game Issue #02 - The First Day is the Hardest

[Khakhan]

Issue #02 - The First Day is the Hardest

---

The evening winds down slowly, with the various unpacking and moving things around and cleaning up taking the bulk of the rest of the evening. Night falls all too soon, with nothing but the occasional sounds of a small party still happening. Eventually, teachers wander through and usher the late-partiers off to bed and the campus grows silent.

 

Entirely too early the next morning, alarms start sounding, waking the Omega House inhabitants from their sleep. Fortunately, to ease the pain, the smell of pancakes and other breakfast-y goodness wafts through the house. In the kitchen, Ty and Becks have whipped up a veritable buffet, and a table is packed down with various delicacies to eat. Also set out are the class schedules for the various members of the household, which tell them that they have an hour before their classes start to eat and find their classes.

 

"Hubris, Megan. Don't forget that Jinx wants to talk to you both before your classes. She'll give you both notes so you won't get any trouble with your teachers." Ty says, tipping a pancake from a pan onto a teetering stack on the table.

[Streetrat]

 Sarah - Artifice

---

Sarah entered the room in a bathrobe and a shower cap. Her bed, the one from Seven's brownstone covered in hidden runes, sat solid in a corner next to her desk neatly made. Had she been back in her home dimension would have been a pile of cast off clothes, stuffed animals and blankets, but her time with Seven had taught her to be neat in mind and body. It was something she had to work at to help clear her mind and body. It was one of the many things that she needed to do to keep control, or at least not break as often.

Steamer Trunk Workshop

Her Steamer Trunk was set up on the desk, she would eventually need to move it down to the basement where the other workshops were. But she was not yet ready to move her workshop there yet.  At least not until the others better understood her wand and the suspended rituals that she created for herself. The trunk was full of strange and unusual materials used in the creation of her magic. It again was a gift to her.  As was most everything that she owned.  

 

The thought gave her pause, even those things that she had made herself, she had made with the materials provided for her.

 

She shook off the thoughts lest they take her down paths that always led to pain. and began to get dressed. She had found that she certainly had a style, and it was not a popular style. Trousers instead of skirts, blouses and vests.  What really mattered to her was that this look went with her jacket.  As if called to her, Jacket flew through the room to circle her a few times and wait for her to place her arms behind her so that it may fit itself upon her.  Jacket was special, it was created to protect her, but it also had an enchantment to always keep her the right temp, never too hot, never too cool, always just right.

 

And the fact that it helped her fly was a bonus.

 

She checked the dimensional pocket to make sure her wand was still where she left it, safe, secure and protected.

 

The smell of breakfast had finally drawn her out of the room she shared with Gabby. She was halfway down the stairs before she even realized that she had not checked to see if she was awake. Sarah only could assume so, Gabby seemed so put together, when Ty was not involved at least, but the pull of syrup and Bacon called to her. "Ty...Becks..." she said as she took a plate and set two pancakes on it, slathered a few pats of butter and began to drizzle maple syrup...the real stuff, runny and tasting nothing like the corn syrup she had grown up with, but tasting...different. She would decide later if it was better.  It was...with the small pile of bacon that she also heaped onto her plate. She then poured some boiling water for a good British Breakfast tea with a lump of sugar and a drop of milk.

 

"Grhmphhuuum" she said to the others as they gathered for the feast. Sarah at least stabbed it with her steely knives and it did seem to kill the beast of hunger within her as she looked over her class schedule and what would become her routine for the duration. 

 

 

[EDTA]

Megan - Newt

---

When it was all said and done Megan wound up helping herself to one of the singles. Ty was right, those beds weren't going anywhere and it really cut down on the space. Plus two beds meant there might have been the remote chance she'd have to eventually room with someone else even if there weren't that many people in Omega House right now. For all she knew another house might be flooded out or destroyed or burnt to the ground and then where'd she be? Stuck with some rando probably! Plus the singles were at the end of the hall, so nobody else was going to be running past her room at midnight. That's all she really wanted anyway.

 

Except for the "no roommate" part, of course. She had enough of those already.

 

But now it was the next day and it was breakfast and class was set to start. And other things. "Thanks dad," Megan says snottily as she's reminded of her appointment. As if she needed a reminder like she was some kid. Maybe the only good thing about doing it now instead of last night meant it probably wasn't going to take forever. Still maybe it wouldn't be the worst idea to get 'lost' on the way and get in there real close to class start time. Nah, the counselor would see through that stunt and Megan'd probably get an extra lecture on top of whatever she was already due to get. Plus how long could it take to tell her what, not to burn down the school? Try not to turn anyone else into ash? Might as well get it over with. 

 

Food first though. "So you gonna make a big deal like this every morning or will I have to char my own bacon tomorrow?" Clearly she's unimpressed by the strips which she wouldn't even charitably call 'crispy'. Sure she wouldn't really refuse any food she didn't have to cook herself, but there had to be limits right? Whatever, choke down enough food for three people and be on her way. Apparently this was the new normal. She was starting to get sick of those.

 

[Chimi]

  Hubris Hammersmith - Iteration

---

One of the benefits of being a genetically engineered freak? After a short four hours Hubris was up and in the shower, beating even the early risers. She made her way back wearing a thick robe with long sleeves past the tips of her fingers. She isn't afraid, really, and if anyone accused her of being ashamed she's get real pissed real quick, but, it's still the kind of thing that you reveal on your own time. Once safely back in her room (a double, but to herself for now, she is used to not having a little privacy) she dresses and sits at her desk. Laptop up, the ripped text of one of her textbooks up, auto-scrolling. She'd flash-read it before, committed it to memory, but repetition set it higher in her mind, made it less of an effort to recall. Learned it, really. A tablet propped up, playing Mean Girls through her earbuds. In between, a watchmaker's toolkit, intricate screwdrivers and teeny tiny tweezers, a felt surface. A bit of the flexible metallic covering of her arm off, tweaking the machinery inside. Her ring finger's tension was off, just a bit. A stiff finger.

---

A few hours later, Hubris waits until a few people have used the shower, and the creak of the stairs means she wouldn't be the first up and about. Or the last. So she stumps down the stairs, burdened with a heavy-looking machine of chrome and black plastic. Nodding to the assembled, she makes her way past the table piled high with food and into the kitchen, where the machine she's carrying gets tucked into a corner next to a big stand mixer. Hubris plugs it in, and listens with everyone else to it doing a little hum and whir. Eventually it stops, and a little ring lights up green. Nodding, Hubris puts a cup in a little landing bay, looking something like an over-engineered coffee maker, and touches her left finger to the green circle. The machine blinks, thinks, and the whirring starts again, little trickles of powder dropping into the cup. Eventually it finishes, and she takes the cup over to the fridge to top up with filter water before capping it any making her way to the table, where she takes a seat next to Megan.

"Uhhh..." She gestures at the table, laden with all manner of goodies, "Is this...normal? It looks like something out of a movie, I guess." She starts shaking up her morning thingie, the water and various beige powders transmuting into a beige liquid. Giving in to her base urges, Hubris does snag a pair of tongs and transfers one small piece of bacon to her plate.

[Jubilant Thunder]

Gabriella Marlowe

 

After some fussing around getting settled into the new room and nervous excited chatting with her roommate/new best friend Gabby finally settles down for the night...only to be wide awake again by 2am. That had been happening more and more ever since her abilities had started to appear; she would just not be tired. After some restless tossing and turning she finally gets up, silently creeping out of the room and downstairs where she permits herself a small moment of relaxation, taking off her glasses. Nighttime was so much easier; lights were subdued, everyone was asleep and the massive wave of sensory overload wasn't nearly as strong. The glow of the digital clock on the microwave was like a neon sign in Vegas, she could hear the scuttling of mice under the porch and the hypersonic squeaking of bats flying around and the low drone of the wings on the bugs they were chasing down, but that was quiet as a tomb compared to daytime in a crowded area.

 

She was distracted by the sound of Ty snoring(at least she hoped it was Ty) so much that she almost missed the soft sound of footsteps in the upstairs hallway, soon followed by the sound of a running shower. Another insomniac? Not wanting to intrude she quickly replaces the glasses, dampening her senses back to mostly human levels. Something to talk about in the morning maybe, for now she had emails to send letting her parents know how the first day had gone.

 

Gabby returns to her room shortly before dawn. She didn't mind being 'the first one up' but being up most of the night still felt weird so she puts on the facade of just being a 'normal' early riser. Grabbing a quick shower she gets properly dressed and heads down towards the fantastic smells coming out of the kitchen. Taking a pancake she piles in scrambled eggs and sausage links, rolling it up into an impromptu breakfast burrito. "This is amazing, thank you." When Megan smarts off she fights down the urge to respond, instead focusing herself entirely on her food until Hubris speaks up too. "I'm sure it's just a 'welcome to the first day of school' kinda thing. This would be a lot of trouble to do every day. Is that like a protein shake or something?" She eyes the container Hubris is drinking from. "I could never be that disciplined, I like pancakes too much." The first one already devoured she starts filling up a second.

[Chimi]

  Hubris Hammersmith - Iteration

---

"Protein, lipids, complex carbohydrates, fiber. Trace nutrients. Enough cadmium that I don't need to go chew on batteries." The last bit has the tone of an inside joke, maybe with a target audience of just Hubris. She pops the flip-cap with her thumb, a little toom sound. The contents smell vaguely cereal, with an off note. "It's not too bad, it's been breakfast for years. Designed to be..."inoffensive to the palate". Which, compared to some tailored nutrition solutions is actually a pretty high bar." Giving the bottle a little swirl, Hubris quickly downs about a third of it before tearing her bacon in half and scarfing that too.

 

"Thank you both for cooking this morning. Everything looks great." Hubris is...polite. And truthful, it does look all well cooked, in fact she's thinking of taking maybe some eggs as well, but her words come from dutiful socialization rather than a genuine outpouring of gratitude. Social duty done, she takes up her class schedule, looking it over for her day.

[EDTA]

Megan - Newt

---

The "alternatives" for breakfast didn't look that appealing, something Megan made clear as she wrinkled her nose as she proceeded to take from the bacon pile. As much as she complained about it, she was really putting it away. "Egh, I don't think you could pay me to eat that kind of stuff. Hope they don't make me worry about all I eat too just cuz I'm 'underweight'. Whatever that's supposed to mean. Not my fault I got a high metabolism."

 

Technically that was true in multiple ways, it wasn't Megan's fault her metabolic rate was quite a bit higher than normal. Or her body temperature. Or any number of all the stupid small things that just weren't 'normal' for her. Not that being able to eat whatever she wanted whenever she wanted without blowing up was a bad thing, really. 

[Streetrat]

 Sarah - Artifice

---

When Gabby appeared Sarah visibly brightened, it was a sad thing for her to face, but she had found herself wanting to cling to her roomie like a life preserver. "Hey there roomie, I didn't catch you as I came down, I am sorry I should have woke you." she said between bites and a good sip of her tea.

 

"Cadmium you say, could you let me know your source? I have been needing some for a ritual I am putting together." Her mind was suddenly abuzz with a ritual that would speed her up for a short duration. Initially it would serve little purpose aside from being able to cross campus in a matter of seconds, but perhaps one day it would be able to be expanded.  Magic was still as of yet an imprecise art at this time for Sarah.

---

[EDTA]

Megan - Newt

---

"Dude, she's just messing with you. Nobody's putting cadmium in their food. Stuff's crazy toxic." Megan's back to the shrinking bacon pile. It was just breakfast and people were already acting like they were too dumb to function! "Like, I don't think they even use it in batteries anymore it sucks that bad. You try using that crap in a ritual you ain't gonna do anything except poison yourself like an idiot. Don't you know anything?"

[Chimi]

  Hubris Hammersmith - Iteration

---

Hubris just swirls her shake-thingie, keeping it mixed, while watching Megan. When she stops, Hubris waits a beat before turning to Sarah. "I've only got, like, 10 grams, and it's super-fine powder, because, well," she lifts her tumbler and gives it another swirl. "Probably not great for you, because it is a carcinogen...but it's in like potatoes and wheat in trace amounts, not 'crazy toxic'. You still don't wanna breath it though. I get it from this scientific supply company though, and I know they have granules for...all sorts of stuff. Take a look tonight, see if they have something that works for you?" She asks, before turning back to Megan and taking a smug drink of her cadmium-enhanced shake.

[Jubilant Thunder]

Gabriella Marlowe

 

Wow...house mates for about 12 hours and the claws were already coming out. Yikes. "So, classes..." Gabby makes a big show of fussing with her schedule and looking it over. "Mostly gen ed stuff to start off, does anyone have anything fun? I'm taking an Intro to Journalism class, I like keeping up with current events and I figure getting a job that keeps me close to the action will help with all the superheroing, right?" She glances around at the other girls, hoping to get them engaged with something other than snipping at each other. "Plus, you know, I can fly and I'm super strong so I think I'm karmically obligated to be a reporter heh...heh." Gabby trails off awkwardly after the attempted humor, not sure where to go after that.

 

Poor Ty, stuck in the middle of all this in a house full of angsty teenage girls. Still, this was her chance to be the cool mature one, above all the 'mean girls' stuff right? Right?

[ManicPixieFatGuy]

   Jan -OOBLECK

     

---

    

Jan had dipped early she didn’t dislike people. She was even excited for these folks being her new team / friends and growing closer with them, but she also didn’t always have the fuel in the tank or spoons as it were to manage her mental capacity for new situations and social situations well. Today had drained her. So she found one of the twin rooms and solo’d it. Unloading her automated helper of his load. Pelican cases, and various hard cases were stacked on the floor and opened. A few left on her tensors disk. 
 

She opened the cases and accessed the hammer space within. Pushing buttons on various slabs of dull metal which then origami unfolded into shelves and a desk and a bed frame that she pushed into place beside one of the existing beds equipping herself with the equivalent of a king size bed in the crowded room. She set shelves up framing the other bed and placed her standing desk beside the wall at the foot of her bed. 
 

She then pulled an intricate canister which was too large to fit in the case she pulled it from and placed it on the spare bed. She then waved and tapped the glass. Before unloading the computing gear and support systems for her Goo canister so he would be nice and comfortable. Large tubes ran from the canister to a silent and advanced generator and another to a large HVAC unit, and more still to a stand alone cylinder which had vacuum tubes sticking out of the length of the pillar. 

 

She then started tacking up posters as her drones flew into and out of her cases retrieving and then shelving books until her shelves were full.
 

As she worked her energy levels and focus grew until she felt replenished and comfortable once again. 
 

With everything unpacked and her room barely recognizable she turned into a buckaroo banzai hoodie three times too big, a pair of sweats, fuzzy slippers which looked like hippos, and a big comfy knit beanie. Before looking at the clock and realizing how late it was. Welp she wasn’t tired now so she might as well sneak down and set up her lab. Giving her drones and tensors disk instructions they all proceeded to sneak through the house and into the basement in the most comedic act of stealth ever perpetrated by by a teenage girl in fuzzy slippers and her merry band of drones. 
 

Hours later her lab was set up, servers, high end computers, 3-d printers of various sizes and styles, and more esoteric equipment. She then placed a bow tie at her station and connected it to a series of wires and picking up a diagnostic tool and soldering iron began to tweak her control module.
 

A time later she woke up, having fallen face down into her work and drooled all over herself. 
 

She stood stretching her back and followed the smell of food up the stairs and into the kitchen nearly floating along the scent trail as her nostrils flared at the smell of bacon. She stepped into the crowded kitchen and immediately grabbed a piece of bacon, as she reached into her hoodie pocket with a WHOOMF sound associated with entering and exiting hammerspace and retrieved an unhealthily large can of monster pacific cooler… because it had juice and was thus a breakfast food. She cracked the can and chugged before walking to the table and crashing into a chair. Pulling her hood right around her face, “UGH, sorry for disappearing guys. Bandwidth got tapped and I had to stealth out before I imploded. I hope you understand? How are you guys? Everyone all chummy and paired up into frenemies and besties yet? “ Jan then chugged the rest of her monster before reaching into her hoodie pocket and getting a comically large mug which she walked to the counter and then began to pour sugar and creamer into before topping it off with a splash of coffee all while attentively watching her dorm mates. 

Edited October 5, 2022 by ManicPixieFatGuy (see edit history)

[Streetrat]

 Sarah - Artifice

---

Sarah watched the back and forth, hearing about cadmium she was glad that her ritual did not require her to drink or eat it, just set it off. So much that she did not know about some of the ingredients, she understood THAT they worked, but not always WHY. 

 

It seems that she had a new line of research that she would have to fit in between classes and homework. I wonder where I would even begin that kind of research... Sarah thought to herself almost missing Jan joining the congregation worshipping at the altar of breakfast.

 

"Hey Jan," Sarah said between bites of...well bacon..."I will be opening interviews and auditions for Frenemies and Archnemesis later this week, as for Besties, that is a constant open council with room at the table for more." Of course Sarah was joking...right now she had one friend and several roommates that may or may not become friends. And her one friend she had only met less than 24 hours ago. Sarah did not realize how her last several months with Seven was remarkably lonely. Seven was a wonderful mentor, but between her and the Freedom League she had many people in and out of her life, but no friends. 

 

She then turned to Gabby "My schedule is primarily built around Gen-ed, a Calculus class and some Gym class. Though I am not worried about being close to the crimes as it seems that a research mage is tend to be sought out when there is trouble." Or at least when you are the Master Mage of a realm. Sarah may not have THAT particular issue in the end. But she doubted that she would be spared a constant draw into trouble as it happened. "Or I could just wait for your call and portal over.  Though that does mean I will need to learn how to portal, perhaps I can work out a portable portal, or create a new shell for my wand..." Sarah's mind drifts off in the thought of how to create a portal ritual, how to control where it goes and...well, she was grateful for that calculus class as the mathematics of it already had Sarah wanting to reach for a piece of paper and start working out calculations. It amazed her how much math there was in certain applications of Magic. It seems that when you bend the laws of physics to your will, you still have to take the laws of physics into account.

[Khakhan]

Ty

Ty looks up from his frying pan, loaded down with bacon and bubbling with delicious smelling grease. He plucks a piece out, still blistering hot and pops it in his mouth, chewing a moment before swallowing. He smiles widely and tips more bacon onto the truly prodigious portion already on the table.

 

"I could probably teach you to step, Sarah. Or rather, translate for Big Guy as he teaches you." He shrugs, getting another piece of bacon and chewing on it. "The way he does it isn't terribly hard. Even with the scrambled aura you've got, should be fairly simple. Might not be a huge jump, but still. Walking through a wall is walking through a wall."

 

Becks rolls up a pancake and stuffs some bacon inside it, chomping down on it, nodding her head in approval as she chews. "Absolutely. Ya know, I need you to show me how he does that. I'm almost positive it's an entanglement thing. That's why you don't end up in a wall and go-" She brings her hands together and splays them apart. "Pa-ksh! Ya know?"

 

She takes another massive bite of her breakfast roll. "Anyway, yall should probably head out soon. Classes are gonna start soon. And Jinx will be ready for yall two." She nods at Megan and Hubris. "If yall are done debating the health merits of various elements?"

[Jubilant Thunder]

Gabriella Marlowe

 

"Hey Jan!" Gabby greets the final member of their crazy little household as she makes her appearance. "Wow, those are some serious pockets you've got there. So what was all that stuff you were hauling down to the basement last night?" The other girls had seemed so intent on trying to be sneaky that Gabby didn't have the heart to interrupt her as she had watched from the couch, but the curiosity was killing her.

 

She whistles as Sarah mentioned Calc. "Wow, going right for the heavy stuff. I figured I'd put that off for the first semester until I get to know the school a bit better. Hey, how does gym even work here?" "She looks over to Ty and Becks even as she starts to get ready to leave(including grabbing some more breakfast to go, she wasn't all that hungry but it was just SO GOOD). "Do they have separate classes for metas, or is there just a 'no powers' rule?"