Dresden Academy

Hawthorne stumbled indoors, head a buzz. The boys were having a laugh at his expense and the ladies he most wanted to talk to were either mad at him or making out with their boyfriends. He found a gaggle of cheerleaders however, thankfully devoid of Carly and Cinna and inserted himself in their midst. "Ladies. Looking lovely this evening."

Tina looked up at the intruder interrupting the lovely deep and meaningful conversation she had been having with Marina. Granted, she had been spending the majority of the conversation staring at her friend's lips and nodding in agreement with what snippets she managed to comprehend, but still. It had been nice.

"Thank you, Hawthorne," she said politely, though (she hoped) not terribly invitingly. "Shouldn't you be putting out fires somewhere else?"

Thorn shrugged uselessly. "Ain't none of 'em want to talk to me." He fought the ridiculously stupid giggle that was threatening to bubble forth. It shouldn't be funny given all the bruises and the scratches that were starting to burn; he hadn't even had anyone look to tending them with some healing charms. Carly might have done it, but she was still fuming and hadn't she given him those nice scratch marks?

Marina grinned at him. "And you wonder why." She'd had a crush on this Nikitin last year, but even she realized what a horribly bad idea that was. He was a party boy, a fun time boy. An unintentional heart-breaker. She turned back to Tina as if this little interruption had never occurred.

Tina grinned back at Marina, glad to see that their conversation wasn't over despite the uninvited addition. "I thought merging the teams was kind of a bad idea," she continued, talking about how the Quodpot changes from before the mid-winter break had changed the set up of the cheerleading teams in turn. "We all work so well in our little units."

"And wouldn't it be nice if Carly stopped lording over us like she was still running the whole show," Marina added, rolling her eyes. She didn't mind Carly so much, but she could be terribly rude to some of the younger girls on the squad. "The quodpot teams aren't terribly happy about it either, but the playing's better than it's ever been."

"Yeah, I thought that too," Thorn said, though he didn't think much of anything at the moment, just that he didn't want to be dismissed and he'd pretend to know what they were going on about if they'd let him stay near.

"Really? You don't think Carly's forcing complex jumps on Brenda and Lyanna?" She turned back to Marina after eyeing off Thorn, who couldn't really be that into cheer besides seeing girls in short skirts dancing for a crowd. "They're clearly not confident enough for it yet; one of them is going to slide a landing and break a leg. Did you see poor Bren shaking on top of the pyramid last week? She's terrified of heights, poor thing."