IKAG Spying Draft

The Carous students eavesdrop on their most popular classmates.

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Steven seeing an altercation between Rudy and another student. Think of some extremely manga-core idea, like a pair of girls pouting over trying to take him to eat lunch on one of the building rooftops; or a girl being pressed into shouting her 'confession' and then dithering on the spot, going tsundere; or a girl taking Rudy's phone and registering herself in his contacts

Conner catches Steven off-guard and bemoans how you see a lot of this shit when you hang around Rudy. But it gives you an idea of how romance works, too. You become like a second-hand master of love advice. Conner is dressed completely different from normal - a light-blue long-sleeve cotton shirt with buttons and breast pockets, an orange t-shirt, jeans and a regular rucksack. Even his hair is toned down from normal.

Conner relates an anecdote to Steven, who mostly tunes it out as white noise. Rudy referred a guy to Conner [dressed as normal] for 'the usual help', but instead of goods, this person, "his name was Eric?", had trouble wanting to ask a girl out. After some wacky schemes Conner decided the best help was to promote self-confidence, self-awareness, and push through the fear of embarrassment. The next day "Eric" went through a transformation from a 4-foot dwarf to an 8-foot musclebound gigachad, telling Conner he had been turned down, but still thanked him for the advice and didn't regret the experience, growing as a person. The end result - everyone is asking out Eric and Conner didn't gain anything out of it.

Conner: "...on the bright side, it's easier to eavesdrop on people if you don't stand out too much, right? [nudges Steven]"
Conner: "Let me know if anything juicy happens, yeah? [walking off]"

Steven has a lot of questions, mostly the clothing, but he doesn't ask them out loud.

At first it's just Steven seeing Rudy and Hayleigh from a distance, but then Centaur appears to mildly bully him before joining in watching as well. Then Shift, Dragon, Spirit, and eventually almost the whole class [minus Conner, Rudy, Hayleigh] is hiding behind lamp posts watching the farces play out, with Rudy and Hayleigh forced to brush off various students. Rather than groups of the class hiding behind different lamp posts or boxes, it's all of them congregating behind the same object. During different scenes we also see [not a priority but a background gag/cameo] Conner caught in the crowds or waylaid by people making a beeline for Rudy/Hayleigh. His old appearance was designed as a kind of repellent to their popularity/succubus radius, keeping people away so he could walk around socialising with them; the new look doesn't have that power.

The Carous class switch things up in terms of stalking:
⦁	everyone holding newspapers in front of them
⦁	hiding behind cars that then move, necessitating they move alongside the cars
⦁	painting themselves the same colour as the wall they're standing against
⦁	obnoxious people loudly asking what they're doing and ignoring/refusing requests to shove off
⦁	Senmu telling them that no, she can only hold the equivalent of her own mass inside her zip-riddled body, not an entire group of people
⦁	Dan almost blows everyone's cover by uncontrollably spazzing out and Jinx almost blows everyone's cover by causing light outages and malfunctioning equipment
⦁	Dan is learning long-range combat training on the side to compensate for his ability, so he uses projectiles as distractions to keep peoples' attention from the Carous class, redeeming himself; ditto Jinx causing accidents to happen to the lovestruck students trying their tricks on Rudy/Hayleigh
⦁	Darkblade is a master of stealth and reconnaisance, radio'ing information and hot scoops, until he sees Mr Carous heading out of the teachers' lounge, and then he's restrained by the other teens

A frame of reference for comedic hitailing: https://youtu.be/pRCi3evkVj8?t=1277

At one point they see Conner interacting with Amelia in an uncharacteristically casual/bashful way that's returned in kind, and they both walk off together. Half the students want to eavesdrop further, while the other half want to concentrate on other juicy gossip around the Neverminds. Senmu remembers seeing the new Conner look at registration; apparently Hayleigh had finally needled him into wearing something that wasn't greeny-orange. Was that the reason he seemed so uncomfortable the whole time?

General ideas of people trying to orbit/chat up either of the Nevermind teens. Often they're separate doing their own thing, but might get caught out together depending on class conditions, maybe they're at their desks or happen to meet in a hallway. This is more a vehicle for ridiculous shit
⦁	Belle trying to do the 'read your palm' fortune-telling bit with Rudy, but she's got crab-claws
⦁	a girl trying to pawn off an amusement park ticket as a lottery win and her needing a partner because the ticket admits a couple only - but she badly messes up the play and ends up giving the ticket to Rudy and Hayleigh to share, running off
⦁	a guy wins a track-and-field event and gets interviewed, asking for Rudy to marry him
⦁	the 'girl falls over, revealing her underwear' trick turns into a human pyramid of girls
⦁	girl asking to stay over at Rudy's house for the winter break, backtracking because they should probably be studying for exams anyway, backtracking because Rudy is probably studying with another girl - it's March
⦁	girls start shit-talking Hayleigh until she corrects them [on downplaying her breast size, on downplaying her appearance, on downplaying how slutty she is]
⦁	a bunch of dudes corner Rudy against a locker, intent on dressing him down, until he starts crying about wanting to save his first time for the person he loves; the dudes inexplicably let him go and cheer him on
⦁	Brunette with short hair: "What kind of girls do you like?"
Rudy: "Long hair. I like long hair. And blonde. Blondes with braids."
Brunette silently walks off
Hayleigh, who is standing right next to him: "You what"
Rudy: "I had to say something!"

The scene culminates in the class spying on Conner for the second time, carrying boxes to the IT supply closet with Amelia. Rudy and Hayleigh catch everyone spying off-guard, giving context on Conner's appearance [Hayleigh used Amelia's approval as leverage to get him to change, and asked "Ams" to praise it when she saw it]. They also reveal they knew the class were watching them the whole time; Steven takes the blame and Rudy brushes it off as no big deal. "You can spy on me anytime you like!"

Conner and Amelia are at the council office door where he fumbles the bag [something similar to the "I think we should go further than this" screencap, an open invite that gets ignored/misinterpreted really badly, that causes the entire class to freak out and internally scream] and she leaves smiling. The whole class descends upon Conner, outraged at his bag-fumbling, but he reassures them the entire thing was an obvious trap designed to catch him off-guard at his expense. Even Rudy gets pissed and points out the obvious logical conclusion.
Conner: "Yes, the play is obvious - too obvious - you miss the dynamic of the whole thing, and that's why you're not an expert."
Rudy: "What are you talking about?!"
Conner: "I taught you everything you know when it comes to romance. But I didn't teach you everything *I* know."
Conner walks away.

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Cliques within the class; oneupmanship dynamics. Even though everyone's there, people will prioritise talking to certain classmates, be it shit-talking or catching up on things
"Even though he's a guy, Rudy is the girliest girl in our class. It'd be gayer NOT to have a crush on him."
shit-talking colleagues
"nice heals :)"
escalating stupidity and people bonding together over covering up an accidental murder or some dumb shit
"time to adopt a child, better go to this liminal space" "that's where I adopt all my children, liminal spaces"
"if they're all dead they won't talk. ...wait, nope. that would get me in trouble"
we need each pairing of characters to be entertaining, rather than just Conner
delightful 'daily life' material