Chapter Six

The alarm woke Roxanne the next morning, but instead of pressing the button that would give her an additional fifteen minutes like she usually did�"this first alarm was just the 'start waking up' alarm rather than the 'get your butt out of bed!' alarm that she never missed�"she bounced right out of bed. She didn't want to wait around the extra fifteen minutes; she wanted to get downstairs as soon as possible, because today was her first day of Ice Make magic training with Gray!

How had my life gotten to be so amazing? She asked herself as she started pulling on her swimsuit.

Here she was, living out her dream of being a Fairy Tail mage, and she was the apprentice of Gray Fullbuster! Just thinking about it gave her goosebumps from sheer happiness. She felt so alive already, as if this was where she was really meant to be.

She rushed through her morning routine, not bothering to make up her bed or brush her hair. She was out the door in record time and she descended the long staircase at breakneck pace, small feet making thunder on the wooden steps, one hand on the banister for balance. When she reached the bottom she skipped the last step entirely. The pads of her feet stung slightly from the impact when she landed, but she was too excited to care. She dashed to her seat at the bar and scrambled up onto it, feet swinging impatiently as she waited for her food to arrive. She wanted to be ready when Gray came to get her, not still shoveling food into her mouth.

Mira read her in a heartbeat, holding back a giggle to a mere dancing-eyes smile as she tended the frying pan where eggs and bacon sizzled. She slipped the bacon onto a plate the moment it was done, placed the eggs on a slice of toasted bread and dashed pepper over them, and set the plates in front of the new mage.

Roxanne wanted to wolf the food down, but after burning her tongue on the first bite she forced herself to slow down and chew properly. It would be awful if her first lesson with Gray was how to keep from choking on her own food! Still, she finished faster than she ever had before, and immediately jumped down from her stool with a hasty thank-you to Mira for her breakfast. Just like her first day in Magnolia, she was too excited to keep still, had too much excess energy rushing through her veins. She needed to move!

So she did. Most of Fairy Tail's mages weren't morning people, so the guild hall was relatively deserted, and Roxanne felt justified in dashing up and down the rows between tables, dodging the few benches that were not entirely pushed up beneath them. She ran until her breaths came fast and hard, but still the energy burned inside her, and she realized that she needed to find another way to calm down. Scrambling on top of one of the side-tables�"the one she knew got used the least, because it had the fewest scratch-marks and indentations from beer mugs�"she laid down in as comfortable a position as she could find and started the breathing pattern for meditation.

When Gray finally entered the guildhall, he found his new apprentice like that, lying flat on her back on a table, eyes closed and body motionless save for the slight rise and fall of her breaths. He looked to Mira, who had finished her duties behind the bar and was now prepping the rest of the guild hall. "What is she doing?" he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Roxanne.

"Meditating, I think," his white-haired guildmate whispered in reply

.

Gray gave her a puzzled look. "Why?"

"Well, she was very excited about starting her magic lessons with you today," Mira said, eyes dancing at the way he shifted uncomfortably. "She couldn't sit still earlier, practically inhaled her food�"I think this is her last ditch effort to calm down."

"Oh." Gray's brows rose, genuinely impressed. He was both flattered and embarrassed by how eager Roxanne was, but he was more amazed by how well she seemed to be handling it. Had she really wished to have magic like his? The ribbing from everyone else last night had made him nervous about teaching a girl like her, who seemed to admire him almost a little too much. He didn't know much about her, but he knew this: He wanted to help this little girl succeed. He wanted to do right by her, the way Ur had done right by him, and he wanted to do everything he could to make sure that her dreams came true. Gramps had already given her a home and basic instruction, but now she needed him to teach her about their magic. He'd seen the determination and relief burning in her eyes last night when he had agreed to be her mentor, and he knew that they had another thing in common: She needed magic. She needed to prove to herself that she could become a true mage of Fairy Tail, the same way he'd needed magic, when the heart had been torn out of his world, and all he'd had left was the need to never be helpless again, to save people from the fate he had endured. He could only hope that he was worthy of her obvious admiration.

Gray let out a deep, shaky breath, nervously setting his mind back to the task at hand. "Roxanne."

Immediately, her eyes popped open and she sat up. Before he could say anything else, she was off the table and dashing over to stand in front of him. "I'm ready to go!" she proclaimed eagerly, practically bouncing on her toes with excitement. "What do we do first?"

He chuckled at her enthusiasm and turned towards the door. "Come on, I'll tell you at the park. Thanks for your help, Mira."

"Any time, Gray." The white-haired mage nodded and went back to the prep-work.

Roxanne followed him, waving goodbye to Mira. "Thanks, Mira! See you soon!"

"Take care!" Mira replied as she waved back.

Gray took Roxanne to the same park where she had been training with Makarov, and smiled at the puzzled look she gave him.

"Okaaaaay," Gray began, taking up Makarov's spot under the shade of the tree. "A lot will change from your training with Gramps, but there will still be a few elements that will stay the same. Now that you've found your magic, you don't need to meditate three times a day, although it's a good idea to keep doing it at least once." Originally he'd kind of planned to drop it, but after what he'd seen this morning, he'd changed his mind.

"I decided to keep this part of your training because meditation is supposed to help with inner peace or whatever. Now, I don't meditate, it doesn't do anything for me and I feel stupid, but if it works for you then keep doing it." A pause, to make sure she was taking it all in. The way her eyes were glued to his face made it pretty clear that yes, she had been listening. "Everything you do is with the goal of making yourself stronger. Not just for the sake of being strong, but to protect yourself, your friends, and the people around you. Magic is awesome, but it can be dangerous too, if you use it wrong�"" Oh, could it ever. "�"which is why you are never to practice magic on your own until you have a better grasp on your magic. Why?"

“Because magic is dangerous when not used properly!” Roxanne chirped confidently, responding without missing a beat.

“That’s right! So, no practicing magic on your own for now. Got it?”

"Yes, Master Gray!"

Gray twitched. "Don't call me that," he requested as gently as he could. He didn't want to sound harsh, but it was one thing to call Gramps 'master'. He was a guild master, and old, and had experience as a teacher. Calling Gray that was, well, kind of weird and creepy feeling. "Gray is fine."

"Can I call you teacher?" Roxanne's blue-green eyes shone eagerly.

"Just Gray," Gray said firmly. "Anyway, like I said, your first priority is getting stronger, so we'll leap right into the easy physical training. Stretches, warm-ups, and then self-defense training. Then, we'll do the harder physical training, like running and other stuff. After that, we'll work on magic training. When we're done, we'll go swimming."

"Okay!" Roxanne chirped, almost bouncing on her toes again. She took a couple of deep breaths before she could slip into fangirl mode, and set the miracle that was her life to the back of her mind so she could focus on her training. "Yes, sir!" she said, much more firmly.

Gray noticed her reigning herself in, and was again impressed by that self-control. He'd been kind of an idiot as a kid, driving himself past what even Ur thought was reasonable out of sheer desperation. Given he was the one training her, it was probably a good thing Roxanne had more restraint, because he still had no idea how to properly teach a youngster.

"Alright," he said. "Let's get started."

For the next few hours, Gray led Rox through her usual warm-ups and self-defense routine, continuing her balance and falling practice, but also adding in some basic punching, kicking and blocking techniques. Gramps had said she should take another month or so to really be ready for combat training, or at the very least another week, but Gray knew that as long as she had someone there to make sure she didn't hurt herself, she'd be okay.

He kept it very simple, correcting her when she messed up and praising her when she did well. When she looked up at him eagerly for an explanation of why putting her feet in that way worked better than standing like this, he did his best to explain�"even though he was pretty sure he flubbed it a little�"but still had to resort to way more 'because it just works' than he liked.

It was nine o'clock when Gray told her to stop, take a breather, and stretch out again in preparation for the more intense training. He walked her through her stretches, helping her push just that little bit more than she could do on her own, and then slowly easing up until she was warm and limber. He hadn't changed the basic exercises much. She still did push-ups, sit-ups, squats and pull-ups. She still played catch-the-coin and hopscotch for her conditioning training�"he'd never thought a girl's game like hopscotch could be used for training like this before, go Gramps!�"and ran the stairs. But he did add some things to her physical training, which had made eliminating her meditation time necessary.

First, he created an obstacle course using his Ice Make magic. When he'd shown Gramps his original design, the guild master had given the crude drawing an incredulous look and laughed, asking Gray how he expected a nine-year-old to be able to climb an ice wall and cross monkey bars made of ice without falling and breaking an ankle. Gray had reconsidered after that, and toned it down to things that didn't involve vertical surfaces or heights.

First was a series of ankle-high rings that Roxanne had to navigate without tripping, putting her feet down in the holes rather than on the slippery surfaces of the rings themselves, the faster the better.

Then came a net that was modeled after chain-link fencing, to give it both strength and flexibility, suspended only a foot above the ground with dull-tipped barbs that would�"hopefully�"catch clothing without scratching skin too badly. She had to crawl under it and, at the same time, avoid the obstacles he placed in her way. Third�"and his personal favorite�"was a ball pit he'd made by turning the water in the park's fountain into thick-sided ice bubbles. She had to flounder-slash-swim her way through it to the far side, her footing both treacherous and concealed by the balls, and then climb out despite her hands being wet and slippery.

Finally, he'd made a bunch of dummies from ice and had her run through them. They spun at the slightest touch, ice-rod arms and legs giving a stinging�"but not dangerous�"smack if she didn't manage to dodge in time.

The course ended with her running up the flight of stairs to where he waited, stopwatch in hand.

"Not bad," he grinned at her once she made it to him. She was obviously tired, her neat braid somewhat bedraggled and soaked through with sweat despite the ice everywhere combating Fiore's summer heat. "Get your breath back, and then try it again."

Roxanne bit back a whimper, and went back to the starting line without a sound. There, she crouched over, bracing her hands on her knees, and took deep, even breaths to help her get ready.

She'd never been so physically challenged in her life, and not really knowing what to do for some of it meant she'd had to figure it out as she went, which was also mentally taxing. Halfway through the second run of the course, she kept going only because her stubbornness wouldn't allow her to show her exhaustion so early into the day. But mostly she didn't want Gray to think that he had been saddled with a weak student. So she clenched her jaw, stuck out her chin, and forced herself up those steps for the second time, to look her mentor in the eye without any sign of exhaustion worse than breathing hard.

When she finally dragged her way up to him the second time, he grinned and ruffled her hair, ignoring the water droplets that were flicked this way and that by the motion. "Good job," he said. "You did a lot better that time." She'd cut almost thirty seconds off her time, which he considered a big improvement.

Roxanne grinned back at him, panting, cheeks flushed with praise as well as tiredness. "I just knew what I was doing that time," she admitted.

"Which means you learned from the first time," Gray shrugged. "Good job." He didn't give false praise, and maybe he wasn't doing things exactly the way Ur or Master Makarov would have, but Roxanne was a girl, and from what Lucy had said, she'd been pretty sheltered before she'd been flung out into the world. A lot of kids like that never got past being pampered and useless, so Gray hoped to encourage Roxanne into being a more productive, self-sufficient individual by praising her when she put in effort.

Gray melted his obstacle course, declaring that twice was enough for the first day, and Roxanne was glad to see it go. But when Gray produced a huge pile of snowballs, she almost took it back.

"Um, we're not having a snowball fight, are we?" she asked nervously. Los Angeles winters weren't made for snowball fights, so the only times she'd seen snow were when her parents took the family on a rare skiing trip, and even then she'd mostly just made snowmen. If it came down to a snowball fight, Gray would slaughter her.

Gray snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm almost twice your age, and you're already pretty worn out." He wasn't stupid. Besides, if he started something interactive like that, chances were he'd start stripping, and with a little girl as a student that just wasn't right. "Your target is this," he said. Moving a short distance away, he smacked one fist into the opposite palm, calling to the scintillating core of his soul, where his magic dwelled. A target rose from the ground, moisture wicked from the air to form a solid disk of ice. On a last, humorous whim, he formed a particular, funny image at its center.

Roxanne burst into giggles, clapping both hands over her mouth until she had herself under control again.

Gray grinned. "All you have to do is throw snowballs and try to hit the bullseye," he said, tapping the target's center, where Natsu's face stood out, the same terrified look he got whenever Erza glared at him stamped indelibly on icy features.

"Okay!" Roxanne chirped, hands dropping from her mouth as she mastered herself.

"Oh, one more thing," Gray added, walking back over to her. "You have to stand behind here." He laid a stick that had fallen from the tree earlier on the ground about ten feet from the target.

"Every time you hit the bullseye three times in a row, I'll move the stick back five feet. If you hit the bullseye three times again, I'll move the stick back another five feet. We'll do that for a while, and then we'll stop for the day. But tomorrow, the stick goes right back to where it is now and the process starts over. Eventually, the line will start out further and further away from the target. Once it starts at a certain distance," say, thirty feet, since that was about as far as he could reasonably expect a kid her age to throw, "I'll put the target on a track to make it a moving target. I'll explain more at that point."

Roxanne nodded again as she absorbed this new information. Her head spun, and she felt terribly intimidated�"could she live up to his expectations? It was just throwing a snowball, but for some reason it felt enormously more important than what she'd done before, as if his earlier praise would mean nothing if she failed. She wasn't sure why she felt like that, but she was still scared.

She took a deep breath, in and out, letting the nervousness flow away like water. She was going to try her best. That was all she could do, try her best every day and tackle her training one step at a time.

Satisfied and reinvigorated, she nodded once more and picked up a snowball, dimly noticing that it was too big to hold well. At this distance, hitting the bullseye was theoretically easy, but that theory was soon proven false. Roxanne threw the ball, subconsciously pulling from her memories of movies and baseball games on the TV since she had no experience of her own�"

The snowball didn't even come close to hitting the target. Instead, it went too high and to the left.

Roxanne bit her lip and breathed, letting disappointment follow nervousness.

"It's okay, Roxanne" Gray said, standing back to observe. "Try again."

Roxanne breathed a little more, and picked up another snowball. She weighed it in her hand, feeling how dense and well-packed it was, the slight moisture from where the sun melted little bits of snow, drop by tiny drop. The snowball was much lighter than a rubber ball, and definitely not as bouncy, but it didn't just crumble in her hand, either. The snowball was built for Gray's hand, too, not hers; it was a little too large to grip easily or firmly. There were a lot of factors as to why her first throw had gone so awry despite the short distance, but inexperience and hastiness were probably the biggest.

Once she was comfortable with the snowball, she eyed the target critically, making a few throwing-motions to get herself used to the motion. Then she took a breath, hauled off, and let the snowball fly.

She missed again, but this time it was much closer, clipping the upper left edge of the target. Roxanne felt encouraged, especially when she saw Gray nodding approvingly. Now I know that I tend to miss up and left, so if I aim down and right�"

She grabbed another snowball and tried again, making sure that she moved her arm instead of just staring at Natsu's face and expecting her body to correct itself. This time it flew too low, but was centered enough to strike the target's supporting base.

Okay, try a little higher.

The fourth snowball fared better, striking the outer ring of the target only a little to the left of the center. The fifth try struck the bullseye, making Roxanne shriek excitedly.

"I did it!" A glance in Gray's direction saw him smirking with amusement, but it wasn't a mean smirk, and his eyes were pleased, so Roxanne quickly scooped up another snowball, determined to hit the bullseye twice more and move the stick back.

To her dismay, she missed the bullseye, snowball shattering on the left side of the target instead. But she didn't give up, taking a moment to calm and center herself, she lined up her next shot carefully. She clipped the right edge of the target. Her next two did find the bullseye, followed by one that missed. So close! After two more throws, she finally got her three-in-a-row streak, and shrieked with excitement, jumping up and down while Gray chuckled and moved the stick back.

Despite his amusement, Gray was once again impressed with Roxanne. Sure, she wasn't as good at throwing snowballs as himself, or Natsu, or even Romeo, but it was pretty obvious that she'd never tried anything like this before, never had the kind of rough-and-tumble childhood that came with snowball fights and ball games with friends, or even any kind of more structured training.

But she makes up for that lack of experience through observation and analysis. Not only does she figure out what she's doing wrong, but she fixes it on the next try, and she doesn't give up when it isn't perfect. She doesn't quite have the hand-eye coordination to hit whatever she aims at yet, but she's observant and stubborn enough to compensate for her limitations, and she gives her all to the task at hand, regardless of what it is.

Still, as she got farther from her target, things would get harder. She'd learned the basics of how to aim; now she'd need to account for the ballistic arc as well, since she simply wasn't strong enough to flat-throw a snowball fifteen feet. Not yet. He could get about forty-five or fifty feet of distance before the force of throwing it hard enough to counter gravity's pull also broke it up. If he was throwing something sturdier, like an ice-ball, he could get much farther, maybe even a good hundred-fifty feet, but that would be stupidly dangerous right now. If he set her goals that were too far ahead, her determination might be broken. He couldn't have that. She did have a long way to go, so she'd need every scrap of determination, spirit and stubbornness she possessed.

Roxanne's first try at the fifteen-foot mark proved him right�"it didn't even reach the target, shattering on the grass a foot in front and to the left of its base. The second snowball was no better, wobbling wildly off to the side, though at least it passed the target. The third was a bit better, but didn't even brush the target's rim. Four more snowballs flew in increasingly erratic arcs as her frustration built, until finally Roxanne stopped, scowling in concentration at the next snowball she'd picked up, clearly trying to figure out what she was doing wrong. She glared at the snowball as if it was the ball's fault she couldn't hit the target, but Gray could tell she was thinking because he could practically the gears in her head working.

Gray decided that it was time to step in. "Roxanne," he said, stepping closer as she turned wide, near-frantic, watering eyes on him. "Relax. Remember, it's your first day. This is as much about figuring out what you can do already as it is about learning to improve."

"But I can't figure it out!" she protested shakily, accidentally squashing the snowball as she gripped it a little too hard. She dropped the clumps of snow to the ground, dusting flakes off cold-reddened fingers that trembled with worry and frustration. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

"And that's okay," Gray said, shrugging. "Look, I had trouble with this too."

Roxanne blinked up at him, eyes wide. "Really?" she asked, surprise and wonder overcoming her fear that she was going to be a failure, that she wouldn't measure up, that she'd let her teacher down. "I didn't know you had to throw snowballs at a target." That had never been covered in the flashbacks. What else didn't she know, that had been deemed too unimportant for the anime to show?

"Yeah," Gray shrugged, crouching down to look her in the eye. Maybe that was why Gramps got along so well with kids; he was fun-size too, unless he used magic. "That's why I picked this, since it's something I'm familiar with. I know how it works, and that it does work. Do you want me to tell you what you're missing?" He respected her determination; he wouldn't undermine it by giving advice that she might not want to hear.

He needn't have worried.

"Yes, please," Roxanne said fervently, grabbing his hands. She wanted to do it right, wanted to succeed, to show him she could do it the way he wanted her to.

Gray smiled and gently pulled his hands free, ruffling her hair again. "You're not letting go of the snowball in the right spot of your throw," he said as he turned to the target and pointed at Natsu. "See, when you're further away, the snowball has more time to fall, so you can't just throw it straight at the target�"not unless you're throwing really hard, and that makes it a lot more difficult to aim properly. Here, watch." He picked up one of the snowballs, absently reinforcing the magic on the pile while he did so, to keep them from melting any further. A little bit of heat softened them just right for molding, but they were right on the edge of becoming slushy.

Standing straight at the target, he wound up and slammed the snowball right in Natsu's stupid, terrified face. "See, I'm a lot stronger and taller than you are, so I can just slam it from here with no problem. But if I was you, I'd have to throw more like this." He crouched down to her height, picked up another snowball. This time he threw it more slowly, almost letting the ball roll off of his fingers in the end. It still shattered against Natsu's face, but it was a clumpy puff of snow-dust instead of a shower. "Did you see?"

Roxanne had watched both throws intently, and while an inner part of her wanted to squeal with glee as Gray hit the target hard enough to make the snowball basically explode, she held that part back in favor of trying to see what he did the second time that she could imitate. "The snowball was spinning?" she asked hesitantly.

"Exactly." Gray nodded. "See, if the snowball is rolling up and back towards you like that, it counters a little bit of how gravity and air drag it downwards." He twirled his index fingers around each other for emphasis. "Plus, since you can't throw hard enough to make a straight line yet, you have to throw sort of in an arc, and changing where you let go of the ball changes the angle of your arc. Here." He moved over to crouch next to her again, gripping her wrist and elbow to move her arm through the motions as he spoke. "You were throwing like this, when you should have been letting go right here, and letting your fingertips kind of graze the ball as it sails away to give that a bit of a spin."

"Oh!" Roxanne lit up as understanding dawned. "I see! I get it now!" It was like putting a spin on a bowling ball, so it stayed in the middle of the lane instead of wandering off into the gutter.

Gray smiled and backed away so she could practice, retrieving the shirt he'd somehow managed to shuck out of before, and pulled it back on. As he'd thought, Roxanne took a few false-start practice throws to get used to the form he'd shown her, before taking aim at the target and actually letting fly. When she finally threw the snowball, it still didn't hit the bullseye, but it did hit the target. Twenty snowballs later, she still hadn't managed three bullseyes in a row, but she'd managed to hit the target repeatedly, and gotten a bullseye at least twice. Finally, Gray decided they'd practiced enough, and told her to stop while he sublimated the snowballs and target.

"That was good," he said as he made his way back over towards her.

She smiled and raced to him, bouncing on her toes and thrilled by his praise, even if she hadn't managed to move the stick back a second time. "That was kinda fun!" she exclaimed, quite pleased with her own progress. "Can we do that again tomorrow?"

"Absolutely," Gray chuckled. He'd already told her that, but he couldn't blame her for wanting confirmation. "But, for now, let's take a short break, okay?" He checked his watch again. "Say, five minutes or so. I've got a game I'd like to try�"I think it'll be right up your alley, once you get used to it." Everyone else in the guild got too competitive and ended up wrecking things�"especially Natsu�"and Lyon… well, even if he knew where he was, Gray didn't think a 'friendly game' was on the table anymore. “And since I haven’t played it in a while, this will be fun for me, too! Heck, I’m so out of practice that you might get the better of me.”

"Cool!" Roxanne bounced on her toes again, giggling at the accidental pun. "What kind of game is it?" Ice would make a really good medium for bowling, and she was actually pretty good at that, for a kid. She didn't even need to use the bumpers anymore!

Gray smiled at her enthusiasm. It was really hard not to keep ruffling her hair, but she'd probably start to resent it if he did it too often. "I call it Hit the Birdie. My mentor used to let her other apprentice Lyon and I play it together." Lyon's 'birdies' had literally flown around, making gameplay borderline impossible until Ur put her foot down. "She said it does a lot of good things for your body, but mostly it builds hand-eye coordination and reflexes."

"That sounds like fun!" Roxanne nodded, shunting aside her desire to squeal and pounce on the mention of Lyon and Ur. She couldn't let on that she knew who they were�"even Erza didn't know who they were at this point in the timeline! "How do you play?"

Gray grinned and moved over to the stick that still lay on the ground. Using that as a marker, he used Ice Make to create two poles with a thin, shimmering sheet of ice between them that could act as a net. It was thin enough and smooth enough to see through, so they'd both know what the other was doing, but he'd left enough deliberate inclusions in the ice to give it a very lightly 'frosted' look, so they wouldn't forget where it was. Next came the rackets�"they were harder, since they couldn't just be solid sheets of ice. They had to have elasticity, something ice was uniquely suited not to have. Once he'd made the frames, he grew a hexagonal web-work of thin ice strings, tuning the magic carefully to give the ice properties natural ice would never have. In some ways, it was similar to how Macao could make fire that 'clung' to other objects, despite fire normally being pretty much intangible. It also made the ice-lines a much, much deeper blue, as his magic saturated them.

Roxanne watched in utter fascination. This wasn't quick-and-dirty battle-magic, like in the show, no matter how beautiful Gray's Ice Make weapons and shields had always been. This was something much more mundane, and at the same time much more amazing. It didn't take a long time for him to finish the long-handled rackets�"no more than a few seconds�"but she got to actually watch the crystals grow and form, and it was a fascinating process. I want that. Roxanne realized as desire burned in her heart so hot that it made her throat ache. I want to be able to do that.

It wasn't until Gray produced the 'Birdie', though, that she realized exactly what game this was. The Birdie was a plum-sized half-hollow ball of ice with a netted ring of fins on the back side, and Gray produced it by placing the 'ball' in the palm of one hand and then laying the other hand atop it and pulling away in a short gesture, the net growing up beneath his hands like rock candy in reverse. The ball split in half and the fins sprouted up from the flat sides of each, creating two Birdies rather than one.

Rox smiled. At least they'd have a spare if the primary Birdie got launched far away.

"Aaand, there we are." Gray nodded to himself, tossing and catching one Birdie a few times to check that the balance wasn't off. The front half of the 'ball' was very faintly blue, a testament to the extra magic that went into it, since it had to have a hard-rubber texture or it would crack during play. "All you have to do is hit the Birdie up over the net to my side of the court, and then I'll hit it back to you. That's called a volley, and it lasts until one of use makes a mistake and the Birdie hits the ground. We'll keep doing volleys until I say we've had enough."

Roxanne found herself smiling confidently despite herself. Badminton! Hit the Birdie is badminton! she cheered to herself. She was so glad to find a game that she was familiar with and loved.

Her school had let the students play either dodgeball or badminton on rainy days, and she always chose badminton, so she was quite confident in her skills. She wasn't the best, but she still enjoyed badminton more than dodgeball. Her parents had also had her playing tennis almost every day since she was big enough to hold a racket, claiming that it did the same things for her that Gray claimed Hit the Birdie did. But Roxanne was sure that they did it just so that she would wear herself out and be more obedient during the etiquette and comportment lessons that came afterwards. But even though she was more familiar with tennis, she preferred badminton because there wasn't quite as much running involved, and because the hitter needed a delicate touch or else the Birdie would fly across the room.

Grinning, she took her racket and raced to the court. "Ready when you are, Gray!" she shouted once she was in position in her favorite spot.

Gray paused, smile faltering. He'd noticed the confidence in her eyes, which meant that she was very familiar with the game, and that had caught him off guard. He knew that Ur hadn't invented Hit the Birdie, but when he'd first come to Magnolia, no one else had known it. He'd thought it was unique to Istvan.

Note to self: do not underestimate student's potential experience. He'd thought of her as a sheltered rich kid, and she was, but even rich kids played games, and Hit the Birdie was the kind of no-violence, no-contact game that would probably appeal to snooty, over-protective parents.

Gray moved over to his own court, watching his apprentice with unerring, analytical eyes. He chose a spot that was centered on his side, the better to react to something unexpected, until such time as he knew Roxanne's proficiency with the game and could thus choose a spot that was particularly effective against her. As a bonus, going to the middle would prevent her from figuring out his own tendencies beforehand because it was something a novice would do, thinking that it was better to have an equal amount of space on all sides.

As he'd thought she would, Roxanne narrowed her eyes in concentration, trying to analyze his own placement and what that would mean for where the birdie would go. And, as he tossed the birdie on the racket a few times in preparation, she moved to the spot she thought most likely for the birdie to go.

Gray was glad he'd noticed her confidence. If he hadn't, he'd probably have gotten creamed in the first round while 'going easy on her', until he'd wizened up. Now, though, he could more accurately assess her while keeping his own defenses up. Losing to your apprentice on the first day is not cool, he told himself wryly, catching the birdie on the racket and holding it up in a visual cue to Roxanne that the game was about to begin. It's the kind of thing that gets you mocked by idiot Salamanders.

Roxanne nodded and braced herself, raising her racket until it was level with the rest of her arm and slightly behind. Gray nodded approvingly and tossed the birdie into the air. He watched it fly up, then turn and come back down ball-first. He waited until it was at the right height, then he lifted his racket and swung underhand with a light touch, expertly popping the birdie over the net.

Roxanne had to race forward to hit the birdie before it hit the ground. She had expected Gray to hit it where she had been, and then figured that he would hit it over her head when he realized she'd played this game before. She hadn't expected him to hit the birdie short of her position, so she had to adjust quickly. Thankfully, her racket met the birdie and easily flicked it into the air, buying her a bit of time to re-center herself for her own hit. She hit the birdie over the net, aiming for the ground just barely on his side, and watched as Gray darted forward and easily caught the birdie. Bouncing it on the racket once, he backed up to gain more ground, then he hit the birdie with far more strength than before. His goal was the far end of Roxanne's court.

When she saw how much strength he was putting into the volley, Roxanne retreated, turning her back to him to get more speed, rather than risk tripping by running backwards. She guessed where he intended the birdie to go, and dashed over there. Thankfully, she had been right, and the birdie came sailing smoothly towards her. She smiled and hit it back the moment it came into range, sending hers to the side of his court that was furthest from him and closer to the net, which meant that he'd have to react quickly as well.

He, of course, met the birdie and returned it to Roxanne, and she hit it back to him. They parried like that, with increasingly difficult-to-reach targets and near-catches, until the volley was broken when Roxanne was just a fraction of a second too late. To Gray's surprise and pleasure, Roxanne took the loss well, merely stomping her foot once in wordless disappointment before scooping the birdie up with the rim of her racket and looking to him for permission to resume play.

"Go ahead," Gray nodded. "You obviously know how to play, so you might as well serve."

Roxanne beamed, spirits restored, and tossed the birdie upwards.

They kept playing for several rounds, and Gray was genuinely impressed by Roxanne's intuition. She seemed to be reading him almost expertly, guessing where he'd send the birdie more often than not and saving herself precious fractions of a second to actually react. What he didn't know was that Roxanne was also factoring in his body language and what she knew of his personality to arrive at those guesses. It certainly wasn't easy, because Gray had twice the reach she did and much better reflexes, but at the same time, despite his admiration, he was still underestimating her a little. His knowledge of her reflexes and response time came from their earlier training, things she had been largely unfamiliar with, and thus lacked the proper instincts to perform without conscious thought.

Gray decided to end the game after several rounds, and when he checked the time he was shocked to find that they had been playing intensely for far longer than he'd thought�"almost half an hour longer. To his surprise, when he looked at Roxanne, he saw that she was breathing hard but otherwise seemed unfazed by the exertion.

"Okay," he said, wiping a little sweat from his own brow, "walk a little bit to cool down, and then we'll do final stretches, okay?"

"Yes, Gray." Roxanne nodded, chin up, and her jaw clenched a little bit as she started walking steadily around the edges of the 'court'.

Gray frowned to himself a little as he carefully vaporized their equipment. He'd been sure that she'd be on the ground passed out from exhaustion by now, or�"more likely�"throwing up from overexertion despite how he'd toned the training regimen down from his original plans. Then again, one of the reasons Gramps had been so adamant that he tone it down was because Roxanne was stubborn.

Keep an eye on her, Gray. Roxanne is eager to please, and on top of that she's tenacious. She'll act tough and pretend she can handle much more than she really can if you let her.

He groaned silently to himself and joined her on her second lap, looking his apprentice over with a much more critical eye. She was still breathing heavily from the workout, but she wasn't panting like a bellows. And she seemed to be walking steadily, not shivering or swaying. And when she looked up at him, she held his gaze easily without her eyes drooping. Maybe he was worrying for nothing?

After a third lap, Gray walked Roxanne through a final set of cooldown stretches, making sure that she wouldn't stiffen up too badly or get sick after all of that exertion.

"We've done enough for now," he said, checking his watch again. "Let's go get lunch at the guild hall."

"Okay," Roxanne agreed, forcing herself not to wobble as she picked up the shirt Gray had shed at some point during their second match. "Here you go." She couldn't manage the energy or enthusiasm she'd had before�"she could barely keep from falling over, and it took everything she had not to show it.

"Thanks." Gray ruffled her hair, and then mentally smacked himself for it as he pulled the shirt on over his head. Hadn't he decided he wasn't going to do that anymore? And when had he taken his shirt off? "Let's go. I can hear your stomach rumbling from here," he teased.

Roxanne flushed, but lifted her chin and tried not to show it. Maybe a rumbling stomach was unladylike, but after so much exercise she thought she was allowed. She followed her mentor as he left the park, doing her best to keep pace with him and to not show how very tired she was.