#ook writes

“So if you’re a girl what makes you special? Why should we, like, keep you?” asked Matt, turning himself over the back of the couch so much he was practically a barnacle. A twisted, squirmy, slagged up barnacle. 

Terry, being the magnanimous older sister that she was, decided to remember that teenagers were incapable of communicating normally and if he was insulting her in weird new ways hitherto unknown to man that just meant he was being well adjusted. A Matt that didn’t think she was cringe and ridicule-worthy was a Matt under duress.

She ran a hand through short, ear-length hair so she could rest her head on it while turning to look at him (she’d tried to grow it out for all of a month before deciding she hated it and resuming with her usual length. If anything, a buzz cut was looking more and more appealing, but Dana still pouted a little at the thought of her hair being entirely gone, so maybe they’d pick up some egg custard buns as a bribe one day to let them both have their moment). 

“Do you mean… as a pet? As a single spark of life in this grand universe? Are you reinventing misogyny? Walk me through the process here, Matty,” she said, keeping the tone only lightly sarcastic. 

“I mean when you were a boy being my brother was kind of unique, I guess, but now that you’re a girl why can’t I just replace you with Dana?” he asked, voice all petulant but face fully slag-eater.

Dana, who was really no help when it came to Matt (Terry still remembered the betrayal of her getting him that fragging Nerf gun for his birthday a few years back), burst out laughing over the phone, her face disappearing from camera as she collapsed (in agony, surely).

“Nothing. Have fun with your new sister,” she snorted before tossing the phone right at his face, watching with amused vindication as he squawked and flailed his way off the couch back like a fish plucked from water. Hmm. That was a lot of sea analogies. Maybe she’d upend her water bottle on him too.

Nine heroes answer the call, but with such large gaps between all of their eras the answers are sure to sound different. Luckily this exchange of cultures and heroism goes smoothly. For the most part. "What's a village?" "I- what?" (Or, the author wanted to try their hand at a Links Meet fic and quickly got sidetracked by anthropology. Don't worry there's a lot of comedy to make up for it.)

Senior camping trip was… off to a great start, all things considered. According to Max’s considerations, at least--which was that no one was on fire, the Stalker hadn’t booby trapped the island with terrifying creatures of unholy origin, and Terry had actually been cajoled into coming. Probably due to the Stalker shiv from last year. The bus got to the campsite, stuff was dumped in an unceremonial pile on the gravel, and fifty or so Hamilton Hill High teens (plus chaperones) had shuffled off to their allotted cabins. 

Or, well, most of them had. The arguments about who wanted to sleep next to whom and who had lost their privileges in the few hours since original agreements had made would start up come nightfall, but for now they each had a cabin number and a mission to leave their bags on the bunk they wanted to claim.

Which is where Max’s first problem started. Sort of. See, in a spectacular move of bumbling Terry had not only managed to mishear the number of her cabin, but had decided to claim her bunk by falling asleep on it--shoes and all--the second she was in range. It wasn’t totally unexpected on Max’s end at least. She had known there’d been a recent rough patch in patrols even if she’d been ignoring that in favor of putting together coding portfolios for college apps. When talking about this trip the ban on tech had seemed to be a huge draw (though knowing Terry the girl had snuck a pager in at the very least) and the manic look in her eye had convinced Max not to tease about that too much. Now the whole group could witness the fruits of that conversation, but McKenna wanted to sleep next to Lilo and could not be dissuaded from this, so a plan was concocted to get the sports kids to carry Terry, slagged up camp mattress and all, to the correct cabin. The chaperones of course caught them halfway through, but by then it was too late to argue things back into place. The mattresses were successfully swapped. 

Terry didn’t even get close to waking the entire trip.

–

A weekend trip typically had a lot of activities crammed into a short window of time, and as seniors many of them exercised their newfound freedom by not participating in any of them at all. Some people dicked off into the woods on their own (word usage purposeful). Some of them sat by the kitchens all day and used food prep as an excuse. Some people didn’t bother with an excuse. 

“Dude, we’re out doing stuff. We got a fire. There’s marshmallows.” Max heard Chels trying to persuade on the second night, the blond leaning through the cabin doorway in hopes of getting their friend to do anything remotely fun. Joke’s on her.

“I don’t care. I’m sleeping,” was Terry’s appropriately sleepy response.

“Did you really pay three-hundred creds just to come here and sleep?” 

Crazed but soft laughter floated out of the doorway. The perfect kind for the spooky storytelling that was about to begin. 

“Yes and it’s so worth it.”

Max finally got close enough to put a hand on Chelsea’s shoulder and lead her away.

–

The screaming might have been what woke Terry up, but despite that girl’s danger meter being completely broken since age thirteen, Max was of the opinion that it was completely justified. A hornet was bad enough, but a hornet that wouldn't stop swooping on her because she’d made the mistake of getting syrup on her hands? Fragging awful. So yeah. She screamed. They screamed. They all screamed for the painful stinger zooming right at them.

At least until a fork nailed the thing smack dab in the thorax and pinned it to the ground. Dead.

The meal pavilion went silent. They followed the trajectory of the fork and found Terry by the buffet table, blinking blearily. She shoved a pancake in her mouth with a hand and shuffled off.

–

“Wait, that actually happened?” she questioned on the ride home.

“YES!” The entire bus screamed.