Players:
Summary: Francis and Travis are both new to Barnes Academy, Francis reveals her odd background.
Date: Date the log took place.
Log Title
Rating: Log Rating.
Barnes Academy - Cafeteria
A large open space with dozens of tables is attached to a kitchen module and a few freezer bays. Trained chefs prepare nutritionally balanced meals for staff and students here that is usually actually pretty tasty and after hours, there is an a la carte fridge with glass doors open to all. The cafeteria is even equipped to handle non-traditional metabolisms and there is even a small private dining module towards the back for staff dinners, guests of the teachers or for use by students with dietary requirements that might disturb others. The entire ceiling is a dome of transparent material and full-spectrum lighting gives the whole space a pleasant, sunny atmosphere, bolstered by the video monitors on the walls showing various live land and sea scapes.
Just having gotten to the school yesterday, Travis is still learning Barnes and getting adjusted to not only Barnes but New York City. There's also something else that Travis is getting used to, having six arms. He's gotten special clothing that has six arm holes, three on each side, so that he can function a bit better. He's got his tray and gotten the daily special, pasta with meat sauce, just don't ask what kind of meat, and some bread as he goes to find a table to sit at.
Even with Travis having arrived to the academy just yesterday, he's no longer the newest student. That falls to Francis, having just stepped onto the school grounds for the first time earlier today. She just finished settling down into her dorm room when the pangs of hunger began nipping at her stomach. So why not the cafeteria then? By the time the other student has arrived, she's already sitting at one of the many tables, her forked covered in twisted pasta noodles and held before quizzical eyes. If she's not disgusted by the food, she's definitely confused.
A tray is in two hands and a bottle of water is in another and a carton of milk in a fourth and there are still two hands free. Travis spots the table where Francis is and walks over and runs a free hand through his hair. "Hi, I'm kind of new here, mind some company?" He asks putting a hand on a chair so if he's given the okay and can sit down with her.
"Yeah, I'm pretty new…" Francis' jaw practically drops as her eyes focus past the pasta and over to the six armed guy standing across the table from her. "…uh, yeah, definitely… New too…" She scrambles for some words to cover up her shock. Things have been strange enough having been haphazardly shoved into this alternate world by her crack-pot grandfather, which caused some sort of mathematical randomizing of her gender she still fails to understand and now a guy with not two, not four, but six arms? "Just got here today." Her voice is low and husky, making her sound like she puts down a couple packs of cigarettes a day.
Travis notices the looks and sits down in front of Francis, he notices the look and gives a six armed shrug. "Yeah, I'm still getting used to this too. The arm thing. It's…weird." He says with a bit of a chuckle. "I'm Travis." He says offering a hand to Francis. "I just got here yesterday, me and my Mom." He admits as it's kind of weird to be an eighteen year old teenage boy and have your Mom at the same school, or normally it would be weird.
Francis looks embarrassed as she leans forward to meet his handshake with one of her own. "Yeah, sorry, but it totally is. Still getting used to this place myself. Not from here." She doesn't really extrapolate on the key word, 'here,' though this would be the perfect time to. She moves back into her chair, letting the fork still wrapped up with noodles fall back to the plate. "I'm Francis. Nice to meet'cha." She scratches at both of her shoulders, arms crossed over each other, which quickly spreads lower down onto her arms.
"This is my first time in New York also. I'm originally from…well not New York." Travis says as he starts to eat some of his dinner, almost inhaling it but then he eats like someone whose an athlete. "So, this is just weird to me. I never thought I'd be going to a military type mutant college. I always thought I'd be going to a local college near where I used to live."
"You're telling me!" Francis replies, picking her fork back up and forcing a bite down her throat. "I would have never expected any of this." The words spill out as her eyes shift around the room as if there is something extremely odd about it. "I mean, I've lived in New York before, but not this one." Her eyes shift again, but side to side this time as if she's expected someone to be sneaking up on them. Then she leans forward and begins in with a hushed tone. "So, has it always been just the United States here?"
"Not this one?" Travis asks sounding confused as he didn't know there was more than one. "And yeah…the United States, it's always been just that, I mean besides Canada and Mexico. Why?" He asks as he eats more of his food. He's just confused as to why she would ask that, who wouldn't know that if they didn't live in the United States already.
Francis simply shakes her head back and forth, her expression going from confused to ultra confused. "Meh. They didn't tell me anything before shoving me into this place." Her food is played with a little more, but none of it reaches her mouth. "It's confusing, to be honest. I mean, I'm from Baltimore, but not /this/ Baltimore." There's a pause while her fork is left back at the rim of her plate. "To put it simply, I'm from an alternate world. It's like this one, but really different." She bites down onto her bottom lip, head tilting lightly to the side as ways to word this begin to run through her head. "Ok. Like, there's two separate countries were here there is one. We have what's known as the Union and the Confederacy, basically." Yeah, it sounds really crazy, but she looks absolutely genuine and honest. Really.
"So…you're not from this world but another world? Kinda like Jet Li and The One, mulitpul universe type stuff?" Travis says trying to understand it all. "And so..you, well the North didn't win and there are two countries?" He runs a free hand through his hair as his brain tries to process it, a fork still in another hand on the same side. "Well, how did you get here?"
"Jet who?" Francis questions as a fuzzy look overcomes her features. Yeah, pop culture references go right over her head. "Yeah, the North and South have basically been at war on and off ever since the civil war." There's another pause, her fingers tapping down onto the table top in a rather poor rhythm as she nervously watches them. She's hesitant to answer the last question, knowing really only the cause but not really the how. "It's all because of my crackpot grandfather. Made some machine to send me here because another war was starting up and he didn't want me to get drafted into the military… or so he says. Can't help but feel a little like a guinea pig right now."
"Jet Li, he's this awesome badass kung fu actor." Travis says with disbelief that she's never heard of him. "No, here the Civil War ended with the Civil War. We're all still the United States. Wow, and I thought things were messed up for me." Travis admits as he hears Francis' side of the things. "And they draft girls where you live? I don't even think they really have any plans to use the draft again, not after Vietnam War."
Francis laughs nervously. "Well, that's the other odd thing… They don't draft girls where I come from either…" She looks down at the full plate of pasta still left mostly untouched, pondering the best way to come out with it. "You see… something strange happened when I came here. Not really sure how, to be honest, but I wasn't a girl there." There, the straight up approach should hopefully work. "The only word I've heard from the other side was that it had something to do with chaos theory, or the randomness of what I would have or could have been, if I was actually born here and not there." She pulls a hand up to her temple, shaking her head again. "Ugh… gives me a headache just thinking about it."
Travis just stops eating and talking as Francis drops that bomb. "What?" He says as he can't even imagine not being a guy. "That's really gotta suck Francis. I mean /really/ gotta suck." Though he refrains from asking 'what's it like having boobs'. "I don't think I'd like to wake up and find I'm a chick but then I did wake up and find I had six arms."
Francis just nods her head as she stares forward with a blank look. "Yeah, it's weird. Doesn't even feel like me, you know? Like, I was shoved not only into a different world, but someone else body." Just when things seemed all but hopeless in her mind, Travis offers up a little tid-bit of information that makes her feel a little better, not much, but just enough. "Wait?" She snaps in with. "You didn't always have six arms?"
Travis shakes his head. "Nope up until a week ago I was just a normal guy. I had a job while waiting to make some money to get into college, I had a scholarship but then something happened, and my mutation kicked and hell, I didn't even know I was a mutant until a while ago." Travis shares, unfortunately he can't go into details about how things happened, he's just not allowed to.
"Wow, that kind of sucks too." Francis answers, picking up the fork and shoveling in some now cold noodles into her mouth. She chews slowly, waiting to speak until she's fully swallowed. "That's another thing that's weird about here - mutants. Didn't really exist where I was from, or at least not to any public knowledge." Odd she's just assuming that everyone is public about it here.
"Here, it's like ya hear about them but then you don't really know or expect to see them, at least where I used to live." Travis says as he finishes up his food, mopping up some sauce with his bread. "But after the whole six arms thing I got recruited into Barnes and my Mom got offered a job here to help out, even though she doesn't have powers or anything. They were just looking for people to teach."
Francis nods in response. "Supposedly my grandfather knows someone high up here… well, knows them in their other life, but was able to convince them to take me in… I think…" She continues to nod, eyes glued to the plate of pasta still sitting before her. "…I have no clue to be honest. Don't have any mutations either, but I do have a weird power suit. Might be the only thing he actually built that actually worked, or so he claimed to have a hand in it."
"Power suit like Iron man kinda thing?" Travis asks as he's not sure how the whole thing works. "I've just got a lot of odd powers associated with my hands. Each one does something different, it's, I'm still getting used to it all and trying to learn how to control it all. Part of why I'm here. So, did you still have baseball where you're from?"
"Iron who? Never mind… Yeah, maybe." Francis says adding a lazy shrug for good measure. She then swirls up another go with the noodles and shoves them straight into her mouth. She perks up with the mention of his powers. "Really? Something different with each arm? That sounds awesome. Like what, if you don't mind me asking?" The fork is placed back down onto the plate, which is then shoved a little forward. Obviously the indication that you're done with your plate is about the same where she comes from. "Baseball? Yeah, there's definitely baseball where I come from. Why?"
"I don't really know. I know this hand" Travis says holding up his bottom right hand, "Can heal people. The top right can make a kind of sheild, it's just weird, I'm still figuring it out." Travis knows a bit about the others but not enough to share. "Why? Cause I couldn't imagine a world without baseball." He says with a grin.
Francis watches intently each hand that Travis gestures with, explaining the powers that follow with them. "Whoa, that's really cool. Wish I had something like that in my hands." She holds up her left hand, balling into a fist and starring at it as if waiting for something to happen. "Guess that's the nice thing about the power suit - came with a manual." She can't help but laugh at the last statement, despite the fact that it really did come with an instruction and maintenance manual. "Yes! What a horrible place it'd be without baseball, right? You guys play Lacrosse out here? It's all the rage back home."
Travis laughs and nods. "Yeah, I wish this came with a manual instead of…well…instead of this." It sounds like he was about to say something else but stopped himself. "Oh yeah people play lacrosse, I never did since both baseball and lacrosse as summer sports and I picked baseball. I was a third basemen." He says with pride. "Can't really play anymore, six hands, not exactly fair."
"I'd say not!" Francis replies with much enthusiasm. "Played a little baseball, but mostly did lacrosse. Was a defender myself. My real obsession became cross country running though. Our coach made is do it since he felt it was good off season training." It's slow to build, but eventually the blond haired teen begins to laugh. "I was just thinking if you did play baseball, do you think they'd let you wear three gloves?"
"I don't know, I don't even own three gloves anymore." Travis says with a chuckle. "But I never got a chance to do either, cross country or lacrosse. I did paint ball and airsoft in my free time and skiing when I was younger. And oddly enough, not sport related, but I always loved wood working. I kind of hope they have shop classes here."
"Well, owning three gloves would seem a bit much if you didn't have six arms, right?" Maybe it's just Francis, but the idea seems absolutely ridiculous. "Never really did any of those myself, but I guess there isn't much skiing to be done when you grew up in Baltimore… yeah, I bet they have some sort of wood shop here, right? Would seem to make sense, at least with the high school part of the academy."
Travis stands up and offers a hand to Francis. "It was nice meeting you Francis, I gotta get going though, gotta meet up with my Mom and finish packing, I'm sure you can relate." Then there's the figuring out of the schedule and training and all that weird stuff. "I'm sure I'll see ya soon." He says with a smile before going to take off.
Francis takes the offered hand and follows through with a shake. "Yeah, it was nice meeting you too, Travis." She nods at the packing remark, thinking about the little bit of stuff she was able to bring with her and how worthless most of it is given her new situation. "I'm sure I'll definitely be seeing you around. Enjoy." She then goes back to staring at the food on her plate, which by now has to be really cold.
