Summer Shenanigans, Wednesday, June 10, 2020

[sith_happened]

"Good morning, everyone!" Anakin called through his bullhorn. "Welcome to another fun-filled team-building activity!"

Is everyone excited? No? Ahhh, you're learning.

There were laundry baskets out, along with scooters, and roughly 3,000 plastic balls in the center of the blacktop that totally existed, shhh.

"Today we're playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos," Anakin announced. "Without actual hippos."

Which needed to be pointed out around here. "Because they are mean and not into team sports."

Because he'd called a few zoos to find out.

"We'll have three teams today, of six members each. One member each round will lay stomach down, clutching the laundry basket. The second team member will use their legs to push them into the balls at the center of the arena."

Blacktop. Whatever.

"The team with the most number of balls at the end of six rounds win."

"Listen for your names and retrieve your shirts:

TEAM CINNAMON SMELL
Wayne
Alara
Amaya
Stark
Astrid
Mae

TEAM WHAMP
Sidon
Shuri
Danny
Tahani
Shunsui
Alexis

TEAM RED DRESS
Steve
Duke
Beaker
Sabine
Kitty
Tony"

Comments

Arrive and Mingle

[sith_happened]

Get snacks! Have a bad feeling about this! Hide up on the bleachers and hope Anakin doesn't notice you!

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[somethingwithturquoise]

You know what? Summer was completely okay with not having her name called out for this one, yes, and it was going to be nice to just kick back and enjoy the show and take notes on anyone in particular who deserved several free jello shots at the bar that evening.

...as if any of them every came in to take advantage of it, but, y'know, whatever.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[betterthanaplan]

Why did Duke keep coming here? He knew he was going to get dragged into the game. He knew he was going to be at best irritated by what they were supposed to do in said game. He'd gotten nothing out of coming except a handful of ugly t-shirts and a gremlin-bite-shaped scar (on his psyche, not his wrist). And yet here he was.

Well. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[lilac_eyed_lieutenant]

Tisarwat had tea, she had a seat in the bleachers, and she had a name that had not been called. As much as she liked to participate in these things, at the moment, she was thinking that was pretty much a perfect Wednesday right there.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[imafuturist]

Tony had been tricked into coming to this. Tricked by the man that he loved! Which was why he was clutching his coffee in a miserable little huddle, glaring at Steve the whole time Skywalker was talking.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[heroic_jawline]

Steve beamed at him. "Exercise is good for hangovers!"

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[hatesparadise]

Danny was literally only there in case something nuts happened again and he needed to be there in an official capacity. Or it was funny.

He was down with things being funny.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[firstofitskind]

Liam was, for once, not involved in whatever was going on this week.

Which was just fine, because, ugh. Touching people. Gross.

But laughing while other people had to push each other around on little skateboard scooter things? That was fine.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Oh, uhhhh, hey." Prompto, after shooting off a few text to some very unhelpful people (Wayne!), considered the spectators at the park right now and figured, hey, Liam was sort of a mentor to Nina, right? Maybe he knew something? So he was bouncing over (not the usual energentic bounces, but more of a sort of nervous, fidgety bounce) to take a seat near him, and tried a small smile. "How's it going, man?"

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[firstofitskind]

Good thinking, Prompto! Liam did, in fact, know the particular something Prompto was wondering about.

More due to convenient timing than anything else, but still.

"Prompto," he greeted with a nod. "I'm okay," he said. And then, after a second, he reconsidered, his lips twisted into a bit of a sardonic smile. "A little worried." Casually assuming Prompto would know why and all.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[hashtag_chocobro]

It was funny how those things worked out sometimes, wasn't it?

But there was nothing funny about a cryptic little addedum like that, any attempt at pretense washed away immediately by the concern that furrowed his brow, by the deep frown on his face. He definitely didn't want to assume anything, buuuuuut....

"About...." he ventured, because even if he was taking a leap here, at least it would introduce what he was worried about into the conversation, and he dropped his voice to a whisper, as if it was some secret, as if speaking his worries too loudly would only make them worse, or that he'd say it and then she'd pop up out from behind the bleachers with an accusing ah-ha! as if catching him in the act of something so terrible as caring about her,"....Nina?"

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[firstofitskind]

Ah yes the utter deviousness that was caring about someone!

(Who maybe didn't entirely believe they were worth caring about, a perspective that Liam actually understood quite well.)

"Yeah," he nodded. "You too, huh?" STILL ASSUMING SHE'D TEXTED HIM ON HER WAY TO THE PORTAL.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[hashtag_chocobro]

There was certainly a type, and they did tend to just gravitate toward each other, it would seem.

Prompto had somehow known that this what was Liam had meant and yet the confirmation still felt like a punch to his gut. "Yeahhhh...." he said, letting out a slow breath because even though he'd played this out in his head a few times already, he still didn't know what to do with it.

"I mean..." he said, after a moment, "is she okay? Did she, like, just lock herself in her room all week? She's not answering any of my texts or calls. Like, I know this is probably a huge devistating deal for her, but still! This is a little much, don't you think, even for Nina?"

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[firstofitskind]

They really, really did.

Though now it was Liam's turn to frown. Not that it looked all that different from his typical expression, honestly, but it was definitely a frown. Because yes, when he'd run into her last week Nina had absolutely been in the midst of eating her feelings, and that's what they'd started out discussing, but it had ended rather abruptly when-

"Did she not tell you?"

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[hashtag_chocobro]

If an expression could be the complete and total essence of a disparaging duuuuuude, that was exactly the expression Prompto was giving Liam right then.

Because nothing good ever followed a 'did she not tell you'.

"...not tell me what?" he eventually managed, in the very small voice of someone who had just lost some sort of gut-wrenching internal battle with themselves.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[firstofitskind]

Liam sighed.

"How much do you know about the kind of... work... she does?" he asked. Yes, they were siblings, but the whole adoption thing had been fairly recent, relatively speaking. And he talked to Nina far more than he talked to Prompto, so he didn't actually know what he knew.

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[hashtag_chocobro]

Ha. Relatively.

Prompto blinked. He frowned. His frown deepened, especially in his brow.

"Did...something happen back home?" he asked. "She said everything was okay back home. She said they finally signed, like, peace treaties and stuff..."

And it was still another two years before he was supposed to be exposed to the idea that peace treaties could be totally broken and messed up!

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[firstofitskind]

Sorry to be bursting that particular bubble, Prompto!

Liam nodded. "It appears that there's at least one group that's dissatisfied with the treaty," he shared. "She got word that a group of cadets was murdered."

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[hashtag_chocobro]

The color drained a little from Prompto's face as he processed this, his lips pressed together, that pit in his stomach twisting into a knot.

"So she had to go to work," he said, which he understood, of course, especially now. He understood, but....

She didn't even tell him? He knew he could receive messages from her world, she had bombarded him with pictures that one time she took a 'vacation' with everyone there. Maybe something else had messed with the phones? Some weird Fandom blip? Some glitch in the multiverse?

His shoulders sagged for a moment, and he looked at Liam, with an almost hopeful lift of his brows, as if there might be sometime to confirm that Nina had tried to tell him, but it just didn't get through, although he wasn't going to ask, because he didn't know if he could handle the possibility that this wasn't the case at all.

"When did she leave?"

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[firstofitskind]

"Last Wednesday morning," Liam told him. "Before the-" he waved a hand at the, well. General shenanigans and goings-on. "She said she'd have her phone off most of the time, because she couldn't afford it making noise at the wrong moment," he continued. "But I figured she would've at least texted you while she waited for the portal."

Though to be fair to Nina, finding out a bunch of kids had been murdered was enough to throw anyone for a loop.

"If I'd known she hadn't," he grimaced, "I would've at least given you the heads-up last week. Sorry."

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[hashtag_chocobro]

So Prompto was...not planning on actually being here this week, but, after not having been able to find Nina last week and then not being able to get through to her despite countless texts and calls and emails, he was....a little worried. And really hoping that he was just overreacting and she was really just taking a whole damn week to recover from this whole break-up thing (let's be honest, it would not be unlike Nina to do something like that). And he figured the easiest way to find someone who might be able to help him out would be at the activity...

....or just that Nina would be there, ready to throw herself into whatever the game was this week with her cheerfulness and energy amped up full-force in an attempt to prove it to everyone that she was fine, really, she was fine, look at how fine she was!

Look, Nina, he knew how you worked, dammit. But he wasn't seeing her, and the sinking feeling in his stomach just kept getting deeper and deeper...

Re: Arrive and Mingle

[canlendanear]

At this point Alara knew by now that by coming to this every Wednesday, there was a reasonable chance her name was going to be called but she actually didn't mind participating and quite enjoyed it.