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

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

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

It was a new year, and with the new year came the new spring term, and Fandom High was all set to welcome its new students, along with those just returning from holiday trips home. It was a familiar setting for the latter bunch: there was the requisite bonfire, with tables and chairs scattered around it, as well as the buffet table with ~~moddable~~ warm food and drinks.

And of course, name tags and lists of Big and Little Siblings as well as roommates. Yep, the weather was okay (if snowy) for early January, and Fandom was all ready to celebrate the start of a new term.

[OCD up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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Yay! Big Siblings time! Joker had been to summer camp before, so he knew what this meant -- the roulette of whether he was going to get a "Oh, you poor thing!" or a "I can't believe I'm stuck with you!"

He wrote "Jeff M." in big letters on his nametag and stuck it prominently on his chest. He wasn't going to be hobbling around the lawn much on his crutches, so everyone else needed to be able to read it from a distance, after all.

So, now all he had to do was keep an eye out for this Katherine -- Kathy? Katie? Katya?

Definitely Kathy. Katherine was for when her mom was super mad at her. Or when Sarah was being annoying.

...Like over Christmas, when she'd just had to draw Kathy's attention to the fact that she'd gotten a training bra. At 11. As opposed to Kathy's own 14. Which wasn't embarrassing in the least, really.

It was also not anything she was going to be bringing up to Jeff when she met him. Little brothers had to be better than little sisters, right?

"Jeff?" she called, reluctantly tugging down her scarf. It was stupidly cold out now. "Jeff?"

And--wait! There was someone with that nametag! Woo! She trotted over to him and gave him a big smile. "Hey, Jeff. I'm Kathy, your new big sister."

No pity or disdain yet, woo!

Woo!

Joker tucked his crutch in his armpit so he could offer her a hand to shake. "Hi! And I'm Jeff, your new little burden! Or people call me 'Joker', too. I have to warn you, if we're doing any big sib/little sib games as part of the orientation experience, you're kind of SOL. That thing where you have to carry an egg on a spoon back and forth? Not gonna happen."

Not gonna lie, Kathy was pretty relieved when Jeff--err, Joker?--mentioned his disability so casually. Now she felt comfortable talking about it, too. Elephant in the room: addressed.

"Lucky for you, the only game I want to play right now involve seeing how close I can get to the bonfire before I fall in," she replied with a dramatic shiver as she shook his hand. "I'm from L.A. This kind of weather is downright wrong. You?"

"Arcturus Station," Joker told her. "So weather of any kind is pretty new. Usually, I have to go on vacation to be as unpleasantly cold as this. I'm just trying to roll with it."

"Congratulations," Kathy said, a touch wryly. "Now you can have all the unpleasant weather you want for the price of your tuition! It's like a vacation, except with way more school work. And, umm, weirdness."

She wanted to know more about where he was from, but she figured that he needed to know a lot more about Fandom than she did about...wherever Arcturus Station was. And why it didn't have weather.

"So, umm, this is going to all sound crazy, like I'm hazing you," she warned. "I'm not, but I totally won't blame you if you think I am, okay? This is your 'get out of rudeness free' card. I'm gonna tell you about some stuff, you're gonna laugh at me or call me a liar, and then, when you realize I'm not lying or pranking, you can call me and we'll be cool. Okay?"

Joker gave her a salute and a grin. "Okay! You may proceed with your hazing ritual!"

Kathy sighed and shook her head. "Okay, so, I guess the first thing to tell you is that we're on an interdimensional nexus, which means we get students from not just different countries, but different worlds, too. We get things like aliens and androids and probably alien androids for all I know. This is Earth, but probably not the Earth you know or even grew up on."

Joker raised an eyebrow at her. "Okay, so a) I didn't grow up on Earth, b) what's so strange about aliens, and c) do NOT be so casual about alien androids. Seriously, if you see one, run. They will shoot you without a second thought."

"..."

Kathy was so not expecting that answer. Any of those answers actually. She was just going to blink at him. A lot.

"Err, on this Earth, we don't actually have aliens?" she said, though it was lot more of a question than she'd intended. "Well, my L.A. might, but we're not really sure if the weird thing down on Venice Beach is an alien or some kind of monster thing."

And now she was babbling. She was THE BEST at being a sibling. Really. "Umm, to give you an idea of where we are, tech-wise, I guess, Earth's only been to the moon by this point in the, err, timeline. We haven't colonized Mars or sent peopled ships out very far or even harvested the full resources of the sun yet. For the most part, androids and aliens and life-not-on-Earth is considered the realm of science-fiction."

All that said, she just had to ask, "Why will android-aliens try to kill me? Is it some kind of Killinator reference?"

Joker really wasn't expecting her answer, either. "On this Earth? What other Earth would there be? Anything more than one, that's science fiction."

As for the other question... "Uh, I was talking about the Geth in particular, really. I don't know for sure that they'd try to shoot you, but they hate the Quarians, and humans are more or less friends with the Quarians, so... Q.E.D."

"That's kind of where the multi-dimensional nexus thing comes in," Kathy explained, or tried to. "There are a bunch of people here from different versions of Earth and stuff."

Was he looking at her funny? She couldn't tell--it might just be that she was expecting him to look at her funny.

"And if that's not weird enough, this island's pretty insane, too. I've, umm, woken up as a boy, and a little kid, and got kidnapped by the radio squirrels on my birthday... Oh, and one of the teacher's a talking pony. And that's not even counting all the people here who've never heard of Mr. What."

That last one was a joke.

Yes, Joker was definitely looking at her funny. "The reason nobody watches Mister What is that it's not very good," he quipped, because that at least was easy to wrap his mind around. "I mean, the forty-second Mister was just a total joke..."

But that was neither here nor there. "It certainly sounds like you've come up with the setting for either the absolute best or the absolute worst sci-fi story EVER," he commented. "Do you tell that to all the noobs?"

"Yeah, okay, I'm not going to argue that the way they were counting just didn't even make sense," Kathy conceded. "But you can't just throw away the entire show because--"

Wait, no. She was getting off-track. Now was not the time to be arguing pop culture (though, yay! Someone else who had seen the show!)

"Umm, you don't have to believe me, I already knew you wouldn't," Kathy said. "But you can see for yourself, the talking pony is real." She pointed through the crowds at Pinkie Pie. That would help her case some...right?

Maybe?

Throw her a damn bone here.

"That... is a pink talking pony."

Joker blinked at Pinkie. "I... can't unsee that. That's... Okay. We're just going to move past that. No, wait." He took a quick picture of the pony -- which, by the way, involved his hand and arm being surrounded by glowing lights and then him pointing his palm to take the picture.

"Okay, NOW we can move past that. What comes next, with the hazing?"

"Orrrr we could talk about what that was," Kathy said, blinking at his arm. "You have powers? I mean, you're not the only one here who does, but that was really cool."

Beat.

"You're not convinced by a talking pink pony? Because from where I'm standing, that's pretty damn convincing."

"...What?" Joker blinked at her. "No, that was just an omnitool. The only power I have is the ability to ask my dad to buy me one. I was taking a picture of our mutual hallucination, that's all." He called up the image, which was three-dimensional, glowed, and floated in the air above his wrist. "See? Picture."

"I'm starting to get the feeling that you're not from 2014," Kathy mumbled, shaking her head. "If it's a hallucination, how were you able to take a picture of it, huh?"

"And I get the feeling you're going to claim it's not 2172, so let's just agree to disagree. I'm not sure about the pony, so I'm just going to shelve that for now and come back to it later, when I'm not fried from all the newness and aching from all the walking."

"You don't have to believe me," Kathy said. "There are newspapers that will back my claim. And TVs. And--oh!"

The walking and the aching thing. That was so much more important that arguing what year it is.

"Can I do anything to help?" she asked, trying not to sound over-solicitous. "Bring you something to eat or drink? Aspirin or ibuprofen? There's some rum, too, but that was supposed to be for the squirrels..."

Hey, she managed to sound concerned without drowning him in pity and enforced helplessness! 10 points!

"Nah, I'm good," he told her. "I'm gonna go park my ass at a table by the food. Thanks for the offer, though."

Kathy would take her points wherever she could at this point.

"No problem," she told him, biting down her instinctive offer to help. She was guessing he wouldn't take it well. "Hey, do you know what room you're in yet?"

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

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