maskormenacelogs | you got that something, i think you'll understand

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you got that something, i think you'll understand

WHO: Those who signed up for this and OPEN to gawkers.
WHERE: Various locations in and around Heropa and Cape Canaveral
WHEN: February 11th
WHAT: Ill-fated doings.
WARNINGS: SHENANIGANS ...

Today's for something a little bit different from the regular superhero business, but imPorts won't be expected to give anything less than their best.

Upon arrival at their destinations (whether voluntarily or if they had to be tricked into it), participating imPorts will be greeted by a member of the TV station crew and filled in on the general gist of the proceedings -- and introduced to their blind date!

To record the proceedings, small flying drones mounted with cameras will be following the characters around all day! These can be dodged or avoided (within reason). Feed from the cameras is live and will be broadcast on television and the internet. At the end of their date, the cameras will be turned off, and participants are free to spend the rest of the day as they wish.

[ ooc; sub-threads for various locations to be posted below! The threads are also open for onlookers or meddling friends, but please ask the players involved before jumping in. ]

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[ Signing up in the first place was a mistake, and Ruka well knows it—well knew it at the time, too—and is one thousand percent certain that showing up is an even bigger one. There's no point, none at all; there's no prize she wants, no person she wants to meet, and putting on a show for someone else will be such a waste of energy.

Yet she's here, cleaned up and dressed up, loitering near the entrance of Sharkland with arms crossed and half-asleep. Ruka only dimly listens to the woman on the show crew explaining how things are going to go; the words buzz past her ears, landing nowhere. She should really just go now and forget the whole thing, just head back to her apartment—

—but there won't be anyone there when she opens the door, so what's the point? It's going to be a miserable way to kill time, but at least the time will go.

Have fun with your hyper killjoy blind date, Tadashi. ]

[Hiro had done the duty of signing his brother up for a televised blind date without saying anything, not until the information about where to go and when got back to the younger genius. A great prank it'll be, is probably what he thought. Whether the joke would be on Tadashi or the date would be something else entirely.

He only gets there after the crew's finished explaining, so he misses all that lovely information. For all he knows, this is some imPort service work he was asked to do. But he sees a familiar face and waves with a smile.]

Ruka-- Hey!

[ Her name pulls her attention enough that she spares its speaker a look, but recognition is a surprise. ]

Tadashi?

[ Hiro's older brother? Of all the people to sign up for a public blind date, he was nowhere near her list. Confusion robs her face of its malaise, but she offers no smiles or waves in return. ]

What are you doing here?

[Should he be surprised by her reaction?

Nah.

He shrugs when he gets close enough to not have to raise his voice, but still smiling!]

Hiro gave me the address, said something about if I wanted to get a moped here, I had to redo my license test. Though... [He looks at the shark-head entrance.] I think I got the address down wrong.

Very... wrong... [ The words are a drawl, but the television crew have already vanished, leaving Ruka stranded with Mister Clueless and Mister Sharkland Gateway. And the drone-mounted cameras; she levels the nearest one with a dead stare.

Why this. Why her. Her head bows, staring at some formless spot of gum fused to the walkway, black with age and dirt. She's not even sure if she wants to know what Hiro's motive was for this. Does he want Tadashi to meet new people? Get out of his hair for a few hours? Embarrass the guy, make fun of him for not looking up the address before he went? Does he actually want Tadashi to get a girlfriend?

No, she definitely doesn't want to know.

Whatever. Ruka sighs, shaking her head. There's nothing for it now, is there? She agreed to this, and he's already here. Might as well see it through. ]

Well, since you came all this way, you might as well check it out, right?

[He gives the drone camera a quick glance - must be security? probably - before giving a quick smile her way. Her mood is definitely lower than it was at Hiro's party and that worries him a bit. Had something happened in the last few days? Maybe he could help get her mind off it for a little while at least; it's not his business to ask details after all.]

May as well. Could be fun, right?

[Look, robotics genius or not, sharks are always cool. He nods his head towards the entrance and starts walking towards it.]

[ A little easier convincing than she expected, for someone who wanted to get a drivers license. Was he always this easy-going? She pushes off from where she'd been starting to take root and follows Tadashi into the park itself.

The weather isn't bad, but it's clear the place has seen better days—and better-funded days, at that. The paint's thin most everywhere, and even for a country that loved its dated aesthetic, the art and signs are dated. It's so old, even the signs pointing out where the concession stands and restrooms are located looks like it should be suffixed with a message to invest in war bonds.

She falls into step beside him, shoulders hunched and hands buried deep in the pockets of her borrowed jacket. Step, step, step on the cobbled brick walkway; she's more focused on getting one foot in front of the other than she is on talking just yet.

But moping through a shark park is boring, and makes for boring television, so it should come to no surprise that steps are taken to immediately rectify this dip in interest: out of seemingly nowhere, two park attendants rush over in something of a panic. Are these two with the— starts one, cut off by the other's of course they are, isn't it obvious? How lucky, because there's some serious trouble. With rapid voices and a disregard for autonomy, the attendants beg Tadashi for his assistance at the nearby stage; his girlfriend, too. There's two spots that need to be filled, after all, and the Shark Show starts in ten minutes. ]

[He's actually enjoying the park, decrepit as it's beginning to look. It's new, it's simple, it's... okay, it's falling apart. But still serviceable. It's when they get close to the show-stage and he's about to ask her something that they get interrupted, being pulled to the building - Hey! - and asked for help - Not my girlfriend - but it all moves too fast, he never really has a chance to think to say no.

Seven minutes later, he's there in full shark costume and trying to figure out why exactly. He looks to Ruka for any kind of word but can't see past her costume either.]

So... [It's muffled through the fabric.] New experiences today.

Hhh...

[ The sound is tired, exhausted—the way an unconscious dog might whine as it's dragged from one end of the room to another. Likewise trapped in a too-large costume, when Ruka bends her arms, the fins of the pink shark fold only slightly, not quite in line with her elbows. The mesh screen within the shark's mouth masks most of her face, and reduces her visibility a great deal more than losing one whole eye ever did, which is probably for the best. Between the hurt of recent loss, the plural days' lack of restful sleep, and this new onset of humiliation, a genuine shark would look less soulless. ]

I'm going to kill Rick.

[ It doesn't sound like a real threat, but it's hard to take words like that seriously coming out of such a cute mascot anyway. The felt toothline of the shark's lower jaw moves when she talks, surprisingly responsive.

Turning a little to face Tadashark—with a full pelvic twist, due to the bulk of the costume—she shrugs her shoulders, fins turned upward in helpless surrender. ]

I'm sorry. This isn't at all what I expected to happen.

[He's careful to watch her movements, hear the tone in her voice. She sounds like this could possibly be the worst thing that could happen to her today. And he feels a little more guilty for something he didn't even instigate. When he talks, he's still fairly optimistic about the whole thing.]

I don't think either of us could've expected something like thi--

[And then they're being pulled by stagehands to the upstage area. There's a decent sized crowd watching with small monitors downstage with vague dancing instructions to match the music starting to play. He turns to look at Ruka, giving a similar shrug.]

[ Maybe she's dreaming. Maybe this is the stupidest nightmare of all time. It has all the trademarks of a mundane one, really: public humiliation, inexplicable circumstances, a serious lack of control of each proceeding moment. It would explain Tadashi; it would explain the Sharks. It would even explain the hovering drone and its camera eye.

Hidden face scarlet for embarrassment, she really has no choice but to pantomime according to instruction—for as much of it as she can see. She's no dancer; she's not very physical, and rarely uses larger bodily gestures than the rolling of a shoulder or a wrist. Would death be better than this? It's certainly possible. At least that tends to be quick.

How long is this song? ]

[Too long, if he's honest. The movements weren't so bad for the first few stanzas, but after three verses, the suit's weighing down on him pretty heavily. And heavy mascot suit, plus regular clothes, plus Florida heat and the moisture from the park? Almost suffocating.

When the song finishes, Tadashi's panting but the crowd is cheering. Chanting something? -ugh! -ugh! But that can't be right. Sure they weren't trained performers and they weren't at all being paid for this but they weren't that bad?

Then he catches the rest-- "Hug! Hug!" He glances back to Ruka, not sure if they're talking to them or ... Oh. Everyone else vacated the stage.]

Um.

[ Three verses is three verses too many. Though her shark is a little larger on her than Tadashi's is on him, it still traps heat well enough—and with her bulky hoodie and the winter long sleeves beneath it, it feels like a clay shark oven. She's not built for this sort of thing at all, and it's a struggle to keep from staggering where she stands when the music finally cuts.

She reaches up to put her hands to her forehead, to anchor herself back to reality, but forgets the costume entirely; the shark's fins raise to block its open mouth and general cheek-area, which from the outside probably looks like Sharkerina (or whatever her name is supposed to be) trying to cover blushing cheeks.

But Ruka hears the chanting, too, and the longer it goes on, the more she feels sorry for Tadashi. The people watching this stage performance probably are well aware as to what their intended purpose here is, and are simply gunning for more interesting interaction. While Ruka was willing to passingly play along, if solely to get out of that empty apartment, Tadashi was solely tricked into showing up. (Unless he was well aware but is playing ignorant because he doesn't want to be on a date with her—she wouldn't put it past a guy, acting that way after seeing her, but he hasn't fallen into any of the nervous evasion tactics she would expect for a deception like that.)

No matter what the circumstances—and even if there's two whole layers of fake shark costume involved—there's no reason to force him to do something like that, is there? ]

I think we can just... [ Her voice is quiet enough for the audience to miss, but loud enough to carry to her unfortunate companion — and very obviously out of breath. ] ... slap fins a couple times, and get out of here.

You think so?

[While Tadashi isn't opposed to hugs (on the contrary! Hugs are great and awesome, he likes them), Ruka seems to not want anything of the sort. So he's not about to try to push it. Slap some fins together? Sure.

He nods and holds his arm-fins out for the audience to see - see? They're going to do it, hold on - and then. Takes a couple steps closer and puts one fin to the side of her costume, and then the other for cartoonish effect. Surely that's enough, right? He hopes so, for her sake.]

[ It's a good plan. After all, the costumes aren't exceptionally firm, so a close hug would probably reveal the shape of the humans inside them, and this is an audience more used to animatronics, from what she thinks she remembers from the babbling Sharkland staff.

It's a good plan, but it doesn't work so neatly as she wants. Heat and exertion, and half a dozen other things wrong, she really should have anticipated the wave of vertigo, the way her legs would go soft like fabric beneath her.

So sure, Ruka's fins go to where Tadashi's upper arms are hiding under blue sharkform, but pantomime quickly turns into a muted grip for balance as she tries with equally muted desperation to stay standing.

Smooth, Ruka. ]

Whoa--

[He feels the balance shifting and he's already moving to accommodate her struggle. But he keeps his voice lower.]

- I got you, it's fine. C'mon. [And then he's carefully trying to help her back to her feet, one giant fin around her back. Yep, time to go, that's decided right now. He helps escort her back upstage and out of view, the stagehands quickly helping to get the costumes off while commenting on a great finale, great performance there.]

[ Thanks is croaked out, barely audible, bit backstage she gets, somehow, even quieter. When the shark comes of, her hair is a mess of static, and the green of it only makes the red in her face more pronounced.

Slow, steady breaths. Slow, and steady. When the rest of the costume is finally pulled off her, Ruka is quick to fold her unburdened arms, watching Tadashi out of the corner of her eye. ]

I suppose there are worse ways, to spend half an hour inside a shark.

[He almost asks if she's okay, but then she makes the joke and. Well, if she's making jokes, then she doesn't want to talk about anything serious then. He'll leave it alone.]

Guess not, but there are probably better ways to spend a day in a shark park?

[Maybe? Hopefully? If nothing else, Ruka looks like she needs some water. There's a thought. He looks around now that the staff is leaving them be.]

Snack bar, maybe?

... Yeah. [ Her arms uncross--the danger of prying seeming to pass--and she begins trying to comb her hair into its usual style, obscuring part of her face. ] I think I skipped breakfast this morning, anyway.

[ And dinner the night before that, probably... the past few days have been a haze of grief, and thinking back, she's not exactly sure how much she's had that wasn't chasing alcohol.

Whoops...

Her hands brace on her knees when she stands up, with less wobble than before--though there's still too much red in her face. ]

Ready?

[That does get a relieved smile from him. So she's not in too horrible condition then. Awesome. And because she seems pretty intent on getting her own footing and breath, he gives her enough space so it doesn't feel like he's trying to coddle or anything like that.

With a nod, he gestures to one of the direction signs, pointing the way to the concession area and waits for her to start walking.]

Whenever you are.

[ She's good at reading people, but Ruka isn't focused enough on Tadashi to dissect his reactions; it's task enough to keep her own body working right at the moment. An attempt at a disarming smile, hands folding together, feet moving one step in front of the other in a straight line... at least the air is colder than it was in those suits, and still being winter, it's cold enough to chill that sense of overheating.

And for the season, it means that the park itself isn't crowded, either; another mercy. ]

Sharks aside... [ This whole mess, she means. ] ... how are you settling in? I know it hasn't been very long, but...

[ But getting Tadashi to talk about himself, especially on a safer subject, means less attention to spare on her state. ]

[ He follows along the path, guiding them through the area while she talks. She seems fairly preoccupied with something physical so best he take the lead. ]

It's been fine, really. Got an easy [Boring] job, Hiro wants me to get a job working with him though.

Oh? [ And there's the shack of snacks, its attendant killing time by washing the glass counter for what is probably the eighth time today. Her pace slows. ] Are you interested on that?

Maybe.

[Honestly, he's interested in seeing where Hiro works and maybe working with him, but he's hesitant even if he can't place why exactly. But he talks to the poor attendant and a minute later hands her a bottle of water with a smile.]

If it means we can work together, it's probably worth checking out at least.

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