"Well, planes are the most popular but there's a couple of dozen people here that can fly on brooms. I've only seen one person with wings, myself," the pretty boy says before he picks at his food a little with his fork.

"Oh, I uh, almost forgot. I'm Terry," he says, waving the fork in lieu of his hand.

At this point Kenzie had no idea whether to take Talberon seriously or not. Most other people she would have at least taken the possibility at face value, but he seemed like the sort to make an elaborate joke of this kind of thing. She decided to leave that investigation to the others, especially since the topic of cats had come up. She beamed at Pandora as she said "No, I didn't bring any books with me, but I do have pictures of our cats! Would you like to see?" She quickly pulled out her phone and unlocked it so she could get to her gallery, and swiped to some choice group photos of her family's four cats. She was happy to show anyone else that wanted to look as well. It took some effort not to immediately begin listing their names and personality traits.

She did manage to find the time to give Terry a politely friendly smile. "Hi Terry, I'm Kenzie."

Although Pandora would have enjoyed looking at a cute animal picture book if Kenzie had one with her, the Ukrainian girl is happy enough to see pictures of her family cats instead.

She perks up, smiling as she replies, "Yes. Like see."

As she watches the auburn-haired girl fetch her cellphone, she asks, "Has Kenzie puffy white cat? Much like puffy white cats."

When Kenzie pulls up the images on her cellphone, Pandora leans in to get a better look at the photos. She looks each one over with obvious interest as Kenzie scrolls through them.

Creighton simply refuses to be baited into the notion that everyone else can see wings on Tal. But he did respect how fast the guy was to come up with a funny response.

"Dozens of broom flyers..." Creighton trailed off, caught in between being impressed and thinking it was silly at the same time. "Why brooms instead of carpets?" If one stereotype was as good as the next, then why not go for something with more room to it.

"Where do they get to fly? Seems to me it would be hard to keep magic school a secret with your own band of flying broom folks."

"Oh, we do that kind of stuff off-campus. There's a training camp a couple of miles into the woods we get bussed out to at least once a week," Terry says, making a vague circling motion with his fork as he talks.

Tal dabs his mouth with his napkin.

"Sweet! Looking forward to those then. The name's Tal by the way."

He figured that he might as well avail himself of this opportunity to ask this Terry guy some questions. "So what's with the whole Jets and the Sharks thing going on between those tables? He asks while gesturing with his thumb at the black & white color-coordinated groups.

"Huh? Oh," Terry says, following Talberon's gesture to see who he was talking about, as the reference seems to have flown over his head.

"The guys with the black jackets and patches are Junior Hexenjaeger. There're a few nicknames for us but the popular one is Paladin."

"Training camp? That sounds promising." It was nice that Kenzie and Pandora were having another cats moment but he wasn't going to jump in on their cat festival again.

He gave Tal an approving nod as he asked one of the questions that it seemed like they all should have. The idea that there were school groups you could recognize literally by how they dressed seemed odd and threatening, like you needed to find one of those groups to join.

Creighton looked unhappy at hearing the odd name coming from Terry. "So Terry what do you think of the Hexenjaegers? I have to admit up front, naming yourself after that group is a little like naming your political group the New Nazis."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:22, Mon 11 Nov 2019.

"We don't have any Siamese cats specifically, but I like those too," Kenzie said happily to Pandora. "We do have a purebred ragdoll, this is Cara. She's a huge sweetie." She pointed to a large, mostly-white cat. "Besides her, we have two black cats that are brothers, Alan and Tristin - Alan is lazy and Tristin is really chatty. And the tabby here is Brigitte. She's really smart, she'll come if you call her and play fetch with you. I miss them already, I'm making my family send me pictures and videos all the time. I hope they don't miss me too much though, I don't want them to be sad." She swiped through a number of pictures of them as she spoke.

She glanced up when she heard the name Hexenjaeger, clearly recognizing it, but for the moment kitty discussion definitely took priority.

Pandora shows strong interest in each of Kenzie's cats as she is introduced to them. She listens closely as the auburn-haired girl informs her about their personality traits. She smiles brightly as Cara is shown to her. She says, "Cara is cute. Is puffy cat." She likes the other three cats as well, listening to the other girl as she speaks about each of them and looking each image over as they are shown to her. Unlike the stoic mask she frequently wears, her expression is genuinely cheery while looking and talking about Kenzie's family cats.

She asks, "Has Kenzie holiday kitty photos?"

She doesn't seem particularly interested in hearing about the black and white gangs the others are discussing.

Hexenjaegers, huh. Haven't heard that since jaunt through Germanic Inquisitorial Cults -- Post-Reformation, of course.

"Paladins, huh! That's a name I can respect.

Tal's kind of surprised at the cheery expression on Pandora's face and Kenzie's enthusiasm about her cats. Not his personal cup of tea. But good to know that even macho monster hunters have a soft spot for fluffy animals.

"Not with them in costumes, but sometimes we can get them together for holiday themed pictures," Kenzie answered Pandora enthusiastically, before flipping through pictures more rapidly for a few seconds. "Like, um... Yeah, here's some, for Halloween." Kenzie had managed to use treats to lure them into the middle of some Halloween decorations, of the silly rather than spooky variety, and snap some pictures of the four of them together.

Once Pandora had had a chance to see those, she flipped forward again, this time to various pictures of cats hanging around under a Christmas tree. "Oh, and every year they like to play with the Christmas tree, so we started hanging toys off the low branches. But we had to get a really high tree stand because some of them also like to eat pine needles and then barf, the big goofballs." While the Rinnes weren't given to ostentation, it would probably be clear just from the sheer number of rooms the cats had been photographed in that Kenzie's family home was quite large.

Normally Kenzie would have asked by now if Pandora had any pets, but between her currently living with a "guardian" and her apparent antipathy toward vampires, she had an ominous feeling about asking for details about Pandora's home life. At least in a lighthearted conversation like this.

"Well, they're not named after them, they are them. Well, a youth group of them, anyway. They're organized and effective. Almost every Halloween they catch some poor uncanny person that got careless and execute them. Um... Well, calling them Nazis is a bit of a stretch. Their current leader, Eamon, is fairly moderate," he says, continuing his circling hand gesture as he talks.

"Well, I say that, but If Miss Ebongrove is really your friend," he says before his hand stops and he looks pointedly at Talberon, "You should know that he has it out for that family. I can only imagine that he didn't sic the lot of them on her outright only because Alban was right there and if he allowed this, there has to be a reason."

Pandora continues to look at the kitty pictures as Kenzie flips through them. She smiles the whole time and is clearly happy to be shown them. She brushes back a bang of her blonde hair after it slips down into her eyes.

After looking through Kenzie's holiday kitty pictures, she ask, "Kitty costumes cute. Kenzie put little hat on Kitty cat before? Maybe Kenzie take some Kitty costumes pictures sometime. Pandora has see cowboy kitty before. Is funny memory."

"Calling them Nazis is only a little bit of a stretch though. And not nearly a big enough one." Creighton shook his head in the negative. "And how is it that the school leaders tolerate - or should I say accept - this kind of behavior? I must say everything about school so far has not left me feeling the warm embrace of the principal and other leaders here."

He took a glance around the room. "Does anyone see Ebongrove? Honestly, if there's someone with a grudge against her, I'm not sure they'll wait for a moment to act against her. We should probably go find her."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:36, Thu 14 Nov 2019.

Kenzie glanced up when she heard what Terry said next, her expression briefly registering serious concern. They killed people every year? Not just rampaging mindless monsters, but people like Lesleigh and Felicia? She didn't want to jump into the middle of a conversation or just drop Pandora, though, so she nodded slightly in agreement with Creighton before turning her attention back to the blonde girl.

"Those are cute, aren't they?" she asked in happy agreement with Pandora, although her good mood had been shaken by the discussion of the Hexenjaegers. "But all our cats are super fussy, they don't like that kind of thing and I don't want to bug them. They do like wrapping paper though - every time we exchange presents they like to dig into it, and they'll even sit with bows on their heads. Here, like this." Since she was already in her Christmas collection of cat pictures, she was able to find several of the cats "wearing" discarded wrapping paper.

Jason looks up, speaking for the first time in a while at Terry's words as he felt the same concern that Kenzie did.

He listened for Terry's response to Creighton's question, leaning in slightly, his face stoic despite the rising emotions in him.

Pandora replies, "Is cute, yes." She nods in agreement.

She looks at the Christmas pictures, letting out a few perky chuckles as she sees some of the more humorous images. She says, "Like Christmas bow hat kitty pictures."

She looks back up at Kenzie and asks her, "Kenzie live close, or far? If close, maybe Pandora come see Kenzie kitties sometime?"

Kenzie glanced up when she heard Creighton's proposal. "All of us? ...I suppose we could, sure." Kenzie didn't know the girl at all, so that seemed a little awkward, but this wasn't a normal social situation - she needed to balance that against the possibility that Lesleigh was currently being murdered or something. Even if it seemed like that was more the staff's job, Kenzie wasn't sure how she felt about them so far.

She answered Pandora as she got up from her seat. "I'd like that, if we could make it work sometime," she said with a smile. "My family lives in Boston, so it's not exactly cross-country, but it's not something we could do after class easily unless we don't have a lot of homework. I was thinking of going home this weekend, maybe you could come along and visit on Friday?" Kenzie didn't know if this place would also have some kind of on-site weekend homework, but that at least seemed less likely.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:21, Fri 15 Nov 2019.

In reply to Terry Griffith (msg # 252):

Tal harrumphed a bit. With a bit of over-zealous confidence, he straightened up and puffed out his chest saying, "Eamon and his Crucible cast party are the ones that should be concerned."

At Kenzie's action suggestion, he gave a comic groan imitating a toddler asking if they were there yet. "Do we have to go now? I was just starting to enjoy my meal at Le Café de Meat Mystery. Now I won't get a chance to try the E Coli Broccoli." He winks and nods, communicating that he is willing to join whenever.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:37, Fri 15 Nov 2019.

"Hold up. First of all, all of the Jaegers are over there," Terry says while pointing at the tables occupied by the aforementioned. "Second of all, Miss Ebongrove is clearly strong enough to take care of herself in the event that somebody forgets that we're all on the same side, here. How many magicians do you think could hold up that much water on such short notice? I don't think even Eamon could have lifted that without drawing a magic circle first and speaking of Eamon, that guy is the top-ranked student. Don't even joke about taking him on."

Pandora's eyes follow Kenzie as she stands up. The Ukrainian girl replies, "Yes, maybe. Tex probably okay if Pandora go Kenzie home for weekend. Pandora ask Tex soon." She doesn't see any reason why her guardian would object to her staying the weekend with Kenzie in Boston, but she still needs to run it by him.

She suggests, "Maybe Kenzie make puppets with Pandora. Have puppet story fun."

"None of that answers the question of where she is." Creighton was unconvinced. "And able to pick up water is not the same as being able to keep yourself safe from attackers.  Those are not the same kinds of skills."

Creighton looked over towards the named student just to remember what the guy looked like. "Top rated student, like I care about that. Are you telling me that if he actively did something you opposed, aim for high drama, like he attacked Leslie, you'd just stand by and let it happen because he's a top rated student?"

"No offense Terry but none of this is giving me a drop of peace of mind. I'd feel better knowing that Leslie is currently relatively enjoying herself and no more distressed by her first day at Rainsford than the rest of us."

Jason straightens and speaks for the first time in a while,
"Lesleigh-" He starts before halting just as suddenly,

"She can handle herself."

A part of Jason, quite a large part actually, was in favour of following Creighton, finding Lesleigh and beating all seven shades out of anybody that might have had a problem with it.

A...cooler part of him won out though.

It was only the first day of school and Jason could already see an overabundance of politics in the institute. It wouldn't hurt to get a better lay of the land before they start making enemies.

It helped that Jason really did believe Lesleigh could handle herself.

"We should be cautious."

Kenzie looked between the people present, no longer sure whose lead she was following, then opted to focus on Pandora. "Oh, okay, sure! That sounds like fun." Her tone conveyed slight surprise, as she had actually figured Pandora would just need Friday afternoon to meet the family kitties, but she didn't see anything wrong with a weekend trip per se. Although maybe Pandora had figured it was actually Kenzie pushing that timetable? So she tried to clarify that with "We could also get you a ride for Friday night, if you don't want to spend the whole weekend. Making puppets sounds like fun, too!" Kenzie had a homeschooled child's lack of instinct for what activities might get her made fun of by other teenagers.

Even she knew it would look weird if she stood up and then immediately sat down again, though, so she said "Be right back," and bussed her tray first. She took a curious glance over at the black-clad kids en route, trying to commit them to memory despite their still looking like a black blob to her, then came back and sat down. "Well, I don't know Lesleigh at all, so I'll go along with what you guys decide."