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The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

@banjoanjo does he know obama's last name?

The Promise - ASTRO-NUT

Vibe check.

Still accepting lads

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Hi! Can I hop in? Before I do, I have a few questions...

1: Are there other races besides human?

2: What are the limitations on powers/abilities?

3: Are there stats in this?

(I have not finished reading the rules so I think I will find some of the answers there too)

@Nate1008

Aight so,

There are two races. Human and parahuman. If you are the former, you must explain why they are aboard The Promise (staff, guard, etc).

Limitations vary from ability to ability so there's no easy answer to this. I do reserve the right to outright reject certain abilities. Due to the nature of the setting some creative license is allowed in that our characters can manifest their abilities/mass shift/etc, but certain laws of physics must be abided by (no hard light structures, no solid shadows, etc). Try to shoot for street tier power levels, with building tier capabilities situationally. Please keep in mind that most of this setting is character interaction based, so the power should accentuate the character in some way.

There are no hard stats in this, but I do appreciate numbers here and there being used as reference (being able to lift a car (avg car weight ~4000lbs), can run 60mph, can crap thunder as loud as a jet (146db)).

I highly recommend reviewing some of the characters we have so far to get an idea of what we're looking for and joining the dicord to work with me and the other GMs, we're always happy to help.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Archie

---

"You - are you okay, Archie? Shit. Fuck. I'm sorry, I didn't... Here - you need...you need to run water over that. I..."
Archie flinched away from her reach, taking a half step away from her as she advanced on instinct. He kept his hand close to him protectively and his eyes kept flashing to her own hands, as if she was going to burn him again. With shaking fingers, he collected himself, taking another half step away from Lynn as he did so. Archie shoved his injured hand into his pocket.

"I- yeah." he said, his face straight but his voice cracked some as he spoke. He really was mostly okay. Physically at least. He had taken worse burns. He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but seemed to decide against it. Lynn was leaving and there was nothing he could do to stop it. All he could do was deal with it, like when mom up and left. She could hurt him again if he tried to stop her. Lynn seemed concerned now but when she had turned around she had been ready to swing. Her eyes and face were contorted with anger and in that moment Archie was brought back to when he was just a boy. His shoulders lift as he inhales a shaky breath; lips pursing into a thin line and jaw setting into something determined and knowing. His remaining hand clenched into a fist and then released.

He's not sure if it's his to say, but he says it anyways. Out of habit, because things like this were his fault in some way or another. "I'm sorry." It's so quiet he can't even be sure that he said it at all, but it's the only two words running through his mind. "I'm... gonna go back. To the table." he says, trying to sounds as casual as he could. He turned, walking away as quickly as he could without running from her without so much as a goodbye. That would just make things worse. Mr. Hyde stirred in him, never liking when Archie was hurt or upset, and he squeezed his burnt hand as if to prove that the pain was not from a direct threat.

Archie didn't go to the bathroom, or run water over his hand. He went straight back to the group, stuffing his other hand into his pocket so that he didn't attract any extra suspicion. He could hear Mr. Black and Mr. White speaking to the group in carefully worded sentences and hushed tones. Archie positioned himself next to Natalie without thinking, she looked upset. She looked as upset as he felt. Despite his earlier thoughts and what had just happened with Lynn, Archie found himself placing his hand on her upper arm. It was a small contact, but he found himself drawn to her body heat and noticing how her muscles felt like stone under her hoodie. Like Lynn, he was reminded very quickly of just how different parahumans were from normal humans. How capable she was of hurting him if she wanted to. He didn't want to believe Natalie would, but the throbbing heat of his pocketed hand served as a powerful reminder.

He pulled his hand away, and put it back in his pocket. He frowned some, to himself and his thoughts, and decided to focus more on the group again. Cara was named Caroline Fuller, they had sat in on the interviews, and there was a party that was concerned for them and the future as a whole. They had circled around Freaky-D now, who was displaying a recording of his skirmish with a woman that seemed oddly familiar. He wracked his brain for why this might be, and found himself thinking back to that first day, when he took his first step onto The Promise.

"One hell of a ride, huh? Nothing quite like it. The first steps are a special thing. It's tradition to take them on your own."

Her short brown hair, the angular features, the piercing hazel eyes that made him feel like she was staring straight through him even through the recording. The accent, too. It was all coming together.

"What's your name?" he had questioned.

"Arianna."

"I know her." Archie announced to the group, suddenly. Suddenly he felt like all eyes were on him, and he scrambled to recover, bringing both hands up as if in surrender, exposing his burnt hand. "First day, she helped me out of the shuttle. She said her named was Arianna." he explained, putting his hand back into his pocket. "She was... odd. I guess this explains why."

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

@JunkMail

Hi, are you still taking applications?

@banjoanjo

Wassup homie

Heck yeah we are.

Make sure to join the Discord. It’s where we do all our scheming.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Archie

---

"What the fuck is this shit, Anderson?"

Archie's attention shifted instantly, and he recoiled in surprise at the venom in Lynn's voice. The wrinkles of her forehead, the crows feet at the corners of her eyes. She was angry at him, she was so angry at him and he didn't know why. His mind raced, trying to grasp what he had done to earn her ire. She immediately looked away, dismissing him as if someone had thrown out a piece of refuse and continuing on in one hell of a tirade. Lynn looked herself, but didn't. The way she sneered, the crinkle of her eyes, they all reminded him of his mother. Archie hadn't spent much time in his life with people angry at him, but those that had been had stuck with him.

Under the fire Archie saw the signs of a brunette woman six inches taller than Lynn was. He saw it again when Lynn stepped towards him and his chest thundered, the great being that resided in him stirred when he saw her reaching. He gripped his chair so hard that his knuckles turned white, and he almost felt himself let it out. His eyes were wide, and in that moment he was terrified of Lynn. Completely and utterly stunned.

He didn't move, his heart thundering on in his chest even when Lynn seemed to have decided that he wasn't worth the effort and pulled away. He watched her every movement, refusing to move for a number of moments until Lynn had turned tail and stalked off. As she left he felt his grip slacken, and he saw Lynn for what she was again- his friend. Or at least, the closest he had to one aboard the station. Everyone that had come to the table was more of less his friend now, aside from Radvi and Freaky-D. He wasn't sure how either of them felt about him. Or if they even cared. He looked to Mr. Black and White for a moment and decided that he had to go after her. He'd get his answer in a minute, this mattered more. Lynn had gone after him when he found the body. She had been there to help him as soon as he was kicked on the first day. Lynn had helped him before and she was angry with him and he didn't know why and-

Archie slid out of his chair and his feet carried him after Lynn. Her back was turned to him and in his much less hardened mind that didn't mean much of anything. "Lynn, wait! What's-" he wanted to know what he had done wrong. Needed to know, so he could fix it. Or at least, try to fix it. He reached for her as he rounded a corner after her and caught up out of sight from the rest of the group, his hand reaching out and grabbing onto her upper arm. Time seemed to slow down for a moment. Archie was unused to parahumans, and their effects. Up until his capture he was the first parahuman he had ever met. Sure, he knew Lynn could get hot. He had seen the recordings of her facing off against the lizard, and felt the heat radiating off of her and Salamandra in the Dim Sum restaurant but he himself had never really experienced it. He felt like he had grabbed onto a hot stove pan or rested his hand against a radiator. "Ow!" he said, almost instantly letting go of her and pulling his hand to his chest and cradling the red and hurt appendage. It wasn't burnt that badly, he had taken much worse working on engines or touching parts that clearly hadn't had enough time to cool down, but the shock and surprise got to him the most.

He stopped where he stood, still holding his hand with the other against his chest. He didn't feel the hammering in his chest like he had earlier. He wasn't scared of her, at least not in this moment. Not anymore. But he had never once thought that she would hurt him- on purpose or not.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Archie

---

"“Look, Archie. You’re never going to know if she likes you unless you tell her how you feel. Be yourself around her. And be confident too. Girls like guys that are sure about how they feel. You just need to show her. Get her alone, somewhere peaceful, tell her that you feel something towards her, and ask her out.” "

Archie nodded instinctually at being told to do something, even if it didn't entirely compute. He didn't have time to explain his situation to her. At least, not entirely. He appreciated her words of wisdom, he really did. He agreed with it, even. Dating here and there in high school had been easy because it was just like talking to a friend in a way. He had never felt the need to really impress, not that he had the means to do so anyways. He had subscribed to the idea that love for lovers while different, had the same responsibilities as love between friends. When you didn't care, it was so much easier to just be yourself. Be yourself? Be yourself?! Never mind the logical absurdity of it, it was an incredibly anxiety provoking thing to hear. Did Eli know what 'himself' was right now?

Scared as shit, lonely, anxious to the point on insomnia... being himself wasn't an option right now. He didn't have the tools to deal with those parts! Did she have the rest of the instructions anywhere? What the hell was the he that he was supposed to be being? Okay, okay. In fairness to her he had a pretty good idea of what version of himself he was supposed to paste onto his face, but it still felt like he was in a burning building and being told to relax. That and he didn't entirely know how he felt yet. About Natalie, and Natalie and him. She was a vision in her own right, small and pale but with superhuman power coiling under her skin that gave her the strength of twenty men. She could flick him, and it would be like a gunshot.

What Eli said about getting Natalie alone and talking to her, though? That made sense. There was no fighting that part of her argument because it was irrefutably the truth of how to solve his problems. He wasn't scared of her, because he knew that she wouldn't hurt him. She was good, and he had found that the people that one had to worry about didn't express concern like Natalie did. He wasn't scared of rejection, because at the end of the day Natalie was just a girl and he was just a guy. If she didn't feel the same way, he could deal with that. Honest. It might not be done in the most healthy way and he'd probably bottle it up and lock it away deep down in his chest until it burnt so bad that his skin burnt away to armor and muscle and teeth of his own. But he'd deal with it. What scared him, mostly, was the feelings that he was developing that he hadn't dealt with before. Sitting around and letting it fester would do nothing but bog his mind down further and bother him more.

Thankfully, Natalie didn't pay him too much attention. This was both a good thing and a bad thing in his mind. Yes, it meant he had more time to not do what Eli instructed but at the same time when she didn't recognize him outright it bothered him more than it should and ugh, see what he means? It's so confusing. Fortunately, Keaton and Lynn had arrived as well. It was very quickly becoming a full house, but that didn't bother Archie much. He was an extrovert by nature and if anything having more people around to divide his attention meant that he wouldn't focus on himself and his confusing feelings. What did bother him was the sudden materialization of two men whom he had never seen before, dressed like black and white crayons and fittingly referring to themselves as Mr. Black and Mr. White. Radvi's surprised shout caught his attention, and the sudden arrival of the two just about made him jump out of his skin. He turned so quickly in his chair that he almost threw himself over. Then Freaky-D fell from the sky, and Archie's heart raced, his arms coming up as if expecting to be attacked again. While Freaky-D had done his best to smooth the waters in the hospital bathroom of all places, Archie was still somewhat apprehensive of the mysterious figure. The boot to the face had hurt.

His shoes felt tight, and he momentarily peeked down at his feet. He was growing again, ever so slightly. His heart was racing, too. He hadn't noticed it because Natalie was sitting right across from him, but he was growing some from all the activity. He placed one of his hands on his chest, where his heart was as if attempting to steady himself. Archie breathed deeply and suddenly, his mouth somewhat like a fishes above water, trying to force himself to calm down. He forced himself steady again, squashing down the reds that were leaking into the edges of his vision, and relaxed. He wasn't in danger.

The two men spoke about impending disaster, and how they had needed to speak to them all at once. Archie's stomach churned at this. Disaster? They were core components? His eyebrows quirked at the phrasing, curiosity peaking in his mind. He wasn't sure who was asking when he opened his mouth- himself or the lizard, whom was ever vigilant and ever protective in his mind. "What kind of disaster are we talking about here?"

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Archie

---

"Okay, okay. Take a big breath... So, how about we chat over some food? I'd wait until after but I'm starving. Is that okay? It should only take a minute. Go sit, loverboy. I'll be there soon."

Archie glanced between the woman and the growing Panda Express line behind her, and nodded wordlessly. He understood the need for food more than most teenage men, given his condition and all. While he was certainly desperate, he was not selfish enough to pester someone when they absolutely owed him nothing. Especially a stranger of all things. He nodded, incredibly embarrassed that she had picked his phone up for him like the child he was, and ducked away- just about scurrying over to the table she had nodded to for him to sit at. A few minutes later she rejoined him just as she said she would with a tray of Chinese food and a knowing smile on her face. Archie realized how nice she was, considering he had just about crashed her dinner. He knew a lot of people back home who wouldn't even look his way because he didn't have much in the ways of money.

"So, what's your name? How long have you been aboard The Promise?"

"Oh, uh-" Archie said, looking down at his phone briefly. He had opened Natalie's profile on his phone and had been debating between trying to free-ball a message or throw his whole phone away and had spent the whole past five minutes simply staring at her number. "Sorry," he said, fumbling for the power button and turning his phone off so Nat's profile picture didn't distract him. "I'm Archie. Archie Anderson." he explained, a sheepish smile forming on his face. He extended his hand for her to shake. "I've been aboard about a month and a half. The doctors back home said I gots a condition and all."

She was pretty. And nice. Oh god was he accidentally flirting? He's sitting here bent out of shape over one girl and somehow telling jokes to another in the same breath. This is why you got your ass kicked in 8th grade he thought to himself. He was an idiot. A grade A idiot with too big of a heart and mouth and too small of a mind. His mother would've probably told him that he was just like his father, which was not a good thing because his father hadn't been all that faithful. Among other reasons for why being like his dad wasn't exactly the best. Archie snapped out of his train of thought before he spaced out too much and weirded her out. "And you? It's nice to meet you."

Around the time he finished speaking, another soul joined the fray. They announced their presence suddenly from behind him, and it's so mild and civil that he actually knocks his poor phone off the table with his arm as he twists around- eyes wide in alarm in case that it's Natalie and oh god oh fuck his heart is beating out of his chest again. Archie recognized him almost as soon as he turned around as Officer Radvi, the man who had interviewed him after his unfortunate flower collecting trip. His eyes flash to the ground where his phone still remained and he stooped over to pick it up before Eli can show him how to properly handle the device again, thanking the god above that the screen isn't cracked (somehow). "Officer Radvi, sir." He greets, pasting a smile onto his face to hide his embarrassment. As he looked up to Radvi he happened to catch a glance of Natalie's steadily approaching form and he felt his heart just about jump into his throat. Now, yes, this reaction might be fairly elementary to some- but Archie was not a man who had much if any experience when it came to dealing with emotions. His surrogate father's way of helping him get over his father's death was taking him fishing with a shotgun and his way of helping Archie get over a bad day was smacking him upside the head with a shovel for slacking off at work.

He had never really cared about girls as anything more than people and perhaps that's why interacting with them up until this point had been so easy. Yet one offbeat with Natalie and it was like she was some whole new, strange, exotic, beautiful species that he had never experienced before. She drew him, but he had learned from a young age that pretty colors and beautiful things oftentimes meant they were poisonous. Or was it venomous? Winky had always told him 'If I bite you and you die, Im venomous. If I bite you and I die, you're poisonous' and it had still yet to fully click with him. Fuck it, bad for his health.

If the way his heart was beating was anything to go by, Natalie was certainly not doing his heart any favors. Eli and Radvi probably heard the literal war drum that was in his chest when his eyes broke away from Natalie's approaching form and locked eyes with Eli. His mouth had a smile but his eyes were terrified. Like some gigantic monster was barreling towards him and if he ran he was dead for sure. He was such a wimp, a part of him thought in a moment of clarity, as if sitting back and observing the situation unfolding. He spat back at that part of him, reminding it that Natalie could probably crush his head like a watermelon without a thought. His hidden observer stirred at that, and he was briefly left wondering if that was terrifying or sexy.

Oh, right. Eli. He was staring at Eli. Fuck. He made a noise that sounded something like a deflating whoopie cushion. "That's her." was all he could muster up, his words failing him for the umpteenth time that day.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Archie

---

Archie Anderson is a coward.

You wouldn't know it by looking at him, or by talking to him, or by getting to know him on a very close and intimate level, but it's true. Archie is a complete and utter wuss, when it comes right down to it, and it's not because he's not lacking in physical prowess or strength of will or even any sort of courageousness. He wished that he was lacking in those areas, he wished those were his problems, because then he could just have Lynn beat them right out of him like his brother had way back when. His life had always been about coping with loss with hard work and determination and then the pain would be over just like that. No harm done, life goes on, burgers on the way home?

But that's not the case, because Archie didn’t have those minuscule, mind-numbingly simple problems. He has emotional problems, which for the record are about a hundred thousand times worse. How do you fix emotional problems, anyway? His usual methods of repression and avoidance don't seem to be working. Perhaps years of professional therapy and trust exercises might help, but Archie had neither the time nor the patience to talk about his feelings at length to some quack who doesn't actually care and look at inkblots that all probably symbolize love or acceptance or daddy issues or something.

Archie sighed hard, fumbling with his phone and haphazardly tossing it onto the table. He can't help but think, as he looks up at the ceiling and curses god and himself and girls, that therein lies the problem. He doesn't want to talk about his feelings, because he doesn't like talking about his feelings, and so he would have trouble expressing himself and opening up to people on that intimate level until the day he dies. Which wouldn't be a problem, really, because that's kind of the way he prefers it, after his family had walked out or died and all but then…

Then there's Natalie. The girl whose name had been stuck in his head since that incident where Mr. Hyde had taken over. It was such an odd experience because he remembered it. He never recalled that had happened before, at least not in detail like he had. It was always curtails and wisps of colors or smells. Like a dream you couldn’t quite place. But he remembered that he had held her and she had let him.

She made him – and this is embarrassing, really, it is – she made him want to talk about his feelings, for once. She made him feel stupid to the point where it's actually sort of medically alarming how badly his words formed when she was around, and he wanted to tell her everything not only about what he feels but about who he is. He wants her to know about his family. About his mom and his dad and his brother. He wants to describe life on a washed up ship and what it was like living on an island. He finds himself craving her attention in random moments, like the previous evening when he'd been doing his homework and had just wished that he'd been next to her, not so she could help him or talk to her but to just be there.

Sure. Where about?

He had replied without even reading her name. Panda Express, then immediately panicked upon realizing that she could get there first and he had no fucking clue what he was going to say or how he was going to go about making... plans for homecoming. With Natalie. Homecoming with Natalie. His eyes flashed around the room, the primal side of his being pounding against his chest like a war hammer because the adrenaline in his body was putting him over the edge. He wasn’t in any danger of hulking out, he could feel it when he was, but the beast had stirred when Natalie had bore her wounds to him. The fact that even the giant was unnerved was probably the scariest thing of all. Aside from Natalie herself, that was.

There was a girl nearby. Around his age. She smiled at him and he was panicking. He abruptly stood up, just about running towards her. He just about crashed into her, dropping his phone on the ground as he did so and didn’t bother to pick it up. She was a girl, she’d know how to help him.

“Pleasehelpme.” He said, way too fast. He breathed, far more out of breath than he should have been. “I need to ask out this girl and I have no clue how.”

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

_{Sit back from the edge of your seat, if you can, Take a minute to remember to breathe, ‘cause we're losing our minds...}

---

W H E R E A N Y T H I N G G O E S

---

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 weren’t. 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 less safe. 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 supposed 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 was 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.”

---

Archie

---

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. One more tardy, Mr. Anderson, and it'll be out of my hands and into the dean's. 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.

“And now, a word from Headmaster Dunbar....”

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 forgotten, or worse. Ignored. 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 did 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 did. 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 fully blame himself for that one, though. He regularly forgot to charge his phone every night. Let alone check it daily.

Meet at the mall, anyone?

The text was brief, didn’t even mention where at the mall, and was irrevocably Archie 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.