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Near The Perk: Friday morning

It was the day of the welcome picnic. The day of chaos and descending hordes, otherwise known as as the day new teachers and new students arrived.

Harriet needed tea. Harriet needed quite a lot of tea. It was the key to the the successful dealing with descending hordes of all kinds.

Luckily, The Perk was right here, and they knew how to make a mean cup of tea.

[ooc: specifically for one, but open!]

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A bit rumpled but no worse for wear, Glitch wandered into town. Perhaps unluckily for her, Harriet was the first person he had seen.

"Oh!" He rushed over to her with small steps, arms swinging at his sides. "Hello!"

Glitch stuck his hand out to shake hers in introduction. Or should he bow? He spent a moment deciding, settling eventually on standing back a little and giving her a small wave with his awkwardly outstretched hand. It probably wouldn't do to accidentally invade a stranger's personal space.

"My, uh, my name is Glitch. Or you can call me Ambrose, I suppose." He smiled. Somewhere, a synapse was telling him that she might think him to be a bit crazy, but it misfired before it could finish the message.

"Do you know where we are?"

Harriet raised an eyebrow at his actions, but she smiled at him encouragingly. "It just so happens that I do know where we are," she replied, holding out her hand to shake, in the hope of cutting through some of his confusion.

"This is Fandom, home to a town and a school. I'm Harriet Jones, Dean of Students." She felt compelled to pull out her school identification and show it to him. "It's an island off the coast of the United States," she added, with no idea if it would mean anything to him. "I take it you've just arrived?"

He shook her hand and bowed, a little. It couldn't hurt, he thought, as she seemed very officious.

Glitch gave a dry little chuckle and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. Travel storms these days are very rude." It made sense to him.

Then it clicked. United States. DG had said she was from one of them, one of those 'states,' and Ahamo was, too. "Do you know DG? She's from this side." He felt it couldn't hurt to ask.

"DG? No, I'm sorry I don't." Harriet was tapping her lip thoughtfully with a finger while she studied him. Because she was Very British, and would stand out as Very Polite even amongst the Very British, she tactfully didn't ask why he had a zipper in his head.

It was lucky for him he wasn't fatter. It didn't matter how good the compression system, there's no way a Raxacoricofalipatorian would fit inside that body. Probably. "Glitch or Ambrose," she said under her breath, then brightened. "I think we've been expecting you."

Glitch frowned, but nodded. Couldn't expect everyone outside of the O.Z. to know who the princess was, right? Right.

But they had been expecting him... Wait.

"Expecting me?" A misfire. "Expecting me?" ... "Expecting me?" He repeated it, same intonation as the first time, over and over again.

"Expecting me?"

Harriet frowned as he started behaving oddly. More oddly. "Oh my."

Well, it was worth a try. She stepped forward and slapped him firmly on the cheek. "I say, Mr Ambrose. That's quite enough of that!"

"Expec-!" He blinked and his eyes went wide. As he realized what he had been doing, he winced.

"I'm very sorry about that."

Glitch smiled, warily, to ease the tension. "My synapses don't fire quite right anymore." He ran his fingers along the zipper as he said it, and gave a self-conscious little laugh.

"You, uhm, said something, though, about expecting me?" He considered it for a second. "Did the Queen send word?"

"It's quite all right." Harriet kept her voice quiet and soothing, not quite the tone you use on a suspected crazy person, but it was close. "I've seen far odder in my time, I assure you. As for expecting you, the Queen did not send word, at least not that I'm aware of, but this place has a way of," it sounded so fanciful, she hesitated to say it, "knowing what's going to happen."

She pursed her lips, watching carefully for any repeat of the repeating. "You, for example, have been expected in the role of one of Fandom High's teachers."

Glitch stared. Not at Harriet, of course, because that would've been rude. He thoughtfully picked out a spot just to the left of her shoulder and tried to collect his thoughts.

If the Queen hadn't sent a message, and they knew he'd be here... He ventured a guess. "Magic, right?"

His synapses hadn't gotten far enough to process the 'teacher' part of what she'd said yet.

"Truthfully, I hesitate to hazard a guess, but magic is as good an explanation as any." She had to glance over her shoulder to see what he was staring at. When the answer seemed to be 'nothing', somehow she wasn't surprised. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm..."

He looked up, the sluggish realization getting there in its own time. Glitch's eyes grew a little wider, more aware, and his mouth opened and shut itself once.

There it was.

"Teacher??"

Harriet carefully didn't smile at his shock, but it wasn't easy. "Teacher." She cocked her head. "Unless there's another Glitch that you know of?"

Glitch shook his head.

"No, but, are you sure? I mean, I had just half a brain for so long, and teaching and students and what if I get stuck in front of a class? What would I even teach?"

He tried to keep his panic contained by fussing with the cuffs on his coat. "Not that I was ever a bad student, or dull, or anything of that sort. You don't become an adviser to the Queen of all the O.Z. being a dullard, you know. But teaching?" He shook his head.

Becoming a teacher was very much not what he had expected of the Other Side.

"I'm sure you weren't," she said, aiming once more for soothing. "Even if you had been, teaching here isn't quite like teaching anywhere else. It's not unlike being an advisor to the Queen. Just pretend you know what you're doing; eventually, everyone will believe you."

Harriet may have been slightly cynical on that point, but she'd known too many advisors to the Queen.

She decided against mentioning that getting stuck in front of a class was pretty much guaranteed. That could wait until he was locked in. "If I remember correctly, you're teaching something called Applied Inventiontronics."

Glitch was nodding, considering it. His synapses offered up that it would be like advising Queens, and all at the same time, and all in one subject area. The analogy wasn't perfect, he knew, but it was calming.

He began to brighten visibly when she mentioned the exact subject.

"Really?" Glitch smirked to himself. "That was always my favorite subjects during school. Also," he looked at her seriously, eyebrows raised, "my best."

That would be Ambrose's Ego, emerging slowly but surely after annuals of lying dormant. He smiled confidently, and Harriet had him.

Harriet quirked an eyebrow at him, feeling quite pleased with herself. "Then there's no one better than you to teach it, is there?"

He thought about it for a moment. Magic, and expecting him, and his favorite subject in all his school days.

Best subject, he reminded himself.

"I," he paused for the smallest moment before the part of him that burned to show off its intellect took over and sealed his fate, "suppose not."

He looked around, then, and asked, "Do I have to start now?"

"School doesn't start until next week, so no. You'll have time to get settled in." Harriet smiled at him in clear approval. "There's a welcome picnic today, though, for meeting your fellow teachers and some of your students." She gestured in its general direction. "I was just on my way there. Would you care to join me?"

He smiled. This is what he'd been looking for, new memories for rebuilding his synapses. And teaching wouldn't be so bad, he'd decided.

Ever the gentleman, Glitch nodded and held his arm out, bent at the elbow, to escort her if she wished. Some habits died hard. "I would be delighted to."

He couldn't help resting his free hand on his stomach at the thought of food. Picnics at Finaqua always had the most delicious sandwiches he'd ever eaten. Absently, he hoped that culinary tastes between this side and the Outer Zone weren't terribly different.

Harriet was still smiling as she took his arm, surprised and touched all at once. "I should warn you," she said, in the interests of, well, not quite full disclosure, more fair warning, "this place can be a little odd."

Glitch gave her an overconfident eyebrow waggle.

"Odd? I've seen mobats and been captured by those evil little hellions of the Easter Guild." He nodded to himself as she led him off.

"I can handle odd."

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Near The Perk: Friday morning

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