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 Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:49 am
Being sick wasn't so horrible that Peter was completely miserable. Sure, it sucked to be confined to bed and coughing and needing tissues every few mintes, but he had his mother to take care of him.
Even better — now that he was sick, she was insisting on doing all her work at home. That meant she would sometimes take part in online video conferences instead of actually going to a location. From the couch, he could also hear her asking those on the other side to walk around the gala hall with the computer so she could see all the angles. It was a little bizarre to overhear, but then she would drop everything to make sure he had plenty of juice and water, and made sure he had something to eat when he got hungry, blankets when he got cold, and just pampered him in general.
Well, he supposed she usually did pamper him, but she was also busy running all over the place. He knew it was to distract herself while his father was away on business (like he always was, it seemed), but sometimes it was nice to just call for his mommy and not have to worry about a babysitter fussing over him (or not) instead.
Today was strange, though. He had been dozing on the couch when he heard his mother get up and head out to the front door. There was some cheerful welcome, which had Peter frowning in confusion. His mom wouldn't let just any stranger near the house while he was sick. Hell, he was surprised that his mom wasn't sick yet! Apparently it was a pretty nasty flu going around.
"Who is it?" he croaked, pushing himself up on the couch and successfully knocking the remote off his blankets and under the couch. He groaned and leaned over the edge to try and fish it out as his mother made her way out to the room.
"Haven's parents and brother are all busy, so she's going to stay with us for the day!" his mother happily announced, leading the little girl out into the room with her.
Peter fell off the couch with a miserable whimper, deciding to just lay there, buried under the blankets and pretend he didn't exist. Ugh... Haven...
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Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 12:25 pm
Haven waltzed into the Gallos’ living area in a pair of purple feety pajamas, with her old over-large pink baby blanket draped over her shoulders and a stack of books cradled in her arms. Being sick and staying home from school didn’t mean she could skip out on school work. It meant she had plenty of time to get ahead of everyone else.
She looked down her nose at Peter—as she liked to do quite often—and sat herself down on the floor by the coffee table, setting her books down to look through them and decide what she wanted to do first.
She didn’t say anything, just sat and frowned and tried to pretend like Peter didn’t exist.
It was bad enough that she was missing school because of the flu—which wasn’t all that bad, but her parents insisted she should stay home at least as long as the fever persisted. It was even worse having to sit around with Peter, but Mommy was away on business and Daddy had a staff meeting to go to and Grandpa Joe was off somewhere playing a game of golf with other old, retired people, and her older brother Jonah had classes to go to and couldn’t stick around to babysit.
So here she was.
At least Mrs. Gallo was nice.
“Angel…” Peter’s mom had called her that since Haven and Peter were first forced into the sandbox together at the age of two. “Would you like anything? A drink or some soup maybe?”
“Some orange juice, please,” she requested.
Haven did her best not to look over at Peter. The longer she could ignore him, the better her day would be.
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Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 12:36 pm
Peter was in his own pajamas, but they definitely weren't feety pajamas! He had at least some dignity left. No, he was wearing pajamas reminiscent to a Star Trek uniform. A mustard yellow shirt with a silver badge embroidered on the right side of his chest, with comfy black pants and a black undershirt. Yeah, he probably looked more like he was in a costume rather than pajamas, but he wasn't really expecting others to see him wearing it.
"You're doing homework?" he croaked in disgust after a few long minutes of watching Haven move around her books on the coffee table he was practically laying under. "Why are you doing homework??"
She made him sick... He couldn't even think about focusing on homework, yet here she was, sniffling and sneezing and being gross and doing her homework.
Peter made a face at the girl as he pushed himself up from the floor, but he kept his blankets around him. He'd at least unearthed the remote and had every intention to roll back up onto the couch... and maybe turn up the volume so Haven would get annoyed and go somewhere else. Seriously. Why did she have to be there??
Talk about adding insult to injury. It was bad enough he was sick...
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Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:51 pm
“Not everyone gets sick and uses it as an excuse to slack off,” Haven said. She finally decided to open her math workbook first and fished a pencil out of her pencil case to begin working on some problems. “But it’s okay if you want to get behind on everything. That just means I’ll be ahead of you at everything.”
Not that she needed school work and test results to prove that she was smarter than Peter Gallo.
Because she didn’t.
“You’re just stupid and lazy,” she continued.
She stopped talking and shut her mouth when Mrs. Gallo came back into the room with her glass of orange juice and a plate of crackers she hadn’t asked for but would eat gladly all the same. Haven thanked her politely and smiled like the sweet young lady everyone else but Peter knew she was. Once Mrs. Gallo had walked off again, Haven’s scrunched up “I can’t believe I’m even in the same room as you” expression returned.
“You’re probably just faking it any way,” she said. “You always fake it. You know, you missed a science test on your first day out. I made a 100.”
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Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 9:45 am
"Who says I'm slacking off??" Peter frowned, pulling the blanket more securely over his head, scowling at the girl across the coffee table. "I did all my homework already and I'm ahead for next week!" he pointed out. Not all of it was true, but she didn't need to know that. It was the english stuff that he hadn't done, but he was totally ahead with his math. Math was easy and he was more than happy to work ahead in the book.
He sputtered at her accusation, although he went into a spasm of coughs while his mother was in the room, so he wasn't able to tattle on Haven for being a little jerk. Besides, his mother always seemed to take Haven's side. It wasn't fair when she was the one being a little brat!
"I'm not stupid or lazy, and you know it!" he half-whined his lame argument. "You're just jealous. And I wasn't faking it! I really am sick! Mom won't let me go to school even though I wanted to!" he tried to convince her!
Ugh! This girl was just... enough to get on his last nerves!!
"You don't have to stay in here! You can go... jump in the pool for all I care!"
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Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 7:21 pm
“It’s too cold to jump in the pool, Peter,” Haven reprimanded him in her snooty “I’m better and smarter than you” voice. Of course, she knew he was just trying to be an insulting little snot and didn’t really think he thought it was a good idea to jump in the pool, but there wasn’t anything stopping her from being difficult right back.
In fact, his presence more or less encouraged it.
“Why would I be jealous of you?” she wondered. She didn’t even bother to look at him as she spoke. He didn’t deserve her undivided attention. Instead, she continued to work on her math problems as if she couldn’t be bothered with someone so insignificant.
She wished he were insignificant. Unfortunately, Peter Gallo was perhaps her greatest rival. She hated admitting it, because it meant admitting he actually was rather bright instead of the bumbling idiot she liked to pretend he was, but Peter was really the only person she could think of that deserved to be given a hard time. Had he been anyone else, she probably would have been nicer and offered to help.
“I’m definitely not jealous that you got to stay home longer,” Haven said over her workbook. “I would have missed a lot more work. I’m not jealous of your grades either since mine are just as good, and if you’re trying to say I’m jealous of your friends… do you even have friends?”
She couldn’t imagine there were a lot of people who could tolerate such a know-it-all.
She should know. Very few people could tolerate her.
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Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 10:18 pm
Peter sputtered in disbelief at her, not knowing where her attitude was coming from. What had he done to her, other than make better grades than her a couple times?? She was much smarter than him in a lot of things and worked much harder for it. He would rather be on the internet or watching the travel channel or something like that instead of studying.
"I wasn't going to say you're jealous of my friends," he said, staring at her as he tried to figure out where she got that assumption from. One... because he really didn't have that many friends, and those he did were nice to everyone. People he considered his friends were just as friendly to everyone else, so... why would anyone be jealous.
He could have told her that he would be jealous that he went into space, but that would just... be really strange to explain.
"Whatever," he grumbled, pushing himself up from the floor now that he'd retrieved the remote and flopped back over on the couch so he could flip through the channels. Haven was working on he homework he'd already finished, so he didn't feel the need to outdo her.
At least not right then.
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Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2012 5:01 pm
Haven smiled—though it was more like a victorious smirk—when Peter stopped talking and finally left her alone. Now she could concentrate on her homework without him bothering her. If she’d had it her way, she’d have sat in one of the other rooms to do her work in peace, but she figured Mrs. Gallo probably wanted to keep her and Peter in the same area since they were both sick. It’d make taking care of them easier for her.
In any event, Haven was able to focus much better when there wasn’t anything to distract her, and she breezed through a couple more problems before pausing to drink some of her orange juice and munch on a couple of crackers. She finished the rest of the assignment in around twenty minutes and skipped on ahead to the next. She was bound to get behind if she didn’t keep up on her own.
After a while longer, when she felt she’d done enough on that subject for the day, she closed her math workbook and pulled out her science book to read through a chapter. For this she picked herself up off the floor and plopped onto the other couch, situating herself comfortably with her blanket draped over her shoulders to keep her warm. Her eyes moved across the page as she read silently, without a care for what was on the TV or what the boy in the room with her was doing.
This particular chapter was on dinosaurs, which Haven liked well enough but which also had her thinking about other things, namely the strange creatures she’d heard lurked around the city, and the one she thought she’d saw coming home from school about a month ago.
“Peter,” she began, making sure he was paying attention to her before she asked, “What do you think about monsters?”
She did her best to sound disinterested. She wasn’t about to go and admit to Peter of all people that she might actually believe that sort of stuff.
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Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:04 am
He grumbled when it was obvious that his mother favored this other brat instead of her own youngest born son, but did his best to ignore it, focusing instead on the television and what was on it. A few sips of orange juice were taken here and there, as well as munching on some crackers. But when Haven finally caught his attention again, he nearly choked.
"W-what? That's-- that's ridiculous! There aren't such things in monsters," he stammered, coughing a few times and sipping some more at his orange juice in order to clear his throat.
Well, of all the things she could have asked him, he didn't expect it to be that!! She needed to seriously give him a heads up. And what the hell was she doing thinking about monsters??
"Like... the boogie man? Come on..." he tried, although he was sure his earlier reaction was enough to give him away. It wasn't his fault that she caught him off guard!! He really wasn't expecting it! Even still, he eyed her warily, not knowing what context she was taking her question from. Maybe she was looking at the dinosaurs and just... making s**t up in her head... That had to be it. She wasn't the kind of person to think that monsters really existed...
Unless... she happened to have heard about... or even seen... a youma...
"Why...?" he asked after several moments of hesitation, shifting uncomfortably on the couch and eyeing her as if she'd grown an extra head. Yeah, he knew this girl was rather strange, but to just... outright ask someone... Did that mean she was a senshi, too?? Maybe... Somehow he didn't think it was possible. Haven? A senshi? Of all the people... And then why would she ask him?? Ughhh... Girls...
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Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 4:52 pm
Haven kept her eyes on her science book rather than looking over at Peter when he responded to her. It was already embarrassing that she’d even asked the question in the first place. She didn’t want to give him even more of an opportunity to tease her.
Then again, if he’d wanted to, he should have done it right away instead of sputtering like that.
“People say things,” she elaborated, looking at a picture of a triceratops. “And there’s stories on the news and in the papers about weird stuff that happens in the city.”
She’d never cared to pay attention to it before. Her parents usually chalked it up to some sort of a gang or terrorist activity and instructed Haven to tell an adult if she ever saw anything weird, but saying “I think I saw a monster” to her teacher or her parents didn’t seem like an especially good idea to her when she’d heard too many of them telling other kids it was all their imagination. Haven didn’t want someone to tell her it was her imagination and then shoo her off to play. She wanted someone to be able to explain.
“I tried to look it up but I don’t think there’s a lot of information on it, but people disappear and there’s a lot of crime and damage to city property,” she said. “I don’t think it’s like the boogie man. He’s not real, obviously. But there’s still a lot of stuff out there that humans don’t understand, and until we can prove it doesn’t exist how are we supposed to know for sure or not?”
She’d seen something. She knew she had. She just had to find proof for that, too.
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Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 8:26 pm
Peter frowned at the girl in his living room, not entirely sure what he wanted to say to her. Did he want to make her feel stupid? Did he want to warn her against the monsters that were real?? Or did he just play dumb and not say anything...?
He frowned at her, before sliding off the couch to sit closer to the coffee table, leaning his elbows on it as he frowned at her across the way. "There are things going on in the city that no one is supposed to know about," he said, speaking quietly and glancing towards the other room to make sure his mother wasn't going to come in and interrupt them... As much as Haven grated on his nerves, he didn't want her getting hurt... And the more people that knew about them, the more she could help.
"They're monsters called youma... I didn't name them, do don't ask me... But they go around taking people's energy and take out people's starseeds... that's... that's like your soul," he explained, wondering if she would believe him or think that he was making up some elaborate lie. That was the problem when someone told stories for fun... sometimes they could tell the truth and not be taken seriously.
"People fight them... senshi... and knights... They're the good guys... Some people say they're terrorists, but that's not true. They end up breaking things with their magic because they're trying to protect people and sometimes it's hard to do that."
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2012 12:51 pm
Haven stared across at Peter with a frown, trying to decide if she wanted to believe him or not. First he’d claimed it was ridiculous and that there was no such thing as monsters. Now he was telling her about these weird yoo-ma and sen-something and knights like they actually existed, and she didn’t quite know which answer was the real one. She looked skeptical, fiddling with the pages of her science book, occasionally flicking her eyes down to it as if to seek comfort from it.
Did books lie, she wondered. Did people purposefully leave stuff out? Was this like a government cover up like her grandfather talked about sometimes? Usually she just thought her grandfather was old and a bit paranoid, but if what Peter was saying was true…
She had read things in news articles… heard about them on the news… even if she didn’t understand some of the words Peter was using… it all sort of fit.
“You’re pulling my leg,” she accused anyway, though she, too, glanced around to make sure Mrs. Gallo wasn’t around to hear, lowering her voice as well. She raised her eyes to Peter again, narrowing them in suspicion as she tried to find some sign of a lie or a joke. He could just be picking on her, leading her on so he could laugh in her face—it was a common game they played, after all—but… he could also be telling the truth.
Haven wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to believe.
“Where do they come from then?” she wondered, trying to catch him in the lie. “The monsters and the people who fight them? And how do you know about it?”
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 8:58 am
She didn't believe him at all. He could tell by the look on her face. Ugh, this is why he never bothered telling the truth any more!
"I'm not!" he frowned, coughing and groaning as a wave of ickiness hit him and he had to curl up on the couch and pull the blanket he had with him closer. "I know because I've met one," he said, not daring to mention that he happened to be one, himself.
"One of the senshi saved me from a monster. And they all come from here, in the city. I don't know why there are suddenly monsters everywhere... you might not be able to see them since they are usually taken care of rather quickly. But people who suddenly lose energy or go into comas? Probably a youma... or worse... Apparently there's a bad group that rules over the youma or something. They're humans, too... just bad humans. They pretend senshi are the terrorists and give them a bad name, but they're wrong."
He wondered how much Haven was going to follow, or if he was just rambling by this point. "Senshi now are born on Earth, but in the past they had their own worlds. Whatever their name is... usually it's the name of a moon or asteroid."
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 4:47 pm
Okay, now it was starting to sound weirder and weirder. Maaaybe she could believe a little bit about the monsters because she’d seen one—she swore she’d seen one—and maaaaybe she could believe in these Senshi monster fighters since there did tend to be some pretty weird things on the news sometimes, but past lives and alien worlds?
There wasn’t any proof of things like that.
“Now you’re just pulling stuff from movies,” Haven accused with a huff, finally snapping her science book shut to find something else to work on.
Of course, now she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She’d done enough math to get ahead, she couldn’t focus well enough on science when she was beginning to think her books might be lying to her or purposefully leaving some of the important stuff out, and social studies really didn’t interest her as much as finding out as much as she could about the weird thing she’d seen after school that one day.
But she didn’t know if she could rely on Peter when it came to getting reliable information. Haven was still fairly certain he was trying to play some sort of a prank on her, but she also didn’t know who else to go to for the answers. She could always try to find one of these Senshi people and talk to them instead, but if they were out there fighting monsters then it seemed like a pretty dangerous thing to do. Haven didn’t particularly like dangerous things. What if she got hurt?
“I think you’re exaggerating,” she finally decided, sorting her books into a neat stack. She’d allow that some of it might be true, but all of it?
It was a lot to swallow.
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Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 10:33 pm
Peter frowned, and then sneezed. Groaning in misery, he flopped over on the couch, trying to get comfortable. This sucked... And it figured she wouldn't believe him.
"Why would I exaggerate about this?" he started, before realizing that he did exaggerate quite a bit. Well, maybe she should just believe everything he said!
He didn't really like her anyway... but that didn't mean he wanted her out in the world and completely ignorant of what was going on. He wasn't going to let her in on all the secrets, but her knowing that there were youma and the Negaverse and all this other bad stuff to watch out for, well... maybe it would help him get more people on the senshi's side.
Whatever... she could believe him or not believe him. In the end she would still be annoying and get on his nerves.
"You better not start making fun of me," he warned, feeling the color drain a little more from his already pale face. "I'm just telling you what I know. If you start spreading this stuff around, I'm never going to talk to you again." Or at least not in depth... Sure, he'd probably still give her the time of day, but after that...? Not much.
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