Streets of Town, Tuesday Morning

[thewrathofkaan]

On Roscoe's first few days here, the many stairways and handrails throughout town had struck him as a delicious opportunity to practice his skateboarding moves. Today he was ready to give that a shot.

Admittedly, the heights made it more daunting than simply racing through the streets back home, but he was sure he could handle it.

He found a good spot where he wasn't too high up and there seemed to be relatively light foot traffic and set off at a glide before he tried his first jump.

"Nice!"

So... this was where he'd be for the rest of the morning. Hopefully he didn't break anything.

Comments

[thewrathofkaan]

"Oh, no way! She's my big sis. Fake one, I mean, 'cause obviously." There were a lot of reasons why that probably didn't need to be said. "She did a magic trick and gave me a flower she pulled out of nowhere. She's good people."

[sciclone]

"She's awesome," Cosima told him, with real enthusiasm. "She told you about the carnie thing, right? I think it makes her a little extra-awesome. There is pretty much nothing she hasn't seen before."

[thewrathofkaan]

"I know, right? What a cool life," he agreed. "Being a carnie sounds like it'd be a lot of fun. No homework, probably a lot of downtime while you're on the road..."

[sciclone]

"Plus she has, like, five dozen people she calls cousins," Cosima added. "So no matter what she wants to do, somebody in her family's going to know about it."

[thewrathofkaan]

Roscoe whistled. "All my family knows how to do is management consulting," he said with some envy. "And I know for sure I don't want to do that."

[sciclone]

"What do you want to do?" Cosima wondered. "I mean, not that management consulting doesn't sound totally fascinating."

Roscoe could probably tell how sincere she wasn't from the face she made.

[thewrathofkaan]

"I'm thinking maybe modeling," Roscoe said, unself-consciously. "That, or maybe teaching dance classes. Ballet, musical theater, hip-hop, all that stuff. How 'bout you?"

[sciclone]

"Um, science," Cosima announced, and that did come out a little self-conscious because it was so different from Roscoe's ideas. "I know I want to do something with biology research but I'm not sure exactly what."

[thewrathofkaan]

"Hey man, that's really cool," Roscoe said sincerely. "I suck at school stuff like that but I know enough to know we wouldn't have our whole world without it. But do they even have normal science classes at this school, though?"

[sciclone]

"Once in a while," Cosima said. "I have to do a ton of online classes to have a chance of getting into college. This school is not very academic."

"It's cool you dance," she added. "Did you grow up taking classes and everything?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"Yup," Roscoe said. "That and I was in some musicals at school and summer camp and stuff and the other actors would always show me some moves. But what I'm really into is krumping. That, you kinda just pick up from watching."

And listening when people told him he was way off base. That too.

"How'd you know you wanted to do science?"

[sciclone]

"I used to get sick a lot," Cosima said. "I'm fine and everything, but I guess watching the doctors just got me curious. Plus I'm sort of curious in general, so that helped."

She smiled a bit and added, "I know it's lame to have to ask, but what's krumping?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry," Roscoe said. "I guess it makes for a good learning experience though. I mean, everyone's always more passionate about stuff they have a personal reason to care about."

As far as he was concerned, someone who wanted to spend that many years in school had to have a pretty good reason.

"And it's not lame," Roscoe assured her. "Krumping's like a kind of hip-hop dance that you make up on the fly. People mostly do it in competitions, and those are awesome. It's like a whole language."

[sciclone]

"Nah, I'm fine now," Cosima said, waving it off. "All it means is I spent a couple years watching a ton of daytime TV."

There was a bit more to it than that, but it wasn't exactly first-meeting conversation.

"And that sounds cool," she added. "Krumping, I mean. I'm gonna have to check YouTube for videos later."