Ava had been looking forward to this all weekend. Heck, she practically hadn't stopped texting Luna that Thursday they'd exchanged numbers and pictures. She still wasn't sure if it had been a good idea to insist "See I told you you were totally cute!" without prompting when the picture came up. Ah well. The conversation hadn't stopped even though it had been a bit nonsensical and random depending on what one or the other thought to ask about making their plans. In the end, an early afternoon dinner like an old person sounded like fun, if only because then they wouldn't have to wait. Ava had skipped lunch in anticipation, just so she'd be hungry. She made her way out of the subway and looked around curiously for the little shop. She eventually saw it, but had promised to meet Luna outside. The moment she saw her she was going to greet her with a real life version of her tackle hug. She was lighter in this world, at least. She checked her phone for the time. Right on time! She'd gotten here exactly when she meant to. Ten minutes ahead of schedule. Which was probably good considering the fact that she'd left directly from school and had run into a bit of a pedestrian version of a traffic jam at least twice. It was so hard to navigate through so many people! She pulled out her phone to say she had arrived, but figured she would give Luna the right amount of time. After all, she couldn't surprise hug her if she knew what to expect! Ava was so excited. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been so happy to see someone. She felt like they got along really well. Like... really well. Even if so far it had been in a weird overly realistic fantasy world. @Luna Avalbane
Now that the day had rolled up, Eva was more than slightly nervous about actually meeting Angel in real life, especially considering just how much they'd stayed in contact even outside of the game itself. Sure, sending the girl a picture of herself had been potentially one of the most terrifying things she'd ever done in her entire short life, but now that they were actually about to meet for the first time in reality, it actually just drove home just how real everything was coming and how connected her real and virtual lives could become thanks to the game and everything she did in it. What if she ended up meeting other people in the game and then in reality? She stepped off of the sidewalk and crossed the road, looking down at the floor as she made it to the other side, shrugging to herself. She was extremely nervous, incredibly so. Her eyesight felt like it was blurring and her heart was pounding harder with every step that brought her closer to the meeting point, though she wasn't sure how long she'd be waiting. She was actually running a little late, though by that she meant that she'd wanted to get there with fifteen minutes to spare, but was probably only saved about 9 minutes. Still, nine minutes early wasn't too bad, was it? She looked around, though the sidewalks were incredibly busy today and she wasn't exactly the tallest person around. She was probably easy to spot, with her purple hair tied up with a red ribbon, though that didn't do her much good when she was looking for Angel. Maybe she just hadn't arrived yet?
"Lllluuunaaaaa!~" Suddenly, Ava was wrapped around her friend. She'd recognize that purple hair anywhere, even if her own brown hair wasn't nearly as much of a marker. Ava was wearing the same jacket that she'd been wearing in the picture, so that was probably helpful. But mostly she would probably just recognize the similar personality. "Aw man this is great! Scary but great!" she released Luna after a hug that was longer than normal but shorter than that last one she'd been given. "So you know, I wasn't lying. This is totally weird but in a good way." Her real body fit her personality in-game way better. "You look way better than in the picture." She winked again, having never quite caught onto the fact that people used winking as a flirt. Her own grandmother had winked at her grandchildren when she was being playful, which obviously hadn't been flirty. "So, this is real Angel." she hopped back about a foot and spread her arms out. "I'm not quite the hero looking type, I know. But that's okay since you can't help real life. Though you'd totally be a protag in a cute anime." After a moment Ava realized they were still outside and she'd barely given Luna time to talk. She did take time to actually say things after all. "Er, anyway, how're you? I meant to text a little more yesterday but I got stuck finishing up boring math homework."
A weight that she hadn't been actually prepared for almost completely bowled Eva over, along with a cry of her name that could only really come from one person, even if her voice was different from her in game voice. Angel had found her. She froze completely whilst Angel held onto her, focusing on her breathing to try and stop herself from panicking or passing out or something along those lines, though she was super glad that the people nearby just didn't care enough to stare at them for being weird or whatever. Such an excited greeting had to look strange from the outside. When she was released, Eva took a few moments to breathe before turning to face Angel in the real world, blushing slightly as the girl continued to talk and compliment her. Wow, Angel sure was excited, especially if she was rambling and ranting as much as she was. It didn't even seem like she was pausing to breathe, which felt like it could've been very unhealthy in the long run. But still, it was so nerve wracking and exciting at the same time to be speaking to somebody IRL that she'd met online! And she was complimented once more before Angel actually stepped back and stopped her rant to ask how she was. Blushing crimson, Eva shuffled in place and kicked at the floor beneath her, trying to speak for a moment before only releasing a squeak. She mumbled something beneath her breath, clearing her throat. Gosh, she needed to say something! Or Angel would be upset! "U-u-u-u-u-u-um....I-i-it's s-s-s-so good t-to s-s-s-see you t-t-t-tooo..." She whispered, barely audible over the sounds of people passing by, though at least she'd actually managed to speak this time. "I-I-I'm g-g-g-good, g-g-glad to hear t-t-t-t-that you g-g-got some w-w-w-work done..." Gosh, she really needed to speak up. She shuffled awkwardly, looking around and adjusting her jacket so it fit closer to her body. "S-s-s-s-so this i-is me.... in r-r-real life..."
"Mhm~" Ava was more than happy to hear the girl's real voice. Less mature, sure, but Ava's tastes were probably obvious from how she'd made Angel. "I totally adore the you in real life~" she raised her arms up to about chest level, fists clamped shut in an excited stance. "You're cute, I like cute things. It's pretty perfect." She promptly blushed and glanced to the side. "I mean uh, you know. I just mean I like the real you." The clarification was probably just as vague and gave off the same meaning. Ava liked Luna, it was probably obvious to anyone looking. Shyness only made someone cuter unless they were mean when they spoke. "So um! Since this is your... pizza stomping ground... hopefully with very little actually pizza stomping... should I follow you in?" she had a tendency to lose momentum when she tripped herself up in wording, which generally only happened with Luna. Or if she'd noticeably upset someone in some way. She would be back to normal in just a minute. Regardless of who Luna insisted should go in, she slid into a booth beside Luna instead of across from her, which caused the lady seating them to chuckle amusedly. There was plainly a whole unoccupied seat one would normally take. "So anyway, you can probably already tell I was looking forward to today." She held out her hands with her fingers spread in front of her. She was examining hands that seemed a little bit less familiar once you'd basically existed in a new body as much as she had in the last couple of weeks. "Hopefully Ava is a cute substitute for Angel even if Angel is probably prettier."
It was funny to see Angel trip over her own words, though it was also embarrassing to hear the words that were being spoken. She could understand the distinction that Angel was trying to make, though it really did sound almost like a sort of love confession of some kind. She wasn't sure exactly if Angel liked her in a romantic sense, though there was certainly a lot of evidence to suggest it, but either way she didn't think she was going to act on any of it all too soon, if at all. She would positively die of embarrassment if she assumed that Angel liked her, only to find out that she didn't. She did choose to lead the way into the pizza parlor, wordlessly motioning for Angel to follow her inside, not trusting her ability to speak clearly to convey the message she wanted to convey to the girl, smiling as Angel slid into the seat next to her. For some reason the girl didn't want to sit opposite her, though it did make it easier to avoid any sort of awkward eye contact. She smiled, thanking the lady that sat them by name, sending 'Emily' away for a moment to let them get situated. She was so glad she'd picked a place that had basically watched her grow up as her family took her here. They'd even offered her a job after school had finished, if she found nothing else she wanted to do with her time. To them, she was practically part of the family. "A-A-A-Ava and Angel a-a-are j-j-j-just as um, pretty as each o-other. I-I don't mind w-w-which I'm l-looking at..." She did her best to smile kindly, handing a menu across to Angel. They'd share the menu, since the pizzas were way too big for one each anyway. "S-s-s-so um, w-w-what type of p-p-pizza do you want?"
Ava felt even smaller with the size of the menus this place had. It was huge and kind of funny to the girl's odd sense of humor. She concentrated at looking at the weirdest flavors for a moment after she was told she was pretty. She'd heard cute loads of times. And rambunctious little imp a load more. "I like pineapple," she pointed at the Hawaiian pizza which was ham, pineapple, and apparently bacon here. "But I'll eat literally whatever you order. I didn't eat lunch just so we could eat today~" she sounded pleased with herself, for whatever reason. Emily was waiting for a signal from one of them, and Ava was starving but a bit distracted. Her feet didn't quite touch the floor with the size of the booths at the restaurant. If she'd been like an inch taller she could have, but Ava was roughly 'adorable' sized if one were to get slightly scientific. "Sooooo other than being adorable how was your weekend?" she asked. "I couldn't stop thinking about today. I'm really not quite sure why." It wasn't exactly a lie, considering Ava knew she had weird feelings for Luna, but she also consistently told herself to calm down. Ava wasn't normally the obsessive sort of girl considering her generally short attention span. She wasn't accustomed to having her brain stuck on anything these days, aside from a certain VR game.
"O-oooh, then h-h-how about the Hawaiian? I-i-it's great here, I-I usually get it if I c-can!" Her mom and herself really loved Hawaiian pizza, though her dad was one of those grumps that said pizza and pineapple just shouldn't ever be mixed with each other, so whenever he came with them they had to get something that everybody liked, which meant that she hadn't managed to have their hawaiian pizza in a very long time. Hearing that Angel hadn't eaten just to make the most of their early dinner together was both worrying and flattering, as Luna didn't believe that there was ever an excuse to eat a meal if you were able to eat, yet the gesture of her wanting to make their first time meeting each other better was so touching and sweet at the same time. Instead, she waved over Emily after hearing that Angel was probably hungry, immediately ordering a large Hawaiian pizza between them and two refillable drinks. "A-a-ah, b-by the way, here the soft drinks are r-refillable so we c-can just go and g-get more when we're done..." She smiled, before registering both the question and the compliment, which caused her to blush wildly. "U-umm m-my weekend was g-g-good thanks. I-I-I spent a l-lot of time e-e-either working or speaking to you. H-how was yours?"
Ava couldn't help but giggle at Luna's adorable stuttering. It just fit this girl so much more than Luna. And much as Ava would have been just as happy to see her more confident and comfortable, she wouldn't complain about anything she found cute. Why would she? "I mostly laaazed around~" she stuck out her tongue slightly. "Dad was home and so I didn't get on the game much either. At one point he asked if I was texting a boy." she glanced away and blushed a bit. He didn't know she had her eye girls instead. "I'm not sure why he asked that. He just acted like I was doing something weird." Of course, she had been acting weird. She'd been obsessing over texting her crush in a very stereotypical teen girl kind of way, save for the fact that she didn't talk about any of it out loud. Ava wasn't quite connected enough with reality to think that was what he meant by weird though, considering she had been pretty sure she was being perfectly normal. Ava reached up and brushed at a little bit of her hair idly; she wanted to fidget with something and she was not pulling her phone out of her little bag today. "So I move around a lot because I'm always kind of hyper according to most people," she started up again. "But I'm not really athletic since I'm not very tall or anything." she started twirling some hair gently around a finger, occasionally glancing at Luna. "Do you do anything sportsy or are you like, a total nerd like me but with less hyper and more attention span?"
Luna giggled as Angel told the story of lazing around and being grilled by her dad about whether she'd been texting a boy or not, being vaguely aware of the fact that Angel liking girls wasn't something that she'd told her dad. It was fair enough, maybe Angel wasn't ready to tell him or maybe he wouldn't understand or was against it, Luna didn't know and frankly it wasn't her place to question the girl about it. Angel's family business was just that, Angel's family business. It wouldn't involve her at all. Though the story itself was pretty funny, considering that, despite the gender, Angel's dad hadn't been too far off of the money with his guess. Luna shrugged, reaching a hand up, almost instinctively going for the flower that wasn't on her real face, before she masked her goof by fiddling with the ribbon that she used to tie her hair back instead. She'd gotten so used to that flower. Maybe it was time to get rid of it? Did she do anything sportsy? Not particularly, outside of P.E. "I-I um, I t-t-tend to be the n-n-nerdy type too. I-I'm just n-not quite so h-hyper..." Even the types of games she usually played weren't so intense and high energy. She mainly played dating simulators and simulation style games. "I-I um, I-I did r-r-run for the t-track team f-for a short while though..."
"Oh that's cool!" Ava sincerely thought being on any team was kinda cool. Especially since the schools were generally bigger here. That meant you had to be at least somewhat impressive, right? "I'd ask what made you stop but really I find just making it in the first place pretty impressive." she kicked her legs a bit more. "I have short legs. Well, short everything. But that doesn't help running fast enough for the track. I can keep up with people, it just takes more work, you know?" Ava was shorter than Eva by just shy of half a foot. Well, really probably slightly less but sit was obviously still noticeable. Obviously she wasn't like, extremely short or anything but in athletics that sort of stuff tended to come into play unless you were so good you could make up for it. "At any rate nerds like us? Totally cute." she nodded to herself as if it were just a universal fact.
"I-I-I stopped um, b-b-b-because I-I was too n-nervous t-t-to talk to p-p-people when we competed..." She'd let people take her place every time until it got to the point where she'd been removed from the team, which she was honestly okay with. She honestly hadn't been too into it and had only really joined the team because her gym teacher had suggested she should, which in her mind had sounded more like an order than a suggestion, as most things did from authority figures. Next came trying to figure out if Angel was trying to hype herself up with the nerd comment, or flirt with her, or both. Either was, as embarrassing as it was to have it recognized, being called cute so often was actually doing fairly well for Luna's self esteem. She wasn't super outgoing or superficial about her looks, but to receive positive affirmation so regularly all of a sudden was actually really nice. She smiled, nodding her agreement with Angel's assessment of nerds and their cuteness, before looking down as she tried to think of something to talk about. They were both gamers, maybe a gaming question? "S-s-s-so um, w-w-what types of games d-d-do you play outside of Terra?"
"Uh, basically... little phone games right now." Ava had basically stopped playing most other games when she started playing Terrasphere. She was just a little bit too in love with it all. But she couldn't when she was on the move, such as when she went home from school. "But I played a lot of regular RPG's and stuff. I know that sounds weird for my personality but I just liked to get to play pretend. Sometimes it's a bummer to be the small hyper girl and sometimes I'd be some other cute girl just like in TS." She missed some of her old characters, though Angel was pretty great too in her opinion, even if she didn't really know much about her as a character that wasn't Ava. Was there supposed to be more? Maybe? "So um, you made it sound like you don't run around much without your parents," Ava switched to asking her own question. "What sorts of stuff do you do besides TS? Other video games? Practice looking cute? Sorry, I couldn't resist imagining that one."
So Angel was a mobile gamer was she? Luna could kind of see that, considering how energetic the girl seemed to be and how much of a struggle she'd described sitting still to be. It made sense that she'd play a lot of games on the move now, when she wasn't playing TS of course, which had also impacted the amount that Luna played other games as well. She just didn't have time anymore in between work, studying, school and playing TS, especially if she wanted to fit sleep in there as well. She smiled as Angel explained that she played RPG games mostly, not really finding it fitting, but liking the idea of the girl getting immersed into her game worlds so much. A giggle found her face at the thought of Angel speaking in ye olde english and rescuing princesses from dragons in other games, or whatever people typically did in non VR RPG games now, since it'd been a while since she'd played any. As for what she did in her free time, she shrugged, looking around before glancing to the side at Angel. "I um, I-I-I play mostly..." She trailed off, looking down at her lap before taking a deep breath. It wasn't embarrassing. "I-I-I play m-m-mostly d-d-dating simulators a-a-and um, s-s-simulation games." She couldn't really address the whole 'practice being cute' remark, as her crimson blush made her face light up like a star, just in time for Emily to bring a pair of empty glasses to their booth and point out the soft drink machine, mostly for Angel's sake. "W-w-would you m-mind grabbing my d-d-drink please?" She was kind of trapped in the booth after all and somebody had to make sure nobody took it. "I-I'll just have a cola, p-p-p-please..."
"Of course~" Ava hopped up quickly before actually responding to anything Luna had said in regard to her questions and comments. She was getting more nervous, and Ava wasn't sure if she was more embarrassed or pleased with the reaction she got for joking with her friend. After all, she was cute and she couldn't help but own it even when she was nervous. At least that was how Ava saw it. She got herself some lemonade and her companion's requested drink before scooting back into the booth and letting her arm slide further so that the cup went in front of Luna. "Anyway, dating simulators?" She made a tiny pleased squee'ing noise as she imagined the girl's attempts to woo people in a game. "I've said it like fifty times already but that's a seriously cute preference. I don't usually play that sort of stuff mostly because I dunno, there's so many games where I can woo a prince or princess -and- swing a sword." Luna just sounded like the most amazingly cute girl right now, she wasn't even sure her over-flattery got across how much Ava thought so.
