Min-ho's Room

[Min Ho]

A small, empty plate lay on the floor by the foot of the bed, the crumbs and smudges of cream cheese almost all that was left of the bagel that had been Min-ho Lau's breakfast. She had been fairly cunning in getting down to the kitchen right before the breakfast rush had begun and then carried her food and coffee right back up to her room where Tetris had been paused. It wasn't so much that she didn't like seeing other people in the morning and chatting, catching up or whatever it was just... well she wasn't a 'chatty' sort of woman, not with the pack at large anyway. She was working on it, but it was hard even after all this time and with those she didn't know well it was that much more difficult to come off as casual.

That and the moon always made her feel drained; even at her age she got into a lethargic, snappy rut and even changing out of her pyjamas seemed like it needed a ridiculous amount of effort. As it was she'd just tossed a clean tee-shirt on and left her baggy green plaid pants on, her bare toes poking out of the too long pant legs as she planted her feet on the mattress.

The female had promptly resumed her position of laying on her back with her head over the end of the bed and hit continue, this time with half a bagel sticking out of her mouth. She had never been able to work out why eating upside down didn't bother her, but as she munched her way through the ring of cheese covered bread -getting some on her nose- she focussed most of her attention on the game on the screen, her apparently strong stomach aside. Tetris was a classic, one of her favourite games and she had a collection so that was saying something but after a few years it got tedious so naturally, in Min's mind, playing it upside down was the most logical progression.

Once the bagel was well and truly demolished, she had taken to humming along with the game's ditzy music. Up until that point she had been playing with it on mute, she hadn't wanted to wake anyone else up with the beeping and chirruping but now she was more or less content to get to the end of the level and then maybe seek out something to re-solidify her brain, the coffee was a big help but it probably wouldn't last long.

[Min Ho]

Accompanied by a chirp from the speakers the screen told her that she'd finished the level and Min put the controller on the floor beneath her head before shuffling down so that she was actually lying on the mattress properly, her head having some support. She sighed heavily and raised her left wrist into her line of sight. Fingers brushed over the obvious scarring on the flesh there and she felt the ridges under the sensitive pads. The memories of those years spent in captivity seemed to swell and rise much more frequently around the moon's peak and even after centuries of change, all for the better, they had the power to pull her under.

She cursed and forced her hands onto her stomach where her fingers interlocked over the soft material of her tee-shirt. Min stared up at the ceiling blankly for a long time before rolling onto her stomachs and pulling herself up off her bed. She padded into her bathroom, dragging a pair of brown corduroy pants with her as she went. She changed and brushed her teeth before emerging and folding her green pyjama bottoms up, tucking them under her pillow a moment later. She left her hair down; it was a mass of unruly curls but the way it fell against her neck helped hide another memory and she was in the type of mood where she didn't really want to 'be strong' and leave it there for the world to see.

The scars were in such places as were easy to be revealed and she had always fluctuated between being comfortable with them being on show and knowing that the majority of the pack couldn't read them anyway, and wanting to cover them up. A scarf and a set of bracelets did the job nicely when she was in the latter frame of mind.

Min picked up her mug of coffee and wrinkled her nose at the contents slightly; lukewarm though it was she drank a mouthful and grimaced as she moved over to her window.

[Min Ho]

Coffee well and truly cold now, Min made another rather disgruntled face before sighing and pulling herself away form the window she had been staring out of. She didn't have a balconied room, but she didn't really mind that, if she needed fresh air she'd usually go up to the roof of just stick her head, and often her torso out of the window as far as she could, sometimes rocking right off her feet. This morning she'd been alternating between staring down into the courtyard, noticing Jess was down there looking like she was in the throes of a daydream, and up into the blue sky.

The Korean wolf had gone for another sip of what she had thought was merely lukewarm coffee and found it tasted like cold bathwater. She shuddered and rubbed a hand through her messy hair before padding across her room. She kicked her beanbag out of the way, squishing Spiderman's masked face with her bare foot as she went, shuffling towards her door.

A refill was in order, she thought as she scooped up the empty plate from her floor. That was about the moment that she registered the new scent seeping in under her door from downstairs. Dark eyes lifted through unruly black curls and she looked at her door accusatorily. Another moment told her several things; Cole and Dia were both there followed fairly swiftly by Steven. Cautiously, though not overly so, Min ventured out into the hallway; she didn't hear the easily recognisable sounds of fighting and the scents she was filtering through her senses were reassuring in that she was reassured there were enough bodies in the area should trouble arise.

Continued in: Hallways

[Min Ho]

Continued from: Hallways

Min-ho shuffled into her room and yawned, perhaps unnecessarily since she'd gotten a decent amount of sleep even if she had fallen asleep to Tetris (again). After a minute of ambling around the space with her mug, which she set down by her bed she dug around through her stacks of games for something to play and out came Time Crisis, the Korean smirked. Oh yes, she was feeling in the mood for a bit of well structured button mashing now that she was back in her room.

She slipped the disc in, turned on the TV and plugged in the controller. Then she grabbed her Spiderman beanbag which she promptly slung herself down into with her matching socks and hummed her way through the opening sequence before she started a new game.

[Min Ho]

POST TIME SKIP

"You know, I see this in my nightmares."

Head tilting to the side Min-ho looked at the screen, fingers flexing around the controller that nestled in her hands, comfortable and warm. The words 'GAME OVER' were written in obnoxiously large text, neon green, flashing away with little dancing heads that look not unlike watermelons with human faces rolling around as the jingle played and yet the Korean born wolf mumbled along to it, nodding her head to the tinny beeps and shrills. It was hard not to know all the jingles to all the games when you sent a good portion of your days curled up in a bean bag playing them over and over, sometimes she died just so she could hear the jingle.

Min shifted in her bean bag, tucking one leg underneath her, dropping her hands into her lap. "Okay." She began ominously, half turning to look at the beta male with whom she was currently gaming, wearing a grave expression, "I know you hate the X-Box, but Halo is calling you. I think it's time we answered the call, gave into the dark side. To be cliché; I hear they have cookies."

[Steven]

The face that Steven pulled was not one that should be seen on an adult, much less an adult beta male with over six centuries under his belt. Instead it rather suited a small child being told it needed a bath and was going to have one no matter what. “I see the accursed X-Box in my nightmares,” Steven remarked airily. He only wished his nightmares were only like that, instead of the fears that normally assaulted his nights on the rare times they would come.

Heaving a sigh, he shook his head mournfully, knowing that there was little chance of avoiding playing on the X-Box and if he was being really honest with himself and pushed aside the automatic reaction to anything Microsoft related, Halo wasn’t that terrible of a game. “How many cookies am I going to get when I slaughter your character without even breaking a sweat?” He asked her, eyebrow raised in friendly challenge.

[Min Ho]

Making a thoughtful sound in the base of her throat, Min-ho seemed to consider Steven's question. "Depends on how much of this 'slaughtering' is because I let you I guess," she countered 'seriously', smiling easily afterwards as she pulled herself up out of the bean bag in a rustle of movement. "I have some disinfectant in the bathroom should you feel the need to cleanse yourself afterwards. The cookies will be for the shakes." So she was a nerd, and it wasn't like it was a secret either; she was happy that way at least.

The offending item was kept in a box under her bed. Min-ho wasn't that much of a fan of the X-Box either, but a while ago she'd been a beat tester for a few games and they'd tossed a free console into the deal, who was she to turn her nose up at that? It just so happened that Halo was good enough to warrant keeping the console around after she'd finished. Still she didn't like to keep it along side the PS and Nintendo.

That was just unclean.

[Steven]

At least his little ‘Minnie Me’ knew enough to keep the X-Box hidden out of sight; her shameful little secret as it were. He would have been seriously worried if she saw nothing wrong in having the thing in full view of everyone. Perhaps Steven was taking his distrust and dislike of the Box a little too far but he was allowed to have very strong views, be they positive or negative. And if they teased him that it made him sound set in his ways like an old man, so what? Steven doubted you would find any elderly gentleman as skilled in consol gaming as he was.

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of both the gaming and the cookies. Along with the mind boggling defeat he was going to inflict on Min-ho. “Is there enough disinfectant in the world to cleanse that sort of dirt?” Steven mused aloud, words more rhetorical than anything else. Not even he would suggest actually using it to wash his hands – ‘accidentally’ spill it over the machine maybe but that was a completely different matter.

[Min Ho]

"Well I hear toxic waste works pretty well, but since you're about to be an Uncle, it's probably best not to risk it." Min-ho said, typically her expression didn't betray that she was, of course, joking, it was all in the tone, one that people tended to need to get used to in order to appreciate that though she most often sounded serious, she was usually joking.

On her knees now, Min flipped back the edge of the comforter on her bed and dug out the box in which sat the 'accursed' X-Box. "Could be worse," Min said, looking up as she pulled the thing from the cardboard and stood up, "At least I don't have a Dreamcast." Teasing Steven was just a past time; one she felt was well deserved since he called her 'Minnie Me', so maybe that was partially why she had gotten over her own aversion to many things Microsoft based.

[Steven]

“That reminds me, we don’t inflict the X-Box on the kid unless it’s as a punishment. We need to make sure that the education is handled properly. No sense in traumatizing lil’ Steven Junior, and possibly scarring the mental psyche of the pup for life.” He knew Min-ho was joking, mostly because he knew her so well but also because the topic and idea was amusing. Just as he knew she would realise that his choice of conversation was less than serious.

“Ugh, Min-ho, please, I’ve only recently managed to successfully remove the memories of that thing from my mind.” The Dreamcast ranked up there with the game Ecco: Sands of Time as a gaming horror story and the only difference was Steven kept pushing on at Ecco, determined someday to complete it or at least get further along than most people. Without cheating – he’d seen the ending more than once but it wasn’t the same without the frustration and gnawing on the controller at the agony of the game play.

[Min Ho]

Min-ho laughed, not all that of an unusual sound when she and Steven were gaming, but on the whole not a sound she was necessarily given over to, even at her age she had a serious, defensive streak in her a mile wide, though the years she had spent with Cole's pack, the centuries even, had loosened her a great deal. "Affirmative. X-Box, only to be used in grave situations," she agreed, carrying the console over to the TV, the controllers balanced on top.

The Korean wolf knew because she'd often sat watching, or lain on the floor to watch upside-down as she sometimes liked to do when gaming, or watching someone else game, and observed Steven battling his way through the incomprehensible player interface, plot and overall insanity that was Ecco the Dolphin. "Never fear, the words 'dream' and 'cast' will not be mentioned in the same sentence again. Until I forget." Ecco, Min-ho believed was the Kobayashi Maru of the gaming world and she had long ago given it up as a fruitless venture. Far from gnawing on the controller she had gotten pretty close to just hurling it at the wall.

[Steven]

He would have to agree with Min-ho in that regard, Ecco was certainly a prime example of a no-win situation but Steven was stubborn to a fault and he wasn’t going to give up on the no win until he had either completely exhausted every possible way to win the game properly or he went insane and declared a vendetta on all dolphins in the world. Whoever had come up with that game in the first place was also insane; and not the good kind where people thought games about blue hedgehogs collecting coins and wearing nothing but sneakers was a brilliant idea (which of course it was) but the bad, bad, bad crazy kind.

Steven leaned back as Min started to plug the consol into the TV and then the controllers into the consol itself. That was the problem with TV’s these days, not enough sockets to hold more than one gaming consol at a time which meant lots of fiddling with wires whenever you wanted to switch.

[Min Ho]

Obviously the dolphins would be in serious trouble if such a thing were to happen, though Min couldn't see Violet being too happy about that, what with her obsession with the sea and all the little creatures in it; Steven would probably find himself on the business end of a gungeing if he voiced any ill will towards the aquatic mammals. It was a randomly amusing though and for a moment she had to stop herself from laughing spontaneously at the mental image of the young, energetic blonde exacting revenge upon the Beta male on the behalf of the Dolphins.

Down on her knees by the TV and the console, as she plugged it in, Min couldn't help herself; she began humming Still Alive under her breath, fighting to keep the knowing, playful smirk from her features. Of course, bringing up the song that she often sang when Steven was trying to make progress on Ecco was a sure fired way to ignite one of 'those fights' that involved both of them poking fun at the other via the game they each respectively hated. But it was fun, and occasionally, she liked to allow her more playful, some would probably say 'dorky' side to show. Gaming and all the 'in-jokes' that came with that were a perfect example of that.

[Steven]

He may be the Beta of a large and solid pack, be deadly skilled in more than one form of combat, as well has having skills in other areas but even Steven knew better than to get on the wrong side of a certain hyped up walking bundle of blond hair and sugar. It would not end well, at least not for Steven’s dignity and frankly he didn’t want to spend the next who knew how many years on the lookout from Violet’s increasingly creative war path so perhaps the Dolphin issues would be put aside for the moment; at least until he next put Ecco in.

“We’re not going to have a deep and meaningful debate about the existence of cake again are we?” Steven half warned, half asked Min, easily recognizing the soft, near silent tune he could hear her humming. The issue of ‘cake’ was his favourite part of the song, and almost always came up in the fights, normally right before Steven pulled his Beta rank card and inflicted the worst punishment he could think of on his friend; Final Fantasy Eight.

[Min Ho]

Min usually made a cross out of her fingers and hissed when Final Fantasy Eight was brought up. Specifically the dreaded words of 'drawing magic', because as much as she adored Final Fantasy, spending fiver hours attacking giant bugs with the most emo game character in the history of gaming was not what she considered fun. It had been novel the first time around, sure, funny actually, as she'd timed it and added it all up and she clearly remembered telling Steven exactly how long she had spent drawing magic in that damn game. Playing it again would be like putting herself through a recurring nightmare willingly.

"Well now, that depends, is it the importance of the presence of cake, or the lack thereof?" she grinned, glancing at Steven and raising her eyebrows as she looked at him, "Don't start with the 'cake is a lie' stuff either, cake is very truthful. There is honesty in the cake." Min-ho nodded sagely, clicking the disc into place and closing the lid before she smoothly stood, and returned to her beanbag nearby, holding a controller casually to the Beta male.