you have entered the red zone.

<H4>Out of Character</H4>All welcome. If you can handle Okkie. B) I left it sorta open-ended so that anybody can arrive…
<H4>In Character</H4>Okkie the Twelfth was in a red mood today… Though her Janardan tee was a soft, cottony white, she wore another top beneath it, one of vibrant crimson hue. It was a nice contrast with the white Academy chemise, and it balanced the brilliant red logo that was emblazoned, blood on snow, across her supple chest. Next on the list of burgundy garments was the solid red bandana tied loosely over her alabaster tresses (which, not surprisingly, were dipped in carmine traces). It was soft and it cast a myriad of cool, gentle shadows over her gingersnap façade. Haunting blue & green eyes peered from beneath these tender shades, yet they were not focused with intensity as they usually were. Instead, they were dipped a bit, staring blankly… Studying the every stitch and staple of the femme’s cherry-soled tennis shoes. She traced a finger over the rubber designs, and then she absently sighed, shifted in her chair, and adjusted the hem of her “rojo” boxers. The shorts’ waistline peeked a few centimeters above the lip of baggy, black cargo pants, rebelling against the tug of white belt, as if it wanted to add color where it wasn’t really needed. But Okkie was not aware of its energetic coloration, or of anything at all, really. She was despondently slumped at a seat in the Janardan library, leafing through a magazine about earthen airplanes, totally unaware of her outfit, which just screamed for newspaper jokes (“what is black, white, and red all over?”).

 

Okay, so maybe she was feeling blue, not red, despite her rather reddish ensemble. It was apparent that Okkie felt quite lackluster — she possessed none of her usual fire, she wasn’t glaring around the library, ready to kill whoever dared glance her way, and she wasn’t rambling around, attempting to stir up trouble. Nay, the banded pendragon was glued to her seat, still tracing the myriad designs on her sporty shoes, sighing now as she adjusted her weight and curled her feet beneath her trim bum. There was something altogether glum about her; even her large, bat-like ears, and her medium-sized wings of snow drooped.

But all this dreariness was forgotten instantly when a bustling stranger erupted into the Academy’s library, apparently in a hurry to cut from one end to the other. Probably in a rush to class. Okkie didn’t notice her until the foreign female was smashing into her, and by then it was too late to either smile or snarl. Wings fluttered haphazardly as Okkie’s chair knocked out from under her, and she landed on the floor with a small thud, papers scattering about her as the perpetrator looked chagrined.

“Oh, I’m sorry. You okay?”

It took all of Twelve’s energy not to snap in reply. She merely brushed off her pants and stood, tilting a bit as she tried to regain equilibrium. Her hybrid eyes then stared down at the stranger, icy but not yet cruel. It might have been polite, though not expected, to help this flustered disaster on wheels pick up her papers. But Okkie just wasn’t like that. She was pretty tough, and she wouldn’t take pity on those that had crash landed in her makeshift red zone.

 

Caramel hands found themselves pressed on Okkie’s hips as she sneered impolitely at the struggling stranger. The nicer half of her wanted to bend down, maybe help this scrambled pendragon gather her stuff. Part of her meaner half wanted this too, if only to get rid of the little twit. But more powerful was her urge to glare down, and cause the other female a hell of a lot of tension.

“In belated reply, I am okay, thanks for… Asking. I do come here often, actually. I assume you don’t.”

Because only smart people chilled in the library… Hm. Okkie maintained a stance of dominant anger, sending a sideways glance at the magazine she had been perusing between study sessions with her tennis shoes. She had the sudden urge to chuck it at Cue, but she quashed this desire, and kept up her steely façade of hate… Hey, it was better than being gloomy.

 

It didn’t take too long for the young unfamiliar to finally collect all her possessions, even without Okkie’s help. But while the hybrid-eyed youth expected this to mean the other was going to disembark, apparently it did not. With a sociable air and a pair of cordial questions — “What are you reading? Is it any good?” — Cue took the seat across from Twelve’s own toppled chair, spread out some books and paper, and commenced to do some busywork. As if she hadn’t, just moments ago, been rushing through here like a bat out of hell, on her way to somewhere better. What an invasion.

“Eh. It’s a brochure about piloting earthen airplanes. You… Probably wouldn’t know a thing about it, and I’m not too keen to explain it. Yes, it’s quite a good read, if you’re intellectually gifted, as I am,” Okkie replied with projected conceit, when she finally stopped her glaring and bent down to straighten her chair. “Didn’t you have somewhere to go…?” And she trailed off, obviously pausing so that the stranger could fill in the blank with her name.

 

As the stranger replied with blatant naïveté, Okkie slipped back onto her chair. She tucked her feet beneath her, curled her spiked tail against her bottom, and leaned her elbows on the library table. No immediate rejoinder came from her muzzle, but she did acknowledge Cue’s presence by leaning over the table, casting her shadow across the other’s books and papers. She was feigning interest, when what she really wanted to do was yank the lighter out of her pocket and set this superfluous femme and all her homework on fire.

“You can’t take a hint, kid. I just thought I’d put that out there,” XII finally spoke up, now leaning treacherously over Cue and her spread of papers. Her carmine bandana threw shadows over her hybrid eyes, and she looked quite devillish, what with the subtle sneer traced over her lips. “Nothing wrong with that, not really. It keeps me amused. Though your arrival was abrupt, and rude, it certainly brought me out of the doldrums. Dunno about you, though.”

Her wings flexed soundlessly behind her as Okkie finally slouched backwards into her own chair. Hovering had not seemed to bother Cue, and it had caused the banded pendragon’s arms to start tingling. Now, bored and not particularly desiring to reread her airplane magazine, the young rebel peered around the library, then reached into her baggy pocket. She withdrew a pack of what looked to be cigarettes, and then a red lighter. Okkie took caution and ducked low in her chair as she lit up, and it was soon apparent that nicotine wasn’t the only agent in the cylindrical roll — the pungent smell of marijuana permeated the air, as the angry one sighed with pleasure.

 

Okkie took a rather long drag from her joint-cigarette, then drew it from her mouth with two fingers. She twirled the cylinder in front of her face for a split second, then turned her cheek and blew smoke beneath the table. She could already feel the drugs permeating her body and relaxing her mind and muscles, but the youth was not without discretion. When she’d exhaled completely, she hoisted herself up a bit, and looked around the library. It was midday and many of the Janardan students were at class… Hybrid eyes fell on only two students, both of whom were browsing the shelves across the rooms. They were both engrossed in their perusals, and neither gave the smoking pendragon and her unlikely table-mate a second glance. ’Kie then looked in the other direction — towards the librarian’s desk. She was nowhere to be seen… That could be a bad thing, in this case. But marijuana caused the Kanji’d youth not to care. With a sigh, she slouched back in her seat, lifted her joint to her mouth again, and took a long toke.

“You want some?” The stoned teenager asked as she exhaled her second round of miasma, and her eyes stared at Cue across the table. The other hadn’t seemed surprised at Okkie’s rule-breaking behavior, but that didn’t surprise the banded female. Cue had admitted to being a ditz. “A toke, I mean. I don’t give away joints, not to anybody. I grow my own shit, and it’s quality. And I don’t know if you could tell in these short minutes we’ve known each other — but I’m neither kind nor generous.”

Jackal-like ears twitched as Okkie laughed, and then she put the paper roll back into her mouth. She bit down on it lightly so she could suck some flavor out of it hands-free, and then she began to fumble with the hem of her shirt. For no reason at all, really. Perhaps her fuzzed brain told her there was a stain there, or a string to be dealt with… Who knew.

 

Whatever had caused Okkie to start messing with her shirt abruptly fixed itself, and the femme stopped her fumbling and looked up. Cue was smiling at her, and the banded female stared as she once more used two fingers to remove the joint from her mouth. She sloshed the tainted smoke around in her maw like mouthwash, and then leaned forward across the table again. She peered straight at her ditzy companion, and then blew a halo of silvery vapor directly into her face, snickering as she did so. When she was finished performing this rather rude stunt, Okkie slid from her seat and stood.

But she didn’t say anything to the other female. A soft caramel hand merely wrapped itself around Cue’s wrist, and yanked the other pendragon up from her chair. Blue and green eyes grinned, and Okkie began to drag Cue towards the oodles of bookshelves. Some sort of devious plan obviously on her mind.

 

In one hand, Okkie held Cue’s wrist in a tight grip, and in the other, she twirled her joint betwixt two caramel digits. It was an odd sort of combination, but the female didn’t seem to care. She kept her clutch on both things nice and tight as she prowled towards the bookshelves, and she never once uttered a word of explanation. She merely yanked her unsuspecting prey behind her, mercilessly, until they found themselves between a shelf of sexual education books and a shelf of fauna magazines.

“Okay. Okay. You probably think I’m weird, maybe a psycho, and I don’t blame you. I’ve been mean since the second you rammed into me, but with good reason, right? Right. Anyways, in the ten minutes I’ve known you, I’ve realized you’re nothing but a do-gooder. And now you’re going to make my day by breaking some rules, okay? I want you…,” On the word ‘you’, she pushed her smoldering joint into Cue’s hands. “To take this, and set this entire shelf of magazines on fire. You’ll cause a ruckus, and it’ll be fun, and the entire floor will be evacuated. You’ll probably get out of class. Sounds like fun, eh?”

 

“I should have known that I had a total gutless twit on my hands here.”

This was the line the caramel pendragon spat at her innocent victim, and it was obvious that fury raged inside her. The drugs had caused her to be risky, irrational, dangerously wrathful. Now, she glared at Cue, desiring greatly to pull her hand back and slap the other female across the face for being such a wimp. But Okkie restrained herself — barely. Instead of striking Cue, she ripped the dead joint from the other’s paws, and stomped on it, expressing her anger in a relatively harmless way. When the roll of paper was nothing but ash and tatters, Okkie looked up from its rinds, and her mismatched eyes flashed. She might not have the guts… But I do… She thought as she plunged a hand into her pocket and felt the cool plastic of her lighter against her warm palm.

“I’m not going to let you ruin my fun, Cue. A long time ago, I was like you. I was trying to play it cool, do the right thing. I was a virgin, I’d never done drugs, and I’d never drunk a drop of tainted tea, if you get my drift. But now that’s all changed. And let me be the first to tell you — being a bad girl is a HELL of a lot more fun than being a goody-two-shoes.”

With these passionate, stoned words, Okkie flipped her lighter on, and twisted sharply around so that the flame licked the corner of a magazine about Skeekippers. It’d be a cold day in Hell before she passed an opportunity like this up.

 

Cue’s shocked exclamation caused a spurt of adrenaline to scream through Okkie’s veins, and she sneered as the small lighter’s flame licked at the spine of the Skeekipper magazine. It wasn’t long before the blaze was clinging on its own strength, and the roguish female clicked her lighter closed and pocketed it. She ignored the other’s futile attempts to put out the flames, and when they got a little too earnest, she shot Cue an icy look and emitted a guttural growl. Don’t you dare mess with my fun, you gutless little excuse for a pendragon…

It wasn’t long before an entire row of magazines was smoldering, and the angry one stepped back and surveyed her work. Black smoke was beginning to unfurl from the burning catalogues, and Okkie knew it wouldn’t be long before somebody noticed. She’d better act fast, act now, before too much time went by…

There was an infinitesimal pause as the fire ate away at the magazines, as Okkie peered slowly around the library, as Cue whimpered in the background over her singed paws. It was a pregnant moment, like a final heartbeat before the body flat lined. It lasted about ten seconds, and in that short window of time, ’Kie backpedaled a few more steps, patted Cue’s side (and slipped the lighter into her pocket, albeit subtly), and whispered, You think that’s bad…? Just. You. Wait.

And then all hell broke loose.

Spinning wildly on one sneaker-clad heel, the banded pendragon vaulted down the row of bookshelves, screaming at the top of her lungs. Okkie flailed her arms for extra effect as she emerged from the row, and she accidentally-on-purpose tripped and wheezed as she sprang for the fire alarm by the door and the librarian’s desk. Her caramel hand fell on it, and pulled the lever, and soon the entire floor was flooded with the sound of blaring sirens.

But these sirens were not as scything as Okkie’s own words as she turned to face the surprised façades as the few students attempted to scramble past her and out of the library. “She’s crazy, I’m telling you! Fuckin’ crazy! She lit up this lighter and just set the whole shelf on fire! I think she put the lighter back in her pocket! She’s just standing there now, sobbing! She’s crazy, crazy! Her name’s Cue; you’d better put her away in an institution before she does some real damage!”