paixaorpg | What are those weird little journal things? [Active]

[OOC: Stalkers? I think that might be a promotion. XD;]

The trio of prinnies had been amazed at just how fast the blond guy could run. Faster than a squirrel on a hot tar road in July, one had said.

Faster than Master Etna when she's mad, another had countered.

They'd chased after him even faster after that comment.

And now they were in the lobby of some sort of inn, inspecting every inch of it while they waited for...well, whatever the blond was waiting for. They were here with him, after all.

And even though they'd finally introduced themselves to him, he still wouldn't give them his name. Bellatrix considered this unspeakably rude and wouldn't even look at him anymore. Keesling and Friedrich, however, had no such inhibitions and spent time inspecting him just as closely as they did the other denizens and contents of the lobby.

None of them had any idea what they were waiting for - they figured they'd watch the blond and see what he did.

Mello really didn't know why the hell he was bothering with this. What had possessed him to agree to teach this guy he didn't even know, who was apparently from the past, of all places, about computers? It wasn't even likely to be useful, for either of them. And trying to teach someone from that far back about technology was likely to be an exercise in frustration. He must be even more bored than he had thought.

But what else was there to do? Couldn't even blow up the damn city because that stupid teleporting bastard had to interfere. Matt had disappeared and he had no clue what Ryuuzaki and Near were doing. Why not?

He sighed as he walked up to the hotel and opened the door, biting off a chunk of the chocolate bar he held in one hand. He couldn't even fucking drive here. This wasn't quite hell and it was probably better than being dead, but it was damn close.

Edward just watched the prinnies blandly as they wandered around the lobby of the inn, wondering if the other guests thought they were as weird as he did. He looked over at the door when he saw it open, though and he recognized Mello a bit thankfully since he seemed to be the only person in the entire city that had any answers and was willing to give them; also it was a welcome distraction against the stupid penguins. He brushed Keesling and Friedrich away so that he could get up and go greet the other blonde. "Mello?" he greeted, walking up to him and extending his hand.

All three prinnies froze and spun to face the blond they'd been following - he had actually gotten up and started moving around. For all the movement he'd had for the past fifteen minutes or so, they thought he might've fallen asleep with his eyes open.

Evidently he'd been watching for the person who'd just entered - another blond. This one had a name, however - Mello. A weird name, they decided, but it couldn't be helped.

Seeing as direct interrogation didn't seem to work on the blond with the braid, the three prinnies conferred quickly and decided to hide and eavesdrop on the conversation. Maybe they would learn something...

As quick as they'd decided, they split and chose hiding places - Freidrich put a lampshade on his head and stood stock-still, Keesling concealed himself (rather poorly) behind a potted plant, and Bellatrix (the only one with the sense to hide behind something that could actually cover her) slipped behind a couch.

"That's me," Mello agreed, taking Ed's hand in his own gloved one and shaking it. A pointless gesture and one he usually didn't bother with, but why the hell not? He was here, for some reason, might as well start off polite. At least this guy was attractive; that was promising. Probably explained why he'd agreed, too; it would hardly be the first time he'd been thinking with his dick, especially when generally frustrated and bored out of his mind.

He glanced around, raising an eyebrow at the prinnies, but didn't say anything about them. This place was weird enough that he hardly even felt surprised. "Ready to get started? I picked up an extra on my way over." Mello carefully didn't mention an extra what; he didn't want any natives realizing what he planned and freaking out.

Edward squeezed Mello's hand as he shook it, mindful not to use too much pressure. At least he seemed pleasant, which was a plus anyway since he couldn't say he'd interacted with a single pleasant person since coming to this damned town. He managed a bit of a smile and, well, it wasn't that hard since the other blonde wasn't exactly hard to look at; that was a thought he quickly smothered, though and just turned to see what Mello was looking at.

Those stupid prinnies. Did they really think they were hidden? Well, two of them anyway. He couldn't see the third, but he also didn't really care either. "Forget them, they've been following me around since I got here." He turned back to Mello and, remembering what he'd said about the locals apparently being uptight about taking the journals apart, replied, "Yeah. Should we head up to my room?"

Freidrich, unable to see and finding the lampshade to be increasingly uncomfortable, finally took the lampshade off his head, dropping it in frustration that his disguise had been utterly ineffective. Keesling and Bellatrix, a bit more satisfied with their hiding places, stayed put (albiet with frustration on Bellatrix's part when Freidrich scrambled to join her behind the couch).

All three of them perked when the braided blond metioned going to his room to do...something secretive. They readied themselves to sprint after him should he and his new compatriot make any sudden exits from the lobby.

"Do you often attract penguins?" Mello raised an eyebrow at Edward, but mostly he felt sorry for him. That had to be one of the weirder things Mello had heard about since he got here. As if talking animals in general weren't bad enough! At least he didn't usually have any following him. Though if he did, they'd eventually find themselves used for target practice.

Oh well. These weren't his problem and he wasn't going to shoot up the hotel on a whim. Mello shrugged and turned away from the prinnies. "Lead on." Maybe they'd manage to leave the penguins here, or bore them into leaving by talking about technology.

Edward was rather hoping for that, himself actually, and he might just have grabbed Mello's hand and made a run for it to leave them behind if it wouldn't make him seem like a lunatic. So instead he just tried to ignore that the prinnies were there and hoped that they'd decide to go follow around someone else.

"Can't say I've ever seen a penguin before these guys," he said, leading Mello through the lobby to the stairs, "but I seem to have a gift in attracting the animal kingdom's freaks."

The three prinnies skittered after the two blonds, sneaking en masse from hiding place to woefully inadequate hiding place with every intention to see this mysterious...thing...they were going to do in the braided one's room.

At least, that was the plan until certain comments were made.

"We're not freaks! We're prinnies, dood!" Keesling retorted indignantly, earning him a sound thump on the head from Bellatrix for spoiling their latest hiding place. Figuring their strategy wasn't working, the three prinnies abandoned their latest hiding place (a small, horrendous chintz armchair) and followed the two blonds openly.

"Of course they can talk," Mello muttered, hoping his tone was low enough that they wouldn't overhear. He considered asking the three what exactly a prinny was and why they were following Edward, but attention was likely to merely encourage them. Instead he pretended he'd heard nothing, as though he and Ed were alone in the stairway, despite the subject of their conversation.

It was possible, of course, that the penguins were working for the asshole who'd ruined Mello's fun, but he doubted it. They seemed too incompetent for that, but that left their motives entirely open to question. At least they seemed more a nuisance than a menace.

"So where'd you pick these guys up?" Mello asked casually. "And what else are you in the habit of attracting? He wondered if Ed's room had a menagerie in it or something and hoped not. The prinnies seemed sufficient for the day's weirdness quota.

Yes, they could talk and they did, no matter how many times Edward told them to shutup. It was more than irritating and just a little disturbing considering the last time he'd had an animal talk to him and why it could.

"I dunno, they just showed up when I got here and started asking me all these stupid questions and haven't left me alone since," he said, clearly not happy about that fact as he opened the door to his room and stepped inside, waiting by the door for Mello to follow. "Usually they're bigger and slightly more dangerous than these guys seem to be, so I guess that's at least a plus."

The prinnies followed the blonds doggedly, hopping up stairs that were too steep for them to climb with their little flippers. Naturally curious - and devious - they were bound and determined to find out what the two blonds intended to do in the privacy of the braided one's room.

Nevermind that they were being insulted at every turn - hell, they were used to that. At least the blonds hadn't thrown them at any oncoming enemies. Yet.

Seeing the door open, they scampered in before the one named Mello could enter, situating them around the room so they could clearly see the low table in the center. This should be interesting.

Mello glared at the penguins, pausing, then shrugged and walked in the room, too, sprawling in a chair near the table. This was basic stuff, nothing deeply secret or anything. It was just the natives he didn't want seeing, but that obviously didn't describe these guys.

Once Edward closed the door, he set aside the remains of his chocolate bar and pulled the extra journal he had bought and a screwdriver out of his jacket pocket. "You're going to have to sit fairly close; these parts are small to begin with and these are miniature versions." Mello began unscrewing the cover with practiced ease, setting the first screw carefully aside.

Edward sighed as the prinnies snuck in, knowing that there was no point in trying to get them to leave so just settling on closing the door and just pulling up a chair so that he could see what Mello was doing. He'd never really gotten into the technology aspect of the sciences until he'd gotten to Germany and found that Alchemy, his passion, was suddenly completely and utterly beyond his reach. So he reached out for the only things he could that he thought might help him get back home. Now he was back to square one and so all he could do was learn as much as he could about this place's technology and Mello was luckily willing to help.

"I've never seen anything like it," he said, leaning over the journal but careful not to block the light.

All three prinnies abandoned their positions as the first screw came out, crowding around the table for a better and more intimate vantage point. Keesling watched in wonder as Mello continued to disassemble the device. The weird little journal-things came apart? Who'd'a thunk?

Bellatrix was just as interested as Keesling, but with a better sense of detachment - and propriety - she was able to catch Freidrich as he went for the remains of the chocolate bar and slap his flipper away before he was able to reach it. The last thing they needed was to get kicked out before they got any answers.

Mello paused and glared at Freidrich, deliberately picking up his chocolate and taking a bite, putting it down farther away. "Don't try that again." His voice was flat, almost dead: he wasn't kidding around, not when it came to his chocolate. He might settle for a smack; he might not.

Watching them warily, he finished taking off the back of the journal, setting it down so the interior was well-lit. "All right. These things don't have real video cards, probably not big enough. But this here," he moved some cables out of the way, "is the processor. That's the main part that makes it work." Mello briefly considered trying to explain what a microchip was and how it worked and dismissed it as irrelevant for these purposes. What the hell had his life come to that he was lecturing some guy from the past and three penguins on computer hardware?

Edward raised an eyebrow at the exchange and the tone in Mello's voice. It wasn't that he was fond of the prinnies, but it was also only a bar of chocolate. But whatever, it was his chocolate and the prinnies shouldn't have been touching it anyway, so Edward just shook his head and turned back to the journal, looking at the interior with all of the tiny little wires and cables and paying attention to what the other blonde was telling him.

So this "processor" was basically to these journals what an engine was to a car; that was simple enough to understand. There was something that he wasn't understanding, though, and he realized, not for the first time, that language was apparently going to be a major setback. "Wait, I get that part, but what's a 'video card'?"

Freidrich let out a small noise at Mello's voice and dove behind Bellatrix. He'd seen fights over small and stupid things before, but no way was he getting killed over a bar of chocolate.

Bellatrix took advantage of her new position as Hiding Place to smack Freidrich again, this time over the head for being a complete moron. She then returned her attention to the journal. Both she and Keesling were interested to see how these small objects worked - for all they cared, Freidrich could cower and hide for hours, just so long as he wasn't dumb enough to go after the chocolate again.

What's a video card? Mello sighed and took another bite of chocolate, glaring at nothing in particular. This was going to give him a headache, he knew it. "If this thing could run any decent games, which it can't, a video card would make the graphics for the games possible. It has memory of its own and powers shaders and visual special effects." Mello didn't mind the lack of games too much, but it had driven Matt crazy, and Matt was damn good at making sure Mello suffered, too. Not that Mello wasn't damn good at it, too.

"All right, now these are your memory sticks." He moved some cables out of the way and worked them out of their slots and showed them to Ed. "Not at a lot of memory, but then these things don't need it for what they seem intended to do. This is your hard drive, for more permanent storage. Not that there's much of that, either." Mello leaned back, leaving the disassembled journal in the middle of the table, and unwrapped another chocolate bar with an air of finality. Not that he didn't expect questions, but this was at least the basics.

So that meant that there were other, similar, devices that someone could play games on. Edward wondered what kind of games they would be and how you were supposed to play them on something like this little electronic . . . journal thing. He supposed that that question could wait, though, since apparently these things didn't have the capacity to play them, so Edward just looked over the pieces on the table and sifted through the questions he had about the technology, picking out the ones that had to do with this particular piece of technology.

"What about a power source?" he asked finally, looking at the main casing. No matter how advanced technology got, it would still need something to power it.

Keesling was struggling to keep up with the lecture. He only needed to know how to work things - finding out how things worked was actually a lot tougher than he'd thought it would be. He paid close attention, hoping to pick up on something, some key that would make all these parts make sense.

Bellatrix, on the other hand, found this all fascinating. Within her was the soul of a computer programmer, and this bit of technology had impressive networking capabilities for its size and relatively simple composition. She had the same question as Ed - no power source was visible. How did the journals run without a power source? Or was it possible the power source was disguised, or small enough to be invisible? Whoever had made these journals had put a lot of thought into them, and she wasn't about to rule out any possibilities.

Freidrich had long since lost interest - he was once again focused on the bar of chocolate on the table. When he was sure nobody was looking, he snuck (as well as a prinny can sneak, anyway) over to the bar and swiped it off a table, retreating to a corner to enjoy his ill-gotten treat.

"That's one of the interesting things about these," Mello began, starting to answer Ed's question, when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Damn it, these stupid penguins! Mello hardly shared his chocolate with anyone, and definitely not these things! He drew his gun in one smooth motion, pointed it at the chocolate thief, and fired, making sure to miss, but not by much. "Drop it, or next time I won't miss."

Edward jumped at the gunshot, instantly on alert. Until a second later when he realized that Mello was firing at the prinny over his damn chocolate! What the hell was that about?! Sure, Edward didn't exactly like the things, but that didn't mean he was about to shoot them over a bar of chocolate! "What the hell're you doing?!" he shouted. "It's a freaking bar of chocolate! Who the hell goes around shooting people over chocolate?!"

Gunshots, as a rule, didn't scare prinnies. Hell, Etna had shot them up...how many times? They'd be fine.

That, of course, didn't make getting shot any sort of picnic.

Keesling, one of the younger prinnies and still unused to the general amount of violence prinnies tended to receive, nearly jumped out of his skin at the shot. "Hey! Not cool, dood!" he protested, once he'd regained the wits to do so.

Freidrich, while not the brightest bulb in the box, knew enough not to anger seemingly crazy people with guns. He quite literally dropped the bar of chocolate, then once again dove behind Bellatrix for protection.

Bellatrix, sick of Freidrich's antics and peeved that the question of the power source had remained unanswered, took the opportunity to remove a small assortment of large, heavy objects from her fanny pack and beat Freidrich soundly with each of them in turn.

What are those weird little journal things? [Active]

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