FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

So here's chapter six, not long after chapter five, I'm speed writing these so that my few fans have something to read for like a Christmas prezzie or something. I hope to have the next chapter done before Christmas but i wouldn't bet on it. as i have yet to begin.

Anyway enjoy this chapter and please leave some comments about the ending and what you think.

Chapter six: The Doubt

After their collective bath, the sentinel recruits almost unanimously agreed that sleep would be the best option for them. They quickly discovered that the store room opposite their dorm rooms contained enough fresh clothes to last them all for most of the next two years. The room was a lot bigger than it seemed, and there were also towels and bed clothes there for them to use.

The dorm itself was fairly simple. There were beds on either side of the room with space to walk down the middle. What was interesting, however, was that half of the room was clearly made out for ferals. Instead of what the humans would call standard bed, one with a mattress, pillow and blanket, there was instead large cushions that were clearly meant to be laid upon.

"They look like dog beds," Josh eloquently pointed out, snickering as he asked Cayden where he would be sleeping. The wolf threatened to bite the human as he picked a bed fairly far away from the door. Without a word being spoken among them all, the recruits chose beds near each other. Kyle was even sleeping with Termal, although no one was surprised at that after how the human had been treating the dragon the past few days. The dragon and human might as well have been actual brothers, for all the different their relationship would be.

No one was really surprised that Skylar had deliberately chosen to sleep at least one bed away from the group. For all his help, the redhead was clearly not a social person, and went out of his way to make sure that they all knew it. Shiro was not deterred however, and chose the bed next to his with a bright smile on his face. Whether he was just too exhausted or genuinely didn't care, Skylar made no indication, the redhead merely collapsed onto his bed and passed out. Even after his shower and rest, the toll of the past week of near constant creations had left him weak and pale.

"As much as I dislike him," Ana mumbled, as she got up and covered Skylar with a blanket. "He didn't once complain or whine about having to keep making clothes for any of us."

"James said that the magic he was using was harmful," Josh said, looking at the sleeping redhead before laying back in his bed and looking up at the ceiling. "He didn't by any chance mean to the environment, did he?"

"No, it was hurting him. He woke up coughing up blood one night while I was on watch," Michael said casually, looking around the room at peoples' reactions. The gryphon knew that Termal knew, the dragon could probably tell in a dozen different ways that Skylar had been hurting himself with the creation magic. The others didn't know though, although Shiro looked a little ashamed.

"Wait! You actually let him keep doing it?" Ana shouted in disbelief, glaring at her boyfriend for a moment before the gryphon had the good graces to look ashamed. He had actually said something to Skylar that night, but the human was stubborn and pointed out the necessity of his actions. How could Micheal ask him to stop if there was a chance that one of the others would have died from the cold? Those stormy nights had taken their toll on the group, and even with all their improvements to their campsite and their newer clothes most of the group still huddled together for warmth. Well everyone except Skylar and Ian, both of whom never seemed to feel the full extent of the cold.

"I guess it was that or you guys all froze to death," Ian shrugged. He didn't exactly feel great about Skylar's situation, but there was an obvious rationale behind it. It had transpired that both himself and Skylar were apparently unaffected by the cold, so Skylar's reasons for creating the clothes were entirely selfless.

"We should probably thank him for it then," Shiro muttered, as he looked over the redhead that he was sleeping next to. "If he put himself through that just so that we wouldn't freeze."

"Hey! It's not like he babied the rest of us or anything!" Josh growled, sitting up on his bed. He could feel his pride being offended at where this was going. "Besides, he didn't catch any food or anything, and Cayden was the one who made the shelter."

"I didn't cough up any blood after though," the wolf pointed out, looking over to the human with a frown. "In fact, I could have done a lot more but I would have ended up like Skylar. He stopped us from freezing to death, Josh, the least we can do is thank him." Josh just scowled before dropping himself back onto his bed.

"It doesn't have to be anything special," Ana said before she slipped onto the bed that Michael was on. "Skylar would probably just get annoyed at anything like that anyway, just a simple thank you from us all would be enough, I think."

The others all nodded in agreement except for Josh, but the human reluctantly nodded after being given a collective glare from the group.

"Fine, I can manage a thank you."

"Good. Now that is settled, we should all get some sleep," Termal said, smiling round at the group before doing just that. Kyle had already fallen asleep leaning against the dragon's side, much to everyone's amusement.

"Sleep sounds good," Cayden grinned, taking off his shirt and getting under the covers of his bed. The smooth sheets and soft bed were far better to sleep on than grass and stone. "Never knew how much I would miss something as simple as a bed," the wolf sighed as he snuggled into the fabric.

With nothing else pressing to discuss and a serious longing for a good night's sleep, the sentinels in training all snuggled up in their various beds and partners, feeling safe and warm for the first time in over a week.

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(Fortis, Sentinel Canteen)

Hale sighed as his partner once again caught him out in the open and took his king. They had been playing chess since they returned from making their report on the recruits, and had since been discussing various methods of training.

"Why do we always play this game?" Hale growled, as he set the pieces up for another match. He hated chess. The pieces were stupid and not diverse enough, tactics seemed to go out of the window with the game, strategies were non existent, movements too constricted and most importantly...he always bloody lost.

"It's a good game to talk casually over," James explained, as he made his first move and smiled a little when his partner responded almost immediately. 'Also because you make the exact same moves every game,' the sentinel thought, as he fell into a pattern. "If we played anything else, you would get caught up in the game and get distracted." That was only a half lie. While James really did enjoy beating Hale an endless amount of times at chess, the wolf genuinely would get distracted by any other game that they played.

"Whatever," Hale said, before growling when he lost a knight. "So we're sticking with the usual starter, and then going from there?"

"Yes. We need to know their limits before we can even begin to train them properly."

"So are these ones any good?" Both Hale and James looked up from their chess game when another Sentinel approached the table, the two instructors glanced between each other as Vanresh moved up to stand beside them.

Vanresh was a large tiger with bright orange fur and pale green eyes. The sentinel wore much the same as the other two instructors but took his trench coat off as he sat down, showing off his lean but clearly muscular form. The shoulder pauldrons that he wore seemed to just pass through the coat, but neither Hale nor James batted an eyelash at it as the tiger leaned on the table to look at them.

"So are they?" Vanresh asked, looking between his two friends. The instructors glanced at each other, both wondering how Vanresh knew about the latest batch or recruits. While it was by no means classified knowledge it was exactly public either. "You're playing chess, you only play chess when you're talking about recruits, and seeing how last years batch bit the dust early on, you must have a new bunch," the tiger explained with a grin, before he took a more serious expression and handed them a very formal piece of paper. "Also, me and Ethan are going to be helping you guys."

"What?" Hale growled, his aura spiking for just a moment as he glared at the tiger next to him. Vanresh tried not to buckle under the wolf's glare as he met it with a blank stare, but it was hard when Hale was the one who trained him and he nothing but respect for his superior. James just calmly took the piece of paper offered to him and began to read it, keeping half an ear on the conversation.

"Given that there are ten recruits this time, the commander feels that you won't be able to give each recruit enough one on one time to sufficiently develop them," Vanresh explained. He wanted to glance to James to help him out here, but knew that despite his calm exterior the human was just as angry and insulted about this turn of events at the wolf. "So Ethan and I have been transferred from the hunter division to help you train this bunch."

"That's bullshit!" Hale snarled slamming his fist down onto the table before getting up and storming out of the Canteen with a raging aura surrounding him. James watched his partner leave before sighing heavily. It actually made sense and he himself had been thinking the exact same thing, but after the accident last year that ended up with the only two recruits dying, this felt like anything other than what it actually was. Not to mention the fact that both Vanresh and Ethan had been trained by himself and Hale.

"Sorry, sir," Vanresh said, looking guilty as he watched the wolf's back. He was actually kind of excited, despite knowing that Hale was going to be resentful for a little while.

"We're the same rank Vanresh, you don't need to call me sir," James pointed out, as he reset the board and pointed for the tiger to take the other seat. "Don't worry about Hale, he'll calm down when we actually get started training. I think he'll be too busy to be angry."

"So you do need help?" Vanresh flinched, almost violently, when James just looked up at him and almost smothered him with a sudden burst of Magic.

"We've been training sentinels for over a hundred years Vanresh, we don't need any help. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir," the tiger said, and didn't care when James didn't bother to correct him on the formality this time. James just looked away and made his first move.

Despite being the same rank, Hale and James were much more powerful and a lot older than any of the other sergeants in the Sentinels. That was because the two had found their calling in training new recruits, and had never wanted to advance any further up the career ladder. In a system where the strongest usually had the best chance of being promoted, they were an anomaly in the system.

"To answer your question," James began, wondering how the addition of the tiger and his partner was going to affect the initial training. Probably not much in the grand scheme of things. "They're special."

"Special?"

"At a first glance some of them don't look very special, particularly Termal and Kai."

"They're the feral dragons? They don't have a very high Sentinel success rate, do they?"

"No, they don't," James shook his head and moved a rook to take one of Vanresh's pieces. "Feral dragons are more physical creatures, relying on their fangs and claws a lot of the time instead of their magic, despite having higher than average reserves and auras compared to the rest of Terra and Earth." Frowning down at the board James leaned back in his chair and looked at the tiger. "Those two would have been labeled as prodigies in their own right though. Kai has an amazing natural aura for healing while Termal has something that could be even greater, something that I've never seen before."

"Which is?"

"His essence, it feels almost tangible at times. After just over a week that dragon has been able to imprint his essence onto every one of the recruits." It wasn't impossible for others with magic to mark others with their essence, Ian was an extreme but excellent example, one that had Hale and James very worried. "I don't know if he even knows that he's doing it, but Termal has been using his essence to... keep the others spirits up."

"And he's doing that naturally?" Vanresh asked. The tiger chuckled nervously when his old teacher nodded. If someone got their essence inside of you it was ludicrously difficult to get it back out, so anyone specialising in essence was dangerous. Luckily though, there were very few among the sentinels with the level of essence required to do such a thing. If it became a common practice then Vanresh was retiring, the thought terrified him. "So that's the dragons, what about the others?" James was quiet for a moment and just stared down at the chess board.

"They are prodigies, all of them," the human eventually said thinking about them. "Kyle is probably smarter than most, if not all of Fortis and he's emotionally and mentally stunted. Ian has Kai's essence and that's evolved into a remarkable healing ability as well." 'Plus that other essence inside of him.' James added silently to himself. He didn't quite know what to do about that yet, encourage the growth or stop it completely? "Ana might not look like much now but in the future, if developed properly she will be a force to be reckoned with. Josh is probably the least gifted in the group but even then that's not saying much, he's already begun to naturally shift his magic around to help him physically without even knowing what he's doing."

"And the other four?"

"Cayden and Michael are going to excel, Michael was strong enough to begin this training years ago and until recently he was one of the top trackers that we had. His magic growth has been stunted a little because he spent most of his time on Earth, but that shouldn't be a problem." James chuckled when he thought of Cayden, if the wolf had been just a single moment faster than he would have given Hale a clean hit when the instructors found them on the island. "Cayden is just going to keep getting faster and faster, he's already at the level that would be impressive for most of the junior Sentinels." When James came to the last two names though he stopped.

"What's the matter?"

"Skylar and Shiro...they're monsters."

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(The island, House)

"What is he doing?" Josh whispered to Michael, as Cayden stood by the entrance of the kitchen panting like very much like a feral dog would do. The human and gryphon had just woken up and decided to come downstairs for something to eat when they spotted the wolf and stopped.

Skylar, Ana, Shiro and Cayden's beds were already empty so they must have been up already, but both Michael and Josh thought that the wolf would be raiding the kitchen, not stood outside of it like a loyal pet waiting for scraps. Just as that thought passed through Josh's head, a small bit of meat came flying through the doorway and was quickly snapped up by the hungry wolf.

"Okay, what the hell!" Josh shouted, before he walked up to the kitchen doorway and spied Shiro, with his arm cocked back and ready to throw another piece of meat in Cayden's direction. Skylar was stood with his back to the door and seemed to be cooking over the stove. At Josh's sudden appearance, Shiro just smiled sheepishly and quickly swallowed the meat himself before Skylar turned around to see what all the noise was about.

The redhead nodded in Josh's direction before his eyes set on Cayden and the fact that the wolf was no longer at the door, but happily eating his breakfast at the table with Shiro. Skylar frowned at the wolf, it hadn't been the first time that he had used his speed to... well, do whatever it was that he was doing.

"You cook?" Michael asked, as he got himself a glass of water to drink, the thought of the quiet and aggressive human cooking was more than a little amusing for the gryphon. Skylar just nodded to him and plated up some meat for the gryphon to sit down with. "Where's Ana?"

"In the bathroom trying to get her hair to do...something?" Cayden shrugged, looking down at his fur with a frown. He could really do with a good brush as well, he was looking a little ragged himself. Deciding that he would worry about it later, Cayden finished off his food before going over to Skylar, who looked genuinely surprised that the wolf wanted more. "I can eat a lot," Cayden grinned, tilting his head to the side in a way that even Skylar found cute.

"Whatever, it's not like we're going to go short," Skylar said, as he slapped some more on the wolf's plate. Josh quickly got some as well and just as he sat down, Ana came walking into the room with a big smile on her face. Her hair was done into an almost perfect ponytail with a little hair framing her face.

"Morning all," she said, taking the food offered to her by Skylar and thanking him for it. The males in the kitchen all kept an eye on her for a moment as she happily ate her breakfast before going back to their own food. Skylar sat down a moment later and they all ate in a companionable silence for a short while, until Cayden swallowed the last of his food and let out a satisfied sigh.

"That hit the spot," the wolf said, chuckling when he looked down at his bloated belly. He doubted that he would be doing much later.

It was only when Josh finished the food on his plate that the silence was broken surrounding them was broken.

"So I've been thinking," the others looked over to the human, as he seemed to hesitate over his words. Whatever he was thinking about was clearly important or sensitive. "Ian's other essence."

"What about it?" Michael asked, Josh now had the undivided attention of the entire table and Skylar was looking at Josh with particular interest.

"I'm worried about it."

"I thought that we discussed this already," Ana snapped. She had a feeling that this conversation was going to go in a bad direction, and she didn't want to see Ian hurt because of something that he couldn't control.

"We very briefly discussed it," Josh pointed out, looking to Ana with a frown on his face. "But I think we should take another look at it."

"Why?" Everyone was surprised to hear Skylar ask the question. In truth, Ian and his supposed 'black fire' had been in the forefront of his mind almost constantly for a while now. The redhead had probably thought about it more than Ian himself had. "What have you thought up that made you want to go over it again?"

"Well, don't you think that its a bit of a coincidence?" Josh said, looking around the table at his fellow recruits. "How likely is it that Ian has another essence inside of him, something that is apparently impossible for humans to do unless trained, and Ian just so happens to find Kai and get a one way trip to Sentinel academy?"

"You're not suggesting Kai has anything to do with it, are you?" Cayden asked with utter disbelief in his voice. Kai would have to be the greatest actor in both worlds to even having a chance of lying his way into the sentinels, Ian too for that matter. "There is no way that that dragon is anything other than what he seems."

"I agree, Kai's essence and aura are too kind and... young," Michael pointed out, making Josh pull a face.

"We're getting away from the point. I agree that Kai isn't hiding anything, but Ian must be."

"You're worried about who put the essence inside of him?" Skylar asked, that was in truth his own worry. If there was even a chance that Ian was working with... him, then the redhead would stop at nothing to see Ian destroyed. Shaking that thought out of his head, Skylar paid attention to the conversation again.

"Not who so much as why? Why put your essence inside of someone in the first place? Why a human? Why Ian? The essence saved us from the naga, but if you think about it, that was just Ian's self preservation being in line with what we wanted."

"So what are you suggesting?" Skylar asked pointing upstairs to where Ian was still sleeping. "That someone is trying to use Ian to...what, infiltrate the Sentinels?"

"I'm not suggesting anything." Josh growled. In his mind, he really wasn't, he was just bringing a valid point up. Why had someone done that to Ian?

"That's not a bad idea though," Michael admitted, voicing his idea even as it began to come to his mind. "The Sentinels have secrets heaped upon secrets, I bet a lot have even been forgotten over the years. If someone wanted to learn those secrets, then what better way than to get an agent inside?"

"Ian would have to be willing for that to happen though," Ana said, she really didn't like where this was going. "And he clearly has no idea about the other essence."

"Could have had his memory altered," Shiro said, putting in his bit. The windragon frowned though when Michael shook his beak slowly.

"Altering someone's memories is no joke. To do it to a point where Ian was able to get past the Fortis security checks would take a master, which is the problem."

"Why?" Skylar asked. He didn't realise it, but he was clenching his knife so hard that he was bending the metal.

"There isn't anyone in the Sentinels that can alter memories to the level that we're talking about." At the blank looks that he was getting Michael went into a bit more detail. "Okay, either Ian is in on this whole scheme, or he's an innocent bystander that's just been used. In both cases there are serious emotional and mental components to be altered. If he's in on it, then all his reasoning and wants and rationale would have to be hidden away, along with the shock and most likely fear of meeting the person able to do it for the first time. Same with the second, just minus the reasoning."

"Okay, let's just back up for a second!" Cayden said waving his paws around. "You're all getting yourselves very convinced that Ian is some kind of spy or something. Have you considered the alternative?" At the blank looks he was getting the wolf sighed. "He might be plain innocent."

"So why can't he remember?" Shiro asked, looking down at the table as he thought about it. "You can't just give someone an essence that can affect them to the degree that we saw in Ian by tapping their shoulder. There needs to be a serious exchange of magics and more than likely trust."

"Trust?" Shiro nodded at Cayden before looking to Michael, the only other one there that could sense essences.

"Did you feel anything that resembled Ian in any way when he started sprouting that black fire?"

"No," the gryphon said, frowning as he seemed to catch on to whatever it was that Shiro was trying to say. "There wasn't any of Ian's essence surrounding him at all, it was just the other one."

"Which means what, guys?" Skylar asked. He really had no idea what the significance of Ian's lack of essence at the time had to do with their conversation.

"If the essence was hostile, then Ian's would fight back against it, it would definitely lose but it would resist, meaning that no matter how strong the other essence was Ian's should have still leaked through," Michael filled them in. Thinking about it now, he was actually getting worried himself. If someone had gotten to Ian, given him that essence and altered his memories, willing or not, to infiltrate the sentinels then... whoever it was had to be powerful. "Becuase there wasn't there are only a couple of possibilities, one is that Ian's essence was simply smothered, we are by no means experts on sensing them, but I find that unlikely."

"Its a really simple ability to develop once you learn it," Shiro added.

"Yeah. The second option is that, when Ian was given the essence, he had complete and utter faith and trust in the one giving him it. Enough that his body didn't fight or reject it at all."

"Could he have been tricked?" Ana asked, wondering if Ian had simply been manipulated into having another essence imprinted onto him.

"Does it matter?" Everyone turned to Skylar who was frowning at the table. Shiro spotted the snapped knife that he still had in his hand, and had to wonder why the redhead was so worked up. "Even if he was manipulated, or tricked, or some other reason that we can't think of. Ian went along with it willingly and is still here." The recruits stayed quiet for a few moments as those words sunk in, before Ana turned to fix Michael and Shiro with a determined glare.

"What are the chances that you simply missed Ian's essence during the takeover?"

"Maybe... one out of a thousand chance. Maybe even higher," the gryphon said, getting a nod out of Shiro. "If you're looking for it, an essence is almost impossible to miss, and with the amount of magic that Ian was releasing, there is no way that he was hiding his essence."

"Shit," Josh mumbled after a few moments of silence. "I just wanted to bring up that I thought it was weird, I didn't want to start this whole thing against him."

"It's good that you did," Cayden admitted, albeit reluctantly, before the wolf sighed and leaned back in his chair. He could hear someone waking up upstairs but he didn't care at the moment. "What are we going to do?"

"Just watch him, don't say or do anything else," Michael said quickly, as whoever was awake started walking down the stairs. They could all tell that it was the subject of their conversation from the volume of the steps.

"Morning, guys," Ian yawned, sniffing the air as he walked into the kitchen, a smile on his face. "What's cooking? Smells amazing." Seeing the row of blank faces, the smile quickly faded. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

"No, nothing," Ana smiled, even though inside she felt her heart clench. She didn't want to lie to Ian, the boy had 'problem' written all over his face. She could see that Ian was lonely just from the way that he reacted. He had gotten an overly big smile on his face whenever anyone offered him a simple acts of kindness when they were on the other Island, and Ana recognised the look that was in his eyes sometimes, when he thought no one was looking. After all, she had seen that look in her own eyes.

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For Ian, the next few days passed slower than he would have wanted. After the breakfast 'conversation' with Ana, if it could even be called that, the others had mostly left him to himself. Daily conversations he'd grown used to with Michael, Cayden, Termal, all the others bar Skylar, completely disappeared. Approaching them prompted a cascade of invented excuses, ones he was too shy to call them out on, and eventually he learned to stop trying altogether.

It didn't stop him from hearing his own name mentioned when he was walking around the house, but they were hushed whispers from behind closed doors, around corners, from groups that simply stopped talking and watched until he had passed them. Ian knew the look far too well. Mistrust, doubt, rejection. Something had happened; someone had said something, that much he could tell, but he didn't know what. Regardless, it proved enough for the entire group to ignore him, except Skylar, who acknowledged his presence with scowls and glares.

So Ian did what he was used to, and retreated. He stopped seeking the others out, stopped talking, and for all intents and purposes, disappeared from daily life. By the fourth day since the kitchen incident, the Sentinels only ever saw him in the dorm, snuggled into Kai and facing away from them. He ate at different times, exercised at different times, bathed when they weren't around, and hid with Kai whenever anyone came nearby. The dragon himself tried to comfort his mate, but the problem wasn't something he could solve; after having friends for almost a week, the feeling of having them snatched away left Ian empty and apathetic.

Especially when he didn't even understand why it had happened.

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(Four days later)

"This is ridiculous," Ana snapped. After the fourth day, she had reached the point of almost tearing her hair out. "We're torturing him for no reason!" Everyone around the table, all the recruits apart from Skylar, Kai and Ian himself, flinched. They all agreed, they had all seen how Ian had just separated himself from them, and how the human was curling up into Kai each night.

The dragon himself had been round to them all individually and asked what was going on. Not in anger or irritation, but simple worry, Kai was simply trying to find out what was wrong so that he could help his mate. It was the pure selfishness of his action that had made the others pull away from Ian in turn, out of nothing other than guilt that they had pushed the human away in the first place.

"Well, we've royally fucked this up," Josh muttered, his head firmly on the table. He felt like such an ass. Not that it excused his behaviour one bit, but he hadn't realised how insecure Ian really was, he hadn't expected the human to have turned so inward on himself after only four days.

"Language," Ana muttered half heartedly as she looked out of the kitchen window. Ian had taken to exercising while they had these meetings; she was surprised, though, when she saw Skylar stood near the topic of their conversation though. "What's he doing?"

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(Outside)

Skylar stared across at Ian as the other recruit stared back at him. He didn't really know why he was doing this. Well he did, their 'plan' had gotten them nowhere, and Ian had even pulled away, making any chance of getting the information that they wanted out of him dwindle significantly. So Skylar had taken the task of simply beating what he wanted to know out of Ian upon himself. Simple didn't even begin to describe his current thoughts, every time he looked at Ian all he could see was him! It was driving him insane! He couldn't take not knowing if they were one and the same!

"What is it, Skylar?" Ian asked, stopping his exercising and sighing, not able to hold Skylar's gaze for more than a few seconds.

"Where's your pet?" was all the redhead had to say in response.

"The hell do you care?"

"They shouldn't see their masters get stomped on," Skylar said, as he walked a little closer to Ian. "It makes them confused as to who to follow."

Ian balled his fists together, still unable to look at Skylar, even as the other human walked towards him, keeping his mouth shut.

"What's the matter, scaredy cat, can't talk without him around?" Skylar smirked, chuckling in a not completely fake way as he looked at Ian. It wouldn't be a lie to call him pathetic. "So where is the lizard anyway, I didn't think that he would leave your side, I mean you are useless without him around."

"Fuck you," Ian muttered under his breath, tightening his fists even more.

"What was that?" Skylar asked, his tone darkening for just a moment as he reached Ian and looked down on the shorter male. "You have to speak louder, pup, or the alpha dogs won't hear you!"

"I'm not playing your game, Skylar," Ian muttered.

Actually grinning now, Skylar leaned down to look Ian in the eye. "Who the fuck's playing?" Skylar didn't give Ian a chance to respond as he brought his knee up to slam into the other human's unprotected ribs.

Ian felt the breath rush out of his lungs at the hit, doubling over and stepping back, coughing as he tried to get some air back and move away from Skylar.

"You know, magic really is an awesome thing," Skylar said casually, as he kicked Ian in the chest when he tried to step back, knocking the other recruit firmly on his back. "It lets me do things like this." Keeping up his grin, Skylar chuckled as he let go of trying to reign in his immense aura. The effect was instant, Skylar's entire body seemed to glow as all of the recruits felt Skylar's aura try to crush them. Unlike their instructors whose auras, while frightening and impressive in their own rights, were tamed, Skylar's felt unbelievably heavy. They all felt like there was a force pushing them to the ground, wanting to crush them. "So come on Ian. Fight back, or I swear I'm going after your pet."

With a snarl of anger, Ian managed to force himself back up, running at Skylar with his fist cocked back to throw a punch at the other recruit.