1491/Of Players and Volatile Matters

Of Players and Volatile Matters
Date of Scene:	19 May 2016
Location:	Hisakata Residences
Synopsis:	Sora is mad at Ayana because of that 'player' Kukai. Chemistry tutoring continues regardless, and goes well until Ayana compares Oxygen to a player; the volatile topic causes Sora's temper to explode.
Cast of Characters:	Sora Hisakata, Ayana

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Sora Hisakata has posed:
Tonight is another night for Sora to tutor Ayana. The first one since the fallout with Kukai, and Sora is interested in petty little revenge. As such, she has prepared. The little room they've been using is empty except for the table they'll be sitting at and two cups of tea.

Sora is already sipping hers.

Ayana has posed:
Ayana had tried leaving her star ball at home. It didn't work. She managed to almost make it to the front door, but then in a nervous wreck she came rushing back to collect it and clipped it right back onto her collar. "I'm sure I'll be fine," she says to Ikiko on her way out the door. "Sora-chan doesn't like me, but she's not evil."

Right?

This of course earned her an uncertain look, a kiss for her bravery, and an encouragement. After all, Ayana was doing her very best to learn chemistry--the hardest subject ever.

Dressed in a pair of jean shorts and tall stockings, and a teeshirt with a fox embroidered on the chest, Ayana knocks at Sora's door. Once she's let in, she doffs her shoes, eschews house slippers, and bounds to join Sora in the little room with the table.

"Hi, Sora-senpai," she greets excitedly. Can it hurt to butter the girl up with the compliment of honorifics? Of course not. "How are you today?"

Sora Hisakata has posed:
"Looking forward to today's tutoring session." Sora says in a voice so sweet it can't be genuine. The lights are a little low, making it hard to see the shadows, but Sora doesn't seem to care, taking another sip of her tea. "I made tea." She offers cheerfully, pushing the cup a little closer towards Ayana. "How are you doing?"

Ayana has posed:
Ayana sets the chemistry book down beside the table, then kneels and picks up her cup. She sniffs at it curiously, squints and studies it, then shrugs. "I'm doing okay, I guess," Ayana says. "I still hate Chemistry and wish we didn't have to study it, but I'm not gonna let Ikiko-chan down."

She raises the cup to her lips and almost sips, but pauses first to ask, "Hey, howcome Norie-chan says your boyfriend is mad at me? Did I do something to upset him?" she asks.

Then she finally takes a sip of the tea. A small one, followed by a little look of uncertainty. She eyes the cup askance, then takes another sip, then sniffs at it again. This is not how good tea should taste, but she can't be ungracious about this.

So she takes a third sip before setting the cup on its saucer, and then back to the table.

Sora Hisakata has posed:
"He's not my boyfriend." The faked cheer in Sora's tone fades into the icy chill of pure hatred. "As you damn well knew he couldn't be when you tried to set me up with him." She then takes another sip out of her tea, smiling as her own good tea calms her a little bit, and the cheer returns. "But enough about that, let's go do chemistry~" The sing-songy bits of her voice aren't normal, a habit borrowed from her Shiniko persona.

Ayana has posed:
Ayana blinks in confusion, and her fox ears show up very suddenly, perked and swiveled forward towards Sora. "H..he isn't?" she asks confusedly. This is, perhaps, the first time Ayana has heard those words and listened to them. Probably it has something to do with the sheer mislike in Sora's tone. Possibly it's because she's trying so desperately to learn from Sora.

Possibly it's sheer chance.

"S--sorry," she mumbles. "I thought he was," she says quietly, then ducks her head and picks up the chemistry book. Placing it on the table, she flips to the chapter most recently covered: molecular bonds.

Sora Hisakata has posed:
"We both know you hate boys and you hate me, so stop pretending you didn't know what you were doing." Sora's voice goes icy again, and reflexively darkens the room. It's nothing like what she could do as Shiniko, but the already dim light grows a little dimmer. Just for a moment.

"So, molecular or covalent bonds." Sora starts, getting out some graph paper and sketching out the relevant parts of the periodic table from memory. "As we've gone over, each atom has a number of protons and electrons equal to their atomic number."

She then points at the noble gasses, the rightmost column, "And these electrons are arranged into shells, like layers of clothing. The noble gasses have no partial shells, this is considered fashionable in the world of atoms, and all other atoms try to mimic that. Got it so far?"

Ayana has posed:
Ayana stares at Sora uncertainly, then takes another sip of (and makes another small face at) her tea. The kitsune's ears fold down to either side--a sign of unhappiness--but she doesn't argue with Sora on the finer points of her feelings towards herself or boys.

It's just too scary. And she needs the tutoring too much.

So instead she leans forward and studies what Sora's telling her, uncertainly. For several moments, her eyes just drift across the page, seeming to take it in very sloly. Eventually, she says, "So ... all of the atoms wanna be nobles? Kinda like in that Game of Thrones show how everyone wants to be the king?"

Sora Hisakata has posed:
"Kinda like that, yes. You're good at math, right?" Sora says encouragingly, now that she's getting into tutoring mode personal feelings kind of slip away. This is her thing, this is what she's good at. She can do this without even thinking much. "There's a pattern to these things, we call it the octet rule."

"Except for Helium, the noble gasses always have eight electrons in their outer shell." It's not true, and Sora knows it, but it's what gets taught in class and she doubts Ayana cares about the truth if it helps her get good grades.

"The tiniest shell has two electrons, so Helium has two. After that, you add eight for every shell. So Neon has ten, two plus eight, and Argon has 18, ten plus eight." Which would form a clear mathematical pattern. "Did you get that?"

Ayana has posed:
Ayana blinks in surprise, then looks up at Sora confusedly. "Yeah, that's easy," she says, one ear perked and the other flattened sideways. "When did Chemistry become Math? I thought they were different subjects. The next one's .." she peeks down at the notes, "Kr .. Kr ... Krypton? Krypton! And it's going to be twenty-six, then um, "X... Xerxes? And that one's thirty-four. Right?" Well at least she got the numbers right.

Sora Hisakata has posed:
"Sorta, it gets a little more complicated as you go up, but I know that won't come up in class, so you don't need to worry about that." Sora responds, without going into detail about what is going on there. "Anyway, moving on to the next bit. Atoms that aren't at the magic number want to get there. When it comes to these kinds of bonds, they always try to go there by getting more."

"There's two ways they do that. Molecular bonds are one." Sora explains, and starts writing down an example, a simple one. Hydrogen. "Now here's the trick they pull, if they share some electrons with another atom, they feel like they have the electrons they shared and the electrons shared with them."

She points at the Hydrogen, "So Hydrogen is number 1. So it has one electron. What was the lowest number in the formula we just went over?"

Ayana has posed:
Ayana squints and stares at the hydrogen atom for a few moments, then her ears perk up and she looks up to Sora, face lined in concentration. "Eight," she says confidently, then immediately realizes her mistake, "No two! Two! So if Hydrogen is number one, then it wants to bet two, so two hydrogen atoms can pretend they're a helium atom and be happy?"

Sora Hisakata has posed:
"Kinda. They can dance and together they'll be just as fancy as a helium atom." Sora explains, and draws down two Hs, then a line in between. "This line represents a simple bond, both of them share one electron with the other. Because there are two hydrogen atoms in this molecule, we also write it like this." She writes down another H, and then the little subscript two.

"Next one is Oxygen, now Oxygen has eight electrons. So how many more does it want?" Sora asks, writing down the round O of that particular atom, then waits for Ayana's response.

Ayana has posed:
Ayana stares at the O for a few moments, then back at the little graph of the periodic table, then Sora, then back to the O. "Well ... the next pretty number is ten, so ..." she trails off, then looks up at Sora, both ears up and swiveled towards the older girl. "So ten? Does that mean Oxygen and Helium want to be together so they can be ten? But Helium's already pretty. So ... that doesn't make any sense."

Sora Hisakata has posed:
Sora smiles patiently, this is a common mistake and she shakes her head. "Atoms are greedy, they don't share unless they have to, Helium doesn't need to share. It's a noble gas. They also don't share more than they need to, or more than what another atom is sharing with them."

"This means that unlike Hydrogen, Oxygen won't share all of its electrons. As you saw, it needs two more electrons. That means it will share two." She draws an example, another O next to the first, with a double line in between.

"A double line means they share two electrons. This is what the oxygen we breathe is like." She then writes down the simple formula for molecular Oxygen, O2. "Did you get that?"

Ayana has posed:
Ayana rubs at the bridge of her nose. Her ears fold back as she concentrates on the drawing and the math, then she frowns and leans in closer. After a moment she reaches for the mug of tea, and finishes drinking all of it in one go.

Then she makes another disgusted face.

Then she sighs. "That doesn't make any sense. O2 would have sixteen. But they're only sharing two so each one is ten, but then ... oh bother. That's very confusing. Why don't they just go get two hydrogen, instead, and then they can be exactly ten?"

Sora Hisakata has posed:
"That's something they also do." Sora encourages, writing down H-O-H, with the characteristic curve. She doesn't mention why that is there, it's something for later classes, "That's exactly what you describe. It's sometimes called dihydrogen monoxide, but more commonly water." She throws in the joke. "Also written down like this." She writes down the short hand.

"But once atoms have formed dance partners and formed up in molecules, they take a little convincing to split up and re-arrange. Oxygen agrees with you, though, dancing with Hydrogen is a lot more fun than dancing with more Oxygen, so if you mix Oxygen and Hydrogen and add a bit of fire? That's going to explode and you get a lot of water out of it."

Ayana has posed:
Ayana's ears perk up, and she leans back in confusion. "Why fire?" she asks, staring at the whole thing confusedly. Then she grins wickedly and looks up to Sora. "Oxygen's a little player. Dancing with two like that! Hee. Okay, I think I get it. Can we do a harder one?"

Sora Hisakata has posed:
The idea of a 'player' causes the fire in Sora's eyes to light up, and her voice goes ice cold again. "Don't talk to me about players." She puts down her pen down, and looks towards the door. "Session's over. We'll continue next time." The hatred in her voice is quite clear.

Ayana has posed:
"W...what?" Ayana asks, confusedly. She blinks even more, then leans away and stares at Sora uncertainly. "But we just ... I didn't ..." she tries, then looks back down at the table uncertainly. "I don't understand," she whimpers, ears laid flat as she looks up to Sora pathetically. "I don't hate you, Sora-chan. I think you used to be very mean to me, and I'm worried you're going to be mean to me again. But I don't hate you. I'm scared of you. You could get me kicked out. I don't wanna be kicked out. I like it here. And I love Ikiko. And you're her cousin, so I want to be your friend. What'd I do wrong?"

Sora Hisakata has posed:
"Do me a favour and don't pretend you don't know Kukai has like a dozen 'girlfriends' and some 'boyfriends.'" Sora says cold as ice, apparently interpreting the mention of 'players' as being an intentional teasing about what happened with Kukai.

"I'm not stopping tutoring you, I made a deal, but if you're going to be like this I'm no mood for it, so we'll continue later. Now get out before I get really angry." Suddenly her shadow rises up, covering the wall behind her. Her shadow is off, hair much longer than normal, and a big hat rests on the shadow's head. And despite the shadow's eyes being no different shade from the rest, it's obviously staring at Ayana, and the malice from it is palpable.

Ayana has posed:
"I don't even know him!" Ayana argues, now growing angry as she sits up and glares at Sora. "I have never met him before he came over! But now he's made you angry with me, and that's not fair," she says. Grabbing her book, she slams it shut and stalks towards the exit. "Your tea tastes bad," she yells over her shoulder, "And I'm going to beat up Kukai for making you mad at me again!" She doesn't even bother getting her shoes; out she goes into the hall between apartments, stalking back towards Ikiko's home without looking back.