lord knows i'm a voodoo child [rachael]

Winter was coming. If there was one season Rachael hated more than any, it was the frosty months of winter. The promise of colds, chills and snow depressed her. The only place decent enough for a quick warm up on campus was the dungeons or the fire dorms. No natural light poured into the dim dungeon, as Rachael’s heels clicked along the hard ground. The stonewalls embraced the heat, shedding its frost. Patterns to delight the mind of a child appeared on walls opposite lights; light falling so softly it seemed silk hanging in air. This place was almost relaxing enough to help her forget the impending doom of winter. Her piece of mind was short lived as she heard muffled sounds of argument up ahead. The dungeons were a typical hangout for younger fire and thunder students back when she lived in the dorms. Maybe some young and stupid water student wandered down the wrong hallway. Content to walk past the altercation when she was faced with it, she kept her head up, confident enough with herself to just breeze through with her usual indifference. She didn’t run a damn charity service for people who were too stupid to have any common sense.

Leave it to the fire students to fight even amongst themselves. The closer Rachael got to the group, the more obvious it was that the numbers were not even by a long shot. Now if there was one thing that could really motivate Rachael to speak up it was a sort of injustice like this. . "Yo, that's Altair. Leader? She has executive power." Altair? Not the Blackjack Blondie she had met a few nights ago? Rachael craned her neck around one of the mountain trolls to confirm if what she heard was actually true. How was someone still so unresponsive and cocky when they were up against an authority figure? It was a foolish stubbornness, even more than what she anticipated from the fire elementals. With her own two eyes she saw the twelfth year fire girl standing toe to toe with the two insolent punks. She would have smiled to see the girl again, but the intensity of the situation demanded action. It looks like Rachael was now even more inclined to step in.

Rachael came up behind one of the girl’s on the sideline and allowed her mouth to hover over her right ear, where her threat came out evenly. "Would you like to remove yourself from the situation? You seem easily mobile, so maybe we can make Altair’s job easier." Rachael laid her hand square on the girl’s shoulder, gradually increasing the amount of heat being applied through her hand. The girl sucked in a shallow breath and stared at Rachael, still not moving an inch. ”What? Are you a mute now? The longer you stand here, the nastier I get,” Rachael’s voice was calm and quieter, a scare tactic she found much more effective than raising her voice in unnecessary fury. Even through her layers of clothes Rachael could tell that the applied heat was well past the uncomfortable stage. The girl tried to slap at Rachael with her free hand, only to have her wrist held firmly in the air by Rachael. She applied heat to this hand as well. "No, this is a task dependant on time. The more time you waste, the less amount of burnt skin you’ll have," She shrugged out of Rachael’s grip and brought her own hand up to coddle the pain inflicted.

Her hands blaze with a fiery, fierce flame. The heat inside her rises and burns up, almost more than she can handle. The flames greet her as if she was scarred with rage and anger, back when she still lived with her mother. It was all the incentive she needed to resurrect flames from thin air. It had been her own personal trick since she first arrived at the Academy nearly seven years ago. Her eyes narrow in on the brute with the big mouth, their icy blue color blending with the flickers of flame around them, dancing in sight. Fire is energy. Fire is life and destruction in one single blow. Fire is what will put these two idiots in their place. ”I hate it when people think they can do whatever they want,” Rachael stood in front of the two girls on the side, flanking the boys that seemed so focused on Altair at the moment.

There was always that annoying little flutter of anxiety before a fight, the nagging sense of feeling pain that triggered such bad memories. Rachael let’s instincts take over as she saw the red flames come spiraling towards her. She whipped her hands up, crossing them in front of her into an X as she conjured up a wall of her own flames to cover her from the boy’s attack. Following through, she pushes the stream back towards the floor, abolishing her own wall and the feeble attempt of her enemy’s attack. She stood still for a moment as she analyzed what she was really facing. She did not recognize the two from her year, so she was able to conclude that they were younger than her, and in turn less experienced. By the way they quickly forgot about fighting each other and turned their attention to the two girls lead Rachael to believe they were not in anyway united enough to team up against the two. Inexperience, hotheaded, foolish, and rash. As long as she played this with a calm, well thought out strategy, she would be more than okay.

She was small, which limited the amount of target space the boy could hit as well as lithe to hopefully have a solid defensive movements without exhausting much energy on meeting his attacks head on. For a fire student, Rachael could be somewhat clam under pressure. Taking advantage of those would be the easy way to a quick victory. Right now the boy was smart enough to hold off on an attack, but he was like a lion pacing in a cage. Rachael would win the battle of wills soon enough. To poke at his ego and further unnerve him, Rachael pushed both hands towards him, directed towards the floor around him. A ring of fire enclosed him, causing the boy to frantically look around from some weak spot. ”You arrogant, moronic, asinine fuck,” Rachael said coolly with a smirk. ”Yo, fuck you bitch!” Bingo. Blinded by fury, he pushed through Rachael’s wall with his own flames and began his assault.

His physical reactions were quick, but the way in which he used his fire was inconsistent. Some blows would be seamless, while others seemed delayed. After a few more failed hits, Rachael surmised that he must still have hard time creating fire out of thin air. It was time for her to stop toying with him and put him out of his misery. Rachael ducked, holding her arms up to latched onto extended bicep for the failed punch. Instantly her hands ignited, wrapping around the fleshy arm and attack the skin. There was a yelling cry from her opponent, but she held on a bit more to drive the point home. When he dropped to his knees in pain, Rachael finally let go, extinguishing what fire she had summoned during her spat with the idiot. Smoke curled from around her own arm as she quickly examined what damage the brute might have done to her. A small stream of black singe taints her jacket. Better her clothes than herself, and the damage done to her clothes wasn’t even from the boy’s attack, but from her own.

"You shouldn't move around too much. It might hurt." the concern clearly fake as she leered down on the boy. He winces and lets out a hiss as his head falls back on the ground, closing his eyes. How cruelly funny it was that short petite Rachael was now hovering over the boy. Rachael watched his chest rise and fall against the ground, so carelessly, so effortlessly. His arm was a nasty pink tinge from the elbow down. This is why she hated fighting. There really was no winner in her mind. Sure, she took down this asshole with little problem, but at what cost of her humanity. Rachael had harmed another human being. ”In defense,” she reasoned. ”If I hadn’t then someone else could have easily been hurt.” Satisfied that she had effectively squashed her guilt, she turned her attention to how Altair was doing. Her hands began to glow again with a bright flame, but she stood down for the moment. Altair was by all means the fire leader, and her pride was on the line. Messing with another fire student’s pride was just as dangerous as an actual fight itself.

Rachael watched with interest as she caught the tail end of Altair’s fight. Clearly she was doing well on her own, and if not, she wasn’t showing too much of a struggle. To actually watch someone else fight stirred up more negative feelings for Rachael than she wanted to admit. She had been on the receiving end of many blows at such a young age and as much as she tried to repress it, the feelings stimulated were uncomfortable. Her face grew solemn as she tried to stay objective. This boy, even though he was getting his ass handed to him, was not the victim. The flames in Rachael’s hands died out as she went to tuck her hands into her jacket pocket. Her now ruined jacket with the brunt sleeve. If she wanted to see these guys again she would have demanded material retribution for her it. The downside of having such a powerful gift like fire sometimes backfired with the user. Thankfully college helped her cut down on the explosive self-injury over the years.

Rachael hung back as Altair reinstated her role over the morons. It wasn’t her place to say anything, but as the beaten group struggled to get up and leave, her eyes narrowed in on the boy she took down with ease. The blue eyes that pierced right through them were not the ones that were glum just a few minutes before. ”I’d head to the medic to treat your arm,” she said coldly. She wouldn’t be responsible for the brunt scar tissue damage if the idiot didn’t treat it properly. Her eyes darted towards the girl from early. ”You too.” As they group did their walk of shame out of the dungeon Rachael wondered what was so important for them to fight within their own alliance. Clearly it wasn’t important since they all walked out together without much arguing. A rather cynical thought crossed her mind, causes her to chuckle to herself. ’Kids these days,’ she thought, dating herself far past her actual age.

”Yes, I stuck around Maple Hollows for another four years to bartend, not to reach my full potential with my powers,” she said sarcastically. Who wouldn’t want to bear four more years if it meant kicking ass with what you naturally have? Power was a tempting little thing, dangerous and alluring, something Rachael desired. Her intervening was at first payback for the good time she had had with Altair at Blackjack. She may not have known it, but she put a silver lining on what had been a disappointment of a day. Though she merely nodded in return to her thanks. ”I’ll manage” Ah, there was the question she wasn’t looking forward to. Caught indulging in her own guilty pleasure. Rather than blushing like some simple school girl, she turned her head for a moment towards the hall to avoid Altair’s gaze ”It was cold out so…” she turned back to Altair and played it off with a half smile and a shrug. ”I figured it be warmer and more secluded than taken refuge in the library between my classes.” Studying, or even just pretending to, could not draw the fire graduate near the library. It was a public place, and there for she would have been susceptible to foreign interaction with potentially stupid people.

The dungeons also provided Rachael with a place to think as she warmed up from the outdoors. She had a lot on her mind with the end of the year so close. Rachael was afraid that her slacking off her freshmen year was going to come back and haunt her. She was a few credits shy from getting her degree in time and her advisor threatened her with another semester of school in order to fulfill her requirements. The shame of being what she liked to call a ‘Super Senior’, even if only for a few months was not appealing. Still if she only need two more classes to get the stupid degree, she’d shallow her pride and shut up anyone who wished to get in her way. ”And you? Maintaining civil obedience or merely shaking things up?” she grinned. Rachael was sort of in the dark about who Altair really was. The night at the bar had been enjoyable, but for the truth of the matter, it was almost like meeting her all over again. Minus the silly name introductions and such. If Altair was anything like she was at

”Yes, bartender by night, superhero by day. I’d have to be called the Drunk Knight,” Comics and the whole nerd universe was not something Rachael really knew about other than seeing the crappy trailers on her TV. It was a lame route to go, but it kept the conversation light and Rachael’s thoughts away from the fight. Later that night is when the guilt will probably set in. Studying in the in dungeon? ”Studying? Who the hell said I was studying?” Somehow that sounded lamer than the library. Almost sounded like a worse place to be. Some loser all alone in the dungeons nose deep in a book because they’re too much of a loser to be social. Rachael chose to stay away from people where as the people who really did know all about comics and that crap probably couldn’t get people to talk to them. ”I’d take silent brooder over dungeon studier any day.” Definitely not a mopping brat, but Rachael preferred to have what she said be of worth instead of just opening her mouth and babbling away about nonsense. She was a devoted follower of thinking before she speaks.

Without a solid destination in mind, Rachael followed along with Altair into the darkness of the halls. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to get to know the fire leader without the hindrance of alcohol. The click of Altair’s shoes caused Rachael to shake her head in disbelief. The girl was already tall enough compared to Rachael. She understood it though, not even the Senior’s seasoned indifference could stop her form a nice pair of shoes. Clothes proved to be a weakness for a girl who cared too much about her appearance. Rachael knew she was attractive and it would be a damn shame if it went to waste. Who would choose to look like they dressed themselves in the dark rather than presenting their ‘best self?’ ”And yet we’re the ones with the bad reputation,” Not like the Fires were completely scotch free. The Waters were at fault as much as the next element, but everyone seemed to get hung up on how aggressive Fire students could be. Maybe if the water students were smart enough to take their good-natured fun elsewhere than the Fire students wouldn’t have so much to bitch about. ”Just put your hands up to your ears and boil it out,” she joked. Sure, in theory it would work if Altair could manipulate and pin point the head into her ear, but to actually boil the water out would cause way more pain and potential damage to the inner workings of her ear canal.

”I don’t think I’ve been to the dorms since high school. I moved into my apartment the December right before my freshmen year,” For the most part she had moved on from high school life. She had always been independent and willing to make mature decision over the safety net school could give. She was eighteen when she moved out and was going to act accordingly. A lot of kids in her generation seemed to grow complacent with hiding from reality by staying a kid as long as they could. Secretly Rachael enjoyed the fact that she was self sufficient, even if it meant scrapping the bottom of the barrel some months. ”Not to date myself older than I am, but there are a few of us who have mature a bit since our first years here,” She accepted that fact that is was a longer journey for some of her peers to keep their anger at bay by staying out of it as much as she could. Many questioned her loyalties the first few years at school since she preferred to sort of stay out of the inner circles, but they came around. She was even considered for the same role Altair had four years ago. ”I’d rather shoot myself in the knee than have to deal with petty bullshit. I commend you for taking that on,” Rachael would get way too riled up by how people let petty crap rule their lives. There was much more going on in the world than school. Had she been in Altair’s position, Rachael would probably get into way more altercations than she would want.

Normally within the first few minutes of interaction Rachael could sniff out was worth her time. She was perfectly content with as long as most people left her alone, but unfortunately the majority of society was not very smart of understanding. It was refreshing to fall easily into conversation with another woman. If I’ve learned anything from life it’s that there are no innocents. There are however, different degrees of responsibility,” The dark side of life was intimately interwoven in all aspects of life. Anyone who said otherwise was just a wide-eyed fool. Maybe that was the root of Rachael’s animosity towards the Water and Earth alliance. ”It’s never going to change with them. And they more they go at as, the easier it is for use to go around with the attitude that we would rather be beaten to death than take their shit standing,” It was like her personal motto, evil shall be expelled with evil. Evil and Good were both subjective terms. ”I just make sure I always get my revenge.” It may take time, and it wasn’t always physical, but Rachael would never let herself be at the bottom of the food chain for too long.

In attempt to lighten the conversation a bit ”I might be sticking around longer than I liked. I have a few classes I dropped the ball in my freshmen year that I need to clear up.” The fire senior let out a frustrated sigh. She still hated academics, but she was a complete brat about it during her first year in college courses. She cut out of classes a few too many times to get some of her basic credits out of the way. ”I might have to face the shame another semester. Not like I care too much. I’m two classes away from getting that stupid sociology degree.” Of course she wanted the degree, but at what price in terms of pride?

She followed Altair’s lead down the halls. Looks like she was going to spend sometime back in the common room. It felt like more than four years since she traveled down towards the tunnel entrance. Other than her current company, Rachael had no other connections to go near the fire hangout. A lot of her friends lived in apartments or moved out ”I have a class in the evening and figured it would be pointless to travel back forth from campus during my break.” Before sitting down Rachael put her bag down at the edge of one of the plush armchairs and shed her jacket. The fire Altair had lit would be enough to get the chill out of her bones and warm her exposed arms. Crossing her legs as she sat, Rachael settled into the armchair across from Altair.

Her fingers lazily traced invisible patterns on the armrest. As anti-social as she was, she had a lot of decent memories in this room. Many nights spent shooting the breeze with a group of people she could actually get along with. They were all ticking time bombs, but for an explosive as they got, they all had the potential to care about their fellow peers. They fought hard and loved hard. It amazed her at how such hotheaded could band together and be one of the most loyal groups on campus. Which brought her back to reality. Altair was younger than her and yet Rachael felt she was easier to get along with than some of her older acquaintances. As of now Rachael sort of wished Altair was closer to her age. Maybe then she would have had more time to she how interesting she was. Even now she was positioned on the couch in such a nonchalant way. Altair looked complacent with her place at the moment; an easy-going confidence that Rachael respected from someone not even in college yet. It was an attractive quality or an already attractive girl. Rachael had done well to stick around Blackjack that night. ”At least now I know you got home from Blackjack alright,” There was a touch of a smile at the memory. ”I didn’t think I’d run into you so soon.”

”One rhetoric writing class and a general science lab. My penalty for skipping out of too many classes,” She didn’t even have a great excuse as to why she had skipped any of them. It wasn’t because she was hung over too many times, sick, or just plain acting up. Rachael just hated academics and back then if she hated doing something, she just didn’t do it. ”Sort of stumbled into the subject. On some level she was telling the truth. She really thought at one point she would end up being a social worker in her future. Trying to tackle the bureaucratic system that seemed to know how to deal with lost wayward children. Government was too disorganized for Rachael to stomach. A bunch of white collared jokes thinking as though they knew everything. Somewhere along the way she had lost that mission and became much more interested in the structures of past and present cultures. ”I took an intro level class, and slowly from there my schedule began to fill up with more classes throughout the years. I haven’t really thought about it too much, but I guess it just fell on my lap.” Rachael’s goal in college was never to find something she liked doing. Her focus was on toughening herself up so she would never feel powerless again. Sociology was just the cherry on top.

Psychology on the other hand had been a huge turn off for her. It was too personal and far too messy. Her chosen field of study aloud her to separate herself from the subject and study it objectively. Some subfields she avoided such as environment, technology, economy and things of that nature. No, Rachael was much more drawn to topics on crime, deviance, class, gender/sexuality, and family. All things she had been connected with. “I live for sincere moments. I’ve always liked to sit back and watch people before engaging. I don’t like putting up with small talk unless it’s worth it.” It was how she treated all new people as well as how she approached new potential subjects for research. Rachael was always a quiet kid who quickly had to force her hand and grow up quick. No one else was going to do things for her. Her social interactions had to count. ”Witnessing the passionate eyes of hate and locking with them makes up for all the phony weather talk, you know? Life without passion is meaningless. I’d rather have confrontation over comfort. I’ll be comfortable when I’m dead.” As much as the woman hated fighting, it was much more real to her than sitting around and acting civil with people who held no interest for her.

”An independent study. Which for me means wrapping up my dissertation on the modern trend of deviance,” This damn paper was two years in the making now and Rachael still was cutting it down to the wire. Sixty pages explaining forms of social deviance; theories of deviant behavior; the amount and distribution of deviance in society; societal reaction to deviants and deviant behavior, analyzes conflict as a normal process in social life; the emergence and dynamics of conflict; the effects of conflict on individual values and social structures; the processes of conflict resolution; individual, group, and inter-social conflicts. This list seemed never ending and yet her advisor felt it still needed some beefing up. ”Maybe keeping Maple Hollow safe is all just a part of my research for this paper?” she bantered.

”Like I said, I tend to hang back. It took a few months for people in my grade to even know who I was when I first came here” she smiled at the thought. Observing people when they didn’t think anyone was watching served as a better introduction of character over anything else. Rachael felt as though the conversation was rather one sided, an error on her part. She was to blame being rusty with actually using what little social skills she had. ”What is it that you do for work?” Altair knew enough about Rachael’s job to know that it ranked high on the cash intake and low on the enjoyment level. The senior had a hard time imagining what Altair did for work. ’Definitely not standing behind some fast food counter,’ she thought. Rachael had no idea what may have interest the blonde so she assumed it was probably just some part-time stint at one of the local shops in town.

”Hmm, I’m sure it will be better the second time around,” she said sarcastically. ’Don’t get stuck in this shit hole longer than you need to be in,’ she thought bitterly. Altair didn’t feel like the kind of girl who needed to be reminded of that though. Rachael didn’t need to be reminded of her shortcomings. Nor did she want to. ”I’ve had four years to brood over it,” And that was pretty much what she did. At first she was livid at the school. She had burned through a lot of her things. Her landlord was not happy to find out she was the one causing all the smoke detectors to go off in her old apartment complex. ”As much as I would love to refute it, all the evidence is heavily stacked against me.” So for three years she ignored her penalty, until reality finally caught up with her.

”To some extent, though unlike the physiological babble I analyze larger group dynamics and trends assemblies of people exhibit.” Secretly she hated how similar the two subjects could seem. They definitely helped one another out in certain careers, but her own personal vendetta against the 'shrinky dinks' stopped her from appreciating how the education of phycology could really benefit her own studies. She'd leave the individual mind picking to them. Did Rachael really want to let Altair in on what she was doing? Most people couldn’t stomach the sort of research she had to filter through. How many fucks did Rachael really give though? None. ”The sort of deviance murderers, rapists and serial killers all seem to commit. There are more similarities these sick minds have to the common man that society would like to believe,”

Rachael had busted trough a lot of doors in and around Maple Hollow to get her hands on criminal records, investigative reports, and professional journals on the subject. The photographs of evidence and the scripted interviews she had made copies of had pretty much desensitized the senior over the past two years. She had developed a strong stomach and a cold heart for the graphic nature of her work. ”My fellow majors like to call me Wednesday Addams behind my back when they think I’m not listening.” She was for all intensive purposes the Black Sheep of her fellow majors. The lengths she even had to go through to get the topic approved was horrific. ”Someone’s got to do it.” How else could authorities combat against violence without the patterns and mind frames these sick people tend to exhibit?

Modeling to Rachael meant stupid anorexic little bimbos without a single brain cell to share between the likes of them. Had she read Altair wrong? She shifted in her chair a bit and gave the blonde a once over. She was clearly attractive enough for modeling, but she was smarter than most people she had encountered. Smart enough to have a decent enough conversation with at least. ’Would you look at that, you hooked up with a model,’ she thought to herself. ”Now modeling isn’t your run of the mill high school job,” She wanted to ask how she got into it, but had it been the reverse, Rachael wouldn’t of really gone into it. She had to remind herself this was a chat, not her interviewing someone for information. ”That’s a pretty tough industry,” especially when it came to second chances. ”but the payout seems high. Is it everything every little girl dreams off? Free clothes, hot naked men- and women- changing in front of you all the time, lots of cool hook ups here and there?" With a side order of vanity and little light bulimia to keep the figure looking good? Now that was a whole sub culture of crazy Rachael could see a journal written up about.