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 Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:44 am
By the time her cousin had finished explaining what the plans would be, Yvette had finished another bite. It was a good thing that the dessert wasn't all that large, or the pair would have been stuck there for hours on end waiting for the young adult to finish chewing all of that food. She gave Lyddie a small smile when she reassured she would wait until the sweets had disappeared from the plate.
It took about another fifteen minutes, but Yvette managed to conquer that gateau. When she had finished, she gently pushed the plate back to the center of the table and looked to Lyddie in an almost apologetic manner.
Eating fast had never been her strong suit.
"...um... are we all paid up?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:11 pm
The conversation slowed to a halt as Lydia waited for Yvette to finish. Then, with a shrug, she picked it back up again. It didn't matter that she was the only one speaking. It was better than awkward silence, and the occasional change in expression or nod helped to keep things going. Lydia spoke of her school, of the preparations for her party, of the shops she wanted to go to. Finally, the dessert was done, and she sat back in her seat for a moment, slightly exhausted from doing two people's worth of talking.
"Hmm? Oh, Babbás is taking care of it." Which was obvious, considering that Lydia was too young to be employed, and her father too doting to let her have anything other than a perfect birthday. Or a perfect dining experience in general. Lydia ate at Maize Maizier so often that they had Iosif's credit card on file, so she could come and go as she pleased and not worry about the bill.
Lydia nodded to the waiter, who nodded back and wished her happy birthday again. "So, shall we go? It's just a few blocks away, and from there we'll see where we want to go."
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:39 pm
It made sense that Uncle Iosif had everything already taken care of. With a bob of her head, she signaled she was ready to go. The girl reached under the table to pick up the homemade purse she had tucked away at the beginning of the meal, then scooted out of the chair.
The girl was still unfamiliar with the surroundings, so it wasn't surprising that she clung to her younger cousin's side. Or rather, Yvette actually went up to her cousin and grabbed onto her hand. "I didn't realize your hair had gotten so long... I love how you wear it though! It's so cute! What sort of things are you looking to wear in your hair?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:02 pm
The area was quite familiar to Lydia by now, after many afternoons and evenings of dining bliss. "There's a shortcut this way," she said, pointing down a narrower, residential street. "And the streets are less crowded over here, too. So maybe we can hit up a few stores before we go home!"
The comment about her hair made Lydia blush slightly- nowhere near the tomatoish hue Yvette would have turned, but enough to make it obvious that they were related. "Thanks! It's a nightmare to take care of sometimes, but I really like being able to do different things with it. I was thinking of wearing it down tonight, actually. Maybe with new clips or something? But we'll have to see what they have."
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:26 pm
"A shortcut?" It shouldn't have been a big deal, but as they drew closer, Yvette couldn't help but feel like taking a shortcut was a bad idea. This was the big city, and shortcuts away from the main streets were said to be dangerous. The shortcuts were where all of the bad people hid, Daddy had been the one to convince Yvette such a simple thing as a child. Even though she was an adult and knew better, she still suspected there was some truth to all of this.
In an effort to ignore her own worries, she resumed the conversation about hair. "I can sympathize, but at least you keep your hair manageable by putting it in braids! Mine gets tangles all the time." There was a slight pause as her eyes drifted to her own dark hair which reached her tailbone. "I wonder... if your hair is longer than mine...?"
The pair got closer to the alleged shortcut, and as Lydia drew her cousin closer, Yvette actually slowed in step. "I-is... is this it?" Something really felt weird about all of this. Should they have even been doing this? The girl hesitated, and soon enough her eyes were upon her cousin's eyes, as if seeking some sort of reassurance.
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 2:54 pm
Lydia had been given much the same warnings about shortcuts as Yvette had, and had summarily dismissed them. Not entirely- she didn't walk through dark alleys at night, since she wasn't suicidal- but staying on the beaten path made for an awfully boring journey. While residential streets were hardly the pinnacle of excitement, they would get them to their destination faster. The street was not terribly narrow, the daylight still comfortably bright. "Oh, nothing's going to happen, silly. Who would attack us in the middle of the afternoon?"
That settled, she gently tugged Yvette down the street. It was more peaceful than the bustling main thoroughfares, and it put Lydia's mind at ease. "Yeah, if I don't keep it in braids most of the time, it's just impossible! But at least I manage to keep the braids interesting." She batted the end of one quietly, looking at Yvette's long hair. "I don't think mine's as long as yours is... not yet, anyway."
A harsh rattling sound echoed in the otherwise quiet streets. Startled, Lydia looked up and then around her. "What was that?"
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 3:16 pm
At first, it wasn't really all that hard to tug Yvette along. She was the sort who was used to getting tugged along into things she might not have been certain about. Her head bobbled a little as Lyddie mentioned that she thought that Yvette was the winner of the "long hair" contest.
Yet, before things started to get strange, the elder girl's legs seemed to start protesting their current path. Her steps grew sluggish at first, then began to get wobbly. It was a strange feeling that seemed to resonate all throughout her legs. It wasn't quite a numb feeling, but the feeling seemed to be rendering her legs quite useless.
At one point, the girl could no longer remain standing, falling uselessly to her knees. Considering she had been holding her cousin's hands, there was no doubt she was slowing the other girl down.
"I... I don't know..." she whimpered a bit, her eyes frantically trying to assess what was going on with her legs and unable to find an actual reason for failing attempts at keeping up.
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Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:36 pm
The noise had startled her, but after a few moments of silence, Lydia dismissed it. It was probably a stray cat or something. Far more worrying was the way that Yvette was lagging. While at first she wrote it off as nervousness, when her cousin collapsed, seemingly unable to support herself, she panicked. "Yvette? Yvette, are you okay? What's wrong? Are you sick? Should I call someone?"
Already she was rummaging through her purse, looking for her phone. Her hands closed around something promising, but when she pulled it out, it was that strange phone that the cat had "given" her before. Lydia was going to give it to the restaurant when they were there for lunch, but she had forgotten. Even if it still worked, she felt bad about using someone else's phone. More likely, its owner had already cancelled the service on it.
"Dumb phone, never there when you need it." Lydia put the strange phone back in her purse and kept looking. Another clatter rose up from nearby, even louder than the first. Shrieking in alarm, Lydia dropped her purse and squeezed Yvette's arms tightly. "What is that?" she cried, tugging her cousin's hands. "Come on Yvette, we should go. You'll be fine if we go, so let's go, okay?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:42 am
"I don't know!" Yvette practically whimpered out as she attempted to get back to her feet. Unfortunately, her legs stubbornly did not seem to want to cooperate, and soon enough the elder of the pair seemingly had sunk back to the ground again. Her cousin's panicked tone was not helping the situation all that much, since now Yvette was not only flustered, but worried because of all the trouble she was causing.
Resorting to the first thing to come to mind, the elder girl almost sobbed out "I'm sorry... I'm sosososorry..." The girl rubbed at her eyes, wiping away what tears had already tried to escape her. "I... I can't get up... my legs... I don't know what's wrong..."
On the other side of the alleyway, a very familiar animal appeared. Or at least an animal that was familiar to the younger of the pair. Unfortunately, the manx had not been attracted to the area due to the girl. It was the youma that had her attention. If the girl had henshined up last time, she might have noticed the girl more readily. However, just like before, all the feline had was a vague sense that there was an unawakened senshi here. One of the two girls in the middle of the alleyway.
This is going to be tricky...
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:12 pm
The rational part of Lydia's brain told her that it had to calm down. All she knew was that something was making noise, and if she panicked, all she would do was make Yvette freak out more. The noise could be anything, anything at all! Maybe someone had dropped a baking pan out a window, or was cleaning a radiator with steel wool, or their car wasn't starting so they were kicking it. Loudly and repeatedly.
The clatter came again, and the part of Lydia's mind that wanted her to stay alive told the rational bit to shut up and move. It took several moments of deep breathing for her to resist the urge to run away, but she managed to look at Yvette with a shaky smile. Forget the news, forget what goes on in the far corners of the world, just take care of your cousin. "Yvette, can you reach your phone?" Her voice trembled, but didn't squeak, which she took as a good sign. "I'll keep looking for mine, but if something's wrong with your legs, we should probably call the paramedics, okay?"
She kept holding one of Yvette's hands, a little more tightly than was comfortable. With the other, she reached down and felt around for her purse. "It's okay," she said, for both their benefits, and looked to see where she'd dropped it. The first thing she saw wasn't her purse, however, but a cat.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, startled, but in a good way. Maybe all the fuss was over a cat after all, and she was just being silly. Then she looked closer. "Aren't you the-"
Before she could finish her question, the clanking sound came again, seemingly mixed with an angry roar. Lydia's fingers tightened, threatening to cut off Yvette's circulation, and she froze in place. If there was a cat back there, it was at least twenty times the size of this one.
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Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:47 pm
If this was a just world, Yvette would have been the one comforting her cousin about this whole ordeal. Yvette was the older one, she should have been the one in charge. Yet here it was, not the case, and likely to never be the case. How could she be in charge if she couldn't even stand on her own two feet?
Helplessly, the girl felt as if she was being forced to listen to little Lyddie. It wasn't that she didn't like her cousin. No, Yvette loved Lyddie, but it didn't make her feel any less silly as she reached into her purse, fingers shaking as they grasped for her overly large cell phone. She had it in her fingers and she pulled it out of her purse, but her fingers decided at last minute to fumble, making the phone tumble to the ground with a slight clatter.
"Oh... sorry!" she squeaked out before attempting to reach it.
The cat padded forward from where she had been standing, eventually able to make out the different faces from the small gathering of girls. One face was unfamiliar and extremely panicked, but the other one she recognized in a heartbeat. Irene!
The nervous girl had reached out to an object she had dropped, which the small animal seemed to claim with her paw. Green eyes looked into the elder girl's purple eyes, the look far more intense than a normal cat would give.
"...shoo kitty! Th-that's mine!" However, then that sound echoed through the alleyway, even louder and more distinct than before. Timidly, she shrunk back, arm whipping back to her without her phone at hand.
Hmmm... I wonder...
"Your phone won't help you! The youma will have eaten you by then!"
If this whole stressful scenario, that apparently was the last straw. Cats didn't talk, but this one did. The girl's body went limp as she literally fainted from the mere shock of having a feline talk to her.
It had worked! ********* didn't know if it would, but it had worked! However, now wasn't the time for celebrations.
"Lydia!" It was fortunate the girl had mentioned her name before, even if it was a mocking scold from her parental figure. "Take out that pen I gave you before, and shout out 'Irene Power, Make-Up!' ...no dilly-dallying!"
There was a momentary pause as she looked to the other now unconscious girl. "She'll be okay... but quickly! With all the energy you can muster up!"
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Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 12:57 am
"It's okay, it's okay!" Lydia was trying very hard to be calm and in control. She was failing pretty miserably at reassuring herself, let alone her cousin. "I'll get it-"
The cat beat both girls to the phone. Now that it was right in front of her, Lydia confirmed that she'd seen that cat someplace before. "You're the cat from the restaurant!" she exclaimed, fumbling in her bag again for the strange phone. "Is this all some sort of birthday surprise? Are there cameras or something?" She didn't think her father would do something this scary, but she was having a hard time thinking of other explanations.
Then the cat spoke. Yvette fainted. Lydia only let out a strangled squeak. A talking cat wasn't much stranger than a cat with table manners, but it was a lot of strangeness and stress all piled together. And the things the cat was saying were stranger still. Youma? Irene? Make-up?
"I'm not allowed to wear makeup yet," she said automatically. Wait, that wasn't important here. "I don't know what you're talking about! And Yvette needs a doctor now. For all I know, she's having a panic attack, or an allergic reaction." The disturbance, which only moments ago had paralyzed Lydia with fright, was now all but forgotten as she tried to take care of her cousin (and a random talking cat).
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Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 11:27 am
Was there a way for a cat to face-palm? Right now ********* was feeling the desire to do such a thing. Unfortunately, she couldn't even spare such a simple gesture right now. This unawakened Sailor Irene was panicking. She didn't have a full view of the consequences, where as the manx did.
In a stern tone, the manx tried to get her girl's attention. "Yvette will be fine... she wasn't standing up when she fainted... so she didn't cause much damage to herself... however, she'll be dead if you do not follow my directions. You need to follow my directions if you want to save her!"
Without any hesitation, the tailless animal began trying to look through Yvette's purse, as if the henshin pen was buried in there. Yet as she worked, she repeated the directions for this soon-to-be-senshi's benefit.
"Take out your pen and call out 'Irene Power Make-Up' with as much energy as you can!"
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Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:43 pm
Lydia wasn't listening to the cat. She was pulling things out of her purse, trying to find her phone. And mumbling to herself. "Tissues, no. Just my luck. What a birthday this is turning out to be! All these ads, why do I take them? Why did I insist on this shortcut? If anything happens, it'll be all my fault." Her hands closed around a long, skinny object- the pen the cat had given her. "And this thing- what is this supposed to be, anyway? It doesn't even write!"
Yet she carried it around with her, and for what? Not for writing, obviously. Not to return it. She'd eaten at Maize Maizier several times since finding it, and never actually handed it in. She didn't know what to do, and being bossed around by a cat was not helping. "If I don't do this, you'll keep talking at me, won't you?" she asked, holding out the pen with trembling hands. "Fine. But after I do this, let me go and get help, okay?"
She was bargaining with a cat. What next? Lydia sighed, cleared her throat, and yelled as loudly as she could: "Irene Power, Make-Up!"
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Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 10:27 pm
The cat finally seemed to settle down once the pen had been located, setting her tailless rump on the ground. ********* was not about to lie to this girl about what would happen next. "If you don't do it, I'll keep talking to you. If you do it, I'll still keep talking to you. I'm going to be honest, there's no way you are going to be able to get rid of me."
The moment that the girl had shouted out the words, she soon enough found herself glowing. Out of seemingly nowhere, feathers seemed to appear, swirling about the young teen, some eventually seeming to stick in the girl's hair, her shoulders, and even down to her feet upon a pair of classy high heel pumps. Once the dance of the transformation seemed to be over, the girl was no longer the same girl as before.
No, now this girl was Sailor Irene, Senshi of Peace.
"Sailor Irene..." the cat murmured for a brief moment, as if in awe of the moment. ********* had done it. She had found another one of her girls. Her paws were trembling in excitement.
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