CHAPTER SIX- THE UNTIMELY DEMISE OF HERO'S FOOD

SIERRA

You wouldn't believe how quickly the novelty of having Steela back wore off for Saw.

One of the first things Steela did when we settled in to Hero's place was take a shower. Pretty soon, steam was rolling under the door.

When the shower time exceeds fifteen minutes, Saw knocks on the door.

"Sis, you're using all the hot water!" he snaps. "Quit hogging the refresher."

"I'm not using all the hot water."

"Yeah, you are!"

The shower shuts off for a second, there's a padding of feet, and a towel-clad Steela throws the door open. And she's not happy.

She uses one hand to keep her towel in place, and the other to grab the front of Saw's shirt.

"This is my first shower in five months. I. Will take. As long as I want." She says, and steps back into the refresher.

When she finally emerges, I duck into the shower before Saw. Predictably, it's freezing cold.

Saw finally gets into the shower after Hutch. He emerges shivering from the cold water.

"I can't wait to just hop into bed." He grumbles under his breath.

"You wish," Hero mutters.

"What do ya mean, I wish?"

"Listen, pal." Hero says. "I don't live in a mansion. You, Hutch, and Lux are sleeping in the living room."

"But there are more of you, and the living room has the couch and a chair. Why do you get the bedroom?"

"For one, it's my house. And two, Steela's already asleep." To prove it, she nudges the door open. Steela lies on the bed, sound asleep.

"Look, guys. I'm tired." I say. "And waking Steela right now should be a felony."

Saw opens his mouth as if so say something, but shrugs and replies "Fair enough." But before leaving he carefully removes Steela's boots, then tenderly kisses her forehead.

"Good night, sis." He whispers with a gentleness I didn't think could come from Saw. His whole face is lit up with pure joy.

Hero loans me one of her T-shirts and chucks me a pillow for the floor. She takes up the other side of the bed, next to Steela.

I've just closed my eyes when the voices filter from the living room.

"Shove over, Hutch."

"Nuh-uh, I'm not sleeping on the floor. Make Bonteri sleep on the floor."

"I'm staying on this couch whether you like it or not."

"Hutch, help me jettison him."

"Eat pillow, Saw!"

Hero rolls out of bed and sticks her head out the door.

"Quit fighting and go to sleep, or else you're all sleeping on my freakin' porch!"

Silence falls.

SAW

In the morning, I'm hungry.

"We shouldn't wake up Hero." Lux says. "She won't mind if we watch TV until she wakes up."

Hutch shrugs, and switches on the TV.

"Now after you've added the eggs," Cooking Show Lady says, "Make sure all the ingredients are evenly mixed."

The fact that the camera's doing a close-up of something that looks delicious isn't helping.

"I have an idea!" I propose. "How about we make Hero breakfast. As a thank-you?"

"Should we be using her kitchen?" Lux frets.

"Anything is better than watching Food TV." Hutch mutters.

I walk into the kitchen and start raiding the pantry. Frozen waffles are popping out of the toaster, eggs sizzle on the stove, and Hutch settles himself with a huge bowl of cereal. All in all, we've probably cleared out half of Hero's fridge.

The three of us sit down to our sumptuous breakfast when Hero walks in.

"Uh…hi, Hero?" Hutch squeaks.

Hero's luckily still half-asleep. She ambles over to her fridge, then stops cold. Very slowly, she turns to face us.

"Where's. My. Food?" she demands.

"Uh…" Hutch repeats, glancing at his dirty plate.

"You ate it all?" Hero grabs the milk carton, and peeks inside. "You drank all my milk? I had almost half a carton!"

"Oh, boo-hoo." Sierra scoffs. "Lux once ate all the Life Day cookies."

"Look Hero, I'm sorry."

"Sorry? I can't afford to go through half a fridge of food every meal." Hero says indignantly.

"I know," I reply. "I'll reimburse you, just chill."

Hero, still sulking, grabs a cup of coffee and plops down in a chair.

And at the worst possible time, I release a loud, impolite belch.

"Saw!" Steela snaps.

"Sorry," I mutter and go back to my eggs.

For a few minutes, everything is semi-normal. Steela's giving me that annoyed look. Hero mopes in her chair, mourning her lost food. Lux and Sierra are arguing over whether the name brand is the same thing as the store brand. Hutch is reading the paper, muttering "politicians" every so often. It's so bizarrely normal that when the doorbell rings, Hero gets up to answer it without a second's hesitation.

"Can I help you?" she asks.

"Yes!" A melodious, musical voice chirps. "I want to see my long-lost sister and brother!"

The scream that erupts from Steela is barely human.

"Go away, Sue!" She screeches, grabbing a butcher knife and pointing it at the door.

"My name is not Sue!" the girl giggles. "My name is Velvet Sparkles Kitty Giggles Rainbow Sprinkles Gerrera, and I'm your and Saw's long-lost sister!"

STEELA

Hero looks back at Steela. "Isn't this the girl from the prison?"

"Shut the dumb door, Hero!" I scream, waving the butcher knife.

Hero slams the door shut, cutting off the Mary Sue. Saw rushes to my side, grabbing me around the shoulders.

"Chill out, Steela." He says, carefully grabbing the knife and setting it on the counter. "What's wrong? Is it something that happened back at the palace?"

I point to the door. "That-that thing out there is one of the Mary Sues from back in the cell. The one who's supposed to be my long-lost twin."

A voice comes from the door. To my horror, the Mary Sue has poked open Hero's mail slot to speak through it.

"Sissy? Bubby? Is that you?" she happy-cries. "Please come out, I just want to meet you!"

"My God, isn't this stalking?" Hero asks.

"Not for a Mary Sue. They're above the law."

I have led a rebellion. I have fallen off a cliff and survived. I have made it through Dendup's Lazarus Project. But I have no idea, none whatsoever, how to deal with a Mary Sue.

Okay. Think, Steela. Think. As painful as it may be, could you remember how you dealt with the other Mary Sues?

Well, they didn't like to hear about each other. Maybe Mary Sues have some territory thing?

I point at Sierra. "Sierra, put on some lipstick, comb your hair, and get out there!"

"Wait, what?" Sierra asks, setting her spoon back in her cereal bowl.

"If you go out there, maybe you can scare her off. Show her that you're the Mary Sue here?"

"But I don't want to be a Mary Sue," Sierra whines.

"Shut up," Lux grumbles. I don't have the heart to tell him that Sierra's walking the tightrope.

Hero ducks into her refresher and emerges with her makeup bag. Very carefully, she applies some lip gloss and eyeliner to Sierra's face.

"Does she look convincing?" Hero asks me.

I nod. "Good enough. Remember three things, Sierra. You're a super nice person, you're totally awesome as to redefine the word, and you've got a traumatic backstory."

Sierra swallows hard, and steps out the door. I rush up to the mail slot and try to listen through.

"Sissy?" Velvet asks. "Wait…who are you?"

"Um…my name is Sierra Bonteri. I'm Lux's little sister." Sierra says.

Velvet gasps. "Lux Bonteri's sister?"

"Yeah!" Sierra chirps. "He's my brother. Do you know him?"

"Oh, my goodness." Velvet says. "He's adorable. But he stole my sister away during the rebellion."

"…Wasn't he teaching her to throw a droid popper or something?" Sierra brings up.

"Oh, Sierra." Velvet croons. "You just don't get it. You don't understand how hard it is to be beautiful, and loved by everyone. When a boy hogs a girl all to himself, and stays away with her like Lux did with Steela, then he's keeping himself away from the girls like us! It's so, so not nice."

"Hey, that's my brother!" Sierra snaps.

I squeeze my eyes shut. "No, Sierra, Mary Sues don't do that! They just agree with the first Mary Sue!" I hiss to myself.

"If you're such a nice person," Sierra continues, "Then why don't you leave Saw and Steela alone? They're happy right now."

"Because," Velvet wails. "They're my siblings! Hug me!"

Sierra flies back into Hero's house, nearly clubbing me in the face with the door

"Please don't make me do that." She begs.

"You said it, sister." I mumble.

Okay, now that Plan A has fallen through, what else can you throw at a Mary Sue?

"Ebony, could you please stop obsessing over how hot you are?" I'd asked one time, trying to be civil.

"Excuse me, you prep?" Ebony (or maybe it was Enoby) snapped. "You don't matter, because you're a prep!"

"You realize you used the same adjective twice in your argument?" I snapped back.

I couldn't see Ebony in the darkness, but there was a sound…the sound of silence, for a minute.

I had wounded Ebony.

"Reality," I whisper.

"What?" Lux asks, and then it hits him. "Wait. Her entire being is so illogical, that we can destroy her with reality?"

"Yeah. I'm going to need Saw's help." I say, nodding to my brother.

"Anything to stop this craziness." Saw grumbles.

…

Velvet Sparkles Kitty Giggles Rainbow Sprinkles Gerrera is even worse in daylight.

She has long, flowing hair that shone in the sun, undulating down her back. It seemed to swish on its own accord, and it changed from black, to deep amethyst violet, to sapphire blue, to flaming red.

And her eyes, they were enormous emeralds. Creepy in its own right. What made them even freakier was the fact they look a little like mine.

Velvet jumps up and throws her arms around the both of us. "Sissy! Bubby!" she shrieks.

Saw disengages, and pushes me behind him. "Yeah. I'm Saw, and this is-."

"Oh, I already know who you are!" Velvet sings in a voice that sounds horrifically like a flute. "I've known who you are ever since I was a baby!"

"But you're supposed to be our long-lost sister?" I ask.

"Of course!" Velvet Sparkles says. "See, when Steely and I were born-."

"Steely?" I echo.

Velvet ignores me and keeps prattling on. "When Steely and I were born, our parents could only afford one baby. So they kept Steely and left me at an orphanage with a note telling me they loved me!"

"Let's see that note," I say, holding out my hand. Velvet Sparkles pulls out a piece of paper and hands it to me.

"Well, it was so awful there." She says. "We, like, had to do all the chores and all the other girls hated me because I was better than them at everything. But, it isn't my fault that I'm awesome!"

Saw gags.

"I know, my past is so disgusting!" Velvet Sparkles says, reaching over to touch him on the arm.

Saw shoves her away. "That's not what I meant."

I open the note and skim over it.

"Hey, Velvet Sparkles? Mind telling me something?" I ask.

"Anything, Sissy!" She flashes an absolutely blinding smile.

"Yeah. Where were we born?"

The smile fades for a millisecond, then reappears.

"The hospital, silly!" she giggles.

Saw gives me a look, and then catches on. "Which hospital?" he counters.

"The one in Iziz…"

"What's our birthday? What were our parents' names? How old was Saw when we were born?"

"Our birthday is the date on the note, June nineteenth." Velvet Sparkles replies. "Saw was three!"

I roll my eyes and close ranks with Saw. "Okay, listen here Mary Sue. First of all, my parents would never refer to you as their 'little Buttercup.'"

"That was just because they loved me so much."

Swallowing vomit, I continue. "Two, my mother's name is misspelled. Her name was Katherine with a K, not Catherine with a C. This doesn't even look like her handwriting."

"Three," Saw interrupts. "The date on the note is wrong. This is the day Steela's birth certificate was filed, not the day she was born."

"Which leads us to fallacy number four." I take over "I was born at home, fifty miles away from the city. We had to wait until my mother recovered, and then we went to the hospital to fill out my birth certificate."

"And since she was born at home, I was there." Saw says smugly. "And I can tell you right now that there was only one baby."

Velvet Sparkles stomps her foot. "You can't do this! I'm a Mary Sue! Everybody has to clear the way for me to get what I want!"

"Well, I don't care."

Suddenly, the door opens, and Hero fills the frame.

"Okay, Velvet Something-I-Don't-Care-About." She snaps. "You're trespassing. Get off my property!"

"What?" Velvet gasps.

"You heard me." Hero roars. "Five people just crashed my house and ate all my food, it was a rough day for tips yesterday, I have to work late tonight, and now this happens. I am done, done, done with this! Get. Out. Of. My. House."

"Holy fierfek." Saw mutters.

Hero wastes absolutely no time with Saw, and instead points to Velvet Sparkles. "Go! And if you come back, I'll get security on your perfect little self before you can blink your gemstone eyes."

Velvet Sparkles breaks down in angry tears. To my horror, she is crying rainbows. "Everyone hates me! Just you wait! Anyone who messes with a Mary Sue should stock up on body casts! Especially you, Mean House Lady!" She bawls, and stomps off.

"DON'T COME BACK!" Hero yells, shaking her fist.

(A/N: Thank you to Kasai1214, StarwarsRulz, and DragonFan47 for your reviews!

In answer to DragonFan47's question as to whether Steela has a crush on Lux: she does not, they are simply very good friends. In this AU, the kiss in "Tipping Points" happened because she was scared, had a foreboding feeling, and wanted to feel close to somebody, it didn't matter who.

What were your thoughts about this chapter? Was VSKGRSG cringe-worthy enough for the Mary Sue bashing she has been subjected to? It was a scream writing her, I'll tell you that. I got to break about every single rule in the character-building book.

Reviews are always appreciated! Flames, however, are only good for fireworks.)