O Little Town [open]

[Zane Mitchell]

The teacher let out a yawn, stretching his arms high up into the air. He moved away from the classroom window, seeing nothing out of the ordinary outside in the cornfields. None of those supposed demonic children seemed to be out in the nearby cornfields, not from what he could see.

Zane walked the short way from the window, over to his desk. There were no students in the room with him, he was alone as he sat down. He felt exhausted, but that sort of thing happened when a person had a little daughter at home, sick with the flu. He was so worried, and had to take care of her all night, so he'd hardly slept at all.

And since there were no students to be seen... The man rested his arms on the desk piled with books, then followed by him resting his face against his arms. For a little while, maybe, he could manage to rest his eyes.

[Becky Myers]

It had been pretty quiet lately. A large majority of the students in town weren't around anymore and had left the school for homeschool. This didn't go so far as to say that there weren't students at the school. There were still plenty of them around, but the numbers had decreased enough that they only really needed one class at the high school, and right now the students were away and enjoying their lunch period.

Becky made her way to the Zane, seeing him lying down. She didn't know much about the man on a personal level, but she had met his daughter before and new that the mother was no longer present. What exactly had happened to her though she didn't know. Still, seeing him so tired, she placed her hands on his shoulders and gently began to massage them.

"You seem rather tired," Becky said as she continued her massage. "Do you want me to take over for you when the kids come back?"

[Zane Mitchell]

That quick nap seemed to have been... shorter than he would have liked. Granted, it was only Becky who had entered the classroom, and she wasn't bothering him. The students were still at their lunch period, he recalled, so there was still a little while before those that were left would be wandering back to class.

Zane didn't normally receive massages. Clearly, that had been a mistake, considering how quickly a simple massage on the shoulders was relieving his sore and tired body. "You're good at this. But you know, you're not obligated to help me relax just because I made the silly mistake of not getting some rest on my own time," he smirked as he glanced back at the girl. It was his own fault that he hadn't gotten any sleep, and he wanted to make sure that she understood he didn't expect anything from her aside from just... well, being a teacher's aide.

The young girl was kind in both actions and thoughts, though. Zane wondered how she'd managed to get stuck with him. "Only if you want to. The students are becoming less and less interested in science every day, it seems."

[Becky Myers]

She'd continue massaging his shoulder as such. He seemed to be responding pretty well to it. She was starting to think that maybe she should help him a bit more often. If his daughter was having trouble, it really wasn't like Becky had anything better to do than go help him. She lived with her parents, and she really didn't have anything else to do after she finished work.

"I'll tell you what. I can do it. All we're really doing is handing out worksheets and watching the kids do it," Becky said to him. She finally stopped massaging his shoulders and crossed her arms.

"Maybe go home and get some rest... Your daughter's not at home alone right now I would hope. Right?"

[Zane Mitchell]

"All right, if you insist," truly, handing out worksheets wasn't too much work, the teacher knew that Becky could easily do that on her own. And it took some weight off his shoulders, just as the massage had seemed to have done.

"She's getting over the flu. Luckily I found a neighbor who was kind enough to offer to watch her for me, during the school day today," of course he wouldn't let his precious little daughter be left alone for even a minute, not when she was so in need of care! But going home to rest for his own health, that didn't seem to be a very responsible thing to do. "I know you could handle it, but still, I would hate to leave you here all by yourself."

[Becky Myers]

Becky was feeling pretty concerned about Zane right now. There really wasn't that much she could do for him, but she wished he'd get some sleep. The least she could have done was offer him a chance to go home, but he had declined that. She felt a bit relieved. She didn't want to be left behind with all of the students after all. They could be a lot of work if they got out of hand, and with her, they often were more rowdy than they were with him around. They didn't have the same level of respect due to her age... plus some of the boys thought it was fun to try and hit on her or try to look up her skirt. It almost made her wish she worked for an elementary school instead, but she couldn't exactly teach kindergarten students physics or calculus.

"Well, alright then, but I am hoping that you feel better soon. Just relax and take it easy," Becky said once again. She didn't know why, but she did feel that he really needed to be taken care of. She couldn't help other than to feel sorry for him as a single father especially since he was raising a girl by himself. She did feel that a girl could be taken better care of by her father than her mother, so long as he wasn't too strict. Fathers usually watched after their daughters better than mothers did, but still... there were certain things that a girl needed to learn from her mother which most fathers couldn't teach.

"I just want you to know that I'm here to help if ever you need anything," Becky said with a confident smirk. "At least until I get out of here and go back to the University."

[Zane Mitchell]

He supposed he could try to take it easy. As hard as that might be, in a classroom full of kids. Students who needed to learn to respect the teacher's aide just as much as they respected the teacher himself. Although... ever since the children of the corn cult had popped up, there had been less and less students coming to school. Some had joined up with the others in the surrounding cornfields, while others had parents who were too afraid to allow them to leave the house. Then there were the adolescents who figured school was useless now that the town was cut off from the rest of the world, and decided either not to go to school or just preferred to go to class in order to cause trouble yet not to learn.

The difficulty of the times made it somewhat harder to relax, although he still would try to heed the girl's advice. He had his daughter to think about. Without him, she would be all alone, and he couldn't have that. "Thanks, I appreciate it," although Zane wouldn't want to ask much of her. She was probably having difficulty living in this town as well... despite the look of confidence on her face, he knew it had to be hard on her as it was on everyone.

"And then you can teach math in a nice town where the little tykes don't hide out in the cornfields!" he mocked their situation almost too enthusiastically. Then again, he hardly believed the children were being controlled by Satan. The only thing he was really afraid of was Cecilia disappearing.

[Becky Myers]

It sounded as though Zane thought their situation was funny. Becky didn't at all. She really did want to go back to school. She wasn't sure what was going on though. She knew there was some group of children out there, lead by a girl named Lilith, and that at some point in the past, they had killed the man who had attempted to end Lilith's life. But to believe that a cult of children was responsible for blockading them? It was ridiculous.

Becky would walk to get a chair and bring it back to the desk so that she could sit next to Zane. She really wanted to be help to him, but she wasn't exactly sure how much more she could help him out than what she was already doing. She liked him a lot, and she certainly looked up to him and respected him from every fiber of her being. To her, he seemed like a really strong and attractive man, especially to be taking care of his daughter so diligently when he was alone.

"Well, I'm not sure what's out there," Becky would say in a melancholic tone. "Be it a serial killer, children, or whatever is killing people. Sometimes I think of taking my chances and going out there to fight whatever it is. It's better than staying here and trying to guess."

[Zane Mitchell]

"Well, if you consider the principle of Occam's Razor, I'd say the town's only real plague is a serial killer hiding out in the fields and terrorizing the citizens of our little home. As opposed to a psychopathic group of children being controlled by the devil..." But that was just him. He had yet to see any murderous children performing ritual sacrifices, only the normal children who still remained about the town. Disappearing children could mean plenty of things... but to think that children with the aid of a demon was the cause of all Jamestown's troubles, well that just required way more assumptions than he was comfortable making.

"Maybe, but whatever is out there, it is dangerous. That much is obvious," as much as the man denied the religious aspect of what was going on, there was no way to deny the disappearances of adults and children alike. He worried for the safety of his assistant, if she really did intend to do something so reckless... "Do you really want to risk your life over something like that, when you could stay here and have a chance at being safe?"

[Becky Myers]

The answer to the question he had posed to her wasn't simply. She didn't know what the principle of Occam's razor was, but she still understood what he meant. Would she risk her life for this? It was hard to say. How could she knew for sure that if she went she would die? There was no way to know that much considering no one had seen any actual murders take place any time recently. Things could easily go well and she could leave successfully. Or things could go badly and she could end up dead like everyone else.

Becky stood up once again. She couldn't help other than to pace around a bit, going back and forth and left and right. She couldn't figure out how to answer his question. She felt so impulsive right now due to the frustration. With this luck, her college education had been put on hold. When she did make it back to school, her friends would all have graduated.

"I'm missing out on my university experience being stuck here. My friends are all going to be gone by the time I get back into school," she said disdainfully. There was a lot of passion in her voice now. She was having a hard time staying still and using her arms, she could gesticulate her frustration.

"What I hate most about this town is the lack of educated people. You're one of the only people here who I can identify with."

[Zane Mitchell]

"No, you're right. This is more of a hostage situation sort of experience than the kind you get at a university," he leaned back slightly in his chair, noticing Becky's sudden need to get up and pace about the room. And although her friends would probably have graduated by the time she was finally able to continue her education, at least she could make new ones. It really wasn't that bad.

"If we give the younger generation some time, and you stick around for a while longer, they're bound to surprise us. That's why we're teaching the children of this town, giving as good an education as we can to those who will learn," Zane's point was to get her to understand that her time wasn't being wasted here in Jamestown, though he wasn't sure how well he was getting his point through.

[Becky Myers]

Zane's reaction to what she had said didn't feel particularly sufficient. After she had told him that she felt he was one of the few people she could identify with, she had expected to have at least some kind of reaction, but she really didn't feel like she had gotten one at all. She wondered if he considered the two of them to be friends or anything more than just coworkers. It wasn't like she expected much more than that, but friends would be nice, or at least she hoped to be a prized disciple.

In any case, she supposed that what he was saying was true. They were here to train the future generation, but Becky didn't want to miss out on her own generation. She wasn't meeting her friends, she wasn't meeting any boys, and she didn't feel like she was getting anywhere in life. Everything for her right now was just stagnant. There was no movement whatsoever.

"I guess you're right, Mr. Mitchell... but still," she said solemnly. She needed to say nothing else on the matter. For the most part this conversation was over for her unless he said something else to continue it. Though, nonetheless, she still did want to move on. It was then that an idea would pop into her head. She'd make her way back to her chair and sit down once again.

"... Could you help me study so that I don't fall too far behind? You studied physics at the graduate level, right?"

[Zane Mitchell]

"Yep. I majored in physics, and took all the offered physics classes that I could while I was there," Zane was a bit overqualified to be teaching at a small town's high school, to tell the truth. But he'd had a passion for a woman who lived in the once peaceful town, the person who had been his wife, so he'd taken the teaching position here. And now, he remained in Jamestown, for his daughter more than for anyone else.

"It was my passion," physics, he meant. It still was, too. "You have to teach something you love, right?" Rhetorical question, that one, because of course it was true! You wouldn't find Zane teaching something like... history somewhere. Blegh. That stuff was just plain boring.

"Sure, I would gladly help you study. What aspect of physics are you studying currently?" Whatever level of physics Becky was in, the teacher assumed it would involve more complicated theories and principles than what he was teaching to most of the classes at this school.

[Becky Myers]

Becky lightened up a bit and relaxed when she heard such a positive response from the physics teacher. Simply put, she hated not moving in her own educational endeavors and really did wish to move forward, so having him help her might make it so that she wasn't so far behind when she did get back to school. Heck, he was probably more qualified than most of the teachers at the University.

"Oh! Thank you!" She said excitedly as she hoped out of her chair and toward him. She threw her arms around him in a tight bare hug. She simply couldn't contain her happiness right now. She just wanted to kiss him, but she knew how to maintain boundaries to some extent. She'd only hug him for a good seven seconds and then release him from her grasp and stand by his side once more looking down at him..

"Well, I have been studying math up until now. Not physics. But for the sake of progress, I think I may just change to physics if you'll help me," Becky explained to him. She placed her hands on her hips.

"I've only taken the basic University courses of Physics. Their numbers are 113 and 117 at my school."

[Zane Mitchell]

"At least someone's excited to learn," Zane commented as the girl hugged him tight. Especially in this town, it was hard to catch many students who wanted to learn so badly that they would try to squeeze their own teacher to death. Luckily though, Becky wasn't aiming to squeeze the life out of him, he realized that once she had released him from the hug.

"Oh good. I promise you by the time you get back to your real schooling, you're going to wonder why you weren't majoring physics to begin with!" Oh, sometimes the simplest things could amuse the man. In this case, he could transform a young person into a physicist, instead of a mathematician, it seemed like a win.

Only two courses on physics? She really had hardly taken any at all! He would have to remedy this situation, by teaching Becky all that he could think of before the town's 'hostage situation' was through. "Then there's going to be a lot for you to learn while you're here," Zane smiled. Did she want to study right now, though? The students would probably be back any time now... So, he doubted there would be much time to begin.