Players:
Summary: A new student arrives to find that she's fallen down the rabbit hole and her twin brother has gone missing. Again.
Date: June 15, 2010
Log Title First Days and Missing Brothers
Rating: PG(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.
A workout complete, the games are about to begin. Not many people play games with Heather anymore, because the speedster is unusually good at them. It might come from her upbringing: the whole 'being groomed to become a mastermind supervillain' kind of carries over to strategy. But she also just has a knack. She is playing a game of chess against no opponent at the moment, switching sides of the board every few moments to remind herself that she's playing to win. The girl's hair seems uncombed at the moment, but not as much a mess as it used to be, sweat resting still between the strands from her previous workout. Her clothes, a loose red t-shirt and a pair of orange pants, are brightly coloured and gaudy, something one might advise their friends not to wear out.
Connor comes stepping into the rec room, munching on a bowl for a chip as he walks around the end of the couch. Stopping mid-munch as he sees Heather, the chip falls from his mouth as he suddenly says, "Are you the Heather that's going to mock me for not realizing how eminently cool you are, or are you the Heather who wants to take me to her Master and turn me into some leather and latex bondage-freak?"
It's been a very long day for the newest student at Xavier's. First the trip from South Boston to the new school for freaks that her idiot younger brother has been attending for a semester, then finding out that self same idiot has gone and gotten himself missing again, and being assigned a room and all the little essentials that she's going to need for the summer so that Cloud won't be without family when he's been through so much since January. It's not a happy day for Star Rosen, her eyes a dark gray for the moment. She was shown where the rec room is on an earlier tour and now stalks into the room, her arms crossed over her chest and looking like she's pretty far into a heavy sulk, "Stupid idiot little brother… Can't keep himself out of trouble for one week while I get here!"
Heather stands up from her game and stares for a few moments at Connor. "I'm the Heather who is playing a game and still kind of wondering if I am at least an /attractive/ leather and latex bondage-freak," she plays from her tape recorder. It seems this Heather doesn't have the neat headset and speaker that her future self has. "Did you meet me from the future? I'm very sorry about that. I mean I will be. I think? Should I apologize for someone who I'm not, but will be? Manners were so hard to start with, but they just got /worse/." She scratches her head quickly and shrugs, but looks over to Star as she enters the room. "Your little brother? Who is that? What are you talking about?" she plays again through her tape recorder.
Connor would reply, but then Star comes in and he tilts his head for a long moment… and then blinks several times. Exhaling once he sets the chips to the side, the young man rubs the bridge of his nose, "Okay… so… simple question. It's not Cloud, is it? Cloud Rosen?" Before he finally looks back at Heather, "Future you doesn't look all that attractive to me, but I don't go for that type… well… I really don't know what type I go for."
A leather bondage-freak? What the hell?! Star frowns at that, having walked in on Heather's side of the conversation. Worry, anger, and a hint of fear cloud the air around her. For a moment, she doesn't seem to hear the question from the girl with the tape recorder, but then she gives herself a little shake and takes a deep breath, slowly exhaling through her nose and looks over at Connor for a moment, "Yeah, that's him." Her voice drops and a note of affection enters her voice, "Idiot jock…" She walks over closer to the other two, "I get off the train and hear that he's gone missing… Again." There's a small shake of her head, and she rolls her eyes, "I swear, I think I'm going to have to chip that boy."
"That type! That type is the type that I am!" huffs Heather at Connor. She's not all that upset, but Star's pheromones exasperate her state, even though she tends to be pretty stoic. The whole time travel thing is also a lot for her to consider lately. She idly plays with the cheap looking watch on her wrist and shrugs. "I guess I should apologize to you too, then. From the future. I kidnapped your brother." What a shocking twist! It might be strange to hear it said so flatly.
With the anger floating in the air, Connor rolls his eyes and makes a disgusted face, "Oh get over yourself, Heather… if you took five second to get off your high goddamn horse and behave like a normal goddamn person you might find SOME OF US might be datable material! It's not like anyone here even has any interest in me in the FIRST PLACE…" And then almost bitterly, to Star he growls out, "Don't worry… he'll come back allright. He's a bit too dumb to be useful to anyone importnt."
Star blinks a couple of times at that little bit of news, her eyes darkening slightly and a hint more anger filling the air, "You're the one that's responsible for him going missing?" Wait, what? The anger fades slightly, though she's feeding off of theirs now and it's not something that's quite so easy to dismiss as it should be, and confusion enters the mix, "You're the one that kidnapped him? Where the hell is he, then, if he's not here and you are?" Then she turns a black eyed glare on Connor, protectiveness and anger spiking, "Hey! I'm the only one that can call Cloud dumb." Pause, "He can be plenty useful." She calms slightly and a small, fond chuckle finds it's way into daylight, "When he puts his mind to it…"
"Act normal? And you think I am the one who needs to get off of a high horse! How do you propose I act normal?" plays Heather on her tape recorder, scowling during the whole duration of the play while looking at Connor. She stomps her foot /hard/, but thankfully it is an Xavier's floor and can withstand any amount of brutality applied to it. "I don't know! Here I am, trying to find the right moves to play against myself from the future who is apparently some kind of evil dominatrix or submissive /I am not sure what/ even though she likely has more than a hundred years experience on me! I'm sure she knows moves that I can't even /imagine/." She sits back down at her chess board and her tape continues to play, pouting as she considers strategy, "I don't have time to be datable material anyways."
Stopping himself from saying something acid back at Heather, Connor blinks a few times as the anger affect fades somewhat. He steps back once, shaking his head before he says with a breath, "Wait… what? I… okay that was WEIRD…" Looking back and forth between the two girls. Pointing at Star first he says, "One…They'll find your brother. If he still has his phone then they can track him via GPS, and besides that, we have a guy who lives here who can find anything and anyone. So… don't stress so much. It just takes time. And you…" Turning to point at Heather, "Your answer's simple… you do what you don't think you'd ever do…" Looking away finally before he puts his hands in his pockets, and sighs, leaning against a wall.
Shock floods through Star as she takes in that the Heather that kidnapped her brother isn't the Heather that's in the room an is, from her understanding at least, from something like one hundred years in the future, "Oh shit…" She stumbles backwards a couple of steps until she bumps into a piece of furniture and flops down on it, not caring that the furniture is, in fact, a table and not a chair, "You mean he could be in another time? Like a hundred years from now?!" That seems to be what she heard, anyway. There's a short pause, "Is that even possible?" Her eyes shift slowly toward violet, though still more gray than anything else as Connor speaks, "But what if he doesn't have time? Last time he was gone, he came back with something carved in his chest!" That's what she heard, anyway, though she never did learn what it was or what it meant. She props her elbows on her thighs and puts her face in her hands, her voice muffled when she murmurs again, "Oh, Cloud… What have you gotten yourself into now?"
"That's the problem," plays Heather, calming now that she hasn't been insulted, being normally quite passive, "My future self has seen me play before. She knows my best strategies, and no matter what I do, she will remember them. If I deviate, it's playing into her hands. If I don't, it's playing into her hands. Do you see my dilemma? Right now, I have a plan. I can't tell you. Ask Chloe about it, after I start screwing with time." She pauses and says, "Are you alive in the future? Did I say if you were?" She scratches her head. Clearly she is having a harder time conceiving of all the dimension at play here than her future self, who sorts through temporal manners quite handily. To Star, she adds, "I will win this, and you'll have your brother back." There's a pause and she says, directed to Connor, "Sorry for snapping earlier. It's unlike me. I know that I am not normal. It's why I am special."
The look on his face says that he would retort her 'special' status, just sighing and looking up and away for a moment, "You didn't… Ahab did… but I guess I use some other name… Volk. Anyways…" Connor sighs and then moves to sit down on the couch, looking up and over at Star, reaching over and picking up his bowl, "Potato Chip? Vinegar and Sea Salt. Always a nice kick on the mouth." Picking up another one and crunching it down before finally he sighs and shakes his head at Heather, "If your opponent dictates the rules of engagement, and by doing so can easily predict your movements… you find a different set of rules to play by. You don't work within the anticipated paradigm. Instead of thinking about what you could do… don't think… tell someone else. Once the strategem is outside your hands, it's outside the ability for your other self to know and anticipate. They then have to know the other person. Heck…" Another chip crunches down, "Give the plan in pieces to different people with a self-designed cascade effect."
Star nods and straightens, dropping her hands into her lap with a deep sigh, "If you really think you can." Pause, "I want in, though. If anybody's going to go get him out of whatever pit he's gotten himself pulled into this time, it's going to be me." How's that for bravado? Forget the fact that she's shaking in her boots, so to speak, Cloud is her twin brother and she's going to clean up his mess. Again. Not like it wouldn't be the first time, after all.
The offer of a chip earns a wrinkled nose and a shake of her head, "No thanks." And there's the tiniest thread of disgust that weaves into everything else, "I only eat organic."
There is a thoughtful pause from Heather as she considers Connor's words. She plays on her tape recorder, "Clever. I considered something like that. A solution that, when all the pieces are placed together, things become clear. I have to know that there are versions of these people in the future before making this kind of plan. But then I considered taking it a step further. Make myself into another unseen player, another piece while still being the player. I can't say more, ask Chloe. Ask her in ten years. You are alive. I think you will have a part to play. I know you live." She moves her pieces a few times and says to Star, "I do not know your future. You might have died. Apparently, your brother is dead in that future. That's how this future me coaxed him with her. Using his own death as leverage. What a strange strategem." Something she might think up. "That we are talking about this means I have to come back from the future, otherwise this won't be talked about." She shakes her head quickly and says, "This game is a strange one. I have to make sure I don't prevent any of the solutions from being presented to me from the future, accidentally. Do you understand? It's confusing."
Connor headtilts, "Organic foods… oh well… takes all types. I'm sure there's something in the fridge for you." Exhaling once he then stands up and walks over to Star, putting a hand out to her, "I'm Connor Blake… from Seattle. Senior class next year here at Xaviers. This is Heather Brown. She's got a special… condition… she's actually talking, but we can't hear or see it, so she records and plays it back. If Cloud's your brother, then you know the 4-1-1 about this place." Giving a bit of a smile, he then looks at Heather, "Seriously… stupid… we should at least be civil… right?"
This is all just a little too much for Star to process. Judging from her expression, not to mention the cloud of confusion that hangs around her, she's seconds away from imminent brain-breakage, "Cloud's dead?" Despair hits and she looks back and forth between the other two students, "I came all the way here so that he'd have at least a little family here for him and now you're telling me that something happens and that I'm totally useless now?!" She doesn't seem to hear the rest of the conversation, instead folding in on herself and wallowing in misery for a couple of minutes; depression almost a visible cloud hanging around her.
It's only when Connor reaches out a hand to her that Star looks up and tries to force herself to focus on something aside from her missing, and potentially dead, brother, "Star Rosen." She gives his hand a firm little grasp before she attempts to withdraw, "Also a senior next year." She glances over at Heather when she's introduced and offers a small little wiggle of her fingers, "Nice to meet you both." Maybe, "Oh. That's… neat, I guess…" Neat is one word for it, anyway. She grimaces at the comment about the 4-1-1 and nods, "It's a school for 'special people' like Cloud." Not people that can't stay out of trouble, but people that have a little more to their DNA than the rest of humanity.
"He's not dead, no, my future self said that he is dead in the future, which is how she might have unwittingly saved his life," plays Heather, raising her eyebrow slightly. Her twitchy hands move pieces across the board again. From her tape recorder, she plays her standard introduction, "I am Heather Brown, Codename: Timeslip. Nice to meet you." She gets up and gently kicks over the black king with her toe. Nodding at Connor, she says, "Alright then. No more insults, though, okay? I don't like being insulted."
Connor exhales once and then tilts his head a little bit, "I didn't mean to start getting growly, I promise… I don't know what came over me… allright? I'm Sorry too." Shaking his head as he motions to one of the many comfortable chairs in the room, "Take a seat… relax a bit. Worrying over your brother isn't going to solve anything. Leave an email from one of the public terminals or off your phone in the library that you want to talk to the Headmaster… he can let you know what's going on." A brief look to the chessboard, and then sighs, "Nice game… but you left a lot of the pawns… be careful of them. Even a pawn can become a Queen with a crafty enough player."
Star gives the other girl a small, dubious expression at the reassurance that her brother is, in fact, alive and causing someone else headaches at the moment, "So he might not die because some future version of you stole him out from under the proverbial nose of this damned school?" A spark of hope enters her voice and she sighs, closing her eyes and shaking her head as she pinches the bridge of her nose, "I think I'm getting a headache…" Temporal mechanics isn't something even mentioned at the school she used to go to, after all. There's another deep sigh and she looks faintly amused at Heather's introduction, "So what do I call you, then? Heather or Timeslip?"
She grimaces at Connor's apology and waves it off, "Don't worry about it on my account. I'm used to it." It's something that happens around her a lot. Especially when she's having a bad day; and if ever there were a day that deserved the label 'bad', it's this one. Star gives a wry smile and nods, rising from her impromptu perch on the edge of the table and moving to plop down in an actual chair, "I know it doesn't, but I can't help it… He's my baby brother." Even if he is just a few minutes younger, "I've got to worry about him." Pause, "So what happens around here during the summer, anyway? Surely there's not class still going on." Not for the ones that don't need summer school, anyway.
"You call me one or the other," replies Heather through her tape recorder, simply. She adds after a moment of surveying her board, "I reply to Timeslip and I reply to Heather. They are equally well suited for the task." She rearranges the pieces into their original order and shrugs, "Is there classes going on? I'm not sure. I don't really go into the classrooms." Heather tends to just fall asleep in classroom settings, if only because in her perception they stretch much longer, so she gets personalized lessons. One might say it's 'special education', but she would not like that term being applied. After a moment, Heather nods at Connor, replying, "And sometimes the queen must be sacrificed for the game to be won. Every piece is both dangerous and disposable, except for the king, for the good of the game… I'm sorry for snapping earlier, as well. I have a hard enough time getting along with people without being mean."
Connor actually laughs a bit, "I think the tape recorder thing is a bit intimidating, to be honest… Though it's really weird… meeting you from the future as an icebreaker for you in the past. Seriously… this place never gets boring…" Turning his head back to Star, he replies, "Classes are out for the summer, but you have to option to stay on campus if you want. I've never summered any place outside of Washington and Oregon… so I'm staying here. Besides… I can visit home any time I want. I go home on Fridays for dinner. I'm also getting some summer tutoring on physics and advanced math. It's been helping me understand a lot about myself. Really… it's great place. It's just a shame I only get one full year here. Only just squeaked in for spring quarter."
Star nods and shrugs of her momentary amusement at being given two names with which to address the same person. It's not something she's ever really dealt with before. Well… other than with band, anyway, "Well, whatever. I think I'll stick with Heather, though, if you don't mind. Makes this place not quite as weird." Or the other girl quite as strange. She nods when the other girl says she doesn't go into the classrooms, though she gives her a curious look, but eventually just shakes her head and doesn't ask. Better to let it slide and not risk offending someone than to open her mouth and ruin all chance of getting along peacefully, after all. Absently, she watches as the chess board is set up.
"It's unusual, that's for sure." She's never met anyone like Heather before. Not other than Cloud, anyway, and he doesn't need a tape recorder. Not that Star is really sure exactly what he can do other than that it seems to be pretty dangerous. She nods to Connor's revelation about classes, "I guess that's what Cloud was going to do since I was invited to come, too… I was told that they thought he could use some family close and we've always been tight, so…" Plus the fact that she's the only other one that's still in high school. There's a small frown and confusion sparks again, "So your family lives close, then?" They must if he goes home all the time.
"I live here full time," plays Heather on her tape recorder, explaining why she is still around. "This is my home now, and I am at peace with that." She then nods at Connor quickly and her player continues to run, "I'm sorry the first time you met me that you had to meet me in fetish gear. That's kind of embarrassing, since I'm not into fetish gear. Also, the tape recorder is probably what's intimidating. The people who talk to me without it seem to like me and everyone else looks at me funny." She shrugs. It doesn't really matter what other people think. It's only when people are actively insulting her that it becomes a problem, particularly because of her unusual world views.
She seems to pause for a moment to consider, but the tape recorder starts playing before her pause is complete. Perhaps she is just going through motions for the others' benefit or she is at a different point in the conversation. It's hard to tell. "Does your family live close?" Very seriously, the speedster continues, for Star's benefit, "If I remember correctly, Connor can warp space through gravitic manipulation. I have never seen it occur, but my suspicion is that distance is no obstacle, since he could just distort the space and reappear at a different location at somewhere around the speed of light." She furrows her brows and looks at her game, carefully replacing the board, still set up, on a table for a later time.
Connor's hands go in his pockets and a bit of a flush comes as Heather pretty much blurbs the whole secret out, and causes him a bit of embarrassment, "It's a little more than that… I just don't know enough about quantum theory and particle physics to make sense of it all." Sighing, he then adds, "Xavier's is not a normal school, Miss Rosen… everyone's here because they have something inside of them that marks them as different, and the rest of the world isn't ready to accept. Everyone needs a place, and this is ours. Anyways… I gotta get going. Guest quarters are on the first floor. There's a terminal for registering yourself in the hallway, if I recall. It'll tell you if a room's open. Like I said before, check with Mister Summers in the morning on the status of Cloud. Things get taken care of here… it took me a bit to learn to, but you've got to have faith. Anyways… since Heather let Schroedinger's Cat out…" He waves and he's just GONE! Right before you both reality seems to just collapse in on itself, the air wavering slightly before retaking it's normalcy.
"That's got to suck." Star grimaces, and sympathy shimmers around her, "At least I've still got a home to go back to." A home other than the institute. She quirks an eyebrow at the mention of 'fetish gear', but just shakes her head. She's not sure she wants to know about that one. Then there's some incomprehensible, at least to her, explanation about Connor and his powers and she just shakes her head in wonder, "Sounds a little too weird to me…" Pause, "My family lives in South Boston. Dad's a cop and mom's the principal of our- Well, of the high school we used to go to." She's not going to be attending there next school year, after all. Not if Cloud ever comes back.
She chuckles softly and once again shakes her head, "Way over my head there, man. I only just took Pre-Cal this year." She frowns faintly at the comment about 'everyone' and shrugs, "Maybe not everyone has some special, unusual thing about them… I'm perfectly normal, for one." Or so she thinks, anyway. She gives a small grateful half smile for the information about rooms and the advice on what to do about her brother and nods, "Thanks. I appreciate it." She lifts her hand to give him a finger wiggle of farewell, but he's gone before she can finish the motion and she blinks a couple of times in surprise, "Wow…"
"And now I've witnessed it," plays Heather triumphantly at seeing Connor vanish to wherever he's off to. She touches each of the pieces on the board and plays with her watch for a moment or two. "I have been awake for far too long. It has been thirty five hours in my reality. It's time for a nap soon." She pauses for a moment to listen to the explanation about Star's family and plays on her recorder, "My parents are Cheryl Brown, codename: Upgrade, and Dan Brown, codename: Mindbender." The names are of two St. Louis based supervillains who were captured a few years back. "I'm kind of jealous of that kind of normalcy. A quiet life like that. Perhaps that's your specialness here. Stability." She hooks her recorder around her neck and it continues to play, "I hope I have not been too off-putting. I come on strong. Goodnight." With that word, she zips out of the room at a breakneck pace, disappearing around the corner.
