Bippidy Boppity Go Fuck Yourself

“… the next to, like… what, be made out with??? The offer is flattering, but I’m not really sure if you can reach my face…”

“Well, FIRST of all bend over so you can reach me then, jerk!”

“SECOND, you know it’s not me you secretly want to make out with, and you will RUE the day you thought you could escape my PLOYS, DAHLIA AQUINO!”

“What’s better than this? Just guys being dudes.”

“Check your abs and find out yourself.”

Enjoying the show.

                  And Miranda blinked.

      Not a true blink, forcing her eyelids proper shut, closing out the world entirely for but a breath of a moment, oh gods no. Her nictitating membrane slid over her eyes, turning their already existing turquoise into a matte blue haze, semi-transparent, and enough for her to keep an eye on what Hope was doing even while she blinked. But it was something, and something was better than entirely nothing. Better than continually trying to back away and hide herself into a tighter and tighter ball both.

       There had been a shutter, Miranda had not missed that. She did not miss the way Hope crossed her arms or tugged at her sleeves, and as a creature who was made to understand sound, who lived and breathed in a social world of thriving song and calls and the ocean’s thrum echoed into body and bone - she was sure something had shifted in her tone. Miranda, being already nervous and thinking only in exits, couldn’t really pick up on what, but it had.

       So she stopped. And just blinked down at Hope, suddenly not understanding. Or, not understanding in an entirely different way than how she didn’t understand before, world warping and strange and reality hard to determine. Now she was just… confused.

        And her body, being wired to answer to emotions in kind, in such a telltale sign for a social species, answered to that change. Miri did not feel herself calming, not really, not in the way of her racing heartbeat and the now consistent familiar writhing sensation under her scales and burning in her throat ( her hand was already at her arm, scratching at her own scales, picking at their covers, trying to satisfy an itch that she swore was writhing around her bones ). But it definitely did take the worst edge off. Just enough, just long enough. And Miranda, after standing there for a moment, also sunk down, slow, as if she was afraid of making any wrong moves herself, and sat upon the ground. Knees tucked to her chest, and tail wrapped around herself like a blanket.

        “I… I don’t know.” Words came out like a whine, slow and high-pitched in their tremble. Ever so faintly, behind every vowel, her jaws still clacked, teeth clicking together and overexaggerating the sounds in some constant attempt to find comfort. Pitiful, she chided herself, bitter in her own throat. It was a feeling she hated.

       “Polly said that you were, and, and I knew ox’knyri were already trying to find me, to get to me, and… She wouldn’t lie to me about that, it was a warning, or a message, or symbol, or… Something. I just know.”

       Finally, her eyes spared a glance away from Hope, staring pointedly at the ground in front of her. Tail-tip twitching, fins pinning themselves back against her head, trying to make herself small.

                               “ ….. I don’t want them to know about any of this.”

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh, fucking... Polina Geist. Of course she probably said some off-hand joke that didn’t land- festering over, what, a few years now at school? Hope had come here to get this shit taken care of BECAUSE of that damn ghost and her whole relationship with Faith, because obviously Faith cared about her and Polly cared about Miranda, so offering the olive branch here was a long overdue thing.

“I don’t think Polly would lie to you, either- but I do believe she’d say something she didn’t understand that got miscommunicated- no offense, but she’s one of the dumbest smart-girls I know, and I know Joy so that’s saying something. Plus, there’s a whole lot about merfolk culture none of us- not even Polly- understand. Like, I don’t know what a... ox-can-eye-ree... even is.”

At least... Miranda seemed to be calming down, even just a teensy, tiny bit. Progress, progress was good. Hope was handling this well, it seemed.

“I won’t tell them, I promise,” Hope said, as soon as Miranda had voiced that desire. Far be it from her to air somebody else’s dirty laundry- who’d she look like, a fuckin’ Oberlin?

       Her breathing - oh it was coming hard now. Not panting, no, but too short and too rough, eyes locked onto Hope with a fury and a fear that she refused to show whenever she could help it. Here, now. She couldn’t help it. It burned in her throat, ached her lungs, made her gills flex in pitiful attempt to help, but this wasn’t helping. Back the princess kept stepping, back back back. Her foot stumbled over some discarded water bottle, clattering making her fins twitch in panic, but back she still crept. 

        Try to keep the space between the two as open as possible. More frightened animal than merprincess - no quick movements, and let the space stay open. Especially as Hope’s movements warped and shifted in her mind’s eye, too fast and then too slow, edges fuzzy, hard to concentrate on. Had to keep a lookout for the exits. If she could just leave, then that would be ideal - no questions, no concern, just get home as quickly as possible and lock herself away in her own bedchambers and wait until the itch below her scales and in her throat started to subside, to go away, to vanish without tell.

        “You’re the one making the plans. Why do I need to be the one to tell you what we both know? That you want to remove my skin, and erase me, and walk around in it, spreading your transparent ds’kn’hjit along my limbs and mirroring my voice and talking to my sister and my friends and taking my throne, and you thought I wouldn’t catch on, that I wouldn’t see it, that you could just hunt me and it would be fine and - ”

       It was getting worse. Rambling, raving sentences weren’t a good look, long-winded trains of thought wasn’t a good sign. What if someone else saw? What if they judged, hurt her? Abruptly embarrassment crept along her fins, made her heart pound all the harder and eyes burn like she was about to cry - but she didn’t. As stupid as she felt, as ugly, wretched, mistaken as she felt, she wasn’t about to show any further weakness to… A ox’knyri. Merely existing in a form that one wanted was enough, and she just needed to get back to Bells, and hide for a few days, and it’d all be fine.

... Scared of being replaced, huh? Goddess, that was so funny it looped right back around to being sad.

“Being replaced... yeah, it does sound pretty scary when you put it like that. Goddess knows I-”

Hope visibly shuddered as she remembered, and quickly banished that line of thought. She crossed her arms across her chest, gripping her sleeves tightly to keep her focus elsewhere.

“I promise, I don’t want to replace you, Miranda. I just... want to be me. That’s already hard enough as is- and I am so sorry for whatever I did that made you think I would try that.”

She was still keeping a calm composure- not advancing at Miranda tried to inch away. Instead, she slid down the wall, going criss-cross applesauce- small, non-threatening.

Hope paused- her quips dying on her lips as warning bells went off. You die enough times, and you start to get a sense for a situation that probably isn’t great.

It didn’t take much to realize that Miranda was absolutely terrified- usually these encounters happened where Polly and Vera and the rest of the Coven were around to draw some attention away. Up to this very moment, she thought Miranda had just been taking that shtick just a tad too far in order to be mean.

But here she was. Staring her down like death themselves had come for them, and not in the fun way they do on wine night. She blinked once, and- very slowly and carefully, leaned against the wall in a casual manner, arms at her side and keeping her body language open.

She did her best to repress a sigh. This was gonna be a whole afternoon.

“Alright, what do you think my plans are, then? What do you think I’m going to do to you that’s got you so worked up?”

Hope snorted a laugh, nearly fumbling her glass of wine as the two of them relaxed by the lake. Goddess, that Milo was a riot.

“You sound like some sort of hoity-toity stage magician themed goon, fuck off!” She laughed, before taking another sip.

“Seriously, if you’re thinking about getting into the themed hero biz to drum up a little more media interest, you’re gonna need much better quips. Thought you’d be an expert at keeping your best work in 140 characters or less~!”

“Ugh, Dee you have NO idea.”

Hope shook the lingering crackles of energy from an attack spell from her hand, looking over the school gym- less trashed than usual after an impromptu villain encounter, but... ugh, Joy was going to make them fix it pro-bono, wasn’t she? Bluh.

“Still, at least it was only a low-level arching attempt- if that guy was even associated with any of the villain guilds at all. Seriously- laughing gas? We’re a tier 8 threat, that’s some level 1 crap at most.”

She sighed, cracking her neck, and then her back. Maybe she should cut down on her entrepreneurial hours and see her chiropractor again. This “battling against the forces of darkness” thing was wreaking havoc on her.

But enough musing about that. She shot a small, only half-sarcastic smile Dahlia’s way.