fandomhigh | Summer Shenanigans, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Summer Shenanigans, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Good morning, everyone! It's time for another summer of Anakin Skywalker Pretends This Teaches Team Building But Mostly Amuses Himself!

Or "Shenanigans."

The bleachers for viewing were set up in the park, close to the pond and near the Belthazor Commemorative Divot. Food vendors, remembering how this worked, had arrived with hot dogs, popcorn, and rum for the squirrels. And coffee. Just...so much coffee. Huge flatscreens were set up facing the bleachers, which the hint that today's event would not just stay inside the park, and the cameras were trained at...well, ankle height or the sky for now because squirrels and rum.

Anakin and his bullhorn were standing behind a folding table stacked high with brightly patterned shirts, and people who had been here before knew that just because the shirts were free, it never, ever meant you wanted to wear them.

"GOOD MORNING!" he boomed through the completely unnecessary bullhorn when enough people were gathered. "Welcome to another summer of team building activities!"

He might be waiting for a while if he was expecting cheers, just saying.

"Today, as has become tradition, we shall conduct a relay race around the island to acquaint you newcomers with where various stores and landmarks are!" he said. "Please listen as your name is called and then come up for your team-building clothing."

AKA: bizarre shirts.

"You will be in four teams of seven players each. You may not use your powers, should you have any, today."

TEAM DROPBEARS
Jane
Mariner
Beaker
Belle
Raiden
Senshi
Dean

TEAM BIGFOOT
Cal
Gale
Rey
Donald
Eddie
Lydia
Vi

TEAM JACKALOPES
Miguel
Steve M
Jonathan
Kamala
Stewart
Steph
Summer

TEAM TREE OCTOPUS
Lana
Steve R
Navaan
Eleanor
Stark
Mary
Arden

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Over at Party Palace, the next team members (Raiden & Senshi, Eddie & Lydia, Stewart & Steph, and Stark & Mary) must inflate a dozen balloons using the helium machine and make one balloon animal each, and that balloon animal cannot be a snake, you potential cheaters. Once you're finished, hand off the balloons to your final team member.

[OOC: Go go, Tree Octopus, finally in the lead! Then it's Bigfoot, Dropbears, and Jackalope.]

"Okay, what's your experience with balloon animals?" Eddie asked Lydia, kinda getting into the competition here.

Maybe they could win this!

"I don't know what they are," Lydia responded. Sorry, Eddie. She held up her phone. "We can ask the Google?"

"Maybe just a good animal," Eddie said after a good long moment of letting the 'I don't know what they are' settle in. "And fast."

Lydia explained apologetically, "I'm from 1810," before she asked the Google voice thingy, "'How do I make a balloon animal?' Oh, look, there's a tutorial!" Maybe they could do this!

And she was still better at technology than Eddie. Shocking.

"Okay. Do you think you can do that and I'll do the helium balloons?"

No need for a funny voice incident here.

"I can certainly try," Lydia said stoutly. "It's just knots, it seems. I can tie things into knots." What could go wrong?

And there was always a need for a funny voice incident, Eddie.

Don't worry, it'd happen. Because nothing going go perfectly right here!

"You'll do great." So many popped balloons. So many.

Maybe she was a secret balloon animal prodigy! (She was not.) "And I'm sure you will do very well as well!" Lydia said, very optimistically.

Re: LEG 4

justalittlerepressed - 2024-05-15 14:53 (UTC) - Expand

Re: LEG 4

mustbeawitch - 2024-05-15 18:04 (UTC) - Expand

Why couldn't they have gotten the food-based challenge, Anakin? They would have bodied that.

"Okay," Raiden said to Senshi, "do they have balloons in your dungeon thing?" Might as well start there.

Senshi, who had pulled on his shirt over his usual armored kilt onesie thing and looked up at Raiden with his big, bulgy eyes, and shook his head.

But he was more convinced than ever that he was surrounded by Tall-Men children.

"Okay, so, uh...why don't you do the regular balloons, and I'll tackle the balloon animal?" Since he had at least seen one before.

Senshi picked up a balloon and pulled at it, examining the construction. "So it's something like an air bladder," he said thoughtfully. "And I fill it from..." He pointed to the helium tanks.

"Yeah, they uh...hmm. I don't...I don't know how they really work," Raiden had to admit. "You put the balloon on the nozzle there and...something?"

And this was why they were almost dead last!

"Don't see why we got this one and not the food challenge," Senshi grumbled.

The girl from 1810 was going to kick their asses because she knew how to use Google.

"Because Dean Skywalker is a sadist, I'm pretty sure." Okay, so if you just did this, and then...no, now his finger was tied to the balloon.

In his defense, Senshi didn't even know what a Google was!

"Is he something of a Lunatic Magician?" Senshi asked.

So, uh, guess who had learned an important lesson about accidentally breathing in helium.

Re: LEG 4

carbsliftthespirit - 2024-05-15 22:49 (UTC) - Expand

Re: LEG 4

sailor_meshi - 2024-05-15 22:53 (UTC) - Expand

Re: LEG 4

carbsliftthespirit - 2024-05-15 22:56 (UTC) - Expand

Re: LEG 4

sailor_meshi - 2024-05-16 00:18 (UTC) - Expand

I'm sorry. Did you put Stewart in front of a helium machine and not expect him to use it to inhale some? And then throw up devil horns and rip oit put some good death metal screams in the squeakiest voice possible?

And then possibly then squeaking out, "Would a phallus count as an animal? Asking got a friend."

And then grinning because that was absolutely what he was going to do first.

As well as maybe shoving a handful of the balloon in his pocket to use later for....other things, don't worry about it.

"Stewart! Seriously!" Kamala whined. "Make the balloons already!"

"They're called Shenanigans, Kamala!" The helium had run out by then; that current high pitch of his voice was all Stewart, baby! "I will Shenan....again!"

But, to appease her and perhaps prevent the rest of his team from also shunning him like a complete outcast, he did toss aside his balloon phallus to get started on...

...he swore he didn't mean to just make another one! He was genuinely trying to make a rabbit, it was just very similar in shapes!

"I mean, they don't call it a one-eyed trouser snake for nothing, right?" asked Steph, who was smirking faintly as she struggled with trying to knot some black balloons into the shape of a big cat. For her planned displacer beast, obviously. Why not aim high here?

She wasn't asking about the other balloons. Hey, not her business. Have fun, man.

Well, since her partner in shenani-crimes was obviously going low, aiming high was clearly the best way to balance it out to a good equilibrium, surely.

"A one-eyed trouser snake it shall be!" Stewart declared. It didn't take him long to finish it, and, once he did, he tucked the absurdly giant dick balloon animal under his arm to fill up another one.

Not to make another, but to such in some more helium so he could be at his squeakist in informing Steph, "Nice toque!"

And if it sounded a little sarcastic as well as squeaky, it wasn't meant to be. That was just how Stewart sounded, and,considering he himself was wearing a bowler hat under the hood of his shirt, he would hardly be in a spot to criticize anyone else's headwear.

Even if it did sound a little sarcastic it didn't seem to bother Steph, who just bowed with a balloon animal brandishing flourish.

"Thanks." Look, you didn't spend most of your life in the PNW without learning what the Canadian term for a beanie was. "No idea if that's going to make Anakin's facial muscles twitch but it's worth a shot."

Anyway, Summer was the one who was going to have to run through the streets with these later, so maybe they should worry about that more?

Stark was grateful he hadn't had to do some other activities this morning and he was also looking despairingly at a balloon that really didn't want to be an animal.

"I have no idea how to make anything out of this."

Wait. He was a space person. Nobody would know if he made an alien animal that was unrecognizable!

"I made towel animals all the time," said Mary, taking a good look at the balloon in her hand. "And I've hired balloon artists for special events before. I think I could figure something out?" she added, not sounding very sure of herself as she carefully twisted the balloon two form two halves.

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