{SF} The Boring Booth

[Tim Tawfeek]

Even Tim was bored. He was manning a little booth set up by various volunteers who certainly meant well. It offered up information and asked for some donations for various causes throughout the world. Someone had gone through a lot of work to spruce up the booth to some degree. There were plenty of posters, some of which were rather explicit. The pamphlets they had on hand were pretty well done too, printed on decent paper and everything. It all spoke about mutant rights throughout the world and how some of the school weren't quite as financially well off as others and blah, blah, blah.

Tim actually cared about this stuff and even he was bored.

So bored that he'd instead taken the pamphlets and started folding them into a castle of sorts. He'd started sliding them in one after the other, building steadily upward and creating the little model building. It sort of resembled the school in some ways but only in the roughest of them. Tim knew he was stuck in the booth for at least another hour and fifteen minutes. He did have bottles of water though...

"Maybe around the edges?" he mused aloud, bringing up the bottles and placing them near the edges of the pamphlet building, only raising his head for a moment to smile at people walking by. He held one up: "Free water for hearing about a good cause?" he tried halfheartedly, giving the bottle a little wiggle.

[Cassidy Laramie]

Cassidy was immensely enjoying the fair. The food, the games, the people; it was all so much fun! He'd even been bold enough to go without his sunglasses despite technically being out in public. Unfortunately, sometimes lots of people was a bad thing, so he found himself wandering to a less populated area of the fair. There weren't too many people walking by, and there was a mostly empty but nicely decorated booth. He headed towards the booth, curious to see what it was about.

 The first thing Cassidy noticed was the large castle of pamphlets. The second thing he noticed was the poor sap stuck running the ignored booth, offering water to anyone who'd go to the booth. "Nice castle," he remarked with a nod towards it. "You look really bored." He smiled slightly at his own private joke as his light yellow eyes scanned the faded colors around the guy, typical of someone who was either very tired or very bored.

"So, what's this booth for?" he asked. He figured he'd give the guy a chance to actually do the job he signed up for. Cassidy really hoped that he wasn't the first person all day to actually ask for information here.

[Tim Tawfeek]

"It won't hide princesses, but it works," Tim offered, adding a slight shrug, "aaaand, sort of?" Tim looked over at the brochures and then up at the guy, offering a friendly sort of smile. The guy looked to be humoring Tim, and Tim was bored enough that he wasn't going to question him or try to talk him out of it. Instead he dove down and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it out, gripping the top, so that the guy could start grabbing it.

"This booth," he said, tapping a brochure out from the castle to hold up, "is about raising awareness for mutants throughout the world. We don't quite have every corner of the globe covered, and some places have it rougher than us. I don't quite want to draw parallels to LGBT causes, 'cuz they have their own thing," he reached up to adjust his glasses, "but, like, it can be about as bad. Except they don't quite know that we're mutants, so it often comes down to stuff like witch burning."

Tim paused and looked at the pamphlet. "I think there's some pictures in one of these if you're feeling morbid..."

[Cassidy Laramie]

Cassidy grinned at the princesses comment. "I guess the princess'll have to be in another castle," he joked. He was mostly there to give the guy something to do, but he certainly wasn't going to refuse free water, even if he was used to even hotter summers than this. He offered a quick thanks and took the water, taking small sips as he listened.

Cassidy's eyes widened, turning a mild orange in shock. He had no idea things were that bad, considering they were doing pretty well here at Bellefonte. He probably shouldn't have been that surprised, but his optimistic and narrow world view assumed there was a Bellefonte-type school for every mutant in the world. "Woah... what are people doing about it then?" he asked. 

"And thanks, but no thanks on the pictures, I'm good," he responded with a somewhat pained expression, feeling queasy. He really didn't need any more nightmares tonight.

[Tim Tawfeek]

Tim let out a slight laugh at the princess joke. He would have been more than down to sit there and rap about video games and all kinds of nerdy stuff for the duration. However, he had the more serious stuff to attend to. "Well, it's not, like, that widespread," he pointed out. "most people don't even know we exist, and sometimes it's hard to catch someone who can teleport or go invisible or something."

Tim was tactfully not mentioning people who would have powers and abilities like his and Cassidy's were essentially screwed. They did have a slightly better chance of not getting caught, mind, but they didn't do well.

"uh, as for what they do," Tim adjusted his glasses. "Part of it is donations. Some schools don't have as much funding as Bellefonte, and some mutants show up in a place that's really hard to get to without a lot more funding. There's volunteer work too," he gestured around him.

"It really sucks," he concluded, before giving the pamphlet he held toward Cassidy another little shake, as if trying to further entice him to reach out and grab it.

[Cassidy Laramie]

Cassidy nodded solemnly at Tim's explanation. He couldn't help but wonder how things would have been different if he had been born anywhere else, under any different circumstances. His stomach churned at the possibilities, his eyes a swirling mess of blue and grey to match. With his weak power and obvious physical mutation, he wouldn't have stood a chance.

"I just don't get why they'd risk their lives just to hunt us down. Plenty of the mutants I've seen around here could probably handle an army by themselves! I'd be scared to even try." What was the point, anyway? He couldn't understand the drive of violence, especially not towards someone who hadn't done anything wrong.

At the further prompting, Cassidy tentatively grabbed one of the pamphlets. He opened it up, trying his best to scan the information without looking at the pictures for too long. At least he'd have different nightmares than usual tonight. His multi-hued eyes lingered on the donation information. As much as he still hated large, impersonal charitable donations from a lifetime of publicity stunts, perhaps they could use an anonymous benefactor...

[Tim Tawfeek]

"People like an excuse to kill other people," Tim pointed out, adding another shrug. "We've been hating folks for years. C'mon, like, fifty years ago you might have ended up crossing the street to avoid me," he pointed at Cassidy and made a sort of shooing gesture. "Okay, you might have been progressive or whatever," the hand went up in a gesture of surrender, "but you know what I mean. People like to have reasons to hate and misunderstand people.

"Just look at all the pushback from the same sex marriage stuff. And that doesn't involve people who might be able to take on an army. Well," Tim paused then, tilting his head slightly to consider, "I did meet at least one girl who could technically kill with a touch, but she was probably the kindest person I'd ever met. Pretty sure humanity has more to fear from lice than her but again," Tim shrugged and gestured at the pamphlets. He had helped gather up some of the information, so he knew what was in there. The statistics would back him up, show that things were definitely worse in other countries, in other areas. They had it great in Kalispell: the place was a veritable mutant mecca. Elsewhere? not so much.

Tim adjusted his glasses again. "Name's Tim, by the way," he said, leaning over the table and offering a hand.