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 Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2010 5:30 pm
The Shufflepuck Café, at first glance, looked fairly normal for a school evening. Some students with nothing better to do milled about, and a few couples late for Valentine’s were hogging all the good seats again. It would have been a calm and quiet place to rest if not for the noisy rifling in a corner.
Several short racks of local papers and magazines were kept pushed up against a wall in the small café, tucked in relatively straight columns. They were typically left untouched; most brought in their own reading material or a date. Coming on to the scene of disarray, it was clear that this was not the case for Cassie Hall.
Tabloids lay scattered on the neatly tiled floor, piled on top of one another in no particular order. Some of the pages were dog eared and folded or left open, which could not be said for the pristine celebrity gossip magazines left sitting in place on the rack. Cassie, in her Meadowview uniform, kneeled in the middle of the chaos, yanking down papers and conspiracy rags and skimming through them as if it were her job. An exhausted employee started over, as though he wanted to say something, but seemed to think better of it as he went to go finish up her order.
It was only when the small shelf seemed to be eradicated of anything but teen pop star sensations that Cassie seemed to be satisfied. She retied her hair, which had gotten loose in the midst of her scavenging, and bent down to try and pick up the piles of yellow press.
Try was the key word. Very little was accomplished in her hilarious struggles to lift the mound of newspapers. Cassie took a step back and smoldered at the pages, as though trying to discover a latent ability of telekinesis.
She seemed a bit dismayed when the papers stayed where they were.
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Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2010 10:27 pm
Robin had a theory - well, if you wanted to be technical, it was really more of a hypothesis. It went like this: If she were to enter a normal place of business and spend an extended amount of time here, then within an hour of her arrival, everything would revert to chaos. She had been calling it "the Fourth Law of Robin-hood," but when she made the mistake of mentioning it in science class that day, she had been corrected. It could not be a law until it had been a theory; and it could not be a theory until it had been put under fire, tested within a .95 accuracy. Until that time, she was informed, it was merely a hypothesis of Robin-hood.
Robin, of course, was not satisfied with the ambiguity of the phrase. So she was making a point of visiting those places that normal people could be found, setting the stopwatch on her flip phone, and measuring just how long it took before the inevitable chaos began.
Two step into the Shufflepuck Cafe, Robin began her countdown. An hour of normal interaction, and this place was doomed to fall into insanity. Robin stretched out her interlaced fingers, eyes scanning around the establishment... now, where was she to begin....
Best to start where there was a strong foundation already. Over there, by the local news - the girl that seemed determined to life up a stack of papers half as tall as she was. Clearly, a scene that needed a little bit of Robin inserted into it.
"Need a hand?" The messy-haired girl appeared on the other side of the stack, smiling, looking pure and innocent and considerably younger than her fifteen years. Her eyes flicked down to the papers as she observed, "I bet that if you can get half, I can get half, and-- OH MY GOD!"
Not even a minute into her arrival, and Robin had already found a reason to start shrieking. Nabbing the top paper off the stack, she observed the cover with something of a starry-eyed wonder; "Pecos Bill's Ghost Arrives in Destiny City! How did I miss hearing about this?!"
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 6:31 am
Cassie beamed at the girl and gestured to a stack to the side, dropping the papers she was holding as a result. They landed with a thump and spilled onto the floor. Ah, well, she could always pick those up later, but she still gave them an annoyed look.
“I could use some help, thanks-“ Cassie paused, staring after the outburst. Then she brightened, face flushing in delight for a topic she was very fond of. She gathered the newspapers rapidly as she spoke.
“I was surprised too! Ah, it’s just so crazy, ever since school started I’ve been lagging in my reading and then the first thing I read is, BAM-” She slapped a hand on a newspaper for emphasis. “-Dead person’s ghost. In my face. Everything cool happens when I’m not looking!”
Expression souring slightly, Cassie said, “I’m not sure if he's still here though.” She dropped the rest of the newspapers once more, save one, in explanation. After flipping through it, looking for something, Cassie finally tugged out a sheet and presented it to Robin. Its bold heading read, ‘GHOSTS: NEAR EXTINCTION?’
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 2:14 pm
"Oh. Well." It was hard to place whether Robin looked flustered or no-nonsense as she took the proffered sheet, flipping quickly through it to the article. She scanned the page quickly, picking out choice words in her quest for information. "HRM. I know the author of this article." Meaning, they had an internet line of communication that was insignificant, but still allowed Robin to claim some obscure familiarity. "He's sloppy on his research - jumps to conclusions without taking in the big picture," she declared, returning the sheet back to Cassie. "I have no doubt that some ghosts may well have disappeared, but he is likely not taking into account the rise in monster sightings around Destiny City, which have distracted the focus of ghost hunters and therefore resulted in less sightings being reported. Once the monster numbers have dwindled down, the reports will start coming in again."
See? Didn't that sound like Robin knew her stuff! She certainly thought it did, and swiped her thumb smugly against her chin.
"So what's your interest in this stuff? You an investigator, or an enthusiast, or what?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 3:39 pm
"Really," asked Cassie, staring at Robin with what could be called awe. What a smart girl! "That's so cool! I wish I knew someone famous." Then she diverted her gaze back down to the paper, a little doubtfully. Robin seemed much more educated on the matter than a man she had never met.
"Oh, I heard about the monster thing!" It was the only thing most people seemed to want to talk about. "It's a government plot, like the Sailor Senshi, so that the city pays tons and tons of money on repairs and can't focus its funds on really important stuff! Like ghosts, I guess."
The papers hadn't really talked about it further in depth, but Robin's theory sounded reasonable enough.
"I don't, uhm, well I'm probably not an investigator!" Cassie answered hurriedly. "That's dangerous sometimes. I don't want to end up in the hospital like those poor kids." It had been the headlines for days on just about everything, along with many Sailor Senshi warnings, although which incident she was talking about went unmentioned.
Cassie stopped, a little unsure of how to phrase herself. "Enthusiast sounds about right? I mean, I really like to read it and all! What are you?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 3:55 pm
"Investigator." She spoke it loud and proud - but of course, most of the things she said tended to be rather loud, and anything she said about herself was proud, so that didn't really mean much. Sticking out a confident hand, she went to the introductions: "My name is Robin. I'm PixiStixRPeople of Don't Trust Your Eyes dot Com - I was the one that cracked the story about the haunted reflections in the pond outside of the old mental hospital. They printed that one in the Curious and Creepy, did you happen to read it?"
Granted, that had been almost a year and a half ago now - but it was still one of Robin's most brilliant moments of success. She'd even gotten paid $50 for her submission; enough to cover her website hosting costs for a couple years!
"I heard about people winding up in the hospital, too," Robin mentioned as a by. "The fact that the government hasn't stepped in to do anything about it yet proves conspiracy. Now, this is just a theory, I think the monsters must be the result of some sort of energy experimentation that got out of hand and invited in spirits from another world. But the Senshi -- they, you know, it's well-documented that they're fighting the monsters. So they're either from the government too, cleaning up the mistake, or they're also visitors from that same other world, right?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 4:24 pm
Investigator, gosh she was bold. "You're very brave," Cassie said in a tone reserved for firefighters and lunch ladies. "I'm Cassie! I am, uh, Cassie Hall of Meadowview High School!"
Surprisingly, she was all ears during Robin's impressive introduction. "You mean you wrote that?! Oh my god, I can't believe I'm talking to a famous person!" Cassie decided not to mention that she had read it and disagreed, after checking out an opposing viewpoint article. She shook Robin's hand vigorously, pleased as a peacock. "I refused to go near that area a month after reading it."
She listened to Robin-the-expert curiously. "That really fits, but the Senshi.. Well, they aren't exactly doing it safely! Have you ever checked out one of those scenes of carnage? It's disgusting. I think they're working with the monsters. Two beasts working in tandem for the government!! Even if they were off world, and I'm not saying they are, then who's to say they didn't partner up then?!"
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 6:50 pm
"Meadowview?" For a moment, all pretenses of being the big, bad, hotshot, famous, super-cool investigator of the supernatural were dropped. At times, even someone like Robin was just a simple schoolgirl - who, finding a like-minded and friendly soul, was simply gleeful to discover they were at the same high school. "Me too, me too! Oh my gosh, you know - we're in, I think we're in the same math class, right? I always sit in the back row, and...." She made a square with her fingers, like a film director measuring his shot, and got an angle on Cassie. "I think you usually sit on the right side of the room. Is that right?"
This meeting was the most exciting thing ever to be associated with math class, that was for damned sure.
"No way," Robin shook her head, "they're nuking them. Haven't you see the YouTube clips? It's insane! But of course," she added in the spirit of fairness, "that doesn't mean they're on our side. Lemme tell you, you run into one of those guys at night, you're better off turning tail, just to be safe!"
Not that Robin would, of course. Because she was the big, bad, hotshot, famous, super-cool investigator, and you didn't get that way by running away.
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:34 pm
Ah, school. Cassie loved it for the people and hated it for everything else.
"Oh my god! Do you have math third block?" Of course she did, because Cassie always sat to the right. The right was one of the nearest spots to the door, prime for escaping the terrors of math. She could vaguely remember seeing pink hair, sometimes, walking into the room. "We need to work together on those partner quizzes sometime!" She hoped Robin was a bit better at the subject.
"I don't know, I've never really checked them out." Cassie shrugged. "They're so unreliable-" There was no trace of irony in her voice as she grabbed several tabloids off the ground. "-and watching them gives me headaches! I looked at one of them, once. They used a cellphone camera. It's like seeing the Blair Witch Project all over again! These people aren't exactly trained professionals!"
There were ridiculous amounts of 'videos' of Sailor Senshi, too, and Cassie had been Rickroll'd too many times to count.
"Yeah, I'm not sticking around at night if I see those terrorists! I've actually been carrying around a whistle since that first story came out about them. You should too. I swear to god, I won't go down without, without bursting their eardrums or something-"
An employee stopped by the two, and informed them, a little on edge, that he left Cassie's coffee on her table.
"Thanks," she said offhandedly. Cassie crouched low and picked up a fair amount of papers; nowhere near the size of the original tower. "Could you, uhm, just grab those for me Robin-"
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:09 pm
If only Robin knew what Cassie was thinking about her math skills - or had stopped to put together that the girl, sitting near the door, wasn't likely to be very skilled. Because, for certain, math was Robin's worst class - she even got a better grade in geology, and she'd slept right through that class! And Robin, like Cassie, was thinking: Hey, maybe this girl will help me ace that class!
"We do! We totally do," Robin gushed. "Maybe we can work on homework together, too!"
Poor, poor fool.
"Well, I can -- oh, sure, here --" Remembering that she'd come over to help, Robin bent to her work, collecting the papers as she continued talking. "I've sifted through a lot of the videos, and I can probably give you links to the best ones? I think it's important, you know, for people to know what's going on, so... hey, you know what!" She stood suddenly, struck by an idea. "Whistles! That's brilliant!"
Robin's thought train had just gone careening off track, from the looks of it. She seemed to know what she was talking about, at least, but....
"You ought to buy a bunch of them," she suggested suddenly, "and go into business. It's perfect! You can make pretty lanyards for them, and then sell them at school, so that kids have a way to call for help if something goes wrong. You can call them Senshi Signals or something!"
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Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 8:10 am
Oblivious to the certain doom of her math grade, Cassie nodded excitedly at the team-up prospects. "We should!" she agreed as they walked over to the table.
"Would you? Thanks! There are tons of videos, you know, and that was a few months ago!" As much as the tabloids loved to bawl their headlines and fluff their stories, they never really mentioned anything that might have made them lose readers.
"What?" Cassie said curiously. "Oh! Oh my god, that's such a good idea! I never thought of that before!" Thinking on a larger scale was definitely not Cassie's forte; just making sure she was fine was always good enough. She really liked it, too. Arts and crafts was always fun, even if she ended up messing up a knot or two. "The Senshi will never see it coming! I'll have to start saving up.."
The idea that the whistles could be used for more dubious, and annoying, purposes did not occur to her. "And there could be Senshi mobiles too, like those wheels in your heels, that- that-" Cassie started laughing, thinking herself clever for such word play. Of course.
Cassie deposited her pile of papers onto the table by her coffee, still giggling. Then she put on her Serious Face, which was more of a goofy grin, and gestured to the two stacks.
"I saw some Sailor Senshi Safety articles in here, maybe we can get ideas from them?" She started to sift through her pile, bypassing ghosts and ghouls and manbears in hunt for some elusive skirt.
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Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 2:41 pm
Plopping down her own pile of cheap sheets, Robin mustered together a serious face of her own. She, at least, was capable of looking serious - if you were to overlooking the distinctive twinkle in her eye, the one that usually promised everyone associated with her scheming was going to be spending their afternoon in detention.
"I'll race you." Leaning against the table, her elbows slightly bent, Robin gave Cassie a sort of eager, canine smile. "First one to find three articles about Sailor Senshi Safety buys the other a pastry. No cross-referenced articles, no repeats. You on?"
Robin always thought she worked better under pressure. She also really, really loved pastries. Her will to win was strong; her passion for sweet foods was even greater. She'd have this contest in the bag.
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Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 3:19 pm
Leaning forward, curious, Cassie nodded. "For your information, I really like apple danishes," she said good naturedly. Grinning brightly, she sipped her small cup of coffee and began to shuffle with an increased fervor.
It would be easy, she thought. After all, Cassie was the one who sorted through all the good stories earlier! "This will be. A piece of danish." She burst out in renewed laughter at her own ingeniousness, continuing her ritual of sipping coffee and flipping past headline after headline.
Originally confident, Cassie looked less and less sure of herself at the search went on. After dropping the pile so many times it seemed that all of the papers had, predictably, gotten jumbled. By the end Cassie had a continuation of an SSS bulletin and was searching for the first half; Robin had already collected her three.
She looked flustered, lips pursed, and she sounded a little accusatory. "I don't- I. The pile was. Mixed up. From before. When you, you interrupted me. This isn't-" Her hand gripped her cup with such a ferocity that it was good she paid extra for the ceramic mug. Cassie wished she could say something; but Robin hadn't checked out anymore than one article beforehand. She swallowed down the rest of her coffee quickly, a bit unhappily.
"I think you have psychic powers, you cheat," Cassie said, sounding a bit severe even as she was joking. Maybe. "Well, uhm. What did you want?"
((I hope you don't mind that I jumped to conclusions a bit in this part? I can change it if you'd like.))
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Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:11 pm
((Totally cool by me!))
Victory had been acquired - but at something of a cost. Robin's pile was now in utter disarray; the gathered stack had been demolished into a tremendous mess of misplaced pages. The carnage was pretty grim, with ad inserts flung to the sides, sheets of paper half-falling off of the table -- but, for her single-minded enthusiasm, the spoils of battle would be hers.
This was not the time to gloat, Robin. Just give a cool smile and a gracious nod, and--
"HAHA, YES!" The girl jumped out of her chair, throwing a fist high into the air with an exhilarated grin. "I am the research queen! Tremble at my might!"
One day - some day - someone would take a bit of time to pull the girl aside and suggest, quietly, that her attitude in victory was lacking. Especially for such a small victory. Knowing Robin, though, she'd be too busy mocking the losers to hear.
Still with that stupid grin, Robin dropped back down into her seat. If people were staring over in her direction following the noisy proclamation, she didn't seem to notice. "Chocolate croissant," she answered Cassie's question sweetly. "We can split it, okay? And I'll look for more articles in the meantime." It was the least that the research queen could do, after all.
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Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:01 am
And was she- augh, she was, Robin was gloating quite happily.
Cassie glowered, just a bit, over her mug. It was- not fair. At all. Somehow. Just plain ridiculous. A mouthful of lukewarm coffee prevented her from further complaint, however. She looked at Robin with a vague sense of irritation. Maybe eventually that someone would tell Cassie to learn to suck it up, too, if she would ever stop alternating between laughing and making sour faces.
"Fine," she said, as though she was just told to suck a lemon for the good of mankind. Cassie leaned over in her seat, looking as though she was groping the floor- was she looking for scattered change? Did she not have money?- before finally rising up with several singles and a quarter. "I think this is enough." After waving over a nice employee, the croissant was ordered and being prepared.
After a moment of further searching, Cassie managed to pull up the first half of her article. She brightened instantly. "I found what I was looking for! It was right after that bridge collapsed, you know?" The page was presented, proudly, with advertisements of 'SenshiBGone' spray and armors.
The article itself was a hyperbole of the event; some recommendations were made to gnaw off your own arm in case of being caught in a Senshi trap.
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