Second floor common room, Friday night

[can_be_more]

No one's in the common room when Aeryn first gets there. Which is weird. She doesn't know the last time she saw it empty.

Of course, being bored, she takes advantage of this. And starts flipping channels, wishing she had her Nerf gun to fire at bad programming. There will be NO Spice Girl ghosts today.

Comments

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander shows up in the common room at OMG hundred hours not-FH time! a wee bit late. And totally unpainted, yo.

To make up for this fact, he has a frog in his hands, instead of on his face.

A frog in a tank in his hands, because the other way offers way too many chances for escape and mayhem.

[bridge_carson]

"Hey, dude!" Bridge waves to Xander. Still dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Also still with a frog and a puppy painted on his face.

[soldtoarmenians]

"Hey! Bridge, gone so long, woe! Haven't seen you in..." Xander checks his watch. "At least three hours!"

[bridge_carson]

"It has indeed been a long time. Ever so long." Bridge says solemnly.

[soldtoarmenians]

"So much has happened in the time that has passed. I could not begin to tell you." Xander blinks. "Well, okay, mostly I had a frozen pizza and fed the frog."

[bridge_carson]

"...yeah, I can't beat that," Bridge says with a shrug.

[soldtoarmenians]

"But if we expand the timeframe, Space totally wins," Xander says. He sets Jeremiah's tank down on the coffee table and glances back over at Bridge. With the civvies. Yup, still kinda... different.

"I mean, all we had here while you were gone was a birthday party, a psychotic crayon attack, and a ghost in the common room." He scratches his head. "Er, and a free cookies thing. With tea. which is not to be confused with a tea party."

[bridge_carson]

Bridge is totally not fidgeting self-consciously, nope.

"Well, that definitely sounds more *fun* than what I did," Bridge says. "I just... listened to a bunch of lectures on stuff like weapons technology and survelliance techniques, and had hours and hours of training exercises. And, oh yes, had my uniform eaten by the mud run from *hell*," he grumbles. "Wait, what, crayon?"

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander's not sure he's ever heard Bridge say anything you wouldn't hear on Smile Time before, so one of his eyebrows does a little twitchy thing.

"There was a flying red crayon. It sort of went zipping around gratuitously grading people." He grins. "Hence my belief that I should totally get extra credit in art after the number of times that I've been drawn and/or written on at this school."

[bridge_carson]

Bridge strongly resists the urge to roll his eyes. He is, omg, allowed to swear. He just doesn't that often!

"That's... well, okay, I was gonna say weird. But that actually sounds not too farfetched, for this place." Bridge says. "You should try and submit pictures of your drawn-on self for extra credit, then." he adds.

[soldtoarmenians]

"Not a bad idea. I .... strongly suspect Rory has some. From the bus ride, not the crayon. I don't think anybody took pictures of that."

Xander tilts his head. "Your uniform got eaten? Are we talking like, mud monsters from space?"

[bridge_carson]

"More like acidic mud from space," Bridge says, making a face. "Which... resulted in me running for the showers from the obstacle course, my uniform desintegrating as I went."

[soldtoarmenians]

"..."

Oh look, ellipses.

Xander could come up with any number of responses to that; most of them involve snickering, the ones that don't involve giggling in a disturbingly hyena-like manner.

But - and maybe it's the sound of mental hyenas that reminds him - Xander's actually been sixteen years old and possessed of disintegrating clothing. Or in his case magically disappearing. And it really wasn't all that funny at the time.

"That's rough, dude."

[bridge_carson]

"Yeah," Bridge grumbles. "On the plus side, I think it made Sky, like, permanently opposed to mud runs. I don't think we'll be doing any of those for the next, oh, decade."

[soldtoarmenians]

"That's something, at least." Xander can't quite help grinning a little at Bridge's expression; he smothers it with a cough. "So who's Sky? Not your C.O., right, that's Commander...um..." He scratches his head.

[bridge_carson]

Bridge raises an eyebrow. "Yeaaaaah, no, Commander Cruger is... well, think seven-foot tall bipedal blue dog, and you'd be on the right track. Sky's human, my age, and he's... sort of the leader of our squad? I mean, we don't really have any official ranks, but he takes charge a lot."