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SABL (Ashen Wolf x LittleCloud)

"Something tells me they've cooled off already," Sable replied smoothly over his shoulder, entirely unbothered by Meg's invective tone. Something told him that 'until further notice' would be arriving far sooner than expected because of someone's loose lips, but for now, he would lord his insider knowledge over Meg. He knew very well that Atlesians hated when you did that, which meant he loved to do it.

Sable felt something small push against his skin once, twice, and several more times in succession. He didn't need to look to check who it was.

Stop poking me," Sable ordered.

Lilac did not stop poking him.

Sable carried on.

"Wow! A nest in a hidden tunnel, you say?" As interesting as that tidbit of information sounded, Sable decided that sounded a lot more like someone else's problem. He'd done more than his due diligence as part of the general public; now it was time to let underpaid professionals handle the rest.

"Well, that's cool," Sable added with the same enthusiasm as someone saying 'whatever'. "Anyway..."

Sable's pants followed the rest of his clothes, being hung this time over Lilac's head. Clad in only his underwear, the handsome faunus struck a very striking figure, like his grungy or school-branded fashion. There was not dwelling on it, or even the sizeable bulge in his pants, since he promptly used this opportunity to get a well-deserved rest. If social outings proved to be so taxing in the future, then maybe it would be best to study next time!
 
Sable might have hoped that throwing himself in to academic life at the Academy would be simpler (or atleast less bruising) than venturing out on to the mean streets of Mantle but unfortunately for him life simply didn't seem to run smoothly no matter where the young faunus was. What started as a simple capture the flag exercise against the brother and sister duo of team HNTR along side 'Miss Aegean' had blown up in to an arguement that had landed the pair of them in the office of their Combat teacher Mister Jet.

"So then what do you two kids have to say for yourselves?" Their teacher asked with his feet proped up on his desk. His office was the same grey box that the most of the other faculty got decorated with souvenirs and pictures from his home kingdom with a hefty double barrelled shotgun hanging on the wall behind him, a vicious looking curved blade folded in underneath the barrels. "You were supposed to go after the flag, not tear strips out of each other."

This was just another scenario where Meg was glad that she wore a mask, right now it could conceal exactly how mortified she felt, who knew what her parents were going to say when news of this got back to them? It didn't matter that she was sure that she had been in the right with the unshakeable certainty that came with her impeccable breeding, she had caused a scene and that was an unforgiveable sin in Atlasian high society.

For now she stayed silent, as much as she hated to acknowledge it Sable was her leader and protocol demanded that he speak first, she just had to wait for him to say something that she could pounce on, if she could convince their teacher that this had all been his fault then maybe she could still save some face.
 
"I don't see what the problem is." Sable leaned back, arms crossed. He looked more annoyed than worried, complete in his assurance that he had done no wrong here. If he was really in trouble, his collar would've let him and everyone else know very explicitly. Thus far, he'd successfully managed to avoid tripping that particular wire, even if he doubted that explaining the nuances of punishment to Professor Jet would do much good. "S'not my fault Maskie over here was just raring for her salty runback against that nerd in HNTR."

Alas, this was likely to be the first of two meetings today, Sable reckoned. Unlike Meg, he didn't have any parents to disappoint, but what he did have was potentially worse: a supervisory board. While he had avoided the sting of his collar's more explicit disciplinary function, there was no doubt that someone higher up heard about today's incident. Alas, the pretty officer girl and her cute ginger partner were not the highest rung on the ladder of his new life by any means, so he could not simply rely on his wolfish charm to carry him through the day.

"For the record, we would've won if she just followed my instructions," he added smugly. Of course, his instructions had been to, effectively, stay behind and look pretty, but it wasn't his fault that he was faster, more agile, and more stealthy than her. She would have just slowed him down!

Which she did.

Because they were here.

In this office.

Sable rolled his eyes. What a drama queen.

"Honestly, even if she didn't follow my instructions, we could've won as long if she hadn't decided to bungle everything by butting in," Sable said, completely confident in his own ability to carry the day. Of course, it still took two to tango, and Sable's description of events was a very charitable description of his part in the incident. While his collar prevented him from literally tearing strips out of his partner, it didn't stop him from goading her or shoulder checking her or wrestling her for the flag or a multitude of other offensive actions that didn't count as unsanctioned violence on his part.
 
Self serving nonsense, Meg certainly didn't recognise the version of events that her leader was recounting, though she stopped herself from any outward signs of objection for the moment. This time there was going to be no outbursts, she was going to navigate this situation with all the grace and tact her parents had raised her with.

"While I will admit that my choice of words may have been...a little inelegant in the heat of the moment I was merely advising my leader that pushing me in the path of a lightning dust blast may not have been the optimal strategy." She began in her most business-like tone, shooting Sable a pointed look before she launched into the defence of her own actions that conviniently cast them in the best possible light while painting Sable as a clumsy egotistical idiot who couldn't be trusted to tie his own shoes, let alone lead a team of Hunters.

Their teacher of course had seen the entire exercise play out with his own eyes and wasn't buying any of either of their excuses.

"Points for trying the pair of you, but neither of you came out of that little incident smelling of roses, but I've seen it all before, so I aint gonna be too harsh on you. Look, you're a couple of first years and you got some ego issues to work out but you also got to learn how to work as a team so here's what your gonna do. I want the pair of you to write up a joint tactical analysis of what you did wrong and essay on how you can improve your team work going forward."

As he was talking he unslung his Scroll from the holster on his waist and tapped a few buttons, causing Meg and Sable's devices to beep in unison "And just to be on the safe side, you two can't split up until that's all on my desk."

Behind her mask Meg's face fell, this was not how this had played out in her head.

"Any questions?"
 
"Oh, so when I do it, it's a punishable offense, but when you do it, it's 'delegation'," Sable rolled his eyes. Fortunately, it didn't seem Mister Jet wasn't buying what Meg was selling either, and not just because he didn't seem like the type to wear haute-couture. Of course, he could tell off the rip that the admin didn't believe him either but he was too used to getting flak from authority figures. It hardly affected him anymore.

That was the fundamental difference between Meg and Sable in this particular negotiation. All the fancy words and psychologically-proven negotiation tactics could not stand one bit to the law of Mantlesian negotiation: the law of whoever spoke loudest and had the most leverage won. And considering that both of them had none of the latter, it was time to butt in. After all, it didn't matter that the shark was good with words when the wolf was better at shit-flinging!

From one self-serving narrative to another, then back again. The room quickly filled with increasingly incomprehensible accounts of the situation interrupting each other until Mister Jet forced to dust to settle with his verdict.

"Hmph." Considering Meg had also gotten penalized, Sable took that to be his victory, but the punishment itself left a bitter taste in his mouth. Still, the tactical analysis itself ought to prove that he was in the right, so even if he had to work on two annoying papers, he would no doubt be vindicated.

Sable raised his hand.

"What do you mean by that? You telling me I gotta look out for sharks when I'm in the bath?"
 
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"What you kids want to get up to on your own time is none of my business." Their teacher laughed, the Academy did have protocols in place to discourage fraternization (which Sable would know if he actually read those documents that Ciel sent him!) but as far as he was concerned, once you had mixed-gender dorms that ship had sailed.

The implication of Sable's question caused Meg to reflexively clench her fists in frustration, quickly catching herself and forcing her body to relax, there was a pressure point underneath his right arm that could paralyse him for hours and she was pretty sure she could hit it if she was fast enough. That was a comforting thought.

"I assure you Sir I have no intention of engaging in such untoward activities." She shot Sable another pointed look "I'm sure whatever parameters you have set for us will be more that enough for us to complete the assignment." While she'd rather not have to lower herself to talking so obsequiously to someone from Vacuo, he was (for some reason) a teacher and needs must.

"That's the spirit." Jet finally took his feet off the desk and sat up in his chair "There's enough give on the leash that you wont be sitting on each others laps or nothing, just don't want you two wandering off and doing it on your own, you wont learn anything like that. Wait is leash offensive..?" He dismissed the concern with a shrug "Whatever, I've got tenure. Anyway I hope that answers your question."
 
Sable snorted. Unlike Meg, he thought Jet's comment was actually kind of funny. That might've just been because he shared the same respect for fraternization rules as they did in Vacuo, though. Or perhaps it was because the idea was just so unrealistic to the young wolf. Sure, Meg might've been this Amazonian bombshell, pretty in that perfect Atlesian way, but her nasty attitude was just too much for him to tolerate. If only he could shut her up and bring her down a few pegs...

...Well, there was the obvious solution, he supposed, but he couldn't do that every time he had a problem!

Sable matched Meg's pointed look with one of own. Unlike her expression of veiled rage, his was pure disbelief. He crossed his arms and leaned back. He boldly quipped: "Man, you talk a big game about 'untoward activities', but you're kissing a lotta ass from where I'm sitting."

After all, what was she going to do? Hit one of his pressure points to knock him out?

With his question answered, Sable wondered what would happen if he swiped that scroll from her and tossed it out the window behind the professor's seat. Discarding that intrusive thought, he raised his hand again. "Last question: when is this thing due and what happens if Meg decides not to hand it in?"

Not him, of course. He was a good student who knew to deal with problems.
 
Meg simply wasn't going to dignify Sable with a response, that was only going to encourage his antics, no it was better to suffer in silence and get this meeting over with as soon as possible. As much as she hated to admit it his uncouth attitude did give him a level of freedom to speak that she lacked and for some reason Mister Jet didn't punish him for it, oh how she would love to see him try this nonsense in front of someone like Operative Schnee...

For now she would simply have to console herself with several other fantasies of disabling her leader with increasing levels of savagery.

"I'll give you kids 'til the end of the week." Jet replied to Sable, already pulling up some other messages that claimed to need his attention from his Scroll "You know what? I've always thought I was one of the reasonable ones in this gig but if you kinds want to be difficult then I can be difficult too. How about that?"

"That wont be necessary Sir." Meg was quick to reassure their teacher, stopping just short of offering him an appologetic (that was more of a Mistralian thing) before turning to leave, reaching out to grab Sable by the back of his shirt and drag him out with her. She was going to have choice words for him the second they were out of earshot that was for sure.
 
A one week deadline--now it was really starting to feel like an assignment. If his free time weren't so closely regulated, he might've been mad about it cutting into his plans for the week. Not that he had any plans, of course. Most of the people he knew at Atlas Academy were, surprisingly, very spontaneous. He wasn't about to expect invitations on letterhead from WNDA or the rest of SABL any time soon.

Sable opened his mouth to make another sarcastic comment to match their professor's, but Meg beat him to the punch. Then she grabbed him by the back of the collar, like an unruly dog. The wolf did not think the comparison was unwarranted. Meg wasn't surprisingly strong; she was just strong, as evidenced by the ease by which his shoes dragged across the floor of Jet's office. He stuck his tongue out, and the door slammed shut.

"Was the dragging really necessary?" Sable deadpanned once they were out of earshot. His feet lay on the floor with his ass inches off of the ground, held up by the hand tightly gripping his collar. Despite his complaints, he didn't really bother to change his position. "Kinda brutish. Where's that Atlesian poise that everyone's always on about?"

There was nobody to impress around them. It was clear he was doing this just to get on her nerves some more.
 
"Since when have you cared about that?" Meg scoffed, uncerimoniously letting go of his collar and dropping him to the ground like a particularly boorish sack of potatoes and looming over him with an imperious glare "I thought you'd respond better to something a little more direct since you clearly have no respect for proper hierarchy. Regardless of anything else that man is a teacher here and for some unfathomable reason you have been placed in a position of leadership. How you act in front of them reflects on all of us! Do you even have any idea what that means? If you aren't going to take this seriously then at least do the rest of us a favour and keep your mouth shut. Better yet crawl back into whatever worthless hole you came from!"

She didn't bother to wait and see if Sable had some smartass comeback (lets be fair he probably did), she quite liked to think that she'd cowed him in to silence this time, for sure it wasn't the sort of eloquent debate team monologue that she had been raised to use when she had a disagreement but somehow she didn't think that Sable would have appreciated that any more than he cared for any other Atlasian institution. No, brute intimidation was clearly the way to go here and with her initial frustrations starting to subside there was a small part of her that rather enjoyed it.

It would have been perfect in fact as she turned to leave him in the dust when she made it a few steps away before recalling the condition of their little assignment and freezing in her tracks, her shoulders slumping....oh why did good things have to happen to bad people?
 
"I don't, but you can just call it a part of my considerate nature," Sable rubbed his throat. There was a sore, red line at the uncomfortable intersection of his shirt, his collar, and his neck. Meg loomed over him now. Granted, she usually loomed over him, being as abnormally tall as she was, but with his butt planted on the ground, he couldn't help but to feel just a little bit like a bratty kid being scolded by an adult. The thought only made him feel more indignant about the drivel she chose to spout at him. He met her imperious gaze with one of his own, clearly unrepentant.

Once, someone had told him he needed to be a better listener. He tried that already, and all of this was the result. It was easy for people to think that censure went in one ear and out the other when it came to Sable, but he was keener than he seemed, even if he often simply filed away the information he registered through those big, lupine ears. This was one of those cases. Yes, Meg had a point--even he had to admit that much--but it was a stupid point in his opinion, and he would not hesitate to make his disdain for her reprimand known.

"Wow! I didn't know you had it in you. Did it feel good to lash out like that? Did you feel big and strong?" Sable looked over his shoulder, sitting patiently in the middle of the hall where he'd been left. His voice echoed behind her as she paced away. When she suddenly stopped, he smirked. "Oh~ Now she finally realizes."

That wasn't a mistake he'd have made. The collar around his neck made damn sure he wouldn't forget about his limitations.

"C'mon, Maskie. Take a seat and let me spin a yarn. This dog doesn't bite. Promise," He patted the floor. Whether she took him up on his offer didn't really matter; Meg was a captive audience either way.

"You like to think you know everything, don't'cha?" Sable laughed. It was full of bitter mirth. She thought he didn't take things seriously? Putting up good results had been his lifeline ever since he enrolled at the Academy. He studied. He wrote the tests. He did the lame exercises. The freedom to be lippy was his and his alone. "Tell you what: I think I can fathom that reason for you. 'You can't be a good hunter if you care about looking clean'."

That wasn't exactly the quote his grandmother had told him, but it was close enough.

"Sure, yeah, my actions reflect on everyone else, there's a protocol to follow, I'm a worthless faunus from Mantle. Whatever. Heard it all before. I could care, but where I come from, the only thing that matters is finishing the job. Heck, I bet Mr. Vacuo over there wouldn't be making half the fuss if either of us had just stomped HNTR." Sable leaned back against the wall, arms behind his head like a cushion. "Honestly... You parrot all these lines about hierarchy, this; etiquette, that. Do you even like these people? They definitely don't like us."
 
As a matter of fact it had felt good for to put Sable in his place, even if it had only been for a moment before cruel reality had seen fit to pop Meg's bubble. Stil she stubornly refused to cede any ground, even if only in her own mind, to the other faunus and so at least for the moment Sable was going to find himself talking to the girl's back, however as far as she was concerned he was wasting his time.

If Meg truely thought she knew everything then she would have simply walked out the door without a second look back the moment Sable had been announced as team leader (okay she wouldn't have because think of the scandal but you get the point) instead she was forced to put with this sort of indignity everyday. None of this actually mattered though because while she may not have been top of the pyramid yet the gap between her and Sable was still roughly the same as the gap between her and an actual dog.

Maybe more so, at least an actual dog could be somewhat endearing if properly trained.

"Oh please, that is an excuse from someone with neither the skill nor the dedication to achieve it." She scoffed at his first pronouncement turning back around to face him and give him one of her standard aristocratic looks of superiority, this was Atlas and Sable may have been underestimating exactly how much of a premium people put on looking, if not actually being, clean and even if she agreed with him that they probably could have gotten away with their...less than stellar battlefield etiquette if they had still triumphed over the HNTR siblings that was the failing of their combat teacher and possibly Vacuoan society as a whole.

The rest of what he had to say couldn't be so easily dismissed however and she was once again thankful for the mask that could conceal her expression just as easily as it did her telltale Faunus nature. Whether he intended to or not he'd hit a nerve but Meg certainly wasn't about to deeply consider Atlasian hierarchy and her place therein, whether she did actually like any of the people around her, whether she had simply been driven to succeed in the hostile power structure she was born in to as a survival mechanism or whether she had been keeping up a facade of propriety and excellence for so long that she wasn't really sure who she was when she didn't have some external goal to strive for or the approval of an authority figure to chase.

Not when Sable was right there for her to vent her frustrations on.

"They don't like us? No, they don't like you" She shot back, steel in her voice as she stalked back towards him "Don't think you can lump me in with you. I am an Agean and you're just a..." She trailed off for a moment, realising she was about to say Faunus, the whys of which were another train of thought she didn't want to go down right now. Instead she straightened up and shifted her tone as if she had dismissed the conversation entirely and had much better things to be thinking about right now "Look can we please just go to the library and get this over with? I'm sure you are just as unhappy with this situation as I am and the sooner we're finished the sooner you can get back to chasing that girl with the fox ears or making Henrietta uncomfortable."
 
It seemed they were at an impasse. Sable could easily tell that Meg was unwilling to entertain his perspective. How couldn't he? It was as obvious as her latent self-hatred. She might as well have been wearing a big, glowing sign over her head.

"For someone with no dedication or skill, it was pretty easy to wipe the floor with you during our sparring session," Sable crossed his arms and smirked. Meg might've been trying to give him the could shoulder, so she couldn't see it happen. But there was no doubt in Sable's mind that she was envisioning his smug expression, clear as day in her mind's eye. No matter how annoying Meg's jabs were, he could hold that over her head until she finally evened the score. It was all he could do to fetter the side of him that wanted to show her just how deep his skill and dedication ran. He was not a simple Mantlesian thug; he was in a class of his own.

Yet for all of his keen insight, it was ironic that Sable couldn't see just how similar he and Meg were. They could be united in their similarities, if their differences were not so salient.

Meg stomped towards him. Her voice was cold and firm, but her body conveyed her simmering rage through sheer, animalistic spirit--the universal language of a much larger creature trying to impose itself upon its lesser. Rather than express his fear, the corners of Sable's lips twitched upwards. He struck a nerve there, didn't he? It wasn't like the martial artist to be so unbalanced. He resisted the urge to comment on it, though.

His restraint was rewarded by the scent of blood in the air.

"I'm just a what, Miss Aegean?" Sable smiled. His voice terrifyingly measured. His ears pointed forwards, a predator with prey in sight. She'd shown weakness, and now he was going to sink his fangs into her. Although he was a head shorter than her and showed no overt hostility, his presence seemed to cast a great shadow over her. The dissonant serenity of his expression merely made the vicious glint in his eyes all the more discomforting. "Go on. Say it."

The wolf didn't let up an inch as he faced down his quarry. They both knew damn well what she was going to say, but Sable took more than a little bit of sadistic pleasure in twisting the knife by making her actually say it.

"Oh, of course we can~ ...Did you seriously think I would let you off the hook so easily?" Even in the face of her obvious discomfort and attempts to disengage, he persisted. "You can hide it all you want, but you're just another monster like the rest of us."

He drew back. Then, as if he'd been possessed, his expression and body language shifted entirely. Now he was just his normal, irreverent self. "Now then!" He turned around and stretched his shoulders. "Let's go to the library, shall we? This wolf has foxes to chase and human girls to bother."
 
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