Horsing Around (Finn, Lucy, Appoline)

[Event !]

Appoline Meian and Lucy Serrano have been assigned to wash Finn's horse.

[Appoline Meian]

This was nerve-wracking.

Appoline rarely went out and did anything social, and this car wash definitely counted as a social event. People were laughing and talking and pranking each other all over the parking lot. Cars were pulling in and out, each driven by a teacher or other staff member (others of whom crowded the area to make sure things didn't get too out of hand). She'd washed two cars already and just came back with a fresh bucket of water to greet her partner, Lucy. They were in Art Club together and rarely talked, but at least they knew each other. Somewhat.

"S-so, Lucy," she began, looking up from the bucket as she pulled back her long black and white hair into a ponytail again. "H-how's... um..."

She never got to finish. The gymnast's eyes grew wide and she let out a squeak of apprehension as a great beast of a creature came walking into the lot, Professor Ivanov riding on its back as cool as you please. She darted behind the taller girl and stared up its long face, quaking in nervousness.

She never knew horses were so big. And... what was a horse doing at a car wash?!

[Finn Ivanov]

Finn didn't exactly ride horses on a regular basis, and maybe it wasn't a good idea to refresh his memory by riding bareback from the horse trailer over to where the students were dutifully working, but hey; it was a good horse. It wasn't going to buck him off or anything. That and he'd missed riding; it seemed like forever since he'd had a chance to actually spend time out on his friend's farm.

"Good morning!" he said with a bright smile, swinging his leg over and jumping to the ground, still holding the reins in one hand. "My friend was hoping you wouldn't mind washing his primary means of transportation. I'll help out, of course. Just avoid the muffler, though, it has a kick," he added with a playful wink, digging into the bag slung around his shoulder.

He pulled out two bottles of horse shampoo, tossing one to the student who wasn't cowering behind the other. "What are your names? I didn't bother trying to memorize them from the roster. Pain in the butt, there are a ton of you guys," he asked, not seeming worried by the students' anxiety. The Clydesdale stood calmly, flicking its tail from one side to the other with a bored snort.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

This was actually really stupid.

Lucy and Sawyer had a plan. Lucy's mainly consisted of keeping a watchful eye over her sister and her duplicates. Sawyer was, uhh, oddly creepy about the fact. And if Sawyer was, jokingly or not, it meant that other people were too. Why did her sister have to be pretty? Why couldn't she be horrendously ugly and revolting to the eye? Damn you, Nica Serrano, damn you and your cute face.

She arrived late though, finishing off a can of some energy drink and tossing it towards a trash can. God damn, it was bright. She flicked sunglasses over her eyes, turning to stare at the tiny girl who was talking to her. "Good. Thanks for asking." She replied, as delicately as she could. I mean come on, she didn't want to be a total jerk. She was just way too cute for that. That was when she turned and saw a bloody horse. Her eyebrows rose. What the actual fuck? Good morning? Was he taking the piss?

No, it seemed the horse was.

Lucy took a step back, with Appoline in tow, it seemed. When he tossed shampoo at her she swatted it away, allowing it to fall to the ground harshly; "No fucking way, dude."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Many years ago, Sean had become the faculty advisor to the Student Activities Council. It was an extracurricular position that the psychiatrist largely enjoyed, as it allowed him to spend time with students in a more laid back, recreational setting and gave him some prior knowledge of, and input in, student activities.

A car wash had seemed an opportune means of raising money. Particularly in light of how successful the bake sale had been, diversifying and taking advantage of summer weather had seemed like excellent ideas. The large amount of interest from students legitimized the SAC’s line of thinking.

Of course, as a man in his mid-fifties and the advisor, he couldn’t participate in the washing of cars. He was here all day to chaperone and to assist with customers, to break up any roughhousing, and to oversee the money.

Then someone arrived on horseback.

The psychiatrist immediately recognized that someone was Finn Ivansov, one of their newer faculty members.

Sean’s day had just become infinitely longer.

With a quick stride, he made his way over to Lucy and Appoline, just in time to see bottles get tossed; he assumed that they contained some sort of veterinary soap. Bending down to pick up the fallen bottle, he saw that his assumption was largely correct.

“Mister Ivanov,” he greeted, as he fully took in the stature of the large animal. “This is irregular.”

[Finn Ivanov]

"Hey, watch your language. He's only 3 years old, you're being a bad example," Finn said, not put off at all by the language or the reaction. He'd prepared himself for getting the full focus of teenage attitude, but much like any other bad attitudes, it was like water off a duck's back.

He grinned brightly when he saw Dr. Neville walk up to the group, and he clapped the advisor on the shoulder in greeting. "Dr. Neville! I brought my friend's 'car'. It's a late model Clydesdale. Runs off grass instead of gasoline, and doesn't smog up the air. Leaps and bounds in technology, I'm telling you," he teased, leaning on the horse casually. "No worries, though, Benji here is a parade horse. Nothin' scares him."

As if in response, Benji snorted and swung its head around to Finn, nosing at one of his pockets. Finn rolled his eyes and pulled out a couple sugar cubes, holding them out for the horse to take. "Yeah, yeah, your bribe, I didn't forget," he muttered. Seemingly satisfied, Benji turned his head back to the front, chewing calmly even as he got splashed with water from an errant hose.

[Appoline Meian]

Appoline jumped at Lucy swatting the shampoo bottle to the ground, then hid behind her a little more thoroughly until Dr. Neville arrived. The horse scared her a little, mostly just because it was so big and she was so little. But... Mr. Ivanov did seem to be telling the truth - it was a very calm creature, as far as she could tell. Though, it did like sugar cubes, which was undoubtedly not good for it.

Looking back and forth between the two adults (and then Lucy), Appoline meekly stepped out from behind the other girl, her hands twisting themselves together in her nervousness. "Um, g-good afternoon, M-Mr. Ivanov," she murmured, almost inaudible above the rest of the noise. "M-my.... um, I'm Appoline M-Meian, and my p-partner is Lucy S-Serrano. W-We're here rep-p-present-ting the Art Club."

She hadn't stuttered that badly in a while, but she was nervous! Who brought a horse to a car wash without warning?

I've never seen a horse up close before? What am I supposed to do? Can I even reach high enough to get its back or mane? Oh dear, I don't know.... Having been raised in Japan, Appoline's thoughts were suitably in Japanese, but the inherent meaning behind them was very clear - she had no idea what she was going to do, and she was very nervous about this.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

"Fuck your language, mate." Lucy shot back. Was he serious? She wished for one of two things; that the ground would swallow her up, or that someone would come in and drag her away. Come on. It was called a car wash for a reason! She listened to the mindless banter, shoving a hand in her pocket and glancing back to realise that the girl behind her looked genuinely freaked out.

"God damn, this is some technical horseshit." She spat lowly, more for herself than anyone else. Like she didn't have enough to worry about with Sawyer lurking on her sister. "And if it gets literal, I'm so far outta here."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean typically cared a bit more, reflexively, about student word choice in front of staff members. However, while he wouldn’t speak that way himself, he believed that Lucy’s word choice had sufficient cause behind it, and so he had no intention of commenting. Finn’s correction was overkill in this situation, as far as the psychiatrist was concerned.

He heard the rush of Japanese in Appoline’s thoughts and recognized more than his fair share of the words (the result of years of interactions with sister faculty at Eisai and study on his own. The girl’s panic was warranted, and Sean remained between the girls and Finn. Turning to the girls, he said, “Because this isn’t what you signed up for today, you don’t have to wash this or any horse if you don’t want to. I'll move you back to the top of the list for the next car.”

Sean couldn’t blame them; he didn’t want to wash a horse.

If Lucy and Appoline opted out, he would pull Kamillia in, but he would give her the option. He would only take volunteers for this special case, as nobody had conceived of this possibility when they had recruited students for today.

If he couldn’t get anyone to agree to washing the animal, then Finn was out of luck.

[Appoline Meian]

The smallest among them looked between those around her, her dual colored eyes slightly wide with her barely contained panic and visible fretting. Her hands kneaded together, then twisted at her bathing suit top and sarong, and finally she took a shaky step forward. "I... I d-don't mind," she muttered softly. "It's... it's our job, r-right? S-so, I'll do it."

It was a surprisingly brave thing for the timid girl to be saying, but Appoline was like her parents in a way - stubborn to a fault and determined to do things right. If this was her next assignment, she'd do it as best as she could despite her fear. Still, she'd certainly appreciate someone good with animals around; the largest animal she'd ever even been near was a rather large dog in her childhood. It had been sweet and very big, but a horse was a great deal larger than that.

Looking up shyly at Lucy, the other girl then ducked her head and blushed. "Um... I'm okay if you w-want to work somewhere else, L-Lucy." The Australian seemed really irate about this job, so giving her a way out seemed like a really good idea.

[Finn Ivanov]

Finn raised an eyebrow at the faculty advisor- hell, if he'd spoken like that to a teacher for any reason when he was here, he'd be in detention so fast his head would be spinning. He knew that from experience. Perhaps they'd gone lax on the rules since he was at school here. (Maybe it would also help if he actually read the code of conduct book, but how fun could that be?)

"Relax, kiddo, it's not like I brought a beehive. I thought this might be a good experience for some of you," he said, trying not to be thrown off by the sheer vitriol being tossed his way. Kids were damn vicious nowadays. "I'm not gonna make you. Plenty of animal lovers around here to do the job."

He grinned at Appoline, glad that someone was willing to be open minded to something new, and tossed a sponge her way. "Only rule is no walking behind him. He's real gentle, though. This guy is the one they use for the workshops for the autistic kids that come out to the farm," he added, picking up a sponge and a bottle of shampoo, obviously planning on helping the kids out. Wasn't like he'd sit by and do nothing while the kids dealt with a horse.

[Lyra Caruso]

"HAH! Holishit, so that wasn't a joke!"

Blurts a voice from inside Appoline's bucket of water, a voice only one of those present would find familiar. A glance inside the bucket and one would find not their own reflection, but the reflection of a completely different person. The car wash caught Lyra's attention as there would be lots of water...and it means lots of people she could prank and mess with for her own amusement!

Why not? She had nothing else better to do. It was Lucy's outburst that may have saved a certain little gymnast from having a disembodied arm reach out from inside a bucket of water and grab her.

"Well Luce! Figures you get the weirdest one."

Her eyes flicked around the bucket. Hn...suppose the bucket was big enough to climb out of? It was hard to tell with the size of the window itself.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

"Nah, the douche just brings a horse for the attention." Lucy shrugged, wishing someone in her group of friends would appear to share in her humour. If he thought her reaction was bad he was sorely missing the mark for the rest of her personality.

She briefly directed her eyes towards Sean as he spoke about giving up on the whole thing. It was a tempting thought.

But running a hand through her hair, Lucy tore her gaze away from Appoline as she spoke again. "Shut up. I'll stay." She replied quickly, dropping her hand again; "It's fine."

Lucy recognised that voice instantly. How could she forget something like that? She turned her attention towards the bucket and stared into it, catching sight of the person she assumed the disembodied voice belonged to. "Dude, get outta there." She said, holding her hand out above the level of the water so she could grab onto it. "Unless you're stuck. Then you picked a really shitty place to get out of."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Part and parcel of working at Hammel was learning to interact with the students individually, while also finding the balance between authority figure, mediator, and confidant. Not every situation was the same, worthy of the same consideration and set of rules. Speaking that way to a staff member during class or during a staff encounter was wholly inappropriate. However, the psychiatrist didn’t believe that staff members should, or could, get away with trying to get a rise out of students and then hiding behind their authority in the face of reactions.

Bringing a horse to a car wash was an attempt to get a rise out of the students. That it wasn’t malicious- and the psychiatrist was certain that Finn had benign intent – didn’t change the underlying facts, nor that Finn’s remarks could come across as bait. As such, Sean cut them slack, because it wasn’t a wholly fair situation.

However, both Appoline and Lucy appeared to have changed their minds about washing the horse, and thus there was little that the psychiatrist could do for them. If they consented, then they consented, and he would leave them to the task. “If anything happens, let me know.”

Then, as he turned to leave, he glanced down at the bucket of water, containing Lyra’s reflection. “And you be careful, Lyra.”

[Lyra Caruso]

Eyeroll at the psychiatrist.

"Yes sir." She replies with a mocking sweetness and followed with a shake of her head. Honestly, what was she gonna do that would need to exercise caution? Her desire to pull a prank was annihilated by the presence of the horse alone.

Lyra reaches up and her disembodied hand appears from inside the bucket, feeling the sides of the bucket for size.

"Okay yeah, think I can swing this. I'll just deal with being damp again." Thankfully this car wash happened on a bright and warm sunny day, drying would not be a problem. Lyra's hand would finally grab hold of Lucy's, a momentary feeling of lightness on her part would slowly feel much more solid and weighty as the girl rises out from the bucket. It would be a fabulous magic trick for the normals!

"Thanks Luce." Lyra would look over at the other two forced to wash the horse with her. Small, scared looking mouse of a girl and some dude, probably a teacher type. All she could really do but raise her hand in a greeting. "Yo."