fandomhigh | BWI Airport | Portalocity Lounge

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!event: newbie shuttle

BWI Airport | Portalocity Lounge | Saturday Morning

Petra was so relieved to find the Portalocity lounge and a banner proclaiming 'Fandom High.' She was pretty sure that meant she was in the right place, even if she did seem to be the first one here, and it meant she could sit down and stop dragging her luggage (two large, new-looking suitcases and an extremely battered green leather overnight case with an Audrey Hepburn decal on top) all over the airport.

She picked out a chair with a good view of the door so she could see new arrivals and sat down with Holly Go-Overnightly in her lap, then pulled her phone out. All her friends were still asleep, no doubt, so texting was out, but surfing the web seemed like a good way to kill some time while she waited for other people to show up. She hoped she wasn't the only new student. That would be awkward.

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When they had asked for volunteers - for the sake of actually doing something - of course Alistair had stood up and proclaimed his willingness to go do something, as long as it didn't involve getting eaten, or wearing women's underwear. (It didn't.)

He hadn't expected what the bus had been like. Or the driving.

In other words, one of their two supervisors (the one who wasn't going to drive) was a tall knight in heavy armor, bearing a large shield (on his back), a sword (also on his back) and a green complexion (on his face). He sounded a little shrill as he called, "Right, everyone strap yourselves in for a ride in this deadly contraption of--" He went greener. "...bags, anyone?"

He'd be sitting down and staring out the window now, thanks.

"Is that a sword?" Petra asked. And then she started looking around for a bag or something. Sure, she'd just gotten off a plane, and she'd white-knuckled it the entire way (get back on the horse, her ass), but she hadn't thought to bring the motion sickness bags with her.

"This old thing?" Alistair asked, reaching out to poke at the hilt of the sword. "No, of course not. It's just a very big poking stick."

Thank you, Alistair.

"Oh, okay, a poking stick," Petra said, humoring the guy. "Do you always wear costumes to greet the new kids?" That was kind of cool, actually.

"Usually, I dress up like a chicken," Alistair confided. "I have these amazing wings made of actual feathers. I could practically fly in little circles about it, if I put my mind to the task, of course."

Stop messing with the students, Alistair.

"That might be the best hazing I've ever heard of," Petra decided. She just hoped the bus driving was not similarly haze-y, although...she'd seen the bus pull up. She had her doubts.

"We try our best," Alistair said. "I mean, it's better than my hazing. They made me eat everything in the castle until I threw up."

True story!

...what?

"Okay, if anyone tries to make me do that I'm going back to Rhode Island," Petra decided.

Alistair grinned. "Don't worry," he said, "It's... a Grey Warden hazing. You lot have it easy."

"I don't know what a Grey Warden is, so I guess I'll take your word on it," Petra said. "But seriously, if anyone tries to make me do that, I'm out of here and I want my tuition back."

"Right, right," Alistair said, holding up his hands. "No force-feeding of students, got it."

Honestly, he didn't really want to think about food right now.

"Sorry," Petra said. "We should probably not talk about food, huh? I'll just, uh...go sit down and let you try not to yak?"

"This is my one good suit of armor," Alistair agreed. "Though-- really, do you have a bag?" Pitiful puppy voice: applied.

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Re: Trip to Fandom!

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Rosella quirked one of her eyebrows, in a vain attempt to keeping from quirking a grin at the gentleman's comments. "Oh, it couldn't be all that terribly and deadly, could it?"

Funny. Her tone almost seemed to suggest that she hoped it really was!

"Oh, it is, terribly deadly," Alistair said. Though he was probably being sarcastic right there, dubious state of his stomach or not. "One of these things once maimed my grandmother."

Alistair had no idea who his grandmother was.

"Really?" Rosella was now looking upon the shuttle with a newfound respect and fascination, though her skepticism was still maintained. She would have liked to think that Alexander would have warned her if it were truly so deadly. After all, it's not like death was every that far away from grandmothers, anyway.

She then eyed the man carefully. "Deadly as a three-headed dragon deadly?" she ventured.

Alistair seemed to think that over for a minute. "Not that deadly," he decided, after a moment. "More like one-hurlock-clubbing-you-round-the-ears-while-you're-sleeping deadly. Love taps, really."

Rosella didn't entirely know what a hurlock was, but she figured she could take a close enough guess and nodded knowingly all the same. "Ah, I see," she said. "I knew it couldn't be as a deadly as a three-headed dragon; I think they would have warned us if that were the case. But I'm glad that it's at least a little deadly; that should help keep it from being too boring."

"Now that's a girl after my own heart," Alistair said, approvingly. Not that he was actually sure the bus was all that deadly, beyond making him feel terribly queasy and nearly prompting him to chuck up his (very large) dinner. "But in all seriousness, we haven't got a great deal of dragons around here. I think most people see that as a good thing."

Both ends of the man's comments made Rosella snort; the last thing she wanted was being after anyone's heart, and she supposed she'd have to grudgingly agree about the dragons. She certainly wouldn't mind not sacrificing herself.

"Still," Rosella ventured curiously, "I hear that while there may not be dragons on Fandom Island, that there is certainly no shortage of interesting or dangerous things. Is that correct?"

"Depends on which day of the month we're on, I suppose," Alistair said, thoughtfully. "I mean, the past couple of weeks have been fairly quiet, other than the rain--" Rosella would figure that one out soon enough, "--but we were attacked by a blight of monsters before that."

"The one's that left behind a terrible disease that infected most of the people who came in contact with them?" Rosella's eyes were positively shining. "Oh, yes, my brother told me all about that! He said it was quite distressing, so much so that he actually came home to spend a spell recovering. It was good to have him home, though I wish he didn't have to go through such a terrible ordeal."

In fact, she sounded quite a bit as if she wished it was her who had 'suffered' so.

"But I don't recall him mentioning the rain. What of it?"

"Sometimes," Alistair said, conspiratorially (he even leaned in to underscore that part), "It rains. All kinds of things."

"And I suspect," said Rosella, arching her brow to meet any conspiratorial tone one might offer her, "that you don't just mean the volume of the water when you say all kind of things."

"I think one time it was mittens," Alistair volunteered.

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