(BL) Hunting The Field Guide - Chapter 343

Chapter 343: Not perfect, but still working
Two days passed, and it was like everyone in the higher up positions in the Guild were walking on pins and needles. Hill was still on guard duty, Rhys was managing decently on his own, with some help from Pamela and now Kellen since he had taken over for him once, and Brent was getting restless.

During this time, Captain Sergei had sent Kellen an email with a list of all of the Gates that they needed to raid soon, and what they needed in terms of Class and abilities. While most of his students weren’t quite ready, that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate it. When Brent saw that email, his eyes had lit up from within, and Kellen knew it was time.

Brent needed to go back to the front lines and get this energy worked out of him soon, or else he might break down. He was holding up, and a great support to the Guild right now, but he needed to work out his…kinks.

Casper was doing…okay. He was doing okay. Pamela had gotten him set up with someone to talk to, and had blatantly lied to him and told him that she wasn’t a therapist, and just a good family friend. It terrified Kellen that Casper believed her, and how easily she did it. With her eyes pink all the time like Rhys, and her powers still unknown, he had no idea what she could do.

But, given what he’d seen, it was clear that manipulation clearly had a role to play, since Casper wasn’t an idiot. That, or he just wanted to believe her.

Gunther? Well, he had stopped destroying his room. It had taken one more day after Kellen’s visit, but he had tempered his anger somewhat. Hill had gotten him some workout equipment, and that seemed to help. He also hadn’t turned away the Guides that had been sent to help him, but he wouldn’t do anything beyond basic guiding.

Kellen respected that, and had Hill report everything back to him when it came to the Guides. Hill completely understood, even if it hurt her that she did. Kellen didn’t blame her, and he would have treated anyone who had gone through a serious shock like Gunther in the same way. If it had been Hill, Taylor, hell, even Gwen.

Espers in shock were dangers to not just themselves, but everyone else around them. Surging came from serious mental shifts, and lack of guiding. Usually those two things went hand in hand, and Kellen had seen too many nice Espers lash out at Guides when in unstable conditions to take any chances.

Gunther had refused to see any therapists, but it was only two days later. Kellen held hope that the man would see that he would need to speak to someone, anyone, and Kellen also knew that that chance lay with Rhys.

Rhys had his second session with a therapist within those two days. The unfortunate, or fortunate thing about Rhys’ powers was that he couldn’t predict about his own personal life that well, and couldn’t predict what happened to those around him often either. So he wasn’t able to tell if the therapist was going to be a good fit, at least not right away. He had been rather nervous after his first visit, and even more so after his second. He was like a beast, waiting for the trap to be sprung.

Kellen couldn’t say that was unusual. He had felt the same way when he’d first gone to therapy. Even if he had known that he needed it, and had viewed it as a tool to help himself overcome roadblocks he had set for himself, he still felt like someone was going to jump out at him as soon as he began speaking.

He wasn’t going to tell Rhys it was much more subtle then he was expecting. If he got along with his therapist, there was a chance that they could talk as if they were friends, but the way a good therapist pulled the threads loose slowly, delicately given the person, was a skill. With Rhys and Gunther’s backgrounds, any therapist would have their work cut out for them, and Kellen hoped that Rhys got the right therapist for him on the first try.

Kellen hadn’t, but Rhys and Gunther? They both needed the right one, right away.

Rhys being so nervous after his second session worried Kellen, but the two of them had spoken about it after, and Rhys was uneasy, but only because he was so cautious that the therapist was going to ambush him.

Kellen thought it was very much like him that he thought a regular human was going to ambush him, but then again, maybe his past was worse than any monster he’d ever faced before. He didn’t speak on it much, but Kellen had a feeling it was more than just what he’d said.

Gunther may have been the other side of the coin when compared to the decision Rhys had made. One had embraced what had happened to them, while the other had embraced the abuser. Kellen was no expert on child abuse, it wasn’t something he felt that he had experienced, but he did know it left a lasting impression.

Some of the education that Guides got was related to mental health, but Kellen felt that Field Guides needed more education when it came to it. Unlike Guides who worked in cities, Field Guides came into contact with the dirtiest, rawest forms that some Espers came back in. Guides were expected to put them back together, to make them human again after fighting with monsters that hadn’t existed on this Earth before now.

That would change a person. Make no mistake, that wasn’t to say that Guides who worked in the city didn’t deal with that. Some Espers managed to hold themselves together until they got to their favourite Guides here, and found comfort in their powers and arms.

Really, Kellen just thought that the whole program needed to be revamped. Kellen didn’t think he was someone who slipped through the cracks, but he felt that he would have benefitted from more knowledge, and probably would have gotten into therapy sooner if it had been expressed that it was something healthy to do.

The client confidentiality certainly helped with that. Kellen didn’t have to worry that his therapist, who was on the front lines, would rat him out unless he was considered a danger to himself. So far that hadn’t been the case, and that was something that his therapist had been very upfront about before their sessions began.

Kellen made sure that the therapists, all of them, that he had lined up, and the ones on employ at the Guild, also had the same standard. He didn’t know what was normal for therapists, but he took his Guild member’s health very seriously. A healthy mind, and a healthy body, was very important for everyone.

Either way, it had been on his mind before everything came to a head with Gunther. It was also something he was looking into before he sent some of the Field Guides to the front lines for their first ‘introduction’ to a gate. Only a few had ever seen a gate in person before, and he wanted them to have as many tools as possible to make the first gate experience not living hell. He didn’t want to scare them away, and wanted most of the Field Guides to stick with the training.

Did he know how many would? He had no clue. All he could remember were the stats that his Field Guide school had quoted. Of maybe 20 kids that they trained, 4 would die from mistakes made in a gate, six would continue on as Field Guides, and the remaining ten would drop out after facing the reality that was within gates.

Kellen hoped that his kids had higher stats. Not in the death category, of course. He wanted to make sure that they were injuries, not deaths. Everyone could come back from an injury, even if they were a little changed.

Of course, Brent was going to be at the helm of the group that went. Kellen had all but promised him that, and Brent was growing more confident with managing the kids by the day. It helped that he didn’t have much of a choice, given all that was happening in the Guild, and that had forced him to grow.

Get more confident.

It was a relief, honestly, to have someone who he could rely on for this. Each day they moved closer to the reality that the Field Guides had almost completed the first half of the training that he wanted them to have, at least the first class. The second class was a little slower, but they were still doing great. It was a good sign, and no one had dropped out since the incident with the Guides.

Kellen was proud of the progress everyone was making, and also grateful that he had so many people who were helping him out. Kellen didn’t think he’d have so many people to fall back on, but yet here he was, his Dad helping him manage the Guiding Division while Casper was on leave, Brent stepping up and taking on some responsibility, and his Mom helping Rhys deal with the dimwit Espers who ‘ran’ the city.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was working. That was all Kellen could ask for.