The Teacher

Rules

Finn led the way back towards the Louvre, anger rolling off her in waves. Gloria tried to both walk where she wasn't in the line of glare Finn was producing and also in front of her where Finn was between Gloria and the vampire. Constantly being bumped was not helping Finn's temper. She kept walking to the Metro, forcing Arthur to put on gloves and pull up the collar of the coat he was wearing to hide the glittering of his skin. Finn kept walking, although at this point stalking was probably a better description of her pace, until they got back to the door in the alley that she had attached the house to. Here, she turned to Arthur and inhaled as deep as she could, letting it out slowly while she tried to rein in her temper.

"There are rules for who can know what and when."

"You told an entire town." Gloria pointed out and Finn felt her eye start to twitch.

"A whole town? Why? What did they do?" Arthur asked Gloria. "Did she kill them after?"

"No, there was a situation with some werewolves." Gloria answered and Finn snapped her fingers, igniting the space in a blue flame that wouldn't be bright enough to draw attention to the alley and had no real heat to it but Arthur recognized it and snapped to military attention, his wary eyes on Finn.

"No more talking from either of you." She glared at Gloria, who was trying to take control of the fire instead of looking at the angry woman. 

"You are in so many violations I don't even know where to start," Finn said to Arthur. "This will be passed on to the Council to review with your petition for a representative's seat. I strongly advise that if you ever drop my name without my permission again I will destroy you and everything connected to you even remotely. Am I clear?" Finn waited for Arthur's nod, ignoring the narrowing of his eyes, before she waved a hand at Gloria.

"This is Gloria. She's the new Chronicler. Be sure to pass on to your people that she is off limits. Gloria, this is Arthur. He changes his name every decade or so, so remember his face. He's the likely king of vampires."

"Not likely, I am." Arthur corrected and Finn raised an eyebrow.

"Vampires are the least likely to follow a single leader.I'll believe you're king when I gain omnipotence and can see it for myself." Finn answered and, with a flick of her wrist she opened the door and dropped the flames. Gloria jumped into the house and Finn followed a moment later.

"That seemed really tense." Gloria said when Finn shut the door behind her and Finn eyed her.

"Never trust a vampire.Not even as far as you think you can throw them."

"What?"

"Always be ready for them to stab you in the back. Of all the creatures in all the worlds they are the most self-serving. Nothing they do will ever be to their own detriment." Finn said, and stalked past Gloria to the combat training room. "I need a bit."

She felt the house shift as she stretched her muscles and knew Gloria would go work on whatever her and Louise had been working on before they went to Paris. Finn lifted the training weapon and shield, they were real so the weight was true, but the weapon would shift as she wanted it to from a sword to a bow or any other weapon she wanted. Today, she shook out her arms and lifted her hammer.

A command word triggered the targets and she struck, dodged and rolled until her clothes clung to her and her breaths came in deep gulps. Another command word shut off the targets, each of them with appendages and weapons of their own, and had them scuttle back to their places along the wall.

Finn put her shield and hammer away on a rack and left the training room for a shower. She set the water to as hot as she could stand it and let it pour down her back. The house was not connected to any plumbing, the water recycled itself through a system that had been designed and magically built before Rome built her aqueducts, and was heated by magic.

Finally, after she felt that the heat had drawn out the last vestiges of her temper and she would be able to talk to Gloria about the day without being an utter bitch, she started to lather and wash off the sweat.

She returned to the main floor of the house and found Gloria at the kitchen table, a stew of some sort in a pot on the stove, and a book in front of her.

"Did you know we could stack all the rooms one on top of another? There's actually a function in the house for an elevator." Gloria said as Finn stepped into the kitchen. Finn blinked at her, surprised that she was just going to ignore the day-

"I know that look. I'm not ignoring the day, I just don't want to jump into the conversation like it's automatically going to be a fight." Gloria interrupted Finn's train of thought and she chuckled.

"So you decided to start with how the house is set up?" Finn asked as she pulled down a bowl and spooned the stew into it.

"Well I was thinking about what you said about the house having set mass and I was really confused because it does NOT seem like it, and I found the information about where the house is if it's not here, and it's actually really sad." Finn raised and eyebrow and Gloria continued. "There's a whole alternate universe where everything is dead. Just, nothing there. No light, no darkness - because you can't have one with the other I guess, just nothing."

Finn nodded as she chewed the stew. It was from a can, she could taste that, but it was still needed after her workout.