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After a sharp squeak, Fredegund's hands were over her mouth. On top of her books was a spider. On the floor was the tray with her lunch. All she did was leave her books on the table so she could get some food and somehow, when she returned, there was a big spider on her belongings.
The spider turned to face her.
Oh gosh, was it looking at her? Or was it just reacting to the loud sound she made?
"Um..."
Of all times she wished her ability applied to bugs... In a consistent manner, at least.
"May you... Please..."
She didn't want to squash it. But it was admittedly frightening...
"Mr. or Ms. Spider... May you get off... My books?"
A napkin found itself carefully slide under the spider. It attempted to scurry off, but a big meaty hand came down on its side as a deterring wall. Having trapped it, the napkin was slowly lifted, every measure taken to not hurt the spider.
Josh didn't want to take his eyes off of his task but gave a nod over to the girl who had just lost her lunch in recognition. "Heeeere we go, lil' guy... or, uh, girl. Who knows. Probably a girl though, she's a big 'un. Aren'tcha?" He carefully lifted the napkin with the spider on it, taking slow, calculated steps towards the closest window of the cafeteria.
Josh positioned his napkin all the way through the window and then shook it lightly. The spider's grip seemed to be a bit much, and it was starting to move again, so he settled for simply letting the napkin drop and flutter the several feet to the ground.
"Theeeere we go. Yeah, uh," Josh pulled his arms back inside. "My mom's petrified of spiders and she'd always try to have me kill 'em. I like 'em, though, so I just put them outside n' hoped they wouldn't come back in. After all, kill all the spiders, n' who eats all the mosquitos and wasps?"
"There were toooons of spiders back home," Josh said in agreement.
He backed away from the window, dusting his hands off. A symbolic gesture more than anything seeing as they weren't actually dirty, but it felt like the right thing to do after completing a job. He looked back to the tray on the floor.
"I'll say. I'unno why people are scared of them, but I won't fault ya for it. Do you, uh, need more money for lunch?" Josh shrugged. "I usually eat off campus, so I'm not sure if you guys actually have to pay for this stuff or not."
"Oh my... My home is often kept so clean that it's not often that I see bugs inside. Not to imply that where you're from is dirty, of course."
She meant it in a way that there wouldn't be any calm places for spiders to spin any webs. She follows Josh's gaze to the tray on the floor. Hmm... What is the proper etiquette for this situation... He was so kind to offer, so she didn't want turn it down, but her parents would scold her for appearing poor enough to have taken pity on. But this wasn't pity, and her parents weren't here. Not to mention, she didn't want to take advantage of her rescuer when she had more than enough to help herself. An idea springs to her mind.
"Thank you, but its alright. If anything, I should return the favor somehow. What would you like? My treat."
Josh wasn't the kind of person to offend quickly. As such, the girl's comment elicited the raising of an eyebrow, but nothing else before she elaborated on it. It seemed pretty obvious that the quantity of spiders near or inside one's home had little to do with the cleanliness of it. Now, rats or cockroaches? THAT could be the indicator of a serious problem.
He could only shake his head in response to the suggestion made by his new friend of sorts. "Nah, I'm all set," he said with a half-grin. "I actually brought leftovers that I was gonna eat in here today before heading back to the library." He reached over and picked up a brown paper bag, shaking it lightly. He had set the bag down earlier, just before grabbing a napkin from the dispenser on the table and retrieving the spider, so even he'd nearly forgotten about it for a moment or so. "Thanks, though! If I'm hungry enough and we're near a food court, I might remember the favor!"
"Josh! ... Uh, Joshua Eichmann," Josh said after a short pause, considering that if she was going to give him her full name, then he should probably reciprocate in kind. The curtsy threw him off though. Was he supposed to copy her? Shake her hand? Bow or something?
Bow. Let's go with bow.
Josh managed a short, slight bow, performing the gesture 'As Seen on Disney's Cinderella' for all intents and purposes. "Nice to meet you, too. Glad I could help you with your eight-legged problem."
"Sure! Easier to pronounce. First time I've ever met a girl named Fred though. Fiiiiirst time for everything, right?" He said it with an easy-going cadence to it, punctuating the sentence with another laugh.
Somewhere between this sentence and the last, he felt he had made things awkward. Darn. Well, if that wasn't a talent of his, he didn't know what was. "At any rate, we need to get you another lunch. I can wait here at the table, if you want."
"Right! Maybe one day you'll meet a Winnifred who doesn't want to be called Winny. Then you'll have met your second!"
She relaxed at the topic change.
"I'll be right back then, Josh!"
Off she goes to get what she spilled on the floor, leaving her bag in Josh's care. Poking out would be the spines of textbooks in different languages, though one of them looks like it's about systems and codes. Advanced stuff for someone so young. She returns with her salad and juice.
"So aside from capturing spiders, what else do you do?"
Josh took the opportunity to finally take a seat. With all the excitement, he had practically forgotten that it was lunch time. Fortunately, Fred had returned with food and that was enough to jog the boy's memory... if not in his head, then at the very least inside his stomach.
"Do?" Josh remembered those fancy schmancy textbooks he saw peeking out of Fred's bag. Guess whatever she did, she was looking to shoot high in her studies. "Already graduated high school, so you're looking at what I do full-time. Uh, super hero? Super hero in training? Agent? Whatever you feel like callin' it."
Josh snickered at his own misunderstanding. A-doy, everybody here was playing at the superhero gig. As far as his own hobbies, though, nothing was really coming to mind as exceptionally interesting. He figured Fred wouldn't be into roleplaying games, nor would she find 'I play vidjagames!' to be the most riveting thing in the world. It was his turn to accept the change in subject graciously.
"I make walls," Josh said plainly. "Shields, barriers, and the like. I suppose I can make 'em invisible but normally they're like... this greenish color."
Josh looked to the side sheepishly and scratched his nose.
"Not... not quite." There had been some difficulties in getting multiple barriers to play nice with one another. Besides, given that the shields moved with him, trying to build a house with them would be pointless... it would move around when he did! Hell, he wasn't entirely sure how walking on a 'floor' made of his own power would even work. One for the experiments, he supposed.
"But I guess I can do some other pretty cool stuff. Like... not die." He sifted through his paper bag, pulling out a pudding cup. He'd have to grab a spoon from somewhere because, of course, he had forgotten to bring one of his own. "What about you? What've you got up your sleeve?"
"I was... just about to ask about that, actually!" Josh said, pleasantly surprised. He pulled out a ham-and-cheese sandwich next and unwrapped it from its plastic tomb, taking a bite. Normally he'd continue talking straight away, but figured to be in polite enough company that perhaps he should swallow. So he did.
"Back up... ghosts? OBJECTS?" Now, there was a good one. "The animals and plants make sense, but like... you can talk to this table? What kind of things would it say?"
Fred gulps and nods. The ghosts one usually gets people's attention, but it's interesting hearing objects getting the billboard treatment this time.
"So far, I can mainly talk to objects I can hold. Like my helix fossil and a rifle. This table might be too big for me to talk to, but I never really figured out the limits to how much I can hold before I can't talk to it anymore. I mean, I can talk to a tree just fine because it's a plant, but I can't hold those, so what's keeping me from talking to objects that are tree-sized? It's really mysterious."
She looks down at the table, then back up at Josh.
"If I had to guess, based on most conversations with objects, they usually have a lot to say about their purpose. Cups like holding liquids or being drunk out of. Books know their contents and like being read or looked at. This table is probably content with being used as a surface. Alternatively, objects are very aware of the world around them."
Josh placed both elbows on the table (after a moment of thought to consider whether or not the table would appreciate that. He decided to the affirmative) and sat his chin where his palms met his wrists. "Huh," he gave as a short exclamation, figuring out what he could possibly say to follow that up.
"Well, these powers tend to be pret-ty darn mysterious, dont'cha think?" Josh said. "There must be some sorta factor that's making it work the way it does... uh, more like, to keep it from workin' on the things it currently don't. Heck. what you can do doesn't seem like it should be possible according to any logic, so... that's what makes the power 'super'. Somethin' like that."
He hoped what he had just said made some semblance of sense. "Other than that it's not the most complicated power. To talk to animals, you could get that on Wild Thornberrys. Plants, heck, even ghosts... those things got some sorta life... um..." Josh tilted his head, let his eyes drift up. "You know what I meant. Ghosts are s'posed to have brains and plants are alive. Ghosts ain't alive. They're ghosts." He lightly knocked on the table. "So to think you'd have a conversation with an object... even things that were never alive to begin with, like rocks."
Fred nods along and decides she should look up what the Wild Thornberrys are later. Oh you. Toons from before your time. Context clues imply something like Doctor Dolittle though.
"And this is even before languages in non-spoken, coded forms... Very mysterious. Oh, yes! My just as mysterious helix fossil."
She fishes him(?) out of her pocket.
"To this day I'm not sure if I'm talking to the fossil's ghost or the rock it's embedded in, or what. He knows a lot though. Has seen many things. Been with many owners."
She puts the fossil on the table to allow a closer look.
Josh scratched his head. Languages in non-spoken forms? If he 'logic-ed' it hard enough he was sure to wrap his head around the fact that just because she was communicating with a table or a rock or a tree didn't necessarily implicate that it was a true language. Then again, thinking too hard about that sort of stuff made his head hurt. He'd much rather be thinking on the simple, the important: How do they put the little 'm' on M&Ms? Why are nearly all quarterbacks overpaid? Whose bright idea was it to call the position 'tight end'?
Josh stared at the fossil was it was set down on the table. Yep, that was a fossil alright. Fred wasn't kidding about it being helix-shaped, either. It actually reminded him of that Pokemon, the one that kinda looked like a snail. Omanyte? It was a while since he had played the Pokemon series.
"I betcha that if it talks about prehistoric stuff, it's probably the... uh, ghost?" Josh guessed. "But that's a pretty good question, given you can talk to like... sand and whatever that was never alive in the first place."
He leaned in to get a nice, close look, as if there was a tiny engraving somewhere on it that he wanted to read.
"Now that you mention it, I haven't been able to talk to things like sand, or water, or fire before... And I can hold sand and water if I cup my hands... Another mysterious thing."
She looks at the fossil. It does have a funny resemblance to a Pokemon, not that Fred would know. Close, but not too close in resemblance.
"But you do have a point that it's more likely that I'm talking to a ghost. That would just open up more possibilities, now wouldn't it--Non-human ghosts!"
Fred turns the fossil slightly to herself to give it another look, then turns it back towards Josh.