Fifth Floor Common Room, Monday Afternoon

[soniaroadsqueen]

It had required moving some furniture around in order to create the space necessary, but Ringo had managed to lay down a big white sheet on the floor and pin its corners with some large boxes. She'd even had boxes left over, and those were stacked near the edge of the area she'd blocked off

Comments

[that_oldsaying]

Alluka was actually not on her floor today. It was a small thing to anyone else, but pretty big for her.

She peered inside the common room, stuffed giraffe in her arms, and then beamed.

"Ringo!" she said happily. "You have lots of things!"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Alluka!" Ringo responded almost as happily. "I know! Isn't it great?" It hadn't occurred to her yet that to most people she just had a bunch of little bits of metal.

She grinned. "How was your first week?" She hadn't seen the other girl in a while!

[that_oldsaying]

"Some of them are shiny," Alluka said agreeably, since that was both true and neatly skipped around her complete lack of understanding as she bounced into the common room to clamber up onto a couch to watch Ringo work more comfortably.

"It was good!" she said. "Andrew asked me lots of questions in his class and Bob wanted to know about our magic, but I don't have magic." A beat. "Do you?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Not me," Ringo answered, shaking her head. "I mean," she looked down at the almost-completed gearbox and wheel assembly in her hand, and shrugged, "sometimes I feel like ATs are magic, but I know that they're just really neat technology."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Wait. Are there a lot of people around here with magic?" There was enough weird stuff on the island that someone having magic powers, or something like them, probably made sense, but...

[kenselvren]

Jalian wandered in after a trip to the mainland, and stopped short at the view from the doorway. Then she came in, careful not to step on anything. "What are you building?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Jalian!" Ringo exclaimed with a grin. "Well, not this particular set," she said, holding up what was probably an indecipherable assembly of bits, "but ATs for you!" Among a few other things.

[kenselvren]

Jalian eyed them with interest. She could decipher one or two things - that was a power connection, maybe? - but the overall construction was strange. "How do they work?" She sat down at the edge of the sheet, watching.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Well, you'd have to hook up a battery," Ringo said, nodding toward one of the so-far unopened boxes. "Then you'd wire that to this set of pins here," she pointed at a pair of metal studs off to one side. "Run a current through and it'll spin the electric motor here," right in the center of the wheel, "which is hooked up to a transmission."

She smiled. "This one's an automatic, since that's easier to learn with."

"Anyway, I haven't hooked up the brakes yet, but once it's all in place, and attached to a boot, you can basically control it by shifting your weight."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy heard voices coming from her floor's common room and couldn't help but poke her head in and see who was here. The fifth floor had gotten much more lively since the newbies had arrived, which she was happy for.

"Ringo!" she said, spotting the girl amidst all the boxes. "Hello! What's all this?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Kathy!" Hi, Kathy! Ringo would totally wave, but her hands were full at the moment.

In fact, she was holding up the complex assembly of parts she'd gotten through so far for inspection. "They're AT parts!" she answered excitedly. "I told a couple of people that I would get them their own pairs, and then realized it'd be easier to just get my sister to send me a bunch of parts."

It was way more fun to build them yourself, after all.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Cool!" Kathy said. "...What's an AT?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"They're like, well, do you know what inline skates are?" Ringo asked, setting down the stuff she was working on and holding up a mostly-assembled wheel for examination. Of course, being unconnected to anything, it might not really be all that illustrative.