2023-03-03: New Tricks
- Log: 2023-03-03- New Tricks
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Rin Starking
- Where: HaroCon - Food Court
- OOC - IC Date: 0097-03-03
- Summary: While snagging some emergency food at HaroCon, Rin Starking and Akane Shinjo have a nice conversation. ... Akane also takes the chance to brag just a little bit.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Just because Akane started her convention trip as a date with Rikka doesn't mean her whole trip is a date with Rikka; she needs time to explore the world on her own, too, and she's said as much. In a lot of ways it's risky for her to place all her emotional eggs in one basket.
It's time for her to hit the food court right now, though, because she has to process the text message she just received. And then the like three dozen more text messages she's sent, in that time.
So right now, she's here, alone, sitting at a table with a slice of convention pizza and texting. "Oh my god. I have no idea what I'm even going to do," she mumbles to herself through a mouthful.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
Someone kicks a chair back from where Akane is sitting and sets downwards, butt flopping into a chair and a bag flopping onto the tabletop as this seeming ballet of motion concludes with a redhead with a braided-up quasi-chignon flopping down with her tray of fast-food noodle bowl (spicy tofu!) and a side of tempura veg flops down. "I know RIGHT? This is exhausting me and we're barely even rolling! I'm going to have to get in the coffee line after this, but I just haaaaad to siiiiit doowwwwwwnnn~~~!!!"
"Were you saving this seat?" Rin asks Akane as she reaches over to pop open a 400ml bottle of brown soda. (Crack open a cold one!)
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Startling a little as she finds herself with a second student present, Akane pauses and searches her memory. ... wait, this is -- right! Right. She remembers her from the pageant recording, now that she thinks of it.
"Oh, uh, no," Akane answers Rin, shaking her head. "You're -- Starking, right? You killed it at the GUTS pageant last year," she enthuses. "Oh, uh, Akane Shinjo." She absently pushes a little bit of lilac hair out of her face.
She looks down at her phone, then decides to swipe whatever it was she was doing off the screen for a bit. "Kinda funny to see you here, though. I wasn't expecting to run into anyone, but this seems to be a pretty big draw... are you much of a Haro liker?"
... this small talk alone thing is simultaneously a lot easier and a lot harder than she expected.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"Yeah!" Rin says, straightening upright. "You remember me! Wow, gosh!" She pushes her glasses up her nose with her thumb, beaming in a sort of dork-ass way, but then she takes a swig of the soda, turning to face Akane. Setting the soda down, she picks up the chopsticks, snapping them apart.
"I am, actually," Rin says. "My mom and Count Starking and everyone, our house is up in the mountains and for a couple of years, my sister and I had a live-in tutor. That was pretty luxurious, wasn't it? It's a lot less glamorous than it sounds, but we had a couple of Haros in the house, the patrol drone, everything... I really got a bug for the little guys!"
"How about you? How do you Haroppreciate?" Rin puts noodles in her mouth while Akane answers.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"A little, yeah! You definitely made an impression." ... Akane reminds herself that she ought to be making impressions, too; she can't just stay in her room anymore. After taking another bite of pizza, Akane hears 'Count Starking,' and connects that with Rin being an Ashford student.
... the nerves do get her, a bit. Her free hand goes down to her bag, pulling it up into her lap; she puts her hand on something in it, gripping tight. "O-oh," she says, taking in the full extent of what she's just been told. "I'm actually kinda new to this... I used to do sculpture, but some bad stuff happened and I'm kinda on a break."
That's... eliding a lot of context, but that's fine. She doesn't need to tell every new person everything about herself to have an honest interaction. "So I guess I'm kind of interested in case mods," she adds. "My girlfriend can do repair and internal mod work, too, so we're looking at putting some stuff together as a pair..."
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
Rin raises her hands to make a little bit of a 'ehehehe' face. Complete with a little poking out of her tongue.
She swirls around her noodles. Listening. Attending. Rin has a kind of intense expression, or is it the glasses? Kind of a few things. "Oh, that bites," she says, with a sort of abstracted sympathy. "Well, a con's a great way to get away from everything. It's like a superliminal hyperspace, a virtual geography where the world revolves around what we know really matters, right?"
"In old Japan, they called it 'Otaku Spirit,'" Rin says. "But I think you get it, right? It's that fan feeling. And THAT is the same all over - even if our differences matter too!"
"OK sorry about the speech," Rin continues. "Hmmm, case mods... well it's kind of a challenge, huh? Because you have to keep the characteristic shape... and you can't block the kicker flow much or the processor is going to glitch out when it gets caught on geometry. You game? I've seen it happen with super-custom Haros -- it's really sad, though! But yeah sorry, rambling. So you two are doing a custom shop kinda thing?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
For a Britannian noble(?), Akane reflects, this girl doesn't seem super bad or anything. This is admittedly pretty casual conversation, but even so, it's... easier than she'd expect.
"Huh. That's really philosophical... I kinda like that idea, though," Akane murmurs, turning it over in her head. "It's sort of like... everyone here is connected by the same things? When you put it that way the crowds are kinda nice and cute, instead of horrible, ahaha." Her grip on whatever it is that's in her bag relaxes a bit, and she settles in.
"Yeah! The ventilation is super important to keep -- the Momo Haros are a little better about that, so that's what we're going to work on." She arrests her flow a bit there, clarifying, "Oh, uh, we're not going to do a full sized shop or anything. This is just a personal project. She's probably in the maker room right now or something." She considers texting to clarify, but... it's okay not to know.
"Do I game... uh, I mean, occasionally. I'm not great? I know a couple fighting games okay, and I've been working on a 100% save of the Tarabaman X4 game..." She realizes she doesn't have any great follow-ups for that and trails off, using pizza as an excuse.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
Rin certainly doesn't seem to have THAT big of a stick up her butt!
Mostly.
"Well, yeah," Rin says with a slurp of noodles. "I don't wanna defend the stank or people pushing or cutting you off, but... we're kind of all in this together, you know? The world tries to grind you down. But here, we make our own world."
Ventilation -- Rin nod-nods along. "Oh, OK! That's totally cool. Are you doing like couple Haros? I think I saw some kits for those, especially if you're just looking for decals."
"Oh I loved X4," Rin says, shifting around. "Lemme get out my thing here, I heard this remix of Sludgedon's stage theme. Do you remember that one?" Rin beat-boxes a couple of bars of it before remembering to eat more food. Slurp slurp nomph.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah! Last night we went looking for some tools and paints -- I'm thinking of a pretty big case mod, honestly. I don't actually own stuff for working with plastic, either, so last night we went hunting around town for a soldering iron and epoxy putty..." Once she really gets stuck in it's a lot easier. Now she has a topic where she feels like she's on stable footing -- two, actually.
"We're still looking into what to do on the internals, but... I know there's like, mini PCBs to get a Mini to be able to do all the same things a full-size can? I thought that was like strictly a weirdos in basements thing but I think the guy who did it actually has a booth here with that stuff..." Akane isn't sure when she got this into it -- but she is very much this into it. "I'm going to try the mod that puts treads on the legs, too, and then restyle the hose coverings to look a little better with that..."
... Tarabaman does still excite her, though. "Oh yeah! When I was little I ended up on that stage for like a week over summer vacation," she says. "That was before I got into keyboarding, so my timing still sucked..." She rubs at the back of her head, before finishing her last slice of pizza.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"If you're working plastic indoors," Rin says, "you want to be careful because those fumes are nnnnnnasty. You may not notice it now, but in twenty years, you'd really feel it! If you're going to do that to your lungs, you should smoke or something instead." A little noodle slurping.
"First of all," Rin says, piously, "for me it was a converted cellar -- and second of all I GET it, totally, but this is where we all come, you know?!"
Forwards. "Yeah? I didn't find it that hard but I was real good at a lot of that genre," Rin says, rather casually. "It is pretty long though. Did you do the grind near the rectenna farm? I found that was always where the last Claw Part would drop if you were struggling to get a spawn through, like, regular gameplay?"
"What's your goal with your Haro?" Rin then asks. "Just messing around?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Oh yeah, that's a good point. The maker room does have good ventilation, but I dunno about that good..." There was such -- stuff going on with Akane before, that she didn't have to think about that kind of thing at all. Now she does, and... it's still weird. "Maybe we'll do it outside. The Ring usually has good climate control, it seems like."
Akane gets the sense she kind of stuck her foot in it, and looks studiously down into her empty plate. ... the video game talk is way easier, at any rate.
"Yeah, this is kinda just to get a feel for it," she says on the Haro topic, before looping back. "When I was little I totally skipped that. I bought a new copy a little while back and did that now, though I ended up not needing anything I got out of the grind... I landed a Hyper Formation before X2 showed up and all the debuffs stayed stuck."
Akane may not be 'good at video games,' but she may well be good at this specific video game.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"Oh, this place has good ventilation," Rin says with a nod nod nod. "I wouldn't worry too much. They know what they're doing. I meant if you started doing it in your apartment or something!" She slurps down some noodles. FEeling it...
"Hahahaha, shit! They kept that - oh, sorry, I didn't mean to swear - were you on the original cartridge? I never HAD a copy that had the glitch that let you do that. Wait," she pauses for a moment, raising her eyes upwards. "You said X2, right? Not X second stage."
A pause.
"That's really tight timing," Rin muses. "Do you speed run ever?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Oh, uh, I actually live on a really nice villa in the AEU now," Akane says, a little embarrassed to say something like that out of nowhere. "So I guess it wouldn't be a problem there, either..."
Her head cants slowly to one side, before she moves back to the other topic. "I do have an original cartridge, yeah... and, hhhhuh. No, I actually don't," Akane replies, slowly. "But it's not that hard, is it? Like -- the insert song starts playing at 60 percent, and X2 is timed to the chorus hit every time, so you have a sound cue to time it to as long as you focus on building a formation charge instead of going for raw damage..."
... yeah, that's a new trick, or at least a much safer version of an old one.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"Oh nice! You know, I want to go to the AEU some time, but it's really hard to make time," Rin asks, says, whatever. She crosses one leg over the other and leans in, staring at Akane while eating. It's not quite a stare; but it is a look. Perhaps more intent than usu-- oh, it stops; she looks towards her soft drink. "Huh," Rin muses. "I never noticed that."
"So I wanna echo that back to you," Rin says, reaching or her phone. "When insert song slows down, X2 is timed to the chorus hit, so you can build formation... I just blitzed that business, but I bet most people do."
"Wanna see something cool?" Rin adds, in a lower voice.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Oh, no, the insert song starting is based on your health!" Akane says, realizing she was ambiguous. "There's a couple other ways to trigger it, but just letting yourself take get hit down to 60 percent is the fastest. Normally that doesn't leave you with enough time to charge a Hyper Formation, but I usually don't upgrade that stuff on the strike craft so it's still the one that charges fast?"
... Wow, she's having a positively normal interaction! With a relative stranger! She considers something, suddenly. She's supposed to keep this low-key, but... "It sounds like that was pretty helpful," she starts, tone suddenly a little playful. "Do you... hm. Can you keep a secret about GUTS Prom?" The Mischief is starting to hit...
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"Ohhhh," Rin says with a tilt back of her head. "So YOU have to hit 60 percent!" She mutters something in the phone, which sounds like a clipped recap of what Akane said. Voice notes~~!
Fowards, then, she says, "Huh, so you're kinda building towards that. Or I guess you probably found it by accident from the description."
"Sure," Rin continues, while opening up her phone - she pauses, though. "Oh, so that's why you saw the video!" Rin smiles a little weakly. Her dreams of viral stardom...
Rin flips through her photos, meanwhile. She does it really fast, actually. She does seem to have taken pictures of birds in snow a few times, though.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"The first time, yeah, but it was way more convenient to just do the fight that way so I started doing it that way on purpose," Akane says, waving it off. "I'll send you a video some time? My VERTEX is aumerei-underscore-seijin. Yeah, like the one in the game." This... might actually be a new friendship? That's not bad, for an outing like this...
She leans forward conspiratorially, turning her phone back on and swiping around a bit. She turns her phone around to face Rin, smirking knowingly.
> Tsutsujidai High distance learning student Akane Shinjo,
> Congratulations! You and Rikka Takarada have been selected as the Couple of Couples for the 0097 GUTS Prom.
There's more text. But the more text doesn't really matter, does it?
Akane's definitely got a smug little grin on her face.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"Sure," Rin says. "I'm virtualgeography underscore rs," Rin says, which definitely sounds like a natural language VERTEX address, but hey, maybe she's horny on another account. She smiles a ittle. And then -
She looks at the phone.
Rin gazes at it for a second or two, before adjusting her glasses.
(Inwardly: Huh.)
(Inwardly: Isn't she lucky.)
(Inwardly: Geez, I shouldn't feel jealous. I bet they're gonna be great!)
(Inwardly: Do they even do proms in Europe?)
(Inwardly: Come on, Rin Rin.)
(Inwardly: You'll figure something out.)
Rin takes a deep breath -
(Inwardly: That's how a Super Soldier does it, right?)
"That is AMAZING! Holy shit!" She leans in to ask Akane in a low voice, "You didn't bribe anyone did you. I'm not gonna judge. That's astounding. I just dunno who your squeezey buns is there."
"My secret's kinda lamer," Rin admits, before flipping through her pictures and titing towards - it's a haro?
Big deal. Except - it's awful BIG on a Haro. Wait, it's upside down. There's -- a hole in the top? No!! It's a helmet!
"I'm gonna wear it at my panel," Rin asides. "I just took this in case it breaks or something and I have to like cover or whatever."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Once she has her phone back around toward her, Akane moves to add Rin to her contact list. "I definitely need to get my hair styled before this... maybe dye, too," she thinks aloud. "Thanks, though! And no, I didn't bribe anyone, though, uh, a friend of mine campaigned... rrrreeeally hard for us. Her girlfriend was... out of town for a while and it wasn't clear if she'd be back for prom, so I guess she decided to meddle."
She scoots in to look at the helmet! "OOoooooo, I like that a lot," Akane says, genuinely enthused. "Did you hollow out a real case from one of the super-size ones for that, or did you build it yourself? It's really impressive either way."
Leaning back in her seat finally, she affirms, "It looks good though! Like -- really good, actually."
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"It's actually a fishing globe," Rin says. "Messed up but true, this thing would normally be holding up a deep sea fishing net but instead I bought it at the salvage yard and then I thought, wow, this is like the same shape as a Haro, right?"
Rin clips to another photo. "I actually put cameras in it! The air comes in through this space around the neck so it's not like THAT sweaty, though I mean I'm glad we're on the Ring and also it's not summer. What makes it stand out a little here is, it's not ON, right? I asked the theater club people for advice on how to make the effect work."
The price she paid was dire.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Oh that's really cool." Rehabilitating junk into something new... that's a good feeling indeed. "If you collab with the theater club a lot for this kinda stuff we might end up talking an okay amount, if I follow through next year... after I get all my transfer stuff in a row, I hear my new school's prop master position is... I dunno about open, but I'd ask for it and get it 'cuz the current one doesn't actually like doing it?"
Waving that back off, she says, "Still, though... that's definitely gonna make an impression on a panel. Good luck!"
Stretching out a bit, she says, "I should get going before too long... last time I wanted to go to the dealer room we put it off too much and it kinda got..." She gestures vaguely, before explaining, "... way too crowded. Still -- uh... good to meet you?"
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"Where you going?"
Rin then giggles. "Thanks. Come by if you want! It's Haro Modding, I got my club buddies to come along to set it up even though we're not, exactly, like, the Haro modding club? But Louis's family has a house on the Ring so he has a shuttle pass and its' got a plus one seat, so DISCOUNTS."
"Thanks," Rin says, "Akane. Let me know if I can help you out with anything. Remind me to invite you if I stream anything alright?? I don't have like an identity or a Channel but sometimes I put some shit on if I can't sleep. My school's in -- the Japanese archipelago," (that is absolutely a polite way to say Area 11 to someone named 'Akane' with three syllables) "so that's my kinda schedule."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Uhhh... I don't actually remember the name, I literally just moved," Akane says. "It's a kinda pricey international school? I'm actually kinda nervous, my French is... decent at best." Thinking about that gets her to kind of a strained smile. "Still, it's gonna be an okay challenge, at least. And -- yeah, that sounds good!"
... she only occasionally dips into streams, but it's still better than nothing, at least? Besides -- she could definitely use the option, at least. More stimulation is better than less, in the kinda situation she's in. "Oh, yeah... I'm gonna have to get used to being on a different schedule, too," Akane realizes. That's gonna strain things... but again -- important to try!
Gathering up her bag, she says, "I'll see you at GUTS stuff, I guess?" before starting to head off.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
"Sure! Enjoy the con! Check out the HaroSoft booth if you want, they have headbands!" Rin offers!
She watches Akane go for long subjective seconds, and then turns her attention to her noodles. They won't eat themselves, after all.
Not even with Haro.