Survival Of The Fittest

((Ayn Mazumatsuzaki's introduction))

Weaving through the sea of tables and bookcases that inhabit the library at a brisk pace, clad in a white turtleneck and heavy charcoal cargo pants, her Payne's grey messenger bag over her shoulder, and her Anorak over the opposite shoulder by the hood, Ayn followed the same path she did every day during the midday lunch break. While others tended to avoid the library, and head to exciting places both on and off campus, she preferred the emptiness of the library, and especially that of the reference section, where few dared to venture without a due cause.

Reaching the table she had claimed the year she begun at Bayview, Ayn slid her messenger bag off of her shoulder and set it upon the table. Pulling one of the 5 cheap chairs that surrounded the table outward, she sat upon it, and then extricated her laptop from the central pocket, which like the rest of the bag's interior, was lined with a soft army-green-colored material. While it wasn't the most portable thing around, it was one of the more powerful ones on the market.

Opening the laptop's clamshell, Ayn booted up the machine, and leaned back in her chair, thinking idle thoughts, like whether or not the school had blocked the proxy server she'd been using recently or if anybody had found a new glitch with her game.

These thoughts were interrupted by the windows startup chime, and Ayn's chair had all 4 legs touching the floor once more. A little red icon on the quick launch worried her- the battery icon. Frowning, she rummaged about in her bag, and, after a few moments, removed a pair of cables. Plugging the first in the power jack on the machine, she leaned backwards with the other, the converter, in hand.

With the power outlet a mere inch away, she leaned the chair back the slightest bit more.

This ended up being just a hair too far, something Ayn noticed as her chair slipped out from under her, and with an accompanying crash, found herself lying on the floor. While without injury, it took a handful of half-moments for the shock to wear off. Surveying the scene, she found it no different than it had been mere moments ago, other than she found herself on the floor.

Reminded of what she had been attempting to do previously by the converter she still held onto, she plugged said device into the wall socket, then connected the power cable leading from the laptop to the converter. The laptop, resting atop the table, chimed, signaling that it was receiving wall power. A faint smile formed upon Ayn's face as she sat there, admiring the roof.

((Rachel Gettys continued from An Apple A Day))

Rachel was smiling as she entered the library. Robert - or should she call him Bobby now? After all, they were edging ever closer towards being a thing, as she had heard people call high school relationships - had asked her to be his date to Prom, and it would be a silly girl indeed to turn down such an eligible bachelor. Even better - eligible Christian bachelor. She would have to pick out a dress, something conservative yet elegant, and she would have to get her hair seen to, not that it wasn't impeccable already, and she would have to buy some new shoes, though mother always provided in these situations...

But that's for later...

Rachel had come to the library to study not for Religious Studies, but for her final period Biology class, wherein they would be dealing with reproduction. It was a topic that Rachel was loath to learn, for various reasons, but she was not going to go into class without having read the necessary chapters in the textbook. After all, her continued good performance in that class was a requirement if she was going to be taken seriously in her championing of creationism. If she had bad grades, she would end up looking like Glenn Beck, and he does too much damage to conservatism and Christianity for me to want to look like him...

She rounded the corner to her usual desk, located in the oft-deserted English Literature area of the library, and found herself almost treading on a girl lying on the floor. She stood there for a second, staring at the girl's narrow, white face, baffled as to why she would be on the ground. Then Rachel stepped back slightly and requested, her voice terse and intolerant, "Excuse me, please."

Ayn knew not how long she had spent on her back, simply tracing patterns on the roof, yet she didn't think it had been all that long. Nonetheless, upon hearing approaching footsteps, her demeanor changed in an instant. Her faint smile (which was a smile for somebody such as her), gave way to a neutral expression, the mask she wears while in view of the world.

The footsteps were very close now. Yet Ayn did not turn her head to face them. And when the footsteps were right beside her, they quit for a moment, and then a step back was taken. Another noise was generated, but it was a form of communication, known as speech. The voice was firm, and made a request of Ayn, which was to move.

The answer given at first was silence. Then, ever so slowly, Ayn turned her head to face the source of the sound. With her amber eyes locked onto the blue eyes of the one who faced her, she spoke, the tone flat and dull, with an undertone of slight irritation. "There isn't anything to stop you from going around the table".

Ayn continues the eye contact for a few long moments, before breaking the contact with a loud yawn and stretch, with the latter resulting in some painful sounding cracking noises emanating from her back. Then, an idea blossoms in her mind, and is swiftly acted upon.

Throwing her right arm skyward with speed one would think Ayn incapable of reaching, an ever-so-faint smirk materializes upon her face. "Or," Ayn taunts "If you really want to go this way, you can help me up, unless that's too much work for you, whoever you are".

The girl looked blankly at Rachel, and immediately the young Miss Gettys knew she would not like this floor-dwelling schoolmate. Then the girl opened her mouth, and what she said sealed the deal.

"There isn't anything to stop you from going around the table."

Rachel glanced at the table. The English Literature section was tight as it was, and the addition of an area for the tables, secluded and rarely used though they were, had made it a mission to simply get to the Shakespeare, let alone get to the desks themselves. Rachel turned back to the curt girl on the ground, and replied glibly, "I'm not that thin. No-one's that thin."

The girl on the ground seemed nonplussed, yawning and cracking her back. If she's trying to irritate me, she's doing a champion job of it, Rachel fumed in her mind.

Then, without any warning, the girl thrust her arm at Rachel. Rachel jumped back, raising her arms in self-defence, and maintained that position for a second before loosening up. The girl smirked at her and replied with the impetuosity and smugness of one of Rachel's atheist classmates in Biology, "If you really want to go this way, you can help me up, unless that's too much work for you, whoever you are."

Rachel stared at the girl. You cannot be serious. But if she is...

Rachel let out a sudden laugh, and replied, "You're right, that really is too much work for me." Then, without wasting a second, Rachel grabbed the girl's table and dragged it so that it was now above her antagonist, and walked through the gap and to the table a few metres away on the other side. She put her satchel down and turned to the girl.

"That, however, wasn't."

Rachel left a beat for the zinger to settle in, then shot the girl a vicious little grin before sitting down and beginning her Biology homework.

Ayn's raised arm found its way to the ground once more, as it was apparent her offer had been rejected. Silently, she watched as the person who had just spoke to her made her way around the table, and then proceeded to shove it in her direction.

When the girl had finished, it was a bit beyond being directly over top of her. The girl then found her way to a table not far off, and delivered an overly rude message before sitting down, and beginning their work. How rude! Ayn thought, But if what they want is a reaction, they'll oh-so-very disappointed.

Propping herself up using her elbows, Ayn moved rearwards, past the edge of the table. A small gap remained between the table and wall, with ‘small' being the keyword here, but Ayn was confident she'd fit through. She moved in a series of motions, first going from being on her back to being in a crouched position, and then in the second set of movements, going from that crouched position to a standing one, barely fitting through the gap.

With her expression still as neutral as ever, Ayn put her back to the wall and pushed forward on the table. A mere few moments later, its position had been all-but restored. Then, sidestepping to the left, she returned the chair from the place it had previously held upon the ground, to the one it was meant to be in.

Looking over to the girl, she shrugged half-heartedly, before slipping into her chair. And then, her left hand running through her hair quickly before joining its relative dancing about on the grey keyboard of her laptop, Ayn acted as if nothing at all had happened.

Rachel opened her Biology coursebook - "Life and the World," written by the magnificently named J R Slaughter - and turned to the chapter on animal biology. She hesitated, and then turned a few pages to today's topic in Biology class - animal reproduction. As she took in the decidedly graphic images of cows and dogs mounting each other and the dry text alongside them, she noticed the annoying girl a few metres away doing her goshdarned best to make a scene without looking like she was making a scene. In an overly elaborate set of movements, the girl extracted herself from under the table and began pushing it back into place. The table slowly moved back into place, the carpet offering a resistance that emitted a low drrrrrr as the table legs budged over it. It was almost as if the girl wanted Rachel to know that she wasn't going to offer a retort - counter-intuitive, Rachel thought as she glowered at the girl.

The girl returned back to her seat and resumed blithely tapping at her keyboard. Rachel glowered for a second more, and then said, tersely, "You done now?"

As Ayn's quick fingers flew across the keyboard, a faint melody was created from the chaos; the thrum of the machine and the whirring of the fan serving as a beat, and the clicks and clacks of the keyboard as the various notes, all coming together to form a surprisingly pleasant sound. But she paid no mind to this, as she participated in an overly absurd role-play with six others.

Within this absurd piece of fiction, the players, who belonged to the ‘Organization of Super Soldiers with Overly Long and Elaborate Names', were sneaking into a top-secret Nazi research facility at the bottom of the ocean which was staffed by Nazi kitten-powered death robots and a skeleton crew of baby-eating space Nazis, with the intent of stealing a weapon capable of destroying the moon. This, however, had reason, since the moon was host to a very large population of Space Nazis who planned to invade earth in three days time. As stupid and silly-sounding as the plot is, Ayn thought, it is surprisingly entertaining…

"You done now?" Asked the girl one table over. For a sole second after she said this, Ayn's gaze was fixed upon the screen, and her hands still flying across the keyboard. But then her entire train of thought was derailed as she attempted to process the inquiry.

With puzzlement writ upon her face, Ayn turned to the speaker, and fired back a query of her own. "Done what?" was her cunning response, containing not one hint of menace or irritation, instead harboring genuine confusion.

"Done what?"

Rachel blankly stared at the girl for a second, dumbfounded by how long she was stretching out this masquerade of innocence. She couldn't have overplayed that line more if she'd cocked her head to one side and gone all puppy eyes on me, Rachel thought to herself, holding the blond's gaze for a few seconds before shaking her head and resuming her reading, her disdain for the girl's oh-so-cute-'n-cuddly routine only slipping out in three muttered words seconds after.

"People these days."

((Bringin' this thread to a close.))

Rachel had managed a rather blissful twenty minutes of study, even with the girl getting mad at her computer across the way. There is no way someone typing that furiously could be happy with what they're writing, Rachel thought as the bell tolled and an end was brought to her taking in the reproductive organs of various species of bird. Rachel packed up all of her things into her satchel and swung it over her shoulder, before turning back to the obstructive girl and shooting one final glare at her. I hope she fails whatever she has next, Rachel thought in a decidedly uncharitable manner, and she walked off to her next class.

((Rachel Gettys continued elsewhere))