Girly supergeniuses?

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

Paige had changed into her pajamas - just because she didn't actually sleep didn't mean that she didn't like going through the motions, if only for the rest of the school - and was now working on the very detailed regimen that was cleaning her teeth. If there was one thing that she loved about this school, other than the obvious, it was their supply of electric toothbrushes if she so desired and the wonderful invention called a waterpick. A sharp knock at the door brought her out of her automatic second counting and she headed to the door, toothbrush still in mouth and humming away.

Kitty was leaning against the wall in her PJs (sweat pants and a night shirt, really), movie and nail polish hidden behind her back as she waited. No way was Paige actually asleep yet...

Paige opened the door, eyebrows going up in pleasant surprise at the sight of Kitty. "Mumblespliff!" She greeted before giggling muffledly and holding up a finger to indicate a moment. She ducked back into the bathroom and returned a moment later, sans toothbrush. "Kitty! Nice to see you. What can I do for you?"

Kitty laughed. "So, I know for a fact that there's no way you're not at _least_ as far ahead in all your classes, and therefore I have come to drag you away from... well, whatever." Holding out her hands she revealed the movie and nail polish bottles. "It's fake Shakespeare, which is a mark against it, but it has Julia Styles there fore it can not truely suck. And, well, what is more girly than pink or cherry red toenails?"

Paige answered Kitty's laugh with one of her own. "You little wretch. You little really hilarious knowing exactly what I need right now wretch. Pick your destination as I lack a television here and let's go before I change my mind and decide to do something responsible." Paige was grinning widely at this point and picking up her robe.

Kitty matched Paige's grin with one of her own. "The rec room's open - I just checked. So now I drag you off to be unresponsible and girlish... By the way," she added as she set off down the hall. "Do you _know_ how to paint toenails?"

Holding up a roll of toilet paper as she closed the door behind her and trotted a little to match up at Kitty's side Paige nodded. "Sadly, yes. Alison insisted on teaching me while we were in Mexico. I'm still not especially good, but it's not technically warm enough to be wearing sandals anyway. No one will know and we'll chalk it up to learning."

"Oh good. A learning experience that I won't be graded on. I highly approve." Ducking into the rec room, Kitty set the nail polish down on the couch and moved to put the tape in. "Do you figure other girls just know these things, or do they have to take time out of their busy shopping schedule to learn them?"

"My logic is," Paige said as she tossed some pillows and blankets onto the couch and then settled herself in, "That you're either born with the long distance shopping with the added benefits of knowing all these other odd things such as how to do nails and put on liquid eyeliner or you get the I know pie to the 300th digit in five languages with the perks of not needing to eat for several days and knowing how to make things explode. Both would just cause a world shut down."

"Hmm... you may have a point there, although Jamie disagrees whenever I claim I don't need food or sleep. Although Ms. Frost may be the exception to your theory."

Paige huffed and waved a hand. "Oh, Frost. She's always ruining my master plans." There was an obvious teasing tone to her words, however much truth there was underneath it. "Oh! Movie!" she cried as the green FBI warning appeared, "What's this one about?"

Kitty laughed, dropping onto the couch. "Ten Things I Hate About You. It's a modern rewrite of The Taming of the Shrew, but like I said, with Julia Styles it can not completely suck, plus it's got that boy from Third Rock."


"I liked Shrew. Well, most of it," Paige said thoughtfully, nodding. "Once you took it in context anyway." She shifted and picked up one of the nail bottles, rolling it between her palms.

"Sure, in context... If you start studying anything out of context it just ends up horrible. And quite frankly I don't think I can deal with having pink toenails..." She eyed the two bottles rather warrily.

Paige covered up a giggle with her hand at the topic change. Super genius' did not giggle. "Does it count if we just thought about it?"

Kitty giggled freely. "I don't know... I guess the red sort of qualifies as girly. Jubes had blue and green and and orange and... but none of them were terribly girly."

"Well. Painting toenails at all should qualify, especially for us. It's a very large step in the girly direction when your idea of make-up is lipchap," Paige pointed out, grinning."

"Very good point," Kitty said with a grin, then eyed her feet speculatively. "Still not sure how this works."


Paige began unrolling toilet paper and twisting it around in her hands. "Here. I do remember this part, mostly because it looked so stupid," Paige replied, winding the paper rope through Kitty's toes.

Kitty watched somewhat bemusedly. "You're right, it does look very stupid. Why...?"

"Separates the toes, makes them easier to paint. Not to mention it seems to be an unwritten rule that for every beauty treatment there must be a really embarassing pretreatment," Paige informed her.

Nodding, Kitty said, "We should probably write these down. For each and every beauty treatment there is an equal and opposite pretreatment. A body in a shopping mall tends to stay in motion. Permanents and water don't mix."

Paige burst into laughter, interupting the movie that was still playing in the background. "I sense a web page."

"Do girly girls know html?" Kitty mused. "Ah well, two steps forward one step sideways."

"We could make it really pink and in sticky caps I suppose," Paige said thoughtfully. "Although, is sacrificing our eyesight worth the girliness? I'm not sure."

"I think they'd take away my hacker membership chard if I ever did anything in pink. Now _there's_ a boy's club." She eyed the television for a second. "Why is Julia Styles backing into that guy's car?"

Paige regarded the television with a slightly titlted head. "Well. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume Miss Styles is playing Kate. Kate in the book broke guitars, Kate in the movie breaks cars. They somewhat rhyme."

"Oh, so that must make him, um..." Looking at the back of the box she nodded. "Patrick Verona. Oh, so _that's_ Heath Ledger." She considered the guy on the screen. "They're right," she finally said, looking back at Paige. "He is cute."

"Yes, agreed," Paige answered, nodding her head. "Not my type but certainly cute."

Kitty giggled. "Yeah, my type is more the 'lives next door, multiplies himself farm boy' type, but hey, whatever floats your boat."

Paige blushed and giggled herself. "Well, I was talking more about how I prefer brunettes but hey! Let's concentrate instead on how the odds are certainly with you since I'm sure 'lives next door, multiplies himself farm boy' types are very difficult to come by."

"Yeah, very true. One in a million." Kitty grinned. "Clearly I have won."

"Yes, you win at life." Paige clapped politely, not too loud that they still couldn't hear the movie. "Now, when does this Ledger guy sing. I thought he was supposed to sing?"

"Hmm, no idea." Kitty turned her attention back to the screen momentarily. "Probably sometime _after_ Styles starts not treating him like a pariah. Unless that's how he becomes not a pariah?"

"Mm... pariah. Good word." Paige watched the television for a bit more before returning to Kitty. "I suppose that makes sense. I don't really understand the formula for teenaged movies yet. Mostly because I've watched a grand total of like... three."

"Something we will have to work on, you and I. After all, it would be useful in understanding how to relate to our peer groups. Assuming our peer groups weren't, you know, abnormal mutant types." She watched as Paige continued putting lacquer on her toes. "Are we sure this stuff isn't, you know, radioactive or anything. How do I know that the incidence of stupidity in teenaged girls isn't a side effect of prolonged exposure to make-up?"

"Just make sure to take it off soon and I'm sure you'll be fine. If you suddenly get an urge to say, spend four hours in a hair salon to make yourself a blonde then I suggest getting it off sooner," Paige answered calmly, painting Kitty's toes with the precision that she use with everything.

"I would look terrible as a blonde," Kitty said thoughtfully.

"Yes you would," Paige answered truthfully. "If it makes you feel any better, I would look horrible as a brunette. I would know, I've already tried to get rid of my hair once."

"Oh, but you're hair's so pretty," Kitty said, looking startled. "Why would you want to change it?"

Paige blushed and smiled as she worked. "You get called a dumb blonde one too many times and you snap I guess. I know I just shouldn't care, obviously I don't have to fall back on overused clichés for insults, but between my hair and my accent." Paige left it at that and shrugged.

Kitty nodded slowly. "Yeah," she said. "It's one thing to know that teenagers suck and another thing to have to deal with them. And since you don't have three PhDs _yet_..."

"It seemed like a reasonable explanation at the time," Paige continued. "But, now I'm here and no one really seems to care if I'm blonde for from the South. I tear off my skin, it's all good."

That got a little chuckle. "Mmm, yep. You fit right in, here at lovely mutant high. Which, you must admit, far beats that one..." Her hand gestured idly at the screen, where Julia Styles was dancing drunkenly on a table. "Um... why?" she asked after considering the movie for a second.

"Is she dancing on the table or why don't we get to dance on the tables?" Paige asked innocently, looking up at Kitty with a grin.

"Why is she dancing on the table. I've done it, and hopefully neither Bobby nor John has the pictures to prove it," Kitty said, sticking out her tounge.

"Kitten, if you've done anything even vaguely embarrassing in this school there's a good 90 percent chance that someone has pictures and they're most likely on the Internet," Paige replied teasingly, but from her own prior experience. She looked up just in time to watch Styles puke on Ledger's shoes. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say she's intoxicated."

"Seems like a reasonable guess. And I know there are no pictures, because when Jamie heard about the whole thing he went looking. Trust me, if anyone could find pictures of me table dancing it would have been him. And hey, Hollywood is clearly sending us the message that drinking is bad, but it's ok because you still look cute when you're hungover."

Paige looked surprised and grinned. "Then you are an exceptionally lucky person. Not only did you find Jamie but he happens to be a handy 'Net searching person _and_ there we no pictures taken. Remind me to never play poker with you. And yes, Hollywood is bad. Naughty, poisoning our minds."

Kitty grinned. "No arguments from me, on either count." Her attention returned to her toes which Paige had almost finished with. "So, um, what do I do now?"

"Well, if we're being honest here and I think we are... I really want to see how in the world this Ledger guy convinces Styles to fall madly in love with him." Paige blushed at the admission. "You can go to sleep, though, if you're tired. Just don't bump your feet, I think they're pretty good considering it's only my second time."

"Very shiny, at least," Kitty said, considering the bright red color. "But what about your toes, hmm?" An eyebrow was arched at Paige. "You're not getting out of this that easily..."

Paige moaned, although it was very mock. "Blast! Foiled again. Obviously, you can put two super genius' against each other, usually people fall for my simple distracting moves." Paige eyed the nail polish cautiously. "Do your worst I say. I have Mr. Ledger to keep me distracted."

"My worst is the pink, but if it's too much I'll settle for the red." Kitty attempted to copy the earlier twist of toilet paper Paige had made, with middling results.

Paige's nose twitched. "Red please. Pink and I don't get along overly well. Warren seems to think this is hilarious and only purchases me things in that colour," Paige said, pleased with Kitty's attempts. "Did I mention Warren is evil? No? Well, he is."

"Heh. You've not mentioned it, but I've had my suspicions for a while now." The twist was tucked between the toes pretty securely and Kitty picked up the red polish to look at it somewhat warily. "Normal teenagers are strange..." she muttered as she opened the bottle.

"Luckily, we're not normal teenagers. Even the normal teenagers here aren't normal teenagers. Mm... refreshing," Paige said cheerfully, eyes mostly secured on the screen but allowing Kitty a couple of quick glances.

Her tongue poking slightly between her lips in concentration, Kitty bent over Paige's nails, screwing up her nose at the smell of the polish. "Half a dozen multi-million dollar heirs, a handful of super-geniuses, and not a one of us capable of keeping the laws of physics intact," she said as she worked.

Paige snorted and waved a hand carefully so as not to interrupt Kitty's workings. "I suppose it doesn't help that our own Physics teacher manages to break a few of the laws himself occasionally, huh? Or at least manages to pause the class once every two weeks to get us to debate how our students "work"."

Kitty laughed, her fingers twitching slightly and a small streak of red ending up on a toe instead of a nail. "Oh, oops," she said. "Remember his 'demonstration' on momentum? Bouncing around the room, trying to get us to measure his velocity?"

"No harm done." Paige leaned down and rubbed the polish off, giggling. "Yes, yes. Nearly managed to put himself through the window in the process, too, he was so distracted trying to talk to all of us and bounce at the same time."

"And then he wouldn't tell us his real weight, so our numbers would never have worked anyway." Kitty grinned. "Our life is so much more interesting than..." She glanced at the screen. "Why did Bianca just deck that guy?"

Paige's head snapped back to the television. "I have no clue. I was distracted by Physics talk. Some girly girls we are," Paige replied, amused.

Kitty giggled. "The physics were more interesting. Oh, look. Ledger's clearly on the outs with Styles. You know, if any of them were mutants they might be a match for our Mutant Soap Opera."

"I suppose we do have an unfair advantage. What with our ability to make things explode and read each others thoughts, etcetera, etcetera," Paige answered thoughtfully, adding a little bit of the King from The King and I voice as the end.

"Does make things more interesting, yeah." The first foot done, Kitty eyed it and decided it looked ok before moving onto the next.

Paige regarded Kitty thoughtfully for a moment before asking. "Would you trade it for anything in the world? I mean, you seem to like it, but it sure has it's moments where it, how do they say... sucks? Yeah, where it sucks."

Kitty considered her question as the brush moved over Paige's toes. "No," she said slowly. "Yeah, it sucks sometimes, but... so much has happened that never would have if not for being a mutant, not for coming here." Looking up she smiled. "God's gifts come with prices."

Paige returned the smile, soft and warm. The words obviously meant a whole lot to her, a whole lot more than just the context in which they had been given. "That they do. Good answer, chickpea."

And Kitty finishes Paige's nails, and the movie ends happily.

Comments

Re: ...

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

I maintain it as seperation between player and character. :) (she said, noting that *I* know bupkis about fashion, cept that I look good in dark colors)