Disclaimer: I own nothing! NOTHING! Dang it!
A/N: Eh. I apologize in advance for any spelling or grammatical lapses. I was on a high - sugar high :P
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Every Little Thing
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Ignorance is This
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'Have you ever seen a chameleon change color?'
Cat Valentine's presence is actually a very refreshing element in everyday life, especially if you're one stressed student of Hollywood Arts.
Tori Vega looks up from the already slurring words on the research entry she is holding. For six hours now, the only things that had been set on their dining table were books and papers about old English theatre and renaissance art entries.
Robbie and Cat had been helping her since after dinner and it was now as late – or early – as three in the morning. Tori was initially determined to do her homework by herself when the duo practically raided her house bringing frozen yoghurt. The rationale behind it? She didn't really bother knowing. She was fine with Cat just being sweet as she is and Robbie maybe looking for excuses to spend the night with the redhead.
Cat was fumbling with the petals of the flowers decorating the table, while Robbie was officially knocked out cold on the couch.
The youngest Vega blinks a few times, her facial expression as blank as her mind. She opens her mouth to answer but ends up sighing and removing the crimson, oval, thin-rimmed glasses off the bridge of her nose. She had started wearing reading glasses since the inception of her stress for the accursed class.
'I'm sorry. What was that?'
'Chameleons,' Cat repeated, still equally cheery as the first time she asked the question. 'Have you ever seen them change?'
'Um,' Tori's brow furrows, thinking that Cat could actually say the most intriguing and philosophical things.
No.
She was never really curious enough to find a chameleon and gawk at it until it changed color. She slightly shudders as a part of her brain equated it to staring at a person while he or she dressed.
'No, Cat. I haven't actually seen one apart from…the one in Tangled, I guess?'
Cat, whose face was behind the flower vase, tilts her head to get the other girl in view. She blinks a few times and almost looked as if this information saddened her.
'Haven't you ever wondered how it actually looked like?'
Tori would usually feel rather bothered by this kind of curiosity. She would supposedly find this rather pointless but she actually stops thinking about anything homework-related.
She sighs.
Chameleons camouflage themselves by replicating the tint of their environment. This is common knowledge. Perhaps this was why she never bothered knowing more about it. Or maybe, just like eighty percent of the world's population would think, it had nothing to do with her.
Cat could make the very intriguing things actually surface in people's heads if they only paid more attention to the things she said and not shrug her off as just weird – or, like most guys and even girls would do, discreetly gawk at her features.
Tori sets her glasses on the table and looks around a little as she contemplated a little more on the Chameleon predicament.
As basic as the knowledge about the Chameleons are, it is also a very basic knowledge that people never really bother to know about things that had nothing to do with them, unless it was something very major like a presidential death or something as cheesy as the greatest proposal ever made. It's almost tragic.
Just like Victoria Vega's knowledge about Jadelyn West.
Tori grips the coffee mug she set on the table earlier. It was cold now.
She actually feels disappointed. It occurred to her that she didn't really know anything about the phenomenon that is Jade West apart from her being Beck's girlfriend, mean, intelligent and, in fact, really attractive. Maybe if she had been more attentive she wouldn't find it too hard to deal with the suddenly most complex person in her life lately. The clock on Tori's Pearphone now indicates three o' five and this finalizes that their last interaction was three days and fifteen hours ago.
'Tori?'
Cat looked concerned. She gives Tori that little kitty cat face that can melt anyone.
'I'm fine,' Tori sips from her coffee and immediately regrets it. It was cool and it tasted like bitter water since the ground coffee must have settled at the bottom of the mug now. 'I was just thinking that I never really paid attention.'
Cat beams and lightly giggles.
'About the Chameleons?' the redhead asks.
Tori returns the smile out of relief over anything. By asking about Chameleons, Cat actually gave her an idea on how to begin fixing the whole Jade predicament. It had been really bothersome how she couldn't figure out why she was even bothered by the frozen relationship she had with Jade (of all people). If she knew a little more about Jade, she could at least do a better job trying to reconstruct whatever it is she had with the other girl.
'Yes, Cat,' Tori lightly sniggers, feeling silly about her ignorance, 'about the Chameleons.'
Cat's eyes brightened all of a sudden and she transfers to the seat closer to Tori.
'Maybe we can search for a video about it on Splash Face!'
Tori attempts to maintain her smile. She looks more like she was stretching her lips than she was smiling now. She nods with much effort.
'Yay!' Cat grabs for the closed Pearbook at the other end of the book and hastily sets it up. 'I feel smart!'
The internet proves its convenience for the billionth time in Tori's life. She can clear up her ignorance over Chameleons through Splash Face and that's when it hits her that the internet can bring her convenience for the billionth and first time. If the Chameleons had Splash Face, Jade, almost naturally, would have The Slap.
Tori practically squeezes Cat all of a sudden.
One Cat Valentine proved really helpful tonight, but she'd be flawlessly helpful if she slept immediately after the Chameleon video. Jade's profile is waiting.
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Trina Vega literally got Tori out of bed at around six thirty in the morning. With all the books and papers sprawled on their table downstairs, it was obvious that her younger sister had little to no sleep.
She wasn't in a good mood really. She had to eat breakfast on the kitchen counter because of Tori's stuff, she had to shake Tori out of her sleep, she was taking TORI and two of her friends to school and she was going to be late because of TORI. Yes. Today is very Torey.
She wasn't as forgiving that she didn't allow the younger Vega to apply her usual make-up. Tori had to live through today with just lip gloss and eyebags – well, until she decided she'd cover the bags-under-her eyes part with eyeglasses.
At Sikowitz's class, the students chatted along, waiting for the bell to ring and seconds after it did, a half-Latina, a bipolar redhead and a ventriloquist practically busted through the door and scrambled for their seats.
Tori frowns upon noticing the front seat taken. She loved that.
Cat had taken the one by the window and Robbie just claimed the one close to the door. Tori purses her lips and looks around for a vacant seat. It didn't take long for her to locate one - but the thing is… It's. Right. Beside. Jade. West.
The youngest Vega takes a deep breath as if to collect her confidence and only releases it after taking the seat. Jade seems she intended to keep up the cold-shoulder drama as she does nothing to acknowledge her seatmate's presence.
It was fine with Tori really. After all, a couple of video profiles doesn't make her the Jade expert.
Just then, their weird-ball of a teacher dove in through his usual entrance – the window.
'TODAY!' he exclaims, making the front row of students jump, 'we will talk about action!'
But really, he didn't have to say it. He got everyone at hello.
'Yay-' Cat says as she claps her hands.
'No, Cat!' Sikowitz interrupts, 'Whoa is the right word. We will analyze what makes people say it with unsaturated conviction!'
'Oh,' Cat looks up for a second, let out an elongated "whooooaaaaa" and giggles. 'I'm witty.'
Sikowitz blinks at Cat a couple of times before looking around the room. He stops at Tori's direction and tilts his head as if his vision would become clearer if he bent his neck at an even more awkward angle.
'Are you in my class?'
'Uh, Sikowitz, it's me,' Tori tentatively responds, right eye twitching. Sikowitz twitches an eye back at her. 'Uh, Tori?'
'No, I'm not Tori. I teach this class,' he says, staying in that weird position for almost a minute, which only made things even more awkward for Tori…and the rest of the class. 'But go ahead and sit in and if you do know Tori Vega, tell her she's making this class up.'
Tori sighs in genuine hopelessness as Sikowitz begins the discussion. She slumps in her chair and rests her chin on her palm. This should be the part where she would begin doodling on her notebook to let her misery seep out, but she doesn't. By slumping and giving into morning frustration, she notices Jade turn her head a little toward her direction.
If she had thought before she did anything else, she wouldn't actually turn to Jade. Hah! According to research, lack of sleep actually kills off brain cells – a significant number of them. Thus, Tori Vega meets Jade's gaze at a whole awkward minute.
Jade parts her lips ever so slightly, while Tori blinks like it would help her understand what was going on.
The dark-clad girl looked from Tori's glasses, scans her from head to toe, but turns back her attention to Sikowitz just like that.
Pride.
Tori turns ahead, but her thoughts obviously lingered elsewhere.
That was one thing among others that Tori deduced about Jade. The girl had the pride of a lion. Based on her hate videos, her hate videos and, yeah, her hate videos, she'd rather pick on the slightest thing she didn't like about you than appreciate your most obvious likable trait.
Jade's hands are suddenly busy with curves and hard strokes of black ink to the back page of her notebook.
Boredom.
Tori's peripheral vision allows her to notice as much as Jade's discreetly moving hand. She raises an eyebrow with the observation. The other girl may not be the most animated person in Hollywood Arts, but she gets bored easily – then again, it was very hard to please her as well.
Probably a little too entranced by the number of conclusions and confirmations she is making out of Jade West, she hasn't really noticed how her head was now turned rather obviously towards the paler girl.
Jade's hand stops. She takes a deep breath and sets her pen down. She turns her attention on the ground at Tori's feet. She is obviously not amused by the youngest Vega's attention directed at her. But nevertheless, she isn't too sure how to react.
Last night, and the two nights before it, was nothing but pain. She was even more bothered that it wasn't the kind of pain she found enjoyable. So, twenty-four hours before Tori Vega decided to snoop Jade West's profile, she already went over the videos about the half-Latina on TheSlap.
Tentative.
Tori seemed confident and smiley everyday but Jade had her own observations; uncertainty seeped through her façade. This should probably be the reason why she always took the front seat; it would help if she took in as much information smoothly and caught up.
This is actually a theory that Jade had worked to confirm this morning.
She pulls out the little apple green post-it note she had placed on the chair beside her moments ago. She only removed it from the chair a couple of seconds after the school bell rang and Tori came in.
It read: Sit here and you die.
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The gang decided that they wanted to eat elsewhere. Really, Festes grew on them but they just couldn't eat the food he made everyday. This is most definitely why they were now hunched up on the relatively tight cubicle at an Italian restaurant a few blocks away from Hollywood Arts.
'Maybe some of us should move to the next cubicle,' Andre suggests, struggling to pull out his Pearphone from his pocket as he was now a wall-and-Robbie sandwich.
The rest of the gang seconded and Tori, Beck and Jade, who were all closest to the opening stood to transfer to the next cubicle.
Tori, upon noticing who she will be transferring with, sits back down almost immediately. 'Uh, actually I'm fine with the closeness.'
'I don't mind,' Beck says, turning to Jade, who simply turns her attention to her suddenly interesting nails. 'Do you?'
'Dumb question.'
It was an answer as unclear as the source of Sinjin's shirt stains, but Tori, with a sigh, finally moves to sit on the bench across the other that Jade sets her stuff in.
'Hello,' a waiter greets as he pulls out a little notepad and a pen out of his pocket. 'Orders?'
'I'll have pasta,' Jade tells Beck, who skims through the menu.
'She'll have seafood, I'll have Alfredo,' Beck decides.
The waiter then turns to Tori, who seems consumed by something. She initially opens her mouth but then she looks from the waiter to Jade.
'What?'
It didn't sound like her usual snap that was exclusive for Tori but there was a hint of annoyance.
Tori remembered Jade's hate video from last night. Having the tail still on shrimps will infuriate her. No doubt there – seeing how she narrated her little fit at the restaurant Beck had taken her out on a date to one night.
Really, Beck was a cool guy and a really nice boyfriend, but Tori was just the little perfectionist. She could keep details in mind like he couldn't. This is probably why she got Beck in trouble with Melinda after correcting the diva about her friend's line.
'Um,' Tori began, 'will the seafood pasta have shrimps in it?'
The waiter's eyebrows shoot up like he had just heart the most stupid question in the world. Jade would have taken the opportunity to insult, not because it was Tori but because the question was indeed stupid. However, Tori follows the question up.
'-but of course it would,' she runs a hand on her face and smiles awkwardly, 'Could you probably pull the shrimp tails off?'
'Uh,' the waiter began scribbling as he nodded. 'So it would be two seafood pastas and an Alfredo?'
'No, no. That was for her,' Tori tilts her head at Jade's direction, 'I'll have pesto.'
Jade's tongue almost folded impossibly in her mouth. Her natural reflex was to insult and she just couldn't afford to have it functioning now. She almost felt little, but Tori offers her a smile and she knew, she isn't actually alone in this little observation stint.
Beck felt the wobbling tension. His eyes darted from Tori to Jade and Jade to Tori. He was confused enough not to feel useless over not keeping Jade's preference regarding shrimps in mind.
Tori breaks the staring game and begins to fumble with the condiments in front of her. Jade's expression fell somber, actually even touched.
'A little nosy, aren't we, Vega?' she says to break the ice.
Tori looks up and for the first time in her life, she feels thankful that Jade insulted her. She shakes her head and smiles with one that would probably last the entire lunch period.
Ignorance, turns out, is a very temporary bliss.
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A/N: THANK YOU CHAMELEONS! By watching a chameleon video on discovery channel I finally got my mind back into things. Thanks for reading and I'm waiting for the LOVE!(reviews) :D HAHA! NO, NO, MOMMY! I'M NOT DESPERATE!
Project HeeeeWhy thank you, dear. Nope, it isn't too "nooby" for me. A review makes my heart happy And I'm even happier that I'm not alone with the research thing. haha! high five yo!
Pinklady5751 Thank you! Haha! I knew it! I knew there was really something very familiar about Avan's features.
DramaHunny101Thanks much. I try to be patient with the development and with writing their character behavior. Because the moment I give in to my impatience, one of them will definitely break character. Thanks so much for reading and REVIEWING of course.
Black-Love-With-M.MOh, I will most definitely keep it going thanks!
AlphaTeam101Haha! I love this! You got me. It's actually what I had in mind because I really find Jade just a little childish although she seems wise. Thank you, thank you dear
BabyDavidHehe, thanks! I'm glad you liked the previous chapters, I hope I don't disappoint you with this. I try very hard to be consistent.
southofnowherefanaticAhaha, gosh, you made my heart flutter the moment I read the review. I hope I didn't and wouldn't disappoint you.
xXLordOfInglipsXxOh, you. That's happiness you have given me as well. Thanks much But you know what they say, feedback (review) lead us to the right path. Hehe.
" " you know, I had a hard time thinking about how to address your username. haha! but thanks so much for the review. you are one very witty fellow my friend.
Dani2606Thanks so much for the review. Hehe. You made me feel like the work pays off. I'm glad you understand how I want it to seem like. AND YES! A JOOOOORI episode will be EPIC! I'm really happy about the reading between the lines thing they do on Nick but *sigh* don't think my wish to watch one Jori episode would happen.
Little Miss Charlie AHehe. I don't usually stalk but I feel honored to have you read and review the fic. After all, you inspired me. Yep! I'll keep Andre in check and I'll probably do a little more research about the guy. Yeah…tenses are just nuts. I really have issues with it. Thanks again, I'll try to be more careful with it
AliasSpyCrazy That, my friend, is so true, Jori is a very difficult platform but it makes people produce really awesome fics. It's very complex pairing because of the unpredictability of their relationship. BAH! What am I saying? I just love them. Thanks for the review P.S. loved you new fic! ;) I'll make a review as soon as my brain is a little less numb.