Logs:Unwelcoming Wagon

Unwelcoming Wagon
Dramatis Personae Colin, Halim, Roscoe
In Absentia Jax, Scott	2024-11-13 "Soooo are you here casing the joint, or..."
Location <XAV> Grounds - Xs Grounds
Xavier's School is situated on grounds as luxurious as the mansion itself. The tree-lined drive brings you up to the lush green sweep of front lawn and the wide front porch with its bench swing, often frequented by students studying in pleasant weather. The large oak tree in the front yard is home to a tire swing, installed long ago beneath the sturdy old treehouse. The lawn rolls out all the way down to the thin rocky pier at the edge of the glittering lake. The water stretches huge and wide off into the distance, the boathouse a small blip at its shore. Along its bank, forest stretches dense and shady to one side; to the other cliffs start to rise, high and rocky, providing trails for hiking or climbing, for the adventurous. Colin shifted uneasily as he approached the massive fenced-in grounds of the Xavier School, constantly double and triple checking his phone screen to make sure he was indeed going to the right place. He knew it was a private school, and it was snobbish enough to hire a token mutant professor, but this was far more lavish than the young mutant had been expecting. Circling around the fence he finally found the entrance gates. A pair of massive, wrought-iron monoliths barring entrance. Beside the gates was a small but pleasant guard post, the door slightly ajar. As he moved closer Colin saw that it was empty, eyes widening at the sight of a half-melted office chair in the middle of the floor. It was still sizzling slightly, and the smell of organic acid and dissolving plastic was almost nauseating. "Um... Hello? Excuse me?" He asked meekly to no-one, trying to gauge if there was anyone within earshot. Not getting a response he leaned over, careful not to touch any of the goop on the floor, and pressed the green button under a label that said 'GATE CONTROLS'. The iron entrance gate opened surprisingly quietly, Colin slowly turning to watch it swing wide. There was a moment of hesitation, wondering if he should wait here, but that worry was dispelled quickly. He just wanted to talk to one of the professors, he wasn't here to cause problems. Hefting his falling-apart backpack up over his shoulders again and adjusting the sunglasses over his face he began walking down the long drive, sticking to the right hand side of the paved path as his eyes locked on the massive red brick building ahead. His eyes darted left and right, shoulders bunched as the knot in his stomach grew steadily tighter with every step. There's a soft humming, at first unobtrusive in the distance before it swoops down closer. The humming comes from -- is that an enormous wasp? No, it's a robot that is designed to look like an enormous wasp -- blue-black body, rust-orange wings, long spindly legs, a tarantula hawk to the eye of the amateur entymologist. It has swooped low to hover a few feet away from Colin, a very faint glow behind its enormous black eyes. After a second or so of inspection, the robotic insect is speaking, clear and crisp in a low monotone of a voice. "You don't belong here." Letting out a loud yelp of alarm Colin jumped away from the drone, immediately bringing his hands up defensively to shield his head from what, for all the world, looked like a double-plated wasp that was displaying an alarming level of sentience for a vespoid. "NGAH! I-- I'm sorry! I thought-- I'm trying to find the Xavier School??" He kept his arms up, gripping the straps of his backpack. Whether he intended to use it as a club or a shield was anyone's guess, for all the good it will do him. "I thought this was the right place! It's what Google said! If it's not I'll leave right now, I swear!!" There's a very brief silence. "Well. At least you can read." The wasp sounds just as flat as before. "This is Xavier's. You --" "-- don't have an appointment." This voice is identical to that coming from the wasp, but now it is coming from the front steps of the school. The door has just opened to disgorge a skinny dark-skinned man, short-cropped tight black curls, in jeans and plain grey sweatshirt over a plain grey tee. The transition from the robot speaking to him speaking is oddly seamless. "You need an appointment." As if in very -- very -- mild concession, there's a buzzing coming from Colin's phone, where a text message has just arrived from an anonymous sender. It has a phone number, as well as listed business hours. The wasp is pulling away from Colin, hovering a little closer to the man on the porch, who only as an afterthought is bothering to ask (probably it's a question, there's a question word, though his intonation doesn't really change): "What do you need here." The tension in the teenager doesn't abate until the wasp is out of stinging distance, Colin's mind running wild with ideas of what a drone like that could be filled with. He swallowed thickly, his mouth suddenly anxious and dry. The phone is an afterthought, adrenal panic outweighing whatever (presumed) social media update he'd just gotten a push notification for. "Look, I-- I'm really sorry, I couldn't find any information on the website, and I-- I thought I could just show up here and ask, I um." His words were spilling out a mile a minute, not bothering to finish sentences before starting new ones. "Can I see Professor Holland? Is he here? Please, I came all this way, I just want to talk to him!" He wasn't going to say 'why', not just yet. Not after he'd been mildly threatened by a wasp the size of a blue jay. "A lot of people want to talk to him." There's another buzz from Colin's phone, this time with an email address in the body of the anonymous text. Halim has not moved, has not blinked, just staring steadily at Colin. The colorful wasp alights to perch on a railing of the porch. "That's his email. You do know how to use it, right?" 'Thud.' When the mansion's door opens to admit someone new to the scene it is with a lot more gusto than necessary, and the skinny Asian teenager that shoulders outside is too busy stomping down the steps to try to close it quietly either. He's wearing a red beanie and a big blue sweatshirt, the hood pulled up over the hat, giving the newcomer a scrutinizing look, before -- "Soooo are you here casing the joint, or..." He does not seem very fussed about the answer to this, he's following it with a quick, somewhat bucktoothed grin. "Uhh--" Looking between Halim and Roscoe, fear was giving way to confusion. Though with most of his face hidden beneath a hood and dark sunglasses, it looked like he was just scowling at them. "Is that you buzzing my phone? How-- How are you doing that?" He chose to address Halim first, the much larger perceived threat. Presumably the other teenager was just a student, and Colin wasn't about to let himself get distracted just yet. Though he did scoot out of the way slightly, giving Roscoe a wide berth to leave. Making it hopefully abundantly clear to Halim that he wasn't there to fight or cause problems, or be a threat to any of the students who were already admitted. "He's looking for Jackson Holland," replies the wasp -- this time a little more waspishly, a very faint edge for the first time in the otherwise flat voice. And from Halim himself, "We aren't firing him, and if you want to make threats you can send them to his email, too. Try to be original, he's probably bored by now." He does finally move -- kind of delayed, taking a very small and very unnecessary step to the side a moment after Roscoe has passed him by down the steps. His brows crease, slightly, and a moment later the phone buzzes again. This time, it is an extraordinarily unnecessarily detailed primer on how text messages are encoded by the sending device and decoded by the receiving one. Possibly that is not exactly the question Colin was asking, but it is the one he's getting answered. Roscoe stops a short distance away from Colin, sticks his hands in his pockets, tilts his head squintily. "He doesn't even have a gun, chillax. I don't think he's here to do hate crimes, I think he freaked out when his eyes started glowing and Mr. Jax is the easiest famous mutant to find, he sure isn't getting this close to Ryan Black or Magneto." "What? I-- Hey! What are you talking about?!" Immediately Colin took a few steps backwards, looking at Roscoe in abject horror. He had been hoping to fly under the radar for a little bit longer, still not putting it together. Fear and anxiety to not breed intelligence, unfortunately. "Yeah, I'm looking for Jackson Holland, but I'm not-- It's not to try and fight him or anything! I swear! I just..." He trailed off, letting out a small noise of dissent through his nose. Maybe it was time to come clean, at the very least he'd be killed quickly by the AI powered wasp drone. "Look, before last night when I went to Evolve, I'd never met another person like me before. I'm not here to cause problems, I don't want to start anything, but when I saw him on the news it was the closest I'd seen to... Myself. And since he was a professor at a school, and the school was cool enough to hire a Mutant professor, I figured I could at least come speak with him." "If you want me to leave I will, if you want me to come back and make an appointment I will. Whatever you want." Halim has returned to stillness, for an instant just staring blankly at Colin. "You could have started with that." The wasp is saying this, but the sharpness has left the voice, once again far more robotic. Halim blinks, and finally takes a step backwards. "... the students here do cause a lot of problems." Unceremoniously he is turning to head back inside, as if this concludes any important thing he could possibly have to offer to this exchange. Or, almost concludes. Just after the door has closed behind him, the wasp is humming back into the air and piping up: "Do we think the cool is additive." Roscoe is stifling an almost unkind giggle, as Colin speaks, now giving him a very thoughtful up-down look. "-- how far did you travel to get here, wow. You came to the right place, New York is lousy with mutants. You don't need an appointment, you can just chill," this is bright, cheerful, inviting as he trails back up to the porch and flops down on the bench swing, though perhaps his next words are less than reassuring -- "If they don't already know you're here, they will soon." Colin watched him warily, giving the drone a wide berth as he sidled his way up onto the porch. Not sitting with Roscoe, standing on the edge of the steps. Every muscle in his lower body was tensed, fully prepared to bolt at a moment's notice. "I walked here from Oak Ridge Tennessee. I got here late last night, but decided to wait until the next day to come here in case everyone was asleep or something. The woman at Evolve said that I could go stay with some friends of hers but it felt a little culty so I just found a steam outlet to stay warm by until the morning." He let out a sigh, looking himself over. He was hardly presentable; Dirty clothes, tattered backpack, smelling like pine sap and bus fumes. Not a great first impression, but it was too late for that now. "So, honestly. How bad an idea was it to come here? Should I have stayed downtown and just taken my chances? And what did you mean by 'they'? Who's 'they'?" "You walked here from Tennessee? Jeez." Roscoe isn't looking at Colin at first, just peering back at the mansion where Halim disappeared, but when he does turn his head again it is with another very toothy grin. "As bad ideas go," he says, "you could do a lot worse." "Yeah, it took about two weeks. But I learned what berries in the woods make you sick, at least!" He says it with a slightly chipper grin, though it was mostly forced. The memories of being doubled over in pain and puking his guts out (or worse) in the middle of the woods had been a powerful motivator to hone his skills and know what can heal and what can harm. "But for real, like. Is he... Y'know." Colin followed Roscoe's line of sight back towards the building, not having been introduced to Halim by name. "And are you? Polaris gave me an odd look when I told her I was coming here asking about the mutant professor they hired, but I guess it makes sense they'd have a couple mutant students as well." Roscoe cringes sympathetically; he's very lazily pushing himself on the swing with one foot. "Oh, he's always like that, it's not you," he's saying, of Halim. He rocks himself forward, then back, then forward again, before he adds, "A lot of us are here because of Mr. Jax. I'm here because of Mr. Jax." This is with another small but toothy smile, his big front teeth pressing momentarily at his lower lip. "Most of us didn't up and walk here, but don't worry. You're in the right place." "No, not the attitude." Colin made a small noise of frustration, leaning in a bit closer as he lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I'm saying, are you both... Mutants?" He practically hissed the last word, glancing around like he'd just summoned a demon. Like it was a bad word to be saying out loud. He half expected Roscoe to deny it, and just hoped the other teen wouldn't get angry or offended about it. "Wouldn't you like to know," Roscoe responds at once, though then he grins -- "Yeah, I'm a mutant." A look of incredulity spread over Colin's face, one that Roscoe would be able to see from a mile away even without his abilities. "How many, um. How many people here are mutants, then? You and Professor Holland, sure, but..." He's so close. He's so close to putting all the puzzle pieces together. Roscoe glances a little anxiously over his shoulder back at the mansion, gives himself another rock on the porch swing, his teeth pressing uncertainly at his lower lip. "I'unno," he says. "Even if I did, I don't -- gossip about people's -- but," he's adding, his voice pitching suddenly chipper again, tilting his head back at the mansion, "you can ask Summers, he prob'ly knows. And don't worry --" this, as he's hopping back up to his feet, tromping back across the porch to the door. "He's like that with everyone, too." When Roscoe swings the front door open, there is a man on the other side, just reaching for the handle -- tall, broad-shouldered, not only also wearing sunglasses in this forty-some degree weather but wearing them indoors. "New kid," Roscoe informs him, as he's slipping past him back inside.