A Fucked Up Kind Of Feminine

[Emprexx Plush]

Eyes ahead, back straight, hood down, hands in your pockets. You can smile, hand out a couple waves, say some vague stuff, nobody wants to pay attention to you. You've got this. The trick to being invisible was convincing everybody there was nothing to see. Hel had gotten really, really good at that before mom left, and none of these people were gonna match up to the prying eyes Lynette Fury. Kinda hoped nobody ever would if she was laying it all out there. Here...well, she couldn't exactly be herself. Hel was still just a name in her head, and nobody could know she was a 'her' anyway. It was gonna be loose clothes and awkward coughs for a couple years at school, but at least things were better at home. She had Dad, and she had her friends online. Kara wanted to hit up some Diablo 3 tonight actually, she should message her back when she got home. It'd be a good way to take the edge off all this.

Straight ahead, straight ahead, her locker was right there. Store some junk, grab some junk, hop off to class, yeah, it'd be over before she hello

Looking aside was a mistake. Gods, that hair? It was so pretty, everything she wanted hers to look like. A little longer, yeah, but the sheen, the depth, strips of starless sky transplanted to flesh and bone. Yeah she was being melodramatic but were you looking at this? They were about the same height though whoever their ghost of a locker buddy was they were a lot stringier. Quick brain huddle up? The game plan was to fly under the radar all day every day and that'd been going pretty well, right? It'd be crazy to stop now, right? What if this was like, a destiny thing though? What'sit called, a meet cute. She'd definitely never seen whoever this was around before even though they were right next to each other all the time. This kind of chance might never come around again, and wow was she crushing. All the little details about what a horrible idea acting on anything like that was right now rushed out the window as she put on her first genuine smile of the day. "Hey-"

You know that anime moment where someone realizes a split second before it happens that they've walked into their own obliteration? Everything gets real slow, the colors get weird or desaturated, the camera focuses in on their oncoming demise while giant messy kanji that probably meant "death" or "despair" or something else she hadn't reached a high enough level of weeb to understand for sure yet? Hel understood what it was to live that moment as the glowering face of Axel Fontaine turned to meet her.

Ha. Okay. So this was how she was gonna die. Cute move, universe, gotta respect you.

[Fenris]

Saying Axel was in a bad mood was pretty fucking redundant if you'd ever like, talked to him, or looked at him, or just kinda been in the hall when he walked by. Pretty sure he had an aura at this point, the kinda aura that said "say one word and my fist'll go so far down your throat it's gonna come out your ass". Maybe it was an aura, maybe it was a rep, either one, didn't matter. It worked, more and more often. Things would get pretty boring when no one was left who wanted to step to him, but there was always someone. Assholes who wanted a rematch or revenge or just thought they could take him cause he was a twig and all. Was kinda fun when it wasn't pissing him off.

Right now he was stuck mentally on some shit from homeroom, this guy what's-his-face was going on about how his friend was gonna kick his ass, whatever. "When you least expect it," real spooky. So now he was looking out for the cheap shot since he couldn't get it in himself and he had Spanish with Mr. Correa who he fucking hated and someone was coming up to the locker next to him which whatever except now they were looking at him

Axel turned his head, scowling, watching the expression on whoever-the-fuck's face freeze in a rigor mortis impression of what had presumably been a smile a moment earlier. Not that he really bothered learning names of people he actually cared about, but he was pretty sure this dude was making a concentrated effort to be as unobtrusive as possible. An anonymous face in a sea of anonymous faces.

He had... dimples. Hazel eyes. Green and brown like leaves at the end of the summer.

Axel's mouth twisted in annoyance.

"What the fuck are you lookin' at?"

[Emprexx Plush]

"Eeeeeeeeeaaauuuuuggh?"

She didn't put much thought into the sound since she hadn't been expecting to make another sound at all. Maybe that'd been wishful thinking? In her head it was a quick pop to the temple and she was gone, she'd wake up sixty years later from cryosleep and surprise! Madagascar is now the only world superpower, it closed every form of transportation in and out of the country when someone in Peru had a sniffle that turned out to be a humanity annihilating super virus scientists have inexplicably dubbed Disease Name! It's fine though, there's flying cars and robot bodies and nobody knows what gender or currency is anymore! It'd be awesome. Instead she was still here, deer in the headlights agape. It'd would be way, way kinder to just hit her, she never should have expected that from Axel. Like, she didn't know Axel but everybody knew Axel, it was a miracle the dude was allowed to walk around without a police escort. Okay, that part could be an exaggeration but how would she know? The only clear facts before her was that everyone thought this guy was real, real scary and looking into his scrunched up rage face she could see why.

Now if you took out the snarl, and the murder in his eyes, pushed his bangs back a little, gave him just a little bit of a smile...

Nope, bad timing, she still hadn't said anything to him and his Akuma impression was getting more intense by the second. "S-sorry, I just, lockers, us, I didn't notice!" Sure. If you weren't paying super close attention that'd sound close enough to a sentence you might get after four or five rounds through Google Translate. Strong showing, kiddo!

[Fenris]

Mystery dude was an idiot. That much was clear pretty quickly. Their school was mostly idiots, though, so whatever. Obvious thing to do now was get his stupid Spanish textbook out of his stupid locker and go to class and just erase this guy from his memory forever. But doing the obvious thing was overrated, and something was still bothering him. Something about his eyes. Something about how he couldn't look directly at them. Something that was... something. He couldn't put a name on it. Whatever. Whatever! It didn't matter. He had to get to class.

Not that it'd be his first time skipping class or anything. Besides. Maybe there was a good reason he was suddenly so on edge. Maybe this was the dude? It was possible. Acting like a pussy so Axel'd turn his back and he could get his first blow in. Didn't look like the type. Didn't sound like the type, either, but maybe he was just a damn good actor. Made more sense than anything else. Weird how nervous he felt, considering he was pretty sure he could shove this loser in his own locker without much effort or anyone caring all that much. Nerves were good, though. You could use those. Made you faster if you felt them right.

Axel's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Yeah, that had to be it. Gut feeling or whatever. Course he could still be wrong, probably shouldn't start shit without knowing for sure. Or without having like, a little more proof. He'd look like a dumbass if he spent his energy kicking the shit out of the wrong dude and wasting his energy and getting his own ass kicked later as a result, anyway.

"You lookin' to start shit?"

Not that he expected him to admit it if he was, but if he pissed himself or whatever that would be a pretty good indicator that he wasn't the guy.

[Emprexx Plush]

It's kinda weird how if you hear a story enough times it starts to feel like your own memory? Hel had a lot of those, but right now the one that came most sharply was Lloyd standing in the dim light of their basement back home. Red carpet so thin it burned like sandpaper when you fell on it, white popcorn walls Mom had always hated. Right out of the stairwell you could look into the main room and see the door to the backyard, with its white wood and glass and blinds that stuck if you tried to raise them more than halfway. Crowding the sides of the room were a punching bag, tread mill, exercise bike, weight bench, and ski track that saw descending intended use in order of appearance. Around the corner taking up most of the alcove was the blue toybox Dad had built with his own hands big enough you could have stacked every friend Hel had ever made inside with room to spare. She and her brothers had covered it in random sticker packs all over; space gladiators, flowers, dinosaurs, starbursts, race cars, kittens...three guesses which she'd added.

Space gladiators. Obviously.

She hadn't seen any of it in months but she could reach out and touch it if she wanted. That wasn't where she was supposed to focus, though. Her older brother's face demanded attention with its swollen, purple left eye. Lloyd looked almost as grim as Dad did. They spoke, but the words didn't make any sound. Guess that was one way to know it wasn't really her memory, Lloyd never focused much on what they'd said to each other. The images were vibrant though. Her brother mimicking the low, wide stance in front of him and only seeing their father for the first dozen or so taps, slaps, and holds he was put through. After that all he saw, according to him, was the guy who'd slugged him on the way home. They went for a few rounds like this every week or so, father teaching son how to stand up for himself. Lloyd sounded so proud recounting that story. Especially that night they stood in the basement, brother to brother. They'd spar a little, grow a little, and Hel would come out stronger for it.

Things got kinda blurry after that. They remembered crying on the floor. Lloyd and Mom were having another shouting match. Both of them shut up when the computer room door slammed. Mom switched from screaming to crying when Dad yelled. Lloyd was trying to speak calmly but they could all hear the shaking anger in his stutter. Her hands squeezed too tight to her ears after that to remember anything more than crashing emotions all around them.

Nobody tried to teach Hel to fight again. It was a pretty fair assumption that she'd never once in her life tried to "start shit." He couldn't know that though, he wasn't in her head. His fist might be in a couple seconds, but that wasn't gonna help. "I was just saying hi?" She didn't realize it at the time, but the involuntary tears beading in her eyes probably undercut her intimidation factor.

[Fenris]

Once upon a time, when Axel was a little kid, like a million fucked-up families ago, he'd had an older brother. Mason Burch was a cocky little shit, the kinda kid who'd never had a thing go wrong in his life and wasn't expecting it to start now. He was a little kid too, thinking about it now, all tight brown curls and cherub cheeks and freckles that got him out of trouble in about ten seconds whenever a grownup bothered to pay attention to what a little twat he was. But at the time he felt ten feet tall, glowering down at him with that fucking smirk on his face. Axel didn't know shit back then, thought maybe this family would be better, thought he still had a chance, and he'd still felt that way even the first, second, tenth time Mason shoved him into the dirt and kicked him for good measure and told his parents the dog had knocked him down. Pissed him off, sure, they got in a thousand screaming matches, but he couldn't fight back. His fists weren't big enough.

But Mason took one of his CDs, one of his dad's CDs, Wildflowers, he was gonna break it and Axel burst into tears and pleaded, begged, screamed. Pushed. Didn't hit, never hit, just pushed. Only time he ever broke down. Earned him a broken CD and a broken nose and a "sorry, we don't think this is going to work out" and another family in Clarksville.

Axel wasn't like that. Never wanted to be like that. Yeah, sure, he got pissed off too easy, sure he punched too quick, sure. But he wasn't a bully. Never that. And he looked at this kid with tears in his eyes and okay, he didn't piss himself, but this was proof enough, right. Could still be a trick, maybe, if he squinted, but he wasn't gonna act on that barely-there chance. He wasn't that guy. There was still that unaccountable feeling wrapped around his stomach but whatever. Fuck it. His gut instincts could be wrong. Or maybe he had indigestion or something.

He pushed his hair back idly, exhaling hard through his nose.

"Whatever. Ain't you. Nevermind."

[Emprexx Plush]

Hoooooooooooo that felt amazing. She had stared death directly in the face and it turned around. Was this why people went bungie jumping or skydiving or whatever? You could do a hard dance remix of her heartbeat right now and have to slow it down a notch, this was wild. She never wanted to do it again but it was wild. The tears in her eyes blinked away. Maybe he wasn't so bad. Like, maybe next time he'd say hi instead? That wouldn't be so bad. There were a bunch of stories like that, the wild delinquent boy whose heart was softened by a soft spoken stranger. She was pretty sure that kinda thing was only written by lonely soft spoken strangers but it wouldn't hurt to fantasize, y'know?

Hel brushed her hair back and flashed him another smile. "Um, okay...have a nice day!"

Did this count as making a friend? It probably would to Dad if she swapped around some of the details. He'd be happy, and even if it wasn't totally true there was no harm in fibbing.