Hungover on a Wednesday Afternoon (Tag: Kamillia)

[Marcus Foster]

Since leaving the US Army it was no secret that mornings were simply not Marcus Foster's thing.  He also didn't care for Mondays as they often reminded him of the between deployment grind that his day to day life in the Army had became during the end of his tenure.  Usually the mixture of these two (mornings and Mondays) found Marcus recovering from the weekend or, more specifically, he was often hungover.  And while most would assume those two factors would be asinine points given it was currently Wednesday afternoon but Marcus was not most people.

To Marcus it was a challenge.

Dark sunglasses shielding the blinding, overhead light from Marcus' eyes.  He wasn't usually light sensitive but the night before had seen far more alcohol going into his system than even Marcus was used to.  He walked along the hallways of Bellefonte with barely a glance at any co-workers he may have passed by and even less to any students.  He'd been awake for less than an hour despite the time of day and had pulled on a pair of tan cargo pants and a t-shirt that loudly proclaimed him as a 'pew professional'.  Even if he hadn't been visibly annoyed and actively avoiding human contact Marcus would have looked out of place (as always) among the nicely dressed staff of Bellefonte.

There was a quick stop by the staff lounge to fill up on coffee before Marcus stepped back out into the hall.  He didn't remember, exactly, what it was that brought him to the Academy on this day, only that he'd set an alarm on his phone a while back.  He was probably drunk when he set the alarm and didn't bother to annotate the the reason.

A short drink from the mug taken out of the staff lounge sent a shock of warm caffeine into Marcus' system.  He stifled a yawn as he moved on down the hallway, his mind searching for the reason of his presence.  A hand on his shoulder brought Marcus to a stop.  He glanced over and offered his co-worker, a portly man with five o'clock shadow and a bad mustache, a half-hearted smile.   The smile waned as the co-worker pointed to the young lady Marcus had walked by without a thought.  "Oh yeah."  Marcus muttered with a nod.  It was coming back to him now.  He remembered why he'd set the alarm in the first place.

"Hey."  Marcus didn't bother giving the mustached staffer a second look.  He stepped around him and started back toward the girl.  "Kamillia, right?"  He asked even though he already knew the answer.  He'd read her file which came with academy photos.  "I'm Marcus, sorry I'm late."  He continued before Kamillia had time to answer his first inquiry.  "You got, what...?"  He looked at his watch even though he didn't really give a damn about the time.  No one was going to give him or Kamillia crap if she missed part of a class for their meeting.  "Come on."  He shuffled on by, already heading for the exit.  "Let's talk over some bacon."

[Kamillia Engel]

Kamillia had a tough week as well, during the weekend she had stayed out passed curfew to go clubbing, because she liked to dance and drink. Which in turn lead her into getting punished by the school, they told her she couldn’t leave the campus for the next month. While leaving campus wasn’t too big of a deal for her, it did hurt her skateboarding activity to the point where she couldn’t actually do it. Beyond that situation on Monday she gave herself a nasty third degree burn like always when she had power training. She kept forgetting that her hands stayed hot after she turned her power off. She had touched her stomach by trying to take her shirt off to change, which in turn not only burnt her stomach but also burned her shirt thankfully nothing caught on fire which was a plus in that situation. It was also only this morning that she had to go to the nurses office yet again because she had sliced the palm of her hand by her guitar string snapping while she was practicing that. All in all it has been a bad week for the young red head.

It also didn’t help when she got a call from one of the staff on Tuesday that she had to go to counseling or else she would never be allowed to leave campus until she graduated. She off course gave in to the demand and contacted the man she was supposed to meet today. She found it hilarious that the school had thought the reason for her rebelling against the school was because of her leaving her home country. The matter of fact was that she had no issues being in America, the farther she was away from her father the better off she was, and the better she felt.

Kamillia was slightly late to the staff offices because of the trip to the nurse’s office earlier. It had taken longer than she thought it would because the one nurse took it upon herself to lecture Kamillia about taking care of herself and being more cautious. While that sounded great and all on paper, Kam didn’t care, she didn’t care about the pain or the scars, things happened, and she wasn’t hurting herself on purpose so what was the harm of it? The woman than had said some snarky remark about her parent’s lack of ability to discipline her, or too teach her safety and Kamillia had to laugh at that. The red head found it amazing how judgmental people can be, especially those who were older than her, she thought her peers had been bad about it but in all honesty ‘adults’ were the worst. Kam then had to deal with the one man in the staff office hallway who was going to try to find the man named Marcus for her. He of course also had to say something snarky about the fact that he kept seeing her here, and that it was about time she saw someone because of how much trouble she was getting into.

To say she was in a bad mood was an understatement. She was tired of this week already, she just wanted to get it over with. She didn’t want to see some counselor who was just going to try to pry her life story out of her and then tell her everything wrong with her life, and then try to fix her.

Kamillia wasn’t going to lie, the man was quite handsome, at least that was a good thing. He wasn’t what she had pictured, granted she had pictured some old man in a suit and tie. “Yeah, that’s me, Kamillia Engel. You’re Marcus I’m assuming?” The German girl asked as her accent started to betray her nationality. “It’s alright, I’ve only been here for like a minute.” She held out her hand in front of her, palm facing the older man which had a gauze the size of her palm tapped to her hand. “I had an issue.” Which meant she had to see the nurse. <Not like you probably care.> Kam muttered under her breath in German as the man walked past her and said something about bacon. “Bacon? Uh.. I can’t leave campus by the way…” She wasn’t sure if he meant going to the cafeteria or actually leaving campus to go get breakfast, which really wouldn’t be breakfast more like brunch.

Outfit

[Marcus Foster]

Right. Rules.

Of course there were rules regarding when and where a student could go. Marcus had never been burdened with a particularly volatile power that kept him cooped up on campus during his Academy days and, at least for the most part, he was free to do what he wished during his off duty time in the Army. Kamillia was right in bringing up the rules. But that didn't mean Marcus had any intention of following them. When policy and procedures failed it was necessary to try different methods.

"As of..." Marcus paused, turning half way toward Kamillia as he glanced down to his watch. "Five minutes ago it's officially 'our' time.." He said, lifting his gaze up to the young lady. His eyes were still hidden behind the large, dark sunglasses he wore. "And I, for one, am choosing to spend my part of the time with better coffee than they have here and five pounds of bacon." It was obvious there wasn't much that would stop him. He had authority to take students off campus so long as he followed the code of conduct and acceptable places within Kalispell and all he had to do was skim Kamillia's file for all of ten seconds to see conventional methods weren't going to work on her anyway.

"Come on." Marcus nodded in the direction he'd been heading. "No one's gonna say a damn thing. And I get the feeling you want to get the hell out of here as much as I do." And with that he turned back around and started down the hall.

[Kamillia Engel]

Most people, especially teachers thought Kamillia was just another useless delinquent. They would have never thought that the girl actually paid attention to the rules. Granted, it was hard to leave the campus when the guards know she wasn’t allowed off the premises. While some rules she broke all the time, like the fact that she has a pack of cigarettes in her dorm as well as some weed stashed in a very well hidden place in her room. Other rules however, she only broke every once in awhile like staying out past curfew, and getting into verbal fights. There were also rules she prided herself into never doing like physically hurting someone, while she will spew words out of her mouth forever she never wants to physically hurt someone. This was something teachers failed to realize, Kamillia was actually a very bright student, she got As and Bs, she had never gotten anything less in a class.


“What the fuck does ‘our’ time mean anyways?” Another thing Kamillia always broke was disrespecting authority figures. From what Kamillia could see was that this session seemed more like an eating event than him trying to figure out what was wrong with her. Kamillia shrugged her shoulders, “Fine whatever…” She reluctantly followed the older man, “As long as I’m not the one getting in trouble for your cravings.” She felt and heard her stomach growl, maybe it was a good thing they were getting something to eat.

Kamillia raised an eyebrow, “What gave it away? My file I’m guessing..” That damn thing was probably the reason why most teachers hated the girl, all they could see was things written on a piece of paper. “Are we walking there? Or are you driving?” It was a valid question, especially considering she had claustrophobia which tended to act up in small cars.

[Marcus Foster]

"Our time." Marcus repeated. It seemed a simple enough answer to him. He gestured with two fingers back and forth between the both of them. "Yours and mine." He cleared his throat, taking a breath before elaborating. "This section of time in our respective daily schedules has been blocked off for the purpose of our meeting. Where that meeting takes place is up to me, and I'm choosing that waffle house down on Third." As far as Marcus was concerned, that was that.

Marcus gave a bit of a shrug to the girl's still reluctant question. Of course he hadn't expected this to be easy. It never was. "To be honest I didn't read much of your file." He admitted. "Only the personal background." His head shook as he continued walking. "I really don't give a shit what your last counselor has to say." He glanced to the girl and issued a bit of a chuckle. "But, yeah, I could glean from what I did read that you'd like to get out of here for a while." He gave a shrug. "But I know cabin fever when I see it."

"I don't know about you." Marcus said, lifting his eyes up to the gloomy, overcast sky that came with the Montana winter. "But I'm not feeling walking around in this. I've done that enough already." The last part of his answer came with a shake of his head. "No, I'm right there." He'd parked his muddy Ford Raptor out front so they wouldn't have to walk far. He looked to Kamillia for a moment. "That alright? You mind getting out, getting something to eat? Having a little chat? That's all I ask."

[Kamillia Engel]

Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad. While she still didn’t like the idea of someone trying to get into her head, to find her weaknesses it might not be that bad if it was this guy. Kamillia didn’t like people knowing her weaknesses. If people didn’t know her weaknesses they couldn’t use them against her, and then hurt her. Kamillia also didn’t like talking about her feelings, she was a woman of action, not of talking about feelings. She was the type of person to show her affections then to repeatedly say ‘I love you’. “I didn’t realize that was how it worked.” If the counselors could always had the ability to leave the campus for sessions with the students, why didn’t all of them?

Kamillia was never an easy girl; she would rather fight for dominance than give up and become submissive. The personal background… She wasn’t sure what was actually in her personal background other than her being German, and the issues she had at the other academy before Bellefonte. Kamilla looked at the ground, she never knew a counselor who didn’t care about the other counselors opinion of the client. Kamillia shrugged, “I never like staying at the campus for very long. There just isn’t much to do here.”

Kamillia looked up toward the sky as well, considering the cold wet rain, or the snow affected her in a negative way because of her powers she rather not get caught walking in a rain storm or snow storm. “Hmm I agree.” She looked at the car he was referring to at least it was a truck, it was a pretty big car, it shouldn’t affect her too badly. “Okay, shall we get going then?” Kamillia started to walk toward the truck. Thinking of food, her stomach was starting to growl.

[Marcus Foster]

Marcus nodded as he fired up the truck and maneuvered it out of the parking lot and headed toward the Academy's front gate. It sounded like he and Kamillia were on the same page which, after their initial meeting, came as somewhat of a surprise. Every word she spoke served to strengthen his belief that not every kid that came into the Academy needed a full on psychiatrist to pick their brains and figure out what made them tick. Many of them just needed someone to listen and help them find their own way.

"Let's go." He agreed with a nod and headed for the truck. He rounded the vehicle and pulled open the driver's side door. When the passenger door opened the black shepherd that was obediently sitting in the back scooted forward at the sight and scent of the stranger. A furry, face poked out into the front of the cab to watch Kamillia get in, tongue hanging from the corner of its mouth as it looked expectantly at her. "Woobie." Marcus said, reaching out and giving the dog a scratch between the ears. "Sit back. Be nice." With a glance to his owner the dog obeyed and went to sprawl out over the back seat with a huff. "Shit, sorry." Marcus cast a glanced in Kamillia's direction. "You don't have anything against dogs, do you?"