[PRP] art lass!!!

[Rookeries]

ART LASS!!!
------------------------------
who: cammy (kotaline) and graeme (zanaroo)
where: art class

 

[Rookeries]

What a day.

Graeme Withers slunk into his chair while the third class of his third day slowly wound into motion. His eyes nearly rolled inward at the idea of enduring this any longer-- the museum barely spoke of the general requirements to 'graduate' thoroughly from Sidekick Academy, let alone the education he was required to take to speed up with the rest of modern society. Mathematics? Science?? What was a lunch break?

Complaints were writhe in this young one, but he relented nonetheless. There was no time for things like that, especially not when he had so many goals in mind. It was difficult to realize that he had signed up for, though, especially since his life seemed so much more disenchanted after he stepped into the walls of Sidekick Academy. He didn't expect so many of his peers to seem so normal-- while he didn't expect them to be particularly special, he expected something a little more than this. There were people sulking in some corners, some screaming at the top of the head in others-- Upper Sewit was about as quirky as this place, if not quirkier.

If anything, he hoped that this third class of his third day would prove him otherwise. Art class, he figured, would be a bit more interesting than his boring first and second period, since he reasoned that art had to be strange to capture the eye at all. So began his innocuous investigation: Graeme's tired eyes scanned the horizon of the classroom, which had tables arranged in such a claustrophobic manner that the backs of chairs were nearly glued into one another, and the tables were so elongated that it felt more like a diner hall. Aside from the occasionally unnatural looking bed of hair, no one seemed particularly peculiar enough to begin talking to.

Graeme sighed, and the bell promptly rang to signal the beginning of third period. There was a brief rustling of papers, and hushed whispers, before a young teacher at the front of the tables began to speak.

"Alright, folks," the teacher sounded, pushing up his glasses, "Welcome to art class. We're stuffed into a pretty small room, so I apologize for that, but most of the general ed classes here get the brunt of bad luck when it comes to the Academy's budget. So," he clapped his hands together, "We'll make do with what we have! I assume all of you have gotten your materials outlined in the syllabus I've e-mailed all of you, and, if you haven't, I'd like you to raise your hand."

There was a slight pause. Graeme looked down at his table area, only to realize that he didn't have any materials on hand, then sourly remembered the fact that he didn't realize what his e-mail was until Hayden had promptly reminded him minutes before he left for the Academy. He looked skittishly around the room to see if there was anyone else in the same situation as him, but to his misfortune, there were none. Pensive, Graeme hunched his back and stared away from the teacher, trying to avoid any attention--

"I did not r'member t'check th'e-mail, sire," he blurted.

Graeme covered his mouth. That was certainly no voice of his, but the teacher expectedly didn't know that, and stared at the back of the blonde's head with a blank expression. The teacher smiled shortly afterward and waved towards his row.

"That's quite alright. Uhhh, if you would, Cammy?" He tilted his head and looked at the girl next to Graeme, "Can you share some of your materials with, um--"

"Graeme, sire," Graeme blurted, again, though his cheeks were blushed pink.

"--Graeme," the teacher noted quickly, "Can you share some art supplies with Graeme today?"  

[kotaline]

"Rainbow, sir," corrected the girl sitting next to Graeme primly, and then turned to the boy in question sticking her hand into his face with the unusually friendly vigour characterized by the stereotypical Crantellian native. "And I should call you by your alias, too! It's really only right, but people don't do it here often." She glanced mutinously at the rest of the classroom as if resenting the casual decrepitude the world had slunk into, but then turned back to Graeme with the smile pasted on her face again. "Are you new?" she queried chipperly as she thrust all her supplies into the middle of the table between them. "You have an interesting accent. Not as interesting as the alien students, sometimes I can barely understand them, but I think it's nice! Yours, I mean. Well, and the alien students' because cultural diversity is a good thing." She paused, remembering the words of a conservative and frequently irate grandfather and amended, "Probably."

The lesson was starting by now though, and Rainbow did a panicked little dance as she realized she had missed the first few minutes, sitting up in her chair and trying to look extra-attentive to make up for it. But the teacher stopped instructing soon after, and she was left with very little idea of what they were supposed to be doing. A panicked look came across her face and she glanced at the people around them. Finally, she leaned in close to Graeme and whispered, "Did you hear what the teacher was saying?" She was quite red with embarrassment and blurted out apologies. Rainbow was used to being at the top of the class, not being the person distracting others during class and for a second it looked like she was well-nigh resentful of Graeme for it, but he was her only chance to figure out what they were supposed to be doing, so the moment melted away.  

[Rookeries]

"Oh, thank you, comely madam! But I am afraid we are not aware of this 'alias' you speak of. Where might we get one?" Graeme chided, back tilted ever more away from the Rainbow-- Cammy?-- girl the more her enthusiasm shone through. He scanned her features, jaw slack dumbfoundedly when she asked him another question, but he nodded nevertheless. "Quite an observation. 'Tis true that we are new to this proximity, but I have little clue what you mean by neither aliens nor accents. Are aliases, aliens, and accents a popular subject in this academy, would you say?"

The blond's head snapped back towards the front of the classroom soon afterward, though, and Graeme merely glanced back at his chipper art partner to see just what she was doing with her supplies. His brows quirked, but the teacher spurred his attention once more when he cleared his throat and coughed, in an elderly manner almost unbefitting a man so young as he.

"...And near the end of the class, you will be drawing a self-portrait so you can look back at it during the end of the term. Got it? Alright, you can start working now."

"Did you hear what the teacher was saying?"

Graeme turned back to Rainbow and sputtered about for words emptily, though none seemed to come to mind at all. He scratched the back of his head-- the knaves always seemed to return his voice at the worst of moments-- and shrugged, biting his bottom lip. For the past three days Graeme was successful enough in avoiding dialogue between any of his peers, and all of his ability for charm seemed to dissipate as soon as those fairies took their part in the discussion. Unfortunately for the two of them, he didn't recall the teacher's instructions save for the latter half of the class. Even worse, once the instructor had finished saying his part, the classroom had erupted into a mush of raucous talking and laughter that was incredibly hard for him to concentrate through, what with having been caught with his pants half down.

"I... uh, dunno, really. Ehm, I mean," Graeme looked at the pile of papers in front of them, and furrowed his brows, "Yes, I do. We are to draw self portraits for the end of class."

Graeme scratched the back of his ear, then jolted in his seat. Alias! Hadn't she asked for his alias? In any case, the young Withers responded a bit after his initial response, "My alias is Jack, by the way," he laughed, sheepishly, "Uh, I do know what an alias is, I just have my moments."  

[kotaline]

Rainbow flushed deep crimson as this strange new voice spoke, and before she noticed anything else was amiss, she hissed, "Graeme! You can't call a girl comely when you haven't even met her properly!! Art class is no place for- for- for scandalous talk. And I assure you, I'm a mademoiselle." She hesitated for a moment, still beet red and flustered, but then she snapped to her senses and stared. "Wait, that wasn't the same accent as before, I-" She cut herself off and tilted her head at him, trying to figure something out. "Are you making fun of me?" she asked with the somewhat fragile undertone of someone trying to be confident who too often found that she was the butt of a joke. "Because if you are, you, mister, can find your own watercolours. I refuse to let a wisecracker handle my pastels!" Seemingly unaware of the innuendo she had just cracked, she stared resolutely ahead at the teacher, but it appeared he wasn't going to repeat himself. Slowly, by inches, her embarrassment subsided and the full realization of the claim she had just smacked the new kid with hit her. Soon, she was pink with embarrasment again, but for wholly different reasons. By the time he introduced himself to her properly, she was ashamed, and coughed, looking away, but extending her hand again with all the sheepish goodwill she could muster.

"Nice to meet you, Jack." she said earnestly. "Look, I'm sorry about all that, it's just, well, you know," She paused, having failed to think of an ending for that 'you know' and blurted, "You're kind of weird."

She squeaked and covered her mouth, stammering, "Self portraits! Those are fun! I'llgogetusmirrors!" and rushed from the table, returning with two which she hastily placed in front of each of them. "I always hate drawing self portraits," she chattered hastily, "Because I hate deciding what to look like." She thought of something, and exclaimed, "I can change how you look, too, if you like!" Her hair shifted from the blue of the day to a lime green to a sandy brown as she spoke. She paused, seeing she was getting a warning stare from the teacher, and sunk into her chair.

"Sorry!" she said, "I have my moments too, I'm not good with new people, especially bo-"

"New people." she finished emphatically.  

[Rookeries]

What came after was something like watching an explosion from afar, and Graeme did not dare catch up with the bubbly girl in her spiel. The most he was able to muster was a hasty wave of his hands, almost as pink as her, "--I wasn't making fun of you, promise! I'd--"

--Explain, if he had enough energy for it, which the young Withers most certainly did not. Instead of interjecting at any moment Rainbow paused between sentences, he slunk into his chair and watched her plethora of expressions fade from one to another. Mood soup, he often called overly emotional people, though he reckoned his incidental showcase in front of her was enough to spur such a reaction from anyone.

He sighed which was, unfortunately, only moments before Rainbow extended a calmer greeting to him. Graeme tried to catch himself, which only led to more fidgeting on his part. "Yeah, charmed-- weird?"

Graeme was strangely taken aback at the fact that he was called weird. He'd been called many times before in other places, especially since his move to Crantel, but being called 'strange' at a place like this seemed more out of tune than anything else. The blond completely ignored his partner while she was collecting windows, and looked down at his outfit, which was made with a plethora of reds and golds and blacks and was, in a word, quite Upper Sewitan.

He frowned. Of course, when he looked around at everyone else in Sidekick Academy, none had worn as antiquated or archaic of an outfit as he had. One point for exterior strangeness, and another for his fluctuating speech. Sighing, the blond squished the side of his face to his palm, resting his elbow against the table whilst Rainbow cheerfully came back with a pair of mirrors. Upon staring at it, he was made more conscious that he was still wearing his hat, which he promptly whipped off of his head and put on his lap.

"Sorry! I have my moments too, I'm not good with new people, especially bo-"

"What? Oh, it's fine. I wasn't offended or-- wait, especially what?"

His face soured considerably; what was she going to say? Boring? Boorish? Graeme's shoulders riled up and he glared at Cammy, fumbling offhandedly at the art instruments scattered about the table in front of him. He managed to grab his piece of paper, at least, though he was still staring at the girl rookie.

"Sorry, didn't catch that-- not good with whom, exactly?"  

[kotaline]

Rainbow was certainly not going to announce in art class for all and sundry to hear that she was bad at talking to boys. That wasn't cool! Probably!! Instead, she turned red, herself, stammering, "Especially... especially--"

Especially...

The problem was that Rainbow was as bad at lying as she was at talking to boys. She had been raised with a strict moral code, and Jack hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, she had been doing most of the things in the conversation wrong, whether she liked to admit it or not. And he hadn't been making fun of her, he said, and she had accused him. To make matters worse, she wasn't really creative enough to think of a clever lie, nothing besides 'boring', which he would hardly believe considering that moments before she had just accused him of being weird. Which he was! She was quite sure that if he wasn't teasing her when he kept changing his voice, he was definitely peculiar, but she turned red very literally when she was angry, so who was she to judge? Rainbow's natural sense of guilt steadily overcame her indignation, and quietly, by degrees, she sunk into her chair, until finally she gave up and leaned in close to his ear, furiously whispering her sort-of-obvious secret. "I'm bad at talking to boys!" Humiliated, she grabbed her own paper and stared intently into her mirror, pretending to be fascinated by the prospect of drawing another terrible self portrait that her daddy would probably hang on his office wall for all and sundry to see. However, art was depressing, and she didn't want Jack to think she was a spaz (too late, a tiny, mean part of her piped up drily), so she turned back to him and more airily offered a peace treaty, brightly asking, "Do you enjoy art, Jack?"

It was a bland question, but it would have to do, because Rainbow was determined not to make a fool of herself again this class period. She at least wanted to limit these sorts of humiliating encounters to one per block!  

[Rookeries]

"Oh."

It was a bland kind of "oh," though Graeme never encountered a problem with a person being unable to talk to boys. He talked to plenty of girls before, he reckoned, though upon second thought they were two decades his senior and far detached from the idea that he was more than a babe still waning post-birth, even in Cran. Before he allowed himself to be bothered by the fact that he was considered so small, he turned towards the table again (as to not stare at Rainbow the entire time, though the reason was honest enough) to grab some art supplies and begin working at his self portrait.

"Do you enjoy art, Jack?"

Graeme, at first, didn't exactly pay attention to her question, as he wasn't quite accustomed to being called 'Jack' in the first place. He did glance at her, though, and upon realizing that she was looking right back for an answer, his jaw gaped rather dumbly.

"Oh, right. That's me," he paused. There was nothing charming about the way he was presenting himself, but he figured that his introduction to this girl was enough that there was no point of honest return, though he wondered why he hadn't noticed Rainbow the two other days he'd been in this very same classroom. "I suppose I like it alright," he turned back to drawing, then glanced at the mirror for reference, "But I fancy another kind of art over all of this scribbling. I do know a smidge about it, but not enough to make me very good."

He recalled doodling with the stage crew while they painted backdrops for their plays. Graeme was always able to draw people decently, though they had the tendency to look scrawiner than they did in real life, which others teased him for: they said he ought to have drawn them that way to bring everyone else down to his size. What kind of nonsense was that? Nevertheless, he always continued to doodle, just as he practiced every other subject he learned and found vaguely interesting, and went on.

When he was able to refine his right eye (and right eye only) to his satisfaction, upon concentrating hard enough on it, he faced Rainbow again. "I guess I should ask you the same. Do you like art?" He fiddled with the eraser and nitpicked around his sketch's smear marks, "I mean, I suppose with an alias like 'Rainbow,' you're..."

A few claps sounded, and the room fell silent. "Alright, class! It's about time to share your partner's quick contour of you to the class. How's about we start with our new student, Graeme--, er, Jack?"

"...predisposed to-- pardon?" Jack managed to blurt, staring up at their art teacher. It was only then that he got around to looking at the rest of the class, none of which had mirrors in front of them to draw their self portraits yet. Worse yet, they were all staring at him and Rainbow.

"Rainbow? Would you be so kind and start us off?"

Jack stared disparingly at her.  

[kotaline]

Rainbow looked down at her drawing, and then up at the teacher, and quietly, reluctantly opted to take one for the team. "This is my contour drawing of Jack!" she said brightly, holding up her self portrait. "It took too long though, he hasn't had a chance to do his yet." The teacher nodded at her sympathetically, and Rainbow didn't know what was worse, the fact that the teacher believed it would take her that long to do the assignment, or the fact that her self portrait was bad enough to pass for a contour drawing of someone else. She grimly supposed that in her lack of talent, there was a sort of anti-talent, but anti-talent didn't keep her grade point average nice and high.

The teacher had moved on to the next pair of partners, and once his attention was off of Rainbow, she slunk into her chair, covering her face with her hands. "That's good!" she replied to Jack with a sort of brittle chipperness. "What kind of art do you like better exactly?" In regards to her own talents, she coughed, and muttered, "Let's just say that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover and leave it at that." The "contour line drawing" sat inoccuously between the two of them, looking more like some strange cloud formation than either Jack or Rainbow, quietly stewing in its own mediocrity.

"I try," she added in frustration. "I do try, and you'd think it would come naturally to me, but I guess I'm better at the books and studying and mathletes stuff." She fiddled with her pencil. "One of my relatives even owns an art gallery, but being artsy is really difficult."  

[Rookeries]

Jack had little idea what a contour was supposed to be, in the first place, and stared blankly at Rainbow whilst she presented her drawing. His nose scrunched up in almost worried concern-- did he really look like that? He stared at the mirror for assurance and his back slunk into the chair again, nodding only once when the girl explained their situation and the teacher moved on.

"Uh, are you alri--" he decided not to pry further, though he was fairly worried when Rainbow hid her face between her hands. Her bright interjection was a bit of a surprise, though Jack did note the slight bitter disentanglement in her tone of voice. When she glanced at her drawing again, he did too, scratching the side of his cheek to try and muster anything at all to assure her confidence.

"Well, I'm not heady at any of those things. No one's perfect, so consider yourself fortunate," he turned his attention quietly back to drawing-- he'd lost his momentum after drawing his right eye, it seemed, and sorely started to draw strands of his hair. Upon thinking about it, he wasn't quite smart at the drawing ordeal, either, but competition was his other name and he tried more than anything to best even someone who professed to being quite poor at the subject. Pride was a needy thing, after all.

He did stop, though, at the mention of an art gallery, then noticed that he hadn't quite answered Rainbow's question before now. "Art runs in your family, then? What a coincedence. I mean, I like theatre, and my folks run a gig back in Upper Sewit."

Jack scribbled nonchalantly until he realized what he'd just said-- not only did he profess to enjoying theatre, but he mentioned Troupe d'Strange. A frown started to carve itself into his features, until he started to erase parts of his portrait and noted, "Well, they ran one. A gig, I mean. And I'm just good at theatre, I don't particularly... like it."

His mouth was open and ready to say more, but the Withers instead chose to keep silent. "S'your fam's art gallery in Cran?"  

[kotaline]

"Haha, I suppose that is what they say," Cammy remarked, looking very much like if perfection was possible, she would rip out her spleen to obtain it. She glanced back down at her drawing and erased it a bit too vigorously, discarding her embarrassment in favour of a fevered attempt to improve somehow. Her eyes drifted towards Jack's paper as discreetly as possible, figuring that if she couldn't be good, she could at least try to be better than him at the assignment. Her ego needed something to go on, after all. Art class was especially irritating to her self esteem.

Finding out that Jack was from a theatre family was surprising, partially because her grandfather had Opinions about theatre people, and partially because she had Opinions about John Travolta, and never would the twain meet. However, she had difficulty picturing Jack in a leather jacket and sunglasses, so he fit rather neatly into her grandfather's category, which was barely an inch above vagrants. But, she reminded herself with a superheroic sense of civil duty, actors were people too, and sometimes performed quite important pieces of civic culture. Her grandmother had taken her to a play once and she had quite liked it, plus without actors, who would perform musicals??? Nobody, and then she'd have nothing to watch on Friday nights. So she chose to view Jack's theatre roots as Positive, and settled for saying "My grandpa doesn't much like theatre either," which was a remark that was neutral enough, though high in the running for the understatement of the century. "I think that's swell though, Jack! I've never tried acting, but it looks like fun, you know? I bet I could pretend to be someone else." She changed her hair colour and added, "I'd at least get the costume part down okay, I think," rather wryly.

She paused, wondering if she was giving too much away by telling him, but he had already told her about his family, and it wasn't in Rainbow's nature to assume other people were liars, so she obliged by saying, "My family's art gallery is in Crantel, yes. It's photography, which I have to admit that I'm better at than this." She gestured helplessly at the paper in front of her, which had still not produced anything that was much good. Eager to change the topic, she asked, "Did you ever perform any musicals?"  

[Rookeries]

"Oh, well. Your grandfather and I must share many things in common," he replied, eyes narrowed.

When Jack looked up, though, he blinked at the sudden inescapable difference of Rainbow's hair, namely because he'd sworn it had been another color before he glanced up from his drawing. Well, the name Rainbow did have to come from somehwere, and he'd noticed that she turned a rather remarkable hue of pink before, but blushing furiously was something a Withers was quite accustomed to seeing, though such a deep hue of pink he'd associated more with overweight and furious bald men.

"You... change colors. Right," Jack breathed in, and resumed drawing nonchalantly, "I mean, 'm sure you would if you tried, right, but we didn't have many girls in our troupe, either. I think there was my mother and two others, really... but it's aside the point," Graeme remarked abruptly. He knew that he was the one to bring the topic about, but it was admittedly a bad topic, and Graeme remarked that it wasn't quite hero-like to spill a life story before being interviewed about it.

He was a bit dumbfounded at Rainbow's questions, though, and though he'd caught on to most of Crantel's jargon and lived there for two years, being holed up in a museum or a home for a majority of his stay left a lot to wish for in terms of extracurricular experiences. He stared at Rainbow, returning a sheepish glance, "Uh... is photography some kind of special paint? And I do like music, if that's what you're asking."  

[kotaline]

"Possibly," Rainbow hazarded, thinking secretly that Grandpa would turn a very interesting shade of red if she compared him to some boy from the theatre. "I think that maybe you're more like J. Pierpont Finch, though. Your names even start with the same letter."

She changed her hair colour again, more to show off than anything else, and remarked, "Yes, I have a passive power." As if used to defending it, she launched, "But passive powers are actually more impressive, i think, if you use them well. I mean, anyone can be a good hero with super strength or invulnerability. How many people can use colour manipulation to their advantage? I think it's challenged me more as an individual." Her posture got steadily straighter as she said it, as if she was slightly less ashamed to be in art class and terrible, and she launched into her drawing with renewed vigour. "Plus you have to think more about strategies and such. It's not all about being strong!" She realized she was digressing and jumped back on topic, remarking "I don't know many girls either," rather sympathetically. For someone who had just admitted she didn't know how to talk to boys, the confession was probably more pathetic than she had intended it to be. She realized this approximately five seconds after she said it and turned red, adding, "But I do have friends!!" Nyancat counted, after all. And Daddy. And Grandma. And Grandpa!

Still, the thought made her depressed. She really hadn't made many friends since coming to the Academy, in fact, quite the contrary. Musicals made the whole 'getting to know you' thing look much easier, and Rainbow didn't know why it was so difficult anyway. After all, she had a 4.0! She was good at almost all her subjects, art aside. She was a perfectly desirable friend! She scribbled a little harder on her paper and looked up only when Graeme replied to her comments about photography and musicals. "Huh? Oh! Gosh, you must really be new here, huh?" Something inside her pointed out an opportunity and she said, "Let me give you a tour of Crantel sometime! I know everything about it, I grew up there!" She smiled her best 50s smile at him, and jabbered, "Photography is kind of an instant picture, depending on what kind of film you use, I can show you my grandma's gallery if you like. And musicals are like a play where everyone sings, they're the bee's knees! Well, some of them, anyway-" She paused, remembering something, and amended, "But if I give you a tour, you'll have to know my real identity, I guess..." Torn between being prudent and missing out on making a friend who wasn't a cat or related to her, she asked, "Do you mind? Oh, wait! What are your powers even, you never told me!"  

[Rookeries]

"J. Pierpont Finch," Graeme muttered to himself, "Sounds an awful flightly fellow, but I'm afraid I'm not familiar. And really, is comparison between my alias and his name even fair?"

Jack did have to blink every once in a while in order to cleanse is palate to try and comprehend the speed and mood in which this girl in art class was trying to talk to him, and he was rather proud of himself for being able to register as much as he was while being so strangely tired. Her hair changing did pique his interest, though, and he found himself nodding in agreement at her... well, natural appreciation for passive powers. "No, no, you don't have to say that again. There's not much brute strength can do for you, but ah, it's just what some of us have to work to work... with. Or struggle to work with, or not work with at all, since apparently some of us get the shortest stick in the superpower pile, and that stick might even disappear once in a while-- I mean, hey, benefits aside, how many people here even asked for their powers?"

He did go silent for a while, but he supposed if she wanted to ramble, he could, too, even if he was a tad more incomprehensible than he ever wanted to be. It was the slip of the tongue, though, so Graeme covered his head with his hands and moved onto the next depressing topic of the class: friends. He was always confident in his abilities, but it seemed that his first real discussion in the Academy was enough to jab at his weak spots.

"Well, that's lucky of you. If it makes you feel any better, I've been in Cant for two years and I haven't made a single friend, and everyone here is so weird I'm not sure where to start."

The two sat there in blatant silence while being left to their own downtrodden devices, until Rainbow broke the silence and Graeme was near melting in his seat. (He needed a nap.)

"Let me give you a tour of Crantel sometime! I know everything about it, I grew up there!"

"Eh?" Graeme looked over to Rainbow, then scratched the back of his ear; he wasn't so much worried about revealing his identity (the museum was already doing such a horribly fantastic job at that, he figured) as he was about that torrential field of horrors he'd only crossed less than a week ago. "Uh, well, you know, great. I'd love to, but is there any other way of getting out of this Academy without paying an arm and a leg to get through that carnival-of-horrors out at the front?"

The boy bit his lip and decided to skirt the powers question, for now, since he'd embarrassed himself enough already.  

[kotaline]

"Oh, it's plenty fair!" responded Rainbow brightly. "If you think about it, we only ever see him being played by actors since it's fictional of course, just like how even though I think of you as Jack, underneath you're somebody else entirely! Well, not entirely, but you get the gist of it."

She supposed that his negativity concerning passive powers was because he had powers he wasn't very happy with, and as she was over the moon with her own, she was only too eager to reassure him. "Don't worry, Jack! A lot of people have difficult powers to master, and it can take time to be able to use them well, but usually the people who take the longest to master their abilities end up being the strongest and most useful. Or," she added conscientiously, "They turn evil and go insane, but really that could happen to anybody. Anybody." She flashed him a smile that she thought was probably bright and confidence-building. "You'd actually be surprised how many people here asked for their powers! There are a few ways to get powers, but some of the most common ones are genetic, like me, I'm the daughter of Vivichromatic and the granddaughter of Radiance. Of course, I didn't ask for my powers, but I'm happy to have them, and then there are people who got theirs in a dreadful accident, and quite a few of them tried to recreate the accident on purpose. Usually people who have magical artifacts are those who are most aware of their power and wanted to have the effects. I mean, it's kind of hard to carry around a magical artifact by accident."

She drew for a bit, trying to think of something else to say, but, luckily for her, Jack offered something. Rainbow's mind neatly glossed over the 'weird' comment and she leapt at Graeme's admittance of not having friends, spouting, "Well, I can be your friend if you want! We can be best friends too, if you want! But you'll have to stop calling me 'comely madam', because it's very forward even for best friends." She wiggled in her seat and added, "I'd make a great friend, my grade point average is really good, I promise! And I know all about being friendly and polite, because that's standard procedure for every hero! Well, except antiheroes and wiseacres, but you know how they can be."

She looked confused at his reluctance to run the gauntlet again, insisting, "Jack, it's really good practice! It's not often that you get a high quality training situation like that, so we might as well make the most of it, right? Plus I think it really makes you value your free time and spend it more wisely." Rainbow had spent a month just planning how to get physically into the Academy. She already had drafted several schema detailing possible ways she could get out, as she was hoping to visit her family for the holidays.