Joyce
The ground sat hard beneath her feet as Dani stood, glaring at the peculiar structure she was suddenly supposed to call home. Its concrete edges were rough and unfamiliar, the green vines sprawling its exterior making it look like some kind of modern government office, or, university outreach in the city, just sized down and wildly out of place. From what she'd seen, she supposed the look wasn't inaccurate. Her hand clenched over the strap of her dust-blue duffle bag as the blazing sun of summer in Sweden pressed to her shoulders. *Why was she here?* 
In reality, she knew why, but that didn't make her furrow her brow at the whole damn thing any less. What divine intervention fucked up so bad that now she had to be stuck *Here.* Maybe if she played her cards right she could make it work. She made everything work, but it didn't mean she liked it. 

Danica Belyaeva stood on the side of the road just before the facility like a bomber staring down suicide. Maybe she was being a little dramatic, but she was already ticked off that her pepper spray had been confiscated and she was damn tired from the flights. She was certainly jetlagged too, but the caffeine pumping through her system flooded her exhaustion with buzzing fingers and wide eyes. Her hazel stare scanned everything. The cab from the airport was boring and long, the foreign world zipping by slowly in a humid gold haze. There was an odd nostalgia about arriving somewhere completely new, seeing the letters she understood scrambled incomprehensibly like a jigsaw puzzle cut wrong. She'd figure it out. Unlike last time she'd done this, she wasn't so at the mercy of others. 

Sun-hot gravel crunched her arrival, the scent of hot rocks and sweet grasses bouncing on the light breeze. Birdsong sounded somewhere from nearby brush. If she wasn't so annoyed, this would have been nice.

*Find my room, unpack my things, get a lay of the land, Короче.* Though her bag held a decent amount, most of her stuff had been delivered to her dorm ahead of time... Wherever that was. Time to find out.
Devon
It was a lovely day to be out, and Owen was feeling.. Surprisingly okay! Yeah. Yeah, he was alright today. Head screwed on tight, pedal to the metal. The pen in his hand clicked and twirled idly as the boy meandered down through the now almost-familiar halls and stairwells toward the clear, beautiful day waiting for him outside.

Today, his favourite white *Exodus* Shirt with the sleeves hacked off was tucked under a belt of gleaming bullets strung around his hips, which gave way to ripped blue jeans that were, er, *Lovingly* Stitched up at the edges with red and orange thread. The light wind felt good on his arms, and cooled the sweat already prickling on the back of his neck. It's him and this ponytail against the summer heat.

Since the sky had stopped being quite so dense a blanket of idle frost, people poked their heads out of their rooms and flickered across his doe-eyed line of sight more often; it was neat, he thought, how this place changed under nicer days, the sun favouring the crawling vines over the concrete they covered, different parts of the picture standing out depending on how the light struck it.

And the light, the contentedly humming boy noticed as he strode out toward the road, struck something unfamiliar today.

Was the blonde new? Owen hadn't seen her. She looked about as pleased to be walking toward the facility as anyone really did when they first arrived- well, except for June, who had seemed to be in a proper fine mood for reasons that still escaped him.

This stream of chatter occupying the front of his mind had left his legs to steer themselves- by the time he snapped back into his senses, it *Definitely* Looked like he had walked toward her on purpose. Oh no. Did that give off the wrong impression? He fired the necessary signals for an easy, lopsided grin to defuse it. *Quick, say something, you're acting strange-*
_ _

Nope. Words machine broke. Awkward little hand wave, though? Sure. He had definitely roped himself into this interaction now.

*...Was today a day he felt like engaging? Evidently, yes! After all, today was a good day.*
Joyce
Dani could see the vague existence of people as she came up to the grey monolith. At least she could tell she was in the right place. Unless, this was some *Other* Odd home for strange teenagers and where she wanted to be was really two blocks down. Faces in windows, footprints in the gravel, initials scratched in the low baking corners hidden by leaves. A few stray candy wrappers lay among the rocks, their glinting silver surfaces bidding her welcome like a two-cent landing crew. Most people would probably be offended or offset by the seeming lack of any and all welcoming committee, but Danica simply found herself empowered by the freedom. She preferred to do things on her own, believing herself to be the only thing she could really trust, and far favoured when she was allowed to take initiative. Initiative was something she'd certainly never pass up. 

Step one was finding her dorm, and as she saw someone about her age lazily approaching with shines in their eyes the size of quarters, she found who to ask. If they couldn't help she'd just find someone else. They waved like a vault pole smacked at the bottom and grinned at her with a warm slant. Looked like they wanted to say something, but fell silent. Dani softly halted where she stood, her weight falling to one side as her halved-blueberry gaze bore down on this poor soul. 

"You."

_ _
This... *Boy?* Boy. He looked like he was a lost time traveller and just about had the dopey confused look like he didn't know what a usb was to match. Some kind of old band shirt with the sleeves hacked off revealed a large scar sprawling one of his shoulders, and Dani scrutinised it for a moment. *Hm.* His tattered jeans looked like they'd been repaired a million times over, and his belt glinted in the sunlight. The almost red waved hair sprouting in long streams from his head was tied back into a ponytail, with messy bumps from a lazily done job speckling his scalp. Next to him, Dani looked kind of like a fresh from the factory smart phone with a well-loved brick. Her put together clean appearance and glinting pearl and gold jewellery didn't make that any less stark. 


"The dorms. How can I get there and where is the front desk to retrieve my key?"

She quickly thought over what else she'd need.

"Are there any maps of town?" 

Her voice was feminine but stern, sitting close to the front of her lips with a slight roll.
Devon
"Oh! Uh-"

Well, this girl is.. Mercifully to the point! Bluntness was certainly better than small talk. Still, something flinched in his stomach when his burnt-umber gaze met hers, startled by just how *Intense* It was. It wasn't an unfamiliar issue he had with eye contact, the feeling of fingers jabbing into his brain through his eye sockets, but the invisible threads connecting her pupils to his were pulled startlingly taut within the split-second. 

She was a good few centimetres shorter than Owen, but her very presence seared its place in space; a brief comparison to clouds in the winter, harsh white glow for ages in every direction, flashed through his mind before he picked a damned spot on her forehead to look at instead of her eyes and remembered to *Answer* The curtly put questions dropped at his scuffed red high tops.

"The dorm building is over that way," He pointed, briefly forgetting which arm corresponded to which direction. "Keys and-and maps are in the front office, uh, behind me, they're.. Probably expecting you." 

*Phew,* His old stutter didn't rear its head again (much). It had been leaking through lately, in moments of uncertainty, crawling through the hairline cracks in his train of thought. Luckily, though, he was reasonably certain by now of where everything was.

His voice, which crackled from the back of his throat, was ever so slightly uneven, but surprisingly smooth nonetheless. His vowels stretched in odd ways and his 'r's drifted ever so slightly, words forming as curling shapes in his mouth.

"They're good and put together here," He attempted, though he was now solidly sure that she was *Not* Seeking reassurance of anything at the moment. 

"Buses and trains are pretty reliable, uhm," *What else?* "I can show you, if you want, or.."
_ _

*That was fine, okay, that was enough.* The fidgety boy didn't want to seem overbearing, just helpful- he wondered often if being enclosed in this concrete bubble of oddballs was impacting his social skills much, like going stir-crazy as a commune rather than an island. It wasn't like he was the type to differentiate, anyway.
Joyce
As the boy spoke, Dani cocked a brow. Even though he was taller than her, he was quite the jumpy little thing, wasn't he? All fidgety and unsure. She was half convinced that if this kid was given a card and a map and told to take the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn, he'd be dead on the tracks in under half an hour. Whatever. He seemed like a resident and *That* Meant he knew things that she needed. Took him forever to get it out though. She didn't necessarily seem to be directly looking down on him for struggling, but she did seem impatient. The hot sun kissed at her shoulders with blanketing waves, a sensation that had felt- *Different* Ever since...
She killed the thought. 

Her gaze followed where the boy pointed, committing these locations to memory. Even if she didn't get it right away, she certainly would soon. His freckled, blemished skin moved smoothly above padded muscle, his accent denoting someone that sounded to her almost english but if they were hungover. He didn't seem too bad, all things considered. Nervous though. She wasn't the biggest fan of types like him. She waited for him to finish before she spoke again, the added tidbits being something useful for later. *If I can figure out the transit, rink location should be no problem. Good to know.*

"No. Thank you."

_ _
That was enough, and Danica appreciated his help no matter how shitless he looked. She had gotten what she needed though, so, with a nod, almost as quickly as she'd engaged him, Dani was off once again. That intense hazel gaze moved away from the boy towards the buildings ahead of her, her platinum ponytail swishing in a flick as she made a smooth break for it. As she passed, the boy would be able to catch the scent of clear and luxurious perfume off her neck and wrists, accenting the brushing summer air. Her clean white converse marched across the gravel to the main building, headed for the office to properly get herself checked in. 


It was a perfectly hot and brilliant summer day when Danica Belyaeva arrived at Newtons Cradle, making quick work of the mental equivalent of shaking out Owen Edris for his lunch money and shoving him in a locker.
Devon
And, just like that, with a swish of a tight blonde ponytail and the trail of something expensively sweet trailing menacingly on the breeze, the blunt winter-cloud-sun girl and her piercing eyes vanished into the shade. 

*...Was it something he'd said?*

Sticking his other earbud into his ear and cranking the volume, Owen sped off toward town. The nice walk would hopefully shake off whatever this had been.

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