fandomhighdorms | Fifth Floor Common Room, Monday Afternoon

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Fifth Floor Common Room, Monday Afternoon

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.

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"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!

"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?"

"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...

"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?"

Ringo thought on that for a moment, not sure how she felt, but then thought back over the people she'd met so far and decided that if they had magical powers, that actually would be pretty neat.

"Yeah. It is!" She grinned. "Did anyone do anything super-cool?"

"No," she said, sounding momentarily disappointed before brightening back up. "It was just a thing we had to talk about, but I bet it'll be a lot more interesting this week! I wish I could do magic!"

"Well," Ringo giggled, "I bet you can do other neat things!"

Everyone could, after all, right?

Did Nanika count as being able to do neat things?

She didn't ask that, though, and instead blinked. "Me?"

"Sure, you, silly!" Ringo insisted with a giggle. "Everyone has something they can do that's neat!" It was just a case of figuring out what it was!

Alluka couldn't help giggling back, since Ringo was so happy. "How, how do you know?"

"Well, that's what being a person is all about," Ringo insisted. "Being, you know, you. Special and different. Everyone has something!"

Alluka considered that, and looked down at her giraffe. All of her toys were different; did that make them people too?

And if that was the case, was she any different from her toys?

"You have a lot of metal bits," Alluka said, because she didn't want to think about herself and toys now. "Are they part of your fake-magic?"

Ringo laughed, nodding her head. "I suppose it is, in a way."

She held up what she'd put together so far. "This is the motor, gearing system, and brakes for the rear wheel of an AirTrek," she explained. "And I suppose my fake-magic is what I can do when I'm wearing AirTrek."

"What sort of fake-magic can you do with AirTrek?" Alluka asked curiously. "Anders can do real ice magic--do you do that sort of thing?"

Though wheels seemed sort of funny for ice magic.

"No," Ringo grinned as a headshake sent her pigtails swaying. "Not ice. But I can go real fast, and in the right environment I can practically fly!"

She also had the Thorn Road, but that wasn't nearly as much fun.

"You can almost fly?!" Alluka's eyes went huge. "But that's like real magic!"

Not fake at all!

"It's only almost," Ringo insisted modestly. "I mean, it's fun! The best! But not flying."

"Can I try it?" Alluka asked hopefully.

Flying! She wanted to go flying!

"Of course!"

Though.

"We'd have to get a pair in your size," Ringo pointed out. "And, I should warn you, it takes a lot of practice to get good enough to do the really tough tricks." The flying ones.

"But!" lest Alluka get the wrong idea, "they're a ton of fun even when you're not flying!"

Alluka had never really had to practice for anything except tea parties and cutting her hair, so the idea of having to do so for something was rather interesting and exciting all by itself.

"As long as it's fun, I want to try," she said hopefully. "I'll work hard!"

Ringo beamed. "Okay. What's your shoe size? I'll make sure we get a pair that fits you!"

Alluka looked at her feet.

"I don't know?" she said, a bit uncertainly. "There's no number on my boots."

Her feet were pretty tiny though, she knew that.

"Well, we can find out!" Ringo scrambled around and opened one of the still-sealed boxes behind her. She ripped it open and started pulling out differently-sized boots.

"Let's see if one of these will fit!"

"Okay!" Alluka chirped and carefully set Bubbles on the couch so that she could pick her way around Ringo's metal things without disturbing them.

"Wow!" she said, once she got closer. "You have so many sizes!"

"Yep," Ringo nodded. "I got a bunch so that I could make sure we had some that would fit anyone."

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