izzyalienqueen | Blue Cove, Deleware - Morning on the 4th

Parker had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from giggling.

Her father was fuming. Spitting mad. Absolutely *seething*. Several Sweepers were milling about, looking confused, and her father's main administrative assistant looked like he wanted to melt into the sidewalk, if it would get him away from her father.

Her father's Mercedes Benz, his pride, his joy, his favorite car... was blue.

Red, white, and *blue*. Shiiiiiny. ~~[pretty much this paint job]~~

"How the hell did this *happen*? Who thought this would be funny? When I catch the perpetrator, there is going to be some serious ramifications--"

Sydney was watching from the sidelines, and he slid her a questioning look. It was all Parker could do to raise her eyebrows at him.

"Whaddya mean, it's not a paint job? What the hell else could it be?"

"I'm sorry, sir, it looks as if they stripped the original paint, and re-applied an entirely new coat...."

Parker put her sunglasses on, and her hand over her mouth, trying to look contemplative. Or considering. Anything other than two inches from cracking up. She'd thought it could be Jarod before-- and maybe it still was, at least in getting the 'perpetrator' inside the carpark, but now there wasn't any doubt: Isabel had a lot of questions to answer.

Parker could've hugged them both. After she yelled at them for taking those kind of risks.

She watched the vein in her father's forehead stand out, as he slowly went a dull rusty red.

"Get me another car! I want it here in five minutes, damnit! Or heads are going to roll, starting with yours!"

"A shame about your father's Mercedes, Miss Parker." Sydney had snuck up on her when she wasn't paying attention. He gave her a sideways look, then remarked. "One would think such a patriotic man would appreciate the gesture."

"It's a fifty-thousand dollar car, Syd." Parker watched her father berate the security guards, and the Sweepers, then his assistant.... "Now it looks like junk." She couldn't help but give him a fast, fast grin. "But pretty junk."

"Mmm." Sydney paused, and before he walked away, he said, "I like the sparkles along the side. Very 4th of July."

Parker gave him a bland look as he walked off, then carefully made her way out of the crowd, around a corner--

--and slumped to the ground, gasping with laughter, unable to hold it in a second longer. Peeking around the corner to look at her father's car, and him stamping around, only set it off again.

After about ten minutes, when a new car was still in transit, she pulled out her cellphone and dialed.

"Isabel? ~You have some explaining to doooo....~" And then Parker couldn't stop giggling for another five minutes, before she finally described the scene to Isabel.

[ooc: written by