savetheearth

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Who: Raye and others
When: Jumping back all the way back to Friday February 28th
Where: All around LCHS
What: Just an attempt to build up some CR before she gets tossed into the Wise Snake adventure.

The bright side of barely getting a wink of sleep the night before was that it hadn't taken much effort to completely ignore her home room teacher's speech about making an effort when she'd dragged herself in late for the second time this week. But that was what happened when she stayed up to the early hours of the morning trying to get some of her actual homework done after making sure Abby finished up her own, and then getting her sister to bed on time.

Not that she was likely to get much sleep anyway, what with the bombs of secret magical networks, alien invasions and the fact that her dad's company was apparently in cahoots with those same invaders. Shit kept her up at night.

So she'd ended up zombie-shuffling through her morning classes, only falling asleep a couple times, until she found herself sitting at the end of one of the lunch tables and picking at the cafeteria-food-grade macaroni and cheese she'd grabbed.

It had been a long morning, and she had the feeling it was going to be a long afternoon too.

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"Uh... excuse me?"

A voice sounds out over Raye's shoulder. Rakka was standing there, one hand skillfully holding onto her lunchtray, and the other fussily adjusting the baseball cap she always wore now.

"Mind if I sit here?" She asked carefully, while trying to do two things at once. One or the other was going to give soon, so she should probably sit quickly.

"Eh?"

Raye looked back over her shoulder, blinking when she saw the other girl standing there fighting a losing battle with her lunch try and baseball cap. Yeah, that looked like a pretty dangerous situation.

"Yeah, sure." She answered, picking up her tray and scooting down the bench a little to make room. "Go ahead."

"Thanks." With some difficulty, the girl worked her way to the table and sat.

For a moment, she simply poked at her food. Conversation starting wasn't one of Rakka's strong suits. She really should try to be nice to the girl.

"A-are you new here? I haven't seen you here before."

And Raye just goes back to messing around with her own food, her free hand holding up her head. She wasn't quite the best at starting up a conversation either, even when she was in the mood too. Especially not when she was as tired as she was.

Ah, but it looked like quietly sulking her way through lunch wasn't going to be a thing today.

"Yeah." She doesn't quite look up, keeping her attention on this apparently engrossing macaroni in front of her. "Well, sort of. I just started here this year."

Well, not much of a conversation was better than too much, in any case.

"Me too. Actually, I started just a few months ago."

More food-poking. Her appetite just wasn't there at the moment. "This place is really weird."

Well, that was usually the case.

Weird? Raye gave Rakka a sidelong glance at that comment. Winter and Lily had said that there were a lot of other high school kids on that network... was this girl one of them too?

Then again, it wasn't the kind of thing you could just blurt out to anybody. Best to keep it under wraps.

"Not really." She shrugged a shoulder, grumbling at the cafeteria chatter surrounding them. "Pretty much like any other school I've been in."

Of the people Rakka had met from the network, a surprising amount of them came to the High School. It was a miracle that she got to chose what school she went to when she came here.

Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing if someone was in the Numbers Club upfront. Either you met them on the network, or you just got lucky.

"Y-you sure?" It was Rakka's turn to give Raye a look, raising an eyebrow curiously. "A w-while ago, there was a fire in the student theatre. I hope that doesn't happen too much."

So far, Raye had only managed to confirm a few of them for sure but she was keeping an eye out. She had a feeling it was going to be important to know in the future. After all, her own home had stopped being a safe place, she needed to know who might have her back around here.

At the mention of a fire, Raye stops stirring her macaroni and grimaces a little bit. "Okay, maybe this place is a little weirder than other ones. Guess it goes with being in this city, huh?"

"Never really had any school fires back home." She said idly, trying to will herself into being more hungry. "Then again, you don't really have to deal with people with magic fire in other schools or any..."

Rakka's fork falls on the table with a clatter, having seemingly slipped from her fingers. The revelation of what she just said just catching up to her.

Oops.

"Yeah. Never really saw that either." Honestly, the network was still so new in her mind that she might have missed the magic fire comment all together had Rakka's fork dropping from her hand not drawn her attention to it. That and the panicked look on Rakka's face.

She glanced down at the fork then back at Rakka, blinking once or twice before.

"... You too?"

"...Uh..."

Oh god, she messed, up, didn't she? What could she do? Think, think, think....

"Uh........ y-yeah."

Nailed it.

Raye just heaved a big sigh. Damn, way to be subtle about it. If there were other people like this girl around, it's amazing it's all managed to stay such a secret for so long.

"Relax, I'm on it too." She pushed Rakka's fork back toward her. "I found out about it a couple days ago. You oughta be more careful about talking about it."

Rakka graciously accepts the fork, putting it on her tray and pushing the whole thing away. Her appetites completely gone now. She feels like she could die from embarrassment.

"S-sorry... I, ugh..." She leans on the table, places her head in her hand and letting out a sigh. "It just slipped out, you know?"

Jeez, she was really taking this hard. Raye was actually starting to feel a little bad about her role in it... even if that role was just "person she accidentally blabbed at."

"H-hey, come on. It's not that bad." All she'd really said was something about magic fire. "I mean, anybody who didn't know would probably just think you were some kind of fantasy nerd or something. Right?"

Helping!

Helping.... sort of.

"Right... I guess I could have probably worked it out if it was someone else. At least it was someone that knows, like you." She glanced at the girl. "You just never know who knows around here and who doesn't."

She's the best at helping.

"Yeah, so it's not a big deal. Worst case, you'd'a gotten a weird look and that's it." In fact, just to show how not a big deal it was Raye'll even take a bit of macaroni, then freeze and slowly put her fork down. "Jesus, how do you even fuck up macaroni and cheese like that?"

Well, okay. That actually gets a little laugh out of Rakka.

"Yeah, school food really isn't that good. I don't know how they do it." She shrugged and pulled her own food back, now feeling up to nibbling at it. "I'm Rakka. Rakka Yoshitoshi."

Now it's Raye's turn to lack an appetite and she leaves her fork where it is. Maybe she'll try it again in a minute. Maybe.

"Raye Satterfield." She returns Rakka's laugh with a little grin of her own. "So, where were you before you got dragged into freaktown?"

"Japan." A smile stayed on Rakka's face, though hints of a frown almost got through. She hid it well. "My parents sent me here."

"Seriously?" Even if Rakka's smiling through it, there's a full force scowl on Raye's face. "They just shipped you off to a different country?"

She has a thing about jerk-off parents.

Rakka's expression drops at the sight of Raye's. Her thing about jerk-off parents is understandable. She lets out a quiet sigh.

"W-well, it wasn't without... reason. It's kind of a touchy subject."

She'd rather not get into it so suddenly, or in public like this.

Edited 2014-03-04 15:39 (UTC)

A reason? Raye's temper flares up a bit and for a second it seems she's about to go off on what she thinks about that... but then she sees Rakka's expression drop. Right. Touchy subject. Raye's ducked enough questions to know when somebody else is doing the same.

Instead, she lets out a breath and decides to give her lunch another try. Still terrible.

"Yeah, well, my dad just dragged me and my sister out here for some fancy new job of his." She shrugs a bit, not looking terribly impressed with the idea. "He's pretty busy with it most of the time, so it's usually just me and her."

And with the attention turn away from her, at least for now, Rakka kept up on her own meal. It sucked too.

"My parents are always busy too. At least you have a sister here with you, I'm an only child."

"Ah, she can be a pain in the ass a lot of the time." She huffs out a breath. "Just getting her to sit down and do her homework is like pulling teeth."

It's said with a good amount of big sisterly affection though. Pain in the ass or not, she wouldn't trade her sister for the world.

Rakka notices the affection in Raye's voice, even if it's mixed with some annoyance. A light smile traces its way across her face.

"Heh, she sounds like a handful."

"Yeah, she totally is." She laughs a bit, grinning a little sheepishly. "Guess I deserve it though. I wasn't any better when I was that old, I guess."

"Well, it's good that you know how it is then. Means you know what to do about it."

She tapped the table thoughtfully. "Where's your dad working?"

"Yeah. Let's me know what she's planning ahead of time."

But then she hesitates at that question, frowning for a moment. She's not sure how much Rakka knows, but it has to be fairly common knowledge among the networkers who their enemy is. After a moment, she speaks up.

"Thunder."

"...Oh."

Yeah. That. That kills the mood a little. Rakka frowns lightly, but nods.

"That's not good."

"Yeah."

There's a pause there before she huffs and folds her arms, fork dropping again.

"But I dunno if he's part of all this alien shit. He's such a dumbass he's probably just making the coffee or something."

No, he isn't. She knows better than that.

Unfortunately, Rakka knew better two. At least her parents weren't part of the company.

At least, she hoped they weren't, no matter what her feeling for them were.

"Maybe, we don't know. I wonder what they're even doing with these alien dudes. Don't you think they'd be trying to help humans?"

It was a tough pill to swallow, that was for sure, but at the same time it wasn't the sort of thing she could just approach him over.'Hey, are you working for aliens to build stuff to kill a bunch of dumbasses who might be superheroes? Cause I think I'm one of those now.'

"There's gotta be something in it for them, right? Maybe they promised the owner he'd rule the world or something."

She shrugs.

"Or maybe he actually doesn't know what's really going on."

Which is extremely unlikely, but at the same time they could hope, right?

Sorry to crash your party, but your Algebra teacher just sat down in front of you with a thermoses of tea she sets to the side. Ms Baker has never been one to follow the social rules of doing this kind of thing in her classroom, especially if you happened to not stay after long enough for her to catch you.

Setting her latest test down in front of her, she waits for Raye to acknowledge her before continuing.

Edited 2014-03-03 02:28 (UTC)

Oh, hey, company. Yyyaaayy....

Raye looks up and grimaces when Ms. Baker takes the seat right across from her, and again when she looks at her test and all the red marks scrawled across it.

In retrospect, she probably could have predicted something like this was coming when she wrote "ASS" as an answer to one of the problems. And then drew a butt next to it.

Crap.

"... Isn't there a rule somewhere about bugging students on their lunch break or something?" Acknowledgement received. Let's get this over with.

"No, though I'm sure if you petition they'd probably make one." Sophie replies.

"Now, usually a teacher would ask what you were thinking when you wrote this, but I don't actually want to know that. I just want to know why you did it. You got this right on the homework two weeks ago, the little bit that was done you did get at least this question right." Let's get to it? Okay she's gotten to it and she opens up a folder she had with her, pulling out the piece of homework in question.

"So, did you forget? Should I have gone over it again?" She wants answers mostly so it won't happen again. Sophie refuses to believe there are any stupid students, even if some teachers don't care either way.

Yeah, maybe she will petition that then! Except that sounds like something she'd have to try at, so she just grunts instead.

Her expression sours even further when Sophie brings out her old homework and points to where she'd gotten the question right. Damn, had she really gotten it right then?

"Who knows?" She shrugs, cranking up that teenage petulance to the max. "Guess I just had other things on my mind than studying up on some dumb math problems."

She won't go into a lecture on the virtues of math, no she won't!

"I know it doesn't look like it's that useful, believe me I went a good few years where I didn't use it at all, but it's a requirement and it could end up helping you down the line." Sophie says instead, and tries a different plan.

Both the test and the homework are put away. "What do you want to do after high school?"

Edited (english my god i swear i speak it) 2014-03-03 04:10 (UTC)

Ah, crap, this speech again. She always seemed to hear it at least once in every school she wound up in. If it wasn't for the crazy magic shit going on, Locke City really would just be another box checked off on a long list.

She shrugs, mixing up her food with her fork again, her other hand holding up her head as she looks appropriately bored with all this.

"I dunno. I just thought I'd see how long I could stay at home and soak up dad's paychecks before he clued in." Was that a trace of bitterness seeping past total apathy? Nah, can't be.

Tilting her head, she resists to urge to ask on that front. Unfortunately that is a thing she can't talk about in a public setting. That's where the rules come in, but she does lean forward a bit, not directly into her space but not out of it either.

"You don't have anything? I wanted to be a Lawyer or something prestigious like that." She says, "You can tell me anything, a rock star? Do you want to write a book about snails and end up on the best sellers list?"

Edited 2014-03-03 04:58 (UTC)

It wasn't something Raye wanted to talk about in a public or private setting, really. There wasn't anything to say about it, really. Her dad preferred to stay at work all night, that was about it.

She does shift a little uncomfortably in her seat when Sophie presses the subject about what was supposed to come next. For as long as she could remember, her goal in life had been to fill her mom's shoes and make sure Abby was taken care of and happy. Other than that... well, she never really had any other motivations in life.

"Maybe I could try all three. Doesn't look like any of them need a whole lot of math."

"You'd be surprised. Music needs math, in it's simplest form. Writing does as well, again in it's simplest form." But she won't lecture, she understands lecturing doesn't get the point across when they have to listen to him.

Looking at the time, she sighs. She doesn't want to take up her whole lunch, so she grabs her folder and starts to stand. "I'm not asking for straight A's or 100%'s on all the tests. Give me a C and I'll know you attempted."

Sophie doesn't believe in lost causes, but she also understands that some people just don't want to be pitied or guided along their life.

"Okay? At least try? I promise I won't bug you at lunch again."

Well, that was at least relatively painless, fast if nothing else. Relatively. That homework reminder wasn't too much fun, and neither was being reminded that she was still drifting pretty aimlessly about anything after high school was a thing of the past.

Not that she was gonna let on about any of that. There was always that one teacher who thought they were gonna make a difference to the kid who didn't give a shit, one in every school, and she'd seen them all come and go.

"A C, huh? And then you get off my back about it?" She could manage a C. Maybe.

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