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“Come on Max, I know you can get this!” Isabel encouraged him.
Max huffed, beginning to feel tired from the exertion of focusing on, and continually failing to, make a proper spec-shot. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he turns back toward where she stands in the club room at Mayview Middle School. She’s got her hair up in twin ponies, and her wide grin ironically makes her look as though she’s chomping at the bit for Max’s next attempt, no doubt to hand-feed him sugarcubes of saccharine praise for his effort.
“We’ve been at this all afternoon. Why isn’t line-driving it enough?” He prodded.
“Look, smashing it with your bat is awesome, and I hadn’t thought to do anything like that.” she shrugged with a lax expression, before tightening to say-
“But what if you get separated from your tool again? You can’t make spectral constructs yet, and this is the more basic thing.”
“Great, so I’m a baby with the superpower to hit homeruns, but without the ability to crawl the base-ics.” Max focused once more on his fingers, giving his sardonic joke an opportunity to emotionally distance him from impending failure.
He sighted in the perched haunted bucket, unscathed and unmoved from the coatrack on which it sat since none of his attempts had even disturbed the air around it much less made contact. The gooey black orb that Ed had previously pejoratively nicknamed an ‘egg sac’ swirled into existence at the tip of his index finger. It took all his focus to build it to the size of a ping pong ball, and once he was there, he found himself lacking the mental muscle to will it any further than a single foot. The sac instead falls a steep downward curve to bounce off its elder siblings and lamely roll another half foot forward.
“That’s a… new personal best for distance, at least. Good job!” Isabel congratulates with the expected and dreaded geometric sugarcoating. He unfortunately lets the frustration of well-meaning condescension get to him.
“Can we cut the participation trophy routine!? I don’t need placating, I need- like, a drill sergeant. I thought you were a jock! Shout at me, or mock my failures!” He regrets the sharp edge his words have the moment they cut free from his inner voice.
Stubborn refusal to back down from a mistake refused to dull the next words though.
“Maybe I could concentrate if you beat me up over it so I didn’t have to divert focus to doing it myself.” Max turns back to the target, hoping to ignore and forget the existence of his outburst. Before he can bring his hand up to try again, Isabel’s hand stops him at the wrist.
“Max-” she starts firmly, the kind of voice that’s fought through a stiff upper lip as a warm-up before pummeling a guilty mind.
“Sorry.” He taps out before the bout starts.
“I… that isn’t how you want to lead. I know.”
Her grip slackens a bit, caught-off-attack by how he’d managed to steal her words from her single handedly and while in plain sight.
“Y-yeah. That’s right- And you don’t *want* a drill sergeant. Trust me; I live with one.” She recovers shakily, steadying herself on a common interest in rebellious youths; that of complaining about parental figures.
“Heh- probably the only consistently positive feedback you get is when you are being tough. Makes sense that it’s what you would impress upon others.”
Realizing that it’s more-rude-than-normal to suddenly pseudo-psychoanalyze your superiors, Max turns at last to look at Isabel.
Her face is frozen. There’s a noticeable and spectrally-familiar red hue to her face, but no “gas” to accompany the colour. Her eyes are wide, and… wet.
Uh oh
Before Max has the chance to wrench his foot from his mouth, Isabel wrenches his arm pulling him toward her.
A brief pang of fear runs over Max’s nervous system before it’s shocked to stunned numbness as her lips clumsily half-meet his.
Almost as though reality had realized it made an error, Isabel reels back, throwing his hand away bearing an expression of supreme, flustered consternation.
The face is fleeting though, as she quickly flees the scene. Leaving a dumbfounded Max with no possibility of explanation as to what just occurred.