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

The island was still thankfully, blissfully normal, so fingers were crossed that the picnic would go off without a hitch.

The weather was pleasant enough - sunny, but not so hot that people would melt outside - and all the decorations had been safely pulled out of storage. There were tables and chairs set up with blue and yellow balloons, a table for all the information the new students would need, and enough food to probably feed two islands. It was time to welcome some new folks, everyone!

[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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's for modesty," Tisarwat explained, feeling relieved and pleased on more than one level to find that Vette was willing to be as cooperative on it as Kuroko had been. "Someone without gloves is practically the same to us as someone being naked, so you can imagine what this," she gestured at the picnic as a whole, "must feel like for me. It would make me more comfortable, if you wouldn't mind. Otherwise..."

She let that trail off with a faint laugh, an embarrassed duck of her head.

"Anyway," she said, as if brushing that aside for now, "everything where I'm from is connected to technology, so being here without it makes you just feels sort of...cut off. It'll take some getting used to."

Though perhaps not nearly as bad as the feeling from being suddenly cut off from your dozens and dozens of selves.

"So you're used to more of an advanced society yourself? What's it like? And how did you end up here, of all places?"

"I," Vette said, already digging through her pockets for the gloves that she wore while she was shooting, "was out one day totally minding my own business," plundering a tomb, "looking at some educational material," she held up two freshly begloved hands and gave her fingers a demonstrative wiggle before settling into a grin, "when all of a sudden, foomp! A flash! And then I was standing in this thing called an airport - not even a proper spaceport - waiting for the shuttle."

She gave an expressive roll of her eyes.

"It took me all of three seconds to hotwire it when the driver got out to top up his drink, it's kind of a joke."

Sorry not sorry, Anakin.

Tisarwat met Vette's now modestly gloved wiggling fingers with a grin of her own and a relieved, grateful sort of nod.

"I can't even tell you how thrilled I was to hear that we'd be taking a shuttle out of that awful excuse for a Station," she said, "and how disappointed I was when I saw what they actually meant! I have to admit, though, the people in charge of decorating it did a wonderful job."

They'd have to, to try making that thing even remotely presentable.

"I particularly liked the frogs. But I thought maybe there'd be more of them here at the picnic, too."

Hmm. Note to self, next time, more frogs. Vette was practically beaming, now.

"I'll have to pass that on to the people with the power to change that sort of thing," she decided. "More frogs!"

A pause. "There are people with actual ships here too," she offered. "All of them are off-worlders, I think? Maybe a few humans from future-Earth but mostly people from other planets or galaxies. One of my employers has her own ship, actually. So it isn't all clunky bus rides, at least."

Ships, Tisarwat wondered briefly, or ships? It was, for her, a significant distinction, and now she really felt the urge to have a better look at these ships and hope that they didn't fall short of her expectations and hopes as the shuttle had.

"So if it ever gets to a point where I really need to get off this rock," she noted with a faint grin, "I may have options. That's good to know. But it's...interesting. You say they're all off-worlders. We're off-worlders. At least one other person on the shuttle with me as well. That leads me to believe that probably most people, if not a significant number, are. Is that right?"

"I'd say about half, easy," Vette said after a moment's thought. "Maybe more, if people from different enough Earths count."

Because there were some pretty crazy-different Earths out there, too.

"Most people from offworld are from out of galaxy too, I think," she added. "Or at least they haven't ever heard of Earth before. So if you're finding this place at all overwhelming, at least you're not alone, there."

"It's very overwhelming," Tisarwat admitted with a faint laugh, "but..." She gave Vette another grateful smiel, "at least the people have been nice and helpful."

For the most part.

She was never getting Illyana and her sandwich out of her head.

"What's it like where you're from?" she asked, tilting her head curiously. "And how long have you been here?"

"I'm from a little bit of everywhere," Vette noted, because she absolutely was not talking about Ryloth with a stranger today. "Most recently, a moon that's a multi-level city so deep nobody even really knows where the ground is anymore. Lots of ships, lots of life, just the way I like it."

Plenty of crime, great place for smugglers...

But ugh, Hutts.

"I've been here a year to the day now," she added. "So I'm practically a Fandom pro by now."

You get turned into a snarling cannibal beast twice within the span of a year, you get to say these things.

"That's very fortunate for me, then," said Tisarwat, feeling it in more ways than one. "I'll probably need all the help I can get."

"Then I'll give all the help I can!" Vette struck another hands-on-her-hips pose, and then broke into a little grin. "You're already better off than most people, you know. You're actually willing to admit you'll need it. This place can be a little much."

That was the funny thing about asking for help, wasn't it? People were much more willing to give you something when you asked for it.

And it just went so much more smoothly when they did.

"The first person I talked to besides some incredibly rude station attendants was a small fuzzy creature on four legs who told me only one planet in this entire system even has life on it," she noted, returning Vette's grin with the confidence that, from what she'd divulged so far, she could relate to how absurd that was. "I knew it could only go one way from there..."

"One in this system, a regular backrocket," Vette agreed with a wry grin. "Possibly one in this galaxy. Nobody on Earth really knows for sure, yet, though they assure me they're looking."

She gave her head a little shake.

"It's so weird. How do you even manage civilization with only one planet? I mean... I know there are worlds that manage it, but it seems so... lonely."

"And I think," said Tisarwat, "at least as far as I can tell so far, civilization for this place is..." grossly, wildly, painfully innaccurate, "...mostly relative."

"Relative, I guess," Vette replied, looking dubious. "It's just weird, how many things about this place are still similar to home, all things considered. They're speaking basic! No matter where everyone came from, we can all... mostly... understand one another."

And then there was Beaker.

"Now that you mention it," said Tisarwat, after a moment of thinking about that, "it does seem weird that I've been able to understand everyone just fine, even though no one here has ever heard of Radchaai."

The similarities were, conveniently, astounding, really. With maybe a few excpetions.

Vette hummed a little, trying to place the word. And then just shrugged.

"Is that what you are? Radchaai? I mean, not many people here know what a Twi'lek is, either, there's only two of us on the whole island, there are way, way more humans than anything else."

And that was weird. And would be. Forever.

"But we all get it, you know? I mean, even the language I couldn't read is actually the same as one back home. I just never had a reason to learn that when Aurebesh is the most common alphabet in the galaxy."

"I'm Radchaai," Tisarwat confirmed, and decided not to bother with explaining much further; this hardly seemed to place to get into the finer details of humanity and civilization in a part of space no one here had ever heard of. "And Twi'lek must be what your people are called, right?"

She thought a little moment longer on the rest of it, too. "This place," she decided, "is just filled with oddities and peculiarities, isn't it?"

"That's one way of putting it," Vette replied with a crooked little smile. "I suppose it depends on which things you figure are peculiar and odd. I bet I can come up with a few you won't even believe are real."

"You can't make a claim like that," said Tisarwat with a small smile of her own, "without backing it up, Vette."

"How about," Vette mused, "people spending entire weekends as other people?"

Because that one was a toughie to buy just at face value, for sure.

Tisarwat blinked.

"I don't think that sounds all that unbelieveable."

Having your entire brain overridden by the most powerful entity in your known universe could do that.

But she smiled as though she were mostly joking, gesturing a little with her hand as she said, "Try another."

Vette blinked, and then squinted for a moment.

"Okay... How about spending a weekend as a little kid version of yourself all over again?"

That had to be weird!

Yeah. Anaander had a real problem with that one, too. Tisarwat herself was a shining example, by some standards.

Even if infusing your consciousness into a child's body wasn't exactly what Vette was talking about.

But Tisarwat could tell that these probably were pretty weird for most people here, and she'd have to admit that it was pretty weird for most people in general.

"As a little kid?" she asked, sounding a little incredulous.

And Vette was cheerfully oblivious to any of that shining example, so she was just grinning a little and saying, "No, I'm serious! I spent a whole weekend just... tiny, and I couldn't even speak the language. It was the worst."

... It had been the worst for several reasons above and beyond that, admittedly.

"And then there's the really random stuff, like clothes that just appear and refuse to go away, or food falling from the sky, or turning into animals."

Or just randomly appearing in an unresponsive Station with a fish in her hands on a world you've never heard of where no one even wears gloves?

But Tisarwat had to admit, all of that was starting to sound a little strange, and it was making her head hurt a little, but she tried to latch onto Vette's energy and gave a little bit of a disbeleiving laugh. "Animals? What kind of animals?"

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]