Room 307, Wednesday Morning

[dollpocalypse]

Topher was annoyed.

He had had a Creepy Construction Worker communicator (which in itself was cool) and access to the network that it ran on (which was much cooler), and now he didn't. All thanks to Riley.

Well, mostly thanks to Electroclash, if you wanted to get technical. The point was that Topher didn't think it was his own fault. But he'd

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[selfhelphero]

After class, Billy had an apple pie to share, and the first person it made sense to share with was Topher. "Hey, are you here?" he called, peeking in past the open door anyway. "Oh, you look busy."

[dollpocalypse]

"I'm definitely not busy," Topher assured him, immediately dropping his pencil and redirecting his attention to Billy. "Annoyingly enough. But I'm also for sure not too busy for whatever that is."

He pointed. It smelled good, Billy! Share!

[selfhelphero]

"It's pie," Billy said, coming in and setting the pie down on the nearest clean flat surface. "They had us bake in Pinkie Pie's class today, like that's going to make things better or something."

[dollpocalypse]

"Pie can sometimes make things better," Topher said, getting up to clear off his desk and steal Bay's chair so that Billy could sit next to him. "It can be a really good distraction or a weapon."

Foil tins could be dangerous, it was true.

"...I bet you could put explosives in a pie."

[selfhelphero]

"You could, but only if the pie was like, gross or made out of a bad fruit or something. Otherwise it would be a sad waste of pie," Billy said, laughing softly to try to keep things light. "How are you doing. Have you run into anything weird?"

[dollpocalypse]

"Well, some rando teacher and I contacted the place the dig site guys are from yesterday," Topher offered. "I did basically all of the work. But then he messed up talking to the expert doctor who supposedly knows what they're building, so she blew us off and Electroclash yelled at us."

That was... quite an answer, Topher.

"How about you?"

[selfhelphero]

"I didn't get nearly that far!" Billy said. "What did the doctor say? Does she know what's in the vault?" Billy had a lot of ideas, some of which were terrible and some of which were awesome.

[dollpocalypse]

"She didn't tell us anything," Topher complained. "Whatshisname got all demandy and she just told us to fuck off. And I could have kept the communicator and gotten someone more personable to talk to her, but Electroclash took it."

He was sulking a little about that, yes.

"You should have been there. You're super personable."

[selfhelphero]

"Awww, thank you." Yes, Billy was taking that as a compliment. "Electroclash is really mean, I'm sorry. Was the communicator cool?"

[dollpocalypse]

"It was clunky, but kind of cool," Topher offered, tilting his head as he contemplated that. "It had great security defenses. It took me like seven minutes to figure it out."

He had, of course, timed himself.

"I like when alien stuff is surprisingly similar to stuff I'm used to and therefore really easy to figure out for us Earth people."

Which always came as a surprise, but whatever.

"Have you been doing anything cool?"

[selfhelphero]

"Just researching, and getting nowhere. You're staying safe, right?" Of course he was, it was Topher, but Billy still had to ask.

[dollpocalypse]

"Define 'safe,'" Topher said with a thoughtful hum. But then he grinned. "I'm kidding. Yeah, yeah, I left the construction jerks alone after they reminded me about their guns. And you are too?"