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 Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 8:40 pm
The girl with the blonde pigtails and polka dotted dress scampered across the stage, giving off the perfect impression of someone around the age of six, her painted on freckles wrinkling as she went to spout off another set of lines to who was established as the older sibling. The stereotype of a teenager; low cut shirt and jeans, sprawled out on the stage bed with magazines covering the ground, popping bubblegum with large headphones covering her ears, a phone her focus. Castille wasn't really paying attention to the lines. She crouched in the front row, trying not to obstruct the view of the front few seats of the highschool stage. She focused on the interaction between the two characters. The "younger" one was now shaking the "older" one violently, and the amused crowd chuckled, muttering about siblings, older and younger, that acted "just like that" Castille smiled, taking a snapshot and then took a crouch-step-wiggle-crabwalk to the right, trying to get level with the stage without getting hissed at. That was the problem.
People don't like to see cameras when watching plays.
She scuttled back to her seat, choosing to get a couple wide shots of the whole stage, beautifully done by the drama classes after school. Castille focused the camera, took a couple shots, and then a few more just of the stage, a more artsy approach then the drab straight aheads she needed for the school yearbook. The play was almost over, and she pulled the camera away form her face, letting her eyes rest while the last two scenes of the play began. After the play was over, she would need a few shots of the whole cast, maybe sneak back stage for some candid ones, and then it was off to the computer lab to do a quick download.
She sighed at the thought of bed. It had been a long day, and her legs were sore from practice.
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Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 9:53 pm
Gently was both a fan of and a reporter for the theatre, as it were. Granted, she never wrote about plays she was in, or even helped with, as her integrity as a reporter demanded she avoid all conflict of interests. Of course, writing about the evils of senshi was much less of a conflict, despite the fact that her status in the Negaverse made her a little bit bias.
She could be bias in those stories, as it happily coincided with the popular opinion: they were terrorists, after all. And that made it okay.
She was sitting near the middle of the front few rows, between two speakers. She had learned the theatre well enough to know where the best seats were to avoid sight line and audio issues. She had her notebook and pencil in hand, and was jotting notes down without looking away from the actors, in the darkness. She wasn't expecting much, of course, and would write her review accordingly. Still, it wasn't terrible so far.
Her eyes shifted from the stage only when movement drew them. She frowned thoughtfully at the photographer snapping photos of the actors. That was a no no, in most productions, and her instincts told her to go and escort the person out. But it wasn't her job, not tonight. Anyway, in high school productions things were probably different. They needed pictures for prosperity's sake.
When the girl sat down again she happened to be in front of Gently, so the jovial reporter leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder.
"Is it okay for you to be taking pictures?" she whispered, just to be sure.
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 11:28 am
She was enjoying the comfy squishy-ness of the theatre chair when she was tapped on the shoulder. Followed by someone asking "Is it ok for you to be taking pictures?" Castille inwardly sighed. She hadn't wanted to disturb anyone. She twisted around in her chair to see a younger woman staring at her, pen and paper in hand. Castille smiled sweetly and said "I'm with the Meadowview yearbook. They told me I would be ok for this show." Granted, they had only said that because Castille had brought her other, much smaller camera to a previous show and the yearbook teacher hadn't like her pretending to be a camera ninja. Neither had the director of the show.
She looked down at the paper and said quietly "oooo, are you writing about the show?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 1:30 pm
The twenty four year old reporter watched Castille with a steady expression. Her light sea green eyes, however, were incapable of holding any kind of malice. Or so it seemed. She wasn't angry, and she wasn't looking for an argument.
Simply checking on some facts.
"Well, just be careful. Cameras can distract the actor, and it's generally rude to do that," she laughed, "plus, I won't get their best performance if they're busy watching someone scurrying around the bottom of the stage, right?"
Her voice was lightly accented, something English, and she laughed easily. Softly, but easily. It wasn't long until the end of the show, anyway, but she certainly didn't want to throw the actors off now and hit curtain on a down stride. That would be very anticlimactic.
"I am! Just covering it for a column, nothing fancy. The paper usually runs small articles that are half review, had advert for these things. School support, and what not."
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 2:40 pm
Castille smiled, saying "Well hopefully it will get a good review! The drama classes and productions can always use more profit to make these sets." She said, indicating the large amount of paint and imagination that went into tonights performance. She turned back around and watched the end of the play, taking a few more photos as the final curtain came down and then the entire cast came out to do a group bow to a clapping and cheering audience of peers and family members.
The music ended and the lights came on while people chattered and talked about the show. A few people rushed to be outside waiting for the cast members to congratulate them on a great show. Castille stood and stretched out sore muscles, turning back around as her arms lowered to the woman she now saw much better. Their eyes connected and she said "Are you with the newspaper?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:25 pm
Gently chuckled and nodded her head, though some angry looks getting turned their way made her withdraw into her seat a bit more. She lifted her eyebrows and pretended to be enraptured once more by the student performance on the stage. Jotting down a few more notes, she smiled easily and relaxed.
The rest of the show went smoothly, and she clapped for the actors at the end, giving them hoots and whistles. A good audience always prompted a better performance, and she had made sure to start clapping at the right moments, and laughing at the right jokes, to cue the rest of the audience. She hardly needed to, though, and by the end they were clapping just as eagerly as she was.
And maybe they meant it a bit more.
Grinning ear to ear, regardless, Gently was nodding her head to herself as she closed her notebook and made to stand. She noted the photographer again and smiled brightly, nodding her head.
"I am! Well, a bit of an intern I think, but I do believe they're going to keep me. They've been giving me more jobs and what not, which is a good sign. And you said you were with the yearbook here?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 11:26 am
Now that all of the lights were one, Castille could see the woman was a little bit older than she originally guessed. But early twenties. Inside, Castille marveled and was slightly jealous of the color of her eyes.
"Yep, I'm one of the photographers and page makers." She said proudly, showing off a laminated makeshift badge with "Castille Brenna" written in sharpie on the shiny surface. "I like being in the yearbook. I get to go to all these events, I get in for free and I get to talk to people."
She eyed the notebook, wondering what she wrote about the play. Then, an idea popped into her head. It brought back memories of a certain night that she had gone out to get hot chocolate.... "What kind of stories do you write about?" She asked, hoping for the answer she was thinking about.
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 1:36 pm
Gently smiled, nodding her head.
There was always something nice to see younger people, anyone still in school, pursuing the journalistic or communicative field. Or even just taking a similarly veined class in high school, or as an elective. It just meant that people were still learning about a field that was marked as dying, outdone by the internet.
Photographers had it a little better than writers, though, and anyone who could put a page together on a computer would have a better chance of jumping into the 'new' emergence of the new media. The internet was where the news was shifting, where it was being found and where it was getting into the most trouble.
There was still a lot of work to do, in making the internet as dependable as Gently ardently believed newspapers to be.
But she was letting her thoughts and musings get away from her.
"That sounds fun! I took yearbook when I was in high school, too. I think that's what started my love of journalism, if only because the class was taught by the same teacher, and he herded me onto the newspaper," she laughed. Looking at her trusty, worn and almost full notebook, she sighed wistfully.
"I usually write fluff pieces and Entertainment articles. Movie, play, book reviews, the latter not so much as the other two. I do cover news events if no one else is around, or if I scoop something, but ah. Mostly the Entertainment section." And a column on the evil terrorists, but that was under another name.
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 11:47 pm
Castille smiled at the mention of "fluff" pieces, imagining, quite literally, pieces of fluff floating about Gently's short hair. Castille had always had a bit of an imagination. A bittersweet situation.
She realized that she was staring and not saying anything, so she mentally shook the image away and focused more on what the fluff pieces meant. "You do serious stories too?"
Here Castille paused, stalling by reaching into her camera bag and searching for her lens. She found it and twisted it slowly on the camera, and then stalled further by placing the camera in her bag.
"Soooo, I heard about something from a little girl a while back, maybe you can tell me more about it." She finally said, looking back to Gently. "She mentioned something about...terrorists. With powers..." Her mind flashed back to the night she met these kids...
The girl with the hobby horse had attacked her. Why, she had no idea. And another girl dressed in a costume of red and yellow had saved her with..peppers. Castille sometimes thought, even to this day, that she had dreamt the whole thing. But the few blurry pictures she had were proof that she had been awake. And sane.
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Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 11:41 am
Suddenly, Gently realized why the girl was so familiar. She had run into her some time ago, on one of her first outings against a senshi. Those had been... complicated nights, when she was first starting out. The camera moving and clicking was what slid the memory into place, and Gently tried not to look surprised.
"I do serious stories sometimes," she said, nodding.
She frowned.
"What do you want to know about the terrorists for? They're... well. Evil, I suppose. Bad, certainly. We run stories on them all the time, the damage they do, and the people they hurt. We get so many letters about them, too, reporting things or just commenting on stories we've run. Never anything, uh. Nice."
She shook her head.
"I'd be careful asking about them. People get stiff and tense when they have to talk about stuff like that. I tried to interview someone who had gotten attacked by one, once, and they all but flipped out. They do a lot of damage, you know. I mean. More than just physical."
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Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 9:36 pm
Castille nodded, slightly embarrassed. They were actually bad guys? They did damage to the city? She felt her heart start to sink, but then a contradicting thought came across her mind. Hadn't the orange one tried to save her after the other one grabbed her? What kind of bad guy saves people from other bad guys?
A good guy did!
Hearing that it was becoming almost taboo to bring up the powered up teenagers made her falter before saying.
"Well I ask..because..I met one once."
She took a deep breath, and continued "Actually...two. I think. One was more of a regular person. She didn't use powers, just a stuffed hobby horse if you can believe it." she added with a little bit of a laugh, hoping she didn't sound completely crazy to this new person. A person who's name she stil didn't know she realized.
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:55 am
Gently didn't get tense, though the back of her mind told her she should. She didn't look perturbed, though she was. She knew she was one of the two the girl was talking about, while the other had been that stupid senshi with the peppers. She needed to go find that girl, and reintroduce her to the new and improved Mr. Saddles.
She didn't narrow her eyes and glare at Castille when she laughed at her weapon.
Instead, she laughed right along with her, shaking her head in wonder.
"I've heard reports of some of them using things like that to fight with. Very strange. The thing to remember is, though, that they're fighting each other, and there's no organization there. Not as far as we've uncovered, anyway. Everyone fights each other, and then we're the ones left with injured people, dead people, and destroying buildings and parks. I don't know, no matter what they're doing, I can't help but think that if they simply weren't here, life would be better."
She was speaking lowly, knowing that most people didn't even have that much of an idea about the terrorists. That there were more than one kind. But because Castille was more aware, she was 'freer' to discuss her thoughts on the matter. Or, more accurately, feed Castille lies on the subject, and see if she could taint the way she viewed Senshi.
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Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 4:17 pm
Castille knew about the destruction the terrorists caused. She saw on the, heard accounts from people at school who had witnessed battles or seen a fleeting figure of a person in the night while walking home, or when they were out on a date. This girl here, she seemed to know a bit more about them though. -Must be the job.- She thought, slightly envious. Because for all the destruction and fear wrapped around these mysterious people...she wanted to meet one. Another one, like the girls she had in the photos in her project box.
"Have you ever met on of them? Gotten to talk to them?" A wistful look came over her face. "I mean, yeah they cause a lot of commotion, and probably a pretty penny, but think of how exciting their lives must be! And what person didn't wish to have super powers when they were little?" Her eyes were bright, thinking back to 5 year old Castille zooming around her living room, shooting "lasers" out of her hands at their dog, who at the time was her nemesis.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 1:36 pm
Gently shook her head, offering a laugh at that question. Her eyes were bright now, and she opted for a lighter air. Even when she was acting, or in this case slightly bending the truth, she preferred a light hearted air to it.
"Not yet! I don't think any of them will be too keen on an interview, though. That's the one scoop I'd love to get. Put those blokes at the office in their places, surely, but that's a bit of a dream. I'm sure I'll run into one of them sooner rather than later, ey? They're all over the place. Just follow the smoke, they say."
She grinned, shaking her head as if to dismiss that part of the topic entirely.
"I bet you're right," she said, masking the knowing smirk her instincts almost let slip. She chuckled instead, pretending to imagine it, "I've heard such crazy things about them from incidents around the City. How high they can jump, punching through walls. Veritable super heroes and villains, really. I bet it's a blast, when they're not getting themselves, each other, and everyone around them killed."
And she meant it.
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 4:36 pm
It was Castille's turn to laugh, and she followed it by saying "Well, if I ever run into another one of those people, I'll be sure to ask them a few questions for you!" Granted, she probably wasn't ever going to meet them, or this woman again. But it was still nice to offer the help.
She quieted down, thoughtful now. "Maybe they don't mean for people to get killed, ya know? Maybe the people are just...in the way." She tried to imagine being in their shoes. "The one I met must have been new, because she couldn't punch through walls or anything like that. She attacked with peppers." Castille still had a hard time believing it. If you were able to choose your powers, why on earth would anyone pick peppers? or a hobby horse for that matter?
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