Zane's paint adventure

[Mr. Barret]

This is just a little situation that I cooked up on a day when I was feeling quite odd and happy. It shows Zane's sense of fashion and interior design, and just how he goes about implementing this sense of style upon his surroundings.

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Zane woke up this morning feeling a little giddy, a little excited. There wasn't too much reasoning to this, but Zane was going to decorate his room today, and this was exciting. Very exciting. Zane bounced his way out of bed and over to his dresser. "What to wear, what to wear?!?" Zane leapt into his chest of drawers and started digging through them like a dog at the beach. "Something blue? Something orange? Something striped?" Zane felt a little inebriated, and giddy! Today Zane was feeling happy and alive, and decided to make his clothes match his mood. A large tie-dyed T-shirt topped the ensemble over a pair of equally garish paisley pants, which were loose and flowy. For shoes, a pair of comfortable hemp flip-flops, which went well with the overall hippy theme were a good choice. And what to do with my head? Zane thought. Something wild, something fun...something hat? no...something colorful...but I haven't gone to the paint store yet. So I don't have any colors yet. Zane was thinking about dying his hair with some coloring, anything he could get his hands on, but he didn't actually have any coloring with him, so he just grabbed some hair gel and whipped it up into a large pointy mess. Yeah, that'll do 'er. And now to the color depot! Zane marched his way out of his room and the carpet in the hallway nearly let out an audible shriek at having to be subjected to the brightness in Zane's appearance. "Good morning world!" With a cartwheel and a skip, Zane moved to the end of the hallway. At the top of the stairs there was a decision to be made, but a verdict was quickly decided upon. With a running start, Zane jumped and landed butt first onto the stair banister. It was a lengthy flight of stairs, but luckily it was straight, and not a spiral staircase. Zane leaned into the incline and put his arms out for balance. "WEEEEE!!!" The softness of the pants he was wearing and the smoothness of the handrail-turned-slide made for a very speedy descent. Stick, *Thump!* roll and up! Zane landed feet first at the bottom of the stairs, but his forward momentum kept moving him forward, so his perfect landing had to be turned into a graceful somersault instead. "TA-DA!" Cash in pocket, Zane made his way out the front door and over to the closest hardware store that sold paint.

Entering the store, Zane made a beeline for the paint department. Hmm Hmm Hmm, decisions decisions. So many choices and so little wall space. But then there's the ceiling too, isn't there? Zane thought with glee. Primary colors are good, and some purple too! oooo, and some green! Zane thought about getting some of the unique, funky colors that were there, but thought that the basic bright colors would be the best. So he grabbed a bucket of blue, red, and yellow, the primary colors, and a bucket of green, and purple for good measure. To make the hauling job easier, Zane summoned up some energy and stored it in the substance of the metal cans themselves. This allowed him to easily haul a heavy load of paint up to the counter and back to his room. He must have made an interesting sight walking down the street, but less so than he could have, because Zane was severely tempted to start juggling paint cans on his walk back to the school, but decided against it using his better judgement, which was impressive considering his jolly mood. Once Zane got back inside the building all bets of inconspicuous were off. Zane pumped some more energy into the containers and levitated them up the stairs and back to his room with himself riding atop them like a wizard returning to his abode.

[Mr. Barret]

Once Zane got inside his room there was the problem of all the furniture that was in the room that he actually didn't want painted, at least in the fashion that he was planning on for the walls. Zane dropped his load of colorful cans, and sucked the energy out of them. He wanted to be as full as possible for his next task. With the paint cans in the center of the room and the door to his room open, the next task could begin. Moving furniture! yay... While this wasn't the most exciting of tasks, it wouldn't be boring with Zane doing it, or particularly difficult either. Zane decided to start with his bed. Hmm, how to do this one... should I charge the pieces separately, or just charge the frame and move the whole thing as one load? Well, I'll have to get the whole mess out the door somehow, so moving it as one mess is a strategy that is out. So separately it is! Zane leapt up, turned a handspring, and landed squarely in the middle of his mattress. He crouched down, placed both hands firmly on his mattress and sheets and shot the mattress chock full of Zane's unique energy. He then proceeded to levitate the mattress off of the box spring and into the middle of the room. The whole mess looked like a bad reproduction of a square ghost, what with the sheets hanging down and flowing about like a little kid's Halloween costume. Standing atop the spooky floating mattress in the middle of the room, Zane eyeballed the dimensions of the door, and the size of the mattress. Oh well, I'll have to get off this thing to get it through the doorway.. Stupid narrow doorways! Springing off the mattress, Zane turned the whole hovering mess vertically and slid it through the doorway and out into the hall. With a lively scream of, "FORE!" Zane launched the vertical mattress straight down the hallway and into the foyer of the main hall. He thought he might have heard some muffled cursing coming from the front entrance, but he couldn't be sure. Bringing his head back inside the room, Zane turned to the rest of the bed structure. Box spring and frame... Can't fling those down the hallway now, can we? Zane stuffed enough energy into both the box spring and frame to get them moving in a reasonable fashion. He separated the two objects from each other and moved them conga-line style down the hallway, one after the other, with himself following the procession. Moving the two objects gently down the stairway, Zane himself flew down the bannister again to land in the entry way. The frame and box spring reassembled themselves at his request and met up with the mattress and sheets to form a decent looking imitation of a normal bed, albeit in a unique location, right in front of the main doors. Zane trotted over and sucked all of his energy out of his previously animated bed pieces. That'll be an interesting sight to anyone who visits today, Zane thought with a grin as he bounded back up the stairs to remove more furniture from his room.

Zane returned to his room and looked around. Still too much furniture around here. All right, we're gonna make this quick. Lots of furniture in one run. Zane dug deep into his power supply and started jamming all the furniture in the room full of energy for transportation. The dresser got a lot of energy because those suckers are heavy, what with all the clothes inside them and the drawers and everything. The desk got a bit less juice because there just wasn't as much wood to the desk, and not as many drawers either. The head board got a little bit of energy, definitely not as much as any other piece of furniture. And that was actually all of the big furniture in the room. All that was left was wall hangings and such. Zane twirled around the room, zinging each poster and picture and wall hanging with just enough energy to get them to come off the wall and float along. Zane moved to the middle of the room and sucked all the stuff off of the walls into a big tornado around him in the center. This tornado he funneled out the door and out in the hallway. Following the paper trail, as it were, down the hallway, he let it rustle itself to a halt on top of his bed, which was still sitting in the main hall, as yet undisturbed. Caterwauling back to the room Zane began getting the other furniture pieces into the air and into motion. The visual from this was quite similar to the walking dishes in the Disney movie: the Sword in the Stone (or some such title), or perhaps Fantasia, with the dancing mops. The big boxy objects began dancing their way down the hallway with a life of their own, or so it seemed, with Zane conducting the performance from atop a frisky computer chair. These miscreants also made their way down the stairs to join the bed and posters in the foyer. Zane made one final trip down the slickery bannister to retrieve his energy from the previously frolicking furniture.

[Mr. Barret]

The room was now empty of furniture and Zane made a quick pass to make sure that he'd gotten everything. Ah, there's something I missed, Zane thought, as he spied the light fixture hanging sedately from the ceiling. That can't stick around during the painting frenzy, now can it? Zane aligned himself below the light and jumped up and jammed some energy into it. He then spent a few seconds unwinding the bolts and screws and wiring that connecting the light fixture to the ceiling and lowering it carefully down into his hands. Taking a few leaping steps, Zane reached his arm out into the hallway and zinged the lamp down the hallway like a baseball, and settled it amongst the paper material nesting on his bed in the entrance. This was possible because Zane knew about how far it was down the hallway to his other pile of stuff, and because he could feel the location of his energy, slightly, as it moved with the lamp.

Now, are we completely empty in here? Zane took a perusal of the room and decided that, yes, it was clean. There was nothing else to remove, besides the boring. A grin spread across Zane's face and a twinkle lit in his eye as he swung back around and nearly pounced in his pile of paint cans. But wait, wait...before we get carried away here...I suppose I don't want to ruin the flooring, do I? Zane looked down at the flooring that was all that was familiar in this now bare room. It was an old floor made of battered boards and scuffed nails. No, I think I'll redo the floor while I'm here too. Give the whole room the Zane treatment. Zane turned back to his paint cans and individually put a little more energy back into the can material. Just enough to get the lids off. And off they did come, zipping off of their containers to land, paint side forward, on all four walls, floor and ceiling. Well, now that that's out of the way, continued Zane's interior monologue with visible excitement on his face. "And now for the mixture," he continued aloud, with a flourish like a band conductor. This next action he actually did gently, as he didn't want to mix the paints too much, at least just yet. He dipped the tip of a finger into each of the liquids of the paints themselves and let flow, into the essence of the contents of the cans, as much energy as he had left in his system, which, might I add, was quite a lot. After each paint container was filled with both paint and a familiar and yet mysterious energy, the fun truly began.

First, each individual paint can began humming, and then vibrating, and then exploded into movement. The five separate cans developed an individual hurricane inside of them as Zane manipulated them into mixing. After all, paint needs a good stir before use, right? He cackled in his head. These little tornados soon began elevating above the levels of their containers and free spinning in the air above their respective cans. Inevitably little flecks of paint had already begun to escape the control of Zane's energy, as liquids are quite difficult to maintain control of, especially at high speeds, and flicked themselves onto the nearest paintable surface, whether that be a wall, the floor, the ceiling, or Zane himself, who was standing in the middle, still orchestrating this dance of color. Zane then began turning his attention to individual colors, while maintaining the high spins on the other four. A little purple there, a little green, ooo, and how about some blue and red there! Zane's thoughts were visibly erratic as could be seen by the random splashes of paint that were appearing, almost without cause, everywhere. Soon, what was at least quasi-organized movement of paint, degenerated into a wildfire of gyrating color, with the demon conductor Zane standing in the center of the typhoon. Ropes of color were flung and peeled from the walls, and shot off again in explosions and bursts of fluorescence. The pigment extravaganza could not last too long though, as too much mixing would cause a lovely shade of brown/purple/black over the whole of the room. Zane realized this and reluctantly slowed the wild movements of paint and with one final burst, flung everything outward toward it's final destination. Whoops, one final detail though, eh, before I leave. Zane found the remnants of his energy in the empty paint cans and levitated them toward him. Stepping upon the platform of paint cans Zane moved himself out of the room. From the safety of the doorway, Zane moved, with a little bit of effort, the remaining energy he had in the paint in the room to cover over the voids left by both his feet and the circular bottoms of the cans.

Yes, that was as fun as I expect it to be. And the result is just right, Zane thought, with satisfaction. Now to let the whole mess dry...

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yeah, so it wasn't that long, at least, compared to some of the other messes that people have posted in here, but oh well.

oh, and if you ever need some interior decorating done, do not hesitate to give Zane a ring. I've heard his prices are quite resonable as well.

Zane: Most certainly. I only require the right arm of your first born child.

Me: Shut up you sadist. You don't tell them that. At least not until you've gotten them to sign the contract.