Ling reclines against one of the wooden railings, sipping quietly at her drink while she watches the general area around. Even grad students need some time away from being lab lemmings, and tonight she's without her laptop and heavy bio text books.

And herein pops another lab lemming: Gillian Schroeder. She's heading towards nothing in particular, at first, holding a cheap styrofoam cup of coffee. Ling catches her eye, however, and the archaeology student moves over towards the other, a benign smile appearing. "Hey. Didja find out anything about those bones?" she says in a neutral tone, taking a sip from the bitter coffee.

Looking at Glissa -----
Determined. Intelligent. Those two words can describe this woman, standing at about five feet and six inches with plain brown hair and grey-blue eyes. A baggy white shirt and baggy khaki pants accent her simple wardrobe, dark brown hair pulled back with a rubberband so as not to interfere with whatever she might find herself doing at the moment. Occasionally she wears wire-rimmed glasses that fit well with her pale skin and oval face, scruitinizing anything in her path. Her feet are donned in tan hiking boots with white socks, and she seems scholarly--in a too-young way. Ling glances up at the fellow lab lemming, giving her a quick dip of her head first in greeting. "Still waiting for results on the DNA test," she says quietly, voice muffled by the now hard rock song coming on in the union accompanied by various arcade games and pinball machine sounds. "Anyone bug you about your findings yet?"
-----
Gillian blinks. "Nah. I need to go to class, though," she says, glancing over shoulder. A fleeting smile to Ling and the archaeology grad student is fleeing the building.

Nicodemus walks in from the direction of campus. Nicodemus has arrived.

Ling watches Gillian leave hurriedly as she was late for her scheduled activities, and calmly goes back to drinking from her glass. A good thing she stayed late at the lab yesterday, and has some free time to get away from the lemming circle for awhile.

Nicodemus steals in from the Union's hallway about an hour before the night classes get out. He detours into the rec area and gives it a quick once over for familiar faces, apparently not catching anyone immediately.

Ling considers joining in on one of the more popular fighting games, as she'd found those rather stress-relieving in some way. She pushes off the railing, and heads towards a brightly flashing console of Marvel vs. Campcom 2.

Nicodemus takes a second look around. Surely he missed someone he knows. Apparently not. But he doesn't let this deter him and heads over towards the video game to the left of Ling: Lethal Enforcers. Plunk a quarter in, pull a plastic gun up, and the carnage begins.

Ling sets her drink balanced precariously on the console as a disgruntled player leaves in a huff after not being able to beat the last boss. With a challenging twinkle in her eye, she slips in a couple quarters and goes to it with Mega Man, Gambit, and Captain Commando.

Nicodemus seems to be more interested in just shooting the hell out of the side-scrolling scenery in this older game, probably from the early to mid 90's era. Sure, he shoots the bad guys and doesn't shoot the hostages or paniced civilians, but he merrily destroys random clocks, desk knick knacks, vases, windows, and makes bullethole smileyfaces on the walls.

Ling is quite concentrated on her own game, beating the crap out of the Hulk, Storm, Rogue, and other character matchups. She's quite adept at the game it seems, perhaps having had lots of practice at it. Super powered moves come with quick movements of her hands and fingertips at the buttons, and an almost battlelusted smile plastered on her face. The reverie is jolted out when someone rudely interrupts her almost finished battle by plunking in a quarter to challenge her. She gives the student, seemingly an undergrad, a quick nod as if accepting the challenge, and waits for her opponent to pick his poison.

Nicodemus trigger finger tires from squeezing off hundreds of rounds per minute in a hailstorm of virtual lead and mayhem. Sometimes, he even takes time out to shoot a bad guy. It's patently obvious he's just getting his giggles from shooting things rather than actually playing the game. As the first level ends, he trades the gun out to his left hand.

Ling and her opponent battle it out, and the enemy is quite soundly defeated with a spectacular super character trio special move finish. The undergrad would look shocked, but his ego is bruised more than anything as he plunks in yet another quarter to challenge again. Ling seems to be enjoying this, and as she waits for her sore challenger to have another go at it, her eyes slip towards Nic's game screen. A quiet chuckle is elicited as he fires a complete happy face into the wall on screen. Then, it's back to student smackdown.

Nicodemus acquires the shotgun powerup and begins merrily peppering the world with buckshot. Combat has moved out onto the streets and he blasts out windows, parked cars, street lights, trash cans, and the random stray dog or cat--which apparently don't penalize the player, though there's no bonus points either. As the wave ends, he switches gun hands and eyes the nearby battle of the titans while a cut scene plays itself out.

By now, the student is quite flustered at being beat by a woman, and shucks out yet another couple of quarters to try and at least get her down to one fighter. He almost succeeds, but finally gives up as he's taken down again. With a short snort and muttered curse, he picks up his drink and leaves. Ling offers a 'good game' call towards the student and he whirls briefly before nodding in acknowledgement and pushing off. The asian grins, then returns to her game. Waiting for the countdown of the other player's side, she uses the time to glance at Nic's screen again, curious.

Nicodemus waves the gun haphazardly back and forth, apparently having grown bored or tired of trigger pulling. The gun-blazing ceases, then he pegs three civilians in a row, ending the game. "Dull, dull, dull," he grumbles under his breath.

Ling finishes off another volley of opponents, coming to the final boss. She glances over to see the gun waving and Nic's dull look. "Guess they should make games that use random opponents, na?" comes her question to him as she occassionally watches her screen and the boss taunting her with threats to end the world.

"Same thing over and over again," Nicodemus complains in agreement. Then conceeds, "But it's fun to shoot the guns every now and then."

"Sort of like this boss," Ling replies, taking about a minute to defeat the first and second stages of the final baddie. "It's the same guy, and you know what he can do, but you don't the order he'll do it in." She glances back at Nic and smirks before turning back to beat the final boss, nearly losing on purpose it seems. After entering her initials in the game screen, she turns around and picks up her drink while glancing at her watch.

Nicodemus looks like he's finished here as well, possibly preparing to leave. "Good game earlier. You trashed that guy."

Ling glances in the direction the undergrad had taken off in, then nods to Nic with a smirk hovering. "It's funny sometimes, to see their expressions. He might be back someday." Then, she offers up her introduction and a hand out of courtesy. "My name's Ling."

Nicodemus shakes, but not too firmly. "Nicodemus." He asks, "You faculty?"

Ling laughs at the thought. "No, just a lab lemming exchange student. I work at the archaeology labs amongst taking some classes." The voice, on her part, comes with some indication of some asiatic accent, but intermixed with knowledge of English and its more native pronounciations. "You?"

Nicodemus doesn't seem to have too much trouble with the non-native speaker's accent. "Another anthropologist?" He slides his hands into his jacket pockets. "I graduated last year from the computer science program, but I come back to visit a lot. Interesting people and the library's better stocked than the public one in town."

Ling smiles. "Comp Sci. Maybe you could look into creating some better games to replace the dull ones." She chuckles, taking another sip of a diluted ice tea, and blinking at her glass as the taste isn't exactly pleasing. "Well, Nicodemus. Guess I'll be seein' you around then. I've got to go back to running that giant wheel they have down inside the lab cages." She smiles, pushing off the game console she was leaning against.

Nicodemus nods a farewell before turning towards the air hockey table. "Enjoy the kibbles."

Ling waves with her free hand and a laugh. "Don't make happy faces in the air hockey table," she calls back before putting the drink glass in the bin above a trashcan and exiting the hall.