Chapter one: the loss of an old friend and the discovery of two new ones.
Professor La Rose was having an exceedingly bad day. To begin with, her boyfriend had broken-up with her the night before. Then, she returned to her flat, hoping for a little sympathy, and found the place trashed and her gecko sticking to the outside of the windows, getting him off had been a fiasco. She didn't get any sleep than night because it took nearly an hour to get Geico off the window; yes, you read that right, she named her gecko after an insurance company. Then there was the task of cleaning the flat.
At one in the morning, her flat-mate returned, drunk as could be. "Hey, you cleaned the flat, cool." Sarah, the flat-mate, slurred as she stumbled in, nearly falling on her face. Sarah was a well-endowed red-head who had a party-girl streak about a mile long. The contrast between them was almost sharp as that between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Cassandra, Professor La Rose, was tall, slender, and didn't go out of her way to befriend people while, Sarah was short, well curved, and made friends with everyone.
There were only two things that they shared, over-all eye-color and a taste in music. Their eyes were dark blue and the only difference was that Sarah's eyes had flecks of gold and had the shape that most Caucasians had to their eyes while Cassandra's eyes had flecks of silver and where shaped like those of someone from the Orient. As to music, they would listen to anything that had a good sound that you could sing along to, except Screamo. Anyway, on with the story.
As her friend stumbled, Cassandra secretly hoped that she really would fall on her face, but no such luck. There were a million questions that she wanted to ask, mainly why her poor reptile had been stuck to the outside of the window and why the sink in the bathroom had been filled with Cheetos and Lays chips, but, considering the fact that people have a very tough time remembering what they did after drinking that much, she figured it was hopeless and stormed off to bed to catch a few hours sleep before work.
She woke up at six in the morning thinking that things might not be so bad after all, even if that was the truth, things were about to get a lot worse. She was driving down 6th Ave. in Gothem City jamming to Click Five's Pop Princess in her old red VW bug. She had recently had the finish redone and was very attached to the old car. Suddenly, as she turned a left onto another street, a huge Toyota pick-up truck rammed her on the driver's side. She lost consciousness as she rolled the first time.
When she came to, she was on a stretcher an being loaded into the back of an ambulance. When they lifted the front wheels, she caught sight of her beloved bug, totaled. Right then and there she wanted to start bawling.
The car had been left to her in her grandparent's will, they died at the age of one-hundred, and she had loved the car passionately. Her grandmother had planed to re-finish it and put in seats that were white with a red stripe down the middle, so, as a tribute, Cassandra had done it for her. She recalled all of the occasions when the cars of her collage peers had failed while her little bug kept at it. After she reached the hospital and the doctors said she was fine, they were surprised that she walked away from that sort of an accident with only bruises and scrapes, she went to meet the person who rammed her.
"So, yer gonna pay fer a new paint-job on ma truck, aren't ya, doll-face." where the first words out of the mouth of the son of a monkey who had rammed her.
"Excuse me! I don't think so, you totaled my car being an irresponsible driver! I had the right of way and you, you jerk, you charged ahead and ruined my poor '98 Volkswagen! Do you know how lucky you are that I didn't die in that crash? Because, if I had, my family would see to it that you were put behind bars so that the roads would be free of one less stupid driver!" Cassandra bellowed, adding hand motions for emphasis, she was usually a very quiet person, but that was too much. How dare that, that, man say that sort of thing after the damage he had caused? He didn't even have the courtesy to act apologetic.
"Don't ya talk to me like that." he growled, he was a mountain of a man, but in her present mood, she could have taken down Superman with ease.
"Now, I think the liddle lady has a right to talk like that after what happened." a good-natured voice with a southern twang said.
"Indeed she does." a voice with a old British accent said. Cassandra turned to see two fairly tall, and muscular males walking toward them. One of them was black haired while the other was blonde.
"What you gonna do about it?" What they would have done, we can only guess, because at that moment Cassandra took action. She hit him on the jaw. Hard.
"Nobody threatens me!" she said and walked outside to call Sarah.
"Pardon me, miss, but you might get into a tad of trouble fer deck'n 'im." they, the two gentlemen who had tried to protect her, had followed her outside for some reason which was beyond her.
"In my present mood, I don't really care." she said finishing her text to Sarah, her phone hadn't been hurt in the roll-over.
"Well, if he files charges against ya, ya may need witnesses to prove that you were threatened. I'm Greg Saunders and my friend here is Justin Arthur."
"Madame." Justin, the blonde, said bowing as he was introduced.
"I'm Professor Cassandra La Rose and I doubt that he'd fess up to being knocked of his feet by a girl." she said, grinning, as her best-friend rolled into the parking lot.
"That was a pretty spectacular punch." Greg agreed.
"Indeed." said Justin.
"So, yer a professor, huh? What of?" Greg asked, scratching his head under his hat.
"Chemistry, I'm currently working for Wayne Industries." at this the men shared a meaningful look that she couldn't decipher. She might have been able to given more time, but, at that moment, Sarah ran over.
"Are you alright? I stopped by the cite of the crash and saw the wreckage of your bug, its amazing that you survived." Sarah said, holding Cassandra at arms-length and looking over her anxiously.
"Yep, we saw the crash. Yer car rolled five times before it stopped. If it hadn't been for Shining Knight's sword, you might still be in that car." Greg said.
"Gentlemen, this is Sarah Jones, my flat mate and best friend." Cassandra said, grabbing her friend's shoulders and pulled her forward.
"Tis an honor." Justin said, bowing grandly.
"I… um… thank you." Sarah stammered. Cassandra was shocked, the queen of parties, the biggest flirt of them all, stammering at three little words, and not even the big three little words at that, and a simple gesture. In fact, Cassandra wasn't even sure that 'tis' was a word. This was amazing, for once in the three years that they had been friends, Sarah had never stammered or acted at a loss for words.
She recovered and quickly said, "Sarah, this is Greg Saunders and this is Justin Arthur." indicating each in turn. As she looked at Justin and Sarah looking at each other, she had a sudden premonition that they would be seeing a lot of Justin and Greg.
"Cassandra," Sarah said, suddenly realizing something she had forgotten, "I managed to find the hood ornament from your bug, I thought you might like to have it." pulling the VW emblem from her pocket.
"Thanks." Cassandra said, her voice broke as she said it and her fingers shook when she took it from her friends hand. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes, Great, just great, she thought, now I'm going to start crying in front two people I just met in the middle of a parking-lot.
In zero seconds flat, Greg and Justin had both whipped out a handkerchief and were trying to hand them to her. When their hands touched, both men gave each other looks that clearly said, 'I was doing that, thank you very much'. Sarah started to giggle, Cassandra cracked a smile.
"What?" both men asked, faces blank.
"Ah ha ha, the looks on your, ee he he, faces when you pulled out your handkerchiefs…" the rest of Sarah's sentence was impossible to understand because she was laughing too hard to even stand up straight, let alone talk. Meanwhile Cassandra was fighting to keep composure, all thoughts of shedding tears far from her mind.
"They were rather amusing." Cassandra said.
By this time, the sun had begun to set. "I hate to bring this meeting to an end, but, we had best be going. I still have to pick up the work that was lined out for me today from WI." Cassandra said, with a bit of a sad smile on her face.
"Next time you boys have a little time off, give us a call and we'll see about five-six hours in a café chit-chatting, unless you want to stand around a hospital parking-lot." Sarah said, holding out our cards, she had had them made a few months back and before that day, Cassandra had never seen the use in them.
"We'll be sure an' do that, Darlin'" Greg said, and for some reason, Cassandra was certain that he was talking to her rather than to Sarah.
"Indeed." Justin said, bowing again. "Twas a pleasure to meet you both." Cassandra could tell Sarah was having stomach butterflies,
"It was a pleasure to meet the both of you as well." Cassandra said, knowing that her friend's voice-box wouldn't work for awhile.
Cassandra practically drug Sarah over to her pink Cadillac, and then she got in the passenger side. Sarah started the car and started to pull out of the parking-lot when she leaned over in a secretive manner and whispered, "That Justin in kinda cute."
"What are you gonna tell your boyfriend?" Cassandra asked, Sarah was dating a very dangerous gangster at the time. "Two words, 'It's over'" Sarah said, not the slightest bit worried.
"Whatever." Cassandra said, knowing this wasn't going to go over well. When Sarah didn't answer, Cassandra slipped into her own world and mused over the loss of an old friend and discovery of two new ones. The bug had performed a final task of bringing two good guys into her life, one of whom she was certain would turn some of her best friend's bad habits around.