Shortly after Jon noticed Sarah, Sarah looked and saw a teenage pixie-girl trailing a haze of pink glitter behind her. He turned and flitted towards her, clearly angry. Jon strafed towards the locker side of the hall as she backed away; it had taken her a while to get used to the idea of having six degrees of freedom in her movement, but time and a few sessions of Descent had helped her start to understand how to take advantage of it.
By the time Sarah had caught up with her, Jon was sitting on top of the lockers, waiting. Sarah was a little calmer by this point, but still obviously upset. He landed on the locker in a crouched position that Jon found fairly intimidating. "What's the matter?" Jon asked, though she pretty much knew the answer.
"What's the matter!?" Sarah hissed. "You told the staff, dammit! After I told you not to!"
Strictly speaking, Jon had told another student, who had then told the staff, but she had to admit that it was somewhat disingenuous, and she did feel kind of bad about it. She nodded silently.
"Why?" the pixie-boy demanded. He had sat down now, but was hunched forward and glaring intently at her. "Why was it okay for you to barge in on my problems? It's not like I didn't give you all my reasons for doing what I asked! Hell, if this whole mermaid thing hadn't come up, do you even know how many people would be on my case?"
Jon sighed. "I guess I did it because you could've gotten killed," she said. "I'm sorry I had to, for what that's worth, but I couldn't let them try to beat you up. They could've made paste out of you even by accident."
Sarah groaned, holding his head in his hands. Little shimmery clouds of powder wafted down as he shook, apparently out of exasperation. "But why do you care!?" he snapped. "God dammit, why does it matter what happens to me? You don't even like me. Your friend likes me even less! Even the people who used to like me don't anymore!" There was a hollow edge to his voice, like he was trying to hold himself back from saying too much.
Jon shrugged. "I dunno," she said. "I guess I just hate seeing someone so defeated. You're right, I never really liked you, but...ever since your change, you're not even rolling with the punches. Nobody should be that down."
"And I suppose you're the model student of Getting Used To It University," Sarah growled. "Well, let me tell you something: you didn't lose everything you worked for for the past four years and the closest thing you had to friends in the process."
"No," Jon replied. "No, I didn't." She sighed. "And I'm sorry it happened to you."
Sarah had been expecting further argument, and didn't really know how to respond. He and Jon just sat there for a while, not saying anything.
Finally, Jon spoke. "So I see you got the dust-thing, too," she said. Sarah stared for a moment, then nodded. "As if this wasn't stupid enough," he groaned. "And it comes out so damn fast...I think I'm going to be sitting in a layer of it by the end of class."
Jon nodded. "I know," she said. "And I dunno how you feel about blue, but with this pink stuff I wind up looking girly even though I'm trying not to."
Sarah nodded just as the bell rang. Suddenly, both of them realized that they weren't even ready for class, and rushed to grab their things. As Jon shut her locker and turned to head off to class, Sarah nervously spoke."Um, thanks." he said. "For...caring."
