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Medusa can't really stand the coffee they have here. Maybe it's the way its brewed, or just the particular brand, but it's positively revolting to her. Bitter beyond belief, and she's long since been used to coffee taken wholly black. She wonders if it's more the fact that she finds no joy in it anymore, with how routine it's become. She slinks down in her chair and starts muttering to herself, not that it does her any good.
The whiteboard is laden with a bunch of multicolored markings that she doesn't care to remember the significance of, she's dimly reminded of the meeting she was just in. She lazily recorded three pages of notes, she'll just go through those whenever she gets home; she could almost be mistaken for thinking herself to be alone, were it not for the faint squeaking sound in the room. She sighs, almost instinctively.
"So, what do you think about my presentation?"
Shaula diligently scrubs the board free of a particular red graph with a small black eraser, a satisfied look on her face. She doesn't get many a chance to show off, so she takes what she can get; and giving off an intricate presentation about their floor's progress so far is serviceable. Most everyone has left, grumbling under their breath about her findings, leaving only Medusa moping in her chair.
"It was... certainly interesting." The blonde mumbles, barely loud enough for Shaula to hear it over her cleaning. Shaula frowns in response at Medusa's disinterest, but ignores it in favor of keeping the peace. She's learned a long time ago that there are simply times where one has to be reserved, and where one has to shout. She's never been good at either, to be honest.
"You gonna' be free later?" Shaula asks, her hands never stopping from erasing every stray mark on the whiteboard.
Medusa opens one wide and bats it in her direction. "Maybe... I have to go pick up Crona from his friend's house." She explains.
Shaula suddenly turns on her heels and crosses her arms, almost making the dazed Medusa fall out of her seat. "Aw, come on!" She pleads. "He can come with us, I just want to go eat dinner or something."
Medusa waves her hand dismissively. "I said maybe. I'm tired Shaula. You'll understand when I'm your age."
Shaula's frown grows, and she plants her hands into her hips. "Your age!? You're two years older than me, and only by a day!"
The elder sister plants her face into her hands and groans. Yes, Medusa is Shaula's elder by only a few years, and Shaula will never let her escape from that. Medusa never understood why, she never used her status to get Shaula to do things that many times.
"Besides," Shaula continues, "you work out more than I do anyways... come on!"
Neither of them can truly deny that Medusa is unnaturally fit for being an aging mother with a stressful job, and Medusa herself can't help but smirk about it, proud as she is. She shakes her head and sits up in her chair, trying not to giggle.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm still tired Shaula, we'll talk about it later today, okay?" Medusa concludes. It isn't really to Shaula's satisfaction, but the younger sister can't really do much about it except return to dusting her erasers.
The silence that follows gives Medusa a bit of time to think and ponder the current situation she's in. She gathers up her notes, and can't help but dash quick looks around the room every few seconds; something is most surely off. The room is about as everyone has left it, chairs in various positions and strewn about the room, but why did they all leave anyways? Why is she still here? Surely she can't be the only one who wanted to stay for some reason or another. She can barely focus on it for very long, as she sees to have lost her pen. Where the hell did I put it...? She sees it on the floor and slowly reaches to grab it, as a strange sense of dread begins to crawl over her.
Why the hell am I so nervous? God, I need to get some more sleep than usual-
"SHIT!"
Her hands clasp her forehead, now searing with pain, sharp at first, now slowing to a dull throb. Her swearing would've woken up anyone in the complex, were this an apartment. Her watery eyes find it harder to see than normal, and she doubts it's the tears causing it.
"Shaula!" She yells, "Turn the goddamn lights back on, what the hell is wrong with you!?"
Medusa hears a few assorted things falling onto the floor, she's willing to wager its mostly markers and other forms of stationary. "Whaaa-I didn't do that!" Shaula yells from the other end of the room, a tone of confused panic in her voice.
"Well if you didn't do it," Medusa begins to question, "then who did...?"
She slowly removes her hands from her forehead, and her question is quickly answered by a bright flash of light that forces her to shield her eyes. It's painful and blindingly white, but it only takes a few seconds for her vision to steady again, and the perpetrator to be seen.
"Arachne cut the theatrics out, for the love of god!" Medusa pleads. Her elder sister (now her boss, she's internally forced to admit) has managed to place herself at the head of the long table the chairs are all lines with, her chin planted atop her folded hands. There's an incredibly satisfied smirk on the face of the eldest sister, while the younger two are left trying to make sense of any of this.
"You alright, dear?" Arachne questions, her smug voice attempting to pose as if it really cares about either of them very much.
Medusa crashes her fist against the table, as her frustration briefly flies out of her. "I hit my head on the table-"
"Well, now whose fault is that, I wonder...?"
The retort is brief, but it pisses Medusa off more than anything she's been told in quite a while. She gets a mental image of how enjoyable it would be to wring Arachne's neck with her bare hands, but she's ultimately able to suppress the need for violence.
"What do you want? How did you even..." Medusa hisses, her voice trailing off in a mixture of confusion and pain.
Arachne, of course, is all too eager to offer an explanation. She claps her hands together and smiles. "Oh, I had Mosquito close all the drapes, as you can see," She begins, waving her hand to a bunch of shut curtains, "then I just had Giriko throw a breaker on my signal! I run in... It was simple, really."
Medusa doesn't really get all of it. She doesn't understand how Arachne managed to calculate that they would be so confused as to not hear her, and she really doesn't get how she managed to time it so well. She doesn't care much either, granted.
Shaula steadies and picks herself up from the floor, she ended up tripping over a loose stack of paper, most of them lie scattered around her. "But why?" She questions, her usually worried and submissive voice growing quickly indignant.
"Aw, come on girls! I like to have a bit of fun with this, I'm sure you both understand."
Arachne says this, knowing full well that neither of them understand. They never will, because they aren't her. She's a very special lady, after all, and Medusa nor Shaula shall ever come to fully realize who she is and what she is capable of. She almost becomes lost in herself for a moment, the power she holds is incredibly mundane, but also more fun than she would at first admit. This business has its perks. Medusa is just left wondering why the hell either Giriko or Mosquito agree to do this stuff, before deciding it isn't important enough to worry about.
"Listen you two, I just wanted to have… a chat, of sorts." Arachne explains, a wide smile governing her emotions. "Medusa is new here, and I think it's just a good time."
Shaula crosses her arms. "For what?"
"Consider it a family gathering, of sorts!" Arachne declares, causing Medusa to instinctively shirk and Shaula to wistfully sigh.
"The last time we were all in the same room together was for mom's funeral…"
Medusa and Arachne can absolutely not help but groan in unison. Shaula has a sad smile on her face, and Medusa is just preparing for some sort of weird lecture.
Medusa is the first to react, resting her cheek on her palm. "Do you really need to bring up mother now? You need to let go, Shaula."
"I'll concur with Medusa on this." Arachne hastily points out.
Both of them are staring at Shaula now, whose adopted a more stern persona in a quick few seconds. She crosses her arms and furrows her brow, as both of her elder sisters prepare for her to start crying or something similar.
"Come on, you know she wouldn't want us to act like this!" Shaula exclaims, a bit loudly for the small conference room. Medusa and Arachne raise their brows in surprise at her statement, as neither of them know how to respond.
Arachne does her part in trying; she tilts her head in an inquisitive manner. "What does that mean? Act like what?"
Shaula, for once in her career at this place, sees something of a chance. She straightens her posture, steps on a textbook on the floor to make herself seem more prominent, and flies into the first speech that pops into her head.
"Like this!" She restates, flaring her hands around the room for emphasis. "We barely talk to each other, we barely see each other, and when we do talk we act like miserable pricks to each other! What kind of life is that? Now, we're all stuck at this same damn place, and we still don't even try to be family!"
Truly, Shaula never knew much about mother, or what she would've wanted. She loved her most dearly, of course, but that didn't prevent mother from being gone so often. Maybe it's a more innocent mind filling in the blanks; she acknowledges this in her consciousness, but she doesn't really care that much. She likes to think in the spirit of things, anyways.
Still, her sisters remain unconvinced. Medusa is too cynical, and Arachne is too cold (at least, that's how Shaula sees it). They both share a long stare at each other, before the younger of the two attempts to respond in a cohesive manner.
"Shaula… we're not children anymore, we can all handle ourselves." Medusa explains, her voice actively trying to stay as neutral as possible. Shaula grunts and rolls her eyes, before launching into another offensive.
"That's not what I meant! I…"
Her voice starts trailing off, inciting both of her sisters to cross their arms as their patience starts to wear thin for this particular topic. Shaula does her best to consider her next words carefully, and she supposes she's come up with something that might sound clever.
"You know what… you're right! We are adults! So let's act like them! No more of this passive-aggressive thing where we ignore each other and pretend we don't exist!" She begins, raising her voice even further, her speech easily audible to anyone close to the room on the outside.
Arachne, for one, can't help but grin at this, even while Medusa rolls her eyes. It's a decent counter, and in her particular occupation, she can respect a silver tongue. Sure, one needs a better voice, but that can always be trained. She almost feels like clapping or something similar.
"That's pretty good, dear. You should get a job as an orator, you would be perfect."
Her smug comment isn't lost against Shaula, worked up as she is. She stomps her heel against the textbook, and grits her teeth. "I'm serious! I've been wanting to say this for weeks... Do neither of you care, or what?"
Shaula's voice is on the border of breaking, a mixture of pent up emotion and a sore throat from her earlier presentation starting to take to her. Both of her sisters are nominally impressed. It's very strange to see Shaula yell, normally quiet as she is. She's a quirky woman with a bit too many personal issues to really make great company, but this is a bit strange, even for her.
The eldest of the three is a lady of particular preferences. She likes when things are organized, and everything is on time. She also isn't a very large fan of when people interrupt her carefully planned meetings. Sisterhood doesn't concern her very much in this matter.
"Shaula… you're wasting my time. If you want, we can talk about this after business hours."
Arachne's words are blunt, emotionless, and not entirely unexpected to either of her sisters. Shaula's red cheeks and nervous posture don't seem to help her case much. She does her best to get another word in, of course.
"B-but-"
"But nothing, dear. I came to have a nice conversation and talk about Medusa's progress this week, and you've turned it into a needless spectacle. I expect your presentation in written format by tomorrow, and would remind you both you're still on my time."
She utters the last two words by glancing at both Shaula and Medusa, the look on her face now more than annoyed. Not angry exactly, but… disappointed, in a way. Arachne stands up, walks to the door, and leaves, without any pomp or ceremony. Much less unique than how she entered. Medusa gives a concerned glance over to Shaula, feet still planted on some calculus textbook from the seventies.
"Are you okay?" She prods, keeping her voice at the neutral tone she's kept throughout this encounter. Shaula keeps her arms clutched close to her body and adopts a weary and tired look on her face. She feels like crying, but refrains from doing so, if only not to further embarrass herself.
"I'm really sorry… I just-"
Medusa quickly interrupts. "It's fine, it's fine. I get it. Arachne is an ass, you're gonna' be okay though."
There's a disturbing silence in the room, as Shaula attempts to keep her emotions under control, and Medusa is mostly at a loss with what to say. The elder proposes that Shaula isn't entirely wrong, maybe they have been a bit mean to each other over the years. But what else do they do? They were never a normal family to begin with, and Medusa always considered herself too stoic for love anyways. She internally grumbles and preemptively cringes at what she's about to say.
"Hey… I get it, and I'm sorry. How about we go for dinner, later tonight?"
It takes a minute to register in Shaula's mind, and she quickly finds her face lifting up. "Y-you mean it…?"
Medusa gives a smile. It's small, and she doesn't know it she's forcing it or not, but she gives it anyways. "Sure. I'll bring Crona, if you want."
"Yeah! Yeah, I haven't seen him since he graduated middle school."
The two of them share a smile for the first time in a very long time. They both feel pretty terrible, for reasons different and similar.
"I'm also sorry, about your hair. What I said…" Medusa continues, supposing that she isn't going to get a less awkward situation to apologize for that.
Shaula hastily takes up the reins of the conversation. "No… it's oka-"
"No, no-" Medusa interrupts. "I shouldn't have said that. I just… want you to do whatever you want to do, okay? Don't feel beholden to what other people want."
The younger sister smiles again, a bit more watershed. She'll take what she can get, it's not exactly often that Medusa apologizes to anyone, anyways. Besides, she supposes this situation could be worse. Her childhood was miserable, so why is she spending so much energy trying to fix something that was never even good? Is it her duty? Shaula doesn't really know.
Shaula can scarcely fix or control her own emotions, and Medusa truly despises what she does in life now. Still, they can try to improve, or they can falter and be miserable. Both of them, in their own ways, are at least going to try. They'll get to Arachne, eventually; they just need time. Shaula won't stop until she fixes whatever keeps them apart. Medusa supposes she can entertain the concept for a bit. The elder sister muses, and smiles.
It's at least more fun than typing in Excel all goddamn day.
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