Survival Of The Fittest

((Roberta Chen continued from what you are in the dark))

Okay. Homework sucked. That was just sometimes all there was to it.

Roberta gnawed on her pen, leaving her actual lunch untouched. It was early enough that the cafeteria wasn’t crowded yet, but that would last minutes more at best. Maybe she should eat and get out of there as quick as possible, but… ugh...

She’d tried to work on this last night, she had, but… ugh she could just be doing so many other things. Like literally anything that wasn’t homework.

Well, her answer to question 13 was now a picture of a stick figure in a cowboy hat, so she should probably just hope the teacher didn’t bother to collect it.

Roberta dropped her pen and picked up her sandwich, getting to work at eating as quick as humanely possible.

You know what's worse than Homework? Manowar.

Manowar sucks.

((Spike Havighurst continued from the library thread))

Manowar was like the Nickelback of the 80's. Spike despised that shit. Spike was a true metalhead who loved Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden rocks. Manowar sucks. You get the point.

That was why Spike wore his Iron Maiden shirt proudly. He liked the design of it, the skeletons on it, it representing his taste of music and it showing off his muscles didn't hurt either.

Spike looked around the cafeteria, searching for a place to sit down to relax. Usually, he would go to the library to relax and chill but the cafeteria was quite empty. And man, last time he went to the library someone crashed a shelf. Juniors. Spike was glad when he didn't have to deal with all the kids.

Spike spotted a tiny girl who was eating a sandwich and decided to join her table. He nodded silently, with a friendly smile and brought out his own lunchbox.

((Dawn Montogomery continued from Ain't Nobody Home Tonight))

With nimble steps, Dawn made her way into the cafeteria. Leaving the class a little early to get here in time might have been a little bit much, but Dawn considered it appropriate and Mr Graham had approved. She wanted to make sure that she could catch her target at a moment when the room wasn't too busy.

Carefully she scanned the room. Whenever someone saw her, she would give them a friendly wink, but she wasn't her to chat with her usual contacts.

It wasn't long until Dawn saw her target.

She made her way to the table Roberta and Spike sat on, careful to keep the box in her hand safe.

"Hi there!"

Too late. Someone had turned up. Well, that was on her for trying to eat and study at the same time. Now there was a thirty-year-old sitting with her. No, wait. Wasn’t he in one of her classes? Probably. Roberta squinted at him, mouth full of sandwich.

Iron Maiden shirt. Festival bracelets. Music fan. Not just wearing it because it had skulls on it, then.

Roberta nodded slightly. “Iron Maiden. Neat,” she said in a tone that might qualify as gruff if she was bigger, once she’d swallowed her mouthful of food.

A greeting. Oh. Dawn.

Roberta hadn’t talked to her in a while, not since the workshop. She didn’t remember all too well what they’d talked about, except that Dawn had gotten all weird and started staring at her hands. What’d she want? Roberta had figured she’d scared the girl off, or at least that she’d done her usual thing of yelling and then being like ‘wait, fuck’ enough that Dawn had gone to pay attention to other things.

“Er… heyyy?” Roberta said, somewhat sheepishly.

Tiny girl paid attention to the shirt and commented it. Yah no. She probably only knows The Trooper, no chance she actually knew them. While Spike was opening up his lunchbox and brought out his cutlery, a new girl, Dawn from the Student Health Association, appeared.

Spike filled his spoon with rice and didn't mind the interaction the two girls were having. Though it was kinda odd how uncomfortable the tiny girl was greeting Dawn.

The boy, a classmate named Spike, seemed engrossed in his food, so Dawn only threw a quick "Nice shirt!" in his direction before setting her sight on Roberta once more.

"I know it took a bit longer than expected. Halloween needed top get prepared and a few other projects had harsher deadlines. But I believe the result speaks for itself."

With a beaming smile, she placed the box right in front of Roberta on the table.

"Here you go."

Deadlines? Box? Eh?

What was Dawn talking about, and why couldn’t Roberta remember a damn thing about it? Sure, she zoned out sometimes, but… she would think she’d have paid attention enough to something that involved boxes or deadlines.

“Um...” Roberta gingerly peered at the box. “Thank… you? What’s the occasion?”

She reached out very slowly, like the box was going to explode on her, one hand tugging at the corner of it without actually opening it.

"Thanks," he mumbled to Dawn, while chewing down the meat. She probably hasn't even heard a single Iron Maiden song, but whatever, a compliment's a compliment.

Spike continued being in the background and stared at the mysterious box.

The occasion?

Dawn giggled. "Don't worry, let's just say it is for your next birthday or something."

As always when she gave out presents, she highly anticipated the reaction of the recipient. Especially when she had made the present herself.

While still smiling, she lightly pushed the box a bit closer to Roberta.

God, Roberta was not looking forward to being twenty. It felt wrong, and would feel more wrong still if she was still in high school by then.

Roberta eyed the box for a moment longer before she gingerly opened it. Inside the box were a pair of knitted gloves, the same pink as the crocheted headband she often wore. Roberta’s brain ticked for a few moments, pulling up scraps of their last conversation, before it clicked.

“Oh! That’s why you were--” Roberta instinctively clasped one hand over the other, her thumb rubbing nervously over one of the old knife scars on her fingers. “That’s… uh… sorry, last time we talked, I didn’t actually… hear some of what you said last time… I just thought you were staring at my hands to be weird.”

She was now pink in the face and staring downwards at the gloves, fiddling with her hands still, before she reached out and picked them up.

“They’re… they’re nice. Are you sure? I’m not a knitter, but… they must have taken a while...”

She was having trouble looking up, her normally brash tone a little more timid.

So the girls were handing out presents, but it was none of Spike's business, so he stayed out of it and continued eating his meal.

Seeing the otherwise stern Roberta flustered was kinda cute in a childish way, but Dawn was tactful enough not to point it out.

"Don't worry," she handwaved Roberta's worries. "I like knitting stuff and had some spare materials around.

"Look, I even got finished just in time for the senior trip next week."

Roberta kept her eyes down for a little longer, still pink in the face.

Slowly, she tugged one of the gloves on. It fit well, and covering up the signs of past stupidity on her hands was a bonus.

"Then... I'll wear them for sure." A little smile, rare to see on Roberta's perpetually grouchy face, flickered across it. "Um... th-thank you."

At this point, she remembered... oh right, there was someone else at the table. She looked up at Spike, then back away again.

"...thefuckyoulookingat," she mumbled under her breath, mostly inaudible.

Dawn was glad that the gloves seemed to fit. Her visual judgment had triumphed once more.

"Glad to hear that," she told Roberta. "But now I think I have distracted you from your work long enough. Surely we will see each other on the trip. Until then, have a nice day!"

With that, Dawn left the place after a wink to both Roberta and the boy. She wasn't the best at goodbyes, so she tended to keep things brief.

Walking through the hallwayys, she found herself humming a happy melody.

((Dawn Montogomery continued elsewhere))