Private Finished Blame everyone but me for this mess

Lochlann, unfortunately, did not know of Marcus's abilities so the boy's well-done puns went right over his head. He did lean forward in his seat a little bit. His interest was now completely fixed on the other man.

"Did you take charge of the monster, or were there other people around?" Lochlann asked. He frowned, brushed his thumb across his lower lip, and then continued. "I mean, I didn't experience the whole monster invasion thing. I just heard about it way after the fact, so I really don't know what it was like. What kind of monsters were they?"

At this, Lochlann crossed his arms across his chest again. It was difficult for him to conceptualize himself, but he was painfully embarrassed hat on many levels, Lochlann was a monster.

Lochlann had never played any of the pokemon games, but he had a vague impression of the company's yellow lightning mouse in his head while Maruc described the story. When the other boy was finished, Lochlann had leaned back slightly in his chair and the tension in his shoulders seemed a little less....well, it was still tense, but it looked less likely that Lochlann would spring over the chair at any second. Now, it looked like any minute, but not second.

"Wow," Lochlann said. "I'm sorry your first experiences here ended up with you literally getting zapped. Mine was pretty dull in comparison....though of course that was years ago now."

He realized that wasn't really reassuring so he said, "It gets easier being here."


ooc:
SO UH I REALIZED IM AN IDIOT
WHAT...should he be tutoring Lochlann in? lmao!

Lochlann considered. What hadn't happened his first few weeks here?

"I moved here from the US," Lochlann said. "And I moved right in that break between the summer and fall semesters. You know, with no chance to know anyone. So I was spending a lot of time on the beach and in the woods hiking and shit."

Truthfully, he'd been avoiding people. The taste of his last ex was still in his mouth.

"Anyway, I'm on the beach, just trying to fight off a killer freaking migraine when this girl walks up to me," he says. "And she's hot, super hot, but kind of in the scary way. You know how poisonous snakes are beautiful but you wouldn't want to get your hand too close? She was like that."

Lochlann shrugged and said, "She walked right up to me and just freaking kicked me. Out of nowhere! Oh yeah, and then shortly later a witch tried to eat me."

Of course, to Lochlann, Guinevere Haze was much scarier than a witch.



ooc: that works great for me! I'm bad at math myself, so this will mean I don't even have to pretend to much with Lochlann haha!

"Yeah, seriously," Lochlann said. He mused for a moment and said, "Basically, as long as you don't go too far into the woods, or into the part with the big FORBIDDEN signs, everything is great. it's past that where the goods get a bit shifty."

Lochlann's attention was drawn back to the matter at hand as the other boy pulled out the textbook. Lochlann read the question slowly, his mouth moving the numbers even as no sound came from his mouth.

After another minute, Lochlann pulled out some paper and pencil. He scrawled it down in his handwriting and flipped the paper around back towards Marcus. The answer was probably right, but there would be little issues where Lochlann seemed to have written the numbers backwards.

"Like this?" he asked. He tried to hide the hesitance from his voice.

Lochlann paid careful attention to what the other boy said.

Okay, so the highest power went in front...but...

"Does uh....does the order matter?" Lochlann asked. There was a little bit of shame in his voice, like he was unsure about even asking the question. He looked at the numbers Marcus pointed to and then frowned.

"I'm...not sure.." Lochlann said. He took his eraser and fixed it quickly, and though it was still crooked, at least it wasn't entirely backwards.

"So if I wanted to do this one then..." Lochlann tried the next problem, hoping for better results, though it took him significantly longer this time. He messed up the powers again, but his numbers were mostly facing the right direction.

His face was flushed with embarrassment.