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Academia - Part 1

Copyright 2008 Zelphair/YaminoFoxie

(Lyrics are not mine. In this particular case, they belong to Audioslave.)

The wind howled. That was the only word the young fox could think of to describe the storm raging outside his window. He reveled in the sound as if it were an expression of his own feelings of outrageous dissatisfaction. The soft fur of his paw was parted by the cold metal strings of his guitar as he played with an unrestrained fury that belied the slow tempo of the song, his one untrimmed vulpine claw serving much better than any pick. Voice soft but full of emotion he couldn't otherwise express, he sang, for no one but himself.

"I am not your rolling wheels, I am the highway..."

It just wasn't fair. Sure, objectively, he knew life was almost never fair, but there was supposed to be a limit. People always tried to force you to be someone you weren't, but eventually, either you'd do something to finally please them, or their expectations would change. That was the way the world worked, right?

"I am not your carpet ride, I am the sky..."

From the moment he'd been born, he'd failed to live up to his parents' expectations. It was to be expected, he supposed. His parents were both pure white foxes of Japanese descent, and he was...well, he had some white on him, at least. There was some on his muzzle, and the front of his neck and torso, as well as a thin stripe down his back and a tuft on his tail. Unfortunately, that was usually the last thing noticed about him. The rest of him was what always caught the eyes of passerby, and with good reason, as it was a uniform shade of sky blue. He even smelled slightly different from any of the other foxes around, or so he'd been told. They'd given him the name Kaze, after his late great-grandfather, though more out of a sense of family tradition than from any familial affection.

"I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning..."

His fur stood on end and he could smell an acrid tang in the air, just before a flash outside his window seemed to almost respond to his voice, in a way that should perhaps have seemed eerie. However, the blue fox was too deeply immersed in his own emotions to notice. His recollections focused on not only his parents, but also on the majority of his peers, who seemed to find something faintly shameful about his coloring, since none of them shared it. He had been shunned enough by both groups that the verbal and occasional physical abuse he suffered on both fronts after being caught in bed with the one friend he did have was almost welcome, as at least his existence was acknowledged. The shouts of "tail-raiser" and worse leveled against him quickly seemed worse than his former existence as a non-entity, though, especially when coupled with the fact that the friend in question had put as much distance between himself and the fox as possible in an effort to avoid the same fate.

"I am not your autumn moon, I am the night."

No, he reflected as the song finished and he set his instrument aside, he didn't need any more trouble in his life. He'd had just about as much bad luck as he could stand. Unfortunately for him, fate, if such a thing indeed existed, had decided that apparently he wasn't quite done with his share. Lately he had another secret, one with the potential to hurl him down from the level of mere outcast to that of full-blown freak. Things had been...happening around him recently, with an increasing frequency that soon made them impossible to write off as coincidence.

A bully who was about to hit him would be knocked off-balance by a sudden gust of wind. Currents of air would carry smoke away from him, always. Electronics with dead batteries, or even no batteries at all, would start working again when he wanted them to, after a quick spark leapt from his paw to the device. Most of it was relatively private, and what wasn't private could usually be written off as coincidence, but even so, people were starting to talk, which didn't bode well for the fox.

The only bright side was that he might soon have the chance to leave it all behind him. He'd graduated from high school months ago, and had turned eighteen mere days ago. Though he'd missed the cut-off date for the fall semester, he could still start in January, and between his own grades and his parents' money, there would be no problem going as far away as possible. After all, that was what he, his parents, and pretty much everyone else wanted, anyway. As he settled into bed, the storm outside having calmed considerably, the young fox comforted himself with the knowledge that it was only a matter of time before he could get away from at least some of his problems.

He was almost asleep when the sudden sound of a gunshot from downstairs woke him. Even across the long hallways of his parents' home, he could smell the unmistakable scent of gunpowder. All of this should certainly have frightened him, and indeed it did, but rather than cowering in his bed, he felt a rush of adrenaline telling him to act. He found himself rushing to the door, flinging it open, and running at breakneck speed down an almost palatial hallway. His parents felt more than safe enough in their own upscale neighborhood that they would never even think of owning a gun, so if anyone had taken a shot, it would have been an intruder of some sort, more than likely shooting at them. A small corner of his mind argued that with all they'd done to him, he shouldn't really care, should perhaps even be happy about that, but they were still his parents, and certain instincts were not easily silenced.

His body froze as he reached the top of the stairs, the cold marble feeling like ice against his footpaws. At the bottom of the ornate staircase, near the door, stood a gray wolf, dressed all in black, his back to a now-broken window, a pistol in his paw. In the direction in which the gun was pointing stood Kaze's parents, defiant, his father holding a ceremonial katana the young fox knew he didn't know how to use, and that was probably as dull as a butter knife, besides. Neither one of them looked to be injured, and there was a distinctive hole in the far wall that he was fairly certain hadn't been there before, so the first shot had apparently missed. The smell of fear hung heavily around the entire room.

"Look, old man," the wolf said with a sneer, "I don't wanna hurt you, and all this nice stuff'll be pretty useless if you're pushin' up daisies."

"Get out of my home!" the white fox shouted defiantly. "If you want riches, go out and earn them like everyone else."

A minute part of Kaze's mind found the comment amusing, since his father had inherited his fortune, and increased it purely by investment.

"Oh, I'll more than earn it, trying to find the good stuff before the cops show up, since I guess you won't be around to lead me to it." The wolf's grip on the gun tightened, and his finger moved to the trigger.

Kaze heard himself shouting "Stop!", and felt as if he were watching himself in slow motion as what appeared to be a bolt of lightning lashed out from his paw to that of the wolf. There was a smell of ozone and singed fur in the air as the wolf cursed and dropped his gun, holding his paw and screaming with pain.

"Stay away from my parents!" the young fox screamed, as he found himself swiftly descending the stairs, despite the fact that his footpaws didn't move. He extended his paw, pad outward, and a gale-force wind knocked the attacker into the door, the door off its hinges, and both wolf and door into the front yard.

Unfortunately, said front yard was currently ringed by police tape, behind which the young fox could see just about every adult in the neighborhood, all staring slack-jawed at the sight. The young fox looked at his father's face, the elder fox's fur making the flush of embarrassment and rage under it all too clear.

"Dear," he said to Kaze's mother in that too-calm tone of voice that meant heads were going to roll, "would you mind giving our statement to the police? I need to have a word with our son."

As his mother obediently made her way toward the waiting police force, Kaze found the scruff of his neck being rather forcefully pulled by his father, as the blue fox was practically dragged into the next room.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" his father practically roared. "I can pay off the police, and I can keep this out of the press, but everyone in the neighborhood, and eventually everyone worth anything in this town, is going to know that my son's even more of a freak than they'd already thought he was."

"What the fuck, Dad?" Kaze blurted out, equal parts surprise, indignation, and bottled up angst loosening his muzzle quite a bit more than usual. He was sure a red tint was visible under the white parts of his facial fur. He'd never talked back to this father this way, and certainly not with profanity, but now that he'd said it, by the gods, he was going to make himself heard. "I've got absolutely no clue how, or maybe even why, but I just saved your fucking life, and Mom's, too. Would you rather be dead than have a freak for a son?"

The skin under his father's white fur was almost purple with rage, giving his face an odd lavender tinge that might have been amusing under different circumstances. As it currently stood, however, the young fox knew his father's coloring was indicative of bad times ahead for the perceived cause of that hue. This time, though, Kaze resolved not to bow his head, tuck his tail between his legs, and meekly take his father's continued verbal abuse. It was not business as usual in the Shiroi household. A line had been crossed, and the youngest member of the family was determined to show that fact.

And so, as his nearly apoplectic father took that massive intake of breath which always came before delivering a harsh rebuke to his offspring, the younger fox stood his ground, eye to eye with his elder. Neither one of them even noticed the small sparks arcing between the digits of Kaze's paw, or the stiff breeze in the kitchen that owed nothing to the renewed vigor of the storm outside.

"What I would rather have," Mr. Shiroi remarked with an acidic tone that would usually have made his son shudder, "is a normal, wholesome son, who respects his elders and does what's expected of him. But God didn't see fit to give me that, did He? Instead I get a freak, a devil child from the moment he left the womb, with unnatural coloring, unnatural urges, and unnatural powers, determined to destroy everything I worked so hard to build for myself."

The young fox forced down the hurt and the anguish making a lump in his throat, determined not to let this monster who called himself a father see how much those words hurt. After all, he'd heard some variation of them so many times by now that they really should have lost their impact.

"Well, you're stuck with me, Dad," Kaze replied, in as calm a voice as he could muster. "I've tried so hard to do what you and Mom want, but I can't change who I am. Whatever I may do to disappoint you, it's not because I want to hurt you. You're still my father, and I'm still your son."

"Not anymore." The heat of rage had left his father's voice, and in its place was a cold finality. "Your mother and I tried our best with you, but apparently we just can't overcome bad blood."

"Bad blood?" The younger fox looked confused. "It's your blood, and Mom's. Didn't you always tell me to be proud of our bloodline?"

"But you're not part of that bloodline," his father replied, more of that frigid calm in his voice. "Or at least, that's what the records will show by this time tomorrow. As far as anyone will know, your mother faked a pregnancy all those years ago, then adopted you, so that I wouldn't think her barren and divorce her. The revelation will put a moderate amount of shame on her, but not nearly as heavy a shame as our own flesh and blood being an unnatural fiend."

The blue fox had to fight to keep his muzzle from dropping open with shock, and to keep from shaking with indignation. "You would stoop that low, just to make yourself look good? What the hell kind of a father are you?"

"One who wants what's best for his whole family," the older fox stated simply. "Your mother and I tried our best, but you just turned out wrong. We're tired of having to deal with the mess you make of our reputations, and we know for a fact that you were eager to leave anyway. We were trying to wait until you started college, but after what you pulled tonight, waiting another month isn't an option."

Facial expression never changing, his father took Kaze's paw in his own, turned it palm upward, and placed a crisp wad of bills into it. "This should get you a hotel room for a while, at least."

Even as his paw closed reflexively around the money, the blue fox stared blankly at his father for a few moments before responding. "Dad, the nearest hotel's like five miles away, and there's a hell of a storm out there."

"You've got...abilities." His father spoke the last word with noticeable disdain. 'I'm sure you can find a way to get there."

Heart full of an almost tangible despair, for a few moments the young fox could do nothing but stare at the back of his retreating father, whose pure white tail stood as straight and stern as the patriarch to which it was attached. Eventually, though, Kaze slowly wandered back out into the main hall, then up the stairs toward his room. His movements, like everything else that evening, seemed to be possessed of an almost unreal quality, as if some part of his mind vehemently refused to believe any of this was happening to him. It all obviously must have been happening to someone else, which explained the almost dreamlike state he found himself in, seeing himself moving up the stairs and into his room, packing his things without any real conscious decision to do so.

However, as the lock on his suitcase clicked shut, as well as the lock of the equally heavy guitar case, he found himself forced to actually consider his next move. Even so, his mind managed to focus straight ahead, so that while he could no longer numb the present and the future, the past, or more specifically the events of the past hour or so, still seemed to belong to someone else. In this new mindset, he weighed his options. Going out the front door, or even going back downstairs at all, would most certainly mean crossing paths with his father again, not to mention police questions, which would in turn fuel angry glares or worse from his father. But if going out the front door wouldn't work...

With calm detachment, the young fox walked over to his bedroom window, unlocking and opening it. In keeping with the style of the house, it was large enough for him to fit through easily, and opened onto what, in better weather, would be a magnificent view of the large and well-maintained back yard, which at the moment was thankfully deserted. As he sat on the ledge, footpaws hanging down outside, the heavy scent of rain filling his nose, part of him knew perfectly well that it was a stupid idea. The rest of him, however, was hardly in a position to care, as he let first his possessions, then himself drop to a very jarring, but thankfully painless, landing below, grateful for the vulpine grace that let him land on his feet.

The wind blowing across the yard was cold, and he suddenly wished he had worn warmer clothes, but it was too late to turn back now. There was warmer gear to be had in his suitcase, of course, but between the wind picking up, and the rain getting uncomfortably close to freezing, he decided it was best to just start moving.

As the light blue fox made his way to the back gate, he did his best to ignore the hum of activity coming from the front yard. His parents would take care of it. After all, this family, this place...they had nothing to do with him anymore.

Setting off at a brisk walk down the back streets, no one seemed to notice his presence. It was almost as if he could be the only one in the world at that moment. Given the night's events, he was at a loss as to whether or not that was a good thing. Regardless, he continued on, one numb step fading into the next, becoming a mile, then two. The exertion should have warmed him, but instead, the long walk, the cold, the soaking rain, and the heavy suitcase and guitar all conspired to lead him toward a cold and bleak exhaustion.

With that in mind, when he came upon a park, its benches, glistening with their fresh burden of water, were too tempting to refuse. A few minutes' rest wouldn't do any harm, and then he would be on his way again. He hardly even felt the wetness of the bench, drenched as his fur already had become.

And there on a park bench in the upscale suburbs, the discomfort of his current situation and surroundings warred with the sheer mental and physical exhaustion threatening to overwhelm him. He found his mind wandering, while at the same time wondering, what would happen if he just stayed there, drifted off to sleep. Given the dropping temperature, he wouldn't lay particularly good odds on his chances of waking up.

Then again, would that really be such a terrible thing? There were certainly far worse ways to pass from the mortal coil, and he couldn't seem to find a reason to stay. Would the world really be that different of a place with or without him? As his body began to give it to its need for sleep, his mind hazily fumbled to answer who would miss him. With a sinking yet resigned heart, he realized there was no one. No friends, no family...

:Then you shall need to make both anew, young one: said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, crisp and much clearer than his own thoughts. :But to do that, you must not pass from this world. I can only pray we've found you in time.:

As sleep took him, the last thing he could remember was the sight and feel of soft white fur, dry and warm as it enveloped him.