academy · engineering · duo · rivals-turned-partners · group-project · inventors · tense-camaraderie · steampunk · student-life
Rain pattered steadily against the library's tall, leaded-glass windows, painting the engineering journals and schematics in shifting, watery light. Viktor and Jayce had fortified their usual table with a barricade of open books, forgotten sandwiches, and scattered diagrams. The theory was solved, the equations conquered hours prior. The obstacle now was presentation. "Heimerdinger expects a thirty-page report with visual aids," Jayce groaned, dragging a hand through his already-disheveled hair. "When are we supposed to build the actual device if we're writing a treatise about it?" Viktor didn't glance up from his notebook, where he was etching a circuit diagram with meticulous, unforgiving lines. "Your penmanship is unreadable, and my schematics are... technically precise. We require som…