Ardenne Academy

A path through the corridor clears in a fast, practiced ripple, students finding doorways and stairwells and sudden urgent business elsewhere, leaving a clean stretch of floor and about forty pairs of eyes arranged along the edges of it at a safe distance. Rex stalks through it, hands shoved in his pockets, clearly with an agenda. He walks directly to where Leslie and Cassian are standing, and stops about a pace closer than anyone would stand who intended a conversation.

"Six days," Rex says. The words carry. They're meant to. Somewhere behind, someone shifts their weight and the sound is enormous in the quiet. "I gave you the Black Card SIX DAYS ago, and you're still hanging around my school like you belong. Like you haven't been exiled." Rex's head tilts, examining Leslie the way you'd examine a stain that hasn't come out after three washes. "No one else ever lasted even three. THEY were able to put it together: I didn't want them here." Rex gestures to the onlooking crowd — sharp, dismissive. "NONE of us wanted them here. THEY were able to figure it out. It was in their best. Interest. To leave. I figure, since you're still here, you have to either be stupid, or you must LIKE the abuse." "So which are you? Stupid, or a MACHINIST?"

Off to one side, leaning against the wall with their arms folded and the expression of someone waiting out a bus delay, Cassian says, without looking up: ".. Masochist. You mean masochist." "It's kind of weird, though. You told me you didn't care about Leslie at all, that they are so far beneath you, that you couldn't care less. Then you come all the way down here, just to harass Leslie." "Curious."

Rex turns, mouth already open... then shuts it, jaw working, and turns back with the temperature noticeably raised. "Nobody asked you." Rex' s focus turns back to Leslie, "Here's how this goes. You say, out loud, right here, where everyone can hear you — that you were wrong, and you're sorry, and you're done. And then maybe I'll be generous. Maybe I take the Black Card back." Rex looks at Leslie, expectantly. "Well?"

"You don't even realize you're doing it, do you?" The question cuts through the air like a knife through silk—clean, precise, utterly unbothered by the tension crackling through the corridor. Cassian still hasn't looked up from his phone, thumb scrolling lazily across the screen as though he's reading something vastly more interesting than whatever drama Rex has manufactured this time. Nobody else moves. Nobody breathes loud enough to hear. A shrug, minimal and dismissive. "You've been doing this since we were kids, Rex. You get upset. You pick someone to target. You make them miserable for a few days. Then you forget all about them and move on to the next thing to catch your interest." His gaze slides to Leslie for a brief, assessing moment, then back to his phone, like he's already categorized them as Not Worth The Effort. "The fact that you're still interested in Leslie says a lot.. don't you think?"

Cassian's quiet observation hangs in the air like smoke from a spent match. Rex's jaw works silently, furious blush on his face, his hands still shoved into his pockets. Forty pairs of eyes track between the three figures—Rex at center stage, Cassian casually dismissive against his wall, and you standing in the middle of it all. Rex's gaze burns through you, waiting for you to say something. To say ANYTHING. The silence stretches, uncomfortably.