ArchivedLogs:Trivia

Trivia
Dramatis Personae Kai, Mya
In Absentia	2013-07-21 Kai meets the new girl.
Location <XS> Back Porch
The back patio is a restful place to sit and relax, in most weather. Ample seating comes in the form of umbrella'd deck chairs and a cushioned porch swing, and the neighboring gardens attract butterflies and hummingbirds to make the viewing pleasant. The hot tub is usually open for use, though in snowy weather the transition in and out is a shivery one! Yellow and purple. That's the colors of the scarf she finally picked to wrap around the lower half of her face. Since it lacks a mouth, she's HOPING it'll make her avatar look less... alien. The avatar itself has even filled out ever so slightly. No longer so breakably thin, though still inhumanly so. And it's floating over the hot tub at the moment while Mya looks down into the water. There's a little bit of envy that would probably be obvious in her appearance if she had a human face. As it is, her eyes still have a vaguely irritated look to them. Her eyes currently glow a little greenishly, too, very visible in the darkness of the night. Little streamers of purple smoke waft slowly off her back. In an alien sort of way, she seems almost... lost in thought? There are other things prowling the night. Small, quiet things who often can be found on this porch. Things like Kai, who is currently coming out of the door to the mansion with a glass of lemonade and a handful of cookies. Dressed in a white t-shirt and sleep shorts with the Green Lantern logo all over them, the tiny Korean boy looks like someone who is filching a snack before the last bed-check. Or what passes for bed-check around here. As he comes out onto the wood of the porch, he looks around, letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light before he attempts to move on. When his vision clears, he moves in the direction of the hot tub, pulling up short at the wide porch swing and staring at the smoky figure. "Hello," he says in a soft, accented voice that's fairly wary-sounding. "Are you supposed to be here?" Mya nods at Kai after looking up to face him,"I am not NOT supposed to be here. Also I am not technically here. I am in the basement. I am Mya." She pronounces it like 'Maya'. "I promise I am not an alien." Apparently this has come up before. "I live in the basement. What about you? Do you live upstairs? It's very nice up there. What is your name?" The smoke wafting on her back begins to gather itself into a sphere of sorts, twisting in an odd, almost pre-occupied manner. Kai frowns at the answer, and tips his head thoughtfully. "You are not not supposed to be here," he repeats, the double negative clearly tripping him up. "And you are not an alien, and you live in the basement." And that covers all the information he has, as little as it is and with nothing to do with it. So he nods, and lifts his eyebrows. "I am Kai," he says. "I am a student here." He sets his cookies on the cushion of the swing, and takes a slow step forward. "If you live in the basement, and are not really here, what I am looking at?" he wonders, watching the smoke gather. "It is very pretty, whatever you are." Mya smiles in a way that uses only her eyes. The turn a warm, reddish-purple color, as she gazes at the boy,"I am also a student. I just live in the basement. It's not safe for me to be out and about. I have to have very thick walls around me to keep people from dying." She wriggles her toes in a very lazy sort of way, then drifts forward to float lazily in the air before the boy,"This is a fake body I created out of smoke. When I do this, I can look around outside my room. It makes me feel free. Thank you for telling me I am pretty. I am not used to that. I was not pretty before I changed. Then I was extra not-pretty after." The smoke flashes several brilliant colors as it gathers, and begins to take on some vaguely 'box-ish' shape. "Kai, will I learn a lot here?" Kai frowns sympathetically. "They used to keep thick walls around me to keep people from dying," he says. "But now I am free, and people have not died. Perhaps it will be the same for you." He offers this encouragement with only little emphasis. The explanation of her body gets a lift of the younger boy's eyebrows, and he smiles a quick, fleeting smile. "Sophie has a body that she uses in a similar fashion," he says brightly. "But she must be asleep to do it, and it is not made of smoke." The question gets a lift of shoulder. "I have learned much since I have been here," he says. "Both in the classes and out of them. But I suppose how much you learn is really up to you, is it not?" Mya lifts a shoulder,"It is not likely I will be free of the walls, ever. My real body emits dangerous smoke and radiation that... kills things. Usually instantly. As far as I know, it cannot be turned off, though we are working on it. Even if I stay in that room, though, I have freedom like this. And now I can be out, and about, and make friends." She does that 'eye smile' again,"Do you think we can be friends? I have never had many." She seems curious indeed, though,"Sophie. I will have to speak with her. Either way, I enjoy learning. It is the most exciting part of the day. Did you know, there is a bird, a type of flightless petrel, that can shoot a jet of oil from its nose with enough force to knock down a human being?" Pause. "I collect trivia. Do you know any trivia?" Kai absorbs this information on Mya with a small nod. "I know about radiation from my science class," he says. "It is very dangerous. I hope that the Professor and the teachers are able to help you not be dangerous anymore." He sounds sincere about that, too. "They are very smart; especially Doctor McCoy. I am sure they will figure it out." At the question about being friends, his expression turns uncertain, and he rubs one bare foot along his calf. "Oh. I am very friendly, but I do not think you would like to be my friend," he says carefully. "Not after you have met other students. I am not very popular. You would be better being friends with someone like Shelby or a person who knows about things." He smiles weakly. "But I will be nice to you," he says. "Because that is a good thing to be." The factoid and the final question get a sort of helpless look before he screws his face up in thought. "There is a big hornet in Japan who kills bees and steals their honey," he says. "But only Japanese bees. The bees from Europe will fight back." Mya tilts her head in a curious manner, then directs the mass of smoke to sit before her, fine-tuning its shape ever so slowly,"I probably would enjoy it. I did not have much time for friends before I came here. Just family. Noone wanted to be friends with someone who wouldn't be around very long." She actually says this with a rather sad note to her oddly hollow voice,"That is amazing. There is a fly that plants larva inside of wasps, then drives them around like airplanes until they all meet back at one location to hatch into more flies. Heheh. You have good trivia." Kai blushes a bit, and dips his head. "Oh, I like making new friends," he says. "Before I came here, I had never had any. Only family and mean doctors. And here is where I made friends with Ivan and some others. But I do not think the rest like me very much. I imagine they hope that I will not be around long." He smiles at the joke, and lifts a shoulder. "But we can try to be friends, if you like. I have never known anyone who was smoke, before." The compliment gets another blush, and the boy bobs his head. "Oh, I know a lot about bugs," he says. "Ivan has many of them, and I help him take care of them. We are in the Bug Club together," he adds, as if this explains everything. "So I have learned much about bugs. Do you know a lot of other things about bugs?" Mya nods to Kai at this,"Before I mutated, I was dying. I think I may technically be dead now. I do not have skin, or muscles, or organs. I can still think and move and communicate, though. It is a little confusing. And not pretty." She offers to the boy,"I have never know anyone who is named Kai. So we are both having first experiences today." She even chuckles. It's a very light sound. "I know many bits of trivia about bugs. It makes sense. There's more of them than there are people." Kai frowns at the story, and his eyebrows lower sympathetically. "If your brain is still working, I do not think you are dead," he says encouragingly. "Because I do not think dead people wonder if they are dead." He sips at his lemonade, reducing the level of liquid before he sets it carefully on the floor of the porch. "I do not know if Kai is really my name," he says apologetically. "My parents only called me Boy, and my brothers called me...other names." This comes with a blush, and the boy ducks his head. "But it is a good name." He doesn't seem to know what to offer on first experiences, so he opts for the subject that /is/ familiar. "Oh, yes. There are many bugs, and there are interesting facts about all of them." He lifts his eyebrows. "Did you know that there is a mold that grows on ants and makes them like..." he wrinkles his brow. "What are the people who are not alive, but wish to eat the ones who still live?" "Zombies! You're talking about cordyceps fungus! Neat! Yes! And then they climb up on a blade of grass so they will be eaten by cows and things and it starts the life cycle over." Pause. "The goliath beetle can get to nearly five inches long and up to a fourth of a pound." Mya claps her hands, then begins to drag her fingers over the box of smoke as if she were scultping it like clay,"I am not sure that I have a brain, but... I do have a skull. I see through the eye sockets even though there are no eyes in them. It is disconcerting. Your family sounds mean." "Yes! That is it!" Kai smiles a bit more brightly at the identification. "It is very interesting. My book says it is the fungus that makes them do this, but I do not know how it could." He gives this thought as Mya explains, and then he looks up with a small knit of his eyebrows. "Maybe you are just energy, now," he says with a small frown. "But I do not know how your brain would keep working, that way. It is very interesting to think about." Maybe not to Mya, but Kai seems unaware of this fact. The comment about his family gets a lift of his shoulder. "They were very mean," he says simply. "But they are gone, now, so I do not think about it much." He offers a smile. "I am sorry to have mentioned it," he says. "It is not a very nice thing to discuss. This might be a reason why I am not very popular." Mya nods to Kai,"I've been working up to putting my hand inside my skull to see if I have a brain in there for sure, but it's one of those things I'm not sure I want the answer to. Not everything you learn always turns out well, you know?" Cordyceps seems to be a safer topic for her,"The fungus could probably do this, yes." She continues to whittle down the smoke phantom she holds in her hand. It has begun to take on the appearance of a backpack, if a bit slowly,"Don't apologize. I like it when people talk to me. I like to listen. When you share these things, you're telling me a little bit about the world, even if it's only your part of it. Listening to this sort of thing used to be the only freedom I had. I still like it." Kai nods, and wrinkles his nose. "It does not sound very pleasant to reach into your skull," he says slowly. "Perhaps it is a thing better left untried." He moves to the swing, then, collecting his cookies before he seats himself. "You can make other things from your smoke?" he says, clearly impressed with the effort. "That is a very interesting thing. Is it hard? Are they still part of you?" He nibbles at a cookie, watching the whittling carefully, and nodding when Mya affirms he is not, in fact, bumming her out. "I like to hear things, too," he says with a smile. "There is much of the world I do not know about, and much I have to learn." He waves the cookie. "Where did you stay before you came here?" "I don't know it would be unpleasant, either though. My real body doesn't feel much of anything. Maybe you can come visit me in the basement sometime? They have it set up so that I can play chess and things like that safely through the wall." Her eyes glow a soft yellow color. "I can make things, yes. Though they eventually just 'poof' away if I'm not maintaining them. They tend to stick around if I incorporate them into my avatar. It's completely cosmetic. I'm working to make my avatar, my fake body's shape look less inhuman." She sighs as the 'backpack' is beginning to look rather lopsided,"It's hard to get exactly what I want if I'm not concentrating. Even then, creating a new thing that looks solid is extremely hard. I'm still learning." Mya shrugs helplessly,"I lived in the hospital before I came here, in Texas. But my past is not so important. Excuse me, Kai... I'm very exhausted, and when I'm tired, it's hard to keep my avatar together. Sometimes it just disappear-" Ironically, this is when Mya's body disappears, poofing into a harmless smoke that dissipates into nothingness mere seconds later.