swerval_zero | OOC: Part the Second

"Too Much Hopeless Savages" takes place a few months later. Ginger's gone off to summer school at MIT, Henry and Twitch are blissfully together once more, and Nikki's mother is picketing the house. She's been suckered in by a preacher who claims the Hopeless-Savage house is a "Tectonic Rapture Pinnacle" or something like that. Arsenal and Twitch (and Arsenal's Claude and Henry, who happen to be brothers) are well out of it, on their way to Hong Kong for Arsenal to compete in a martial arts tournament and the H-Ses to meet Grandmother Shi, the matriarch of Claude and Henry's family. There are chunks of this plot I won't go into, as they don't concern Zero.

Unfortunately, Zero gets to listen to, "Two, four, six, eight, you dress weird and your son's not straight!" and the like all day. When she finally snaps and yells, "We are home!" down after a rousing round of "Punkers go home! Punkers go home!" someone calls her a slut and Nikki snaps. Dirk and Zero barely keep her from throwing a punch. They find out that Mr. Preacher's brother is a judge and has given him some sort of fancy paper that gives him the right to annoy them on their own property. Over dinner that night, they, along with Rat, hatch a cunning plan to leave until he goes away. Nikki convinces her mom to come along (to get her away from Mr. Preacher-Man).

There's a whole big thing with Arsenal & co., but the upshot is, they have a box and a bunch of secret agents want it back. Zero and most of her group wind up in protective custody, where Rat flirts a lot with a British spy lady, but not before Zero purchases a bird that speaks about twenty languages, who she names Fish. The bad guys nick Arsenal's Claude, and she goes on the lam for a day until she gets him back. Also, the art in this section is really bad and weird. Arsenal finally gets her Claude back, they're all reunited, and since Zero refuses to be parted from Fish, she winds up hanging out in quarantine for a month. Fish now not only speaks twenty languages, he is also starting to pick up Zero-Speak, or as it is colloquially known, Nonsense. The End.

Zero is at Fandom High because her parents are doing a world tour. They're currently in Europe.

She's removed from her support network--she doesn't even have her band, or her guitar. Her boyfriend's in Massachusetts. And she's one of the most vulnerable students here. No powers. No special skills. She can shoot (I figured her parents had her learn the basics so she could at least defend herself in a dire situation), but as established by the fact that she shot the librarian, she's not exactly the best shot in the world. Her flair for mischief's gotten her in trouble a few times already.

I've toned down her wordplay quite a bit, partly because I'm not that good at it, partly because, IC, Zero is worried no one will understand her if she talks weird. This is a new concern for her, but there are some pretty strange people at Fandom High. She's developing a major guilt complex, fueled by the events of the first trade ("I didn't even hear them take them!") and her killing the librarian. Yeah, it was temporary, but she didn't know that at the time.

Her relationship with Ginger is somewhat on the rocks. They haven't actually spoken except a fight while she was sick, and though I haven't mentioned this onscreen, he hasn't written back to her since that letter. So look out for developments on that front, if you're interested.

I think that's about it. Any questions?