"I bet you'd be good at it. The last guy was really bad at it. ...no offense to him."

"I really dislike having authority. But - hmm, maybe there's a way to make it work."

"Up to you. I am no longer personally suffering now that I have been magically imbued with the power not to be one of the kids who gets mercilessly pelted with dodgeballs from eight different directions."

"Your school sounds at least moderately concerning in almost every way that I can think of."

"Yeah. I might have asked for a transfer but I sort of don't want to go anywhere else now."

"What'd'you think, should I be a high school gym teacher?"

"Probably. You could teach self-defense."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Maybe the ones who aren't idiots could learn archery."

"Even you weren't safe with a bow when you were fifteen."

For some unclear reason Alex seems to find this comment utterly exasperating, but he doesn't respond.

"...so, are you planning to train with Alex every day from now on?"

"I don't know. Probably almost every day, at least until I get better at things? Maybe not all at the same time, at some point I have to go back to actually stopping vampires. And the school paper meetings are on Mondays and Thursdays, if I end up doing that. And I still have to read more, I'm almost done with the first load of books but it sounds like there are a ton more things that it would pay to know about. And I should probably ever do any of my homework. Or have any friends." She frowns. "But yeah, like, probably. Maybe some days Alex'll have stuff to do, though."

"I've been keeping an eye out in the evenings, I don't think vampires have been emboldened by your absence. I'll let you know if that changes."

"There's lots it'd be good to know but I wouldn't say there's much it's worth disrupting your sleep and school to read a little faster."

She looks pained by this. "...but school is hard."

"Well, maybe you should drop out."

The two of them are probably having a telepathy conversation of some kind judging by the glaring but all he says is, "what's hard about it?"

"It's just, uh, hard to make homework happen, I guess." Lots of staring at it and not doing it and thinking about how you should really be doing it and then not doing it, lots of panicking at the last minute and internally screaming about not getting things done. "I guess maybe if I budgeted my time better, or something." To accommodate all of the screaming time.

"Can you take classes that involve more in-class assessments and less homework?"

This would probably require paying slightly more attention during class and writing notes instead of stories. "Maybe. I think homework is sort of a fact of life when you're in high school? And I don't think Sunnydale High is super customizable even as high schools go, what with the teacher mortality rate."

"Hmm. Perhaps this isn't the time, but maybe we can think later about how to make school a little easier for you."

"Orrr you could drop out."

"I think that's illegal at fifteen. And, hey, then I would have no excuse to be on school grounds and stop slime monsters."

"That's true."

"I will just have to bravely suffer through remedial English."