video - bathroom mirror; timed to Saturday morning

[entertainaplanb]

[Becky's been a little nervous about showing her face on the network thus far, but... what the hell, she's met enough people in person by this point. Besides, she's not really sure how to describe what she thinks is the latest result of one of those vertigo spells.

So she grabbed some old lipstick and wrote her network number on her bathroom mirror; pardon the London Underground shower curtain. Her hair's down, and she's wearing a purple t-shirt and jeans.]

Has anyone seen anything like this before?

[She holds up a gun... sort of. There's no obvious place to load bullets, and that cap thingy at the end certainly wouldn't let anything out. Not to mention all the dials on it.]

Very steampunky, to be sure, but this one's got me stumped.

Comments

[15minuteslate]

It's -- it was the first unusual thing that happened to me.

[Mamoru shrugs. He won't elaborate further unless she asks.]

C'mon, this way.

[He takes off down one of the smaller side-streets, away from the mall.]

[entertainaplanb]

[She doesn't ask. She knows enough about how these things go to know that what triggers the vertigo doesn't always make sense, and that the result can be tame or... pretty disturbing, really.

Instead, she just follows his lead. This is a part of town she hasn't really seen before, and she can see why she hasn't heard much about it before now. It's making her glad she went with the buddy system.]

[15minuteslate]

[Mamoru leads her down the streets, which grow more dirty and decrepit by the minute. He turns off into an alley, one surrounded by windowless walls. He looks around a little nervously.]

How's this look?

[entertainaplanb]

This should be fine. I don't see this taking very long.

[She fishes the gun thing out of her purse - for lack of a better place to put it, she stuck it in there before she left her apartment.] Okay. Time to see what this thing does.

[15minuteslate]

[Mamoru's interested for sure, and it shows on his face, but it looks like a cool, detached interest.

This is a lie. He thinks that gun is rad as hell. So maybe he's not standing quite as far out of the way as he should. After all, it's a small alley.]

Fire away.

[entertainaplanb]

[Oh, Becky would be lying if she said she weren't a little excited. This is a pretty cool little thing, after all; she mostly didn't want to burn down her apartment or anything.]

Okay. [She takes aim at the far end of the alley - this can't be that different from what she remembers of firing a gun, right?]

[Wrong. There's a lot more kick when she fires than she was expecting, and she's so focused on trying to keep her balance that she only barely notices the shot going wide. And the bolt of lightning headed straight for Mamoru.]

[15minuteslate]

What the --?!

[It hits Mamoru squarely, causing him to yell and seize up in an extremely undignified way, before everything goes fuzzy and then blank.]

[entertainaplanb]

...Oh my God.

[Becky all but runs over to Mamoru, once she's fully regained her balance and sees that he's down for the count. She checks for a pulse first, and he's still got one; that's good, since she has no idea how she'd begin to explain this one.]

Oh my god I am so sorry I didn't know that would happen. [She'll probably say it all again when he wakes up. In any case, she starts fumbling for her phone on autopilot - until one of those damn vertigo things hits her, anyway. Just what she needed out here.]

[When it passes, she looks at the gun and sighs.] Fat lot of good it does for me to remember how to aim it now.

[15minuteslate]

"Ughhhh..." Mamoru groaned as he came back to consciousness, squinting into the light. He didn't feel up to sitting up just yet, but he did shade his eyes with a hand. "You...you shot me," he said, incredulous. "Oh my god, I was just shot with a friggin' steampunk gun and survived."

He's not sure whether this is horrible or really cool.

[entertainaplanb]

"I am so, so sorry. I had no idea it was going to do that. But apparently firing a Tesla isn't that much like firing a gun after all."

...She may not have realised she just gave the thing a name that she didn't have when they started this conversation.

[15minuteslate]

"It's ok. I think I'm fine. Thank god that thing's apparently meant to be nonlethal, right?"

He sits up, blearily shaking the fog from his head.

"I like the name you picked, though. It's a little cheesy but I can't say it isn't appropriate."

[entertainaplanb]

"Very good thing. This would have been incredibly awkward to explain."

And then Becky frowns. "What do you mean? I didn't give it a name."

[15minuteslate]

"Not to mention I'd be dead," Mamoru griped. "Or in the hospital. And yeah, you did. You just called it a Tesla."

[entertainaplanb]

"Well, that's what it is, I - oh, for the love of God."

Becky's just... gonna facepalm now. "Couldn't possibly have known that when I got the thing, could I. That would probably be too easy."