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Assuming the crowd heads to the Tasty Dog for lunch Thursday.  Dave, Greg and Rob stay in the cafeteria debating the Matrix Trilogy while the rest of the US head out of bounds for food.

...*poit*  and the group appears in the side alley of the Tasty Dog.  "Ha!" is Sarah's victory cry. 

"And I thought I was fast."  John says.

"That's not fast.  It's just... a shortcut.  Kind of like cutting through someone's backyard," says Sarah.

She heads inside the tasty with the group.  "What is everyone having?  Nachos?  Burger?  Soup of the day says Clam Chowder!  Mmm clammy."

"Chili dogs sound good."  John says, holding the door for everyone.

"One of everything should do just fine."

It isn't readily apparent whether he's joking or not.

"John," Sammy whispers, "Want me to order extra, so you don't go hungry or stand out?"

John smiles and shoulders her gently, replying in a low voice "No, but thanks for the offer."

"No problemo."  She searches the crowd for anyone who might know them or rat them out, so that MIB Agent S can be put on the case if necessary.

With the onset of the colder weather the crowds in the Tasty Dog have thinned some, since it's mostly outdoor seating and a bit of a walk it it's cold.  A few of the booths are full, and a couple of tables.  There is a booth in the back corner that should be big enough to hold the group.

The Tasty Dog is an order and then sit type of place.  They bring the food to your table and refill drinks, but you order up front as if worshipping the giant menu board gods.

It's not long after you place your order before the food is delivered to the table.

Jakob eats slowly, as if trying to figure out the essence of each food, separating it out into its components.
When he (finally) notices the quizzical looks he's drawing he smiles sheepishly.

"You gotta understand, the first sixteen years of my life about 90 percent of the food we ate we raised ourselves.  This all takes a little getting used to."

Sarah says, "Really?  Grew your own food?  Wow.  That's so... uh.." She pauses a moment to think of the right thing to say.  eco-friendly? green? back to nature? "Medieval."  ooh smooth choice brain.  why don't you ask if he tips cows while your at it.
"Uh, I mean.. it's cool that your family could do that.  My dad feels like the great provider if he can get back from picking up pizza in under twenty minutes.  You should totally have the chili cheese fries.  Or another time we could go out for Chicago Dogs." 

Donnie dips another frie in the hideous mix of ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce that takes up a portion of his plate. "I think I could live withour chili cheese, but I would totally miss french fries if I had to go all, ahem, 'medieval'."  He grins at Sarah.

"So, Jakob, what's your secret? John wouldn't have dragged you to the freaks and geeks of the Usual Suspects table if there was not a reason for it. Plus you have taken in the recent events without freaking out like most people would. What's your story?"  

"That's certainly one way of looking at it."  He chuckles.  "Just a different way of life.  My folks were farmers, their parents were farmers before them, and so on."

He munches on a french fry. 

"And before you ask... cow tipping is fun - once.  After that..."

Jakob shrugs.

"Not too much to tell.  I just figured John got stuck with the new guy so he introduced me to the people he knows.  As far as the weirdness goes - I'm Polish.  My family goes back to the old country - some of the stories my grandmother told me - golems, spirits, all kinds of whacky stuff - except for that we tend to believe in it.  Doppelgangers and teleportation isn't that far off from there."

He is being a little evasive - but in such a way that it doesn't seem likely that any more information can be browbeaten out of him at the moment.

"Then you'll probably enjoy Oak Park.  We have plenty of stuff that's not on the agenda of other schools."  John says between bites of Chili Dog.

"Just don't drink the bottled water," Sammy adds.  "Breathing can be dangerous too sometimes.  Become familiar with the nearest escape routes, and have backup routes in mind.  If all else fails, trigger the fire alarm system.  And dating will only get you in trouble."

"Or hurt."  John says as he dives into his cheese fries with bacon.

"Same thing sometimes."  Sammy eats her chili dog with gusto.  "The guilt's a killer too."

Sarah laughs, "What are you guys, the doom and gloom wagon?  Jakob you'll be fine.  You can drink the water, bottled or otherwise, most of the time anyway.  You can find someone and date them if you like without fear, probably.  I mean most of the school manages it all on a daily basis.  Honestly just keep your eye on Sammy here.  She's our canary in a coal mine when it comes to weird stuff.  Really if you want to be totally out of the way of that stuff just stay clear of the lunch room and the football team and your odds of a normal and uneventful school year should go up by about seventy percent.  Stay clear of any party hosted by Elrod and you can probably bump up the odds to eighty-five percent."

psst.  hey it's your brain!  what?  insensitive comment half way through.  Oh.

She looks slightly guiltily at Samantha "Everything always does happen to her" Jameson and says, "Sorry Sammy."

Sammy shrugs her shoulders and grimaces as if to say Its not like you're lying.  "Or school arts performances.  Stay clear of me period, and they go up to about 90 percent."  With a sad look at Sarah she continues.  "El and Nick ought to be safe in a short while.  Once I figured out that what happened to them was largely my fault -- I set the stage, evil Sammy just walked into it -- well, it seemed to me that their best hope was for me to stay away from them as much as possible.  Same with Heather and Janie, but that was easier to do."  She eats some fries drowned in ketchup.

"It's not your fault."  John says.  "If by setting the stage you mean you cared for them and they cared for you then you have to share any blame, and that is so totally the wrong word, with them.  It's not like you have some irresistible scent that makes men unable to say no to you.  So you can't sit there and say it's your fault.  You didn't come here from some other world and hunt down the people that you were friends with and then throw yourself at them.  As your friend I refuse to let you take full responsibility for something that wasn't your fault."  His eyes shine with the passion that will someday be the doctor he becomes.  And then he takes a deep breath.  "And I'm going to shut up now and finish eating."  He goes back to his Chili Dog.

Sammy lets out an amused snort.  "If this was a movie, that's where the singing and dancing on the tables would start.  But you will note that nothing horrible has happened to Nick or to Elrod since I put some distance between them and me.  Nothing horrible for an entire three days!  Therefore, I must be right." She viciously stabs another french fry into her ketchup and continues eating.

John looks at her with what might be an amused expression, it's hard to tell sometimes with him.  "Let's test your hypothesis.  Take me flying tonight.  There was no setting of the stage with me, and yet she left a message on my phone.  So that means if you're right, then bad things will happen to me if we spend time together.  So take me flying tonight."

Sammy starts to say something potentially awkward about him being afraid of flying, but instead takes a ketchup filled french fry and looks at John.  "If you're looking for the world to beat you up, it'd be much faster and easier for everybody if I just paint a bullseye on you with this ketchup.  Because I'll feel absolutely terrible if I'm proven right about my theory, and I'll have to cook up a whole new set of excuses for hiding in my cave if I'm proven wrong."

"The scientist in me demands we find out."  John says, taking the french fry from her and eating it.

Sammy looks at John, and her stomach flip-flops.  She suddenly remembers a mental image shared through Sylvia, and starts to worry.  Not you too.  I'm not making you a target too, and I'm already making two boys feel bad.  Not you too.  Please god, let him just be practicing on me.

She smiles strangely at him, the kind of smile you'd see on a person who's standing on the deck of a passenger ship waving goodbye to somebody on the pier, somebody they might never see again, but they have to look happy because a stiff upper lip and a cheery demeanor is what's expected.  In an ever so slightly strangled voice she says "Told you you'd want more food.  Good thing I didn't listen to you and got extra anyhow."  She pushes the plate at him and tries to figure out how to get over her friends and out of the suddenly way-too-crowded booth.  "S'cuse me guys, I need to go to the ladies room."

After Sammy has cleared out Sarah asks John, "That was nice of you John.  With any luck maybe you can shake Sam out of her 'It's all my fault' mode." 

Donnie watches the conversation between Sammy and John, eyes bouncing back and forth between the two. When Sammy manages to escape after her strangled statement to the safety of the women's bathroom, he turns to John. "Dude, that was brutal. Match Point to John."

He steals a fry from Sammy's abandoned plate.

"She was there for me when I was feeling low.  It's the least I can do to try and help her get through this."  He says as he starts eating Sammy's offered plate of fries.  He looks at Donnie.  "Brutal, you really think so?"  John looks concerned.  "This is why I don't have many friends.  I have a bad habit of saying exactly what I think."

Eagle ears can hear everything.  I'd better come up with some convincing camouflage in case he's not filtering.  Sammy painstakingly washes her hands with soap and water as she tries to come up with an exit strategy.

"Pfft.  Don't worry about it John," Sarah says.  "You were not brutal.  A Sammy sinking herself deeper into self pity is a Sammy that will end up doing something harmful to herself.  As friends we'll all rush to help her and potentially get hurt ourselves.  We've got a bad case of super power breakout here so just about anything can happen to someone whether they've got powers or not.  It's not our faults if someone we care about gets hurt.  It is the evil of other people.  If we give up love and friendships because we fear then the bad guys win.  They isolate us and warp us and before we know it we end up cackling something like, 'They called me mad!'  And I am so not going to go that way."

Sammy knows she can't hide in the bathroom all day, so she comes back out.  She picks up a discarded newspaper on the way back to the booth.  She quietly sits down on the very end of a bench and starts skimming through the front pages.

Jakob sits quietly in his seat, doing his best to imitate a potted plant.  A six foot five, two hundred forty pound potted plant.  He feels great sympathy for Sammy but sees wisdom in Sarah's words - and doesn't feel like he knows any of these people well enough to wade into this particular psychodrama.

Sarah sips her drink and sighs, "You know, the seats are more comfortable but there's not the constant hum of noise from the cafeteria.  Plus we've been gone like twenty minutes and the school could be overrun by giant alien ants and we wouldn't even know it.  On the other hand there's not the odd smell from the cafeteria.  I mean it's like a melange of every meal ever made along with whatever weird cleaners they use and the scent of hope fading to disappointment from every kid dreaming of a tasty hot meal.  Oh and the food is waay better even if it doesn't exactly meet the school boards dietary requirements."

"Giant alien ants are good," Sammy says from the depths of the newspaper.  "Or cockroaches.  Giant, pony-sized mutant cockroaches that fly.  We could tame them and have our own circus act."  She folds up the paper.  "I remembered in the bathroom that I promised I'd take you flying whenever you were ready to try it, John, so..." she shrugs.  "I can't break a promise.  You can come over whenever."

"If not tonight, this weekend."  John says, then looks at his phone.  "Getting late, we should head back before the bell."

Sammy grabs her stuff, steps outside, and spares a moment to see if the school is still standing and to listen for the sound of screams or sirens coming from down the street.

Donnie cocks his head as if listening to something. "Do I hear theme music playing? John Williams? I suddenly picture the American Flag whipping in the wind behind Sarah. I don't know why.." He scrapes the last gob of ketchup/mustard/hotsauce with another purloined fry and stands up to join the rest of the US outside.

As everyone bundles up, he leans over to Sylvia. "Want to go flying this weekend too? Althea is missing you."

"Out of curiosity, what happens to us if there's somebody - or something standing in the same space where we arrive back at school?"

Sarah grins, "Doesn't work that way.  Be pretty horrible if it did.  Though once I popped in just in front of a bus.  I know the school pretty well now so I can usually catch an empty room.  We use the news room because... well you're looking at a good chunk of the news group and it's empty a lot of the time.  A lot of work gets done from people's laptops wherever they are and we have scheduled get together meetings and so on."

When they've polished off lunch and returned to the alley Sarah will pop them back home.  Probably knocking aside a huge crowd of people who have gathered in the news room for some unknown reason. 

They arrive in the newsroom to the thunderous sound of nothing.  The bell rings a minute later and people can be heard in the halls moving to their next class.  No screams.  No sounds of disturbance beyond the normal.  And for just a brief moment, there is a sense that everything is normal.  Just another day, in a high school.  And then everyone moves to their next class.

OOC:I'll leave this thread is anyone wants to have any last minute chats.  No action on it by late afternoon tomottow and I am likely to close it.

Jakob slowly opens his eyes and looks around until he finds Sarah.

"A bus?"

"It was a mini-van I thought?"  John says, "Or was that a different time from when you stopped Donnie from getting smushed flat?"

Sarah laughs, "No this was just when I was hopping around on my own.  At least I knew there was a mini-van.  Last time I pop out into the street just because the sidewalk was crowded."

Donnie shudders. "I've faced mad witches, vampires, and demon-possessed warlocks, but that as the closest to helpless death I have ever faced." He reaches out and squeezes Sarah's hand. "Thank you, again. I still owe you a life."

Sarah nods, "Yep.  Totally.  Wait what?  Owe me A life?  You're not going to ritualistically sacrifice kittens or anything are you?"

Sammy remarks,  "His life.  Technically you're responsible for him forever now, and he's yours.  Sshhh, don't tell Sylvia."

"Nice..."

He pats Donnie on the shoulder.

"Wow.  Uh.. Sorry Donnie.  I mean, well, I hope this works out better than it did for my pet goldfishes," Sarah says. 

"Just keep Pip in cookies and all will be fine, oh jedi master." Donnie says, bowing solemnly.