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 Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 10:55 pm
Oh well that was too easy. "Yes."
And then she looked back down to her feet and shuffled a bit. "I mean, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Why did she want it so bad? The vocalized answer was a murmured, almost whimper of a sentence. "Because it's the only thing I have," And that didn't make any sense to anyone.
In a way it was forcing herself into Evie's life. Stealing it connected their two adventures in a way Dana wasn't honest enough to do directly. She wanted to know her sister better, she wanted her to know her better. She wanted to be able to tell her the secret that had been weighing on her more heavily each day since the carnival disaster. But all she had was a rock, a connection only in the sense Evie was frantically searching for it.
And if she couldn't share with her sister, a human being she had cohabited with right across the hallways since she was born, they why would she trust Tara? The logic of that question was overridden entirely by a crushing sense of loneliness and an urge for just someone, anyone to see. Dana had been exhibiting all kinds of out of the ordinary social symptoms since her first 'real' nega battle and witnessing the destruction at the carnival, and the building frustration of listening to her father worriedly discuss his theories on typical childhood stressors had been building on a slow burning rage. No one had noticed, no one saw.
But Tara would see, at the very least, the light show that came with powering up. Sailor Chibi Columba stood there, still holding her rock, and looking down at her winged sneakers to avoid looking at Tara. "I go lots of places no one knows about."
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Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 11:19 pm
Oh no. Oh no no no no no.
That was an excuse Tara had used plenty of times herself, all for truly crazy things. Nobody would believe that she'd died. Or been in space. Or been a cat. Or any number of other impossible things. Even in the senshi world, people had trouble understanding what she had been through.
That Dana was using her go-to phrase was worrying, but it wasn't the only worrying thing. "Yes? What do you mean, yes? What- how?"
She had been so certain that Dana had accidentally taken the rock from whoever had stolen it. It never really occurred to her that she might be the thief. Mostly because she didn't want to believe that it was possible. Now she couldn't push away that it was not only possible, but probable. Not now that there was a senshi in front of her, where Dana had been before.
"Oh my god." Tara took two sudden steps backwards, tripped on a patch of carpet, and fell backwards on her butt. She reached out one, hesitant hand, towards the wings on the sneakers, so make sure this wasn't some sort of stress-induced illusion. Once she was convinced that it was real, she jerked her arm back and hugged herself, shaking slightly. "This is all my fault." It didn't matter that she hadn't been present for Columba's awakening, or that nobody could decide who was a senshi and who wasn't, not even a cat. She was fully convinced that this was her fault. "Everything I touch, everyone I care about. First Laney, and now...
"Haven't I been through enough?" She was yelling now, not at the senshi, but at the sky. Or rather, since they were inside, the ceiling. "You've dragged me to hell and back, and now you want to do it to them? To her? I won't let it happen! I won't!" Without even taking a breath, she switched gears, looking up at Columba. "Give me your pen. You can walk away from it all, right now. I won't tell anyone, promise. Just give me the pen, and everything will go back to the way it was."
Even as she spoke, Tara knew that wasn't true. Nothing would ever go back to the way it was. But she had to try.
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Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 11:45 pm
Columba was the picture of wide eyed shock at first. Tara's volatile reaction made her look downright frightened. But there was a small flutter of something else and the corners of her mouth very inappropriately twitched into a smile for a brief second.
It wasn't that she found amusement in Tara's distress, but the fact Tara knew enough to be anguished at this revelation was almost like a wave of relief. She wouldn't tell her she was evil or bad or a terrorist. She was not going to need explanation.
Tara knew things. She didn't even have to say what she was or wo she was, if she was anything at all. It was still obvious she knew, and that gave Columba a twisted sense of happiness.
She crouched down to her knees to be closer to Tara's level and shook her head in response to her statement about the pen. "It's not that simple, is it?"
She powered back down to Dana Caffrey and looked at her hands, a rock in one and her henshin pen in the other. "I haven't gone... I mean... the cat. Chaonis. They all said I am supposed to go out and fight, but I haven't." The back of her finger lightly brushed he butterfly bandage on her cheek, the last remnant of her carnival injuries. And then a small sniffle forewarned an impending flood of tears.
"Since the carnival. Lots of people died there. I said I could handle it but I couldn't, and I quit..." There was an awkward pause, and then she whispered as if it was a secret. "Lots of dead cops, too."
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 12:05 am
Tara was not relieved. She was angry and scared and devastated. It wasn't enough that she'd had to go through horrible things. It wasn't enough that her best friend, who had been in a coma for a year, now shared that destiny. Now her cousin, who was only thirteen years old, was drawn into it as well. Everyone had their breaking point. Tara had hit so many that some parts of her had gone missing, never to return.
"No," she agreed slowly, letting her arms relax. "No, it's not. I should know." She did know, from experience, that trying to lock a henshin pen away could only end badly. "I just... I didn't want this for you. Or for anyone else."
It was a relief, if a small one, when Dana powered down. The last thing they needed was for a bad guy to come searching for the power signature. Regardless of her status as a senshi, Dana was too young to fight. And whoever was telling her to needed to be socked in the head, as far as Tara was concerned.
"The carnival. Yeah, that sucked." She sounded detached as she spoke, because crying over every life lost would reduce her to nothing but a puddle of tears. "I want to tell you that it gets better. Maybe for you, it will. Not all senshi are totally screwed up." No, it seemed that she was the only one to get that sort of special treatment. "But I won't lie to you: a lot of people have died, caught in the crossfire of a war that they don't understand. More are going to die before this thing is over. No matter how hard we try, we can't prevent all of it."
The dead cops, Tara knew, were particularly hard for Dana to deal with. She had trouble with them as well, though not to the same extent. "The cops are trying to do their jobs, to protect people and nab the bad guys. Except they can't handle these bad guys. So we need to do an extra good job, to make sure that nobody else has to..."
She trailed off, looked at her hands, and smacked them against her forehead. "What is wrong with me? Why am I telling you to- no, you don't have to fight anything, okay? Don't do anything you don't want to do. The only person you need to protect is you. Understand?"
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 12:20 am
"Nobody talks about them," Dana sounded uncharacteristically bitter. "They are just trying to do their jobs so they must've asked for it, right? Or maybe it's jus' because they aren't important enough to be talked about when all anyone cares about is Chaos this and Order that."
She had surrendered the rock to the floor, even if temporarily, but she was ready to pounce if Tara made a move for it. "If it's a war, no one told me what we're s'possed to be fighting for," She twisted her hands around the pen. "Maybe it is just a gang war between terrorists after all. Nobody's got anything important t'talk about or fight for except stupid words."
Tara's use of 'we' struck a chord, and after a quick, thoughtful scan of the floor, Dana actually looked up to make eye contact. "Are you a senshi too?"
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 1:02 am
"It's not like that. At least, not for me." Tara took her hands away from her face and hugged her knees tightly. "I know that they're trying to do the best that they can with the information that they have. It's true that there are a lot of misunderstandings between cops and senshi, and a lot of bad feelings because of that, but I don't think that anyone's claiming that cops aren't important and valuable."
She didn't want to talk about how she was somewhat desensitized by the amount of death she'd seen. Or about how she tried to tune out the cops more than the other casualties, because they were more painful, more personal. Even if she was being honest, there were some things she just didn't want Dana to know, ever.
"You were at the carnival, and you still don't know what we're fighting for?" That was a little surprising. It was true that all senshi had different reasons for fighting, but they all boiled down to the same thing, really. "Did that look like a gang war to you? Believe me, if they want to launch an attack on senshi, they don't have to do it so publicly. That was an attack on people, cops or otherwise, who have nothing to do with us. I'm not okay with that, so I fight against it." Sometimes. When she wasn't paralyzed by fear. Which wasn't often.
Dana's simplest question was actually the one that Tara gave the most thought to. Was she a senshi too? For a while, she'd thought that all senshi faced lives of misery. Apparently, that wasn't the case. "Sort of," she hedged. "It's complicated. But for the short version..." Reaching into one of the roomy side pockets of her cargo pants, she pulled out a rather elaborate pen and set it on the carpet, next to the rock.
The rock. The rock had gone missing from Aquarius Outpost during the mess with the civilians. Had Dana, or whatever her senshi name was, really taken it herself? "How long have you been... y'know?" How blind had she been not to notice? Not that they had ever been close, but Dana was still family.
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 9:51 pm
"The carnival wasn't a war," Dana countered, looking at the floor just slightly to the left as her hands holding the pen rested limply on her knees. She couldn't say what it was, she didn't have the tools or experience or even vocabulary to untangle the mess that was her thoughts on the matter. All she knew was it kept her up all night, anguished and confused.
The ball of energy that she usually was had gone completely from sight now. She had done her best to keep it up and pretend, since her father was already asking questions about bruises and odd behaviors, but in front of Tara the act had dropped. All the sunshine and smiles had been replaced with lethargy and murmurs to compliment Tara's apathy and detachment.
She didn't look up, but her eyes did flick over to Tara's pen and her brow knitted as she pondered this revelation, putting another puzzle piece down to a picture she was sure she had the most pieces of. Her sister and her cousin. Hopefully the entire family wasn't involved.
The question of how long took some pondering. Here is where the lie became complicated, because Dana hadn't been a senshi when the Surrounding event took place. She was just a bystander who happily absorbed stories into her imagination. She wasn't going to reveal Evie's secret, she knew it wasn't her place, so she just stuck to a very vague, "A... A while."
But with all of this secret sharing, something else came out too, and the way Dana twisted her hands around her henshin pen allowed a small glimmer of rage to come through.
"I don't get in fights at school, you know." She knew this had been the topic of many hushed phone calls between her father and other adults, both other parents ad friends regarding his concern about his daughter's new seemingly violent behavior. When she came home with mysterious bruises and bloodied knuckles and refused to talk about it, this was the only logical explanation to him with his limited knowledge of what she was out and about doing, and the impromptu haircut didn't exactly help matters.
Dana had always been the one that drew concerned looks, and her father was always eager to make it a mental health issue. It was almost always automatically attributed to the loss or absence of her mother, and the fact she was trapped under this lens, where every move made was questioned and automatically explained away by this, was a source of building rage she didn't even realize was there. From Dana's perspective, it felt like no one really bothered trying to know her, or figure her out. There was no one to advise on the complex problems she could possibly be navigating, or other losses she might be grieving over. It was lonely. It was infuriating. It just led to more attention seeking and outrageous behavior that continued the loop of discontent and anger.
"I'm not mean or nothing. I'm not a bully. I don't need to go to counseling or anything," A reference to her father's latest solution since she came home one day after Serpentine had done an epic number on her face.
Clutching the pen to her chest, she faceplanted to the carpet. "I don't wanna do it anymore. I don't want to be here." Not that she could leave. She was thirteen, and with the exception of getting to choose when to power up she was pretty much tethered to whatever her father or Evie decided and they, for some reason, had decided to stay in Destiny City.
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Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:33 am
Tara knew that she was dealing with her cousin. A young girl who didn't really understand what was going on. Someone she cared about and wanted to protect. And so she she didn't press the issue. She knew that the carnival was only one relatively meaningless battle in what was quite possibly a war without end. She knew that it was quite likely that she would die fighting, no matter how hard she tried to avoid that fate. But she didn't want Dana to know that, not yet. Maybe for her, it wouldn't even be true. If she had been a senshi for almost two years, maybe longer, and was only starting to descend into despair, there there was hope for her yet.
"Dana, you don't have to justify yourself to me. I know that nobody can really understand what it is we have to deal with. Counseling won't help, because you'd have to lie to them the whole time. Your family will worry no matter what, because you're keeping secrets from them. So save the explanations for them, because they're going to want them, and coming up with new ones is a challenge."
At that moment, Tara didn't want anything more than to tell Dana that everything would be okay. But that would be a lie. She had to lie to her brother, to her parents, and to most of the people close to her. Now that she knew that she didn't have to lie to Dana, she figured that she owed her the truth. Even if it was a thoroughly unpleasant truth.
"You can leave," she started with. "It is possible. It won't help, though. The war will go on without you. And you'll become involved with it, even if you aren't fighting. The people at the carnival didn't discriminate; they attacked everyone, senshi or otherwise. The whole thing is like that, only on a smaller scale. Maybe someone will think you're an easy target for a bit of energy. Maybe they'll be in a bad mood and want to take it out on someone. Or maybe you'll just be in the wrong place at the wrong time... like I was."
There was no way that Tara was going to go into detail about what she'd lived through with Dana. But if she could pass on some of the lessons she'd learned, so that she could spare her cousin even a fraction of the pain she'd experienced, she had to try.
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Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 7:32 pm
She popped back up from her faceplant with an oddly angry outburst. "I have to to somebody, my dad wants to throw me in the nuthouse by now!" Which was an exaggeration, but Charles Caffrey was always eager to assume the worst and he had seriously been discussing counseling. "Well, duh, I don't want to go, I don't need it. S'not gonna help anyway because it's not like I can say a grown boy in a negaverse uniform broke my nose instead of another punk kid." Her voice was even raised before she caught herself and went back to carefully inspecting the carpet.
"I can't leave. I can't go anywhere. Because I'm here, and my dad's here. You're here, Evie's here, Kent's here. And I can pretend I'm not what I am but it won't make any difference because we're all still here," She babbled nonsensically.
She pounced forward, suddenly much closer to Tara's face and leaning on both of her hands. "Was it really an organ smuggling ring?"
Dana shouldn't really know anything about that. Her dad and Evie had made it a point to keep her out of the loop, deciding it wasn't something to share with someone so immature. But Dana was an unstoppable devourer of media and gossip and wasn't deterred b a bit of family walling, and she was morbidly curious.
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Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:34 pm
"I can try to talk to Uncle Charles," Tara offered. It probably wouldn't help, considering her reputation as being rather "off," but maybe it would be worth a try. "I could tell him we talked, and it's just usual teenage stuff. Or maybe I could get Kent to talk to him, that might work better." Kent wasn't considered loony. He also would want to know why Tara was asking for this favor, but he'd be more likely to listen than a real grown-up.
Dana sounded upset, but her words, confusing as they were, made Tara smile a little. "Kid, it took me two years and a trip to the hospital to figure out what you just said. If you got off with weird looks and a broken nose, you'll be just fine." She nodded, and then paused. "Wait, someone broke your nose? Who was it?" Nobody was gonna mess with her cousin, no way, no how!
She leaned back reflexively when Dana pounced on her. A bit farther than she should have. Her legs kicked the air as she tried to regain her balance, but that didn't stop her from slamming the carpeted floor with her back. "Oof," she said, mostly to stall for time. Going back as far as Barren Pines was not something she'd planned to do during this discussion. Public safety advisories aside, there were some things Dana just didn't need to know.
"No, it wasn't. And that's all I'm going to say on the matter. It doesn't affect you, so don't worry about it." Tara pulled her shirt down around her, covering the scars on her abdomen that had been briefly revealed when she'd been bowled over. What would sufficiently distract Dana from that doom- and gloom-filled train of thought? "Uhhh... so hey, what's your senshi name? I must've missed it earlier?" That was a lame change of subject, but it was important information to have. This was one name that Tara couldn't afford to forget.
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Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:36 pm
"Good luck," Dana snorted. She had little faith in her father's ability to not assume the world was falling apart at the seams, including his own personal one involving his tight knit little family. "Onna these days he's going to find an excuse to ship me off to an aunt or a convent or somethin'."
She had no idea what it was she had apparently figured out, but she also didn't pry, figuring she wouldn't understand it any better if Tara elaborated. Too much philosophical and emotional crap, she thought. "Okay, maybe it wasn't broken," She admitted. She did have a flair for exaggeration. "But it did swell up real ugly. A negaverser-- I think he was a lieutenant, he jus' had a toy snake-- he smashed my face up pretty good." She pointed to the butterfly bandage over a slight discoloration on her cheek. "This is all that's left, though, 'cause it happened at the carnival. Then his captain friend grabbed me by collar, and then... uh... I don't remember." She did open her mouth very close to Tara's face to point at a chipped canine that would be fixed as soon as her father made the dentist appointment. "Ah' broke my tooth chewing on his arm, though!"
She was disproportionately proud of that, and showing off at least distracted her from the not-an-organ-smuggling ring story. She would come for that later.
"I'm Sailor Chibi Columba, senshi of Correspondedence." At least she had gotten past saying 'Columbia.'
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Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 8:05 pm
"An aunt?" Tara wrinkled her nose. "I dunno 'bout your dad's side, but you definitely do not want to go and live with my mom. And Aunt Diana's even worse, believe it or not. I almost think a convent would be better. Not that it'll come to that, but if he offers you a choice, go with that last one."
Hearing about how her little cousin was getting beaten up by Negaversers was really disturbing. Hearing how she was beating them up was almost equally disturbing, but it did make her crack a smile. "Piece of advice: don't chew. Use pointy body parts that have some protection. I like knees, myself."
It took her a moment to parse the name and sphere she was given, and she frowned once she managed to decipher it. Correspondence? She was woken up to safeguard letter-writing? Tara didn't like that thought, so she didn't voice it aloud. Instead, she turned her attention to the name. "Columba, huh? Another constellation. Maybe these things do run in families."
That was a disturbing thought. Tara would have to be very careful, to keep Kent or Evie from getting involved in this whole mess.
"So," she went on, "I guess you know who I am. I wasn't lying about the rock being mine, you know. And I'm not mad that you took it, but I'm kinda wondering, why? Did you just want a souvenir, or what?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 8:18 pm
Dana nodded intently, obviously absorbing every bit of Tara's advice on which option to go with. She was not as well versed with the various individuals that populated their little family. Since her mom's death it was very tightly knit between her and her father and Evie. The rest were just background noise at the occasional holiday or birthday until Tara came back into the picture, especially for Dana who was too young to remember most of the past family drama.
"Run in the family?" She asked slowly, considering Evie's secret senshidom. Eunomia was not a constellation, but this was unfortunately not something she could correct Tara on. She had to, ever so painfully, keep her mouth shut and not be a know it all.
The things she did for her sister.
And then something hit her when it became clear Tara was not going to introduce herself. Because she should already know. Because the rock.
Which Dana didn't actually take because she was never at the surrounding.
"Oh... uh... uuuuuh...." She picked up the rock and turned it over in her hands. "I thought the symbol was cool? I seen it somewhere." She was desperately wracking her brain for some clues in Evie's story. "It was a while ago, I don't really remember where I grabbed it. Either the infirmary or the library."
She had to crack a smile as she mentally, prematurely congratulated her self on being oh so clever.
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Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 8:26 pm
A cool symbol? Tara had seen cooler, but she didn't really argue. Dana didn't need reasons to go pocketing mysterious space rocks. Still, something about the statement struck her as meaningful. It took a moment before the pieces slid into place.
"Oh, duh! You're a senshi!" Well done, an excellent statement of the obvious. "Hey, if you like cool symbols, you'll love these!"
And just like that, Tara was gone. Nothing so dramatic as a sudden disappearance; she merely ran out of Dana's room and down the hall, back to the couch where she'd dumped her things. She was back a few seconds later, carrying a rather beat-up composition notebook that went with her everywhere these days.
"I've been working on translating the library up there," she said excitedly, flopping back down onto the carpet and opening the book. "Can you let me know if you recognize anything? Oh, and I want to check the symbol on the rock against what I've got written down here. You can have it back after that, I just need to see if it's part of one of the alphabets I've identified."
Maybe there was a silver lining to all of this after all. If Dana had been to space, it was possible that she had the information Tara was looking for.
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Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 8:33 pm
Dana's smile took a very hollow and blank tone to it as Tara went on. And then she left. And then she came back with a book.
"Ah--... um...."
Wel she couldn't really turn it down if she wanted to talk. If she was going to cover Evie's butt and keep up this lie it would probably help to get a little bit more information. Plus, she didn't want to be hounded the way this conversation started in the first place.
"Okay..."
Because she totally wanted to spend being grounded doing homework. Ugh.
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