See, this last bit really drives hone my feelings about Kai. She gets angry at things that are worth getting angry about.

Taro is an ass, and she gets angry at him for being an ass and belitteling her inteligence. That is worth getting angry about. People keep making excuses for Taro that sound an awful lot like "boys will be boys."

And Cassidy seems to have no idea how bad relations are between Taro and Kai. "Oh, we're all crew! We get along." Taro may have decided to join the crew, but I'm not sure Kai has. She doesn't trust them entirely...

Wait a second... how can he/it be a buffer when there are only the three of them?

Speculation: I think she means the Shahin-to-Kaia direction specifically. I suspect Kaia-to-Shahin would be an easier transition.

Hmm. I just realized I call Kailani by her nickname but not Shahin or Jamian. I wonder why?

Well, Kailani has three syllables?

My question is this: is Kailani close friends with anyone in the group, outside of Conrad? We've seen her helping Vlad with homework and asking Mabina for advice, but most of the normal everyday interactions get skipped in favor of the out of the ordinary stuff. I'm wondering if she's spent much time with anyone but Conrad, outside of the group setting. She's been adopted into the crew because Mabina&Cassidy are mother hens and because she's dating one of the crew, as far as I can tell.

No. "You're crew, and when you fight, it makes the rest of us miserable." Take out crew and put in "our friend," and look at it again.

No-one is saying that Kai gets angry about things she shouldn't get angry about. What they're saying is when she blows up about it, it makes everyone around her uncomfortable. And Conrad has no way to get away from it when she does that - he's entirely vulnerable to it.

~L

That's pretty accurate. Taro and Conrad have manage to monopolize most of her time, and she doesn't bond easily.

~L

Yes.


She invites it a little more? I can still picture very clearly Char saying "Oh, Kai, you boo!" but I can't really imagine anyone saying that about Shahin, can you?

~L

At several points in the story especially at the beginning, its pointed out that Taro didn't really have a nice year last year due to his being owned by Megan. Its like one of the main things the students have to deal with, they get essentially kidnapped by an older student and are forced into servitude for a year or more. Do you think that by the end of that time they are in anyway not crazy, or that at least some of how they were treated rubbed off. Taro was basically taught that in order to survive and not be prey again that he has to be the predator. Its not really a conscious choice he's making anymore, he's not getting off on it, in his mind it how it has to be, its how he was treated, and that's not easy to fix, he's been away from Megan for maybe 4 or 5 months, this is the kind of thing that would send normal people to therapy for years if not forever.

This can correlate directly to how Kai flies off the handle. She may not see it as an over reaction but to those observing it is. Yes sometimes its justified, but quite frankly the school isn't going to change, so she has to change, and if she doesn't it could have catastrophic effects on Conrad. The crew doesn't want to see that happen again. They've been there and they've done that with Taro, and since there aren't anger management classes available it falls into their hands to try and stop it, or at least curb it.

There is a school psychologist, though - I'm surprised none of the new kids have been referred over to him in the interest of 'I'm just your friend, I'm not getting paid to help you cope with this.' Maybe he's got a bad reputation with the students?

Would you go to the psychiatrist at a school where mind control was readily used?

*laughs maniacally* Don't worry my precious, everything will be all better. Just look into my eyes.

Unless you are trying to kill yourself or someone else I don't really think the staff steps in, with exception of maybe your mentor. So unless you are voluntarily going down there, you probably won't be sent.