Just What Everyone Needs...A Goth

[Jake Sheppard]

… O-kay. Having dealt with nervous little wallflowers with downcast eyes who seem terrified to dare to speak more than a few words in front of *The Headmaster* Jake’s not sure whether Tobias’ ballsy-ness and refusal to let the position sway him is refreshing or terrifying. For the moment he settles on *different*, because it’s strange to find anyone who’s neither distracted nor deliberately not noticing anything (because ‘round here you train yourself to ignore the big things… and end up missing the little ones as well), and puts the energy not wasted on debating that (how the hell does Ororo manage to make the *teacher* thing look instinctive?) into trying to keep as neutral a tone as possible, without any smugness or sarcasm creeping in at the edges. ”Seems like a lot of effort to go to when 99% of the residents either won’t notice or don’t comment…” He doesn’t add that if he’d known Tobias was the other 1% he could have just clicked into mutie-gear and swung things so he wouldn’t notice either by affording himself enough *time* to react or by a more devious route… Ororo’s kinda touchy about suggesting ethically dubious uses for any *gift* and besides, he doubts he could get away with even jokingly threatening to mess with a student’s memory (though *electrocuted for threatening mind-rape* isn’t a bad epitaph, all things considered).

The smile becomes a little more forced as Tobias continues, the amusing/irritating needle swinging to nudge at *starting to piss me off*. So – Jake runs over what he’s learnt so far as he shifts through the various files littering the desk until he finds the relevant one, rifling through that to get the necessary documentation – we’re up one smartass goth who thinks really, really loudly. Fantastic. Who the hell vets these applications anyway?

”Right… Timetable stuff, room allocation, random student contract you’ll have to look over and sign at some point…” Paperwork passing hands punctuates the sentence. “Everything seems to be in order… unless you’ve got any questions. Like where the cafeteria is or how many days jet-lag allowance newbies get.”

[Tobias Smith]

Though it may not appear so, Tobias pays close attention to what the Headmaster has to say. He scans the documents that he is given with half-open eyes, before bringing out a simple black pen from his pants pocket, and signs where it is indicated.Yet again, he yawns and rubs his eyes.

>”Right… Timetable stuff, room allocation, random student contract you’ll have to look over and sign at some point. Everything seems to be in order… unless you’ve got any questions. Like where the cafeteria is or how many days jet-lag allowance newbies get.”

Tobias finishes signing, and hands the papers back and tucks the pen away again. He smiles wearily, and asks quite sincerely, fairly certain that with one or possibly more faculty members already starting to get pissed, "Well, if you could point the way to the Cafeteria and my dorm, I'd really, really appreciate it. And if you ever need anything done with time stopped, just give me a call...and don't let anyone else find out."

Tobias stands and stretches, extending his gloved hand to the Headmaster. It is his beleif that making shaky alliances with those with authority while still pissing them off kept the balance of the world in check in Tobias' mind. It works with Officer Polanski and half the cops in San Francisco, so it should work with some extremely-talented mutated teachers/anti-terrorists in some remote mutant highschool. According to Tobias' point of view, the two aren't that different, except the powers of course.