[Mana Khemia] The Civility of Envy

[aphelion_orion]

Drabblet to stretch my fingers.

Title: The Civility of Envy
Fandom: Mana Khemia
Characters: Roxis, Vein
Rating: G
Contains: Use of the original Japanese names abounds. I like them better.

Comments

[laryna6]

Stopping there is evil, but then I've done quite a few oneshots for this fandom with the same degree of evil. Some part deliberatly, as part of the Evil Plot To Get People To Write Me More Mana Khemia Fic.

Remarking on the little ending note first, since I read it most recently, yes, he is, although they exaggerate it in the sequel. Actually, I really liked how he's certain they'll be great and is kind of pairing up the two of them, since he's the one who was at school with Theofratus(/Theophrastus)-and-Isolde. It makes it feel like he's influenced by memories of those two and being completely overshadowed by them, the two geniuses working together, and it also relates the two pairs to each other. Not that Roxis would be happy about being the Isolde in the relationship, although they do have a lot in common. Superiority and dislike of Vayne, to name two. I can see Theofratus as the kind of annoying know-it-all that Zeppel's treating Roxis like he is here, and I'd bet Isolde read ahead. It feels like him projecting his own experiences of the previous generation onto them.

Now I'm thinking of writing fic where Isolde & Theo started out as rivals, or at least Isolde considered them such. The two rising stars of alchemy, her experiment-based (predictology, knowing what will happen based on information used to make predictions) & his intuition/genius... Like I tend to think Vayne had some instinct for it, being a mana. Something would have to explain how he picked it up so well despite being raised in the woods by a cat.

Your Vayne is adorable. 'Please don't chase me out of town with pitchforks.' As is Roxis interpreting his honesty as deception, because in normal life it would be. He can't mentally compensate yet for the complete lack of normal social skills caused by being raised by a cat, if he even knows yet, and I doubt your Roxis cares to know. You have to care about someone at least enough to take a good look at them in order to understand them, and he doesn't want anything to do with Vayne, so of course he doesn't know how he works. It's all very real, all the details of people's reactions to this.

I also loved the background you gave his family, all the little things and feet of clay. Watching the scene where Roxis talked about his father gambling, I at least got the impression that Roxis was fairly proud of it, or at least not ashamed (well, of the fact it wasn't alchemy, but not of the gambling), and had picked it up himself. Not alchemy, but I definitely got the feeling that his father was more of a ~card shark that won money (with skill, not cheating) than a gambling addict/victim that lost money. Roxis seems to be a person who admires ruthless skill.

And the thing about portmanteaus made me grin. As would Zeppel's reaction to being told he's acting like a Shipper On Deck XD

[aphelion_orion]

Aw, thanks. I'm glad you liked it.