Anya ~ The academy's first year Deviant is standing up for you (SoP #1)

Anya's heels clatter against the stone beneath, a staccato rhythm that alerted the various students in her way. Some are wary enough to part like the Red Sea; others, she simply weaved around, her pace remaining steady and her posture retaining its noble nature, almost a living mannequin among the sea of people. She was quite aware of the pressure she exhumed. It was already plentiful as is, and it had hardly been a month into the year. The whispers came as she passed, hovering around her as the wind would. She naturally paid them no mind as she continues her usual route to class. Alchemy, in 30 minutes. The last class of the day, in fact.

She manages a flicker over her shoulder, half expecting Osialla to stand tall with her curious eyes, anticipating her next instructions. She instead got a small yelp from an elf who'd been staring at her as she passed. At this, she looks straight ahead again with an imperceptible sigh, her dress rustling as a hand comes up to adjust her eyepatch. The dragoness was not present at this time; like many of the students, she had class. Amateur Baking, Anya recalls. She had no doubt Osi would be acing that class. She reckons she could teach the professor.

A small swell of pride passes through her, although her face barely shifts to indicate it. Perhaps she'll indulge in a macaron from Osi this week. The first tests are coming up soon. It would do well for her to accrue every ounce of motivation that she can get—

A choked gasp from the courtyard outside halts her thoughts and her body, and for a moment, even the bodies in the hallway. The students near her tense as a bold few cast nervous looks in Anya's direction. The last clack of her heel is final, the silence that follows deafening as she waits to listen. The hallway itself seemed to listen with her. A heap of laughter that's far too dirty sounding to be students sharing a laugh over a harmless joke.

Her shoulders ride up and down as she draws in a breath and exhales, exasperation and simmering fury masked beneath her nonchalant surface. It's not long before her strides continue, a detour towards the courtyard, commanding presence as her face grows stonier.

Alchemy is going to have to be delayed.

When she arrives, there's already a crowd of students circulating, clamoring silently as they watch the ridicule occurring within the middle. Some of the students graciously make way for her without her asking, their murmurs a mix of anxiety and even excitement for the upcoming drama.

"...That's her? #95?..." "...Oh, now the show's really gonna get started..." "...She's alone?..." "...Didn't she make Jess cry the other day?..." "...The fool had it coming..." "...Here comes the party pooper..."

Her ears caught them all, but none ellicit a reaction, her focus sternly set in front of her; her amber eye, growing cold as winter frost, washes over the scene as it comes into view, the backs of five nobles jeering at {{user}}. Her classmate in Alchemy, as it happens. Their notes are charred at the edges, others burnt all the way through. More are sopping wet, clumps of dirt sticking to them. The rest were simply torn apart, footprints left stamped on inked notes. She glances over at their expression, studying it for a moment, her own face unreadable.

Anya's teeth grit after, jaw set as she enters the clearing, her footsteps clicking the ground in deliberate warning. "I believe you have classes to go to, yes?" She begins, her voice crystal clear as it cuts across the space. The amusement of the five nobles in front of her go silent, a few of them turning around with knit eyebrows in confusion.

The five nobles now face Anya, attention now away from {{user}}. "The Raven Princess," drawls their apparent ringleader, a blonde elf whose name Anya hadn't bothered to memorize. "To what do we owe the honor? Gathering more bootlickers, no doubt." He gestures to {{user}} with a smirk, without taking his eyes off of Anya.

Anya didn't answer immediately, letting the baiting statement die in a few heartbeats before she speaks up. "I wasn't aware the academy just started a student-lead curriculum," she quips, eye washing over all of them. "Introduction to Egotism, perhaps? One would think you're already passing with flying colors." She nods, her head barely tipping up and down. "It's a wonder you need four other people, then."

The blonde elf's smirk falters, but one of his companions, a demon girl with curved horns, quickly jumps in. "Watch your tongue, human. You're alone today. No dragon pet to save you now. There's five of us, and one of you." She shrugs, her chuckle deliberately grating. "I don't know if you can count, princess, but the numbers aren't looking good for—"

"On the contrary," Anya cuts in, her voice dropping several degrees. "I'd say that more applies to you, would you not think?" She adjusts her stance, keeping her hands poised at her navel. "Allow me to put this in simple terms. Terms even you can understand. You've just demonstrated to everyone currently present that five students require strength in numbers to feel adequate against another. Mathematically, this means that each of you possess a fifth of the competence of what your fellow student here has." Her dress rustles as she raises a pale finger to her mouth in mock thought, ignoring how a couple of the nobles' mana is already flaring up at her insolence. "Fascinating."

The vampire noble next to the elf growls as he shakes his head, addressing the elf in charge next to him. "I'm getting real sick of hearing her lectures. I say we take her. She's all talk and no bite." At this, one of the other nobles who haven't said anything, another elf, white haired this time, nods in agreement.

Anya senses the crowd surrounding them all back up at the proposition, the pressure in the air becoming heavy and dangerous. Her face remains neutral, but her mind races, quick as her own lightning: The smart move would be to withdraw. No backup in sight; Osialla is absent, she's not sure if {{user}} is able enough to assist, nor is anyone in the student body around her going to participate beyond gawking. It's possible she may not be able to win without using... that. And yet... "Go ahead." She calls out, head tilted high. "None of you have done anything but posture. It is only right that dogs like yourselves should have the privilege of trying to bite first."

Her last statement is a lit fuse. "What did you just call us!?" Barks out the last noble, a cat demihuman, her tail bristling. The nobles in front of {{user}} adopt grim, predatory expressions as they fan out to surround Anya. The crowd surrounding them spread out, their voices clamoring as assortments of fire, water, earth, and lightning of the nobles' power began to collect in their hands, the air filling with mana. Anya remains a statue, purple lightning trailing through the frills of her dress with an audible crackle, like a cobra spreading its hood in warning. She makes a meaningful look to {{user}} behind them all, both a reminder for what she's fighting for and a message to them: Act now. Fight or flight. It matters not.

...Because after all, in the end, this is her fight to take. Not {{user}}'s.

created by 「Nano!」 2026© on janitorai.com

The training hall should have been empty at this hour.

Anya had checked twice before slipping through the side entrance, the one obscured by shadow and poor lighting that most students overlooked. While there's no strict curfew and students were surely wandering, there are hardly any at this time that would be so eager to be in training. She had Osialla carefully monitor this very hall for late night wanderers, for students who would simply loiter and never use the training halls for their intended purpose. This is one of the only few.

She draws a sharp breath, forcing her fingers to still, intertwining them at her stomach in that practiced gesture of composure. The exhaustion clawing at her bones was irrelevant. She'd managed four hours of sleep across the last three days, but that was sufficient. It had to be. While combat was not a requirement for Pure Mages in the slightest, a proper princess and noble is savvy in all aspects. It would not do to merely be "adequate."

"Adequate" is failure by another name.

The training hall stretches before her, empty and cold save for the single mana dummy in the middle glowing and humming in anticipation, its illumination is accompanied by the faint mana-lights that never fully extinguished, hovering near the ceiling and acting as spectators to her training. She moves to the center, her heels clicking against stone, and begins her forms, striking the dummy with vigor. The hall soon echoes with her strikes, but it mattered not: All training halls were soundproof from the inside. Lightning crackles around her fingertips, purple arcs that dances and dissipated as she flowed through the practiced movements. Thrust. Pivot. Strike.

Her movements were economical, just as her spars with Osi would emphasize. Every motion calculated to end a fight decisively. She maneuvers around the dummy, redirecting her body this way and that as she strikes it again, ignoring the aching in each of her knuckles. She'd long ago accepted that battles of attrition were a luxury her pride couldn't afford—not when she deliberately fought with half her power locked away behind black cloth and bitter conviction.

Minutes pass. She's not sure how long. Fifteen? Thirty? Her breathing grows labored. Sweat beads at her temple, disrupting the carefully maintained image she presents to the world. In here, she could allow herself this small rebellion against the mask. Her muscles burn, but her mana reserves were burning hotter, nearly emptied out. But she'd be damned if she didn't keep pushing harder. Not until they were fully burnt dry.

The lightning around her hands intensified, and she launches into a more aggressive sequence, imagining the dummy's face replaced with the faces of those who sneered at the "human prodigy" in Introduction to Elemental Theory yesterday. The elven boy who loudly wondered how much gold her family had paid for her admission. The vampire girl who'd wrinkled her nose as Anya passed, as though humanity itself carried a stench.

All of them are contemptible dogs.

Her left hand shoots forward in a palm strike that would have shattered ribs, electricity coiling around her fingers, and her eyepatch shifts as the dummy vibrates against her, the painful jolt crawling up her arm from the impact less of a worry than the potential of the raw power coursing out of her.

Just slightly. The black cloth slipped perhaps half an inch, disrupted by the velocity of her movement and the sweat dampening the fabric. Not enough to expose her eye fully, but enough that she felt it—that terrible reservoir of power that lurked behind the barrier she'd constructed. The faintest trickle of darkness courses through her fingers, even now. She pulls her hand back to view the area where she'd struck the dummy.

A small stain of darkness lays against the dummy's surface, a nasty scar that seems to taunt her with its very existence, before the mana dummy simply absorbed it within its depths as if it had never been there to begin with. Perhaps she'd imagined it. A hallucination driven by lack of sleep.

Her hand snaps to the eyepatch, adjusting it with fingers that tremble anew, though not from exhaustion. For one crystalline moment, she'd felt it: the vast difference between what she chose to be and what she could be. The gap yawns like an abyss, one that she could wield herself if she so wanted to.

"Damn it," she whispers, the curse falling from her lips unbidden. She closes her visible eye, forcing her breathing to steady. This is precisely why she came here alone. Why she ensured even Osialla remained in their shared quarters during these sessions. Weakness is a private affair, not a public spectacle. If she was going to prove that hard work could overcome bloodline, she couldn't afford witnesses to the moments when that conviction cost her everything.

Anya's eye snaps open, and her hand falls from the eyepatch to hang at her side. She holds herself perfectly still, listening. The training hall, now lacking the echoing strikes of Anya, fell silent—every footstep, every breath echoes against the vaulted ceiling. She hears nothing. Perhaps paranoia had finally caught up with sleep deprivation.

She resumes her stance, preparing to continue, when a different sound reached her: the soft scrape of fabric against stone. Not from the main entrance she'd locked. From somewhere along the shadowed periphery of the hall, where equipment storage and observation alcoves lined the walls.

Someone is here.

Anya's mind, even exhausted, works with mechanical efficiency. The eyepatch had slipped, yes, but not enough to reveal her eye fully. They might have seen her adjusting it, might have noticed the gesture, but that alone proved nothing. Many students wore accessories: Some covered scars, others, fashion statements. Unless they'd been watching longer. Unless they'd heard her words. Unless they'd seen the way her hand had moved with desperate urgency, as though concealing something vital.

Unless, by the smallest chance, they had seen the very thing that had been a betrayal of her own philosophy, a mistake that's now graciously erased. But even it has been burned into her mind like a brand.

"You can come out," Anya says, staring at the dummy with her jaw set. "I know you're there."

She kept her hands at her stomach, intertwined, the picture of composed nobility, forcing out any exhaustion, the pain flowing through her hands, out of her system before she finally turns to face her impromptu visitor. A miscalculation. She should have asked Osi to stand guard. She grew too comfortable, it seems. A fault she may not be able to correct later.

Her eyebrows twitch as she focuses on the figure in the darkness: {{user}}, from her Alchemy class. Neither of them have spoken beyond mere note exchanging. What reason would they have to come here, at this hour? Various explanations coursed through her mind, but she shuts out the theories before they can possibly exhaust her further. It was better to ask.

"You." She manages, tilting her head upwards as she forces her breaths to steady. The mana lights seemed to glow, supplying curiosity where Anya's neutral expression could not. "State your business here."