Perfectly Normal
48
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Perfectly
Forty Eight
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *bounce * Almost CMA
time! InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink,
Dracena and Greywolf are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting.
Readers/Reviewers: When I come back from being Pagan in the woods, I am going
to start a new “thing” for the stories for those who can’t access them on AFFN
anymore. Wheee.
as you can! J
Kitty
tugged fiercely at her ponytail, her once occasional nervous habit now verging
on a tic. “I swear, I have to stop
coming back here. Whenever I’m around,
crazy stuff happens!” She thought
longingly of retail therapy, then of her carefully budgeted inheritance and
regretted the spurt of responsibility which had led her to set up the very
hard-to-access accounts. “I bet you guys
wouldn’t be having this problem if I wasn’t here.”
“Stop your
whining,” Jubilee ordered, her voice uncharacteristically sharp.
jacket, a thin barrier against the sudden, cold wind that had sprung across the
lake. “Where’s the Shi’ar now?”
“Jean went
down to the basement to, um, keep an eye on things,” Kitty replied, not quite
registering Jubilee’s tone as she dwelt solely on the chaos that seemed to
spring up in her wake. “Kurt’s down
there still. He’s been down there since
last night. Maybe I should take him
something to eat. You know how he gets
when he doesn’t eat…” she trailed off, looking over at Jubilee, then
frowning. “I suppose you know how he
gets about a lot of things.”
scolded herself tartly. She had forgiven
them both, she reminded herself. She had
forgiven them both and even though she was not ready to get back together with
Kurt, it still hurt like a knife wound to her belly that he had had sex with Jubilee.
“Stop it,”
Amara snapped, cutting off any reply from Jubilee.
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her dark hair over her shoulders, she looked up and down the shoreline of the
lake and, with a small nod that seemed to be in response to an inner monologue,
she set off down the wet, rutted path towards the copse of pine at the far end
of the water. “Come along,” she said
loudly after a moment, not stopping to see if Jubilee and Kitty were following.
in the trees, she knew. It was virtually
impossible for someone who did not know the tricky path to make it into the
clearing there silently. Even Lance, as
many times as he had followed her out there, had trouble being quiet when they
walked to her altar.
Jubilee and
Kitty exchanged mildly confused glances before setting off after the Nova
Sotto voce, Kitty began again, “I
really think that we need to get rid of this film crew. They have to have
enough footage by now. They’ve
interviewed all of us and now it’s just getting freaking insane!”
Jubilee
nodded, picking her way through the dense underbrush after Amara, shifting so
that she was ahead of Kitty. “It’s like
everything is fraying apart at once…”
She fell momentarily silent as they stepped into the small clearing,
dominated by Amara’s altar and associated objects.
trappings of their paths were and, for just a moment, Jubilee felt a pang of
guilt for neglecting her own traditions for so long.
she pressed on. “We have to act normal
and all this shit is going down.”
“Maybe it
was the Shi’ar that got you in the basement,” Kitty suggested, her gaze
drifting towards the mark on Jubilee’s arm.
“Maybe it’s some weird thing they’re doing…”
but she had to suggest it.
Amara
motioned for silence, her expression thoughtful as she tilted her head first to
one side, then the other. “Kitty, you
disabled some of the equipment, yes?”
“Yes, but…”
“And
Jubilee…you showed your powers. Yes, I know
it was an accident so don’t start with me because I WILL finish it and you will
NOT be happy.” She closed her eyes and
tilted her head back, seemingly drinking in the dappled light of the clearing
and inhaling deeply of the scent of wet pine and loamy earth.
her hands palms-up, as if accepting an offering.
“Oooooooookay,”
Kitty breathed. “Amara’s gone bye bye…”
Amara’s
eyes snapped open and, shooting Kitty a quick frown, she announced, “I know how
we can make them leave before tonight, how we can get rid of them AND their
tapes.”
“Does this
involve covert ops shit?” Jubilee demanded.
“Because I’m not gonna go slithering around in someone’s bedroom like a
freaky little ninja just to steal a tape…”
“…what
other reason would there be for that?” Kitty asked, brows arching delicately.
“You’d be
surprised.”
Amara
snorted. “No.
focus on the Shi’ar and the refugees…”
“Our wiles?”
Wiles are bad. Wiles are very, very bad!” She folded her arms over her chest
and added, for emphasis, “Bad!”
“What the
fuck are you talking about?” Jubilee demanded, looking between the two
friends. “Wiles?”
“She wants
us to flirt with these guys, to come on to them and use our sexuality and femininity
to get them to give up the tapes!”
Jubilee was
quiet for the space of a few seconds, looking thoughtful.
it was more like whining…”
“I don’t
care what it is,” Kitty put in, “I’m not going to do it.”
“That’s
fine,” Amara shrugged. “There’s plenty
of girls to go around.”
Kitty
groaned, mostly to herself and pinched the bridge of her nose.
say I told you so…”
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commoner, generally speaking, though it is also used to refer to first year
military cadets in some cases.