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 Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 6:58 pm
Today was one of the better days Blanche was having for the month. Not more than a week ago, she'd received her monthly allowance and had probably what she regarded the best idea of her new life - bento. Initially money had been tight in the Gordon household, until they had descended into an abandoned spree of glorious larceny. After all, it was easy to get money when you could teleport into a bank vault, now wasn't it?
So Blanche had taken her small cash allowance straight to the small Asian market she had found across town not more than a week beforehand, and bought up every one of the clever lunchboxes she could find. Most of them were brightly colored and shaped like animals. At least a cool half-dozen were Hello Kitty themed, for it seemed the young woman had fallen dearly in love with the charming little cat. All this, had been done in an excuse to exercise her usefulness in one area - the kitchen.
Ray would be the first to admit that his cooking generally left much to be desired, when he cooked at all. But as Chibiusa, she'd had the benefit of training from Sailor Jupiter, and was an expert at the adorable little lunches from her native country. It was with this in mind that she walked through the halls of Meadowview during the free lunch hour, cradling the rabbit-shaped blue container while winding through the halls. It was interesting to hear the noise and the bustle, and she caught more than a few curious eyes in her direction as the young princess tried the knob to the door she knew was Mr. Gordon's.
It was locked. But he'd said he would be there that day, and she tapped politely on the door. No answer. Suddenly distressed, Blanche leaned back against the door and surreptitiously kicked it with the back of her heel. Men! "Never around when he says so."
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Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:16 pm
Jenny was having a day. It's wasn't a good day, necessarily, but it wasn't a particularly bad one either. It was just a day like any other in the halls of Meadowview, which meant that she was peeling a 'Kick Me' sign off of her back and catching the corners of her mouth as they tried to turn down. There was no reason for frowning, after all. “Boys will be boys,” she repeated her father's words aloud, taking little comfort due to the fact that the sign had been stuck on her back by a large girl who clearly had some sort of developmental issues.
“I suppose I would be angry too if I had a mustache at sixteen,” Jenny continued chattering to herself, thumbing her upper lip to feel for any sign of peach fuzz.
Thankfully, there was none.
It was well past her own lunch period, just the time when Genevieve should have been shelving books. It had been only by the fortune of a lack of other applicants that Jenny had snatched the comfy post-lunch library assistant position, filling her last required elective before graduation. What had begun as organizing the long out of use index cards and writing out overdue notices to stick in lockers had quickly become an hour and fifteen minutes of wandering the halls and reading paperback romance novels in her favorite corner stall. Upon realizing that she was about as organized as a tornado and twice as unpredictable, the librarian had no qualms about looking the other way as she slipped out the side door.
It was during one of these wandering periods that Jenny happened upon Blanche, arriving just in time to see her heel collide with the door and catch that last comment.
“Well, it's Thursday!” she piped up, as though this should mean something. The look on the pink-haired woman's face said that it did not. “He monitors afternoon detention on Thursdays when Mr. Percelli is out with heartburn.” She paused again. Waited for a response. Nothing. “It's pizza day in the cafeteria?”
Blank stare.
“Mr. Percelli always goes home with heartburn on pizza day.”
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Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 8:20 pm
Detention. Heartburn. Aiyaa, more words that the woman didn't know, and to admit such a thing when you were there to visit the English teacher just reflected badly. She wouldn't ever want to do such a thing, even if it was a valid excuse. Torn and warring with what to say, Blanche smiled a bit hesitantly and looked the girl over. Immediately, the bun-like hairstyle with tails was approved on the sole grounds that the color and style were similar to her own. That indicated taste. She also knew something about Ray that Blanche herself did not.
It was inviting, to say the very least.
Making a quick decision that the girl was going to now be her sole aid in finding the mysterious Mr. Gordon who was perhaps even now betraying her with the greasy goodness of pizza, the young woman held up her package. "I made him bento, he said I can bring it." Again, the heavy accent that she couldn't banish, and the whole thing felt stilted and wrong in comparison to the fluid usage around her. Depression warred with a desire to see his face when he opened the traditional lunch, and she forayed again into the Wonderful World of English. "Can you help me? Ah, not busy?" Rabbit-buns bobbed as she moved nervously, trying to not let it show overly much.
Intimidated by a high schooler. Well, she'd never actually been in high school, so it wasn't such a bad thing to be afraid of was it? Deep in her subconscious, the Lady snorted derisively and scathingly suggested that perhaps she just start killing things until Wiseman came to stop her. Then she could deliver her present, couldn't she?
Generally, she tried not to listen to that voice.
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Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 5:40 pm
Jenny was charmed, both by the girl's hair (how adorable!) and by her broken language. She must have been a foreign exchange student, which made her nothing less than a spectacularly exciting addition to Jenny's otherwise dull and boring Thursday. She was rocking between heel and toe, listening with barely restrained excitement. She was a friend of Ray Gordon? She was a friend of Ray Gordon!
“Well, any friend of Mr. Gordon is a friend of mine. He has good taste in people, you know,” she all but giggled out the words, looping one arm through Blanche's. She started off down the hallway without asking Blanche if she'd like to go. Of course she'd like to go. Who wouldn't like to go see Mr. Gordon? Maybe he would be happy that she helped get his bento to him. Maybe he would even share it! Oh, how romantic. Jenny sighed out loud, the dreamy sort of sigh that you don't even realize you're doing until someone stares and you awkwardly excuse yourself to go water the mailbox and trim your bike.
'Where are you from? Oh, are you from Europe? I bet you're from Europe, all of the women from Europe are just terribly pretty.”
Jenny wouldn't know a Japanese accent if it bit her in her Thursday Care Bear panties.
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Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:04 pm
It took another teenage girl to recognize the sigh that came from the young lady with the admirable taste in hairstyles and Blanche couldn't help but laugh softly as her suspicions about Ray's schoolyard popularity were confirmed. As if there had been much doubt, after the pile of carnations he had foisted off onto the young princess after Valentine's Day. Her English then had been at least decent enough to read most of the messages and all of them had caused a large helping of amusement and in smaller dosage, jealousy. Certainly she couldn't send the man flowers!
She did, however, have bento. Warming to Genevieve's compliments, the senior was favored with a genuine smile from the often-depressed Blanche before she answered. "Oh no, I am Japanese. From Tokyo?" Did they even teach kids about Japan in this century? She certainly had no idea, but they'd been forced to learn English which the then-Chibiusa had thought was incredibly unfair. Nobody in this damn country spoke her language! "My name does not make you think so though - Blanche Williams." Lightly her nose scrunched, it had taken her forever to learn how to say the name that Ray has bestowed upon her when Tsukino Usagi had been abandoned. "Are you from here? I think Mr. Gordon would like you. Does he?" If not, he should!
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Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 6:14 am
Jenny had sent at least a half dozen of those carnations, each with a thank you note carefully specifying which instance of homework assistance or study session it was repayment for. She'd sent a half dozen more under other students' names, just to make sure Ray Gordon got more carnations than any other teacher in school.
She'd succeeded with flying colors. Reds and pinks and whites, mostly.
“Oh!” Jenny said, and her face visibly brightened. Her china blue eyes widened in fascination, “Domo arigato!”
Jenny mistakenly believed this to mean 'Hello', and seemed rather proud of herself for this bit of knowledge. She believed this because she had been too occupied with her Malibu Barbie playhouse to pay attention to the Japanese Muzzy videos her mother had paid several hundred dollars for when she was seven. Her mother's dreams of a child prodigy had been dashed years ago, when she realized that child-Jenny's attention span directly correlated with shininess and color saturation and that Muzzy met the standard for neither.
Things hadn't changed much, save for the fact that her attention span was now connected to how handsome someone was or how pretty their shoes were.
“Well, I hope he does after teaching me English for so long! Jenny hoped a lot of things. She hoped them in the back of her notebook and the inside of her locker but never, ever, ever with any belief that they would actually happen. Jenny's hopes lived in a perfect palace of blown glass and spun sugar, see-through and fragile and tacky as hell, “I'm Genevieve. Mr. Gordon calls me Jenny V, so I suppose you can too!”
Jenny bowed then, because that's definitely what all Japanese people do.
“I've always gotten A's in his class you know.”
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Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 10:01 pm
Jenny was rapidly finding a way into the young woman's heart with her friendly eagerness and for once, Blanche actually thought that someone was absolutely adorable. It was very hard to do without being cloying, especially when the person in question was probably one of the more adorable people you'd meet. Jenny-V and Blanche together, when the latter was in the right mood, could probably get a bunch of crotchety war veterans to coo like doves over them. Not even piles of kittens would stand a chance!
Returning the bow, Blanche smiled and uttered the meeting phrase she was most familiar with in a school setting - "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu! It is nice to meet you, Jenny-V." It was perhaps, a tad formal, but it had been ingrained into her to be polite! She was very thankful for the nickname, however, as 'Genevieve' was a bit much for her rather clumsy and thick tongue. The thanks had been mildly confusing, but perhaps it was simply in response to the compliment? It was quickly dismissed in favor of inquiring more about the girl and Ray's classes.
"You have known him a long time then? Only some longer than me, that is nice. You are from Destiny City then? I have not met many people yet I am, at times, very busy." Busy learning how to control her emotions again, keep herself from brooding, getting out in the sunshine. Learning English was becoming consuming for her. "I was happy to find time for bento, but if he is busy..." trailing off with a sigh, Blanche tried to not look too mournful. "You are lucky, to spend much time with him." It was something both girls could agree on, that anyone spending time with Ray Gordon was a lucky person indeed.
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Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 10:26 pm
The halls were mostly empty, save for the occasional student passing on their way to or from the bathroom, their destinations marked by the various trinkets teachers used for bathroom passes. Some clutched only a laminated piece of paper or a brightly colored ruler, others laboriously hauled Ms. Collier's Bathroom Fern to and fro in it's brightly painted pot. A few gave them curious looks, one a polite nod, but most just went on their way with slow steps to procrastinate their return. One boy stopped at his locker and pretended to forget the combination for the next fifteen minutes.
“I've been here all of my life, all seventeen years!” Jenny felt it was important that everyone know that she was only seventeen. That she was graduating at seventeen. There was a little bounce in her step as she said it. “Mr. Gordon has been my english teacher most of high school. Sophomore year I had Mrs. Bradley, but she was awful. Just awful. Everything we read had some kind of symbolism for,” Jenny looked left, right, and behind them, “Womanhood.” For some unknown reason, she followed that last word with a brief moment of jazz hands.
“He's always busy-” was that a sour note in Jenny's tone? Surely not! “-but I'm sure he can make time for a pretty student like you!”
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 12:43 am
Red eyes followed the fern for a moment and she gave a puzzled look at it, but shrugged it off. Perhaps the student was simply carrying it for the Garden Club? If they had such a thing here, but that seemed reasonable, the gardening club was something almost every school had that Blanche had ever heard of. Mentally, she made a note to ask Ray about such a thing, only because it would have pleased Makoto that the school he worked at had her favorite club!
Jenny's age made her blink a bit, but it was quickly shrugged off. It was so odd to be physically older than everyone she came into contact with, but she'd lived for only a mere fourteen. Really, she wasn't entirely sure that she'd even be in high school in her natural body! What exactly 'womanhood' was was a mystery to her, but this was brushed over for a moment as Blanche gave a reassuring smile and pat to Jenny. "He will make time for us, or he will be sorry! I know to find him in many places!" It had a friendly threat to it, akin to the idea of 'you can run, but you cannot hide', and then her pink brows knit and she smiled again, this time hesitantly.
"Jenny V, what is...womanhood? And..sym..symbol-ism?" Fingers clutched at the wrap of the bento and her footsteps slowed just a bit in light embarrassment that her grasp of English was so light. "I do not know these words, I am sorry!" Her hand waved in front of her face and her head shook at herself causing the long ping tails of hair to brush around with the movement. In all, it was fairly adorable and ridiculous all at once, totally out of place for an adult woman.
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