It has HOW many legs?! (Ash)

[Marnie Sullivan]

So that was that, then. Marnie and her parents had said their goodbyes, hugs and kisses were exchanged, and Marnie had had nothing to do for the last half a day except unpack the boxes stacked in her new room. Her new home, sort of. She'd made decent headway, too, but every once in a while she'd unpack a notebook or knick knack that was more interesting to pore over than tidying up. At the moment she was digging through a box of paperback books, deciding which ones to store in the shelf beside her bed and which ones to leave in the box and hide under it.

An Angel for Margaret? Vague title, deceptively simple cover. It'd be safe on the shelf.

The Heat is On (Out of Uniform)? Never in a million years.

Princess of the Highlands? Innocent enough title, but if anyone were to check the cover it'd be a dead giveaway. Better not risk it.

A few minutes in Marnie pulled out a book that was decidedly not trashy, one with dragons and witches that she'd loved since she was eleven.

I don't have much more, she thought, glancing at the pile of remaining boxes. I can take another break. With that, she sat cross-legged on her new bed and opened up to one of her favorite passages, where the main character accidentally zaps the rude boy from next door.

[Ashley Engel]

No one ever really said goodbye in her family, Ash had noticed.
When she left her parents’ house Elisia and Thomas both had been too choked up to say anything proper. When she’d left for abroad Cain never said goodbye. And now, leaving for Hammel, neither her grandfather nor -again- Cain ever said goodbye. They said everything but.

I’ll see you in the summer.
Don’t get into trouble.
Call me when you get there.

The driver was the first one to say goodbye to her as she stepped out onto Hammel’s campus.
Luckily, finding the dorms was not a spectacularly difficult thing. Paperwork had been finalized days ago, leaving in her hands all the numbers and times and maps she needed to navigate. Numbers would always be more clear than people. Ash was thankful she had folded sheets of paper over a tour guide of some sort. It helped her find her dorm swiftly, while her attention balanced between the number on her papers and the cellphone in her other hand.

Her only luggage to be moved into her room was the duffel bag over her shoulder.
Inside it had clothes, toiletries, three books and a journal that looked like it had been run over by a train. Twice. Not exactly the most lavish of personal effects to bring to what would be her new home for a year.

There was no knocking or announcement involved with reaching her room.
Ashley crossed straight by the other doors, finding the one detailed on the sheet as her own. The door was unlocked but shut, and she shouldered it open with an almost pointed silence towards the other occupant to the dorm. At the very least, she held back from shutting the door to her room. This term was about doing things differently, after all.

So instead she left it open as she sat her duffel bag down and unzipped it, staring flatly at the contents. Honestly, there was something more than a little creepy about the way she looked just standing there, staring down at the contents with her arms limp at her sides. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t move. She just stood there, staring.

The fact of the matter was she was adjusting to the particular feel of another new dorm room miles from the two singular human beings on the earth she knew and liked. It was surreal, despite being her third time going through the motions. After a long minute she finally moved, picking up one of the books and moving to set it on the small bedside table. The second book went on top of it, and the third on top of that. All of them were remarkably dry texts- one on the subject of aerodynamics, the other a compilation of philosophers and their studies, and the final one something simply labeled “shadowrun” in rigid silvery letters across the spine.

The rest of the contents of the bag she left, zipping it up. The plan had been to toss it under her bed and leave it. But no sooner were both hands on the opposite ends of the duffel and the weight lifted than she froze again.

Slowly, gingerly, the back was set back down.
Ashley’s spine went rigid. Her hands tightened on the bag and she dared to cautiously swallow. Her intention had been to totally ignore her roommates for as long as possible. That option seemed exhausted now though, as she stood there staring eye to eye (to eye, to eye, and so on) with a spider. Small. Black. Fuzzy. And absolutely life threatening based on the way it made her pulse hitch up into her throat.

As if the insect had a gun to her head, Ashley moved as slowly as possible. She let her bag go and stepped in reverse, never once taking her eyes off the deplorable creature as she backed out of her room. As soon as the doorway cut the creature out of her sight she turned around. Her eyes locked on the nearest soul. Marnie. Poor, poor Marnie was about to make a new friend. (It was the spider, not Ash.)

“You.”
Ashley didn’t have a name to call. There was probably one on her sheets, but they were left on her bed and there was no way she was going back in there just for some girl’s name. So a strained, almost angry-sounding word spat towards the stranger unpacking would have to do. Of course, right after that she paused. She wasn’t entirely sure what to say to get the girl to kill the spider. Asking politely didn’t come to mind, because to Ash this was not a polite situation. This was dangerous. Kill or be killed. They had a limited time frame before the eight-legged son of a dog moved, creating a whole new world of problems. So, given that this was such an emergency situation, Ash defaulted to what she knew. Which was how she talked to house staff before when there were spiders afoot. And, arguably, in that context the word weren’t nearly as..

“I want you in my room.”
..creepy.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie only barely glanced up from her book to register Ashley striding past her doorway, duffel bag in tow. She briefly considered getting up and heading next door to greet her, but she had just flipped to the page where the heroine learned the true identity of her mother and besides, the girl with the duffel bag probably hadn't even noticed she was there. She could say hello in a little while.

"You."

Marnie's head snapped up. Her new neighbor stood in her doorway, and even without hearing her name Marnie knew she was being addressed. This girl was clearly too young to be a staff member, maybe even too young to be a student. Possibly someone's younger sister, here to see them off?

"I want you in my room."

"...Excuse me?" Marnie's eyebrows furrowed together, and she didn't bother to hide the confusion in her voice. This girl was maybe thirteen, probably just barging in to demand help with her bags, Marnie figured. As nice a school as Hammel appeared to be, she supposed it was no surprise that some students would feel entitled to whatever they asked for. How irritating. Still, Marnie dog-eared her page and stood; first impressions were important, even to people who didn't bother much with their own. "Did you need help carrying something?"

[Ashley Engel]

Ashley wasn’t sure if she hadn’t spoken loud enough, or clear enough.
The girl asked for clarification (at least that’s what Ash took it as) before rising from her seat. Ash’s attention darted from the girl, to her book, to her face. She knew that book. She hadn’t liked it, but when she’d gone on a sort of fantasy binge it had wound up in her hands and she’d finished it in a day. For just a moment, Ashley’s attention wandered to the room around the stranger. She had other books present, and there was an urge to pry into each one. More pressing matters were at hand, though.

“No.”
For a moment, it seemed like that was all she was going to say. She was not pleased about the insinuation that she could not carry her own things. Ash was no weight lifter, but she wasn’t as scrawny as she looked. Even if, in that moment, it was hard to tell. She was not wearing particularly flattering clothes. There wasn’t anything incredibly ill-fitting about her jeans or bomber jacket, but they did a lot to hide her already lacking frame. She shouldn’t have been offended. Her arms couldn’t really be seen under a jacket. Still, she was insulted anyway and it showed in the way her eyes briefly narrowed before she turned around to lead the way to the current cave of death.

She stopped rigidly outside the doorway and kept both hands in her pockets.
“It’s in there. On the wall, over the bed.”

If this wasn’t the setup to a murder in some book somewhere, it was about to be.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Well aren't you a charmer, Marnie thought. She wasn't a huge fan of asking for help herself, but she at least knew better than to gawk and frown when she made a request of somebody. She strode into the next room, hoping that she hadn't been that rude when she was that age. It was probably an upside-down electric outlet, or maybe a smudge left behind by a previous resident. Most likely nothing she could do about it, but it couldn't hurt to pretend to try.

The spider was so small that Marnie made it four steps into the room before she realized what she was looking for.

"Oh my GOD!" Almost instinctively, she leapt up onto the chair that sat near Ashley's new desk. "EW, SMASH IT, HURRY!" The spider skittered down the wall and disappeared next to the bed, which meant that for all intents and purposes it was simultaneously anywhere and everywhere.

[Ashley Engel]

Whatever she’d expected, what she got was not it.
Ashley was used to people being unphased by the things that creeped her out. Typically similar past requests ended with a sigh, a shoe, and a thud. Then she could get back to what she was doing. When the girl walked by Ash had felt marginally better, because it meant the whole event was soon to be over. At least she’d thought that.

A split second before the girl started shouting, the force of her panic rippled out.
Ash shut her eyes, inhaling hard and deep and processing the distinct sound of the mental words and spoken ones colliding into the same sentiment. The shock of it, combined with the fact the spider was indeed still present, had her heart back in her throat.

“Jesus.” Ash spat it like a curse through her teeth, leaning against the doorway to help handle the incredibly unexpected wave of pure Marnie that just smacked her in the brain.
“What do you mean smash it?! You were supposed to smash it!”

The little offender skittered out of sight, and in that exact moment that visibility was lost, all bets were off. Ashley retreated from the doorway, backing into the common area and away from the incredibly unhelpful girl and her chair perch.

“Shut up and do something, for the love of god.”
One hand found a wall and the other found her head.
With the doors open and space unobstructed, it felt like the other girl was right next to her wailing. Even if her words out loud had been panicked but brief, it sounded worse when each syllable pounded behind Ashley’s ears.

“You scared it off.” She spat, probably louder than was needed, just so she could hear her own voice. “It’s your job to find it.”

[Marnie Sullivan]

"My job?!" Marnie shrieked, eyes locked where the spider had vanished below the bed while she felt around the desk for a heavy object - or any object, really - to throw in its direction. Her face prickled as her skin turned an ugly shade of mauve to match the wall behind her. A close inspection would reveal even a poor mimicry of the checked pattern the wallpaper featured. "Why didn't you say anything?! Go get somebody! Go get a shoe! Just get rid of it!" For once, Marnie wished her parents had stuck around longer - spiders had never been a problem for them, and she wouldn't be stuck here, trapped on this stupid chair while this girl barked at her.

[Ashley Engel]

Oh joy, she was locked in a battle to the death and her only ally was a chameleon.
A loud chameleon.

Ash groaned as Marnie shouted, rolling her eyes.
“I did say something you deaf-” She let the words go. Snapping back and forth was that little devil’s plan all along. (Really, it wasn’t that dramatic, but when you angered a bookworm you had to expect a dramatic inner monologue against the antagonist.)

The common area was nice. A couch, some chairs. An end table. A lamp that looked very, very throw-able as Ash stared at it. But she really didn’t want to start her term with the destruction of public property on her record. So she avoided the lamp and instead made the move of courage.

Even when every step back into the room meant getting closer to the girl and her less than contained thoughts, Ash did it. She marched herself step by step into the room, teeth grit the whole way. And as soon as she was in the awful position between the open door and the end of the bed, she grabbed the end post to the bed and yanked- notably without any warning to Marnie.

As soon as the bed jerked the black speck of evil raced out from it’s hiding place behind it, scurrying up the wall to the ceiling where a light web had been slowly forming over the days before the room’s real occupant arrived. The oh-so-deadly spider veered left and right across the ceiling while Ash cursed loudly and let the bed go. By the time she staggered back and fell right on her butt the murderous thing was making a straight path for Marnie. (Or rather, the opposite side of the room from the bed, but Ash would always swear it made a direct homicidal lunge for the chameleon girl.)

[Marnie Sullivan]

"WHAT DID YOU DO!" Oh god, oh shit, it was coming this way, and when Marnie made an attempt to leap out of the chair her foot caught on it and she came crashing to the floor. Her knees and elbows throbbed where she'd collided with the ground, but now was not the time to pause and nurse her wounds. Marnie scooted out the door and clambered to her feet, breathing harshly.

"OKAY. Okay. Watch it," she ordered Ashley in a shaky voice. "I'll. Um. I'll be right back."

She ducked next door to her own room and grabbed a book out of the box next to her bed, not bothering to check which one it was. Marnie carried it, raised like a canister of pepper spray, back to the next room.

"Did you see where it went?"

[Ashley Engel]

“You-”
There was probably something unsavory to follow that as miss chameleon left, but when the options were between insult a stranger and keep an eye on a spider, Ash kept her mouth shut. She didn’t, for the record, give a second thought to the less than graceful crash landing Marnie had suffered. This situation couldn’t have been less about her in Ash’s mind if she hadn’t even been around to get involved. What it was about was mister eight legs and his slowed pace towards a far corner. Ash stayed in the floor, sitting and staring up at the point without seeming to blink. To anyone else it might have looked like a pensieve scene. It played out more like a captive audience/hostage situation in Ash’s mind.

The only real security of the moment, oddly enough, was the sound of the other girl’s head. The fact she was nearby, even if Ash couldn’t see her, was enough to keep her in place instead of giving up and retreating. She caught snaps, not real words or coherent strings. Something muffled, about a book.

When Marnie came back brandishing a hardback Ash all at once felt relieved and disturbed. Wouldn’t killing it with a book mean you’d end up with a book donning bug guts? She didn’t point that out. It was the girl’s book at stake, not hers.

“Corner.” She hissed, pointing.
The little bugger was probably laughing it up over his perceived getaway in that corner. Ash glared at it, and hoped chameleon’s aim was as good as her camouflage. Or.. maybe better. Better wouldn't be objectionable.

[Marnie Sullivan]

"Okay," she muttered, mostly to herself. Up in the corner, the spider sat still, as though it were completely unaware of the chaos it had caused so far. "Okay. There it is." She hoped Ashley was watching, just in case it managed to scurry away at the last second. Marnie sucked in a deep breath, raised the book over her shoulder, and aimed. "One, two..." She gulped. "THREE!"

Marnie heaved the book at the corner of the ceiling, where it struck with a loud smack. The book tumbled to the floor. Adrenaline pumping, Marnie peered up where it had hit - sure enough, there it was. A tiny splatter of bug guts. Slowly, her eyes still trained on the ceiling, she felt around the floor for her book. When she grabbed it and inspected it carefully, she saw a tiny stain and more legs than any creature should have sticking out from the cover.

"Well. That's, um." She stared at it for a moment. Marnie was still breathing a little too harshly, but the skin around her neck had begun fading slowly back to its usual color. She looked up at Ashley. "Do you have a tissue I could use?"

[Ashley Engel]

Marnie wasn’t the only one breathing hard.
The thrill of battle was fierce and heavy. Ashley’s chest heaved as she clumsily stood, almost seeming to admire the girl and her book.

“No.” Her tone was flat, almost harsh. Her face was neutral though, which was a better alternative to the mix of rage and horror it had been during the eight-legged assault.
“Hang on.”

It was a reward.
Rather than leave Marnie to her own devices now that the threat was gone, Ash moved out of the room to the bathroom. When she returned it was will a whole box of tissues taken with her. No skimping for the hero. She offered them out as an unspoken thanks for the hard work. She expected the other girl to do as much as she did, but even house staff were paid. This exchange was no different, though kleenex were a pretty lame paycheck.

“Your skin.” Ash nodded at Marnie after a minute, words filled with too much bluntness to leave room for tact. Now that the heat of the moment was dying out, her head was calming from a roar of panic to a dull pulse behind the ears. Not quite a headache, but she was sure in time it would get there.

“You change colors.”
It was an observation, not a question. Ashley pointedly didn’t mention what she could do. She didn’t care if it made people uncomfortable or not. She just wasn’t prone to sharing with strangers.
“That’s interesting. Is there anything you can’t mimic aesthetically?”

[Marnie Sullivan]

When the tissues were offered, Marnie took one with a "thanks." The smashed enemy was still fresh, of course, so removing it was quick, although still disgusting. She looked up when her neighbor pointed out her power, which had been completely useless during the battle with the spider but had appeared in full force all the same.

"Oh, uh, kind of a lot, actually," Marnie replied. Her hands we're begin in to return to normal as well, but she could still feel some color tingling on her face. "Detailed prints like paisley really suck, and if I try to do too many colors at once they all just kind of end up a weird brown."

She crumpled up the tissue, but before she through away she decided to make one more inspection of the book to be sure she'd collected all the guts.

"So what can you do?" As soon as the words left Marnie's mouth, she realized what the spine of the book read, and the wall's color seeped right back into her face and neck like an specially ugly blush. She had smashed a spider with a copy of Cowboys & Cabana Boys, and it's cover was not what anybody would call discreet.

[Ashley Engel]

Initially her attention had been centered on the girl’s face.
The way her skin changed, the idea of patterns and colors and details. At Kocher, Ash hadn’t gone out of her way to talk to other students. (Primarily because it meant they’d talk back, and inevitably things would snowball.) But now it was donning on her that while people generally weren’t interesting, powers were. Chameleon’s power specifically was very curious. Ashley wanted to know about it, though it was about the same way a mortician wanted to dissect the cause of death out of a cadaver.

When Marnie turned the question over, Ashley’s eyes darted off her face.
Straight down to the book in her hands. Her face stayed passive, eyes unblinkingly set on the racey cover. If she had an opinion on the nature of the book, it wasn’t very clear. Ash would never claim to have not read any snuff books. She would, though, admit they didn’t do a thing for her. Still, there was no such thing as a bad book in the world. Weird ones maybe, but not bad.

“I can hear other peoples’ thoughts.” Ash deadpanned, still staring at the book in Marnie’s hands.
She didn’t like talking about what she could do. People like Marnie could be open about it. Changing colors? That was cool. Self-involved, flashy. A party power. Ashley’s was not. People typically did not like knowing someone else had access to the things behind their teeth. Words they wouldn’t let out of their throat, all audible to her. Give or take some variables.

Withholding a sigh, Ashley moved past Marnie to shove her bed back into place. She fully expected the other girl to nervously excuse herself, leaving Ash to her privacy once more. Nothing new.

[Marnie Sullivan]

If Marnie's face could blanch, it would have.

"Oh, th-that's cool," she stammered, hurriedly hiding the book behind her back. As though the girl hadn't already seen it. As though she couldn't just read Marnie's thoughts and know what sort of book it was. "I, uh, should probably go, lots to unpack still!" She gave a half-hearted wave and darted back to her own room, where she threw the book under her bed and slammed her door a little too loudly. The box of books sat where she'd left it, waiting to be sorted. Instead, Marnie shoved the whole thing under the bed, flung herself onto it and shoved her face into a pillow.

So much for that first impression.