Chapter 1

Kurt huffed at the little ball of blue putty that rotated gently above his palm, wishing it would spin faster.

‘You have to feel it,’ said Mr Schuester. ‘There’s no use even trying to do Kinetic magic unless you’re determined to succeed.’

Kurt scrunched up his eyebrows, willing the ball to spin with all his might. If this isn’t determination, he thought, I don’t know what is.

‘You’re doing great there, Kurt,’ he heard Mr Schue comment. ‘But you’re trying too hard. Remember, feel it. Don’t force it.’ He patted Kurt briskly on the shoulder, almost sending the putty ball flying out of his mental grasp, and wandered over to where Finn was sweating with the effort to even make his navy ball start to rotate.

Beside him, Rachel squealed excitedly. ‘I’ve got it! Mr Schue, I’ve done it, Mr Schue! Look, it’s a blur.’ She held out the spinning pink blur for the rest of the class to see, eyes shining with pride.

‘Well done, Rachel,’ Mr Schue praised. ‘Excellent work. Everyone, take a look at Rachel’s ball. Yours should be getting that fast too, by now.’

Kurt sighed. It wasn’t fair. He was definitely better than Rachel at magic, she just found Kinetic magic easy because she was a girl. Throughout all of Telepathic, Genetic, and Offence and Defence, they had been on par (although he had privately thought himself better, of course). But with Kinetic Rachel had the advantage, and he knew it was pointless to try and beat her.

Dragging his thoughts back to the lesson at hand, he concentrated on the ball. Rather than trying to make it spin, he simply let his mind flow – easy, like in Telepathic – and eventually sensed the ball at the edge of his mental perception. He smiled, finally in control, and the ball’s rotation sped up.

He let it spin and settled to watch the others in the class. Beside him, Mercedes’ ball was slowly speeding up, becoming more and more of an orange blur. Tina, frowning, was staring at her ball as if she hoped it would move on its own, expression as dark as its colour. A couple of seats away, Santana and Brittany seemed to have forgotten about their purple and red balls in favour of playing with each other’s hair as they chatted softly. Quinn, sitting alone, was silently rotating her silver ball, a serene expression on her face. Kurt noticed Joe shooting glances at her, his brown ball barely floating above his hand. Puck, Sam and Mike had abandoned their attempts at rotating a long time ago and were surreptitiously shooting tiny finger-flames at each other, Lauren watching in the background. He watched for a few minutes, mesmerized, at the intermittent flickering of black, gold and white flames.

He was interrupted from his observing as her heard a cry behind him and twisted round to see Artie bending over in his wheelchair as he reached for his green ball. He seemed to have dropped it.

‘Here,’ he said, picking it up and handing it back to him. ‘Did you manage to do anything.’

Artie sighed and shook his head.

Kurt turned back to the centre podium as Mr Schue called them back to attention. ‘Ok, everyone! Eyes in the middle! Thank you.’ He picked up his dark red ball and held it up for them to see. ‘Kinetic magic may sound easy,’ he said. ‘Who finds moving stuff around hard? Exactly. No one. But in reality, Kinetic is one of the hardest things to learn – you have to know how to feel and control an inanimate object with your mind.’ He paused, threw the ball a foot into the air, and caught it hovering above his hand. ‘I asked you to rotate your ball until it was a blur. You did – ok. Rachel, let’s see what you’ve got.’

Beaming, Rachel leapt up and swept her way to the middle of the classroom. She smiled sickeningly at them and hovered her ball like Mr Schue had. ‘It’s really not as hard as it looks,’ she said. ‘All you have to do is just reach out and sense it, and then take control, and voila! – spinning ball. I mean, it’s obviously easier for girls, everyone knows that, and I must say, I do have a slight advantage due to my high level of intellect and magical ability, so you may not all be able to perform to the standards that I have just demonstrated – n9;

‘Ok, Rachel, I think that’s enough.’ Their teacher shooed her back to her seat. ‘Well done everyone for today, you were good, and some of you were excellent.’ He smiled in Kurt and Rachel’s direction. ‘So your assignment for next week is perfect blurred rotation and, if you think you’re ready for it, transporting whilst rotating.’

The loud sound of the tower bell rang through the classroom as the lesson ended. Kurt, in no particular hurry, grabbed his satchel, straightened his tunic, and followed Mercedes out of the door and into the courtyard.

The sun was streaming brightly down between the branches of the two huge oak trees that dominated the yard. Students milled around, lounging on the grass in the shade of the trees.

The crossed the courtyard and headed straight for the dining hall. Kurt joined the queue for food behind Mercedes, keeping a wary eye out for the large group of warriors that ruled the school. Seeing none, he relaxed, and turned back to Rachel.

He waited patiently as one of the kitchen girls dumped today’s lunch – brown, slushy stew, as usual – into his bowl and he picked out a small loaf of bread to accompany it.

Just as he was turning to go and sit at his usual table, he stopped, frozen, before the hulking warrior directly in front of him.

‘Hey, Hummel,’ sneered Karofsky. ‘Had fun in your little magic class? Enjoy being a fairy?’

Kurt seethed, willing himself to not make a witty comeback that would just result in his lunch being upended into his face.

Karofsky moved closer. ‘You like it, huh? You like being a fairy, you disgusting little fa -'

‘Karofsky! Dude! Coach’ll hear you!’ Azimio warned him.

Karofsky smirked, glancing over at where Coach Beiste was walking down an isle of tables. ‘Later, Hummel,’ he snickered, glancing at Beiste once more before hitting the bottom of Kurt’s bowl and striding off.

The hot stew splashed all over Kurt’s face, hair, and clothes. He spluttered, dropping his bowl, and wiped the stew out of his eyes.

‘Oh, Boo,’ he heard Mercedes croon.

He shook his head, hoping that the stew would distract anyone from the tears forming in his eyes. ‘I’m going back to my room,’ he gasped, before shoving his way through the crowd in the hall and out into the courtyard.

He hurried up to the dorms, skittering to a wobbly stop in front of his door and muttering the password. He heard the lock click and stumbled into his room, kicking the door shut behind him, and rushed to the bathroom. Opening the bottom of the large barrel that held the water, he filled the large bowl with it before leaning over and lowering his face into the cool liquid.

Kurt stood up, rubbing the water out of his eyes. He looked at himself in the large, stand-alone mirror. His hair was still sticky with stew and his dark red tunic was stained a disgusting shade of brown. He tugged it off, chucking it in the vague direction of the laundry chute (it’s ruined now, he thought, I should have thrown it in the trash) and pulled off his slightly stew-y pants.

He filled the metal tub with water, warming it as he poured, adding some soap to create bubbles. Taking off his underwear, he lowered himself into the warm water and felt his entire body relax.

It was only now that he let the tears in his eyes flow. This was the third time that week that Karofsky had got away with bullying him, the third time that the teachers and staff had stood by and watched as he was humiliated before the entire school.

He wasn’t necessarily… angry. Sure, Coach Beiste could have done something just now, and the head chef Figgins had been standing right behind him last time Karofsky had thrown his porridge in his face. But he couldn’t really blame them. Raise one finger against Karofsky and his bunch of warrior thugs and they would be fired before they knew it. It just wasn’t fair when the father of the school’s head bully was also the school’s headmaster.

In reality, the only person who ever stood up to him was Coach Sylvester. Head of the school’s Guerriere squad – female fighters who followed the warriors into the battle to support them, and more commonly known as Jerries – she exerted anough power and dominance to bend almost anyone to her will.

Unfortunately for Kurt, though, Sue was on the King’s battle council and had little time for gay kids being bullied by warrior homophobes.

Occasionally, his half-brother Finn and his friends Sam, Mike and Puck had stood up for him, but too anxious to retain the status of ‘popular’ or ‘badass’, little had amounted of it. In his first year at the Academy, Puck had even been one of the guys who had pushed him into the moat every morning.

And whilst the girls were lovely, they had little influence over the crowd of warriors that followed Kurt around.

Kurt sighed and slid under the water to rinse his hair out. He just wished that there was one other person at school who understood what he was going through. What he felt. What he needed.

He sat up quickly as he heard a loud knock on his bedroom door.

‘Who is it?’ he called.

‘It’s me,’ Rachel’s voice answered. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Two seconds.’ He got out of the bath and wrapped his fluffy robe around his thin frame. He strode out of the bathroom and opened the door for Rachel, who had a worried look on her face.

‘Oh, Kurt, honey,’ she murmured, taking in his bloodshot eyes and solemn features. ‘Come here.’

She wrapped her arms around him and gently patted his back. Soon, she released him, and guided him over to his armchair to sit.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she muttered, sitting down at his feet. ‘I’m sorry he treated you like that and I’m sorry that we never do anything to stop it.’

Kurt remained silent.

‘Are you ok?’ she ventured.

He shrugged and wiped a tear away from his eyes. ‘Can you go, Rachel?’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry, I just really want to be alone right now.’

Rachel looked only slightly hurt, but nodded anyway, patted his knees and left the room. Kurt continued staring ahead of him, looking at nothing, until he heard the end of lunch warning bell ring and jumped up to get dressed and not be late for his advanced Alchemy class.

He may have been the only and loneliest out guy in his entire town, but he wasn’t going to allow that to stop him passing Alchemy.