In retrospect, Jesse was lucky to have ran into Vanessa before. Thanks to their earlier encounter, he was no longer phased by her aggressive behavior or excessive swearing. The rest of the cast, however, wasn't that lucky.

The woman was an enigma. During rehearsals she was incredibly professional, and her acting was top-notch, the level he would expect from a famous actor. On the other hand, when it came to any social interactions unrelated to work, she was a ticking bomb of aggression. If anything set her off (and many things did), she was ready to verbally, or even physically abuse anyone in her way. So far only one fight broke out, between Vanessa and a man named Colin. It was after one of the rehearsals, when she approached a sweet young woman, Rayla, and straight up verbally assaulted her over the quality of her acting. Whether the quality was good or bad, the attack was unreasonable, and Rayla was really scared by the situation. Colin intervened, and Vanessa didn't like it to the point where they ended up exchanging several punches before the rest of the cast managed to split them.

Yes, so far the play was coming along great.

Walking up on the scene, he no longer was Jesse Glenn - he was now a noble knight, ready to save the world. It was only natural he hit the lead role, even if it was to Vanessa's dismay. After seeing her acting, he realized she couldn't have gotten any lesser role, either. They were both clearly the most experienced actors in the crew, even though Jesse would never gloat about it.

This was the first time they were rehearsing without scripts in their hands. While some people, him included, have memorised their scripts very fast, others still struggled, so this was the first time they could actually act out their characters' actions. But when the knight was saving a forest spirit from being killed by a bandit, he noticed thin, skin-colored latex gloves on her hands. As much as he was unwilling to get into a fight with her, his curiosity took the best of him and he decided to confront Vanessa after the rehearsal.

He waited patiently for everyone to leave. He figured that if she had no reservations from making a scene in public before, having another person around would be of very little help, especially since he was pretty sure he would be able to disarm her by himself, even if it meant using his gundalian powers. Having went trough all the possible ways this could go in his head, he walked up to her.

"Why the gloves?" He asked, pointing at her hands, now in pockets of her jacket. Now that he thought of it, she usually kept her hands in pockets.

"None of your business. Piss off." Her voice was nearly a hiss.

"Friendly as ever, aren't you? I'm just asking. It broke my immersion on the stage, so i'd like to know there's at least a good reason for that."

A scoff. Of course there was a scoff. Jesse had long lost hope she could communicate like a normal person.

"If that kinda shit breaks your immersion, then what good are you as an actor? No fuckin' good at all. But if you absolutely NEED to know, some of us here are taking their roles seriously."

"Seriously? How is wearing latex gloves taking your role seriously? If anything, they make you look ridiculous."

"Look you moron, i actually took time to find out about what my costume is going to be, and i'm getting gloves among other things. If i want to look comfortable wearing them, i need to actually get used to them." she laughed, but, by any means, it wasn't a pleasant laugh." I can't believe i need to explain this to you - you're even less of an actor than i ever thought you were! What are you even doing here? You're a fucking JOKE!"

Jesse gritted his teeth as she spoke, forcing himself to remain calm as she laughed in his face and left without looking back at him. He was already regretting even attempting a conversation with her. Once again when talking to her, he struggled not to say anything rude. He wasn't really easy to provoke - in fact, he took some kind of pride in being able to ignore many of the harshest criticisms he received, but everything she said and did made him want to throw a remark back at her. The worst part was, that he realized, she was only acting this way to purposely hurt people. She was very much capable of acting better, she KNEW how she SHOULD act, she just consciously chose to be this way. At this point, aside from his pride, the only thing stopping him from talking back at her was the fact it would certainly turn into a fight, and he just didn't want to do any more fighting after having to deal with two military conflicts. At least he found some ease in being able to just quietly despite her. It didn't happen often to him, but she had absolutely no redeeming qualities. In fact, her cruel behaviour started reminding him of the days of the Twelve Order. He shivered, and quickly pushed that comparison aside. That was in the past, and now he needed to move on with the future.