Rex returned to his own body the sa way he always did from Lustia’s domain: all at once. Full sensory access was restored as soon as his consciousness returned to the vessel it belonged in.
He was in the Academy’s guest quarters, which were the furnished rooms on the third floor that Elizabeth had set aside for mbers of the Special Honor Division who wanted to stay at the academy instead of going to the city to live.
The ceiling above him was just plain stone, like the kind used in institutional buildings. The light coming through the narrow window was still blue-dark, like it was before dawn.
This ant that Lustia’s domain worked outside of ti in the practical sense of the word; even though the conversation had felt long, the world had probably only moved an hour in his absence.
He moved his head and noticed Diana was lying on her side with her back to him, and the blanket was wrapped around her in a way that only a light sleeper would do when they weren’t fully awake.
’Oh yeah... we did have sex in the academy.’
’Eh... not a new experience for because I had tons of sex in my school before with my sex friends.’
Her hair was loose, a style she rarely wore in any context he had witnessed before. This looseness changed her appearance in a specific way: she seed less composed, less deliberate, and more like a person in bed who had, after a very morable evening, found herself in her current position.
For a mont, Rex looked up at the ceiling.
[FIRST MAXIMUM BOND BONUS: 1000 ENERGY POINTS]
[TOTAL ENERGY ACQUIRED: 1000 POINTS]
[CURRENT BALANCE: 1500 POINTS]
He did the math on its own. He needed five thousand, but he only had one thousand and fifty.
He could still reach the number because Talyra and Aisella were ahead of him, and he just needed to max their bond to have a threeso.
"For now..." He thought, "This is a good place to be."
He reached out and put his hand lightly on Diana’s shoulder, not urgently, just present enough to register.
She was awake before he finished the gesture.
He had thought so, because people who sleep lightly and have been trained to fight wake up to contact the sa way other people do: fully and right away.
She turned over and looked at him, and what crossed her face in the first second before she organized her expression was a sequence he filed carefully: recognition, warmth, and then the very specific quality of a person who had done sothing significant and was now, in the morning’s first clear light, looking at the person they’d done it with and finding that their feelings about it had not changed overnight into anything regrettable.
"Rex..." she said his na, not as a greeting but as a statent, like people do when they talk about things that have changed in their minds.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," Rex said. "Looks like last night made you sleep pretty well, huh?"
Diana put one hand over her face, which he had never seen her do before and which he found very unsettling. "What ti is it?"
"Still early, I guess," he said. "It’s still dark outside."
She moved her hand and looked out the window to confirm this. Then she looked back at him with an expression that was a mix of Diana’s calm deanor and her usual reckless behavior.
"Oh shit!" she said. "We have to go before anyone gets here!"
Rex said, "I know."
"Before the sun rises," she said.
Rex said again, "I know."
She was looking at him like soone who had sothing to say and was trying to decide if now was the right ti to say it.
He waited because Diana was not the kind of person you rushed to conclusions about.
"About last night..." Diana held the blanket that covered her vulnerable body. "Well... I... uhh..."
"Hm?"
"I don’t regret it at all," she said, in the straightforward way she always spoke when she had made up her mind about sothing. "T-That’s it... I just want to make that clear for you."
"Good to hear it then," Rex said.
"But I don’t know exactly what it is yet," she said, which was the most honest thing she had said since he had known her, and he recognized it as the kind of honesty that cost sothing to produce.
"And I’d like to figure that out before it becos sothing everyone else is also figuring out."
Rex looked at her. "I can work with that," he said.
She held his gaze for a mont and found sothing in his eyes that seed satisfactory, as her expression transford into a version of composure that was genuine rather than performative.
"Okay," she said.
She sat up, and the competent, deliberate version of Diana Von Starlight began the process of re-establishing itself in the particular sequence of soone reordering the world around them. "Let’s begin our day as we usually do."
She found her clothes, and Rex also got his. The room went back to being a room instead of a mont.
Before she opened the door, Diana turned to look at him one more ti. Then, she approached him one last ti, tugged at his shirt, and kissed his lips for a minute.
And then she looked at him with the kind of look on her face that was still partly the unguarded one, the one that showed warmth.
"You still cheated," she said.
Rex stared at her.
"At archery," she said, to make it clear. "You were holding back, and then you weren’t, and that’s not fair."
Rex said, "I accept the criticism."
"Good," she said. "I’ll be looking forward to a real rematch at so point."
"Yes, you’ll get one," Rex said.
She walked back to the door and opened it, and then she looked down the hall, like soone whose first instinct when they reach a door is to see what’s on the other side. When she saw it was empty, she left imdiately.
Rex stood in the room that was empty for a mont. "Alright... that already confirms she’s mine."
"Welp, sorry, Theo. The first one who bites the bait gets it." Rex laughs, and then he uses his teleportation skill to get back to his room at the Silver Rest before the city has fully woken up.
...
The inn’s morning was like any other: warm, tidy, and slling of coffee and the food Mara made when she was in a good mood, which was most of the ti.
When Rex ca downstairs after a quick shower, he saw Mara already at the service counter and Marceline talking to one of the morning staff through the kitchen doorway. The two of them managed the space with the ease of individuals who had discovered a collaborative thod that suited both of their needs.
He ate breakfast like soone who had worked hard all night and didn’t need to be modest about it.
Mara refilled his coffee once without being asked and gave him the look that said she knew where he had been and that it was true. She decided to be happy about it instead of saying anything.
He liked the privacy.
He thought about Talyra at 44, Aisella at 52, the two-way multiplier, the five thousand energy points, and Avatar Creation.
And after enjoying breakfast with a cup of coffee, he already made his move to the academy, and it didn’t take long until he walked into the classroom feeling positive because he had a clear picture of how things were going and enough pieces already in motion that the next phase was mostly about carrying out plans instead of making them.
When he got there, the classroom was two-thirds full, which was normal for this ti of morning. Apollo’s group was huddled together near the back windows, just like they had been for the past few weeks.
Talyra was sitting on her desk instead of in her chair, which was how she usually waited for class to start. When she saw Rex co in, she waved with the simple excitent that was always there.
"Morning, Rexxy~!" she said in a way that made it sound like she had been waiting all night to say it to people.
Rex said, "Morning," and sat down in the chair that had beco his over the past few days. "I have a nickna now?"
Talyra giggled. "Hehehe, do you like being called ’Rexxy’?"
Aisella was already sitting in her chair with a book open in front of her. She wasn’t really reading it, though; it was at the angle of sothing she was holding.
When Rex sat down, she looked at him over the top of it with the calm attentiveness that was her default register.
"You look like you slept well," she said.
This was not small talk for Aisella, but it was a social observation that was also a diagnosis.
"Well enough," Rex said.
"Liar," Talyra said in a low voice, but not too low, and then she looked at a point in the middle distance as if she hadn’t said anything.
"You got there."
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