fandomhigh | Fandom High Graduation Ceremony, Class of 2012, Early Saturday Evening (Part 2)

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!event: graduation

Fandom High Graduation Ceremony, Class of 2012, Early Saturday Evening (Part 2)

Were you all enjoying your graduation, children? Ingvar certainly hoped you were. It was so much fun, after all! Though... it could be a little more fun, couldn't it? It felt as if something was missing somehow. Something to really make it... fun.

Ingvar knew what it was.

And so, while the graduates were still on and around the stage, the earth began to rumble. Large black clouds of smoke pushed out of Ingvar's volcano and into the air, obscuring the sky and the moon. Soon, the air was covered in a thick black blanket of darkness.

The tune of the rumbling shifted.

Around the stage, clear protective walls sprung up. This was not Fandom's first tango on graduation day, thank you. She knew how to take care of what was hers.

Unfortunately, Ingvar knew its mother well. Moments later, it began to rain: a thick downpour of familiar plastic poppets in varying levels of creepiness, but also nice, brown, fluffy ...red-eyed, sharp-clawed teddy bears. And leading the charge, teeth-first--

"DROP BEARS!"

[OCD is up! Have at it! Audience | Grads: Fight! | Grads: Hide! | Aftermath | OOC 1 | OOC 2]

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General Caraway was on his feet, blood pounding, when the volcano first rumbled. He had reached the edge of the stands when the clear walls slammed up before him, and then -- then he spotted the monsters descending like a storm upon the graduates.

A Lunar Cry? Here?

He pounded on the wall, uselessly. Madness. His daughter was in there.

"Someone get this down," he shouted.

Jono was going to go out on a limb, here. He hadn't met General Caraway before, but he had noticed that he'd been speaking with Laguna earlier, and there was a family resemblance at play here.

"She's fine," he said, calmly, as he stepped up beside the man. "She's got Squall with her, and she's a force to be reckoned with on her own, mate."

"My daughter is in there," General Caraway seethed. A moment later, he noticed that the newcomer was not anyone he knew, or had ever seen before, and yet seemingly knew who he was.

"I do not know who you are or why you are speaking to me, but I do not approve of being dragged here and forced to watch while my daughter is thrown into a cell and attacked by demented beasts."

It was as if you could measure how frightened he was by how acidic his words tasted.

Yeah, it wasn't like Jono hadn't heard that tone before. Not even the first time it had been directed at him.

"Well, you'll have to take that up with the island across the water there, won't you? It isn't as though the Administration plans these things, though they certainly do their best to plan for them. Last year, when I graduated here, it was Vikings." A pause. "I'm one of Rinoa's friends. And trust me, I've seen what she's capable of, and what most of the young men and women in there can do, for that matter. Have a little faith in your daughter, sir."

Have faith? Every time he turned his back, his daughter ran off and did her utmost to get herself killed. She ran into occupied Timber, took up with SeeDs, became a Sorceress -- he had half a mind to think she did these things just to spite him.

If he could wrap her in cotton and keep her on a shelf, he would. Or at least surround her with bodyguards and guard dogs. Would she never think of her own safety?

"If my daughter is ... harmed," he said, although that wasn't the word he meant, but that word, he couldn't bring himself to say, "then I shall go home, and fetch an army. I will return here, and find this Administration, and kill every last one of them."

There was no vigor behind it. It was less bravado and more ... an empty shell.

General Caraway had very little left. Much of it was inside a clear plastic wall, fighting drop bears.

"And your army wouldn't survive to tell the tale," Jono replied, still perfectly calm. Still perfectly casual. "Your daughter and her friends have saved your world several times, now. Against sorceresses with the power to rip time itself apart. Why in the world would they have any trouble against a handful of teddy bears? Be reasonable, man. When Rinoa talks about you, I get the impression that you've got a cooler, more calculating head about you. Please, don't prove her wrong."

General Caraway stared at the boy (who, it seemed, was an alarming shade of grayish blue; he was going to file that) for several seconds, trying to either intimidate him into submission or think of a more cutting rebuttal.

Unfortunately, the more pragmatic side of him was increasingly convinced that the boy was in the right, as loath as he was to admit it.

Finally, he sighed. When he spoke, it was towards the wall again.

"She's wrong," he said. "I have little pragmatism left in me."

Galbadia was still in ruins, and his daughter made it a practice to have play dates with death. It was a wonder he slept.

"You're speaking of Ultimecia," he continued. "The rumors suggested that there were off-worlders lending assistance with that. Were you involved?"

"With that, and with the death of Adel," Jono replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "I don't have another fight like those left in me, but the blast that took out that... large flying... monstrosity of a weapon, that was my doing."

So, yes. Yes he had been involved.

"Jonothon Starsmore. My mates know me as Jono, though. You might or might not have heard that one before, I've got no bloody clue."

Jono did, in fact, seem to ring bells. The paperwork his daughter had mentioned, perhaps? Or maybe it had been in connection to the events the boy had just claimed participation in. Perhaps even both.

He straightened, slightly. "I owe you a debt I cannot repay," he said, "as do many in my world, though few may ever realize it."

It was stiff, but General Caraway was stiff. He had spent his life in the military, but it ran deeper than that. Only Julia had known how to soften him around the edges, and she'd been gone for a very long time.

Jono could handle stiff, too. Most of the people he'd worked with in both the X-Men and Weapon X (loathe as he was to think too hard about Weapon X) had been so stiff, Jono had wondered how they'd managed to make room for the broomstick.

"I have enough of my own debts to repay," he noted, evenly. "This only begins to balance it out a little."

If Jono didn't watch out, he was going to get a big hug and a hearty thump on the back. "Oh, hey! Good to see you again! You've got the whole..." Laguna gestured vaguely at his own face. "...It looks good on you. How've you been?"

Oh dear god it was hugging him.

"I've been worse," Jono replied, shrugging his shoulders a little as he attempted to writhe free. He was still not the hugging sort. Not really, anyhow. "Keeping busy, really. And... yourself?"

He was being civil! See him be civil?

CIVILITY.

Oh. Not the hugging sort. Right.

Laguna should have figured Squall would find people like himself to hang out with. He let go gingerly, but kept smiling at Jono. "I've been better, I've been worse. Haven't been burned to the ground by this warhorse" -- he jerked a thumb at Caraway -- "so that's something, right? AND, more importantly, I haven't had to deal with any floating doom-towers lately. Good job, there, kid."

"Yes, well... I like to do a job thoroughly when I do it," Jono noted, only a little awkwardly. "Especially when it's all-or-nothing like that particular situation was."

What with Adel sucking Rinoa's power out of her like a living battery, and all.

"You have any more problems with floating doom towers in the future, and..." Well, Jono wasn't going to do that over again. Ever. "... I'll see if we can't figure something else out."

Laguna ran after him, just as quickly but far less urgently. "Oh, chill out!" he told Caraway, reaching a comforting hand for his shoulder. "They've got this. This is nothing!"

"I am not fond of chilling out," Caraway snapped. "What sort of leader are you? What sort of father? I suppose that question answers itself."

A low blow, but Caraway was not feeling charitable towards the man who seemed wholly indifferent towards their children's fate.

If Laguna had known that Caraway used to lock Rinoa up for her own protection, now would have been the perfect time to bring that up.

"The kind who knows not to coddle kids, and to treat them with respect," he grumbled. "Are you saying you don't think the Sorceress can't handle herself? Are you saying you don't think my SON is good enough to protect her?!?!"

Caraway gave his underling the coldest stare he could.

"You have raised neither of your children," he said. "What makes you believe you have the least insight about fatherhood?"

Even as he said it, he knew it to be over the line.

Laguna hadn't been Caraway's underling for decades, but that stare still cut right through him. And what Caraway had said was cruel, and he had to know it. "I didn't get the chance," Laguna answered sadly. "It's my own fault, and every day I regret the decisions I made. I didn't get to be there when my son was a child." He looked up at Caraway very deliberately, and his voice firmed as he pointed beyond the invisible wall. "But I also know that I could take those monsters with one hand tied behind my back, and I know that my son is TWICE the soldier I'll ever be. And your daughter? Has more power than HYNE."

Caraway had felt sympathy for the man, until he had returned the insult, and with interest. It was possible that it wasn't what Laguna had meant, but it was another of Caraway's deeply-held fears, too painful to push away now that it had risen to the surface.

"I know," Caraway said. "More power than Hyne. Some day, she might use that power. And then I'll have a decision to make, and so will you."

Left unspoken was that Laguna's son would be at ground zero for that war.

Laguna facepalmed. "Yes, I know. And if if comes to it, I can make that decision, with a clear conscience. Can you say the same?"

Losing a son and a daughter-in-law would rip his heart out, but Laguna had firsthand experience with what a Sorceress could do. On the other hand, he liked to believe the best of people.

"Now, I'm counting on your daughter to stay sane so that I don't have to make that choice, so don't piss her off."

"Yes," Caraway answered, without hesitation. "I can make that decision, too."

He wouldn't vocalize his answer. Loire didn't have a right to hear it, and Loire wouldn't like it. But he was not living his life to please Laguna Loire, or Esthar, or Galbadia, either.

He turned back to the furor of drop bears and bloodshed.

"She trusts your son with her life," he said. "And with her heart, which may well be the same thing. The whole world had better pray that her trust isn't misguided."

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Fandom High Graduation Ceremony, Class of 2012, Early Saturday Evening (Part 2)

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