fandomhighdorms | Second Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

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Second Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

Fact the first: Gert had gone out this afternoon in search of one (1) sandwich.

Fact the second: Someone (a bartender? Gert hadn't caught his (her?) name, but he (she?) had hair tucked into a baseball cap and seemed very drunk) had been racing around a town with two garbage bags that held a combined two hundred bagels.

Fact the third: Evidently running away from a pursuer, who Gert assumed was the owner of the bagel store, Baseball Cap had thrust one of the bags at Gert and yelled at her to take it and run.

And so it was that a baffled Gert hauled a massive bag of about a hundred bagels up the stairs through town and up to the second floor common room, at which point she proceeded to dump the bag on the counter and collapse on the couch with a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese.

What. The hell.

[[open. i don't know. if you care, it was totally april.]]

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"Right," Victor agreed, plucking a sesame bagel out of the bag. "I might even put some hummus on it. It'll be a bagel party for the ages."

He flopped onto a chair, sans hummus as of yet. "How've you been?"

"I was a blonde ninja for the weekend," Gert offered, because it was a pretty solid example of how she was doing. "You?"

"I was a really stupid gang member," which was also a solid example of how he was doing. "Named Lucky."

Which had just added insult to injury, as far as Victor was concerned. "Like ... a sexy ninja?"

Gert crinkled her nose. "I guess," she granted, though that wouldn't have been her first choice of adjective. "My name was Roxie."

Which was clearly supposed to be a sexy name, so... insult to injury, sure.

"I got pissed when Cade made a sword joke, though."

"Like whoever made it happen was naming us after their dogs," Victor said, crinkling his nose right back. "And -- what, Cade had sword envy?"

"He actually had one too," Gert clarified, and she even managed to keep a straight face for long enough to elaborate, "I jumped on it."

"Tell me I did not miss a full-on sword fight."

Not that Lucky would have appreciated it, but Victor certainly would have.

Gert smirked. "Sorry."

He'd totally missed a sword fight.

"It ended kind of fast, though." Because that was totally just a consolation, not her bragging or anything. "What, did you not get into any gang fights or anything?"

Victor shook his head. "Nah, mostly I moped about some girl I liked. It was all East End Tale. Surprised I didn't have a dance solo."

He added, "Who won the swordfight?"

Gert smirked, drawing her knees up to her chest and balancing her bagel on one knee. "Me." Well. "Roxie, anyway. Turns out jumping on someone's weapon renders them kind of unable to concentrate."

...

"Okay, that one did sound dirty."

Edited 2013-05-01 22:05 (UTC)

"Duh," Victor agreed, covering his smirk with his hand. "Though jumping on Old Lace, who is basically your weapon, mostly sounds ... likely to end badly."

"Yeah, pretty sure she'd dump whoever it was into a tar pit," Gert agreed. "Which would be literally dirty, I guess."

"Also hot, if they fell much past the surface."

That was a terrible joke.

"Hey, can I ask you something sort of serious-ish? Not personal, promise."

"Yeah, sure," Gert said, mildly surprised by the request. "But I reserve the right to change my mind." Her tone suggested that she didn't think that was all that likely.

"What would you say to somebody who has kickass powers but hates where they came from, doesn't trust heroes, and basically just wants to go bale hay or whatever?" Victor asked. His last conversation with Evan was still stuck in his head. "And I'm not kidding about the baling hay part."

Hmm.

Gert took a moment to think seriously about that, because her immediate instinct to compliment (part of) this person's worldview probably wasn't the most productive approach.

"That it's their call, obviously," she replied after a moment. "No one has to put themself in the middle of this hero stuff if they don't want to. If they'd rather keep their powers on the DL and be safe doing their own thing, that's up to them."

There. She thought that was a good answer.

"Why, are you...?"

"Not me," Victor said, shaking his head firmly. "I don't love everything. But I like most of it. But Evan sounds pretty miserable, and I just sort of want to tell him to quit being a crybaby, and that's ... really cold."

He chewed at his thumbnail. "You're right," he added. "If people aren't evil, they should do what they want."

"You want me to talk to him?" Gert offered. "He helped me out once when I first got here. I could try and... give him whatever the opposite of a pep talk is."

Victor squinted toward her, gratitude mixed with concern on his face. "Maybe," he said. "Do you think you can do it and not make it sound like I was bitching about him? 'Cause I'm not, I just -- don't know what to say."

"You got it," Gert promised. "One vague anti-pep-talk coming up."

Really, anti-pep was her specialty. She should start an anti-pep squad.

"Why do you think he should keep heroing it up, anyway?"

They could shake anti-pom-poms!

"I guess I believe the 'with great power, comes great responsibility' thing," Victor answered cautiously. "It's cheesy, but ... Evan is here for a reason, right? Being a hero is his choice, I know it is, but it still feels wrong to say 'thanks but no thanks' and go back to milking cows."

Edited 2013-05-02 00:45 (UTC)

"Okay," Gert said slowly, deciding to take that piece by piece, "without getting into the icky religious imposition of the whole 'he's on the planet for a reason' thing, you know an unmotivated superhero is, like, the most dangerous person you can imagine, right?" She'd seen season three of Wendy the Werewolf Stalker; she knew all about what happened when you tried to train someone as a hero who wasn't cut out for it. "Way better that he screw around and just use his powers to turn off the lights in his room and levitate books off high shelves than to stick him in a high-pressure job he doesn't want with a crazy high death toll."

Edited 2013-05-02 01:05 (UTC)

"... You are not supposed to be smarter than me."

Which meant Victor really couldn't argue with what she'd said.

"Okay, but how come you do it? Or any of us? We could, like, hang out in foster care or whatever and decide L.A. is not our problem."

Gert preened. That would give her something to keep in mind when she met her version of Victor and he got all smug about his dino know-how, thank you.

"Not a superhero," Gert corrected him reflectively, not that he'd actually used that word, "but... I don't know. It's definitely not just because I have a dinosaur and so I can help out, though. If I didn't, and everything else from the past year had still happened the way it did, I'd probably still be doing it."

Which made an argument against powers being a lock-in factor for a career in heroism, as far as she was concerned.

"What about you? Why do you do it?"

Edited 2013-05-02 01:41 (UTC)

Victor thought about saying because I was programmed to but that wasn't the truth. Not anymore.

"Sorry if this makes you want to puke," he began, "but I do believe people are here for a reason. And I promised my mom to help keep people safe, and I want to keep that promise. And ... I dunno. I just like it."

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arsenicmauls - 2013-05-02 02:32 (UTC) - Expand

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