School was… interesting. Apparently there was a big party announced after a young master of a family gained a large amount of wine. Unfortunately this party was announced to be at the same time as another party. And lastly, nobody could afford to miss either party if they wished to play politics, at least at a certain level anyway.

The reason for the two being unmissable were completely different too. The first party, was an invitation from the aggressive faction of nobles/royals. The were young and up and coming, anybody who was anybody, who was anybody with potential, who was really anybody with an ounce of ambition, was going to go. No, they had to go.

The second party, as stated before, was from a young master, a slovenly prodigal… prodigy and genius of the ‘neutral’ faction. Yes, that neutral faction, the neutral faction that was anything but neutral and controlled the kingdom’s and especially Aene’s financial industry with a death grip. It is rumored that they were a plant to control the kingdom’s markets from the merchant’s guild. They didn’t become kings, the financed and owned them. If you wanted to become anybody, period, you had to have their financial support. You also couldn’t become entangled with neutral politics, since they did not become kings.

Quite literally neither party was something to afford to miss. The neutral faction’s party was arguable more important, but the young politician’s party was a carrier ruiner to miss. So now all the little nobles, the little nobles mind you, the little unimportant ones that could crush Micky and his family because they accidently dropped some pocket change on them… Were all in a tizzy about which party to go too and how to attend them both, as attendance was mandatory.

Ironically, even though she was pissed, the young politician’s party planner actually wanted to attend the other one herself. She had something of a crush on the young master and missing his party… it was crushing her. But she was riding the tiger now, and maybe she could somehow sneak in if she moved some things and… … … yeah, she was so totally going to crash his party. Interestingly this would ruin so many of these young aspiring noble’s plans in its own way…

Most of this was lost on Micky. Though he had an inkling. Rather he was sweating dubious but not physically. What where the chances that it was some other noble that purchased his wine? What were the chances this wasn’t a part of John’s scheme?... yup this was probably, sorta, maybe, not(?) it…

So Micky was understandably disturbed. Maymay, the social butterfly spirit she is, was understandably talking to everybody. Obviously that included the elfin commoners that she had kissed up to so hard. She got the deets on everything and she was loving it, because she knew she was a part of this scheme… even if she didn’t know what it was or how it was going to play out, she was a part of a social scheme! SQUEEEEEEEEEE! *Cough* apologies you didn’t need to hear the internal monologue of a teen girl. Nobody needs to hear the internal monologue of a teen girl, not even a teen girl. For those teen girls out there… may the gods of your choice bless you…

Prin was ambivalent about the whole thing. She acted like she didn’t care. It was her advice to Micky. Her advice after wall slamming him, in a back alley, why are there so many back alleys in this school?, and giving him ‘advice’ to always act nonchalant even after you're caught in the act! She gave him this ‘advice’ after he started to especially freak out! about an especially interesting rumor about how the young master acquired his wine.

One of them was of course, his private brigands had stolen it for him. It was well known that the neutrals ‘did not have a standing military’, instead they had standing bandits to protect their assets… and their interests… Another was that it was a scheme from another noble, hu, who’d of thought?, since the young master is well known ‘not to scheme’ at least politically. In fact, he was quoted as saying that ‘politics is a losing business about bleeding money from each other, I’m only into winning business!’

Aside from that his ‘Intro to divinations!’ class was interesting. He figured as a pink mage he could, possibly, roll himself into divinations. Even if he were terrible at it, a seer of any kind and certified were valuable assets that every noble would snatch up. The king even had a standing order and paygrade that made the bottom value for seers and was most definitely willing to ‘bounty hunt’ the more powerful ones. He didn’t get it, but he was going to stare into this crystal ball until he went blind dang it!

Things at home were also getting… interesting. Even Jezebel was getting worried over Abigale who kept running off. She seemed mostly fine and was smart enough. He figured that she had acquired some gang of kids and was running around raising hell or something. He wondered if there was an old man to bother in order to get candy in this section… Memories… The fact that it was hard candy the old man pegged the kids with didn’t matter one bit!

Micky went back to making potions tinctures and other cures… the fact that some of them were considered poisons in the right way, or combined together properly didn’t bother him one bit! The fact that the ones that combined into poisons were the most common sellers and that random but regular people would buy them, but only certain ones, and never the total grocery list needed to combine them into poisons… didn’t bother him one bit! The fact that he heard that such poisons were becoming the number one poison in the sector, didn’t bother him one bit! The fact that he was mostly making antidotes for these specific poisons that he forced his family to carry around at all times, didn’t bother him one bit!...

Aside from that, he was actually getting interested in being a land owner. It was kind of fun to fix things with his own hands… so long as it wasn’t his parents asking, or bugging him about ‘how to fix it right’... He was all good. Granted, he didn’t always fix it right… and it was usually what his parents told him weren’t right that needed fixing… … … but everything else was great!

Micky was losing track of ‘the plan’ though. Whatever that was he didn’t know. He just knew that even though he was learning and growing and all that junk, he was stagnating. He personally wasn’t growing. He needed to do something more about that, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t even have a plan yet. He should probably do something about that.

Pagebreak

John was ecstatic. His plan was coming together just like he wanted. He was also laughing, laughing at his attacker because in spite of seeing everything, there was nothing, nothing! he could do about it. And the amature was just too amature. John had taken many a beating, whether from his loving father in the name of training, or from vicious practiced ‘nobles’. And yes, the art of beating someone up was an artform to the nobility.

John was back in school the day after his beating. He was even able to stay in school the entire time and recover, mostly, overnight. Now normally this would be because of practiced precision. Noble scions knew just where and when and how to strike to cause the most pain and be untraceable. Their targets would stay in bed for as long as they deemed necessary. It was clear that his attacker this time was out of practice. So out of practice it was obvious they had never done it before.

So John laughed, a maniacal crazed laugh, he thought it was cute in its own way. So so cute, so cute he wanted to return the beating ten fold, and could barely focus on his task. That task was making sure some information and a vaguely worded message traveled on a specific route. The message wasn’t addressed to its recipient, in fact, it was specifically dangerous… to the writer… that it be received by them. Neither were actually John’s to give, or to make sure they took that route. He made sure that’s what happened anyway. It was all just so convenient that it took that particular route, through those particular people… John laughed, it was all just so beautiful!