necroslacker | room 216 ; thursday afternoon

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room 216 ; thursday afternoon

There was a Council meeting to attend tomorrow. Even if he hadn't remembered on his own, Ashley had popped up earlier this morning while he'd been walking back from class to remind him. it was the first time he'd seen her since he'd raised the child from the dead awhile back. She'd been avoiding him which was funny considering Ashley was stubborn and blunt and unafraid on her worst days.

The conversation had been short with Sam promising to be there and not asking questions about the child and if said child would be a topic of conversation during the meeting. He didn't want to know. She'd left but not before telling him to practice because he needed it.

Sam had made a face at that but Ashley had disappeared before he could retort so he'd just continued on his way. As soon as he'd gotten into his room, his bag had gotten tossed into a corner, his shoes had come off and one of his favorite records had gotten tossed onto his record player.

He'd been laying pretty low since this past weekend and with the way he was in his room again, Sam wondered if he was going to be able to break that cycle of hibernation anytime soon. When he flopped down onto his bed, eyes on the ceiling and feet dangling off the edge, Sam figured that today would not be the day he'd get back into being social outside his room.

Maybe tomorrow after the Council meeting. That is, maybe tomorrow after the Council meeting if he didn't come back completely wiped and apathetic about bureaucracy in general. That remained to be seen.

[Door cracked & post open]

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Fortunately (or unfortunately, whatever) for Sam, he had people perfectly willing to bug him while in his room.

"You might be the only person around here plays music I actually recognise," Kate told him from the doorway. Her roommate had been ~~AFK~~ AWOL for what felt like weeks. It was too quiet, and he was right there to be bothered like it was her job.

"Is that a compliment or an indirect way of calling me old and stagnant?" Sam wondered, picking his head up to glance at her but staying sprawled on his bed otherwise.

"You should see what it's being played on," he added and tucked a pillow under his head so he couldn't get a crick in his neck.

Kate shot a look over at his record player, and shrugged, "You forget, where I'm from we've had to take a few steps backward. No electricity even, most of the time. The lower-tech, the better." Vinyl was seen more than you'd think for twenty years in the future.

"Greg has one. Mechanical and all so it works in magic waves."

"Magic waves?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at that. "What's that even mean? It's like...hexed or something so you don't have to worry about batteries and power cords?"

All this time and she'd sort of failed at explaining why her world was as fucked up as it was. "We have magic waves, we have tech waves... No spells in tech, no electricity in magic." That still wasn't a perfect explanation, but he probably didn't want to hear about post-shift resonance theory.

"The mechanical thing is touch and go. Like phones and guns sometimes work in magic, but not always."

"You telling me you guys don't have basic electricity?" Sam wondered, trying to imagine living in a place like that, magic or not. "No wall sockets, circuit breakers or power outages when it so much as drizzles on a power line?"

"We have all that, just doesn't work in the magic waves," Kate corrected, slouching against his door frame. "And it sucks and drops out a lot even in tech."

"We have things like ice sprite eggs in the back of the freezer to keep it cold when the power crashes out, and feylanterns when it gets dark instead of light bulbs."

"I'm just gonna leave this topic alone because I don't understand it at all," Sam decided, waving a hand to dismiss that topic. "I've had a long few days and my brain doesn't need anymore weird stuff to make it explode. I'll need it to work till at least tomorrow."

He could probably get away with not saying anything at the Council meeting but Brannoc would catch him before he left and demand conversation which meant he had to be something more than a brainless teenager.

"I though 'Don't be Evil' wasn't academic enough to need brainpower," Kate remarked. At least, he'd made an offhand comment that implied as much the last time they'd talked.

"That's not what I need it for," he said and sighed. "I've gotta go back to Seattle for a few hours tomorrow for a meeting. And it's not the kind of meeting with doughnuts and hot chocolate either. I'd be a little more excited about going if there were gonna be sweet treats."

No, he still wouldn't be excited about it.

"They won't let you take your own doughnuts and chocolate?" she asked, and shook her head with a hint of a smirk. "That's harsh."

"Yeah well, it's not exactly a typical meeting," he replied, shrugging and turning his eyes up to the ceiling. "We're not talking about budgets and money and staff meetings and stuff like that. Three months in and I still don't feel like I belong there. I'm not a bureaucrat."

Ah. "Your Council... thing?" Kate guessed. See, she paid attention. Though she still wasn't entirely clear on what it was he actually did.

But no, he didn't really look like the type. Skateboarding slackers weren't generally in for politics.

Sam pointed at her when she guessed it and sighed again. "It's another one of those things I sort of inherited a few months back. I got the house, the grounds, and the unwanted spot on the Council with a bunch of people that really don't know me besides the whole...necromancer thing."

Kate huffed a dry snicker, "They must love you," she quipped. Even Kate, who was a necromancer, had no love for the group as a whole.

"Guess they're probably not the sorts you want to buddy up with anyway." She'd avoid that kind of group like the plague.

"I'm the only necromancer on the Council." Thanks, Douglas. "There's really no reason or anything to buddy up with them. They can't train me, I can't train them, they're afraid of what I can do, I don't want to scare anyone blah blah blah."

Yeah, that was a good enough reason. Necromancy wasn't something you chatted about over coffee for most people.

"Would you want to have to train with them?" That seemed like it might warrant him spending more time around these people he didn't seem to like much.

"No. I'm too lazy to train with anyone," he said and that was complete honesty. "I'm not in Seattle long enough to do anything worthwhile anyway. I don't need werewolf training or vampire training or clown college or anything like that."

"Not like there's much call for playing with the dead here." It seemed as good a reason as any just not to do it. "Your friend aside." Because apparently she still hung around, for whatever reason.

"And no one should need clown training." Why anyone would want to be one, she couldn't imagine.

"I don't play with the dead," Sam said a little more sharply than he meant. It was a trigger point ever since Douglas and David Davidson. It just seemed cruel. "I don't raise them to control them. That's cruel."

Kate cocked her head with a slight frown. "You don't have to?" An undead without a pilot in her world led to a bloodbath. Even Kate had controlled them under duress in the past.

"No, that's not what I meant," Sam replied, shaking his head. "I have to control them yeah, but I don't raise them so I can make them dance around or entertain someone. I knew someone that did."

"The People would call that training," Kate remarked, deciding to bring herself into his room, since it seemed like he was too lazy to try and throw her out at the moment anyway. To Kate it seemed dangerous. One slip of control, and you had a major problem loose on the city.

Was 'training' mildly morally superior to 'entertainment'? Only slightly, if anything.

"To them, a vampire amounts to the money it would sell for." It sounded like they had a disturbingly similar philosophy to Sam's 'someone'.

"Training. Yeah." Douglas had thought of it that way too and Sam had just been nauseous and ashamed. "I knew someone that liked to think of playing around with dead people as training. He was a cruel bastard."

And he took great, great pride in that. "If I raise someone, I raise them for a reason. The friend of mine who hangs around me, the ghost? I raised her because she was buried without a head."

Gruesome but necessary if she wanted to know his ethics.

Gruesome was not something that bothered Kate a whole lot. Her kind of necromancy involved things far more disgusting (at least to her mind) than that little slice of imagery.

"Generally an undead short at the neck is not a fixable thing. That's one will have ceased it's undead existence as well as their regular life." Obviously not true here, since she'd seen Brooke, who didn't look very headless.

"Yeah, she got a lucky break or something," Sam said, shrugging and trying not to let those memories get to him. "Or maybe the laws of necromancing work differently for me then they do you. I raised her body so she could be completely buried. It'd give her family and friends some closure."

"Better use of it than anything that happens in my world." All they had was Roland and his minions using them as science experiments and weapons. They didn't spare a thought for closure and burial, as far as she knew.

"Making yourself sound like a decent sort again today, Seattle." That was a nice change from implying he might be evil.

"I'm a decent sort when it comes to my friends," Sam corrected, giving her a look. "Why are you always trying to turn me into a nice, decent sort, anyway? Miss those in Georgia?"

[Ugh so sorry, lots of storms tonight]

"Can seem like we have a deficit." It was possible Kate spent her time in the rougher side. "Occasionally it's nice to know they do exist. Stereotypes can be broken."

"You haven't met any other decent sorts here?" he wondered curiously. "I can't be the only one. That'd be scary."

"Sure I have," she lifted her shoulders in a shrug and smirked. "It just doesn't really come up with because they don't automatically argue the point when I haven't even made it." It had become a habit to tease him about it was all.

"I've got my reasons for arguing." He was still convinced that whatever was inside him was gonna have him ending up like Douglas one day. It'd be hard to tell him otherwise. "Maybe I'm just saving you from the potential heartbreak of it all."

Didn't really need to explain to Kate about niggling evil fears. She was just as bad, though she would never say as much out loud. Inherited powers too often came with associated responsibility and issues. Kate creaking hated both.

Still she exhaled a laugh. "I wouldn't say I'm that attached, sugar," she drawled. "But its very sweet that you're worried."

"Did you just call me sugar?" Sam wondered, raising an eyebrow at that. "Endearments a new thing with you or am I just special or something?"

This was why she tried to avoid picking up Southern expressions, because when she did come out with them, even jokingly, people looked at her like she was crazy.

Kate chose not to explain all that, and rolled her eyes. "Yes, the first. Next time I'm thinking of calling you 'woogums'," she deadpanned.

"Does that mean I've gotta start using endearment and pet names too?" he wondered, half smiling.

"Only if they're good ones. I have standards." And yet, 'woogums' came out of her mouth not ten seconds ago.

Possibly they were double standards.

"Fuzzy...wuzzy sweet thing," Sam tried, wincing before it had even stopped coming out of his mouth. "Yeah no, I'm never saying that or anything else similar to that again. Sorry to dash your hopes."

"Yeah, when I'm better at pet names, it's time to quit," she had to agree, a hint of amusement shaping her lips. "It's a real shame, I was already picturing the wonderful conversations we could've had," she quipped.

"Our conversations aren't already wonderful without the pet names?" Sam wondered, shaking his head. "Well, it's good to know how you really feel. Obviously, I'm just being used because you're bored."

"I am bored," she had to admit, though their little chats did have their entertainment value too. "I haven't seen my roommate in a couple weeks, and I have to irritate someone on a semi-regular basis, right?" He just so happened to be the nearest viable candidate!

"I don't get irritated." That was an easy answer, wasn't it? "If that's your aim, you really should find an easier mark."

"Maybe I'm seeing how long it takes to break you." Mostly it was a figure of speech, and that sometimes it was refreshing not to have to worry about getting someone's back up. "It's all about the challenge."

"You're not gonna break me," he said confidently, shaking his head. "I've dealt with worse than you so you either better up the game or just give up now."

"There's a guy threatened to have the earth swallow me who could do with some pointers from you," Kate told him, crossing her arms. Even she had more patience than that.

"I'm sure you'll be shocked to know, it's not something I actually work on."

"Too bad I don't give lessons in pretending to be a super nice guy," Sam said, sighing. "Even if I did have time, I don't do seminars."

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room 216 ; thursday afternoon

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