Pranking the Dragon's Lair

[Harmony Muller-Barton]

Harmony had been awake all night.

The idea had come to her a few days before to take advantage of the fact that her roommate was a fairly heavy sleeper. Of course she'd wanted to tell Tomer all about it and get his input. But A) there was no way she could sneak him in to help and B) she was sure he'd find something wrong with her plan. Nah, it would be better to just tell him about it afterwards and gloat.

And the supplies had been so easy. Five packs of Styrofoam cups.Four different types of food-coloring. Three rolls of rainbow colored yarn. Two huge box of thumbtacks. And the partridge in a pear tree - one thick permanent marker.

So an hour or two after Safia had turned in for the night, Harmony had got to work. She filled up pitchers with water colored in food dye, collected the rest of her supplies and sneaked inside.

Three hours later, Safia's room was perfect. The yarn was crisscrossing throughout the room, stuck into the walls, ceiling, and even the furniture to create the most ADHD spiderweb ever. Every flat surface was also covered in cups filled with dyed water. Some cups were stacked three high in a pyramid. And there was a smiley face with it's tongue sticking out designed among the ones on the floor.

And the piece de resistance was the thick curling mustache drawn on Safia's upper lip. Harmony was guessing that with everything else going on in the room it would be a while before the girl noticed her facial graffiti.

Her work complete, Harmony lay on her bed staring at the ceiling and unable to sleep as she waited for her roommate's reaction upon walking up.

[Safia Chatterjee]

Safia was having a pleasant dream. In it, she was riding on Toothless over the endless seas, with nothing but the wind and her dragon for company. It was a dream she'd had before, and she always woke in a good mood when she had them.

Unfortunately, this morning wasn't going to start so smoothly.

She had been completely oblivious to the goings-on around her as she slept. Having Harmony as a roommate, she typically tried to remember to lock her door when she went to bed, but she didn't always remember. Apparently last night had been one of those nights, for as Safia yawned and opened her eyes, she was met with... With...

"HARMONY!" the Indian girl shrieked, knowing immediately who was to blame. Safia looked wildly around her room, at all the yarn and nonsense, and the cups of colored liquid covering everything. She was so far unknowing of the inky marks on her face.

"GET IN HERE AND CLEAN THIS UP NOW!" she demanded, already standing to start pulling strings off of her walls. With each tack she tore out, her claws and scales grew, until she was ripping them out of the walls and snarling like a beast. Her tail had elongated and was snapping around angrily, getting tangled in the strings as she twisted and turned around. "HARMONY!" she yelled again.

[Harmony Muller-Barton]

Harmony didn't have to wait too long. Which was good, she was slightly worried she would pass out from exhaustion and miss the moment Safia woke up. Though even if she had fallen asleep, the shriek that exploded from her roommates bedroom would have probably woken her.

"What?" Harmony yelled back as she jumped to her feet. She tried to sound annoyed, but truthfully she was having a hard time suppressing a giggle. She walked over to Safia's door and threw it open. The sight of Safia freaking out was enough to make her face break out into a huge grin.

"Dude," she said. "You really should keep your room cleaner. This place is a mess."

[Safia Chatterjee]

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'WHAT'? YOU AND I BOTH KNOW YOU DID THIS!" Oooh, Safia was going to get her roommate back SO hard, maybe sneak a habanero pepper into something she ate or do something to her room or or or...

Grrrrrrr! She should know better than to mess with a dragon!

"Shut up!" Safia growled as Harmony looked inside. "You're going to get SO much detention when I tell the dorm monitors about this." She hissed and struggled as her tail became more entangled in string; it was getting rather hard to move. "Damn it!" she snarled. Her pride couldn't handle this. Finally, she gave up trying to pull all the tacks from the wall and just stood, glaring and still oblivious of her new 'moustache', at her roommate. Slightly incapacitated by string. "If you don't cut me out of this, your life is going to be hell," she threatened.

[Harmony Muller-Barton]

"I don't know what you're talking about," Harmony said, leaning against the door frame. "I've been sleeping. Sheesh." Of course, just then she started yawning a bit. Safia's screaming and yelling had helped her feel more alert, but she was still exhausted from being up all night.

Of course it didn't help that the more Safia's tail got entangled the more she found it almost impossible to keep from exploding in laughter. It was seriously the best thing she'd seen in a long time. "Dude, you look like that stupid dragon from Harry Potter. Ya know, the wimpy one caught by the chains in the bank basement."

"Oh yeah?" Harmony said, crossing her arms in defiance. "You just said you were gonna rat me out. So why would I wanna cut you loose?"

[Safia Chatterjee]

"Like hell you were sleeping," Safia growled as she writhed about trying to get untangled without pulling tacks out of the wall and all over the floor. If she ended up stepping on one and having to get a tetanus shot, she was SO going to kill Harmony. "Just tell me, if you were sleeping, who on earth else would do something like this to me!?" Okay, granted, she did have some enemies, but none that Harmony knew about.... As far as she was aware.

Safia whipped her tail again, pulling hard enough to send some tacks flying from the walls. "Shut up!" she snarled, knowing full well how stupid she must look. But what else was she going to do? She was too angry to control her ability enough to bring her tail in. "It's not like I asked for this!"

She sent a rage-filled glare towards the little brat. "You'll do it because I'll give you a tenfold worse punishment in return if you don't," she hissed. "Clean. Up. The damn cups. I'll get out of this stupid mess on my own." Maybe. Hopefully. Safia tried to start sawing some of her rough-edged scales against the yawn, which seemed to be somewhat successful in sawing them.

[Harmony Muller-Barton]

"You callin' me a liar?" Harmony yelled back. Of course she was lying. But that didn't mean she enjoyed having it pointed out to her. "How am I supposed to know? Maybe someone just got tired of looking at your stupid face?" Because yes, that was a perfectly valid reason to do...all this.

Harmony ducked a little when some of the tacks flying out of the wall hit the doorway. "Geez, you tryin to kill me?" she asked. "Maybe I'd help out your sorry butt if you stopped acting like a ravin' lunatic for two second. Sheesh." She rolled her eyes dramatically. Because of course Safia was totally overreacting to this.

Maybe it was the fact that Safia had threatened to call the dorm monitors. Or maybe it was the sight that some of the yarn was breaking apart on the girl's dragon-ish scales. Whatever the reason, Harmony was actually considering at least pretending like she was trying to help clean up.

Then again, the rage glares were not helping. "Maybe if you asked nicely, bozo."

[Safia Chatterjee]

"Of course you're a liar!" Safia spat. That's all Harmony was, a little lying twerp of a roommate that Safia was going to make pay for all her treacherous deeds. "Shut up!" she snarled. "Our dorm door was locked, and you're the only one in here that would do this!" Okay, Safia wasn't certain the door had been locked, but it should have! "Just stop with the bullshit and admit it already!"

Safia huffed irritably. "If I was trying to kill you, I could have easily by now," she snapped. The Indian girl had a temper, but she wasn't anything close to a murderer. She just had this annoying roommate to deal with on a regular basis. She'd make sure she locked her door from now on. "Fine. Fine, I'll stop ripping this crap out if you help. I shouldn't even have to ask though." Safia humphed and went still, although she was also quite tangled and finding it harder to move anyway.

She gave another glare as Harmony told her to ask nicely. Safia didn't really have much of a choice, did she? "Fine. Can you please-" she paused here with a death glare -"Get this off of me and clean up those cups of... Whatever." There, that was as nice as Harmony was going to get. Safia humphed and went to work trying to saw her way out of the tangled mess she'd gotten herself into. ".... Do you have any scissors?" she asked in a low growl. Her scales were going to take too long.

[Harmony Muller-Barton]

"You're in no position to be name callin, Scaly," Harmony yelled back. Yes, she had been to one to put her roommate in this situation. Yes, she was enjoying every minute of it so far. And yes, she was also starting to wonder if maybe she should just run and hide in Tomer's room at let someone else deal with the snarling, scale-covered girl.

But no, she wasn't going to admit that this was her doing. Now was not the time to start tattle-telling. Especially on herself.

"You threatening me?" Harmony asked, crossing her arms and glaring at her roommate. She almost turned around right then and there to leave the idiot to work her own way out of the mess. And eventually discover her facial art alone. She even started to turn away.

But then Safia said 'please'. Harmony spun back around, smiling. "That's a good little girl," Harmony sneered. She did bend down to pick up a few of the cups, wondering how she was supposed to dispose of them without making a mess. Clean up had not been a big part of her planning.

"Geez do I have to do everything?" Harmony huffed and rolled her eyes. And yes, moving three or four cups to the side apparently meant doing everything. "I'll have to go find some."

Stepping away, Harmony took her sweet time wandering around her room, finding a pair of scissors. She also grabbed the empty trashcan in her room for something to dump the cups into.

She came back about ten minutes later and tossed the scissors up on the bed. "There ya go, Scaly."

[Safia Chatterjee]

Safia grumbled but didn't respond. If she had a dollar for every time someone commented on her scales, she would be rich. Besides, she was proud of them anyway - she was a freaking dragon! And she didn't need Harmony to admit she'd done it. Safia knew. She knew it was her.

"No, I'm not threatening you," she replied with a roll of her eyes. "That was not a threat. Saying 'I'll kill you if you don't get me out of this' is a threat. One I am not making, because I would never actually murder someone, especially over a dumb prank." There. Humph.

"Don't call me that," she snapped as Harmony responded. Safia was anything but little! Ughh. She watched as her roommate seemed to half-heartedly started to move some cups around, twitching and struggling against the strings around her. "I just asked for a pair of freaking scissors," she grunted. It's not that hard!! But Safia didn't say that because then Harmony probably wouldn't get them for her. Stupid little brat!

She hung there in fuming silence until her roommate finally returned. "Took you long enough," she muttered as she took the scissors and started cutting the binds around her. Gradually, Safia got herself out, and gave a relieved sigh as she shook off some of the string remnants. "Okay, now I can help clean this mess up." She almost said your mess, but... Ugh. She carefully reached out and started grabbing cups, emptying them into the trashcan that Harmony had brought. "How long did this even take you to do?"

[Harmony Muller-Barton]

Harmony continued to smirk at her roommate. It was fun seeing the other girl twist around trying to get free, both physically with the yarn and with her words. Harmony was no master at conversations and comebacks, but it seemed Safia was too angry to care about it either.

"Well if this is such a dumb prank, I guess you got no reason to be all huffy about it," Harmony said, grinning. Though she was a little hurt at having her prank called 'dumb', especially after it had taken her so long to pull it to off, she wasn't going to pout about in front of some idiot loser with no sense of style.

"Whatever you say, little girl," Harmony shot back. Because telling Harmony specifically not to do something was just asking for trouble. It was like dealing with Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Harmony watched as Safia finally freed herself. She was finding it hard to suppress her laughter every time she looked at her roommate's mustache. She only hoped she could be there, perhaps hiding safely around the corner, when Safia finally noticed it.

She slowly continued dumping the cups, but not to worried about helping that much. A) She was tired. B) Since Safia was free, she could clean this up, right?

"Almost all night," Harmony replied without thinking. "I mean...I bet that's how long it would take someone else to do...you know...if I had to guess." She glanced at her roommate to see how well she'd take the cover up. After all, Safia was free now. Who knows what she'd do?

[Safia Chatterjee]

All pranks were dumb when you were the butt end of one, Safia thought moodily. Especially one that invaded her personal space and privacy. “Next time target someone who’s actually done something to you,” Safia demanded with a scowl. Seriously, what had she ever done to Harmony!?

Her fangs slid out again as the younger girl purposefully jabbed at her again, but Safia just fumed in silence. The best way to get an idiot to stop bothering you was to ignore it, right? Still, her sharpened teeth probably gave away just how much she wanted to stuff the girl in a pillowcase and hang her somewhere high until she pleaded for forgiveness. Hmph.

“Oh, please don’t hurry,” she mumbled to herself, watching the pace with which Harmony was cleaning. Safia was half-tempted to tell a dorm monitor anyway just so she might have some help cleaning this stuff up.

Aha! Safia whirled on Harmony triumphantly as she practically admitted that she had done it. “Oh, alright, someone,” she agreed sarcastically. “I bet that someone would be really tired and do a really crappy, slow job at cleaning her mess up.” She kept dumping cups of liquid into the trash bin, groaning as she looked around at how much more she needed to clean. “Okay, that’s it, I’m telling someone else so they can come in here and help get rid of all this stuff,” Safia hissed as soon as she managed to make a path to the doorway, which she quickly bee-lined towards.

[Harmony Muller-Barton]

Harmony would have agreed with Safia. It was not fun to be the butt of a prank. Then again Harmony was usually the one doing all the pranking, so she didn't have much experience with that side of things. "Geez, you don't have to flip out," Harmony said, rolling her eyes. "You got no proof this was me. But maybe if you're gonna be so lame about it then you deserve to be pranked." Because yeah, that was totally logical.

"Yeah, well I bet that someone wouldn't exactly feel motivated to help such a crabby dope like you," Harmony said glaring at the girl. She had one of the full cups in her hand. And she really wanted to toss it right in Safia's face at the moment.

"You're gonna tattle?" Harmony yelled, jumping to her feet. "Don't be such a big freakin baby." She tried to get in the way of Safia getting to far away. Still holding the cup in a threatening manner. Maybe she shouldn't have cut her loose after all.

[Safia Chatterjee]

Ohoho, Harmony was just going to wait and see what Safia was going to do in retaliation for this, because no way was she going to let this go unpunished. Maybe she wasn’t as creative as the younger girl, but she was sure she could think of something. “I don’t need proof,” she mumbled. Honestly, who else would do this? Harmony was known for this crap. “Lame, huh? Tell me you wouldn’t react badly to someone doing this to your room.”

Safia snorted. “A crabby dope, huh? What do you expect, for me to laugh and compliment whoever made this huge mess?” Seriously, this entire thing was incredibly stupid and a waste of time. She saw the cup in Harmony’s hand and edged away from her, going to clean up some of the mess a bit further away. She did not want to get sopping wet.

“I’m not tattling. I’m getting help to clean this stuff up. There’s a difference.” Safia rolled her eyes. “I won’t say any names, jeeze. I just don’t want to be in here all damn day!” She growled as Harmony tried to block her way, scowling darkly. “Don’t do it,” she warned. “Then I will get your butt in trouble.”

[Harmony Muller-Barton]

It was true that Harmony was known for his. And it was a reputation that she would deny in the moment of getting caught. But any other time she was delighted to hear others mention it. Who needed good grades, she was infamous.

"Whatever, baby," she said, rolling her eyes. Of course she would freak is someone did this to here. But that didn't mean she'd admit it and help Safia's argument.

"Geez don't be such a sore loser," Harmony said. "Or else I'll have to teach you a lesson." She wiggled the cup she was holding, grinning at the colored water sloshing inside.

Harmony might have let it go and just went back to helping clean. But Safia had threatened her and that was the easiest way to tempt her. So she couldn't hold back now.

"Don't tell me what to do dragon-butt-head," she yelled. Okay maybe it wasn't her greatest moment of name calling, but she doubted Safia would point it out. Especially since she had thrown the cup of water as she'd said it.

Without waiting to see how drenched her roommate got, Harmony teleported out of the room , then out into the main hallway, and then started running. She was sure Safia would run tattling now, but maybe she could get some distance between them before that and build a plausible defense.

Though even if she got away Safia was sure to retaliate. So be it. This was war.

((wrap for Harmony))