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

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!event: welcome picnic

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

Some extra tables had been set up in the shade of the trees on the lawn, away from the buffet in spots where it might be less crowded and much quieter. Well, aside from the mariachi band, but at least their music was entertaining? They might even take requests!

[OCD is up, have at it! This is the FIRST post for general mingling. Please use this post first, if your browser can handle the comment load. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are all here and there's more room for mingling here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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Okay, here was where Sparkle realized that he was going to have to ask more questions.

"Uh-huh. And so now I ask what a hut is supposed to be, where you're from. Because what I'm thinking of doesn't tend to stick anything into bikinis, you know?"

"Giant, smelly slugs with pretensions of grandeur and an iron grip on the smuggling industry," Atton ponied up. "Why, what were you thinking about?"

This place was, for lack of a better word, weird.

"... You know, huts? Little houses made of, like, sticks or whatever? Little pigs build them so that big bad wolves can blow them down."

Sparkle could honestly say that the giant slugs were a bit of a new concept to him.

"Oh, right," Atton said after a beat. "Yeah, no, we lived in old storage containers. Not exactly easy living - I would've taken the hut over the Hutt."

Sparkle still wasn't entirely sure he knew what to make of the whole giant-slugs-and-brain-tentacles conversation that was going on between them, but at least there was a little bit of the conversation that he could wriggle in on because it made sense.

Sense was sort of awesome around here today, even if he'd never admit that he was having troubles finding it.

"Most living isn't easy living, you know. People live wherever people can live. Storage containers, tents on the city limits, on the steps of big public buildings holding out a cup and hoping that someone's going to give them a little spare change so they can buy themselves some food or some damn coffee even though everyone is convinced they're just going to use it to turn around and buy crack or meth or pot with it anyhow and you're too young for a job so you just go hungry so hungry you think of maybe eating cockroaches because at least that's a little protein and that's better than nothing."

Sparkle shot Atton a grin.

"Storage containers, huh? Sounds cozy."

It was a nice, moving little speech, it really was; just a pity it was lost on Atton, who'd seen and lived enough crap by now that he'd become numb to it all.

"Yeah, it's all fun and games until someone shits in the corner," he said, with not a single dip in his apathetic drawl. "Or sends Exchange thugs to shake you up, or maybe drops a bomb on your head."

Ooo! Thugs and shit! Sounded mostly homey!

Okay, so the bomb part was new.

"You get bombs dropped on your head often back home?"

"No, but my planet did," Atton said conversationally, leaving only the slightest emphasis on the word 'planet'.

"I'm just not interested in playing 'who's life got messed up worse'. I just came here planning not to settle for anything less than a room with a bed and a smell that reminds me slightly less of urine this time."

Sparkle held up the hand that wasn't holding his plate in a sort of 'I surrender' gesture.

"Hey, I wasn't making a contest out of it or anything." Though the planet part kind of stuck with him, and there was the vaguest hint of interest in his voice, somewhere around the edges. Either this guy was telling the truth, or was even better at bullsitting tall stories without a second thought than Sparkle was. "Looks pretty clean from here, anyhow. Haven't had a chance to check out the room, but I'm pretty sure people take their pisses in the bathrooms, so at least there's that."

Though, really, he knew all about that urine smell, himself. Ugh.

Truth or tall tale?

Yeah, maybe a little bit of both. Atton liked to mix things up like that.

"At least there's that," he echoed. "And free food. Can't argue with that."

"Yeah, that's true. Nachos last for about forever if you leave off the cheese," Sparkle shared, because he was feeling helpful like that. "I'm going to smuggle about as many of them as I can back up to my room for later. Just so long as it doesn't attract rats or something, it doesn't hurt anything."

He made eyes at the burritos again.

"... Could probably manage a few of those too, just so long as I eat them before the meat inside goes all funky."

And Ulrik was ordering pizza for tonight, too. Room 209 was going to be greasy party food central.

"You could try wrapping 'em up and dumping 'em in an ice bucket or something," Atton shared. "Might make it last a little longer."

He wasn't much of a hoarder, but hey, he'd seen plenty of people do it.

Sparkle tilted his head for a moment thoughtfully. There was merit in that, really, wasn't there? If he put the food into the fridge, if there was a fridge, he'd give it like ten minutes before someone wandered by and just helped themselves, selfish little shits, if they didn't have the foresight to try to keep some of this for themselves that was their own damn problem and it wasn't Sparkle's job to make sure that everyone in the school was eating, okay?

Okay.

"... I'd have to wrap them in plastic," he noted thoughtfully. "Napkins would get all soggy and then I'd just be eating wet burritos stuck to paper." Which was still better than not eating at all. And Sparkle seemed to acknowledge as much while making a reach to put a few extra burritos on his plate before grabbing a handful of napkins.

"I hear paper's good for you. Really nutritious," Atton deadpanned. Really, he figured that if for whatever reason the school decided to stop feeding them after this, he could probably work some credits out of someone playing pazaak or something.

Guy with a blaster and a quick mouth always got by.

"By the look of this place, though, plastic would probably be easy to scrounge."

Or not. Either way, wasn't his problem.

"Oh, yeah. Chip bags everywhere, whatever," Sparkle replied, now almost fastidiously rolling a burrito in a napkin, just to see if it would fit. "You think they have picnics like this often? It's weird they don't care what any of us are like, though. Boys, girls, rich, poor, from outer space, cats..."

He was still waiting for that other foot to fall. Waiting for it while trying to scrape some stray beans back into his burrito with his finger.

"Yeah, you'd think scammers and thugs would be coming at this place like a band of mynocks," Atton commented. He snagged another quesadilla off the table and bit into it. "Either they're naive enough to think no one's going to screw them over, or they've got some screening process we don't know about."

Which was a terrifying thought, actually. He was going to hope they weren't screening for stray latent Force sensitives.

"The people who have been here a while seem to like it," Sparkle noted, raising an eyebrow. "But the people I've met who have been here a while are, like, my big brother who is like holy shit rich, and Dean Bus Driver, who I'm pretty sure is tripping bad on something."

Other planets, he could accept. Being some chick's great-great-great-great-great grandfather was maybe a bit of a stretch.

"Maybe the faculty's just all completely cracked."

"Dean Bus Driver?" Atton asked, vaguely invested in this conversation for the first time in... well, ever. For a few seconds, anyway. "Well, he's a Jedi. 'Cracked' is what they do."

"I have no idea what that is, either," Sparkle reported. "All I know is that he thinks capes are still in fashion or something, he's got pretty good hair, and apparently he's related to like half the people who live here."

Which really only further served to reinforce Sparkle's notion that he might be from one of those redneck states.

"Jedi are like... warrior monks who think they know what's best for everyone else," said Atton, who obviously wasn't biased at all. "Then they go out and cause amazing amounts of property damage and maybe kill a whole bunch of people."

He glanced back at the crowd - skipping his eyes briefly over Sia. "Makes sense, though. Where one goes, a whole bunch of them follow."

"Oh." Sparkle considered that for a moment, and then nodded and started wrapping another burrito. "So the school is being run by psychotic televangelists with guns or something."

That sounded exciting. And shitty. And kind of explained why Dean Bus Driver dressed like he was part of some sort of cult and acted like someone had lodged a two-by-four up his ass.

"So, what, you figure they're trying to recruit, here, or something?"

"Hell if I now," Atton answered. "But if they start taking my measurements for those ugly robes, I'm out of here."

He hadn't run away all this way just to get recruited into another Force cult.

"You have to have a knack for it," he added, less facetiously. "Don't have it, so I'm banking on no."

Edited 2012-05-06 12:31 (UTC)

Really, the robes would probably be an improvement on Sparkle's current wardrobe, but it wasn't like he'd see it that way.

"Swimming back to Canada," Sparkle agreed. "I'm pretty sure I could make it, so long as I don't get swallowed by a whale or a shark or something."

And Atton was kind of attached to his ribbed jacket here. Robes would ruin his whole casual-rogue thing.

"How much of a swim is that?"

"I dunno," Sparkle admitted. "A few days, maybe. I mean, if the weather's good. I'll grab a lifejacket before I go, sleep on my back. Like the world's biggest waterbed."

A beat.

"But I guess my toes would get pretty wrinkled. Gross."

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

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