POP! [Kait]

He noticed her very quickly. She was close to him in age, maybe a grade above him, but still in high school. Wei couldn't help but notice they way she looked, with horns and feet that looked like a dog or a cat. Something about her triggered his inner trickster, probably something about the way she carried herself. She didn't seem like she was particularly happy. While he wasn't really the happy police, he didn't really like to see other people as palpably unhappy as she seemed to be. Call it a pet peeve of his.

That was why he had watched her for a while, just to set this up. In his hands there was a confetti popper that he had bought with his own money a few days. It had been a little hard for him to part with the money, but since they tended to come in a multipack of about ten poppers he thought of it as investment into his pranking future.

He peeked out past the building once, making a quick sweep of the courtyard, checking to see if she was coming. He quickly pressed his back against the building, bouncing on his toes and playing with the string.

Was this a good idea? Would she laugh? Or would she get scared and run away? No, she didn't seem like the type of person who would be scared by a harmless confetti popper.

He took a deep breath and looked up at the sun, guessing the time before getting a more secure grip on the popper's string. She would be coming around the corner at any moment now.....

<blockquote><font size = 8><center>POP!</center></font>

He'd done it almost on instinct. He almost could feel her presence against the hairs on the back of his neck, like he could sense her coming. Maybe it was just the prankster in him, or maybe it was some form of excited stress at the idea of being able to do a little bit of pranking at this school. He hadn't been here long, and it felt good to slowly get back into the rhythm of pranking in the spirit of harmless fun.

As soon as his ears caught someone turning around the corner, he'd pulled the string. For a moment he was stunned, almost worried he'd been too gung-ho and pulled it on some random person.

He was relieved when he looked down at the ground and saw her sitting there, silent amidst books, papers, and colorful confetti. A huge grin broke across his face.

<font color = ffcb05>"Yeah, well... I'm kind of awesome, you know."</font> He said, grinning widely, his long canines on display in a way that seemed more carefree than threatening. Wei bounced around her, helping as best he could to recover her dropped possessions.

Almost as an afterthought he bounced in front of her, holding out his hand. She was nearly a foot taller than him, but he was already used to looking up at people.

<font color = ffcb05> "My name is Wei Hu Sun, self proclaimed pranking master."</font></blockquote>

<blockquote>Wei Hu Sun tilted his head, his ears twitching slightly as she repeated his name. It wasn't perfect pronunciation, but he'd already sort of let go of the idea that his name would be pronounced right by the people at the school. Not to mention it wasn't horribly incorrect. It was pretty close, actually.

When she said that she was the most infamous prankster from her dimension, his whole body became rigid, and bounced around with excitement. Another awesome prankster? He would love to get some tips from her! Maybe she had some cool inter-dimensional pranks? He would definitely be into learning about that!

His excitement deflated, and for a beat he looked like he'd been tricked, before covering his mouth and snickering at being tricked. <font color = ffcd05>"In any case, it's nice to meet you C... Kl..."</font> He screwed up his face.

<font color = ffcd05>"Kowie... Shlowie? Uh..."</font></blockquote>

<blockquote>Considering Wei Hu Sun's first language was Chinese, her explanation of her name didn't help him to pronounce it very much. Listening to her, the closest thing he could think of to approximate the sound she was making was something like <i>ki lo yi</i>. He shrugged and stored that away in his mind. He guessed that in this place of people where it seemed like not many people came from China like him, he would probably be the one pronouncing every else's name wrong.

Wei had never really noticed that everyone else around him were more human-like than non-human, but that's partially because he'd gotten used to it. Turpan City wasn't exactly a metropolis since it was flanked by mountans and desert and volcanoes, but he'd interacted with humans growing up, so never really felt too out of place among them.

That being said, he'd interacted with more monkeypeople than peoplepeople, so when he looked around to confirm, he suddenly felt so far from home. And so very, very alone.

<font color = ffcb05>"Yeah, I agree. Back home in China, I went to a school that was full of other monkey people like me. They were all normal though. I mean... aside from being monkeypeople. Though I guess that would make them normal-normal to me, since I am also a monkeypeople. Monkey person? 猴子人?"</font>

Wei looked visibly confused, but seemed to decide that it was something he could just figure out later. <font color = ffcb05>"Hey, what was stuff like in your home? Where I'm from there's a lot of ruins. And spirits. They seem to like me."</font> A pause. <font color = ffcb05>"The spirits, not the ruins."</font></blockquote>

<blockquote>Wei tilted his head when she talked about her homeland. He frowned a little. <font color = ffcb05>"Did you not get any cool powers?"</font> He asked, bouncing slowly around her. Tilting his head, he bounced back to where he was before tilting his head.

<font color = ffcb05>"Well I think it'd be cool to look like that. I think it'd be rad to have horns! I could headbutt people!"</font>

He put his head down and charged towards the wall to illustrate his point, and immediately held his head and screwed his face up in pain. <font color = ffcb05>"Ow! Okay. Maybe I shouldn't do that with or without horns..."</font>

Gently rubbing his now sore head, he couldn't help but think about his life back home. It wasn't great. He was tiny, and most kids his age had already started getting their gold fur. He was the only kid who still walked around with patches of white baby fur. But he still considered here better than there--at least here people didn't know the white patches were baby fur.

<font color = ffcb05>"Well, you don't really have to worry anymore! This place is full of people who look freaky. Hey! Back in China, people used to get super duper scared of me. I would climb trees, like this--"</font> To demonstrate, he scaled the brick wall, crouching on the bricking that stuck out of the wall. <font color = ffcb05>"And I would hook my knees and swing down and the peoplepeople would scream so loud! I thought it was funny!"</font></blockquote>