Ezra was waiting for Aida at the base of the girls’ stairwell when the dinner bell rang. She was caught in the jam on the stairs, confused at the holdup until she heard giggles travel through the pack of girls on the stairs. Surmising the cause, she decided to take the boys’ staircase instead.

“Aida, what are you doing here?” Levi asked genially.

“Someone has created an obstruction on the girls’ staircase,” Aida said grimly. She fell into step beside Levi. “How is Sue?”

Levi puffed his chest out, smirking. “She is feeling much better now.”

Aida eyed him beadily. “It sounds like your relationship with her progressed favorably.”

Levi’s casual smirk dimmed into a more serious expression. “I don’t know why, but I got the feeling when I was with her that…it was contrived. Supposed to happen that way.”

“Maybe you’re overthinking it,” Aida offered half-heartedly.

“Maybe you’re right,” Levi admitted. His voice lowered. “I hope I’m overthinking it, because it doesn’t feel right. I feel like I’m taking advantage of her when she’s most vulnerable.”

Aida stopped on the stairwell between the first and second floors, pulling Levi into a corner and out of the flow of foot traffic. “Look,” she said quietly, glancing around to make sure the other students were continuing on their way. “You have good instincts about consent. But you do need to be aware that if you’re overly cautious about everything, and leave initiative completely to the other person, then you run the risk of killing romance. I’m not telling you what to do,” she went on before Levi could speak. “I’m just saying even if these intrusive thoughts come up, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep doing what you’re doing. Or should?” Aida puzzled over the conundrum. If Levi was starting to become self-aware…what would happen? Would he still be involved in the machinations of Sue’s romantic life? Or did Sue’s momentum with Caleb already hit critical mass, eliminating Levi from the running for Sue’s heart? But it’s only been two and a half star cycles! The game is supposed to span the whole school year…

Levi sighed, running his hand through his hair, leaving it neatly ruffled. “I get what you’re saying. It still makes me uncomfortable, though,” he grumbled.

Aida gave him a half smile. “It’s confusing,” she agreed. “Just remember, if she ever says ‘stop’ or ‘no,’ just do what she says.”

“Obviously,” he said dryly.

“By the way, how does Metal support Water?” Aida asked, even more quietly. “I was doing some research on it earlier this afternoon, but I didn’t find anything that explicitly explained it. The other elements’ interactions were more intuitive.”

“Oh.” Levi started walking again, and Aida followed. “Metal allows the existence Water. Think about a metal bowl or container. When it rains, water collects in the bowl. If the bowl isn’t there, the water gets absorbed into the earth, or by the plants, or evaporates near a fire.”

“But what about large bodies of water, like the school lake?”

Levi glanced at Aida. “Have you read the bit about what happens when you have too much of an element?”

“Right,” Aida remembered. The other elements wouldn’t be able to absorb the excess fast enough. “But then…where’s the balance?”

“That is balance. There is a lot of water at the lake, but there will be a dearth of water in places like the Sundry Plains.” Levi pronounced it like “sun-dry,” but Aida recognized the name from her cursory skim of Wyndian History. Her initial thought when she read about it was that the Plains were made up of different types of flat geological structures, such as grasslands and plateaus, but the way Levi named it made it sound more like a desert.

“Oh,” Aida said lamely as they finally approached the dining hall entrance. She could see Ezra leaning against the banister of the girls’ staircase, reading a book and looking just the slightest bit ill-tempered at the girls hovering around him. “Well, I’ll see you later. Ezra and I are going to discuss my strategy against Abedi over dinner.”

Levi smirked, promptly hitching his carefree attitude back in place. “Try flooding him.”

“Don’t have enough mana for that,” Aida sang back, raising her hand in a backwards wave.

Ezra glanced up at the sound of her voice, snapping his book shut. Aida waited for him at the dining hall entrance, her hands clasped behind her as she tried to make herself look as inoffensive as possible to the girls glaring at her with icy, wooden, flaming, jagged, steely, and overall stabby eyes.

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“Sorry for the wait,” Aida greeted him. She spoke blithely. “I had to take the other staircase, since the girls’ side was frozen.”

Ezra nodded jerkily. “I didn’t wait long.”

They placed their orders, Aida trying to keep a serene expression on her face as she felt the other girls’ mana poking at her. “What were you reading?”

“War tactics.” Alarmed, Aida glanced at Ezra for an explanation. “After watching Lara and Suelina’s match today, I thought it prudent to prepare myself against her. She is quite ruthless.”

Noticing Aida’s grimace, he smiled. “I imagine your point against her was a great blow to her ego, and now she’s coming at us with a vengeance.”

“Is there an exercise you would recommend to increase the size of one’s mana reservoir?” Aida asked. “I know Mana Circulation can help with the recovery speed, but as of now, I don’t have enough mana to be able to have a sustained fight.” She dropped her voice to a dramatic whisper. “If I miss my attack, it’s over for me.”

Ezra tapped his finger on his book as he thought. “Unfortunately, increasing the size of one’s mana reservoir is not a quick endeavor,” he said slowly. “Common wisdom says the more you use your mana on certain techniques, the more often you can use those techniques in the same period of time. But that is a result of improved efficiency, as well as incremental increases in the size of your mana reservoir as you exhaust it. However, if we were to consider strictly on increasing the size of your reservoir…”

The discussion tapered off as they searched for a table, to no avail. Aida couldn’t quite say for certain, but it seemed like Ezra’s fans had spread out around the cafeteria, every feasibly available table claimed by one or two girls, pointedly ignoring them as they looked innocently around the cafeteria or occupied themselves in conversation.

“Let’s eat in my room.” Aida’s eyes nearly popped at the volume of Ezra’s voice. He had made no effort to be discreet with his suggestion, and it had unequivocally been heard by the girls. Even Levi, sitting with Lily and Vanita in a corner, had heard. He gave a mock salute disguised in a casual stretch as he leaned back in his chair, leering at her and Ezra.

Aida was exasperated that the girls’ pettiness made her have to take the stairs again, but also amused at how their plan to keep Ezra away from an “unworthy” backfired so neatly.

“As I was saying,” Ezra resumed when they had reached the relative privacy of the staircase. “The most direct way to increase the size of your mana reservoir - although still slow and tedious - would be endurance training.”

“Endurance training…like long-distance running?” Aida was disappointed, but also not surprised. From her recollection, mana recovery had strong correlation with lung health, which was why Mana Circulation and meditation went hand in hand.

“Yes, but Mana Cycling at the same time.”

Aida wrinkled her nose. That sounded like a very un-fun time. “How do you do that? I need a lot of concentration to Mana Cycle, and running for a long period of time is a challenge in itself.”

“That’s part of the difficulty.” Ezra unlocked his door, balancing his tray in one hand as he held it open for her to pass through. “Do be aware that it is substantially different from Mana Surging, as that is an active use of mana. Mana Cycling is inherently a passive skill, so it is very difficult to do two opposite things at once, so to speak.”

Aida sucked in a breath, taking in Ezra’s room at the same time. Like Levi’s room, his room contained a significant amount of belongings that denoted his elemental affiliation. But his room was hyper organized. Sue’s organized room gave the impression that she never really touched her things, Levi’s organized room spoke to his self-respect; but Ezra’s room was painfully neat. As if he was compensating for something.

All of his metal knick-knacks were stacked carefully, edges perfectly parallel with other edges. Rounded objects were carefully enclosed in metal frames, keeping them from rolling all over the place. The different varieties of metal were all carefully segregated in their own areas: gold with gold, silver with silver, copper with copper. In the middle of his room was an additional circular metal table that clearly served as a workspace of some sort. All the surfaces were meticulously dusted. The contrast made Aida self-conscious about the dirt hitching a ride in the wrinkles of the toe box of her shoes.

Placing his tray carefully on the metal table, Ezra pulled the school-provided wooden desk chair over to the table. “Sit here.”

Carefully placing her feet where Ezra himself stepped, Aida took the desk chair as Ezra pulled out a small metal stool for himself.

“It must be convenient, being able to make your own furniture,” Aida commented.

Ezra glanced at the table. “It gives me something to do. I can practice my Metal Manipulation here.”

They ate in awkward silence. Without the buzz of public chatter, the silence was amplified.

Aida cleared her throat. “So…I don’t really know how to approach my fight with Abedi tomorrow. I don’t expect my trick on Natalie today would work again, I don’t have the mana to go for a battle of attrition like Shon was doing…and I don’t have the ability to go for a physical fight like Lara,” she listed off. She peered at him hopefully. “Is there some sort of angle I’m missing?”

Ezra chewed over her words carefully. “It’s good you know your weaknesses. But now let’s consider Abedi’s weaknesses.” He put his chopsticks down, straightening on his stool. “He is overly dependent on his physical strength, which is immense. However - and this is a common trend among Metal practitioners, since we do not typically have easy access to metal - he has not cultivated his mana arts very much. That is why he spends the bulk of his mana creating a weapon, and then using his creation for the remainder of the fight.”

“So I should try to disrupt his creation process?” Aida asked, trying to imagine how she could do it now that she no longer had the element of surprise.

Ezra dipped his head. “That is the easiest method.”

Aida lapsed into thought. Abedi’s physique pointed heavily to great stamina and strength, but it didn’t seem like he put much stock into Mana Surge to supplement his weapon. She had assumed before that it was because he didn’t want to surge against his friend, but wasn’t it more likely that he didn’t have the mana - or control - to do so? Even if he didn’t want to accidentally crush Shon’s skull, he could have still used the surge to avoid getting tripped in such a silly way.

Aida nodded determinedly. Perhaps she wasn’t such a one-trick pony after all.