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The Stables, Friday

Nina's own escape had been nowhere near as dramatic as Regina's. She didn't have access to most of her magic (and toy fireballs and round droplets of plastic water were not much use at all) without tools and time to prepare (she was making a note to herself, under all the screaming she wasn't doing, to fix that later) she was sort of… stuck.

And short of ripping a limb off and hoping it had a sharp metal bit in it to scratch a summoning circle in the floor of her prison cell, Nina hadn't had anything she could use, and no way to confirm that her stupid plastic body would actually have sharp edges if she ripped herself apart unless she actually went ahead and did so…

So, like, no. But the very fact she'd considered it said… well, a lot.

Nina had fallen back on her other strongest skill, when it came to getting out of situations: lying.

The kerfuffle with all the other toys—something about a break in? or a mass rebellion? she wasn't really sure, the details didn't filter very well down to other prisoners—and meant that her case was much, much more effective when she pled that she really was a Good Toy and that she'd been throwing a party, which is what only Good Toys did, and that Prompto had had the very best of intentions but that he'd been wrong, he'd taken happy exhaustion after a party for not happy enough--

And it took her a while, it really did, but when her transgressions were held up against the real traitors, why, it was like she wasn't a Bad Toy at all! They let her out, since she was obviously a Good Toy and, gushing her thanks, her praise for the Toymaker, and her total understanding for the whole mix-up, their warnings to make sure she avoided such confusing situations in the future because they would be watching…

Nina couldn't throw up or cry in her current form but, once she was far, far enough away from the Toybox, she collapsed against a building, shuddering until she was all shuddered out, and then, because she desperately did not want to be caught again, crept her way through town, making one of her priorities to find and get a pencil crayon so that she wasn't left without a way to summon things again, as she headed towards the dorms.

The dorms loomed in front of her, both reassuring and terrifying. She wanted to go in, check on Miss Dozy and Foomy, but she wasn't sure she dared. If she met Prompto again………………………

Nina picked her way around the outside of the dorms instead, skirting around the principal's tower, vaguely intent on the Preserve, but when she spotted the stables, she detoured there. No one else was there, just a few stuffed, toy horses pretending to eat their plastic hay, and that… that was just about the most relaxing thing she'd found.

Paranoia (though was it really, when they really were out to get them?) meant that she still made herself search every nook and cranny and…

"Like, what is this?????????????" she wondered, picking up the weird little nesting doll and turning it over in her hands. "What??????????????????"

There was an illustration of the dorms on the front leading to the Preserve on the back of the doll and that seemed...

Nina had been on the island for almost a year at this point. This was the sort of thing that, like, seemed important.

Hugging the nesting doll to herself, Nina peeked outside the stables. Important meant she was going to have to leave the relative safety of the stables and she didn't want to… but she was going to have to… but maybe, just maybe, she'd take stock here first, for a little bit longer…

[Open post, naturally! And this tag hasn't been used since 2012?!]

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Okay, so, this was kind of a secret, but, sometimes, sometimes, Prompto liked to just go to the stables for a little while. And, while he was there, he would stack up the hay bales and...pretend they were chocobos. What?? Don't judge him! (Not for that, anyway). It was fun! They had hay bale chocobo races and everything! And he was thinking he needed a little more fun right now, especially after all the bad news and all the bad toys.

So imagine his surprise, when he bounced on over to the stable for a nice little chocobo race to lift his spirits, to waltz and and find none other than the very toy he'd sent off to the Toybox the other night!

"Nina!"

Oh! Hey! It was the very last person she wanted to see!

But Nina knew that, if she couldn't fool him now that things would get really ugly and, after a day and night spent in the Toybox, well, Nina trusted him a hell of a lot less than she had before.

"Proooooooooomptoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she cried, sounding absolutely, positively delighted to see him, like she usually would be, as she set the nesting doll down and flung herself at him for a hug. "Oh my gosh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Later, when Nina had the ability to throw up, she was going to throw up so much.

And Prompto was going to want to throw himself into every garbage trash pile ever, because that was where he'd belong.

Heck, even the trash would be too good for him.

But right now? Right now, he was feeling the biggest rush of elation to see Nina there, and if she hadn't made the rush for him, he'd be rushing toward her right now. As it was, he met her hug eagerly with one of his own, picking her up and twirling her a little as he laughed.

"You're back!" he gushed as he set her down and beamed at her. "I knew it! I told you, didn't I? I told you that it would all be okay, and they would fix you, and now you're back! Oh, this is great news! And we need some great news right now, too, Nina. So many awful things have been happening..."

And he looked sad, for a moment, before he shook his head and chased it away with another laugh. "What are you doing out here in the stables, anyway?" He had to ask, but, hey, if she was back, and fixed, then he knew it had to be something really good and fun!

And he had to go and hug her again. Had to! She was back!

Normally, normally Nina would argue that he didn't belong in the trash but, no, right now she'd be in total agreement with that. Trash. He'd make her skin crawl, except she didn't have skin right now!

And the fact that she missed the fact that her flesh couldn't creep was a really pathetic one but, dammit, Nina missed her body.

Right now, though, she was entirely focused on him and his words and the spinning and the hugs and the lies she had to weave.

"You were, like, so right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she chirped, snuggling all into that hug the best she could while not being very snuggly at all as a plastic toy. Still, she was a more cuddly sort of plastic than he was. "I'm so sorry I ever doubted you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I said terrible things to you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina pulled back out of the hug just enough to stare up at him soulfully. "Can you, like, ever forgive me??????????????????????????"

But, since he was a good toy (and Nina was never going to think those words again without a shudder once this was over) and she was too, she brightened even before he answered her.

"Like, oh my gosh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Prompto, like, I realized that I'd completely forgotten to invite our friends here to the party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I was telling them all about how great it had been and promising that the next party, like, would be here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And, look, I even made a new friend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

She gestured expansively towards the weird little nesting doll.

"She's, like, not very talkative," Nina said, "so I think she's super shy, so I've been telling her all about the horsies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And Prompto tried his best to follow all of that, feeling a little like a ping pong ball back and forth on a table, opening his mouth to respond a few times, but she just kept going, and, by the end of it, he just had to laugh because, thank goodness, this was definitely his dear, sweet, talkative Nina again and he just sort of beamed at her happily for a moment, so glad she was back, so glad he was able to do what needed to be done to get her back.

And then his smile turned to the new friend, and he did a bow...which was one action that was not as easy as some of his other, but his arms were able to sweep out nicely.

"Always a pleasure to meet a new friend!" he said. "And there's no need to be shy! We're all, like, super good friends here!"

The nesting doll just stared at them and didn't respond.

"I told you," Nina said, giggling into her hands. "But, like, it was really fun getting to tell her all about the horsies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And, like, if she didn't like hearing about it, she would have left, right????????????????"

... It was stupid, so stupid, but it was the right sort of stupid.

"Well, I mean," said Prompto, smile fading maybe just a touch as he considered the new friend, "it wouldn't have been nice to just leave like that, whether she enjoyed it or not..."

And that hung in the air a little before he laughed again. "But how could she not enjoy it? Especially if it was you telling her, Nina!"

"I do tell a pretty good story," Nina said, not at all modestly, though she laughed, the sound happily delighted. "But, like, so do you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been telling stories for ages now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Prompto, it's your turn!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please????????????????????"

"Well, how can I say no to that?" Prompto asked, laughing, and going to pull up a large plastic hat bake so that he could plop down and sit comfortably. If they were going to play Storytime, they might be here for a while! His hand sort of rubbed at his chin in a gesture of deep thought ashe considered. "But what kind of story should I tell? What do you think your nee friend would like to hear about most?"

Edited 2019-08-17 01:03 (UTC)

Sitting wasn't something that Nina could do very comfortably--not and sit like a lady, at least--so she clambered up onto one of the plastic hay bales and draped herself on that, on her stomach, folding her arms in front of her and letting her legs kick in the air, like she was super, duper, incredibly ready for story time.

It was as ladylike as she could manage.

"Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm," Nina hummed, looking thoughtful as she considered the weird little doll that she was pretending was sentient like they were. "Oh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How about, like, do you remember how we decorated the bus that one time???????????????????? And, like, how totally happy all the toys were to see it??????????????????? Tell her about that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Do I remember" Prompto asked, scoffing playfully before laughing; he took a moment to fold up his legs, crossing them in front of him and leaning in, hands draped over his ankles, making the most out of all those nice jointed pieces. "How could anyone forget?"

And, to be honest, the details...were a little fuzzy, like he was pulling the memories out from someone else's brain a little, but there was more than enough to go off of, and he launched in with a sort of wonder in his voice. "It was incredible! You should have seen it! It all started out as a helpful plot to make the bus amphibious, so that it could float, in case the island should ever do something like flood. So Nina and our very good freind Vette and I all got together every single floatie and inflatable we could find, in all sorts of colors, bright balloons and rainbows, and glitter! So much glitter," he chuckled a little, "naturally, and even duct tape in different colors so that we could not only make the bus float, but it was just about the prettiest bus you've ever seen. There was even a unicorn for the very top of it! You should have seen it!

"And it did make all the toys happy to see it," he continued, though his tone turned a bit darker, a bit more warning, "except Dean Skywalker. He took one look at that bus, and he was furious! I guess things like that should have really told us the truth about Dean Skywalker; we should have known right then and there that he'd turn out to be a bad toy and a traitor, because what kind of good toy could look at something with that much light and laughter and pretty colors and, most importantly, good intent, and be mad about it? Only the worst of toys, and how lucky we are that we've finally seen him for what he was, and to meet his fate in the Toybox.

"But don't be worried!" Prompto rushed in after his tone went morose for a moment, flashing another smile of reassurance for their new friend. "Good toys don't need to worry about the Toybox, because Good Toys, even if they do go a little bad, will always be safe and fine and the Toybox is there to help them. Isn't that right, Nina?"

His eyes danced eagerly to her, anticipating her agreement, her first hand testimony on the wonders of what the Toybox can really do for a toy that was truly good and wonderful at heart, just like her!

[You MONSTER oh my god <3 ]

The only good part of the whole story was that, as soon as he'd started waxing on about how horrible the Bus Dean was, Nina had figured out pretty quick just where he was likely to wind up at.

It... it didn't make the gut punch of dealing with it much easier, since she was going to have nightmares for life about him handing her over to that unspeakably horrible prison and being forced to endure it, but it did give her warning, which meant her shuddery, crawling terror was clamped down on hard.

He wanted bright-eyed, bushy-tailed agreement. He'd get it.

She'd just die a little more inside, giving it to him.

"Definitely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Like, it's super scary, when you're a bad toy, but the Toymaster is super great at fixing that right up, no problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Look at me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Like, Prompto was the best friend he could be by turning me over when I started, like, going the slightest bit bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because he didn't wait, the Toymaster was able to fix me right up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And now," she laughed, "I'm totally better than ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[ <3 <3 <3 ]

Well, if anythihng, it was true that the Toybox had managed to take care of whatever it was on Wednesday that had Prompto suspicious about the level of NIna's goodness, because Prompto couldn't be happier just sitting there and listening, and he was so proud. Of Nina and her strength and her acceptance, embracing her Goodness so much, like he knew she would, and proud of himself, that he'd been able to save a friend, that he knew her well enough to catch her before she fell down that slipery slope in that terrible abyss of Badness that so, so many toys around them were falling into.

It was all going to be okay. The traitors would be executred tomorrow, everyone would know that only Bad Things happen to Bad Toys, and everything would be nice and happy and perfect again.

He sighed, a little wistful sound.

"The best Nina you can be!" he said fondly. "The happiest Nina. I'm so glad you're back. I'm so glad you're fixed, Nina, but I knew you would be. I didn't have a shadow of a doubt!"

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The Stables, Friday

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