Jesse had reached the center of the crowd when Aiden popped out from behind someone. Jesse started backwards to avoid body-slamming him by accident (although she was tempted to do it on purpose), making her gold barrette slip down out of place by accident and sent some hair cascading over her right eye. She really needed to get better at fastening it in place, since she now could see almost... nothing.
"Well, if it isn't Team Trashbag!" Aiden mocked as Jesse tried to look around him, but failing as he moved to block her vision, "How's your stupid pig?"
The moment he said the last two words, Jesse felt her blood boil, then freeze in anger. Her fists clenched, and she reached up to her left eye instinctively to shove her hair out of her face.
"I heard that intense heat causes brain-" Aiden cut himself off, eyes widening and freezing stock-still as his mouth hung open. For once, the condescending, brown-haired bully was absolutely speechless.
Jesse was glaring at him, but since only her left eye was showing, it was glowing blood-red, casting faint shadows over parts of her face. Combine with the malevolent glare she was sending him, Aiden was incredibly lucky that looks couldn't kill, because if they could, he'd be decapitated on the floor. "I don't know how," Jesse snarled, taking a step towards him and making him step back, "I don't know when-" Another step forward and back. "But someday, far into the future, when you're least expecting it," and her face was only a few inches from his, "we WILL get our revenge."
"Whoa, whoa, I-I was just joking! Jeez," Aiden whimpered a bit, cringing away from the one-eyed glare Jesse was sending him.
Jesse adjusted her hair so it was in the style it had been in before encountering Aiden, still glowering at him. "Yeah? Well, I wasn't." And with that, she shoved him out of the way and kept walking. Jesse was a pretty nice person, but try to hurt any person she cared about and you were dead to her. Probably worse than that, actually.
The black-haired person was talking to some other people, and Jesse had to watch them for another minute. Yes, their outfit definitely seemed off.
She walked forward and tapped the person on the shoulder, with a quiet, "Um... excuse me?"
The person turned around, to reveal it was actually just a woman who looked remarkably like Ivor from the back. "Yes?"
"Ah, sorry- you just looked like someone I was looking for," Jesse said, feeling immensely relieved that she hadn't just up and confronted the woman.
"Oh. Okay." And she turned away.
Jesse was relieved, but disappointed at the same time. The only lead she had, and it didn't even turn out to be the right person...
Suddenly, a loud squealing rang out through the area, and her head snapped around, in the direction of the squeal. "Reuben?" she called out, hopefully.
She started walking in the direction of the squeal as a butcher (seriously, who sells pork chops at a convention?) called, "Pork chops! Fresh off the bone!" And, to Jesse's incredible horror, he pulled Reuben out and set him on the counter. "Nothing quite like a juicy pork chop!" And, to Jesse's even more acute horror, he pulled out an axe.
"Reuben!" the desperate scream that tore itself out of her throat came quite unprompted, but as she ran towards the booth it was the first thing that came to mind.
Her pig whipped to her with a desperate squeal, and the butcher glared at her. "What's the big idea? I'm trying to run a business here!"
Jesse's fists clenched. "That's my pig!" she snapped at him.
"Oh really?" the butcher asked in a voice that really just wanted to make Jesse hit him, "well I found him out in the woods, so I think that makes him MY pig."
Jesse took a deep breath to calm down. She did NOT need to pulverize some innocent guy (even if he was about to butcher Reuben) and get herself kicked out of Endercon. "Please?" she asked, a bit desperately, "he's my friend."
The butcher's expression seemed to soften a little bit, as he glanced at Reuben. "To me, he's inventory. I... might be amenable to some kind of trade," he hinted.
Jesse bit her lip, before finally pulling out her stone sword. "All I've got is this sword..."
The butcher's eyes lit up, and he lowered his axe. "Oh... that's very nice. With this I could cut my butchering time in half."
He hesitated, before knocking Reuben off the counter over to Jesse's side, and taking the sword from her grip. "Nice doing business with you!" he called after her as Jesse scooped Reuben up and started walking away.
"I am so sorry, Reuben," she said softly to her pig, "I should never have let you run off in the woods."
Reuben grumbled a little bit, but nuzzled into his female owner. Jesse finally set him down when she saw Olivia, and jogged over to her friend before tapping her on the shoulder. The dark-skinned engineer turned to look at her, and Jesse said, softly, "Hey. You know that thing I had to do earlier? Long story short, he cheated Petra on a deal, and now we're trying to track him down. You in?"
Olivia grinned at her a bit, brown eyes sparkling with interest. "Oh, I'm in all right."
"Did you find him?" Petra asked, racing up to them with Axel hot on her heels.
Jesse huffed a bit and glanced off. "Nah, I thought I saw him earlier, but it was a false alarm wait there he is!" she blurted, pointing. Automatically, she had to make the pointy bumps curl in on themselves again.
Everyone looked. Ivor was at the entrance to the keynote, panting. He glanced backwards, but didn't seem to spot them, before rushing into the keynote.
"We have to follow him!" and the whole group raced over to the usher. He gave them a look that just seemed really bored. Honestly, Jesse would be bored too, if she had that job all day.
Jesse grinned sheepishly at him. "Um... hi. What would it take... for us to get inside tonight?" And smiled pleadingly.
The usher blinked. "Uh... tickets..." and then he started laughing, as if it were funny. Honestly, it wasn't that funny...
"So, uh, here's the thing," Jesse said, crossing her hands behind her back, "we had tickets, but then we lost them."
"Oh man," the usher said, sympathetically, "that sucks man, I hate when that happens."
"I know!" Jesse agreed, a bit too enthusiastically, "I feel like such an idiot."
The usher winced at her apologetically. "I'm sorry, but... no tickets, no show."
Suddenly, a chicken fluttered out of nowhere- probably escaped from some machine someplace. The usher cowered away, shrieking, "Chiiiiiicken! Chicken! Chicken!"
The chicken wandered away, and the usher panted, straightening back up. "I-it's okay, it's gone, you're a totally cool dude," he whimpered slightly, before turning back to face Jesse. "Sorry, brah."
The four of them walked away and gave each other a look that basically said, "Okay, what the heck are we supposed to do now?"
"How are we going to get past him now?" Olivia hissed, glancing at the usher.
"I could get past him. Just need a little wind-up room," Axel suggested.
Jesse let out a laugh, eyes widening. "Haha, no." Her gaze rose, and a small smile formed on her face. "What we need, is a distraction."
Petra turned to see what Jesse was looking at, her own face sporting a mischievous grin, "A bunch of chickens running around might be a distraction."
"And the usher's afraid of chickens!" Axel exclaimed, dark gray eyes lighting up.
Jesse felt her mischievous grin grow to beauty-pageant proportions, "What would you say... if I said I wanted to break this guy's chicken machine to create the mother of all distractions?"
A/N: Did you know that if you do nothing with the butcher, Reuben will beat him up? For the purposes of this story, I didn't do it, but it's really funny if you can find that gif.
Annnnd another cliffhanger. I am Queen of the Cliffhangers (not really xD) ! Bow down to me!
DemonCatLady: Thanks! i'm glad you're looking forward to it.
angelwings: Hehehe. And I feel like my readers are reading my mind.
NinjaCat: (winks) That shall be revealed in good time.
Gamerwhogames: Glad you think so! By the way are you on Quotev as well?
EchoWolfWinds: Yep! And thanks, although I tend to not partner with people because it doesn't work out all that well with different writing styles and all that. Thanks for the offer, though. And thanks, I'm glad to see people like this story :)
x.X. A.L. X.x
