SWORD ACADEMY (censored)

“Frank!” Ainsley roars. “You’re crushing my dang bullets!”

Frank’s the only one able to restrain her when she loses her mind like this, and he’s only able to do that by parking his hefty hive on top of her. The tethers to the bed work well enough when she isn’t having an outburst but not so much when she is. She’s never broken them though, and I believe it’s a conscious choice rather than her inability to.

The negation cuffs don’t work on her at all, not that she needs them to. Never once have her sparks tried to breach the barrier. They’re perfectly content to sit back and watch the All Ainsley show without interference until she invites them out. The engineers are hard at work trying to design something that can contain her exhibited power. I’m hopeful by the time they succeed, everyone will realize how unnecessary it is to bind her.

Ainsley has accomplished something we’ve never dared dream was possible for any charge. Not only has she tamed her four sparks, she can also wield them individually or combined. To become a wielder is a cognisant decision where a sheath opens their spark well for release voluntarily. That choice is supposed to mean a transition from sheath to wielder as the drain can never be closed again. Except, she’d been dead set against that sort of rigid Polarity as firmly as any other choice she’s expected to make. The result? She’s both sheath and wielder now, meaning she skipped right over her Schism entirely without giving up light or dark. And she’ll never have to give up any of it either because she solidified her choice with unquestionable resolve by synergizing.

“Skittles! If you don’t settle down, I’m bringing out the mirror again,” Frank buzzes. She stills underneath him.

When she was shown her reflection, the first thing she did was go into full Battle Unicorn mode, hurling the poor handheld mirror at the door window so hard it broke beyond repair and cracked the window glass. But she has to accept what stares back at her, so we keep trying, and she’s slowly coming around to the idea she’s reached Synergy, just not in the typical way.

I couldn’t be more proud of her. She’s at one with herself. All the pieces that make up everything she is resulted in this beautiful finished puzzle before us. And when it came to making herself whole, as Nick and I were blessed to experience with external support, she simply took to the task on her own. The proof of her success is in the golden rings of her eyes which surround the maintained brownish-grey, a standard Regular shade that’s the result of her mixed sparks. Not choosing awarded her the ultimate choice. She’s everything now, the epitome of balance.

Air, earth, fire, and water.

Light and dark.

Sheath and wielder.

Gloriously synergized.

She’s an unstoppable force of nature, forged by nurture, and that absolute union with her sparks means no one can ever force a choice on them again.

Grady opens the door to count out heads before he enters. Ainsley’s limited to three visitors at a time, and Frank’s clearly a requirement, so Nick excuses himself to make room for Grady, opting to check on the other patients while he waits for his turn again.

Ainsley’s rarely short on visitors. We take turns spending the night with her too, never leaving her alone. But it isn’t enough. We aren’t the specific visitors she longs for, and she has no problem letting us know how she feels about it, sometimes with her mouth, mostly with her fists. Neither her father nor her brothers can come, and Luke…no Regulars are allowed entry. We fought and won to get her access to her Sparklet which has definitely helped, but that isn’t enough either.

I hate that the Order is keeping her locked away at the Ward. Her sparks aren’t a danger to anyone, including herself. She’s proven that, but they just keep waiting for her to disprove it, determined she’s shattered like the others who still need our care on this floor. They have something of a point. Our shattered sparks need our support more than ever. For months they showed true signs of improvement, but over the last two weeks they’ve all reverted back to their previously faulty state, somehow impossibly worse than before. It’s as if having that little reprieve gave them a taste for their freedom, and taking it away hurt them more than remaining blissfully ignorant of the chance.

Grady headtilts. “Are we having Ainsley pancakes for breakfast?”

Ainsley brrrts a laugh and pushes at Frank who finally stops flattening her. “I’m magically delicious,” she announces, flipping off the guard who peeks in through the glass slat in the door to make sure her quota isn’t being exceeded. “Come taste the rainbow!”

Grady falls into her arms, and she holds tight to him.

“Still no change with Sunny?” she quickfires.

He snuffs.

Sunny’s still being sedated where her fire and water sparks are battling for dominance inside her. Ainsley has begged repeatedly to see her. Nick and I tried our luck as well on her behalf, but the guards aren’t budging, and they won’t move an inch until Ainsley stops scaring the daylights out of them which is never happening unless she lets them see they have nothing to be scared of.

Of course, Ainsley isn’t going to do that, and the guards really don’t have anyone to blame but themselves. Without realizing it, they started a game with her, and she really, really likes games. What began as an accident, leading to the discovery that her negation cuffs don’t work, turned into a major source of contention amongst the guards and a major source of entertainment for Ainsley. The playing board is the one-sided mirror along the front wall.

Her first move was to create a simple barrier over the mirror, coating it in a wall of dirt. Not being able to see inside the room made the guards understandably nervous, so they countered her move by tethering her to the bed where she couldn’t reach the mirror. For wielders, using a spark requires physical contact at the point of origin.

Ainsley doesn’t like losing, and she’s clever. Her next move was a powerful combo that led with her air spark. She used it to carry her water spark to the mirror where it dutifully coated it with a wall of ice. Never once did she destroy the tethers binding her to the bed. That’s clearly against the rules of the game.

The guards assumed her continued resistance was due to her loss of privacy, so they tried to strike a deal with her that if she’d stop blocking the mirror, they’d not only remove the tethers but also provide her a curtain she was free to draw when relieving herself. It seemed like a reasonable solution to them. But they don’t know Ainsley, not in any way that would help them beat her. Her resistance was never about privacy. Ainsley doesn’t care about privacy. What she does care about is winning. She went right along playing the game they started and burned the curtain while coating the mirror in a wall of fire that blazed for four straight hours without doing any damage to the surrounding area.

Every time the guards take the wall down, Ainsley puts it back up, each barrier more creative than the last. In addition to the initial walls of dirt, ice, and fire, there have been walls of shifting sand, swirling kaleidoscopes, bubbling slime, and flowing lava. She really seems to be enjoying herself. The guards are not enjoying themselves.

Currently, the mirror is coated in giant bubble wrap. It’s a constructed masterpiece she wielded using all her sparks. Her air spark carried it to the mirror, her water spark formed the bubbles, her earth spark knit the bubbles so they’re separate units that have to be individually dispelled, and her fire spark added tiny pockets of gas inside each bubble that stink like sulphur when released. The guards didn’t make it very far into the removal process before running from the room, retching their way down the hall. That wall has lasted two days so far, and I’m pretty sure it cinched her victory since she’s been awarded chains to go along with her cuffs. She’s still bound to the bed railing, but the extensions allow her to move around more freely.

Grady wags a finger at the wall. “They haven’t dispelled those rank rockets yet?”

Ainsley shrugs and pats the bed. Grady slumps down next to her and rests his head on her shoulder. She grabs his fist and holds it beside her when he reaches out for her to bump it.

“I wish I could see her,” she says longingly.

“She’d want to see you too,” Grady growls. “She’d come up with a hundred ways to drain the piss from your doggone eyes.”

Ainsley brrrts a laugh. “She would.”

“Any word on Luke?” he yips, and it’s her turn to sigh.

Luke doesn’t want to see Ainsley. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, but he was very adamant about not wanting to, going so far as to demand she ‘let him go by order of the free pass’ which made absolutely no sense to me. Whatever that means stopped Ainsley from reaching out to him when we begrudgingly relayed his message. We thought he might change his mind after the initial shock passed, but I’m starting to believe that’ll never be the case. He’s as stubborn as ever and determined not to interfere in her path forward, convinced he can never be what she needs. He’s only ever wanted to protect her, and his idea of doing that now is to protect her from him holding her back.

He isn’t angry over what she did to him or holding it against her in any way, and he hasn’t even reverted to the brooding mare we stared at endlessly before Ainsley opened herself up to him. He isn’t letting himself feel any of it which is somehow worse considering what he’s lost. In Ainsley’s successful effort to keep her sparks from going to sleep, she put his to sleep instead. Not just his. She mass hibernated every single spark she touched in the process, any outside the protection dome. The Dark Royal Guard was completely obliterated in one fell swoop. They’re all just Regular people now.

The Order is using the opportunity to seize control from the Royals, and that news has delighted all of us, because the might of the people’s S.W.O.R.D. will slice through the dividing walls of Scintilla, replacing the Royals with Regular citizens. It’ll take time, but it never would’ve been possible without Ainsley. I just wish the balance hadn’t come with such a steep price tag.

“Fiona wanted me to tell you she can’t make it today,” Frank bumbles quietly, lifting his head just enough to see whether he’ll have to sit on her again over the announcement.

Ainsley shrugs. “I know she’s busy right now with her work.”

Fiona surprised us all by stepping up when it comes to Ainsley. She’s staging protests in front of S.W.O.R.D. Court demanding her release, and she isn’t alone. Thousands upon thousands of people are joining in support. They won’t be keeping her here for much longer. They can’t without risking an uprising.

“It’s for you, Skittles,” Frank vibrates. “She’s fighting for you.”

Ainsley shakes her head. “I might be a part of this, Frank, but this is more than that to Fiona. It has to be more. She was always meant to unite the people, and while I’m proud to be one of those squibs, I’m only just one. These walls coming down is the single thread I’m holding onto right now to keep any semblance of sanity. We’re meant to be free, our sparks are meant to be free, and unless we let them go, they’ll go extinct. All these rules and controls have done nothing except diminish ignition. We’ve got a lot of work cut out for us to repopulate Scintilla, but with people like Fiona leading the effort, I’m hopeful we can achieve that.”

Frank’s mouth hitches up at the side. He’s just as proud of Fiona as Ainsley is, and he has as much faith in her too.

“When can I see Sunny?” Ainsley unholsters, renewed determination in her tone.

“They aren’t going to let you out of this room to see anyone,” I tink, hating to tell her that but knowing a lie will only make her reaction worse. “Not until you show them it’s safe to.”

She clenches her fists, Frank steps closer, and I square my shoulders to receive the sauce she’s bound to shoot, but it never comes.

“You have to stop shielding their view,” I chime. “It’s the only way.”

“Big blitzing no,” she reports, refusing to make even that small concession to get what she wants. “Explain to me how you transport.”

My brow whizzes up. I actually have no idea. I’m new to wielding. That’s always been Nick’s area of expertise. “Probably best to ask Nick,” I plink.

“Probably best to get the brain fart then,” she clips, “before the urge strikes me to ride this beauty bareback.”

I know she would, and there’s nothing and no one that can stop her now. I scurry off to find Nick, equal parts terrified and delighted for her. Glorious changes are on the horizon, and they’ve only just begun, with this beautiful chaos incarnate at the epicenter.