O is for Oops

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

Frank stared at the pieces of the... something in her hand. She actually hadn't been entirely sure what it was, which had been part of the reason she'd picked it up and... played with it. Yeah, she really couldn't phrase that any better than that. But who could resist a mysterious thing that had just been left out in the open like that? It had practically been begging to be touched. Whoever owned this... thing should be thankful that Frank of all people had touched it. Because Frank was totally responsible. Mostly. More or less. Okay, she sort of resembled someone responsible if you squinted and tilted your head a little.

She'd been bored, okay? That happened from time to time. School was wrapping up, and since Frank had been, y'know, kidnapped for a large chunk of that time, she'd gotten away with missing some of the major stuff, given a bye with the thought being that she'd make it up next year (yeah, that would totally happen). Which left her with lots of time on her hands. Which meant that her hands should be filled with something. Enter the... something.

“Maybe I can just...” she said, before sticking her tongue out, licking the ends of the object, and then beginning to piece it together that way. Nothing happened, mostly because there wasn't anything all that special about Frank's saliva, despite her rather odd power. So since nothing happened with that, Frank moved up from just licking to spitting, hocking an impressive loogie right on the rim of the thing, before moving to jam the two pieces together. She'd just started to press her, her tongue sneaking out of her mouth to show just how much effort, when she heard a little coughing noise. Locked in place, a smile plastered on her face, Frank turned.

“Hi, is this your thing?” she asked, extending her arms and, by extension, said thing in question. “it, uh, broke.”

[Steinbeck Dunn]

The trouble with having a rat for a pet was that sometimes he got out. And when he got out, he couldn't just run harmlessly around the floor and get into normal mischief like chewing wires and getting into the trash. No. Applesauce couldn't do normal escaped-rodent things. When he got out, he'd go back to his cage in secret (somehow always managing it when Becky wasn't looking) and methodically remove his toys and spread them around the floor. And not just the floor near his cage. Oh no. Once time Applesauce had gotten out at home and they'd been stumbling on jingle bells and chew sticks in the kitchen, basement, and bathroom.

It was annoying, to say the least. But it was more than that now that Becky and Applesauce no longer lived at home, but in a group-living environment. Which meant other people would trip on his chew sticks and jingle bells and wonder what the hell kind of demented person was leaving those things lying around.

So when Applesauce got out for the first time last night, Becky was dreading the clean up. She'd found him in two hours, in the hallway outside her dorm room with a bunch of toilet paper in his mouth. But now it was the next day and she had to go through the process of scouting for all his things. She'd found almost everything except for one of his favorite toys: a chewy thing that hung from the ceiling that he could spin and it would jingle and even release treats when properly filled. It was a pretty big item, so Becky thought it would be one of the first ones she found. Instead, she was losing all hope by the time she found it in the hands of a girl on the first floor of the dorms. In quite a few different pieces.

She watched her mess around with it for a little while, assuming that she'd notice that she was there. Crap. She wasn't noticing. And Becky didn't want to be rude and snatch the thing out of her hands to figure out exactly what was wrong with it. So she coughed a little bit, hoping that she would notice. And she did. She stepped forward when the rat toy was proffered. It looked really broken. "Um, sort of," she said, because really, it was Applesauce's thing. "That's okay. It shouldn't have been just lying around. Not your fault."

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Soooort of?" repeated Frank, eying the other person with a fairly comic "stank" eye, which she swiveled up and down, taking in the person. "Saaaay, I've never seen you around before," she turned then, turning to face the other girl head on. "And it's okay: I totally was, like, playing with it and it went all breaky and stuff which kinda happens when I play with stuff for some reason I think it might be because I'm not really gentle but it's kinda in a buncha pieces now is it supposed to be like that?" And yes, yes she really did say all that in one sentence without so much as a breath to separate it all out. She was smiling sheepishly too, first pointing at the thing then at the girl.

"'cuz, like, if it's not, supposed to be like this, that is, I can totally, like, pay to fix it or buy a new one or something. I'm responsible like that. Just ask anyone. Frank Responsibility Cox, that's what they call me. What do they call you, person I have totally never seen before?" and she tilted her head now, actually falling silent for a few moments, which, judging by the strain in her face and body, took quite a lot of effort.

[Steinbeck Dunn]

Becky could tell immediately that her 'sort of' had been misinterpreted as something bad. Like she was only pretending that it was hers or wanted to steal it or something. "Well, it belongs to my rat," she clarified, although she wasn't sure if that made her sound less crazy or more crazy. Not a lot of people had rats for pets, after all.

Her eyes widened as the girl seemed to talk at a million miles per hour, never pausing for breath or anything. It was really impressive, actually, but also kind of confusing. It took her a few moments of blinking to really comprehend the meaning behind the sounds coming out of her mouth. "Umm, no, it isn't. It's all supposed to be one piece," she lisped. "But that's okay. I should be able to put it back together. All the pieces are supposed to be able to come off. Well, most of the pieces. And hot glue will probably fix the rest." She didn't want the girl to buy her a new rat toy. She was sure that she probably hadn't meant to break it and with talking to her, she felt that asking her to buy a new one would be way more complicated than it should be. She struck her as someone who made things complicated.

"Um, I'm Becky Dunn," she told her with a small smile. She was actually pretty funny and she obviously had her heart in the right place. She could have just left the thing where she found it, broken into pieces, after all. "Sorry. I'm new. My rat got out of his cage and dragged that along with him. Kind of a weird explanation. Um. But maybe we can find some glue and try to fit it back together?"

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Aaaaah, that totally makes sense," said Frank, nodding. "I had a rat once. And a ferret. And I think I remember a mongoose. Noooo idea what happened to them though. That's weird," she paused for a moment, her head tilted, while she obviously tried to remember what happened to the stream of pets that had apparently been under her possession at one point. This did have the pleasant effect of rendering her silent for Becky to talk, which had to be a good thing, everything considered.

Soon Frank's eyes were widening and her lips were parting into an "O" of understanding. Her head nodded slowly, realizing that this whole thing did make some sense. An introduction came, and: "Ah, Becky, that's a cool name. I'm Frank," and with that, Frank grabbed Becky and pulled her in for a quick, intense hug, thus proving that she didn't believe in personal space. She probably would've licked the poor girl if she'd thought she'd get away with it.

"Wait, we need glue? Man, I knew I was forgetting something," said Frank, crossing her arms, which did mean that she let go of Becky to do it, which was progress, maybe? "And your rat really dragged this thing all the way out here? Man, is he some kinda super rat? He can't, like, fly around or use heat vision or something too, can he? Maybe he's the last from his planet of ratly survivors and he's come here to save us from ourselves!" Frank's eyes went wide and she nodded, clearly very caught up in the whole idea of the last rat son of Krypton or something.

[Steinbeck Dunn]

It was nice to hear that she wasn't the only one who liked to have a rat as a pet, but considering the long list of pets that Frank had apparently owned, she wasn't sure she should be too happy, for the rat's sake. Goodness gracious, that was a lot of animals to go through. She made the decision that if she brought Applesauce down for her to see, she'd definitely make sure to supervise. Not that she thought that the girl would do anything on purpose, but, well. She had broken the toy. And forgot about her past pets. Not a good track record.

Becky was expecting maybe a handshake when Frank reached her hand out. When instead she ended up being crushed in the girl's arms, she was pretty uncomfortable and a lot flustered. "Um, nice to meet you?" she managed after a moment, taking a deep, proper breath in once she was relinquished. it took her a few seconds to recover from the shock of oh-god-someone-I-don't-know-is-hugging-me before she could register what Frank was rambling on about. Rats from Krypton?

She laughed a little bit, because it really was a funny conjecture, and shook her head. "He's not a mutant rat, as far as I can tell. Although he'd definitely fit in around here if he was," she joked. It seemed like Frank's outgoing-ness was a little bit contagious and considering she'd just been attacked/hugged by the girl, she felt a little more confident that anything she said wouldn't be taken too seriously. "He always does this. Whenever he gets out, he just drags all his favorite things around. His weird idea of decorating, I guess." She paused and looked over one of the pieces of the toy. "Yeah, this is definitely gonna need some glue. Do you know where we might find some?"

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Nice to meet me too!" agreed Frank, nodding enthusiastically. She's soon moved to looking at the various contraption, half distracted by that and half distracted by what Becky kept saying. Mutant rats would be cool, but apparently Becky's rat was, contrary to all appearances, more or less normal. Well, that was something of a bummer, but "Well, he must be a pretty cool rat if he drags stuff around like that. I mean, mutant rats would be cool, Animagi would be cooler but---wait, glue!"

Frank snapped her finger and nodded. "Glue, glue, right, totally knew I was forgetting something. I was trying to lick it together. Which, like, might have worked if my spit was sticky or something. But it wasn't. But yeah, I know where there's some glue. I've got loads back in my room... somewhere," she turned, looking toward the dorms, her eyes narrowing. "Are we gonna need glitter, stick, super, craft, modeling, wood, scented, or edible. Just kidding," she waved a hand, "I totally don't have wood glue. I mean, who would have that? Seriously."

She shook her head, obviously lamenting the poor choices that some of their other students no doubt did.

[Steinbeck Dunn]

Becky couldn't help but smile. Frank's enthusiasm was kind of catchy. It would be funny if this whole time people thought she was the one with the power, only to realize that it was Applesauce controlling the gravity all along. And that really, he was here to be trained instead of her. She would be downgraded to just the mutant rat handler. That would probably be fine with her. It would make an interesting plot for a book, actually. She shook her head to clear her thoughts when Frank replied to her question about glue.

She was trying to lick it together? Becky suddenly had second thoughts about holding the object and wiped her hands on her jeans, setting it down. Okay. She was gonna rinse the parts off before they tried to reassemble it. She wiped her hands on her jeans for quite a few more minutes before deciding that whatever damage had been done had been done. She shook her head incredulously at the ridiculous girl and said, "Um, super or modeling would be fine," she said, unsure if she was joking or being completely serious. Did she really have all those glues hiding up in her dorm room?

Honestly, Becky wouldn't put it past her. Frank seemed nice, but she also seemed a little crazy. She felt like Frank was an experience happening to her rather than a person she was meeting.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Alrighty then!" chirped Frank as Becky picked the right few glues. She stood up, accidentally bumping the table for a little. That required her to pause for a moment to steady it, which meant that she had a few seconds to look over at Becky. A large, friendly grin spread on Frank's face, and she nodded to her new friend.

"You should totally come along! You can see what my room looks like and all the stuff I've got there," she leaned forward a little, whispering: "I've got caaaaandy," she then leaned back, giggling, "and MREs, but nobody actually wants to eat those. That is, unless they're military, or there's something wrong with them. Whyyyyy are you still sitting down? C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!"

Frank began tugging at Becky's arm then, and it seemed quite likely that she would literally drag the other girl out of the seat if she had to. "You gotta see my room. Oh! Should we bring the thing, or your rat's thing, and fix it there? Then people won't be staring at us," she nodded and leaned forward, moving to try and scoop up the thing parts.

[Steinbeck Dunn]

Becky jumped a little when the table started to wobble, but returned Frank's smile awkwardly, eyes at her shoes. She definitely seemed clumsy. No wonder she'd accidentally broken Applesauce's toy. It was a wonder that she hadn't broken anything else around here. Although maybe she had, and that was why she kept such a large collection of glues. That was some pretty good planning ahead on Frank's part.

She was a little worried about going with Frank to her room because honestly, considering what she knew of her so far, her room was probably a disaster area and she might never be able to leave. But the tugging at her arm and the whining was really, really persuasive and she found herself standing up. "Okay, okay," she said laughing a bit nervously. "As long as you have candy, I guess it's okay if I come along." She really couldn't care less about the candy up there, but if it would appease Frank, she was down. "Um, let's just fix it up there. That way we don't have to lug the glue down here. If you don't mind carrying the pieces until we can like, rinse them off?" she asked, even thought it was kind of silly and maybe a little bit rude. After all, her rat chewed on the thing all the time. It was covered in rat spit. But somehow, human spit was grosser. Like, you'd let a dog lick your face, but not a human, right? "Sorry. I'll pass on the MREs."

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"Awessssssome!" crowed Frank. She'd already started gathering up the pieces, and she only paused a moment when Becky suggested that she, well, carrying the various pieces. Frank giggled at the reason, bobbing her head, "Yeah, I can totally understand that. you're not the first person who's been all like 'Frank, don't lick that' or thinking that it's kinda disgusting or something. I'd like to blame it on my power or something, like, since I can eat anything and all, but, like, I'm pretty sure that if I had, like, a totally different power, I'd still do stuff like this."

She was bobbing her head and had somehow managed to get all of the pieces in her arms. Thus situated, she began walking toward the dorms. At first Frank practiced her silly walk, since, well, when else were you going to get to use it. Her head swiveled back toward Becky though, and clearly Frank had no intention of slowing her conversational flow one bit.

"I don't blame you about the MREs either. the school got me a whole bunch of them when I came back from being kidnapped. My kidnappers didn't exactly feed me too good, so I had, like, partially starved and all, because I have to eat, like, loads and loads of calories and junk. So they gave me the MREs to help fatten me up! Don't worry though," she turned again, her head bobbing. "There's a lot more candy then anything else. I special-order some of it from around the world. Like this British chocolate that I get imported that is just ah-maze-ing. Though my roomie and biffle (BFFL; Frank says it like that), Ellen likes that. Aaand there we are.!"

For they'd stopped outside a room. Frank gestured with her head for Becky to open it, still grinning all the while.

[Steinbeck Dunn]

Becky was glad that Frank wasn't offended or anything. Despite being a little (or maybe a lot) odd and really rambunctious, she seemed to have her heart in the right place and understood that her quirks were quirks. It was a pretty quirky power too, but Becky thought that the alternative power she was talking about was actually pretty interesting. "It'd be pretty useful to have sticky spit," she said ponderously. "So that you could glue anything together any time. But I bet it would make eating difficult." After all, spit that viscous would be hard to deal with.

Her eyes widened when Frank started walking away from her. And not normally walk away from her or anything. She wasn't even going to comment on how she was walking. It was just weird and not natural and had her staring in the way you stare at a train wreck. Like it's weird and awful but you can't look away. She was surprised that Frank was able to maintain the focus to walk like that without falling over and have a conversation with her, but it seemed the wonders of the girl never ended.

Her eyebrows knitted together at the mention of her getting kidnapped -- she hadn't meant to bring up anything potentially traumatizing, but Frank didn't actually seem very upset as she was talking, so she guessed it was okay -- and imagined that it would be even worse for Frank, considering her power. "Really? Wow. Imported candy. Sounds pretty fancy," she lisped. She'd never had specially-imported British chocolate before. Her candy was usually just cheap after-Halloween-special candy. She gave Frank another awkward smile before moving to open the door for her, considering that she was laden down by rat toy pieces. She was actually kind of glad that Frank was a talker. It meant she could do more listening, which she vastly preferred.

She held the door open for Frank, letting her step inside before she did. She didn't want to invade the other girl's space, after all, but she was very curious to see the inside of her room. And her mad collection of glues and candy and MREs.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"It would! Sometimes I wish I had a totally useful power like that, though I guess my power is kinda awesome too. I mean, haven't you ever wished you could totally eat whatever you wanted? Though I gotta admit, I do wish that stuff didn't taste pretty much exactly like you'd think it'd taste. Drywall is just awful," Frank scrunched up her nose and stuck out her tongue before shaking her head. She wasn't kidding: she'd scarfed drywall before, quite a few times, in fact. Had been the first thing she'd eaten when she'd discovered her power, thus giving her one of the more interesting "this is how I got my powers" stories, if nothing else.

If Frank noticed that Becky reacted the same way most people did at the mention of Frank's kidnapping (i.e. with something akin to pity or a "did that really" happen sort of thing), she didn't show it. Didn't slow, and most certainly would rather focus on the imported candy. The mere mention of it had Frank's head bobbing like, well, a bobble head, only one with perhaps slightly more control (only slightly though, because "control" and "Frank Cox" didn't, as a rule, go together very well).

The door opened, and Frank wiggled inside her room. Seriously, there was a wiggle in her walk and a giggle in her talk and she was totally in the room. Now, actually, the common area looked almost normal. Frank did share with Ellen Banks, who was one of the queen bees of the school (or the queen bee, depending on who you asked), though Ellen was almost in a hurry to begin the whole dorm moving process that was soon in coming. Frank pointed toward a room that couldn't have been anyone else's, mostly on account of the rather large sign done in glitter proclaiming it to be Frank's. not to mention the various baubles hanging off it, a whiteboard that had obviously been drawn on recently, and more glitter than should be anywhere near a door.

"That one's mine!" she chirped. She moved to set down the rat toy before darting forward, flinging open the door into Frank Cox's private chambers.

it looked like you'd figure. Packages of food lay about, mostly eaten, but some obviously having been half consumed before Frank got bored and moved on. "Half-eaten" didn't actually mean that only the contents of the package were consumed. Several had obviously been literally ripped in half and eaten, with bite marks showing on some of the sturdier packages. The controllers to at least two video game systems could be seen here and there, as well as a few half-finished projects and various bits and baubles. Strangely, all the clothes appeared to actually be in her closet or a dresser, though both looked about ready to explode. The bed had obviously experienced a fair amount of eating, but looked like someone had literally climbed around in it and vacuumed up the crumbs, even taking a few nibbles out of the sheets.

And a brilliant rainbow of the brightest colors ever shown from every corner.

"There should be glue in the craft area,' said Frank, pointing to the school-provided desk that most probably used for actual schoolwork. Frank's was bright pink with some glitter here and there.

[Steinbeck Dunn]

Becky couldn't say that she had ever had the desire to eat whatever she wanted. Regular old food items were enough to keep her happy. But she nodded her head anyway, because Frank seemed really excited about it. "Drywall?" she said, a little alarmed. Frank really could eat anything. Even though it was against her better judgment, she was curious as to why that had even come up. "Um, what compelled you to eat drywall?" she asked, hoping that that wasn't an invasive question or something. Maybe along with her power came really weird non-food cravings and she just ate everything whenever she felt like it.

Trailing behind her into her room only confirmed this thought, apparently. It was a pretty nice common area and Becky wondered who exactly lived with Frank and if they enjoyed their roommate. Frank was nice, but she imagined that she would get a little exhausted if she was around her a lot of the time. She was glad she got a pretty quiet and reserved roommate or she might have gone insane by now. She could immediately tell which one was Frank's room just by the look of it. It looked like a five-year-old's room. A really hyper five-year old.

She stepped in and was immediately taken aback by the sheer amount of stuff in contained. She had to take a moment of silence just to take it all in. Everything looked like it had been nibbled on. Wrappers and the bed sheets. There were video games and knickknacks everywhere. She was surprised that the clothes were chewed on and spread around the floor as well. The brightness of the walls made her squint her eyes and she felt that the only appropriate response was, "Wow."

Becky came over and looked over at the craft desk. "Do you do crafts often?" she asked, even though it was pretty dang obvious that she did. She wondered if all of this was school work or if it was some personal projects as well. She found a lot of tubes of glue on the desk, but she didn't quite know which ones she was allowed to touch. "Your room is really neat," she said instead.

[Frank "Sunny" Laffont]

"yeeeup," said Frank, nodding. "Was trying to make a joke; y'know: I'm so hungry I could eat drywall and all. My power kicked in at just that moment, which meant that I actually took a biiiiig bite right outta the wall. Which suuuucked, because, like, drywall tastes exactly what you'd think it tastes like," Frank wrinkled her nose at that. Yeah, she'd had about a week or two where she went around experimenting, seeing what all she could actually eat and all. Frank only needed to eat a few things once before deciding that she never, ever wanted to eat them again. Unless she was starving. Even then, there were probably better options.

There were tons of options in her room though. Frank had already started moving around in her craft area though, which was probably one of the few areas without much in the way of something to eat within arm's reach. That might explain why she whirled, lunging behind her to grab a container off her bed, which appeared to have some kind of cookies in them or something. she fisted one before nudging the container near Becky.

"Allll the time!" chirped Frank through a mouthful of cookies, without losing the slightest bit of intonation or pronunciation, yet another her special little gifts. She began digging about in the supplies, still chewing on what most people would consider too much of a mouthful of cookie. "And thanks!" she chirped, before having sorted out a few bottles of glue, arranging them. "About the room being neat thing. Most people call it bright, or in a few cases 'an assault on the eyes,' and at least one person has compared me to, like a five year old. Which is just hurtful, ya know?" Frank flashed a frown at Becky before reaching down and pulling out another tube of glue. She arranged them all, nodding, pleased that she really did have as many types as she'd thought. Always nice to know you were correct about something.