- "Sure thing." - He replied, somewhat absent-mindedly, to
Aelita's farewell. His attention was still focused on the mess that unfolded in front of his eyes, causing his wincing to turn into a full-fledged grimace. As the girl departed, he followed suit, going out through a different exit before anyone else would come into the practice grounds.
By this point, his afternoon class was inching ever closer - mathematics, with Proctor Gamble, if it could be believed - and he'd need to get his supplies, and maybe some lunch before he headed there. It took him a couple of hours before he was standing in the classroom, fully ready.
As for the class itself, it would have been a rather bland, run-off-the-mill affair, were it not for the ending when Gamble loudly announced he would be absent from the Academy during the coming week, starting that evening. He did not look pleased, and those in the front row would easily have heard him mutter something about "retirement that never came", but for Ivan, his mind was immediately taken somewhere else.
A few weeks before, in a visit to Gamble's office, he had managed to discretely swipe a copy of the chamber's key. While he obviously couldn't have done much with Gamble around, he had ever since then waited for an opportunity to present itself, whereby he could use the key to ransack the proctor's place for anything of value.
Now that opportunity had presented itself.
It was so that, a few hours later while most of the Academy was enjoying dinner, he stealthily made his way over to Gamble's scriptorium. By that point the Proctor would be gone and, with everyone else otherwise distracted, he could sneak in and make out with whatever valuables Gamble wouldn’t miss.
In his mind, apart from all the midterm solutions until the end of the year, the one thing he would
really like to get his hands on would be Gamble’s liquor cabinet. With the proctor being one of the oldest, more seasoned
dreadlords at the Academy, many former students and colleagues over the years had gifted him a panoply of alcohol ranging from whisky to wine and liquor, that the old Proctor had stored in a cabinet in his office.
And which Ivan couldn’t wait to get his hands on.
So absorbed was he in his daydreams about alcohol that he failed to notice the other initiate roaming the dark, deserted halls. Indeed, he was so focused on all the alcohol he would be ransacking out of Gamble’s place that, after he bumped into the girl, all he could manage was:
- "Chianti girl!" - After he recognized Aelita. At once, a series of feelings washed over him: surprise gave way to incredulity that someone else would be roaming around that place at that exact time, which in turn was replaced by annoyance and anger at the prospect that the girl could derail his plans, before finally setting into
panic.
A panic which took hold of him when he reached out to his pocket and failed to find the key to Gamble’s office there. He searched frantically for a second before he found it… right by the feet of his colleague. His eyes widened and an expression of panic - which he tried, and failed, to contain - washed over his face.
Oh, no.
