“This is a stupid language,” Evie said, tossing her binder away and dramatically flopping face first on her bed. There wasn’t much room to sit or stand in the tiny bedroom so Dana was rolling her eyes from a perch on the desk.

“Evie, stop it, it’s just flashcards. You’re learning to introduce yourself, not trying to give the Gettysburg address.”

“Why would I want to-- nevermind,” Evie flopped her head up to rest her chin on her arms. “Fine, hit me with it.”

Dana pulled up the first card and cleared her throat, trying her best to imitate her best accent. “Me lene Dana, esena pos se lene?”

“Okay well now you’re just treating me like I’m stupid,” Evie sat up and pouted. Dana was introducing herself, she knew that. Sort of.

“Am I?” Dana raised an eyebrow. “Then what’s the answer?” There was a moment of silent staring between the two of them before Dana rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “I asked for your name.”

“Oh!” Evie cleared her throat, practically butchering the accented vowels with the following phrase. “Me leme Evie.”

“Lene. En. N sound, Evie.”

“Ugggggh,” Evie flopped backwards. “This is pointless anyway, she probably doesn’t even remember or understand this stupid bet.”

“I dunno, she looked back like she understood,” Dana suggested with a shrug, playing with the deck of flashcards Evie had drawn up. At least her sister could do that. Dana had no problem hearing some of the the lighter accents, so she was judging Evie pretty harshly, when Evie could barely comprehend half of the syllables, and was just obliterating them when she tried to repeat them anyway.

“I don’t know why you care so much, though,” Dana ended up mumbling to herself. Evie occasionally had fits of rage against the gall of the Negaverse senshi who dared to threaten her little sister and at the same time she was trying her hardest to accomplish this thing she clearly wasn’t capable of in an effort to bring her over to her side. Usually Evie was pretty simplistic in her desires and goals. It didn’t compute to Dana.

“I don’t care,” Evie said defensively as she looked up at the ceiling. “It’s just like... like um... Well I don’t like her but that doesn’t mean I want her corrupted.”

“I don’t see the dif,” Dana shrugged. She wasn’t a senshi, she couldn’t feel auras and energy signatures. To her it just looked like black and white chess pieces trying to punch each other.

“You don’t understand,” Evie countered and just got a scoff in return.

“Good point,” Dana said in a sarcastic tone. She hated how her sister acted like this senshi thing was a mysterious and magical thing no one could possibly understand. She had been threatened constantly to keep it between the two of them, she couldn’t even tell dad. And from Dana’s point of view it was very stupid. Her sister wanted to be Batman, all angsty and secretive and unknown to the world. She preferred Iron Man, and would prefer to call a press release instead. Secret identities are stupid. “Okay fine, next conversation attempt. One you’re gonna need.”

“If you think it’s stupid then why are you helping?”

“Cuz I am,” Dana smirked, knowing Evie was frowning even if she was looking up and not at her. Then she added awkwardly. “I don’t know. She looked lonely.”

“When she tried to kill you?”

“She didn’t try to kill me, you just assumed she was.”

“Yes, silly me,” Evie flopped back up again and huffed. “Assuming she was going to kill you when she was positioned to snap your neck.”

“You are silly,” Dana said, obviously not wanting to seriously talk about things like death and waved the card around. “Now shut up and listen, Tone-Deafy McDeaferson. Like I said, you’re gonna need this one. Milas Elinika?”

Evie stared at her with an utter blankness Dana let go on, hoping with all of her hope that it meant she was trying to figure it out. Except she ended up just saying, “Okay, I know it’s a question.”

“Ugh, Evie.”

“I can say it! Mee... mias eel...”

“Milas Elinika.”

“You’re saying it too fast!”

“Well if she ever asks you,” Dana smirked. “You just answer ‘den mila Elinika’.”

“Den milo El...” Evie knit her brow, trying to decipher the syllables. “Den milo Elinika.”

“Oh good! Ohi works too.”

“Okay...” Evie nodded. They’d covered ne and ohi already, since yes and no were fairly essential. That didn’t mean she wasn’t constantly switching their definitions, but she thought she knew them in her own head. “What am I saying then?”

“That you can’t speak Greek for s**t,” Dana cackled. At least until she got smacked with a binder.

“NOT IN THE FACE!” Dana shrieked and flailed, falling off the desk and landing in one of the few strips of empty floor space. “You’re mean. This is why no one wants to help you out.”

“You volunteered!” Evie shrieked, clearly taking the deadpan snark way too seriously. Plus she was on edge anyway. Why she was making so much effort to reach out to Nickeline was something she’d been angsting about for a while. She didn’t like her. She’d even go so far as to say she hated her. But part of her wanted to not hate her. Evie didn’t like hating people, she’d been raised to believe no one was inherently evil or bad, and people who seemed that way were usually suffering.

She wasn’t sure how much Nickeline was suffering, if she was at all. She could agree with Dana that she did look lonely. No, she was definitely.

‘No one knows me.’

Evie pressed her mouth in a thin line and leaned over to peek at her sister on the floor. “Are you going to get up or what?”

“Can’t. I’m dead. I am dead. The sheer decibel level of your screeching caused a fatal brain hemorrhage,” Dana said after several moments of silence as she dramatically flopped an arm over her face. Her special way of playing off the fact Evie may have hurt her feelings just a bit.

Evie sighed and reached down to pull Dana up by her gangly arms, while Dana cooperated, but not without some dramatic groans and flopping about madly. “Come on, Day,” Evie huffed, but when the preteen was pulled onto the corner of the bed with her, she grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to impart some sort of serious focus. “Dana are you even okay with this?”

“Okay with... how bad you are failing at accented e sounds?” Dana quipped and laughed.

“Shut up, Day, you know what I mean. She tried to kill you...”

“Well she didn’t really try,” Dana snickered and shrugged. “She could’ve. She probably could’ve killed you too. But she didn’t.”

Evie frowned. And most of that was the indignity at the suggestion Nickeline could kill her. “I’m a super senshi,” She stated stubbornly. “She couldn’t even kill me when we were evenly ranked.”

“Blah blah I don’t understand your weird bullshit,” Dana snorted Senshi stuff was weird, and stupid, and she wasn’t interested in the mechanics of it so much as she just wanted to ride on some sensational butt bow tails to fame and fortune through their sensationalism. “Point is, I think you’re doing the right thing by not being a grudge holding b***h,” And she held up the binder she’d been hit with, making it do a little dance in her lap and smiling behind it. “You’re being a very big person by not being a total d**k and--” She stopped to dramatically sniffle, “I’m soooooooo proud~”

And Evie pushed her right back off the bed.

And just kind of frowned quietly. Just because she was making all this effort didn’t mean there weren’t still grudges. There were so many grudges, and just because Dana didn’t hold the threat against her life with any sincerity, it was a transgression Evie couldn’t fathom forgiving. Her motivation was the competition of the bet, and the urge to prove her side right at all costs. And Dana was attributing a level of compassion and forgiveness Evie was certain she didn’t have in her.

Dana’s eyes watched her thousand mile stare and frown as she peeked back over the mattress and concluded something similar in her own interpretation. “You can forgive her, you know.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it. Dad says everyone should be forgiven.”

“Dad says a lot of things,” Evie grumbled, picking up her binder and thumbing through some of the pages she scrapbooked together.

“Maybe that’s why you’re having problems,” Dana huffed, standing up. “Because you don’t actually want to do this.”

“Of course I do.”

“I dunno, it doesn’t seem like you’re really trying.”

“I am so!”

“Oh! I get it!” Dana teased and reached over to poke her shoulder. “Because then you’ll be on the same side and have to be friends.”

“It doesn’t work that,” Evie said with an eye roll before turning back down to her binder. “Senshi are kind of independent unless they’re on a team, and she ain’t on my team.”

“Well yeah, because you were fighting but if she’s...” Dana’s brow furrowed and she looked up in thought as she went through several hand motions trying to figure it out. “If she’s on your side doesn’t that put her on your team?”

“No, see,” Evie sighed and peeled her eyes off her vocabulary list. “There’s the good side and the Chaos side--”

“Chaos isn’t bad,” Dana interrupted matter of factly.

“Shut up, it is here. It’s like... uh... I... I mean it’s...” Evie groaned. Maybe she should’ve paid more attention at the purification meeting, because all she could describe it was was ‘brainwashing thing that makes you evil’ and she wasn’t even sure if that was accurate. But rather than admit she couldn’t describe it to Dana she just shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand anyway.”

“But isn’t the good side a team?!” Dana asked, sounding frustrated enough to rip her hair out.

“No.”

“But you work together to-- But then what’s a team if--... Oh my god!”

Evie was cringing. Dana was worked up and yelling and that wasn’t especially good given the topic they were discussing. “Day... calm down...”

“NO! This is stupid. You’re stupid. You and mysterious senshi senshi of senshiness and the secret and the weird other senshi and your senshi friends and I’m not allowed to know or talk about and-- ...a-and... and it’s stupid. You’re stupid. Why can’t I know things? I can understand things!”

“Dana, it’s just best if you stay uninvolved,” Evie muttered. And then pointed to the door. “You should leave. It was mistake to let you help, we can’t talk about Nickeline anymore.”

“Why?” Dana sounded fully enraged at this point.

“Because I just said you shouldn’t be involved. You shouldn’t have been there that night. You shouldn’t have even met her. Now go, I don’t want to talk about this with you anymore,” Evie did her best not to meet Dana’s glare. Nope, she was reading her lists in her binder and ignoring the fact the Dana was so worked up her face was red and her shoulders were tensed like she was trying to figure out if she wanted to take a swing at Evie or storm off.

“You should just forget about senshi and terrorists and all this other crap, Dana, because... I mean... you just should.”

“You are so full of s**t, Evie,” Dana yelled back. “You think just because you got superpowers you’re this wise, unattainable being, but you’re still human just like me!”

“That’s not it at all, Dana,” Evie said, trying to keep her voice down to a calm monotone, and still avoiding eye contact as she dismissively flipped the page.

“It just gave you a big ego is all,” Dana kept yelling as she went to the door, grabbing the doorknob on her way out. “But you’re still the same loser you were before!” And then she slammed the door behind her hard enough to rattle the whole room.

“It’s not that at all,” Evie murmured to herself, not that Dana could hear it. She didn’t want her little sister exposed to a world of aliens and warfare and endless space and death, was that really such a crime? It wasn’t like Dana was a senshi anyway. She didn’t have to be involved, so why she kept injecting herself into it was a mystery and an annoyance.

And now she was stuck with this project all by herself. As annoying as Dana’s teasing and cackling had been, she didn’t realize how much of a burden it was having her not be around to help as when she was gone. Evie needed a study partner, she wasn’t going to make any progress without one.

She flipped through her phone, mostly looking at DCU classmates and study group regulars before an accidental flick too far brought up a familiar name she hadn’t considered.

“Hm...” She mumbled and started typing up a text.

>Hey, Lydia? How offensive would it be if I asked you if you knew any Greek?

(2227)