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 Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 10:04 am
He glanced back down at the flyer in his hands before looking up again. Sure enough, as advertised, the Petite Paris pastry store stood right in front of him. And unfortunately also as sure enough, there seemed to be a massive line-up that spanned from the length of the tiny little store to the end of the block.
He stood there, staring at the line, half wavering between fleeing the spot and gaining the remains of his masculinity back and actually lining up next to that tall girl in line at the very end. Toby weighed the pros and cons in his mind.
Cons: The line-up consisted of an entirely female population, the shop itself was pretty much as girly as it could get (for crying out loud, the entire store was decked in a soft pink), and he was pretty much going to get laughed at by the entire staff.
Pros: Now, unbeknownst to the general public, Toby loved sweets. Not the expensive kind of course, but the kind that one generally got at supermarkets after Halloween, or pastries marked right after expiry date that normally went for a quarter of their regular price and tasted just as good. He looked at the flyer and then squinted at the poster also in a deeper pink on the front glass door of the store. Sure enough, it wrote All you can buy pastries, for $10 on both fronts.
And with that in mind, he debated that one more time: chickening out, or actually lining up? Ok ok, the lineup was full of girls. Girls gossiped and talked about weird things, like their hair. There was no way he would be caught in a line up with them, aw who was he kidding.
Trying to act somewhat dignified he walked to the very end of the lineup an stood there, ears reddening already. Its not like anyone knew him, and it would be worth it in the end, really.
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:45 pm
The tall woman that Toby sauntered behind just happened to be Lieutenant Variscite, well, sort of. It was Dale Spencer, the self-proclaimed charmer of Destiny City. She had her Blackberry out, and was feverishly texting someone or another. It was a dull conversation, but something to take her mind off of the long line.
Why was Dale in a line for a shop so pink? For the same reason as Toby, of course. As many sweets as you could fit in a basket for $10. Dale preferred the natural taste of berries, but Petite Paris was known for its chocolate-dipped strawberries and fresh ingredients. Plus, cute girls tended to dote upon those who gave them chocolates. $10 for sweets that lead to scoring sounded like a good plan to Dale.
Then, a lone guy came to stand in the line. His ears were redder than bricks, and he looked like he was trying to act cool while standing in a line filled with girls to a very, very pink store.
"Hey," she nodded to him. "You're a brave one."
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 5:00 pm
Aree hated sweets.
It would be nearly impossible to describe just how much she hated them, but it would be safe to say that it fell somewhere between the way Charonite hated failure and the way Nealite hated poor people. Given the option, she would have eradicated the cavity-causing fat factory of Petite Paris from the face of the earth. She would have strolled in there in her Negaverse form and ripped the star seed out of each and every bloated, cholesterol-clogged chest in the grossly pink-papered joint.
Fortunately for all involved, there was one week out of the month where her body seemed to revolt against logic, practically demanding sweets lest her ovaries rebel against the rest of her body and claw their way out through her back. Thus it was with a horse-sized dosage of Midol in her system that Aree stepped into line behind Toby. She leaned slightly to one side, eyeing the long line with a groan.
“You'd think that with an a** like that,” she murmured, clearly focused on the cellulite-riddled thighs of a woman several feet ahead of them in line, wearing a skirt several sizes too small, “she'd have a VIP pass to this place.”
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 7:57 pm
Oh god, was the girl in front looking at him?! He tried to possibly scrunch even lower, eyes barely peering out from the collar of his shirt, willing the line-up to go faster. Seriously why were half the people even in line? He eyed an overly plump lady standing a little in front of them and pondered why the heck she was even buying pastries.
Apparently his imaginary friend from behind him had an answer, as did his imaginary friend Number Two, who seemed rather sympathetic about his ordeal.
What the- came the belated thought as he swerved out from his 'hiding shell', turning left and right before confirming the voices were indeed, not imaginary. He couldn't help but grin just a little bit: at least the other two girls in line had a sense of humour.
"At least she has an excuse," he sighed, eyeing their clueless 'victim'. "I dont think even a month's load of cupcakes is going to get my dignity back after this rate."
Oh crap, did he just say that part out loud?
"That is, for my sister." He added on a little too belatedly, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. "You know how girls ah, love those sweets and stuff, which is totally not a guy thing to do, yeah!"
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:48 pm
Dale eyed Toby, she eyed him hard. Was this guy afraid of the pink, diabetes inducing shop or something? Maybe all the girls intimidated him. Poor fellow. Dale should be sympathetic to him.
But then, what would she gain from that? She was already ahead of him in line. Perhaps she could get some entertainment out of it. The woman that walked in behind him seemed amusing.
"She'll be very lucky if she doesn't have heart failure just from walking into the shop," Dale laughed. "I wonder how it'll affect us, hm?"
Dale glanced back at the guy behind her again, "Don't worry about your dignity. We youth have to work so hard nowadays that we deserve a break every now and then, right?"
She paused to let a smirk form over your face, "Or is it your sister that's working hard?"
After delivering that blow, Dale looked back at the poor woman that looked like she was about to topple over.
"Are you all right, my dear?" the black-haired woman raised an eyebrow. "You look like you should sit down." With a smooth step, she walked over to her (practically ignoring Toby) and offered Aree a hand.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 6:13 pm
Aree suppressed the desire to roll her eyes at Toby's comments, though slightly amused that the boy thought it was that big of a deal. Okay, well, maybe it was. After all, the store was know for being a froofy girl-haven, so perhaps Toby's presence was something to be ashamed of.
“It does make you a little bit gay,” she commented flatly, her tone of voice giving no clues as to whether or not she was serious. With one hand pressed to her stomach, try to alleviate the gnawing pain there, she regarded him for a moment, before her focus was broken by Dale. How... unexpectedly kind. Aree blinked, caught slightly off guard before remembering that she was Aree Cadence, just another vulnerable teenage girl. It felt as though it had been weeks since she'd worn that human costume, and she often found herself surprised when the initial reaction to her presence was not 'Oh god, oh god, please stop kicking me in the face.'
She was just about to wave a hand and say she was fine when the idea struck her. A sly grin crossed Aree's lips as she took Dale's hand, the other pressed to her forehead, “Well, I do feel a bit faint. I think it would be just shameful for them to not let us through when I'm so obviously not well.”
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Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:18 am
All defensive retorts about his very in-tact masculinity was forgotten as he raised one eyebrow at the girl behind him in line. If her stomach was THAT sick, why would she bother eating something that would possibly make it worse?
He opened his mouth. "If your-"
And unfortunately, unlike the thought process in his brain, never managed to complete the sentence. All prior attention to cell-phone texting and girl-gossiping in the entire lineup had been dropped as one of the staff employees in a horrifically frilly apron appeared from inside the shop, shaking her head apologetically.
"I apologise to all customers waiting in line," she began, cringing a bit as if knowing the result, "But unfortunately we are all sold out."
Excited and angry murmurs had already begun erupting from the once-line, but all that was going through Toby's head was the words "sold out", in loop mode, possibly complete with Doom Swirls. There was no use going up to the staff member and making her reconfirm words she already mentioned.
"Well," he shrugged ruefully, "I guess that's that. People must really like this shop."
As if to establish this point, a rather middle-aged pompous lady burst out from the shop, holding literally a shopping cart full of boxes and bags. Fanning behind her were what seemed like two other harried attendants, both holding armfuls of packaged pastries as well, with enough combined between the three of them to feed a small world country, and possibly half the United States.
Yep. People sure liked this shop. Injustice aside (they really should have a limit on how many one can purchase!) he guessed he would have to line up earlier next time.
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Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:59 pm
Dale watched the army of satisfied customers walk away. Oh, oh no. The pastries looked too good, cream about to burst out of sweet biscuits and chocolate mousse dribbling down the side of a croissant... it was too much.
"Excuse me for a moment, my companions," said Dale in a low voice. She gave both Toby and Aree a pat on the back before briskly walking around a corner, her hands confidently behind her back and her nose stuck up just a little bit.
The corner that she passed was dark enough, even in the bright sun. Too many people were focused on going home with their tasty treasures or moping at their loss. It made transforming from Dale to Variscite easy, and when she walked back out, her hands weren't behind her back. They were at her sides, and she calmly raised a clawed hand up to point at the woman with the shopping cart full of pastries.
"Your delicious foo-- Star Seed-- is going to the Negaverse!!"
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Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:22 am
That b***h.
That fat ******** b***h.
If one happened to be looking at Aree the moment that... thing emerged from the shop, one might notice that she looked like she was about to have a seizure. Her left eye had begun twitching, her lips parted in an expression that could not decide between disgust and outrage.
There she was, her entire reproductive style inducing civil war as though her uterus was Robert E. Lee, and that monstrosity had decided to buy out the one saving grace which might rescue Aree from her torment?
No.
Hell no.
No sooner had Variscite emerged than Aree transformed, throwing caution to the wind and not bothering to hide. It was Tanzanite who strutted over to the woman, walking as though she owned the entire damn planet, and did what every period-raging woman would do.
She pulled back a fist, aiming straight for the wretched woman's face.
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Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 1:22 pm
By now the crowd had burst from its once-organized straight procession to a smattering of angry ladies. Some of them proceeded to march into the shop and and exclaim all sorts of sugar-deprived injustices, while others hung around to plague the poor attendant who had made the announcement.
Toby was honestly just having a hard time navigating through the chaos - he rubbed his cheek where he had been hit by a stray handbag - when something, make that two somethings, caught his sight. The first of the two was busy making an announcement that sounded awfully familiar while the other had gone straight for the 'cream filling', so to speak, and literally socked the pastry-hoarding woman a good one.
Gasps and screams were heard from all directions as the woman literally went flying, pastry boxes hurled into the air, her two attendants doing the gentlemanly thing to do of panicking and screaming "ITS A TERRORIST" at the top of his lungs. That sentence alone was cue for everyone to scream and start running at all directions from the two strangely-uniformed ladies in the center ring. Toby could have facepalmed. Maybe he was just hallucinating again, because agents knew better than to use their powers for personal gain... right?
His other thought was that it was the middle of the freaking day, they couldn't be serious. Oh god, if they were caught, Charonite might just kill them all.
Feeling somewhat guilty and responsible for things out of his control, he applied to the best of his ability his 'pro thief skills' to wriggle his way upstream from the panicking crowd (which involved at this point, some ladies tripping over each other in panic) towards the center of the chaos. Ok, here went nothing.
"Uh, hi ladies." He began, feeling really really stupid - thank god everyone else was too busy freaking out to pay attention to him - "Maybe this isn't really a good time for... you know?"
Where the heck did they even come from anyway. Maybe they were disguised as some of the civilians somewhere in that line up?
...Civilians. Crap. He forgotten to change to his Negaverse guise.
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Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 1:41 pm
Variscite strided over to an abandoned pastry box and opened it. Inside was a lovely chocolate-covered eclair, and the lieutenant took a victorious bite as she looked over at Tanzanite.
"Oho! I had no idea that I was in line with a fellow Negaverse Cavalier. Quite the punch you've got on you. Now we have all this food for the picking!" She licked some of the cream off of her clawed fingers before glancing over at Toby. Poor, poor Toby. The civilian. The one Variscite had no idea was a lieutenant.
With the eclair and all traces of said eclair gone, the lieutenant walked over to the young man as he spoke.
"What are you trying to do?" she chuckled. "Do you really want to try and stop us? Of course, you think we're terrorists too, don't you..."
The tall woman picked Toby up by his shirt collar with both of her hands and hoisted him up in the air before forcefully slamming him into the ground (a move that she learned from battling the Valkyrie senshi).
"I'd like your Star Seed... in a doggie bag, please." She flexed her claws and lowered them towards his chest for the kill.
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Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 4:31 pm
Hell no. Tanzanite used her powers for personal gain first. Using them to keep Charonite happy and serve the Negaverse was just something she did so that the General-King wouldn't, well, kill her.
Tanzanite was not worried about getting caught. She was not worried about Charonite or Variscite or the civilian currently talking to them as though they were ideal subjects for casual conversation. The only thing Tanzanite cared about at that particular moment was venting weeks worth of pent up rage on the face of this pompous, arrogant woman. She gave Variscite a flat stare, unable to force a smile through the overwhelming rage she felt for the pompous, snotty example of human greed lying a few feet away. A few long strides carried her over, and Tanzanite knelt upon the woman's prone form, pinning her with a knee.
Blow after blow, the purple-haired and PMSing Lieutenant had no intention of stopping until she was pounding nothing but gray matter into the pavement.
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Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:22 pm
Sometimes, Toby considered his life something like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, in which the endings only resulted in death, or a doom that then resulted in death: the plotline would include something with the words 'Murphy's' and 'Law', most likely together in the same phrase.
How the hell did he, from lining up at a pastry store for crying out loud, end up on the receiving end of his immediate death? Granted, it wasn't really death as he technically had no star seed to take but the other short-haired Negaverser's clenched up fist hitting his chest would still probably hurt A LOT. He wasn't too sure even then if it would thud painfully against his chest or he would be groped a bit on the inside before she disc-
- Ok. Lets not go there.
Talking while having the wind knocked out of you was something like swimming upstream in a flood with a hurricane against you, but being the somewhat durable character he was, Toby managed a wheeze something that sounded like "Arg", which was actually supposed to mean "I'm on YOUR side, please stop hitting me, I'll go crawl away miserably now thank you."
All thoughts of oh, possibly transforming to prove his self-worthy evilness were abandoned for thoughts of him being asphyxiated and really, to give up being the reasonable one. His one free hand grabbed the nearest item to him: a very creamy, mushy cupcake, and-
- smushed Variscite in the face with it.
One day 20 years in the future, an older and wiser would be explaining to his thief kidlets why this was the stupidest move he had ever done in his bad guy career, but currently that future was looking very, very dim.
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Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:32 pm
Variscite did not expect to receive a cupcake to the face. In fact, she was quite surprised by this sudden turn of events. She had experienced hurricanes and suplexes against her attacks, but never a cupcake. Well, it got the lieutenant off of Toby, anyway. She rolled off of him inelegantly and got to her knees, wiping the cream off of her face. That was when she noticed Tanzanite punching the brains of a woman in.
"NO!" she shrieked as she wobbled to her knees and stumbled over, her vision still obscured by the pink cream filling of the cupcake all over her once-fair visage. "You need to get the Star Seed from her! Otherwise our transformations would've been in vain!" She was torn; Variscite could either make sure that Tanzanite ripped the Star Seed from the layers of fat that this woman possessed, or she could rip apart Mr. Hero.
Luckily for Toby, it looked like Variscite was more intrigued by a scantily clad woman tearing her knuckles into the blubbery pillows of fat that made up the victim's face. She walked over and squeezed Tanzanite's shoulder.
"Hey! Get her Star Seed, already!"
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Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:04 am
It took Tanzanite a moment to realize that what she was punching was now mostly a lump of bruised flesh, but when Variscite squeezed her shoulder she seemed to jolt out of her brief, pleasant Reverie. Her expression was nothing short of murderous, gray eyes narrowed until she realized that the person stopping her was not some foolish civilian, but one of their own. As much as she lamented the idea of not beating the woman to death, she would simply have to settle for beating her within an inch of her life.
Reluctantly, Tanzanite plunged her hand into the woman's chest in that oh-so-distinctly-Negaverse manner and wrapped her fingers around the starseed. She yanked it out without any visible remorse, rising to her feet with their reward in tow. Extending a hand as if to pass it off to Variscite, Tanzanite brought her foot down hard atop the woman's head, plunging one stiletto straight through her eye socket.
"We can go now," she said flatly, bending down to retrieve a box of chocolate macaroons.
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