Logs:Constructive Criticism

Constructive Criticism
Dramatis Personae Hive, Leonidas, Roscoe	2024-04-04 You kids are no help at all.
Location <XAV> Grounds - Xs Grounds
Xavier's School is situated on grounds as luxurious as the mansion itself. The tree-lined drive brings you up to the lush green sweep of front lawn and the wide front porch with its bench swing, often frequented by students studying in pleasant weather. The large oak tree in the front yard is home to a tire swing, installed long ago beneath the sturdy old treehouse. The lawn rolls out all the way down to the thin rocky pier at the edge of the glittering lake. The water stretches huge and wide off into the distance, the boathouse a small blip at its shore. Along its bank, forest stretches dense and shady to one side; to the other cliffs start to rise, high and rocky, providing trails for hiking or climbing, for the adventurous. It is really not that cold out here -- colder than earlier in the week, for sure, when it shot up to genuinely balmy weather, but though it's grey and threatening later rain it's still pretty mild and springlike. That hasn't stopped Hive from bundling up, slouchy knit cap pulled low on his head, fleece-lined chore jacket over his thick Theta Tau sweatshirt. He's some way to the side of the mansion, off a small distance from the gardens, accompanied today by a pair of largeish bee-shaped robots. There's a small scale model of some new building glowing in faint holographic projection nearby him, and several of the measurements etched in his messy scrawl all around the plans are updating themselves in real time as the bees buzz and crawl around the area taking the lay of this section of lawn. As is often the case, Leonidas is somewhere he’s not really supposed to be. In this instance, it’s the air space over the school laid back like he’s in a hammock despite the slightly colder weather. Being Leonidas he also forgets that there’s a time limit on his ability, so in the next moment he’s falling, a steady stream of southern accented swears getting steadily louder before he makes contacts with one of the trees, tearing off a branch and slamming into the ground, wheezing as the air is forced out of his lungs, and a few moments later a half hearted, “I’m alright.” Roscoe has replaced his broken earbuds with another pair of cheap ones, these ones still new enough to provide stereo sound, the wire snaked under his blue hoodie to his phone in the pocket of his shorts, though he is not acually playing music through them as he tromps his way toward Hive and the Bees, << (come on he has to know how it sounds.) >> Actually he hates buglike robots -- he is stepping very carefully through the grass to avoid these ones, most of his thoughts have been swiftly redirected to keeping track of where the robots are -- but he is determinedly queueing up a nosy << Whatcha doing >> anyway. He does not make it to this question -- instead he pulls up short a few feet away from Hive and frowns, turning his head with confusion, "...do you hear --" that probably was Leonidas hitting the ground. He gives a super-casual six-foot radius to one of the bee robots on his way to check out this new and exciting event -- "Uh. You good?" sounds outwardly much more concerned than Roscoe is -- he is trying desperately to save the memory of Leonidas falling out of the sky Forever And Ever. "I like bees. Fantastic architects. My parents did not name me Hive, you know." Hive has determinedly not been looking in Leonidas's direction, much though he must have overheard the boy's descent well before he hit the ground. His eyes have scrunched up through the thud and through the wheezing. "Aren't you basically indestructible?" He's only glancing briefly in Leonidas's general direction, and expanding one of the holo-building's wings to jot a note next to it in glowing Thai script. "... could remember that for you wholesale," it's kind of muttered half to himself more than a real offer. He flips his stylus absently between his fingers and turns, leaning slightly against the handle of a wide-footed cane as he actually faces the teenagers. "Is this school fancy enough for you. Could it be -- more excessive." “… yeah.” Leonidas answers both questions meekly, <<Think my vape went up my ass though. Why did I leave it in my back pocket.>> before remembering too late that Hive can hear his thoughts. With a huff he rolls over and pushes the ground hard, launching himself back onto his feet. “Fancy enough?” His gaze seems to grow distant for a moment as he remembers the mobile homes and section 8 apartments he grew up around, “This is single-handedly the fanciest place I’ve ever been.” It apparently did not even occur to Roscoe that Hive wasn't a given name; his mind goes totally blank for half a second and the first thing he does think is, << who did? >> This is with half-forgotten, half-bitter nostalgia for his first lab, where half his labmates had nicknamed him Creep which had been kind of deserved. He is not exactly sure what "...wholesale?" means, << like Costco? >> and he is really uncertain what more excessive could possibly entail at this place but after squinting over his shoulder at the extremely fancy existing buildings he opines, "I think it should have more gargoyles." "Jesus fuck, kid." Hive blinks, stares at Leonidas and then looks away with a grimace. "Do you need a fucking doctor or -- tsss." He is swiftly deciding this is Very Much Not His Problem, turning determinedly back to his drawings to add a large note: GARGOYLES. "My -- uh. Flicker. I guess. When we got out of our lab. Labmates named me a lot of shit, actually, but this one stuck. This place is unnecessarily fancy," he's agreeing easily, "but shit could always be more ludicrous. One client wanted me to reroute a damn stream so a waterfall could go through his house. Another had me rotate the entire fucking bell tower of his church so it had a better view. One of my brothers," his absent gesture of stylus towards his frat sweatshirt clarifies this some, "built an entire automated mansion just for his client's French bulldogs. If you had infinity money, is there anything you'd want this school to have?" “Not, uh, literally. It shattered.” Leonidas wraps one large hand around the limb and tosses it out of the way. <<Socializing is hard. How the fuck am Iawyer’s son?>> “Have a hangar under the basketball court, but we aren’t allowed down there so it doesn’t really count.” He sucks his teeth like he’s thinking, but his brain is almost eerily silent. Big head, no thoughts. “I feel like if you hadn’t asked I could’ve named a dozen things.” << What shattered? >> Roscoe, perhaps ill-advisedly, is squinting at Leonidas now, looking for broken bones, still vaguely thinking about names and mutant names and nicknames that had been as transient in Lassiter as everything else, going for his vape in his sweatshirt pocket only to fiddle with it. "Oh, I'm not thinking big enough," he says, considering with mild dismay that somewhere in the world are numerous French bulldogs living better lives than his. He squints over at the mansion again. "If I had infinity money I for sure would not be wasting my time on high school," he says. "I would fuck outta here and go..." he cycles mentally through a handful of Early Retirement options, concludes swiftly that retiring with his fat stacks to a private island sounds boring and lonely, and scowls, like this is Hive's fault somehow. "There's nothing wrong with the school, it just -- there should be more than Xavier's." "You kids are no help at all," Hive laments critically, "I'mm'a ask that weird-ass doors kid I bet they'll ask for rocket-powered flying dorm rooms or some shit." He's idly doodling rockets onto the side of the building, now. Possibly these will not last through to realization. "-- been adding some embellishments to the new dorms, I feel like if I start out with space-ready hover-dorms maybe by the time I trim it down, just a steam room or an indoor pond will seem totally reasonable by comparison. I mean, Chaz doesn't even know what the fuck money is but Scott still worries sometimes about budget." He leans a little more heavily against his cane, squinting over toward the mansion. "Should be, yeah. What kinda more?" “You know what, yeah. Sometimes we have kids that need to be in the water, and it gets cold here, an indoor pond would be great.” Leonidas snaps and points, before awkwardly dropping his hand <<Is that rude? I don’t know.>> “… my vape. Landed on it. Needed to quit anyway, starting to get a cough from it.” He twists at the hip so the back of his pants are visible, and sure enough his back pocket is wet through with something. “I’d say there’s only so much you could have in a school, but clearly I’m not thinking near big enough.” At the mention of Sriyani, Roscoe thinks back to yesterday's unauthorized field trip to the Freaktown ball-pit-bouncy-floor-rope-bridge basement and vaguely bookmarks whatever that is as a potential request, but Natsumi he pictures from long before yesterday in Prometheus scrubs, and she kicks off a whole parade of faces of kids on Lassiter stays of various length, and now he is trying hard to quell the thought that technically there did used to be more than Xavier's and this only adds to his flusterment when he is asked to specify, << more kids / more schools / more adults / more support / more understanding / more help / more more more ({ungrateful sonuvabitch} what do you need more of!) >> which all piles up into a highly teenaged shrug and a straightforwardly disrespectful, "I don't know, you're the mind reader -- sure, give us rocket dorms." "You've got like a zillion acres and one of the richest men alive running the school. I think it would be impossible to think big enough because billions is not a real number." Hive's bees are evidently finishing up their surveying -- or maybe one of them has gotten bored, because it's flitting away altogether. The other is trundling back over to fold itself up, dormant, near his blueprints. "-- and yeah at least one of the new kids sleeps much better in the water. Can't keep exiling them down to the lake, gonna have Shane up here grousing about back in his day by the time I'm through." Hive is still scowling as he adds bouncy floor rope bridge indoor fucking jungle gym??? to his notes, highlighting several rooms in the would-be dorm hall's lower level. Below this note: TALK TO HORUS. "Feel like all that's gonna take a little more than a new building. Plenty of people outside here interested in building that but --" He hitches up a bony shoulder as he continues his idle doodling -- more hastily sketched line-art rockets, though these ones have arms and are hugging. "-- never enough of em." “I honestly just pretend rich people don’t exist most the time. Where I’m from you’re rich if you make a hundred thousand. That’s pocket change to someone like Xavier, and that’s depressing to think about.” Leonidas shifts awkwardly on his feet, gaze going distant again <<Need to figure out how I’m gonna make money once I graduate. Probably going to end doing manual labor.>> His nose scrunches and he sucks his teeth once more. “People ever start heroing you’ll make a killing off lairs.” << Hard to pretend that here, >> Roscoe grouses; in his pocket he is turning his vape over and over and over in his hand. He takes a slightly awkward sidestep out of the robot bee's way as it crawls back toward Hive, tilting his head to read the glowy holographic notes, lingering for a moment on the hugging rockets. This sort of short-circuits him again, and he pulls back into himself with a kind of huffy "...pffft," as he adds << FUNCTIONAL BATCAVE >> to his Infinity Money list. "Whaddaya mean start heroing," he says. "People been heroing this whole damn time." Hive looks just a little bit like he has bluescreened himself, for a moment staring blank at Leonidas. It doesn't last; his scowl is twitching into a smile that still manages to look a bit sour. He turns back to his work, annotating: BATCAVE HERE beside the wtf-playroom. "Shit, yeah. You all got the hero jet under the basketball court and everything." “Yeah, they have, but I’m talking costumes and bits. Like the Justice League or the Guardia a of the Globe.” Leonidas clarifies with a wave of his hand. “Not to say the X-Men aren’t doing that, but they aren’t doing it publicly.” <<Still haven’t figured out what my bit will be, so can’t really blame them.>> He reaches up and scratches at his beard. “Feels like we’re almost there though. We’re already walking the line just by existing, might as well commit fully and bring out the spandex.” Roscoe's first impulse is to assign a Bit to Hive, the unfortunate nearest available hero. << Is 'Hive' already a bit? There should be more bees buzz buzz buzz. >> Roscoe's second impulse is to say 'Okay, Batman' derisively, but this calls to mind the Raid Bat Guy lying in a heap in the hallway outside his cell, so he pivots swiftly to 'Okay, Superman' but Leonidas can already fly and punch through walls, and after another moment of thought does not bring to mind any appropriately ludicrous superheroes, Roscoe just scowls and tugs at his knotted hoodie drawstrings, pulling his hood closed around his face. "You're walking the line," he says. "Some of us are just --" the only word that comes to mind to finish this sentence is 'creeps', so Roscoe drops it and then -- after an awkward moment of silence -- just starts tromping back to the mansion. "So you mean a bit like Captain America wrapping himself in the flag and not a bit like your teachers wrapping themselves in leather X's. Got it." Hive tucks his stylus away behind his ear and zips his jacket a little higher. "His name was Dusk," comes as a kind of distracted addition. His eyes cut to Roscoe, frown deepening as the boy heads off. He's swatting at his display now, but kiiind of slowly lest he close up his work too fast and end up Awkwardly Trailing Roscoe back inside. <<This is why I don’t have any friends.>> Leonidas just sort of sighs to himself. “Sorry for interrupting your work. Y’all have a good one.” He turns and starts to walk off, before abruptly stopping, grabbing the limb he downed, then jogging off further into the grounds.