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 Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 11:49 pm
Zia tapped her foot impatiently. Never before had she so clearly understood the phrase 'All twisted up inside'. Her life as Zirconia was in turmoil, and her life as Zia had been nothing but rubberbanding between trying extra hard to appear as everything is normal and just flat out snapping.
But tonight, she would do neither. No extremes were in order. Well, it was extreme for her, if only because Zia was an obsessive dieter and tonight she decided she really, really needed to just indulge in food, and since there were no leftovers in the fridge and she definitely wasn't going to make any interaction with her dad, her only option was to go out.
Which brought her here, waiting for a place to sit in a favorite hang out for sushi and getting cravings just by staring at a sign advertising a new menu item. She was one hunger pang from sitting down with people she didn't know and grabbing a waiter by the shirt to rattle off her laundry list of demands.
And then, suddenly, a pleasant surprise. She realized she recognized someone who was already seated. At least she thought so. She needed to do a double take, but yup! That was definitely her.
"Marcella!" She called out, waving as she approached. Hopefully her old acquaintance wouldn't mind bumping into a former Crystal girl.
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Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 10:03 pm
Marcella sat by herself at one of the tall tables for two by the window, gazing absently outwards. Her own superhero lifestyle had been getting to her, as well, and really, it was the last thing she needed on top of all of her final exams. She could stress herself a stomach ache quite well enough, thank you, without having to worry about people trying to chase her off the Earth or an asteroid full of people who had died a millennium ago.
Really not the best blend to which to add sushi, but damned if she was going to spend supper at home stewing. She needed the change of environment. And maybe wasabi would help clear her head, if nothing else would.
Awaiting the sushi boat she had ordered for herself, the girl absently sucked down edamame like they were going out of style. At the quite unexpected sound of her name, though, Marcella fumbled a bean, rather indelicately dribbling one mame down her lip as she turned to see who was there.
... Zia? They still corresponded regularly, if not often, but it had been a while since she had really seen the other girl more than just in passing at a distance. Catching the escaped bean before it fell onto the table, the brown-haired girl waved with one hand and slipped the renegade into her mouth, attempting to make the whole thing look as natural and planned as possible.
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Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 8:28 pm
Zia decided to pay no attention to the startled reaction and walked over to join her. "Hey!" She said, not quite settled in. You could always tell if Zia Connolly was planning to get up at any moment or was going to attach to the seat like a barnacle depending on whether or not she set down the giant black purse that was just barely smaller and stylish enough not to be considered a freaking shopping bag.
"The wait is getting outrageous, can I join you?" She asked, trying her best not to be outrageously imposing and just slightly imposing instead. "I'll buy your dinner if you let you me be your eating buddy," She said with a bit of a tone that implied she would've nudged her with her elbow, had they been sitting side by side.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 2:28 pm
Flushing slightly at her fumble, Marcella did her best to play it cool. Quirking a brow, she turned to glance past Zia at where a sizable gathering had appeared, seemingly just in the last five or ten minutes. "Wait- oh. Wow." She looked back to the lavender-haired girl and nodded, indicating the other seat with an upturned hand. "Yeah, it's fine." The hosts were getting out the buzzing pagers. "I just ordered, but I also got some spring rolls, so my waiter should be back with those before too long."
At the offer to buy dinner, the younger girl shook her head. "Oh, no, that's fine," she said, then added conspiratorially, "I'm going to town on a sushi boat tonight, and I would feel bad making anyone else pay for that." Marcella leaned back in her chair a little, anticipating her old acquaintance's purse to drop like an anchor, and rubbed one eye with a fingertip. "Just been ... crazy with finals and all. Even I get a little stressed out sometimes." She laughed once, at herself. Classwork stress during finals week she had learned to manage; all of the senshi bullshit had sort of tipped the scales, and the pre-med student had not yet had time to completely adjust.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 10:09 am
Zia settled into the empty seat and shrugged a little, "If you say so..." wondering if she should argue a little more about being okay with footing the bill, but for now she just wanted a waiter to get over here so she could be one step closer to overindulging.
"Ugh, I know how you feel," Zia responded, slumping a little. "I mean, I know I'm not doing anything as ambitious as pre-med but dealing with finals and graduating and changing schools and just..." Being a cat and dealing with bickering senshi who can't agree on anything. That part had to be left out, but just thinking about it gave her a bewildered look.
"Oh thank god," She said half under her breath when the waiter approached with spring rolls and she unloaded another order on him. She wasn't going to pull that delicate 'Oh, I can barely eat anything at all' or 'I'm on a diet, I should only taste' crap she was known for and leaving hungry.
She was going all out, ordering the same sushi boat Marcella had earlier and an extra side of hamachi for good measure.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 12:28 pm
"Thanks for the offer, though," Marcella added with a small quick smile. She really had more than enough money to pay for her own comfort sushi. She also just sort of felt like she had not seen Zia recently enough to be comfortable letting her take her cheque. Although, since she could apparently not just quit being a senshi, the girl considered the possibility that these sorts of rampages through raw fish and vinegared rice could become regular....
The appearance of the appetizer lifted her spirit somewhat, and she slid the plate to the middle of the table and gestured to the neat line of four spring rolls. "You can have some if you want," she told the other girl as she picked up one with some difficulty using her chopsticks, and transferred it to fingers before she dropped it.
She dipped one end of the roll into the little dish of sauce that had come with it, took a bite, and chewed contemplatively for a moment. Then, raising a hand to her lips, Marcella asked, "You're going on to DCU, right?"
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 1:22 am
Zia just smiled in response, deciding to keep things polite and not dip into a habit she'd picked up from her grandmother that could sometimes turn a gift of a polite offer into a near heavy sale through debate. Not tonight! She caught herself pretty easily, and just let her thoughts segue back to fish.
"Aaah, thank you," Zia said quickly, stabbing a spring roll with her fork and dunking it in the dipping sauce for a generous coating. Usually she used her chopsticks just to show off she could, even though they gave her some annoying difficulty. Tonight she was just going to accept they were too difficult for her and use the fork for shoveling.
"No, I was hoping to go to NYU or a few other places... but it's been a crazy year and I really can't go to college outside Destiny City now, and by the time I realized that I missed out on being able to sign up for fall classes." She slumped and sighed. She worked her a** off to get into her favorite colleges and they were all off limits. She imagined she must be the only person who spent the last month dreading acceptance letters instead of rejections because knowing she could've made it so much harder.
"I'm hoping to go to DCU in the spring though. What about you? I can't remember, are you already in Sovereign Heights or are you just going to start?" She asked, trying to figure out where Marcella would be given their grade difference at Crystal.
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 12:59 pm
"Can't leave the city?" Marcella replied with a concerned and sympathetic look. "That sucks. Parents not letting you out?" Her own parents had been mixed on the idea of her leaving, too; for all that the city had proved to be quite dangerous over the last year or so, the goings on had also served to heighten her parents' vigilance. She had wanted to move out and live on her own across town to be closer to campus, and even that had taken quite a bit of selling to convince her parents that it would be okay.
And of course this whole senshi thing threw a wrench in everything, she thought, expression souring slightly. Staying in town might be best, where Marcella knew that Asclepius at least had a few allies. What if she ended up in a city where she was on her own? Being an utterly useless senshi with an utterly useless power, but still expected to stand up to whatever might be out there? That had worried her, more than she had cared to admit; few things frightened Marcella into submission before she had been 'awakened' by that crazy talking cat.
"Oh, yeah, I'm at Sovereign Heights," she confirmed, dipping the other unbitten end of her spring roll into the sauce. "Finishing up my first year. DCU has a pretty good medical program, and I figure that would give me a few extra years to decide where I would want to get my Masters." Maybe four more years for supernatural things to die down.
"Forgive me because I've completely forgotten, but what are you planning to study, again?"
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 10:25 pm
"You could say that... my dad is getting up there in age, I'd hate to have something happen to him while I was away," Zia said, even though that possibility hadn't even remotely occurred to her until just now when Marcella gave her the inspiration to use it as an excuse.
It was plausible. Robert Connolly had already had one heart attack in his lifetime and he was turning 71 this year, but it wasn't a very approachable topic. He was still an intimidating force in his family and mentioning his mortality was not tolerated, even when it was just general concern.
Zia managed to come out of her thoughts to see Marcella's soured face. Maybe she wasn't the only one in the world with this problem. People in the real world probably had more normal circumstances wreck their college dreams too, right?
"I'm sure you can clear up any problems in your way while you're at Shlip, though," She said, trying her best at a reassuring smile. "The one thing I didn't plan for..." and she just nodded in agreement. "That's great. Lord knows you'd be able to find work in this city too, with all your medical education," That last remark was ended with a slight grimace. She had originally intended to compliment Marcella for choosing a noble field like medicine but it just came out dark and a little depressing.
"Oh, me, uh..." As much as she welcomed an opportunity to quickly changed the subject after that awkwardness, she suddenly found herself trying to find some words to spit out. "Finances, Econ, broad business stuff. I'm hoping for a Business Science degree, but I'm shooting for a Stock Broker job in the long term so I'm basically just preparing for the Series 7 exam and collecting classes that'll look good."
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 2:21 pm
All the talk about "fate" and "destiny", particularly as it related to either her parents' great fortune some years ago, or, more immediately to Marcella's stupid starseed, really irritated the girl. The whole "up and coming" aspect of the medical profession in the city, as a result of monsters and interstellar wars, had only served to lower her bullshit tolerance when it came to being destined for anything. Marcella's grimace reflected Zia's expression, even as she nodded. Throw the senshi sphere she had been stuck with into the mix, and it all seemed impossibly contrived.
"I do hope your dad will be alright, at least," she replied with genuine concern. "Please don't hate me for saying this, but sometimes I wonder if my parents will be able to die of old age as long as we live here. I mean, instead of ... freak building collapses or terrorist attacks or monsters or whatever." Marcella gestured with the remaining bite of her spring roll, as though the appetizer could convey just how crazy things must be even for one of the uninvolved civilians of the city.
Then she ate the last of the spring roll, brows furrowed in contemplation as she chewed it. Once it was safely swallowed, the brown-haired girl added, "Always a worry in medicine that someone you know will end up in front of you on the stretcher, you know?"
Marcella ate up the change in topic just as willingly. "Sounds good," she told her old acquaintance. "Best of luck with it all. Is the Series 7 very hard? I can't say I know anything about it, I guess because I have my own piles of tests to worry about, although not for a little while longer, I guess."
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Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 5:21 pm
"I wouldn't hate you, I totally understand," Zia said as she slumped in her chair. It was a thought that had crossed her mind several times, but only reinforced her desire to get the hell out of Destiny City that had been festering there even before the supernatural crapshoot began that not only made her want to leave even more but kept her bound here against her will.
"Yeah... but that's... that's rough no matter who you are," She mumbled, staring down at her place setting with a pondering frown. She had already suffered the shock of losing a senshi she was responsible for, but now her thoughts were starting to creep into similar tragedies affecting her other life.
"Oh thank god," She snapped her head up after she saw a waiter hauling Marcella's sushi boat over to the table, as well as her own side plate of hamachi she'd ordered extra, leaving her to only assume the rest of her food was on the horizon.
She decided to not even bother trying to wedge another, more comfortable topic of conversation when she could just as easily succumb to the urge to stuff her face and quash any more dumb statements itching to escape.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:49 am
Marcella nodded, contemplatively studying the grain of the small, square wooden table she shared with her old friend. She remembered being in Crystal, meeting the older Zia but never really quite knowing her, and hoping quietly as a younger girl that they might have something to bond over, some excuse for Marcella to get to know her a little better. And, well. This was not precisely what she had in mind.
She admittedly zoned out a little, one pinky finger in her mouth to attempt to dislodge, as discreetly as possible, a sprout that had decided to wedge itself between two of her teeth. But a few moments later, a dish full of sushi moved between her absent gaze and the tabletop, and she blinked, snapping back to the present moment.
Marcella immediately filled up the little provided dish for dipping with soy sauce (low sodium was quite salty enough for her) and smashed a small blob of wasabi into it with her chopsticks.
"Screw profundity, it's dinner time," she said with a slight laugh. Then, after a few bites, she added, "If you want to take one of mine while you're waiting, we can just trade. I don't want to just make you watch while I eat all of these."
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:27 pm
"You don't have to offer twice," Zia said with a gluttonous grin as she traded a few hamachi pieces for one or two rolls off of Marcella's sushi boat and got to stuffing her face.
Chewing and glancing off to the side in thought, she accidentally brought the conversation back to current events, which, in Destiny City didn't seem to be as fun. "Did you hear about that attack on the elementary school?" She asked and was almost tempted to stab herself in the hand to shut herself up. She had vaguely wanted to ask around, but not as Zee, and since her alternate identity was an entirely different soul, it was getting harder to keep both lives straight the more they merged together.
"Nevermind, don't answer that. Happy subject change, god, what's wrong with me..." She muttered.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:53 am
Marcella smiled back around a bite of tuna roll, then picked up one of the hamachi pieces with her chopsticks. She swallowed, then took a small taste before deciding it good and eating the rest of it.
Her expression darkened at the mention of the elementary school, and the brown-haired girl's curls bobbed as she shook her head. "I heard there was an attack," she replied, raising a hand to her mouth to help hide what she was chewing as she spoke. "But not too many details." Marcella trailed off, turning her attention to the boat-shaped plate again as she nodded slowly at Zia's quiet words.
"Kind of hard not to think about it, though, when it seems like the only things that happen here are crazy," she sighed at length. Then, with a slightly forced smile, she asked, "Any plans for the summer?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2011 8:04 pm
"Yeah..." Zia just mumbled when Marcella trailed off. Even the arrival of her own meal didn't perk her up, though she did push it forward a little, gesturing for Marcella to help herself since they were already switching and making trades.
When Marcella brought up summer plans she nodded, happy to have a lighter subject to cling to. "Oh! Yes. I am finally free of classes for a while so I'm going to focus some hard time on resume building. I'll probably pick up my old go-to at the animal shelter and then my friends roped me in to dealing with the campgrounds. They need volunteer rangers or something while there's an influx of campers," She rambled, going back to stuffing her face.
For some reason, it hadn't quite hit home just how ridiculous the thought of her out in the woods or any rugged scenario was. She could barely handle the city after a hard rain. And for some reason she didn't see the problem in attempting this ranger thing.
"What about you? Are you at least going to relax?" She asked, laughing a little. The hypocrisy was at least funny enough to be a joke, right?
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