fandomhigh | Fandom High Graduation Ceremony, Class of 2012, Early Saturday Evening (Part 1)

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!event: graduation

Fandom High Graduation Ceremony, Class of 2012, Early Saturday Evening (Part 1)

With things back to normal - or as normal as Fandom ever got - preparations for graduation had gone into full swing. The ceremony was set for right after sunset, to make sure all types of guests could safely attend, and the lawn had been lit up with blue and gold lights, creating safe paths in which to walk to the seating area and giving everything a twinkling, serene appearance.

Of course, the staff knew that graduation was rarely a serene event, and the fact that Ingvar's volcano was being unusually active emphasized the need to prepare the seniors as much as possible. Last year's cache of weapons had been discreetly stashed in a trunk behind the podium...and yes, they'd all been properly cleaned. Who knew what dried Viking blood could do to metal?

Once everything had been arranged, the guests were let in, and all that was left was to pray everything went smoothly.

[OCD is up! Have at it! Welcome | The Processsion | Speeches | Diplomas | OOC]

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Raven, Tara, Ben, Elphaba, Squall, George... It felt like damn near everybody Jonothon knew from his school days was graduating today. It was a sort of surreal experience, considering the time difference that his own world had thrown at him. Waiting five years for his classmates to graduate one year later was unsettling.

He was sitting near the back of the crowd with the bottom of his face covered, ready to leave at the drop of a pin should any of the inevitable X-crowd take any sort of interest in him. Because Jono would always be paranoid. Forever.

"I hate this," Karla said, head-butting his arm. He was one person she didn't have to put a good face on this for. "Hate it, hate it, hate it. Almost all my friends. At once. This sucks."

"Yours and mine both," Jono sighed, not even hesitating before slinging his arm over her shoulder, if only briefly. "It's... odd. I had to wait five extra years for this than you did. But that doesn't mean I had any more time with them. Maybe I'll be less shite at keeping touch now than I was when I could take for granted that they were right here on the island too."

"Well, you get one more year with me," Karla said, her hand creeping up to wrap around his waist. "Lucky you."

"Lucky me," Jono agreed, sighing a little as he looked up toward the stage. "Lord only knows what I'll do once you go too, luv. It'll be a bloody quiet island, Fandom's usual insanity aside."

... Okay, so there were the New Warriors, but Jonothon's track record with super-teams wasn't a great one. He wasn't exactly banking on them being a long-term commitment either.

Karla might have been hoping that once she went, she could convince Jono to come with her. But that wasn't something she was going to mention to him. Not now anyway.

"I saw you left the island the other week," she said. "Can't say I blame you. Go back ho--to your reality?"

That place wasn't his home, dammit.

"I did," Jono agreed, raising a hand to scratch at the back of his neck. Or, really, to feel for the cool metal of his collar, hidden underneath the upturned collar of his coat. "Better being called nasty slurs on my own bloody terms than be told that I have to hide myself in my own home. Found Lee and Stacy and a few of my old students while I was there, too."

Oh, there was a wealth of information missing from the story he was feeing her, there.

"Like I said, no blame here," Karla said quickly. "It was all bullshit, especially since the benefactor's wife is a Fandom Alumnus of class...like 2118 or some nonsense."

Pardon Karla as she made another face, remembering a whole week of ridiculousness over nothing.

"I'm glad you found your friends, though," she added. "They're okay?"

"Both depowered as well, but alive," Jono replied, shrugging his shoulders a little. "Like most of us. I didn't get to spend much time just catching up with them, since we didn't actually meet until that Friday, but I get the feeling that the going has been difficult for them, too."

Call it a hunch.

"Everything went okay at home then?" Karla asked anxiously. "No one...yelled at you or tried to hurt you or...whatever the Hell happens when you go home?"

"Kicked the shite out of me on the side of the road, leaving me with a concussion and a few cracked ribs while yelling anti-mutant slurs in my face? That sort of thing?"

That was oddly specific, Jonothon.

"No, of course not."

Yes. Of course.

"...That sounded oddly specific, Jono."

No, Karla couldn't read narrative. She just knew Jono.

It was as though they had met!

"They were picking on some kid. Little bloke whose only visual clue that he used to be a mutant was what was left of a tail," he explained. "I was hardly going to let that stand."

"So you interfered, and then they called you nasty names, ganged up on you, and left you on the side of the road to die," Karla said flatly. "And the kid?"

Mother Night, Karla hated Jono's world.

"Ran off," Jono replied, shrugging his shoulders a little. "Never caught his name, but at least he had the good sense to get out of harm's way when somebody was offering him an out. I don't think they followed him, for what it's worth."

It had been worth an awful lot to Jono, at least.

Re: Welcome! Karla and Jono

glacial_queen - 2012-04-29 03:18 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Welcome! Karla and Jono

furnaceface - 2012-04-29 11:22 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Welcome! Karla and Jono

glacial_queen - 2012-04-29 15:35 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Welcome! Karla and Jono

furnaceface - 2012-04-29 16:17 (UTC) - Expand

Alice had not heard much from many of her friends in Fandom. Hania took most of her time. And so she was somewhat sure that that figure near the back was her old friend, and yet, from a distance away, he looked quite different. It required closer inspection.

Perhaps Hania would like to go for a walk? Alice was going to wander near the back -- why, yes, that was most certainly Jono, unless this was some quite alternative version of him. But blue didn't change that he was Jono. She'd been red herself once. And greyish, when she'd been infected, but that was a different matter entirely.

"Jono?" Alice asked, a warm smile on her lips. And from the safe haven on her arms, Hania contributed her own excited brrrrrrrrrap.

"Alice," Jono replied, blinking. It had been years for him since the last time he'd spoken to her, hadn't it? By his own standards, at least. He'd still been on fire the last time, if he remembered correctly.

At least one whole Jonothon ago.

"Alice and companion," he corrected himself, offering Hania a little smile as well. "Who I don't believe I've had the pleasure of meeting."

"Alice and companion," she laughed, holding the precious angel treasure light-of-her-existence out for him to inspect. Or hold, should he like. "forgive me, a proper introduction is in order."

She cleared her throat and prepared her best Proper Society voice. "Sir Jonothon, may I present the lady Hania Matilda Sihaya Liddell Atreides, who is quite excellent and clever and beautiful, and who was in and not out when last we saw one another. And fair Hania, this is the eminent Jonothon Starsmore, a most true and loyal friend, who was on fire when last we met."

Hania, the excellent and clever and beautiful, was going to kick her legs and greet Jono with an enthusiastic djuh djuh djuh and some accompanying drool. Presumably, that was a 'hello.' It was hard to say for sure.

Edited 2012-04-29 02:21 (UTC)

And Jonothon was... very much a big softie when it came to adorable little girls. Hania had won him over from the very first brrrrap.

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Hania," he replied, leaning forward and waving his fingers in front of her in a little hello. He was not going to hold the baby. When he touched things, everything in the world broke, and he was not going to give himself the opportunity to break the baby. "She is a lovely little thing."

"She is the most beautiful creature that God has seen fit to create," Alice agreed, her voice steady for all that. It still amazed her, the love she could have for this tiny being. It frightened her, but she no longer needed to run from it as she once had.

She wondered at her own wording. Had she gained back her faith in the Almighty? She had thought that lost with her own family. How odd.

"I take no responsibility for drool which may be deposited on you," she added. A timely warning, as Hania was doing her level best to grasp Jono's fingers. That might take her a couple of minutes, but once she achieved it, they were going right into her mouth. "Has your fire been extinguished? I had no idea you could change hues."

Well, if the little girl wanted to chew on Jono's fingers, he certainly wasn't about to stop her. Even if she didn't have mutant powers, he was pretty powerless once she'd locked those big bright eyes on him.

Like putty in her little tiny hands.

"It... has been, yes," he confirmed, "though it wasn't my choice. Neither was this particular look, for that matter, and I'd trade it in if I could. But there's nothing to do but make the best of it, I suppose."

Because he'd been so good at that so far, sure.

Hania, as expected, had clasped her chubby fists around Jono's fingers and guided them -- with some difficulty -- into her mouth. There, she started gumming them, pressing her very few teeth against the edges. And slurping all of that delicious saliva around. Very hygienic.

"Does blue not suit you?" Alice asked. "I've gone red in the past, with horns, but it was temporary. A spell of rage, to slay and kill. I am sorry that your fire was taken, if it was so dear to you."

Alice would happily rid the world of fire, but she would grant an exception to allow Jono to keep his, in her fire-less utopia, if he did indeed care for it so much.

Hania interjected a squeal of delight, flailing and kicking her feet. Fingers were amazing!

"It was... a part of me. Like my breath or my heartbeat, even if I didn't strictly have either. And without it, it feels like a little part of me has been stricken deaf. The blue... I wouldn't mind as much, only this is somebody else's face. I didn't want this face, they just... they made me take it."

In fairness, most people didn't get to choose their faces.

Still, he didn't see himself staring back when he looked in the mirror. He didn't think he ever would.

He wiggled his fingers a little, for Hania.

Edited 2012-05-02 10:43 (UTC)

"Like when we're swapped from boys to girls," she said, turning the concept in her mind. "It isn't that I objected to being boy-shaped on the basis that there was anything objectionable about being boy-shaped, but all day I looked into the mirror and I didn't see Alice. It was such a relief to see myself again."

"A little like that," Jono allowed, thinking on the one time that Fandom had swapped his gender on him. He'd gone from not-his-face to even-less-his-face, so it had been perhaps less jarring than it could have been. "This face... is a face I wasn't particularly fond of even before I found myself wearing it, though. It's taking a bit of getting used to."

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