Hexus: Neo

>12< Vortex

[6:19PM, January 4, UTC +02:00]

PAULA hissed at the friction burn from pulling on the laces of her boots and blew on her fingers. She reached down to tie them but then stopped and hissed again, this time out of frustration, as she remembered that her change of location was going to affect both time zone and climate. She was irritated, which made it harder to think, which in turn made her sloppy. Adam was exercising his full power as head honcho by ordering her go to Perth immediately, in spite of all her warnings that her cousin Walter likely wasn't going to change his mind about moving the kids in. And even if she somehow managed to coerce him by using the ultimate 'you'll be responsible if anything happens' line, he sure as hell wasn't going to wake everyone to start packing in the middle of the night.

Also on her list of annoyances: Damilare. Sure, he was probably just being influenced by one of the many instincts he had romping around in his brain, but he needed to get it together and understand that she wasn't going to oblige him by entering whatever version of committed relationship he thought they deserved. And now he was acting like some depressive wounded dog that had been kicked one too many times, which was creating a shitload of unnecessary tension between them. She tried to ignore him – which should have been easy, given the many other things they all had to worry about – but it was getting harder by the day, and she was still doing her best to silence the part of her brain that was trying to generate feelings for him. She groaned.

Why can't good sex just be good sex?

Then the icing on the cake: Adrianna. After dropping orders, Adam had gone on to berate Paula about treating Adrianna with respect. Paula had been very clear about her feelings towards the other woman from day one, and as far as she was concerned, the team had worked just fine before Adrianna came. For almost four months after the death of Eugene – the previous Air mage – Paula and Kojiro filled in whenever air magic was needed, without any issues. But then talks began about finding a proper replacement, and ignoring hundreds of well-trained and knowledgeable mages with Air magic as their primary ability, Adam brought in Adrianna. Paula had openly protested, but much to her chagrin, Adrianna was still put up for the numerical vote – which, as was the norm, needed to be more than half the existing members for an acceptance. Ecru sided with Adam, and Kojiro voted her in too, probably because he was old and wanted to be relieved of the extra duty. The only other person who voted against was Damilare – because he 'got a weird vibe' – but in the end, three votes beat two and now they were stuck with an inexperienced ignoramus who couldn't tell the difference between a kelpie and a hippocampus.

Paula was kind of hoping Adrianna got killed during that solo mission, but somehow all the woman had managed to do was anger an entire pantheon of century-old gods and possible bring down their wrath on millions of unsuspecting Japanese people.

Paula rolled her eyes as she kicked her shoes off and walked back to the closet to find something more appropriate for a warm summer night. She huffed at her choices. Of course, all the good clothes were in her other apartment. She considered porting there to get what she'd like, but thought better of it. Despite how casual and easy she made it seem, bending the fabric of space took a lot of energy, especially when the space between was that distant. Plus it didn't make sense to put in that much effort just to look fashionable for someone she was going to be visiting around 1AM. She changed into a loose burgundy cotton shirt with metallic stud details and a pair of leather jeans, and just as she closed the closet door, she was hit by a tortuous tightness in her chest, like the air had become thicker and heavier, like curdled milk. She was finding it hard to breathe, and her eyes widened as she spun around.

Holy shit.

Something incredibly powerful had appeared. Somewhere below her, if her senses were correct. She moved quickly to get out of the path of the radiating power and ran into the corridor. She bumped into someone. Damilare stumbled back, his eyes feline and yellow with pupils dilated, and he looked disoriented for a moment before he blinked and looked at her.