2022-10-31: Tea And Airsoft

• Cast: Namiko, Mic Sounders the 13th
• Where: A mall on the outskirts of Tsutsujidai
• Date: U.C. 0096 10 31
• Summary: Namiko's friends are all busy so she spends her afternoon at a mall she doesn't usually go to. She meets a mysterious stranger.

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<Pose Tracker> Namiko has posed.

Namiko Itsatoycompanyjoke is at loose ends this week!! Her cool buddy Rikka spends a lot of time with BOYS now, and her nearly-inseparable other bestie Hass is doing some kind of weird streamer operation she doesn't entirely understand but requires that she be glued to her computer for like, a week.

And thus, Namiko has fallen so far that she finds herself performing that very final resort of the teenager with nothing except their homework to spend their time on: Still not homework.

It's a bit far from city center, where she ends up, a shopping arcade she doesn't normally go to. She has a full cup of boba in her hand, the outsized straw poked deep. Her other holds the inevitable school bag, but looped around her shoulder is a second bag, a tote which contains her haul from a specialty teas shop at this mall.

With little else to do, she flops into a bench facing into the mall center, sifting through her phone for neuron activations. What was Hass' handle again...?

<Pose Tracker> Mic Sounders the 13th has posed.

Swan and Stallion informed Mic: keep guard at Tsutsujidai as part of our agreement. Stay loyal to Akane when you meet her. For the sake of oblivion, lay low.

And he was going to do that last one! He was! He was going to stay perfectly still and pretend to be a small parade float undercover, but. But...!!

He got bored.

And so now he happily tromps through a (mercifully mostly empty) shopping district, a great boxy sort with a curious orange aura around his brightly-colored frame and happy emoji eyes on his digital screen.

The passerby who do spot him register him as a very elaborate advertisement for that new soda, Triple Tangerine or something like that. And he does look quite mascot-y. And it helps that nobody is walking on the ground. (But that's fine! He's a hologram of some kind, right? Soda advertisements are getting so elaborate!)

Looming right behind Namiko without realizing he's actually looming, Mic claps his hands together and happily boom-chirps, "Hello!"

<Pose Tracker> Namiko has posed.

The fact that the population of an area correlates indirectly with proximity to Tsutsujidai High School is one of those little mysteries of Tsutsujidai that outsiders might notice and the residents fully think you're crazy to even mention. Still, Namiko kicks her legs and muses, "Gosh, how's this place in business, even?" to herself with a chuckle.

And then the street thunders at her and she yelps. "GYAH!"

The boba flies out of her hands, and she bobbles for it a few times before managing to catch it against herself - nice hands; she was in softball, back in middle school - and then she looks back to where she heard the noise. And then up. And up. And uuuuup.

Oh hey it's some kind of giant toy robot looking Directly At Her. "YEAH HEY SUP" she squeeks.

<Pose Tracker> Mic Sounders the 13th has posed.

"Nice catch!" Mic gives a thumbs-up and winks with his digital display eyes. He looks down down down at Namiko like he is somehow an entirely normal thing to encounter in a nearly-dead outdoor mall. Or anywhere, really.

"Is that the video game arcade? I want to play rhythm games! Though..." Mic looks at the building, considering it with an intense gaze for a second.

"Mm. I can't fit," he says with a little digitized huff. Sometimes he forgets about things like 'human-scaled buildings.'

Still, nothing gets him down for that long. "This is a nice place! Mic likes it here very much. Do you like it here?"

He stares waaay down at Namiko like, again, this is just a normal conversation to have.

<Pose Tracker> Namiko has posed.

NAMIKO IS CURRENTLY HAVING A NORMAL ONE

"OH UH YEAH THANKS" Namiko yelps. But he's not...hostile? He's just... ...excited. She has to shift her arms a little to grab her boba a little better, looking uuuup at the biiiig robot. "You're a big ol' robot, huh," she says, below her breath. Namiko's personal scaling is a bit of a mess on account of having everything weirder than a construction Labor memory holed every night. "Oh, uhm." ...

...She looks back, and then straightens up. The possibility that this is a kuchisake onna situation and she's about to get smushed and/or turned into an enthusiastic but toyetic robot is not...actually zero. But.

...he seems cool?

"Uh...just coming by myself for the first time, honestly," she says up. "But they have some neat stuff!" She hadn't even noticed the arcade. Would Hass like this place? It's a bit of a hike, though.

<Pose Tracker> Mic Sounders the 13th has posed.

"Big!" Mic beams, quite literally, with little blush stickers showing up under his eyes on the screen. "My brothers and sisters are mostly all taller than me." He shifts happily from foot to foot, which only makes the concrete rumble a little, at least. Maybe he's more hollow inside than he appears.

"Oh! I'm here for the first time too!" His eyes go starry. "We can be tourists together! Explore the shopping area!" Not that Mic can fit in many of the other buildings either.

"My name is Mic Sounders! You can call me Mic!" He declares that last bit in English, for some reason. "Let's be friends, okay?"

In the back of his processor, the thought remains: Stallion warning him not to grow too close to the inhabitants of this town, lest it prove even more painful for him to do his duty. They're all fated for destruction. But by the time he remembers that, he's already belted out the words.

<Pose Tracker> Namiko has posed.

"Wow," Namiko says. She is sixteen so she has to be pushed just a bit harder to commit to the bit. "Hard to imagine that!"

Not like, a lot harder, though. Initial impulse to run directly away successfully defeated, Namiko swiftly reorders her belongings to a more comfortable posture. Well...

Heck, sometimes even aliens and robots can be kind, right?

"Alright, sure!" There's got to be SOME interesting stuff around here! She tucks her hand under the tote's strap, boba in that hand, school bag in the other. "Mic, huh?" Hmmm. Hass would love this, wouldn't she? "Sure, Mic. My name's Namiko! Let's be friends!"

She slips the school bag down, and, with the expertise of a 16 year old girl who has been handling a phone every day of her life, spins her back on Mic. "Let's commemorate! Say cheese!" she says, spinning holding her camera at arms' length for a snap.

...she can't quite do it instantly because framing a shot that contains the face of an object THAT big and THAT far above you requires a small amount of finagling.

<Pose Tracker> Mic Sounders the 13th has posed.

"Namiko! Namiko and Mic are now FRIENDS!"

Somewhere, remote-monitoring Mic from afar, Swan White facepalms. "The Thirteenth..."

But Mic, having cheerfully and obliviously forgotten the terrible fate that awaits this newly-budding friendship, is just over the moon as he gets a photo-op!

"Cheeeeese!" He makes a V with his fingers. This is not his first friend selfie, oh no.

"You said they had neat stuff, right? What kind of neat stuff?"

<Pose Tracker> Namiko has posed.

She was sincerely not expecting him to know what to do there but the fact he nailed it gets her to break out in her easiest smile yet. "I can send it to ya on VERTEX later," she says, shouldering her bags again. "Actually, do you have that?" do robots have cell service. oh no did she just cause total bedlam (yes)

"Hmm! Well, mostly a lot of the kinds of shops that aren't in the city center, I guess?" she says. She points with her boba hand. "There's a little shop there that imports teas and stuff from outside. The tea situation in Tsutsujidai is dire, so hitting the little shops that get their stuff from Wherever is always an interesting time." She waggles her tote bag. "Got all sorts of stuff to try out later!" Uhhh. "She points. "Boba shop's not exactly unique, but this one's good, anyway." Points again. "Model shop...lotsa those in town, actually. Not my thing, but my brother likes the Taraba vinyl figures so I swing through sometimes."

Finger drags. Stops. Head tilts. "Airsoft?? Sure, OK."

<Pose Tracker> Mic Sounders the 13th has posed.

"Hmm?" Mic scans through his apps. Nope, nope, nope. "Nope! I'll have to download it when I get back to baaaato the place where I recharge!" he quickly amends, secure in the fact that there's nothing suspicious there. Good! Good save, Mic Sounders the 13th.

Stallion quietly locks Mic's downloader. No social media for you, Mic.

Mic listens curiously but a little puzzled, as the tea stuff just flies over his head. Vinyl figures, Mamoru liked those, right?

Mamoru :(

"Airsoft...Airsoft! Yes, Mic can help you win Airsoft!

Or make the biggest target ever, but either way, he'll have fun and come back to base a little scuffed up. And in time for another lecture, probably.