Logs:Stranger Habits

Stranger Habits
Dramatis Personae Avery, Naomi, Nessie
In Absentia	2023-07-26 "Do we look like we have a problem with your hand?"
Location <PRO> Grounds - Lassiter Research Facility, Ohio
Outside the walls of this prison-cum-torture-facility-cum-science-lab, the crowd has been swelling, and swelling. Three thousand people have blossomed into six, and the camp is a hectic jumble. Well Meaning Human Allies being tasked with work by the crowds of skull-and-crossbones wearing 1%ers that have been making sure the encampment is fed three squares a day or by the hordes of military veterans taking care of keeping the mobile showers running or the trash cleaned up. Drum circles (mostly white people, off-beat) competing with drum circles (mostly not-white people, actually keeping rhythm). A stray congressperson trying hard to look more somber than frazzled. Hopefully not-stray dogs with OCCUPY LASSITER 2023 bandannas tied to their collars. Clusters of Prometheus veterans mingling with the just-freed rookies. Eclectic makeshift shelters ranging from car-hood tents to huge luxury ten-person affairs to ramshackle lean-tos to an honest-to-god igloo defiantly standing in the sweltering summer heat. And over here, off in a corner of what was once a lovely staff garden -- a nondescript schoolbus-shaped bus has been parked carefully out of the way of any Nice Flowers or shrubbery; a few tents are scattered around it, a small bonfire sits in the center of a flagstone patio where, as the Blackbird comes down once more for a landing nearby, a number of teenagers are sharing dinner and stories. Not far removed, one -- teenager? Maybe they are also a teenager; in Nessie's monstrous form it's hard to tell either age or gender and her oversized Xavier's School tee shirt doesn't give much away -- has a sketchbook in hand. Nessie's many legs are folded down near the ground, a wide straw hat on her head, and she's been sketching some of the nearby kids around the fire but has just taken a break, distracted, to watch the green glow of the first fireflies emerging. “Alright! Let’s fuck ‘em up!” Avery yells, right-hand sickle out and ready to go. “We bust in, get the folks, and get the hell out.” She ran out of the Blackbird, dragging someone out with her out of proximity. “This is gotta work. Laws aside, public attention should ruin a bigoted and corrupt government and general system.” She raised the sickle up in the air (for anti-authority, not communism), running to the front of the crowd. “This is gotta be great… history always favours a protest for good reasons…” Avery had a smile on her face, still keeping her sickle high. “They gotta let the others out or somethin’ bad’s gonna happen, hopefully not caused by us.” Avery switches which arm to raise, joining the rhythm of the crowd. Naomi is returning to the Xavier's corner with stuff. A paint bucket, a gift from one of the (on beat, surely) circles, swings from one hand, and it's filled with other treasures -- drumsticks, hardly used; good lotion, with shea butter; a political campaign tee-shirt, from some poor Representative who did not know what "the one girl separated from her brother" actually looked like; weed, pre-ground, and a cheap pipe for smoking it. She's still in her prison uniform, scrubs and laceless shoes, but there is a light hoodie draped on her arm, just in case (so one Occupy Mom said) it gets cold. "They're pretty, right?" comes in a half-whisper when Naomi comes up to Nessie, reaching around her fellow monster's shoulder and giving a light squeeze. Spreads her hoodie on the ground and empties the bucket into it, turns it upside down to use as a seat before gathering up her goodies onto her lap. "All this time we been out here and ain't seen 'em, that's the real human rights violation." Her eyes skip over to the emerging students from the plane, catching on Avery's -- hand? weapon? thing? "... They let new kids come along with y'all?" Nessie reaches up with both of the arms on Naomi's side, pincers pressed closed as she squeezes back. "Oh my gosh, are you gonna vote for him?" She's eying the shirt with amusement. "Tell me he was speechless seeing you." She pushes her hat a little higher on her hard-shelled head, allowing her secondary pairs of eyes a better view of the lightning bugs. "Oh, I love them. They always make me feel like --" Her words cut off with a small tilt of her head, a blink of each pair of eyes in a wave of succession. "Ohhhhh I haven't met that one yet." She's looking at the sickle-hand too, with a small bounce of excitement. "I didn't even know we got a new monster recruit. Campus just hasn't been the same without you guys, I skipped most of summer." She almost starts to wave towards Avery, but checks herself with a small and apologetic dip of her head, glancing to Naomi. Softer, hushed: "I'm guessing you aren't in a new person mood huh?" “AY YOU-“ Avery yelled, pushing through the crowd with both normal hands. “Th’ fuck are you talking about? Gay gossip? You gonna join the mass protest or no?” She asks, putting her hands waist. “I’m not gonna stand here with my arms up in the air without the boys- That ain’t a protest. That’s just a buncha strangers compacted together. We need a band of goddamn brothers!” Avery took a breath, shifting her attention to Naomi. “Ciao, bella. Name’s Avery Borowski. I’ve been called a professional trainwreck that drinks underage, and a bitch.” Avery grins, holding a hand out. “Nice t’ meet ya. Ya look neat.” She laughs maniacally, just saying whatever on her mind very bluntly with a strong city accent. “Eh… fuck me… this is fightin’ for our goddamn family and I’m trying t’ flirt.” Naomi's holding up the shirt now over her scrubs, laughing before turning it inside out, tying up the sleeves and generally transforming it into a sack. "Shit, you right, after all this mad sciencing on my brain I could do so much voter fraud." Looks back up as Avery approaches, green eyes catching on the sudden -- normal -- hand. "I ain't ever in a new white bog girl mood, but --" She grimaces when Avery starts making demands in her direction, tucks her weed deeper away into the shirt she's clutching. The look she gives Avery -- and her outstretched hand -- is deeply unimpressed, even without the benefit of eyebrows on her scaled forehead to raise. "Naomi. Winters. I've been called one of the Lassiter Sixteen. Do you like being called a bitch?" Her accent is still deeply Southern but her cadence is changing. She does not lift her hand to shake. Adds on, dry and unapologetic: "Sorry. I'm taken." "Sorry," Nessie says, and her many (many) armored arachnoid legs are uncurling beneath her -- it puts her considerably taller than the other girls, looming over them as she skitter-shifts to place herself -- juuust a little in front of Naomi, actually, but with her impressive bulk and looming stinger-tail the effect is more drastic than it might be for someone else. "We totally thought you were, uh," The forwardmost pair of her eyes have narrowed, sharply, on Avery's hands as she approaches. "-- someone else. Um, Naomi was just in there, I don't think she needs to do anything but, like, be alive, right now, that's already plenty." Avery hides her face in one of her hands and mumbles insults to herself. “For the record, I’ve been called a lot worse, so ‘bitch’? Tamer than I’ve seen before. So yeah-“ She chuckled, doing jazz hands as a joke. “I’m not one for apologising. But breaking out of prison is a pretty good excuse.” Avery pauses, biting her cheek. “I mean t’ say… sorry for that. I say shit like that.” She says haphazardly, her hand turning back into a sickle as she gestured to the fellow protesters. “Also, you were, and still, lookin’ at my hand. You gotta problem with it?” She put her hand in between the three of them. “Just a weapon built into my system -all the iron goes int’ my hand and a bit of magic and there it is.” Avery leans against a nearby tree. “I do better on weed, could ya give me some? Promise I won’t be a dick to you two afterwards.” Avery’s voice raised the more she talked about the bargain, genuinely meaning it but sounding like the opposite. Naomi does not give over her weed. In fact, she moves it further from Avery's reach, and if that happens to be behind Nessie's legs, well, so much the better. She's not shrinking away from Avery, though -- nor is she beginning to lose her cool, the way she might have some months ago. "If it really were all the iron in your blood," she says, her tone almost (but not quite) bored, "you'd pass out every time you did that 'magic'." Oh, that's what it is in Naomi's voice -- condescension. When she looks at Avery again, there is a flash of glowing emerald green in her eyes, there and gone again almost too fast to notice. "Would you like help with your foot-in-mouth problem? I could totally fix that for you." "Do we look," one of Nessie's sharp-pincered arms is gesturing between herself and the snake-scaled girl beside her, her second more human-looking pair of arms crossed above it, "like we have a problem with your hand?" Her previously cheery voice has gone flat and unimpressed, and overhead her tali with its very large stinger is flexing ominously. She offers a tight smile as she takes another step forward. "How about, you don't be a dick to her, and I don't stab you? No bribes needed." “Fine, fine…” Avery holds her hands up in surrender, backing up against the tree. “I’ll stop messin’ with ya. Just a force of habit for dealing with strangers.” Avery put her hands in her back pockets. She pulled out her zippo lighter, continuously flipping it open out of boredom. Then her face lights up with an idea. “I had an idea to make up for ya.” She grins. “Nathan’s on Coney Island. Then we head down to the boardwalk to Paul’s Daughter and eat some calamari and cheese sticks. It’s super good, epitome of deep fried goodness...” She suggests, backing away from the two of them, back into the crowd, still full of vigour for the protest. "Do you stab bogs now?" Naomi sounds more intrigued than anything when she asks Nessie this. "Oh shit remind me to introduce you to Queen Bee, she gonna love you." She does not elaborate on if Queen Bee will love Avery. "How about," she says to the new girl, "if you manage not to get stabbed by Nessie or anyone in these scrubs for running your mouth, I'll think about letting you fund me and my gi-- joyfriend's next date." "Only when they need it," Nessie answers, sinking just a little lower down toward the ground. "Didn't think you needed..." Her stinger has stopped swaying, at least, though her tail is still held tense and ready. "Wait who's Queen Bee?" Her tone is perking back up at this -- though when she addresses Avery it's more matter-of-fact than cheerful. "I think you'd have better luck inviting people to Coney Island with you if you, like, maybe, adjusted, your habits for dealing with strangers. Sometimes if you're just nice? That -- it's like a cheat code for making friends."