Survival Of The Fittest

Finding the best tree to sit under was a part of the fun!

((Daenerys "D" Todd: Pregame start))

It took a while, but after maybe fifteen minutes, Daenerys spotted a tree far off from the park's particularly populated parts. Some children were playing on a fenced basketball court not too far from her, but that was all. Perfect for her plans.

Daenerys sat down against the tree, letting her handbag fall next to her. The sitting-down part was probably a little bit rougher than intended, but that was the fault of her spending the last night with way too much learning. It was the start of her senior year, so she had to give it her best shot right from the get-go. Even if that meant that on this saturday, she couldn't rely on her whole power. But that had been just another reason to accompany her family on this visit to the park. From her tree, Daenerys could even see some hints of Kiddieland, where her parents and siblings had to be right now while she relaxed alone.

Closing her eyes, she listened closely for the voices. At first the remaining human sounds made them hard to hear, but eventually Daenerys succeeded in filtering out what she was searching for.

A Black-capped Chickadee.

A Woodpecker.

And a Common Grackles.

That were the ones she recognized on the spot.

A Mourning Dove.

A Chipping Sparrow.

And a Blue Jay.

That were the ones she recognized after a little bit of listening.

Daenerys let out a yawn. Last night's cramming-session had maybe been a bit too much after all.

A new voice reached her ears. Was that a Carolina Wren?

Before coming to an answer, she had already dozed off.

---

A ball missed the basket and collided with the fence, resulting in a very loud clank. Loud enough to awake Daenerys from her slumber.

Shit!

While her plan had been to relax and listen to the birds, Daenerys had not planned to take an afternoon nap, especially not in the public park. And not when she was supposed to reunite with her family in three hours. Opening her eyes, she listened for the voices of her parents but came up empty. Apparently she hadn't slept long enough to become a missing-person-case.

A look to the right revealed that she had slept too long anyway.

Her handbag had been opened and its entire content lay strewn across it. Its entire content? Yes, even her smartphone and purse. Whoever did this had followed plans beyond mere thievery.

Daenerys cursed again. Still doozy from he sleep, she half-crawled, half-crouched to her belongings on the hunt for anything that was amiss. But it seemed like everything was fine apart from being on the grass.

It was when her view fell on the pen she always carried with her that a suspicion arose within her. She picked up her smartphone without pushing any button, instead using it as a mirror to see...

... that some asshole had used her pen to draw some crude war paint on her face.

"..."

Daenerys resisted the urge to curse even more. Because whoever did this might have decided to stick around and see the results of their work. Slowly she let her view wander around the perimeter, searching for someone hiding.

Just who was the malicious mastermind in the shadows?

Could Ada Bentley be the vile culprit behind such a heinous crime?

She wasn’t exactly doing a great job at hiding herself if she was. No, she was just kinda standing a few feet away from Daenerys, right out in the open. Horrible name, for the record, Daenerys. Ada really had to hand it to the girl’s parents, they’d really done their damnedest to set their poor kid up for a lifetime of bullying and comparisons to a shitty TV show, full marks on the ‘garbage parenting job,’ she guessed.

It was an objectively nice day today. Warm, bright, pretty much nothing in the way of a breeze to speak of. Definitely ranking on the lower end of Ada’s favoured weather conditions, in other words, but nowhere near as bad as the height of summer. Nothing was as dreadful as those skin-meltingly awful few weeks. Her t-shirt was bright pink, her shorts denim. Her right hand absent-mindedly adjusted the clutch on her shoulder bag, as she took a brief sip from the cup of coffee held in her left. She pulled a face; it definitely wasn’t a bad brew, but when you’d sampled more caramel lattes than most people had eaten hot dinners, ‘not bad’ didn’t even begin to cut it.

Man, Daenerys really did look like shit right now, though. Like the aftermath of passing out on the sofa at a house party, only with fewer Sharpie’d dicks on her forehead

Ada stood there, almost motionless, waiting for Daenerys’ furtive gaze to sweep over her. As soon as she locked eyes with the girl, she gave her a small nod and a wry smile, swallowing another few mouthfuls of coffee before speaking up.

“Hey.”

She paused for a moment, looking the other girl up and down, eyes glancing at her open handbag for a moment, her belongings tossed hither and thither.

“You’re looking pretty cool right now. New fashion trend I missed or something?”

Bill walked along the park path, his wireless earbuds on blasting Carpenter Brut's Trilogy album. It was another repeat but a comforting one. He always needed something energetic when it came to his walks, and the brut delivered. All the while, his eyes occasionally glanced down to his phone to check his messages on discord.

It was a habit at this point, one that he struggled to break.

The day was bright and warm, which was not how Bill liked the weather. It was always better whenever it was cloudy with a breeze, so one could hear the trees flutter with the wind. Nonetheless, he went on his walk, a routine was a routine, and he knew what would happen if he stopped for whatever reason.

For that reason, he was clad in a simple drab t-shirt with London written on it. It was colored black, and it had a somewhat faded image of the Tower of London on it. For pants, he went with the usual blue jeans.

It wasn't long before he wandered off the path and decided to walk by an area of the park where few people were around. It made it less awkward when he would stop in his tracks to check his phone.

Which, coincidentally, he decided to do. Again.

After seeing, yet again, that he had no new messages, he sighed and put his phone back in his pocket. His focus was now back on his walk for a few minutes before the habit would kick back in. That was until he noticed the two girls nearby. One of them sat by a tree, and the other stood around with a coffee in her hand. He tried to remember their names; before he saw something was with the sitting girl's face.

Did someone scribble on her face? Do people still do that crap?

Bill found himself standing there, a bit away from the pair looking at the sitting girl. Her belongings were scattered on the ground before an open handbag.

Just like in a new game running on an old pc, two people suddenly plopped into Daenerys' view.

One was some dude she remembered from school, putting away his smartphone.

The other was Aba Lastname, a girl from her class. She was holding a coffee and looking at Daenerys like some zoo animal before asking a question dripping with sarcasm that told Daenerys everything she needed to know.

They were the culprits. And they even filmed it for shit and giggles.

Daenerys had two thirds of a mind to call them out, but forced herself not to. Without a doubt, making a scene would be what these jerks wanted her to do. She was not going to give them this satisfaction.

"Thanks. And yes, it has been all the rave lately." She answered instead, feigning cluelessness.

"By the way, isn't it a bit too late for the wake-up-brew?"

Looked like another dude had rolled up to watch the carnival.

Ada glanced at him over the rim of her glasses, taking another deep drink from her cardboard cup as she did so. The guy was named something like ‘Bill’ if she remembered right, which was honestly every bit as bad a name as Daenerys, just on the other end of the spectrum. Bill was the name she expected to be attached to, like, a 40 year old building contractor or a retired postman, that sorta person. Not some scrawny string-bean her age, with a Guy Fawkes mask t-shirt and eardrum-bursting music erupting from his earbuds.

He wasn’t a bad guy though, by all accounts. And in all honesty, neither was Daenerys. But they had their own circles, and she had hers. They hadn’t grown close together while growing up, so she was real doubtful they’d grow close now. It was whatever. It was just how the world worked. They could have been the nicest people on the planet, and they could have been the perfect complements to Ada herself, but the time to discover that was now way gone, and there was an invisible wall between her and them that they’d all just have to live with.

She narrowed her eyebrows just a fraction as she looked back down at Daenerys, who was very nicely proving her exact point, real generous for someone who looked like a clown in a blender. There was no such thing as a ‘wake-up’ brew in Ada’s world. There was the first cup, and there was the last cup, and then there was however many brews in-between it took to power her through whatever bullshit the day aimed at her. Never less than two, not even on the most absolute perfect of days. Common knowledge, honestly, if you spent any time at all around her.

“Girl, this is like, my third cup of the day,” Ada replied, voice muffled by the plastic lid hovering an inch away from her mouth. “Can’t wake up what’s already dead inside.”

She drank again, then tilted her head and folded her arms, holding the cup at a 45 degree angle that put it perilously close to spillage territory.

“So, like, did your friends just decide to scrawl all over your face and then ditch you or something? That’s pretty shitty of them, you should get better buddies.”

She glanced sideways at Bill as she said these last couple of words, raising her left eyebrow. Now, odds were that the guy had just been on a casual walk through the park when he’d also stumbled upon the world’s worst face painting attempt, just like Ada had done. But, hey, on the other hand…

“Right, Billy boy?”

Maybe not, y’know?

"Ah."

It was all he could say at that moment. Both of their attention were suddenly on him. He was never good with aknowledgement, positive or otherwise and here he was being given mixed signals by two folks when he'd much rather be on his walk.

But he couldn't walk away at this moment, that would just be awkward. He'd probably find a rock to trip over and roll down a hill into a bush or something.

"Oh. Your friends tagged you?" He said, right hand hanging impulsively over his pocket where he had placed his phone. Whenever he was in a conversation with someone, it was always a struggle to put away his phone for even a second. The FOMO was real, and it got him into some trouble back home with his folks till they made an agreement over his phone usage.

Naturally, the two played stupid. But Daenerys hadn't expect anything else.

However, this quick exchange had given her precious information: the boy, Billy, seemed less secure than Ada was, which showed in him saying "Ah" like some sort of weird VTuber and only repeated the thing Ada said in different words. He clearly was the weak link in their criminal duo.

Now it was time to press on. With slow steps, Daenerys approached the boy, looking him straight in the eyes the whole time.

"You know, friends is such a stretching word. You think you know people until you realize how few you know about them." She gave a slight smile that stopped shortly below her eyes. "Or how few they know about you."

She now stood right in front of Billy, way closer than most folk would be comfortable. But that too was on purpose.

"Like for example, you have no idea what I do to people who think they can just draw on my face. Especially to people who do so and try to hide it. Do you wanna know?" Her tone became colder as she spat out the last few words.

Ada gave a wry smile as Daenerys got to her feet, unfolding her arms to take another sip from her cup and fixing the other girl with her withering gaze, eyes looking over the rim of her glasses. Here we go. She’d seen this entire scene play out time and time again, always with the same end result. Someone would get pissed off at some shit Ada said or did (or in this case, was presumed to have done), and they’d try and take it out on her there and then in order to, she didn’t know, try and prove a point or something? Which never worked, ‘cause all it ‘proved’ was that they were just a child who couldn’t be bothered to resolve conflicts privately, and always caused a scene, ‘cause they could never take even a fraction of what they were dishing out. Again, like a child.

But no. This occasion was different. Looked like Little Miss Daughter of Dragons had decided to bite down hard on the bait that Ada had half-heartedly dangled over the side of the ship. Like, seriously, all she’d done had been to raise an eyebrow and suggest that maybe, possibly, this probably-totally-innocent boy had played a part in the face vandalisation, and apparently that’d been enough to make Daenerys stomp over towards him like she was about to spew fire in his face. Or whatever the Daenerys from the show did, Ada didn’t know and she really didn’t give a shit either.

She watched the telenovela in front of her unfold, the only sign of a reaction coming from another raised eyebrow. Daenerys was really getting all up in this guy’s grill, pretty uncomfortably so; Ada was pretty sure she could see flecks of spit land on Bill’s face, which was pretty fucking gross. She didn’t intervene, though, and didn’t really think she’d need to either. Obviously if it looked like Daenerys was gonna do something real dumb then she’d step in to knock some sense into her, but as far as she could tell, the girl was either running on blind rage, or she was just pretty slow. All mouth, no action, same old goddamn story.

“I wanna know,” Ada piped up, voice half-drowned by another deluge of coffee. “For the record.”

No harm poking the bear when it was missing its claws, right?

Daenerys was clearly mad, as one would be if someone had spent time tagging their face in their sleep. But things started getting weird when she stepped closer and closer to Bill, talking all the while about what she'd do to someone who was, say, lying. Or something along those lines.

She was keeping eye contact the whole time, and Bill could only find it deeply uncomfortable. Some people were so insistent on keeping that sort of thing going that it felt like they were looking through his head. Reading his mind and all that. No thank you.

He wanted to look away from her, but he figured she'd get madder if he did since something had already gotten to her.

Then she forewent all of that and just got in his face and... Whoa! Ok, she was spitting in his face. Bill could handle the close contact, uncomfortable as it was, but spitting? Dear lord no. What if it got in his mouth? Just the thought made him want to vomit.

The girl on the side was adding to the whole thing. Bill did not like this. Not one bit.

"H-hey, wait up, what're you getting at? That I did it?"

The boy was clearly losing his shit. Good.

Ada on the other hand seemed less impressed. That annoyed Daenerys. how long was this girl continuing to play stupid?

She turned in Ada's direction to answer the question. But in the middle of the turn, her eyes fell upon a bush she had paid little notice before and she saw them.

Three young boys, maybe in fifth grade, ducked inside a terrible hiding spot that only children would judge to be sufficient. The one in the middle was holding a smartphone in the direction of the three highschoolers. This boys were among the group that played on the basketbal court when Daenerys arrived, but that didn't matter right now. What mattered that seeing the three, several dots instantly connected inside Daenerys' brain.

Her face became a mask of sheer anger.

The faces of the three kids became pictures of fear as they realized they were caught. Then they bolted off.

Daenerys ran after them.

"COME BACK YOU LITTLE SHITS!!!"

---

Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?
Who put me down at the fresh end of the food chain?

You are now entering the harmonic realm...

---

Some time later, Daenerys would return to collect her belongings, a satisfied smirk on her still painted face.

Neither Ada nor Bill would ever see any of the boys again.

((Daenerys "D" Todd continued elsewhere))

Would you look at that. Seemed as though a group of pintsized pranksters had been the culprits all along, and their little scheme had just gotten rumbled.

Shame, really. She’d been enjoying herself, watching Daenerys totally flip out over something as tiny as having Sharpie scrawled over her face (like, seriously, girl? Not a huge deal, and if you didn’t have a pack of wet wipes in your bag at all times that was your own goddamn problem), and Bill squirming and freaking out over something that he knew he wasn’t guilty of. Eh, well, all good things, yadda yadda.

And hey, it wasn’t like this revelation had been disappointing either, far from it. Ada let out a loud, harsh laugh as dragon-girl raced after the terror trio, yelling black and blue murder at a group of kids less than half her age. She wondered when DD would realise there was still scribble all over her face. Not for a while, she wagered; girl really didn’t seem like the brightest bulb on the christmas tree. She was making a damn fine job of ensuring this whole scene would get immortalised forever; Ada could see a couple other bystanders holding their phones up, recording the whole event.

Damn, maybe crippling embarrassment just ran in the family or something. Parents with naming their kid after some fantasy bitch, Daenerys herself with, well, everything she’d done after waking up from her little sunshine nap.

“Well, that was fun,” Ada said, turning back to face Bill, voice dry as ever, although the smile on her face showed exactly how she felt about what she’d just seen. She took another sip from her cardboard cup, and that smile real quickly turned to a grimace. Yeah, this shit was definitely amateur hour. Last couple mouthfuls, and it was nothing but sugar and caramel syrup in an overpoweringly sickly sweet fusion. This shit wasn’t difficult, but some baristas made the art of coffee-making seem as arcane and impossible as goddamn alchemy.

“How you holding up, Billy?” She continued. “Girl really had it out for you, huh? You look like you need to run home for a change of clothes.”

Bill did not know how long he stood there, getting spittle on him from the raging fire in front of him. He did not know how to quench the flames; they kept going at him. How was he going to get out of this? Daenerys did not believe him, and spectator over there was fanning the flames like it was a sport. Because of this and the heat, Bill could feel sweat trickle down his back.

Dammit, he did not need this right now.

He reached down and pulled at his shirt a bit to his side, taking quick breaths as he pondered what to do.

And then, suddenly, the crazy girl turned and chased after a pack of kids. Bill stared wide-eyed at this fucked up display. What in hell just happened.

Well, first things first, he could not stay here in case crazy came back and it was bett-

Spectator talked to him.

He turned his head towards her, thinking of what to say in response as his right hand reached to his face and he could feel the specks leftover from Danerys.

"For you, probably. You did not get spit in your face." He said taking deep breaths and wiping at his face with his hands, after a bit Bill finally said.

"A-anyway, what was that all about?"

Ada ignored Bill’s question for the moment, choosing instead to scrunch up her nose in mild disgust and roll her eyes. Did nobody in her goddamn class carry personal hygiene equipment around except for her? Nobody at all? Wet wipes, hand sanitiser, even just a travel pack of Kleenex? Just her? Even after that whole ‘global pandemic’ thing? Cool. Great to know.

“Jesus, Billy, don’t wipe it off like that, come on, dude.” She tutted, sticking her hand into her shoulder bag, continuing to speak without glancing up from the organised chaos inside her bag. “What, you think spit’s gonna be less gross on your hand than on your face or something?”

Guys were the worst when it came to this sorta thing, seriously. The amount of times she’d seen dudes heading to school without even bringing a bag with them was beyond goddamn infuriating. Yeah, whatever, most of them didn’t need to bring a bunch of spare pads with them in case of an emergency, big deal, were they all really that confident they could make it through the day without spilling shit down their front? That they could control the weather and stop a sudden downpour from happening? Society had graced them with the gift of deep-ass pockets, and all they kept in there was their phone and their wallet? Come on, now.

“Here,” Ada said, sighing, handing a small packet of tissues over towards Bill. “Take the whole thing if you want, I’ve got spares.”

She took a brief look around herself, checking to see if there was a trash can nearby, cause she sure as hell wasn’t gonna be drinking the rest of this sludge. Nothing in sight, but it didn’t look like Daenerys was coming back anytime soon, either. It would be real easy to just slip the cup into her bag, but, eh, what would be the point? It would be insanely obvious who had done it, and it wouldn’t even be that funny, either.

“As for what that nonsense was about, eh, girl’s named after some fantasy bullshit,” Ada said, shrugging. “Probably got a complex about it, whole heap of unidentified neuroses, that sorta stuff, if you’re named after a princess or a knight or whatever then I guess you don’t like being made to look dumb as hell.”

She cracked her neck, rolling it along her shoulders.

“Probably also shouldn’t stick around here much longer either. Doubt she’ll be in a better mood after being pranked by a bunch of toddlers.”

"Uhm, thanks. Really." He said as he took the tissues and started to clean up the spittle left by the crazy girl. It gave him the heebie jeebies with this kind of stuff, especially if it was from someone else, made his back freeze and his hands shake.

It made him feel useless, well, more useless than he already was.

"Uh, yeah, definitely." Bill said in response to spectator's comment about getting out of there before she got back. In a way, he did feel bad that someone was messing with her like that, but then she got up in his face and kind of spat all over it so, a bit of cancelling out there.

If he saw her again, it'd be better to keep a low profile. Not like that was hard for Bill.

"Well! See you around!" He forced out with a wave before quickly turning around and wandering back where he came from with a rigid walk. This whole experience had been mortifying to say the least, he just hoped that the rest of the day would go better.

((William "Bill" Taylor continued elsewhere...))