Gaihere, dragon student

Though a lot of dragons have come through Carramba recently, not all of them are simply able to walk in with paperwork filled out already. Gaihere has done so - the first of presumably many who will, because he's from Star City!

***

When the young dragonet deposited his furry behind onto the lobby floor, tucking his wings down as tightly as he could, the only thing people really thought to themselves was 'gee, what a polite dragon!'. They could have been thinking 'OMGWTFBBQ!!!11eleventyone!!2' or 'who's letting their pets run around the campus' or even 'is that a student or a teacher?' ... But in general the thoughts that Gaihere was receiving were soft and friendly.

The thought he got from one particular woman behind a counter, was 'oh another one! how cool!'

"Thank you," Gaihere said, gently placing a packet of information on the desk, when she beckoned him near. The admissions counter was pleasantly empty of paperwork right now, since the semester had started a couple days before. They had their share of sudden arrivals like him, as well as transfers in and out of classes - those were handled on the other side of the lobby, at the Student Educational Services desk. He wouldn't be going over there if he could help it, there was a man wearing plate armor and a big lance thing slung on the wall behind him, and Gaihere got a strange feeling from him whenever they met eyes...

"Welcome to Carramba High," said Cybil Qeats, the school's most decorate admin aside from Dean Luger himself. Cybil took care of so very many things, these days. "I see you're going to need a map, did you need gear to read it?"

The Schatternak-Terigon hybrid tilted his head and his long ears lopped to the side. Cybil had to restrain herself from giggling and glomping him. She wanted to take him home and snuggle. "Gear?" Gaihere asked. It was so adorable that the dark-skinned hardwired blackbottom-haired woman almost lost it.

Clearing her head, Cybil nodded and glanced around. "Yes, gear - some students lack... appendages? You've got lots of those, but no thumbs I can make out. And your ears probably aren't quite long enough to hold papers."

Gaihere twitched his ears together and apart, and it was true: though they were long, they weren't really intended for use as thumb-and-finger!

"Yes please," Gaihere said, and Cybil pressed a few buttons on a keyboard that was strapped to her shoulder and somehow connected to her brain via thick wires. Gaihere was having a faintly hard time understanding her thoughts while she accessed her computer-brain, for some reason the electronic signals interfered with the brainwaves. But soon enough someone else showed up from behind a big admin-only wall, with a clipboard and a strange stiff-wire apparatus.

"You'll have to bring it back, we're running out of these things, you know." The busy alien shuffled around and could barely reach Gaihere's shoulder if he stood on his ... toe-things. And Gaihere wasn't fully grown - he would be a reasonably 'ridable' sized dragon, some day. Not huge, like those big Pernese things that half the staff were bonded to, Cybil thought.

"There are other dragons here?" Gaihere blurted out, and while it clearly surprised the alien who was fitting his head with the gear, Cybil connected two and two realizing that he could access her thoughts. She was polite about it though.

"Yes, many actually. Some are students like yourself, and some are working for the school. Many are just bonded to the staff or students. Some are just leeching," she looked around but apparently didn't see who she was thinking of. Gaihere got a weird sensation - Cybil thinking directly at him.

You will want to announce that you are a telepath receiver, she thought, We have classes for learning how to use telepathy politely.

"I am sorry!" Gaihere said, ears poofing out to the sides and head bouncing low - causing the alien to grumble about moving around, "sorry!" Gaihere said again, almost taking the alien with him when he raised his head again.

"It's all right," Cybil said, "at least you're not prying on purpose. That's what we try and teach people around here anyway."

"Well, now that I know I do not think I will need to take a class. I am good at remembering things. When I am done with this map," he looked at the alien who was appraising his work, "I will bring this right back."

The triped gave what might have been a bow, but it might have been sneezing, and trundled away. The gear that had been assembled upon Gaihere's head was simple, unobtrusive, and useful. It was something like a marching-band music holder, and something like a horse's bridle. Using his ears, Gaihere could press a little switch that rolled up the map, or unfurled it so he could look somewhat crosseyed at it over his nose.

Come to think of it, he'd seen three people with these things outside, Gaihere realized he was going to fit in just fine if other people were having to use them!

"Now let's get you some classes, and a place to stay. You'll be living with the other student dragons, we have a large hyperspacial facility for that." Cybil said, and when she pressed her buttons again a bigger map of the campus appeared as a hologram on the wide desk. Gaihere gazed at it attentively.

"This is a beautiful map," he said. "How pretty the campus is too. I will be able to fly over it, won't I?"

"Of course, as long as you watch out for the no-fly zones around certain buildings." The flashing of the dragon den area stopped, and was replaced by the flickering red aura around two or three taller buildings, and the big java-cup Caffetorium nuclear reactor in the middle of campus. "Be careful flying over the Caffetorium," she warned just in case, "we're not always sure whether offworld students are okay with the... steam."

The thing she said in her mind was 'the radiation' so Gaihere took that to heart.

"Well, are you interested in anything in particular," she gazed at the paperwork, "Gaihere - did I pronounce that right?"

"You did, and... I suppose I would like to learn a bit about your world, but also to be effective in what I do."

Cybil asked, "what would you like to do?" She almost said 'when you grow up' because that was usually the line she got to use on the 5th and 6th graders who were brought through the school on visitation days...

"I will like to be a guardian, ... I might even want to stay here and work. I am able to camoflage myself, that makes me hard to spot."

"It certainly does, that's a good goal, Gaihere." Cybil nodded. She accessed her class database and came up with several alternative groups of classes. "I like that one," he nodded toward the third of four, "but... What is 'deselection procedure?' It sounds a little strange."

"Oh - er," Cybil couldn't help but mentally clamp herself down by pretending to access her database, "it's... let's just change that - if you like the rest of the classes, you could get put into the Security pool, we could certainly use a big strong dragon type patrolling the halls during class."

"Oh that sounds fun!" The dragon said, delighted, forgetting momentarily that she'd not answered his question. Maybe he'd learn later, but for now, Gaihere had a class schedule to take to his councilor, and a campus to get used to!