recolle | look it's 3am i can't be witty for these subject headers okay

He's close; Yuri straightens and corrects by saying his name again with a slight shift in emphasis. "Yeah, Yuri. Did you want to head over on foot or catch the 18?" Knowing the bus system as well as he did was a mark of how often he used it to get around town. Necessity and the inability to always make it on foot to where he needed to be on time left him with that much of a public transit skill.

Still, he wonders how much nicer it would have been with a functional subway system. Hm.

"Whichever one will get us there quicker. I don't wanna lose any time for us to get in and explore the place before they close the building down for the night."

James did not actually look up how to get to the Retrospec building (although in hindsight, he really should have), so he's assuming the 18 is the bus route that goes by the building. But he still doesn't know how frequently that bus runs. He always took a different bus route from home.

"The 18." Yuri pulls his phone out of his pocket, checking the time. Shoving it back in his jacket he jerks his head to the side, frowning as he half-spins and takes off at a jog. "As long as we get to the stop in the next two minutes. Run!"

Speed can be everything. Yuri's used to the buses running on whatever schedule they decide, but the 18 is usually on time, if not early. Today he's hoping it's on time as he picks up to a run with his hands hooked around his backpack straps. He knows the way, dodging around slower pedestrians as he races down the sidewalk toward the second bus-stop shelter some two blocks away from the school itself. The bus is just pulling up as they make it there, pending both succeed to not end up bowled over or bowling anyone over in the process; Yuri slows to a jog and watches people disembark before leaping up the steps at the front of the bus, digging out his wallet for the passcard he has tucked in there. Tapping it down over the nodule, he heads for the back of the bus, trusting James has himself figured out enough he'll be fine.

May as well snag his preferred seats in the meantime.

James bolts. He's only a few steps behind Yuri the whole way, and soon makes up the gap. Instead of slowing down as he approaches the bus, he instead hooks his hand around the open bus door to yank himself around and jump onto the bus.

Once he fishes his own bus pass out of one of his (many, many) pockets, he taps it on the nodule and follows Yuri to the back of the bus.

"Alright, step 1, done. How long do we have to ride on here?"

Yuri snorts, vaguely amused at jumping on the bus, though it mostly registered as a thump and gets dismissed out of his head. With his backpack now on his lap, he fishes out his waterbottle before answering James.

"Fifteen minutes if traffic's light. If it's heavier, twenty, maybe twenty-five. It's a Wednesday, we should be fine." Taking a swig of water, he settles back, one foot kicked up on the sidepanel of the bus. "Thursdays are the worst."

Watching Yuri pull out some water, James realizes that water sounds like a good idea. He pulls his own bottle out and takes a long gulp before capping it again.

"Thursdays, huh? You ride this route that often?"

He takes a moment to decide if it's worth discussing with James. He's not a great conversationalist as it is. Not like it matters; Yuri's in Tisse all the time. He sighs, pulling his hood back so it's not still resting over the crown of his head. He likes being shut away in his own protective sphere, but it tends to make conversation with those who don't know him more stilted.

"My dance studio's in Tisse. Same with work. If it's not the 18, I'm catching the 201 or the 90 Express." All depending on where he needed to be at any given time, or where he was catching which bus.

He whistles a little. "Damn. That's a lot of buses. I only ever take the 908." James has only lived in Recolle for a year, he doesn't even know half of the bus routes. Honestly this is the first time he's hearing of the 201 or the 90 Express. The 908 is the only bus that runs to his area anyway. At least it happens to go through Apprassage, though.

He lapses in silence for a moment. James isn't the greatest at conversation either. "...So, what kind of job is it?"

Ironic that they'd both been here for the same amount of time; less so that they'd had very different experiences. Yuri shrugs his shoulders. In his opinion, it's not so many buses, and not the only ones he rides. Then again picking up dance work off and on means he's used to getting into parts of the city most people probably don't bother visiting without good reason.

"Hm? Oh, at the Stardust? Mostly register stuff and rentals at the ice rink. Have you been to the Stardust before?" People had usually been to either the roller rink, the bowling hall, or the ice rink at some point. Then again, Yuri tends to presume a number of the teens he meets have all been in the city longer than he has.

"The Stardust? Is that what the ice rink is called? No, I've never been there before." He has gone to ice rinks and roller rinks a few times before, but that was years ago and far far away. He'd never bothered to really look up any rinks in Recolle--it had never been much of his thing.

"It's what the ice rink, roller rink, and the bowling alley are all called. It has a mascot and everything." He sounds someone dry when he notes that detail. Comet the Cosmic Orca is a suit he's had to wear often enough to know he would rather not mention how often he has to parade around as a cosmic orca.

At least it pays better in the suit. For the torture.

"I think there's an arcade attached too? I don't bother with stopping by that part." Or anything other than the ice rink, if he's honest. Yuri looks out the window, checking the street name they're passing. They're making good time. In another few stoplights he'll be pulling on the indicator for their stop.

Yuri's sarcasm has been noted and is returned in kind: "A mascot? Well damn, that's how you know they've got everything."

James looks out the window too but, not having done the research and Google Maps-ing that Yuri has obviously done, doesn't look too closely. What difference does it make to him what street when they're on when he doesn't know how many more are left to go?

"I didn't even know there were combination ice rinks/roller rinks/bowling alleys/arcades. Seems like a hell of a mix for one place."

"It's stupid," he says near immediately, looking back to James and wrinkling his nose. "I've heard of one of those being attached to a mall or something, but all three together? Four with the arcade. It's stupid, no one has a reason to stick around. You have to leave to eat anything decent, all the shopping's down the street because the buildings are so big. What's the point?"

Developers and goals at capitalising on Tisse being high on the entertainment scale, but Yuri's not actually concerned with the details. He breathes out through his nose, shrugging his shoulders. "Not the worst place to work though. Sometimes I get to pick the music."

It's all in the little things, really.

He glances outside again, reaching up and pulling on the indicator string to let the driver know she had people disembarking at the next stop. "We've got to walk a few blocks from here," he says, nodding his head toward the left of the bus. "After we cross the street."

As the bus rolls to a stop and they step off onto the street, James can't help but raise a skeptical eyebrow.

"Someone's opinionated about the megarink."

Thankfully, the pedestrian light is already green (well, white) for them, so he begins to cross the street.

He snorts again, swinging his backpack over one shoulder as they cross the street. "You would be too if you worked there."

Hopping up on the sidewalk, he glances down the way they need to head. Foot traffic isn't so bad today, right before the offices start letting their workers free. Setting off at a decent speed, he shoves his other arm through his backpack loop. "I wonder if they've changed the lobby up since last month. Or when they bother. Think we can spot any cameras watching the entrance when we get there?"

James snorts. "Why would they change up the lobby since last month? They've got better things to be doing, like sending us weird packages and putting faces on all our fruit.

"As for cameras...I don't know, but we'll just have to see who can spot more of 'em." He says it like a challenge. Mostly because it is.

"They changed it up from February. Who knows if it's a trend or not?" The elevator disappearing had been weird. The stones even stranger. He kicks at an imagined stoned on the sidewalk, scowling at the people they pass without making eye-contact. They weren't exactly the most inconspicuous pair to be walking around, though the time of day at least made it reasonable.

The challenge, however, gets Yuri to look over at James... and smirk. "You're on." No claims on what winner gets or loser doesn't get. Ten to one that involves money, and he's still tight budget after last month.

"Though, uh, how likely is it they can hack the city's camera networks?"

James isn't keen on setting the terms of this bet either--he doesn't have much money to throw around himself. They can cross that bridge when they come to it.

He scoffs at Yuri's question a little, as if the answer is obvious. "Well let's see. So far they've given us a bunch of hallucinations, suspicious packages to addresses we never gave them, and they alter reality as we know it every time they do something weird so that no one else notices it. Yeah, I think they can hack the city's cameras."

For whatever reason, this answer prompts Yuri into smirking.

"So why are we bothering counting any of the cameras when the answer is they could even be using the ones on our phones if they felt like it? What we really need is a way to black things out, and I'm not the brain for that."

"Well we can't black things out, except for with tape if it's just for our phones. So what else are we gonna do but count them?"

By now they've walked a few blocks and James starts to see something that looks like it could be an office building. He points towards it. "That it?"

Yuri looks up, squinting against reflective glare. The building in question borders the one he remembers; he nods, gesturing beyond it. "See the sign?" RETROSPEC is hard to miss, but it does seem slipped into a space that might not have always existed. Then again, thinking that was more fancy than fact.

Yuri shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, slowing down his pace until he's walking at normal speed. As they approach the front stairs leading to the doors, he notices they're propped open. It's odd after last month; he frowns, pulling his hands back out of his pockets and taking the stairs in leaps. "The doors are just open?" The whole security interface for mad libs is completely gone. Utterly missing.

He stalks right on by into the main lobby, spinning around to take a quick look-over of the space. "When the hell did the elevator get back?!"

This isn't right. That's a bit redundant, considering this is Retrospec, but even by the standards James expects from them, this is weird.

As they enter the building, James looks around. He's never been here before, so he has no expectations and is just trying to soak everything in.

"So...the elevator was gone for a few weeks and then they put it back? Why bother?" It's weird, but not impossible--maybe they had just covered that particular wall and kept the elevator shaft. Not that it'd be worth the effort to do so.

Not one to dawdle, James strolls up and immediately presses the 'up' button on the elevator. But instead of the doors opening, instead he just hears from all around them:

"...And now let's welcome our latest guest to The Funny Pitchers: Dan Halen, from Scotch Plains!"

"...hey, hey there everyone, thanks for the warm welcome, but it's actually pronounced Scotch Tape Plains. ...Eh? Ehh? Get it? ...Yeah, okay."

James turns to Yuri. "...is that what the elevator did last time, too?"

He was already stalking across the lobby looking for the door to the stairs to see if that will finally give when James is asking his question. "Do I look like I know? It was gone. Now it's here."

He counts doors as he goes. Were there more here than the last time? He frowns, reaching for his phone to pull it out and bring up his photo gallery. Ever since he talked to that Akira guy, he's been keeping a photo log of his own. He's still thumbing through to last month's album when he hits the end of the lobby. Glancing up, he reaches out and finds himself facing a blank expanse of wall.

"Haaaaah?" His startled commentary on the situation is well timed to answer James' question with regards to the comedy playing over the speakers. Yuri spins around, gesturing back to the wall behind him. "No, it wasn't, but — the stairs? Where the hell did the stairs go? The door was right here."

"So now the elevator's back but the stairs are missing?" This gets more confusing by the second.

James realizes the elevator never arrived, so he mashes on the button again. And again, the comedy introduction begins to play. He leans over and shouts down the hallway. "Hey, Yuri? I don't think this elevator actually works!"

Looking back toward James, Yuri frowns. He's not surprised, but... he turns away from the blank wall, figuring he'll check on one of the doors (were there that many last time? he needs to pull out his phone to check) to see if any of them open.

"It didn't work in February either! Not even the buttons... maybe that's why they walled it in last mon — ow?!"

Jerking his hand back from the door, Yuri half-skips, half-hops a half-foot away. "It shocked me?!"

"What?!"

The elevator proving useless, James runs down the hallway to find Yuri at one of the doors. He can guess what happened, but hey, no harm in trying for himself. He jumps towards another door on the other side of the wall and grasps the doorknob with both hands to yank it, but ends up pulling back with a hiss. It doesn't really even hurt, but it's the combination of the mild sting with the much more intense frustration of this whole trip that leads to an outburst.

"Damn it!" He kicks the door for good measure. It doesn't do anything, but at least it felt good to hit something for once. With that out of his system, though, James takes a few moments to breathe.

"What do we do now?"

Yuri's first suggestion is not to check other handles, mostly because he doesn't like the tingling buzz the door handles are tossing out today. He grimaces, glaring at the doors, shifting his weight and spinning to stalk on toward the unstaffed front desk.

"Try the phone if they have one? See if they have a mail slot? A buzzer? An intercom?" He hits the counter and vaults it, landing on the far side and starting to rifle through drawers after glancing over the counter. There's a phone, but he waits a moment before picking it up in case it's also rigged to shock.

James gives another door a yank, just to be sure, but gets another zap for his effort. He has half a mind to just ram the door until it breaks down, but he stops short and gives the door another strong (but not damaging) kick. Ramming the door means property damage, means getting caught, means...he doesn't want to know what.

So he runs over to the desk too. While Yuri rifles through the drawers, he tries to sort through the mess on the desk--or lack thereof.

"Who keeps a desk this neat?!" No notes, no papers, no files, nothing! Not even a mote of dust. Just some dumb 'Jim + Janet' sticky note and a few useless desk toys. James has half a mind to throw them to the ground in frustration.

That's when the phone rings. James is so surprised, he seizes up and only stares at it, like he doesn't believe what he's hearing.

The top drawer reveals notepads with the logo for Retrospec and a few pens, while none of the other drawers do more than wiggle and catch on the lock that has no visible keyhole. Yuri crouches down to try and figure out that mystery when the phone starts ringing, startling him enough he straightens up and stares at the phone along with James.

Then reaches out to pick it up, eyes flicking around the office as he speaks. "Hello?"

The other side of the line crackles before speaking back in a robotone. "Knock knock." The line waits; with no response, in the same exact tone, it requests once more, "Knock knock."

He holds the phone out to James. "Okay, that's just," creepy, "Stupid."

James watches tensely as Yuri picks up the phone, but still takes the receiver when Yuri offers it to him.

"Uh...hello?"

"Knock knock," says the robotic voice. James gives Yuri a confused look, but the voice repeats itself. For something so monotone, it sure is impatient. James huffs, partially out of annoyance and partially to brace himself for whatever this is going to be.

"Who's there?"

"Please provide 'knock knock' input."

"Oh, uh. Knock knock?" What on earth is he doing? Telling a knock knock joke to a robot?

"Who's there?"

James scrambles for the first joke he can think of. "Cows go."

"Cows go who?"

"No, idiot, cows go moo." James has never felt dumber in his life before, but hopefully it'll at least lead somewhere.

"Input accepted." The line goes silent for a moment and James covers the speaking end of the phone to whisper to Yuri, "I think I just passed some phone test or something."

But moments later, he hears the robotic tone on the other end prompt him once again with a "knock knock." And James slams the phone back down on the desk. He crosses his arms.

"Never mind. That was a total waste."

He listens to the knock knock joke exchange with the phone, eyebrows slowly creeping up. Even the phone is a joke, and this is not the first of the month. He picks up one of the pens and a pad of paper, showing them to the room at large.

"I'm taking these," he announces, waving them around a little in mild emphasis. "Feel free to tell me no now if that's not okay."

He pauses. Absolutely nothing happens. Looking to James, he shrugs.

"Looks like I get a new pen out of this. Did anyone bother telling these idiots April Fool's only is the first of the month?" He vaults back over the counter to the far side, eyes skimming over the seats. The dumb plant's still there. After having found nothing remarkable about it last time, he's less inclined to look it over again.

James raises an eyebrow. "So we're resorting to stealing now?" Not that he's judging--a part of him wants to steal something too just out of pettiness. Maybe the potted plant. But he probably shouldn't. He definitely shouldn't.

Sighing, he checks the back of the desk. He's not expecting anything, but at this point, who knows what Retrospec would pull on them now? There's nothing interesting there, though, just a couple wires running from the wall to the desk--

"Hang on." James does a double take at the phone. He lifts it up and looks all around it and underneath. Then he sets it down and picks up the receiver again. No tone. "This phone isn't even connected to anything! What the hell?" He almost throws the receiver back down and stomps towards the chairs, collapsing into one with a mighty--

PPBBBBTTTHTHTHTHH!!

The look on his face could kill armies right about now.

"I asked," he says, not apologetic. Nothing about this has been shadier on his end than it has been from Retrospec's end. Yuri glances at James when he's saying hold on, pulling his head back at the announcement about the lack of phone lines. "That's like what they pull with the app."

Half turning to watch James as he marches for the chairs, collapsing down in them, Yuri... pauses. Then coughs into his hand and starts laughing. Looks here can kill, but the sheer level of ridiculousness Retrospec's willing to indulge is almost as insane as everything else about them.

"So this is really all a big joke to them, huh? Everything about this. They play around in the dark and have us remembering things but won't say why it's important, if it's important at all. Then they rig up their whole office as a joke!"

James digs into the cushion of his seat and rummages around until he can get a hold of the whoopie cushion. He yanks it out and throws it to the floor.

"This whole place is bullshit. Is there anything useful here? Or did they just turn it into some circus for us to make asses of ourselves? I bet they're watching us right now on some camera and laughing at us."

Yuri toes the whoopie cushion, recovering from his laughter and tossing his requested pen up in the air. He catches it again, pointing it toward the door. "Pretty sure they've been doing that since the first time."

It's also enough that he kicks the whoopie cushion more toward the counter, breathing out through his nose and heading toward the door. Not to leave: once there, his phone's out, and he's snapping photographs to add to his RETROSPEC OFFICE folder. "How much longer do you want to hang out here?"

James sighs, beleaguered, before standing up again.

"Just a few more minutes. I'm gonna take some photos first before we split."

He pulls out his phone and heads down the corridor of doors, snaps a photo, then walks over to the desk and snaps a photo of it too, and then positions himself alongside Yuri to take a photo of the overall view of the lobby. Right afterwards he squints at the photo.

"Wait, hold up--was that TV there this whole time?"

He glances up at the television in question, blinking and opening his mouth to respond. "Uh." It was a very well informed response; he takes a step forward and squints, trying to remember. "Maybe? I wasn't exactly looking."

The elevator and the doors had taken up the bulk of his attention. "Does it work?"

Maybe it's a closed caption feed of whatever video monitoring the company has in the front office? He takes a few steps closer, though he hesitates again. Please don't be rigged for something annoying.

James follows up behind him, observing the TV with his hands on his hips. It seems okay for now. Although at this point he wouldn't be terribly surprised if it sprouted fangs and chased them out the front door.

It seems like Yuri has the same idea, because he notices the hesitation. "Hold on," he says, and starts rummaging in his backpack. He pulls out a candlestick--one of the thick, sturdy, metal types--and brandishes it like a baseball bat.

"Alright, I got you covered." Whatever this dumb TV tries to pull, he is ready for it.

Yuri won't even pretend that he's not using the pen to try and turn on the television. Unfortunately, it doesn't register the pen as being a proper touch, and there's no button, per say. He scoots closer and reaches out to use his finger to press the television on. The deep thrum as it comes to life is normal; an image resolves on screen.

Both young men are rewarded with Bohemian Rhapsody and the horrid proposal video from last month capering across the screen. Nothing else happens, and less so when Yuri tries changing the channel. There's no response. Just more Bohemian Rhapsody. More dancing fruits on a pretty terrible video edit. Poor Janet.

"This is even more tasteless than the first time I saw it," he says as he steps back, looking over the reception area again to see if anything's changed as a consequence to the television starting to sing and dance. A casual glimpse sees nothing new out of place.

James scrunches up his face in disgust when he sees the video and recognizes it. "Eugh, this again?"

He doesn't even wait to check for anything new, he immediately steps forward and shuts the TV off. He doesn't need to see that garbage again, he already knows how it goes.

"I guess that's it then." James heaves a disappointed sigh and crosses his arms across his chest. "Now we just go home now with a handful of nothing."

"Or a handful of pen," he says. After Retrospec shipped back the cats he left in the office last time, he's got even less tolerance for what would be reasonable boundaries anywhere else. Still, he heads back to the counter and reaches for the sticky note to add on something of his own.

Open up communication lines, lovebird.

Resticking the note in place, he shrugs, heading for the door with eyes narrowing as if he expects it to slam shut on him. In a way, he does. In another way... he's breathing a sigh of relief once past Retrospec's threshold. "It's not useful. But things changed in there again."

James puts the candlestick back into his bag, shoulders it, and follows Yuri out the door. Just before he steps over the threshold outside, he looks over his shoulder, as if there's something he might've forgotten inside. But no. Same dumb Retrospec from 10 minutes ago. Nothing else worth noting that they haven't already. So he takes the final step out.

"Yeah, I'll still post some photos and stuff for anyone who wants to see it. In case anyone wants proof of how pointless this all is and how powerless we are to do anything about it."

"Sounds like the teenage condition," he says to be snarky, hands jammed into his jacket pockets, pen all tucked in there too. James sounds like he has the lock on sharing this, which is good: Yuri isn't sure he has the patience or attention span after the whole Yuri's Angels are not a real thing post he'd made on app last month. People like that Akira guy and several of the adults did keep track of information.

Including Pearl, only Pearl no longer remembered Retrospec. He frowns, pulling out his phone to check the time. "I need to head out. I'll keep an eye on the app for when you post?"

Half a question, half Yuri looking toward James and cocking up an eyebrow.

James scoff-laughs at Yuri's comment, but then sobers up a little at the question.

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it. I got this, you go do whatever it is you do at the ice rink, I'll post everything when I get home." He waves his hand casually, trying to vaguely gesture at 'whatever it is Yuri does at the ice rink.'

He nods, then heads on out. Work calls, which means rent will be covered, bills paid, and money set aside for his moped (at last), a project he's been saving up for about a year. Set back in having to pay the fine last month. He's still irritated by all that.

But it's neither here nor there, and so Yuri heads off at a jog toward Stardust to go be his own best breadwinner.

look it's 3am i can't be witty for these subject headers okay

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... somewhat, not... someone dry laksdjf

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