Here we are, on time this time :P Enjoy!
The mansion looms above the landscape, a sprawling beast of wealth lounging and glittering in the sunlight. Verdant hills roll away in every direction, unbroken by neither tree line nor human dwelling. This modern monstrosity is the only thing in sight; plunked there seemingly randomly by the eccentric millionaire who had the money to have it built. Perhaps they had tired of the city, perhaps it was some new fashion, the new place for parties: quiet, picturesque, a place to gather and get lost in all at once.
At any rate, the hooded stranger standing at the end of the drive would never have warranted an invitation.
The mistress of the manor would not have heard the bell, even if one had been rung. She holds a flask up to her blue-green eyes and, squinting with concentration, raises another flask and tips. The liquid inside the second flask shifts, pulled by what would later be described as "gravity," about to drip into the first flask –
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Faster than a striking snake, she whips around and hurls both flasks in the direction of the voice. In a flurry of snowflakes, a shield appears in the stranger's arm, raised in a defensive position. The flasks freeze on impact and shatter. The liquid inside crackles at it splatters and freezes onto the shield.
"Damn you!" She spits, "Do you realize how much trouble I went through to get those?"
"Trouble you should have obviously remembered before you threw them," replies the stranger coolly, lowering his shield slightly. A pair of glittering ice-blue eyes is just visible beneath the heavy hood.
"You'll pay for this," she hisses. The sword at her belt separates into segments as she raises it above her head. A crack like a whip sounds as she brings it down, striking the floor mere inches from the stranger's feet. The expensive tile fractures, but the stranger doesn't flinch. An icy silence fills the room as the stranger in the hood and the woman with the whip-sword stare each other down.
The silence shatters when the stranger chuckles. "You're desperate."
"It's not exactly a laughing matter when you're trying to construct a soul," Ivy snaps.
"So that's what you've been up to," Vexen says, with the air of one who is not surprised but is trying to sound like it. He lowers his hood. His white-blonde hair almost glitters in the sunlight that streams from the window behind him, just as it glints off the spines of the books along the walls. "How very interesting. How does one construct a soul, exactly?"
"It's a learning process, one which you so rudely interrupted." Ivy deflects, narrowing her eyes at him. Those razor-sharp cheekbones and thin lips give his face a fox-like quality: condescending, calculating, and cunning.
"With good reason," Vexen replies indifferently, "These two rather unstable chemicals would have reacted to each other with a violent explosion. Really, if you're going to perform such experiments, you should invest in some-," he looks her up and down, taking in her scant and revealing clothing, "-more protective garments." He finishes with a sneer.
A growl rumbles in the back of Ivy's throat. "How would you presume to tell me what to do?" She demands.
"I am a scientist, like yourself," he explains. "And, also like you, I am wondering whether it's possible to construct a missing piece of myself. Yet – again, like you – I have no idea what parts create the sum of that missing piece."
"So why are you here, then, seeing as I know nothing?" Even as she says it, she unconsciously shifts to her left, towards the table she'd been working at. All her notes are here, right next to her, she can't let him get to them…
He catches her movement. His eyes flick to the notebook on the table at her hip. "Well, I didn't know that, did I?" he asks in a way that makes Ivy uncomfortable, as he looks straight into her eyes again. "Scientists learn from each other's experiments… and it seems this wasn't a fruitless journey after all." Vexen's lips twist into a cruel smile.
At this, Ivy loses her temper. He can't have her notes, he won't, too much depended on them. She raises her sword and strikes again, this time upon Vexen's shield. It freezes there, literally: ice crystals encase the first segment and then the next, growing up the sword towards the hilt. Ivy cries out as the cold burns through her gauntlet. She drops her sword, and it falls crackling on the floor. She stares at it in disbelief.
"You need to cool off," Vexen says, with a dangerous dispassion. "You can't expect to make any progress when your emotions get the best of you." As he speaks, a dark portal blossoms around him, swallowing all but his last words, whispered from nowhere.
Ivy blinks at his sudden disappearance, but is relieved too. She looks again at her frozen sword and sighs. It would thaw eventually, but this encounter had cost her precious time. Her life depended on this experiment: she would either succeed or die, and Ivy had too much to do to die yet. She turns back to her table of vials and beakers. Her missing soul won't construct itself.
Ivy's not my favorite, but her and Vexen just went so perfectly together in my head I couldn't just not do it XD Please leave a review, don't be shy :3 Stay tuned for the next chapter in 2 weeks!