Mischievous Function

A little while later, in another room...

Fanny let out a low exhale as she stared at the mirror and looked herself up and down. Her silver ponytail was messy and unkempt as always, and her familiar blue hoodie was already rather wrinkled and worn.

She rolled up her sleeves and splashed her face with water a few times. After drying her face off, she looked back at the mirror and took a deep breath. "Okay..." she whispered to herself, nodding slowly. "Today. Today's the day. You got this, Fanny. You're gonna do great tonight."

Her gaze drifted around the bathroom before it landed on her folded idol outfit sitting on the corner of the countertop. Fanny took a rather long moment to look it over again before cracking a small smile and walking over to it to pick it up.

Just as she exited the bathroom, she heard the door to the room unlock. She turned to find Pencil walking in with a coffee cup, looking down at her phone. Pencil glanced up for a second and nodded. "Morning, Fanny."

"Morning," she answered, walking over to her bed to set her outfit down before flopping down on the desk chair and drawing her gun to examine it and make sure it was clean.

Pencil drank the last of her coffee and tossed the cup into the trash can nearby before hopping on top of her bed and lying down. She glanced around for a moment and chuckled when she spotted Fanny's outfit on the other bed before shaking her head and looking back down at her phone.

"What was that for?" Fanny asked in a slightly raised tone.

Pencil raised an eyebrow, still scanning her phone screen. "Hm?"

"You laughed at me," Fanny noted with a pointed glare at Pencil. "Why?"

After a moment of staring back at Fanny, Pencil chuckled again. "That wasn't a laugh, Fanny," she told her. "You want to hear a real laugh? You should let other people see you in that thing." She gestured to the outfit.

"Are you saying it's ugly?" Fanny demanded, leaning forward in her chair and racking the slide of her gun. "You know, Mic worked really hard to get us these."

"No, no, not at all!" Pencil quickly said as she raised her hands defensively. "Exactly the opposite, actually; I think it's really cute. I honestly think all of your outfits look really nice—but that's exactly why people are going to laugh when they see you in it. I'm pretty sure that to over half of the class, this is going to be their first time seeing you in a dress."

Fanny arched an eyebrow as she reluctantly leaned back in her chair again. "So what?"

Pencil stared at Fanny with wide eyes and resisted the temptation to let her jaw drop. After a few seconds, she let out a small laugh and nodded. "You know, I admire that about you, Fanny," she told her. "You don't really care about how anyone feels. You just kinda...do your thing. You hate everyone and everything and you don't discriminate. Not that I'm jealous, but...man. Must be easy not caring about what everyone thinks about you."

"Yeah, I've outgrown all that," she scoffed as she waved dismissively and went back to cleaning her gun. "I've seen enough of life to know that people's feelings don't count for...anything, unless they do something about it. People can hate me all they want and talk all the crap about me that they can think of and start all the drama in the world, and I couldn't care less. But I'll put a bullet in their skull before they even lay a finger on me."

"Yeah, we've learned that lesson already," Pencil smirked as she shook her head and leaned back and rested her head on the pillow.

A contented silence reigned over the room for several moments as neither of the girls felt moved to talk further. Fanny eventually re-holstered her gun and stood up to stretch with a sigh, while Pencil glanced over at her briefly. "Hey, Fanny?"