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Grayson was avoiding Dani. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have stood for this, and would have ruthlessly hunted him down and demanded that he stop being such a girl and deal with whatever issue was plaguing him. Her methods were direct, tested and often successful, and she was a woman who didn't often mess with success. However, she'd borne witness to the mother of all awkward exchanges the night before, and she didn't quite know what she was going to do about it. Thus, she was avoiding Grayson as well.

It worked out perfectly, really. When two people were determined to avoid one another, they tended to manage it easily enough. The only problem she could foresee was if Grayson attempted to avoid her by hiding behind Barnaby, in which case she'd have to knock one or both of them out and drag the redhead away for a private conversation. It wasn't the most desired situation, so she hoped it didn't come to that.

Lunch bag tucked under her arm, Dani pushed her way into the cafeteria, standing on her tip-toes to scan the room at her full height. She hadn't seen Grayson all day, hadn't even seen him in the halls on the way to lunch, so she was hopeful. There were, however, a fair few redheads attending Meadowview, which she found annoying.

If Barnaby had been looking for her, he'd have no problem.

She puffed out her cheeks, striding quickly down the middle of the cafeteria, peering down the tables as she went. No Barnaby here, no Barnaby there, was that -- no, his name was Jacob or something? -- until finally, aha!

Triumph lit her face and she hurried over, accidentally elbowing someone on her way. Whoops.

She dropped her lunch on the table in front of him, and in lieu of greeting, said seriously, "We need to talk."

Had she been his girlfriend, or a girl he'd known longer than a day, this would have been a much more frightening prospect. Thankfully, she just looked like a creepy stalker chick.

Pleased that he seemed amenable to the circumstances, Dani started unloading her lunch. A sandwich, on whole grain bread, was followed by a banana, a cup of mixed veggies, and one of those one hundred calorie pudding packs that no one in their right mind actually ever ate. Once this was all arranged she set the bag aside, anchoring it in place with her water bottle. There, she was prepared for the long haul.

Poor, poor Barnaby.

"So, the Jude Situation has changed." Because this was obviously a matter of utmost importance in Dani's immediate universe, she trusted Barnaby to treat the situation with the gravity it deserved. "I no longer want to set him up with a girl. I think he's, um, got enough on his plate."

She unwrapped her sandwich, poked at some lettuce that was trying to escape. After a brief silence, she asked suddenly, "So how much do you know about Jude, anyway?"

Dani didn't notice Barnaby's lunch except to note that she thought peanut butter and jelly was really good, and she debated asking him to swap half. While she was health conscious to an almost alarming degree most of the time, she did really love peanut butter much more than she ought to. Her eyes narrowed a bit, and she wondered if it was crunchy peanut butter.

She really liked the crunchy peanut butter.

But! It was not the time. She had more important things to worry about than whether Barnaby liked his peanut butter creamy or crunchy.

She took a bite of her sandwich, green eyes intent on Barnaby's face while he talked. Thankfully Dani was not the type of girl to talk with her mouth full, so she swallowed, frowned a little, then shrugged.

"By Robin Hood I assume you mean Sagittarius?" If Barnaby had no clue what that meant, she would just gloss over it by making some strange connection to his astrological sign rather than senshi identity. "Because that would make all of this a lot easier."

"It makes me look less creepy, for one. Robin Hood, err, helped me out once. That's how I met Jude." No need to reveal herself as a senshi. Barnaby might have been in on Jude's secret, but she was paranoid to the nth degree about as few people as possible finding out she was Magellan. "Also, it makes it so I don't have to make up a story for what I am about to tell you."

She paused a moment to eye his sandwich again, but discreetly. There was no way to tell if that peanut butter was crunchy or not unless she actually asked, and she wanted to save the small talk for after she dropped the atomic bomb on Barnaby. (Maybe it wouldn't be a huge surprise to him, but Dani had certainly been floored. Stunned into silence, even, which was a feat for her.)

"Okay, brace yourself." She sounded entirely too serious about this entire ordeal. "I saw someone kiss Jude." That was it? "A male someone." Still, this wasn't a life or death matter, Dani.

Though she was keen to see his reaction, she had to ask. "Is that crunchy peanut butter, by the way?"

Dani could understand the stunned silence. She imagined it would be even more stunned if he knew it was Grayson who had done the kissing, but she thought she might be able to leave that part out. Not, you know, outright lie, but skirt around the details and omit certain ones that would make life even more extremely awkward for everyone involved. She could at least manage that much for Jude and Grayson, considering she liked them both and she didn't know quite how to explain the entire situation without outing Grayson in more ways than one, and she wanted to avoid that.

He had not, after all, told anyone that she was Magellan. As far as she knew.

Half of her sandwich was still on the table, so she looked down at it, chewing her bottom lip. Crunchy peanut butter. Damn. "Do you want to trade halves?"

She pointed, saying, "Roasted chicken breast, cold, with lettuce, tomato, this sauce that's kind of like thousand island dressing, salt, and pepper. It's really good, I promise. I really like crunchy peanut butter," she explained, giving his sandwich another longing look.

Now that it was out in the open that Jude had been macked on by another man, she found herself hesitant to offer up too much information too fast. She had to let Barnaby acclimate to the idea, after all.

Beyond pleased to have half of a sandwich with crunchy peanut butter, Dani beamed him a bright smile, completing the swap with utter satisfaction. She'd save Barny's sandwich half for after she finished her own, or she knew she wouldn't want to eat the rest of the chicken sandwich. After all, they'd had roasted chicken for dinner last night (hence the leftovers in sandwich form) and it had been a while since she'd eaten PB & J.

She took another drink of water, settled in for what would hopefully be as short and painless a conversation about Jude's sexuality as they could manage. "I'm not sure. Like I said, the guy kissed him, not the other way around. Jude kind of... sat there."

Her cheeks went a little red at the memory. Ugh, totally embarrassing, and she wasn't even the one who'd been kissing or being kissed.

"Anyway. Er. This is important because the other guy was a Zodiac." There were only so many minutes in the lunch period, so Dani had to alternate between eating and talking. It was a good thing she could multi-task. "And it wasn't Aries, obviously, so. Jude basically has a huge problem on his hands."

Briefly, she wondered if anyone else in the Zodiac was making passes at one another. It seemed like kind of a complicated situation, even from the small amount she knew.

Dani wasn't sure what the rules about inter-office relationships with other Zodiac were, and actually hadn't even known about the Zodiac senshi at all until Grayson explained it to her, but she figured it would be kind of frowned upon to be sucking face in the middle of battle. In their civilian identities it probably didn't matter, since no one could tell each other from a grain of sand when there was a henshin in place, but she imagined there could be some repercussions. After all, Jude and Hero hadn't broken up very long ago, or at least, that was her understanding.

Of course, her understanding had also been that Jude strictly liked women (which could still be true, she supposed, though he'd handled the situation with more grace than she expected if that was the case) and Grayson wasn't seeing anyone, period. It made a little sense as to why he wasn't seeing anyone if he was wanting to be seeing Jude, but Jude had been with Hero, but --

"I don't think so?" She pursed her lips, considered it. "I mean, she can't kill him, he wasn't even the one who initiated anything. Plus, they aren't together now, so it's totally not fair."

That wasn't to say that, in Hero's place, Dani wouldn't go punch Grayson's lights out, but it was much easier to be unbiased and fair when her own personal life wasn't involved.

It wasn't very often that Dani didn't have a game plan. She was resourceful, dedicated, and enthusiastic when she found a cause, and lately, her cause was Jude Lawson. This Grayson business had thrown a wrench in her plans, though, and completely knocked her off course. She didn't like being knocked off course. Actually, in retrospect, she might be a little irritated with Grayson for it.

"Honestly, I don't know." She finally gave in and set her own half sandwich aside, picking up the PB & J one almost reverently. She took a bite, kicked her feet for a moment underneath the table. Luckily, she didn't strike Barnaby.

Crunchy peanut butter and strawberry jelly? If Barnaby had this kind of sandwich every day, she was going to have to convince him to trade more often. Or, barring that, beat him up and steal his lunch. (Not that she'd ever do that. Really.)

"This is so good. I haven't had PB & J in like, forever." She wiped her mouth with her napkin, gave him an approving look, then her face settled back into serious lines. "But yeah. I was thinking... this is going to make it so much harder to do anything. Not only does he have Hero on the brain, but now guys are mauling his face."

That wasn't fair at all. The kiss had been very chaste. In Dani Vision, however, it had almost resembled an episode of Queer as Folk.

(She'd only watched it once by accident. How was she supposed to know LOGO was the gay channel?)