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A. Redbright Institute

School might be out for the summer, but there are still plenty of students around. Some of them have dorms here, and others are just there for the summer classes. Regardless, Ekko is also there, keeping track of the underclassmen. Occasionally he has to guide a student to their classroom after they've gotten lost.

Sometimes he wonders why he took the position, but of course he knows why. It's just another small step in a quest for recognition. It's worth it. Even if he does have to deal with dealing with young kids.

Still, if he's needed or called for, he's there to help.

B. Everywhere

Ekko is seventeen and has about a year before he'll graduate. He knows that he wants to stay in London, and his grades are good enough for the universities here. But he also knows he's going to need a job. Which means there's a kid walking all over the place checking out stores and popping into them to ask for applications. Thankfully most have gone the way of electronic applications, but a few of them still have paper forms.

For shame.

He still takes them, slowly amassing a small collection of application forms over the day.

He may bump into people in his hurry to visit as many stores as possible. He could rewind so it never happened, but sometimes it's easier to just go with the timeline.

"Didn't see you there."

C. Wildcard

Choose your own adventure!

[Prose or brackets okay by me!]

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The real answer is Big Ben, but that's such a tourist-esque answer he'd rather go with the night. But he does have a small thing about clocks, namely he loves them. Time's a big thing for him. "Then what's yours?"

Unpaid- there's a brief look of horror. Why would anybody even want to agree to that? If they aren't getting a paycheck out of it, what's the point?

"You're serious?"

"The Royal Observatory." The answer comes quickly, without even a moment's hesitation. "Dad used to take me there years ago to look at all the stars. It's my favorite place in the city, hands down."

"Good reason to like a place." Ekko's reasoning is hardly that sentimental. "How often do you get to go these days?"

"Not as often," she admits with a little sigh. "Dad died years ago and now it's never the same, you know? I'll go from time to time - but I haven't stopped missing him yet."

"Hey, why would I make that kinda thing up?" Heiji leaned an elbow against the counter. "No one does that out here? I know there's some crazy workweeks over in the States, too, but I think we got them beat."

"Aaah!"

"Whoa!"

Clara winces when she witnesses the two students collide into each other during their rush to get to their classes in time, a flurry of papers and notebooks everywhere while she moves closer to try and help them out. Ooooh. She has a feeling that will leave a mark and the poor dears need all the help they could get.

Which will explain why some of the notebooks and papers may begin to move on their own as the metahuman and the witch struggle to shift for their own things and apologise for the accident to the other.

"Sadly, yes. Ms. Redbright wants to know how many we'll have staying with us over the summer - at least living with us."

She knows there are commuter students who don't live on campus, but the cafeteria wants to know the number of those staying for the summer so they can prepare accordingly.

He nods, understandingly. "Yeah, I get it. Things like that are always gonna be different no matter how long it's been."

"They've got to be nuts," it the only explanation he can come up with. If they were actually getting paid it would be different, but otherwise, good grief.

He sighs, just vaguely annoyed. Isn't this the kind of thing the school should know already? They've got lists for things like that. Well, they should.

"We've gotta get more organized if TAs are running around trying to figure this stuff out."

"Give me 'til two, I'll get back to you."

Ekko winces the second they run into each other. Ugh, he's not supposed to be a hall monitor, but it looks like he has to today.

He starts sorting their things as well, fussing over both of them and making sure they aren't actually injured.

"You know you're not supposed to run in the halls."

Besides sporting some bruised egos thanks to have their fellow snickering schoolmates nearby, the two seem to be okay as they launch into longwinded explanations of what exactly happened. ('I'm late for class!', 'I'm trying to be late for class!')

All the movement makes it a little bit hard for Clara to not bump into anyone, needing to duck and weave as she puts the things into the general range of their rightful owners. It's a lot harder than it looks and whoops she just went right through Ekko without realising it until too late.

"Sorry!"

"You were trying to be late?" Sometimes these kids gave him headaches rivaling the professors'. He feels for them, even if it doesn't quite stop him from occasionally running off.

But that's him and not these kids. "Get to cla--"

He shivers as soon as Clara phases through him, as though somebody actually had thrown ice water over him. But he does his best to compose himself, even as he shudders.

"Get to class."

She's so sorry for that. It's never a pleasant experience for her too but it doesn't stop her from feeling guilty for doing that to someone, unintentional or not. Clara visibly winces and stays stock still for now, waiting for at least half of the party to go away before she tries moving again.

Despite their best attempts to explain why they would want to be late for class, mostly involving the nonappearance of their papers, the student shuffles off with a muttered affirmation while the other student springs off to their class after they breathlessly thanks Ekko and bids a good day to the perfect.

"Goodness. Children these days," Clara muses with some amusement before she looks back at him with a worried expression. "Are you okay? I'm sorry. I didn't meant to do that, honest."

"Yeah..." said Heiji, enjoying the smell of cooking food. "But I guess that's what's expected, y'know? Until someone changes things."

"Sorry about that!"

Abigail takes a moment to look around, make sure she hasn't caused him to drop anything. And, thankfully, it looks like she hasn't. Immediately, she pulls her earbuds out and lets them hang out of her pocket.

"Totally my fault. I wasn't paying attention."

Then, she notices the applications and touches one of them. "Just a stranger's opinion -- you don't wanna work there. Owner likes pushing people around until they can't take it anymore."

He gets it, kind of. Honestly, he's skipped his fair share of assignments, but usually he'd just skip the class all together. (Don't be him, kids.) He sends the underclassmen off with a warning.

At least the Institute is full of enough magic for him to see and hear Clara just enough.

"Just cold, don't worry about it." He's gone through plenty worse.

"If you say so." She had a good idea people were always cold in the wake of her going through them and she hopes that's only the case. She would just feel awful if something else happens. Especially to someone hardworking as Ekko here. "Let me know if you start floating yourself soon! I would hate to see you get stuck in a student's cellphone or the chocolate fountain."

... He probably won't get that joke of hers. Clara why. "Anyways! How are you? Busy as ever, I take it?"

Ekko just groans and rubs his cheek. Workaholics are probably the only people in the world he just doesn't understand.

"I guess," it sounds a more like a petulant teenager than he really wanted it too. "Anybody planning on that?"

As far as he could tell he just ended up chilled. It's not the worst thing that's ever happened to him, it's just a (sort of) minor inconvenience. "I'll let you know if I start hovering." He doubts it's going to happen anytime soon.

He doesn't get the joke so he just casually ignores it. Yep, that's the thing to do.

"A little less busy during summer. Less students running around." But he's still busy enough to herd around students.

"Yeah. It was like the entire city changed when he left." She sighs, then realizes that this is probably heavy conversation for the first conversation she's had with a person. So she quickly continues, "but- it was a while ago. I'm, like, over it in general." Kind of.

"If this is 'a little less' busy then I worry for you when school actually starts now!" She's forgotten how many students they're actually are thanks to her new job forcing her to be here more often in the night. Usually everyone is asleep at that point.

Well, some aren't and that's the point of her job. "I hope your workload at least has eased up a little. With everyone gearing up for graduation or something like that, it feels everything is moving by so quickly! Can't believe the school year passed. It feels like only yesterday Mrs. Redbright gave her speech in school."

He checks the application, well, what's one more to the trash heap? He winces and pulls it out of the pile. "Thanks for the heads up. Sounds like you've had experience."

If there was ever something he hated it was being pushed around. He's far to proud to stand for something like that.

"Lotta people grousin' about it," he said, taking his plate with a smile and a thank you as his order was finished. "But unless something serious happens, I don't think it'll change anytime soon. You know, like an organized labor movement."

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