Logs:Of Raids and Remembering (Or, In a Just World)
| Of Raids and Remembering (Or, In a Just World) | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-10-13 "This school has to hit critical weird at some point." |
| Location
<XAV> Conservatory - Xs First Floor | |
Tall panes of glass and a many-gabled glass ceiling protect this large indoor garden from the elements, while welcoming in sunlight to keep it warm year-round. Adjoined to the southern face of the venerable mansion and surrounded by more conventional gardens beyond, the conservatory is all Old World elegance from the outside. Within, however, it is lush and green and in certain corners--whether despite its careful tending by the groundskeeper or because of it--seems practically wild. Footpaths and a burbling artificial steam wind through the space, connecting its disparate parts. Benches are scattered throughout, thorough soft grasses or mosses under certain trees also invite rest. The outside wall is lined with tropical and subtropical plants. The ferns and cycads and epiphytes are kept moist by artfully hidden misters that also give the place a sort of magical ambiance, dense foliage wreathed at times with drifting patches of mist. Nearest the building is a desert in miniature, with a few impressively sized cacti as well as palo verde and other trees adapted to arid climes. Between these, and by far the largest section, is dedicated temperate zone plantlife from around the world, the beds growing more carefully manicured and the pads less winding as one approaches the center, where a clearing with a small ring of seats is a popular spot for some teachers to hold court. It's been a hell of a night. Day. Whatever. Quentin is not really keeping track of time anymore, but it's been long enough that the buzz about the Returned Teachers has thoroughly spread through the school and not quite long enough for him to have gotten much proper sleep yet. He's in XS sweatpants and an ancient Yoda tee shirt, which together with his bleary expression make him look like he's ready to tumble back into bed. Instead of bed he is sitting cross-legged on a benchlike root under the banyan tree, poking slowly at a bowl of oatmeal. "Yo." Probably Roscoe did not stumble accidentally into Quentin's oatmeal time, for there's a deliberateness to the way he's drifting through the conservatory, though he also looks sort of like he intended to be asleep at this point, in flannel pajama pants and a too-big blue hoodie, hood pulled up onto his head, with his own whatever-time-it-is snack (his is a styrofoam cup noodle he's already halfway finished with.) Though he assumes Quentin came here for some peace and quiet, he's decided Quentin must not actually want that or he'd be hiding in his ivory psi-shielded-single-room tower and either way he's confidently reassuring himself that << (if you annoy him in the brain, he'll tell you to fuck off.) >> Out loud he says, "How long you think Party Wing is gonna last now?" "Mr. Summers was very much unconscious, so maybe at least a couple more hours." Was Kavalam there last night? How long has he been here? These questions will probably remain a mystery to everyone except him. He is leaning up against one of the thicker prop roots, dressed casual but a little less immediately-ready-for-bed than the other two in a dark yellow tee shirt and faded old jeans. "How long will your superheroing gig last?" Quentin tips his chin up reflexively at Roscoe. Goes back to staring at his oatmeal. A second later decides that maybe this seems a little too exhausted and sits up straighter, taking a quick bite. As he swallows it he's scrutinizing Kavalam with a faintly puzzled expression and though he is definitely not putting words to it, no doubt his oh-shit-should-I-remember-your-name face is waaay familiar enough to Kavalam. "Hey, we were super safe and boring heroes last night. In a just world that'd buy us --" He's considering this with a scrunch of his forehead, and whatever conclusion he comes to prompts him to pivot grudgingly: "Gig doesn't even pay us." He's still frowning at Kavalam, and though still not asking about who tf this person is, is asking: "Who snitched?" With no immediate order to buzz off, Roscoe is dropping down exhaustedly down on the bench opposite the other two, taking a long sip of hot salty broth once he does. Even before Quentin asks this million-dollar question Roscoe is wondering with considerable alarm << did I snitch??? >> which seems distressingly plausible. He has been putting serious thought into the possible consequences of their actions for as long as they've been doing it, but he's still drawing a blank on whether this should spell lights out. "I mean," he says, after a moment. "In a just world probably we would not have been doing that in the first place, right?" "My superpower is knowing everything going on in this school," Kavalam entirely unhelpfully replies. He frowns right back, pointed towards Quentin though it's Roscoe's question really percolating in his mind together with a million horrors and insanities that Should Not have happened in a just world. "In a slightly-bit-more just world you would at least get the pay," he finally concedes. Now Quentin's vaguely-puzzled look is one of open curiosity. His intense scrutiny of Kavalam does not actually tell him whether or not this assertion is true, but he is taking another big bite of oatmeal lest he blurt out any too interested-seeming questions. "Yeah. Well. In a just world we'd never have met because this school wouldn't exist. -- Do you think they'll open admission up to alien kids?" Roscoe had been staring down into his noodle cup, his mind suddenly keenly and completely fixed on tracing the limp noodles at the bottom, but he lifts a fleeting, amused grin up toward Kavalam -- "I had that superpower once," he laments, then drops his gaze back into the cup again. "There's alien kids?" he says, like the concept of child aliens has never occurred to him. He's not sure whether he wants to attend school with them or not, fighting off an instinctive cringe at the idea of expanding Xavier's' tiny monster contingent with any of the aliens he'd seen at Evolve. "This school has to hit critical weird at some point," he says. "Are they staying here?" Kavalam's eyes have widened a little at this thought. "I mean the Earth. Not the sch... okay, also the school." His critical frown suggests he also is unsure about this. He does wobble his head side-to-side, shooting Roscoe a crooked smile. "But how would we tell?" "They didn't bring any spaceships back from Genosha so I'm guessing they gotta stay somewhere. For now, anyway." Quentin is stirring some unstirred swirls of sugar and cinnamon into his oatmeal before he takes another bite. "Don't you still have that power? -- If your thing is eyes or telepathy," he's warning Kavalam, a little prickly, "we're full up on those." "Aw, come on, there's plenty of room in the creeper niche." Roscoe swirls his styrofoam cup around like he's swilling wine, even though the single-minded focus on the noodles within it has morphed into single-minded glee in knowing something Quentin doesn't, though he's keeping this determinedly out of his voice. He glances at Kavalam again. "Figure we'll know when the government raids us," he decides. "My thing is not eyes or telepathy." Kavalam's promise here is very solemn, his boring and mildly-nearsighted eyes still a little wide behind his glasses. He is looking straight at Quentin and not at all at Roscoe but there is still a hint, in his mind, of some kind of Roscoe-wards camaraderie when he adds innocently enough: "I've told you before my thing, do you not remember? I thought I heard your brain was very-very good in the remembering." He pulls off his glasses, fixates on rubbing them for a moment so that he doesn't fixate too hard on thinking about the concentration camps in Riftworld, or the swarms of mercs attacking his friends outside Lassiter, or his Many Nightmares about soldiers and Sentinels descending en masse to this place and hauling them off to some newer and harsher Prometheus. The thoughts are there, though, flitting through his mind and then back away. He huffs, dryly amused, and gives another small head-wobble. "Well, at least the raiding part itself would feel quite comfortingly predictable only." "What? Are you -- I don't forget --" Quentin's brows hike quickly and lower again just as quickly. There's a very determined calm in his expression that looks all the more anxious for how badly he's trying to keep his face neutral. His spoon taps quick and restless at his bowl and he takes another hasty bite, chewing it for longer than oatmeal has any possible need to be chewed. He has marshaled together a touch of actual calm again by the time he swallows, enough to relax more comfortably into a cocky: "C'mon, we've collected some of the biggest badasses in the world here, I feel sorry for the poor suckers who get ordered to raid this place." "Maybe my memory is just better than yours," Roscoe suggests with a one-sided shrug, very nonchalant on the surface though still a little gleeful-smug underneath. He slurps up the last of his noodles and wipes his chin with one hand, thinking about the last raid on Lassiter, about guards he knew by name -- some guards he'd liked -- guns drawn in the hallway outside his cell. "I don't," he says. "Really, do you?" Kavalam is pressing something down fiercely here, the clear shape of it indistinct but bloodied round the edges and bristling fierce and protective against the feeling of Joshua and Roscoe in his memories. "I think if they actually came to do it maybe you would not." He is looking up at the roots twining overhead, mind now uncomfortably darkened with the memory of HAMMER's agents stalking the XS halls. "... not so-so long ago I would have said you anyway don't need to because the Professor would roll over and put out the welcome mat. He did when HAMMER came for Mr. Jax. But now, maybe..." There is not, actually, any sort of confidence in his mind that Xavier would do anything at all to stop the school being overrun with fascists, but. At least he is no longer confident that the Professor wouldn't, either. Quentin scrapes the bottom of his oatmeal bowl. He's slouching back against the tree roots with a studied insouciance, nodding along slowly more at the other boys' memories than their words. "... fair enough," he's started to reply, but his casual affect is disrupted all over by this HAMMER revelation. "Sorry, what? That fascist literally tortured him -- they didn't do anything? No wonder people get out of here and join the Brotherhood." There's more disgust in his tone than real surprise. "There are real superheroes here again now though, whatever that spineless old man would sit by for." "What?" Roscoe looks to Kavalam for clarification, not Quentin, eyebrows pinching together in a crinkle over his nose; everything he knows of Jackson Holland and HAMMER he picked up piecemeal from the guards or the rumor mill or the TV in the (w)rec(k) and he isn't sure if they didn't mention a school or if, at the time, he was just too fixated on his takeaway that << (nobody is coming) (there's no raid team anymore) (there hasn't been a raid in years) >> to remember. For a moment he wonders idly if he should just go ahead and be bitter about This, Too but he doesn't have much will to do so, so this disappointing fact just gets punted off to join the disappointing facts pile in his brain. He blows his breath out in a huffy, tired raspberry. "Bro, this isn't the Rebel Alliance, this is a prep school." "Malthus Rogers walked in here and hauled off Mr. Jax while he was very dangerously decorating for the Valentine's Dance." Kavalam is bitter about this, is holding on to his bitterness with clenched fists along with so many other prickles of bitterness through the years as though it will keep him safe when everyone else in his life has simply forgotten to. "Quentin is annoying but he's not so very wrong. I think if they didn't pretend to everyone that they would keep people safe here nobody would get so disillusioned that they run off and join that other spineless old man in his terrors. A little bit of a garbage choice but --" He shrugs. Quentin's eyes have narrowed, his brow furrowing. The look he darts between the other two is somewhat uncertain, and though he's tensed up briefly at Kavalam's description of Magneto, ultimately he just shakes his head hard rather than argue. "Yeah, well." He drops his spoon back into his bowl, both hands clenched tight against it. "Got half our government eager to turn this place into the next Genosha and the other half doesn't give a shit as long as their donors keep doning. Think until someone offers some better choices people are going to cling to the only shitty ones who even pretend to care." He slides down off the root, his shoulders a little hunched. "Gonna get some sleep. People might still need us tomor... today." Roscoe slouches lower in the bench, tugging with one finger at the knot in his sweatshirt's drawstrings to pull the hood closer around his face -- now he's trained his mind intently on the banyan's many-branched root system, sifting his focus through the ground to follow the tree all the way down. "Maybe we should all just disillusion ourselves in advance to save time," he says thoughtfully, before he ticks his eyes back up to watch Quentin stand. "Hit me if you need a buddy," he adds, at length. There's no other answer from -- well, where would there be an answer from? Quentin and Roscoe are alone under the banyan, here. "Think it might be a little late for in advance for some..." Instead of finishing this sentence, Quentin is looking around them with a small uncertain frown. He shakes his head quick and trudges off. A small telekinetic bap thwacks Roscoe lightly in the shoulder as he goes. << Sure will. >> | |
