trans_9 | What Some Take For Magic At First Glance [Opentastic]

Howard has avoided The Warehouse entirely for the last few days. Something about wandering around in it alone seems like a profoundly unsettling prospect. Even when he returns to it, he decides it's a better idea to work out in the front yard than actually lounge around the living room.

Today's project is a roller fridge. Having found three sets of identical rollerblades (for someone with six legs? Or just three right feet?), Howard's set to dismantling them and fixing them to a mini-refrigerator he found in an unclaimed house down the tracks. He eventually plans on recalibrating the fridge into a freezer and attaching a handle to drag it to and from Hydroponics, but actually putting wheels on it seems to be the most difficult task so far.

After several failed attempts to use a candle-lighter to weld some sort of axle on, Howard gets a drill and an extension cord out. The sound of the drill upsets the cat, whom he's zipped into an old backpack, bar her head. He doesn't want her to run off onto the tracks, after all, or leave her alone in the house, and despite all the random junk he's accumulated, he hasn't yet found a small leash or collar.

She growls at him and struggles to free herself, but he routinely calms her down with cat treats and a sock full of catnip when the noise scares her too much. To keep her attention, he slips one of the cat treats up his sleeve and out of sight. That's just sleight of hand.

The fridge, on the other hand, may require more creativity. He sits with the backpack full of cat on his lap, chewing on a hangnail, trying to figure out how exactly he's going to give it wheels that can swivel.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Must've been a big war or a good school system for you guys. We've had wars on my Earth and I couldn't tell you where half of them are. Was it over something important?"

He rolls his eyes. "Because some genius thought 'hey, that kid can make it rain' meant 'maybe we can bust out of this fishbowl we live in if we throw him off a building to get eaten by bugs'. Common freaking sense is kind of a rare resource where I'm from."

"Yeah, it was something pretty big. With a ton of repercussions people still feel fourteen years after the fact. You know, the usual crap. And crap with words and places that are probably as familiar as Miltia is to you."

Jr. let out a sarcastic snort, shaking his head. "Lack of common sense is sadly a common trait in places where it shouldn't be..."

"Sounds fun. Hey, at least it sounds like you guys had running water? Or you know, maybe didn't need it or something. So are you a clone or just some other kind of created, anyway?" He tilts his head again, to the right this time. "I mean, not that it matters to me besides just being curious, obviously. My best amigo's a synthetic human, so."

Before Jr. tackled that question, he raised an eyebrow. "You didn't live in a place like that your whole life, did you?"

Well, he called Gaignun his brother already, Galilee aside (though Galilee happening at all was why he ended up doing that anyway), and it wasn't as though the trip down there wasn't obvious enough about it. Jr. took in a small breath before speaking. "Yeah, clone." He figured if Howard was that interested, he'd ask more. "You mean Zouichi when you say synthetic human, right? Unless you've got Realians back where you're from, too - that's what guys like him are called in my world."

"Nah. Just the last stretch. I wouldn't have my unbeatable knowledge of Halo 2 without at least a little of a normal childhood." Come to think about that, he should try and find an X-Box in the media library.

"Clone of someone?" He nods. "Yeah, Zou. He calls himself a synthetic human, so that's what I'll call him. Besides, 'test tube baby' sounds douchey."

"Got'cha." Well. Not about Halo. Jr. wasn't really that much of a buff in the more technological side of Earth. Though he still liked playing games.

"And yeah, uh. My dad." Maybe Howard wasn't used to meeting many clones ... though Jr. wondered if any others called their creator father like he and his brothers and sister did. He technically was - and calling him dad didn't make much of a difference in him being #1 worst dad ever. "I guess you could call him a politically active scientist," he added with a voice dripping of the fakest enthusiasm ever.

Jr. preferred bastard or douche, though, to be quite honest.

Wow, Jr., Howard's impressed with the amount of vitriol you can fit into such innocuous words. "Not a huge fan of family reunions, huh?"

"Deeeeefinitely not the biggest," he said with a small, dry laugh.

Not that no good came out of them in the end, but said good usually being surrounded by death and destruction due to the ambitions of not only Jr.'s father wouldn't leave anybody very excited about the idea. "But I hear they're not very fun in most cases anyway."

Howard shrugs. "I don't know. I always got to look forward to getting beat up by my out-of-state cousins at mine. What's not to love about that?"

"Heh, well I guess if they're annoying enough!"

What Some Take For Magic At First Glance [Opentastic]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject