Planet of the Ape Toys [Open]

[Logan Hewitte]

Ah, the mall, a place full of wondrously cool stuff.. For most people. Logan wasn't exactly a common fixture at the mall but they had some pretty good stuff.. Like that hardware, electronics, video games and comic books and of course we can't forget the toy store.. What? They've got remote controlled trucks and transformers! Alright, so maybe Logan was a little too old for it but he didn't care. Poking around the shelves, he was on the look out for something new and cool.

Right now all he could sense were the usual stuff. Basic remote controlled toys, couple with talking toys, a bit of this and a bit of that. There was nothing particularly interesting but still Logan managed to pick up one of those Furreal pet things, flipping the box over and staring at it for a moment.

Sure it would seem weird for a teenage male to even be looking at a robotic chimp for ages four and up but Logan saw things that other people didn't. He saw a walking talking money with artificial intelligence and a universal translator. The technopath was going to make himself a little friend just cause he can. Kind of like that bear in the movie A.I... Yeah, that'd be fun to attempt.

Getting to the counter, he waited in line as a lady spoke to the girl at the counter, talking about some toy that didn't work. It was taking forever and Logan looked up then down at the remote controlled car, taking a quick venture through its mechanics and finding the problem.

It was just the wiring and Logan could have fixed it but he didn't say a word. That usually led to too many questions being asked like 'How did you know that?' and 'Why can't you just mind your own business?', though he doubted he would have gotten the latter from the middle aged woman at the counter.

Patiently waiting his turn, he paid for the toy before getting asked if he wanted it gift wrapped as though an eighteen year old guy can't be buying a toy monkey for himself.. Okay, maybe the girl at the counter had reasons for her question. Still, Logan politely declined before ripping it out of the box and shoving it in his backpack then quickly grabbing the receipt. "Wait, you forgot the instructions," the girl called out, only to have Logan give her a look that said 'Are you serious?!' "I don't need it," he told her before walking out the door, a hand on the backpack as he swung it over his right shoulder. Next stop, the comic book store.

[Ginny Campbell]

Like many teenage girls Ginny adored the mall. The mall, after all, had everything anyone could possibly desire: clothes, accessories, books, music, games....even food! All this wrapped within an atmosphere of socialization was pure bliss as far as Ginny was concerned. She loved the material goods and she loved the crowds; there wasn't much about the mall she didn't like. Well, okay, maybe the unfair assessment that anyone who spent time at the mall was an airhead, particularly as she already had to combat those judgments because of the color of her hair and her gender, but that wasn't going to stop her from doing what she wanted. Clearly other people were the ones with the problems; she might resent their accusations, but she certainly wasn't going to change just for them.

Of course, despite the fact that she was a blonde girl who appreciated wearing more than simple jeans and t-shirt (a combination usually frowned upon in the circles whose approval she sought) didn't stop her from also being something of a geek. With Dr. James Campbell for a father that was probably inevitable; even though he hadn't raised her she'd still found herself drawn to the stories of elves and princesses she'd found in his library.

Now she was older and she was building her own library. This was a slow process due both to limited funds as well as a lack of room in her college dorm. Still, slow didn't mean non-existent, and even if there was nothing worth buying for her collection the bookstore was a fun place to be. Or, in this case, the comic store.

Usually she stayed away from comic book stores. Usually comic book store employees and patrons stared at her the moment she stepped over the threshold. Usually the walls were plastered with scantily clad women contorted in unnatural poses. Not here. The comic book store at Pilot Ridge Mall was brightly lit, clean, and had a chipper young woman with a green mohawk at the counter. It was much more inviting than most of her previous comic book store experiences, and so she decided to peruse the wares, interested in discovering the world of capes and spandex.

She was standing by the entrance, flipping through a comic about some heroine named The Question, when footsteps announced another person had entered the store. She glanced up to see a boy about her age, backpack hanging carelessly off one shoulder. "Hey!" She greeted him, not at all bothered by the fact that talking to strangers was generally considered odd. "That backpack looks like it weighs a ton, what do you have in there, the dictionary?"

[Logan Hewitte]

If he were ever to be some cool super hero type, Logan definitely knew what his kryptonite would be. Girls. Pure and simple. He liked them as much as the next guy but for a teenager with a high IQ, he had a knack for sounding like a complete idiot around them. Logan never knew what to say or how to act and things tended to go badly all on their own.

Course, lucky for him, the role of a villain would be a much better fit. He had the whole evil genius thing down.. Except for the evil part unless it was accidentally as in the case of the Ninja Robot. It was gone now though. Logan took it a part after it accidentally cut his arm up, though lucky for him he meant some kid who could heal so that turned out alright in the end.

Getting to the comic book store, Logan wasn't particularly careful with his back pack. He had some fragile stuff in there but it would survive well enough. Besides, if anything went wrong, he'd be able to fix it real quick.

Turning he looked thoroughly confused when some girl said hi. Girls didn't just say hi to him for no reason which was enough of an excuse to give her that look of suspicion for just a second because responding. "Hi," he said, even managing a smile. She seemed nice enough.

"Nah," Logan said looking at her like it was a strange thing to say. Dictionaries didn't weight a ton, it weighed practically nothing if it was just an app on your phone... You'd think this girl would know that. Shifting the backpack he cringed at the baby chimp sounds that were emanating from it. Great, just great, now he was going to get that weird awkward moment then he'd have to try and sneak away with his self-respect and ego still attached. What eighteen year old would have a monkey in his packpack, seriously?

"It's okay, it's not alive or anything and don't ask," he said, head lowered as he tried to make his escape... To the next shelf. Alright, so he didn't get far but he figured this girl would want to talk to the weird guy with a chimp in his backpack.

[Ginny Campbell]

Ginny noted the narrowed gaze the boy sent her way, but decided to ignore it; after all, other people were always the single most interesting thing to pay attention to, far more so than comics or lovingly packaged action figures. So until he outright told her to leave she was going to pretend she didn't notice his body language and facial expressions.

If it wasn't enough that he was the only patron in the store, his backpack was....chirping. And he seemed quite intent on not divulging whatever was inside. She furrowed her brow at his bag, willing the contents to reveal themselves. They didn't, and he attempted to flee. Oh, hell, no. He wasn't getting away until she knew what was in that bag!

"Innnnnnnteresting." A smirk slid across her face as she trailed behind him, unwilling to leave him alone. "Don't ask, huh? Wow, you sure know how to pique a girl's curiosity."

She circled the boy, trying her best to trap him between herself and the shelf (which was really difficult, considering that there was only one of her) before asking, "So if it isn't alive, what's making all that noise? I know!" She clapped her hands together, struck by an idea. "It's a zombie pet. You're going to start the zombie apocalypse. You know, I don't think that your little zombie critter is gonna let you go just because you feed it. They're not that discerning if folk lore is to be believed. But maybe it shouldn't be. Not like I'm the leading authority on zombies or anything. I guess Hollywood probably isn't, either."

Her grin widened. "So! Spill! She laughed, clasping her hands behind her back and rocking back on her heels expectantly. "You don't think you're gonna get me all curious like that and not tell me, do you? Come on, don't be a tease."

[Logan Hewitte]

Logan wasn't exactly anti-social. He wasn't completely against the idea of meeting new people but he just wasn't terribly good at it sometimes. It wasn't as though people said hi on the streets. Most of the time they would just listen to the music on their ipods and keep their sunglasses on so that they wouldn't even have to look at you. This was why having some girl say hi to him seemed kind of odd but Logan could see that she was relatively harmless, or at least appeared to be.

He was sure he had managed to make a good enough escape but he would be wrong. Logan only made it to the shelves, still determined to have a look at the comics and see if there was anything new that he might want to get. He cringed when he heard her say the word 'interesting' all stretched out like she was Nancy Drew and he was some blindingly obvious clue.

“I didn't mean to do that,” he said, oh great, he pique her curiosity. Great, just great, he thought sarcasticly. She was even circling him and this was making Logan a little nervous. Too much attention was never a good thing. It was like she was a vulture and he was a nice big piece of almost dead meat. It was pretty unnerving but Logan didn't say a word because soon she spoke again.

“What noise?” he asked, it was stupid and he knew it wouldn't work but the damn thing had shut up now so unless he smashed his bag up against a shelf, it would more than likely stay quiet for the moment. “Zombies aren't real,” he told her like this was all just facts and she should know better.

“If I was gonna start any kind of apocalypse, I'd use machines with artificial intelligence,” he said, probably giving away too much but then what was she going to do with that piece of information. It was all just hypothetical and not literal. Logan was definitely no threat to the world or anything.

It didn't work though. She was still there, still trying to get him to talk and there was no way in hell that Logan Hewitte was gonna tell some hot girl that he had a damn monkey toy in his backpack! That just wasn't right and if he was just a regular guy at a regular high school and she was there then it'd be like social suicide and Logan loved what little he had of a social life and wasn't about to ruin it. Course, he didn't know her but that didn't change much.

“I'm not telling you anything. I don't even know you. Why are you stalking me?” he asked, but he didn't sound angry, just uncomfortable with the situation and clearly trying to hide something. He turned for a second, pretending to look over the shelves but froze.. For just a second as he let his mind wonder to the phone she had and made it ring before snapping back to reality.

“Sounds like an important call so I'll see ya, bye!,” he said, practically diving past her and around to another shelf. He knew that sort of thing wouldn't last but it bought him a moment to figure what why this girl even cared what was in his bag. He knew what it was to be curious but he was just some weird strange guy, she really didn't need to be doing this.

[Ginny Campbell]

"Hmmm. You sure? You really are a tease." Ginny gave the boy an exaggerated frown. What was so difficult about answering her question? Maybe he'd shoplifted something.

"Right, what noise. The noise from the zombie pet you stole." She grinned, shrugging at his insistence that zombies weren't rule. "Mmmhmmm. Of course not. So it's not a zombie and it's not alive but it chirps."

She cocked her head to one side, hands on hips as she regarded him with a raised eyebrow, her grin slipping slightly, still there but with a hint of seriousness she hadn't had before. "I don't really have anything else to do and you're not answering my question. Answer and I'll leave you alone. Don't answer and I'm assuming you're a shoplifter." There was a bit of an implied threat in that statement, but before she could drive home the point that his refusal to answer an innocuous question had turned from fun and games into something more suspicious her phone rang.

She sighed in annoyance. Probably her dad wanting to know where she was. There had been far too much excitement in the Campbell-Kilbourne household lately, which meant her father was being more protective than usual. He didn't need to be, though; she was an adult, she could take care of herself.

But when she yanked her phone out of her purse there was no missed call. She stared at it for a moment before realization dawned. Unfortunately for Logan, Ginny was friends with Mia Keystone and so she knew a thing or two about technopaths and their distraction techniques. "Soooo...." She bounced around the corner after him, shoving her phone back into her purse. "Machines with artificial intelligence, huh?" She asked, crossing her arms and tapping fingers with amusement. "So Mr. Machine, how long are we gonna play this game? I don't think answering one question about the contents of your backpack is gonna kill you. If you didn't steal it then you have nothing to hide, right?"

She shifted her purse on her shoulder, weighing her options. It wasn't really important that he tell her, but now that she'd chased him around the store she felt obligated to find out at all costs. Besides, what if he had stolen something? She couldn't think of any good reason for him to refuse to answer her question. "You answer my question and you can ask me one and I'll answer honestly." She paused and added, "Without making you chase me half way around the mall, even."

[Logan Hewitte]

Logan just frowned when he got called a tease. Something about this just wasn't going the way it should. Why was she so concerned about what he had? You'd think he was hiding the new Duke Nukem game in his backpack of something!

"Fine, it's a zombie but I didn't steal it, I have a receipt," he said sarcastically about the zombie part, pulling out said receipt from his pocket, he even waved it in front of her as proof before shoving it back in his pocket. He didn't need her actually looking at it because then she'd be able to see exactly what it was he had bought.

"It wasn't 'chirping'," Logan said, unable to help himself. He knew that this was a bad idea, that he was slowly feeding her more and more information which was going to inevitably help her figure it out.

Logan glanced sideways at her while trying to busy himself with the stack of comics in front of him. "It's kind of personal," he told her, it wasn't really but he would certainly like to keep it that way. No teenage guy would willing admit to have a toy meant for a child, even if he had great big genius plans for turning it into a walking talking interactive robot or something.

"And I didn't steal it. You can go ask the check out girl at the t- ..place," he said, almost saying 'toy store' which would have been much more of a hint that this. He stopped himself in time though but she was getting somewhere. Making Logan get defensive was the easier way of making him admit to the things that he would rather keep secret.

After the fake ringing, Logan managed to find a nice pile of Spiderman comics. He didn't really need any more but he was keeping away from the strange girl so this was working out well enough.

His fingers stopped flipping through the comics and he turned to look at her and a rabbit waiting staring at the hunter, waiting for the last minute before it decided to run the hell away. Mr. Machine? Did she really just call him that? It made him sound like robocop's less cool little brother and Logan definitely did not like the sound it.

"It's.. highly classified," he said, going with a total lie then trying to help himself salvage it before it was too late. "Or it would be if I was working for some secret government agency," he said, head tilted as he went off in deep though about some cool potential future in which he was a highly prized scientist type doing cool stuff with time travel or maybe something more legit like working on something better than a memristor-based fuzzy neural network or genetic algorithm-based problem solving.. Yeah, the stuff that went on in Logan's brain weren't exactly the most interesting or even understandable to most people but it kept him entertained.

"I don't really have anything I'd wanna ask you," Logan said, at least not anything he could access right now through her phone. Not that he would, Logan wasn't that kind of a guy, unless he happened to get very bored one day. "Except.. Why Mr. Machine? That's not a cool name in any universe," he said, yeah he didn't like the name that much. "And I'll answer your question when you answer mine," he told her, showing some semblance of confidence and certainty. He wasn't gonna budge, if she wanted to know about the baby monkey toy then she was gonna have to spill about this whole obsession over the machines with artificial intelligence thing. Sure, he said it first but she brought it up again way after he said it, in fact it was after the fake phone call and that was kind of suspicious.

[Ginny Campbell]

"I knew it!" Ginny grinned. "A zombie. And you got it at the zombie store, very nice." Maybe it was a little mean, but pestering this guy was kind of fun; if he didn't want people to bother him then he ought not to have such hilarious reactions. "Sure, I'll ask the girl at the place." She had no idea what the t-place might be, however. Perhaps the T-Mobile kiosk. The young woman manning that kiosk had tried to waylay her earlier, but she'd kept going without looking the other girl in the eye. But if they had weird chirping things that young men were ashamed to be seen carrying, perhaps she ought to drop by later and check it out.

Oooh, wait. Personal. What could be personal to a young man, something that he wouldn't want to share with anyone, and that began with a 'T'?

That was enough to bring her up short. She liked to tease people and she did think his reactions were amusing, but she wasn't cruel enough to knowingly out someone in public. The chirping must have just been the sound his phone made, and he'd not realized that was what she was asking about.

But she had to admit, he looked good. She would never have guessed. Ah, the miracles of modern science, boon to so many. She studied him more closely, trying to be surreptitious about staring at his chest. Was he binding, or had he had surgery? He looked young for surgery, but then she wasn't exactly an expert. Either way, she was impressed.

She glanced down at her own breasts; she often wished they were more generous, but she supposed that this really put her body in perspective. At least she was born in the right one. Poor Machine Dude. That must be difficult.

Still, while she may have felt a bit sad for him, that didn't mean that his overreaction (or not, she was following him around) was any less entertaining.

"No kidding," She smirked at his dismay over his new nickname. "You may have missed this, but we're both in a comic shop. Of our own volition. Neither of us are cool." She did hand quotes around the word cool. The whole cool thing was overrated, anyway. Enjoying life was far more important than living to someone else's standards of cool or trendy or in style, anyway.

"But if you must know, you remind me of a girl I know." As soon as the words left her lips she regretted them; she didn't mean to sound like she was taunting, because in this instance she definitely wasn't. "I mean," She clarified hurriedly, "She uses that little trick of yours." Although Mia would probably have sent obscenity filled text messages to her phone informing her she was a meddlesome witch instead of simply making it ring. "But ummm." She bit her lip, looking embarrassed now that she was sure she knew the boy's secret. "It doesn't matter to me. Who you are. So, ummm, you don't have to answer. I didn't realize it was personal."

[Logan Hewitte]

[]

In hindsight, the sarcasm was probably not the best choice but he wasn't likely to admit the truth so why not go a head and say it's a zombie if it'll get her off his back. She seemed way too interested for a regular person. People didn't look too deeply into things, at least in Logan's experience.

Logan kind of hunched a little with his head lowered. He knew that despite her saying she would go ask this girl at some place, this was definitely not over. He was so close to giving up but then what would that lead to? He wasn't gonna tell her so giving up was more along the lines or yelling for security and then complaining about being stalked by some crazy girl... Actually, that was starting to sound like a decent option. A second later he stood a little straighter and looked over a copy of Wolverine Origin. He had that one already and it was definitely good, nothing like what happens in that movie they made and sure there was less action but it was still a good read and a good book for his collection.

the girl seemed to be staring at him but Logan ignored her for the moment. She hadn't said anything so he just left her alone and secretly hoped that she might go away. When he caught her staring at his chest, he just looked confused. "What?" he asked, his way of getting an explanation out of her since Logan wasn't the type to come right out and demand he get one immediately.

"Yeah but you're a hot girl in a comic shop, that immediately gives you like ten extra cool points," he said, probably sounding like a total dork in the process but he threw a compliment her way so maybe that would even it out a bit. He didn't really care about being cool anyway, Logan knew what he was. he like sci fi and comic books and video games. That was him and he wasn't about to change anytime soon.

Logan raised an eyebrow at her explanation. Oh great, he reminds her of some girl, that can't be good, right? "Wow, thanks," he said sarcastically. What she said sounded like a bit of an insult but there was no venom in his words, he didn't take it too seriously since it wasn't what she meant.

"Trick?" he asked, not picking up on what she mean. He was being subtle with the phantom phone rings being he didn't want to out himself and his strange techno gift. Subtly was the key and yeah, maybe breaking into a government database only to write 'lol aliens!' on the schematics of a circular spaceship-like craft they were developing was probably not a good idea but he was 15 and he took it down before they could get all crazy about it. Either way, he had grown up a lot since then.

Logan looked at her for a second. Did this mean that he was finally free? How come he didn't feel triumph at his apparent success? Could it be that he felt a little guilty about being so secretive and all? Nahh... No way... Okay, maybe a little. Logan sighed, a sign that he was giving in before actually explaining. "It's just parts for something I'm working on," He told her. That would probably do for now. He wanted to build something like Cobalt but with a face cause at least when it spoke, it's mouth would move and that'd just be way more fun to deal with. Plus he could show it off to Jared would be thoroughly impressed and then Logan liked it when his friends were impressed by the things he did.

[Ginny Campbell]

((ooooh. Oops. I read it as sarcasm/desperation to get rid of her, anyway. haha.))

Ginny raised one hand to her mouth, hiding a snicker. "Nice try." Maybe that was why most comic shops seemed hostile; it wasn't that she was a girl, it was that she was hot. Or rather, that she was blonde and wore makeup. That wouldn't surprise her; the other engineering students seemed to feel that this was offensive to them (particularly the other young women) so it stood to reason the comic fans would have a similar outlook on life. She simply looked too much like their arch-enemies this way.

Maybe she should dye her hair black. She grinned at that thought; her dad's reaction alone would make that worth it. Then again, she really liked her hair its current color, and she imagined that black hair would make her look goth. Definitely not a look she would be interested in pulling off long term.

"Sorry, but I'm totally not cool." She drew her attention back to the topic at hand; as flattering as his comment was, it simply wasn't true. "Can anyone say Lord of the Rings convention? Or engineering student?" Or Redwall and its talking animals, skanking at concerts, owning her cousins at Super Mario Brothers....Nope, she didn't think she fit the conventional definition of the word cool.

He seemed baffled by her accusation, and she sighed. Had she been too subtle? That was a rare occurrence.

"Yes, trick." She snatched her phone from her purse, waving it in his face. "Hi, I'm a phone, when I ring usually there is someone on the other end."

She returned the phone to her purse, rocking back on her heels to scrutinize the boy. "Unless someone is doing machine talky stuff and making it ring." Like Mia. Or Reeve. Or the unknown boy before her.

"Oh. Something you're working on." She repeated. That sounded much less like he had vials of testosterone in his bag (or bottles or whatever it came in; she wasn't sure) and more like he was working on something technological. Which made a lot more sense, if he was a technopath.

"So a project. Projects are pretty cool." She commented, shifting her purse to the other shoulder. "I can get behind projects. Oh, yeah, so, my name is Ginny. I guess you don't want me to keep calling you Mr. Machine...?" She hinted, wondering if he'd tell her his real name or try and come up with a more clever codename.

[Logan Hewitte]

Logan didn't say a word. He knew that the amount of words he spoke was directly linked to his chances of getting into trouble, especially when a girl was involved. Even a compliment didn't seem to make much of a difference but then he hadn't meant it that way at first. To Logan, it was all just simple facts.

"Lord of the rings? Really?," he said in disbelief before shaking his head. Sure, it was a big deal to a lot of people but Logan had never really gotten into that one. "I never really liked it," he said, not really going into what he did like. After all, it wasn't like they were having a proper conversation. She was just investigating that sound and he was just letting them go off on different tangents to avoid getting found out.

It was still great though. She was hot and she seemed to like comics and lord of the rings and stuff so that just made her seem even better but Logan wasn't going to forget that she was still the enemy right now.

"Yeah," Logan said, looking at the phone, before taking it from her hand in one quick motion and flipping it around a couple times like he had never seen one before. Even tapping it lightly against the palm of his hand like that would fix it. "Maybe it's broken," he said, handing it back to her, successfully plastering an oblivious look on his face. He wasn't going to admit what he could do to some random stranger.

Machine talky stuff? Logan had to try so hard not to smirk when she said it. "why would anyone do that?" he said, eyes focused on the comic in order to avoid looking into hers.

"why? what'd you think it was?" he asked, looking back at her, a little curious as to where she had gone with that train of thought. it wasn't like there were too many potential reasons for it.

He smirked when she went on about projects being cool. "Yeah a project. with Popsicle sticks and a lot of glue," he joked as he put the comic back on the shelf.

So she had a name. Ginny.. That was an alright name.. Made him think of harry potter but it was cool, she looked like a Ginny.. That was a weird thing to think about a person's name but then Logan wasn't paying too much attention right now.

"LJ or Logan," he told her. Only his brother, Jared and a couple of other friends called him LJ but it didn't bother him either way, as long as it wasn't Mr. Machine. That name made him feel like he needed a prosthetic arm with a machine gun on it or something. Nope, Logan was definitely just a regular guy.. except for the whole technopath thing.

[Ginny Campbell]

"Aw, really? You're one of those people who think they're too long and detailed, aren't you." She shook her head in mock disappointment, "God, that's a bummer. And here I was hoping for someone to argue the merits of Glorfindel versus Arwen." She gave a mock sigh. She had her father and Estelle for that kind of geeky conversation, anyway. Maybe her father's friend, Rome, if she really needed someone who wasn't her age.

She watched in amusement as he made a show of checking her phone. "Definitely, broken." Did he think she was unaware of the state of her phone? "Why would anyone do what? Talk to machines?" She raised an eyebrow. "Because....they can? because they can take technobabble to whole new levels?" She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. "Some people can do stuff like that, you know." She shrugged, as if she wasn't interested in whether or not he was one of them, but that wasn't true. She was dying for confirmation that her suspicions were correct.

"Yeah? Popsicle sticks and glue?" He was blatantly lying, but she figured she might as well play along. "Hell, those are always the most awesome projects." She winked. She may have been in college, but children's crafts would never get old.

She shrugged uncomfortably at his question. Probably he wouldn't appreciate her suspicions, whether she'd been correct or not -- and at this point she was thinking probably not.

"Uhhhhh." She supplied helpfully. "Yeah, nothing, really. Was just curious. It's not everyday someone's bag makes noise, you know. Well, unless you have some funky ring tone. That could totally be it." She shrugged again, offering him a smile. "And anyway, I was bored. You and your bag were here." That was honest, at least.

"So Logan. What kind of projects with Popsicle sticks and glue are you making? Trying to recreate the Bat cave? I hope it's in miniature. If there's anything I learned from the three little pigs it's that sticks don't make good construction materials."

[Logan Hewitte]

"Nah it's not that," Logan admitted. The stereotypes didn't always work. People were people and they had different interests and likes and dislikes. "I just like more sci fi and less fantasy," he explained. More future and less elves was what he preferred but from time to time he would watch a fantasy movie with dwarfs and orcs.. Course LARPing and going to renaissance faires were cool cause they had knights and sword fights and a bunch of old timey alcoholic drinks and festivities to partake in.

He smiled when she spoke. "Arwen's hot," he said, he may not have bothered to read the books but he did watch the movies at least. Still, he had absolutely no idea who this Glorfindel person even was but that didn't seem to matter right now.

"Oh, you like technobabble?" he asked, looking interested but faking it a little, only the smirk was genuine. "Cause I can go on and on about memristor-based fuzzy neural networks and genetic algorithm problem solving," he told her, "And don't even get me started on heuristic multi-lingual translators," he said, like he was talking about very real things.. which he was. After all, his dad went to MIT so he didn't simply have the technopath ability, he actually understood most if not all aspects of it. All these things were going to be incorporated into the monkey in his backpack and hopefully with a few new improvements it won't be as crazy as Hannibal Cobalt, the blue truck that seems intent on experimenting on meta-humans.. Something definitely went wrong with the artificial intelligence in that one.

"So the x-men are real?" he asked, looking at her like this was some conspiracy theory that he was suddenly interested in. He was just messing with her of course. Logan didn't want to have to admit anything to anyone he barely even knew but if she managed to last through a whole conversation then maybe he could see her as a friend.

"Yeah, I might even get some sharpies and decorate them," he said with his faux excitement before laughing a little and shaking his head and how she was just playing along with it. He knew he would probably end up going to far and just annoy her after a while but that time hadn't come yet.

"I do have a cool ringtone but my phone's in my pocket so that wouldn't work," he told her. He nodded when she said that she had been bored and that he had just been there.

"the bat cave? That's a great idea," he told her, and it actually was too. He was half-tempted to try and make it though a virtual recreation was way easier to do, for him at least. He knew that she probably wouldn't tolerate this kind of distraction for too long so he figured it was a good time to be more honest.

"It's actually got more to do with quantum electromagnetic vortex hard drives than popsicle sticks," he admitted, looking back up at her to see what she might say. At least she seemed to have forgotten about the robot baby chimp for now.

[Robbie Wilkes]

Of all places, the comic bookstore was not a place Robbie frequented. He passed by it plenty of times. But he never went in. It was Estelle's territory. The reason why he never went in was because he never actually felt the appeal of reading things with pictorial distractions. He liked reading, sure. He liked absorbing words and making his own graphic presentation of what was happening. He'd tried reading them, God knows how many times Estelle had shoved a comic book in his face but he just couldn't quite get into it like she did.

But that didn't mean he would say no to his best friend in the entire universe when she asked if he could accompany her to said store. Especially not when she promised she would pay for hot chocolate later. So off they went with Robbie glowing with the promise of hot chocolate and Estelle glowing with...something else. Either way, they were both happy to be out of the school compounds.

Arriving at the comic bookstore, Robbie's eyes went straight to one blond girl who was talking to a rather familiar looking boy. "Florie, does that guy go to Hammel? Should we go say hi? We should go say hi!" And without waiting for Estelle's answer, the blond boy dragged his companion over to intrude on the obviously interesting conversation they were having.

More interested in the girl, Robbie pushed Estelle to the guy while he greeted the girl. "What's cooking, good-looking. And hey man. Your bag is talking to you." Robbie looked down at the boy's plastic bag and then looked back up at him with a big smile. Which he then directed to the blond girl. "How you doin'?"

[OOC: Hope I'm not interrupting ^^]

[Estelle Flores]

Yay comic store time! It was true, Estelle’s forte really was science fiction and fantasy, but she was also was an enthusiastic buyer of comics. Especially the whole line of Star Trek comics. Excitement! Robbie hadn’t been all that enthusiastic to go with her, but she’d wheedled him into coming with her with the promise of chocolate. That always worked. So the two hopped over to the mall with the comic store in sight. Maybe they would even have the little Lord of the Rings figurines, but she would only have enough money to have either a figuring or a book. And then some hard decisions would have to be made.

Estelle was about ready to go into full on Geek Mode when Robbie spotted two people talking and made a beeline straight for them. “Um… Wha—” Estelle spluttered as he dragged her along. Truthfully, she didn’t recognize either of those people and it was probably pretty rude of them to go barging into their conversation. But before she could dig her heels in and stop him, they were already there and Robbie was trying to put the moves on some older blonde girl. Already. Estelle rolled her eyes, a grin stretching across her face. “Hi, sorry. We didn’t mean to disturb you.” She laughed a little awkwardly and tried to think of a way to tell Robbie to stop drooling over the blonde girl without making it sound like they were dating. She’d had a little more than enough of that particular assumption.

Instead she settled on, “Sorry, he’s not properly housebroken.” She grinned sheepishly at both of them, “I’m Estelle, this gentleman here is Robbie. It’s nice to meet you.”