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Giselle Petrova had a problem.

It was the biggest problem about living in Barren Pines, and that was that her possessive best friend was a Meadowview student, and she was technically a traitor who had abandoned her post for things like "education". So in order to save her reputation and alliance with Tatiana Konstantin, Giselle was willing to partition part of her time into Talking With Tate time.

They didn't even have to be talking with each other, really. She could be playing Age of Empires, and Tate could be doing whatever it was that Tate did (most likely violent videogames), but what counted, what really counted was that they were doing these things whilst being logged on to their respective instant messengers. The fact that they could talk if they weren't busy was good enough.

Giselle paused her game, looking over to the open chatbox hovering near the edge of the screen as Tate logged on, and typed:

elbasucks4452: Good afternoon, Tate.

Giselle was used to Tate not replying in both real life and online. Both of them had come to the tacit agreement that, yes, they were best friends, but defeating other people came before speaking. They could speak with each other every day, but losing was absolutely final.

elbasucks4452: What comp. is this?
elbasucks4452: Tell me when you're done.

She then turned her attention back to her own game and unpaused it. Unlike Tate, Giselle was not playing for money, but the satisfaction of seeing the words 'YOU ARE VICTORIOUS' on the computer screen and knowing that she had singlehandedly defeated four different empires on a random map of the world on 'Expert'. It was a way to de-stress after a long day, and keep in practice with her strategies. If her enemies were wearing chain mail, she was ready with arrows.

Giselle heard the chime of the messenger four times amidst the horns that signified her city was under attack. Pausing, she brought up the chat window and grinned.

elbasucks4452: Congratulations are in order, I assume.
elbasucks4452: Prize?
elbasuck4452: If there's a bounty, pass my crossbow.

At the next set of messages, she paused, hands hovering over the keyboard.

Home. Home, where her mother would sneak snacks into her book bag, home, where her father would pull her aside to admire his new model ships and demand they recreate a naval battle. Home, where her family was, and Tate, all more familiar and more pleasant to her than everything in this school combined.

She looked at the book she was reading this week, open next to her. There was a picture of young Marie Antionette, riding on horseback on the pages and she bit her lip. Marie Antoinette had wanted to go home, too. But she had other duties, and even if she had not been wise in her execution of those duties when she became queen, she had stuck it out. Giselle was smarter than Marie Antoinette, she was fairly sure, but the situation was the same. She was here to do a service to her family, to do what was expected of her, and she had to give it her best shot.

elbasucks4452: Can't.
elbasucks4452: Too much work, sorry.
elbasucks4452: We'll still see each other at Thanksgiving, though? Unless something really crazy comes up, lol.

elbasucks4452: I'm trusting you, General Konstantin.

She didn't know what else to say, so she settled on:

elbasucks4452: How's Meadowview?
elbasucks4452: I've heard the senshi and negaverse are still running around, must be pretty annoying.
elbasucks4452: We don't see any around Barren Pines, so that's nice, but the girl living in the room beneath me is so annoying.
elbasucks4452: Like ten senshi, ughhhhh.

Complaining about other people being stupid was a good Tate 'n Zell conversation fallback, especially after bad news. They both had plenty to complain about, what with one thing and another, and no one to complain to. (She could try complaining to Elke, but Elke would probably not join her in her rrrrage.)

Giselle staved off the invaders as she unpaused her game, and when next Tate replied, she snorted.

elbasucks4452: Are you kidding me? What are they going to do, glitter on you?
elbasucks4452: Dani is a boring name anyway. Not much historical significance in a 'Dani'.

Going back, she began to build some trebuchets, on the basis that enough trebuchets would serve anybody well. And priests, when she reached the population limit, she'd want to start converting her enemies...

elbasucks4452: Some people.
elbasucks4452: There're a few who won't leave me alone, though.
elbasucks4452: One girl keeps wanting to paint my nails.
elbasucks4452: Anyone decent at Meadowview?

elbasucks4452: I don't care what anyone says, running around in fukus and shouting things is just idiotic.

elbasucks4452: Not true. 'Tatiana' was big with the Romanovs.
elbasucks4452: Plus, James Bond.

She attacked the Franks, lining up the trebuchets at the wall they had erected in vain. With patience, anything could be brought crumbling down, but trebuchets made quick work of it.

elbasucks4452: Figures. Come to Barren Pines.

She couldn't quite remember how she had gotten in, but she had to have gotten in somehow, right? She had to have... applied? Otherwise she'd be in Meadowview right now, or Crystal, right? Right?

She didn't like those thoughts, and shook her head. Whatever she had done, it had worked, but not being able to remember was an itch she couldn't quite reach, irksome for someone as organized as she was. She was distracted soon enough though, the idea of Tate going to prom was amusing, but brought a faint pang of envy along with it. Prom meant a pretty dress and, if one didn't have a date, having fun with her best friend. She bet there was plenty to observe at prom.

elbasucks4452: Take pictures.
elbasucks4452: Going with anyone?

elbasucks4452: Rather be a dead princess than a Dani.

The wall was crumbling, and her army was waiting. Giselle licked her lips and selected a few ballistics to aim for a lonely (doomed) enemy guard tower that was feebly shooting arrows. It didn't stand a chance.

elbasucks4452: It's not as bad as it's cracked up to be.
elbasucks4452: They tell me crazies have more fun.
elbasucks4452: Then again, was hardly true for George III.

She paused again, looking at Tate's next question. Barren Pines... Might be going? She knew hardly anything about social events going on in the school, partially because she hardly ever participated in them. Elke might know. Maybe Elke had mentioned it to her before. When she was trying to get her to focus on her homework, Giselle sometimes tended to tune the French girl out.

elbasucks4452: ...Don't have a dress anyway.
elbasucks4452: Papa would say it's frivolous, and I don't have a date.

elbasucks4452: Or, like, someone to do my hair or anything. Aren't those a requirement?

Everything she knew about the prom was the stereotypical image that most teenagers knew whether they lived under a rock like she did or not.

elbasucks4452: I didn't say I wasn't, okay?
elbasucks4452: I was just saying if I did it would be last minute and stuff.
elbasucks4452: I'll try, but you'll probably look much nicer than me.

She switched over to check her navy, busy attacking an enemy dock. A perfect fleet of Galleons, aiming with hails of arrows. It was pretty almost, seeing volley after volley crushing the dock.

Somehow, it still wasn't enough. Her eyes flickered back to the chatbox for a moment, and she sent a fire ship to crush that dock. She hated talking to Tate about these things. it wasn't that she didn't miss her, or that she didn't want to go to prom, she was just, just busy. Busy in that vague sense that left her sort of drained after everything was done, and she felt like if she got off her schedule to go see anything familiar, whether home, Tate, or anything else, she'd never want to go back. Which would be simply unacceptable. She would have to go back, and it would be like the first day of school all over again, trying just as hard to be even better than when she left, and missing things she had left behind even more. It was too easy to live in the past, she had historical evidence for that.

Even if she had wanted to verbalize all these feelings, she never would have been able to, not even to Tate. So instead, she destroyed the docks, wrecking the harbors of her enemies so that she might distract herself from her own safe harbor beckoning tantalizingly.