peterverse | shaker, meet stranger

mrglam posting in

Sadde is home; it's a Friday evening, his shift is over, and there's no school. He's reading a book, lying on his bed in his small-but-tidy apartment.

He is also quite naked, because it's his place and why not?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

first_and_final

"That is the idea."

From:

peterxy

The next time Piggot asks Ashras to meet him, she curtly congratulates him on his part in capturing Cricket, then informs him about High School. Apparently he's the first teenage Case 53 (or similar) to join the Protectorate, but they had rules for those, given that they tended to have no memory and thus being dropped in school would be highly useless - not even the Youth Guard could argue against that logic.

The compromise is that teenage Case 53s will be allowed to choose whether to go to High School or not, and if they prefer not to, they will be allowed to test out, and will have onsite time dedicated to studying for those, with occasional unscheduled Youth Guard visits to guarantee they are getting an appropriate education.

From:

first_and_final

This seems like a pretty reasonable compromise to Ashras. He chooses not to go to school, obtains information about the relevant educational requirements, and solicits appropriate material. He is thereafter almost never seen without a textbook.

Also, he belatedly realizes that he can now both speak English and send email, so he dashes off a quick thank-you note to Sadde, thus:

Hey, thanks for showing me where to go. I'm settling in nicely with the Wards so far. For some reason I'm supposed to learn about history and literature and mathematics instead of spending all of my time obsessively developing and testing new magic weapons, but at least they didn't send me to high school, which sounds terrible.

From:

msglam

Oh, that's good, I'm happy it all worked out for you. So you do magic weapons? And I can't say I dislike high school, I have friends there, but I suppose you have those on the team, too, so it probably loses much of the appeal.

From:

first_and_final

My teammates are by and large pretty great.

I'm supposed to keep some things about my powers secret for tactical reasons, but yes, "magic weapons" is the basic concept. Wands and staves. The ones I've used in the field so far throw stun bolts, force blasts, and lightning (at nonlethal intensities), and you might have guessed I can also do fire, but if I have any other tricks in reserve I'm not talking about them, both for tactical reasons and because I'm not totally sure I have the designs down and I don't want to brag until I have a working prototype held in my own hand.

From:

msglam

Sadde suspects the latter has more to do with it, from the way he's phrased it.

That's cool. And your English is going pretty well.

From:

first_and_final

Everyone is very surprised by how fast I picked it up, but they had someone teaching me who had a translation power, so I don't see it as that surprising. And of course I practice a lot. Always someone to talk to or something to read.

From:

msglam

I suppose. I would still have taken much longer, probably; I'm terrible at languages.

From:

first_and_final

Until that week I would've said I was sort of okay at languages. I guess motivation matters.

From:

msglam

I would never say I was sort of okay at languages, more like pretty terrible.

From:

first_and_final

And if you're ever transported to a strange planet where no one speaks English, you'll find out if motivation makes you any less terrible.

From:

msglam

Yeah.

And on another subject, I don't think there's a good way to ask this, but you didn't tell anyone else about the coat, did you?

From:

first_and_final

It seemed private.

From:

msglam

Thank you.

From:

first_and_final

No problem.

Let me take this moment to complain about Earth mathematical notation. Who decided that putting things next to each other means multiplying them? Why did this seem like a good idea?

From:

msglam

I don't know who decided it but you can always use a dot, or an x, or a *, or something XD

Edited Date: 2016-03-04 09:07 pm (UTC)

From:

first_and_final

Believe me, I do. My problem is that other people don't, so I'm always left wondering if these particular things are being multiplied or if they are just hanging out together for other, innocent reasons.