1st Floor Rec Room, Monday, 7PM to 9PM

[jaegerborn.livejournal.com]

When the clock struck seven sharp, something happened to the rec room. DVD players vanished, consoles disappeared. The television was no more. Anything that contained even the slightest trace of modernity became nothing; replaced, instead, with ancient furniture and ancient toys.

You might not be able to play Great Thieving Cars 5 tonight, but the bored among you could choose from an array of tops, dolls, knucklebones, bibloquets and hoops. And that was just as entertaining, wasn't it? Wasn't it.

Two hours later, the clock struck nine, and all the extraneous wood became metal and plastic again, as if nothing had happened at all.

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[dollpocalypse]

Topher did not want to play with a hoop. Not at all. "What the hell?" he complained. "Who stole all the A/V stuff?"

[callmemavy.livejournal.com]

"What's ayvee stuff?" Mavis asked, poking her head into the room at the sound of such obvious woe. Not that she managed to share it, especially when she spotted the toy propped in the corner nearest the door. "Aww, a hobby horse (http://www.keeleyhire.co.uk/images/items/full/5536.jpg). I had one of those."

[dollpocalypse]

"The TV and everything," Topher said, frowning. "All the stuff that's usually here instead of the caveman toys. I really wanted to watch that cop show Nearly Organic tonight."

[callmemavy.livejournal.com]

"Caveman?" Mavis studied the rest of the toys scattered around the room. "I guess you could play with these in a cave. There wouldn't be a lot of room for rolling the hoop, though."

[dollpocalypse]

"Is rolling the hoop even the goal?" Topher sure didn't know. "I just mean it's really disgustingly old."

[callmemavy.livejournal.com]

Mavis rolled her eyes. "You haven't seen disgustingly old until you've seen the kind of toys my great grand-mummy likes to give people." Said great grand-mummy was technically Uncle Murray's grandma, but meh, details. "At least that cat over there looks like it's stuffed, not embalmed."

[dollpocalypse]

Topher began to change his mind about this girl. In a positive way. "...Whyyyy do you know the difference been what that would look like?"

[callmemavy.livejournal.com]

"Because embalmed ones are all shrunken and smell like potpourri?" Mavis wrinkled her nose. "They're actually kind of cute, but the spices make me sneeze."

[selfhelphero]

Billy was heading downstairs when he heard Topher's voice, and he stared a little when he saw what Topher was complaining about. "Are we having an antiques sale here or something?"

[dollpocalypse]

"I guess so," Topher whined. "Do you think this is some school-mandated 'turn off the TV' initiative? I hate those."

[selfhelphero]

"If it was finals week, maybe. It doesn't make sense now," Billy said. "Maybe something broke and they're fixing it?"

[dollpocalypse]

"I could have fixed it," Topher grumbled. "Wait, is it maybe Earth Week or something? I hate that."

[selfhelphero]

"That's in April." Yes, he knew that, the dork. "Still, they could have put a sign up or something."

[wildandbrave]

It was shortly after 7 when Cosette made her way to the rec room. She'd only meant to come downstairs for some piano practice, but upon spotting the toys she let out a laugh and a delighted exclamation of "Oh!" She set her sheet music down atop the piano and went to go look at the selection.

The toys were antiques even by her standards, but she hardly cared; within ten minutes she'd seated herself on the floor and was amusing herself with a bibloquet like -- well, like a girl who hadn't gotten to play with many toys when she was younger and was making up for the time now.

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

The noise of the ball hitting the cup of the bilboquet was what prompted Scott to initially glance over in Cosette's direction.

"What is that?" he asked, finally, after a good two minutes of watching. Look, there was something oddly fascinating about the whole thing. Shh.

[wildandbrave]

"Some sort of game, of course," said Cosette, intently trying to catch the ball in the little wooden cup again; so far, she'd been successful at it about a third of the time. It took four or five more tosses before she managed it, at which point she set the toy down on the floor with a pleased expression and glanced over at Scott. "Though I admit I don't know if there are any rules to it."

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"We could look it up?" Scott suggested, pulling out his phone, which seemed oddly incongruous compared to the rest of the room.

... Not that Scott knew what 'incongruous' meant, but he did recognize that the modern technology seemed out of place here.

"If we knew what it was called," he added after a moment, and then shrugged and just typed 'ball cup game thing' into Google. "Google says it's called a balero," he reported. Well, Google said it had many names, but that was the one he was going with. "Guess you're supposed to see how many times you can get the ball in the cup in a row."

[wildandbrave]

As many times in a row as possible? Cosette would take that as a challenge, but at the moment she was slightly more interested in Scott's phone. (It was entirely possible that it was more prominent because everything else in the room was several centuries older, yes.)

"Who says, now?" she asked, leaning forward to peer at it interestedly. "This Google person?"

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"Oh, not a person," Scott said hastily. "At least, not one person. It's, uh, the Internet? Do you have the Internet where you're from?" Scott was maybe not the brightest potato out there, but his roommate did come from a version of Earth where history happened differently, so he was quite accustomed to having to explain the things he took for granted.

[wildandbrave]

"No, and no phones either," Cosette told him. "It's nearly two hundred years ago where I'm from, and I'm only getting used to everything. Can you really ask it questions and have them answered? I didn't realize phones could do that."

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"It's so cool," Scott said enthusiastically. "Like, I'm totally not the greatest at remembering things, but with my phone I can just look stuff up! Here, you wanna try?" he said, holding out his phone to Cosette.

[wildandbrave]

"Yes, please; you may have to show me, though," Cosette said, already reaching out eagerly to take the phone. "I've only just learned how to make calls on mine."

Because of course her father had bought her a phone, and of course it was a fancy high-end smartphone, even if neither of them had a clue what most of the features did. She'd left it in her room, though.

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"Right, okay," Scott nodded, handing it to her and then scooting over so he was sitting beside her. "It's already open to Google. A webpage. Tap your finger on the little box there," he indicated. "And that'll bring the keyboard up. Then you can use your fingers to type a question."

[wildandbrave]

"Any question at -- oh!" Cosette had poked at the letter H, but gave a little start of surprise when it actually came up on the screen.

"I always expect it to feel more like pressing the keys on a piano," she admitted, and poked the tip of her tongue out between her teeth in concentration as she carefully typed out How does electricity work?

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

Which brought up a number (http://science.howstuffworks.com/electricity.htm) of (http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/topics/1xa_flash.html) results (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoUlm5K-DIM).

"See!" Scott said, bouncing a little with enthusiasm. "The third one's a video, if you want to watch," he pointed out.

[wildandbrave]

"I'd like that," agreed Cosette, whose natural curiosity lent itself well to a fledgling interest in science. "Now, how do we watch it?"

The universal symbol for "Play" was not timeless. She did, however, tap the play button mostly by accident.

"Oh," she said breathlessly, "like the moving pictures on the television!" Which she also intended to learn about, but she was working her way there.

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"Pretty much," Scott said with a nod, and then turned his attention to the video. How electricity worked wasn't something he thought about much, he just sort of took for granted that it did. "Did that help at all?" he asked, once the video was finished.

[wildandbrave]

"Oh, yes, it did, thank you!" You might just have created a monster, Scott; Cosette was already planning to go and camp out in the library to read up on electricity tomorrow. "I don't understand all of it yet, but I will."

She picked up the bibloquet again and gave it a few experimental flips. "I suppose I can do that on my phone as well?"

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

Scott's grin widened at her enthusiasm; he couldn't help it, it was charming. "Yeah, most phones these days can do all sorts of stuff. Including look things up on the internet."

[wildandbrave]

"How many things can I look up?" Cosette was not about to stop being enthusiastic about this any time soon. "The sisters always used to tell us to stop asking so many questions, but there was always so much more I wanted to know."

And she didn't think the phone would talk back. Unless she was making a call. Right?

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

Unless she had an iPhone and accidentally activated Siri, anyway.

"I don't think there's actually a limit," Scott told her. "Why wouldn't they want you to know stuff?" he asked, confused. He wasn't, like, Stiles-level of information geek or anything, but with very few exceptions (mostly centering around trying to figure out what was going on around the time his parents really started to be unable to stand each other), he couldn't think of any time someone actually actively discouraged him from asking questions.

[wildandbrave]

She did, actually, but so far she hadn't managed to activate Siri. So far.

"I haven't any idea," Cosette admitted. "They would only say that we weren't meant to know the answers, but then they were strict about everything in the convent."

Which might explain it right there.

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"That doesn't sound like much fun at all," Scott said, making a face. He at least had the grace to look sheepish a moment after, running a hand through his hair as he gave her an apologetic look. "... Sorry," he said. "That was kind of rude of me to say." Even if it was true.

[wildandbrave]

"They were very good to me," Cosette said; she felt obligated to defend the Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration at least a little bit, because they had taken her and her father in for several years.

With a slight smile, she added, "But it was awfully gloomy there, yes."

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

Look, you'd think a class where they played video games would mean Scott wouldn't be planning on spending his evening doing just that, but considering he was still humming the Mario theme as he came downstairs...

"Doot doot doot doo doo d- huh?"

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, pretty much", said Anya as she passed by, stopping to frown at the new stuff. "Apparently someone took the whole television rots the brain a little too far."

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"I was totally looking forward to playing that game where you run around killing dragons," Scott pouted.

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"I have never heard of that game, but now I want to play it too," Anya said, not quite pouting, but otherwise disappointed. "Does it have a plot or is just awesome dragon killing?"

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"There's sort of a plot?" Scott said. "Like, everyone thought the dragons were a myth until boom! They start appearing all over the place, and you play the legendary hero who's the only one who can stop whatever's making them come back."

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"That's...you know, if the dragon slaying action is half as good as I'm imagining it, I really want to play it," Anya said as she crouched to grab a cloth doll from the floor, waving it in her hand. "Instead all we can do is play Fifteenth Century Kitchen, or probably some variation of Burn the Witch."

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"Those don't sound nearly as fun," Scott griped. "Maybe things will come back? Eventually?"

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

"That's the way it works, right?" Anya placed the doll down again. "A moment of weirdness, and then it's all good. Actually I had a moment of weirdness earlier today; heard something that obviously wasn't there."

She looked back at the doll, now with wariness.

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"Really?" Scott said, with a concerned frown. "It wasn't just someone messing with you?"

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

Anya shrugged. "I wish it was something like that, but I happen to be really hard to surprise. Unless you know someone that can turn himself invisible?," she said with something like hope in her voice.

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"Not that I know of," Scott offered apologetically. "Is it- is this like the thing that was on the radio the other day?"

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

Anya thought about it for a moment. "I'm not sure? I kind of miss the radio a lot of days, to be honest. What thing was on the radio? Something like an unnatural sound?"

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"It was like, uh? Something about clock pieces falling on people, but then they would hear their own voice saying stuff? I don't know, it was kind of confusing."

[notvenom.livejournal.com]

Anya listened and slowly tilted her head. "Well that is something, alright. This place still manages to give me the creeps. Anyway," she said as she shrugged a bit. "I'm Anya, and I think I should know your name but I'm terrible at paying attention sometimes. So, uh, hi?"

[nobodysbatman.livejournal.com]

"Scott," he informed her. "And yeah, this place- well, actually, most of the time I don't really mind the weird," he admitted. "Except when people get hurt."