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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."
 
"Reprobate." Meg hissed at him through gritted teeth, they both knew that that wasn't what she had been going to say but saving face was as much as reflex to her by now as anything she'd learned in her Mistralian studies. It didn't matter whether Sable believed it or not (because lets be fair, he wasn't going to), Meg found comfort in knowing that she'd followed the proper procedure.

"I am nothing like you..." She muttered under her breath as she watched him move down the corridor before, still mindful of the leash they were both under, catching up to him and making sure to at least bewalking beside him if not a few strides ahead, it simply wouldn't do for her to be seen following him.

The library of the Academy was everything that you would expect from such an institution, a multilevelled marvel of shining metals and crisp white plastics that had seen fit to mostly eschew such old fashioned contrivances such as books for convinient information terminals and other cutting edge forms of media but none of that really mattered for 'Miss Aegean' for the moment as she settled down at a table to review the footage that had got them into this mess in the first place.

It was no great surprise that Blood & Money SA hadn't exactly covered themselves in glory but even if they hadn't been more concerned with sniping at each other than capturing the flag it still wouldn't have been a sure thing. The siblings of team HNTR fought like a well oiled machine, covering for each other's weakspots and finding ways to create openings for their individual strengths and that was before whatever they were doing with their Semblance's that allowed them to manipulate their surroundings. The only thing stopping it from being even more impressive was just how offputting it was.

Of course Meg had plenty of ideas of her own but she wanted to see what Sable made of all this first, just like her combat style she was going to wait for him to expose himself and then she would strike!
 
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"Uh huh. Reprobate. Right." It was good that Meg expected Sable not to believe him because he didn't even give her the courtesy of pretending that he had. Instead, he just crossed his arms and radiated smugness in her general direction. Simply knowing he'd wormed his way past her allegedly-impenetrable defenses was enough to satisfy him, even if he hadn't made those walls come tumbling down. "Keep your secrets, Maskie."

After much ado about who got to go first, the duo finally made it to the library. Sable knew what a library was in concept, but he could count the number of times he'd stepped into one with his fingers--and even less so, if you counted the ones that weren't in someone else's house. He'd never been an avid reader--that had been her proclivity--so his interest in the structures had been purely profit-based.

The Atlas Academy library smelled less musty than those ones, though, and had a lot less actual books, which Sable found more troubling than comforting. There was a low drone of whispered discussion as well, but aside from that, it was more or less as quiet as could be. The sheer sterility of it was beyond even the classrooms. It felt a too mechanical for his liking, and he and robots had never mixed well.

"I wanna get outta here and be a nuisance, so let's get this quality time over with," Sable remarked on Meg's behalf. Clearly she wasn't feeling up for a second round; she'd been quiet ever since. Rather than view the footage on his scroll, he opted to loom ominously behind Meg. He knew his proximity would irk her, which was partly the point, but it was mostly just a rare opportunity to see the top of her head, considering the height difference between them.

"Wow! I look good on camera," Sable whistled. "I'd look even better if I wasn't trying to dodge a fist from my beloved teammate." Aside from the fact he looked infuriatingly good just in general, Sable didn't seem keen on making any comments that weren't laced with sarcasm. "Look at them holding hands! It's cute. I remember doing that when I was six." His tone made it unsure if he was lying or not. "Didn't seem so keen on holding hands when I was talking trash, though."

At any rate, after the first viewing, Sable had gathered what information he felt he needed. He clapped his hands together. "Right. Well it seems pretty simple to me," he began. "You just go 'woosh' and 'fwting' and 'pow' and then make sure they aren't touching and then go 'twhack' and 'bang' on one and 'sching' 'clang' on the other."

He paused.

"I'm fucking with you. Pretty obvious the nerd's semblance only works in close contact, so it's a simple matter of either holding them both off at once while the other goes for the objective, or separating them and going 'schwing' and 'bang'."
 
Meg didn't like people standing over her at the best of times, too many memories of stern tutors and unfriendly treatment at the hands of her Atlasian peers, and she certainly didn't like Sable being taller than her for once. To make matters worse she knew there was precisely nothing that she could do about it, anything she tried would just be confirmation that he had gotten another rise out of her and she knew that he knew that too, just another little thing on the pile of indignities she had been forced to endure since she had passed the entrance exam.

Her only hope was that the video they were studying would at least offer some kind of distraction, alas it wasn't exactly her finest hour and being forced to relieve it was excruciating enough without the commentary from her 'leader'.

"Can you please try and take this seriously?" She asked with a sigh, Meg didn't fancy her chances of success but she just had to hope that Sable wanted to get this assignment resolved as much as she did "Don't think I don't know that you fight people better than Grimm, if there was ever a time for you to actually be useful it's now. They fight exceptionally well together but that only means they struggle when seperated, given the low combat utility of Semblance, Nick would be the obvious choice to target first."

Sound tactical advice (?) and certainly not influenced at all by her desire to settle the score with Nick from their combat class.

"What have we got here? Long time no see Fishface." A voice dripping with wealth and privilege interjected as a blue haired boy in an Atlas uniform approached them, a sword and shield slung on his back, drawing a long-suffering groan from Meg "Finally found someone who'll actually take you on a little date huh?"

"Oh what fresh hell is this...? Hello Lance, how's the family?"
 
"Huh?" Sable crossed his arms and shot her an unamused look. "You don't think I'm taking this seriously? I literally just said what you said."

Despite his flippant demeanor, or perhaps appropriately to it, the faunus was being plenty serious by his reckoning. Frankly, he took a bit of offense at the suggestion he wasn't. Lines of text in the Academy's books may have been obscure to him, but lines of attack and defense seemed as obvious to him as the moon's shattered state. Maybe Meg had a point about him being especially good at fighting people--not that he found fighting Grimm to be especially difficult either. However, as talented in combat as he was, it seemed his ability to articulate his deeply ingrained training was not as robust.

"Besides, he knows he's the obvious target." He leaned over her shoulder to take control of the playback. Having him practically draping himself over her was no doubt uncomfortably close for the Atlesian, but Sable didn't really care about the intersection of their personal spaces. "Look, that little nerd is on her like graffiti on a dumpster. And if you watch here... and here... the big one's making sure her precious little baby is safe."

Needless to say, the only reason he could so accurately pinpoint the time stamps was because proper attacking patterns on the SA side of the match were few and far between--when they weren't incidental, at least.

"Letting her fuck around with the terrain is a pain in the ass anyway," Sable added. He was good at thinking on the fly, but that didn't mean he particularly enjoyed the mental effort of recalculating all his angles of attack. Even with a compatible partner, coordination would be all too easy to disrupt if he let her freely shape the field. "And if we remove the big bitch from the board first... Heh."

There was a sadistic glimmer in his eyes, a not uncommon detail in the young wolf. It was obvious he was having a bit too much fun thinking about how to ruin HNTR's day. From a purely objective-based standpoint, it was inefficient, but he wasn't concerned about efficiency for this second round. He wanted to send a message. "He's gonna be pissing and shitting himself when he has to do everything on his own."

Speaking of piss and shit, it was at that point that some scum off the bottom of his boot decided to make its appearance. Even if he hadn't recognized him from class, Sable would've disliked him on principle. Team GLNT had made no secret of the high opinions they held of themselves, even in comparison to HNTR, the 'only other respectable team' by their measurement. Now, one of them was making a nuisance of himself. While Meg was not his favorite person in the world, he couldn't go around letting people think he wouldn't do anything if his teammates got in trouble.

Needless to say, it was great timing. Trying to explain something to Meg was like talking to a wall.

"Oh? I was just thinking about seeing the circus later," Sable cut in. He draped his elbow over Meg's shoulder. He was clearly unbothered by the insinuation that this was anything but a study session. "But it seems the clown's come to us. How convenient. So to what do we owe the pleasure, bozo? Finally tired of striking out?"
 
"That's so funny because I was just thinking about seeing the zoo later." Lance just ignored the rest of his comment, despite several of his very public failures (and how was he supposed to know that second-year had a girlfriend?) he had just the right combination of money and confidence that meant there were a disappointing number of girls who were willing to give him a shot, instead he turned his attention back to Megara with a smug grin.

"Oh you know, Ironwood's finest by day, fantastically wealthy by night, the usual. How about you? Didn't look like things were going so well for you in combat class."

Meg was already on her feet, just because she wasn't Lance's biggest fan didn't mean she was about to be any nicer to Sable and the feeling of his arm around her made her want to take a a series of searing showers. "Well we can't all have the good fortune to be matched with people we already know now can we?" She replied, just about managing to keep her veneer of Atlasian civility intact and keep her tone conversational "Such a shame you didn't make leader, then again I suppose playing second fiddle to Gerrard is what you're used to."

"Better than having to listen him." Lance shot back, tilting his head towards Sable, they both knew that she'd gone for a cheapshot and he needed to regain some ground. This left Meg in a rather difficult position because while she couldn't let him have the last word here she also really didn't want to be in a position where she was defending Sable, that would only give him the wrong idea.
 
"Is that so? Well, when you visit the gorillas, tell the Gerry and the rest of your lot that I said hi," Sable quipped back smugly. These Atlesians really needed better material. He'd heard it all; when it wasn't preening like peacocks about their superior wealth and breeding, it was almost always dog-this and zoo-that. Heck, even with Mantlesians, it was almost always dog-this and zoo-that! At this point, it'd take a truly novel insult to upset Sable's poker face to any significant degree. That isn't to say he wasn't irked, though. Sable was always irked. It just so happened that Atlas Academy offered a very convenient way to de-stress: annoying Atlesians.

Fortunately for Meg, Sable was apolitical when it came to that particular pastime, and unfortunately for Lance, he decided to give Sable an opportunity to butt in.

"Wo~ow. 'Atlas' finest' can't figure out a comeback for a Faunus so he decides to deflect? So much for being from more clever and well-spoken." With his arm rest taken from him, Sable simply crossed his arms smugly. He didn't mind defending Megara against Lance. Mostly because he knew that his intent wasn't so much to defend her, but offend him. "If your pickup lines are like that, no wonder your success rate is so low. Tell you what, Lance. Since not having to listen to me is such a privilege, here's an order for you: don't fuck off. I could use the entertainment."
 
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"I'll pass that on." Lance met Sable's smugness beat for beat, if he wanted to rile up the rest of GLNT that was fine by him, heck he'd bring the popcorn and laugh when Gerrard pounded him in to the ground like he had done last time he'd clashed with SABL. It was a shame the rest of GLNT wouldn't be as into it but Trystan was far too his own melodrama to notice and Lin was just far calm to rise to any sort of provocation but what could you do?

"I do okay for myself." He grinned lasciviously for a moment as his mind wandered to his conquests and Meg had to restrain herself from punching him right then and there, she knew what that look meant and worse she knew that he had looked at her like that before too. "Honestly I kinda feel sorry for you, you get put in charge of a whole team chicks but you're stuck with Fishface and that weird pink gremlin."

"Is there a point to any of this posturing?" The other Atlasian fixed him with a look that made it abundantly clear that she was not in the mood for any of this, mask or no mask, this had already been a car crash of a day and the last thing she wanted was to be stuck between two of her least favourite people. She just wanted all this to be over so she could have several rounds with her training dummy and a nice pot of soothing tea.

"What I can't come and check in on an old friend? We're just all so concerned how your standards are slipping since you started slumming it. Not gonna look too good for Mummy & Daddy now is it?" Lance caught Meg briefly clenching her fists and while some people might have taken that as he warning, he knew that meant he'd hit a nerve. There was that ground he was looking for.
 
"Please do. It's all a lapdog is good for, anyway," Sable snorted. The veiled threat didn't bother him overmuch. He anticipated coming into conflict with GLNT at some point in his career here. Honestly, he was surprised it hadn't happened sooner considering how he treated their pretty princess in their first exhibition match. But there was nothing wrong with expediting the schedule, especially when it came with the fun pastime of flinging shit at someone who was becoming exponentially more irritating by the second. Were it not for the laws of this land, Sable would have started a fight. Freedom would taste really good right now, but Mantlesians were always good at making do in irksome situations.

But perhaps there was a way to get what he wanted? He had the will for it, and as the old saying went...

"Wow. Crazy," Sable deadpanned, miming speech with his hands. "All that yapping and yet nothing of substance." He looked over at Lance. He was practically transparent to Sable's keen, crimson eyes. Then he lolled his head over to Megara.

"You wanted to review strategy, right? Then listen to this." When it came to folks like these, saying the quiet part out loud and cutting straight to the point was usually enough. He had the advantage here; Sable had nobody to disappoint since everyone was already disappointed in him. "Lance here is employing the time-honored tactic of giving you the 'option' of losing by concession, or losing by initiating a conflict, wherein the instigator will proceed to pussy out and appeal to some higher power to dole out punishment. It's the kind of trick twelve year olds think is especially clever, often used by those too lacking in skill or courage to pick a fight directly. Observe the focus on status and connection, and realize he has nothing to call his own."

...Wait a second! Sable was doing the exact same thing!
 
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