"-- when the Hypersphere collapses..." Svyeta Perunova held her marker in an overhand grip with her right hand as the left wielded an eraser, each moving in concert as her mandala-like diagram kept changing and shifting throughout her seminar. At least a third of the mages in the audience had jaws slack and eyes wide as their minds exploded to life, while quite a few either winced uncomfortably from how foreign the paradigm seemed (most of the Awakened Mages present, save for the few members of House Thig throwing each other the horns and pointing like excited children seeing Mickey Mouse for the first time). The hardcore and itinerant Sorcerologists alike sketched and typed dryly, too caught up in the word and the symbol to put together the meat of her words. "... the ensuing vacuum creates a vector for the water to flow into Realspace and the heat to flow out. And there you have it: a look under the hood of your average ice spell!"
One member of the audience, seated in the far back row, hadn't heard a word she said. His eyes were simple scrying orbs, watching her movement and writing poetry about the way her elbows bent, the way her ass likely looked behind her knee-length blue cardigan, how the leather of her gladiator sandals brushed against her ankle, how her camisole clung to small, perky breasts with no bra between skin and silk, even though it was loose and cut high enough to maintain her modesty. His teeth clenched hard, and his neck nearly quaked from the tension he forced into it. His right ankle, still newly set in a brace after a freak accident broke his tibia, throbbed from his on-foot trek from Old Temple to New Haven, assured that his suffering would show the depths of his seven-year-long devotion to her. His bright green hair's spikes wilted under his perspiration, hair gel and dye running down the back of his neck. A faded Eagles of Death Metal tee clung uncomfortably to his chest, holes eating at the collar and at the sleeves. As if to check, he ran his palm over the nametag reading "Rhenn" that he wrote extra-large, while fidgeting with the program that Zofie, the Rob-Zombie-Groupie-looking animator, had given him in his other hand, already wrecked from sweat.
"Any questions?" Svyeta turned to face the crowd and clapped her hands together once, letting her storm-bright green eyes scan across the assembled group, wide and soft. Rhenn's hand shot up high as he showed his teeth, an attempt at a grin that displayed as a rictus from the manic tension that coursed through him. For a moment, for a faint, instantly-regretted moment, Svyeta glanced up to see Rhenn in his sweaty, addle-brained glory, waving his hand like the inflatable tube man at a car sales lot. She couldn't whip her eyes away from him fast enough as she swallowed and wiped her brow, instead picking upon a slouching, smarmy, yet fiercely-engaged House Thiggian doing his best Fonzie sprawl over her stadium seat.
"So... okay, by that mechanic, then a Fire spell would just work in reverse; taking out the moisture and raising the heat to the point of combustion. If you don't mind me getting all Seinfeld for a moment, and I apologize to yuz guys for the reference, but--" He sat up enough to shrub both hands and waggle his shoulders, his voice going high and in the back of his nasal cavity. "'What's the deal with fireballs'?"
Rhenn's grin went to a grimace as he glared down toward the Hermetic, a pall sinking around the lab tech in time with his hand's drop. He didn't hear a bit of Svyeta's explanation, not over the sound of his own pulse in his ears and his breath quivering in his throat from his rage. He gripped his crutch, the clenched teeth beginning to grit against each other as he waited for the Q and A to finish. Each query after the first sounded as if it originated underwater, and each answer Svyeta gave became more grating, another annoying divergence from his chance to reunite with her. By the time the applause started, Rhenn's body ached from sheer self-exhaustion, kept awake only from the cocktail of energy drinks, amphetamine, oxycodone and dry mouth. As the audience filed out, he sat in place, utter dejection going from the top of his head and down to his braced foot, still grinding and stinging in his stillness. He waited still, even as Svyeta convened with a stately, white-robed draenei shaman and a perky, yet stern human woman in a tweed pencil-skirt and jacket. He waited as the janitorial staff swept at the aisles and begrudgingly navigated around him as he half-heartedly lifted his crutch as the reason he stayed behind. As she took her leave through the side exit to the lecture hall, he cursed in the back of his throat, snorting hot snarls through his nose as he hobbled up on his crutches and angled himself toward the door.
The draenei and smartly-dressed agent both dispersed toward their respective parts of town, the former to Old Temple and the latter to the West End, leaving Svyeta on her lonesome on the casually-populated street. She took a slow breath as she started to bundle her white-streaked blue hair into a ponytail at the back of her head, grazing her fingers against the intricate talisman scarred into the back of her neck. She seemed hardly surprised to see Rhenn once more, his grin even more haphazardly tacked on as his eyes held their scowl from his self-torturing ordeal, gray eyes wild under bleached brows. She set one hand on her hip as the other lazily lifted to wave, turning her shoulder toward him in a subtle show of defensive body language. Her smile went tight, too high on her mouth to be genuine, while her eyes stayed low, sleepy, and near unreadable to give him not a single mote of her carefully-crafted energy.
"Wow, hey! Svyeta! That was a great seminar, huh!" Rhenn's tone of voice betrayed far too much irritation, showing his disregard for her work as he kept loping forward on his crutches, as if angling for a hug that seemed inevitable in his delusion. It wasn't until she circled to the side that he changed his tract, still holding his rage behind his smile as he planted himself and dipped his head concessively. "You wanna go grab a corndog or something?"
"Ughm..." Svyeta winced in a way that showed all of her teeth and scrunched her nose as she shook her head, her back hand pointing down the street as her front hand stayed at her hip, leaving her elbow pointed toward him. "I need to get going back home. I have a cat whose probably knocked everything off my desk and--"
"Oh, still leave all your **** out, huh?" His words came out too sharp for how he had intended them, yet his expression still seemed hopeful, even as he watched the distance between them increase as she backpedaled. He loped forward once on his crutches to follow her, calling out as she kept scooting away. "I'm working on getting that story you showed me on film!!"
"By ****, I rrreally hope you're kidding! That story was, is, and always will be baby****! Please don't... just don't put my name anywhere near it!" Svyeta finally broke from her protocol as enough distance elapsed between them for her to turn her back to him and start her stalk away, turning swiftly down the busying street of pubs and restaurants to put a crowd between her and the living mistake of her past. "Ugh!"
Rhenn balanced in place as Svyeta ran off, shaking from both the pain that wracked his body and the sledgehammer blow to his ego, his face caught between a sneer and a sob before he broke. "Urrrrrugh!!!" He threw his crutches to the ground and tumbled to the pavement, roaring through his teeth as he wielded one crutch like a club and beat impotently at the concrete. "**** you, bitch! **** you!! **** you!!"
He hardly noticed the approaching click of skull-charms dangling from a leather anklet approaching from behind, or the sound of dainty, yet dense teeth pulling chunks off of a freshly-cooked cow's heart approaching from behind him. It took Rhenn a moment to piece together the sharp, gravelly South Carolinian twang, yet it hit like a truck.
"Not if you paid me to give you a handjob with a boxing glove on the end of a twenny foot pole, y' dingleberry." Zofie's bright pink dreads formed a cloak around her shoulders as she crouched over Rhenn, bits of meat-juice dripping onto his cheek as she tore off another bite. "If I have this right, you put a lot of people out of work and took a **** on their names just to impress that girl what just ran away from you like you were a bad fart in an elevator."
"God... ****in'..." Rhenn flailed his arm backward, limply, to swat her away from him, yet he only accomplished her sidestepping to crouch above his head, still gnawing on the beef heart and leaving the juices to spill onto his face. "You--I bet you ****in' tricked her, you stupid pink bitch! I bet you got into her head and turned her against m--"
"Dude, I have never seen that girl in my life. All I'm doin' here is impressin' a point that y'better take your ass down to the studio and hang it the **** up, since your whole reason for bein' there is done gone and..." She raised up on tiptoe as she looked to the horizon, scrunching her nose in a manner that put up the illusion of harmlessness, of a puckish little lass to the passers-by, like the coyote acting the fool before snapping its prey's neck. "... apparently puked on her way to git away from whatever you've made of yourself. It ain't my faith, but sir, this is a Come to Jesus moment if you ever had one."
Rhenn's lips stayed taut as he sulked, scowling into the distance, turning his eyes abruptly away from Zofie's barefoot stroll toward the nearest Watch officer to escort him back to Old Temple.
