that lucky day - - [ open ]

[m a n c y]

penny - - -

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It was a monstrosity. A large beast, staring her right in the face like an angry dog. Ugly. Irredeemable. Its gaze was something nightmares were made of, instilling the kind of terror that the scariest horror movies would envy. In all of her life, Penny had never seen something so horrible, so pants-shittingly putrid.

It was a five thousand word essay on a Roman ruler of her choice, and it was due tomorrow.

She didn't even have the subject of her paper yet. Granted, she had been stuck on that part for the past four days. So maybe she wasn't in such a sorry state -- after all, she had lots of preliminary research, right?
Though it wasn't really for fear of being trite and choosing someone everyone else would do. Hell no! Everyone was going to choose Julius Caesar -- she knew that for sure and she wouldn't even dream of attempting that stupid butthole! Sure, he did a lot of cool things and maybe even had a Shakespeare play about his assassination, but, newsflash, a lot more rulers did a lot more interesting stuff and were in general even more fun.
Also, she didn't like Shakespeare.

It's just that Roman rulers were so interesting! But one had to consider the politics of the person in charge. If your professor was a funny kind of guy, then Tiberius was always a safe bet -- but you had to be really careful with him because holy shit could that turn out badly if he didn't have a sense of humor oh God.
Not everyone could stomach the gross details of the "little fishes," after all. Even she couldn't handle it sometimes!

She could always go with his mentally disturbed protegee, Caligula -- but hmm. Sure, she could probably write for ten thousand words about all the fucked up shit he did (even if she was to tactfully leave out that weird obsession with feeling up statues!), but then again he also had some kind of "PC" problems and well!
Let's just say it was hard. Really hard!
Maybe she just should have gone with one of the five good emperors. Hmmm.

And this was how Penny found herself sitting in the coffee shop for three hours now, staring at a blank document in between bouts of Tumblr, wikipedia, and tgdfb.
Uh.
That last one only when children weren't in the vicinity, thanks. She wasn't dumb, for chrissakes!

She didn't even have a title.
Oops.

Penny stared at her laptop dejectedly, willing for a title to appear on the screen so that she could finally get started. Jesus. This was what happened when you contemplated poses for commissions instead of watching your teacher to see if he was totally into the Tiberius thing, or if she would be better off dealing with someone like Hadrian.
Fuck. Stupid stupid stupid! Last time she ever made that mistake.
Of course, she told herself that every time this kind of shit happened so maybe she should just stop lying to herself already.
Whelp.

Really, there was no logical way for this day to get any worse.
Really.
No possible way.


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[Perse]

e s t e l l e - ★

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[/size]i ain't settling
for anything less than everything[/center]

Stelly loved the coffee shop. She loved coffee, for starters; but on top of that, it was a good place for people-watching, and, if you happened to sit in the right spot, there was always a chance of hearing some juicy gossip. And Stelly loved gossip. Everyone who knew her was aware.

But today, she wasn't people-watching or trying to eavesdrop or anything like that.

"... so yes, I may not be able to show up for dinner tonight..."

Not too far away from Penny's table sat Estelle at her own, phone in hand, though positioned in a way as if she were preparing to hang up. This conversation had been going on for five minutes, though the voice on the other end of the line kept trying to interrupt her, dragging on the conversation. It seemed rather angry.

At this point, even she seemed rather angry.

"No, dear... it's not... listen, okay? Look, it's not like I don't want to go, I do, but... yes... let me speak!" She raised her voice a little bit, obviously becoming irritated by this conversation. Realizing what she had done, she looked up and, assuring herself that no one was looking, returned her attention to the cellphone.

"Look, I'm in a coffee shop right now. I don't want to be raising my voice in public like thi..." Another cut-off.

She snapped.

"Okay, if you're not going to listen to me, then we'll talk later. Now, goodbye." She quickly hung up the phone, shutting it fast, as if to emphasize how annoyed she was, not that anyone around her really cared. She gave an exasperated sigh, and slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans just as her order was called. She picked her purse up off the ground next to her and got up, still obviously irritated by the phone call.

---

Coffee cup in hand, Estelle turned to head back to her table, though she moved absentmindedly. Her mind was preoccupied with the little argument she had had with her date - though he wasn't really her date now, but whatever. He was an asshole anyways.

Unfortunately, because she was so busy with her own thoughts, she wasn't paying attention to her own feet - and consequently tripped over them.

The coffee cup went flying.

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[m a n c y]

penny - - -

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Wait wait wait she had it!
Oh this was going to be just too good! She'd do it on Nero! Now there was a fucked up kind of guy who Penny could get behind. Well, not really. Uh.
They weren't exactly each other's types so to speak, ah ah ah....

But he was just so crazy! But also in a way that everyone was okay with talking about for some reason. Of course, if you asked her Rome did more fucked up shit than whatever it was Tiberius tried to get behind sometimes on a daily basis but you know what, her opinion didn't really matter all that much on the matter! She was just supposed to write a good essay, make sure it was accurate, and offend no one.
Nero was probably the craziest she could go. Which was good, because Nero was absolutely batshit.

He was also an easy target. He blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome and (supposedly, but she'd make it sound definite) had done nothing but play his lyre or do something else that befitted his drama-queen status. Nero, you wacky man, you!
Oh! And she'd definitely have to pencil in how he trapped people in theaters to watch him perform extravagant plays in which he was the only actor! Also he was terrible at it but no one could say that because Nero was crazy!
There was also that choice bit about how he killed his pregnant lover, and then castrated that one slave guy and made him live as a woman, pretending to be his deceased wife. That was definitely important!

She had the perfect title, too! "Nero: Menace, or Just Acting?"
Everyone knew the answer to that one, though. Both!

Alright time to get started on this shit.

Penny lazily clicked on her internet tab -- quickly realized that lazily was not how she was going to handle that particular image oh jesus -- and started a quick google search for some bullshit sources. Ah--
Woah! --
Oh--
Fuck![/b]

Coffee. Piping hot coffee all over her fucking laptop and it was sticky and wet and now it was on her hands.
Nice.
Well, fuck.

Wait. That wasn't nearly incredulous enough. Here, let her try that again:
WHAT THE FUCK.
This was her work computer! She had like two hundred dollars in unfinished commissions on this piece of shit, and now some goddamned lousy son of a bitch had gone and ruined it! Coffee! Goddamned lousy coffee infiltrating her fucking computer and she just knew it was futile to even try wiping it off because by this point it'd probably seeped into the goddamned keyboard and --
There it went! Turned right off! God fucking damnit!

She had schoolwork on that computer, too! What the fuck was she supposed to do? Her money, her grades, her goddamned livelihood, down the drain, just like that! All because some idiot asshole couldn't keep his hands on his own damn coffee!

Uuuuugh. She'd have to beg her roommate for her laptop, she guessed. And her roommate didn't exactly trust her not to go to furry porn sites and get thirty viruses on the damn thing so she'd be watching her like a hawk.
And then she'd have to switch the motherboard out of her laptop, clean it off, and somehow shell out another thousand dollars for a new macbook and goddamnit.
Fuck.
Her.
Life.

Ohhh who the fuck did this she swore to god there was going to be hell to pay. But not really. Because that would get her absolutely-fucking-nowhere and she didn't want to be cursing out some chief-of-douchbags in the middle of a coffee shop.
Just wasn't classy. Not her style.

Penny wiped that ugly frown off her face and turned to find the guy responsible.
Oh.
It was a, erm.
Girl.
Whelp.
That wasn't quite what she had been expecting.

Made it a little easier to talk to her. Felt more like they were on equal footing and all (even though Penny felt like she should have for sure had the upper hand here, but by all accounts she was kind of a victim).
"Careful!" She advised a little too cheerfully, given the circumstances. She then picked up the cup, wiped it clean with a napkin, and handed it over.
"Don't think there's much left, to be honest. But are you okay? Did you trip or something?"

Never hurt to have a little common decency. For all Penny knew, this girl was having an equally rough day and just tripped. No one deserved to be yelled at for an accident.
But goddamn if the entire situation didn't make her blood boil.

You know what they say, though. No use crying over spilled milk.
Or fried laptops due to clumsy idiots, for that matter.
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