Completed Wisdom for the Next Generation

“Said he’d close his eyes, lady.” Ysobel huffed. “Just get on with it, will ya? Got places to be, people to see.” She rolled her eyes once again, though this time she worried they would get stuck. Had they not kept her sedated for four whole days, she may have been able to curb her incessant need to pester any poor soul in her presence. The woman’s sharp stare didn’t deter her. “Besides…it ain’t like he’s got eyes for me, you know. He’s a good boy, aren’t ya Greg?”

Finally, someone had acknowledged the tragedy that was her wrists stuck in some stupid metal cuffs. “Oh come on, it doesn’t hurt that bad. You would know. Just a little jolt to wake you up!” She copied his smirk, offering a small shrug. “The faster she gets me out, the more likely she will remain in one piece when she does.”

Her eyes widened as he began to explain his ominous mentioning of a ‘next time’. “Huh? There’s more of ‘em?” The smirk turned into a genuine smile. “And we, as in you and me…just the two of us…we are gonna take them all down? Just us?” There was a squeal of excitement before she took a moment to calm herself. Cool. Calm. Collected. "It will be fun, can't wait."

She definitely looked very calm, and not at all like she was about to explode.

“So when are they sending us out? Reckon we got enough time to…I don’t know…get ice cream or something?”
 
Good boy? Greg? The girl had gone on one mission with him and all of a sudden she seemed awful cozy with him. An amused smirk crossed his lips at her assurances towards the nurse. "A good boy I'm not, but I guess you wouldn't know that. I don't intend to sneak any peeks though, you're right." Yoh was a little young to be ogling, plus even he wasn't the type to eye ladies up from a hospital bed.

Evidently though, whatever Ysobel had been trying to do by jaw-jacking the nurse had worked to an extent, as she swayed over and worked a strange tool over the magic restraining cuffs around her wrists, releasing her. Gaage was pretty sure it was less out of fear over Yoh's threats and more that she was sick of hearing her complain though.

"Here then, there are some clothes from your room on the chair over there, get dressed."

Gaage snickered, spinning around to face the wall so she could disrobe and dress herself without prying eyes. She was cute, if they were in the same class and Gaage wasn't dating a violent shadow bender, Eberwhit would definitely be trying to hit that. As it stood now? She was a kid. A fun kid and one Gaage definitely had a soft spot growing for, but a kid nonetheless.

"Well there'll be other teams out there too, but we get the big stuff. Pretty nice, huh? Teaming up with you worked out well, scoring a nice bit of action out in the field like this. Definitely gonna be fun."

By the time she'd finished dressing, she'd asked about how much time they had, and Gaage clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth before spinning to face her again. "Probably a day or two. I assume the Proctors will want to get you up to speed and have you knock out some classwork first." A small pause, and Gaage raised an eyebrow. "The fuck is ice-cream?"
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Ysobel
“See?” Ysobel grinned proudly as the nurse finally came over to remove the cuffs. “Nothing to worry about. He's a good boy.” She fought the urge to give the woman the smallest of shocks for having the audacity to cuff her in the first place, but maybe Gaage was right. Maybe she was just a little dangerous when she was less-than-fully-conscious. She was only doing her job.

“Could you use the fuzzy cuffs next time, at least?” She mumbled, rubbing at the marks left on her wrists as she made her way over to the chair and began undressing. Really, their methods of protection against the tiny girl were overkill and only served to fill her with that same energy she fought to contain.

She blew a light gust of air in Gaage's direction. “No peeking, my boyfriend would be very upset with you.” She reminded the man who faced away from her with a quiet snort as she laughed.

She stared at her reflection in the window in front of her after she had finished dressing, patting down the front of her tunic with a pleased sigh. “You can turn back around now, I’m decent.” She hurried back over to the cot just as he questioned her. “Ice cream?” She chuckled, before realizing he was serious. “You have never had ice cream?”

One of the few memories Ysobel still had from her life before the academy included her mother making ice cream for her and her siblings with ingredients from their farm. “I guess…it is frozen…cream? But not too frozen. And there are flavors like chocolate, vanilla, even some people mash berries in it..." She droned on about the process of making ice cream for a few minutes before stopping herself. "Gaage, you're not serious, right? Did you not have a childhood?”
 
Ysobel had what Gaage liked to call "Shaky-Tongue". In that when she was nervous or anxious, she tended to start talking... and not stop. Now, Eberwhit wasn't sure what she was anxious about, but in the 40 seconds or so he turned away from her, she called him a good boy (again), asked to be cuffed up with an item usually saved for particularly kinky nights in bed, and threatened him with the wrath of a boyfriend that Gaage was convinced didn't exist.

He didn't say a word about it though, and the nurse was too used to treating teenagers that it didn't faze her a bit. When she finally did call for him to turn around once again though, he couldn't resist the urge to prod her a little, smiling and leaning forward in his seat. "If your goal was to distract me by talking until your tongue falls off, I'd say you came pretty close." A sharp snicker left his throat as she suddenly took on a more serious expression.

"Frozen but not too frozen? The fuck does that even mean?" Gaage knew what cream was obviously, but why would you eat straight cream, even if it were frozen? That just seemed gross, but she went even further than that with talk of mashing berries and different flavors.

The redhead knew Ysobel didn't mean to insult him, but the ghastly expression on her face as she asked if he'd not had a childhood really pissed him off. He was a freak, and he'd been treated as such. This Academy had been all he'd known for so long, that even if he had eaten this weird ass treat, he'd have been drooling and speaking gibberish when he did."

"Yoh, the moment my family realized I could turn people inside out with my mind, I got sent here. So no, I didn't. Not everybody is here by choice, you know."

Ysobel
 
“I don’t know. Do I look like a chef to you?” She snorted, laughing at his question about ice cream. “You don’t have to question everything. Some things are just good. Accept it and move on!” There was a small flinch from the pain in her side as she slipped on her shoes and continued on talking.

A drawn out silence followed Gaage’s response to her question. She had not intended to elicit such a reaction from him with her playful prodding, but it appeared she had struck something that upset him greatly. She, like many others, knew that even now some people were not awarded the choice to join or remain with their families. But unlike Gaage, she wasn’t turned in because her family was afraid of her.

“I’m-” For once, she didn’t know what to say. “Sorry Gaage. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Ysobel locked eyes with the ground as she apologized. Perhaps she was fortunate to have had seven years of a somewhat normal life before the events that led to her being enrolled, though it never felt that way. She felt so fortunate that she had little memory of that night, she never realized she had been taking much of her childhood experiences for granted.

"Well,” She only waited a moment before trying to lighten the mood with her inability to shut up. “I suppose there is no time limit on first experiences, so let us go get ice cream. I promise you’ll love it. Plus, if we are going to be partners again, we should get to know each other, right? Not to mention I am starviiiiing.”

She beckoned him to follow as she began walking towards the door, but was quickly stopped by the nurse who handed her an all too familiar glass vial full of pills. She counted them in her head. A new one had been added since her last dose. Unfortunate. “Come, we need to hurry if we are going to get there before they close up for the night.”


It was clear this bonding session was not optional.

If he didn't follow behind Ysobel, she was going to drag him along until they had made it to a tiny building within the Anir Square. The outside was quite plain with only the name of the establishment listed, but the inside was a gaudy mess of pastels. More distracting than the garish décor was the temperature. It was freezing.

Ysobel would not allow it to deter them, pulling Gaage over by his arm to a counter where an elderly woman waited for them to place their orders. "See? You can get just about anything." She pointed to a list of ingredients longer than either one of their class lists.

"Vanilla for me, what about you?" She pulled out a pouch full of coins as she waited for him to order.

Gaage Eberwhit
 
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The bonding session might not have been optional, but he didn't have to look happy about it. The looks he was getting for being dragged around by the hand of an underclasswoman were embarrassing enough, but then on top of that, she took him to a building that looked like it had been slapped with a giant washed-out rainbow. Gaage was more surprised he'd never noticed the gaudy fucking thing before than anything else.

The inside wasn't much better, although there was a weird sweet smell in the air that wasn't entirely displeasing. Eberwhit felt his nose twitch a little, and a small part of his frustration was substituted for curiosity, if not a fragile one. Most of the stuff up on the board of ingredients he hadn't heard of, but there were a few that were familiar.

Well, nothing ventured nothing gained...

"Uh... Chocolate is good, I guess?" He still wasn't entirely sure he understood, but Ysobel seemed ecstatic. "Sure you don't want me to pay? I have some extra on me, Yoh."
 
She would pretend not to notice the way Gaage tried to avoid attention as they walked- a strangely difficult task considering she wanted nothing more than to stare at him, too. Part of her even felt a little jealous that others got the opportunity to do so as they walked past. It was unfair they were allowed to watch as they passed by while she had to search ahead for the small building.

While Ysobel may have had her self-declared ‘brilliant’ moments, she could be shockingly unobservant when it came to the feelings of others.

Chocolate is good, I guess?

“Really? There are so many options and you choose something so plain?” She raised a brow, as though she hadn’t just ordered vanilla. “Suppose it just means we will have to come back and try the rest.” And spend more time together. Not that she was excited about it or anything. This bonding was strictly to ensure they were the best team for their next mission.

Wait, did he just say something?

She stared at him for a minute before realizing that he'd asked about paying. Tossing a handful of stray coins into the woman's hands, she shrugged and walked over to a table. “Consider it a birthday gift.” While her birthday was only about a week away (not that she was counting and had quietly celebrated it every year since she arrived at the academy), she figured birthdays were another experience he was lacking in and another goal for her to accomplish.
 
What did this girl want, anyways? He hadn't asked to be drug out here and made to order some strange desert that he'd never even heard of, and now she was going to nitpick him over flavor choice? Yoh was cute, in her own way, but she was a fuckin' weirdo if there ever was one. She'd been stealing looks at him the whole way here, too.

"Alright, brat. Don't push your luck too hard, I'm tryin' to be accommodating here." There was a little irritation in his tone, but he simply raised an eyebrow and stepped ahead of her to accept her vanilla cone before his could come out. "You get chocolate then, I'll try yours." It looked... odd. Like a big white clump piled onto the handle of a torch. Who the hell was in the market for this? It looked he was carrying around a damned snowball.

With all the caution of a man walking into an Orc's den, Gaage slowly stuck his tongue out, pressing it against the icy cold surface of the ice cream and gently running it upwards, scooping a bit into his mouth and closing his eyes with a thoughtful him.

"Mmm. Not bad, actually."

Licking his lips, he leaned in again and took a more complete bite out of the top, wrapping his lips around it and biting down. Okay, he was starting to see the appeal. Maybe.
 
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Reactions: Ysobel
Where the fuck did he think he was getting off in calling her a brat? Why was he so annoyed that she was trying to do something nice for him? Tightly crossed arms accompanied the scowl on her face. It wasn’t her fault that he managed to choose something so boring, but the audacity he had to take her cone?

They had been there no longer than five minutes and Gaage was already back to pushing her buttons as though they were still on that dumb cart.

“Hey!” She stood, slamming her hand on the table like a child who’s ice cream had been stolen by another…incredibly nice looking older boy. “You can’t take mine just because yours is shit.” She attempted to convey her displeasure, but she was briefly mesmerized by…whatever it was he was doing...

Whatever it was was making her feel sick. No. Not sick. Weird. Like she had a stomach full of butterflies. Yes! That was how Lumen phrased it. Butterflies in her stomach! A weird-good kind of feeling- not like one would expect had they eaten a bunch of bugs.

Gods he was hot.

“Fine.” She pushed past him and grabbed the chocolate cone. Ysobel despised chocolate, but she would suffer for her partner’s sake. Between hesitant licks, she dumped the contents of the glass vial onto the table and counted them out before placing one in her mouth and swallowing it with a large bite of the ice cream. Disgusting. She couldn’t tell which tasted worse, the ice cream or the foul medicine they forced her to take.

“So..” She shuddered as she forced another one down. “What do you do in your spare time? Got any hobbies?”
 
Hobbies?

She was kidding right? Gaage was halfway through another bite when she asked the question that gave him pause. Looking up at her, he raised a quizzical brow. She... didn't seem to be enjoying hers very much. Then again, it was... actually his he supposed. Maybe she didn't like that kind or something?

"My hobbies are working out, sleeping, and killing people Yoh, that's quite literally all I have time for. Not like they give us many days off to practice crochet, is it?" There was a little bitterness in his voice, but it wasn't so much because he wished he had more time and more that he knew there really wasn't anything besides killing that he was any good at. It was something that still gnawed at him from time to time.

She didn't need to know that though.

Between bites that it was painfully obvious she abhorred, Gaage reached out and snagged the chocolate cone, switching it for the vanilla he'd swiped. "Here. you look like you're gonna die if you take another lick and I don't need that on my conscience." Gaage offered a smirk and licked at the chocolate, finding it not too bad either.

Not something he'd go out of his way for, but he could see why she enjoyed it. "You did good out there. We keep our shit tight, we'll knock out the next line of missions in no time, bring down the whole ring."
 
“That's kind of boring.” She commented between the grimaces she displayed as she tried to eat the chocolate ice cream. She had, once again, not intended to insult him with her responses, but it may have come across that way. “You could just always sleep less.”

It wasn’t a healthy or practical suggestion given their situation, but it wasn’t impossible at all. “That’s what I do.” She shrugged. “I reckon I’m still shit at crochet, but there’s so much more time if you shave your sleeping down to, like, three hours.” She was goofy, but she was serious. “I’ve even read an entire book since I started cutting down half a year ago!”

She omitted the part where it was only one hundred pages. That was unrelated to her point.

“Hm?” Her brows raised as the cone was snatched from her hands and replaced with the one she’d ordered. “It’s just…I don’t like chocolate.” She chuckled, tossing back one of the last pills. “They used to mix these stupid things in with chocolates. They taste like peppercorns and cherry. Disgusting. It left a bit of a foul taste.”

She licked the vanilla cone. He licked the chocolate one.

Oh my gosh. This is like…a kiss! An indirect kiss! MY FIRST KISS EVER!

There was no attempt to hide how wide her eyes were, how pink her face was, or the fact that she was staring at him for a little way too long. By the time she’d noticed, he was already talking about something else. Something about their next mission. OH WHO CARES? She had a KISS!

Completely ignoring whatever he had said, she continued to press him for details of his life. “So we’ve established that you have no hobbies and poor time management skills, yeah?” There was a loud crunch as she bit the cone. “You’re graduating, right? What are your plans after that?”
 
Gaage's eyes fixed on the pill as it went into her mouth, his own face twitching a bit. Not a fan of medication, didn't like how it made him feel one bit. If Ysobel was okay with taking it though, more power to her. "Yeah, well I happen to like sleep. Cutting down on it isn't in my plans." He deadpanned and took another mouthful of ice-cream.

The rashness of such a lifestyle wasn't lost on Eberwhit either. Usually he wouldn't give a shit, but he was supposed to go out in the field with her again soon. That meant if she got sleepy in the middle of a mission it could be his ass.

Leaning back against one of the gaudily colored walls, Gaage followed her lead and took a large bite out of his cone, his other arm crossing under the one held at his mouth. "You're about to be going out a lot more in the coming days. You'd better get a fair amount of rest. I don't want you falling asleep on me when I need you."

He didn't know if she was listening or not. She just stood there, staring at him with eyes as big as dinner plates. What the hell was going on with this girl? He could have sworn she wasn't this spacey before she'd gotten hurt. Gaage shrugged, a brow still quirked up as he finished his cone and dusted his hands. "I have no idea what I'm doing that far from now. I like to live in the moment. It'd ruin the experience if I tried to path it all out ahead of time."
 
"Suit yourself." She shrugged, almost reaching the bottom of the cone already while he had only just taken his first bite. "It just seems like a waste of time, but to each their own I guess. I just figured there will be more time to sleep when I'm older. Married, probably. Retired with kids, maybe even grandkids, you know?" Perfect little red-headed...

Wait, what were they talking about?

She had way overshot the time frame she was curious about and made some attempt to backpedal. "You obviously don't like to live in the moment if you aren't even awake for any of the moments." She snorted, tossing the very end of the cone his way. Chocolate filled. Gross. "It's not even that far. Only a couple months, right? You have to have at least some idea of what you'd like to do. I find it hard to believe you have absolutely no preference, Gaage."

She had written much about her own plans in her diary over the years and had come to one conclusion. In her eyes, leaving was unforgiveable. It was a waste of everyone's time. A waste of a seat in their academy. A waste of potential. "I've known you for what? A week? Even in that little time, I can tell you're a very opinionated person. If you don't want to share, fair 'nuff. But don't lie to me." Her tone had shifted. She was serious.
 
The expression crossing Gaage's face could have been described as incredulous, but then it gave incredulity a bad name, perhaps. The cone she tossed hit his chest with a soft pat before falling to the ground, and Gaage popped the remainder of his own into his mouth before pushing from the wall he leaned on, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You've formed an opinion of me awfully fast Yoh. But you can't presume to know me, can you?" It might have sounded harsh coming out, but it wasn't meant as a barb or an insult. As Ysobel moved into her final year of Initiation, she'd need to learn not to assume anything about people. It was a good way to make enemies. "What choice do you suppose I have?" Taking a quick glance at the little old lady at behind the counter, he gestures to Ysobel towards the door before heading towards the exit of the shop.

"Look Yoh, I'm good at one thing and one thing only." He continued once they were back out in the daylight, sliding his hands into the pockets of his trousers. "I don't really know what else I could do. I'm not trying to be fuckin' cheeky with you, I just genuinely don't know." Gaage didn't make a habit of being so frank and honest, but he had a soft spot for the platinum-haired girl, and she'd been nice about pressing him.

"You want my opinion though? I think it's all bullshit, this Academy system. Same time, though, there's nothing I can do about it. That's for somebody a lot smarter than me."
 
"It's called a first impression. Did they not teach any of you basic life skills?" Her laugh made it seem like she was joking, but she was being completely serious. He was a well rounded fighter, but that could only get you so far and it was most certainly not useful in every scenario. She would remind herself, when writing in her diary, to include a note about not letting Gaage participate in anything that might require communication.

She followed him, exiting the shop close behind. "You may think that, but that doesn't make it true." She softened her approach as she placed her hand on his arm for a moment. She may have pushed him, but she was not his enemy.

If he could see her face, he'd notice that she looked hurt by his words. "It is not a kind place." She pulled her hand back. "But neither is any other place for people like us. You know just as well as I that we are...volatile. The Academy is not perfect, but it is a necessary step in learning how to control ourselves. You don't want to hurt people, do you?" She paused for a second before she continued, unsure if she actually wanted his answer to that question. "Many things have changed since we were children, Gaage, but Vel Anir still needs us." Her arms crossed.

"You're going to leave. Aren't you?"
 
Gaage was beginning to wonder if maybe Ysobel had been attending classes that he hadn't. Basic life skills? First impressions? Eberwhit had heard that the next class down the line was going through a different type of curriculum, but he hadn't imagined it was that different. Maybe all that Revolution bullshit they kept preaching to the class wasn't straight out of their asses after all.

"No. They didn't." He replied bluntly, looking none too amused by the observation. "When we got started, they wanted us for one thing and one thing only; to kill who they wanted us to kill. They didn't give a shit if we fit in, or could make friends." It was almost jealousy that burned in his chest for a moment, that Ysobel's class warranted so many concessions in order to offer them a semblance of a normal life. God forbid they break their toys like they had with Gaage's class, right?

Gaage didn't pull away from her hand as she placed it on her arm, but his eyes wouldn't meet hers for more than a moment. This underclassman giving him a lecture... it was silly.

As much as Yoh wanted to try and cheer him up, they weren't the same. They hadn't gone through the same training, not really. How could she understand what he had to go through with this choice?

She asked him again, and his brow knit with frustration.

"I told you I don't know, Yoh!" He raised his voice, but he wasn't shouting. "I don't know anything, and every day that passes I feel like this shit makes less and less sense. If Vel Anir needs me so badly, they shoulda asked nicely instead of taking me from my parents. If they need me so badly, why are they treating everybody that comes after me so much better all of a sudden? It doesn't fucking add. It just doesn't."
 
The response she received from Gaage made her feel…sad. For him. For all of them. Their training, though different, was hard on all of them and she had never considered how it affected the older classes. She never took the time to talk to them. It wasn’t encouraged the same way socializing with their own class was, but it wasn’t discouraged either. Maybe she should have made the effort earlier.

Were they all so broken and fucked up? Ysobel could only wonder.

Could they be fixed? What a silly thought.

The raised voice caught her off guard and she took a step away from him. On some of his points, she agreed. There would always be more questions than answers when it came to The Academy, which she had come to accept ‘for her own safety’ as someone once told her. She couldn’t tell him why his class was punished and hers was treated like they were almost people. But it wasn't her fault.

“At least…” She focused on something in the distance as she felt her eyes watering. The mention of parents brought back the few memories she had of her own. Their faces...their bodies...bloodied and bruised. And Ysobel, screaming for them as someone from the Academy carried her away from the scene. Ysobel was too soft- her entire class was. The nurturing they received was intentional. They weren’t being molded into the perfect soldiers to do Vel Anir’s bidding. They were being led to the slaughter. She was confident in that. “At least they let your parents live.”

She barely managed to get her words out before the first tear fell from her eye and she turned away from him. “I actually…um…I have a thing here…” She was cut off by her sniffling. “I’m just going to stay the night here. It’s late.” She began walking in the opposite direction, counting the remaining coins she had to ensure she had enough for the night.
 
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