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thejusticelounge2013-06-26 08:24 am
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2013-06-26 08:24 am
Entry tags:
to kill an afternoon
Steph stepped through the zeta transporter’s hidden door and arrived in Star City, the later afternoon sun still peaking out from behind the tall, metallic skyline. She checked the text again and walked up the steps to the library Mia had chosen, the place packed with quietly murmuring study groups scribbling or typing frantically in tandem at each table in sight.
Going to the back, though, she spotted Mia and there was in fact abundant free space. “Hey, thank you so much!” Steph said in way of greeting in a half whisper. She sat down beside the girl at the little rounded table and took out her laptop from her backpack. “You just had play practice, right? What play are you in again?” she asked, slightly sheepish that she’d already forgotten.
Mia had managed to get out of her school, to her bike, and to the library without any unwanted attention, thankfully. The longer play rehearsals lasted the less people there were out there to hound her about things. And now she was sitting quietly in the back of the library with her sociology research paper spread out in front of her. Though she was paying more attention to texting on her phone then anything that had to do with school.
She glanced up as Stephanie approached and smiled slightly putting her phone back in her bag. “Hey.” She said and gathered her things up so she didn’t take up the whole table. “Yeah, Anything Goes. Our first show is next Friday. So, we’re like attempting to get our shit in gear.” Mia straightened in her seat crossing her legs, “So, what’s your paper about? Like just a character analysis or something?”
Steph snrrrked a laughed. “Well, personal experience tells me that the last second is the best time to finish something,” she joked back. The cheap laptop blinked to life and she pulled up the GoogleDoc for her essay, mostly blank but for her name and the date. “The whole assignment was to write a character analysis on a character of our choosing and discuss their development throughout the novel, eight page minimum and due in a week.” She sighed loudly, leaning forward on her elbows.
She looked down at the paper in front of Mia and cocked her head, reading some of it upside down. “You’re taking sociology? I took a course last year. Really interesting stuff.” Step shrugged. “Need any help?” It occurred to her that she’d be needing her book and dug through her backpack for the faded paperback, a dozen or so sticky notes peaking out between pages with her loopy handwriting scrawled all over them. Her hand bumped another object and she plucked it out, offering it to Mia. “Gum? It’s watermelony goodness,” she said in her cheesy salesman voice, waggling her eyebrows.
“What play doesn’t end up doing stuff at the last minute, anyway.” Mia pointed out and shrugged her shoulders clicking her pen repeatedly as she listened to what Stephanie had to do. “That’s cool. I’m kind of doing an analysis too. On the impact things like TV shows and movies have on teenagers and crap like that.” That actually wasn’t like Stephanie’s almost at all. But whatever.
She leaned back in her seat now spinning in her pen between her fingers. “Yeah, this semester. It was Sociology and Psychology or some other history class.” And Sociology and Psychology were a lot more interesting then history for the fiftieth time. She looked down at the gum and shook her head. “No thanks. I just got done with some mint gum. And mint and watermelony goodness doesn’t really taste good together. Hey, have you eaten yet?” She asked curiously.
If Steph had tensed ever so slightly at the repeatedly clicking pen, she couldn’t be blamed. But she nodded, stowing the gum away in her bag. “Huh, so you could kind of argue in your paper the GGG Show’s influence on you, then. Sort of, I mean, it’s literally, directly affecting you, so it’s like if anyone has something worth listening to about it, it would be you. Fun Day had to have made it at least semi-worth it, though, right?”
She tucked her feet up under herself in the plastic chair. “Nope, I’m running on coffee and gum. Me and plans don’t really get along, so no time for breakfast,” she joked. She’d overslept and a class had run late today, meaning no time for lunch either. Suffice it to say Steph was actually pretty hungry, but she didn’t want to cancel on Mia, either. “Want to call it a study break and catch something to eat? Because I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to go into convulsions pretty soon if I don’t get some onion rings in me.”
Mia laughed slightly, “I could write about that. If this hadn’t been assigned like fifty years ago. I’m focusing on more entertaining shows anyway. I would have actually had to watch his show if I was going to do it on that.” And that was seriously the last thing Mia was ever actually going to do. Hearing about that shit second had was bad enough. She shrugged her shoulders slightly, “Yeah, I guess. And my shirts are still selling pretty well too. So there is still a lot of money that’s being made, which is good. It’s kind of annoying they keep saying that Ollie planned it all and stuff though.” That was actually the thing that was really pissing her off if she was being honest. Oh well. Not like she could do anything about it. People like that would never believe her anyway.
“Yeah, I think we’ve been studying way too hard.” She fake yawned and started to pack her things back into her bag, “a break sounds like something we deserve.” Mia stood up and flung her bag over her shoulder. “There is a diner down the road we can just walk to. If there aren’t people out there waiting for me or something. It happens…”
She gave her an annoyed look. “Are you kidding me? Who the heck would believe anyone, let alone Ollie, would exploit their daughter in the media like that? It’s not even like he gains something from it! You guys are giving it all to charity.” She closed the lid on her laptop. The GGG show was an annoyance at best 9 out of 10 times, but when that one moment on occasion came around, they really got under people’s skin with their accusations. “As if slut-shaming you, Kate, and Diana wasn’t enough, they’ve got to accuse Ollie of making a quick buck off of it. Classy folk we’re dealing with, huh?”
Steph shook it off, though. They did things to get a rise out of people and she wouldn’t give them one. “For what it’s worth, you really don’t deserve it- any of it.” And that’s all she had to say on it, because anything else had already been said to death by this point and nobody wanted a a gushy girly moment. She smirked at the lunch suggestion. “Lead the way, my stomach is sobbing.”
And the two girls left as quickly as they had came. They’d totally get their papers done some other time. Right? “So how are the Titans doing? You guys all at each other’s throats yet, or can we call off the defcon 1 status. Please tell me Damian is still outraged he isn’t your leader yet,” she pleaded, grinning. “Babybird likes his power plays.”
“It’s stupid.” Mia said with a roll of her eyes. Of course they were trying to make it seem like it had been Ollie’s idea, why would they want it to appear like Mia could plan things on her own? Why would they want it to appear like her or her family were trying to help people, when their whole deal was that they were bad people? But it still annoyed the hell out of her. “If anything Ollie lost money on it.” Well, of course he did. How else was she supposed to pay for everyone to work during the fun day thing. Obviously she used Ollie’s money for that. But she was sure he didn’t really care. There were a lot more frivolous things she spent his money on.
Mia headed out of the library and looked over at Stephanie when she asked about the Titans, “No, we’re getting along pretty well. If you don’t count Rose or Zach. But they’re Rose and Zach if they were getting along with anyone I think that would be some kind of sign they were possessed or something.” They were both a lot of bark and not so much bite, unless you deserved the bite in Rose’s case. Maybe still not so much with Zach. Her eyes widened slightly when Steph brought up Damian and she cringed, “I may have neglected to tell him that he could join the team. On purpose.” She kind of hoped someone else had told him. She had been a little mad at him for a few reasons, stupid reasons, so she hadn’t said anything yet. Whoops.
She hitched her bag over her shoulder and glanced around the street, almost suspiciously, before crossing it towards the Diner. “If any people pop out from somewhere and start being annoying and trying to bother us just ignore them. It’s usually lazy unmotivated paparazzi who don’t want to move to LA to see real famous people, or reporters. Sometimes just jerks. But you know…” She shook her head and pointed to the building a couple yards away, “There it is. They have a great hot dog, by the way.”
“Yeah, like an arrow-shaped sex island, for example.” Steph grinned. She’d never let it go, misunderstanding or not. It was doubtful she would ever believe Ollie’s fervent protests to what she thought the island looked like unless he sat her down in front of a live satellite feed of it in high def (but even then she’d insist it was purposefully arrow shaped, just to screw with him). “Ooh, do they do those hotdogs with lots of different combinations, or just a really kickass classic dog?”
The bit of information Mia had just told her snapped her back to attention, though. “Oh, no. No way am I unleashing the fury of Sir Stabsalot because his invite to the Titans party got lost in the mail,” she said, shaking her head quickly. They arrived at the diner and walked in, seating themselves at a window booth. The multiple warnings about possible harassment raised a red flag with Steph, though. “So you really are getting bothered almost every day by GGG supporters, huh? I guess I didn’t really realize exactly how bad it’s gotten … Those incredible dickswads!” she said, pissed by proxy. “Are they seriously so bored that they have to create their own scandals to blow up in the gossip rags?”
“You can get whatever you want on it, and they have awesome cheese-dogs.” She didn’t know if she wanted a hot dog honestly. Maybe she’d get one. They did sound kind of good at the moment. And it was better to just get something that kind of sounded good rather then just sit there and be mad she wasn’t going to eat something because nothing really made her that hungry at the moment. Maybe she’d ask if they had avocado yet, it wasn’t really in season though so she wasn’t sure if they would…
Mia sighed, “I feel kind of bad.” She said and shrugged her shoulders. “Damian asked me to ask if he could join the team.” And she had been like 100% for it too. But after she asked Bai said that he probably wasn’t going to join anyway so she got mad that he asked her to ask if he wasn’t going to join in the first place so she never told him that they all said he could join. “Maybe someone else talked to him about it. Oh well.” Mia picked up a menu when they sat down and browsed it before deciding she was definitely going to get a hot dog.
“Well, Star City does have it’s own newspapers and tabloids so it’s not like we’ve never gotten attention before or anything like that. It’s just never really been… on this big of a scale.” She laughed slightly, “Sometimes it’s kind of awesome. Sometimes it sucks though. And I’m sure at least half the hate mail I’m getting is just from like… stupid d-bags from 4chan and stuff. But like… I don’t know.” She looked at the waiter as he approached their table. “Hi. I’ll have a lemonade and a hotdog with the avocado relish. Aand.. that’s it.”
Steph quirked a brow, skeptical of Mia’s blase blow off and pseudo-explanation. “I’m just going to tell him you guys only recently decided to let him in and the congratulatory muffin basket got lost in the mail,” she joked. There was more to the story, but she wasn’t sure if it was earth shattering enough to really hash out. “Are you two okay, or was it an honest mistake? I get it if the whole GGG thing is making things stressful,” she said casually, unaccusing.
“Sooo does that mean that your family is kind of like the Kardashians of Star City? Does that make you Kim? Ollie is totally Kourtney.” She laughed, imagining the whole Arrow Family in sequin skin tight dresses with blow-out hair. The waiter came by and she jumped, glancing quickly at the menu for something to order. “Hi! Um, I’ll take a bacon and cheddar hotdog and lemonade, too, thanks,” she said, handing him the menu.
When the waiter left with both of their orders, it was barely a minute before he returned with a cheery smile and two tall glasses of lemonade. “I think I heard someone say that your birthday is coming up soon. That’s right, right? Eighteen? Are you excited?”
Mia considered the question for a moment trying to think about what had actually happened and when she had actually forgotten. “Both, I guess. I left the Titans meeting all like ‘well I’m just totally going to let him sweat it out for a day’. And then I just completely forgot about it like the next day.” She took a breath and shook her head. This was really bad, just the fact she was always on top of things but she was just getting over whelmed with all this lately, “I just realized the other day that I hadn’t even spoken to Gar since the Titans meeting. I didn’t even like… realize all this until just now. It’s not just the Godfrey thing. I don’t think. It’s a lot of end of the school year stuff. The play, Graduation, Prom. My birthday. Ollie’s birthday. There was that drug thing that turned me invisible for like a week. Plus the Godfrey thing. And just patrolling on top of all that.”
The superhero thing wasn’t the hard part, it really hadn’t ever been. Soon school would end and her life would calm back down to it’s usual getting attacked type of thing. Mia laughed when Stephanie compared to them to the Kardashians. “Does that make Gar, Kanye? Pff. He wishes he was that cool.” Mia said and took her lemonade sticking her straw in it and taking a sip.
“Yep. My birthday is on the second. So like twenty-something days.” She smiled slightly and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess. For the presents. Not so much for the ‘adult’ thing. I don’t think it really changes anything. People either see you as an adult or a kid, one birthday isn’t going to change that.” She smiled up at the waiter as he arrived with their hotdogs and she took her plate in front of her, “Thank you.” She said and watched him walk back off. “How is college anyway? That’s probably hard, right? I mean I’m doing online school next year, I think I’m going to take all my required classes that way until I decide what I want to be. I don’t think I’d actually be able to like… do like actual college.”
Steph nodded. “Yeeeah, funny what falls through the cracks when you’ve got a million things going on. Kind of makes things fun when you’re busy, though, you know? You’ve got birthdays and graduation parties galore, then summer to just be a bum,” she said, almost wistfully.”Enjoy it! It’s seriously the best. You pretty much get to make your own schedule. I mean, the switch is sort of weird at first, but college is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.” She smiled at Mia, taking a bite of her bacon hotdog.
“Are you thinking about a major yet? The majority of my freshman classes second semester were online, actually. It’s easier to go at your own pace, but it’s even easier to get lazy and look up cat videos on youtube instead,” she laughed. How many afternoons had she wasted in a spiral of spazzy cat videos? If she hadn’t had Barbara to kick her in the butt and keep her on track like she had, Steph wasn’t sure she’d have made it through last year.
“You’re going to do great, though. If you want, after you graduate, I can take you and Rose to a party this summer. And you can bring your Kanye, too. There’s probably only, like, an 85% chance we’ll get into a shit load of trouble. What could go wrong?” she said in her best salesman voice, cheesy grin included. She took another bite of the hotdog. WOW Mia had been right about this place. “Any ideas what you might want to do for your birthday?”
“I’m only enrolled online. So I can do things when I can do them.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I doubt I’d ever be able to do the actual college thing. Last year I missed my finals because we were attacked. A couple years ago I missed the whole last few months of school because we were attacked. I’m surprised I’m even graduating. And that’s just high school.” Like she wasn’t pulling A’s or something anyway. But the fact still remained that she missed a lot of school. She thought that may be one of the reasons they started the league school for the kids.
She took a deep breath and sent Stephanie a look, “No,” Mia said in an almost bracing way. “I haven’t been thinking about a major. I think that’s also a reason I’m just getting the required classes out of the way. While I think about what I actually want to do with my life.” It wasn’t like if she picked a major and changed her mind in a couple years she wouldn’t be able to switch because of money issues or something. Unless Ollie really did go bankrupt again. But she just didn’t want to feel obligated. She had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. There were things she wanted to do, but did she really want to just do that? And she could change her mind a year or two years from now. “It’s stupid people are expected to know that at eighteen.” No one did.
Mia leaned back crossing her legs as she took a sip of her lemonade, “You really want to take Rose to a party?” She questioned and smirked slightly. “But sure. Obviously you’ll have to remind me since I’ve definitely proven that I forget things a lot.” She laughed and shook her head taking another bite of her hotdog. “Prom. Prom is the weekend of my birthday. Well, my birthday is on Thursday but I can’t do anything then. I mean maybe I’ll have a family dinner or something. But that weekend is prom so I’ll be mostly focused on that.” She paused for a moment and smiled, “And getting presents.”
Steph recognized the look on Mia’s face and waved a hand airily, taking another bite of her hotdog. “No rush at all. You’ve got years to try things out and figure out what you do and don’t like. Besides, you’ve still got high school stuff to concentrate on, so don’t sweat it. I mean, I know what it’s like to juggle high school with heroing, so it can get really leave you frazzled,” she said, reassuring her.
“I was seriously freaked when I started college because I don’t really have the money to spend trying out different majors.” She shrugged. “I guess I just got lucky when I fell into Nursing, you know? Just try a million things and do what makes you happy. Eff me, when did I turn into an after school special?” she laughed.
She took a long drink from her lemonade. “I know how she is, but that’s why I’d invite her. The girl’s crazy fun. Bonus, if someone pisses her off, I’ll drive the getaway car,” she joked, grinning, imagining having to pull Rose off some handsy, but ultimately harmless, college guy while she tried to strangle him. “Ooh, did you find your dress yet? Is Gar going as a guest?” she asked. The two really did make a sweet couple. “You can expect a few presents from your Gotham peeps. We’ll send Ollie back through the zeta tubes with an arm full. He’s probably use to being your pack mule by now, huh?” she teased.
“Just be sure to frisk her first. Or else someone will be at least threatened with a sword.” Mia snickered as she shifted in the booth pulling her feet up next to her as she leaned against the wall taking another bite of her hotdog. At the very least threatened. Just for the hell of it. Because Rose would find it fun, or funny. And while it probably would be it probably wasn’t best to have people threatening random people with swords. “I don’t drink though or anything, so I can be the designated driver.” She added with a small shrug.
Then she shook her head and smiled slightly, “No. It’s against the rules to bring someone over twenty. Even if you’re eighteen. Which I guess I can kind of understand.” Why would someone over twenty want to go to a high school prom anyway? She wouldn’t want to. She was pretty sure Gar probably did though, but he was immature. Or he pretended to be. “I’m actually taking Rose. Which again I’m going to have to frisk her, she’ll be wearing a tux I think so there will be a lot of places for her to hide things.” Thankfully most of her friends at school knew Rose enough to know not to attempt to press her buttons. So, she didn’t think it’d be a problem.
“You don’t have to get me anything though.” Mia said with a small cringe. She wanted presents, obviously. But then she started feeling bad for pushing people to get her stuff, it wasn’t like she couldn’t buy her own shit, so… “It’s totally fine.”
Going to the back, though, she spotted Mia and there was in fact abundant free space. “Hey, thank you so much!” Steph said in way of greeting in a half whisper. She sat down beside the girl at the little rounded table and took out her laptop from her backpack. “You just had play practice, right? What play are you in again?” she asked, slightly sheepish that she’d already forgotten.
Mia had managed to get out of her school, to her bike, and to the library without any unwanted attention, thankfully. The longer play rehearsals lasted the less people there were out there to hound her about things. And now she was sitting quietly in the back of the library with her sociology research paper spread out in front of her. Though she was paying more attention to texting on her phone then anything that had to do with school.
She glanced up as Stephanie approached and smiled slightly putting her phone back in her bag. “Hey.” She said and gathered her things up so she didn’t take up the whole table. “Yeah, Anything Goes. Our first show is next Friday. So, we’re like attempting to get our shit in gear.” Mia straightened in her seat crossing her legs, “So, what’s your paper about? Like just a character analysis or something?”
Steph snrrrked a laughed. “Well, personal experience tells me that the last second is the best time to finish something,” she joked back. The cheap laptop blinked to life and she pulled up the GoogleDoc for her essay, mostly blank but for her name and the date. “The whole assignment was to write a character analysis on a character of our choosing and discuss their development throughout the novel, eight page minimum and due in a week.” She sighed loudly, leaning forward on her elbows.
She looked down at the paper in front of Mia and cocked her head, reading some of it upside down. “You’re taking sociology? I took a course last year. Really interesting stuff.” Step shrugged. “Need any help?” It occurred to her that she’d be needing her book and dug through her backpack for the faded paperback, a dozen or so sticky notes peaking out between pages with her loopy handwriting scrawled all over them. Her hand bumped another object and she plucked it out, offering it to Mia. “Gum? It’s watermelony goodness,” she said in her cheesy salesman voice, waggling her eyebrows.
“What play doesn’t end up doing stuff at the last minute, anyway.” Mia pointed out and shrugged her shoulders clicking her pen repeatedly as she listened to what Stephanie had to do. “That’s cool. I’m kind of doing an analysis too. On the impact things like TV shows and movies have on teenagers and crap like that.” That actually wasn’t like Stephanie’s almost at all. But whatever.
She leaned back in her seat now spinning in her pen between her fingers. “Yeah, this semester. It was Sociology and Psychology or some other history class.” And Sociology and Psychology were a lot more interesting then history for the fiftieth time. She looked down at the gum and shook her head. “No thanks. I just got done with some mint gum. And mint and watermelony goodness doesn’t really taste good together. Hey, have you eaten yet?” She asked curiously.
If Steph had tensed ever so slightly at the repeatedly clicking pen, she couldn’t be blamed. But she nodded, stowing the gum away in her bag. “Huh, so you could kind of argue in your paper the GGG Show’s influence on you, then. Sort of, I mean, it’s literally, directly affecting you, so it’s like if anyone has something worth listening to about it, it would be you. Fun Day had to have made it at least semi-worth it, though, right?”
She tucked her feet up under herself in the plastic chair. “Nope, I’m running on coffee and gum. Me and plans don’t really get along, so no time for breakfast,” she joked. She’d overslept and a class had run late today, meaning no time for lunch either. Suffice it to say Steph was actually pretty hungry, but she didn’t want to cancel on Mia, either. “Want to call it a study break and catch something to eat? Because I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to go into convulsions pretty soon if I don’t get some onion rings in me.”
Mia laughed slightly, “I could write about that. If this hadn’t been assigned like fifty years ago. I’m focusing on more entertaining shows anyway. I would have actually had to watch his show if I was going to do it on that.” And that was seriously the last thing Mia was ever actually going to do. Hearing about that shit second had was bad enough. She shrugged her shoulders slightly, “Yeah, I guess. And my shirts are still selling pretty well too. So there is still a lot of money that’s being made, which is good. It’s kind of annoying they keep saying that Ollie planned it all and stuff though.” That was actually the thing that was really pissing her off if she was being honest. Oh well. Not like she could do anything about it. People like that would never believe her anyway.
“Yeah, I think we’ve been studying way too hard.” She fake yawned and started to pack her things back into her bag, “a break sounds like something we deserve.” Mia stood up and flung her bag over her shoulder. “There is a diner down the road we can just walk to. If there aren’t people out there waiting for me or something. It happens…”
She gave her an annoyed look. “Are you kidding me? Who the heck would believe anyone, let alone Ollie, would exploit their daughter in the media like that? It’s not even like he gains something from it! You guys are giving it all to charity.” She closed the lid on her laptop. The GGG show was an annoyance at best 9 out of 10 times, but when that one moment on occasion came around, they really got under people’s skin with their accusations. “As if slut-shaming you, Kate, and Diana wasn’t enough, they’ve got to accuse Ollie of making a quick buck off of it. Classy folk we’re dealing with, huh?”
Steph shook it off, though. They did things to get a rise out of people and she wouldn’t give them one. “For what it’s worth, you really don’t deserve it- any of it.” And that’s all she had to say on it, because anything else had already been said to death by this point and nobody wanted a a gushy girly moment. She smirked at the lunch suggestion. “Lead the way, my stomach is sobbing.”
And the two girls left as quickly as they had came. They’d totally get their papers done some other time. Right? “So how are the Titans doing? You guys all at each other’s throats yet, or can we call off the defcon 1 status. Please tell me Damian is still outraged he isn’t your leader yet,” she pleaded, grinning. “Babybird likes his power plays.”
“It’s stupid.” Mia said with a roll of her eyes. Of course they were trying to make it seem like it had been Ollie’s idea, why would they want it to appear like Mia could plan things on her own? Why would they want it to appear like her or her family were trying to help people, when their whole deal was that they were bad people? But it still annoyed the hell out of her. “If anything Ollie lost money on it.” Well, of course he did. How else was she supposed to pay for everyone to work during the fun day thing. Obviously she used Ollie’s money for that. But she was sure he didn’t really care. There were a lot more frivolous things she spent his money on.
Mia headed out of the library and looked over at Stephanie when she asked about the Titans, “No, we’re getting along pretty well. If you don’t count Rose or Zach. But they’re Rose and Zach if they were getting along with anyone I think that would be some kind of sign they were possessed or something.” They were both a lot of bark and not so much bite, unless you deserved the bite in Rose’s case. Maybe still not so much with Zach. Her eyes widened slightly when Steph brought up Damian and she cringed, “I may have neglected to tell him that he could join the team. On purpose.” She kind of hoped someone else had told him. She had been a little mad at him for a few reasons, stupid reasons, so she hadn’t said anything yet. Whoops.
She hitched her bag over her shoulder and glanced around the street, almost suspiciously, before crossing it towards the Diner. “If any people pop out from somewhere and start being annoying and trying to bother us just ignore them. It’s usually lazy unmotivated paparazzi who don’t want to move to LA to see real famous people, or reporters. Sometimes just jerks. But you know…” She shook her head and pointed to the building a couple yards away, “There it is. They have a great hot dog, by the way.”
“Yeah, like an arrow-shaped sex island, for example.” Steph grinned. She’d never let it go, misunderstanding or not. It was doubtful she would ever believe Ollie’s fervent protests to what she thought the island looked like unless he sat her down in front of a live satellite feed of it in high def (but even then she’d insist it was purposefully arrow shaped, just to screw with him). “Ooh, do they do those hotdogs with lots of different combinations, or just a really kickass classic dog?”
The bit of information Mia had just told her snapped her back to attention, though. “Oh, no. No way am I unleashing the fury of Sir Stabsalot because his invite to the Titans party got lost in the mail,” she said, shaking her head quickly. They arrived at the diner and walked in, seating themselves at a window booth. The multiple warnings about possible harassment raised a red flag with Steph, though. “So you really are getting bothered almost every day by GGG supporters, huh? I guess I didn’t really realize exactly how bad it’s gotten … Those incredible dickswads!” she said, pissed by proxy. “Are they seriously so bored that they have to create their own scandals to blow up in the gossip rags?”
“You can get whatever you want on it, and they have awesome cheese-dogs.” She didn’t know if she wanted a hot dog honestly. Maybe she’d get one. They did sound kind of good at the moment. And it was better to just get something that kind of sounded good rather then just sit there and be mad she wasn’t going to eat something because nothing really made her that hungry at the moment. Maybe she’d ask if they had avocado yet, it wasn’t really in season though so she wasn’t sure if they would…
Mia sighed, “I feel kind of bad.” She said and shrugged her shoulders. “Damian asked me to ask if he could join the team.” And she had been like 100% for it too. But after she asked Bai said that he probably wasn’t going to join anyway so she got mad that he asked her to ask if he wasn’t going to join in the first place so she never told him that they all said he could join. “Maybe someone else talked to him about it. Oh well.” Mia picked up a menu when they sat down and browsed it before deciding she was definitely going to get a hot dog.
“Well, Star City does have it’s own newspapers and tabloids so it’s not like we’ve never gotten attention before or anything like that. It’s just never really been… on this big of a scale.” She laughed slightly, “Sometimes it’s kind of awesome. Sometimes it sucks though. And I’m sure at least half the hate mail I’m getting is just from like… stupid d-bags from 4chan and stuff. But like… I don’t know.” She looked at the waiter as he approached their table. “Hi. I’ll have a lemonade and a hotdog with the avocado relish. Aand.. that’s it.”
Steph quirked a brow, skeptical of Mia’s blase blow off and pseudo-explanation. “I’m just going to tell him you guys only recently decided to let him in and the congratulatory muffin basket got lost in the mail,” she joked. There was more to the story, but she wasn’t sure if it was earth shattering enough to really hash out. “Are you two okay, or was it an honest mistake? I get it if the whole GGG thing is making things stressful,” she said casually, unaccusing.
“Sooo does that mean that your family is kind of like the Kardashians of Star City? Does that make you Kim? Ollie is totally Kourtney.” She laughed, imagining the whole Arrow Family in sequin skin tight dresses with blow-out hair. The waiter came by and she jumped, glancing quickly at the menu for something to order. “Hi! Um, I’ll take a bacon and cheddar hotdog and lemonade, too, thanks,” she said, handing him the menu.
When the waiter left with both of their orders, it was barely a minute before he returned with a cheery smile and two tall glasses of lemonade. “I think I heard someone say that your birthday is coming up soon. That’s right, right? Eighteen? Are you excited?”
Mia considered the question for a moment trying to think about what had actually happened and when she had actually forgotten. “Both, I guess. I left the Titans meeting all like ‘well I’m just totally going to let him sweat it out for a day’. And then I just completely forgot about it like the next day.” She took a breath and shook her head. This was really bad, just the fact she was always on top of things but she was just getting over whelmed with all this lately, “I just realized the other day that I hadn’t even spoken to Gar since the Titans meeting. I didn’t even like… realize all this until just now. It’s not just the Godfrey thing. I don’t think. It’s a lot of end of the school year stuff. The play, Graduation, Prom. My birthday. Ollie’s birthday. There was that drug thing that turned me invisible for like a week. Plus the Godfrey thing. And just patrolling on top of all that.”
The superhero thing wasn’t the hard part, it really hadn’t ever been. Soon school would end and her life would calm back down to it’s usual getting attacked type of thing. Mia laughed when Stephanie compared to them to the Kardashians. “Does that make Gar, Kanye? Pff. He wishes he was that cool.” Mia said and took her lemonade sticking her straw in it and taking a sip.
“Yep. My birthday is on the second. So like twenty-something days.” She smiled slightly and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess. For the presents. Not so much for the ‘adult’ thing. I don’t think it really changes anything. People either see you as an adult or a kid, one birthday isn’t going to change that.” She smiled up at the waiter as he arrived with their hotdogs and she took her plate in front of her, “Thank you.” She said and watched him walk back off. “How is college anyway? That’s probably hard, right? I mean I’m doing online school next year, I think I’m going to take all my required classes that way until I decide what I want to be. I don’t think I’d actually be able to like… do like actual college.”
Steph nodded. “Yeeeah, funny what falls through the cracks when you’ve got a million things going on. Kind of makes things fun when you’re busy, though, you know? You’ve got birthdays and graduation parties galore, then summer to just be a bum,” she said, almost wistfully.”Enjoy it! It’s seriously the best. You pretty much get to make your own schedule. I mean, the switch is sort of weird at first, but college is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.” She smiled at Mia, taking a bite of her bacon hotdog.
“Are you thinking about a major yet? The majority of my freshman classes second semester were online, actually. It’s easier to go at your own pace, but it’s even easier to get lazy and look up cat videos on youtube instead,” she laughed. How many afternoons had she wasted in a spiral of spazzy cat videos? If she hadn’t had Barbara to kick her in the butt and keep her on track like she had, Steph wasn’t sure she’d have made it through last year.
“You’re going to do great, though. If you want, after you graduate, I can take you and Rose to a party this summer. And you can bring your Kanye, too. There’s probably only, like, an 85% chance we’ll get into a shit load of trouble. What could go wrong?” she said in her best salesman voice, cheesy grin included. She took another bite of the hotdog. WOW Mia had been right about this place. “Any ideas what you might want to do for your birthday?”
“I’m only enrolled online. So I can do things when I can do them.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I doubt I’d ever be able to do the actual college thing. Last year I missed my finals because we were attacked. A couple years ago I missed the whole last few months of school because we were attacked. I’m surprised I’m even graduating. And that’s just high school.” Like she wasn’t pulling A’s or something anyway. But the fact still remained that she missed a lot of school. She thought that may be one of the reasons they started the league school for the kids.
She took a deep breath and sent Stephanie a look, “No,” Mia said in an almost bracing way. “I haven’t been thinking about a major. I think that’s also a reason I’m just getting the required classes out of the way. While I think about what I actually want to do with my life.” It wasn’t like if she picked a major and changed her mind in a couple years she wouldn’t be able to switch because of money issues or something. Unless Ollie really did go bankrupt again. But she just didn’t want to feel obligated. She had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. There were things she wanted to do, but did she really want to just do that? And she could change her mind a year or two years from now. “It’s stupid people are expected to know that at eighteen.” No one did.
Mia leaned back crossing her legs as she took a sip of her lemonade, “You really want to take Rose to a party?” She questioned and smirked slightly. “But sure. Obviously you’ll have to remind me since I’ve definitely proven that I forget things a lot.” She laughed and shook her head taking another bite of her hotdog. “Prom. Prom is the weekend of my birthday. Well, my birthday is on Thursday but I can’t do anything then. I mean maybe I’ll have a family dinner or something. But that weekend is prom so I’ll be mostly focused on that.” She paused for a moment and smiled, “And getting presents.”
Steph recognized the look on Mia’s face and waved a hand airily, taking another bite of her hotdog. “No rush at all. You’ve got years to try things out and figure out what you do and don’t like. Besides, you’ve still got high school stuff to concentrate on, so don’t sweat it. I mean, I know what it’s like to juggle high school with heroing, so it can get really leave you frazzled,” she said, reassuring her.
“I was seriously freaked when I started college because I don’t really have the money to spend trying out different majors.” She shrugged. “I guess I just got lucky when I fell into Nursing, you know? Just try a million things and do what makes you happy. Eff me, when did I turn into an after school special?” she laughed.
She took a long drink from her lemonade. “I know how she is, but that’s why I’d invite her. The girl’s crazy fun. Bonus, if someone pisses her off, I’ll drive the getaway car,” she joked, grinning, imagining having to pull Rose off some handsy, but ultimately harmless, college guy while she tried to strangle him. “Ooh, did you find your dress yet? Is Gar going as a guest?” she asked. The two really did make a sweet couple. “You can expect a few presents from your Gotham peeps. We’ll send Ollie back through the zeta tubes with an arm full. He’s probably use to being your pack mule by now, huh?” she teased.
“Just be sure to frisk her first. Or else someone will be at least threatened with a sword.” Mia snickered as she shifted in the booth pulling her feet up next to her as she leaned against the wall taking another bite of her hotdog. At the very least threatened. Just for the hell of it. Because Rose would find it fun, or funny. And while it probably would be it probably wasn’t best to have people threatening random people with swords. “I don’t drink though or anything, so I can be the designated driver.” She added with a small shrug.
Then she shook her head and smiled slightly, “No. It’s against the rules to bring someone over twenty. Even if you’re eighteen. Which I guess I can kind of understand.” Why would someone over twenty want to go to a high school prom anyway? She wouldn’t want to. She was pretty sure Gar probably did though, but he was immature. Or he pretended to be. “I’m actually taking Rose. Which again I’m going to have to frisk her, she’ll be wearing a tux I think so there will be a lot of places for her to hide things.” Thankfully most of her friends at school knew Rose enough to know not to attempt to press her buttons. So, she didn’t think it’d be a problem.
“You don’t have to get me anything though.” Mia said with a small cringe. She wanted presents, obviously. But then she started feeling bad for pushing people to get her stuff, it wasn’t like she couldn’t buy her own shit, so… “It’s totally fine.”