[REG] Dastardly Dining (Audrey, Janice)

[cibarium]

There were a few things Janice missed about Barren Pines, despite the fact that it turned out not being a school at all and was actually a youma factory elaborately disguised as one. One thing was the library -- the selection had been fairly impressive, and the lights there weren't fluorescent. Another was the common room and those little student lounges, when they didn't look like they were haunted.

However, the one thing she missed above everything else, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was the food.

Janice hated public school lunches. They were disgusting, unappetizing and devoid of any nutritional value, overpriced for the cardboard they were made of, and she was somewhat suspicious some of the entrees Meadowview contained a select variety of carcinogens given how low-grade everything was in them. As such, she normally opted to pack her own lunch with her to school, but today she had managed to sleep in and didn't have enough time to put one together, or even grab a tomato out of the greenhouse. She was pretty damn hungry by the time her lunch hour rolled around -- but after perusing what was available in the cafeteria, not quite hungry enough for what they served here.

So, having settled on a can of Megaquench but otherwise foodless, she scouted the tables of the dining area for somewhere she could sip at her drink over her copy of Wuthering Heights. Those plans changed, however, when she caught sight of a familiar mass of blue hair seated near the window. A lopsided smirk alighting on her features for an instant, she weaved her way around the chairs and tables and students until she reached her target, immediately sitting down unannounced and without permission.

"How are we doing," she asked, resting an elbow on the table and propping her chin on her hand, "...Linarite?"  

[nessy]

For most, Barren Pines was talked about in hushed whispers and rumors. Audrey Collins had made no secret about the fact that she was transferring out of plain ol' Meadowview High to go to an elite private school. An elite private school that had turned out to be a black market operation! But less than a month later, she came back, fresh as a daisy. The only change was her shocking head of hot pink hair, which hadn't lasted more than a week after her reunion with Pavel Kruschev.

One thing that hadn't changed, was the black sweater that had permanently added itself to Audrey's wardrobe. It was a fairly breathable knit, with red star buttons on the front, a remnant of the Barren Pines uniform itself. Originally, it had garnered several strange looks, but for the most part, the Collins geek had faded back into the faceless crowd of uncool youth.

Except for, obviously, one Miss Janice Fitzpatrick. Audrey would've rather had a bevy of annoying, busty cheerleaders suddenly place themselves across the table. Brainless jocks. Hell, AV geeks that only wanted to get hands up her skirt! Perhaps even...no. Janice was not as bad as Ursula Johnson. Probably never would be. Letting her own book flop onto the table, the bluenette put down her pizza and stare levelly at the other young woman across from her.

"I think you've finally unhinged yourself, Fitzpatrick. I haven't the foggiest what you're going on about. Lose your way to the men's room again?"  

[cibarium]

Janice had opened her book, eyes on the text, idly flipping a page once or twice while Audrey gave her response. That was one of the behaviors she reserved for people she outwardly disliked: invade their space, and then act like she was bored to be there. She let her gaze flick back to the other girl after a moment of this, though, and in her low, oily voice she replied, "No use playing the fool with me here, Collins, Her Majesty tipped me off before you even knew you should refer to her as Her Majesty."

Straightening her back, lifting her attention away from the book again, she continued, "You mean you didn't even see me at the meeting? Honestly, that disappoints me, I thought you were a little more attentive than that."

Her energy drink was opened with a short, sharp, quiet hiss. Janice gave a somewhat disgusted look at the pizza her bedgrudging dining companion was eating, but didn't say anything about it. The fact the girl had consciously chosen to eat it was insult enough in her book.  

[nessy]

"As if I ever would, unless I had no other choice. I have little respect for those that ******** their way to the top of organizations." Dark gold eyes levelly swept her mathlete rival across the table. The look was similar, but then, weren't they always? The disguise magic was always weaker for fellow teammates, but it wasn't dissolved entirely. Uranophane could have been several people, but none of them would know about the new Queen.

"Honestly, I am not selling clues today. And had you talked to Ursula, you'd realize that not only is she unworthy of her lofty position, but that I wouldn't have recognized you anyway, had I been paying attention. Which I really wasn't." A lazy lift of the shoulder, and Audrey turned her attention back to her lunch. Cafeteria pizza was surely the most divine pile of cheesy msg she'd ever tasted in her entire life.

"I really had better things on my mind. But since you're the new hired help, I guess they aren't giving you much to think about. It's almost a pity. Almost."  

[cibarium]

"Hah," she offered, a puff of breath forced into a monosyllabic laugh. "I've talked with Ursula a few times, and don't really have anything against her. I'm supposed to be working under her, as some sort of attendant to the Queen." Janice could not work her teeth around the word handmaiden. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, regarding the bluenette from the corner of her eye. "If you know her that well, though, you can guess the job isn't quite as glamorous as advertised."

Audrey could probably piece together the picture for herself, but Janice went on anyway after another mouthful of Megaquench: "When I was recruited into a paramilitary force, I wasn't expecting to spend quite this much time carrying shopping bags and helping to pick out chick flicks she could force her fiance to watch."

Janice had an ability to keep a very straight face in a number of situations and over a variety of conversational topics. Sometimes this had the effect of making her look more professional, more trustworthy in her opinion, more intimidating. People would gravitate to her as the calm and collected member of the group, make her into an improptu leader or at least be willing to listen to what she had to say.

Right now, though, was one of the cases in which her intensely stony expression was not helping her at all.  

[nessy]

At the simple mention of the word fiance, Audrey's face screwed up into a look that suggested perhaps there was a dead, rotted corpse underneath the table. Perhaps the only person that didn't know of her disdain for the relationship was the General King himself, and only out of sheer fear and respect. After all, Ursula was the queen now. It slid snidely through her thoughts, and the teen snorted derisively to herself.

"You think she'd at least get you a pet to inject with radioactive fluid, or whatever weird things you do in your spare time." Audrey was a math geek. Numbers weren't shameful, they got you places in life. Science? Science was weird, and Janice had an unholy devotion to the strangest fields it seemed. Shaking her head and folding her hands on the plastic table, she rested her chain and looked almost girlishly at the other Lieutenant.

"So you're not enjoying the ah...challenge of our after-school regime? I'm sorry, but why does that concern me?" She was indeed somewhat baffled. The two had been at each others' throats for a few years now over mathletes, though in recent weeks, that hadn't mattered much at all really. Especially since the mysterious disappearance of their coach.

Hee.  

[cibarium]

'Unholy devotion' was far from an understatement; while Audrey always managed to surpass Janice's marks in math tests (the closer the race was, the more it was worth it to rub it in the homely girl's face), Janice was practically not worth even competing against in the sciences due to her unshakable, obsessive interest. When they'd dissected a fetal pig in biology she had been the one to remain in the classroom through lunch hour to methodically disassemble the entire animal far beyond the class requirement of finding and labeling the digestive system and chambers of the heart: she had removed the eyes, cracked open the skull and studied its brain, stripped one of its legs down to its skeletal structure before she was told to clean up and make room for the next class.

"I'm supposed to be at the Queen's command, follow her word and her orders," she prattled on, looking straight ahead with narrowed eyes. "But so far I haven't exactly received any orders you'd think would be... relevant to our agenda. I suppose all that doesn't really concern you directly, but..."

And then she shifted again, straightening in her chair and regarding Audrey with slightly more earnestly-given eye contact.

"Well. To be blunt, I think I could put myself to better use. And since the first step of being a useful part of any organization is familiarizing yourself with its members, I figured I would have to start somewhere. And you seemed like the easiest person to reach, all things considered."  

[nessy]

"Yes well, we can't precisely Negabrawl in the middle of the cafeteria. Kinda gives up the whole 'hide in plain sight' thing." Sitting back slightly to study her classmate, Audrey wound her blue curls around her finger and tapped her shoes in a light rhythm. "Definitely couldn't hurt to get to know everyone, especially Obsidian and Hematite." Her voice lowered on their names and she tried to speak casually so as to make it look like it was nothing more than a discussion on their calculus homework.

"The latter is probably fresh out of the hospital by now, but when he's better he's quite dependable. I am sure her High Mightyness has been singing his praises. I've found Tanzanite to be reliable, and Serandite is young but willing." Staring at the ceiling, she sighed and then looked back at Janice. "What is really needed, however, is a central training regimen. The GK's been too busy with the lady to really force the issue, but more and more recruits are coming and have no idea how to do things properly."

Stopping, the bluenette all but laughed at them both. Before, she wasn't willing to give Fitzpatrick the time of day, and now she was listing off her knowledge of the Negaverse and suggesting ways to be useful. But really, mathletes was so unimportant compared to the larger goal they were both working towards now, and Janice was capable...if she had to admit it. "I mean, did anyone teach you how to take items from people? Or how to move about without being caught?" Exasperated, she leaned back in, elbows on the table. "It's shameful!"  

[cibarium]

"I've met Obsidian before," Janice smirked a bit, "he's been giving me combat training on the side." That mention did a fair bit to explain a large bruise Audrey could see on her forearm. "And I met Hematite before, out of uniform. That was before I was recruited."

She idly flexed one hand in front of her, watching the long digits work. "He had no regard for my personal space... and... very fragile fingers."

Grin.

Tanzanite and Serandite were both unfamiliar names, but she filed them away in her memory for future reference when she would have a face to attach them to. When Audrey shifted the topic to a training regimen, that peaked Janice's interest further -- her eyebrows perked up attentively, and she looked at the girl with genuine concern for her words, a look that had never really been cast in her direction before.

"Now that," she said, drumming her fingers against the neon-colored can of her energy drink. "Is a thought. I only got combat training myself because I raised it to the General-King as an issue." Removing her glasses and wiping at them with a cloth fished out of her pocket, she continued, "But you're saying there's no organized effort to bring everyone up to a standard? If he and Her Majesty are too busy with their own affairs to arrange something so rudimentary, maybe we should just take matters into our own hands."  

[nessy]

Audrey raised an eyebrow at the idea of the pairing of Obsidian and Janice in a training scenario, and grinned widely. They probably would've been at each other's throats, and the idea of it was absolutely hilarious. "I almost would've paid to see that, Fitzpatrick." The comment about Khal and personal space was pretty true, but then, she'd never tried to keep him out of hers at any point in their relationship brief though it was.

Scooping up more pizza before it could get cold, she demolished the last of it before speaking again, meticulously removing the grease from her fingers so as not to destroy her precious book. "At our meeting, I got the feeling that they were scared by this unexpected new person showing up and are trying to deal with that as best they can. Unfortunately, they are too used to the competence of myself and several others to realize that perhaps not everyone is so eager to learn. I had quite a bit of down time to learn how to do what I can do, but it's simply no good anymore."

Chewing her lip, Audrey did something that she almost never did, and certainly had never done with Miss Janice Fitzpatrick. "What do you suggest? It can't be too extreme, or else we might lose valuable members of the team. And even incompetents are valuable at this point, since the team is so small. Sadly." If there was anything worse than a noob, it was a useless noob, and they had to fix that or it was all over.  

[cibarium]

"Well, we could always feed the incompetents star seeds until they turn into youma, they'd probably be more useful that way," Janice suggested, but the grin she was giving suggested it was a joke. Or at least probably a joke. It sounded like an idea she could take seriously; she possessed a brand of arrogance that, instead of placing herself up on a pedestal, cast others into a ditch.

Then she had a notepad in her hand -- something that may have illicited a tired groan or sigh from Audrey -- Janice with her notepad was Janice at her most irritating, with the pen-clicking and punctuated scribbling, and over the years she had perfected the art of taking it out so fast it looked like she had made it spontaneously appear out of nowhere. She was already etching strings of words into it by the time Audrey had even noticed it.

"So. A training exercise needs to apply the proper skills, and... if our organization is as full of half-wits as you say it is, we'll also have to make it interesting so they'll actually want to participate."

Pause. Scribble.

"And competitive."

Scribble, scribble, smirk.

"Like a game of some sort."  

[nessy]

Now there was an idea! Perhaps if they fed enough of them to the wimpy baby lieutenants that had done little more than sit with their thumbs up their asses, there might actually be some fight there. Gold eyes lit up with pleasure at the idea, though she knew well that it was an impossible venture. Chewing her lip in thought, Audrey tried to ignore entirely the notepad and pen she hated so very much. The one good thing about no more mathletes was the idea that she didn't have to listen to that goddamn pen for an hour every evening.

"Mm, a game like paintball? But it has to be something that can be proven as a useful training technique, and I'm not quite sure paintball works. Capture the Flag seems a bit too prone to violence...uhm." Fingers drummed the table restlessly as she brainstormed out loud. "Tag? What about tag? Physical contact that can be easily monitored but it teaches you evasion and agility. Also, how to find your target since you know certain people will target others. And it's not exactly complicated, you know? Even the dipshits will get it." And she could possibly even shove some people off tall buildings. That would be fun.  

[cibarium]

That was one thing she'd forgotten about Audrey, they shared the same sense of humor sometimes. Or at least, the reason they'd decided to team up in the first place was that they agreed everyone else still looking for a partner was too stupid to be worth their time. Janice had caught the little spark of amusement at her first suggestion, and couldn't help but appreciate it a little. Which meant she was enjoying sitting at Audrey's table for reasons other than deliberately being irritating.

Heh. Who would have thought.

Tag... Janice liked that idea, and lit up a little with intrigue at the thought. "That's definitely a good place to start. Not only for those reasons, but the basic rules are simple enough and everyone should have played the game at least once in their lives." Which definitely ruled out the problems other games might have raised. "We could probably make it a bit more interesting though, give it a reward incentive, like a prize of so many star seeds if you win."  

[nessy]

"Yes, we can't assume that everyone is on at least your intellectual level, let alone mine." The light jab was accompanied with a light smile to show that while Audrey was being bitchy, she didn't want an argument too terribly. You did, however, have to get in hits where you could, or it wasn't even a decent rivalry. Payback for all the goddamn pen clicking, at the very least! They might have been working for the same side, but it never would excuse the pen clicking.

"I like that idea though. Sorta like an entry fee, winner takes all sort of thing? I know several lieutenants that would jump at the chance to look impressive if all they have to do is play a child's game. Enjoyable though it might be, that is." Audrey wasn't going to lie, she enjoyed tag. Being smaller than a good deal of her peers meant that when she got going very few could catch her. Negaverse tag? She was one of the older agents, she probably had a good edge on everyone currently on her level. Only Obby or Khal could potentially catch her, and she wasn't about to play with them.

"Winner delivers to Ursula. Or Killingworth, your mileage might vary on who you view as more worthy of impressing." She'd take Killingworth any day. All you had to do to impress Ursula was tell her that her tits were looking shapely that day, or whatever worked on her. "How would we get the news out though? Word of mouth? Can't exactly pull people like the boss."