exsilium | action / video / audio

[ action - for roommates (Soldier Blue and Judal) or anyone who wants to stop by unit 510 ]
[Bolin's sitting on the floor in the living area, with his back against the couch and Pabu curled up on his head. He's spent most of the past five days exploring his new home (and training, and hanging out with Korra and Asami as much as he can). But a guy's gotta give his muscles some time to rest and so he figures he might as well play around with the strange little gizmo they gave him. (Evidently he's supposed to be able to talk to people through it -- like a mini radio or something.)

He pokes hesitantly at the screen and gasps in surprise when it changes. It takes him a long time to find the tutorial, and even longer to make his way through it. Reading is hard enough for him even when he doesn't have to figure out what strange words like "video" mean.

In the end, it doesn't help him that much. All he really gets out of it is you can leave messages for everybody who has one of these weird devices to see, and these messages can either be in written words, recordings of your voice, or a kind of moving picture with sound. He decides to just poke around the device and see if he can figure out how to make a moving picture post for himself -- it sounds pretty cool.

Ten minutes later --]

[ video ]
[The feed flicks on and Bolin lights up.]

Hey! I think I finally figured it out! [He leans closer to the device, and Pabu jumps off his head indignantly to go doze on the couch.] Hello in there! Can anybody hear me?

[His thumb slips, accidentally switching it to audio.]

[ audio ]
Wait, what did I just do?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ She cringes away at first because god he's loud... ]

You changed it from video to non-video voice-chatty.

Ooooooooh. Is that why it went all blinky and beepy?

...which am I doing now?

Now you're on video. Which means I can see you, and you can see me. [ She waves a little. ] Hi.

Hi! [Bolin grins brightly and waves back at her.] This is some pretty amazing stuff, isn't it?

Um -- it's... A laptop. Basically. Little bit higher-tech but nothing I haven't seen. But I'm guessing it is something you haven't seen.

Thaaaaaaat would be a no. [tilting his head] What's a laptop?

The thing you're talking on. More or less.

Oh. Right. Your world must be pretty remarkable.

Nah. Mostly just... Y'know. Modern.

Republic City is modern, and Republic City doesn't have anything like this.

Republic City is probably from the past, then. As in modern to you, but not to people who are actually like... From now.

[Bolin kind of feels like there's an insult in there somewhere. But he decides not to go looking too hard for it.]

Is the gold hair a future thing too? I've never seen anything like it.

... Gold ha--you mean mine? [ OH. INSERT FLATTERED GRIN HERE. ] Nope. Just natural blonde.

You were born that way?!

[GASPU]

Uh...Huh? Is blonde not a thing where you're from?

Most everybody has hair like mine. [points up to his black hair] Except Korra has the prettiest brown hair.

Huh! Well, where I come from, there's pretty much hair of every possible color. Some of it's natural, some of it comes from a box.

Sounds like somebody has a crush. [ Whoever Korra is. ]

What? Me? No. Noooooo. We're just friends. I was kinda maybe but she wasn't interested so friends. Good, good friends.

Ouch. Too bad she didn't really think of you like that. [ she totally did that to xander. ] You seem like a nice enough guy!