ArchivedLogs:Discomfort

Discomfort
Dramatis Personae Dynamite, Lyric, Sebastian
In Absentia	2014-01-04 '
Location <XS> Workshop
A large barn-like building situated at the far end of the gardens from the mansion proper, this makerspace functions as a classroom for many of the more hands-on classes. An expanse of workshop space, it is subdivided into smaller segments for the different types of activities: Woodshop, Welding shop, Machine shop, Electronics, Bike shop, Screen Printing and Photography, Fabric Arts, and the Rapid Prototyping Lab with a trio of 3D printers. The space comes complete with a large host of tools available for use, although many of the more dangerous require prior clearance from administration to use -- students with appropriate clearance to use them can gain access to locked equipment with their student IDs. From sanders to MIG/TIG welders to soldering stations to industrial sewing machines to its own darkroom, though, this space is well equipped for teaching students how to /make/. The sharktwins /had/ been largely absent for break, but with classes about to start back up, vacation time is over. For whatever tumultuous value of 'vacation' it had been, anyway. It's probably evident enough /why/ Sebastian has been keeping largely to himself since returning; even a complete ignorance of worldwide news cannot escape the rumor mill of a tiny boarding high school and Jackson's incarceration and terrorism allegations have been no secret. So, back at school but not quite back in the swing of /life/; the tiny blue sharkboy has sequestered himself off in the workshop. He's shed the brightly colourful ultra-feminine attire he favored before break; in place of skirts and heels and tights he is now dressed strikingly like his brother (largely owing to pilfering clothes from Shane's closet.) Pinstriped slacks, a maroon dress shirt with its sleeves rolled up above his elbows, currently. He's leaning up against a table in the electronics section of the workshop. On the table beside him is the body of /half/ a metal dragonfly, somewhere just upwards of half a food long, currently slightly gutted. He has a black Stark tablet-computer on the table in front of him and what looks like a large trackball mouse attached to the tablet; rather than mousing, though, this device is projecting into the air schematics for the /full/ dragonfly-bot. Sebastian manipulates the holographic imagery as though it were tangible, plucking out the holo-dragonfly's eyes and flicking them aside, his brow rumpled as he slumps an elbow down against the table. Lyric is colorful-femme enough to make up for Bastian today, soft yellow sweater, soft pink skirt, flowery-gauzy pink-and-green headscarf wrapped around her hair. Glittery baby-blue nailpolish, lavender Ugg-style boots, she is rocking pastels all the way down. She has a bundle of fabric in her arms as she enters the workshop -- and then stops. Staaaaares at Sebastian with a slowly growing frown, peering at him intently. Per/haps/ unable to determine which twin this is. Perhaps just wary. Dynamite meanwhile has a block of... metal. Just... Metal. It probably weighs half a ton, and when carried by the pint-sized berserker, it basically almost looks like it's carrying itself. Still, when it's sat upon a more reinforced workbench with some climbing and effort on the tiny woman's side, she actually sees Lyric first and signs a greeting,'Lyric. Hey!' Then she sees... Sebastian. And says,"I apologize for losing my temper earlier. Even if you were a doody-head." Bad at apologies, apparently. Sebastian's nose twitches before he bothers to look up. He pushes the holo-dragonfly to one side to minimize it, blowing up a window of a lot of lines of color-coded computer code to take its place. Only then does he peer around the glowing midair images to look towards Lyric, with his cheeks slowly darkening to a deeper blue. "... Hi." His huge black eyes shift away to the travelling block of metal, and his brows crumple. First in startled double-take but then in confusion. "I, what?" Lyric waves to Dynamite, cheerfully enough, but her steps are still slow and cautious as she enters further. Her weight shifts uneasily from one side to the other, arm curled tight to hold the bundle of fabric to her chest. She is obligated to set the fabric down on a bench though to sign a cautious query to Sebastian, a B-initialized SCIENCE that is his namesign. And then, still cautiously: 'You look good today.' But she's still not approaching any closer. 'Was not sure you would come back to school.' Dynamite clambers up on the desk, all twelve inches of her, and then onto the block of metal. Sure is shiny! She begins to move over it after kicking off her shoes, causing the metal to screech from time to time. She's... molding it like someone might do with clay, but with her tiny little fingers instead. "I'm apologizing for losing my temper when you called me stupid earlier today." To Lyric, she signs,'Do you want help with that? You know I sew, too? What are you making?' Sebastian's cheeks flush darker still. He looks back to the glowing display in front of him. "I didn't. Call you stupid," he says softly, though with a trace of apology. "What happened?" He hast to focus considerably when looking to Lyric, hairless brows knitting as he tries to parse the signing. "I wasn't sure, either." There's a tiny blink of motion across his eyes, clear inner eyelids sliding sideways shut while the outer blue ones stay open. "I didn't want to. It's hard at home. For my dad and my little brother." Lyric's eyes dart between the other two restlessly; she inches closer at the speaking, face screwing up in concentration as she tries to follow the spoken words. 'Stupid?' she manages to catch, then shaking her head and gesturing to Sebastian. 'No he's the nice clone.' She actually does sign clone, too, and not the more appropriate "twin". 'What are you making? I'm aking a skirt,' she tells Dynamite, 'but I might come back later.' Because she's slowly backing away from Sebastian again? With a cautious: '... my dad says your dad could be in jail forever.' Dynamite looks over at Lyric in confusion,'What do you mean clone? What's a clone?' Because seriously, she doesn't know her science. Or science-fiction for that matter, really. "I remember... I said one of the words you're not supposed to say, and you called me stupid. Then I broke my stool, and you complained about getting blamed for the mess. And I said I didn't care if you got blamed for it since you were so mean to me when we first met and I didn't have any reason to care. Which was wrong of me to say. Everyone has problems." She decides it is politest to continue the conversation in sign,'Why wouldn't you come back to school?' Pause. 'A skirt! Neat! What color? Are you doing it wild, or are you working from a pattern?' "/I'm/ a clone," Sebastian answers with a small wrinkle of his nose. "And I've never met you before. That was my brother. We're twins. He's," he says a little uncomfortably defensive, "having a really rough time. Apologies, if he was mean to you." At the sides of his neck, his gills flare outward, opening and closing in slow useless gasping at air they are incapable of processing. His jaw clenches a little tighter. "My dad won't be in jail forever," he tells Lyric, after a stint of silence. "Only until they execute him." 'Shane,' Lyric clarifies, on the subject of clones. 'His twin, Shane.' She spells the name first before adding /Shane's/ name-sign, also initialized, an S-handshape bowing a violin. 'He's funny. But more rude.' The question of Sebastian's father, though, makes her shift uncomfortably. She looks down at her boots and then up at Sebastian. 'Sorry,' she signs, but then, '... but he killed a LOT of people.' And a pause before she adds: 'Maybe. If he didn't they'll let him go, right?' Her discomfort doesn't abate, though; she scoops her fabric back into her arm with a shake of her head, using her free hand to sign: 'Later.' Dynamite is VERY insulated. To the degree that she has little idea what's going on. Until a couple of weeks ago, she wasn't even IN this country. "Jail? Execution? Why do I feel like I'm missing things?" She scratches at her nose in thought, metal sculpting forgotten. But at least she knows the difference between Bastion and Shane now. 'Where are you going? What's wrong? Stay and talk?' More mannerly than his brother by habit, Sebastian clamps his mouth shut tight at Dynamite's response, but he can't hide the sudden startled and utterly /dumbfounded/ look he gives her -- his taken-aback /expression/ says clearly enough that he thinks she must be an idiot, even if a swift moment later he catches himself with a blush, head shaking quickly and eyes fixing on the ground. "Um. It's -- they accused my dad," he says slowly and carefully, "of creating the disease that made the zombies. While trying to kill all humans." His eyes fix /steadily/ on his work as he says this, slowly returning to his code to start scrolling through it. "He didn't. Do that. But that's what they say." He doesn't try to stop Lyric from leaving. Just nods, numb and heavy. Signs 'sorry'. Stays fixed on his work. 'His dad made the zombies,' Lyric sets her cloth between her legs to answers -- /while/ Sebastian does; it's only a moment later that she also amends with a faint blush: 'Well he's accused of it. In jail now.' She curls the fabric back into her arm, shaking her head quickly. 'Will sew later. Bye!' She forces a quick small smile to Dynamite, gives Sebastian an uncomfortably wary look, and scurries off towards the door. Dynamite looks dumbfounded. Then again... she's not terribly bright, either. 'Bye'. She looks at Sebastian, looking a little confused,"If he didn't do it, then why is he in jail?" Like it's both utterly unthinkable Sebastian would be lying about his fathering being innocent, and unthinkable that the justice system would fail so hard. "How are we supposed to make them let him go, then?" Meanwhile, she's visibly trying to hide the expression of hurt on her face due to the look on Sebastian's. She's seen that look before. Sebastian's weight settles heavily against the table, head shifting straight through the holographic imagery to thunk down on the tabletop. His gills are fluttering slowly again, his head shaking. "He's in jail because the people who /did/ do it work for the government. And have been rounding up mutants and torturing us for a long time. And he fought back. And they don't like that. So executing him for a plague /they/ made means they don't go to jail for it, /and/ means he doesn't come mess up their project anymore by rescuing the mutants they kidnapped." His tone is quiet, and more than a little bitter. He draws in a shaky breath as he lifts his head and plunks down to sit on a stool. His head just shakes unhappily. "I don't know. Maybe they won't let him go." He follows this up with an uncomfortable, "{Sorry,}" -- the word is in Vietnamese but the /tone/ of apology transcends language barriers. "This is -- you're new and this is a lot of. Ugly. When probably all you wanted to do was --" He looks at the metal block uncertainly. "What /were/ you doing?" Dynamite points at the block of metal,"I'm making an aluminum sculpture. I wanna make something to commem... comenor... to memorate my arrival here. Life was bad before, and now it's very good." She moves to plop down on top of the block, then, little legs swinging,"Did you wanna go beat them up? Or break him out? Doing the right thing is important, and letting him get punished for something he didn't do isn't right. It's wrong." Said with the simple conviction of the truly not-bright. "Then we go beat up the bad people. That's how it works in all the stories." "Commemorate," Sebastian answers with the automatic habit of a teacher. Or in his case, a peer tutor. "I'm glad. That life is better, for you." His gills flutter faster at the question, and eventually he breathes out a sharp laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, I kind of do. But I don't think it would help him if I did. No matter how much I want to. Makes me a little sick, thinking of just. Leaving him there alone, he's. The nicest person I ever --" He blinks rapidly, shaking his head. Signs 'sorry' again. "I'd beat up everyone if it helped him. But I don't know how to help him." "We can't just break him out? I saw a treehouse. He can hide in the treehouse until his name is cleared! We'll give him cookies, and milk, on the regular. I saw the kitchen. There's enough to feed him forever." Pause. "Oh, oh! We can hire people, like in the show leverage, to get, like, blackmail stuff, or ask the president to pardon him! The American president does that stuff all the time, right?" Definitely not very up on her learning. Dynamite still chews on the word,"Co-mmem-o-rate. Commemorate. I'm... a little slow, maybe. Why can't we go get him? You said it won't help. Is it the lawyers? Does he not have enough money for a good one?" "Because breaking out of jail /is/ a crime. So even if he's cleared of the one, committing another isn't going to help him. He's got a lawyer, he's just gotta -- stay. Until there's a trial. And he can get cleared the legal way or --" Sebastian swallows, hard. "... or." But he just manages another swallow. He shakes his head quickly at the mention of -- Leverage and pardoning. "S'not that easy," he whispers. "I wish it were." "Wanna go hit things, really hard, then? And write your dad a letter? Then we can give him a letter, and you'll feel a little better 'cause you hit stuff. Tell you what. If he doesn't get cleared the legal way, then we'll do it the other way. Breaking out jail is a small thing after a death sentence, right? Can't get any worse. So the way I see it... We're win-win. We just gotta sit around, you know?" She's... so sure and chipper. Sebastian is quiet a stretch longer. His black eyes are glistening brighter than before, gills still slowly shifting with soft whispering noises against the stiff collar of his dress shirt. "Maybe," is all he'll finally allow himself to say. "I guess we'll see, right?" He attempts a smile, but it dies before fully resolving. He presses his palm hard against his eye. "I think I'm going to --" His voice is a little breathless, words coming in uneven start and stop. "-- finish fixing this." He gestures towards the metal dragonfly on the table. "But maybe some time later we can hit things." Dynamite gets THAT look. She taps the side of her nose,"Dreams come true! I always wanted to be pretty and strong, and then when I needed it most, it happened." Pause. "But if you want, I can leave you alone. I know dudes don't like to talk sometimes, and that's okay. Momma says we express ourselves in different ways." She hops off the bench, abandoning her block of aluminum for the moment,"Just come find me if you need to talk to a complete stranger okay? I'm Dyna. My room's the one with the smaller doorknob at the bottom." Sebastian flinches, with a small bow of his head when Dynamite says dudes don't like to talk sometimes; the bright tears that had been glistening in his eyes spill out down his cheeks, though he seems determined to pretend this is not happening. "Yeah," he says softly, "I guess maybe we do." He gives Dyna a smile and actually manages to hold it, this time. "Thanks. Dyna. I'm Bastian. You can tell I'm not Shane because he's the cursey one." "Nice to meet you Bastian. Sorry I couldn't tell the difference between you and your brother." She stops at the door,"There's a box of tissues under the woodworking bench. I saw them while I was on the ground. Just in case you need to... clean up or something." Not going to call him on nearly crying. Nope! Dyna waves a little, and then closes the door behind her. Where she'll wait a few minutes to warn off anyone trying to come in. Not bright... but not totally unperceptive either.