died8yearsago | MHA #3; Tuesday Evening [12/18].

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MHA #3; Tuesday Evening [12/18].

So, Rosa had invited Captain Tightpants over for a...thing. A date...sorta. Not really. Maybe? Whatever, it didn't matter, it was mostly just to prove that ~~RoboCop~~ CyborgPolice was the greatest cop film of all time, and anyone who said otherwise was clearly just a dumb asshole.

Mostly.

Either way, she didn't exactly appreciate that there were gremlins on her balcony right now to boot, but at least they weren't trying to get in, and she'd reminded them that she was very much armed and not afraid to take advantage of it if they got it in their heads to try and get in and get all bitey and make her think she was some flighty princess again. No, apparently, they had no desire to actually come inside, they just wanted to stand out there like idiots, singing Christmas carols, and they weren't even doing a very good job of it.

And then Arlo 2 got it into her head that she wanted to join them. So now she was little out the occasional little tremulous howl to along with the so-called 'singing.'

"Oh, yeah?" Rosa asked her. "This is what we're doing today? Cool. That's not going to get old real fast or anything."

[[expecting he of the tightest of pants, but, yeah, sure, open before his arrival if anyone needs/wants to poke at her]]

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Miguel showed up with a six-pack of decent (but not over-the-top) beer, and a large plastic bag of popcorn which he had meticulously sifted to remove all the unpopped kernels from. Then deliberately put one back into, just because.

He knocked on the door.

And, suddenly, Arlo 2 didn't know which was more important, singing along to the gremlins on the balcony or barking at the knock at the door. So she tried both, alternating between the two of them in a way that earned her a look of fascinated confusion from Rosa as she went to the door.

Alro 2 got that look a lot.

Taking a moment to check through the peephole that it wasn't more singing gremlins or annoying neighbors or anything like that, Rosa opened the door wide enough to step back and invite Tightpants in with a "Hey."

"Hey." Miguel stepped in and gave the dog and the musical balcony a dubious look. "Didn't know it came with music."

"It usually doesn't," Rosa noted, closing the door. "We're just lucky, I guess."

And before the door even closed, a third point of distraction presented itself to Arlo 2, but this one beat out the barking and the singing easily, because there was a new person in the apartment and of course she had to tear across the room from where she was to say hello, it was only polite, and try to make sense of the very different smells and new shoes to potentially lick, and Rosa thought about telling her to chill out, but....nah. Once she got it out of her system, she tended to calm down for the rest of the evening, anyway.

Miguel looked down at the dog. "Hi." He glanced from one full hand to the other, then tucked the beer under one arm to give her a quick pet. He wasn't much of an animal person himself, but she seemed friendly enough. "What's her name?" He was pretty sure he hadn't been told before.

"Here," Rosa held out her hands for the beer, "I'll take that."

She needed to inspect it for shittiness, anyway.

"And it's Arlo 2," she said, as the dog in question faced that ever present conunundrum of not being sure whether the hand going to pet her was better left for petting or to be licked, which resulted in her plopping down on her butt for pets, then hopping back up to try to catch the hand before it retracted, and then back down with the hopes for more, and then back up and going for his shoes a moment after that. "It's just kind of best to let her do her thing, she'll get tired of it once she feels you've got a passable amount of drool on you."

It was minimally shitty! It cost a decent amount of money and had been on a shelf of "good local brews" over on the mainland. Plus it had coffee beans in the brew. Miguel handed it to her and just left his hand down for the dog to do...whatever she was doing. "Well, good, I'd hate to be insufficiently drooled on."

The coffee aspect was definitely noted and appreciated, and Rosa quirked a brow at Arlo 2 as she finally stopped sniffing and licking long enough to look at her owner questioningly. Rosa gave a faint nod, and Arli 2 gave possibly the most adorable, least intimidation growl ever before pouncing at Miguel's foot, gave it a very half-hearted attempt at a chomp, and then turned back to Rosa, who narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Alright, fine," she said, going to pull a dog treat out of the pocket of one of many leather jackets hanging from a coat rack and tossing it to Arlo 2, who utterly failed at catching it despite her best efforts, then swept it back up and scampered off elsewhere.

"She's so dumb " Rosa said, almost sounding fond about it, too, then lifted her chin at Tightpants, then quirked her head toward the couch. "Let's get this going before the beer gets warm."

Miguel grinned at the dog. "Fierce, too. If the beer starts getting warm, just put it outside; the temperature's dropping fast."

He headed for the couch, though, and plopped himself and the popcorn down.

"But there's gremlins out there, too," Rosa pointed out as she sat down, grabbed one of the beers for herself before handing one over to Tightpants.

And then she realized that there's gremlins out there was a logical thing to say that made sense in her life now. Ugh.

"On second thought, sure, go ahead, put some out there. Could make make this night more interesting."

As long as she wasn't the one getting bitten this time.

Miguel took his beer, looked from the rest of the pack to the door and back, then shrugged. He cracked the door open, grinned at the carolers, gave them a thumbs-up, and set the beer down carefully just outside the door.

Then he eyed them.

"Hey, guys - can you go carol for my roommates? 29 Chimera Court. I think they could use some cheer. I'll make you hot chocolate tomorrow."

The offer had caused the gremlins pause, for sure, and they eyed Miguel right back before taking a moment or two to discuss it amongst themselves in guttural, debating tones before they all seemed to come to a conclusion that that was an offer almost too good to pass up, jabbered an agreement, and fixed him with a look that made it clear they they fully expected him to make good on that offer before scampering off the balcony.

And Rosa, while feeling a little disappointed that he didn't get bit, found that she was actually mostly glad he didn't. If anything, he could have wound up thinking he was someone really annoying, and then she'd have to go and put Tightpants out in the snow, and she'd actually kind of feel bad about that.

"So, what?" she asked. "You and the gremlins are tight now?"

"Well, the beer'll be safe, we won't have to listen to the carols all night, and no-one got bitten" Miguel said. "I don't mind making them some drinks tomorrow."

He plopped back down on the couch. "I'll count it a win."

Rosa tried to find a hole to poke into that logic, but she had to admit, except for the obvious last part, it was pretty sound. Those were definitely three undeniable things right there.

"Yeah, well," she said, reaching for the remote off her coffee table, "I just hope that it gets you some sort of, I don't know, bite protection for a while or something, but I don't think I'd trust those guys further than I could kick them."

...and that's why you got bit, Rosa.

"But whatever." Her attention was on the TV now, the Blu-Ray menu, setting up the movie. "We shouldn't be talking about gremlins when we could be watching robot cops cleaning up the streets of futuristic Detroit."

There was...a slight pause.

"Or maybe past Detroit, for you. I don't know."

She was trying to get better about this stuff, okay? It was still super weird.

"Depends when it's set," Miguel said with a shrug. "I'm still from this century, but my Earth doesn't seem to be this one exactly, either."

He opened the popcorn and held it out.

"Never been to Detroit, anyway."

Yeah, once you added different times to the different Earth things, that was when it was enough Fandom talk for Rosa.

"Neither have I," she said, starting the movie and tossing aside the remote. She went in for the offered popcorn after a small, brief moment of checking for unpopped kernels.

None so far. Off to a good start.

"I'm okay with that."

"Never seemed like I was missing much," Miguel agreed. He munched some popcorn himself and took a drink of his beer. "Do I need to know anything before it starts?" he murmured as the movie started.

Rosa consider that over a handful of popcorn.

"No," she said, which was pretty much her conclusion from the get-go. "It's pretty straight-forward. The plot's so simple even a baby could follow it without a problem."

Which she sounded...oddly irritated and heated about, but whatever.

Yeah, that was a little weird, but okay, whatever.

Miguel watched as the movie continued, in a bit of an odd place - some of it was nothing at all like home, and some of it was way too much like home, and it was a really weird feeling.

It definitely meant he was rooting for the anti-corporate folks, though.

Well, obviously. Rosa would really like to meet anyone who would root for the corporate folks so she could just punch them right in the stomach.

But, hey, if Tightpants had any issues with it, he wasn't saying anything about it, and that was what mattered. She had a ridiculous movie about a robot police officer going on a justice rampage, half-way decent beer, non-shitty popcorn, and no gremlins singing on her balcony.

God, this was so much better.

...until, of course, her latest handful of popcorn just so happened to pull out of the bag with that single unpopped kernel. Which she picked out from her palm, held up between her fingers, and just looked at Tightpants with a clearly disappointed look, shaking her head.

She took it back; worst movie date ever.

Miguel gave her an overly innocent look. "Nobody's perfect?"

Hey, she'd promised retribution of some sort. He was curious.

And okay, the movie was good, but Rosa was more interesting.

"Wrong," said Rosa. "I am."

She leaned forward to set the kernel on the coffee table, nodding at it as she settled back in again with a swig of beer.

"We'll just see how many of those you rack up before we're done here."

"Humble, too," Miguel pointed out.

There was only the one. He'd been careful. It was a point of pride.

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MHA #3; Tuesday Evening [12/18].

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