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John needs to get out of his room. With his only classes later in the day, he stops by the cafeteria, grabs some seled and takes a seat.

"Hey, Crichton," says Anders, sitting down across from him with a heavily-loaded down tray. "Haven't actually seen you around much lately, which kind of makes me suck. Kept meaning to drop by and see you, and stuff just kept happening."

"Hey man," John says, waving. "It's no problem. Stuff's usually important. Thanks for thinking of me though. How goes it?"

"It goes okay," Anders replies. "Think I did all right on the Classics midterm this morning. I better have, after all the studying I did. I totally skipped out on gym 'cause of those posters that said there was gonna be a Pyramid expert as a guest speaker in Campaigning, and you know what? Complete gyp, man. This guy wasn't a Pyramid expert. He's not even an athlete, just some creepy dude with a bad mustache."

He scowls a little, pokes the fork into his red beans and rice, and eats a forkful with a bit too much aggression. "Oh, and before you ask, I know nothing more about the stirrups than anyone else does, okay?"

John stares. "Stirrups? Like a cowboy uses?"

Anders flails a little, but since he happened to be holding a forkful of red beans and rice at the time, people at nearby tables might end up getting pelted with flying food. "I have no idea! All I know is Parker told me that Kennedy said something about me and Cally and sex and stirrups on the radio the other night, and Tyler said something about it last night too. I got no idea what kind of stirrups they're talking about or how that would even work!"

"Well..." John blushes bright red. "If you're using...stirrups, I guess one person would wear a saddle and the other person would mount...I can't believe I'm saying this."

Anders turns about the same shade of red. "I can't believe you're saying this either. And dude, I don't wanna know! I mean, the handcuffs are about as far as we . . . why am I telling you this?"

John grimaces and slaps a hand over his face. "Unfortunately, I knew about the handcuffs..."

Anders facepalms too. "Oh yeah. Truth or Dare. Stupid Kennedy, that was all his fault too. Okay, seriously, dude, change of subject, like, now."

"No problem," John says quickly. "How's Cally?"

Anders isn't entirely sure this is a change of subject, but hey. "She's good. Awesome, even. Thinks we should both take all the same classes next semester, though, which I'm not so sure about. We had a little bad patch on Sunday but everything's okay now. Hey -- Cally told me Aeryn's back?"

Again, quite possibly not the best change of subject, but what does he know?

"That's good," John says honestly. "Happy for you. And yeah, Aeryn's back." And that's all he can manage to say about that.

Hey, Anders isn't that dense. He can tell this is a sensitive subject. "Complicated situation, huh, dude?" he asks, nodding. "So yeah, um, have you developed any of these weird powers people are picking up left and right all of a sudden?"

John smiles. "Thanks," he murmurs before clearing his throat. "And nope. Though I've seen enough of Rory taking her arms off to last me a lifetime and a half."

With surprising reaction time, Anders reverses the direction of his fork and puts it back down on his plate instead of into his mouth. "Okay, seriously, I haven't even seen her do that and it still sounds like the grossest thing ever. Least Zero's got a nice non-disgusting ability."

Victor sat down with his food and a Mountain Dew Pitch Black II and half-brooded, half-gleed. Which was an odd combination, but hey, whatever. He was still a little upset about last night, buthe was looking forward to hanging out with his friends. At least he had told them to not go. Everyone else...well, he wasn't going to say lest he lose any more popularity.

[ooc: Maybe slowplay, maybe not. Depends on how busy I am in class today. I have a Certification test coming up.]

Pippi snagged a bit of everything and plunked down next to Victor.

"Gooooooood afternoon."

"Hey, Pippi," Victor replied. "How's your day going?"

"I got my cooking thing from Agatha today!" she said popping her soda open.

"Your cooking...oh, the thing for your ship? How is it?"

He took a bite of goombu and chewed it slowly to test the flavor. Victor had tried gumbo before, back when Xavier's had a school fair, and while this wasn't as spicy as the one that Cajun guy had made, it wasn't as good, either. But it was decent enough, and he kept eating.

"It's wonderful! We should all go out for a picnic and have Walter cook something on it to break it in!"

Victor smiled at that. "Yeah...that sounds like it'd be pretty cool. It's not too cold outside to do that, is it? Even so...man, it'd suck to fall in the water!"

"Well the idea is to sail somewhere and then have the picnic on the shore somewhere. But yeah, I guess it would!"

Okay, a picnic sounds good, then...btu we can't do it this weekend. Walter and I signed up for the Europe trip...but maybe another time?

"Oh yes! I'm going too! We can try it out when we get back!"

"That sounds like a good idea," Walter said, dropping into a seat next to Victor and draining his first glass of water before starting on a second. "Are you happy with Miss Clay's work?"

"Oh yes!" she said attacking her lunch with proverbial relish. "It's beautiful! I also showed her how to use her new laptop ~~which we're still playing out~~."

"Wonderful," Walter said as he worked on his gumbo ~~with neither relish nor chutney.~~ "My new bots will be ready tomorrow. I wonder if they'd like to go to England with us?"

Smirking at the thought of pranks that could be played in hotel rooms? Surely not.

"I suppose that depends on if we could get them through customs or not."

Walter pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Things are rather different now, aren't they? Still, I want to bring my recorder bot, even if I leave the pranksters at home."

"Oh, crap, I forgot!" Victor said with a sigh. "I'm supposed to meet with Agatha next week so she can work on Bot. I better call her today. Thanks for reminding me."

"Maybe she could bot-sit for you until we get back?"

"Work on Bot?" Walter looked up from his food. "Is something wrong with Bot?"

"Well...I wouldn't say wrong. I was telling her about some of the stuff he's been doing and she's curious about him. She thinks he might be...I dunno...evolving or something." He smiled at that. "It's almost like he's a mutant like me."

He took a bite of gumbo ~~which he ate plain, you food weirdos~~ and chewed thoughtfully. "I think I'm gonna try to take him with us. Let him see the sights before his operation. We're gonna give him a new body."

"I have to go to All and Sundries to pick up my canvas. If you'd like to accompany me we can stop by her shop."

Walter was a bit confused by the idea of an alarm clock, no matter how clever, evolving.

Like Victor. Well, a mutant bot for a mutant boyfriend, he supposed was only fitting.

"Tell her hello for me if you do go see her. I'll be down tomorrow."

"Okay, this is gonna sound like I'm babying you, but are you gonna be okay if I go, Walter? I don't wanna leave for an hour and come back to find you stuck on the floor because you tried to do backflips or something."

Yeah, it sounded weird to Victor, too, but he was trying to take care of his man, dangit. Walter's pride could fuck off for all he cared.

"Actually, I had a call from Alfred. He has to go to the mainland today, so I'm going to go down to keep an eye on the restaurant this evening."

Walter braced himself for what was bound to be Victor's less than happy reaction.

Victor twisted his lip, but nodded. "If Alfred think you can do it, then you probably can. But if you need any help at all you call me, okay? I'm not gonna check up on you ~~except to get some free food yum~~ but I trust you that you won't do anything to hurt yourself."

Then, he smirked and gave a knowing, miscevious look. "Remember, we still have that date when you're better."

"If you want to come down before it gets dark to have some dinner, I'm sure Alfred wouldn't mind." Alfred had really grown on him, which was the last thing he would have expected after their first meeting.

"And you can make sure I'm not doing any acrobatics that would interfere with our future date." No blushing. Really. It was just warm.

"Good," he said, grinning before turning back to Pippi. "Okay, just let me know later when you're going and I'll head over there with you."