It was more than three hours after the last student had completed the physical part of their element test. Cam had been in conference after conference, meeting first with the teachers of each elemental discipline to hear their recommendations, and then with selected students who hovered on the line between passing and not. Those were always the hardest, the ones the teachers couldn't quite agree on and so the decision fell to him.

He wasn't surprised to find both Marah and Kapri in that group in each of their respective disciplines. In fact Marah was the only earth element whose promotion was in question, and out of all the questionable students she was the only one with a Ranger teacher on her side. Even Dustin's support, it seemed, was not enough to qualify her unconditionally.

Kapri's story was somewhat different. She had three air teachers in favor of passing her, and two against. If elemental promotion were done by majority vote, she would have earned her element easily. But elements were awarded to first years by consensus, not majority rule, and the two teachers who were against her were unwavering in their decision. They could not be convinced--and the three who supported her weren't any more willing to yield.

So Cam met with Marah, then with Kapri, with a second air student, and with one of the water students. It was rare that four students would be so disputed. Typically even one was a rarity. Teachers knew their students by the end of the year, and the tests were more of a formality than anything else. It wasn't that the results didn't matter... it was more that any good teacher could predict which students would perform well and which would not when the time for testing arrived.

It was a testament to the degree to which Lothor had shaken up the academy, Cam thought, that the teachers couldn't agree on whether or not to promote so many students. One of the teachers had actually told him that the reason she wouldn't pass Kapri was because the girl couldn't focus in a fight. Never mind the ability and the progress she displayed in other areas--if she couldn't defend herself she didn't pass.

Cam thought that was a terrible way to judge a first year student, and he said so.

One name he was pleased to see missing from the list of disputed students was Nena's. The committee of water teachers who had administered her physical test all agreed that she should be promoted out of the novitiate class. He had no doubt that she had passed the written test, given that she had already passed it twice before, which meant that she had finally earned the element she had been chasing for three years now.

Whether or not she had passed the second test he had given her remained to be seen.

The teacher conferences were dismissed as soon as he finished with them, and the non-residential students were sent home after he talked with the last one whose test results were in question. It had been a long couple of days, for him and all of them. But he still had one more evaluation to make, and he was going to do it tonight.

The way of the samurai is the way of human strength, Nena had written. It differs from the way of the ninja in that its power comes solely from within. Where a ninja must be at peace with the world around her, a samurai must be at peace with the world inside of her. A samurai draws on the power of human awareness, the awareness of the self, rather than the awareness of worldly elements.

Cam sighed. That wasn't what he had asked. She was trying too hard, looking for the "right" answer. All he wanted was a little personal introspection on her part, some insight into who she was now and how it compared to who she had been at the beginning of the year.

Cam started to grin. That's what he wanted. An honest answer; that was all he asked.

It's also built my confidence, she continued. It's given me a wider perspective on the history of martial arts training, and that's something that's helped me in samurai and ninja studies alike. They aren't independent disciplines. They're related philosophies, each with its own focus and application.

Cam's eyes narrowed, and his smile vanished. What was so hard about it? Was there something about the word "you" that had been unclear? He didn't need her to recite everything he had taught her back to him. She was his only samurai student; he knew perfectly well which parts of it she understood and which she was still struggling with. He just wanted to know how she felt about it.

He flipped through the rest of her test, exasperated at the string of too-perfect answers. She might as well have been presenting a lecture on her discipline for people who had never heard of it before. Every once in a while, some snide remark about free time or social integration would slip in, but for the most part she seemed to be more interested in impressing her nonexistent audience than in being herself.

He tossed the papers down on the table and got to his feet, ready to go ask her what she had been thinking. He hesitated, then, remembering her utter focus during the weapons drills. She had worked harder than anyone else the last two days, doing his tests on top of her water element practice, and confronting her now would be both unfair and unproductive. If she couldn't answer the question in writing, how could he expect her to be any less defensive when he put her on the spot?

Her element. That was what she needed right now. That was what she had earned, he reminded himself, and that would mean more to her than the results of her samurai test anyway. The other students wouldn't find out how they had done until later, but Nena had waited long enough already.

Cam left his office and headed for the holographic entryway. The teacher conferences might have officially ended, but he'd be surprised if the teachers were actually gone. Testing week was one of the most intense experiences anyone at the academy went through, for the teachers no less than the students. Most students didn't realize that the teachers were tested too--just in a different way.

As he'd suspected, four of the five water teachers were still gathered by the pool outside the holographic entryway when he arrived. Tori was among them. Her presence, and Dustin's in his own discipline, was unusual in a group that tended to involve only the more experienced teachers.

"Hey, Cam." She was the first to greet him as he joined them by the edge of the water. "Need more information?"

"No, I'm done with the student evaluations." He glanced around at the assembled teachers, all of whom he had known for years. In fact, Tori was both his most recent and closest friend here. "Do you have the element badges with you?"

"I do," Chandra offered, after a brief pause. "Here."

"Did you pass our disputed student?" Tori asked curiously.

"This isn't for him," Cam answered, accepting the badge from Chandra.

"Going to make yourself an honorary water ninja?" Tori teased.

He gave her a look. "You know, it wasn't so long ago that you were falling in this pool instead of walking on it."

"Don't hate me because I have attitude," she replied impertinently. She gave him a little smirk as she said it, and he tried not to smile back. They were all like that, all the former Rangers... he just got it from Hunter more because he was around him the most.

"I try to overlook it," he said, and wouldn't that make Hunter laugh. Hunter, who claimed Cam had more attitude than all of them put together.

It made Tori laugh too. "Nothing annoys us more than seeing ourselves in someone else," she informed him, obviously quoting from one of her classes. But was it one of the classes she taught or one of the classes she was taking, Cam wondered?

He was still pondering her words as he made his way back to the main academy building. Tori did have an attitude, and it was what made her a Ranger when she'd barely been allowed to stay on as a student at the academy. Nena, too, had some of that same attitude: the wit, the intelligence, the ability to see through things and turn people on their head just by understanding them.

But Nena tried to suppress that attitude, tried to keep it under wraps, hidden beneath a veneer of proper, obedient, carbon copy model student behavior. Just as he'd felt he had to in order to win his father's approval. Maybe that was why he fought so hard for her... and why her test answers had annoyed him more than they should.

She wasn't in the dining hall, but he found her on the second try in the student lounge just outside the water element classrooms. There were two other students there as well, but she wasn't participating in their conversation. She was sprawled out on the couch, one leg hanging off the side and a book held up over her head. Her eyes flicked toward the door when he appeared in it, and she lowered the book in surprise.

Cam tilted his head back the way he'd come. She looked around, like she'd lost her bookmark somewhere, and finally just tossed the book on the table and got up to follow him. Her movement attracted the other students' attention, but though they looked as startled to see him as she had they didn't offer a word of greeting or inquiry.

Cam didn't speak until they were out of earshot of the lounge. "I know it's been a long day," he began. "Would you mind stepping outside for a moment?"

"No, it's fine," she said immediately, but she sounded nervous and he supposed she couldn't blame her. For all she knew, her test results had been disputed and he was here to interview her the way he had the others.

"It's not about your test," he said over his shoulder, as they made their way toward the door. Which wasn't strictly true, but at least it wasn't anything negative--not about the test she was thinking of.

When they got outside he led the way down one of the side paths toward a meditation gazebo. They were only about halfway here when he said conversationally, "Actually, I lied. It is about your test."

He came to a halt, pulling the element badge out of his teaching robes and holding it up for her to see. "You passed," Cam said simply.

Nena looked torn between disbelief and hope. "Are you serious?"

For once, he didn't give a question like that the kind of sarcastic reply it deserved. She had every reason to be skeptical. But she also had a water element, and he reached out to pluck the school symbol off of the front of her training uniform.

"You won't be needing this," Cam told her, pocketing the generic Wind Academy badge. "You have a new one now."

Nena took the metal disc slowly, looking from it to him and back again and she held it up. The blue dolphin tail glinted in the light, the Wind Academy's symbol of a trained water ninja. She ran her thumb across the surface, a smile gracing her expression at last.

"I wasn't sure I would ever get this," she said at last. She didn't look up at him right away, taking the time to attach the new badge to the top corner of her training uniform.

"What made this year different?" Cam asked casually, turning away to continue his walk down the path. Just because he'd decided not to "confront" her didn't mean he couldn't steer the conversation.

Nena fell into step beside him without protest. "It was the samurai training." She didn't have to think about it and she didn't sound self-conscious about it, which amused him after the careful thought she must have put into her written test.

"It made me..." She trailed off, then started again. "I was good at it without studying," she said. "I mean, I did study, but there were parts of it that I just learned, I just figured out--parts of it that came naturally. It was good to be good at something for a change. And it made me realize that maybe there was more to ninja training than just studying, too."

"Training... any kind of training," Cam amended, "has as much to do with confidence as it does with skill."

"Yeah." He could see Nena nod out of the corner of his eye. "That's what I didn't have. I know a lot of my teachers thought that being a terrible ninja destroyed my self-confidence, but it didn't." He could hear the rueful note in her voice, but she kept going. "I didn't have any confidence to begin with. Samurai training changed that."

"Why did you have confidence in your samurai skills when you didn't have any in your ninja skills?" Cam wanted to know.

She hesitated this time, and she did sound a little self-conscious now when she answered. "Because you did. I've never... well, don't take this the wrong way, Sensei. But I don't ever remember someone believing in me before. I mean, it's not like I have a terrible life or anything, but..."

She didn't have any family. No parents, no siblings, just a series of foster homes and one failed attempt at higher education on state sponsorship. The academy had recruited her from the seasonal tourist ship where she'd worked three years ago, and she hadn't even bothered to say goodbye. She had told them she didn't have anyone to say goodbye to.

When Lothor abducted all of the ninja students and imprisoned them aboard his ship for an entire year, Nena had been the only one to slip into her old life like she had never left. Because as far as anyone knew, she was just another drifter, another anonymous sometimes-employed minimum-wage worker who for once wasn't collecting government aid. Her disappearance had caused no ripples because the only people who would know she was missing were at the academy.

"I understand," Cam said, when she didn't seem inclined to continue.

"It's just that you telling me I had this ability really mattered," Nena insisted. "I want you to know that. It made a huge difference to me. This--" She tapped the badge on her uniform, fingernail clicking softly against the metal. "This is because of you."

No, it wasn't, but Cam let that slide for a moment. "So what does the way of the samurai mean to you?" he asked quietly, keeping his eyes on the view from the edge of the gazebo.

"It means a second chance," she answered. "Or maybe even the first. Not the first chance I've had... but the first one I've taken. And once you've taken one chance..." He could hear the smile in her voice as she trailed off.

"Going to become a risk-taker now?" he suggested dryly.

"Now that I have something to risk?" she countered. "Yeah. Maybe I am."

He smiled. There was the attitude.

Cam turned to her, his gaze flicking to the element on her uniform and then back to her face. "That's not because of me," he told her. "It's because of you."

He reached into his teaching robes and drew out a second badge, this one emblazoned with an eight-pointed star. "And so is this," he said, holding it out to her.

She just looked at it for a long moment, then lifted her eyes to his. "I don't want anything I didn't earn, Sensei."

He didn't lower his hand. "Your written test sucked, Nena. You told me everything I taught you, which isn't even close to what I asked. I wanted you to teach me something. The way you did just now."

She gave him a skeptical look. "So I failed, but you're going to pass me anyway? No thank you."

"Not every test comes on a sheet of paper," he reminded her. "I don't pass students that didn't earn it."

Nena stared at him. "That's my written test," she said finally. "What about the physical?"

If she didn't take the badge soon, he was going to put it on her uniform himself. "You can't seriously think you failed the physical test," he said, somewhat impatiently. "I hope you'll think about teaching a weapons' class next year. Novice ninja, too: we have a shortage of compassionate first year teachers right now."

She didn't stop staring at him. Cam raised his eyebrows at her. "You know, false modesty is a particularly annoying vice. Get anymore self-deprecating and I'm going to re-enroll you as a novitiate just to teach you a lesson."

Nena snatched the samurai badge out of his hand with a less than flattering grimace. "What do you want me to do," she demanded, "wear both of them?"

"Yes," Cam agreed, trying not to sound too smug. "That's how they do it in Japan. Element on your chest, training style on your shoulder. For most people the training style is ninja, so they wear the badge of their academy. For you, your training style is samurai."

She considered the badge for another long moment, then reached up and removed her dolphin symbol. She put the samurai badge in its place. She proceeded to take the school badge off of her shoulder and replace it with her water element. "I'd rather wear it like this," she said calmly.

Cam shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said, amused by her defiance.

He really had gotten used to the Rangers' audacity, hadn't he. Now he was looking for it. He almost shook his head at himself.

"So tell me what your friend said," Nena said abruptly.

He gave her a puzzled look.

"During the holidays," she prompted him. "I tried to leave the academy, and you wouldn't let me. You said a friend gave you some advice you should have followed, but you wouldn't tell me what it was unless I finished out the year at the academy. I did," she added, as though he might not have noticed. "Now it's your turn."

He couldn't help it. He laughed. He hadn't forgotten, but the story was going to sound all the more implausible in light of what she had confessed to him.

"The 'friend' was Hunter," he said. She nodded, like she had expected that. "He told me not to teach."

Nena just stared at him. "What?" she managed at last.

"He told me not to teach," Cam repeated, perfectly aware of the irony. He should have listened to Hunter--but if he had, Nena wouldn't still be at the academy today.

"He told me it wasn't what I wanted," he offered, taking pity on her shocked expression. "To live in my dad's shadow, to go back to the world I'd lived on the outside of just to prove I could do it... and do it better than anyone else. I think I took the head teaching job in revenge," he admitted. "For all those years when my dad wouldn't even let me train."

She didn't answer right away. He wondered what she was thinking, but it was only the truth. That was what he'd asked of her, and that was what he was giving her in return. He hoped it didn't make him seem less in her eyes.

"Wow," Nena breathed finally. "So this isn't what you want to do at all."

"Teach at a ninja academy?" His mouth quirked upward. "No, I guess not. I thought it was... All my life, I wanted to be a ninja when I grew up. But I guess what we want isn't always what we need."

Nena's scrutiny was a little bit disconcerting, as though she'd heard more in his words than he had said. "What do you need, Sensei?"

He held her gaze evenly, but he didn't have an answer for that. "I'll let you know when I find it," he said at last.

She was smiling now. "Your word as a samurai?"

He didn't miss the insinuation. "I told you it was more valuable than my word as a teacher."

Nena shook her head slowly. "No, Sensei. I don't think it is." She paused--to make sure he understood, he thought. "Your word as a teacher would be enough for me."

"Then you have it." That meant a lot to him, even if he didn't tell her. "Keep in touch, Nena."

Her smile brightened. "Same to you, Sensei Cam."

He nodded. It was past time to go, and he took a single step away from the gazebo. Her voice stopped him before he could take another.

"Cam?" It was the first time she had called him only by his name. "If you're this good at something you don't even want to do," she said, her voice laced with some secret amusement, "I pity the competition when you find whatever it is you do want to do."

He turned just enough that she could see him smile before he headed back up the path.