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

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!event: welcome picnic

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

As the heat continued to bear down on the lawn, many of the tables and chairs were set up in the spots where there was shade, so no one got overheated or anything. That would be very rude for the first day in Fandom, after all.

[OCD is up! This is the picnic post for general mingling. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are all here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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Be kind ~~rewind~~ to the new folks, there's plenty of time to break them in.

Up slightly early because I need sleeeeep...

Feeling a little rattled, Miles took a seat near a table and brought out his sketch book. Not finding any true inspiration he began sketching the castle that was apparently his new school.

"So weird."

Over the past few weeks, Jules had gotten pretty good at navigating with a crutch, but the picnic presented a particular challenge.

"I need to rig up some sort of harness so you can carry things on your back," she remarked to Camden as she and the mountain cat finally got settled at a table after, like, three trips with carefully balanced plates of small amounts of food that she was now consolidating on to one plate.

Camden looked deeply unimpressed by this idea, for the record.

This time round Alara didn't feel nearly as awkward as she had when she had first arrived at Fandom and so was making more of an effort to try and be a bit more social at this picnic.

Well, you're the mayor of a school town, you should... probably be at the school picnic.

Jesse was here, holding a glass of orange juice, and kind of... hovering on the edges of the park.

Maybe next time she should ask for a designated mayor spot, or something.

Astrid was definitely on her way to doing her usual sitting on the sidelines and drawing some of the more visually interesting new students, but she couldn't help noticing one of those new students already at it.

"You're an artist?" she guessed, tilting her head, wanting to see what he was drawing without being rude, her own sketchbook under her arm, pencil behind her ear.

Astrid sort of had a favourite tree by now that she settled under to watch everyone and sketch people and the picnic or sometimes just the scenery. There was a bit of a lack of interesting new non-human faces, by the look of it, and that was always a little disappointing, because they were always a good challenge, but it wasn't like Astrid was ever short on ideas for things to draw.

Yasha had gotten herself a plate of food and then retreated all the way to the shadiest spot she could find at the edge of the lawn, close to the school gates but still within visual range of the picnic so she could at least observe what was going on.

So don't mind the tall, muscled, and freakishly pale woman just lurking as best as someone this visually striking could lurk in the shadows, okay? She was hoping the massive sword that was visible over her shoulder would be enough to deter people from trying to start a conversation or something equally excruciating.

Freya had actually managed to get a portal to the right Gaia earlier that week, and so she was convinced that that was that, and her little excursion to this island was over, and she could continue her search for Sir Fratley in earnest.

So imagine her surprise when she boarded a train car for the business district in Lindblum and wound up exiting it not in the business district or even in Lindblum at all, but back at the end of the causeway on Fandom Island.

So if she seemed a little irritable, especially in her flickering tail, as perused through various cheese bites at the food tables, well, could you blame her?

She clearly needed to stop taking those cars. She could get there in a few leaps if she had wanted to!

"Jesse!" Summer grinned when she saw her before bouncing on over. "It's your first welcome picnic!"

"It is!" Am I supposed to sound that enthusiastic about it? Crap. "This is an island tradition, right?"

"Pretty much," Summer said with a wry grin. "At the start of each semester. It's a great way to get a lot of the newbie brain breakage out of the way in one go. Plus the free food doesn't hurt."

She would always be a fan of the free food, because her first welcome picnic food was some of the first food that hadn't been a pill that she'd had in a while at that time.

"So you get a lot of people here who... really don't know how to deal with a place like this?" said Jesse.

Oh god free food sounds amazing!

"Actually, hold that thought," she said, "I could... really use a sandwich."

See? Everyone loved the food part.

"Thought totally on pause," Summer said, and made shooing motions with her hands. "Go, go. Get sustenence!"

"I'll be back in a sec!" Jesse said, and then, halfway into leaving, added, "...Can I get you anything?"

"I'm good for now," Summer assured her, smiling because it was actually kind of nice of her to ask, even though Jesse obviously didn't know yet that the longer Summer was expected to hold a thought, the more time it had to build, sooo...."but thanks."

"Cool," Jesse said, and went for the buffet.

She didn't return with a comical stack of food or anything, but she had managed to pick up two burgers and a large sandwich. "Sorry," she said, "I've been eating too much food out of the machines at Town Hall."

And if there was a bit of judgement in Summer's blink, it actually had nothing to do with the food on Jesse's plate currently, because that was actually kind of impressive.

"Why?" she asked. "There's an insane amount of variety in restaurants on this island in proportion to the population, and half the time when you order it, you get leftovers for days."

"I've been working too much to cook," Jesse pointed out, "And restaurants are expensive."

Despite generally not really caring for the heavy amount of eating finger foods without gloves that usually went hand-in-hand with these kinds of events, Tisarwat did let Summer convince her to at least swing by because it was always interesting to see new people, and it was a rare event where she might get the chance to talk with some of her friends from when she was a student here, because she hadn't been socializing as much, and she missed seeing some of them more often.

She would skip the food, for the time being, but she did have tea.

Her own that she brought with her, of course.

"Well, now I just want to make you food," Summer decided. "And I won't even put it in jello. Unless you're into that, in which case, please let me make you food in jello. But it seems that, for the quality to cost ratio, you're probably not getting out much better in the long run with vending machine food, unless they're broken ad you're getting it for free."

She shook her head.

"But, anyway," she said, "you do you, but at least grab leftovers before you leave, too. Back to the point. Most people actually don't seem to have a clue what they're getting into with this place. Case in point, I," her hand went to her chest, "thought I was being sent off to a Galactic Federation brainwashing camp when I first arrived, so, needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Some people just show up and get stuck here with no idea what's going on. And then you have the poor saps who show up here thinking it's just some normal boarding. I'm pretty sure this place, like, puts out misleading flyers all throughout the multiverse on purpose."

"You think there's a method behind all of this madness?" Jesse asked, as she walked slowly towards a nearby picnic table. "Sit with me?"

And Summer sat easily into the seat across from where she figured Jesse would sit at the table when they got there, without missing a beat.

"I mean," she said, "there might be? If there is, though, I'd guess it's, like, super individualized and based around each person as a separate case, you know? So, like, this very complex formula or whatever that breaks it down to some of the of most minute details, because it just...has to, right? Like, the multiverse is infinite, and here it is, trying to juggle all those different dimensions and reconcile various timelines and realities, right? Plus, everyone is coming from such different places, everyone's got different things going on, some people are stuck here, there's the weird time variances that people experience. If there is a method, it's got to be on a level that very few of us will actually ever be able to understand...

"Or," she submitted, because, yes, she was still going, "it's the complete opposite. There is no rhyme or reason. That the only result of taking so many different dimensions and realities and trying to smush them all together on a small island like this one results in one of the finest examples of pure, unadulterated chaos in existence, and all we can really do is kick back and enjoy the ride. Maybe that's why we have so many weird blips of things around here, especially those weekends when realities get all jumbled and we get, like, kids from possible futures, or different reality versions of ourselves or just people who might look or sound like we do, but are totally different otherwise. They're like little cracks forming in the already tumultuous fabric of this particularly whackadoodle reality that just leak all over the place, like...a broken lip gloss container in the purse of existence.

"I don't really think," she concluded, "there's probably a whole lot in between for this place."

"I like the lipgloss analogy," Jesse said, mouth curving. "The reason I ask is... I don't know. The weird stuff where I come from, it's weird, half of it doesn't make sense, and yet... there's theories that do seem to bind it all together."

She took a bite of her burger. Her appetite had been crazy since the Bureau; maybe it was all the Objects of Power she was connected to now. Does a floppy disk get hungry?

"Like, it doesn't have to be personalized," she said, "It just has to be... personal. Like the universe knows what to do with someone who has a brain that corresponds to some parameters, you know?"

Emily's rubbing off on me.

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

General Mingling [Fall 2020]

OOC [WP 2]

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