The Deck, Wednesday Morning

[lockestheway]

The first thing Peter had done when the island moved was-- well, check his bottle of water, just to make sure no one'd slipped anything in it to turn him as nuts as half the people he'd met here so far.

The second thing he'd done was check and see if his internet connection was still holding. If this insane place messed up his plans - and that was starting to look like a distinct possibility - he was going to--

What, exactly?

The question kept bothering him. He didn't like it when he couldn't fully oversee all the possible consequences of something; it made planning for all the contingencies all but impossible.

But the internet connection was holding, and the weather was better than it had been. So on Wednesday morning he finally trudged out with his desk in hand and sat himself down on the deck. The flat little display produced a colorful screen through a holographic emitter that Peter could manipulate with his fingers.

He was doing his routine daily check of all the big blogs, poking around to see if anyone had responded to Demosthenes and Locke's latest essays. And doing up a nice, healthy, respectable tan in the process.

At least that couldn't go horribly wrong.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

Hat on her head, bag over her shoulders, and ready to go exploring some sandy Egyptian locales (she was secretly hoping to find some sort of tomb), Ariel breezed past the deck, but backtracked her breezing when she saw she wasn't the only one out and about. And considering the unfamiliar face, she had to grin in greeting at the other boy.

"Hi, there!" she said. "What's that you're working on, new kid?"

[lockestheway]

New kid.

Peter still wasn't sure whether he couldn't wait until he lost the title, or hoped he was never going to lose it because it meant he wouldn't be here long enough to lose it. "I'm just checking my news blogs," he said, putting on his chipper good-boy game face. "You know, see what's happening out in the world while we're here. Hi."

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"Anything interesting?" Ariel wondered, though she thought she'd much rather go out into the world and figure that sort of thing out firsthand, but the new kid probably meant going on in the world as it was before they came here, or wherever he was from, or something like that, which was entirely different, of course.

[lockestheway]

"Just the usual," Peter said, with a bright smile that was one hundred percent the product of fakery. "Is Russia planning a war, how's the Formic situation coming along, a Word from your Hegemon..."

You know. Mindbogglingly important stuff that most people here wouldn't appreciate properly.

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

Least of all Ariel.

"What's a Hegemon?" she asked, plopping onto one of the deck chairs to give the new kid her undivided and interested attention. "And a Formic? Stuff from where you're from, right?"

[lockestheway]

"No, I just made those up," Peter said, sarcastically, before he could catch himself.

Seriously, though. She didn't know? "The Hegemon. You know. Leader of the united world, manages all of our political organisations, shares his power with the Polemarch and the Strategos...?" That guy?

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

The sarcasm got a snort out of Ariel and she quirked a grin at him. "Please don't tell me no one told you about the different worlds or whatever," she said. "Because the leader of the world I'm from is my dad, and no one calls him Hegemon, or Polemarch or Strategos. Those almost do sound like names someone'd make up."

[lockestheway]

People had told Peter about the different worlds thing. He just thought it was all kinds of ridiculous. Possibly delusional. There had to be a majority of people here who knew about the Hegemon - it was supposed to be a publicly accessible summer camp.

Unless it wasn't.

Hm. He might have to poke his sources about Portalocity.

Of course, Ariel had said the magic words 'the leader of the world is my dad', so Peter yanked his attention away from that. "Well, they aren't," he said, with significantly less sarcasm. "I'm still getting used to the 'different worlds' thing. Your father is a political big shot, huh...? Wow."

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"Oh, you know," Ariel shrugged a little, with a faint grin, "king, master of all he surveys," which was the entire ocean, "no big deal. I'm Ariel, by the way. I don't think I caught your name in all those made-up words."

[lockestheway]

"Peter Wiggin," Peter offered, "But I don't make up words, I swear." He offered her a hand. "It's not often I meet royalty."

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"Nice to meet you, Peter," Ariel smiled as she took the offered hand and gave it a shake. "Any relation to Ender, or coincidence? And I'm glad to help contribute to your royalty meetings."

[lockestheway]

There wasn't at all a tiny muscle by Peter's eye that twitched every time someone brought up Ender.

Well, okay, but it was really small.

He had to fight to keep his smile as genuine-looking as he could make it. "Oh, Ender's my little bro," he said, shaking Ariel's hand in return before dropping it. "Well, older one here. But he hasn't been around to meet with me. Does that make you 'Princess Ariel of...'?"

Please change the subject.

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

Luckily for Peter, that sounded a bit too convoluted than what Ariel wanted to deal with this morning, and the smile encouraged her to smile back and figure that, no matter the timeline, Ender was pretty cool, so Peter earned points by default, and that was all she needed.

Later, though, it would definitely get her thinking what she'd do if one of her sisters showed up, but younger than her, and she'd only manage to confirm that it was a good choice not to venture into that territory with Peter.

"Atlantica," she answered. "You've probably never heard of it. Not Atlanta. That's totally different, although they do have a really great aquarium there! I'm not allowed in, though; I was kicked out for hugging an otter."

Man, that really was one of the best dates ever.

[vanillajello]

On her way back from town, Kate was on her fourth cigarette and first gigantic iced coffee of the morning. These things were necessary when there was a funeral to get to, just a little later in the day. A conversation, however brief, about something other than death or coffee prices seemed like it wouldn't hurt, either. That was her main motivator as she stopped by when she spotted someone she knew by name but not really otherwise.

That last bit was particularly important today, too.

"Drugs worn off yet?" she asked in greeting as she stepped on to the deck.

[lockestheway]

"Are you kidding me? I think they're running stronger than ever," Peter said, waving vaguely towards the dunes and the small bits of Alexandria skyline you could see from here.

[vanillajello]

Kate flicked her gaze in the general direction where he was gesturing, while taking a drag off her cigarette. "Fair point," she said. "The island is being a little intense on the newbies this time around."

[lockestheway]

Newbie was another one of those lovely, lose-it-or-let-me-get-out kind of words.

"Maybe we're special," Peter said, switching off his desk's display. He wouldn't be getting any reading in with people jabbering at him anyway. "We might be harder nuts to crack."

[vanillajello]

"I hope you're aware that in this instance, 'harder to crack' basically means 'slower to accept the facts'," Kate noted with a very fleeting and even fainter hint of a smirk. "Besides, I don't know if it gets more special than getting turned into a cat for a week two days after moving here."

She so wouldn't have said no to a transformation like that right now.

[lockestheway]

"I'd say it means 'slower to crack up and wind up institutionalized'," Peter replied. "Everyone else here seems pretty damned mad, present company excluded."

Though he'd have no trouble going out of his way to make Kate feel crazier if it was ever in his advantage to mess with her, but nevermind that. "Though I'm sure you made a nice cat."

[vanillajello]

Kate would've snorted with amusement if she'd been feeling entirely herself. "I'm sure I'm only excluded because I am present company," she noted instead. "And, my cat self sleeps a lot. I think my boyfriend finds that nice enough."

[lockestheway]

Yes. Yes, she was only being excluded because she was present company. "You've seemed sane thusfar, turning into a cat notwithstanding," Peter bullshitted. "And anyway, I hear cats can be plenty soothing."

Val would be rolling her eyes because there was totally a dirty joke in there somewhere Peter was just trying not to do overtly.

[vanillajello]

"Not ones that insist on eating s'mores and react badly to certain words," Kate retorted, before sipping on her coffee. "Nice contradiction there, by the way."

Well, to his credit, the lie was only obvious because she'd been new once too.

[lockestheway]

Peter held up his hands. "I'm just trying to be nice," he said. "Would it help if I said I think you're a very charming crazy person?"

Watch him backpedal. Just watch.

[vanillajello]

Kate shook her head and managed to convey at least some degree of amusement. "I'm not gonna be offended if you think I'm crazy," she pointed out, "since I'm sure you'll change your mind eventually." A beat. "Though not about the charming part. That's a permanent feature."

Wow, that was the single most normal Kate-like thing she'd said since Monday. And it felt incredibly fake to her.

[lockestheway]

Something seemed off about her. The plotty little thing in the back of Peter's brain filed that under Potential Leverage/Plaything When Bored.

"I can tell," he said, quasi-genuinely. "So what have you been up to since last we met?"

He thought he was charming, too. He was not entirely on the money.