Rambling man(Miss. K, Open)

[wanderer]

OoC: Let Miss. K post first, then anyone else is free to join.

The squad car pulled up to the front gates and one of the officers pressed the call button on the voice box. A voice answered the buzz and a brief conversation followed. The gates swung open and the car pulled into a small reception area just inside the campus wall. Parking, the cops greeted the teacher there. <Hey, you the one we're turning him over to? Well he's all yours. The little devil is more trouble then he's worth.> As the cop spoke, his partner was opening up the back of the car and dragging out the boy that had been in the back seat. The cop removed the cuffs that had been on his wrist and shoved him toward the teacher. The kid muttered under his breath. "F%@#ing pig." The cop that had done the shoving walked up to the boy and glared down at him. <Your in enough trouble as it is I think, you don't want any more.>

He was older then when he had left, reaching the age of 15 since he had last escaped the walled in school. He stood taller and his lean frame had gained a bit more muscle to it. As the cop glared at him hard, the boy just glared back. He didn't like cops, he barely tolerated teachers. There was only one adult that he ever really listened to and that was his father who died before he had been shipped off to this school. His name was Micheal Thornblade, and he was a person blessed with an Alice. A luck Alice to be precise. So how did he get caught by these flat feet? Well he wasn't the only one that had a luck Alice, and that man happened to decide that Mike was better of in this school. For over a year it had been a game of cat and mouse, where the old man's stronger ability had finally won out.

Mike looked at the teacher that was sent to see him back to the school. His backpack hit the ground beside him and he glanced back at the cops as they hurried to get out of this place. One of them practically shoved paperwork at the teacher to get her to sign. Once that was done they would hightail it out of there as fast as they could, they heard rumors about this school.

[Miss K.]

"That's right."

Katie replied to the cops. As the boy was pulled out of the car she looked at him. The little boy who had escaped when she first started teaching. She blamed her self for letting him go and so she wanted to be the one who would pick him up. She glared at the cops and the way they were treating a student. Lately she had been getting very aggressive. As the cop thrust paperwork at her, there was a bit of a lightning flash in her eyes. She signed the papers and thrust them back at the cop with just as much force as he had used on her. Once the cops drove off, Katie was left looking at the boy in front of her. For a moment she thought of lecturing him.

She was sure he had heard enough of it. Instead she opted for something more... motherly. Walking over to the boy, Katie would wrap her arms around him. The hug was gentle, although firm. Her voice came out just the same way, gentle but firm.

"I felt terrible when you left...I worried about you every day. I know you don't want to be here, but... bare with it until they deem you fit to be on your own."

With that Katie would pick up the boy's bag and take his wrist firmly in hand.

"So, did you have fun?"

Katie still looked the same, perhaps a little more aged, a wrinkle here or there. Nothing too bad. She still wore the lab coat, though now it was looking more worn then anything. She had been going back and forth from the school on various assignments, so its no wonder. She had specifically set it up so that she would be back in time to pick Mike up. She was so happy hearing they had found him. She really did worry. The children at the school, were like children to her, if one of them became lost, or passed away, Katie would be a total wreck for months. Mike was the first student who ever took off under Katie's watch. So his case was the one that upset her the most.

As time went on the female teacher tried to be understanding about the students not wanting to stay in this school, but it never got any easier.

[wanderer]

Mike looked over at the teacher that was picking him up, he remembered her from when he had escaped before. "I did alright, a little luck goes a long way if you know how to use it." His hand dug into his pocket and came out with a deck of cards. He spun the top half of the deck onto the bottom in one smooth motion with a practiced ease. Mike was a gambler, never wanted to be anything besides a gambler. He had been practicing gambling on his father's knee since before anyone had guessed he had an Alice. He even heard that some of the snotty types though it might have shaped his Alice.

"I almost never not have a roof over my head and it's surprising who you can get to play a kid if you act right. Better if you also have someone that is there to make sure they pay up." He knew that the school kept track of his habit. He had gotten a number of warnings and punishments for it before. They said gambling wasn't a respectable professional and Mike told them to sod off and mind their own business. When they said stuff like that they weren't just insulting him and what he believed, they were insulting his dad and his belief to. And for the young boy that was unforgivable.

He looked over at the teacher next to him and his scowl softened. She really did seem like she was trying to be nice. "Sorry... about when I left. I shouldn't have struck out at a lady. But, I don't think I was wrong to leave. Don't like this place, trying to make me something I'm not, something I don't want to be. They tell me that everything I learned at my dads knee is wrong. What the F#@ they know about the real world when they can't even face it on their own." Bastards lived behind walls to protect themselves from the world because the world would think them freaks. Well Mike made do just fine out there on his own, if it wasn't for people keep trying to drag him back.

[Miss K.]

Katie noticed a little bit of dirt on the boys face as he talked. She removed her hand from his wrist and licked her thumb. She gently rubbed the dirt off his face with her thumb and smiled. As the boy talked, Katie would listen. She didn't say that he was right, or that the school was right, she simply smiled. When the boy was finished Katie would sigh softly and pat him on the head.

"Ya know what I have learned, people are always going to try and change who you are. They will always try to change what you believe... but... instead of taking off and being pissed at them, Think about it this way. The ones who are trying to change you, are scared of things."

Katie would return her hand to Mike's wrist and start walking, pulling him along gently.

"The reason this school was built was because people with Alices were feared, used in experiments and so on. This school was built to protect the children who would grow up, unable to protect or control their powers."

After a bit of distance Katie would stop and turn to Mike.

"Now... tell me... if you saw a small child crying in the middle of the street would you help him or her? Of course you would. Alice Academy is built to help children who would otherwise be test subjects or tortured. Now... I don't expect this to change your view, but ... I did want to give you something to think about."

Katie would reach into her lab coat pocket and pull out a book. The book was an ordinary black leather bound book. The pages inside were lined to make writing easier. She would hold the book out to Mike.

"Now... This is what I want you to do. Since I requested to be the one who picked you up... I want you to write in this book for me, all the things you would like to see changed about Alice Academy. You don't have to do it now. You can bring it to me when ever you feel like you have something you want me to look at. I will go over it with you and see what I can fix."

Katie would set his bag down and with her now free hand reach up and gently cover the boys hand with the cards.

"If you want to play your card shark games, come to my house or office. I will play with you. We will even play for real. Since I am a teacher, you know I will pay you if I lose."

Katie would wink and smile at Mike. In all honesty she was trying to make things easy for him and the school.

[wanderer]

Mike gave what Miss. K had to say his attention, he honestly listened to everything she was saying. What's more he could see she believed everything she said, probably saw the truth of it time and time again. Micheal didn't doubt that 99.99% of the time that what she said was true and they did try their best to look after the kids in their care. But your always going to get that .01 percent that is different. He carefully took the book that she had offered him and slid it into his pocket. It was a nice gesture, but he was pretty sure that she couldn't give him what he really wanted.

"I hear ya and it makes a lot o' sense. But it also kinds of reminds me of a story I read once, in a book called 'Wayside School is Falling Down." Kid's story really, but that one stuck with me. There was this kid named Myron and he was getting tired of sitting in the same seat every day, running down the stairs to go to recess and running up the stairs to go to class. So one day he decides he has had enough." The cards seemed to disappear from the little gambler's hands like a magic trick. As they moved a little closer to the buildings of the campus a brick wall had come into being beside the walkway. It was probably about six feet high and about three and a half inches wide. So it might have been a little surprising when Mike leapt, caught the edge of the wall, and hauled himself up. He wasn't trying to escape, Miss. K still had his stuff. But as they moved forward he balanced himself on top of the wall.

"While all the other kids are running up to the class room, he goes down into the basement. While he's down there he meets three men an they ask him if he wants to be free or if he wants to be safe. If he wants to be safe then he has to go to class every day, sit in the same seat, go to bed at the same time after brushing his teeth, and so on. Or, he can be free. Though in the story they don't tell you how scary that can be. You don't play by the rules then the rules aren't there to pull your a... butt out of the fire when things go bad. And they will go bad sometimes." Mike leapt, his hands outstretched. His palms hit the top of the wall and his arms flexed. For a few precarious moments he fought for his balance before he got control of his body again. Tilting his head back so he could see what was in front of him, the young boy started walking on his hands while balancing on the wall.

"But the choice is still the same in the real world. You can be free or you can be safe. I know what being free means, I know there are bad people out there that might do me harm. My dad... well my dad ran into one and you probably know what happened there. You probably know I saw that as well. I know it's safe here, that the teachers will look out for what they believe is my best interest. The problem was I was never even given the choice. They saw me and said I wanted to be safe, never even thought I wanted to be free." That was the nut of it. Maybe, if he had been given the choice this wouldn't have been so bad. But they had packed him up and shipped him out, chalk up another victory for the bureaucracy of the government. They had made the right choice for a person that couldn't and didn't know any better. At least in their minds. After all, what could a thirteen year old boy have known about making it in the real world.

[Miss K.]

As they walked and talked, Katie let Mike do what he wanted. So when he climbed the wall she acted like it was normal. She didn't think he would run, at least not today. She wasn't the new teacher anymore. Catching a student would be easy. She had gained even more control over her Alice and would use it if she had to. As Mike talked about the book, his father and things that he thought, Katie would nod.

"I see..."

She would hold his stuff for him and glance at him every now and again to make sure he wouldn't get hurt. Luck Alice or not, she still worried about him.

"Do you think... if you had been given the choice. You would have been able to chose the one you wanted and it would have been the right one? Say... They said you can live out on your own, or... go to this special school? Do you think at your age, that your choice would have been any better then theirs?"

She was sure the boy did. Everyone felt that way though. They believed that their choices were fine. Not until something went wrong would some admit that they made a mistake, sometimes... no one would admit it. Katie's eyes would turn to the sky and she would let out a soft sigh.

"After you took off Mike, I almost quit. I thought I had gotten into the wrong profession with my Alice. I could have become some sort of weather girl or something. Though... I hoped you would return on your own and not escorted by the police."

The last part she said rather flatly and would glance at him with a smirk.

"I stuck it out. I gave my self a week. If at the end of that week, I hadn't found a reason to continue being a teacher, then I would quit. Leave the Academy and do something else. Unfortunatly... Things changed. I became attached to the people here with in that week."

Katie's eyes would go to the grass and she would stop walking. She slipped her heels off her feet and set Mike's bag beside it. She would take off running and put her arms above her head. Katie would thrust her self to wards the ground, her arms catching her and she would pull off a cartwheel. Getting back to her feet she laughed a little and walked back to the things.

"So, I couldn't quit. Though Several times I went out looking for you, I also had some mother troubles, but I was mostly looking for you. I thought... if I could bring you back, show you the people I knew, you would want to stay. Heh, that was silly wasn't it?"

[wanderer]

Katie. As he moved, his shirt fell down a little revealing a fairly muscular body. If you looked at his body mass index it would tell you he was overweight, but that wasn't counting the fact he only had about 5% body fat. But there was also a nice, new looking scar following one of his ribs where it looked like he had gotten cut somehow. "I don't know how I would have reacted if the cops hadn't gotten there. But be fair, would you have known what to do? My dad had just been killed and the guy that had done it was knocked out by a frozen fish flying through the window. Then some suit tells me I got special powers and I'm being shipped off to some school I never heard of." Mike swung his feet down onto the wall and sat on the top of the brick barrier, his shirt dropping back down so it sat right.

"I'm not going to say that every decision I made out there was right. But I was here what, a few months? I made it out there for over a year. I wasn't doing that bad. Though now the money I won got confiscated by those cops as 'evidence'." He snorted, as if he didn't believe that for a second. "More like they saw a chance to get a whole bunch of free cash with a low probability of it coming to bite them in the a...butt." Since he was on the school grounds he was making a small effort to clean up his language a little. He was cutting down on the cursing at least.

"I might of come here if I was given a choice, but we'll never know. You can have a bird eat out of your hand if you don't try to hold onto it. But as soon as you clamp down the only thing it does is struggle to be free." She had almost quite? He hadn't known that. He took off and never looked back when he had made it out. His friends and rivals he had made in his short time here hadn't mattered, the open road had called to him and he had answered. Even in a place as large as this the confinement was suffocating. It didn't matter that he could go anywhere on the campus basically, he knew deep down he was still in a sort of cage. "It wasn't anything you or the other students did. Some suit said I was going to have to stay here and play good little boy and I extended one finger to them and told them to sod off."

[Miss K.]

Katie would grin at him. She had wondered about that money that had been in the officer's pocket. She kept silent, watching the boy carefully and listening to his every word. He did make quite a bit of sense. After he was done she grinned and reached into her lab coat.

"So... all that money must have been hard to earn... Too bad those cops took it."

A soft sigh left her lips as if she didn't know what she was going to do about it. Pulling her hand from her lab coat pocket she held a wad of money. Her eyes sparkled as she looked up to Mike.

"I tell you what... I will give you this here money, IF you agree to not run again... At least not any time soon. Give the school another try, and if you don't like it, can't stand it here... I will let you out the front gates my self."

Was he going to ask where the money came from? She still had a mischievous grin on her face. What had happened was, when the cop came up and thrusted that paper at her, Katie was a bit miffed, so she decided to take something from him. A little passive aggressive, yes... but it was better then out right smacking the cop for being such a jerk. It was probably Mike's money now that she thought about it, but she wouldn't tell him that. For starters, it had clearly been divided between the two cops. No use for one of them to just carry around a wad of cash, that would be too suspicious.