Through all the languished proceedings of strangers pretending they liked each other; various clashing personalities and worldviews colliding around the room; stilted conversations beating him into cauliflour brain, let alone ears; inter-personal dynamics as friction-free as coarse-grade sandpaper dragged over a poorly-fixed pothole; saccharine and skin-deep sweetness shared by freaks and rejects. Vincent watched Cece with amusement - he'd seen her social media presence, it was hard not to with how aggressively present it was within the team - and wondered what she was like beneath instagram. He wondered if there was anything beneath instagram at all.

But he was getting sidetracked with quiet, self-satisfying belittling. At least instagram was a purpose. In truth, throughout all the goings-on, the practiced disinterested glaze in Vincent's eyes belied the true attention he was paying to Eilidh, who found herself assaulted on all sides, the inane chatter seemingly inescapable. There was a quality to the blind girl that stirred a long-suppressed protective streak in Vincent, something innately soft and comforting. The cynic in him wondered how much of that was the girl herself playing mind tricks. The rest of him wondered to what degree he was able to manufacture reasonsfor burning bridges. Eilidh fundamentally wasn't - [i]couldn't be[/i] - fooled by his rehearsed aloofness. There was something equal part frightening and freeing in that.

Vincent's posturing self-diagnosis and armchair psychology was interrupted by Julian's goading about some new experiment, which was quietly absorbed and packed away and stored to be used as fuel for retaliation later. The ginger fuck's smug superiority complex never failed to light a fire under Vincent's ass. It was good to have a reliable source of motivation for pissing the self-important jerk off. Julian needed it, was Vincent's honest take; a mind and ego like his, without people to bring him back in line, was how mega-assholes like Julian's progenitor came to be.

But Julian and Vincent's back-and-forth was merely back-and-forth, and they both enjoyed it in a certain light; it was Hana's quiet jeering at Eilidh that really got Vincent's goat, and he slowly winched himself up off the floor to do something about it. What, he wasn't sure - Hana would probably put him through a wall far quicker than he could adjust his destination to a comfy mattress - but he was standing now and had begun walking and adjusted his direction and well, in for a penny. Make it count, smartass, because you won't be able to say much else a couple minutes from now.

Thank Christ then that the entire volatile tableau was disrupted by Booster's flying toaster, and Julian quickly changed into his big-boy pants and started alternatingly stroking his ego barking orders and stroking himself while getting all involved in tech and circuitry from the far-off future of two thousand-and-whatever. Vincent swiveled on the balls of his feet locked eyes with Julian, who he could see visibly sigh at what both boys knew was inevitable. Vincent stepped forward, one moment in the kitchen on the far side of the counter, the next his foot falling mere inches from Julian's toes.

[color=9370DB]"Six [i]at least[/i], who beat Booster's D-list ass into next week's F-tier? Co-ordinated? Prepped for intervention from actual, capable, seasoned professional capes?"[/color]
Vincent suppressed a smirk as he saw a flash of pique across Julian's face, hidden from the team but not from Vincent; he clapped a hand to Julian's shoulder and let the kid make a show of pushing it off with no small amount of force.
[color=9370DB]"I say if you wanna organise ritual teen suicide there are easier ways to go about it, chuck."[/color] Vincent leaned in surreptitiously, hushing his next words but making sure his body language screamed that he was talking of Hayden: [sub][color=9370DB]"I mean christ, kid, some of us ain't even had the joys of [i]puberty[/i] yet."[/color][/sub]

Julian shoved Vincent back, and this time Vincent let the smirk blossom full force, which he was pleased to see caused a flaring of his would-be 'leader's' nostrils. He let the moment hang, wanting the next to be extra sweet for the subversion of expectations.

[color=9370DB]"I'm in. Either I get to say 'I told you so' after I've had to save you and the rest of the Chump Champs, or I get to make a clean getaway, or God's looking the other way and we pull it off and I can carve off a piece of glory."[/color] He patted Julian's quickly-reddening cheeks as he envisioned his room as clear as day, reaching through space to pull it towards him; as he took a step backwards, he said [color=9370DB]"Feels like a Win-Win-Win to me, Jules!"[/color], and then pulled his other foot through and let space unfold behind him, vanishing from the lounge entirely.