Ah-hem. I'd like to apologize for the delayed chapter, the reason this took so long is that I have been diligently working on a rather long one-shot, and, I was informed about an hour prior to the trip that I was going Toronto for a few days. At least I had all that time to work on my stories! So, even though I didn't have my trusty reference document for this ficcy, I did work on it anyway.
To my reviewers: I was surprised at the comments on how my HS AU is "different" from the other ones...and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for making me feel so special! ;-; I LOVE YOU ALL:hugs you all: I'm not making Squall a mean-faced, cold-hearted bastard! Nor am I making Rinoa a bitch! And I know you all love me for it! ;) Reviewssss...n.n
(Unfortunately, I did generate for this fic the classical Pervine, a.k.a. Pervy Irvy; Irvine the horny cowboy of doom! I just couldn't stop myself, because he just fits that role so perfectly. xD)
ROFL O.O Wtf is with this wonking long chapter! I just don't want to have this story be like, 50 chapters long, and if I keep doing these silly less-than-2000-words chapters, I'll never ever finish this. X.o So this chapter is like...over 5000...sorry, I just write a whole lot. And I was so bored in the car! xD I hope the longness is a good thing for you guys, and not a bad thing! O.O
It does notreally matter what these affectionate people do-- so long as they don't do it in the streets and frighen the horses!
-Mrs. Patrick Campbell
Dancing in Drag
Chapter 3: So He Likes Blondes
"People are staring at me..."
Smiling, brown eyes shifted to glance back as Rinoa tossed her dark hair.
"So?" She asked, "Don't they always?"
She bounced on airily as she rounded the street corner and led her reluctant step-brother up near the crowded plaza-type centre before the odd-shaped high school. Squall's eyebrows fell down in a dismayed frown.
"Not like this," he hissed, desperately trying not to meet a single of the many ogling stares that were upon him. Rinoa giggled and turned to link her elbow with Squall's, winking cutely.
"Then let's stick together. Guys would never attack cute girls in a pack," she said, obviously taking a sadistic pleasure from the other reluctant brunette's unfortunate situation.
He stumbled a bit, set back by the unconventional sandals on his feet. He walked with a strange, uncomfortable awkwardness and his hands kept flying back to feel his bum in the eternal fear that the skirt was riding up. Rinoa eventually started slapping his hands away.
"Squall!" She chided, "Your skirt is fine! You're going to look like a freak if you keep doing that in front of people!"
He shot her a sharp glare.
"I don't look like a freak," he said, "I am one."
Rinoa sighed loudly and unlinked her arm from her step-brother, walking ahead of him briskly.
"Just figure it out and take it easy," she said dismissively, picking herself up in a cute jog and disappearing into the mass of students with a last solemn glance back at Squall. Silver flickered over his confused blue eyes as he watched her go.
He was lost in a cacophonous mess of short-skirted girls squealing to their friends about being back, and thuggish, dumb-looking jocks having amicable beat-downs with their old pals. Suddenly, Squall felt very alone. At least at other schools, he could have always counted on a welcoming party consisting of school bullies, freshened anew from summer vacation and overflowing with bloodlust. Here, he just felt ignored, which was almost worse than handsome fists pummeling him to the ground at first chance.
"AY THERE! WATCH OUT!"
Before he could turn and see what was happening, Squall was thrown down with blinding force. He heard low shouts as his brain regained the ability to process requests, and sat up almost in a panic. Thankfully, the denim of his skirt wasn't very flighty and hadn't seemed to have flipped.
As he tried sitting up, he felt something restricting him: a body, fallen sideways across him. He glanced down, slightly frightened of being so close to anyone in his outfit.
"Hey...are you okay? Can you, uh...get up..." Squall tried to mimic feminine speech. His voice was too soft to be heard in the laughter and shouting circling the two of them. What had been so funny about that?
The blonde young man who had fallen groaned a bit and pushed himself up, deep blue eyes connecting with Squall's immediately. Suddenly the boy looked a bit scared and fell back, apologizing profusely.
"I-I'm sorry miss, I'm really sorry, please forgive..."
"It's...alright..." Squall said slowly, slightly taken aback by the abundant amount of fear evident in the other boy's actions. He carefully stood up, unable to help his hands from flying back quickly to hold the ever-faithful skirt in place.
Raising an eyebrow, he offered his hand down to the other in attempt to calm him down. This seemed to only confuse the blonde, but he tentatively accepted the offer, clutching it in his warm hand, one slightly bigger than Squall's. The brunette bent forward slightly to strengthen his force in attempt to pull the young man up.
SMACK
Startled, he immediately dropped the poor blonde's hand and the boy fell back again. Squall's cheeks flamed with burning redness and he spun around with a sharp glare, hands held over his victimized ass. The culprit let out a low whistle.
"Well, don't that beat all! The honey's even got a face to go with that ass!"
Stormy silver-blue eyes widened slightly, flickering indignantly. How dare this low-life moron defile him like that! The tall, auburn-haired and pale-blue-eyed cowboy stepped a bit closer and gave Squall a smug smile, not caring to hide how his eyes traveled quickly from the brunette's face to lower places.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he hissed at the contented cowboy, carrying a sharp undertone but speaking voice still held back. The man frowned slightly, eyeing the scar between Squall's eyes and running his thumb gently along it.
"Looks like this sweet one's a little kinky," the cowboy remarked with a cryptic smile.
Gritting his teeth, Squall threw his fist out at the cheeky man, realizing penitently that over the summer, his already unimpressive strength had been moisturized and fruit-scrubbed to a near comatose weakness. As he had expected, a well-formed hand flew up to catch his fist effortlessly. Amused crystal-blue eyes blinked up to stare into his.
"Y'all don't mean to tell me you would actually offer this lovely hand to that chicken?" He drawled, and Squall pulled his hand fiercely away, remembering the blonde and turning carefully to see the young man staring up at them in bewilderment.
Partly to make up for dropping the clumsy blonde, and partly to spite the cocky cowboy standing behind him, Squall held out his hand again, careful to crouch this time instead of offering his rear end up for abuse again.
The boy looked totally perplexed at this kind act, like he had never been sympathized with before. Part of that held a familiarity to Squall.
"Here," he spoke, voice mellow, pulling the blonde boy up with a short tug.
Squall noticed right then that the blonde's boyishly handsome face was marked by a strange, outlandish crest that ran up its left side. Slightly uncomfortable, Squall gently pulled his hand away from where the boy's still had it in warm grip. The crested blonde blushed and apologized quietly.
The shy but obviously energetic young man seemed to be having an inner struggle. Squall watched with a blank look on his face until an irritated cowboy cleared his throat from behind. The brunette turned around with a warning look.
"Come on, princess," the cowboy drawled, "you don't want to waste your time with that little wuss. You're new here, ain't ya? Why don't you let me and my friend show you around?"
Friend? Squall hadn't noticed anyone else. Silvered blue eyes flickered to the side, and fell upon a slightly taller blonde behind the auburn-haired young man.
He had a roguishly handsome face with harsh, masculine lines. Short blonde hair was gelled back, and narrowed eyes of a coma-inducing jade green glanced down across his sharp angled nose at Squall. He had the kind of expression that Squall had grown to dislike: a quiet but confident smirk that said, "I don't even need to open my mouth to seduce you."
Squall narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the tall, handsome blonde, trying to give across the message that he was unimpressed.
"No," he said sharply. The cowboy stepped closer.
"Did y'all just turn down my offer?" he seemed to ask in complete perplexity, then glancing back at his green-eyed friend, "Tell me she didn't just turn down my offer," he said to his friend.
The blonde only continued to watch Squall with his half-amused stare.
Realizing that girls were gathering around the cowboy and his friend at an alarming rate, Squall saw this as his best chance to get away.
"H-Hey! Hold up, will ya!"
But the auburn-haired young man was only able to watch as his unflirty, short-haired victim sprinted away, almost comically, on slim, well-toned legs and shoes obviously not made for running. "Green-eyes" only stood and let his amused gaze trail Squall until he and his friend were buried under squealing girls.
His homeroom was undecorated, unembellished, and almost...meditative. The desks, arranged evenly, were made for two people, unattached to the chairs. One wall was a long, empty whiteboard, one was a long, empty corkboard, the other was a long, empty row of shelves, and the last one, with the door hidden in the corner, was just long and empty.
He could certainly grow to like the environment. It was the teacher he was getting worried about. She wasn't anywhere to be seen. But then again, he reminded himself, it was still two minutes until homeroom. Walking slowly and minding his outfit carefully (trying not to check his ass again and just content to holding the skirt down at the sides,) Squall pulled out a blue chair and occupied an empty table, careful to fold the denim under his bum before he sat.
His eyes felt heavy from the lining job that Rinoa had done, and he still felt unbelievably, incredibly awkward. But he tried to look natural anyway, propping his elbows up on the table and leaning his chin on his hands with lowered, bored-looking eyes.
However, his legs kept crossing and uncrossing themselves at his calves without his permission, a nervous habit that seemed to have come from having his skin for view in public for the first time like this. His feet also kept slipping in and out of the torture sandals, which were, to his horror, actually starting to become tolerable.
"Ummm...can I sit here?"
Startled awake from his musings, the brunette's head spun toward the speaker a little too quickly. Well-conditioned strands of brown hair tumbled down from the shocked jump he had accidentally put them to, and he shook them away, blinking. It was the crested blonde from earlier.
"Go ahead," he said, still feeling a little shied away by being so close to someone other than Rinoa in his "state," and turned his head away on his propped up hands to stare at a long empty wall. There was silence and he wondered if the young man had changed his mind, but then he heard the obnoxious pull of the metal chair against the ground as the blonde sat.
The deep blue eyes glanced at and away from the back of his head, until he turned his head back to stare forward and the boy was in his peripheral view, not daring to look at him.
"So, um...you're new here, right?"
"Yeah," he admitted with tired sigh that revealed to him just how much he didn't want to be at school.
"Oh...well, if you shouldn't have any problem finding friends here...at least, people who would talk to you." The blonde let out a short, fake laugh. "I mean, I hope you don't mind my saying, but you're really pretty. You probably get that a lot though, huh?"
Squall blinked and let his slightly confused glance fall on the blonde beside him, catching himself quickly and looking away again. So Rinoa hadn't been lying to him...?
"I...I don't really know," he answered lamely. The blonde gave him a bit of a dumb stare.
"That cowboy guy you were talking to was Irvine Kinneas. It's not unusual for a girl to be noticed by Irvine, but for him to be that persistent with you is like..." his eyes widened in emphasis, "...wow. Because if you don't hang all over him from the start, he'll just go off to another slut. Not that you're a slut," he added, quickly looking away.
Squall watched him silently.
"A-Anyway, I think you should stay away from those lady-killers," he continued, "they're both a couple of jerks." He then glanced at Squall nervously again. "Unless you like them, I mean, which is fine, too..."
Squall blinked amused silver-blue eyes at the blonde. He certainly wasn't the most shiningly self-confident young man he had ever met. He figured this was the kid that got teased often, he was so unsure of himself.
"Who was the other one?" he asked after a moment. Confused deep blue eyes caught his own and glanced away again.
"Uhh...who?" he mumbled.
"Kinneas' friend," Squall elaborated, and the boy didn't look back at him.
"Seifer Almasy..." he said it slowly and tentatively. Dark brown eyebrows rose delicately and he turned his head, trying to catch the look on the crested boy's face. He couldn't.
"Anything I should know about him?" he asked with a puff of breath to blow hair out of his face, and the blonde sighed.
"N-no. I mean...he's usually pretty mellow..."
Squall's face almost brightened at this. This meant he wouldn't have to deal with him.
"...but, he screws around with chicks a lot, too, 'cause they just love him," he added bitterly. "If you don't like him, then you probably shouldn't worry, I mean, he's not the type that ever chases anyone. Everyone just...goes to him. Kind of annoys me, actually. Like, how can anyone feel that entitled to everything? I can't even remember the last time a girl didn't want him. Maybe that's why he never goes after anyone..."
This meant Squall did have to deal with him? He blinked. What exactly did it mean? Did it even mean anything? Squall rubbed his temple firmly to stop himself from thinking about it. It only proved to be giving him a headache.
He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably and tugged the falling bra strap back up on his shoulder. He sighed soundlessly, wondering how any girl could stand the contraptions. It was already really uncomfortable.
"Oh, man, I'm sorry. I'm probably talking too much..." the blonde laughed nervously, eyeing Squall out of the corner of his eye. The brunette scratched the back of the hand that Irvine had grabbed without welcome, moisturized into incredible softness by Rinoa.
To be honest, it was kind of scary to him just how feminine his hands (and everything else about him) had started to look.
"Um, no, it's fine," Squall said quietly, crossing his calves again. "I asked you to."
The blonde smiled brightly just as the bell rang. Squall glanced at the door as it turned open slowly, and their homeroom teacher seemed to glide through the doorway. She wore a long, slinky black dress and her raven black hair was tied up tightly. Piercing yellow-gold eyes regarded the classroom carefully and her snow-pale skin was accented by fluorescent lighting. Moving like a ghost, she slinked over to her desk and took a seat.
"Welcome to my classroom," she spoke with a whimsical little smile, her voice pouring smoothly like liquid silk. "Some of you may know me, but for those whom I have not had the pleasure of acquainting, I am Edea. No title or formal address is required, as I am expecting to see from young adults the respect that does not require a title for validation."
She picked up a stack of papers and evened them out as some frantic students shuffled through the doorway inconspicuously. Yellow eyes sharpened in their direction, not missing a single one of them. Her darkly-made-up lips stiffened.
"All of you are tardy," she said, no sympathy evident in her voice. "I will suggest to you now, that you not repeat that behavior in the future. I will not be lenient."
The scared students took their seats meekly, quickly sharing looks that said, "eek."
After a while, Edea started checking her papers and class lists, allowing her students the time to re-acquaint themselves and talk-quietly.
"Hey..." the blonde looked at Squall again when it was safe to make quiet conversation, and the brunette glanced sideways at him.
"Hmm" he made a little acknowledging noise.
"I'm not bothering you, am I?" the nervous young man asked quickly.
"Nope," Squall said without looking at the blonde, holding back the urge to say that, though his speaking wasn't, the nervous behavior was bothering him.
"Alright...well, it's nice to meet you, miss...I'm Zell Dincht." He blinked expectantly.
"...I've never met a 'Zell' before," he said it half to himself.
"You don't like it, huh?" The blonde looked almost disheartened. Squall frowned.
"No, I was just saying it's different. Nice name," he added lamely, trying to make the kid feel better. He didn't really have an opinion on it.
"Oh, um...well, uh...thanks for putting up with me, I guess. I just don't have a lot of friends, so it's cool for such a pretty girl to listen to me talk without knocking my lights out at some point." He laughed shortly, "I can't even remember the last time this has happened. Maybe it never has."
Squall raised a dark eyebrow and silver-blue eyes flickered to the side at Zell.
"Don't worry about it," he mumbled, scratching the base of his neck where an uncomfortable itch had come from the turtleneck collar.
"So...what's your name?"
The brunette blinked out of his half-unwary state again and leaned back in his chair.
"Squall," he said quietly. Zell gave him a bit of a dumb look.
"So we're even," the blonde said with a boyish laugh, "I don't think I've ever met a 'Squall' before. Say, is that it? You don't have a last name?" He smiled jokingly.
Squall glanced sharply away with a dark frown.
"No."
Zell's smile fell instantly, and he decided it would be best to let it go. The bell rang then, and Edea stood up as students began shuffling out of their seats.
"Remember there are five minutes in between classes. Now, everybody...welcome back to Garden High, and good luck to all of you." With a small, dismissive smile, she opened the door and let her students out. Squall was nearly the last to leave the room, Zell close behind.
"Hey Squall, over here! Your locker's gotta be close to your homeroom. What's your number?"
With a sigh and a hand at his side, keeping his skirt in check, Squall went as best as he could after the chipper blonde. He looked down at his schedule.
"901," he read, and Zell whooped.
"Great! Right next to me! Well um...you have your locker com, don't you? You need help?"
Squall shot a glare at the blonde, who recoiled slightly.
"I am...fine." He forced out, trying not to yell. Honestly, Zell was nice and he didn't mind him, but the blonde was starting to show signs of being a little overbearing.
"Oh-okay." Zell turned to work on his own locker, 902.
Squall managed to open his on the first try, and he pushed his bag in it, one that held his very last pair of pants, his black dance pants that Rinoa had been forced to let him keep. He glanced to the side and saw that Zell was having no such luck, wrestling with his locker.
"I just don't get it!" he growled, frustrated, as he kicked the locker. I know I got the combination right! I have it right here!"
Closing his own locker with an inquisitive glance toward the one beside him, Squall walked over to Zell's other side and inspected the locker with a click of his tongue.
"It's not the combination," he said quietly, and Zell stopped working up the handle. "Look, Zell...it's glue."
There was a layer of super-glue in the locker's crevice, and Squall was almost ashamed to admit that this had actually happened to him before. Zell whimpered quietly, crouching down, and stared so close that his eye was about to get stuck in there as well. He bent down and tried tugging the locker at the corner.
Squall sighed soundlessly and pulled out an old library card, leaning over Zell to stare into the crevice as well. With careful precision, he started to chisel out a path through the glue, at least managing to separate the door from the locker wall.
"Whoa...sweet!" Zell stared at his salvaged locker in amazement and spun around to beam up at the brunette.
He didn't realize that his face would turn right into Squall's chest.
Startled again, Squall yelped and forcefully shoved the blonde off, arms crossing protectively over his "falsies." Silver flickered over blue eyes in disdain and Squall turned his face away, heart still hammering from shock, wondering frantically if his cover was already blown.
Zell looked positively mortified.
"Wa-Wait! Squall! I-I didn't mean to! Hold on, I'm sorry! Don't go!"
Calmed down a little, Squall took a deep breath and dropped his arms from his chest, glaring at the floor before looking at Zell. He hadn't seemed to have noticed anything unusual.
"Its...o-okay," he said, swallowing a dry spot in his throat that had lumped up from shock, "Its fine, just...be careful from now on...that kind of stuff makes me nervous..."
'Understatement of the century,' Squall sighed in his mind.
Still staring at him with round blue eyes, Zell stood up shakily and nodded.
"I've...I've never met anyone like you," he mumbled as he put his stuff in his locker, "how can you be so nice? You obviously don't let guys like Irvine give you any nonsense...I guess that means you can tell I'm not lusting after you or anything...I mean, not that you're not pretty enough to be lusting after—well, I-I-uh...I mean, you're pretty enough, but I'm not after you...not that I'm saying you're not good enough, you know...I just meant...um...I'm not...going to...you know. Uh...?"
Zell looked pretty well confused with himself, and Squall leaned his back on his own locker and glanced sideways at the blonde, an almost invisible smile on his lips.
"I think I understand," the brunette said quietly, and Zell blushed slightly and nodded, closing his locker with a little fiddling.
"Well, uh...then, do you want me to walk you to class?"
This behavior was completely new to Squall. Being a guy for your whole life can make the first day of being in a woman's position certainly interesting. He had never been offered a "walk to class" before, only guy friends that would just kind of...appear at his side and platonically be his crutch until he figured out the building's arrangement on his own. But here he was, being offered a "walk to class."
It made him wonder if this was why scientists seemed to have found women as the more socially dependent sex; it was a lot easier to be the dependent sex when there seemed to be more to be able to depend on. Admittedly, though he knew he shouldn't have it, it was a "warm and fuzzy" feeling in his gut. A walk to class...it was endearing.
"...No."
Oh, it was certainly a warm and fuzzy feeling, but he wasn't about to morph into a sweet, dependent girl just like that. No, he was certain that some women were very much independent, and he privately felt it necessary to keep some aspect of his already feeble masculinity.
Zell just stared after him and the ghost of his little smile, bewildered. He scratched his head.
"That was definitely one of the weirder things to happen to me lately," he mumbled, followed by a little smile and a boyish blush. "Nobody that pretty has ever been so nice to me. Damn, I just hope being nice to me won't make other people ignore her. Kinda quiet, but I think she's got a good heart in there..." His deep blue eyes widened comically as he considered what he had just said.
He stared at his locker before slamming his head against it with a silly laugh, ignoring dubious stares of passer-bys. "I was sniffing glue again, wasn't I?" he joked to himself.
'I told her I wasn't lusting, so I'll stay true to that.'
"Well! I personally ain't ever seen a thing like it! Little sugar 'n spice over there was supposed to be turned off by that glued locker, but she helped the chicken out and he even got a face full of it! She didn't even yell or nothin'! So what's wrong with me?"
Irvine and Seifer stood a little way away from Zell and Squall, watching them.
"She turned me down! How could she turn down this handsome mug?" Genuinely perplexed blue eyes searched Seifer's for answers, since he could not supply his own.
Seifer raised a dark eyebrow at his fretting companion and then dropped it with a tiny smirk.
"She must be into blondes," he explained simply, running a lazy hand over his jaw with a hidden smirk. Irvine shot him a flickering crystal blue glare.
"Face it, man, that feisty sweetheart ain't fallin' for your 'passive charm' or whatever the hell you call it. I know her kind, they're big on the run-and-chase, and when you finally catch 'em, they like it nice an' rough." Irvine's blue eyes fogged up, and with a very not amused stare, Seifer hit him lightly behind the head.
"Yeah, right," the blonde's voice turned in tone as he took on a sneer. "Just watch and wait, cowboy. She'll be throwing herself into my arms by the end of the week."
Something sparked in crystalline blue eyes as thin lips curled up in a smirk.
"Did I smell a challenge on your breath?" he asked.
"Maybe you did," Seifer answered, smirking back. Challenging blue met taunting jade-green.
"One week," Irvine breathed, eyes flashing in excitement. "Whoever wins her over-"
"Gets the girl," Seifer cut in, and disappointment was evident on the auburn-haired cowboy's face.
"Y'all are no fun," he frowned. "But have it your way. Whoever wins her over, gets to keep her. Tell me, Al, won't this one look lovely in my collection?"
Seifer frowned back, ignoring the boorish butchering of his last name.
"You're sick. And she does have a name, you know."
"Well, you ain't any better," Irvine rebutted in defense, "And I haven't given her the pleasure of knowing it yet."
"Maybe if you had been listening to them when they came out of homeroom instead of ogling her ass, you'd know it." His smirk grew, and he held up one hand with one finger out, and the other hand with fingers curved into an "O" shape.
"Almasy: 1; Kinneas: 0."
Smirking candy-green eyes held the gaze of irritated crystal blue, and slowly the hallways started to empty out.
Suddenly, amazingly strong hands clutched around both of their necks and forcefully shoved their backs against the lockers, holding them against the clanging metal.
Seifer forced a smile through the choking grip and managed to open an eye at the attacker.
"H-Hey, it's been a while, Fu...ya look as sharp as ever..."
An unimpressed, cold stare was sent at him as the fiercely strong young woman tossed her silver hair out of her one good eye.
"Idiot," She said, harsh as ever, "Both of you, to class now. I won't cover for you imbeciles this year."
She dropped them and the two young men touched hands to their abused necks as their ever-cold, silver-haired friend marched away.
"Same old Fujin," Seifer sighed with a smirk as he rubbed feeling back into his neck. Irvine blinked hazy blue eyes.
"Yeah, scary chick's still way too strong," he remarked, "but damn, if those hips ain't gotten curvier!" He let out a low whistle, and the taller blonde shook his head, hitting his friend's head a little harder and knocking the cowboy hat low on his face before walking off.
"You're sick, Kinneas."
Pale blue eyes just flickered in the light of a challenge, smiling and plotting as he watched his green-eyed friend step further and further away.
"I might be sick," he mumbled to himself with a bit of a crazed smile, "But at least I know how to get a sweetheart. About Miss sugar 'n spice, well, good luck even getting her to look at you."
-o-0-o-
o.0
Squall is Miss Sugar 'n Spice? xD Oh my.
YES, SEIFER HAS DARK EYEBROWS! xD To those who have ever written Sei-Sei with blonde eyebrows, you are terribly mistaken! Just look at every official shot of him in existence, and then try to argue with me! He has nearly black eyebrows! Dark brown, at least! OH-HO:has an eyebrow complex: x.o
Review and you'll get your next chapter soon. And, like, I'll give you, um...:holds up gum: (Hey! It's Canadian!) :holds up CANADIAN gum:...Canadian gum! Believe me, everything is a lot sweeter in Canada, from their soda to their gum! Even their Diet Pepsi has more calories than ours! One more calorie, to be exact! And it tastes one calorie GOODER, too! Um, but, be warned, because I think their gum is two calories sweeter than ours.
Ahh, anyway...Canadian or not, if you review my story, you're 374 whopping calories sweeter than a normal reader! That's like, a whole meal! I promise not to eat you:3 xD
Uhh...byebye! Tell me what you think of my characters! o.0 Just hope you don't hate my story now! x.o