*Bing-Bong!* Daria stood on the doorstep of her…friends house, rubbing her temples in an attempt to ease the frustration she felt.
*whumf* “Hey Daria.”
The bespectacled teen jumped, surprised by the martial artist’s sudden entrance. “…do I want to know where you just came from?”
Ranma grinned. “The roof. I like watching the stars.”
The brunette glanced up at the third story of the house, then the twinkling dots scattered across the black velvet of the night sky. “Mind if I join you?”
“Sure.” He pushed open the ornate front doors and waved her in. “I’ll have to ask you to take off your boots, though; I’d like to keep my shiny new hardwood floors as clean as possible for as long as possible.”
“I guess I can understand that.” She sat down on a convenient bench in the tiled entrance and tugged off her Doc Martens, replacing them with a spare pair of slippers. Feeling somewhat naked and light-footed without her favourite butt-kickers, Daria padded into the house after Ranma, looking around as she went. “This is a nice place you’ve got here. Open spaces, tasteful decorating…and a really big screen TV.” She stopped to admire the huge entertainment system and called out to Ranma, who was now in the kitchen. “Does that monster have cable?”
“Apparently. Can I get you a drink? Tea, coke, water…?”
She leaned in close, studying an ornate rack of bladed weapons. “Coke is fine. Are these swords decorative or functional?”
Ranma strolled in and handed her a can of coke. “Both. Here you go.”
“Thanks. So, which way to the roof?”
The amnesic warrior led her to a paper sliding door near the centre of the house and slid it aside, revealing a spiral staircase. “Up, of course.”
Her retort was predictably dry. “Funny.”
Each floor of Ranma’s house was smaller than the one beneath it; the first floor housed a lounge room, kitchen, dining room, lavatory, and a large combination laundry and Japanese-style bathroom. The second floor had the main bedroom, an entertainment room, a more conventional bathroom, and a spare bedroom, and the top floor held only a single decently sized study/library. However, the stairs didn’t stop at the third floor, they kept going to the roof, where a ten foot by ten foot deck gave a spectacular view of Lawndale.
Guess where Ranma and Daria are?
…no, they’re on the deck, you perverts.
…and they’re not doing THAT either!
God, you people have one-track minds…
The two teens reclined on a pair of deckchairs, sipping their drinks and watching the sky in a companionable silence. Eventually, Ranma decided to break that silence. “I heard shouting.”
“Hearing voices can be a sign of mental instability.”
“…I heard shouting coming from your house. I have good hearing, and your mother has good lungs.”
Daria sighed. “Figures. If you must know, the school called my parents to discuss the psych test I took today. They seem to think I have low self-esteem, so now they want me to take a self-esteem building class in the afternoons.”
Ranma frowned. “And by ‘low self-esteem’ they mean…”
“They think I criticise myself too much, but I really just criticise everybody else.”
The pigtailed martial artist thought it over for a while, then shrugged in the darkness. “Well, whoever they put in charge of this class has to know what they’re doing. All you need to do is convince them that your self-esteem is fine, and they should let you go.”
Daria shivered, zipping up her coat before answering. “For some reason, I don’t think I’ll be that lucky…”
If she had been a less composed person, Daria would have screamed.
“Esteem... a teen. They don't really rhyme, do they? The sounds don't quite mesh. And that, in fact, is often the case when it comes to teens and esteem. The two just don't seem to go together. But we are here to begin realizing your actuality, and when we do, each and every one of you will be able to stand proudly and proclaim, ‘I am.’ Now, before we-”
“Excuse me, I have a question.”
The human marshmallow seemed stunned at the interruption. “I’m…I’m sorry, but question and answer time is later.”
Daria wasn’t deterred for an instant. “I’d like to know what ‘realizing your actuality’ means.”
Mr O’Neill stammered, trying to vocalise an answer that he simply didn’t have. “It means...well…look, just let me get through this part, okay? Then there'll be a video!”
Daria opened her mouth to respond, but an amused voice murmuring in her ear silenced her. “He doesn't know what it means; he's got the speech memorized. Just sit back and enjoy the nice man's soothing voice.”
Daria turned in her seat and came nose-to-nose with the girl behind her, a pair of startlingly blue eyes twinkling in amusement mere centimetres away. She pulled back a little to find the eyes set in an attractive face wreathed with silky, inky black, chin-length hair. “How am I supposed to pass this class if I don't know what he's talking about?”
The mystery girl grinned. “I can fill you in later. I've taken this course six times, so I know what I’m talking about.”
After the class was over, Daria’s new acquaintance had introduced herself as Jane Lane, Artiste Extraordinaire. The energetic artist was now laying out the severely overused outline of the self-esteem class while the two of them walked through the halls of Lawndale High. “…and once we’re finished with the role-playing, they take the guys and the gals into separate rooms, and a female counsellor talks to us about body image.” The two girls blinked as they stepped out into the afternoon sun. Jane glanced around, slightly surprised. “Huh. The way that Ranma guy has been following you around, I half expected him to be waiting out here for you.”
“He was going to wait outside the classroom, but one of the wheels of Kevin’s jeep burst, and Mack asked Ranma if he could help change it.”
Jane grinned. “Wow, you’ve got him trained well. So, he knows cars?”
“I’m confident that he knows what a car is.”
The raven-haired girl frowned. “Then how does Cap’n Mack expect him to help?”
“Now that is a cool trick.”
The ‘trick’ Jane was talking about was Ranma holding the back half of the jeep up in the air while Mack replaced the damaged tyre.
Ranma was, quite naturally, clueless. “What trick?”
Jane grinned and started poking around the jeep, looking at it from all different directions as she tried to figure out how Ranma was doing it. After peeking under the vehicle and waving her arms around in search of wires, she had to concede defeat. “Alright, alright, I give up! Now tell me how you’re doing that!”
After staring at the crazy girl for a moment, Ranma turned to his smirking friend. “Daria, what is she talking about?”
Mack grunted as he tightened the last bolt. “There, that should do it! Thanks Ranma, you can put it down now.”
“Right.”
Jane watched as Ranma gently lowered the jeep’s wheels back to the ground. “No, seriously, how did you do that?”
“I just grabbed the tow bar and lifted.”
Jane stared at him for a moment before she scampered around to the back of the jeep, nudged Ranma aside, and grabbing the tow bar. “HHHNNNNNGGGGHH! HHRRRRRGGHHHH!”
“…maybe you should stop before you hurt yourself.”
Jane stepped back, shaking the feeling back into her hands and glaring at the jeep in consternation. “I’ll lift you yet, my pretty.”
Mack chuckled as he wiped his hands off on a rag that looked suspiciously like one of Kevin’s shirts. “I’m going to go find Kevin and tell him I’m finished. Knowing him, he’s probably under the bleachers with some random cheerleader.” He picked up his bag and made to leave, but a voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Just out of curiosity, how did you get suckered into doing this for our dear QB?”
The football Captain turned to Daria to answer. “Do you really want Kevin to start driving a car he repairs himself?” He waved and turned back away, jogging towards the oval.
“…Point taken.”
“So, with the exception of more than a decade of combat training, you’ve completely forgotten everything about yourself, right?”
Ranma nodded, his mouth too full of pizza for a verbal response to be possible.
“Damn.” Jane took a bite of her own pizza, chewing it thoughtfully, before swallowing and turning to Daria. “Betcha $50 he’s a genetically enhanced super soldier, let loose from the lab to see how he deals with freedom.”
Daria smirked. “I say he’s an alien sleeper unit, waiting for the signal to attack.” The brunette turned serious. “Anyway, about O’Neill’s self-esteem class…”
“Right. Well, you can forget everything I told you about the class, because the ‘Final Exam’ consists of about half a dozen incomplete statements that you have to complete. In theory, if you’ve embraced these statements, your self-esteem will soar like an eagle.”
Ranma swallowed mightily, then spoke up. “If it’s that easy, then why have you repeated the class so many times?”
“I like pretending to have low self-esteem. It makes me feel special.”
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(Posted Fri, 06 May 2005 20:30)
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