Logs:Meerkat Manor

Meerkat Manor
Dramatis Personae Nevaeh, Roscoe, Sriyani
In Absentia	2024-02-24 *Roscoe --> Sriyani: why is there a desert in your closet? put it back, i'm watching tv (followed by some hijinx ensuing.)
Location <XAV> Echo and Sriyani's Dorm
The furniture in here tonight has had a bit of a shuffle -- one of the desks and one of the dressers have been pulled nearby to the closet, forming a partial barricade around the closet door. Where the furniture ends a strange mix of Random Items (ranging from a few suitcases to some keyboards yoinked from the music room) are heaped to make up the rest of the makeshift barricade, a sort of semicircular enclosure cordoning off the closet door. Why is the closet door being cordoned off, well. At the moment Sriyani is crouched in front of it, frowning earnestly from their laptop screen -- there's a video paused of several meerkats nosing a treat ball around their sandy floor -- and then their closet door, hand tight on the doornknob. Or, the door that used to go to their closet; on the other side of it now there is decidedly -- something much larger, much wilder, and much more filled with small mongeese. "Okay," they're saying, hushed, to their companion, "just tell me when." Crouched beside Sriyani, dressed in a slightly too large hand-me-down red sweater and jeans, Nevaeh has her eyes closed. Or had them closed. She opens them when she hears the door open and emits a very quiet squeal of delight at what used to be and is no longer the inside of Sriyani's closet. "Not yet," she whispers, closing her eyes only to peek again. "They're so cute, and they're really used to humans..." She trails off, eyes focusing somewhere past the Smithsonian National Zoo's Small Mammal House. At least the one in the present. "Oh, oh, oh! Um, when!" Chime? Ping? In the midst of this, Sriyani's phone is receiving a message. Roscoe --> Sriyani: why is there a desert in your closet? put it back, i'm watching tv Sryiani's eyes light and they pull the door open on Nevaeh's cue. There is definitely no closet behind there; in the desert beyond two meerkats have just been playing with their puzzle ball, which rolls right through the door as it opens. The meerkats follow, knocking a pair of live mealworms out onto the dorm floor. Possibly this is not the greatest time for Sriyani to move to check their phone but its chime has them well trained, so as it buzzes they're abandoning the door to reply. A third meerkat has followed the mealworm path, but is scampering over the makeshift barricade as Sriyani lets their guard down. Sriyani --> Roscoe: What! There's a lot of things in my closet Sriyani --> Roscoe: Put your eyes back you shouldn't be looking into my room anyway Sriyani --> Roscoe: Aaa you distracted me now YOU gotta help put this back Nevaeh's squeal is not so quiet this time, startled by the initiative shown by the apparently unforeseen third meerkat. She scrambles over the barricade. Or tries to. Her trailing foot unseats an apparently load-bearing tennis racket, and the already unstable structure collapses. It also trips her up, and sends her stumbling out in the middle of the room. The errant meerkat, meanwhile, has scurried up onto Echo's bed and assumed its iconic, watchfully upright pose. Roscoe --> Sriyani: i wasn't looking in your room!!!!! Roscoe --> Sriyani: wait, put what back? Roscoe --> Sriyani: 😱 omw Sriyani's hand has clapped over their mouth, though their wide eyes are delighted rather than alarmed. They're stifling a laugh as the first of the meerkats escape, and nudge the treat ball just a little farther into the room, wriggly little bribes to keep the meerkats inside as they go to offer Nevaeh a hand up. "Oh my god he's doing the pose -- you're such a stereotype, look at your friends over here defying expectations." There is amusement in their voice as they chide the meerkat on Echo's bed. It's only now, as they regard the creature's new vantage point, that they're idly musing, "-- I really hope he follows the ball back through the door." Nevaeh hangs onto Sriyani's arm for a moment after she's righted, closing her eyes. "That third one messed me up. Now I have to find the new way to get them all in there without being noticed..." The annoyance of doing so doesn't stop her pulling out her phone to make a video of the meerkat standing sentry on the bed. She takes a very careful step forward and stoops to get a close-up. "We might need more mealworms..." A moment later the (bedroom, not closet) door opens abruptly and Roscoe comes barrelling inside, where he promptly collides with Nevaeh -- "Oof!" he says with alarm, grabbing a suitcase for balance and almost losing it again when the suitcase starts to roll. As soon as he is solidly on his feet again, though, he is distracted by the meerkats. No, not the meerkats -- "Ew, ew, what's in the ball?" He says this with cheerful fascination. "Oh close the door!" Sriyani is unconcerned about Nevaeh and Roscoe's collision but is flapping a hand hastily towards the bedroom door. It serves as a reminder to them to hop over the tumbledown barricade and close the closet before the meerkats can escape back to their home. They crinkle their nose as they look down at a stray mealworm trying to escape becoming a snack by wriggling under their backpack. "Worms," they tell Roscoe with delight. "It's for the teacher's lounge, it's honestly ridiculous to have a curfew on a Saturday night so we have to entertain ourselves here." "The worms are for the meerkats," Nevaeh adds helpfully as she stumbles right back into sitting in one of the desk chairs. "But this is not the future I saw originally, so all bets are off." She sounds downright gleeful about this. "You have to help us herd them back through. I'll see if I can find the teacher's lounge and make sure there isn't anyone watching." Only now does she remember to stop the video that's been recording on her phone and closes her eyes again. "Okay okay there's no one there right now but we have to hurry someone is coming!" Roscoe rolls the suitcase back where it was super casually. "My bad," he says. "What was the future you saw originally? Was I in it?" He puts one hand on a keyboard in what would have been a very discordant chord if it were plugged in, and leans around Nevaeh to gawp with open-mouthed amazement at the meerkat on Echo's bed; as Nevaeh is looking at the teacher's lounge, Roscoe is holding up his phone to get a picture too. "Oh, yeah, nobody's there right now," he says. "Someone was watching the Knicks game earlier but they turned it off." If he could end a spoken sentence with :( he probably would have, but the mopey expression he pulls is almost good enough. "Do you want to know who's gonna win? You could go bet real quick." Sriyani's eyes are gleaming as they reach for the closet door again. It's become a closet once more as soon as it closed, but shortly after they take hold of the handle, the teacher's lounge is behind it instead. "Nevaeh's supposed to be practicing looking at good futures so this is basically like homework. -- okay c'mon meerkitties." They are reaching out with a toe to nudge the wormy puzzle ball back towards the door just as they open it, gently rolling the wormball into the lounge. One of the meerkats is eagerly following, at least. “No, but you are now.” Nevaeh frowns, and a ghostly 3D image of the teacher's lounge fades into existence around them, showing Meerkat One is batting the treat ball around in the future. “I think it changes more unexpectedly the more things we do different from how we…originally got there?” In the vision, a second meerkat joins it through the open door that does not look out on the hallway but into another room, three blurry teenagers only hazily visible beyond. The sudden movement of the ghostly image startles the actual meerkats in the present, and the lookout emits a rapid chirping string of alarm barks that sends Meerkat Two through the closet door. It seems reluctant to flee, itself with Roscoe and Nevaeh between it and the exit. “I don't know how we get the third one in there.” "Aw, my bad," says Roscoe, his tone so blithely unapologetic that it borders on sarcastic. When the ghostly teacher's lounge materializes, his eyes widen -- "Jeez, this is trippy. How can you even tell what futures are..." he glances aside at Nevaeh and seems to decide this is not worth asking. Instead, he pokes the holographic future treat ball with the toe of his sneaker, which -- though his foot goes right into the toy a few times -- gives off the impression that Roscoe and holographic future Meerkat One are kicking the ball to each other. This, alas, does not seem to encourage Meerkat Three to stand down. Nor does gesturing toward the teachers' lounge and saying, "Shoo! Go with your homies!" After a moment, Roscoe glances to the side, then hastily shuts the bedroom door loudly -- this time, "My bad" is apologetic. The sudden slam of the door does spur Meerkat Three off the bed; Roscoe makes a tiny, undignified "eep" sound and jumps out of the way. "Ack!" Sriyani reaches to swipe a towel from where it's hanging on the edge of their bed, trying to use it to shoo the meerkat towards the closet door. The animal does get shoo'd -- under Echo's bed. When Sriyani crouches down to nudge one lost mealworm nearer the edge of the bed they narrowly miss getting bitten, scurrying back with an offended look. "Hey I was trying to feed you that not me -- oh no how long do we have." “Oh no, Mister Summers is coming,” Nevaeh whispers urgently. “Maybe twenty seconds? Fifteen?!” She scampers onto Echo's bed and jumps up and down on it in a bid to encourage the meerkat out. “Roscoe go over there so it doesn't try to go under the Sriyani's bed.” She doesn't actually sound very confident about this. Possibly it's not actually a precognitive instruction this time, but at least she doesn't seem quite as frantic now. “Oh and Boston wins,” she adds casually, between bounces. "Oh, no, it's Summers," Roscoe says, almost at the same time. He dutifully hightails it to stand on guard by Sriyani's bed, poised bracingly like a soccer goalie with his knees bent and his eyes carefully scanning under Echo's bed. "It's right there --" probably nobody else can tell where the meerkat is exactly, even when Roscoe points with one finger. He perks up a moment later -- "Yes! Take that, New York." "Oh no Mr. Summers?" The meerkat is abruptly forgotten as Sriyani drops the towel and flings themself towards the closet door. It closes with a thud, the other meerkats still happily enjoying their scattered mealworms on the floor of the teacher's lounge. Only then does the third meerkat venture back out, darting to snatch the bribe that is trying to wriggle back towards the relative safety of the Heap O' Towel nearby. "Oh we won?" Should Sriyani be worrying about other things? They are instead just perking at this Excellent Sports News. "Next time, we should definitely place bets." --- When the door opens to the teacher's lounge, the meerkats both scatter under the nearest plush sofa, leaving their haul of mealworms and the treat ball still rolling about the entrance of the room; all is quiet once more. Scott notices none of it -- he's humming tunelessly, with a binder-clipped bag of chips he's cradling like a baby and a bowl of dip in one hand; with his other hand he is checking his email. He puts his phone in his jean pocket and sits on the sofa, reaching for the remote, then pauses at an unfamiliar sound, his brow furrowing slightly. He bounces, once, on the sofa as though the springs might have been the cause, then sets his chips and dip aside (the dip teeters precariously where it sits on the cushion) and stands to investigate. First he stares bemusedly over the back of the sofa at the mealworms, then he crouches down to look underneath it. "What the --"