ArchivedLogs:Hate-Bait

Hate-Bait
Dramatis Personae Megan, Kisha, Sophie, Kris	2013-05-08 Team GIRL POWER assembles to discuss Operation Student Hunt, Kisha is kind of a buzzkill. Megan and Kris bring refreshments!
Location <XS> Kisha and Sophie's Dorm
It's mid-morning when a subtle knock comes at the door. The particularly sharp-nosed might notice that te knock is accompanied by the scent of fresh-baked cupcakes, drifting in through the door. Outside, Megan is in a black tee and bluejeans, barefooted and standing eagerly with a tray of fresh cupcakes in a plastic bin. The pink-haired fairy-girl is all smiles while she waits for her knock to be answered. "There's someone at the door," Kisha informs helpfully, hard at work on yet another project. This time she's assembling some kind of headset which looks like a low budget Google glass. "And..." She sniffs the air. "It's probably not for me." How she can smell the cupcakes over the faint chemical aroma of her desk is one of the schools minor mysteries. "If it's a boy and you intend to.... do stuff... you'll have to find somewhere else to do it." Sophie is-- sitting upright in her bed, working on knitting something small and blue. So focused, is she, that she does not hear the knock! But Kisha's response to it is enough to distract her from her work. "What-- No!" She blushes practically /audibly/ and sets yarn and needles aside, stammering a little. "It's just-- I don't-- I don't know who it is!!" She can't smell the cupcakes, after all. Today, Sophie is dressed in a black t-shirt with a butterfly on the front, sparkly black skirt and galaxy-print leggings. And she opens the door for-- Megan. "Oh-- oh, hey. Uh. Megan, right?" "Hi!" Megan says as the door is opened. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything, I just um," she glances past Sophie to get a quick look at the room, then says, "Well, I wanted to apologise for last night," she offers the bin of cupcakes as evidence of the depth and sincerity of her apology. "And to see how you're doing." Kisha tilts her head. "It's a girl. I stand corrected.... Still, my initial comment RE stuff still stands." she says with a shrug. "It's hard to make cool gadgets when people are getting busy in the same room." Her own outfit is considerably more understated, black pants and a black t-shirt with the Black Mesa logo on the front. Sophie blushes bright red, shaking her head. "N--No, it's okay, honestly." She does accept the cupcakes, though, because y'know. Free cupcakes. "I just kinda-- I mean, Professor Wagner kind of surprised me, you know? If it wasn't for that I probably would have been fine but it was just kinda.. bad timing." Stepping aside, she looks over to Kisha. "Kisha, this is Megan, she uh--" It might not occur to her just what it sounds like happened yesterday. OH WELL. "She's just a /friend/ and is it okay if she comes in or are you too busy for company?" "I brought cupcakes!" Megan suggests to Kisha with a smile. "And I promise not to do 'get busy' with Sophie in the room." The 'or anywhere else, for that matter' goes unstated; maybe it doesn't need to be stated. "I just came to the school yesterday, and I still haven't met everyone, yet, but this is now the /second/ batch of cupcakes I made, and they're just for your room. The other batch went surprisingly fast." Kisha glances some more between Megan, Sophie and her work. "I don't mind if you have people round for a social gathering," she concedes. "I hope you won't take offense if I don't partake in the cupcakes? I am trying to avoid sweet foods as they are bad for you. I think it might be sugar which makes Peter so.... himself. So I'm sticking to healthy things like espresso and pizza." "They were cupcakes and we are highschool students," Sophie points out, re: fast disappearances. And she gives Kisha a ... weird look, but nods. "Okayyy then." She steps out of the way so that Megan can stroll in, and opens up cupcake container to take one for herself, and offer one to Megan. She made them, after all. "There's a lot of people to meet and it's easy to get to wrapped up in stuff to meet people, I think." Sitting at the edge of her bed, she idly throws a pillow on top of the thing she was knitting before, and gestures to her desk chair for Megan to sit there /should she choose/. "I don't think sugar makes you hyper, I think Peter is just... Peter." "Also, there's sugar in espresso," Megan adds with a smile. She claims one of the chocolate-strawberry cupcakes, then does the same of the offered seat, curling her legs beneath her. "I guess your body made it back to your room alright. What is it you do, anyways? You seemed to split in two or ... something. It was neat." Kisha tuts. "Not the way I make it," she assures. "You just keep adding coffee until it turns into a thick mass of caffeine. Tends to be a little gritty, but you get used to that after a while." Her attention returns to her device in progress. "Yes well I don't want to take that risk. He /has/ gone missing twice since I came here, which works out at around a disappearance every two and a half months." Sophie rubs the back of her head, grinning awkwardly and blushing a little. "It's uh... Kisha called it astral projecting, I haven't been able to come up with anything better. My body sort of goes mostly unconscious but I can send an image of myself out. I was thinking it might help with looking for Peter but it's kind of low-range and oh yeah KISHA." She looks apologetic, at least, for the interrupting, but that doesn't stop her from ... interrupting. "Kisha we think Peter's missing for /real/, he isn't answering texts or anything and I guess there's some twins who are missing too? I don't know them, but anyway a bunch of us were talking about going to the city in groups to look for them but we /can't tell the teachers/ or we'll probably get grounded like Peter's roommate did." "I'm still not sure I agree with not telling the teachers," Megan says with a sigh, "but I guess it doesn't really matter. All we're really doing is going into the city to look around like tourists in groups. Which .. isn't hard for me! I am still a tourist!" Her wings flutter just faintly behind her, shimmering a vaguely dimmer hue than when she entered. "Who came up with this plan?" Kisha wonders idly. "Because it has several flaws which I can think of... If you mean the twins as in /The twins/. Then going in a group will not help you. Two enhanced strength, extremely tough sharkmen going missing at the same time? This implies either a single very powerful individual /or/ a large group who know how to work together. We don't even know if the cause is the same in each case, which might mean two significant threats are out there." Killjoy powers activate! "I struggle to think of any students who /haven't/ gone missing that could handle themselves in even a traditional mugging." "I. Um." Welp, now Sophie feels totally put on the spot. "Well uh.. it was kind of a group thing but Rasa was sort of running the meeting. And Faelan and uh.. Kris and Ivan and I think Megan just kind of showed up accidentally. And another boy showed up later. But we all figured that if nothing else, if Peter's not answering his phone then he's gotta be in trouble... I really, um, don't know anything about the twins. But Rasa said something about there being fires at places where Peter liked to hang out... I mean, the plan was to run if anything bad happens. Even though we are in a group. The group was just sorta.. to make sure if something bad happens then at least one of us can hit the panic button." She lets out a slow sigh, flumping back on her ... back. "If we tell the teachers they'll probably lock down the school or something. But the more people looking the better, and sometimes people will say things in front of kids they wouldn't in front of adults because they think we don't get it." "Besides!" Megan says, smiling at Kisha broadly, "I'm sure there's nothing really big wrong. He probably just got lost, or something, and his cell phone is dead. I mean, how much would it suck if he took a train to DC, and lost his wallet, and his phone was dead? No money for the train back, and no way to call ..." she trails off, then says, "Well, see? I mean, it doesn't /have/ to be that any of them got kidnapped. There is probably a perfectly normal reason why they're missing." Kisha shakes her head with dismay. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm going to ignore the 'everything is fine' option because it is horrifically implausable. Three people don't all lose contact at the same time like that." She puts down her project and shifts around in her chair. "Faelan is a liability in any kind of crisis. I don't actually know who Kris is... But honestly this sounds like a terrible idea and the staff aren't entirely stupid. You would get at most two trips before they catch on and ground everyone, which isn't enough to make a significant contribution to the search...." She smiles. "Unless of course you knew how to cheat." Sophie rolls onto her side, digging around for a loose ball of yarn. Rolling onto her back again, she proceeds to idly toss it up in the air, catch, and toss again. "Faelan's sweet, but he is kind of... jumpy." Toss. Toss. "You're being kind of a buzzkill, you know. Everyone's worried and we just... it's super lame just sitting around doing nothing about it, you know?" She catches the ball one last time, rolling on to her side to face Kisha's way. "What do you mean cheat?" KNOCKNOCKNOCK* That is the sound of a Kris knocking on a room-door. She saw (and smelled some cupcake). And now she's a wantin' herself some more. But it's rude to just show up and ask for cupcakes! So she made smoothies! Mango-smoothies with fruit-bits in them! Like, five of them (because she didn't know how many to make). Kris has picked up from Megan's behavior, in fact, that people like you more if you bring tasty food to them without them having to ask! Friend-bribery is obviously an important skill and she wants in on it! Both the bribing AND the being bribed with baked goods. Megan finishes her cupcake and sets the little wrapper aside. "I think it's /more/ unlikely that people got /kidnapped/. Kidnappings don't just happen all that often! Three at once? Maybe they went to the city together, only one brought a phone, and they're all out of money. that's a far more reasonable explanation than /kidnapping/. I mean, it's just silly to assume the worst. But even if it is the worst, well, it's not going to hurt anything for us to just go out in groups and look around." Kisha fixes Megan with an indulgant smile. "They all have family in the city, so by now they could have /walked/ home," she points out. "Cheat yes... Missing Peter? Well, now there's an app for that. His latest webshooters have a tracking chip in. So by using the app and getting the best search radius for your time by following a systematic search pattern based off bus routes a small group could cover a remarkably large area before the teachers realise they're upto no good." Her eyes flick between Sophie, the door and then back to Sophie. "I swear no-one ever knocked on the door when it was just me. So logically it /must/ be for you again." Sophie raises her hands defensively. "I have no idea! This doesn't usually happen!" And, to the door, "It's open!" Of course she isn't aware of the load Kris is carrying, but. That'll sort itself out. That said, this mention of /apps/ and /tracking/ definitely has Sophie's attention. "Oh, oh /jeez/ that is /cool/ does-- does Peter know you're tracking him? That's a little weird if he DOESN'T but you should tell Rasa! I mean. We should let the others know and maybe then we don't have to go running around not knowing what to do, y'know?" "App?" Megan asks. Because someone doesn't have an iPhone. She flutters off the chair, wings carrying her across the room effortlessly to open the door, if Sophie and Kisha aren't interested in doing so. And on the other side, "Smoothies! Hi, Kris, I made more cupcakes. Want some?" Kris holds up her tray as Megan snatches open the door and holds up her tray full of drinks,"I saw and smelled the cupcakes, and since you've been SOOOO nice making them all for us, I thought I'd bring smoothies... They're mango and berry!" She holds them up, and then looks past megan speculatively at the cupcakes,"I'd love some!" Her evil plot comes to 'fruition'! Kisha siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighs. "App. For a smartphone. He /asked/ for something like that including," she explains. "It's fairly short range because it was designed to help him locate them if they went missing. I'm also /not/ tracking him... I simply have the capacity to track his webshooter guns if I really wanted." She leans over and peers at the stranger. "Can't you tell Rasa? I don't really want to get too involved in the actual /searching/ part. It seems far too risky and I'm awefully busy." Sophie sits up at mention of smoothies, setting her yarn ball aside. "Oh, uh, thanks!" This has proven to be an unexpectedly delicious morning. Sipping thoughtfully, she finally nods. "I can tell Rasa, yeah. Um. I mean, is it an app that you can put on other peoples' phones? Mine's an Android but there probably isn't a thing in the Play store called 'Find Peter's Webshooters' and I don't really know how to get apps that /aren't/ in the store.." She's babbling, a little, and recognizing that, silences herself with sweet, sweet mango. Megan happily accepts a smoothie, and motions for Kirs to claim the chair by the bucket of cupcakes. The fairy-girl instead claims a seat on the floor, curling her legs up beneath her as she settles down lightly. For now, she just listens, because this has just reached 'over her small-town welshwoman head' status. Kris STARES at the cupcakes, then sets the smoothies down, snatching one for herself after showing them off, AND THEN plops down in the chair by the cupcake bucket. More staring commences. MUST SELECT OPTIMUM CUPCAKE. She finally snatches a frosty-looking one for herself and begins eating it. When she's about halfway through it, she asks,"Still talking about looking for Peter? I know the theater teacher is looking for him too. Looked very organized. Had a file with his name on it. And someone named Murphy Law, too." She continues to chew and consume baked goods for a second or two longer, then rises again to offer her hand to Kisha,"Kris, by the way. I'm down the hall with Kira." Kisha glances down at the offered hand, then at her own. They are mostly oil free, so after a quick wipe on her t-shirt she shakes. "Kisha, I am erm... here. Theater teacher? That is strange, I am not sure I like the idea of teachers having secret files about students." She waves her hand at her side of the room. "Probably best not to touch anything over in my half, most of it is dirty or potentially dangerous.... As for getting the app installed I guess I should just post up a link and email /everyone/. Then write a little FAQ or something. Not that it'll help if he's lost in the sewers again!" "Teachers always have weird files on the students, didn't you see Ferris Bueller?" Siip. Sophie drinks slowly, as to avoid crippling brainfreeze, but is clearly too entranced by the drink to ease up on it very much. If at all. "Email's probably a good idea, also. I just.. I know it kind of sounds like a dumb idea for us to all go looking when we don't know where to start, but like I said... it's stupid sitting around, too, and... I'm just sort of afraid maybe he got in trouble for being a mutant. 'Cause I haven't heard anything about... any /not/-mutant people getting kidnapped all over the place. And.. if that's what it is, then that's not cool." Long, dramatic sip. "Except now we have a place to start," Megan points out to Sophie, optimistic. "I don't have a smartphone, but I'm sure someone does, and we can use that to find him, so ... problem solved! At least as long as the batteries didn't runout in his webshooter things." Kris shrugs at Kisha,"He didn't make any effort to hide or conceal it, so I assume it was not a secret file. For all I know, it could be Peter's permanent record." She looks over Kisha's side of the room out of curiosity, then wisely decides not to fuss around it. Anyway, she's got cupcakes to keep her amused. Omnomnomnom. "Sometimes starting in the wrong place, however, can be worse than not knowing where to start. Once you have determined a place is THE right place to start, you tend to stop working any other angle that doesn't involve that start." She closes her eyes, and sips her smoothie in a thoughtful manner. Kisha smiles. "I fully admit it could be make-busy work," she concedes. "Because there is no way to ensure he has them on him anymore, by now they could by just about anywhere in the world." She drums her fingers on her desk. "Ferris what? Actually, it's not really important right now. I should snag one of the school computers and draft an official missive on the subject. Get everyone the app who might want it as soon as possible so the interuptions will cease. It was nice meeting you both, I'm sure I'll see you around the school in the future." Once Sophie finishes up her smoothie, she leaans over to set the cup on her desk, and lies back down on her bed. Blorf; too much sweet. But so good. "That's probably a good plan, Kish'. And um. I think Rasa was going to go to the city today, but I think I might wait until this weekend... I haven't been down there before and I guess it takes a while to get there, and since I don't know my way around I'd rather have more time to figure it out than get there and totally blow a day by not knowing what I'm doing." She picks up her ball of yarn and goes back to tossing it in the air and catching it. Like kitty. "And then we can watch Ferris Bueller after everything's back to normal." "I'm still not sure how I'd even go to the city," Pixie admits with a grin. "I mean, I know how to get there and all, but my Gran said I probably shouldn't let everyone and their mum see my wings, or my ears." She shrugs. "I don't really see what's to be ashamed about, I think I look /awesome/, and who /wouldn't/ want to fly around like a life-sized Tinkerbell? But apparently I need to be careful, so ..." she trails off, then spreads her hands. "Anyways! I have been cooped up inside this mansion entirely too long." All of a day? "I'm going to go put some shoes on and head out to explore the grounds. I'll catch you girls later, okay? Enjoy the cupcakes!" Kris decides to stop staring at cupcakes because, well... Kisha's roommate is playing with yarn like a cat. A CAT. This earns a few minutes of sipping her smoothie, followed by a wave as Kisha decides to depart,"Oh, well, it was a pleasure to meet you..." The girl rises, unsure of whether she's supposed to leave now,"Don't work too hard... what you are doing sounds like a lot of work, even if it is very important. We can't have you tiring yourself out totally before it's all said and done." When noone else actually leaves, though, she sits herself back down,"Ferris Beuller?" Another headcase. Meanwhile, Kris continues to eat and drink like she's TRYING to put on weight. Then Megan is about to leave, and she suddenly pipes up with,I have an idea. Why not throw glitter on your face and carry a wand! Then everyone will think you're just a slightly weird girl in costume. And thanks again!" With the room emptying out, she asks Sophie,"Need me to clear out?" Sophie catch yarn, hold close, look to Megan. "Yeah, like... I mean no offense but it might not be a good idea for you to go running around. People can be total /assholes/ to people who look different and it would be super awful if you got hurt too, y'know?" Although Kris's idea has merit! "Oh but-- that might work? Maybe? We'll figure something out." She gives Megan a little wave as she heads out, and turns to Kris. "Ahhhh. Actually yeah I have some homework I need to work on, but-- we should totally hang out later or-- sometime! We can go to the city maybe if we can get a third, yeah?" Megan raises her hand. "Thirdsies. If we can find a way to make me not look like hate-bait." She winks at them both, flutters back to her feet, then waves. "See ya!" Then she skips--yes skips--into the air, flutters to the door, and heads on her way. Kris stands up... and snatches a couple of cupcakes, then heads for the door,"Enjoy the rest of the smoothies. I'll be by to later to pick up the used dishes? If you need me to take any trash down when I do, have it waiting by the door?" And then she's skipping for the door... but not into the hair,"Look forward to New York!"