hashtag_chocobro | Room 303; Thursday Evening [12/06].

Nina was probably the most romantically exiled person there was on the island today! Which would be sad, except that she was a willing participant in her own exile. (It was for the best cause, of helping Vette's love life! And Sidon's too, though should things go wrong, she was going to be very disappointed in him.)

She'd had some very strict words with the squirrels (they were to tell her everything) and had, for the night, left Foomy at the Magic Shop, since the guy she was dropping in on would probably appreciate that, even if he didn't know it to appreciate it.

And so, armed with Mooby's, Nina made her way to her destination.

"Is, like, the point of this game just to kill people????????????" Nina asked abruptly, peering over his shoulder.

Hi, Prompto!

What? Knocking? Announcing herself? Not trying to scare the crap out of him? Nah! He could take it! She had faith.

If Prompto was startled slightly, he would maintain that it was only because he'd been on a stealth mission, leaning forward toward the screen, tongue sticking out slightly in concentration as he slipped around a corner to unleash a volley of bullets onto his unsuspecting enemies in an admittedly pretty gratuitous display of violence so crisply presented on his nicely upgraded screen. So a voice behind him when he was kind of in the zone made him jump just a bit as his head whipped over his shoulder.

Not an enemy sniper bent on revenge. Something even worse: a cute girl with fast food. All she needed was a puppy, and it would be the Unholy Trifecta of Perfect Argentum Ruination.

But he grinned, figuring he had a pretty good idea on why Nina might be looking for somewhere to hang out tonight. "Not just," he informed her, turning back to the game as he pulled out a grenade and tossed it into the room he'd just been in, backing up carefully before igniting it spectacularly. "It's also destroying buildings and things, too!"

That done, he paused the game to turn around in his chair and ask, "What's up, Nina?" even though he already knew, but also knowing that asking would likely get him filled in in a...uniquely Nina was that was probably not to be missed.

She'd even brought a bribe, in the form of fast food, because really, where else was she supposed to go? (Okay, one of the common rooms would suffice, but that was no fun at all!) Nina beamed at him and if some of that was because she'd startled him well, yes, that had been the point.

"I have been churlishly exiled from my domicile, which has been made palatal," she said, in the tones of direst doom, though given that her smile was going nowhere, it could be inferred that she did not actually mind. "Starry lights abound!!!!!!!! A feast is laid out!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Elegant cushions dot the landscape and are ripe for romance!!!!!!! I fled before the princess-to-be arrived and now, I come here, to beg prettily for a place to rest my weary feet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina offered him the bag of Mooby's.

Edited 2018-12-06 16:14 (UTC)

And now Prompto had nearly bitten the inside of his cheek raw from the effort not to laugh. Because wow. Woooow. That even managed to exceed his already high expectations of Nina's account of the whole thing. He almost wanted to give her a round of applause, if it wasn't more fun to just play along.

"No!" he gasped, eyes wide, a hand to his deeply scandalized heart. "What tragedy! What inconvenience! To be cast aside out of hearth and home for such unsavory pursuits!"

He nearly broke at that one, so it became imperative to throw himself into it even harder to keep from laughing.

"But of course you may seek refuge in this...far humbler abode, my poor, beleaguered, displaced lady," he ducked his head, before taking up the back, hopping out of his chair with a sweeping gesture of his free arm toward it. "I shall even offer to you the best seat in the house, though I'm sure such a concession will do little too soothe you in this time of such trying desperation."

"It soothes me not at all," she declared, as she took her seat in the offered chair, nearly swooning into it, really. "Well, perhaps a little. It's a rather nice chair!!!!!!!!!! Though I will accept, but for a few moments, as to remove you from your murdering and blowing things up for longer than that would make me out to be quite the churl myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And even damsels in distress had standards.

Also Nina wanted company and a place to hang out. Not to usurp his room.

Prompto couldn't help a smirk slipping through now; talk about a tough crowd. "There's more than one chair, you know," he said, reaching for the other one, because apparently, stealing Jason's chair was going to be a regular past-time for him now. He pulled it over close, setting the bag on the desk, and plopped himself down before giving into the temptation to inspect the contents of said bag. "That one you're in right now is just the best, though, because it's mine."

And he'd achieved a comfortable butt groove in it that was truly unrivaled.

"Besides, I think I can take a break from all the murdering and blowing things up for a little while. Especially if there's dinner. I did not spend all that money on all this nice equipment just to go ahead and get hamburger grease all over it."

She laughed, making no move to get out of his chair.

"I suppose that's fair," Nina conceded, surveying his set up. "Admittedly, like, I don't know a lot about this sort of thing, but it looks pretty impressive!!!!!"

And Nina was kind of impressed at herself for how much of it she recognized as being a thing.

She pursed her lips for a moment, then cast a side-long glance at him. "Does it, like, work as well for keeping up with your people back home?????????"

Because, like, that was the suckiest bit about the whole mouse thing.

"Yeah," Prompto said with a faint grin for that one. "I've got it rigged up with some parts from home so that I can easily connect with my friends back home, and we can all play together. Not that, like, it was that hard or anything; it helps that the tech here is almost exactly the same as what we have there, and, I mean, we could always connect through our phones, too, but it's just so much more epic on a screen bigger than your hand."

The contents of the bag inspected, Prompto dug out one of the sandwiches, nudged the bag Nina's way, and held up his spoils. "Thanks for this, by the way. I was in such a rush to get home after all those birds, I didn't even think about food."

"I liked the birds!!!!!!!"

Because she would, really.

And it gave him something to likely be horrified by while Nina got her own sandwich out of the bag and wrestled with a pang of envy that was completely unwarranted.

She didn't even have people she'd want to contact for fun back home.

"Is there, like, a limit on how big the screens can get?????" she asked, instead. "To make it even more epic??????????"

Edited (I'll get formatting down one day. One day!) 2018-12-06 19:34 (UTC)

"I liked them for the first hour," Prompto allowed, because it was true; he'd even got in on the song with them, but once he realized they had no plans of stopping, like, ever... "But that got old real fast.

"And I guess there's no limit, really, if you can find a screen big enough. Hook something like this up in a movie theater? I mean," he had to grin a little crookedly at the thought, "I don't think you could get more epic than that."

And there was a theater here, wasn't there? So now that thought was in his head.

"Oh my gosh!!!!!!!!!! There's a theatre here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Because, really, how amazing would that be??????

"I mean, I'd probably just rather watch," she admitted, "but if you didn't mind that, I'd be totally willing to help you set everything up!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina was not a gamer, but she knew both Prompto and Vette enjoyed things like that.

"And you could set it up on a day where your friends were available!!!!!!!!!!"

Ah, but then the question became 'did Prompto really want both sets of friends to meet'. Nina hoped he did.

"Do you think they'd let me do something like that?" Prompto asked, snorting a little into a laugh, because someone didn't quite grasp how little a word like let was likely to mean to some of his friends here. "Because that would be kind of amazing. And I did promise Vette she could join in on one of our raids sometime. That'd be one hell of a way to get her introduced to it."

Granted, he may have been putting that off out of pure fear, sure, but he could push through his fear for gaming with (almost) all his favorite people in a movie theater, easy.

She had no idea what the narrative was implying, honestly! Nina was a lady.

Nina laughed, waving one hand dismissively. "I'll take care of arranging the space, if you want to do it," she said, since really, if she let Prompto and Vette do something like that it would take forever. "I'm, like, good at talking people around to my point of view!!!!!!!!!!"

No, she was good at steamrolling right past their objections. Psh, same differences.

She bit into her burger.

Well, it definitely didn't take much for Prompto to be convinced on this matter, at least, ruminating over it thoughtfully with his own bite. "Man," he said, swallowing, "that would actually be awesome. Probably wouldn't take me much to figure out what I'd need to make it work, just a matter of getting in there, and then..."

No more putting off potential trash-talk aimed at him like a laser on both sides!

"You and Vette could....kind of meet Noct and Gladio... Iggy, too, if we do it on a school night. He doesn't play, but he always complains about when we do. Maybe we can convince him to join in, too, if you play. Wouldn't want things to be uneven, right?"

"It would be a terrible thing of him to do to me, if I were playing and he wasn't," she said, nodding sagely. "Do you, like, think he'd be convinced by that????????"

Meanwhile, she was already contemplating ways to get the theatre at their disposal.

"If he was here it'd be easy to convince him," she continued, "but since he's back in your world, that's harder??????"

Nina was good, but she was not yet that good.

"We'll see what we can do," Prompto said with a chuckle, trying to picture Nina, Vette, and himself ganging up on Ignis with pleas to play, which would honestly be worth it even if it didn't work.

"I mean," he reasoned, "if Noct is on board, he's the prince, Ignis pretty much has to do what he says."

Ahahaha.

HAHAHAHAHA.

Yeah, right.

But it was amusing enough to think about.

Nina squinted at him over the top of her burger.

"From the fact that you say that, that makes me think not so much??????"

Though she was intrigued by that.

"Do you listen to Noct??????"

"Well, yeah," Prompto shrugged a little, picked a pickle off where it was hanging out a little from the last bite. "Of course. But, I mean, he's not really the type to tell people what to do just because he can, either, so that helps. And when he does, he's usually not wrong. He was the one who convinced me that going here might be good for me, and, man, this place has been amazing, so it's a good thing I did listen."

Edited 2018-12-06 23:30 (UTC)

"I guess I can't be, like, too surprised," Nina conceded, wiggling to get a little more comfortable in her chair. "Even I have people I listen to!!!!!!!!!!!"

It was shocking, but it was true.

"You didn't want to come???????????"

Nina? Listening to people? Well, maybe with extreme reluctance, he could believe it. With maybe a stomp of her foot and cute pouting, and it was adorable.

"No," Prompto admitted, more than a little sheepishly, "not really. I was leaving behind a lot of good things in Insomnia, I'd never even left the city before. But it's not like it's going anywhere, and low I have all these new experiences to bring to the table. A ton of new friends," even that he HAD friends, really. "Theres no way I could have imagined this place would be like this. Good thing at least Noct was smart about it."

That... that was fair. It wasn't true, but it was fair.

Nina considered that. Part of her wanted to ask if he'd go back home if he could, right then, but at the same time, she didn't really want to know the answer and didn't really want to pressure him into an answer he thought she'd prefer either.

Deciding that was too sticky to ask, she changed direction.

"Have you, like, thought of going back for a visit?????? Like the trip with Sidon, going to his home..."

Ah. Er.

"You are invited, right?????????????"

"I was actually thinking of spending winter break back home," Promtpo admitted, hthe wistfulness in his grin gone a bit crooked, "but, then, yeah, Sidon had to go throw his trip into the mix. Who does that guy think he is, anyway, ruining plans with free vacations to exotic locales, kicking people out of their rooms just so he can be, like, the best boyfriend ever? What a jerk."

"The worst jerk," she said, her expression going a bit dreamy. "Honestly, Prompto, you should have seen the room!!!!!!!!! It looked amazing!!!!!!!!!"

Maybe she'd wheedle Vette into asking him if they could keep some of the fairy lights.

"And this trip!!!!!!!! I'm so excited!!!!!!!!!!! And I have, like, no idea what to wear!!!!!!" She was going to wind up bringing everything, since obviously Vette had to be coming too.

Nina laughed. "Though it did make me realize that a trip to my world might be more complicated than this one is?????? Vette and Sidon wouldn't exactly fit in, you know?????"

"I'd suggest maybe asking Sidon for advice on what to wear, but, I mean...." Prompto snorted. "Can't imagine he'd be much help there, unless you're into the look de au naturale. And, you know, I never really thought about that before, but I don't think a trip like this would work for my world, either. There's no one like them there. Just a whole lot of...boring old humans, I guess."

Nina threw a napkin at him.

"I wouldn't ever!!!!!!!!!!" Oh my gosh, that would be the worst. Being naked around everyone?

She would die.

Fixing Prompto with a look that she hoped expressed her disdain for that idea, she chose to focus on the other thing he'd said.

"I don't think you're boring," she said earnestly. "And while humans are, like, the most common in my world, they're not the only race. We've got Kobolds, Elves, Dwarves, Wingers... but those are, like, recognized and known?????????"

Edited 2018-12-07 00:46 (UTC)

There was a faint smile of appreciation for her feeding him that line about not being boring. "And all we've got are humans and daemons and magitek soldiers. A lot of cool animals...I think...most of them are outside the wall, so maybe if we went there instead of the city, but that'd be a whole new adventure for me, too."

She meant it, darn it!

Nina considered that.

"But, like, the daemons mean you shouldn't really go outside the wall, right??????????"

She was game for it, since Nina was fearless, but Prompto had... er... well. Seemed the opposite of keen about daemons, so...

"Well, people still live out there," Prompto explained. "But it's not a very easy life. They mostly come out only at night, and if you keep the light going...they won't go near it. One of the largest cities out there, Lestallum? Runs on a giant generator powered by a meteor that keeps light going to all the outposts. And there's no daemon in Altissia, but then that'd put us in Nif territory..."

There was another soft, almost apologetic smile. "It's complicated, outside of Insomnia. For more than just the daemons."

"It's okay," she said easily, since really, they didn't have to go there. Though Nina was probably going to spend an absurd amount of time nagging Portalocity for info on all these places.

"But, like, it'd still be totally cool if one day you showed us around Insomnia, wouldn't it?????? And I'm sure I could swing something at home too!!!!!!!! Don't know about Vette, though, she can't access her universe at all!!!!!"

"Yeah," said Prompto, slowly, as he thought about something, "that'll be interesting, won't it? Like. that she'd be able to go to Sidon's world, or mine, or yours, but not her own? It doesn't make any sense. Traveling between worlds is so much easier in all the video games and comic books..."

"I wouldn't know about games or comics like that," Nina admitted, since those... weren't really a thing they had at home. "But cranky bus dude mentioned something about it doing that to some people??????? And from what else I've heard, it seems fairly common???????"

She shook her head.

"Like, some of the ideas floated about are that it's a way to make sure those going back to their worlds are ready to face them?????????? Vette doesn't talk much about her life there, but..."

Well, it hadn't been pretty.

Prompto nodded a little. He didn't know a lot of details, but he felt he knew enough about Vette and how she responded to thing in those little quiet moments they sometimes had to know there was proably...a lot going on there. "Maybe," he offered thoughtfully, "it has something to do with how you're coming here, too. Like me and Sidon, we both knew we were coming here, and we can get back. Well, I mean, I haven't had a chance to go back yet, but I have no problem contacting home or sending and receiving stuff. What...what about you? I'm not sure if we've ever really talked about that, have we? Maybe when we first met, which seems, like, forever ago at this point! It really wasn't that long, though, was it?"

Then again, he'd only known Noctis for two years now, really known him, as a friend, and look at them now.

"What brought you here, anyway?"

And there... there were an awful lot of answers to that she could give him, there really were. There were ones that she knew he'd believe and ones she wasn't sure he would. There were ones made up of a thousand little lies and ones that were nothing but big, bold lies, coloured in badly.

Vette hadn't even asked why she was here, though she'd asked other questions.

A thousand stories flew through her head.

In the end, though, they were friends. So she told the truth.

"Well, like, oh my gosh," Nina said, looking at him as she reached for the bag to steal some fries. "What a thing to ask!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think I might faint--or you might, upon hearing my story!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" One hand holding a fry, she raised it to her forehead, looking tragic. "I," Nina declared, in tones of absolute import, "am a spy!!!!!!!!!!! I've been sent here to, like, learn everything about here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And to totally report back to my superiors!!!!!!!!!"

It was easy to tell the truth, when she didn't think he'd believe her anyway. And a little sad.

Well, and when she told it like that...

...though that would make her a pretty effective spy, too, now, wouldn't it, if no one would believe her when she told them because she was just so...so...Nina about it?

"A spy, huh?" Prompto asked, grinning, not necessarily discounting it, but definitely needing to sound a little dubious, in the case that she was just making it up or being dramatic, that she was testing to see just how gullible he actually was, but, then again, they were sitting there eating hamburgers because their best friend, a blue girl with headtails from outer space, was downstairs having a fancy dinner date with a shark prince from another world, so...he felt it would dumb to discount anything off hand.

"Dredged up anything good yet?" he ventured. "Or is it all classified, top secret, you'd have to kill me if you told me?"

Edited 2018-12-07 03:09 (UTC)

"Indubitably," she assured him blithely. "Though it would pain my heart terribly to do so!!!!!!!!!!"

Okay, Nina could not think of a situation where she'd have to kill Prompto.

"Honestly," she said, "I get most of my gossip from the squirrels?????"

"The squirrels? Really?"

But now that he thought about it...

"You know, that makes sense. Those little dudes are everywhere."

Don't judge him too harshly, Nina. Prompto always got terribly distracted when talking to his big sibling, they didn't really get around to covering little details like radio squirrels, through no fault of hers.

But that wasn't important right now. What was important was Prompto deciding to ask a question that he wasn't terribly sure he'd want a real answer to, despite his smirk.

"So what do they say about me, huh?"

She looked at him doubtfully. Did he seriously want an answer to that?

"First off," Nina said, in a terribly posh voice, "the squirrels are drunken little menaces. So their opinions are... interesting, at times."

Nina loved the squirrels. They were amazing. They were still weird little drunkards.

"That being said, it's probably my fault they've got glitter flags of you and me," she admitted, a bit sheepishly. "Uh, they do that when they think people would be cute together?????? But then there's also the whole thing where you're really not that into me??????? So they get confused?????????"

What? Nina wasn't stupid. They were friends but the level of flail he exhibited around her was not... what she thought he'd show, towards a girl he liked.

She shrugged a little. "Mostly, they like you. Think you're a bit dweeby????? And giggle about your boyfriends back home???????????"

Well. There was some information in that answer he would have never expected or known what to deal with. But, thankfully, Nina had said just enough more than that so that he could avoid acknowledging beyond a few surprised blinks.

Even if he wondered if that last bit was really the squirrels' opinion or Nina's.

"They're not my boyfriends," he pointed out, "but so what if they were? Whatever. They're just jealous."

"They probably are!!!!!!!!" Nina said cheerfully. "They're downright weird about things, but not about boys liking boys."

She was sort of more confused on that score, but given that she'd only heard mention of Prompto's friends back home in the vaguely senses, she had no real opinion on that as it might impact her.

Mostly, Prompto just left her confused in general when it came to liking people.

"Squirrel jealousy," she said, shaking her head. "It's a terrible thing. You should see Leroy pine some days over the notes!!!!!!!"

Oh, gods, they had names?

Well, he supposed they were kind of cute? Still a little weird, though.

"I'm thinking maybe these squirrels need to find some hobbies," he decided. Ones that weren't apparently shipping him and Nina, because....what? That was obviously....crazy. Wasn't it?

Yes, he decided. On so many levels...

Edited 2018-12-07 04:23 (UTC)

To be honest, Nina wasn't sure if Leroy had always been named that or if Paris had named him, but either way, the squirrel answered to that name, which made it his.

"I think the whole news thing is their hobby," she said, her smile going a bit rueful as she ducked her head.

It kind of hurt, to hear that, even though she'd known he wasn't that into her for a while.

"Like, imagine the amount of effort they put in????????"

"I mean, sure," Prompto shrugged a shoulder, feeling maybe a bit like avoiding it only seemed to make it stick in the air uncomfortably, but he just wasn't ready to process that sort of thing right now. "I guess so....so, what, do they just, like, keep tabs on everyone or something?"

Nina paused.

"Do you... like... not listen to radio at all?????????????"

"....no?" answered Prompto, with the uncertain lilt of a person whose only answer was probably the wrong one.

With a look of utter despair, Nina leaned back, draping one arm over her eyes so she didn't have to look at him.

"Prompto," she said, like the news she had to tell him was the worst news ever. "Prompto, they write everything down, in their little squirrely notes, and then they have people around the island read their notes the next day to the entire island and anyone off of it who cares to listen to the podcast. Everything you do is on radio!!!!!!!!!!!"

Unless, like, you bribed the squirrels.

"Everything?"

Well, that would definitely explain why they thought he was mostly a dweeb, then, without a doubt, though he definitely had a feeling some of Nina's natural hyperbole was in effect here. Because he was pretty sure if there were squirrels writing down everything he did and putting it on some broadcast...he would be way worse off in the friend department and probably the everything-else department, too.

"Well, like, we don't have to report everything, because no one really wants to listen to everyone and how often they brush their teeth or shower every day????????????" Nina offered. "But, like, the squirrels still write all that stuff down. They're always watching!!!!!!!!!"

Room 303; Thursday Evening [12/06].

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