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[code]Mason Square - Lawson Residence[/code][hr]

[i]He’s...an awakened.

Nah, fuck that, man, he’s gonna sleep in today.[/i]

Billy groaned softly as he felt bittersweet consciousness come back to him. He looked at his phone, saw the time, and dropped it back on his bed before rolling over. So he had slept through his alarms, so what? It was just an art class, and spending an hour trying to not look at the junk of the male model they had gone with was not how Billy wanted to spend his Saturday. Sleeping was how Billy wanted to spend his Saturday, sleeping like how his arm was asleep from how he had weirdly spent the night on it, turning the limb into a mess of pins and needles that was now the only thing he could focus on and, great, he was awake, weekend ruined, thanks stupid, asshole arm. Billy flopped over onto his back and let out a loud groan like a bear coming out of hibernation. Okay, he was up.

But he wasn’t getting out of bed.

He lied there and let his mind drift back to the dream he had, and after careful consideration determined that whatever it was he had dreamt up had been some fucked up shit. It almost felt as if he was really there, just floating along with those kids before Ranger Rick revealed himself to be a total dick. Then again, ever since he had watched Scoot Reese reveal to the entire class that he was a closeted ICP fan by going through such great lengths to show off his hatchet to everyone a lot of Billy’s dreams were full of fucked up shit. Visions of viscus and vicious monsters coming to consume the town, the wholesale slaughter of his friends and family right before his eyes, Henry coming back from the dead to confront Billy and his sister for being such failures, and one particularly horrifying one where Billy showed up to school naked. All of it was bizarre; especially because he hardly remembered dreams until a month ago.

Then there was the spiral on his shoulder. That was a mystery. He had tried showing it off to Layne to see if his friend knew anything about it, to which the idiot acted as if Billy was so high that he was seeing shit. Which wasn’t the case, well, okay, Billy was high, but in the morning it was still there and he wasn’t high then, maybe. Well, he did partake in a wake and bake that morning which reminded him that he still needed to do that this particular morning. Reaching into his nightstand drawer, Billy rummaged around for his breakfast to inhale. He took a quick one-off and sunk back into his bed. Maybe he could lull himself back to sleep, get this Saturday really going.

Have another dream, perhaps.

Relax, perhaps.

Do not think about the park ranger shredding into that little kid[i] aaannnd [/i]there it was, so much for relaxation. Sitting up, Billy eventually made his way to the bathroom and went about his morning routine before heading back to his room, hair still dripping wet as he searched for his glasses. He stepped into a pair of yesterday’s jeans and grabbed a tee from the “clean” pile. He grabbed his phone and went out the front door, shouting a goodbye to his folks as he ducked past them eating their breakfast. He jumped in his car and turned the key, the backfiring of the engine sounding like the blast of a rifle before it sputtered to life. As he turned down the long, pebble driveway and the ranch-style house shrunk away Billy cranked the tunes, a second-hand subwoofer kicking with the bass hit of every beat and rattling the failing infrastructure of his vehicle. Billy rolled down the window and let the air dry his hair. He had a few clients to meet at school, but not before he slammed a huge breakfast. 

Before it even really started, he decided that the day was going to be a good day.

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[sub][@Surtr Inc][/sub]
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[code]Grand Ridge - Outside Main Building.[/code][hr]

Today was a bad day.

Rita took a step back as Claire prodded her chest. Confrontation had been a mistake, and Rita did not know how to handle that confession. She felt her throat tighten as Claire mentioned the physical abuse, but there was a callousness inside of her that still felt that it did not justify her behavior. Rita’s relationship with her parents was never physically abusive, but there was a lingering presence of toxicity in regards to her mother that left her never feeling wanted. Yet even that did not mean that she had the right to be a bully and a bitch—which, she realized, was what she was being to Claire right now. 

She couldn’t figure out how that made her feel. 

Rita stumbled back a few more steps before catching her balance after Claire had shoved her. Perhaps the other girl had not noticed, but she had been dangerously close to falling down the stairs. Rita’s nostrils flared. [i]So much for not wanting to hit me.[/i] Rita let her head hang, catching Claire’s own panicked reaction out of her peripheries; perhaps the girl had noticed how close she had been to sending Rita careening down the stairs before cracking her skull open upon the concrete. It’d be best for both of them for her to try and de-escalate things before one of them said, or did, something that would have permanent repercussions. 

“I’m sorry,” began Rita slowly, as if her words were trying to cross a minefield, “but I don’t care …”

[i]...about you or your fucking shitty parents,[/i] she thought, before swallowing the words and wincing like she had just drank a spoonful of expired cold medicine.

“...er, what I meant was, I didn’t mean to drag up something so, uh, uh, painful. That sucks. That really sucks,” she managed to say, her words sounding as if she had just sight read them off of a teleprompter. They were hollow. Empty. Forced. Her eyes stayed lowered, and her lips were pulled thin as she grimaced. Unless Claire was an idiot, she’d be able to tell that Rita was being anything but sincere. She tugged on one of her bangs. “Um, oh, is that the fire alarm?”

She turned, ready to bolt down the stairs like a frightened rabbit. If she was quick enough she could get lost in the crowd of students heading to the emergency meeting spot before Claire called her out on her half-hearted apology. 

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[@Surtr Inc][@Prosaic][/center][code]Grand Ridge - Main Building, Hallway.[/code][hr]

Penny smiled at the sound of her name being echoed by her two friends and she gradually slowed her pace to a stop, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she turned to greet them. As she saw Lynette and Aliana approach her from the direction of the bathroom her smile dipped and became slack jawed, a single eyebrow raising up on her forehead. She hadn’t seen them in the bathroom, but their hair and clothes looked damp. It was curious. Very curious. She didn’t know exactly why Aliana was calling her a life saver, but she felt the conclusion she drew wasn’t very far from the truth. The look of surprise shifted into smugness as the girls caught up with her, and she removed one hand from the pockets of her jacket, which was unzipped enough to reveal the sigil on her chest, to place it on her hip.

“Wow. Y’all look like absolute shit,” she said, turning her head to laugh. She didn’t look too good herself; there was a slightly off, almost feverish pallor pushing its way through the light fake-n-bake orange of her skin, and when she talked her lips peeled back to reveal the slight stain of red from when she had thrown up blood. She practically shoved herself between the two women and placed an arm around each of their shoulders with a playful clap as she began to guide them towards the entrance. “Let’s get the hell outta here before Professor Dickhead comes back with the entire SWAT team. All this talk about the school burning down totally shook me up really good. And I mean, who knows, maybe there’s like gonna be a ton of smoke that’ll enter our lungs and poison us if we linger around. Besides, I’m dying for a cigarette”

“So,” she said as they walked together, “did the two of you get wet by trying to hide in the toilet, or was it when you didn’t take cover after blowing up the toilet with a firework? Look, I’m not jealous or anything, but the next time you skanks decide to blow up something will one of you [i]please[/i] give me a call. I always wanted to know what it would’ve been like to be a twelve year old boy stuck in the body of a technically adult woman.” She furrowed her brow at that last statement and quickly shook her head. “Actually, ew, God no, I don’t want to visualize that, gross.”

“But, seriously,” she whispered, “what did I miss?”