The Garage!

Who: Arden & Pepper & Open (for all!)
Where: Occam Automotive
When: Noon-times

Arden was standing atop the edge of the fountain, testing the boundaries of her balance; she was leaning forward, one leg outstretched behind her as an arm holding her umbrella reached out before towards the fountain's waterfall. Every now and then, a perfectly horizontal line formed from the tip of the umbrella to the tip of her outstretched foot... but mostly she wobbled around a bit as she tried to figure out what to do with her other, umbrella-less arm.

She was a bit damp. Her hair hung about her, initially beaten down by the off-and-on showers and the less successful balancing attempts. But it was soon dawning a voluminous frizziness that defied both gravity and its own dampness, so ha! Although had she used the umbrella for umbrella purposes and decided that balancing atop the fountain's slick edge was a trick saved for a dryer day, she wouldn't have been nearly as damp as she was. But Arden didn't care. She was decked out in well-worn jeans and an old coat of her dad's, and they were the perfect clothes for getting dirty and causing trouble in. Heck, she practically looked like a street kid in them! ...Except that upon closer inspection it was evident that her clothing wasn't patchy or soiled. Although the jeans she wore were worn they had been recently laundered and a pair of fairly new bright red rainboots gleamed despite the dreary weather.

Pepper was less impressed with the weather. She hated it when it rained and she'd stayed away as long as she could before heading for the park to meet Arden. She wasn't going to stand the girl up, but the rain always ended up tricking down the back of her neck. She was trudging by the time she reached the fountain, coat fastened around her, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against the rain. "Hey," she said, peering up at the other girl from under the rim of her cap.

"Hey!" Arden grinned and hopped off the fountain, landing with a bit more grace than she had previously exhibited a moment earlier. She then bent down and picked up a small bag. It was smaller and more worn than her school backpack and contained some medicine that she figured would help Roy. She certainly wasn't a pharmacist, but she had tackled a very confusing medical book before finding considerably less-confusing pamphlets targeted towards over-coddling mothers and adults living on their own. Then it was a simple enough matter of raiding the home medicine cabinet and duping the guy at the drug store. She wasn't looking forward to her dad finding out about the medicine cabinet, but some risks were worth taking! She pushed her arm through a strap and shrugged the bag onto her shoulder, "Ready to go?"

Going somewhere that was out of the rain was a really good plan, as far as Pepper was concerned and she nodded. "Ohhhh yes," she agreed readily. "You seem really, really happy today," she pointed out. Though Arden was generally fairly bouncy, it was possible that Pepper was just noticing because it was in contrast to her mood now that she was wet.

"I found stuff!" was the eager reply, and Arden, while walking, reached around with one arm to pull the bag more towards her side so she could open it and reveal the contents to Pepper. Inside was her little pilfered pharmacy: pills for headaches, medicine for colds, cough drops, stuff for sneezing (it was really allergy medicine but Arden figured a sneeze was a sneeze). She didn't know exactly what Roy was sick with, so she had tried to cover all the bases. After Pepper had gotten a good look at the stash, she close the bag and shrugged the strap back up her shoulder, sill grinning. Yeah, she was a in a pretty good mood alright -- she was off to aid a friend for one thing, and she very much wasn't in school for the other. And a School-Free Arden was a Happy Arden... well, until she wasn't anymore.

Pepper looked into the bag and perked up rather. "Jeez - where'd you get all this stuff?" she asked as they headed out the park and towards the garage, a spring coming into her step. "This is just great - but you're not gonna get into trouble for any of this, are you?" she asked, taking the grand assumption that Arden had stolen the lot.

"No," Arden lied. Her dad would be anywhere from confused to furious -- she could no longer guess anymore -- at discovering a good portion of the first aid and medicine cabinet missing. But at as long as neither he nor her got sick anytime soon, she didn't see any reason to worry. And she didn't expect any trouble from the drug store owner (where she had actually stolen some stuff), because, well... "I'm covered. I walked in the drug store yesterday in the skirt and the owner didn't suspect a thing -- the one thing a skirt's good for, if you ask me. Hell," -- she liked using 'hell' and 'damn' when she roamed away from school and home -- "I could be having fun someplace the adults want to keep locked away dressed in jeans and they'd bug me with 'What're you up to, missy!'." She imitated the pinched face and growly voice of the guy who kicked her out of a lot a few weeks back that Arden had considered perfectly acceptable to play in. Then, relaxing back into a grin she continued, "But I get caught doing the same thing at the same place in a skirt and they'd only ask if I was lost and look all concerned-like."

It was a fact she had only discovered within the past couple months, and of all the cool things she had discovered this one fascinated her the most. In fact, Arden took pleasure in testing and exploring the theory whenever she could. If it only took wearing a different outfit while doing the same thing to get a different reaction, she wondered what other simple tricks there were like that as well. She thought she'd test voices next -- and see what saying the exact same thing in a different voice did.

Pepper laughed a little at that. "Wouldn't know - don't do skirts," she said, more easily. She was never one to stay in a funk very long, and Arden was even better at drawing her out of one even if she was there already. "I hate skirts - and they make your legs all cold. They're not practical," she said, as if this were the final word on things. She knew Arden wasn't a fan either. "But, cool that you got all that stuff - hope that Roy's at the garage and stuff, but guess we'll find out in a couple of minutes, right?" she added, knowing the garage wasn't that far a walk from the park.

"Guess so," Arden replied as they approached the garage. When they reached the entrance she stepped through without a moment's hesitation, a fun little tingle of apprehension at her stomach as she entered a place that housed what were very shiny cars. But the apprehension was the kind she got when she went to someplace new or about to try something even more daring -- not dread. Arden had never been a shy child, and she certainly wasn't going to start now. Only after a brief overlook of the place, she was moving about as if she owned it, stepping into areas by the wall that was most likely not for visitors, touching items that looked interesting regardless of whether they wanted to be touched.

In fact, to the side of them was an incredibly fancy car with the backdoors open, and with nobody around at the moment it was just too good an opportunity to explore. She stuck her head and then half her body through the door, enough to peek between the two front seats at the steering wheel and controls. This? was cool. The car wasn't on, but she reached out and started fiddling with a couple buttons and dials just because they were there. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing happened, much to her disappointment. Hmph, this stupid car wasn't fancy at all! She pulled her body back through the doorway, standing upright as she she turned to Pepper.

"This car isn't that great," she declared, sharing a severely critical, unimpressed expression, "Any stupid car that's gonna try and look fancy oughta have buttons that do stuff even with no key." Arden actually knew next to nothing about cars in the grand scheme of things, but you wouldn't guess by her tone. She said it as if this were some Unquestionable Fact, blatantly daring the Universe (or some unlucky bystander) to say different.