Logs:"Support" "Group"

"Support" "Group"
Dramatis Personae Emilia, Hive, Kelawini, Roscoe
In Absentia Joshua, Gaétan, Sera, Matt	2024-01-21 "You people will say anything but 'gang'."
Location <XAV> Conservatory - Xs First Floor
Tall panes of glass and a many-gabled glass ceiling protect this large indoor garden from the elements, while welcoming in sunlight to keep it warm year-round. Adjoined to the southern face of the venerable mansion and surrounded by more conventional gardens beyond, the conservatory is all Old World elegance from the outside. Within, however, it is lush and green and in certain corners--whether despite its careful tending by the groundskeeper or because of it--seems practically wild. Footpaths and a burbling artificial steam wind through the space, connecting its disparate parts. Benches are scattered throughout, thorough soft grasses or mosses under certain trees also invite rest. The outside wall is lined with tropical and subtropical plants. The ferns and cycads and epiphytes are kept moist by artfully hidden misters that also give the place a sort of magical ambiance, dense foliage wreathed at times with drifting patches of mist. Nearest the building is a desert in miniature, with a few impressively sized cacti as well as palo verde and other trees adapted to arid climes. Between these, and by far the largest section, is dedicated temperate zone plantlife from around the world, the beds growing more carefully manicured and the pads less winding as one approaches the center, where a clearing with a small ring of seats is a popular spot for some teachers to hold court. Outside it's frigid, well below freezing and briskly windy. Here, though, it's snug and warm, the only hint of the bitter outdoors coming through in the intermittent sound that creaks at the windows. Tucked among the sturdy and carefully-trained roots of the school's banyan tree in a far corner of the conservatory is one figure whose sour expression and half-starved stature looks even more unimpressive when held up against the Very Outsized Rumors that have long circulated about him among labrats and student body both. Hive is dressed in an aged oversized crimson sweatshirt (it reads Theta Tau in Greek lettering across the chest in gold) and faded jeans -- no cap today, leaving his fuzzy-short hair exposed along with the thick prominent scars that lace his skull. There's a thermos of Some Kind Of Soup nearby him that he's not touching, and a deep scowl on his face -- though whether that's directed at the holographic computer display floating in front of him or at the teenagers chattering at him is anyone's guess. Both/and. The holograph is currently displaying the much-annotated blueprint of some building, Kind Of Similar in some aesthetics to the school's existing buildings but not actually familiar otherwise. Hive's teenaged epiphyte today comes in the form of one large Hawaiian girl. Kelawini is sitting up on one of the banyan's lower branches, aesthetically supported by a row of sturdy prop roots. She's wearing a sapphire blue corduroy cropped jacket over an aqua shirt adorned with batiked sea turtles in yellow-green gradients, blue jeans that ride low on her hips, and brown suede boots swaying idly in the air. "...so I wen tell um, eh brah das fucked up, you like beef?" She pauses mid-chatter to flail her arms in vaguely combative fashion, and her recollection of the beef in question was not very much more refined in terms of martial technique. "An den he say, yah! So I bus um up an he look all slackjaw like I no wen warn um!" She isn't genuinely exasperated, but continues to be slightly bewildered by mainlanders who start fights and then act all Pikachu face about it. Roscoe has only one earbud in -- the other one doesn't work all that well -- the wire snaked under his hoodie to his phone in the front pocket of his joggers, and though he was enjoying relative mental silence in today's travails around the footpaths listening to his music (Weezer's "Buddy Holly"), over this a tiny mental warning floats over as soon as he sees Hive, << teep alert. >> Roscoe's already lazy pace drags even slower, like he's trying to piss off an imaginary adult who's just told him to hurry up. He looks from Hive down to the holographic display -- "Whazzat," he says. It's safe to say that Emilia has no idea what the hell Kelawini is talking about. Something about beef. Beef was Tasty. Once her mind translates what the hell the girl is saying, it makes more sense. Someone started something with Kelawini. Dumb decision, in her opinion, once she gets a look at her. Kelawini basically said the equivalent of 'you wanna go', they said 'yeah, let's do it then', and then got their shit kicked in. Got what they deserved. << Subject has been prepped. Initiate test. >> << Not good enough. Give me the 22 gauge. We go again. >> << Weapon Plus program, test 5. Dr. Lawrence Michaels. >> << Oh god, she's killing me! >> Snaps back rather quickly. Do what they told you to do in therapy. Breathe. And breathe she does. In. 1, 2, 3, 4. Out, 1, 2, 3, 4. Think of other things. Right. Easier said than done. Emilia stands at a tall (for her, at least), 6'2". She's currently dressed in a black ensemble, not dissimilar to the one she was last seen in. A black field jacket, surplus, most likely, the military ones with like four pockets on the front, a navy blue t-shirt, grey button-down work shirt, and black work pants, along with her standard black logging boots. She's also wearing gloves, leather. She watches Kelawini for some time, not sure if she remembers exactly how to socialize with people. << This is going to take time, Emilia. But you need to know these things, these strategies, so that you can live as normal of a life as you can. >> << And what if I don't know how? >> << Then you learn. >> Emilia has her own headphones on, listening to Stoned Jesus' I'm The Mountain. Hers are noise cancelling, filtering out any noise that she deems Too Much. She was given a phone shortly after arriving here, a requirement, they said. But she takes them off, puts them in a backpack she was given, a simple black canvas. It's rudimentary. It'll be good enough. This philosophy will remain. Steps closer. "Lotta people only like beef until they actually taste it." Hive isn't looking up at Kelawini but her story does prompt an amused snort of a laugh. The amusement has slipped from his face as he overhears Roscoe's approach, and now he does look up, mouth pinching thinner. His chin lifts jerkily in greeting, and then he's volunteering: "-- sorry about the other night. Should've said that then but I wanted to scram before it got..." Worse, presumably, but he's trailing off, teeth clenching as Emilia nears. His eyes rivet on the tall girl, fixing there a long moment before turning back to the holographic plans. "Jesus, there's a lot of you." "Howzit," Kelawini shoots back, even though Roscoe was not talking to her and very possibly had not seen her yet. "Oh hey, new girl!" << Chee she one big tita. >> Her contemplation of New Girl's reputation for biting is a little less clearly defined, half skeptical and half cautious. "Too many," she's complaining at Hive. "Sometimes I go over the boys' bathroom. She so big she need her own room." This with a casual gesture at Emilia, the statement at once praise and complaint. Roscoe dismisses Hive's apology with an easy shrug, like I'm over it, which is not quite corroborated by the mental legwork that goes into << Probably my bad for -- nono don't think about it. >> Kelawini gets a similar shrug: "'sgoin'," he says. "How's --" he darts a look over his shoulder at Oh Hey New Girl, eyes widening subtly, and stops walking entirely, keeping a good distance away from Emilia and, also, everybody else in the clearing -- he, too, is aware of Emilia's reputation by now. "Really? She's not that --" whatever deep cope he was about to make about Emilia, who is ten inches taller than him, cuts off abruptly. << Holy mackerel she must weigh a ton. >> << They're talking about you, you know. >> The rational part of her speaks, more in focus. She isn't sure how to take the fact that they're talking about her height. Might give her a complex. She's not that tall. ... Okay, she's pretty tall. But still. Stop that. At the hesitance of everyone to be near her, she sighs a bit. She did this to herself. Shouldn't have treated people like meat and bit them. She had no excuse for that. << Stop staring at me. It makes me uncomfortable. That's all you have to say. >> She doesn't. "I'm not going to bite any of you." She says, dryly, without humor. "I'm reformed." It's a dry joke, one of those 'yeah well, look at me' kind of situations. She looks at Kelawini, thinking similar thoughts, admittedly, about her being rather large and intimidating. If the 6'2" woman with metal claws is intimidated, you're probably doing something right. Her mind wants to lash out in the most unproductive way, but she doesn't, showcasing a rare control. Everyone is staring at her, everyone makes judgments about her, and she has to deal with them, the consequences of her own actions. That doesn't make it any less infuriating. Why had she done the things she'd done? She had no answer. Self defense? No. "What were you going to say?" There's a small smirk on her face, to show that she's joking, not asking for intimidation purposes. "I'm not that, what? Tall?" "Exotic foreign torture lab," Hive is explaining once Roscoe has, presumably, clocked the skeleton, "The adamantium is like their entire fucking thing. One-trick ponies in Canada -- congrats on the, uh, freedom." He's blowing up his holographic model just a little bigger so that he can add himself a note: "adamantium-proof????" by the bedrooms, after which he tells Kelawini: "Not gonna do you any good but hopefully next year everyone'll be less on top of each other." He lowers his hand, elbow resting on his knee and the stylus bobbing loosely between his fingers. "I can hear your thoughts. Just by the way." Kelawini wasn't exactly staring before, and she still isn't now, though she is subtly sizing Emilia up and not liking her chances. "Say, no say--das his business eh?" She hasn't really thought through her reflex to defend Roscoe, but her tone at least is casual if not exactly friendly. She looks down at Hive, frowning, and then looks past him, sending a query through her link with the phone in her pocket and sifting rapidly through the information that pours back in. "Howsit their entire thing?" She is squinting at Emilia now. "I seen one full metal fakka before, you don't look liddat." Though she adds magnanimously, "But, you know. S'okay if you are, yeah." << Why she's smiling at me like that? >> Roscoe definitely feels threatened; outwardly he is puffing himself up very ineffectually, rolling his ankles onto the outer edges of his sneakers to give himself a whole 3 extra millimeters of height. He almost deflates when Kelawini defends himself, but only to puff up with satisfaction instead. Of course there are exotic foreign torture labs -- he nods very sagely like this was to be expected, but is taken aback by, "Canada?" which he's half sure is a weird attempt to troll him. He tilts his head at Emilia, eyes narrowed slightly. "Naw, she's only half metal," he says. "Jeez. What are they putting in the water up there?" << Alright. Not one for comedy. Screw me, I guess. >> "Oh, you know, just metals that no one really knows about." To demonstrate, she briefly unsheathes every claw, before in the same second popping them back in, to show she doesn't intend to use them. "It is his business. I was just making an attempt at humor. Apparently, it didn't go too well. I'm sorry." She says, earnestly, hands raised defensively, as if to say 'hey, my bad'. She means it, she's just trying to make friends, after all. The problem was that she did not know how to do that. << If you can hear my thoughts, stay out of my head. Unless you can't, at which point... nevermind. I'm new to all this. I don't hold judgment on you. >> Interacting with people was hard. Why didn't anyone tell her that? Not like anyone at Weapon Plus would have. Hey, we experimented on you for years but here's social interaction 101. "I'm kinda... new to the whole interaction thing. Sorry if I say something wrong." It's a work in progress. She might not make friends of these few right away, and that's okay. But man, would it be nice to have some friends around here, try to live a normal life. She feels like a child, desperate for attention. But she's also angry. << Someone was supposed to teach me how to live. No one could prepare me for this. Is anyone's life here easy? No. But I wish mine was just a little bit easier. >> "Their entire thing, like, every other month these fuckers are losing another poor sap they've horribly traumatized like, oh shit, I shot yet another incredibly strong mutant up with indestructable metal, how could this have gone wrong again, we have no data to analyze what's happening here. But then I figure if you the type of sadist running that kind of place --" and the lazy sweep of Hive's stylus describes all present company, not just Emilia -- "you're not really that concerned with scientific rigor." He's hunching forward a little more, head dropping to rest in his palm with the heel of his hand digging hard against his eye. "Trust me, I would like nothing better than to stay out of all your heads." His eye has scrunched mostly closed. He gestures up towards Kelawini, adding, "-- Metal that she knows about. Now." "Ohhh, half metal," Kelawini echoes, as if this makes complete sense. << Maybe dakine stay inside? >> She's still pondering the anatomical implications of this when Emilia demonstrates. << Ho shit dakine stay inside! >> She sits up straighter, and might have done more than just sit up if the claws didn't immediately go back in, but she genuinely doesn't know what that would have been. "Internet knows, so." This she punctuates with a shrug, as if the conclusion were self-evident. "Everybody says things wrong. They keep you all solitary up dere, or Canadians no--don't like..." She scrunches her face up slightly, uncertain of the word choice and looking it up quickly just in case. "...interacting? Too cold for talk story, eh?" Roscoe's eyes widen wide at Emilia at the slide of claws from her knuckles, and he falls one step back, very casually, his hands in his too-long sleeves jumping into his pockets. << Can Joshua do that? >> he wonders, trying to remember how many claws Joshua had last he saw him. He looks at Kelawini, then at Emilia with sudden pang of empathy and a guilty gratitude for always being locked up with eight hundred other mutants at once, at least one of whom would probably be willing to talk to him. "I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice," he says. "Well... I thought so too." She says, somewhat sadly, looking down at her feet so she doesn't tear up upon Kelawini's question. An understandable response, but Emilia sees it as dumb to have such a response to a simple question. "They kept me alone. Save for the guards, I had no one else." << Put her in isolation. See if that affects the test results. >> << Are you looking for a certain result, Doctor? >> << The usual. >> "I never really understood how much isolation could drive you insane, not having anyone else. I used to think I liked being alone. As a kid, I kept to myself for the most part. But that..." A couple tears do fall, but she quickly pretends they didn't happen. << This isn't the way, you don't bottle up this shit. >> But Emilia doesn't want to start dramatically sobbing in front of a bunch of strangers. A deep breath. "It was cold, yeah." A small, somewhat dry laugh. She recognizes the attempt at humor, and does find it funny, but isn't really in the mood to joke. "Colder than anywhere I've ever been. Ukraine wasn't even as bad. And they regularly used to drop below freezing." Explains the accent that Emilia forgot she had. Turns out you get used to it when you hear it your whole life. "You would think it was a stereotype, but no, a lot of Canadians really don't like interacting with each other. The Nordic countries probably have them beat, though. I hear they don't go out of their way to interact with anyone, unless you're close to them." She sees the empathy Roscoe looks at her with, and her eyes as she looks at him seem to reflect the same, and a show of gratitude. Then, she slowly begins to realize why. They all were in similar situations. But what? Something like her? <<What... he said 'when you run somewhere like that' and gestured to all of us. Were they all in Weapon Plus? Something worse?>> "You said when you run somewhere like that. Were you all... were we in similar situations?" "Nah, Canadians are the same shitty-ass racists you all have here, just in denial." Hive's eye is scrunching back shut. "...the fuck's Joshua done to himself now?" His expression grows more pinched even before Emilia's question comes aloud. "Us, you, half this damn school," might be an exaggeration but only a small one. "Not Weapon Plus, though there's a bunch more of you with the --" He holds up his fist, seems to realize this isn't quite as indicative as he'd like, then tucks his stylus between his fingers so it stands out pointily. "At this point," adds Hive like he doesn't himself have a passport emblazoned with a maple leaf, "I just assume every Canadian mutant's got knives for hands and probably Weapon Plus is itching to fill them full of metal. But Prometheus..." Here he trails off. Kind of unconsciously his other hand is rubbing against his head, nubbly bitten-down nails scratching at the ropy thick scars running along his scalp. "I've don't think there's any easy comparison of whose torture labs were worst. I hear all your nightmares and they all fucking suck." After a beat, just a little less gruff: "I'm glad you're not alone now." Kelawini meets Roscoe's glance and looks back at Emilia almost in sync with him. "Eh brah," though the words are identical to what she'd recounted to Hive just a few minutes ago, her tone is completely different--sympathetic and angry and impressed, "das fucked up. You one badass tita." She jumps down from the branch she was sitting on and lands solidly on her feet, her eyes darting quickly to the scars on Hive's head, then away. "Lassiter 2023, yah." She glances at Roscoe again, but doesn't speak for him. "I wasn't in no solitary, but there was people there they wen keep liddat." She's frowning, though not about the labrats she'd heard they kept alone anymore. Images of Gaetan and Sera surface in her mind, fail to match the description, and recede. She doesn't even bother considering whether Mr. Tessier likes interacting. << Maybe the French kine built different. >> Is she thinking this at Hive? Unclear, but she decides not to ask Emilia given her next thought is, << maybe the shitfuck kine built different. >> She starts to search for "Weapon Plus" online, then stops and anonymizes her connection before proceeding. "Like he said, we got you." The pause is very brief, but still longer than she'd intended. "Yah." Roscoe is not answering in the negative or in the affirmative, just rolling his feet flat again and shifting between them, his hands wringing in his hoodie pocket. Somewhere through this, his twisted gratitude for Lassiter has stretched to its staff too, mostly more constant than his fellow labrats -- guards who snuck him cookies from their vending machines, orderlies who told him how the Celtics were doing when they saw him, researchers who noticed it was his birthday. << That's messed up >> is almost in tandem with Kelawini. "I knew some the people they had in solitary," he says, not quite managing to dwell on who -- he skips ahead to consider Canadian racists with a bit of Boston Strong swagger: << I'unno, our racism built different. >> He glances sideways at Kelawini again. "Sure," is not nearly as reassuring as the other two -- it's a little too casual and he shrugs while he says it -- but it is with high mirth that he is thinking << you come all this way from Ohio and play Walmart Greeter here. >> Emilia isn't sure what to say. The support she got is not what she expected. Believing that her reputation preceded her-- it did-- Emilia was forced to face the facts, that what she had initially done to earn this reputation was wrong and uncalled for. Like teaching a child right and wrong. Deep down, Emilia always knew some of this. Simply because she had once been traumatized did not mean she had forgotten all she had learned. In many cases, Emilia knew, for example, that biting people was wrong, but did it anyway, because she felt she had to defend herself, and biting them was better than using her claws. "Well, I'm Ukrainian, not Canadian, technically. Though I did live in Canada for a bit- you know what, it doesn't matter." A small smile, less unnatural than her last attempt a few days, maybe even weeks ago. Passage of time had no meaning to her anymore. "In any event... thank you all for your support. In your own ways, you've helped me come to terms with some things. And, as much as it undoubtedly fucking sucks, pardon my language, knowing that I wasn't the only one to go through such terrible things is comforting in a weird way. I'd like to extend that support back to some of you: If you need... want, to talk about anything, if you feel comfortable enough, consider me another link you can visit in the chain." Unfortunately, that only brings back memories of how they used to keep her in line. << Throw her in the tank, chain her. Let's see what happens. >> << Doctor, I have to object, this isn't ethical. >> << You are on the Weapon Plus project, Ms. Evans. Nothing here is ethical. >> << Treating a subject like an animal is not going to end well. >> << I think I know what I'm doing, Ms. Evans. You may go if you do not wish to watch this, but it will happen, with or without your approval. >> Hive's shoulders tighten at the mention of Prometheus Solitary. He swats at his blueprints, collapsing them into nothing and tucking his stylus into his sweatshirt pocket. His eye twitches after this, and he's very studiously not looking at Emilia; though his muttered: "... comic book villain-ass..." is largely to himself it's not exactly hard to hear. He sticks his small holo-projector into his pocket, too, and picks up his thermos. Tips up his chin to the others. "Right. See you all back here at dinner for Mutant Torture Lab Support Group." And then he's shuffling back off through the greenery. "Yah I know like, I'm Hawaiian but stay live America," Kelawini says earnestly. "Maybe different cuz Canada didn't go do colonialism on Ukraine." After a brief pause she adds, "I think." She's very mildly disappointed when Hive grumps off, but only offers a casual, "Shoots den!" It's a long moment later that she processes his farewell and asks, more to Roscoe than the rapidly retreating telepath, "Wait, seriously do people go to those fo' real?" Roscoe has dropped his gaze uncomfortably away from the others in the clearing, glaring at the ground and gnawing on his lip, both tempted and revolted by the idea of wanting or needing to talk about any of this, confidently reassuring himself that << not in Sam Hill >> he's going to this support group. He drags his eyes up again to look at Kelawini, shoots a glance at Emilia, and sidles casually closer to his former labmate -- "I don't," he says scornfully, but a moment later his face pulls into a grin: "You people will say anything but 'gang'."