milliways_bar | (no subject)

"It's Cubefall??"

Cue one more delighted Milliwayser, bounding down the stairs like Christmas morning.

Ava's just taken her habitual post-Arashmaharr shower (the assorted infernal smells, she's noted, really get under your fingernails), and she meant to spend tonight hanging around strategically, waiting for Zevran and/or Sameth and/or Sam Winchester and/or pyramid people.

However, the evening's plans clearly need modification.

Twenty minutes later, she has dismantled a chair and a couch and is midway through construction of her now-traditional Cubefall Lego fort. A mostly-neglected salad and Coke sit off to one side.

(As usual, she hasn't even looked at sample configurations.

She's too much of a control freak to give up her body voluntarily.)

Maybe if Andrew happens by, they can have a painfully symbolic conversation about change and new beginnings.

ooc: THERE AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE A CUBEFALL PARTY. Get in on this fort-building action! Open until my brain gives up.

eta: sleepyface merc loves you all! is it can be slowtimes?

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Mike walks over to a nearby table, snags a chair, and sits.

"What're you building?"

Then he stands up again, and prompts her for an answer.

Actually seeing a statistically large turtle do the sitting and standing thing is kind of funny; Ava giggles a moment before she can bring herself to reply.

"Uh. I'm building a fort."

Mike then plops back down into the chair, as if blown away by the revelation.

If she's really paying close attention to his movements, she'll notice his tail moves to the side as he sits, so as to not be pinched by his shell.

"Great googly moogly, a cushion fort in Milliways..."

"Well," she says, "I usually bring in some cushions. But the rest of it is toys! They're kinda Lego-like."

"Usually? Is this something you do on a more than just today-like basis?"

Ava shrugs.

"I've done it before, around this time of year. It's like a tradition?"

"How have I missed this?! I feel so cheated. Cheated and used. Cheated and used and abused and made to feel cheap!"

"I do know you, don't I."

Well that was a sharp turn in the conversation, but fear not! Mike can turn on conversational dimes!

"For a given level of know, yes. For instance, you've been in my living room."

They have that in common!

Also, that qualifier really narrows the field.

(He's not Riley. Even as a turtle, she'd recognize him right away.)

"Hi Mike," she says.

"I wasn't sure it was you at first."

"Hi Ava. I get that. I wasn't sure I was me at first either. It's been so long since I've worn the shell, you know?"

"I ..."

Ava looks him up and down, lips twitching.

"I can guess, I guess, but I literally have no idea."

"Cubefall is the time of year to find out such things."
Is all he's saying.

"I'll pass," she says.

"The world doesn't need to see me without opposable thumbs. Unless ..."

She peers! At Mike's ... turtlehands!

Mike looks down at his hands.

"Come to the dark side, Ava. We have thumbs."

"I just think scales might make me look fat," she apologizes sheepishly.

Mike puts on his most SCANDALIZED face.

"Young lady, I will have you know that these are Scutes, not scales."

"I don't know what that means."

"Well then welcome to Turtle Anatomy 101, I'm your professor Michael J. Angelo. First we're going to learn the names of the shell."

Mike pulls at the neck of his shirt, revealing the yellow armor underneath.

"This chest portion is called the Plastron, and the the back here..." He turns for a better view of his back. "Is called the carapace. The bit that connects the two is called the bridge. The whole shell itself is covered by a series of geometric panels called scutes."

That actually did make sense, weirdly enough.

And yet: why.

"Got it," she says obediently (and reluctantly), though she's tempted to call them the blastron and canape.