fandomtownies | The Park, Saturday Afternoon

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The Park, Saturday Afternoon

Beau had gone out and gotten a bunch of dog toys in the last few weeks. Like, a lot, because managing a puppy's seemingly limitless energy level was enough of a challenge with a normal puppy, let alone a fey one, and she'd been experimenting with a lot of different options.

Playing some variety of catch, though, was the reigning champion; Nugget got to run around as much as he wanted to, Beau got a pretty decent cardio workout, and the whole concept of teaching him how to blink on command was starting to come together. It was a good system, if Beau did say so herself. She already knew how to use her ki to throw caught arrows with enough speed and force to do damage, and she figured that applying the same principle to throwing a frisbee far enough for Nugget to have to blink to catch up to it was close enough to count as practice. So hey, her dog wasn't the only one getting some training in here!

So anyway, yeah, that was what was going on here today: just Beau, throwing a frisbee that occasionally flew much further and faster than it should have, and a brown-furred puppy with exaggeratedly long, pointy ears chasing after it. Which sometimes meant blinking out of sight and then reappearing ahead of the frisbee where he could take a moment or two to put himself in the right position to catch the frisbee.

Was that cheating? Nah.

[OOC: Going to be in and out for a bit to do errands, so it'll be slow, but open!]

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Having just finished checking out the picnic- and the new arrivals- Liam was heading back home when he spotted Beau.

"Hey, Beau," he greeted. "Hey, Nugget!" he called out to the puppy, bending down to beckon him closer should he be in the mood for pets.

Nugget was always in the mood for pets! He barked joyfully and bounded over toward Liam -- yes, closing the last of the distance with a blink.

Did Liam have treats, by any chance? Because Nugget had those big hopeful eyes going right now.

"'sup, man," Beau yelled, jogging over to retrieve the frisbee that Nugget had abandoned to go say hi to Liam. "Thanks for that, uh, you know. The present. I was gonna need a new one soon."

Did Liam have treats?

Of course he did. He... maybe had started carrying them regularly once he'd been de-teenagered, shhh.

"Who's a good boy?" he asked the puppy as he obliged with pets and ear scritches. The answer was absolutely Nugget. Nugget was the goodest of boys.

"You're welcome," he said. "I would've got you a flower crown- they did have blue ones- but I wasn't sure it'd go with your whole aesthetic."

You were Nugget's favorite now, Liam. Okay, his favorite of the people he didn't live with, anyway. He was wriggling delightedly on the grass now because pets and scritches and treats!

Beau snickered. "Yeah, I mean, it's not really my thing. Kar's, maybe. Definitely Yasha's. But the journal is way more useful for me. How was the trip?"

Liam dangled one of those aforementioned treats above Nugget's head.

"Good," he said. "Fun. A new experience for me, not so much for Verity."

Nugget started pawing at the treat, although he might have more luck with it if he actually got up instead of rolling in the grass. But shh, he was having fun!

"Still fun for her too, though, right?" Beau had to ask. "Even if that means I didn't get to bother you guys at Caritas the other night."

That was probably lucky for them, honestly.

He was having fun and it was adorable as all get-out so, really, it was a win for everyone involved.

"Yeah, she had a great time," Liam confirmed. "Even if I had to spend half the time convincing her not to stand up on the rides just to see if she could," he said, rolling his eyes in fond exasperation.

"What fun is that, though?" Beau asked him, looking like she genuinely didn't get it. "I would want to find out too."

Nugget finally wriggled until he rolled over far enough to get back on his feet, and then made a grab for the treat.

Edited 2021-01-03 01:27 (UTC)

"I know you would," Liam said, letting the treat go just as Nugget went for it. "But that's exactly the kind of thing that gets you kicked out of the park. Which was very much not the goal."

"... yeah, okay, fair," Beau conceded. Because the one time she and Karolina had gone to an amusement park they hadn't actually managed to stick around long enough to get to that point, but they probably would have gotten kicked out for something. Winning too many prizes at the games or excessive PDA, if not standing up on the rides.

"So like..." she said after a moment, sounding like she was about to concede he'd won a bet between them, "I'm taking classes on the mainland this term."

Nugget was very happily scarfing down his treat now. Also picking up the frisbee and trotting over to Liam.

Hopefully Nugget wouldn't be too disappointed by the fact that without Cool Monk Shit(tm), Liam could only throw the frisbee a normal human distance.

Maybe one day he'd figure out the whole telekinesis thing and change that, but for now? Yeah.

"Oh?" Liam arched an eyebrow, keeping his tone carefully devoid of anything resembling smugness over what was basically an admission that Beau was a total nerd. "Just general stuff or focusing on anything specific?"

"Specific shit I can use for like... Expositor business," Beau clarified, because she might be a total nerd, but she still wasn't the type to take classes just for the sake of it. She seemed braced for some kind of reaction from him, and relieved to not get it. "Like... civics and shit like that."

Nugget was just happy to have something to chase, okay? Beau didn't have endless ki reserves to throw the frisbee super far every time anyway.

Please. Liam might tease Verity about her nerd-ish tendencies and denial thereof, but Beau seemed genuinely uncomfortable with most people knowing that side of her, so while he might rib her a little from time to time, it wasn't to the same degree.

"That's cool," he said approvingly, as he flung the frisbee across the park. "Practical. I have no idea where I'd even start if I decided to do something like that."

Honestly, he probably would never, just because the idea of formal schooling was, excuse the pun, a completely alien experience.

Beau watched Nugget go racing off after the frisbee, practically tripping over something that might have been a squirrel on the way.

"I'm not saying it's necessarily going to work out for me," she felt the need to point out in a weird circuitous attempt at thanking him for not making a big deal out of this whole new thing, "but... just giving it a try, seeing if it's different when it's something I want to do instead of a decision that got made for me."

Beauregard.

Look who you were talking to.

Liam Neville 'Is having a destiny the same as lacking free will' Kincaid-Price absolutely understood just how thrilling that particular freedom could be.

"I get it," he assured her. "Believe me, I really do."

"Yeah, no, I kind of knew you would," she said gruffly.

Honestly, this was one of the reasons they were such good friends.

"But yeah, I guess... not totally sure how this is going to go, but I guess we'll see, right?" She laughed a little bit, just a touch sarcastically.

"I'm sure you'll kick ass at it," Liam said. Well. If she decided she wanted to kick ass at it.

"I kick ass at everything," Beau told him with enough over-the-top bravado to make it clear she wasn't actually bragging. Just trying to nudge the subject off to the left a bit.

There was a dog. That was teleporting. This was not something Stark had expected after leaving the picnic but wasn't entirely surprising since Karolina had mentioned it recently.

He was just going to stand and watch for a bit. The dog was cute and the teleporting was different enough to be very intriguing.

And Nugget, of course, just saw someone new and HAD TO GO MAKE FRIENDS IMMEDIATELY.

(Beau was going to claim that was Jester's influence, probably, even if Nugget had spent more time with them here by now than he'd spent with Jester.)

Beau spotted him heading in Stark's direction and ran after him with a mild sigh. "Nugget, dude, like... chill." To Stark she added, "He's just like super excited to meet people. Hopefully he's not bothering you?"

Nugget was not, in fact, bothering anyone; he was just standing there, wagging his tail so hard his entire body was moving, and looking very hopeful about getting pets.

Perhaps Nugget knew that glowy aliens were all happy to pet him?

"Not bothering," Stark assured Beau before smiling at the dog and crouching down a little. "Hello, dog."

... all the ones around here certainly seemed to be, yeah!

"Say hi, Nugget," Beau drawled as if she really didn't expect him to listen (she was not proficient in animal handling, like, at all), but he barked once, cheerfully, in Stark's direction.

"'sup," she added. "Didn't I see you at Caritas the other night? Pretty sure I've seen you around a few times, at least."

She was not a creeper, okay. Just very fond of observing people and usually taking extensive notes about it.

Stark reached out his hand to the dog because yes, all glowy Fandom aliens were indeed happy to pet teleporting puppies.

"I was at the party," he said, looking up at Beau. And he'd looked dashing in his formalwear! "I'm Stark."

"Beau," she said, and it was a testament to the influence Fandom and the Mighty Nein had on her that she didn't sound like the mere act of introducing herself was some excruciating ordeal, honestly. "I was pretty fuckin' smashed that night, sorry. You had a dope jacket, though."

Nugget was more than happy to lean right on in to the pets, making distinctly delighted noises the whole time.

"... and you've already met my dog, so."

Stark would be happy to continue petting the dog for a while then, since Nugget seemed to be enjoying himself.

"He's a good dog," he said after a moment. He didn't have much basis for comparison but it seemed true. "And thank you. Annie picked out the jacket. I liked it."

"Yeah, he's a pretty cool dog," Beau said, even allowing herself a split-second grin. And it didn't even look like it hurt. "Like... he's not technically my dog? He belongs to a friend, but he's living with me and Kar now since Jester kind of got him and then realized she's kind of not in a really great situation to have a dog. There's like... a lot of traveling, it's pretty dangerous sometimes."

Like Beau could judge. If she'd been there when they met the traveling merchant on the way to Nicodranas, she'd have gotten and then promptly lost a pet owl.

"Karolina had mentioned the dog," Stark said. "Didn't know any of them could teleport." No other dog he'd ever seen could do that, not that he'd seen that many. "He's from your home?"

"Yeah, there's a lot of creatures in my world with some kind of crazy powers." Beau made a bit of a face, like she knew that might sound like she was totally bullshitting. "Short-range teleporting is pretty tame on that scale, to be totally honest."

Looking at you, displacer beasts.

Stark came from a really weird universe, Beau! He didn't think you were bullshitting at all.

"What else can they do? Can Nugget do anything else?"

"Well, Nugget's like super fucking smart," Beau said, definitely sounding a little bit proud of that, "but that's about the extent of his powers, and it's mostly a defensive thing."

She took a few moments to ~~get totally lost going through the Monster Manual~~ rifle through what she remembered from a lot of her reading.

"But we fought these things once, kind of like... they hang from the ceilings of caves like bats? Only they look like giant squid, and they can make this like sphere of magical darkness around them kind of like an ink cloud. There's other creatures that can spit acid, or turn invisible, or..." She grimaced. "The teleporting spiders were a lot less cool."

"We don't have anything like bat-squids," Stark said, thinking about it. "Acid though. I don't remember teleportation. The invisibility was technological."

"But same principle, right?" Look, Beau got a little bit excited when people didn't quite think her world was that weird.

Nugget just got excited about having people to play with, which was probably why he was barking now.

Beau, your world sounded perfectly reasonable to this glowyface alien. Perhaps because he was a glowyface alien.

"They couldn't be seen. So yes, I think? And...starburst is something like teleportation, I suppose. Now that I think about it. Leviathans do that."

"That sounds pretty fuckin' cool, man, not gonna lie," Beau said. "So you're from some kind of, like, advanced futuristic world or something? That's most of them compared to mine, I guess."

"It is pretty cool," Stark admitted, though the word wasn't one he'd usually use. "Um. We have space travel. Which is more than they have here. Leviathans are ships. Living ships. Not all more advanced. Futuristic doesn't seem the right word if it's my present. Past? I'm not there now but it's still the present, I think. Depends on your point of view."

"Living ships," echoed Beau, her eyebrows shooting way up for a moment. "That's... fucking metal, dude."

Nugget yipped cheerfully and went back to rolling in the grass for a bit.

"I don't even fucking know where to begin figuring out my world's, like... where it is relative to this place's timeline, or anyone else's. Totally different calendar, and like... our year is shorter?" She scowled, like it was actively annoying her that she couldn't figure out a conversion that made sense. "Also time passes, like, really weird between here and there whenever I visit. Do you ever go back to yours?"

Was this a time to make a joke about the fact that Leviathans could breed? Probably not, as Stark was not really prone to wordplay.

Stark shook his head, standing up from the crouch he'd been in to better pet the dog. "I don't. I haven't, for a long time. Things seemed to move slower there when I tried to pay attention to time passing." He frowned and shook his head again, more slowly this time. "I haven't even contacted anyone for a long time. Too long, probably."

And if Beau got a hold of that tidbit of information she'd likely be insufferable, whether due to the terrible jokes she'd make or her insatiable curiosity.

"Yeah, I feel that," she said instead as Nugget started chasing what looked like a butterfly. "This last time I went back, I spent almost two months there, and when I got home I found out that I had like... barely been gone a week. Time's just fucking weird."

Understatement of the last decade, at least.

"How did you end up here?" Beau asked, because of the aforementioned insatiable curiosity. Sorry, Stark. "Like... are you one of the people who intended to come here, got sent here, or were in some random-ass place one second, and then all of a sudden, surprise?"

"Time is very weird," Stark agreed with all the seriousness of someone who had dealt with time travel and the general non-linearity of it all more than once.

"Yes," he said in answer to the question which was not a helpful answer. "I didn't mean to come the first time. I was just here. A long time ago as a student. Then I had to leave. To go back. Then I came back, for a while. I've left and come back a few times. I think that's done now." At least he fervently hoped so.

"And you?"

"I'm really starting to feel like I missed the fuck out," Beau said ruefully, "by not showing up here as a student first."

That was all for the best. She'd been pure hell as a student, though... maybe she wouldn't have hated school quite so much here. Eh. Too many hypotheticals there, so she put the thought aside for now.

"Just gonna chill here for the foreseeable future, then?"

"It was a good place to be for school." Stark paused for a moment before admitting, "or I thought so. Nothing to compare to."

Somehow, formal schooling had never been offered during his childhood.

"Good place to stay, too. Better than most places I've been. Better than almost all of them. Not sure where else I'd go." There was always Moya. He knew that. But he wasn't sure he fit there anymore and he thought he did, here. At least somewhat.

"So. Yes, planning on staying here as much as possible."

"Yeah, I feel you," Beau said, and even let a touch of genuine warmth into her voice. "I was... kind of running away from somewhere and like, all of a sudden I just appeared here, so I was pretty much fine with that. I probably never would have gone back at all if I wasn't trying to help a friend."

And now she kind of had a role or two she could actually fulfill back there, which was new and kind of nice but made the whole never-looking-back thing difficult.

"But yeah. This is home now, as far as I'm concerned."

Stark nodded. He understood running away. He would have preferred not to. But he did.

"How long have you been here? I came back, this time, before the summer."

"Two years and a couple of months by now," Beau said; her eyes widened a touch, just briefly, because it was still weird, every single time, to realize she'd made it this long. "I showed up a couple of days before Halloween, I think? Yeah. Was it like... even if you'd been here before, did you still have any, like, adjustments to make this time around?"

"The first time I was here about that long, I think," Stark said after a moment's consideration. "Adjustments...yes. Plenty. I didn't know anyone anymore. Not sure how long I was gone. It was long enough that everyone left. Almost everyone. Except Anakin. I knew Anakin."

He looked down, toying with the buckle at his neck. "It was lonely."

"Yeah." Beau's voice dropped a pitch or two and went even more gruff than usual. "That, uh. I can see how that would be pretty lonely."

She thought about Jester growing up in hiding, and her own overly sheltered childhood, and it wasn't really hard to imagine the scope of it.

"But you stuck it out," she said, with a little more sympathy in her tone than she'd quite meant to show, but, well, being alone was her worst fear. "And having at least one person left who you knew from before, that counts for something. Is it better now?"

Stark sighed very softly before answering.

"I think it's better. I know people now at least. I think I have friends." He sounded a little uncertain when he spoke because he felt uncertain. He probably shouldn't. The people in question did indeed seem to be his friends. "That helps."

"Yeah, you were pretty damn social at the party," Beau noted. "Like... probably more than me, now that I think about it. So good job there."

Nugget squirmed a bit, rolled around, then started running around them in vaguely circular loops.

"And, y'know, I'm biased, full disclosure, but --" She'd caught that uncertainty, yeah. She knew that uncertainty really damn well. "If you count Kar as one of those friends I'd say you've got it pretty good."

Was she kind of grinning and not even bothering to hide it? Well, yeah.

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The Park, Saturday Afternoon

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