The Exchange Teacher - Welcome to Dyntril Academy

Natt beat Basque to the punch as he was busy coughing on food. She stuck her hands out and waved them back and forth. "No! No! No! That's not something that's going to happen."

Basque wiped his mouth with his napkin. "Not that Natt isn't…a wonderful woman, but I can't stay here forever, and we were specifically told when we left that no Kruamian would be permitted to return with us."

The Tinkerer put his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his hand. "Oh, so you're just going to play around for a bit?"

"No-no-no-no!" Natt protested again as she filled her previously untouched wine glass to the brim. "This guy and I? Uh-uh." She picked up her glass and chugged it.

The hosts didn't say anything; they just looked at the other two. Basque was glad when he saw Natt going for a second glassful. It brought out his disgust for her and overwhelmed those butterflies in his stomach that Symantha's question had drawn out.

Natt put the empty glass down and began filling it for a third time. "I mean, have you listened to the arrogance of this guy? And that freaky moving tattoo on his back. Plus, I think he might still have some Julvie on him."

As she went to lift her glass up, Symantha placed her hand on Natt's arm. Symantha wore an apologetic look. Natt pulled her hand free and downed the wine.

"I'm sorry, Natt. That was insensitive of me."

"No, no, it's fine," she said as she filled a fourth glass. "I'm sure Master Gerenet was more offended than I was."

The Tinkerer sat back in his chair and resumed eating. "Ya know, Sym, not only is that core-thingamabob that Basque brought up a genius idea, but he already finished programming it."

Symantha turned a forced smile to Basque. "Oh, not just brawn, but brains, too?"

"Didju came up wiff that shing yerself?" Natt asked. Her eyes were glazed over, but she was pouring herself another glass of wine.

Basque looked down at his mostly eaten meal. It had been fantastic. He wanted to finish it off, but he'd lost his appetite. After setting his napkin down on the table, Basque stood. "Symantha, Tinkerer, thank you so much for the lovely meal. It was truly delicious."

The two hosts stood. The Tinkerer wiped his mouth with his napkin. "Here, let me help you get all the machines."

Basque nodded.

"You're more than welcome to come again for supper," Symantha said.

"Thank you, ma'am. I've not had cooking that good in a while now. I'd be honored to join you again if you'll have me." Basque nodded to her. He looked at Natt, who set her empty glass down.

She picked up the wine bottle and tried pouring more into her glass. The bottle was empty, and only a few drops splashed into her cup. In a reprise of a scene he'd seen before, Natt looked into the bottle, as if the liquid was hiding somewhere inside.

Basque's revulsion for the woman was coming back hard. He didn't want her near his students. "Tomorrow, I'm going to do classroom work with the students."

Natt looked up at him. A new bottle of wine appeared in her hand. She looked into his eyes and then turned to Symantha. "Sym, why you standing? Sit! We drink!" Natt poured wine into Symantha's mostly full cup.

Basque didn't say anything and left the two women alone. The Tinkerer was stacking cores on the table when Basque walked into the workshop. They didn't speak as Basque took the cores and put them in his storage one by one.

When the Tinkerer picked up the last of the cores, he held on to it instead of putting it on the table. He extended it out to Basque, and Basque took it, but the Tinkerer still didn't let go.

"I'm sorry about Sym's comments. She can have a mouth on her at times."

"We all have mouths, though?"

"Ha!" the Tinkerer laughed. "It means she talks too much, says things she shouldn't."

"Oh." Basque shook his head. "I'm not worried about that."

At last, the Tinkerer let go of the device, and Basque put it in his storage.

"And please don't think too poorly of Natt."

"How can I not think poorly of her?"

"She's not been the same since…"

Basque waited for the Tinkerer to finish his sentence, but he didn't. So, Basque did it for him. "I know, since she 'fell'."

"Ha!" the Tinkerer laughed again. "Just goes to show how little you understand the women around you." The fiery-haired man shook his head as he said, "Nah, Natt never gave two asses about bein' a noble."

"Not quite what I heard."

"And where'd you hear that? Julvie? Krill? Yasher?"

"Natt herself."

"That I don't believe."

"Believe it or not, before school started, she went on a tirade at me about if I knew what it meant to be 'fallen'."

"Oh. Well, there's a reason for that."

Basque looked at the shorter man, who looked away. He waited again for the Tinkerer to expound, but once again, he didn't. Basque sighed. "And what reason would that be?"

"If she'd not been fallen, then she could have stopped her demotion. But, looking at how she's acting now and from what I'm hearing, things worked out fine."

Basque didn't know how she was acting differently. She was getting wasted. Again. The only way he knew her to be. "I'll take your word for it. Thank you for everything."

"It was my pleasure. If you need me to make anything else for you, please let me know."

"Will do."

"And come back again for dinner some time. I know Sym will be kicking herself until you do."

Basque smiled. "I wouldn't want that. She's done nothing wrong."

The sun had set when he left the Tinkerer's house. The dark sky matched Basque's dark mood. What had he been thinking? For a moment, she'd sparkled. Even if it was only because she was self-conscious, she'd not been drinking. Then, just a bit of embarrassment made her chug a bottle?

He was done with her. He couldn't trust her. His heart ached. Worse than seeing Rakelle with Eder. Rakelle? He understood her. They'd been friends for ages, since before they dated, and would be after. Natt? He didn't understand her at all. A wonderful woman was drowning herself in alcohol.

And he hated that he wanted to understand her. He wanted to write her off. He wanted to banish her from his thoughts, but her devastating smile tore into them instead.

The sounds of students in their lounges echoed in the Grand Entrance Hall. The voices got louder as Basque ascended the stairs, but he was glad to see that none of his students were out of their dorm hall. When he entered the dorm hall, his students were once again running around in the hall and in and out of each other's rooms.

He nodded to the ones who acknowledged him, then ducked into his room. Sophia was waiting for him. There were three Kruamian women in his life: one obsessed with him, one who infuriated him, and one who confused him.

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"Welcome back, Master Gerenet." She was back to speaking Kruamian. Her voice was precise, almost mechanical, and her posture was as stiff as her voice, like she'd gone back to being made out of wood. Basque couldn't deal with it.

"Good evening, Sophia."

"Shall I have dinner prepared for you now?"

"No need. I ate with the Tinkerer and his wife."

"Very well, sir. Shall I draw your bath then?"

"Yes, please."

Sophia bowed and went into his bathroom. Basque watched her go and wondered what the Tinkerer meant about Sophia and Natt. Sophia seemed to like Natt. Why would Sophia be the reason that Natt ate with the Tinkerer and his wife?

"Sophia?"

The vivid-violet-haired maid came out of his bathroom. "Yes, Master Gerenet?"

"<What is your opinion of Natt?>"

Sophia shook her head and looked at the servant's door. "I'm sorry, Master Gerenet. I'm afraid I don't understand you."

Basque sighed. He wasn't going to find out anything that night. He didn't want the headache. He didn't want to have to guess her meanings from gestures alien to him. "Sorry, what I meant to say is I can take over the bath stuff from here. You may go for the evening."

Sophia bowed. "Thank you, sir. Have a pleasant bath and evening."

"You too."

As Basque bathed and got ready for bed, his thoughts drifted towards the woman who was tasked to serve him during his stay. With her gift of picking up Hianb and the smooth precision of her movements, Basque knew she wasn't someone to take lightly. She struck him as brilliant, both physically and mentally.

He'd always assumed that her talents being overlooked was because the Kruamian society looked down on her for not being "noble," but what if that wasn't the case? A hole dropped in his stomach. What had he done? Teaching her his language? How had he so blindly trusted someone he knew almost nothing about? Had he been that desperate to give her the freedom to speak with him?

Not like it had accomplished anything, as tonight proved. She was still wary of being overheard. However, would she need to be wary if she were a monitor placed to observe him for the Kruamian government? Unless that was an act to make him think she was on his "side"?

Why had he been so trusting? If the positions had been reversed, if the Kruamians had come to Hianbru, every Hianb placed near them would have been a monitor, someone who reported everything. Basque shook his head. Sophia was beautiful, obedient, and felt like a good person. She was perfect to be a disarming agent.

Basque let out a laugh as he recalled Symantha saying he wasn't just brawn. No. She'd been right the first time. He might as well not have had a brain for how little he used it. Passing off technology that he'd had no hand in developing didn't make him smart. He was good with the interface, that's all.

Oh well, he thought. What's done is done. Just need to be more wary from here on out. Basque put it out of his mind and went to bed. He'd focus on the one thing he was qualified to do: teach.

The next day, Basque didn't want to see Natt, so he skipped the morning teacher's meeting. Let Krill complain. He notified them through Harnel that he was only missing the meeting, not the classes.

As such, Basque was waiting for his students in the classroom before they arrived. As he'd always shown up on the dot previously, he was pleased to see that they all arrived together and that they all arrived ten minutes early.

"Good morning, class."

"Good morning, Gerenet-Shr."

"Today, we will learn the fundamentals of the interface. Mastering this can be the difference between life and death against a Yani."

Normally, he got objections from his classes that even babies knew how to use the interface, but here, since only Cayelyn had ever used it, no one complained.

"First, let's look at what an interface is."

Basque opened his interface and went through the option menu until he found the public display and activated it. The transparent blue screen that he saw in front of his eyes didn't change, but he knew the students could see it now as well.

"This is an interface. Please note how it follows the motion of my head, not my eyes."

Basque reached out and put his hand through it. "It has no physical presence. Also, even though it's semi-transparent, the text on it displays correctly no matter which side you look at. In other words, what you all see is the same as what I see. There are no reverse negatives or backwards or mirrored text."

As he'd left his interface in the options menu, he flipped it back to private and then closed it out. "Now, let's all open our interfaces. You need to conceptualize," Basque turned to the board and wrote <<OPEN, "in your mind. You should know that by default, only you can see your interface."

Kamryn raised her hand.

"Yes, Kamryn?"

"I'm sorry, Gerenet-Shr, but what do you mean by 'less than less than open'?"

"You aren't 'saying' it in your head. You have to think of it as a symbol and visualize it."

"Whoa!" she said.

A murmur went through the class as the students asked each other if they were seeing it "too".

"Like I said, no one else can see yours, for now. I made mine public for all of you to see. Also, please note that there's maybe only ever a 0.00001% chance that you would ever want to make yours public to someone.

"DO NOT SHARE YOUR STATS. Do not share them with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Don't share them with your cousin, aunt, or even your parents. I'm not saying everyone in the world is bad, but you never know who else might be around, who might see. Or maybe they let slip that you've got twenty-seven strength. As soon as you become a specific number, you are vulnerable.

"Bad people exist in Hianbru. I can only assume there are worse here. Especially to you all and your position. Now, class, do we share our stats?"

"No, Gerenet-Shr!" Their response was prompt, loud, and in sync. Their morning training sessions had drilled that into them.

"Excellent. Now, another thing that there is an exact zero percent chance you want to share is your inventory. To find your inventory, open the main menu and it should be the third option. If you can't find it, it means you've been playing in the menus while I've been talking. How many of you is that?"

Malcalm, Emilisa, Ryleegh, Xav, and Jan raised their hands.

"Thank you all for being honest. Either use the back arrows at the top until you get there, or visualize this:" On the board, Basque wrote <<MAINMENU.

"Alright, is everyone at their inventory?"

They all nodded.

"Good, now how many slots do you have?"

A number of hands shot up.

"Ryleegh, how many?"

She stood and said, "Twenty-five," then sat back down.

"Yes, as a default, you have a five-by-five grid. Through items and levels, you can expand it to a ten-by-ten grid. The default is that five similar items will stack in the same slot. That as well can be upgraded to a hundred. So, theoretically, you can carry up to 10,000 items with you at no physical cost. Now, let's go through some of the other menus."

Basque spent the rest of the morning going through each and every menu option. Then, after a lunch that quelled the rumbling in Basque's stomach but left no impression in his mouth, he moved on to mastering the interface.

"Interface commands are customizable. When fighting a Yani, you can't waste your time visualizing 'open, scroll three, inventory, select what you want'. By the time you'd make it to 'scroll three', you would be dead.

"The interface has customization options. In Hianbru, we call them 'hot keys'. If you go back to the settings, remember the one that I told you we would be coming back to?"

Saevi raised her hand, and Basque nodded at her. "Commands?"

"That's correct. Everyone, please open it up. What do you see?"

Several students raised their hands.

"Fawna."

The blonde stood up. "An input field." She sat.

"Yes, an input field. It would be nice if there were toggle switches, but this allows for so much more customization. Now, everyone, let's enter this into the input:"

On the blackboard, Basque wrote command -en -loc <<OPEN<<MAINMENU<<INVENTORY -sc <<I.

"Let me explain a bit. 'Command' lets the interface know we're making a command. The dash gives the 'command' command its…commands. The first 'en' tells the interface we are going to 'edit' 'new', in other words, we're making a new command. The 'loc' is a location, and then we have the location chain of the inventory. The 'sc' means 'shortcut' and we bind it to less than less than I. I chose 'I' as it's the first letter of 'inventory'.

"Once you've done it, try it out. Close out of the interface, then visualize the open I."

There were a few "whoa"s and quite a few satisfied looks on their faces. Basque smiled with them. They were just getting started. Over the next several hours, he showed them how to make shortcuts to specific inventory item slots, override those shortcuts, and perform other useful actions.

"There is so much that can be done with the interface. I programmed the cores that we'll be working with until the tournament with the interface. Depending on what classes you become, it will give you some new options, but you won't see them until you gain enough experience to get a class. Yes, Maecy?"

Malcalm's twin put her hand down. "What's a 'class'? Aren't we already in Class E?"

"You know how the deputy headmaster is 'of the Sword' or Master Harnel is 'of the Fist'? Those are their classes. However, I will not allow you all to limit yourselves to only one class. None of you will be 'of the Anything'.

Basque checked the time on his interface, then put his hands on the side of the lectern. "That's all for today. For the rest of the month, we'll be exclusively on the training grounds. That doesn't mean we're done with the interface, though. By next week, I want you all to come to me one at a time and tell me something you've discovered with it.

"Class dismissed."

The students filed out and chatted as they left. Basque watched them leave, then went out himself. He frowned the second he stepped out of the door. Harnel was waiting for him with an angry-looking Natt standing next to him. Basque felt a headache coming on.