Devolve 2.0 The Reboot

( swearing and griping behind the cut )

( He wasn't sure what he'd done now, but he was going to find out. )

Down in the basement, past the darkened weight room full of shadowy machines, and past the well-worn doors to the gym, the door to the indoor pool stood open. Inside, Jubilee and Molly were hard at work perfecting their cannonballs and underwater tea parties, oblivious to the late hour.

The night hadn't started so nicely. Jubilee took one look at Gert and Chase failing to see what was right in front of their faces and hightailed it to Molly's room, pajama-clad and armed with a movie, a plushie, and plans to colonize Molly's room until they both felt better. She hadn't expected to find Molly crying any more than she expected to burst into tears herself.

Somehow with all the crying and hugging and honesty, Jubilee spit out the short story of her crush on Jono. And with that, out came her anger at herself for getting so attached and for never saying anything. And how relieved she was she'd never said anything. And again her anger at Jono for not bothering to tell her, even though she was the one who had masochistically told him to go after Paige in the first place. She'd heard it from rumors, and personal feelings aside, that sucked.

Molly's situation twisted her up inside and made her want to confront Chase, so she could tell him to his face that if he thought Molly was being hurtful then he should just take a look at what an insensitive asshole he'd been. But it seemed like Molly wanted to confront Chase too and she said it with such a purple-ish gleam in her eyes that Jubilee quickly figured disarming the situation would go a little better.

Night swimming, she prescribed. Putting on a bathing suit when it's dark out always cheered her up, at the very least, even on the occasions she'd then scampered out to the lake to discover it was too glacial to jump in. But this time she led the way downstairs, to the pool in the basement.

Cool water washed away the sticky feeling of tears and soon they were laughing. They stayed underwater as long as they could and came up in bursts of bubbles. They jumped off the diving board until Jubilee's arms were sore from pulling herself out of the water. They were both wrung out from everything--Jubilee kept alternating between happy thoughts of the fact that she finally felt like she'd made sense of the world and unhappy thoughts of the sense-making Molly still had to do--so they headed upstairs. They fell asleep watching cartoons, spooned together under the covers, convinced that tomorrow would be better.

After Jubilee got done in the greenhouse, she'd gone through the usual routine. Shower, scrub nails, lament lack of nail polish, get dressed. It was late afternoon, already nearing dinner time, and there was really only one thing she wanted to wear.

In her favorite grey sweatpants and a massive faded Batman t-shirt, Jubilee took off down the hall. She hesitated for a fraction of a second in front of Victor and Molly's rooms, but she brushed off the impulse to go whining to them and instead headed for the stairs, which she circumvented via the banister. Downstairs, she made a bee line for the rec room, where she put on some cartoons and curled up on the couch.

Her whole body felt empty, as if she'd used up her monthly allowance of thoughts and they'd scoured her clean. Earlier in the day, it seemed like Ororo had sensed there was something up with her and she'd let her do whatever she wanted. As nice as it was not to be on fertilizer duty, Jubilee knew it was an indication she needed to snap out of her little semi-crabby funk. But as she gazed blankly at the television, it occurred to her that it might be a little harder than she thought.

Jono started digging through his admittedly obscenely large playlist looking for proper horrors and zombie themed songs for Lee. Then he could rip them to her player.

So far besides Rob Zombie (Which was obvious, really what was Jubilee thinking, leaving him out?), he had a few others queued up and waiting for whenever she descended on him to critique his additions. It was a rather nice way to pass an evening. Especially since he was done with his scouting runs for the week.

Tapping off his fag in the ashtray on his desk, he took another drag as he opened his file of Tom Petty songs. He could think of one off the top of his head, but there were probably others as well. There was no need to wait for knocking, Lee would let herself in.

The human colony was finally back to something resembling normal, and those who had stayed to help rebuild over the course of the month had all returned, having fixed and even bolstered the colony's defenses. The weather was also beginning to turn from cold and miserable to something a little bit warmer and slightly less miserable, and both of those events were enough reason to celebrate.

Instead of the usual carefully balanced dinner, the meal had been made with more of a focus on flavor, and had been laid out buffet-style in the dining hall. There were more treats than normal, and though many adults were aware that it was a sign that some of the chocolate and other treats were nearing the end of their shelf-life, it was still an impressive and well appreciated treat.

In the library, a decent selection of alcohol was laid out for the older residents, and in the recreation room, a couple of teenagers had put themselves in charge of keeping a steady flow of entertaining yet age-appropriate films running throughout the evening. Another resident had put himself in charge of music, and was taking requests in the dining hall.

((OOC:Here it is! Have fun! For everyone who was on the Saturday supply team, you'll be arriving home from the run shortly after the party starts.))