Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

7:00pm: Voicemail
[cough] This is Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. I can't come to the telephone. Please leave a message.

10:02am: Room 402, Wednesday morning
Wesley returns to his room, having picked up his mail. There's an envelope with British postage -- never a good sign.

Dear Wesley, I am disappointed to discover that Professor Ambrosius has not received a single assignment from you. This speaks remarkably ill of your self-discipline, not to mention your scholarship. I expect that all of your assignments will be completed by the end of the Christmas break; if not, we shall have to reconsider allowing you to study away from home. Your father.

Wesley crumples the letter into a ball, throws it across the room (where it lands next to several other balls of paper), and storms out.

9:43pm: Random thought
[[Sparked by a comment in Cuddy's journal. Does anybody feel like volunteering to teach a class for the cats this coming semester? Kiki, say, or Alanna's cat whose name I forget? Octavia is much too young and inexperienced.]]

1:14pm: Wishlist
Just one, really:

Any of the avatars of the Trickster: Anansi or Loki or Coyote or Puck or ... Note that there are fandom analogues of at least the first two. I'd love to see Chaos teaching a class.

12:48pm: Room 402, Monday afternoon
The doorway to Room 402 is cracked open. There is a rustling noise. Anybody who peeks in would see Wesley amusing a gray kitten by tossing bits of crumpled paper for it to chase. Or, depending on who's telling, would see a gray kitten training her minion-with-thumbs to obey her slightest whim.

[[Particularly for lovelylana and valentine_tart, but anybody else is free to stop in.]]

7:09pm: Dorm room, Sunday night
A person walking by in the hall might hear some indignant mews punctuated by equally indignant "Stop that!"s and "This is for your own good, dammit!". There might even be a few epithets.

Wesley is giving the cat a bath. The NPC Pet Shop swears that if he gives the cat a weekly bath in a special shampoo, she will become non-allergenic.

//SOMEBODY! RESCUE ME FROM THIS INSANE PERSON!//

1:17pm: Dorm room
Wesley walks into his room, closes the door, and sits down at his desk. This is a bad mistake. From this angle, he can clearly see the envelope from the Watcher's Council that he threw under the bed a week ago. Since he is the Slave of Duty, Wesley gets down on his hands and knees and swipes his arm back and forth under the bed, dislodging several of the Dustbunnies of Doom. Fortunately, even at Fandom High, dustbunnies are mercifully inanimate. So far. Wesley opens the envelope. It contains two foolscap pages in a copperplate hand, the lines crossed; there is also a separate sheet of notepaper, folded and sealed in black ink. Wesley lays the note aside and unfolds the foolscap pages. After a few seconds, he mutters "Oh, dear GOD, no.", begins to crumple the sheets, then thinks better of it. His shoulders slump.

After a few painful minutes of contemplation, Wesley stands, unlocks his trunk, unwraps the paper parcel, assembles an armload of books, and heads out for the library. On the whole, he'd rather be torn limb from limb by a pack of drug-crazed hyenas, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be an option at present.

8:17am: First Night on the Town
[Wesley pays a visit to Spike's pub here.]

7:28pm: Manipulation, Myth and Magic Field Trip
Wesley is away on Professor Jareth's field trip to the Labyrinth, permission letter obtained. In the wastebasket beneath his desk are several crumpled, early versions of the letter he wrote asking for his father's permission. And addressing certain other concerns.

( first letter home - final rough draft )

7:27pm: I have put it off long enough...
The weapons ban is not going to simply go away. And while I have no intention of parting with everything I have with which to defend myself (not unless I am called aside by a member of the administration and mad to do so), I realize that perhaps storing all of my weaponry in a trunk within my closet, and a bag under my bed, is folly.

I've decided to go into town and see if there's a storage lot where I can keep my equipment.

My first concern with this is venturing out into the town alone. I've yet to do so before.

My second concern is with how I will pay for adequate locker space. I've no easily expendable funds.

Of course, if there's a decent pub in town...with a ready dart board...

3:58pm: My father is a mad man.
And I am a fool.

Here I am in a strange place...outside of my own dimension, for bloody sakes. Not days after zombies nearly ate the student body.

And I find myself facing the bloody Scourge of Europe without so much as a drop of holy water on my person.

I can't speak of it. I may need another Valium.

That settles it. No more traipsing about outside the dorm room unarmed. And I'd been worried about my stash of firearms being confiscated since Principal Connor updated the school rules on personal weaponry. Though perhaps the zombie attack has made that issue moot. I imagine there are a number of students on campus who are clinging to their weapons anew since this past weekend.

And there's been talk of a family day. What upsets me more, I wonder? The thought of Father setting foot in this place (there is no chance he'll allow Mother to visit). Or the thought of not seeing a familiar face from home (even if it's his) after realizing what other familiar face has been passing through Fandom High's halls...

The former, I'm thinking. I have never fared so pitifully in an Academic endeavor as I have been faring here. I haven't yet caught a Diplomacy class. And I never did complete my assignment on manipulation for Professor Jareth.

How ironic is it that my most promising marks so far are probably in Martial Arts? Simply because our instructor hasn't asked anything of us yet.

8:56pm: E-Mail
Ah... And because it seems to be the main means of communicating hereabouts...

I've established an e-mail account.

[E-mail can be left for me here.]

8:22pm: For better or for worse, I've settled in here at fandomhigh. I have a dorm room - 402 - with an American named wraithbaitjohn. I've yet to speak to him in anything but passing. Hopefully I can rectify that situation sometime soon. It would be good to have an idea of who this person is I'll be sharing space with for the duration of my stay at the school.

I have a tentative schedule so far as courses are concerned. Professors Jareth and Amidala kindly allowed me to sign up late for their classes - Manipulation, Myth and Magic and Diplomacy, Section B. MM&M meets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; Diplomacy meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the afternoon. I'd like to attend Paranormal Studies 101, as well, and await Professor Hellboy's response as to whether or not it is too late to register.

So far, I've attended two MM&M classes and our first assignments have been...interesting. To say the least. Very challenging. More on that later.

Father would undoubtedly have had something to say if I hadn't decided to take a physical education course this semester, as well, so I signed up for Martial Arts.

That is assuming, of course, that I would have told him of my decision. Principal Connor doesn't know my father or my family, so she isn't likely to write home with a weekly report of 'ways in which Wesley has failed you now' as Headmaster Danborough did. Though Principal Connor hardly seems the type to have played my father's games even if she had known Roger Wyndam-Pryce when she'd granted me a late enrollment.

None of which matters, I suppose, if Father's found some other means of keeping an eye on me here. As he undoubtedly has.

Therefore: Martial Arts. Although I've never seen the use in dedicating daylight hours to such endeavors. Father's lessons when I was a child always took place in the evening. A Watcher stands beside his Slayer in battle, of course, and a Slayer's battles are fought in darkness. It's become routine for me to practice my swordplay in the evening for that reason, and I always jog before dawn. It will be an adjustment. As many things will here at fandomhigh, I'm afraid.

On a happier note, I have arranged a means of practicing that method of defense which offends neither my standard exercise routine or my ribs - which are almost fully healed now from the injuries I incurred taking the Practicum of my Academy entrance exam.

I've joined the school's gun club. Sponsored by Principal Connor herself. I may nip down to the campus shooting range before our first meeting and get in a bit of target practice. This school's policy on hand guns is perhaps the only one I can get totally behind, without any reservations. Besides those, of course, related to the thought of certain members of the student body being armed. The student handbook does not prohibit the possession of fire arms. This is a great relief to me, as my gun collection isn't quite what Father had had in mind, I'm sure, when he'd suggested I pack "the most necessary items" before leaving for school. I did not relish the thought of leaving it behind.

7:35pm: Just a bit of a detour...
To be honest, I hadn't taken him seriously when he'd first mentioned it. Which is just the sort of mistake one would think I'd learned not to make by this time, but- Father's always doing that, isn't he? Threatening this punishment, doling out another... Holding the Academy above my head and promising to yank it back if I so much as think of stepping out of line.

It's not as though I meant to score so badly on my entrance exam. As though I tried to fall short of Father's grand expectations. It's not as though I failed the bloody thing. Top twenty-three percent is not...particularly impressive, granted. But it isn't slim pickings, either.

"Oh, you don't think so, do you?" he asked, when I said as much.

Well. Said almost as much.

"Top twenty-three percent isn't bad, you say? Let me tell you something, Wesley. When a new Slayer activates... When the Council chooses her Watcher... Who do you think they're going to choose? Hmm? The top trainee of his class? Or someone's whose marks on the entrance exam were so bloody not bad that they landed him seventy-seven percent away from the bottom?" This from a man who only scored ten points higher on his entrance exam than I did. And there were no practical portions to the test in Father's day.

So here I am. Starting school - not at the Watcher's Academy, as is my right. But at a multidimensional institution with such varied offerings on its course listing as 'Fashion, Style, and all other things you need to know to be a Generally Hoopy Kid'.

There are several legitimate courses on the list, as well, which I would be very interested in attending... But having enrolled late as I have, they're almost certain to have filled up by now.

I suppose I will simply have to make the best of what I can.