fandomtownies | The Holoscene, Friday

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The Holoscene, Friday

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]

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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.

"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.

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..."

"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.

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.

"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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"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?"

"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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

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!

The fact that it was still the chocobus was going to make Nina so happy!

"Well, like, it would be boring to have just a normal street, right?????????????????" Nina said, beaming. "And, like, now we can run over planets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Because that was the goal? Or something?

She was super not sorry, Astrid.

Astrid did not recall running over planets being a part of the plan.

She couldn't even say that there was probably very little chance of them having to run over a planet, either, because she was back in Fandom now, anything could happen.

"Sure," she said. "And if we start on not-normal streets, then when we get to the normal ones, it'll be a cinch, right?"

She was just going to keep trying to justify it, wasn't she?

"Alright, then," she nodded, started heading for the passenger side door, "let's get started?"

It was honestly pretty cute how she kept trying to justify it.

"We just thought it would be more fun," Nina admitted as she beelined for the driver's seat door and opened it. "Once we agreed that there would be no hitting non-murderous animals but that everything else was okay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Including," Astrid noted, because process of elimination was a thing, "murderous animals?"

Astrid may have been having the first tingles of feeling like this might have been a bad idea at the back of her brain while she settled into the passenger side seat, which was oddly, somehow, strangely comforted by the familiarity of seat belt as she reached back almost out of habit.

Had Nina and Mae thought of something like seatbelts, or was the Holoscene just filling in the gaps?

She was leaning toward the latter.

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bookbeltof_love - 2020-01-24 21:29 (UTC) - Expand

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white_oleander - 2020-01-25 16:53 (UTC) - Expand

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

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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. "

"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.

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

"They do," Astrid had to smile faintly at the question, "but 'gross' would be a pretty good way to describe them, too.

"A car's great, though," she added, "for driving up and down the coast, you know? Long stretches of high way...nothing but sun and sand and water and wind..."

"I've never really been on a coast," Mae mused. "I mean, I've been here, but I don't think that really counts. I like riding on the back of my friend Gregg's bike, though, we get some good wind going then!"

"If we're ever in California together," said Astrid, despite that heavy feeling that she might never see California again, or, if she did, it wouldn't be under very good circumstances, "we'll have to get a convertible and go, maybe up to Oregon, or down south to Mexico."

And she didn't want to disparage Mae's friend or his bike, but she was pretty sure she could give them a pretty good run for their money, in that case.

"I guess you could just program something like it here," she realized, "but I don't think it'd really be the same."

Mae looked around and shrugged. "I guess not." She totally thought it probably would, but didn't want Astrid to feel bad. "It sounds fun, though. We should totally do that some day."

"Yeah," said Astrid, who was starting to wish she hadn't said anything about it at all, "maybe."

Her eyes dropped away for a moment, as she felt like every inch of her awkwardness was being slowly magnified with each second that passed without her saying anything else.

"Are you going to sit in on the lesson?" she eventually asked. "It's probably not going to be very interesting, though."

Said the girl who had yet to hear about the underwater in space with monsters and flattening planet parts yet.