Second floor common room, Tuesday afternoon

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae had decided today was a good day to have a lazy afternoon. She had her crappy (actually, perfectly servicable) tote bag she'd made in class to decorate, a whole bottle of white-out to stink the place up with, and she'd barely watched any TV since she'd gotten here, so she had lots of shows she could catch up on.

Theoretically, anyway. All she could find were weird preteen sitcoms, where kids were excited to get to go to school, and everyone spent the majority of their time screaming.

"Where's the sells-weed-out-behind-the-equipment-shed character?" she wondered, as she watched two girls freak out about being caught rearranging the letters on a highway sign. "Or the 'burnouts vaping in the stairwell' characters? These shows are so unrealistic."

[open!]

Comments

[thishouseishaunted]

Honestly, the only reason why Mae hadn't moved in there was that she already had a history of disappearing into video games and forgetting, you know, that people were people.

"They have a class here to teach you how to bust out of jail?!"

That was clearly the important take away here.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"They had a class last semester that made a whole week out of busting into teachers' offices," Prompto offered, since he figured that was a good way to show that this was part of a range of questionable high school experiences, grinning crookedly the whole time, before it went a little proud and maybe squishy. "I got to help with some of that. One of the teachers planned a different animal booby trap in his for each day.

"But the bust out of jail thing was just, like, a one shot. And it was, like, an old-timey medieval jail. Next week, we'll probably have to fight goblins or something."

[thishouseishaunted]

"What, like those naked cat things?"

Mae had no idea how this comment would come off to people here, no.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Naked cats things?"

Yeah, Prompto didn't even know how that comment would come off to him, especially not when it was coming from someone who looked like a cat.

"I mean, like, puppies and kittens and chickens."

Who were way less cute than chocobos, but, hey, he understood you had to work with what you had sometimes.

[thishouseishaunted]

"Puppies and kittens and chickens aren't goblins."

This conversation was going so well.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Ohhhh, you meant the potential fighty stuff," said Prompto, "not the cute animal booby trap stuff."

It was clear which one he preferred.

"But you're right. They're not."

And then he looked maybe a little awkward, because he still wanted clarification about the whole naked cat thing, but it seemed all sort of weird and wrong to ask when the person you were talking to looked like a cat.

"Sooooo...." He could totally steer far from that, right? They'd lost track of the important stuff, anyway. "About that abandoned store?"

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae's eyes went wide with excitement. "I got to spend a whole day sports rioting and smashing cars!"

[hashtag_chocobro]

"...I have got to check this store out," Prompto concluded after a long, long moment of examining whether or not there was really anything else to say. And there wasn't. "Where did you say it was?"

[thishouseishaunted]

"I miiiiiight tell you," Mae said, realizing she had something of actual value here. "I dunno. How do I know I can trust you?"

[hashtag_chocobro]

"I mean, come on," said Prompto, grinning and pointing at his smirk, which he felt surely could be best defined as 'charmingly cheesy', "just look at this face."

Plus, it was a small town and one of his best friends was a spy. He was going to find it, regardless of whether or not Mae told him anything.

[thishouseishaunted]

"That is an aggressively standard face." Mae. Don't be mean. "What with the hair and the . . . stuff."

You know, like facial features and things.

[hashtag_chocobro]

And the freckles!

So many freckles!

And, really, Prompto would happily take 'aggressively standard' any day of the week, because that was far better than he could ever hope for, and was honestly just glad the hair got a mention. He didn't spend as much time on it as he did for it to just fade into the background to his average, unspectacular face.

"Exactly. See? Aggressively standard, perfectly trustworthy."

[thishouseishaunted]

"Well, trustworthy people definitely always insist they're trustworthy all the time."

[hashtag_chocobro]

She was a hard nut to crack, this one, wasn't she? Prompto laughed a little.

"I mean," he pointed out, "you did ask."

[thishouseishaunted]

"I feel like most people would offer, like, snacks or something. In return for valuable information."

[hashtag_chocobro]

"There's literally a cabinet full of snacks right behind me right now," Prompto pointed out. "Seems like kind of an empty gesture at that point. But, sure, I can get you some snacks. What do you like?"

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae shrugged. "I don't actually have a pricing scheme in mind or anything."

She was going to be so terrible at running this weird abandoned arcade she'd found.