Logs:We Own the Night
| We Own the Night | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-08-02 "This is way harder than it looks on Lord of the Rings." |
| Location
<XAV> Dallen, Roscoe, Spencer, and Sriyani's Dorm - XS Second Floor | |
What was once a generously-sized double-occupancy room (or a reasonably-sized triple room) is now a terribly cramped quadruple room, furniture arranged somewhat bizarrely to provide each of the residents a bed, a desk with a hutch, a dresser, and some closet space. It's not intuitive which desk goes with which dresser goes with which bed -- maybe even less so when taking into account the hodgepodge of decorations -- but with only Roscoe in residence over the summer the room is much tidier than usual, Roscoe's own belongings very meticulously stored away even if his commitment to cleaning up his roommates' things has only gone so far as clearing the floor entirely, mostly by stacking things onto their offenders' unused beds or dressers or desks. The effect is oddly Spartan, or it would be with a little less nerdery. The spidery robot that usually roams the floor is conspicuously absent -- probably Roscoe has put it in a closet somewhere, out of sight out of mind. Right now Roscoe is propped up in bed, his pillows smushed into the corner of his top bunk, one arm curved up behind his head to cushion it further, watching a video on his phone, his eyes drooped almost shut -- as he's alone, he isn't bothering to use headphones, so the room is filled with the faint sounds of Elden Ring and the much more strident voice of some streamer making fun of J.D. Vance. It's no longer raining, though there are still fat droplets beaded on the window, and the room is still a little muggy despite the air conditioning; Roscoe is wearing flannel pajama shorts (green checks with a Celtics shamrock) and an orange t-shirt with both sleeves and a portion of the sides cut out. The closet door is opening, spilling muggy-warm air into the room together with a marketplace-clamour -- many voices (chattering, haggling, shouting, laughing) and mostly not in English, the smells of cooking food, beeping horns, music. Sriyani spills out dressed in bold hip-length orange and purple kurta, baggy jeans with large holes in them and jute sandals, holding a small cardboard tray filled with crisp pani puri shells stuffed with spiced potato, onion, peas beside a little tub of tangy tamarind water. "J.D. Vance is low-hanging fruit everything he does is mock-worthy." Sriyani has set their tray aside and is digging through their messy desk. "Have you ever had pani puri it's amazing -- {Nahida I can not find it are you sure we didn't leave it at your place?}" Nahida is slipping into the room after Sriyani, in extremely colourfully embroidered bell-sleeved shirt over a plain white tank, flood-length jeans and ankle boots, green hijab tucked and pinned neat. "Tch, for all I know you chucked it straight into another dimension." She has a tray of small diamond-shaped silverleafed burfi, but she's swapping this out for Sriyani's snack. When she plucks up one of the little shells, fills it with tamarind and pops it into her mouth, there is unsurprisingly the same number still remaining. "Bed already?" Her brows arch as she looks over at Roscoe, and then waggles Sriyani's snack in offering. "Night is still so young, no?" "He was my Senator first I want to listen to people mocking him," Roscoe says plaintively, but the video stops playing, and then a moment later Roscoe pokes his head over the side of the bunk, eyes wide first at all this food and then at Sriyani's desk as they go through it. "Whatchu looking? I can help you look, I'm great at it," he makes the offer a little eagerly. He swings his feet over to prop his heels on the ladder, toes curling under the rung -- "I wasn't asleep I'm just being a lazy piece of shit," he says; only now does he think to crane his neck at the closet -- "What time is it there?" "The morning is young there. Um there was a little --" Sriyani is holding their hands a small distance apart in indication, "-- journal? Book? It's full of pictures, knowing me it's probably in New Zealand or something look it doesn't matter I'll just find us somewhere new." They're heading back to the closet door to close it again. "You really should try the pani puri --" Their face is scrunching up in concentration, and when they open the door again it is on a cluttered room that looks a little like it was designed by Dr. Seuss; inside several people are signing at each other and even without knowing any sign language there's something animated in the motions that suggests it's an intense debate. Sriyani closes the door again quickly with a very small eep. "Okay bad aim give me a sec." Nahida looks amused but unsurprised at this first false start. She fills another one of the crunchy shells with the tangy water and rises on her toes to offer it up. "Crunch it all at once. It's a whole taste explosion. Are you coming with us?" She is eying the pajama pants a little critically. Roscoe leans forward, elbow propped on his knee, to take the pani puri and put it in his mouth, then -- "Mm!" he is hopping down the ladder the rest of the way to take another (unfortunately when he takes it he does reduce the total quantity by one.) "I can come!" he says, then -- also looking down at his legs sticking out of his shorts, and wholly misinterpreting -- "I can put on shoes." "Oh all my trips are shoes optional." Sriyani is scrunching up their face harder this time, like maybe this will help with the focus. Maybe it does, because they bounce slightly on their toes when they open the door next -- this time on an apartment so brightly adorned with banners and puppets and stuffies that it seems like a carnival in miniature. The door they've opened is out of an armoire, opening out into a loft with a fluffy bed and a workbench -- Sriyani is gesturing to the latter, and the compound bow and strange arrows on it. "Okay gogogo." "Sriyani just yesterday we were ankle deep in the snow, don't say rubbish. Shoes optional if you don't like your toes much." Nahida pulls the end of her scarf up over her face and hands Sriyani's tray of food entirely over to Roscoe. She flits through the doorway, fingers fluttering light, and in a moment when she returns it's with a fancy-looking bow and a whole handful of the weird arrows, the apartment behind her still looking untouched. "Next time we're finding the shield, though. Or the wings? You picked the worst Avenger, bow isn't a superpower." "I'll wear shoes," Roscoe decides; he starts to head over to his closet, stops to take the full tray of food, doesn't seem at all sure what he's supposed to be doing with it and is busy anyway gawking into this circus/puppets-themed bedroom -- "Where in Sam Hill is that, is that someone's bedroom?" He wrinkles his nose judgmentally and helps himself to another pani puri while he's holding the tray, frowns again at the bow and arrows. "Do you know how to shoot those?" he says. "Do any of us know how to shoot those?" "I said optional I didn't say that's a good option. Anyway," Sriyani is saying critically to Nahida as she returns, "We can't exactly steal turning big and green and anyway people online say that Cap and the Falcon are like, down in DC hunting monsters with Leo Concepcion, I do not want to get some creepy monster disease off that shield." They are looking very approvingly at the arrows, reaching out to pluck one of the arrows from Nahida. "I totally took archery," for a couple months several years ago, but who's counting, certainly not Sriyani as they close the door, re-open it out onto a deserted outdoor archery range (where is unclear but it is definitely light enough to be Very Early Morning on the other side of the door) "but he's got, like, cheat arrows anyway, it's probably easier." "Nobody's in the bedroom, tch. And it's not somebody it's just a silly superhero." Nahida is examining the very odd-looking head of one of the arrows very uncertainly, but that isn't stopping her from following along after Sriyani. "I'm not very sure that follows. But they probably do some very cool things, I saw footage and sometimes they have a whole explosion. Just in the arrow. Arrowing of the future, I guess." "But why is his bedroom full of creepy dolls?" Roscoe sets the tray down on his own desk, then crouches down to put on his sneakers, which takes juuust long enough that he has to hurry after the other two out to the archery range, leaving the food behind -- "No way," he says, "he probably has hard-mode arrows. Experts-only hero arrows." Despite this prediction he, too, is reaching to take one, holding it up to his eyes with a suspicious squint -- "It looks pretty high-tech for a pointy stick," he says. "Which ones are the explodey ones? We should probably be a little careful with those." Sriyani is squinting down towards the far end of the range, and then at the arrows. They pluck one at random, holding it up for Roscoe's perusal. "Can you tell what's in this? It's not gonna blow me up, is it?" Despite not holding the bow they're already sighting down the length of the arrow-shaft with its odd bulbous tip like maybe they will just chuck it down toward the target. Nahida shakes her head, this probably does not signal any real disapproval of playing around with unknown and potentially explosive arrows, because with a beneficent wave of her hand the one bow is now three bows, the select One Of Each kind of arrow is now a pile of each. She slots an arrow at random into the bow just a little awkwardly, like someone who is definitely trying out this trick for the first time but has watched The Hunger Games lots. Her teeth grit as she tries to draw the bow -- probably she expected this task to be considerably easier, it always looks effortless when the grown-ass muscular and well-trained man on the news was doing it, but she's having to put a hefty amount of muscle into making this work. At least the arrow (whichever it is) is aimed very much a the targets and not at her friends, despite a liiittle bit of wobbling on the draw. "I think the bow is the expert only part," she is deciding (though determined) through her teeth. Roscoe is now pointing the tip of his arrow (this one actually isn't pointy) at his face, one eye closed to ogle the arrowhead, though he lowers it to dutifully ogle the one Sriyani is holding out -- "I dunno how to tell, probably," he reasons, "you'll know when you shoot it?" With that he's grabbing one of these helpfully duplicated bows, turning it this way and that in his hands before hopefully orienting it right-side-up. When he nocks his own arrow it almost immediately wanders to point away, and he hastily undraws, then repeats his mistake. "Jeez," he complains, letting go of the bowstring to inspect his fingers, "this is way harder than it looks on Lord of the Rings." Sriyani's Few Months Of Archery does at least have them getting set up pretty easily. It does not make the draw weight any less, though; they've got some decent muscle for their size but their size is still Not Large, and as they strain to pull the bow the arrow starts to point up-up-up. When they let go (too early) the arrow flies, wobbly, up, and wobbly again back down -- right towards them, and Sriyani's eep is timed with it exploding -- -- into a wide net that falls down like a tangly tent over the three of them. Sriyan's eep has turned into a bright laugh, though they are kind of a little tangled up in here. "Imagine having these for dodgeball instead. Gym would be way better." Nahida squeaks, more undignified than probably she would like. Thankfully, her arrow has poked out between the holes of the net, so when she looses it in her surprise it flies down the field; the resulting CRACK isn't quite enough of a boom to really suggest they are In Danger here but definitely more than enough to suggest they would have been if she'd aimed nearer by. "Aaaand maybe these stay far-far from gym class. Oh! Oh but imagine do you think you could replace something in the tip -- put a little fireworks in there instead." "Ack --" Roscoe's reaction is more of a squawk than a squeak, both arms darting up to cover his head before it becomes clear that neither of these misfires have exploded them. At a very slight delay, he laughs too, a little sheepishly. Fortunately, he hasn't dropped the bow; unfortunately, when he tries to lower his arms again its pointy protuberances are caught in the netting. As he starts tediously trying to unloop the mesh, "If you can make a bow-tie for a bug you can definitely tinker with a bomb arrow," this may not be true but he's very confident in it. Once the bow is no longer entangled in the net, Roscoe is a little less delicate yanking himself free. "Oh yah," Sriyani is agreeing brightly with Roscoe's assessment, "at least Nahida will make the most stylish bomb arrow we've ever seen which is proooobably good because it might be the last thing we ever see, too. Do any of us know how to do chemistry?" They certainly are not volunteering for this tinkering, which is saying something given the many many things they're also terrible at and will eagerly jump into anyway. With a dramatically big sigh (as they start picking their way through the tangle to -- help? hinder? time will tell, but they are attempting to help unravel the group from the weighted net) they finally proclaim, weightily: "I bet Quentin could turn this into some Gandalf-dragon-fireworks nonsense." Nahida is not bothering with much struggling, past painstakingly extricating her bow from the net. Past this she's just waiting, really, for Sriyani to tend to this mess. "He would but it had better be one damn good dragon if we need to put up with the amount of Quentin that will come with it." Is that stopping her, once they are freed, from eying the pile of arrows with an excited contemplation. "What time is it in Chicago, then?" "The night is one hour even younger for Quentin," says Roscoe, then, even more enthusiastically, "He's probably just reading the dictionary or something, I'm sure he won't mind." "She's been in Dhaka all summer, she doesn't know anything about time anymore." Sriyani gathers up a handful of the cloned arrows and clutches them in the crook of an arm, bow slung over their shoulder. They're returning to the doorway that first disgorged them. Unappealingly, it's an aging portajohn at the side of the range, which kind of slightly makes it look like Quentin just lives in a shitter when they yank the door open eagerly. "Quentin are you decent," they're hollering before coming through with the follow up, "what do you know about fireworks engineering or, um, making arrows?" "We get our time first, you are the ones always struggling with catching-up." Nahida is hanging back just a little, lifting the edge of her hijab up over her eyes just in case the answer is no, but following Sriyani into the "I'm sorry, but being ashamed of the bodies we live in is just one of so many arms of propaganda teaching us that what we are needs to be hidden away," the very familiar voice behind the door is saying with a small huffy edge. "Feeling like we have to hide our skin to be decent, just one precursor to feeling like our other natural gifts have to be shut up in a closet. I'm always decent." Quentin (who is in jeans and a colorblocked button down, tucked with one knee up and one folded under him at the desk in his room) has at the first sound/feel of intruding minds and people hastily clicked away from the browser tab he was looking at (likely not fast enough to escape Roscoe's note -- the OED, where he's been looking into the etymology of nightmare). He swivels his chair around, brows lifting. "Plenty about explosives. Not so much about the arrows, yet, but --" He cocks his head back towards his computer where he's already starting to pull up various instructional sources, "give me a bit and I'll learn." "He's decent," Roscoe says unnecessarily, at the end of Quentin's speech -- he did spot the dictionary on the screen, which adds an extra layer of satisfaction to his thought that this is not only exactly what Quentin would say but also such a Quentin way to say it. Probably he doesn't need to come close to the screen at all to be able to read it, but he leans in eagerly anyway -- "Sure sure sure," he says, "the night is young!" | |
