Author's Notes:As I warned you in the last chapter, you're going to be seeing a few references to the Twilight series. This chapter is an experiment of sorts in that I'm inserting an in-between color to introduce another original character that was loosely inspired by, who else, the Bella from Twilight. That's all I complained about, not having enough colors to work with. And then it hit me. I was like "Um...duh. Of course there are more than seven colors out there." So you all will be seeing lots of in-between colors at varying points. Back to my other train of thought (I know, it's almost impossible to keep up with sometimes), I mean loosely in that I already had her character sketched out, I just named her after Bella. Then I watched Practical Magic and heard "Coconut" by Harry Nilsson...the rest is history. Well, after you read this chapter it will be. Whatever. I confuse myself sometimes. All I know is that a whole chapter evolved simply from that song. Just think of a auburn-haired Luna from Harry Potter (personality wise) dressed like Zo from Ten Inch Hero (I simply love that movie. Jensen Ackles was great. Totally worth it, if you can actually find it that is.) for her debut. Oh and by the way, I plan to up the rating to 'M' for green and afterwards. Just a heads up.
Music Suggestions:'One love/People get ready' by Bob Marley, 'Coconut' by Harry Nilsson, 'Crazy' by Alanis Morissette.
Disclaimer:Still don't own Dark Angel. That simple.
Lime
Three years had passed since the incident on the playground with Pogue and the bullies. No one bothered the transgenics and the transgenics made nice with their ordinary classmates. They even played together on occasion. However, Sebastian had a natural calling when it came to playing pranks and as long as one had his permission, one could prank on any and everyone on school grounds. He'd forgotten one simple rule: not Pandora. He'd played on the wrong girl and now he was paying for it.
"Pandora, come on!" Sebastian complained, trying and failing again to lunge across the lunchroom table for a piece of the fruit. "How often do we get fruit around here? And you know that green apples are my favorite. Just one slice. Please, Pandora?"
"Uh uh." Pandora uttered firmly, pulling another slice from her plate and biting a chunk of it off. "You embarrassed me in front of all those boys yesterday. And you know how I don't take to practical jokes lightly."
"It was Mason's idea." Sebastian threw out desperately and unexpectedly.
Pandora frowned disbelievingly. "Yeah, like I believe that." Pandora said, looking over at Mason who looked slightly panicked and was shaking his head furiously. "Mason wouldn't hurt a fly. Besides, he knows better, which is why I'll give him a piece if I decide to share."
"Don't even think about involving me in this." Mason said quickly, his hands out. "I don't even like fruit."
oooomooooouoo*ooooovoooxo*
Upset with and trying to avoid Sebastian, Pandora took an alternative route home from school. As she walked down the unfamiliar street, begrudging Sebastian in three different languages, Pandora's grumblings tapered off as she heard music filtering through an open door. Sneaking along stealthily, Pandora edged closer to the sound coming from what looked to once be a new age/alternative therapy shop.
"There is something I can do for you." a female voice drifted from within the shop as Pandora stood on the threshold in indecision.
Pandora shook her head of the cobwebs as she realized the voice was speaking to her. She opened the French patio style door, with numerous panes broken, cracked and all-around filthy, and stepped inside. As the door clicked shut behind her, Pandora looked around the dank and musty store that surrounded her. Crystals, books, candles, and a few other things she chose to not identify cluttered the shelves she passed as she walked deeper into the store. Looking around in amazement, she finally discovered the source of the voice in a rear corner of the small store next to a curving, wrought iron staircase. The girl was also surrounded in what was once very expensive merchandise for those seeking alternative medicines or a higher level of existence. Now it was just a not so expensive pile of, well, crap.
"Um...hello." Pandora began unsteadily, still unsure of the person before her. "What's with the music?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was so loud." the girl apologized, turning to stand with an accompanying apologetic expression. "Just a leftover habit of where I hail from. Wasn't another person around for miles. And whether or not they had overly sensitive hearing hardly mattered."
"Oh no, that's fine. I wasn't complaining or anything." Pandora said placatingly, holding her hands out to stop the girl from turning it down. "I was just wondering what it is. I've never heard anything like it before. Granted I've only been around for less than a decade, but it's very...unusual." Pandora explained, at a loss to describe the eclectic sounding music pulsing through the speakers.
"Right." the girl began with a knowing smile and a little eyeroll, she then knelt down and threw a few more items into a trash bin to finish off that particular aisle. Standing back up, she brushed her hands off on her skirt and gestured Pandora towards the counter to her left.
"My mom is real big on the oldies. I was more or less raised with music by Harry Nilsson, Martin Briley, and such. Didn't help matters much that I was born and raised in Jamaica after Maui didn't work out for my mom and dad. Where artists like Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and peace, love, and harmony are still principle markers of the island. It's too bad we're unable to fall under the influence of drugs and alcohol, 'cause the maryjane is totally legal there. It's like, the only place on earth that doesn't complain 24/7 about how much life sucks. I'm still not entirely sure why my mother decided to move us here." the girl explained expressively, her hands moving around in tandem to her explanation.
Pandora stared on in bemusement at the girl's almost incomprehensible ramblings.
"Just who are you, anyway?" Pandora asked in a confused tone of the girl standing before her wearing a hippie style tie-dyed skirt and lime colored tank top, her copper colored hair twisted into numerous tiny braids.
"The name's Bella, my sweet." the girl, Bella, answered in a airy tone, a faraway glimmer drifting over her features.
ooooaooooso*ooooxooocoo
'That was perhaps the most bizarre girl I have ever met.' Pandora thought to herself as she opened the front door to the apartment complex she lived in with her parents.
Once she got started, Bella could not stop talking. Bella detailed everything about herself: everything under the sun from her parents' backgrounds to her life as a Jamaican.
And that was before Pandora had left that first night.
It hadn't even mattered that Pandora had offered to return the next morning, a Saturday morning no less, to help clean up the shop that she and her mom were moving into, and made a quick exit. Bella could not be deterred from talking in a cheerfully bright tone when Pandora returned the next day and helped the girl sweep up, carrying trash bag after trash bag of garbage to the curb outside the front of the store. But somehow, even though Pandora wasn't really much for talking, Bella was the type of person that one couldn't help but love. Her odd and slightly off-kilter attitude towards life and dreamy, almost airy lilt to her voice that tended to trail off when, what Pandora had coined "a happy thought" occurred and she went silent for awhile, never got dull.
Bella was an interesting character to say the least.
"How was your day, sweet?" Max called out from the kitchen when she heard the door open and close. "Was Bella more subdued today?"
"How does she know that you call me sweet all the time?" Pandora mused as she ambled into the kitchen and hopped up on the counter next to where her mother was doing the dishes in the sink.
"Left field there, sweetie." Max said in a slight chastising tone, a smile tugging at her lips.
"She calls me 'sweet' too. I never told her that's your pet name for me as well." Pandora continued to muse with a frown.
"It might help if you tell me more about this Bella. Do you know anything about her? Her parents, transgenics obviously." Max said, attempting to get more of an explanation. Her daughter hadn't said much the night before, just retreated into her bedroom after informing everyone why she was over an hour late and glaring daggers at Sebastian.
"Just her mom. Her dad's an ordinary and he's still living in Jamaica. Some kind of sleeping disorder that he's being treated for. Couldn't live here anyway, being an ordinary and hiding from the mob and all. She said that you know her mom but you probably don't remember her. Said that that is part of what her mom does, makin' people forget her and implanting suggestions into other people's minds. I don't really believe the last part, though. Do we really have transgenics that can play games with your mind?" Pandora finished with a question.
Max's eyes widened in recognition. It couldn't be.
"Mia's back?" Max asked in a bewildered tone.
"How did you know her name?" Pandora asked, slightly confused. "Does that mean you remember her?"
"Of course I do, she didn't wipe us that last time." Max said dismissively with a wave of her hand. "Did you meet her? How is she? She didn't try anything on you, did she?"
"No, I didn't." Pandora answered, raising an eyebrow at the last question. "She wasn't there yesterday or today. She had to settle a few things back home in Jamaica. She sent Bella ahead of her to get a chance to settle in. But Bella said that her mom wanted to meet with you and dad as soon as she gets in."
"I wonder if she knows..." Max trailed off, more to herself than her daughter. The last time Mia had been around, Mia had thought that she and Logan were perfect for each other. Did Mia believe that Pandora was the result of her and Logan? Did she even know about Pandora and Alec?
"Knows what, Mom?" Pandora asked curiously, head tilting curiously as well.
"Oh nothing, sweet. Can't wait to see her." Max said, evading the question as she returned to the task before her.
oooomoooxo*oooonooomoo*
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you've gotten shorter, Max." Mia's cheerful voice greeted Pandora and Bella a few days later as they were putting the finishing touches on the shop level of the building Bella and Mia would be living in.
Pandora turned around in surprise, staring at the woman dressed in black sweater-like top and lime green capris as Bella stood and ran to her mother with a bright smile.
"Momma!" Bella yelled excitedly as she jumped up into her mom's open embrace. Not having yet directly looked at Pandora, Mia looked a bit surprised when her daughter continued speaking. "That's not Max, Momma. It's Pandora...the girl I told you about over the phone yesterday?" Bella finished speaking with a question and a confused expression at her mom's blank stare.
"Ah...so you're Pandora?" Mia asked cheerfully, looking directly at Pandora intently with her head cocked to one side. Pandora frowned slightly. Is this what her mom meant about the mind games? She didn't feel any different.
"Uh...yeah." Pandora replied flatly as she mimicked Mia's head placement. "Does that hurt, tilting your head like that all the time? Bella said you do it a lot."
Mia frowned with a slight pout. "You mean you noticed? No one ever notices. Is something wrong with your head?" Mia asked bluntly, trying her mind coercion again.
"Bastian likes to convince me of such everyday, but I doubt it." Pandora replied in a wry tone, one corner of her mouth quirking up. "Got some messed up sleeping patterns, though. Kind of a complicated jumble of both my mom and dad. I'll sleep a normal 7 to 8 hours one week and then the next...I'm lucky if I can sleep through three. Kinda nice when you have a enormous test the next day but a big pain most of the time. I never know from one day to the next how long I'll stay asleep." Pandora finished with a shrug.
"Oh, goody." Mia said cheerfully, clapping her hands together. "Someone else that isn't affected by my telecorecion. It'll make Dougie's absence a little easier to bear. So, do you live nearby? What about your dad? Is he living outside the no-cross line? I heard the deal with ordinaries living here in TC is still a no-no."
Pandora looked at the woman as if she were crazy.
"Look I don't know how much you know about me, but me and my family all live together in here about three blocks away. Both my mom and dad are transgenics. So are my two younger twin brothers." Pandora explained.
"You mean that Logan isn't...I mean that Max and Logan aren't...?" Mia questioned, a hint of frustration accompanying the confusion. Apparently a lot had changed while she'd been out of the country, the world she'd left starting to unravel around her fingers. Max and Logan were no longer together? Then who did this child belong to? It was quite obvious that Max was her mother, but who was the father if not Logan?
"Wow." Pandora said, bemusement gracing her features. "Um...no. Not even close. He's married to Asha and they have a son, Mason. Friend, by the way." Pandora continued, pausing and tapping her opposite bicep with the her fist in salute.
"So who exactly is your father?" Mia asked, holding a hand to her forehead and looking as if she were about to collapse. Bella stood beside her mother watching the exchange between the two with a neutral expression.
"You probably know him." Pandora replied with a quirky smile. "His name's Alec."
"Oh my." Mia exclaimed, collapsing down in the chair Bella had dragged to her side when she noticed her mother's expression. Mia fanned herself for a few moments before continuing, her eyes downcast towards the floor with a perplexed expression.
"Well, I can honestly say that I never expected that."
ooooonoooo*ooooxooooo*ooovoooooo
So, how'd you all like my bringing Mia back? I thought she was such an interesting character when I first saw "Fuhgeddaboudit" and it's still one of my favorite episodes. Is it too confusing? Am I bringing in too many characters? I wasn't really planning on making Bella such a prominent character, but as I mentioned in passing in my first note, scenes with her in them will not stop sprouting up in my mind. So I figured I might as well get her background out of the way. Besides, it all kind of came together at the right time (for once). Not to mention, Pandora needs her own version of OC, a girl to talk out all her problems with. I mean, Sebastian and Mason can't be there for all her girl problems. Oh, and my Bella doesn't sound too much like Twilight Bella, does she? Because that isn't what I want. At all. I know there isn't much to go by yet, but some original thoughts on the matter from you guys would be great. Minor subject change: that little scene at the beginning was more filler than anything. A reference of time, if you will, and a setup for Bella's introduction. Besides, I'd originally written that for orange, but it just didn't work out and I still wanted to use it somehow. Anyway...until next time...