Multi-pup post!

[eureka_bell]

Stephen Bell has taken over much of the Cooper living room, and is buried in blueprints and choice pieces of salvage metal which are starting to take the shape of complicated switchboards and ridiculously powerful engines. Tremble in your robot boots, Jetstorm, because Vader II is rising Frankenstein's monster-like from the wreckage.

Gabriel Gray

Comments

[wearsredhelmet]

"Whatcha readin'?" a young girl asks in a friendly way as she wanders by Gabe's tree. She's kept some distance between them - enough so that she can run with enough of a head start if he gets up. She's wearing a spring jacket a few sizes too big.

She's also got the teensy power of being able to see the dead and receive visions of the past and future (all powers spotty, vague, unformed, young as she herself is), if Gabriel looks at her long enough to sense anything about her.

[notmostpeople]

Is Marie with her? Because lord knows a ghost could cause some headaches.

Meanwhile: oh, no. A child.

...Come on, Gabriel, you're trying to be sociable, retreat with novel notwithstanding. What would people think of Inty if her boyfriend (the word still provokes a thrill) was a social reject?

"This," he says amiably, displaying a blue slab of a book with a title that may or may not be a misspelling of 'dragon'. Gabriel's gotten through most of the more reputable reads available in the Cooper home.

[wearsredhelmet]

Like Bridgette would wander about and leave her little sister alone? Marie is, in fact, toddling along a few yards behind Bridge, humming a children's song to herself. Bridgette glances behind her every so often.

"It any good?" Bridge asks curiously. It does not, after all, look like it has pictures.

[notmostpeople]

Gabriel glances too, but achieves nothing more than a vague and unsettling impression of there being a mechanism somewhere about that's kept going without actually deigning to retain cogs or springs or similar workaday necessities. What the...?

In answer to your question, Bridge: "It's..."

...actually, pulling a face and tilting his free hand slightly in a so-so gesture will speak more than mere words ever could.

(Now he's noticed her, at least for a given value of 'notice', his eyes keep going back to the general area which Marie occupies and being confused when there's nothing there. Are you going to make him bother Inty about this?)

[misterbunny]

The Bunny approaches the guy with the blueprints with a gleam in his eye. "Whacha got there kiddo?"

[eureka_bell]

Good grief, a talking rabbit.

In deference to the time he's spent in this universe, adopting kraken and talking to robots and so forth, Steve doesn't actually vocalise this. Though that may also be because he's so engrossed in a certain corner of a certain blueprint (it's a particularly complicated part, and there are so many rubbings-out that you can see the colour of the table through the paper) that you probably couldn't surprise him from it with a giant purple singing dinosaur.

"Building a fighter jet," he explains absently. "Dunno, though, should I drop the missiles? Could be dead weight..." It is primarily for a race, after all.

[misterbunny]

"Depends on what yer using it for. If you plan to engage in a dogfight, missiles are very important. Especially heat seeking nuclear warheads." The Bunny gnaws his foot. "But that's just my experience."

[eureka_bell]

Well, he has always enjoyed building heat-seeking...

...hang on.

"You have much experience of that kind of thing?"

Being a rabbit and all. Not that he's judging!

[clockwork_son]

Steve!

Have a huggly sneak-attack, courtesy Gabriel.

It is huggly. Also stealthful.

<3

[eureka_bell]

Now that's a distraction of which Steve can approve!

The narration is assuming that stealthful sneak-attacks require huggling to be directed from behind, but that doesn't mean Steve can't snug Gabriel's arms. And highly snuggable arms they are, too. Oh yes.

His grin is directed not around, but up, so that the bespectacled face above him appears to be suffering from a case of upside-downness. 'Up' is a direction in which Steve often finds himself looking, with Gabriels. It's practically habit, by now.

"Hey, you."

[clockwork_son]

"Hey, you, too," he says. Somewhat foolishly. Steve tends to make him foolish. It's a thing.

"Jet blueprints?"

Looks like! Has he mentioned you're awesome, Steve? Because you are.

[eureka_bell]

Hey, he's only returning the favour!

"Resurrecting Vader," Steve explains, in a tone of voice which could be also legitimately be used for a proposal of marriage or the opening of a particularly pleasing birthday present.