Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, Saturday, All Day

[bigdamnprincipal]

If anyone in Fandom could control the weather, they weren't doing a particularly good job with it today. It was quite hot and sticky outside, so the lawn was filled with as many pop-up tents as could be acquired to provide some well-needed shade. There were plenty of cool drinks and moddable food that would hopefully survive the heat--it might not have felt like summer would be ending any time soon, but it was time to celebrate the coming fall nonetheless!

[Flying OCD-free! Have at it and stay cool!]

Comments

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Agree to disagree, Jane.

"A...hammer. Makes you the Norse god of thunder?" Arden repeated slowly. She was doing that a lot today. A few more minutes of rapid thought and then she shrugged. "Actually, I could see it. Okay."

[needsacatchphrase]

"Mjolnir," Jane replied with a little shrug that twirled it in her hand with a sense of weight that did not match how easily it moved. Then she continued in a bit of an unflattering impersonation of Odin with: "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor. It's a spell, I guess? From his father."

And Jane very clearly had some opinions on Odin.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

#FactsTho.

"How very Arthurian of him," Arden said, watching her swing the hammer. Noting that it swung more easily than the weight would imply sounded like something someone with science smarts would notice. She just thought it looked neat. "But accepting that an artifact with the belief of an entire culture could give magic powers to someone that then embodied a prominent member of that culture's mythology isn't the weirdest thing."

Hell, it wasn't even the weirdest thing in this conversation.

[needsacatchphrase]

"He's less mythical and more... my ex-boyfriend," Jane said with a little sigh. "Which makes the whole god thing less impressive when I've seen him struggle with making pancakes."

It was adorable, by the way.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"The original Thor is your ex-boyfriend?" Arden yelped.

[needsacatchphrase]

"Yep," Jane said, popping the p at the end and then sighing a little. "That'd be him."

The one she broke up with via a letter.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Okay, so Arden had never had a boyfriend, but even she was pretty sure you weren't supposed to do that.

"How do you...did you meet him at some kind of...all gods meetup?" Was there a hookup app? CreatR or something?

None of these were the questions she expected to have on her first day of college.

[needsacatchphrase]

Look. Mistakes were made.

"He sort of showed up on earth one day? The whole spell on the hammer thing was supposed to be a lesson from his dad that made him like the rest of us humans." Because Odin was a really shitty dad. Like, the worst. "And that's when we met."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"...Did you get the hammer in the breakup?"

Like maybe had just decided not to pack it up with the rest of his things, presumably delivered with the letter?

[needsacatchphrase]

"No, that was after... well, after a lot of things." Remember the genocidal guy from space? Yeeeeah. "He's not on earth anymore, last I heard. And he has this other axe from what Valkyrie told me."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Yeah, Arden had never really gotten the downlow on the genocidal space guy, but honestly at this point? She'd kinda forgotten he was a plot point.

"He's not on Earth anymore?" Maybe Asgard was some kind of weird demi-plane? Like where the djinn lived when they weren't insubstantiated on Earth.

[needsacatchphrase]

Well. It both was and wasn't because people couldn't make up their minds on magic for the longest time. Also, it was destroyed by Ragnarök.

So there you go.

Jane nodded at that. "He's in space, I think? We don't exactly keep in touch."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Sure, that makes sense." Even odds if she was being sincere about not keeping in touch with one's ex (that you'd broken up with via letter), or lightly sarcastic at the idea of a mythological god just roadtripping through space.

"I'm getting quite the education and classes haven't even begun," she mumbled.

[needsacatchphrase]

LOOK, THE LETTER WAS JUST. A THING. AND SHE WAS FINE.

Jane winced at that comment. "Once you've settled in a little more, I'll buy you coffee and a pastry for a check in."

Because college students, in her experience, they loved free food. Thank you, Darcy.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden did, in fact, perk right up. Because she was also highly free-food-motivated.

"That would be great, ma'am. Uh, did you say what you were teaching?" If she had, Arden had also forgotten that. Take that, Thanos, you were on the same level of importance as the name of a college course. "Something to do with astrophysics, probably?"

[needsacatchphrase]

It's really what he deserved.

"Ass-Kicking, actually," Jane said with a laugh. "I co-teach with someone who... would probably stare at me blankly if I suggested it be my actual field of study."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"The course is named Ass-Kicking," Arden repeated. "And you're teaching it?" Not that Jane didn't look super-buff and very capable of kicking ass what needed it! But it was a big jump from astrophysics and worm holes to ass-kicking. "Is there, like, a physics component?"

Beat.

"Wait, I'm in that class!" And if there was a physics component, you had to tell her, Jane, or it was entrapment.

[needsacatchphrase]

"Oh! That'll be great then. I'll bring donuts to class."

Cara would be thrilled. You wouldn't be able to tell, but she would be.

"And no, there's not physics component beyond applying force to matter."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"But we don't have to like...derive...how much force or whatever, right?"

She was pretty sure derive was a math term.

[needsacatchphrase]

"Well, I do. So I don't break someone?" Jane ventured.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden was just going to grimace at that image. "...But those of us who are just, like, boring, ordinary mortals?"

[needsacatchphrase]

"Oh, I wouldn't," Jane promised her. "I've tested it out with people who are in my weight class. For lack of a better word for it."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Great!" Arden was absolutely going to avoid being a demonstration in class anyway. She liked her bones in one piece. And in the right places. "I think I'm gonna go--" lay facedown in the dirt "--settle in with my plate and eat, I think. Can't pass up a free buffet."

Beat.

"It is free, right?"

She was suddenly very glad she hadn't let so much as a mouthful of food or a sip of a beverage cross her lips. Being hungry was no excuse for being stupid, Arden.

"Completely free of any cost or obligation, no expectations of a return?"

[needsacatchphrase]

"All very much free," Jane promised her. "Feel free to take extra. They somehow manage to have enough to even feed Raiden, so there's plenty."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Witnessed," she murmured under her breath. She didn't know who Raiden was, but she'd heard of the appetite of young men, so she was going to take the self-care route and assume that that was all Jane meant.

"Sounds good," she replied. "And, I guess I'll see you in class on Thursday."

Where she would be in the back, head down, if they asked for volunteers.