fandomhighdorms | The dorm stairwell, Wednesday afternoon

Ringo had been struck by inspiration this morning, but it had taken her a few hours to get everything ready. First she'd spent an hour putting together a bunch of little signs using bright colors and glitter and anything to hopefully make them extremely noticeable.

Watch out on the stairs
AT ride in progress

Then she'd walked from floor to floor with her stack of signs and a roll of tape and taped the things up all over the place near the dorm stairs. She really didn't want anyone to get caught by surprise, after all. That's why the signs were so glittery!

Once that was done, she walked the stairs top to bottom a few times, eyes picking out potential lines to ride and noting any tight areas to be careful of. With a plan in place, she returned to the ground floor and sat down, closing her eyes to visualize her ideal run. The central trick that the whole thing turned on was going to be, well, tricky. She'd need to skate up one wall, kick off, grab the handrail, and use that as a pivot point to make sure her momentum was heading in the right direction to keep going up the opposite wall. And she'd have to do that once for each time the stairs changed direction at a landing.

Ringo rather doubted she'd make it all the way to the top in a single run on the first try, or even the tenth try, but AirTrek wasn't about being perfect the first time. No, it was about practicing until you nailed it. And Ringo was prepared to try as many times as she needed to.

So she got her ATs on, and got started. Laughter and excited whoops echoed ahead and behind her as she rocketed upward, punctuated by sighs and frustrated exclamations when she didn't manage to land at the right angle, or with enough momentum and had to start over. But messing up was part of the process, and she messed up a little less with each run.

She'd get there eventually, and until she did, getting a little better with each attempt, learning little tricks to make things easier, well that was where a lot of the fun was!

[ooc: Feel free to bump into Ringo at any point in the process. Making signs, hanging them up, actually speeding up the stairwell walls, or on a break to catch her breath and drink some water.]

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Alluka was in a great mood! And she and her giraffe were hopping down the stairs when she saw Ringo, who looked like she was just finishing sticking something up on the wall.

But that wasn't the important part.

The important part was that Alluka bounced over for a hug. "Surprise!" she said happily, laughing as she flung her arms around Ringo.

There were a lot of bad things that Ringo had made her think about, but it had been weeks, and people had helped and even though she was still terribly confused: Ringo was her friend!

And Ringo was surprised. Not so much that she didn't manage to turn around into that hug and hug right back, but still surprised. After all, they'd left their last conversation on a more than sour note. She wouldn't even have been shocked if Alluka had avoided her the way she'd sort of been avoiding Alluka.

"I'm surprised!" Ringo exclaimed as she hugged back. "But it's a good surprise."

Alluka giggled, pulling back from the hug.

"Hi," she said, rather belatedly. "What are you doing?"

Ringo grinned at that giggle, relaxing a bit.

"I'm putting up signs so that people will be careful on the stairs since I'm about to do some AT tricks on them. I don't want anyone getting hurt!"

"Are they going to be dangerous tricks?" Alluka wondered. "And will you get hurt?"

"Well, all tricks are at least a little bit dangerous," Ringo admitted. "But these shouldn't be too bad. I mean, I'll be going pretty fast, but it's not like there's all that far to fall if I mess up." Just down a flight of stairs, really. No biggie.

"So, I should be just fine."

Well, if Ringo was fine with it, Alluka didn't care past that. Falling down a set of stairs didn't sound that bad, in her mind, especially since Ringo didn't seem to care.

"Is it going to be a lot of fun?" she asked, instead. "Can I watch?"

Ringo beamed. "I sure hope it'll be fun. That's why I'm doing it."

"And of course you can watch if you want!" She smiled at the other girl. "You could even get your own ATs and see if you can learn some of the basics." But only if Alluka wanted!

"Or you can just watch me. Totally up to you!"

Oh! Oh! Oh!

"Can I really try and learn? Can I really?"

She'd, she'd even put Bubbles down to learn, since Bubbles would probably not like it much.

"Sure!" Ringo grinned. "After all, I shouldn't have all the fun to myself!"

Though, given Alluka's current level of skills, they might not get too far. But however far they got would be fun!

Alluka giggled.

"Well, you could," she said, "but that'd be mean."

"And there's plenty of fun to go around!" Ringo pointed out, trying not to hear an accusation that wasn't there in Alluka's words about being mean.

"That's the best part about the island," Alluka said brightly, totally unaware of any potential accusations that Ringo might read into, well, anything. "I like having fun."

"Me, too!" Ringo grinned. "I bet that's why we get along so well."

"Anyway, if you want to give it a try, you'll need to get your ATs."

"Oh!"

Yes, yes she needed to do that.

"I'll be right back!" she said, and turned to go. "You'd better wait for me!"

A beat.

"Please!"

"Of course!" Ringo grinned. "I'll be right here warming up when you get back!"

Stretching and warm-ups were important, after all. Especially when you were at least theoretically responsible for keeping a newbie from getting hurt.

"Just don't take too long!" she called after Alluka, hoping that the other girl could tell that she was teasing.

Now that wasn't the sort of rukus you heard everyday, especially not in the dorms, and so Ada was wandering down the hallway to peer into the stairwell.

"Good crashing or bad crashing?"

Yes, there was a difference, especially when you were a carnie.

Ringo had, in fact, just missed her trick. She'd held onto the railing just a split-second too long, and instead of giving her a nice upward trajectory, she hurtled feet first straight into the wall across the stairs.

She had plenty of time to brace for impact, and to roll into the fall which followed without hurting herself, and now she was sprawled on, mostly on her butt, on the stairs. Laughing.

"Good crashing!" she announced just a bit breathlessly, tilting her head back so that she could see who was asking the question. "Hi!"

"Hi yourself," Ada said, hip-checking herself up on the banister to slide down to where Ringo was sitting. "You tryin' to do a trapeze act in the stairs or something?"

"Not exactly," Ringo grinned broadly. She waved her feet, trying to draw attention to the AirTreks she was wearing. They mostly just looked like weird inline skates with fewer, bigger wheels.

"I'm trying to see if I can manage a run from the ground floor all the way up without having to stop. I'm having to improvise some of the tricks, though, and I haven't quite got them down yet."

"With rollerskates?" Ada asked, scrunching her nose. "How d'ya manage that?"

Ringo laughed again. "Air Trek," she corrected lightly. "They have motors in the wheels." She lifted one foot straight up and wriggled her foot inside the boot at just the right angle to spin the back wheel with a high-pitched whine.

"Because, yeah, I think it'd be tricky to do with regular skates."

The dorm stairwell, Wednesday afternoon

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