Players:
Summary: Heather, Hildegarde & Theo meet up in the Rec Room. Rashmi arrives and tries to diffuse a tense situation.
Log Title: Emotions
Rating: R (L)
Xavier Mansion - Recreation Room
What was once the Parlor has been turned into a Recreation Room for the students. A nice plush carpet meets the light blue walls giving it a homey feel. A pool table at one end, a foos ball table at the other, and entertainment center with video game systems, movies, and of course, cable TV. Big comfy chairs and couches surround a coffee table for comfortable loafing. Long glass windows with a pair of French doors line one side of the room bringing in plenty of light during the day. The main rule in here is to clean up after yourself.
Scene
The weather today was rather pleasant, so many of the students and staff spent most of the day outside to enjoy the weather. Hildegarde had decided to spend as much time outside as she could, but with the darkening sky came mosquitoes, something the woman is not terribly fond of. She decided to go indoors for the night but was in no mood to return to her bedroom just yet. The woman is currently sitting on a metal chair that looks like it doesn't belong in the room. She is seated in front of the tellevision, engaged in a heated game of Mario Kart with one of the students next to her. She is doing surprisingly well at this game, only having been beat twice in the past hour.
Theodore Fegenbush has not spent time outside. Mostly because that's where people were, and he doesn't want to be around people. His right hand is in a cast. Fortunately, he's left-handed. Book tucked under his arm, he wanders into the rec room. He doesn't say hello to Hilde, but drops the Robotics book on one of the tables, and flops roughly into a chair. He stares at the cover for a moment, and then opens it up.
Heather zips in through the front door, right on schedule. Well, her schedule anyways. She stops when she sees a video game playing on the screen, though, and wrinkles her nose distastefully at it. This expression only remains on her face for a split second. Instead, she decides to take a different road than approaching the gamers. "Are you planning on making a robot army?" she asks, playing the words on her tape recorder.
Hilde puts her arms up as she wins again! "Oh yay! This game is so much fun!" She pats the student on the shoulder gently. "Don't worry, I will teach you the ways of the Mario Kart…And also History." She turns to look at Heather as she approaches them. She looks a little confused at the question, "Robot Army? I would not even know how to start such a thing." The students next to Hilde whisper something to each other and look up at Heather before leaving the room, waving goodbye to Professor Hilde. The teacher offers them a wave and turns back to Heather, "You are Heather, correct? We met in the gym that one night." She does notice Theo on the chair, but decides not to say anything just yet. She had heard that he was brought back to the mansion by Tony Stark last night.
"Yeah," Theo answers Heather dryly. "I'm going to use it to take over the world." He adjusts the bandage over his broken nose, gently. "Besides, this is one of Dr. McCoy's recommended readings for me." There's a certain emphasis on the last word, almost a snubbing tone. Theo is often a little bit of a snot to other guys, but to the ladies, at least those of his own age, it's a rather rare occasion. "It's pretty easy, really," he says to Hilde, still looking at his book. "You build a bunch of robots, and make them kill everyone you don't like."
As the other students leave, Heather doesn't seem to acknowledge their departure. She hasn't been introduced to them, so they might as well not exist except as background noise. They have not become Important to her yet. She fiddles with her recorder slightly and then plays while facing Hilde, "Sorry about the ambiguity. My system leaves something to be desired. Yes, I am Heather Brown. Codename: Timeslip." The speedster turns towards Theo and plays a second message, "Dr. McCoy has not given me a recommended reading list. Does he normally?"
Hildegarde frowns at Theo. "Well that certainly does not seem like a very friendly thing to do. Why would Hank give you a reading list that involves creating killer robot armies?" She shakes her head, "Perhaps you are misunderstanding his assignment, hmm?" She glances back up at Heather. "Oh I am sure your…System works well. I simply meet a lot of people and have a hard time keeping names straight sometimes." She smiles. "Did you wish to play the Mario Karts with me?"
Theo now turns to look at Hilde with one of those teenager 'you're stupid' looks on his face. "Because I'm smarter than the rest of the people here, he gave me some advanced work to do over the summer so I could be challenged a little better. And because technology is my thing, that's what I'm learning. I'm not really making a killer robot army." His tone is abrasive and short. Somebody's in a bad mood.
"Mario Kart? No, it takes too much time. I will get distracted too quickly, and I will get tired of watching the game men move," plays Heather on her tape recorder. She raises her brow slightly at Theo and plays, "I do not know much about robotics, but I understand that someday I might know more. I know more about temporal mechanics. I suspect I will learn quite a lot about it, but maybe not anymore, but I caught a glimpse and I wrote down what I remembered. There are holes, but it will help me to read it." She does not really detect tone on her tape recorder, but it's hard to determine whether she would acknowledge it either way. She's not exactly the queen of empathy.
Hildegarde shakes her head and makes a "tsk tsk" noise. "You know, there are many smart people here. The ones who are truly genius and also wise do not flaunt their intelligence." She frowns slightly. "You seem upset. Would you like me to bake you something?" She figures the boy is in no mood to talk about the events that took place earlier. Turning to Heather, "Yes well, taking up time is the point of the video game. It helps one to pass the time, and it lets you do it with other people."
"Bake me something?" Theo asks, not quite prepared for the question. "I dunno," comes the non-commital response. "I'm fine, I don't need special treatment." He thumbs a page over, but he isn't really reading it right now, he's too distracted. "Temporal mechanics is strange stuff," he admits to Heather. "Guess it would make sense for you to learn it so you don't go ripping a hole in space time and destroy the universe." No pressure.
"Maybe I will let you read the manuscript someday. I don't understand all that I've written yet. It is like waking up from a dream and finding journal scrawls that meant so much and have become nothing. But it wasn't a dream," plays Heather to Theo. She turns towards Hildegarde, answering in the very systematic way that she tends to, "Well, it passes more of the time. It takes a lot of time for me to talk to you, but I can lose myself in thought and just listen to playback. I cannot do that with video games."
Hilde waves a hand at Theo. "Nonsense. It is not special treatment. I cook for many people. There may actually still be some cake in the kitchen unless the other students got to it…Or would you prefer something more filling? I could whip up a quick meal if you'd like." She offers a small frown at Theo for his moodyness and turns back to Heather. "It does not take so long to speak with someone. And…I do not understand your ability I suppose, so perhaps that is why it does not make sense to me." She pauses for a moment. "But also if you would like something to eat I could make you something as well."
Theo takes a deep breath, as if there had been some great sin committed against him he's trying to overlook. "If it makes you feel better, cook to your heart's content. He sits at the table, staring down at the text before him and wishing he were doing more than just pretending to read it. "I think Heather just likes using a tape recorder to talk to people. After all, it takes the same time for us to receive whatever you're saying, so you gotta sit there and listen through it anyway."
"Well, no, I don't enjoy the tape recorder. It just barely beats out my enjoyment of the dull thrum of you slow worlders," plays Heather, raising her brow, "It's hard to understand and pay attention. If I ignore you until you finish, at least I can think of other things. Games and words and time and people. Instead of trying to decipher your boring boring moans." She just sits down when this message is done and plays to Hildegarde, "I have already cooked in this cycle, but thank you."
Hildegarde nods to Theo, "I try to cook every day. It is relaxing. I shall see if there is something left in the kitchen in case you become hungry." She stands and begins to walk toward the kitchen, her boots clanking heavily as she moves. She pauses for a moment as Heather plays her message, causing her to furrow her brow and give the girl an odd look. "My my. You people need to learn to be friendlier toward each other. What a nasty thing to say." She shakes her head and moves out into the hall toward the kitchen.
Rashmi treads the hallways just in time to catch Hilde's final sally. Bobbing her head and smiling a bright greeting to the teacher, she glances at the doors, brows furrowing. "Is something wrong, Ms. ….? Um. I don't think we've met?"
Theo turns his head as Rashmi enters, and then answers Heather, not heeding the suggestion of being nicer. "Yeah, it's called communication. Most people do it when they want to have relationships with other people," he says with vinegar. "You should try it sometime." Definitely no way to talk to his teammate. "Everything's just peachy, Rashmi," he answers her. That is if you ignore the attitude, and the fact that Theo is in a cast, has a broken nose and too black eyes and enough butterfly bandages to sink a ship.
"I am just stating facts. The way you communicate sounds really, really dumb to me. It has a low, unpleasant dark green quality, and it will never be different." Heather frowns for a moment and plays, "Besides, I communicate just fine. And I suspect relationships are simply too unwieldy for me to maintain." She glances over to Rashmi and raises her hand in greeting, but plays nothing from the recorder.
Hildegarde stops as she nearly walks into Rashmi. "Oh my, sorry dear. Have we met? No I do not believe so. I am Hildegarde VonReginleif, but most people call me Professor Hilde." She looks at the girl, "Or just Hilde if they are not students." Depending on how much the students pay attention to the news, they may recognize the name as that of an author who has written a few books about mutants. She glances back at the students when she is asked what is wrong. "The students are…Difficult. I believe I have some cake in the kitchen, we'll see if that calms them down. It always worked on my sister." She offers a quick smile before continuing to the kitchen. "Be right back."
Rashmi glances inside, raising a knowing eyebrow. "Cake might help for Heather, Professor, but… wait." Pushing herself through the doors into the Rec Room proper, she blinks owlishly at Theo's less-than-hale condition. "What in the *world* happened to you?!" A hand rises to Heather, echoing the nonverbal greeting, and she glances at the timebender, then back at Theo's cast, as if to not bother to put voice to an utterly rhetorical question; 'Have you *seen* this?!'
"Maybe you should look up the difference between an opinion and a fact. It is your opinion that the way I communicate sounds dumb, and you associate colors with talking — which is weird as hell, by the way — but it's a fact that you just can't deal with real life, so you just wander around pretending you've got some edge over the rest of us because you got visited by a future version of yourself. So why don't you—" His voice is starting to become raised. Rashmi's interruption, comes at a timely moment. "I got in a fight, so what?" he barks, maintaining the angry voice.
"I hate it when people rant like that. And being visited by a future self is not what gives me an edge. I'm not going to show you what you sound like, just because it would be so terribly dull," plays Heather. She rolls her eyes slowly and in an exaggerated fashion so that the motion is clearly visible before she adds, "No doubt because you are so charming." She turns towards Rashmi, and in a completely different tone plays the second message, "He looks pretty battered. I'm never sure when I should be concerned about these things."
"Good rule of thumb," Rashmi says with a sigh, walking towards Theo with the air of a Big Sister, "more than three places that need bandages? Be concerned. Theo," she says to the boy, clearly worried. "You look like you got into a *war,* not a fight. What *happened?*"
Hildegarde had managed to slip away from Rashmi before the girl had started questioning about Theo's condition. She is gone for a few minutes before returning with half a cake, a small stack of paper plates and some forks. "Here, it is a banana dark-chocolate cake." She sits it down on the table and smiles slightly. "Eat some…If…If you want." She glances at Rashmi and shakes her head. "Not now. He was…And the…You know, the guy with the flying car…And…" She tilts her head slightly toward Heather, as if to indicate that this is perhaps not the best time to talk to Theo about things.
The technopath grits his teeth at Rashmi's question, and then glares at Heather. Reaching out with his power, he reverses the current to the device, so that the next thing she plays will play backward. "I got attacked by a couple of faggy skinheads, okay?" he announces. "And I won that fight, if you wanna know." Not exactly, but he didn't die, and that's close enough. He stares at the cake, but he isn't interested in eating at the moment.
"On ot lufpleh eb etim tath imshar uoy knaht," plays Heather from her tape recorder, not really knowing any better than to stop it when it plays nonsense, since she can't really understand any of the slow speech properly anyways. "krej EGUH a era uoy hguoth neve ded ton era uoy dalg ma i llew." She blinks a few times at the presence of the cake and heads over to get a slice. She may have already eaten this cycle, but she is a fan of food.
Rashmi pauses, blinking first at Hildegarde, than Heather, and at least has the grace to blush at her faux pas. "Okay…. well… Theo? Why don't you and I go someplace else, okay? You, um… you're… especially prickly tonight, probably you don't want to deal with people, right?" Straightening, she looks to the others, smiling gently. "It's okay, Heather, Professor… I think I can help here."
Hildegarde continues to smile a bit but slams down a hand on one of the tables when Theo speaks. The table makes a loud cracking noise and slumps to one side. The woman clears her throat, "Excuse me. Theodore please try not to use such hateful language. This is a school." She nods to Rashmi. Yes, Rashmi seems to know Theo much better than she does. Perhaps the girl can get some more information out of him. "Oh you two don't really need to go anywhere. I was going to head out now anyway…" She glances at Heather, "What do you say? Have you done your exercise yet this cycle? We could visit the gym." She nods, trying to get Heather to follow her out of the room to give these two a bit more privacy.
"Gee, what was your first clue?" the boy snaps back at Rashmi. He hasn't seen her in a while, but isn't welcoming her back to the school very well. "Why don't you all just go play shrink with someone else?" he says, reaching out with his hand and slamming his book shut. He stands up from his seat, and pushes away from the table roughly, and starts to charge out of the room with heavy steps.
"I'm Theo. I'm emotional. Bluuuuh. I'm going to go and cry," plays Heather after Theo is thoroughly out of earshot. Her imitation is not particularly good, but that may be because she's not entirely sure what Theo actually sounds like (nor does her voice get translated perfectly). It may also be because she is not good at imitation. She quickly eats the thin piece of cake that she grabbed and plays to Hilde, "I do not normally exercise in this cycle, but I can accompany you."
"Heather," Rashmi groans, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment and taking a deep breath. "I'll deal with this, okay? Sorry to run out on you guys… um… And for not having any cake. Professor, how about maybe tomorrow I'll make some curry to make it up? Um… sorry… Have fun at the gym?" Turning, she hurries out of the Rec Room after Theo, determined to catch up to the boy before he gets to the Dorms….. again.
Hildegarde sighs as the boy rushes out of the room. She nods to Rashmi, "I will let you handle this, since you seem to know him. If you need me I will be in the gym, and I will keep my communicator on me." The woman turns to Heather and smiles. "So…Um…I shall put this away and go put on appropriate clothing. Shall we meet down there in maybe 15 minutes?" She begins recollecting the cake and dishes.
"Fifteen minutes? That gives me plenty of time to change and still do a journal entry. That is fine," plays Heather to Hilde. She tilts her head slightly and replays a short segment of her tape quickly to herself and then plays to Rashmi, "It's so hard to understand tone on these things, but you looked exasperated. Whoops. Apologies. See you." That said, she offers and small wave and zips out the door.
~ Fin ~
