T is For Tennant (The Only Acceptable Name for a Rat) {Cass}

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank let out a long, slow breath while she stared down the girls' dorm. The dreaded girls dorm, filled with frippery and girls. There was a long pause while Frank stared, then she realized that despite her name, she was actually a boy, and she just pushed through, entering the dorm as though she belonged there (which technically speaking, she did). No sooner had she stepped through than she dropped down, nearly crawling on her knees. Her eyes swept the floor, looking for any sign of movement or anything at all that would hint toward something having passed by recently.

Oh, there were probably people there. It was after classes, right around the time people sort of drifted off and did whatever they wanted before most would toddle off to bed. There wasn't a great wealth of people though, as, well, they still had time to be other places and do other things. But there were people, and people had a tendency to stare at Frank just in general, usually on purpose. At least she wasn't leaking glitter or trailing confetti, nope, not this time.

She was holding rat treats though, and calling out in a slightly high pitched voice: "Tennant, oh Tennnnnnant, here Tennant, Tennant, tennant, I have some tasty treats for you~" while shaking her hand. The rat treats knocked against one another, creating a little noise, though perhaps not enough to really attract human attention. Frank kept crawling along, finally reaching a door. shrugging, she gave it a little nudge, sticking her head in. Wasn't like it would be a big deal if she just took a peek in someone else's room. Frank craned her neck as she looked all around, softly calling out the name.

Stupid rat had to be here somewhere.
Probably.
He had come this direction...

[Castilla Salinas]

It had been a long tiresome day for Cassie she had activated her power twice today in class trying to do as the teacher said and gain some semblance of control over it. She had passed out both times and woken up with her migraines nice and strong, though the second time she had managed to see the first few snap shots before losing control of her own body so she saw that as progress of sorts. She had spent the last hour in the quiet of the forest while her pain killers kicked in feeding carrots to Belle.

Now she was strolling down the hallway back to her dorm room, she had plans to scour the internet to see if there was any information she could find on her power. Although she realized google wouldn’t hold all the answers she was curious to see if she could find anything that would give her a clue as to how she could control her power better. She was the sort of person who although she appreciated the teachers help she needed to try her own ways as well. Who knows maybe someone who actually has the power out in the world have left some tidbits somewhere disguised as an article of fantasy but supplying some fact?

Her internal thought process was interrupted as she neared the door to the dorm she shared with three other girls to see some girl she hadn’t met before on her hands and knees with her head poking in their door calling out as if to an animal. With a puzzled look she walked closer, “Lost something? Can I help at all?” she asked as she drew closer wondering what or who Tennant was, she assumed something small due to the girl being on her hands and knees but she could be mistaken who knew around this place.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Possibly," admitted Frank, though she didn't move. She had this vague sensation that someone was standing more or less near her, likely looming over and wondering just what the hell Frank was doing. Okay, so there had been an offer for advice, which Frank supposed probably meant a little less looming and a little more looking. Frank was gonna go with that anyway.

She sat on her heels, letting out a puff of air that disturbed the bits of her hair that had fallen about her face. It took several more puffs till Frank felt good enough to actually turn and look up at the other girl. "You wouldn't happen to be a great mouse detective, would you? Because I need someone to help trace a rat," Frank rose to her feet, mostly by sort of shimmying her body and kind of working her way up in perhaps the most awkward way possible. Soon she was at least standing next to Cass instead of kneeling and looking.

"You see, I seem to have misplaced a rat named Tennant. We were sort of on this whole trial period, see if he would work as a pet for me in this dorm. I tried to look for a toothless alligator, but you wouldn't believe how big those things could be! Definitely not an animal for a cage. So yeah, rat, but whataya know, he got out," Frank rolled her eyes and then gave Cass a "can you believe it" look. She then turned and look. "I think he headed into that room, but I haven't really seen him in, like, a few minutes now and he is kinda a rat..."

[Castilla Salinas]

Cassie waited patiently as the girl on the floor didn’t move but admitted to possibly losing something, the girl seemed to ponder something for a moment before leaning back on her heals and huffing hair out of her face before turning and looking up at Cassie. "You wouldn't happen to be a great mouse detective, would you? Because I need someone to help trace a rat," The girl asked as she shimmied her way up the wall to stand.

Before Cassie could answer her the girl launched into her tale of the rat that was a trial pet and how it had escaped the cage. Once the girl stopped her explanation Cassie smiled and opened the door walking inside the common area of the dorm she shared with 3 others where the girl thought the rat had gone. “Well I’m no rat expert but I do live here and I can help you look, maybe we can find something more tantalizing then rat treats to tempt him out?” She offered strolling toward the fridge to see if they had any cheese in there. "Rats like cheese right?" she half asked half pondered, with a shrug she decided to give it a go anyway.

Cassie wasn’t too sure she didn’t dislike rats and wasn’t scared of them by any means but she also had never tried to catch one before so she wasn’t too sure of the best plan of attack either but hey couldn’t hurt to try right? Taking out the cheese she placed it on the counter, took up a knife and cut a few chunks off. Tossing a piece over to the girl she took up a piece of her own and lowered herself to the floor as the girl at been doing earlier trying to look under furniture while waving the cheese around to see if there was any movement.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank followed Cassie into the little dorm common area, looking around with some interest. She hadn't quite been in another section of the dorm just yet, as there hadn't been any sneaking around, either for romantic liaisons or for just flat out having fun and partying. Frank was slightly disappointed to see that the common area was the exact same as the common on for the coed dorm. She watched as her new helper headed to a fridge, pulling out some cheese.

"Y'know, i did think about that," admitted Frank, pointing, "but I figured I'd eat it before the rat did. Plus I didn't actually have any cheese," she paused for a bit, "because I ate it."

The cheese was being cut, and it took all Frank had not to nom on the rat pellets. That was the problem of eating everything: you actually wanted to do it. Didn't help that Frank needed to just about constantly shove food down her gullet in order to stay upright and healthy and perky and Frank-ish.

"His name is Tennant, but I don't know how aware of that he is," admitted Frank. She dropped back into a crouch, essentially waddling her way through the area. "Here Tennant, Tennant, Tennnnnnnnannnnt," she cooed in her most enticing voice, shaking the hand with the rat treats again. She thought she saw movement a little bit away, but she couldn't be sure.

[Castilla Salinas]

Cassie listened entertained as Frank kept talking, it was kind of nice really she didn’t have to worry too much about keeping up a conversation Frank pretty much took care of it for her. “Tennant” Cassie called out gently as she crawled around the on the floor with the cheese in hand trying to see if she could spot the rat now that she knew what his name was, though she did giggle at the fact that it was true the rat probably wasn’t all that aware that it was supposed to respond to the name.

Cassie was beginning to wonder if she should stretch the searching to some of the actual bedrooms in the place but she didn’t want to invade the other girls space that lived there so was about to try her own when she heard the plastic on the block of cheese she had left out on the kitchen bench rustling.

Whipping around she saw there sitting on top of the cheese merrily eating away at a far bigger offering their either herself or the other girl had a rat. Was it Tennant? She wasn’t sure as she had never met Tennant but hopefully there weren’t too many more loose rats roaming the school right. “Well apparently our measly offering of cheese wasn’t enough he wanted the whole thing” Cassie laughed as she pointed at the rat atop the cheese just in case the other girl hadn’t noticed him yet.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank had nearly entered another room as it was, her head craning around to look. She wasn't nearly as shy about invading someone's personal bubble; nope, not Frank. Besides, it wasn't like the rat hadn't already managed that. For all they knew, he was situated deep in someone's clothes drawer, nomming away at a favorite sweater or something of the like.

Turned out that Tennant had better taste than that. Frank turned at Cassie's comment, then started giggling. she giggled hard enough to fall back onto her butt, pointing at the rat. "That's jus---" she tried, before bursting out in another laugh. She rolled about for a few seconds, hitting the door she'd been crouched in. As she did, Frank pushed against it, then levered herself more or less upright. She took several deep breaths, still giggling a little.

Eventually, Frank regained control of herself. She turned to look at Tennant, still perched atop the cheese and looking proud of himself. Frank tilted her head to the side, then the other. "You don't suppose he was, like, hungry or something, do ya? I totally got this rat food for him," she walked forward a little, holding up the food, "'cuz I ain't sure that I could share cheese with him. I'm totally a cheese hog," and a meat hog and a junk food hog and pretty much anything edible hog (anything edible being pretty much everything in existence for Frank).

'So, like, you think we should let him finish?" asked Frank. She walked over to stand by Cassie, also facing the rat, considering. "If he's hungry, than he should totally get his grub on, y'know?"

[Castilla Salinas]

Cassie laughed along with the girl it was impossible not to her laughter was infectious and it was rather entertaining. Clearly the rat was smart, why would you go after the small offerings when there was a giant block of cheese left unattended. Cassie got control of herself just before the other girl did taking deep calming breaths to control the laughing fit.

"You don't suppose he was, like, hungry or something, do ya? I totally got this rat food for him, I ain't sure that I could share cheese with him. I'm totally a cheese hog. So, like, you think we should let him finish? If he's hungry, than he should totally get his grub on, y'know?" Cassie thought about it for a moment looking at the rat, he certainty didn’t look underfed by any means.

“I don’t think he is starving by any means I think he just decided it would be super fun to send you on a rat hunt. As for the cheese I don’t think any rat even the most well fed fat rat on earth would pass up a block of cheese” Cassie responded with a laugh, as for the cheese no offense to rats or anything but she didn’t want it any more, she made a mental note to buy a new block.

“As for the cheese he can have it, though maybe we should put him and the cheese into something so he doesn’t decide to take off on another expedition when he is done” She suggested getting up off the floor and walking to her room she pulled out an empty shoe box she had there bringing it back out to the common area and handing it to the girl. “I’m Cassie by way” she said with a warm smile.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Not starving, well, that made at least one of them. Frank looked at the rat, who had apparently decided to work his malicious evils upon Frank for no perceivable reason. This did make Frank like the rat a little more, but she still wasn't sure that he made the best pet. "We'd have to experiment with a lot of rats to figure that one out," said Frank. This, of course, merited thought, because Frank was Frank. however, she didn't think that people would, as a rule, like it if she happened to fill the school with rats, and she didn't want to have to bribe off quite everyone...

...at least not yet.

"Thanks for giving him your cheese! I'm sure he totally appreciates it, even if he's being a snob and not sharing or anything," said Frank. She bounded over to Cassie and gave her a quick hug, just the slightest of squeezes before releasing and backing up. "Oh, I'm Frank, by the way, and yes, that really is my name, and no, it's not short for anything, and yeah, we should totally find a shoebox or something; just make sure to poke a lotta holes in it. Otherwise the critter doesn't last long,"

everything about that last bit clearly demonstrated that Frank had at least one critter that hadn't lasted long. She took the box and approached the rat anyway, moving very slowly, "You should probably sneak around him," this next she said with a horrible Australian accent, "'cuz tha's one smart bugger righ' there."

[Castilla Salinas]

Cassie froze as the girl bounded towards her, before she could react or stop the girl she was pulled into a quick hug. She waited for the mental smack down of her power to fire into effect and put her on her ass. To her great surprise she stayed in her own head, she stood there waiting and confused as the girl took the box, she vaguely heard the girls speech about her name, wait what did she say her name was? Frank? Well that was different.

Cassie couldn’t get over the fact that she hadn’t blacked out, up until that point since the first time her power triggered it had triggered every time she touched someone or they touched her, what was different about this time?

She tried to bring herself to focus on the here and now as Frank snuck up on the rat talking to herself in a bad Australian accent but she was having trouble focusing. She couldn’t shut her brain off from going over and over the events in lead up to the hug, trying to figure out what she did this time that prevented the episode. Maybe it was just a random thing and it actually didn’t happen every single time she made physical contact with someone just every other time.

She was still standing right where Frank had hugged her by the time Frank had the rat in the box, she mentally shook herself and took a few steps. “I think there are some scissors in the top draw we could put some holes in the lid with” She said walking into the kitchen and opening the draw in question, pulling out the scissors she went to hand them to Frank.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank, being more or less distracted by the rat and hadn't really noticed Cassie's minor freakout. It was hard to say with absolute certainty that she would have commented upon it even if she had noticed, perhaps it had been really noticeable or Frank was being super aware of herself or her surr--no, no, that doesn't sound like Frank even in the slightest.

So she somehow managed to get the rat into the box, though this took a good deal of dancing around and shimmying. The rat nearly climbed down Frank's shirt, but she managed to catch him before he could do any real damage. Then there was this sort of wiggling shifting forward thing to get the rat to try and go into the box even though he didn't really seem to want to. Eventually, Frank had to resort to jumping up and down, knocking the critter into the box and shoving a lid on it.

"Awesome, scissors!" said Frank, waving the box up and down for a bit before remembering that she actually had something resembling a living creature inside. She paused then, holding still. She raised the box slightly, peeking open the lid to look at the creature inside, "sorry 'bout that, Tennant. Don't worry though, we're totally gonna poke some holes in the top, make it up to you," and with that, Frank reached for the scissors.

"Oooh, sharp pointy objects!" she said, grinning from ear to ear. "Usually they give me the little plastic ones for some reason," she brandished the scissors and gave them a few snips to test. You had to fear for the rat inside.

[Castilla Salinas]

Due to her mixed emotions and thought cascading off on their own tangents its took her a little longer then it should to realize what the events that led to the rat making it into the box. Had she been paying attention she might have noticed the almost brutal way she got the rat into the box. Or the way she shook the box once the rat was inside as she got excited over the scissors.

Had she noticed all that properly she might have questioned herself more about easily offering the girl the scissors but it was too late now right the girl had the scissors in hand and was waving them around with glee. "Oooh, sharp pointy objects! Usually they give me the little plastic ones for some reason," Between the words and the huge grin on her face she really did begin to wonder about her choice to hand over the scissors to the girl when the rat was already in the box, maybe they should have done the holes thing before putting the rat in there...

“Shall I hold the box so you don’t have to juggle to two?” Cassie offered stepping forward not wanting to make the girl feel she didn’t trust her or anything but also thinking if the girl looked to be pushing the scissors too far in the box or something she would have some control over making sure the rat didn’t get stabbed.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank had just raised the scissors for another good stab when she heard Cassie's comment. She looked over at the other girl, saw the expression, and incorrectly jumped to a conclusion, which might as well be called "Franking" (though to be honest, far, far too many things might as well be called "Franking"). She nodded and shifted her grip on the box, before holding out the scissors. "Here, you take the sharp pointy object thing. I don't want to be all stabby stabby on Tennant. We haven't reached that point in our relationship. Now, if he was the real Tennant," Frank sighed, looking off into the distance with a dreamy look, "I'd let that man do all the stabby stabby he wanted..."

Frank stood there in a daze, totally not picturing a, let's go with "romantic" interlude between her and David Tennant that was probably the sort of thing better left to the inevitable fanfiction. She did get a little spacy, her grip on the box slipping a little. It didn't help that rat Tennant did not want to be in the mostly hole-less box for altogether too long. He jerked and moved, threatening to topple the whole box over soon.

[Castilla Salinas]

Cassie was slightly surprised when the girl gave up the scissors instead of the box but she didn’t argue she took them carefully out of the girls hand as she mused about Tennant and her not reaching the stabby stabby point of their relationship. Cassie giggled slightly and shook her head a little bit at the girls choice of words especially when she seemed to go off into a trance after stating that she would let the real Tenant do all the stabby stabby he wanted.

Cassie noticed that the girls grip on the box wasn’t great as she went into her daze and that the box itself was thrashing around as Tennant obviously tried to find a way to escape the box. Stepping forward she placed a hand under the box between Frank’s hands making it more stable. When she was sure that between Frank’s loose grip and her own hand supporting the bottom that Tennant wasn’t going to take a spill out of the box and be given the chance to escape she gently placed the tip of the scissors to the box twisting them slightly and applying a gentle pressure until a small hole appeared. Pulling them out again she moved to a new spot on the lid repeating the process a few more times until there were an appropriate amount of holes in the lid for the rat.

“There we go Tennant now you can breathe again” She said gently placing the scissors on the counter next to her, not moving her hand from underneath the box just yet as Frank still seemed to be in her daze and she didn’t want the rat to fall to the ground.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank's mind continued to spin a rather vivid imaginary scenario involving her possibly tying David Tennant to a chair and forcing affections upon him. She was only vaguely aware of the squirming rat/box in her hands, and only slightly aware of the fact that Cassie had moved to support said box by placing her hand in the space between both of Frank's. No, the girl had definitely left this world for the all too vivid world of her own imagination.

Cassie's voice did eventually call Frank back into reality. "Not unless I let him," she murmured, clearly taking the vocal intrusion to be referencing her imaginary being instead of the rat. As reality descended, however, Frank noticed the other girl again. She then also seemed to notice that she was holding a box, a box with holes in the top, and those holes had what looked like a little rodent nose poking out, desperate for air. And everything just sort of came together then.

"ah, right, the rat," said Frank, nodding. "Thanks for that. and saaaay, why haven't I seen you before now? Have you been hiding in here, Cassie? You're not some sort of freak Morlock creature or something, are you? Or maybe you're a Changeling! no, wait, those aren't nice," Frank paused, staring at Cassie with pursed lips. "Maybe I have seen you before. Do you have English with that one super hawt guy? You know the one, 'cuz he's super hawt," Frank nodded and moved to give Cassie a knowing, conspiratorial elbow nudge.