Logs:Modern Solutions

Modern Solutions
Dramatis Personae Avi, Harm, Sera, Joshua	2024-04-29 "Um. What'd I miss?"
Location <XAV> Great Hall - Xs First Floor
The largest room at Xavier's, the Great Hall is designed to hold all of the mansion's residents and then some. Built for the mansion's bigger functions, it serves as the school's dining halls on ordinary days, and ballroom when needed. On school days, long trestle tables stretch across the hall, high-backed chairs with plush cushions offering seating for the students. It's still breakfast time, at once more sluggish and more wired than even the usual Monday-morning sleepiness. The horror and grief and intensity of the weekend has settled into a strange uncomfortable pall, slow-moving but punctuated by an unusual intensity in the conversations whispered between clusters of students. Avi is, as usual, at Prime Table Real Estate with a very motley rotating cast of kids, The Popular Kids and The Weirdos alike seeming equally likely to veer out of their way to come chat or check in or wolf down their oatmeal nearby him. Just now he's offering a dap to one of his basketball teammates as they hasten off to fit a quick shower in before classes; Avi himself is in a bold orange shirt together with his black jeans; on the table beside his mostly-empty breakfast tray is a large tub of disposable earplugs. A label on the front, bold and colorful, says: BRAIN ARMOR (free); someone has drawn a cartoon monkey with its hands over its ears beneath this. Avi has a pair in, already, and a tablet open beside him with its screen open to a large mostly blank document that still holds the hand-scrawled message from whoever was last to stop by and avail themselves: modern problems require modern solutions. Sera is looking like a classical tomboy who's kept up with the times in her own fashion: short-sleeve button-down in pastel multicolored plaid unbuttoned just enough to show the top of a white undershirt, medium blue overalls with all the extra pockets, and gleaming white-on-white sneakers. It's not unusual for her to roll up to breakfast late, though she has been eating more actual breakfast than usual once there. She coasts to a stop at Avi's table and arches one inquisitive eyebrow at the earplugs. "I gather there's more tea than what I sampled on the way." She slides the chair in front of her back and sinks down gracefully into it, propping one elbow on the table to lean in with an intense gleam in her intense green eyes. "Do spill, please. You know I'll simply waste away without it." Blink. There's no forewarning or sound effect, just Joshua -- kind of baggy around the eyes, kind of sluggish, but shaved and washed and dressed, regrettably, in paramedic uniform -- arriving to drop off an X-Kid (and in plenty of time for class, take that, ADHD.) He's giving a very long and very flat look to the tub on the table. Then to the kids at the table. Then to the tub again. He blows out one sharp puff of air and shakes his head as he glances over to his buddy. "Really appreciated you this weekend," he's saying. "Get some rest." Then, with a small upnod to the other kids, he's gone. Joshua's passenger is dressed in a white tang suit with no adornments except for plain white satin piping and frog buttons, and soft white shoes to match. The elegant ensemble is much finer in quality than most of Harm's clothing, but fits them perfectly, which makes their haggard expression, distant shadowed eyes, and beat-up black medic pack all the more obvious in contrast. When Joshua lifts his hand from their shoulder they turn, hesitate just a moment, then now -- much shallower than they usually do, with adults. "Same. Be safe." Only after he's gone do they turn to the gathered X-kids, and walks slowly over to slump into a chair across from Avi. "Hey," they say softly, and looks like they're about to say more but frowns down at the earplugs. Looks back up at Avi. "Um. What'd I miss?" "Girl you know I ain't one to let you starve, it's a mitzvah to feed the hungry." Avi has unplucked one of the earplugs when Sera sits down. He pauses here long enough to lift his chin kind of sympathetically to Joshua and Harm. With this particular new arrival he's sucking in a slow breath. Taking a concerned look at Harm and passing them what's left of his breakfast -- a small cup of fresh fruit salad -- before he continues, not quite as enthusiastic as he'd been just a moment before but calm and sure all the same. "Things got a lil rowdy when the news hit Saturday, you know? Folks real broke up. Lael real-real. Errybody loved that man but he and Lael was like, tight tight. Anyway he decided we gonna go talk to the Prof, get him off the fence and doing something. Naomi barge in still on her cynical y'all-crazy-why-you-even-bothering trip and command us to stop. Then when we tell her we for real and we going to talk to him, what she do? Order us to break the Professor door down. Shit, folks riled enough, we just lucky didn't nobody come to no other harm with that petty ass attack." Sera is sipping her (literal) tea while Avi fulfills his halachic duty. Her already intent eyes widen at the recounting of the second order, and her hand lifts as if to stifle the "Goodness!" that spills from her anyway. "I imagine that didn't much help your negotiations. I doubt the Professor cows easily, but even if he knew none of you were out for blood, the sight of Lael Winters breaking down a door must have given him some some pause. Or...did it help, in spite of her?" She reins in her visible interest and radiates gentle sympathy. "I am so sorry -- for your loss and the whole community's." Her eyes tick over Harm appraisingly. "And you must have known the medic, too -- Ms. Nievas? Naomi ought to have been supporting you, and her brother for that matter, not...whatever she was trying to do there." Harm accepts the fruit cup with a small dip of their head and immediately starts in on it, though their progress is slow. They do not seem surprised by Avi's story at all until "break the Professor door down". They fork stops mid bite, then lowers the chunk of pineapple speared on it back to the cup. "Did you really break his door down?" They sound...not quite incredulous, but certainly startled. "I guess you had to. She can't have -- I mean, her control can slip when she's -- not like that makes it okay, but..." They close their eyes, slow their breathing, and relaxes their death grip on the fork. "It just...kind of seems like the opposite of her whole stance on this. Which I didn't understand before and understand even less now." They take another breath, but not another bite. "Rachel was wonderful. I learned so much from her -- a lot of our younger medics did, she was a good mentor." They pause, pursing their lips. "She and Joshua were really close." "Oh yeah, joke's on her hater-ass," Avi says with a slightly proud hitch of brows, "cuz our "crazy" asses got some cool millions on the way to help alla them folks get on they feet." He is pretty somber with the continuation: "Ain't gonna make none of this right, but it sure won't hurt." His brows pull in, deep. "I'm real sorry, man. That's messed up. May her memory be a blessing cuz it sure sounds like her life already was." He's pausing after this, and continuing -- still pretty serious: "It wasn't no accident, Harm. I'm sorry, but it wasn't. She was mad we weren't listening to her, she was being mean, petty, and tryna get us in trouble. I know you gonna want to think it was a slip, but you can ask Lael if you want, he know his sister and he's took these." With this he's picking up the tub, shaking it meaningfully as he angles it across the table to the other two. Sera lapses back into a startled smile, and bright admiration ripples her aura of solace. "Oh, bravo! Very well-played, considering you were starting from somewhere far more likely to get punishment than results." She finally does start picking at her breakfast potatoes, swirling them through the ketchup though still following Avi's words with keen interest. "What was her stance, anyway? I'd vaguely assumed she was abstaining from the protest to focus on her mid-terms and study for the AP exams. But even cynicism doesn't cover actively trying to sabotage you." She turns one hand gracefully palm-up. "If she were right, you would simply have failed on your own merits." When Avi offers the tub, she reaches to pluck up one earplug, delicately, between her thumb and middle finger. "I suppose if Lael endorses this method it must be effective, but it would also impede non-mind control communication, no?" "Thank you." Harm's voice is still quiet, but their grief is growing less so, a deep ache that seems to twist tighter and tighter. "Sorry -- I believe you, I just don't understand..." Their shoulders hunch. "She's been so careful with her power, and she was still worried about going out with me..." They look down into their fruit cup. "I don't know what her stance was. She was against the sit-in, but in a conflicted way. She didn't explain and I should have asked, but -- things were getting so volatile in Freaktown and I thought, if I'm there when it pops off, maybe --" Their voice wavers. "Well. I was there. And Naomi was here. I would be less surprised if she'd freaked out when the news broke and ordered you all to -- rise up in Taylor's name, or go back to your rooms, or calm down and talk it over, but." They seem tempted to just stop there, but adds, in a smaller voice, "Not like this." They look at the earplugs, chewing on their lower lip. It's kind of reluctant when they finally venture, "Mrs. Dirie knows how to communicate without hearing." Avi is nodding to the tablet -- still cheerfully saying modern problems require modern solutions beside him. "Yeah! There plenty options, we got ways round that. More ways than we got 'round someone hijacking your body 'cuz'a you won't do what they want." He tips a few of the earplugs into his palm, giving a second to Sera and closing his hand around the two remaining in his palm. He bites down brief at his lip, and his voice has lowered just slightly with a softer concern when he says: "Even if you ain't think you need it right now? If she -- if you." He doesn't finish this thought, just uncurling his fingers to offer the earplugs to Harm. "Maybe just to keep in a back pocket. In case." "You were dealing with a lot." Sera harmonizes Harm's grief with her own, older and steadier if no less painful -- the trickle of comfort remains, though, uninsistent. "You still are, and in case you've any thought of adding to to it: you are not responsible for what Naomi did. Period." She accepts the second earplug, squishes both experimentally, then wiggles them into her ears, tipping her head this way and that as if to test her newfound lack of hearing. "Blissful silence," she declares, pulling the tablet over and writing in neat cursive below the existing message: whether you need them or not, we've got your back. Harm's brows furrow, their dark eyes tracking slowly between their friends. They look very much like they want to argue. But they don't. They do, however, take the earplugs Avi is offering -- very carefully, as though afraid they'll detonate if handled too roughly. Their eyes settle on the tablet, but they don't write on it. Their murmured "thank you" might be kind of hard to hear even without the earplugs they're slipping into one of the myriad zip pouches on their pack.