(no subject)

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

Toph didn't go into the pizza party. Partly because she doesn't know what a pizza is, partly because the linoleum on the kitchen floor makes everything annoyingly out of focus, but mostly because she wanted to be on her own. It seems she wants to do that a lot these days.

She surveyed the bunker: fixed some structural damage, reinforced it, expanded a little. But then she ends up crouched on the edge, toes curling against the rock, head bowed.

She could be accused of staring into space, except she doesn't really stare anywhere.

Comments

[alwaysroomforhope]

Steph thinks she looks sad. And she's friends with a Sokka, so obviously she's someone worth knowing.

Steph wanders over with a plate of reheated pizza and a big smile. "Hi," she calls, peering up. "Want lunch?"

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

She doesn't look sad anywmore! Except Toph isn't actually allthat good at controlling how she looks. Luckily her bangs cover a lot of her face, so the tears aren't exactly highly visible.

"That smells great."

Which is a yes. "What is it?"

[alwaysroomforhope]

"Pizza." Steph grins, bouncing up to the edge of the bunker lightly, without dropping any pizza. "I didn't see you at the thingie last night, but I can't blame you, we're totally a weird bunch. But awesome. Really awesome. Have you met the babies yet, Mel's girls?"

Because people who're brooding and miserable totally appreciate being babbled at. (Actually, Steph finds they often seem to, because then they can smile at her airheaded ditz act and get distracted from their worries. On the other hand, she's pretty sure some people just get annoyed, so it's a gamble.)

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

"I haven't even met Mel."

Toph could get annoyed at babbling, or she could just put up with it until it goes away.

[alwaysroomforhope]

"Mel's awesome," Steph says with assurance, settling on the edge of the roof far enough away that she hopes she won't be intruding and passing the pizza over. "She's --"

Steph's about to say 'the one with the pink and blue hair' but passes on that.

"-- about my size, but she's way quicker. You'll know her by the babies though, they're so totally adorable. They're always with her or with my Sokka."

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

"Oh those babies," Toph says. "Sokka's nieces - what's all that about anyway?"

[alwaysroomforhope]

"They're great." Steph loves them more than she really should for someone who's known them only a year or so. "Hana set one guy's hair on fire by mistake the other day, it was hilarious. We're totally trying to teach them to steady their breath, but they're so young."

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

Toph opens her mouth.

Toph shuts her mouth.

"They're Firebenders?"

[alwaysroomforhope]

Steph freezes.

Whoops.

"...what?" she settles on, after just slightly too long. "What's that?"

[vehicon-thrust.livejournal.com]

Thrust has work to do.

He's been out scavenging off the farm, scanners on high for those subtle human life-signs. He's got stuff to build and a refuelling station to refit (he and Jetstorm have plans to get overengerized! It will be awesome, in a drunk way) and there are a few places that aren't inhabited anymore where people either died and left their electronics or fled and decided electronics, not being edible, were of little use.

But he's back now, and possibly looks a little ridiculous carrying a battered shoebox full of cellular phones and bluetooth headsets that don't connect to anything anymore in his manipulatory appendages.

Hey, it's possible there are people around who don't care that he looks ridiculous.

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

There certainly are.

Toph assumes at first it's some sort of mechanised vehicle, but it's moving wrong for a vehicle, and though Toph can't see through metal as well as through Earth, she can feel enough to know that it's not really built like a vehicle.

She stands, mostly to get a better feel, and experiments with a shout.

"Hey!"

[vehicon-thrust.livejournal.com]

He is too built like a vehicle. Just... not in this mode.

"Hey, yourself." The voice is gravelly, male, deep, and relatively friendly. It also doesn't belong to a human-- just someone capable of speaking human languages fluently. But the wheel stops rolling, the engine sounds change to idling.

And Thrust looks at Toph, curious. He still hasn't met everyone yet. Like the comlinks, it's something he's working on.

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

There's certain processes that happen when a human - or indeed, anyone organic - says something out loud. Breathing, for a start. There's a physical mechanism.

Guess who doesn't talk like humans talk?

Toph has her head turned down, away from Thrust, but points directly at him.

"Did you say that?"

[vehicon-thrust.livejournal.com]

This is actually closer to the reaction Thrust thought he'd get from humans-- even if it's for entirely different reasons but it's not like he knows that yet. Here's hoping approaching it with good humor helps.

A heavy mechanical head swings to the right, then to the left. Servos are faintly audible-- to a Transformer, that's just one of those processes that happens "You see anybody else close enough?

"My name's Thrust."

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

"I don't see anything, Smartypants."

Toph turns her head up at him to reveal her milky white, sightless eyes.

"I'm blind."

[vehicon-thrust.livejournal.com]

To Thrust, they... don't really look all that different from everyone else's eyes. Well, the color, sure, but he hasn't worked out that that black part in the middle affects sight.

"That's a frag of a malfunction. Humans can't repair that kind of damage?" Thrust is not embarassed (at least not yet), but he is surprised. She's stuck with a non-functional set of optic sensors that can't be replaced? Really good reason to appreciate being a mechanism instead of an organism.

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

"It's not damage, I was born this way."

The only person who might have been able to give Toph sight is recently dead, but she's never considered it anyway.

"Anyway," because she doesn't want to talk about blindness, she turns it on him, accusingly. "You're made of metal."

[clockwork-son.livejournal.com]

Gabriel has been in the younger Gabriel's room, working on the Sylar watch.

It was a good distraction from... things.

He's a naturally nervous person, and he's quite a bit more nervous than usual lately. Which is why the tall, shy twenty-year-old is approaching the bunker with his head down, moving as though he unconsciously expects to be accosted by someone hostile at any moment.

When he looks up and sees Toph, he blinks, and is startled out of most of his self-consciousness.

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

Toph doesn't move in response, though she does notice it. To show this, she says out loud,

"Why are you so nervous?"

[clockwork-son.livejournal.com]

He jumps, and it's back again.

"Um."

See Gabe flounder. Flounder, Gabe, flounder.

"...hello? I'm Gabriel."

Introducing himself in a blatant attempt to change the subject is possibly the most transparent ploy ever, but it's better than telling her that he just adopted a serial killer into his family.

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

Definitely better than telling the person who considers a sister one of the victims of said serial killer.

"Yeah? I'm Toph."

Doesn't really answer the question, does it? She waits.

[clockwork-son.livejournal.com]

"--Nice to meet you?"

Yes, nervous is certainly the word. Flounder. Flounder.

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, I know," Toph says indifferently. It's not nice to meet her. It's awesome to meet her.

[clockwork-son.livejournal.com]

Ah. An ego. Gabriel knows those.

Small, nervous smile. (He's too far away to see her eyes, and is looking in the wrong direction in any case.)

[runaway-bandit.livejournal.com]

Pause.


"So," Toph continues, "why are you so nervous?"