…or, Mack On Her Ass
Thaumatology came and went without giving me a single reason for being there, other than saving a few points on my grade. My brain was rotting out of my skull by the end of the ninety minutes. I was out of my seat in a flash when the period ended, anxious to get out into the open air and do something.
Out at Hauldhagen Field, a lot of the skirmishers and other experienced fighters hadn’t waited for class to begin to box their weapons and get to sparring. I went ahead and got my weapon mocked so I’d be ready, but sat back and just watched what the fighters were doing. After a minute, murmurs from the newbie side caught my attention. I turned around to see the girl they called Mack—the demon girl of Harlowe, the girl at the center of the drama that had sent Barley packing—wandering onto the field. She hadn’t been present the week before. Had she transferred in, or just blown off two days’ worth of classes?
She looked dazed as hell, no pun intended, and mousier than ever. She was way out of her depth. She was watching a couple of the advanced girls sparring with an axe and a mace, and her eyes were on the weapons. Her hand had gone to the knife on her belt, but not to the hilt. It was like she was trying to cover it up with her hand. I wondered if she knew she was doing that.
She looked overwhelmed. Completely out of place. If I could have made myself forget that she was a half-demon and that she’d screwed Barley over to impress her friends, I might have run over to play hero.
Even knowing her heritage, I couldn’t see any malice in her. Ignoring that knowledge, I could see her being easy prey for a clique of bullying dykes. Taking it into account, I had to wonder if she was really being manipulated, or if she was doing it herself. Barley’s reading of her being desperate for love and attention didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t a monster.
Callahan showed up, and the Harlowe girl’s reaction to seeing her looked to be about the same as mine had been. It would be so easy to empathize with her. Her grubby t-shirt and her permanent slouch didn’t do her any favors, but it made her less intimidating.
Was it possible that was all a pose?
“Anybody seen Johnson?” Callahan asked, looking up from her roster. If she was taking roll, that meant she knew everybody in the huge class by sight. That was impressive. “Fuckin’ Johnson,” she said, when nobody said anything, then whispered something like “Kill that faggot,” under her breath.
That was when the name clicked: Johnson, Steff—the obnoxious half-elf. He was from Harlowe. That raised some interesting questions. Was he skipping because he knew Mack would be there?
Regardless, Callahan’s homophobia (or athanophobia, or whatever it was) was starting to get on my nerves.
She looked at Mack without much interest, then looked at her again. Her eyes scanned the sheet on her clipboard and then narrowed a little. She did a very discreet double-take.
“New girl. Mackenzie?” she said.
Mack sneered a little, but she hid it quickly. I think Callahan noticed it anyway.
“I’d prefer ‘Ms. Blaise’,” she said, stepping forwards. “I was raised human.”
Maybe the stunned bunny look had been an act. This girl had big adamantine balls, the kind that came from knowing she could knock the head off even a seasoned fighter with a single punch. If Callahan hadn’t called her “new girl”, I would have bet money she’d just blown off the previous sessions.
“Fine, then,” Callahan said, unimpressed. “You ready to wow us today, Blaise?”
“Ms. Blaise, if you please,” Mack said.
Adamantine balls.
“Look, I’ll call you Daisy the Magic Rocking Horse if that’s what you want, but I expect you to earn it. I’ve already extended you a line of credit, but don’t push your luck,” Callahan said. I wondered how much information the school gave her about her students’ backgrounds. She was tough, but would she really push back that hard if she knew she was addressing a demon?
“It’s a rule,” Ms. Blaise said. Her eyes were full of contempt. Her voice was mostly calm, but there was an excited quaver in it. She looked tense. There was a small tremor in her hands. Several other students stepped back. I stood my ground, but braced myself for the very real possibility that I was about to see a demonblood flip her shit.
“Rule number one in life is that the people who have the weapons are the ones who get to pick which rules get enforced,” Callahan said. More evidence that she didn’t know exactly what she was facing.
“Oh, I’ve got a weapon,” Mack said. For somebody who didn’t know what she was, it would have been easy to miss the subtle undercurrent of menace there.
Of course she had a weapon. Her whole body was a weapon. Preternatural strength. Nails that could double as rending claws. Teeth that could shred flesh and shatter bone. The fire of hell itself.
Homophobe or not, I prayed that Callahan had the ability to back up her bluster against more than a couple of unprepared humans. She obviously hadn’t caught on yet. Her eyes went to the bronze-handled hunting knife on Ms. Blaise’s belt. It was an ugly, unremarkable looking weapon, done in an obvious and poor imitation of the elven style. I couldn’t imagine why anybody would bother to enchant it. Of course, she would only be carrying it as a formality. Whatever the rules said, Ms. Blaise would hardly require an enchanted weapon.
“Great,” Callahan said. “Come at me with it.”
“What?” Mack said. This wasn’t the response she’d been expecting, obviously.
“Draw your knife and come after me,” Callahan said. “Attack me.”
“But, but it’s not a mockery, it’s a real knife,” Mack stammered. Maybe Callahan was cagier than she looked. The professor had just changed the game. Instead of the demonblood goading her into a fistfight, she was challenging the student to draw her weapon. Chances were a demonblood would be far better-versed in using her hands and teeth.
“Should I care?” Callahan said, fluttering her surprisingly long eyelashes. There was something off-putting about her corded body, something vaguely wrong about the set of her shoulders, but she had a pretty face. “Am I supposed to care that you have a live blade? Is there some reason I should find that fact to be significant?”
“Are you insane?” Mack yelled, her voice cracking with indignation. She literally could not believe that Callahan was standing up to her.
I was losing more respect for “Ms. Blaise” and gaining it for Callahan. I didn’t like bullies. I know that’s not an original stand. Who does like bullies? But I hated the way she’d slouched into the class, made herself the center of attention, and tried to intimidate the professor into doing things her way. She’d be used to human teachers and classmates shitting themselves when she looked at them funny. She wouldn’t even have to make a direct threat. It would be enough to give anybody a case of “big fish, small pond” syndrome hopped up on giant strength.
“No, I’m serious,” Callahan said, cool as can be. “Is there a reason I should care that you have a knife?”
The Ms. didn’t care for that one bit.
“Well, for one thing it’s a fucking knife and I could kill you with it,” she said. “For another thing, it’s a fucking knife and I could kill you with it!”
“Really?” Callahan asked. Now she looked like she was trying to keep from laughing, as the demonblood’s tantrum continued to build. “Are you sure about that?”
“Am I sure that it’s a knife?”
“That you could kill me with it,” Callahan said. She put her clipboard off to the side, where it hovered in the air. “Because I’m not sure you could, even with that knife.” Now I was starting to wonder if she was insane. Challenging a demon to unarmed combat? “In fact, I don’t think you could do so with my personal blade, a long sword so loaded with enchantments my grandkids will be paying it off.”
She drew the weapon—a nice piece with a basket hilt and a long blade with gold filigree—and held it out pommel-first.
“Here, take this and swing it at me,” she said when her angry pupil didn’t react.
“What?” Mack asked.
“Don’t speak Pax?” Callahan said. “Take this and swing it at me.”
“You’re not serious,” she said, looking at the weapon like she thought it would bite her. Maybe it would. Callahan had said it was enchanted up the wazoo.
“Deadly,” Callahan said.
Mack stepped forward, her hand reaching out for the weapon. She froze, then looked at the teacher’s face.
“You really are serious?” she asked. She didn’t seem to have registered Callahan’s fist going up and back.
“I am,” Callahan said, punching her in the nose. I heard the crunch. “You’re not.”
It was the most impossible, paradoxical thing I’d ever seen. Callahan and Mack were of a similar height. Though Callahan was bulkier, she seemed to be a mostly-human mutt. Yet Mack, by all accounts half-demon, was down on the ground screaming her head off and Callahan was standing her ground.
“You punched me!” Mack yelled. The fact that she wasn’t bleeding implied her heritage hadn’t been exaggerated.
“Yeah, yeah, go cry, emo kid,” Callahan said, turning her back on her, sheathing her sword and grabbing her clipboard.
Mack blubbered something that sounded like “I’m not crying.”
Callahan waved a hand dismissively.
“Whatever, go to the healing center if—Johnson!” she said, looking up suddenly. I followed her gaze and saw Steff skipping across the field. “You’re late!”
“Aw, sorry, Coach,” Steff said, slouching his head low while giving her a big ol’ shit-eating aw-shucks grin. “I’m just trying to move slow enough for your poor, human eyes to follow.” His eyes flicked down to where Mack was still sitting sprawled on the ground, apparently digging for sympathy that didn’t seem to be coming. “Shit, Mack, what happened?” he asked her.
“I punched her in the face,” Callahan said.
Steff snorted.
“Better not do that too much or she’ll get to like it,” Steff said, rolling his eyes and smirking. “Are you okay, honey?” he said to Mack in a fluttery, girlish sing-song voice. He didn’t think much of her, either, it seemed.
“If she likes getting the shit knocked out of her, I think she’s in the right place,” Callahan said. “Though it’s kind of hard to imagine a place where she wouldn’t. Do something with her, will you? I can’t have crying kids in my class. They unbalance my fucking chi.”
Steff gave the crying Mack a sidelong glance, then dropped his voice low, beckoned to Callahan and said, “Look, Jillian.” I couldn’t make out the rest, but Jillian? Elven arrogance shouldn’t have surprised me at that point, but he either hadn’t processed the fact that he was talking to somebody who had suckerpunched a demon or he didn’t care.
“You’re telling me?” Callahan said. “I didn’t say get rid of her, but at least make her stop crying.”
They exchanged a bit more of what I guessed was “friendly banter” for them. Steff fit surprisingly well into the warrior jock culture, for somebody who identified as queer. Then he led Mack, still griping and moaning, away from the field. I didn’t envy him getting stuck with her. I still couldn’t quite get a bead on her, but I was less sure I wanted to. I felt bad for Barley getting screwed over, but she was better off with Mack out of her life.
“Class started five minutes ago, so I’m guessing everybody has their weapons mocked,” Callahan said, looking around the field. A bunch of people started moving towards the tables where the boxes were. “All you people, next time you aren’t ready when class begins, you’re spending it unarmed. ”
That was one thing I could say for sure about Ms. Mack Blaise: she was a grade A dumbass for picking a fight with Callahan.
Cross-Reference TOMU Chapter 85: Mixed Melee
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