Room 301, Monday Afternoon

[seveninchmotto]

Isabelle was having trouble focusing.

She didn't even have anything in particular that needed her undivided attention, so it shouldn't have been a problem. But it was annoying. She didn't like moods like this. What was the point of not being able to get lost in doing anything? Ugh. And she'd already been down at the gym training, too. And both her closets were as organized as they were going to get. And she didn't feel like shopping.

So, this was how you ended up pacing around the room like a caged animal. It was not a good look on her.

Maybe she needed to go for a run or something.

[ooc: Open post, open door!]

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[not_every_mage]

Anders was annoyed. He'd figured out by now how to charge his phone, or thought he had -- anything that technically complex was still a mystery to him -- but today it wasn't doing it. Instead, it was just blinking a "not charging" message whenever he plugged it in.

The problem was a bent pin that kept the plug from connecting, but he didn't know that. He was almost ready to give up on the damned thing entirely.

He hesitated by Isabelle's room when he noticed she was inside and in motion. If nothing else, this was a place to start that didn't involve hunting anyone down.

"Sorry, but are you any good with these?" he asked, waving a phone at her. "It won't work."

[seveninchmotto]

Isabelle stopped her annoyed pacing – for the moment, anyway – and looked over towards the door.

"Well, I'm okay with them." Shadowhunters and technology weren't the greatest together, but a teenaged New Yorker needed to know her way around a phone. "What's it not doing?"

[not_every_mage]

"It won't charge," Anders explained, stepping a bit more into the room and holding the phone out as if he didn't totally trust it. "I plugged it into the cable-thing but it just keeps telling me it's 'not charging.' And I don't even know what will happen if the battery goes dead."

He sighed. "I swear, nothing like technology to make you feel like an idiot."

[seveninchmotto]

Isabelle reached out for the phone. "If the battery goes dead, the phone stops working," she said. "It's annoying, but just means you have to recharge it. If you can."

[not_every_mage]

"Would I have to get a new phone if that happened?" he asked -- a bit nervously, because he couldn't afford that. "See, normally it charges fine, but this morning when I went to plug it in it fit together funny and now it's just not doing anything."

Except not-so-helpfully informing him it wasn't charging every time he went to plug it in, anyhow. He shrugged and passed her the phone and its charging cable.

[seveninchmotto]

"No, like I just said," Isabelle replied, inspecting the phone and the cable, "you'd just have to charge it. The only difference is that you wouldn't be able to use the phone before you did that. Technology moves fast, but not quite that fast."

[not_every_mage]

"The problem is that nothing happens when I try to charge it," Anders tried to explain, and then blinked at her as the gears in his brain tried to move. "Wait. Could I charge it another way?"

[seveninchmotto]

"Well, for one thing, you could get a new cable," she replied, with remarkable patience for her track record. Possibly because she was looking up from the phone now. "But it looks like you just have a bent pin."

[not_every_mage]

"A ... bent pin?"

Anders had no idea what that had to do with a phone. But he also hadn't known getting new cables was an option,so the day was full of new things.

He smiled sheepishly. "Thank you for being patient with me."

[seveninchmotto]

Isabelle shrugged. "You caught me at a good time." When she was desperate for reasons to focus on something. Yes, her motivation for patience was questionable, but it still worked. "Anyway, straightening it should fix things."

[not_every_mage]

"I'll try it," Anders told her, reaching to reclaim the phone. There were only so many things on it that could conceivably be called a pin: he suspected he could figure out which one she meant. "What were you doing before I decided to bother you, anyhow?"

[seveninchmotto]

"Nothing," Isabelle said. Sadly, that was not a secretive answer but rather a pretty apt description of what she felt like she'd been doing. She wrinkled her nose as she returned the phone and the cable to him. "Nothing worth mentioning, anyway."

[not_every_mage]

"It's that kind of day," Anders remarked, wrinkling his nose back at her. "Too gray and cold to want to get up to much."

[seveninchmotto]

"It's not that." Although that was definitely a factor too. "I'm just bored."

And/or restless. Actually, mostly that other thing.

[not_every_mage]

"I don't have too much to do either." Which was probably part of why the phone thing had been so important -- it was at least something to focus on. "Class is over and that was just a movie day anyhow."

[seveninchmotto]

"I'm not sure I understand the obsession with movies, anyway," Isabelle shared, shrugging her shoulders. "They're fun to watch sometimes, sure, but for class? Why don't they just let us leave instead?"

[not_every_mage]

"Maybe they like knowing where we are for an hour," Anders said acidly. "Reno wasn't as bad about it as some of them, anyhow. He let us put together first aid kits while we watched or go spar instead."

[seveninchmotto]

"I don't understand how everyone didn't pick sparring." A beat. "Well, yes I do."

Because everyone wasn't like her. She was aware of that, yes.

"But I still think people who didn't pick that picked wrong."

[not_every_mage]

"Then I picked wrong," Anders shrugged, not sounding as though he especially cared. "But I've never been much for practice fighting. You are?"

He liked real fighting. Real fighting, he was doing something. Sparring was just a lot of concentrating on fiddly things so nobody got singed. (He could have sparred to learn to use a sword or dagger - some mages did -- but there were many, many things Anders could do but didn't want to.)

[seveninchmotto]

Isabelle shrugged again. "It's a wonderful way to work on not getting killed when fighting for real," she replied lightly.

[not_every_mage]

"I prefer crouching behind things and drinking a lot of potions for that," Anders said amiably, scratching at the back of his neck. "Though it's possible I should come up with a better long-term survival strategy."

[seveninchmotto]

"Crouching works for a while," she shared with a pondering look away. "Potions I wouldn't trust, but that has reasons behind it." A lot to do with a certain kind of mistrust of magic. "I believe more in brute strength."

[not_every_mage]

"You sound like a warrior," Anders informed her. "And what's wrong with potions? Other than that you can spend half your bloody life putting the things together if you don't buy them."

[seveninchmotto]

"They're not for me," she said, putting it simply. "I mean, if I'm heavily injured and one can heal me quick and keep me from dying, sure. Other than that, I prefer to leave them to warlocks."

[not_every_mage]

"Well, I am a mage, but I don't like the word warlock," Anders said, crinkling his nose. "It sounds like someone with long nails, a beard, and a malevolent cackle. You cant be a warlock without a really good cackle."