Driveby411's Occasional Moment of Genius

Fanfiction

2009-07-21T08:59:21Z

It finally happened, I wrote a fanfiction again for the first time in over a year! Here it is!

Title: "A Heart That Wouldn’t Quit”

Fandom: X-Men: Evolution

Characters: Kitty, Lance, Ororo Munroe

Word Count: 2215

Rating: PG, one curse word, emotional meltdown

Summary: Lance breaks up with Kitty for good, forever, because he can’t stop loving her.

This breakup had been on his end. During the middle of dinner Kitty’s cell phone- a recent birthday present from her parents in Illinois- vibrated in her pocket. She had excused herself under the illusion of needing to go to the restroom just so she could check who it was, and ran down the hall to the kitchen when the name ‘Lance’ showed on the screen. She barely caught the call in time, one more vibration and it would have gone to her voicemail.

“Hello? Lance?” she gasped, trying to catch her breath. The phone was silent on the other end for a moment before he spoke up.

“Kitty, is there any way we can meet up? I need to talk to you, it’s important.” He said quietly. She frowned a little at his strange tone. It wasn’t unusual for Lance to be vague during their phone calls on the mansion’s phones because the odds of someone listening in were high, but on her private cell phone it seemed unnecessary.

“I guess so, but only after dinner. Since it’s almost eight I’ll have to bring someone, the Prof doesn’t like us out alone after dark. Or ever, actually.”

“I’d rather us be alone for this.”

Kitty froze for half a second while her brain simultaneously stopped and kicked into overdrive at the same time. “Is something wrong? Are you in jail? What did you do?”

Lance sighed. “That reaction, that’s why I want to talk to you in person. You just assume I’m in some kind of trouble. Can we meet at that crappy little coffee place you like around 8:30?”

“I can’t leave the grounds unless I bring somebody, Lance. It’s a safety thing. And that ‘crappy little coffee place’ has really good green tea, thank you.”

“Fine. Try to bring someone who won’t go blabbing as soon as you leave.”

“ ‘Blabbing’? Come on, Lance, just because we all take a healthy interest in each other’s lives-.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it- see, now we’re fighting. Again. Just like usual.”

“What are you saying? You keep saying things like that-.” Kitty bit her lip. He had, within the space of a few minutes, accused her of suspecting him of causing trouble and picking fights over silly things. This never bode well for their relationship. It was about this point that Kitty would call it off before he did something to hurt her…

Before he did something to hurt her. She didn’t realize until her internal monologue halted what she’d been thinking. She was always the one to call it quits on him, even when- especially when- he promised to change. He never did. They both knew it was a futile promise, and that it was really just a step in their little hateful romance. There was too much pressure in their separate lives for anything less than total harmony, and neither one of them felt particularly harmonious after a few hours in each others’ presence, especially with their lifestyles pulling them apart.

He said she was too good for him, to stop wasting her time crying over him, but his words sounded false. Lance wasn’t that thoughtful. He generally didn’t think more than a few days ahead at a time, claiming it wasn’t being disorganized, it was so he didn’t have to think about the future. This didn’t make sense to Kitty- the future isn’t a set path, it’s never too late to change it, to improve it. There were a lot of flaws in Lance’s logic like that. When they were getting along it was easier to ignore them, but when apart, whether it just be because of curfew, or a breakup, or regular old physical distance, they expanded and grew until she couldn’t think of any positive traits to him at all.

There was only the sarcasm, the anger, the barely repressed rage…and that subtle resignation to despair that only came out when Lance thought nobody was paying attention. Kitty wondered why he hid it, and why it was there to begin with. She knew his story, how his life had gone so far, but did not know why he had given up on himself. She could not place the exact moment when he had stopped talking about what he was going to do tomorrow and instead spoke of what he had done wrong in the past.

“Are you going to be there or what?” Lance sounded irritated as he interrupted both her sentence and her train of thought. Kitty nodded anxiously, then remembered she was on the phone and told him she would. He hung up. No goodbye, no ‘see you later’, just a click and then the silence of a disconnected call.

She shivered a little at the feeling of foreboding she felt. Not that anything would go wrong, just that she was going to hear something she really didn’t want to at 8:30 at that crappy little coffee place. Unfortunately, dinner still waited and even though her appetite was thoroughly gone, she had left the table under the pretense of going to the bathroom and must return.

So she did, noticeably quieter than before despite her efforts to hide it. When dinner was over and everyone was either cleaning up or running away so they didn’t have to help, Kitty got permission and a travel buddy under the condition that she was not, at any point or in any way, to touch the driver’s side of the vehicle. Unfortunately, her travel buddy was Ororo Munroe, since she needed to run into town for a few gardening supplies anyway. The awkwardness of having an adult with her on her probable breakup date with Lance almost made her call Lance back and cancel, but right as she finished dialing the Brotherhood’s house number she hung up again, remembering Lance’s odd quiet tone.

Besides, if it was a breakup date it was going to be awkward anyway, so why not bring an adult along? Ms. Munroe promised to sit well away from wherever Lance and Kitty did, and since that was the best offer Kitty felt it was possible to make, she accepted.

The crappy little coffee place was slow since it closed around nine, the last customers of the night beginning to wrap up their doings and head out, when Kitty and Ms. Munroe entered. Lance glanced up from a booth near the door, did a double take, then sighed with a frown as Kitty neared him. Ms. Munroe ordered a cup of whatever they had left and sat at the counter, leaving the two teens alone as well as she could by mansion rules.

“Of all the people you could have dragged along it was one of the teachers?” Lance grumbled in lieu of a hello. Kitty narrowed her eyes.

“At least she won’t ‘blab’ about it,” she shot back. Wow, she thought, what a disillusioned couple we make. They sat in silence for a moment.

“I’m not really sure how to say this, but I’ve been thinking about it and even though it feels wrong, I think it’s the right thing to do.” Lance said suddenly, leaning forward intently. Kitty leaned forward too, unnerved by the sudden calm determination in his eyes.

“Okay,” she said when he didn’t speak again. He twitched a little at her voice, then took a deep breath.

“I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think…damn it!” He pounded one of his hands with the other in an effort to beat it out of himself. “Say it, just say it. Kitty, I really do…care. About you. I….”

He stared at the cheap stained table severely for several moments, before suddenly looking her dead in the eyes. “I love you.”

Kitty blinked in surprise at this, but remained silent.

“I do. I love you. It’s…incredible, really. And I think this is why we need to call it quits. For real. Forever.”

Ah, so he was breaking up with her after all. What a strange way to do it. The fourth of Kitty that wasn’t still in shock from Lance admitting that not only did he have feelings for her but he outright loved her was sort of relieved that this was finally happening for some strange reason.

“I mean, we suck together. We’re not really right for each other. As friends, sure. But not like…this. Not as a boyfriend-girlfriend thing. You really are way better than me,” he looked back down at the table, the walls, Ms. Munroe, anywhere but at Kitty, “And I keep lying to you, and getting in trouble and expecting you to be there for me when I’m not there for you, and it just…it keeps happening, and it’s wrong.

“I want to be around you all the time, and when we’re not together I always thing about you. ‘What would Kitty think of this?’ ‘Would Kitty laugh at that joke?’ And even though my heart won’t quit, my brain knows it’ll never work. It’s over for good this time, I promise. Because if my heart won’t quit loving you, then yours probably isn’t going to stop pitying me.”

Lance stared out the window, seeing something that was probably only in his head, and Kitty stared at Lance, too startled to do anything else. This was not at all what she had expected.

“So…goodbye, Kitty Pryde. Someday if I’m ever worth something I’ll look you up.” He stood up, leaving Kitty staring at the booth seat where he had been for a second or two before she blinked and stood up as well. Lance hesitated, then awkwardly held out his hand. After a moment Kitty shook it, still wordless. What was there to say to that?

“Goodbye, Lance Alvers,” she finally whispered, surprising herself with how broken her voice sounded. He looked at her longingly for a few seconds more, then glanced away with a brief, relieved grin, one Kitty hadn’t seen in a very long time, and left.

Kitty wasn’t sure how long she stood there, her right arm slightly extended from the handshake, until Ms. Munroe put her arm around her shoulder and handed her a tissue. Kitty glanced down at it in surprise, then noticed that her face felt wet. How long had she stood there in that horrible little café, crying? It wasn’t so much that Lance finally was leaving her, but the words he had said.

“If my heart won’t quit loving you, then yours probably isn’t going to stop pitying me.” He had tried to stop loving her and refused to. Couldn’t, even. And that hurt more than anything else, knowing she had his love all along and didn’t even realize it, and knowing on a deeper level that he was completely right to leave her. Was it pity she felt for him? Yes, something deep in her answered. When had her crush turned to pity? She couldn’t think of the moment it had happened.

And why couldn’t she stop crying? Ms. Munroe must think she was like a baby or a silly girl getting dumped for the first time. Their drive back to the mansion was silent, gardening errands put aside. When Ms. Munroe had parked the car in the empty garage and turned it off, they sat in the dark for several minutes, Kitty still silently tearing up every few seconds.

Ms. Munroe glanced at the door to the mansion, at Kitty, and then wordlessly gave the girl a hug and showed her something very few of the mansion residents had seen- the secret way to her attic garden sanctuary. Kitty curled up between two exotic-looking leafy plants and took a little while longer to bawl her eyes out before determinedly lifting her chin and descending down the ladder to the top floor of the mansion like a soldier going to war.

Word has discreetly gone out to not mention anything odd about Kitty’s behavior or what had happened until she was ready to talk about it, and for once nearly everybody agreed to after the first few days of Kitty checking her phone every twenty seconds hopefully. Nothing changed, Lance did not call. She gathered the courage to ask Wanda about him at school, and found out he’d been so busy being somewhere else that even his housemates only glimpsed him a few times a week.

Whatever Lance was up to didn’t really matter to Kitty, not like it would have before. After a few weeks of moping and staring at the phone in the middle of the night, or hearing it ring and her heart lifting to her throat only to find out it was one of her parents, she started acting like her old self again. She became the same bubbly, cheerful girl her friends were used to. She wore even more pink than before.

However sometimes, in the middle of the night when she was feeling the most alone, Lance’s words would come back to haunt her one more time: “My heart won’t quit loving you.”

Impressions Part 2

2009-01-22T00:53:11Z

I have now been to all of my classes, and have come up with more that stood out to me about them:

1. On MWF, I have all my classes in rooms I've been in before. Only one of those classes was expected/on purpose. The one my statistics is in I had a budgeting class in last year, and the other room I had Spanish in last semester and have a different Spanish in it now. TR schedule is entirely new rooms- hence my lecture hall reaction in Part 1.

2. Mom says I'm too good for a dry erase board held together with tape. She told me to go get a new one. The beginning of this conversation had been me mentioning thumbtacks. You know where the randomness came from now.

3. Little asian men who teach math- I literally cannot hear this guy speak. He mumbles at the board, and lapses into silence, and when he talks it's too quiet for me to be able to hear with my HEARING PROBLEMS. Another reason the Man wants me to fork over several hundred dollars I don't have on hearing aides I don't entirely need yet. I'm not going to do it. So instead of paying attention to him talking about how to do chapter 1's homework, I did chapter 1's homework. He has an extremely strong accent that garbles his English almost beyond comprehension, for example: "confis"= "confidence", "infens"= "inference"

4. Google had a server problem- that was weird. I was trying to remember what my first hostel in London was last summer, and I had to retry several times over a few minutes before it worked again. I felt really lost and askew. I didn't find it either.

5. Obama's housecleaning methods- Interesting. Day 1 is entirely internal stuff, putting holds on salaries and policies on lobbying. I actually am very intrigued by this. It's going to be a lot harder to be corrupt soon. What will our politicians do with themselves after that happens? They may have to form their own constructive ideas on our issues instead of repeating whatever the highest payer says. Is this the downfall of capitalism? I will be keeping an eye on this over the next several years.

6. Showing Ryan, my very politically aware, CNN-watching, doomsday-pronouncing friend, the Reagan Oracle theory from Dana Carvey's "Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies" show last year, which is my top favorite comedy performance after Jeff Dunham's "Spark of Insanity". I love Reagan Oracle. He does now too. We then proceeded to watch Ross Perot youtube clips from 1992 and made fun of his voice.

That concludes my "Impressions" miniseries. Tune in later for more!

Impressions Part 1

2009-01-21T03:54:45Z

It was a very impressionable day. I'm not entirely sure why it's seemed so odd, aside from being productive, but it was. I have pinpointed a few things though-

1. The inaugeration- I missed it. I was in class. Since then I have read Obama's speech on MSN.com and I actually quite enjoyed it. It's a textbook example of what a powerful political speech is supposed to do- catch your interest, mention current issues, talk about what the country has done in the past that's a bigger deal than the current issues, make them seem solvable, inflate the people's egos and willingness, play on their patriotism, talk about what should be taken care of in both short and long term, mention the past hardships thing again to make it seem attainable, then leave you with a patriotic punch to the heart. I want to have that speechwriter's babies.

2. The wooden horses in the art building- mine wobbled. You have to straddle them and mine got unbearably uncomfortable after about half an hour. A few of the other students' horses had graffiti on them, but it wasn't artistic graffiti, it was clan marking graffiti (Madisonese for the stupid scribble something unintelligable to show whose turf it is and how 'cool' you are kind of defacement). In case you don't know the wooden horses are not actual wooden horses (I bet the Trojans wouldn't share any), they were the benches with the raised side to support an easel. Yeah.

3. The Krylon painting finish spray can says "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm."
So if I were to spray it in California I would inevitably get cancer and make mutant babies, but since I'm in New Mexico I'm in the clear? That was the best food for thought I've had in awhile.

4. My CJ110 class is in a real-life lecture hall. There are long rows of tables raised up on tiers, and the tables have ledges on the edges so nothing falls off onto the row below...I played my little bubble game on my cell phone for 45 minutes of the 90-minute-long class and it was everything I thought it would be.

5. Public relations majors are really, really annoying. I'm not sure if I actually belong in this major because so far out of the dozen plus PR majors I've encountered, I've only liked one of them to any degree at all. The rest are really high-strung, preppy, OMGLOL!!!1 kind of people. In a few years I hope to get hired right in front of them.

6. My allergies ARE worse in New Mexico, I've decided. Not sure why. Don't care enough to find out. I have medicine.

So tomorrow I'll probably do a part 2 reflecting the other half of my schedule. Until then, see ya.

End of Semester

2008-12-09T02:25:10Z

What a crazy semester. Decent enough, just crazy as sin in multiple ways. For the sake of something to do (and to kill the hour until my CJ final presentation), I’m going to do a month-by-month playback. You don’t have to read it, but since I’m going through all the effort of writing you might as well.

August- Yikes. Where was I going to live? We came very close to getting me an apartment, especially since they took my single in Santa Clara and turned it into a double in Santa Ana a week and a half before school started, causing me to unpack literally half of my belongings and leave them behind. Again. But Daniel got a car (that is still having problems despite the Fayetteville Auto Park’s so-called “pre-owned car Inspection”), so I didn’t get an apartment under the assumption that I’d just move off campus in December. Also in August I had the bad scheduling from Hell, in which I inadvertently screwed myself over and had to change three of my classes to three different ones. Yay yellow carding! The third (or first) thing was my scholarship problem, in which my grade for freshman year totaled a 2.8 and my scholarship was revoked, appealed, and re-granted over the three weeks prior to school starting.

September- School, homework, the discovery that I would have had to literally pay over $1000 to leave campus over Christmas break, which meant I was stuck in the dorms, roommated, for at least four extra months. Amusing stories of how Daniel’s car wasn’t working very well.

October- Midterms, half of which I was okay with the grades of, the other half of which I didn’t technically fail but definitely are not bragging-worthy. Fall break, in which I visit Emily and watch two days flash by in about 20 minutes. I make the 50-mile drive from Santa Fe to Albuquerque in an hour and fifteen minutes, which is an average speed of 66 miles per hour (that was the parts in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. I averaged 85 on the highways. I FLEW. A sudden increase of homework.

November- I died in November. The homework took over my life, and I ran out of dining dollars. Went home for Thanksgiving, didn’t sleep much, ate too much. It balances out. Returned in school and promptly hit several academic roadblocks.

December- Very crazed beginning, but settling down now that I’m hitting finals rather than homework. I have two today that will be over relatively quickly, and then I have a presentation on Friday, a test on Tuesday, and a test on Thursday. I go home next Thursday as well, and will remain there until the spring when I return to school and hopefully get that job at Staples.

Ya

2008-11-02T20:38:32Z

Not sure why I'm so bad at updating this blog. I think it goes back to the whole nobody-reads-it thing. Oh well. Nearly everything I post I do so in several locations. Anyway. This school year:

New bike, finally, yesterday. Purple Trek 820. Piece of heaven. $80 u-lock so no cholo friggin' steals it like my last bike.
Lots of writing- two Spanish classes, an English class, a communications class (and much, much more!) so my 'school' folder looks like it has elephantitis.
Lots of deviantart action- go look: www.deviantart.com/~helloparadise or something like that.
Very little personal relaxation time.
Thanksgiving coming up- 3 1/2 weeks!
Christmas coming up- 1.5 months or so!
Have essays and tests on a monthly basis this semester, so constantly working/studying for something or other. Used first whole pack of index cards, only have two more.
Etc.

I just realized I could probably go do my laundry without much laundry-room washer availability throwdowns, so I'm off again. See ya.

The Purging of the Red parts 2- 4

2008-10-13T03:45:33Z

Title: The Purging of the Red, Part 2

Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Characters: X23, Jean, mansion females

Prompt: # , Red
Word Count:
Rating: G
Summary: The girls get tired of Jean lording her naturally luscious red hair over them.

“Shh!” someone giggled.

“Quiet, she may hear us,” Rogue muttered, slapping at the wall by the door blindly until the switch flipped on, illuminating the garage.

“Which car are we taking?” Kurt asked quietly, scanning what was available.

“I guess Jean’s van. It’s the only one big enough for all of us,” Kitty said. The girls of the X-Men and Kurt quietly snuck over to the nondescript grey van.

“I’m driving,” Kurt said, opening the front door.

“What, why? I just got my license, I can drive,” Kitty whispered indignantly.

“Because we want to live,” Tabby said, shoving Laura into the van and following, “Amara, help me pin her down.”

“I’m the only guy here, and this is sort of awkward for me since I already have a wonderful girlfriend. The least you could do is let me drive to make up for it.” Kurt gently pushed Kitty towards the back seats, and hopped in the driver’s seat. Rogue, who as conspirator got shotgun, manually opened the garage door to avoid bringing attention to their departure. Once Kurt had eased the van onto the long driveway, Rogue shut the garage door and hopped in.

It only took about twenty minutes to get to the mall thanks to the lack of traffic on the roads at this time of morning, but the mall was busy.

“So what are the odds of someone recognizing us? Isn’t Ms. Munroe out today too? What if she sees us?” Amara wondered out loud.

“Sees us what, buying hair dye? We’d just get a small lecture on our natural beauty and maybe a slushie or something. We’re just a bunch of teenage girls at a mall. It’s a great disguise because it’s true. Plus she’s at the grocery store.” Tabby replied. Laura followed them with an air of resignation, trying to ignore the nasty fast food smells and noise. Since it was a mall, some quick obligatory shopping was done, but the girls (leading Kurt and Laura) were quick to converge in one of the small general stores in one of the mall’s many halls.

“Okay, so what color do we want to get? Pretty much every available shade is here somewhere.” Rogue muttered, slowly pacing the aisle studying all the options.

“Here’s a boring dirty blonde,” Rahne said. Rogue and Tabby glanced at it for a moment and dismissed it just as quickly.

“No, we want something…worse,” Tabby muttered, “Since we can’t just shave her. It has to be a color that few people would want, and the few that do get it would never be able to pull it off because it’s so ugly….”

Laura felt her eyes drawn to a certain color against her will. She tried to look away before anyone else saw what color she was staring at, but it was too repulsive to look away from. Jubilee noticed her stare and looked at the dye.

“Oh…guys, this one!” she said happily, snatching the box off the shelf and waving it in the air. Laura slapped herself in disappointment as several of the girls patted her back in congratulations.

“Good job, Laura,” Rogue said, gently taking the box from Jubilee and almost caressing it, “Tonight, when Jean’s asleep, we have work to do.”

They finished their shopping with an air of triumph and got back to the mansion just in time for dinner.

At dinner, the intended victim of their plot chatted comfortably with them about school and life in general, unconsciously making some of the girls wonder if going through with the plan was such a great idea. Jean wasn’t a mean person. She was nice, and aside from a tendency to get all the New Mutant girls the same jewelry for Christmas each year, was thoughtful and generally a good person. It could be argued that she had few flaws, one of them being her tendency to assume others saw things the way she did, and another being that when she was around it was easier to actually enjoy being friends with her, while when she was gone it was too plain to see several of her personality flaws.

Which is why once dinner ended the girls, Laura, and Kurt had to have a huddle in Tabby and Amara’s room.

“I don’t think we should go through with this,” Rahne said nervously. “Jean may have better hair than all of us put together, but she’s really nice. I don’t think she’s aware of it.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve been living with her longer than the rest of you except Kitty, so I can say this with confidence. Jean Grey knows exactly how pretty she is, and she’s not afraid to use it when it suits her.” Rogue said firmly.

“I think that someone is going to wake up with ugly hair in the morning regardless of what’s decided here. This sounds like a lot of fun,” Tabby said, studying her nails casually.

“What are you talking about, you don’t even know where we hid the dye,” Jubilee said, “Only Rahne and I know where it is for security purposes, remember?”

“Where is it?” Tabby asked.

“In my sock drawer- oh, man!” Jubilee sat down and sulked.

“We’re going through with this,” Rogue said confidently. “She looked right at me and flipped her hair during dinner.”

“When was that?” Kurt asked, distracted from staring out the window.

“Right after we ran out of potatos. You didn’t see it? It was a huge hair flip!”

“I want to be one of the ones with my fingers in her hair when the dye sets in,” Tabby said dramatically, standing up.

“Of course. You hate Jean’s hair just as much as I do,” Rogue nodded, “So the two of us will do it. The rest of you will be on lookout or something.”

“What about Laura?” Kitty asked. Laura scowled at the desk she was sitting on.

“Laura’s going to be sound asleep in Logan’s room,” Laura said, “And therefore not be in trouble with the rest of you tomorrow. Unless Jean kills you and hides the bodies before the Professor is awake.”

“Logan lets you stay in his room?” Jubilee asked in surprise.

“Stay on topic here,” Rogue snapped her fingers in Jubilee’s face. “You’re going to tell us when she’s asleep so we can start the dying. I dyed my hair once in middle school and it took almost an hour to get done.”

“You used to dye your hair?” Jubilee asked in surprise again.

“Focus,” Tabby cried out in exasperation.

There was a knock at the door, and Bobby popped his head in. “It’s movie night, people. Are you going to watch with us? Dr. McCoy picks tonight, and he’s thinking one of those “Friday Night Lights” types of movies. Or “The Replacements”. Not sure. What are you all doing in here, anyway?”

“Um, yeah. Sure. We’ll be down in a minute, Bobby. We just need to…finish something,” Rogue said.

“Throw some extra popcorn in,” Kurt said lightly. Bobby glanced around once more, then shook his head and left, muttering about how weird girls and Germans are.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Rogue said, and quickly went over the details with the group until each member knew their roles by heart, then they went downstairs to enjoy the movie and pass the time until Jean went to sleep.