The weeks had seemed to fly past for Vertiya since she bumped into her father, and before she knew it exams were around the corner and revision was happening. The exams were not crucial to being able to stay in Atlas, but were more just a guideline for the teachers to see how the students were progressing academically, and as such there were varying responses to them. Vertiya was taking them seriously – she'd been in the library every day for the last couple of weeks, getting study done to prepare – and Ruzovi was at least going over things in her spare time, but neither Yimesz or Pluto had bothered to even pick up a book yet. Although Vertiya would have preferred the two of them to actually get some work done, there was nothing she could do to force them into it, and so her time in the library had not been with any of her team.
That wasn't to say she'd been alone, though. At first she had, as she wasn't aware that there was anyone else in her year preparing for the exams, but soon enough she realised there was another who was spending their time in the library as well. Techta Wayve, the leader of team TDAL, had also been taking the exams seriously, and although the two of them originally decided to study separately, they'd at one point worked together, and now the two of them decided to revise as a pair. Vertiya found a little bit of herself in Techta as well – they were both not the most sociable of people, they were both somewhat awkward around new people, and they'd both ended up leaders of their respective teams even though neither of them expected it – and that was probably the main reason why their friendship blossomed.
Vertiya was in the library first on this particular day, and although she, as per usual, decided to go and start up by herself, she soon heard footsteps approaching her and was greeted by the familiar large, turquoise eyes of her new friend. Techta slid in to the seat next to Vertiya, tying up her deep blue hair before turning to face her. "I'm not too late, am I?" Techta asked, a little concern present on her expression. Techta's voice was surprisingly deep for a girl, and didn't quite match her looks – with a heart-shaped face, large eyes, small nose, and fairly small build as she was both shorter and slimmer than Vertiya, she had more of a cute look to her – and as such Vertiya had first assumed her tone would be high pitched, similar to Ruzovi, but Vertiya had gotten used to it now.
"No of course not, I just got here early," Vertiya explained with a smile, moving her set-up a little so that Techta could see it. There were scribblings, notes and various books that the both of them had worked on, and Techta was quick to get a pen and scribble a little more on the dust workings that the pair had been recently looking over. Vertiya was not used to working with other people before as she never found anyone who was on a similar intellect level, but Techta was smart enough that Vertiya was not doing all the work, and it did a great job of making sure Vertiya was not stressed under the workload. Whilst Techta was writing things down, Vertiya simply flipped a card through her fingers as she always did whenever concentrating, waiting to see what she had thought of.
"You really love handling your weapons, don't you," Techta said with a grin, able to see Vertiya's card shuffling through her peripheral vision, as she finished drawing up a diagram in the small blank areas around the notes already written on the piece of paper she was using.
"They're convenient for fiddling with," Vertiya explained to her, shaking her head with a humoured sigh. Even before Vertiya settled on dust infused cards as her weapon of choice, she still was fond of card magic tricks, and was rarely seen without a deck of cards on her person, whether shuffling them, flipping them through her fingers as she was now, or doing a couple of tricks. "I guess it's a bit harder for you to bring your lot here, isn't it?"
"Well you know as well as I do if I were to start messing around with my weapons around here, all our notes would become useless within minutes," Techta pointed out, laughing. That led Vertiya on a mental train back to when she first found out about Techta's style of fighting, and how much it surprised her.
It was a few weeks back, when Vertiya had recently started talking to Techta and the pair of them had started working together. Vertiya had a fair bit of info from most of the students back from initiations, but try as she might, she couldn't find anything on Techta no matter how much she looked through her past writings.
However, at one point when they'd done a lot of work and were more or less done for the day, their conversation managed to somehow go over to weapons, and of course Techta knew about Vertiya's weapon. Although it wasn't a talking point any more, everyone still knew about the Nevermore.
"Why, what weapon do you use then?" Vertiya asked, having admitted she couldn't actually remember what she used. Techta wasn't offended as she wasn't someone who tended to do much in the way of combat – again, similar to Vertiya – but she wasn't bothered about explaining.
"Oh, I use a water gun," Techta had explained, so calmly that it sounded as though water guns were common when everyone used actual guns in their loadouts. Vertiya knew that her expression was shocked, because she could see and hear Techta's laugh from it. "Oh, and water balloons as well," she added, amused.
"Wait… How?" Vertiya asked, trying to formulate how on earth a water gun would possibly do anything. Unless it was to the extent that it had the power of a fire hose, or there was something that somehow affected the water, Vertiya could not think of a way that it would do any significant damage.
"Tell you what. Next time there's a duel on, I'll go in for a change, and I'll show you then. If I win, you're making the snacks for the next three times we're in here," Techta suggested, grinning. Vertiya was far too intrigued to let the opportunity slide, and although she was in no way the cook that her mother was, she'd found a good cookie recipe recently that she intended to try out as it stood.
"You have managed to appeal far too much to my curiosity," Vertiya confessed, her expression defeated, yet in a joking manner. "You're on."
Vertiya only had to wait until the next day before Professor Lazuli decided to give the option of it to anyone who didn't want to study during his class. Emeric from Fen's team decided to give it a go, but with the exception of Vertiya, no one was bothered about him going for it when Techta said she'd give it a go. Even Aurolia, Yi's girlfriend, asked Techta if she was sure about it, and that she'd go in for her if Emeric was causing problems. Techta, however, was adamant, and went to the ring, taking her water gun off her shoulder sling.
Emeric was unimpressed about Techta's weapon, and when Professor Lazuli allowed them to start, Emeric taunted her into going first. Techta, with a shrug, fired a blast from her water gun, which caught Emeric full in the face without doing any damage at all. Emeric audibly chuckled at the lack of damage done by Techta's weapon, but that laugh soon vanished when Techta wiggled the fingers of her right hand – she was holding her gun in her left – and Emeric got pulled down, his head slamming into the ground face first.
Vertiya immediately understood how Techta's weapon worked, but it didn't seem like everyone else had yet, least of all Emeric. He got back to his feet with a scowl, before extending strings from his hands, causing his puppet to lunge towards Techta. She wasn't caught out, though, and quickly grabbed a water balloon from the holster full of them around her chest, using an underarm throw to hit the puppet before opening out her palm. As she did, the puppet got launched back at Emeric, smacking him in the face and knocking him backwards.
Techta didn't stop there, though. Whilst Emeric was getting back to his feet, she launched a load of water from her gun up into the air, controlling it into a floating bubble which was rapidly expanding. Emeric could only watch as the bubble turned into a wave, which crashed down on Emeric and shoved him straight off the spar platform.
There was a stunned silence for a moment, before Derek, Aurolia and Lissandre, the rest of Techta's team, started cheering and applauding, leading some of the others to do the same. Techta curtsied and gave a small smile, before heading down from the sparring area herself.
Vertiya wandered over to her as she deescalated, clapping with a smile on her lips. "Hydrokinesis is your semblance then, huh," Vertiya said, more of a statement than a question, which brought a similar smile to Techta's expression.
"Very observant," Techta replied, swinging her gun around to her back. "Which I suppose begs the question, what are you bringing to the library? I could kill for something sweet. Cookies would be great, now I think about it, if you're up for that."
"I didn't lose you somewhere, did I?"
Vertiya got brought back to the real world by Techta's question, and she hurriedly shook her head. "No no, I just got lost on a train of thought," Vertiya explained, looking over what Techta had been doing. There wasn't anything she saw that she didn't understand, it was just a different style to how she would work herself. "How about if you did this though?" she continued, drawing a couple of lines on the diagram Techta had drafted of dust with various weaponry.
The pair worked seamlessly through the day, and before they'd even realised it, the outside world had gotten dark, and it was only when Vertiya let out a yawn that she realised how late it was. That wasn't uncommon – Vertiya often would work for hours on end with time flying, because she was one of the rare few who enjoyed it – and as such, she knew when was the best time for her to stop.
"We should… probably call it there for today," Vertiya said, checking her watch before rubbing her eyes, followed by looking to her right to see Techta. She'd managed to fall asleep, snoozing peacefully with her face sideways towards Vertiya, resting on one of the open books she was going through. Vertiya, knowing that sleeping on a book was remarkably uncomfortable once you woke up, gently nudged Techta's shoulder.
"Who what where?" Techta suddenly said as she shot up into an upright position, looking around rapidly before realising there was just Vertiya next to her. "Oh… I fell asleep didn't I? Oops," she continued, drowsiness returning to her voice.
Vertiya giggled softly before nodding. "I was just saying how we should probably call it a day, which considering your napping is probably the best path," she explained. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Wait… one more thing I wanted to ask," Techta said, yawning mid-sentence and rubbing her eyes herself, which had gone red through tiredness. "How is it you manage to… be friends with everyone? Like, all I have are my team and you, and yet everyone else seems to like you."
Vertiya managed to mask her emotions, which were a blend of surprise and confusion. She never exactly thought she was the most popular of people, quite the opposite really, so for someone to ask that caught her off guard. "I… dunno, really. I don't exactly think I'm friends with everyone, it's more or less just my team, you, and Fen. I don't really know anyone from CMNM," Vertiya admitted. "My brother has always been the sociable one. Yimesz just knows how to work people, I guess. Kinda like Aurolia in your team, no?"
Techta shook her head at that last point, a small frown appearing on her face. "It's actually quite different to what you think. Aurolia and I talk a lot, and she's told me how the only reason she got popular is because of her looks," Techta told her, looking out into what seemed like nothingness. "She actually used to get quite upset really, because she'd get ogled after because of her model status and her attractive appeal, yet no one ever bothered to find out anything about her. Most of the time, everything you see from her is all put on in order to fit what people believe she should be like and in order to be able to make friends with people. According to her, Yi is actually the first person she's been with that actually wants to know more about her true personality, and is the best boyfriend she's had."
Vertiya was learning a lot of surprising things tonight. Vertiya always considered Yimesz as the 'player' type in relationships considering how many he had been through, but to find out he was actually caring for someone was not something she'd even dreamed of. "Huh. Guess I should probably stop berating him then," she said, thinking out loud more than conversing. "I suppose it helps if you play to the people, which is not something I can or will do. People know me probably because of the whole Nevermore thing. That's more or less it."
"Well… that's not entirely true either," Techta said, getting up out of the sofa and taking her things. "I mean, whether you know it or not, Yimesz is not the only attractive Hylae at this school. I can guarantee that people will talk to you if you make yourself more approachable," she concluded with a grin, before heading out of the library.
Vertiya wasn't sure what to think about that. Still being unsure on her true sexuality made it difficult for her to try and forge a romantic relationship. Besides, out of who she talked to, Fen and Techta were both straight, Ruzovi was still too young and also straight anyway, and Yimesz was her brother. That left Pluto… However, Vertiya was fairly certain she didn't want to do anything with someone she was in a team with, because that would complicate things more than they needed to be. Besides, she didn't have time to think about romance with exams just around the corner. Sighing, she packed up her things and left the library as well, leaving the lights to fade to darkness as she went back to her dorm.