dualislogs | kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

WHO: Open to all residents
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: The RoCocoa Cat Cafe
WHEN: Aug. 10-14
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!

Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces, but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating! Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! But don't be too shy, you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

This month’s event is held at the brand new RoCocoa Cat Cafe, a sparkly new establishment that caters to children and the young at heart with iced and hot cocoa drinks of all kinds, delicious pastries, age-appropriate live music, and of course many friendly kitties who love to lounge in laps. The cats are of all shapes, sizes, and colors, including some who may look a little different from what you expect, or may look like an ordinary cat but are actually anything but ordinary underneath that adorable fur coat. All cats in the cafe are adoptable, too, if you meet a new furry friend and just can’t bear to go home without them!

So pull up a chair, get to know your new neighbors, and enjoy a sugary treat or two with the resident furbabies. You might just meet your new two- or four-legged best friend!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tim laughs at the question. "I was mostly messing around--unless you count the gym my brother had our dad install. First floor, so not technically basement, but he used to be in the circus, so he wanted an aerialist rig, which makes it a little more intense than most home gyms."

The circus? Most people ran away TO the circus, not from it. But who is David to judge. He is impressed, though.

"You any good in the air then?"

"Me?" He lets out a surprised laugh. "Um. Dick has taught me some stuff, but I'm not anywhere near his level. He lives to fly. I'm an amateur in comparison."

"Even an amateur by comparison can be amazing," David points out with a small smile.

In fact, Tim could probably impress a lot of people if he wanted to.

"You'd be better off holding out for the real deal," he says with another laugh. "I can mostly keep myself from falling on my face, but I'm not a performer. His parents were both acrobats, so he grew up on a trapeze. Me... not so much." He pauses, then considers how that probably sounds, after referring to Dick as his brother, and mentioning "their dad." "Uh. One interesting thing about me is that I grew up an only child, but now I'm one of five. Four of us are adopted."

A kid growing up on a trapeze? There is half a moment where David wishes he'd gone to school with someone like that. Instead he listens quietly as Tim clarifies, and he is left smiling with a brief nod.

"That's a really generous father you have. I have a sister by blood, and people I'd consider family by circumstance. I haven't seen any of them in well over a year and a half though. Well, except for the party just before I came here.

"It's been a while for me, too." He smiles a little. "Everyone gets busy." What with dying, coming back to life, fights, travel, The Mission in its various forms... "Plus, I was in a different interdimensional nexus before this, which made it a little difficult to get together for Sunday dinner."

Not that that's actually a thing for them.

Thing was, David would absolutely understand the whole 'dying, coming back to life, fights, travel' and all of that. Another world, another set of heroes, but a simple and consistent truth.

"Another interdimensional nexus? I don't suppose I can get an explanation there?"

Tim makes a face. "I think about half of the newer arrivals must have come from there, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone else had mentioned it. A similar setup, with people dragged out of their own times, places, and universes, but in the middle of the woods, and scale the technology back to about... Earth 1890." Tim gives him a slightly pained look. "Modern technology was really not a thing at all.

"What about you? Mansion with a training center and holographic simulations? Sounds a little more exciting than a really intense personal gym."

"Where Tommy was," David observes after a moment. He hadn't expected too many people from there. But he definitely heard that story. Only from one person though. Still, he's intrigued.

Still, there's another question to address, and the point is to get to know each other.

"It is a bit more 'exciting' if you want to call it that. People with... abnormal powers are common in my world. One subset of them aren't exactly looked at positively by most people, and there is a school for us. Them."

Tim nods. "We call them metahumans where I'm from. People with powers. A lot of them tend to go into the crime fighting or crime creating business, but I'm sure there are plenty who would also prefer to just live an ordinary life." Not many that he's met, but then--he's in the crime fighting business. "They're not hugely common, but they're not exactly rare, either. You guys have a school for metas? That sounds... really sensible, actually." And David has said "us," so...

"Do you have a power?"

"Are they born with them?" David asks, because it's definitely an interesting question. Do other worlds have people with powers who weren't called mutants? Metahumans sounds less, well, slurrish.

"It helps. People are afraid of us. Lash out. Better to help us learn our powers, especially since it comes out in our teens."

"It depends on the person. Some yes, while some had accidents in laboratories, or exposure to radiation or chemicals. Like I said--it's not hugely common."

He nods a little at David's explanation of the school. Kind of like older heroes mentoring younger heroes, or the Titans, though there seems to be less widespread stigma in his world. Having a safe place to explore one's superpowers is really important, and it sounds like this school David's talking about provides that, as well as a safe place to just be a kid. "Sounds like a good place for someone with powers to get their feet under them, especially if it happens in your teens. God knows that's a volatile enough time, even without your whole body suddenly going haywire."

He says from the venerable age of... nineteen.

Interesting.

"Back home we have a distinction between those two types. People who gain them through accidents and the like? Those are mutates. Of course they aren't called that as often. Somehow they're a bit more accepted in some situations. Maybe it's because everyone wants to have super powers, and those people got them by accident."

Of course, the whole concept of Xavier's is nice and all. Until you realize it makes a massive target given the concentration of a hated population.

And it isn't like David is much older than Tim.

"It's nice enough. I mean, what other school has flying class?"

"...I would love to have gone to school where there is a flying class. Gym class would pale utterly in comparison, I'd imagine." Though the implications of a school that is known to the public to have a bunch of unpopular metas are not lost on him. Of course it would become a target.

David laughs and nods. "Yeah, my sister thought the same thing. She was more interested in sitting in on flying class and energy weapons class than she was any of mine. And I had drama taught by a guy that could teleport into the room with a burst of blue smoke. Talk about perfect entrances."

Kurt was also very dedicated and wonderful. One of the few members of the X-Men that David actually missed.

"It really was an interesting place to spend a few years."

kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

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