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On a bench in an out-of-sight corner of the Grove, a head snapped up immediately at the sound of the girl's yelling. A teenage boy had been curled up next to his open backpack, leafing through the mass of papers given to all new students. Now, he froze, eyes no longer focused on the sheet in front of him.

Other students, he thought. This would be his first glimpse at a few of his classmates. He straightened his hooded sweatshirt around his neck and pushed the mound of paperwork into a neater pile on his lap. Flipping a few mousy tendrils from his eyes, he scanned the area, trying to see the girl making all that noise.

When he spotted her crashing through the hedges, a few things struck him immediately. She looked about his age, from what he could tell. Her dye-streaked hair and urban attire seemed entirely at odds with the peaceful and dignified atmosphere of the Academy. But most intriguingly, she was running after and screaming at... no one.

The boy blinked, his face betraying none of his surprise or confusion.

Gerald simply stared at her blankly for a few long moments. Now, in his current situation, where he knew no one and nothing about the social hierarchy, he knew he had to be careful. Until he had things figured out, he pretty much had to be uniformly polite to everyone. The last thing he wanted to do was offend someone who, in time, would turn out to be class president, or a prefect, or Mr. Popular... But how exactly was he supposed to respond to a girl who had been running through the campus screeching at absolutely nothing? It was like running into a disturbed homeless person. You tried not to make eye contact or respond in any fashion and hoped they would pass you by. Except she had already spotted him and was talking to him. She seemed embarrassed, at least, which suggested she knew she had been acting like a lunatic. After blinking at her once, he decided to pretend nothing had happened for the moment.

"Hello," he said, keeping his expression vague and completely neutral, as though he hadn't just watched her throw a fit at an invisible friend.

'Spir...' Trying as he was to figure out how the girl had been going to end her sentence, it took a second for him to register her extended hand. When he did, he politely put aside his papers and stood, in order to greet her properly.

"Gerald," he responded, shaking Verdi's hand easily and looking her dead in the face. She looked flustered still, and he thought that she might not be as outgoing as he first might have thought. He was still looking at her, as though he might read the answer to her odd behavior in her face, when he heard the flutter of paper as a breeze slipped through the Grove.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement as several sheets of his paperwork were swept off the bench. He fought down the impulse to immediately lunge after them. Instead, he slowly released Verdi's hand and turned to pick up what was left on the bench. The stout youth slid the papers into his backpack for safe keeping, then, making eye contact with with the taller girl, motioned in the direction the stray sheets had been blown, indicating that he was going to collect them. He turned and began walking, not in any rush, expecting Verdi would most likely follow.

((Okay, getting late, so off to bed for me! Will be back at some point tomorrow...))

"Reading," he answered quietly and briefly flicked the sheets of paper he had managed to collect in her direction. He hadn't been disturbed at all by her quiet snickering, considering it a reaction to his breeze-pilfered paperwork more than a sign of further instability. He bent to retrieve one more piece of paper then scanned the area. It looked like the last one. He waited for Verdi to catch up to him and accepted the pieces she had captured. "Thank you."

The girl didn't seem to be in a hurry, but Gerald still hadn't observed her enough to figure out whether she was someone he would want to associate with in the future. Not wanting to get too friendly, too quickly, he zipped up the papers in his backpack. "Should go soon anyway... need to get my uniforms."

Gerald paused to consider his options. Verdi had left him an out, but usually, people just did that to be polite. If you took the out, they got offended, and that was a bridge burned. One of those complicated social games people liked to play. Of course, Gerald was no stranger to social games.

He shrugged, keeping his classic too-cool-to-care expression. "Hey, it's a free country. You want to come, you can come. But either way, we should get going." He motioned with his head off to the right, then turned and started walking. Now that was how you left an out. Act like you don't care, but use the words "can" and "we" to suggest a positive response. He felt pleased with himself for a moment.

Now... hopefully, he was going the right way. He had only looked at the route to Moliné for a few minutes. He certainly couldn't pause to pull out the map right now, with Verdi watching. Confidence was key.

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