Mystical Changes ~ Vampire Academy Fanfiction

19

Well, we've been teaching classes at the academy for a week now. It's been going well, it didn't take us long to get into the motion of it all. Dimitri had the upper hand because he was a teacher before everything that happened to us. While he didn't teach actual classes, he was my personal teacher helping me catch up on everything I'd missed in my time away from the academy. I also somewhat had an upper hand too, seeing as I was not that long ago a student myself. I could better understand how the students are thinking and processing what we are teaching, this helped aid the way we decided to teach them. It was a Wednesday morning and we were running late. "Babe, we need to leave like right this second if we are going to get there on time." Dimitri called from the kitchen, he was busy making our coffees to go. Let's just say we... awakedly slept in this morning ;)

I'm now 11 weeks pregnant, and I got distracted admiring my baby bump in the mirror. "Okay, okay. I'm ready." I called out as I grabbed my knitted jumper. I walked out of the room to find him standing there, arms full. He had both our coffees, our bag of lunch, both our coats and the car keys hanging of one of his fingers. The pups were both sitting at his feet, eagerly waiting to go as well. I grabbed my coat from him and the lunch bag then we headed to the car. I let him drive so I could eat my breakfast on the way, mamma gotta eat! We made it to the academy just as the bell rung. We headed straight for our class, taking all of our crap with us, we'll have to put it away later. Slowly but surely all of our students came pouring into the gym. Once it looked like everyone was there, we did the role call. Once done, we hauled them all outside.

Today I'll admit is one of the colder mornings we've had since starting teaching, and the students weren't very amused to be going outside. "Alrighty, so to start off todays class you are all going to run laps." I said gleefully. This was glorious to me because I'd spent so long doing this back at my academy with Dimitri. I'd run away from school with my best friend Lissa, in a bid to keep her safe. In doing so I got really behind in my training. Upon being captured (by Dimitri, might I add...) and hauled back to the academy, Dimitri was my saving grace that kept me from being kicked to the curb. One of the terms of me remaining at the academy was that I was to partake in morning and afternoon extra training sessions with Dimitri... One on one. (We all know how that turned out...) For so long all he would 'teach' me was laps. Laps after lap after laps, followed by some for of fight training. I used to be so pissed off at him for it, but it held a good lesson after all.

I heard one of the students mutter something in the back. "Sorry Brad, what was that?" I called him out, turning his cheeks bright red. "Why do we have to run laps... it's not going to do anything for our fighting, we're here to learn how to fight and kill strigoi!" He protested. I glanced at Dimitri, he just chuckled, I on the other hand full out laughed. He knew what I was about to say. "I've been where you all stand, not that long ago in fact. I too used to have to run laps everyday. Twice a day." I spoke loud and clear, this was a teaching moment. "And you know what, I hated it too. But you know what else, I'm better off for it. I was at St Vladimir's when the strigoi attacked." I paused to let the information set in. I heard a few gasps, I had their attention. "If I hadn't been running laps, twice a day for months on end, many more people would have died that night. I was on the outskirts of the academy boundary when we encountered the first Strigoi."

I had to pause for a second, everything from back then came rushing back into my mind, like I'd been thrown into a brick wall. "I was the first warning for the whole academy. I had to run, I ran for my goddamn life as fast and as hard as I could. I ran until I found a teacher to alert about the impending attack. It was the early warning that saved so many lives, they didn't catch us off guard like they'd hoped too. I had stopped their surprise attack. So before you go bitching and moaning about having to run a few laps. Stop and think, think that one day it could save your life, it could save many peoples lives. You're not always going to be in a position to attack and kill a strigoi you come to face. One day you may come across one that is too old and strong for you to fight, they may be way bigger than you, there may even be more than one of them. And when that day comes, while you are running away to save your life, and maybe others, while you are running you are going to remember this day, You are going to remember the importance of running these laps, of building the endurance and speed to run away. You are going to remember how it saved your life."