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Post by ADAM EVAN RIZZO on Nov 7, 2012 16:47:10 GMT -5
COSTUME
Bartholomew was such an incredibly random name to point out, but Adam never really thought about a name like that. It did sound a bit old and no one he knew had it so maybe that was why. He could add it to Gladice and Betty. He nodded and agreed with her after deciding that it was not exactly a name he would choose for his kid, should he have one in the future. Hey, he was only fourteen. Thinking that far ahead was difficult. I just want to survive the rest of this year. One step at a time, one grade at a time. He flashed her a smile when she agreed not to explain the nickname to anyone, figuring she probably wouldn't but needing to ensure that he warned her. "Exactly. I knew I liked you for a reason," Adam bumped her lightly. There was a surge of relief that did not surface in his smile but he felt the brief knot of apprehension unfurl and drift away.
The smile quickly faded. "Yeah yeah, don't remind me." He waved her off without even trying to smile again. Waters had the upper hand and Adam knew that. They could douse his flames and leave him floundering around in a puddle if they so desired. It was infuriating but he understood that everyone had their weaknesses. The Earths were going to be susceptible to his element once he could manage it, and the Thunders had the upper hand over Water. Mona could prove useful there, he supposed, but going against Annabel was out of the question. Adam did not break the rules and then go against himself when it pertained to a best friend. "Eleventh grade? Is that when we really get to work with our powers?" He asked, ignoring her challenge for a brief moment to satiate his curiosity. "I don't want to wait that long. Ugh. But I guess if you've got the upper hand it only makes sense for me to have help. I'll see if Mona wants to jump in." He was not sure if the two knew one another--it was possible considering the mutual friendship with Adam--but then again maybe not. It did suck that one of his closest friends was on the opposite alliance; hanging out with her had to remain minimal for their safety. At Annabel's mentioning of owning dogs, he did not look nervous about the fact but he certainly felt it. "What kind of dogs?" Small ones were not frightening--in fact, they reminded him of oversize rodents with too much hair--but those that had the potential to knock him down and tear at his face were scary. His past dog attack was enough to keep him in that mindset.
Annabel did not seem the least bit phased by his scare threats but would that deter him? Oh, no. He wanted to gain at least a small ounce of satisfaction from one good scare, even if it was just one. "You're going to be scared shitless. And if not, then you'll be annoyed as hell and that will be just as rewarding." He strutted with the confidence of someone who knew that they had the upper hand. Would it annoy her? Adam did not really know but he figured if it went on long enough it might.
Adam was not easily frightened. In fact, he reveled in haunted houses and scary movies about the paranormal and the psychological fuckery that was Saw. But this was different. This was something he had always been afraid of and to an extent was unexplainable. An irrational fear of sorts, one he never discussed with other people. It made him angry to think that he could not fully control his response to seeing the clown. "You could say that," Adam said, voice steady but eyes looking past his friend in attempt to move onward. Ghosts were not scary, however. Not to him. But this...he nodded to her question in agreement. Scarier, in my opinion, He wanted to say but refrained. Instead he sighed quietly as they finally walked away from the clown and he could try and shove the image out of his mind. Annabel using his nickname did sound nice though and Adam focused on that to settle his nerves. No one else could call him that, he decided. Every friendship he created needed to have a special sort of connection and for him this was one of the ones with Annabel. "Yeah, I hope so because I feel like I'm slowly descending into madness being in here." The slow but steady return of comfort was soon dashed to the rocks when she brought the clown subject up again; his brows furrowed but instead of anger there was...something else. It was almost unreadable. "It...was nothing. Okay? Just...just nothing." He muttered, glancing away from her. He contemplated telling her but every time Adam felt the urge to open up something pulled on the reins. Fear of exposure, weakness, being taunted. Annabel did that to him a lot anyway in fun and normally he did not care but this was a different matter entirely.
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Post by ANNABEL LYNNE DALE on Nov 7, 2012 23:42:04 GMT -5
She looked as smug as she felt, though she did not continue to verbally taunt her friend. It felt nice to have the upper-hand, not like she would have felt if Adam were a Thunder element. He seemed pretty bummed out by the idea of having the wait until eleventh grade for the good stuff and Annabel could agree with him there. She wanted to be able to work wonders with her element now. There had been a couple of graduates playing around with ice manipulation in the courtyard when she was headed to class one day and it had been hard to suppress her envy. Her brother's assurance that she'd be able to learn it for herself one day did not help. 'One day' wasn't now. She'd never been one for patience. "Ugh, right? It sucks." She huffed out a breath in irritation. "I just want to graduate now, know what I mean?" Then she could chuck shards of ice at people for shits and giggles and Adam could, in all likelihood, melt those chunks just as easily.
Her reaction to the mention of Mona probably wasn't what Adam was expecting. She stiffened and her usually cheerful expression slipped into a scowl that closely resembled the usual demeanour of her father and brothers. She folded her arms and looked away, not wanting to cause strife, but it was a tad too late to hide her knee-jerk response. "I'd prefer you didn't." Not her, anyway. She knew Mona, she didn't want the girl anywhere near her. "Besides, it's dangerous to have anyone else around." Their friendship was forbidden by the standards of the Academy and its alliances. She didn't want Mona anywhere near she and Adam. She remembered their fight on the cliff and didn't want a repeat of the experience. She offered no such explanation to her friend, not wanting to admit that she'd sort of gotten her ass kicked by a girl who was one of his other friends. Annabel tried not to think about the fact that Adam was buddy-buddy with a lot of her enemies, much as she was sure her friend didn't like to think about her circle among the Earths and Waters.
Adam asked about their dogs and she was completely clueless to his phobia as she chirped, "Big dogs. We've got a German shepherd and a husky." She'd definitely see them coming if they decided they wanted to approach, at least. She liked small dogs and all but she definitely preferred the larger breeds. She'd missed Quartz a lot when he'd went to live with her parents so she was glad when Josh and Nell had gotten dogs of their own. "Their names are Nietzsche and Balto. Don't ask about the first one." It was a weird name and she still couldn't spell it. Apparently he was some guy important to philosophy. Or was it psychology? She wasn't sure.
She settled for rolling her eyes and ignoring him, figuring that if she couldn't come up with something to throw back at him that the silent treatment was her best bet. She resumed conversation shortly afterwards but didn't mention the subject of Adam trying to scare the crap out of her. He ended up being the one spooked and she didn't know how she was meant to handle the situation. He was the one who usually bragged about how brave he was and he'd pretty much proved that up until now. She still hadn't connected that it had anything to do with the freaky clown costume. He mentioned a descent into madness and she figured he was kidding, chuckling. "Next thing you know the vines'll be pulling you in like the maze in Harry Potter." She stepped away from either side of the bushes and tried to stay more in the center of the path, wondering if Nell would actually do that. She'd witnessed the maze shifting around a couple of times and she wondered what her sister-in-law was doing. Adam didn't bite her head off at the question but he also did not give her an answer. She was quiet for a long moment, debating. Uh. Deciding to drop it, Annabel nodded. "Okay." She was quiet for a while, a contemplative and unusual silence as they tried to find their way out. "Geez, this place is so huge that we rarely run into anyone else." The fact that the hosts allowed large gaps between the groups helped to eliminate the problem of crowding.
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Post by ADAM EVAN RIZZO on Nov 11, 2012 21:24:34 GMT -5
COSTUME
Growing up seemed so far away, and Adam--being the (im)patient saint that he was--did not like the fact that it would take him several years to even reach a point where he had any sort of strength behind his element. Even then it would take past high school to reach the level of power he wanted. Creating heat sounded like an epic addition to his skill set as a Fire and that excited him. Too bad it would take quite a few more years to reach that point. He blew up towards his forehead, rolling his eyes upward as though watching the air pass by his nose and up above him. "Yeah I wish graduation would hurry up and get here," Adam agreed, sounding disgruntled but not exactly angry. Anxious as he was to obtain his full potential, it did excite him to know that he could watch himself become stronger and stronger with every passing year. "And then maybe we can have a real sparring match together and we'll see who wins." At least in that scenario, if the were injured, it was not out of anger or hatred but simply because of strengths and weaknesses. It could be fun at any rate.
Annabel's reaction was actually unexpected and Adam blinked, not quite sure what to do about it. He understood that opposing alliances did not normally like one another or get along (there were definitely a few exceptions, he and Annabel included) but to have her throw her arms one over the other and wear a scowl that even he could be proud of? He was baffled. "Yeah, yeah. Forgot about that." He shrugged off his friends' initial comment and instead agreed that they should avoid allowing either side of the alliances see them around one another outside of random run-in's in the hallway at school. He did not necessarily forget that Mona was Annabel's enemy, but he did forget that this friendship was a secret. As much of a nuisance as it could be, Adam knew that it needed to be this way. If the girl was not one of his closest friends and one of the few he trusted, he might have let the friendship slip away simply for their safety. Their safety, because he cared about her and did not want anything bad to happen. He wanted to ask Annabel if she knew Mona--based on the reactions it seemed possible--but decided against it.
Adam shuddered inwardly, rolling his shoulders and tilting his head to try and make it look like he was considering the breeds more than the fact that they had large teeth and could tear his face to shreds. "Ah, sweet. Are they guard dogs or something?" From the cop chases he saw on TV, German Shepherds made for good attack and drug dogs. As scary as that was he knew the benefit they had to the police force. If any felon was as scared of big dogs as he was, they could easily catch them without much effort. He put his hands up. "Not asking." The word did not seem hard to pronounce but avoided repeating it just in case. He silently wondered where it came from. Eh, maybe I'll ask later. It seemed like such a random name to give a dog or any pet, really. He liked simple names that were easy to remember, but to each their own. Then again, Adam never owned a pet outside of a goldfish and at the time he thought the name 'Goldy' was an absolute stroke of genius.
Being trapped in a mess of vines actually sounded nerve-wracking but for the sake of retaining his Krueger-tough persona he laughed with her. "Let's try and avoid that, yeah?" Unaware that Nell had the capability to do such a thing, it could be unavoidable if the Earth girl had the urge to tie him up and leave him to try and escape on his own. He knew that Earths had the power to manipulate, well, earth, but being as he was not one and the only one he was remotely familiar with was Nell his knowledge was little. Adam felt relief when Annabel did not press into the clown issue further; there were times when he did not know how he would respond but with this he knew that prying would only piss him off. Being lost in the maze was maddening and infuriating as it was. There was no need to add that into the mix. The silence and lack of interrogation soothed him at least and being away from the clown helped. What sick fuck thought that that was a good costume to wear anyway? Obviously someone who knew it could be scary. He replied to himself. He glanced at Annabel. "Better than being crammed up against a bunch of other people," Adam pointed out. "But it would be nice to get out of--" As he turned another corner, he saw what looked like an opening in the maze that looked out past the walls of bushes. A brief smile graced his lips as he pointed. "Exit? God I fucking hope so."
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Post by ANNABEL LYNNE DALE on Nov 13, 2012 10:14:02 GMT -5
It always seemed to be about getting older. Annabel didn't understand how some people could say that they wished for the return of their childhoods. Why would she want to be a kid again? Everything that she considered to be "cool" could only happen once she'd up and graduated. She'd be an adult. She could leave the house without asking her brother if it was okay, she could drive, she could use her damn powers! The day of twelfth grade graduation couldn't come soon enough. "I look forward to it," she said, still confident and still smirking. Her brother had told her of the importance of elemental alignments as well as their strengths and weaknesses before she'd even went to the Academy. He'd also told her that she'd be in major trouble if she ever got into her head that she could best him in a fight, which had made Belle laugh. Adam didn't comment on how she'd gotten weird about Mona and she didn't push him about it, merely nodded and left the subject there. She didn't want to be in the same room with the Thunder girl no matter what the alliances said. She'd heard the alliances had changed a few times in the past and she didn't like the idea of trying to get along with those assholes in Thunder. I don't care if those are his friends, I don't like them. She respected her friend enough not to talk about it, though. Not everyone in the world was going to get along and neither of them could change that.
She shook her head. "Not specifically. They might attack someone if they broke in, though." She actually wasn't sure if her brother and his wife had trained the dogs to be aggressive toward strangers. She couldn't see Nell doing something like that but she wouldn't put it past Josh. "They're pretty intimidating just standing still though so we might be able to ward people off that way." She considered calling them to her side so that Adam could meet them and see for himself but thankfully for her friend she decided against it. She didn't want a dog tagging after her through the party because it might make navigation harder. They were probably having fun with whatever they were doing anyway. Guard dogs or not, they'd do better at protecting the house than any of the other pets they had. Birds, fish, cats, a fox and a pig. They even had a turtle. None were particularly known for defending their owners in a pinch. She chuckled when he said that he wasn't going to ask. "He's a psychologist. No... philosopher? The second, I think..." She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "I dunno, you'd need to not-ask Josh or Nell. They named him." She hadn't named any of their pets. It didn't make her too bitter, though, since the animals belonged to Nell and her brother and not Annabel herself.
They didn't seem to be walking straight into a vine trap, which to be honest was a good thing in Annabel's opinion. She didn't mind Earth elementals but the idea of being kidnapped by a bush wasn't a very appealing one. It was less scary than whatever Adam seemed to be worried about, though, and it began to sink in that they'd seen the guy in the clown costume around the time that her friend had started acting weird. She didn't press him for details even when suspicions developed, trying to be respectful of his decision not to talk about it. No one should be made to talk about their fears if they didn't want to. "Oh, I wasn't complaining," she assured him. She liked people and she wasn't too averse to crowds as long as she could still move around but having complete freedom of movement was definitely better. "Besides, this place would be a lot less spooky if we weren't alone." It would take away from the experience if they were surrounded by other groups. "What?" she asked impatiently when he stopped, then realised that he was pointing. Her eyes lit up. "Fuck yes!" she said loudly, heading toward it. When they were about five feet away, though, it burst into flames and she shrieked and stumbled back a step or two. Blinking, she recovered before scowling and looking unamused. "Fuck you, too, Josh." Once outside of the maze, she grinned wide and glanced at her friend. "We win. Now let's go get some candy or something..."
[The end?]
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