walksthebounds | (no subject)

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Jamie ought to be getting back to the Bounds soon - but it's been a long year, and he thinks he's entitled to a day or two of taking it easy somewhere familiar before he plunges himself back into trying to learn a new world and new customs.

Fortunately, he's got a standing offer of a place to stay. He's never taken Laini up on it before - it's easy enough to get his own room - but now he's broke(r than usual), and tired, and it seems the easiest option.

He gives a perfunctory knock, and then pushes the door open.

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"Whassamatter, you blind? I didn't put a sock on the door, and it's not like you'd develop-"

Duo cuts himself off as he looks up from the workbench. His face is oddly distorted from the magnifying glasses he's wearing, and there's a bright attached to it as well.

"Got the wrong room, kid?"

Edited 2009-11-07 05:03 (UTC)

". . . maybe," Jamie says, cautiously, and takes a step back, checking the number against the key in his hand.

"- and then again, maybe I've just got bad timing." (At least Duo doesn't seem to be wearing a towel. Or pajamas. Or anything that would indicate that a sock on the door would have been helpful.) "Ah - isn't this Laini's room?"

"Sure is, though not that you'd know it." Duo flips the lens up to get a proper look at who he's addressing. "She's been on a trip for a while, and who knows when she'll be back."

"She said I could stay here," Jamie explains, holding up the jangling keys, and glances over at Duo's worktable. "But if you're, ah, already in possession -"

Duo snorts. "Nah, I'm just a temp roomie. Laini tends to take in strays." He grins.

"If you don't mind me cluttering up the place, come on in." It's hardly cluttered, really. Duo has a set of tiny tools laid out neatly on the desk, with Laini's projects stacked (with great care) to one side.

Jamie doesn't have to be asked twice; he heads over to the table, looking curiously at the tools (and at Laini's projects.)

"I reckon I'm another, then. Stray, that is. I'm Jamie." He waits to hold out his hand until he sees if Duo is going to stick out his - you never know what the customs are.

Sure enough, he does. "Duo Maxwell."

His hand is calloused and scarred, obviously someone who has plenty of experience with machinery. (And guns, but that's harder to tell.)

He's currently working with a tangle of wires and a dissected circuit board.

"Pleased to meet you."

Jamie shakes the hand - his own is reasonably unmarked; he hasn't been doing anything that would build up callouses lately - and then rests an elbow on the table.

"I hope you're not building a booby-trap for the room," he comments, with a grin. "As a guest on sufferance I'd probably feel obliged to tell Laini. That would start us out on the wrong foot."

Duo grins. It's sort of sly. "Or you could help me make one. She'd probably appreciate the humor."

Beat.

"After she killed us both, anyway."

Jamie gives a snort of laughter.

"I'd take you up on it, but my immortality ticket's been revoked. Unless you've got an extra life you'd like to lend me?"

The sad thing is, kid could be serious. You never know, here.

Duo checks his pockets and shrugs. "Sorry, fresh out." He tilts his head and eyes Jamie.

"I know where we could get some, though."

Jamie's eyebrows go up.

. . . is he serious? You never do know, in Milliways.

"All right, I'll bite - where?"

Several minutes later...

"No, no, man! You have to jump on their heads twice! Or they just walk around like killer accordions."

"- unprintable things!" says Jamie, pressing buttons furiously (only he doesn't; he actually says them, in a variety of languages.)

"Bloody little dinosaur gits, what'd I ever do to - wait, where am I now? Why am I underground? Am I meant to be underground?"

"I've never been clear on if they work for this Bowser tool, or if they're just the local fauna. Imagine the trouble they'd have getting to work in the morning?"

Duo fidgets with the other controller. "Yeah, underground is fine, sometimes it's a shortcut, or there's hidden bonuses and crap."

"I'm not surprised they don't like us really, we're awfully shady-looking characters - oh buggering hell!"

Jamie scowls after another tiny dinosaur that has, presumably, stompled the head of his tiny man.

"Dinosaurs," he complains. "What mad creator ever thought they were a brilliant idea? Extinction serves them right!"

"Pick up the mushrooms instead of running away from them next time," Duo suggests. "Remember, you're already hallucinating. Give in and you will become stronger!"

His green hatted-and-overalled plumber crushes the dinosaurs and giant bullets in revenge for the death of his brother.

And then he gets fireballs. Muhuahaha.

"These are awful morals for children," Jamie says approvingly, and then starts as the bright green-and-blue world fades out.

"- wait, now there's numbers! I'm not meant to have to do anything about the numbers, am I? They're not sneakily trying to teach us maths?"

Jamie does not approve of games that sneakily turn into schoolwork!

"Ignore the numbers. You won't be alive long enough to appreciate their value anyway."

Was that a challenge? Yes. Yes it was.

". . . is it against the rules to shove my tiny brother into the path of oncoming dinosaurs?" Jamie wonders, innocently. "I'm just asking for clarification's sake."

"Hey, I'm totally taller than you, shorty." In the official art, anyway. It's hard to tell when you're that pixelated who's really bigger.

"Besides, I think we're done with the dinosaurs. It's on to weird turtle-things. And the occasional rugby player who also turns into a frog."

Look, he didn't make this game. Don't ask him to explain it.

"Serves him right," Jamie says, watching the demise of the rugby player with gleeful satisfaction. "Football's king!"

Duo squints at the screen. "Wait, he was wearing a helmet. Maybe he was an American football player. Oh well!"

Then, Mario hatches a strange egg on the screen. Up pops Yoshi.

"Oh, well, American football," Jamie says, waving a hand to dismiss the whole genre, and then hastily returns his attention to button-pushing.

"- wait, now we're forcing the dinosaur young into labor? No wonder they're not fond of us."

"I'd really prefer not to think about what this guy is. Because it's definitely a guy...yet he lays eggs." Too many mushrooms, Duo supposes.

"They did that this place I visited once," Jamie remarks, brow furrowed as he narrowly eludes an angry frog-thing.

"It was great, actually. Really easy to make money as a babysitter."

Duo eyes him a little. He's having trouble conflating just why males laying eggs would make it easy to get a babysitting gig.

"Yeah? Where was that?"

Jamie makes a pondering noise.

"I don't remember what it was called. They spoke something a bit like French, though, I remember that."

(He remembers it because frogs lay eggs. Political correctness for the win!)

"That is so weird. I mean, I don't give a lot of thought to the language thing, here. But really, you and I could be speaking something totally different, and neither of us would ever know."

Duo pauses.

"But then again, if I try and speak something else, like Japanese, it comes out sounding right to me. And a couple other people have heard it like that too."

"- really?" Jamie says, interested.

"Wait, let's see - try the Japanese."

(Jamie's fairly sure he knows it, though he's not really sure which of his languages it is.)

Duo looks up at the ceiling for a moment, considering exactly what to say.

"壁に耳あり、障子に目あり," he says.

"ああ, 実に?" says Jamie, looking up also - once again, in this place, you never know - and then, "くそ. 二の舞ってしまった!"

"No, but it seemed apt, considering what we were talking about. I don't think I'd sleep here if they really did."

He picks up his controller and immediately heads off to the Yellow Switch Palace for an easy extra life or two.

"I'm guessing you heard that the way you were supposed to."

"I heard it in Japanese, all right," Jamie says, and taps his head. "I reckon it's because we were trying. It's the same way when I use Russian with Piotr - you know, the big Russian bloke."

He eyes the screen narrowly, until Luigi pops back up again.

"All right, you're not getting me dead so easily again!"

"Maybe if I talk in Spanish it would distract you more?" Duo offers cheerily as he hits the little 'P' switch and picks up a pile of coins.

"I'm onto you," Jamie retorts, and attempts to jump on Luigi's head. (It does not work so well, as the game is not designed to be fratricidal.)

"Oh, you'll like this next one," Duo says as he finishes his level and handy yellow blocks shoot all over the map. "It's got cliffs."

He tosses his controller down and climbs up off the couch as Mario reappears for his turn. "Want anything to drink?"

"Ummm. What are you offering that won't corrupt the youth?"

Jamie wants his reflexes top-notch for videogaming!

Duo snorts. "I'd say you stay here long enough, you're pretty much guaranteed to get corrupted before your time." He rummages through the mini-fridge.

"Iced coffee, water, soda, toxically colored sports drink?"

"Toxically colored sports drink please!" Jamie says promptly.

What? It's a challenge.

Duo passes him one. It's...green. If you're being generous. Don't bother to ask the flavor. It's green. But fortified with electrolytes and vitamins!

He gets himself a can of coffee and sits back down.

Jamie takes a gulp, and then pauses, to consider his drink.

"- full sensory experience, all right. I'd reckon those mushrooms don't taste too far off this."

"D'you think he eats them?" Duo asks, nose wrinkling. "Or snorts them up his mustache? Or maybe just absorbs them. In some kind of weird osmosis."

"Maybe he's actually destroying them," Jamie suggests, as Mario leaps for some shiny gold coins.

"Maybe he's getting moral points."

"Nah, he grows, after. They obviously have some kind of effect on him." It's logic!

"Moral growth!"

Your 'logic' cannot defeat Jamie!

Duo almost chokes on his coffee.

Jamie, considering this a victory, serenely bounces Mario over a fleet of tiny enemy turtles.

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