fandomhigh | Outside the Command Center, All Day Friday

Outside the Command Center, All Day Friday

Inside the Command Center, with the doors propped open, Dean Zordon can't help but hear the endless chatter of students going back and forth during enrollment. Unfortunately, stuck in his tube, he really has no choice.

[OOC: All IC interaction during the signup process should go here. No OCD threads unless someone else wants to set some up. I'm beat, yo.]

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Xander shook his head. "Not saying that wasn't getting old, but no. They shut down the school for safety reasons, and shipped the students off to a bunch of different places. I ended up here."

Nadia winced. Getting 'shipped off' didn't sound that great. "Did any one else from your school come, or did you end up here alone?"

Xander snorted. "There's a headache you might not want to try to tangle with unless you're a Quantum Physics type. Short version is yes, there's a bunch of people I kind of know here. Longer but less sensemaking version is that none of them are exactly the people I went to school with, because we all somehow got here from different times."

"Different . . . times?" Nadia shook her head. "You know, I'm not sure I want to know."

Xander chuckled. "Yeah, I get that. Though that might be one of the things you need the Cliff's Notes on, anyway -- not that I want to blow your mind on your first week here, but you're gonna come across it all, sooner or later. There's people here from other dimensions, other planets, other times, and ... pretty sure other species. Not even counting the vampires, who kind of used to be human. "

"Okay, vampires?" Nadia said. "For some reason I thought there was only one?" Was it Marty who'd told her that? Because, well, she knew now that everything he'd told her was suspect.

"There's only one at the school; there's a couple more in town," Xander clarified. "Spike owns the pub, and he's... apparently under control, though God knows we thought that about Angelus. Dru and Darla are loose out there somewhere, and they are not. You meet up with a freaky brunette chick with a British accent who talks like she's on some really good acid, or a blonde who... actually I can't think of anything that really stands out about Darla. She's hot, but that's not gonna narrow it down around here. But you meet up with either of them you run the other way, and fast."

And, okay, if Nadia was going to follow her big sib's advice, she'd be running away from any blonde she happened to run into. "Should I shout, 'hey, is your name Darla?' just to be sure before I run?" She shook her head with a grin. "What about the one in the school? Is it dangerous?"

"Yeah," Xander answered seriously. "But not in the run the other way sense. Just in the 'if he gets too happy he can turn into somebody you have to run the other way from' sense. He's got a soul, but it's kind of stuck on with Scotch tape."

He considered the question about Darla just as seriously. "The Investigators' Club probably ought to hunt up pictures of Darla and Dru, to warn the students to stay away from them, actually. If nothing else I bet Angel could draw some - he's pretty good at sketching, and he's sure as hell known them long enough to do it from memory."

"The soul makes him not dangerous." Nadia's definitely skeptical of that. She's run into way too many dangerous people who supposedly had souls to think that they're a magical way to make someone good.

"No," Xander said, pleased to hear what sounded like cynicism in her tone. "The soul makes him not evil. He's still plenty dangerous."

"Ohhh. Not evil. Well. That makes all the difference." Nadia rolled her eyes. "Because if he's only just kinda bad or malicious, it's all good?" She shook her head. "I've known too many 'not evil' people who still wanted to hurt me. But I guess I could give whoever it is a chance, if he's not going to eat me on sight."

Xander shrugged. "He's not my bestest bud - you won't find me on the friends-with-Angel train anytime soon. But he passes for a Good Guy - please note capital letters to indicate the side of law and order versus me actually liking him - when he's got the soul. The dangerous part is where it can disappear and turn him into a complete psycho."

"It just, what, randomly goes away?"

"Not exactly random, no," Xander said. "It's a curse - and let me head you off at the pass here on 'why would they be that stupid' with the answer 'I have no idea, and believe me you're not the first to ask' - and because it's supposed to be a punishment, they threw in a loophole where he's not allowed to like it. One second of true happiness, and poof, soul gone, evil guy back in charge."

Nadia shook her head. "We'll just have to keep him unhappy, then. Wouldn't KNOWING being truly happy would make him evil make him never be truly happy?"

Xander would feel guilty for stealing the smart chicks are hot line from Angel, if Angel hadn't stolen it from him in the first place.

"You'd think so," he said, nodding. "But it seems like he's lost it more than once, so nobody's real sure on the answer there, even him."

Nadia shook her head, bewildered. "The weirdness just keeps on coming, doesn't it." She looked at Xander again. "Just how likely am I to get killed while I'm here?"

Xander considered his answer carefully. He didn't want to scare her off, but he'd be a crappy human being, let alone a crappy Big Brother, if he didn't tell her the truth. And honestly she didn't seem like the type who scared too easily.

"Less than a lot of places, definitely including Creepydale, USA," he finally replied. "But it's a possibility. It happened last semester. you want to keep your eyes open and be careful."

Nadia's eyes widened slightly before narrowing in determination. "Well, I'll just have to hit whatever it is before it hits me."

He grinned, but lifted a finger in warning. "You wanna watch that too, though. The admins around here a pretty trigger-fingery about handing out the detentions for throwing the first punch."

"So I'll hit whatever it is shortly after it hits me?" Nadia grinned. "I'm actually kinda used to being in trouble."

"Well, that you won't have any, er, trouble, finding around here," Xander assured her. "If you ever need help, though -- unless it's with Quantum Physics, I'm surprisingly useless there -- I'm in 406. 555-9776." ~~Which I totally did not just look up on my own phone keypad~~

"Thanks." Nadia was starting to feel a bit more relieved, and a bit more confident, about this school. "That's really nice of you, helping out a new kid like this. I mean, I know you were assigned to me officially, but still. Thank you."

"Hey, no problem!" Xander grinned. "Not like it's a hardship to spend time with cute.. uh, new people." He winked.

__

{And amazingly enough this is not the most behind-the-times slowplay on campus, as somewhere, Logan and I are still trying to get out of Special Collections. Three weeks ago...}

Re: After registration

nadiathesaint - 2006-01-09 23:12 (UTC) - Expand

Re: After registration

soldtoarmenians - 2006-01-09 23:46 (UTC) - Expand

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