Lion’s Den PV: Mathias Closed

@Mathias Pride

Rather than elude him, the opportunity seemingly rushed Mathias head-on.

While initially ambiguous, the purpose for Valentine’s strange gesture with the tennis balls made itself known quickly. Sliding his wand out from his pocket (while maintaining a guarded distance against the other boy, no doubt), Valentine identified the nearest tennis ball that was lying about a meter away. He would start with this as a warm-up. The ones that were further away could be saved for later.

“Wingardium leviosa,” he uttered, paying little to no heed to the other boy in the room. His hand drifted in the ‘μ’ shaped wand motion as he stamped his foot for added emphasis at the end of the incantation. In tandem with this, he pointed his wand toward the ball of his choice.

Like a bubble breathed underwater, the ball began to rise steadily, a suspended pendulum in the air. Trailing his wand upward, Valentine allowed the ball to rise until it almost touched the ceiling (that was if he wasn’t interrupted by his pesky roommate) before aborting the spell.

As the ball fell back to the ground, the next two things happened in a blur of motion. Swiftly drawing a hastily conjured V with his wand tip, followed by a small dip and rise, he traced the path of the tennis ball with his eyes, lining up the angle of his wand to intercept it mid-fall.

“Flipendo!” he shouted. A loud banging noise went off near simultaneously as the ball suddenly veered violently off course at a perpendicular angle, slamming hard into the wall.

This was where the second part of his practice set came in. Valentine had not just been watching for where the ball would fall to. He had been predicting the subsequent trajectory as it ricocheted back at him, such that when the ball came hurtling at frightening speed, the first year simply sidestepped it with a respectable amount of clearance. A loud cracking sound was heard as it slammed into the wall behind him, but by then, the ball hadn’t had enough kinetic energy to manage a second return. It was hardly a close shave, but this was just a warmup shot. And while he might have had no problems dodging the balls as they came at him, could the same be said for Mathias? Would he continue to linger, even if his safety in this room was compromised?

Mathias' weakness was not being bludgeoned by tennis balls, although it was a reasonable presumption. His actual weakness was a bit more apparent, yet overlooked in this encounter it would seem. As the balls levitated, he watched them with idle interest. That shrinking sense within him would diminish when he was certain that they had moved on, which they had.

The boy was admittedly a skilled caster. He did not fail to levitate a single tennis ball. 100% effectiveness, he told himself. The sample size was merely the levitation of a few balls, but the average student [Wisdom 5] would be successful approximately 80 percent of the time. With that Mathias would simply observe, the leviosa would become a flippendo and the tennis balls would be shot at a wall. That was not particularly powerful [Arcane Power 0] but was exceedingly accurate [Accuracy 10]. The boy was an all-or-nothing type, that much he was able to get out of this demonstration.

The boy was seeming more and more like a Ravenclaw my the moment.

Of course the question was -- what should Mathias do? Pride would demand that he stay put, that he defend his domain. Much like a housepet patrol the perimeter of their white picketed yard. No thank you. What were his other options? He could allow himself to become a target. There was no gain in that, only loss and again merely a reflection of stubbornness and pride. He was stubborn but not to a fault.

So what can he do? He does not have any spells yet, so not much. He was not a physical brawler. So that left a final option: salt the earth. He would take off his shirt, a simple button down collared shirt. No, the strip fever was not contagious nor did he have a particular desire to show off his prepubescent physique. Rather he wanted the cloth. If the tennis balls shot around again, he would not react, in fact he could only hope that the boy would give a repeat performance. He would wrap the shirt around his fist.

It was possibly obvious what he was doing at this point. His fist padded, he would attempt to crack one of the windows. He was not strong, but it was not as if glass was particularly durable either. A sudden *crack*, the glass in a single pane would shatter. Icy air would enter. "Brrr," he commented with a smit-eating grin adorned his face as he shook out any glass that might be trapped in his shirt. The shirt goes back on.

"Should have been more careful," he shrugged. "Hopefully they don't think it was all these bright balls..." He would start walking towards the door. He did not bother with the bowl of nuts, it was contaminated at this point. The room had now developed an uncomfortable chill.

Attempting to leave classroom?

@Mathias Pride

Valentine’s eyes tracked Mathias’s motions, even if the rest of his actions didn’t, instinct allowing him to predict the next of his devious tactics.

“. . . Careful. Those windows are dusty. You might get an infection.” Valentine suspected that he didn’t much care, but the fact that he remained utterly unfazed was still conveyed. Raising his wand to the broken window - just a little past the other boy’s body to spook him - he performed a triangular spiral motion and uttered out the corresponding incantation.

“Reparo.”

So be it. He hadn’t planned on using that spell for any practical reason as of late, so the sudden interjection of the other boy offered him a convenient opportunity to shake off some of the dust, both literally and figuratively. As the window returned to its original, pristine condition, both boys would have noticed that in breaking and repairing it with the mending charm, all of the dust had ironically been purged from the glass sheet. Good as new. The same couldn’t be said about Mathias’s knuckles, though. Thrusting his fist into solid glass couldn’t have been completely painless.

If the other boy didn’t try to pull off any other weird shenanigans, Valentine would move to return to his initial intention to practice.

Merlin, this boy was such a magical nerd. Frustrating really. With an inability to make a formidable difference due to lack of spells of his own Mathias was not able to make an appreciable change to his setting. All he really earned by a shot to his pride, the loss of a private space that was now perilous as well as noisy, and of course a set of sore knuckles.

There was no way to really fight back, not really. He realized when he was beat. It was a sensation he never wanted to feel again. It hurt more than his pride, it tugged at something else. This uncanny sense of deficiency, this feeling like a clay pigeon. Powerless to make a lasting or for that matter any impact. The knowledge that betrayed the madness of those cavalier to fault that this was an exercise in futility.

He would not bother taking his dish with him, now left in the lurch likely to be shattered by a rogue ball. Was too close to his shoes anyways, another care package would arrive in a matter of days. Mathias would let out a disgruntled noise, more a sigh than a verbal sound and head for the door. "Have fun, done with the place anyways," he claimed. An obvious lie, but he was too supercilious to say he was pushed out. "Club canceled and all that," his hand moved in small circles almost casually as he continued to walk away.

Back to the snakes den it would be. Cool and dark, capable of soothing his bruised ego and knuckles.



Thanks for the roleplay, it was fun. Hit me up for a future roleplay. I apologize for my slowness and short posts, been awfully busy.