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 Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:53 pm
Man, why had he bothered to come? It was just a bunch of kids, and this was going to- "Seung!"
Oh thank god there was someone he liked. Not just someone he could put with, but someone he actually liked...probably the only other Fa'e he could honestly say that about, which was probably kind of sad, seeing as they'd only met once, and she'd just been a toddler. Okay, so Stefan was right and he needed to be more social and meet more people his own age, but so far they'd all kind of sucked.
"I, umm..." She'd totally called him on his grumpiness...now what was he supposed to do? "I've never played lasertag before?" It was part of the reason, anyway.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:59 pm
"We go a really long way. I've pretty much known Lethe since... well, ever." A few days after he was born, even. His memory of the meeting was rather fuzzy, but it was still somehow there. "She's my best friend. And yeah, we saw each other at the arcade a few times." He added for Lethe's benefit, as the line started to move forward.
"Hey, any of you two want a drink ? Ill pay."
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:00 pm
Mitsu looked back at Arrien, horrified, as she called to the firing squad. She allowed herself a brief moment to reflect upon her sad state of affairs before turning back to Dusty and licking her lips nervously. It'll be okay, it'll be okay. Rat's here and he'll protect you if he's needed. She looked down at her companion. He, grinning maniacally per usual, was staring down his thumping tail. Her stomach dropped. What about Lethe? Lethe was busy with - with other people. And there was Mik - oh no. Reluctantly, she looked up again. It looked like she was stuck with the boy.
Step one. Step forward.
"Busty," she said cautiously, taking three steps towards the Fa'e before halting. "I don't want..." she sighed to gather her thoughts and her courage. "... trouble."
She chewed on the inside of her cheek as a twinge ran through her mind; people were screaming again. She closed her eyes and sighed heavily, clenching and unclenching her fists. She could do it - she'd done it before - just block them out, and don't listen to what they say. But they were being particularly difficult. She opened her misty eyes, staring off into the distance to Dusty's left.
"No trouble," she mumbled. "No trouble." Below her, Rat perked up and began to sniff the air suspiciously.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:11 pm
Unimpressed by Mitsu's show of almost-sorta-kinda-bravery in the face of Deerkitten, Dusty just snorted and slipped to the side, giving Mitsu an unfriendly little push in the direction of the prep room. "Don't be a pain," he growled through a fake little smile, no doubt pasted on for his Guardian's benefit.
"Second call! Fa'e party, please report to the preparation room for your game!"
Glancing up in annoyance at the loudspeaker, Dusty decided he was tired of waiting for Lethe. "Hurry up, I'm goin' in!" He called out to his friend, who seemed to have gotten sidetracked chatting with some other Fa'e. Unsatisfied but determined nonetheless, he went ahead inside, where the small, blacklit room had all the vests, numbered 1 through 14 in barely-glowing letters on the front, waiting for the players.
Without hesitation, he claimed himself the vest with the number "1" for the red team (red being so much cooler than blue, for obvious reasons that he wasn't sure of). "This one's Lethe's," he announced to no one in particular, pulling the vest numbered "2" off of its rack.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:19 pm
Seung's ear twitched a little as she listened to Mik. "Oh. Guess that make sense." Her lips pulled to one side as she thought, making the eye marks on one cheek look like they were winking. "But I never played either, and I'm not grumpy." She grinned up at him. "Can just not know how to play together and have fun anyway, ye?" she decided cheerfully, fully expecting to solve all of Mik's problems.
Hearing the announcement, Seung tugged on Mik's hand. "Better go, sounds like they getting grumpy too." She hurried into the room, blinking to let her eyes adjust to the dimmer light. She noticed Dusty going for a red vest and immediately grabbed a blue one instead with the number 4 on it. Blue looked better on her anyway.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:25 pm
Lethe nodded, relieved that Sei chose to speak up first. "We grew up together," she continued, if only because "Yeah. Yeah. Hear that? Best friends. The best you got was 'I saw you a few times'! Also: your hair is weird and you might want to get that checked out. Just sayin'." might have been a little too... abrasive. Plus it was true enough, she had known him since he was a hairless, wriggly thing struggling to communicate properly with her.
"Sure!" She chirped immediately at Sei's offer, "I'll drink anything. Whatever you like. I--"
Oh. Right. They were here to play Lasertag. Choking down a sigh of exasperation, Lethe flashed another bright grin. "Maybe later, though? If we don't hurry, I think they might give our place to the next party. Darsais, are you playing with us?" As determined as she was not to purposefully exclude the other girl, especially now that her superiority was clearly established, Lethe nevertheless didn't exactly wait for her to reply before grabbing Sei's hand and (gently but determinedly) following Dusty to the preparation room, calling out "C'mon, Mimizoo!" to her cousin without looking to see where she was.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:31 pm
"Oh, yeah. Would be better after the game." He shrugged a bit, and followed Lethe like the good little boy he was. Oh, teams. He... hadn't thought about teams at all. Or, really, he thought they would be pre-asigned. But hey, if it was such...
"Which team ?" He asked to the river girl. Hey, if he could stick with Lethe and Darsais, the better !
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:32 pm
"I guess so?" Mik blushed faintly, just a little embrassed now. He knew Seung didn't like Dusty, but she wasn't grumpy about being here. And here he was, stewing over having to play a game with kids...except Seung was a kid, and he liked her. She was, basically, making him look stupid. Unintentionally, of course.
The teen didn't like looking stupid, even in front of kids, so he decided he would at least try not to be visibly unhappy, and trailed after Seung on her way to the preparation room. Personally, when it came to colors, he preferred red to blue, but he also preferred Seung to Dusty, and so he followed suit and took a blue vest.
He was still a little leery about this whole thing, though, especially since he was surrounded by kids. He was totally going to be the most obvious target, at six feet tall with bright red-orange wings. Maybe he'd luck out and everyone else's aim would suck. His was pretty awesome. On second thought, maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all! He and Seung - and whoever else - could totally win.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:35 pm
Mitsu's face contorted in half-shock, half-despair as Dusty shoved her into the room. Darkness... she gulped nervously as Lethe passed her. Just keep close to them, right? That was what Amaris said. She winced as a high-pitch shriek shot through her mind. It sounded far away, as if it were tucked deep in a cave, but it was still there. Feeling lost, she watched as Dusty and Lethe suited up from her place by the doorway.
Rat paced around her feet, looking up into her face, and barked twice before placing his front paws on her legs. Snapping out of a reverie, the toddler looked down at him, alarmed at first, but quickly calmed. "C'mon, Rat," she murmured and leaned down. Rat quickly poofed into manageable bunny form, which Mitsu then picked up and placed safely into her dress, where he was cradled to her chest by the sash beneath. Feeling only marginally safer, she approached the rack and struggled to pull the red 3 pack down for herself.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:46 pm
"This's yours, Lethe." Greeting the River Fa'e with the red #2 vest, Dusty took to shrugging his own pack on, offering no help to the unfortunate toddler who claimed and was threatening to be squashed by #3. Doing the side-bucket and hefting the plastic laser gun, Dusty instead concentrated on making as much a nuisance of himself as possible, pointing his gun at the people filtering into the prep room and pulling the trigger (to no effect, of course, since the vests wouldn't be charged until the game started).
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:46 pm
Bhel ran into the laser tag lobby while his sister held the door for him, and immediately made a beeline for one of the old arcade machines. Without bothering to put any money in, he wiggled the joystick around and made his own explosion noises, grinning as though the demo actually responded to his input. Then, with a happy laugh, he pounded on the buttons.
"Nonono, come on, they're calling us," Lucretia urged Bhel, catching him under the arms and trying to herd him towards the preparation room. "We got here just in time, now hurry up so we don't miss our game."
The Raevan girl had wrapped up in a black bedsheet again to hide her lack of... well, anything below mid-torso; it also did a bit to help hide some of her white skin, but probably not enough. She was kind of excited about this laser tag thing anyway - it had sounded interesting enough that she had actually volunteered to take her brother to the get-together with... the rest of his kind.
As she finally got her brother to join the others in the preparation room, Lucretia glanced around to see just who her teammates would be. Interesting people, looked like. ... Oh, shoot, Bhel was wandering off again.
The bull Fa'e spotted Seung and headed towards her - he had not seen her for a while, and, while he had been much younger at the time, he still remembered her. They were both blue. And on the blue team now, looked like. He had never done this before, but he wanted to pretend like he had, and so headed over to the Blue #11 vest and picked up the gun. Holding it in both hands, he pointed it experimentally and pulled the trigger, and frowned as nothing interesting happened.
With a sigh, he turned towards Seung to try to get a look at how she was doing this. He waved a little so she would not get any sort of ideas like he had no idea what he was doing.
Now under a few black-lights, Lucretia gasped in surprise as she observed that her white skin was glowing. "Bhel, look!" she breathed in surprise and slight apprehension, holding out her pale arms to admire them as she drifted over to Blue #12, just beside her brother.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:49 pm
She was about to say 'blue', more out of reflex than anyone else, but took note of Dusty standing there, holding up a vest and giving her a Dusty Look(tm), and quickly thought otherwise. "Red," she said firmly, "We're on the red team. Definitely."
It was too bad though -- Mitsu was having trouble pulling on a red vest herself, but Seung was on the other team. Clearly she hadn't learned the same lesson Lethe had, that toddlers should stick together so they could grow up to form a fearsome group that routinely asserted how awesome they were. "Hi Seung!" Lethe greeted the other small girl anyway, flashing her a smile to show her no hard feelings that she didn't want to be on the same team as the River Fa'e (clearly the smaller girl had good taste in colors. It was all good.)
And then she proceeded to somehow slip her vest on -- hands still bound in ribbons -- while no one was looking.
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:50 pm
Sei also rather preferred blue, but... It didn't really matter in this case. He took the red vest with the number 5 on it and proceeded to put it on, twirling the laser gun in his hand with ease as he waited.
This somehow felt almost... familiar. He couldn't explain it, so he decided to ignore it for now. He should really try to have fun at least...
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