Logs:Newmethean

Newmethean
Dramatis Personae B, Naomi, Shane
In Absentia Jax, Ryan	2023-08-11 "Did they -- help? With the -- um. Being a person."
Location <NYC> Freaktown - Riverdale
It's definitely August, today, sun blazing fierce and hot and plenty of people indoors seeking relief from the heat. Multiple of Freaktown's mansion-backyard swimming pools are bustling, though, although currently this particular one at the edge of their current acquired territory is largely quiet. A luxury 'natural' affair in a beautifully landscaped backyard, perhaps it's the plants floating on the surface or the slight greenish tinge to the water that keeps the mostly-cityfolk preferentially crowding the more familiar chlorine-heavy bright-blue pools in other yards. Currently, though, this one has a small blue shark half-submerged in the water at one side, settled onto one of the slabs of rock that provides seating. B is in silver-and-black swim trunks, no shirt, the long set of gills along her sides shifting regularly beneath the water. There's a trio of small beetles, metal and jewel-bright in their design, perched alongside the rocky lip of the pool; in front of B, a holographic computer display is hard to read from most angles with the way the sun reflects off the water and dances through the slightly glowing interface, but it doesn't seem to be giving her much trouble. Beside her is a large bowl of ceviche, very heavy on the fish and light on the peppers and tomatoes and onions, and a tall pitcher of lemonade with two glasses, although she is currently the only one in sight. Naomi is not cold-blooded, despite what the rumor mills (or, perhaps, the Oracle) might say, just Southern -- the heat has not bothered her in her exploration of Freaktown today, but maybe the chlorine has. She's making her way down from this mansion now, towards this pool above all others. She's in a green bikini set that exposes the full extent of her shoulder and back scales (including one patch in the center of a shoulder, the scales there slightly smaller than the ones surrounding it), a fruit-print sarong tied loose around her waist, a Jansport backpack that has definitely seen better days hanging tossed on one shoulder. Her locs are already wet, but not soaked, when she comes to the edge of the pool. Stares at it a little suspiciously. "'Xcuse me," she says, turning towards B, hesitant before her face lights up with recognition(?). "Oh, hi Mr. Shane!" She closes the small distance she had been keeping from Person with Holo-computer to drop her bag a little closer to B, peering at a particularly unreadable part of the display. "Whatcha working on?" "Oh! I'm not --" For just a moment B is casting her eyes across the surface of the pond in a brief helpless search, but relaxes at the concrete question. "Oh! Um, I'm trying to set up a -- sort of resource directory, for folks who are coming out of the labs, Pa is scrambling to make sure there's a kinda smooth option for people to get in touch if they need immediate help but we've been getting so many questions that don't actually need -- well, if there's a central place everyone can go to find things they're looking for most, that might take something off his plate. Unfortunately on the back end making sure bigots don't just troll us with endless -- sorry, I'm rambling. Um, did you want --" She's looking uncertainly at the glasses of lemonade, now. At the ceviche. At Naomi. Her brow scrunches, slow. There's no telltale fin to give him away and certainly no mood music, but beneath the water there's a blue ripple beelining B's way. Shane does not, at first, emerge when he reaches his sister, just tugs her down straight through the holo display and into the water before his head pops up beside where she'd been -- he's starting to reach for the ceviche but half-tumbles backwards when he notices Naomi, an undignified squawk accompanying the motion. "Oh shit sorry I didn't realize you were -- crap. Uh she's been working too much she was suppose to --" He breaks off halfway through this and decides that perhaps he does not need to give an explanation, instead just pulling himself up to sit a short distance away from Naomi on the other side of where B had just been. "You holding up?" "Ohhhhh." Naomi nods knowingly (thought the glance she is giving the ceviche is a bit less confident). "Like a Linktree --" Whatever Zoomer insight Naomi has on Linktrees devolves into a sudden eep when the shark she was talking to disappears into the water. She blinks at -- Shane? At B's refracted body in the water? Both of those. "--Oh," is a little less confident, "that was -- wait, you're Shane, now, right?" The ridge raising between her eyes is not quite the same as brows knitting together, but on scales it will have to do to convey her confusion. "I'm -- holding on, I think." She undoes the sarong and sits on the edge of the pool, dangling her legs into the water. "Are y'all, uh, holding, up?" B resurfaces shortly, decidedly not spluttering as many others might have been at such a sudden dunking. "I told you I only needed --" she starts, and then, as she starts to pull herself out of the water, glances to the display still unruffled right above its surface, eyes going wider when she looks at the time. "Oh, right," she says, and settles back down, one arm braced against the rock to keep her head up but most of the rest of her submerged. "Do you want lemonade?" B is asking now, maybe more confident that teenagers like lemonade than that teenagers like raw marinated fish. "Shane hasn't touched his yet he's been too busy with assault." She sounds remarkably blase about this, admittedly. "Are you... back at the school? Now?" "I've always been Shane," Shane agrees with a toothy-bright smile. "Except when I'm B. She's," he leans on this just a little heavier than he might have in another setting, in some other outfits, "my sister." He grimaces at B's question, and tips his head back. "Damn good reason to be out here. I mean," he adds, quick and a little apologetic, "I'm sure they're really trying, this time. At the school. But --" One of his shoulders hitches, clawed fingers flicking languidly between the three of them as if but does not need much elaboration. He does nudge the fuller of the lemonade glasses towards Naomi, after B offers it away. Naomi squints at B for a moment, then at Shane, then at the lemonade, as if it might know how to tell two identical sharkpeople apart. "It's nice to meet you, Miss," is a touch apologetic as she takes the lemonade. "Yeah, I mean -- I live there. So." She kicks out with one leg into the water, nodding at the flick of claw. "They got all these new kids while we was gone -- every single one of 'em bog as hell." There is deep annoyance leaning into her words. "I'on miss the food none but least there was monsters --" Naomi frowns, backs up, looking at Shane with wide eyes. "This time?" "Historically, they haven't exactly been like. Stalwart Promethean allies." B's smile is much thinner than Shane's, lips pressed closed tight. "... to say nothing of labrats who are monsters, too. At least here there's hella labrats, now." Though at that fact she sounds more rueful than grateful. She pulls herself a little higher up out of the water, claws extending longer so she can spear two cubes of fish on her forefinger. "But I mean, probably we should be grateful for the backup this time, it was --" This thought cuts off with a chomp of fish, pivots to: "I'm glad y'all got back safe. How much longer you got there? Xavier's, I mean." "Food's better here than --" Shane starts to say, but stops with a frown and a small sinking of his shoulders. He's quiet, picking more sedately at the fish as B speaks. "My pa and them," he allows carefully, "have not always seen eye to eye on how we've handled Prometheus. They did step up," he's been looking at Naomi but now looks down at the water. "This time. Anyway, it's not so far to here, at least. We are not gonna run short on monsters any time soon." "Oh." Naomi looks down into the water, too. In profile, the shift of scales on her forehead is in some ways easier to see -- they flatten out, her eyes widening with some small internal realization. "--Oh, that was -- that wasn't. Oh." She sips at her lemonade, bony shoulders pulling in just a little tighter. "Two years? My credits are a whole mess right now, I ain't sure if that's still true." She taps a fingernail on the edge of the glass. "...When y'all was at the school, did they -- help?" Her mouth scrunches hard to one side. "With the -- um. Being a person. After Prometheus." "Wasn't?" The thick ridge of B's brows lifts, just slightly. "Oh if your credits are a mess there are totally ways to --" Shane swats at his sister's shoulder with a light bap that, probably, sounds sharper than it is due to the water. "I'm not going to mess with the school's system," B grouses, a little sulkily. She perks up on the next question. "Oh, wow! They totally did not, one time this teacher even called Shane --" "My pa helped. A lot," Shane cuts in. "And -- other Prometheans. We needed a lot of help with being a person. I don't think most people even could know where to start, if they haven't been there, you know?" Naomi's wide eyes bounce back and forth between the twins, mouth opening -- closing -- opening! -- and closing in rapid succession as things she might have commented on get cut over or swatted out of the conversation. Her mouth has scrunched hard to the other side of her face, now. Her nod is slower this time, less agreement and more contemplative. "...Other Prometheans," she echoes, "like your labmates or like --" When Naomi gestures towards the twins, there is a pause before she turns her hand inward. "-- y'all who been out?" Her hand drops. "S'a lotta folks been in there longer'n us." "Like --" B hesitates, her alien expression hard to read, though her eyes have gone a little wider. "Well, nobody was out, before us, so." She shrugs a little uncertainly, here. "I was in Pa's lab, and Ryan's, and -- we were kind of the first, so I think -- figuring out what life after looked like was a little piecemeal at the time." Her brow is dipping again as she looks over to Naomi. "I'm not sure longer is really -- I mean, it makes things different, for sure. How much of a life you even have to come back to, how much of a life you lived before. But most people who aren't total jerks are not lining up to compare, like, how long we got vivisected, you know? Hell is hell." Shane is watching the water, for a moment, legs swinging slowly and eyes tracking the ripples that ensue. "Other Prometheans. Both. My labmates are their own thing but having community who knew what it was like in there -- who gave a shit without the weird fucking questions and awkward stares. Would've been even more of a mess without that." When he looks back up it's with a rapid double-blink, a small bob of his head. "I know people who were in the labs a fucking month and have worked like hell since then to make sure everyone else coming out has a home, and I know people who were in there years who could not give a single shit about other mutants. I think those of us who were there for a while and are here, now --" He spreads his hands, then drops them back to the water. "Get that you'll need people who get it. They need people who get it, too." Naomi is not reaching to scratch at a phantom scab on her shoulder as she listens -- she sets down the lemonade to grip hard at the lip of the pool, rolling her shoulders back. Her mouth unscrunches into just a regular frown, teeth pulling at the edge of her lower lip. "Mmm." Her head tilts from side to side. "I think I also meant -- what about the kids who don't got freak school or freak town to go home to? They need that too, and --" She glances at the holo-display, little it still reveals to her at this angle. "-- ionno. Y'all know that already." "Usually, we try to get contact info from everyone getting out of the labs so -- if people need that support, or community, or just to talk to someone once in a while who understands..." B's mouth thins again. "But usually it's been a one-lab-at-a-time deal and also those people are right in front of us. We're trying to figure out ways to get in touch with people just getting out now but..." Her hands turn up, now, a mirror of Shane's, and then fall again. "Gonna need kind of a team effort, I think." Shane's fingers are clenching down hard against the rock he's sitting on, breath caught for a moment as his gills flutter fast and erratic. "We know a lot of things. But we weren't in there with you, and a lot of the kids coming out, if we find them, when we find them -- they won't have had any mutant community, not before and not after. Unfortunately," his smile here is thinner than his usual, far less teeth showing, something pained in the slight creasing around his eyes, "I think plenty of you will have a lot to offer." "When you find them." The flicker of green glow in her eyes is gone in another blink (and was it so odd, really, probably snake people just have glowing eyes sometimes!) as Naomi uncurls her fingers from the poolside. "... y'all need more folks on the team?" The lift of her shoulder is too carefully casual, the look in her eyes when she looks from Shane to B earnest and almost pleading. "I ain't sure what's best to offer, but I got so much free time till September." B glances from Naomi to her brother, and then pulls herself back out of the water to sit beside Shane. She's flicking at her display with one hand, and spearing a piece of fish with the other. "I'll loop you in. We're going to be at this a while, I think, and when we find them -- we'll be real glad to have you on the team."