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 Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 1:45 pm
Between school starting back up for the new semester and all the homework that came with it, continuing scout duties, and her usual barrage of after school athletics, volunteering, and MUN, Tallulah hadn't had much time to continue posting to her Youtube account, much less edit videos. But today she had an hour between her last class and when swim practice started, and she meant to make the most of it, holing herself up in the deserted computer lab to do some clean-up on her latest collection of clips.
It wasn't anything fancy. She'd managed to rig her camera up to record while she fought a fairly ordinary Youma, and Europa's attacks did not particularly lend themselves to flash-bang shock and awe tactics. If anything, it looked like she was freezing the enemy and then railing on it with her fists.
Tallulah frowned at the clip as she reviewed it. This was no good. She needed to film more of her escapades with Pyxis - he was the flashy one, not her. But the viewing public demanded shots of Senshi in action, and they would get clips of Senshi in action. Hmm, maybe if she messed with the contrast...
She leaned into the screen, trying to tune out the ever-present buzz of computer processors as she struggled to make out the audio track.
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 2:08 pm
Tate was not a loud person. When annoyed, when alone, yes, then her shrieking could obtain decibel levels best suited to dog whistles. The louder she got, the more it was like she was trying to punish the people around her. The more she was satisfied by the raging.
But right now, she was calm, and she shut the door of the computer lab behind her with barely a click. Her shoes were rubber-soled, which was conducive to crossing the lab to her usual computer. And then there was... Well, normally this place was deserted, but Tate was looking at the back of Tallulah Cowden's head like she had lasers for eyes. Everyone knew Tallulah Cowden. Not everyone liked her, but it was rare for someone within one class to not know her. Why wasn't she off saving Finland and their soggy shoes or whatever the current tragédie du jour was?
This demanded investigation. She set her bag down--quietly. Walked across the room--quietly. And then, standing over Tallulah's shoulder, she let out a bark of laughter.
"That's you?!"
This was too rich.
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 2:15 pm
Tallulah jumped about a foot in the air and shrieked briefly, which was probably just the response her attacker had been hoping for. She then scrambled to cover the computer screen while she hastily exed-out of windows. "What? No!" she yelled, initially thinking that- the girl's name was Tate, she managed to recall- that Tate was accusing her of being Sailor Europa. But then she realized that was impossible, because the henshin glamour, and if she hadn't even been able to recognize Pavel as Pyxis until he'd told her, then there was no way that Tate could recognize her based off a blurry image on a screen and-
So that identity was safe, but then, she still had to protect her internet identity, because, after all, the videos were supposed to be anonymous, and-
When in doubt, deny, deny, deny.
"Of course it's not me," said Tallulah, regaining some of her composure. Thinking on the fly was not her strong suit and she would not be able to keep this up for long - she'd either have to get rid of Tate or hope she went away on her own. "I'm just... um..."
She had nothing.
"This isn't what it looks like," she insisted, even though, obviously, it was.
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 2:43 pm
"I was born at night," said Tate, "but it wasn't last night."
She had an irritatingly arrogant smirk on her face, arms crossed over her chest. Mariska had always said that she should be more like Tallulah Cowden, more like Giselle Petrova, and while she'd never resented the comparisons to Giselle--she knew Giselle--she'd hated that an underclassman could be seen as better than her. What kind of person snuck around and videotaped terrorists? Didn't Tallulah know they were supposed to call the cops, not record every second of their bloody fighting?
This was the best thing to have happened to Tate since Giselle had returned. "Just what? Editing your video to put it on youtube?"
There was a reason not many people liked Tate. She had a way of pissing people off, of looking down on others even though she was worse than they were at a lot of things. She knew that, and since Giselle's pseudo-death, she'd embraced it.
She waited, completely silent, just staring.
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 3:36 pm
"No," said Tallulah, who was out of things to say by this point, and Tate was obviously not buying it. Retracing her steps, panicking had been her first mistake. If you acted like you were up to something, then obviously you were. Well, there was no changing that now, and she was far enough into the lie that if she didn't come up with something soon, she'd be caught in it.
On-the-spot thinking had never been her strong spot.
"It's not my video," she said, in what she hoped was a convincing tone of voice. "I was... poking around the computer and I found it on the public drive."
It was not a very good story, just a passable one. She tried to back it up with, "I don't know who made it," but she could tell that Tate was probably not on the market for a steaming pile of bullshit.
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 4:04 pm
Tate laughed. "Right, and you decided to edit it? I live on computers and game consoles. I edit videos, too, when I put my tournament bouts on youtube. My GPA might be lower than yours but I'm not stupid."
She walked back to her computer, sat down and logged on. "What does it matter, anyway? All you're doing is letting terrorists keep doing their terrorist-y thing, all for the sake of vicarious internet thrills. Hmph. Thought you were better than that." Tate sighed. "Gosh, I can see why you'd like to keep it a secret. Won't get you into a good private college, will it?"
The brunette was genre savvy, which was useless in a normal situation but so useful when you happened to find the darling of the junior class uploading videos that were illegal at worst and immoral at best.
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 5:10 pm
No, vigilante video journalism probably wouldn't impress admissions advisors, to say the least. Tallulah looked rueful, and then said, "They're not terrorists."
Maybe she said it a little bit too fast. "I mean," she said, trying to cover, "You've seen the videos. Terrorists wouldn't rescue kittens." This was the only piece of not-damning evidence she could come up with, since everything else involved destroying playground equipment and fighting on school property.
Luckily, Tate seemed willing enough to let the subject drop, but then there was that nagging at the back of Tallulah's mind that said she needed some kind of insurance that this wouldn't be mentioned, ever again. After all, Tate had her suspicions, and no one ever needed to know that it was Tallulah making the videos. She was already starting to feature Sailor Europa too heavily, and needed to find some new targets before someone put two and two together. (Unlikely, but she couldn't help but worry about it.)
"Would you mind not mentioning this?" she said meekly. "Ever?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 8:13 pm
"Hmm, what?" Tate had her school email up, and was typing something--to an out-of-school address? Gpetrova, that wasn't anything to worry about, she didn't even go to Meadowview, she went to Crystal. She spun around in her chair to face Tallulah. "Sure, terrorists wouldn't rescue kittens," she agreed, readily. "But we've only seen that particular sample of the pretty-skirted sailors once."
Her mind could come up with a ton of reasons why. The most likely was that the insane leader of the terrorists (Astraea, the fake sailor had called her) had decided that that particular terrorist was not performing up to par. Saving kittens could not possibly help with destroying the world. And, to save the organization's face, she'd had the kitten-saving senshi done away with! Clearly.
(So sue her if she was a little skeptical of the outing of Sailor Nea as a Negaverse agent as a bad thing. She never saw anything about the Negaverse on the news, just the monsters called youma and the terrorists also known as senshi.)
She flipped her side pony over her shoulder and continued, "After all, the other samples of the terrorists feature people trying to beat each other up and destroying playground equipment in a low-income area. They're not exactly saints."
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:37 am
"Low income?" asked Tallulah, narrowing her eyes at Tate. This had gone beyond being about the videos. This was a matter of personal honor, and her family wasn't rich, but they certainly weren't poor. "I live in that neighborhood," she said. "I don't know how you're defining low income, but that isn't it."
By all logic, she didn't have to take this abuse. She could get up at any point and walk out and even have a perfectly good excuse to do so. But she didn't want to give Tate that smug satisfaction when she did.
Insulting or not, the economic status of her neighborhood was not exactly the point of this argument. "It's not like it matters," she added. Back around to the cover story, she told herself. "I'm not the one who took the videos. I just found them on the public drive. For all I know, someone downloaded them off the internet. The person who made them might not even go to this school."
If she had any chances of rescuing the situation (which she probably did not), she had just pinned them on that bit of misdirection. Running away to swim practice was looking more attractive by the second.
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 8:55 am
She yawned, ignoring the argument about low incomes and whatnot. Both working adults in her household were doctors. Tate had a very skewed mental image of low income and playgrounds at all happened to be either low income or attached to schools. No, she was much more interested in the whole denying it thing. Being a private person, she'd had no real plans to spread the information around; maybe tell Giselle, have some laughs over it, but...
Well, the lady doth protest too much, okay? And Tate had a lot of hostility to get out. Years, in fact. "On the public drive?" Tate unfolded her gawky self from the chair, she crossed to the computer and said, "Show me."
Thinking this may not be clear enough, she frowned and clarified, "Show me or I'll log into this computer myself after you leave." She knew how to look at timestamps on files, and the public drive was the same across all accounts--therefore, if it's not there the videos were Tallulah's. If the file was there--which she doubted, she wasn't stupid--it'll show she was just editing it, sure. But if someone else was downloading the videos, the other two or three or whatever would be there without the extremely current timestamp. She knew that much from checking to make sure she had updated subs for anime club.
"You still haven't addressed the questionable morality of your activities, by the way," she said.
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 3:19 pm
On the public drive? Show me.
Tallulah stared at Tate, considering her options. Obviously, there was a problem with doing so, because the file was not on the public drive. In selling Tate on the lie, she hadn't anticipated actually having to prove it. This was really bad.
But she couldn't let that show. "Right," nodded Tallulah, trying to buy herself time. Time - that was it! She leaned around Tate to peer at the clock over the teacher's desk.
"I would love to show you," she said, "But I'm almost late for swim practice and coach is gonna kill me if I am."
Let Tate knock herself out searching the massive Public Drive for a file that didn't exist, decided Tallulah as she hoisted her gym bag and school bag onto her shoulder. Even if her escape was most certainly damning guilt, it was still an escape. She backed towards the door. "See you later," she said as she eased out into the hallway.
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