04 - College AU

Sokka couldn't understand it. He'd explored the campus, working out the most efficient routes to his classes as soon as he got his finalized schedule, and made what he thought was pretty good time considering how far this was from the Engineering building.

But he still was one of the last to arrive at the Physics lecture.

He sighed and started trying to find a free seat in the packed auditorium. Physics 1 was required for a lot of different majors, and it seemed that everyone wanted to get it out of the way during their first semester. There weren't even real desks here, just joined seats like in a theater, with little planks that could be raised to serve as something like a desktop.

He hoped enrollment for the class had been limited to the number of available seats; he didn't want to have to take notes while standing.

But in the last row, on the far side of the lecture hall, there was an empty seat right on the aisle waiting for him. He hurried around, dropped his bag on the floor beside the seat, and all but crashed into place. Victory! He would have liked to be closer to the front, considering the size of this hall, but sitting was always better than standing, and-

He turned to face the waves of malevolent energy he felt emanating from his side.

The girl in the seat next to him was glaring daggers at him.

She had a vaguely goth-like look, with her pale skin and the dark colors of her very elegant outfit. Not to mention how the black nails on her fingers looked sharp enough to use as weapons.

Sokka put on a polite smile and wished he'd brought his taser. "Can I help you?"

She glared at him for a long moment. Then she said, "You're sitting on my purse."

"Oh?" Sokka blinked, lifted his rear, felt around, and did indeed find a very thin handbag. "Oh. Sorry."

The girl took the purse without a word and turned forward again to wait for the lecture. Her face was expressionless and her posture straight out of a chiropractic textbook, but Sokka was still getting a very displeased vibe from her.

He tried saying, "Sorry," again.

Her eyes flicked to him, but she said nothing.

Sokka looked to the front of the lecture hall. Class was supposed to have started, but the professor wasn't here. Was that common? Sokka was technically paying for this time, through his tuition, scholarship notwithstanding. And after this, he had a Logic class all the way in the Languages building (for some reason), so he couldn't stay beyond the allotted time. No one else seemed bothered, judging from the loudness of all the conversation in the hall.

Sokka checked his phone to see if there had been any notices about the class being canceled or rescheduled.

"Professor Jixieshi uses candles he makes as timekeeping devices," the gothy-girl said. "Until he settles into his schedule for the semester, he'll always be a few minutes late."

"Oh." Sokka tried to pick a question out of the many that occurred to him, but decided to play it safe and settled on, "You've taken classes with him before?"

Her gaze slid over to him. "No. I'm a freshman. But my parents funded the construction of this building. It's named after our family. Tidao Hall."

"Ah." Sokka suppressed a wince as he considered how much this girl probably paid - or her parents paid - for the handbag he'd been sitting on. It was possible she was joking or something, but the quality of her clothes and the fact that she was first person Sokka had seen on all of campus with hair so shiny he could see his reflection in it made him decide to believe her. "Are your parents scientists?"

She fully turned her head to look at him, her face still completely lacking in expression. Sokka didn't miss the way her eyes scanned him, no doubt taking in the quality of his own clothes and hair. He knew he didn't look unkempt - the Tribe had raised money to buy him everything he'd need to be the first of them to attend college - but there was no way he'd be able to pass for the kind of people this girl probably hung out with.

Eventually she said, "My mother is a corrupt politician and my dad is a heartless corporate executive."

Was that a joke? Was he supposed to laugh? Sokka decided to compromise on a half-grin. "Oh, well, I'm sure they're very proud that you take your studies so seriously?"

"No." She turned to face the front of the lecture hall again. "I already got my Physics credit. Advanced placement credit. They think I'm wasting my time auditing this course."

Sokka tried to reorient his understanding around this new information. The high school on the reservation hadn't offered Advanced Placement courses, but he knew about them. This girl would have taken at least two years of Physics in high school and then passed a test to prove her understanding and earn college credit. So she was smart- if she was telling the truth, and not just messing with the guy whose butt had been on top of her bag.

"So what are you doing in this class, if you already got the credit?"

The gothy-girl tilted her head so that she could look at him out of the corner of one eye, and her lips quirked in what was almost a smile. There was energy in her posture now, and all of a sudden she had taken on enough life that Sokka found himself enjoying the sight of her.

"Projectile motion," she whispered, "is hot."

Sokka had no idea what to say to that.

Not that he entirely disagreed, but he didn't feel safe acknowledging it out loud.

Fortunately, the professor chose that moment to arrive, citing some uneven air currents in his office affecting the melting rate of his clock-candles. There was little discussion of actual physics today compared to administrative matters, since it was the first class of the semester, and that was fortunate, as Sokka was more than a little distracted. Fortunately, he got through everything without completely zoning out or dropping his stuff or anything like that.

When class was over and it was time to run over to Logic class, he said to the girl, "So, uh, do you want to be lab partners? I'm Sokka, by the way. It's always good to have a, uh, enthusiastic partner. You know, instead of one who won't even show up."

She stood up and didn't meet his gaze. "Get out of my way. I need to get to my next class."

"Oh, uh, sure. Sorry." Sokka shoved his stuff in his backpack and stood up so that he was no longer blocking the rest of the row.

The girl stepped passed him and into the aisle.

But then she stopped, blocking all the people who had been filing out behind her.

She turned around to Sokka. "I'm Mai. We can give 'lab partners' a try." Then she swept away, becoming immediately lost to his sight in the exodus of students from the lecture hall.

Well, he hadn't been expecting Physics to be his strangest class of the semester. But it would probably be even more interesting than he'd hoped.

END