christina wants to go home (canada; freezes time) (freezeframes) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2012-09-19 19:50:00 |
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Chris had started out pretty opposed to this egg thing - she had other things going on in her life. Much more important things. Like sulking over being dumped. But sulking over being dumped was draining, and a number of her teammates seemed to be getting into the competition, and the beach wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened while she was stuck at IVI (after all, hadn’t the worst already happened?), so she thought it wouldn’t hurt to not completely ignore the competition. She hadn’t volunteered to take the egg yet - not while there were other people that were more enthusiastic about it, but if she saw an egg, it wasn’t like she was going to ignore it. And her power might even come in handy. So it wasn’t like she was going to ignore an opportunity if it presented herself, she thought, as she finished up her studying in the library and started making her way down to the first floor and the exit. Oden had been and never would be the most competitive person, but that For The Greater Good here meant his team could take a trip to the beach? Alright, he’d volunteer to carry around that brown egg. Not specifically that he had much of a terrible want to go frolic in the waves, he figured the other Peacocks might enjoy it and also, well, didn’t care to see the Rooster’s ego inflated even more. That last bit he’d kept to himself. They’d been going down a perfect streak until yesterday when the egg Max had been holding was bum rushed by Hailey leaving them a bit shaken. It wasn’t within Oden to throw in the towel after one mishap, so he forged on with the plan for him to hold the egg next and then found out what a pain the little thing could be. Figuring out how to carry it had been a bit of a challenge as it was only about a fifth of the size of his palm, making simply carrying it in his fist... weird. Good thing earlier on there had been the idea to protect it between a number of the boney plates his body could create. Might have made posture a bit of a problem today, however, it was nearing the end of the day and the egg was still safely cradled between the bony protrusions coming from the crook of his left arm and nearby from his ribs. Perfectly safe and all until the books he’d been carrying when he himself was leaving the library suddenly slid to the side; he tried to grab it, but because of how he was forced to position himself watched it fall to the ground with a loud clap. He almost went to pick it up instinctually, then remembered his little passenger and feared for the worse. Reaching his hand out under where his bones were tucked around each other, he expected to be met with a handful of goo when he allowed them to return to normal. Instead gently tumbled down the still safe egg into his hand, Oden chuckling softly under his breath at the luck of this thing. Chris had only half been paying attention to what was going on around her, but the noise of the books hitting the ground got her attention. Head snapping to the side she saw that it was just Oden’s, and she’d almost gone back to not paying attention when she saw the egg. It was brown, which meant that he was... a peacock, she thought? And they were doing... okay, if she remembered correctly? Better than the Blackbirds, at least. She thought. Most people were doing better than the Blackbirds, so they probably were. It took a moment of deciding before she decided to just go for it, glancing around to see if there was anyone else within range. There wasn’t, so she approached Oden, and right as he was at the far end of her range, froze him. She almost giggled (almost, but not quite) at how easy it was, taking a pen out and stabbing the egg that was still in his hands before unfreezing him. One second he was carefully starting to bend to pick up the book that had dropped and then next... He was having to take a half step back away from Chris who was practically standing on top of him; the same person that hadn’t been there that second ago. But that wasn’t all that had changed, Oden looking down at his now slippery hand showing him an almost perfectly circular hole poked in the side of his egg where it’s gelatinous middle was seeping out into his palm. A noise of confusion caught in his throat as he looked to Chris, down to the egg, Chris, the egg, Chris and then took a moment to stare forlornly at the ruined egg. This was what you call taking a step back from helping your team win that trip... Hell, this might even be called letting your team down. There was a sigh before he looked up at Chris once more, fought a small urge to narrow his eyes at her and levelly spoke. “I do not think I have ever been told what your power is, but I am to guess it is stopping time?” Almost as if to emphasize his words, a nice big glob on the egg itself then fell out of his palm and onto the floor with a sickening thwop. “Pretty much,” Chris said, almost feeling bad about how sad he looked. But he was a good looking guy - he’d probably broken lots of girls hearts. Dumped them over instant message even, maybe. So she hadn’t just broken the egg for Blackbird. She’d broken it for all of the girls whose dreams he had crushed. And it was a game, anyways. This was kind of the point. Even if she hadn’t really been all that into it before, there was something that she kind of liked about finally doing something egg-related. “Sorry?” she said with a shrug, only sounding a little bit sorry. “Nifty,” he replied, it being kinda obvious that he did not think it that cool given the circumstances, yet at the same time wasn’t going to fall apart at the seams over the egg. If he only knew the crazed logic Chris was using to justify what she’d done, however, he might have simply hurried away instead of now dawdling on his way back to his room. It was a game, he realized, and decided to tell her just that. “Breaking the eggs is the point, so there is no need to be sorry.” “Yeah,” Chris agreed, glad he wasn’t taking it personally. He didn’t seem thrilled about it, but she also wasn’t getting blood thrown at her. Which probably shouldn’t be a measure for whether or not something was going well, but at IVI, it tended to be. She took a moment to dig around in her purse, frowning at the interior of it. Finally finding what she was looking for, she pulled out a packet of tissues - always close at hand recently, taking a few out and passing them to the other student. “For cleaning up? And good luck, I guess. With the rest of the game.” The half-hearted start of a guffaw left his lips when she offered those tissues out of her purse, it not stopping him from taking them with a quiet, “Thank you.” A beat was missed, “For the tissues.” The thin, soft pieces of tree fibers weren’t going to clean up this mess entirely, but it was a start. A few steps taken over to the trashcan set at the entrance to the library led to the now broken egg being disposed of before he ran a tissue over his sticky palm. Past that he strode over to the bit of egg on the floor, bent down onto one knee and finally said, “The same for you and your team. Not enough good luck around with this it seems with all this-- Do you have another tissue I may have?” “Yeah, sure,” she said pulling out another few tissues - the last ones in her pack, she noticed, making a face, and handed one to him while kneeling down and picking up a few loose pieces of shell that had fallen as well. Chris realized she probably could have found a cleaner way to break the egg - like just taking it and throwing it in the trash can - but there was something that had seemed satisfying about the idea of unfreezing someone to a broken egg in their hands. And it had been satisfying, to tell the truth. “I’ll go register the break - I don’t think you need to come with me? I don’t know, this is the first egg I’ve broken. But yeah, I’ll do that part, and I guess you can get a new egg?” It was kind of odd, how this situation was ending. Like both of them were having to address how awkward it was that the entire student body was going crazy over eggs. To drive that fact home, Oden forced one corner of his lips up in a small unspoken thanks for her help as she handed over more tissues and picked up pieces of eggshell. “I have not had this happen yet either, so do not know.” There was a final sweep with those new - and now goopy - tissues before he pushed himself up to his full stance and looked down at Chris again. “If you run into any problems registering the break, I will help set things straight after I go wash my hands and tell my team we need a new egg, though.” This was the part where he visited that trash can once more and left to do just that. Well, not before throwing out, “Good one, by the way,” over his shoulder. |