Application for Layla Williams

[notalemon]

The bus to Sky High landed on the driveway in front of the school, back in the sky after the disaster full of babies. Layla headed towards her first class with Mr. Boy (although in all honesty, she should probably really have been in classes with heroes, rather than remaining in the hero support class). Between one blink and another, the school

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[average_adam]

Intrigued by some of her answers, Adam decides to stop by. "Hi. I'm Adam. What did you mean by 'make lemons'?" he asks with a friendly smile.

((OOC: Just so you know, Mickey is actually two dimensional from whatever angle you look at him. It's magic, or something. And do you mind putting some information about Layla in her user profile? Thanks!))

[notalemon]

A panicked look crosses Layla’s face for a moment. “Make lemons? I… didn’t say that, did I?” Oh, crap. She must have gone off on one of her tangents or something, otherwise there was no way she would have mentioned her powers.

“Oh, make lemons! You know, when life gives you lemons, make… apple juice?” she asks hopefully.

[average_adam]

His smile widens to a grin. One can't not be happy in the face of that grin. "Oh, I like apple juice. An' I like the way you think. I heard you talkin' 'bout the rainforest an' animals an' growin' food an' stuff. I think that's all pretty important, too." Anathema's liberal magazines had made a big mark on Adam's mind when he'd been at a particularly impressionable stage in his life...

[notalemon]

Layla’s worry over having revealed her powers switches to excitement in the face of someone else who thinks the rainforests are important. Will tends to agree with her, but not really know what she’s talking about, which he really should by this point in his life if he was planning on being an environmentally conscious superhero at all.

“Oh, it definitely is!” Layla exclaims, glad to have found a poor, unfortunate audience for her environmentalist rants. “My neighbors don’t even separate their recycling from the rest of their trash! I have to go through and do it every morning. I mean, they’re getting a bit better, but still! And no one else seems to think that growing food is easy enough to do,” she continues, ignoring completely the fact that it takes her much less time to grow food than it does anyone else. “People are always in such a hurry.”

[redheadshizuka]

Shizuka almost hesitantly approaches the other girl, smiling sweetly. She hasn't been to an arrival in a while and figures she should go to them more often. After all, she imagines it must be frightening to arrive in a strange place with no one to tell you what's going on. She was nervous when she first came, anyway.

"I like monkeys and bears too," she says. And quickly adds, "Oh, sorry! I'm Shizuka, by the way."

[notalemon]

Surprised at someone else showing up, Layla returns the smile. “It’s just so hard to choose between them, isn’t it? I mean, they’re both fantastic, and it’s really hard to decide that you like one thing more than another things. It always feels really unfair.” After her mild little speech, Layla processes the rest of Shizuka’s introduction. “Oh, it’s nice to meet you, I’m Layla.”

[redheadshizuka]

Shizuka giggles a little. "I know," she says, and explains: "Your interview with the Mouse is broadcast across the park, so everyone can hear it. And I agree -- picking one thing about other things really does seem unfair." Actually, Shizuka has never thought about it like that before, but now that she is thinking about it like that, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, everything being different is part of the specialness, isn't it? It doesn't seem fair to take away the specialness by trying to say one thing is 'better.'"

[notalemon]

“Through the park?” Layla asks, a bit confused. “So is this actually Disneyland? Because I’m pretty sure this wasn’t where the bus dropped me off this morning.”

[elle_sparks]

A new person was a surefire relief from Elle's boredom.

"Hi," she greeted with a grin. "So do you have powers too?" she asked, assuming that the making lemons thing wasn't just a gardening thing. Especially with all that crap about saving mankind and the rainforest. She sounded like one of those loser hero types her dad sometimes recruited.

[notalemon]

Layla looks, understandably, panicked. “Um… no?” This… was definitely not the best morning she’d ever had. “What would make you think that?” she asked with a rather nervous laugh.

[elle_sparks]

"Because you sound like one of those goody two-shoes hero types," Elle said, her hands lazily bouncing a ball of electricity back and forth.

((btw, I ADORE Layla :) ))

[notalemon]

About to get insulted on behalf of her boyfriend (boyfriend? Friend? They really needed to talk about it), Layla manages to calm herself down a bit. “Well, the environment is very important!” she says instead, slightly defensively. Eyeing the electricity nervously, she considers (and promptly disregards) moving further away. “That’s… an interesting power.”

(( Thank you! :) She's much more entertaining than my Montesquieu reading... ))

[alcoholit]

Bernard, who has been laying low recently, decides this could be amusing. Very. Amusing. He ambles over and takes a drag off his cigarette before giving the girl a very, very sceptical glance, "You know, I'm rather offended. You picked a monkey over me. Or...well, most of us. Damn self-hating human. Foolish mortal and all that." He shrugs, "People seem to master self-love, but humanity could never quite cut it to think ourselves more important than a slightly-devolved Manny or a goddamn tree. I mean, they don't even breathe."

He pauses in his rant and realises something, "So, where's your beard, young-girl-Manny? Or dodgy shirt, for that matter?" Damn hippies. Next she'd tell him to stop blowing smoke in her direction. Well, she would stand there.

[notalemon]

Unsure how to really defend herself against this, Layla stares in bewilderment for a moment before her mouth starts working again. “I never really said I hated humans, just that we have some things to work on. No one can really disagree with that at all, can they? Well, some people probably could, but I feel like they’d probably disagree with anything just to be contrary. I mean, moneys don’t really seem to have an incredibly negative impact on the world they live in, unless you happen to be monkey food of some kind.”

His next comment confuses her a bit more, but not enough to totally make her stop talking. Not that there was really a lot that could make Layla stop talking. “Just because I don’t conform to your ideas about what someone who cares about the world and the animals and plants in it doesn’t mean that I care any less. It’s very judgmental of you to assume otherwise, you know.”

[alcoholit]

"I'm a very judgemental person. It makes life more fun." Bernard half meant it, and half just said it to annoy her. He took a drag off his cigarette and shrugged, "Thing is, you can't ever fix the human race, and that's what makes us better than monkies and things. We're fucked up. We have...er...humanity. We thought it was a stupid enough idea to create ways of being ruled by other people and come up with clearer ways of understanding each other, yet, we never do understand each other. Makes us interesting, humanity." Bernard really was just arguing for the sake, and rambling on a little drunkenly. Or it would be drunkenly if he had alcohol.

[notalemon]

Layla looks, if possible, even more indignant. “How on earth does judging other people without knowing them or giving them a chance to defend themselves make life more fun? I mean sure, it probably simplifies it a whole heck of a lot, but there are lots of other things that can do that instead. Like organizational stores and things like that. They simplify peoples lives, and not many people have ever been offended by a filing cabinet. And interesting though we may be, and fucked up as we are, that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t try to improve themselves. Everyone can always be just a little bit better at something, right?”

[mickey_mous]

((I'm the worst mod evar. Seriously. There's no call to take three weeks to process an app. I'm so sorry! Next time, just nudge me...))

"So, Layla, you ready to find out which of our excitin' lands you're gonna live in?"

[mickey_mous]

((Hello? Still playing?))

[notalemon]

((Aaah, I could have sworn I responded to this already!))

Layla, still a bit unnerved by a talking Mickey Mouse, smiled uncomfortably. "Sure I am..."

[mickey_mous]

((No worries! Just wanna get you into the game finally.))

"Keen! How'd you like to live in Fantasyland?"