[Open] In Philly

[easy_as_cake]

Who: Trance and Open
What: A proper introduction! One that doesn’t involve anyone getting attacked, getting healed, or getting in a gigantic unexpected argument! After the chaos of arriving, running for her life, learning to heal, and attempting to stop her best friend from completely burning every possible bridge, Trance looks for a little mental R&R by doing some exploring around the camp.
Where: In and near the library.
When: After the healing log but before the quest moves on.
Warnings/Notes: Only what you bring with you. I’ll update if any are added.


I. Outside The First
[There’s a curious-looking purple girl with a tail exploring the abandoned buildings outside the library the group has holed up in. She stops to pet one of the oversized vines, talking to it under her breath, before she notices one of the many-eyed lizards farther up the building.

Her tail twitches slightly side-to-side before she extends a hand toward it, carefully, slowly. It’s well out of reach, but she doesn’t let that stop her. The lizard doesn’t seem to take note or care either way if it does see her. With that many eyes, how could it not notice? She frowns slightly and wiggles her fingers a bit.]

Come on. I don’t bite. ...I hope you don’t bite, either. You don’t, right?

[The lizard remains unfazed.]


II. Outside The Second
No, not- Not that way!

[Trance has discovered another spell she has access to. She sits cross-legged in a patch of grass breaking through a pile of rubble that may have once been a road, hands stretched in front of her, fingers buried in the grass. The grass, which she is talking to.

The grass… which seems to be responding, after a fashion.

It grows right impossibly fast, twisting and turning around itself to make vine-like ropes that grab for anything passing by. She, perhaps, hasn’t quite learned to control this part of it yet. The grass-vines grab the nearest passerby and Trance snatches her hands away from the ground with a squeak. The grass doesn’t do anything but hold its accidental prisoner in place, but it also doesn’t seem to be receding.

Sorry! I’m sorry! That wasn’t- [She takes a deep breath and presses her hands to the ground again.] I can fix this.


III. Inside
[Trance has found herself a quiet corner to read in, out of the way and unlikely to be stumbled upon by anyone she’s currently annoyed at. A small pile of books sits next to her, a couple larger ones already tucked into a sad-looking messenger bag. They largely seem to be medical books or emergency preparedness manuals, although one has a blank but fancy looking binding that obviously doesn’t match the decaying state of a lot of the library’s books.

At the moment, though, she’s distracted by one particular book that even at first glance is not the serious subject matter of the rest of her finds. Though faded, the cover obviously once sported bright colors and reflective foil in the shape of scales on a fish. She seems entirely engrossed in reading the picture book, not paying much attention to her surroundings except to look up whenever she hears footsteps.]

Comments

III

[suckitblue]

[ Simmons isn't sure what happened while he was taking his nap, but he can read the team mood. It seems like it might be best if he just stays out of the way and lets it blow over.

Luckily, he has some (re)reading he wants to do anyway. He's dug up a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and is trying to find a quiet corner to sink into when he discovers someone else had the same idea. ]

Oh!

[ Awkward. He's seen the purple woman around camp, but hasn't exactly spoken to her much. ]

Do you, uh, mind if I sit here?

[ He's lowkey scoping out the stack of books as he does. He's digging through Tolkien now, yes, but he has plenty of other things he wants to try and skim before they move on. ]

[easy_as_cake]

[He doesn't want to know. It was a lot of stupid, and Trance is still a little miffed over the whole thing.

It's got her paying even less attention than the should, and she jumps when a person speaks, nearly dropping the book she's reading before she grabs it back into her lap. For a second, she flounders in surprise, but then she smiles, gathering her things closer to her from where they'd started to spread out.]

Sorry! Yeah, please. Hi. I'm, um. Trance. We haven't really met yet.

[suckitblue]

Sorry I startled you.

[ Awkward. Good job, Simmons. ]

I'm Simmons. ...Nice to meet you?

[ That's no less awkward, he's really batting a thousand as he sits down. He's polite about that, though, accepting some of the cleared space without really encroaching on Trance's personal bubble.

It's a little dim, though. He reaches up and puts a hand to the wall behind him for a moment, then pulls it away and leaves a glowing handprint behind to read by. Good. ]

I take it we're all doing a little research.

[ He's in no place to judge what Trance is reading when he's returning to his own childhood books for medical information of all things. ]

[easy_as_cake]

It's okay. I just didn't see you coming. [She hasn't seen anything coming since she got here. It's surprisingly difficult to adjust to, but she's managing well enough. Minus the whole having to pay attention to her surroundings part.

He can be as awkward as he likes. She's good at ignoring awkward entirely, and anyway, awkward is much better than hostile! She smiles brightly, settling back into her more compact spot.]

Nice to meet you, too!

[She even makes it sound like it really is nice to meet him, because it is. She's met so many people, and most of them haven't even thought she was weird for being purple yet! No one has called her tail stupid or called her a monkey or just plain pretended she wasn't there. It is very nice.

And then he does that light trick and she gasps in appreciation.]

That's amazing! Did you learn to do that here or could you always do that?

[suckitblue]

[ She may be purple and have a tail, but commenting on that would probably be rude. Simmons is grateful some of the guys he knows from back home aren't here, it would've been an entire scene with them.

She's kind of pretty, actually, but thinking about that wouldn't make awkwardly meeting a new person any easier so he tries to just let that observation drop. ]

Oh, the light thing?

[ He's gotten used to it, he didn't even think about doing that. He never thought he would get used to that. ]

Yeah. I can do a couple new things here and that's one of them. I can also heal people and make these chains out of light?

[ He makes a little sweeping motion with one hand, as if he's trying to mime out the shape of a chain. ]

...It's pretty cool.

[ He's trying to be dignified and respectable, but he can't contain a little bit of the dorky excitement he gets whenever he reminds himself of that. ]

[easy_as_cake]

[It's okay, Trance is 110% dorky excitement most of the time when she learns new, interesting things, too. She's certainly not judging him for it. If anything, her smile grows and she sits forward a little.]

Really? I can do that, too! The healing, I mean. Well, a little. It's not very much, but it's definitely more than I could do before without Andromeda and all the equipment in the medical bay. I can't do chains or anything, but I did make a bunch of plants accidentally grab somebody earlier, so that's new, too.

[There is no place for dignified and respectable here. The picture book lies closed and forgotten in her lap, all her attention now on her new friend and their shared powers.]

[suckitblue]

Was that your ship?

[ It has a medical bay. Part of Simmons is like oh, thank god, someone else who understands about space. So far it seems to just be him, Brainy, and the Jedi. ]

That sounds pretty useful. Mostly I've been using chains to trip people up, I'm not sure how much they can hold and I don't want to find out at a bad time.

I bet you could do that with plants too.

[ That's what he was doing during the Weathertop fight. And also something he's done to Dixon, but he's not exactly broadcasted that incident. ]

[easy_as_cake]

Well, she's more her own ship, but she was the ship we were all living on. The Andromeda Ascendant. She's a warship, but she's really nice.

[The ship is built very well, but Rommie herself is also very nice. Just nice all around. She just assumes pretty much everyone knows about starships, though. That will be a bit of a shock once she discovers otherwise.]

Ooh, I wonder if I could. Probably kind of hard to practice, that, though. Most people aren't going to want to let me trip them just to see if I can.

[Of course, if she happens to run into Harper soon, she might try it anyway.]

[suckitblue]

I've been on a couple of ships, but I wasn't Navy. I'm used to being on the ground.

[ He totally got spacesick like five times. ]

Some people might volunteer. That Impulse kid was asking me to test the light thing on him to see if he could absorb it.

...Might want to find somewhere soft to try that, though.

[easy_as_cake]

We're not navy. We're High Guard. Well, sort of. Rommie's High Guard, and Dylan, and the rest of us are kind of honorary since we're there anyway. I don't think I've ever met an android that wasn't High Guard, either. [Not a sentient one, anyway, but specifying that seems a little like it might be an insult so she doesn't.] Are there lots of them in the navy where you're from?

[He's all made of metal. Of course he's some sort of android or robot or something. A combat android looking like him makes complete sense. Although he does look a bit like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum now she's thinking about it and the thought makes her smile.]

I don't think I've met him, either, yet. I haven't met very many people. Everyone's kind of... I mean, there was a really big fight, so I don't blame them for kind of wanting to keep to themselves, right?

[suckitblue]

[ If the purpleness hadn't tipped Simmons off that Trance isn't from his neck of the woods, the reference to High Guard would've. There's nothing by that name in the UNSC.

But as for being an android... ]

Oh. Erm.

[ Right. It seems like other worlds don't have people running around in combat armor all the time. This is an easy mistake. ]

I'm only about one eighth cyborg, actually. Arm, leg, some organs, but...

[ Simmons unseals his helmet and pulls it off to demonstrate. See? Human. ]

I've only seen a couple of robots personally. [ One in particular, and he's an asshole. ]

Everyone's kind of beat up and tired, that was the worst thing we've seen so far.

[easy_as_cake]

[To be perfectly honest, there's not much High Guard in the High Guard these days, either. But they're working on it.

She looks a bit embarrassed when he reveals her mistake, but only a bit. As least she hadn't assumed he was something weird.]

Oh! Sorry. There's nothing wrong with being a cyborg, either, you know. I've met a few of them. One was really mean and tried to shoot me, but I'm sure you won't do that.

[It had been a trying time for everyone.]

Have you been here very long? I only just got here right when everything was kind of. Exploding.

[suckitblue]

It's okay, I don't even have a gun anymore anyway.

[ Given how things are going, he kind of misses it. Shooting at people who were trying to hurt his friends, those sure were the days. ]

I've been here since... well, I guess since we started showing up here? That was the worst thing that's happened to us so far.

[ It's not like anyone else has shown up and claimed to have been around longer. ]

You'd think that would mean I have some idea what's going on by now, but no. I don't think anybody really does.

[easy_as_cake]

...That would probably make it harder.

[But just probably. She has faith in people's ingenuity.]

I guess that's good. Unless things are just going to get worse which is always possible. Or maybe they'll get better and we'll all be really happy and surprised. [She even looks like she believes it. Optimism is very strange when you don't know whether it's really going to happen that way or not. She's working on it.] At least if nobody knows, then we're all on equal footing? It's like a field trip!