Of Heroes and Villainy

School continued on for everyone. Walt continued to study people's abilities with his magesight and then came to Kageo with the information excitedly explaining it all to him. It made Kageo wonder about some of it himself since he had started seeing vague auras around people ever since their first kiss, and it seemed to be getting clearer the longer they were testing out their connection.

It was such an odd thing to Kageo that they were somehow melding their auras together and gaining some of each other's abilities like this. It was even more curious than Walt's ability to recreate other people's magic, though that fascinated Kageo too. He knew that Walt was self-conscious about it, especially when he felt he was geeking out too much, but Kageo was just as curious to see him do it. He loved watching Walt figure out how to recreate a spell and make it better.

Walt, for his part, loved that Kageo always encouraged him and was an amazing sounding board, often suggesting things that Walt hadn't put together yet. They were often found with their heads together, which was the start of a rumor connecting Walt's burgeoning discoveries and the Blackwood family name along with Kageo's blood magic. It eventually made its way back to them when Stella, of all people, marched up to them where they were comparing notes from their Esoteric Studies classes near the grove on the edge of campus.

"Astrophel Whitmore! So the rumors of you

colluding

with the Blackwood boy are true!" Stella exclaimed with a fair approximation of disgust and appall, all while signaling to him in their familial sign language to ask what was really going on.

Walt calmly met her eye, watching her hand movements with his magesight. "Yes. Clearly I am," he literally checked his notes, "oh yes, colluding with my

roommate

, about the

school we are both enrolled in

."

Kageo would have laughed at what Walt had said except he had been watching the sign language Stella was doing with a raised eyebrow. He had an idea as to what it was probably for but couldn't make heads or tails of it. "What do you mean colluding? Over what? Magical history? Potions to make all the boys at school love us?"

Stella scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Whatever, Blackwood. Only about a fifth of the boys at this school are even

remotely

interested in other boys and only about half of them are exclusively that way. Besides, rumors are clearly useless but if word of this spreads to the faculty there may be some questions asked that could prove uncomfortable for

both

of our families," Stella supplied, as if she were explaining rain to the village moron.

Kageo raised both eyebrows now at her. "How do you have exact numbers on the boys who like boys? Have you been polling everyone, because you forgot the two of us. Also, what exactly

are

the rumors? Are we not allowed to hang out or Daddy Whitmore will have a stroke? Isn't now the time you're supposed to learn how to be a tiny little bit rebellious and not worry so much about what your family thinks?"

Stella fixed a baleful look on Kageo, finally meeting his eyes. He was slightly startled by the appearance of an aura around her that was filled with colors he had come to associate with mirth, curiosity, openness. Her aura was such a mismatch to her demeanor and speech that he was having trouble wrapping his mind around it. Which is why he almost missed what she said in response.

"I don't have to poll anyone, it's one of my knacks as a woman," Stella said. "Besides, you two are more than a little obvious for anyone who's looking. The rumors are that you are influencing my brother with your blood magic and that the two of you are stealing people's powers."

Kageo couldn't believe what he was hearing, so much so he was rendered speechless as he turned to look at Walt in shock. Walt, who had been forewarned a little by his sister's hand movements, was nevertheless stunned. He returned Kageo's look with a befuddled one of his own. It took a moment for Kageo to manage to find his voice again from the thoughts running through his head now about whether he was bad for Walt.

He started with the first thing that had dropped his mouth, because he couldn't help himself. "Obvious?"

Stella rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Yes, dummy. You two always know where the other one is and you 'study' together more than anyone else here. Besides, I've tried to come visit you when you've locked your door. It's more than a bit suspicious that I can't pick it.

"But please tell me that the most minor thing I mentioned is

not

what has your full attention right now! For one thing, it's terrible for the standing of

both

our families if we allow these rumors to persist and I hope they haven't made it outside of the Academy yet. That would be disastrous!"

Kageo shook his head, partly to say that wasn't his main focus but also to try and clear his head a little bit. "Stealing powers how? Are others suddenly unable to use their magic or abilities? And why is that being blamed on Walt and me?"

Stella glanced over at Walt and then addressed Kageo's question, "They're saying you're using your blood magic to copy whatever it is in their blood that gives them their powers so you can do it yourself. Only one person has reported losing their powers, but it was later discovered that her jilted ex-lover had put magebane in her mashed potatoes."

Kageo blinked for a moment at that before he let out an annoyed huff. "Alright, let's say that's, theoretically, something I could do with blood magic, and it might be. In order to do it, though, I would need some of their blood. I can't just read that from them standing there.

"On top of that, your brother knows exactly nothing about blood magic. He hasn't even

watched

me use it. So how is he supposed to use it in any way if I won't even do it in front of him?"

Walt affected a hurt look and clutched at his imaginary pearls, saying, "You

won't

? I thought it was just coincidence that I've never seen you do it!"

Kageo actually looked a little sheepish now. "I really do love you figuring out how to recreate magic, but blood magic is dangerous to the user. You're using a part of yourself each time you practice it. Learning slowly, building it up over years, and you can protect yourself. If you go too fast too soon, you go down dangerous paths. Even those who are experienced can end up with blood poisoning if they use too much. And no one comes back from blood poisoning."

Stella looked intrigued by that, asking, "No one? What have the healers tried?"

Kageo looked up at her. "They've tried almost everything. Weaning them off blood, healing them, giving small doses at a time, cutting them off from their blood magic. You name it, they've tried it. Once you take in that much life energy though, there's no fixing it. You overload the system and you just crave more blood and more destruction. It was why blood magic was banned for a while. No one has had blood poisoning in a while, though not many use it anymore."

Stella looked disappointed, pouting slightly. Walt spoke into the quiet following Kageo's admission, "So what do we do?" His question wasn't surprising to Kageo so much as him trusting his sister, but he kept his peace, trusting Walt. Rather than speaking, he just looked up at Stella to hear what her plan to combat it might be.

Stella looked back and forth between them, irritated at their mirrored looks of bald-faced expectation. She huffed, but answered nonetheless. "We need damage control. There's no stopping information, once it's been discovered, but you can change how it's perceived. So we start by discrediting your blood magic. Downplay it, let people think it's weaker than it is. No one else has seen it, so that should be pretty easy.

"The next part is harder: Father must have suspected for years that Astrophel could do what he's been doing more openly here at the Academy. Stifling that knowledge any longer is not possible. You have to decide what direction to take that, Brother, but decide quickly and begin making it clear. You know Father. Weakness of any sort is to be exploited, and power is to be respected while continuing to look for weakness," she finished, her hand flashing in more of their family sign language, telling Walt silently that she stood by him.

Kageo shut the book he had been reading, looking like his mind was working a million miles a minute on what she had said. "You and Walt are kind of the perfect people to downplay my abilities. Yami would never, even if I asked her, but she won't refute if you two do it. Pretend you have actually seen it. In the meantime, putting some distance between us in public is probably a good idea as well."

He quickly put his books back in his bag and got up, bowing to both of them before he turned and started walking across the quad in search of his sister. He wasn't upset with either of them, but he had to start thinking about Walt's social life and what it meant for them to be so close to each other all of the time.

He could feel people's eyes on him as he walked, and could see some of them turn around to whisper to each other. This wasn't new for him, of course, but it made his stomach turn in knots that he had caused it to happen to Walt. Of course, he knew Walt had dealt with court whispers before, but it was a whole other thing to be looked at as evil just because you're hanging out with the son of "traitors." Those types of whispers had followed Kageo since he was seven years old, and without Adiran's guidance and assurance that his parents weren't traitors, it would have been easy to walk down the path toward becoming just that. Why not burn the entire institution down like his parents had apparently wanted to do? Hell, sometimes he still considered it. Watching the Capital burn would be gratifying. He couldn't do that to Yami and Rinne though, or his adopted parents.

Walt and Stella watched him walk away, and Stella shook her head. "I don't get what you see in him."

"Isn't it obvious?" Walt asked, mirth in his eyes. "Dating him is sure to piss Father off, and 'angry people make mistakes.' Besides, he's interesting and interested in me in a way that no one else has ever been. His perspectives are fascinating and I've learned a lot with his help. Plus, he smells good."

Stella gave a look that said she still didn't get it but wasn't going to say anything about that. "Let's get to fixing some of these rumors, then."

Walt snapped upright as if someone had pulled him up by the spine and saluted her sharply. Stella rolled her eyes and turned to leave, motioning for him to come with her. "Come on Major," she said resignedly.

Kageo found Yami and Elliot together near the lake by the school. It was a common hangout spot and Kageo had been there before, so he wasn't surprised they were there. Elliot, who had been sitting very close to Yami when Kageo came into view, sprang away from her as if she were made of hot iron. It was almost comical, if it hadn't been Kageo's sister he was too close to. Kageo set him with a look that said he was watching him while Yami shook her head at them both.

"So, Mr. Big Man on campus," Yami said to Kageo as he sat down across from them. "Quite a bit of talk about you and Mr. Whitmore at the moment."

"Yeah, it's always so great to be the topic of conversation everywhere," Kageo said flatly. "I take it you've both heard the rumors then."

Yami nodded and Elliot looked sympathetic before he said, "I think it's a load of bull but rumors spread fast. Can blood magic even be used like that?"

"It can, and it has been," Yami said, which earned a surprised look from Elliot and a frown from Kageo. He was sure he had probably heard about this before but Yami had always been a better keeper of family history when it didn't come with memories on old items. Eventually, Yami continued, "Edie Blackwood, who was the sister of our great grandfather, used blood magic to recreate people's spells and powers to make them her own. Unfortunately, she had to get a fair amount of blood from the originators of the powers to do so, and it led to unsavory rumors about her being predatory and vampiric in nature.

"None of the people she did this to died, of course, because she was careful, but it caused quite the stir. Not that I think you've been doing anything like that, Niisan. We would have heard if you had been getting blood from other people. You can't keep that kind of thing secret, but I can see why people are freaking out. Our history is against us here."

"What happened to Edie?" Kageo asked.

It was Yami's turn to frown. "She was put on trial and imprisoned. When she eventually got out, she just disappeared. Never seen again. Even our family history has no idea."

"A proper mystery," Elliot commented, and Yami grinned at him. "Well, if people are so sure you are doing this, then why don't we test it? See if it's possible for you to even do it with a small amount of blood?"

"Seriously?" Kageo asked, but Yami's grin had gotten bigger.

"I guess that makes you the volunteer since Kageo knows my powers so well," Yami commented. Elliot looked a little taken aback by that but then shook it off and shrugged, deciding he was willing to do that to help her brother. Yami pulled out a very small dagger from her bag and grabbed Elliot's hand, making a small cut along the side before she pulled out a small bottle and collected it.

"Are you sure we should do this out in the open?" Kageo asked her.

Yami nodded her head. "Might as well. Edie needed at least one to two pints of blood just to do this ability, so this small amount wouldn't let you manage it unless you were some sort of blood magic savant."

Once she was done, she took just a little bit more for healing purposes and then handed the bottle over to Kageo. Kageo swirled the blood around for a moment before he poured a drop out onto his hand. The blood absorbed into his skin and then he brought his hand over and healed the cut on Elliot's hand as if nothing had ever been there. Elliot looked impressed but Kageo was already moving onto what they were trying to test.

The blood swirled around the bottle, this time because of Kageo's abilities, until it came out of the bottle and went around his body. It absorbed into his skin and his eyes glowed red as he took in the information the blood told him. He had some vague idea as to what Elliot's major was, but that alone didn't tell him what Elliot's strengths were. He was slightly alarmed to realize that despite having only taken a very small amount, he probably

could

recreate Elliot's abilities.

Instead, though, he held out his hand to try something and let it fizzle and spark out. It took an amazing amount of concentration to screw it up, and it made him feel a little exhausted after. He could see people begin whispering to each other around them. Yami's eyebrows furrowed slightly, realizing what her brother had just done, but only Kageo and Elliot noticed her reaction.

Elliot leaned in and whispered, "Did he just pull one over on everyone?"

"Mhm," Yami replied with a nod, and then said louder, "Well, you tried, niisan. You'd just need far more blood to achieve what people are saying you have been doing."

"Which is not exactly something you could do without people knowing," Elliot pointed out.

By the time dinner came around, word had spread not only that Kageo's blood magic wasn't as strong as people thought it was, but that people had seen him use it for the first time ever. While his healing with blood magic was impeccable, he fizzled out trying to use Elliot's powers.

Kageo was sitting with Yami and Elliot, just kind of pushing his food around his plate, when Stella and Walt came into the cafeteria. Walt sat at the table while Stella went off to find her usual crowd, mostly as part of the plan to get ahead of the rumors. "What did the bartender say to the horse?" Walt asked the table at large, once again completely ignoring Stella's date's presence to the point that he disgustedly got up and stalked off in the direction Stella had gone.

Kageo watched her date go before he looked at Walt and shrugged. "I don't know, what?"

"Why the long face?" Walt finished the joke, then looked pointedly at Kageo. "So why the long face?"

Kageo looked down at his plate, knowing he had no real interest in the food before he put his fork down. "Just realizing court intrigue follows us to school, and I hate it."

Walt nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, I kind of hate it. I relaxed for a second and then bam! It's right back again," he said.

Kageo glanced around them. "It's exhausting. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to be a student that doesn't deal with rumors, spies, and having everyone's attention."

"Probably pretty boring. I bet most of them wish their lives were more 'exciting' as if we enjoy this sort of thing," Walt said.

Kageo could see how that might be true. Everyone here seemed to want to be the big hero in some story that would be told later to the entire country, but Kageo had been sitting in the villain spot for so long that he couldn't bring himself to want that. He didn't comment on that though, instead asking Walt how his side of fixing things went.

"We did what we could to downplay any connection you and I have, mostly claiming that you've been carrying me through most of my classes because we all know privileged boys don't work hard. We also did a fair job of poorly demonstrating someone else's abilities but making it look like I've been doing parlor tricks this whole time," Walt answered. "It's exhausting!"

"Yeah, we did something similar," Kageo replied before kind of recreating the fizzling out magic. Walt could tell that Kageo was making it fizzle out on purpose, but there was some real power behind what he was doing and if he wasn't trying to force it to look bad, he could do whatever it was he was holding back on.

Walt hid his interest in the mechanics of what Kageo was doing fairly poorly, at least as far as anyone at the table was concerned. "It's tiring to fail at something that comes easily, isn't it?" Walt asked in hushed tones. "At least all I have to do is pretend not to be able to see what someone is doing and simply not recreate it, as difficult as that is for me to do."

Kageo gave him a knowing smile to show he agreed. "It is. When we first started to try this, we figured if I only took a little bit I'd never be able to do it. Imagine my surprise when I needed to force it to look weak."

Walt looked like he wanted a demonstration rather than to try to imagine it, but he kept his peace. If he was being honest with himself, it had been difficult even with his "eyes" closed not to work out what spell-form would probably work to replicate what he had seen. Walt could tell by the look Kageo gave him though that he didn't want Walt to ever try to find another way to replicate his blood magic. It worried him too much.

Walt nodded, wordlessly acknowledging what he knew Kageo was thinking. He packed away his curiosity for the moment and focused on eating. Kageo looked back down at his own food, forcing himself to choke down a few more forkfulls before he threw the rest away. Walt was also having trouble with the taste of the food and didn't bother with any beyond the first taste. Yami was the only one who ate more than a bit of her dinner. Kageo and Walt stayed at the table until Yami was satisfied but she hadn't eaten much that day and found that she was ravenous.

Once she was done, Elliot went to take their trays up and they started making their way back to the dorms. They split off when they got to the two buildings, the men going one direction while the women went the other. Kageo unlocked their room door and went inside first, dropping his bag onto the chair of his desk before he let himself fall back onto his bed while he let Walt shut the door.