Thalia did not pay attention to the stares to her hair, carefully pulled back in double ponytails, tied close to the head and near the ends by Yarrow that morning.

Thalia did not care about the whispers or rumours about her and her charge - who she was getting enrolled in the academy with the design and implementation part of the biology track as that was closest to his 'engineering'. She doesn't care that they've been rumoured to be in some sort of weird harem with at least half the upper crust of society. Or that those connections are why she got the communication case in the first place. She is too angry to pay attention to nonsense today.

Oddly that anger had made waves of progress and that just seemed to make her stronger. The woman was on her way to the arts department to get Marcus a job - preferably as a paid helper - but she was not ready to be too fussy.

Then she would be having words with two supervisors.

She casts a circuit drawn onto her wrist before she left this morning, forcing door after door to rapidly open as her bare feet stalk the halls. She had even the barest touch of Yarrow's eyeliner on, this thick paste that they had shown her how to apply infront of the curved mirror Yarrow had brought from their residence. That was complicated. Too hard. LATER.

She finally bursts through to the art department in a whirlwind of metaphorical fire and fury.

Before her is a room filled with stands holding holo-sketchpads, their inside covers lined with magic circuits, while a platform sits in the centre. Stools sit behind each stand as someone moves between them all, looking up startled at Thalia's entrance.

The woman is calm, serene, with grey lacing her forest green hair and a pair of spectacles perched upon her nose. She is tall and reedy, and she looms over Thalia. "May I help you?"

The wind is knocked out of Thalia's sails, the woman's voice nice and polite and a little welcoming. She tries to stay motivated and forceful as she curls her toes to remind herself of her purpose. "I am here to get my charge a job." She grits her teeth and continues through the discomfort, "I am in charge of..."

"The human, yes. You seek to find him work with his hands. Despite rumours already moving around that he is good with mechanisms."

Rumours will be the death of Thalia. "And how can that be public knowledge, he's only been in one class, and I had to force his way in there."

"Dahling, there is nothing that younger students love to do more than gossip. You put a human among all these students and did not expect both gossip and experimentation? Do you not remember what your study years were like - or is this daring look a new thing?"
Thalia flushes and feels the heat leave her body completely.

"Don't be like that", the art professor says with a soothing voice. "Tell you what, if your charge is without a task by the end of the week, I will make him my errand boy. However, I have a little bit of a request for you - become my model for a day. I'll get you an easy meal somewhere nice, the academy will pay you something extra, and I will get this position filled. If you don't like it, you don't have to come back, but if you do, we both win."

Thalia watches those delicate boney hands place a heavy container of clay beside one of the stands. "And what do I have to do as one of your models?" The idea of doing something for herself feels refreshing, maybe it's the dye fumes getting to her, or the lack of sleep. Either way, she slowly nods, trying to get the professor more.

"I am Professor Susan Claytop." The older woman prompts with a gentle smile. "I have a life modelling class if you are curious. We are doing hands."

Thalia smiles back, there is something reassuring in Professir Claytop's manner, and she finds her saying the words. "How do you want me to set up."

Her mission on pause, it is some time later, with a wallet heavier with money and a belly full of warm vegetable curry, that Thalia sits with Claytop and one of her students, Honeysuckle - Honey for short. Br1n is playing one of the local bards again, someone harmless, as the trio discuss how Honey is going to craft her end of year masterpiece, the one she gets graded on to see if she is ready to advance in years. Honey is thinking a dress, something that shows off her knowledge of the foliad body and form while also plays into her work with textiles.

Thalia can't help but see the similarities between her field and the stark differences. "It's all about preference, whether you want to be acknowledged for the final piece, or the journey along the way." She thinks about her own journey, and the series of nothing 'discoveries' and how much of it would be different if she just got a hold of something with her own hands. Like the things in her bedroom. She should make sure Marcus is well and then go out again tonight.

The others catch her thinking, and a weird look goes across the Professor's face, eyes almost having a gold shimmer to them as she inspects Thalia. She is about to ask about what has the Professor interested, when there is a screeching sound before she hears two familiar voices.

<Now, like we tested.> <This is Academy Radio, Radio Luna, Club FM, coming to you from the mechanics wing of Natare Academy. I am Marcus and we bring this first to you, the citizens of Natare and soon this whole glorious continent. I'm here with Br1n who will be the late show host, say hi Br1n>

<Hi Natare, we hope to bring more of you in for shows and support. But to start - some more Deluna Vesperine my favourite bard for the season.>

Music starts playing and the women look among each other. the Professor leans in towards the information terminal at the edge of the room. "Br1n. What is a radio?"

"Marcus has informed me that there was a system of long rang transmission in his realm called radio waves and that the medium was a form of communication and entertainment, and that has been replaced by something he says is 'digital' now. We are instead expanding my capabilities to run two thought processes at the same time, with intent to create relay stations and form a second network of me in other cities."

Something tugs at Thalia and she considers. "And you both did this in one day?"

"No, we expanded the research some of the mechanics lab were doing, added in some of my own self reflection and some of Marcus' engineering. You should see a large copper pole that we acquired from archaeology, though Marcus now has to try and read some old human script they have found."

There's so much Thalia is trying to get her head around. Copper? Human script? She knew about a few things of human origin in old Foliad runes littering the forests around Natare, but not enough that there would be full human texts out there.

Is she horribly kept in the dark about the corner of her field she is kept in? She is a techno-mage specialising in historical artefacts, and NOT ONLY is she being given terrible artefacts so her co-workers can get all the prestige, not only is her time spent more as errand girl for her mentor and now a favour to be traded - but her knowledge base has been kept in the dark when those around her were supposed to be helping her learn. That was the One point of the academy.

She could see it all so clear now, being in the art department with these women who would work and train to better each other, year after scarlet year.

She stands as her cheeks darken in rage. "Excuse me ladies, I will see you next week." She clenches her fists and goes back to her war-path.

"WHAT in the ROT is going on?" Thalia had burst through into the much nicer office of her mentor, Verdan Blackbough. She could not even mentally call him professor as his very actions had been called out in one evening as just plain selfish.

The man turns on his prosthetic leg, the circuit glowing as he moves away from the membranous window, overlooking the courtyard strip of the Academy. He seems shocked at her volume, but not at her rage. "Thalia, come in, I'd offer you a seat but you seem not in the mood to sit. Love what you have done with your hair." He blinks owlishly from behind his spectacles, the surfaces tinted dark as he looks at her.

He is taunting her, this man who signed up to help her be raised in the academic sphere.

"I'm done trying to grow under a strangled canopy Blackbough. Why have you never helped me grow? What is with the Orion deal and am I having to struggle to learn the basics of my own field from my own research? Its like you are trying...."

"To force a woman who doesn't take initiative to learn how to do so? To elect some sort of fire in a wicked smart woman I know who takes so much burden on herself. You can not teach someone to want it. You cannot teach someone to push back. You can help those lessons once they have begun, but there is no catalyst you can make to the ecosystem except to make yourself the enemy. You were not ready to graduate, you still are not, but now you are ready to learn."

Thalia is ready for violence, but this calm, 'logical' answer can only cause her to weep hot tears, collapsing into the offered chair even as she feels his hand on her shoulder, holding her down. And she does give it a good, hearty weep, all the pent up frustration and exhaustion from lack of sleep catching up with her. The curry and talk had helped, as had the support of Yarrow, but all that is gone now, listening to the voice of her mentor.

"Now, I can have you meet a colleague of mine who will give you a starter on what you need to know, and then we will put you into a small team I'm starting up, looking into the limiting number of elements you can cast in a simple circuit. Does that sound like something that would interest you?" Verdan stays behind her, the light pressure on her shoulder meant to reassure her, but just holding her down in her misery, the power and anger from before melting away too soon, too fast for her to grasp onto.

"What of the communications case?" Thalia says, voice barely a whisper.

"We can keep that in storage, until I can find a team to support you and I in sending the human back." Away. He says. She sees the holos of him time and time again with his successes, student after student brought high under his tutelage - the very promise that had led her to his door all those years ago.

She wipes her face on the side of her last good robe, the eyeliner coming away in black streaks and leaving her bare once more.
"Calm yourself, you are better than a tantrum like this. Now you can push back I can guide you to where you need to be, for the good of us all." A part of her can't tell if he believes it or not, gripping the arms of the chair until growing wood pricks her hands, reminding her she is real.

It is later, she cannot say how long, but she is in an academy bathroom somewhere, staring at herself in the reflective membrane. It beats before her as it reflects her tear stained face, the dishevelled robe; the still blotched and demented hairstyle that was pulled into ponytails and now flares behind her in a mane of chaos, all the way to her ass. She is still all there and still all where she is 'supposed to be'. The resentment is back, coiling in her gut like a trapped snake, even as its master is back in his office.

Her hands slap the walls roughly, squeezing tears from her eyes to match the pain within her.

To get her own research and get her own freedom she needs to graduate, to graduate she needs a mentor - an out.

She could go to the other staff, but her reputation was about obeying, mixed with that long line of average developments. Would someone else really take that risk?

She could go to Orion - as much as she hated his demeanour, he was technically down on paper as someone with power over her now, and she was planning to confront him before her meeting with Verdan. She would just have to be humble, and see if he could meet her down where her rage meets her resentment.

Worse comes to the worse she could summon the voice in her dream - see what a deal with an Incubus was like.