BLESSINGS?

TC

a note: well if you've made it this far Vari I applaud you...e-mail me or talk to me at school if u don't understand what's going on... this part is alot shorter than the first one because I didn't origionally intend this stupid little jaunt to go on this long or to be chaptered...whatever...but i like it alot better now and my ego/self esteem is all puffy cuz of your review Vari..thx alot ^.^ oh and i was to lazy to double check to see whether this fit with what i'm writing now..so there might be continuity errors later on...whatever...oh and there isn't any more for a while after this...i've barely begun writing the next part...^^;;;

Tesha opened her bleary eyes to find herself curled up on the floor. "Wha?" She mumbled as she got to her feet, working a cramp out of her neck. What had she been doing sleeping on the floor like that? Tesha stumbled to the fridge to make herself cereal. There was no milk. Then she remembered. Her late-night excursion to buy milk, the headlong flight through the forest...Tesha fell to her knees before the fridge, glancing outside to see whether it was light or not. As silly as it seemed, she felt much better knowing that it was day. Although the thing could probably still get her, she felt much more secure in broad daylight. Besides, it was easier to convince herself that it had all been a dream or something. Somewhat reassured, Tesha stood up again and fixed herself some coffee. Then she glanced at the clock. "Dear Gods!" She exclaimed and almost dropped the mug-full of hot drink on herself. Today was the partnering ceremony, she was supposed to report to the main pavilion in fifteen minutes! Tesha prepared herself the fastest breakfast she had ever managed, and got ready even more quickly. She practically flew out the door, still tugging on her uniform's jacket. She had to run to get there on time and although she wasn't out of breath when she got there, she was a little flustered. Most of the seats were taken, so Tesha lingered at the back, waiting for the assembly to start. When it did it was as dry as she expected. Some officious personage talked about devotion and trust for an hour, and once everyone was comfortably and soundly asleep, the headmaster took over. He woke them up with a shout for attention that made the amplifiers screech and whine. Following that brief unpleasantness, he told them all to line up at certain tables according to their trainee numbers. Tesha went to the table marked T10025-1525 and picked up a small slip of paper. She shook her head at what was written on it. These ceremonies were so inefficient, why didn't they just call her and tell her, or leave a message? All that was written was a meeting time and an office number. Tesha sighed, her meeting time was in an hour or so, at least she'd have time to go home and clean up.

* * *

She was almost late anyway, due to the fact that the offices were numbered in a rather peculiar fashion and #3354 was impossible to find without assistance. When she finally did fly in the door, a scarce two minutes after the assigned time, she saw an officer and another junior standing in the office. She snapped to attention and was told by the chuckling officer to relax. Then she turned her gaze to the other person in the office. He was about a foot taller than her and had tousled brown hair above shockingly blue eyes. Shaggy blue-gray ears poked out of his hair and a neatly tapered, also blue-gray tail twitched idly behind him. He was clothed simply in worn blue jeans and a blue woolen sweater. His figure was vaguely familiar and she could see him frowning at her in similar confusion. Suddenly she gasped. "It's you!" Was all she said as she pointed at him in surprise. The officer who had been assigned to introduce them hadn't had the chance to begin talking yet, and looked from one to the other, obviously lost.

"Do I know you...?" The blue-gray male said. He looked vaguely annoyed that he couldn't place her.

"Sort of, you rescued me from a....umm a pickpocket. You hit him with a rock remember? So I could get away? But you didn't stay so I didn't get the chance to thank you." Tesha lied. He looked confused for a moment and was about to say something when his eyes flickered with a sudden recognition, as if everything had fallen into place.

"Oh...yeah, I remember, well it was no problem uh...Ms...uhhh" He faltered.

"That's my job." The officer interjected, a grin on his face. "You two have obviously already met, so that part's over and done with, but at least let me do my job and introduce you two to each other." The two juniors nodded. "Alright then, Junior Marldunn Kulldeer, this is Junior Teshalanna Dzahai, Junior Teshalanna Dzahai, this is Junior Marldunn Kulldeer. Providing there are no objections, you two will be partners from here on." The officer ended formally.

"Hey, call me Tesha okay?" Tesha said as she shook her new partner's hand.

"Alright, if you call me Marl." He replied.

"Sounds good to me." Tesha shrugged.

"Now you two run along and get acquainted." The friendly officer smiled at them. "I have more difficult partnering to do, and since yours was so easy it'll be even harder. If you go now I'll have time to readjust before the next one." He grinned at them as they saluted and left. "I like you two, have fun and stay safe all right?" He called to them as they left the office.

"Yes sir!" Tesha replied as they walked away down the hall.

"Hey Tesha, would you like to come to my place? I think the student lounge is a little public for some of the things I'd like to discuss with you." Marl asked as they walked out of the office building onto campus grounds.

"My how forward of you Marl, we only met yesterday!" Tesha fluttered her eyelashes at the larger male.

"That's not what I meant..." He looked slightly pained.

"I know, I was just teasing, ya better get used to it. Actually my place is probably better if you don't mind." She grinned at his expression.

"Okay." Marl looked slightly relieved as he shrugged. Tesha was insulted.

* * *

"Big place you got here, is it all yours?" Marl looked around at Tesha's quarters as she kicked the door shut behind her. He hadn't said anything when she had opened it. Only laughed and shook his head.

"Yeah, for now, my senpai and her boyfriend left it and all the furniture to me when they left on a mission." Tesha looked sad for a moment.

"You miss them don't you?" Marl looked sympathetic.

"Kinda, me and my senpai and her boyfriend were pretty close." Tesha admitted. "They promised they'd be back though." She said stubbornly. Marl nodded. Tesha sat him down on a couch in the living room. "Would you like anything to drink? I'm sorry I don't have any milk, that's what I went out for last night."

"No thanks." Marl lounged comfortably on her sofa. Tesha took a chair facing him.

"So about last night...what was going on?" She asked him.

"I'm sorry, I was hoping you would know." Marl shook his head. "I just came upon you being attacked by someone so I tried to distract them, when you didn't run I didn't know what to do and then suddenly you got hit by something and flew right at me. So I grabbed you and ran into the bushes. After that I lost you." He finished apologetically.

"No, I lost you. After that encounter I panicked and ran like a frightened rabbit, it's hard to keep track of someone when they're like that." Marl nodded slowly. "And I don't have much to add to your tale except that there was another one, aside from the one chasing us. He stumbled out of the bushes and at first I thought he was a regular person, until I saw the bat-wings. I think he must have been the brain of the operation and that drooling thing was his pet. That thing stumbled out right beside me and you can pick it up from there." Tesha shrugged.

"Did something seem weird about the way the lights went out?" Marl asked.

"You saw it too? I thought I must be crazy, they all flickered, then flickered again but crimson the second time and then they went out. And it was all random too, not like a power outage or something." Tesha frowned as Marl nodded. He paused before speaking.

"Something strange happened last night, and I have an odd feeling it wasn't the last time we'll see that sort of thing..." Tesha agreed, she also had an odd feeling of foreboding about the whole issue.

"But it's not like there's much we can do about it is there?"

* * *

The shadowy figure sighed, the sweat on its forehead and the tremors in its muscles showing how truly exhausted it was. "Oh that's it, I'm gonna have to call someone. I can't keep up the shield much longer." The figure closed its eyes and began to glow with the same blue light as the mirror.

* * *

"It's almost dinnertime, why don't we go to the mess hall?" Marl suggested after a look at the clock.

"Good idea," Tesha agreed, stretching. "We've pretty much beaten this paranormal thing into the ground, I doubt we'll get any more from each other. Perhaps someone else had something happen to them."

"The mess hall's a good place for eavesdropping." Marl nodded and stood up. "Alright then, let's get going." He led the way out of the apartment and to the mess hall across campus. When they arrived, the hall was as crowded as usual, bustling students eating and chatting were everywhere. Tesha wrinkled her nose, she rarely ate in the mess hall for she found it all too public. However at the moment it was a necessary evil.

"How can people stand to eat all clumped together like this day after day?" Tesha asked incredulously.

"Some like it for the company." Marl shrugged. "You know there are more social types than you." He grinned. Tesha stuck out her tongue. They each grabbed a tray and selected the most appealing choice of food. Then they sat down at an empty table to eat.

"Hey didja hear about the vandals? They've been smashing lights and stuff all over campus."

"Yeah, I even heard that they chopped down a couple of trees!"

"Oh they tried for a wall too."

"Really?"

"Yeah, one of the nearby apartments has a really beat up wall but it's still intact."

"I wonder why nobody saw them."

"Yeah, I wonder who did it."

"And we just sat down too..." Tesha's ears had perked up at the first mention of the lights and the rest of the conversation had been fairly enlightening as well. Suddenly her attention drifted to another table.

"Y'know a guy got attacked last night by a giant rabid dog."

"Really? Is he badly hurt?"

"Naw, just a few bites and scratches."

"Do you think it was somebody's pet or feral?"

"Well the guy was a little tipsy, and although campus security's keeping their eyes open, they couldn't get a clear description out of him so they don't really know what to look for. He just kept telling them how big it was. He says it was bigger than a horse and that it smelled really bad."

"How did he escape?"

"Well lucky for him, campus security happened by and their lights must've scared it away. Nobody got a look at it except the drunk though."

"Does that seem odd or is it just me? Sounds like what chased us last night." Tesha frowned. Marl nodded his agreement. Well that was another interesting piece of information. The more Tesha listened, the more she realized that the whole mess hall was buzzing with conversation about the odd things that had happened lately. Once more, they all seemed to connect back to that guy in the park, the one who got it into his head to sic his pet beast on her. Something was definitely going on and Tesha was beginning to get curious. Lucky for her she wasn't pure cat. Tesha quickly finished her meal, and as she threw her trash away and sat back down she suddenly made a face and swore.

"What is it?" Marl looked up from his food.

"I forgot about something, look, it's dark outside." Tesha's statement caused Marl to look out the window and swear also.

"I wonder if it's still out there looking for us."

"I think so. I get the feeling we saw something we weren't supposed to back there, and that he intends for that to be corrected by hunting us down with his ugly pet." Tesha shuddered. "Well I suppose the sooner we get this over with the better." She and Marl headed for the exit of the mess hall. Once outside, they stayed as much as they could to well-lit and populated paths. The lights were all on tonight, and the odd blue light they produced combined with the electrical hum of their power sources conjured a rather surreal environment. Tesha and Marl walked down the pathways in a sleepy silence, the nervousness they should have been feeling washed away by a humming blue wave of lassitude. Tesha slowly began to realize that they had been straying from their original course and were now uncomfortably close to where last night's events had occurred. However she felt somehow compelled to continue, as if drawn on by something. Finally Tesha and Marl reached the head of a small trail that led off into bushes and trees. The peculiar sleepy warmth beckoned to them and they followed it down the trail. When they had almost reached an area nearly parallel to the path with all it's lights burned out, the sleepiness lifted. Or to be more precise, it winked out. Kind of like a light had just been turned off. Tesha and her new partner were suddenly very alone in a lightless wilderness prowled by bat-winged creatures. Tesha and Marl blinked once or twice then shared a mutual look of utter puzzlement. "What do we do now?" Tesha whispered to her partner, who was looking around and rubbing his eyes.

"I don't know, we should probably just try to head back the way we came." He replied equally as quiet.

"Sounds good to me." Tesha looked nervously around her. Marl turned to lead the way back, but Tesha stopped him with a hand on his arm, her ears twitching. "Wait a second, do you hear that?" her ears roved this way and that like tiny satellite dishes, trying to find out where the noise was coming from.

"Hear wha-" Marl was cut off mid-sentence as suddenly Tesha's ears locked in one direction.

"There! It sounds like someone breathing!" She stalked quietly towards some bushes a few feet away.

"Tesha wait a second..." Marl started, but his partner was already parting the bushes. He could only wait tensely as she tried to see who or what was concealed. Tesha pulled the branches aside, she could hear raspy breathing coming from somewhere in the undergrowth, it didn't sound too healthy though. Tesha finally uncovered the culprit. He was curled on his side under a particularly thick bunch of branches. Fine silver bangs fell across delicately closed eyelids and fluttered with every hesitant breath. Dirt was smudged along his high cheekbones and the curve of his narrow face, obscuring pale, frail-looking skin. Suddenly Tesha gasped, there was a ragged slash running across his ribs on one side, and poking out of his back were huge bat wings!

"Marl look! It's the guy from last night, he looks hurt!" Marl came trotting quickly over and peered into the bushes alongside Tesha.

"Huh." Was all he said.

"Well, what do you think we should do?" Tesha looked at her partner.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, should we leave him here, should we turn him into the police, should we take him to the hospital?" Tesha stared down at the still-sleeping male.

"I don't know..." Marl seemed to think for a minute.

"What do you mean you don't know!?" Both Tesha and Marl whirled around looking for the source of the voice. "I go to all the trouble of dragging you two out here, meanwhile shielding him, and you don't know what to do?!" Tesha, not being able to locate the direction from which the voice came, replied carefully.

"So what do we do then?" She was still looking around.

"Take him home and clean him up!" The voice sounded exasperated. "Just take him home and tend to his wounds, he'll take care of the rest once he's fixed up." Tesha eyed the bushes dubiously. "Aauugh...just do it okay? He wasn't the one trying to kill you, they were trying to kill him too! Just take him home already!" The voice began to sound much like an impatient child. Tesha looked at Marl. He shrugged and moved to pick up the unconscious young man. Tesha continued to scan the woods.

"Who are you? Why should we trust you? After all I can't even see you... " She asked, still not completely trusting the bodiless voice. The voice seemed to nearly scream in frustration.

"I'm an angel of course!! I'm in the Spirit world so no kidding you can't see me you dumbass!! Just go with it okay? And stop asking stupid questions!! Gods I hate dealing with humans..." There was a sort of click then, like a telephone hanging up.

"Hello?" Tesha ventured.

"I think he hung up on us." Marl said, his face serious. Tesha looked at him incredulously, then laughed quietly.

"I don't think I ever imagined that angels had such bad manners and foul language. Oh well, I suppose we'll just have to trust him. Let's get out of here."

"Right." Marl lifted the young man and Tesha led the way out of the park and back to her apartment.

"Hey Marl?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think "dumbass" counts as a blessing?"

* * *