2024-05-30: Group Project

• Log: 2024-05-30 Group Project
• Cast: Elan Ceres, Miorine Rembran, Luanova Luckwright
• Where: Asticassia School of Technology
• OOC - IC Date: May 30, UC 0099 (2024)
• Summary: Miorine and Elan take a bonus class together and have to do a joint in-class project afterwards. The teaching assistant, Luanova, is just thrilled about it, I tell you.

---

<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.

        There are three major learning departments at Asticassia School of Technology's high school section: the piloting course, the mechanical course, and the management strategy course. But between those three major tracks, there are a great many classes, including supplemental classes that one can sign up for optionally. This is especially helpful for those who might be in one track but have an interest in learning more about a subject outside of their field. Just because one is in a certain learning track doesn't mean they can't take a course in another, especially if it might supplement or round out their education, after all. Some sign up for these supplemental classes voluntarily; some are voluntold.
        
        One such special class, a business and management strategy lecture open to the piloting and mechanics students, is being held today by an eminent retired CEO. When he was still running his business, an all-around company that dealt in a variety of support goods from pre-packaged meals and bottled water to spare mobile suit parts to communication devices, it was one of the top businesses in the Benerit Group. After selling it off, it's dropped down the ranks, though it's still in the top twenty, at least--but that's not his concern anymore. The lecture itself includes explanations on various models, predicting market trends, appealing to a broad demographic while not alienating the fringe, and so on and so forth. He's quite passionate about it.
        
        He also decided to make it interactive. At the end of the class, he assigns each student a partner and tells them to come up with a working business model based on his talking points in twenty minutes. One such pair is Miorine Rembran and Elan Ceres. During this phase, he goes around the room checking in on people's work. And since there were more sign-ups than expected, he has a TA assisting him with this portion--one university student, Luanova Luckwright.
        
        Elan, for his part, has not protested. Actually, he spent the class listening diligently and taking meticulous notes on his tablet. A little strange, since he looked like he couldn't care less, but that's the Ice Prince for you. His face might be pretty, but it's also dispassionate.
        
        ...That's the understanding of most Asticassia students, anyway.
        
        At the moment, though, despite all his meticulous note-taking, he is doing very little to contribute to the assignment. At best, he offers references by pulling up his notes for Miorine while she comes up with the ideas.

<Pose Tracker> Miorine Rembran has posed.

Miorine in contrast hasn't taken a single note. She's looked bored and disengaged throughout the entire special class. She's had her chin propped up on an elbow throughout the entire class.

Mostly it looks as she'd rather be anywhere but here, doing anything but this.

Then comes project time, and Miorine lets out an audible sigh-huff, before she gathers up her pad, and bag and moves towards the table with Elan.

What begins is then a four minute long 'staring' contest where Miorine isn't doing anything. However, she comes to realize, neither too has Elan.

At first disaffected, her expression becomes irritated when he first shows her his notes, then outright annoyed... then... she cracks...

... and now.

"Aren't you supposed to be Peil's Golden Boy? Chosen by the Peil Grade?"

Miorine is furiously tapping away at the datapad, without doing a single check of any notes, including Elan's meticulous ones.

"This should be trivial for you. (I don't need them.)" She asides regarding his notes, in the middle of her grousing.

The fact is, it's trivial for her too. What irritates her is that she cracked first, and thus must pretend to care about the assignment.

It is a strange sort of arrogance - pride she demonstrates. Showing the world that she could be Delling's heir if she wanted to. If she was willing to put forth the effort.

And it's an active choice that she doesn't. That she demonstrates how effortless it is.

"Just sitting there with that vacant look on your face." She mutters, "I guess that's why you're in the piloting program, dueling really must be the only thing you're actually good at."

<Pose Tracker> Luanova Luckwright has posed.

        The teacher's assistant is another face, daughter of a power-broking orbital senator, heiress to one of the Benerit Group's workhorse arms manufacturers. And perhaps a stealth operative, by the way she suddenly speaks from a blind spot behind Miorine and Elan both, eyes closed, with an indefatiguable smile. "Besides, Elan, I told you. I grade your papers here. So you better be putting in the work."

        Lua gives a quick scan over the notes laid out on the table and what she can spot from her angle on Miorine's datapad. "Miss Rembran," she then greets cordially. Everyone knows who the Rembran girl is, but the few times she's ever shown at the kind of events Lua and Elan are known to attend, she's left at the first opportunity. That makes this hello! "I see you've been paired with Mr. Ceres. Sorry to hear that."

<Pose Tracker> Luanova Luckwright has posed.

        The teacher's assistant is another face, daughter of a power-broking orbital senator, heiress to one of the Benerit Group's workhorse arms manufacturers. And perhaps a stealth operative, by the way she suddenly speaks from a blind spot behind Miorine and Elan both, eyes closed, with an indefatiguable smile. "Besides, Elan, I told you. I grade your papers here. So you better be putting in the work."

        Lua gives a quick scan over the notes laid out on the table and what she can spot from her angle on Miorine's datapad. "Miss Rembran," she then greets cordially. Everyone knows who the Rembran girl is, but the few times she's ever shown at the kind of events Lua and Elan are known to attend, she's left at the first opportunity. That makes this hello! "I see you've been paired with Mr. Ceres. Sorry to hear that. I'm the teacher's assistant, Luanova Luckwright. I'd ask if you've got anything to check in on yet, but I'm guessing you haven't been practicing your telepathy at each other for the past few minutes."

<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.

        Miorine only pretends to not care. Elan actually doesn't care. That's what decides this game of classwork chicken.
        
        He does put in a token of effort towards collaboration. The purpose of these notes is for those who do care. But Miorine rejects his efforts, and so Elan stops trying. He simply watches her with his usual deadpan. Her grousing about him being chosen and how it should be trivial for him and her follow-up insults get no reaction whatsoever. He simply continues to watch without giving any input or suggestions as she types up the plan.
        
        (It is true that he's only good for dueling. But it's true in a different way from what Miorine is suggesting. That is something that Elan accepts in an empty sort of way.)
        
        His yellow-green eyes do flick up, tassel earrings trembling, when Luanova approaches and snipes at him, both directly and indirectly. His lack of expression still doesn't shift, though. Elan Ceres told her when they last met not to expect him to joke around with her at school... Is he taking this seriously or not?
        
        It's impossible to tell. People at school describe him as a person with high walls, and that's apparently true mentally as well. There's not a hint of what he might feel about Luanova, Miorine, or any of this.
        
        He doesn't weigh in on the conversation, either. Apparently that's a burden that Miorine will also have to bear.

<Pose Tracker> Miorine Rembran has posed.

As the teacher's assistant approaches, Miorine tries to go back to that vibe of bieng uncaring, but it doesn't - actually take. She cares quite a lot about her pride, and Elan wounded it in some way that she believes was purposeful.

In truth however, it's because she assumes far too much of other people's actions, of his motivations.

"It doesn't even matter that it's him."

Miorine notes, as she finishes tapping for the moment, before swiveling around her pad as if to show off her work.

What she displays is a rough business plan for an agricultural shipping company that is meant to break Colonial reliance on the PLANTS for fresh produce.

Despite it being rough and in haste however, it's incredibly detailed, and manages to follow along with the CEO's points quite well on the market trends and predicted market share.

"For something this basic I don't need anyone else's input." However, at the introduction, she notes, "Luckwright. The Foresight CEO's daughter." It's offered with an almost sense of boredom, at that fact she pulled out of the ether.

She doesn't follow up on her opinion one way or another, not of her - not of her mother, not of her mother's company.

"Guess you're not checking in to 'network'." She notes, of her motives, because while rarely that observant of other people, it's common sense that she wouldn't compliment Delling's prodigal daughter over Peil's latest star if that were her motive.

But the overlying suspicion is of course still there... Miorine's gone most of her life with suspecting every new face is one that will seek to use her.

<Pose Tracker> Luanova Luckwright has posed.

        Lua nods her head. She looks over the datapad Miorine is showing off, and the small amount of time Miorine shows it off is still enough for her to pick up on its intricate level of detail. There are failure points, of course. Every plan has failure points. But it is a strong proposal compared to where the rest of the class is at, even before you factor in how little time she must have taken to map it out.

        "Lua," she answers Miorine's greeting (more of an acknowledgment). "I don't network," she says. That's probably quite hard for Miorine to believe, with how jaded she is of society and how known Luckwright is for appearing at so many promotional appearances. She wears that practiced smile that the good manipulators use, the one that it takes years of experience to distinguish from a real one. (It's true, though. She doesn't network.)

        "All right, then. Sorry for the snarkiness, you have been banging this one out pretty good." Miorine just probably needs a few minutes for the finishing touches before she can spend the rest of her class time just wishing she was elsewhere.

        "Unfortunately, it is a group project." She reaches down to touch Elan's notes and pull them back out again, not towards Miorine but laid out in front of him to read again. Her eyes look down at Elan with an ambiguous apprisal. Is this what he meant last time they met by telling her he wouldn't acknowledge her at school? This total, passive silence, though, is not like him. "Elan Ceres," she draws out his full name this time, a quiet signal she would expect Elan to recognize as her dubious acknowledgment of his playing dumb. "I'm not going to recommend an easy pass just because you were sitting here while Miorine did the work. Tell you what, here's your assignment: find three potential failure points in her proposal that it doesn't already address. We know you can do it, but it's still my job to make you prove you can."

<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.

        While Elan may not offer anything to the project or the conversation, he does at least pay attention when Miorine turns her pad around and shows off her plan. Tracking his eyes, he's clearly reading what she's presenting. Those eyes track to Miorine herself when she claims she doesn't need anyone else's input. Still, he says nothing as she and Luanova talk about networking, and only looks back at the proposal when Lua reads it over and offers her commentary.
        
        Of course, then she reaches over for his notes and turns them around for him to read. Again, he glances at her. She offers an assignment. It's a reasonable assignment, all things told. Elan Ceres would be able to do that, and quite easily; and as Lua says, it's her job to make him prove it.
        
        There is a brief moment of continued silence as he continues to regard her sidelong.
        
        Then, at last, in a soft voice, he states, "I've already done my part of the assignment." He regards Miorine impassively. "Top CEOs know how to delegate."

<Pose Tracker> Luanova Luckwright has posed.

        Lua exercises the inner strength to not say 'don't be a shithead' in her capacity as teacher's assistant. "If you don't demonstrate to me that you've found the failure points, what they are and how to address them, then I'm only giving Miorine the credit."

<Pose Tracker> Miorine Rembran has posed.

There's an absent nod, without Miorine actually repeating, 'Lua's' name before eyeing her at her comment of not networking.

Obviously she's skeptical.

"What a dutiful assistant you must be." She replies with acerbic dryness, not truly acknowledging the apology.

"Anything to get this over with."

Is all Miorine states, because despite it all, she doesn't in fact miss class unless she's trying to make an escape attempt.

She doesn't want to give them an excuse to 'cut short' that escape window.

Finally managing to put on that bored face again, her grey eyes flick towards Elan as Lua addresses him.

Perhaps she's a little surprised that in fact, Luanova is laying it on thick to make certain the Peil CEO is doing his work, but she doesn't interfere with it.

At least until she asks him to find potential failure points. "There aren't any." Miorine replies - faintly irritated at the idea of Elan evaluating her proposal for failure points.

However, Elan's reply...

... at first she stills, as if she isn't sure she heard him correctly, but as Lua replies, her face undergoes a furious transformation,

"Don't act so full of yourself." She says as she abruptly stands up, leaning over as if to get in his face. "I'm not your subordinate!"

Her grey eyes pierce right through him, as her weight is balanced on the table in front of them.

Fortunately it's heavy, and she's tiny, otherwise the idea that she might flip it isn't out of the question. Miorine is at least aware of how that'd look if she failed to do that, "You think I don't understand what you're implying! I'm onto you!"

It is yet another misunderstanding - certainly, but in her eyes implying she's his 'subordinate' is as good as a statement of intent.

That he intends to get his hands on her, one way or another.

<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.

        'Anything to get this over with,' Miorine says, and Elan glances at her.
        
        He didn't think he'd hear her say something he'd agree with.
        
        Lua shoots down his bid for precisely that. He considers her ultimatum, then the tablet. As he reaches for it, though, Miorine interjects: first, by claiming there aren't any failure points in her proposal, and second, with her fury. When she shoots to her feet and leans over him, he looks her back in the eye without moving away--indeed, still without any kind of emotional reaction, even while she's yelling in his face.
        
        But he at least speaks, rather than continuing to remain silent: "Someone has to be for this assignment. You accepted that role on your own." It's not something he has any interest in continuing or maintaining.
        
        She goes on to accuse him of something, though. "On to what?" he asks. His continued quiet calm is quite a contrast to Miorine's yelling.

<Pose Tracker> Luanova Luckwright has posed.

        Lua meets Miorine's small snipe at the assistant with unamused silence and the hint of an arched brow. This is a more receptive response than her practiced smile: enough respect to spare an honest expression and not a false one. But not everybody reads faces like Lua does.

        "No plan survives contact with the enemy," she begins to answer Miorine's complaint. "It's not a dig at you, you actually..."

        No time to finish that thought; Elan has pushed a button and alarms are going off. She watches the confrontation for a moment with a guarded lack of expression, then turns around, to a room full of students staring at the Delling heiress yelling at the Peil CEO. "Alright, get back to work, this isn't a soap opera!" There's just a little bit of sharpness in her voice, but plenty of it in her staredown of the students, who eventually dissolve into the usual whispering.

        The same sharpness isn't in her eyes when she turns back to Miorine and Elan. They're just tired. "Don't answer that," she tells Miorine. Don't rise to the bait - and that's typical Elan Ceres bait, if delivered in this new cool demeanor he's trying out. "The sooner you just give me the answers the sooner you can disperse and go home." That's what they both want, right? If this keeps escalating that's not going to happen.

        Of course, you come to school to learn to become an adult - and because you haven't, yet. Whether it escalates or not is not a choice Lua's interested in making for them.

<Pose Tracker> Miorine Rembran has posed.

Miorine seethes all the same at the idea that her plan may not survive contact - that it might be picked apart, shot through by someone like Elan Ceres. A boy from the Three Branches who wants to make her his.

In a sense, Elan's words are true, in the dynamics of how the Benerit Group works. Even if he were silent he could still claim the task was 'entrusted' to her, and she decided to do it.

And that makes her furious that she walked right into that. No matter what she says, if she refutes it and claims it's solely her idea then- she just looks worse

"What kind of laissez-faire leadership style is that- when you didn't give any input on what your own company even is?" Still obviously angry, "If that's your idea of delegation, then I think 'Peil Grade' has gone rotten."

Is that... an egg reference? She's not helping her case on playing 'farmer'. It draws some sniggers from the class.

Elan however, asks her to clarify, and Lua warns her not to answer that, and she gives her an angry sideeye. "Stay out of this! Don't tell me how to treat the enemy."

She's definitely not helping her case on this not being a soap opera. If anything, she's making it more of one.

However, despite her anger, she's not unaware of the dynamics in the room. Lua has the authority here. She does not, and while she chafes against it, to fight it longer is to imply she cares.

About school. About class. About this assignment.

When really it's all about her pride. "Answer her then." She tells Elan, as if she were in fact, giving the orders now.

Then grumpily sinks back into her seat.

<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.

        Elan Ceres isn't the CEO of Peil Technologies yet, and the fact that he will be is a little-known fact within Asticassia... or is supposed to be, anyway. Still, he is the head of Peil House and a highly-ranked duelist, and that comes with his own prestige--enough to make people stare when Miorine yells at him. Though given how Asticassia students love drama and gossip, they'd no doubt be staring anyway.
        
        Except that doesn't bother him either. At the least, he doesn't react to it. Miorine's dig at his leadership style similarly goes completely ignored. He does, however, glance at Luanova, both for how she starts to say that there really are issues with Miorine's plan--and that he should just give her the answers already so they can be done with all this. Apparently that does get through to him, because he reaches again for Miorine's tablet without another word. Fortunately, that happens at the same time Miorine 'orders' him to, so there's no further fuss.
        
        A moment passes as he reads through her rough-draft plan again. Then he hands it back to Miorine. Even though the assignment is coming from Luanova, he looks directly at Delling's daughter as he states, "You have few ideas on how to procure funding. The ideas you do have on what to do with the funding before you launch the company lack detail. You don't seem to care about what the shareholders will think. And you don't seem to care about meeting demand."

<Pose Tracker> Luanova Luckwright has posed.

        Miorine's side outburst to Lua elicits a mild blink of surprise. After a moment to process, Lua reverts to her neutral, practiced smile, so as to avoid letting out her actual inward smirking laughter at Miorine having decided the "enemy" is not a figure of speech but is Elan specifically. "There. Draft a quick proposal how to integrate strategies to address these concerns, and you're both done." It's like pulling teeth with this kid, she swears. The Rembran girl is prickly, but Lua honestly couldn't blame her for it, given what little she knows of her situation and the absurd race for the Holder title.

        "It really wasn't a dig at you," Lua adds to Miorine, quietly. Her way of extending an olive branch within professional bounds? "You drafted the most complete game plan I've looked at today in about a fifth of the time." She takes down a few notes on her own tablet, and will soon be done and moving on to another group, sparing only a brief pause to mourn the lost opportunity to mark points off Elan's grade.

<Pose Tracker> Miorine Rembran has posed.

Elan's 'unflappable' nature just tends to piss her off all the more, in part because she can't read what's going on there. She's convinced that for all types like him, it's an act.

A pretty expressionless face - the same as a poker face.

A bluff, a deception, a mask. She knows that under there he has to be mad at her.

He has to be.

Still, Elan takes the plan, reads it, hands it back and-

He begins to criticize her plan, one after another, after another. And each one is in fact - true.

Even if he's doing it indifferently, it still reminds her of Delling tearing holes in her ideas when she was younger.

"You think I care about your opinion?"

He's not wrong though, she doesn't... care in the more specific sense, not of nameless, faceless shareholders or finding funding.

The only one that really rankles her is the idea of not caring about meeting demand, since meeting demand is... feeding people.

That is something she cares about.

"I don't need him to address anything."

Lua however tries to extend an olive branch, and Miorine, is definitely instantly suspicious, guarded.

But after a moment, she raises both shoulders, with hands palms up as a theatrical shrug.

"It really doesn't matter anyway. Playing at being the dedicated school girl is really the last thing on my mind."

Leaning back in her seat, as she crosses one leg over another, she declares, "The only thing I care about is getting out of here."

She is- definitely not talking about just the class, is she? The rumors of her escape attempts are also impossible to escape.

<Pose Tracker> Elan Ceres has posed.

        "No," Elan replies succinctly. To his view, Miorine has made it clear to everyone at School--even someone like him--that she doesn't care about anyone or anything here. But that's fine. He doesn't care about her opinion, either.
        
        As Lua and Miorine have their side conversation, Elan swipes down on the tablet and begins to draft a quick proposal as instructed. It's frankly nothing brilliant--apparently, Elan Ceres does his best work when he can take it back to his dorm room--but it will meet the basic criteria.
        
        More importantly, it will be done. He may not be needed to address these matters, but they must be addressed all the same.
        
        Soon enough, though perhaps not before Luanova moves on, he'll hand that tablet back to Miorine. She may well have Words for him about it, if she even acknowledges it at all, but if she decides she wants to edit his work into something that meets her own standards, that's fine by him. He completed the assignment (rubytext: his mission). That's enough.

<Pose Tracker> Luanova Luckwright has posed.

        You think I care about your opinion? God, listening to this kid is like listening to herself at that age.

        (She'll grow up. She'll get more self-control. She'll get better at lying.)

        Lua's last words after checking Elan's work, answering Miorine's declaration of the only thing she's yearning for, isn't emphatic, but it has deeper undertones of emotion than anything else she's said this class. "You and me both, sister." And what does that mean? Is she that fed up with taking shit from the students in this TA job?

        The moment passes before there is time to process the thought and react.