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xp_logs2025-06-17 08:06 pm
xp_changeling) wrote in xp_logs2025-06-17 08:06 pm
NOT ANOTHER TEEN DIMENSION - Intelligence
MA and Kevin make their first foray into the teen dimension to gather intel.
While the explanations by Molly and Clint still sounded like science fiction to Kevin, he dutifully suited up for the wormhole, accepting and snapping on the forearm gauntlet used to help them navigate the new dimension and more importantly to bring them back. Marie-Ange was already calibrating hers with eXcal’s systems, readying them for the transition. Finally, they stepped into the bridge and received a thumbs up from Molly as they switched on the machine.
The world momentarily went white, with a feeling of being stretched instantly and impossibly long and then... nothing. Kevin looked around for a moment, behind the wheel of a car – a Toyota Camry – parked in the parking lot of a high school. Just like Molly and Clint mentioned, although even he paused as he looked to his passenger.
It was certainly Marie-Ange, but it was absolutely a teenaged version of her.
“Huh.” He said finally.
"Oui, huh is a very correct thing to say." Marie-Ange said. "I believed Molly and Clint, but it is another thing to see it" She flicked auburn curls away from her face and looked wonderingly at the fresh faced version of a man she only knew as Perpetually In His Forties. "Why are we in a car together... " she started to say, and then laughed. "Oh. Oh, are we cutting class to make out? How very high school."
"Too early." He tapped the dash clock. "You're wearing a sport letter jacket for track and a class ring, both which I'm pretty sure are mine. So I'm guessing I pick you up every morning for school so we can sneak in a chance to make out before we get here." Students were streaming around the parking lot and into the school. Kevin reached in and pulled out his wallet. "Kevin Sydney. Born in 1986. That would make me, what, seventeen or eighteen in 2003? Right age for a high school senior." He paused and pulled out a photo of the two of them which had them cuddled up in swimsuits together from the wallet, wordlessly showing it to her.
"I still have an accent." Marie-Ange said. "I hope I do, because I have one now. " She busied herself with a small clasp bag, branded with multi-coloured Louis Vutton logos. "I also have a knock off purse, good job other me. Ah, a passport. Good, I can keep the accent. Marie-Ange Colbert, French passport, born in 1986 as well. Which is a year before I was actually born, how odd. A passport, but no driver's license yet, Illinois learning permit..." She fussed a bit more with the contents of the bag. "I failed my drivers' license test thrice, some things do not change, no?"
"It helps. So, before we leave the car, I need you to take the lead culturally here. You're in the right demographic and I was last in high school in 1949. By this year, I was over five years at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay."
Marie-Ange silently nodded, taking a few minutes to go through the contents of an equally knock-off designer backpack, stacking a few textbooks and spiral notebooks on her lap. "Standard classes, nothing too different from what I remember. I have two arts electives, not any surprise to that. AP Government, AP English Literature, A Statistics class I am doing poorly in..." She started placing the books back in the bag. "I am going to assume we have at least two classes in common. This is a nice car for that time, but it is not new, and the CD player only holds one CD and does not play MP3s. I would bet you have early admission to a good university, so probably our AP classes."
She reached down and pulled up a binder, full of CD's. "Music first.." She flipped through the pages. "White Stripes. Foo Fighters. Red Hot Chili Peppers... You like popular rock and grunge, but nothing controversial, unless you are hiding your Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine in the back."
"I have a Radiohead... The Flaming Lips. Goo Goo Dolls. Yeah, none of that means anything to me. Oh, here we go." He pulled out a small organizer from his knapsack. "I guess I'm a little A type, which explains how I lettered in track. OK, looks like mostly AP histories and government studies. And..." Flipping through the book. "There it is. Georgetown for the fall. Ooh, the conversations our counterparts must be having. I bet that Colbert is looking hard at something like Howard or American U."
"Half those are on my phone when we get back, I will send you an educational playlist. Knowing my luck you will quite like Radiohead. You can probably pass just agreeing that it is a shame about Nirvana but Foo Fighters is the better band, and that the Chili Peppers new album... " Marie-Ange paused in thought. "is different but you're into it. Howard is definitely not on this me's list, but American would be. If she has a similar educational record to me, and she does if she is getting this C minus in Statistics, then it would be American, and she got rejected from Columbia and Cooper Union." None of her counterparts notebooks had anything useful about university, but Marie-Ange had never kept that sort of thing in her backpack either. "I have soccer in here, and I would wager if we found a yearbook, I did theatre tech, or am doing it. So whatever social group you are in, it is safe enough that you can date an arts student without any sort of stigma. It could just be that sort of school where it does not matter though."
"Well, hot French exchange student breaks the normal class orders. I bet I field a lot of questions asking whether or not it is true what they say about the French." Kevin paused digging around his knapsack and pulled out a short strip of condoms. "And either this me is very optimistic or it's likely we're having sex. If you've got a few in your purse, that's definitely happening." He tossed them back in. "No cigarettes, no drug paraphernalia... hmm... independent study. assignment. Looks like I can skip some classes to research for it."
"I already found the birth control pills." Marie-Ange said. "The real question is, track star and art student, who are our friends? Because that will probably inform who we can ask questions of." She leaned over to look at Kevin's organizer, still propped on the steering wheel. "You have a track practice instead of PE, and that gives us a good time to meet up mid-day. I can bring you lunch, but I am cutting class to get it. At best, no one will notice, at worst I can find out who is in the administration when I get a... what would an American high school use? Points? Detention? Is that real, we never had it."
"I think we need to shortcut some things. We're both good kids, it seems. We need to understand what we're dealing with. I say we go start to the office, see if we can get access to a full list of the student body. We can use that as a roadmap for the rest of the school." Kevin said finally. "Tell me you can hack a computer from 2003?"
"Two thousand three? Yes. But it is two thousand three. I do not think the privacy concerns were the same. We are probably good students - all we have to do is borrow last year's yearbook from the office. The only thing we would be missing are this year's freshmen." Marie-Ange said, thinking out loud. "That, we get from the office. A few minutes with the administrator's computer and I can get a list. She probably even still has a good printer with a cable connection. Easy enough, you distract her, I print the list, and we scarper with it and a yearbook."
"Sounds like a plan. Get your stuff. It's off to the Principal's office we go." Kevin said.
***
"Hey Miss Brant." Kevin picked the name off the plaque on her desk but spoke with old familiarity. "How's today treating you?"
"Well, hello Kevin. What are you doing here? Don't you have Spanish?" Betty said, giving him a look over her glasses that was considerably older than the secretary was. Maybe it was part of the job training.
"Independent study project. I mean, kinda pointless now but..." He shrugged, his body language entirely different from the Sydney that MA was used to. "I need to get some photocopies from last year's yearbook. Do you think you can help?" Another old con technique he taught the other members of X-Force: asking for help often got you want you wanted easier than some elabourate scheme. Betty nodded and looked up at the shelves beside her seat to locate the yearbook.
"I can do that. Marie-Ange, do you need something or are you just here with Kevin?" Her tone was slightly less friendly to Colbert.
"I am..." Marie-Ange took a mental step back - she'd intended for the retiring and shy student she'd been in her own 2003 - but she'd also been thrown into not only a new country, and a new social group - but had the added burden of a pair of erratic powers. Here, she'd clearly been at this school and in the United States long enough to have a boyfriend, and a college picked out, with far fewer burdens - she might not be that painfully shy awkward teen. She bit her lip, and glanced away from Kevin. "Miss Brant, would you have a Tylenol? The nurse is not in her office, and I bruised my hip at futbo - at soccer yesterday. Kevin thought you might have some." She glanced quickly in the direction of the hallway, towards the only half-staffed nurse office.
"There's some in my desk, dear. Kevin, come with me. I'll unlock the photocopier for you." Betty took him into the secure room with the photocopier, with the door firmly shut behind them, making her computer open to MA.
The hardest part was navigating a word processing program that was - in Marie-Ange's memory - legal to drink. It was still only a matter of half a minute - open the program, find a file named "Student Roster 2003", and print out the entire thing on a inkjet printer that left messy little smudges on the paper. Marie-Ange then queued up a few printer tests - if Miss Brant heard the printer, now it would be "I don't know what it did, I bumped it and it just started printing!"
Tarot had heard Cypher's "printers are the evil" lecture one too many times perhaps.
She also plucked a pair of Tylenol from the desk drawer, even as she folded the student roster out and shoved it in her pocket - and closed Word.
Kevin came back from the printer room. "And so, they suggested that I try for regionals."
"You are so perfect for that." Brant cooed as she took her seat. "So if you need anything else, just tell me."
"Will do." Kevin said, collecting MA and heading out of the office. "There was a lot of Mrs. Robinson in that."
"You are so wholesome like this it is actually making me need this Tylenol." Marie-Ange pulled the student roster from her pocket. "I have a list of names, and grades, and..." She pulled out another paper. "And the staff roster."
"Perfect. I just realized, we can't take anything back from this dimension with us. I guess transcribe through audio from a quiet spot. Where is everyone unlikely to be during first period?"
"First period? Probably no PE. I do not remember seeing anyone in gym shorts when we came in, do you? So the gym, or the field? I have an excuse, I am on the soccer team." She had found cleats - ew - and a duffel bag - cute shorts, cute sports bra, cute hairband, terrible socks - when they went through the contents of Kevin's car. "I could claim needing to run off the sore hip, you can claim to watch me in my cute shorts."
"Like any red-blooded young man, I support this." Kevin nodded.
***
Keds, a pair of soccer shorts cut high - Marie-Ange was honestly a bit startled her counterpart wore them, she never would have, everything she wore at seventeen was cut to below her calves - right up until it was miniskirts and a pair of suede leather pants Amanda -made- her buy - and a T-Shirt that was Kevin's, worn knotted at the waist to show her midriff. Every excuse for Kevin's counterpart to want to watch his pretty, soccer-playing girlfriend. She laid back on one of the risers, one knee bent up, head and braided red pigtails resting on a pillow of Kevin's backpack, ticking names off a list. "Is Benjamin Russell one of ours? Who is Dominikos.. oh..." She sat up. "Oh. Oh, I suppose he is still vile. I should have pulled the detention records. " She pulled the paper down to show eyes too sharp for a seventeen year old face. "Victor Creed. Senior."
"Football team. Makes sense. Sabretooth was always a physical specimen." Kevin said, taking a sip from his coke. It was an older can design, one he didn't recognize. After all, he was at the bottom of a lake in 2003 in his real dimension. "We have a lot of legwork to do. Pretty much everyone in the mansion is a student here and half our allies, contacts and opposition are on here in some way."
"Do you think the coach has him on steroids?" It was an idle question, she didn't expect an answer. "You went to a real high school, yes? You had cliques? People who got along, and could not stand each other?" Marie-Ange's head didn't move from the backpack-turned-pillow. "I only did for a year, maybe it was not like here, but we had groups. If you were on the sports team, you did not talk to the people who did theatre, or the people who smoked pot in the back. Seniors never talked to Freshmen. No one talked to teachers. Neither of us is going to be able to talk to all these people, just because - .." She ran her finger down the list. "Anthony Stark. Anthony Stark, age sixteen, is either someone this Marie-Ange would not ever speak to because he is taking a maths course she does not even understand the name of, or so rich that she could never even approach his orbit. We are going to need to find people who can be part of those cliques."
"I left high school after grade ten to join the Army. And my high school was staffed by nuns. I don't have any real input for this experience." Kevin said and shook his head. "But social dynamics are social dynamics. You and I should be able to map out who is with who and who is aligned how."
Marie-Ange set up. "Or." She said. "Or we just do not, and let everyone help do it for us. Kevin, this is high school. Neither of us had a typical high school experience. We have people for this. I could go charm Anthony Stark into answering questions or I could just send - " She waved a hand. "Molly. Clinton. Doug. Whoever he would take classes where they do complex math with greek letters with and save half the time. Seriously. We deploy just - everyone. Work the entire school."
"We can't let them wander around without intel. We need to understand who is who and where they are in the hierarchy.".
"I do not propose to let people wander around without intel. Really. As though I would." There was the briefest urge to say "as if, Kevin." as though 2003 had crept into Marie-Ange's vocabulary with a phrase she had never used. "We send in ours, we send in some of Clinton's people. I will go get Garrison, he had a normal high school experience." Sort of. There was Dept H to consider there, but he played baseball. "Neither of us has time to map the eldritch complex layers of a high school. Let me delegate, no?"
"We still have plenty of time in this school day. I agree with focusing on our people and the dimension fiddlers first, but... we're seniors, after all. We should be able to leave here with a solid start." He passed over a list of mansion residents that he'd pulled from the yearbook and the school records. "We've Got two more periods, then all the after school activities... fuck, I have a 400m run. After, we try the mall. Apparently you and I already have movie tickets for 8."
Marie-Ange's eyebrows furrowed. What movies had come out in. 2003? That two teenagers would. Oh. Three hours of hobbits and horses. Hopefully they would be out of these bodies by then. "I do not think this you says fuck, Kevin." Marie-Ange said instead. "Maybe you do. Maybe this you is a secret filthmouth." She unfolded long legs from Kevin's lap. "Fine. Very well. Lets us go be teenagers. I miss text messages already."
"I'm in foreign country, Colbert." Kevin said, as he got up. But there were subtle movements with him, twitches, momentary pauses. Kevin was acclimating quickly. "But I'm really good at foreign countries." He held out his hand to her with a smile.
"You are a delight. Had you been seventeen when I was as well, I may have well dated you." She took his hand and let him help her up.
While the explanations by Molly and Clint still sounded like science fiction to Kevin, he dutifully suited up for the wormhole, accepting and snapping on the forearm gauntlet used to help them navigate the new dimension and more importantly to bring them back. Marie-Ange was already calibrating hers with eXcal’s systems, readying them for the transition. Finally, they stepped into the bridge and received a thumbs up from Molly as they switched on the machine.
The world momentarily went white, with a feeling of being stretched instantly and impossibly long and then... nothing. Kevin looked around for a moment, behind the wheel of a car – a Toyota Camry – parked in the parking lot of a high school. Just like Molly and Clint mentioned, although even he paused as he looked to his passenger.
It was certainly Marie-Ange, but it was absolutely a teenaged version of her.
“Huh.” He said finally.
"Oui, huh is a very correct thing to say." Marie-Ange said. "I believed Molly and Clint, but it is another thing to see it" She flicked auburn curls away from her face and looked wonderingly at the fresh faced version of a man she only knew as Perpetually In His Forties. "Why are we in a car together... " she started to say, and then laughed. "Oh. Oh, are we cutting class to make out? How very high school."
"Too early." He tapped the dash clock. "You're wearing a sport letter jacket for track and a class ring, both which I'm pretty sure are mine. So I'm guessing I pick you up every morning for school so we can sneak in a chance to make out before we get here." Students were streaming around the parking lot and into the school. Kevin reached in and pulled out his wallet. "Kevin Sydney. Born in 1986. That would make me, what, seventeen or eighteen in 2003? Right age for a high school senior." He paused and pulled out a photo of the two of them which had them cuddled up in swimsuits together from the wallet, wordlessly showing it to her.
"I still have an accent." Marie-Ange said. "I hope I do, because I have one now. " She busied herself with a small clasp bag, branded with multi-coloured Louis Vutton logos. "I also have a knock off purse, good job other me. Ah, a passport. Good, I can keep the accent. Marie-Ange Colbert, French passport, born in 1986 as well. Which is a year before I was actually born, how odd. A passport, but no driver's license yet, Illinois learning permit..." She fussed a bit more with the contents of the bag. "I failed my drivers' license test thrice, some things do not change, no?"
"It helps. So, before we leave the car, I need you to take the lead culturally here. You're in the right demographic and I was last in high school in 1949. By this year, I was over five years at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay."
Marie-Ange silently nodded, taking a few minutes to go through the contents of an equally knock-off designer backpack, stacking a few textbooks and spiral notebooks on her lap. "Standard classes, nothing too different from what I remember. I have two arts electives, not any surprise to that. AP Government, AP English Literature, A Statistics class I am doing poorly in..." She started placing the books back in the bag. "I am going to assume we have at least two classes in common. This is a nice car for that time, but it is not new, and the CD player only holds one CD and does not play MP3s. I would bet you have early admission to a good university, so probably our AP classes."
She reached down and pulled up a binder, full of CD's. "Music first.." She flipped through the pages. "White Stripes. Foo Fighters. Red Hot Chili Peppers... You like popular rock and grunge, but nothing controversial, unless you are hiding your Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine in the back."
"I have a Radiohead... The Flaming Lips. Goo Goo Dolls. Yeah, none of that means anything to me. Oh, here we go." He pulled out a small organizer from his knapsack. "I guess I'm a little A type, which explains how I lettered in track. OK, looks like mostly AP histories and government studies. And..." Flipping through the book. "There it is. Georgetown for the fall. Ooh, the conversations our counterparts must be having. I bet that Colbert is looking hard at something like Howard or American U."
"Half those are on my phone when we get back, I will send you an educational playlist. Knowing my luck you will quite like Radiohead. You can probably pass just agreeing that it is a shame about Nirvana but Foo Fighters is the better band, and that the Chili Peppers new album... " Marie-Ange paused in thought. "is different but you're into it. Howard is definitely not on this me's list, but American would be. If she has a similar educational record to me, and she does if she is getting this C minus in Statistics, then it would be American, and she got rejected from Columbia and Cooper Union." None of her counterparts notebooks had anything useful about university, but Marie-Ange had never kept that sort of thing in her backpack either. "I have soccer in here, and I would wager if we found a yearbook, I did theatre tech, or am doing it. So whatever social group you are in, it is safe enough that you can date an arts student without any sort of stigma. It could just be that sort of school where it does not matter though."
"Well, hot French exchange student breaks the normal class orders. I bet I field a lot of questions asking whether or not it is true what they say about the French." Kevin paused digging around his knapsack and pulled out a short strip of condoms. "And either this me is very optimistic or it's likely we're having sex. If you've got a few in your purse, that's definitely happening." He tossed them back in. "No cigarettes, no drug paraphernalia... hmm... independent study. assignment. Looks like I can skip some classes to research for it."
"I already found the birth control pills." Marie-Ange said. "The real question is, track star and art student, who are our friends? Because that will probably inform who we can ask questions of." She leaned over to look at Kevin's organizer, still propped on the steering wheel. "You have a track practice instead of PE, and that gives us a good time to meet up mid-day. I can bring you lunch, but I am cutting class to get it. At best, no one will notice, at worst I can find out who is in the administration when I get a... what would an American high school use? Points? Detention? Is that real, we never had it."
"I think we need to shortcut some things. We're both good kids, it seems. We need to understand what we're dealing with. I say we go start to the office, see if we can get access to a full list of the student body. We can use that as a roadmap for the rest of the school." Kevin said finally. "Tell me you can hack a computer from 2003?"
"Two thousand three? Yes. But it is two thousand three. I do not think the privacy concerns were the same. We are probably good students - all we have to do is borrow last year's yearbook from the office. The only thing we would be missing are this year's freshmen." Marie-Ange said, thinking out loud. "That, we get from the office. A few minutes with the administrator's computer and I can get a list. She probably even still has a good printer with a cable connection. Easy enough, you distract her, I print the list, and we scarper with it and a yearbook."
"Sounds like a plan. Get your stuff. It's off to the Principal's office we go." Kevin said.
***
"Hey Miss Brant." Kevin picked the name off the plaque on her desk but spoke with old familiarity. "How's today treating you?"
"Well, hello Kevin. What are you doing here? Don't you have Spanish?" Betty said, giving him a look over her glasses that was considerably older than the secretary was. Maybe it was part of the job training.
"Independent study project. I mean, kinda pointless now but..." He shrugged, his body language entirely different from the Sydney that MA was used to. "I need to get some photocopies from last year's yearbook. Do you think you can help?" Another old con technique he taught the other members of X-Force: asking for help often got you want you wanted easier than some elabourate scheme. Betty nodded and looked up at the shelves beside her seat to locate the yearbook.
"I can do that. Marie-Ange, do you need something or are you just here with Kevin?" Her tone was slightly less friendly to Colbert.
"I am..." Marie-Ange took a mental step back - she'd intended for the retiring and shy student she'd been in her own 2003 - but she'd also been thrown into not only a new country, and a new social group - but had the added burden of a pair of erratic powers. Here, she'd clearly been at this school and in the United States long enough to have a boyfriend, and a college picked out, with far fewer burdens - she might not be that painfully shy awkward teen. She bit her lip, and glanced away from Kevin. "Miss Brant, would you have a Tylenol? The nurse is not in her office, and I bruised my hip at futbo - at soccer yesterday. Kevin thought you might have some." She glanced quickly in the direction of the hallway, towards the only half-staffed nurse office.
"There's some in my desk, dear. Kevin, come with me. I'll unlock the photocopier for you." Betty took him into the secure room with the photocopier, with the door firmly shut behind them, making her computer open to MA.
The hardest part was navigating a word processing program that was - in Marie-Ange's memory - legal to drink. It was still only a matter of half a minute - open the program, find a file named "Student Roster 2003", and print out the entire thing on a inkjet printer that left messy little smudges on the paper. Marie-Ange then queued up a few printer tests - if Miss Brant heard the printer, now it would be "I don't know what it did, I bumped it and it just started printing!"
Tarot had heard Cypher's "printers are the evil" lecture one too many times perhaps.
She also plucked a pair of Tylenol from the desk drawer, even as she folded the student roster out and shoved it in her pocket - and closed Word.
Kevin came back from the printer room. "And so, they suggested that I try for regionals."
"You are so perfect for that." Brant cooed as she took her seat. "So if you need anything else, just tell me."
"Will do." Kevin said, collecting MA and heading out of the office. "There was a lot of Mrs. Robinson in that."
"You are so wholesome like this it is actually making me need this Tylenol." Marie-Ange pulled the student roster from her pocket. "I have a list of names, and grades, and..." She pulled out another paper. "And the staff roster."
"Perfect. I just realized, we can't take anything back from this dimension with us. I guess transcribe through audio from a quiet spot. Where is everyone unlikely to be during first period?"
"First period? Probably no PE. I do not remember seeing anyone in gym shorts when we came in, do you? So the gym, or the field? I have an excuse, I am on the soccer team." She had found cleats - ew - and a duffel bag - cute shorts, cute sports bra, cute hairband, terrible socks - when they went through the contents of Kevin's car. "I could claim needing to run off the sore hip, you can claim to watch me in my cute shorts."
"Like any red-blooded young man, I support this." Kevin nodded.
***
Keds, a pair of soccer shorts cut high - Marie-Ange was honestly a bit startled her counterpart wore them, she never would have, everything she wore at seventeen was cut to below her calves - right up until it was miniskirts and a pair of suede leather pants Amanda -made- her buy - and a T-Shirt that was Kevin's, worn knotted at the waist to show her midriff. Every excuse for Kevin's counterpart to want to watch his pretty, soccer-playing girlfriend. She laid back on one of the risers, one knee bent up, head and braided red pigtails resting on a pillow of Kevin's backpack, ticking names off a list. "Is Benjamin Russell one of ours? Who is Dominikos.. oh..." She sat up. "Oh. Oh, I suppose he is still vile. I should have pulled the detention records. " She pulled the paper down to show eyes too sharp for a seventeen year old face. "Victor Creed. Senior."
"Football team. Makes sense. Sabretooth was always a physical specimen." Kevin said, taking a sip from his coke. It was an older can design, one he didn't recognize. After all, he was at the bottom of a lake in 2003 in his real dimension. "We have a lot of legwork to do. Pretty much everyone in the mansion is a student here and half our allies, contacts and opposition are on here in some way."
"Do you think the coach has him on steroids?" It was an idle question, she didn't expect an answer. "You went to a real high school, yes? You had cliques? People who got along, and could not stand each other?" Marie-Ange's head didn't move from the backpack-turned-pillow. "I only did for a year, maybe it was not like here, but we had groups. If you were on the sports team, you did not talk to the people who did theatre, or the people who smoked pot in the back. Seniors never talked to Freshmen. No one talked to teachers. Neither of us is going to be able to talk to all these people, just because - .." She ran her finger down the list. "Anthony Stark. Anthony Stark, age sixteen, is either someone this Marie-Ange would not ever speak to because he is taking a maths course she does not even understand the name of, or so rich that she could never even approach his orbit. We are going to need to find people who can be part of those cliques."
"I left high school after grade ten to join the Army. And my high school was staffed by nuns. I don't have any real input for this experience." Kevin said and shook his head. "But social dynamics are social dynamics. You and I should be able to map out who is with who and who is aligned how."
Marie-Ange set up. "Or." She said. "Or we just do not, and let everyone help do it for us. Kevin, this is high school. Neither of us had a typical high school experience. We have people for this. I could go charm Anthony Stark into answering questions or I could just send - " She waved a hand. "Molly. Clinton. Doug. Whoever he would take classes where they do complex math with greek letters with and save half the time. Seriously. We deploy just - everyone. Work the entire school."
"We can't let them wander around without intel. We need to understand who is who and where they are in the hierarchy.".
"I do not propose to let people wander around without intel. Really. As though I would." There was the briefest urge to say "as if, Kevin." as though 2003 had crept into Marie-Ange's vocabulary with a phrase she had never used. "We send in ours, we send in some of Clinton's people. I will go get Garrison, he had a normal high school experience." Sort of. There was Dept H to consider there, but he played baseball. "Neither of us has time to map the eldritch complex layers of a high school. Let me delegate, no?"
"We still have plenty of time in this school day. I agree with focusing on our people and the dimension fiddlers first, but... we're seniors, after all. We should be able to leave here with a solid start." He passed over a list of mansion residents that he'd pulled from the yearbook and the school records. "We've Got two more periods, then all the after school activities... fuck, I have a 400m run. After, we try the mall. Apparently you and I already have movie tickets for 8."
Marie-Ange's eyebrows furrowed. What movies had come out in. 2003? That two teenagers would. Oh. Three hours of hobbits and horses. Hopefully they would be out of these bodies by then. "I do not think this you says fuck, Kevin." Marie-Ange said instead. "Maybe you do. Maybe this you is a secret filthmouth." She unfolded long legs from Kevin's lap. "Fine. Very well. Lets us go be teenagers. I miss text messages already."
"I'm in foreign country, Colbert." Kevin said, as he got up. But there were subtle movements with him, twitches, momentary pauses. Kevin was acclimating quickly. "But I'm really good at foreign countries." He held out his hand to her with a smile.
"You are a delight. Had you been seventeen when I was as well, I may have well dated you." She took his hand and let him help her up.