Tobi studied Miss Antonina’s face, gently rolling her gaze across the woman’s gaunt features. Her skin’s texture looked like the spot under a frog on a Lilypad. It looked repulsive. Her lips were thin, but oddly plump for a woman as old as Miss Antonina. They reminded Tobi of the worms she would find just under large, warm rocks after the rain on a summer afternoon. Her eyes were grey-blue, not quite the color of smoke, but near it. Her Flecks were invisible, as they are after one who has Given Over officially takes the Technetium. Her eyebrows were exactly the same color as her hair, the charcoal version of the smokey grey-blue of the woman’s eyes. She wore her hair natural, curly and telling it’s own wild story without words. Her nose was exactly fine, with no special characteristics.

“Miss Sella, when these girls stand to leave, I need you to keep your ass in that seat. I don’t want to see you so much as flinch.”

Whatever embers of anger-driven defiance were left in Tobi, Miss Antonina’s words pissed them to a hissing death. She didn’t bother to try to mask her reaction as well as she normally would, she could tell that the Mistress was already basting her ego in Tobi’s inner turmoil. Thin punches of panic spotted her insides.

“Miss Sella, I want you to know that Neem was instrumental in rectifying your little incident last night. She’s being a snot about it, but I know she feels all warm and good in her pitiful little heart. Why don’t you look at Neem and tell her thank you, tell her how much you appreciate her using her gifts to not only rectify your incident, but to help us avoid a bit of scrutiny that I’m not too keen on putting up with. Go ahead, do it. Now.”

Tobi shifted her attention to Neem, and noticed the girl seemed to be trembling just a little bit. It wasn’t the trembling of a scared person, but of someone working especially hard to control their own reaction. Passion, just below the surface, flushed Neem’s skin and caused her body to excrete just enough pheromones that Tobi’s animal instinct kicked in. Danger, so nearly imperceptible that only countless generations of genetic information comprising the dna of her bloodline could remind her that she, at her core, knew how this would go… for both of them. They both did.