Last Vacation Days

[greenisthenewblack]

Who: Shego and YOU
What: Trying to pretend everything's normal
Where: Espresso Yourself
When: Jan 3rd, mid-morning to mid-afternoon

[Winter vacation is drawing to a close, which means that Sheila really should be going over her lesson plans and figuring out new ways to snap students out of the post-holiday doldrums. So she'd gathered up her papers and notebook and headed out to her favorite little coffee spot to do just that.]

[And yet, even after she's settled at a table, her notes in front of her and a ridiculously large mocha in hand, nothing seems to be getting done. See, a couple days ago she stumbled across the network. It's proving... extremely distracting. She hasn't quite convinced herself to jump in, yet, but she's watching, reading, and trying to figure out if she's just plain lost it.]

[This results in a lot of very intent scowling at her notebook, and not much actual work.]

Comments

[seishindairingun]

[Inga could claim that she'd stepped on a pen or something but NOPE; in truth she'd just tripped on her own two feet, dropping her coffee onto the nice lady's table.]

Sorry—!

[greenisthenewblack]

Hey, watch it!

[Sheila snatched the papers away, mood turning south in an instant. Man, she really needed to watch her temper lately.]

Walk much?

[seishindairingun]

Sorry...

[There are some napkins in her pocket, she hastily takes them out and dabs at the coffee.]

I swear I'm not normally so clumsy, I guess I've had a lot on my mind lately—the earthquake and the network and— [Hey Inga shut up the network thing is supposed to be a secret]

I mean— [cough] Sorry... Did any get on your clothes?

[greenisthenewblack]

Huh.

[Sheila snags some napkins someone abandoned on the next table and starts wiping the spill away from her papers. She watches the woman suspiciously out of the corner of her eye.]

What, you work for a television network or something? [She doubts it] Don't think anything's damaged, but geez, watch where you're going next time!

[seishindairingun]

Huh? Television...? [Wait no. What? Wait. Oh, geez, if it were just an (justifed) angry person she could deal with it, but she hasn't had to keep a heavy-duty secret since forever.]

Uh, no. Just something I... was looking up. [And it caused her to space out because...] It was pretty... silly, actually, you know, conspiracy theories about Thunder Corp and gangs and... [snake statues?] ...police. And stuff. Hard to believe— [INGA NO] —I mean, I'm sure it's nothing. [SHUTTING UP NOW]

[She straightens, putting on her customer service face.] Sorry again. If there's anything I can do...?

[charcoalfeather]

[Coffee certainly wasn't tea, but it did keep you up twice as long. Which was why Rakka was here. Her cup was held in both hands as she made her way through the shop until she stopped. Her eyes fell upon the teacher that she saw sometimes at school.]

Uh... miss Go? Are you... okay?

[greenisthenewblack]

Mmhmm.

[For a moment, Sheila doesn't seem to realize she's been addressed, despite the automatic response. Then she jumps a little, slamming her notebook shut on the page with the strange... network thing.]

Uh, I mean, yeah, sure. Just... school stuff. Rakka, isn't it?

[She was usually okay with names.]

[charcoalfeather]

[She nods.]

Y-yeah, you're my history teacher. At school.

How... how are you?

[greenisthenewblack]

[And not one of the troublemakers, despite being a bit stand-offish sometimes. Sheila could get that.]

Oh, fine, fine. Getting the kinks worked out of my lesson plan. It's always a job and a half to get you kids back into learning mode after the holidays.

You?

[dragon_blossom]

[ Ah.

Miss Go.

Teacher Marina hasn't had yet. Don't know if cool or pain in the ass. Assume careful observation. Maybe she's got a hot date that Marina can gossip about?

...probably not. ]

[greenisthenewblack]

[A few minutes go by before Sheila realizes she's being watched. She barely glances up as she sips her mocha.]

Y'want something, kid? Otherwise, take a picture.

[She carefully places her actual work over the page she has the network open on.]

[dragon_blossom]

Maybe I will.

[ She's texting on her phone. It would be easy!

And weird. But she has to be confrontational and a jerk. ]

[greenisthenewblack]

[It's a shame arguing with the students isn't something that goes over well, even on school breaks.]

[A real shame.]

Yeah, whatever. Something I can help you with, kiddo?

[grannyfucker]

[Jovan's there too, getting his usual coffee order. As the drink is finished and offered to him, he's bundling himself back up in his winter clothes so that he can grab the coffee and head back to his apartment like he usually does. But this time, as he makes his way out of the cafe, he spots a familiar face and stops dead in his tracks. He tries to look her over discreetly, to try and make sure that it is, in fact, who he thinks it is, and not just some lady who looks very similar.

Well. The resemblance is uncanny. Might as well say something and check, right? If it's not her, then no one will notice and he can head home, no embarrassment caused to anyone.]

...Miss Go?

[greenisthenewblack]

[For once, she's actually writing up her lesson plan instead of spying on all these weirdos on that probably-hallucinated network. She looks up at someone saying her name, and it takes her a moment to place him, but she gets there.]

Jovan?

Hey, it is you! Sit down, kiddo, what've you been doing with yourself?

[Sheila pats the empty chair at her table, setting her notes aside.]

And you're not my student anymore, so skip the Miss Go stuff, mmkay?

[grannyfucker]

[Well this isn't what he expected to be doing with his afternoon. He sets his coffee down on the table and takes a seat, unbuttoning his coat.]

Oh, uh, yeah--Sheila, right?

[Three years out of high school, and he still can't see his former teachers as anything other than his teachers. It makes sense, to call her by her first name now, but it still feels weird.]

Well...I've been going to LCU since finishing high school, I'm doing public policy and English. It's pretty okay, nothing too exciting or crazy though.

[ "Also I was a zombie last week and had to figure out how to reattach my arm. And I think I was a murderer in a past life." But he's not about to mention that part of it.]

[greenisthenewblack]

Aw, you remembered! That's sweet. Doing well, I imagine.

[The guy was always a straight-A student in her class.]

Nothing exciting sounds pretty good to me, honestly. I've got a few - uh - characters, this year.

[And even some of her good students had been acting up lately. She hoped it wasn't all connected to the network that she totally wasn't hallucinating whenever she wrote a certain string of numbers in her day planner. Or notebook. Or... whatever.]

[centurian]

[ Gerald has been having his own crisis of sanity ever since he discovered the network a little less than a week ago. He's glanced at it a few times since then, and each time, he's been more and more convinced that he's had some kind of nervous breakdown.

Which... didn't quite bode well for him doing his job. Or the fact that his "laryngitis" still hadn't quite cleared up.

To make matters worse, (or at least slightly more awkward and incredibly cliché) on his morning coffee run, he just so happened to walk into a coffee shop containing someone he didn't quite expect to see again.

Or, to be more specific, a certain someone that he used to date once upon a time, when everything still made sense. A childish part of him debated running for the door, but the rational part of him knew that would just be idiotic. So, he did what anyone might do. He walked up to her, smiling, and decided to catch up. ]

Hey. So... um... fancy seeing you here.

[ ...Smooth, Vakarian. Real smooth.

Crap. ]

[greenisthenewblack]

Gerry?

[Sheila looks somewhere between surprised and amused as she hastily flips to another page in her notebook.]

Oh, yeah, it's almost like I live in this city or something. What the hell'd you do to your voice?

[Blunt, as always, but she doesn't seem angry to see him. Gerald was a nice guy, when she knew him. Probably too nice, for her.]

[centurian]

[ He gives her an apologetic smile, knowing full well just how... off he's sounding. ]

I'm glad it is you. If it'd turned out to be your... clone or... unknown twin or something... things might've been awkward.

[ Their relationship had ended on a decent note, but for some reason, Gerald found a... really unfortunate amount of awkwardness surfacing. When people asked him why he didn't date all that much?

As much as he hated to admit it, might be the reason. ]

Well, there was some yelling. And then... [ And then I found out that what I thought was laryngitis might be something else entirely. Oh, and there's a network that can connect to paper, so I'm not sure if I'm suffering from a nervous breakdown. How are you? ] ...I threw out my voice. You know how it goes.

[ another pause ]

You wouldn't happen to know a good remedy for laryngitis, would you?

[greenisthenewblack]

Pfft. Who'd want to clone me. [Okay, he was still really fun to tease, at least. Definitely wasn't going to wind up dating the guy again, but he was just so utterly hopeless around a pretty face. And Sheila considered herself quite pretty, thanks.]

Well, that sucks. Should sort itself out in a few days though, right? Drink some tea with honey, or something. [Thank god she'd never lost her voice. It was hard enough getting the kids' attention most days when she could shout over them.]

Life treating you okay, besides sounding like you've got a kazoo stuck in your throat?

[somesayinfire]

[in one of Brooke's first excursions out of her house since the earthquake, she's decided to check out a coffee place she'd never been to before. Starbucks was fine and all, but sometimes you don't feel like paying eight bucks for a drink with a whole lot of fake Italian in the name.]

[chai latte in hand, she sits down in one of those comfy chairs and pulls out a copy of one of Rachel Roth's more obscure novels. she's read it before, but it is one of her favorites. still, she doesn't get very far without noticing how intensely the person at a nearby table is glaring at her notebook. of course, she has no idea what's going on, but knowing the clientele at this kind of place, she can take a guess. she smiles over the pages of her book.]

Characters not doing what you want them to?

[greenisthenewblack]

[Sheila gives her an odd look, and tilts her notebook away in an attempt to hide the network.]

Uh, no. Working on something for my classes, actually.

[Who asked you, anyway, kid?] Sorry, that not coffee shop hipster enough for you?

[somesayinfire]

Hey, just taking a guess. [Brooke laughs quietly, trying to shrug off the hostility and continue a conversation with someone who probably doesn't want one right now.]

Non-trad? That's cool. What are you studying?

[greenisthenewblack]

...teaching, actually. High school history.

[She was a cheery one, wasn't she?]