[CENTER][SUB][I] Sit back from the edge of your seat, if you can, Take a minute to remember to breathe, ‘cause we're losing our minds...[/I][/SUB][hr][H3][B][url= https://youtu.be/VgRoxf0b8UQ]W H E R E   A N Y T H I N G   G O E S[/url][/B][/H3][/CENTER][hr]

Hannah’s boss- bosses, were unhappy. Particularly Josiah Stanton. The head of R&D, a thin man with far too much gel in his sparse hair— informed her that she needs to do something to satiate his patients and prevent some sort of riot. Elizabeth McCoy offers up helpless eyes while nodding along with her employer, and Hannah understands, really. After the sudden and unpredictable breakout a large volume of people and parahumans alike had died. Their main demographic were parahumans, and while they certainly looked and acted like regular people they decidedly [i]weren’t[/i]. They had lost friends, family, people they had known for years. Security could be replaced easily enough, but beings who could burp fire and shit lightning took precedence. They stood to cause a much larger volume of damage in a much shorter period of time, after all.

“Something should be done that will allow them to channel that energy," Elizabeth suggests, smiling shortly. "Something simple. Humanizing. I know it worked on me when I was a student."

"Or," Markus Wrath drawls, leaning forward from his spot on the table. “we could take to using some of my pet project."

The room seems to drop a few degrees when the man spoke. He was large and looked like he ate nails for breakfast, so much so that he cowed even Gennedy when he wanted. Elizabeth blinks, her hands holding tight to the hem of her shirt. "I…"

"It’d be on the side," the man tells her, flicking his wrist. "Nothing flashy, but it would help the guards in such a case."

"I'm just not sure that's what I want,"  Josiah entreats, carefully. "From what I’ve read, it’s still in its infantile stages. I think McCoy is onto something here. Improving standing and all. It’ll buy you time to continue refinement, if anything."

"Student relations." Wrath snorts and rolls his eyes, like Elizabeth is the most naive person to enter his life. "You can do your outreach if you want, but people always remember the bad things that have happened more than the good."

"I think it’s a horrible idea," Susanna argues, shooting Markus a glare. “Arming people further is going to make them feel [i]less safe[/i]. Not the other way around."

“It’s no longer about their safety. They aren’t people, Castillo.” He fires back.

They quarrel for a while, Elizabeth attempting to defend Josiah with meager and mild interjections, but Wrath continues to speak over her. She was a parahuman and should’ve seen that coming, but in this room they were [i]supposed[/i] to be on equal footing.

"It's final," the man says finally, standing "You'll do whatever silly relations work you want, but the security and tech branches will continue to work towards nullification tech."

He and Gennedy, who had been silent throughout the debate, unwilling to voice his disagreement with Wrath, stood. It bothered Elizabeth to no end, how thoroughly he had been brainwashed to follow the other man’s words. He was certainly not a soft man himself, but he also never questioned the status quo of parahuman and human relations- viewing Wrath as a superior rather than an equal.

“I think I have an idea.” Hannah said once the two men had left. The remaining heads turned back to her, and while the woman was little more than a figurehead there [i]was[/i] a reason why she was in the seat she currently occupied. Any one of the people in this room could have just about any person on the station spaced if they saw fit, but this woman wasn’t intimidated by any of them in the slightest. She almost reveled in their attention.

“It’s a distraction. But I think given that they’ve had time to mourn now, it’ll give them something positive to focus on.”

[hr]


[sub][center][h3]Archie[/h3][/center][hr][/sub]
By the time Monday rolled around, Archie’s throat still hurts a little, but it's nothing a lozenge won't fix, and his head feels a little fuzzy from the few days spent either sleeping too much or too little, but he was  alive and well. Saturday brought him a raw throat and a nasty cough, but since he was up here in space being observed half the day by scientists, he ended up taking enough medicine to knock it out before it could really develop. He decided to go to school and he's running even later than usual.

By the time he arrives, he’s forgotten half his schoolwork and nearly knocks a freshman to the ground in his rush to get to class, his teacher's words ringing in his ears. [i]One more tardy, Mr. Anderson, and it'll be out of my hands and into the dean's.[/i] Archie personally doesn't care about tardies, since his first period never really gets rolling until it's ten minutes in, but he doesn't want any more trouble than he had already gotten himself into during the first week. He steps through the door’s threshold right as the bell rings, and Archie feels like he might faint with relief. Or maybe that's all the running. Christ, he really needs to get in shape again.

"Anderson, how nice of you to join us," his teacher drawls, obviously not amused. He ignores her tone and slips into his seat in the front row. A seat he abhors with every fiber of his being, but still the seat he was assigned. It was arguably a worse curse than the primal side of his conscious. The curse of having an ‘A’ in your last name. "Sorry."

The thing he had found about his teacher is that she'll let you get away with most anything, so long as you apologize. "It's fine, Mr. Anderson. Are you feeling any better? Ms. Ellis told me you weren't well."

Archie feels his face heat up at the extra attention from from the teacher and his classmates. "Yeah, I wasn't. Better now." He tries to glance over the subtle reminder that he and Natalie had taken quite a shine to one another. 

"I'm glad to hear that," she replies, rifling through a folder on her tablet before sending it to his, papers having long since been replaced in the classroom. "Here's your essay and your last test. Let me know if you have any questions." She wanders past Archie, giving forwarding similar results to a few other students who were absent. "And today, we'll be getting some background on another important and influential writer: William Shakespeare."

There wasn't much of a response from the class, but Archie releases a groan within his mind. If they're going to study Shakespeare, he might as well start calling English a foreign language class. He was never any good at it. He spent the next half hour alternating between paying attention and working on a sketch that was as bad as he felt (he couldn’t even tell what it was, but it was shaping up to be a wonderful looking fish-cat), and the bell's only a few minutes from ringing and sending them all off to their next class when the teacher spoke up, "Okay, listen up, class, because this is important.”

Archie was successfully snapped out of his inattentive state, and automatically moves his hand to cover up his minuscule sketch. If anyone (Lynn) found out about his drawing thing, she’d probably tear him a new asshole.

“The Headmaster has an announcement for everyone, and requested that the education wing build it into their schedules for today," She continues, and the entire class groans, even Archie. Usually he's all up for a lengthy, time consuming segments that cut into class time. But the class was already almost over. Couldn’t she have just done it earlier? He's just glad he doesn't have much of a social life. Otherwise he’d be fairly pissed about this announcement cutting into the amount of social time that was normally afforded to get from one class to another. The teacher dimmed the room and put the projector screen down.

At first, it was simply school announcements and other school news. The two anchors were flat and had no huge amounts of charisma, very obviously reading lines about how the school was replacing the paper towel dispensers with air driers, and how the robotics club was hosting a robot battle royal in room 46. Be sure to bring your appetite for destruction. And pizza. Chaos today as a salamander escaped from its tank in the biology room. More fungus on the wrestling mats. Archie was always impressed by the creativity that came out of the daily news class in the digital arts wing. They always somehow made the total lack of production value fun to watch in their own way.

He was beginning to grow discontent though, with the school’s lack of statement after the breakout. Sure, they couldn’t undo what had happened, but they could at least say that they were working to ensure that the reason why the seat to his left was vacant wouldn’t happen again. Archie’s sentiment was shared across the the student body, and it seemed as though the faculty had been instructed to remain silent on the matter as well. Whenever prompted, they had been tight lipped and deflective. 

[i]“And now, a word from Headmaster Dunbar....”[/i]

The woman appeared on screen in a jerky cut that had obviously been simply pasted in by one of the students in the class. It had been filmed by someone who was actually being paid for their work, though. He could tell, because the lighting was nice, the headmaster held a professional demeanor, and the edges of her person weren’t hugged by a poorly done green screen.

"Students of The Promise," their she began, and the entire class perks up a little, as if they were each being addressed by name. “The administration is incredibly sorry for the incident that occurred some four weeks ago."

And there it is, Archie thinks. What the population had been waiting for. “We have been spending every day since the breakout. To ensure it doesn’t happen again. We are deeply, deeply sorry for the mistakes and failures on our end.”

Nothing of significance had changed in the weeks since. The brick and stone campus buildings, statues, the lawns and stately oaks, none of it looked any different. The overpasses and stairwells had been repaired, the grass trampled by people and torn up by shrapnel replaced, all the signs of the death and carnage had been neatly erased. It was nice to know that it hadn’t been [i]forgotten[/i], or worse. [i]Ignored[/i]. The school had held sermons for those that had died, but little else had been done in the wake of the disaster aside from the repairs.

“As some of you know, The Promise’s annual Homecoming dance will occurring soon. We have elected to open the dance up to the entirety of the station, and thus The Promise will be hosting various themes and celebrations across the station. Be you at the school or on the streets, we hope to be seeing you.”

Now this really got his attention. Back home, Homecoming dances were held held by a few schools at a time and that was it. But what the school was suggesting now? That sounded like Mardi Gras, or the Festival of Lights in Prague. He had never been to a concert or massive party before, but he figured partying with a few thousand people could certainly make for an interesting night.

The rest of the day had gone pretty smoothly, all things considered. It was normal aside from all the chatter. People were making plans already, talking about who they were going with, where they’d be, what they’d do. It’s as honestly the first positive buzz of activity he’d seen the school undergo since the breakout. On his walk back to his dorm he sparked a wonderful idea. He [i]did[/i] have people he could go with if he wanted. His pulled his phone from his pocket, almost losing his grip and throwing it in excitement as he did so. He was still unused to carrying the device.

His fingers were slow and undisciplined, but he managed to select Lynn, Keaton, and finally Natalie. His fingers hesitated over her name for a moment- not because he didn’t want to invite her or add her. He most certainly [i]did[/i]. He couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be doing than spending time with her if he could. It wasn’t even that he was inexperienced with girls. He was just so incredibly nervous around her. Most of his previous ‘relationships’ had been the girl making the first move, but it seemed like he was catching feelings just like he had caught a cold over the weekend and he had no idea what to do with himself as a result. He had been somewhat avoiding her, seeing her irregularly at best and never one on one. Texting her even less so, although not for her lack of trying. He didn’t [i]fully[/i] blame himself for that one, though. He regularly forgot to charge his phone every night. Let alone check it daily.

[i]Meet at the mall, anyone?[/i]

The text was brief, didn’t even mention where at the mall, and was irrevocably [i]Archie[/i] as a result. Archie didn’t waste time waiting for a response, instead he dropped his school bag off at his dorm, walked to the only mall on the station, and seated himself as close to the Panda Express as he could.

He was eating for two, after all.