smash_logs | LOOK. UP IN THE SKY.

LOOK. UP IN THE SKY.

Who: All of Smash.
What: Dorm log!
Where: Student and Teacher dorms, and quite possibly beyond campus.
When: March 13th - April 13th. The whole month.
Warnings: YOU KNOW YOURSELVES

We all know our characters experience downtime after classes and their busy schedules, and this is a good venue for those kinds of miscellaneous dorm-shenanigans to take place. Not only does it give your characters the easy chance to meet new people in a laid-back environment, but it's a good mechanism for strengthening CR. It's easy!

Feel free to begin in any way you please! Plan with (a) fellow player(s) if you'd like! Or, set up a thread and wait for characters to bite! Just add a thread with the room number (and date/time, if it matters) and the characters that reside there (just for reference!). You do not have to use one character's thread as a dual-purpose for both characters if you do not want to. Doesn't have to be a dorm room, either, if you have something else in mind.

This month sees the added addition of the fallen Egg Carrier--the debris still litter the lakeside.

Thank you to Angela for the original text! Here are the school's living arrangements, for reference.

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BONUS EVENT TIME!!

March 16th
Are you Irish? No? TOO BAD, you are now. Many of the bars and clubs downtown are having green-flavored festivities. Sure, they're stated to be for those of legal age, but that's never stopped people before, right?

March 23rd - 25th
THE GREAT EXCITEBIKE MIGRATION. Better stay out of the streets or you might get run oveBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBbbbbbBBBbBbBBBBBb

April 1st
OH NO IT'S APRIL FOOL'S. Crazy Hand is out and about, slapping unsuspecting students and faculty with fish stickers. What? If you are unfortunate enough to fall victim to his pranking ways, you might find yourself saddled with a minor curse (hair color change, uncontrollable sneezing, anything you want, really) for as long as the sticker is on your person. The catch--try as you might, you can't remove it. Someone else will have to take it off for you, which might be a tall order if the sticker makes you say everything backwards.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1: Thanks to a helpful tip, Hajime's largely retreated into the library, desperately trying to locate the file of gijinka.exe. He cycles from excited to frustrated to desperate and around again with each new file he goes through. Hopefully no one is too put off by the robot muttering to himself in the shelves, walking back and forth to desks with piles of disks to sift through.

2. Otherwise, Hajime tries to keep himself busy cleaning up the mess at the lake. A lot of the smaller stuff has been taken care of, but sometimes he just likes to sit by the forest and stare out at the lake like a big sad nerd.

3. Otherwise, he's just... around. Maybe he's an unfamiliar weird robot guy who avoids eye contact and looks longingly towards the cafeteria or gym a lot of the time. Maybe he's a guy you used to know and you want to know why he stopped coming to class, or comment on that, like, army he led or something? I DUNNO!!!

Edited 2015-03-21 05:57 (UTC)

Hey. Hajime. Did you know.

There's a librarian.

She's there to help.

And also stare into your robot soul as you scare off yet another shiny pidgey with your mechanical mutterings and pacings.

It might take him a while to notice because he is SLIGHTLY preoccupied with his search, but enough of those spooky blue eyes boring into him and finally he might think to look up.

"Ah--er. Sorry, was I--was I being loud?" Ah yes now he remembers where the volume buttons are.

She was mostly keeping tabs on how long it took for him to ask for help. People were awfully stubborn about that.

"A bit."

Now that he was aware she was there, she shifted the books in her arms around and continued to place them back into their homes.

Yep, he still went back in to read on his own, albeit a bit more quietly. For a helper, he's pretty lousy at asking for help. Even with that, it was a few minutes before he began muttering again, exasperated.

"Ought to... what does that even mean, it's all... but it's in here, I-- mmrgh."

He slammed the file shut with a bit too much force, before flinching. "Sorry. Uh... ah, do you-- nevermind."

Another book was placed calmly on the shelf, giving him time to ask before she looked at him again. He didn't. So Vianca gave robojime another long stare until she finally blinked once, slowly.

"Are you afraid asking for help will make you appear foolish?"

"I--what? No, that's not--I mean..." That calm, unfaltering stare made him want to question himself. "I just... I'm looking for a digital file. I figure you're more acquainted with the physical books located in here." That's how librarians work, right? Like, he goes to libraries a lot, and that's what he's acquainted with.

Shantae liked looking over the lake. It reminded her a bit of being at home, on the ocean... Well, on a smaller scale for sure. Which is why it sucked that a big ugly airship had to crash right there and ruin the view. At least the cleanup job was going well...

But then there was this depressed looking robot. Well, not like she could tell he was depressed, but he was very expressive for a machine. Her curiosity piqued, she went to speak to him. "You okay?"

Digital eyes flickered over to Shantae, then back out to the lake, and Hajime gave a small shrug. For anyone who didn't know his situation, he figured he shouldn't make a fuss. "As okay as a robot can be."

He faltered, then put a hand to his face. "No, that's not right. I don't know how okay a robot can be. I mean, physically sound, but a robot, so--" He had both hands covering his face by this point. How could he mess up the world's simplest, most innocuous question? "Sorry. I'm doing great."

Shantae didn't take that answer at face value. She plopped herself down next to the depressed robot. "I don't know anything about robots or machines, but you definitely don't sound great to me," she said. "You want to talk about it?"

Giving the genie a sidelong glance, he pulled his knees in to his chest. "No... thanks, but it's nothing you should concern yourself with. I just... need to come to terms with some things."

"C'mon," she said, elbowing him in the side. "Tell me. You'd be surprised. Besides, I'm used to solving problems weirder than whatever you've got going on."

She wasn't going to take no for an answer.

"Have you, really?" He'd be a little more skeptical, except he'd probably solved weirder problems, too. After a moment, he shrugged in acquiescence, and wished he had a chin to tuck his knees under.

"It's sort of complicated. Hard to sum up. Basically, people got hurt because I tried to take on something big... something that needed to be done, but... I didn't want it to happen violently. And... mm." Complaints about being a robot felt fairly selfish, in comparison to the wreckage before them.

She patted his back in response, saying "Nothing complicated about that," she said. "If you stood up for something important, then you should be glad. Even if there WAS a bit of... collateral damage."

"And for the record? I once had to help solve a squid's mid-life crisis," she explained. "So yes, really."

"Mm. I'd like to be able to feel good about it. I'm not used to victories being... complicated, I guess." This is what happens when you don't get O-passes in each stage.

"No kidding, huh...? Well. I've handled weirder."

"Yeah... I am used to victories being complicated," she admitted to him. "So I get where you're coming from. But it's still about doing the right thing."

"All right, try me."

"Back home, it was always so simple. We worked hard, believed in people, and the good guys won. I helped a political candidate defeat his opponent, who was mind controlling voters with afro hairspray." There are few things that get him to brighten up like talking about his cheer team. "My superiors get to handle even more bizarre."

"The good guys are still winning!" she reminded him. "You still did good, even if... well, this happened."

"For the record? The mayor of my home town sold the town to a psychotic warlord for chocolate money."

"Sounds like something the afro guy might have done, if he won." Turns out they're just living in alternate timelines of each other.

"I didn't think about the bad guys' families before, is all. I just..." He groaned, rubbing at his temples. Purely out of habit, of course. "I feel like an ass if I focus on all the good things that happened, even if there's so much more of them. But then it feels like I don't appreciate the good stuff, either, or how hard everyone worked to make it possible, and I...

"I just wish I could clear my head... take a deep breath, or something, or a long shower, or... you know. Human things. Everything feels so stuck, in here."

"Sometimes all you can DO is focus on the good things," Shantae pointed out.

"A little while ago, the pirate Risky Boots stole something from my uncle. A magic lamp. I had a chance to get rid of it for good, but she kidnapped my uncle, and I had to give her the lamp's seals in exchange for his life. He didn't want me to do it, but his life was more important. I ended up losing my magic for a while, but if I had the choice to do it again, I would, every time." She cocked her head. "It may not be much, but you have to look for the good wherever you can find it. I eventually got my magic back. You'll be fixed up too."

For a while, he fell silent. He hated this body, its unfamiliarity, its coldness and lack of comfort, but... in the end, given the choice between this, and all those animals still being under Eggman's control...?

"This isn't the first time my body's been changed by this school." It was easier to claim which was worse when he wasn't being cooked from the inside. "Pattern recognition says these things do have a way of fixing themselves. But... even if it doesn't... I knew this risk from the start, and I'd do it again." He gave a humorless tut. "I just need to get over myself, is all."

"Then you've got nothing to be ashamed of," Shantae reminded him. "This is just a temporary setback. You did a good thing! Be proud of it!"

He should be proud of it. He was. Everyone had worked for this, and the person who had gotten hurt was an undeniably bad person. He needed to lighten up.

"When you lost your magic, was it... how did you get used to having such a big part of you... gone?"

She frowned a bit at the question. She didn't like thinking about it much, but if she was going to show empathy for Hajime's situation, he deserved to know. "It was hard. Losing my magic wasn't just losing part of me, it was losing the only connection I had to my mother too. I'm a half-genie. My mother was a genie, my father was human. I never knew either of them... But I always felt like even though I lived in the human world, that I had some connection to the genie world. Losing my magic was tough. I felt isolated and alone... But I had my friends there to help me, to cheer me up, to encourage me and train me not to rely on magic as much as I had."

He nodded, faintly. Yes, that was probably right. "I've had the ability to see souls for as long as I can remember. It changed how I talked to people, how I saw them, how I thought of them. This body... changed it. I don't... I don't know how to do anything without it." His speakers huffed out a sigh. "I went on and on about other peoples' feelings, but I can't even read them without a big light showing me the way. But most people do this, all the time."

LOOK. UP IN THE SKY.

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shantae who is a genie now

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