He stares at the pristine screen, counting its blinks.

One. Two. Three. Four.

“And there was a blast of electricity,” The words then said. “And a deafening sound that could only be obtained by silence…and…and…”

Black letters were inked into white -- and then nothing.

One. Two. Three. Four.

“The city suffered a major power outage due to an abrupt explosion in the local power generator. It was…it sounds…I sound like a goddamn physics bore.”

The pathetic, little man in the corner of diner slumps over, dark brows knitted in frustration and tall, edgy form emanating its usual tangible exhaustion.

Based on the faded jeans and the gray ratty, t-shirt, you might say he's fairly young -- maybe approaching his mid-20s or so. But study the slouched back and scowling face, and note the shades of stubble stretching across a pallid square chin. Top that off with dark circles smudging the sallow skin beneath his hazel eyes and that should be more than enough for you to add a few more years -- perhaps even decades -- to that approximation.

But then again, Danny always was the type to assert natural beauty.

His long fingers remain motionless on the black, apple laptop, twitching every so often as if they were brushed by a flighty, fickle muse of some sort.

A muffled groan. A shaking sigh. And he resumes his scattered thoughts, staring at the pristine screen and counting its blinks.

One. Two. Three. Four…

ooc| Open to all.

There was no telling how long she'd been sitting there and watching him. Her elbows rested on the back of the booth in which he sat and she peered over his shoulder at the screen. She's curious and she considers herself almost impervious to anything any ordinary human could do. She also has no concept of manners.

Her hair was a brilliant blue, the shiny iridescence of one of those South American butterflies, and worn in high pigtails, wrapped in darker blue ribbon. Her eyes are blue today, and the pupils are normal.

She's wearing blue eyeshadow and has variously shaped bejewelled blue piercings in various places on her face. (And other places too, but the only one visible is her belly button.)

Her clothing departs from the blue theme and is mostly black, though with a blue shimmery print of a faery on the front of the tight black shirt.

She has yet to say anything, finding it more entertaining to watch the human than to interrupt him and ask questions.

Morlos was hungry. But that might've been obvious, considering the fact that he was in a diner. Sure, he could've easily eaten a bird or a... human, but that thought made him really sick. He was going to eat, and he was going to do it the normal, human way.

He seemed to slink into a booth with a wallet that he'd managed to filch, stuffed into his oversized jeans, and his slightly tight shirt, that he'd stolen as well. Morlos didn't really believe in paying for clothes anymore, though he felt bad for stealing.

He watched the people with his piercing blue eyes, looking about... trying not to look suspicious, not that he was, anyway.

He pushed his dark hair out of his eyes, and looked down at the floor with a muffled sigh.

(Bah, so short and craptastic. Sorries. <.<)

Of course he'd notice Morlos (it's good to keep tabs on everyone around, after all), but he doesn't bother glancing up (best not to attract any attention).

He rests his chin on the palm of his propped up hand, the other hand absently groping for the plastic, *half-empty coffee mug beside his laptop. He vaguely wonders if congealed coffee develops into poison.

He decides to be reckless this afternoon.

Danny ventures a careful sip, leaning back to rest his slouched back against the cushioned seat and grimacing slightly at the lukewarm drink. And something sparkly and blue slides into the edge of his peripheral vision. He wonders if that's a new omen.


...


Back-track.

"OHMIGOD," He sputters, knees jerking up in an instinctive, protective curl and body pressing into the opposite side of his seat as far away from the Blue Thing as possible.


*or half-full, if that floats your boat. We'll consider this as a character note of Danny.

Meg grinned. What an odd reaction from the preoccupied human. She hasn't seen anything this entertaining in a while. (Read: the last couple days. Meg has a short attention span and an even shorter memory.)

"Something the matter?" she asked, twirling a lock of silvery blue hair around her index finger. (Wasn't it a bit darker a second ago?)

Then her attention was distracted.

Oou, werewolfie. She might have to run away from him if he got too excitable. But at the moment, all he was doing was sitting there. No worries. (Though he could probably smell that she wasn't human.)

"Yes," He snaps, glaring at her with all the potency of a good, venomous glare. Of course, this coming from Danny would be something equivalent to the glare of a white, wriggly rabbit. A very scruffy, bedraggled rabbit with red-veined, sleepless eyes and a perpectual frown, probably. But all in all -- hardly threatening.

Basic message? Go away.

Most people get the hint and trundle off, muttering bad things about Danny. But Danny doesn't know that he's not dealing with a human, does he?

"What?"

Unlike certain innocents I could name, Meg is perfectly aware of the fact that she is bothering the human. She doesn't know why she is, yet, but she certainly enjoys the affect. It's amusing.

Yes, she's shallow and self-centered. What do you expect from her kind? At least she isn't malicious.

Sadly, Danny doesn't know the difference between malice and quirk.

Briefly -- almost fleetingly -- he catches a vision of the Blue Thing flicking out a swiss army knife. Something to amuse his paranoid self, no doubt.

Slow movements then.

He redoubles his efforts on The Glare.

"Go away."

Which, when coming off of his jumbled tongue and out of thin lips, would be something more like:

"Mmway."

She actually does have a Swiss Army knife. But it's at home, in a pile of other shiny interesting things that she acquired on a whim and now doesn't even remember owning.

"No."

Simple, to the point, and delivered with a broad grin that should tell him that she is playing with him and that she's enjoying herself immensely.

He flicks his gaze around the room, calculating which route would be the quickest (and cleanest) way out.

Of course, first he has to be /able/ to choose a route; one can't escape if one's trapped to the booth, of course. And the fact that he was the one who trapped himself is beside the point.

Why? Because I'm changing the topic.

"What is wrong with you?" He demands, a frustrated blush creeping up his unhealthily pale skin.

Distraction would be good. Maybe if he throws a plastic knife over her shoulder, she'd chase after it and give him enough time to escape.

Knife.

Not a good notion.

She gives him a funny little smile that could possibly be construed as flirtatious if he were actually apt to think of that kind of thing and shrugs.

"There's nothing wrong with me."

She's fae. There can't be anything wrong with her, you see. (Forgive the arrogance, do.)

"But you probably need therapy."

Had Danny perceived the smile as flirtatious, he would be mildly flattered. Which would then, inevitably, lead down the tangent of him being raped.

Maybe 'mildly' is a bit of an understatement.

"Yes there is," He seethes, hot breath rushing from his mouth in quick, heated snaps. "Normal people would know how to mind their own business. And normal people would know what the words 'go away' mean."

He blinks at the mention of therapy, and instinctively shudders.
"Go 'way," He repeats, a great deal clearer, this time.


Maybe a plastic fork will do the trick...

Her eyes twinkle.

"I don't want to."

And that's that, as far as she's concerned.

She reaches over and tweaks his ear.

Yes, she understands the concept of personal boundaries; no, she doesn't care that she's invading his.

The touch burns like the first touch of a heated, iron stove.

Okay, so Danny's exaggerating things. His reaction was fairly close to that comparison, nonetheless.

The touch was enough to jolt him from his fear-stricken-rabbit-demeanor, however. Perhaps electricity imagery should be used in place of fire imagery.

Oh, well.

"Bitch!" he hisses, and that really wasn't nice, Danny, especially when referring to complete strangers. But then again, most strangers don't go about peering over your shoulder for who-knows-how-long and tweaking ears.

So what sort of stranger, is she?

He doesn't want to know, too focused on scrambling out of his corner to really care.

Well, that was rude.

She gives him an affronted look and crosses her arms.

"I never did anything to you."

Um. Okay.

The funny thing is that she really doesn't think she did anything to him. Nothing worthy of so strong an insult, anyway. Maybe a vaguely annoyed 'brat' sort of thing, but...

She ought to curse him.

It's not so much of an insult as an instinct. Subbing for random, college courses with apathetic (in the very least) students would result in such linguistic habits. That, and the lack of sleep. And paranoia. And visions of your head getting stuck between the elevator doors with the elevator (inevitably) going down and your head being dismembered with the rest of your body.

But that's going off tangent.

"You touched me!" He responds, indignant. And with his words, you'd think that Mel had attempted rape.

She might have, but then that'd be flattering Danny too much, wouldn't it?

"Hmph. If you're that paranoid about it, maybe someone ought to touch you a little more."

No, that's not an innuendo. She isn't a typical, loose, fidelity-challenged fae. She doesn't think he's a prude. She doesn't think he's overreacting.

Really.

She doesn't.

Hazel eyes widen and you can almost see Meg's entire face reflecting in those sickly, green-brown eyes.

That's if you can get past the egregiously dark rings and the many red veins, of course.

"No," He says, trying to not let that one syllable pitch into a squeak, and failing admirably.

He scooting to the far end of his seat, eyeing the Blue, Glittering Thing warily.

She giggled.

And then she was in the same seat as he was--probably she climbed over the back of the seat--and scooting closer to him.

"Loosen up, silly."

She's amused again. That's good; he wouldn't want to have a fae annoyed with him enough to mess with him magically.

Ohmygodproximity.

"Don't want to loosen up," he asserts, and noticing that he sounds like a very immature, stubborn child and not caring. He inches away as quickly as inching can go, glaring at her for all its worth.

He falls off of the seat with a rather dull thud.

For the sake of young, impressionable minds, we won't go into detail on what Danny says next.

She wags a finger at him scoldingly.

"You shouldn't swear in front of ladies."

Funny, I don't see any here. Do you?

Meg doesn't exactly fit into the common definition of 'lady,' you know.

His eyes are fixated to that wagging finger, as if suspecting something to fly from its suspiciously harmless motion. Which Danny is, unpredictably.

"Ha-ha-ha," he laughs wryly and unconvincingly. "I'm getting lessons in proper ettiquette from a person who was peering over my subject for God knows how long and touching me and climbing over my seat and --"

He snaps his mouth shut, lips thin, pale, and grim, and refuses to speak any more. Maybe if he just shuts up, she'll get the hint and bugger off?

He ought to get up, as well. He doesn't appear very mature sprawled across the floor, tight-lipped and glaring, does he?

Oh, that reminds her.

She leans over and examines the words on his screen curiously, actually ignoring him in favor of his computer.

"What were you doing, anyway?"

She doesn't seem concerned that he's basically just called her rude. She isn't so sure that she likes him, so she doesn't care what he thinks.

Anyway, he's not cute enough for her to be gentle.

He stays sullen and silent.

That is, before he remembers that she's in possession of his dearly beloved, five-thousand dollars lap top.

Oh,

"Crap!" He explodes, scrambling to his feet and momentarily forgetting the Annoying Blue Sparkly Thing.

He quickly swivels the screen towards his view and, in his rush, accidentally presses a random key.

Lady Luck seems to hate Danny. A multitude of windows pop up and he busies himself closing each, one by one. Rather rapidly, mind you. Too rapidly, it seems.

The last window closes.

He curses.

Again.

Sigh.

"Was that a mistake, sweetie?"

What? He hasn't given her his name and she has to call him something.

"What were you doing?"

Innocent, childlike curiosity.

Totally innocent.

"Report," he groans pitifully, too tired to be snarky and snappish. "Lost all my data. Gotta look it all up again."

He feels like collapsing back into his seat. Does just that. Only, there's no seat behind him so he collapses onto the floor.

Someone ought to give this boy coordination lessons. And clean his tongue out, while they're at it.

"Oh, poor baby."

She slides along the seat and offers him a friendly hand up. Said hand is bedecked with as much odd blue jewellery as her ears, but it's still friendly.

Wait, no. It's green. Greenish blue.

So, come to think of it, is everything that was brilliant blue ten minutes ago.

He stares at the hand for a bit, not contemplating on its change of colour as so much as whether it'll trick him or not. You can't trust hands, after all. They are an essential tool for disaster.

So he hesitates, at first, sort of just sitting there staring, thoughts creeping into his mind of what she's capable of.

And, after a stretching moment of consideration, he helps himself up to his feet, brushes himself off in a rather business-like manner and takes the seat opposite of Meg.

You didn't think he was that easy, did you?

Taking the laptop, he turns it around and opens up another window.

"I was working on a recent accident at the local power plant," he begins, eyes fixed to the blank, white screen and fingers busying themselves to typing up another story. It was...odd how he'd launch into a perfectly civilized conversation. But if there's a table between them and he's not looking at her, it's a hell of a lot easier to carry something as tedious as conversation.

In other words, he's hoping he'd bore her.

Would he notice if suddenly everything--hair included, mind you--is pink? Hot pink? (Except for the black stuff, of course.)

Because, now, it is.

"Did it blow up?"

Yay, explosions!

"No." He asserts, as if fearful of Meg jinxing him. "No, no explosions. Explosions not good." Hopefully 2nd grade grammar will work with this girl?

And, all right, so admittedly Danny doesn't have the best vision in Bayfield. Still, the guy's got enough sense in him to distinguish between Glittery!Flagrant!Blue! to Hot!Retina-burning!Pink!

His eyes backtrack as his mind reels.

"What did you do?"

A simple question, fair enough. But from the way Danny asks it, it's as if he just witnessed his own birth. In graphic detail.

"Do?"

Okay. She looks way too innocent. Way, way too innocent.

"So stuff just caught on fire, then?"

Fire's good too; not as good as explosions, admittedly, but almost as entertaining.

Get the feeling that she's the kind of fae who might make a huge mess just to see how the humans around react?

Yeah. Me too.

OMG, that would be the greatest thing for Meg to do EVER. So great that this roleplayer is reduced to capitalizing short-hands.

Of course, that wouldn't be good for Danny at all. Poor guy, currently wrestling with his $5000 laptop and not at all reassured with Meg's suggestions.

"No. No. NO." He reiterates. "Fire isn't good, explosions aren't good, nothing explode-y and flameable is good."

Utilizing emphasis, now. Good job, Danny. You're slowly learning to speak.

"So what did happen at this electrical plant, if nothing caught on fire and nothing exploded? What, someone slip and fall?"

How boring.

She doodles circles on the tabletop with one finger. And we do mean doodles; glittery illusion--also pink--follows her finger, though it fades about an inch away.

Danny is amusing.

"Black-outs. Malfunctions. Fuzzy, pink bunnies bouncing on the control panels -- I don't know! I lost all of my information!"

He buries his face in his hands. Why did his mother have to give birth to him? Couldn't she conceive some other sperm?

"And stop that."

'That', referring to the neon-bright sketches that Meg's fingers swirl onto the table. 'That', referring to those drawings that encourage the muscle near his right eye to twitch. 'That', referring to whatever the hell Pink Thing's doing that he doesn't know how and why and why won't she go away?

She won't go away as long as you provide sufficient entertainment, Danny boy. You might as well get used to it and try not to twitch.

"Stop what?"

There is now an illusionary fuzzy pink bunny bouncing along the top of the booth behind her. Only Danny can see it, however, because she doesn't need to risk making everyone in the diner suddenly Innish.

She's not an airhead, you know.

"Stop -- Stop with whatever it is you're doing!"

And he cuts himself off there and blanches (if he can blanch any further, what with that remarkably pale complexion of his). Very calmly, he shuts his laptop with a quiet click, rubs his eyes, then stares at the booth.

And stares.

And stares.

And suddenly, he realizes what Pink Thing reminds him of. Do you remember going to Chuckie Cheese's? Danny still does. And he remembers, when he was wee young, that he had slammed his nose into the glass at the exchange counter (childish enthusiasm, y'know). But that isn't the point (although it sure hurt like hell). The point was that after blinking away the colorful stars from his eyes, the first thing he sees is a doll with a tan all teenagers would dream of with flowing pink hair that defies gravity. Not to mention the fact that it wasn't wearing any clothes. And they stared at him with smiling faces and lifeless eyes -- as if they know something he doesn't know and are going to pull every trick in taunting his ignorance with their permanent, eerie, wrinkling grins.

Yes, Mel reminds him of trolls.

"GO AWAY," He cries, desperate now and wanting his mother's skirt to cling to. Not that skirt where she does her voo-doo tricks with, though. Those white, frilly skirts that are supposed to be maternal and soft and very comforting, y'know?

Ah, childhood nostalgia.

Hmph.

"Well, if you're going to be that way."

She slides out of the booth with a scowl. (She's green now, by the way. Sort of a blue-turquoise-y green. Though still quite sparkly. And no, I have no idea what the original colors of any of this stuff is.)

And flounces away. After the bunny hops down onto the table, then onto the laptop, and leaves an illusory but long-lasting, er, present on top of the five thousand dollar laptop.

So there.

At which point Danny doesn't want to open his eyes right now. Eyelids screwed painfully shut, Danny's pretty adamant on wishing everything to go away and return back to normal. He says that, too, a sort of mantra that he mumbles over and over again, because, hey, if it works for Dorothy, why shouldn't it work for him? All right, so he doesn't have the ruby red slippers, but it's the thought that counts, right? Right.

But then again, what's normal now?

You're going crazy, Danny-boy. Admit it. Accept it. Embrace it.