"What are you on in Maths right now? Binomial expansion?"
    "No one's getting it. The teacher's coming down harder on me 'cause I'm older, but, I mean, geez..."
    Kite laughed. "Binomial expansion's easy! It's tedious, but there's no real talent to doing it. You're the real patient type so I'd've thought you'd not have any problem with it."
    "How, precisely, is this stuff easy?" Sora asked, scowling.
    "Well, give me an example, I'll show you."
    "(x - y)^12."
    Kite stopped midstep, and fell silent for a moment. Sora watched him curiously, even moreso when Kite reanimated a few seconds later, announcing, "x^12 - 12x^11y + 66x^10y^2 - 220x^9y^3 + 495x^8y^4 - 792x^7y^5 + 924x^6y^6 - 792x^5y^7 + 495x^4y^8 - 220x^3y^9 + 66x^2y^10 - 12xy^11 + y^12."
    "You cheated," Sora said flatly.
    "Nope. It's simple, I told you. The first step is to get your exponents down, and those go in a set pattern that anyone can guess. Once you've got that, you can either go Pascal's Triangle, but that gets nutso after the first seven terms or so, or use factorial theorem, which is what I did."
    "Factorial theorem?"
    "Yeah. (n!)/([n- k]!k!), where n = your total exponential term and k = the greater of the two exponents for the term you're calculating. It's especially good for finding specific terms in a sequence."
    "I remember that now. The teacher was going on about it in class," Sora sighed. "I didn't understand how it worked at all. Or that triangle thing."
    "You're meant to take it for granted that it functions," Kite said, shrugging. They continued their walk. "The simple how of it is just to know that factorial theorem and Pascal's Triangle both expand out to give you your coefficient. An even simpler way to think about it would be 'factorial of one less than your higher exponent, over factorial of the lower exponent.' You'll be crossing stuff out by the bucketsful, too."
    "Okay, but why does this all work, then?"
    "Don't worry about that."
    "No, really."
    "Look, you don't have to understand why it works. Unless you're planning to pursue maths as a career, the main objective it just to know how it works. In the case of binomial expansion, there's no real reason to Pascal's Triangle except that it works for what you need to do."
    "If you think you'll overcomplicate things otherwise..." Sora began.
    "Teachers overcomplicate things, that's the problem. Do you think you're seriously going to need all this theory stuff once you get to study the subjects you like? What subjects do you like?"
    "Japanese, I guess." This generated a short laugh from Kite, to Sora's puzzlement. "What's so funny?" he asked sharply.
    "Nothing-- I'm just remembering how when I first met you, all you did was talk in l33t."
    "\/\/4n+ 3j3 5|-|00ld 5+4r+ 4941n?" Sora challenged.
    "No, no, that's okay..."
    They spent the rest of the time en route to the Carmina Gadelica marketplace trying out some sample problems. By the end of a rather lengthy binomial raised to the 34th power, Sora seemed to be getting a decent grasp of the concept, to say the least. He was also nursing a headache.
    Tutoring had been working out relatively well these past few weeks, mostly for how open-ended the sessions tended to become. Though they met regularly, it was always up to Sora how long sessions would last, and the material that would be covered. There was no sense beating a subject to death that he already understood, and similarly little point in keeping silent about areas he was having problems in. He learned very quickly there was less shame in admitting difficulty than in Kite badgering it out of him at some later point. Because he would. He was insidiously good at that sort of thing.
    It was a Saturday afternoon and the servers were beginning to fill up with younger players, those just getting out of their half-day of school. Already the marketplace on Lambda server was beginning to get crowded, limiting the two Twin Blades' movement, and causing them to wonder why their charge couldn't have picked an emptier place to meet.
    An Assist hired out his services to less experienced players, usually when playing the game for its own merits had started to grow old and the player needed something new to keep up interest. It used to be an unofficial practice, but the advent of the Assist Guild had greatly regulated the system, though people could still give out support services without the guild, even if less efficiently. The greatest benefit to the guild was that it advertized and was able to bring in much more business, and the PCs running it tended to do a great job of matching the client with an appropriate Assist.
    Last week Kite and Sora had both gotten guild notices for the same job. It was apparently a large-scale operation requiring at least two allied parties, and both could really do with a high-powered, preferably Level 99 or 100 Assist. So, they had both been requested. By name, the guild reps had stressed.
    That part didn't really impress them. Apart from Balmung they were arguably the two most legendary players in The World, and they received unsolicited requests like other people breathed. Most could be safely ignored, a few could be safely accepted, and once in a while were the scary ones. This, fortunately, didn't seem to be one of those. By the sound of it, it was just a level-95 dungeon on Omega server about ten levels long, for a rare item someone needed for a trade quest, and that was all to be said. After other things they'd had to deal with, this should be a cakewalk.
    "So was there anything else?" Kite asked, turning down onto a side-street nearing the meeting place.
    "Well, I guess about quantum physics in relation to a cat--"
    "Oh, give that up already."
    "Fine, fine." Sora glanced at his surroundings. "We're nearly there. 'Spose we should get ready..."
    "Ah, come on," Kite complained. "Do you have to switch back into 'orae'?"
    "That's what fits this character. I have an image to uphold, you know."
    "Why not just use 'boku' like the real you does?"
    Sora scowled at him. "Tell you what. You don't tell me to use 'boku,' I don't tell you to use 'watashi.'"
    "That stung."
    "Good."
    And then:
    "WAAAAIIIII!"
    It was a shriek, a thousand nails clawing at a blackboard. The whine of a hundred adoring pets and affectionate toddlers and the squeal of every high-pitched anime girl ever inflicted upon human ears.
    Sora and Kite froze in time to see, around the corner, a cluster of maybe twenty or thirty PCs, though it looked like more than a hundred, and all of them, saving a few, were female. Most of them were short, brightly colored and the expressed age of 15, and quite a few were Twin Blades. The ones in front --a number always changing as others struggled to push forward for a better view-- mostly held up hand-crafted signs involving crudely-painted hearts and terrifyingly affectionate proclamations. When they saw they had gained Sora and Kite's attention, their screams of adoration tripled in loudness, reaching new levels of ear-bleeding decibels.
    It was their fan club.
    "Oh good god," Kite whimpered, going into a defensive stance.
    "What do we do?"
    "...RUN!"
 

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