Xavier Augustus & Willow Durand
Location: Zeus High School – 5th Floor (Music Club)
Time: Noon
Everyone looks fairly confused and disconcerted by the quake. For a moment, even Cynthia’s pout vanishes and everyone looks around, as if expecting a second wave.
However, Willow’s words return the room to normality…
And ratchet up the tension as she does the equivalent of attempting to disarm a social landmine with her face.
Adelyn cringed upon hearing the suggestion of Shelia working together with Cynthia in this particular project. Cynthia’s face reddened considerably, her expression becoming decidedly furious, and the black-haired musician traded a helpless glance with Xavier, and readied herself to play peacemaker.
It was unneeded. Xavier took upon himself to basically haul Cynthia aside before she could explode. As he sincerely exposed his points of view, the blonde singer’s fury diminished. It was, however, replaced by a stern and decided expression.
“No.” Cynthia said simply and harshly. Her stare was hard, her indignation was visible, but at least she had lowered her voice enough.
This was, perhaps, the biggest real difference that existed between Cynthia and Shelia. There was a hard core to the former, steel underneath the somewhat artificial innocent persona and the brattishness under that surface. Meanwhile, the pink-head was exactly as painfully innocent and soft as she looked.
In a way, Cynthia better resembled the American pop idol she actually was, if perhaps one who hadn’t gone through the more cynical and dirty stage of celebrity culture that oft awaited them when they grew up. Shelia, meanwhile, resembled more the model Japanese idol in comparison.
“I don’t mind getting help from others, I know I can’t mount a spectacle alone.” She continued, and then her eyes looked at Shelia. “But not her. It won’t mean anything if she has to help. No. I won’t accept it.”
It is a rather firm denial to your plea.
Eilian Aubrey
Location: Zeus High School – 5th Floor (Crafts Club)
Time: Noon
“Twenty-seven, huh? Well, it’ll have to do.” Astor nods, and starts helping to straighten up your work station. You pay him no mind as you busy yourself with the device in your hand.
The cover at first seems to resist your effort to open it. Yet you apply some more strength, and something clicks, the bronze-looking circle popping open and revealing the insides.
Whatever this device is keeping, time is not it.
The inside looks simple and functional, lacking in decorations, and mostly taken by a circular transparent acrylic panel under which six needles spin, moving at the rhythm of the seconds, by your accounting.
In the place where the hours should be at, there are eighteen symbols, distributed equidistantly across the border of the circle.
The symbols themselves aren’t something you can recognize, at least at first glance. They seem to be rather simple, mostly geometrical figures with a line crossing it through the center, the left, or the right.
What a strange device. It is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. A sensation of weirdness, almost of surrealism, overcomes you for a brief moment.
You can feel its mechanism pulse. It has an internal logic of some sort, and yet you can’t trace any distinct pattern between the movement of the six needles, at least not with such a brief window of observation. Instinctively, it feels alien, like the material of the device itself.