open whatever this is

[parodeity]

WHO: if you know dave or someone else who showed up you could have gotten an invite, or you could have gone on your own, so "whoever" is the answer here!
WHERE: apple orchards that exist in the apprassage district
WHEN: friday september 15th!
WHAT: apple picking and one or two other fall activities
WARNINGS: nothing it's fairly innocent

[ you probably got an invite to this group via a chain of text messages or just an in-person invite, or alternately you just decided to go apple picking or whatever for your own purposes and found a loose group of retrospec users doing the same thing. there are! lots of fall activities! okay! it's very early and i'm doing this very casually because i can. maybe you:

a) go apple picking. all the apples are still unfortunately like this so this orchard is already a party. try not to drop the dancing fruit, which may be harder to grab than the non-dancing variety.
b) purchase any variety of apple-themed foods, although if you join the group as a whole they'll eventually meander back to some college dorms with a kitchen to actually make some of their own, so.
c) there are those photo head cut out things where you stick your head through a board and take a picture, all fall themed. what the fuck are those called.
d) it's fall there's probably a hayride and one of those hay mazes. try not to get terribly lost or something unfortunate.
e) as stated above at the end they will meander back to some dorms and a kitchen specifically and make apple-related stuff, and serve apple cider, because apples > everything else or something. probably there are also boardgames or a movie at this point idk.

or do whatever ]

Comments

[buncho]

i.
[ Mafuyu probably didn't get a personal invite, but she's here anyways. Because if somebody did invite her, they would have intercepted her at the entrance, given her a pat down, and confiscated the pocket knife she has in her hands, now walking down the rows of short trees with a basket in one hand, idly flicking the blade in and out in the other.

Not saying she'll fight you guys for the best apples, but she's here on an errand with thirty bucks in her pockets and she will fight you for the best apples. Figuratively. Maybe. ]

ii.
[ Are bees still out in late summer... Google says yes, and that they might be a little more irritable if people get too close to their hives and try to meddle with them when there's less pollen and nectar available. That 'people' might Mafuyu, screaming as she runs down the hill— I mean, she's almost always screaming, but this time she's screaming a specific word, and that word is BEES. ]

iii.
[ At least with corn fields, you can just brute force push your way through the stalks. You can probably also do that with bales of hay, but at some point, you'll be trying to shove aside twenty bales of hay at a time and that's when it starts to get a little impossible. Mafuyu knows this because that's what she did. Hitting that roadblock, she climbs on top of the hay wall and decides to walk her way out from on top and may or may not have stepped through a block that wasn't bundled tightly enough and caused an avalanche that topples several rows of hay maze walls. Just. You know. Inadvertently rearranging the maze in trying to escape, and now there's no way out, help. ]

iv.
[ Somebody do the photo head cut out things where you stick your head through a board and take a picture with her so she can get a regain, thanks. ]

iv

[parodeity]

[ some of the other ones look great but ok let's get mafuyu a regain... ]

I'll be the apple if you wanna be the farmer?

[parodeity]

i. apple picking

[ dave's pretty tall - just two inches under six feet - so reaching up or just. jumping a little (and occasionally hovering for a second if he flies) tends to work just fine in terms of picking things. otherwise, he can clamber up a tree pretty easy and toss some down to work with someone.

if you need a vocal thing to respond to instead of that Vagueness, he'll occasionally look at an apple kinda ruefully. ]

I know these bug me way less than a lot of people, but it's still a bit much to just bite into one, you know?

ii. hay maze

[ dave won't actually cheat for this? he gets a stamp on his hand to go through and offers up one of his small half-smiles. ]

Buddy up, or do you plan to go solo through the thing?

iii. say cheese

[ as he promised chiyo, he has his camera around his neck for most of this, and will be taking various pictures of the scenery and the people involved...so he may take a snapshot of you if you don't like, aggressively tell him not to.

he may take some of these hanging upside down from a branch but w/e. ]

iv. after

[ and for the whole back-to-the-dorms portion, dave will actually be helping to make caramel apples - specifically, he will be adeptly rolling the caramel on evenly and letting people add whatever toppings. ]

I can make the chill time a lil less, so just do whatever and I'll have it out for you. Okay?

[buncho]

[ Mafuyu surveys the picture board thing in question, a fairly tame and childish one with a farmer picking an apple from a tree, with a basket full of happy smiling apples at his feet. ]

Okay.

[ She steps over to the backside of the board as their photographer gets ready, and sticks her face where the hole is. And gets into character. ]

HAHAHAHA! INSOLENT PIECE OF FRUIT! YOU SHALL JOIN YOUR FALLEN BRETHREN FOR YOUR DEFIANCE! YOUR FATE IS SEALED, AND IT SHALL BE WITH CRUMBLE PIE CRUST!! Now pretend you're screaming or something, Dave.

[parodeity]

[ ...........

WHAT DID HE EXPECT. dave actually actively has to try not to laugh. because. mafuyu, please?!

but he keeps his straight face up until he puts his head through the apple hole.

then it goes...MILDLY DISMAYED! ]

Oh no...but actually, farmer Joe, what you didn't know was...this was all an elaborate set up for the revolution. In all the time you've spent pickin' us, you didn't think to check...on the other crops.

[buncho]

[ I hope their photographer is doing a montage. ]

Don't tell me. It was the grapes?! I knew they've gone sour! Safety in numbers will not help. What awaits them is an even worse fate than pie: off to the raisin factory for them!

[parodeity]

[ i'm saying they are just so that they can get the montage at the end...keep it 5ever ]

Worse than that, the lemons are on our side, too. Life handed them to you and now the lemons are gonna hand you a complete regime change usin' their inside information.

[ @ dave: what ]

[buncho]

Not the lemons!

[ Grapes are whatever, but lemons!!! ]

Alright, Apple... How about you and I make a deal? You become my informant and tell me everything you know, and I won't crush you with my bare hands.

[ Deal. Threat. Same thing. ]

i

[glaciers]

[Shouto's about as tall as him, but he's perfectly fine with staying on the ground.]

Do they stop... doing that when you cut into them?

1

[lecturehall]

[dave's gonna be walking through the orchard, perusing apples, when he sees that damn stickler of an RA high up in the boughs of an apple tree, dropping plump dancing fruit into a basket he hung off a nearby branch.

he doesn't notice dave at first but when he does he simply stops, turns, and stares.]

Don't tell anyone else I was up here.

you already have i's and I'm sorry but I had to

[ucchu]

Is it?

[of course, that's pretty muffled, considering leo's mouth is full of apple. that he just took a big bite of. straight off the tree and everything.

he didn't bite its face though, so here his apple is, missing a chunk and looking so happy about it.

:D]

I guess it's pretty weird to bite the face part...

i!

[ucchu]

[most people would probably avoid someone walking through the orchard with a knife in hand. some people might, you know, either report that or stay very far away.

leo tsukinaga is not most people, and he's just running right up to her with apples stuffed in his hoodie pockets.]

Ah, that's a good idea-- hey, I'm hungry, can you slice this one for me? You can have half if you want!

[and he holds out a happily dancing apple. he's smiling just as brightly. stab it mafuyu.]

iii - lmk if this is okay!

[thole]

[Though John is hardly one to have received a direct invitation from Dave, professors do have lives outside of classes and grading and their offices at the university. And it seems the perfect time of year to do a thing like apple picking, even if a half-bushel of apples is going to last John a rather long time with only him eating them. Maybe he'll do some baking to bring in for some of his fellow professors, he will have to think on that one.

There seem to be a lot of people here with the same idea as him of course. Some of them with perhaps more inventive ideas of the activity than others.

John stands back for a long moment, watching Dave dangling upside down from one of the branches of the trees snapping upside-down photos of the scenery and people around them before he cannot help but speak up to comment:] You know, that neck strap will hardly do you any good without gravity working in the correct direction.

[i.e. careful you don't drop your camera there, son]

[buncho]

[ She isn't here to cut up people's apples for them, but the offer of half means there is zero hesitation before taking the apple from Leo's hands and stabbing it right through the top.

...he said "half," but there's a stem and core in the way of half, so she just sort of skins the face off the apple and hands that portion back to Leo. Here, enjoy your apple face. ]

[destiny_key]

[A. they're apples, probably]

[It's impossible to live in this area and not go apple picking at least once. But honestly, Sora hasn't been apple picking since he was a kid, so this is maybe still a little weird. But he was invited (via text message), so he came, and honestly this is probably one of the more exciting things that's happened this week.

He'll wander around with those plastic bags that they give you at the entrance trying to scoop up as many apples as he can get his hands on. Which is actually a bit of a challenge, seeing as the fruit is trying to dance away from him as fast as he can. More like apple chasing than apple picking, really.]

[D. corn mazes are actually metal as heck]

[What possessed Sora to go into the hay maze by himself, he has no idea. He was done chasing the dancing fruit for the day, and it seemed fun. And they give you a map, so you can't get too lost, right?

Wrong. Sora has a decent sense of direction, but he keeps getting distracted, and before he knows it, he's somewhere in the middle with no idea where he actually is on said map. Maybe he should... ask someone.

Going up to the first person he can find, he'll ask;]

Hey, um. D'you know where we are on the map?

[windeity]

A.)

[This is the worst thing to ever happen to him. These apples are literally the worst thing, and even knowing where they came from he's not any happier. However, John's about an average height but with enough upper body strength he's able to hoist himself up into tree after tree to dig around in the leaves for some of the best apples. For anyone passing by underneath, he'll call out:]

Here, catch. [You know. Before he proceeds to start dropping dancing fruit? Better catch them while you can (and avoid a bonk to the head.)]

E.)

[John, surprisingly, actually knows what he's doing in a kitchen so by the time they move back to the dorms with their supplies he's busy taking a few apples and slicing them up. There are bowls of various powders and baking supplies and for anybody who wanders in and out of the kitchen they'll find that he appears to be making miniature apple pies/tarts and shoving them into the oven maybe 20 minutes later. There's flour in his hair? And half of an apple-slice hanging out of his mouth. By the time the tarts are done he's pulling them out of the oven and setting them on the counter to cool, eyeballing them carefully before speaking up to whoever's around.]

Let me know what you think. I'm kind of out of practice.

[grimdeity]

i. apple picking.

[ when dave had asked rose if she wanted to go apple picking, she hadn't really thought about how the apples would be the dancing kind, even though that was "normal" not more than fifteen days past. but now it's really unnerving? ]

Why make them dance? What purpose does this serve? [ it sounds more like she's mumbling to herself than to anyone in particular. ] The horses to giant chickens almost make sense in comparison but dancing fruit? Why?

ii. hay maze.

[ when you turn the corner you may find a blonde girl wearing a halloween sweater, casually leaning against one of the sturdy corners of a dead end. ]

Are you lost?

[ it's said with an amused quirk of the lips, but listen. she is also lost and doesn't want to admit it. ]

[invocate]

I -- APPLE PICKING

[Li-Na doesn't mind heights at all. Frankly, she rather enjoys them. So when one of the trees ends up having some apples up a bit high, Li-Na climbs right to the top of the ladder without a drop of fear. Picking the apples, is not so easy. Despite being a dancer herself, Li-Na does not appreciate the way the fruit keeps bouncing about on the ends of their stems, making it difficult for her to get a good grip.]

Look here, just hold still so I can pick you.

[Apparently, the apples do not understand Cantonese, because they continue wiggling and jiggling and generally making a nusence of themselves. Li-Na huffs as she reaches for one particularlly boucy apple... and ends up leaning out too far as she tries to snatch it off its branch. With a surprised cry, she falls off the top of the ladder. Luckily, there's a branch directly beneath that she's catches right in the stomach.]

Omph!

[Good thing she's not afraid of heights?]


II -- HAY MAZE

[Li-Na is kind of terrible at mazes. She always gets lost inside of them and ends up going around and around and around, until she either finally finds her way out, or someone finds her and shows her the way out. But she enjoys them all the same.

So here she is, deep inside the hay maze, just wandering around aimlessly, not minding the least that she doesn't know where the entrance or exit are.]

iii

[invocate]

[Li-Na has her bag of dancing apples hanging off one arm as she just walks around the orchard. She's had enough picking for now and is just enjoying the scenery. The apple orchards look different from the strawberry farms she went to with her friends in Hong Kong, but the general feel of everything is much the same.

As she walks under one tree, she spots Dave... hanging...]

Do you not become dizzy?


[ooc: finally. tagging. dave.]

iii

[invocate]

[Li-Na was just wandering her way through the maze, perfectly content to take her time.

Until SOMEONE decided to knock over a several rows of hay bales.

Including the one Li-Na was walking next to.

There's a shriek as the wall topples over, Li-Na crouching down on the ground with her arms over her head. Luckily, the wall on the other side of the aisle doesn't fall, which creates a nice large cavity underneath to protect her. Once she realizes she wasn't squished flat, Li-Na opens her eyes and quickly crawls out into an empty space... now surrounded on all sides by fallen hay bales.]

What... what happened?

a of course

[grimdeity]

[ rose has her basket, and is examining one of the apples that can be reached by a somewhat shorter person like herself. she isn't thinking about the possibility that her brother's roommate could be up in the tree, dropping fruit on unsuspecting passersby. like rose.

so of course, she looks up when she hears a voice from above, only to be nailed in the face by an apple. she drops her basket, clutching her face and feeling a sense that something like this sure has happened before.

after a moment, realizing the perpetrator and glaring up into the trees, muffled beneath her hands, ] ... If you're trying to make this some sort of thing between us, John, could you fucking not?

[parodeity]

[ oh my god. ]

I want clemency for my family if we do that??

e

[parodeity]

[ yeah dave's just been kind of staring blankly every so often. making pasta is one thing, THESE ARE LITERAL BAKED GOODS and john mentioned it before, but like.

still weird as fuck.

he snags a tart, though, which is more proactive in terms of eating things than dave typically is sometimes. ]

You're a mess, for the record.

i

[parodeity]

I think it's mostly just so they look stupid. There's no deeper meaning?

[ haha guess what world they come from though rose ]

[parodeity]

I mean, they stop moving? So it is basically apple murder.

[ OR IT...FEELS LIKE IT. SAME DIFFERENCE! ]