One of the first things suggested to Amber upon her return to the human world and the Mansion was that she go back to school and complete her GED.  For many reasons she was unsure what the point would be.  For one, her powers allowed her to survive with or without money.  Between her resistance to the elements and the fact that she could hunt and kill whatever food she needed, money was more a want than a need.  For another, how likely was it that a walking corpse could be truly a part of the human world, no matter how good her skills or education happened to be?  Her re-integration into the human world could only go so far.

As days turned into weeks, however, and she began to rediscover what it was to be human and those things she enjoyed about being human.  Very prominently on that list, was a love of learning.  During the years she'd spent in self-imposed exile in the woods, she'd forgotten the simple joys of spending hours on the internet looking up various interests and learning for the simple sake of learning.  As a dino, both her needs and desires were much simpler.  A comfortable den, plentiful prey and a well patrolled territory were all that was required for a fulfilled life in the wild. She was no longer in the wild.  She wanted more out of life.

So, after great contemplation and with more than a little trepadition, she found herself outside Gemma Taylor's office door.  This woman was the one to speak to, so she'd been told, if she was actually serious about getting her high school diploma.  She didnt' know if she was making the right choice or not and anxiety and indecision warred with hope and anticipation.  It felt right.  Mostly.  Probably.  She knocked timidly upon the door.

There was a knock on the door, almost too quiet for Gemma to hear, but she noticed anyway. Not all students were confident enough to barge right in, especially if their powers were not conveniently turned on and off in Gemma's adapted aura. The guidance counselor looked up from the paperwork she was perpetually swamped in, curious to see who came calling. She did not have an appointment, as far as she remembered, but her door was always cracked open, ready for any student who needed help or support.

"Come on in!" she called out, putting down the papers, and she stood up, waiting to see who came through the door. If she had an appointment, she tended to open it herself, but just in case it was a new student, she did not want to hit them with the aura right away.

"Come on in!"

A deep breath for courage before she opened the door and entered the room.  She had only vague recollections of the older woman but from what she saw once the door was open, she hadn't changed all that much.  What she had not recalled was her strange aura that nullified mutant powers.  A few steps in and she felt a weird tingle come over her entire body.  Looking down at her hands, where normally she saw mummified flesh, off yellow and leathery, she now saw pale, soft, hands.  "Oh."

"Um, I'm here to fill out papers so I can finish my GED.  Ghost said I should."  Her words were obviously distracted and her reversion to her human body was deeply unnerving.  Good or bad, she wasn't entirely certain, but it had been many years since she'd looked like a regular human.

>> "Oh."

The girl paused as she walked in, looking a little hesitant and a little surprised as she reached the edge of Gemma's aura. The counselor had expected a reaction like that. Even if students knew that she was an adapted, they sometimes had a hard time guessing how the aura would affect them personally.

>>"Um, I'm here to fill out papers so I can finish my GED. Ghost said I should."

"Alright, I can definitely help you with that." Gemma smiled "Please take a seat. Are you comfortable being within my adapted range?...
It cancels your mutant powers while you are in it. If you'd rather not, I can sit back,
and make sure I am out of range. Just let me know, okay?""

Gemma pulled out a stack of papers, selecting the ones she would need.

"What's your name?"

"Are you comfortable being within my adapted range?..."

Amber nodded, still feeling a little bit off kilter with the sudden change.  "It's fine.  It's just...it's been a long time since I looked normal."  She'd never really looked completely normal.  Her albinism wasn't exactly a mutant trait and that didn't go away in the aura.  Her eyes had always been lack, though she supposed if she looked in a mirror just then they'd be some other, more natural, color.

"What's your name?"

She sat down in front of the woman.  "My name's Amber.  Amber Thirsis.  I hope I'm not too much of a bother."  She still wasn't positive she was making the right choice, but she was doing it anyway.  Even if she'd never be 'normal' having a basic education couldn't hurt.

>>"It's fine. It's just...it's been a long time since I looked normal."

Gemma noted the use of the word normal, but it did not carry most of the negative connotations with it. Mutant children from different backgrounds used the word differently, and one could pick up a lot about what they thought of themselves and of their mutations by what they thought was normal. This girl was certainly unique, but she was not bashful about it. And since she said she was comfortable in the adapted aura, Gemma sat back down.

>>"My name's Amber. Amber Thirsis. I hope I'm not too much of a bother."

"None at all" Gemma smiled "My name is Gemma Taylor, but you probably already know that. I'm the guidance counselor, which means I am here to help you with whatever you might need some help with."

She hit a few keys on the keyboard, pulling up Amber's file on the computer.

"So, you said you want to do your GED?"

Amber had never had much of a problem with being a mutant.  Sure, sometimes there were struggles relating to looking as she did and there were even greater struggles relating to her extreme sensitivity to sunlight, but her sister Aura had taught her that to be a mutant was to be special and that she should embrace that specialness.  That was a lesson she had taken to heart and even when things got hard, she never forgot that important lesson.

"Hi Gemma.  I remember you from years ago, before I left."  Not well, but she remembered.  There were cookies involved.  "Thank you for helping me."  Did whatever you need help with also include a lesson on how to be human?  She kept that question to herself.

"Um, yes my GED.  I don't know if I really need it because of what I am but, you know, maybe I might some day.  So I should probably get it." 

>>"Hi Gemma. I remember you from years ago, before I left. Thank you for helping me."

"That's right!" Gemma smiled, remembering the last time Amber had been at the school. It had been a while, and it took her a minute, with students coming and going so frequently, to place the name and the face. "Welcome back, then."

>>"Um, yes my GED. I don't know if I really need it because of what I am but, you know, maybe I might some day. So I should probably get it."

"It definitely cannot hurt." Gemma nodded. Even if she was never going to use the papers, it was easier to have them and not need them than to scramble when she ended up needing them anyway. "Because of what you are... do you want to talk more about that? There is a lot one can do with a GED, but it seems you also have options in case you don't have one."

"Thank you."  It wasn't surprising that Gemma hadn't originally remembered her.  Not only did she suppose that there were probably quite a lot of students to come through her walls, but she looked a lot different than she once had as well.  Where once she had been a pale, small girl with black eyes, now she was a walking corpse.  Likely very few who had only known her at that time would recognize her now.  

"I don't know, maybe?"  What to do with her future wasn't really something she'd thought much about.  In the woods, life was a day to day occurrence.  Now?  Mostly her planning for the future stopped at trying to reintegrate into human society and getting her GED because apparently that was important.

"My plans probably aren't what most would consider 'acceptable'."  She laughed a little nervously.  "Unless you count living as a dinosaur and hunting stray cats and dogs as acceptable."  Yes, she was serious.  Yes, she had subsisted on many a stray cat or dog.  It wasn't like she was eating people, or anything.

Amber was not the first student to return after a hiatus, or ask to pick up where they had left off before. In these cases, Gemma had learned, it was best to ask first what brought them back, and where they imagined they were going next. Sometimes what they thought they needed to achieve their goals was not the same as what people led them to believe they needed...

>>"My plans probably aren't what most would consider 'acceptable'. Unless you count living as a dinosaur and hunting stray cats and dogs as acceptable."

Gemma chuckled at the idea. Less so about the cats and dogs, but more so about 'living as a dinosaur' being a valid option for someone sitting in the same room as her. Mutations never ceased to amaze her.

"No, I'd say most people don't consider that an acceptable career goal." she agreed with a smile "But that doesn't mean we can't talk about it... so, is that where you have been? Living as a dinosaur?... Did you run into any trouble?"

Where had she been?  Where hadn't she been might have been the better question.  Actually, both answers to that question were somewhat ambiguous as she hadn't been paying much attention to things like state lines or the names or labels of human places.  It was those sorts of things she had been trying to avoid during her long absence.

"I went lots of places!"  Despite her reasons for coming back, she couldn't deny that it had been quite the adventure and some of that excitement leaked into her voice.  "I don't know exactly, but I know I wandered as far as Alaska before coming back south and east again."  Where she had found Hades, but that was another story and probably not one she should be talking to the counselor about.  

"I didn't get into trouble but I did get very lonely.  That's why I came back."  She looked towards the ground, expression sad.  "I think it would have been fun to have someone to wander with.  That would have been better."  Or someones.  A proper pack.  Pipe dreams, maybe.

Amber sounded excited about sharing some of her adventures. Gemma was a little glad for that. It would have been way worse if she had returned from roaming the country with traumatic experiences she did not want to talk about. Sure, a dinosaur could take care of herself, but that did not mean people were going to be nice to them in any situation.

>>"I went lots of places! I don't know exactly, but I know I wandered as far as Alaska before coming back south and east again."

Gemma made a mental note to look into wildlife reports and cryptozoological sightings in the areas Amber mentioned. If there was going to be a story breaking about dinosaurs roaming North America, she needed to know about it.

>>"I didn't get into trouble but I did get very lonely. That's why I came back. I think it would have been fun to have someone to wander with. That would have been better."

"Having company is always good." Gemma agreed "So, you were... in your dinosaur form the whole time?"

"Almost the whole time," she agreed.  For the second time, she refrained from mentioning Hades and the fact that she had helped save his life.  Some things were meant to remain private and even if she had felt the need to speak about it, it wasn't something she could do without talking to him first. Which was basically impossible given that she had no idea where he'd ended up once they parted ways.

"I was careful to do my best not to be seen, though."  She knew enough to understand the trouble that could come about due to dinosaur sightings.  It was one of the reasons she had traveled so long and so far, to avoid being found and hunted by human hunters.  Enough rumours were bound to lead to a witch hunt, whether from cryptozoologists or, even worse, mutant hunters.  

"Deinonychus' are small," she clarified.  "Small for dinosaurs, anyway.  That makes it much easier to remain hidden."

>>"Almost the whole time."

Someone living in their shifted form for that long... Gemma was not sure if she should feel impressed or concerned. Ideally, mutant students were taught to embrace their powers and abilities, and feel normal in whatever form or shape they took. It sounded like Amber had taken this philosophy to the maximum, which was good; if someone was not in balance with her own self, the world was going to be more cruel to them as well. With that said... Gemma was glad the girl decided to return to society, at least for a while.

>>"I was careful to do my best not to be seen, though. Deinonychus' are small. Small for dinosaurs, anyway. That makes it much easier to remain hidden."

"I understand." Gemma nodded. A small dinosaur was still better than a Mansion student romping around as a Brontosaurus or whatever... "But it sounds like you decided to come back and spend some time with us." she added with a smile "Is there a reason you came back now, or did it just kind of happen?"

She knew it probably wasn't the most mentally healthy thing that she could have done, living as a dinosaur for so many months.  The first time she'd done it she'd completely lost herself within it's mind and there was nothing to say that such a thing couldn't happen again in the future.  Still, it was what she'd needed at the time and, ultimately, she'd come back into the human world of her own accord and in her own fashion.  Maybe she'd retreat back to the solitude of the woods away from humans again, but probably not for a long time.

"I can't live alone in the woods all the time, can I?  It's hard, sometimes, to find the right balance between the human and the not human.  It just felt like the right time to come back.  Like I could face the human world again.  For a while, I felt like I could't."  It felt easy to open up to Gemma.  It also felt a little therapeutic.  Not many had an understanding of what it was like to balance two disparate sides of self and, even if she wasn't a mutant, she just had a way of making a person feel comfortable and heard.