2nd Floor Common Room, Tuesday Evening

[dark_slippy_thing]

Somewhat distracted by the lesson from today's Mad Science class, Valentine had wandered into the common room, where talk of the end of the world and being the cause of it was far less likely to occur.

He'd found a few scrap pieces of paper and some tape, and was making little finger puppets in the shapes of friends, chickens, and tar monsters. The television screen became the backdrop for his little puppet show, as he had made himself quite comfortable sitting on the floor directly in front of it.

"Oh no, not the end of the world," Valentine-the-Rikku-finger-puppet protested vehemently, while Valentine-the-monkeybird-finger-puppet flailed about, said "Bob," a few times, and then smashed itself against the off-on switch on the television repeatedly.

It was a fantastic simulation of everything going dark one last time, Valentine decided.

If anyone asked, he'd probably tell them that it was rehearsing for the next Fandom Chicken, or something.

(Open, as common rooms tend to be!)

Comments

[the_merriest]

Rikku stopped in the doorway, and tried to figure out if it was better to ask, or to really, really not ask. It was Valentine, after all.

One of the puppets was loud, and very orange.

"Is that supposed to be me?" she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

[dark_slippy_thing]

Valentine looked over his shoulder, waving hello with his handful of puppet-like things.

"Rikku, hello! You could tell? And I had been worried that the craftsmanship was crude at best..." He turned to the puppet and mused about that for a moment.

[the_merriest]

"It was orange, and kinda hyper," she said with a shrug. "Seemed like a good guess. Uh. Why am I a finger-puppet?"

[dark_slippy_thing]

"Why not? I think you make an excellent finger-puppet," Valentine stated, waving the little paper Rikku-thing in the air. "I'm retelling the edge-of-your-seat thriller that is the end of the world according to myself. To myself. I'm a very well-behaved audience, you know."

[the_merriest]

"That's not exactly a cheerful story, is it?" Rikku asked, leaning against the doorframe. "And wait a sec, where are you, then?"

[dark_slippy_thing]

"Sitting in front of the television, so far as I can tell," Valentine decided, thoughtfully looking down at himself to be certain. "Unless I'm elsewhere. Can you see me, or am I perhaps hiding under that table over there?"

[the_merriest]

Rikku blinked. Right. Conversation with Valentine. Always needed to readjust a little.

"I can totally see you, you're fine. I mean, don't you get a puppet, too? Or would that be too confusing, since you're already the narrator and the audience? You'd need, like, separate names for you."

[dark_slippy_thing]

"I already have separate names for me," Valentine stated. "I am Valentine Prime. The you finger puppet here is 'Valentine-the-Rikku-Finger-Puppet,' as it is obviously not really you. I attempted to make a Valentine-the-Valentine-Finger-Puppet, but I don't believe I properly captured the style and romance that ought to be portrayed in such a creation."

He hesitated for a moment.

"And I'd really... rather not, anyhow."

[the_merriest]

"Yeah?" Rikku asked, smiling sympathetically. "Maybe this time we tell the story differently. You know? Get some kinda army in there. You have extra fingers, right?"

[dark_slippy_thing]

"Ten in all," Valentine clarified, giving his fingers a wiggle by way of demonstration. "Twenty, if you're offering to front my military expedition to save the world?"

[the_merriest]

Rikku grinned and bounced over to claim a patch of floor near his. "You bet! What're fingers for, after all?"

[dark_slippy_thing]

"I have absolutely no artistic skill whatsoever, but I do have more than a few spare finger puppets, all ready to save the world," he said, motioning to a small mountain of scribbled-on paper tubes sitting on the table.

[the_merriest]

"They don't need to be fancy," Rikku said. "We'll just give 'em names and that's good enough. If you've got some black, one of them can be Lulu. She's got all sorts of magic. Totally not someone to piss off."

[dark_slippy_thing]

Valentine dug through his pocket and found four crayons, a pencil, and a red pen.

"I've got yellow, orange, white, and blue? Or we could use the pencil. Is gray close enough to black, do you think? Why in the world do they make white crayons, anyhow?"

Welcome to Twenty Questions with Valentine, where Valentine asks questions.

[the_merriest]

"I'm sure gray's fine," Rikku said, swiping the pencil. "Her dress is kinda grayish in spots anyway."

She was drawing in a bit of shadowing to suggest that this particular puppet had rather impressive cleavage, which ought to identify Lulu quite accurately anyway.

"They probably have white in case you're on colored paper," she reasoned. "Who else should we bring along? Tidus would come. And if you have blue, that can be Sokka."

[dark_slippy_thing]

"Sokka on a mission to save the world? I ought to shut the television set off now and spare it the suffering." He grinned and shrugged, and then started to colour another finger puppet with blue all over it anyhow. "What other hero-types do we know? I've gotten a Donatello one already coloured, though my attempt to make green with yellow and blue really turned out looking more like someone slipped corn and blueberries into the strained peas."

[the_merriest]

"Is he the purple one or the red one?" Rikku asked. "Mikey was orange. Maybe if you get his headband right, that'll help. I know lots of hero-types, but they're back home. Can we swing by Spira for them? Just a short trip, really."

[dark_slippy_thing]

"He was the purple one. Came with us on our little voyage into the unknown. Communicated with the monkeybirds astonishingly well." Valentine had proceeded to grab an orange crayon and the blue one, and was trying to remember if those were the colours to mix in order to make purple, or if they weren't. They didn't exactly have purple where he was from. The camera filters atmosphere just seemed to eat it all. "Are you proposing a road trip, Rikku? Dropping the puppet show for a road trip almost sounds like a good idea. What is Spira like, by the way? Do they have purple there?"

[the_merriest]

"They have lots of colors," Rikku said, not looking up from where she was giving another puppet a lot of yellow, for that Zanarkand Abes outfit of his. "And lots of fiends, and lots of places where bad things happened. It's not a good place for a road trip."

[dark_slippy_thing]

"Ah."

Valentine pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment.

"I understand," he finally said. "There are probably far better places for road trips than ... well, my world or yours, I suppose. Any suggestions?"

He was fully aware that they were working on a puppet show, here. But 'Road Trip' was such a compelling topic, if only because he liked listening to himself speak.

[the_merriest]

"Mel and I went to Florida," Rikku mused, borrowing the blue crayon to finish Tidus's outfit. "It was awesome. But the cops chased us out again."

[dark_slippy_thing]

"None of them would be suitable members of our finger puppet army, I'd imagine. Unless you blew things up while you were there. What's a Florida?"

Valentine was perfectly alright with the notion of lending out the blue crayon, as he was going to attempt to make purple out of the red pen and the pencil. He was only slightly dismayed when the result was not, in fact, purple, but instead a scribble of red with shiny graphite etched overtop.

Which was close enough to purple for his tastes, anyhow.

[the_merriest]

"It's here, somewhere to the south," Rikku noted. "Just a few hours if you drive fast, and driving fast is way more fun than going the same speed as everyone else."

She considered the finger puppet and then set it down again, nodding. "If we need hero-types, there are plenty here, y'know."

[dark_slippy_thing]

"I've never driven, really. Is it much faster than walking?" He'd given up on purple entirely and was now giving Valentine-the-Monkeybird-Finger-Puppet a facelift with the orange crayon.

"You know, I'm not certain I'm entirely anxious to recruit many more hero-types to the cause from around here. Faceless strangers seem to be far... safer."

[the_merriest]

"You've never been in a car?" Rikku asked, bouncing. "It'd take days to walk that far. Weeks, I think, really. You can cover the ground like you're flying, and things just whoosh by in a blur. I think you're not supposed to go as fast as we were going, but we were totally safe. Until we hit that stupid cabbage vendor, anyway."

[dark_slippy_thing]

"You hit a cabbage vendor?" ..... "Did you get any cabbage, at least?"

It was a perfectly valid, totally important question.

[the_merriest]

"Some of it ended up in the backseat, all crispy-fried. It went well with the steak. Which happened 'cause we hit a cow. And the car had flamestrike on it, so, uh." She gestured vaguely. "We had to pull over for a bit to try to get the car to work again, but boom! Supper was provided."

[dark_slippy_thing]

Valentine was taking mental notes, here. Fried cabbage with a side of cow. Char-broiled to perfection in the back seat of a car. It was a recipe for success, if ever he heard one.

"So... cars are for cooking things and going from place to place quickly?"

[the_merriest]

Rikku giggled. "No, no, they're not supposed to cook things? I just, uh. Made the car do some neat stuff and it had some weird side-effects. We put a chimichanga maker in the dashboard, too. That's, uh ..." Dashboard. Hmm. "Just kinda some empty space that really could be improved with a chimichanga maker, you know?"

[dark_slippy_thing]

"Of course." He had no idea what she was going on about. "So cars are better when they have ... Chattanooga makers in the dartboard."

His mental notes were going to be very difficult to make sense of later on.

"And when they cook cow."

[the_merriest]

Rikku laughed. "Chimichangas are kinda like burritos but kinda not. Cars don't usually do food stuff, we just souped it up all spiffy so it would. 'Cause, you know. Cars are awesome? But anything's better when it's making food for you. Right?"

[dark_slippy_thing]

"Absolutely!"

Valentine couldn't help but agree with Rikku logic when it involved making things make food for you.

"Do you think there's any possibility that things around here could be rigged up with chupacabra makers as well? Like the television or the ... doors?"