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In the two years that she had been living in Destiny City, Robin had developed something of a vendetta against the Crystal Academy girls.

It wasn't like she hated all of them. Some of them were funny; others were surprisingly nice. Even if the Crystal population seemed overrun by bitches and sluts, Robin would acknowledge (at least on record) that exceptions were plentiful, and it wasn't fair to discriminate on them based solely on the general rule.

There was one flaw that seemed universal among them, however, and it was that which Robin could not abide. Every single Crystal girl that she had ever met had been irredeemably condescending. They saw a Meadowview girl, done up with her red skirt and sneakers, and they couldn't stop at thinking oh gee, that girl goes to a different school than me! No, they had to take that next step - poor thing, I guess she couldn't get a scholarship to go to Crystal!

But hey, you know what? That was cool. They could think whatever they wanted of Robin, with her messy hair and off-the-rack clothing. It didn't bother Robin so much. Besides, she had a policy. In the words of the esteemed Robert F. Kennedy (who Robin upheld died as a result of an extraplanar conspirator's jealousy of his awesome hair):



It would be unpatriotic to refuse such presidential advice, right?

Down the street walked a pair of Crystal girls now. They weren't dressed up in their uniforms, of course - God forbid they present themselves so plainly on Valentine's Day! - but Robin was certain of their identities for a myriad of reasons:

1. Both girls were strutting it like they were on the catwalk.
2. Both girls were strutting it like they were on the catwalk -- and wearing painful designer heels while they were at it.
3. This street was immediately outside of the Crystal dorms, and this pair was walking away from them.

As they passed, Robin, who had been sitting outside of the local Starbucks prying the lid off of a Peppermint White Hot Chocolate with Extra Whipped Cream, copyright (Robin wasn't sure if the copyright at the end was necessary, but she didn't trust Starbucks not to sue her if she forgot it), grinned. Lost in their own little world, the girls didn't realize they were being watched.

"-- and Brad sent flowers," one of the girls, a blonde with blues eyes, was squealing. "A big bouquet, almost as big as I am! It was almost as big as the one Daddy sent, can you believe?"

"Oh, you're so lucky," sighed the other girl - also a blonde at a glance, but her brown eyebrows gave her lie away - "Corby didn't get me any flowers at all. We're going out to dinner tonight, and if he doesn't have that necklace I told him about ready the second I walk in there, he's in for it!"

Both girls laughed. Blowing a bit of steam away from the surface of her drink, Robin spared a silent chuckle for herself as well. These Crystal girls thought that this holiday was made for them, didn't they? Just like they thought everything else was either entitled to them or beneath their notice. Boy, were they about to regret that....

"Ohh, wait, look!" One of the girls squealed, putting out a hand to halt the other. "A love fortune-teller's booth!"

It was indeed; like one of those cheesy old gypsy fortune-tellers that sat behind glass panels with glassy robotic eyes, but better. This one seemed to have been stripped down and built anew. Now, it was like Barbie had made a secret love child with Esmeralda - she was gypsy chic, with a sparkle in her (otherwise still lifeless, robotic) eyes. Just to emphasize how relatable this unit was to the Crystal girls, there was even a stuffed toy dog sticking out of a knock-off designer purse.

The girls, of course, had no problems with putting in a dollar for their fortune - once they'd found a change machine in the adjoining arcade, anyway. The doll inside stirred to life, her mouth falling open and closed out of sync with the words--

"Tonight, you will be close to the one you love," piped in a woman's voice, set in a quavering, low, mysterious tone. "Your every desire will be fulfilled, and in the arms of your loved one, your pleasure shall reach new, fantastic heights!" Both girls began to giggle at this point, obviously amused by the folksy little fortune they were getting.

But the Barbie-gypsy was not quite done yet. A cheesy sound of thunder pealed from the box, meant to awe more impressionable audiences, and the final prophecy was pronounced:

"After, you will each decide to leave your boyfriends so that you may spend the rest of your lives in true happiness, in the arms of one another."

The lights and sounds stopped - the doll went still. Motionless, too, were the two girls standing in front of the machine, eying each other warily.

As they hurried awkwardly away, in low voices swearing to each other never to mention this again, Robin casually tucked her handheld walkie-talkie back into the front of her jacket. She permitted herself a single moment of victory, failing to hide a brilliant grin behind her sleeve, before recomposing and sipping mildly at her drink. There was no room for gloating at the scene of the crime, after all - more Crystal girls might be arriving at any second, and the next one might be even better!

And waited. And waited, and waited some more. It was odd - the special effects were going off, and the fortune teller's mouth was moving, but there was no voice....

Somewhere, a short ways down the street, a pink-haired girl seemed to be having some difficulty. You know how they put those little cautions on coffee cups, the ones that say Warning: Contents may be hot? And then you think to yourself well gee DUH, what idiot would forget about THAT?

Robin, apparently, was that idiot. So much for that low-profile she'd been maintaining.

"Reeeeeeehhhh!" she whined, trying to wave cool air onto her burnt tongue. "Owieowieowie--!"

Even in the obvious pain that she was, though, the prankster was able to realize that she had a customer. A customer that had been waiting too long already, by the looks of it. Wide-eyed, she gave the customer a brief look-over, trying to pick out some detail to wield. Hunching suddenly away from the fortune teller, in a totally not suspicious attempt to conceal the walkie talkie she'd pulled out of her jacket again, Robin rushed to deliver her line:

"You will meet the love of your life today, but they will make fun of your shoes."

The animatron in the machine, of course, had pretty much stopped moving by the time that the fortune was given. And the cut off whiiiiiiine owwwww that followed the words weren't too subtle, either.

Robin was, in fact, doing better - the pain on her tongue had faded to a sort of numbed tingling, and what she thought for sure had to be third degree burns were likely no more than the thinnest top layer of her taste buds being stripped off. But there was a problem - because, just in case the rest of it wasn't heavy-handed enough, Robin was still holding the walkie talkie. And even if Eilian had been in the dark already, it didn't take someone of average intelligence to figure out what it was used for.

"Oh. Uhmmm." This is awkward, her face read briefly. If there was one thing that Robin was good for, though, it was graceful recoveries - or at least recoveries that made her look like she knew what she was doing. So she grinned, only slightly sheepishly, and waved the hand with the walkie talkie. "Yeah, yeah, I'm totally fine! It was just an assassination attempt." She set the drink onto the bistro table in front of her and wrinkled her nose at it. "That barista guy in there... I think we were in the same history class last year. He's got it out for me."

And the matter of the walkie talkie? The fortune teller? Nope, Robin wasn't giving any explanations away. Hence, dodging the awkward part.

"That guy?" Robin glanced back toward the coffee shop, observing the boy inside with an emotion that was definitely not longing, but much closer to alarm. She could see him inside now, turned away from the front door - mopping up a spill by the looks of it. Sourly, Robin shook her head. "No way! Not a chance. He's probably just getting back at me for that D we got on our report on the Spanish Inquisition." Apparently, teachers didn't appreciate it when you plagiarized Monty Python in your report titles, and even less when you included song lyrics in your report. Who knew?

But, of course, this wasn't about her history report. This wasn't even about her and the coffee boy. This was about Eilian, her shoes, and the faux fortune teller that had delivered an ominous message about them. Robin shrugged, still smiling. "Hey, I was working under pressure! I didn't even see you get near it until it was too late, give me a break." It was actually rather embarrassing, that - for Robin's observational skills to have let her down. It would have been one thing if she'd gotten bored and hadn't cared, because that was just expected of her; but to have tried and failed? Ouch, ego.

Fortunately, there would always be chances to redeem herself. Because down the street now came another Crystalite, wearing pumps that were way too high for her, a push-up bra that she barely had the goods to make use of - and, cooing over the cute fortune teller, she was rifling in her purse for a dollar.

Robin licked her lips, planning out what she was going to say this time - but then thought better of it. "Okay, here - you know so much about this stuff, don't you? Why do you give it a try?" She waved the walkie talkie at Eilian, grinning. "Just wait for the lights to go off, then press the button and give her a good one. You'll have about fifteen seconds before it stops, so make sure you time it right!"

"Your school, maybe," Robin cackled, watching their latest victim flee the scene (which was no small feat, in those terrible heels!) "I think there are Crystal-cup scholarships that nobody talks about. They bring in the girls that have C cups, just to make sure all the Meadowview girls feel inferior."

It wasn't entirely clear if Robin had caught on to the fact that Eilian herself was one of the Crystal girls, or if she was trying to needle her companion - or if she just thought that Eilian wouldn't care about the cracks. Whatever her line of thinking, though, she seemed perfectly at ease in the introductions. "I'm Robin Goodfellow," she reciprocated, accepting the hand and giving it a few pumps. "You wanna sit down? I bet that he won't try scalding you with your drink, if you wanted to join me for a while. And who knows--" Robin grinned, "maybe he'll say something mean about your shoes, and it'll be true love!"

Boob job ballerina. Now there was an idea for the next hit Barbie doll, screw the fashion fortune teller! "Huh. I wonder how those work when you're twirling around," Robin mused aloud. "Oh well. I guess that if you're trying to buy your way into a skillful art, you need something to compensate, right?"

It wasn't really Crystal Academy itself that Robin hated, mind you. It was the bitches that filled its halls, who decided that their daddy's money was all they needed to get by in life. They didn't have to be clever to get by - they just needed to buy the right face, the right body, and they were set for life! They'd get the top jock and settle into a life of sloth and luxury. And it wasn't even the thought of their easy success that bothered Robin, but the complacency. Where was the adventure in a life lived without trouble?

And when it came to Valentine's Day... well, that was a whole new world of hate.

But Robin just smiled anyway, and thought it over. "Well, gee, I dunno," she mused, tapping a finger on her chin. "I mean. I don't think so, but there is a pretty sweet "forbidden love" angle on that, isn't there? The lowly Meadowview girl falls for the Crystalite... it's practically Shakespearian!"

Eilian had never even met a Hillworth boy? Robin seemed speculative, eying up the girl with new thought in her eyes. She was envisioning the pair of them launching off into an impromptu journey - it's Valentine's Day, let's get you a date with a Hillworth! But for two things, in fact, Robin would have jumped at the opportunity. The first being, she already had quite the interesting setup here, and she didn't want to walk off after something that she wasn't sure was shinier; and the second being, she rather liked keeping Eilian's companionship to herself for now. Once the day was over and she had nothing but boring, empty time on her hands, though, that would be her adventure for another day!

For now, she settled for teasing the poor Crystal girl.

"Oh, sure, you know, Hillworth boys. Terrible creatures, they are," Robin told her. "Most of them are missing their front teeth in fights, and they all have antenna on their head," she waggled a finger above her own head to demonstrate, "so that they can scan the police channels! I saw one the other day who was missing his whole arm - said that he got it stuck when he was stealing from a vending machine, and gnawed it off so that he wouldn't get caught. I feel sorry for the next sap that wanted a stick of jerky, and got that instead!"

If Robin were being truthful... well, she might've met one or two Hillworths, but they hadn't left much of an impression yet. Her two years living at Destiny City had filled her up with lots of biases and impressions about some groups - snotty Crystal Academy girls being the obvious choice, though Eilian had officially won herself a note as being an exception - but others, she was still learning about. That didn't mean she wouldn't make things up about them, of course, just that she had to follow up her claims with a grin and an exclamation, "Ha! Wouldn't that be something?"

"Obscure? Me?" Robin was stunned - absolutely stunned - that Eilian could presume to go there. To suggest, even for a moment, that Robin was the sort to just disappear into the crowd! The girl's lips stiffened into a pout. Indignantly, she offered her irrefutable proof of fame; "I have a blog, you know!"

Then the girl relaxed, was laughing. She didn't take herself that seriously!... or else she wouldn't admit that she did. It was remarkably difficult to gauge her sincerity, with how easily she flitted back and forth between looking purely humorous and absolutely serious.

"I figure it's not so bad, though," she remarked after some number of seconds. "You know, we get to wear sneakers. Plus, we get boys! On those two things alone, I'll take the ol' red and white anyday. Not even to mention," Robin flicked her hair back and sighed dramatically, "those Crystal girls, you know, they just can't keep their hands off me. I could only imagine what it'd be like if I went there! They'd have to line the halls with pillows to catch the poor girls as I went past!"