Emma's Flat, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Wednesday Afternoon.

[icecoldfrost]

Classes were done for the day, and while normally Emma would be doing some stupid group team-building project with the other students in her human development class, she was skipping whatever stupid feel-good heart-to-heart nonsense the teacher had come up with this week. With an excuse! ...kinda! Candy was coming over once she was finished with work tonight so they could practice for summer internship interviews. Which meant Emma was putting away her groceries and prepping to make an utterly ridiculously large amount of tacos.

Look, she and Candy were growing girls. And they were not going to give in to the self-hate of the American media and body-image magazines. Because tacos. They were not just necessary to live, but to deal with the stupidity of the human race and their male counterparts who were jostling for the same jobs and complaining about how it was 'unfair' that the girls had the 'advantage' of being female.

No, Emma hadn't been experimenting to see if she'd suddenly developed psychokinesis last week in class, why did you ask? Really. Setting someone on fire with her brain, while potentially therapeutic, wasn't actually helpful.

Yet.

[OOC: Open for calls, texts, you know the drill.]

Comments

[bitten_notshy]

Emma's phone was ringing. Ringing, not just buzzing with a text. This was Urgent.

"It's happening again," Jack said when she picked up. "I can't lie."

[icecoldfrost]

Emma blinked for a moment, then grinned wickedly. "Really? What's your favorite guilty pleasure?"

It should be noted that Miss Emma Grace Frost was an utterly horrible person.

[bitten_notshy]

"I get out aggression by going to Pizza Planet and killing ninjas on the arcade console," Jack returned promptly. "I learned how to play when I was temporarily 14 but now I do it almost every week. Did this one hit you? What are your underpants like?"

The Guilty Pleasures question was more interesting, but Jack was sticking with the classic question.

[icecoldfrost]

"Who says I'm wearing any?" Emma practically purred into the phone, as she kept pulling groceries out of her bags and put them away. "I could be lounging around, waiting for the cabana girl that I hired for this week."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack snorted. "Is this a very charitable cabana girl?" he asked. "Because the last I knew, you had no money. Not that I didn't appreciate that mental image."

[icecoldfrost]

"That's an utter lie, I'm disgustingly rich," Emma quipped. "It's just...all tied up in bonds and investments and the stock market and all that. Because then it has little money babies, and I get richer."

"I just tend to be lacking on liquid assets is all. Hank wants me to get another job and stop using my telepathy to steal things." Because Hank was a party-pooper. "Like cabana girls."

[bitten_notshy]

"Oh, you know what I mean," Jack said. "The money babies haven't been born yet, and you're still eating ramen in a hole in the wall in Brooklyn. Hank's likely right about getting a job -- even if I would scam people constantly with your gifts."

He added, as an afterthought, "What does this stolen cabana girl look like?"

[icecoldfrost]

"I don't want a job; it's not like the island, where your boss actually has thoughts or emotions or intelligence. This is New York," Emma whined. "Everyone hates everyone else."

"And the cabana girl, for the record, is Candy. It's taco night."

[bitten_notshy]

"So get a job where it doesn't matter if you hate people," Jack suggested. "Make coffee drinks and spell everyone's names wrong. Wait tables and drop bowls of soup. And tell Candy I said hello, by the way. I liked her."

[icecoldfrost]

"I can't wait tables or sell coffee, it'd look bad on my resume," she sulked. "I've put in resumes at a few places, but as much as they say they want to hire me, they don't want someone who's still a student."

"I'll try...I don't know. Maybe hostess at some of the very nice bespoke shops. Maybe I'll get a discount on my suits or something."

[bitten_notshy]

"Snob," Jack said affectionately. "Let me know if I can help at all. I could wrangle Eric into writing a letter of recommendation, if you want."

[icecoldfrost]

"If I had money, I might pay to see that," she answered, perking up a little. "What on earth would Eric put in a letter of recommendation? 'Not squeamish around blood, looks good in leather?'"

[bitten_notshy]

"Can detect a fake ID with a glance, doesn't ask too many stupid questions," Jack nodded. "What employer wouldn't appreciate it? Especially if you're applying to work as a dominatrix."

[glacial_queen]

Unlike poor Jack, Karla hadn't yet left her dorm room. She was lounging on her bed, painting her toenails, and bored. So she decided to call Emma, who always knew the best gossip and could make her laugh.

"Kiss kiss," she called. "Hello darling. Entertain me. I'm bored and I'm out of batteries."

That was not a tidbit she had intended to share.

[icecoldfrost]

"Karla! Darling!" It was a good thing Karla was a universe and a few states away, otherwise she'd have had the good sense to run away at Emma's smile. "I've missed you."

"Now, tell Auntie Emma all the things you've been up to that you haven't told her about because you know she'll be Very Disappointed."

Sucker.

[glacial_queen]

Karla gave her phone a very confused look. Why would she tell Emma that? And yet, when she opened her mouth it was to say, "You mean like how we may have aggravated a Red-Jeweled Priestess in Kaeleer by interrupting her shipment of landen children in a nasty fight?"

Beat.

"EMMA WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

[icecoldfrost]

"Maaaaaaagic!" This was revenge, Karla. Revenge for every vague message you had ever left for Emma, and allllllll the ones you were going to leave in the future. "Anything else?"

[glacial_queen]

You were the absolute worst, Emma.

"That's it! I think! I told you about going to war before Christmas, right?" Well, if she hadn't, it was on the table now.

"And--okay, I don't think you heard about the ghost ballet for Valentine's Day, but that wasn't my fault!"

[icecoldfrost]

"How does a ghost do ballet? Wouldn't they get washed out by the lighting?" Emma asked as she grabbed a soda from her fridge. "I'm sure it's your fault somehow."

[glacial_queen]

"Is not!" Karla sniffed. "Warren and I visited Wesley in LA because he had extra tickets to the ballet. It turns out that the owner of the ballet was evil and had trapped the soul of the prima ballerina in his magic amulet thing. Warren and I got stuck backstage and ended up possessed by the prima and her secret boyfriend, before getting attacked by evil minions. What part of that was my fault?"

Other than the second time they'd gotten possessed being her idea and all.

...Which she said aloud a second later.

"DAMMIT!"

[icecoldfrost]

"I think that second part is totally your fault," Emma pointed out helpfully. "Possession isn't a game, Karla. You didn't even have another telepath there in case your little friend decided it liked having a body again."

[glacial_queen]

"They weren't actual ghosts possessing us," Karla muttered. "It was more...emotional hot-spots that we triggered by being there."

Because that made it all better.

"We managed to break out of both of them all right."

[icecoldfrost]

"Only by sheer luck or stupidity," Emma countered. "Does Morton know about this?"

[glacial_queen]

"The part where we fought off the Priestess?" Karla sometimes clung to hope far longer than she really should. "Of course! He was there!"

[icecoldfrost]

"That, and the war bit, and, oh, setting yourself to get possessed on purpose," Emma stated. "I'm telling."