needsaparrot | Mauvaise Chance Sub-Basement, Late Wednesday Morning 2/7

"So yeah, that'd be where my Slayer, the burglar, decided I'm not allowed to play with fire," Xander said, pointing to the area behind the boiler. He'd actually cleaned up the fallen plaster and chipped out the rest of it that had still hung from the ceiling, but a bin full of chunks and a whitish line on the ground still marked where it had been.

Beyond that, a long hallway stretched with a single door just to the right. A left turn led to a second hallway, with three more doors.

Willow	"I thought we decided that in third grade," Willow replied.
Xander	"Yeah, but I'm a grownup now." Xander waved a hand and led the way down the hall towards the south apartment, pulling his passkeys from his pocket. "That's supposed to be one of the privileges, like driving and going in the little room behind the curtain at the video rental store."
Willow	"Why can't you go to the bathroom before you go to the video store?" Willow asked.
Bridge	"I've never even been in a video store," Bridge admits. "I've heard about them, though."
Willow	"They're nice," Willow said. "Sometimes they have old-fashioned candy. Though I never did believe that they'd let you buy bubblegum cigarettes unless you were over 18. I think it's a trap."
Xander	"See, there's another one. I get to buy bubblegum cigarettes and play with fire now. It's on my driver's license along with the Must Have Passenger Side Mirror thing." Xander started to put the key into the lock of the south apartment - assuming it was an apartment and not a portal to hell or closetland or somthing - then stopped. "Bridge, you wanna check the door and make sure I'm not unleashing satanic wildebeests if I open it?"
Bridge	Bridge takes off a glove and holds his palm up against the door. "No wildebeests, Satanic or otherwise. Actually... nothing on the evil-scale at all," he says.
Willow	"What about icky bugs?" Willow asked.
Bridge	"No icky bug auras," Bridge confirms with a nod. "Promise."
Xander	"Good to know. You have no idea." Not that Xander'd been imagining there might be a guy who'd dissolve into bugs on the other side of the door until Willow put the thought in his head. He unlocked the door and pulled it open. Yup. Apartment. No Hellmouth. Just a really big living room. Xander stepped in first and peered around.
Willow	"I'd say it looks okay but then there's jinxing issues," Willow said.
Xander	"Nice living room, anyway. Not as big as mine, but then they all make me look like a slumlord compared to the groundfloor apartment." Xander flipped a lightswitch on the wall; yup, electricity was connected in the rooms, too, not just the hallway.
Willow	Willow looked around some more. "Nothing's on fire," she pointed out, because she liked to spot the positive in things.
Bridge	"Yeah..." Bridge says distractedly as he steps inside.
Willow	"You know what this place needs?" Willow said, looking around some more. "A plant."
Xander	"See, I was gonna say 'furniture besides that table' ?" Xander pointed to a small coffee table in the middle of the living/dining room. "But plant first, definitely."
Willow	"It would liven the place up," Willow said. "Until such time as somebody neglected it and it died and then the guilt of that poor little plant's lost soul would be on you for the rest of your life and please don't make me take care of the plant, Xander, I can't handle that kind of responsibility!"
Xander	"What if we gave the plant to the person who actually lives here?"
Willow	"Oh! Like a welcome gift?" Willow nodded. "I like that."
Bridge	Bridge? Not really hearing this conversation. Instead, he's focused on the door to the study, and is walking over towards it.
Xander	"Yeah, or a sort of please-don't-sue-me-if-the-walls-start-bleeding bri--" Xander stopped, noticing Bridge heading across the room. "Something over there?"
Bridge	"Think so," Bridge says, opening the door and flicking on the light. "Huh," he says thoughtfully, tilting his head to look at the wallpaper. Or at least, what appears to be wallpaper, at first glance.
Xander	Xander followed him in. "Good huh or 'I sense an ancient burial ground and tentacles are involved' huh?"
Willow	Hearing this, Willow sighed. "Could we just once have a time of tentacles when I'm not wearing a skirt?"
Bridge	"No tentacles, just... a book I remember reading in first grade," Bridge remarks. "On the wall. Now, I mean. Not when I read it."
Xander	"Finding stuff written on the walls tended to involve a lot of yelling when I was in first grade," Xander said, walking up to peer over his shoulder. "This is kinda cool, though. Nifty wallpaper."
Bridge	"Aaaactually," Bridge says. "I don't think it is. It looks more like someone actually painted this right on to the wall."
Xander	Xander slid his finger over the nearest sentence. "Yeah, that's paint. Somebody really had a lot of time on their hands."
Willow	"Somebody painted a wall to be a book?" Willow clearly thought this was the best idea ever since people had come up with the idea of books in the first place.
Bridge	"Mordecai Three-Three-Three and the Snake with a Hat, to be exact," Bridge says with a grin. "Cool.
Xander	"Three three three?"
Bridge	"He's three plus three years old, and he has to repeat everything three times before people pay attention," Bridge explains.
Xander	Xander grinned as a memory popped into his head. "Like you when somebody walks into a Common Room?"
Bridge	Bridge grins back. "That would be where I picked it up from, yeah."
Willow	"Why can't I have a room that has my favorite books on the walls?" Willow asked. She clearly felt this was very unfair.
Xander	"You could--" Xander stopped, because he would so get hit for saying she could take a book apart and paper her room with it. Though... "Get and e-book and print it out and make wallpaper?"
Willow	"Ooo!" Willow perked up. "I wonder if there's a form for that. By the way you need forms. I keep meaning to tell you. I'll make them."
Xander	"I think there's---" Actually a stack of them upstairs in a drawer, but why spoil her fun. "A need for forms, yes. Lots of forms. As long as I don't have to fill them out."
Willow	"Of course not," Willow said. "It'd be all kinds of forms for things that your tenants and clients needed. There needs to be a process, just like the labels."
Xander	"....Labels?"
Willow	"I've got a label maker!" Willow said, far, far too cheerful about this. "Now all the labeling can be uniform and much more organized. No more using rulers to get the sizing correct!"
Xander	He had a feeling he'd regret asking this. "Yeah, but what are we labeling?"
Willow	"Everything!" Willow said. "That way whenever you look on a shelf or in a drawer or in a closet you know exactly what everything is!"
Xander	"Won't I just be able to tell by looking at it?" Then Xander thought about some of the things he'd found in closets over the years, especially in Sunnydale. "That was stupid. Forget I asked." "Speaking of closets, we should check 'em. For portals to... just for a change of pace let's say magic countries with talking animals, instead of Hell." He glanced around the closetless room, then headed for the one next-door, calling back, "Also dry-rot."
Willow	Willow followed. "Peter gets cranky if you don't call those wardrobes."
Xander	"The built-in ones are closets; the stand-alones are wardrobes." Xander paused in front of the one in the bedroom they'd entered. "Except when they're not. And sometimes they're armoires. I built one of those once. It looked a lot like a closet."
Willow	Willow took all that in, then said, "Okay, it is possibly my own fault that I never noticed you were gay."
Xander	"Or a carpenter." Xander didn't roll his eyes. Because, er, yeah. He just reached for the door handle and pulled it open. Which given all his portal to wherever worries? Probably stupid not to wait for Bridge to pre-check it. Not that the human evil-o-meter would've sensed the veritable tsunami of acorns that came pouring out of the closet onto Xander's head.
Willow	Willow stared at this, her eyes wide. "Squirrel treasure! Like - like for the king of all squirrels!" Having a royal boyfriend influenced your imagination just a little.
Bridge	Bridge picks up an acorn. "Well, they're not evil. I can tell that much. You should take some with you for the squirrels next time you do radio," he suggests.
Willow	I should!" Willow said. She turned to go back into the other room. "I think I saw something in here I could use to hold..." Willow's voice trailed off as she looked around the room. "Um, guys? Are we sure the walls were painted with Bridge's favorite book? Because I don't remember him being this into fictional accounts of how a young Jewish girl spearheaded the Suffragette movement. Not that I'd blame him if it was though."
Bridge	"I wouldn't say it was my favourite- well, not anymore anyway, I guess it was my favourite when I was six, but- hey, it changed!" he observes. "How did it do that?"
Xander	Xander poked his head into the study. ".....huh. Yeah, that definitely says Votes For Women. Not Votes For Women, Votes For Women, Votes For Women."
Willow	"And this part here gets into the tea cups," Willow said, pointing to it.
Xander	"Okay, that's kinda cool." Xander frowned. "But not exactly scary. They can't've walled off a whole floor of apartments just for magic novel-paint, right?" Xander shook his head and went back to exploring the rest of the apartment. Like, for instance, the coat closet at the end of the hall. "Unless they were reeeeally new to Fan---" rumblerumblerumblerumblethudthudthudthudthud.... Yes, that would be the sound of a man getting pelted by acorns. Again. "...dumb."
Bridge	"You okay?" Bridge asks worriedly, coming up behind Xander.
Xander	Xander rubbed his head. "I'm starting to wonder if the squirrels didn't wall the place off."
Bridge	"Yeah..." Bridge says. "Maybe we should get out of here before you hurt yourself again? Um. I mean, before anyone else is hurt. Yes."
Xander	Xander narrowed his eye. And rubbed his head. Again. "Right, because there won't be more nuts in the other apartments."
Bridge	Bridge snickers. "I promise to check all closets beforehand to make sure the only nuts around are the three of us."