[log] DO YOU WANNA BE IN OUR CLUB [closed]

[armoured]

Characters: Alphonse Elric, Stephanie Brown, Tadashi Hamada, Mami Tomoe, Freya Crescent, and Edward Elric
Location The convenience store in square P3
Date: Day 016, morning
Summary: More people joining the Katamari team of losers.
Warnings: None currently.

[Passing back through the convenience store on the way to look for Steph's friend was definitely the best idea, it meant another full restocking of food, which would put their supply levels at an almost comfortable place for the first time in many days.

Al is feeling even more hopeful than usual as they root through the shelves for supplies. He's got company, the latest weird problems have abated, and his brother has been in relatively frequent contact to reassure Al that he's safe.

He's moving quickly through the store, trying to stock up as fast as possible so they can keep moving, when the door swings open...]

[OoC: This is a free for all mingle for new and old members of the group.]

Comments

action | OTA

[lancingintherain]

["Mallard River Market". Well, there's no river, and there are certainly no mallards, but this is definitely a market, and the first good thing Freya's seen in a couple days. Her dwindling rations were making her nervous, her backpack is full of junk more appropriate for a different species, and her morale is low altogether, but as she pushes open the door and ducks inside out of the falling snow, she feels hope start to come back.]

["hope" becomes "OH NO" really fast, though, because she immediately realizes two things: that she's made a huge mistake by just walking in without casing the place first, and that she isn't alone in here at all.]

[she hears someone in the aisle nearest to her. There's only one smart way to find out if they're friend or foe: round the corner and stand there brandishing a big plank of wood with shards of metal stuck in it, which is exactly what she does. Keeping her voice down, and trying to sound a lot bolder than she actually feels:]

Who goes there?

[OOC: I'm not worried about time paradoxes with who she meets first, but anyone who tags after the first thread could just find her grocery shopping semi-normally instead of ready to hit them in the face. I'm assuming whoever she meets first would tell her that everyone in the place is part of Team Katamari.]

[armoured]

[Do you know who is the best person to meet around the edge of a corner? This massive spiked suit of armour, of course!

He turns his head at the sound of someone approaching, the lights of his eyes bright in the dimness of the shop interior. Any words of greeting die before he can get them out because that... that's a chimera. True, he's got more used to chimeras after travelling with some of his companions back in Amestris, but she looks so familiar that for a moment he's taken out of Norfinbury and back...

Come and play with me and Alexander today...]

N-Nina?

[The trembling question comes out before he can stop it.]

[tadashiwashere]

[Tadashi hears the commotion going on from the other side of the store, but he has his butt planted on the floor near the SD card machine, making some serious efforts (again) to find and remove a panel to see where the power source for the machine is. At first, he assumes Al has found something exciting -- it's hard to tell with how high the younger boy's voice goes sometimes. By the time he realizes something is amiss, the situation has resolved itself in some way or another.

Cautiously, he edges through the store and peeks into one of the aisles to catch sight of Freya.

And then he steps back again, eyes wide.

What. What did he just see?

Another peek.

At this point, it's rude to not say something, so Tadashi lifts one hand in an uncertain wave.]

Hi. Sorry -- was that you talking to my friend Al just now?

[Mochi the cat, free to wander the store on his own, seems to have no qualms about the new encounter. What's that she has in her bag? The cat wanders up to find out.]

[lancingintherain]

[at the sight of him, she freezes in place, her hands tightening around the sofa-fabric grip of her weapon and her fur standing on-end. At that voice, though, her ears flatten back against her head under her hat, and she stares wide-eyed up at the towering armored figure in open astonishment.]

Alphonse!?

[YOU'RE TEN YEARS OLD HOW ARE YOU LIKE TWELVE FEET TALL]

Action | OTA

[tadashiwashere]

As could be expected at this point in the game, Tadashi was fairly dead-set in making himself useful around any tech they happened to run across. He knew they didn't plan to spend a lot of time in the store, so after gathering enough supplies to potentially last him another solid week, he set himself up at the SD card vending machine.

Once more, he made a selection and watched as the machine reacted and gave him a card. And again, he made a careful inspection of the base, searching for a sign of where power might be coming from.

He'd set Mochi loose already to wander the store and stretch his legs, so Tadashi dropped his supply of gear into a pile, stripped his jacket off, and wedged himself against the machine, pushing against it with his back for all he was worth.

A futile effort, it turned out. Even if their entire party worked together, the machine wouldn't budge.

[armoured]

[The illusion breaks as soon as she speaks, and he can slowly see the differences. She's taller, she's wearing clothes, and she's more... ratty, than she is dog like.]

You--

[Wait, his brain is trying to connect the dots.]

Freya? You're-- [A chimera. Not human. Some rat monster thing.] --here.

[armoured]

"Tadashi, what is that?"

He's seen them before, namely when Max was having his confusion over what it was and then displaying the video that was on the one he found quite a while ago now. Al hunkers down over Tadashi's shoulder to look more closely at the little bit of plastic.

He has a feeling that there might be video content on these too, but he will defer to Tadashi's much greater technological knowledge.

[spoileralert]

You're... Freya, right?

[ Steph is enough of a snoop that she knew already what the strange woman looked like, as well as where she is from and how it differs from where the man Zack is from. She isn't alarmed. At this point, after Al, very little alarms her that isn't actively trying to. ]

Hi, I'm Stephanie.

[spoileralert]

"It's probably a bad idea to grab a shelf unit and try to smash the thing, yeah?"

Steph has found that as things go wrong she gets less and less angry, and what would have started as a desire to burn the place to the ground is now more of a curiosity-driven need to try everything that's viable.

OTA

[spoileralert]

There's something about having a plan and a map, knowing what she's doing and where she's headed that comforts Steph as much as the teddy bear still tied to her backpack with a green sheet. Everything she finds seems to be green. It's a little eerie. Oh well, she looks good in green.

She wanders the store with something almost like a smile on her face, content in the knowledge that if she doesn't find the things she's looking for she can still continue on her way. The utility belt under her purple hoodie is useful for the small things that would otherwise stuff her backpack, and she uses it to arrange a first aid kit of sorts. Bandages, they still need. She doesn't want to give up her few blankets. Where are there bandages...

[lancingintherain]

[she hears him step over and then back, but doesn't see him—she's busy browsing the shelves for anything that she recognizes among the overwhelming assembly of bizarre, colorful packages. She turns quickly in place, in time to catch him peeking again—and keeps her weapon lowered and in a loose, one-handed grip as she reminds herself that this dude is, apparently, a friend. She still sounds cautious, though.]

Er, hello. Yes; he's a friend of mine, too.

[she's about to say something else, but then Mochi makes his entrance. She looks down in surprise at the cat as he wanders up to her, and she takes a small step back. She's from a place where you don't underestimate strangers—even small, fat, fuzzy ones.]

Oh! Hello, there.

[she says this completely sincerely, as if she expects Mochi to talk.]

action; ota

[forfeits]

[ so far, Ed has found little in the way of surviving here in Norfinbury. he's beginning to feel the effects of little to no food and the extreme cold. bad enough they'd had the night with the strange singing and the light.

he does not expect, however, to stumble upon what looks like a shop of some sort -- and begins to walk the perimeter of the building. the butcher knife he found clutched tightly in his hand, he slips into the shop. he expects it to be empty, quiet, but he can hear the rustling and voices of others, which sends panic straight through him. if he had his alchemy, he wouldn't feel this way.

he hears noise in the aisle over and slowly starts to peek around, which only results in him knocking over a few boxes of dried pasta, clattering and spilling over onto the floor. Ed jumps, making an undignified noise as he presses himself back against the wall, momentarily forgetting he was stalking after someone, after all, even though he has the knife extended for attack. pasta is a very dangerous monster, after all. ] W-what the hell?


(ooc; can meet anyone first, doesn't matter. they can also find him trying to clean up the mess. )

[spoileralert]

[ Steph, not talking but searching the store for useful goods, is closest when are knocks over the spaghetti. She glances in that direction, not startled because here is the group filling this place up the most. She does look surprised when she sees him, though, and there's that smile again. It almost feels like things are starting to go right for her. ]

Ed! Geez, that sure is a knife you've got there.

[lancingintherain]

[Freya's investigating a bag of barbecue-flavored chips when Stephanie shows up. She pauses and watches her carefully, but pushes down the impulse to grab her weapon from where it's leaning against the shelf and tries to sound friendly.]

Oh—hello! Yes. ...Stephanie.

[wait. With an edge of suspicion to her voice:]

...You know my name.

[spoileralert]

[ She shrugs, trying to look harmless. ]

You left all your calls public. I like to know what's going on.

[armoured]

Al is focusing more on grabbing all the food that he can find. He already took another week's rations when they passed through only a couple of days ago, but he wants more now if they're going to be on a rescue mission.

He catches sight of Steph as he rounds a corner and clanks up behind her, the sound of his metal feet on the floor more than giving away his approach. His voice, though, is soft for her ears only.

"How are holding up?"

[armoured]

[Al is focusing on looking for food, it's the most useful resource and the one that seems to be the hardest to find in random locations, so he's stocking up with everything he can find.

His first indication that there's someone round the corner is the scattering of pasta, but he assumes it's one of his other companions, and so he doesn't actually investigate until a few minutes later when...

...ah....

There's a second of frozen shock as Al takes in that familiar form, before he's just charging headlong at his older brother and gathering him into a bone-crushing (possibly literally) hug.]

BROTHER!

[spoileralert]

She glances up at him, wondering why he's speaking so quietly. The shop isn't so empty that every sound echoes uncomfortably. But beyond that she doesn't think much of it. She smiles, and it's a little happier than just plain polite.

"I'm alright. It's good to have something specific to do. You?"

[lancingintherain]

[she's taken aback by how freaked out he seems by her—personally, she doesn't think inexplicably tall kids in ridiculous full suits of armor really have much room to be freaked out by anything. She's seen plenty of weird stuff before, but even so, she feels like she'll need some time to get used to her friend's real appearance.]

I am. I was heading west, and—well, here's my first bit of good luck.

[she tries to sound extra harmless and calm, just for him. She even relaxes her grip on her weapon, and gives him a small smile.]

...Forgot my name already?

[armoured]

He feels a bit foolish for asking so quietly now, he had only been worried that she was fretting over the disappearance of her friend and would want to talk without being overheard. But her almost chirpy reply makes his caution utterly unwarranted... but now he can't talk louder without being conspicuous, so he goes on speaking softly.

"Mm, I feel the same way. Even a hopeless situation can start to look bearable with the right companions and the right goal."

[armoured]

N-No! No, of course not!

[He's still flustered, but he's rapidly managing to get himself under control. Even if she is a chimera, then she's obviously not in the kind of pain that Nina had been in, she's more resembling the others that have since become friends of his.

Whatever she turns out to be, he won't judge her, and he's already feeling a little ashamed for reacting so strongly to her appearance. So he too makes an effort to sound more welcoming.]

I just wasn't expecting to see you here, that's all.

[forfeits]

[ when he sees someone, his first instinct is to lash out, but something in her voice is familiar. she knows his name, and though his hand on the knife tightens, he seems to look a little less terrified. ]

W-whoa... jeez, I almost -- Steph, right?

[ well, probably best not to say what he would have done. the knife handle is cold even through the fabric of his gloves. ] Yeah, I found it in one of the houses. Figured it was good to have a defense.

[spoileralert]

[ She raises her eyebrows briefly, her smile turning a little grim. She knows what he might have done, and she knows that she could have dodged it and probably gotten the knife away from him to boot. He wouldn't be the first to try to kill her, though he might be the first to try it accidentally. ]

Good find. The best I've got is a screwdriver. It'll do in a pinch.

[forfeits]

[ Ed has gotten used to the fact that he might not see his brother in this place, that they may be kept apart in this snowy hell. so when he's in a position to attack, pasta scattered across the floor, he does not expect to see the hulking suit of armor, does not expect to see it rushing him.

he doesn't react until he's being crushed between his arms, and Ed drops the knife immediately, arms reaching to hug Al in return. ]

A-Al! [ strange, how a few days in this place make emotions run high, make a lump start in the back of his throat where it shouldn't be. he grumbles, patting the metal shell of his brother. despite his protestations, his voice is soft. ] Hey, Al, c'mon you're killing me here. Squeezing me to death, it's good to see you, too.

[ he laughs, and he's thankful for the hug, for the surprise, because at least now he can stand a little straighter, look a little less wary, and hide the exhaustion that had previously been written all across his face. ]

[spoileralert]

She even grins in agreement.

"Feels like progress. It isn't intel, but it's a start."