[phone calls OTA] Technical Difficulties

[st_abby]

He'd passed by the alien, gleaming thing in his room a hundred times by now, or nearly must've done, and hardly stopped to examine it. It was strange, but so were most other things in this place. A shiny, awkward looking device attached to the wall by means of a long cable, set on one of the little tables that seemed to litter these rooms. It had neat rows of square buttons with numbers etched on, and a handle, so Vax'ildan had supposed it was meant to work some feature of the room in a way he could scarcely imagine. He didn't want to break it, but eventually the boredom and curiosity got the better of him, much like with the door locks. It would probably fix itself, if it came to that.

After the first few moments spent listening to the monotonous warble that came from the handle, Vax'ildan reached to jab a finger into a button. When it beeped but did no more, he pushed another. And a third...

OOC Note: If you would like a thread with Vax, please leave a top-level comment to this post and he will reply! No need to pre-arrange, but as one does when learning new technology, he may disconnect the call etc. accidentally or your character may tell him to leave them alone in very few words if they so choose - most of these threads are likely to be short.

Comments

[st_oriedqueen]

Within minutes of arriving, almost literally, Regina threw herself into the "captives" side of hotel administration. It was what she was good at, and without Storybrooke's welfare to look after as penance and without Robin and Henry, Elsa, Emma, Hook, and Ruby Lucas and Enchanted Shores and the co-op to manage, she needed something to do to make amends. Putting the others' needs ahead of her own worked.

She'd found an office that none of the staff seemed to mind her occupying (they brought her towels), set up at the desk, and begun creating the inevitable stack of paperwork. At the moment, she was reviewing the food and beverage inventories and creating an emergency food supply target list.

When the phone rang, she glared at it suspiciously a moment, rubbed her eyes behind her glasses, and picked up, barely biting back the what? that wanted to let fly in favor of a very carefully modulated, "Regina Mills speaking."

[st_abby]

This voice was much different from the others so far. Mature, female, and no nonsense in it, though he thought it might be lovely under other circumstances. Vax imagined a matron with a freshly cut switch at the ready.

"Aren't you meant to tell me what room you're in?" The man's question held genuine curiosity. The girl he'd contacted had been much less direct, so maybe how one answered didn't have to be so formal as all that? "I'm supposing Regina Mills is your name."

[st_oriedqueen]

"Have you ever known a mill to speak?" Regina replied sharply, but with less bite than she might have used before raising Roland this past few years. She let out a somewhat pained sigh at the young man's eagerness, in general. She wondered if it hurt to be so genuine. "I'm not in the habit of giving my location to strange men."

[st_abby]

"I've known trees and animals and even swords to speak," Vax'ildan returned with cheek. "A mill wouldn't be much stranger than those things." On the whole, he thought she had the right of it - why announce your location at the beginning unless you knew very well whom you were speaking with and actually wanted them to join you there?

And if only she knew him, should would understand how very strange a man he was.

[st_oriedqueen]

"What an interesting life you must lead," Regina replied, equally cheeky and sharp with the implication he might be quite mad. That she had known any number of things to speak or people to disguise themselves as any number of such things, she had no intention of revealing over the phone. "Whoever you are."

[st_abby]

"It hasn't killed me yet." Though he still wasn't sure how that'd happened. He was long overdue, in the scheme of things. But he'd seen plenty of others fall, and that sobered his tone some. "Let's say it's been interesting enough."

"I'm Vax'ildan," he told her then, as if that explained some of their conversation. In a way, it did. "One of your neighbors, it would seem."

[st_oriedqueen]

Not yet. Regina knew well enough how fragile the line between 'not yet' and 'now' could be. Thinking of Henry, Roland, Robin, but especially Snow and how close they had all come to crossing that line, it made her chest ache. At least she was already doing the work she could to look after them all, making her amends every single day.

"Interesting is a curse," Regina replied at some length. "Did you have a reason for calling or are you simply experimenting with telephones?"

[st_abby]

"Mostly that last," Vax admitted, rising to pace a bit as he made conversation. "I've never used 'phones' until toda-"

As if to prove himself, their call was abruptly cut short. The base of the phones had slid off of the nightstand with his absent tug of the cord gone too far. He was fast enough to catch the base before it landed, but his hand had triggered some kind of latch that cancelled out the woman's voice.

Very smooth.

[st_oriedqueen]

As the phone disconnected, Regina rolled her eyes and exhaled through her nose. She waited a moment to see if Vax'ildan would call back then realized that if he'd reached her by accident he wouldn't.

She said, "Goodbye to you, too," because she couldn't let it go, shook her head, and went back to work.