ArchivedLogs:IHeartNewYork

IHeartNewYork
Dramatis Personae Cody, Rasa
In Absentia	2015-10-15 '
Location <XS> Great Hall
The largest room at Xavier's, the Great Hall is designed to hold all of the mansion's residents and then some. Built for the mansion's bigger functions, it serves as the school's dining halls on ordinary days, and ballroom when needed. On school days, long trestle tables stretch across the hall, high-backed chairs with plush cushions offering seating for the students. It's a little past the dinner hour at the Xavier School, but that doesn't mean the kitchen is closed, or that the tables are put up by any stretch. Off in one corner, away from where most people can trip over a cable or otherwise interrupt, a new face has claimed some turf right next to a wall outlet. With a notebook opened up that has some rough sketches on it, and what looks to be a laptop half-taken apart in front of him, Cody is currently trying to fix some new problem with his frankenmachine. Doing so out in the main hall is probably not the best place, but he's checking out something inside with a small magnifying glass while his phone sits next to him, the sounds of country-rock pouring out with at least some conscious effort to not bother others with the tinny music. Rasa appears a little late to dinner tonight. Ze is not a familiar sight around the school, having graduated last spring, but frequents sporadically enough that hir appearance doesn't cause an uproar. Ze slip in wearing tall boots that also happen to be sneakers, laced up to her knees. Colorful socks in pink, orange and green stick out the top and rest around hir thighs, a black skirt over the top. Ze has a couple tee shirts, one long sleeved and one short on hir torso, with a jacket over one arm, a backpack on strap on one shoulder. Ze makes a bee line for Cody, lowering hirself as ze walks to peek around the furniture at that outlet Cody is using. Ze slips a cord out of hir bag and gives a little wave as ze plugs in without much preamble. The cord is inserted into the base of a phone that is so low on battery, only one percent appears on the face when it receives lifegiving energy. "Hey, mind watching my phone while I get something to eat?" Ze kind of waits for an answer. Cody doesn't even look up at first, but says without preamble and a touch of a smile, "Sure." As if that's that, and then with a triumphant look in his eyes he digs into his satchel to take out some jeweller's screwdrivers so he can dig into the loose connection inside his case, "There you are... did I strip it or something last time I was in?" Talking almost to himself, but now seeing those raucously colored socks for the first time. Rasa is off as soon as ze hears Cody, casting another glance at him when he starts talking to himself. However, there is food to get, so he's left on his own for a few minutes. Then, miraculously, those ridiculous socks are back along with the human person that they are attached to. Now, ze has a tray in hir glove covered hands, completely with a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and a couple grilled cheese sandwiches. Ze settles into a seat as ze glances at what Cody is working on, choosing to turn hir phone on before looking at hir food. Hir phone just vibrates as it boots. Reaching over politely now that there are other people at the table, Cody turns off Keith Urban in the middle the chorus on 'Til Summer Comes Around', and then smiles at the covered figure sitting close to him for a moment, "Cool socks. There was a girl back at my old school who'd rock stuff like that every day. She'd also change her hair once a week." He then points to his case, "I'll introduce myself in a moment, promise, I just need to find out if I stripped a mounting screw for my cooling fan." "Ah, sure... sure," Rasa replies, hir brow furrowing lightly as ze glances up to watch Cody work. "Socks are one of my joys in life, so... yeah, I have about a million of them. I don't do nearly as crazy of socks as some other people I know. My socks, for instance, are a matched pair." Ze says this like it's a revelation. Ze picks up hir spoon and starts swirling it around in hir potatoes before pulling a mouthful too hir lips. "You know, if you do strip it, there's probably an appropriately sized drill in the work room. Kisha knows where everything is. You can ask her about it." Once more without looking up at the moment, having gone back to his work with the little screwdriver, "Kisha... you mean the girl with the 'I just got blown up' look and the robot, right? I saw her my first day here. Wicked machinery... WAY over my head. Then again, closest thing I've ever done anything with like that was banging on a piston from a tractor." There's a little click from inside the case, and the offending screw comes out, held to the light of day, "Aha... looks like I did strip you." It's finally then he looks past it and really sees the person across from him, and the covers cause a bit of a curious expression to come over him. But then curiousity turns to faint embarrassment as he looks back and away, "So hi... I'm Cody. Literally only been here a few days. And my socks are nowhere near as cool." Rasa's face is a vibrant blue today and almost wet looking, like fresh paint. Hir hair is a vibrant lemon yellow and hir eyes seem orange in comparison. Ze still has the spoon in hir mouth as ze listens to Cody speak, pulling it out clean a moment later, finishing the potatoes before speaking. "Rasa. I spent nearly three years here and I don't really judge people by their socks, but it does seem like an interesting notion. Too many people don't put any thought into what they wear, so I don't know how well it would go." Ze stirs the spoon in hir food distractedly. "Yeah, That's Kisha. She's good to talk to and will help you build stuff if it's not annoying to her. She might also take it off your hands and build it herself for you. Anyway. Welcome to Xavier's." Cody looks back at Frankenlap for a moment, and then gives an apologetic smile, "I saved over most of a summer to buy all the parts to build this... it may not always work, but it's still..." He stops, and then takes a breath, "Thank you for letting me know, but more important, thanks for the welcome." In the meantime, his hands have been busy digging out what looks like someone's old pill case, one of those ones people who need to divide up their pills by the day. He opens up Thursday, and takes out a fresh screw to replace the old one with, "People here have been pretty nice so far. My roomies are cool, and this place is huge." Back to work and getting the new screw seated inside, "There's probably uncomfortable questions I could ask... so I'll skip to something easier for now if you're okay with that. Have you been to New York? Is it really as dangerous as everyone says it is?" "Oh, my. Questions. Okay..." Rasa takes another bite of hir potatoes, a slightly smaller one that allows hir to finish them more quickly and return to eating. Hir spoon is put down afterward, turning hir attention on one of the sandwich halves. "Well, I live and work in New York, so yes. I have been there. It's, um, kind of dangerous. I have used my self defense skills, ones taught at the school, on occasion. Some of the danger is, well, personal, I suppose. Others stuff is because I am what I am. I am ... not sure what you mean about uncomfortable questions." Ze tears off a corner of the bread and cheese combination and pops it into hir mouth, chewing. After the screw is seated, Cody leaves his work aside for a moment to say, "Three things you don't talk about at the dinner table. Religion, Politics, and Sports. I figured I might add mutations to the list since... not everyone likes how things turned out." The backplate is picked up and he begins to screw that back in place as well, "So back to New York. There's got to be good parts of it, right? Things or places to see that aren't going to make you feel like you have to pack a bottle of mace? At least someplace I can get one of those stupid I Heart New York coffee mugs for my aunt?" "You know you can order those things online, right?" Rasa asks with a smile, brows waggling amusedly. "And yeah. There's good stuff. For instance, I work in a coffee shop with a dance club upstairs that is sort of a haven for our kind to just be themselves. That's nice. I have good friends and roommates and my person is super great, even if I don't always get along with his family. There's tons of places to go and see and you can still do that. Talk to the teachers some time. They'll probably take trips out from time to time. I've seen plays and gone to concerts and eaten some good food. So that's all available." Ze takes another bite, chewing quickly before adding, "Mutations... are kind of like genitals. Some people love to show them off while others prefer smaller more intimate settings for discussions. Either way, it's often better to wait 'til you know someone before you start asking about them. It's kind of like walking up to someone and asking about the size and shape of their dick. Or the existence of said penis." Mouth open. Mouth closed. Computer completely forgotten about. The entire line of conversation about junk just making Cody turn some interesting shades of red before he coughs once and then gulps before mumbling out, "Yeah, I could buy it online, but then how do I know it was from New York." But the attempt to take the conversation back on the rails falters as the imagery seems to be stuck there in his head for a few moments, and he finally gives up, "You just made it all sound like a football locker room. Wow. I... I am entirely lost for what to say." "Okay, so maybe that's not the best of analogies, but it kind of works, you know? Anyway. You don't know it's from New York. Heck, most of those mugs are likely made outside of the US anyway and then brought in. And sold. So... if authenticity matters, you can probably find a pottery class somewhere and make one while in New York and then you'd know for certain." Ze chews another mouthful of sandwich and swallows. "Are you from somewhere where people don't talk about genitals? I apologize if you are." Cody looks away for a moment, "Well, bulls and stallions sure, but naked discussions aren't EXACTLY dinner safe... my dad's more about what to do about work the next day, or complaining about how little people are paying for local fish." Almost absently, he's finished sealing up his machine, and starts putting everything away before he flips it over, opens the monitor, and turns the machine on, "Maybe since I was trying to dodge the topic, fair's fair you shoved it back in my face." "Well, it's hard to dodge the subject when you keep saying, 'well, there's a subject I'm dodging and I'm going to reference the fact that I'm dodging it a couple times.'" Rasa shrugs and rubs a finger against the side of hir nose. "I'm a metamorph, amongst other things, but I'm mostly telling you because you'll likely figure it out on your own, plus it's super hard to have conversations with people more than once when you don't really look the same from conversation to conversation." Cody puts his hands up in surrender, and laughs a bit, "Okay, okay! You got me... and you're right. I shouldn't have even brought it up, really." Then he drops them back into his lap, and sits back in his chair, "I suppose it's because I don't really know how to feel about being here. But thanks. So... you change everything? Looks, and hair? Does your voice stay the same?" "Kind of? It is kind of variations on a theme, I guess. People can often recognize my speaking patterns with my voice. You... um, get used to it. Just ask yourself, what do I sound like, and then try to remember how I sound in twenty minutes and try to imitate it. Then, have a cold and try to sound exactly the same." Rasa shrugs and finishes off the first half of her sandwich, reaching for hir spoon again. "Now, you can talk about yourself some. It helps with the quid pro quo of social interaction. If the conversation is all about me - well, it strikes me as odd after a while." "Me?" Cody replies, with a bit of sour amusement, "I'm just a west coaster and wannabe gear head... sorry, when the first thing you see in the door is someone with a mind-controlled robot, it's kind of a blow to the ego. I thought I was good with electronics, but... not anymore." The laptop is booting fine, so he shuts it off, and packs that back in the bag too, "My... whatever it is... didn't start until about six, maybe seven months ago. My sister apparently knew some mutant rights people from college who got information to my parents about this place, and I got shipped here fast as they could afford. Not much to say really... where I'm from seems kinda... dingy... compared to here." "Aaaahhh, don't compare yourself to Kisha or the others that are super amazing at robotics. You're just going to make yourself feel like crap that way. Instead, you should pick their brains and learn from them while they are here because you never know when they are going to fly away on one of those devices. They could help you land an internship with a super great electronics firm in the mean time." Rasa is back to eating potatoes. "It's going to take some time to get used to just being here, so relax. Sounds like you have a family. That's a thing. You still talk to them?" Cody ticks it off on his fingers, "Dad and older brother, no. Mom, kinda... Aunt and sister, yes." The thumb sort of waggles there, "And a couple friends from online, but those were mainly for when we were on raids or something." Packed up, he picks up his own phone and checks the time, "I promised to hang out with one of my roomies... a get to know you kind of thing. He's in a wheelchair, and it's supposed to be a temporary thing, but I figured I'd be a good guy and bring him up a sandwich." He pauses in his escape to say, "You're probably right, then taking it's time thing... and I'll see you around?"