Reporting For Detention

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less Than Beta sidled into the headmistress' office early on the Friday morning after the incident in the computer lab. He was somewhat disheveled, but this was due to him having slept out in the dining hall all night instead of any actual lack of care about his appearance.

"Headmistress Cutty?" he asked as he patted down his hair into a slightly less messy state. "I was told to come see you..." He promptly held out the note from Professor Kensington.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less shifted awkwardly as he stood. Getting in trouble was embarrassing...

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

Cutty, on the other hand, was perfectly groomed, as she was wont to be, and looking awake and ready for the day. Her computer was already reattached to the network and turned on. She smiled warmly at Less. "Ah? Were you?" She read the note.

"I see." She sounded thoughtful. "I was going to postpone the detentions until after I had a chance to speak with all of the other professors so that I could arrange shifts to deal with all the detentions, but I suppose that since you are here, we might as well. Please take a seat." She motioned to one of the chairs set before her desk.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less took the offered seat and almost immediately shrank back in it. He doubted that having to leave in the middle of his last visit had been anything but disrespectful. In addition, he really didn't know what this 'detention' thing was. For all he knew, he was about to be chased from the almost-pack or something equivalent to it.

This still didn't mean he knew how to not be blunt. "What is going to happen to me?" he asked in a worried tone.

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

"Nothing terrible," Cutty told him, soothingly. "Everyone involved is serving detention from now until the end of the semester because of the way it escalated. Miss Wilcox has had her candidacy for student elections revoked, and will not be allowed access to a weapon for the rest of the semester."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Despite the reassurance, Less was still worried. "The first part, what does it mean exactly? I was threatened with detention on the bus here, so it can't be anything but bad. Also, what should I do if something like the computer lab thing happens again?"

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

"Detention is a form of punishment as decided by the school, which is usually given by one of the teachers. Here at Saint Dymphna's, the form of detention will be decided by the teacher holding the detention. I would suggest being careful with who you get in trouble with in the future," she said with a smile. "Not everyone is going to make their detention sessions involve a conversation."

"As for what happened in the computer lab, Miss Wilcox was extremely out of bounds in what she is and is not allowed to do, and the thought of shooting you to stop anything from happening should never have been in her mind in the first place. Ideally, someone should have run to fetch me, or another teacher, before allowing things to get that far out of hand. I was expecting that my students would show a better standard of behavior than to allow a simple argument to escalate to the level that it did."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less mulled over this for a moment. "So who is holding my detention?" he asked. So he should have run away? That... was unusual. It certainly wasn't anything he would have thought of on his own. Human society sure was strange...

((Wow, that was a short post...))

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

"At the moment, I am. And later on, the rest of the professors and I will be changing who handles the detentions for everyone until the semester ends."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"Okay. What do I have to do for it?" Less supposed that it would be a menial chore normally done by very low rankers. Something like waiting for meat to dry and then subsequently reloading the racks. Or disposing of the inedible parts left from the butchering process, probably by going out into the forest and burying them.

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

"You're fulfilling today's right now," Cutty told him.

"Now, how have you enjoyed it here at Saint Dymphna's so far? I don't believe I've had the chance to ask you that, yet."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"It's...different," Less answered. "I'm still not used to having to shift to human form to communicate. And everyone smells different from the humans back home. There's a much bigger variety of smells, some of which like Damien's or Verin's are very strange. There are also traces of magic everywhere, whereas at home you only get it in a few isolated spots or right after someone cast something."

He thought for a moment more. "Classes are hard. I can't type very well at all... Right! There was something I was wondering about. A curse hit a student a while back. Do you know what might have caused it? I was trying to find the source right before the thing in the computer lab happened."

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

"No, I can't say I do know. This is the first I have heard of anything like that," she said. Cutty's lips were pursed, slightly. "Unfortunately, I don't know very much about magic, so perhaps someone like Professor Callahan would be a better person to ask, unless you opted to continue your own research."

She continued on. "And yes, part of going away to school involves meeting a great deal of different people." She smiled. "I'm still good friends with everyone I met when I went to university, probably because we were all so different. Meeting people from different backgrounds is sometimes the best way to open your mind to new ways of thinking, and ways to solve problems you might have never thought of otherwise, besides showing you new things that could interest you."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"I'll report to her, then?" Less asked. "Where is her office?" He would probably have a one-track mind until the whole curse thing was resolved.

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

"Not yet," Cutty said mindfully. "You're still in detention with me for the next, hm," she checked her watch, "half hour or so, let's say."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"What shall I do for that time?" Less asked. "Conversation options relating to the incident seem to have been exhausted. Or mostly so." He added the last part after remembering that he had been too tired to give his version of events.

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

"Perhaps you could tell me your version of what happened last night?"

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less shifted forward in his seat slightly. "I was tracking magic hot-spots in an attempt to find any other curses that might have been around. I went into the computer lab because it smelled very strongly of magic, so strongly that I thought another curse had appeared. In there were Ada, a girl with silver limbs, and Rena. Rena tensed up when I appeared, so told her not to attack. I was in wolf form at the time," he added.

"Another student whose name I do not know and Michelle entered. Then Rena began making aggressive words at Ada. Since she was acting like a hostile pack representative, I shifted to human and told her that since she was a student and a pup she could not represent her pack without demeaning it." An annoyed look flashed across Less' face for a second. "Michelle then pointed a gun at me and told me to 'get on my knees and shut up'. And something about silver bullets. Lousy metal for a weapon. I told her also that she was demeaning her pack, and to stop threatening me. Then she shot me. Then I shifted to wolf and attempted to disarm her, but her gun broke without my help. I stood over her to make sure she wouldn't attack me again, then went to rest in the corner because I was tired. She yelled at the silver girl and I growled at her. Then the computers made a very loud noise and drove Michelle and Rena away. I do not know what happened to the girl whose name I do not know."

Less took a deep breath. "Ada and the silver girl talked about a living computer, which was apparently the reason for the large amount of magic. I asked for a keyboard and the silver girl brought up a word-processing program on a computer. Before the latter happened a teacher came in and began asking questions. If they were going to give the living computer a new body, I thought I could help. I typed out instructions for a spell that would help the computer transfer with less mind harm, but it was poor because paws do not make good typers. During this, Michelle accused me of attacking Rena but I did not let it interrupt my typing. Then the teacher brought us all here."

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

Cutty nodded, likely to herself, as Less told her his version of what had happened.

"Yes, that does corroborate with what Miss Turing and Miss Robinson- the 'silver girl in your story- told me," she said, after a few moments. "Ideally, we'll be able to get the security camera's from the computer lab to give us the footage of what happened. You're very lucky that Miss Wilcox didn't shoot you fatally, though she shouldn't've shot anyone at all. In a normal school, she would have been expelled immediately. However, Saint Dymphna's is quite unique, though we will be keeping a closer eye on her from now on. "

Cutty did not comment on the 'living computer'.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less cocked his head to the side. "I could probably shift in time; weres are pretty tough. I think I would be pretty scrambled for a while if shot in the head, though. How bad is it to have scars inside your head?" It couldn't be that bad. It would just cause a very bad headache, right?

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

After a second's worth of thought, Cutty said, "I'm fairly sure it'd would do more than just a bad headache. It's quite a bad thing to have scar tissue in your brain. Perhaps you should ask Professor Kensington to go into detail in her biology class when you take it next semester."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"Okay. That's two professors I have to find now. Where are their offices?" Less shifted in place. There was still time left before he would be allowed to go find these professors, but until then he thought he ought to learn whatever he could.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"So, who should I report to next time?" Less asked.

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

"For next time you should report to Professor Tate." She smiled. "Professor Kensington's office is on the fourth floor; Professor Callahan's is as well."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"Thanks you," Less said. "May I be excused now?"

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

Cutty checked her watch one more time. "Why not." She smiled. "Let's just keep it between us that I've excused you from this early."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"Thank you, headmistress." Less Than Beta wasted no time in leaving, though he did paused at the door to wave.

[Portia Bianca Rosalind Cutty]

Cutty nodded back, and returned to her work.