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 Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 7:35 am
"Oh? That's neat! So.." Junko tapped her lip, counting quickly in her head. "Six siblings?!" Seven children..geeze! Here she had thought having two children in the future would be a handful!
He grinned again and she laughed, smiling and rolling her eyes. "Uh huh okay. Charm. You wish you were charming." She teased affectionately, already feeling better about earlier. No big, she had stumbled not fallen. She would be okay.
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 7:48 am
"Seven," Nahm corrected, "with the new one. One of the aunts just had one and then stopped, and the uncle didn't want any, so it was mostly on our parents to expand the clan." He laughed. "Glad we're off at school or we'd be babysitting. Grue babies bite."
"I am fantastically, wonderfully, amazingly charming," he protested. "Ghouls swoon regularly, even when I've showered."
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 10:08 am
"Geeze, I don't blame you." Junko have Nahm a blank stare when he mentioned grue scarelings bite, reaching up to playfully poke at the corner of his mouth. "I bet grue teenagers bite, too." She dropped her hand away after that, giving his hand a squeeze. "If they have half as many teeth as you I imagine it must hurt a lot."
Junko laughed at Nahm's protest, smirking up at him. "Well thank you for showering. If I'm going to swoon I don't want it to be because you stink." She looked ahead of them, checking if they were almost to this spot he'd told her about.
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 11:14 am
Nahm snapped playfully at Junko's finger, missing deliberately. "Second and third rows grow in when you get older," he said, "but at least one of the cousins has bitten his tongue in half. Requires a Fearhealer to see to that, but doesn't happen twice."
"That'd just be rude." He grinned. Then he pointed ahead towards an archway that had become dimly visible in the flicker of the torch. "There. Watch your step when we come out. There's no railing."
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 11:42 am
Bitten his..ow! Junko winced and clasped a hand over her mouth, having had the misfortune of imagining the situation. Ugh..just...UGH! "Have you ever bitten anyone?" If someone could bite their own tongue in half by accident she didn't want to imagine what could be done intentionally. Eugh.
"That would be rude, yes. You are to always smell pleasant around me. That is an order~." A joke, honestly. It wasn't one she expected Nahm would take seriously.
No railing? Why..what was..? "Okay, sure." Junko blinked. She didn't need to be told twice!
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 11:58 am
"Only if they deserved it." Nahm's smile gained just a touch of that sharper quality from before. "Never bitten anything off. That's big trouble if you get caught."
He snickered at the order and snapped a mock salute. "Yes, ma'am."
There was an echoing quality to the space beyond the archway, and as they stepped through, it became apparent why: it was a large, circular chamber with a domed roof, several tunnels feeding into it, and in its center, below the walkway that circled the room, was a still, black pool of what might be water. It smelled cold and dank and slightly oily. The light from the torch reflected oddly off the surface, seeming to be swallowed up in a very short distance.
On the far side of the room, a trashbot rattled out of one of the other tunnels and moved purposefully along the walkway, then turned with a squeal of rusty wheels and vanished into a different tunnel.
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:16 pm
"Oh. Never for like..ah...fun?" Junko was putting it delicately, a faint blush spreading across her cheeks. That must've been a silly question; Nahm had rows and rows of teeth that could eat...almost anything she gave him, there probably was no biting for fun.
The change in sound got her attention and Junko stopped short just under the archway at the end of the tunnel to stare at the room before them, her eyes wide and her jaw dropped. Whoa. She looked up, down, left and right, checking out the whole room from where she was. "Wow.." She heeded Nahm's warning and stepped carefully along the walkway, watching eat step and making sure she stayed well away from the edge. The trashbot started her and she stopped where she was, watching it disappear again. "Nahm, this is so cool!" Junko grinned back at the boil before she got down low to the floor, reaching tentatively out to try touching the water..or whatever it was. She frowned. Nope. Too far down. She stood again, slowly rising to her feet with her arms held out at either side to keep her balance. "What is this place?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2013 1:22 am
"Why, Junko." Nahm winked at her. "Can't, too sharp. Gotta be real careful for some things, but I got a talented tongue." He opened his mouth to flop his long tongue out briefly, then rolled it back inside.
He strolled along the path, watching Junko's reaction to the room with a delighted grin. Definitely worth the minor hassle of getting them here. "There's a sign on the far side that says Cistern, pretty old and all scratched up. Look over there," and he pointed out a small, round pipe that stuck a little ways out of the wall below the walkway; nothing currently flowed from it, but the wall beneath it was heavily stained with something dark. "I think it must be a collection pool. Don't know what for. I just like it. It's quiet."
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Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2013 5:08 am
Junko blushed again and pouted at Nahm over her shoulder. "Don't you 'why, Junko' me, I just like knowing neat things about my friends." None of her other friends had as many teeth as Nahm. It made it curious. The bit about his tongue had her blushing more and looking away, clearing her throat and wandering further up the walkway until she was in the center of the room. Creeper.
A cistern? She'd heard of those! How lovely! She turned to see what Nahm was pointing out, blinking. Huh...what was it collecting? This didn't exactly look like water. "It is quiet. It's nice here." Junko collected her hair over one shoulder and idly toyed with the braid she had done it all up in to keep it safe. "So you come here a lot? You must bring all the pretty ghouls here~." She teased him with a little grin and even stuck out her tongue at the grue boil. "Where do those other tunnels go? Just further in?" So many tunnels, this place must have been like a maze if you didn't come down here very often. Junko would trust Nahm knew where he was going.
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 1:08 am
"I could tell you a whole lotta neat things," Nahm teased, grinning. She'd started this line of conversation. Mistake.
"Nah, it's not for romancing," he answered, unexpectedly serious for a moment. "Just when aboveground gets too noisy." He wandered out to join her, looking around at the tunnels. "That one goes to the incinerator, that one goes to a junkheap, I dunno if Moira knows about that but she's gotta, it's huge, that one splits off into a grid with all sorts of gratings and vents and there's like this meat moss growing all over - you ever seen postcards and brochures and s**t from Silent Hill? Kinda like that. It's cool. I dunno about the one over there, my buddy Gordon didn't want me to go in when he was hangin' out with me last time, and I listen to him when he tells me no."
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 1:35 am
Junko just gave Nahm a blank stare when he teased her. "Somehow I don't think what you're implying involves much conversation. Down, boil." She even pointed at the floor to emphasize her command.
And then she ran from that topic like a bat out of hell.
"Oh.." That was...unexpected. So he came here to get away from things? That seemed pretty healthy. It just surprised her that Nahm needed to get away from it all sometimes, she didn't think the boil capable of anything not upbeat and happy and creepy. It was kind of nice to see. She took note of each tunnel, especially the incinerator, should she ever come back in the future to know which tunnels to avoid and which were okay. Huh...meat moss? "That's neat.." She'd never been to Silent Hill but she had seen things for it. "So don't go down that tunnel or that one..noted." She pointed to the incinerator and the one Gordon had said to avoid. "Can we go down the big one?"
...Who was Gordon? A student? Must have been someone Nahm really respected if he listened to them telling him not to go somewhere. "Is Gordon a student?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 2:07 am
Nahm snickered and leered amiably, because she'd been accusing him of creeperhood, and who was he to deny an allegation like that?
"Sure, why not. There's a grate partway down, but there's bunch of smaller accessways along the sides. Gotta watch for minis and trashbots more closely than in the bigger tunnels, but there's some cool places down there." He chuckled and shook his head at the question. "Gordon's one of Moira's headcrabs. Kinda like a Nice Hat, but the symbiont type instead of a mini. He knows these tunnels inside and out - all three of them do, actually, but Gordon likes me best so when Moira lets me take one of them with me it's him."
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 2:54 am
"I want to see it!" Junko was smiling again, bouncing on her toes and reaching for Nahm's hand to lead him to the tunnel he had pointed out. She was used to dodging minipets around her feet, it wouldn't be much different from being in her own dorm, right?
Headcrabs? Awwww! That was so sweet! She'd love to meet one of them at some point. Maybe another visit! "They sound adorable. Moira must really like you! I've never met her myself." But she had heard of her! She just didn't know her yet.
"I think I want to come here again sometime. It's nice." Junko squeezed Nahm's hand and leaned back against the boil, her head against his shoulder. "Thank you for bringing me here."
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:15 am
Nahm let himself be dragged, grinning to himself. Junko was just adorable, really. One of many reasons he liked her. "Moira's awesome," he opined. "I bet she'd like you. You should meet her."
He squeezed her hand back, chuckling a little. "It's a good place to think some thinky thoughts."
There was indeed more activity in this tunnel, minipets peering at the two monsters from openings in the wall and the occasional trashbot trundling past on its own business. Nahm made sure to pull Junko closer to the wall when trashbots appeared, keeping robes and feet well out of the way. The trashbots weren't totally harmless, but they generally left him alone if he didn't get in their way.
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:39 am
"Who doesnt like me~?" Junko replied teasingly, a hand on her hip and a grin on her face. She could name a small handful of students who didn't like her, but other than that..
His words made her giggle. "Thinky thoughts? You're so weeeeird." The weirdest, obviously.
As they walked down the tunnel she lifted her feet to avoid incoming trash bots, trailing her fingers along the wall with a light scrape of her mails and occasionally trying to get a better look at the minipets she could see watching them. This was nice, to just go exploring something new with a good friend, forget any little insecurities she currently had.. "Have you ever been in love, Nahm?" Junko asked conversationally, looking his way again.
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