David Ruttman's Story

Just as the German car was getting parked another vehicle was coming up. This one was different from the others in the fact that it was a military jeep, rather then the usual civilian cars. The second it stopped, two uniformed soldiers exited the jeep and hoisted a hand cuffed young man out with them. From there they half led-half-dragged him across the yard into the building.

"This is a little excessive guys." The boy said in frustrated tone. The soldier pulling him along by the arm only pulled harder whilst spitting out a "Quiet you."

"Seriously I can walk on my own." He continued as they passed through the entrance. "You don't need to escort me everywhere like a criminal." The soldiers snorted. "You are a criminal." One said. "And your father had every right to leave you to rot in Juvenile hall after endangering his reputation like that. You should be grateful punk."

"Oh yeah, grateful. Grateful that stuffy ass is more concerned with-OW!" He was stopped mid sentence when he felt his arm being twisted. "I said be quiet you little brat. How an immature and irresponsible little punk like you got born to a man like that I'll never know, but I won't stand by and let you bad mouth the colonel like that." Then the soldier roughly hosted the boy's hand up, pulled out a set of keys, and unlocked the cuffs before shoving towards the reception counter. "Hopefully in the next four years you'll learn some damn maturity."

Straightening himself up and rubing the soreness out of his abused wrist, the boy turned to glare at the retreating backs of the soldiers. "DICKS! Both of you! Giant over inflated dicks!"

"I've filled out stuff like this before, if you need help with what something is asking for. Your parents probably know a lot of this stuff if you ask them for it." Alex told her. Normal parents would probably know. Mine would be angry about the excessive use of paper. She thought with a sigh.

"My parents aren't exactly fans of traditional schooling or traditional anything." She said with an uneasy laugh. Alayna didn't even have a way to contact her parents if she wanted to. Before they had told her that they were sending her to Boarding School, they had been busy planning a trip Brazil for "work." Honestly, she didn't have a clue what they were doing, but the last time she had gone with them out of country they had gotten arrested. It wouldn't surprise her if they were already spending the night in a holding cell somewhere. If nothing else, at least they weren't constantly getting into trouble for drugs.

Alayna continued to fill out the paperwork, and after a few more minutes she had finally finished it to the best of her ability. She was just about to turn it in at the receptionist desk when three boys made their entrances, each one a little more surprising than the last and not at all as low key as the girls had been. One didn't appear to speak English, another didn't speak at all...and one was already screaming profanities. If she were honest, the screaming one was the one that didn't surprise her. Her entire life she had been around people yelling and screaming, people who were angry in general. The quiet ones were unsettling, despite her being a rather quiet individual herself.

"DICKS! Both of you! Giant over inflated dicks!" The boy yelled.

She had noticed the officers had treated him rather roughly and it concerned her. The violence had seemed more than a little unnecessary. He couldn't have been much older than she was.

"Are you okay?" Alayna asked him, holding the clipboard closely to her chest and her face holding an expression of genuine worry. It was her opinion, that children and teens should be treated with care and respect. Not thrown and tossed around like a bag of garbage. Another lesson from her parents, even if they had a skewed view of what safe for someone her age was. Taking her to large scale demonstrations and protests all over the world, in strange places, probably wasn't the best idea...especially when she didn't enjoy them to begin with. She couldn't complain too much though. She had seen more of the world than most adults.

"That was...intense, to say the least." She tacked on. The fact that he had come in in handcuffs didn't particularly bother her, though she was curious. She hadn't met many real criminals and figured that whatever he had done, couldn't be that bad if they were just going to throw him in some boarding school. It wasn't like this was a place for dangerous career criminals.

"Are you okay?" The boy, still a bit riled up from the manhandling he had endured, felt himself jumping slightly as he about faced to the speaker. "What!" He almost let out another curse word, but when he saw that the one speaking to him was not another adult about to chastise him but instead a girl near his own age he caught the cuss before it could leave his lips. "Sorry." He let out a breath to relax himself and dialed down the frown on his face. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"That was... intense, to say the least."

"It's nothing I'm not used to. Growing up around jarheads like that makes people throwing their weight around like they own the place a familiar sight." He shot another dirty look at the closing doors, half tempted to go out and shout one last insult at the departing grunts. But instead he returned his attention to the girl and held out a hand. "My name's David by the way."

"What!" The abrupt yell made Alayna pull back slightly and her heart jumped. Perhaps he really did need those handcuffs? It wasn't until his face softened and he began to apologize that she relaxed again. For having such vocal parents, the brunette didn't handle confrontation too well herself. In fact, there was very little that made her more uncomfortable than a raised and yelling voice.

"My name's David by the way." He introduced and held out his hand. She smiled and shook it.

"I'm Alayna. It's nice to meet you." She said, her voice sincere. If the boy's family sucked, which it sounded like it did, then she would make it a point to be a friend. It seemed like he needed one and if she was going to start at a strange new school, with no experience other than home schooling, then she could use all the friends she could get. There was nothing worse than being in a group of people with no one to talk to and she refused to be that girl. Not like she had been with all of her parents weird friends. Those awkward gatherings were the reason she had become to attached to the fantasy world in her books.

She gave the boy one last smile before turning back to the receptionist and turning in her paperwork. "I'm sorry some of it's sparse..." She wasn't sure what else to say. My parents used a collection of herbs and oils to soothe everything from fever to nausea growing up, so I'm not sure if I have any allergies to medications? The sarcasm was dripping throughout her thought, but she knew it was best to keep that information to herself.

"That's fine, honey." Said the receptionist, though something about the older woman's face as she flipped through her paperwork said she was annoyed. Sorry you didn't ask my parents this before they enrolled me? Alayna thought, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Once the woman was done leafing through the papers, she reached for a key and handed it off to Alayna, who was more excited for this than she had been anything else the whole day. "Room 117, just two doors down from Miss Croft."

"Thank you, Miss!" Alayna thanked her, despite the awful vibe she was getting off the receptionist she was more than grateful she now had a place to put her things.

She moved to meet with Alex, figuring that she could just follow her to their rooms, but before she reached her she stopped by Pandora - whom she hadn't been able to properly introduce herself too because of all the commotion.

"By the way, it's nice to meet you. Sorry I didn't get to say with all that chaos." She began with an apologetic smirk. "Hopefully you get a room close by, too! That way we'll all see some familiar faces when classes start."

Alayna knew full well that she was being awfully nice to everyone, maybe too nice, but she was determined to make her first experience in a real school a positive one.

The arrival of the boy in handcuffs was something of a shock to Vizkopo, though he was used to people shouting it was a new experience to him that they were shouting in English. It was no surprise that he tried to sky away from the boy as far as he could without leaving seat, Manfred on the other simply looked down at the boy with a vicious sneer plastered on his face, before he went back to finishing the last page of the clipboard.

Something drew Vizkopos eye from where the other students were seated, one of the girls was waving to him. A part of him wanted to wave back, but his arm wouldn't lift up and besides, his uncle had told him he wasn't here to make friends. The most he could make in response was two quick blinks in lieu of a smile before he quickly refocused on the floor before his uncle noticed. Just as his eyes darted back to the ground, he realised another girl was looking at him, analysing him perhaps, it was something he was not exactly used to in a positive light and was thoroughly expecting the girl to be trying to find some way to get to him now.

A clatter at the desk was the only sign that Manfred had finished the clipboard of information, followed by the rapidly vanishing clacking of his shoes on the floor as the man simply left his nephew without so much as a look or a thought back at him. Just like that the last connection to his homeland was gone, Vizkopo was completely alone now.

"Vizkopo?" The receptionist called out, looking around at the gathered students. Quickly the boy stood up and grabbed his small suitcase. Though he walked stiffly, with his head down and eyes averted, like always his posture was perfect and his feet never once dragged on the ground, any such behavior was long since done away with by his eagle-eyed mother. "You must be Vizkopo." The receptionist spoke slowly, as if lecturing an idiot. "Your room is 215. You are not allowed on the first floor, but the ground floor is the common rooms." The whole time the woman talked, he kept his eye fixed on the key, no doubt if she even noticed she would have thought he was simply trying to memorise the number. Obviously finished he took the key and started to move to the front door.

"Thank you." He replied quietly as he moved off, though he was not fluent in the language he spoke English just passingly well enough to understand people. If it were not bad enough that his voice was quiet, he also bared a rather notable accent that made vowels even harder to hear unless you were next to him, so he was unsure if the woman even heard him and he simply couldn't bare to turn around to make sure. Instead he quickly made his way to the door, trying hard to get out of the way before the angry boy managed to notice him.