milliways_bar | (no subject)

Want to know what might freak her out even more? The girl who pulls right up near her--but not immediately next to her; he knows the importance of personal space re: Oswin--wearing glittery snakeskin gloves and matching boots, a crown, and arm bangles.

She is, in short, a cross between a Sailor Scout and a creature from Xena.

"Water, please," she says quietly to the Bar, fussing with the leather and ribbon harness on her silver wings.

Ooookay, yes, that's distracting. It's the harness that's the worst, she thinks. It looks like some sort of utterly bizarre bondage gear.

Utterly utterly weird.

Bondage gear which looks like it spent time in a second-grader's craft class, yes. Apparently it was ribbon week. But the wings are mended again and that's all she cares about.

She thanks Bar gratefully and guzzles her drink, grinning as she smacks the bottom of the glass on the bar top. "Picked an option yet?" she says cheerfully. How unnerving the cheer is is up for debate.

Hello, Oswin, he thinks. Haven't seen you in a while. Where's Carmen?

Edited 2013-06-06 05:18 (UTC)

"... Choice?" She honestly thought this was just a horrifically horrible joke. Thinks, actually, this girl could be in on it.

"Oh, no!" the girl says mournfully. "Do you not know how to work the vid screens?"

That's a damn shame, Oswin.

"They're really easy," she chirps. "I can show you if you want!"

"... So you're part of this." Did you know Oswin could even do icy disapproval? There you go, Autor, learn something every day.

Actually, he does know that. He knows that very well, thank you.

She laughs the glare off. "Well, of course, but only as a patron," she says, and gestures with a glittery glove to the vid screens hovering above the bar.

"This is Cubefall. A holiday of change." Which you're just going to love, aren't you? "People pick what they'd like to be for a few days, just to try it out. And they build things out of the toys to make new items in the furnace."

You'd know that if you paid attention to the instructions on the screen, Oswin, gosh.

Eh, reading came in secondary when the 'robot' option on her list came out as this, the reason she's still not looking at the screen directly.

"Days?" What if she'd hit that thing by accident?

Autor smiles softly. "It's okay," she says, and waves her hand at the screen again, pretending to push it away. "You don't have to change if you don't want to."

She cocks her head at the tinker toy and Lego chairs. "But building something is always fun, and Cubefall ends after tomorrow."

Edited 2013-06-06 06:00 (UTC)

She catches the screen before it can wander away, chin set a stubborn angle. She can hear an 'easy way out' from a mile away, and fear is something she's been fighting for a long time.

So.

She eyes the other options - a young man, a border collie, and...

Something odd.

A blank box that is labeled Reintegrate with previous code?

Augh, Autor knows that chin-tilt. She orders another glass of water and waits for Oswin to make her choice.

He only hopes she bounces back quickly. She does that.

Well. That makes it a 50-50 shot - she's a computer genius, there's nothing about that last option that makes her at all inclined to choose it.

(And she's not entirely sure she wants to know what it means)

So. Boy or dog.

Boooooy or dog.

Eh.

Her voice has dropped a full octave when s(he) shrugs.

"So I'll be Nina."

Autor glances up at the voice and--holy geez! stars and garters and the love of all tha--jerks back.

"Who's Nina?"

She stands (and shockingly, there's quite a lot of height going on, at least for her - this is the first time she's seen what it's like to be over six feet without the use of a stool) to examine the clothes she... he, definitely he, has been kitted with.

"Huh. Well, at least I'm still stylish." He appraises, taking into account the coat, the red t-shirt and pants she thinks she last saw on a Cleric, and the boots she might need to keep later - all knee-length with enough straps and buckles to count as a restraint device.

"Nina... is a guy I knew, once." SO MUCH LIES.

Apparently bondage is all the rage in fashion these days.

Autor cranes her neck painfully and blinks at the new 'Nina'. He's... so tall! In his normal form, Autor has a good four inches on Oswin, but even as a girl, he was taller than she is.

This, however! She's Yugo's height! he thinks, thoroughly distressed by the unfairness of everything, ever.

"All right, Nina," she says, "what do you want to do first?"

"Well, first we sh-" The rest is swallowed by a startled yelp as he goes down in a tangle of limbs suddenly turned coltish.

Soooo being suddenly tall has disadvantages. One of which? Different center of balance and a much further distance to fall.

And Autor, who has dealt with a change like this before, has just enough foresight to get the heck out of the way.

Interestingly enough, she also has the speed.

"Are you all right?" she asks, and offers a hand.

"That... did not exactly go as planned." Oswin replies sheepishly, accepting the offered hand and stumbling back to his feet.

He takes a couple experimental steps, and wrinkles his nose in a way that looks better on her usual tiny female self.
"How do men walk like this?"

Autor has to try not to lift Oswi--er, Nina--into the air with a hand. Still, it's fairly easy to jerk him into a stumble, which is something she'll have to tone down in the future.

"Um, carefully?" she suggests, trying to sound as neutral as possible. The nose wrinkle almost blows her cover, as she starts giggling.

"So what's first on the agenda?"

"Is this real? Like, actually, properly real?" He fails to answer the question again, running fingers that both seem right and over-large all at once through hair that is definitely shorter than usual.

The girl chuckles, and shakes her head. "It's real, though it might not be true. Either way, it's temporary," she says, and reaches up--way up--to poke Nina in the chest.

The 'real but not true' bit earns a worried, if unfocused frown, but it's soon shrugged off. Mostly so that he can raise an eyebrow at the poking.

"Pretty sure I don't go squish."

"That is because I am being very, very careful," she says, grinning.

And it's true. She could easily pop a hole in Nina's chest with those gloves, snapped and sprained wrists aside.

"Do be careful walking around, though," she says. "You may not go squish easily, but you could still injure yourself if you fell."

Oswin... thinks the girl is joking.

Pretty sure.

...

Actually not sure at all and, has she mentioned, this place is weird?

"Story of my life." He rolls his eyes, steadying himself with one hand on the bar. "Suppose I should test this thing out, since I'm only going to have it for a little while."

Making Oswin unsure is sort of a talent he has. Sort of? In any case, Autor tends to do that a lot, whatever he looks like.

"Reason for the season," he says, having once heard the phrase out of context.

She'll just step back and let Nina get used to her new center of gravity. Just because she's strong enough to catch the man doesn't mean she's fast enough.

Also? Awkwardness.