Cafas was terribly unamused with Persi. More so than usual. The kid had already earned himself a danger room session, so putting Cafas in a worse mood with him had been unwise.

I'm gonna make sure his a** gets kicked

Cafas strode up the hallway to the door of Persi's room. He figured he'd start the highly annoying search for him there. He could almost guarantee he wouldn't find the kid there, but it was better than nothing, plus it might provide clues. He also knew the kid had a room mate, so that might make the job a little easier.

He reached the door pretty quickly. He knocked on the door gently. He'd hate to give the game away if the kid was there. Better to act like he wasn't him when looking for the kid, or he may just not find him. He'd never open the door for Cafas.

There better be someone here.

Today was shaping up to be a pretty decent day. Persi had bolted early, Aiden didn't have to be anywhere, and he finally actually had some time to himself.

Except he really didn't have much to do, so he just took the chance to wear clothing less sweltering (long sleeves and high necks might be the order of the rest of his life, but it was disgustingly hot for this early in the summer) and crawl back onto his bed. And then promptly fall asleep again in the wonderful coolness.

And then be horribly awakened by someone tapping on the door. At least they weren't banging. The light tapping echoed enough in that room. Rather more bleary-eyed than when he had kind of woken up earlier, he stumbled out of bed, finding just enough presence of mind to turn around halfway to the door and trade his light t-shirt (goodbye, dear coolness!) for a shirt that succeeded in covering his scars. He finally lumped the rest of the way to the door, had his hand on the knob, and then realized his sunglasses were on his desk, so of course he had to go back and get them. Once they were on and he could hardly see (what with the light being off and all), he pulled the door open, only to stare at the man on the other side.

"Cafas?" he asked, thoroughly confused. What was he doing here? And why was he waking him up? That was entirely unfair.

Cafas was getting thoroughly sick of waiting by the time the door opened. He could hear the movement inside, which didn't help any. The sunglasses that greeted him made him resist the urge to place his palm firmly onto his face. "Hi Aiden. So clearly you're Persi's room mate. Well, do you know where he is? He'd required for class."

Hmm, he could use a partner too.

"So are you, so help me find him. Welcome to Remedial Gym. Mostly self defense training, and you've been signed up. If you do well at this and pass gym next semester too, I'll see to it that this counts as extra credit." He looked over the clothes Aiden was wearing. It would not do at all. Persi he could stand to torture with the heat, Aiden seemed like a good kid so far. "And grab a t-shirt and shorts or something dude, you're gonna want them."

Maybe he'll show Persi up...

Cafas was looking for Persi? Just his luck. Get his nice, cool sleep interrupted because his roommate probably skipped class again and got noticed, and had to pay for it now. Served him right. "He went off to climb trees again," Aiden replied. Hesitation over ratting out his roommate to a teacher? Nope. Not one bit.

Wait, what? Staring at Cafas was now called for. How did he get himself signed up for remedial gym? He might do the bare minimum in p.e. classes, but he did the stuff, and it wasn't like he needed the exercise. And why self-defence training? "...What?" he managed to ask, dearly hoping that he had heard Cafas wrong. "What for?"

And he was not wearing a t-shirt in public. Maybe if he could find one that was only short-sleeved on the left, but that would probably just draw more attention. The point was to reduce attention. Still, if Cafas was going to make him exercise in this heat, this particular shirt was probably going to give him heat stroke. So, with a long, wary look at Cafas, he closed the door and dug around for some sort of compromise. A pair of long shorts would help, but he really didn't have all that many long-sleeved shirts that were lighter than the one he was already wearing.

Grimacing, he pulled out the one that would probably be his best bet, though once he had it on the sleeves felt a little too short for comfort and he had to keep tugging the right cuff down to make sure his wrist was still completely covered, and while it didn't feel any cooler than the previous shirt he felt that it looked cooler. Besides, he simply was not going out there in a t-shirt. He pulled the door open again, probably radiating abject misery. He certainly felt miserable about this whole thing. Remedial gym in this heat. When he wasn't even failing gym or anything.

This was all Persi's fault.

Climbing trees? Wonder how often he does that? Bit old for it, but whatever.

Cafas waited for Aiden to get changed. When he finally managed to find something to wear and opened the door, Cafas was feeling even less amused than before. Seriously? did the kid have some phobia of his own arms? Because that would be both weird and perpetual inconvenient.

"In answer of your earlier question, because I think some competition would do Persi good, and I think it might do you some good too. Plus, you're a good guy, I figure I can probably trust you not to abuse what I'm teaching you." He decided that standing there was not getting Persi any closer to being found. He was very glad he'd started early. "Come on, let's go find Persi. Maybe he's had an attitude shift. Never know your luck."

Cafas knew his luck pretty well as far as he could tell though, so he doubted Persi had come to some epiphany about his own bratiness. Cafas wandered outside at a casual pace. No point rushing, they would finish when he decided they were done anyway. "So, any idea which tree to start with?"

So I can light it on fire...

Well, he couldn't exactly argue with that reasoning. He might not like it, and he wasn't about to let Persi get away with dragging him into this without any sort of repercussions, but Aiden really couldn't argue that Cafas' plan was flawed and useless and stupid. It wasn't. Under normal (and not personal) circumstances, Aiden would have quite agreed with him. A little competition did improve a lot of things, exercise was (theoretically and officially) good for your health (somehow allowing for injuries gained while exercising), and if more people had to be involved in anything resembling fighting, it wouldn't be smart to bring in people who would go off and use the skills to beat up others. Bullies didn't need any more help.

He still didn't like it, and trudged along after Cafas. "This is Persi you're talking about, right?" he said rather absently. "He's still the same as ever." 'Ever' being, of course, limited to however many weeks it had been since Persi had shown up at his door and Aiden had had to give him clothing and interact with him until he stopped just standing in the middle of the room, dripping on the carpet.

He was still following Cafas with his reluctance very poorly hidden when they reached the trees. Aiden peered towards them, but couldn't see any sign of Persi from there. Probably just a bit farther in again. "There are a couple that are better for climbing than the others," Aiden said quietly before taking the lead (still reluctantly) and heading into the cooler but still uncomfortably hot shadows beneath the trees. Most of the trees he thought Persi liked were in roughly the same area, so he headed there first. "What did Persi do to get, what did you call it... remedial gym?" Hopefully not anything that would add even more to the load of stuff he had to put up with because of his roommate.

Persi, in fact, had no idea what tree he was in. It was a pine tree in the forest, with nice, large (well, relatively) pinecones. Beyond that, he didn’t know; he’d walked for something like an hour or half hour after getting to the forest before climbing the tree, but that didn’t necessarily indicate that he’d been walking straight. If Persi could keep going in one direction, or turn in set amounts, his sense of direction was pretty good; a constant series of small, unplanned, often unconscious re-anglings of the direction he was walking made it a lot harder.

...Which might make getting back out of the forest a bit difficult. Probably not, though; he was pretty sure Brute would find him anyway. There had to be someone in the Mansion that could, and Persi wouldn’t be surprised at all that Brute got them to help. Really, he’d be shocked if he didn’t. The goal was just to make it a pain for Brute first. And to put off the inevitable misery, for that matter.

Escaping some of that misery… wasn’t going to happen, at least during the lesson. Though Persi was pretty sure that Brute couldn’t do anything worse without seriously breaking a few laws, so he probably wouldn’t be a whole lot more miserable than last time. His sketchbook, however, was protected; he’d gotten a second, filled it with practice sketches of random things, since he was willing to lose those, and hidden it under his bed. His actual sketchbook had been hidden down the back of a chair in the living room since the night before. Brute would have to be really obsessive to find it. And more than a bit stalkerish. Persi could lose the practice one.

In the meantime, he sat in the tree, pulled pinecones off of the branches in reach, and attempted to figure out how to juggle them. He had to pick a lot of new ones.

No epiphany from Persi? Bummer. Cafas kept walking. Somewhere in this useless forest was a kid in thorough need of respect. Cafas peered into the trees and sighed, resigning himself to the search. "Well, let's start at that good spot then." Cafas followed Aiden until they arrived at the supposed most likely spot. Well, so much for most likely.

I guess just pick a direction now...

"He decided he wanted to mouth off at me, and I decided I aught to teach him how to defend himself for when he inevitably does that with someone dangerous. This was the only way to make sure I had enough authority to make him do it. He hasn't done himself any favours since either. Well, there was the one time he tried to hit me, that was ballsy, if stupid." Cafas set off looking, because he thought he heard something that direction, and he frankly had no other clues.

Fingers crossed.

"Keep your eyes out for signs of recent human activity. Footprints, scuffs that aren't full off pine needles yet, that sort of thing. Once we find him, try to convince him to come down. Might help if you don't mention I'm here."

Mouthing off at a teacher? Sounded like Persi, though Aiden wasn't entirely sure he believed his roommate had sufficient guts to actually do more than talk about mouthing off to a teacher. Persi not differentiating between a teacher and someone who'd bust his face for being an idiot? Considerably more believable. "He actually tried to hit you?" Now that was far less believable than Persi being rude, and Ai's disbelief showed. Seriously, the kid who jumped if Aiden so much as looked at him wrong (sure, he'd done most of his jumping in the first few days they'd lived together, but the impression had stuck)?

On the other hand... attempting to hit Cafas had clearly not turned out well for Persi. And Cafas now wanted to include Aiden in this 'self defence training.' His survival instinct suggested that finding a way out of this arrangement sooner rather than later might be beneficial to his health, if only until he could figure out how he was supposed to heal himself. He'd really rather not be bleeding to death before that. Or have broken bones. Or, well, anything more serious than a bruise or twisted ankle, and even that was a stretch, especially if it was inflicted by other people. Aiden could take it, sure, but that hardly meant he enjoyed it.

Too bad that pulling an apparent Persi and hiding clearly wouldn't work. Even if Aiden managed to get away from Cafas like he had from Isabel, Cafas now knew where he lived, and lived in the same building. There would be no escaping from him, and putting off impending doom only worked if you just needed the time to finish some über weapon or something. Nothing like that was going to help Ai, so it was looking like he would just have to suck it up and endure it.

And maybe do his best to stay on Cafas' good side. That was probably the smart thing to do. At the moment, that apparently meant doing his very best to lead Cafas to Persi before Cafas felt like getting annoyed with Aiden. Let Persi take the force of anything Cafas wanted to dish out, since this entire thing was his fault. Peering around as they walked, Aiden squinted to pull details out of the dark world. Footprints... scuff marks... Well, the ground had been dry enough that any real footprints wouldn't be from Persi, at least not on this trip. Maybe there'd be a bit of one in the dust, but there wasn't much dust here. Fresh scuffs? Possible, possible. Aiden wasn't familiar with actually tracking anything, but logic and common sense had their place in everything. And sharp eyes too - Aiden paused a moment before moving sideways past a couple of trees to a raised root that was mostly covered in moss. At least, it had originally been covered in moss, but there was a large scrape down one side that looked fairly recent to Ai. From Persi? Not necessarily. There were plenty of other people who came through here. He poked the fallen moss. At least it was still springy, and not dried up and dead. In this heat, moss turned to firestarter very quickly.

"Yeah he did. It didn't go so well for him. My advice, don't try it." Because reflexes were just one of those things that would be difficult to control, and Persi had got lucky that he'd only been hit in the stomach. Lucky that Cafas had more than enough time to temper his response.

Springy needles formed a carpet over the hard, dry ground underfoot. Cafas watched them intently, searching for discrepancies in the greens and browns of the forest floor. It was Aiden that noticed something tangible first, however. Cafas crouched in the dappled sunlight filtering through the branches above and inspected the naked patch of the otherwise moss coated root.

He wasn't much of a tracker, having not needed to learn the skill ever, but he could tell that it was recent. The moss that had fallen off still vibrant green and springy, golden sap still gently leaking from the shallow scrapes on the root itself. "Well, it's sure better than nothing." Cafas looked into the semi-shadows ahead, spotting an exposed patch of dark brown dirt. So, they had a direction.

He stood, startling a bird from its midday roost. He forged on in his best estimation of the direction their quarry had headed. He walked gently as he could, avoiding fallen branches and other unnecessarily noisy objects. He'd walked for a few minutes like this, semi-stealth, when something caught his attention. A pine cone falling to the ground a few dozen yards ahead. He only saw it thanks to the briefest of gaps in the trees and branches.

Gotcha!

Cafas stepped gently behind another tree and motioned Aiden ahead. In a low voice he muttered "Think we've found him, go get him down." as the boy passed. He'd try to stay out of sight behind the thick, rough pillar of the pine, limited to his hearing for assessment of the situation.

"No intention of that," Aiden muttered. Even when people decided that they didn't care what Conri thought and figured that Aiden's shy nerdiness was worth picking on, Aiden never hit them. The only things he'd ever made forceful, intentional contact with were trees. Aiden was pretty sure the trees could handle it and wouldn't feel anything. They were trees, after all. Trees put up with a lot worse than one kid whacking them with swords.

Anyway, Aiden resolved even more not to give Cafas any sort of reason to attack him. Not even fake-attack.

He seemed to be on the right track, at least. It was a good thing he'd noticed this scrape, even if it was only because the exposed wood reflected more light than the moss and happened to be just visible through his sunglasses. He'd take luck if it kept him from getting punched. For now, he fell into step behind Cafas as he took the lead again. After a few moments, he found himself trying to walk as quietly as Cafas, any sharpness in his own steps jarring through his ears. All right, so he was a little competitive. It was one of the many reasons he sucked at team sports and the main reason he ever asked his brother to help him with english, okay? He might hate being in a group, but he hated being the failure of the group about as much.

Wait, he had to try to talk Persi down now? Aiden turned a rather strangled look on Cafas, but the thought of what Cafas might do to him if he couldn't get Persi drove him past the pink-haired man and (hesitantly) towards the tree Cafas figured Persi was in.

So, how was he supposed to do this? There was no way in hell Persi was going to come down if he asked nicely. Aiden was bright enough to realize that he didn't politely ask Persi things. He put up with things as long as he could and tried to avoid the issue. So...

Well, there was something Aiden had been putting off dealing with for as long as he could. Dealing with that would be far less stressful and dangerous than getting on Cafas' bad side. Guess that was his best shot. "PERSI." he said, loud but flat-toned. "Do you remember borrowing the second volume of Shiro no Ou to Kuro Kishi? One of the pages is torn." Well, if Aiden being unhappy about a (mildly, like not even an eight of an inch, maybe not even a sixteenth) torn page didn't convince Persi that Cafas wasn't involved and that he should come down, Aiden was out of talking ideas. Never mind that he had kind of been out of ideas to start with.

Persi jumped, dropped another pinecone in the process, and leaned a bit to the side to look down. Yep, that was Aiden. Huh. Persi had not expected him to be here at all. Also, he was pretty sure that Aiden was perfectly capable of yelling at him at literally any other point in the week, when he was not a mile into a forest and up a tree. Which meant that probably wasn't actually why Aiden was here.

Hm. Persi didn't see pink anywhere. Maybe Brute could change his hair color, too, or something.

In the meantime, Persi still wasn't entirely sure what Aiden was talking about. He climbed down a few branches so he could see better--still no pink, but Aiden wasn't half hidden now--and picked one of the pinecones that was now in reach. Still solid and green; those ones were less painful to catch, and heavier, so they were easier to feel when he caught them. In theory that should help make them easier to juggle. He rolled it between his hands while he tried to remember what the jumble of sounds meant.

Oh, that one. Right. "Yeah. I don't think it was torn...." Certainly not seriously; there were little marks and discolored paper like happened to every book that was read much, but nothing that had stood out. And then he noticed what Aiden was implying. The pinecone stayed in one hand, and Persi's expression became thoroughly offended. "I didn't tear it! I made sure I didn't tear anything." Mostly for fear of Aiden, but still, he had.

A pinecone falling to the ground was Aiden's first warning that Persi was indeed in the tree. Well. He definitely wasn't going to be able to hide from Cafas. Ever. Not even if his life depended on it.

Okay, he really hoped it wouldn't ever come to that. No matter how messed up his life was, he didn't want it to end. There were usually enough high points, or potential for high points in some distant future (dim as they currently seemed) to make continuing on worthwhile. And he really didn't want to find out what happened after death or if people were actually judged. Plus there was the whole painful part of death. It was probably extremely painful. Unbearably painful.

Yeah, best to avoid the whole thing.

Oh, he wanted to deny it, did he? "Oh really? Then why is it torn now?" No, Persi wasn't going to get out of this one. "Did you think I wouldn't notice, or did you just not notice? The others I've lent you had better not be damaged too." He leaned back to stare up the tree. Wait, was that Persi? Aiden glared at him. Yeah. Persi. The roommate that had made his life so precarious by being enough of an idiot to make a teacher, specifically the teacher somewhere behind him probably thinking of ways to make one of them utterly miserable, mad enough to go looking for him in the woods. In the morning. In this heat.

Well, that explained why Aiden would be out here with Brute. Apparently he was also kind of an asshole. Persi knew perfectly well that he hadn't torn the book; he'd paid more attention to that than to actually reading the things. "I don't know, because I didn't tear it." Persi glared back. "And if they are, it's still not me. It'd be stupid for me to damage anything I borrowed anyway, why would I?" Not that he was going to borrow anything from Aiden again anyway, if this was the result. He'd find things to do that didn't set him up to be yelled at for things he hadn't done.

Asshole. That made it official; Aiden definitely didn't like Persi. Nice to know, even if it was way late. Whatever; Persi didn't feel like wasting time on this. He was annoyed enough already, he'd rather deal with whatever reason (almost certainly Brute) Aiden was actually there. "Anyway if all you wanted was to yell at me for that you could have literally any time in the last week, and you haven't even looked at me, so why are you here?"

Actually, when Persi thought of it, he kind of hoped that it was Brute. At least he knew about that. This constant ambushing with new, surprising miseries was really getting old.

This wasn't going well. Aiden almost shot a worried glance in Cafas' general direction but caught himself just in time. He shifted his weight instead. Maybe... "Well, I didn't, and it's torn now," Aiden insisted. "Do you need to see it?" Hopefully that wasn't too obvious a ploy to get him to come down. Man, Aiden hated this. Trying to convince someone to do something they didn't want to do, for precisely the reason they didn't want to do it, without letting them know that that was the reason, and without bringing the cause of that reason down on himself as well? It wasn't fair that Persi had gotten him involved in this. Not fair at all.

"I never said you did it on purpose," Aiden said quickly. Cafas or no, he did still have to live with Persi, so he'd better not make him too angry or it might be almost as bad as having Cafas mad at him. First chance he got around to it, he'd apologize for this whole mess. And remind him that it was all his fault.

So much for his distraction and secrecy. Er.... um... there had to be some way to deal with this. Maybe - no. What about - no. Well... nothing for it. He had to say something. "Erm... well..." Okay, telling Persi that he hadn't been able to make himself get around to talking about the tear was way harder than it sounded. Wait! Persi didn't know that he'd known about it for this long. "I, uh, only noticed it this morning. Rereading them." He tried to keep his wince at the lie internal, or at least hidden behind his glasses. This had better be worth it.