[hr][h1][color=dimgray]Max Hernandez[/color][/h1][hr]

Max Hernandez sat in a leather office chair in his staff office in the Academy's Administration Wing. He was leaning back in his chair, reading a book of poems by Emily Dickinson which he had pulled off of his bookshelf a few minutes before. The bookshelf was a funny-looking thing, made of a sleek grey metal wire and filled to bursting with books, folders, and stray pieces of paper. Organized chaos, as Max called it, which was difficult for anyone without extrasensory perception to search their way through. The office was the definition of organized chaos, with filing cabinets filled to bursting, desk drawers crammed with a hodgepodge of everything from snack bars to case studies, and a corkboard covered in crooked papers. A garden box filled with cacti sat by the window on a shelving unit covered in bags of desert soil and fertilizer. The only organized thing in the room was the top of Max's metal desk, which contained only an iMac, a keyboard, a mouse, and a Keurig. 

Max sighed and placed the book on the desk. Emily Dickinson was hardly his cup of tea (poetry really wasn't his cup of tea in general), but he was so incredibly bored that he felt his only options were to read a book or shoot himself. He instinctively felt for his gun, a Glock 17, in his jacket pocket, and then, smirking, leaned forwards in his chair. He looked out of the window: it was hardly four o'clock, but it was already nighttime. Oh, how he hated Alaska. He stood up from his chair and turned the grow light suspended above his garden box on. He had always loved cacti. Like him, they were thorny and self-sufficient. 

From the floor-to-ceiling window of his office, he could see the grey ocean stretching out endlessly towards the horizon, and the sun dousing itself beneath its waves. If he looked quite hard, he could make out a small icy island or two floating amongst the grey abyss. Ice floes bobbed with the waves, keeping their heads above the water like people lost at sea. A flock of seagulls tore across the beach in a thin cloud, scavenging for food. [i]'Stupid birds,'[/i] Max thought. [i]'They'd rather freeze their asses off than fly south for the winter.'[/i] He looked down at his watch. It was just about time for the boat to dock carrying this year's load of metahumans to be trained. Sighing, he took one last drink of his coffee, tossed the styrofoam cup into the trash, and left the room, shutting the door behind him. 

"Time to go get the urchins," he muttered as he walked down the hall. 


[hr][h1][color=firebrick]Victor Calahan[/color][/h1][hr] 

Okay, now things were getting completely out of hand. Just as Victor was beginning to adjust to the number of people, another came over, this time a muscled-out jock with dreads and an aura that reeked of overconfidence. The man, who introduced himself as Abe, made Victor take a step back and look down at the ground. The one kind of person who Victor hated the most was cocky jocks. He looked at the robot cat for some kind of reassurance, but it just looked away and snuggled up to Arianna's leg as she pet it (in that moment, he wished he were the cat). He sighed and looked out towards the Academy. After a few awkward moments after Arianna's question, he turned back around. 

"Richmond," Victor said, "but after a while I moved to Black Fall. Richmond's not a fun place for metas to be." He tried to keep his eyes off of Abe and towards Arianna's face. She had quite a pretty face, one that he quite enjoyed looking at. From someone nearby, he heard that they were approaching the dock. 

"I think we're getting off soon," he said. "I'd, um, better go find my sister. It was nice meeting you, Ari. I'll see you around." With that, he smiled weakly, and then walked away. Anything to get away from beefcake. 


[hr][h1][color=darkorange]Casey Calahan[/color][/h1][hr] 

"Nice to meet you, Jess," Casey said. "I'm Casey, from Black Fall. So yeah, huge-ass city girl." They shook hands. Jess' grip was surprisingly strong, Casey found. She was a charismatic-looking girl in-general, Jess was, with a spark of adventurousness in her eyes and a fairly tomboy-looking physique and fashion. She was the kind of person who Jess wanted to be friends with. 

"So," Casey asked, "are you a new student or a returning one? I'm new around here. This boat ride has been absolutely crazy. I never knew there were this many different kinds of metas in the world." She tried not to talk too much, but she had so much to say. This place was chock-full of funky-looking metas of all kinds, from bird-men to giant redheaded behemoths to boys made of fire to a guy in the corner who seemed to be part...turtle? It was all so foreign, like a scene from a sci-fi movie.