In among the 11th graders, an unfamiliar boy stands up, looking a bit awkward seeing as he's one of the few who are both new and not freshmen.

Alli isn't paying attention when the students first stand; Helen's filling her in about her kind-of-not-really boyfriend from gymnastics camp. But then Jada nudges them. "You guys. You guys. You guuuuuuys," she hisses.

Alli looks up. "Huh? Wha-" then she sees the new boy.

"Look at the new kid!" Jada whispers happily.

"Holy. Shit." Alli sizes him up. "Can I have one?"

"...I am seriously regretting the camp boyfriend right now," Helen giggles.

They applaud rather more enthusiastically than normal. Alli grins. Thank you, transfer student gods.

Theo sits back down, waiting for the end of the assembly.

For once, Alli is grateful for the snobbery of cheerleaders. While they clearly agree that the new boy is worth chatting up, at the end of assembly they sashay past him with winks and smiles but not a word. No matter how pretty he is, they obviously expect that he will approach them first.

Alli has no such compunctions.

"Yo new kid!" she says cheerfully and sticks her hand out. "I'm Alli, what's your name?"

Theo smiles at the cheerleaders as they walk by, but doesn't wink back. He seems a bit confused by the attention.

Ooh, conversation. "Hi! I'm Theo," he says, reciprocating.

"Nice to meet you," she says with a grin. She waves at her friends behind her. "That's Helen and that's Jada." They wave. "What brings you to Sunnydale?"

"Oh, pretty boring really. My dad got a new job in the area."

"Well, welcome, glad to have you." The bell rings and Alli bites back a swear; there's a lot of teachers still nearby and she definitely doesn't need detention her first day. "Math time I guess. Where're you going? We can help you find your classroom."

He looks down at his schedule. "Apparently I also have math!"

Jada pouts. "I've got English."

Helen kicks her ankle as she smiles brightly at the others. "Me too. Come on, Alli can walk Theo, right?"

Jada smiles back, but her eyes are glaring Not everyone has handy camp boyfriends! at Helen. But she goes along with it. "Nice to meet you," they chorus, and wander off towards their classroom.

Alli does a gleeful dance in her head and decides she owes Helen a thank you drink. And possibly Jada an apology drink. "Math it is! Come on, it's this way." She grabs her backpack and heads out of the gym. Once outside, she takes a gasping breath. "Oh man. I did not realize how stuffy that room was until I left. Air."

"Haha, yeah. Assemblies aren't exactly the most interesting. Are we in the same class?" He shows her his schedule.

"Ugh, right? I don't know why they think that'll make us any more excited about school. An hour of listening to adults saying feel good shit. No one caaaares." She looks at his schedule mostly as an excuse to lean towards him and peer at it. "Yeah, that's mine. I think there's only two sections? Sunnydale's not all that big."

"Ah, okay. Have you had the teacher before, then?"

"Couple years ago, she teaches Algebra 2 and Precalc. Last year was Geometry with a different guy." Alli shrugs. "She's okay. Little weird? She's into creative shit, and it's math." Not particularly wanting to focus on school, she changes the subject. "How do you like Sunnydale so far?"

"It seems nice, I guess? Lots of graveyards, though."

"Tell me about it. We're like a bad Halloween joke or something." If only he knew, Alli snickers to herself. "At least I match-" she is in fact wearing quite a bit of black, "-but enh. I don't do the whole mopey death poetry thing. Just the clothes."

She turns them into the next door on the right and grabs a seat towards the back. There's a desk free next to her she jerks her head at. "Wanna join?"

Theo looks around the classroom a bit, but decides to sit next to the one person he kinda knows. "Sure."

He sits down at the desk next to her, moving fluidly into the seat.

That was- huh. That was rather more graceful than Alli was expecting from a teenage boy. What is he, a dancer?

Class starts, limiting Alli's ability to chat, but she isn't paying particularly close attention; mostly she just draws stupid doodles on her notebook. Nothing worth taking notes on happens the first day of class anyway. Every so often she'll slip one in a note to Theo; her favorite is immediately after the teacher starts talking about how "math is a super power."

Towards the end of class, she puts her pencil down to fold a note for Helen for later, but the pencil fails to stay where she left it. It drops off the desk and rolls away from her, landing somewhat behind Theo's desk. She sizes it up, decides that she probably can't actually scramble for it, and then sighs at the empty desks behind them. No one she can ask to pass it, and it'd be an awkward angle for Theo to reach; twisting around in these desks is downright painful. Fine, fine, she can do this subtly, right? There's no one behind them anyway or she wouldn't have this problem.

She leans down, reaches as close to the pencil as she can manage, and wiggles her fingers. The pencil scoots closer to her all by itself until she can snatch it up without overextending her arm. Gotcha.

She sits back up, and goes back to her latest doodle. Cartoon-Cosine and Cartoon-Sine aren't being very nice to Cartoon-Tangent. Shame on them.

Math... is kinda boring. Theo's pretty good at it, and they're just listening to the standard start-of-year lecture that recaps a couple of things and tries to get them all inspired for the new year of wonder. Eugh. He's pretty amused by Alli's doodles, though, but he tries not to laugh – he doesn't want to get called out on the first day of class.

Not noticing straight away when Alli drops her pencil, he keeps listening to (or at least trying to listen to) the lecture, but he looks down when she leans over to pick it up, trying to see if he's at a better angle to get it, and seems a bit surprised by the random movement of the pencil. He didn't think there was a breeze... along the floor... at exactly the right point to nudge her pencil back into her hand?

Oh well. He's not too worried by it.

No one noticed. Score!

Class wraps up pretty quickly after that. Alli gets up, puts her bag on her chair, and digs out her schedule. (Stupid single pieces of paper, it got crunched under her books, ugh.) Once she knows where she's going, she looks back at Theo. "What've you got next?"

Theo stands up from his seat, again moving fluidly. Perhaps he is a dancer?

In response to Alli, he grabs his bag, pulls it up from under the desk, and accidentally catches his nails, leaving a mark in the desk. Ow?

"I have... French. What about you?"

Okay, dancers are one things, but- that is not a thing that fingernails do. Not even if you file your fingernails into claws, this is not a thing they do. Maybe if he'd coated them with metal, but... that's a gouge. In a chair.

Alli likes magic. When she found books on witchcraft in her sister's boxes, she actually, voluntarily read them all. A couple of them were comprehensive enough to cover more than just witchcraft. She can figure this out. She can fill in "not a vampire" all by herself, for example; they're in a classroom full of windows on a sunny day. But Theo is definitely not entirely human. If she thinks about the nails in that context- yeah, she's got a couple guesses. Fingernails aside, neither are particularly dangerous. Weird shit, but not "flee screaming" level. (Which is awesome, because he's still really hot.)

It occurs to Alli a second later that this might mean Theo knows about witches. She could have someone at school to talk magic with! The people at the Magic Box are okay, but they're mostly old and pretty much exclusively crazy. If she wasn't in school, destroyer of all things happy and exciting, she would consider dancing with glee. But this is still a bit of a leap from fingernails. (Desk-gouging fingernails! But yeah, fingernails.) So she decides to be subtle.

"What'd that desk ever do to you, Nails?"

Subtle for her, anyway.

"But nah, I've got Latin. But I can show you where French is first if you want? All the language rooms are next to each other."

"I don't actually have anything against random desks, though these ones are pretty annoying. That wasn't me, though - do you really think my nails can do that?" he asks, laughing. "But sure, lead the way."

He's got a good poker face, Alli approves. "Whatever you say, Nails." She hoists her backpack up, silently swearing about heavy science textbooks, and heads for the door. "C'mon, this way to gibberish."

He looks at her a bit weirdly in response to her first comment, but follows after her towards the language classrooms. "I don't do Latin, so that's definitely gibberish, but French really isn't too bad."

She grins at him unrepentantly. "It's your name now. Just go with it." She shrugs. "It's really all gibberish. But Latin's actually useful sometimes? I've never been like 'oh shit I wish I spoke French right now'. So Latin gibberish it is."

He laughs at that. "Yeah, no, I can't say I've ever had that for either of them, and I've been doing French for way longer, so... French not-so-gibberish for me. Do you often find a sudden need to know Latin?"

"Hey, it's great for the SATs," Alli says innocently. (It is, and the less she has to study vocabulary the better, but hey, she can poker face too.)

"Yeah, there is that, I guess...?" he says, looking a bit confused. "But French is probably more useful in the real world than Latin; how many people do you meet who speak Latin? Or do you just read a lot of Latin books?" he laughs. "I mean, not that I read any French books, but still."

Alli sneakily side eyes him. There's poker face, and there's actually oblivious. The second theory is gaining traction. Which is disappointing, because she wants a magic buddy, and weird, because he's not human, and also not a big deal, because he's eye candy and friendly and it's not like she's going to stop.

She grins at him. "What, like there's a lot of French speakers in Sunnydale? And the more Latin words I recognize, the fewer SAT vocab words I have to learn. I swear, it's like they take that shit straight from the Iliad." She stops in front of a door. "This one's you, Nails. Have fun with your gibberish."

He grins back. Did somebody say eye candy?

"Nah, there aren't really," he laughs. "Unless they're forming an evil underground network of French people. See you later!"

He walks into class.

Alli suffers through Latin class and takes notes almost exclusively on words that seem like they could be useful for spell-casting. She and Theo are in the same History class when she gets to her next period, but Latin ran long and she's late enough that she can't get a seat next to him. She settles for waving at Theo and sits next to her ex-boyfriend instead, nudging him with a smirk every time the name Paul gets mentioned. This earns her a bored glare, but that's not exactly going to stop her.

At lunch she sees the cheerleaders trying to descend upon Theo without appearing like they're doing so, so she doesn't even bother trying to talk to him. She's been at school with those girls for years, and not even eye candy is going to get her near them. She doesn't feel too bad; she's hardly leaving Theo without people to talk to. She sits with Helen and Jada instead, getting the rest of the story on Helen's summer fling. Their friends Jim and Peter join them halfway in and insist on referring to the guy as CBF for Camp Boyfriend, which makes Alli laugh but annoys Helen enough that she doesn't bother adopting it herself. The boys roll their eyes while the girls gossip about Theo; Jim asks if Theo plays lacrosse, and Alli snorts and says "Like I'd ask," and after that they let the girls talk in peace. Helen informs Alli she'll be living through Alli vicariously and that she'd better not let her down. Jada is horrified when she asks Alli if Theo's coming with them to the Bronze that weekend and Alli has to admit she didn't ask him.

She doesn't see Theo in science class, which doesn't really surprise her. She went for chem instead of bio, since it's enough like potion brewing that she actually enjoys it, but it was long odds. That means it's English class before she runs into him again, and this time she manages to snag a nearby desk. "Hey stranger, long time no see."

"Hey! I know, right? How've you been in the... four hours since we last spoke? Found any people to speak Latin with?"

"Probably about as many as you found to talk French with. Pretty good! The Chem teacher promised to blow-" she remembers the teacher's presence at the front of the room at the last second and trades out the swear word, "-stuff up later in the year if we behave. Which might actually make me behave, we'll see. What about you?"

He notices the slight pause on 'stuff' and laughs a bit. "French was just vocabulary, but that was okay, and we just laid out what we're gonna do for the semester in Bio. Nothing major, really. Explosions sound fun, though."

"Explosions are going to be awesome," Alli agrees enthusiastically. "Oh hey, at lunch me and my friends were talking about going to the Bronze this weekend. Have you been yet? Want to join?"

She's not going to ask him out on his first day, but it's a group outing. Which is totally different and therefore fine.

"Uh, that's the nightclub, right? Nah, I haven't been yet, so yeah, I'll tag along."

"Yup, nightclub. I'd say it's where the cool kids go, but I am so very deeply not a cool kid. It's where everyone goes." She sighs. "There's not exactly a lot of options in Sunnydale."

He laughs. "Yeah, but if everyone goes there, then it is where the cool kids go. It's all about perspective."

"Don't ruin the Bronze for me! It's all I have!"

He laughs, then jokingly gaps and says, "Oh no, I'm so sorry! Not your beautiful nightclub!"

"Number one club in Sunnydale!"

"Because there's no competition like the lack thereof."

"Better the Bronze than nothing at all, though." She scribbles the address on a page in her notebook, then tears it out and hands it to him. "We'll be there around nine."

"Cool. I'm guessing it's either tomorrow or on Saturday?"

"...Saturday. Definitely Saturday. Good call. Man, that could have been bad."

"Hah, oh well," Theo says, smiling.

The teacher actually starts the lesson, finally, so Theo starts paying attention to it instead of Alli. Unless she has some funny doodles, like in math, of course.

Their first book of the year is apparently Macbeth, which means Alli is writing angrily sarcastic notes to herself/Shakespeare about making witches look bad and how the stereotype is totally unfair. She does not share.

Oh well. Theo supposes Alli just doesn't have any clever cartoon puns, and doesn't dwell on it.

Macbeth is weird.

No argument from Alli.

After class she tells Theo, "I have to run, I've got plans after school, but I'll see you tomorrow?"

She and Peter have had plans to see Sin City 2 pretty much since the first one came out, but she'd rather not go into the whole "we are totally just friends, trust me, been there had that conversation" thing, so she'll just gloss over that part.

"Yeah, see you tomorrow!" he responds, getting up from his seat and grabbing his bag.

"See ya!"

The movie outing goes all right. Alli arrives ten minutes late only to discover that Peter had lied about the time, which is aggravating both because he lied and because he was right, but it means she doesn't miss any of the movie so she lets it go. What she's less inclined to let go is the fact that he and one of the cheerleaders, Lia, have apparently been seeing each other, and he brought her along to the movie. Complaining to her friends takes up most of her attention the next day.

"That was our movie!" she complains to Helen at lunch.

"It's not like it was a date," Helen points out. "Do you not remember the Great Coffee Debacle? You made me swear an oath to never let you try dating him again."

"I don't want to date him," Alli snorts. "But it's our movie. And he brought someone else!"

"So... you went to the movies with him... and you're annoyed he brought another girl... but it wasn't a date?" Jada asks, grinning.

"Yes," Alli says, exasperated. "And a cheerleader at that!"

"I think you're picking unfairly on cheerleaders," Helen says primly.

Alli eyes her suspiciously. "...who are you and what have you done with Helen?"

"It's not that different than gymnastics!" she says defensively.

Pestering Helen about her newfound tolerance for cheerleaders occupies them for the rest of lunch. After school Jada drags Alli and Jim to the mall, which almost immediately turns into Jada modeling outfits while Alli and Jim complain to each other; apparently the lacrosse team is deeply divided over their uniforms. (When Alli offers the perfect solution, Jim's groan of "black doesn't count" earns him an uncomfortable future prank. After Peter, of course.)

Just because he said that, Alli turns up to the Bronze on Saturday in her favorite full-on goth attire: black, black and more black. Her red lips are the only spot of color in the entire ensemble. She restrains herself to only her fishnet tights and skips the shirt, but she digs out her black corset to make up for it. Jim's expression when he sees her, torn between resignation and awkwardly trying not to stare at her chest- her corset is really awesome- makes it all worth it.

And of course, Theo gets to see her in all her corseted, high heeled glory. Bonus points.

Theo goes home. He listens to music and surfs the internet for a while. It's a Thursday, and he's just started at a new school; he doesn't really have much else to do.

Friday passes pretty uneventfully. Theo speaks to a few new people and sits with a random group of them at lunch, then gets ambushed by the cheerleaders again, is polite but definitely doesn't seem particularly interested in any of them, and then lunch is over, he goes to lessons, pays attention without trying to seem nerdy, and the day is over.

He turns up to the club on Saturday in smart-casual wear, looking very handsome. Turns out he actually has a fashion sense and he's not afraid to use it. He speaks to a few people he's already interacted with, then notices Alli and moves over to her, subtly checking out... her outfit? "Hey!" he says. "You look nice," he compliments her, charmingly.

"Thanks!" Alli says, pleased, checking him out rather less subtly. "You too, Nails, you clean up nice." She reintroduces her group just for politeness' sake; he's only been around for two days, and there's a lot of names. Jada's mom has dragged her to LA again for another audition somewhere, but Helen and Jim and Peter are there. (Peter's brought Lia again, but she's wearing a little black dress and not saying much so Alli's dealing.)

She links her arm through Theo's and leads him inside. "C'mon, let's get drinks."

"Thanks," he responds. He doesn't really react to her checking him out, but he definitely notices it. It's nice that Alli helped him with the names, but he's usually pretty good with that sort of thing.

Following alongside her into the club, Theo looks around at things. What's it like?

The Bronze is in a dingy warehouse and is clearly not so big on fancy decor. The bar and the dance floor are both crowded, there's some surprisingly tolerable live music on the stage, and scattered people on the edges of the room playing darts or pool. Not very fancy, but a little bit of everything.

Alli makes a passing attempt to argue the bartender into giving her alcohol, but they clearly know each other and neither of them is taking it seriously. Once they're done joking around, she ends up with a Diet Coke and she raises her glass to the group. "Cheers!"

Well, it's not too bad. It's kinda... rustic? Better than it could be, at the very least.

Theo watches the interplay at the bar, smiling, and then gets a Coke, too (not diet). "Cheers!"

Nothing in Sunnydale is exactly the height of modernity. It's a good spot for going out with friends, even if it isn't in the best neighborhood, which is all Alli needs.

They start with darts, but it only takes a few rounds for everyone to get tired of Jim beating them handily. He makes apologetic noises about lacrosse and hand-eye coordination, but Peter just laughs and calls him out on actually getting the coordination from Halo. They alternate between pool and dancing for a bit; the band that night is playing a good mix of upbeat songs, and it makes for a good group dance circle.

As the evening starts to slow down, Alli makes a run to the bathroom, but feels her phone slip free from her jeans as she's on her way back. "Damnit, phone," she mutters. She doesn't have anything with her for a locator spell, and she can't just move something to her hand unless she can see it. And lighting? Not the Bronze's strong point. She looks around, sighs, and makes a ball of light in her hand as she kneels on the phone. Heeeere, little phone. Come to Alli.

Theo sticks at the edge of the group or near Alli, but tries to actually take part in the activities, like darts. He's not too bad, but he's definitely not the best of the lot.

After speaking to Jim and Peter for a bit, at least as much as you can do that with the live music in the club, he heads over to the back hallway, going to the restroom, and sees Alli. And the ball of light.

... The ball of light is in her hand. It doesn't look like she's got her phone there, or a flashlight, because her phone is on the floor. And there's a ball of light in her hand.

"Um," he says, sounding a bit confused by the turn of events.

Alli's brain starts swearing to the tune of the current song. Shit, shit shit, shit SHIT...

"Well, fuck," she sighs. "Hi, Nails. Do you see my- gotcha!" She swipes her phone up from under a pile of spare stools and stands, brushing off her knees. "Sooo."

"Um."

He looks at where the phone was. Then at her hand. Then blinks his eyes, looks at his fingers and clicks them, pokes himself in the arm, looks around a bit, and then back at her hand. He seems to be awake. Her hand is still a hand. There is now a phone in her hand. The phone could plausibly be generating light. The phone was not there previously. He blinks again.

He makes a face and repeats, "Um?"

Oh, right. The light goes out. "Do you-" she starts, then winces as the band hits a particularly loud chord. "If I have to explain can we at least go outside," she says louder.

"Uh. Y-yeah?"

He doesn't seem to be moving. He's just looking at her hand, where the light was. And now isn't. And just mysteriously was. That's a regular hand. He doesn't see a mysteriously small flashlight, or LED, or some other potentially light-emitting electronic device that was in her hand before she picked up her phone. She might need to prompt him to actually follow her.

She waves a hand in front of his face, sighs, and starts hauling him towards the door. She leans around Peter and Lia, who are presently attached at the face, and taps Helen. "Theo's not feeling well, going to grab some air," she yells.

"Suuuuure," Helen laughs. "Have fun, be safe!"

Since she can't very well refute the implication without sounding defensive (or if she told the truth, crazy), Alli just looks innocent and keeps going. Theo gets dragged out past the bouncer and into a side street by the club. There's a couple at the far end of the alley, but they're clearly too into each other to notice the company and too far to hear.

Alli lets go of Theo and leans against a wall. "So, hi. I'm a witch. Apparently you need the magical birds and bees talk. Which, weird for a non human, but whatever, I'll roll with it. Where do you want me to start?"

Theo mostly doesn't pay attention on his way out. He's just looking around, making sure nothing huge has changed that he failed to notice, and keeps looking back at Alli and her hands... to make sure of something?

"You're... a witch. Witches? Non-human? ... Uh?"

Apparently he's having trouble being coherent.

Alli doesn't really understand reactions to magic that aren't 'this is hella cool and I must learn this immediately' but incoherence is still strictly better than, say, homicidal rage. She'll take it. And speak slowly and clearly. "Yes, I'm a witch. Yes, there are witches, plural. Anyone can learn magic if they study enough. I've already got, like, homework and a social life, so I only know some small stuff." She draws a smiley face made of glitter in the air to demonstrate, which promptly fades away. "You gouged a hole in a desk with your fingernails. I thought you were playing dumb, Nails, did you actually not know?"

"Magic," he says, sounding about half-way between 'disbelieving' and 'oh, of course it is, what else could it have been'.

"I caught my nails on a desk. I don't... It's not following." He makes a face. "... Non-human because nails?"

"Magic," Alli repeats. "No more sparkles until we're out of sight of people. I don't want to go through this explanation again. But yes. Magic. Me, witch. You- actually, probably about half human, but still not normal human."

She starts to say something a few times, then closes her mouth and thinks, and tries again. "Okay, so imagine you are actually half Asian. And you have never heard of Asia or met an Asian person or whatever. So, duh, obviously you do not think you are Asian, because you have no idea that's a thing. And then hi, there's me, knowing metaphorical-Asia exists, having read books about metaphorically-Asian people, yada yada bullshit. And it is really obvious to me that you are at least partially Asian, but it's also really hard for me to explain because you're still confused by Asia existing?"

"Asia being... what, exactly?"

He's looking at her like he thinks she might be a bit mad. Sure, unexplainable light from her hand, but thinking that he's not human? ... What?

"My book didn't have a name or anything," Alli says glibly, which is Alli-speak for it calls all nonhumans demons or monsters and let's really not get into that right now. "Just descriptions of what meant 'friendly to humans' and what meant 'scream and pull a gun'. Congrats, Nails, you do not requiring screaming and firearms." She holds out a hand. Her fingernails are on the longer side, and painted black because who do you even think this is, but they are otherwise pretty standard fingernails. "Want to test? Bet you you can do some serious damage to the wall." She nods at the side of the building, which is plated with metal sheets.

"Your book didn't have a name for... the species that I half belong to? And you realise these are nails right?" He holds out his hand. "They'll break and it'll hurt if I try scratching anything too solid – it's not like they defy physics."

"Oh my god, you wimp," Alli laughs. "Just do it carefully. And did you really just complain about physics to a witch?"

"Well, yeah, but you're a witch! My nails aren't much stronger than yours, anyway!"

Despite the complaining, he actually does go and scratch the metal sheets. And, even though he does it quite casually, he actually digs in quite a lot. Those are some pretty obvious claw marks.

Stare. Blink. ... Blink again. More staring.

Some people are above gloating. Alli is not one of those people. "Told you," she says with a smirk. Then she softens a bit. "Okay so I was expecting this conversation to be way more cackling and potions and less of the personal revelation shit. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he says absently.

Blink. Stare. Blink again.

"Wanna try that again? Once more with feeling?"

"Yeah, sure."

Blink.

"Shit like this is why Keith should serve alcohol," Alli grumbles. "Breathe, dude. Do you need to, I dunno, sit or something?"

"Hm?" he asks, rather absently, and then his attention returns to the situation at hand. "No, I'm fine, sorry about that. So. I'm not human. Cool. And you're a witch." He pauses, seems to consider, and asks, "... Wait, did you say anyone can learn to be a witch?"

"...as far as I know? Most of the witches I've read about are human, but humans also wrote the books, so who knows." Her eyes narrow at him. "Are you sure you're not, I dunno, in shock or some shit like that? Seriously, I was freaking out and calling my sister for a solid week."

Granted, it might have gone faster if Jess had picked up the phone sooner, but that's none of his business.

"No, I'm... I'm okay," Theo says, seeming to mean it. "So. Could I try, uh, witchcraft some time then? I mean, I have no idea how to go about it. As is probably obvious. But if it can do lights from your hand, it seems convenient."

"I will never say no to a magic buddy. Never. Just- don't tell anyone, okay? This is the sort of shit that lands you in the shrink's office reassuring them you're not delusional."

"That sounds... like a plan. I would rather not have anyone think I'm mental."

Alli grimaces. "Me neither. Glad we're both on board." Then, suddenly, she grins. "Magic train, get on board, whoo!" She glances back towards the door of the Bronze. "We're running out of excuse time, though. Helen definitely thinks we're making out, and the longer we're out here the more stupid-ass questions I have to deal with tomorrow. Dance now, magic later?"

He laughs. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. It wouldn't do to get them too suspicious."

If that's all, they can head back in.

It's definitely time to head back in.

Helen sees Theo and Alli come back in, takes in Theo's bemused expression and starts giggling near-uncontrollably. Alli rolls her eyes at her and glowers a bit, which does nothing to stop Helen giggling but does at least make her try to quiet it down.

The rest of the evening is split between pool and dancing. Jim makes a single attempt to bring back darts before being resoundingly shouted down by his earlier victims- so, all of them- and eventually bails on them to play with some of his lacrosse buddies instead. Alli sticks her tongue out at him as he leaves, ignores his laughing "what are you, a toddler?" and goes back to dancing.

Dancing is great. The band figured out early on that tonight is a high energy, angry-about-school-starting sort of crowd and they only bother with a couple slow songs, which is exactly Alli's speed. Coordination isn't really her thing (she's fine, but nothing special; she tries and fails not to be jealous of Theo and his supernatural grace, because cheating) but her outfit is kickass and she doesn't have to do much to know she looks awesome, which is really what she's dancing for anyway.

Eventually Helen has to head home to make curfew, and Alli ducks out with her to bum a ride home. Not having to walk home in her favorite Hooker Shoes is totally worth having to spend the ride beaming innocently at Helen and repeating, "No, really, totally nothing happened." Helen vows to get the story out of her eventually; Alli just laughs. If only she knew.

Sunday she spends trying and failing to brew a glamour potion that will do her makeup (it keeps giving her neon orange eye shadow, which is useless for anyone not secretly yearning to become a traffic cone) but come Monday she's back at school, non-magical makeup and all.

Theo's grace is cheating, but he doesn't seem self-conscious about it. He looks pretty good and seems to enjoy himself, managing to tone down the 'bemused' part of his expression pretty quickly and seeming to enjoy the rest of the night.

If anyone makes a comment suggesting what Alli and Theo got up to, he won't explicitly deny it unless it's extremely suggestive, but he'll also try not to fuel any rumours.

He's back at school on Monday too, as non-magical as he can get with his supernatural grace. If Alli seems like she wants to talk to him before school, he'll go over to talk to her, but otherwise he'll wave and probably wait until a shared lesson to talk to her.

Alli, excited by the idea of a magic buddy, is in fact planning to catch Theo before class, but she oversleeps her alarm and winds up rushing in at the last minute. She settles for waving at him when they get to English.

Oh, that's cool, they can sit together again.

He takes a desk next to her and gets his things out of his bag. "Hey! Did you have a fun Sunday?"

"Enh? Favorite hobby, awesome, failing at it all day, less awesome." She glowers at nothing in particular. "I will make it obey me." She cocks her head at him. "What about you?"

"Oh, right. I didn't do much interesting – it was basically just a bit of homework, some reading, listening to music, and the internet." He smirks. "Some of us don't know much about interesting hobbies, and so we have to resort to mundane methods to entertain ourselves."

Alli lights up. "Join next time, then? I need a hobby buddy so badly you have no idea. My nearest one is Los Angeles."

"Sure!" he agrees excitedly. "That sounds fun."

He tilts his head and asks, "Who do you know in Los Angeles that's a hobby buddy?"

"My sister," Alli says, her face shuttering briefly before the expression disappears. "Come over some afternoon? I'll talk you through the baby stuff. What days are you free? Do you have shit in the afternoons at all?" She smirks slightly as she adds, "Please, please tell me Jim didn't talk you into lacrosse."

He makes a face at her expression, but responds, "Uh, nah, I don't have anything yet, so I should be free... basically whenever. And I think lacrosse is in the spring?"

Someday Alli might rant about her sister to someone she's known less than a week. Yeah, and someday she might declare herself Queen of Saturn.

"Yeah, well, I think we covered how I give no shits about lacrosse. Tomorrow after school? You'll need today to pick up some stuff." She scribbles out a list and hands it over. Her handwriting is bad, but not unintelligible. The list contains nothing hard or expensive, but it's all over the map - from things he could probably find in his kitchen, like thyme and a wooden spoon, to "fist sized mostly round rock" and "twig from live oak tree". She hands it over. "Be excited, Nails. More homework."

Maybe someday Theo will declare himself King of Jupiter, too. Hey, it could happen.

"Woo!" he says, taking the list and glancing over it. "Okay, that's pretty... varied." He puts the list into his bag, makes a note to do it, and then starts paying attention to the teacher because apparently the lesson is starting.

Yay. English.

No yay. No yay for English. It's school. (But Theo knows she's a witch now! So this time he can receive angry note-rants about witch misrepresentation, at least until she gets an exasperated look from the teacher.)

The next day after school, she hangs out on the front steps, skimming through some reading while she waits for Theo.

Yay! Angry notes! This is all very yay!

Theo fetches stuff that evening, having to make a quick trip to the store for some of the spices, and meets her at the steps the next day.

"Hey!" he greets her. "I managed to get everything."

"Gold star. C'mon, this way. I keep my kettle at home, 'cause- duh. I promise I'm not an axe murderer or anything."

Home's not far. (Nothing in Sunnydale's far, not really.) Alli covers the basic safety rules on the way. She considers skipping things she thinks should be obvious, like "do not drink the potion unless I tell you to drink the potion", but then she remembers that he didn't notice he wasn't human, and opts for the full and entire safety briefing. Sure, she cuts some corners sometimes, but she damn well knows the corners are there.

He's not stupid, he gets things like lab safety, it's just he didn't think 'not being human' was in the realm of possibility and so it didn't cross his mind.

But whatever, he understands 'better safe than sorry'.

Lab safety occupies her until they reach her house. When they get in the front hall, she sticks her head around the corner into the living room where her mother's watching TV. "I'm home, I brought a friend."

"Oh, should I come say hello?" her mother asks, not looking terribly inclined to move.

"Nah, you haven't met. New kid. We're just going to do... chemistry homework." It's like chemistry. "When's dinner?"

"Oh, I've got a date with Tedd. You can just order pizza. Money's in the usual drawer," her mom says absently.

"Ooh, pizza. Thanks!" She ducks back into the hall and waves at the staircase. "C'mon, my stuff's upstairs."

Theo does pay attention to the lab safety, and tries to make a note of the most salient points. He plans on being super cautious when they get round to any actual practical work, because it seems to have lots of horrible opportunities to go wrong.

He nods at Alli's statement and follows her up the stairs.

Alli picks her way through what might generously be called the upstairs hallway but is more accurately just a small landing. It's not quite to the level of appallingly messy, but there's... piles. Lots of piles. Alli doesn't seem to notice, and walks through the last door into a cramped attic/storage space. She weaves through the stacks of boxes, following a path that may or may not be obvious without practice, until they get to a spot in the back that's slightly better cleared out than the rest. There's a little camping stove set up with a small iron pot balanced on top, and a haphazard collection of herbs and books scattered nearby and on a short, battered bookshelf. She plops herself onto a cushion and gestures to the one of the stove's far side for Theo before starting to organize ingredients.

Once Theo takes a seat, she tosses a book into his lap. "Congrats, Nails, more shit to read. But this one gets you magic!" She accompanies the word with jazz hands surrounded by a shower of sparkles. "First things first, though. No mystical potions of love and beauty yet. Baby potion is... basically bugspray" She holds out a mortar and pestle with a sprig of rosemary in it. "Chop chop!"

Theo follows her along, looking at his surroundings a bit bemusedly, then sits down as directed.

He takes the book – indeed, it does get him magic so he's a bit more excited about it – then starts grinding with the mortar and pestle, as seems to be expected.

Magic!

Alli had a magic buddy! Who can chop spices for her! Alli is delighted by both of these things. They pass the next half hour or so preparing ingredients while Alli regales him with anecdotes from her own potionmaking attempts. (A couple are by necessity second hand; it took her longer than she admits to manage her memory potion.) Every so often she'll float him an implement, just to enjoy the look on his face.

Once everything's added, Alli considers the resulting colors and nods proudly. "Looks good, Nails." And not just the potion, she snickers to herself. Smirking, she turns down the heat and leaves it to simmer. "I'd start you on another, but. Bit of a cauldron problem. So, cards or something while we wait? I can grab us a snack from the kitchen?" She grins suddenly. "Or a drink? Mom's shit at hiding the vodka."

He keeps forgetting about the fact that it's actual magic, so yeah, the floated objects definitely catch his attention.

"Eh, I'm not much of a big drinker personally, but a snack would be good. What sort of thing do you need for a cauldron, though – is it a specific metal in particular or a specific shape or does anything work so long as you can heat it up and stuff?"

"I don't think magic really gives a shit? I've seen a couple recipes that specify but I'm not buying a three foot red glass cauldron anyway, so meh, whatever." She peers at hers. "Jess left me hers, but I think they're pretty standard at the Magic Box." She rolls her eyes. "Maybe not cheap, I've had less expensive hobbies, but if you go enough they've got a discount for people who actually know their shit, it's the newagey hippies they overcharge."

"… The Magic Box is actually, y'know, magic? Or run by witches or something? I don't think you've mentioned that yet?"

"I don't think they do magic themselves. They just know it exists, and have a pretty good stock of supplies." She reflects for a second. "And also a few things that are actually worrying, seriously, those Do Not Touch signs are legit."

"Okay then, I will make sure to be careful when I go in there," he says, looking briefly worried. "Anyway – cards or something?"

"Yup! Hang tight, yell if shit explodes." Alli ducks out and returns a few minutes later with a deck of cards and a bowl of Cheez-its. "Magic fuel!" she proclaims, setting it down between them, then grimaces. "That came out wrong. They're not magic. They are fuel for us doing magic. Whatever, they're delicious." She eats a handful of Cheez-its rather defiantly before starting to shuffle. "Pick your poison?"

Theo raises an eyebrow. "How about snap?" he asks, smirking. "Nah, but I don't really know many card games. I'm more a phone-music-and-book sort of guy."

He takes a few Cheez-its too.

"If you think I will not go full force for snaps, you are about to be real unhappy," Alli warns him jokingly as she deals. "Some books are okay.? Usually I get bored and go find other shit to do. Music's good though." She grabs a handful of Cheez-its, looks mournfully between her salty hand and the cards, then wipes her hands on her jeans with a shrug and picks up her deck. "Let's do this."

Alli is not very good at snap, but Alli is dedicated. She tries not to leave bruises... when she remembers.

Theo is not amazing at snap either! But he's not too bad.

He seems to be enjoying himself, while they wait.

Alli does not need to win to enjoy herself; it's all about slapping the cards. Thankfully for Theo's hand, basically-bugspray doesn't take too long to brew. When the pot puffs a cloud of pink smoke, she hops up. "It worked!"

He gets up too! (Smoothly!)

"What sorts of bugs does it work on? Like, ant repellent or like, moth killer…?"

"I don't have a list...? I mostly use it for mosquitoes," Alli shrugs. "Mosquitoes are the worst shit ever and can fuck right off."

"Yeah," he agrees. "I seem to be pretty lucky and don't get them much."

"Ugh. Probably a weird Nails thing. That said, I hate you, you lucky asshole."

He laughs. "I hadn't actually thought of that but yeah, could be."

Alli packs him up a bottle of magic bugspray, muttering loftily under her breath the whole time about "non-human assholes cheating the bug system." She offers it to him. "Bottle back when you're done, yeah? I am not brewing gold and gemstones or shit like that, but. Magic shit is not cheap and I cannot pull bottles from hats."

He takes it. "Thanks – and have you looked into making money with magic? No convenient way to make diamonds from, like, glass?"

"Yeah, I looked for a bit. Fund the habit and all that. But magic books are a fucking mess. Dark magic and incomplete recipes and shit like that more often than not. Besides, selling half this shit would mean people know magic exists, and, nope!" She grins. "You're welcome to try selling magical bug spray, though. I will most generously allow this."

"Thanks," he laughs. "I have no idea how I'm meant to do that but I guess I'll look around."

"Let me know when you figure it out and I will undercut the shit out of you," Alli jokes. "We could-" she's cut off by her phone's text message sound going off, and she checks her texts.

tedds 2 dunk to drive come get me

"Oh, for shit's sake," Alli sighs. where r u? she sends back quickly, then makes an apologetic grimace at Theo. "Hey, so I have to go pick up my mom, her not-boyfriend's a dumbass. Want a ride home as long as I'm driving?"

"Yeah, that'd be cool, thanks."

So Alli drops Theo off at home first, promising to catch up with him at school at some point, then turns north. She fetches her mom from whatever fancypants restaurant Tedd picked this time then drives her home. Her mother spends the ride rambling about the delicious wine at Fancypants and how they really must go back with Tedd sometime, since she's about as good with drinking age laws as she is with the ones about learner's permits. Alli spends it rolling her eyes so hard it's practically audible.

The next day passes by without too much of a fuss, and after it Theo has soccer practice! Or trials, or something. He met up with some of the guys and suggested he might be interested and now: voilà, soccer practice. Or whatever. They suggested he come show them his skills, so, probably more like trials.

He is demonstrably rather good at it. Until, that is, he trips and lands badly.

On further inspection the coach seems to think he might have sprained it – he's having pain moving it, it looks discolored – and decides he should go to the hospital to get it checked out.

Intake is about as much fun as pulling teeth, but that's intake for you. Once he's gotten to wait in the emergency room for a good long time, and then been called up to enter in all his personal information, insurance information, school information, and probably his favorite color just for fun, he is sent back to wait some more. And some more.

Finally he gets called into a "room" with a nurse, which is mostly distinguished by having curtains for walls and not in fact being much of a room at all. The nurse is a friendly young woman with a nametag that says Anderson. She offers Theo a clipboard. "Double check your information please, Mr. Garder?" she asks. "I'm sorry, I know you've done nothing but paperwork, but, well. The paperwork to correct it later is much worse."

"It's no problem." He takes it, smoothly, then starts checking over the details.

The coach lurks, mostly non-threateningly.

Nurse Anderson smiles at him and makes polite small talk until Theo's done. It's always nice to see teachers who care about their students.

He's sort of required to wait here while Theo is here and he would really rather not have the kid turn out to have a fracture that went unnoticed, so yep.

Theo is done shortly thereafter and lets her know as such.

"Thank you," she says, filing the paper in a folder on her desk. "Let's get you x-rayed, shall we?" She wanders outside the curtains for a second and returns with a wheelchair. "In you get."

"… I'd, uh, rather not if I don't actually have to."

"You have a potentially broken foot and no one likes liability paperwork. I promise it doesn't bite."

He raises an eyebrow, but sighs and gets into the wheelchair.

Once his ankle is x-rayed, he's wheeled back to his coach while they wait for the results to come back. Nurse Anderson spends the wait entering Theo's pile of paperwork into a computer that looks probably older than Theo. When her pager pings, she leaves for a minute, then comes back with a stack of x-ray pictures in her hand. She shoos the coach, apologetically citing medical privacy, then rounds on Theo.

"You- you're not human! What are you doing in a hospital?!"

"I – uh – pardon? What – why am I not meant to be in a hospital?"

"You- You're at least part Shaar and you had an x-ray. I had to delete them before the radiologist saw! Don't your parents have a doctor you can use?"

"… I can honestly say I didn't know I was part Shaar, and I didn't realize it would show up on x-ray."

"...I am not caffeinated enough for this. Explain."

"I knew I was something – found out a few days ago – but I did not know the something I was would show up on x-ray." Pause. "Or does that not explain the right bit?"

"It explains, um. The lack of confusion or denial. Not the part where you didn't know. A few days ago?"

"… Yep." Pause. "I hear I'm unhumanly graceful."

Well, this is a mess. Emma sighs. "I'll write down my email for you; I don't have Shaar physiology memorized, but it'll be in one of my books at home. You should probably still talk to your parents about it, though. For now, um. I'll tell your coach you just have a sprain?"

"I haven't seen my mom in – about ten years now – but I'll make sure to let my dad know."

Emma suppresses a sigh. Of course he hasn't. She is clearly winning at Family Drama and Secrets bingo today. ...but on the bright side, she doesn't often get to feel like her parents are a model of normalcy and disclosure. Silver linings.

Emma scribbles Theo a note for his "sprain" and a separate piece of paper with her email address and the word 'Shaar', just in case, since he seems unlikely to be focused on spelling. "You can give this to your dad too. Any other questions while you have me? That don't require an encyclopedic knowledge of demonology books, at least, nursing school was bad enough."

He pauses. "I guess it would be silly to ask if that's a transliteration or if they speak English?"

"I just know enough biology to recognize species and 'reasonably neutral', you really do have to wait for me to get home to my dictionary. Sorry," Emma says apologetically, but then adds thoughtfully, "Though really, at least one must speak English just fine, if you exist."

"I guess I will interrogate my dad to see if he's masquerading as one." He shrugs and then reaches for his bag. "Uh – I guess I will email you later? Reasonably neutral is good as things go?"

"Uh, yeah, other options kinda revolve around death, destruction and mayhem. Appreciate the neutral."

"No good?"

"Once in a while. Not enough to really be a category. Good in a human's opinion isn't always the same, anyway."

He shrugs. "Do I need – some sort of something – for my foot – or does the whole being-a-Shaar thing mess all that up?"

"It messed up the x-rays but it doesn't seem swollen enough for a break and your bones are sturdier than most. Keep your ace bandage on, ice it regularly. Try not too put too much weight on it, but you don't need crutches. Tylenol if you need it. If it's still swollen and painful in two days, let me know and I can ask around for a safe radiologist, or hope your dad knows one."

Nod. "… Thanks."

"Sure thing." She walks to him down part of the hallway and points at a door. "Check out is in there; I'm sure your coach can help." He's standing by the door expectantly, almost as though he's had players get injured before. "I hope your ankle feels better soon."

He flashes her a smile. "I hope so too."

And then he's off to get out of there.

Peter is an incorrigible gossip who plays Halo with most of the soccer team; there was never the slightest chance Alli was not going to hear about this without minutes of arriving at school. (And even then she scolds Peter for not texting her the night before when he'd found out, but his priorities are apparently Halo and not hot new boy, which is clearly incorrect.) So she's waiting outside math for Theo once he arrives, bouncing worriedly.