ArchivedLogs:Human Beans

Human Beans
Dramatis Personae Aloke, Kelly, Rasa, Sebastian, Shane
In Absentia	2013-11-20 '
Location <XS> Gymnasium - B1
For a mutant school, this is a pretty standard gym, even if its sturdy construction to handle mutant powers is less standard. Still, it is designed along normal lines; setup for a basketball court, standard equipment -- punching bags, rubber mats, standard assortment of balls, weight training equipment, the usual fare. It is large, and as well-appointed as the rest of Xavier's tends to be. Classes have ended for the day, but the various extracurricular activities around the school tend to continue on their own disparate schedules for several hours post-class-time. The gym is busy, with a volleyball practice going on down at one end; at another side the fencing strip has been set up, with fencers all in white trading attacks back and forth. Shane is not among these latter; instead he's just dressed as he has been all day, neat pinstriped pants and vest and button-down, still hanging kind of loose on his kind-of-skeletal frame. He has two backpacks beside him; one is heavily laden with books though the one closer to him sags somewhat emptily. He probably has homework to do; he /definitely/ has a detention to be serving, but instead he's glaring down at the screen of a Stark tablet in his hands, writing something -- though the current screen display is entirely in Vietnamese, so it's anyone's guess as to /what/. One of those figures-in-white is not at the moment engaged in SWORDING. Just getting /off/ the strip, Sebastian is easily identifiable among the group for his diminutive height and odd custom gloves. He meanders over to the bleachers towards his brother, pulling off his helmet and peering down at Shane's screen. "-- We kinda suck with you /and/ Dai /and/ Taylor all out," he laments. Aloke walks out from the teacher's locker room in white, loose fitting, martial arts style pants. He's also wearing a white Xavier's logo t-shirt, and is barefoot. Just outside the locker room is a push cart piled with at least a dozen foam yoga mats, which he pushes across the room, weaving around the various practice sessions until he's in the vicinity of the bleachers. He smiles at the boys, "Hey, long time, no see." Rasa enters from the men's locker room, adjusting a band across hir chest that peeks out from underneath hir tank top. Ze is wearing a pair of blue athletic shorts under this white tank, with bulky socks around hir ankles disappearing into sneakers on hir feet. Ze turns away from the volley ball game with a sigh and begins eyeing the space that the fencing team is taking up. Hir form is gaunt, less with abject starvation (though, ze is starting to look it), and more with conservation. Hir body is a little taller than normal and a standard shade of olive toned skin, but with green blushing at pulse points and shadows, instead of blood hued pinks and reds. Ze starts to turn away from the fencing team for free space, hands being pushed into fingerless punching gloves, when ze spies the twins and starts walking straight over. Hi. After a rather crazy night, a missed breakfast, and a light lunch, Kelly is on the lighter side of pale today, but there is also a light greening shade just behind his ears and around the edging of his face. He's only wearing a pair of gym shorts and a light tank top, which puts the bulk of his difference on stark display: large bark patches on his neck, back, chest, arms, thighs, legs, and feet with those ever wiggling vines coming out of his arms. Near those bark patches, flowers and leaves sprout out along the edges and cracks, quite a many in number at the moment, not to mention the collection growing in his hair at the moment. Right now he's play with a hand ball, bouncing it against one of the walls, smacking it, chasing it, and in general working up a sweat. He misses a bat at the ball and yells out: "Heads up!" as it starts to bounce over towards the group gathering. By the time it would make it to them it would be going rather slow, losing all of its energy in the initial bounces. Chasing after it a jog he says: "Hey guys! Mr. Suresh... that's a lot a pillows." "We live in a fucking boarding school with two hundred people in it, I see /every goddamn person/ here every single fucking day." Shane doesn't look up from his tablet, though he does tip it slightly towards Sebastian to allow his brother a better view. Notes, collated from the many accounts still tweeting the apocalypse -- at the moment he's gathering /traffic/ patterns, reports of convoy trucks passing through one neighborhood or another; with the deserted nearly traffic-less streets vehicles on the road actually catch notice, now. "Khh. Tell that to the fucking administration. Maybe if more of the team dies they'll have to let me back." "Nice flowers. Can you choose what kind you grow?" Now he /does/ look up from his screen, to look over Kelly with a hint of appreciation. His teeth bare, afterwards; this is probably a smile though in him it's sharp and made more vicious by his collection of too-many sharkteeth. "Ras. You're not dead." Sebastian's eyes scan over Shane's tablet curiously. "{-- Moving more medication?}" he hazards a pensive guess in Vietnamese. And in English once more: "Even if you can, tell him no. He'll try and get to to grow him pot." His gloved hand rubs wearily across his forehead, and he takes a seat on the bleachers a step below Shane. "Hi, sir," he greets Aloke quietly. "-- Hi, Rasa." His brow wrinkles in a deeper frown. "If you went to class and stopped skipping detention they'd also let you back." Aloke nods at Rasa when she comes over too. "Hey Rasa, it's good to see you." Aloke reaches out and palms the runaway ball, holding it out for Kelly when the boy jogs over. "Kelly! Hey. I've been looking for you. You're on my advisee roster. We should set up a time to meet." Aloke sighs at Shane's crassness and then nods at Sebastian. "He gives good advice, Kelly. I'm sure it's not much of a surprise that you shouldn't grow such things while you live here." He smiles and looks the little group over. "I've been hoping to get the yoga club going again," he says when Kelly's looking at the rolled up mats. "Anyone interested?" Rasa wanders up the stairs with determination, pausing only to note, "yes, not dead," before closing the gap between hirself and the twins, throwing hir arms around their clothed shoulders for a big hug, even if it is unbalanced by Sebastian's lower seat. "You guys aren't dead either. good. Stay that way." Ze squeezes for a moment, if not shoved away, before getting hir feet underneath hir and sitting back and giving them space. "Hey, Kelly. I'm s-" hir eyes close briefly, "I'm afraid I don't get much out of yoga, Mr. Suresh. Good luck." "I don't know, really, never tried. I do know I can't' stop the darn things from being pink though... " Kelly answers Shane with a shrug and a bit of an awkward grin. Taking Shane's advice and Aloke he also adds: "Sometimes plants get stuck on me, and stuff. But... totally not interested in seeing what happens when I merge with plants that mess with my head, just so ya know." But the sudden talk of pot and adult language around a teacher shrinks back his friendliness just a tad. He's happy to take the ball, as he gives Rasa a quick wave. "Ok, Mr. Suresh. That's not a bad kinda thing is it?" he asks, hopeful that it isn't. "I'd give Yoga a try, sir, but... just so long as no one laughs at me. Not exactly the kinda kid you usually see on those things." Shane oofs quietly, but it's kind of exaggerated; he wraps an arm back around Rasa's waist for a hug that is not quite as fiercely tight as his usual -- he may not be dead but his stick-thin frame suggests that that was a near thing. "I made a good attempt at being dead," he informs Rasa, and nudges a toe forward to POKE Sebastian in the neat white arm of his fencing suit, "but this motherfucker keeps insisting on feeding me so he ruined that plan." Kelly gets his sharp-toothed grin next. "What, and the rest of us are totally the kind of fucking kid you see doing -- " He waggles his webbed fingers towards his brother's modified fencing glove. "Any of this shit? We have a goddamn octopus on our fencing team and our star volleyball player," he waves towards the girls' team practicing down the way. "Is a horned spiked -- bone demon. You think anyone's gonna give a fuck you're a freak who does yoga?" He leans back against the risers, propping an elbow behind him, his posture as lazy-languid as his tone. "S'not a bad thing if you get a good advisor. They just. Pester you about how you're feeling and that you're getting proper coaching with your plant thing and that you're on track with classes. I think mine just gave up in despair, though." His fingers swipe against the tablet briefly, switching it over instead to a map of the city that he has appended small flags to wherever the trucks have been sighted. "{New shipments,}" he agrees with odd /cheer/, "{or they're just finally going to go ahead and start bombing whole neighborhoods.}" Sebastian's hug /is/ tight; he certainly doesn't seem like the apocalypse has been ill-treating him at all. "Not dead. Manhattan's /really/ horrifying, though." He settles back down, plucking the tablet out of Shane's hands to pull his gloves off and scan it himself. "-- Don't even joke about that." His tone is quieter, now, abruptly more serious with Shane's talk of attempting death. His lips press together, eyes fixing on the tablet. "{These neighborhoods got hit bad -- though I feel like if they were bombing they'd just send drones.}" He turns the tablet back over to Shane, glancing up at Kelly with a very tiny twitch of a closed-lipped smile. "The pink is nice. And um --" He considers the yoga mats uncertainly. "I -- guess I'll try it out, sir. But I can't if it overlaps with fencing practice." "Alright kids, I'll get out of your hair," Aloke says. "Yoga is open to everyone, and I'll try to make sure it doesn't overlap sports practice. It'd be great /after/ practice, actually. And Rasa, everyone can benefit from the meditative aspects, even if you're very flexible. It's a mental discipline, as much as physical." Aloke points over in the corner of the gym. "I'll be over there if you need me." He smiles and trundle the cart off. Rasa just eyes Shane when he jokes about dying, hir lips pressing firmly together, the green in hir skin growing darker, but only for a moment. Hir gaze shifts over to Bastian, studying his face as he speaks. "Are you back now, or are you going to zipping back and forth like your Pa?" Ze then turns to peer at the other two, the whites of hir eyes a little yellower than they were before. "I don't think growing weed is the same as consuming it, but I suppose that depends on how intermixed you become with the plant itself? Does it work like a graft, or does it merge?" Curiosity wins out over all politeness for a while, but when Aloke starts speaking to hir directly, ze stares back, blankly listening. Ze nods and gives a little wave before hir shoulders slump forward and ze rests hir torso against hir thighs. "I feel like I should tell him that I have enough on my plate right now, but whatever. Teachers don't seem to discuss their assignment pacing with each other, why would they talk about extracurriculars?" "Its kinda like I am the plant." Kelly explains. "I gotta, well, put some of me inside it when I do it, and I feel anything the plant feels and stuff. Like if you were to pluck a leaf off while I was attached, it hurts." Huffing a little bit, he nods to hir and settles down near the group... though not in hug range. "I saw the new room list... when they put us back in our normal rooms, that is. Looks like it's me and you, Shane, if you use your room at all, that is." The boy's cherubic face tries to be friendly, decidedly NOT talking about deads and almost deads. "Is that some sorta homework you two are working on, though?" "Of course I use my fucking room, dude, my computer and textbooks don't do so well in the lake." Despite all the cursing Shane's tone now that Aloke has departed is actually edging towards cheerful, profanity seeming dropped in out of habit rather than ill temper. "And I know. My last roommate sorta died. I guess it'd be payback if he tried to eat me, I've taken a /lot/ of chunks out of him over the years." He flips his tablet back to its screen of Vietnamese text. "Pfft fuck homework I haven't even been to class yet. -- Teachers," he agrees with Rasa, "don't tend to give a shit about much past their own noses. I /know/ you don't just get hit with a fucking oblivious stick the second you get hired because there's a /couple/ good ones but shit." His fingers scrub through his hair, and his hand falls back to the bench at his side. "-- If you're /becoming/ part of the plant I mean -- like feeling what it feels, would that even make you high? I gotta think actual pot /plants/ aren't much affected by -- themselves." "There's actually a limit to how much approximate time of nightly homework any class is /allowed/ to give us," Sebastian muses with a small furrow of his brow, "but I think they forget that that's supposed to be a maximum and not every single night -- so if /all/ your classes have two hours of homework each that's twelve hours of homework and you're kind of screwed." He leans back, tipping his head back against Shane's knee. "It's not homework, he's just tracking what's going on in the -- um. In New York." His expression fades more somber at the mention of Taylor. "... He'll be back." "Seriously," Rasa agrees, grumbling. "Then again, Suresh is kind of flighty, all things considered. Haven't actually had him for a class yet, but high schoolers don't seem to be his forte." Ze tunes hir attention back to the curiosity presented before. "Hmmm. I don't know about sensory information. That could be psionic rather than biological, which brings us back to the question of how much TCH would shift between the bushy growth and the rest of your person. Do you know if chlorofyll transfers?" Ze gives a little yawn and draws hir knees up toward hir chest. Now that things have gone all scientific, Kelly shrugs his shoulders on this one. "Never really... figured that out." He admits with a small defeated shake of his head. "Though I know something's sure transferring. My... green stuff goes in the plant when I merge with it." He doesn't call it 'blood' this time, but it's the same difference. "But... all I've figured out has just sorta been what's happened to me since I went off on my own." But the dead roommate thing hits Kelly right in the gut, and he drops his smile entirely. "That's... pretty bad way for you to get a new roomie. I'm s- err... I wish it were different." He decides to stick up for Aloke a little bit: "He doesn't seem so bad, I mean, he's great with Lia." "S'alright." Shane chomps his teeth demonstratively: Om, nom, nom. "They come back." He lifts his hand, fingers raking absently through the plasticky-hard spikes of Bastian's hair. "Lia's fucking /crazypants/," is his opinion, but it sounds more amused than anything else. "And ze said he was kind of flighty and /I/ said oblivious, I don't think either of us said he was goddamn Hitler. I'd still bone him. Just /Jesus/ sometimes he's really fucking -- presumptive." At the sides of his neck, his gills flutter; he clenches his jaw briefly together and drops his gaze downwards. "-- If a little of you goes in it does that mean eating your plants are also kind of like cannibalism?" "Are high schoolers anyone's forte?" Sebastian's smile is quick and small. He tips his head back, exhaling with quiet contentment at the scritching. "-- /I'm/ in high school and I don't feel like I know how to deal with high schoolers. And we're /all/ crazypants, I don't think you get out of those labs without being kind of /off/." His smile, though, drops away sharply at the mention of cannibalism, face paling and his gills fluttering as well. "You just want to make a literal human bean," Rasa remarks dry and amused. "Though, potentially, that could be a form of vegetable protein your system can handle." Ze draws in a deep breath. "Though, I didn't notice anything extra meaty about Jim's cherries." Hir hand reaches out and squeezes Sebastian's shoulder when he stops smiling. "Mr. Suresh is very nice." And that's all ze'll say. "Gosh, I hope not. It's still the same plant when I let go of it, after all, I just... made it do something different. So far I haven't grown any oranges or... cherries on my own." Kelly says, after Rasa mentions Jim and his fruit. "Anyway, I better hit the showers and head back up to try and grow something for tomorrow. Though, I'll be glad we can just get Pizza delivered or something." And with that he offers a wave to the other students and heads out. "Jim saves the meaty part of his cherries for Hive," Shane opines. His brow creases at the sudden quiet from Bastian, his hand tracing downwards to press fingertips lightly to his twin's fluttering gills. "We'll stick to venison and fish, mmkay?" His head tips back towards the fencing strip. "You're almost up again." "Oh my god." This comment comes both with some exasperation and /almost/ a return of Sebastian's smile. But instead he just thwaps his hand upwards to whap Shane in the chest. His gills press down flat again and he hops back to his feet, pulling back on his gloves. "Right, /eep/." He grabs his helmet off the bench, putting it on again quickly as he scurries back off to his team. Rasa draws in a deep breath and considers. "They are a rather strange couple, but who am I to judge." Ze backs up a little when Sebastian gets up to fence, eyeing Shane quietly before standing up as well. "I... may go try yoga on the ceiling. That'll help me focus and make Mr. Suresh quiet down about what more clubs I should join. See you later?" "Yoga on the ceiling. Sure. Fucking showoff." Shane just raises his eyebrows at this, and turns his attention back to his tablet.