thoughtformed | [ Action Log - OPEN! ] The Sacred Halls of Learning

WHO: Jim Moriarty and anyone!
WHAT: The super-villain thing just isn't cutting it anymore. Time to try out the weird but brilliant professor gig!
WHEN: October 9, throughout the day and evening.
WHERE: Anywhere in or around any New Moore school building
WARNINGS: I hope none!

Moriarty, in his previous life, was undeniably good at what he did. He had set out to be a clever planner of shady deeds and by the time that life ended he had been called "The most dangerous criminal mind the world has ever known." That was arguably less true in the last year of his life, when he had largely abandoned any project that didn't directly contribute to his spectacular public triumph over his arch-nemesis Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty had ended his career on a high note, the highest note in history.

But that was the problem. He had accomplished everything already. There would never be any pulling strings from the shadows again, he was a famous public figure not only in his previous life but here too. Sure, being infamous had its advantages too, but it just wasn't the same.

It was time to find a new intellectual challenge. What better place to exercise the intellect than the local excuse for the Ivory Tower? Rumour had it that some truly brilliant minds had taken up residence here. If that was so and Moriarty could find a way to fit in, he would be glad to become a reformed-bad-guy just for the company. He had been a professor of mathematics and a very good one at one point, perhaps he could be hired on to teach here.

The first step, of course, was getting to know the place and the people in it. Administrators, students, janitors, everyone was part of the world he wished to call his own. If he ran into the right person he could even ask for a job.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Scott rushed out of math class like a bat out of hell—that would have been a really funny pun if he'd been a vampire. He went as fast as he could go without arousing suspicion. He'd thought they'd get another day off maybe, since everyone had gone kind of crazy and started looting everything, but apparently the school had stayed safe. Which figured. Who'd want to loot a dinky little school? He hadn't taken the return to school schedule with much grace.

As he wove through the students finally making their way out of their classes, his mind was elsewhere, as it so often was—asking Stiles' help for their geography assignment, checking in with Derek just to make sure he really was okay, Allison's—. If anyone had been looking at him, they might have seen him slow down and sigh, the sigh of the truly besotted. Allison, he thought. Allison.

And that was when he almost ran into the older guy walking around the halls, the one who definitely didn't look like a student. He had to kind of swerve and twist to avoid him, and he dropped his notebooks. They fell open. On most pages, the notes petered off into doodles of wolves, and the moon, or a lot of swirly shapes, which was a little embarrassing, actually. He'd thought werewolf sense were supposed to help avoid this kind of stuff.

Scott cringed a little, said, "Sorry, my bad, I totally didn't see you there," and knelt to pick up his things.

Now that was a rather interesting display of careless youthful impatience followed by a rather agile physical maneuver. The fact that the young man had reflexively tossed (or dropped, same thing in this case) his schoolbooks in favour of avoiding a person, along with the doodling evidence that he was simply not captivated by any of his classwork, suggested sports over academics. He would make a lovely bodyguard, military operative, good for simply spy missions with enough training...

None of that would actually happen, of course.

Jim simply stood there and leveled his gaze at the boy, calculating, completely unruffled. How would he respond to that particular form of social pressure?

When Scott stood up again, dusting off his notebooks, the guy was just staring at him. It was kind of intense. His suit looked fine, so he probably wasn't waiting for Scott to offer to pay for dry-cleaning, or anything.

Scott had the sudden idea that guy might know he was a werewolf, and he tensed, arm tightening around his books. The idea set him off in a low-grade panic, and he listened for Allison's voice—she was in the cafeteria, talking with Lydia—to center himself again. It would probably be really counterproductive to shift in front of a guy who might know about your lycanthropy. But no, when he played the moment back in his head, he knew he'd been careful. There was no way the guy knew. It had been stupid to think that.

The intensity of the guy's stare was still kind of unsettling.

"Um," Scott said, if only to maybe divert the guy's attention to something else. "So. Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. Are you a new teacher here?"

It had been a good while since Jim had worn his Moriarty persona around anyone but hardened mercenaries and soldiers. Well there was that trial, but the gentle normal people could watch him timidly through an entire entourage of grim-faced police guards. Now he was face to face with someone young enough and inexperienced enough to be unnerved even by Moriarty's neutral-calm look.

He switched to what passed for friendly in Moriarty's range. "Oh don't worry, I'm not going to bite you."

Scott laughed, a little uncomfortably.

"No, of course, why would you—why would you bite me?"

His voice went a little tight on the word 'bite', and he cut himself off, clearing his throat. Way to go, Scott. That wouldn't look weird at all. He took a cautious step back—it was small, but definitely noticeable. He was getting bad vibes from this dude.

The wolf senses were like what he guessed spidey-senses would be like, sometimes, in that Scott didn't always get anything concrete, but they were insistent. And he knew better now than to ignore them. Not well enough to start running away, though—his mom had taught him manners. Or, well, she'd tried.

"Um, I didn't like, mess up your suit, right?"

The reaction would have been obvious even if the boy hadn't kept talking about it. Though it had been a good long while since Moriarty had reason to dissect the minds of teenagers, he certainly could do so with ease. This one wasn't a vampire fetishist, he was a wolf fetishist. Much healthier, in Jim's opinion, but that was neither here nor there.

The fear was a bit of an overreaction in his opinion too. Maybe he should back much further away from the intimidating presence bit, at least in front of the students. Terrorizing them was the last thing he wanted to do.

"Don't worry about it, it's just clothing. Nice sidestep, by the way. Do you play football? Or 'soccer,' I suppose you'd know it by that name. If you don't, you should."

Scott felt his eyes go a little wide. That was kind of cool, he thought, figuring out that he did sports just because he'd avoided hitting him. He relaxed a little, but not enough that he couldn't bolt if needed.

"Lacrosse, actually," he said, cautiously. "It's kind of like hockey, but on a grass field."

The explanation was standard for him, but reminded him of uncomfortable dinners with his girlfriend's creepy family, and he scrunched up his nose.

"How'd you know?"

Moriarty chuckled, then let out an amused sigh. "Believe it or not I have actually heard of 'lacrosse,' and a great many other things too. Perhaps it seems that your teachers were carefully cultured in petri dishes in the biology lab, never intended to leave the building, perhaps recycled into raw materials upon retirement?"

"Oh," Scott said. "It's just people usually ask."

He felt a grin stretch across his face despite himself. Harris would have gotten upset at that one—someone using his own subject to insult him. Then he probably would have chimed in with something like, I'm surprised you even remember what biology is, McCall. The grin gradually faded to a small smile.

"My PE teacher wasn't so bad."

Well that was unfortunate. The kid was brooding about the past, a past that never actually existed if the powers-that-be were to be believed. Some basic manipulation should be able to correct that, particularly because his target was scatterbrained, passionately emotional, and because of his age he should be as mentally adaptable as he was physically responsive to abrupt changes.

"So what was so important to you that you were sprinting through the hallway? Someone from back home, perhaps? Or someone you met here?"

"Yeah, I guess someone from back home," Scott admitted. He'd been rushing to leave class, mostly, but truthfully, his destination would have been Allison or Stiles anyway, and that covered both of them. It was weird to have someone who didn't really know him suddenly interested in his life. He fidgeted, wanting to go find his friends and get rid of this uncomfortable feeling he was still getting.

But maybe it would be polite to say something back, and found himself saying, "Do you have anyone you know here?"

He didn't even know this guy's name. Maybe he'd ask that before he left.

Jim tilted his head in the direction the teen had been headed, hands in pockets, smiling broadly.

"Don't you have somewhere to be? I'm afraid I'm not willing write you a tardy note, even if your instructor might actually accept the lame excuse."

[ Action Log - OPEN! ] The Sacred Halls of Learning

Unfortunately for Moriarty, this Teen Wolf is def not one of those brilliant minds :(

As long as there are no spitballs he'll be quite satisfied!

Yeah, you don't want that, wolf spit is probably super gross.

But less germy than human, right?

Previously unconsidered advantages of being a werewolf!

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