Cranes and Coffee

Alexis glared at the failed first attempt as Achlys moved it away. Why did he have to be so stupid? There were tons of other things he cold have agreed to do that wouldn't have involved sitting there looking like an idiot as he failed to fold paper right.

"What kind of prank did you do?" Alexis asked as he eyed the banter across the table from him. The story sure seemed more interesting than folding paper. He did though begin folding his next crane. With quite a bit of patient help from Achlys it was coming out better. He learned far better from a person than through videos.

"It seems quite a few of us ended up meeting partners who can be a little trying at times," noted Spike from his casual spot watching the whole table. "Make sure your cranes actually look like cranes Alexis or i'm not going to count them. At least put in some effort here." He wasn't going to be helping make the cranes but that didn't mean he couldn't keep nudging him to do better.

Alexis started to growl something insulting back but then swallowed it and slowly nodded instead. "Fine. This one is looking better anyway."

Spike raised his eyebrows and looked between Evan and Cori before sighing to himself. "That sounds like being difficult to me, but good luck with that," he said to Evan before he went back to carefully watching Alexis work.

Alexis finally finished a very mediocre folded paper crane, but at least it was recognizable. "So now you and your sister are pacted with people who wanted to pact with the other one. It sounds like that sucks. I think you ended up pranking yourselves," he snickered as he started on the next paper crane.

But then he paused after he took in the last part of what Cori had said. The teen gave Achlys a pat on the shoulder before glaring at Evan. "She's right. They are people. Several of them are my friends," he growled. Alexis was happy to be getting powers, it was part of his plans of course, but he also considered many of his regalia to be his friends. Perhaps even clinging to them a little too much to be healthy, since they would probably all go back home after the tournament, but he was protective of his friends. He'd actually been finding that out more and more lately.

Of course the patting on Achlys' shoulder kicked up a little dust and Alexis' glower was broken by a sneezing fit. And then he struggled to hid his annoyance as he realized the whole thing was kind of embarrassing. Achlys looked a little bit like she wanted to just shrink away and hide as she whispered a quiet little "sorry." Alexis put his arm around her rather than say anything in response to her apology

Alexis felt so embarrassed at having made his opponents lean away from the table because he couldn't help but sneeze with all Achlys' dust in the air. Worse still, he truly felt bad for her and he knew the whole thing would make her feel terrible. Well... more terrible.

Once he had recovered he left his arm around Achlys for a few moments before leaning back in to grab his next piece of paper and slide one over to her as well. Spike was just slowly shaking his head in disapproval at the sudden outburst of sneezing.

Alexis groaned. "Sorry for assuming you're a dick," he reluctantly apologized to Evan. "You might still be one for all I know, but they made a really dumb move too. Shit, I don't know you but Straga isn't the kind of person you want to mess with like that from what i've seen." He'd only met him briefly but he was a pretty imposing dragon. Straga could destroy him if he wanted to.

As Alexis was working on folding his next crane, only halfway lopsided that time, he snorted. "Yes I saw the movie. The thing is you can't really switch back real well, can you? Or are you really following the movie and trying to get the two of them to get married or something?"

The last bit elicited a small laugh from Achlys as she was folding another crane. Far better and far faster than Alexis could.

"No, actually fighting with him would be stupid. When I first got here I would have done it but i'm trying to be smarter about that shit," Alexis admitted as he finished another crane and then tossed it in he very small but growing pile of mostly ill-shaped paper cranes. He was getting better with the cranes too but his improvement was painfully slow. At least the talking wasn't really keeping him from folding. Actually, it seemed to distract him from his frustration a bit.

"Good, because that would have been really weird," he replied to Cori. "That kind of stuff is dumb enough without other people trying to force people together."

Most of Alexis' problem with folding the cranes was that he wasn't being patient and careful or checking his own video as much as he probably should have. Achlys had been making decent headway on her own contribution to the pile but she stopped and sighed. "Alexis it's ok to take your time with these. You can't force them. You have to be careful and fold them like this- like he is," she soothed as she gestured towards how Evan was folding his.

Spike eyed how everyone was working but remained quiet. Opting to simply watch how Alexis handled the frustration.

Alexis groaned. "Well you're doing better than me and Achlys told me how to make one of these weird paper birds before we came here. Not something I do normally." But he did reluctantly take their advice and try to slow down and focus on getting the folds just right.

Which wasn't super easy to do when Evan commented about how Alexis probably wasn't competitive either. "No, i'm competitive," he snorted. "I'm just supposed to be getting better at things i'm less good at." Like patience. Well... at least he was trying? There was another reason too. Aside from the challenge being something more up Achlys' alley, Alexis had been gambling on the difficulty for him being enough to maybe sort of halfway impress Spike. Actually impressing him was impossible as far as he knew.

He glanced at the fairly small pile he and Achlys had made so far though. No way was he going to survive making 100 of those damn things. Alexis took a deep breath and then nodded. "Yeah... 50 sounds better than 100 to me." As he worked on the cranes more Achlys leaned over on him a little as she folded her own cranes.