-- FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE! [Josh]

The exam room was almost silent, the sound of pencils scratching against people and occasional bored sighs the only thing that disrupted the atmosphere of the room. The intensity with which Joshua was reading and rereading his answer to one of the questions was almost comical, a scowl of concentration fixed upon his features. Did I word that right? he thought, wondering whether he would get a better mark if he tried to use different phrasing. He glanced at the clock, trying to decide whether or not he would have enough time to reword it. Chewing the inside of his lip for a moment as he thought, the graduate quickly got to work erasing and began once again in his neat, cramped writing. He often offered more than was asked and so over the years he had adapted to writing small and neat so that he could fit more words onto an answer sheet.

"Time is up," said the professor in monotone.

A part of him wanted to give it a last once-over but he convinced himself to hand it in with no other worries. Joshua was confident in himself and in his work but he always liked to strive for the best marks possible. School was the one thing he was really good at, that he excelled in. He'd always been told that he was bright and Josh took great pride in that. He'd sometimes wished he was born with athletic prowess so that his father would have been proud of him but in the end he knew that sports were not his thing. He liked tennis and volleyball was... well, it was okay, but he could never play those sorts of things on a competitive level. It took the enjoyment out of it if he had to strive to be better than everyone else. It was why he liked his intelligence--learning came naturally to him. Sure, he had to study to increase his knowledge but he still enjoyed it.

Hefting the heavy bag containing his books and laptop over his shoulder, Joshua was caught in the middle of the crowd leaving the room. Compared to the previous quiet of the exam room, the shoving and cursing and threats that rose into the air were rather disconcerting. War always put people on the edge. Not wanting to get into the midst of a fight, Joshua ducked under a wave of water and headed down a different hall. This damn place. It was easier to breathe and relax once he was away from the stifling mess of people and so he was walking at an easy stride by the time he happened across an altercation in the making. Recognising Lark arguing with some guy from their element, he would have just walked on by. He figured his friend could take care of herself judging by the way she was handling the guy and besides, they were not supposed to be friends.

That is, those were his plans until the boy spoke up. "Well if it isn't the traitor himself! Dale!" Joshua turned, having already passed them, to give the Fire elemental a cold look. "I'm sorry," he said, clearly not sorry at all. If he apologised to you and you weren't his friend, chances were it was sarcasm. He didn't try to hide this. "Did I say that I cared?" Unlike Lark, Joshua was a traitor. He'd all but announced it in the hall by remaining with his girlfriend and had backed that decision up by fighting alongside his new allies in Water and Earth. He didn't give a shit about this bastard. "Not going to stop and help a friend, Dale?" the Fire mocked. "Looks like you really are a--" Deciding that he didn't care, the next words were cut off as Joshua sent a strong blast of flame toward the boy. "Guess I am helping a friend," he said in an almost blasé tone.

He sent Lark a meaningful sort of look and gave her a nod. It was silent indication that he knew she would not deny their friendship and so he wasn't going to bother with it, either. Now it looked like it was two on one, a much less fair fight than it had been when the boy was facing Lark on her own. She'd been doing fine and thus Joshua did this not to save her ass but because he'd literally been dragged into it by the idiot Fire. When would they learn that you just didn't provoke people with bad temperament? If Josh had been a Thunder he might have been able to keep going. He could have ignored it and just asked Lark how the fight had gone down when he saw her later. He was not, however, and so insulting him and suggesting he wasn't a good friend had been a bad idea. Friendship was one of his highest values, you didn't fuck with that. "What'd he do to you?" he wondered casually, inquiring about how they'd ended up fighting.

Joshua understood the fact that Lark could stand on her own and so he really had just been proving a point to the arrogant bastard. He gave an absent nod when Lark suggested that he be on his way and he actually would have walked away from the fight, too. He was not someone who was always stubborn and though he was protective he was not overbearing. He hadn't done this to help her because he knew the help might not be appreciated by one so proud. He stepped away from the duo just as he caught sight of the other Fire elemental coming up from behind her. A warning flashed through his gray eyes as they narrowed. "That would have been the plan," said Josh grimly, "if there were only one of them." He hesitated where he stood, not sure whether she could handle a two on one fight. He had faith in Lark and her fighting abilities but Fire elementals seemed to attract one another like moths to a flame. He was one, albeit a traitorous one, and he still understood how they worked. Nevertheless, he did not attack the one holding Lark. He wouldn't bail her out of a situation unless it was absolutely clear she could not handle it on her own. It was the pride thing again--they both understood matters of pride, after all.

"Tch," spat Joshua in obvious distaste. "That's off school grounds, asshole, you know the rules." The rules were not written down or any record of them kept. Instead, they were a number of things left unspoken from years of war in the Academy, passed down to the freshmen each year by their older and stronger allies. Things such as the Medical Wing being safe ground, the alliances being almost automatic in defending one another, the school grounds being the only place for attack... if you had been at the Academy long enough, you knew. Unfortunately, some people chose to disregard this. He understood that their friendship was dangerous no matter how they maintained it because it would cause suspicion and doubt toward Lark but he didn't like the fact they'd physically attacked her because of it. He still had not lifted another hand against them, merely flicking his colourless steel gaze between the three others and occasionally sweeping the hall.

He stiffened when the boy punched Lark, automatically gaining the desire to strangle him. Much as Joshua understood matters of pride that did not mean he appreciated seeing his friends hurt. Clenching his jaw as tight as he could to avoid clocking the Fire elemental on the side of the face, he instead turned to the winded one that Lark had flipped. As the Fire attempted to get up, a hot blast of his own element hit him hard, causing him to fall back again. He hadn't attacked anyone and so it got in the way of no one's pride that he was keeping him down for the count. He didn't want to have to deal with an entire group of them. His eyes flashed again when the one who'd punched Lark chose to speak. "Traitor?" he repeated. "Look who's talking -- she's not your enemy. I'm your enemy." He had no trouble admitting that he was not on their side because he had almost no loyalty to them any more. Fire had lost his support when they'd chosen to attack Nell. She meant a lot more to him than some alliance, even if he had stuck by it all the years before. "What would your leaders think?" he scoffed. "Encouraging treachery? Your element are already a bunch of spineless cowards, why weaken yourself more?"

Of course, these words did not exactly sit well with either of them. The injured one got up and sent out a fiery blast of his own. Seeing it coming, Joshua raised his forearm in a defensive position but also countered the attack with his mind, using his superior skill over the boy to disperse some of the flame before it could do any damage. If they had been farther apart and he'd caught it in time he might have been able to completely block but as it were, the distance gave the younger student advantage. He felt the pain and searing heat on his skin but did his best to push it to the back of his mind, punching the boy hard in the chin and snapping his head back and then shoving him against the wall to knock the breath out of him. He might not have been in this to bail Lark out but you did not attack Joshua. You just didn't. His past dealing with gangs and gang violence had imbued a natural sort of reflex in him--it was almost compulsion to retaliate if someone caused him physical harm, especially if it was not an accident.

In his own mind Joshua knew that the fight would not have worked out in Lark's favour. The second Fire elemental would have come along to back up his friend no matter what had happened and then she'd have been outnumbered two to one. At the same time, Josh was also not doing this because he thought she needed his help. It was a matter of personal pride and Lark was not going to tell him what to do. Much as he valued their friendship there was a part of him that reacted negatively when people told him that he should do something, a rebellious streak that likely came from living under the thumb of his father most of his life. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly when she suggested he leave, taking it not as thanks but as a sort of suggestion that he'd done this because of her.

He ignored her for a moment to turn his attention to the Fire whom he'd trapped against the wall, using his free hand to grab the guys wrist. As the elemental struggled against his grip Joshua let searing heat flood down his arm and into his palm, making the other boy cry out in pain as he was burned badly. "Get out of here," Josh hissed, letting go and stepping back. Of course, this was not some sweet and scaredy Earth that Joshua was dealing with. This was a Fire elemental, proud as they were arrogant, and he was not entirely certain that the guy would heed his advice. As further threat Joshua started to increase the heat in the hallway until the boy got his point and stormed off in the same direction of his friend, perhaps to make sure he was okay. They might have been assholes but the Fire element were a loyal bunch. It was perhaps one of the only things he missed about them. Their sense of camaraderie had been familiar for six years and now that he was without it, he felt sort of strange.

Now that they were alone, Josh turned to his friend with a frown. "I didn't do it for you," he said honestly, bluntly. It wasn't an insult but a statement. He had not gotten involved in this because of their friendship. He would have done so for Nell or Devin in an instant but that was because they were not fighters by nature and thus he worried about his less capable friends when ganged up on by some of the opposing element. Lark was a Fire, they were usually aggressive fighters that could stand up for themselves. However, they were also proud. He, Joshua, was proud. He couldn't have just shed the nasty comments and let them fester, he had to teach the idiots a lesson. You didn't insult him, you didn't mess with him. He'd been taught by the gang that it was pretty much everyone for themselves in a fight and that if you couldn't hold your own, you got crushed. There was irony in that the same guys that had taught him to fight had later tried to kill him but they had been right, at least in Josh's mind.

She was hurt, he could see where the attack had hit her. Joshua might have asked if she was alright if it had been anyone else but he adapted to the behaviours and personalities of his friends. She could take care of herself. And I can take care of myself, he thought stubbornly. He was not afraid of his element. Well, alright. Maybe there was a small part of him that feared them. He feared what they could do to him in numbers, what they might do to his friends in his new alliance. Earths and Waters were not as ruthless or violent as Fire and Thunder. Some of them could fight, yes, but even if they won their injuries were usually the worse of the pair. At the same time, he wouldn't allow himself to admit that fear. He'd been ganged up on by a crowd of older Thunders in the last war and it had taken him back to his youth when they used to surround him on the schoolyard, sneering and jeering as they dared him to 'do something about it'. Joshua shook his head, a gesture meant only for himself, to clear the negative memories. Don't think about that now.