Laundry Day [open]

[haxxor]

Maybe they had a staff to take care of this sort of thing, but Sam had always liked doing her own laundry. Maybe not liked it, actually, but it made sure none of her stuff got subtly removed and thrown out by her sisters or her mom, and it made sure no one poured the non-colorsafe bleach on it and made innocent faces. She knew they did it on purpose. They always did stuff like that to her on purpose, just because she didn't want to look like them. Bitches.

Sam sat on top of the gently humming washer, actually without her laptop for once as she read through the complete collection of Frank Miller's Spider-Man. She'd read it before, of course, but it was one of her favorites. Even though nothing really changed for him, she liked Spider-man. No other superheroes really quipped all that well, and none of them were geeks, really, not even Clark Kent. Peter had more solidarity than the rest. And even though Ultimate Spider-Man was really her favorite, she couldn't just read that one over and over, could she?

Of course not.

Besides, laundry gave her an excuse to sit down long enough to get through the whole thing with enough interruptions that she wouldn't get bored. And she really needed to do laundry. She was down to a blue polo shirt with her high school's crest on the breast pocket, which she thought must have been Joy's at one point. It looked like the sort of thing cheerleaders were supposed to wear on their days off, especially since it didn't cover her belly-button, not even when she pulled it down so far what breasts she had nearly popped out of the open (and buttonless) collar. To compensate, she was wearing about six pounds of mascara and eyeliner and blood-red lipstick and she'd repainted her nails black. She felt weird, even with all that. When her t-shirts got done cycling, she was definitely changing.

Until then, she could only hope that Spider-Man was enough to hide behind. And in truth, it pretty much could cover three-quarters of her torso. Little blessings.

[Blurt]

Blurt was excited. He had found a door he didn't yet know existed; and that was saying something, as he had spent his time thus far at the mansion doing nothing but exploring.

'Exploring,' of course, here meant 'bothering people, getting footprints on the linoleum, and crashing into walls.'

Now he popped his head into a whole new room, which was only full of laundry machines. This would have been a disappointment - no secret tunnel, no Narnia - except for the fact that there was a cool-looking girl sitting on one of them, reading a comic book.

He skidded across the linoleum, looking pleased and totally forgoing introduction. "Spider-Man? Awesome!"

[haxxor]

With reflexes that bordered on precognition but stemmed instead from having lots of siblings, Sam yanked her feet up onto the top of the washing machine and out of the kid's tornadic path, clapping the volume across her chest and stomach for safety. (Of which, she wasn't sure, but hey, it worked.)

"Oh my God, what is your problem?" she shouted shrilly out of sheer conditioning, casting the kid a dirty look. After half a beat's thinking, she realized this was not the proper response, though probably close.

"Whoa," she said, "okay, sorry, reflex. Do you need something?"

[Blurt]

True to the girl's reaction, Blurt slammed into the washing machine, which made a deep ringing sound of protest. "Whoops."

He would have looked sheepish if that was at all a part of his mental processes. Instead he just looked up at the stranger with a pleased look on his face. "Nice reflexes. I don't really have a problem, although my teachers used to call me a problem child, so I think perhaps I AM a problem, but I don't really know what that means." Clearly, he didn't care either. "Oh, I don't need anything. I'm exploring. You're waiting for your laundry. And hiding."

He prodded the comic book covering her stomach. "Clark Kent's got nothing on Peter Parker," he said cheerfully. "Your shirt's too small. Is that why you're hiding?"

[haxxor]

"Aw, crap, you prolly made my load all off-balance," Sam whined from atop the machine, which carried on spinning without the telltale distortion of sound. But if it started thumping, she'd know who to blame.

He talked about a mile a minute. Sam could talk when she really got on something, but it was kind of mind-boggling, even though little kids did tend to talk. But he talked a lot. And fast.

"Ummmm," Sam said slowly. "...Okay."

She let the rest of it sink in.

"My shirt is not too small," she said defensively, extensive eyeliner pulling her glare into cats' eyes. "And it's not my shirt anyway, it's my sisters, so step off. It's laundry day! What do you expect?"

[Blurt]

"How can it get off-balance?" said Topher curiously, eyeing the humming box in front of him. "It's not like standing on one foot or something, it's a machine, isn't it? I mean I can get off-balance -" he demonstrated by standing on one foot and wobbling severely - "but my Playstation doesn't."

"Oh," he replied to the explanation of her shirt. It did make perfect sense. "I don't have any siblings," he said, by way of an excuse.

"Who are you? I'm Topher, but my superhero name is Blurt. You want to see my head?" he adjusted his ever-present beanie proudly.

[haxxor]

"The load gets off-balance. What, have you never done laundry?" Sam asked somewhat snidely. What? She'd done it when she was ten. "Like, when you put all the clothes on one side of the washer, and then when it spins you get a huge lump and the centrifugal force drags the machine all over the room and stuff. My sister used to do it all the time, and once she flooded the basement."

Faith had deserved it, too. God she was dumb.

"I don't have any siblings."

"You're lucky."

"Who are you? I'm Topher, but my superhero name is Blurt. You want to see my head?"

"Sam - and, uh, sure." What was up with his head? "I don't have a superhero name. I couldn't think of one."

She was waiting for the perfect thing to come along, was all. She didn't want to end up with some lame one, like... Blurt. How was that even intimidating?

[Blurt]

Blurt thought about the laundry thing for all of about half a second. "Nope, not really. Sometimes my mom would get mad at me and I'd have to wash my shirts in the sink... That sounds pretty fun though, does the machine really go all over the room?" He looked honestly interested in trying it.

"Isn't Sam a boy's name?" Topher asked her, scrambling up on the dryer next to her. That was pretty okay because the dryer was running and the top was nice and warm. "You couldn't think of a superhero name? How about Freestyle? Or Whizzer? Wait, what do you do?" In the excitement of meeting a new mutant, he forgot all about showing her his head.

Sam's thoughts would have really insulted him if he had been easily insulted. Instead he just pouted momentarily. "Aw come on, mine isn't lame." He thought of something and brightened up. "When I get mad butt-kicking skills, everyone will think my name is cool because they'll all be scared of me. Like Batman. Come on, that's a lame name too."

[haxxor]

"Yeah," she said. "It spits foam and stuff and once it tore the pipe out of the wall. That was, you know, peachy keen."

Especially since she had to fix it. Joy had always argued that Daddy was too busy and Sam knew how in the first place, and besides, she wasn't going to get any manlier from one little pipe. It wasn't like it was hard, but it would've been nice to be able to choose to keep the basement from flooding.

"It's a girl's name too," Sam said sharply. "Besides, it's my initials. I don't need a superhero name. I'm above that."

She also couldn't think of one.

"Yours is uber-lame," she said, not paying attention to the fact that she hadn't said it was lame out loud. "You're, like, five. You're a long way away from butt-kicking skills, and people are scared of bats. They're the denizens of the night or something. No one's scared of a loudmouth."

[Blurt]

"Awesome." said Blurt, visibly impressed. "I've gotta try that." Aha. He grinned semi-wickedly. "Especially 'cause you know how to fix it."

He banged his feet against the dryer contemplatively. "A girl's name? Is it like a nickname? What's your full name? That's so cool that your name is also your initials. My name would have to be like, Bert Lewis..." He tried to figure out how to spell 'Blurt' in his head. "Um..." The 'u' was a stumper. "Anyway."

"Hey! It is so not lame! It's awesome! Forge said it was awesome. And HE is awesome. So HA." He stuck out his tongue at her and then replied hotly, "And I am NOT five, come ON. I'm EIGHT. That's a BIG difference." He was feeling very capital-letters at this point. "And how do you know I can't kick your butt? And who's scared of BATS? I'm much more scared of eels" - he couldn't resist a twitch at the word - "but you don't hear about like, Eelwoman, and even if you did you would laugh at her. And at least I have the brains to THINK of one. Not that you'll ever get to see them NOW." He held his beanie on defensively.