Sitting in the back of the taxi, his hastily-reacquired sunglasses finally shrouding his freak eye, things had managed to seem a little less real than they did now. Now surreal was more the word, with an undeniable lack of fiction that kind of made him want to crawl back into the taxi, which had promised to wait with those belongings his parents had deemed fit to send until initial things were sorted out with the school.

There was nothing to go back to, however, and so Aiden set his jaw, pushed the taxi door open, and stiffly walked towards the quiet building. The kind of quiet, at least, was one he was fairly familiar with. It was late morning during the week, so classes were clearly in session. His normal school always seemed empty like this when everyone was in class. He just hoped that classes wouldn't let out anytime soon. The longer he could go without dealing with people the better.

He still glanced around at everything nervously as he followed the signs to the main office, though. A place like this could hardly get funding from the government, so it was clear that the lavishness of the place came from whatever private money supported it. Probably something left by some dead rich guy who would be turning over in his grave to know how his money was being used.

Erg. Office. Ai took a quick step back around the corner. He really really really didn't want to go in there, but other choice did he have? He couldn't go home. He wouldn't subject his parents to his presence while he was like this. All he could do... was walk in there and get this part of his trial over with. With a deep breath, Ai forced himself to walk up to the office door and push it partway open. "Uh, hello?" he asked warily.

>>"Uh, hello?"

Maya looked up from behind her desk that she was currently using to rest her feet on while she leafed through some comics she had borrowed from Akshay. In the past five minutes she already forgot that they buzzed someone in through the gates, and that someone was probably standing in front of the office right now. The mirrorwalker frowned and put the comics down, trying to look professional. Miss Taylor as not around, so she had to do the paperwork.

"Yeah, come on in."

"Yeah, come on in."

Would have been nicer if everyone were out of the office at the moment. As it was, Aiden shuffled slightly and turned to more or less face the - girl? young woman? - with her feet on the desk. Was she the secretary? She seemed a bit young, not to mention, well, unprofessionial, what with her feet up on the desk. Either way, though, Ai had to admit that he did feel a touch calmer. She couldn't be much older than he was, after all. She was probably just stuck helping in the office in a spare block or something.

People stuck doing jobs they didn't really want were far easier to deal with. "I'm... Aiden Killian," he said, still hesitantly. Talking to people was annoying. He would much rather have nothing to do with any of this. "Apparently me coming here has already been, well, arranged?" His parents probably hadn't wanted anything to do with these people, but surely someone had told them he was coming. Explaining himself was not something he felt like doing right now.

An awkward teenager shuffled himself into the room.

>>"I'm... Aiden Killian... Apparently me coming here has already been, well, arranged?"

"Okay" Maya nodded, finally getting her feet off the desk and leaning forward to check the computer "Take a seat, this might take a few minutes."

Maya was not really keen on paperwork, but she knew how to use the database. Once she pulled up the appointment information, she looked back up.

"There it is. So... um. Welcome to the school. My name is Maya, and I am one of the... people in charge. I will need some basic information to check you in, and then I'll give you the tour. So... did your parents sign you up to come here?..."

As directed, Aiden lowered himself onto one of the chairs arranged against the wall. He did his best to refrain from glancing around at everything, even if the office was really just a fancier version of the one in his former school, but soon found himself rubbing the pale scar on his shoulder and forced himself to stare at his hands instead.

When the girl spoke again, Ai glanced up but quickly dropped his gaze again. Maya. Hm. Decent enough name. Wait, she was one of the people in charge? He blinked at her, but she was already continuing. She needed information? Didn't his parents do everything? Probably not. So be it.

"Yes," he answered briefly. The momentary debate on whether or not he should leave it at that was settled quickly enough; if this Maya person wanted to know more than that his parents had agreed to this, then she could ask. He certainly was not interested in talking about his personal life with these people.

Yes. That was all. The kid was not very chatty. Maya stopped poking at the computer and looked at him, folding her arms.
She had seen the symptoms before; many kids had gone through the school in the past years, and Maya had greeted a lot of them. This was nothing she had not seen before.

"You don't wanna be here, do you." she said, tilting her head to look at him. It wasn't really a question.

Aiden shifted uncomfortably. Well, someone was unnecessarily perceptive. How was he supposed to respond to something like that? His brother would just laugh it off - no. No. Dealing with this person and this place was better than thinking of that. Anything was better than thinking of that. Anything.

He forced himself to breathe, to talk. Only... he still didn't really know what to say. Sarcasm? He was trying to be polite-ish. Sarcasm didn't really fit with that. He certainly wasn't going to do something crazy like burst into tears and whine and moan about how this was ruining his life. Besides, it wasn't ruining his life - it had already been ruined. This was just the icing on the cake to keep his life from ever getting better.

How about dry humour? There were worse options, and Ai really couldn't think of any better ones right now. "And here I thought I was keeping that hidden pretty well." As he spoke, though, he quickly realized that he couldn't keep his tone from flattening out, for all that there was almost some levity at the start.

"And here I thought I was keeping that hidden pretty well."

Maya sighed and shook her head. She could have guessed. To ever mutant teenager running away from home and seeking shelter in the Mansion there was another mutant teenager dragged in kicking and screaming by parents who only wanted the best for them...selves.

"All right, let's try this again. Why don't you tell me why your parents think you should be living here in the school, and then we'll try to figure something out. This is not a prison and no one's gonna keep you here against your will. But there's a lot of perks to this place too, so don't knock it until you know more. Deal?"

She really should just take the hint and leave him alone. Surely she could just run the file and send him off to wherever he was supposed to stay, nice and far away from proper society, without pestering him with all of this. It wasn't necessary, not by a long shot.

Neither brevity nor levity had satisfied her, though, so what would? Raging anger? Writing or drawing that would be one thing - actually doing it would fail miserably. And be kind of completely and totally stupid. Aiden shifted in his chair. Besides, for all she said it wasn't a prison, what else was he supposed to do? Going back to his parents' was not going to work. He wasn't going to be able to get a job and live on his own - heck, he was still in high school.

"My parents want me here so they don't have to disown their last kid or deal with me," he eventually muttered darkly. And they would have gone with disowning him too, if it weren't for the hospital staff telling them about this place. And probably strongly reminding them that they only had one strike left in the offspring department, and striking out probably wasn't the best idea. At the very least, explaining it would be even more societally awkward, since apparently they had announced the news that he had survived without injury before they found out how that was. He briefly wondered what would happen if one of the 'perks' Maya had referred to happened to be a drastically shortened lifespan due to dangerous mutants living on the other side of a thin wall.