Who We Were Born To Be (Niam) [ON HOLD]

Chapter 9: Pyromancy

Chapter 9

Louis' point of view

“It's sooo not possible,” Mike insisted in his strong Texan drawl.

Louis liked Mike. He's sassy. Not afraid to speak his mind. Of course, these American kids are all pretty spunky. It's a culture thing I suppose. In Britain, people consider it 'polite' to say things in a more round-about way, or to imply them without saying them outright.

The One Direction boys were currently spending their scheduled half-day with the young people they had freed from Guantanamo, helping them to learn to use their powers. There were five pyros in the group, and Louis was the only teacher there whose power was fire, so he had his work cut out for him. Although, I suppose I learned to use my power without learning directly from a pyro.... well in France at least. Grant and James were actually really good teachers to be able to teach people who had a different power to them. Teaching these guys is actually much harder than it looks.

“Yeah, it's too far away!” William insisted. “Our power can't go that far!” William stood there only in silver underwear. He still didn't have very good control of his power and had managed to burn off his clothes earlier in the lesson. Louis had issued pairs of his specially designed flame-resistant underwear to the students right at the start. It had come in useful several times already for them. Though the girls' version needs some more adjustments. William had seemed happy to continue the lesson in his underwear rather than going back to change, so Louis had gone with it.

“Too far away?” Louis scoffed. He had set up five targets for the kids a mere 30 yards away. Louis waved his hand and five tiny compressed balls of flame, each the size of a marble, appeared in the air in front of him. He gestured again and the five balls shot toward the targets. They burned a tiny hole straight through the centre of each of the five targets. “And that's how it's done!” Louis announced proudly. The awed looks on the faces of the students was extremely gratifying. They should be impressed. It took a lot of practice and a lot of James' teaching to get this good. James had said that the majority of pyros never learned to control more than one flame at the same time, so sending fire at multiple targets at the same time would be impossible for an average pyro. Not to mention how every single one hit the bull's-eye, thought Louis.

Unfortunately, the students didn't quite succeed in copying Louis' stunning example. William managed to once again envelop himself in flame, which would have burned off his clothes a second time if it hadn't already happened once. Laura's fireball missed the target by several meters. Ruth's fire just went out half way to the target. Aaron didn't seem able to summon any fire at all. He needs more teaching of the basics, I think. When Aaron's power worked, he was the best of the students, but some of the time he just couldn't turn it on. Well, everyone has performance problems now and again, Louis thought dirtily. Mike seemed to be having a great deal of trouble controlling his fireball at a distance, and it kept wobbling back and forth. But eventually, after a painstaking couple of minutes he managed to clip the edge of the target with it. “Yes!” Mike yelled. Er, yeah. Success. Sort of. Louis returned Mike's high-five, and went back along the line of students, trying to help each one with their problems. I know I said to James that these guys would be keen to help shut down the prisons world-wide. But it seems it's going to be a long long time until they're in a position to help anybody. I really don't think we appreciated our own teachers nearly as much as we should have. Maybe I should send James, Grant and Nadine a gift-basket each?

“Louis, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Louis turned to find Jordan Wright, the organisation's North American coordinator, standing there. Jordan had overall responsibility for the organisation's activities in North America, much as Grant Wells did for Britain. Though nearly all of Jordan's time was tied up these days in managing this impromptu training facility which housed and trained the 172 young people that Louis and the other boys had rescued from Guantanamo. Alistair and James visited regularly, of course, but the day-to-day running of the facility was under Jordan's control. Louis supposed that himself and Jordan were technically of equal rank since they were both on the organisation's executive council. Although we're in North America, so I guess he's in charge while were here.