The Last Amazons

By Dixxy

Chapter Four: Mission Complete

(Ella)

There are very few places on Earth that have been known to satisfy my every whim. Very few places where I feel at least a little happiness, despite whatever the situation was.

The shoe section at JC Penny.

"Ella, look at these!" said Sally, Ria's aunt. She, Anubis, Cara and I had all gone out for a day of power shopping. Sally was looking at a gorgeous pair of leather high-heels with the little ankle straps. "Now these would look fabulous with that tan dress suit you have."

I looked over the pair she had. I nodded in approval. "You're right, Ella, these are cute. I'll take 'em!"

"Aren't you gonna try 'em on?" asked Sally, blinking at me in confusion. I laughed and sat down to try them on.

Cara, meanwhile, was looking at a pair of knee-length boots. I smiled at her. For someone who used to cause my niece so much distress, she actually turned out to be a sweetheart. She was just, mislead, during a difficult time in her life. The surprisingly second oldest of our group picked up the boots and brought them over to a chair to try them on.

Anubis was pouting in a chair over by the Nine West display, in an array of our shopping bags. He'd been a doll and offered to carry our bags for us. Now he seemed to be regretting that decision and was mumbling something about a conspiracy.

I was finally satisfied with my shoes and put them back in the box and went to the counter to pay for them. After a few short minutes, the transaction was complete and I happily skipped over to Anubis with my bag.

Okay, so I'm thirty-two, does that mean I can't skip? Okay, okay, so I'm thirty-five. ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, I'LL ADMIT IT! I'M THIRTY EIGHT FLIPPING YEARS OLD!

"Another load to carry?" asked Anubis grouchily.

"No, I'll take it myself," I said, sitting down. "I'm just waiting for Cara and Sally to finish up, that's all, then we'll go get you an Orange Julius." Anubis' eyes widened in happiness. "I thought that would be your response, mate."

Anubis' eyes widened in a different kind of shock. "Mate!? Look, Ella, I respect you as a FRIEND but-"

"Mate is Australian slang for friend," I said.

"Oh, I get it," he said. "So you were acknowledging me as a friend."

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm surprised that you haven't heard Sam say anything like that."

"No, not really," said Anubis, shaking his head. He looked over to the register and saw the remaining members of our party on their way over. In response, the monk jumped up excitedly. "Ah, Sally and Cara seem to be finished. Can we go get the Orange Julius now, PLEASE!?"

I laughed. Deep down inside, he was still a little kid at heart. He never really got to experience childhood, and here he was, doing it now. "All right, my treat."

"Yay!"

~

I got home later that evening to find Sam sprawled out on the couch. "Hello, Ella," she said cheerily. "How was you day?"

The parental intuition I'd gotten from taking care of Sam for ten years kicked in. "All right Sam, you either had a really good day or you've done something exceptionally bad. Which one was it?" I asked, tapping my foot.

"Sage kissed me," Sam responded dreamily.

My eyes widened. "And you didn't hit him?"
"No!" she said, sitting up. "It was. . . wonderful."

I grinned. Finally, I thought to myself. "Tell me about it."

"Well, it started when Ria wanted to go bombard Sheila McConner with some paint filled water balloons, and then she overheard her saying that she thought Ria was a lesbian, so she got depressed. We found her in the food court at Quincy Market and Sage started one of those bit sit-com type speeches and some guy yelled at him. Sage fingered him and then we figured out it was Mr. Wimbly, so then he got depressed and he went to the docks. I went to go talk to him and after I buttered him up, we just, kissed," Sam blurted out before blushing.

"Oh, now, now, love is a wonderful thing," I said, sitting next to my confused niece. "You know that you shouldn't be afraid of a man, least of all Sage. He couldn't hurt you even if he wanted to, and I don't think he'd do that."

Sam looked down at her lap and took sudden interest in a pencil she'd picked up off of our coffee table. "It's not that I'm afraid of. . . it's these new emotions I'm feeling. I'm scared of them."

I leaned back into the couch. "Love isn't a scary thing. But it can be painful. You do realize I was supposed to get married before you were born, right?"

My niece shook her head. "No, you never told me that."

"I had a fiancé, once. A long time ago. His name was Eddie. He was tall, thin, and had auburn hair that made me feel like a thousand butterflies had been released into my stomach at once," I said. I sighed at the memory of my Eddie. "He was killed in a car accident the week before our wedding was supposed to take place. I, I was devastated." With that, I began to cry. The memories of having to attend a funeral instead of a wedding on my wedding day, of having to pay for all these fees that I couldn't afford because of the cancellation, it all flooded back to me. I buried my face into my hands sobbed hysterically.

Sam put an arm around my shoulder. "I'm sorry about your fiancé, Ella," she said. "But that was a long time ago. You, you need to start going out there and start dating again. No one will ever replace Eddie in your heart, but you have to move on."

I listened to her words. Sam wasn't very good at offering comforting words like, say, Keisha or Mrs. Lewis (although Mrs. Lewis occasionally made me want to get a gun and shoot either myself or her), but she did have a way of subtly getting her emotions across. She cared, but she couldn't express her feelings in words. I settled for a hug instead.

~

The following day, around five, the buzzer in our apartment sounded. Sam and I were both watching a movie (Double Dragon), and since Sam was in an awed stupor at watching Bo Abobo scaring the crap out of Jimmy and Billy, I got up to answer it. "Hello?"

"Hi, Ella? Is Sam home?"

"Sage?" I asked. "Yes, she is. You sure sound excited."

"Yeah, we both are!" the second voice belonged to Kento, but why was he going to see Sam, too?

"You boys coming up?" I asked.

"Please?!" they both asked in a childish union. I had an odd feeling they rehearsed it, but shoved the thought aside and buzzed them in.

Sam was still oblivious to the world outside of the movie. So, doing what I always have down, I picked up the empty popcorn bowl and lightly bobbed her on the head with it. "Hey!" she said.

"Your little friends Sage and Kento are coming up. They seem excited about something," I said.

"About what?" asked Sam. "Kento learned to belch the alphabet?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Um, someone I don't think that's quite it, Sam. . ."

Sam shrugged. "They're guys, and don't guys do stuff like that?"

Oh boy, I thought. "Well, not always. You don't see Mike or Anubis doing that, do you?"

"Yeah, you're right," said Sam. "Anubis prefers the Star Spangled Banner."

I stared at my niece in disbelief for a few moments before a knock on the door sounded. Sam leapt out of her seat and opened the door. "Come in, boys," I said.

"Check us out!" said Sage. I looked up and saw the boys wearing blue and tan jock jackets, the blonde holding a football. "Guess who made the football team?" (Note: I don't know the school colors for any of the Boston schools, so I winged it with the colors of the jackets. The team name with also be invented)

"You two made the football team?" said Sam in disbelief.

Kento shrugged. "Sage has got the best arm that the couch has ever seen and I can knock down three guys in a single go. We both need work of strategy but he loved us and begged us on his hands and knees to sign up. How could we refuse a groveling, grown man?" he said.

I laughed. "And what brings you two to this neck of the woods to share the information with us?"

Sage shrugged. "You guys are closer to the school than anyone else," he replied. "We figured we'd save ourselves the trouble of back tracking all over Boston."

Sam laughed. "So, what positions are you guys playing?"

"Well, I'm gonna be a line-backer, whatever that is," said Kento. "The coach wants Sage to be a relief quarterback, whatever THAT is."

Sage's eyes widened. "Are you telling me you don't know how to play American football, Kento?" he asked slowly.

"Isn't just throwing that potato shaped ball around, knocking people down, and trying to get the ball to the big yellow pitchforks?" asked Kento. Sage slapped his forehead. Sam stared at Kento in some sort of a new light that was a bit duller than one might expect.

"Go talk to Anubis, Kento. RIGHT NOW," said Sam. "Him, or any of the adult male figures related to the Senshi. Trev and Ev, Emilio, Roger, Gregory-"

"Who are Emilio, Roger, and Gregory?" asked Kento. Sage nodded.

"Rona, Sara, and Keisha's fathers respectively," I said. "Also, try reading up on it at the library or something."

Kento nodded. "Okay, I'll go read about American football."

"Just call it football, Kento. Here, the football you're familiar with is called 'soccer'. And it's not that popular," said Sage, frowning. He chuckled. "I wonder what Cye'll do if he goes to see a game. . ."

"He'll swear at the referee just like any other self righteous British soccer fan if his team starts to loose," said Sam. "You guys want something to drink or anything?"

"Nah, we gotta go spread the good news once I teach Kento how to play," said Sage. He and Kento then turned and headed for the door. "Now Kento, this is a football."

"I know what that is!"

"The football is the key aspect to the sport of the same name. . ."

Sam and I just looked at each other for a few seconds before both of us were on the floor in hysterical fits of laughter.

~

Dixxy's Notes

Eiyp, sorry it took so long to update. I just went through a recent. . . mini-crisis over what to do with this whole series and I wasn't sure what I was going to do with myself, never mind the series. But now I know what I want to do. This series is going to continued on FF.Net but will no longer be found on Ronin Adventures, my website. In its place will be an alternate reality of sorts where the female armors don't exist. Trulpa didn't have an armor, no Senshi, ect. The Senshi will all appear, but in very, very different rolls. This series will continue on FF.Net, though, so don't fret about that.

Questions:

Kar-chan- If you want something else from me, then check out my profile for not only the other Senshi stories but a few other stories I've written. The best of these other stories? Either version of End of Innocence (they can be told apart easily- one is plain EoI and the other is marked EoI v2.0). Also on my profile are some of my favorite stories to be found here- "Intermezzo" is a riot and is something I've gone back to read three or four times. If all else fails, travel to Theria.Net or AmandaSwiftgold.Com, the two largest Ronin Warrior fanfic archives on the net. Swifty's site probably has about a thousand Fanfics by now and a crapload of Fanart to boot (especially on the Oekaki Drawing Board- some of it's pretty stupid (pineapples riding moose who attack stick figure Ronins stupid) but there are some absolutely breathtaking ones.

I'll try to get more out, soon.

~Dixxy