Hi! Just a quick note to welcome you to my first WWRY fic. I hope you enjoy - I just felt some background was needed for Scaramouche. She is so utterly immense, she deserves a history. I hope you all like - please review regardless of whether you love it or despise it. Thank you!

Oh, and I own nothing but the plot - but we all own freedom! or something Bohemian-esque :P

xxx

Bohemian Like You

Scaramouche was not planning on being a rebel. God no. She had it all planned. She was the brightest of the GaGa Girls. She was just what was needed to boost the music programming industry to a whole new level. Obviously, she sometimes wondered why everyone had to be the same, but she ignored those thoughts. The last thing she wanted was to be an outcast.

Kelly woke up one Monday morning, grinning like a loon. She sat up and switched her iPod on. Generic pop filled her room as she threw her clothes on and scraped her bright blonde hair back into a pony tail. She ran over this week's hottest formation dance routine, checked her bubble gum lip gloss was perfect, and left for school.

The school was full of the usual hustle and bustle. She saw her friends across the hall and they squealed at each other, an echo of the group of girls to their left and to their right. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that boy. Galileo. They had been discretely warned by their teachers to stay away from him. He was trouble. She thought she saw him looking, but she ignored it. Instead she joined in with her friend's dissection of last nights Big Brother. Her blonde hair bobbed in time with the three other girls in her clique and all three laughed in sync with every other clique around them.

"Oh my state approved deity! Can you believe its series 243? I totally love it!"

"It's like totally amazing. My favourite is completely Candy!"

Kelly laughed along, like she was supposed to, but she couldn't quite remember who Candy was. All of the girls on the show blended into one. As did all the boys. She shook her head. Those were dangerous thoughts. Individualism was totally not in.

"Hey .com! Wakey wakey girl! Brad is like totally over there and totally staring at you!" One of her friends snapped her out of her thoughts with her full name. For some reason, she always cringed at her name. It seemed too impersonal, but names weren't a personal thing, so why did it bother her? Her thoughts were dragged back to the virtual world when Brad tapped her on the shoulder. .net was the biggest babe on the web. He was the perfect example the of cute boy band member. In fact, it was rumoured his face would melded into the programming of the summer's biggest hit when they graduated in three years time. And to top it all, he was interested in her!

"Hey there baby. Would you be so totally cool and go to the cyber cafe with me this afternoon after class? It would be like amazingly hip." He was so calm, even though her heart was racing.

"Of course!" She squeaked. Her friends squealed again and hugged her while Brad stood, one hand in his pocket, the other tweeting his new romance while she calmed down. He flashed his impossibly perfect teeth at her before walking away again.

The rest of the day was a blur. The news of their date had spread like a virus through planet mall. Soon everyone's status was full of compliments and well wishes for the happy couple. Kelly replayed the moment over and over in her mind and even downloaded the clip from YouTube's surveillance system. She was so high, she completely ignored the fact that her friend, Barbie, had been asked out with the exact same words.

The bell rang for the end of school. Kelly practically ran from school to meet Brad. She had never been so excited. She had had a crush on Brad since, like, forever! And now something might finally happen. It was going to be perfect.

She walked up to the cyber café, straightened her new dress and took a deep breath. There he was, sitting at the table by the window. His perfectly blonde hair gleamed under the bright artificial lights, his blue eyes contrasting with the deep red of the sky outside. She bit her lip and walked towards the guy her internet profile quizzes had said she would dream of.

"Babe! So glad you could make it!" His voice practically sang in her ears as she sat down.

"Of course I'd be here, idiot." She smiled at him. He looked confused. "I mean idiot as a term of endearment," Kelly explained. He still looked blank. "It's a good thing." She told him, as slowly as she could.

"Well ok baby, you kinda lost me a little bit. But never mind that, I need to show you something. Let me hook you up babe, and I'll blow your mind." He grinned at her as he handed over the headsets for the new tactile-web pages that had just been set up. Kelly signed in and Brad pulled her into his latest document. It was beautiful - Paris as it was way back in the 21st Centaury. This was the setting for the summer's biggest hit – it had even been engineered into the curriculum at school. It was lovely, but Kelly couldn't help but feel it was slightly, well, clichéd. Still none of the other couples seemed to mind. It shocked her that other people where here, still he must have factored them into his scene to add realism or to make sure it wasn't too awkward for their first date.

"So baby, you wanna drink?" Brad's voice pulled her back to virtual reality.

"That would be lovely." Brad pulled her over to a table on the boulevard and poured her a drink that he had programmed to be there. It was Coke. The official favourite drink of Planet Mall. Thing was, Kelly had never really liked it; she just said she did to fit in.

"So baby, you digging Paris?"

Kelly forced a smile at him to approve. The "baby" thing was starting to get a little bit annoying. This was only their first date. She didn't belong to him or anything.

"So baby, who do you want to win Big Bro this month?"

"Erm, I don't really know yet. Howie, I think." She had not come here to discuss Big Brother. She wanted to be wooed and seduced, not talk about the same crap she did with her friends. Although, she had never thought it was crap before.

"No way baby, I'm all for Candy! So, you all excited for the big dance?"

If Kelly had answered straight away, maybe she wouldn't have noticed. Maybe her life would have followed the route it was supposed to. Maybe she would have fallen for Brad and they would have been the most successful couple on Planet Mall. Maybe then, she never would have realised she was different. Instead, she paused. And in that pause she heard hundreds of girls chime "yeah honey! I can't wait" at hundreds of dates. He had been saying the exact same thing to her as every other guy here. Then it clicked. This was a chat room. He hadn't bothered himself to programme a place for just the two of them.

"Brad," She began, anger beginning to seep into her voice, "why do you want to know about my plans for the dance?"

"Well baby, I was wondering if you would, like, go-" his voice faltered as Kelly kicked his shin hard. As his sentence died in his throat, the voices of every other guy in the room filled in the blank for her as they chorused "with me coz you are like, the cutest babe in school". Tears welled up in her eyes.

"Brad! Say something to me that isn't programmed into your dating core!"

"Baby, what's wrong with you?"
"Don't call me your baby because I am not your fucking anything!"

"Kelly? Wait babe, I don't get what's making you so not cool."
She stood up, her eyes blazing. "This is 'not cool' you idiot! It's so damn fake! Why the hell did you even want to go out with me?"

"Coz I was told you were cool, babe. I was told you were one of the best GaGa's around."

"That's it?" Her voice was dangerously soft. "Not because of my personality, not because of my brains, hell, not even because of my looks. You asked me out because I was the best at being a fucking little sheep?" Her voice kept rising until she was screaming at him. "Well not anymore! Do you hear me? I am not a GaGa Girl any more!"

She ripped the cyber headsets off and tore out of the café. She sprinted all the way home. Slamming her door, she stood inside her room, panting heavily. She slowly stepped towards her mirror. There she was, blonde, pink and white. Her skirt too short and too bright, her top too low and generally too hideous. Why had she done this to herself?

She bit her lip and stared at her bedside table with red puffy eyes. There it lay, its silver shinning in the cold, artificial light. She ran her finger down it, feeling the icy metal bite into her skin. She could do it. Oh it would hurt, she would make her family so ashamed, but she had to do it. She reached out and grabbed the scissors. Hesitantly, she opened her wardrobe and began.

The next day, Kelly-no-longer stepped into school. Last seasons desire for bright hair colour had left her with spare purple hair dye which she had poured over that sickly sweet blonde. She had used so much, the light lilac had turned a deep and passionate violet. She had found black fabric paint and long swathes of material to turn into clothes. She hid away the body she had so freely displayed. It made her sick to think of what she had been, how she had never noticed the monotony, the complete control the state had over everyone. Her dark red lips curled into a sneer as the first group of GaGa Girls spotted her. They shrieked with laughter as she swooped past in her black dress. The Boyband boys pointed and giggled in their overly feminine way as she strode past, her fly away hair back combed and bedraggled.

Her closest friends ran from her when they saw her knee high black boots and home made dress. It scared them knowing she was different now. She didn't care any more. She hated who she was now, an outcast, a loner, forever on the fringe of society, but it was better than who she had been before.

As Kelly-no-longer fought with this change, eyes began to follow her. As she shouted out against her teachers, cruelly mocked the girls to stupid to understand she was the way she was because she wanted to, because conformity had almost crushed her. The black fabric clung to her arms and hung in ragged lines from her hips made her look like a witch from years ago, like, dare I say a bohemian. And that is why the eyes watched her.

One set of eyes saw her from the shadows. He was an outcast from birth and didn't know how to feel about this new one. But already he could feel the words rising in his throat, threatening to choke him unless they were heard. At night he dreamed the name of the one who would help him save this world – Scaramouche.