(no subject)
OOC: Just in case anyone wonders what in the hell they're talking about later on, Jareth is synesthestic and has assorted forms of crosswiring among some of his senses. Yes, things can taste like purple to him.
<> Jareth's Room - Lv3(#3514RC)
There exists an interesting mix of order and chaos throughout Jareth's room. A large, Middle Eastern-style throw rug with elaborate patterning covers a good part of the standard unicolor carpet underneath. Along one wall, an ornate wood bookcase is neatly arrayed with several shelves of novels and various scientific texts.
Near the bookcase, against the adjoining wall, is a desk filled with a pile or two of papers, many with esoteric scribblings, along with a number of various small electronic parts. There often seems to be something under construction on the desk, or occasionally in a small pile along the nearby floor. At each end of the desk's back shelf is a scale model of an SR-71 Blackbird, facing out towards the room. On the far side of the desk from the bookcase is a small entertainment center, containing a TV, DVD player, and a game system or two. Shelves in the cabinet contain a number of movies and games.
The walls of the room are laid out with several posters, of Einstein, a lightning storm, and various nature scenes. Posters of science seem to be gathered around the desk, while nature surrounds the bed. Also along the walls are painted a number of vines, moving along the walls in smoothly twining randomness. Nothing visibly adorns the ceiling, but when the lights are off and the room is dark, a series of constellations can be seen, painted into their accurate arrangements and positions.
[Exits : [O]ut ]
Tap-tap-tap comes the knock on the door, from a silent and solemn Alyssa Carter. Pyjama clad and in stocking feet, her hair pulled back into a loose and sloppy ponytail, she looks every one of her seventeen years, and then only just. After a moment or two she knocks again, then readjusts the contents of her hands -- a PDA, a small pad of paper, and a pen.
From within the room comes an answering thump of feet along the floor. Jareth can hardly claim being dressed to kill, either, as evidenced when the door swings open a moment later. His stylish attire is made up of t-shirt and sweat pants. Briefly, he regards Alyssa. "Kind of late for selling Girl Scout cookies."
There's a snort, though the sound's awfully empty -- and Alyssa holds up the pad of paper, on which she's penned four words: I need your help.
Even the incorrigible smart mouth has some sense of propriety. Upon seeing the paper, Jareth immediately frowns and moves to beckon Alyssa into the room. "What happened?"
Alyssa finds a place to sit and scribble frantic messages on her pad of paper, the PDA set carefully aside. 'It's a long story,' the paper finally reads, 'but I need you to reprogram this. Do you have my voice on record?'
If hovering can be classified as patient, it's with a patient sort of hovering that Jareth waits, standing alongside to watch in silence. For several moments following the completion of the note, his mouth hangs open in thought just as speechless. "Ah, hell. I'm not sure. I can try and find it, or set something up as best I can." Confused, sympathetic nonetheless, he leans down slightly to examine Alyssa and place a hand on her back. "You okay?"
She sighs, with that hand on her back, and lowers her head for a moment, fingers (pen still entwined in them) rifling through her hair, disrupting the ponytail. Eventually she shrugs and lowers the hand witht he pen, once more scribbling out, 'Long story. Boils down to being mute, now.'
There is little other gesture for a hand so placed other than to rub along in the hopes of giving more comfort. Jareth does so for several moments, staring into some point on the desk. "Jesus. Do you know if's recoverable?" A glance turns his attention to the device, not too distantly familiar, and he reaches for it. "Let me try and get something for you while we talk."
'Surgery,' comes the defeated scrawl, 'and even then they don't know if it's completely recoverable. Sean took me to a doc friend of his, and they checked me all out -- but I'm mute, now.' She twists around to look up at him, and smiles ruefully before flipping to the next page, where she writes 'Aly Carter, literally speechless. Never saw it coming, did you?'
Another furl of the eyebrows answers this, longer than before and more somber. "Ah, Jesus." In spite of himself, he can't help but share the humorless smile. His hand falls from Alyssa's back to rub helplessly at the back of his head. While he does, he fixes his attention on the PDA, stirring it to activity. "This might take a little while." After staring blandly at the device for several moments, he glances toward her again. "Did they find what's..." and his hand twirls, seeking the word, "...blocking it or whatever?"
'I didn't get the technical version,' the paper pronounces, 'but it's basically extra skin blocking my vocal cords from working, but not messing with my breathing.' Alyssa puts down the pen and stands, padding over to watch the PDA with interested, hopeful eyes.
Amid the manipulations, Jareth spares enough attention to shake his head. "That's screwed up." Any intensity one might expect in the statement is largely absent, devoted as Jareth is to his workings within the PDA. His eyes flick toward her briefly even so. As for the screen, what does flash by now and then flickers by just long enough to indicate that it is in fact there, too fast for detail in the outpouring of data Jareth inspires.
Despite the speed of information moving, Alyssa still watches avidly -- there's not much else she can do, really. She starts to say something, then closes her mouth and bites her bottom lip as the realization that she /can't/ once again hits home. Rather than stand there or cry stupidly, she wanders back toward the desk and paper.
For a time longer, Jareth continues to work. The combined focus of effort and lack of ability to do much more to help leave him helplessly silent. He glances to her every so often, moving to take a place of his own leaning against the desk. Eventually, he lowers the PDA and looks up from it. "Well, it's a start. It's not like we would have with a better sample, but it's something for now until we improve things."
'Is it my voice?' she asks, without actually looking up from the paper.
After a moment she stops and scribbles that out, replacing it with 'Is it at least not Sean, the Professor, or Charlton Heston?'
Rather sheepishly, Jareth turns up his hands. "As best I can approximate it on short notice. I can try to improve it as we work with it, but I'm only human." For a moment, he not quite stares, thoughtful and debating with himself. "I could try and set it to Al Pacino, if you prefer."
It looks like Alyssa's considering this, but at the mention of Al Pachino, she starts slightly and holds up her hands, then shakes them back and forth. Quite alright, thank /you/. After another moment she holds out her hands for the PDA, and raises her eyebrows questioningly.
Look closely and perhaps see the dark little gargoyle of gallows humor, perched on Jareth's shoulder and whispering in his ear. "You sure? How about Rick Moranis? Gilbert Gottfried? You might be popular sounding like Jack Nicholson." An acerbic smile flickers out its brief existence, and then he extends the PDA to Alyssa with no further added commentary.
Alyssa flashes Jareth a slightly agressive smile, then curls the PDA to her chest with a sigh. She blinks down at it for a moment, then slowly, carefully types out, "This is a test. I repeat, this is only a test -- hello, my name is Alyssa Carter." The voice is accurate enough, though slightly flat -- closer to the quality of a voice in memory than to one actually being heard in real time. But at least it's hers. "Thank you, Jareth." There are tears in her eyes, and so she looks quicky away.
The next smile that Jareth displays dissolves the black wit into a degree of quiet satisfaction. He says nothing while he watches, lacking the need. This smile, too, scatters into nothing as Alyssa turns away. With little else to offer, he leans down to fold an arm across her shoulders, squeezing just briefly. "We'll put you back together. Don't worry."
"Like Humpty Dumpty?" Alyssa's stand-in asks, as the girl herself twists in her chair, turning so she can wrap both her arms around the one of Jareth's that was across her shoulders. Eventually, though, humor shines its way through and she disengages one arm and reaches over to type out, "So, this is how I sound to you -- what's that mean I taste like?"
Another smile appears briefly while Jareth submits to the grasping contact. "Just stop sitting on that damn wall." Still bent slightly as he is, he answers the question first with a blink. "I hadn't paid attention to that. ...Sugar and spice and everything nice?"
Alyssa just wrinkles her nose, and taps out "Cop-out."
In a shining example of maturity to be emulated for generations to come, Jareth sticks out his tongue. "Well, like I said, I never really thought about it, so it's a bit hard to describe on the spot. You know how messed up things are in here." Fingers wave at his head, and he focuses on an apparently helpful spot on the wall for a moment. "I'd say... minty."
Rolled eyes are expressive enough, though she doesn't bother to type anything out at first. When he finally gives her a difinitive answer, she wrinkles up her nose again, and mouthes 'Minty?'
Jareth's hands turn upward and a twist of his mouth offers helplessness. "For lack of a better term. Some people feel like an airy sort of gel, or metallic, or..." His shoulders hoist fractionally. "And you end up with minty freshness."
"Wonderful," quoth the RoboAlyssa, "I'm freaking toothpaste." She stands, though, grinning up at Jareth. "Thanks for the help -- it's nice to sort of have my voice back, even if it's not for real."
Supplying a hmmph to express his responding opinion, Jareth crosses his arms and aims his nose farther skyward. "You could just as easily be mint chocolate. If you're toothpaste, though,, shh before I have the urge to brush my teeth." This said, he drops his arms to resume more common demeanor and return the smile. "We'll get you up and babbling again. Meanwhile, you can get the TV easily by having Moses demand it."
"If I /were/ mint chocolate, would you be tempted to eat me like a girl scout cookie?" Apparently Alyssa's sense of humor is returning, such as it is. "...I still have all the commandments memorized. Was fun to do 'em as Moses."
The transition of the majority of color out of Jareth's face would surely do a chameleon proud, to say nothing of the bugging of his eyes. The draining color also takes any power of speech with it for several moments. Finally, he blinks, smacks a hand to his face to rub vigorously, then jam fingers into his ears with eyes firmly shut. "La la la la. Can't hear the innuendo. La la la." Several moments later, one eye cracks open. "At least you didn't suggest opening you like halves of an Oreo." The eye shuts. "LA LA LA LA."
"But you did!" The RoboAlyssa informs, though from the expression on the girl's face it's more likely that the sentence would have been crowed, rather than simply spoken. Silent laughter shakes her, and she stands -- with PDA in hand -- and starts for the door.
Alyssa, now being mute, seeks help regaining some approximation of her voice. Both seriousness and laughing ensue.
<> Jareth's Room - Lv3(#3514RC)
There exists an interesting mix of order and chaos throughout Jareth's room. A large, Middle Eastern-style throw rug with elaborate patterning covers a good part of the standard unicolor carpet underneath. Along one wall, an ornate wood bookcase is neatly arrayed with several shelves of novels and various scientific texts.
Near the bookcase, against the adjoining wall, is a desk filled with a pile or two of papers, many with esoteric scribblings, along with a number of various small electronic parts. There often seems to be something under construction on the desk, or occasionally in a small pile along the nearby floor. At each end of the desk's back shelf is a scale model of an SR-71 Blackbird, facing out towards the room. On the far side of the desk from the bookcase is a small entertainment center, containing a TV, DVD player, and a game system or two. Shelves in the cabinet contain a number of movies and games.
The walls of the room are laid out with several posters, of Einstein, a lightning storm, and various nature scenes. Posters of science seem to be gathered around the desk, while nature surrounds the bed. Also along the walls are painted a number of vines, moving along the walls in smoothly twining randomness. Nothing visibly adorns the ceiling, but when the lights are off and the room is dark, a series of constellations can be seen, painted into their accurate arrangements and positions.
[Exits : [O]ut ]
Tap-tap-tap comes the knock on the door, from a silent and solemn Alyssa Carter. Pyjama clad and in stocking feet, her hair pulled back into a loose and sloppy ponytail, she looks every one of her seventeen years, and then only just. After a moment or two she knocks again, then readjusts the contents of her hands -- a PDA, a small pad of paper, and a pen.
From within the room comes an answering thump of feet along the floor. Jareth can hardly claim being dressed to kill, either, as evidenced when the door swings open a moment later. His stylish attire is made up of t-shirt and sweat pants. Briefly, he regards Alyssa. "Kind of late for selling Girl Scout cookies."
There's a snort, though the sound's awfully empty -- and Alyssa holds up the pad of paper, on which she's penned four words: I need your help.
Even the incorrigible smart mouth has some sense of propriety. Upon seeing the paper, Jareth immediately frowns and moves to beckon Alyssa into the room. "What happened?"
Alyssa finds a place to sit and scribble frantic messages on her pad of paper, the PDA set carefully aside. 'It's a long story,' the paper finally reads, 'but I need you to reprogram this. Do you have my voice on record?'
If hovering can be classified as patient, it's with a patient sort of hovering that Jareth waits, standing alongside to watch in silence. For several moments following the completion of the note, his mouth hangs open in thought just as speechless. "Ah, hell. I'm not sure. I can try and find it, or set something up as best I can." Confused, sympathetic nonetheless, he leans down slightly to examine Alyssa and place a hand on her back. "You okay?"
She sighs, with that hand on her back, and lowers her head for a moment, fingers (pen still entwined in them) rifling through her hair, disrupting the ponytail. Eventually she shrugs and lowers the hand witht he pen, once more scribbling out, 'Long story. Boils down to being mute, now.'
There is little other gesture for a hand so placed other than to rub along in the hopes of giving more comfort. Jareth does so for several moments, staring into some point on the desk. "Jesus. Do you know if's recoverable?" A glance turns his attention to the device, not too distantly familiar, and he reaches for it. "Let me try and get something for you while we talk."
'Surgery,' comes the defeated scrawl, 'and even then they don't know if it's completely recoverable. Sean took me to a doc friend of his, and they checked me all out -- but I'm mute, now.' She twists around to look up at him, and smiles ruefully before flipping to the next page, where she writes 'Aly Carter, literally speechless. Never saw it coming, did you?'
Another furl of the eyebrows answers this, longer than before and more somber. "Ah, Jesus." In spite of himself, he can't help but share the humorless smile. His hand falls from Alyssa's back to rub helplessly at the back of his head. While he does, he fixes his attention on the PDA, stirring it to activity. "This might take a little while." After staring blandly at the device for several moments, he glances toward her again. "Did they find what's..." and his hand twirls, seeking the word, "...blocking it or whatever?"
'I didn't get the technical version,' the paper pronounces, 'but it's basically extra skin blocking my vocal cords from working, but not messing with my breathing.' Alyssa puts down the pen and stands, padding over to watch the PDA with interested, hopeful eyes.
Amid the manipulations, Jareth spares enough attention to shake his head. "That's screwed up." Any intensity one might expect in the statement is largely absent, devoted as Jareth is to his workings within the PDA. His eyes flick toward her briefly even so. As for the screen, what does flash by now and then flickers by just long enough to indicate that it is in fact there, too fast for detail in the outpouring of data Jareth inspires.
Despite the speed of information moving, Alyssa still watches avidly -- there's not much else she can do, really. She starts to say something, then closes her mouth and bites her bottom lip as the realization that she /can't/ once again hits home. Rather than stand there or cry stupidly, she wanders back toward the desk and paper.
For a time longer, Jareth continues to work. The combined focus of effort and lack of ability to do much more to help leave him helplessly silent. He glances to her every so often, moving to take a place of his own leaning against the desk. Eventually, he lowers the PDA and looks up from it. "Well, it's a start. It's not like we would have with a better sample, but it's something for now until we improve things."
'Is it my voice?' she asks, without actually looking up from the paper.
After a moment she stops and scribbles that out, replacing it with 'Is it at least not Sean, the Professor, or Charlton Heston?'
Rather sheepishly, Jareth turns up his hands. "As best I can approximate it on short notice. I can try to improve it as we work with it, but I'm only human." For a moment, he not quite stares, thoughtful and debating with himself. "I could try and set it to Al Pacino, if you prefer."
It looks like Alyssa's considering this, but at the mention of Al Pachino, she starts slightly and holds up her hands, then shakes them back and forth. Quite alright, thank /you/. After another moment she holds out her hands for the PDA, and raises her eyebrows questioningly.
Look closely and perhaps see the dark little gargoyle of gallows humor, perched on Jareth's shoulder and whispering in his ear. "You sure? How about Rick Moranis? Gilbert Gottfried? You might be popular sounding like Jack Nicholson." An acerbic smile flickers out its brief existence, and then he extends the PDA to Alyssa with no further added commentary.
Alyssa flashes Jareth a slightly agressive smile, then curls the PDA to her chest with a sigh. She blinks down at it for a moment, then slowly, carefully types out, "This is a test. I repeat, this is only a test -- hello, my name is Alyssa Carter." The voice is accurate enough, though slightly flat -- closer to the quality of a voice in memory than to one actually being heard in real time. But at least it's hers. "Thank you, Jareth." There are tears in her eyes, and so she looks quicky away.
The next smile that Jareth displays dissolves the black wit into a degree of quiet satisfaction. He says nothing while he watches, lacking the need. This smile, too, scatters into nothing as Alyssa turns away. With little else to offer, he leans down to fold an arm across her shoulders, squeezing just briefly. "We'll put you back together. Don't worry."
"Like Humpty Dumpty?" Alyssa's stand-in asks, as the girl herself twists in her chair, turning so she can wrap both her arms around the one of Jareth's that was across her shoulders. Eventually, though, humor shines its way through and she disengages one arm and reaches over to type out, "So, this is how I sound to you -- what's that mean I taste like?"
Another smile appears briefly while Jareth submits to the grasping contact. "Just stop sitting on that damn wall." Still bent slightly as he is, he answers the question first with a blink. "I hadn't paid attention to that. ...Sugar and spice and everything nice?"
Alyssa just wrinkles her nose, and taps out "Cop-out."
In a shining example of maturity to be emulated for generations to come, Jareth sticks out his tongue. "Well, like I said, I never really thought about it, so it's a bit hard to describe on the spot. You know how messed up things are in here." Fingers wave at his head, and he focuses on an apparently helpful spot on the wall for a moment. "I'd say... minty."
Rolled eyes are expressive enough, though she doesn't bother to type anything out at first. When he finally gives her a difinitive answer, she wrinkles up her nose again, and mouthes 'Minty?'
Jareth's hands turn upward and a twist of his mouth offers helplessness. "For lack of a better term. Some people feel like an airy sort of gel, or metallic, or..." His shoulders hoist fractionally. "And you end up with minty freshness."
"Wonderful," quoth the RoboAlyssa, "I'm freaking toothpaste." She stands, though, grinning up at Jareth. "Thanks for the help -- it's nice to sort of have my voice back, even if it's not for real."
Supplying a hmmph to express his responding opinion, Jareth crosses his arms and aims his nose farther skyward. "You could just as easily be mint chocolate. If you're toothpaste, though,, shh before I have the urge to brush my teeth." This said, he drops his arms to resume more common demeanor and return the smile. "We'll get you up and babbling again. Meanwhile, you can get the TV easily by having Moses demand it."
"If I /were/ mint chocolate, would you be tempted to eat me like a girl scout cookie?" Apparently Alyssa's sense of humor is returning, such as it is. "...I still have all the commandments memorized. Was fun to do 'em as Moses."
The transition of the majority of color out of Jareth's face would surely do a chameleon proud, to say nothing of the bugging of his eyes. The draining color also takes any power of speech with it for several moments. Finally, he blinks, smacks a hand to his face to rub vigorously, then jam fingers into his ears with eyes firmly shut. "La la la la. Can't hear the innuendo. La la la." Several moments later, one eye cracks open. "At least you didn't suggest opening you like halves of an Oreo." The eye shuts. "LA LA LA LA."
"But you did!" The RoboAlyssa informs, though from the expression on the girl's face it's more likely that the sentence would have been crowed, rather than simply spoken. Silent laughter shakes her, and she stands -- with PDA in hand -- and starts for the door.
Alyssa, now being mute, seeks help regaining some approximation of her voice. Both seriousness and laughing ensue.