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Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 6:12 am
Zac Bancock was as smart as a whip. If you didn't know that, you weren't paying enough attention. It was to his downfall also that he was only around five foot something. Falco had never been involved enough to give a particular damn what the exact measure of the 'something' part was. The kid was short and as portable as a fun sized candybar, though his fellow students seemed to get considerably more satisfaction out of porting him around than anyone ever had with tiny, often stale candybars.
Of course fun sized candybars didn't carry around notebooks full of mysterious scribbles and check boxes, in which they seemed to be carefully making tick marks while watching a scene further down the hall with one of their tormenters began to unfold. Right now it looked pretty ordinary.... if you payed no attention to the little notebook.
Falco was paying a bit more attention than most people.
He'd also gotten a little closer than he'd expected to get, and was standing craning his neck slightly to view the contents of the notebook, which largely he couldn't make heads or tails of...
It was only Zac's cool and satisfied body language, almost like the cat with the canary, that let him know that the contents of the notebook, written in some kind of confusing short hand, had something to do with everything else that was happening.
So far he was betting on something to do with the water fountain... but maybe he wasn't being sufficiently monomaniacal, or whatever the proper term was for tiny, alarmingly intelligent people.
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Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 8:30 am
He nipped at the end of his pen, watching as a woman with a dog crossed in front of a man on a bike who had to swerve into the grass to avoid collision... the rest... well.
Bike ran over foot, the offended party lurched backwards into another student, who had been caught stuffing Zac into a trash can the week before, who, still holding a note in hand, sat down hard on a cheep nylon backpack, which -squelched. His cry of distress and disgust was audible even here.
Zac's hand moved to make another check in the improbably series of checkmarks, when he paused as though suddenly aware that someone was watching. The notebook was 'casually' covered with a hand and he tilted his head back searching for the source of the hairs rising on the back of his neck.
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Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 8:40 am
"...Jeesus Kid." Falco noted, watching the chaos unfold. It was like watching some kind of bizarre Rube Goldberg machine kick into action. It was downright surreal, and even looking at it it was hard to believe what he was seeing.
Of course then again a few years ago he wouldn't have believed they'd have strange monsters invading the city, or two strangely powered groups of damn teenagers reining terror.
Most city's had gangs. Go figure a place called "Destiny City" would take it to the extremes they'd seen.
He brushed back his bangs casually as Zac quietly covered the notebook. He'd already seen enough to convince him that there was more going on here than coincidence.
"If I believed in that sort of bullshit I'd say you were missing out on a fortune if you could fake a Jamaican accent."
He raised an eyebrow deliberately, as if he could pin the small young man with his eyes.
"I knew you were freaking smart but that's just ******** terrifying."
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Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 9:25 am
Zac froze... his shoulders tense and his mouth dry. "I... Don't know what you're..." He started but it was clear...all too clear that wasn't an argument that would fly. "...So worried about sir..." He said tensely. "... It's just a study of schedules?"
He swallowed hard. and quietly tore out a few pages from the notebook and undid the cap on his bottle of water before taking a small swig...and then poured the contents over the pages in a wash of blue ink that carried legibility with it. He sat mute for another moment waiting for 'the other shoe' to drop... detention, expulsion... it wasn't like they could do jail time, it wasn't like they could PROVE anything.
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Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 9:41 am
"... That must be some nothing then." he pointed out, raising both eyebrows now as he eyed he eyed the drowned pages. They'd been barely intelligible in the first place if at all, and he made no effort to rescue them now. "Besides, I'm not worried I'm..." he considered the words. "Impressed."
And seriously hoping he'd never pissed the kid off, but he'd hardly admit that.
He reached into his pocket after a moment of scowling thought, pulling out a cell phone. He glanced at Zac off and on as he clicked around with a series of small chirps from the ridiculously happy sounding device,as if waiting fot Zac to bolt while he searched.
When he didn't, and when Falco himself had found what he was looking for, he showed him a small picture on the display. Two of the boys who helped give Hillworth it's particular reputation, holding an cream colored cat with long fur. In the small picture it was hard to identify but they appeared to be tying something to the animals tail.
"I think you know these two? You've seen them around?" he pressed, wondering if Zac knew where he was going with this already.
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:50 am
The cellphone gave him pause, he gripped tight fingers around the edge of the notebook and tried to assure himself that there was no way that say...cops could be involved over drowning suspicious note book pages when the only consequence was dumping a jerk into a backpack filled by a 3rd party full of malodorous water balloons.
He glanced at the screen with an excellent poker face, though he needed to work on the eyes. No wonder so many players wore things to obscure them. Fingers tapped the edge of the note book as though itching to open it again but refusing to. "... I'm aware of them..." He said evasively.
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 5:21 am
Well, he wasn't sure that Zac got what he was thinking yet, but they were getting somewhere. The boy definitely didn't like it, but he supposed he wouldn't either if he had that level of control over things derailed by an surprise observer.
Not his problem. Kid was just in the right place at the wrong time.
"Good." He dug into his pocket and carefully pulled out the firecrackers that he'd been carrying since he removed them from the white cat's tail. "...See when they broke up their little party that you see here, they..." He drawled it out sarcasticly, still holding his fingers closed around the small, powerful explosives. "...Forgot. Some of their belongings."
He let that hang for a second. Zac was smart. He could figure it out.
"...So I was looking for someone to return them."
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Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 5:38 pm
"Of course... I know that cat at least... I'll be sure to make sure they get their... property back, sir." He said glancing the man over, there was a different sort of look in his eyes. Not...dangerous per say, not if you hadn't just seen the oddly 'coincidental' events... but there was a sort of 'sizing up' going on, calculating as though he were considering a sheet of statistics rather than a person.
"...I'll be sure you see it returned to them as well."
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 5:00 am
He wasn't exactly sure how to feel about that look, but the kneejerk reaction was to be disquieted by it. He wasn't even sure what to compare it to. As far as he knew, Zac Bantock could have leveled the same gaze at a frog for dissection in a biology lab, or even at a race horse he was deciding weather or not to bet on. It was just hard to tell if he should be looking for the Scalpel or worrying that the kid was about to check his teeth, or whatever you did to decide if a horse was worth betting on.
Horses had never held the same interest as a bike.
Anyway, he'd comitted this far, and technically he hadn't outright ASKED Zac to do anything... creative... with the firecrackers.
"Well I hope her owners think twice before they let her out next time. I couldn't find a tag or anything or I'd have taken her home." He pointed out, opening his fingers to let Zac take, or at least hold out a hand to be given, the cherry bombs. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen one go off at close range, but given what they could do to a damn toilet, he was afraid to think what they'd have done to an animal.
"If they're not careful she might not be so lucky next time some cracked in the head punk mistakes her for an old action figure."
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Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 3:16 pm
"I think that particular feline hasn't been declawed..." he said turning back to his notebook and flipping a few pages casually. "I think they might find themselves very nearly as surprised if they keep messing with her, both by the cat and her...family." He looked back up, tapping on a page with it's strange arrows and assortment of seemingly random letters and numbers.
Then after a fraction too long he flashed a smile that was eerily genuine. "If I see her around I'll make sure she makes it home safe too...sir. I'm sure her family will appreciate what you did for her already too."
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Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 4:25 pm
...There he went again. There was something about the way Zac phrased things that made the hairs on the back of your neck want to stand up. It was... He couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was predatory. It rang warning bells even though there was no specific reason it should, especially coming from a kid he could use as an arm rest.
No, check that, there was plenty of reasons, just because Zac was damned intelligent. His brawn wasn't physical it was mental, and he'd toned those muscles to Olympic champion levels, and there was no small part of him that knew he'd feel a little more at ease when he wasn't being stared down by this particular young man.
"Great, that's great." He noted, a bit more uncertainly than he would have liked, but there was just something about the funny pauses that made him feel like he'd started something dangerous.
Was the little punk going to try and bring this to the teaching staff? He'd never outright ASKED him to cherry bomb the little bastards in retaliation... but would he do something else? It wasn't like Zac had been following him, he didn't know him the way he knew his classmates, right?
"Thanks for the favor." He added, shifting his weight slightly. It felt like a good time to move on,and his instincts told him it was a good time to move.
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Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 4:41 pm
Zac folded up his things and gave, what had to be a mocking salute, but somehow it seemed more than that, not simply mocking but some kind of 'secret handshake' that the good teacher was not yet privy to.
"See you soon sir... I'll send you an...invitation to the big event."
And with that he turned, shouldering his bag and wandering out into the crowd, diminutive and unassuming he blended in, a tiny wolf in sheep's clothing.
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