Logs:Xyzbca

Xyzbca
Dramatis Personae Roscoe, Sriyani
In Absentia Nevaeh, Nahida, Ryan, Steve, Jax, Erik	2023-05-08 "I wish my power was getting out of here."
Location <PRO> Cafeteria E-16 & Commissary E-17 - Lassiter Research Facility
The cafeteria is the largest single room in this wing, tiled with the same multi-gray linoleum throughout, its walls clean but bare of any decoration or relief for the eyes. The floor space is mostly taken up by rectangular tables with attached if often creaky bench seating, with a long stainless steel counter at one end serving up bland, often overcooked, but reasonably nutritious food day in and day out. It's noisy and crowded here at mealtimes, but not so much that it's impossible to have a table to yourself. Or be exiled to your own table. Roscoe has claimed the table closest to the corner, something he was probably only able to do because it's not a mealtime right now. His voice is low, but still carrying in the mostly-empty cafeteria -- he's fiddling with a little plastic house stolen from a Monopoly game, the corners worn smooth now like he's had it for a while. "I don't want to scare you," he's saying, "but it's way different being here if you're still just a kid." Does he mean Sriyani? He's not looking at them -- his gaze is fixed on the toy house. "And Nevaeh --" he is pronouncing her name either very wrong or with a little too much inflection on the vowels -- "is lucky there's so many of you to look after her, but -- I mean, you have to know what to look out for." He closes his fist around the game piece and adds, "You got it down good though, anyway, the looking-after-people stuff, prob'ly. Someone told you were like, a superhero squad." Now he does look up at her, his tight, worried frown softening into a quizzical look, one eyebrow raised -- "How'd that work? You had capes and everything?" "And masks," Sriyani says earnestly, "I made them." For just a second they sound almost proud, before this deflates into a heavy sigh. "I think we kind of blew the whole secret identity thing with, uh --" They wave a hand generically around their current also generic setting. "Woah, should I have given a fake name? Maybe we all should have given fake names it's not like we had ID, oh man, we totally should have arranged that first." They rub a hand ruefully over their face. "But yeah, capes, masks, like a million followers on TikTok -- well, Nahida's really the one who handled that. Maybe if we're lucky one of them will notice we're gone and do some kind of true crime detective wizardy." They peer across the table, brows scrunching. "How long have you been here? You're just a kid -- I mean, we're -- I mean, compared to some of these people is it even legal they're ancient." Roscoe puffs out his cheeks and blows his breath out -- "Prob'ly fake names wouldn't help," he says; he opens his mouth like he's going to add to this, but then shuts it, shaking his head. "I miss TikTok," he says, tone conveying what is probably a very deep, crushing grief. Then: "Are Snap streaks still a thing? Man, everyone always wants to talk about jail in here, like, come on, tell me what's up outside." He puts his chin on one fist and sighs, but obliges Sriyani's request that he talk about jail -- "Like a year and a half. I'm not the youngest person in the system either -- they're not just pulling from juvie, they get kids from foster homes, group homes, ICE…" "You get arrested just for being in a foster home?" Sriyani's nose wrinkles up at this in some disgust, but unwrinkles in short order as they move on to -- "Wait, you missed the whole fiasco with Will Smith and The Slap? Oh my gosh white people everywhere had a meltdown I mean, it was like a million years ago but I guess for you it's fresh news, Chris Rock insulted his wife at the Oscars and he went straight up on stage and slapped him and they acted like he shot someone's grandma on live TV -- oh and Ryan Black's been arrested probably seventeen more times but he looked so wild at the Met Gala this year -- I think Captain America broke up with him and is dating Spencer's dad? that's a weird mess, oh, people broke Magneto out of prison! Spence's dad was in that prison," kind of offhand, "but now he's in a different one after that whole thing about breaking people out of here all the time, um and not that anyone goes there but I heard they somehow made twitter even more lame like, it's for Nazis now or something. Ohhh and the Queen of England finally died but personally I think she really died moths before and they were just pretending." Sriyani hasn't entirely said this all in one breath but it's a very near thing, before they sit back, brows slightly scrunched, to take stock of whether or not they have forgotten Anything Important. "They're making a Percy Jackson series." "More like… if the foster home can't figure out how to deal with you," says Roscoe. "Or your powers." He lifts his chin off his fist, mouth falling open and then just… staying open, for as long as he listens to Sriyani's recap, eyes widening slightly. He closes his mouth, reopens it just in time for them to add the bit about Percy Jackson, and closes it again. When he finally deems it safe to speak, the Percy Jackson bit is the only thing he responds to -- maybe it's the only bit he remembers. "Who, like, HBO Max? Please say not the CW -- ooh, is Riverdale still going? Wait, the Queen died? Damn, I can't believe I'm missing it." Sriyani taps a finger against their chin in Very Serious Thought before just shaking their head. "I don't remember, maybe Netflix?" A small and nonchalant shrug, given the certain doom they have just committed the Percy Jackson series to. "I'm pretty sure Riverdale will live longer than the Queen did. Oh, the Shadow and Bone series was great, too and --" They sigh again heavily. "I'm going to miss XO, Kitty this month. It kind of sucks in here." Their mouth twists to one side, tongue poking absently at the corner of their lips. "Do they really, like. Take you to do weird science at your powers? What if your power is getting out of here?" "What's XO Kitty? And Shadow and Bone?" says Roscoe. Perhaps the incredible breadth of television he's missing out on is weighing on him; his shoulders are slumping, and his head sinks back into his hand. "Yeah, you're telling me." He makes a face at their next question -- "Yeah, nobody's making that up, believe me. Mostly it's not so bad but you gotta get real used to needles." He sighs -- "I wish my power was getting out of here," he says, before he seems to realize what they're saying -- "Wait, your power is getting out of here? What's your power? Wait, shoot, did you already tell them?" "It's like a spinoff of To All the Boys I've Loved Before it looks amazing it's coming out this month but I'm in here now." Sriyani slouches back against the wall but almost immediately sits up again, slightly bouncy in their seat. "Yeah! I mean, no -- I mean, yeah." They're looking around the room now suspiciously -- first at the largely empty room, then up along the walls, the security cameras Not Actually Lurking in pretty plain sight on the ceiling. The suspicion is probably unnecessary given that immediately afterward they're answering: "I had to tell them in that questions room. Or tell them some anyway. I do a thing with doors. At least when I can do it. I don't really get how they can just turn us all off here that's super creepy doesn't anyone know where the switch is? Obviously someone knows -- um, anyway yeah, getting out of basically anywhere -- uh. Anywhere that has a door, anyway. What do you do? When we're not all broken?" Roscoe furrows his eyebrows -- "Sheesh, you'd think she'd make up her mind by now," he says, then, "I only saw the first two." He follows Sriyani's gaze around the room, maybe more practiced at looking directly to each of the cameras in turn. "Did they have a teep in with you for lie detecting?" he says, pulling a face -- "I forget they can do that, sometimes." His gaze is still fixed on the last camera -- he pulls it slowly back across the table to Sriyani. "Like, you make doors into portals? That's dope. They're probably gonna brain control you in tests, though. Keep you from trying to run away." He puts his Monopoly house very carefully on the grooved aluminum surface of the table -- "I just got x-ray vision." "They can brain control you?" Sriyani says this first like, woah, like, cool, but then immediately after, eyes wide with a starker horror: "They can brain control you?" They shiver, and glance back toward the cameras. Then fix their eyes down on the table. For a while it seems like they might not even have heard Roscoe's answer, but at length -- quietly curious, though they don't look up: "... can you see through lead?" "Yeah," says Roscoe. "You brought a girl who can do a mind control thing, right? They're gonna get her doing their dirty work, prob'ly. Teeps, healers, metafreaks, anyone they can use against the rest of us." Now he's looking at the cameras too, but when he looks back at Sriyani he grimaces abruptly, suddenly sounding self-conscious. "Oh my God, I'm freaking you out, I'm sorry. I usually -- I try not to do that." He shuts up, then, his eyelids lowered, biting on his lip, until they speak again and he laughs just once -- "Nah, I can't see through lead… gold… adamantium… but I can see through, like, the walls." After a very short pause, "Haven't seen a big switch to turn off the power grid, though." "Yeah but she's great she's not scary, she just --" Sriyani begins, but then stops, scrunches their heavy brows a little uncertainly like maybe? Maybemaybe they are reconsidering, just a skosh, this ready assertion. Their hands move to fidget with a necklace that isn't there, drop back to the table. Their nose twitches, not entirely unlike a rabbit. They go silent. ...Not for very long. "It's kind of hilarious Superman got that right. You can't do the lasers thing, can you?" "I can't do anything else Superman can do," says Roscoe -- now he's grinning down at the little Monopoly house, tap-tap-tapping it against the table restlessly. "If I could I wouldn't still be at Lassiter, I'd be at some other lab being some medical researcher's dream come true and curing cancer with my spit." His nose wrinkles as he imagines it, but then he drops the smile. Doesn't sigh, but from the hitch of his breath, maybe it was a near thing. "Bet that would suck, too, though." "I think if you were like. Invulnerable and fly you would have lead with that." Sriyani is smiling now, too, bright. "Though honestly that sounds cool on paper but seem kind of boring. Like unless you do something really dangerous like --" They hesitate, squinch one eye up, "-- attack some kind of really well guarded government... military kinda... prison thing I guess?" Their whole face is joining their eye in this scrunch, before relaxing into an almost (almost) sheepish smile, "that's probably not that cool, I've never been shot at before, how many people get shot at? Flying would be kinda cool but -- oh you know what would be cool, understanding any language -- oh you know what would be cooler, do you think there's people out there who can just, like, borrow other people's -- hmm, I guess that's cheating, that's like "I wish for more wishes"." They look up at the ceiling for a moment, thoughtful. "What would you pick, if manifesting was like, hey, it's mutant time, pick one." "I wonder how they'd do a blood draw on someone who's invulnerable," Roscoe muses, but he doesn't seem to be wondering that hard -- he shudders and shakes his head. "Well, now you got me thinking about it I wanna wish for more wishes," he says, but, "Teleporting," is his answer, though it is said almost as a question, like he's not totally sold on it. "What about you?" "They can turn off our powers, right? So couldn't they just make them in.. invulnerable?" Sriyani pokes a finger absently at the crook of their arm. "I bet there's mutants who don't even have blood, that'd be even harder." They do not think long about their answer at all. "I used to think I'd want to turn into animals but in like every story about that you end up losing your mind and being an eagle or wolf or whatever for ever and I probably wouldn't want to eat rabbits for the rest of my life. I want to control the weather now. We had so many videos ruined last year 'cuz of rain like people do not always pick great days to have trouble." Now a small pause for thought. "... granting wishes would be pretty neat, though, but only if you have good friends, because I feel like otherwise you'd get stuck in the genie trap. What we really need is someone who can swap powers. I'd totally let you try mine for a bit." For a moment -- just a moment -- their face falls. They doggedly plaster their smile back on a moment later. "A lot of people come through here, thought, right? Maybe we'll find one." Roscoe shrugs -- "I mean -- if you come in here with a tail it won't go away just 'cause of the grid." He's looking at the inside of his elbow, too, though, his mouth pulled into a lopsided pucker. "I met a lady in here whose blood was acid. She was dope." He squints back at Sriyani, grinning -- "You ever seen Weathering With You?" -- but drops this chain of thought quickly, moving onto, "so long as you don't have to live in a lamp." He shakes his head. "We better hope they don't find one," he says. "Can you imagine what the docs would do with that?" Sriyani scrunches their nose back up, head tipping uncertainly to the side. "I can't imagine what the docs would do with most of this, like, what are they gonna do with Nahida making a pile of rocks or me opening a door to China, build themselves a wormhole -- woah, it would be so cool if I helped invent wormholes." Now they're looking back at Roscoe, brows furrowing. "Wait, so there are people in here, like, invulnerable or super strong or whatever and they just -- huh." For a second they just consider this, looking uncertainly at the table. Then at the door. Then at the table again. Then they're hopping to their feet, bouncy-quick. "I gotta go I'll see you lunch 'kay?" A quick smile, and they're darting for the door.