Civilians
Spear of Cerberus
Posts: 109
Preferred Name: Varmun
Pronouns: He/Him
Character Profile: Character List
Character Name: Dante Vasari
Main Account: Isaac
Status: Active
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Post by Dante on Dec 9, 2015 17:05:34 GMT -5
"We're seriously starting with math?" Dante's voice was a mix of disappointed and nervous, and his cringing face made for a perfect reflection.
"What, you'd rather teach her science?" Isaac sat down on the floor, a cheap tablet lying in front of him. He reached out and tapped the scratched screen, pulling up a lesson plan he and Dante had both done when they were in school. A page of math problems suddenly appeared, all of their answers wiped clean from the last time Dante had touched it. Isaac turned the tablet toward Bikini, who sat opposite the two brothers, and he said to Dante, "It's one of the most practical skills—the basics, anyway. She'll be fine." Isaac then reached over and smacked Dante on the back, adding, "Now, have at it, professor."
Dante's head jolted, and he gave Isaac a stunned stare. "What? Me? I thought you were gonna do it."
Isaac snorted and sat back on his hands, his legs crossed as he leaned away. "Consider this a refresher. Come on, it's kid's stuff."
Isaac was doing this for a laugh, wasn't he? Dante just knew it. He drooped his head and held back a groan, preparing himself for humiliation. Thankfully, the sight of Bikini picked him right back up, and he said, "Okay, well, anyway, what math do you know? Do you know addition and subtraction?"
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Posts: 49
Preferred Name: Nilo
Pronouns: she/her
Character Name: Bikini
Main Account: Rakuen
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Post by Bikini on Dec 13, 2015 21:36:34 GMT -5
Bikini looked at Dante, then to Isaac, then to Dante again as they had a little back and forth in front of her. Bikini wasn't nervous about learning, in fact she was downright calm and fascinated even. But deep down she had worries the two boys couldn't achieve any strong teaching to make her learn because she was too stupid or something like that, but it's worth a shot. Dante wanted to help her, and Bikini wanted to make Dante proud.
"Well, I count my earnings from dancing all the time, so would that count as addition?" Bikini let that last word still in the air in a high note of uncertainty, then after a pause she also said in a more quieter tone "-a-and subtraction if I... use that earnings?" Bikini blushed, not quite sure if that was right to say. Oh, to be honest, Bikini didn't really know what subtraction was, she was still recounting like a kid when she took an amount from the original amount of money, so you could say she was good at counting, at least.
"D... did I answer that right?"
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Civilians
Spear of Cerberus
Posts: 109
Preferred Name: Varmun
Pronouns: He/Him
Character Profile: Character List
Character Name: Dante Vasari
Main Account: Isaac
Status: Active
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Post by Dante on Jan 7, 2016 18:27:16 GMT -5
Dante gave Bikini a reassuring smile and nodded slightly. “Yeah, exactly. So we can move on to multiplication, right?” His voice had wavered at the end there, having started out excited for Bikini’s knowledge, then drifting into dread. Multiplication—one step closer to long division. A shiver ran up Dante’s spine at the thought.
“Slow down,” said Isaac, raising one hand to gesture. “Let’s at least how good her addition and subtraction are. It sounds like she’s self-taught.”
“Oh, right. Okay.” Dante pushed the tablet closer to Bikini, tapping its frayed surface to turn it back on. The backlight wasn’t too strong, but the math problems were easy enough to read. Three rows of three math problems filled the screen, and Dante pointed to the first one, asking, “Think you can solve these?” He gave her another smile and waited patiently, and if Bikini were to look at Isaac, she would find the same reassuring expression.
The math problems all had double-digit numbers, and some even had triple-digits. Some had addition and subtraction at the same time, and the last problem even had four numbers being added up together, though they were thankfully smaller than the rest.
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Posts: 49
Preferred Name: Nilo
Pronouns: she/her
Character Name: Bikini
Main Account: Rakuen
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Post by Bikini on Jan 20, 2016 11:24:37 GMT -5
Bikini actually felt good when Dante was eager to move onto multiplication, like maybe she wasn't so stupid after all. However though she had some addition equations to solve, on the tablet thing.
In which she did fine. however, then it came t numbers that got into adding up over the number 10, she didn't know how to count over that and made the answers wrong, showing her work as she seen numbers all her life, more than letters. she looked worried, knowing she was doing bad. She scratched her head as she worked, and even guessing she filled in her answers wrongly, thinking that the way to count over 10 was 10, 20, 30 and so forth.
Giving the tablet back she smiled, knowing she did bad. Her face was flushed with pink, her eyebrows furrowed upwards in a questioning expression, her tail's habit to wrap around was acting up, trying to curl around the table leg but didn't know she was curling around Dante's leg, she was gentle but very firm.
"I got all of them wrong, didn't I?" she asked after a long pause, not ashamed but knowing she had a long way to go.
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Civilians
Spear of Cerberus
Posts: 109
Preferred Name: Varmun
Pronouns: He/Him
Character Profile: Character List
Character Name: Dante Vasari
Main Account: Isaac
Status: Active
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Post by Dante on Jan 20, 2016 19:01:39 GMT -5
Dante leaned forward, watching Bikini with a smile on his face. He watched her work, then stumble, then scratch her head, and then furrow her brow as she handed the tablet back. She didn't seem confident, and she had taken a pretty long time to solve the problems. Dante felt bad at first, and he wondered what was going on in her head. But he didn't get far before he blushed bright red, feeling the tip of Bikini's tail curl around his neck. His leg had twitched from the sudden gripping warmth, but he didn't jerk back, only feel a heat rise up in his face and shoulders.
He had to clear his throat to calm himself, and he looked over the tablet, saying, "N-no, no. Not at all. You uhh… you got this one right."
"Not quite," said Isaac, a bit of sympathy in his voice. Dante looked to him, confused, and Isaac pointed at the first problem on the tablet, saying, "She didn't carry the one."
"Oh," said Dante, feeling deflated. It felt as if he had failed just as much as Bikini. He looked over the work Bikini had shown, trying his best to understand where she had gone wrong so that he could tell her how to improve. Sadly, he couldn't quite see a pattern, as he was too baffled by what she wrote, unsure of why she had written a bunch of 10s and 20s and 30s.
Isaac, however, seemed to figure it out. Looking to Bikini, he took over, saying, "I think we need to go back a little farther. Bikini, can you count to 20 for me?"
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Posts: 49
Preferred Name: Nilo
Pronouns: she/her
Character Name: Bikini
Main Account: Rakuen
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Post by Bikini on Jan 21, 2016 1:20:59 GMT -5
Bikini's tail tightened upon hearing she got them all wrong, just like he thought she did. She sighed, thinking she wasn't a lost cause. She lowered her head and said quietly, "I'm sorry..."
The look on Dante's face was what really made Bikini feel bad. it looked like she was failing him, maybe he was starting to dislike her for her lack of education. But she couldn't let those thoughts get the best of her.
Isaac asked her to count to 20, and she nodded, a bit confused but her attitude said she wanted to learn and was willing to continue and figure out her problem. "Alright... one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten...." she blushed, having a feeling this was her problem and she was being naive, ".... twenty...?"
Her tail continued to slither up Dante's leg, really not noticing that it wasn't the table leg, and also not realizing that it was warm. She could of seen it with her heat sensory, but learning how to do math was really taken her attention from everything. She face was hot and she gripped the table, shaking her head at her mistakes.
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Civilians
Spear of Cerberus
Posts: 109
Preferred Name: Varmun
Pronouns: He/Him
Character Profile: Character List
Character Name: Dante Vasari
Main Account: Isaac
Status: Active
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Post by Dante on Jan 27, 2016 18:34:42 GMT -5
Bikini’s tail was constricting so tightly, looping around so much, that it was stealing some of Dante’s body heat. His face turned bright red, his body tense. He had to stop himself from trailing his eyes down her tail or draw attention to it at all. Chewing his lip seemed to distract him enough, and he stared straight down at the tablet just in case, almost missing what Isaac said.
“Ah. There’s the problem.”
“Huh?” asked Dante, finally refocusing. “What is?”
Isaac shook his head, and then leaned to the side, his elbow pressed against his thigh, his head in his hand. “She can’t count past ten. The only numbers she deals with are data chips, and she’s probably only dealt with back-end merchants who rip her off.” Dante looked a little lost, wondering where that last part had come from. He narrowed his brow, and Isaac continued, “Dante, what’s the highest amount of money you’ve gotten from dancing before?”
“Uh…” In his head, Dante thought, Dude, that's asking a lot from me right now. Again, he had to stop himself from looking at Bikini’s tail. After chewing his lip again, he answered, “Maybe ten bucks?”
“Exactly. People tip in small amounts. And if they go above ten, it’s not going to be eleven or twelve. We gravitate toward fives and tens. If anyone tipped her more than ten dollars, it was probably fifteen or twenty. She has no idea that there’s anything in between.” Isaac must have recognized just how distracted Dante was, as he went ahead and continued teaching Bikini, rather than passing it off. Turning to Bikini, Isaac held up both of his hands and explained, “Bikini, the way we use numbers, and the way we count is based on the number of fingers we have. We have ten fingers each. Think about the number ten as being a full set of fingers.” He then nudged Dante and had him raise his hands as well, his fingers splayed. “If I take my set of fingers and Dante’s set, we get twenty. It’s easy to remember because the number two is in front of it.” He then grabbed the tablet, swiped to a blank page, and wrote out the number “20” for her to see. “Twenty is two sets of ten fingers. You see what I mean? What you have yet to learn is that there are numbers between ten and twenty.” Isaac then lowered all but one of his fingers. “The first number is eleven.” He then wrote out the number “11” on the tablet. “The number eleven is one full set of fingers plus another one. Then we have twelve, thirteen, fourteen…” Isaac went on, and he did his very best to explain this to Bikini. Dante simply sat there, thankful that Isaac was here.
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Posts: 49
Preferred Name: Nilo
Pronouns: she/her
Character Name: Bikini
Main Account: Rakuen
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Post by Bikini on Jan 27, 2016 23:53:07 GMT -5
As Isaac explained her mistake, Bikini's worry melted away into understanding and she smiled bigger, her tail loosening up off of Dante's leg, and wiggling in excitement much like a cat's would. "Oh! Is that all? It's so simple!" she giggled, then held out her hands to the table and the tablet, "Can I try again?"
Whether they gave her another crack at the set of problems they already had or gave her a new set, she did her work pretty fast, seeing Bikini only did counting all her life. Though she didn't know how to say each of the new set of numbers by their name, she already knew the rules of counting now. She finished her problems in breakneck speed, and handing the tablet back to Isaac and Dante. "Done!" she said, giggling and much more confident than the first time around.
They went through subtraction, then multiplication, division, and went a little bit into fractions until it made her head throb with a bit of confusion, holding her head as she shook it, "Ugh, this is harrrd. 1/4 sounds like it should be bigger than 1/3!"
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