Logs:JV Superheroics
| JV Superheroics | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-09-05 "I round y'all up after classes, Sriyani probably got a whole game plan already." |
| Location
<XAV> A Residence Hall Courtyard Of Some Variety | |
The Residence Hall's common house borrows just enough of the mansion's architecture to complement it, though it has its own distinctive flavor as well. Walkways and bridges connect each dormitory wing to the common house at the center, with picturesque outdoor courtyards tucked alongside each wing, providing many of the dorms with a view of the plantlife and water features. No two courtyards are exactly the same, but all have plentiful seating along their winding footpaths, benches fixed in place as well as chairs and tables that rearrange themselves along the flagstones or in the shade according to the students' whims. It's early morning. Probably later it'll be warm again but right now it's feeling practically fall-crisp; perfect weather for the run Avi's just finishing up, sweaty and breathing hard as he jogs back into the courtyard in blue-striped black running pants and a blue quick-dry tee. Somewhere in its center, lying beside a fountain, a massive lump of wrinkles and lolling tongue rolls slightly over to the side and looks up at him, unimpressed at all this exertion. Avi lopes over to Chonk's side, nudges the bulldog lightly with a toe. "Nigga, you think I'mm'a bring your breakfast out here? Ol' spoil-ass baby." Bryce is perched on the fountain itself, dressed neatly in crisp jeans and a green short-sleeved button-down, bold against the array of red and purple feathers on his arms. Most of his neck and face, though human enough in shape, has traded his normal skin for scales in a stripey red-green-orange panther chameleon patterning, though equally anachronistically this lizardy skin has grown a luxuriously shaggy mane around it. He's sitting cross-legged on the fountain's edge above Chonk, quietly reading from a small The Book of Mormon, which he closes and pockets as Avi arrives. "Is he wrong, though? Look at his face, he's starving. And Moab's been mocking him all morning, we had to flee." Nevaeh, not quite as early a bird as the two boys and one Chonk, is only now making her way outside. She's wearing a lilac dress with black tights and chunky pink and purple sneakers, her hair under a pink headwrap with a bold white floral print. She waves to the boys and drifts over toward them, and stoops down to pet Chonk, mooshing his jowly face around. "If I just come out here and didn't know better, I might think he's all tired out from running with you." She looks up at Avi. "But I'm pretty sure this dog has never run in his whole life. What's to mock, though? He's perfect." "I meeean..." Avi tilts his head sideways to look at Chonk's smooshy face where he's slumped over on the ground, distorted even sillier than its usual nonsensical state by Nevaeh's mooshing. "Yeahokay, how'm I gonna make this princess walk all the way back upstairs? I'm not heartless." He's dropping down to the ground beside Chonk, kind of lazily doing some cooldown stretches that are hampered in form by the fact that he is distracted reaching out to scratch the bulldog's large belly. "Nevaeh, he tired out from being so perfect. Takes a lot of work maintaining those wrinkles. He's gotta think weighty dog thoughts all day and he do it on probly two, maybe three breaths per hour." "We took the elevator," Bryce admits freely. "I cannot make him do more than one stair and I am definitely not carrying him. Anyway Moab is kind of obsessed with 'run and not be weary' and 'walk and not faint' right now but I think even just standing up makes Chonk weary." Bryce leans down, gently poking a feathered finger in between two large folds of wrinkle. "Weighty thoughts, hm? You think he's solved the mystery of where all our teachers went?" Nevaeh nods gravely, sitting down in the grass. "I wouldn't have energy for anything else either, if I was this perfect. But you know," she's telling Chonk confidentially, I don't see Moab walking or running anywhere, neither." She looks up at Bryce, "If he figured it out, he'd be too tired from figuring to tell us. But I have a theory or two." She glances at Avi and ducks her head a little. "Okay, it's really just the one theory, and it doesn't actually tell us where they are, anyway." "Good luck to Moab, she didn't have luck with 'Cease to be idle' last year and she ain't gonna have luck with this. Chonk committed to his life of leisure." Avi sits upright from where he's been stretching out over one leg, his dark eyes riveting on Nevaeh. His brows lift high. "Okay but spill tho." Bryce is sitting up straighter, too. He's folded his hands neatly in his lap and is looking a little bit like he's in class, wide-eyed and attentive. His voice has gotten hushed and a little breathless. "You have a theory?" He leans just slightly forward. "Are they on a super important mission, do you think? Oh sorry no you tell." He claps a hand over his mouth. "This isn't news to you," Nevaeh tells Avi, "you were there when this all started." She turns back to Bryce, to whom this is news. "A few weeks back, me and Sriyani and Quentin were at this festival in Madripoor. Quentin heard this mutant kid in trouble, and when I looked for them I saw that pirates had kidnapped them and were going to sell them to someone. So we grabbed Avi and Nahida and rescued them. You should have seen us, we were amazing." Here her voice has grown hushed and her eyes huge. "Then it turned out a bunch of mutants were being kidnapped and sold somewhere my visions couldn't see. So we told Mr. Summers and Mr. Jackson, and I think the X-Men were investigating those disappearances when they disappeared. And here's the thing..." She hesitates, scrunching her fingers into Chonk's loose skin. "I've looked and looked for them, but I haven't seen anything. My visions aren't always easy to control, but nothing about any of them? It's like when I was trying to look for the kidnapped mutants. I could see them, right up to when they got sold, then nothing." "I mean, Mr. Jackson'n'em all gone straight off your map, too?" Avi's brows scrunch up, and he pulls both his long legs into a pretzel. "It's at least a small news." His fingers drum on the ground beside him, leaving a tiny glittering web of frost delicate and crystalline in their wake. "Not a good news, either. You think these some kinda high-tech pirates? Other-world-y pirates? Magic pirates? We might've got 'em caught up in some real-real trouble, huh?" His expression has gone somber, and he's resting his chin in his hand, now. "... if they was dead, would you see dead?" "If they've gone where the other kidnapped mutants are, that sounds like a pretty important mission," Bryce says, with full confidence. "Otherwise why would they have missed school. I bet they're saving so many people right now. Mr. Jackson's probably like," he's holding his hand up one direction then another, the shield miming coming with a khh-khh sound effect apparently, "and Mr. Summers is like --" here his hand goes to his temple, eyes squinting up together with a pow-pow, "and Mr. Joshua is just --" Here his face gets very serious, and he drops his hand to Chonk's side lightly with a very slight upward jerk of his chin like 'sup', then frowns: "... I don't know a good blipping noise, oh! Blipping. Right. And Dr. McCoy..." Though here he just frowns, brief, and decides perhaps to move on. "Anyway maybe there's just more people than they thought and," just a little bit more fiercely, "they'll be back." Nevaeh nods firmly, then looks abruptly less certain. "Not the pirates who were kidnapping people in Madripoor, but the ones they were selling to definitely have some kind of technology or powers that blocks my visions. I don't know if the X-Men got caught themselves, or if they went to rescue folks, or...both." She worries at her bottom lip with her teeth, then shakes her head. "I wouldn't be able to find them if they were already dead, either, but I don't think that's what happened." She looks up at Bryce's determined prediction and smiles. "Guess you got your own kind of vision too. But we don't know when they'll be back. Someone's got to protect the school and the city and whoever else needs protecting." "Someone, huh?" Avi's brows are still lifted, but now there's a small and amused twitch at the sides of his mouth. "You happen to know any someone who got a line into the future? Might get the 411 on who needs protecting? That'd be convenient just in case we had a bunch of people with superpowers round here who could help out." His cheeks are puffing out, and he pulls himself to his feet with a sigh. "After a shower. And breakfast. And classes, dang. Wish everybody needed saving after Mr. da Costa got me through college app season but sometimes life is what it is." He's mooshing several times at Chonk, whose nubby tail wags eagerly, and then waggling a lazy wave to the others. "I round y'all up after classes, Sriyani probably got a whole game plan already." Bryce's eyes are still very wide, and for a second his still-hushed, "Are we --" is probably going to resolve into some question about The Rules, but it does not get that far. He is considering Nevaeh, and considering Avi, and nodding very seriously. It's only once the older boy is away that he confides somewhat bashfully to Nevaeh: "I don't have nearly as much of a superpower as most of you guys." Nevaeh taps her chin with one finger, eyes casting up toward the sky thoughtfully. "I might just have someone in mind. Guess we'll just have to see." She pushes to her feet and waves to Avi, then looks back at Bryce. "You got mad boy scout skills, that's kind of a superpower. You think any the rest of us ever half as prepared as you or your bro...sister? Besides." She bounces up onto the balls of her feet. "Besides, I heard y'all got an actual guardian angel and everything. C'mon." She waves him along. "Let's get some breakfast, and I'll give you a crash course in superheroing." | |
