Chapter 19: Two Parties, A Date, and a Meeting With the Time Traveler

Ida leaps out of bed one morning with the urge to eat weeks-old Spooky Day candy.

Why? Because it's her birthday, of course, and birthday girls deserve candy!

She invites over Rain and a few close friends to help celebrate. She's planning on a morning party because Marlin's new job at the theater starts kind of early in the afternoon. (Marlin gained the Virtuoso trait and followed his mother into music.)

"Good morning, Ida dear, happy birthday. I hope you are planning to put a shirt on before your guests arrive."

"Good morning Mom, thanks! And I don't know, I was thinking about giving them an adult-themed show since I am aging up today and all..."

Shanti isn't amused by Ida's sarcasm.

Ida autonomously takes the last opportunity she'll have to set a booby trap.

Guests start arriving pretty early. Everett Morris, a friend from shop club, brings an entire stuffed soy turkey. 

Ida doesn't like tosoykey. 

Also in attendance are Everett's sister Darcy, who wasn't invited, Marlin, Aubrey, and Morris Alto, another shop club friend. Rain, too, but she's out of shot. And yes, the two Morrises do make things a little confusing sometimes.

Yeah! Birthday! Wooo! 

Morris Alto: "Parties are beneath me. I'm only here to support the shop club president."

Yeah, yeah, and the cake is just a side benefit, right?

Rosalind has married her boyfriend and is now Rosalind Andrews. Also, she's pregnant! Marriage still seems like a big commitment to Ida, but she is very enthusiastic about the thought of babies. 

Ever the excitable Sim, Ida is... well, very excited for her friend. Rosalind may be much closer to Rain, but she and Ida have been friends since childhood. 

Speaking of Rain, she and Ida have a little reunion. "I'm so glad you could make it!!" Ida enthuses before launching into an animated retelling of her experience with the Time Machine.

Marlin's got his eye on that cake. Don't worry, Marlin, you don't have long to wait.

Creepy vampire gnome watches Ida make a wish...

Ida has only gotten more excitable and emotional with age. She now has the Unstable trait; sometimes her mind gets carried away with itself and she forgets who she is.

She also plays enough video games to gain the Bot Fan trait. Her full list of traits is now Brave, Eccentric, Excitable, Over-Emotional, Unstable, and Bot Fan.

Shanti and Alexander take advantage of cake traffic to sneak upstairs for a bit of alone time.

Look at those adorable sappy faces....

Immediately after cake, Marlin congratulates Ida rather passionately.

"Whoa, guys, get a room," Aubrey complains. They ignore him, as usual.

Is this the famous chicken dance?

"So, now that I've had my birthday, we can start dating again, right? You haven't found someone else, have you?"

"Of course not!" Marlin is offended by the very thought.

"Good."

More dorkiness.

Marlin indulges Ida's eccentric rambling about bot-building while their pixel robots battle on screen. She tells him about her plans to use the Time Portal to venture into the future and learn about bot buildling. She talks about the potential in plumbots; how they can help people, change the world, or even just make housework easier. Her plan is to bring the knowledge of Plumbots back to this world and make a profit from selling them to the people of Sunset Valley and beyond.

Her plan is a good one, and Marlin tells her so. He's a little concerned about how long she'll spend in the future, though. "I don't want to spend one more minute without you than is necessary," he says.

"I'll be gone a few days at max," promises Ida. "And hopefully I'll only have to make one trip to learn the basics enough to be able to set up shop here."

Sooner than she'd like, Marlin has to run off to work and the party comes to a close. It's not the end of celebrations for the day, though; Earl Steel is having a party at his place to celebrate his marriage to his girlfriend, Rachel.

Ida hasn't seen much of Earl since elementary, and is surprised at all her childhood friends getting married so soon after graduation. "Jumping the gun," she calls it.

Immediately after his wife disappears upstairs, Earl tries to flirt with Ida. 

"What the hell, Earl? Your wife is pregnant. Are you crazy?" She cringes at the realization that Earl's turned into a real creep since school.

She considers just leaving, but her mother is upstairs, and Marlin said he'd meet her here after work, so she simply decides to ignore him and head up to the party.

Shanti: "What kind of party doesn't have food? Pathetic."

Rosalind is here too. "Wow," Ida comments, "I think you've actually grown bigger since I last saw you like, three hours ago."

Rosalind tells Ida her good news: she's been accepted at Sacred Spleen and is going to start there as a bed pan cleaner as soon as her baby is born. 

"You know, my mom practically runs that place," suggests Ida. "You should talk to her. Get in good with the boss now, it'll do wonders for you in the future. Just ask my mom."

Shanti is thrilled to meet another youngster starting on the medical career track. "You know, I was a bed pan cleaner once too."

Ida: "Hah... my work here is done."

Oh, Marlin's here!

Marlin tells Ida about his day while Shanti offers to determine the sex of Rosalind's baby.

She's having a boy!

Marlin: "May I have this dance?"

Ida decides she can't wait until tomorrow to check out the time portal. She convinces Marlin to ditch the party and come look at it with her. "You haven't seen it yet, right? It's so cool!"

"Hmm... I guess you turn it on like this... Whoa!"

The man who emerges from the portal introduces himself as Emit Relevart. 

Ida: "If that's your real name, I'll eat my hat."

"Emit" says he needs Ida's help to gather missing power cells for the time portal to get it working again. Marlin doesn't like this. "He doesn't want to dig through trash for his power cells so he gets you to do it for him? Who does this guy think he is?"

"It's all right, I'm used to digging through scrap piles."

So Ida collects the power cells while Emit does... whatever he's doing.

When she's finished, Emit thanks her profusely and walks off to work on fixing the portal.

"Yes!! That was totally awesome!"

Ida wants to follow Emit into the future right away, but Marlin wants her to wait and do more research first. "Don't you think this Relevart guy would be hurt if the portal was dangerous?" Ida reasons. Marlin has to concede her point.

"All right, but wait until tomorrow, OK?"

"Okay," Ida says, "I want to be at graduation, anyway."

When Ida turns to ask Emit if he'll wait to take her to the future with him tomorrow morning, he's already gone.

"It's fine! It's totally fine, I can go alone," she says.

"Snowflakes taste cold," Marlin replies.

They're both hungry since there wasn't any food at Earl Steel's boring party, so they go to dinner at the Diner.

Afterwards, Marlin asks her to stay over.

Ida agrees, thinking this means they'll take that next step. But right when she's about to propose they go up to the bedroom, Pauline comes home.

"Haha... this is awkward," Ida says.

"Do you want to leave?"

"No, it's okay. We don't have to do anything. As long as I'm with you, everything is fine."

And it is.

---------------------

Notes -

Ida is officially taking over. Somehow, I'm feeling bittersweet about this. Her full rolls are:

-Single

-1 child

-Inventer/Bot-builder

-Opportunist

-Gourmet

.... ^.^'