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

Despite the not-so-great weather earlier in the week, the weather today looked nice and... well, decent for the end of December, and while the rest of town might still have signs of last week's snow, there were no traces left outside the school. (It just meant one less uncomfortable question for the big siblings to deal with, you're welcome.)

The buffet table was ready, set as far as possible from the glittered-out blue and gold tables and chairs. The winter bonfire was crackling for warmth and food-toasting opportunities. The lists of siblings and roommates had been double-checked. It looked like everything was ready for a picnic!

[OCD is 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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"That's on Earth, right?" Jack asked with the blankness of someone who'd never suffered through an elementary school geography class.

"Wouldn't take the kids anywhere in our galaxy," she responded when she'd thought about it a minute, "Most of it's still rebuilding. You'd have to ride herd on 'em pretty tight almost anywhere."

She thought at him. Maybe a little too loudly the way people who weren't used to this kind of communication did.

Kids are a commodity to the slavers.

Jono's answering wince suggested that he got that thought loud and clear.

And that he didn't much care for it. Understood it. Didn't care for it. He replied with only the faintest nod of his head in understanding.

//Can't take them to my reality either,// he offered. //Less because of them, more because I'm a bloody shit magnet back there.//

What a great genetic inheritance that was.

She kind of hoped he didn't pick up on the images that went with the thought. How she felt about slavers probably did, there was no way to stop the small burn of hate when she thought the word.

"You can take 'em to other places though, right?" she asked curiously, "Not just back to yours or this planet? If it weren't the rebuilding, mine'd be fine. As long as they weren't biotic, nobody'd give 'em so much as stinkeye."

If it weren't for that whole 'half the galaxy died and the rest are building back from the wreckage' part.

Jono had spent a year as a slave locked in the back of his own head, used to murder his own people.

He would judge nobody for their unkind feelings about slavers, or any images that might or might not go with those feelings.

//Other places, other times. Depends what Portalocity has available,// he explained. //Might try to take in some natural sights along the way. Volcanoes, jungles, not sure offhand if any of our students this semester haven't seen space yet...//

They should really sit down and talk sometime.

"If you can do times, especially if you can do 'em in other realities," she mused, "Ilium, my reality, anytime more'n three years ago. It's safe as houses then, and it's a shopaholic's wet dream. Or Eden Prime, but for that you want to go back about five years. It's a colony world." She made a small gagging noise. "Peaceful, pretty, all that sh..stuff.. people like to picnic and prance about in."

The kind of place that made her marrow itch.

//Well, that sounds... perfectly domestic,// Jono mused, not quite able to keep from wrinkling his nose at the suggestion, himself. //I'll keep Ilium in mind, though. If nothing else, I suppose people can get their need for souvenirs out of their systhems.//

She grinned lopsidedly, "Yeah. It's domestic as hell. It's a good place to go when you need quiet and pretty sunsets and sh..stuff, though. Ilium's good. You can buy almost anything there."

Legal. Not legal. Available.

Jono could indeed appreciate the flexibility of the word 'anything.' He considered, and then nodded some approval.

//I'll run it by Hannibal,// he decided. //Just my luck to be married to and teaching with a bloody shopaholic.//

Hannibal enjoyed occasionally purchasing new, fancy things. To Jono, that was basically the same thing.

"Hannibal?" she echoed, "The dude with the elephants is here?" That was.. kind of cool, actually. He'd conquered like half the world with nothing more than some good tactics and a whole lot of rage. She could get behind that.

The word 'husband' triggered her memory. "Oh wait, you mean the tall drink of water that was hovering around you earlier. Definitely can't be the same one. I think the other Hannibal was African." Phoenician but who was counting, right?

Something resembling amusement reflected in Jono's face, apparent more or less around his eyes.

//Surprisingly popular name, it seems,// he offered. //My Hannibal's lithuanian. Psychiatrist. Bloody stubborn bastard who knows how to get his way. No elephants, though.//

Had a few interesting proclivities that happened to make for a very unfortunate rhyme.

"You married a shrink?" Jack asked dubiously. The rest of it: normal. The cannibal part she didn't know about: sure, meat was meat. But to marry a headshrinker?

Judging was happening right now. A little bit.

//I know,// Jono replied, leaning his head back a little as though he was in some minor amount of pain, now. //Believe me, I know. I'm not the island's biggest fan of the profession, myself.//

And here he was. Married to one. The irony.

She couldn't help but laugh a little. "Love, man, it's a pure b..ugger."

In hindsight, maybe she could have chosen a different word. She blamed his accent for that bit of slang.

"I usually give them breakdowns."

On purpose. She truly hated when someone thought just talking could fix her shit. Sometimes it helped if she could trust the person she was talking to.

The number of people she trusted didn't even reach double digits. People paid to poke around in her head didn't make the list.

Yeah, Jono could count the people he trusted to poke around with the contents of his head on one hand.

Could still do so, if that hand had been the victim of a horrible lawnmower incident.

//Might've done that once or twice myself,// he admitted it. //For some reason, the,// he paused, ticking on through a long list of words before settling on, //normals don't like it when I glower at them and refuse to speak.//

Wimps.

"These are people who know you do the in-head-stereo thing, yeah? Not just people looking for a mouth you don't have?" Jack asked. Smirked a little. "I can see where they might find it a little unnerving. It's all about the look in the eyes."

Hers usually reflected a lack of anything resembling sanity or little things like a regard for human life.

Used to. Still did for people she didn't give two shits for.

"Honesty glaring back at them is something they're just not ready for no matter how much they're getting paid for it."

Jono just looked faintly amused, and then held up a finger.

A moment later, his eyes had shifted to pure white, his irises and pupils both fading away entirely. Another moment still, and they were glowing. And a moment after that, they were giving off the same hot-orange crackle of energy as the rest of the front of himself.

//My actual mutant power,// he quipped. //A very powerful glower game.//

Her hands shot out to cup the sides of his face and tilt it a bit so she could get a better look. A completely honest grin broke out. "Holy crap that's cool! You sit there glaring at them with eyes like this?! I am so fu..dam..darn jealous!"

Enjoy all that little kid glee, Jon. "I can only do white!"

Jono blinked and looked faintly baffled, which didn't do much for the overall effect, no. Meant he needed a second to process the hands on his face, though her glee was difficult to miss.

//Comes with the rest of the package, I'm afraid,// he quipped, a little wryly. //I can also do solid blue or red, if the muse strikes.//

Because what even was consistency?

"We don't get red," Jack said with a minor sigh, "Not even baby biotics. Purple and blue and white. Depends on the level of dark energy they're holding at the time. I haven't been able to do blue since I was about seven. Too much power."

//Purple's a new one on me, though,// Jono offered. //Purple, I've never done. You'd think it'd just be a matter of finding that middle ground between blue and red, but of course that's not how that works.//

Adventures in glowing eyes. His own were easing back again, settling comfortably on 'solid white' and just kind of chilling out there for a while.

"Wait, you figured any of this for making sense?" Jack laughed a little, "Nah. That'd be too easy."

She nodded up at his eyes. "It take effort to make 'em look average?" She was curious. Hers glowed when she was holding so much dark energy it was bleeding off her and then it was a matter of using the energy. Shutting it down when it was bleeding that bad was almost physically painful for her.

Jono lifted a shoulder in a sort of dismissive half-shrug.

//Sometimes,// he replied. //Hell, sometimes talking takes effort. Depends on the day.//

He ducked his head, closed his eyes, and then he looked up again they were right back to normal.

She had her shares of days like that. "I hear ya," was all she said about it. "Gravity, man. Sucks when it gets too high."

//Gravity,// Jono agreed, bowing his head a little. //Complicated business, that. Couple that with a very particular sort of nonsense that is powers that never make much sense on a good day...//

He shrugged.

//But there's life, I suppose.//

"Beats the alternative," she bobbed her head, "I figure the longer I stick around, more chance to figure out how it all works. Maybe keep things from going so wrong for someone else. Can't do much but fertilize some flowers otherwise."

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