Dusty Semblances Lecture

[Fuchsia Iris Ükhel]

The next few minutes within Fu's mind were somewhat tumultuous as she wrestled with her hidden emotions. Aside from the initial shock of fear, the sudden hyper-vigilance, the swirl of repressed anger, and the deep-seated feeling that it was unfair to treat her like that, she now had to contend with a good deal of embarrassment as she felt at least a dozen eyes on her at once. Far as she knew, they all thought he'd somehow shut her right up, but that wasn't it. What had her so quiet in the moment was the storm in her brain and the big dose of anxiety that hit her right between the eyes. As things calmed back down for everyone else in the room, they didn't for the alleycat. A series of images, memories, forced their way into her mind, only to be automatically pushed back out, replaced instantly by a sickly blackness, a wall erected in defense, a hole stuffed suddenly full, a door slammed shut.

Her face felt hot, though she wasn't sure if it was from the urge to strangle the person next to her or the looks she was getting. She kept her eyes averted for her own sake. It wouldn't help her any to meet their gazes, especially not the Professor's. For a few minutes in the painstakingly long silence, she fought the urge to storm out of the classroom. Eventually, when the automated fire systems in her brain put out the worst of the flame, leaving her head full of smoke, she began to release her tense body, focusing one by one on various muscles that had been alerted to the potential danger in front of her.

Two weeks in and you're already losin' it, her mind scolded her, Guess he was right. The scowl that settled on Fu's face after this thought fluttered through her made her look as unpleasant as she felt. It was at this time that she started looking sidelong to see who was still staring at her, and if they were, she'd meet their gaze with an intensity that didn't belong in the classroom. An angry look, that somehow transcended normal ire and went straight to the soul. It was an animalistic look that simply said, "I'll fucking kill you with my bare hands if you keep staring at me." Little did they know, it wasn't far from the truth.

When the students unfortunate enough to have met her gaze were dealt with and no longer looking her way, she turned her eyes toward the front of the room, still slouching low in her chair, she did what any sensible wanted criminal would do and pulled out her small butterfly knife, obsessively flicking it around a few times to give her anxious hands something to do. In the throes of emotions like these, there was something almost possessed about her dexterity. The blade traveled fast, dangerously, and yet at no point was she not in perfect control of it. The slight click of metal-on-metal was fairly audible in the now-quiet room, though she didn't stop when the Professor started telling another story. At least this time she was half-listening.

While her mind continued its slow process of deescalation, at some point, somebody threw something onto her desk, right when the professor yelled "WHAM!" She didn't see it directly, but as if she had some kind of extrasensory perception, the second it landed on the wood, her blade drove right through it. It was a completely effortless move, in a flash she'd flipped her knife from its closed position, to open, and with an audible 'thunk', hit the little ball directly in the center, bifurcating the word written on it which now read: reee laaax.

Next thing she knew, though, she was sitting there, knife embedded in the wooden desk, just staring at the strange orb which seemed to be reshaping itself back together around the blade of her knife. Transfixed, she watched it, and something in her was able to finally push the weight of her emotion off her shoulder. She slipped effortlessly into dissociation, like slipping on a perfectly-fitting glove. With eyes that saw through the world, she just looked at the ball, unmoving, until the second "WHAM!" snapped her out of it. At least the nasty look on her face was gone, now. What were they talking about?

[Leonard Uaine]

Why was everyone throwing things around the classroom? Lennie was starting to get a little concerned for his own safety here, what with the seemingly random collection of objects that had already flown around the room during the first lecture of the term.

He refocused on his professor just as he finished telling a story about how he'd been hit by a car. When it came to funny stories, Lennie did have a couple of those. "There was this one time I got chased by a bear," he began, looking around to see if he had anyone's attention. "We were, like, thirteen or so I think? It was late spring and my cousin Vern convinced me that it was still hibernating and that we should totally go touch it, because we'd have a really cool story for our friends. As it turns out, the bear was not hibernating, and proceeded to chase us four miles through the woods before we ran into a Huntsman, who was sufficiently intimidating as to convince the bear to direct its attention elsewhere." He shrugged, chuckling slightly at the memory. "Not the story we were looking for, exactly, but we were still the coolest kids in town for a week."

[Keid Sharma]

Just like that, they were back to calm and awkwardness. The switch to jokes told Keid their teacher felt as uncomfortable as his students in the heavy silence. Hopefully that outburst was a one-time thing.
Surprisingly, telling random stories worked as an alright distraction and Keid was content to catch his agressively crafted airplane - very balanced, very aerodynamic, ten stars rating - nod his thanks, and let others relax the atmosphere.

Except Fu, apparently. He never saw Castor throw something across the room again, but he very much heard her knife stab down directly behind his neck, and nearly got whiplash with how fast he spun around.
She didn't even see him, though, transfixed by whatever she'd just killed. He still scooted his chair and stuff to the side.

When Lenny finished his own story and she still looked out of it, Keid sat up and took his turn to take attention away from the unpredictable girl with a knife. "I saw a Huntsman kill a pack of Grimm with alcohol, once." Maybe the most idiotic moment of his life that he hadn't been part of. "He'd lost his weapon, we were out of Dust, and he just dragged a crate of whiskey around with a snowmobile to chuck bottles at them", he explained, the memory bringing a grin to his face. "I didn't know the method to his madness at that time, I just watched him somehow beat the Grimm handily and drive away twice to take a sip, and people yelled at him from a distance for wasting good bottles." They had a great sense of priorities as far as he was concerned.
"And years later I learned that his Semblance made the whiskey stickier than honey, and it was mixed with burn Dust too, so the Grimm became slow and flammable... He didn't get even a drop of beverage for the whole year afterwards." Mostly because there would have been safer and less wasteful ways to fight. His mentor was just a character.

[Professor W B Copperfield]

Castor had a story. Short, gruesome, but interesting. Despite ripping out guts to be a grotesque thing, Copperfield just pursed his lips and nodded. He'd needed to get quite messy at times before. "'Nevermore'. Big ass Grimm bird bastards are referred to as 'Nevermores'." He supplied.

He glanced at Fu and she at least seemed to be coming back to the conversation, if not a little bit.

He noticed Rouge get up and leave. A bit of him wanted to call him back to his seat, but in a way just a few minutes ago Copperfield had pretty much told him to get out if he didn't want to learn. His loss, really. Dust infused glass sounded absolutely insane on the battlefield. Maybe his Semblance really couldn't work with Dust, or maybe he just hadn't found out how. In Copperfield's eyes, Semblances were as mutable as the personalities they came from. It may be a slow process, but they could be changed to have different attributes or stronger effects. He hoped he saw Rouge again in the classroom.

With Leo's bear story however, Copperfield was on the edge of his desk. He chuckled at the ending. "Bears may not be Grimm, but they can still tear a man apart. I'm surprised you and your friend were able to outrun it for that long. And heck yeah you were the coolest kids in town, that's quite the story!" He gave Leo a warm smile. "I hope you don't do that anymore. Right?" He'd joke a little.

Keid told a story about a Huntsman who had lost his weapon, and how he dealt with the threat. "That's quite the resourceful Huntsman! If you've lost your weapon, you have to find another one! Use whatever you have to defeat the enemy! Thanks for the story, Keid."

"Anyone else have a story or a good joke?" He opened up the floor a little bit, hoping that Fu would speak up. But she wouldn't. Just sat there, shut down. He had really messed up... She had deserved it after all. And the words of someone dear to him echoed in his ears. "Just because they deserve it, doesn't mean you have to shove it down their throats, Copper. You can be gentler." he sighed and shut his eyes. She always did annoy him with that, but he was dealing with adults then. They could bear a little in-your-face lecturing. These were kids...

But, as it turned out, story time was enough to eat the remaining time. The bell rang, and students began picking up their stuff on reflex. "Alright, I'll see all of you next time! Make sure you're Aura isn't broken when you come to class because it might be a little explosive. Have a good day!" He called after the leaving students.