Second Floor Common Room, Monday Afternoon

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

Will had dreamed of his parents last night. It wasn't unusual for him to do that but this one had shaken him up a bit. The dream had started out normally, actually. It'd just been him and his parents, eating a quiet dinner while rain fell against the the window. Will recalled turning to his mother to ask her a question and seeing, to his horror, several Ride Alongs crawling across her face, distorting her from Will's sight. When he'd swung around to tell his father, it hadn't been his father but Mr. Hobbes, smiling malevolently at him.

Will had woken up and hadn't gone back to sleep. He'd gotten through his class and was grateful that he could come back and actually not do anything for while. Training was going to have to wait. He thought about attempting a nap but the visuals from the dream reared their ugly head again and he ended up settling down in the common room. He switched on the television set but couldn't find anything to his liking so he just settled on some sports recap show.

Instead, Will was going to see if he could use his Grid indoors. He'd tried before and it had worked but it was clumsy. But, he figured he could give it a go again. He closed his eyes and pulled up his enhanced sight. Immediately, he felt a little seasick but the vision eventually settled and walls started following away. Will started looking around, noticing energy signatures from people in the halls and in their rooms. He looked up and could even see where people were on the floor above.

Will kept his eyes closed and his Grid up, trying to pick out common rooms from dorm rooms from other rooms on the third floor while he was sitting on the couch on the floor below.

[Open place and post. Will's Grid can't make out people individually (aka he wouldn't be able to say 'John Smith is in the hallway above me') but he can see where energy is centered, can see through walls, and around corners etc. To squirrels, it'll just look like Will's dozing, though.]

Comments

[not_a_moonie]

One of those energy centers bounced out of a third-floor room, detoured into that floor's common room, lingered there briefly as the girl attached to it discovered that there was no orange juice, and then moved back along the hall and down the stairs to the second-floor common room.

"Hey," Alana said, glancing at Will and not initially realizing he seemed to be napping. "Do you know if there's any -- oh, crap, are you asleep?"

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

Will had noticed her particular energy center especially when it started getting closer to him. When the energy track stopped and he heard her voice, Will opened his eyes.

"No no, sorry," he said, shaking his head. "I was daydreaming. There's a lot of crap on television right now so I was trying to entertain myself."

Seemed like a good enough lie to him.

[not_a_moonie]

"Yeah?" Alana asked, pausing to lean against a chair. "Come up with anything good, or was daydreaming mostly crap too?"

She hadn't the slightest inkling he had been lying.

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Warmer weather, sunshine, less snow, no more frostbitten fingers and toes," he reeled off easily. "So yeah, I thought it was pretty good. Too bad I don't have the ability to actually spin it into reality."

[not_a_moonie]

"That's a class we should have here," Alana said, with a slight laugh. "How to control the weather. I guarantee it'd be full every single term."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Yeah but what happens when a whole bunch of students learn to control weather?" Will wondered. "What if I wanted a rainy day, you wanted a really hot day, someone else wanted snow? We might break Mother Nature."

[not_a_moonie]

Alana pursed her lips, taking the question seriously. "No idea," she admitted. "I guess we'd all need little bubbles so it'd rain on you while I got my heat."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Might work," Will allowed with a shrug. "I just think it'd lead to arguments and brawls and some really wonky weather patterns. Meteorologists would go nuts trying to give accurate forecasts."

[not_a_moonie]

"True, plus it might sometimes storm where a cold bubble and a warm bubble hit each other," Alana said, trying to visualize it. "-- at least, I think that's how it works."

She smiled wryly. "I'd still be all in favor of you being able to make it less freaking cold."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, me too," Will said with a laugh. "And the last place I lived was a lot colder than this so you think I'd be used to it but yeah, no. I'd rather be able to go outside without losing feeling in my face."

Wisconsin was fun like that.

[not_a_moonie]

"Most of Landfall is pretty warm," Alana volunteered. "Not tropical, but not freeze-your-face-off, either. I think this is about as cold as I can handle."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Landfall?" Will asked, not having any immediate recall of a place like that. "Don't think I've heard of that place before."

He paused and then added,"...which probably means it's not somewhere on this planet, doesn't it?"

Unless he was really bad when it came to geography.

[not_a_moonie]

"Nope, nowhere near this planet," Alana confirmed, sounding as though she were glad of it. "It's the major planet in my galaxy, but I seem to be the only person from there to make it here. Which is, by the way, incredibly strange for me."

She shrugged. "Where are you from?"

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

He honestly had no idea at this point.

"New Mexico," he said because that was what he did know. "But, it's not really home for me. My family moved around a lot. We didn't stay in one place for too long."

[not_a_moonie]

"I always wished I got to travel," Alana said wistfully. "My dad was pretty tied to his office. We never really moved anywhere. Did you like it?"

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"It's not as great as it seems," Will shared with a shrug. "You never really feel like you're settled and you never get a chance to make friends. Being best friends with your parents might seem like a great way to bond but it's really kind of...sad."

[not_a_moonie]

Alana nodded slowly, slightly. She wasn't friends with any of her parents -- well, maybe with her stepmother, a little, when she got over the fact her dad had married a girl she went to camp with -- but she saw what Will was getting at.

"I can see where that part would suck," she said. "'Cause when you need to complain about your parents, the only people who you really know would be ... your parents."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. And complaining to an empty bedroom doesn't really do it either," he said, chuckling. "After about the third time of us moving, I tended to not even try making friends so it was partly my fault too. I knew we weren't sticking around so I just kept to myself and internalized."

[not_a_moonie]

"You seem like you're trying to change that now," Alana observed. "Or did I just catch you on a share-y day?"

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"No, I'm giving the extroverted thing a try," he said with a little laugh. "It's kind of hard not to in this place where they assign you a friend and then put you in a room with someone else. Interaction is nearly impossible so I'm not resisting."

[not_a_moonie]

Alana nodded. "This is not an easy place to hide in your room and not talk to people," she said. "Plus, it's freeing that everybody here is equally new and confused. I talk to way more people here, too."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"How's it going for you?" Will asked since he'd just realized the conversation had been pretty focused on him. "Enjoying it?"

[not_a_moonie]

"Yeah, I guess I am," Alana said. "I do the student council thing, and I got to be Homecoming princess back in the fall. It's so not stuff I ever would have done at home, but -- if nobody here knows who I am, why not take advantage of it, right?"

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Are you famous back home or something?" Will asked since the statement seemed to imply that not being known was a good thing.

[not_a_moonie]

She'd meant it more in the 'getting away from an old reputation' sense, but if he was going to take it that way --

"Oh, totally," Alana lied breezily. (She hadn't planned to, but she wanted to see if Will would buy it.) "I'm the biggest teen pop star there is. I got so tired of being stalked by paparazzi I had to come here."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

Will didn't trust easily but he also wasn't one to outright accuse someone of lying. And he had no proof she was lying so...

"Really?" His eyebrows arched up at that news. "Why would you tell me something like that so easily? You don't even know my name. I could tell people."

[not_a_moonie]

Hmm. She maybe hadn't thought this one through.

"You don't know my name either," Alana pointed out. "So ... what exactly would you tell, and why would they care?"

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"...the internet."

Hey, people on the internet salivated for famous people. Tracking down famous people was like a hobby for some of them.

[not_a_moonie]

"... okay, yeah, there'd probably be somebody on the internet who would care," Alana granted. "So, um, please don't do that?"

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Not my place," Will said, shaking his head. "People who want their privacy deserve their privacy."

His parents had seemed to really want it and it'd left Will pretty much completely uncertain about his whole life.

"I won't."

[not_a_moonie]

"Thanks," Alana said with a shaky smile, because he seemed so totally sincere. "And now I feel bad that I was pulling your leg -- I'm not famous. At all. I was just really sick of being home."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

Will stared for a second before he laughed and shook his head.

"I probably would have left here believing I'd met a famous person," he told her, still snickering. "Oh well. At least I didn't look like an idiot and ask for an autograph?"

[not_a_moonie]

"Oh, there's no way I could have managed that without giggling," Alana told him. "But maybe you would have thought meeting a fan just made me really happy."

She smiled and pushed her hair back. "It's Alana, by the way."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"Will," he said, giving her a nod. "Even if you're not famous, it's good to meet you anyway. And I'm not famous at all."

[not_a_moonie]

"Same," Alana agreed. "Famous people are probably really boring, you know? And spend way too much time on their hair."

[livebytherules.livejournal.com]

"See, I would think they have people to do their hair for them," Will decided. "It would give them more time to count their money and buy unnecessarily expensive things."