Prompt 01. Smile
After the 'Ramones Incident' (a name that Eames flinches at for a good week afterwards, as if he half expects the music to start up and blast out his eardrums again), they both think the entire affair is over with. That Arthur got his revenge, equally petty and even less creative than their own (they think) hilarious minor pranks.
Somehow they both manage to underestimate the pointman.
But the moment they 'wake' into the dream world that should have been the one Ariadne painstakingly designed for a future job (but hadn't yet decided the when or where, it was a hobby of hers, really, those various worlds she built without a particular aim), they realize just how wrong they are.
The dream is nothing like they imagined it. Nothing. Instead of generic-beautiful-grimy-stylized-realistic streets they find themselves in a kaleidoscope world of mostly black and white, splashed with almost random colors and dosed with enough chaotic action and design in the background that Eames briefly has to wonder if he's having an acid flashback.
Only tried the damn stuff once, he swore, and found himself petting a fedora hat and calling it Puss Puss.
The dream reminds him quite a lot of that. Particularly when a pink cartoonish cat winks at him before trotting on by carrying a letter.
It takes them a good mind-dizzingly long hour to extricate themselves from the world where every time they tried to speak a narrator with a slapdash hard-on for wordplay has their heads spinning, and when they do wake to reality (they don't need their totems to check, as there's no longer a man in a penguin-suit winking at them), it's to find Arthur tossing a satisfied (and, Ariadne thinks, a rather evil) smile over his shoulder as he exits the room.
They learn not to underestimate his creativity when they catch sight of the note from Yusuf bubbling and babbling on about his excitement over Arthur wanting to try the new 'recreational' compound.
Somehow they both manage to underestimate the pointman.
But the moment they 'wake' into the dream world that should have been the one Ariadne painstakingly designed for a future job (but hadn't yet decided the when or where, it was a hobby of hers, really, those various worlds she built without a particular aim), they realize just how wrong they are.
The dream is nothing like they imagined it. Nothing. Instead of generic-beautiful-grimy-stylized-realistic streets they find themselves in a kaleidoscope world of mostly black and white, splashed with almost random colors and dosed with enough chaotic action and design in the background that Eames briefly has to wonder if he's having an acid flashback.
Only tried the damn stuff once, he swore, and found himself petting a fedora hat and calling it Puss Puss.
The dream reminds him quite a lot of that. Particularly when a pink cartoonish cat winks at him before trotting on by carrying a letter.
It takes them a good mind-dizzingly long hour to extricate themselves from the world where every time they tried to speak a narrator with a slapdash hard-on for wordplay has their heads spinning, and when they do wake to reality (they don't need their totems to check, as there's no longer a man in a penguin-suit winking at them), it's to find Arthur tossing a satisfied (and, Ariadne thinks, a rather evil) smile over his shoulder as he exits the room.
They learn not to underestimate his creativity when they catch sight of the note from Yusuf bubbling and babbling on about his excitement over Arthur wanting to try the new 'recreational' compound.