-note/warning- this chapter is not meant to offend anyone. That is all I can say without giving it all away, but don't worry; no offense is meant at all…
-dedication- I dedicate this chapter to someone who hates Teen Titans. I'm working on her, though. She has never read this story, either. Her name is Katie. Some of you may know her, and some of you are probably just skipping over this little snippet anyway.
Chapter Thirteen
(This contains spoilers. Don't read if you haven't seen 'the end' or don't like spoilers)
The night was young. The café slowly filled with its usual inhabitants for Wednesday nights, including one girl who carried a laptop case under her right arm. She yawned, coming up to her table, and put the bag on the tabletop. Pulling out not only a laptop but also two bottles of water, she sat down and waited.
Within moments of her arrival, another girl also came in the door from the dark outdoors and sat at the table with her.
"So," Vesta began, "Boy, are YOU dead."
The blonde and red haired girl shrugged, typing the keys down one at a time, slowly. "Yep," was the only way she replied.
The two were silent for a few moments, just kind of spacing out in their own little worlds. Then Winter spoke. "I have the information for the end; part two."
On the taller girl's face her eyes widened drastically. "Really? Terra doesn't come back, does she?"
Winter sniffled, and wiped a tear from her eye. "No… It's worse."
Vesta rolled her green eyes, leaning back in her tall chair. She was worried about it, but spending time with certain apathetic people rubbed off on her. She waited for Winter to tell her on her own time.
This wasn't very long, apparently. "Don't blame me, but…. Beast Boy's evil side tells him that Terra dumped him because he's stupid or something but the really bad part is… well… he CRIED!"
The two were silent for a little while. Winter's rushed speech was followed by her downing all of the water in both of her water bottles and hyperventilating as if she had just run a race.
"Um… I…" Vesta pulled a few strands of her curly hair behind her ear and she and Winter reacted at the same time.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
And no, this was not a hyper, happy, fangirl scream. This was the scream of bloody murder that can only take place when a bad coupling is even just mentioned.
John looked at the two, hardly fazed, from where he was standing by the counter. He spoke to the drinks guy.
"I'm gonna need to get them some water."
"Come on you guys, you're wimps!" Winter called to her straggling friends behind her. Every time that all of them went somewhere as a group, nowadays, Victor did not even want to dare imagine what would happen if they all stuffed inside of his car so they ended up walking. But where they were headed now, at 9:37 on a Sunday morning, was nearly a mile away. And Garfield, Vesta, and Achilles were lagging behind; obviously tired at this 'long' journey.
It was another gorgeous day; a few birds flew above their heads making patterns spelling out subliminal messages across the colbat sky which no one noticed, the air was warm and therefore ignored, and the twelve friends took up a big part of the sidewalk. If there had been passerby they probably would have wondered what the hell was going on but, then, there isn't really all that much passerby on a Sunday morning so we shouldn't worry about that.
"Winter," Garfield whined while he walked a little faster to catch up with the rest of the group; Vesta and Achilles were simply ignoring the blonde and red haired girl, "Are we there yet?"
Raven rolled her eyes and responded before Winter could, "Of course. That's why we're still walking."
They continued their walking.
"Well," Winter commented. They had been silent for a few moments and she was the first to break it, "We should be there SOON anyway."
Vesta rolled her eyes. She and Achilles were still not walking with the group but they had caught up. "How soon, exactly, is soon?" her voice was a little sarcastic. It is becoming a collective belief that Achilles is rubbing off on her.
The blonde and red haired teenaged girl looked around her as if lost in the wilderness. She licked her finger and held it above her head; measuring which direction the wind was coming from. She then looked at her watch and to her left. "Soon is right now. I'm sorry to say that I miscalculated."
Winter was facing a building off the sidewalk and the rest of the group collectively turned as well. Their eyes feasted on a huge cathedral – stone in structure with medieval type doors and a stone tower jutting up into the blue morning sky. In unison there was a sound of "Oooooh," coming from the group while they looked at it in awe.
Yep. Winter had decided that morning that they needed to go to church.
Walking in was a very informal affair. They got strange looks and some "look how cute" smiles from others entering the church, but most of the time they were just ignored. A lot of people were walking in but they were engrossed in their own affairs and didn't care to look at twelve random teenagers who just happened to be walking into the church at that moment.
The lobby was crowded, but the teens didn't stay in there to mingle. Instead they walked; crouched together in a protective circle, into the main hall of the building.
"Ooh!" Garfield squealed, pouncing on the little bowl of water beside the door from which people ahead of him had taken a bit. He pulled some out on his fingers and used it to slick down his hair. Looking around, he whined, "Where's the mirror! I need to know if this looks all right!"
His quest for a mirror was quickly cancelled, as he was slapped on the head annoyedly by Raven and bustled away by Winter and Rayne. Apparently his antics were not quite as comical to those girls as they were to him.
Kori was looking around her with wide eyes; interested in every picture, every painting, everything that she found to be beautiful. Presently she dragged Dick along with her in every direction to look at it all. The spike haired boy didn't seem to mind the part about being dragged around by a gorgeous girl, but he did seem a bit, well, stretched along.
As they walked inside, Betty and Emily shared a nearly guilty smile. They quickly showed each other the items in their hands and a release of stress came when they realized that the two of them were on the same page. They stuck together while Rayne and Winter, who had dropped Garfield, looked around for a place to sit. Raven was walking with the two of them, but she was silent – her hood was up and she did not utter a word. (utter, udder, the stupid Calvin and Hobbs udder joke thing… wow I'm weird.)
Achilles and Vesta did their best to look as evil and dark as they possibly could. Somehow, on the way there, they had reapplied both of their eyeliner to the best of their gothic abilities and their faces both held scowls toward the general direction of the world.
Meanwhile, Speedy just stared; lost as a poor boy could be.
All of the teens took up two smaller pews in the back right side of the church. In the front of the two sat, from left to right, Kori, Dick, Victor, Garfield, Emily, and Betty, and, in the row behind them (from left to right), Winter, Rayne, Raven, Vesta, Achilles, and Speedy. This order does not matter at all. I came up with it off of the top of my head so it doesn't have any secret hidden meanings or anything.
"Will you please," the priest implored after the service had begun, "Turn in your hymnals to number two-oh-six."
Most everyone stood up. Vesta and Achilles remained seated, but that was only because they were still putting up their "I'm really, really, really, mucho dark" exteriors.
The song was Amazing Grace, a very well known hymn to just about everybody, and Victor stood up as straight as his back could hold him, singing out the notes with the choir. The only problem was – well – he was holding his hymnal upside down. And the words looked as if they were in a different language to him.
"La, la, la, I don't speak Latin, or Filipino or Japanese - but, wait a sec," he listened to the choir for a moment, before 'catching on,' "I once was on lost, but now they're cancelled. Was white but now I'm green!"
Garfield, catching the last line and taking it personally, whacked his poor friend on the arm. The African American noticed this and growled down at Gar, who immediately gave a sweat drop worthy grin and inched away.
After standing where he was for a few moments beside the loudly singing teen beside him, he grew a little bored. He was tempted very badly to pull out his gameboy and play Zelda or Mario brothers but he knew that if someone else saw him he'd be toast. A lightbulb turned on in his head; the Eureka bells chimed and he, when he was sure no one was looking, dove under the wooden seat and laid there on his belly; playing his gameboy.
Kori's eyes were on the choir, seeming to find them intriguing while they sang the hymn. All around her everything seemed to be different and new and exciting. And every time she saw something even remotely awe inspiring she would tug on Dick's arm from his spot beside her and point to it eagerly.
Vesta randomly fell over onto Achilles shoulder; asleep. Achilles looked over at Raven desperately, wondering what to do, but the hooded girl ignored his silent pleas and continued to look forward.
Emily and Betty would exchange glances every so often and giggle as if they shared some great joke. When the song was over they sat down and whispered a little bit.
"Which should we do first?" Emily asked, grinning, "Wildlife or Veggie Tales?"
"Stupid, evil, Satanist monkeys," Vesta murmured in her slumber, "Go away and bother Achilles because he's the one who likes evil Satanist monkey butts in his face."
A few people nearby turned toward the poor sleeping girl with strange looks on their faces – not sure what to get out of her little speech. Most of them either raised their eyebrows at the other teens surrounding her while others simply went back to listening to what the priest had to say.
"Well that's nice," Rayne sarcastically murmured toward the general direction of those sitting to her left.
The teenaged boy, who had, by Vesta, been said to like evil monkey butts in his face, shook his head and yawned. Pulling a tissue from his pocket without disturbing her sleep, he presently began ripping it up into strips.
He got a few strange looks from this action. Both from his friends and a few people nearby, but he didn't pay attention to this.
With an evil grin on his face to show the others who were watching that his ploy was not exactly a light and fluffy one, he put a piece of the tissue into both of Vesta's nostrils.
If you have ever been awoken by this form of torture, you know that it is a very annoying way to wake up. It is one of the most annoying, actually; right behind being slapped awake and having your hand put in a bowl of warm water. But, of course, knowing Vesta, and knowing the brain that our authoress owns, we all understand that this would not work too very well on the beach-esque dirty blonde haired person.
If you were one of the people who understood this, go to your kitchen and eat a cookie or a banana and pretend that it's from me.
Instead of waking up as our gothic friend had hoped, Vesta, instead, opened her mouth to breathe through that. His shoulder's slumped down in defeat when he noticed this and his eyes asked "can you believe this girl?" to whoever saw them.
But what was really lovely was when she began to snore.
Achilles' annoyed look on his face quickly turned to one of, well, "uh-oh," and he tried to shut her up. He probably debated pulling the pieces of tissue out of her nose, but, when you think about it, would you pull the tissue out of your friends' noses? I think that he likely found the prospect too disgusting. While he tried to think of a way to shut her up, more and more people snuck glances toward the two, and, with so much publicity, he began to shake her; waking her up was his last chance.
Nearby, the clone of Dick Grayson was watching the very boy he'd been cloned from with fury and envy in his eyes. He was ignoring Achilles and his strife to wake up Vesta – instead he was watching two people sitting in front of him and fingering the bow and arrow he had made in woodworking class that very morning.
Kori was leaning into Dick, whispering into his ear while he listened intently. Speedy had no clue what they were talking about but this made him furious. He began to curse them out under his breath.
"Shhhh!" Winter warned him before turning her attention back to the front of the church.
He cursed her out as well, though silently. He put the arrow on the string of his bow; still holding it on his lap but making it ready to fire.
Emily and Betty hid in a corner of the pew, right next to the cold stone wall. Between them they held a small Wildlife colouring book; the very thing they had been hiding, talking, and looking guilty about, and they, like five year olds with little crayons stuffed in their fists, coloured ceaselessly inside and outside the predrawn lines.
"Stay on your own page!" Emily whispered. They were both colouring basically wherever they wanted to, so this was an empty threat.
"You stay on YOUR own page!" Betty whispered back, deliberately scribbling on the page that Emily had proclaimed as her own.
"You're a MEANY!" Emily whined aloud, gaining more attention towards their group.
All at the same time, Winter, Rayne, and Victor shushed her. But it was no use. She wouldn't shut up. Winter began to swing one of her legs back and forth to release the stress that was slowly but surely rising in her, but found her foot hitting something. She ignored this and continued to kick in that direction until a hand under the seat caught her foot and a voice from the same direction proclaimed loudly,
"Stop kicking me!"
It was Garfield's voice, Winter realized at quite the wrong time, and right as she realized this; that the green skinned boy had gone underneath the pew to play his gameboy, an arrow whizzed by her face and hit Dick in the back with dead accuracy.
It bounced off that surface, though; luckily. The dark haired boy turned around, feeling the piece of unsharpened wood hit his back (although it did not cause him pain) and began to fight with Speedy.
"This means war," he let the other boy know coolly.
Speedy glared in response, "It's always been war."
Kori looked between the two of them; confused. "Why are you two speaking of a fight between peoples? In Tamaran, there is always some type of war going on. If you are joking it is not very funny."
Vesta's snoring, Speedy and Dick's war speeches, Emily's whining, and Gar's short outburst – these things make noise. And this noise was noticed very much by the other people in pews nearby until practically the whole of everyone sitting in the church was looking at them. Except the priest, that is, who continued to preach.
Garfield pulled himself from under the wooden structure, rubbing his side where Winter probably had been kicking him, and holding the silver gameboy in his hands.
"I think that it would be best if we got out of here," Rayne whispered to Winter, who was also trying to find the best escape strategy.
"Should we just bolt," Winter asked in reply, "Or would it be safer to just sneak out?"
Vesta sat up, her eyes looking blurry and groggy. She pulled the tissue from her nostrils with a questioning glance toward Achilles, who pretended to not notice her looking at him, and after Winter and Rayne saw this and the amount of havoc that was building up, they nodded to each other.
"Yeah," Winter decided.
Rayne finished her sentence for her, "We bolt."
Grabbing as many people as they firmly could, Rayne and Winter ran out the nearest door of the church on the count of three. Everyone with them was confused, but Vesta, who was intoxicated with sleep, was giggling. Their flight ended when they were nearly a block away from the stone building.
Winter made an announcement.
"New rule," she said, "I'm not allowed to drag you guys anywhere at the same time ever again."
They walked away towards their schools together. Speedy seethed; mourning the loss of his arrow which still sat on the floor of the church and mad that he and Dick hadn't been able to finish their war proclamations, but the rest of them were mostly just being quiet or talking in small groups.
Raven, who had been quiet for nearly the whole of the morning, was having a very in depth discussion about the psychology of the Opera Ghost in the Phantom of the Opera with Rayne. Achilles, for a moment when their conversation had begun, had attempted to break in with his theory of how Christine had actually been in love with the Phantom but the two teenaged girls shunned him and told him to go away.
"He had never known someone who would possibly accept him – she came to him freely, believing that he was an angel sent by her father, and he fell in love with her because of her compassion. However it was a sick love; twisted and dominating. He had to control her and it just didn't work out too well."
The nearly violet haired girl presented her battle to the redhead walking beside her in her, as always, monotonous voice. Rayne was ready, though, and spoke as well.
"He continued to pursue her even after she had told Raoul how much she didn't want to be in the dark anymore. He saw her beauty and heard her voice and was possessed. That's all; not love."
Garfield, who was wearing his thumbs out on his gameboy, looked up. He was walking behind the two girls with his brain being sucked into his mini gaming console in his hands but he'd heard snippets of the conversation. "Dude," he announced, "You guys are weird."
Raven got an annoyed look on her face, and that glare caused Gar to grin nervously and return to his playing.
The walking continued on.
"Everyone," Kori announced suddenly; coming out of her conversation, "Friend Betty and I will partake in a 'night out girls' this evening. Would anyone else care to join us?"
The lack of vote was unanimous. The red head and the African American girl walked away by themselves.
REVIEWS ARE YUMMY! They make me SMILE!
Rose: Well the ELAs are tests that fourth, eighth, and eleventh graders in New York State have to take every year. They're a pain in the bum, I tell you. Basically, they make you read a few essays, short stories, and poems, then you answer multiple choice questions about them. After that, the teacher reads you some story or essay twice; you take notes then answer MORE questions, then they usually make you write about two essays. One which isn't too bad which is all about facts, but the other which is really dumb and usually involves you telling a story about your life or a figure in history. And they make you do all this in like two or three hours. They don't sound that bad, but it's really just irritating I guess. To get a high 3, well, the tests are graded out of everyone in NY instead of a percentile of what you got wrong. You can get anywhere from a low 1 to a high 4… it's kind of hard to explain, do you get it? I'm REALLY bad at explaining things that I don't like… Sorry that I am kind of dead right now, I feel like falling over and going to sleep… Hope you liked the chapter!
Golden-Sama: Yes! Please let me hit 100! lol... I'll probably never make it. The story shall skip over 100 and just go back to 0 or something... lol. I'm going to start advertisng my story more. Maybe that will help. French accents seem to be pretty hard for me as well. I can't USUALLY just say "well this is myirish accent" and imitate it perfectly, but when I'm talking to someone who has any accent at all i can usually imitate it. I hate only getting like six hours of sleep... That was what it was like for me the last two and a half weeks of school (though now that I'm out there's a lot more sleeping in time) because I was up really late every night and I had to be up by like six. Argh. Sorry this chapter sucked... :-p
Tidu'sluvr: There won't be any more coupling action till the NEXT chapter then maybe a little bit after that. Then there's the intermission thing... Yeah. I can't type right now; I'm in a really big hurry because I bloody have no more time... but yeah. I'll talk to you later. CAITLYN GOT MOTHER MAE EYE! She downloaded it! But we have to watch it together. Or at least on the phone. I hear (from sources other than gooseducks) that it's going to be awesome. CAN'T WAIT:-D
TTHPfan: Well I don't HATE Dc Comics but I also am not too terribly fond of it either. They killed off STAR:hyperventilates: Maybe I don't want to know... it will kill my already tragified brain. I have a couple friends who have computers in their rooms too. I mean, I do, but it isn't on the internet. My mom actually likes it that way - she doesn't have to let me on the other computer too often because I have one in my room that I can do normal not online work on. I love the rain, but if I snuck out in the middle of the night I'd be in TROUBLE. lol. At my house you can hear everything. Where I used to live my sisters and my bedrooms were in a separate appartment from the rest of the house so if I wanted to sneak out I really easily could, but, strangely, I never did. Long reviews are great! I usually write long reviews - I also usually write long review replies as well but then this isn't TOO short or anything. Hm. Well I'm really, really glad that you like the story. It's always awesome to get new readers:-d
-note- there really isn't much for me to say. I am in an untraditionally melancholy state, so if it shows through my work I am terribly sorry. Argh. I just have a lot going on. I will update again either later tonight or tomorrow – depends on how much perseverance I have with finishing my next chapter and whether I'm leaving tomorrow or Saturday. If I'm leaving tomorrow then the update may be later. I am only updating so soon because the last chapter – chapter twelve – was a week late and now I'm behind… But once I update again I'll be back on that schedule of mine.
Oh yes. And I'm sorry about its shortness. When I think about it; its shortness is nothing compared to how short my first chapters were, but for the moment it's pretty darn short. I promise to make it up to you.
Sneaky Peaky: "Chapter Fourteen"
Kori and Betty witness a mugging… you can only guess what that does to their sanity…