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Fabian has just failed his bard class. Between trying to figure out how to live alone, his crippling loneliness, the pressure of being a Maximum Legend, and the rigorous training for the owlbears, he just doesn't have the energy to pirouette and prance like he knows he can. Over the last semester he’s been just skating by, flirting with failure but barely eking out a victory by sheer effort alone. But now it’s come to the midterms and he’s just screwed up majorly.
Everyone is lined up and performing the group dance when he trips over his own feet and stumbles out of time to the music, crashing into Mazey as she dances beside him. He glances over at Terpsichore and sees the frown on her face, the slight shake of the head in disappointment, and the tic made on the clipboard.
He continues to dance, doing his best to ignore the whispers and sniggers from his fellow students, but they just add up, like little grains of sand – no, at this point they add up like boulders – and Fabian can feel something crack within him. The stress overflows and it funnels into something more refined, more volatile: rage.
The class ends, the midterm is over and the deed is done for better or worse, and the teenagers shed their tension as they head over to get their bags. Well, all but one. As Fabian sorts through his bag, Mazey walks over and nudges him gently with her hoof.
“Hey, you ok after that fumble? You’re forgiven, by the way, for stumbling into me,” she jokes, only a little hurt that Fabian hadn’t yet apologized for crashing into her.
Flustered and humiliated, Fabian turns around sharply and deflects.
“Don’t you mean you’re sorry for bumping into me??” he asks loudly.
“Come again?”
“I said, ‘Don’t you mean you’re sorry for bumping into me?’” he says, even louder.
Mazey scoffs. “You’re crazy if you think that I’m the one who initiated that disaster back there.”
“I mean, it’s a surprise that you can even dance at all with those big cloppers. Can’t even do an en pointe because you don’t have toes.”
“...Excuse me?!” Mazey’s face heats up and her ears droop down. “Fabian… I can't believe you would say something like that! I… I just…”
Her eyes go red as the bull within bellows at the gate, begging to be let out.
She lets it.
She shoves her finger into his chest, and nostrils flaring, tears into him.
“I just can’t stand you! You’ve been nothing but a shit-show for these past six weeks! Whatever happened to the Maximum Legend, huh? Everyone could see how sloppy your footwork was today; you were a complete trainwreck! Messy and pathetic! Why I ever thought you were cool is a mystery to me! You know what you are? A Maximum Failure!”
This draws chuckles from the gathered students, one or two whispering “Maximum Failure” to other students and Fabian knows that while it might not stick, he’s still going to hear it whispered from time to time behind his back if he ever screws up like this again.
“Yeah, whatever, Mazey. You still ran into me,” he continues to allege, and he grabs his bags and storms out of the dance studio.
“Asshole,” snorts Mazey, before the bull goes back into its cage and her eyes return to normal. As the door closes behind Fabian, he can hear students gather around her to console her and confirm that they, too, know Fabian’s full of shit.
He cringes and hurries to his locker, far away from the dance studio. What the hell did he just do? He insinuated that she couldn’t dance because of a lack of toes when every student knows that Mazey Phaedra is the most graceful student of them all, that’s what he did. Maybe if he can settle down and calm himself, get some rational thoughts back in his head, he can apologize to her and hope to amend what he’s destroyed.
Maybe.
Does he deserve it? No, he deserves nothing but this anger burning deep within him, and he lets that anger warm him on this cold December day.