Library Loitering |
Summary: | A group of students, both new and settled, get to know one another better. |
Date: | 2018-02-09 |
Related: | NA |
NPCs: | NA |
Scene Runner: | NA |
Library, Winbarry Estate
Fri Feb 09, 2018
The Library is a large room with bookcases lining the walls which are full of books. Most of the textbooks have been salvaged from the school. Only the books that are referenced most are here. Histories and Sciences mostly with a scattering of other subjects. None of the books on magic have made it to this room. None of the books are in any kind of order just yet.
A few computer workstations have been set up so web surfing and hopefully school work can be done.
There are rectangular tables and chairs in here, all salvaged from the school library.
===
Ariel is still in his exploration phase, now taking in the library and giving off a distinctly unimpressed impression. Which is fair since most of the books got eaten by dinosaurs or something and this is just the big ones, and even then not in any discernible order. "Thank god for the internet." He steps away and looks over at the computers. Right now he's a good looking kid, tall, with broad shoulders and a square jaw and floopy boy band hair in black curls.
Friday night.. that hallowed point in the week for students and bone-tired teachers/staff alike where a weekend stretches ahead, just brimming with possibilities. Unless you're in detention or you really effed up.. then you're kinda screwed. For the most part, with classes over on this late afternoon, most of the reduced student body has either dispersed into town to take in the (limited) nightlife being offered to teens.. or hunkered down here at the estate to relax. It's a mixed bag.
So what's happening at this precise moment? Fionnuala Reid has an English paper that she drug her feet on (not usual) and she's feeling like a total prat. It's due Monday but she has to work on the Saturday and Sunday so tonight will have to be sacrificed to the cause. To enter the library is to see the shifter girl peering at a set of shelves bearing a variety of dusty tomes on poetry. How could she be so dumb in letting this slide? It's not like her. She pads past the boy lamenting the mismatched library, her brilliant eyes noting Ariel as rather unfamiliar. "Got that right. Somebody crammed a Popular Mechanics magazine into the poetry section." Is offered casually. To look upon Fee is to see a cheerful, sweet-looking girl with an arching halo of black wings and wayward black hair, piled up into a bun that is about to give up the ghost.
Janessa slips into the library, peering around, apparently exploring the environs she's found herself dumped into. Spotting others in the room she freezes a moment, halfway in, before flashing a tentative smile, then quickly eyeing the hall outside.
It's tough being the new kid and recognizing nobody.
Especially when the others are weirdos with wings.
"Uh… sorry. Didn't know it was taken," she says, starting a step back.
You have those that study because they have to, and then you have those weird people that likes to study. Like a certain Vinny, who is currently keeping most of his attention on the book in front of him, which it would seem he has been reading for a while now. He blinks as he hears people talk, letting out a bit of a breath. About to comment something about people being loud, he seems to remember not everyone has the hearing he has. So instead, he offers them all a smile. "Good to see this many people in the library," he offers, quietly.
Ariel turns toward the voice and nearly jumps when he sees the winged girl. So far everyone he's met has had hidden abilities so no ones quite stood out like this. "Goodness me, but you're just a whole lot to take in." He shakes his head and glances back to the books. "Is everyone in this school utterly gorgeous? I'm beginning to think that Whitley's promise that Ares was the prettiest team was just him trying to sell me something." He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a book and without bothering to look at where he's actually putting it goes ahead and slots it in between a book of Greek history and a life sciences textbook from the mid-80s. When he catches sight of a familiar face he sends a wave toward Janessa. "Heeeey… you. Sorry about flaking yesterday. Got hungry." Like that explains it. "Did you and the other kid find the office?"
Not only are these new faces interesting, they're fairly charming. Fee grins widely; her grin seems to fill her face. "Well, aren't you nice? People ARE pretty cute here, aren't they? It must be the Super genes." Fionnuala giggles easily, pleasantly. There's the barest hint of a Gaelic heritage in her words, imbuing the slightest of inflections. She was born and raised in the States so she hasn't the powerful sporran-waving haggis-tossing broque of her parents. She catches herself and lowers her voice to a whisper, eyes alight with absorbed solar energy as she slides the magazine back in with it's brethren.
She's quiet when Ariel greets the girl who strides in next, and Fee will tip her gaze up to the uncertain Janessa, her smile kind and ebullient. "Nothing is taken in here. You just come right on it." My, some new faces! A glimmer of excitement in the girl's features as she pulls out a crusty old tome on Tennyson. Ariel engages the other girl and Fee seeks out a seat. She pads by Vinny and hesitates, recognizing the studious boy on account of rubbing shoulders in the halls and due to role call, though she doesn't know him personally. "Sorry to interrupt you. Looks like this is the hot spot tonight." Says the pleasant girl.
Ariel's addressing her makes Janessa take a second look at him. Looking a little bit disoriented, she says, "Uh… it's OK I guess?" Not seeming dubious of the apology but more confused as to the need for it. "You're … Sorry, we met yesterday didn't we? I'm not used to so many people; I'm kind of in over my head."
She reverses the step out and comes into the library completely. "Didn't get a chance to introduce myself then. Janessa." Pause. "Janessa Archer." Longer pause. Then addressing Fionnuala. "Uh … thanks." Pause, looking around uncomfortably. "What is this place? I didn't know there were this many books."
"It's always interesting to see this many people in the library," Vinny replies after a few moments of pause, looks going from the people he was talking with to the book in front of him and back. "Everything's okay, then?" That question offered to all of them.
"Yeah. I met you and… Ko… Kogal? Kona? You don't remember me at all, so I'm not going to feel bad about not remembering that kid's name. Kugel? Oh, wait, you're Janessa. I remember that. I was going to ask you if you could shoot an arrow in the air and then shoot another arrow to split the first arrow as it fell. But then I got hungry." Ariel shrugs. Like, hey, these things happen. Just then he makes a face, smiles just a bit and shrinks, his hair exploding outward and lightening, shoulder to chest proportion changing drastically until he's a fairly short, still good looking, blonde girl. Still wearing the boy's uniform, though. She stretches her arms above her head and gives a big, genuinely happy smile, "Oh, god, that feels good. They asked me to keep one shape for the whole school day and I didn't realize how much I'd feel like I was suffocating by the end of it." She looks down at herself, scowls and with a quick tug her slacks and blazer are a sweater and skirt. At Vinny's question her brows furrow inquisitively and she turns to look at him, "What wouldn't be okay?"
Vinny's query gets a considered look. "Yes," Janessa eventually decides. "I think everything is OK. I'm just disoriented is all."
Ariel's sudden change of form gets … a raised eyebrow and a quizzical look. And, not visibly, categorization as a particular breed of monster, but that probably shouldn't be gone into right now…
"Uh… so… yeah. I could do that. Probably do that three arrows deep if I concentrated."
Another glance around.
"Who has time to read all these books? It would take someone years!"
"Ah, I see. I'm still…" Vinny begins before Ariel's change of form takes his attention. "That's… quite interesting," he remarks, watching the blonde girl a bit carefully for a few moments. "Ah, sorry…" he remarks, before he looks to the book again. He soon looks up again at the question about what wouldn't be okay. "Err… I'm not sure?" Where is the sketchbook when he needs it?
"These books are all terrible. Nobody should read them. Half of them are from the 50s and are packed with weird racism. I saw one that had this chart about racial brain size and it was so bad I thought I was reading Twitter." Ariel turns and grabs a book at random and starts flipping through it, looking for the racism. It's a very dry calculus text and she is very quickly very bored of this exercise and puts it back two shelves down from where she found it. "Actually, I guess he had a point. Are you sure you're okay? Yesterday you seemed more… with it?" When Vinny replies to her, more or less, Ariel looks back at him, eyes narrowed. She looks between him and Janessa. "You're both acting pretty suspicious."
"Yesterday I … well, I didn't realize how weird a place I was in. I thought it was some stupid religious boarding school or thing like that. Mom always dumps her unwanted children in that kind of place. Then I …"
She gestures at Ariel. Well you change yourself. Koga makes butterflies out of thin air. She…" Fee is gestured to. "…has wings. So I'm not sure what the Hell Mom got me into."
Vinny pauses a little as he listens. "Suspicious? Sorry, that's not my intent at all. I mean…" There's a brief pause, and a half-smile. "Most others have abilities that… I mean, people can see them, and they can be useful. And then, someone like me… Just senses and a little bit of quickness. Not very useful…" He looks to Janessa, blinking a few times. "Wait… she always dumps them? Many siblings, then?"
"I guess that makes sense. /I/ thought this was going to be a full on prison. With armed guards to keep the freaks separated from the rest of the world. So finding out that I'm in, uh, what? Superhero Hogwarts? Kind of a step up." Ariel folds her arms in over her chest. "Your mom dumped you here? I'm pretty sure my parents signed over their guardianship of me to the school. Which makes me a sad little orphan, now that I think of it." She glances sidelong at Vinny and shrugs. "Something that makes you special? Who cares how useful it is? Is it fun?"
"Sticking to Mom's usual habits, I'd guess I have way over a hundred half-brothers and half-sisters. She, of course, doesn't remember them all so pressing her for details is pointless. She shacks up for a fling, gets bored, moves on, dumping her kids in whatever nearby place looks like they can take care of them. One bad experience with leaving a half-brother with his father three thousand years ago and Mom freaks out and never lets them stay. I'd rather be with Stanley than here. I understood things there."
There's more than a bit of bitterness dripping from her voice there.
"But Stanley got bought off. So did this place probably. So here I am. And Mom's … who knows where? Probably in Africa. She loves hunting wildlife there."
Pause.
"Nothing quite like taking a charging rhino down, though, I have to admit. Gets the blood racing."
Vinny pauses as he hears Ariel's words. "Ah, you know…" He pauses for a few moments. "That whole 'superhero' thing? Would be nice to be useful then?" A brief pause, and a smile. "But at least the quickness part can be fun. The senses? Not so much if I'm at a place with lots of sights and sounds." Then he pauses at something Janessa said. "Three thousand years ago?"
"Not everyone has to be a superhero. Hey, maybe your powers are more suited for villainy? I sometimes wonder!" Ariel gives him a bright smile and it's hard to say if she's being serious. She looks back at Janessa when the other girl shares her story and just nods slowly. "You'd think that at one point it might just be easier to drop off your new kids with your old kids and make them raise one another as their own children. Then you keep everyone together just in case you ever need to get the whole archery clan together for… uh… a big arrow-off?"
Apparently Vinny's incredulity went over Janessa's head. She just nods and repeats, "3000 years, yes. Or so. Mom's memory of things last week is flaky so you can imagine what it's like from prehistory. Maybe it was 5000. Maybe it was 10,000. But 3000 is the one she said most often so it's probably the right one."
Slow dawning.
"Oh, right. Sorry. Not used to other people." That's a weird segue. "Mom's Dang Ji." As if that explains anything. "Sister of Hou Yi. She's a goddess."
Beat.
"Of archery and the hunt?"
Vinny whistles momentarily as he hears Janessa's words. "Wow… That's… impressive." There's a brief pause as he hears Ariel's words. "Villainy, hmm? I don't know. I could probably be a good spy or something, though." Looking between the two again, he offers them a momentary smile. "I'm Vinny…"
"You're the kid of the goddess of archery, the hunt, commitment issues and mother-of-the-year awards and the girl with the wings is the one that's so weird it gets you all unsettled?" Ariel gives Janessa such a flat look. When Vinny makes a game attempt at moving the conversation toward the polite she looks back at him and nods. "Hi Vinny, I'm Ariel."
What has Fionnuala been doing this whole time? Thumbing through her chosen book and seeing that she hasn't picked the right one? She can sometimes be a bit tunnel-visioned when she's stressed, and she realizes she has both overlooked the conversation at hand… and again, messed up on her selection. Bollocks. Abruptly, out of the blue, she yelps. "Why can't this be easy?!" Well, there's that. Poor Fee.
Yup, she was there the whole time. She looks sidewards to Vinny, apologetically.. "Sorry.. loud, huh?" She smiles ruefully. Closing the tome she pads back toward the shelf, her mouth pressed together into a white line of rumination. Is she aware of the conversation taking any sort of tangent? She peers conspiratorially over a shoulder with a mysterious little smile as she replaces her book, pulls out another. "Guess what I can do." She offers, her tone is obvious: she wants to help people feel comfortable.
Oh god the suspense.
"Janessa. Archer. Janessa Archer." Pause. "Well, in English anyway. Stanley loved the name Jane and Vanessa so he combined them." Well that explains THAT. For no good reason. "My other name is one of Mom's stupid jokes."
Fionnuala's sudden insertion gets a snap of the head as Janessa suddenly looks her way. "I'm guessing you can fly?" she says with a grin. "Or are the wings decorative?"
Looking between Janessa and Ariel, Vinny offers them both a smile and a nod, before he looks to Fionnuala, offering her a grin. "Tap dancing?" he asks, rather lightly.
Ariel considers Fionnuala. Really considers her. Seriously considers her. How much considering can one do before it becomes ogling? Because she stops just shy of that. "I'm going to guess a flaming sword, pillars of fire, healing touch and the whole angelic package. Maybe with some flying and tap dancing on the side?" Ariel shimmies her shoulders a bit, as if considering how she'd look in a pair of wings, but ultimately decides against it.
"What a pretty name~" Comes the girl's singsong voice as she hugs an equally old, crusty book of poetry to her chest. Her grin is infectious. "Janessa. It makes the names Jane and Vanessa better.. it's like a Super Saiyan fusion of awesome." Just bear with her.. she's a nerd and sweet and means well. Fionnuala's gaze, glowing faintly in the hue of honey-gold, watches Janessa for a time. Her wings quiver as if responding to her addressing of them. "Oh sure.. I can fly, reasonably well." A smile to Janessa. To Vinny, she nods heartily. "I can try I bed I'd be good, even in my own mind! But I think I'd do badly enough to warrant detention.. oh, no noooo~"
She turns next to Ariel——GIRL Ariel! Whoa she really was lamenting Tennyson! Somehow Fee seems accustomed to the flawless shifting of genders (there's reason for this) and she smiles heartily at Ariel following her barrage of possibilities. "Your faith in me is strong but…" She cants her chin as she strides purposefully to the table, and turns dramatically. "I can….." Eyes flash, feathers ruffle. ".. eat.. a whole deep dish LARGE PIZZA…. by. myself." DUN DUN.
Foolish, but it's Fee. Her smile is unwavering. "My name is Fionnuala. It's nice to meet you all."
"So … this is kind of a 'all the best freaks are here' sort of place?" Janessa finally says after staring long and hard at everybody. "Sounds like I'll blend in fine then. Better than a monastery anyway."
She sighs and relaxes. Visibly. "I'm sorry if I'm coming across as a bit hard here, but … like … I've lived "off the grid", using Stanley's words, all my life. I didn't even know what the grid was until a couple of months ago. I'm not used to … well, people. And electricity. And cars. And … pizza, even."
Vinny is unable to hold back a bit of a laugh as he hears Fionnuala's words. "Now that's a useful skill," he offers, before he nods slowly as he hears Janessa's words. "It can take a bit of getting used to, I imagine. I come from a small place, so less people around." There's also a grin offered. "Not even used to pizza? We will have to make sure you get better used to that, then."
Ariel sniffs a little at Janessa's description of the place. "All the best freaks and all the rest, too." Fionnuala's revealing of her secret superpower gets a low snort from the girl. "Meat and cheese on one plate. That's pretty treyf. Deliciously outlawed. Sacrilegious." Ariel smiles, though it fades after a moment. Pizza sounds so good. She remembers it being super tasty. But she could really only digest the pepperoni these days. To Fionnuala she asks, "So have you always been absolutely fucking amazing, like demigoddess Janessa Archer," she stops, thinking that name over and gives Janessa a 'really?' look, then, "or is this the result of one really interesting day?"
Fee's life has been pretty vanilla, for a Super, but Janessa truly intrigues her. She recognizes a demi-divine fish out of water, even if she doesn't precisely use that term outright. As the archer eyes everyone, Fee smiles and lowers herself down to sit. "You'll do just fine. Give it a week. We're all kinda out there.. in some fashion. All the best awesome people." Added simply, 'freak' isn't quite part of Fee's vocabulary. Consider this the result of her years of upbringing with two profoundly 'open' parents. Janessa relaxing, finally, only softens her grin. "The grid can be terrifying but Shady Cove is a much smaller circuit panel compared to what's out there. You haven't lived til' you try pizza… maybe a bunch of us can go into town this weekend and you can be given a guided tour." She offers, with a wholehearted nod to Vinny. Ariel's words, spoken in her female timbre, cause the girl's head to perk as she settles back down alongside Vinny. She peers over a shoulder, past a feathered wing, to watch Ariel thoughtfully.
"It's taken awhile. I'd call it a series of interesting days. Each and every day, 365 in a year, since I came into my abilities as a wee little girl. I can change forms, I absorb sun, and I do in fact wanna learn how to heal. I'm kinda bollocks when it comes to fighting." An un-self-conscious wink as she outs herself. She opens the book and props it up, considers.
Vinny smiles, nodding a bit as he hears what's said, offering them all a smile, before he looks back to his book, focusing on that for now.
Seems like everyone else has always had their powers! Maybe Ariel needs to form a trauma club to get the other kiddies who got their powers through some horrible shit together to brood. "Huh. Just the fluid shape over here. Fluid everything, really." Sometimes she identifies as a boy. And sometimes she identifies as a girl. And sometimes she identifies as a twelve foot tall rock monster. Though she's keeping a lid on that last part for now. "I'm okay at fighting though. Hitting things makes me feel better about everything. That's why I joined Ares. I read between the lines of 'deeds over words' as 'punch first, ask questions maybe'."
The girl listens openly, closing her chosen book… seeing as how it's after hours she goes to leave behind the card from the inner cover of the book cover with her name signed. She smiles to all assembled, though once gaain to Ariel she gives a poignant look. "Now that is cool too. I know somebody else pretty amazing who can do that… you're very lucky in fact." A giggle.. and a quick bow of her head. "I need to get back to my room… if I'm late my roommate will hog-tie me and put me in the attic." She considers. ".. of if I'm late with this project, maybe it'll be my teacher doing that instead…"
One more fond wave. "Goodnight guys. It's nice meeting the lot of you.. let's consider that pizza." Said with one more earnest, sweet smile before the winged girl departs.
"Being born this way isn't so great, really," Janessa offers Ariel after a long scan of the books. "Especially when you haven't got anybody reliable to teach you. Mom's a flake. An irritating one. She taught me things here and there, but …" Janessa goes a bit cagey. "Well, she's got her ideas of what need to be taught and they don't match mine. She thinks I need to loosen up. I think I need to know what the Hell I can or cannot do. Bit of a disconnect."
"So she stuck around for a while? You made it sound like she just kicked out babies and sent them off to the monastery." Ariel watches as Vinny sinks into a good book and fades out of the conversation, then looks back to Janessa. "My parents were very normal. Then it turned out they were completely weird. And then I was being shipped off here with papers authorizing them to be my new parents. Or something. I don't know how surrendering guardianship to a school works. All I know is that the gym teacher has asked that I stop calling him Uncle Inferno." She leans up against a set of shelves, having decided that since all the books on 'em are all bunk that leaning is really the only purpose left to 'em.
"She's … like … timeless. She has memories of cavemen. Actual cavemen. She "stuck around" for 20 years with Stanley. "Stuck around" with me for 15 years. That's … like … a blink of the eye to her. A one-night stand. And I'm left in the wake and I don't even know how long I've got?"
Janessa builds up a good head of ranting steam.
"Does being infested with this goddess bullshit make me burn out faster? Am I going to die in my 30s because my body can't take the power? Or does it make me live for centuries? Am I going to get married and watch my husband and my children and my grandchildren all die before me? I don't know. And Mom doesn't know either because she doesn't care to know."
Constantine was just headed towards the library to see if he can find any good books on electromagnetism so that he could understand his powers better…he knew what he could do, he just didn't know the science of it. Could be a neat thing to know!
He wears a black beanie stylishly on his head so that his dirty blonde hair seems to peak out in more than a few places from underneath his hat. He wears a black sweater with a dark blue longsleeve shirt underneath…which outlines all of his musculature. Blue jeans adorn his legs and boots cover his feet. He has a metal ball in his hand then as he walked, taking a soft breath as he hummed.. smiling to the ladies as he finds them.
"Heya Ariel, how you doin'?" he smiled to her before he looks at Janessa.
Whoa. is every woman here a supermodel? Because dang. Either way, he's more than happy to make another friend, good looks aside.
"Hi there. New student?" he asks with a smile.
"Find some of your siblings. If she's been doing this for thousands of years and you have a half-brother that's two thousand years old, that answers a lot of questions. And if you find out you don't have any that are over twenty, that also answers a lot of questions." Ariel looks after Fee as she leaves and gives a slow shake of her head. "The chipper girl with wings leaves and things get all dark in here. Do you want to know what I am? Because I'm beginning to suspect that the answer isn't human." She shuts up when the door opens again and in walks Constantine. She's wearing that same compact blonde body again, sporting the proper school attire for once. When she sees him she offers the boy a slow smile, "Well, hello there, Lumberjack." She seems to find this very funny because it's all she can do not to laugh at her own possibly nonsensical joke. Then she perks up and looks back to Janessa, "You need a code name! You should use Artemis just to confuse everyone!"
Ariel also introduces the two, because she's not totally rude. "Janessa the Archer, this is Constantine the Lumberjack. Constantine, this is Janessa. I've only been here a day longer than her, but I get to yawn with ennui and call her the new girl."
"New as it gets," Janessa says. She's obviously fuming at something but trying to not take it out on the newcomer. "I'm Janessa. Janessa Archer. I shoot things and turn them into porcupines. And I whine a lot." She adds that last one with a rueful grin. "Sorry 'bout that," she adds in Ariel's direction. "Just that whole shock thing still."
Her smile turns vaguely malevolent. "I think I know how to find my siblings. Just take out an ad: "Is your mother an immortal whore? Did you get abandoned somewhere obscure at a young age? Do you really like to kill things with sticks thrown through the air with great force? If so, you might be my blood relative! Call me at 333-7468."
Beat.
"Sorry. Doing it again."
Constantine smiles softly to Ariel, shaking his head "I'm not a lumberjack…" he teases. He just -looks- like a lumberjack…a ripped and shredded lumberjack who happens to be good looking. God forbid he fully grows out that facial hair.
With a smile as Ariel introduces them, he extends a hand to Janessa. "Constantine Ashford, at your service." he smiles, though it fades only a little bit as she starts to vent about her family.
"…I'm sorry." he says in sympathy to Janessa. "My family aren't all sunshine and rainbows either…though you probably have it worse, immortals and all." he smiles softly.
"Well, see, you're just going to get a lot of weirdos with an ad like that. Guys showing up who have translated it into whatever it is they're into. 'oh, I thought immortal whore was a code word for diaper play'. Then you're chasing people away with sticks thrown through the air at great force." Ariel goes through a dozen barely perceptible changes when Constantine looks away, most of them tightening and shortening her outfit in ways that don't seem like much but have a cumulative impact. "Maybe you should just get an Ancestry dot Com account. Put in your mom, Dang Ji, born ten thousand BCE. Then just wait for the messages to pour in from other people related to an ageless arrow lady." Giving Constantine a once, nope, twice over, Ariel says, "It's not that you're a lumberjack. It's just that you do what lumberjacks do."
"He … cuts down trees?" Janessa eyes Constantine. "Not sure if I approve of that. Lots of animals need those trees to survive. Each tree is its own ecosystem." She takes the proffered hand nonetheless. "You don't chop down trees do you? Is that your power? I'd be so disappointed if that was it."
Constantine looks back to Ariel aaaaaand she's tightening her clothes. He coughs into his hand a moment and looks away, back to Janessa. "No…I don't cut down trees, I promise. My power deals with Magnetism and Electromagnetism. I can control metal, and with focus, other things with an electromagnetic field." his potential is extreme. A kindness in his smile though, before looking at Ariel. "…and what do you think lumberjacks do? I don't cut down trees or anything like that."
(OOC: I had to leave here, feel free to supply missed poses. - Fee )