ArchivedLogs:Levels of Terrible

Levels of Terrible
Dramatis Personae Ghost, Hailey, Kai
In Absentia	2014-04-10 Connected to Future Past. A bit.
Location <XS> Rec Room
School this may be, but life for Xavier's students certainly isn't all studying. Outside classes, this is a popular spot to find students in their downtime. An enormous tribute to slacking off, this room is a wealth of fun and relaxation. Comfortable armchairs, couches, and beanbags offer plentiful seating scattered throughout the room, and the cushioned windowseats by the high windows offer a cozy nook to curl up and look out on the grounds. The room is often filled with the noises of gaming -- whether it comes from the big-screen television (tall racks of DVDs beside it, if nothing can be found on the multitude of cable channels), tricked out with consoles from retro to the latest releases, or the less electronic clatter and thump of the pool table, air hockey, or foosball. For those a little more subdued in their gaming, the cabinets hold stacks and stacks of board and card games, ranging as classic as chess and go to as esoteric as Dixit, Catan, and Gloom. More days than not, there's some variety of snacks to be found on a table beside the gaming cabinet -- quite often in the form of fresh-baked desserts. Middle of the week, and tension levels are a bit strained, with the mystery surrounding Rasa's disappearance and subsequent campus lock down. Here in the rec room, long after classes have ended, there is more quiet than usual; the few students sitting and watching TV remarkably un-chatty for once. On said TV, Queen Elsa belts out her show-stopper, something that Kai is humming along to as he sits by the bookshelves and finishes up his homework. He's dressed in a pair of cargo shorts and a green-and-yellow striped t-shirt. His feet are bare, allowing him to spread his toes thoughtfully against the plush carpet. Balanced in his lap is his laptop, his English assignment -- vocabulary words -- pulled up on the screen. At his side are a couple of thick-looking dictionaries, one of which is open to the middle and currently being used as a reference. Hailey hasn't been effected by the mystery and in fact seems blissfully unaware at the moment. Slow careful clompfs of her boots ring out across the rec room as she looks for a snack and place to kick back. The room was quiet for once! A great bonus for the shadow girl, so quickly and carefully she finds a bowl of pretzels and an open spot before very unladylike jumping and flopping into a seat to relax. Ghost has been nervous most of the last few days. She wasn't close to Rasa (they've fought a bit, too), but she was still a classmate and it could happen to any of them. But, since the news of Rasa's rescue reached, she's been a bit less on edge. She's walking into the Rec Room, yellow eyes narrowing on Hailey for a brief second, her darting away from Hailey's direction since dreams show that people don't change (at least to Ghost), as she approaches Kai. "Hey, Kai. How you doing today?". Ghost eyes what Kai is reading, reading a word out loud. "'Molal'. That's..a word? Sounds like gibberish to me.". Kai looks up when Hailey flops in the chair nearby, and he watches the new girl with curious tilt of his head before he goes back to his work. He's happy to leave the girl to her own devices. When Ghost comes up, he looks up and offers a small smile to the older girl. "I am doing better, since they have found Rasa," he says. "Ivan would be very upset if they had not." He frowns as Ghost finds the word, and bends to peer at the book. "That is not my vocabulary word," he says, frowning at the odd-sounding word. "Mine is 'molasses'." He taps the word helpfully. "It is some sort of thick syrup that is sweet." He looks up, and shrugs helplessly. "I am not sure how to use it in a sentence, though." Hailey chuckles a little as she munches a few Pretzels. "Molal is a good word, Molasses is a type of thick extra savory syrup usually used as a baking supply. A sentence would be, I love the sweet taste of molasses with my coffee cake in the morning." She yawns and takes a handful of pretzels into her mouth. "Oh Ghost, Saw you in a dream the other night. It was weird." Ghost ahems, speaking slowly as to quote. "'Jimmy tried his hardest to win the race, but he was as slow as molasses.' That's one example, for some reason people use it to mean 'slow'." Ghost frowns as Hailey talks about dreams. "Was it about shadow violins and how much of a reckless bitch you are even in the future?". Kai looks over to Hailey as she supplies a sentence, and his eyebrows lift in appreciation as he considers it. Then Ghost is offering /her/ sentence, and his brows knit briefly as he weighs the two. "Those are very good sentences," he decides, nodding firmly and bending over his keyboard. "Thank you." There is a slow pecking of keys as he enters a sentence -- whose is anyone's guess, the way he's hunkered over. When the talk shifts to dreams, and Ghost asks the details of Hailey's, he looks up to frown at the older girl. "That was not a very nice thing to say." Hailey laughs boisterously. "Hell yeah! Something about doomsday and shadow violins. Can you imagine if I could do crap like that!? Make stuff? I've been trying but it still kicks my ass just to make tentacles." She huffs/ "But it's true. Me and Shane and her shared a dream of the future. She actually thought an apocalypse sounded /fun/, even after what just happened..this past fucking year.". Ghost growls lightly, trying to read what Kai typed. "What did you put?". "Just because it is true does not make it a nice thing to say," Kai says, shaking his head and looking over at Hailey. "She has probably not had to deal with the things that we have, and does not understand how terrible things can be." He shrugs. "You should be patient with her." He looks over at Hailey, and wrinkles his nose. "You make tentacles?" he verifies, knitting his brow. "Like Taylor?" Ghost's question gets a bit of a blush, and he leans back to reveal his sentence: 'Ghost and Hailey gave me two different sentences for molasses.' Hailey shakes her head as she kicks back, using the shadow of the bowl on her lap to curl a shadow in the bowl, a mass flicking pretzels into her mouth from a distance as she yawns before chomping. "No I just had to deal with being secretive, slowly being unable to be in the sun, waking up all over hell and back for no apparent fucking reason, having my parents break up after a bunch of drug and violence, and have a mom struggle to support herself let alone her daughter as I roam the streets trying to make a life for myself while keeping the fact I'm a mutant a secret." She looks at them. "So....no, I have absolutely no problems in my bright shiny life." Inside, Ghost probably feels sympathy for Hailey. But she's already a bit upset, and is reading things a bit different. "Oh, great, your parents split up and you have to hide what you are, when you /purposely/ fuck around with your abilities. You even wanted to do a fucking concert using powers. Don't give me that. When my mutation manifested, my family was receiving death threats. I had to fucking run away, got kidnapped, experimented on for half a fucking year and almost died. My parents probably don't even fucking know I'm alive.". Ghost is heading away, after this. "So, don't you try and garner sympathy from me, god dammit. I've experienced things you never will.". It's hard to tell if Kai is sympathetic to Hailey's story. He merely watches owlishly as she talks, yellow flickering around the edges of his irises as listens. When she finishes, and Ghost chimes in, he lifts his thin shoulders. Since it seems to be story time, he decides to chime in. "When I became Foom, I killed my family," he says matter-of-factly, scratching at a bare leg. "And many soldiers. And then we did not see the sun for a very long time -- years, maybe. And men poked and cut at me and jabbed me with needles and electricity to see if they could determine how Foom could be used. It was very unpleasant." He lifts his eyebrows, and now there /is/ a sympathetic look on his face. "I am sorry about what has happened to you." Hailey Shrugs a bit. "Tch, chick you need to learn EVERYONE has fucking problems. Yours aren't worse than mine, mine aren't worse than yours. You need to know that shit happens and roll with the damned punches. If you keep falling down or try standing in the way you're gonna get your ass kicked. Roll with the hits, let em happen then go when you have the chance, whether that means kicking the other dudes house or bouncing out of there doesn't matter. She nods a bit before flicking some salted snacks at Kai with the shadowy bits. Ghost just shakes your head at Hailey. "You don't even fucking pay attention, do you? I hope that the future /does/ change and you actually get some fucking senses.". Ghost is then walking off, a small wave to Kai, leaving the Rec Room completely. Kai ducks the salty snacks, noting the shadowy launchers with a small tick of his eyebrow. When Ghost begins to walk off, the tick becomes a deep furrow, and he purses his lips thoughtfully. "She is not completely wrong," he offers at long last, looking back in Hailey's direction. "But you are not completely right, either. I think there are different kinds of terrible, and the things which have happened to many of us are the worst kind." He takes a deep breath, composing his thoughts. Orating is /hard/. "Your life has not been easy, but at least you have not had to watch people killed for scientific curiosity." He also stands, now, carefully picking up his laptop and closing it gently. "That is a thing which you should appreciate while you can." Hailey just shrugs and stands, almost flipping the pretzals. "Tch, try to be relaxed and shit gets thrown at you." She sets the bowl down. "Bye." She says gruffly, clomping off in her heavy boots back to her room Kai watches Hailey go, and furrows his brow at the pretzels still on the floor. "You should come back and clean these up," he calls after the girl. "That is how the school gets ants."