trans_9 | Familiar Air

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Familiar Air

It still threw her, even though she'd been in a couple of times by now, how truly real the sensoriums made everything seem. The dusty rock underneath her, the arid heat and the way the air just wavered the further you looked into the distance. The little baby mountains, the mesas, the distant noise from El Paso's downtown stretched out below her. Even the SMELL of the air. Nothing about the simulation was the tiniest bit out of place.

It was just cool enough to be comfortable on the ledge, with a light breeze and the shade of her little tree and she watched the movement of cars through the city streets with no small amount of wonder. She had thought about getting up a few times, about going into the simulated city and finding a projected Mrs. Reyes, or maybe even her Tia, but the idea still felt too strange. As much as she longed for familiar faces the knowledge that they weren't real, just placeholders, made her skin crawl.

She sighed and picked up a stone, tossing it down the long hillside below and watching it bounce it's way to the bottom. At least the hot air was still a little soothing.

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"Hey chica."

And there was Paco, standing with his hands in the pockets thoughtfully provided by his plantsuit for just that purpose. He offered her a lopsided sort of smile.

"So, I'm thinking we need to take advantage of the Meatship Media-O-Rama and have a movie night. You in?"

He was still trying to wash the taste of slugs out of his brain. Normal stuff was awesome for that.

"I'm saying right here and now though, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers is not going to be on that list."

She jerked her head up and around, unable to help a soft smile at the sight of him. Hands in pockets, that look on his face... Something about it was soothing, despite the awkwardness she felt around him since arriving here. She shuffled over and patted a spot next to her on the ledge.

"I probably can't talk you into Slither either then huh?"

Edited 2009-04-27 04:46 (UTC)

"I already said that I wouldn't feed your Nathan Fillion crush if you wouldn't let me watch Jessica Alba movies," Paco said, flopping down next to her and taking a moment to admire Stacy's attention to detail before wiping the dust off of his plantsuit. "So no, there will be no Slither of any kind."

Yep, just two buds hanging around El Paso. Just like old times.

"Yeah, well, that Fantastic Four bullshit isn't a real movie anyway. When she has a role in something I can stand to watch we'll talk."

Brenda grinned a little, pulling one knee up to her chest and resting her chin on it.

"So how's that nose I broke? All healed up with the magic of science?"

Paco put his hands to his nose -- an act which, entirely by coincidence, hid his mouth, which allowed him to hook a thumbnail under one of his front teeth. He then bent his nose to one side, flicking the nail away from his tooth and causing a horrible crunchy sound like he'd just rebroken his nose.

"Yep! All fixed."

Jazz hands!

She knew the trick, knew when he lifted his hand she shouldn't have asked, but aughspffft! DAMMIT! The sound made her just SHUDDER anyway.

Brenda wound up and socked him HARD.

"Augh! Jerk you know I HATE that!" She twisted her lips into a pout. "I brutalized a slug for you! Be nice!"

"Ow!"

Paco grinned. Totally worth it.

"Oh come on, like you wouldn't have smashed it anyway. Admit it, it was exactly like punching injustice in the face."

"Injustice was very squishy. Would have been better if it had a tiny skeleton for me to break." She grumbled. "Even just a bitty little slug spine, you know."

Paco considered several comments along the lines about how he'd keep that in mind for next time -- "you must have this many bones to infest Paco's brain" -- but decided against it. He didn't really want to keep talking about that whole mess.

"So, any real movie suggestions, or should I just come up with something that would make Jaime confused and say you suggested it?"

"The Matrix Trilogy is probably thematically appropriate. As is Back to the Future. And Tremors. I could totally go for watching Tremors again."

Action movie violence and Michael J. Fox were always kind of cathartic.

"Toss in the movies Jaime and me came up with and some video games, and we'll be set for at least a week," Paco said. "Too bad we can't take popcorn out of here, then we'd have a real party."

"Yeah, ANYTHING that's not mush would be nice, honestly. I gotta get Brainy to teach me whatever crazy Coluan skillz he's got that let him eat that crap so neatly."

"But, horrible food aside, how are you doing?" She hesitated, then added. "Kate said you guys talked, and she seemed okay, but I dunno how that went on your side."

"Maybe we could take over this place instead of the Media Library," Paco said. "Depends on if we want to invite everyone or not. I think we could stuff three people into one of the booths, but it would be a hell of a lot more fun in here."

He sucked on his teeth for a moment. "I'm doing better. That's kind of what the movie night is for, just being as normal as it can be on board this thing."

Paco's face darkened a little at the mention of Kate, and he picked up a rock and tossed it up and down a few times before letting it roll down the hill. "Yeah. We talked. I'm giving her some space right now. But if there was a way to bring those slugs back to life so we could kill them all over again..."

Brenda sighed, reaching over and resting hand on his shoulder. She would have liked to just press up against his side and hug him but they weren't dating here and that meant that was weird so... small comforts it was.

"I'm sorry. At least she's alright though. Everybody is."

She knew that wasn't really very soothing at all.

"And yeah, we should totally see if we can do movie night in here. We could custom-build a movie theater space with couches and stuff and a gigantic IMAX-like screen." She paused. "Hey... I wonder if the mediarama room has movies from the future! We could watch the sequels that have yet to be!"

Paco laughed, and it came out a little harsh.

"Yeah. Everyone's okay," he said. His relationship with Kate was screwed -- she hadn't officially broken up with him, but the fact that she could barely handle being in the same room with him because of what those slugs had done to her was a death-knell right there. And that sucked, and he couldn't exactly talk to Brenda about that, what with Kate's "by the way, Brenda seems to have changed her mind about that kiss not having happened" thing.

No, screw it. Screw it. He was going to watch movies with his friends. Future movies.

"We should totally look for future sequels. Or future movies in general. When we get home, we can invest in the big hit ones or something."

She didn't miss the hard edge to his laugh, but she didn't patronize him by pointing it out either. Paco just wasn't a 'come cuddle me when I'm sad' kind of guy. He had always been more about presence than any specific attempt at comfort, for himself and for other people.

For as long as she cared to remember it had been one of his best qualities.

"At the least we can start rigged betting pools about future Academy Awards Winners." She leaned on him a little, just enough to give him a teasing rock. "Hey and maybe Jessica Alba will be in a movie I don't hate in the future."

That last smile didn't feel so forced.

Edited 2009-05-31 02:18 (UTC)

The longer he had both his friends with him, the better he felt. He was going to bounce back to normal eventually, and he could fake it until then. And maybe, with enough space and time, Kate could think of him as at least a non-threatening friend again.

"Okay, we'll toss some future Jessica Alba movies in on the pile," he said with a grin. "So you can figure out if you like them or not.

He got a little more serious again, although this time with less internal moping.

"We might need to sit on Jaime. He's doing that thing where he gets massively responsible and pretends he's not being frantic in his head. He's thundering through his Violations trying to get off this thing and back home."

"Yeeaaah, we'll have to take him aside and beat some childhood back into him." Brenda agreed, nibbling a little nervously on her thumbnail.

"I don't know what that punishment stuff is that you get when you rack up too many 'stop it' points but I really don't want to find out what it is, especially not because Jaime gets himself reprimanded."

"Oh yeah," Paco agreed. "I get that he wants to go home, but there's got to be a better way to do it. So I'm enlisting you in Jaime-watch and recruitment for making sure Jaime doesn't suck up all the Violations himself. If he tries to do something stupid, whack him over the head."

Brenda held up her left hand solemnly, the right settling over her heart.

"Girls Scouts Honor. You can count on me for Jaime whacking."

She'd never actually been a girl scout but whatever.

"So... what about you? I mean I know 'just let's be normal' but... is there anything I ought to do to help YOU out with this whole thing?"

Paco sucked air through his teeth and made a face.

"I'll live. You know me, I'm not trying to ignore it it or pretend it never happened. Just going to let it go and watch some movies with my friends and be normal for a few hours until I feel sane enough to deal with the fact that my brainslug may have just screwed over the time stream."

Stupid brainslug. He really wished that Superboy and Robin hadn't picked that moment to wander into the MedBay.

She takes him by the chin at that and turns his head toward her, meeting his eyes with a serious frown.

"Let's start with this. Stop referring to it as 'your' brain slug like it's some kind of pet that you let just off the leash. It's an evil alien entity in it's own right and it has it's own name. The Sub Visser might as well have put on an episode of Muppets Tonight with you as Kermit the Frog." - Paco knows EXACTLY what Brenda thinks about muppets - "So stop talking like you were responsible, even a little bit, okay?"

She tussles his hair a bit.

"Secondly, lets get the hell out of here and go raid the media room. You want to be normal, lets start being normal and make a list of the movies we wanna see. Then we can start in on designing the ideal sensoriumey movie theatre in our brains."

"Yes Mom," Paco said obediently, and quickly held up his hands to keep her from punching him. "I'm dealing, okay? It's cool, I feel bad about it but I'm not eaten up by guilt or anything. I got my victories -- it didn't kill Jaime and now it's dead, and as a bonus, I can cuss people out in languages spoken by species I've never even met."

That last bit was technically a lie. He hadn't picked up too much language off of Sub-Visser Seven's previous hosts. But it had helped, sort of. Some of them had given up, become quietly despairing shadows in their own minds. Some of them had fought the Sub-Visser every day of their lives. Some had screamed and railed, some had begged, some had tried to escape or kill themselves when the Sub-Visser left their heads to feed. The only victories any of them ever got were small ones, moments of control snatched out of the Sub-Visser's iron grip before the Sub-Visser grabbed them back. He'd had showed some of those moments to Paco early on, trying to make him give up, make him believe that he was going to be a prisoner for the rest of his life. But it hadn't worked. If all Paco could have were small victories, then that was all he needed to aim for. He'd trusted Jaime to do the rest.

He'd won. He was going to be okay.

"Movie time it is!" he said, hopping to his feet. "Come on, let's pry Jaime away from badtouching Stacy's insides and make him help."

"You got it. Surely the temptation of future movies will be too much for his tired brain to resist!"

She smiles as she climbs to her feet as well and follows him out of pseudo El Paso to find Jaime.

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Familiar Air

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