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Haru sometimes gets coffee at Tim's, when he happens to feel like it on a random morning, or when he needs to be up long enough to finish out a guiding session with June. This morning it's the first thing.
a zanmi is an esper
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come-hold-my-hand
Followfollow, objects retrieved, and then it's Gundam time, snuggling as best she can with her view averted from Mysterious Introvert activities.
come-hold-my-hand
The first episode of Gundam AGE, as summarized by Cara's train of thought
The first episode of Gundam AGE opens with a small green-haired child in a colony being destroyed by !!robot enemies!!1, receiving some handsized mcguffin from the hands of his dying mother, which apparently holds the secret to defeating the "Unknown Enemy". Then he wakes up from the nightmare-memory, has some encounters with his teenage friend trio (him, obvious childhood love interest, vaguely antagonistic mechanic friend), and is testing the mcguffin-derived mobile suit (shockingly called "Gundam") that he built because apparently he's a supergenius. But also the design has been passed down in his family for generations? From back in the past, when people still built mobile suits? (War is over, apparently? Except now the UE is attacking.)
Anyways, predictably, the UE attacks his new home colony, they wreck havoc, he gets in the Gundam, and manages to defeat one of the attacking weird UE mechs (it gets destroyed by its allies after Our Hero disables it, which is interesting!) but there's Still More Danger, and then the episode ends with all the characters we've seen being impressed by and worried for green haired boy genius as he goes after the other bad guys.
1: this is exciting to Cara because she remembers Mags saying that she felt like the hyperfocus on the bleakness of human warfare gets exhausting and whiplash-y as the main tonal focus of mainline Gundam shows, and while Cara did enjoy it as part of how SEED and Destiny were structured, she could see it getting old and wants to see where they're going with this.
She glances over at Haru when it ends. Should she start the second episode?
come-hold-my-hand
"Yeah, I'm fine. I just finished my episode, and wanted to check to see if I should start another." She wiggles against him.
come-hold-my-hand
Which he means, so Cara has to try and figure out her preferences or something uggghhhh.
Well, she isn't feeling particularly restless or under-peopled at the moment (Guiding isn't a social activity but it still feels so much more real than passive cuddles?), and all else being equal, she'd prefer he get more time to do his introvert stuff.
"I'll watch another episode! I want to see where they're going with this." she says, after thinking for ab it.
come-hold-my-hand
Gundam AGE Episode 2, as summarized by Cara's train of thought
In the second episode of Gundam AGE, the space colony is collapsing, and the good guys plan to evacuate everyone to the central core, and then tow it out using the experimental docked warship! This is delightful. They need to steal the docked warship from the sketchy commander who was going to abandon the colony, though, and do this by holding him hostage. The two other teenagers run into this happening and decide to... help, basically.
Meanwhile, greenhair protagonistboy runs into a scared purplehair girl who doesn't talk and also screams "psychic mcguffin space princess" just her entire design. He rescues her and brings her into into his mech cockpit, and then she uses her psychic space princess powers to lead him out of the colony. His weapons doesn't work on the enemy, but it turns out the series gimmick (or at least one of them) is that his Gundam comes with a giant 3d printer/ML alg thingy to manufacture him upgrades at dramatic moments (the titular AGE system). The episode ends with him getting a fancy new 3d printed energy rifle and 1-shotting the scary enemy.
When she finishes, she thinks for a bit, and types up some notes to share with Mags later, maybe
So from a toy commercial standpoint, obviously the AGE System is a cool way for them to have a title mech that changes continuously - kinda what the Impulse Gundam from Destiny had going on but moreso? And it provides a narrative structure where the AGE Gundam gets bullied by the
monsterenemy mech of the week for a while, and then after holding out for a while, gets a cool tool or upgrade to defeat them, which is fun. The UE are neat, Yurin is cute, and the colony evacuation plan is incredible.
How's Haru seem to be doing?
come-hold-my-hand
"Yep! Done with your mysterious introvert book? -would it be okay to shoulder surf your laptop usage, or nah?"
traceless
"I need to know you're doing it lest you see, like, private email or something, so announce yourself, but a lot of it's surfable, right now I'm just doing blog research."
come-hold-my-hand
"Of course! Makes sense. And oooh-" she wraps around him from behind and rests her chin on his shoulder. What's the research?
traceless
He's looking through case studies of various captive monsters! There's one about Cricket on the search results page but he doesn't open that one.
traceless
There's more talking ones but Haru's going to switch over to a tab about a dungeon snake that turns out to have some properties that are inconsistent with being a reptile.
come-hold-my-hand
Ohhh, this is fun! Usually she would chat someone up while doing something like this, and she reserves the right to ask if that's okay if she gets bored, but - actually, she's really enjoying just... watching, and trying to piece together his thought process / work process without saying anything. She'll keep doing this for a while, if no interruptions present themselves.
come-hold-my-hand
Oooooh spreadsheets! Presumably rows are different dungeon monsters, what columns does he have?
traceless
This snake here has no legs (congruent with snake) but it also seems warm blooded (incongruent with both snake and legless lizard); Cricket has a row in the spreadsheet already, and he has a congruent personality and dietary preference but incongruent wings and speaking ability and toxicity response...
come-hold-my-hand
He does indeed have incongruent speaking ability, which also implies incongruent mental faculties!
This is a neat spreadsheet. She'll watch happily for a while longer, and then, when he seems to be at a bit of a lull, ask:
"So - it was actually hard for me to tell yesterday if you were interested in me scoping out a monster zoo nonprofit org? But it would be enrichment for me, if you did."
traceless
"If you want to start doing some groundwork on getting a monster zoo to exist that would be really cool!"
come-hold-my-hand
"To be clear, I will mostly be doing groundwork on getting a team to do that groundwork, and they'd probably need grad student amounts of research stipend to do it? Though actually, I bet it wouldn't be that hard to find a grant to cover it partially... Oh, let me email Prof Meadows, I think she could have a lead on an advisor..."
She pulls out her phone, starts composing, and sends an off a quick email.
"Do you have a pen and paper I can borrow? I want to start writing some stuff down."