ic Fast Times At Claremont [Open]

[MoonSimply]

Claremont Academy Grounds, Bayview Area, Freedom City

Sunday, January 7th, 2021, 12:43pm

 

La Puma Negra, otherwise known as Carmen on campus, didn't feel like going to church today, instead having spent the day lounging on a low branch that was part of a tree between the Athletic Field and the rest of the campus. It was a colder day, being mid-winter as it was, with snow melting in some shaded corners from a few days before. Even with these conditions she didn't wear a jacket, the feline young hero was warm enough with the black fur that covered her body, her regular uniform just enough just enough to provide her warmth beyond what her body gave. Here in the tree, it was just dry enough for her, and high to where she felt comfortable from the vantage point.

 

The feline young woman had not felt well, a textbook resting on her stomach. She wanted to rest but couldn't, something bothering the back of her mind, but she couldn't put a pin on it, every time feeling she was catching up to it before the thought swam away deeper in the back of her mind. Carmen thought that it could be her test scores, but even being somewhat uninterestingly average, she was still passing comfortably. At the least not drawing the ire of counselors or teachers for them. With those thoughts, she simply lounged above in relative peace for the time being.

[Avenger Assembled]

A succulent, supple young raven landed on a nearby branch and fluttered its wings before giving La Puma Negra a questioning look. The big bird looked quite unafraid to be in the same tree as Carmen, a fearless explained when the creature spoke in a pleasant British accent.

 

"Greetings, fellow student! A chilly day, eh?" Puffing its feathers slightly, the raven added "In some places on this continent, it gets thirty, sometimes forty degrees lower than this and stays that way! Can you believe it?" 

[MoonSimply]

Puma or...Carmen, could smell something coming near her but didn't flinch, only raising a brow when the bird landed and began to talk to her. It wasn't like something like that surprised her, after all, she was a young talking cat woman, but it was still odd. She watched, inspecting the strange bird before responding back to it.

 

"Guess so. Where I come from this sort of weather is rare. Don't think I've ever seen snow before," she says adjusting herself somewhat, "Who are you?" 

[RocketLord]

Cats and ravens talking in a tree.

 

James looked up at the tree with the voices. The one he had just been sitting by, reading in a book before they spoke up. He was dressed in a heavy jacket to keep warm, but didn't seem all that bothered by the cold despite it.

 

"Hello?" He was holding a hand up over his eyes as he looked upon. "Owain, is that you? B-be nice."

[EternalPhoenix]

Effigy and Invisigirl

 

“If it’s a talking bird, it’s Owain.” Wilona did not look cold, despite the wind flowing around her position in midair. Because she was flying. Which was a thing people apparently casually did here at Claremont. Well, it could have been that she was covered from the base of her neck to the soles of her feet. Or maybe her right hand that shimmered slightly with heat. Who knows? Normally, she wouldn’t have stopped at all. But 1) a bird talking to a catgirl (who wasn’t Neko) in a tree was unusual. And 2) Naomi had stopped first. Because right next to Wilona in midair was a smaller girl, apparently sitting on nothing. And how did she know who Owain and Neko were, you ask? They were all freshmen and magic users. Class, obviously. “It’s Freedom in January. Observe the normalcy.” She gestured at…well, everything. “Dirty snow and rock salt. Amazing.” She sounded extremely jaded, like she’d seen it a thousand times. “You must be new. I’m Wilona, this is Naomi and yes she’s listening. The bird is Owain, like I said, and I forget who the other guy is.”

 

Naomi was having thoughts. Thoughts that words were fundamentally incapable of expressing. Cat and bird. Catbird. Tiger stripes, quoth the raven. Ideas danced, twisted, and reformed behind her blank eyes. “James.” Yes, she was in fact listening.

 

“James? No wonder I don’t remember it.” There were probably millions of people named James. Common. Dull. Boring. Bleh. “You done staring at Miss Stripes yet? Snow at Saint Michael’s won’t move itself.”

[Tiffany Korta]

Madame Raven

Ah Freedom in January, it was almost as good as trudging through the streets of New York. It was so good that when she spotted the group by the tree Callie almost just kept on walking, but she thought she might as well go over and say hello.

 

“It seems to me that we have a conspiracy here.” Callie smiled at her own personal joke

 

Spotting the new person she offered a reassuring look.

 

“You’ll get use to all the crazy here, it’s part of the charm of the place! I’m sure your sick of introductions by now but I’m Callie Sen.”

[MoonSimply]

Carmen suddenly felt somewhat swarmed, and against her better judgement of leaving to stay in solitude, she didn't. She definitely wasn't alone in the weirdness department now, considering she had just talked back to a talking bird and was now spotting two people that were simply in mid-air without a wire in sight. She felt surrounded and somewhat overwhelmed in greeting.

 

She took subtle breath before responding, "My name is Carmen, I came in from Puerto Rico, I've only been here since December," Carmen looks down towards James and Callie before looking to Wilona and Naomi, ignoring talking bird that was apparently Owain. She seemed to blame them for the initial disturbing of her peace.

[RocketLord]

James stopped and looked around. He was clearly starting to get uncomfortable with the number of people there.

 

He had met most of the others briefly, but only really knew Owain.

 

"I-I wasn't staring," he stammered defensively in response to Wilona. "J-just making s-sure that Owain w-was being nice." 

 

James had completely lowered his book by now and had started to look around. "I'm James, I'm, uh, from the future. Your future, I mean. I guess."

[MoonSimply]

Carmen furrowed her brow. Was James staring at her? She hadn't caught on to him if he had been, "The future, what do you mean by that? You some sort of time traveler or something."

 

"Ojalá, no mi futuro, (Hopefully, not my future)" she says in Spanish with a grimace, taking a glance towards Owain, "You can transform or something, or just some bird?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Aye, I am no raven born, though I do have a bond with the birds. Just they had a bond with Bran the Blessed, you know; and did feed the Prophet Elijah in the wilderness. Behold, my true form. Dyn!" He declared, and with a distinct warping of his outline reshaped himself into a lanky blonde boy with a bowl cut. He had moved into the crook of the tree for his transformation, so did not fall from the tree. 

 

"A great many of us come from different times and places," he went on. "I myself hail from the realm of Logres some fifteen hundred years ago. You would know Logres as Camelot," he translated, "but that was but the great castle of the realm, not the realm's name." He said the words as if he had said them many times before. "Where do you hail from?" he inquired. 

[Tiffany Korta]

Madame Raven

<”Welcome to Claremont then! I apologise that my Spanish is rather finishing school.”> her Spanish was near perfect but more European in style

 

“Ah it seems that a few of us are from either the past or future, it just happens that I’m originally from the ‘80s. But maybe a tale for another time, just part of the fun of this place!”

 

Callie then looked toward Owain, she knew him about (Claremont wasn’t the biggest of places) but hadn’t spent much time around him her being a year above.

 

“Carmen has already said… Owain isn’t it? Puerto Rico is an island in the Caribbean, where its a lot warmer than here I can tell you!”

[MoonSimply]

"Don't tell me you both are also from the future or well the past?" she says looking over towards Wilona and Naomi. Was everyone here some sort of time traveler, or something? Did that kid say something about Camelot? It was all sorts of strange now and suddenly she didn't feel that different from some person out and about on the streets of any city.

 

"Far warmer there," she responds, letting herself be a little bit more open than usual, "I lived on the west end of the island."

[RocketLord]

"Y-yeah. I t-think I time travelled. I don't really know what happened," James tried to explain, still stumbling over his words a bit, before adding a quick "Sorry."

 

He rubbed his arm a bit as he took a few steps back, giving everyone some space, if they wanted to come down from the tree.

 

"I d-don't think everyone here is from a-another time. Just s-some of us. It seems like it's p-pretty common with, uh, temporally or dimensionally displaced students here. R-right?" He looked at the other students for confirmation.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I am double-displaced," said Owain equitably. "We came first to your year 1944, to battle the forces of Saxon madness." He climbed down from the tree himself, then came up behind James and embraced him with an arm around the shoulders. "But James and I here, we were brought together by fate, and are now the best of roommates!" He beamed at Carmen. "There are fine young men at this school, and ladies too! Such a fine idea." 

[EternalPhoenix]

Effigy and Invisigirl

 

Wilona shrugged. “Was talking to Naomi, not you Flyboy.” This was directed at James, naturally. And she was right. Naomi was carefully studying Claremont’s latest student. “Seriously, you’re getting rude.”

 

“Eep!” Naomi startled, and turned invisible. So her voice now came from apparently nothing, which was sitting on nothing. “S, sorry. Fur patterns, interesting.”

 

Wilona laughed. “Naomi’s an artist, and it never turns off.” She kept grinning. “No, she and I are from right here and right now. Some days I feel like we’re the only normal people here.” Well. There was Leon, she guessed. “<Don’t mind the boys, they’re just dork ass losers. You want to have some fun, you come see me and Naomi.>” She was fluent in Spanish, too. Ah, the advantages of other languages.

[MoonSimply]

Carmen smiled when she heard them speak Spanish, partially feeling like she couldn't hide what she was saying and that she knows had someone that at least could understand her. She got up from her lounging position on the branch, stretching out somewhat before jumping without any sort of issue down from the branch and back down to the grass lawn below.

 

"I see what you mean. I never noticed I had a pattern," she says continuing the conversation in English again and turning towards the direction of Naomi. Carmen looked at her arms, not seeing anything. The feline young woman seemed a lot more comfortable now, looking to the rest of the students, "It's been rough."

[RocketLord]

"Sorry." James almost visibly shrunk after Wilona berated him. "I, I just thought... sorry."

 

He looked up at Carmen.

 

"I'm, uh, sorry, but... were you... born like that? I-I completely get if you don't want to answer that, s-sorry if I'm prying, I-I'm just curious."

Edited January 19, 2022 by RocketLord

[MoonSimply]

"No se (I don't know). Guess I've always been like this. I wasn't born like this, it just happened over time. Claws, the tail, all this," she says pointing down at herself in regard to the fur, "The doctor said it was just growing up... but well I don't think this is any normal case of growing pains."

 

She puts a hand to her hip, "Not many heroes back home, it's rather quiet back there."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I have a friend who too shares feline nature," said Owain. "Though she bears only the ears and the tail." He hmmed, then said, "Do you perhaps bear kinship with the people of the Iya Valley, in far Japan?" he called down. "My friend Neko, she looks for people like her own." 

[RocketLord]

"N-no, I don't think that's s-something that happens to everyone," James tried to agree with Carmen.

 

He frowned slightly at the mention of Neko. Owain had talked about her, but he had never really met her. Kind of strange, now that he thought about it. Nothing against her, but he should probably try to meet Owain's friends.

 

"There's, uh, there's a lot of heroes around here, I t-think. A-always something happening."

[MoonSimply]

Carmen out her hands to her hips, "No, I don't suppose it happens to everyone. If it did, I doubt I'd be here," she responds back towards James. Even walking on a little bit of melting snow barefoot, still cold to the touch, she didn't seem too phased until she seemed to realize that she had let her textbook up on the branch. The feline young woman seemed irritated by forgetting it, scrambling up the tree without barely a sweat, partially leaping up the relatively short distance before coming back down with it in her arms, an English textbook.

 

"Maybe my family was from Japan, though I wouldn't know. Don't think the doctor ever saw anything like that in blood tests, and I've never even been to Japan as well," nodding her head in a no.