IKAG Origami Challenge Draft

Another attempt at an 'opening story' for the series. Set sometime after Conner's class transfer and his establishing a [mostly-solo] bartering operation. The number of years he's been looking for a dream hobby is ambiguous, ditto how long Amelia has been in the class for. Lots of concepts are introduced in each of these opening drafts but since pictures and dialogue can tell separate narratives simultaneously, and foreground events can be overlayed on top of background events, we can theoretically compress much more on each page than it seems.

==========================================================================================================

Start with Rudy and Hayleigh. Popular kids at a school with super students. Rudy a fairweather friend, Hayleigh more assertive, no powers between them. Standoffish dynamic between them since they're brother and sister. They find their class, the classmates are eager to see them [for most part]. We see some of the student quirks [Ahmaad, Rick/Gomez, Caitlyn] and how Rudy placates them.

Amelia is at her desk, there's an empty desk between her and Rudy. Amelia expresses annoyance; students are meant to overcome their stumbling blocks rather than be told 'it's ok' and given passive patter. Escalation between Rudy [passive] and Amelia [neutral/assertive] near each other's faces.

Rudy and Amelia bicker about their differences over Conner's empty desk, until at one point he appears sitting at it in the middle of the arguing. Rudy is surprised/happy to see him, Amelia less so. Rudy draws attention to a giant rucksack against the wall that he's less happy about. Conner brings out some art brushes and nails.
Conner: "Hayleigh told this neat concept the other day. It's called Patriarchy? Amelia! You're a woman!"
Amelia:
Amelia: "Yes?"
Conner pulls a hammer from his person: "I don't trust myself to do it, so I'll need your help. Pound these nails through my d*ck, will you?"
Rudy: "Hahaha! What the heck?"
Amelia: "Wh-you're not serious--?"
Conner: "Ah, I'm just pulling your d*ck, champ. These are for Woodworks! We're putting drawers together!"

After registration Conner and Rudy wander over to their first class, the former asking the latter why he asked Amelia out yet. He says they're 'not like that' and Conner thinks everyone can see the sparks between them. "It's the classic yin-yang, short white guy, tall ambiguously-brown chick, born from different families, yadda-e-yadda. Look, you don't have to LOVE the girl, just think of it as one of those political marriages, maybe? Get in the council's good graces! God knows I'm not heading there any time soon." Establish a dynamic where Conner tries to give big-brother advice and Rudy crops out the useful bits, if there are any. Conner expects the 'popular' students [everyone that's not him] to get along well, trying to hide his obvious contempt for them.

Amelia is hiding behind a wall with a sheet of notes, still seething over being caught off-guard and unable to carry the conversation. She resolves to study up on both 'patriarchy' and 'hammering nails' so she can press the advantage in future. Hayleigh cheekily wishes her luck. Phones are soft-banned in classes and the library so Amelia uses a combination of phones and books.

The next day Amelia confronts Conner and Rudy before registration, now with a list of rebuttals and course-corrections to keep him from ad-libbing. Rudy had enough people following him before [cautiously, seething at Conner walking with him] but now there are TWO super-popular people in close proximity. Rudy wants to interject but macho Conner asks him to 'nah, son, step aside and watch a real master debater at work', and then immediately gets caught off guard and shut down multiple times, to the delight of the crowd. Conner gets mad and then concedes the point, "Ok, I get it, I give up, you win, alright", walking off, Rudy following after him. Amelia seems almost pleased but then remembers and runs after Conner; the entire point of the exchange was to get him to give up his bag and change his look [the hobo-like turtleneck and handcuffs]. But she's stopped by a club leader called Gavin who needs her help. Forced to pick between Conner or her duty as secretary, she unenthusiastically tags along with the club leader.

Conner and Rudy talking about plans for the day. Rudy saying something cheerful and trite, like 'every day is a new adventure'. Conner amused, thinking it's the sort of line only Rudy could pull off and people would believe it. Rudy thinking to himself, Conner was the guy who said it to him in the first place.

Gavin is the leader of the Origami Club; as per the tradition of Motown High, a student of high enough standing in the school's clubs can challenge the leader for their authority. Amelia has been asked to mediate the challenge, on account of the other councillors are indisposed:
⦁	Princess Daughter doesn't attend unless it's a large-scale event
⦁	Frank doesn't attend because he's either expected to attend yoga, or he's busy waiting on hand and foot, taking commands like "Frank, organise the book shelves for me" or "Frank there's a mouse on the floor, be frightened for me, there's a dear"
⦁	Bucky is lazy as hell
⦁	Ella isn't allowed anywhere unsupervised, much less mediating a challenge
However Amelia also feels she has to keep tabs on her more contentious classmates. She has to convince the whole class to attend the challenge with her, even though students generally aren't allowed to spectate unless they're leaders, related to the club, or a high enough rank.

At first she decides the class will come along, using her authority as a councillor, and asks for [rhetorical] objections. None are forthcoming, the students don't seem to have plans that lunchtime anyway; for the most part they understand it's not really a request. Amelia scans the room and as she mentions the prerequisites for attending a challenge, in particular the part about having a high enough rank, she stops to see a poorly put-together strawman resembling Conner sitting at his own desk. She says nothing.

Smash cut to the students walking over to the Origami Club. Amelia making a small speech about the class having to be on good behavior as a role model for other classes. The students talk up all the adventures they've had as heroes or sidekicks. Conner visibly seething for multiple reasons.

Dan, or "Big Eats", says his feet hurt. He looks at Centaur meaningfully. Repeat twice. Centaur gets angry and threatens physical violence if he tries to ride on her back. "I don't want the skin stripped off my back, thank you!" She sees Dan recoil in fear of her anger, and he begins to spin out of control anyway. Fearing for her safety Centaur does the sensible thing and kicks Dan in the face, sending him dizzy and stopping the spin. Depending on how far from Dan they were, the Carous students stand in stunned silence, watch in dismay [Amelia] or have spread out to start running away. Centaur, ashamed and on the spot, sees Darkblade with his hand on his knife in a defensive stance. Darkblade hurries off.

Conner's bag has a medical kit that Caitlyn uses to treat Dan's face. In the classroom where the Origami Club meetings and activities are held, Amelia brings Gavin and the rest of the club up to speed on Carous' students, that they're ostensibly there to watch the proceedings to understand how these club-leadership challenges work. Rudy butts in to call Gavin totalitarian and abusing his position, and gets a dressing down in response. Some of the Carous students are low-to-mid rank in spite of their superpowers and understand being on the Tails side of the coin.

Gavin calls most all of the class a liability or threat to the club, since they're hard counters to paper. The students have a sudden revelation on why they're banned from the library [Rick, fire-powers, possible book burning; Gomez, magma powers, possible book burning; Dan, uncontrollable spinning, possibly book burning; Darkblade, banned for looking up books on how to kill Mr Carous]

Gavin: "I'm aware of most of the students from the famous 'Carous class'. Most of the students, at least."
Gavin: "You there, with the sour face."
Audrey: [points to Steven, confused]
Steven: [points to himself, with a face like Droopy getting bitchslapped by Rock Lee]
Gavin: "No, you!"
Audrey: [points to herself, further confused]
Gavin: "Yes, you! What's your superpower, exactly?"
Audrey: [in quiet text] "...I ...I can punch a horse in the face and knock it out."
Gavin: "Sorry?"
Senmu [covering for Audrey]: "Doing your mom." [class laughter]

Holly: "Is ice bad for paper too?"
Gavin: "Yes. Actually a surprising number of elements are bad for paper, despite what the rumors may tell you. Ice paper, rice paper, fire paper, they're all paper in name only. They're more like patterns of microfibers, or recycled plastics."
Gomez: "Fire paper??"
Holly: "Wow... so it's like some kind of magic paper!"
Rick: "It's like a superpower!"
Senmu: "Super magic..."
Spirit: "It's made in a factory, for Christ's sakes!"

"If this were the Tennis Club, or Weird Science, then we wouldn't be having this problem. If anything having latent fire powers might almost be a boon in the Science Club. Given the nature of Origami, you can understand why everyone is on edge."

Gavin gives an off-screen abridgement of the rules for a leadership challenge, and then makes the mistake of opening the floor for questions from the club and class. Conner asks Gavin questions on how long he's been practicing origami, how he keeps motivated on doing the same thing for years. He shows a surprise respect for the leader, from an angle that the other students don't share. Gavin ultimately states there's no magic secret to it, he just kept at it because he liked it and people praised him for it. Conner's visibly disappointed by the answers [or rather, the lack of a 'magic wonder secret' to finding a 'dream hobby'].

Holly holding Rudy's hand, possibly subconsciously, as Conner and Gavin talk. Rudy is confused by it, as are onlookers. Senmu separates Holly and Rudy, only to take over the hand-holding. As Holly reciprocates, Audrey stands in to try and mediate, being much taller and bulkier than either of them, towering over Rudy most of all. [These don't need their own panels of focus, they're background event actions to show character interactions between people that aren't just Conner.]

Classmates clearly uncomfortable being there or being scrutinised by the Origami Club, or for that matter a student councillor that seems to be only keeping half an eye on them. Lots of chattering rather than concentrating on the match.

Centaur trying to leave partway through, dressing it up as 'having to powder [her] face'. "Oh, you're taking a sh*t? A'ight, see ya." Centaur getting mad and saying she doesn't need supervision 'getting down the stairs' [offered by Caitlyn and Senmu]. Bison also leaves, saying he feels he's coming down with another headache. Dan opening the door for Centaur to try and make up for before.

Jinx: "Hey, if you possess a guy that needs to use the bathroom and then you leave their body, do you have to take a sh*t as well?"
Spirit: "I... what kind of question is that?"
Darkblade: "It's their body, so it's their waste. Stands to reason. Why would he bring it back over?"
Spirit: "Don't enable him!"

Audrey: "Sarah and the others were thinking of having a sleepover party on Saturday, would you, would you, you know, if you don't mind, that is you don't have to--"
Hayleigh: "I can't, Dad never lets me. He thinks I'll get a bad case of the lesbians."
Hayleigh: "(Joke's on him, I just go to parties to get knocked up by guys.)"

Rick rattling off inane sports commentary.
Rick: "It's the fight of the century, 50-Grams Gavin versus Charlie the Kid, with our own Amelia Bedelia up to ref! It's not going to be one to miss, folks! Let's go to our co-commentator for tonight, Mr Tevens! Tevens, out of all the big names here tonight, who do you think is going to be the weak link in this chain? Or rather, who do you think will be putting in the most work of anyone tonight?"
Steven: "The audience."

Amelia trying to juggle watching her classmates, watching the Origami challenge, and also trying to finish up other work in the meantime [reading over and signing documents]. Called out on it by Hayleigh, Amelia protests she has things under control. Keeping tabs on the fight. Audrey feels something wrong in her bones but can't put a finger on it.

Caitlyn, with her cop energy, protests that Gavin is 'cheating' in the fight as he has the superpower of paper manipulation and abuses it. Amelia lets the fight continue. Dragon says Gavin is the defending leader and so he has the right to use his powers. If the challenger wants to assert dominance, he has to prove he's strong enough to overcome that handicap.
"If Gavin didn't have that power--"
"Then he might lose, or he might still win anyway. If Charlie had that power too, he could lose as well. We don't know for sure."

Dragon [to Caitlyn]: "Think about it for a second. Dozens of superpowered students jumping in to demand things play out their way? There'd be riots everywhere."
Dan itching in fear, he doesn't want to be involved in riots. Rick and Centaur covering for him, adamant that they could take on any dissenters. Gomez less sure about his own self-control, like Rick he feels the fire burning through his veins but has second thoughts after hearing Dragon's words.

Jinx: "Please don't bring up riots." [Jinx. Superpower: Luck manipulation]

Everyone suddenly more on edge. Caitlyn insistent on the fight being stopped, or more 'fair' at least. Rudy notices Amelia just watching intently in silence, and he looks to Conner for support as a non-super - but is curious to see Conner also watching the challenge intently rather than itching to leave.

Tension between the Origami students as the Carous students are generally strangers to them, though well-known enough as a pretty infamous class. Powder keg waiting to go off? A lot of murmuring between the Origami students, few of whom want the Carous class to be there and most of whom are scared of said class; one of them interrupts to whisper something into Gavin's ear; they converse for a few seconds, then Gavin calls for a time-out. Jinx feels a snap in reality ("Oh no!").

One of the piles of paper on Gavin's desk ignites. "The paper!" "It wasn't me!" Centaur takes a defensive stance in front of the Carous kids, "Everyone behind me!" Some confusion. The burning paper suddenly has cold crystals materialise all over it, in an attempt to put out the fire. "What happened?" "It's just a freak accident!" "I knew it! They're trying to interfere!" "Get them out of the club!"

"Everyone calm down!" Amelia gets everyone's attention to control their composure. She tries to ascertain what happened. Rick and Gomez both deny involvement. Holly was just tryin' to put out the fire. Gavin believes them - the parchment was a special brand of 'fire paper' that intentionally ignites.
Spirit: "WHAT? WHY"
The more important thing to Gavin is that he switched it with one of his own sheets; he had suspicions about the paper Charlie brought with him and wanted to double check its legitimacy. Everyone's just on edge because of natural tension between the different types of students.

Amelia attempts to apologise on behalf of the class, despite ostensibly being a neutral third-party in terms of the actual fight - and then Dan goes out of control. Despite being restrained by several people in the class he begins spinning and becomes dangerous to the touch. Bison is already outside the room, though Dan's body threatens to bore through it. Conner rummages through his bag for something to 'get Dan's attention', settling on a steel rod which he hands over to Centaur. The other students are holding back for not wanting to injure Dan or create collateral damage. Centaur gingerly feeds the rod into the Dan tornado much like how a stick in the spokes of a bike wheel could convince it to stop very quickly. Unfortunately for the rod it ends up much like feeding a pencil into a thresher; fortunately this seems to satiate Dan and he collapses on the floor. Lizard bursts through the door too late, having heard the noise from outside.

Gavin: "(I wasn't expecting one of the other students to flare up like that, but this only gives me a further advantage...)"

Gavin posits that any momentum in continuing the match has come to a dead stop with the interferences; Amelia can't help but agree, so the challenge will be rescheduled for another day, with fewer bystanders. Either Amelia will find some other way to corral her classmates, or she'll somehow rope Bucky or Frank into judging the match.

Before the Carous kids can leave the room proper, Gavin calls Conner out by name as he'd joined and left the club a year ago. Conner says he doesn't remember it that way, as the club leader was a girl at the time. Gavin explains that was the previous club leader Oscar, who left as a result of Conner's time in Origami. The current Origami leader challenges Conner to a duel as recompense.
Conner: "What, now?"
Gavin: "Of course not! In a week's time, here in the clubroom!"

Conner: "Mmm. I don't think I'm allowed to duel other people. You'll have to ask Ams about that." [makes to leave]
Amelia: "I'm not your secretary!!"

The Carous students are all outside the clubroom. Amelia is still inside the clubroom.
Caitlyn: "So what now? Do we just head back to [the] form[room]?"
Rick: "I'm headed to the lunch hall. You guys do as you please."
Gomez: "What, you're going to gorge yourself now?"
Rick: "You got a problem with that? I can make up for lost time!"
Gomez: "You're the slowest eater I've ever known!"
Rick and Gomez continue to argue.
Caitlyn: "Are we- are we allowed to split up?"
Dragon: "We're nearly grown adults. You don't need your hand holding."
Dan: [conceited as a cover for shame] "I don't see why we had to all be in the club, anyway. We're being coddled like children, you know?"
Centaur: "It's because of you and your crazy spin-out power that everyone has to keep an eye on you!"

Senmu: "What did you do to make him [Gavin] so mad, anyway?"
Conner: "Ahh, that! That! ...it was a glorious Summer's day--"
Rudy: "Autumn."
Conner: "Autumn's day! There was an advert in the school newsletter that piqued my interest, until someone cut the page out and folded it into an airplane..."
Conner gathering a small audience to rattle off a tall tale.

Bison: "It's not just him. Everyone fears us. Even the posh students view us with disdain."
Centaur: "Well, sod the posh guys."

Amelia paying for her hubris in trying to manage the rest of the class and oversee the match. She blames herself in the end for things going south, but still feels that managing everything by herself is the way to go. [It's all she knows how to do, and there's the pressure as the daughter of the principal, and she's done it for so long it could be catastrophic if she stops now.] Darkblade or Dragon asking why the other student councillors couldn't pitch a hand and Amelia gives her reasons. Hayleigh asking why it has to be Amelia shouldering the burden alone and she's suddenly put on the spot, admitting she probably wouldn't, or couldn't, put an essay together on the reasons for it. After being embarrassed by asspats from everybody, Amelia decides to head to the council office.

Conner says it's a lot of work for a single person to do! It sounds exhausting! He asks out loud, hypothetically, how difficult it would be to become a student councillor himself, especially if people like [spoken disparagingly] Bucky or Ella are already on the team. Dragon shuts him down - it's not the position that gives you respect and capability, it's having that capability and peoples' respect that awards you the position. Ella and Bucky are capable? Dragon submits they must be to some degree, so as to save face for the whole council. Conner sat mulling it over.