Logs:Of Aliens and Alleys (Or, Mutant Jailbird Slumber Party)

Of Aliens and Alleys (Or, Mutant Jailbird Slumber Party)
Dramatis Personae Astrid, Kavalam, Kelawini, Naomi
In Absentia	2020-12-07 "Last time y’all gone on a trip, nobody noticed until we kidnapped Xavier."
Location Across the Rift - Jailbird Refuge and Slumber Party/Bowling Alley - Somewhere in New York
At some point the otherdimensional weirdness should start getting less surreal, right? You would think. And yet as they move from the tedious (bland camp food or bland jail food) to the macabre (jailhouse full of corpses) to the -- -- what the hell is this? Perhaps someone has an explanation, but Kavalam doesn't, really. He's perched on the lip of a ball dispenser, absently fingering a black and gold swirled bowling ball and staring a litttttle vacantly around the crowded bowling alley, displaced teenagers sharing microwave dinners with hardened terrorists and the-wrong-versions of X-Men in this weird 50s throwback environment. His hair is rumpled, his glasses askew, someone is probably tending to the latest cartload of supplies he's brought back from town but it definitely is not him. His fingers drum against the ball, a slow meaningless rhythm. Kelawini is busily devouring her meal, not-quite-sitting on the edge of the table but just sort of leaning against it as if she might see fit to take off at any moment. Her eyes are also scanning the bowling alley, her gaze darting anxiously from one group to the next. She's still wearing prison pants, but someone has found her a shapeless blue sweater to wear over top so that she has generally stopped shivering, at least. Polishing off the last of it--lasagna, or whatever it was?--she looks over at Kavalam. "Your throw now, or--?" She looks back at the score cards they're only nominally keeping track on, shrugging. Clunk. The bowling ball that leaves Naomi’s hand is more thrown than rolled, landing loudly on the lane’s surface before meandering its way directly into the gutter. Naomi is stripped down to the fewest layers she has been in a while - just a teal long sleeve wicking shirt and her black long underwear (what? they’re basically leggings), grey wool socks starting to sag around her ankles. She turns to the ball dispenser, waiting for her black and green ball to come back around. “His turn now, I think,” she answers Kelawini, her voice not robotic but determinedly neutral, like the rest of her expression. Astrid is also looking around the crowded bowling alley, though far more nervously than the others as her eyes dart from group to group, searching for any empty space nearby just in case something within her goes awry. She sits across the top of the middle chair in a row of three flanking the ball return, feet firmly planted on the seat. The prison issue sea of beige is still being worn - pants with matching sweatshirt. At least they are relatively clean. The clunk of the bowling ball hitting the lane pulls her attention back to the game at hand. "You know," Kavalam is getting up slowly. He cradles his ball close to his chest like it's a prize as he ventures near the lane. "I always thought bowling looked so normal. When is the last time any of your bowled?" He stares intently down the lane. Places his fingers so very carefully into the holes. Swings his arm once gently, once again more firmly, tongue poking out the side of his mouth as he squints hard and releases it to roll straight into the gutter. His sigh is heavy. "Is there a bowling alley in Salem? We should have a team. We will do, I think, about as well as all the other school sports." "Chee, not since before we come to school. Last winter?" Kelawini makes no immediate reply to the other question, though. She disposes of her flimsy tray and plastic fork in the trash and makes for the ball return with a sort of incongruous aggression. Plucks up a ball and chucks it down the lane--her form isn't awful, but she's put far too much force into it. At least it does get farther than those of her schoolmates before weaving its way into the gutter. She narrows her eyes at the ball, then raises her eyebrows slightly at Kavalam. "This? I think this is worse than the other sports." “It’s been years for me.” Astrid confirms while using both hands to fiddle with her glasses in a failed attempt to straighten them. New frames are definitely in order given everything they have been through in the past couple weeks. “A bowling team sounds nice and…” she pauses, taking a quick assessment of all those strange and recently freed mutants from the same prison she was just in near them. “...mundane.” Getting up, she takes a quick step down onto the floor and quickly ditches both prison issue slip-on vans in favor of the low friction just socks provide on the wood floors. Making her way towards the ball return, she grabs the nearest ball and holds it against her chest, waiting for the lane to become clear. Kavalam scoots off the floor, moving to plop down next to Kelawini and neatly mark down his score of nothing, for all the good it does on the haphazardly kept scoresheet. "Mundane is what we think now, but with our luck the Salem Center Bowling Lanes will probably be run by aliens." His brows scrunch suddenly. "Are there aliens? Do we think there are aliens? Suddenly that sounds less ludicrous than it would have last month." Kelawini's eyes follow Kavalam kind of automatically. "Inokea if we any good," she tells him with--perhaps more intensity than seems necessary for the topic, "you want fo start a bowling team, I'll join." Her laughter comes sudden and seems to surprise even her. She blushes. "Sure--why no aliens? Maybe we are part alien. Explains all of..." Her hand waves at--the entire bowling alley. "All this." Naomi throws another loud gutter ball, grimacing as it hits the lane. “Oh, there gotta be aliens. Bet they’re blue. Or -“ she scratches at the edges of her scales, “- they’re birds. Never trusted seagulls.” Her tone is still much more neutral than is normal for her- it’s hard to tell if she’s joking. She steps out of Astrid’s way quickly, moving to the table and gesturing for Kavalam to pass the score sheet. Making her way around Naomi and towards the front of the lane, Astrid takes a couple seconds to stare down the pins. The ball is held up by her left hand with the right supporting her wrist, back stiff and looking almost like despite what she said earlier, bowling is something she does in fact do frequently. Several more steps are taken before she launches into a slide while the ball is flung down the lane toward the pins. She’s already turned around heading back to the seats when the pin farthest to the right flies out of view into the recesses of the alley with a light plop. “Gawd, I sure hope there are aliens. Then I can still hold onto the idea I was adopted and somewhere out in the universe is my real family waiting to take me back.” A soft smile cracks her lips before she takes a peek over her shoulder to see only one pin was knocked down. “ You definitely want me on your bowling team.” "Somewhere in which universe, though." Kavalam pushes his glasses further up onto the bridge of his nose, and though his tone was more subdued there, a small smile cracks his face when the pin gets knocked down. One of his fists pumps into the air. "Astrid leading our varsity team here. We are on our way to a championship medal for sure." A pause, a small frown. "Championship pennant? Trophy? What prizes does bowling have?" His head wobbles from one side to the other indecisively. "Whatever they were, it's probably different in this world anyway, no. Championship -- bronzed bowling shoes." At some point on one of his supply runs he has acquired himself a camera, but at the moment it sits on the table beside the scorecards, untouched; he looks at it now with teeth dragging against his lower lip but does not pick it up. "They are waiting, though, aren't they? In -- the other world. Your families. Probably." Kelawini subsides, curling in on herself a little as the others speak. She does manage a small smile when Astrid knocks down one pin, though it fades quickly enough. "Yeah. Probably gone to the school fo beat up Xavier over losing us," she sounds very much like she wants to find some amusement in this mental image, but doesn't quite make it there. Her eyes search the bowling alley frantically, her shoulders relaxing only when she spots Nanami across the room. "I stay--I keep thinking, maybe they will figure it out and send someone to come get us. But..." She just shakes her head. Naomi takes the scorecard, scribbled in two zeros for her and a single point for Astrid. Her eyes flick up, scanning the bowling alley for Lael, slower than Kelawini’s looking. Her grip on the tiny pencil relaxes when she spots him. “My other siblings ain’t gonna fight Xavier for us, ion think.” Ducks her head, studying the scorecard. “If they’ve noticed I missed calling for Thanksgiving.” Her grip tightens on the pencil again. “How you think they gonna figure it out? Last time y’all gone on a trip, nobody noticed until we kidnapped Xavier.” “Given what we’ve seen of this place, I don’t even want to know what their aliens are like.” Astrid mirrors Kavalam’s movements by pushing her own glasses further up the bridge of her nose. “Our universe would be the better bet then, right?” She returns back to being perched across the top of the plastic chairs, shoes still left on the ground and feet planted across the seat. “Maybe the grand prize is just a pitcher of cheap beer with a blue ribbon tied to the handle? That sounds very bowling I think.” Astrid’s quick fit of laughter slowly winds down, and once done, she falls silent. She thinks about the last question posed to all of them as she watches Kelawini’s reaction, searching for her sister followed by a similar one from Naomi. “Yeah, I suppose they are waiting. Should have been back home a while ago, right? I feel awful, but really haven’t given it a thought until now. How about you?” She almost does a double take, eyes wide and glued to Naomi. “Wait.” She shakes her head, still trying to process the words. “What? Who kidnapped Xavier?” Kavalam's cheeks suck against his teeth. "Tch! What a load of rubbish you talk. Last time you all ran off on one lark to the city they noticed. They made sure to send their youngest and hippest X-Man to do regular checkups on you so you wouldn't run off scared of a teacher. Must be nice to take so much for granted the care people give you you don't even see it when it happens. People care, ya? They notice. But how do they find a whole other world? That problem I don't know. I don't think it will be for lack of searching. For you all." His hand waves off vaguely toward the rest of the bowling alley. "Marinov even gave the Professor one good punch in the face," he informs Astrid, solemnly. Kelawini continues deflating, her broad shoulders hunching inward. "A bunch of us grabbed him up, end of summer," she says vaguely. "It was kind of a big deal at the time but it's not important now." Her gaze drops to the polished floor of the lane. Her voice is uncharacteristically quiet and almost lost in the din of the crowded alley when she adds, "They're not going to find us." Naomi shrinks too, pulls her shoulders in and gives Astrid a small shrug. “Man ionno, I just rolled up into town and suddenly I’m stealing y’all a van. I didn’t know that guy was X-Men.” Shrugs again, still small, still curled into herself. “Was just... tryna help. But not important now.” She bites her lip, glancing at Kelawini. “So we’re stuck. Least we ain’t dead. That’s. Something.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than the others. Raising her eyes to Kavalam, she adds quietly: “Thank you. Ain’t nobody said that to you in a minute.” Astrid leans forward, hunching slightly with elbows placed firmly into knees and chin held by both hands as she listens. Her eyes move between each one of them, resting long enough until they’ve said their piece on the Xavier incident before moving to the next. “Well… I honestly can’t imagine.” She chews on her bottom lip, twitching her nose to stop her glasses from slipping down. The sudden mood is infectious, as she turns morose. “Yeah, at least we are alive, right?” Again she looks between each teen, teeth digging deeper into her bottom lip until a large indentation is left. “Thank you all. I… well… I obviously wouldn’t be here without you. So thanks.” "From the sound of things, you helped a lot. Who knows where this lot would be if..." Kavalam's eyes are skating around the bowling alley again, flicking between the sea of recently freed people. Now he does pick up his camera, sitting up on the back of the plastic bucket seat to get a better vantage point of the three gloomy teens. "Well." His eyes widen at Naomi's thanks, and then Astrid's. His fingers clench tight around the camera, shoulders tightening, and he hides his expression behind the camera's viewfinder. The picture he takes is probably -- not going to brighten any rooms. "At least," he agrees softly, "we are alive."