Ruan Quants's Story

His eyes were like that of a cat, in the sense that those ever gazing orbs of his seemed to function like a two-way mirror, reflecting back what he saw but never what he felt. It unnerved people, when he'd look at them, make them feel like they were under scrutiny. Like he was picking them apart. A lot of the times he was, but mostly he did it because it would make people squirm. It wasn't the sadistic kind of pleasure, no, it was simply something he did because they expected it of him.

Story of his life, really, living up to expectations. Always being told he could be better, always being compared to somebody else. A pattern so unique to him that it might as well have been his fingerprint. The Tala wasn't any different, though initially he had not only expected, but actually, genuinely wanted it to be. Wishful thinking, perhaps. He should have known that all the work he was putting in was just going towards the filling of somebody else's shoes. And of all of them, it just had to be Leo. The previous leader. Of course.

His candidacy had mislead him at first. Things went well. He was actually praised. A prodigy, they called him. He swelled, like an exotic bird looking to mate. It ruffled his ego as much as it did his feathers, so to speak. What wasn't there to love? Then the incident occurred, and it scarred him. Quite literally, in fact, as in that moment as he realized he had gone too far, he made a split-second adjustment that turned a would-be death into the major injury of one, and the moderate injury of another. The student was hospitalized, naturally, and Zuko himself was left with a pretty nasty scar. The event branded him. Chained him in stigma.

It was something he lived with now, and his first week as the new Leo so far hadn't proven easy for him. It wasn't odd for the others to judge him, but there was one Tala in specific that just drove him over the edge. A member he looked up to, in fact, one that partially drove his desire to become one of them. Aries. Ruan Quants. The number two. The way she seemed to treat him. Like she wouldn't even give him a single thought, let alone a second.

It offended him. Not in a way that angered him, but anguished. She, in all rights, was a role model of his and seemed anything but impressed with his mere existence. He still looks up to her, but he notices how she looks at him and the way she changes when they interact versus how she interacts with the others. It hurts him, but instead of letting it show he puts on a competitive edge with her. If she can't see herself, he'll have to show her. That sort of thing. Again, wishful thinking.

He had been at the library since rather earlier in the morning, those cat-eyes of his glued to a book. His interest in literature wasn't exactly something he was public about, but he didn't really attempt to hide it, either. It wasn't rare to find him buried in pages there from time to time. There was a summit to happen that day, and a compulsive glance at the time told him that the meeting was to occur twenty minutes from then. With a sigh, he found himself broken from the trance the book had placed him in and now watched the time as it counted down. He believed himself to be alone.

After about ten irritating minutes passed, and two attempts to get back into his book, Zuko made the motions to leave when the silence of the library was broken. He and the source were separated by several rows of book-shelves, but he didn't necessarily need to see the source to identify it. He recognized the voice. Of course he had. Of course she was here, now. Aries had been talking to another, but Zuko hadn't quite heard who. She mentioned, however, that they should do exactly what Zuko meant to do. If all of them were to make it on time, that meant that he would, at least temporarily, need to go seen.

Hoping to avoid any eye contact, he kept his eyes on the ground and quickly traversed out of his row and then down along the line of them all. Because he a) didn't see where he was going and b) had made a miscalculation of which row he needed to cut through to leave, he found himself turning into the area with the people he was trying to avoid.

Sensing their presence and seeing them out of his peripheral, Zuko froze, deer-in-the-headlights style with his eyes still locked on the ground.

"Fuck." It had been said quietly, to himself.

Awkward.