"Sounds like you're speaking from personal experience, " thinking aloud when Sophia heard the example. Such an example wasn't a very well crafted or thought of before just shouting it out. A parent told a kid to not have an apple because they we're going to have dinner. There was a purpose behind the rule, nothing tyrannical about it. But listening to her speak about authority didn't help either, just listening to her made it sound like the world was against her, and the scapegoat happened to be that she was a mutant. She was only a mutant to people who knew she was one, it wasn't as though from looking at her you could tell she was one, she could probably get by without appearing like one. Still, these thoughts and opinions weren't favorable to Sophia, who spent the greater portion of her life in posh and privileged settings.

"In Science, we learn that sometimes are constants like gravity, certain equations, and such. But there are also theories and postulate, that we must assume are true in order for other theories and equations to work as well. Life isn't that much different, there will be people who will always do the same times, but you have to trust a few of them to lead you in the right way. But science isn't without faults, sometimes theorems and postulates are wrong, and they break the very idea of other theories and equations we might have. We learn from those mistakes, again, not unlike people, and it would seem, you've learned never to trust anyone, " which was what it sounded like. It was a shame, even Sophia, who was a starch believer in science and thought rather highly of herself believed and trusted certain people. It was all the more tragic when they let her down, but all the more important when they proved her right when they assisted her. Sophia might have not been able to express it properly, but trust was something you had to hand over to someone, and just believe.

"Science can teach us a lot about how the world works, but it is just as good of a metaphor for people as well. If you believe in something, it may prove you wrong, like the Geocentric model. Very early, when people were just looking at the stars, they thought that Earth was the center of the universe, that everything circled us. It wasn't until about the 17th century did we were able to prove otherwise, which led to a radically different shift in how we thought of our place in the universe. Granted, we believed in something, it was proven wrong, but we grew stronger because of it. Now if you asked, no one thinks the universe resolves around the Earth, just them, " guilty herself of thinking things happened around her for her. She did think that certain things happening benefited her more so than others, but that was just ego. Through science, Sophia could explain people, but that was the extent of it, relating people to science, theories, postulates, equations, all of which people weren't. Looking back at Tses, maybe she seemed strange for using sciences as a metaphor, but reiterated her point, "But what I'm trying to say is that sometimes you have to trust someone. They might hurt you, but more likely, they might just help you out. "

The more the woman spoke, the larger her words became, and while Tses had a fairly decent vocabulary none of that included science. The closest she ever got to the stuff was a few stolen files from a professor at a school a year or so back she retrieved or Kystler, and she couldn't read any of it. She felt like she was trying to understand a verbal book, and all the letters kept mixing up. Constrants....postulate....what the ... Her thoughts kept sending back the words, stamped with a incomprehensible! stamp. These words were a credit card being swiped for someone with no funds in their account. Over and over, it was just denied, denied, denied...

But she was put on her listening face, and got the most out of it she could. Less because she was interested in what the professor had to say, and more because her pride was on the line. She wanted to feel at least a little smart, instead of just some little homeless bum who wandered into this building. But every little rejection in her mind was just another blow to her pride.

Then, finally, it was summed up into an easy sentence.

>> "But what I'm trying to say is that sometimes you have to trust someone. They might hurt you, but more likely, they might just help you out. "

Tses gave a shrug of her shoulders at that, and just glanced at the ceiling and back down. "Seen more of the 'hurting you' than the 'helping you' unfortunately. Trust only goes so far. People break it enough, you stop giving it. Oh, there's a little here and there... like the fact I brought Serena here. I may trust you guys enough to keep her safe, but I still want to verify it because blind trust only ends in trouble."

Now this was beginning to get annoying. Sophia had perfectly reasonable ideas to present to a person, and what happened, nothing. Not only that, but this little turd of a girl wasn't even really listening, clearly the idea of constant and postulates meant something, and Sophia wasn't just rambling for the sake of rambling. This girl was like a broken clock, twice a day, maybe she was right, but only those two instances and ever again. Broken was broken, and this short time wasn't nearly enough to fix her obviously, and considering she'd likely never see her again, maybe it wasn't worth it. Though the girl could atleast humor Sophia with a 'I'll consider it…' like response, it didn't hurt to humor Sophia.

If anything, the fact that Tses wasn't humoring Sophia made it worse. Her ego as bloated as it already was, to think that someone wasn't listening to her was extremely annoying, surely it showed on Sophia's face. But her intent was to be composed, having an outburst wouldn't help, and it surely wouldn't paint the picture Sophia wanted of someone freely trusting another. Sophia lamented, this one is damaged goods, "Very well. Have it your way."

They have been walking for a short time now, almost coming up against the end of the halls, and not at one point did they find this Serena girl, and now they were coming toward the end of the hallway. Sophia was going to be quite upset if she found out that no such Serena girl was even here, though what might Tses say if she didn't find her either, "So what does Serena look like? Tell me about her, maybe I've seen her around and just not known it was her."

Tses watched the expressions change on the woman, and slowly, it sent little warning signals through her mind. She was irritating the professor. That much was evident. And that was counterproductive to her whole 'best behavior thing'. Sometimes, Tses hated being so.... dumb. She hated not understanding what people were saying, and she hated not being able to relate to it. As much as she did the whole 'disinterested' charade, she wasn't proud of the way she tended it tick people off. At least this woman was putting up with her a little. She hadn't kicked her out yet at least.

She found herself speaking slowly, sighing a little, and shoving her hands in her pockets. She kept looking for Serena, but let herself speak a little. "Listen, I know you probably have some really insightful stuff you're saying... I wish I understood it, I do. But I don't. Science is.... beyond me; not really something I needed growing up. But thanks for the effort..." It was about as nice as she could managed given the circumstances, and she did a little shoulder shrug shaking it off. She blinked at the question, and traced through her memories.

"She's pretty much the same height as me, younger. Blond hair past her shoulders, has a little curl to it I think. Blue eyes, controls blood." She said, glancing around. this place was making her feel a little unnerved by it's emptiness.

"Yeah… whatever…" Sophia wasn't overly interested in what Tses had to say anymore, dismissively retorting to her latest attempt to prove her ignorance, she was going to play whatever advice Sophia had attempted to give and wasn't going to listen. Perhaps Sophia needed to relate it to one of internet or pop-culture things, but Sophia didn't know any, so it wouldn't have helped. Granted she might as well been speaking Spanish to her, though Greek might have made more sense, considering much her calculations and even terminology was built around it.

If it was anything Sophia disliked, it was that Tses was unintentionally wasting her time. Granted Sophia hadn't existed for probably more than ten years longer than this girl, but she had been in far more laboratories and experienced a lot more. But it was more or less an annoyance to Sophia since she saw herself on a might higher totem pole than Tses. Sophia had an arbitrary judging and ranking system, seeing people as either higher or lower than herself based on arbitrary judgments she determined without committee. Though Sophia was consistently on the top of these rank because of her naturally gifted knowledge, her natural beauty and fashion choices that were always an attempt to subtly upstage everyone else, her mutant powers with little flaws and otherwise smooth control, and her massive ego never allowed her to ever be toward the bottom. If she a time she found herself arbitrarily ranking herself so, it was because someone else was superior in something, she hated, but Tses was hardly even on any of these ranking lists, so obviously Sophia was superior in any number of different ways. And someone superior needed to be listened to, and because Tses hadn't done this, Sophia was now disinterested in Tses. Not it was Tses's fault, but Sophia's ego was simply to bloated and conceded to relent to someone else's thoughts or judgments.

"Blood? " Sophia nearly stopped in her tracks, grabbing Tses's as though stunned by the sudden news. This was strange, but Sophia wanted to know more, "What do you means she controls blood? "

Tses tried. And her quick attempt to be on good behavior vanished almost as quick as it came. She could see the body language coming off Sophia, and the disdain she felt seemed to be thick in the air. Tses was used to people being judgmental; heck, she was a mutant, so it kind of came with the territory. But this felt different. It felt personal. This woman acted so far above Tses, and she longed to just blast her through a wall and knock her ego down a few notches. But she had placed herself in the middle of the bee hive, and trying to blow up the queen bee could have unforeseen negative consequences.

It was too bad, really. Tses was itching for a good fight, and after the loss she felt from New Years, her mind had steadily drifted from angry, to reckless, before finally settling somewhere in a sad emptiness. She didn't feel anything anymore. Not really. Sure, she got irritated, and got annoyed, but those feelings drifted and faded so much faster. She just felt numb and her heart had hardened from the pain. So now she felt like she was hunting to feel something, anything. Anger, happiness, fear.... each emotion reminded her she was still alive, she was going to survive, and she was going to make it. She welcomed the feelings she felt, negative and positive. They just were little vital signs that she was still functioning. Whatever, Sophia pissed her off. At least it was something.

Then, she changed, and Tses found the woman react differently at the mention of Serena's powers. The younger woman looked confused for a moment then shrugged. "Yeah, blood. Like you know, red stuff, in peoples veins. She can make it like hover and stuff like that." Seemed like a perfectly normal thing to be able to do in Tses' mind. She could make moonlight explode, Serena could make blood hover. It was a mutant world after all.

At just the notion that a person could make blood hover, it was scary to think that she might be able to do if she could manipulate it quite like Sophia could manipulate glass. Sophia could reform glass in to any different shapes, not just forcing it to float in the air, and even she could melt it and reform it as necessarily. If this Serena girl could do the same, this was one very scary person, her body covering in goose bumps rather quickly, and even shivers spreading down her spine and to her back. This was a notion and power that Sophia thought was rather unbelievable though.

"Seriously, that what she can do?" leaving little chance for Tses to settle down at all from her retort, but Sophia didn't want to believe that such a person even existed. Why would someone like that need to exist in the first place. Granted you could, but why? Mutations were not only weird, but it was slowly getting to the point that Sophia was considering herself a massive step above the rest now. Her powers, with almost no flaw, and herself with no real flaws either, she was quite a impressive person, but there were even scarier people out there. If the world only knew, they'd be even more scared.

"Then… let's find this girl a bit quicker for you," now it was Sophia's mission to get this over with, she didn't want to dittle-dally with it any longer, it was something she longed to see completed, and move on as a result. But that didn't seem likely, and among all other things, Sophia still didn't know if perhaps Tses was lying about a girl who could control blood or not, something like that, why would Tses lie about that? But in any case, Sophia didn't want to think about it; she didn't like blood and just the thought of it annoyed her greatly.

Tses gazed at Sophia, rather baffled by her evident discomfort with the idea of someone controlling blood. It didn't seem like something to be afraid of. Blood was just like anything else: it could be dangerous in the hands of the wrong person, or it could just be something else to use. She made handmade explosives, and she was quite certain there were dangerous ways of using that. And there had to be at least one mutant who controlled water, which was EVERYWHERE. If blood made you afraid, there were plenty of little surprises mutants could create further down the road to leave you even more unnerved.

"Yup. She controls blood. Not sure exactly how much she can do with it. The blood she was controlling was already on her, so it wasn't like she just ripped it out of someone or anything." Tses said non-nonchalantly, and paused, looking at a picture on the wall, some abstract blob of colors. Oddly enough, it reminded her of blood, but that could have just been because of the conversation. She crossed her arms for a moment, considering what it could be, then blinked as Sophia tried to hurry her along. Rolling her eyes a little, she followed.

"Don't you have like a main office where students register or anything? Class schedules, rooming arrangements? A secretary who can tell us where to go so we don't have to just keep wandering. She could just be away from the mansion right now." Tses remarked, and adjusted her arm band again like she did when she was fidgety. The fabric brushed against the scars on her arm, the nerves on her skin sending louder sensations to her brain while the thick scar tissue left a quieter tingle. the mixed sensations the scars created was something she had grown used to, but occasionally she stopped to think and process it.

Blood was not something Sophia was ever going to deal with, it wasn't her field of expertise and nor did she have any vested interested in making it such. Though what you might be able to do with it, even if it wasn't outside of the body, there were potentials for lots of manipulation, assuming the strength lied in doing such. If one could do a lot of harm to another person if you crossed this person, or simply spooked them enough to activate their power. Now that Sophia began to think about it, the more her body cringed at the idea of forcing portions of blood into parts of her body that caused her to get blotches on her skin, or made her pass out at an inconvenient time, or what if… no way… they could use it stimulate movement in the body! Everyone was this girl's play toy now! It was time to find this girl.

Then Tses had to do the unthinkable, she had come up with an idea that actually sounded relatively intelligent, which only made Sophia curl inside. Granted though there was a reasonable reason why this wasn't their first action this entire time, maybe two. Firstly, Sophia though that this girl would just be easy to find, and the fact that they hadn't seen other children running about made Sophia wonder if she was unaware of something that everyone else ought to have been well aware of. And then the second, "That could very well be a good point, though I don’t know where such an office is."

Tses blinked ever so slowly, and tilted her head to the side. She crossed her arms and couldn't stop the expression that crossed her face. She was rather bewildered by the woman's answer, to be honest. Her thoughts about Serena and the blood controlling, and mutants in general vanished momentarily, and she focused on the current thought racketing through her mind. "How can you be a Professor and not know where the office is? Isn't that kinda like a given?" She questioned. While she knew fairly little about schools, she knew that teachers were pretty high on the totem pole of schools, and as such, typically had a fair knowledge of the places they were teaching at. She squinted slightly at the woman, a suspicious expression crossing her features.

"Unless you aren't even really a professor here...Or maybe you just wish you were one..." She was poking into things she probably shouldn't, but Tses did seem to have that one fatal flaw of being nosy and outspoken. Which, together, tended to be a bad combination. It made her come across as rude in the gentlest of terms. If she had to be compared to any animal, a hedgehog would probably be the most common answer. Coupled with her slightly jaggedly cut blond hair and pigtails, she had far too much sas than was healthy. Then you gave her the powers to make explosives...

Well, sometimes powers just went with the people who wielded them.

"Maybe if we just head back towards the entrance we can see if someone else can show me where it is...." Tses suggested. She knew it might be a blow to the girls ego, but she wasn't sure her current tour guide could really show her much. Or help her at that. She was starting to think the person was just trying to save her own skin for not letting Tses wander the halls alone. Which could be highly likely. But what would Tses do unattended anyway?

Well, perhaps it was good to keep her supervised.

"I…I…" at a fairly loss for words for Sophia. Rather astounding intellect, great body, and the ego to rival the side of the planet, but when it came down to it, she was bad with finding things and the general location of stuff. If she could, she'd find a way to build a teleporter just to get herself from one location to another instantly, just because she always got lost. Plus, this place was foreign to her still, despite only having been here a short time, but that wasn't the problem. Sophia's face and anger built rather quickly from that point, the pink to red changing complexion on her face was enough to send her in to another state of utter embarrassment as well.

"I am too a Teacher here!" her voice creaked in to a rather loud stance that was enough to scare a few people, but it was one of utter shock as well. In almost any sense, this was never the side Sophia showed, one with her calm and collected manner dismissed for one of sheer upset and panicked embarrassment. Though as she shrieked back at Tses, portions of windows began to jiggle in their frames, as though they may break through them any instance.

"I have years of education, formalized training, greater understanding of the universe and cosmos that few people have ever understood, muchless known about. And you don't think I'm a teach just because I’m human and get lost! I just moved in!" though when she was finished with her little tirade, she finally noticed some of the windows around her buckling and a few of them even beginning to show signs of cracking and spider webs forming as a result. With her new focus on the windows all the sudden, even her own eyes completely off of Tses, whatever it was in Sophia settled down and more of her calm demeanor returned as her attention toward the windows quickly began to seal up all the cracks, making them like new once again. Turning her attention back to Tses, "I am a teacher here… I start next week."

There was a large assortment of things that had happened to Tses when she angered someone; people had turned into dinosaurs, she'd been thrown into trees, she had people try to stab her and she had people try to shoot her, both successfully and not. Anger was something unpredictable, and it changed it's appearance depending on who wielded it. Around Professor Stratford, anger was something that looked an awfully lot like glass, with cracks crawling across it's surfaces like frost during a sudden drop of temperature, and that was rather disconcerting. The panes that started to jiggle and move did so unnaturally, and the way they wobbled reminded her of a tall building being pushed by the vibrations of the wind. This anger was not as comical, yet, she felt herself longing to smile despite it.

Her sense of danger was growing, but she kept her face calm. Responding to threats only increased the strength of the eventual eruption. The tempter tantrum was almost childish for someone so sophisticated, but that hinted towards how risky any taunting could be. But risk was what Tses lived off of, and thrived on. So her mouth couldn't quite control itself.

"I think it would be best for both of us if you kept your temper and powers under control. I'd rather not have to fight anyone today, and I'm sure you wouldn't want that as your introduction to your new students; 'Hello, I'm Professor Stratford, I tried to impale a visitor last week with a piece of glass, but I'm sure nothing like that will happen again.' While that would be an exciting story, I don't think it is the bullet point you'd want on your resume." She calmly responded, and crossed her arms. She was knee deep in water, and at the edge of a very steep drop off. She was flirting with danger, and in her slightly twisted mind it seemed ...fun. The combination could get her thrown out at best, and injured in a more serious turn of events.

"I’ll consider it,” she growled back as she nearly began gritting her teeth, though she was more interested in impaling this girl with a few shards of glass at this particular point. She did have a point thought, it wouldn’t have been a good introduction to the school, considering she hadn’t had a formal introduction just yet. Sophia could see it though, hurting someone because she got on her nerves, it would have been righteous and proper, she could have found a way to explain it. But she was the adult, and she wasn’t to be one, even if she was fighting the urge to do mean things to another person who was getting on her nerves.

"Let's turn around, I imagine the Office isn’t too far away from the entrance,” a grumble in her voice, as though admitting some level of defeat, but angry with herself that a child had gotten to her in some way. Sophia was a very collected person; this kind of outburst from her was unacceptable, whether in normal company or in that of private, such an show of anger was not in her normal strain of thoughts and she was really embarrassed that it had come to that. She purposefully turned around and walked ahead, ensuring that she could collect her thoughts so that the redness in her face could disappear, replaced with the calm and collected feeling she was more normally attuned to.

Tses resisted the urge to mockingly salute the teacher, and forced her hands to stay crossed across her chest. At least there she maintained her defiance without 'poking the bear' any further. She enjoyed getting the better of people, and having windows explode or stab glass chaser would definitely not leave her with a leg up. In fact, getting stabbed with glass would make her image of being reckless turn into a more suicidal type of mentality. And as depressed as she was, she tried to avoid ever being that hopeless.

This interaction was loosing some of the fun for her, and that was was forced her to let things go as they turned back towards the front of the school. The woman's irritation had been amusing for a moment, but now there was little beyond mild interest to keep Tses from leaving and coming back later. She just wanted to figure out where Serena was, and get rid of her unwelcomed shadow. But this was becoming more and more annoying the longer she stayed.

The woman moved purposefully now, temper evident in her footsteps for a few moments before her walking seemed to become more collected and more the well mannered individual Tses had first encountered. She was trying to save face, at least from Tses' point of view she was. Get them lost for a half hour? Oh that wasn't such a big deal, she'd only just got there after all. But if she had just admitted from the beginning she was new here much of this could have been avoided. "If we can't find the office, I can always just go back outside and wait for someone else to help." Tses said, breaking the silence.

"Fine, you're more than welcome to sit and wait outside instead," granted, there wasn't a lot of damage she could do outside, and at this point Sophia wouldn't have minded her outside either. But this was not her win, but it rather Sophia's defeat. Trying to look like the adult and she was still capable of being gloated in to reacting not only poorly, but in a manner which painted her in just the most negative light possible. This wasn't what Sophia wanted at all, it was an absolutely horrible way to look, and for someone like her that was not only smart, but beautiful, this was a travesty all together. Thank goodness no one else saw or heard Sophia's outburst, the last thing she wanted was to have others see her appearing like some demon or witch to students. No one would even entertain the notion of taking her class.

The office, why hadn't Sophia thought about it? Was she too over confident in this situation? And if she was, why didn't she already realize that she didn't know where this office was, much less that she didn't know this girl? She didn't need to impress anyone, least of all a person who Sophia already believed too far beneath her, but still, she tried. Just a few question spinning in Sophia's head, having noted that she never usually did things like that, but at the same time, she normally was not around a wealth of people either, so assisting people was not her normal act. Sophia resided in her head that the only reason she helped was her own benefit in the eyes of others, thinking better to help a person rather than let the ponder and wait. But she was the adult, she was to be expected if she had to deal with children and teens, and Sophia should have known that she wasn't going to be respected after Tses didn't heed her comments at all earlier.

Resigned to trace her steps back, she found herself retracing herself back to the entrance, but when it came to a stair way, she pondered if she needed to go up or down at all, forgetting if she had even traveled up stairs before. She had to stare at it pretty hard before even deciding upon anything, "Which way was it….?"