intraspective | Room 504, Sunday Evening

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Room 504, Sunday Evening

To say that Ino had been well pleased with her week was understating things more than a little, which meant that today (other than the brief period wherein 'today' had meant 'afternoon'' and she'd wound up talking to Squall), clearly, was a day meant for a) having chocolate and b) sprawling out on her bed in a tank top and shorts and playing with her new phone.

While her weetiny plush ninja rested beside her and, okay, she might've had her new Materia keeping her company on the bed as well. Shush. Don't judge her.

While she nibbled on chocolate and poked around the settings for her phone. The wallpaper, at least, was totally staying.

[Open door, open post!]

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Hurley was not a happy camper when he dialed up Ino's number.

But he needed to talk to someone, and he didn't want to worry Hoshi about things.

So, he sat, waiting for Ino to pick up.

It took Ino a little bit longer that usual to pick it up as she had her new phone which wasn't her old phone and that meant when her old phone started going off she had to scramble up off that bed to find it.

She found it in a pocket of one of her light jackets.

"Hi!" Ino chirped.

"Hey," Hurley said, doing his best to sound happy and stuff to start out. "It's Hurley. Been too long since I've heard from you."

Partially because his universe was running at a much weirder speed.

"I'm sorry!" Ino said, heading back to flop on her bed. "Time just ain't been slow lately, you know? Keepin' busy, busy!"

"Yeah, lots of school stuff, right?" Hurley said. "Cool, like, fun stuff? I hope you're good. You're good, right?" His voice betrayed the fact that he was not good.

"I'm good," she said quickly, wanting to reassure him. "But Hurley--you don't... you okay?"

Hurley was definitely not okay. When talking with his accountant earlier, he'd been told that a factory he'd bought burnt down, and then when he started arguing about the curse, a man had fallen past his accountant's window.

"You know anything about breaking curses?" he asked, completely serious.

"Not my area of expertise," she said slowly, "but I can get a few people to look into it. What sort of curse?"

"There are different kinds?" Hurley said, a little baffled. "I just know I used some bad numbers, Ino. I won the lottery and now bad things are happening to people. Really bad stuff."

"Are you alright?" she asked, frowning at the phone. "What sort of bad things? Why do you think that's connected to the lottery?"

"Oh, nothing happens to me," Hurley said, his exasperation evident in his tone. "But like, my Grandpa Tito died, and then at the funeral Father Aguillar got hit by lightning, and I bought my mom a house and it caught fire, it just doesn't stop. And now things are happening to people I never even met but because my accountant thought I needed to diversify all these people are getting hurt and it's all my fault."

Oh.

There was... well. What was she supposed to say to that?

"Where did you buy the ticket?" She could ask that, yes.

"It's not where I bought it," Hurley said. "It's the numbers. I shouldn't... when I was at Santa Rosa, when I was in the mental hospital, there was this guy Leonard. And he'd always repeat these same numbers, over and over. And those are the numbers I used on the ticket."

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Potato chips. Somewhere during the course of the evening, Zack had developed a hankering for some potato chips. And so he'd bit his happy Ino adieu, and he'd wandered off in search of them, a quest that had taken him off into town, because while he would eat a lot of things, the soggy stale things that he'd found in the common room were... not among them.

He was... probably understandably confused when his happy Ino was not as happy as she had been when he'd left, by the time he got back.

"Hey, Ino...? Are you okay?"

He'd brought her a bag, too, but they could probably wait.

"I think," Ino said, giving her old pink phone a long look. "That really it just ain't worth answerin' the phone some days."

Which wasn't an answer but at least gave an indication of what might be bothering her?

... Ow. This called for ditching the chips on the nightstand and taking a seat on the bed beside her. All the better for putting an arm around her shoulder.

"Bad news?"

She snuggled right on into him, and tugged over the notepad she'd scribbled a few things down in.

"You know anything 'bout breaking a curse that was triggered by numbers being used?" Ino asked, sighing. "Hurley's got a bit of a predicament and I said I'd--see what I could find out."

Zack bit his lip at that.

"Curses on my world can be broken with remedies," he pointed out, "but they're not really caused by numbers, either. We have equipment that can prevent curses, too, but I don't know how much good that would do him if he's already been."

He scuffed his toe against the floor, thoughtfully.

"I can try to get some of that stuff together anyhow. A black belt, or a gris-gris bag, or even just some simple slotted accessory with the right materia fitted in. It can't hurt, at least."

She nodded slowly.

"I didn't think you'd know," she admitted, "'cause your world works different. But that might help, yeah."

"Anything is worth a shot, right? And maybe somebody at the magic shop in town would know, too? I haven't been in there, but it's worth check out to be sure."

Or he could ask someone at the Magic Reserves, for that matter. There wasn't exactly a shortage of people on the island who would know about curses.

"I'll ask around," she said, with a bit of a sigh. "See what I can get from people. Is it--bad--that I wish there was just somethin' good goin' on?"

"I don't think there's anything the matter with wishing that good things were happening to your friends instead of bad ones," Zack pointed out, frowning thoughtfully. "In that meantime, I'll ask Kunsel if he has any leads on a gris-gris bag that I can get in a pinch."

Edited 2010-09-27 03:22 (UTC)

"Put that way it don't sound bad at all," she admitted, smiling a tiny bit. "It was just soundin' more selfish in my head."

Her special, special head.

Zack smiled a tiny bit to go right along with her little smile, and then reached up to ruffle her hair.

"Your head is a silly place sometimes," he decided. And then he pulled her into a hug. "We'll find a way to help your friend, Ino. If there's any place out there to find the solutions to things, it's here, right?"

"Not silly," she informed him but there was no heat behind it as Ino was just going to cling into that hug, oh my yes. "And, you know, I keep tellin' myself that..."

But so far, had it really been true? None of her problems were ones that Fandom had been able to fix.