Survival Of The Fittest

((Faith C. Marshal-Mackenzie guest starring in this thread, with permission from Zarina. GMing Approved by Jilly))

“Man, the trailer for the next Mission: Impossible looks so damn good, have you seen it yet?” Faith asked, turning her head slightly to look over at Abel as the two of them walked, their conversation turning to the familiar topic of action movies. He shook his head in response, before asking a question of his own.

"Nah, I didn't know it was up yet. How's it look?"

Faith paused for a moment, trying to figure out a way to properly sum up the annoyingly hipster-music laden trailer, instead of just gushing about how cool some of the scenes looked - especially that urban motorcycle chase, vintage Cruise shit, and she dug it. The first half of the trailer had been all plot though, and not the typical excuse plot either, it was rubbing in all the consequences of the cool ass action scenes rather than setting new ones up.

“It looks like they’re going a bit grittier with it, I hope it’s not like, a Dark Knight style take. Don’t get me wrong, I love that trilogy, but Mission Impossible needs the mad stunts.”

Abel seemed to be briefly physically pained by the suggestion of gritty realism being brought into the world of helicopter jumps and fight scenes-cum-car chases.

"Ugh, really? I'm kinda tired of 'gritty' stuff. I just wanna see explosions and car chases, ya know?" He paused for a moment to fiddle with the bandage on his nose before continuing. "I'll probably still go see it with Amber, but I dunno."

Faith nodded in solemn agreement to that for a moment, a small break in the conversation hanging as the two of them dreaded the potential of not cheering drunkenly at the end of the next Mission Impossible. She had hope for that to just be marketing though, trying to fit the times a bit more. As long as it still had the sweet stunts, they could just fast forwards through any painfully pretentious bullshit.

She realised that she hadn’t asked him about the bandage yet, and spoke up once again.

“What happened to your face anyway? Looks like you got in an argument with a wall and lost.” She said, giving him a grin that belied her playful curiosity. It wouldn’t be like Abel to get in a fight, so she wondered just what adventures her erstwhile companion had been getting up to lately.

((Faith C. Marshal-Mackenzie, exiting stage left!))

Abel honestly didn't give a shit about Mission Impossible, but he could never tell Faith that. Tom Cruise? More like Tom Snooze, which is exactly what Abel would rather be doing. But he could never tell Faith that, or that he was really lost in thought about the Fast and the Furious spinoff that just got announced with Jason Statham and Dwayne A.K.A. "The Rock" Johnson. Now that was gonna be a movie, a good break in the Fast timeline and extended universe.

He might be a bit overdramatic, but he couldn't tell Faith that he just liked hanging out with her more than watching something with Tom Whomst and maybe a car explosion or two at best.

"Hmm?" Oh yeah, the band-aid. He ran over it again with his finger, cringing internally as he hit the totally inconspicuous tender spot. "Oh, uh, nothing. Just playing with myself too hard."

He stopped and stuck a finger in the air before Faith had the chance to interject. "Don't."

Abel whipped his arm down and turned back around to continue walking when it happened; his shoulder collided with another person's chest like hitting the car next to you with your door in a crowded parking lot. He flinched and looked up at the other party.

It was Alton, going the opposite way before the not-quite-a-fender-bender. Cool dude!

"My bad, man," Abel said, nodding his head at Alton before continuing the march to first period with Faith.

"H-hey, don't touch it!"

"All good, man," Alton said, shooting Abel and Faith a smile and a nod and then shooting them again with a finger gun. They were gone as quickly as they'd arrived, whisked off on their various businesses. The interaction had been intangible, but he was glad to have seen them. They were good, interesting people. Faith especially had become positively fascinating since her improbable ascension in the school's political hierarchy. She had a certain ability to reach across the aisle uncommon in the current climate, and yet Alton wouldn't have characterized her as moderate.

Then again, maybe she actually was. Politics were not all that interesting to him, except insofar as they informed the actions of people or affected the circumstances of his life. He had certain beliefs that mattered but most of the intricacies of taxation and road maintenance and all that were for other people to waste their lives on.

Alton paused for a moment once the pair was out of sight to resettle his pack and brush down his shirt, though neither shirt nor pack was particularly ruffled. He'd seen Abel coming a moment before the collision, but the boy had moved with a certain casual careless confidence that had prevented Alton from avoiding contact. He didn't begrudge the guy, of course. He could relate, just, he had the grace to preclude such repercussions.

So now, all there was to do was kill a few minutes until the time came for French class to start. Alton wandered the halls, free of intent but walking with a purpose, eyes peeled for something to catch his attention until, as he passed a bank of lockers, a tremendous clattering sounded behind him.

((Continued from I Voted!))

Sven winced as his locker belched forth it contents, spilling books and a pencil case and a brown paper lunch bag and a little wire shelf out and across the floor with a thunderous cacophony. He was here early for once, the day off to a good start for once, and then? Then this had to happen.

The worst part was he wasn't even really sure what "this" was. Why had his belongings burst free to scatter across the floor? He had packed well, he thought. The locker hadn't been overstuffed. Okay, he left a lot of things in it. He couldn't packrat all his belongings around in a massive sack like some of his peers. He also couldn't race pell-mell from class to locker to class like they did. He took it a little slow, and generally the teachers were understanding. Had the shelf perhaps caught on the door? There was altogether too much rough metal edge to both.

Whatever the cause, he was probably going to be late today, again. With a sigh, he turned and surveyed the damage. There was an arc of junk, a scattered mess wrought by gravity, and for a moment he thought it would be perfect to paint, something really and truly dark for a change, something scarier than any grim castle or grisly monster: entropy captured for the eye to devour.

Then he lowered himself to the ground, down on his hands and knees like he was prostrating himself before the manifestation of fate, like he was begging, please, no more, let this be all the trouble today. He had to get to class. He had to take a few deep breaths.

It was only as he reached for the pencil case, a tacky blue clamshell of plastic that looked like it belonged in the third grade at most, that he became aware that he was not alone. Someone else was there, wearing a smile and reaching out to hand him his physics textbook.

Alton smiled as he held out Sven's textbook towards him. Now this? This was interesting, at least momentarily so.

Sven was not somebody Alton knew well. That was to be expected. Sven didn't know much of anyone in the class well, from what Alton had been able to ascertain. He was reclusive, seemingly troubled, always hiding behind a dour attitude and a pair of sunglasses and a beard that made him look in his mid-twenties, but not the cool, hip, fit mid-twenties Alton hoped to be on course for, rather the burned-out wannabe-hippie academic-probation sort. Sven was excused from gym class and he spent a lot of time in the nurse's office. That was as much as the average student knew, and that only if they paid attention.

Alton, of course, was decidedly not the average student. He had connections and friends, and he had a good memory, and he knew Sven was a super-senior. He knew the guy had gone clean-shaven two years ago, had had paintings up around the school, boring stuff that looked like it was leftover from the Sixteenth Century. More than that, he knew a girl who'd known the guy, a girl who'd been a year ahead of Sven's original grade, class of 2016, a fellow artist. Her name was, well, Alton would definitely remember it if he saw her again. He remembered she was cute, a button nose and a slight overbite and pigtails worn unironically, and he remembered that she'd dressed modestly at George Hunter but by the middle of her first year at UTC she was sporting a short skirt and a push-up bra. They'd been at a party, both of them drinking but her more heavily, and she'd sprawled across his lap and asked how everything was going back at old George Hunter, how all her old friends were, whether Library had finally gotten the stick out of his ass and started painting again, or if he'd actually gone ahead and just dropped out. Library? Who, Alton had asked, was Library? And it had turned out that Library was Sven.

From there, the whole story had flowed. Alton knew about the car crash, the injuries, the eye. He knew the guy had shoved all his friends away and tried to restyle himself as some sort of ascetic monk, seemingly without much success. He'd paid a little better attention after that, but not too much. Their school was absolutely full of injuries and tragedies and unique individuals. But Sven was particularly opaque about his situation, and that piqued Alton's interest, and so when an opportunity like this spread itself out before him, he wouldn't dream of walking away.

"You alright?" Alton asked. "What happened?"

"I'm," Sven said. His mouth was dry suddenly. "I'm, fu—"

Fuck. He'd almost just said "fuck" out of absolutely nowhere, for no reason whatsoever, and that rattled him, and this guy also rattled him, this guy who Sven knew nothing about who was just being a decent guy and helping with some fallen belongings but who was for some reason raising every individual hair on the back of Sven's neck.

He'd been here before. Not literally in this exact place (right? He thought that was right but even as he thought it a powerful aura of deja vu settled upon him like a thick snowfall suffocating a tiny mountain town) but metaphorically here, that is to say: on the spot, the one unable to keep up with the little social maneuvers and mores of high school. It was absurd, he thought, absolutely absurd, they were all of them teenagers and yet so often they were playing their byzantine political games, challenging and outmaneuvering each other and all for what? A prettier date at prom? A meaningless percentage point on a meaningless GPA? Any one of them could die in a second so what did it matter? Sven hadn't finished his sentence. He'd just let it hang there, not even a trail-off but mid-word. This was horrible.

"I'm fine."

He reached out and took the physics textbook. This guy looked nice, polished, put-together. He was, wait, was he into sports? Soccer? He looked like a soccer guy, or maybe that was just his hair.

"That's good."

Alton didn't let it nettle him that Sven had completely ignored the second question he'd asked and had seemed to struggle with the first to a somewhat uncomfortable degree given its utterly trivial nature. He was intruding here, after all, poking at the hermit, even if in an overtly benevolent fashion. In fact, the failure to respond properly was perhaps a better response than some nothing pleasantry would've been. It told Alton something he'd suspected but not known through personal experience: Sven was a messed up guy.

This impression, of course, was furthered by the fact that the boy was down on his hands and knees, in this half-crouch-half-squat, cradling the textbook Alton had handed him and not doing anything about the rest of his junk all over. He seemed totally oblivious to the surroundings, even as other students passed by, in ever-increasing numbers, making a wide circle around their zone of disaster.

Alton was squatting too, but in an easier, looser posture, resting on the balls of his feet. He was flexible, and he found he often didn't want to sit down and risk dirtying his pants but also didn't want to stand, so this position was easy for him to take. He reached out and grabbed this slightly bent shelf made or wire, and held that out towards Sven too, curious to see what the guy would do now that there was a competing demand for his hands.

"You need help getting to your first class?" Alton asked, smile fixed on his face. He shrugged, but only with his shoulders. "I have a French presentation I wouldn't mind putting off a few more minutes. I can walk you if you want."

"No."

Sven's voice came out far, far harsher than he'd expected or intended, completely free of the uncertainty and stuttering he'd stumbled through moments before. He turned, set the book in his locker, then took the shelf and set it on top of the book, upside down, the pointy bits scratching at the cover. Only at this point did he realize he wasn't actually helping with his own mess, just hanging his classmate out to dry to do it all for him and hand him things.

He was being an asshole, wasn't he?

This horrible song rippled through his head there, something his dad had played him, once, for reasons he couldn't begin to remember or fathom. He'd forgotten most of the words, but the chorus went something like: "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole! Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole! Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole! Not like you!" The guy pronounced "Picasso" as "Pick-Ass-O" and Sven had hated it from the moment he heard it, hated it more than he thought he'd ever hated a song before, and he pronounced it "Pick-Ah-So" and he had this deep fear that it was actually the singer who was right.

"I mean," he said, trying to recover a moment too late, just like always, "that won't... Thank you. That won't be necessary. Thank you."

He picked up some pencils and shoved them in the ugly blue pencil case, to look like he was helping.

"Alright."

Alton wasn't going to push this too far. He'd gotten a bit of what he'd wanted, a window into the life of one of his classmates he'd otherwise known of only secondhand. He'd confirmed that some of what he'd been told was true, and he'd stored away a few little details to potentially make a hypothetical next meeting with the guy a little smoother. At the very least, there was an icebreaker established now, a point of shared experience that he could call back to and joke about in the future.

He gathered the rest of the pencils and pens, playfully swatting at a sophomore boy's foot when it almost came down on the highlighter he was reaching for, and returned them to Sven. Before he knew it, the mess was cleaned, with everything back in its proper place (or at least in the locker; Sven's decision to shove his shelf in upside down and pile the books and papers and pencil case haphazardly on top explained the predicament they found themselves in more clearly than the words he'd not deigned to use ever could've). Alton stood, smoothed his pants, and held out his hand.

"I'm Alton, by the way," he said.

With anyone more dialed into the social scene, he wouldn't have presumed to introduce himself. It suggested he didn't expect Sven to know him, and someone who prided themselves on paying attention might've taken offence at that. With Sven, though, Alton figured he was probably extending the guy a lifeline.

"Thanks again."

Sven closed his locker, having to apply a little more force than ideal because something was in the way. He snapped the lock into its place and spun the dial, belatedly hoping he'd not sealed away anything he'd need before lunch. He had his lunch itself, though probably smashed together and mixed into a disgusting slurry barely contained by the bag, as well as his papers and the novel they were reading in English. He was probably all set. What was he even having for lunch today? What had he packed? It didn't matter. Better not to know, maybe. Spare himself the disappointment, toss the bag in a bin, buy a slice of pizza. That sounded like a plan.

His mildly-disconcerting guardian angel held out his hand and introduced himself. Sven wanted to be like Pablo Picasso, not an asshole, so he reached out and took the guy's hand. It was smooth, warm, and somehow he hadn't expected either of those things but he managed to keep himself from recoiling.

Was Alton an Irish name? For some reason, Sven thought it was. It didn't matter, of course. He was very unlikely to remember it, and even more unlikely to spend any meaningful amount of time chatting with this guy ever again. But still, there were certain expectations.

"Nice to," he started, and his mouth was still dry so he ran his tongue over his lips, feeling the light prickle of beard hair against its tip, "nice to meet you. I'm Sven."

Alton shook hands, his grip firm but not tight. Nobody liked having their fingers crushed. Really, so far as he could tell, nobody liked handshake games as a whole. They played them because everybody else did, but there was a reason the high five and the fist bump had gained prominence in more casual settings. Sven's grip, in any event, was limp and uncertain. His hand was warm and felt ever so slightly damp. Alton could keep him here now, if he wanted. He didn't, so he let the boy go.

Sven introduced himself too. There it was, the confirmation. Alton had been right: this guy was a social outlier without a clue. So he responded with a light chuckle and a simple phrase.

"I know."

Those two words hit Sven like a jab to the throat, like a branch through the windshield, and he reeled on every level except the physical. He blinked, and for the first time he really looked at Alton and when he did it was as though time froze and stretched and he could see everything all at once, all the way back to the beginning of both of their lives and also to the end, and it was all Sven could do to keep from screaming or crying out or laughing or lunging at the guy and flailing at him ineffectually.

In half a second, the laughter won. It couldn't be restrained, but it was not a sound of happiness or mirth. It was a dark, bitter, black laugh, and he expected Alton's eyes to widen or his stance to tense or for him to ask what was wrong or to react in some fashion but none of that happened. Alton stood still, implacable, one finger tucked into his belt loop, little half-smile on his face like the Mona Lisa's, and Sven didn't know why he would've expected anything else. After all, he understood Alton now. He saw everything, and it was so funny it hurt and so infuriating it made his blood boil.

"Of course you do." Sven's voice was calm and cold, worlds away from the rippling laughter of moments before. "I know you too."

The perfect clarity and sense everything had been making shattered, then, and Sven realized he didn't know Alton, he didn't know what he was doing, he didn't know why his stuff had fallen out of his locker, he didn't know anything. His mind was playing tricks on him. It had to be. He hadn't slept well last night. He'd been up very, very late. He hadn't done that in a long time. Good things did not come of putting off sleep, and this monstrous certainty of an imagined past and future for Alton was sure evidence of that. The boy had phrased things strangely, and that had set Sven off. That was it. That was all. No more, no less.

But why didn't Alton react?

Without a word more, Sven turned and failed to smoothly blend into the masses around them, beating a trail for English. He'd be fine. He would forget about Alton. That was his goal. This was just a moment. He had them a lot. They always passed.

Still, the thought lingered with him, unshakable: Lucky bastard.

((Continued elsewhere))

Sven had a moment. It was something different from all Alton had seen before, something unhinged. In another situation, to another observer, it might've been scary. Alton found it intriguing.

Was the boy's statement meant as threat? As acknowledgement? What had prompted Sven's cackling? Was it related to something Alton had done or said, or was it totally unprovoked? Was he off some meds? On them?

Alton would probably never know, but that was how the world worked sometimes. He could enjoy and appreciate a good mystery.

He watched Sven hobble his way along, sticking out like a glowing beacon of abnormality among the waves and waves of unremarkable figures around him. Of course, that was only a function of the interaction that had just passed between them. A different day, a different set of reactions, and Sven would be one of the nameless throngs, while one of those currently-boring nobodies would hold Alton's gaze. That understanding and perspective was something a lot of his classmates lacked, he found.

When Sven had vanished completely, Alton took a look at his watch. Four minutes to make it to French class. That was more than ample. He set out at a trot, pleased by the path the morning had taken thus far.

As she drifted through the throng of students making their way to class, Ariana Moretti took a long sip out of her coffee thermos. The still-hot liquid almost burned as it touched her tongue, and she pulled what little energy she could from every sip. Anyone foolish enough to try to steal a quick taste would be put off by the stiff nature of the pitch-black coffee within the blue metal cylinder; the fuel was custom-made for her own personal consumption and no one else. Brushing by a few wayward juniors that were crowding the hall, she blinked her eyes a few times and adjusted the strap of her knapsack to more comfortably hang over her left shoulder.

Fucking school. The year had barely begun, and yet she couldn't wait for it to end.

((Ariana Moretti Memories continued from Reveries, though not chronologically))

That was the one drawback to knowing what you wanted to do with your life, she tiredly mused to herself as she slowly shuffled along towards her first period destination. Knowing how to get to the destination was one thing, but having to wait on the trip was a whole other. Having a mother who currently lived in a correctional facility had imprinted a strange sense of justice onto her, and much like something out of an NBC cop drama, Ariana felt herself pulled towards a life in law enforcement. Perhaps it had been her strict sense of right and wrong, or perhaps she'd lived firsthand what having a family member in the system could do to a family, but the idea had just come to her, and unlike many of her on-a-whim fashion choices or hairstyles, this one hadn't gone away.

French class was a bit of an inspired choice, but for someone seeking to eventually end up in the federal government, Ariana had known that language skills would prove to be invaluable. Not that she was altogether spectacular in French, but she got by well enough in her Spanish classes that a third language elective seemed like a good idea.

If only it hadn't been first period. Being half asleep wasn't conducive to thinking in another language.

Taking another sip of her coffee, she heard a strong voice call out, and footsteps quickly behind her.

"Make a path, coming through!"

Shifting quickly to the side, she had to put her hand out and steady herself on a passing student's shoulder as she watched Coach Oppenheimer barrel his way down the corridor. That was a classic coach move if she'd ever seen one before. She wondered where the fire was. Having steadied herself, she turned her attention to the student she'd had to use as a temporary handrail. A flicker of recognition flashed upon her face - it was in fact a classmate of hers, which made any awkwardness nearly moot.

"Hey, Alton. Good morning." Ariana gave him a weary smile. "Sorry about that. It's too early for that shit."

Tilting her coffee cup in the direction the coach had gone, she brought it back and took another sip. Every bit brought her closer to a proper consciousness level for school. Something flickered in her memory, and she nodded her head at him.

"You're presenting this morning, no?"

"Bon matin, mademoiselle," Alton said, offering Ariana an exaggerated and pompous bow punctuated by a flourish of his left hand that didn't come as close to clothes-lining a sophomore girl hurrying past as it might've looked like. "Et oui. C'est tres tragique."

He straightened again and chuckled quietly to himself. It was probably too early for French, too, at least for the few remaining minutes of linguistic freedom remaining for them. As to the other activity it was allegedly too early for, well, Coach Oppenheimer's bullish behavior wasn't even the most dramatic event of the past ten minutes, but Alton wasn't going to complain about a cute girl laying hands on him. Call it a minor net positive.

"I haven't really practiced," he added, after a moment to glance around just in case Madame Clarke-Moone was heading their way. Candor between classmates was all well and good, but Alton knew better than to brag about what he was getting away with when it could still blow up in his face. The exact same presentation, he suspected, could slide about twenty percent on the grading scale depending on how much effort one appeared to have put into it.

Alton thought he was pretty good at French. Not a natural, of course, and he probably was never going to be fluent, but mostly because he didn't have enough interest to try. The reams of vocabulary were tedious, but often enough the words were just English words with an extra E at the end, and worst case using the English term with an overblown accent was at least good for earning a laugh. A lot of French conjugations sounded more or less the same, too, so spoken projects weren't so bad, especially if you could bring a little charisma and physical acting to spice things up. By the fifth mumbled, droning monologue about nothing, the whole class tended to be bored into stupefaction, no matter how clean the grammar. Anything that could spice that up could cover for slight failings on the more academic front.

"I think I'll be fine, though," he continued, flashing a smile and getting moving in the direction of their next class again, pace steady and relaxed even though the bell couldn't be too far off now. "And you? Will Ms. Elliot be demonstrating the proper etiquette for..."

He paused a second, trying to remember what they were even presenting on.

"talking about last year's summer vacation?" he concluded, his uncertainty ever-so-slightly performative. "Hope that's right."