long time, no poast =O

[windhover]

and what a fine time to do it  =O

News news, update update... school sucks, RPing's great, writing's even better, blah blah so on.  I won another /vgc/ writing contest-thing a week or so ago, but I can't put the entry up here yet since it involves HUEG SPOILERZ HOMG for the Chroma-verse.

So I started writing this thing instead.  =D

It's actually finished, but it's so long I'll post it in segments anyway.

When the child entered Anchor’s refugee-citizen program, or RCP, he was designated C728K.  Shortly thereafter this was lengthened to Konrad C728K.

The string of letters and numbers was intended to be only a temporary identification, which would suffice until the child was either adopted into a willing family, shuffled into foster care, or became old enough for the solitary self-support option.  But a child can only be adopted by someone who both wants it and is able to care for it.
 

Konrad C728K displayed few, if any, of the qualities commonly found desirable in children of his age group.  He was tall for his age and somewhat gawky, and his features were rough and unusually mature, making him neither endearingly cute nor ugly.  He displayed a potential for athleticism, but his poor coordination and inability to cooperate with others kept him from being a contender for any team sports.  He understood basic logic well enough, in the way that all children do, but facts, formulae, and academic concepts slipped from his mind as if it were a sieve, and although he spoke well and fluently, his reading scores were always abysmal, no matter how hard he tried.
 

Of course, Konrad C728K was hardly the only child in the RCP with these deficiencies, which was why the foster system had been developed.  Konrad C728K, however, adamantly refused to submit to such care.  As such, he continued to live in the government-sponsored orphanage, receiving the minimum amount of formal education that he was guaranteed by law and that was required in order to survive, until he grew to the eligible age to enter the solitary self-support program.
 

Because of this development, the designation “C728K” was no longer viable, and was removed from his public identification.  Thus, his name became Konrad—just Konrad.  Ordinarily, orphaned children in the RCP program were either adopted or put into foster care, and, if they did not remember their surnames, or never had such a thing in the first place, took on the surnames of the families who cared for them.  But, since neither of these situations applied to Konrad, he had no surname of his own.
 

But Konrad was fine with being “just Konrad”; he had picked the name himself, and had never wanted another.  That was really the only thing he had ever wanted—the freedom to do whatever he pleased with his life.
 

In his childish grasps at freedom, however, it appeared that the choices he made were not entirely wise.
 

His decision to stay in the orphanage left him with very little exposure to the outside world.  He knew all the necessities that were required for the self-support program, but his social skills had been severely stunted.  He had only ever spoken with the tutors, overseers, and administrators at the orphanage, never with the other children, and never in casual conversation.
 

And so, when the first friendly nobody on his first day of public school in his entire life asked him what he liked to do, he was left completely at a loss for words.  What did he like to do?  Did he like to do anything?
 

Because of the reputation this exchange quickly garnered, Konrad’s high school career quickly became even more of a hell than it usually was for others.