Malakai Kanaita
Why, exactly, he found himself repeatedly cajoled into participating in these things was so far beyond his own rationale that he would rather not even think about it. Was it a sense of responsibility? A presumed and insistent need to act as a representative of alternative medicine and the cultures within which it was practiced? Hardly. At least... not anymore. Anymore these lectures were nothing more beneficial than a few extra dollars in his pocket and a reminder that alternative medicine was still largely considered to be absolute and irrefutable bullshit. As if the accusation needed further validation from the room at large, he could see it there in the faces of the students staring despondently back at him; they were all too eager to skim to the employ of their pills, their poisons, than to bother with anything even remotely holistic or, dare he even think it, spiritual. It was all just words, stories he had recited so many times that it was as if he had never truly lived them. It was an charade, a production that had been perfected by him, the artisan, over the course of the last few years. Hell, even he didn't believe it anymore. Not really. But at least he was capable of staying awake during the damn thing.
Malakai's eyes cut to the source of the metallic clatter as it echoed about the packed lecture hall, finding the petite young woman easily even without the aide of her mortified expression. He heaves only a sigh wrought of exasperation, heavily-muscled arms crossing over a shirt that, truly, would have benefited greatly from even a brief encounter with an iron, his suspenders pulled taut against the ample muscles of his chest. He fixes her one last, poignant glare before returning his attention to the class at large. "Now, as I was saying..."
The Hawaiian man supervened this lecture in the manner that he always had, proped against a non-descript campus wall, the smoke of his cigarette swirling in soft plumes about him. He took to observing the students, the staff, as they bustled about the campus as if in some grand hurry... though for and towards what he could not possibly fathom. It was a peculiar shift in the otherwise regimented alignment of the mulling mass that bribed his attention to the maw of a distant alleyway, a clutch of young men seeming to be in pursuit of what appeared to be a young woman from the curtain of gossamer hair. Dammit. The brooding gentleman took a last, lingering drag from the cigarette he had meant to savor before flicking it haphazardly unto the icy ground at his feet, a subtle and agitated growl of sorts escaping from him as he eased from the brick wall behind him.
Perhaps it would not turn out to be as it appeared, he considered idly as his boots crunched a path through the thin layer of frost that had accumulated gradually over the course of the morning. Yet as he turned the corner into the seclusion of the alleyway all hopes that he would be dismissed of this self-induced ethical pursuit evaporated. Nope, it was precisely as it appeared. Perfect. A silent sigh whispers through his lips as he moves himself forward, reaching out with a single, tattooed hand to grasp the woman's assailant by the collar of his shirt, twisting thick fingers into the fabric to further restrict the fellow's movements should he be so foolish as to attempt any. "You heard her," he growled in his customary brutish tone. "Now let her go before I have to do it for you... and I don't bluff."