Who: Andy Moran [KELVIN] and Alice Liu [KRAKATOA] Where: Andy (and Ollie's) Apartment When: August 31st, Afternoonish What: Youtube Content; bingo spot filled. Also discussion of potential science experiments. Warnings: They're kind of adorable.
Alice rapped on the door to Apartment 5L and rocked back on her heels as she waited to hear if anyone was in and coming to answer. Tucked under her arm, she held her laptop, and she drummed her fingers anxiously on the closed clamshell case. "Andy, is that you?" she called through the door.
Briefly, Andy considered the worth of deception. He could easily say he was Ollie -- he certainly looked the part. And he could probably manage his mannerisms, his inflection, his little tics…
He shook his head, opening the door after a moment of daydreaming. No, that’d be silly.
“Yes, it’s me,” he said, giving Alice a friendly smile as he looked down at her, and then at the laptop. He frowned, gestured toward it. That was unusual, though so was someone coming to the apartment looking for him, he supposed. “What’s that for?”
"You'd better not be Ollie trying to trick me," Alice said, grinning back. She didn't think that the twins would try to pull that trick on her, but she was certainly gullible enough that she might fall for it, at least initially. "Umm, so anyway. I was doing some reading, or I was supposed to be doing some reading for one of my classes that's starting soon, and then I found this video online, and I was like, 'Oh my god, I need to show Andy,' so, uh, I've got it here, if you, like, want to see it?"
That was a reasonable explanation, and Andy nodded, stepping aside to let her in. Reading was fun, but homework was so restrictive. He was fully in favor of following whims if they took you somewhere more interesting -- which this seemed to have done.
“What is it?” he asked walking over to the couch. “Is it about sloths? I found a documentary on them yesterday and was watching it -- they’re fascinating.”
Alice shook her head. "No, but oh my god, you need to send me that, I love sloths! They're so cute with their little, like, faces." She cleared her throat as she set her laptop on the coffeetable in front of the couch, flipped up the screen, and pressed the button to bring it to life. "Anyway, it's like -- well, you'll see."
The screen already displayed Alice's browser. She clicked the button to bring the YouTube video to fullscreen, but YouTube's sponsors had decided that Andy would have to wait even longer to see what Alice had found. "Ugh, sorry, after the ad."
Andy’s mouth opened then closed, before he could inquire as to why faces were special because everything that was alive had a face (well, everything that mattered, generally) and many things were small. It was better not to question too much, he imagined, and they were moving quickly toward the video she had come to show him. Better not to derail the conversation, Ollie had said to him a thousand times.
Of course, that didn’t stop him from asking a few questions about the ad (What does One Direction have to do with Honda? Why are they advertising a tour; didn’t they just break up? What kind of name is One Direction anyway and which direction is it? Is it up? Do you think it’s up? I think it’s up.) before he saw what the video was about.
“Ice and lava…” he said, leaning in to look closer. “Interesting…”
"I know, right? Isn't it pretty?" She sighed, sitting back against the sofa cushions. "When I saw it, I was like, oh my god that's our powers. It would be so fun if we could try the same experiment, but…" Alice trailed off. Everyone the facility knew that she couldn't use her powers, least of all for fun science experiments.
“The bubble patterns are interesting -- maybe together we could flash-freeze the lava, so the end result is even glassier?” Andy’s mind was alive with possibilities, until the conclusion Alice had drawn finally dawned on him. Hmm. “I mean, we’re all supposed to train, aren’t we? We just need to procure a small lava sample from… somewhere.” He pursed his lips. “We can’t buy that on Ebay, can we?”
"No," Alice confirmed bitterly. "I tried. I read about the video, and they like, use a furnace to make the lava themselves, but there's no way we're getting one of those here."
“That has to have been one powerful furnace…” Andy thought aloud. Getting something like that brought it was absolutely out of the question, yes. And surely the building’s furnaces couldn’t manage that. Although…
He smiled, nodded. “We don’t need to get a furnace,” he said. “We already have something better.”
The pieces clicked for Alice immediately. She lived with a pyrokinetic, and one of her first thoughts upon meeting Ariel had been whether she could make flames hot enough to melt stone. However, as she got to know her roommate, Alice realized she couldn't ask such an intensive use of powers of her. Besides, Ariel Bhagat was hardly the Lock's only pyrokinetic, and obviously Andy wouldn't think of her first.
"Do you think..." she began. She tried not to sound too hopeful, not after all these years of nothing. "Stone starts to melt at around 700 degrees Celsius."
“That’s easy,” Andy said immediately, though he didn’t have any real idea. But it seemed easy enough. He had faith. Or optimism. Or just the determination that they’d find a way no matter how hard it was. “I’m sure he’ll do it, too. He likes fire.” Andy rolled his eyes. Fire, to him, was vastly overrated. But he supposed he couldn’t begrudge Ollie for his opinions. “Do you want me to ask him?”
"Do I want you to ask him?" Alice repeated, flabberghasted. "Oh my god, of course I want you to ask him!" Her voice rose in pitch with her excitement. "If he could do it, it would be, like, the best thing that ever happened to me! I could, like, die happy."
Andy paused, frowned. “I’m not entirely certain that this is really a life or death situation…” He shrugged, pressed on. “But I can ask, sure. They say the training floors and walls are built to withstand heat for pyrokinetic reasons, so we can even do it there and not get in trouble -- it’s training, it’s important. We just need the rocks, now.”
A wide grin spread across Alice face. "Those we can buy on eBay."