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Making alloys by bullying a collared weirdo on the astral plane. Sounded like Max's kind of class. Professor Artiae's mention of 'firmly independent' mages elicited a raised brow from Max, though he didn't comment. He certainly wasn't talking about Fido over there, so what, was he just calling Max uncooperative? As empowering as it was to hear he could make the room explode just by being difficult, it couldn't be [i]that[/i] hard. He hadn't made that stupid crystal explode in last semester's partner exercises, in any case. All the other guy had to do was let Max take the lead; he was probably used to that.

Labrador's monotone encouragement didn't exactly put Max in the mood to behave, though. Sure, this guy would rather be eating kibble out of his leech's hand than sit here; Max totally understood having better things to do, but he could at least keep quiet instead of being patronizing. That explained the comment, then; Artiae knew Max was disagreeable at best and fully expected him to perform the magical equivalent of French kissing with this jackass regardless. If the sparks [i]didn't[/i] fly, there was probably reason for concern.

Max checked his phone rather flagrantly one last time before he fully engaged with the lesson, unconcerned with looking rude. Salem didn't even play along with the joke. What, was Aaron on his pity list because he got sent back to the pound when his owner [i]allegedly[/i] died? Lilie, surprisingly, at least got him to exhale forcefully from his nose. Asston definitely had a leash somewhere; with self-respect that low, his vampire probably walked him to class and let him piss on street lamps. The brunet slipped his phone away shortly after, not looking to push the envelope [i]too[/i] far. 

The cube in question was already inhabited by a plentiful dose of Max's essence by the time he began, and the first part of the exercise was child's play. The mage extended a hand, bidding the metal to hover above the table. Pure metal, uniform crystallization, near-limitless possiblities for a clean faultline to form. He suspected that wouldn't be the case in a moment, but that just meant he needed to do another hasty internet search on metallic structure when he got back to the dorm later. His pointer finger flicked to draw a plus shape in the air as indentations etched themselves into the cube in parallel, and after a few moments of seemingly nothing happening, the cube segmented into four equally-sized prisms in a loose orbit about each other.

[color=8585ad]"Whenever you're ready, I'll hold them in place,"[/color] The mage muttered before anyone gave him shit about the pieces moving too much. Spontaneity was far easier when his magic already had a flow to it, in his opinion. Inert metal needed to build up momentum, but objects that were already charged were easily and effectively manipulated. Granted, the whole point of the exercise was to [i]stop[/i] movement, but he knew what he was doing, damn it!

The fingers of Max's other hand flexed at his side to drill the motion into muscle memory. While the professor could probably catch shrapnel in his sleep at this point, the boy didn't see any reason he shouldn't be prepared to at least deflect anything flying at him regardless. Ashton could fend for himself; it'd probably be a mercy for him to get brained with a metal rod.

[hr][@Achronum]