Neo rolled his eyes upon Maria's comments regarding his accent and pronunciation. He felt like she has yet to understand his whole point of using the kind of accent he employed in his daily life. He deliberately used it to annoy people he met, and Neo always took a delight in tormenting people in all sorts of ways in various scales. For him, it was partly for fun, and partly because he wanted to know the people who would at least tolerate his apparent failure in properly enunciating his words. If he knew the people who refused to talk to him for long because of the way he spoke, he dismissed them as not worth spending time with. He still preserved that kind of elitism that magi and alchemists used to have back in the days of yore, one of the behavioral relics he possessed despite his modern approach in alchemy.<br/><br/>"You still don't quite get it, don't you?" He said. This time, rather than the grating accent he used daily, he spoke in Received Pronunciation, or what the rest of the world regarded as "General British" accent. "I can't quite remember if I told this you once and, frankly, I don't want to bother with such details anymore. But see, my native accent, the one that my Father used and I grew up with, doesn't really indicate the kind of background I actually had and the region I lived in as a kid. To put it simply, I never had a birth certificate when I was born. No citizenship and neither a state me and father pledged allegiance with. Magi were like that, given their secrecy back then. That's why I don't speak naturally anymore. Because I consider myself an American and not a European. After all, I did fight in the First and Second World War, as well as in Vietnam in the 60s before it went out of hand. I don't want to give people the idea that I'm new to this country, when I am in fact older than the formation of some few states in the Union."<br/><br/>"But yeah," he continued, back to his usual accent. "Hot darn, tha' last tim' muh hair was like t'is was back in the 60s. I look lik' an Allman Brotha'. Back den, I was a hippie in San Fran, at Hashbury." He noticed the black scrunchie than held his hair like a ponytail. He removed it, saying "I dun' need one o' these. I hav' bettah ideas, I'mma tell ya'. As fo' dat school idea ya' have? I dunno. I did sum' teachin' once, also back in the 60s, but I maybe sum' time soon, I tell ya'. I jus' dunno righ' now."<br/><br/>He then turned his head towards the dinner table and saw that Maria has already started eating. By that, he walked to the table and took a seat where a plate has been prepared for him. "Fresh fish, huh? It ain't lookin' like catfish o' salmon, so what is it?"