Chapter 01: Shri, the White Spirit

I wiped some blood off of my lips with the back of my hand, glaring darkly at my opponent. You know how adults always tout that school is a safe place to be? Total. Nonsense. Throughout my life, all seventeen years, I had come to understand. People are greedy, selfish fools who will leap to attack the first moment you give half an opening. A fist slammed into my stomach, knocking my breath away, and this was followed by a strike to the face. I hit the ground hard.

Laughing, my opponent picked up my wallet from where it had fallen nearby and walked off. He hadn't really been interested in the money; I only carried pocket change unless I was going to buy something, and he knew it. He had just found it a convinient excuse for pummeling me again. I lay on the ground for a few long moments, then staggered to my feet. Exiting the alley between school buildings, I made my way to the nurse's office. She sighed when she saw me.

"I need to have a revolving door installed for you." she muttered. "You're in and out of here so often..." Not true, that. I only came three times a week or so, whenever I got the crap beaten out of me in a fight. Which, yes, did happen fairly regularly. The nurse raised a hand and pointed at me. A white orb made solely of magic shot off of her finger and hit me in the chest, instantly healing my wounds. Useful trick, that one, but it was something I was unable to learn. "Rai, I really am concerned about how often you come here. No student should be getting hurt this often... or at all."

"It's fine." I sighed, stretching my healed arms. "The school can't do anything about it, anyways. If people want to hurt me, they'll find a way to."

Perhaps now is a good time to explain why, exactly, I am such a magnet for pain. In my world, people are born holding Crystals. These are, typically, large hunks of unpolished blue stone. With these Crystals are the Spirits that inhabit them. Nobody... really knows what they are. Gods, elementals, aliens, it could be anything. These spirits can pop into your life anytime between the ages of just-born to fourteen or so. The longer the wait, the stronger the Spirit. I had not managed to be like other people. See, I'd have been happy with a low-level spirit, even if it was totally useless. But no, I had to be the only person on the planet without a Spirit at my age.

So, naturally, everyone else in my class found me an easy target when they wanted to hit someone. They had their Spirit backing them up, whereas I had just my own hands and feet to protect me. One-sided is a mild way of putting it. To make it even worse, my Crystal isn't even normal. It's violet, not blue, and instead of a random shape it's more like two diamonds connected together at the tip. Faceted, and with a much nicer color than theirs, it really is different. It hangs around my neck held by the middle, so it looks roughly like a Mobius Strip; the symbol of infinity. A bit ironic, which is the reason I do it.

"If you ever need some help..." the nurse began. "I can always find somebody to be your bodyguard."

"I said it's fine." I said, a touch too sharply. I didn't want a bodyguard, not for something I should have been able to do myself. Nobody ever said life was fair, but I got the short stick every single time. We're forming groups? Sorry, Rai, everyone's full, so you should work by yourself. We're heading on a Field Trip? Oh, you don't have any friends, so just stay at school for the day. We've decided to start dating? Well, you don't even have a Spirit, so even the ugly girls don't want you...

My whole life was like that. There are some upsides, I admit, if you dig deep for them, but for the most part I was always just shunted to the side. Children in particular love having a scapegoat for when things go wrong, and I was the perfect target because I was different from everyone else.

The door opened behind me. I stepped to the side, looking over to find one of the staff there, along with a girl who had vivid yellow hair, black bangs, and probably a violent personality.

"Oh, Rai." the teacher said. "Good. Would you mind showing this new student around? She needs a guide." I heard the unspoken. You have no friends, so you can't be busy, and we may as well let the new girl know you're at the bottom rung of the ladder. Nobody likes a teacher's pet, after all.

"Sure." I said. It was true; I didn't have anything better to do. "This, obviously, is the Nurse's Office. People don't stay long." I headed out the door, and the girl followed me. "Piece of advice; don't expect to become friends with me."

"I wasn't intending to..." the girl began. "But why not?"

"Oh, you'll see." I replied darkly. This girl was not one of those I'll-be-friends-with-everyone types, and it showed. Quite calmly, I gave her a brief tour of the school. Office, library, gym, cafeteria, and classrooms. The rest of it she'd learn on her own by being here. "That about sums it up." I said as we walked out the main doors. "Any questions?"

"I've got one." An unfortunately familiar voice said. I looked over to the speaker. Jarrett, the same one who had just gotten through pummeling me, was relaxing against the wall. He wasn't talking to me, though. "I haven't seen you around here before. Ditch this loser and hang out with me." Seriously, had he no originality? "My spirit's A-Rank, but he doesn't even have one."

"Really." the girl with me replied. "Too bad for you, I'm not interested. I don't need to waste my time on an idiot who probably can't even dress himself." Jarrett twitched. He was very fond of giving out insults, but he had no ability at all to take them in. It was like he thought that everyone should listen to him, because he was oh so mighty and perfect, but if anybody dared to think something different than him... well, they HAD to be wrong. "Get lost."

Jarrett left his place by the wall, about five feet away from us, and crossed the gap in one long stride. He gripped the girl's collar, glaring. "Listen," he said fiercely, "When I tell you to do something, you do it. Do not ever mouth off to me. I don't care how good-looking you are, I'm not going to put up with it."

I watched, interested, as the girl gripped his arm and expertly threw him into the ground. She placed a foot on his chest.

"Punks like you are everywhere." the girl said smoothly. "You're not the only one stupid enough to think you can just coerce me into things." Jarrett snarled.

"Koman!" he said. His spirit, which surprisingly looked like a knight in full plate-armor, appeared. "Teach this girl a lesson!" The knight drew his sword. The girl didn't look even slightly nervous, so rather than foolishly jumping in and trying to help, I stood back. She probably knew what she was doing... probably. If she didn't, well... the nurse's office wasn't far. I could probably get there and back in under a minute.

The girl sidestepped the sword as it swung down over Koman's head, then tapped the Spirit's side. Koman's entire body stiffened, and he let out a howl of pain as electricity arced over his armor plates. The Spirit collapsed to the ground and vanished.

"Elecion's a little stronger than your... knight." the girl said. Jarrett wormed out from under her and stood up, furious.

"The only way you could beat Koman is if-"

"Is if I had a higher-level Spirit." the girl said smoothly. "I do. Now get out of my sight before I do the same to you." she held up a finger, and electricity crackled menacingly on the end of it. Jarrett, for once, did as he was told. The girl had said her spirit was higher than Jarrett's, which meant S-Rank. The highest. News of this would be known to every student before the end of lunch, if the rumor mill was still operating as well as I thought it would. "How many jerks like him are around?" I realized, after a moment, she was talking to me.

"Too many." I grumbled. "I've met most of them." The girl gave me an odd look, which I had expected. Then she added something else, which I had also expected.

"What did he mean by you not having a Spirit?" she inquired. I gave her a level glare.

"It means exactly what it sounds like. I don't have a guardian Spirit." I responded. The girl blinked, and I could almost see the cogs churning in her head as she processed this. A Spirit was just something everybody had... period. Being told there was actually someone who didn't tended to throw a wrench into the perfectly working machine of people's worldviews.

"Excellent!" the girl said, placing her hands on my shoulders. "Even the Professor has ever heard of anybody who's had to wait this long!" This time, I was the one who blinked. Wait, what now? People had this bad habit of starting in the middle of thoughts. She seemed surprisingly earnest, though. Showing once more its incredibly bad timing, the lunch bell rang. "Meet me by the main gates after school!" With that, she ran off to get to her classes on time. I scratched my head.

After the final periods of the day, though, I decided I might as well go. The fact that this was my most interaction with a girl my age on a non-schoolwork thing had as much to do with the decision as my interest in my lack of a Spirit. True to her word, the girl was waiting right at the gates as I got there.

"Good. Let's go!" the girl said, taking a turn and walking down the street. I followed alongside her, wondering where exactly we were going. Her house? Nah, there was no way I was that lucky. Whatever her interest in me, we had only just met. "I didn't introduce myself earlier, did I? Aril, Aril Yelani."

"Rai Aquarius." I replied. The girl raised an inquiring eyebrow, as if to say 'What kind of a last name is Aquarius?'. "Don't look at me. If I remember right, some people on my father's side very far back were obsessed with myths and legends."

"I can tell." Aril said, nodding. She seemed amused. Well, she could have actually laughed, so things might have been worse. I was wondering, however, what was wrong with her. On the social pecking order, I was on the absolute lowest rung. I had never even heard of any girl who would be interested in someone like me, especially if she really was of the highest ranking. We took another turn. After ten minutes or so of walking, we came to a halt in front of a house. She WAS taking me home? "This is where the Professor and I are staying. You'll be coming here a lot." the girl took out a card from her pocket and inserted it into a slot. There was a clicking sound, and the door swung open. She put the card back in her pocket, and gestured for me to come inside. I did, taking off my shoes as I did so.

The entryway was clean enough, but my glances through the open doors showed a lot of clutter elsewhere. Every square inch of the kitchen was filled with odd gizmos and gadgets, while the room opposite it, on the left, seemed to have been filled to the brim with computers. This was definitely not a normal house. Aril stretched widely.

"Much better." she said, sounding satisfied. "Hey, Professor! I found a good research subject!" I had to smile. Well, if nothing else, at least scientists would like me. They liked anyone who was different. After a few moments, a sleepy-looking man came down the stairs in front of us, dressed in a long white labcoat.

"Good, good." he yawned. "What's his issue?"

"No spirit." Aril replied smugly. The man jerked awake and peered at me. "None. At. All. Sound familiar?"

"Yes, yes." the Professor said, walking over. "All right, then, let's see if we can't get yours to come out. There's no such thing as having no Spirit, just not having it come out for awhile." he lead me into a third room, though the kitchen, which was filled with various sharp objects. I swallowed nervously.

"Relax." Aril said, almost reading my mind. "They just look painful; he's not going to stab you with any of them." I held up my Crystal, and immediately, both Aril and the man she referred to only as the Professor fixed their full attention on it. "That almost looks like two Crystals put together." Aril breathed out. She dug out her own, and that gave me nearly as much shock as mine did to her. Her Crystal was a faceted yellow diamond, just one, but it looked much more like mine than a normal one. "Her, Professor! Why don't we try doing to his Crystal what we did to mine?"

"Why not?" the Professor said. He took my Crystal and set it in the middle of the room's only truly open space. "Now, boy, what we're going to do is stimulate your Crystal with a calibrated pulse of magical energy to increase the ambience and redirect the protective barrier's force. Or, if you want the simple terms, we're breaking the magic shell around it. Get ready to duck." he fiddled with a few knobs and levers, then pressed a large red button. Of course. It was always the large red button.

My Crystal detonated. Not physically, that was impossible, but magically. Aril was thrown into me, and in turn, I was thrown into the wall. The Professor smashed into a different spot. Every high-tech tool in the room gave off its own small explosion as it became another pile of slag. All of the windows were blown out, and the clearing in the middle of the room was much, much larger than before.

"Didn't expect that." the Professor said, coughing because of all the smoke. "Aril, have Elecion reroute the electrical flow." Aril nodded, and after a moment, the lights in the room went out. A shape was moving around in the smoke in front of us, more visible with each passing second.

"Rai..." Aril said quietly. "I'll forgive you for touching them since it was uavoidable, but get your hands off me now." I realized where my hands were and quickly jerked them back. "Thanks." The shape in the smoke launched out of it, landing next to Aril and me, and I got my first good look. The Spirit was female, with long white hair, golden eyes, bandages wrapped around her arms, and a strange sort of snug leather outfit. I didn't notice any of that at first, though. My attention was attracted to the foot-long claws that were in place of her fingers. She was walking on all fours.

"Nya?" the Spirit said inquiringly. In its mouth was my crystal, held as usual by the cord that made it a pendant. After a moment, I took it from the spirit and slipped it around my neck.

"Uh, thanks." I said as Aril got off of me. The white-haired spirit next to me made a pleased noise. A name floated up in the back of my mind. "Shri? Is that your name?" the pleased noise got louder, and the Spirit licked my cheek. She looked human, mostly, but seemed more like an animal inside. Aril knelt down next to me and looked at the white Spirit.

"Definitely S-Rank." she breathed out. "Elecion, lights!" the lights in the room flickered back on. I slowly got to my feet, and the Spirit stayed next to my left leg, seeming pleased. I wasn't sure with what. After a moment, though, I reached down and pat Shri's head. She purred. "So, what was with the explosion, Professor?"

"Too much energy." the man said as he got up, rubbing his head. "The shell around the boy's Crystal, the one keeping this Spirit of his inside, was made of an abnormally high amount of energy. Spirits appear when the shell is gone. Sometimes that's shortly after birth, or for the powerful spirits, it can be much longer. This one had barely started to go, so the magic we exposed it to in order to hasten the process let it off violently." That made only a little sense to me. "Oh, well, another success. We'll get the equipment replaced later. Go print off a card for... for, uh..."

"Rai." I said. The Professor nodded. Aril hopped to her feet and headed out of the room.

"She's a good girl." the Professor said fondly. "And a very able assistant. Watch over her when she's out, will you?"

"...Sure." I said. I had the feeling I was going to be seeing a lot more of the yellow-haired girl, both at school and after, so keeping an eye on her wouldn't be such a hard thing to do. Not that I would ever tell her I was doing so. Besides, she seemed quite capable of taking care of herself. Those things people say about girls needing protection? In this case, it absolutely did not apply.

After a few minutes, in which I sat down and Shri curled up by my feet, Aril returned. She handed me a card like the one she had used to enter the house, and sat down on one of the few remaining surfaces of the room. We were all very quiet for a while. Finally, Aril looked up at me.

"Hey." she said. "Earlier, when you grabbed me..."

"I-I didn't mean anything!" I said quickly. "It was an accident!"

"Not that." the girl muttered, running a hand distractedly through her hair. "I meant for catching me when I was thrown backwards. ...Thanks." I blinked. Oh. So that was what she had meant, not my accidental feel of her ample chest.

"N-no problem." I said. The awkward silence returned. Shri stretched and made a noise at the Professor. "Um... anyone else hungry?" Aril quickly stood up. "Guess that's a yes. I can probably make something. If I'm going to be visiting a lot, I may as well know how things work, right?" the Professor nodded.

"I need to check my other experiments for damage. You two can have fun downstairs." he said, getting up as well. He ambled out of the room, leaving just myself, Aril, and Shri there. I winced slightly as he left.

"I am sorry..." I said quietly. Aril shrugged.

"Worse things have happened." the girl replied fatalistically. "Besides, better you than someone like that jerk I took out earlier. 'Course, now you have to deal with my culture in this regard." she sounded half-amused, half-annoyed, which was absolutely never a good thing with girls. When they got like that, you never knew what they were going to say or do. "I hooked up with the Professor in Malir, a little country a long ways south of here. This place is... different... from my home." I realized she was trying to start a conversation.

"What's it like there?" I asked. This seemed to be the right thing to do, because the girl visibly relaxed. I followed her into the kitchen.

"Well, life there is a bit on the fast side." Aril said thoughtfully. "It's mostly farmland, but I grew up in the city there. That place is a major trade hub, so there's always people moving in and out of it. This country's very relaxed by comparison. You have the custom of marriage here, right?" Slowly, I nodded. Of course we did; what civilized people didn't? "Malia's a tad different. Put in the simplest way, I suppose people are very... free. And forward. Binding commitments aren't very common, but everyone who grows up there, me included, learns some of the customs we're to follow. And I have too much self-respect to lie to them." I nodded.

"Aything else I should know?"

"You're near the top, now." she replied. "Get used to fame, because S-Ranked Spirit Holders are about one in five million. There's two of us at the same school, and when word spreads, you and I are going to be the talk of the town. There's one very good upside to it, though." I blinked, and Aril smiled. "You see, you just entered into an elite sort of social group. I've met some other S-Rank holders, and none of them were everyday people. As you can imagine, we... keep to ourselves a lot. Everybody wants the power and fortune of having a truly elite spirit, so because of that, they don't really see us for who we are. I suppose that's the real reason I can let my guard down around you. You can see the real me, and not just my power." I nodded in agreement. When you were at the bottom rung, you learned to judge who people really were. Aril was nice enough before I had a Spirit, so I was confident that she was a good person. "I guess I'll add you to the database tonight. One of the older people on our rung runs a web site; I'll write it down in a bit."

"Thanks." I finally said. The girl smiled at me. "So, um... what are you making?" the girl hopped down from the counter and looked at the oven.

"Pizza." she replied. "I'm not a good cook, really, but I make a killer sauceless pizza. You... do like doughy crusts, right?" I nodded; I loved softer crusts. "Oh, good." A timer went off, and she pulled the pizza out of the oven. Maybe it couldn't be called a pizza, since it was really just bread dough with melted cheese on top, but it smelled pretty good. "And Rai? Before you ask, I won't sleep with you on request." I choked and took a hasty gulp of water.

"That wasn't on my mind." I replied honestly. "I'm grateful to you as it is..." I looked down at Shri, who nuzzled my leg. "The limits are... whatever you say they are." Aril gave another soft smile and cut a slice of the pizza out for me. I passed it to Shri, whose claws retracted into fingers. The Spirit devoured her share of the meal. Looking entertained, Aril cut the rest of the semi-pizza into slices, and the three of us ate. Afterwards, Shri padded off somewhere. I could feel that she wasn't far, and was desiring a nap. Shortly after that, I realized I knew that she was asleep. So this was how people connected to their Spirits felt; they could understand those they were bonded to.

"Let's go downstairs." Aril said after we'd cleaned up. I ambled into the hall after her, and we went down the stairs. "The Professor doesn't actually come down here. The top floor is his space, then there's the workplace and main floor. Down here in the basement is my area." Most basements were cold, but this one seemed well-insulated. It probably helped that nothing was actually exposed to the outside; it was really more of a floor of the house that was below ground than a basement.

"What kind of other S-Rank Spirits are there?" I asked as we walked into a well-furnished game room. Since I was part of that group, now, I wanted to know. Aril thought for a minute.

"Well, let's start at the bottom, that'll be easier." she said. The girl took a seat on a couch. I settled down on a recliner across from her. "At the very bottom are F-Ranks. Those are little critters, like the Professor's. Helpers, really. They're not strong by any means, but those who have them say they're useful around the house. Up from that is E-Ranks, the most common. Those are leaf sprites, critters with minor elemental powers, things like that. D-Rank Spirits are a bit less common, but not so much that having one will get you looks of interest unless you're in First Grade. Those ones tend to be smaller animal spirits. C-Ranks are a little harder to find, and they're minor elementals and the like. B-Rank is when everything changes. They're a lot rarer from that point on, and they turn humanoid. If you've got a B, then you're probably the luckiest person in your class. B-Ranks are things like river spirits, tree spirits, that sort of thing. A-Ranks are very hard to find, and those will be fully humanoid and a lot stronger. With A- and S-Ranks, there's no real grouping, save that they're unique. S-Ranks, as you should know, are about one in five million. More than that, though, they're likely to be a major elemental, even an incarnation of a season, or something like that. No S-Ranked spirit is weak, whatever their personality is. People usually stick together with their own ranking, especially in the uppers levels. So you'll find S-Ranks like us hanging out together when we actually meet up, A-Ranks crossing town to visit other A-Ranks, B-Ranks standing in their own group at school... but you've seen all that." I nodded. It was kind of hard to miss. Without a Spirit, I hadn't been accepted into any of the groups. Even the F-Rankers had shunned me, which was very sad indeed. "Now." she said, standing up. I blinked. "You need to get home, right?"

I checked the clock and nodded. At the very least, it would be good to call my mother just in case. I followed Aril back up to the main floor, and as I was getting my shoes on, Shri woke up and padded over to me. I scratched her head, to which there was a pleased response. "I'll see you at school tomorrow, then?"

"Sure." the girl replied. "Have to stick with my group, after all." Nodding, I made my way out of the house, my spirit padding along beside me. I looked down at the Spirit beside me.

"You know..." I said. "I think life's about to get really interesting. For both of us."