Re: Trespassing?

[Kensie Barnett]

By the time Verity got back to Kensie’s room, Kensie was standing there with the boy she’d been talking about, her arms crossed and looking a bit cross. She seemed to be arguing with the boy. Well, she called him a boy earlier, but he was at least eighteen, his short, trimmed goatee making him look slightly older than he was. He had short red hair and wore a button-up shirt and slacks, and had a belt of tools around his waist. “What do you mean you aren’t paying me?” the boy was asking.

“I mean that you made me cry and you owe me,” Kensie answered, looking triumphant before he had even fully agreed. Had she not told him she wasn’t paying him before? The boy only sighed, like he’d been dealing with her for most of the hour and wasn’t sure why he was. “Look, I’m sorry I made you cry, alright? How was I to know you would get so upset at me saying you were bothering me?”

Kensie shook her head, sticking out her tongue slightly. “Nope, not good enough. You owe me because I’ll tell my sister you made me cry, and who do you think she’ll believe, hmm? But if you help me… I can put in a good word for you.” The boy looked a bit shocked at the statement. “Wait wait wait. If I help you… you’ll brag about me to your hot older sister?” He asked, realizing that scoring points with Kensie might give him a chance with Sonya. “What kind of game are you playing, Kensie?”

“The kind where I get what I want and everyone wins,” was her response. She really was a master manipulator, if Verity caught all of that. The boy hung his head and grinned. “Fine, you win. I’ll help you fix the window.”

Kensie grinned triumphantly, doing a happy little dance around to greet Verity finally. “Everything’s all set then!” She told the blonde girl. “Operation ‘Fix The Window Without Getting Caught’ is almost complete!”

[Verity Lohlepher]

Verity had enough sense to stop talking when she entered the room. Kensie seemed to be in deep argument with some boy. She guessed that was the one she was talking about. The blonde was keen on not making any noise and stepped lightly through the bombshell of a side of a room the younger girl had. If she didn't know any better she'd think the Barnett Sister's room was schizophrenic. She listened to Kensie twirl the handy boy around her little finger and kept silent, unsure whether she was more impressed or wary. To think she had that much manipulative power. For a fourteen year old girl, that was scary business.

The girl was finished in no time and Vera was paralysed only for a few seconds before regaining feeling and stretching her jaw muscles once again into a grin. They would make it! The blonde turned abruptly to the boy. "Catch this!" she said. She didn't see his facial reaction at being told to catch something when there was nothing there...or wait. There was. She summoned the window. Vera was in business mode too so she didn't see what happened to the boy after a giant window came falling from above. She didn't think there was a problem though. She would have thought the sound of glass breaking made was louder than gas molecules floating merrily along the floor.

"Okay, so you're chief," She told Kensie, letting her take charge since the boy/man was her minion. "What do we do while he's fixing the window?" she jabbed a finger towards the handy guy.

In the back of mind she remembered the script lying around somewhere. Without waiting to listen to Kensie's response she jumped around and spotted the book. In one smooth motion, she bent down and brandished the book in front of Kensie's face. "Actually, while he's fixing the window, why don't we work on that script? We gotta make it perfect!" she said enthusiastically.

[Kensie Barnett]

Kensie watched the window appear in mid-air, unable to stop herself from finding that strange ability of Verity’s cool and handy. The boy caught the window, thankfully, and Kensie let out a breath she didn’t know she’d started holding when the window appeared. “Good~” Kensie told him in a singsong voice. “Just get that aaaaall fixed up and I promise as soon as Sonya’s back I’ll mention how helpful you are, okaaaaay?” She nodded self-satisfactorily as she brushed her hands together and walked over to Verity, who was hopping her bedroom minefield. She swooped down and picked up one of the discarded scripts and suggested they work on it while the boy worked.

“Yeah!” Kensie nodded excitedly, hopping onto her bed and making herself comfortable. “You can sit here or on Sissy’s bed. I’m suuuure she won’t mind. Especially since she doesn’t get back for almost another week~” Kensie scooted back to the wall and sat cross-legged, making sure her dress stayed in its proper place when she did. “Alright, where do we begin?” Kensie asked as she picked up her own script. “I’m thiiiinking the ghost girl needs to be prettier and more likeable,” she told Verity as she started highlighting her lines to look at. “I mean, it might as well be a role to fit its actress, right?”

[Verity Lohlepher]

Verity decided to take Kensie's offer to sit on Sonya's bed. Hers was a teensy weensy, little bit too messy for her liking. Surprising or not, Vera was a pretty tidy girl. She could tolerate dirt but when it came to deciding between a clean object and a messy object, she'd sit on the clean object. Good thing she'd had her shower that day. Once she was on the bed, she laid down and made herself comfortable. After some twitching around, she settled and opened up her script book. She heard Kensie's suggestion and sucked the insides of her mouth. "If we're going to do that, maybe we should make her more tricky and cunning as well. Oh! And annoying to the main character!" she said, looking up with a grin. The boy fixing the window snorted. She didn't understand why. If that was the way Kensie wanted to edit the characters then what she suggested were all valid points. There was nothing funny about it. She sent a scowl in the boy's direction before returning to the script. "And if we do that for my character as well, what's her name? Oh yeah, Kat, we should make her less clingy and less mean," she said.

She flicked the pages to a scene she had found particularly strange and read it out aloud, the bit she was finding confusing. "This part should change. At the moment it's saying 'Roland turns to the dead mouse? And..." she squinted at the page. Why did her dyslexia choose to act up now? "Races off into the...river? Throwing flies at his convenience..." She gave up. She wasn't even sure that's what it said. It probably wasn't. While the script was a load of garbage she could have sworn the last time she read that scene it hadn't sounded that weird.

[Kensie Barnett]

Verity took a seat on Sonya’s bed, which suited the girl who had offered her sister’s bed just fine. Her bed was a little messy, but she’d actually made it that morning. It was one of the cleaner things on her side of the room; save for her closet of course. She had to take care of her pretty black dresses, right? Kensie was also a very clean person as well, despite her room. She didn’t go a morning without taking a bath. It was picking up the things she’d discarded she hated. “Hmm I agree with the tricky and cunning part,” Kensie told Verity as she rubbed her chin thoughtfully, “but the whole annoying thing doesn’t sound very much like me…” Her mouth twisted to a mischievous grin when Verity suggested what to do with Kat. “We could make her clumsy and loud.”

Kensie was flicking through pages as well, highlighting her own lines and using a pencil to circle things she didn’t think made sense. She was a novice when it came to writing plays, of course, but these people seemed either really eccentric… or like they had no idea what entertainment was. No wonder the plays hadn’t been all that popular lately. Kensie certainly hadn’t liked the last one she’d gone to see. She got up and wandered over to where Verity was, looking at the book curiously. “The dead mouse turned into Roland…” She took the book and changed the rest of it to make a little more sense with her pencil. “Yeah that sentence didn’t make sense. I get the mouse part because of the curse… but… they should have paid more attention.”

[Verity Lohlepher]

Verity pouted when the girl suggested they make Kat more clumsy and loud. “Loud, maybe, clumsy? No way. Destructive I’ll take but not clumsy. It doesn’t suit with the story anyway. Kat is meant to be demure.” A wry smile slid onto her face. “And what were you saying about the annoying thing not sounding very much like you? I think it does and very rarely does the annoying person find that themselves are annoying,” She watched Kensie go up to her and look at the script. The younger girl read some out and her smile changed to become more sheepish. Oops.

She peered over her shoulder to see what she was writing and tried to read the changes. “The dead mouse turns into Roland. Roland screams and leaps into the icy river screaming curses at his convenience?” she read aloud slowly once she got her script back. Wait…that didn’t sound any better. “Is this right?” she asked mystified. Sometimes she really hated dyslexia. She reread the script. “I don’t think it makes sense following the next part…the next part says ‘KC jumps into the fire to rescue to wailing Roland,’ If Roland jumped into an icy river, how does he end up in the fire?” Maybe it didn’t really say that…it was probably her dyslexia stuffing up her understanding of words. But usually it wasn’t this bad. She sighed. “Can you read it aloud to me? Or at least the bits you want to change? My dyslexia sucks today. All I’m seeing are these words that don’t make sense to me.”

[Kensie Barnett]

“I was just returning the favor,” Kensie told Verity with a smug chuckle. She so enjoyed messing with people. She wasn’t as happy with the being told she was annoying but didn’t know it, which was why she had quieted down to concentrate on the book instead of continuing to mess with the requip-user. Verity seemed to be getting frustrated with her dyslexia, reading the sentences out loud and cursing herself for having trouble. Kensie felt sorry for her. She didn’t really understand dyslexia that well; she didn’t have it and only knew Verity as far as she could tell who had it. She took Verity’s book so she was on the right page. “The dead mouse turns into Roland. Rolan screams and leaps into the icy river screaming curses at his… oh. That was supposed to say cousins. That was my fault.” She chuckled, changing the word properly.

She kept looking at the book. She hadn’t read that far ahead after the weirdness of that one small section. They did have something about a river and fire. Was the icy river on fire? Kensie flipped back several pages in the book, scanning quickly. Her focus was on the book now, trying to figure out what in the world she was reading. “I think someone was drunk writing this…” she chuckled. “You mixed up a little bit but it seriously talks about rivers and fire. But there was no fire. Maybe he was supposed to jump into the river?”

[Verity Lohlepher]

The girl hmph-ed when the other told her she was just returning the favour. What she had said was valid to the plot! It had also gone along with the other girl had been saying about making the characters fit the actress/actor better. There was no 'favour' to return. She guessed that made Kensie the one throwing the verbal barb (that really wasn't painful at all). The blonde didn't care though.

She listened to Kensie read aloud what was on the page. It was safe to say she was about to start screaming curses at her convenience. Not at Kensie but at the script. If even Kensie read what she had been reading then obviously there was something wrong with it. Maybe her dyslexia wasn't even acting up at all. Maybe what she was reading...was actually what she was reading. Even she thought that was a little far-fetched. If the above was true then...then she could safely say Kensie was right in saying that the script was a load of garbage and whatever else one could find in a sewer or dirty on the streets. Vera felt tempted to throw the script out of the window. It would reflect her feelings entirely. The symbolic meaning of throwing something out of the window was that one didn't care about that thing anymore thus they were 'discarding' it.

In fact she was going to do it. The girl stood up quite out of the blue and stomped up to the window. If she had been in a yelling mood she would have added the standard cry of frustration as she drew her arm back before hurling the script out of the window. A shout of surprise accompanied the book's descent onto the ground. Vera probably seemed crazy by now. The girl turned around, dusted her hands and walked back to the bed. "Okay, now that's done with, I think the setting should be in two different dimensions that are polar opposites. Maybe KC is in one and Roland is in the other. That would make sense if he jumped into an icy river and then ended up travelling into the other dimension where it is a hot fire." she growled before wondering if she should go back down quickly to reclaim her script. Just because she wanted to throw it out of the window (and had done so), it didn't mean she was going to give up on the piece of rubbish. She would make it beauti-

Suddenly the door opened to reveal the handy man - with steam coming out of his ears. "What was that? You made me drop my hammer onto the ground!" he said in a very very very annoyed tone.

[Kensie Barnett]

“No don’t throw out-“ Kensie started to protest as Verity got frustrated with the script and promptly chucked it out the window. She had an almost cute frown when she was upset with someone, which she wore right now.  “We *need* that if we’re going to rewrite it, idiot,” the obviously upset fourteen year old told the blond woman  as she hopped up from her bed, her dress swishing a little from the movement.

Verity seemed to still be thinking about the script, at least, suggesting that the setting have different dimensions or something. “Ooooor,” a still annoyed Kensie told her in reply, “We make it less confusing and just have a burning building. Who goes swimming in an icy river anyway? That’s… that’s really cold and stuff,” she reminded her companion, her hands resting on her hips.

About that time, the handy man came inside, rather angry with the two of them. Kensie took a reflexive step back at his outburst. “I-it wasn’t me,” Kensie insisted nervously to the angry boy. She was manipulative and cunning, but she didn’t always have the strongest response to outright anger, especially when it came from a young man who was quite a bit taller and physically stronger than the fourteen year old girl.

[Verity Lohlepher]

Kensie’s protests were all but ignored. When Verity turned around she saw that the girl was frowning. That wasn’t surprising. She shrugged her shoulders when the ebony head girl chastened her. The blonde rolled her eyes as characteristic of someone not believing they were wrong. “I’m going to get it again, don’t fret,” It was true. She was planning on getting the script from hell in the very near future. The girl was about to explain to the other girl that Roland never went swimming into an icy river on purpose and that she got the burning building wrong since it was a burning river of flames in the first place, but the door swinging open gave her other things to think about.

Almost immediately, the girl’s reaction was to cower away from the angry man. Vera however, was distinctively more aggressive in nature. “Oh yeah and can’t you just ask us to get it for you nicely instead of throwing a fit?” She threw it back to the handy man. He stuttered for a second, caught off his game by her response. “Y-y-yes but I’m doing you a favour! I have every right to be angry!” The blonde thought it was a lame excuse. She huffed before slipping off the bed. “I’m going to get my script. You can go get your hammer by yourself!” She declared this before moving towards the door. The boy looked slightly scared and appeared to want to say something. She was sure Kensie could deal a few minutes alone with him. Maybe more ideas for the script?

[Kensie Barnett]

Kensie wasn't quite as intimidated when she noticed that the young man was intimidated by Verity. She didn't find Verity intimidating at all, whether she was a stronger wizard or not. "Mikey," Kensie insisted with a grin of renewed confidence, "Just remember.... I promised I'd tell my sister aaaaall about you and how awesome and helpful you are."

With that, the young man she'd called Mikey seemed to change his mind about protesting as he was obviously going to do. "Y-yes. Just keep up your end of the bargain!"he told her as he hurried out of the room behind Verity. Kensie sighed, shaking her head as she kept her hands on her hips.

"I can't believe today," she sighed to herself as she sat on Sonya's bed, this time picking up her own script and staring at it blankly. Maybe she should suggest the two of them look at it and meet again later. She was starting to get tired after running around with that blond girl all day. At least she felt a little less aprehensive about her at this point. "I'd better not get in trouble..."

At least she was having fun. Even manipulating Mikey was kind of fun. She doubted Sonya would even care, since she was always too busy practicing magic to care about boys. Still, Mikey didn't need to knkow that, right?

[Verity Lohlepher]

Verity exited the room with the handy man behind her. She'd meant it when she said she wasn't going to collect his hammer for him. She guessed that left them walking down together to get it. Or she'd just leave him behind. That sounded reasonable. The blonde didn't want to waste time so soon enough, she began running down the stairs. She didn't consider the handy man. He'd probably follow more slowly. Not get lost. She was a fast runner so she reached her destination sooner than she expected.

Her destination was the ground beneath Kensie's window. She scanned her eyes on the ground. Sure enough she saw the script. The girl had to admit that it was one durable script. Not a page was unfolded. Okay maybe she was exaggerating a bit. The script had been bent in indescribable ways. It was indescribable because it was....well indescribable. You just couldn't describe the damage. The girl smiled sheepishly but all the same, picked up the script.

However, before she started to run back, she saw the hammer lying on the ground next to the script. She hesitated. Hmmm. Nah. He could get it himself. And with that final thought, she sprinted away from the scene back up to Kensie's room.

When she got back inside, Kensie was in the same place she had last seen her in (which really wasn't that much of a reliable source to go by). The blonde waved the script. "See? Retrieved! And in one piece!" That much was true. It was in one piece (despite the aforementioned indescribable damage). She went to sit on the bed with Kensie. "So let's get back to work?"

[Kensie Barnett]

While Verity went downstairs, the handyman Mikey in tow, Kensie sat on the bed, kicking off her sneakers and wiggling her toes with a sigh. She was young and had the usual amount of energy for someone who was so young, but she had been playing and working hard all day, both before and after running into Verity. She'd even climbed and fell into buildings...

Yeah, Kensie had it rough, she thought to herself as she leaned her head against the wall. She wasn't entirely serious, though today was certainly rougher than she liked it most of the time. Maybe it was like, Karma's way of seeing if she was ready to go on an adventure with Sonya. if so, she was pretty sure she'd passed. At least she hoped she'd passed. A grin grew on the youthful girl's face as she imagined Sonya's reaction to everything. She would be soooo upset. But that didn't mean it couldn't be amusing.

Kensie was humming to herself by the time Verity came back, but she hadn't done any real work. Real work was for other people when she wasn't trying to save a play and be a star. Now it was hard to concentrate despite how much she was pushing, because she was used to other people taking care of things either on their own, or because she wanted them to. She looked at the disfigured script, feeling a little bit sorry for it. The impish grin spread across her face as Verity actually asked if they should get to work. That book was only in one piece because the play gods willed it. With help, this would be a lot easier. "Sure," she nodded, brushing her long hair with her fingers so that it wasn't between her back and the wall. "But if you chuck the script again it'll probably die, and theeeen I get to write your character to be however I want her~"

-Exit-

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