So I was looking at the closeness of a vote and trying to think of a way of swaying it. Argument had clearly reached peak effectiveness, and an extremely tight result would irritate a number of people, myself included. Even if Whirlwind won.
And then I realized, write-ins! Questers
love write-ins!
[o] Be Mahou Shoujo Punk Rocker
It's six o'clock, and your unprompted arrival at the breakfast table Saturday morning is enough to draw your father's bewildered attention. You'd never been much of a morning person at the best of times, and the past two weeks have been rather far from
that. However, you know it's not your bizarre wakefulness that holds his attention.
He pauses for a moment, coffee cup suspended before his mouth. You tense, smile dimming as excuses run through your head. After some thought, he seems to decide on not pushing the issue, and returns to reading his newspaper.
You jingle slightly as you move around the kitchen to prepare your meal. You can feel his eyes occasionally flicker towards you, still confused.
Eventually, he seemed to come to a conclusion, and lowered his newspaper. You freeze, toast still in your mouth.
"So..." he begins. "New look?" The poor man looks rather lost.
You nod slowly as you finish your bite. "Thought of trying something... different," you explain.
Your dad mulls that over for a bit, and then, as though deciding the mysteries of (barely) teenage girls was rather outside his area of expertise, nods slowly. "...I see."
You finish the rest of your breakfast in awkward silence before he manages to get his thoughts in order again.
"So Emma... did anything... happen, last night?"
0-0-0
Last Night
You've been pacing around your room for the past hour, black depression having yielded to frustrated rage. You have to move, you have to do something
, hit something.
The thought is barely through your head when your hand lashes out across your vanity, throwing make-up and accessories onto the floor. They, and the furniture, had been a birthday gift. Your parents had said that you were grown up, and the laugh that memory evokes is bitter and choking. Yeah
right.
But you feel a little better for it, and so you swing your arm again, clearing off more of the surface. This time, one of the glass bottles smacks painfully into your wrist, prompting a yelp you quickly muffle. It
hurts.
You swing again anyway, and stand in front of the mirror, staring into the reddened, tear-streaked face of Emma Barnes. The face in the mirror twists into an snarl, and then shatters into a dozen pieces as your fist hits it. You choke down the pained scream and stand there for a moment, the room silent save for the faint, lyrical sound of falling glass and your own laboured breath. Is that who you are? Is that who you
want to be?
Then there's a knock on the door. "Emma? Are you alright?"
Crap. It's your mom. You force your voice steady, and feel vaguely proud about how little it wavers. "Fi- fine, mom. I'm fine."
"You sure? I'm coming in-"
"No!" The shout is louder than you expect, and you hear the door handle stop. More quietly, you continue. "Please mom. I just- just have to be alone."
You can feel her hesitate, but then the handle clicks. She's let go.
"Emma, I- If you say so. Good night." You hear the creak of floorboards. "Uh, tomorrow I was thinking we could... go shopping! Just you and me. Wouldn't that be nice." Her voice is bright, artificially so. Still, it makes you smile, just a bit. The quavery expression is reflected back at you in a dozen silvered shards.
"Y- yeah. Sure." Wow. That's more choked than you'd expected. You hear her step away, and let out a sigh as you collapse onto your tangled sheets, utterly drained. Normally the soft fabric would be comforting, but not now. Your head falls to the side, and you stare out at the window. Out above the dilapidated skyline of Brockton Bay, you can see the stars twinkle brightly.
There must be a blackout. The thought makes you giggle. What a world to live in. You can only see the stars when things break down.
You want to see them more closely. The bed springs seem almost to complain as you get up and move towards the window, sticking your head outside. The air here is clean, not like it is downtown. Not like in the alley.
Well. There goes your good mood. Still, it
is a nice night.
You're out the window and hoisting yourself on the roof before you really realize what you've decided to do. You'd done it before, of course. Oh man, had your dad been angry. All 'you could have broken your neck' and 'what were you thinking?'.
You weren't really thinking then. You aren't really thinking now. Still, the sky looks much closer, and you stare at it for a moment, before the wind picks up and you realize that you're still wearing your pyjamas.
You stop looking up. Brockton Bay stretches out before you like a skeleton, ribs stretching out to they sky. The blackout suits it, you decide. Brockton Bay is a mess you decide, firm in your (barely) teenage wisdom.
"Fuck it." You know your parents wouldn't be happy if they heard you using words like that, but it feels
good to say. "
Fuck it." Right now, up here, it doesn't feel like any of it could touch you, like you're looking at the whole city from on high. The alley seems distant now, unimportant. You're not going to let any of that hold onto you. You're not going to just bow down.
Your face splits into a manic smile, and you feel like you could fix it. Burn it down and build anew.
You giggle. Pride is one thing, arrogance another. Still, it's a nice thought.
You know that soon you'll have to go back down, fall asleep and be just Emma Barnes again. You'll have to wake up, and deal with a world of darkness. The cold nipping at you through your thin pyjamas ensures that. Still, you think, you might as well enjoy it while you're still up here.
You begin to clamber up to the peak of the roof, bare feet struggling for purchase on the slippery tiles.
Then you slip. The rough surface scrapes your skin as you slide down the angled roof, limbs desperately trying to find purchase on the shingles, but never quite gaining enough friction to slow you down. Your shout is stuck in your throat, shock paralyzing your vocal chords even as you feel your feet stick out over the edge.
And then you're off, and there's nothing to hold on to anymore.
"Ah-," you start to shout, but the sound is entirely too quiet. And too
late, if you're going to be honest with yourself.
You see your window shoot past, and the brickwork blur from the speed of your fall. Your eyes squeeze shut, protecting you from the sight of the ground quickly approaching.
What a stupid way to go, you think. As far as last thoughts went, it's rather accurate, if not really profound. Oh yeah, carve that on your marker.
You giggle. Something's tickling you. And for a two-odd storey fall, isn't this taking quite a while?
You crack open an eye, and find yourself staring into your bedroom window. After a brief moment of shock, you latch onto the windowsill, just in time for the...
A gust of wind pushes you gracelessly through your window, and you find yourself lying stunned on the bedroom carpet. The wind had stopped your fall.
You're fairly sure wind doesn't do that. You're also fairly sure wind didn't give people a new wardrobe, but then you seem to be reevaluating quite a bit of what you knew about wind right now.
You decide to focus on the clothes. A light, steely grey jacket is now draped over your shoulders, the denim adorned with chaotic designs and metal accoutrements. Bright green blotches spot the garment like stains. Underneath, you're wearing a light blue shirt covered with what could be leaves and clouds, or simply camouflage patterning. A small collection of thin metal chains hang around your neck, lacking anything that would make them actual necklaces. Similar chains have wrapped themselves around your wrists, resting on top of a pair of finger-less gloves. You flex your hands, wincing as you realize that they're still bruised from your attack on the vanity.
Moving downwards, your skirt seems slightly torn, and its camouflage is ruined by the eye-searing combination of acidic green, bright white and sky blue that composes it.
"Maybe it's supposed to blind your opponent?" The thought slips out in a mutter and you chuckle a little at the image. You feel lighter than you have in... weeks, honestly. Since the alley. You push down the hot burst of anger that the memory evokes, and just... let yourself relax.
Underneath there's a pair of more muted shorts, and underneath
those... you blanch. Fishnet stockings. Torn, fishnet stockings.
It's so stupid that you can't hold in the giggles, and soon you're rolling on the floor, tears far more pleasant than those you'd become so familiar with streaming down your face.
"Fishnet.
Stockings," you gasp, breathless from laughter. The magical wind seemed to have had some...
odd tastes in clothing. After you calm down, and decide to make use of the mirror you
haven't broken, you note it's not
that bad. The stockings only really show on your knees, soon vanishing into a pair of boots that can't seem to decide if they're made for combat or for
walking.
That just sets you off again, and soon you are collapsing onto your bed, wonderfully, joyfully exhausted. The clothes seem more comfortable now, strange and funny in way that you find yourself appreciating. You'll have to wake up early, fix up your room before your parents come in to wake you.
But right now - you yawn, and your eyelids suddenly seem much heavier than before - right now you need to rest.
You're asleep before you finish the thought, utterly unconcerned about the mess that is your bed and your room. That's a problem for tomorrow.
0-0-0 -
This scene happens
You gulp, and try and look your dad in the eyes. Underneath your fingerless gloves, fished out from the bottom of some drawer you hadn't opened in months, you hand balls into a fist, sending shooting pain up your arm. It helps you focus.
"Nope! Nothing happened. Uh." Okay maybe it doesn't help you focus
that much. Then you smile, and it's light and happy and honest enough that even you almost believe what you're saying.
He seems to buy it, and that is that.
0-0-0
Written to the song from the warehouse scene in Footloose.
