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[fakejaded]

Britta waits until no one's around before she makes her way into the dance studio. At mid-afternoon on a Friday, she has the room free, the place empty until the evening class unless someone turns up to practice, and she prefers it that way for now. While she's been getting steadily better under River's tutelage (that girl is one intense taskmaster

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[apoorupbringing]

Chase had been heading out to find someone to hit- preferably Sirius, because the guy had the right equipment (a thought he had to re-examine the wording of, then figured he'd been spending too much time with Manwitch)- when he saw a blond girl in the doorway of what he was like at least seventy percent sure was the dance studio.

Not that he would ever have had an actual reason to go into it or know what it was, but you could only live on an island that small for that long before you just knew. Freaking everyone. Except this chick. He had his Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned and his hands his shoved in his cargo shorts, looking for all the world like he'd just spent a few hours doing something typically beachy. This was because he'd been surfing. So clearly, he chose her own attire to comment on.

"Nice spandex," he told her.

[fakejaded]

Britta scoffed, brow arching, though he didn't seem to mean it too harshly. "Thanks," she said wryly. "Nice hair." Salt water could really do a number on hair. Some guys wore it well. This one - well, he looked like Zac Efron and that point only worked in his favor for Annie. At least he looked like he belonged around here, though; he had that on his side. Lucky him. In spandex or her usual attire, she never quite fit in.

[apoorupbringing]

"Thanks, I grew it myself," Chase replied. He ambled over and stuck his head through the door, past her.

"You're a dancer?"

[fakejaded]

"I am," Britta said, nodding. That was probably a stretch, admittedly, since she knew she was absolutely an amateur, but whatever, she danced, she had been dancing, she was a dancer. Not making a crack about high school musicals was incredibly difficult right now but she was trying really hard to be sensitive to the fictional population of the island. "Ballet. It's something to do."

[apoorupbringing]

"I hear that," Chase said, stepping back and crossing his arms across his chest. It was funny- back home, he hadn't really talked to a lot of strangers. He'd get into fights with people sometimes, when he took the van to the beach on the weekend, but he didn't go around making friends.

"So it's something you do here, or were you one back home?"

[fakejaded]

"Are we playing twenty questions?" Britta asked, amusement creeping into her voice anyway. If she wanted to answer stupid questions, she'd go to the police station or the government (except neither did much of that here). There didn't seem to be any harm in answering, though. "I was taking a class back home. Do you dance?"

[apoorupbringing]

"No," he said forcefully.

"No singing, no dancing. Not ever." He kicked up a foot against the side of the building and leaned against it.

"And hey, feel free not to answer. Just being friendly. Or... bored out of my skull to the point where I'm grilling random strangers. Whatevs."

[fakejaded]

"It's cool." Britta shrugged. Weirdly, she actually meant it. Even with Jeff and Annie around, she found herself drifting around alone a lot of the time, and while it was easy to say that was how she liked it, she wasn't sure she was fooling anyone. Even if this kid didn't look all that much older than Annie, she'd take friendly. "I think everyone here's pretty much bored out of their skull. You have some kind of vendetta against the arts?"

[apoorupbringing]

"Only the kind broadcast on the Disney channel," Chase groused.

"Or that possess you and jerks you around the island like a freaking puppet. That kind. Yes. Major vendetta. Big honking V for vendetta."

[fakejaded]

"What jerks you around?" Britta asked, brow furrowing. "I haven't heard about anything like that." It was partly an accusation, but mostly she really just wanted to know. She'd been on the island for months and seen it do some weird shit, but that particular brand of weird shit must have been before her time.

[apoorupbringing]

"That's because I make up random weird sounding shit about the island to fuck with people," Chase said.

"Or it's because you haven't been talking to the right people. Next time "oh hey I woke up as a different gender" day or "oh sweet I'm behaving the exact opposite of how I usually do" day happens, come back and tell me which one you think it is."

[fakejaded]

"Oh, no, I believe you," Britta said. "This place sent me home for a weekend and jerked me right back and it made snow happen, weird shit is... I can buy it. But, I mean, what, you wake up as a girl?" She arched an eyebrow at him, giving him a quick lookover that was less about taking in whether or not he was attractive so much as it was about sizing up what he'd look like as a woman.

Weirdly, it was not the first time she'd looked at someone that way.

[apoorupbringing]

"Or you waking up as a guy," Chase said, mirroring her expression and glancing her over right back.

"It's pretty weird. I mean, even for this place."

[fakejaded]

"Wow," Britta said. "That sounds... educational." Actually, it sounded like bullshit, and not of the he-made-it-all-up variety. Even so, she had to wonder if it helped any, forcing men to experience life from a woman's perspective for a couple days, or if it only made things worse because they had seen the other side. "But nothing should have that kind of power over a person."