Second Floor Common Room, Saturday Afternoon

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie was spending her Saturday the way she sent most Saturdays: studying. Hey, she hadn't been in any of her workshops this week due to her impromptu trip to Montreal. She had to catch up. Never mind that she'd been keeping up with her independent coursework even while at home, and catching up with taught workshops seemed to be limited to absently thinking that if she was going to miss a lecture on one of the seven deadly sins, lust was probably the right one to skip.

But whatever. She could still use this time on working on her Latin wordforms and reading ahead in Economics. And she could do it while sitting cross-legged on a couch in the common room, too. That was quite enough pretending to be social for her, especially since the previous week was still making her wary of specifically seeking people out.

There were some bags of tea and an empty cup on the counter in the kitchen area, but they seemed abandoned now. Natalie was drinking Pepsi.

[ooc: Open, duh!]

Comments

[genesishero]

"Oh..." Well, that was a little disheartening. But then, at his last school they'd been taken on a field trip inside the janitor. So... "Maybe I'd have better luck finding a teacher to screen potential field trips, instead."

Ooh! Like Captain America! Or Thor!

... Probably not Thor.

[whenshewasnice]

Probably not Thor.

"Well, I think clubs need a faculty advisor, anyway," Natalie offered. "So that probably won't be too hard to do."

[genesishero]

"Maybe I'll look into organizing something like that, then," Evan decided, looking just that much more pleased all over again. "Or at least see if anyone else out there is half as interested in that sort of thing as I am."

It was kind of difficult to be sure, since Natalie was sort of the first person that he'd seen with a book on her hands outside of class since he'd arrived on the island.

"Oh! And I'm Evan, by the way!"

Because after the long conversation was totally the appropriate time to finally offer a lady your name, Evan. Sure.

[whenshewasnice]

With the way Natalie tended to suck at or just plain ignore social conventions, she had no room to judge. And she didn't.

"Natalie," she said. "Hi. Guess you're kind of new here."

To be fair, though, if he hadn't sounded pretty new, she might've just thought they hadn't met before. She was antisocial enough for that.

[genesishero]

"New just this term," he agreed with a nod. "I'm here to keep out of trouble while things go kind of crazy back home, but... I kind of like it here. I mean... Most of the time."

Last week had been a bit of an exception.

... A lot of an exception.

[whenshewasnice]

"I've been here for about a year, and things like last week don't happen all the time," Natalie said after a pause. It wasn't hard to guess what he was referring to. They were all still thinking about it.

"Sometimes, but not all the time."

[genesishero]

Evan nodded a little bit. That was good to hear. In all fairness, things like last week did happen all of the time, back home. The teachers just went through a lot more pains to keep them sheltered from as much of it as possible.

"Is it always like that? Where it happens and then just goes away and all that's left are memories of it?"

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie considered her words, if only for a few seconds. "More or less," she decided then. "I haven't heard of anything being too permanent. All these things pass eventually, and everyone is fine."

Physically. She thought that went without saying.

[genesishero]

Physically. Evan had kind of gathered that there were plenty of people who were still injured in that other way that counted.

"Then... I guess here still doesn't seem too bad," he decided, though he was murmuring a bit. "Not if everybody makes it through, in the end."

[whenshewasnice]

"Most people seem to think so." Natalie was not great at being reassuring. "Those that don't... I guess they leave."

[genesishero]

"I guess I can't blame them, if they get scared after things like last week happen. Not everyone is meant to be able to handle that, I don't think."

That was why the world had heroes, right?

[whenshewasnice]

"Probably not." And yeah, Natalie had already pegged him for someone from a world with superheroes. There was a certain kind of vibe. "Guess you think you can handle it, eh?"

[genesishero]

"I haven't run away yet," Evan noted. "I'm not really anxious for a repeat of last week, but if I can't handle here, I have no clue what I'm going to do when it's time to go back home."

He'd been raised to be a hero, right? So this was... maybe just another stepping stone on the way there.

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie raised an eyebrow. "And what's home like, then?"

She was managing to be genuinely a little curious. That was rare but still happened!

[genesishero]

"Well, home home in Kansas was always pretty quiet. There were community dances sometimes, and ball games, but mostly it was chickens and tornadoes."

Of course it was.

"But then I went to school, and everyone in the school had powers, and most of the students..." Bullied the hell out of him? "... Were kind of difficult to get along with. But we were all there for the same thing, to learn how to use our powers for good in a world that, um, kind of doesn't trust us all that much."

Hates and fears, actually, but that didn't seem to cast a great light on his reality, either.

"The school only gets blown up every few weeks or so?"

[whenshewasnice]

"... The school gets blown up."

Huh. That hadn't happened in Fandom, at least, and she rather wished it stayed that way.

"Seems kind of inconvenient."

[genesishero]

"Sort of," Evan admitted, "but at least Krakoa spits out enough diamonds for Headmaster Logan and Headmistress Pryde to rebuild."

Yeah, that was a normal thing pretty much nowhere.

"What about where you're from? What's it like there?"

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie shrugged one shoulder. "It's pretty close to how the mainland is. From what I've gathered, we have a lot more stuff that... I don't know, I guess it mostly occurs in video games or something."

She still hated that, not that it showed.

[genesishero]

"Video games? Yeah?"

Evan... didn't play many video games. Ever.

[whenshewasnice]

"Is that a prompt to be more specific, or are you not familiar with video games?"

She thought it wise to check.

[genesishero]

"Kind of maybe a bit of both," Evan admitted, scuffing his toe. "I mean, we do have them back home. I just don't really play them at all."

[whenshewasnice]

"Well, we just have this... experience point system and stuff, back home," Natalie said, waving a hand. "It's kind of a minor difference."

One that had still managed to rattle her enough when she'd moved here.

"You're not missing out on much."

[genesishero]

Experience points, huh? Evan couldn't help but look a little intrigued by that. And being intrigued by something video-gamey would even make his uncle proud! Probably.

"Most games these days look like they're about either shooting other people, or shooting zombies, or shooting knees," he noted. "I think maybe if there were more games out there with real educational merit, I'd play those."

The 'Who The Heck Was Apocalypse Anyhow??' game would get played until the cartridge wore out. Or disk or whatever games were played on these days.

[whenshewasnice]

"I don't know, I mostly play Mario, or stuff at the arcade," Natalie shrugged. Because she was old school like that. "Educational entertainment tends to fall flat on its face."

[genesishero]

See? Evan was bad at this gaming thing already.

"There's an arcade on the island somewhere? Right? I mean, I've never been to one before. But it can't all be Medal of Duty, or... or whatever people are playing these days, right?"

They kind of looked like they were all the same game.