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Post by John Egbert on Aug 16, 2012 19:34:38 GMT -5
1:30 PM. Recess, and as usual, John can't find Dave anywhere. It figures. Dave has this thing about skipping school - he's barely there, but no truant officers have caught him yet. John really doesn't know how the guy does it. It's like magic or something. He considers for a second that he could be doing it with time magic, and then realizes that before Dave got his powers, John saw the guy at school all of four times total.
He's hanging out by himself then, again today. He walks up to the tetherball. John could be champion of tetherball if there was such a thing, that's how often he plays with the damn toy. He picks up the ball and swings it around the pole. He's absolutely not influencing the air around the ball at all. Nope, not at all.
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Post by Artemis Fowl II on Aug 17, 2012 21:24:02 GMT -5
When it came down to it, Artemis hardly needed schooling. He was a self-taught boy who frequently boasted about his superior intelligence to anyone who would listen. Which meant that the one time Mother had managed to overhear a conversation between Artemis and Butler, she immediately felt that it would be wise to send Artemis to school despite his genetically mutated intelligence. It will be good for you, she said. Artemis thought glumly as he sat alone in the schoolyard during their lunch break. It will help you socialize, Arty.
Artemis was scowling. This was a waste of time. He rarely went to school these days because he was busy with the family business, but he had to show up every once in while to maintain his grades. Mother would be disappointed when she returned if he didn’t. He watched the more energetic students run around the yard, quickly tiring of their antics. His gaze stopped on a young boy playing with a ball attached to a string. The boy looked eerily familiar to him...as if he was looking at a mirror. Artemis could see differences though. For one, he would not be tossing around a ball like that. It served no purpose.
Still, Artemis couldn’t dismiss the possibility of them being related. He stood up and brushed off his clothes before approaching the boy. Artemis stood behind him far enough not to startle him and cleared his throat.
“Hello,” said Artemis coolly, waiting for a reaction from the other boy. The ball moved unusually in the air considering the lack of a breeze and Artemis squinted for a moment. Surely he was imagining things.
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Post by John Egbert on Aug 17, 2012 22:28:42 GMT -5
John's very into his tetherballing at the moment. It's gotten to the point where he's picked up a rhythm as he swings the ball on the rope around the pole. He's guiding the ball gently, gently round and round in a soft, up and down motion, almost like a wave. John's so focused that the voice behind him takes him a bit off guard. He startles, a small jolt running through his body, and the ball drops unnaturally out of the air behind him, bouncing against the pole.
"oh, hey! sorry, i didn't see you there," he says, and takes a good look at the other boy. He raises an eyebrow. The kid looks...strikingly similar to him, except much better groomed and dressed than him. John's considering taking off his glasses to compare when he realizes he's absolutely useless without his glasses on. His vision gets all blurry and he'll be lucky if he can make out more than very basic shapes of the other kid's features. "have i seen you somewhere before? cause you look really familiar."
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Post by Artemis Fowl II on Aug 18, 2012 0:09:46 GMT -5
Artemis’s squint immediately disappeared as the ball dropped from the air back against the pole. Ah. He is one of the mutants. He mentally filed this tidbit in the back of his mind. A person of his age who looks similar to him with a physical mutation was the kind of information he could use someday.
Artemis folded his hands behind his back and circled around the boy so he was standing on the opposite side of the circle surrounding the pole, just so he would have a better vantage point if the other boy tried something with the ball again.
“I imagine I may look slightly familiar to you,” he said, unable to keep the sarcastic edge out of his voice. Artemis mentally pulled up an image of his family tree. Perhaps he was an estranged cousin of some sort. He had to be estranged, considering the use of slang and his casual dress. “I don’t suppose you have Irish relatives?”
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Post by John Egbert on Aug 18, 2012 0:18:08 GMT -5
John watched the other boy walk around behind him. He was acting awfully strangely, and kind of staring a little. He understood he wasn't exactly the coolest looking kid his age - though Dave had once told him he was getting better, John couldn't figure out if he was saying it ironically or not. John had a problem with that. The kid also seemed like he was talking down to John, but he tried to play it off. Some people just had different accents than others, he supposed.
"i'm not sure! i guess we could," he said, thinking back and looking up at the sky. "my dad's family, i think, is from england, but a really long time ago. those guys are all gone by now. why do you ask?"
He scratched his head, really thinking. He didn't know many of Dad's relatives, but he didn't remember any gingers in the family, and he wasn't sure what color Nanna's hair was before it all went white.
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Post by Artemis Fowl II on Aug 21, 2012 23:58:21 GMT -5
Artemis’s suspicions were beginning to become discredited in his mind as the boy showed none of the Fowl traits, which to Artemis meant refined villainy. The other boy seemed completely unguarded despite speaking to a stranger. (Artemis momentarily forgot that a schoolyard was hardly the place to be wary of strangers, particularly when they were the same age.)
"I was merely pondering the possibility of us being related, considering the similarities. I suppose it’s just a coincidence." Artemis conceded, with an inclination of the head. He flicked some dust off of his blazer, bothered by how easy it was to get dirty in a schoolyard. He resolved to dress casually next time he came back. "I apologize if my questions were invasive."
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Post by John Egbert on Aug 22, 2012 10:32:43 GMT -5
"Yeah, I guess it would be possible. I never heard my dad talking about me having a brother or any cousins the same age as me or anything, though." He shrugged, picking up the tetherball and bouncing it against the pole it was attached to. "My immediate family's pretty small." He laughed when the other boy apologized to him. "Hey, no worries."
John took a minute to look at the other boy. He was definitely wearing a suit jacket and nice pants - on a playground. Bouncing the ball against the pole a few more times, he let it drop and then considered holding his fist out for a fist bump, but realized since this kid had suited up to go to school, he might not know what that was. He stuck his hand out for the other boy to shake it. "My name's John, what's yours?"
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Post by Artemis Fowl II on Aug 25, 2012 10:50:10 GMT -5
“My father has not said anything either,” Artemis admitted. Although he supposed if his father had family the right age, Artemis would know despite any attempts to hide such information from him. He wouldn’t find out through a chance meeting, at the very least.
Artemis examined the hand being extended to him for a split second before taking it into a firm handshake. He was well aware that this kind of greeting was not common for people in his age group, so the gesture came as a surprise. “Artemis Fowl, the second." Upon letting go of John's hand, his own fell at his side uselessly. It occurred to him that he was unaccustomed to speaking with peers in his own age group and he wasn't sure what to say next.
((omg Arty why'd you use your full name it sounds so pretentious hahaha))
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Post by John Egbert on Aug 26, 2012 22:58:01 GMT -5
"The second? Whoa. Your dad must be a pretty important guy for you to be named after him." John wasn't named after his Dad, or Grandpa, or anyone, really. In fact, John wasn't really sure of his Dad's first name. Dad always signed official documents 'Dad Egbert', so John assumed that that was his real first name. (He wouldn't be surprised. Nanna was always such a joker. He felt like it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of thing - that's what Rose would call it, anyway.)
John shook Artemis's hand firmly, confidently, and then released it after a brief pause. He grinned up at the boy, front teeth sticking out prominently, and picked up the tetherball again, giving it a few small tosses back and forth in his hands. "Do you want to play ball with me?"
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Post by Artemis Fowl II on Sept 1, 2012 1:59:55 GMT -5
"My father is very important," Artemis conceded, though he doubted the other boy would be eager to hear exactly how important. Artemis was also aware that it would be unwise to speak too much of his family to a schoolmate he just met. He was pleasantly surprised by the confident handshake the other boy gave him, but his cheerfulness was strange to see on a face so similar to his. Perhaps he should see John as an older version of his brother instead of similar to himself.
Artemis immediately regretted remembering his brother.
"…I'm unaccustomed to 'playing ball'," Artemis said hesitantly after a long moment. He could practically hear some of his frequent companions laughing at him in the distance (namely Holly Short) and immediately regretted it. He narrowed his eyes at the structure in front of him. A ball attached to a metallic pole by a string…it wasn't anything he was familiar with. Admittedly, Artemis wasn't well versed in sports. He certainly had never seen anything like the tetherball on television for sport competitions, although it did remind him of one of Butler's punching bag. “How does one use this?”
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Post by John Egbert on Sept 1, 2012 22:11:15 GMT -5
"Mine is too, at least, I think he is. He works for some sort of business but he doesn't really tell me what it is. I went into his office the one time, though." He neglected to tell Artemis about that whole incident with the Shale Imps that eventually led him to Do The Windy Thing for the first time. If he wanted to see that...well, he'd have to be around to catch Airtime in action.
"You're what? That's crazy, man." John laughed heartily, but it was in good spirits - he was laughing at what he thought was a strange situation rather than directly at Artemis. He watched the other boy stare at the tetherball structure, puzzling and puzzling at it. He then realized maybe this kid really didn't know how to play ball. He did, after all, decide to come in to school in fancy-looking clothes rather than just a t-shirt and shorts. "To be honest...I have no idea how you're supposed to use it," he said, smiling sheepishly. "I've just been sort of swinging it around the pole and seeing how many times I can get it to go around before it falls down. It's fun."
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