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English wasn't much fun without Mr. Gordon.

Vanessa sat quietly in her desk with the book that has been assigned to them. It was open, and she stared at the words, but the pages of her book never turned. Every once in awhile she'd stick her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, furrow her brow, and attempt to concentrate on the contents. But she was easily distracted by far more interesting things, and stopped on a number of occasions to join in random conversations with little solicitation. Her whispers were always too loud and too enthusiastic, and she had been scolded twice already by the substitute for unnecessary behaviour.

And so she read. Sort of.

It was probably more appropriate to say that she tried to read. Tried to read because it was important that she graduate this year. Tried to read because it would be setting a good example for John Jr.

She did not look up when Tallulah sat down beside her, but smiled conspiratorially at the sight of that paper.

Vanessa loved sending notes in class. Sometimes, people wrote back. But this was something entirely new!

Understanding that it might be something secret, as was often the case with notes, Vanessa made her face go completely blank and collected the piece of paper as casually as you please. When she peaked at it, it was not subtle.

But the substitute was not looking, and Vanessa scrawled something underneath Tallulah's question. She gave it back.

If there was an art to writing notes during class, Vanessa certainly hadn't mastered it. Beyond finished with her copy of assigned reading, she smiled softly when Tallulah wrote back and scanned the note again.

The question caught her off guard, and she shot a very obvious look of surprise at the other girl.



Vanessa folded the piece of paper up neatly and moved as though she was going to give it back. Then, suddenly, she seemed to have changed her mind and scribbled something underneath what she'd already written.



Punctuation and grammar clearly held little significance for this girl. She was not, nor had she ever been, the sharpest knife in the drawer (Vanessa was probably more of a spoon, truly), but the mistakes she made now were born from sheer carelessness.

It hadn't yet occurred to Vanessa to wonder why Tallulah was asking these questions, or to be suspicious of howd she had come to know that there were a lot of doors in her dreams. Tallulah was one of the smart kids in class, Vanessa knew. This did not explain her intimate knowledge of Vanessa's subconscious, but the auburn haired girl was too busy being excited about passing notes in class to wonder about this.

After everything that she had been through, something as trivial as this should not have mattered at all. But it made English class more bearable, so it did.

The substitute looked back at them, Vanessa waited with baited breath, and then flashed a toothy grin at Tallulah when their mischief continued to go undiscovered. She took the new paper eagerly, and the question on it made her freeze.

Tallulah? Dead?

Vanessa searched her brain closets for the answer. They were eerily empty.



She was beginning to think that Tallulah wasn't as smart as everyone said she was, and handed the paper back with a confused smile.

Vanessa was cool. At least, she thought so. If she'd known that Tallulah had come to her because she'd seen through Super Van's costume, the poor girl would have been crushed. She'd put a lot of work into keeping her identity a secret. Indeed, it had possibly been harder for her than it was for many super heroes, because Vanessa had often forgotten that she was supposed to be anonymous.

She cocked an eyebrow at Tallulah's hiss, and stared at her for a moment.

Something was up. Or off. Or something.

Vanessa hadn't yet figured out what, precisely, was going on. But Tallulah had never been so interested in her before, and she suspected that there was a reason now.

"Okay," she flashed Tallulah a set of approving thumbs, and lowered her voice to a whisper; "Where?'

Was she just supposed to follow the other girl out of the room?

Golden eyes flickered across the note. It was a moment or two before Vanessa remembered that there was, indeed, a hallway behind the auditorium (she didn't have much reason to use it, ever, really) and then she smiled.

"Sure thing," Vanessa, who kept her voice low, nodded agreeably, and the corners of her lips twitched with curiosity. While she was supposed to be paying more attention to her studies, Vanessa had no considered that a rendezvous between periods might make her late for class.

Tallulah was acting very strangely. Vanessa had always been very susceptible to things like mystery and intrigue, no matter what responsibilities she might have, and possibly would have skipped the whole day in a heartbeat if this other girl proved to have something especially worthwhile to share.

Glancing at Tallulah out of the corner of her eyes, Vanessa winked conspiratorially and returned to her own copy of the text. It was upside-down.

"Whoops," she whispered under her breath, corrected this mistake before the substitute could see, and then screwed up her forehead in concentration and attempted to read.

The clock above the blackboard marked the seconds as they passed by with resounding ticks. Irritable teenagers quickly grew restless and, as a couple of her classmates started to get rowdy, Vanessa had to pinch herself to keep from fishing some rubber-bands out of her pockets. She was trying very hard to behave herself, because Mr. Gordon was no longer here, and Tallulah wanted to meet her after class. There was no time to visit the Principal's Office.

At long last, the bell that signalled the end of class rang.

Sighing with relief, Vanessa hauled her gangly frame out of the desk, collected her things and headed out the door. Once in the hall, surrounded by students that buzzed with preparation for second period, she made a beeline for the auditorium.

The things that Tallulah said surprised Vanessa so that she forgot to be upset about the transparency of her alter ego.

"No way!' Vanessa gasped out her astonishment, voice louder than she'd meant it to be, and regarded the other girl with blatant awe. She remembered. Of course she remembered. Not everything, because the details of dreams are so often lost to the subconscious, but enough.

"Oh my gosh!" She declared, speaking in a passionate whisper, and gestured enthusiastically with her hands. "Like in that new movie with that guy from Titanic with the really long name and Juno! Do you really think so?"

This was the coolest thing since youma attacks.

And then something that Tallulah said made Vanessa stop short, and she cocked an eyebrow at the other girl.

"Are you a Senshi?"

She held her breath and crossed her fingers.

This. Was. Incredible.

Tallulah's confession sparked a miniature explosion inside of Vanessa. An explosion of awesome things, like ice cream sundays and puppies and cheeseburgers, only SO MUCH BETTER. Vanessa's face lit up like a torch, a flash of pearly white teeth and twinkling golden eyes, and it was a moment or two before she registered the latter half of what Tallulah had said.

"Oh," she worked at once to straighten out her expression. It looked very difficult. Vanessa was having a hell of a time keeping her excitement at bay, and she fidgeted awkwardly where she stood, but managed after a moment. It was important to Vanessa, who wanted to be taken seriously, that Tallulah would trust her with something like this.

"I won't tell anybody, I swear!" This was a passionate whisper. Vanessa shoved her hands in her pockets to stop herself from hugging her fellow stude-- no, fellow hero. "You can trust me. I'm… I'm not a Senshi, but I understand. I'm a hero too, you know."

Or, at least she had been, until John Jr had tattled on her to Mr. Rae.

"But don't tell anybody." Vanessa winked at Tallulah, repeating the other girl's words on purpose. She thought it made her seem clever.

And then she smiled again, and it was a dazzling thing. "So… do you have, like, super powers and stuff?"

It was Super Van's greatest vice, and a source of eternal frustration for Vanessa, that she was little more than a chick in a spandex suit with the heart of a warrior, and a temper to match. She envied the Senshi their strength, and their power.