Devolve 2.0 The Reboot

Harvesting vegetables used to be a strange task for Jubilee. She'd liked it, that first year, picking home-grown fruits and vegetables, if only for the sensory experience of it. And it had been reassuring to know that every bit of food they could produce would help their cause and make them stronger. Yet that first year, it also felt foreign. She'd never done it before: she'd never spent days with dirt under her fingernails and sore arms from carrying huge baskets or spent so much of her energy thinking positive thoughts about vegetables. But all that had changed. Three years later and she was a pro. She wore gloves and knee-pads and a hat. Her pleasure in the process was tempered now by the awareness that every ounce of food was necessary just to keep them alive. Harvesting wasn't just a job now. It was a mission.

It was early evening, after dinner, the time of day when it cooled off enough that a few people would drift outside to put in a little more time. Ali Blaire would turn on the grow lights over the seedlings and smaller plants, which would make it light enough in the gardens to continue for a while longer. The grow lights were long narrow tubes, sometimes colored, that Ali kept suspended over the rows as she worked. Jubilee thought the lights looked like giant lightsaber lasers (or whatever) but she'd already discovered that if you walked through them, you just cast a shadow over the row and that's all. They always made the garden look ghostly, especially as the night beyond the fences progressed from sunset to total darkness. But it was still reasonably light out, enough that Jubilee noticed several other people drifting out to join them.

Russia seemed very far away. There were days when it felt closer than others, especially when Illyana was wandering through areas full of snow. She had left the snow behind her and winter as well. Spring was upon her with its rains and flowers blossoming. So far America was not impressing her, and she would have rather gone back to Europe. Russia and Europe held dark memories, though. Plus she had not yet searched American for Piotr and Mikhail. She had no proof that they were out there, but she would not give up hope until she had searched over every corner of the world. Thinking about Mikhail made her jaw tighten and her fingers clenched around the hilt of her sword.

She was not sure exactly where she was located. Once upon a time she had seen a map of America, but these days she let her powers work things out for her. When she had teleported over, she had arrived in Alaska and traveled across what she imagined was Canada. Now she was making her way along a coast. Illyana liked the smell of the water; it helped to cover up the stench.

Lance had never been a great mechanic, and he hadn't really ever worried too much about it. It had always been enough for him to be one of the junior people at the shop, doing whatever jobs they gave him. There were a few times when he had screwed things up but never to the point where things were irreparably broken. All you had to do was teach Lance once, though. At least when it came to mechanics.

So Lance was more than happy to be doing whatever small things he could to the tractors. He was humming while he worked. Fortunately it wasn't Gaga; it was some Maroon 5 song, which probably wasn't much better when he asked some of the music snobs around here, but he doubted that Chase would care too much.

"Since your wife's mental T-Rex hasn't eaten me in the night, I guess I'm not being a bad enough influence on you yet, huh?" he asked with a wink.

( Taking a break. )

Lance had put it off long enough, but now he was going to face his doom. Or, well, Raven. It was basically the same thing. So. Training. With Raven. It was like someone had just held a mirror up to his past and told him to look into it. Only Lance knew that the him from back then was a far cry from the person he was now.

Which meant that he wasn't gonna let Raven play any of her fucking mind games. She was still here. Maybe time had changed her for the better as well.

He wasn't gonna hold his breath, but it was possible that it could happen.

As he walked down the hall toward the Danger Room--weren't they all fancy schmancy here?--Lance rolled his shoulders and took deep, cleansing breaths. He had never been to actual anger management classes, but he knew some of the techniques.

When he got there, he knocked. Like a dumbass. But what else was he supposed to do?

Josh had tried to write out what he wanted to do but kept having to stop when it got too complicated or he realized he needed to talk to Hank about details, so finally he'd just made a list of possible types of damage he wanted to check. Then he'd paced a little around the infirmary while he waited for Hank to arrive.

Aprileen, so far, was a success. The younger kids had gone bouncing from room to room, collecting small sweets and little trinkets from the people who had volunteered. The costumes had been adorable, even under the somewhat limited circumstances. Once all of the children had had their fun and headed back to their rooms, it was time for the party to start.

The classrooms had been decked out in traditional Aprileen style, with greens and purples, and a small amount of alcohol had been procured from the stores. There wasn't nearly as much food as they'd had at the last party, but there were enough munchies to hopefully keep people happy. A playlist of carefully selected songs had been set up, though they fully expected someone to decide to step in and play DJ at some point during the party, and a dance area had been cleared in the first classroom.

People had started to head down to the party as soon as the last of the kids had cleared their trick or treat spots, and by the time nine rolled around, there were already a fair amount of people hanging out, in costumes that ranged from marker goatees to impressive works of art.

It had been a long day, he'd gone into the city with one of the scavenging teams and he'd be going back out with the other one tomorrow. He figured Josh had probably had a long day too, and he'd been kind of pathetically pleased when he'd agreed to Kevin's suggestion of getting together to watch a movie in his room after dinner. He'd considered suggesting watching in the lounge, but in his room he knew everything was safe to touch and he could actually relax and just enjoy the movie...and Josh's company.

He had a pretty giant stack of dvds on top of the television, to maximize the chance of finding something they'd both like, and he'd changed into soft fleece sweats and a not quite matching hoodie, with the lightest pair of gloves he had. Now all it needed was Josh...and possibly for the butterflies in his stomach to stop fluttering quite so madly.

Betsy's day had been dragging on so slowly, and she'd had a headache for much of it, and it was just one of those sort of frustrating days. To keep herself busy, she decided to redo the inventory of the store rooms. Her attempt at finding a distraction was really what it came down to in the end, and that was the major reason she decided to appropriate the few extra bottles of schnapps she found in a dusty back corner.

Mint. The worst kind. But still, she finished taking inventory and then unscrewed the bottle, drinking almost half in one vile go. She had learned in college the therapeutic properties of getting really, really drunk every so often. It would do wonders for her mental well being, she thought, to just let loose for one night without constantly worrying about everything all the time.

She'd scrounged up a Dazzler CD a day or two ago, and now she put it in the boom box someone had stuck in the gym. The bottle was almost gone already, though it was a small one, and so she found another and then clicked it back to her favourite song to sing along.

Standing on a workout bench, Betsy sang into her freshly opened bottle like it was a microphone, shimmying her hips as she got to the chorus. There was a smile on her face as she started to relax, and she knew this had been a good idea, even if it meant she was drinking minty liquor alone in a basement. At least it was the basement of the building she believed housed the only hope the human race had left. This was her life now, in this place without any of the people she'd thought would be in her life. But that was okay, because there were new people around, new people who were worth knowing.

Though it seemed like there were more early risers around than there had been before the outbreak, the early morning hours were still relatively quiet. On average, Paige only really saw a handful of other people up then, depending on the day and the season. Sometimes it was necessary for certain people to be awake at the crack of dawn, but the number of folks who were up then because they actually wanted to be seemed to remain at a low and constant number.

That was one of the best things about the morning. She could run before she had to worry about too many people trying to stop her to talk, and she could just listen to the world as it woke up. There wasn't really quite as much to listen to anymore, but it was still enough to get the point across. New day, new chance to do something worthwhile.

Her usual circuit of the grounds completed for the morning, Paige had ducked into the kitchen to make some coffee and was on her way out to take a cup to one of the other people guaranteed to be up that early. Even though there wasn't a whole supply group going out on Monday, she knew that Sam would be down in the garage doing a check of the cars anyway. She peered in quietly, smiling as she spotted the popped hood of one of the vans, and made her way over to where he was working.

"Morning," Paige greeted as she approached. "Brought you some coffee."

Raven waited in the control room for the boy, silently focused on making a few changes to one of her training simulations. They were minor details, but there were some things that absolutely needed to be perfect in order for her to find them acceptable as training tools. It was more time consuming than anything, checking everything and making the minor changes, but it was something to do while she waited.

Generally, when someone came in and desired to be on one of the teams, they had to pass an assessment. Lucky her, she got to be the assessor. There were a number of skills that needed to be up to par in order for her to be comfortable letting anyone off-grounds on one of the supply teams, and even though the boy who was coming in to test seemed fairly confident that because of his years living on the outside, he was a shoo-in, there were many things that relied on more than just one's ability to not get bitten for two years.

( Meeting Mr. Stark )

( First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me )

( Bat outta hell and on its way )

How in the bloody fuck- oh right, because he was besotted twit, that's why.

Pete paced back and forth on the porch as he smoked. Somehow, along with the bit of Kitty wanting him to move into her room (which he basically had anyways), she'd managed to get him to agree to not smoke indoors. So he was having a fag break outside.

Wasn't a bad day for it really. Not overly bright and sunny, not terrible weather either. Wisdom lit the cigarette dangling from his lips with a hot knife, then took a long drag. Exhaling out the smoke, he relaxed visibly.

Gert didn’t have a mental plan of how long of a time to give Molly as a cool down, but she figured that she had let a sufficient amount of time pass. If she was mistaken, then she could always bow out and return later. Her patience was pretty much infinite, and she was willing to wait it out as long as needed to.

After checking Molly’s room as well as a few other places, she had taken to wandering the halls and looking into various doorways occasionally. When she reached the med lab, she paused for a moment, fidgeting with the rings that were still on her finger and thinking, pondering. It was not like her to hesitate. Squaring her shoulders, setting her chin and letting out a deep breath, Gert turned into the room, eyes scanning it and then she smirked and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning against the door frame.

There was Molly, stocking shelves, iPod firmly entrenched in her ears and dancing slightly. For a moment, time seemed to slip backward, and Gert could believe that nothing had changed, that the world was just like it had always been, that they were just like they had always been. That sort of thinking was what had originally gotten her into trouble in the first place, though.

She couldn’t leave it hanging there, though. Stepping forward, Gert knocked on the wall although she wasn’t sure whether Molly would be able to hear her or not. It just depended on how loud she had the music currently up currently.

Gert hadn't been avoiding other people so much as she had been slowly working her way back up in the ranks of friendly interaction. Another thing that she wasn't in the habit of was waiting for someone to tell her what to do. When Chase said that her childhood had lacked discipline, he was right. Her parents had pretty much allowed her to do what she wanted when she wanted so long as it didn't involve anything dangerous and even that was negotiable if it was for a good reason. Gert had attended various protests before she was even thirteen and had once come home with a black eye and a feeling of the utmost moral importance. Her mother may or may not have cried herself to sleep that night, and her father's ire might have resulted in Gert being unjustly grounded, though it was a punishment that she had managed to discuss with them until the terms seemed less tyrannical.

In reacquainting herself with the mansion, Gert had been avoiding the library, but now she was wandering through it, mentally cataloging the shelves and comparing them against the meager collection that she had gathered for herself from hither and yon during her and Chase's zombie sojourn. There hadn't been time for them to pack the massive collection from their apartment, which Gert still felt guilty about. Her fingers lingered over the spines of the books as though touching them would help her apologize for leaving so many of their compatriots behind in the big wide world to be destroyed by needed but nonetheless senseless acts of violence.

( swearing and griping behind the cut )

As promised, Thursday afternoon at 12:50, Kitty waited for Chase in the control room of the Danger Room. The door stood ajar and inside Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots played quietly. The windows into the Danger Room itself showed nothing but a massive empty room, although the control panels were all booted up and humming.

The girl in question had taken a seat at the central desk, where she sat playing with a small puzzle made of two pieces of twisted metal. She wore an expression of serene concentration, her mind totally engaged but still totally at ease, as she twisted the pieces back and forth. Every time she twisted them just right, so the pieces slid into two separate parts, she phased them back together and started again.

( Seeking the Heart of the Labyrinth )