Restart

"Yes," Samantha said with a nod. "It's going extremely well. I've illustrated five more books and published a small book of poems myself." She paused, wondering if she sounded a bit too pleased with herself.

"How is your work going? Have you designed any buildings yet?" She smiled encouragingly.

Elena ground her teeth and whirled on Walter. "And you willingly came here to ask? Did you want to work with this jerk?" She could not believe anyone, let alone Walter, would want to even breathe the same air as Lynn, let alone work with him.

P.S."Brooklyn!"

Restart

"No...but I've got a parking lot in the works." Sydney said with a weak laugh.

"For the J-Mart they're putting in at the crossroads off Hormer." Aveda said, feeling decided ignored now that Samantha had sat down and Sydney looked entirely spaced out.

"It's work!" Walter said, throwing his hands up in the air.

Restart

"Well that's . . . good," Samantha said, biting her lip gently and wondering if he thought it was good. For some reason she could not shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong. What was Sydney doing hanging out at a bar anyway? He had not seemed like the type back in Ditto Town.

"So, um, you come here often?" she asked weakly, wondering if that had been entirely unsubtle.

Elena made a face. "You'd better not give us any trouble," she told Lynn warningly.

P.S."Brooklyn!"

Restart

"Ehhh..." Sydney wasn't entirely sure how to reply to that.

"Every night, yep." Aveda offered helpfully.

"Yeah, I totally won't." Lynn said, thinking that such a warning was entirely ridiculous.

"It'll be fun, all three of us working here together." He assured them, turning to attend to the grill.

"Who said anything about working?" Walter said, shaking his head.

Restart

"Oh," Samantha said, doing her best not to sound disappointed, though her eyes clearly showed that she was. She wondered then if he were in some kind of trouble.

Elena sighed. "I suppose then that you're going to leave that girl out there waiting all night?" she asked Walter, jerking her thumb over her shoulder.

P.S."Brooklyn!"

Restart

"She meant that she is." Sydney said, glaring at the girl. Aveda glared back at him, feeling that if anyone had the right to feel betrayed it was her.

"You shouldn't even be here." He said, resigning from the glaring stand-off by picking up his glass for a valid excuse.

"I can stay til like nine." Aveda said, her face displaying utter dejection now.

"You got time to stay for awhile? I mean, we could move to a table if you wanted to catch up." Sydney said hopefully, refusing to notice his young friend's reaction by averting all his attention back to Samantha.

"Til I learn the answer to her question...yeah." Walter grinned.

Restart

Samantha glanced at Aveda, unable to ignore the girl's hurt expression. While she really did not want to hurt the girl's feelings, she also was not sure she could handle an awkward conversation with her around. This gave Samantha a dilemma.

She wanted this to be comfortable for everyone, but it looked like there was no winning at this point. With a slight sigh she shrugged. "I've got some time," she admitted, not wanting to lie. "I've got to wait for that barman to come back and answer my question at least. And from the looks of it he might be a while . . ." she trailed off, glancing over at the doorway into the back where Walter had disappeared into awhile ago.

"You can move with us," Samantha offered Aveda with a friendly smile, unable to help herself the girl looked so dejected. "If that's alright with Sydney."

She stood and took a step toward a table as she waited for a reply.

----

Elena shook her head. "And if she reports you to the manager for poor service?" she asked, crossing her arms.

P.S."Brooklyn!"

A (Slightly) Less Normal Life

"Wow. Like Hercules?" Malcolm asked. Malcolm had never met Hercules back before the move to Ditto Town, but the demigod had been an Avenger. Malcolm had seen him on TV a few times.

"A demigod? It has been a very long time since I last encountered one of your kind. Although this was a different race of gods than the Olympians," Moira commented, looking suitably impressed.

-----

"No, dearie, not that door. We're going through this doorway," Miss Lucinda said, moving further into the gloom of her basement.

At the very far end of the basement, there was a wooden door set into the wall. It was painted a rather ugly shade of lavender that was currently beginning to peel.

"This doorway opens to any place I want on Dittotopia. So all I have to do is think of where I want to go and it is on the other side of the door," Miss Lucinda said and opened the door dramatically. On the other side was a graveyard that would, quite frankly put the typical creepy graveyard in a slasher movie to shame. The headstones were crooked and fungus-covered, the forest was overgrowing everything, and the tree canopy shut out almost all of the light. There were large crypts springing up out of the waist high grass like rotten teeth. It was not a nice place to spend an afternoon.

-----

Ana pointed at one of the drinks and said mystically," The Force tells me it's that one. So what's the story with the space pirates?"

A (Slightly) Less Normal Life

Peter nodded. "Yeah, like Hercules. Never met the guy, but I've heard he was a bit of a jerk though."

Hero rolled her eyes. "We're so much better than him," she said, full of self-confidence.

Nikolas coughed none-too-subtly. "Can you guys see monsters?" he asked Moira, thinking that she should be able to at least.

----

"Ugh, creepy," Katie said, looking around and thinking that if she were a vampire she would rather live in a mansion like some of the kind Miss Lucinda had described to her. "So we wait for 'em to pop up outta the ground or somfink?" She kicked at a headstone absently.

----

Caeden highly doubted that the Force could tell which drink was which, but not being a Force-user himself and not being very familiar with the Jedi race, he decided to take her word for it.

"Oh they came across our ship in the middle of nowhere. Pulled us out of hyperspace someway, I've got no clue how. Anyway, so they started boarding and we started fighting and then suddenly the Captain was there in his swirling cape (don't know why he insists on wearing that thing, it's got to be uncomfortable and get in the way) and his lightsaber and several guns and he totally took out, like, half of them. Then Jones came barreling through and he had been in the middle of taking a nap so he took out a bunch on rage and bad breath alone. Together, along with some excellent help provided by yours truly, they fought them off. I guess they figured we weren't worth the trouble."

Caeden shrugged and then paused, going over in his mind what he had just said and wondering if he had given away any privileged information.

P.S."Brooklyn!"

Hidden Away

The princess ducked behind an enormous oak tree. She looked up through its skeleton of branches, desperately searching for a way out- or at least a place to hide. Crashes echoed through the forest and the princess gulped in a breath. The monster would be sure to find her under the tree, standing by herself. There was nothing for it but to run.

She turned around, ready to make a break for it, only to see-

Jackie Foreman opened her eyes to see only the drab, uninteresting setting of her eighth grade English Classroom. She sighed quietly. In general she loved school, but she'd been forced to put down the book she'd been reading (right before school) at a particularly exciting moment! Thoughts of what might happen to the princess were haunting her.

It seemed an eternity until the bell rang, but at last Jackie was free. Not free to get her book- she'd had to leave it at home, unfortunately- but to find her sister. That'd be better than nothing.

There! Jackie spotted her fraternal twin through the crowd of students pouring out of their classrooms!

Hidden Away

"Bye, Steph!"

Stephanie's head popped up and she waved at her classmates. "Good luck at the meet!" she called back as she stepped out of the room. Where was her twin?

"Ms. Foreman?" Her history teacher held out her textbook. "I believe you forgot something."

"Sorry!" Stephanie beamed a smile at her teacher and bounced onto her toes. Where is Jacks now?

Her sister making her way towards her, so she waited by the wall and waved to passing friends. "I know for a fact that as soon as we get home you are going to go straight to your book and read it until the end," Stephanie announced when Jackie caught up.

She hooked her arm around her twin's and led her to the doors. "We should have classes outside." Steph spread her arms apart. "Maybe I should suggest that to the principal..."

Hidden Away

Jackie made a frustrated noise. "Of course! I've been going crazy all day!" She frowned, but then said, slightly more optimistic, "Only a few more hours, though."

"What class do you have next?" Jackie asked. "I forget. I've got art with Ms. Dewalt." Maybe she and Stephanie could walk together. Sometimes her twin got on her nerves awfully, but today she supposed that she could tolerate her.

Hidden Away

"You'll survive," Stephanie assured her sister. She raised her eyebrows dramatically. "The question is, will the princess?"

"Math." She stopped for a moment to read a sign on someone's locker. "Is Mrs. DeWalt the practically senile one, or am I thinking of the other art teacher?"

Her watch (digital) said that they had a little over one minute left to get to class, and her math teacher (Mrs. Gibbons) always ended up starting ten minutes later, so they could take their merry time. At least she could, anyway.

Hidden Away

"Oh, shut up!" Jackie said, but she smiled anyhow. "No, Ms. Dewalt is the young one. She kind of cool. For a teacher."

The two of them began walking down the hallway. It was still a bit crowded, but not so much as before. Most of the kids had retrieved their next books from their lockers and had headed on to their next class. "Do you need to get anything from your locker?" Jackie asked her sister, stopping at her own. She twirled the combination lock this way and that until it popped open. All she needed for art was her art binder and her project from yesterday.

Maybe in class she would get to glimpse Ahrick's work again. Ahrick was a vulcan boy who had suck an interesting and unpredictable style of art that Jackie was always intrigued by it. He always calmly stated, when she commented on his work, that it was simply logical. Whatever that meant.

A (Slightly) Less Normal Life

"Are you kidding? This is Ditto Town, of course we see monsters. Just last week, Pandora had to stab a gremlin that was about to make the stoves explode," Malcolm interjected.

Pandora ducked her head shyly and said quietly," It's true. There's a nest of them in the abandoned building behind us and they keep wandering in. They're drawn to places where they can cause accidents and a bakery is full of potential accidents."

-----

Ana summoned forth her best confused expression and asked," But I thought Jones doesn't like Jedi? He doesn't have a problem working for one?"

Ana hoped the boy had had enough alcohol when he got the drinks mixed up to answer her questions. She doubted rather seriously that she was subtle and sneaky enough to trick a sober and halfway intelligent person into revealing information best left unsaid. Punching people was more her method, no matter if it did make Master Vendar make that annoying disapproving noise at her.

-----

"Do you mind? We're trying to sleep down here," a voice from beneath the earth complained after Katie kicked the headstone.

"That's not a vampire, despite the whole sleeping in a grave thing. It's one of the barrow wights that wandered out of the forest a few years back. Tried to start up some kind of creepy little kidnapping and murder ring, but I cursed them. Now they wouldn't hurt a fly, would you little dearies?" Miss Lucinda explained.

"Sure, sure, whatever, you old hag. When are you going to throw the next sacrifice down here? We build up an appetite constructing these dark artifacts, you know."

"Not until the next full moon, dearies. You know we have a schedule. It's not my fault you're all such nasty piggy eaters and gobble it all up before I'm due to bring you your monthly nummies. Now get back to work or I'll have to come down there."

The graveyard was noticeably silent after that.