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 Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 5:02 pm
After a long period of time, having this as a job had made it become rather monotonous. Kids came in, he taught them how to do something completely useless to their lives -or something that was rarely useful- and then they went on their merry ways. Then there was the fact that he could also compare them with, y'know, other kids who had the same genetics or the same genetics but different parents and blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. That aside, it wasn't that interesting.
However, today he was certainly going to be at least a little bit more interesting than before. Today he was supposed to be holding a skills class for a girl who was made of rare DNA, that being Hope and Revenge. He'd never really known those could be sins and virtues, but he supposed that it made sense and didn't have any reason to argue. Supposedly, she'd been distant and unfocused for a while since her guardian had come into possession of her, and Fifth decided that that would be a good place to start.
What he had in his classroom at this point were various different things that were muddled up in one way or another. He had a tape that had a series of different audio captchas - those odd things with a bunch of weird sounds along with a certain amount of letters or words. He also had a few different puzzles ranging in difficulties and I Spy books. After all, if she needed to learn to be less distant, the first idea would be to learn how to pay attention. What better ways were there to do that?
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Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 2:38 pm
Nina was obviously not all that ecstatic to be going back to the facility. When she had decided to go with Ephron, she figured it would be her "big escape" from the place, at least a little. However, this was the second time she found herself being driven down to the facility for something or other since she had been re-adopted, and it only seemed to frustrate her. At least last time she didn't actually have to enter the place, but she still didn't like being near it.
Not to mention that, this time, she would be going it alone, and she didn't know anybody else there that was a friend. At least she wasn't kicking at the seat this time, but Ephron was able to feel the anger radiating off her from the back seat. She wasn't very happy with him right now, that much was obvious, but would she behave herself for her instructor? Past experiences proved that her anger didn't usually overshoot their target to hit someone else, so chances were good that she would only be directing this anger at her guardian. At least that's good... I think... Ephron mused silently, wondering -- a little too cynically -- if he was going to wake up dead tomorrow because of it.
"Remember the geode I gave you! I'll be right here when you get back out, okay?" Ephron called to Nina as she hopped out of the car. In response, she only turned her head slightly and snorted derisively before making her way to the classroom, by herself.
It wasn't too difficult to find the correct room: the hallways were all familiar to her. She hadn't exactly been down these particular halls before, but they had the same basic layout. She had no idea what to expect when she entered, but at least she wasn't being taught by a tech...
"Hello?" she called into the room as she slowly opened the door, leaning heavily on the doorknob, "I'm here for the class?" She wandered in hesitantly, but immediately started looking around at everything that was displayed in the room. So many things she had never been into contact with before, though wasn't unfamiliar. She then glanced at the one who was to teach her a new skill today, and couldn't help but find curiosity. He sure wasn't a sight that she had been expecting, though what she was expecting, she wasn't quite sure. He appeared to be as unique as any spawn she had seen, despite not being one. Something to relate to, a pattern of thought that Nina tried to project so that she could feel more comfortable with a stranger.
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Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 7:35 pm
Fifth didn't even look up from whatever game he was playing when the young girl walked in, apparently engrossed by whatever it was as he mashed crazily at the buttons, holding up a finger for only a split second to signal that he would be with her in a moment, honest, he would. Finally, the game made the tragic sound of a loss and Fifth growled at it, pressing a few buttons to save his progress before tossing it into that pile of pillows that he kept in a corner.
He looked up once all that business was finished and blinked in surprise at the girl who was standing before him. Chuckling softly, he got to his feet and approached her, putting out one of his taloned hands for the girl to shake. "Hello there. You're in the right place and all, don't worry about that. I'm Fifth Avenue, and I'll be your teacher as long as you call me 'Fifth' instead of 'Mr. Avenue', because I'll never get used to being called that," he said, very much easygoing. He could tell that the girl wasn't ecstatic to be here, and didn't blame her, and was going to treat her as such.
"And if I remember correctly, you're Nina, right?" he clarified, lion tail flicking behind him just a bit as he led the young girl a bit deeper into the mass of different puzzles and the like. "Now, I have been informed that you have a tendency to be rather distant and unfocused. Going off that, I decided that a good way to help that habit would be teaching you how to pay closer attention to things, which you can practice with these puzzles and the like. Sound like fun?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 9:59 pm
The girl frowned as she watched her instructor finish a handheld game, fiddling her fingers as she waited. No, she wasn't angry, she was merely curious despite being unsure of what to do. Trying to listen to the odd, artificial sounds that came from the device as she waited, she started phasing out everything else around her, staring blankly at nothing in particular. She twitched slightly at the "death" tone, which sounded out of place, and found herself back in the room. She fought off a blush once she realized she had been staring off into space, and opted to act as though she hadn't been doing just that.
Noticing the talons on Fifth's outstretched hand, Nina couldn't help but smile to herself -- and shook the hand with her own taloned hand carefully. Usually, she would use her untaloned one for introductions, but this seemed more appropriate. It also seemed to fill her with a sense of relief when she heard her teacher ask her to call him by his first name, to even the playing field to a degree. Titles only thrusted a sense of duty onto an individual, didn't it? Gave them a responsibility that was expected to be fulfilled by their peers, whereas a first name was simply a label for a person and their individual personality, to a sense.
Or maybe she was over-thinking things again, spending more of her time wandering her own tangle of thoughts than actually interacting. "No 'Mr. Fifth'?" she teased, grinning before replying to his question with a sharp nod. "Yup! Nina Falco!" she was still getting used to the last name attached to her first, but at least she felt that it sounded pretty cool.
Upon the explanation of her shortcomings, she drew in a slight breath, failing to stop the blush this time. Still, she was not angry, just a little surprised. Obviously, Ephron must have mentioned something about this problem of her's, but she was unsure of whether or not it was because she could be read as easily as an open book. Maybe they were just perceptive? Either way, she followed closely behind Fifth as he led them over to the games, eyes bouncing from one logo to the next without actually reading them. Her attention could only focus on one thing at a time at present, and she preferred that it was on the explanation rather than the flashy colors. Glancing back up to him, she nodded and asked, "You going to be practicing, too?" Of course a teacher didn't need to 'practice,' but it was always more fun with friends, right?
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Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2010 7:00 pm
At the response of the small girl, Fifth let out a surprising-yet-fitting bark of a laugh, grinning broadly. "Nah, no Mr. Fifth, either, Miss Nina," he teased back easily, smiling that broad smile of his. He was relatively unaware of the rare spawn's wandering attention span, but he could have guessed as much, so long as her guardian had, in fact, been telling the truth about her recent difficulties. Regardless of that, most children he had known wouldn't have been able to focus considering the multitude of colours that were provided by the puzzles and the books and everything else that polluted his classroom. Surely, the dinosaurs painted all over his walls only made everything else more distracting.
"Weeell... I might, once you get into the harder things. After all, I don't want to ruin the fun of puzzle-solving completely," he responded with a soft chuckle to her question, finally coming across what he was looking for. He knew that he had ordered the room earlier -sometime earlier, since he had gotten prepared a few hours too early- and that it was set in stations that the two would follow to progress to harder and harder things. Though... he wasn't completely sure what that order was supposed to be anymore. Everything just seemed to be stacked in foreign, unsorted piles all over his room.
Hoping that he would make sense of it as they continued along, he led the girl to the stack of I Spy books that manned the first station, silently hoping that the girl knew how to read. Sure, some of the books he had had small pictures of the things you were looking for next to the words, but most of them didn't, and he preferred not looking completely uneducated. On top of that, a small part of him worried that it could lose him his job.
"First, we'll start with the easy stuff. I Spy, now in book form," he said, chuckling softly as he spread the five different themed books across the floor. They were all various holiday editions, but otherwise appeared to be very similar. If she caught on quickly, though, he would switch to... whatever was next, sooner rather than later. "So go right ahead and take your pick."
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Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2010 9:47 pm
Her nose scrunched at the formality that Fifth teased her with in return, but Nina couldn't keep the 'displeased' look on for long, and the frown quickly dissipated into a smile. It was all she could do to keep from blowing a raspberry in return, deciding that sticking with a liiiittle more maturity would probably be for the best; instead, she rocked back a little and responded, "Okaaay, you got me: no titles. Deal?" At the very least, she was easily finding herself comfortable in Fifth's presence; perhaps it was the laid-back attitude he projected, but it was, by far, different than the technicians that occupied the same building. Her guard was quickly lowered as she relaxed a bit more.
There was no denying that she was a little disappointed, to not be able to utilize the material into more of a two-person game. It made her feel like an artist might, working on a picture with their peers at their back. Well... maybe not exactly like that, as it didn't necessarily make her uncomfortable. She'd just have to try to get through the easy stuff faster, is all!
Her ears flicked once she heard what 'level 1' was, "I Spy?" It took little time for a smile to envelope her face after that; she knew that game! Well... not so much in book form -- she didn't know there was a book form -- but she had had a lot of fun the last time she played it! Her eyes studied the cover of each book in turn, trying to pick which to try at. One of them looked rather warm, making Nina feel too warm in the process. Like so many other children may be tempted, her eyes hung on the Christmas edition, intrigued with the reflective bells. However, just as she was about to grab it, she noticed a Halloween version, grabbing it instead. "This one okay?" she chirped; obviously, her decision was not at all affected by what time of year it was. Peeking past the binding, she asked as the book was lowered, "What are you gonna do instead?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 3:19 pm
“Agreed,” Fifth replied easily. Titles were never something that had fit him very well… Then again, in all reality, his name was a title all its own, at least in the gang that he spent all of his time -even his time at work- running, even if it was just his ever-present authority being remembered during his absence. His large, gold wings fluttered gently in the stale air of the room, a few loose feathers falling to join those who had already taken their leaps of faith to the carpeted, paint-stained ground.
Fifth nodded when the girl reiterated the game that he said that she was going to be playing, lion’s tail flicking gently behind him, the poof of fluff on the end of it threatening to tickle at the back of his legs if he had not been wearing full-length pants for once in his life. He observed quietly as she looked between the different books, seeming to linger for a moment on the Christmas one before suddenly switching her choice to the Halloween one. A small, curious part of Fifth wondered about the sudden change of plans, but it was shrugged off; after all, he was here to teach her how to be more in the moment, not to host a strange, observational child psychology class. “That one’s fine, ‘course.”
“Me?” Fifth asked, laying the tips of two of his rough-skinned fingers to his chest, though the lilt of his voice made it apparent that the question was merely rhetorical. He glanced over her shoulder, bright green eyes flicking across the cover of the page before he shrugged lackadaisically, taking a seat where he had been standing and letting his wings slowly fall from where they had been clenched tightly against his back; the relaxing felt nice on the normally strained muscles in his back. “I’ll continue to be the teacher. I’ll keep you on track, help you when you need it, give you hints, that sort of thing.”
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Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 8:54 pm
Nina beamed when Fifth had agreed on her choice of a book, eager to flip through the pages and see the pictures that were alluded to on the cover. Honestly, she didn't really associate the images with the holidays they corresponded to, having celebrated any of them very little during her long stay at the labs; the Halloween one just seemed more dynamic, more interesting, than the calmness that the others seemed to portray.
She didn't look to find a seat in one of the chairs in the room -- instead, she opted to sit on the floor alongside the other I Spy books, cross-legged as she opened to the first page with an image. He eyes didn't stay on it, however, looking to Fifth as he responded to her question. She almost reached over to the closest book still on the floor to offer something for him to do, but thought against it. After all, these were his books, right? He must have long since found everything in them. "Okay," she replied, hoping that he wouldn't get too bored just watching.
Looking through the words at the bottom of the page, she decided that it might be better to start from the beginning of the list rather than look for the easy ones first. Most of the words were easy for her to read and understand, being able to sound them out if she had trouble, but she still found herself stuck on a couple of unfamiliar terms. For one, she didn't know that there was a difference between a cobweb and a regular spider web. She also had a hard time finding some of the things that were half-hidden by an object or a shadow. She was hesitant to ask for any help on these catches, but when she started to get frustrated, she figured it wasn't worth the effort to get angry. Turning the book around, she pointed to the word that she was currently stuck on, "I can't find the werewolf!" At the very least, she was succeeding in not getting too distracted by anything else in the room.
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Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 10:44 pm
One thing that Fifth loved about the iSpy books that he's gotten was that next to the words, there was always a tiny picture of what you were supposed to be looking for. That way, he could pretend that he was able to read, or at least look less under-educated. When the girl spoke to him, he seemed almost surprised -likely considering his thoughts had drifted- and brought himself back into the moment, smiling apologetically and peeking over her shoulder.
"Werewolf..." he mumbled, a talon plucking softly at his lower lip as his green eyes flicked to the picture before to the entire scene. "Since telling you would be what teachers don't do -at least, that's what I've been told- I think I'm supposed to advise you on how to find what you're looking for. Best bet would probably to be starting with colour first of all, then shape or... apparent furriness. I would say looking for where they would most likely be, but iSpy books don't follow any kind of logic..."
...
"Now, this is gon'na be harder than the iSpy books. Not a lot harder, but definitely harder by comparison. I'm going to play this tape -yes, I know that no one uses tapes anymore and I'm an old man- and we'll both listen. A lot of it will sound like static and people mumbling indistinct conversation and the like, but in all of that, will be something that's very definitely audible. First, it will be a word, then a phrase, then it will be nothing but a series of numbers and letters; steadily getting harder, right? Best idea is to try and tune out everything that you don't want to hear, while staying focused enough to hear what you're looking for."
It had been about fourty-five minutes since Nina had come into the classroom, and they'd now moved from the first task to the second; after all, reeling in the beginning stages of dissociation / ADD was a big job, it was bound to take a while. They were sitting, now, in two small chairs ( which Fifth fit into very awkwardly ) next to a large, old-looking boom box. He slipped the tape in place and smiled softly. "Also, probably good to stay quiet. Any questions about this one before we get started?"
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