Broken In So Many Ways [Open]

((Note. Chronologically takes place one week after the second Initiation. This thread is an immediate follow up from this one. ))

The Courtyard. Shortly after the Indigo Incident.

Fool. Idiot. Weakling. His mind was tormented. The Memory haunting him, twisting, changing with the current situation. He saw her again. But instead of calling for him to help her...she laughed at him and turned away. The beasts...laughed. He was cast aside. A weakling. Not worthy of her. Of them. At some point between his departure from Mao's dorm room and his arrival in the courtyard he'd stopped by the lockers. And he'd armed himself with the Talons.

He didn't know why. He didn't know how. Drake was for all intents and purposes lost. Confused. Wild eyed, his eyes trapped in that deep shade of blue that was once his own natural colour. And for just a moment his hair seems to be lightening, returning to the ashen blonde of his youth. Something was very, very wrong with this current situation.

Looking around like little more than a beast he darts from cover to cover until he is finally satisfied he is alone...well, at least as alone as he could be in this place. The idea of being alone...now was starting to hurt. This pain...this emotional torment was alien to him.

He does the only thing he could do. He screams. He lets out an angry shout that any who had known love would understand. And then he launches himself for no real reason at a wall, slashing at it with the Talons at a frightening speed, trying desperately to just burn himself out. He had no idea what would happen if he fully drained himself to point where the Frenzy caused him to collapse.

It didn't matter. He slashes. And slashes. Trying to score the wall. Trying to shred through stone in a seemingly pointless endeavour. But all the time he roars his pain out. His defeat. Defeat. Defeat for being worthless. For not acting. Fool.

In his mind the Memory twists even more. Now it mocks him. Now she laughs at him. He was normally so calm. So controlled. Always on a knife edge in the field. But now? Now he was broken.

Broken in so many ways.

Alexander hears a scream and comes running. He spots a boy slashing at a wall fervorously.
"Hey! What d'ya think you're doing! Stop that!"
He pulls out Man Cannons just in case things went south.

Drake ignores Alexander, continuing to slash and hack at the wall for a few moments more...then stops the moment he hears the Man Cannons being drawn. The look in his eyes...dilated, wide, wild. Somewhere between pain and madness.

He would then start to laugh. An insane, tormented laugh, looking toward the sky, daring whatever powers that be were out there to strike him down. But more disturbingly is the hiss of an ignition switch. The flames dances along the blades and Drake simply stands there, laughing as though he had lost everything.

She had broken him. She had asked him to do the impossible...then her affections went toward the other. His mind had simply shattered at that point. It was not a good sign for anyone. And laughing he turns his attentions back to the wall, sending an aura flared shockwave into it. This has a bit more impact than the normal claw slashes but for all its destructive force...

Drake is the one who collapses. Slipping to one knee. His laughter is...mixed. His voice halfway between pain and insanity...

This has something to do with a girl. I can feel it already.
"Uhh, ya alright there, pal? I mean, we're being trained to fight grimm, not walls, remember?"
He eyed the crazy-man carefully, ready to strike at the firt sign of trouble.

Drake continues to laugh, going from the deep, booming echo and breaking slowly into something far more pained. He slumps, just a little. Now he had gone from confusion into shock. Indigo's 'request' had completely and utterly destroyed him. The mental block...the trigger for the Frenzy had snapped. He couldn't go one way or the other so now, after his futile slashing at the wall, his brief period of berserk rage...

Now he was breaking down. He slumps over, going into the catatonic state he had nearly slipped into earlier. The Memory was there. Twisted. His sister's bloodied form laughed at him. She turned away from him. The beasts laughed. He could do nothing and because of that the beast had won...

Walking from her training in full battle gear, she would notice the boy on the ground stopping to twirl her spear passively before pointing the spear tip at Alex in a passive manner, "Why is the wall destroyed, and why is there a insignificant boy beneath it?"

Drake is out, lost in his catatonic mental state, prone. The flames still dance over the Talons. He's still armed. His eyes are still open, dilated, feral in their appearance. And he remains unaware of his surroundings.

He is lost in the Memory. Doomed to repeat it over and over again as the fate remains the same. He growls to no one but himself, eyes wide as he just stares into oblivion. He wears not his scarf-mask or his cloak. For all intents and purposes his body and soul are bared to the world.

Evidently irritated by Drake's lack of an instant answer, she presses down on the button of her spear, a brief spark flashing over the tip as she looks down at him, "Whelp, either get up, or I will drag you up. Choose now."

A voice. A different voice. Not...her....voice. At this Drake's eyes seem to come into Focus and he stares straight at Aoife, the vivid blue eyes starting to return to normal, tendrils of black snaking in one more.

Her eyes are different. This was no longer the Memory. He simply stares at her, glancing to the side a moment, noting the spark flashing over the spear tip. For a moment he is still...and then he does a quick kip up to his feet, Talons quickly brought to his sides. He glances about again, noting what had happened and he shakes his head. Groggy. Tired. Still lost.

"Who are you...?"

Deciding to make herself sound more badass than she is, she looks at him like he was a speck of dirt on her plate boots, "I am fire incarnate. The conqueror of dragons and hellfire. You think that someone such as you has the right to know my name before they give theirs?"

At that he smirks and shrugs, indifferent. Ok. So she wasn't going to identify herself. Which probably meant that there was little chance of him figuring out exactly...what had happened. He tried not to think on it...he suspected that the Memory was perhaps an influence. The wall certainly bore his trademark on it.

"So I shall call you Flicker then. In that case...where am I?"

Eyebrow twitching slightly at the nickname, she would activate her aura around her right fist, the plate setting alight as she looks at him with Contempt, "Currently? Side of the courtyard. In a few minutes if you keep it up? Either the morgue or hospital."

Doubtless this girl's displays intimidated people. She was probably used to it. She probably expected it. So naturally Drake's complete, unflinching lack of fear was going to be something akin to a dire insult for her. But that was the way he was. When not lost to the Memory he was cold. Fearless. Logical to his core. Tactical and dour in his nature.

"I see. Then I suspect the Memory had something to do with...that." He points a Talon at the wall and frowns for but a moment. He'd lost control. And this time it seemed as though he had severely lost control.

"Let us try this again. I am Drake. If your name is not Flicker then you may wish to let me know what it is."

No fear. No concern. No worry. He was not one to be intimidated.

"Knight." Deciding his affront to her is not even worth her full name, she would only move her spear from being pointed at Alex and to her side, spinning it in one hand before bringing it to her shoulder, flames disappearing once more.

Was it wrong for him to actually be enjoying her offended response? He wondered that. In the field he was something of a sadist, inflicting pain because he could but now...well. This was unusual. He shrugs again, noting the motion of the spear and then as a sign of 'peaceful' interaction he unhinges the Talon on his right arm, letting it slide free and lowering it carefully before reaching to his belt for the box of pocky, opening it carefully.

"Just Knight? Hmmm."

Yeah. He probably knew this was infuriating to her. But this was almost fascinating to him. He was still somewhat out of it, recovering from the Frenzy burn out, recovering from his mind shattering. Already he was trying to bury...the incident.

"Snack?"

He offers the box reluctantly, but decides some sort of diplomacy was better than yet another building storm...

Shaking her head at his request, she would relax an inch, her fists loosening slightly, though she would still hold him in contempt, using her spear to flick her braided hair, looking over him subtly in an analysing manner.

Even as she glances over him he is glancing over her, making a note of her motions. Her movements. The weapon. In his own mind he was constructing an image. Constructing an idea of how personality and form interacted. But he did so under a rather...substandard disguise of eating a stick of pocky.

This was significantly easier with his mask. He hadn't quite appreciated exactly how much it covered and hid from view. At that thought there was a slight frown. His nature is still calm. Dour. Sombre. He's calmed significantly from the agitated Frenzy state and seems to be coming back to himself. He just had to get away from Indigo.

"If that was your wall then I apologise. There appears to have been an incident."

"It's not me you will have to apologize to. It's Kirkka." replies the still hostile sounding Aoife, returning to spinning her spear in a passive manner as she now stares him directly in the eyes, her own being cold and unforgiving, "Now why are you here, destroying walls?"

Ah. The direct question. And once again she was trying to take an authoritative stance. Trying to assert dominance. Almost as though she hadn't quite realised that of all the people in this Academy that he was one of the few it just wouldn't work on.

His shrug is indifferent, his eyes meeting her own and returning the stare. Cold and black, an abyss that consumed the deep blue that was once there when he was younger. A change born of pain. His voice is passive, almost flat in its tone.

"Pain. Yes. That is the best way to describe it. Forgive me, I am not accustomed to that particular sort of pain..." Clearly not physical pain. Across his arms and what is visible of shoulders and neck are crisscross scars, similar to the slash marks of Grimm creatures. Clearly he was accustomed to that sort of pain.

Giving her casual smile of Malice, she would look down at him, despite being the smaller one of the two, "So you decide to destroy walls because they give you pain? Are you some kind of wall-hating sociopath? I have good reason to believe that you and the Tin Can are related."

"Tin...can?"

He looks visibly confused at that. He was not one who was overly social. For the most part he ignored people. But he shrugs, shaking his head and frowning for but a moment again. Then he actually has the audacity to smile at her.

"People have different problems and different ways of dealing from them. Some can lose themselves. Others try to make themselves seem much more than they truly are. Why judge anyone?"

Infuriatingly calm, zen and rational. He glances over her again and then carefully unhooks the left Talon, lowering that as well. "You can be assured I am no threat. Like for like, as it were."

Aura flashing red but not igniting at the smile, she looks at him with her pink, soulless eyes and says even more coldly, "Because it is human nature to judge someone or thing. And just because you have put away your weapons. It does not mean I will put away mine."

Emotion. He provoked quite an emotive response. A definite change in tone. Clearly this was Knight's attempt to deal with the fact that her usual methods of intimidation and posturing were just not working. At the comment of human nature he smiles, shaking his head.

"Human nature is questionable at the best of times. And often it is not for the best intentions." He shakes his head and glances to her, to the flare of her aura. Instinctively he manipulates his own aura, a shimmer of white, a brief glimpse of interlocking curved blades over his arms. A defensive measure, nothing more.

"I would not ask you to disarm yourself if you did not feel safe. Do not misinterpret that. Each has their own approach."

Such a cold response. Such emptiness in eyes of such colour. He knew his own gaze was described as soulless by most...but then his own eyes were black as the night itself. The Abyss stared back. Or so some had told his parents when he was younger. But again he tries for a diplomatic approach, taking another stick of pocky to eat. He did need to replenish his energy after all. The Frenzy took a lot out of him..

"You imply that I care if it is questionable or not. And I don't even need to use White Dragon to beat you." Says the female, her gaze not changing from where his eyes are as she continues to twirl the spear with one hand.

"Ah. But the question there is...why do you feel the need to beat me, hmm? We are not enemies. We are not at conflict with one another...are we?"

And now he's using logic. Reason. Cold sense. He watches her, keeping his gaze locked on hers, smiling just a little as he chews the pocky stick. It wasn't so much confidence or arrogance. It was just that he wasn't phased by fear. He'd long forgotten about fear. He'd long had no reason for it. Some events just destroy the emotions associated with them forever more.

"We could turn this into a wager. But it would seem a futile one. From what I have seen you are not my enemy. So why would I take up arms against you?"