sofia vhalos ; doesn't take your shit (iquit) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-09-29 21:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | # past / backstory, danny kwon, sofia vlahos |
Who: Danny Kwon & Sofia Vlahos
Where: Fox Grove High.
What: A "first-meeting" of sorts.
When: Backdated - 18/01/24 ; Lunch.
Sofia was now the Geek representative. She’d been out of quarantine for long enough to see what was happening in their group. Like the others, she stayed quiet, not that they were trying to harbor their leader. They were just a very close-knit and quiet group. The girl had been one of the lucky ones. He avoided her due to not trusting that her immunity. Instead, he had it in his head that she had a latent infection. Her only saving grace, considering the way he treated others. The spiral downward had taken months. He’d been satisfied that they’d listened, but eventually became more demanding. Sofia herself hadn’t been close to the last rep, but she’d gone on runs with him. That was another reason she was wary. She didn’t know just how far he’d go to try and prove that he was in his rightful place. In the end, they all found out. He’d taken it out on one of the girls. He’d been doing it for weeks, but no one thought anything of it, mostly because she hadn’t said anything. It wasn’t until she’d flinched when he reached for her that the others started to pay attention. He’d always be asking where she was and started getting, what she felt, was overly possessive. It wasn’t until they managed to stage an intervention that she finally cracked and explained what had happened. After bringing it to the council, he was hung by the neck until dead. There was now an empty chair that needed to be filled and they’d talked about nominating several people, but no one wanted to fill it. They’d all turned against one of their own. The group was not going to be the same again. No one nominated Sofia. The council had met and they asked if the group had decided on a new representative. While everyone was quiet, she stood up and raised her hand. “I’ll do it.” The voice sounded like it wasn’t even hers. That had been several weeks and meetings ago and she was still reeling with the responsibilities. She had organized her group as best as she could and attempted to spread out her feelers to members of other cliques. It wasn’t easy. Making her greetings to those in the cafeteria, she grabbed a few things from the line and made her way out. She didn’t feel like going through the motions today. She was tired of trying to be friendly to everyone. She just needed some time to herself for now. The girl wanted to appear approachable, but also wanted to be able to think. Most nights she went to sleep exhausted. Sitting down on a bench in the hall, she laid a book across her lap and unwrapped the corner of her sandwich. She was still sitting there, half of her attention on the book and half on the sandwich, when Kwon came tromping down the hall with a gaggle of other former football players. Their equipment had been shredded and torn and re-sewed and re-armoured over the last year and a half; some of the JV boys had undergone growth spurts, which meant the vests and shorts sitting ill-suited on their lanky bodies, stretched and tight. As the pack of laughing boys continued into the cafeteria, carrying their new supplies, Danny slowed to a stop. He still thought of himself as the wide receiver—the runner, scout, point man, but his position had morphed in the weeks and months since life turned upside down. He had additional duties now. Sometimes that meant standing on the platform while the council executed a fellow teenager. The girl on the bench was a face that he’d only noticed after she raised her hand at the council meeting, suddenly planting herself on Danny’s mental landscape and emerging from the general fog of faces at the school. There was a difference between pre- and post-outbreak, at least: nowadays, he tried to remember names and faces. Fitting them to little things he knew about them and to form a picture of the survivors (in part to keep an eye on potential troublemakers), the ones who had survived Fox Grove’s decimation. But he still wasn’t that great at it. Persephone was much better. “Valos, right?” he asked, looking at the tiny girl perched on the bench. Then his dark eyes noticed the book in her lap. “Sorry for interrupting.” The voice startled her, more than she'd like to admit. She'd been mostly focused on the book. The sandwich was being eaten mechanically, automatically. Sofia was only thankful she hadn't been drinking anything. That would have been unfortunate. For now her shoulders had lifted to her ears and she'd stopped moving. A moment later, they lowered and she took in a breath before looking up at the familiar face. It was the guy who was friends with Persephone. While she'd talked to the girl quite a bit before she'd become the leader of the school, she backed off the moment other people started to take notice of her. "Close enough." A lot of people had problems pronouncing her last name to the point of her not really caring as long as they were in the ballpark. "Just call me Sofia." That was one everyone could say. Sofia not Sofi or Sof. She didn't know him well enough to be that friendly. He seemed nice enough. He seemed loyal enough. Like a good person, but she didn't know Persephone as well as she thought she did, and she didn't know where his lines were. Those were things she'd have to rectify now that she was in charge of an entire group of people's well-being. “Thanks. Sofia it is.” "It's not a problem. Am I in your spot?" She doubted he ate alone. Sports teams tended to stick together. Danny shook his head, a small smile on his face. The idea of the footballer camping out in the hall by itself was an odd mental image—it just Wasn’t Done. “I eat with the team in the caf,” he explained, confirming her assumption. Although he surprisingly wasn’t one for crowds; the boy preferred having his small tight inner circle. “Just wanted to say hi, since you’re new on the council.” He readjusted his gear, resting his new baseball bat against his shoulder (he still had to get down to the workshop and add nails to this one) so he could extend his right hand for a handshake. “I’m Danny Kwon, head of security.” Introducing himself despite the fact that he’d been running security and haunting Persephone’s side for over a year now, and that Sofia had plenty of opportunities to see him standing up front with the council. “If you’ve ever got any concerns, bring them to me.” His look was somber and significant for a moment. Like your last representative. Danny didn’t voice it, but the thought was there in the twitch in his cheek, the premature stress lines at the corner of his eyes. If only they’d caught the guy sooner. "Of course, how silly of me," she said in response to him confirming her assumption. Even so, she didn't make the mistake of believing that he fell into some sort of hive mind. Her smaller hand slid into his larger one. It was warm, a little calloused, but his grip was firm and sure. "Nice to meet you officially, Danny." Her tone wasn't completely serious, but the smile did fade at unspoken nod toward the former reputation. She sucked in a breath and exhaled. "I feel a lot better about being in charge knowing you'll be there for us." Us, not me. The other word had almost slipped out, just as her hand slipped from his grasp. The choice to rise to a visible position had been a decision based mostly on self-preservation. She just needed to make sure others didn't see that. She wasn't losing any sleep, but he must have. The twitch didn't go unnoticed. "You should come by and hang out with us sometime. We've got a lot video games and between you and me, they say they don't like you jocks, but they wouldn't say no." That reminder was a heavy cross to bear, like sandpaper scraping against his skin, knowing that the safety and security of the school hinged partially on him. And yet his responsibilities were comparatively light, so Danny couldn’t even imagine how Persephone and the other council reps handled it. He didn’t envy this girl her new position; there was a reason he’d always dipped off-stage and let Jason handle the spotlight. But Sofia’s mention of video games made him instantly crook to attention. “Oh? I’ve got a couple portables, but never played any group games here. Got multiplayer?” He’d never even thought of muscling in on the geeks’ territory until now, but now that she’d mentioned it, he realised of course they’d have video games. Not many of his fellow jocks prioritised that sort of thing, but Danny—D-Kong—did, quietly. So, accordingly, rather than keep hovering above her, Danny sat down heavily on the bench beside Sofia. Sofia instantly noted his shift when she mentioned the video games. She wasn't stupid. She knew people outside of her group liked to play them. They'd become so much more mainstream before the outbreak. Con culture was becoming more widely visible. "LAN parties are still a thing," she explained. While X-Box games relied on a external server, the PC games were easier to manage and modify. Sure, they could play other people on the same machine, but sometimes it was nicer to have the whole screen to yourself. "We managed to pillage a large screen if you're more into consoles," she added just in case he wasn't too keen on the idea of trying to figure out the keyboard and mouse combo. "Do you have anything good? We could do a swap." Most of the time when the geeks and brainiacs got going on one of their tangents, it was like they’d lapsed into their own foreign language, a gobbledygook and jargon that Danny couldn’t follow. But this was speaking a language he could reciprocate in. “I’d be willing to swap my GBA and all its games for some stuff in your library. Depending what you have.” Giving it up would be painful, but he still had the DS and PSP too—out with the old, in with the new was a motto he’d had to forcibly teach himself. “What’s your favourite?” "You don't have to go that extreme. We've got handhelds. We usually just game swap," she said with a light laugh. "I wouldn't mind a copy of Harvest Moon or anything with Kirby if you have them. I've got most of the Pokemons if you want to do battle!" Most but not all. She hadn't exactly had time to run around in second hand shops to really get a good look. Danny’s face was starting to light up at this little glimpse of normalcy—so desperately needed after promotions won on the back of executions. “Seriously? You’re telling me we can trade and fight Pokemon? In 2018, post-zombie Austin?” He didn’t quite laugh, but he let loose a small noise that was almost there. “Yeah!” she said finally breaking her usual cool exterior. The smile that spread across her lips at his sudden softening was genuine. This kind of interest wasn’t something she’d expected from him. While she knew that she shouldn’t stereotype people, it was hard not to box a lot of the groups that stuck together. “Stop by my room and I’ll let you go through my collection?” “It’s a deal.” He would have reached out and shaken her hand, but hers were still filled with her book and the remains of her sandwich. So instead Danny gave Sofia a business-like nod, a crisp acknowledgment as he rose to his feet again. He’d just meant to check in on the newest Geek representative—a sussing-out of her personality, a hope that she wouldn’t be anywhere near as awful as the last one—but he’d come away from it feeling more heartened than expected. “Looking forward to working with you, then,” Danny said, and with the smallest flash of what could have been a smile, he finally continued into the cafeteria, to find and rejoin his team. |