ArchivedLogs:Roomies

Roomies
Dramatis Personae Kelly, Shane
In Absentia	2013-11-24 Shane lets Kelly in on the secrets of the universe.
Location <XS> Shane and Kelly's Dorm - FL2
Kelly's impact to the room is nearly impossible to detect. His clothing folded neatly into the closet out of sight, his few school books stacked from largest to smallest on his desk, each book exactly centered on the one below it, and his bed perfectly made with a crisp military fold. Though as he opens his desk drawer, there are some oddities to be found. Most particularly the 9 different wallets stacked in it, and the collection of ketchup packets, salad cracker packs, salt, bundled napkins, plastic eating utensils. The sun had set outside long ago, but it wasn't close to lights out yet. Shrugging his shirt off, he lays it face down on the bed, spreading it out wide. His hands flitting over it to pick out some leaves and petals that he'd shed in it, and deposit them quickly in the trash. Bare chested, the full extent of his mutation is obvious and extensive. Patches of bark go all the way up his spine and spread out on his shoulders, a few smaller patches are on his flanks, but the right side is much larger than the left, covering almost his entire right ribs. On his chest the patches are smaller, but there are green shoots visible just under the skin spreading out from all of them, and at just the right angle, his skin looks less peachy, and just a little green. His flowers and leaves are mostly on his hair and shoulders, but several of them also bud on his arms, and a few on his chest and back. His vines continue to wiggle on their own around his arms, their thorny lengths each as thick around as an average thumb. He yanks his hands in a lighting quick motion over the shirt, obviously trained to the point of muscle memory, and the shirt that was on the bed now sits there again in a fold that would make a retail manager jealous. Shane hasn't actually been seen in his room, in a while. There's some evidence that he actually does live there, or did at one point -- there's a laptop on the desk, clothes neatly hung in the closet, but his bed has been crisply made for days and there's been no sign of mess or change that might indicate an actual student presence. The first announcement that he is returning to the room is music, some light and lively classical tune. Shane bumps the door open with his hip, violin tucked beneath his chin. He's dressed in jeans, short-sleeved button-down shirt, a pinstriped vest over top, and he doesn't stop his playing as he slips inside to close the door behind him with one bare foot and seat himself on his bed, eyes skipping over Kelly. "Hot." "C'mon man, don't make fun." Kelly says a little self-consciously as he covers his chest with his own arms and moves quickly to his closet to pull out another shirt. This one had yet to be prepared for him, though, so instead of putting it on, he just pushed it against his chest while he opened his drawer again to search for some scissors and a sewing kit. "But... one heck of a way to make a grand entrance, with your own theme music and stuff." "Make fun? The fuck am I making fun of?" Shane sounds genuinely puzzled at this, the music halting as he lowers his bow hand to his lap. "I was playing over in my dads' suite but then they were fucking and now they are done and /that's/ boring but I come here and woah, half-naked roommate. Worse things to come back to." This is all delivered in a casual-light tone, after which he puts bow back to strings. A little bit faster, now, decidedly less classical. "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". "Sorry, not used to... Gosh, if my parents were doin' it, I'd get the heck outta there, too." and then Kelly just shrugs it away and sits down on his bed, getting ready to make the alterations to the shirt. He opens the scissors and very carefully cuts the collar out of the shirt, and widens the opening on the top almost to the ends of the shoulders. The lively tune of the music picks him up. "Are you feelin' better, though? I hear the treatment is kinda intense." "Pfft you kidding my dads are hot as fuck, I left when they were /done/ then it was boring in there." It's hard to tell how serious Shane is about this, it's said with the same casual-flip tone he was using before. There's a few measures of silence -- or at least he doesn't /talk/, the violin does a good job of filling the room anyway. After a pause, though, he starts speaking over the music again. "Treatment's shitty but it's better than being a zombie, shit. Those things smell like crap. What aren't you used to?" "Most of the kids on the bases were like super fit." The pudgy mutant explains after a moment of shock disbelief at Shane's opinions of his dads. He lets an awkward laugh out, and then motioning to himself as the counter point to his statement. "I guess all that training and exercise equipment rubbed off on 'em or something. So... usually all I caught was flak for how I looked, and that was /before/ I needed to worry about needin' a sun lamp in my room." Which after mentioning THAT, Kelly blushes a bit. "Oh... I guess you didn't know about that, yet... they're... gonna install one in here. I promise not to turn it on too much, though." With the fabric cut away, he starts to fold over the edges of the shirt and re-hem it. This is a slow process and more than once he pricks his own fingers with the needle letting out an 'Ouch!' "Bases, what bases." Shane lowers his violin, holding out one bone-thin arm. "I'm not exactly /fit/ right now." He looks over Kelly again at the motioning, the hairless ridge of his brows raising. "-- 'sides, I /know/ a thing or two about getting flak for how you look. I dunno what you looked like before but you kind of /rock/ the plant thing." His wickedly sharp teeth bare in a fierce grin. "Man you should see my fucking /actual/ house, it is like floor to ceiling sunlamps. -- /slight/ exaggeration but only slight. My dad eats more sun than an entire fucking /forest/ of Kellys. Uh. Dude you know there's actual sewing machines around here right?" "No... I didn't know that. Kinda... used to doin' this by hand, cause my dad woulda freaked if I bought one of those." Kelly says, but he compliment gets another awkward laugh from him and he does relax some of his nervousness now. "Jax?" Kelly asks at first, knowing that was one of Shane's fathers, but not the other. "Or your other dad? But either way that has got to be one HECK of an electric bill. I'm pretty sure just one will be fine for me." He sucks on his thumb before he sets the shirt down for now. "Army bases, Bragg was the last one I was at. Grew up an army brat, so I've been all over the east coast south of Penn. Even spent six months over in Belgium, once, and a week in Hawaii. Where are you from?" "Out in the workshop," Shane informs him. "Bunches of sewing machines. For, uh, sewing shit. My last roommate, he's got like. Seven /million/ fucking tentacles -- I think a crapton of kids around here could do with knowing their way around a sewing machine really. I mean, shit, imagine trying to put on a shirt when you have hugeass fucking wings." Shane sets his violin aside on his desk and flops backwards onto his bed, now, legs dangling over its side. "Jax, yeah. He eats light like fucking crazy. My other dad isn't a mutant, he's just a cyborg." His legs swing, heels thudding absently against the side of his bed. "I dunno," he answers the question of where he's from, "a fucking cage. Never been out of the country, what's Belgium like." "It's really old." Kelly tries to explain, "But in a cool way? Like, they have restraunts there that were owned by the same family for like 600 years, no kiddin'. Like, longer than there has even /been/ a USA, this same family has been cookin' up food and serving drinks in this same stone building in Brussels." As he talks, his southern accent gets more and more thick, his eyes rolling up as he tried to remember the details. "I was like, 9 or something, so I guess I'm a little fuzzy on it, but I know the people were really nice, but also kinda drunk a lot, even kids our age drank beer. The US base there was outside this small town called Lian, Liag, or something like that, so that was mostly what I got to see, but we went to the cit- erm... bigger towns a couple of times. And the food was SUPER greasy, and really rich tasting. But there were KFCs there, which was good. And that's something to remember: If you want food that taste the same whever you travel, its KFC. They're like... crazy strict on the ingredients, where places like McDonalds or Pizza Hut change depending on what country you're in, or city... EVERY KFC taste the same." Getting a bit lost in his thoughts, he shook himself and turned back to his room mate. "How long have you and Jax and..." he lets that hang... "Your other dad been together?" Shane rolls over onto his side, propping his head up on a palm, elbow resting on the mattress as he looks over at Kelly. He's quiet, through this description, fingers tapping against his cheek. "Why the fuck would I want food to taste the same wherever I am?" He sounds eminently puzzled about this, too. "-- Pretty irrelevant, though, /I'm/ never travelling any-fucking-where overseas." His lips twitch, though this time his smile is thinner, wry. "-- Probably not you either anymore, dude, they don't let freaks like us on planes. Probably /all/ terrorists, you know." The last question pulls his smile wider again. "Uh. Shit. B met my pa /in/ the cages back, uh. Three years ago? Nearly four now I guess. But they didn't get me out till months later. Ba wasn't in the picture, then, my Pa was with a different --" His brow furrows for a moment. "-- Anyway he's been with Ba -- I guess most of this year. Feels like longer. Been a /long/ fucking year, though." "Hearin' bout things like the cages, it's a wonder that we all aren't." Kelly says half jokingly, "Its still kinda hard for me to believe that anyone would do that. But dang, half the kids here seem to be from them." With a deep breath, the boy rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. "But I guess I should have, I was brought up to think that muties were freaks, dangerous, not even close to human, and minions of Satan with demonic taint. I... didn't really buy into it... but that's just what you were /supposed/ to say down there. Dad hated 'Muties, Queers, and Foreigners.' And made sure everyone knew it. I think your dad would have given him a heart attack if they ever met." But there was a bit of a note of satisfaction in that possibility, a sly smile. "Nah, only about a quarter of us. There's not always a lot of place for us to /go/ when Pa breaks people out so the ones who are young enough tend to get dumped here." Shane's teeth bare again, and he huffs out an amused laugh. "/shit/, yo, what the fuck would he think about Daiki? Goddamn -- queer mutie foreigner. Everything all in /one/. Though that kinda asshole, I'm probably foreign /enough/ to count, my /parents/ were immigrants even if B and I were born here." "I think my pa'd give a /lot/ of parents a heart attack. His own included." Shane flops back onto the bed again, staring up at the ceiling. "-- Not sure your dad's all wrong, though. We're /not/ all that close to human." "Yeah, guess we aren't, are we?" Kelly said, holding up his own hand to look at it, as his vines wrapped around it, their thorns glittering as the caught the rooms light on their razor sharp tips. Hearing his dad called an asshole actually causes him to flinch a little, gut reflex defense causing a flash of anger that dies down soon after. "I only managed to get a 2/3 there, myself." He adds as he lets his hand fall. "Did they ever figure out what caused all this... stuff, though? I mean... if it turns out that a mutant started the zombies... they're going to hate us forever. I mean, it's going to justify everything they ever said about us." Shane's eyes track over to Kelly, too, a small shiver passing through him as he looks at the fines wrapped around Kelly's hand, at the glinting thorns. He draws in a slow breath, swallowing and turning his eyes back to the ceiling. "-- Know the guy who caused it, actually," he admits, sort of /offhand/ in his nonchalance here, "but he never would've done if they hadn't fucked up him and then tried to kill him first." Hearing that, Kelly sprang up on his side, turning to Shane with complete shock. "Jesus, seriously?!" he asked a bit more harshly than he meant to. "What... what happened?" The question coming out so quickly that he didn't have time to temper it down. "Gosh, I don't mean to... but dang, that's, I guess that might be something you gotta keep secret or something." "Yeah, I mean, shit, do /you/ want to be the one who leaks that to the press? I sure as fuck don't. It'd start a goddamn war /after/ this war is over." He still sounds sort of blase about all of this, just shrugging a shoulder in answer to the question. "Guy was in the labs. He didn't want any of this shit. S'mutation messes with pathogens. The shit they were doing with /him/, dude, trying to turn him into the world's most terrifying bioweapon." He turns one hand upwards. "Guess it fucking worked. Only then they came after him with guns and shit once he was /out/ and -- well, what happens to /your/ mutation when you're panicking and in danger of death? Nothing all that controlled, I'd guess, if you're like lots of other people. But imagine that if losing control means millions of people might die. And then think what /fucking idiots/ the military is to goddamn /shoot/ at him. -- You grew up around all that, does joining the military make you lose your goddamn mind? Or soul? Because fuck if the lot of them aren't just brainless fucking /psychopaths/ the second they have to deal with one of us." "Not all of 'em are... but... yeah a lot of 'em are." Kelly says after hearing the story. "God... just... god... did... did they kill him?" He sits back trying to make sense of the entire mess, trying to understand how that puzzle could fit together. "So, he was in the cages with you, then? An they did this to him? Oh man... please tell me that those places are shut down now, that your dad finished 'em off." "I wasn't with him. I think he was in his own goddamn -- isolation ward I don't even fucking know. Anyway he'd just got out and I've been out for years." Shane shrugs again, eyes turned back to the ceiling once more. "If he's not dead he probably wishes he was, after this shit. And no, they aren't shut down. I mean, the ones we came from are. But there's like a bajillion. It's the fucking government, dude. They're torturing us to death so the goddamn military can learn to kill people better. Those labs are going to be here a long-ass time." Kelly makes a fist with his right hand and slams it into his own bed, but by the time his fist lands on the bed, it's twice the size it normally was, bark covering his fingers to the point that they look like talons. The whole room shakes from the impact despite the cushioning the mattress provided. "Another reason I'm glad I'm /nothing/ like them." Kelly says, trying to breathe and calm himself down. "Anyway, didn't mean to bug you 'bout it... and... I'm kinda glad your dad's doin' something about it. Wish I could." "Jesus, dude." Shane turns his head to look over at Kelly, brows raised. "When this shit is over you should /definitely/ come to my fight club. Work out some of that -- whatever the hell that was." He folds his arms beneath his head, eyes closing. "And then. When you grow up from a sapling into a huge-ass fucking nightmare tree, maybe you can join them. Smash some cages open. Unleash more monsters into the world."