Adrian stepped into the spacious halls, clean grey linoleum under his black leather shoes, leaving the two adults and the weird tension between them in the office behind him.
He turned his chin down one hallway, toward the back of the school, where the hydra stables were.
Adrian had missed his last class during his time in the infirmary with that black-haired geek; School had been out since the talk in the headmaster's office.
It was because of this that the hall was empty.
Too empty.
Adrian turned over his shoulder, looking in the distance at the end of the opposite hall, noticing a dark-haired boy who had turned a corner.
"Is that guy really slacking on his detention? After just saying he would go?" Adrian thought to himself with mild disbelief, his brows furrowing as he stood in silent thought for a moment.
"Ah, whatever." He grumbled to himself, turning away again to continue in his own direction.
"Now I don't have to be near that waste of space, and he'll probably get suspended." He thought to himself, his eye glinting with satisfaction as his lips pulled a smug smirk.
...
Julius crossed the halls with steps like feet made from feathers, walking in the opposite direction of the stables until he found a hall leading around a corner into a set of grey metal double doors.
He pulled one door open to look into a large room with eggshell white walls, octagon tables as grey as the floor, and an opening in the wall at the end of the room.
The room was clean now, where before Adrian's sudden speed had made papers fly around and scatter.
Additionally, several students were haunting the cafeteria still while wooden puppets with painted smiles waited to serve hungry students.
"Well, this makes things easy," Julius observed, his face as dull as a rock's surface, with eyes as analytical as a feline's.
He stepped past the single open door, letting it fall slowly shut behind him, his steps purposefully silent as he entered smoothly like a gliding apparition.
The moment he reached the centre of the room, as if feeling a sudden chill in the room, the students caught Julius in their gaze.
"Did you hear? He beat up that Adrian kid."
"Nah, my friend said he saw Adrian choking him out."
"I saw that kid, Adrian was on the floor because of him..."
"Fenrir said Julius must've been using weird magic, he said he saw him in the headmaster's office with a floating eye."
"He blinded me badly; I didn't see what happened after."
Words about him spread like the plague, Julius capturing the attention of the loitering students as if a spotlight jumped onto him the moment he entered.
Though that was to be expected, fighting the son of Zeus was bound to draw attention no matter what had happened.
Though Julius wouldn't let others' thoughts affect his state of mind, a reputation was just a tool to be manipulated, and he seemed to have at least benefited from the confusion he stirred.
Besides, he already had something he came here to do; those gossips weren't even a distraction to Julius.
Julius continued across the cafeteria, following the black queue lines, before falling into the almost empty servery.
There was a square-shaped opening in the wall, revealing a kitchen in the room behind.
At the bottom of the opening was a bland metal stretched across, metal slabs held on top containing portions of different varieties.
At the edge of the opening, standing watch from the room behind, stood four wooden stands.
Each puppet was the same size as a mannequin, though it had a wiry body resembling twigs, with its body painted a fine, polished brown.
Its face, however, was painted a bright white, with two black lines painted for eyes to give the puppet a simple face.
A tan leather apron hung from around its neck, with the last feature resting on its back, where a golden brass wind-up key rotated seemingly endlessly.
Julius met the painted eyes on the puppet's face with his own muddy, amber-tinted gaze.
Then his eyes dropped to the collection of food in front of him, scanning each display for something with the texture of a biscuit.
His eyes crossed, spreading along the display until they reached the end.
"Nothing." The tension in his gaze softened by a fraction, the light in his gaze dimming somewhat.
Then his eyes lazily slipped to the corner of the display, where he noticed a metal basket discarded around the side of the white opening wall.
His eyes narrowed, just about able to see contents matching the shape of a brick, with undeniable gold colour and a crumbling look.
His eyes glinted imperceptibly, like a devil's eyes, only missing a smirk on his face to complete the sight.
His steps fell to the side until he was at the end of the servery, his hand rising and stretching over as he leaned forward.
SNATCH!
One of the puppet's hands swiped toward Julius's, about to reprimand Julius, leaving Julius to reflexively retract his hand at the sight of sudden speed.
His eyes rose again to meet the two simple black lines on the puppet's face, and he breathed an exhale through his nose like gentle steam curling out from a dragon's breath.
His eyes narrowed dangerously on the puppet, his hand moving to one of the baskets on the servery as he thought, "If you're gonna get in my way..."
"Ay," A voice like muscle called out, pulling him out of thought and catching him by the shoulder.
Julius felt a strength hold him in place, his chin turning toward his shoulder to catch a glance at the idiot who obstructed him.
A tall, scaled woman towered behind him, the entire surface of her eyes like deep wells of shining ocean depths.
Her hair was a crimson, untamed red that matched part of the scales on her face, flowing unevenly where a gold pin caught her hair on one side of her head.
Her teeth looked like a collection of an assassin's daggers, her bottom row of teeth like a spike trap protruding slightly from her bottom lip.
Her entire face was covered in scales, with the upper half of her face coloured red in a round pattern around her forehead, while underneath, the other half was shaded a beautiful turquoise that glimmered underneath the cafeteria lighting, where it was brightest by the servery.
Her cream blazer was nowhere to be seen; instead, the hem of her white buttoned shirt slipped free from her skirt.
Her arms were lean, nowhere near as muscle-bound as someone like Thurid, though unmistakably full of strength.
Her forearms wore the same red on the outer part of her arms, though underneath her wrists, running all the way to her biceps under her shirt, was a vast sea of turquoise.
A tie hung lazily over her battered shirt collar, the black thread boldly dyed magenta in diagonal lines spaced in intervals.
"My brother said he saw you beat up the narc." Her voice was casual, carrying a hint of admiration, spoken slowly as if huffing out cigarette smoke.
Her bored eyes never leaving him as she rolled the words out of her mouth, whilst trying to confirm the rumour.
The girl's angle revealed the back of Julius's cream blazer, with half of the boy's head facing her.
A single eye, like crystalised honey, glared silently at her from over his shoulder, where her red hand still sat.
"Brother? Is she a second year?" Julius thought to himself, silently studying her.
His eyes dropped down to where her grip settled, thoughts foaming in his mind, his brain like a sponge.
Julius's gaze drifted, as if given directions by a navigator, his dark, muddy eyes narrowing back down at the metal displays with various dishes.
His eyes swelled with cider mist of thought, "That puppet stopped my hand earlier. I thought, because it manages interruptions, I should distract it by making a mess for it to clean up..."
"Are you deaf or something?" A voice snapped behind his shoulder, the boredom replaced with agitation from impatience.
Though Julius was like a spectre, like an unresponsive image that wasn't really there, standing absently as if her words never quite reached him.
Meanwhile, his thoughts continued, "But this will work even better..."
The girl's impatience ramped up, "HEY, I'M TALKING TO-"
"Get your hand off me." Julius spat like dirt through gritted teeth, like even the use of the words toward her was disgusting to him, his eyes twisting into daggers as they pierced her direction.
In that periodic moment, a lot happened.
The fight or flight response is an interesting concept in that, as a bodily mechanism, it differs from person to person.
The basic understanding is that when a living thing feels a sense of danger, it responds in an instinctive reaction, which results in the thing reacting with an action that is supposed to assure its defence.
Though a rare few tense up, go numb, as if their brain stopped working.
This girl did exactly that.
Her grip stuttered, her eyes losing focus at the unexpected attitude.
Though before she could gain her sense of self, Julius carefully slipped himself into that tiny periodic moment.
His hand closed around the edge of the metal basket, whipping it back and over him, resulting in the contents flying out.
SCHLOP!
The food splashed over her, covering her ragged uniform in a mess of orange and red sauce.
The action was so unforeseen, so unpremeditated, that her grip loosened entirely.
Just as Julius Sparrow predicted it would.
end of chapter 25