fandomhigh | SHENANINGANS, Wednesday, May 13th, 2020

Entry tags:

summer games

SHENANINGANS, Wednesday, May 13th, 2020

Good morning, Fandom! It was time for the start of the third annual Summer Shenanigans, and Anakin had been secretly prepping for this since last year! (If you think that means he had a stockpile of intensely ugly t-shirts, YOU WOULD BE RIGHT. Give yourself a prize.)

There were bleachers set up for watching the events, food vendors hoping to get you to eat a variety of things that may or may not have any business being deep-fried and put on sticks, and big screens showing various parts of the island, which was definitely a hint that the games today weren't just centered in the park today.

"WELCOME!" Anakin yelled through his bullhorn at the appointed time.

Yes, he knew how to use a bullhorn. He just preferred to make it boom and squeak like that because he was kind of mean.

"Today you will be put into four teams of seven," he said, "and you will be conducting an obstacle course around the island! When your name is called, please collect your t-shirt and briefly say hello to your team."

And complain about your t-shirt color names. Pretty in Spring Turquoise wasn't close to being turquoise and the rest of them were pretty much the same color with different names, so excellent quality control there, Anakin.

"Then you will spread out to the appointed areas. I will shoot off a flare that Beaker--" Beaker meeped and waved, "--had absolutely no part in testing, and that will be your signal for the first group to begin their task. Fastest team back to the park here wins."

There was a pause.

"You win nothing but bragging rights because we've all learned from the fish incident two years ago. If you're new, well, just trust us. No one needs to win a fish." He coughed. "Anyway! Names! Listen up!"

Team Sweet De Crocus
1. Cait
2. Grog
3. Shuri
4. Beaker
5. Alluka
6. Astrid
7. Kitty

Team Fresh Eggplance
1. Nina
2. Stark
3. Wayne
4. Juillene (and Camden)
5. Sabine
6. Alara
7. Ulysses

Team Lake of Aluminum Crab
1. Duke
2. Elli
3. Liam
4. Alexis
5. Summer
6. Freya
7. Tahani

Team Pretty in Spring Turquoise
1. Mae
2. Julius
3. Iris
4. Amaya
5. Shunsui
6. Rosa
7. Rey

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Right," Juillenne said sheepishly. "Though you're more familiar with this world than I was when I arrived, so you've got one up on me there."

"Except this world is about seventy years behind me in history," Julius admitted. "All the big stuff I know about with how the world works? It hasn't even happened yet."

“Did things really change that much in such a short period of time?” Jules wondered. Seventy years ago... well, she hadn’t been alive then, but there had only been three Queens in that time, all of them poisoners.

"Oh yeah," Julius explained as they made their slow way up to the school. "Uhh, in about fifteen years, a huge comet's going to slam into Canada. That - somehow - brings magic back into the world. Spirits come back and magical creatures stop hibernating and the world kinda explodes with magic and tech. It's the singularity, pretty much."

Okay so that was... Juillenne kind of lacked a frame of reference for a lot of those things, honestly.

“Canada?” she asked. “And what’s a ‘singularity’?”

"The country to the north of here?" Julius said. "Wait, hang on."

He paused for a second, digging his phone out of his new jeans and toggling the AR view to public. "Map of North America in 2020," he commanded aloud and the phone's AI projected an image of the continent in hard light in the air in front of them. "Highlight Canada," he ordered and a yellow line outlined the country. "That's Canada," he explained as he started walking again. "We're in America - highlight America." This time, the line was red. "And we're in Baltimore."

Another command and the Baltimore area was highlighted in blue. "And I'm from New Mexico," he added, as another part of the map lit up in the same green as his eyes. Heartstriker green. He hadn't set the colors; the maps just did that now, outlining known dragon territories in their signature color.

Yeah, don’t think she missed that, Julius. Her gaze slid from the map, to his face, and back again.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Is that,” she nodded at the map. “Magic, or technology?” When she’d first arrived, nearly everything had seemed like it was magic, but now... well, she had a basic grasp of things like the television and cell phones, anyway.

She could if she wanted to! He wasn't going to hold it against her!

"Ah, mostly tech," he said. "But there's some magic in there, too. A lot of companies have found ways to combine both these days."

“Interesting,” Jules mused. “We don’t have anything so advanced where I’m from. I’ve heard the elementals use fire to make sure their homes are always well-lit, but that’s hardly the same thing.”

And then, because she absolutely hadn’t missed it, sorry Julius. “That’s a very distinctive shade of green.” Just an innocent observation!

Who did she think she was? Eliot Spencer?

Julius quickly shut down the AR display, thereby ruining any and all chance of playing it off as a coincidence.

"Oh, uh, yeah," he said, Very Casually. "It's, uh. It runs in my family. We all have eyes this color."

Look, color symbolism was very important on Fennbirn! She couldn’t help picking that up.

“Conversely, there’s no one back home who’d be able to tell you I was a Milone just by looking at me,” Jules said wryly. It was true, with her noticeably darker skin, relatively short stature and mismatched eyes... she looked nothing like anyone in her family. “Is your family a prominent one, then?” she asked.

"...Yeah," he said, a little reluctantly. "My mom's - our clan - it's a whole thing."

His mom was the Queen of the biggest dragon clan in the world? So you know, clearly difficult to explain.

"I'm sorry," Jules said. "I didn't mean to pry."

"No, it's okay," Julius said. "Family's just complicated, you know? And it's really nice being somewhere where nobody knows that I'm a H--Quetz."

SMOOTHER THAN A FRESH JAR OF SKIPPY.

And she wasn't even going to ask him "What's a 'H-Quetz'?"

"That much, I do understand," she told him, with a little bit of a smile.

Thank you, Jules. Leave him to his delusions that he was selling this.

"Complicated family or no one knowing who you are?"

"Hmm." Jules bit her lip. "Little of both?"

And she didn't even know the half of it, yet.

"Yeah," Julius said with a sigh. "Complicated, right?"

Jules nodded. "You mentioned your mother," she said. "Mine- well. She's just not all that interested in being one. She's got her own life, and I'm just... an occasional diversion."

She'd long since come to terms with the fact that Madrigal was Madrigal and would never change, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt every time she left.

Julius's arm tightened around her shoulders, something like a half-hug almost. "My mom's...almost the opposite. She's, uhh, really into being a mom. And what her kids are up to," he said, picking his words carefully. "But she has a really strict idea of what it means to be one of her kids. Or, at least a good one."

"And you worry about living up to that?" Jules guessed.

"Oh no," Julius said with a laugh that was more bitter than he knew. "We're way past that."

"Oh," Jules said, small and soft, and was now leaning her head against his shoulder in her attempt at something like a hug. "I'm sorry."

"It is what it is," Julius said, softly. "I'm used to it."

Another few steps and then he stopped, utterly confused. "Wait. Did you just - were you comforting me right there?"

Mind. Blown.

"... Yes?" Jules scrunched her nose up at him, because she thought it was kind of obvious.

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