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No, I want to keep going week by week.

Yes, bring on the VIOLENCE!

[mcclay]

Alex's expression of amused calm breaks as annoyance seeps onto his face.
"I shall be throwing no one off the tower, Miss Fager. I am deeply hurt but your lack of trust in my skills, and the skills of our friends. What I proposed is perfectly safe if we go into it with cool heads and a plan. Is it dangerous? Yes, I will not lie to you. However, as you yourself can attest to, my theory and ritual crafting skills are more than sound. The ritual shall go off without a hitch so long as we take the necessary precautions to deal with the spirits and the gale. Runes of warding and binding can help with the latter, and a mixture of doughty combat skills and clever minds can confound the former. Might I remind you that in a few short weeks we are supposed to engage against others in violent spectacle. We are being trained by dangerous people to do dangerous things, and we must scrape and grasp any advantage that comes our way. If I am able to do this this will put our floor ahead of the others, as a boost in power for one is good for all."

[Chevaleresse]

"There's a difference between training to fight with knives and sticking your hand into a blender. This is a bad idea." She didn't quite want to admit that her reasons for not wanting to go along with it, while still largely centered on it being ridiculously dangerous for everyone involved, also included not wanting everyone to see her pissing herself of fear because it was raining hard outside.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"I think you're overestimating how good everyone is. You're not asking us to help you wrangle a spirit. You're asking us to all go possibly die for a shot at having something strong under our control. Isn't this how a LOT of people in those old books die? They think they're super in control of the whole thing and nothing could possibly go wrong and then it does and everyone's dead? That's exactly what's going to happen here."

[Mistwing]

'Dunna actually stomped like a pissed off little sister at that. It really didn't help that her slow aging made her look several years too young to attent this school.

"Have you even seen me carve a rune!? How would you know if I can just slap a post it on the back of your head and somehow overpower a hurricane!? We're not talking about every day stuff here! This sort of thing THROWS BUILDINGS! How many newtons of force do you think I'd have to disperse? For how many people? And if I can't!?

Just ASTRONOMICAL chance of somehow making it past all the other obstacles and using your stupid ritual is worth risking the rest of everyone you've asked to help dying to get you there?"

[Sl4cker]

Albert doesn't deign to say anything, but he does turn towards Alex, inclining his head against the light so that the reflection of his glasses hides his eyes to his fellow student.

[mcclay]

Alex groans in frustration.

"Idunna you are a godling, a scion of divinity that burns so bright I'm worried that if I looked at you with my true sight I'd burn out my vision forever. There is nothing, nothing you cannot accomplish if you want. You will reach heights of power with ease that I will only maybe get to with decades of careful study and work. I trust you implicitly and explicitly with my life. You can do this, you can make this pathetic little gale bend to your will. Our will. This team, this floor, is immensely talented. We should show off that skill before the final, before we are thrust into combat. There is not better chance to build up our coordination as a team than this. So please, help me."

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Bernie shakes her head. There was a lot she was willing to put up with to help her friends, but dying for no reason was not one of them. Her parents had always taught her to stand up for herself when she needed to, and this was a situation she was going to stand up for herself in.
"No. I'm not enabling this. Not because I don't care about any of you, but because I want to see you all tomorrow, unhurt and alive, and I want to keep seeing you all like this for a long time yet.

I'm happy for you to do whatever you want to yourself for whatever reason you think is a good idea, as long as you know it won't kill you, as long as nobody else gets hurt, Alex. But the moment you think you should risk the lives of EVERYONE on this floor because of a small chance of getting some extra power for a competition that we can win without it? No. I'm not okay with this, not at all. Also, you said it yourself; we're immensely talented. By that logic, we should only keep practicing, honing what we got, to fight the others. If you really were convinced of that, if you really, honestly, believed in us, you wouldn't be trying to rope us into doing something deadly like this; that just reeks of desperation.

I worked long, and hard, and for hours and hours, to become a violinist, to participate in recitals, to win tournaments. I didn't take an easy way out, not like what you want to do. I practiced, every day, every night, until my fingers were sore and my shoulder stung and I had the music playing in my head. But I got there in the end. We can get there through hard graft, through careful practice. This isn't and shouldn't be our answer.

If you're convinced we need this to have a shot at winning, you don't really believe we have a shot, and I can't stand anyone lying to me or anyone else like that. And I definitely can't stand it when someone does that knowing they'll hurt everyone around them.

I'm out."
It's more than a hint of bitterness and disappointment in Bernie's voice that makes her feelings clear as she leaves the room.

[Sl4cker]

Albert watches Bernie go, lips slowly curling into another smirk, though this time it is marked with an acceptant solemnity. "That... is pretty much how I expected that to happen."

[mcclay]

Alex twitches. Alex shakes. And finally Alex rages.

"Fine, FINE! I see how it is! I see who really cares about me. I guess I'm the only one who cares about this damn floor!" This is the first time anyone here has heard Alex raise his voice, it sounds both shrill and echoey, like a screaming gale through a hollow log. "I see that I can't be trusted, that I'm too fucking weak to do this! Just someone who can barely hobble along." He takes a few steps forwards, going red in the face as he starts to hyperventilate

"I knew I was the only competent one here. The smiles and the playing nice and fucking fake trust is always pulled away in the end." His usually confident grin waves and widens and the edges of his mouth hurt. "Its all smiles and giggles until I want to actually do something to FUCKING ADVANCE MYSELF! Thats fine, thats FINE FINE FINE! I don't NEED Bernie or Scarlet or Idunna or ANY OF YOU anyways. What use do I have have for COWARDS AND MONSTERS! I am a fucking WESTCOTT! We do not negotiate, WE FUCKING COMMAND! I can handle some pathetic fucking sprits, unlike you USELESS FUCKS! FUCK YOU, I DON'T NEED ANY OF YOU! SPINELESS WRETCHES! COWARDS!"

He convulses as he descends deeper into the episode, eyes wide with madness as his pupils dilate. He scratches violently at his leg with his free hand in between swinging around his cane wildly. "I did all of THIS SHIT MYSELF! I fucking BUILT MYSELF BACK UP! I didn't need fucking anyone TO BECOME A REAL FUCKING PERSON AGAIN! Not my parents, not my fucking family. ME! I read those fucking books! I WAS THE ONE WHO FIXED MY OWN FUCKING LEGS!"

He pauses to cough violently into a handkerchief. When he pulls away the substance trickles form his bottom lip, a thick and gooey mixture of blood and sap. The bottom of his pants leg drips with more of the stuff, collecting in stick drops on his shoes. "You think I'm weak, a pathetic fucking cripple! Don't any of you FUCKING LIE TO ME! I can see it in your eyes, I've seen it before! 'Oh poor Alex, hes a mewling cripple who can't walk withouth help.' and 'Oh the poor dear can't cast regular spells and has to focus on ritual like a broken freak.' FUCK YOU ALL! I'll fucking capture the storm myself! I AM THE GREATEST WIZARD TO LIMP LIKE AN ANIMAL ACROSS THIS EARTH! You can't take that from me! I WON"T FUCKING LET YOU!"

As he says this sprigs of mixed bone and muscle and bark push through his pants, leaves that pulse with veins crowing the tops of the new branches. He swings his cane around in a mad frenzy as he slowly, painfully starts to limp off towards the exit, still howling as he does. He gets halfway to the door before he stumbles and falls to his knees. This proves to much for Alex and he breaks into ugly, crazed sobs.

[Sl4cker]

Albert, for his part, doesn't drop his expression when Alex begins his anger-infused rant, though it does turn cold and hollow in an instant - tensed, as if it was being forced to stretch across his face as he - and everyone else - weathered the boy's storm.

When Alex finishes, he coughs a bit, mutters, _{"Nun... Scheiße."} under his breath, before turning to the rest of the people in the room with a sheepish expression. "Yeah, I had a feeling this would happen too." He adjusts his glasses and reserves one last moment to let himself look sad before closing his eyes. When he opens them, his face is a mask - calm and neutral. "Don't approach him or try to talk to him for now. He's unstable, will probably resist if you try to take him somewhere. I'll try to stabilize him." He turns and stalks towards the howling student.

When he gets above Alex, he just stares, crouches down, face still impassive, and waits for the boy to notice he's there.

[Chevaleresse]

"You got it, Doc." If it weren't for the situation, Scarlet probably would have laughed at herself. Though perhaps Albert would appreciate being referred to as a doctor. Still, there were more important things to focus on. She tensed slightly as Albert dropped in front of Alex. She thought about grabbing him and hauling him back, but that'd potentially make him violent. He was already to that point, really, but she didn't want to be a target for a number of reasons. Big one being she didn't want to hurt him, but it'd look real bad for her in a lot of ways.

This was disturbing in a lot of ways. She'd file this away to be horrified at later; flesh and plants were both quite natural, but combinations like that? A bit less so. Though she supposed it wasn't the only, or even the most unnatural thing in the room. Disturbing that he'd just snapped like that too; she'd have to watch for this, going forward. Lay out a framework for dealing with it, maybe. Something told her he wouldn't go for the same sort of help as Albert did, and she didn't particularly want to provide it besides. Lots to think about, going forward.

Of course, none of this thought was visible on her face, unless you counted a slight twitch of her eyebrows downward. She glanced sideways at the others. "Idunna, you might want to get ready to grab him. I'll probably make it worse." She tried to pitch her voice so that Alex couldn't hear, but there was only so much one could do in a relatively close space like this.

[Mistwing]

Idunna didn't say anything. She just stepped aside for Alex. Her expression hard to read. Somewhere in between regret and recognition. She didn't respond to Scarlet immediately, but took a moment. Teeth digging into her bottom lip slightly. "Don't." She finally said, clearly not a fan of the idea of this getting physical.

[Chevaleresse]

"Not saying do it now. Just saying we might have to. He's not stable." Sure, grabbing Alex probably wasn't the healthiest route for him. But what about everyone else? She supposed it was fortunate, in a twisted sort of way, that he couldn't actively throw spells out at them. It would have made him much more of a hazard. She hoped he would understand after this episode was over; she was used to being a hazard and handled as one.

[mcclay]

Alex twitches there for a long while longer, sobbing and howling in violent fits that sending his entire body shaking and twisting. Then, he stops. He tilts his head to the side, as if listening to something. Slowly, the shaking subsides and he paws out for his walking stick, which he had thrown during his raging. With shaky legs he starts to push himself up, leaning heavily against both the stick and Albert, if the other boy will let him. He coughs and hacks before spitting out a thick, dark red globe of blood and sap onto the floor. When he finally stands up the exertion almost makes him pitch over again and he slams against the wall, only his cane preventing him from falling again. A look of frustrated determination comes over his face and her forces himself to stand up straight.

He turns to the group, his friends, and gives them a shaky smile. "I...I apologize. I got a little, well, heated in the moment. Rest assured I'm feeling quite better now." The little breaks in his words ruin their meaning, along with the quickly drying bloodsap that is only now starting to stop oozing from the corners of his mouth. "I also have come up with a significantly safer activity for tonight."

[Sl4cker]

Well, there he was. Covered in blood and sap, struggling to support himself (though - Albert knows better than to try to help support him - even if he wants to). He steps back a little, head titled forward again. He has a gentle expression - watchful, as if he was attempting to prop the metahuman using his gaze alone (thinking about it, he could probably do that).

"What's your idea, Alex?" Mentally, he notes down that he's gonna have to have a talk with the boy later. Dude needs help.