legionworld | I Need A Break

Entry tags:

I Need A Break

Who| Wash, Pidge, Dipper, Dave, and Kubo
What| The kids take Wash on a day out, whether he likes it or not.
Where| There's a planet-sized mall out there somewhere, right?
When| After Out With the Old, the day after this discussion
Warnings/Notes| This is going to be ridiculously cute, y'all.

Yesterday was rough, last night was rough, and the morning finds Wash awake but unenthused, sitting in the mess hall with the remains of his breakfast and a mostly empty mug of coffee in front of him, scrolling through his omnicomm and pointedly avoiding a certain post. He needs to learn to control his temper, because yelling doesn't work here. It's probably too early to talk to Rich, and it's definitely too early to try to talk to Robbie, but he can't just ignore this either.

That train of thought abruptly stops as a direct message from Kid Quantum pops up on his screen. He watches it once, tilts his head slightly, and watches it again. Okay, he gets the part about having an assignment today, but what the hell is "it should be arriving shortly" supposed to mean?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It" turns out to be a group of the younger Legionnaires approaching Wash's table after finishing breakfast, looking way too purposeful for a bunch of kids this early in the day.

"You got Kid Q's message?" Dave guesses -- based entirely on the surprised and then perplexed look he'd seen on Wash's face as they came over. "Word. Let's bounce, then. We're on a schedule."

As if to demonstrate that statement, he flashes a wrist where his sleeve is pushed up to show off a watch. Why the fuck is Justin Time wearing a watch? Who knows.

Dipper looks Dave approvingly over wearing the watch. So far, they haven't really talked about what happened the last time they had a conversation, but Dipper's big enough to own it when he's wrong and he knows he's been too sensitive lately.

So, for right now he's being civil.

"You got that just for synchronizing, didn't you."

He turns back to Wash.

"You have to come with us. Important mission." He grabs Wash's arm and tugs. "Vital to, I don't know, team cohesion. Or something."

"It's your expertise," Kubo adds, solemn as he adjusts a heavy messenger bag over his shoulder. "Without your knowledge and skills we can't complete the mission."

To silence Wash's potential misgivings, he points to his clearly stuffed messenger bag. The shape of his burden suggests water bottles, granola bars, maybe a juice box or two.

"We don't need to stop for supplies. Mother packed snacks for us. We can go now."

"Time is of the essence, Wash." Pidge has her very best serious face on. "And I won't lie: This will be the most important thing you do all month."

She puts both her hands on the table and leans in.

"We'll explain when we get there, but right now we have to go."

Okay, this has gone from curious to suspicious. Wash takes a drink of coffee, looking from one very determined kid to another, before putting his mug down and addressing each in turn.

To Dave: "Okay, since when do you wear a watch?"

To Dipper: "How do you not know the purpose of the mission?"

To Pidge and Kubo: "And you two are way overselling it."

And to all of them: "Also, if we're going on a mission, why is no one suited up?"

But there's logical holes, and then there's getting orders from the person in charge. Pointing out the flaws in the plan doesn't change the fact that Kid Q told him to go along with it, and he can't exactly refuse orders. After a moment, he sighs in defeat. "Are we going to be gone long enough that I need to find someone to feed the cat tonight?"

"Since never. It's actually fourteen seconds late and that's kinda driving me nuts. Which means y'all's are all off by that much plus or minus a second because, yeah, shitty attempts at the syncronized watches cliché." Dave shrugs, removing the watch and offering it to Wash. "Merry Christmas, I guess."

But hey, the gang's all here, so he inclines his head towards the mess hall doors.

"Anyway, where we're going the superhero duds might stand out too much." Dave's even ditched the godtier outfit and cape, by some miracle. In just a t-shirt and skinny jeans and the ever-present shades, he looks like a pretty ordinary teen hipster coolkid. "You can snag the spacearmor if you want, but I dunno if you're gonna wanna walk around in that stuff all day."

"No time to talk about whether or not I know the purpose of the mission, because we have a mission."

He adds, "You're going to accept my perfectly cyclical non-answers and you're going to like it."

Dipper keeps tugging on Wash's arm. Before, it was just light tugging. Now he's digging his heels in and putting his weight behind. It's pretty fruitless, because Wash is freakin' huge and Dipper is tiny but he's still trying.

"I don't have to sell it," Kubo points out, with the slight giggle of a kid whose sass is backed up by a higher authority. "Your commanding officer told you to go with us. So you have to go with us. And since we're ready to go -"

He doesn't contribute to the dragging, just gives Wash that same gleefully smug grin.

"Let's go."

"Your cat will be fine," Pidge says, also opting out of the tugging. Though she may have to go around back and push if he doesn't get up soon.

She's lost her poker face in favor of her cat-like grin. "If everything goes well, we'll only really be gone for an afternoon."

Wash accepts the watch without comment. It's not the first time he's had it's broken - you take it used on him, and he's sure it won't be the last.

At least Pidge has addressed his concern. Wash raises an eyebrow, waits for a moment, and then stands suddenly, raising his arm to shoulder level - if Dipper doesn't let go, he's going to get lifted right off his feet. Turns out Wash's sense of humor kicks in after the first cup of coffee, and that was over half an hour ago. "Fine," he says, because Kubo at least has a point. "Lead the way."

The original plan was to hit up the mall and hang out like normal people. That didn't necessarily change, but they hadn't quite been expecting the mall to be a planetoid all its own. Sick.

When they arrive, the large and very lit up sign reading PLANET RETAIL: 1000+ STORES, 400+ EATERIES, INDOOR AMUSEMENT PARK & MORE! makes the game plan pretty obvious. But Dave still bothers with a grand gesture at it, lips quirked slightly into a smirk.

"Okay, today's mission: chill the fuck out."

For a moment, Wash just stares. He thinks he's used to the vegan spacefuture, and then it shows off things like this and yanks the rug out from under him all over again. What the hell.

It takes a few seconds for him to find words. "Where do we even start?"

[Wash]

Kubo spent much of the early trip tugging on Wash's sleeve, pointing at things and asking what they were.

"What's that?" to a really elaborate light show/fountain. "What's that?" to a virtual reality hard light display that simulates only the experience of playing with a litter of puppies. "What's that?" to a rollercoaster.

A really awesome looking Space Future rollercoaster. The planet-sized malls of the UP didn't go half measures on anything, and that included the towering hanging coaster snaking up and over the amusement park section of the mall.

Really, what was that whole section?

[Dipper]

Kubo had not, as of yet, gotten a real chance to make friends with Dipper. All they had to know each other by was that Kubo had liked Mabel a lot, and two missions.

One of which Dipper tried to kill him on. And on which Kubo gave him a significant quantity of papercuts.

Not the best set of scenarios to base a friendship on.

So Kubo tried to think of something to strike up a conversation with Dipper about as they walked, when a particularly sparkly display caught his eye. The store advertised itself by its "authentic, traditional archiving supplies" and propped its stock of paste, blank books, stationery, and other crafty materials up on popsicle stick and googly eyed thrones.

"That store reminds me of your sister," Kubo said, pointing to the glittery window.

"A show" and "not as good as the real thing" were Wash's answers to the first two things. At the third question, he pauses for a moment to stare up at the roller coaster. He's had a lot of thrills in his life, but very few of them could be considered anywhere close to safe. Honestly, given what Wash knew of Kubo's story, the same could probably be said for Kubo.

"That's a roller coaster," he says, looking at Kubo with a mischievous glint in his eye. "Wanna ride it?"

Kubo squinted. There were, in fact, people on that car, as it chugged along at a nice, gentle pace sloping up to the top of a great big metal hill.

"Where are they riding to?" he asked, right before the car PLUNGED down the first drop and the passengers started screaming.

Kubo grabbed his shamisen. "We have to help them!"

[Everyone!]

Pidge really did have a shopping list, and she really did mean to get to the electronics store. But then she happened to glance at the arcade as they passed and suddenly it's all forgotten.

They. Have. EVERYTHING. Fighting games, racing games, dance and DJ games, pinball, shooters of every flavor, most of them with VR components but many vintage machines were tucked away in the corners as well. It's a gamer's heaven. Is she drooling? She feels like she's drooling.

"Someone pinch me." She is going to spend as much time as possible in here, possibly the rest of her natural life if allowed.

[Dipper]

It had been too long since Pidge had a really nice dress. Cargo shorts were her go-to outfit for work, but the problem was it had been her only outfit to go to for far, far too long.

This was play, and it had been too long since she really got to play.

It wasn't all that much. OK, it was still green, but it was a darker green than she'd worn in a long time and the pattern of dark orange crystal flowers tied the look together nicely. She'd opted to wear it out of the store, and she felt lighter than she had in a long time.

Also: less caked in her own sweat. Generally.

He'd hovered around while she'd shopped, since they planned on hanging out in the mall after, but he hadn't really paid attention to what she was buying. Now that she was wearing it out, he could't help but pay attention to that -- and basically nothing else.

The thing with Pidge that blew Dipper away was that she was a kind of cute that sort of just...was always there, no matter what she was wearing.

In her armor, she looked cute because she looked tough and badass. In her usual shorts and boyish clothes, she looked all cute in a nerdy kind of way, like she was perpetually ready to just engineer the heck out of something. So this was less that she looked cuter and more that, once again, she had yet another type of cuteness in her arsenal.

It was really starting to get unfair how many different types she had. It was kind of like she was something from a Jokokoman game, where she had like ten different evolutions and all them were considered equally cute by focus groups.

"That's a dress."

That was not what he'd meant to say.

"I-I mean, you're -- uh. I've never seen you in a dress, but it looks nice." A pause. "Not that you ever look un-nice, you usually look nice, in your other clothes. And you look cool in your armor, but you look just a different kind of nice right now, that's equal to the other ways you usually look nice, and wow, I'm still talking, aren't I, I'm going to shut up now and pretend we just got shifted into an alternate dimension where I never opened my mouth at all."

He added, "That can happen! Because we're in space. And weird dimensioney stuff happens here all the time."

Edited 2017-03-22 06:53 (UTC)

Pidge is fine letting Dipper ramble a bit. It's actually kind of interesting to be on the other end of it for once. She doesn't have to be the one who sounds silly and honestly? It's kind of cute.

"Relax, Dipper. Compliments won't be held against you." She says it with a chuckle that should let him know that she gets it. If she's blushing (she is a little) she doesn't really notice.

"...It really looks nice? The style's kind of vintage, I mean, for my era."

Pidge is not really a fashion person, so while she feels good, she's not sure if the dress is stylishly vintage or...just old.

Okay, permission to gush freely.

"Yeah, totally!" This wasn't as neon as Mabel liked her clothes, but that wouldn't have worked for Pidge anyway, and he could at least tell the cut was nice. "Um, not that I know a lot about fashion, but I have been the screaming, agonized victim of more than one of my sister's surprise makeovers."

Normally, he'd be completely embarrassed about that, but...he knows Pidge will probably just think it's amusing, and that makes it more funny than embarrassing.

"Apparently, I'm a winter."

That's a mental image. Pidge suspects Matt would be relieved to know that he missed out on that particular bit of having a sister.

"Honestly, I've never been able to tell the difference between the seasons." She chuckles. "I just wanted to quit feeling like...well, like you feel when you only have one set of clothes."

And have sweating issues. Which Pidge does. A lot.

Wash is several steps ahead of Pidge before he realizes she's stopped, and he backtracks to follow her gaze. Somehow, Pidge getting way too invested in an arcade is not a surprising development.

"Should I come find you in a couple of hours, or do you need a player two?"

Pidge shoots him a sly look.

"Is that your way of saying you know I'll wipe the floor with you?"

Wash slowly raises an eyebrow and lets himself smirk. "If it was an offer to keep you company, but if you want to get humiliated in public by someone more than twice your age, then sure."

"C'mon," she says, grabbing his wrist and tugging him inside. "Your pick: Techno-Brawl VR or Cannon Crisis 3?"

And we're back to the arm-pulling. Pidge must really be excited. "Cannon Crisis 3," he says, matching her sudden quick pace, "and are you sure you didn't make those up?"

"See for yourself."

The arcade machine is set up in the Japanese style, where the machine is actually two machines and the players have their own screens on opposite sides. From what she can tell from the attract screen, it's a game about twitch reflexes and pulling off the flashiest combos. A lady cat with mecha-limbs is fighting a vampire with massive torn up wings to match his leather pants on a sinking ship stage.

The grin she gives him is the very definition of "shit-eating."

Wash has spent a good chunk of the day being dragged hither and yon by four very excitable teenagers. On one hand, it's been nice seeing everyone away from Legion World and getting into their own interests; on the other hand, they've been at it for hours and he is exhausted. Turns out keeping track of four teenagers is a high-energy task and they've wiped out his reserves. He needs a break.

So when he sees something that interests him, he sends the coordinates to everyone and heads towards the small shop, ready to wait in one hell of a line - that is, until the owner of the place gets wind of the fact that a Legionnaire is in line for their establishment, at which point he's ushered directly in.

If anyone follows the coordinates Wash has sent, they'll find themselves in front of Paws For Coffee, Planet Retail's most popular cat cafe. Wash is inside, relaxing in an oversized saucer chair, with a cup of coffee and a cookie on a side table, a huge ginger cat lounging in his lap, and a calico draped over his shoulders. If the point of today's mission is to relax, then Wash has accomplished that in spades.

The owner is happy to let more Legionnaires skip the line and come right in, for which Dave is infinitely grateful. Like hell was he about to wait in that long-ass line for a fucking cat cafe just to find out what Wash is up to.

He probably should have guessed something like this. The guy is clearly a cat person, if his own cat is any indication of anything. But even still, Dave just arches an eyebrow at Wash's cozy little cat pile, sidestepping a tabby trying to rub up against his leg.

"Was this seriously the secret all along?" he deadpanned. "All we had to do to get you to relax a little was give you a cookie and entomb you in cats? Shit, we'll just skip the trip next time and place an order with the nearest Petco."

Skipping lines is a Legionnaire privilege Pidge is more than willing to take advantage of, but really, why aren't there dog cafes? With big outdoor areas to throw sticks.

But then a friendly tabby steps from the counter to her shoulder and drapes itself over her neck and...yeah, she sees the appeal. She heads over to Wash and Dave, scratching it's head.

"We enlisted Kid Q for this," she chimes in, "but I guess 'Hey, Wash, let's go pet some cats' would have worked equally well." She can be as sarcastic as she likes, but it really is nice to see Wash so relaxed.

Wash raises both eyebrows as Dave and Pidge approach but makes no move to get up from the chair. He's comfortable, and that's important. "Do you want me to relax, or do you want to make fun of me?" he says lazily and without ire. As far as he knows, neither of them know that those two conditions aren't mutually exclusive, and he's going to milk that for all it's worth.

"Chill, I'm just givin' you shit," Dave says with a shrug, shooing a purring ball of fur out of one of the other seats to sit down. "I promise I know crazier cat-ladies then you, and given I'm related to them I probably can't judge too hard."

Oh, look at that, a menu. Excuse Dave, he needs to see what kind of treats this place offers beyond felines.

"I think we can do both," says Pidge, completely unable to stop petting the cat around her shoulders. "I think giant robot lion might beat anyone in a crazy cat-lady contest."

She sits down at the table as well, one leg tucked under her. The cat climbs off her and then hops down to the floor. "It's working, isn't it?"

The cat that Dave shoos off from the chair - a very affectionate flame point Siamese named Snowflake, according to the holographic infoscreen that pops up next to said chair - turns around and hops back up on the chair, going for Dave's lap. A warm spot is a warm spot, after all.

The huge ginger cat in Wash's lap slowly rolls over and splays its paws in all directions, and Wash rubs its belly, watching the show unfolding in front of him. "What's working? The judgment or the relaxation?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I Need A Break

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

mall entrance

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject