Unexpected bonding

Musa walked across the yard, among training and chatting students, trying to calm her twirling thoughts by firmly holding the combat stick. Usually, she enjoyed the lessons and this place felt like a second home to her. But in all honesty, these last few days could've gone a lot better. For some reason, this complicated mix of excitement, worry and determination around her was harder to take than usual. Everyone was restlessly and impatiently waiting for something to happen, even though they didn't fully know what it was. But it was there, hiding in the plain sight. This was the time her help would be needed the most, but she had never felt herself so...damn useless. How she wished she could've already been in her room, put her headphones on, focused on the music and let the rest of the world keep turning by itself for a while. 

 The sudden flash of obvious arrogance and more hidden anger was an oddly welcoming change in the common atmosphere and attracted her attention. It didn't take long for her to figure out its source: one of specialists was training with a battle rope a few long steps away from her, clearly apart from the others. His technique appeared to be nearly flawless, but she didn't need her powers to notice that behind it there was a deep need to let his frustrations out. 

Musa didn't actually know much about Riven. Of course, everybody had heard of him - other than being close with Sky, he had got quite a bad reputation in Alfea, and his questionable habits with drugs didn't exactly help on the matter. These "stormy and unbalanced"-kind of energy auras were often too much for an empath like her, and that fact alone put him among the people she had usually been avoiding. Still walking forward, she answered his sharp glance nonchalantly – a neutral, silent hello, that didn't expect any kind of discussion. However, hearing quiet, out of the blue chuckle made her stop reflexively, full of doubt. They hadn't changed more than a few words with each other before and she had had no reason to believe it would change now. He stopped his training too and looked at her, estimating. 

 "You like holding that big stick?"

His slightly amused, undermining and suggesting tone after a long and exhausting day made Musa react quickly; with secure grasp, she rotated the stick swiftly and bent into an attack-position, holding the stick very close to his face – staying still, half waiting for some kind of anger or offended surrendering-movement. However, her intuition was wrong again: instead, the youngster touched the head of the stick lightly and lowered It, raising his eyebrows and smirking almost flirtatiously. "I'll take that as a yes." 

 Young fairy repressed her will to roll her eyes: sadly, Riven was also well-known for his narrow-minded, obnoxious and somewhat prejudiced comments and opinions. This year Terra and Dane  had seemed to have gotten the worst blows of them. Even though Terra hadn't admitted it to anyone, Musa had lived with her long enough to know that some of the remarks had really gotten under her skin. And that was saying a lot, when it came to a generally happy person like her. Some people just couldn't take a hint of crossing the line, and the boy standing in front of her was definitely one of them.

To show him that she really wasn't in a mood for such behavior today, she partly leaned on her stick and titled her head. "I think I just threw up."

In spite of the loathing tone in her answer, Riven couldn't help feeling a tad impressed: this tiny fairy seemed to have more fierceness and spunk in her than the most of the well-trained Specialists. After the lackey-like, avoiding or somewhat fearful reactions he had usually faced, this strictness from someone else than his best friend or mentor – especially a girl - certainly was something new. There was no denying that Beatrix had offered him quite a portion of that as well in her own, seductive and slightly twisted way, but this lass had some exceptional gentleness, vision and different kind of honesty in her that Beatrix just... had not.