fandomhigh | Newbie Shuttle, Portalocity Terminal, BWI (Saturday Morning Fandom Time)

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!event: newbie shuttle

Newbie Shuttle, Portalocity Terminal, BWI (Saturday Morning Fandom Time)

After everyone was done shouting at and/or hugging him to say goodbye – and there had been a lot of both –Victor Mancha had two choices in getting from Los Angeles to BWI. The first was taking a commercial flight, which would have been reassuringly normal.

The problem was that, even if he somehow got past the metal detectors, he suspected his circuitry might count as the kind of portable electronic device that wasn’t very takeoff-and-landing-friendly. He didn’t exactly have an easy off switch, and crashing a plane by mistake seemed like a big step towards super-villainhood.

Which meant he got to the Baltimore airport via portal. He’d never been through one before so he didn’t have much to go by, but it seemed like a nice portal: If nothing else, it smelled far better than Cloak’s ... cloak had. Victor was grateful to know that hadn’t been the state-of-the-art in teleporting.

And now he was on the East Coast other than New York for the first time. Once he’d exhausted the little potential for exploration the terminal had, he sat in a semi-comfortable airport chair, suitcase at his feet, and tried to break the Tetris high score on his phone while keeping watch for any other kids.

[OOC: Operation newbies: Go! I will be slow for a few hours after 5:30 EST, but otherwise around all night.]

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It had been about a week since Karolina had found out she was being sent across the country to boarding school. She'd been angry at first, but had simmered down since because anger wasn't an emotion she could hold on to for long. So, by now, she was just trying decide between wary and curious.

Standing in the lounge with a cap on her head and her bags at her feet, she was settling on fidgeting with her MedAlert bracelet while she watched people gather.

Oh, this one got a raised eyebrow. "Uh, hi, but when did you change your mind about the school thing?"

Not that Victor sounded upset, exactly -- just surprised, and like he knew Karolina quite well.

Edited 2012-05-04 20:31 (UTC)

Karolina looked over at him, almost startled. He got a raised eyebrow right back. Actually, two of them. And a very confused look, to boot.

"... Sorry?"

Surprised, yes. Not so much with the knowing.

Victor frowned a little at her. "When I was leaving?" he said, as if to clarify. "Not like you were rude, but I really thought you thought you were over the school thing. Which is a valid life choice, but uh ..."

He ran a hand back through his hair. "Did something go wrong already?"

Karolina looked at him like she had no idea what he was talking about. It was easy, because... she had no idea what he was talking about.

Then she decided she probably just looked a lot like someone else. Some people seemed to think all Californian blondes looked alike, after all.

"Sorry, you must be mistaking me for someone else," she said, with a friendly little smile. She even stuck her hand out. "I'm Karolina. Hi."

Yeah, except for how they did this a year ago, only with fewer polite smiles and more attempted kidnapping. There was a long pause as Victor tried to process this.

Not the time to bluescreen, Vic. He shook his head to focus and took her hand, lightly.

"Victor," he said, sounding dazed. Was this amnesia act some plan? If it was, it would have been nice to let him in on it. "I, uh ... thought I knew you from home. Maybe I was wrong."

He sounded like he didn't believe what he was saying in the least.

"Must've been," Karolina said, and sounded like she definitely believed it. She did give him a curious, almost concerned look, though. Maybe he was just having a hard time with this boarding school business, too?

"So where are you from, Victor?"

"Los Angeles," Victor said, trying to figure out if she was waiting for him to say some code phrase. (Or could this be a Skrull or a clone? Mostly, it was weirding him out, especially given the look on Karolina's face. Almost like she really was meeting him for the first time.)

"I went to East Angeles High. I thought I met you there."

This was technically true.

Karolina paused for a bit, then shook her head. "No, I never went there," she said. "I mean... I'm from Los Angeles, too, but I didn't go to that school."

And she had to admit the LA thing made this a little freaky. But then, how many people lived in Los Angeles, exactly?

Victor, thanks to Ultron, could have told her it was 3.8 million as of July 2009.

"It's a big city. Maybe you have a clone somewhere," he said, and tried to smile even though it didn't reach his eyes. "So ... how did you end up here, anyhow?"

Edited 2012-05-04 21:37 (UTC)

"Oh," Karolina said, fiddling with her hair because she was kind of crap at lying, "some people just said this could be a good fit for me."

'Some people' was a nice and vague way to say Captain America and child services, right?

"How did you?"

Victor could tell Karolina was lying, but it was hard to know what about when she was acting this way.

"Things got weird at home," he answered, frowning because she should know this. "Seemed like a good time for a break."

A pause, then -- "Not 'some people' like your parents, right?"

Because if Frank and Leslie Dean were still around through some screwy dimensional warp or time travel or secret alien power thing and were influencing what Karolina did, Victor was pretty sure that was a much larger problem.

Karolina bit on her lip, any traces of a smile vanishing as soon as he asked that.

"Uh, no," she said, shaking her head quickly. "Not my parents."

Re: Wait for the Shuttle! [5/04]

ultron_junior - 2012-05-04 23:23 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Wait for the Shuttle! [5/04]

solarhippie - 2012-05-04 23:37 (UTC) - Expand

Wow, a girl. Frank hadn't gone to school with girls in forever. And maybe this girl wasn't dressed like the ones from home, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to smile at her.

"Hi," he said, friendly as always. "I'm Frank. Are you here for Fandom too?"

Karolina smiled back at him. She might have been wary of the school thing on the whole, but that didn't extend to people!

Assuming they didn't turn out to be anti-alien, or something.

"Uh huh," she nodded. "So they tell me. Hi, I'm Karolina."

"Nice to meet you," he said, inwardly flailing a little bit because he was talking to a girl and she was being nice! Ish. They hadn't been talking for very long. Frank was easily pleased, okay?

"Where are you from? I'm from New York. I mean, New Rochelle, which is in New York, technically, but I guess some people might think I meant Manhattan. I don't, though. Mean that."

Karolina couldn't help chuckling a little. It was all friendly, though. She wasn't really the type to laugh at people, and she guessed he might have been a little nervous.

And hey, she was nervous too.

"Los Angeles," she said, to answer his question. "I haven't really... been to the east coast much."

"It's a cool place," Frank promised with a nod. "Not that I've ever really been that far outside of New Rochelle. I've always wanted to travel, though. And Baltimore seems like a cool start, you know?"

"I wouldn't really know," Karolina shrugged with a little smile. She had never really been paying attention to the eastern parts of the country. Baltimore was just a name. "Have you ever been to boarding school before? I haven't."

"Nope," Frank said. "My last school was back home in New Rochelle. It's sort of weird to be so far from home, but you're from way farther, I guess. Are you freaked?"

"Yes," Karolina admitted. Though she supposed in her case it wasn't just the distance and the newness of the boarding school experience. "But um, I was told it could be good for me?"

"My dad said that too!" Frank exclaimed. Okay, Frank, breathe. "I mean, you know, like, the culture and stuff, and getting some distance and everything? He totally said that when he was trying to get me to come here. It makes sense, but I'm still kinda nervous."

Karolina smiled a little lopsidedly. "Me too."

And there were a couple of questions she kind of wanted to ask (like whether there was anything in particular he needed distance from), but asking those would have probably meant talking about a few things she didn't want to be sharing, so. She kept them to herself.

"Guess we'll just have to see, huh? Maybe we're nervous for nothing."

"Totally," Frank agreed. With a hopeful little smile, he offered, "Good luck?"

"Good luck," Karolina agreed. Still smiling. Hey, he hadn't turned out to be bad, so far. "Hopefully we won't need it."

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