Hey Idiot, Tutor Me

[Demi Smith]

Demi had loved the camping trip. She'd spent the better part of the week living essentially off the land, actually teaching her skills and feeling like pretty much a total badass. When it came to being dropped off in the middle of the woods, Demi didn't just do well: she excelled. It had easily been one of the best weeks she'd had since she'd gotten there. And it had also shown that she could totally interact with people in ways that didn't necessarily involve punching them. True, there had been some punching, but only a little.

Sadly, the same could not be said for what followed. Now Demi faced down "finals" for the first time in her young life and suffice to say that she was woefully underprepared. Her usual tutor hadn't been around much lately, leaving Demi to fend for herself. Again: if she'd been in the woods, that wouldn't be a problem.

Instead, she was in a library.

Demi groaned with frustration, letting her head fall down from its spot between her upraised hands and hit the book in front of her. She let out a small scream of frustration before looking up and around. "Hey!" she said, hissing. She flicked a little bit of dirt at the nearest person. "You there, person! I need you to get over here and tutor me."

Yeah, she might be getting just a little desperate.

[Karsen Ford]

Karsen was in the library getting another book on binary code and computer make since he had finished the ones he had stored in his room. He was going to write home and ask for a bookshelf because he really needed to store the books he bought from the bookstore in town and the ones he ordered online. They were resembling a tower at this point and he was sure he could build a fort out of them. That reminded he should so build a fort out of those books. He was balancing ten books a ridiculous amount when he heard someone yelling. He looked around and then walked towards the table with a shrug.

“What do you need to be tutored in?” HE asked raising an eyebrow at her, not even sure if he could help. Hopefully she didn’t ask him about history or social studies. Math, english, and science he was good at the other two not so much. Mostly because he didn’t really pay attention, he was more obsessed with using his power and building things than learning about the history of the world. Besides he could learn that stuff online when he was bored and finished the books in the library.

“I’m not the best in history and Social studies because who cares about that stuff. I sleep through that class mostly because it has nothing to do with my power. Now math, science, and english I can help with” He wanted to make sure she understood that he would be useless unless she needed help with his good subjects.

[Demi Smith]

What didn't Demi need to be tutored in? She was tempted to retort back with that, but she remembered how skittish some of her other tutors were. If she snapped at Andrew, he went cowering beneath a desk. She didn't need that: she needed someone who could explain this stuff to her.

And boy, did this guy look like the sort who knew stuff. He kept going, insisting that he didn't know about history and social studies (Demi's two worst subjects), but he knew math, science, and english. Demi sat for a moment, looking at the various textbooks. Basic math: the kind that was really set for someone about three to five years below Demi's age. The English book was a year or two behind. The science was just as bad, though that was probably Demi's strongest subject outside of gym.

"I don't know, that stuff," she said, gesturing at it. She used the hand to rub through her hair, looking up at him. "You sure you're not good at social studies and history and junk? Those are my worst..." she wrinkled her nose. Demi hated admitting to being worse at something than the idiots around here. Well, at least she could kick most of their butts. She had that going for her.

[Karsen Ford]

Karsen took a deep breath and nodded looking at the books on the table. He could do this, he was helpful and the girl looked like she was in distress for some reason. He never really had to worry about finals and stuff because well things were just about studying in a way that he knew.

“Okay well lets see, we can start with the basic principles of Math. what specifically are you having problems with. Like what have the teachers been going over?” He flipped through the math book and choose not to comment since it was below his level of math. He just figured she was a younger year that needed help.

“Well, I can help with History if do you have any class notes, I can totally make you a timeline of the basic dates and stuff. Or if you have past test I could even make you a mock test on things that are liable to pop on on finals. All you really need to know are dates, inventions and the reasons for any wars you’ve covered.”

Karsen rubbed at the back of his neck and shrugged his shoulders “I guess I can try to help you in social studies but math and stuff is my strong suit because of my power” In hindsight he probably should've made an effort to study his weak subjects stronger but he only had english, math, science, history and some electives. Not to mention his whole power based stuff.

[Demi Smith]

Basic principles? That had Demi wrinkling her nose. "I get the basics," she insisted defensively, shifting on her seat seat again. As for what they'd been going over, she shrugged and gestured at the book again. "That," was her ever so helpful verbal addition. She looked at the book like it was poison.

Then ended up looking at the history one. "Well, it's, like," she gestured, then sighed, "the history doesn't make sense. It's all... wrong," she flipped open the book, "and I'm not any good at remembering these stupid dates and stuff. We're supposed to be figuring out how the American government started or something..." Demi trailed off, staring at the book as though it were written in Egyptian.

The comment on powers drew her head back to Karsen. Actual interest sneaked onto her expression, though there was a healthy dose of amusement: "Your power is that you're really good at math? That's really lame."

[Karsen Ford]

Karsen nodded, it seemed like she was learning algebra and stuff, they start with some basic problems and then go from there. "Okay that's doable." He said offering her a small smile. He took out a notebook and copied some problems from the book for him to solve and an example. "I'm gonna solve a few problems and the explain how to solve them with the littlest amount of work."

"Okay, you don't have to believe it happened a certain way you just have memorize part of the dates. So the start of the american government means you're dealing with the 1780s. Meaning that any dates that don't start with 17 you can eliminate and anything dealing with government would be after 1789 which was when it was started. And are you talking about the American Revolution? because that's something I can help with"


He shook his head "Nope I'm a technopath with added mechanical intuition...I build tech things and stuff, Math and science are an added bonus because of the research I do" he explained, not wanting to really get into it with her. Mostly because he was interrupted from what he was doing to help her so he was going to help. HE just hoped it wouldn't take that long.

[Demi Smith]

And he was taking Demi's book. Well, if he wanted to do the work, that definitely worked for Demi. She'd seriously considered making Andrew do that for her a few times in the past, but he'd been really good at whining about how that was wrong and how she shouldn't do it and stuff that Demi only kind of sort of paid attention to, really.

Though she did listen as Karsen went on talking about the American Revolution and stuff. "Oh yeah, I know about that," she insisted, straightening slightly. "That's when George Washington used his kickass powers to beat up the stupid human British. 'cuz Washington could, like, turn his skin to iron so he was all bulletproof and junk, and he also had the smarts to, like, attack during Christmas with an elite squad of killer mutants."

All said with the utmost sincerity, albeit a little like someone talking about their favorite sports team that had just totally kicked butt in last night's game. "Oh, and that's a pretty cool ability. It's, not, like, outwardly cool, but you can make all kinds of cool stuff. Back home, we had a guy who built a rocket car," she grinned at that, remembering her first ride in it all too well.

[Karsen Ford]

Karsen was about to go into detail about the math problems, when he heard her explanation on the American Revolution. He paused to look at her and realized that she was serious so he changed her approach. Her biggest problem was definitely going to be history.

"Okay, so your right, except since mutants are a secret things are a bit different. George washington was the first president, the government was established in 1789 and the American revolution was won in 1783. I'm not sure you'll need to exactly what happened during the wars, but if you want to pass you'll have to leave out the mutant stuff. We're supposed to learning to go out into the human world so we need to learn their version of events" He nodded quickly drawing a timeline for him to explain to her what happened in the textbooks verses her version. He had no idea who screwed up her version of history but the idea that Washington was a mutant was plausible but not written down in history.

"Yup, and that's cool, they limit my access to rocket fuels and stuff but i'm getting there. I think it's their fear that i'll start a fire and my lack of funds" He shrugged his shoulders tur

[Demi Smith]

Wait, had he said... Demi was right? Demi stared at him for a while, wondering if she'd heard him right. Generally people were extremely keen to tell her precisely what she'd done or said wrong, especially when it came to stuff like history. Yet he had said that she was... and he'd kept right on going, talking about the bits about the war and the government. Demi sort of knew about that, and she actually found herself looking down and scribbling it into her notes, underlining certain bits. It did seem like the sort of thing she'd need to know, after all.

The bit about rocket fuel had her grinned. "We made ours," she said. She looked up at him, her eyes nearly sparkling. "There's, like, ways of making it, especially if you work with a few mutants and follow this special process and junk. I saw it a few times. It's totally sweet: they, like," she raised her hands up as though picking up an invisible object, "pull stuff from the ground and sort of," she twisted her hands, "wring it until the stuff comes out and it gets refined and blasted and it's really cool."

Demi was trying not to think about how strange it was to be talking about something that happened back among the Inherited and get the feeling like someone was actually listening...

[Karsen Ford]

He was glad that he had avoided clashing with the girl about her history. There was no reason why Washington couldn’t be mutant, the government had been covering up a lot of things recently. Karsen felt it was best that they just keep going from there because it would help her get things faster. Just remind her that they had to do it the human way for her to past and there was no confusing.


He would keep that in mind while going forward. “Social studies, i’m figuring since you need to know when the government started you also need to know the branches and how it works. That’s what I learned in social studies although i’m a bit rusty on that because I’m from Canada, but we’ll work through it i know the basics.” It did help that he had a computer and good skills with the internet. However his version of social studies had revolved elementary school teachings. Everything after that was history, and wars.


“That sounds awesome, no that sounds like heaven. Sadly any dangerous chemicals I use here either has to be snuck in or approved.” Karsen was pretty sure that she had to live somewhere, where the people didn’t think you were a menace or needed to be contained. Of course he realized that he was free to leave once he had his power under control. Still building a rocket car seemed pretty neat but that wasn’t what they needed to do right now.

“So did the teachers give you a study guide or a review packet?” He asked putting his pencil down when he was finished labeling the steps to the math problems he had did. He had added written instruction so she just wasn’t looking at a bunch of numbers.

[Demi Smith]

Demi's brow furrowed but she nodded. Part of her wanted to ask about Canada: she'd heard about it in passing. There had been another school there at one point, one that got burned down... which struck Demi as kind of ironic given what Bellefonte had been experiencing. Apparently Canada didn't have a badass like Demi running around to put out their fires.

More importantly, Karsen was digging Demi's talk about the rocket cars. "Well, I think it was, like," she gestured, "a group thing. We want to have good tech and stuff too, and we only use stuff we make, so having someone who can make stuff is pretty helpful," though Demi supposed that some people would probably be surprised to hear such words from her. Sure, she was a little pugnacious... okay, her favorite hobbies generally involved hitting other people with either parts of her body or objects she could control, but she still understood that the powers that made stuff were important.

Though apparently that wasn't enough to fully distract Karsen. Demi sighed. "Gah, you're like my teachers," she mumbled. While Demi sulked, she also dug around in her backpack, soon pulling out a packet. "There's a few," she said, sitting them down. "There's the one on history or civics or whatever," she tapped one, "and there's the math one," another, "and, yeah..." she shrugged. She wanted to add that it was all stupid but, well, some of it was starting to make sense now.

[Karsen Ford]

Karsen nodded but grimaced at the group thing "See I'm not good at working with others, mostly because they don't listen very well. Like I don't want to do and I couldn't let someone help me with actually putting it together. Unless it's Tim but even the I do a lot of the actually putting the things together. ya know?" He didn't expect her to understand but it would be cool if she did. He was trying to keep on topic, because she did need a tutor and it he could tell. He didn't think she was stupid just that she was lead to believe the wrong things. Especially that crockpot story about Mutants in the American Revolution.

"Okay so nine times out of ten some of the questions will be from these packets. How are you at flashcards? I have some extra's ill just write the questions and answers and we can do them that way like a game." They could make it like a little game where he gave hr questions and answers and she just matched them up. "mmm we could play for candy, I have a couple of candy bars and a couple of bags of chips."

He didn't see anything wrong with it since he had to find some way to keep her interested in this so that she could actually remember this stuff.

[Demi Smith]

"Most people are stupid," Demi offered as her esteemed, informed opinion, adding a slight shrug. She'd only been around these people for a while and it was already more than enough for her to feel quite comfortable making that particular assessment. She didn't bother with worrying about who Tim was, probably a friend or something.

Though now Karsen was continuing, talking about studying and stuff that Demi supposed she should be paying attention to. this stuff just did not click with her, and she furrowed her brow. "Uh, yeah, I'm awesome at flashcards," she lied, not wanting to admit that she didn't have the faintest idea what those actually were. She shifted and looked at Karsen from the side. He talked about... wait, what?

"You can make this a game?" Demi asked, perking up considerably. "Wait, and you'll give me food if I do good?" she practically leaped out of her seat now, looking around. This was much better than studying with Andrew. "I'll so kick your butt at the flashcards thing. How do we do it," Demi was already moving around, flipping stuff, trying to figure out which were the cards and how she went about winning them.

[Karsen Ford]

Karsen nodded in agreement, as he took out his flash cards and wrote down the answers and questions each on a separate card. It would be simple, really simple. He would even allow her multiple chances to get it right. There was no way she'd get it wrong..okay maybe she would but Karsen was thinking of some failsafes so she wouldn't just give up. He was pretty sure his biggest problem would be she thought the whole things was stupid and stopped playing.

"Okay, so on one set of cards there are questions and the other is the answers. So to make it fair, we'll do History first, then social studies and then math." He said, he knew mixing the flash cards would confused her so he choose seven questions and set the fourteen cards down. It was simple....incredibly simple.

"Okay, so you need five to win. All you need to do is get all questions in one subject right and there are fourteen questions in each subject. You have unlimited tries, so don't be upset if you get them wrong. Every time you reach five points, I fork over some food from my bag...deal?' He asked holding out his hand over the table for her to shake. He was nowhere near done writing down everything but he figured he'd have time before she moved over to the next category.

[Demi Smith]

Demi kept her eyes on Karsen as he explained the whole flashcard thing. It sounded a bit more boring than she'd figured originally, and a lot more like studying. But she still found herself nodding. "So these will be the questions from the key?" she asked, her brow furrowing. It still just barely made sense to her, but it meant that she could win at something and prove how awesome she was again. That definitely suited her well, and she was already nodding confidently.

"Right, I can so do this," she said, rolling a shoulder. "You're gonna be handing over food to me in no time," Demi leaned forward then, her eyes intent on Karsen. "Well?" she demanded, gesturing at his cards. "What are you waiting for? Start the game already!"