"Me too, I'm done!!!" Jade grinned as she pushed her tray away, although there was still fruit left in it. "Let's go!!" She was the first one up, out of her chair before the others had barely began to get up.

Jacob's interest was piqued when the others mentioned training. Especially with this Balzathar fellow. He'd never met the man, but rumors were aplenty. He sounded like Jacob's kind of guy, though. Tough and merciless with his students. Hell, the guy sounded like a DI. The only difference was the DI's usually didn't train people who could shoot fire or fly. Yes, this could be interesting. Shoveling the last bits of food into his mouth, Jacob cracked his neck and smiled, standing up. "Hell yeah, I'm in. I could use some real practice fighting my own kind. I'm not used to fighting Wanderers yet. With these weird assholes we got running around, training sounds like a good plan."

Dark realizes that Jacob wasn't with them when he brought up training with Balthazar. No matter, seeing how everyone is eager to train, or willing to live is a better to way put it. He finishes up his breakfast, looks over at Aphrodite who is trembling with excitement. He pushes his plate aside and rises up and says.

"Let's go."

-End of scenario whatever number we're on-

Scenario 25

As Dark leads the group towards Balthazar's gym, he comes to an immediate halt and looks behind him.

"Before we enter those doors I must warn you. Balthazar isn't a normal professor, his training is dangerous, passing out is the least of your worries in this gym. You should be worried about dying, if any of you are getting cold feet you can leave now.

Dark looks at everyone's determined face, and Ashlynn's usual "Shut and go on with it" expression and he grins as he opens the doors. Balthazar is in the center, meditating while levitating. Even when he sits his incredible size overwhelms Dark, as if he's staring at a boulder of a man. He puts his fingers towards his lips to make sure everyone stays quiet, as they approach Balthazar.

"I brought the students like you asked."

Balthazar remains silent, eyes closed, and levitating as if Dark wasn't there.

"I guess we wait."

Ashlynn held her helmet by her side and groaned slightly. Ugh. I hate waiting.]

Jade's stomach did a few flips as Dark explained to th what Balthazar was like. She bit her tongue and kept quiet, knowing this was for her own good. She walked in and stood a bit awkwardly next to Ashlynn, wringing her has, a habit she had when she got nervous.

Balthazar clears his throat, as he opens his eyes and stares at the group in front of him. He points at Aphrodite, Jade and Ashlynn.

"You three, come here."

Ashlynn brushed her back and put on her helmet, approaching forward slowly. In her experience, when someone is that terse, something bad will be coming soon.

"Yes sir." Jade walked over quickly and stopped a good six feet away from the man, her muscles tensing up slightly.

Aphrodite slowly approaches along side Ashlynn, wondering why Balthazar are interested in them more than the others.

Balthazar examines each woman, and lets out a grunt.

"I see, you have more reason for training than the others. Especially you Ashlynn."

Aphrodite gives him a confused look, then realizes he read their minds.

"Before I completely agree to train you, I need a sample of each of you. Show me everything you know so far in battle."

"Fine", Ashlynn said, stepping forward slowly. She created telekinetic armor in all the usual places- shoulders, forearms, shins, knees, elbows, and helmet.

After creating the armor, she created a large pane, only to smash it into palm-sized fragments. With a flick of her wrist, the fragments started to orbit Balthazar, creating what was essentially a hemispherical razor-blade hurricane. With a downward flick of her fingers, the hemisphere shrunk, attempting to slice and crush the imposing instructor.

Jade blinked a couple of times and watched as Ashlynn went first. She formed a sphere of black magic around Balthazar and the small hurricane. She jumped back, flying a few more feet away from him and landing softly. Spikes began to form in front of her, her mind in a more defensive than offensive mode. If he managed to break from Ashlynn's attack, then she'd change her game plan.

Dark creates a dome around him, and the others that aren't participating, and for safety measures reinforces it a bit more.

Aphrodite realizes what's going on, and creates a barrier around her as well. Instead of using her telekinesis for offense, she goes with her black magic and creates multiple fireballs, and sends them launching towards the levitating Balthazar.

Balthazar smirks with amusement as he creates a shockwave with makes Ashlynn's attempt to crush him useless and extinguishes Aphrodite's fireballs. He looks over at Jade and sends a shockwave immediately shattering her black spikes. He stretches out his legs, and stands up straight.

"Try again."

Ashlynn clicked her tongue out of irritation. "Pompous fuck", she muttered under her breath.

She established a secure telepathic link between Aphrodite, Jade, and herself. "I'll create an illusion. Afterwards, we'll attack with our all at the same time."

Ashlynn then concentrated hard, crafting the hallucination specifically for Balthazar. Suddenly, a large black circle radiated from Balthazar and grew on the battlefield. The circle then closed, turning into a pitch-black dome. The dome enveloped all the combatants, causing a complete blackout and loss of vision. It opened again and disappeared into the hole from where it came, only for the hole to shrink out of existence. With vision now restored, it seems that there were realistic illusionary copies of the all-girl team (each showing use of their respective 'original's' powers) surrounding Balthazar, scattered across the gym. Who was whom? Surely there was enough time for the girls to switch places and move locations.

"Now!"

The copies then went forth towards the target, some flying and some charging on foot. Ashlynn herself leaped into the air, and as she extended her forearms, generated two thin longswords that grew their way toward Balthazar. As the swords got closer to their target, multiple sword 'branches' grew off of the two main limbs to skewer him multiple ways.

Jade flinched as the shockwave easily wiped out the spikes. She heard Ashlynn in her mind but made no movement until the word was given. With a flick of her wrist, spikes rises from underneath Balthazar, wether they hit or miss wasn't of importance to Jade. She pushed herself forward, flying above him, looking down for a second before sending a jet stream of water at him.

Aphrodite's telekinesis becomes visible as sickles shoot towards Balthazar, and with everything she can muster she creates a giant orb of fire and hurtles it towards him as well.

"Wait a minute." Dark says in question as he witnesses what the girls are doing.

Balthazar lets out a grunt, and time seems to slow down around the girls, until it becomes a halt. "Just what exactly are you three doing?" Balthazar says creating his own telepathic link with the girls, then what seems like the world crashing down upon them. Shockwave upon shockwave of telekinesis slams on each girl pinning them to the ground and leaving an imprint on the floor. Aphrodite tries to fight back but only for the force to become stronger within each struggle. Then as if they were puppets on string, Balthazar suspends each girl and lines them up in front of him.

"Is this how it felt? When they attacked you?"

Balthazar breaks free of telekinetic grip on the trio and watches as they collapse to the ground.

"I see why you got overpowered, your attacks are predictable, you exert so much magic and energy with the hopes of them hitting your opponent than actually focusing on your target. So much wasted energy, could be use a lot better. Dark and Kyo have been learning this, slowly, but hey it's hard to train idiots."

Dark remains silent, but swings his right arm under his left forearm.

Balthazar shoots him a glare and Dark immediately drops his arms as if nothing happen. He goes towards the girls and heals them all immediately.

"Sit back for now. I'll explain how I'll train you three, I need to speak with this Jacob fellow."

"This.. was child's play compared to that," Ashlynn said as she was hung off the ground. She then was dropped from the invisible strings and lay on the floor, taking off her helmet. She was irritated, not because Balthazar was some untouchable opponent, but because of his condescending attitude.

Jacob watched in earnest as Balthazar attacked the girls' attacks. Smiling, he was reminded of flares on a fighter jet. The purpose wasn't to defeat your enemy so much as to not be defeated yourself. One good way to ensure such an outcome was to simply prevent any attacks from landing. So far, this seemed to be working pretty damn well for Balthazar. Thinking back to the fight in the warehouse, he remembered that maybe only one attack landed on their opponents, a scorching blast of fire, and that seemed to be decently effective. It had at least caused the person to drop the girl he was holding, and that had been enough for their purposes.

When Balthazar mentioned him by name, Jacob's back straightened and he stared directly at Balthazar. Taking a few steps forward, he nodded gently. "That would be me. To be honest...I think I'm gonna need the most training. I wasn't even aware of the extent of my own powers before I came to this Academy, and I'm still learning just what we're all capable of here. I'm used to fighting ordinary humans, but this is a whole other ballpark. Not to mention the fact that I don't really have much in the way of offensive capabilities. I'm a White Mage primarily and Telepath secondarily."

"Spare me your life story kid, I know about you. All of you, and you're right you do need the most training. Your healing is adequate at best, and you've yet to show any other skills that a primary white mage can do. Your training will be far different than the others, judging from where you came from, you're more of a support than a fighter. Your training will require far more endurance than the others, speed and precise actions. That is what is required of a white mage."

"So you think this is child's play huh, because I decided not to kill you three, but rather toy with you? I'm glad you feel that way, I'm not here to make friends, you can walk out of these doors for all I care, but I doubt that's what you wanted to do, if so then why waste both mine and your time coming down here? Each one of you will be partnered up with someone, more of your opposite. I will train you all with a separate style of combat. My training will make this 'child's play' feel like heaven."

Aphrodite slightly nods, as she listens to Balthazar, the man means business even if he does come off as an asshole.

Dark sighs as he figures that Balthazar enjoys listening to himself speak. Impatiently tapping his foot leering at his trainer.

"Also, I know that time is imminent for you all, I'm aware you have a friend who's been kidnapped, so I'm going to be pushing you guys beyond your limits for the time being. For now she will be safe, if they took her it's for reasons that I'm sure a few of you know, her conditions may be harsh, but I'm sure she'll make it through. She's a tough one that Ivy, she'll stick it out."

Mei had quietly slipped into the gym around the end of Balthazar's speech. The room crackled with magic. Apparently she was late. Slipping in somewhere around Balthazar like the others, she acted as if she hadn't missed anything. It was bad enough that she was late, drawing attention to herself wouldn't make it better.