"Is that who I think it is?" A new arrival chuckled.
"Is that Vozylyzy?" Someone exclaimed in delight.
"Doesn't that make her the daughter of Arin?" Someone else layered on excitedly and Zory sighed.
"Mari, you need to leave right now!" Ozzy begged as he managed to regain enough control of his lower body and limbs to start to squirm with more traction beneath her.
"I was already planning on it, but I-?" She began as he grunted before his hands began to shake with strain.
"Mari, ease up!" Vitale barked at her.
"I'll ease up when he stops resisting." She shrugged. "He never knows when to quit if I don't wait for him to tap."
Wondering why she had ever been put in any position to spark him reacting like this more than once was only making Nesterio even more irate. If Trixxie had suspected the reaction from Matilda that occurred, there was no way that Ozzy had not been even more guilty in withholding any intel he had gathered on their guest of honor. While she was far more of a mother hen to Trixxie, Nesterio couldn't shake the thought Ozzy was genuinely her friend.
"This is ridiculous." Ozzy hissed up at her.
"He's not going to stop this time." Vitale said lowly before his volume spiked in response to appealing to reason availing him nothing. "Mari, you're hurting him. Ease up!"
She rolled her eyes before closing them while her nostrils flared with aggravation. The idiot beneath her was really just hurting himself like struggling against being handcuffed. She didn't feel inclined to share how this pin worked with so many people who might find themselves subject to it in the future within earshot. Vitale had always been quite the mastermind at working a crowd faster than she did. He wanted Zory to feel her hand being forced to let Ozzy loose and she didn't even want to know the reason behind that wildcard of a play.
"Get out of here, okay?" She smiled at the muffed guy who was still sitting on the ground near them. She didn't need Ozzy to get his hands on him twice. "Being a recalcitrant has more than one meaning, you know… Like when you proclaim a feigned betrayal for something petty and silly and call that friend a filthy traitor… I'm really gonna have to hurt him if he hurts you more than he just did, so please."
There was something so oddly casual about the way she tilted her head signaling the small man to flee while not just caving to the accusations of hurting Ozzy. Ozzy certainly hadn't confirmed that was the case either.
"L-Lady Ryomari-?" The lowly little worker bee Nesterio had no grounds to formally accuse Lady Matilda of having been puppeteering couldn't help but sniffle. "Th-thank you!"
"Happy to help." Zory smiled kindly.
The small ball of light the young man summoned to use as his way to make his exit rapidly expanded in a burst of weak but stable magic. The second her verbal assailant was officially out of harms way from the wrecking ball she had stopped from crossing an even worse kind of line, she obliged Vitale's likely foolish request. She stepped off Ozzy lightly, the way her feet seemed to hesitate in the air for a split second signaled there truly was some kind of gravity at play. Whatever she had done, him regaining movement despite it left room for doubt.
As Zory casually slid her hands away into the pockets of her sweats, Nesterio couldn't help but wonder if folding her arms across her chest had added to the completely foreign style of grounding technique. Wherever she had really earned her stripes, it certainly hadn't been under the Yin-Yang dynasty nor any of the regimes they were affiliated with.
"Sniveling coward!" Ozzy snarled after him and to what end, only Zory seemed to know. Why he hadn't moved yet did imply she really had only eased up but had yet to release him somehow just yet either.
"I'm going to let you all the way up now." She explained with another small shrug. "But if I can tell you start so much as thinking of pursuing him, I'm gonna pin you all over again, go it, Ozzball…? You are a dog with a bone once you start to lose your cool at someone and you need to keep it or I am going to bring a whole new level of in the doghouse down onto your narrow-minded little fledgling head… Do we have a deal?"
"No freaking deal." He hissed like a teenaged punk who couldn't bring himself to cave to the obvious authority she held well about his pay-grade too.
Her lack of any fear in openly threatening to do it again even without viable proof of cause was even more unsettling to many, but not Nesterio. The somewhat equally fired up guy who had just been helplessly laid out at her feet already once even needing that warning implied she was right about how not waiting for him to tap worked. Calling him a fledgling right in front of them had the big Vozylyzy fans all whipped up all over again. He really had made quite the name for himself in the underground rings. The rumor regarding who he would or wouldn't allow himself to pledge to when scouts from higher zelestial worlds were around were now squashed as well. If he secured a bid to officially undergo the real rites of ascension to join the ranks of a higher world he planned to serve no one but Zory no matter what it took to earn her trust.
"Do we have a deal, Vozylyzy baby?" She challenged.
Her calling him that in confirmation of him being that guy would bring a whole lot else full circle sooner than he'd like either. Although their spectators may feel like nothing seemed to obviously change, something most certainly had.
"Fine." He ground out not a second before he sat up.
Vitale only asking her to ease up rather than actually let him up on the spot suddenly made more sense to anyone that had not caught on as fast as Nesterio. That odd flit of her feet in the air before they silently landed on the ground near Ozzy's flank made it clear she was somehow controlling the gravity in their immediate vicinity only- in strange ways that were as if his chest still felt pinned even without her still being there on top of him. Although Zory rarely still needed to start literally shattering the earth beneath him like she had originally did once upon a time to make a point, she knew for a fact that he still wasn't calm enough to actually be trusted.
"Oz?" Vitale asked as he rose to his feet.
"I'm good." He huffed as he glared at the ground in shame.
"You're not good." Vitale whispered with a kind of tender regard that threw everyone for another loop. "But be a good little fledgling by using your words now, yes?"
Fledglings. People who had the potential to become fully zelestial. Rare. Exceedingly.
Seeing the way he was acting almost like a kid who'd been thoroughly scolded by Zory wasn't exactly making a secret of the fact he had not earned her trust back made Vitale frown. She still was not even giving him any opportunity to level with her the way she would normally require him to if she wished to truly help him as she had done earlier with Trixxie.
"Oz, take a breath, man." Vitale encouraged. "That guy is long gone, okay?"
Watching the odd kinds of magic Zory was working with Trixxie earlier gave them all the more reason to stay on edge more than they would have already been on guard if Ozzy had made himself known in a far more appropriate way. It was implying perhaps Ozzy was beyond her ability to help. It was only then that Nesterio realized they were wearing the same exact brand and style of sweats, but Zory's were black and his were gray. They were not friends in passing, they were actually affiliated somehow already.
"I said I'm good, dude." Ozzy said, but anyone who knew even the first thing about him or Zory knew he wasn't yet.
She laughed with obvious fury at that bold-faced lie.
"Whether you're good or not?" Zory stated with a nearly hysterical kind of shrill disbelief. "You are really so grounded when we get home, Ozzball."
"You live with this woman?" Volo spoke for the first time all night, perhaps the first time in days.