Strokes of Genius, Wednesday (February 17)

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

Having a few days to go until spring break either made this week better or worse, and Katchoo was about to toss a damn coin to decide for her. On the one hand, the anticipation of a week off (mostly this entailed the two days of not having to be here) put her in a good mood; on the other hand, as soon as said anticipation ramped up and she asked herself how many more days to go, the impatience set in.

Heads, tails, with her luck the coin'd land on its damn side.

Know how you could tell she was twitchy? She'd pulled everything off the haphazard mess that was the main set of shelves in the crafts section, and was reorganizing it.

Scary. Possibly mildly apocalyptic.

[OOC: The OCD kept falling asleep, so I threw a blanket over it and wandered off.]

Comments

[bitchprince]

"%$#$!@*#&#@##!@$#%%%!@$%#ææ@#**&!(@*@&@*&(!@$^#@&^*&^&!"

Katchoo had that greeting earned all by her lonesome. On so many levels, including spiritual and etmological.

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

Was that ever larger than life. Utterly unsurprising, given who exactly had just shown up.

"And good morning to you too, sunshine," Katchoo drawled evenly, rather unplussed by the impressive outburst. She could guess what had prompted it.

. . . SHE REGRETTED NOTHING.

[bitchprince]

"Shut up," Arthur told her, succinctly, stormed on over, and reached over to snag her arm with the express purposes of dragging her somewhere where there wouldn't be any bloody squirrels.

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

The squirrels stayed out of the back room, because it was scary in there, and also had a conveniently open door. Wasn't that nice?

"Says the guy who just barged in here all -- HEY!"

And she was being dragged. Damn this being scrawny business.

NFB

[bitchprince]

"No squirrels," Arthur said, yanking her into said back room. 'Crabbily' was too subdued a word. It was a Katchoo word. This deserved an Arthur word. "She does not have a good reason to."

Re: NFB

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

Aha.

"Really?" Katchoo asked, still affecting the bored drawl, the one she'd had years of practice at while getting yelled at by teachers in the Houston public school system. "According to who?"

Re: NFB

[bitchprince]

"According to me as well as my people's customs," he shot back. "She should know better than to let any old peasant from a different time period charm his way in, let alone flaunt it."

And that wasn't even starting in on Jacob's obvious shortcomings in this scenario.

Re: NFB

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

"And what are you going to do?" Katchoo asked. For now she was maintaining the drawl, but it miiiiiiiiiight show signs of cracking soon. "You're not her goddamn parole officer. 'sides, your people's customs and you, last I checked, aren't exactly in perfect sync."

She kind of slipped that one in there. No one ever accused her of being nice.

Re: NFB

[bitchprince]

If anything, his expression tightened at the reminder.

Thank you, Katchoo, it wasn't as if he was having issues about that.

"In my father's absence, I am the head of House Pendragon," he replied, tightly. "It is my duty to see to her wellbeing, whether she likes it or not."

Re: NFB

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

What, was she supposed to be here to help? Maybe, but in her own special way.

"Whether she likes it or not? EXCUSE ME? I think Morgana's pretty frikkin' capable of seeing to her own wellbeing," Katchoo bit out. "She's not five, Arthur, geez, and she's not stupid."

Re: NFB

[bitchprince]

"She is my father's ward," he pointed out. Pointedly. "And not stupid is debatable. Nevermind vindictive. She's treating this place like it's a bloody season out in the country most of the time, for God's sakes."

Arthur liked his sexuality-slash-propriety issues where they were, thank you: locked up tightly in the closet.

"Nevermind that she's an innocent. God only knows what he's got in store."

And now we were getting to Jacob's flaws. Much better conversational material.

Re: NFB

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

"Stupid, stupid, goddamn . . ." The next string of sounds out of Katchoo's mouth defied any typeface anywhere to adequately convey, but scattered in there among the multilingual obscenities and the less coherent noises were words such as 'insane,' 'responsibility,' 'royalty,' and 'men.' It might not be terribly difficult to wrangle the appropriate context.

Unless you were a squirrel, and thus exiled from listening range.

"-- DUMBASS," she finally exploded before tapering off long enough to breathe. "You come down like a mob of insane chaperones every time she talks to somebody, and you're surprised she has fun waving it in your face? God, Arthur, she's female, not helpless. There's a frikkin' difference."

Re: NFB

[bitchprince]

"She is my responsibility," he snapped back.

In the face of her ranting her face off? Damn skippy, Arthur was going to go for tightly controlled. "Whether she gets the severity of our situation or not. Besides, my father will never forgive me if I let anyone despoil her."

Daddy issues plus brotherly protectiveness equals...

"Whether you get the severity of our situation or not. I didn't come here for your approval."

[intraspective]

“Katiiiiina,” Ino carolled, leaning in the doorway roughly around lunchtime. “How could you perpetuate the lies of a bunch of squirrels?”

Despite that, she was grinning.

What? It amused her!

[On massive SP ‘till the evening, but could not resiiist.]

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

Katchoo's messy thatch of hair, followed by the rest of her head, poked over the top of the shelves to reveal a vague but amused grin. "Iiiiiiiiiiino," she rasped back. "They offered me rum. What else was I gonna do?"

[intraspective]

“Obviously,” she scoffed, wandering over to where Katina was. “You should have phoned me and seen if I’d offer more rum. Ain’t that how it supposed to go? I'm hurt.”

No she wasn't.

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

"I wasn't drinking the rum anyway," Katchoo parried. Hell with this reorganizing thing; she cleared off a space on the shelf for her to lean against instead. "Was gonna sell it instead, and then you'd be on the short end of the stick, wouldn't you? Look, I just read what they give me. What're the delusional little furballs lying about this time?"

[intraspective]

"They're little monsters," she said almost affectionately, rolling her eyes. "I went to the dance alone and yet it's been all 'about her daaaaate' and stuff since then just 'cause I talked to Zack there."

Ino laughed, shaking her head. "I didn't have a date, ain't that unfair? If they're reporting it then I should have one for real, huh?"

She tilted her head thoughtfully.

"Or not talk to anyone but I think I'd last maybe a day before breaking a vow like that." No kidding.

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

"Little monsters with flags," Katchoo added, snorting. "They love that stuff, you ever noticed? Drawing hearts on the notes and crap like that. Maybe they're trying to will these things into reality."

She picked a piece of frayed Scotch tape off the edge of the shelf and snickered. "You. Not talk to anyone. My ass."

[intraspective]

Ino stared at her.

"They draw hearts on the notes?"

Then sniffed and raised her chin. "I could totally be silent if I wanted to."

You know, for a little while. Maybe if she spent the time hermitting with a notebook and stuff. Hiding from people.

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

"They're special," Katchoo intoned, shaking her head.

And then, of course, had to fix Ino with an arch, raised-eyebrow look. "And for how long, exactly, can you pull that off?"

[intraspective]

Ino fidgeted.

"Depends on the circumstances? Me and Ichigo didn't talk to each other for, like, weeks once. But that's 'cause we'd dared each other into mutual silence around each other and then tried to get the other person to crack."

That was different, though. That had been a challenge and she'd been able to talk to everyone else.

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

"And who cracked first?" Katchoo had to ask; she'd never been able to talk to Ichigo for long before talking turned to top-volume yelling. But that had been kind of fun, in its own weird way.

". . . and if it wasn't a date, what was it?"

[intraspective]

"He did," she said smugly.

... Never mind that it was because he'd gotten afflicted by one of those weekends that some people turned into different people and she hadn't. It totally counted as a win, shut up.

Ino blinked at her. "What? At the dance?"

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

Hey, Katchoo would grant her that as a win. "Yep. Whatever the squirrels were talking about with all the extra a's this time that you're telling me is lies."