Wildest

Back to the Basics

 "Welcome to my lair!" Ashton twirls around the moaning floor gallantly, the dust asking her to dance and posing as her spotlight.

"I fell through there." Jenny taps the scar in the wooden boards tentatively.

"Careful! That was daddy's booby trap." her warning sends Jenny jumping back with her organs full remembering the hollow feeling of the fall they floated through. "Jeez, I'm only kidding." she cackles, "Stop being so uptight." Ashton sinks into the homely leather desk chair.

"Is that it?" Jenny points to the wall behind her, Ashton spins in her chair.

"What is?"
"Janine's 'scoreboard'."

"Oh, that?" her eyes finally caught onto the bloody tally marks, "yeah. Looks like she added a whole bunch to your side too."

"With all due respect, doesn't her pendulation imply that you're next on the list?" Jenny pulls one of the chairs facing the desk, and straddles it like a cowboy, resting her chin on its backrest.

"I dunno..." Ashton shrugs, "probably."

"What was it like?" Jenny looks around the room, "growing up as a mafia baby?"

"Oh...I didn't find the glamour in the dark side till very late." she picks at the hardened blood on her desk. "I was such a pretentious little asshole."

"Was?" Jenny tries not to chuckle.

"Well I insisted that everything daddy did was either immoral or primitive. So I ran away from home, kind of like what Scar did."

"Immoral? You love this stuff!" Jenny protests.

"I used to be a lot like mother..." Ashton looks up at her, remembering hiccups of spite. She presses her fingertips together on the desk, "I was very academically driven when I was young. I insisted that I went to magic school in Masonville. I wanted to better craft my powers, but I never thought further than that; I didn't really know what I'd do with them once they grew to a point I considered appropriate. I didn't leave with daddy on good terms with me. He was such a gentle father, believe it or not. He truly felt me being gone. The only way I sort of...remedied that within me, like an inner closure or something, was to not fail. So my lack of future at the magic school frustrated me, and I soon left after I finished the year when you had to specialize in elemental magic, and then I found the glamour in the dark side." She said simply.

"Right, so you considered that tormenting people at the Darrington as not failing this whole 'I'm an evil witch here to manipulate you to your own destruction' scheme?"

"Well, it wasn't until I found you that my purpose changed..."

"Did you stalk me? Like, did you know who I was?"

"Not at the time. You seemed like an interesting target, with your morphing powers and all that. I was planning on turning you into Lupita's freshest meat. Would've made daddy proud." she admits.

"How'd you find out?"

"The hard way, unfortunately. I saw it with my own eyes. You intrigued me so...I stalked you a little. I saw you at night with Janine. I couldn't contain myself, so I tried to murder you but her power was undeniably by your side the whole entire time. The day Theme shot me, that is. I found her and this wand in Odessia's cottage...I basically pulled her tongue and made her tell me the truth about you. And that's how I knew."

"I still don't get why of all places in vast, vast Los Angeles you chose the worn out Darrington Inn." Jenny shook her head.

"Oh please!" Ashton snorts, "punks are so vulnerable. You guys are always on the prowl for more reasons to whine about why society's this way, and not that way, and when it's that way, you want it this way...it would take the slightest little blow and I'd have your frustrations wrapped around my finger and ready to be pointed in the direction I wanted." Jenny rolled her eyes so hard, she saw the back of her skull.

"If we're starting this thing off with you thinking so highly of me, I quite frankly don't see where this is going."

"You can't back out because you're triggered, that was part of our arrangement."

"No it wasn't!"

"Where were we?" Ashton ignores Jenny, producing a book and the wand on the table.

"The banishment spell thingie."

"We first need to find out whether or not you're capable."

"Why can't you do it, again?"

"We've been through this!" She groans, as she flicks through the pages impatiently, "I am doing it; I'm giving the spell you'll cast an extra boost." her eager finger finally settles on a page. "Perfect. Let's start with this." She hands Jenny the wand and flips the book to her as if she was reading her a picture book.

"Color spell?"

"Why not? It's a classic."

"What am I, a kid?"

"You act like one. Anyways, this was one of my first spells. Figured we'd start off with something easy to spare your energy. Now go on." she squints at the instructions.

"Do I really have to recite that out loud? Is that what witches do?"

"Only those who use wands."

"Might as well get me a matching broomstick or somethin'" Jenny mutters, lifting her wand up with a sigh, "so, what color am I changing?"

"I dunno...your hair?"

"Interesting," Jenny smirks, squinting at the pages again, "float with the breeze, the rainbow you squeeze..." she tried to follow the tangly lines of the wand instructions on the page; they looked like one of those dance mats that numbered all the footprints in hopes to confuse one when learning to waltz, "cease all its color and do as I please..." she closed her eyes, transfering what the book made her think was all her energy, motivated by the forces of nature...or was it gravity? Into the very tip of the dead piece of wood that was her wand. Ashton watched the small freckle of light at its end eagerly clenching her knuckles together tightly. This was the moment of truth. "pink please!" she concludes, pointing the wand at Ashton's hair. Ashton frowned upon her gasp, grasping the tips of her hair in horror. She sighed in relief to note that the flames forming it remained their fiery red. However that made her heart sink.

"What the hell, Jenny! You tried to change my hair color?!"

"Whatever..." Jenny waved it off with a chuckle, looking at her wand, "didn't work in the end, did it?"

"Are you sure you've said all the right words?" Ashton pleads. Jenny grabs the book from her and scans the spell's recipe with her fingertip, muttering it to herself as she went along.

"Yeah, 'float with the breeze, the rainbow you squeeze, cease all its color and do as I please', and then you're supposed to say the color you want." Ashton shakes her head in disappointment, inches away from slapping her forehead in hopelessness. But void had not opened yet for her. She didn't want to think it had, anyway. "Maybe we could try again?" Jenny closes the book and places it neatly in front of Ashton.

"I hate to break it to you, batsie, but if you can't use your magic, then we are most literally fucked."