fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

The weather was thankfully behaving, so it was fairly warm outside as everything was set up for the picnic. Tables and chairs had been set up, and there was plenty of food and drinks, along with nametags, and two signs: one listing the Big Sibling/Little Sibling pairings, and another listing rooms and roommates for the new students.

[~~WAIT FOR THE OCD PLEASE.~~ OCD IS UP, HAVE AT IT. This is part one of the picnic, for specifically meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here and here, in an effort to keep browsers from breaking for as long as possible. *g*]

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It was one thing to take quips like that from Cain, but this?

"I'm not insane." Defensive much? "The Witch's alchemists took out half my brain and I just got it back. I'm not insane just because my synapses aren't connecting they way they should be."

A pause, to catch his breath and his thoughts, as they were currently bouncing around like mad inside his skull. Quite a few of them were wondering why exactly he had just said what he had said about them, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

"And I don't think you can be from Oz, because no one has called it that since the Gray Gale." Would that mean anything to him? He decided to explain his point further, because damnit he was right. "The Gray Gale who has been dead for centuries."

That ought to do it. No, wait. "It's called the Outer Zone."

Glitch had said that all very fast, in an almost dismissive tone. Now he stood there, trying to process it himself.

"She doesn't take out brains," he snapped right back. He should know. He'd lived with her, after all. All his life, from the mauntery until the bucket. He'd lived with her and she was his Witch no matter what the graffiti said or anyone said or even she said because she was dead and couldn't actually argue.

Something stung in his eyes.

"She didn't, anyway! She put wings on monkeys, but she didn't take out anyone's brain! And as for the Gale, if Dorothy's the one who told you anything about the Witch--"

He didn't know what he'd do. After all, she was gone, gone with the Wizard. What could he do? What could he do even if she was right there?

What could he do period?

"I'm from Oz," he said again. "That's the name she used and Nanny used and the Gale Forcers used and everyone else uses. I'm not insane either. Stupid, yes, but I know that at least."

"Yeah, well, I've got the zipper to prove it!" He pointed, very emphatically, to where it was on his head. "She made me wander around the O.Z. with half a brain for annuals so she could have her try at my invention and ruin the Outer Zone forever!"

He took a breath to try and calm himself. "The Witch? She possessed a young girl, made her kill her own sister, and... And..." And? "We stopped her." That wasn't where he had meant to stop, but there it was.

Glitch sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "And the only Dorothy Gale I know of is the founder of the Royal Line."

Some of his synapses were trying to make sense of all this, but the few that were still being indignant about being told they'd never been removed in the first place were less than willing to accommodate.

"And why in Nameless Name would the--"

He breathed out. Getting angry wasn't solving anything. And it was her way, not his. His way was...

He didn't know what his way was, but it wasn't her way so he'd have to try and think even if he was stupid.

"Dorothy Gale, the founder of the Royal Line?" There was a blink.

"Did she come back, then? Because she left with the Wizard just a few weeks ago. Is she some relation to Ozma, then? Even I know that Lurline placed the line of Ozma in charge of Oz when she left." At least, that's what Nanny had always told him. He'd never been one for religion.

None of this made any sense. It was as if the pieces were there, but all in the wrong order, as if he was remembering things mashed up like potatoes. He closed his eyes and tried to settle even as something swam into his mind, gold and sparkling as the world turned dim.

"Possessed?"

He shook his head.

"The Witch, my Witch, couldn't. Wouldn't. And I've never seen you. It was Dorothy who got her with the bucket of water. We were in the kitchen, locked up with the Lion and that stupid dog--"

He tried to remember, tried to hard to remember through the haze of the past, the haze of memories and the smoke that he'd flown through on his way out of Southstairs.

"Ok, wait."

He had to think for a moment. His mouth was frowning on one side, to the right, concentrating so hard his zipper hurt.

"You know Dorothy Gale, and you have a Witch?" He was trying to piece it together, like cogs in one of his more elaborate clockwork mechanics. "I suppose the Lion would be an ancestor of the Viewers, maybe, and..."

He was still frowning, silent, staring at the ground. Willing the pieces to click together and whirr to life they way they should.

"But that was all so long ago!"

"I knew her," he pointed out. "She left. And I... had a Witch. She's dead now. She--"

Is my mother.

Was my only family.

Cared.

"lived with me. Her old Nanny practically raised me."

As much as anyone raised him.

"So..." He started slowly, letting the pieces fall where they may.

"Your Witch was the Witch of the West?" Glitch tried to remember his history lessons of that era, but it was coming in bits. "Not the Cave Witch?"

If it was true, well, that would explain a few things.

He nodded.

"We lived in Kiamo Ko," he said, figuring that if the man was in the far future, it didn't matter much at all.

"In the Vinkus, the ancestral home of the Arjiki royal family."

And before the Wizard had taken them, with the Arjiki royal family. Or the remainders of it, anyway.

"I don't know about any Cave Witch, though."

Though the fishwell kept flashing in front of his eyes.

Glitch nodded.

"Some of them are still there, I think. The Arjiki." He didn't know for sure, and something niggled in his mind that said he probably shouldn't be telling this boy about the future.

It misfired itself away.

He ghosted his fingers along the length of his zipper again. "The Cave Witch is the one who possessed the princess Azkadellia."

Glitch sighed, then smiled at Liir. "At least we have that figured out, right?"

"Good for her," though he didn't know who he was speaking of in either case.

Then he breathed out.

"You did most of the figuring. I just yelled at you."

"Not really." He quirked an eyebrow at Liir. "Actually, it was pretty bad."

Glitch let it go, though.

"The yelling is fine, actually, since I think I yelled a little, too. Did I yell?"

He wasn't so sure now if he had.

"It doesn't matter now," he said, though whether it was to the first or the second item of business is hard to say. Though--

"You're not going to be ridiculous at me because of the Witch? Because--"

She's my mother.

Because I loved her.

Because she raised me.

"of the strangeness with time, are you?"

A pause before he went on.

"The Time Dragon dreams us all, besides, and dreams don't always make sense."

Glitch gave him a Look. "I don't think I'd be a very good teacher if I were strange at my students." As if he knew.

Then he grinned, wide, at the mention of the Time Dragon. "You know, I haven't heard about the Time Dragon since I was a boy. Creepy little folktale, though." He looked serious for a moment. "Not one of my favorites."

"I've heard more of the Jackal Moon," he admitted. "And it's more upsetting than the idea that there's a great beast dreaming us up. At least that way, no one really knows what's going on."

Perhaps that's why religion never appealed to him then.

He gave a small laugh of agreement, then leaned in conspiratorially.

"To be perfectly honest, I never really cared for any of 'em."

Or did he? He leaned back and considered it.

"At least, I don't think I cared for any of them. I don't now, at any rate."

He didn't either, actually. That was stuff out of the Grimmerie, Elphaba's things. Elphaba's things that she'd selfishly horded, that'd come to no good end.

There were better things to deal with.

"We could talk about your class, you know."

Glitch looked shocked for a moment, but recovered quick enough.

"Oh, yeah. I have a class."

Yes, he had forgotten that being a teacher meant he had a class. A few synapses fired off violently in disappointment. What was it again? Oh, right, "Applied Inventiontronics."

He smiled. "I don't have any lesson plans, I think. Unless this place took care of that, too. I also didn't know I was going to be a teacher until I arrived this morning on the travel storm."

He didn't realize that it might not be a good idea to admit such a thing to one's prospective student until after he'd already said it. He tried to recover.

"Not that I don't know anything about it. Inventiontronics was always my best subject in school, and I was first in my class."

"You know more than me. Then again, that's true of anything."

He gave a faint smile.

"I've never been to school before."

And I'm rather stupid.

Glitch scrunched up his face, expressing the 'pshaw' he wasn't saying, and waved a hand.

"You can learn as much from living as you can in a classroom. And I didn't learn that until I had half a brain."

He nodded for emphasis.

"You remind me of the Scarecrow," he said carefully. Carefully because he didn't mean to insult. Carefully because he wasn't sure if he meant it until he'd said it.

It was a compliment, though.

He thought about that for a moment. Let his synapses work at finding the reference somewhere in all the legends he'd never really payed any attention to.

There was something about a man of straw not having any brains, but being the smartest one all along. A child's version of the Tale of the Gray Gale. "That's good, right?"

It didn't occur to him that Liir might actually know who that particular character was based on.

"He saved my life," he admitted. "And he was one of the better conversationalists. He didn't have Nick Chopper's cutting wit, but he knew which way the wind blew. Or he seemed to, anyway. He's gone now."

A pause.

"It was a compliment."

Nick Chopper sounded oddly familiar, too. He shrugged it off as something Cain probably mentioned at one point or another.

Glitch took a second to soak in the compliment, but couldn't fight the urge to discredit himself.

"Thank you. I don't know about the conversationalist part, though. If that episode earlier is any evidence of it, I might just be the worst." He didn't know if he was talking about the loop or the argument. It was probably both.

"That's more than likely my fault," he pointed out. "I don't know anything. And I certainly don't know how to deal with people. At least, not people who actually talk to me. Or aren't crazy."

Glitch shot him a stern look for the 'crazy' remark, but smiled anyway.

"You're doing pretty well right now, I think. And you know more about your part of the O.Z. than I do. And you know the legends and folktales."

He shrugged.

"Everybody knows something. Even headcases."

He gave Liir a pointed look. "Even you."

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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