Diaper U Ch. 01 (AB/DL)

Rejection hurt the most when it came in multitudes.

Daniel Aster prided himself in his resiliency and independence. He didn't care what any authority told him, he could bounce back from any criticism. If a critique held merit, he'd listen, and if it just broke him down without purpose, he'd ignore it. He knew he had power, and he knew that with the right training, he could control that power. He was a master warlock in the making.

The first rejection slip that came on his doorstep, delivered by a curiously intelligent Peregrine Hawk, he ignored. There were over a dozen great Warlock schools across all eight continents. (Maybe Mundanes thought there were seven continents, but they hadn't figured out indoor plumbing until the 19th century, so what did they know?) and plenty of smaller private institutions. It didn't matter if one said no.

The second slip, he laughed it off. 'Fundamentally incapable of controlling power' may have been a note in both papers, but what did that matter? He knew his control was a weak point, it just took one administrator to see that it could be improved, that it wasn't hopeless. Besides, they saw his strengths, didn't they? Good results on written exams, high levels of magical attunement-if it wasn't for piss poor control, he'd have been a cinch.

Eight rejection letters made his confidence waver.

He now had a stack of forty. So many letters that they made his waste paper bin overflow, so many that animal control had been called to complain about the bird poop spattering cars in front of his home-bird messengers were traditional, but perhaps a bit inconvenient.

When he got to be High Warlock, he'd see about getting official communication channels equipped with telephones and pagers.

If he got to be High Warlock. You didn't get elected to top positions without a prestigious degree to your name.

For all his confidence, he admitted needed education, practice, and a good teacher. Nobody became a master on their own; even Merlin had learned from the fae.

Only...that wasn't quite true. He didn't just need a teacher, he needed remedial classes, maybe a tutor-the kind of education he could only get with a lot of money or a top-tier school. He was like a toddler who'd never learned to walk while his bones were growing, and now required physical therapy to catch up; he knew he had the capacity but he couldn't stand up to prove it.

And with forty academies-public, private, long lasting institutions and barely-accredited night schools-all insisting he was unfit to be a warlock at all, Daniel had to admit that maybe they were right.

Maybe.

Lying on his bed, Daniel weighed his options. Give up, find a private tutor, bribe his way in-or keep digging for another school that he hadn't already applied to.

Maybe he could make an appeal to his upbringing-his dad had been Mundane, not a lick of magic in him. Only his mom had power, but naturally, she was a witch. Women's magic worked off the same fundamentals as men's, but the nuances were vastly different; Warlocks worked alone, with lightning responses and raw strength no witch could manage, witches pooled their magic into covens that operated more slowly but with more delicacy, more staying power.

It was like the old saying-If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. Warlocks were fast.

Or...they were in theory. Daniel had learned the basics of magic early, but he wasn't fast, and nothing his mom had taught him had built speed.

The catch-22 made him reel-he needed a teacher to get the speed and precision of a true Warlock, but his current abilities were so low that no school would take him.

While he pondered this, another hawk smacked into his window, flopping onto the wrought-iron fire escape outside his apartment. He winced, walking over to open it, while the bird gave him an annoyed look.

"I keep my space tidy," he said, rolling his eyes as he untied the letter from around its neck, allowing himself to feel a spark of hope. "Not my fault you can't tell clean glass from open air."

The hawk gave a croaking little caw, giving him a side-eye that seemed to say, 'I'm better than you.' Even the birds were looking down on him today.

Once the note was in his hands, the bird squawked, flapped its wings, and took off to the skies once more.

"Okay," Daniel said, turning over the letter in his hands. "Let's see what we've got...Berrier University."

A distance-learning outfit, Berrier had been just about his last choice for application, but it was at least a choice. He didn't need to attend for the full course-he could enroll for a semester, get enough proof that he could handle his shit, and take those grades to a real school.

He just needed his foot in the door. Holding his breath, he slid the envelope open and withdrew the note inside, mumbling the words as he read it aloud.

"Dear Mr. Aster,

We regret to inform you-"

Something was wrong with the note; after reading those first eight words, all the letters turned blurry and illegible.

He knew what the note said by heart, anyways. 'Your control isn't good enough, you aren't fast enough, you don't have the potential to be a warlock-you've got good grades on paper, go find work as an enchanter or something, maybe get a job teaching.'

And the message between the lines: 'You'll never be a real magician, so take the crumbs you can get. You just don't have what it takes.'

"Dammit," Daniel snapped, crumpling the note in his hand and tossing it into his trash bin. It bounced off the rim and rolled away. Annoyed, he snapped his wand-a stubby little thing with an ergonomic grip-off his desk and sent a shower of sparks at the note. It flopped into the air, overcorrected, and soared past the bin again.

He tried the spell again, and it this time flew straight up, no closer to being thrown away than if he'd left it to sit. On the third time, he spat out a word and flicked his wand and-instead of levitating the paper-set it on fire.

Eyes widening a fraction, Daniel blurted, "Shit," and ran over, stomping out the flame before it could spread.

He stared down at the ashy pile.

(Goddammit.)

(God fucking dammit.)

(Are they right about me?)

Grimacing, he went to get a dustpan and clean up the mess. A cleaning spell would have been faster, but the last thing Daniel wanted to do was confirm the worst belief he held about himself.

He did have the potential, though. Daniel knew his strengths, and he knew his flaws-he was impulsive, he acted too quickly, he could be too stubborn for his own good. But he had a well of power inside him, one he could feel deep down in his core, the kind of power that warlocks of legend could only dream of.

Maybe he was a little cocky, too, but who ever heard of a passive warlock?

"Screw them," he said aloud. "I'm going to get into one of these schools, one way or another."

He wondered about cheating, but that wouldn't help either. Even if he found a way to pretend to be able to do things he couldn't, he'd be found out too quickly; he needed something that would get him trained, not just that would get him in the door. His control was that bad-and, being honest, he couldn't blame it fully on being taught the basics by a witch. Many witches, his mother included, had better control than him even though that was miles away from their field of expertise. And...

And...

And that gave him an idea.

Sitting down, he picked up the phone from his desk, punching in his mom's number on the hard plastic buttons. It rang twice, and then-

"Danny!" she said, excitedly. "How are you, sweetie? Everything still going okay in Seattle? Have you found a job yet? A girlfriend?"

"I told you, I'm just here until I get accepted into college," he said, scratching his chin. "Why look for a job when I'm leaving in a few weeks?"

He heard her click her tongue, a noise she made when she was thinking. "Right, right-it's just, you never call, how am I supposed to know what's going on in your life?"

"I'm calling right now!" He rolled his eyes. "Look, I was just curious-do you have your old records from when you were studying at Alphebeta?"

"I'm sure I've got them somewhere," she said. "Why?"

He didn't detect a hint of suspicion in her tone. Perfect. "For filling out one of these applications-I think it might help. Could you send that over?"

There was a way to get the education he needed. If witches had better focus than him, he'd just go learn from witches. His poor control wouldn't stop him from getting enrolled, and he could fake the rest.

Daniel just had one obstacle to overcome:

Alphabeta-and, for that matter, any other witches' school in the world-was an all girls school. Of course it was; 'all witches' and 'all girls' were practically synonyms.

Still, he had a way around that, too.

He'd just need his mom's records, a little sleight of hand, and a dress.