Instructor Watanabe
   
  

 /===================( - Paulownia Mall - Club Escapade - )===================\ 
|                                                                              |
|  Open only at night in Paulownia Mall, Club Escapade is a favored place for  |
| adults to gather and meet after a hard day's work. One part dance floor, one |
| part bar, this is just as good a place to unwind as it is to drop off sleazy |
| pickup lines.                                                                |
|  Blue velvet is everywhere, the most predominant color aside from splotches  |
| of red among some seats and the small bar. The dance floor is indicated by a |
| ring of blue lights surrounding the 'Escapade' logo in red. A stage, rarely  |
| used, is set up for performers. Red and blue wires can be seen all around    |
| the stage, and it is advised one stays back from them. A staircase leads up  |
| to a small lounge on the second floor. A few tables and two red sofas, one   |
| long, the other a mere two seater are set up. This is usually reserved for   |
| parties, although loners and surly sorts like to go up there for the         |
| seclusion from the noise down below.                                         |
|  For being a 'grown-up' place, the establishment seems to be okay with       |
| underaged people being present as long as they don't cause trouble. This is  |
| commonplace enough that there is some consideration over whether or not      |
| they'll even be serving alcohol in the near future. As of now, the bartender |
| is quite good at mixing drinks... but his help is not very good at getting   |
| the right drinks to the people who ordered them.                             |
|===============================( - Players - )================================|

|===============================( - Objects - )================================|

|================================( - Exits - )=================================|
| Out <O>:                 Port Island - Paulownia Mall                        |
 \============================================================================/
Club Escapade: Teenagers not allowed, except when they are. Which is most of the time, thanks to the lax owner.

Fumiya is there tonight, dancing his worries away. And his troubles. And his grief (over Michael Jackson, six months now). But mostly he's just dancing for the sake of it.

Lots of people are staring.

He's in his full neons, no black or grey colors tonight. A few more greens than usual to hold onto that festive feeling, even though Christmas is a few days passed. But, darnit, he wants to cling to the Christmas memories he never really got to get (besides catching on fire at the SEES dorm). Eventually he winds down and takes a seat to cool off and catch his breath.

The two or three girls he immediately hits on turn him down just as fast.


Aigis comes by Club Escapade from time to time in order to 'observe'. Teenagers are amongst the world's most interesting people in terms of varied activity and also illogical activity and, perhaps, even self destructive activity. But the important thing is that there is a lot to see, and Aigis--Aigis likes to watch.

She comes in through the entrance, dressed in her casual wear--she has to wear clothes if she goes outside, obviously--ane she has found that it is a mite inappropriate tow ear a school uniform every day. Even if she likes its regal formaliy.

She arrives just in time to see Fumiya get shot down. She watches this, fascinated.


Fumiya would never call it 'shot down', more that 'she couldn't appreciate his grooviness'. And thus shot him down.

Illogical and self-destructive activity is the teenager's specialty, and while Fumiya has been careful to mostly avoid the self-destructive habits, he has engaged in plenty of illogical ones. They're just so darn fun. He's about to stand up and re-engage in MORE when he spots Aigis out of the corner of his eye. Oh crap, how long was she watching?

"Yo, Aigis-babe!" He calls out over the music, standing up to walk over to her as non-chalantly as he can. "What brings you here tonight?" He asks, drawing attention away from his own activities, particularly his lack of luck with the other girls here.

'The other girls', huh? It's funny how he can briefly forget she's a robot when she's not looking like one. Despite her verbal flubs and little etiquette mistakes here and there (and who is Fumiya to criticize over improper etiquette?), she's still one of the girls. Only made of metal. Silicon. Plastic. ...whatever.


Kirijonium!

"I have come to observe." Aigis says, this is a common activity for her. So common that it's barely an activity and more a state of being. She seems to accept chatting it up with Fumiya as an alternative. She likes Fumiya. Somehow. It might be the Junpei waves he sort of gives off. She smiles at the neon dude. "Though I was not expecting to see you here." She approaches so Fumiya doesn't have to walk ALL the way. She looks towards the girl who just rejected Fumiya, then back to the Fumiya.

"What happened?" She asks.


And then Aigis says stuff like this which makes it hard to forget she's a robot. "Observe? O-oh... ok." Fumiya scratches the back of his head. "Sayin' it like that is a little too... on-the-nose, Aigis-babe. Maybe you should say something like 'hanging out'. I mean, then the ones that know you will still get the picture, and anyone who doesn't won't think it's a little weird. Any dude who hears a girl say she came to a dance club to 'observe' will think she's a total square, at best." Fumiya offers.

Then Aigis brings up Fumiya's babe-hunting troubles, and he laughs nervously. "That? That was nothing. Ahem." He fake-coughs, to give him an extra second to think. "Just, uh... just a babe who clearly had her priorities messed up." If she wouldn't give Fumiya the time of day then, clearly, something must be wrong with her.

"So how long have you been... hanging out at places like this? You got a favorite spot?"


"A favorite spot?" Aigis asks, "To obs--e--'hanging out'?" Okay, she is having a little trouble here, she squints her eyes and wrinkles her nose in deep throught, obviously choosing these expressions to indicate that yes she is trying even if, perhaps, by her tone it seems that she isn't.

"I am ... not a square." She settles. "I am not even a cube. Very well, I will 'hang out' instead."

She pauses. "It means the same thing?" She doesn't sound ENTIRELY certain. "Hanging out that is. Are there other words for it?"

She frowns. "I thought hanging out was participating rather than watching."


"Yeah. Everyone has their favorite spots to hang out. Even if ya don't think of them like that, where do you keep returning to?" It's a pretty sly way to ask a girl where she likes to go, even if Aigis might not be the most ideal person to practice on. "Ah..." He nearly corrects her on the 'square' thing, but decides not to. If she ever looks into the origins of the slang she'll probably figure it out.

When she questions him on the meaning of hanging out, he frowns. "Well, yeah, I guess. But it can also mean just watching, and most teenagers really won't say they're just there to 'watch' things, so there really ain't many ways to say it."

He taps his chin thoughtfully for a few moments. "Maybe, if you really wanted to insist you were just there to watch, you could say you just wanted to 'check things out'. Um... but I'd stick with 'hanging out' for places you go to a lot. Once you've gone somewhere often enough you're not just observing, even if you're not actually out there dancing, y'know?"


"Ah, I see." Aigis says, "Thank you for this instruction, sensei." She bows, formally, to Fumiya. She ponders Fumiya's question as she straightens. "I come here fairly frequently, the shrine, a few places in Inaba, the dorms, sometimes Junes and Lucky Seven. Those seem to be the places I spend the most of my time."

NOW YOU CAN FIND AIGIS ON YOUR OWN TO START SOCIAL LINK ADVENTURES WITH HER. MAYBE. SHE KIND OF MOVES AROUND A LOT.

"I am told I would be great at 'doing the robot'." A pause, a longer one, and then. "Where do you participate in 'hanging out'?"


"Huh? Oh no, no..." Fumiya says, nervously, waving his hands a little. "You don't have to thank me for stuff like that." He chuckles, and assumes the sensei bit was a touch of humor, which was good. It's great that she has a grasp of comedy. Unless she was /serious/, in which case Fumiya being an instructor for anything is kind of worrying.

But he certainly mentally notes down those locations. For future reference. I mean, you never know.

Then he laughs abruptly at 'the robot'. "Why am I not surprised?" He sighs, shaking his head. Someone telling a robot that they'd be good at the robot, did they think they were clever? "Well, the robot is kind of a stiff dance, got popular in America after the age of cheesey sci-fi movies, I think. Let's just say their vision of robots compared to... the real thing was a little off." Though those old serials were pretty nifty. "Most people nowadays dance a little more frantically."


"Oh," Aigis says. "Are you certain? It seems to be the polite thing to do." She does not clarify whether Fumiya-Sensei was a joke or not. Her impassive face may suggest otherwise, but aigis's humor has always been rather quiet as it stands, very neutral, almost as if she was hesitant to step onto the territory of becoming a true humorist.

"I suppose because it is the sort of obvious comment people make." Aigis says, hesitates again, and then coughs into her fist--certainly an intentional act--"My apologies. That was rhetorical. Robotics was likely not as advanced then as it is today, so I do not blame them for being off with regards to speculation."

She does some hang jerking motions similar to the 'robot' dance.


"Yeah, yeah, it's fine." Fumiya assures. "I mean, I guess it's better safe than sorry, but not everyone needs to be formal. Once you know they're more comfortable with being informal, you can lighten up a bit, you know?"

Fumiya suddenly realizes he's spent all this time helping Aigis out with her interactions. Geez, maybe 'sensei' isn't too far off. It's certainly not what he intended when he started chatting her up, but he just couldn't help sticking his nose into it whenever he sees her acting so stiff.

"Ah.. ha ha, that's pretty good, Aigis." Fumiya comments on her dancing, before walking out onto the stage himself. "But dancing is all about feeling the music, and the rhythym of everyone around you. And, in my case, ignoring that and doing my own thing." He says with a smirk, and a wag of his finger, before interupting everyone currently dancing on the floor with his own interpretation of 'Smooth Criminal', which contrasts harshly with the higher-tempo techno currently playing, but it doesn't stop Fumiya in the slightest. Even the jeers don't bother him.

The thrown objects he nimbly avoids.


Aigis is always pretty stiff, but sometimes she is stiff in a bizarrely fluid way, in a manner, unfortunately, not too unlike doing the robot. Her hand twists to the side as an object is thrown. She looks towards the source, but fails to find it. Once the third object is chucked, she snatches it out of the air and frowns.

"This is dangerous. Why do people throw objects at you?" She ldoesn't let the object, whatever it is, drop because it's a dancefloor. It's dangerous!

"Hinata-San told me about dancing with Dance Dance Revolution so I had practiced. But it seems real dancing is different."


Fumiya danced crazy! And continues on, eventually causing some of the crowd to warm up to him, if only slightly. At least the foriegn-object-flingers cease their protests, though they still don't like his intrusion and 80s-ness.

Finally he walks off the floor, allowing everyone else space to continue their own moves, and he just grins and shrugs at Aigis. "Haters gonna hate." Is all he says regarding the objects, as if it's all that needs to be said.

"DDR huh? Yeah that's... kind of dancing. I guess in the same way when you're playing a video game and shooting people you're 'kind of' operating a gun, I guess." He scratches his head, he's never been too into the non-rhythym-based video games.

"It's not really the same as dancing, though." He says, taking a seat at a nearby table, and nudging a seperate chair with his foot to allow Aigis to sit as well. "DDR dancing is more about memorizing the songs and being able to react to... um... like, a limited set of commands. Real dancing ain't like that, you gotta be able to go with the flow. Change and adjust with the music and the people around you. They ain't going by any script, so it's a lot different than DDR." Humm... "Do you, like, practice fighting..." He glances around to make sure no one's listening. "Shadows and stuff? Well it's kinda like the difference between practice and training, and the real thing."


Aigis smiles. It has taken her a while but she thinks she knows what it is about Fumiya that she likes. beyond the Junpeiness, that is. Aigis is very fond of Junepi as well. It's eerie because the two are nothing alike but, well, incompetence can be forgiven perhaps but cruelty...cruelty, less so, right?

"'I see, so up to now I have merely been practicing--I do not have proper experience." Aigis says, suddenly feeling like dancing is the one thing she is not programmed to do. It's so easy in machines. You just time it properly. Easy, when you are a machine too. But 'go with the flow'? woah that's crazy talk.

"You do not let people bother you much, do you." Aigis says.


"Well.... practice makes perfect. You still get experience with practice, after all." Fumiya says, not wanting to discourage her from practicing. "Just.. not as much, I guess? Or a different kind, at least. It's kinda tough to explain..." Surprisingly tough, actually.

Incidentally, Fumiya totally needs to spend more time hanging out with Junpei. The only bro in Inaba is Yosuke... and he's Yosuke.

Fumiya shrugs again. "Nope, I gave up on caring about that a long time ago. Sometimes I wonder if I should start caring again. Ha ha ha..." Truthfully, he HAS starting being a little more conscious of that, but only of people closer to him. The faceless strangers surrounding the dance floor he could really care less about.

It's about there that Fumiya realizes the time. He's spent far longer talking about philosophically junk than he intended. Whoa. "Whoa." He echoes his thoughts. "It's later than I thought. I should probably head out. I'm not sure what my folks are doing for New Year's yet, I'm still trying to squeeze out of it so I can hang out with pals. Maybe I'll drop by the SEES dorm if you guys are doing something." He says, standing from his chair and straightening his shirt.

"See ya around, Aigis-babe. Maybe you should try cutting loose on the dance floor sometime. My best advice is not to worry too much about what strangers think, most of them won't even remember you the next day if you do something stupid." If you impress them, well, that's another thing.


"No," Aigis says, "I do not enjoy such conflicts. While on certain levels, it is important to be bothered, I think someone disliking your dances--and not being bothered by that--I think that is alright. Perhaps I am articulating poorly. I am not entirely certain how to express it... but I am glad you do not seek out conflict--or get into conflict easily. I like that about you."

She pauses, lowers her head, and then adds, "Ah, sorry to keep you from enjoying yourself." She raises her head, "It is nice talking to you. I will...try when I am feeling comfortable. It may be some time before I am able." She didn't mind DDR but she thinks she's less capable on the floor, so to speak.