Logs:Of Games and Glasses (Or, The Lassiter Youth Comedy Hour)
| Of Games and Glasses (Or, The Lassiter Youth Comedy Hour) | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2023-05-06 "You brought a flatscan?" |
| Location | |
This hallway looks roughly the same as every other hallway in Lassiter -- too long, too cold, too empty. It is lined with identical heavy doors with identical tiny reinforced-glass windows, and spotted with might-as-well-be-identical guards. Echo cuts a sorry sight as she picks her way tentatively down the hallway, tag hanging off the back of her tan scrub shirt and obvious seams down the sides suggesting that she did not or could not put much care into dressing. In front of every doorway, she leans in to squint at the label, bringing her bare face about a foot away before stepping back every time. Her low mutter of "rec room...rec room..." appears to be unrewarded, so far. Partway through this odyssey, Echo stops and slumps against a wall, clutching her abdomen with her arm and uttering a queasy groan. Roscoe is coming out of one of these doors; in one hand he has a half-eaten bag of Chips Ahoy! that was mostly air even before he opened it, and in the other hand he has a handful of tiny dry cookies he's trying to funnel into his mouth as fast as possible. He sticks the bag under his too-big scrubs shirt when he sees Echo, but when he draws closer, he seems to catch onto either the fact that she probably can't see it, or probably can't eat it. "Your shirt's inside out," he says helpfully. "What you looking, rec room? You want the one with the TV?" Kavalam is not coming out of one of these doors -- not going into one, either, but leaning in the open doorway of one of the cells, leafing idly through an ancient copy of Reader's Digest. His scrubs are olive, wrinkled but fit well enough; his half-rim spectacles sit a little too low on his nose, his thick hair is currently an unkempt mess. His eyes flick halfway up, peering out at Roscoe -- then Echo -- then lowering back down to the magazine. "Does she look like a TV would do any good for her?" He is frowning critically back down at the magazine ("Are You Raising GOOD KIDS or BRATS?" asks the cover, most prominently.) "Maybe if you unmount the television so she can --" He brings the magazine close up to press against his nose, then adds, for Echo's benefit: "-- I am putting my book to my face now." And, after a thought, "I don't normally need to do that, because I brought my glasses in with me." Echo's eyes are shut tight but she opens them with an effort when Roscoe addresses her. Blinking rapidly and then squinting again, this time at Roscoe, she flattens her mouth into a line. "Ah, figures..." She pushes off from the wall again and straightens, eyes angling slightly downwards now to where she can tell his eyes are located. "Uh, thanks," she adds belatedly. "Yeah," she starts to explain before Kavalam beats her to it. Swinging her gaze in his direction, she grimaces. "He's right. About the TV, not the -- I had my glasses Wednesday night, they just got smashed during the..." she clamps her mouth shut. "Well, if you want the rec room without the TV, it's that way," says Roscoe, pointing with the Chips Ahoy! bag in the direction Echo was coming from and then, realizing that Kavalam can see his cookies, pulling it protectively back. He's already backing down the hallway -- "I can show you if you want. Just follow the sound of my voice." "Disaster?" Kavalam supplies, when Echo goes silent. "Suicide mission? I know stupid ideas is its own entire department in our school but I think this must be some kind of record even for us, no?" He leans back into the cell to toss the magazine lightly onto the bed, trudging back out into the hall. "I do not want your cookies," he assures Roscoe, as an afterthought. And then, an after-afterthought, perhaps immediately hedging on this: "... where did you get cookies?" Kavalam's second suggestion makes Echo visibly flinch, before a look of confusion clouds her face. She shakes her head as if dispelling a fly. "Wait, you -- us --" Her narrowed eyes have no target this time as she turns to follow Roscoe. "Er, I can see you, just not clearly," she clarifies. Turning back toward Kavalam, she matches his pace. "I'm sorry, I don't think we've met?" She frowns. "I mean, I'm new, I haven't met met everyone. But, on the roof, or--" The furrow in her brow deepens as she opens and then closes her mouth. "...I'm Echo," she hazards anyway, directing this somewhere in between the two boys. Roscoe is eating the last of his cookies now, the empty bag crinkling loudly in his hand -- "Some the guards'll sneak you stuff if you ask," he says, with his mouth full. He frowns slightly, looking from Kavalam to Echo back to Kavalam, and tilts his head to one side -- "Prob'ly not you though," is his not-very-apologetic assessment. He only walks backward for a few steps before turning to take the lead. "I'm Roscoe," he supplies, over his shoulder. "That's Kavalam." "We have met," Kavalam assures Echo. He is dropping into place somewhat beside her, frowning as he watches her squint between the two boys. "You did not -- maybe -- tie on your glasses before..." His frown deepens. He sounds quite regretful when he decides: "Of all of us who should have not come here, I think maybe you should have not come here the most." After this he is perking up -- just slightly: "Roscoe is a very helpful prisoner. He knows -- wait. Do they have glasses here? If they have glasses here he probably knows it." "Oh...sorry. That I don't remember." The sorry has a reflexive quality but the rest is genuinely apologetic. "I -- normally I work pretty hard to remember stuff, in case I need it later. Detailed journal and whatever." As though she's just realized something, she mouths their names silently. With their dismal pronouncements, Echo's shoulders hunch over and her next words are quiet and heavy. "Yeah. Just wanted to help them. But." A wan smile appears a moment later to paper over the weight, a brief huff of laughter. "Didn't get the impression from those...notes...that they'd care if we could see..." she says, though there's still a trace of hopefulness in there. Probably neither of the others can see Roscoe frown, his mouth puckering before he says, "You can get reading glasses at the commissary but they're mad expensive. Otherwise, I'unno, I'll ask around. We don't have an eye doc in Lassiter right now." He says this with authority, like he should know. After a moment, he adds, "Stuff like that takes forever, in here, 'cause it's so big. Maybe you're better off waiting until you get to a smaller lab." Kavalam blinks at Echo's apology, his brows scrunching inward before he dismisses it with a slightly awkward wave of a hand, an even more awkward hff that doesn't manage to actually be a laugh. "It's not you, it's me. I am very forgettable. At least -- normally." His eyes are scanning the hallway and some genuine amusement manages to creep into his voice a moment later. "If it helps, you are not missing very much? Everything here is very ugly." His fingers trace slowly along the wall, stopping at one of the chipping edges of one of the many more-or-less identical door signs. "... how often," he starts, stops, reconsiders slowly before asking instead, "How long. Does it take. Usually. For people to -- go. Other places?" More confusion, on Echo's face, and some hesitation before she tentatively asks, "Your power...?" She glances at the fluorescent light beam flickering directly above them, giving this section of the hallway an uneasy feeling. "Guess that all," she gestures toward both of them, "tracks with my idea of prison." She follows Kavalam's question with "You seem like you've been here a while...?" Is it hope or fear running through her words? "If they split us up..." Roscoe looks back over his shoulder at them, his eyebrows pulling together, then looks ahead again. His voice is a little sour, when he finally answers. "I dunno. Depends what they want with you. I wouldn't count on getting to stick with your friends. I've had like, a hundred roommates. Lassiter is weird, people don't stay here long." "Is being forgettable, yes." Kavalam has paused outside the door to the rec room, tracing a finger against the defaced sign outside. "If your powers are quite entirely useless," he is looking only a little pointedly at Echo with this, "would you say that is a help or a hurt. If you would like to stay here and continue making very poor choices." Echo's slow nod is at odds with her expression, but she drops it, turns to peer into the door they've paused at. Voices from inside, mostly low, occasionally belligerent, corroborate the idea that "This is it?" She shoots Kavalam an unfocused look, mutters "Low," but does not argue. "Choices...have we got many of those left?" "Yeah," says Roscoe, with half a laugh, "You can keep your chin up or you can cry about it." He leans on the door to swing it open, and swings one hand, still crinkling the empty wrapper, in a grand here-we-are gesture -- "And in here we got chess, checkers, Monopoly, parcheesi…" he looks shiftily at the assortment of other inmates in the room and says, "Or we could go to the other rec. Would you say your powers are useless or just not flashy?" "She is basically a tape recorder," Kavalam tips his hand out toward Echo in indication, "and I make people forget I exist. Probably," he muses, "hard for them to do anything with, if they -- remember to test it. The person they came to rescue is human, is that so normal here?" His brow creases at Echo's question, shoulders slumping. Some of the cavalier has bled off of his tone when he replies, heavier and a little bitter, and he's looking now more at the door than at the others. "Rec or the other rec, apparently." But when he looks back up he's edging -- if more determinedly -- toward nonchalant again. "This is not even the worst mutant torture prison my friends have been in and it ended alright before." A frown. "... alright enough." Echo, in fact, sets her jaw and raises her chin a bit, such that she is decidedly looking over the top of Roscoe's head, but the sorry list of board games he's rattled off widens her eyes a bit, like she's really seeing the place despite that being clearly unlikely. Kavalam beats her to the explanation again and she adds, sheepishly, "It's useful for...rehearsal, and when people lie about. Arguments. Harm thought I might think of something useful... But can't really imagine the military wants to extract it, or...whatever they're trying to do in here." It's clear she didn't think that much about the who what why of Prometheus before this. She looks at Kavalam when his voice changes, her eyes drifting downward slowly in some kind of sympathy, before a sharp "Wait, what? What happened before?" "You brought a flatscan?" says Roscoe, in a vaguely affronted but very low voice -- he's still looking worriedly at the other inmates. "Shoot, keep that to yourselves. You tried to raid mutant prison with a human? What did you think would happen?" He glances up at Echo, his mouth pulling bitterly to one side -- "I'unno, once they smell espionage potential, it's pretty much over for you. I got my sentence extended twice." He looks at Echo when Kavalam speaks, as if for confirmation that they had indeed been in a worse mutant torture prison than this, then looks at Kavalam, brow furrowing. "Which lab was it? Tagliacozzi? Everything I hear about that place is --" he shudders illustratively. "Eugh." "I did not bring anyone," Kavalam says, mildly offended. "I would have brought none of these people. Perhaps Doors Girl open a door to the right place this time while Naomi order people to come home. Not -- whatever that was." He turns, leans back against the wall with shoulders hunched. "They did not bring the human. The human was already here, they came to rescue him. I came because clearly this school has made me stupid also. What is Tagl..." He shudders as he trails off, as if the shudder is perhaps part of the name. "It was Shippenville," he answers, and then, by way of explanation, "it was in another dimension. They had a genocide there. Not the best of our Thanksgiving vacations." Echo's voice has dropped to just above a whisper with all the furtive glances going around. Kavalam has hit on all her anxieties but she manages a bit of an edge to her voice. "Hey. You're right this was a bad idea but," her gaze slides uncomfortably off Roscoe and his extended twice, "everyone'll... suffer enough consequences without. Criticism." The last is said with insufficient conviction; certainly, Echo knows how to beat herself up, if she won't extend it to her comrades. "Alternate dimension genocide vacation." A hand comes up to rub her forehead, forcefully. "Being a mutant is so complicated." "Man, why weren't you in charge?" says Roscoe with amusement to Kavalam, but he seems a little abashed at Echo's admonishment, his hand slipping off the stack of board games he's idly looking through like he wants to put it in his pocket, then wiping awkwardly down the side of his grey scrubs when he remembers he doesn't have any. "Never heard of Shippenville," he says, before the explanation comes. Then he says, "Oh," as though Kavalam has explained everything satisfactorily, though his eyebrows are still low over his eyes. They lift at Echo's next words, lips pulling into a toothy smile -- "And we're boring mutants." "I make people forget I exist," Kavalam answers Roscoe, very -- very! -- lightly. His eyes cut to Echo, a crease forming between his brows. His shoulders sink -- just a little, although he doesn't apologize. He looks, briefly, around the room, casting a slightly critical glance at the selection of Recreation, and then, though they only just arrived, he's turning to leave. "This place is maybe quite boring," he tells the others on his way out, "but I do not think we have ever been." | |
