Welcome to Gaia! ::

Through the hall of the Hillworth school walked the one thing that almost none of them saw on a daily basis - a girl. Had she been a Crystal girl, there would have possibly been a small crowd, but alas, Audrey Collins was nothing more than a lowly Meadowview junior. She'd also wielded her last name like a weapon, when her knee hadn't done the trick, and she knew most of the boys believed that she was some relation to the dreaded Detention Prince, Andrew Collins.

Of course, that was totally wrong. But they didn't need to know that. Strangely though, Collins hadn't been seen in a few days, and Audrey was decidedly worried. Worried enough to be prowling around the campus, making sure he wasn't just hiding. Obsidian was decidedly not all there sometimes, and the bluenette didn't put it past him.

Lost in her own thoughts, she jumped almost a foot in the air as she walked past a janitorial closet and heard a distinctive thump, and muffled cursing. Hands stuffed into the pockets of her beloved Barren Pines cardigan, she turned on her heel to inspect the closet and almost laughed out loud. The chair leaned oh so casually against the door knob could mean only one thing, that someone was inside.

Quietly, she tiptoed over to the wood, before banging on it like a set of drums. Well, it might not be Drew, but there was SOMETHING interesting in this closet!

Oooh, a fighter! Must not have been in the closet long, or he wasn't quite used to the treatment yet. Such things were heavily policed at Meadowview, and didn't happen often. But they did, invariably. Once Audrey had taken to padlocking everything she owned during gym class, the vandalism had stopped, but the teasing remained. Small of breast, and hip, she was more boyish than anything else.

But she was still a daughter, not a son. Giggling, and tapping on the door, she exuberantly plopped into the tilted chair, legs dangling and kicking childishly. In a sing-song voice, she called to the boy in the closet. "Now now, that's absolutely the wrong thing to say. Don't you want to be let out? I mean, you really should be nice to us girls."

Hee, boys were so fun sometimes.

Gripping the bottom of the chair and swinging her legs thoughtfully, Audrey pretended to consider the idea for a moment, before hopping up, and pulling the chair away easily. It really was a good trick, if you weren't on the receiving end of it. Lightly, she rapped the door with a knuckle.

"Since were so nice, and said please, and were just so pleasant about it...." she trailed off and stepped back, sure that the heavy wooden door would come flying open in about half a millisecond. Not that she blamed the poor kid, whoever he was. "Though you really should get some tutoring in science, there are a whole lot of girls in the world. Unless you're...well. Can't say I blame you if you are."

Amused, she paused, and leaned against the opposite wall. The kid'd come out when he was ready, at any rate.

A guppy. She'd bagged herself a real-life Munchkin. Being only roughly five-three on a good day, Audrey was used to looking up at nearly everyone. There were a few girls at school who were shorter, but no boys! This kid must be really young, to not have shot up through puberty yet, and under closer inspection, she didn't really spot a hair on his face nor peeking from his shirt.

At his references to the type of girl who usually was seen about the Hillworth campus, she couldn't help but wrinkle her nose in an adorable expression of disgust. "Yuck. I've never been in that position at all and I don't plan to be. I promise, your virtue is safe with me." Grinning at her joke, she shook his hand lightly. "I'm Audrey, Audrey Collins. What'd you do to get shoved in there?"

Her thumb jerked at the closet as she all but bounced over to sit back in the desk chair, smiling encouragingly. It wasn't exactly considered good form to take the star seeds from the Hillworth boys in the school, but hey. Friends didn't hurt either, now did they? No they did not.

Not bad, a bit on the grumpy side, but still appreciable sarcasm and wit. In all, there were worse people to spend a few hours of the afternoon with and if Drew was about, it was going to be his own damn fault he missed her wonderful company. "Hmm, I was supposed to meet someone, but he keeps vanishing." Pulling out her own cell, complete with Horde symbol phone-charm, she checked the time and smiled.

"I have a bit of time to kill before I'm due home for dinner, coffee sounds great. Gotta have cake with it though, I'll buy the cake, deal?" Not to be considered a huge feminist, simply an equalist. He was going to buy the coffee, she'd buy the sweets! Bending, she scooped up her own bag, which she'd tossed down before beating on the closet. She wasn't dumb enough to bring her laptop to Hillworth with her, not after the first time when she'd nearly lost the thing to some enterprising students.

"But promise you won't hit me on the head? I'm not sure I want brain damage just so I can be a Hillworth floozy."

Since her experiences with Pasha and Khaldun, Audrey'd become much more comfortable with the casual contact that normal people engaged in every day. So it was almost easy for her to link an arm through Zac's, and drag him towards the end of the hallway so that they might leave the all boy campus behind. "If it's sweet and sugary, I'm all for it. I am, after all, a growing girl." She stopped for a second, paused, and laughed.

"I hope not too much though. If I'm too much taller I'll start looking funny." She ignored entirely the comment about the chair, considering there was one sitting right there in the hall. A girl could never be too sure these days, working for the Negaverse. "What kind of coffee do you like? Black, sweet, funky-flavored, mocha? Mocha doesn't really count, I think. It's like hot chocolate more than anything, you know?"

Noting the discomfort, Audrey hugged his arm just a little tighter before letting go and continuing towards the Shufflepuck Cafe not far from the dingy campus. "Well, if you want the truth, I was looking for you. I heard the screams of a poor kid in trouble and like a good superheroine, I just had to rush over." At the bland look she got in return, the bluenette rolled her eyes lightly and smiled again.

"Andrew Collins, you know him right? I've been looking for him around campus. He's not really returning my calls or anything, he's so unreliable like that. It's really crazy, the jerk." Face scrunched up into a dramatic demonstration at how displeased she was with the lack of contact from Drew. "He was supposed to show me something, but then vanished. I'm hoping it didn't explode and kill him or something."

That would be really tragic. Then Khal would be the only guy she could hang out with, and that was more than a little awkward lately.