My mom was Mexican...

For getting to the house and meeting everybody!

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After the younger girls had gone to bed, Chase, Nico, Karolina, Victor and Olive moved into the living room for some slightly more grown-up fun. Victor had dared Karolina to fly around the beach house and over the ocean, and was passing the time until she got back talking to Chase and Nico about the Sons of the Serpent.

"So wait," Chase asked, "Do these guys have anything to do with Cobra? As in 'commander'?"

"No," Victor explained. Again. With a slight glance and shrug in Olive's direction. "Totally different serpent commandos."

Edited Date: 2013-01-04 03:34 pm (UTC)

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The world almost ends in the next volume.

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"Only mostly," Olive offered, trying not to actively wince. That'd be a great impression, right? Victor's friends were on the other side of that door, and the first time Olive met them was not going to be when she looked like she was in pain, thank you. "I hope they don't ask anything I can't actually answer."

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"Like what?" Victor asked, freezing in place. (From behind the door, she might hear a muffled 'Is that them? Let me - Ow!') "It's not like you're the one who normally has to keep secrets."

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"Oh, like something I don't know the answer to," Olive said, shaking her head. "Mostly a joke. It sounds like they know we're out here, though."

And cue her putting on a smile for her soon-to-be-audience.

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"Sounds like," Victor -- who had totally missed the joke -- agreed, and added a muttered Showtime under his breath just before the door cracked open and a blond guy who looked like a surfer leaned out.

"Olive?" Chase said, glancing her over. "Hey, wow, c'mon in. Blender boy has good taste. Everybody's in the kitchen."

"There are cookies!" a younger, female voice with a light German accent added. "And Nico had us add pieces of Reese."

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"And you must be Chase," Olive said, raising her brows and smiling at the boy. She wasn't resentful of the once-overing and had actually kind of expected that, but don't think she'd missed it, buddy.

"I happen to love pieces of Reese," she added, calling out towards where that little German voice had come from, before leaning a bit towards Victor and murmuring, "Blender boy? I'm remembering that one."

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"Got it in one," Chase said amiably, while Victor rolled his eyes and nudged Olive with an elbow.

"Don't encourage him," he said, as they walked to the kitchen. "He comes up with a new one every five minutes."

Two preteen girls were hovering over a plate of cookies around the kitchen table. The one with lighter brown hair under her bunny hat was eating a cookie and had a second in her other hand; she waved a cookie at Olive and said "Hi, I'm Molly" through a very full mouth. The other, with darker hair and an old-fashioned skirt, halfway curtsied and offered a shy hello in that same German-accented voice.

Karolina and a Japanese girl in a long dark dress emerged from the other room. Karolina looked happy to meet someone new; Nico looked suspicious but willing to be proven wrong.

Victor took over the introductions. "Olive, this is Klara, Molly, Karolina, Nico ... you already figured out which one is Chase."

"The hot one," Chase shot back with a smirk. "Also the only guy since Vic took off for the wrong coast."

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"I see you're also the shy one," Olive added to Chase with a slight smile, before turning to look around at everyone else and waving a little nervously. "Hi. Um. Nice place you guys have here."

It was weird seeing Karolina here, but Olive was already prepared for that and thus just gave her the same standard wave she was offering around to everyone. Also with the weird? Trying not to stare at Nico. Not because of the goth thing so much as the common-taste-in-boys thing and damn it she was actually pretty and Olive had been hoping pettily that she'd be a total troll.

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"It was a big step up from the tar pits," Nico put in, with half a smile. In a petty corner of her heart, she'd kind of hoped Olive would be a troll, too, but she wouldn't admit that even under pain of death and never being allowed into Hot Topic again. "And the neighbors still buy we're some weird big foster family. Mostly they're only here weekends, anyhow."

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"You're lucky they buy it," Olive said with a little smile. "I can't even hide in my room at home without my parents and three faculty members and maybe some random passers-by looking into what I'm doing."

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There was a little magic involved, but nobody wanted to mention that in front of the muggle they'd just met. A few uneasy glances were exchanged before Karolina piped up, "You're from Ojai, right? It's so pretty there."

Which didn't really answer the observation, but at least suggested a new direction for the conversation.

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Olive, unbothered by the segue-whiplash there, replied, "Yep. Born and raised and all that jazz. I can get you guys a freaking ton of oranges if you ever need."

'Cause you know, people so often need a bunch of oranges in one fell swoop.

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"You must be very rich," Klara told her. Fresh fruit was expensive in 1907 New York even with Klara's power, and the Runaways budget of nothing hadn't yet alerted her that it wasn't the case here.

Nico smiled slightly,placed a protective hand on Klara's shoulder. "She's from 1907," she explained. "She gets a little excited about weird things."

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Olive had to grin at that. Um, hi, holy adorable alert. Even if the 1907 thing was weird, but again, she'd already known that had been a thing. "I'm really not," she assured Klara, "but the town where I'm from grows most of the oranges in California, so I can get them for very, very cheap. Kind of like how I bet it was easier to get certain things at home than it is here, right?"

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"You can't just tell people they're rich," Molly sighed, and claimed yet another cookie as Klara tentatively nodded.

"Like horses," she said. "They're everywhere at home and since we got here I've seen two. They looked sad."

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"They probably were," Olive said, because why delude the poor kid? "But hey, there's cars and stuff now. They're pretty cool. I mean, I like a horse as much as the next teenage girl, but cars are so convenient."

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Chase snorted. "We should take you up in the 'frog," he said. "It makes cars look like 18th century technology."

He realized Nico was glaring at him and added, "... but we probably don't have time if you're just here for a day."

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"That just means you'll have to show me another time," Olive said agreeably, because A) SHE WANTED TO GO INTO THE FROG THING and B) everyone won that way. "I bet it beats the pants off my little Volkswagen."

Edited Date: 2013-01-06 05:55 pm (UTC)

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"Definitely," Nico said, warming some, as if Olive had passed a test. "Sorry, it's just that we're supposed to be low-key. Even with the shields on, going out in a huge flying frog in the middle of the day just for fun is ... basically the opposite of low-key."

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"And no offense to you guys, but I'm pretty sure no one wants my unpowered ass freaking out if something went wrong while we were being, um...the opposite of low-key, right?" Olive offered, giving a sheepish little shrug. "I get it. But hey, there's cookies, which are pretty much right up my alley."

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"They're good cookies, too," Victor finally put in, to a general murmur of agreement. He'd been hanging back to see how things would go. It seemed like they were actually okay, and that thawed him out enough to speak.

Nico hummed to herself, tilted her head at Olive thoughtfully. "Do you freak out about stuff around superpowers a lot?" she asked. "I'd think you'd be all bored with it, between Victor and everybody else at your school."

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"Nooo, not bored. Never bored," Olive said, shaking her head. "I mean, dude, the coolest thing I can do is sew my own prom dress. So yeah, it's never really going to get old for me."

She looked a little more uncertain, but decided to stamp on in the name of honesty. "It's sometimes a little freaky, though. No one has powers or anything where I'm from -- we don't have those Avenger people or anything -- so sometimes it takes a minute for me to wrap my mind around something, but...for the most part, it's gotten to be sort of a new form of normal, you know?"

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