fandomhighdorms | Second Floor Common Room; Saturday Evening [06/03].

Second Floor Common Room; Saturday Evening [06/03].

It was so quiet, Summer half wondered if everyone had died or something. It was quieter here back home, where they had a government sanctioned curfew. And, in Summer's book, that was no bueno. And she wasn't the type to just sit there and complain about it; she was going to do something. And that something meant going to the common room and making some goddamn tacos.

Why? 1) Tacos were delicious. 2) They were easily shareable. and 3) She was really good at making tacos, yo.

She set her phone to play some music loud enough to get people's attention, and then she set to work. Tacos were best with mini dance and singing breaks, too, you know.

[[ open! come have some tacos! ]]

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Tip was feeling a bit restless this evening, so between the music and the taco smell, she was pretty easily lured down to see what was going on.

"Hey," she greeted. "You're in the pole dancing class, right?"

"Heyyyyyyy!" Summer greeted back, giving her current batch of taco meat a little stir in the pan. "That's right! And so are you. Tip? Yeah?"

It's not like it was hard to remember everyone's name in that class, what with most of them already sounding like stripper names and there being so few of them.

"I've got tacos if you're hungry! Help yourself; I've got some stuff already ready on the counter there."

"That's me," Tip agreed. It also helped that the class was so small. Plus, Summer definitely had more natural pole dancing talent than Tip, so there may have been a little bit of occasional staring on Tip's part. . . . "Thanks, that's really cool of you. Just felt like cooking?"

She didn't know where it came from, either, honestly, though perhaps if she spent a little more time with her grampa's alternate reality goggles, she'd find out that, in certain universes, it was just her destiny.

"Yeah," Summer shrugged. "Bored, really. And hungry. So you put the two together and, voila. Tacos. I'm not the best cook in the world, but tacos are pretty easy, I think."

Tip shrugged and nodded. "I'm mostly a master microwaver, myself, but when I was growing up, if I wanted something home cooked I had to do it myself, so I've picked up a few things. These smell really good, though."

"Here's to hoping they taste half as good as they smell," said Summer, taking a moment to lift the bottle of soda she'd been sipping on between stirs in salute. "And, if not, well, there's nothing wrong with an expertly nuked Hot Pocket, and I saw some of those in the freezer."

"I promise to nuke it quietly," Tip said with a smile as she started putting together a taco. "So as not to offend the chef."

Once she had a suitably stuffed taco shell and a beverage of her own, she found a seat. "You're new this summer, right?" she asked. "What do you think of the place so far?"

"Hmmmm." Rather than give the question a knee-jerk response, Summer considered it a little, narrowing her eyes at the pan in front of her for a moment. "It has its perks," she decided. "Actually, I really like it, which was weird, because I was dead-set against the whole thing at first. I didn't come here...in a good situation, and I was expecting something way different. But, really, I'm kind of grateful, because it's way better here than at home, even if it's not ideal."

She felt that summed it up pretty well. She tilted her head curiously at Tip. "Have you been going here very long?"

But after a brief pause, she also added, "And before you ask, no, the weird stuff doesn't bother me. Home was way, way weirder than this. So far."

Tip laughed a little at that. "Yeah, I'm from one of the weirder Earth worlds, too. This place isn't bad at all, when it doesn't get sucked into an apocalypse." Destroying her own giant statue self last fall was going to stick to her. For a long time. "I've been here about a year now. Started last summer. I get you on this being way better. What were you expecting it to be like?"

Summer blushed a little because it all seemed so ridiculous now. "I honestly thought it was a brainwashing camp or something," she said. "Um, so, my Earth is currently ruled by space bugs? Who are part of this totally creepy Galactic Federation. I wasn't exactly ready to toe the line, so my parents sent me here 'for my own protection.'" Complete with actual air quotes. "I was pretty much preparing myself to fight out of a forced lobotomy or something."

Tip actually perked up just a little at that. "You come from an invaded Earth too!" There weren't a lot of alien invasion kids here, no. "We managed to kick our invaders out — they were sort of like frog-balloon things, not bugs. But not until after they herded the whole human race into 'human preserves' to make room for themselves."

"Ugh," said Summer, with a very expressive face to match, as it was for both Tip's description of her invaders as well as the whole herding into human preserves thing, because gross. "Our are mostly benign so far, but it all starts somewhere, you know? First their changing your calendar, instituting a curfew, and feeding you on a diet of pills, the next thing you know, they're using undercover agents to pose as teenagers to insight a massacre at a wedding!"

She was getting a little heated, and not just from standing in front of the stove, so she forced herself to take a deep breath. No need to get all worked up like she did in class the other day.

"So how'd you guys get rid of them?"

Maybe she could get some ideas.

Tip shrugged. "We helped them get rid of their own creepy alien nemeses," she said. "Big violent lizardy things that liked to enslave people and actually eat planets. After that, they were willing to make a deal and we got them to move to Titan instead."

She took a big bite of her taco and nodded approvingly. That was a good taco indeed.

"Did yours take over Christmas? The Boov mostly let us keep our months and things, but they turned Christmas into Smekday like, specifically to demoralize and assimilate us."

"Smekday?" Summer quirked an eyebrow, turning off the stove as the latest batch was done, and going to add it to the bowl, deciding that was enough for now. "Do I even want to know?"

Probably not, since she was starting to put together her own taco. "And all pretty recent, but, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Christmas is out. There'll probably be, like, pockets of people celebrating all underground or whatever, but definitely not a big thing. They probably have their own bug winter holiday, so we'll have to like, wear antennae and, I don't know, decorate the Flebflop with the traditional Floobandangle."

Summer was pretty basic, so it didn't take her long to prep her plate and flop on the couch to enjoy. "Really, I'm hoping it's all solved by then. I'm working on a plan to break my grampa out of space prison so that he get everything back to normal again."

"Plans are good. I had to kind of wing it when I busted my best friend out of space prison. That was the first time I got my hair shot off. I don't really recommend it."

Summer's free hand darted protectively to her signature ponytail. It was mostly a subconscious move, though, as all of her attention was honed straight on Tip now.

"You mean you've broken someone out of space prison before? How did you do it? Was it hard? I mean, obviously, that space prison and the Federation prison are probably way different, but maybe not. I mean, big universe, small world, that sort of thing, and I need all the help I can get."

"Just once," Tip said. "And it might have been more of, like, a space jail? My friend J.Lo — space alien, not the singer. He was one of the invaders but he accidentally sent out the message that told the other aliens where they were. When he tried to go home to his people for a visit, after they left Earth, they locked him up as a traitor. So Bill and I —" She tapped what look like a small silver bug-broach on her shirt, and it flew up into the air next to her head. "This is Bill, he's my robot. He makes bubbles, which are the basis of written Boov, so we used those to make me a disguise and distract the motion sensor cannon on the top of the jail. . . ." Tip trailed off with a frown. "You know, I think maybe if that J.Lo from the future hadn't come back in time to try to assassinate the J.Lo in jail, I wouldn't have gotten him out at all."

A lot of Tip's life depended on deus ex machina, yes.

And Summer's depended a lot on a deux ex Rick.

As such, she followed that all pretty well, too, making a slight face because, man, she really needed a robot, everyone had cool robots, and, really, it sounded like her biggest help would be a future Rick coming back in time to do something similar, which wasn't out of the realm of possibility, like, at all, but she needed something way more solid.

"I thought about possibly just going balls to the wall and getting myself in prison, then planning an escape from the inside out, but I don't know if I could handle space prison very well, and there's no guarantee I'll wind up in the same one as my grampa Rick. I don't even know where it's located, but I've got Miss Hera helping me out with that. She and Kanan say they might be able to provide me with a ship. I'm trying to bribe my brother into forking some information about some of grampa's friend for help, but he's being a total butthead and saying I should just drop it, but how can I just leave my grampa in jail? When I'm ninety-nine percent sure he's only in there because of us? Ugh!"

She tilted her head back and released a groan toward the ceiling. "Invasions are sooo dumb!"

"They really are," Tip agreed. "How'd your Grampa Rick end up in space prison, anyway? Did he try to stop the bugs?"

"Nooo," said Summer, biting her lip a little. "Not really."

Not at all, actually. "Okay, you might want to get comfortable, because this one's a doozy. The bugs and the Galactic Federation weren't even interested in Earth until my grampa ran from them. So he was a wanted criminal before all this, I guess, but it's like...because he wasn't going to let some bullshit government get in his way, you know? And I guess he's been on the run from them for a while now, which, really, if you look at his track record, isn't surprising, but he's done a lot of good, too, you know? Sometimes I think he just messes up, but he doesn't mean to.

"Anyway, so get this. I have this 'friend,' Tammy? And I have this party because my parents went to this weird Titantic reinactment thing, and I'm like, okay, cool, it's a Friday night, no parents, obviously I'm going to have a party. Well, Grampa Rick decides to have a party, too, which means, all my friends from high school are mingling with all his friends from space and whatever, so Tammy and my grampa's friend Birdperson actually hook up, which is kind of weird, sure, but, whatever, you know, more power to them. They become a thing and fast forward to about a month ago and we get this invitation to their wedding. Personally, I'm stoked. I love a good love story, and I'm all happy Tammy found happiness or whatever, but get this. The wedding happens, it's all beautiful and great, and then, all of a sudden, during her speech, she announces that this whole time, she's been a deep undercover agent for the Galactic Federation, and the whole thing was this grand scheme to get Grampa Rick, and Birdperson, and all the other galactic miscreants in one area to arrest them all. And, of course they're not going to go quietly, so it turns into this whole shoot out, it was crazy, but, somehow, Grampa Rick manages to get me and my parents and my brother Morty out and we escape, but now we're fugitives. We can't go back to Earth because that's when they invade, because they have to be there in case Grampa Rick ever returns. Welcome to the Federation, Earth! We pretty much thought you were dumb until we realized we might be able to get Rick Sanchez if we take it over!

"So we settle on this little dinky planet outside of Federation jurisdiction, and it's kind of lame, but whatever, it's life, we still have our family, and then one day, Grampa Rick just...leaves. And then the Federation shows up and is all, 'Hey, how's it going, Smith Family, guess what, you can come back to Earth now, everything's okay.' Only it's not okay, because they took over the Earth, and the only reason we were able to come back was because Grampa Rick turned himself in. I know that's what happened, it's the only thing that makes sense, and it's total bullshit. We shouldn't just roll over and let that happen, let him suffer in some galactic prison because he wanted us to be happy. And that's the kicker, too, is that the new Earth sucks, and we're not happy, so he sacrificed himself for, like, nothing..."

Tip nodded slowly at all that. Honestly, as someone who at 11 had befriended a balloon-frog alien and drove across the country in a flying car, she wasn't too lost by that whole narrative.

"Hang on," she said. "So Birdperson was totally all in with Tammy only to have the whole thing turn out to be an elaborate ruse? That . . . I mean, damn. I'm sorry for your grampa but I feel really bad for Birdperson."

"And she shot him," Summer said, "right in the gut, point blank, right there in front of everyone. It was awful!"

"That is screwed up," Tip said. "At least the Boov are honest. I mean, they tried to ship the entire population of North America to Florida and then changed their minds and sent them to Arizona because they liked to wear oranges as shoes, but they didn't pretend to be our friends or anything while they did it."

"Yeah, exactly," Summer said. "I'm sure my grampa's done some pretty messed up stuff before. In fact, I know he has. But he's honest about it. None of this long con bullcrap Tammy pulled. I'd rather be a galactic fugitive than live under the thumb of that kind of government."

"So what have you got so far?" Tip asked. "For your plan."

"Um." Summer wrinkled her nose. "I...kind of...don't have one yet? It's still, uhhh, very much a work in progress."

A work in beginning would be more appropriate, really.

"Oh. Well, everyone has to start somewhere, right?"

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Second Floor Common Room; Saturday Evening [06/03].

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