trans_9 | (no subject)

Bella is poking around the ship, as she often does. The Engineering department has never been a favorite place for her, it's even more deeply Weaverish than anywhere else on the ship. But she's also Get of Fenris, and an Ahroun. Perfectly capable of handling herself, and it's always a good idea to keep an eye on things that might be dangerous.

That's just her excuse, though. Really, the wolf's curious.

The stack of screens is a new development, it wasn't here the last time Bella checked and it's not part of the humdrum of things on tables that she pays little attention to when they change.

"What are you doing?" she asks Allen, watching him as he looks for potential sign material.

Jaime eventually finds his way there, and bounds through the door. "Is there where the testing is?"

Gimme gimme, Allen. He wants knowledge, and the sooner he tests, the sooner he can go back to schooling at least a little.

"Yeah, hey Jaime. Right here." Allen holds out a media pad. "There's a math, science, history, english, and writing section. It's long, but go through each part until the questions start getting annoying."

This kid does not waste time.

He pops into a seat, and starts taking his test.

Math, okay. Science, cool. Englush and writing, no problem.

History...

"Uuuuuh. We got a problem," he says, looking over some of the questions.

"I figured." Allen spins around in his fleshseat to take a look at the test. "Alternate histories are gonna make it a bitch to teach." He looks over the history portion of the test. "Maybe everybody from specific universes should do their own timelines. Group project."

The DC kids will have fun with that one.

"AAAaah hey Bella."

Allen only jumps a little. Wolves are sneaky!

"Looking for stuff to make a sign out of. I expect you're not interested in going to school, but I'm trying to get the kids on the ship to do it."

A hesistant head pokes around the corridor. Yuri's never gone to school in something that has organs and a pulse of its own. But school is a semblance of normalcy, even if she's never been at the top of her class.

"Ah, hello, is this the place where we're gonna have school?"

This time she won't have to fight anything with dozens of eyes, right?

"Yeah, 'cause Hercules, the Greek Gods, and Atlantis aren't a myth, and this Greek history stuff leaves out the formation of Themiscyra," he says, leaning back in his meat chair. "Oh, and also, uh, I'm pretty sure from talking to Traci that the plagues of Moses and all that stuff wasn't just, y'know allegory. She said the Spectre killed all the first-born sons of Egypt for real. Dunno if that's all true, but a lot of this myth stuff isn't so mythological. Annnd the Egyptian history is way, way off, I can tell you that from personal experience, since I have a chuck of Egyptian history in my back."

He scrolls forward, "Annnd recent history, like this Cold War stuff, leaves out the sanction against superheroes and the JSA being called to unmask by the House Committee on Un-American Activities."

He scrolls through.

"Wow, y'know, from these questions, is everyone else's history really this boring? All these questions are about the kinda boring stuff."

Kon is grumbling to himself when he comes in and he goes over to get a test and--

"Ha ha."

Sees the one with his name already on it.

"Hey, I put in some stuff about the formation of the Zulu nation, and William Wallace hacking some English heads. That stuff is pretty cool."

"As for all that stuff - you can pretty much strike anything supernatural from any of the histories of boring worlds like mine. I feel fairly confident in saying that most worlds not containing superheroes or people with significant supernatural abilities are going to have mostly old dudes making treaties and regular old wars with guns and swords and mundane human torment, and no islands of Amazon warrior babes. Most of the stuff regarding gods has yet to be proven as not a myth or allegory, and that includes your magical tech bug there."

He nods in the general direction of Jaime's back bug.

"I hypothesize there was little to no significant supernatural interference in the course of my history until current times. But I have pretty good evidence there's at least one god running around up there in the higher planes."

"I did tell ya," Allen says, with a wave of his hand. "Just answer until you can't go any further."

Allen glances at the small girl as he picks up a media pad.

"Probably not. But this is where you take the diagnostic test, so make yourself comfortable."

There are some fleshseats and unoccupied chitinous work tables.

"I'm Allen. What's your name?" he asks, handing her the pad, looking at her curiously. There is something in his gaze of a scanner - as though he's taking in data, not looking at her.

He practically breezes through the elementary school, junior high, and freshman and sophomore year stuff. Answer answer answer answer. All glory to the implanted knowledge and all.

But once he hits Junior year, boy does it get iffy.

For one...

"Your history stuff is kinda off."

"Alternate universes. Just use the comment boxes to put in anything you think I ought to know about how the histories differ."

Jaime answers all that he can, and then finishes, getting it up and handing it over.

"When are they getting graded?"

"I'm gonna give the essays to Mei Ling and keep the commentboxes on the history for data collection purposes, but the multiple choice stuff is pretty much already totaled up." Allen takes the media pad and starts checking it. "Think of this as your personal student profile. You're not doing bad at all. If you're going the premed route I'm going to have you bone up on chemistry right away."

There's a protracted sigh. More work? Come on.

Eventually he gets through most sections, which get all blah blah blah after a while, and he decides at those points the questions are getting too hard or boring and he stops there and moves onto the next section. It's during this time that the fidgeting comes. This kid cannot sit still. It's like he's got ferrets twitching around in his muscles or something. He sits up. Kicks back. Sits up. Taps the table with his fingertips.

He is very obviously one of those kids that stares at the window, pretty much DYING of boredom until class is over, and absolutely cannot stand when he has to actually pay attention to something like a test.

Attention span--he's got none. (At least when it comes to stuff he finds boring).

Of course, in the long run, it means he takes even longer to finish. Then of course there's the fact that he spends more time considering each question. Part of his problem seems to be the classic "overthinking" of things thing. He'll go with his gut instinct for a correct answer, then second-guess himself, switch it--then go back and switch it again. He knows he's clever, and it's pretty obvious just from talking to the kid that he's clever, but anything past 10th grade and he doubts his own smarts.

"Aw, there's essays?" he complains, when he gets to that part.

Edited 2009-06-29 05:05 (UTC)

Jaime winces.

"This is basically the second time I never finished out chem," he says regretfully. "I got a lot closer this time. Although it wasn't easy 'cause I was doubled up in most of my classes, no study hall OR lunch, no electives 'cause to catch up I had to just take core classes..."

"Don't worry about it. This tells me what cores you're missing and which ones you can skip." Allen hefts Jaime's test. "I do not like time-wasting on unnecessary classes, or on classes you're not ready for when you could be relearning the basics. School systems are inefficient. This one isn't going to be."

"Yes, there's essays."

Allen doesn't turn around from his project as he waits for Kon to finish. Co-head of Engineering - he has a lot of work to do. Or at least plenty of stuff to occupy his time. "The faster you do them, the faster you can go bug Robin."

"I'm just getting kinda bummed that it feels like I keep falling behind. At the rate I'm going, I'm gonna wind up graduating with the freshman. It'd be nice if the whole 'missing huge chunks of my life' thing could stop."

"Yuri. Yuri Ohtani." She says as she takes the pad. She feels the gaze sweep over her. That's totally a teacher look right there. It gives her a little butterfly in her stomach but at least it's familiar.

"H-how much time do I have?" She says as she sits down and takes up something that could just as easily be a pencil, a branch or a dried up tentacle.

"Sorry, kid. You seem like the kind of guy who's all prepared for the future, and has been since he was old enough to conceptualize time, but the universe has a way of messing with everybody's plans."

Allen clicks through Jaime's test, looking at his notes on the history portion. "My wife had the same problem. Avid student, decent sense of ambition, got sucked into a dream world of magic for ten years." He glances at Jaime. "Not that I mean to discourage you, because the GED isn't that hard to pass, but there's no shame in going back to school once the world's been saved. Or even while it still needs saving. Heroes have to retire sometime."

There's another protracted sigh. The analytical essay is just about torture. There are a ton of vaguely whiny sighs and fidgeting from his direction as he writes that one. It's mostly bullshitting.

The more creative ones, however...they're a little easier.

"Write about a time in your life when you helped someone achieve a goal or overcome a problem of their own. If you have never done either of these, you are a twat."

First of all, you're giving out essays to little kids that have the world 'twat' on them, and if you're allowed to do that, I should be allowed to curse like a sailor as much as I want without getting "Mr. Kon" from someone.

But okay, whatever, here's my essay:

A time in my life I helped someone achieve a goal or overcome a problem of their own is my entire life. (Duh). Pretty much from the moment I popped out of my containment tube and said "hello, word," I had it clanging around in the ol' brainpan that I was a superhero, so I went out and started fighting bad guys in Metropolis as Superman (at least I thought I was Superman). Then he came back and I started fighting bad guys as Superboy. The fighting bad guys part has pretty much stayed the same for my whole life, and I've saved like a kajillion and one babies in runaway carriages, stopped buildings from falling on people, caught crashing planes, and punched big brawny guys in the face so they didn't hurt people or take things that weren't theirs, because they seem to have trouble with that whole not hurting people, "no, that doesn't belong to you" thing. I bet when most supervillains were little, they didn't share their toys in the sandbox.

Anyway, that's what being a superhero is, and that's especially what being a Superboy is, because what it means to wear the 'S' is you're never off the clock. You're always trying to find ways to help people, because you can, and it's the right thing to do. (Also, duh).

So it's hard for me to answer this question because I do it all the time. Instead, I'm writing about one of the rare few times I didn't help someone.

One of the times I didn't help someone was back around the beginning when I tried to be famous on top of the superheroing, and tried to cash in whenever I could, and I was like Panther Beat Magazine's Hottest Hottie of the Year. I thought it was okay to cash in because I was still helping people a lot, and everyone seemed to love me anyway. One time, my manager, Rex, hired a lookalike to go to an appearance I was scheduled at, a mall opening, so I could do a talk show at the same time, to pimp my latest product or cartoon or whatever (I don't even remember what it was for, at this point, that's how stupid it all was).

Except a gang I'd pissed off by messing up their weapons-smuggling operations, the Dragons, did a drive-by and shot the impersonator, thinking it was me.

His name was Luka Warlaw and he was 18 years old. He wanted to be an actor, and just needed some cash, so that's why he took the job from Rex. He wanted to go to Hollywood someday, and be in the movies.

I knew it'd happened, but I didn't think it was a big deal at all that he got hired. I didn't think about how someone might hurt him thinking he was me, about the fact that he had no powers or anything to defend himself if it did. I didn't think it was a big deal. I didn't think about a lot of things back then, because I was generally really stupid. I know a lot of people seem to think I'm an idiot sometimes and careless, but back then, I was really stupid.

Edited 2009-06-29 05:55 (UTC)

See, because it was a big deal. Because I was out trying to have my stupid face on the TV, to sell Superboy Shiny White Brand toothpaste or something, and put him in that spot, he died. He was only 18, which is sort of kind of close to how old I am in my head now. Now I think a lot about the fact that I might die, because people on the ship from the future say that's what happens, and I wonder if in those few seconds before he was shot, if Luka was thinking the same things, about how much he still wanted to do, but would never get the chance to.

What it taught me was that you should never play around with people's lives and always put other people first, instead of yourself. If I'd been thinking more about protecting people and less about myself and getting famous, Luka wouldn't have died.

To me, the time I've helped other people with their problems haven't really taught me anything to write about, other than the people I've fought for those goals with are some of the most amazing people I've ever met. The times I didn't help other people are the times that taught me things--they taught me that I just couldn't do that. That you can't go through life just thinking about yourself, or other people can get hurt. You still need time to yourself, and certain parts of yourself that are just yours, but otherwise, all the rest of your life should be for other people, if you have that much of yourself to give in the first place.

And I do. A time in my life I helped someone achieve a goal or overcome a problem of their own--I've tried to make that my entire life. I always try to help people, and I always try to solve people's problems (like if their problem is a bad guy threw their bus off a bridge, that kinda needs solving in the form of someone catching it and all). In the end, if we can't change things, my death might be for that to.

But to be honest, I wouldn't want it any other way. I don't want there to ever be any more Lukas in the world.

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