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23 - + 1 Charisma
🕑 Added 2025-02-12 22:57:17 +0000 UTCLexie went to school the next school day in good spirits despite what happened the last time she was here. Aiden didn’t walk her to the gates because he had to head to his cleaning gig early that morning but Lexie was okay walking to the gate by herself.
"Hi, Mitch." She waved at the security guard–who simply nodded her in–and made her way across the school field.
But the closer she got to the classroom, the more her apprehension grew. Truthfully, she was dreading seeing Veronica again. Not because she was scared of confrontation necessarily. But she didn't feel prepared to face the situation yet.
Even though Aiden told her that learning about pathways would make it easier for her to guard hers from manipulation, she wasn't sure she was at the stage where she could. At least not without deep meditation. Aiden said she wouldn’t always need the meditation and would eventually be able to access that magical plane while in the normal plane at the same time. But it would take time and work.
Lexie was willing to put in the work. It was the time part that bugged her.
In any case, she would face whatever came at her today head-on. No way was she letting herself get bullied by a middle schooler. That would be embarassing.
If she touches me again, I'll just claw her eyes out, Lexie told herself, nodding resolutely. Funny, because Lexie had never been a fighter. She'd always been the type to avoid trouble rather than engage with it. But now she didn’t have a choice. And even though Veronica was taller than her and probably stronger than her in just about every way, Lexie wasn't about to let herself become a doormat. She wouldn't let Veronica put that fear inside her like Aiden's bully did to him. She would fight it with every bit of physicality she could muster until her magic could match up.
So the second she walked into class, she located Veronica first, readying herself.
Veronica was engaged in a conversation with Diane, but as if drawn by Lexie’s gaze or some cruel twist of fate, she looked at Lexie at the same time.
Their eyes locked. Lexie didn't look away.
It was like two lions in the animal kingdom.
If she showed fear and looked away first, Veronica would think she was scared of her. She would pounce, thinking she'd won another easy target.
So Lexie held her gaze until Veronica scoffed and looked away.
And then Lexie continued to her seat, determined to maintain her good mood despite it.
“Hey Dewie,” she greeted the bespectacled boy as she took the seat by the window.
His head shot to her, a confused look on his face. “You know my name?”
She looped her backpack on her seat and brought out her study pad. “Uh. Yeah?” Roll call happened every morning and she could see the names of everyone as the teacher ticked it off. Plus she’d heard people call him Ewie-Dewie a few times so it caught.
Did he not like being called his name? Maybe because of the teasing? Did he prefer Dewitt?
He was still staring at her with that stricken expression and she was starting to get uncomfortable.
“I can call you something else if you want me to,” she said. “Do you have a nickname in mind?”
His eyes widened for a beat. “Are you in love with me?”
“What?” Lexie blurted out loudly, so taken aback by his question that she drew the attention of the people in the surrounded seats. Her face heated and she reduced her tone to a whisper. “No!”
He peered at her. “You’re blushing. And you asked to call me a nickname. Kinda sounds like you love me and stuff.”
“I don’t,” Lexie said firmly, ignoring the snickering in the seat behind her. Jeez, could she not just find one nice, normal seatmate? “I asked your name because I was trying to be nice to you.”
If anything, he looked more suspicious and confused. “Why? Are you trying to prank me?”
“No, why would I be trying to prank you?’
He shrugged. “Some people think it’s funny.” There was a mild tightness in his face when he said it, which told Lexie that he didn't think it was very funny.
“I won’t prank you,” Lexie told him. “As long as you agree not to prank me either.”
That shocked him. “I wasn’t going to prank you in the first place.” He sounded so genuinely offended that Lexie had to believe him.
“Really? Then why did you tell me not to sit here on the first day?”
“Because…something bad might happen.”
“What?”
He sighed in exasperation. “A red-hatted gnome sat there the week before you came. That means something, possibly something bad, is going to happen to that chair.”
“A gnome?” As part of her Politics class, Lexie was studying human relations with other planets and their inhabitants. While there were a lot of alien species, usually creatures Lexie thought were mythical like dragons, orcs, and the all-important Fae, she’d never heard of gnomes.
Suddenly, the brunette girl sitting in front of them, Mya, spun around and gave Dewie an annoyed look.
“Just ignore him," she told Lexie. "He’s always saying silly stuff like that.”
“It’s not silly!’ He frowned fiercely at the girl. “It was really there. I don't know why no one believes me.”
“No one believes you because there’s no such thing as gnomes and you’re either an attention-seeking liar or you’re insane.”
“I’m not insane!” He was getting agitated now and Lexie didn’t want the situation to escalate so she said, “I believe you.”
Mya and Dewie turned to her stunned. Not just them, but the class had gotten significantly quieter too.
Lexie held her ground and shrugged. “If he said he saw a gnome then he saw a gnome. I don’t get what the big deal is.”
“Gnomes don’t exist.” Mya said it slowly like Lexie was stupid.
“Maybe they do, maybe they don’t.” She glanced around to see that several people were staring at her like she was crazy now. "What? Is it that hard to believe that we discovered dragon aliens but not gnomes?”
“Is she for real?” She heard Veronica say with someone else snickering.
“Whatever.” Mya was tired of explaining it to Lexie. She rolled her eyes and immediately turned to her study pad.
Lexie turned back to her pad too.
Dewie leaned in to whisper. “You really are in love with me, aren't you?"
“No, I'm not." But she didn’t think he believed her because he smiled and winked at her.
“Okay class.” Mrs. Patridge, the History and Politics teacher, walked in, agitated, her curly hair a mess around her head, her glasses perched crookedly on her nose. “Sorry, I’m late. There was an accident on 2nd and 5th Roman and the bridge almost collapsed. Caused a heap of traffic. But no worries. A few student [Heroes] have taken care of it.”
An air of excitement was instantly injected into the class and some of the kids sitting by the window stood to take a peek out the window, to see if they could catch the [Heroes] at work from there.
“It’s already done,” Mrs. Webber snapped. “Stop standing and take your seats.”
The students grumbled as they did but they knew better than to defy her.
Mrs Webber turned to the holographic board and pulled up a projection of the earth with each of its Districts split up into separate sections.
“Today we’re going to be continuing our conversation about the First Great War." She surveyed the class and said, "To recap, who can tell me what the war was about?"
Trixie put her hand up instantly.
“Yes.”
“The war was between the old Guardians and humankind. The Guardians were slowly destroying human civilization forcing the Humans to seek help from extraterrestrial beings like the Fae. The Fae agreed to help us and then we managed to lock the Guardians up in the Evil Tower and got our own system."
"Good." Mrs. Patridge glanced at Lexie, as though trying to make sure she was keeping up and Lexie nodded. Apart from the fact that they'd discussed this in their previous class, Lexie already read up on the First Great War. It was one of the few historical occurrences that didn't have an equivalent on Earth 2.
The Guardians were essentially like gods, supernaturally powerful beings who were worshipped and often bestowed powers on humans that they favored. The powers were given through contracts with the humans, and the humans would essentially sell their souls to these Guardians for power. Like the Grecoroman gods, there was a Guardian for everything–strength, beauty, wisdom and also magic.
The problem though was that the Guardians hated each other and would often use human armies to wage wars on other Guardians' territories. District would fight against District, nation against nation, a proxy war for supernatural beings who only saw humans as their toys.
And then Earth was discovered by the Fae who had already established a magic system on their planet without the Guardians. The humans pleaded with the Fae to give them a system like that so they could fight back against the Guardians and the Fae agreed. That was basically how Earth's system came into being.
“Excellent start. And how did we establish our system? Jefferey?”
“Uh…” The freckled boy fumbled for a second, trying to hide the fact that he was probably doing something else on his pad other than taking down notes.
“The Great Developers and the Fae climbed the tower and found the source of the Guardian's magic," Mya continued. "They found a way to siphon it and feed it into wells all over the world. Then they found a way for humans to use it without the Guardian's interference."
"That's great Mya, but I want to hear from Jeffrey next time."
Mya blushed and gave her a clipped nod.
"Okay, Jeffrey. What happened after we took the Guardian's magic?"
"Well, um...the Guardians got weaker and we locked them up. Then we used their magic to create the system."
“Good, but Mya already said most of that. And what happened after?”
“Obviously, we got powers.”
People chuckled all over the room and Mrs. Patridge shook her head.
Lexie stuck her hand up in the air.
"Yes, Lexie?"
“Why didn't the system give powers to everyone?" she asked. "I mean part of the problem with the Guardians was that they only distributed powers to people who found favor with them or who they wanted to use for their nefarious deeds. The Great Developers of the system and the Fae reportedly wanted fairness and equality as well as an end to the wars. So why not just let everyone have powers?"
“Because then people who didn't deserve it would get it,” Veronica pointed out. Lexie only spared her a glance.
"How does the system decide who deserves it and who doesn't?” she asked Mrs. Patridge next. “It's certainly not a moral decision, or there would be no such thing as a [Villain]. So basically it feels like the system is designed to arbitrarily give some people powers and others not, depending on what it wants from you. Isn’t that what we hated the Guardians for doing? How is this different?"
"It's different because the system is fair," Veronica answered again, sounding annoyed at being ignored. "It doesn't need you to worship it or kiss its butt. It'll give you powers because it thinks you're worthy."
"Worthy? You mean if you have the right parents, hire the right tutors, or fight the right monster at the right time. Again, arbitrary things. And even then it's inconsistent because you could have all those things and still not get chosen. Hardly seems fair to me."
Veronica remained quiet grinding her teeth. Everyone in the class was watching Lexie now, and Mrs. Patridge seemed excited about the dialogue.
“Lexie, What do you think would happen if everyone had powers?" she asked. "Do you think things would be fair then?”
Lexie chewed her lip. "I’m not sure." She truly wasn’t. On the Earth she came from, no one had powers but there was still the separation of rich and poor. And while most people may believe they could technically have access to wealth, because they weren’t restricted from making money, very few people were actually rich. “I guess there would probably still be problems even if everyone had powers."
"Problems like..."
She shrugged. "Probably more powerful bad guys. More [Villains]."
"You would know," Veronica said and Lexie ignored her once again.
"But people would also be able to defend themselves better," she said. "And we could maybe even have more healers. If that happened, even if people only healed themselves and their loved ones, then maybe the healer shortage wouldn't be as bad."
Although Lexie didn't all the way believe that either.
From what she'd read, there used to be more Healers in Orinia until just about a decade ago.
Before that, healing was seen as a noble calling and Healers were assigned to the church to work under a [Saintess]. They dedicated their lives to going around, eradicating disease and helping people at the cost of their own health. The sacrifice was seen as a mark of honor to fulfill their duty.
But the dark side of that was that it wasn’t entirely by choice. The church had been bullying and using political power and underhanded means to force healers into compliance, forcing them to give up their lives or be ostracized from society, unable to find work anywhere.
But then the Hero association stepped in and ended the forced recruitment of necessary [Heroes] and [Healers], allowing those who had the skill but didn't want to practice to go free.
So in a way, it was justice and choice that gave them the healer shortage. But if there were more Healers, odds were there would be more people like Dee who would still choose to sacrifice themselves for it.
If you were pre-affixed as a healer would you do it? An internal voice mocked Lexie. Because it knew that the answer was most likely no. While she liked helping people, she wasn't willing to kill herself for it.
That took the air right out of her self-righteous sails.
And all the more when Mrs. Patridge pointed out, "There's also the fact that mana isn't an infinite resource. There’s certainly a lot of it in the world and will be for years to come, but there's probably not enough to allow every living thing to utilize magic. Too many people using magic would mess with the balance of mana in the atmosphere can have dire consequences."
"We can run out of mana?" Lexie asked. She'd assumed mana was like oxygen, simply there to be inhaled and then exhaled by trees...although now that she thought about it, they could run out of oxygen too. Of course.
Why hadn't she thought about that?
"It would be difficult to," Mrs. Patridge said. "But not impossible."
"A world without mana," Veronica shuddered at the thought. "Sounds awful."
"Not really. Everyone would be a mundane.” Xena finished in a low tone. "Might be nice."
Veronica turned on her. "No, we wouldn't all be mundane. We would be dead. Right, Mrs Patridge?"
"Yes. At this point, our bodies are designed to live in a mana-filled atmosphere. To drastically change that, we either would not survive or we would be forced to evolve into a different type of human. But evolution typically takes multiple years to do so death is the most likely outcome."
"See?" Veronica gave Xena a triumphant look and Xena rolled her eyes.
"Now," Mrs Webber clapped her hands and referred to the rest of the class. "Though the system initially gave out a lot of abilities, there were some that were restricted. Who can tell me just four of the many forbidden classes and skills that the system almost never grants? Abernathy?"
“Some forms of necromancy,” Abernathy said. “Reality manipulation. Mind Control. Future Sight.”
“Good. And why are these forbidden skills not allowed anymore?”
“Because they’re too awesome and the system doesn’t want us to have nice things,” Bennie said and a few people laughed.
The question and answer went on and on until break time.
Lexie didn't go to the cafeteria, still traumatized from last week. Aiden made her promise not to use the cards to give herself time to rest, so she stayed in her seat and read through old notes, trying to ignore Dewie who stared at her like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. It was distracting. She wished he would leave but Dewie barely ever went for lunch at the cafeteria, unfortunately. Lexie was trying to decide if she should find somewhere else to study when the three musketeers walked in.
“Lexie!" Boyle said instantly when he saw her. “We won!”
She blinked at him. “Won what?”
“The bet.”
"Oh." She’d been so busy with Aiden that she’d forgotten to watch the match. “TD won?”’
“Yup. Wiped the floor with Brayden. It happened exactly as you said. He pretended to be slower at first to make Brayden think he was winning and then bam. He had him. It was epic.”
“I bet.” Now that’s another thing to look forward to today. After she was done with Aiden, she could reward herself and watch the highlights of the match.
Abernathy looked sour as he trailed behind them but Chris said, “Here, give me your account number so I can send you your winnings.”
Lexie rattled it off.
A minute later a notification popped up letting her know that 135 credits had been added back to her account.”
She frowned. “Why 135? It’s supposed to be 150.”
“The wager guild takes ten percent of every bet pool,” Chris said.
"Who on earth decided that?"
"The wager president did.”
Lexie frowned in confusion and then the realization hit her. “You're wager president?"
He said smugly. And then Boyle spoke up. “Hey, you know your stuff for a girl. Tomorrow is MediKate versus Kane the Mundane. Who do you have so I can make my bets?”
Before she could answer a ding hit the corner of her vision.
It was a notification, but it was weird, flickering almost like a glitch. She opened it up with a frown.
*
+1 Charisma.
*
Huh? What was that? She would have to ask Aiden when she got home.
It didn’t sound like any of the other boys got the same thing. They were still waiting for her answer.
"MediKate will probably win," Lexie said. "One sneaky tranquilizer dart and the Mundane is down."
Abernathy scoffed. “Please. Obviously, Mundane or not, Kane isn’t going to lose to a girl with barely any magic.”
This again?
“Oh really?” Lexie slowly smiled. "Would you like to make a wager on that?”
***
It was on her way home that it occurred to Lexie.
She suddenly stopped in her tracks as it hit her and she frowned into space for two seconds, her dad staring at her.
“Are you solving multi-universe problems?”
She blinked at him and shook her head. “Nah. Just thinking about something…in class today, the teacher said that there were skills that the system never gives to anyone anymore.”
“Yes. The forbidden skills. And?”
She glanced at him. “She said mind-control was one of them. But at that [Hero] party there was this guy and…I dunno if he had mind-control but I felt like he was doing something telepathic to Xena.”
“Really?” he frowned.
“Yeah. But I wasn’t close enough to be sure.”
Aiden’s frown remained and he rubbed his chin in thought. They continued walking. “Well, mind control is forbidden but there is a workaround.”
“What does that mean?”
“I knew someone who was a telepathic spell caster.” For a second, his expression turned annoyed as though he was thinking of an irritating bug. Lexie got the feeling that whoever this someone was, Aiden wanted to punch him in the face. “It’s not real telepathy in the sense of the word. He couldn't read minds but he could sense thoughts from pathways.”
“Pathways…can give away thoughts?”
“They give away a bunch of information. But you’d have to be a pathway expert to be able to make sense of the information you’re getting. And even then it’s not as strong as real telepathy where you would outright read someone’s mind. It’s more so that you’re getting the impression of their senses and emotions and you can manipulate it slightly.”
“Oh. So that’s what he could have been doing?”
“It would depend. I only know of one telepathic spellcaster so I’m not sure. It’s a notoriously difficult thing to learn.”
“Even for a generational genius Archmage like you?” Lexie joked and he tweaked her nose.
"Yes, brat. Even for me.”
Aiden didn’t have to work at the Healing House today, so he spent time with Lexie working on plugging her pathways. This time she was able to do it for a longer stretch and she was proud of herself. Aiden was happy about her quick progress too.
After they were done, she ended up watching the TD fight on the couch while Aiden made dinner. It was exactly what she thought. He hung back a lot in the first half and then really dominated in the second half with his <LOCKJAW>. He also exposed a new skill which saw him throwing his opponent from side to side and attacking him from each side he landed on. It was a cool move that looked quite complicated but of course, TD pulled it off.
At the end of the match, he took off his mask and grinned genuinely for the first time at the roaring crowd. Lexie smiled back at him then remembered Xena’s words about her having a crush on TD, so she stopped herself from smiling.
"I’m not a fan girl," she told herself even as she commented, "Good job Top Dog! Amazing finish!”
She also scrolled down the comments, where there was a debate about what Top Dog should name that final move.
The top comment read: I think he should name that finishing move Dog Walker. Because he walked him like a dog.
Lexie frowned. Dogwalker sounded good but she had a better idea.
How about Ragbone? she commented underneath. What he did reminded Lexie of ragging when dogs would shake their toy aggressively as though trying to kill it.
The comment almost immediately got two likes, which gave Lexie some validation for her choices.
A doorbell rung and Lexie stood from the couch. “I’ll get it,” she announced as she jogged to the door. Aiden didn’t even budge or respond. He was too focused on Nancy the baking queen again.
But when she pulled open the front door, shock pierced through Lexie's good mood.
“Xena?”
"Hey,” she said, frowning. Lexie almost felt like closing the door again, before Xena could ruin her mood, but the other girl looked more uncomfortable than antagonistic, rubbing her elbow. “Can we talk?”
"Um…sure.” Lexie walked out and closed the door, wondering what this was about. “Is Emma okay? Do we need to crash another [Hero] party?”
“No, she’s fine,” Xena said with a small smile. “No more party crashing. I don't need you passing out on my again.”
“I won’t pass out. I’m getting better at activating cards, even the tougher ones. Of course, it still takes me almost forty seconds to activate most of the hard ones but I’m sure we can work around that.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lexie blinked. “Don’t be. Aiden says forty seconds is great for my age.”
“That’s not what I’m sorry about” she breathed out and then she said, “I heard that Veronica was talking bad about your dad. Who for some reason you sometimes call by his first name.”
The mention of Veronica dimmed Lexie’s mood. The other girl hadn’t done anything to Lexie today but smirked whenever their eyes met. Lexie wasn’t scared of her, but it was annoying.
“Yeah, so?”
Xena exhaled deeply, clenching her hands. “Well, when she was talking about my mom you told her off, but I didn’t say anything when she spoke about your dad.”
Hang on, what? That’s the part she was apologizing for?
“You weren't there to say anything,” Lexie pointed out. “You got your panties in a twist because I tried to help you and stormed out. “
Xena’s face reddened. Her eyes traveled everywhere but at Lexie. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that either. I guess I’m sorry for that too.”
Two sorries in one day? What on earth is going on?
“Did your mom put you up to this?” Lexie asked, and some animosity jumped right back into Xena’s expression.
“No. And she’s not my mom.” Ah, that's the Xena I remember. Ever the contrarian, because she literally called Emma ‘mom’ two speech bubbles ago.
“No. I’m apologizing because I felt bad for yelling at you when you tried to help, but also you don’t have to do that alright?”
“Do what?”
“Defend me. Don't try to talk to me and be nice. It’s annoying. You don’t have to be my friend just because my mom asked you to.”
Who said I wanna be your friend, Lexie thought but she didn’t say it. As prickly as she was, this was Xena at least trying to communicate and Lexie didn't want to respond to that with nastiness.
“You think your mom asked me to be your friend? And that’s why I’ve been talking to you?” Lexie shook her head. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I just like you?”
Xena made a weird face. “You like me? Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess maybe I’m a masochist.” Lexie shrugged. “I mean, you’re mean but you’re also kind of funny. And you introduced me to the AFC so that's nice. And it takes a certain kind of person to go all the way to another city and disrupt a local political event to scream at the superpowered law enforcement. Plus you defended my dad when Rose was yelling at him.”
“I didn't do that to defend him.”
“Yeah you did, at least a part of you did.” She smirked at her stormy expression. “Anyway, I wasn’t being nice to you because of your mom.”
She peered at me. “So you’re saying your dad never told you anything about me?”
“Well...” Lexie tried to lie, but she wasn't very good at it because Xena sighed.
“He did, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, but that’s just because dad’s a gossip, not because your mom told him to say something.” Thankfully the door was closed so he couldn’t hear her badmouthing him. “It doesn’t matter. I liked you before he even told me that stuff.”
Xena didn’t look like she believed her so Lexie let it go.
“But alright, fine,” she said. “I won’t try to be your friend anymore.”
"You won’t?”
“Yeah. As a matter of fact, I’ll go out of my way to not be your friend. When Conrad loses his match on Thursday, I’ll rub it in your face so hard you’ll think I despise you.”
That got Xena to smile before she said, “He's not going to lose.”
“We’ll see.” Lexie didn't think he was going to lose either but if she told Xena that, Xena might think she was trying to be her friend again.
Xena soon left, and Lexie went back in, in an even better mood.
And she completely forgot to ask Aiden about the notification she received earlier today.
