She Blindsided Him with Science! – Chapter 7, Act 2, Strip 3

Liilytown University is very – and rightly – proud of the high enrollment figures in the STEM fields. They’re less proud of the way in which these figures are reached, but fortunately that’s something that you can simply…uh…de-focus in your advertising material. And, after all, Lillytown U isn’t a liberal arts college, so taking a slightly illiberal stance on students picking a major shouldn’t be considered terribly far off the mark. *cough*

Not that there’s any way to stop the Professor, anyway. He hates half-filled classes, and happily invests the extra time to prowl the campus for warm bodies…uh, I mean, to dedicate himself to recruit outstanding talent. And he firmly believes that the human mind is malleable, at least during youth and early adulthood, and to a degree – a former English major might never turn into an truly exemplary scientist, but such late bloomers often excel at mad science. And a mad scientist is still better than a non-scientist, to the Professor.

Mopey, by the way, has no intention of turning this into a slasher movie – she did not miss her “victim”, she wanted to only draw a small amount of blood. In this hunter/killer group set-up she’s running with the Professor, her job is mostly to slow the prey down and inflict minor injuries, so the Professor can then move in to finish off the weakened prey. During that final stage, she’ll only hover around in the background – as a kind of reminder that there are worse things than being enrolled in one of Professor Dr.’s science classes. Not many worse things, not hugely worse things, but still…worse things.

And with this, the first two members of the regular cast have been re-introduced, after their long absence during all of act 1. And in proper style, I’d say – Professor Dr. as a demented science freak, and his assistant Mopey as straddling the coarse line between extreme misanthropy and outright sociopathy.

The student is just a generic student, as far as I’ve planned ahead. I’m giving no guarantees he might not show up in some later chapter, though – as a mad scientist…

More on Thurs…uh, Monday.