walksthebounds | (no subject)

(no subject)

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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"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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