Change Of Heart {open

[Ashley Shaw]

It was what happened. When someone got just so damn bored that you decided that going to get lost in the mall was even partially fun. But, on this day, Ashley Shaw decided to step out of his lonesome shell and get out and do something with himself. While this wasn‘t exactly making something of himself, he was sure as hell doing something rather stupid.
He found that he might grow a little if he did something different. He never went to the mall, he never really went to the downtown, but he felt change was needed. So, he did so.
He forgot about what he hated, what he didn’t want and focused on what he wanted. He was hell-bent to get through this stage and come out better.

He weaved his way through clothe shops and music stores, stopping to stare at the odd, well, oddity in the place. He was feeling surprisingly up-lifted and wanted to just tear the place up. He felt himself get happier as he stopped to scan through music, dashing from one section to the other in break neck speed. He got weird looks from people and some just walked away. He didn‘t mind; it was for a different reason than usual. Usually he got looks for sulking, now he got looks for acting like he was hyper and on steroids. It was a change. A nice, welcoming change.
Whatever had made him do this would remain a mystery, even he didn‘t know why he‘d decided to do this in particular. He could have graffitied the school or kicked a popular douche up the ass or smacked someone out with a barge pole.
He guessed that embarrassing yourself was fun if you mean to do it.

Ashley Shaw was busy both running around like an excited canine and listening to Lady Gaga blasting from the public radio. Ok, it may have not been blasting, but he could hear it above everything else. He was fixed on music, randomness and in general just playing around and causing a ruccus. It was fun, he would admit. There wasn't anything he was doing in particular that was amusing, it was just that he was doing something different.

The boy stopped, to rest his feet for a while, sitting down on a bench without even thinking. Ok, so maybe this had its bad parts. Aching feet were not a good thing, it was simple as that. Sure, it for a different reason now, but at least he had somewhere to rest now.

[Ginny Campbell]

Ginny was staking out the mall, refreshing herself on the available stores before her dress shopping date with Mia. At least, that was what she had planned on doing, right up until she had gotten distracted by F.Y.E.

The recently released artists display lured her in with promises of new music, a promise she could rarely resist. She stopped before the display, arms folded across her chest as she mentally dismissed each album one by one as the typical radio-friendly pop rock drivel -- because, of course, she was far too cool to listen to anything on the top 40. Never mind that plenty of the bands she listened to had the same sound; they were an acceptable level of obscurity, and that was what mattered.

"Ew. Ew, ew, people listen to this?" She shook her head in disappointment at humanity's collective failure to listen to anything she deemed worthy. Of course, when the dreaded mainstream took notice of the same bands she did she was forced to abandon them as sellouts, but that wasn't the point.

Speaking of mainstream, was that really Lady Gaga playing on the radio? People were still playing her? Hadn't she been replaced by La Roux or Ellie Goulding or something by now?

Her disdain was interrupted by a young man darting out of the aisle beside her, looking like a manic chipmunk. She wasn't entirely sure what he was doing, exactly, and judging from the looks on the rest of the patrons' faces neither did anyone else. Maybe he was crazy; she approved.

She decided that crazy boy was more interesting than pop music and followed him out of the store and to one of the benches conveniently interspersed throughout the mall. "You aren't stopping already!" She objected, parking herself in front of him. "Come on, you just got started. You can't quit now! What if I wanted to dance with you?"

[Ashley Shaw]

The bench was a little uncomfortable, and yes, he wished he had collapsed in a furniture store so that there was at least something decent to sit on. The black-haired teenager was catching his breath, he hadn’t even noticed the older girl storming around behind him like it was nobody’s business. Well, it was actually a business. It was his. But he really couldn’t be bothered to complain about a woman following him. Wait… as a matter of fact he should be bothered. Why, you ask? Well he was currently someone’s perspective other-half, and it didn’t settle well if another woman was following you round like they were your long lost best friend from a land far far away.
When he had sat down, the blonde stood in front of him and began to complain. About dancing. She was suggesting she wanted to dance with him.
He felt like laughing. It wasn’t like it would be the first time he’d been mistaken for some completely different, but if she was actually being serious that he was having second thoughts on even becoming a loyal second-half. Actually, he retracted that thought. He was a nice guy.
Well… he was trying to, anyway.

Ashley Shaw tilted his head to one side and just gazed at the girl with a very blank expression that was maybe more blank than a piece of blinding white sparkly new freshly printed a4 sheet of flat tree (paper). The girl was blonde, almost his own height, and perhaps was older than him, he couldn’t tell. He hadn’t seen her around Hammel before, so maybe she was a human? That would explain why she wasn’t in that place and looked so young.
He seemed to have forgotten that non-metas existed, he spent all his time around people who could read your mind and also turn into giant tame black cats that even the mother witch would destroy the world for.

He sat up right and leaned forward a little bit, looking at the girl.
“Why would you ask a strange to dance with you?” he smirked, “a little odd, don’t you think?”

[Ginny Campbell]

"Why wouldn't I?" Ginny shot back, placing her hands on her hips, "Dancing is fun, come on! Who doesn't like to dance? With strangers or otherwise?" The obvious answer was boring people, that was who.

But rather than pester him further on that topic she instead dropped onto the bench beside him, pulling her legs up to sit Indian style. "Besides, who're you to talk about being odd? What were you doing back there, racing your imaginary friend?" It wasn't actually that far-fetched that he was with someone invisible and she knew it -- he could very well have been friends with Jordan, for starters, and there could easily be other metas with invisibility -- but he was calling her odd after his display in the F.Y.E. Not that she could really defend herself on that count; she was certainly being what some (boring) people considered strange but she didn't care what they thought; being interesting was much more important than appearing sane. That didn't change the fact that calling her out on this was hypocritical of the person she'd mentally dubbed crazy boy because of his antics.

"I'm Ginny." She offered, deliberately ignoring the fact that he hadn't asked. Hey, she was bored and he seemed entertaining. Less entertaining than he'd seemed when she'd thought he was trying to call attention to himself, but entertaining nonetheless. She held out her hand in greeting, "And you are....?" Hey, she couldn't refer to him as crazy boy to his face!