(no subject)

[darkhourdear]

Who: Phillip, Toushirou, and an open prompt for ANYONE!
What: Phillip's best method of getting CR: dog walking
Where: Gateway, in the park or just around where it might be a good place for dogs.
When: September 30th

1. OPEN

It's a nice day out- the sun is shining, the air is crisp, there are no killer dinosaurs on the loose... seems like a good opportunity for dog walking!

Which is exactly what Phillip's doing. Gloria the golden retriever got moved with the familiar from Locke to Gateway (because like Phillip was going to agree to leave her behind), and though she's beginning to slow down a bit she still loves walks. And combining the fact that she's not as fast as she used to be and that Phillip's gotten bigger, she doesn't drag him through the park so much anymore.

However, both she and Phillip are very friendly towards people, so when she strains towards someone (possibly you) wanting attention, Phillip will comply if it looks ok. "Hello! Sorry, she's really friendly sometimes..."

2. closed to Toushirou

Towards the end of the walk, Phillip heads towards their final destination- not his home, but the home of one Toushirou Hitsugaya. Who might pretend to be cranky about a great number of things, including Phillip and his dog, but Phillip knows better at this point. He climbs up the apartment stairs with the very enthusiastic golden retriever (she knows where they are), only stopping when he reaches the door to knocks.

Comments

2.

[icy_heavens]

Hey. His crankiness is totally genuine, thank you very much. Totally.

He can hear excited canine footsteps even before Phillip reaches the door, so he's got a little advance warning. He's already put his homework aside and is on his way to answer it before Phillip even knocks. Though the knock does happen before he gets there.

He pulls the door open. "Hey."

[darkhourdear]

"Hey!" Phillip grins and Gloria pants happily, straining forward from the leash to try and reach Toushirou to shower him in affection. "Can we come in?" Mostly that's a question for Gloria, who is clearly eager.

[icy_heavens]

He's almost as used to Gloria as he is to Phillip. They so often come as a package.

He steps back to let them in. "Yeah, it's fine."

Not that he wants Gloria tackling him, or other nonsense -- unlike Phillip, Toushirou has gotten a little smaller due to Echoes -- but she's allowed to come in.

[darkhourdear]

Gloria won't tackle- but she will immediately crowd around Toushirou's legs and try to get at his hands for petting and licking purposes.

Phillip actually has less fanfare when he comes in, making sure Gloria isn't being too much of a nuisance. "So, how are you?"

[icy_heavens]

She'll get pets, but it's just to keep her distracted from jumping on him or something. Really.

"Eh, I'm alright. Whatever the hell has been going on with us lately hasn't suddenly crept up on me so far."

He can't say that it won't, of course. Just from how things have looked on the network, this stuff has been happening with no trigger at all. It could just come up at any time, and he really doesn't like the prospect of that.

[darkhourdear]

"Yeah, me neither." Wait for it, Phillip. "What is it, even? Just... Echos, expect people say stuff while it's happening?"

1

[dictator_ko]

Mina likes dogs. Or at least affectionate dogs that'll give her lots of love. So when she notices the friendly-looking dog, she reaches down to pet Gloria's head. "I like dogs like her!"

[darkhourdear]

Phillip is more than happy to stop and let people pet Gloria- she is the best dog ever and deserves all of the attention. All of it. "I do too! Some people don't, though, so I always try to make sure."

[dictator_ko]

"Your dog's a real cutie." Today Mina has her ears and tail out (she'd gotten her clothes tailored for the tail), which had gotten some stares. But, hey, her ears and tail're cute! So some attention isn't so bad. Now if only she could do something about the sharp teeth. That isn't so cute!

[darkhourdear]

"Thanks! I think she is too." That pretty clearly means Mina is Numbered, and... it's still a tiny bit weird to Phillip that it's sort of ok to walk around like that. He remembers the lengths people went to to hide everything when this all started.

[dictator_ko]

Honestly, it isn't her first choice. She'd mostly spent her days as a Numbered hiding the signs. But she had given up since the sharp teeth comes in--hiding that would require absurd measures she isn't prepared to take. So far nothing bad's happened to her other than an argument with her parents. Which was terrible, but it had ended with hugs.

"We used to have a dog, too, but he disappeared during the attacks..." Now she's beginning to feel sad, which results in her trailing off and getting kinda quiet.

[darkhourdear]

Well, Phillip's not going to bring attention to it if she isn't. Nothing wrong here! Nope!

Oh geez. That's... sad. Phillip frowns for a minute, thinking. "Well, um... if you want, I'm sure Gloria would like other people to play with sometimes!"

[dictator_ko]

"I'd like to!" She pauses. "...Who knows, maybe my parents'll get a dog after all. They've been kinda busy, but they've been talking about it. I just didn't want a replacement."

[sparklingscarlet]

Blaise is skipping through the park. He's got a loaf of bread in his backpack and he's on a mission today to feed ducks at one of the ponds. He's happily humming along when he sees a gold blur pull towards him. He looks at it and his face brightens to see a doggie! He welcomes it with open arms, laughing.

"It's okay! She's adorable!" He gets in Gloria's face and starts doing baby talk. "Who's a good puppy? Did you come out here just to see me? Lookit how cute you are! Do you like the park? Do you? You're such a good puppy!"

He looks up to officially greet the owner at this point.

"She's so sweet! My name is Blaise, thank you for letti-" His eyes go wide for a moment as he actually sees Phillip, and he jumps up from the dog. "OhmyGod, ADORABLE!" He moves to glomp Phillip in a fit of cutesy joy.

[darkhourdear]

Gloria pants and licks at the new, friendly person, happy to have made a new friend. Phillip smiles too, pleased to see his dog getting along with other people. It's nice when people appreciate how cute she is!

Though, um... he wasn't really expecting that energy to be turned on him "Whoah--!" He stumbles back as the older boy tackles him in a hug. He isn't entirely sure how to feel about this. He likes friendly people, and hugs, and he thinks being adorable is good (though he's getting kind of old for that, isn't he?) but um... um...

"Thank... you?" he says, uncertainly.

[sparklingscarlet]

"You're so cute! You have this baby face! You know who you remind me of? This cute boy with white hair who is also super adorable with a baby face! But he ran away from me when I blinked. He was so fast! I tried to find him, but he was gone! I wonder how he did it?"

Blaise lets go of Phillip as he starts to think.

"Last he said, he was going to a grocery store, I think. I wonder if he's okay. I think he was an albino, it was so incredible! Oh, and he was so grumpy! It was kind of funny! I wanted to follow him and help him out, but he disappeared. I hope I'll see him again someday. I really want to be friends."

Pretty soon, he's sitting back with Gloria and petting her all over again, because puppy! With so much cute, his brain isn't exactly on the same track right now.

[darkhourdear]

If Phillip were thinking a little bit more, he might learn something from this. Namely, what his own brand of steamroller conversation can often feel like to Toushirou. ...Who it sounds like this guy is talking about. And called him cute? Oh, he can only imagine how poorly Toushirou would have taken that. He can see why his friend might have just run away.

Phillip himself isn't entirely sure how to take being called 'baby face'd, but... Blaise seems to have meant it as a compliment so that's good, right? He will take it that way! Gloria at least is unaffected by the barrage of words, so that gives Phillip a moment to orient himself. "So, um... do you live around here?" he says, more awkward than he normally would but he's trying to get the conversation back to a track that he can follow.

[sparklingscarlet]

Yes, Toushirou took it very poorly. But, that's something Blaise just never caught on to. Hell, Blaise is barely affected by the fact that Toushirou ran away. Just more opportunity, in his happy-go-lucky opinion.

"Oh, yea! I live like, ten minutes up the street!" Blaise says eagerly. "Hey, do you want to go feed ducks? I brought bread, we can share!" He opens his backpack to show Phillip the loaf. "See? It'll be fun, before it gets too cold for them to stay! C'mon!" He hooks his arm around Phillip's and starts to happily pull him along. It's not a fast pace, thankfully, so Gloria shouldn't have problems keeping up.

[darkhourdear]

Oooh. Phillip would not say no to feeding ducks, so he doesn't even mind that he wasn't actually given a choice. "Ok!" he says cheerfully, catching up to the pace quickly and Gloria padding along besides them when she caught on to the fact that they were moving. "Do you feed the ducks a lot?"

[jasminebloominginshadow]

Jasmine may have moved back to Locke for the time being, but she still had business in Gateway. Her studio was still important to her, after all. That being said, when she was heading back from lunch, she was accosted by a strange dog.

"... Heh, this is a nice change from them barking at me," she said, leaning down to pet him. When Philip came up, she looked up with a smile. "Oh, hey there...! I know you... you're Philip Santorini, right?"

[darkhourdear]

Oh...! It isn't the weirdest thing ever for Phillip to be recognized, for reasons other than being Numbered because that's not public, but this also isn't the first time he's run into someone outside of the Network, either. "Yeah," he says, with a nod, "And this is Gloria. Um... your name's Jasmine, right?" He's not so good with last names.

[jasminebloominginshadow]

Jasmine nodded. "That's right," she said. "Heh, I'm surprised it took us this long to run into each other."

She gave Gloria a pat before standing back upright. "I'm a bit surprised. I thought you lived in Locke City..."

[darkhourdear]

Oh. That makes Phillip shift a little, uncomfortable. "I used to, before, you know... everything," he says with a kind of vague wave of his hand. He super doesn't want to explain the reason he's not there anymore.

[jasminebloominginshadow]

"... I see," Jasmine replied with a short nod. "Yeah, I moved out to Shepherd's Haven a few months after the invasion, so I understand what you're saying."

She laughed nervously. "But ah... I actually ended up going back with my fiance recently..."

[darkhourdear]

Yeah, the moving back part makes sense, even if Phillip doesn't personally consider it an option. "Because of the snakes?" That whole things seems super bad.