|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 12:48 pm
Finding out where she was starting the school year off had not gone smoothly in Dana's household. And she had no back up, either. It was her father's decision, her sister had no sympathy, and there was no one else around to object in her favor.
Tara was target number one, thanks to their last talk where Dana expressed paranoia about the possibility of being sent away. This was worse! She wasn't even going to get to go to Meadowview with her friends?
She didn't even cover for any more amiable reasoning to bust on over to Tara and Kent's place. She was fresh from getting her uniform tailored and mad.
"TARAAAAAA!" She wailed, pounding on the door over and over with one fist.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 11:35 pm
The last unexpected visitor had put Tara in a state of panic. When someone was knocking at her door, shouting for her, her first inclination was to flee. Kent wasn't home. No one would know. It was for their own good, anyway. Anyone who got in touch with her would get sucked into her crazy life, or what was left of it. Had she learned nothing from Laney?
Apparently not, she reminded herself fiercely as she went to answer the door.
"Oh, it's you." The door opened onto Dana, who was, in Tara's mind, a lost cause. She'd already crossed the senshi event horizon; there was no escape for her. Though she didn't need to pound on the door- or, in the absence of a door, her cousin- because of it.
"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" The uniform didn't even register on her radar. Kids wore the strangest things these days. She was more concerned that Dana was upset, probably over the wreck that the lives of all senshi would eventually end up.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 10:30 am
Dana pulled her fist back when Tara opened the door and took to crossing her arms and rapidly tapped her foot in her Mary Janes.
"You said you were going to talk him out of it," She accused right off the bat. She hadn't come here with any intention to talk of senshi things or complain about Evie's display at her upgrade. She had much bigger problems.
She gestured down over her school uniform. "Does this look like talking him out of it?! He's shipping me off to Catholic school!" One in town so there was less shipping off and more of a change in paperwork, damn it the world was dramatic and awful right now.
"All of my friends are going to Meadowview or HITS or Crystal!" She shouted, pushing past Tara and inviting herself in as she gripped her own head, "This is an apocalyptic disaster."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 4:40 pm
"I said whatnow?" This didn't sound like a senshi-based catastrophe. And so it wasn't, at least not directly. Quickly she thought back to their last discussion. She'd spent most of it freaking out, but Dana had mentioned something about how her father was thinking of sending her to a convent.
Tara studied Dana for a moment, then shrugged. "At least you don't have to wear a wimple?"
No, that probably wasn't going to cut it. "Look, Dana, I said I would try. And I did talk to Uncle Charles! I told him that you were just going through a rough patch and needed some time to figure things out, but that everything was fine." And having done that, she thought that everything really would be.
That was silly of her. When were things ever "fine" for a senshi?
"I did warn you," she reminded Dana, trying to shepherd her cousin inside. "I'm not exactly the poster child for good behavior, you know. I was basically expelled from Meadowview for excessive absence, and I didn't graduate high school until I was nineteen. It's not a huge shocker that he wouldn't listen to me about something school-related.
"But," she added hastily, "for what it's worth, I did try. And I am sorry it didn't work."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2013 8:15 pm
"Uggggggggh," Dana groaned out as loudly as she could. "How am I supposed to spend a whole year like this?"
And then something sunk in. "Oh god, do you think it'll be for all of high school? I had dreams. I had dreams of prom and hot boys. There are no boys in St. Mags, Tara!"
Evie was always complaining about Dana's little issue with being boy crazy in what was Evie's opinion, way too early. Her attempt to go out on Halloween in one of the many cliched 'sexy witch' costumes two years back had yet to be fully lived down.
"What am I gonna doooo," She wailed, dropping do her knees once she made it to the living room, and then went ahead and laid there face down on the floor, groaning like a dying walrus for an impressively long, sustained breath.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2013 9:42 pm
All of the problems in the world, and Dana was fixated on the lack of boys at her school? Seriously?
"You do realize that the prom is a multi-school event, right?" Not that Tara had gone to hers. She hadn't really seen the point, especially since, at the time, she had nobody to go with. "From what I can tell, going to an all-girls school doesn't stop Crystal girls from meeting, uh, hot boys. I doubt it'll stop you."
Why the hell was she encouraging the fantasies of her adolescent cousin? It took some thinking before she found an answer she was comfortable with: because senshi had so few points of happiness in their life, and this one was harmless enough. So she thought. Tara had never really gone through a boy-crazy phase.
"Look, lying on the floor isn't going to help." Falling back onto the couch with a muted thud, she studied Dana, a rather unimpressed look on her face. "If you want, we can go over your options together. Otherwise, you can continue to practice your walrus impression. It could use some work; mine is clearly superior." Though Dana did have an impressive lung capacity.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 1:39 am
"That doesn't matter," Dana said, rolling over and laying flat on her back, looking at the ceiling. "I am not going to have my epic high school romance in the halls and under the bleachers. I am going to be trapped in a sea of plaid skirts and nuns."
And after a pause for dramatic effect. "Angry nuns are not a swim team of hot guys, Tara." Obviously Tara. God.
"What options are there? My life is over. I am not even a senshi anymore."
Maybe being stuck in a religious boarding school would be tolerable if she could sneak out and patrol or go to her homeworld, but she wasn't even granted that much. The new pen ********* had given her didn't even work.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 9:14 pm
"Under the bleachers?" Tara blinked, then shut her eyes and put her clenched hands over them. "Danaaaaaaa! I did not need the mental image of you going at it with boys in dark corners. Now I can never unsee it!" She opened her eyes wide and stared at the girl who, until just then, had been a little kid. "Never. Unsee. It."
Maybe it was for the best that Uncle Charles had decided to send her to an all-girls school, for reasons that, refreshingly, had nothing to do with being a senshi.
"Honestly, as long as your school isn't actively trying to kill you, you shouldn't complain." Pretty much anything was superior to Barren Pines, even if it involved angry nuns. "But there are always options. Like- wait, what?" Tara's mind screeched to a halt as she tried to process Dana's last statement.
Not a senshi anymore? How was that even possible? And, more importantly, was it an option for her?
"Tell me what happened," she demanded. "Why do you think you're not a senshi anymore?" Even after learning that she would be attacked no matter what, Tara couldn't help but cling to the hope that there was some way to make all of it just go away.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 9:25 pm
Dana's brow furrowed and sunk cartoonishly low on her face as she kept staring at the ceiling. "I'm fourteen years old, Tara, gawd."
Her frown didn't get any better at the question of why she wasn't a senshi anymore, or at least why she thought she wasn't. Thanks to Evie and her stupid cat she wasn't even speaking to her sister and she had to steal her own pen back.
Only to find out it didn't really work anymore. The pen was different. ********* gave her a new one that was supposedly 'better' but it just seemed broken, and she couldn't even ask Evie what gives because she'd just take it away again.
"A cat messed up my pen."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 9:35 pm
Age was so not the point. "No matter how old you get, you'll always be my little cousin. I don't care if you want to have makeout sessions under stairwells or whatever, but I really don't need to know the details." Seriously, there was such a thing as too much information. "Unless you need help, in which case, you can always come to me, but I'm really not the best person for this sort of thing."
Tara was married to science. What did she know about boys?
Not the real issue here, moving on.
"What did this cat do? Did they explain?" This was a real puzzle. Maybe this cat didn't like having chibi senshi risking their lives, so they jammed the pen somehow. That seemed counterproductive, though. If Dana got into a pinch, without the pen, she wouldn't be able to protect herself.
Ah, there was the lesson she had learned all those months ago. Tara put her hand over her stomach, where her most noticeable scars were, and sighed. Her brief glimmer of hope had flickered out, and now she was back in the darkness again.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 10:13 pm
"You people are all impossible," Dana wailed, dramatically clasping her hands over her face. Evie, Tara, dad, they were all just trying to keep her down, man. How is she supposed to embark on an epic adventure of romance and danger when you assholes are so against the thrill of life, here?
She flopped both of her hands out at her sides, fulled extended and heaved a looooong, heavy sigh.
"No, she said it was a gift and just kind of ran off," She lied. She certainly wasn't going to share the bit about Evie going psycho and ruining what should've been her epic moment.
She managed to pull herself out of her self centered mire to notice Tara's weird mannerisms and pushed herself up on her hands. "Are you okay?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 10:33 pm
Tara ignored Dana's outburst. Nobody other than her mother was allowed to call her impossible, and Dana was not her mother. Apparently, Tara was becoming her. That was startling, and she was pleased to put that train of thought aside to focus on the more important issue at hand.
"A gift, huh?" What kind of gift would a cat give? Other than the pen itself, of course. One senshi couldn't be awakened twice. But senshi did get boosts in power. Unless they were Zodiacs. Or named Virgo or Leo, since they managed to skirt the rules somehow. Normal senshi progressed in rank, so maybe the cat had done something about that.
It was a good hypothesis. There wasn't really a way to test it, though. "I don't really know about how senshi get more power," she admitted. "It probably has something to do with whatever the cat did to your pen, but I have no idea why that would make it stop working. My advice is to find the cat again and ask. Or any cat. Or any experienced senshi, really- if they've gotten to Super, they should be able to tell you what to do. If I'm right."
The increased attention was not really appreciated. Tara pulled her shirt down over her stomach, not that it had shifted much, and folded her arms. "I'm fine. You're the one wailing like it's the end of the world. Are you ready to talk about your options yet, or should I find a book to entertain me?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 5:51 am
"Huh," Dana just looked confused. At first the prospect of finding another cat or higher ranked senshi to figure out what the ******** was wrong with her new pen seemed attractive and plausible. Maybe Irene would know what ********* did.
But Tara not knowing when her own pen was so elaborate and fancy drew some confusion. Luckily she was distracted away from any more questions about Tara, because for Dana, the real focus here was herself and her own worries in true fourteen-year-old fashion.
"What options?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 1:26 am
“Option One: Get depressed. Mope around the house. Be as despondent as possible.” Tara extended one finger and pointed it at herself. “I could model, if you’d like, but considering your wailing, I don’t think you’d need to act much. Basically, convince your dad that you’re miserable at that school, and it’s in your best interest to transfer. You’d need to be delicate about it, to make him think it’s his idea. There’s no guarantee that it’ll work- it didn’t for me- but it could be worth a try.”
She extended another finger and tapped them both on the edge of the couch. “Option Two: Go rogue. Skip school. You’ll get a rap for delinquency, but they’ll probably make you switch schools. Then again, you’re already going to the delinquent school, so I’m not sure it’d work the same way. But you never know.”
Tara was quite possibly the worst person to be giving advice in this situation.
“Option Three: Try it. Who knows, it might be a really great school! I like HITS way better than Meadowview, even though I thought it was the end of the world when Meadowview kicked me out. Besides, if they don’t expect much from you at that place, you can keep up really easily and focus on the things that matter to you.” Like boys, apparently. Were they really related? Sometimes Tara felt like an alien in a family of supposedly-normal people. And really, that wasn’t far from the truth.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
