Hailey huffs and shakes her head at the departing blonde's back. Once the door closes behind her, she grumbles softly before saying, "I was going to let her explain this, but since she's stalling..."

She looks down, then back up at Rean. "She's not still mad at you. She's embarrassed and clinging to fussy propriety as armor."

Rean turns around, unstartled because he could sense her, but still caught a little off-guard. "Huh?"

    Elliot adopts a thoughtful pose. "You really think so?"

"It really seems like she's mad at me... Oh, uh, good morning Hailey."

She nods. "I know so. Thumped her about it a bit in that first 'orienteering' exercise, even. Her reasons are her own, but it's not something you're actually doing, and hasn't been since the first accident."

She sighs. "We've been so busy that I forgot to remind her. I'll try to catch her sometime soon."

"Well, thanks for that. It'd be a relief if you're right."

He scratches his head sheepishly.

"I still feel like I ought to properly apologize, though."

She giggles and scoffs. "For breaking her fall with your face? I feel like she should apologize, honestly, but I'll settle for whatever stops her from sniping uselessly at you."

She grabs the door and starts leading the way toward class.

Elliot tactfully doesn't mention how unnecessary that particular apology would be, momentarily reliving his memory of... breaking Hailey's fall with his own face. He shakes the thought away. He has, uh, noticed, Hailey's crush on Laura. It has been very noticeable. And its pretty cute.

"Guess we're walking together?" he asks cheerfully.

He and Rean follow her out the doors.

And then something clicks in his head, contrasting Hailey and him with Alisa and Rean. "Ohhhhhhh. Wow. Uh. Yeah. I think Hailey's right, about Alisa."

Alisa totally has a crush on Rean. It explains everything.

"Looks that way!"

Hailey would be pretty embarrassed herself if anyone mentioned her enormous crush on Laura. Luckily, she hasn't realized that Elliot knows.

She's socially sharp enough to spot when Elliot has the realization about Alisa, though, and giggles. "Yep. No point in doing anything other than trying to stop the sniping so she can come to terms with it, though."

Rean fidgets with his sword.

"Do I... want to know what you two are talking about?"

"Nope," she replies with a smirk. "Even remembering that we're talking about something like this is a great way to reduce your odds of future fun. Just keep being your earnest, upstanding self, and everything will be fine. So on that note, Rean, what's your favorite class so far?"

Rean starts to reply, realizes he has no idea how, then just shakes off his profound confusion and let's it go.

"I've been enjoying history more than I thought I would," he muses.

"None of our coursework is terrible," Elliot opines, "but to be honest I went into this thinking combat training would be the hard part. The academic side has really been giving it a run for its money."

"It really has!", she exclaims with a tired nod. "I have to work hard to keep up. I'm just a flighty, windy bitch, not cut out for this academic genius shit."

You cheating, airheaded brat, those grades can't be yours. You're just a glory-seeking little cunt, just like your glory-hound parents.

Her smile turns faintly strained for a fraction of a second.

Rean and Elliot both sweatdrop at Hailey's language, but don't press.

As they enter the school's campus, they fall back on the topic of smalltalk that has become something of a default in their class: the ever-growing vitriol between Machias and Jusis. As one-sided as it started, it didn't take long for Jusis to start provoking Machias on purpose.

Classes today are a bit of a cool-down from the frenetic pace of the first two weeks.

Translation: tests and review, instead of new material.

First period, they review science.

Then they review math. With Sara. Who definitely isn't the math teacher. And who mostly just reads out of the textbook.

The morning concludes with a review of history, with Thomas Lysander, their rather quirky and energetic history teacher. Rean and Alisa have another moment during which they forget they're supposed to be at odds. Honestly if they could just maintain that state, their problems would be solved.

Then it's physical training. Two hours of basic exercise out on the athletics field.

After that, a short break to wash up and eat a rushed lunch.

Then two more hours of weapons drills and chi training, with durable (but inanimate) target dummies set up in a widely-spaced row:

The sword-wielders clip extra weights onto their swords (though this is a bit redundant and comical in Laura's case) and burn their arms with swing after swing, occasionally switching to projected mana slashes when they have the spare energy. The gun users of the class are all using advanced firearms that use chi instead of physical bullets, and practice both their aim and their firing speed. The orbal staff pair practice flinging mana, training stamina and speed with their staves rather than anything complex. Alisa is doing her own thing, firing phantasmal arrow after phantasmal arrow...

Hailey slams her batons in swipe after swipe after sweep, bopping with minor air-hammers and gusting in the direction of her sweeps, occasionally mixing in wind-blades as often as she can when she has the chi for it, trying to make her Crafts more efficient in chi use each time, even though she knows there probably isn't much to gain there.

Matter. Mana. Energy.

These are three different things, for all that human intuition often gets them mixed up.

The body is made of Matter and Mana. It uses Energy. But before it can use that energy, it has to get it from somewhere.

As Hailey moves through the forms of her strikes, the force of her body is opposed by the force of the world. The shock of impacts, the recoil of her weapons, the heat generated by her muscles, the chemical reaction that comes with every breath. None of this goes to waste, as it would in a more entropic universe. The mana in Hailey's body absorbs this energy and moves into a state of excitation, storing that energy for later.

Imagine a flywheel, spinning faster and faster as one pours more and more kinetic energy into it. Imagine that flywheel drives a shaft on which there are seven gears. Four of those gears have teeth shaped to catch an aspect of Matter. Three more have teeth shaped to catch an aspect of Mana.

This is a poor analogy, prone to causing confusion in less-studious children, who often make the mistake of taking the analogy too literally and concluding that chi is the same thing as orbal energy, which actually involves spinning gears and the math of orbits. Chi very much isn't that. But, poor as it is, the analogy is compelling.

All that metaphysical momentum waiting to be used. Hailey throws out a wind blade, briefly engaging her metaphysical, metaphorical 'clutch', grinding the momentum of the mana in her body against the mostly-static elemental field constants, warping reality to make the Air sharp. She spends chi, giving up some of that stored momentum, to shove on the fabric of existence and shape it into something interesting, however briefly.

Hailey has a lot of practice at this, so she can shove her chi against reality quickly and precisely, draining less momentum from her body's mana than most girls her age would need, to achieve the same effect. She's far from perfectly efficient, though. Class Seven has only just started the lesson on doing the math, working out the actual energy necessary for a given effect and calculating the metaphysical 'mass' of their own mana and from that working out what percentage of their maximum 'momentum' they actually need.

None of them are above 20% efficiency, but 10% efficiency is impressive for a layman, so for teenagers they're all pretty far ahead of the curve already. The hard numbers mean little, Instructor Sara reminds them, though. Being efficient with the raw energy of chi is only one small part of the infinite possibilities in bending reality to one's will. Skill wins, every time.

Elliot is definitely feeling his own lack of skill, as he swings his orbal staff around. He's between Emma and Hailey in the line, with Hailey on his right and Emma on his left.

He grips the control band on his staff, energizing it with a token drop of chi. He feels the head of the staff physically catch on the ambient background mana, and heaves with his tired, aching muscles. Water mana froths into visibility around the orbal staff's head as it scoops Water out of the aether. He hurls it at the target dummy, formless bluish bubbles rolling lazily toward the target before colliding and bursting with a satisfyingly musical concussion.

He takes a moment to catch his breath, and to glance at the girls to either side.

"Man, you two are both so much better than me at this. I feel like I'm wielding my orbal staff like it's a shovel. No finesse. No technique. Just scoop and throw..."