fandomhigh | Fandom Invasions Class #7 (Thursday period 3)

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fandom invasions

Fandom Invasions Class #7 (Thursday period 3)

When the students filed into the Danger Shop they found two young girls standing with John in the usual lecture spot.

"Hi," the older one said, bouncing a little on her toes. "I'm Susannah Lynn and this is my half-sister Grace. Dad asked us to help him with this class since it's all about us.

"See, there was this big swirling thing, a..... vortex?" She looked up at John for confirmation of the word, grinning when he nodded and then continuing. "And a bunch of us kids got pulled through it and came to Fandom and got to meet our parents before they were our parents. It was really freaky and a little scary, but it was also a lot of fun." She giggled. "Seeing everybody's face when they realised we were their kids was really really funny.

"It was so much fun, that Dad decided that you should get a chance to play too! Isn't that great?" She turned and looked up at John again. "This is where you take over, right?"

John smiled and nodded. "It is. Thanks, Susannah." He addressed the class. "Fandom is always throwing the unexpected at you. And sometimes that isn't a hostile invasion. Sometimes it's the next generation. The object this class isn't to fight the invaders, but look after them. Keep them amused, fed, make sure they go to bed on time... you know. Be parents. And then make sure they get back to where they're supposed to be."

Grace pulled on John's pantleg. "Daddy? I wanna colour!"

John picked her up and smiled wryly at the class. "Sometimes it's easier to just beat something up."

[ooc: ~~wait for~~ ocd is up! Have at it.]

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Oh look. A common room.

Valentine, whose brain was far more broken than he ever would let on, led Coraline to the kitchen area, mentally demanding that there be both cake and tea.

And Princess Coraline beheld the cake and tea, and decided it was very nice indeed and met with her approval.

"Now I shan't regret telling you my name again," she said, smiling brightly. "Where is Mum?"

... How was he supposed to answer that question!?

"Probably back in," what was that place called, again? "Brighton. Juggling. And Drawing. At the same time. Juggling her drawings, you know. While wearing those rabbity things on her feet."

It was worth a shot, here.

"Is there any cake to spare?"

"I suppose," she said with a sigh. "I can be kind and share. Mum says that cake-hogging isn't very nice, and neither is abandoning princesses. And you say neither is giving people malformed eyes, and then you bicker quite a lot. You and she don't make a lot of sense when you talk, you know. And you can't juggle drawings, they would blow away in the wind."

Malformed? His eyes weren't malformed. They were just wee and useless and... malformed. Fine. And he was totally going to hold this against Helena until the end of his life. It was her fault that he didn't have super-vision like everyone else in this world, after all. Pinholes. Peh.

"Blowing away in the wind certainly would be a shame, wouldn't it? A whole world, just swept up and carried off..."

"Drawings aren't worlds," she said, shaking her head. "They're just imaginings. You can always draw them again. Although you'll never get them the same. But then they never turn out how you saw them in your head anyway. But at least those can't blow away."

Valentine stared at Coraline. His daughter didn't know? About drawings and his world and... And... Helena was her mother. And if Helena was her mother and he was her father...

Maybe they hadn't told her just to spare her the headache of trying to figure out the mechanics that went behind her mother having created him. And he could respect that, he supposed...

His head was starting to hurt.

"Sometimes even imaginings can be far more real than you ever expected them to become," he finally said.

Coraline shrugged. "I suppose." It wasn't really an issue that concerned her, to be honest. Why should it need to? Worlds may become drawings - her mum had certainly sketched a great deal of the City of Light, and some of it decorated her room - but the other way around just seemed ridiculous.

Even for a girl whose father always wore a mask.

"Does she know we're here? She's likely to be worried if we've gone off adventuring." Coraline thought about that for a moment. "Are we? Adventuring, I mean."

Valentine couldn't help but smile a little at that.

"Perhaps we should leave the adventuring to your mother. She seems far better than I am at that sort of thing. A regular heroine in -ugh- bunny slippers." He grabbed a piece of cake for himself, as he was never one to turn down cake, even if it wasn't entirely real and existed in a simulation in class and...

He wasn't entirely real himself. Maybe it was alright to stop telling himself that Coraline here was just the product of someone's imagination. Maybe she was just as real for him, for the remainder of this class...

"Would you like to do some adventuring, Coraline?"

He hated to speculate that she might fall into darkness when the class ended.

"I should always like to go adventuring," she said, smiling brightly. She popped the last bit of cake into her mouth and considered taking another. She was her father's daughter, after all. "Where shall we go? What is it we're after? Treasure? A rescue? Some noble quest, or are we cut-throat pirates seeking jewels?"

Valentine lost his appetite for cake at the mention of jewels and offered his slice over to Coraline.

"Whatever you want," he said, working his way past a siege of wild brainbeasts, all trying to stampede through his head and trample everything to pieces. "This is your adventure, after all."

Well. That didn't sound so cheerful, now did it?

"We don't have to adventure, Dad," she said. "I only thought it might be fun. We can do something else if you'd rather."

Way to worry the child, Valentine.

"Nono, adventuring sounds absolutely fantastic," he stated, plastering a grin onto his face. Onward and upward. "How about that treasure hunt? I do pride myself on my nose for treasure."

"All right, then." She nodded. "Where does your nose say treasure is? Do we have a map? It's usually where the X is. I wonder why they use X for treasure. There aren't any Xs in treasure at all. You'd think they'd use T."

"It's a silent X," Valentine replied smoothly. "So silent, they don't even put it into the word when they write it down."

It made perfect sense to Valentine.

Coraline considered this for a moment, and then nodded. "Like the ones in front of your name when you sign forms."

Clearly, she was his daughter.

Clearly!

"Just like that! It's a dark, unnoticeable, slippy X. But the pirates who made the treasure maps had excellent ears and eyes, so the word couldn't hide its X from them for long."

"Is that how they found the xtreasure?" Coraline asked. "They heard its X and tracked it to its lair?"

(She was still pronouncing it "treasure." It was a silent X, after all.)

"That must be exactly what they did," Valentine agreed. "I imagine if we listen closely enough, we'll be able to hear the X and do the same. Think your ears are good enough to find us some xtreasure, Coraline?"

It was entirely possible that Valentine was starting to believe that the word had a silent X in it for real.

"I can try," she said eagerly. "How will we know where the X is coming from?"

She hopped up and was very still, listening carefully.

It was entirely possible she was going to begin signing her name as XCoraline.

XValentine would have no objections to that. If they were to find the xtreasure, he would leave it entirely up to her what she would like to do with her newfound X.

He stood as well, not entirely certain anymore if he was listening, or simply pretending to do so.

A place where there was apt to be treasure...

"I think I hear something over that way," he said, pointing at the couch. There had to be some spare change in there, didn't there?

XCoraline listened carefully, then nodded. "It's a high, jingly sort of noise, isn't it?" she said. "Muffled by the couch. Under it, perhaps. Or within."

Xtreasure awaited them. Yarrr!

"Certainly within it," XValentine decided. "X marks the place of xburied xtreasure in particular, after all."

He found himself grinning somewhat in spite of himself as he dive-bombed the couch and grabbed hold of the cushions.

"Ready? On the count of three. One! Two!"

"Xthree!" XCoraline shouted, pulling her cushion up and hurling it away. She climbed onto the couch frame, inspecting it giddily. "Did we get any xtreasure?"

After XValentine had tossed his cushions to the side, he leaned forward to survey their claim.

"There's absolutely some xtreasure floating around," he observed, pointing at a couple of pennies and a wad of chewed bubblegum which, fortunately, didn't come fused together in a nasty clump. "An excellent start to our xtreasure-hunting expedition, I must say."

He'd have to go digging around in common room couches more often, he decided.

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