milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

enzo matrix

(no subject)

A boy walks into a bar and abruptly loses half his vision.

"Huh? Is it another holiday?"

It probably is, if Bar's dressing people up. And here Enzo just intended to supplement his Academy lunch ~~with something that doesn't make him gag~~. Holidays, though, are always fun and novel, so he may be taking a longer lunch than planned!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"And they still don't think you can?!"

"They say even if I can they can't have one rule for me and another for everyone else."

Pfft, like that explanation ever flew with a kid Enzo's age.

"But you've already got the function!"

Shrug. "Like I said, rules are annoying."

Enzo nods vehemently. "Maybe I should be a renegade like Matrix. Only then they wouldn't train me." That is problematic.

"You mean like a rebel?"

"Kind of. He's still a Guardian, but he... had to teach himself. And some stuff happened that made him real mad with the Guardian Collective anyway. So he still mends and defends, and he's great at fighting and at Games, but there's a lot of stuff he doesn't know, and he's only got a version 1 protocol."

"Sounds like his impatience didn't pay."

"It wasn't impatience, there was a war and then he got lost in the Games, he couldn't go to the Academy!"

"Oh. Sorry, you implied he left."

Enzo shakes his head. "I wouldn't do that. Not really."

"Lost in translation then." Shrug. "It doesn't matter either way."

Enzo nods and shrugs as well. Then he smirks. "Though I might if Cathode keeps assigning huge docs to write."

"Miss Jenks gives a lot of prep too." Carlotta says sympathetically.

"What class's she?"

"She's my form tutor."

"Form tutor?" Tutor by itself, he would get.

Carlotta leads the horse back in for a quick groom.

"Yes. In charge of the second form."

"Is that like second term?"

"No, second year for most."

"Oh, okay. We've got two terms a year. Well, really two terms an hour, but, you know." He shrugs.

Carlotta wrinkles her nose. Time conversions between worlds are complicated and brain breaky.

"We have three. But we don't always go up after the same number in our school, we mostly go up when we're ready."

In Carlotta's canon, some pupils spend more than three terms in a form but don't age and a few, like Carlotta herself, pass the same age twice. The crowning jewel in this bizarre arrangement is that the first form book starts with them aged fourteen to fifteen, yet the sixth form six years later is eighteen year olds. The mun has yet to work out exactly how this is to be achieved...

The mun laughs hysterically because she has found a canon with a worse timescale than her own.

"Huh. We get held back a term if we fail more'n two classes. Otherwise we keep going."

"Doris had to stay in the first form for five terms." Carlotta says with a grin. "She's a dunce, but we all like her."

"Wow." He grins. "I don't think anyone'd get held back that much at the Academy. To be a cadet in the first place, you have to pass a test or else a full Guardian has to sponsor you."