Solomon Moon had a name that would yield several pages of results if someone had the mind to put it to a CCTS search engine. If not for the numerous military campaigns in which he had participated close to, or at the head of his family's forces, then certainly for the lineage attached to his family itself. The name "Moon" conjured up many different ideas when spoken by the common population.

Be it that they were known for being mercenaries, or for being one of the few noble houses to predate the fall of civilization at the dawn of the dark age, what mattered was that they were known. In every city there lived at least one man, woman, or child, who knew the name for one reason or another. Perhaps they were related to one who served in the expansive Moon forces, or perhaps they knew people who had lived in areas through which said forces had campaigned, and in especially unfortunate examples, they knew someone who had faced that force in opposition. In this last example, the knowing of the individual would ultimately remain forever in the final and past tense, as facing the forces of Moon, due to their numbers, their access to high tech and military equipment, an apparent lack of scruples, and the ruthlessness of their de facto leader, often meant a grim fate.

Simply put, Sol had a reputation and it was for this reason that the idea of anybody being curious enough about him, to stalk him through the academy, rather than simply feed his name to a computer and devour the resultant long pages of reports and news stories that documented his life, was something that would never have occurred to him. As far as he knew, this was just another average and uneventful day upon the isle, and he was en-route to one of the few hobbies he had any time for.

He strode through the halls of the school, adorned head to foot in an outfit that might have been worth the month's wages of a well to do tradesman. A sleek navy blue coat with long sleeves and swallow tails was slung snugly across his broad shoulders. Beneath the coat he wore a simple, but expensive looking, white shirt of some fine satiny material that was light enough to be flattened against his chest by the pace of his advance. Upon his legs was a pair of navy blue slacks that were tucked into a pair of polished silver greaves that bore the engraved likeness of the night's silver mistress itself, the moon of Remnant. His feet rang across the floor, as the steel capped jack boots and the alloy shanks of their soles clapped upon the marble with each flowing stride.

His walk was part march, and part glide, as if he had within him both the qualities of a solider and that of a loping predator in equal measure. As he reached a door that exited into a small ancillary courtyard, he paused and placed both hands, each clad in a glove of fine black leather, on the mid brace of the gate and pushed it open slowly. Going from the confines of the building into the open expanse of an outdoor area would not have been much reason for hesitation in most, but to Sol, it was an act that he'd come to associate with danger and peril, and it seemed almost apparent with how he gingerly stepped into the open, before adopting his marching gait once more.

A few more minutes of traversing a lush courtyard that overflowed with the greens of grass, ferns and creepers, alongside the rainbow hues of flowers in several shapes and sizes, all of which Sol only considered as potential places for staging an ambush, was all it took for his destination to become clear. The building that the young man approached lacked some of the splendor of the academy hall he'd momentarily departed, and had a much more utilitarian aspect, and to Sol, a much more pleasing aesthetic as well. He appreciated function much more than form, though he understood that a pleasant facade could be a function in and of itself, and this building served a vital function indeed. This new building was more blocky and simple in it's design, featuring shuttered windows and a blank, though still pleasant, brick and mortar face, with a large sliding door of corrugated steel at either end.

Sol approached a man gate that was set into the large hangar door and rapped loudly with his left hand. The door opened and Sol favored whoever stood on the other side with a salute before slipping in.

" 's a nice day out Master Moon." Corporal Kelly said with his obvious Pinnacle accents, as he returned to his seat near the door, "Sure you don't want to spend some time in the sun with the other students, rather than cooped up in this box with me?"

"The other students annoy me." Sol's voice, a bass-line growl that suggested the distant grinding of tectonic plates, or the rustling moan of a forest fire, replied crisply to Kelly, "I don't think most of them have even been properly blooded. They are being trained to kill, and they strut around with smiles on their faces. It seems indecent. Where is she?"

"That's what young people are supposed to act like M'lord. You should give it a try some time. Maybe try to talk to one of the girls, one whose heart isn't a collection of pistons." Kelly replied, not unkindly or impatiently, as he was well acquainted with Sol's melancholy temperament and did not begrudge the young man for it so long as his acrimony was directed elsewhere, "Old Glory is in the back, next to the VTOL, under that tarp. Just like you left her."

"I'll work on her outside, will that make you happy Corporal?" Sol replied, his weary features seeming very old in the way they did when he heard good advice he knew he couldn't make himself follow.

"Happier at least." Kelly answered with a grin.

---

The back hangar door that lead into the mechanical shop whined in protest as it was forced to open, Sol shoving the several inch thick, dozen foot tall, steel barrier with his shoulder as he lead a mostly whole motorcycle along. He showed no more effort at heaving aside the massive hangar door than most men might had shown while leaning into a stiff wind. He left the incomplete vehicle propped up in an open patch of gravel, the unpainted grey of it's body glinting in the mid morning light, and returned to the shop. When next he stepped into the light he was carrying a tool box in his left hand, and from his right dangled a significant portion of the bike's transmission system, which had to weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty pounds. He did not seem to notice the burden, aside from how it hampered his ability to take the long flowing strides that were his typical march.

Sol set the long section of cylindrical steel down on the gravel as he cracked open the tool case and laid it nearby. His dark hair hung down across the right side of his face, and his golden eye seemed to sparkle with an unidentifiable emotion as he beheld the incomplete work of mechanical complexity. There was quivering of the corner of his mouth, and he rubbed at it with a gloved left hand until it ceased, before rolling his shoulders out of his waist coat, and folding the garment neatly upon the bike's un-upholstered seat. The long sleeves of his shirt bulged with thick cords of muscle, and he rolled up the left sleeve to his elbow as he crouched down to being digging about in the bike's guts.

Lily was not the only one absorbed in her work. Solomon had yanked some sort of cluster of hoses and electrical wires out of the guts of the machine he was working on, and was in the process of sorting through them, searching intently for a specific article in the rats nest of connections. Unlike his anonymous voyeur, Sol was not in anything resembling a hurry as he did this. In fact, he seemed to be making every effort to be in as little of a hurry as possible as he, using the forefinger and thumb of his gloved right hand, carefully plucked one end from the bundle gripped in the ball of his left fist, favored it with a close examination of his shining golden eye, and then moved on to the next. There was such a deliberateness to each movement, that he seemed to forget that anything existed but his hands and the bike he was working on, and this was by design.

Though he would never have admitted it, not even to the emotional counselors that had treated him a few years ago, and continued to assess him every few weeks, Sol detested the academy. More specifically he hated the campus with its broad and exposed courtyards and blind bottlenecks, as he hated the other students with their naive grins and insincere expressions of severity, and most of all he hated the feeling of constantly being surrounded with strangers, many of which were armed. Every moment was an ordeal beneath a crushing weight of some impossible to identify but aggressively tangible sense of exposure and peril, an irrational dread of awaiting an omnipresent doom that may or may not ever occur. This constant anxiety made Sol moody, and when he was moody he became violent, because to his mind the best and most trustworthy means of taking control over a situation was to become the aggressor instead of the victim. Of course, he was only barely aware of this trend in his behavior, and rarely did he self reflect in any capacity that might recognize it, but he had established a routine to combat his anxieties. Though why his solutions worked, or how they made him feel better would remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.

His extent of understanding regarding his own unease on the campus was simply that he had within him a finite well of tolerance for the environment and the population thereof, and his self restraint directly corresponded to this imaginary font of tolerance. As his tolerance was eroded by the numerous every day anxieties, insults, offenses, stresses and discomforts of sharing such a crowded place with so many people, so too did his ability to control his temper dwindle along with it. At first this had served as a manner of solution to the problem. Several vicious beatings, fights, and spiteful crusades were still things of legend among some of the junior years, despite most having occurred during Sol's first year at the school, and this reputation meant that he was given a wide berth. Everybody who was likely to cross paths with the young man, as he only attended a few very specific classes, and only used certain areas and paths of the building, was either well educated in the volatility of Sol's temper or were typically forewarned by their peers. In a few cases, some were elucidated the hard way. Over time however, this aversion of his peers had only worsened Solomon's temperament, and had further fostered a sense of isolation that in and of itself was just as depleting of his stores of patience, and as the years wore on, even more so.

One might have thought Sol did not see the looks of fear or concern that other students wore when they passed him in the hall, or how some would suddenly realize an urgent reason to turn on their heels and walk in the opposite direction when they spotted him rounding a corner towards them. To his credit, he tried to ignore it, but when four of five people passing oneself in the halls responded in varying ways towards the same identical bugbear, it was impossible to miss, even for a man with only one eye. Even lashing out did not relieve it, in fact, losing his temper did not magically restore his nerves and refill his well of endurance, as well as just being a shameful way to behave in general.

It was something Sol had been forced to live with, because one could no more mend the psychological scars that had long since shaped his behavior, any more than one could take back the impact of a hammer blow.

One of the ways Sol handled his stress was by working with his hands, ideally in a place where he could expect to be left alone, and have line of sight on all the area's entrances and exits. However, even this solution was imperfect, being that for those that knew the source of his traumas, they might accurately surmise that Sol couldn't accomplish much with his hands except through a great deal of care and effort. Not to mention that his mind was a toxic place, and being alone and undisturbed for long periods allowed whatever stresses were troubling him to fester like open wounds in his brain, or swell like intellectual cysts that would eventually burst and spill poison into his synapses.

That being said, the expression that he wore as he fished around the insides of a derelict motorcycle, searching for a connection that might not even exist, was likely the closest thing that his stoney visage ever came to being peaceful. At least it seemed as peaceful as a grey cloud that may or may not turn into a thunderstorm. There was a warmth in his golden eye, that made it twinkle wetly like dew in a bar of unexpected morning sunlight, and that same remarkable but obscure suggestion of a peculiar sentiment.

Sol had showed an aptitude early in his life for machines. Electronics remained a mystery to him, but if it had moving parts and fit together with purpose, he could typically puzzle out the function. In fact, it caused him genuine satisfaction to do so. Though not an inquisitive individual as a rule, this served as an exception to prove the rule of his usually lacking curiosity. As an aside, Sol's father, Terrel-Daton Moon, had been a busy man too, and had little time for distractions, but restoring old vehicles was one such hobby. The pair, father and son, had bonded over the experience of resurrecting pre-fall wrecks with post-resurgence tech. Perhaps this had something to do with it, and anyone who gave it the two seconds honest consideration that Sol had never afforded the question it would be obvious that this was precisely the reason that Sol enjoyed working on old machines.

The big man, with sweat beading on his noble brow as sunlight glinted off the frame of the bike and tanned his planar face, was just beginning to relax. Like a monk sitting cross-legged beneath a peach tree, he was reaching out to caress the peace of nirvana, and as he worked he could feel the knots that the day had already managed to tie his nerves into slowly begin to loosen and tease him with the prospect of unwinding. He was so close to a place of security and safety, away from thought, and away from worry, that he could practically smell it. And just as he felt the first of his burdens begin to relieve itself, the shrieking of something nearby slammed that opportunity shut like an axe sinking itself into a mighty tree and sending chocks of pain and surprise vibrating up through it's trunk.

Sol was on his feet on the instant. He was a towering and imposing figure, even though he didn't really stand much taller than an average man, as the way he assumed a broad stance of power and challenge as he turned to confront the source of the commotion had less in common with a object of flesh and bone, and more with a blockade of concrete and steel. He had grabbed the first thing that was at hand that could serve as a potential improvised means of self-defense, which turned out to be a two foot long section of unfastened bike frame that jutted menacingly from his right fist. The metal tube, hollow and about as thick around as a broomstick was gripped so hard in his gloved hand that it would permanently bare the shapes of where his fingers had stamped an imprint of themselves a quarter inch into the steel. His eye had lost that suggestion of serenity that it had nearly possessed for a moment there, and was wide and wild like that of a startled or rabid beast. His lips were drawn back in a silent snarl that seemed slightly too broad for his face, populated by teeth that weren't any sharper than usual, but displayed in such a way could only be described as fangs. This expression of threat and shocked aggression did not depart when he finally discovered the source of his surprise.

In fact, discovering that the source of the shriek, which he'd taken for someone being assaulted, or perhaps charging at him, was just some careless girl and a jumbled stack of parchments, actually made him furious. This was in no small part because it also made him feel foolish and made the very real fighting instinct of imminent danger that had dumped a cocktail of adrenaline into his veins and left his heart hammering like and earthquake in his chest seem trivial. The fact that he'd killed people while feeling the way he did at that moment was a distantly understood association as well, and it would be a lie to say that the cruel animal part of him was not considering indulgence at that exact instant.

She spoke to him, but his mind was too tightly wound around itself and a concoction of stress hormones to recognize what exactly was said, and anything less general than the vague intent was lost upon him.

He was breathing heavily, and ejected a dense cloud of steam from his nostrils as he broke his wild gaze from hers for only as long as it took to glance at the page rustling against his boot. The display might have been described as cartoonish, but no cartoon could ever have managed to be a genuinely menacing as the combination of Sol's posture, his primal leer, breath misting the air on a warm day, and the two foot stock of steel that was grasped so tightly in leather clad fingers that it was beginning to groan in protest. One might have thought that he was locked in a staring contest with a rattlesnake, and somehow his gaze was the more venomous of the two.

Without letting his scalding gaze wander from Lily's nervous greys, he fell slowly into a crouch. It was not clear at first whether he meant to adopt a low stance in anticipation of pouncing like a cat upon an especially brave and noisy mouse, but it certainly seemed likely. With a motion that was as quick as a snake strike, he snatched the offending parchment from where the wind had trapped it against his boot, and then like a bear rising onto it's haunches, he rose back to his full height. Each movement was performed smoothly and painfully slowly, Lily held firmly in his line of sight for the duration. During this time he made an effort to control his breathing, and by extension the runaway galloping of his heart, and by the time he stood once more at his full height, the combination had burned through the majority of endorphins and adrenaline that was clouding his mind, and he could think once more with something more close to clarity than a moment earlier.

He snapped his wrist like a whip, causing the page in his bare fingers to emitted an audible and startled crack in surprise. Then, creasing the paper slightly to force it to maintain it's shape, he raised it to eye level between himself and his unexpected visitor. His acidic gaze shifted quickly between the page and the girl, and after a moment he seemed to relax, but only the kind of relaxing that an idling tank might be capable of. He still seemed to be cocked like a flintlock and no further than a sudden or foolish movement from exploding with a deafening report. However, the way the bar in his hand fell to point at the ground instead of Lily, and the way he seemed to decide that he could trust her with indirect observation as he studied the sheet of paper was at least a little reasurring.

He understood that he was looking at a blueprint, though it seemed drawn by a person only recently introduced to the idea of such a thing. After a few moments, and a few more stern glares at Lily, he understood as well that is was a blueprint for some sort of dust infused cloak and cowl, though the functions of which he could not determine without referencing the numerous notes scrawled around the borders.

His mind seemed to be working along like a machine of war slogging across a battlefield, though little of his outward appearance actually changed, and he directed his attention away from the blueprint to give the girl herself a more detailed inspection than he might have done when he thought she might prove to be a threat.

His inspection started with her eyes, as was typical for Sol, for he was envious of the eyes of others, despite the brilliant hue of his own. The reason for this remained behind a shock of dark brown, nearly black, hair that hung down in front of his face, the leather of the straps and patch beneath deliberately sharing an identical hue in order to hide in the dense locks. The dusty grey of her gaze seemed as if it should belong to someone older, and it stood out against the deep raven black of her hair, which fell to her waist in a pair of tails that made Sol think of the folded wings of a crow. Next he noticed her feline ears, black triangles of soft skin and satin fur that sprouted from her crown and gave her an incredibly easy to identify profile. Sol didn't like cats. He considered them barely tamed, selfish, petty, and fancying themselves to be much more clever than they actually were. As a rule he disliked most faunus for the same reasons. The sweeping scan of his golden eye was obvious as it slithered down her body like a greasy yellow eel of thinly veiled irritation. He took in her figure without any remark or influence of his demeanor, though he would have called her "cute" standing at five and a half foot or so tall, with a more generous bust than one might expect of such a lithe figure, but only if he were prone to such sentiments at that exact moment. Under different circumstances it was the kind of figure he would have gone for, but as it was, any attraction he felt towards it was retroactively undone by his agitation, and post-actively by the state of her clothing. Though not filthy, the tattered state of her knee length black dress certainly looked like the kind of thing that an unwashed street urchin would wear, and it caused Sol's already low opinion of the girl to plummet right through Remnant's mantle and into kilometer deep bedrock beneath. The lack of any footwear of any description only completed the look.

Were it not for the sheaf of papers, and a book clutched in hands that were both scarred upon the knuckles and backs, as if she ate by digging up roots in addition to everything else, Sol would have claimed to have no lien to spare the beggar and directed her that Vytal was private property. As it stood, she seemed to be a student, though one of an incredibly poor breed and caste, and Sol wondered what could possibly justify the presence of such a wretch at this noble academy.

He glanced to the blueprint, still held aloft in a manner that he only just realized was threatening. Truth be told, he was in exactly the kind of mood to crumple the page up and throw it at the girl's filthy feet, but what stopped him was a memory. He did not remember Lily specifically, he'd never seen her before in his life, and could claim so with absolute certainty, having just inspected her as closely as he could without forcing her to open her mouth and say "ahh". What he remembered was countless sooty faces of destitute refugees as they fled a combat zone as he lead his forces in. In some cases he was welcomed, and in others he had been scorned. In some especially painful examples, the rebels had been using civilian homes and structures as bunkers and barracks, and once the smoke and screams had cleared it was impossible to tell who had been insurgent and who innocent.

The memory made Sol's face turn white, the color of his tanned cheeks seeming to flee from that horrible image of mangled and half burned bodies beneath sundered fortifications and rubble. He blinked, once, and then again, trying to clear away the image as if it were blood that had splashed in his eye. The stock of frame, bearing five prints of Sol's grip, clattered against the earth as his fingers snapped open. He swallowed, and realized his mouth was dry, as the entire world seemed to crystallize into reality around him. Lily's words, spoken almost a minute in the past suddenly made sense to him, as if that traumatic memory had shattered a spell of madness that surprise had cast upon him.

He seemed a different person, both outwardly and inwardly as he marched towards the girl and presented the lost page to her at arm's length with a smooth motion, that exposed the thickly scarred back of his own hand.

The moment when their hands were connected by a rumpled page of a notebook seemed to have a great and unspoken significance, one that Sol remained blithely ignorant to. He was too fixated in the obvious gulf between their stations to note anything as academic as the fact that they both had scars on their hands. Truth be told, Sol had scars everywhere, to the degree that he no longer even considered them a remarkable characteristic individually. If anything, the only thoughts he had for the duration of the exchange of the page from himself to Lily was repeatedly and silently wishing that it would make the girl leave him alone.

He did not want company. Why else would he have made the trek out to the most secluded auto-lab? Even less did he want the company of some barefoot stray in rags. He was actually angry at Kelly for convincing him to do the work outside. If he'd just stayed inside where he could keep an eye(singular), on all the entrances, and trust his men to refuse all visitors, then none of this would be happening. Thoughts along this line concluded abruptly the moment Sol saw the girl prop up the wings of her tattered skirt, and drop a curtsy of all things.

It was a bit too shallow to properly honor the height of his station, and it seemed to be little practiced, but the very fact that Lily even knew what a curtsy was had a most profound effect. Said effect was that Sol went from glaring at the cat eared girl, to favoring her with expression that would have accurately conveyed his surprise at seeing one of those screaming goats yelling poetry... While bungee-corded to the underside of a bus. Of course, Sol was a private creature, and this meant his expressions as well. The reaction to yodelling caprinae prose in an extremely improbable location would have left most men with mouth agape and eyes drawn to the widest extreme. To Sol, this same expression was achieved by inclining his head slightly towards the left, and a slight knitting of his brow.

The surprise he experienced at this unexpected display of etiquette was such that he even forgot to tell the girl to "get lost" as had been planning to, and she managed to utter an entire mouthful of questions in a sweet and quiet voice that suited her diminutive stature before Sol managed to arrange his thoughts to martial a suitable riposte.

"It's called a motorcycle." He explained, to much chagrin at his treacherous lips giving a lecture when they should have been lashing this wastrel's adorable ears, "Found it in a sealed bunker on recon in Pinnacle."

His voice was not altogether a pleasant thing, and even Sol felt that the roughness of his words were too harsh to properly address someone politely. It was fine to talk to soldiers and hunters when your voice sounded like an engine that ran on sandpaper. Like every other aspect of the man, his voice had been trained as a weapon, because a good terrifying yell could do as much to shake a foe as a solid blow to the midsection. Unfortunately, using such a voice to address something as small and fragile as the faunus girl seemed like trying to butter toast with a broadsword. He tried to control that aspect, and make it a little less harsh for the ears, but the effort only made him sound more husky, as if his diet was primarily cigarettes and broken glass when next he spoke.

"Insulation has rotted off the wires... It keeps shorting out. Need to replace them..."

His frustration had not abated, but even Sol realized by this point that he had witlessly blundered into a situation where disengagement would be impossible without significant losses. He was many things, arrogant, brash, self-involved, single-minded, power-hungry, to name only a few of an admittedly vast list, but rarely was he intentionally rude or vindictive without just cause. As much as he hated it, and he hated it well because Sol was quite gifted at hating things, Lily had done nothing to earn the kind of reaction that would justify Sol doing something that would make her tuck tail and run like a startled kitten. He really wished that would change, because he simply was not in the mood to entertain the curiosity of some grey-eyed vagabond.

This all put him in the type of position that usually made him respond violently, namely an awkward situation. He could not turn his back on her, for numerous reasons, and that made returning to his work impossible for the moment. He would not be able to concentrate with Lily there watching him anyway, because he was already frustrated, and his patience burned away by his temper. He could not, that is would not, leave himself, not because that would be rude, but because he was nobly born, and this was his space, and if anyone should be forced to leave it would be the bloody faunus.

"Why are you bothering me? Have you got nothing better to do?" He asked, and strangely this was nor said in an unkind or purposefully rude manner, though given his smokey voice that growled like an over stoked furnace, it still had the effect of being most unwelcoming.

Sol listened to Lily talk with more patience than he honestly would have claimed to possess at that exact juncture. Sure, there was a little voice in his head that encouraged him to grab the girl by the throat and see how many twists it would take to unscrew her skull, but it was a quiet voice and more or less said something similar no matter who was talking to him. So Sol ignored it for now.

He regretted that Lily took the opportunity to divulge her activities in great detail, though perhaps not complete in that respect and wisely so. If he had thought that what he had asked her would be in any way interpreted as an invitation for the cat to give him her life's story, he would have chosen his words more carefully.

As she spoke, his face slowly grew harder, transforming from the aspect of chiselled granite to that of hammered steel. If she talked for much longer Sol had no doubt that he would lose his temper. Of course one might not have known it by looking at him, because the general scowl, the haunted cast of his golden eye, and the stiff line of his strong jaw were as typical of his nature as the red tubing of a stick of dynamite, each with a similar capacity for explosive detonations when mishandled.

He did not have the most inviting face, and always put this down to missing one of his eyes amid suspicions that everyone knew in spite of his best efforts to conceal the fact. People either ignored his disability, which made it seem trivial, or they patronized him with sympathy despite the fact that Sol managed just fine without it. He also assumed this was why people had difficulty making eye contact with him, as even now, the cat girl was shifting her feet and seemed to be looking only vaguely in his direction. Truth be told however, Sol was not an ugly young man, at least not on the outside. His features had both a strong nobility and lean athleticism in their suggestion, and his eye was a brilliant and sharp hue that was as golden as a freshly minted coin, and his body was a striking example of physique, if you were into bulging veins and muscle fiber like woven steel. He dressed well, was impeccably groomed, grew little facial hair (much to his private chagrin), and thus was always clean shaven even after long campaigns. His posture was stiff, but proud, and his gait was gracefully and powerful. The real reason people couldn't stand the sight of him actually had little to do with any details that might disfigure what was already present, as Sol falsely believed, and had more to do with how they were often presented. Even a solid gold vision of Michealangelo's "David" would have looked gruesome and insidious if softly lit with a sickly yellow light that cast hard shadows in all the wrong places, and as for Sol, his light was most dreary and his shadows very deep indeed. His imperfections stood out as if beneath a spotlight when he brooded like a thundercloud.

This is worth mentioning because this conversation with Lily was actually the longest of its kind that Sol could point to in recent memory, despite the fact that he had spoken exactly once, and Lily only twice. This was not to say that Sol never spoke to anyone. He frequently conversed with other people by virtue of his station and his employment, but there was a world of difference between talking to a client, or a man on the payroll, or a teacher, and chatting with a stranger. In those examples there was a clear point to it, there was an exchange of services, or a power dynamic that required propinquity and engagement that necessitated conversation.

Sol, as his name might imply, was a solitary person. Sol rarely spoke with the caste that he would consider "civilians", with exceptions to this being potential clients for his family's services, the service staff of establishments he patronized and by extension the instructors at the academy. People rarely approached him, or made any effort to strike up a conversation, for reasons that both should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention, and are far too numerous to list here. On the rare occasion when this trend failed to hold up, it often lasted until Sol spoke, in that menacing voice of his that so well represented the moniker his men afforded him, One-Eyed Dragon, at which point the other party would remember an urgent appointment elsewhere and labor to depart as politely and swiftly as all haste would allow. Sol did not usually resent this arrangement, or if he did, he certainly did not notice in any strong capacity.

That meant that now that Lily had made two clear efforts to acquire his permission to leave or remain, she had firmly placed herself in a category of Sol's experience that did not previously even exist. On one level Sol was annoyed by this, a fact that should shock "no" and "one" in that order, because even a blind idiot should have been able to tell that Sol did not want, nor benefit of, company. However on another level, the one eyed lord was touched, not in an sensitive sense, rather he was simply effected by this act of polite deference. As clumsy as it might have been, Lily had afforded him, in her own unique and very strange way, a kind of consideration that no one else ever had. To Sol it was an experience that was utterly, singularly, absolute in it's novelty. He was not even sure how he felt about it. He wasn't sure that it annoyed him either, though as a rule he was certain it should.

Sol was acutely aware that he needed something to do with his hands, because standing there, stock still as a very unpleasant statue, felt far too much like standing at attention for a superior, and he was not about to give that kind of honor to some shoe-less feral. Using a trickle of his aura to activate the slotted silver bracer that encircled his left wrist like a tiny bandolier, he ejected a stick of tobacco that likely cost as much as a decent bottle of beer, into his left palm and then put the filtered end to his thin and severe lips. Holding the stick between his teeth, he lit the opposite end by holding it up to the same bracer from which it had originated. He filled his lungs with the pungent smoke. Once he exhaled, he did so again, but this time held the smoke in his mouth and allowed it to drift up over his lips as he inhaled it through his nose. The act suited him, and provided his aspect a draconian persuasion.

Sol didn't really like smoking. It was a filthy habit he knew, and that made him feel guilty, absurdly enough considering the kinds of things that he felt no guilt for, and he'd been told that it had a poor affect on his temper. Of course Sol disagreed with this last part, if anything the nicotine helped him calm down, even if going long periods without would do the opposite. There was also the fact that the smell reminded him of his father, but Sol did not even suspect this possibility, as with most things involving his father, he avoided thinking about it when he could.

The cancer-stick soothed his demons enough for Sol to endure the rest of Lily's explanation, which was just coming to a close as he repeated the smoke trick that made him seem like a fuming lizard squatting over a horde of wealth. He considered her expression, his golden eye looking even more haunted and weary as if was obscured by wisps of acrid smoke that floated up from his nose and lips. If she had an expression, he could not read it. Whereas Lily's face was mostly blank of any clue of what she was thinking because what she was thinking was the same things coming out of her mouth, Sol's face on the other hand was deliberately as cold and impassive as a mask, though which the only clue of what was happening beneath was his eye. People who knew Sol, knew that he rarely emoted with anything but his eye, and with it he could convey as broad a range of emotions as most could with their entire faces. Most people thought that Sol was a cruel, sadistic, callous, and robotic thing, because most people could not meet his gaze.

Right now, Sol's eye seemed gentle with a bit of sharpness that was irritation, but mostly it looked tired with the kind of bone deep weariness known almost exclusively to soldiers who had spent so long in battle that for them the war would never end. It was with this eye that Sol appraised Lily again, as if he'd forgotten doing so a few moments earlier. He realized that paradoxically, he wanted to be left alone, but he did not want to send the girl away, perhaps because she did not seem to want to be alone.

He was silent, and somehow that silence managed to be just as harsh and oppressive as his voice. It stretched on an on, as Sol just puffed idly on his smoke, simply watching the girl with an unreadable expression that reflected the uncertainty within him quite fittingly. It was just as the silence reached a peak, a point when it seemed it must mean that the big man really did want the girl to just go away and was merely waiting for her to come to the conclusion as well that Sol finally spoke.

"Electroactive polymers..." He said, the syllables smiting the accumulated stillness like a hammer shattering frost, "Engineers in Legion use them to make things like artificial muscle and smart fabrics. You'd want something like that for your cloak... That sort of thing is really expensive you know?"

It was clear from his tone that he knew more than just enough for idle conversation, and the truth was that he was intimately familiar with the kind of technology he was speaking of. His counselors had advised him against taking an active role in the designs that he'd utilized myomer fibers for, and it had proven in it's own way to be a means of coping with the trauma that had required their employment in the first place.

He remembered her blank expression when he'd tried to explain his motorcycle to her, and Sol reasoned that if the idea of conductors was too much to handle for the cat eared girl, then the advanced sciences of Electroactive polymers would be way over her head. As luck would have it, he had a ready example, quite literally at hand, but he decided in favor of one that he felt would be a lot less uncomfortable to show to an utter stranger like Lily.

"I'm pretty sure I have some in the shop over there." He said, nodding towards the large building that had stored his bike.