gunsforhire | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Roxy, anyone
What: A certain day
Where: The coffee shop that keeps seeing a lot of shit
When: April 13, mid-morning to mid-afternoon
Warnings: Depression over dead friends?

She hated time travel.

Everytime time travel was brought up, it was a reminder. Calliope was in her future. Jane and Jake were in her past. Her mom would know everything that happened to her and help her despite her also being in the past. Time travel was just a reminder that everyone was far away.

And today, today it was April 13th. Jane's birthday. The day she "left" her world only to arrive here almost a month and a half earlier. It almost feels like it happened that way just so she could see the date glaring at her.

Today was supposed to be a good day. It was supposed to be a celebration of Jane's sweet sixteen. It was supposed to be a party with all their friends as their youngest finally reached the milestone and it was going to have cake and be great.

Instead it was the day they all died.

And Roxy? Roxy was a sentimentalist in her heart. So while she heard about the cloud coming, she still went out to get a cake. With cyan icing and one of those sixteen candles. She got a weird looks, it's not like cake packages were air tight, she was risking it getting ruined, but she couldn't take the chance of it being tomorrow when it cleared up.

Of course she got caught and what happened to be nearby, but that one coffee shop. She had retreated inside to protect the cake and, well...she was stuck. Which was horrible because she kept REMEMBERING today and wanting to cry and she just kind of hoped no one would bother her if she just hid in the alcove area near the bathrooms.

She tapped away on the games on her phone, in her attempts to not stare at the cake in hopes of avoiding it, at least.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kids do help.

She looked up when he approached, and she's smiling again. "So, got anything interesting?"

"What, this? Nah, just the house blend with soy. Well, and an anatomy quiz to study for."

"Oooo, anatomy, fun. Need help?" She asked.

"Sure," he says. "How familiar are you with the nervous system?"

"Pretty familiar. Good stuff to know," she said. Especially when you were making sure burn wounds didn't hit any IMPORTANT nerves.

"Definitely. I'm trying to memorize the twelve pairs of cranial nerves," he says, "though I need to be really familiar with the peripheral nervous system in general."

"...those I know," she said. Helmets. Helmets and headbands, all MESSING with those nerves and Jane wouldn't listen-

"So, flashcard method? Like, ask you a thing and you describe it. Describe a thing, you name it?" That's how it worked in the movies.

"That's how I usually do it," he says. "I have my notes, but I doubt you need them."

It should be daunting, talking to a girl hardly Gamma's age who knows so much. Thank goodness she's so easygoing. He trusts her.

"Well, notes wouldn't hurt. Never know if something would like to be a surprise change," she said thoughtfully. Better safe than sorry, right?

"Interdimensionality could confuse things, perhaps?" he asks. "Hang on, let me find them." He digs in his backpack for his notebook.

"Basically. Already know it's changed a few laws of physics,and I'm highly curious how whatever made your eyes vibrant here differs from Ectobiology. I know the vibrant eyes aren't a naturally occurring thing here," she said. Which...might have been insensitive, but hey, her eyes were practically fuchsia.

Sigma grimaces. There's a reason he hates biology classes. "That makes two of us," he says. "But you're right. Besides my siblings, you're the only person I've ever met with vibrant eyes. What causes yours?"

"The ectobiology. It's baaaasically clonin' and test tube baby makin', but quicker and easier 'cause the laws of physics bend easier. Got a couple of theories of why it is. It might be that's what happens when you try to mix most human gene types in a small group, so you get supposed to be albino eyes with darker skin," because her skin is certainly too dark for proper albino and has traits hinting of several differing ancestries (because Homestuck is vague on that sort of thing so why not melting pot), "it could be a possible side effect of the ectobiology itself 'cause the only other creatures I've seen made with it have monochrome eyes, or maybe it's just an indicator of the inherited abilities."

"Cloning, huh? That sounds like something Omega would propose," he says. "But that's not how your cats multiplied?"

Roxy nodded. "It's a bit complicated and I got the stories in bits and pieces, but I think I was one of the direct clones, and some of the others in our little group of crazy adventurers were mixtures of us direct cloners, it gets really fuckin's weird," she explained with a shrug.

"And no. I had one cat. Then I started experimenting with the ectobiology equipment and you've gotta have the right setting for straight up clone, so it was a buncha mutations. Eventually got one that lived. Then I made more...then I thought they should have girlfriends and boy, was THAT an adventure in chromosome fuckery, but then there were girls, and then they started breeding...." Which was kind of a mistake to let happen. "Last count was a hundred and thirty-six cats."

"That does sound odd," he says. "I imagine all the cats were just a result of regular old biology."

Cloning, and mixing genetics? He isn't sure he wants to think about it. This is why he prefers chemistry over biology.

"After I had both genders? Yeah. I made.....'bout a dozen cats I made, and then it expanded from there. And ectohumans can have children, so there's no reason they couldn't once their bodies were stable," she said with a thoughtful hum.

"Ectohumans? Are they so easily identified that they're labeled like that?" he asks.

"Nah, most people dun even realize ectobiology is a science exists, it's kinda esoteric. Just made it up right now." She shrugged.

"I suppose that's fair," he says.

She nodded. "Far as I know, there's only...eight humans. Though I suppose there could be more, but I wouldn't know how to find 'em. But so far, we all have vibrant eyes. Got mine, Dirk's orange, Jane's cyan, John's sky blue, Jake and Jade are really vibrant greens, Rose was violet, and rumor had it Dave had red. Probs look a lot like yours, but he's always wearing shades, so..." She waved vaguely.

She never got to meet Dave either, but Dirk said that's what it was in the old videos. It had been an honor, apparently, since it came up in so many interviews for Director Strider.

That sounds analogous to Sigma and his siblings, until he counts Alpha. "Why wear shades? Red eyes are cool," he says. "Until people assume I'm wearing contacts. Your eyes almost remind me of Theta's."

"It's a Strider thing. Dirk does too, but we've known each other the longest, so I've talked him into lettin' me see before," she said. "Theta is lucky then. Pink's the best."

"I think you'd like Theta," he says. "He was the one on the skateboard at the park. Funny kid. Always wants to impress people and make them happy."

"Oh no, he sounds adorbs. And he was adorbs, but personality means double adorbs, I just might die."

Children were cute, okay. It's new and exciting.