The alarm clock went off.

The girl in the bed stirred for a moment, stared at the alarm, then buried her head under her pillow, grumbling to herself. The cat, lying beside her on the bed, opened its eyes in annoyance.

"Lynn! It's time to get up!" her mother called from downstairs almost exactly one minute later.

Lynn sighed, turned off the alarm, and got to her feet.

Checkers stretched, and to Lynn's envy, curled up and went back to sleep.

"Just another day of school," Lynn thought to herself, as she got dressed and gathered her school things. She clambered down the stairs to have her breakfast. Her eyes set on the small pile of packages that had been piled on one corner of the table.

"Your party is this weekend. You can open them then," her mother said, without even needing to look. Though Lynn could hear the smile in her voice.

"Okay, okay," Lynn said, putting a Toaster Scramble to cook while she rummaged for a cereal. Her mother came into view from down the hall. She was, to put it politely, a beanpole. Tall, but thin as a rail. She kept her jet black hair cut short. Her dark eyes focused on daughter. "Get going, or you're going to be late."

Lynn wasn't quite as tall as her mother, at least not yet. She had the same dark eyes, and similar black hair, though she kept hers tied back in a no nonsense ponytail, most of the time. She also... carried a bit more weight than her mother, both in her chest (so to speak) and on her arms, a gift supposedly from her father.

After breakfast, they got into the car, and headed toward school. "Don't forget, your uncle will be driving you home after school," her mother told her. "Have a good day!"

It wasn't that Lynn disliked school. She was good enough in classes. She enjoyed swim team. There were just... certain parts of the school day that she couldn't stand, though.

"Good time, Lynn," Coach Robbins told her. "You shaved a good second off your crawl. Good time. But you ought to hit the showers before classes."

After showering the chlorine and pool water off, she stopped by her locker to get the early She sat down in homeroom. Normally, homeroom was overseen by her English teacher, Mr. Roberts. Today, however, there was a sub. Lynn mentally groaned as he read down the attendance.

"Linse..." the substitute began.

Lynn put up her hand, "Just Lynn, please," Lynn said as most of the class broke into giggles around her.

The substitute paused, looking over her name. He gave what appeared to be a stifled chuckle, and read again, "Lynn Oyl?"

"I'm here," Lynn said, rolling her eyes. The rest of homeroom went quietly, as did English class after that.

"You okay?" Greg asked as they left English. The two had lived next to each other for years, and had practically grown up together. Greg was shorter than Lynn, but not by much. He adjusted his glasses, and grinned. "I know how much you hate that name."

She did. She knew her mother's given name was Olive. Her grandmother's name was Nana, and her actual uncle was Castor... but did that mean her mother had to name her "Linseed"? She had been trying to make "Lynn" stick as a nickname for as long as she could remember. Lynn grumbled again. "Yes, I'm fine."

"Okay, okay. You want to get together to study tonight?" Greg may not have been the most athletic person in the room, but he was usually the smartest. And he could explain things so anyone could understand them. He was a good guy. He had his issues, but a good guy.

"Not tonight," Lynn told him. "My birthday is tomorrow, remember? You're coming to the party this weekend, right?"

"Of course I am," Greg said, still grinning. "See you later."

School went as school usually did until lunch. Math was interesting, history less so. It was lunch that Lynn dreaded. Dreaded... wasn't really the right word. She didn't hate it, fear it, or so much as acknowledge that every time lunch rolled around, something would be horrible. Not horrible for her, at least not at first.

At any high school the size of the Oceanview came an unfortunate reality: Bullies. This particular group of bullies was led by Frank Covett, a giant lunk of a senior. The rumor was that he was a senior because no teacher had been brave enough to flunk him. Lynn didn't particularly believe that rumor, but it was a fact that he'd been kicked off both the Football and Basketball teams for anger issues.

During this particular day, Frank must have forgotten his lunch money, because he was busy shaking down everyone smaller than him (which was pretty much everyone) from anyone he could get his over-sized mitts on. With every person accosted, Lynn felt the temperature of her blood rise, until, when he picked on a fellow freshman, it finally started to boil.

Across the table, Greg, who'd seen this particular movie was before, making desperate sounds to keep her in her seat. "You know what happened last time... Lynn!" But he was too late, Lynn had already gotten up from her seat, and jogged across the cafeteria to where Frank was threatening her fellow student.

"Frank, that's enough," Lynn told him, trying her best to sound stern.

"Cough it up... huh?" he said, sparing her only a short glance before resuming his torment of the poor blond kid he was picking on.

Lynn felt sorry, for once, she wasn't wearing any type of heeled shoe. Lynn lifted her foot, and stomped her unheeled sneaker down on Frank's foot.

He gave a yelp, probably more of shock than pain, and turned to face her. "Why, you little..." and fired a punch right into where Lynn had been standing a second or two ago. Sadly, his second punch was better aimed, and caught her right below the eye with a resounding crack.

There was no doubt that Lynn's cry was because she was in pain.

Frank followed up with a third punch to her gut that left Lynn doubled up on the floor. After a final kick to her back, he went back to his now fully terrified victim.

A few minutes later, after Frank had moved on, Greg arrived to help her to her feet, and escort her and her untouched lunch to the Nurse's station.

"Again, Lynn?" the nurse asked, as she pulled out the ice out of the freezer, wrapped it in a paper towel, and handed it over.

"Why won't the administration give him detention, or better yet, expel him?" asked Lynn, even though she knew the answer. Frank had threatened just about everyone, and no one other than Lynn had offered him up to the dean. She was the only one who'd ever gotten into fights with him, and there was a reasonable case that she started it.

"You have study hall next, right?" the nurse asked, ignoring Lynn's question.

Lynn nodded.

"You can spend it here, eat your lunch, and then go to class afterward," she told Lynn, pointing the way to a bed in the back.

"All right, Lynn," Greg said, as he headed to his next class. "Feel better, okay?"

Lynn did feel better after resting, though the shiner she'd acquired was going to give her mother another heart attack. At least the rest of the day went quiet. None of the teachers asked about the black eye, and she wasn't forced to explain herself. This hadn't been the first time this had happened, after all.

After reducing her backpack to the things she would need for homework tonight, she went out to join the mob taking their buses or finding their parents for their rides home.

"Lynn!" called a voice from a large blue pick up truck. "Over here!"

This was her uncle. Not her mother's brother Castor, but the best friend of her mother since before she was born. He was large set man, with a scraggly beard and a blue sailor's cap. He studied her as she climbed in the passenger side. "Another black eye?" he asked knowingly. "How many does that make since the school year started? Four?"

"Five, I think," Lynn told him, counting mentally. "No, six, I think."

"What happened this time?" Uncle asked. After she explained her encounter with Frank this time, he nodded, but passed no further judgment. In fact, he was almost suspiciously quiet. Despite his gruff looking exterior, Uncle was usually a giant teddy bear. He finally came to a decision, and spoke up."How about I give you an early present and not take you straight home. Let's go work on the boat a bit."

He called it a boat, but it was more properly a ship. No mere sailboat, Uncle's boat was a sloop (according to the book Lynn had gotten for Christmas last year), complete with multiple cabins, and a full on below deck hold. Lynn loved it. She loved the ocean and water, another thing she assumed came from her father, as her mother claimed seasickness. Her mother, as far as she knew, hadn't ever visited.

Even just swabbing the deck felt so natural to Lynn.

"You going to join the navy when you graduate?" Uncle asked.

"Mom would kill me herself," Lynn said. "She hates the water. But I don't know, I mean, I don't know about being in the Navy, a cog in a military machine. I'd rather be a cop and dispense justice."

"NCIS then," he suggested and they both laughed.

They spent about an hour together, before Uncle had to get Lynn home. It was a school night after all. But Uncle had one more surprise for her. "Your computer still has a DVD player, right?" he asked, as they were turning towards her home.

"It does," Lynn replied, "Why?"

"Excellent," he said, as he parked in front of her house. He reached into the back of the pickup's cab and produced a box, wrapped, somewhat poorly, in birthday themed wrapping paper. He held a finger to his lips. "Don't tell your mother I gave this to you. You can open it tonight." He winked. "And I'll see you tomorrow."

"What?" Lynn asked, turning to stare at him. "Why?"

"You've got too much... well. You'll see. Just trust me tonight, promise me, and I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay," she said, her curiosity piqued. She took the package, promised her Uncle that she'd keep the secret, and headed into her home. Her mother wasn't home yet, which made it easy to put the package in her room.

After the expected explosion her mother had when seeing her blackened eye, she received strict orders to never get into a fight again. After that, they worked together to cook dinner. After dinner, she went up stairs to feed her cat, and work on homework.

And to see what was in this mystery package.

After ripping it open, Lynn discovered the first thing in the package. The original series of the 1980s version of "She-Ra" on DVD. Lynn had watched, and enjoyed, the Netflix series, so this seemed like an obvious present. Oddly, though, the DVD package wasn't sealed. When she opened it, there was an extra, unlabeled disc on the top of the first DVD.

Curiosity getting the best of her, and surely Uncle wouldn't give her a virus, right? So she popped that DVD into her computer first. She'd never seen the cartoon that was on it before in her life. But she recognized two of the three main characters well enough. Olive Oyl? That was her mother. It was even her mother's voice, probably, albeit what she must have sounded like fifteen years ago. She hoped that her mother really wasn't that flighty, it was pretty clear that Popeye... loved... her.

Loved her?

It was all Lynn could do not to go downstairs and challenge her mother about the identity of her father. But she'd made a promise.

And Bluto... her Uncle's given name was Bartholomew, but could that have been a nickname? It sure sounded like him. But the personality absolutely did not match.

Lynn watched the cartoons on that unlabeled DVD twice, all the way through, trying to make sense of it all. She had never known her father. Her mother only had told her that he had abandoned them when she were young. That's when she went back to the package, hoping for some sort of clue to unravel the mystery.

But the only other thing in her Uncle's Christmas present was a can of grocery store spinach with a pop top lid. There was a hand written post it not stuck to it. "When you've had all you can stands, and you can't stands no more."

(A/N: Don't try to work out the timing of this one. Repeat the MST3K Mantra.)