Complete Calamity

Focus.

Mari needed to focus. Too many things were going on in her life. Not to her directly but to the country she lived in herself. In a way, that was possibly worse. War, chaos. Those two things were things Shadow Heart had promised Fiore when declaring war against the Magic Council. A complete calamity. She struggled to restrain her anger. That was getting more and more difficult as time went on. Strength was key for her to survive this new 'era'. as she decided to call it. Strength to survive, strength to protect. She wasn't doing a very good job of it but she still needed to be at the very least, competent. She might not admit it to herself but she was getting tired of this act she had living in Shadow Heart and pretending all was well. All was not well. She knew it. Right now even if they were good, she just couldn't bring herself to believe that could stay the same way forever. Eventually the citizens would have to see their true nature and they would run, screaming in terror as their world burnt around them.

She shook her head of her dark thoughts. That wasn't relevant now though. What was relevant now was training herself up.

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The first step was making sure she stayed calm even if there was so much anger within. She could feel it spilling out of her constantly and she feared losing her grip on it. Calm was a relatively loose word. As long as no one was feeling her anger physically, it was maintaining control. For all she cared they could see it on her face. Just so long as she didn't hurt anybody. She sat cross legged on the ruined ground of Era and started thinking of her anger. She needed to think this through so she was less uncontrollable.

First was her anger of herself. She was a terrible person and such a bad, bad, bad hypocrite. She got bored to the extent that murder was alright. She was too cowardly to even consider that leaving Shadow Heart wouldn't affect her family. She acted so self-righteous at times like she was better than the rest of them back in the guild when in reality, she fit in there like a charm. She didn't want to fit in there and it was fueling her anger. She knew it would be best for her to leave but yet she couldn't move her feet. Just how further would she be able to go till she toppled?

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Dull rage burned within the girl's soul and she fought to hone it; rage could be a deadly thing when used right. Of course there were the people who were more on the side of love and thought that fighting for love is better than fighting for anger since anger was darker but Mari would disagree - when love was fought for, it generally stemmed from anger. Anger was a useless tool she decided. Feeling that power churn inside her stomach she knew she had to let it go or else she could end up falling much quicker than she decided. She let it out in a show of releasing magical energy. She actually wasn't that great in terms of how much she had but for that moment, it would have seemed impressive for a nearby bystander. Not that she would have tolerated any bystanders watching her practise.

With great control, the girl stood up and closed her eyes. The key to getting herself stronger was to be more in touch with the psychic energy only she had the benefit of knowing and loving due to that experiment or whatever it was all that time ago. When fighting, Mari thought she was a pretty balanced person. The only things that let her down was her tendency to falter at times and her slower than average speed. Those were her greatest disadvantages in a fight. Speed, she guessed she could deal with. However, faltering? Faltering had no place in the battlefield. Anything could happen when the opponent faltered. If she wasn't careful, it could cost her life or something just as bad.

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So faltering was the next big thing she had to deal with. However how she practiced faltering was completely beyond her knowledge. She had no ideas beside getting someone to throw knives at her face but not actually at her face. So nearby but not. She didn't know anyone in Era willing to throw knives but not really at her face though. Possibly she could walk around blind folded and be instinctive. She guessed that could help her faltering problem in that she had no idea what the fudge cake she was actually going to be walking into. But then it would be more of an instinctive thing. She grinned suddenly. Yes. That was it. She could walk in water because no one knew what was in the water and she'd still know what she was doing. The only problem was that there was no water nearby. Oh well, she guessed walking in ruins was close enough. She had a one shot of walking through without crashing into anything.

She smiled and looked around her. This was ruin enough. Perhaps she could fight air at the same time. She pondered this thought for a second. Hmmmm.....nah, it wasn't worth it. Why she'd bother was crazy. Walking was fine. Walking was good actually. Then she could get back to her original thoughts of being angry and explaining to herself why she was actually angry. Could get her to see reason in what she was doing too so bonus.

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And with that in mind, she set off exploring the ruins in which her practise was in. She focused on forcing herself to walk forwards and facing whatever deadly challenges appeared on the ground. She faced all sorts of dangerous things ranging from sharp glass to prickly grass. It was fair to say all were a testament to her strength that she did not shy away...not but still impressive. She caught herself faltering all but twice. She didn't manage to get the intended idea of thinking of anger while walking but she definitely got the walking part down and packed. She decided she'd keep on walking. The ruins while not vigorously challenging still served some form of activity that required paying attention and dodging dangerous bits e.g. crashing into walls. It would serve as unconscious dodging while she actually did more training.

Next up on her list was focusing on her inner zen and zoning in on the senses around her. Yup to anyone who guessed it, what was next on her list was meditating. Seeing as this list was virtually coming out of thin air, her activities to train were completely random. Well perhaps not completely but their order certainly was. Meditating while moving could be an exceptionally hard task. Mari didn't find this to be so. It was relaxing, losing oneself into their inne-OW

Mari yelped as her leg crashed painfully into the edge of a ruin. Tears began to prickle in her eyes. And they said getting stabbed was harder to tolerate.

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So maybe multi-tasking wasn't ideal for moving meditation. Moving meditation in a ruin while trying to not concentrate on hitting things and instead doing it instinctively definitely wasn't either. In fact it was terrible. Mari didn't know head nor tail of what she was trying to achieve rather only achieving in the field of getting herself confused in what she was actually doing. She needed to do one thing at a time. If that one thing was meditation than she sure as hell should just stick to the thing. But then multitasking in fights could be really handy. She knew it in the core of her soul. Multitasking was great.

Two key things she always used in a fight were multitasking and her surroundings. Provided she wasn't an idea her training idea was really actually boosting her ability to do both which to be frank, was great and the desired effect she wanted. And so she had to battle between possibly losing a few toes and an overall better result. The overall better result won and so the petite girl resumed doing her regime. Perhaps in a way that was less detrimental to her health but still something she could safely say would help her in her training scheme.

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Once she finished doing her 'moving meditation in an extremely and beautifully so safe way in a ruin' regime, the girl sat down on the floor and decided to think. Think again. She couldn't deny that she wanted to return back to Sabby and Pieter again. Tears pricked in her eyes and she lay flat on the ground. Maybe instead of training she should just think of her family. Instead of rage, instead of hurt, thinking of love. Love was powerful apparently. She didn't know, how would she ever. But it wasn't the time to get all bitter about it. She decided to fill herself up with reminiscent thoughts of her family instead, the family she had left behind.

First was Pieter. Pieter always made her feel warm. Warm in that she always admired his niceness. His capacity to be nice actually. He always helped around, stuck around, was loyal in the ways it counted. Out of the two siblings, he had reacted more calmly when she told him of her choice to join Shadow Heart. He didn't complain, he didn't protest. He simply accepted her choice and said that he'd try and support her. Of course Mari hadn't agreed to that and he had grown unhappy but stil, he hadn't tried to disown like most people would have done. Sabby on the other hand hadn't reacted too well. She was always the more emotional of the three of them and th emost immature. Not surprising judging that she was, indeed, the youngest of the lot. She had cried and demanded to know the reason why. Mari, being the person she was, didn't tell her the truth. It probably hurt Sabby the most and she hated herself for it sometimes. But she didn't think she'd have understood at that age. Just 11. Maybe now she would. She was 13? 14? Somewhere along the lines of that in terms of age. It saddened her to think that she couldn't even remember the age of her sister.

By now...by now, she was thinking they were dead. That man, always watching, always waiting. He didn't trust her, she didn't trust him. She also didn't trust that they would stay untouched even if she was still in Shadow Heart. And again with her dilemma. To stay or not to stay. That was the question going through her head indeed. She sighed. She needed to decide, and decide soon.

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