Upon Vestia: Chapter Fifteen

James narrowed his eyes, realizing he'd just given Esk some great ammunition to annoy him with. Oh well, too late now. "Yes it's annoying! How could it not be annoying?"

Esk continued to smirk. "normal people don't tend to find the sound of a pencil on paper irritating." He reasoned and punctuated the point by drawing a single line down the paper. "you're just pissed off with everything else. My breathing will annoy you next, or blinking, or just existing. " He drew another line. "I'd suggest you go punch something but as you can't really get exhausted I don't think it'd work so well. "

James glared at Esk as Esk dragged the pencil down the paper. Normally the sound wouldn't bother him at all, but today it was enough to heat his processor up another few degrees. And Esk was right, he WAS annoying. That smirk. That smirk!
James stood up with an inarticulate sound of pure frustration, knocking his chair over with a clatter.

Esk looked rather pleased with himself, moving a little to avoid getting hit with the chair. "Try not to break things." He suggested flatly. "Or hey, go smash stuff, see if it makes you feel better." He added one last little line to his image of James' irate expression.

"I'LL DO WHATEVER I WANT, DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO," James raged at Esk. The sound of that pencil was driving him crazy. He headed for the door and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him as hard as he could.

Esk snorted, shaking his head. Well, at least he could still irritate people intentionally, he felt a bit better knowing he wasn't going all soft and damn sentimental.
He looked at the image he'd drawn of James ranting, smiled to himself and flipped to a new page. "Vestia, you might want to keep an eye on him, he looks about ready to punch a hole in your hull or something." Esk shrugged.

"I won't let him do anything too stupid," Vestia said cheerfully. She watched James storm down the hall going... who knew where honestly. "I had no idea he could yell so loudly," she said dryly.

"Yeah I think my ears are still ringing." Esk rubbed his ears.

"Mine would be too if they worked that way," Vestia joked. "But I gotta know, what did you draw?" She couldn't see from where her camera was, bah.

Esk snickered. "How do you know I wasn't just scribbling randomly?" He asked. She had, to be fair, probably been able to peer over his shoulder at other points in other rooms. He always forgot she was watching.

"You draw a lot. If you're just scribbling randomly all those times I've seen you drawing, that's a strange use of paper," Vestia said, laughing.

Esk smirked. "Maybe I hate trees." He told her. He shrugged. "It's something to do right? Kills time. Helps drown out annoying people"

"Makes sense, makes sense," Vestia said. "No wonder you've lasted here as long as you have."

Esk smirked and nodded. "gotta tune em out somehow, or you go nuts and shoot everyone for a bit of peace and quiet." He huffed and held up the image so Vestia could see, mostly because she hadn't nagged him about it. It was rough, he'd done it while James was ranting after all, but it really did capture the android's rage quite effectively and was definitely recognizable as James. "next time he pisses me off, i'll remember today." He snickered.

Vestia laughed at the accuracy of Esk's sketch. He really had gotten James' furious expression down on paper quite well. "You're going to draw things so he gets mad at the noise of the pencil? Sounds safe," she said. That android was strong.

"He's not gonna hurt me, even without his laws, he'd have to deal with his brother looking disapproving. Besides, if he really does goes rogue, i'll shoot him in the chest, see how well they shielded those databanks." Esk shrugged and set the sketchpad down. "He's just pissed off, everything's gonna set him off till he chills the fuck out and stops being a righteous idiot. " He put his feet up on the table and leaned back in his chair. "Dunno what androids do to relieve tension though, it's not like they can really go for a run or something and burn through it by exhausting themselves. Or get drunk.. or binge eat. Man, being an android sucks." He shook his head and yawned. "Maybe he can go sleep with the captain again." He snickered. Oh yeah, nobody kept their mouths shut on the Silver Devil, ever.

"Yeah, I have no idea what they're supposed to do to burn out their anger," Vestia agreed, ignoring the threat to shoot James. She really had no idea how serious these threats were, so she preferred to pretend she didn't hear them. "Hmm," she added, remembering what she'd overheard on game night a few weeks ago. Yeah, James and Acus was probably not going to happen again.

Esk shrugged. "As long as he doesn't hurt anyone else, it's his problem."

"He doesn't seem murderous, just noisy. We're probably fine," Vestia chuckled. "He's probably fine too."

She watched James, who had gone to one of the training rooms to punch punching bags. Not that it was going to help him much, but apparently he had decided it was a good use of his time.

Esk nodded. "he'll be fine." He sounded dismissive.

Vestia figured Esk was probably done talking to people now, he never seemed especially chatty, so she lapsed into silence.

Esk picked up his sketchbook and went back to doodling.
Nope, he wasn't very chatty at all.
Hopefully James wouldn't do anything too stupid that needed intervention.

James tried to leave Vestia and head into the city.

Vestia shut the airlock so he couldn't.

James raged.

He was fiiiiine.

Skye heard something and came out, looking at James curiously. "James, what's going on?"

James looked around at Skye, glaring a bit less furiously for a moment. She wasn't a jerk like Esk and Vestia, right? "She put me on house arrest!" He fumed. "She and Asher are conspiring against me!"