Groovy Tunes, Sunday

[furnaceface]

Jono was in a good mood at the Groovy Tunes today, and not even the stereo could ruin it.

It was trying, granted, but having terrible luck. How was it to know that playing old Disney songs was just going to remind him of good times spent in amusement parks with loved ones?

Groovy Tunes was open, Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

[OOC: Open!]

Comments

[okteiviakom]

Octavia was looking to hit some drums today. The last week or so seemed to demand it, or at least something physical and aggressive, and she wasn't feeling up to finding Magnus for that sparring session right now, so...

She turned up here. "Hey."

[furnaceface]

//Hey,// Jono replied, giving Octavia a nod in greeting. //Octavia. How've you been?//

He'd been surprisingly well, considering he'd missed the whole... thing... with the soul-eating boozemonsters.

[okteiviakom]

"Fine." She had also missed most of the boozemonster thing, but her answer was still a lie. And she was okay with that. "You?"

[furnaceface]

And Jono wasn't eavesdropping, so it wasn't as though he knew she was anything but what she said she was. He nodded, leaning back against the counter.

//Well enough,// he replied, shrugging. //Finished teaching for the semester, settling in to spend most of my summer putting my focus into this place and the school back in New York.//

He was a bit worried about Alluka, but he wasn't going to be that guy who told a student who was technically not his daughter than he would rather she not go back to her world without him, at least. Her family terrified him, but he had to let her grow up, had to let her make these decisions. It wasn't as though she didn't understand the risk.

//It's shaping up to be a quiet summer,// he said, intead.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia's head tilted just a little bit. "New York?"

Was she asking about the city or the school? Possibly both. She wasn't elaborating.

[furnaceface]

Yeah, Jono had no idea, so he was going to just cover his bases, here.

//Big city with a school for mutants in it,// he explained. //Uh, people like me, more or less.//

He waved a hand at the flames.

//Well, not exactly like me. People who don't quite fit the traditional definition of human.//

[okteiviakom]

Octavia made some dry, wry sort of sound at that last bit. She understood what he was getting at, though. It wasn't hard to, with the way his voice was inside her head without seeming to bother with her ears.

"Are there a lot of you?"

[furnaceface]

//Far, far fewer than there once were,// Jono replied, his shoulders hiking up a little. //But we hang in there, in spite of it all.//

In spite of sentinels and witches, in spite of multiple plagues that seemed to affect mutants in particular.

[okteiviakom]

Now there was something Octavia could relate to. The groups on both sides had been thinning rapidly, back where she was from.

"Perseverance," she said. "I know a couple of things about that."

[furnaceface]

//These days, I find myself surprised if I meet someone around here who doesn't,// Jono replied, his tone wry. //Some days I wonder why I ever go back at all, but... I can't give up on the place. Even if things are never better, at the very least I've got to fight for the handful of us there are left. Got to do what I can to give the survivors reasons to keep going.//

[okteiviakom]

"Survivors need to find their own reasons to keep going." Well. Guess that was the extent of her identifying with that subject. "Letting others shoulder it just leads to trouble in the long run."

He'd... probably already figured out she had extensive damage.

Much like a lot of other people on the island, yes.

[furnaceface]

He glanced at her thoughtfully at that, and then nodded.

//Perhaps I misspoke,// he said, finally. //Give them the tools to find those reasons for themselves. Assure them that the reasons are out there. I've seen too many people give up looking before ever having a chance to start.//

He'd been one of those people. With the way his life had gone, he was mostly still around in spite of his best efforts. He had a body that kept soldiering on regardless and a mind that screamed and fought against itself every moment of the day.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia nodded, vaguely, as if to say she could live with that explanation.

There was still a shrug, too. "Not everyone's going to survive." She was having one of her more cynical days.

[furnaceface]

//Believe me,// Jono said, looking at her evenly, //I know.//

He'd buried people he'd considered friends. Didn't have enough left of loved ones to bury. Watched his entire species go functionally extinct several times over.

He knew damn well.

All the more reason to fight harder.

[okteiviakom]

And most of the time, Octavia was in that camp too. Ge smak daun, gyon op nodotaim. But she was still working on a renewed bout of 'one way or another, everyone goes away eventually'.

She just nodded. She didn't have a reason to doubt his words.

Probably should've said something in reply, though.

[furnaceface]

Jono watched her silently for a few more moments, and then nodded toward the back of the room.

//You know where the drums are,// he said, his voice a little quieter. //I assume that's what you're here for?//

[okteiviakom]

"Yeah."

And she ducked her head and headed exactly that way. What else was there to do but to make some noise?

Shut everything else out.

[furnaceface]

Shut everything else out, indeed. Jono watched her go, and then settled in behind the counter, his good spirits dampened somewhat.

At least the stereo had stopped playing happy Disney songs. He would have had to throw it out into the street if it hadn't.