Entry tags:

Lofty Heights Open Log

Who: Everyone school-aged or school-adjacent (so basically everyone??)
What: SCHOOL HAS BEGUN
When: All through September
Where: School bus stops, School bus, and Lofty Heights
Content Warnings: n/a

Some Top-Level Ideas:

Faculty Preparations & Mingle (Before September 8th)
The faculty of Lofty Heights has a lot to do before the school year actually starts — prepping their classrooms, working out a curriculum, getting to know each other, getting the office to order the right supplies.

The Wormhole Projectors on the Bus Go Pew Pew Pew
The bus stops for Lofty Heights students are peppered throughout each of the cities. Parents and students alike are waiting there to be picked up.

Once you're on the road, things seem normal... until a womrhole opens up. The bus goes right through it, and suddenly all you can see out the window is clouds below... and the massive floating school complex on the horizon.

In-School Interaction
Are you lost on your way to your next class? Having trouble getting your locker open? See a friend and want to chat? Or maybe there's a pack of Seniors on the pros wl for new students, looking to do a little ~~bullying~~ hazing.

Or maybe you're already in the classroom, trying to wrangle your rowdy students — or, perhaps, you're a student trying to make sense of the current lesson.

When lunch time rolls around, do you sit alone? Or do you spot a friend or acquaintance and sit with them?

Anything that would make sense in the context of the school :D

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[ This world is nothing but irritating people.

But she is speaking Italian now, or he thinks she is. It’s messing with his head, and Nico doesn’t like it. If the Mist that keeps mortals from seeing anything abnormal - gods, monsters, magic - doesn’t exist here, then why does this language twisting power work? And why does it work on him, when he’s so good at seeing through the Mist? It’s maddening! ]

And like I told the Alliance people, and the Atlanteans, and the truancy officer - I’m not a superhero! I’m a demigod, and I don’t need this stupid school to train me!

I use the word superhero because it's easier shorthand than saying this is a knock-off Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Whether or not anyone here is a hero remains to be seen.

[A demigod, though! That's fun! Presumably from the Greek pantheon, but just to make sure:]

Am I allowed to ask you who your parents are? Or is this interrogation purely one-sided?

I don’t know what that is.

[ Much like how Serrure showed no recognition of Camp Jupiter, Nico doesn’t react to the knockoff Xavier’s reference. Pity.

He does hesitate on the lineage though. It never goes well, but he’s aware that a quid pro quo will get him more answers about magic. It’s a fair trade, and it would be hard to never say anyway. ]

My father is Hades.

[ He says it like a challenge, because he’s expecting the flinch and mistrust that he sees in everyone. So he flies in teeth of it.

And that is all he’ll give. His mother isn’t up for discussion. ]

[She claps her hands together at that. Twinsies!]

I'm the father of Hela.

[A challenge right back.]

[ She’ll find no judgment here - not for being the father of Hela. Maybe a little for being a Norse god, because it’s trouble every time the pantheons mix.

Nico doesn’t know much about the Norse and Egyptian gods. He knows their around, knows the Norse demigods don’t go to the Underworld when they die. And the father of Hela is… Loki. ]

The bad pizza mirage makes more sense now. When you started talking in Greek, I thought you might be Artemis in a new aspect.

[ He wants credit for considering god as a possibility. ]

Did you really? Do I look like an Artemis?

[She seems flattered by that. Artemis is good, after all, compared to Loki.]

Either way, I'll make your pizza into worse if you tell. It's more useful to be Serrure here.

You don’t not look like an Artemis?

[ Nico has no idea what Artemis truly looks like. The gods can appear how they like, and their divine forms are essentially deadly to humans and demigods alike. He shrugs. ]

Zeus has been a swan.

I won’t tell if you don’t. People get stupid about Hades. They don’t like thinking about death, so the Underworld is evil instead of necessary, and a couple of skeletons gets you an escort to the school bus.

As I've been a horse.

[She hopes that someone her age won't make the embarrassing jokes about it. Which is a lot to hope, but it seems easier to trust a son of Hades.]

My past self is literally the God of Evil, so I understand.

At least that’s your choice. Persephone turned me into a dandelion once. She could’ve done something with poisonous thorns, but no. A yellow flower.

[ He’s head to toe in black with a flaming skull t-shirt. The injustice of it all.

Nico’s curious. The Greek gods have modernized quite a bit to reflect the current world. Sometimes, it makes sense - he’s pretty sure Iris would claim being the goddess of cell phones. Sometimes, it’s tragic, like Pan fading out of existence with no wild left to be god of. This might be the first time he’s heard a god speak of a past self. ]

What are you the god of now?

They're not flowers. They're weeds.

[Whether she means that as compliment is hard to tell.]

Mischief, as he once was. Though I hear I'll also be partial to stories in the future.

They’re hard to kill, and they choke out the other plants.

[ Nico grins sharply. He knows that Persephone probably picked it because they’re weeds and common, but he’s found a way to make it a compliment. Dealing with the rest of the pantheon is tricky at best - Nico is (currently) living proof of his father’s affair. ]

Gods aren’t great with other people’s kids. “Tolerated” is good.

[ Huh. Mischief fits. Stories, he’s not so sure where that fits into anything. Don’t they have Muses for that? ]

Mischief sounds like the real one. Evil sounds like when people think Hades is the god of death instead of Thanatos. Or - are the Norse gods like the Greeks? Rome made Jupiter the god of wealth, so my dad’s Roman aspect is… different. More respectable. Do you get to pick what you want to be?

I’d like to think I do. But we are beings of story, and at times it is hard to tell whether we tell them or they tell us.

[Loki dips a piece of bacon in syrup.]

If everyone expects the worst of you, what else can you be?

Anything you want?

[ This is familiar territory that Nico feels a sort of kinship over. Even his father had do get shaken - more like shouted - out of a similar rut. ]

I … might OCCASIONALLY rip a few cracks in the dining pavilion at camp and maybe raise a few undead. Big deal, that’s what they think I’m going to do anyway. But then I get my doctor to write a note saying it’s a medical condition, and I get to have lunch with the Apollo kids table instead of by myself at the Hades table.

I know what I’m doing. Will and the other Apollo kids know what I’m doing, and Chiron knows what I’m doing - getting what I want the way I want. It’s my choice. Just like it’s my choice to help other kids on their quests, or my father’s choice to save New York City and Olympus. Nobody expected that. You’re the god of mischief and stories: have a plot twist.

Edited 2022-09-13 15:05 (UTC)

Oh, I've had plenty of plot twists. The issue really is that I know how it all ends.

[She waves away all the depressing talk, moving on.]

You know, no one here has expectations for you, other than the ones you've assumed of them. Both of us have the choice to shape the narrative, and you assume I've made my choice because I'm afraid of judgement.

I made this choice because it's more fun. There's far more opportunities for mischief. And the coding classes they offer are decent, even if the rest of the curriculum is like kindergarten compared to my studies before.

How does -

[ He stops, and not just at the handwave. If she's under some sort of prophecy, well, most people don't share the content of prophecies willy-nilly at lunch. It's kinda rude to ask. ]

Everyone always says that. That nobody has any expectations, but they do from the first time they look at you. If they don't, most of them will when they get to know you. So I act like they already expect the worst.

[ A small shrug. ]

Then I don't have to deal with them or their disappointment. This school though - I don't like school. Nothing to do with them.

[ Kinda to do with them, as school makes him feel stupid and provides a great opportunity for crazy adults/monsters to get into positions of power over kids. ]

Mm, how very outsider kid in a teen sitcom of you. Not that I'm much different, but it would seem one of us is having more fun with it.

[Loki starts packing up her lunch, which just means tossing everything into the lunchbox and it mysteriously disappearing regardless of size.]

I could get us out of here. Try a bit of homeschooling.

[ He hasn't seen nearly enough tv to grasp how deeply that cuts. Nico knows what a sitcom is - he's quite proud of that, but can't brag about it without looking stupid. ]

I'm not saying I want to stay, but... how are you making it fun? Because you getting us out of here only helps for today. I could get out of here, too, but this will all happen again tomorrow. They know there's no home so there's no homeschooling.

We'll brainstorm, duh. I assume you've already tried the obvious solution of creating a guardian who can claim exemption for you?

You could also go my route of having your older self shirk responsibility and foist you onto some old wizard and thusly create a home in this realm. There are probably other desperate-to-be-a-father-figure wizards out there, after all.

[ There's only one way Nico can think of to create a guardian: raising one from the dead. ]

No one's going to believe a skeleton is my guardian.

[ His world doesn't need really advanced plotting most of the time. ]

I don't have an older self because I'm not older yet? What does that even mean, and why would I want to move in with an old wizard? The only one I know is already nosy.

Why not? I'm the mother of a horse and the father of a wolf. A skeleton could very well be your actual parent.

[Also they all just finished multiverse hopping??? There's plenty of weird stuff going on.]

Anyways, I was clearly describing my personal circumstances, not that I actually think you'll follow suit.

You're a god. That's different, and you know it.

[ Nico appreciates that Serrure is trying to help, but sometimes gods are a little godly about everything. While it's probably possible that Hades could've assumed the form of...

No, he is not going to consider that. ]

Why wouldn't I follow suit if it works? If you already had a good idea, I'm not going to waste time trying to think up something better. What I need is someone tolerable but apathetic and lazy, who doesn't cover their eyes at horror movies.

And you're the child of a god. The same logic applies.

[She doesn't get the issue here???]

Mine wasn't a good idea, it was something I fell into. My idea was to live on my own and construct a fake guardian, but I had protests not from those in power, but from those close to me. You can avoid such things and continue down the fake guardian path.

Greek demigods -

[ Nico falters and corrects himself. ]

Modern Greek demigods don't seem to have stories about how their godly parents took the form of a swan. If any of the other kids know about that, they're not saying anything. I try to avoid thinking too hard about it, or about where Athena's thought-babies come from.

[ Or Serrure's horse and wolf. He really doesn't want to accidentally picture anything. ]

If it wasn't a good idea... are you okay?

[ Not a good idea, something I fell into, avoid such things. Even gods get themselves in a pickle. ]

I ask again why that matters. The people here don't know the exacts of your pantheon. This is such an easy lie to pull off, so what's keeping you from doing so?

[She shrugs]

I'm perfectly fine. While I'd rather no cage at all, I can work within this one.

Because I’ve never had to pull off a lie like this before. I don’t know how to do it.

[ Why couldn’t she stop poking at it so he didn’t have to admit that he can’t do it? ]

Nobody’s ever asked who was taking care of me before. I got to do what I wanted.

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thecoolerloki - 2022-10-19 04:36 (UTC) - Expand

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