Sigh No More [[ Open ]]

[ghostgirl]

Alisa Faye Scott was lost and confused. She was in an unfamiliar town full of unfamiliar people, and she'd gone and gotten herself lost. She had no idea to where she'd driven. She knew how to get back, that part was easy, she just didn't know where to find what she was looking for. She was trying to find a comic shop or a gaming shop somewhere. Emma and Xavier were surely crying at her door by now, driving her father mad.

She was bored and lonely, so she'd gathered up her D&D core rulebooks, her bag of dice, her notebook and her DM's screen, shoved them in her DMing bag, and jumped in her car to go find somewhere to relax and enjoy herself. She didn't have to actually make friends at the shop if she was just DMing after all... I mean, who gets to know someone by being in a roleplay they're running? You learn more when things are flipped the other way 'round.

Either way, here she was, sitting on a bench in the town center, sipping on a strawberry smoothie and wondering how she'd ended up so lost and confused. Surely their was a comic or gaming shop around her somewhere, but it was time for Alisa to take a break. She was wearing herself out fretting about it, and it did her no real good. Shaking her head, she shifted to sit crosslegged, sideways, on the backless bench, and spread her DMing materials out in front of her, careful to make sure that nothing could possibly blow away in the wind. After she was content with the way things were set up, she began putting together information for her next campaign, falling into her world and away from the one to which she didn't really belong...

[prospice4]

Nat never really had much of an excuse to be in the city, especially when school was out. He didn't live in the complete rural area of Someplace, and his family was far from made up of farmers, but they lived at that distance where a car seemed superfluous (to Nat at least, whose standards were a bit off kilter to say the least) but a bike ride was a trek. All the same, on occasion he hazarded a trip into the town center for the sort of things that couldn't be found in the little convenience store in the country.

Dark Horse comics were not among the things that he had been able to pry out of such locations, and they were generally sparse on appropriate gifts for his younger sister's birthday. It was the latter that had been his main motivation for coming, and for well over an hour he'd wandered through a commercial maze before happening upon a pair of rather flimsy "ruby slippers" (ballet flats plastered with red glitter, technically) and, since his six year old sister had been obsessed with The Wizard of Oz of late he decided to buy them, only partially because he was fed up with looking.

Annoyed with the fact that nothing seemed to be of decent quality around here and that his hands were now covered in red glitter, he made his way out of the stifling indoors and out into the sunshine. This turned out to be a slight mistake, because immediately his hands flared up in a thousand tiny splashes of light, that most stubborn of craft supplies clinging to his flesh with the tenacity of a swarm of rot grub. He frantically tried to rub it off on his pants, with mixed success, before casting his eye around. The courtyard was nearly empty except for a couple - he recognized them vaguely - making out not so stealthily in the shadowed eaves of storefronts and a girl who he didn't recognize who seemed to be a much more organized Dungeon Master than....

Wait. Dungeon Master? Either she was new here or he had made a serious oversight in his personal mission to root out everyone in Thorpe who either did play or had the potential to. Considering his searches had become more and more exhaustive after all two of the newbies had ducked out to save their reputations leaving only Nat and two others standing, he figured that it was the first. Still, opportunity is opportunity, even if every time you move a few new lights dance across your palms. "Heyy, you play too," he said, having come up behind her. His guile was similar to that of most most people of his age and stature, but similar declarations had worked before. He seriously hoped that she wasn't just visiting from out of town.

[ghostgirl]

Alisa sipped her smoothie and looked through a list of monsters and checked her own list of locations. A story was playing out in her mind, and she wandered down each and every avenue, splitting into two people at each fork and venturing both new roads at the same time. It was the way her mind worked. She placed NPCs and items and quests and events and monsters and bosses and observed it all. As everything panned in her mind, she took notes and scribbled new ideas. At a certain point she was lost in the 3.5 Monster Manual II, trying to locate a specific monster. It was then that she realized the monster was in the fifth 3.5 Monster Manual, and she was an idiot.

Sighing, she set the Monster Manual II down and returned to her notebook. She was a good halfway through the pages, filling each page with options of where to go and what to do. She noticed little around her until...

"Heyy, you play too."

Jumping a little, Alisa clutched her notebook to her chest and twisted around to stare, wide-eyed at the newcomer. "Um... Well, yes... And no..." Flustered, she shook her head and twisted back around, gathering her books and whatnot back into her bag.

"I tend not to play anymore myself... I mostly just run things... Less... Less interaction that way..." Her face was flushed red as her hair, which she kept trying to brush back behind her ear. Once everything was all gathered back into her bag, Alisa stood and turned to face Nat.

"You said... 'too,'" she started, looking at him. "So, that means you play. Where do you play? Is there a shop around here? I've been looking and I haven't found one yet. It's rather hard to run a game without a location."

Finding herself wishing she were in Manhattan again, Alisa shook the thought out of her head and sipped on more of her smoothie. She was confused and lost and flustered all at once. Unsure of herself, she opted to say no more to the man before her, and cast her eyes at the sidewalk, not wanting to seem too familiar. It would hurt too much to lose another friend if she had to leave again. She really didn't want to leave again, not unless she went back to Manhattan. Oliver and Duncan were there, waiting for her.

Then again, she was a little glad that someone had decided to talk to her. She honestly wouldn't mind making another friend. After all, it'd been 4 years since she left Manhattan. Still sipping on her smoothie, she glanced back up at Nat and waited for a response from him, whatever it might be.

[prospice4]

He instantly felt bad when she jumped, knowing that he probably shouldn't have broken her obvious concentration. "Sorry!" he bumbled before she had a chance to say anything looking slightly mortified as she began to shuffle through her stuff. He knew that people who shared his particular set of interests weren't the most... comfortable... about that fact, and for good reason. One of the worst days of his life had been partly spent in a trash can. Small town kids weren't the most... accepting... of such habits, something Nat had learned not too long ago.

His eyes brightened when she said yes and then he looked rather crestfallen when she retracted it. "Oh, I see," and then she elaborated and he felt foolish again, "Oh! Yeah, I gathered that. I'm Nat by the way." The last bit seemed rather oddly tacked on, he was tripping over his tongue. After all, he didn't want to seem rude or anything, especially if she was, in fact, new in town and not just visiting, which meant that she would be attending Thorpe. It was one of his personal quests to try and keep people like her as much out of harm's way as he possibly could, although that particular mission was born more out of a valor of spirit than actual capability.

"Yes, I do," he said, feeling thoroughly awkward by now. He wasn't bad, once he got to know someone, but it was unusual for him to have this kind of extended conversation with a complete stranger. Most people tended to back away from him pretty quickly, which he figured was partially because of his long hair and overall unusual look. He didn't care, particularly. If he had cared, he figured that far too many of his hours would have been spent distressing over the fact or trying to fit into a hole that he simply wouldn't fit into, when there were far better things to be worried about.

"Well, to be honest, mostly in basements..." he shuffled his feet. The fact that there wasn't exactly a large population around her assured that there wasn't even a modest gaming community. "There is a comic book store, though, it carries most things... It's hidden, I can show you if you want. I guess that means you actually are new here, great! Welcome to town."

He took a second to actually look at her - his eyes had been averted for the most part - and was surprised to find that she was quite attractive by almost any standard. He shamed himself for stereotyping, and besides he didn't really hold the same standard as everyone else, but he really couldn't stop the thought. Just a thought, really, he brushed it away and stood there with one hand still in his pocket and a shoebox under his arm, jabbing into his elbow.

[ghostgirl]

Alisa genuinely smiled at Nat when he responded positively to her assumption that he played D&D as well. It had been a while since she'd felt comfortable around... anyone, really. She was, however, still nervous, given it had been five years since she'd made a friend.

"Basements, hum..." she mumbled, a little unhappy. "I suppose I should have guessed. This is a small town..." The girl'd become accustomed to large cities filled with all sorts of people. Conventions twice a year, renfests twice a year, and more than a couple local gaming shops from which to choose. Limited selection really... limited her selection. However, her spirits rose at the mention of a comic shop.

"Oh! Oh, yes, please! I've been meaning to catch up on a few titles, too... So a comic shop would be really nice." Alisa had to bugger about at every comic shop she had the chance to stop at, looking for missing issues for her collection. She couldn't make a pull list because she didn't ever stay in one place long enough for that to really matter.

She paused for a moment, fumbling around with the words and thoughts going through her mind. "Ah, ahm... I'm Alias. Er, Alisa, but you can call me Alias. Rather, please call me Alias. I prefer Alias." Her face turned about three different shades of red as she bumbled and tripped over her words, but there it was, she'd introduced herself.

Shaking her head and closing her eyes, she sipped on her smoothie again. She was really bad when it came to being personable, and she knew it. For a moment, she wished she hadn't even left the house. But then again, she still did think that perhaps making a new friend again finally would be a very good thing for her... Alisa was just worried that perhaps her inability to act like a normal girl trying to make a friend would scare this boy off, and she really didn't want to be teased like that by the world. Dangle a potential friend in front of my face and then jerk him away... she began to scowl as she sipped her smoothie, unaware of the mood slipping onto her face.

[prospice4]

"Yeah, I guess it is pretty small," he said, sheepishly, looking down at his boots. He liked them a lot better than tennis shoes, even if he did get some odd looks because of them. Not that he exactly tried to fit the mold of the completely accepted kid. "But, it's home, you know, what can you do? You're welcome to join us... uh, probably. At least I assume. You could probably DM too, our current one is... well, subpar, to say the least." He chuckled. Well, it was perfectly true, and an understatement at that. Nat had given in a whirl for a little while, but he'd proven to be about the same, not near as good as their former dungeon master, who was off in some big city college now. Honestly, Nat probably wouldn't know how to play without him.

Alias? As an alias? That was enough to put a grin on his face, just the corners of his mouth. "Alias it is, then," he said easily enough, not seeming to mind or even really notice her awkward stumbling. it wasn't so much that he was used to it as that he was by nature too easygoing to find such things annoying. He didn't seem unduly alarmed by the unusual nickname, either. After all, he really hated his own full name. Nathaniel? Such a mouthful.

"Alright then, come on," Nat said, grinning, turning and starting to walk. The comic shop was nestled in the far right corner of the outlet mall, disguised by a much larger store, and it was hard to find because the marked entrance was actually indoors. Nat hadn't been able to find it until someone showed him, either. He held the door to the larger store for her, revealing several such outlets, a Jamba Juice, a Nathan's Hot Dogs, the like. The comic book store was all the way in the back right corner and unassuming at best, it was timing. "Fair warning, though, if it's anything super recent you might not be able to find it... sometimes things come out a little later out here, I'm sorry to say."