"Hey, Tor." Dustin frowned around them, as though just now realizing that they were lying on the wet grass in their teaching robes. "Do you ever think maybe we should, I dunno, not..."

Tori shrugged, unconcerned. "They're black. They'll dry."

"But, I mean," Dustin persisted uncertainly. "We are supposed to be teachers and all."

"What, you think we don't look respectable enough?" Tori grinned. "We're doing better than some people I could mention... at least we haven't been turned in to guinea pigs."

"Speak for yourself," Dustin grumbled.

"Shane, what do I have to do?" Porter demanded. "Show you the secret handshake?"

Shane stared at him in surprise. "There's a secret handshake?"

"No," Porter said, deadpan. "But there is a secret extortion society to make sure your secret dues stay current, so pay up."

"Literature?"

"Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find he had been transformed into a giant cockroach. I'm never reading that book again."

"Philosophy?"

"Yes, the table still exists when there's no one in the room to be aware of it. It's not god, it's called the conservation of mass and energy."

"...Quantum Theory?"

"Schrodinger had no business putting his cat in a box in the first place. That man should have been jailed for animal abuse."

"You know a disturbing amount of stuff."

"Let's talk about your apartment now."

He stopped outside Marah's door, studying her almost empty whiteboard. It had her name on it, and a sparkly sun that she shouldn't have been able to do with dry erase markers. Ninja powers, maybe?

There were two colored markers snapped into place at the top of the board, and he couldn't resist. Dustin uncapped both of them and started doodling. He drew a frowny face on a little stick figure half-buried in the earth, and underneath he was writing the words Reconsider your commitment to your ninja training when Marah flung the door open.

"What are you--" She caught sight of the whiteboard and rolled her eyes. "Dustin, we're supposed to be having a moment here!"

"Oh, sorry." He drew long hair on his stick figure and then waved the other marker in her direction. "Here, you want one?"

She pretended to pout, but she couldn't hold onto the expression. With a giggle, she snatched the marker away from him and proceeded to draw stars around the stick figure's head. Space ninja she wrote beside it, with a little arrow pointing to the figure.

From an evil UFO he added, and she started humming the song. Dustin sang along until a door down the hall opened and someone stared in their direction. They exchanged glances and Dustin just shrugged. "What?" he asked innocently.