soniaroadsqueen | Entries tagged with room 506

Ringo was toweling her hair dry after her post-AT-run shower when she suddenly realized something.

She had totally forgotten to give Xanthippe the chocolates that she'd made for Valentines. So she was sort of going through her stuff trying to find the box she was pretty sure she remembered packing, but not actually managing to turn it up. Had she not actually made one? Had a gremlin stolen it?

Fortunately, Ringo still had some supplies left over, and a bunch of extra chocolates, too.

Which was why she was seated cross-legged on her bed, humming far too loudly, and going through a couple of different tupperware containers of handmade chocolates trying to find the best looking ones she had left so she could box them up for her roommate.

[ooc: Door cracked, post open.]

Ringo woke to the sound of the whip-crack and wet cracking noise of one of the Thorn Regalia's blades breaking through the back of an exes' skull, and she sat up with a start, chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.

The extra oxygen also helped push down some of the nausea that it felt like she was swimming through. Ringo pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned her head back against the wall. She was, sadly, starting to get the hang of waking up from a nightmare where she killed dozens of people.

Exes, she reminded herself firmly. They weren't people anymore.

Sleep hadn't really been very restful since she'd gotten back from LA.

She'd even realized the day before that she was sort of avoiding talking to Kathy. She was glad to have her senpai back. Super-glad. But right now thinking about Kathy involved too many less super memories of blood and bodies collapsing in that weirdly slow way that they did when there was no brain trying to stop them.

The deep breaths weren't enough, and Ringo found herself sprinting for the bathroom to throw up last night's dinner.

She washed her face and came back to the room, not having the energy to properly shut the door behind her. Her eyes tracked back to where they usually did when she was stressed, her ATs. But those brought new memories with them, and she shook her head and just sat down on her bed, trying not to think.

[ooc: Door cracked, post open.]

Ringo had had that weird feeling in the back of her head since Tuesday. You know, the one where you are sure you're forgetting something important that you really should have written down or something. The one where you know it's not going to be all that terrible if you never remember, but where when you do you'll be facepalming about how you could have possibly forgotten.

It wasn't exactly unpleasant, but considering how simple Ringo's routines usually were, it wasn't exactly a super-familiar feeling, either. Which meant that after dinner, Ringo had just sort of felt tired. Not the comfortable stretched muscle feeling of a good workout, but the vaguely fuzzy-brained feeling of a day doing too much hard thinking. So she took a bath to relax a bit, then decided to get to bed early.

She was slipping into sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, and it wasn't long before she drifted into dreams.

[ooc: Expecting one. Up early for great SP justice. That Ringo went to bed early isn't secret, but comments are NFB due to being dreams.]

Ringo had managed, she hoped, to finally get all the parts she needed to attempt to repair her drone. The one that had crashed all on its own, slamming into the ground and skipping without any input from her at all.

Stupid drone.

She'd also figured that, while she was at it, she could make some upgrades. So she was replacing the little electric motors with much more powerful ones. That should make the thing way faster. "This is going to be so awesome," she said to herself, grinning.

Now she was all set to test her modifications. She got everything hooked up and turned on just one of the motors. Not enough to send the drone flying, but enough to make sure she'd hooked the propeller up properly. The motor let out a high pitched whine as it spun up, and Ringo frowned as the propeller began to wobble slightly. It hadn't occurred to her that the cheap plastic hadn't really been designed for a the additional stresses she was putting on it. If she'd wanted that, she should have gotten a less crappy drone.

The wobble got more and more pronounced, and Ringo sighed, reaching out to cut the power, but just before she could the propeller came completely off, shooting across the room.

Ringo dived off her chair, ducking low to avoid the flying projectile.

It occurred to her that maybe she should have closed the door. Hopefully that flying piece of plastic didn't hit anyone walking by.

[ooc: Door and post open.]

Ow. Ow.

Ringo's head was pounding when she blearily opened her eyes. She usually didn't sleep that late, but the sunlight coming in her window suggested that she had. And also made her snap her eyes closed and groan. Stupid sunlight.

The couple of drinks she'd had the night before probably weren't enough to leave her feeling quite this bad, but she'd also gone on a terrible crying jag, which had not helped at all. During those few seconds before she's squeezed her eyes closed, Ringo thought she'd noticed a glass next to her table. She flailed over blindly and found it with one hand, sitting up and taking a sip with her eyes still closed. Oh, water. That was good. She chugged half the glass in one go, then let out a sigh.

Crying all over Dante last night had been, well, less than ideal. Ugh. On the other hand, the crying had, well, actually felt kind of good. Ringo had been fighting that off since she'd talked to Kathy.

Which hurt to think about still, and part of her wanted to not do that thinking, but it was hard not to poke at it. Like picking at a scab or something. Besides, she sort of felt like she owed Kathy. It wasn't like Ringo hadn't known Kathy would shoot her down. Kathy had never said or done anything to make Ringo think she was anything but straight, and Dante had flat out said so. So Ringo had gone in knowing how Kathy would have to respond, and that Kathy wouldn't want to because she knew it'd hurt Ringo, and she'd still confessed. It had been deeply selfish, so Ringo owed it to Kathy not to run away from the consequences.

She shifted slightly, taking another sip of water and stretching. Then her eyes blinked open and she looked down. And snorted. She'd fallen asleep wearing the Thorn Regalia. She carefully removed them, walking slowly across the room to put them back in their biometrically-locked case. Then back over to her bed where she flopped back and closed her eyes.

Poking at a broken heart was apparently a lot like picking at a scab. It was hard to stop doing, too.

[ooc: Door's closed, but post is open if anyone wants to swing by and yell at Ringo for being an idiot. Or just hang out. Whatever!]

This week had been a tense one to start off with, but the past few days had been worse. Way worse.

Kissing Kathy was something that had, in some form or another, been floating around the back of Ringo's head for months, but not like that. Not, well, not when it didn't mean anything. When it wasn't about her. And while she knew she was lucky that Kathy had stopped her, that she would have regretted it if they'd kept going, there was a part of Ringo's heart that had cracked at the rejection.

And before she could begin recovering her equilibrium from that little incident, she was pretty sure that she'd been seconds away from kissing Dante. Dante! And then he'd stopped her! Dante had rejected her. Dante, who made out with enough different people that Ringo knew about it.

Two days in a row where she'd done her best to make huge mistakes was bad enough. Two days in a row where she'd been rejected, even if she knew she should be thankful for it, was not helping her emotional state at all.

She told herself that she didn't care if people thought she was pretty. It may not have been at the top of her priority list, but the way she was feeling today made it clear to Ringo that it was on the list.

On top of which she still felt like she should, well, let's just say she was still tense.

So she was dealing with the roil of emotions in the classic Fandom manner: repression. She'd pushed back all of the furniture in her room to make some space, closed her door, and cranked up her music as loud as it would go (which wasn't loud enough for her taste since she only had a pair of crappy add-on speakers for her tablet). She'd found a series of how-to videos online, with some group from back home working on combining break-dancing with AirTrek, and she was going to learn to do it, too. The fact that she didn't have any real dance experience made it more attractive to her at the moment: she had to spend all of her concentration learning new techniques and moves, and spending all of her concentration was a very good thing.

[ooc: Door closed, but post totally open if anyone wants to swing by.]

It wasn't even going to be for a whole week, but Ringo found herself having trouble packing for a trip back home. She'd mostly managed to get over the sense of paranoia that the island was just waiting to ambush her with something terrible at any moment, but she still had little moments where she fell back into being Crazy Apple. Cold, practical, ruthless. But why some part of her felt like she needed that set of traits to pack for a trip home was beyond her.

So she was kind of fighting with herself. Why not take a bunch of the outfits that Kathy had helped her buy in Baltimore? Sure, they weren't all super-practical, but none of them restricted her movement all that much. And besides, they were so cute on her!

Which was why there were two piles of clothes on her bed: one of cute stuff, one of practical stuff. Good thing she didn't leave until the next day. She'd have plenty of time to figure something out.

[ooc: Open for SP if anyone wants.]

Ringo had never been great at dealing with her emotions at the best of times. Before Fandom she'd mostly just suppressed them, so she hadn't had a lot of practice. The nightmares that had been waking her up in the middle of the night hadn't done much for her mood, and whatever it was that had happened yesterday had pretty much shredded what control she had left.

So as the day had worn on, with emotions that she didn't think were hers kept washing over her, overwhelming her ability to cope, Ringo had began to fall back onto old habits. Fandom had been good to her, so she hadn't really had much cause to practice suppression over the past half a year, and that meant that those old skills surfaced slowly. Part of that was how long it had been, but part of it was because Ringo had been fighting it. After all, those skills were more Crazy Apple's than hers, and she was still scared of that other her other persona. Even more scared than usual with the reminder from yesterday.

Sometime after lunch, though, she gave in. The emotions pulling her this way and that were too much as she swung from crying to shivering and back again.

So the girl who threw off the covers and climbed out of Ringo's bed looked like Ringo, but something was off. The graceful movements as she walked to the closet were right, but there wasn't any bounce to them. Flat, controlled, and perfectly efficient. A large metal briefcase was extracted from the back of the closet and then set on the desk. A long series of numbers was punched into the keypad, causing a red light to begin blinking. "Designation Crazy Apple," Ringo's voice intoned calmly at the prompt. The light turned green and the case clicked open. "It's been a while," she murmured, a smile touching her lips as she gently extracted a pair of ATs that hadn't seen the light of day since that case had gone into the back of the closet the day Ringo moved in.

She sat on the bed to put on the elaborately-designed ATs, then she stood up. She shifted her weight back and forth, feeling out the bruises and little cuts she'd picked up walking back to the dorms last night in just a pair of socks and adjusting her stance to compensate.

There. She nodded to herself firmly and headed for the door. She'd left a pair of AirTrek somewhere out on the streets last night, and needed to go pick them up. There was an easy smile on her lips, but it didn't touch her eyes.

Welcome to Fandom, Crazy Apple, Queen of the Thorn Road.

[ooc: Open if anyone wants to run into Ringo's much crueler persona.]

Ringo hadn't been to a club before. Prior to Fandom, she'd never really had the opportunity. She wasn't even sure if she was super-excited about it now that she did have the opportunity, but she did have to admit that she was curious.

And a bit competitive.

Which meant that her first time at a club had to be impressive. But it was hard to be impressive when you weren't entirely sure what constituted "impressive" at the intended venue. Which was why Ringo wasn't making a ton of progress in picking from the various dresses that she'd laid out on her bed. They were all new-ish, items she'd picked up on her trip into Baltimore with Kathy.

At least she'd decided that she was definitely wearing heels, and she only had the one pair of those, so that part of her wardrobe was figured out?

Now she just had to do the rest.

Good thing she had plenty of time.

[ooc: Door and post open!]

Ringo had been using the weekends for longer, more aggressive runs around Baltimore, or the warehouses on island. This weekend she'd been working on a series of pretty intricate rooftop-to-rooftop spinning flip transitions, and she'd come down at just the wrong angle. Not quite enough to sprain her ankle, but it was definitely sore.

Injuries were just a fact of live with AirTrek, but she hadn't made a simple mistake like that in years. Not on a landing. The fact that she'd made one now suggested one thing: she was out of Tune. Badly out of Tune. Which made sense, really. She hadn't actually Tuned since she got to the island. That was, wow, almost six months. Six months. Ringo hadn't gone more than a couple of weeks without tuning since, well, basically since she could remember.

So after she'd limped back to the dorms and taken a shower, she'd headed back to her room. It had taken her fifteen minutes of digging around in the back of her closet to turn up the box she was looking for, still taped shut. It was actually kind of embarrassing, considering how she sort of talked down to some of the people she'd introduced to AirTrek. Acting all superior, and she hadn't Tuned in six months? Hadn't even talked about Tuning with anyone else? What a joke.

After spending a few minutes brooding, Ringo shook off her frustration and got down to business. She opened the box, carefully pulling out a bunch of complex wires and electronics. Half an hour later she was stripped down to her underwear, electrodes stuck all over her body running into a gray box sitting on her bed. She sat, legs folded beneath her, eyes closed, with a pair of huge headphones on. Her breathing was slow and easy as she centered herself. Then she began to hum, not especially loudly, but clearly audible, long steady tones, shifting the pitch with every breath.

Finding her sound. Finding her rhythm. Tuning.

[ooc: Door cracked, post open.]

Ringo and her sisters spent a lot of time texting each other, so she was pretty much always caught up on the goings-on back home, but she still liked to get on the phone with Rika every so often. So after she'd finished her daily ride through town, she'd dialed home.

"Yeah, things are going great," Ringo insisted.

"No, nothing weird has happened since those aliens at the end of the summer."

"Well, yeah, it was weird, and there are other weird things here, but you have to admit that some things back home are, too."

"Uh, huh. Oh! A friend of mine and I threw a party on Friday, and a bunch of people came! It was great." Ringo was beaming.

"Yeah, I know." She blushed slightly. "But I'm having a lot of fun."

"Good question. I should probably try to come back in October sometime? Are there any sweet events coming up?"

She rolled her eyes. "Of course I'm talking about a battle! Or a parts war. Or anything! I mean, I'm staying in shape, and there are actually quite a few people who are getting into AirTrek around here, but no one's good enough for organized competition. I want to play some Disc. Or Balloon! Balloon would be awesome!"

"Really?" Ringo's smile was huge, and her eyes wide. "And you don't have to pre-register? You can just show up? That's awesome!"

"Oh! That reminds me. It'd be cool if I brought a friend or two next time I visited, right? I mean, I know we don't have a lot of space, but no one here's ever been to Tokyo! Or seen what a real AT competition looks like."

"Awww, yay! You're the best, Rika!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll stay out of trouble," she sighed, rolling her eyes again. "And say hey to everyone for me! Take care!"

Ringo hung up and tossed her phone onto her bed, humming happily and smiling. Her family was so awesome!

[Open!]

Ringo woke up to the alarm on her phone. Which was odd. The alarm on her phone wasn't set to go off on the weekend.

She blinked blearily, swinging mostly-blind in the direction of the sound in an attempt to get it to stop. Ringo had never really been a morning person, but she fought her way through sleep enough to actually focus her eyes and silence the alarm. Then she frowned.

How did she have a bunch of messages from home? Rika was a great big sister, but not generally a worrier, and Ringo's eyes went wide as she realized something bad must have happened to have messages and missed calls.

Except how did she have missed calls? Sure, she wasn't exactly a light sleeper, but the phone ringing should have woken her up. She grabbed it and started going through the messages, only growing more and more confused. They were all about her. Asking if she was okay, where she was, if she'd lost her phone... All that just overnight?

And then Ringo's eyes caught the date listed in the corner of the screen.

What in the world?

She dashed off a quick message home, letting them know that everything was fine and that she'd call later with details. Then Ringo pulled herself out of bed, stumbled down the hall in a daze to the bathroom where she spent a minute or two splashing cold water on her face and hoping that it would help. Then it was back to the room where she settled onto her bed, sitting cross-legged, and started doing some internet searches on her phone.

Hopefully she could actually figure out what had happened so that she'd have some details to provide when she made that promised phone call. And so that the little edge of panic hovering in the back of her mind would quiet down.

[ooc: Door and post open, should anyone want to swing by.]