J is for Jiminy (Like the Cricket)

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank really was as easy to distract as Franck anticipated. He just knew her so well. She beamed at him while he talked of her absolutely brilliant coffee scam. when he suggested swimming pool, Frank clapped her hands like a child (so technically like Frank, considering), bouncing up and down on the chair. "Awesome, awesome, awesome! Yes, that's something we should totally do! Turn the whole swimming pool into one giant thing of coffee!" she flung a hand up into the air, clenched in a triumphant fist and let out a little whoop. She soon lowered the hand, patting herself down in the search for various footstuff. Soon more wrappers would fall onto Franck's floor, proving mostly that Frank had interdimensional pockets.

"And i can totes buy that many beans. I'm super rich, remember? Heeeey, fooood!" she said, taking the milk, crackers and cheese. She took the whole hunk of cheese in one hand, taking a big bite of it, chewing and talking around it, not missing a breath. "This really isn't what i normally chow down on though. I mean, sure, when I'm doing the whole meal thing and making sure I get the, like, bajillion calories I need in a day. But who wants to eat like that all the time? You know they sometimes give me these, like, meal supplement things? I've heard they wanna switch me over to MREs or special bars or something."

Frank shuddered and then held the crackers up to her mouth, somehow effectively shooting crackers and cheese at the same time. Suffice it to say that Frank had turned eating into some kind of gross artform.

[François Laffont]

François would much rather have Frank sleeping right now. But since it would appear too big a favour to ask out of her, at least could he minimize the damage done to her by cutting her from her daily sugar and coffee supply. Who knows, perhaps sleep will then be able to get back at her and make her sleep at last. Franck was not keeping his hope up on that one but still wouldn’t complain if she was to fall asleep on him. In the meantime, he would provide her with her favourite topic of all, whatever prank they can pull up to cheer everyone. Now, Franck was into making everyone happy and forget what was going on, and he had to admit a pool made out of coffee would be interesting and unexpected, but he had no idea how to do it nor what will happen to them if they ever get caught. They had to get caught no? How were they supposed to bring in enough coffee while going unnoticed? Boiling the beans (or would it be instant coffee?) to make the coffee didn't seem as big of a problem, they just had to get someone with fire abilities to heat the water and it should be fine.

“Then there’s the question of getting them in without being noticed,” he said after she told him she could buy that many coffee beans anytime. It was true he sometimes forgot how rich she was. She was not flaunting her riches as much as some others would, at least not in a way that would make it clear for everyone, even if they didn’t want to know.

He watched her eat the cheese. Franck just had the time to cut himself a slice of it that she was stuffing a bit chunk in her mouth. And then some crackers. And she was still trying to talk through it all. The most amazing was how he understood her. “How the hell do you manage to eat like that without choking?” he asked, his head to the side, staring at her like she was someone in a freak show and he couldn’t take his eyes out of her. He couldn’t, in a way. He was amazed by what she could do, in a gross kind of way. Even he didn’t have that big of a mouth.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Pfft, you can sneak anything into a school if you know how, especially if it's, like, weird stuff. I mean, the security staff's more worried about, you know, dangerous stuff. Weapons," Frank began ticking off on her fingers, still not ceasing in the whole eating thing, "drugs, illegal substances, condoms, stuff like that they care about. But try to smuggle in several crates of balloon animals? They just think you're weird," which would've been a fairly standard assessment of Frank in a nutshell, and she clearly didn't mind it either. She stuffed more food in her face, figuring that she should further celebrate her freedom in that very scrumptious manner.

The question, however, was one that Frank got all the time. She rolled her eyes, blowing her lips. This did send crackers and stuff flying a bit, but Frank didn't seem to really notice. "It's so practice, man. If your power made you eat all the time, you'd totally be aces at it too. Plus, I think that, like," she swallowed, then opened her mouth, pointing and continuing to talk, "eating lots of food is some kinda side effect. I'm like totally built to just munch down on stuff."

Frank's mouth did look a little different. For one thing, if you looked, you could see that it appeared that most of her skin had been toughened by something. On top of that, there just seemed to be more elasticity involved. With the right tools, you could get more into it than that, but surely nobody would want to do that.

[François Laffont]

Franck wasn’t so sure about her statement here. He believed it might be hard to smuggle that many beans inside the school. Well, perhaps you could through the cafeteria... His knowledge in pranking was sadly limited, he knew mostly what Frank told him about. And she was not very talkative on the details, or perhaps she acted too randomly to remember all of them. Though he could see how coffee beans wouldn’t strike as too odd from the staff. Well, odd yes but not to the point of confiscating it or anything. With Frank, he bet they witnessed stranger things. He raised an eyebrow at condoms. Really, they’d confiscated those? Sure he could see how they would prefer abstinence but shouldn’t they at least be glad to see those who wanted some action were smart enough to think about protection? “I won’t ask how you know all of this,” he simply said in a sigh. Yep, rather not know. It was better, for his nerves.

Even though the crackers she spat out didn’t go all the way to him, Franck could not help but to step away from her slightly. He shoved the bits that fell on the table away from him. “I don’t know, I’d say eating is kind of the power and a powerful jaw a side-effect to allow it,” he replied. But what did he know? Anyway, it wasn’t much the fact she had a strong jaw or teeth that could gnaw at anything that was the amazing part here. It was that so much could fit in. He already came to the conclusion she had a black hole for stomach. He didn’t pause one second however to think she might also have a frog’s mouth.

Now that she was done talking, and that she actually swallowed all the food, he grabbed the bits she threw out and tossed them in the garbage. “Can we strike a deal? I help you make the pool turn to coffee and you take it easy for the rest of the day, how does it sound?” he suggested. The school might not like his deal but he thought more about his friend than the burden of emptying the pool entirely to clean and then fill it again. Even if they might end up being the ones washing it.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Experience!" chimed Frank, nodding enthusiastically. "Schools do not like it when you mass order condoms and don't clear it through certain offices and junk." Obviously there was a story behind that, most likely involving a prank of some kind (either that or an orgy, and with Frank, the prank was a safer bet... if slightly). She was likely to start reminiscing about that, except her attention span wouldn't allow her to focus on it without some guidance.

Instead, there was a brief talk about her power, which would've ignited quite a bit more conversation from Frank. Indeed, her mouth had already started to open to begin pouring forth with a great deal of conversation upon this matter, except she'd paused momentarily because suddenly shoving most of the block of cheese into her mouth sounded like the best idea ever and even Frank couldn't talk around a huge chunk of cheese (no, this didn't stop her, but the words were muffled enough that she could hear all of Franck's deal).

Frank swallowed the cheese, licking her lips. 'Awesome! I knew I could count on you! I promise to take it easy for the rest of---hey, what counts as a day? Like, until the sun goes down or until midnight or until everyone else wakes up? I'm jus' wondering 'cuz y'know, time stuff, wibbly wobbly, all that,' said Frank, waving a hand in a slightly jerky, dismissive motion.

[François Laffont]

Of course, Frank would ignore what he just said and tell him. Well, at least not in detail. Experience. He was fine with this as simple explanation. He’d rather not know what his friend did with condoms. He was ready to assume it was for a prank. Well, begging with all his might this was for a prank so he wouldn’t hear the scandalous details of his fellow students’ sex life.

Instead of animal balloons made of condoms, this was what he decided she did with those and shall stick to that hypothesis no matter what, Franck was given a power lesson. Or at least tried to understand the lesson while Frank munched in all the cheese he took out. It wasn’t all that easy to understand her and he simply gave up. She’d probably repeat that some other time without realizing he should have known already, if the occasion turned up.

At least he got the part when she finally agreed with him. “I meant until next morning,” he explained. He wasn’t quite sure what her definition of rest was like so he felt the need to specify one thing. “No energy drinks during that time.”

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Next morning!" said Frank, gaping at her friend, "and no energy drinks!? Man, that's so not fair! Like, I need the energy----aaaahahaha, I see," she raised a finger at him, waving it. "That's because you want me to drink lots of coffee instead, right? I suppose I could, but coffee always makes me wanna pee and stuff for some reason. But I guess peeing a lot is okay. Obviously I can't, like, not do anything, because there's just so much to do..."

Frank tapped her fingers to her lips again, thinking, even humming to herself a bit. She then seemed to realize that she still had cheese and crackers and all and began eating those, nomming cheerfully for a few seconds until something seemed to hit her. "Wait a moment," she said around the food, saying the thoughts as soon as they entered her mind. She waved the crackers. "You're feeding me realish food, and you said no energy drinks..."

Frank's eyes widened. "Are you sabotaging me? Arrrrrreeee youuuuuuu?" she opened one eye wide and closed the other, giving Franck a highly suspicious look, since that obviously deserved it, hard.

[François Laffont]

"What!?" he let out at Frank’s logic. What made her come to the conclusion no energy drinks meant to go for coffee? This was beyond his understanding. Was it really so hard for her to take one moment to sit down? He better not tell her that she would point out she was doing precisely that. He should have put sleeping pills in that food. The way she was eating the cheese, she certainly wouldn’t notice it. But how much did he have to give her for them to have an effect? He was really trying to calculate this when he realized what he was doing. Was he seriously planning to drug his friend? He would blame Frank’s influence for this one, should anyone read his thought right now and point it out to the world. Yep, Frank’s influence to cause mischief because everyone just had to love it. Why wouldn’t she love sleeping? Her body would surely like it.

There was barely any cheese and crackers left when she suddenly stopped eating. He paused at her, wondering what was going on. Was her amazing mouth and oesophagus finally giving up on her? No, it was nothing that dramatic. Although, by the look she gave him, she might as well consider it so. He looked down, a sheepish smile coming to his face. He’d happily shake his head while laughing considering how ridiculous a turn this conversation took. "I’m not doing anything. I just want you to take things easy for a day. Consider this a challenge I’m daring you to do,” he replied. Oh, so after planning pranks and making a deal to participate in them he was now challenging her. That was it, Franck just sold his soul and someone took his place.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"see, that confirms it," said Frank, nodding with the feeling of one who had just done a lot of winning. "This must be how Charlie Sheen felt..." she wondered aloud, again proving that she literally said anything that went on in her head. And no, no of course Frank did not realize the irony in her comparing herself to a celebrity who literally had a mental breakdown in public after doing who knows what to his body for an extended period of time. Knowing Frank, she probably thought of him as something of a hero, and his actions as something to look up to, though possibly with less cocaine and more wizardry and tiger-blood.

There was some eating in there with Franck looking down at Frank with that sheepish smile, which had Frank totally believing that she'd totally just caught him. He was laughing and insisting he didn't do anything, and of course he wouldn't lie to her or anything like that.

"Challenge!? Challenge accep--- wait a sec," she narrowed her eyes again, looking at Franck with the utmost of suspicion. "Is it considered taking it easy if I watch cartoons? Because I still can't, like, do nothing. That would be super boring and junk, and I don't do boring," and lo, the most obvious thing ever said in human existence had now been said.

[François Laffont]

Franck was not quite sure why she would bring out Charlie Sheen like this. All he knew of the man was that he played some movies once before falling in disgrace and being quite the laughing stock lately. Whatever point he seemed to prove for her, comparing herself to Charlie Sheen, for it was the impression he had, was perhaps not the best idea of all. Franck really had no idea how his friend’s mind worked or how she came to this. But in case of doubt, he would change the subject. Yeah, that was easier than trying to understand. Otherwise it would need all day. And a lot more cheese.

He was actually glad, doing a little victory dance inside when she paused and got him to stop the dance. Dang, he was so close! But wait, why did he worry? Of course, she stopped only to get the rules of the challenge and ask about cartoons. He had to give her that she was right, she didn’t do boring. And he didn’t want her to try and give up after thirty seconds. “Cartoons’ accepted, as long as you stay on a couch or in bed and don’t go running around,” he said. He might as well give her that. There was still a chance she’d fall asleep on the couch while watching her shows anyway. “Still in?” he asked her, again with a bit of a challenge in his voice.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank considered the terms for several seconds, which required her to hum and tap her lips regularly, eying Franck with a comic mixture of suspicion and amusement on her face. She didn't see why she couldn't take a short break and watch a bunch of cartoons while on a couch. He'd only said no energy drinks, after all, which meant that Frank could still put down utterly ridiculous amounts of sugar.

"Challenge accepted!" she agreed, reaching out for a hand to shake. If Franck delayed in extending one by even the slightest bit, Frank was start waving her hand up and down, clearly thinking this to be one of the most important parts of the whole hand-shaking process. Because obviously the challenge just wouldn't be a challenge without some hand-shaking involved. How else would you make it official?