First Day of School (Pt. 3)

--- Jon ---

While psychology itself wasn’t necessarily a topic his school had much depth in these days, it did however possess a decent number of the books, if somewhat out of date. So even if none of the books would touch upon topics such as Deviant Psychology, there was still a fair number of books from the late nineties, early two-thousands when the school still taught a Psychology 101 class for the AP students.

Now normally people wouldn’t think he had much of an interest in psychology, but most of those people didn’t consider the fact that he knew full well that child psychology was an absolute necessity if you wanted to enter a childcare field like he wanted. He was well aware how important a healthy mental state was for a growing child.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that his ma also taught him the basics of intimidation, terror tactics, and a number of other skills related to psych warfare, or at least the basics that could be taught without any practical experience anyway. Well excluding that one time the station had a prank war and his ma had him help in gaslighting everyone.

(I wonder if that’s why those cops flinched when ma was introducing me?) A fair number of them had almost seemed scared his ma there.

(Maybe we took things too far?) He considered, knowing just how serious the Whitaker duo tended to take their prank wars. Normally he wouldn’t think that, but since then he’d actually seen how effective those tactics could be when he had to use them to even the odds against Rosalind’s kidnappers back in Blackwell.

(The wire snapped under his blade and the lights went out shrouding them all in darkness.)

(Light danced across the wall as a flashlight hit the floor, its own struggling against the arm held tight around his throat.)

(A faint humming filled the air, crackling through all of their radios and echoing through the dark.)

(The door rattled against its hinges, jammed in just the right way to keep them trapped inside.)

(The scraping of metal on metal screeched through the air as the humming seemed to intensify, and the men struggled all the harder against the door in search of an escape that wouldn’t save them.)

“I’m going to make them an apology muffin basket.” He decided with a nod.

“What was that?” Aliyah asked, blinking owlishly as she looked up from her book.

“Oh, uh, I was going to do some baking later today, you think your family would like some?” After all, if he was baking it wouldn’t hurt to make some for everyone, “actually since I’m baking I might as well just make some for the whole building!”

Scene Consequence

-Skill Revealed: Psych Warfare at Lv. 3 (0/8)

-*New Quest* Muffin Man: Bake and deliver muffins to neighbors and the station.

---

By the time the bell rang he’d managed to make a fair amount of progress in the book he’d been reading -as well as find out what kind of baked goods the Jefferson’s like- and thus considered it a productive morning even if he hadn’t gotten in his standard sort of training.

Unfortunately, this did little to change the fact that once the bell rang he had to make his way to the first class of the school year, Social Studies.

Now normally he was all for learning new things, a habit that Miss Edna, De Sade, and his ma all encouraged. Sadly, given his school’s… less than stellar standards, he’d long since learned that a disturbing portion of the class was devoted less to a study of history and politics, and more about the recent and most prominent masks to influence the world.

A fact underlined by the review test the teacher had passed out after going over the class syllabus for the year.

(“What event led to the public outing of Deviants to the world? C. The Rift Riots.) He was a bit surprised when they mentioned the ‘public outing’ bit, since the school usually glossed over that detail, despite the fact that the Arcane Association was proof that Deviants had been around since at least the seventies.

(“What Deviant terrorist was Sanctuary built in response to? B. The Tallman.”) The fact that they were emphasizing the man as a terrorist irked him, especially since the man’s rampage ended what was essentially a genocide. Something that even his Deviant disliking ma respected the Tallman for.

Regardless, given how only a third of the test’s questions seemed to revolve around non-Deviant history and events he felt he was fairly justified in his reluctance in taking this class.

What’s worse given how he knew the De Sade family had been practicing magic for well over a century, he knew Deviant History was a lot longer than the twenty something years everyone wanted to focus on over everything else.

(Maybe it’s because they aren’t looking for it that they can’t see it?) He couldn’t help but wonder with a bitter sigh. (Or is it because I actually have a foot in that world that I can see more than just the Deviants playing Mask? After all they become a lot less interesting once you’ve seen the things outside of their spotlights…)

It was an interesting -if unpleasant- idea, one that continued to bother him through the rest of his history class, as well as the class after that.

---

As the bell rang signaling the start of lunch and his class began to disperse into the halls, he threw his backpack over his shoulder eliciting a faint jangling sound out of it.

His eye twitched minutely, before -without missing a beat- he left the classroom and started making his way through the halls towards the school theater, one of the few places he knew would be empty until the various after school programs started for the year.

Once he was sure he was alone, he pulled his backpack off and opened it. Or to be more accurate he opened the zipper to the second pocket that he kept his lunchbox and nothing else inside of. Of course, said lunch box wasn’t the only thing in said pocket, given the half-asleep fairy he found within.

Said little fairy looked up at him, blinked, and gave him a sheepish wave.