Fifth Floor Common Room, Thursday Morning

[thewrathofkaan]

Sometimes, having a mom who occasionally remembered to try to buy Roscoe's love was kind of sad and weird. Other times, it was really nice.

Today was the second kind of day, because Roscoe opened up a package that had arrived in his mailbox the day before and found a sleek white hoverboard bundled up in wrapping and packing peanuts.

Fuck yeah.

So, since it was gross weather outside and he wasn't about to try this thing on the stairs anyway, he figured he'd test it out by gliding into the common room. There was some minor cursing on the way there, and then some major cursing when he tried to navigate the doorway, but he was starting to get the hang of balancing his weight to move by the time he tried gliding in circles around the furniture.

The next step was obviously videoing himself doing this, but he wasn't feeling that bold yet.

[[open like a common room!]]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante was hungry as hell - and bored - so of course he was trawling through the common rooms looking for something to do.

And then he got distracted.

"Holy shit, what is that thing?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"Gift from my mom," Roscoe sing-songed, attempting a little spin in a circle to face Dante. It wasn't the most graceful, but he managed. "Cool, right?"

And stupidly unnecessary in a town that was 80% staircases, but he wasn't about to send it back, god.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Is that a hoverboard?" Dante said. He squinted at the thing as he walked in closer. "Damn, Return to the Past was right."

[thewrathofkaan]

"You know, it is, but that's kind of a crazy name since it has, like, wheels and all." He slowed to a stop to demonstrate. "I feel like to be an actual hoverboard it has to fly. Still, good try, right?"

[rebelseekspizza]

And now Dante was close enough to squat down and eye the things. "Yeah, less impressive from this angle," he said. "Kinda looks like a Segway."

[thewrathofkaan]

"Basically." He smirked. "And more annoying to navigate, probably. But it looks cool."

He stepped off the board. "You wanna give it a try?"

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shrugged, pulling himself back upright. "Sure," he said. "Looks like a nice toy, anyway. How'd you get it?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"My mom sent it. She does this whole thing where she tries to buy my love every once in a while when she remembers I exist," Roscoe shared breezily. "I'm just like, hey, bring on the gifts, you know?"

He took a few steps off to the side to watch Dante from a safe distance. Having just started out on this thing himself a few minutes ago, he was very aware there could be crashing.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante put a foot down on the thing, testing its weight and balance. The other followed soon after, and he maintained an easy sort of grace. "She sounds classy," he said. "So how does this work?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"You just sort of lean whichever way you want to go." Roscoe physically demonstrated, leaning his upper torso forward. "It's got weight sensors, I guess. And if you want to turn to the side, you kind of lean forward on that foot and put your weight on the back of the other foot?" He wrinkled his nose at the clunky description. "It was sorta intuitive."

[rebelseekspizza]

"All right," Dante said easily. Kinda made him think about Ringo's AirTrek instructions.

He leaned forward half an inch, and the board started moving. A little faster than he'd expected, so he had to shift his weight - a brief moment of clumsiness - before it slowed to something more predictable.

[thewrathofkaan]

Roscoe normally wouldn't share a new toy quite so easily (he was an only child, after all), but it was worth it to get to see what it actually looked like when someone was on this thing. "So that's what I looked like," he mused. "Pretty much as awkward as it actually felt."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Just gotta figure out how to use your weight, I think," Dante said. Another shift, and it was turning at a neat forty-five degree angle.

He was a fast learner.

[thewrathofkaan]

"Nice," Roscoe whistled. That wasn't nearly as awkward to watch. He never knew Dante could be graceful like this -- well, outside of sex, anyway. "Ringo got you practicing on her skates yet?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Oh yeah, ages ago," Dante said. "She is obsessed with those things."

His grace was actually built-in for fighting and fighting on the move; applications elsewhere were just a lucky side-effect. He got less awkward on the board with every move he tried-- so he aimed to make a circle, kinda like Roscoe'd been doing.

[thewrathofkaan]

Roscoe's grace came from a general comfort with his body that made him exceptionally coordinated in just about any physical activity he tried except for fighting. Which wasn't to say that he couldn't fight, just that he'd never exactly gotten any practice. There hadn't been many backyard brawls at his posh charter school in LA.

"I wonder if anyone ever told her that in 2016 America they just kind of give off an obsessed-with-the-'90s vibe," he mused with a little smirk. "I mean, she makes it work, but still."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Oh, I told her," Dante said, throwing Roscoe an easy smirk. "She's still in denial."

[thewrathofkaan]

"Sometimes you just can't help bad taste," Roscoe said with a cluck of his tongue. He wore mesh shirts and jeggings and felt qualified to make this judgment. Go figure. "I'm mourning for her, really."

[rebelseekspizza]

Well, yeah, but Dante was inclined to give Roscoe the benefit of the doubt because...

... okay, because no other reason than that he wasn't Ringo. "I do that all the time, and then she rolls her eyes at me," he said fondly. "She does not know what she's doing."