Logs:Cocoa Diplomacy
| Cocoa Diplomacy | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2025-01-07 "...who we defending against?" |
| 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. School has been out for a little while now, and it won't be dark for a while yet -- the allure of the fresh thick snow-blanket laying deep around the grounds has pulled a lot of X-Kids outside. There are a couple desultory snowball fights kind of fizzling and starting at various places around the grounds, but they haven't picked up into an all out war. Yet. When the time comes, Avi will for sure be ready -- he's getting the fortifications all in order for the team he is easily confident he will muster up when needed. Around him there's a solid snow fort, already elaborate in its multiple-roomed structure, high walls -- he isn't yet done, though. He's standing up atop one of the walls, raising it higher to give it a proper parapet. Then higher still at the corner, pulling a taller tower into being. He's dressed -- kind of middling, for the weather, proper boots but jeans, a jacket that is probably warm enough for early winter but not warm enough for below-freezing-in-the-snow. There are mittens shoved into one pocket that he isn't wearing, no hat to cover his neat short locs. He takes a half-step back, frowning at the tower's taller smooth walls like it is missing something. Echo emerges out of the back of the mansion prepared for the weather, even if there are getting to be one too many colors: brown boots, blue snow pants, gloves and beanie in very different shades of purple, slightly discolored candy-red 3-in-one jacket. A pair of hockey skates is dangling from its laces up by her shoulder as her eyes adjust to the fairly monotone outdoors. Her gaze goes up, up -- "Oh, shit, this is way better than what I was hoping you were doing out here," she's calling to Avi excitedly, dropping the skates by an exterior wall and trudging over, stopping halfway to stow one glove in the crook of her arm and run her fingers through some unspoiled snow. "How about arrow slits?" Like Avi, Roscoe is not really dressed for the snow, though unlike Avi his mutation is presumably no help with this -- he's been slogging around the perimeter of the fort in joggers and a bright blue hoodie under a puffy orange coat, green high-tops not really intended for snow but at least waterproof, red beanie pulled low over his face and both hoods pulled up over that. He would be very well protected if it got about twenty degrees warmer and starts raining instead, at least? He does not sound cold, though; as he rounds the wall to tilt his head squintily up at Avi on the wall, though he does sort of sound like he's putting a lot of effort into not sounding cold: "Need some kind of snow tank to challenge this thing, have you considered leaving a little snow warfare for the rest of us?" "Rest-of-us, you mean you ain't gonna join my squadron? We recruiting." 'We', at the moment, is Avi and the giant lump of bulldog (bundled up in cozy dog sweater and a proper snow jacket) he's hitching a thumb towards, lolling near the fort's doorway. Presumably Chonk will be no actual help in this battle at all; he's simply splooted in a little burrow of snow, regarding the world with sleepy eyes and looking highly disinclined to move. Avi snaps his fingers, points to Echo: "Arrow slits!" he's crowing this excitedly like, what a genius suggestion. The tower is starting to grow a small slit in the front-facing wall, though this soon widens: "Snowball slits maybe, 'less we start getting some real bad ideas we hopefully won't arrow nobody." He peers down toward Echo, smiling bright. "You gonna be on my squad, yeah?" "Oh yeah, I know how to pick my battles and I would not like to be on the receiving end of my own suggestion," Echo says cheerfully, wiping her wet fingers on her briefly tugged-out fleece layer before slipping her glove back on and scooping up a snowball-to-be. "Come on, people can fly around here, we gotta have extra defenses," she's directing to Roscoe. "You can even recruit some of them if you'd rather stay in the cold, Chonk-less wilderness." Off the glove comes again to rub affectionately at the aforementioned's wrinkly forehead. Roscoe teeters sideways to get his own handful of snow, one foot lifting off the ground, and though he starts to pat this into a snowball with his bare hands, he doesn't have it packed very tight before he's having trouble just holding it, and drop-kicks it rather than finish. Through this he is saying, suuuper casually and not at all cold, "As opposed to the super-cozy ice fortress? If you're worried about people who can fly you should be making guerrilla ice tunnels," but now he is trudging after Echo toward the fort's doorway, though he ignores Chonk and just comes inside, hands tucked back into the insulating warmth of his pockets. Apparently he has decided to include himself in this 'we', for he's adding a moment later, "...who we defending against?" "Hey ice can be real insulating, the Inuit been onto this shit for years." There's a side window digging itself out of the fortress, now, and then Avi is climbing inside, poking his head out again but from Still Higher Up. Chonk's tiny nub of a tail is wagging hard at Echo's attention, though he has not otherwise moved. "Quentin'n'em over there doing full military formations or some jonx. And that boy got the TK so we need the walls. -- If Spence hear about this and enters the fray he got a habit of being a total rogue agent and the walls will not stop him but I got a plan for that, too, I got some food up in here, he easily distracted." "Snow's -- yeah," Echo defers to Avi's explanation, although probably this was slightly more convincing before she told him to put holes in the thing. "Quentin's over there? Never mind, I do not know how to pick my battles." She doesn't sound put out about this, though. "Need to get Nahida out here too so you can stick to throwing and surveillance," she's saying to Roscoe, looking critically at his bare fingers as she packs a few snowballs herself. "Oh no, why did that sound like this is a -- Defend Xavier's exercise or something." "Quentin?" Roscoe is repeating, too -- already he's craning his neck out for the enemy, squinting against so much sun glinting off snow -- "Jeez, he looks serious." Then, at a very slight delay, with a snicker, "Lol." He sifts the toe of his sneaker through the snow, trundling around in a vague and lackadaisical mosey, not really around the fort so much as in a little orbit around himself. "Who's defending this place with snowballs. If Xavier's needs defending, those creepy bugbots can pull their weight for once." Then, "-- there's food?" Now he is scanning methodically around the fort itself, then starting on a fairly direct collision course with one of its internal walls. "He real serious but I think we can get him. Once I spring my Spencer Trap we be mobile as hell too. Plus if it comes to it you can always just hide behind Chonk, he a tank all to himself." Avi is getting out his phone to text Nahida, though, at Echo's suggestion. "This is a defend our honor exercise. This snow ain't gonna last forever we gotta enjoy it while we can." There's a very slick slide starting to wind its way down the tower, and he climbs over the top of the structure, skidding down the slide to land in the snow. After this he's pointing towards the small nook of an ice-room just beneath the tower, little though Roscoe needs his help to find the insulated drink dispenser and box of snacks set up on an icy ledge. "If we manage to humble Quentin just a lil bit all the better. If not, still cocoa in it for all us." "When has he ever not been serious?" Echo looks from one of her friends to the other and lets out a small laugh that sounds almost relieved. "Right. Hiding behind Chonk is probably negative honor, though, so I'll do my best. I gotta have a recording of Quentin sounding commanding somewhere." She's settling down in the snow now, a small pile growing in front of her as a muted Quentin Clipshow the others can just hear if they strain starts to play next to her ear. "Come on, Quentin is hilarious," says Roscoe blithely, it's a good thing he's turned to direct this over his shoulder to Echo because he's walking into the snow wall immediately as he does -- "Ope." As he helps himself to the hot cocoa, before any glorious battle has even been waged, "Mm. Maybe we can lure all his footsoldiers over to our side, he does not have cocoa." -- and as if summoned, Spence is blipping into existence bundled in red and black with an armful of snowballs. "Sneak attack!" He cackles, but the hand he's just lifted to lob the first shot of this war goes slack when he sees Roscoe's drink. "Ooh you have cocoa?!" Whatever conclusion he was heading toward is promptly derailed by a snowball that zips in at highly improbable velocity and angle to bean him on the side of his head. "Treachery!" Spence cries, as if he were not just about to desert. The snowballs he's been carrying vanish from view, and he's dropping down beside Echo to pluck up another. "This means war!" | |
