The Holoscene, Friday

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae's "civilized" class on Fridays was kind of fun, in that it was entertaining to see what sorts of faces the teacher would make at Mae's attempts to wear gloves. But it was also kind of frustrating and irritating because she was not a Victorian dandy so why did she have to wear gloves?

Why did she have to be civilized, for that matter?

So she was taking her frustrations today out in the Holoscene, beating up holographic trashcans and trash-mans and trash-ladies and trash-non-of-the-aboves with her holographic baseball bat, all while shrieking like a banshee.

It was very theraputic. Mae was thinking she should make start a class. Nina had a class, so she could, too, right? A "How to be beating up holographic things with a baseball bat and screaming like a banshee" class. . . .

[open! No OCD, just let me know if you wanna mod a holosuite and not interact]

Comments

[bookbeltof_love]

"Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Speaking of Nina...

"Good afternooooooooooooon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae paused mid-shriek to go see who that was. (It was very clearly Nina. No one else could manage quite that many exclamation points consistently.)

"NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" she said, with her own variety of (totally unsustainable) boisterousness. "What's up?"

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina was very consistent in her over-punctuation, it was true! And she was impressed at Mae's own shrieking!

She beamed.

"Oh my gosh, like, hi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Astrid's going to be teaching me how to drive," god help everyone, "and, like, we were wondering if we could use the Holoscene before we took to the real roads!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina's glee was doing a pretty good job at eclipsing her complicated feelings about learning to drive because Vette wasn't around to drive her anymore.

"What do you think?????????????????"

[thishouseishaunted]

“I think that’s a great idea! You can run over anything you want in here!”

[bookbeltof_love]

"Yesssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! See, this was why Mae was great! "Any suggestions for what I should run over??????????????????"

Poor Astrid. Poor, poor Astrid.

"Do you know how to drive?????????????????? Did you want to learn too????????????????"

[thishouseishaunted]

“Oh you know, mailboxes, trash cans, pedestrians. . . . Gotta watch out for the animals, though. Running those over is just sad.”

Mae shrugged. “And sure! I never learned at home!”

Because everyone in Possum Springs knew better than to trust Mae with a vehicle of any kind.

[bookbeltof_love]

Yes. Well…

"The only animal I'd ever run over would be the animal trying to murder me for no reason," Nina agreed solemnly. "………….. I'm, like, going to have to ask Miss Verity or Liam if hitting a lindworm with a car would hurt me, the car, or the lindworm more………….."

Because that was surely a thing her teachers would be glad to answer!

She clapped her hands together.

"But, like, I was thinking maybe something under the sea????????????? Or, like, under the sea but in space!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina had not run these ideas past Astrid, for the record.

"Ohmygosh imagine, like, running over planets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[thishouseishaunted]

“Nina,” Mae said very solemnly. “You are a genius!!!! . . . But aren’t you technically running over a planet every time you drive?”

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina paused.

"But, like, do you think I'm flattening the planet every time I drive????????????"

That was the important part!

[white_oleander]

Last fall, Claire had enrolled Astrid in driver's ed classes, because it seemed like something a young woman should know how to do and wasn't she excited to learn how to drive like all her friends (what friends, Claire? What friends?) were? And then in November, when she'd turned sixteen, she took her test and passed, getting her driver's licence, and hadn't really driven since, because Ron would never want to go with her, and she hated driving with Claire because she was such a nervous passenger that the whole experience was too stressful and it was easier most times to just take a cab.

So that put Astrid in the perfect position, clearly, to teach Nina how to drive a bus.

Well, actually, it was sort of just a desperate bid to get caught and subsequently kicked out, but since she wanted to just get caught and not get killed...lessons at the Holoscene first, and then they'll work up to the grand theft auto.

So she was there, coming by after her classes when she and Nina had agreed to meet, not entirely sure how this would go, but it wasn't like things could really even get worse for her at this point.

[bookbeltof_love]

"Astriiiiiiiiiiiiiiid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Nina's exuberance did not extend quite so far as to hugging the other girl—she wasn't sure how Astrid would take it, really, since she hadn't yet decided what to make of Astrid—but she bounced up quite excitedly.

"You're here, you're here, we can get started!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina was… not concerned about terrible crashing accidents or getting kicked out so, really, this was just fun from start to finish for her.

Including the grand theft auto part.

[white_oleander]

Then they were sort of on the same page, since Astrid really didn't know what to make of Nina yet, either, but her excitement was certainly...something. She couldn't help a small smile back.

"I guess we can," she said with a nod. "Everything set up, then? I have to admit, I don't really know how all of this stuff works..."

[bookbeltof_love]

"Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mae and I set things up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Though you'll, like, have to look at the car to make sure it makes sense?????????????????? Neither of us know how to drive so the car might not be programmed right……………"

And, really, Astrid was probably not going to be expecting them to drive under water, in space, with the goal of running over planets…

But this was what happened with Mae and Nina talked.

[white_oleander]

Then it would be a learning experience for all of them!

"I'll definitely have a look," she said, nodding, and trying to remember her driver's ed classes, offered out of a storefront in a strip mall, by a large man who seemed to have trouble breathing even when sitting still. The steering wheel always seemed to be covered in sweat, from himself and the nervous, timid teenagers that took their turns driving around Hollywood and the freeways.

"I mean, I don't know much about cars, but I should be able to tell that it won't just blow up once we turn the ignition or crash the moment we try to turn the wheel."

...she hoped.

[bookbeltof_love]

"I mean, like, I've never been inside of an explosion before," Nina mused, "so that would be pretty cool……………."

Nina, no.

"Come on, come on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We've got the room over here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[white_oleander]

"Well, maybe," Astrid offered, her tone thoughtful, as she started to head over to the room indicated, "once we get a handle on all the basics, then we can see about the explosions."

Astrid, no.

"These rooms are supposed to be able to do anything, right?"

[bookbeltof_love]

"That's what they tell me," she said happily, "but, like, I wouldn't really know………….."

That was a lie and yes, yes Nina was crossing her fingers behind her back as she trailed behind Astrid just enough so that Astrid would get to walk into the room first.

Because Nina desperately wanted to know Astrid's reaction to the incredibly cute, bright, screamingly pink car hanging out on the bottom of an ocean, in space, would be.

"But I would be super down for playing with explosions after!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[white_oleander]

Astrid really didn't know how something could be both at the bottom of an ocean and in space, and yet, there she was, looking at it.

And the car...

"Wow." It came out of Astrid before she could really stop it, blinking a little because that was a bright car. "Well, that is..."

Somehow exactly what she was now thinking she should have expected.

"...different from the car I learned how to drive in..."

Just wait until she saw the bus!

[thishouseishaunted]

“Hey Astrid!” Mae greeted. “So I hear you are a driving ninja.” She had not heard that. Except possibly in her own head.

[white_oleander]

"I don't know if I'd go that far," said Astrid, feeling suddenly, inexplicably embarrassed about this whole thing. "I just got my licence when I turned sixteen, that's all."

Like any other normal American teenager her age, really.

It had been nice. Normal. While it lasted.

[thishouseishaunted]

"I didn't get my license at sixteen, so that still sounds impressive."

Mae had not yet turned sixteen. But she was right in that she wouldn't be getting a license then.

Or ever.

[white_oleander]

"I guess so," Astrid allowed, but she shrugged a little and felt that embarrassment grow and spread around in her stomach. "I mean, it's not a big deal. And Nina said she had to learn something for one of her classes, and she mentioned driving, and I figured....you know, I'm not get much use of it out here, anyway..."

Not that she was getting much use out of it in California, either, but that wasn't the point, not really.

[thishouseishaunted]

"Cars are kind of extraneous," Mae agreed. She ran everywhere, herself. "But they do look like a lot of fun, if you get to drive them where there aren't any other cars and you can't accidentally hurt anyone. "

[white_oleander]

"L.A.'s so spread out," Astrid noted, "that you pretty much need a car if you ever want to get anywhere..."

Or a van. How many vans had she been stuffed into and carted around in in the last two years? Too many to want to count.

[thishouseishaunted]

"Gross," Mae decided. "Don't they have, like, buses and things?"