Thank you so much for the support as always, @xpegasusuniverse ! This one was super fun to write, so I hope you like it!
Summary: Byleth had been making some… questionable choices with his teaching methods as of late, to the point that managed to make Seteth lose his cool. However, there was nothing Byleth could not see after a Pulse or ten…
The Imperial Year was 1180, Garreg Mach Monastery. Classes were in full swing now that the students have gotten used to their teachers and assignments.
Bonds were being formed, friendships were blossoming. New skills were sharpened every single day.
Yes, new skills.
However, one could wonder why some of these skills were being taught to students with no potential nor aptitude to make full use of them at a particular House: the Golden Deer, whose professor was none other than the newbie teacher hired on a seemingly whim by the Archbishop: Byleth.
The sound of heavy steps against the polished marble echoed as someone approached the Archbishop’s study.
“Rhea!” Seteth opened the door, forgetting about decorum or common courtesy, really. He huffed, quickly making his way to Rhea’s desk.
“Seteth?” She widened her eyes, surprised to see him display so much emotion to the point of even forgetting to call her by her title instead of her name. “What’s happened? Is it serious?” She made motion to get up, as Seteth was one of the most put-together people she had by her side.
So, if he looked that shaken, something terrible must have transpired.
He banged both hands on her desk, exasperated. “Rhea, you must- you have to control that little favorite teacher of yours! He’s- he’s- ugh,” he put one hand behind his neck as his blood pressure rose.
That made Rhea fully get up, startled with the mention of Byleth. “What happened to him? Is he alright?” She circled her desk to go to the door right way.
“He’s more than alright; too alright, in fact, that he’s messing around with the students’ schedules!” He pressed his temple with the remaining hand, still with his head hung back as he held his neck.
“That child did? Impossible. He is not the kind to do that.” Rhea tilted her head to the side, her shoulders sagging as the tension left her body.
“You don’t understand,” Seteth snapped his head to Rhea. “We’ve tested all of the students before they enrolled and documented all of their strong and weak points, as you are well aware.” he said and she nodded with a frown, wondering where he was going with all that. “Professor Byleth just- he ignored all of that! And he’s fooling around with the students’ potential for growth. This is unacceptable, Rhea. No, Archbishop. We cannot have this happen right during the year all heirs of the three countries of Fódlan are enrolled!”
Rhea crossed her arms, still finding it hard to believe.”Seteth, I need more than an emotional explosion to cue me into taking action…”
“It’s not- ugh,” Seteth took a deep breath. “Alright, I might have been a little emotional about the situation, but it IS unacceptable, Rhea. Will you come with me? They are in the middle of class right now so I can show you what is happening right away.”
“Very well. Seeing as this seems serious enough for you to lose your composure like that, there was no way I would not accompany you. But I will still need convincing to believe that that child is ‘fooling around’ with the students as you said.”
“Yes, yes,” Seteth bobbed his head to the side with a hint of annoyance. “Byleth is your protegé for a reason you cannot share, but you cannot protect him after this, I assure you.”
Rhea straightened her back as Seteth led the way. “After you.”
At the Golden Deer training ground, one could see many students doing their best with their assigned jobs.
There were some practicing white or black magic, some learning how to ride, others how to mount, some sweating under heavy armor and others hitting a training dummy with martial arts. From a distance, it looked like an ordinary arrangement — after all, if one wanted to cover all bases, there was a need to train a wide range of classes considering their aptitudes.
Yes, considering their aptitudes.
Once one approached more, it was plain to see that there was something… unique about the class arrangement.
“Pr-professor…” Lorenz huffed as his noodle-like, white arms shone under the sun and all the sweat poured out of him. “I s-still fail to see h-how this will, ah, a moment for a breath, please.” He raised one palm and lowered his head to take a breather.
“It’s not break time yet, Lorenz. Keep punching that bag,” Byleth said dryly, not even looking up from his little notebook as the noble of the roses was getting as red as one from all the physical exercise he was forced to do.
“B-but-”
“Professor! This is insanity! I can’t thrust this lance one thousand times! I can’t even do it three times!” Lysithea complained from the other side.
“Well, at least you’re not forced to learn MAGIC,” Leonie complained from a desk under the shade, envying the people doing physical stuff.
“Well, I would RATHER be doing that.” Lysithea shot back under bated breath.
“Now, now, back to the assignments I gave you all.” Byleth snapped his fingers to call for attention, still looking down at his notebook indifferently.
A round of whines sounded from the disgruntled students. Even Marianne groaned loudly under all that heavy armor she was forced to wear.She rather envied how Ignatz was learning how to mount a wyvern even though the boy himself feared the beast would munch down on his head if he fell down on its foot one more time.
Claude and Hilda had their heads in their hands as they tried to figure out how white magic worked, so they didn’t even have the mental capacity to complain.
From afar, it looked like an ordinary class, indeed.
However, if one looked just a smidge closer, the pandemonium would be revealed.
Seteth pointed with a grave expression, then crossed his arms. “See? See?! He’s wasting all of their potential!”
“Hmm… It does look rather odd.” Rhea took one finger to her chin in thought. “Let us approach, shall we? I would rather we do not jump to conclusions.”
“Jump to conclusions?!” Seteth threw his hands in the air. “Look at the students’ morale! We will be lucky if only one of them graduates this year if this keeps up.”
“Still,” Rhea said, looking from Seteth to Byleth. “Ah, our eyes met. He will approach now.” Rhea motioned for Byleth to come over, so the Professor obliged.
He looked at something in the air for a split second before heading to where the Archbishop was, but it was such a natural movement one usually wouldn’t be able to catch it.
“Good afternoon, Archbishop, Seteth.” Byleth nodded to either of them with his usual poker face. He held a small notebook in one hand and the feather pen he was using in the other.
“Hello, child,” Rhea greeted with a warm smile. “It has come to my attention,” she glanced at the fuming Seteth beside her, “ that your students have a… rather particular training regimen as of late.”
“Yes?” Byleth replied with a shrug, bringing his notebook to his chest.
Rhea opened her mouth to reply, but Seteth had lost the last of his patience.
“Please, explain yourself, Professor Byleth! You are wasting all of your students’ potential with this so-called teaching plan!”
Byleth calmly looked from Rhea to Seteth, then down to his notebook.
He snapped it open.
“Do you know the amount of damage and the percentage of success of a magical attack coming from a 45º angle towards an unit with less than fourteen points of resistance, who is hiding behind a pillar and is armed with a pair of steel gauntlets?”
…
“… Professor Byleth, I am not asking for a lecture-” Seteth barely recovered from the sudden question, but Byleth was only getting started.
“Let me tell you: it’s a whole lot. They will die if their bare skin is even grazed by the magical attack. Low resistance is shit — ah, pardon my french, Archbishop.”
“French…?” Rhea tilted her head to the side, her eyes glistening with interest but also a little befuddlement.
“I need those three to train their magical resistance by opening their mana channel in their brains,” Byleth pointed at Claude, Hilda and Leonie, who had dark clouds over their heads trying to understand the magic books in front of them.
“Also, do you know how dope it is to have a flying archer? Ignatz will be fine with that wyvern, I’m sure it hasn’t eaten a human in the past decade or so, so it’s probably safe. I mean, you wouldn’t offer the students a feral mount, would you?”
Seteth remained stunned by the answers Byleth had at the ready, as though he had had this conversation before and prepared them for this.
“But-”
Byleth ignored Seteth’s raised index for an interjection and continued his speech. “Have you any idea how frail mages are? We must prepare the students for any situation, even the ones where they will be forced into hand to hand combat with the enemies should their mana run out in the middle of the battlefield. Lorenz will live. He’s passed out for now, but once he builds a bit more muscle, he’ll get used to the regimen.”
Rhea’s eyes shone more and more with each word Byleth uttered.
“Marianne needs the extra defense she’ll get once she get promoted to Great Knight five years from now…”
“Excuse me? How long did you say?” Rhea took a step closer as Nyleth mumbled the last part.
“Ah, don’t mind me. As I was saying, Lysithea is training with all melee weapons to upgrade her stamina, definitely not to make her into a knight down the line,” he spoke quickly with the straightest face a man could wear. “And I finally found a horse big enough to support Raphael’s muscles, which is good. What if he gets stranded in the middle of battle with an injured ally and the fastest way to get help is through a horse? We must prepare them for everything.”
“Of course.” Rhea ate it all up with a bright smile, nodding as more and more nonsense came out of Byleth’s mouth. “You truly are wise beyond your years, child. I wonder what that could mean…”
Byleth looked over Rhea’s shoulders to nowhere in particular, but somehow it felt like he was looking straight at the eyes of someone who was reading a story about what was happening to them at that very moment.
“Indeed, I wonder what it all means.” He flashed a rare smile without breaking eye contact with the surprised reader.
Seteth groaned beside Rhea, holding back the urge to mess his own hair in agony.
It was all bulshit! It was clear! There was not a single thought passing inside that man’s head, it was blatant to see!!
Seteth couldn’t voice his thoughts as Rhea was more and more fascinated by the bulshit Byeth said, so he just held his nape as his blood pressure rose.
Of course it’s all bulshit, Byleth thought, reading the passage through Sothis’ eyes as the reader gasped in wonder. I really just wanted to do a meme run, you know. Imagine how hilarious it would be, he grinned as Rhea asked more questions about the reasons he made up after Pulsing that last hour a few times to get it all right.
The usually stoic man managed to hold back his snort as he saw Seteth in agony behind the amused Rhea. But as that was the final Pulse he had used that day, all of the answers had to be perfect for him to be able to have free reins over the students without any interruptions for the next few months. Afterwards, it would be up to them to train on their own so he could have an army oof mismatches later down the line…
Yep, now it was only a matter of time until he could stick Lorenz into that ridiculous Grappler outfit and hide Marianne inside the oversized Fortress Knight armor.
How hilarious would Claude look as a Priest, could you imagine? And how clueless Hilda would be at the Gremory class?
Byleth would hardly wait for them all to do their bests so he could at least have a few laughs in this endlessly repeating life of his.
