Fifth Floor Common Room, Monday Afternoon

[soniaroadsqueen]

It had required moving some furniture around in order to create the space necessary, but Ringo had managed to lay down a big white sheet on the floor and pin its corners with some large boxes. She'd even had boxes left over, and those were stacked near the edge of the area she'd blocked off.

Most of the boxes were open, too, and revealed their contents to be hundreds of tiny different bits of metal. Ringo had asked Ume to send her AT parts, and Ume had delivered in spades. She had enough pieces here to put together dozens pairs. Sometimes, apparently, little sisters were good for something after all!

Of course so many boxes had taken a lot of work to get up to the fifth floor, and she hoped no one had been annoyed as she had painstakingly moved one box at a time from the lobby.

Now Ringo was sitting in the middle of that white sheet, her smile matched by some happy humming as her hands rapidly swapped out small screwdrivers for tiny wrenches and the pile of precisely-machined metal in front of her began to take shape.

Every so often some screw or gear would slip from her fingers, and she'd have to put down what she had so far and find it. Fortunately, the sheet was very, very clean, and practically nothing blended in against it. So soon enough she'd be back to humming and assembling, and she was almost done with the first unit.

[Open!]

Comments

[that_oldsaying]

Alluka was actually not on her floor today. It was a small thing to anyone else, but pretty big for her.

She peered inside the common room, stuffed giraffe in her arms, and then beamed.

"Ringo!" she said happily. "You have lots of things!"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Alluka!" Ringo responded almost as happily. "I know! Isn't it great?" It hadn't occurred to her yet that to most people she just had a bunch of little bits of metal.

She grinned. "How was your first week?" She hadn't seen the other girl in a while!

[that_oldsaying]

"Some of them are shiny," Alluka said agreeably, since that was both true and neatly skipped around her complete lack of understanding as she bounced into the common room to clamber up onto a couch to watch Ringo work more comfortably.

"It was good!" she said. "Andrew asked me lots of questions in his class and Bob wanted to know about our magic, but I don't have magic." A beat. "Do you?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Not me," Ringo answered, shaking her head. "I mean," she looked down at the almost-completed gearbox and wheel assembly in her hand, and shrugged, "sometimes I feel like ATs are magic, but I know that they're just really neat technology."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Wait. Are there a lot of people around here with magic?" There was enough weird stuff on the island that someone having magic powers, or something like them, probably made sense, but...

[that_oldsaying]

"Lots!"

This may or may not be true, but Alluka thought it was.

"There were a bunch of people in my class who said they have it! Isn't that exciting?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Seeing Alluka reminded Kathy that she was supposed to go hunt down Anders to talk to him about something. He'd asked during class on Thursday, but she'd had to run to study for her SAT II on Friday and just hadn't seen him since. She resolved to find him sometime before class to find out just what he'd wanted to discuss.

Not that that was going to stop her from greeting Alluka. She was out of her room and exploring! With her giraffe!

"Hi!" she said, beaming at her. She was so proud of you, Alluka! "You made it all the way up to the fifth floor! Did you come by yourself? Well, I mean, besides your friend," she amended, nodding at the giraffe.

[that_oldsaying]

"Kathy!" Alluka scrambled up off the couch to flail the giraffe in Kathy's direction. If Kathy came near, she'd get a hug. "No one yelled at me for getting up here! And I had Bubbles for company."

Bubbles the giraffe. Yes.

She beamed. "Hi!"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oooh, you found out your giraffe's name is Bubbles? Excellent!" Of course Kathy was coming in for a hug. Pfft, for all she knew, Anders was going to ask her to explain the onset of puberty to her.

Oh god. Had anyone explained to Alluka the stark reality of puberty beyond 'soon your body will change in the most exciting of ways'? Oooh, if that was what Anders wanted to talk to her about, Kathy was not about to let him get away with foisting that all on her, darn it.

...There was so much that Kathy just did not know right now. Oy.

"And nobody will yell at you for being up here," she said, wrapping her arms around the younger girl. "There's no reason for them to do so. You have every right to be up here on the fifth floor."

[that_oldsaying]

Yay, hugs! Alluka flung her arms around Kathy in return and nodded, giggling.

"He told me his name," she shared, as if that was totally what stuffed animals did. "And the fifth floor isn't as scary as I thought it would be, since you and Ringo are here."

The jury was still out on whether Jalian was scary or not.

[kenselvren]

Jalian wandered in after a trip to the mainland, and stopped short at the view from the doorway. Then she came in, careful not to step on anything. "What are you building?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Jalian!" Ringo exclaimed with a grin. "Well, not this particular set," she said, holding up what was probably an indecipherable assembly of bits, "but ATs for you!" Among a few other things.

[kenselvren]

Jalian eyed them with interest. She could decipher one or two things - that was a power connection, maybe? - but the overall construction was strange. "How do they work?" She sat down at the edge of the sheet, watching.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Well, you'd have to hook up a battery," Ringo said, nodding toward one of the so-far unopened boxes. "Then you'd wire that to this set of pins here," she pointed at a pair of metal studs off to one side. "Run a current through and it'll spin the electric motor here," right in the center of the wheel, "which is hooked up to a transmission."

She smiled. "This one's an automatic, since that's easier to learn with."

"Anyway, I haven't hooked up the brakes yet, but once it's all in place, and attached to a boot, you can basically control it by shifting your weight."

[kenselvren]

Jalian inspected it more closely. "Pressure controls?" she guessed.

[that_oldsaying]

Alluka poked her head up from where it had been hidden by the couch--she was lying on her stomach on it now--and she waved.

"Hi!" she said brightly. "Do you live on this floor?"

[kenselvren]

Jalian nodded at her, a bit confused by her exuberance. "Yes; room 520. Do you?"

[that_oldsaying]

"N-no," Alluka admitted, then wondered if she maybe should have lied. She darted a glance over at Ringo, just in case the new person got scary, but kept smiling anyway. "I'm from the second floor."

[kenselvren]

Jalian just nodded. "You're in the outdoors class." She searched her memory, then shook her head. "But I've forgotten your name. I'm Jalian."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Hey, Jalian," Kathy said, giving the other girl a wave. She was sprawled on a chair, watching Ringo put these AT things together. "Long time no see. How've you been?"

[kenselvren]

"Kathy." Jalian nodded back. "I've been well. You?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Looking forward to June," Kathy said with a rueful smile. "That's when all my exams are over with and I can finally relax."

For a varying definition of 'relax', obviously. She was kind of bad at that game.

"You have anything exciting on the horizon?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy heard voices coming from her floor's common room and couldn't help but poke her head in and see who was here. The fifth floor had gotten much more lively since the newbies had arrived, which she was happy for.

"Ringo!" she said, spotting the girl amidst all the boxes. "Hello! What's all this?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Kathy!" Hi, Kathy! Ringo would totally wave, but her hands were full at the moment.

In fact, she was holding up the complex assembly of parts she'd gotten through so far for inspection. "They're AT parts!" she answered excitedly. "I told a couple of people that I would get them their own pairs, and then realized it'd be easier to just get my sister to send me a bunch of parts."

It was way more fun to build them yourself, after all.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Cool!" Kathy said. "...What's an AT?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"They're like, well, do you know what inline skates are?" Ringo asked, setting down the stuff she was working on and holding up a mostly-assembled wheel for examination. Of course, being unconnected to anything, it might not really be all that illustrative.