fandomtownies | The Park, late Thursday night

What Chad was doing wandering around the town late at night was no body's damn business. So he felt he shouldn't make it his business to find out what the girl he noticed drifting around the park was doing there, either. Was it a ghost, he wondered, recalling back to some of the first day warnings? If it was a ghost, he wouldn't be able to see such a clear outline of a figure, unless it was a special ghost? Maybe just another person.

Either way, he didn't want to frighten her. He imagined that a huge figure suddenly looming in the dark would give most people quite a scare. So he held still and waited until he knew better what he could do.

Finally a moment of immobility followed by a small splashing sound and an equally small cry of triumph. Whoever it was stood up and possibly rubbed her back before starting away from the pond, stumbling with a muttered curse over a metal lobster at its edge.

Oddly, the curse sounded rather like, "Poot!" but the tone was right.

It was a little too dark to see what happened, but a succestion of splashing, shouting, and cursing could only mean falling. "Are you okay?" Chad called out, hand to mouth, as if acting like a megaphone to project his sound, but didn't move besides that. His dark figure charging forward to investigate would probably cause an alarm that was best to be avoided.

Was that an eep?

"Who's that?" A girl's voice.

"It's Chad," he responded, although he knew that probably wasn't too helpful because the chances of whoever that was knowing who he was were smaller than the chances of whoever that was not knowing who he was. Still, he lifted up a hand and waved, a little exaggerated so that she might see it better.

"What are you doing lurking out there? You're not a thief, are you? I'll want to see your license." Given her experience was limited to Ankh-Morpork and Lancre, she was making a rather broad assumption that other places licensed thieves.

"No, I'm not a theif," Chad assured her, "but I don't have a licence. I don't drive...." He thought about maybe moving a little closer, because he didn't like talking so loudly over the distance, but if she thought he was a theif that might not be a good idea. One step, then. One step at a time.

"If you're not a thief, what are you doing lurking?" Ravishing? "I should warn you, I'm a witch, so don't try anything funny."

"I wasn't lurking," Chad explained. "I was just walking by, and didn't want to frighten you."

"Oh. Then why don't you come out of the shadows?" She brushed the mud off the knees of her dress and moved to where one of the lights in the park could show her silhouette more fully.

To say that she was round was actually probably accurate, despite her muttered complaints.

"Thank you." Chad accepted the invitation and stepped into the light, hulking form emerging from the shadows. He scratched the back of his head a little, feeling rather awkward all of a sudden.

Agnes craned her head up to see the lurker and wondered if he had troll in his ancestry somehow somewhere.

"Who are you?"

First giant, now troll. Chad was collecting quite a list of supposed ancestory.

"Yasutora Sado," he answered her simply, "but people call me Chad." And then, he figured, he might as well offer his hand, so he did. Even if meeting someone in the middle of the night in the dark wasn't exactly typical. "I'm a new student at the school," he added, in case further proof of not being a theif or rapist or murderer or demon to harvest her soul was needed. Although, really, that didn't disprove any of it.

[[ have to disappear for work now, woes ]]

"Chad. I'm a new student, too. Agnes." She wished she were taller. Nanny Ogg knew how to convey authority to anyone any size, but Agnes was pretty sure she couldn't carry it off when she had to crane her neck to see this guy.

Would you look at that... look how big his hands are.

I hate you.

Something croaked in her pocket.

[ooc: No problem at all. I had to do a disappearing act myself.]

"Nice to meet--" Chad cut off as his eyes drifted down in the direction of her pocket. Did her pocket just croak? Either he had imagined it entirely, she had croaking pockets, or she had herself a pet frog. And frogs, while they could be very, very ugly, could also be ridiculously cute. He shook his head, remembering that he was in the middle of a sentence. "Uh, you, Agnes."

He was pretty sure he remembered someone else mentioning that name, but couldn't quite remember who amid all the flurry of new names and people.

Agnes glanced down at her pocket and then back up at Chad. Nothing to see here. Really.

Crrrrooooak

"Do you usually lurk in the dark in parks?" she asked hastily to try to cover the fact that her pocket was both croaking and wiggling a little.

"Do your pockets usually croak like that?" Or are you just happy to see me?

If Chad had been a more expressive guy, he would have facepalmed at the unwarrented addition in his head.

"Not usually," Agnes said, pulling the frog out of her pocket. "I needed something for my roommate."

Chad's head tilted as he look at the frog, quelling his urge to run his finger along its head. "Why does your roommate need a frog?"

"Because he called me 'round' on the radio, and I told him I'd turn him into a frog." The frog wriggled in her grip and she shushed it. "But I don't really want to do that if I don't have to, so..."

"Are you planning to tell him that the frog used to be a person?" If Chad were in that situation, that's what he would have none. But he couldn't say he'd ever been called round before. Or really ever been bugged enough by something that someone called him to want to turn them into a frog.

Agnes smiled a certain, shall we say, witchy smile. "I'm going to put it in his bed for him to wake up with."

Chad's head tilted again; he was thinking of how he would respond to waking up with a frog suddenly in his bed, and he would have responded pleasantly, which he didn't think was the reaction Agnes wanted to get.

"He doesn't like frogs, then?"

"He's very jumpy and I may have convinced him I'd do it," Agnes said. "So I think opening his eyes to a frog staring him in the face is going to wake him right up."

"I see," Chad nodded. "Good luck."

Although, now that he knew what she was doing stalking around late at night (or, at least, it seemed she had constructed a pretty good alibi), it seemed that he might have to tell her what he was doing. But the thing was, ne didn't even really know.

"Thanks." You'd think she'd heard what he was thinking, even if she hadn't. Probably. "Now it's your turn."

She couldn't possibly have....could she?

Chad feigned ignorance. "For what?"

"To tell me why you're in the dark here in the park," Agnes said, wondering if she was going to get a crick in her neck from this conversation.

"Oh." Chad shrugged his massive shoulders, scratched the back of his head. "Just....going for a walk..."

She was totally not going to buy that, he could tell. Which was unfortunate. But it didn't stop him from trying.

Agnes gave him a Look swiped directly from Nanny Ogg's repertoire. It fairly shouted, "pull the other one, it's got bells on."

"I was," Chad said, infusing something that almost sounded like a tone in his voice, one of sincerity to make his nod. "Getting to know the area."

"Mmhm." Agnes looked sceptical, but didn't pursue it. "Have you learned anything interesting?"

Quite a few possibilities ran through Chad's head on how to respond to that. His favourite was where he would claimed that he learned that pretty girls go hunting for frogs in the pond. He was Mexican; he had noooo problems with 'round.' But he did have problems with coming off as creepy. So he just shrugged and said, "Not really."

In retrospect, tomorrow, he would probably regret his choice.

For some reason Agnes didn't get, Perdita snorted derisively in her head.

Agnes looked up at him, trying to read his face in the less-than-stellar light. "Mmhm. Well, now you know the pond has frogs."

"And where to go if I ever need to put a frog in my roommate's bed."

There was that, wasn't there? "Is your roommate a boy or a girl?"

"Boy," Chad answered. To the best of his knowledge, this was true. But after meeting that boy who could turn into a girl with water, he was prepared to accept that his assumptions could turn out to be wrong. But his roommate seemed manly enough. "Jim Ellison." He shrugged a bit apatheticly. He hadn't gotten to interact with Jim too much, but couldn't imagine ever needed to infest his bed with amphibians.

"Oh. I haven't met him yet." Not that she'd met a lot of people. "Well," she put the frog back in her pocket, "I have what I came for. The next time we find each other in the dark, no lurking."

Now that Chad was certain that Agnes would be quick to assume he was a maurauding, hungry bear on the prowl or some other possible moster that was included in so many of the warnings he'd heard from oldbies, he nodded. "Agreed."

And tried to ignore the thought in his head that popped up when he considered what circumstances thing might have them finding each other in the dark.

Can a split personality sneeze? Because that might have been the noise Perdita made.

"Good night, Chad." Agnes left the huge boy behind, and if she glanced back, there was no reason for it. Really.

Chad lifted his hand in a wave-less wave. "Sleep well and frog-free, Agnes," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and lumbering on to continue his nocturnal trekking.

The Park, late Thursday night

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