13th Howl: The After School Numbers Club [Action at the high school]

[professorwolf]

As promised, there are snacks on a couple of the lab tables in Lyall's classroom when school gets out that Monday afternoon. Not much of it is chocolate, though, mostly because Lyall had been pretty sure he'd have been tempted to nibble and then he'd have regretted it. It's not all healthy, though, considering the appetites of teenage boys: next to the cheese and crackers and celery with ranch and peanut butter dip on a platter, there's chips and pretzels and an open box of cookies.

And on the other tables, there are decks of playing cards, small pads of paper, and plenty of pencils, plus a couple science and math books. Hey, Lyall has to make it look like a school event for anyone who wants to poke their head in, after all, right?

Lyall himself is sitting at the counter in the front with his laptop open, though he's paying more attention to the door than the screen at the moment, waiting for students to come in. Stella the ferret is in presence, too, though she might be anywhere in the room at any given time. Lyall has given up on wrangling her, ever since learning she was sentient.


((open to high school students, middle school students, and a couple college students that Lyall actually knows personally ^^ if your character is in the high school but didn't get an on-screen invite, feel free to assume an off-screen invite if you want to show up! multiple threads for mingling and/or planned Magic games are welcome))

Comments

Hope you all like CARD GAMES

[shiromadoushi]

Bakura had prepared for this and once the end of day bell rang, he booked it too his locker where there was an additional bag he had brought with him. A small child sized bookbag that was stuffed with Magic the Gathering cards.

Those regular playing cards were gonna be shunned so hard.

"So! Where are the snacks?" he greeted as he entered the classroom, setting the bag down on the table with a grin.

Open

[icy_heavens]

It wasn't that hard of a sell to Granny. Joining a club at the highschool? Okay, he wasn't the most social, but he got along better with older kids than he did ones his age, so it wasn't that strange.

He'd gotten a little held up after school -- for a really stupid reason; that damned idiot just had to come hassle him today of all days -- so he was a bit later than he'd intended to be. And not really in the best mood because unsurprisingly, dealing with bullies was not a happy thing. Even if it was still better than the mess they'd all gotten into with these numbers.

Still, his frown was hardly any deeper than normal when he finally found the proper room, backpack slung over one shoulder. "I don't suppose I missed anything important?"

[spideyfanone]

Kurt fully expected to be the smallest and youngest here. After skipping a couple of grades as a short kid with a summer birthday, it was just the way peer interaction worked. That and the fact that he was pretty good at spotting fellow bullying targets kept him from ignoring the greeting. He'd brought homework so he'd have something to do when he inevitably wound up talking to no one, and he didn't move the precalc book off his lap. Being halfway sociable was one thing, giving up his readily-deployed psychological shielding quite another.

"Probably not." He was snarky and articulate through text on a screen. Not so much in person.

[icy_heavens]

Not that it had been much of a greeting, anyway. He was bad at those. Socializing was hard.

He glanced over in the direction of the voice. Not someone he'd met offline before, though he expected that of most of the people who would show up here. Bakura was the only one he knew for sure. He slid his backpack onto an empty chair.

"Which one are you?" Yes, his phrasing often lacked tact. What of it?

[spideyfanone]

How else was one supposed to phrase the question? Interpersonal skills were dumb. "Um, I'm Kurt, but I didn't put that on the network, and I'm kind of new..." He shrugged. "So no one in particular, I guess." And that was relatively comfortable. He'd never exactly thrived on attention, and the kind of things you'd have to do to be notable in this crowd were pretty freaky. "You?"

[icy_heavens]

Actually, you could do something as unremarkable as being eleven years old and get funny looks from this crowd. Or horrified ones. Usually the latter.

"Toushirou. Been around since a few days into it, apparently."

[spideyfanone]

This being Kurt's first foray into meatspace to deliberately meet network people, he'd mostly avoided that. "Lucky?" He restrained himself from looking back down into the book with some effort. "At least you're not playing catch-up. That pretty much bites. Silver lining."

[icy_heavens]

Well to be fair, the first time Toushirou intentionally showed his face, it was when everyone was headed out to the Dead District to werewolf hunt. Given the nature of the situation, it was probably natural for people to be horrified.

"Tch. Yeah, right."

Like just about anyone else involved, he'd kind of rather not be. But how could anyone just ignore all this after they knew it was happening? Besides, staying ignorant now could be even more dangerous.

[scramasax]

"Hello," Anthony called, cutting himself short of adding a name to the greeting while an inarticulate lingering thought to the effect of you said "Mr. Bakura" indeed! floated through his head.

He'd been looking forward to this a bit bemusingly, himself. On one hand, he discomfortingly knew that others that since the beginning of the month he'd gotten different and distant. He hid, he retreated in the middle of meetings with all school year's friends to have looks at the network, couldn't get his mind off of the people like them and their vague calling - and enemies for that matter. Although he hadn't paid it any attention anymore, since that bizarre sensation on colliding with the statue in mid-April, his old natural "glow" hadn't quite come back, nor his top coordination.

On the other, he hadn't gotten a knock at his door or an accosting while walking home from school since touching those statues at the gallery along the lines of which he'd been bracing himself for. The minor "werewolf" bitemarks had all essentially healed through and disappeared. There was a host of reasons to be glad for a closer assembly and acquaintance of if not all considerably more of the ones with numbers who were and had always been short within reach, under the approval and watch of Mr. Lyall.

"You didn't eat much at lunch?"

[shiromadoushi]

"Heeeey, Freshmeat!" Bakura greeted in return, unzipping the bag and starting to pull out stacks of cards. "and of course I ate plenty of lunch. But lunch was 3 hours ago," he pointed out cheerfully.

Re: Hope you all like CARD GAMES

[icy_heavens]

Toushirou would have missed the initial greeting; he'd gotten stupidly held up after school and was a bit late. So really the first thing he noticed was the stacks of cards Bakura had pulled out of his backpack. Surprisingly to anyone who'd met him, he thought he might recognize what the cards were. Not that this showed on his face.

He'd heard of the game, but never played. It wasn't like his knowledge was in any way extensive or even useful.

"I guess you came prepared."

[spideyfanone]

"Yeah, I suck at optimism, too." Which was the sensible way to go about it, of course. He shrugged and would have just shut up. As conversations go, this had already been a pretty long one for Kurt, when it wasn't about the fine points of bottle rockets anyway. But the point was knowing people who were his age and therefore kind of less scary, right?

"So did you get anything cool from the weird memory and stuff dispenser?"

[spideyfanone]

Kurt didn't like talking to people, good reason or not. In fact, good reasons were even worse, because that put the pressure on and brought out his contrariness. And he had no idea what other people on the network were actually like, besides Mr. Lyall. For all he knew, there were football team guys with nerd vendettas and girls in fancy outfits with death glares, all annoyed that he was a rising senior at fourteen.

So he'd brought homework. He always brought homework. But he'd also taken a bit of advice from his nearly-as-awkward dad and brought something strange along to put on the desk beside him. Conversation pieces might make people come and talk to you. Though he hesitated a little before he put up the beat-up tin lunchbox with its stupid picture and suspicious stains. Part of him insisted it was private, but maybe someone would see it and have an idea.

[shiromadoushi]

"Of course~" Bakura returned with a grin, continuing to carefully stack the cards by color. "Pretty sure most people don't have a deck."

[icy_heavens]

Who needed to be optimistic on their own? He had people for that.

He plopped himself into a nearby chair. Generally, he tried to act more mature than that, but these little childish behaviours sometimes bled through anyway. Pretenses were hard to keep up all the time.

"Ice powers and sword skills. Whether you'd count ghost knowledge as cool or crazy, I don't know."

He hadn't even believed in ghosts, or anything supernatural a couple of months ago. He'd dismissed it all as nonsense. But now? With what he could do? Yeah, dismissing wasn't happening anymore. Even if it was still nuts.

[spideyfanone]

He'd already decided to just not talk about his memories, and the lunch box on the desk, childish and beaten up and marked by creepy, rusty stains, felt especially lame compared to sword skills. But at least he'd stumbled his way into one kind of cool thing at the last minute. "I teleport. It's pretty freaky, but I did some tests and I've got a basic chart of capabilities, and disappearing in one place and popping up in another is pretty much exactly as impossible if you do it across a room or across town, so I don't know what that's about."

[shiromadoushi]

"Am I seriously the only one here who sees homework for the time sink that is truly is?"

Bakura's tone was light and joking as he sat down backwards in the desk in front of Kurt to grin at him. "Lemme guess, Mr. Grade perfectionist from the planet Mathatron?"

[icy_heavens]

"Most people probably aren't very aware of the game in the first place."

Stuff like this was a bit of a niche thing. Popular enough in its own circles, but not really mainstream.

[spideyfanone]

Nice to know who someone was right off the bat. "This desk is now an official embassy. Try and don't start an interplanetary incident with your homework-deriding ways, earthling." It was a little easier to translate his internet snark into actual words when there was already an established pattern. And he just expected people to be older and taller than he was, so that didn't disconcert him any.

[icy_heavens]

Blink. Okay, he wouldn't admit it out loud, but teleporting did sound pretty cool.

"It's something useful, anyway. And I don't think what's supposedly impossible matters much anymore. Not with all the weirdness that's happened lately."

[spideyfanone]

"Swords are useful. I mean, assuming you're not up against guns." He was sometimes a little too practical, and he'd often had trouble with suspending his disbelief on video games when it came to that subject. "Maybe I'll get better at it, but for now it's really tiring and short range. And I keep losing stuff. One of my socks totally disappeared."

[icy_heavens]

"We haven't been so far. But who knows, later?"

He was well aware of the limitations, how outdated swords were. Really, what chance did he have against a gun without something like Kurt's teleportation to go along with it? Or at least super-speed. If stuff like this would continue to happen, he'd better get something to make up for the logistical problems.

"Practice does seem to work. I used to just get frost all over the place; now I can concentrate actual ice in specific locations."

[reckless_fire]

Oh hell, here was a goddamned tragedy in the making. Some kid had actually brought his homework. True, the Spiderman lunchbox offered some hope that he wasn't all study, but still. This was a situation that needed to be rectified immediately. After fortifying himself with some snacks, he wandered over and plopped onto a seat near the wallflower. Propping one leg up on another chair, he stuffed a few pretzels into his mouth, munching contentedly for a moment before turning to the other.

"Yo. Dude. You're off the clock, so take a breather, huh?"

[spideyfanone]

"That's good to know. I'm not gonna make any very grand escapes from bad guys if I can just get as far as the hall from my bedroom." Though there were definitely applications. He'd been charting them, along with his excruciatingly extracted findings on his current limitations. He had a whole notebook devoted accordingly. "So you've basically got a freeze-ray."

[spideyfanone]

This was more like what he'd figured would happen. Immediately defensive and scowly, he shook his head. "Not really. This is usually my homework time. If there is a clock, I'm on it." Of course, after homework time was tinkering in mom's lab time, sitting through dad's college physics lectures time, and then video games and books about aliens time after dinner and before bed.