Imagine That

He wasn't wearing any of the totems he had gathered over the years. The Earth Dragon's coat, the Bone Dragon's bracers, the Lightning Dragon's gloves, all of these and more were safely on display in his home. Instead he was barefoot, dressed in the usual jeans and unbuttoned white shirt. He had a necklace around his neck with various trinkets strung along it, a trophy from his years at Moral Crest. It bounced softly against his chest with each quiet step that he took, gently ticking him as he made his way toward the front office.

Stepping in he found a seat next to a rather eager looking kid with a whole bunch of stuff. "HEY! Are you a teacher here? What do you teach?"

Matrim looked over at the kid, over toward the secretary who seemed busy on the line on her headset, and back over at the kid. "No. I'm not a teacher here."

"Oh... do you have a kid who goes here?"

Matrim felt a tinge of pain as he thought about Dana and Shane, about finding them after what Whirlwind had done. "No. Just looking for someone."

"Huh, well I've met a few teachers. Like there's this one who-"

Matrim turned and raised a piece of paper with a shoddy drawing of how he remembered Thirteen. The picture had her holding a plate of what was best defined as a 5-year-old's best attempt to make a puffer fish. "Do you know this woman?"

"I... I don't feel comfortable answering your ques-" The student was caught off guard by the sudden escape of air as their diaphragm caved in.

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A rather unsuspecting student was walking past the office entrance, running a bit late to their class they had forgotten to grab the books from their locker. The plan was to rush over to the locker and then make a mad dash with their books so that they wouldn't be in trouble with their power teacher. Of course as they got to their locker and put their hand on the combination, they didn't expect the door to fling open, nor did they expect the whole row of lockers to explode violently outwards from the wall with a student being shot through them. Both students collided with the opposite wall as a rather tall man crawled out from the hole in the wall, lifting a paper.

"How about you?" Matrim asked. "You seen this woman?"

"That's.... I don't...." Ms. late-without-her-books replied.

"Tell him... just tell him..." The rather disheartened freshman managed to sputter out.

Matrim could hear the secretary frantically trying to get someone capable to come out from one of the offices. Matrim on the other hand stood calmly, not thinking anything of the damage or construction. School of hard knocks, this one probably was, he just did that freshman a favor.

He was still rather calm all things considered. One student through a wall wasn't so much an act of aggression on his part as it was a compliment. Besides, the student was definitely alive and well, maybe a broken rib, maybe a little bit of a distrust with strangers. So be it. It'd help him in the end to be wary of strangers. The other one? He hadn't hurt the other one quite yet because the other one seemed useful.

"I... I wouldn't know.... but..." The student pointed in the direction of two women, "They will."

Matrim smiled as he looked and then something caught his eye. Her eyes. He felt his heart pump faster, the pace quickened at a rate he was able to measure in his own mind. He could time the beats per minute and was consciously aware of each step between where he was and there, aware of what angle it'd take to launch himself off of the wall beside her in order to launch a kick across her face.

All of this raged through his mind, he didn't even realize that he had bellowed out a single name in rage.

"AWREN!"

He was off like a shot, but he wasn't for a moment distracted by the unfamiliar one, but the one who had familiar features? The one he had known? She was one of the lesser ones on his list, not one of the ones who had messed with his brain but definitely a good start. His short fuse was triggered but there was a lot more going on in his brain.

Sister.

Enemy.

Sister.

Enemy.

The imprints in long term memory fell victim to the truth, to how Matrim had viewed the situation. He stepped down on his left foot with a good distance between them, launching himself toward the wall area directly between them, planting his right foot against the wall. As he collapsed in on that foot and kicked off once more the foot dragged and swung around toward the direction of Terrene's face.

The angle was true but the target stayed in motion. Change was a constant after all, if but a constant pain in the ass. "Oh?" He managed to say in reaction as he was able to skew his angle if only a little to hit the wall earlier and simply drop down to one knee. There was a comment made but this wasn't who he was fighting, not in his mind. He was fighting what appeared to be a hammer, though he wasn't quite sure how that happened.

In any case.

"Poor life choices describes me all too well," He gripped his fists tightly as he began to grind his jaw. Accessing Qi was all too familiar but he had to focus his entire body as he surrounded himself in the energy, wrapped layers upon layers, threading it. Emitting a shield was more time consuming, wrapping himself in armor made the process a lot smoother, a lot more efficient of a foci than simply generating the thing.

"But hey, what's one more bad life choice? Now then. Hit me with your best shot!"

Fire away.

Matrim charged straight toward the hammer wielding individual with every intention of purposefully getting hit to gauge his opponents strength capabilities as well as process any information he could on how they handled the weapon as a means to judge both skill and familiarity. Someone might say he was blindly charging in which was true, but there was at least some purpose. If the person did nothing to stop him? Well he would just punch her square in the nose with a right jab.