Just as Akasha was walking toward what appeared to be the main building, in order to meet whoever was in charge of this place, her head swiftly turned upwards as the windows coming from an office above slammed open, letting out a torrent of thick grey smoke out of the building. At first, the Amazon thought that fire had been set to the school, but this smoke turned out to be something magical as it soon after greyed the sky, letting but a few rays of sunlight passing through.
Her survival instincts kicking in, the young warrior shifted into a readied stance as the smoke blew downwards to crash on the ground and transform into smoky grey doves. Normally, the amazonness wouldn’t be afraid of this kind of birds, but this time being made of smoke and darting towards her made her grow suspicious.
With amazing agility, she had dodged one a few times, but relentless as it seemed, the smoke that was chasing after Akasha managed to finally hit its mark. As the smoke penetrated every orifices, the female shape-shifter found herself in a haze, the world slowly blurring out from her vision, her reflexes and movement sluggish.
Her first reaction to this situation was giggling. It reminded her of that one time she had snuck into the tribe shaman’s hut to steal her smoking pipe. Turned out that this was no ordinary pipe. One blow from the smoke inside was enough to make her feel pretty much the same way she was now, except she had seen visions of unbelievable colorful sceneries, and other things she couldn’t make sense of.
Well, perhaps she was high after all, as she the image of a man, dressed casually in terms of modern society, besides the white coat, appeared in her sight. While she was unimpressed by his clothing style (she doesn’t know modern fashion anyways), she liked the guy’s tattoos.
Akasha didn’t understand much of what the man, calling himself the “headmaster” of this school, said. She however understood that he poisoned them, and people would be guiding them around. Her face turned into a grimace, fearing what kind of poison was running through her. Hopefully she wouldn’t die!
But the most shocking thing was the language. Even though the man had spoken words unknown to the amazon, she actually understood what they meant. Trying to piece together the actual words spoken with their meaning blew the poor girl’s mind. She actually stood there in a confused haze for a whole minute after feeling like throwing up when she was coughing up all the smoke she had inhaled.
She just barely regained her composure when a new guy gestured to the group of new students to follow him, speaking with somewhat harsh words. However, despite what the man called Varus just said about being expelled if he wasn’t impressed, Akasha did not feel anything like annoyance to this. Rather she took it more like if the man was challenging the group, and it gave the amazon renewed strength, to accomplish her best and prove she wasn’t just a weak girl undeserving to be standing here.
Puffing up her chest like a proud warrior, Akasha held her head high. “Alright! I always love a challenge!” She exclaimed loudly. However, instead of an actual voice, the loud roar of a panther echoed in the premises.
What the hell? What was she doing in her panther form again? The wild teenager had no memory of having transformed herself after had beaten the two boys to a game of “King of the Hill”. Again, she had shifted into a panther unwillingly, but she didn’t realize that it had happened right when she lost consciousness momentarily due to the dean’s spell. As her consciousness faded away, her brief moment of distress had triggered her survival instincts, her dominant animal side taking control of her body, thus shifting her into her panther form. However, due to the spell restricting the students’ movements, Panther Akasha (Panthera) couldn’t move while her human side had faded into unconsciousness.
Realizing just out of place she might be in her wild aspect, Akasha focused to revert back to her human form. Upon returning to normal, she scratched the back of her head, chuckling in embarrassment.
“Hehe, sorry for that.”