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It had taken some convincing, but Ylaine had managed to make Grey and Reginald realize that she deserved the opportunity to take the GED, even if both Grey and Reginald were adamant that it was not a good measure of education, especially for someone like Ylaine who knew all the answers without trying. They considered her arguments, but theirs fell on deaf ears. Ylaine was tired of listening to her so-called guardians. They guarded her from nothing but living her own life.

To appease them, she had agreed to one small demand. They had insisted she undergo exit counseling from the Center. It seemed a small price to pay for their permission to decide some part of her own life. Ylaine still worried that they would attempt to pursue legal action if she did not abide by their rules, so if there was a negotiable point she could live with, she accepted it. She was still too young (in the eyes of the law) to have any chance in emancipation hearings.

Returning to the Center had not been easy, but she did alone, listening carefully with one ear for any whisperings from the student body about her hair. She had chosen a quiet time for her appointment and if the few students she passed knew about her, they made no sign of it. Just in case one of them tried something, she had placed a bit of adhesive between her head casing and the wig and put on a hat tied under her chin. If someone yanked really hard, the wig would come off, but hopefully she would have enough time to try and resist any attackers.

The guidance department was located on the second floor, off to the side of the main classroom areas, and Ylaine headed straight for the office of one Rosalind Naaktgeboren. Talk to her, and then get the hell away from this building for good.

Unfortunately, neither Grey nor Reginald had seen fit to tell Rosalind about this. Instead, they had described Ylaine simply as a student wishing to remove herself from school, implying they wanted Rosalind to talk Ylaine out of it. Ylaine was walking into a trap of good intentions.

Ylaine's first response was to frown, as usual. While she secretly harbored a great love of things which were very girly, pink, and pretty, brightly cheerful people and things were annoying. Every time Ylaine encountered a cheerful person or place she felt like she was being forced to be cheerful, too, and there was nothing she resented quite so much as being told what to do.

Rosalind Naaktegeboren's office was almost disgustingly cheerful. Ylaine glowered at the pictures, the colors, and the sweetly angelic voice most of all. "I am Ylaine Taylor," she informed Rosalind simply, because legally that was her name and it answered Rosalind's jabbering queries quite succinctly. It also subtly objected to the usage of the term "honey" by setting a more formal tone in the conversation.

On her first day of class, Ylaine had been instructed to stand in front of the other students and say her name and something about herself. She had not known how to answer besides to give her name. The teacher had tried to prompt her, asking her likes or dislikes (favorite flavor of ice cream? do you have any pets?) and in the end she had offered a response only to question where are you from: a laboratory, she told them, which was an answer many of the other students shared and said absolutely nothing about who she truly was. The teacher had given up and let her sit down.

She only had that one answer, so she said to Lindy, "I was born in a laboratory," and thought that this would suffice.

Ylaine was no better at answering personal questions without eye contact. She monotoned, "Spare time implies there is some difference between time spent working on proscribed tasks and time spent otherwise." It actually said a great deal more about Ylaine's personality than she intended or realized. Her gaze was empty as she stared at Lindy, waiting for thsi interview to be over with.

Enjoyment was not something Ylaine generally found in her life. Purpose and meaning, yes, but enjoyment? "I do not appreciate being typified," she said, once again revealing more by her refusal than she ever could by telling the truth. From her perspective, this meeting was off to a bad start, and all she had to do was endure through it until Lindy was satisfied and released her, or until she could honestly report back to Reginald and Grey that Lindy had wasted too much of her time -- spare or otherwise.

As if a switch had just flipped in her head, Ylaine went from reticent to indignant in the space of half a second. Her eyes narrowed and she straightened with resolve, arms crossing and head tilting. From her tone, it was obvious what her opiinon of Lindy's intelligence was. "You're jesting, surely you cannot tell me you beleive this to be a suitable institution of learning, overrun as it is with insolent little brats."

Hypocrisy was somewhat lost on Ylaine, even if she did know its exact dictionary definition.

There was no pause, no need for switch-flipping. The wheels in Ylaine's head were whirring at top speed. Naught to sixty in less than half a second, she was a rocket car hurtling down the track.

"You are jesting," she accused, but with a cold calmness that burned more with ice than fire. "There are no children my age, not here nor anywhere else, and I dare say there never will be. To attempt to define any individual at this school as one of my peers is insulting. And I will thank you not to label me with your meaningless terms which have no bearing on my situation. The students at your institution--" spoken more like a correctional facility than an educational one-- "are little more than brutish louts, immature and unmannered. Their juvenile antics are no more conducive to learning than the howling of zoo monkeys, and their behavior is barely above the level of wild apes. In all my life I have never met more distasteful, disrespectful individuals capable of such utter baseness of behavior. If you had any clue as to the breadth of their inhumanity you would surely have them all expelled."

It was a full-on rant. To Ylaine, this was the manner in which she won an argument: by exhausting her opponent into submission. What was not totally clear was who she thought her opponent was. Her examples seemed a touch specific to be a true generalization of the school's population.

"As if such things would concern me," Ylaine lied smoothly, more comfortable lying than she was telling the truth. Lying was to her a trade skill, courtesy Emerson Thweatt. "The antics of these children are of no consequence. It is simply unacceptable that I should be subjected to such nonsense."