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Dave secures a table for the crew and makes sure to keep an eye out for some of the stragglers like Matt to make sure they find it.

No oine had seen Seth in a while. He's stuck the music room for lunch, and he'd gone straight home to practice his instraments.

He had been pretty broken up at the earlier incident, and the yelling. He didn't know what came over him. But his life had changed so much in the last few weeks, he was under a lot of stress. He wasn't going to make any excuses for himself. That's what he had called the others out on. His father had told him once "everyone had their excuses, but they are still in conrtol of who they are and what they do. I see people all the time, they blame their actions on others, on circumstances. But action is a choice, and no matter how upset, or sad, or whatever choice emotion you are, You make your choice." Seth had been raised to beleive that he was responsible for his own actions, and no one elses. These kids...blameing outbursts on fights. Fights don't get angry, the people do.

But seth thought he had blown it with everyone. He still didn't really understand this school thing. Or this eating in cafeteria thing. He had spent half his childhood when most people were in school, at home learning math and music from private tutors. No recess for him.
And no friends. in the back of his mind, seth was worried about 2 things....That they know about him. And he didn't want that. He didn't know what to make of this power, so until he did, no one else would get to, and number 2, that he had ruined any chances of having these people as friends.

His mother had told him that hiding in the music room playing guitars would make sure of that. And then she had made him paella, so she must have been serious.

So as much as he was out of his comfort zone, Seth was the first one sitting down at the lunch table today.

DAVE: "Hey guy.  Missed you yesterday."  Dave said as Seth sat down.

Donnie marches to the table, smiling at the two guys there. "Wassup fellas? Dave, you still planning on being at the Vortex on Friday? I am going to need your assistance in something I have planned to mess with Sarah, Greg an Rob in the game.."  He starts spouting Dungeons and Dragons mumbo-jumbo, sounding like a foreign language to Seth and anyone unfamiliar with the role-playing game. He immediately clams up if he sees Greg or Sarah approaching the table. He hasn't gotten his lunch yet.

"yeah...I had a song I had to get on paper. How is everyone?"

"Good. You missed the Cheeots orgy yesterday, and some cheerleader was making out on a table with a slacker-dude. She then jumped up ans slapped him. It was a wierd lunch."

"Cheetos orgy?"

GREG: "Donnie thinks three people eating Cheetoes is an orgy."

"He's a freshman?" Seth deadpans...

There were four! And it was experimentation, baby!

"Cheetos orgy? Oh, not today too, Donnie."
Colin sits down at the table, just beside Seth. He looks quite cheerful today, as if he had a weight taken off his shoulders.
"Yesterday we were feeling quite blue, and Donnie talked us all into cheese-flavored oblivion."

"Correction, more than that five or six. I forgot Colin got in on the action. I lost count, as I was in fake-cheesy paradise."

"Well to be fair the international rules say that if more than 5 were involved it was an orgy?"

"Wooo! See? In ya face Dave the Doubter.."

"There are international rules about those things? Really?" Colin asks, trusting Seth's word on international matters.

"Today is my turn to tempt you, if you're into cycling. A local club has organized a tour of the Illinois Prairie Path (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Prairie_Path) this week-end. They've cleaned it up and put historical panels on the interesting spots. Would you like to share some miles with me?"

He gets some brochures out of his bag and spreads them on the table.

DAVE: "I take it that by cycling you mean peddleing, and by inference some form of physical exertion?"

GREG: "Ah, I'm gonna have to decline.  There is a film festival out at U of Chicago and I managed to get an invite."

"Well yeah, Dave, but it would be little physical exertion, if you're not used to it. The point is to stay together and have fun.
Greg, that's cool! What are they showing?"

GREG: "The Thin Man movies, and a few of the lesser known Noir classics and some modern reinterpretations."

DAVE: "Can I just drive along side the cycling thing?"

"Thin man, thin man, thin man... Sorry, Greg, no clues.
Dave, it's a trail. You can't drive on it. What about we settle for a picnic? More your thing? Donnie can bring the Cheetos."

Sylvia makes her daily appearance with her pit-of-horrors lunch bag.  She looks perkier than she's looked in a while.  There's a spring in her step that wasn't there yesterday, and she's scanning the local paper with the avidity of someone looking for something specific.

She squeezes into a seat somewhere near Donnie.  Maybe she's hoping for more Cheetos.

"Hi, guys.  Anything weird going on?"

Donnie looks at Colin, wide-eyed. "What? Me? Go outside? No way. Outside has things with teeth, itching nasty bugses. I could get killed and eaten. Plus, there's that huge too-bright-to-look-at ball of flame in the sky. The one that burns, y'know? Waddaya call it, the sun! Yeah. The sun and me don't get along. I tan like a lobster. Besides, I run raids on the weekend. My guild needs me."

"You run?"  Sylvia finds that hard to believe.

"Hi Sylvia. No, not in real life. I just play characters that are athletic.. What do you want to try today? Have you been introduced to my long-time friend, LIttle Debbie? Lemme go and get you an introductory pack of Nutty Bars.."

"I'm okay, thanks.  Hey, has anyone seen Kel around?"

Donnie's shoulder slump a bit as he walks towards the lunchline, hearing Sylvia's question.

"Not yet, Sylvia. Do you like to cycle? Or at least to have picnics?" Colin hands her one of his brochures.

"What are you looking for in the paper? I had a look at them this morning as I delivered them."

Whatever had gotten Sylvia in a snit with Colin seems to have been forgotten.  "I have a bicycle.  I haven't used it since getting here."


"I was wondering if anything had gone on at the Tasty Dog.  I thought I saw cops there," she explains after a lame pause.

Kel arrives at his usual fashionably late time, just enough to hear some sort of discussion involving the sun and outside and then Colin mentions cycling.  He looks at Colin and says almost immediately, "Sorry not my thing, I think there's a show this weekend anyway."  He then looks at the paper Sylvia is looking through and with arched eyebrow he asks, "Why are you reading a paper?  We write enough articles..."

Meanwhile, Sammy decides that sneaking off campus two lunches in a row might be pushing her luck.  She goes into the cafeteria and heads for the lunch line.  She takes a look at the menu and tries to decide if she wants an entree or if she's going to skip straight to an ice cream sandwich.

http://www.op97.k12.il.us/lunch/HSAug.pdf

Sylvia gives Kel a little shrug.  "Just looking for, you know, stuff."  She keeps it vague, but it's one of those things about teenage lingo that a general term like "stuff" can have such a specific meaning.

She changes the subject.  "Has anyone here heard anything about their shrink appointment?"

Kel smirks as Sylvia explains and just goes, "Yea, I enjoy catching up on Garfield too."  He then shakes his head as she asks about the psych appointment, "Not a word, and that's how I'd like it to be kept."

Colin's face goes "aww" as Kel declines the invite to the trail too.
"What about a picnic? A lunch together far from this crazy place?"

"The Tasty Dog? I don't think i saw anything about it. If you want I can ask Chris."

"I'm actually looking forward to the shrink's appointment. I'd like to find out what they know about us and what they think they need to know about us."

The detective?  Sylvia wonders if she could get Kel and herself in trouble by showing too much interest.  "No need.  I'm sure if it was anything exciting it would've been in the paper."

Matt comes walking into the lunch room, his mind wandering as always but for some reason there's a slight smile on his lips, an odd thing with him to say the least. He's got no idea why but he just woke up feeling terrific this morning, and the feeling's persisted all through the day. There's this little thing nagging him in the back of his head though, but he's not sure what.

When he comes up to the table - likely hailed by Dave who were keeping a lookout for him - he just nods a "hey" to everyone and sits down, preferably on the edge or not inbetween people. Then he notices Kel and Sylvia and realizes what it was he was forgetting about. "Oh... hey. So-- did I miss anything?"

Sylvia is a terrible liar, simply terrible, so all she can manage is a slightly nervous look at Matt and a "Like what?"

"Uhm... no, nothing, was just, ehm, wondering. Crazy things seem to occur around here pretty regularily it seems, was worried that I'd missed something, 'sall." He smiles at her. And has just revealed himself to be a worse liar than her probably.

Sylvia, who seems to spend more time at lunch moving around and chatting than eating (and with good reason), moves to the seat next to Matt, trapping the loner between herself and the next tablemate.  "What have you heard?" she asks at a volume that's meant to be discreet.

Donnie comes back to the table with a tray dominated with what astoundingly looks like a salad. A tuna-fish sandwich is next to it, sans the usual chips. His only concession to his normal diet is two cans of coke. He sits down and starts eating the salad without comment, but looked as if he had to steel himself before beginning.

Sam emerges from the lunch line with a bag of Doritos, a brownie, and an ice cream sandwich.  She weaves her way through the tables  and dropped bookbags towards where the bandies are sitting.

Matt instantly begins squirming as soon as she sits down as the devious female's evil scheme come's to frutiton (alternately; he bugs out once again for no reason other than his own insecurity).

"I-ehrm-- heard? Oh, well, uh, nothing," he whispers back, slightly too loud probably, "uh, err, no, nothing, nothing about the drugd-- I mean, the, the, weather-- oh crap. Okay, it's not so much what I heard as much as what I, err, saw. Which was you and Kel kicking righteous @$$, go you... oh, and the entire world changing for a slight moment for some reason. But apart from that nothing."

The topic de jour is bycicling...seth offers in a tone that is mildly appologetic....

"What?" She doesn't get that 'entire world changing' part.

Kel who had plucked up Sylvia's paper when she had moved, opened up to a small section of editorials on the local Chicago music scene.  He reads through it lazily as he listens for whatever anyone's talking about.

"Oh," he seems a bit surprised that she did not know what he was talking about, but then figures that she's probably just testing him. "Well, when the owner noticed what you were doing you - like - gestured at him or something, and then all of a sudden the entire world changed, and you were gone and the drugdealer dude was just hanging around, smoking his cigarette, then when he went back inside it all like changed back and you were back and had the guy on the ground. I totally thought I was loosing my mind there for a moment, but what's a little reality altering next to red hulks and ninjas, you know?" He lets out a 'heh' at the end of that and shakes his head.

Sylvia's loath to spill a secret, but her gaze drifts to Kel, and she nods a little in the rebel's direction as if to imply that it was all him.

Matt follows her gaze and goes all 'aaah'. "OH! He's the ninja master isn't he? Fancy martial arts and illusions combined makes for just one result; ninja master, definetly. That is so cool..."

Colin greets Matt and is about to say something, when Matt goes and start chatting under his breath with Sylvia of something they clearly don't want the rest of them to know. He can't help but frown.

What the hell are they talking about? Something definitely happened between them. Could they be...

Then they nod to Kel, and he gets even more confused.

I did notice Sylvia and Kel spending time together and asking about each other a lot. But then what's Matt's role in that? And Donnie's? This way she'll never even notice him. And he's eating salad for her. How cute.

He looks around, feeling somewhat lonely. So many questions! He realizes he'd like some female insight into the mattter, but neither Sarah nor Gretchen are anywhere in sight. He misses them.

Colin waits for Sylvia and Matt to finish their private chat, or at least to have a pause, since he wouldn't like to eavesdrop, and then approaches Matt. He puts a hand on his shoulder, and holds it tight as he talks.

"Man, I'm so sorry. Yesterday I looked for you everywhere. I'm really sorry, I thought I had done something for him, but it wasn't enough. How are you feeling? If you'd like to talk, or just hang around, you don't even have to ask, ok? You're not in this alone."

----

"Seth, you're invited too. To the trail or to the picnic, whatever you'd like more. And Donnie, it would be a perfect way to lose some weight on your own terms. And girls dig some tan on a boy." he says with a wink. Of course, him being lean and copper skinned surely helps his case. Or not. Whatever.

DAVE: "Yeah, Donnie and sunlight.  Now there is a combination sure to cause spontaneous human combustin."

Donnie looks at Colin and his mouth twists in a half smile. "Genetics, Colin. My people are pale and pasty by nature. Predisposed to transcluscent skin, blonde, hair, blue eyes, and despised by UV rays, unlike you."  He leans over towards Colin, saying quietly "I would appreciate not talking about my weight, thanks."

Donnie goes back to his salad, but doesn't seem to have the heart (or desire) to finish it.

"I'm going to the library guys. See you later." He dumps the remains in the garbage bin and walks out the cafeteria.

Sarah skips lunch today.  Events of last night have left her with a lot to think about.  She searches for a quiet dark place to test her new talent. 

Sylvia watches as Donnie leaves.  Poor guy.  She grabs her things and hurries after him.

Real smooth, Colin. Why must highschool be so damn complicated?! I didn't suck at these kind of things last year. I'll have to apologize.

Colin is evidently very ashamed to have embarassed Donnie. He remains silent for a while, wishing for an easier world.

Matt looks up at Colin. "Oh, uh, thanks. Yea I decided to skip school, the news hit me rather hard, so I was just walking around in a daze for most of the day reading comic books. Looks like everything worked out though, because for some reason I'm feeling better today than I have for a long time. Not sure why exactly, as I can't remember if anything special happened yesterday, except, uhm, that." He nods after the departing Sylvia and Kel.

"I'm glad to hear it, I was worried."

He gives him one of his trademark bright smiles.

"So, do you like cycling?"