The Luckiest Girl In The World

With her mom's kimchi recipe now in her possession, Kathy figured she should try to make some. Without a proper kimchi fridge, she couldn't make much, but she figured she could probably get away with one or two jars in the back of the fridge. With her mom's recipe in hand, her children behind her and the gijesa of her whole family on Monday (though her parents got short shrift compared to Sarah), family was kind of on her mind a lot.

Her usual strawberry Yakult had been swapped for banana milk and she had a bowl of injulmi rice balls to snack on when her hands weren't covered with red pepper flakes or salt. She sang as she worked, TARA and BTS and Super Junior blaring from her phone, dancing around the kitchen chopping vegetables, salting water, simmering the glutinous rice powder.

For the first time since she moved in, the house - or, at least, the kitchen - really smelled like home.

[Open for visitors or phone calls or them guys what live here!]

Kathy'd had trouble sleeping last night, in that she really didn't at all. Even moving to the safety of her closet hadn't helped; sure, she'd managed to fall asleep, but only long enough to have a screaming nightmare about zombies and towers and rabbit brains and then she was back up for the night. It wasn't until she noticed the date on her phone that she realized what she was responding to.

Right. Halloween. The trip to LA and then their getaway had messed with her sense of time enough that she hadn't realized how close the holiday was. Kathy used to love Halloween; she still might, if she hadn't been on the island. Last year's little...stunt had left her more than a little fucked up. Turned out her subconscious was better at keeping track of the date than the rest of her. Yay.

After the nightmare, she'd given up on sleep entirely, obsessively watching for signs that the island was going to turn her into an ex again, aware that she wouldn't notice even if it did, and that being paranoid it would was probably a good sign that it hadn't. Once dawn broke and she remained herself, that should have been the end of it - but it wasn't. Kathy had worked herself up into a panic and that wasn't responding to anything useful like 'logic' or 'thinking.' She just knew she had to get out of there. Off the island. Something.

She spent the morning in Baltimore, but when the third shitty zombie costume finally made her break down and cry in public, she realized this wasn't a viable option. Neither was Limbo City; if she was hesitant to visit most days, Halloween itself was a hard pass. That left...Ezra.

Kathy didn't even bother calling, just booked the closest portal, giving her enough time to grab a thing of donuts and go. And the irony of ironies was that Ezra wasn't even home when she got there; nobody answered her increasingly frantic knocks or her abuse of the doorbell. Eventually, she gave up, hoisting herself up to the roof of their porch. Exes couldn't climb, she would be safe on the roof while she waited. Something about that thought process was wrong, but she didn't bother to pinpoint what. Her brain was pinging safe and that was what mattered.

Curling up on the tiny bit of roof, she burrowed into her winter coat and, at some point, fell asleep.

[Ezra's house modded with permission and for said house-modded guy!]

Max had waited until all of Kathy's friends had been tracked down and brought to the war council chamber. His nominal reason was because he figured they'd have a vested interest in knowing the timetable had moved up a lot, since they were the ones with a way out. Kathy was pretty sure that both he and Stealth were coming up with ways to convince the Fandom contingent to stay and help out.

Kathy wasn't sure how either of them hoped to pull that off. Neither Stealth nor Max had made a great impression the last time they'd dealt with anyone in Fandom.

Once everyone had been fetched and gathered, Max stood up again to explain why their situation had grown so much more dire with Josh's escape. For once, he didn't seem to be putting on a show for those benighted souls less educated in the ways of sorcery than he was; he seemed geuinely concerned about them understanding what was going on. Honestly, that worried Kathy a lot more than even the things he was saying. Max Hale hadn't done solemn even in the midst of the zombie outbreak. For him to do it now was chilling.

( What do you do with a problem like a Cairax )

[Many thanks to all my beloved preplayers! NFI, NFB. Adapted and improved from Chapter Twenty-Three of Ex-Communication by Peter Clines. Previous post, Next post]

The irony didn't stop just at their location. The portal opened up inside the Observatory. For a building in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, it was in surprisingly good shape. Minimal destruction, no signs of looting, and there was only one streak of blood, long-since dried. It started from a room off the main entrance and ended in the pitiful remains of what had probably been a gopher or a woodchuck or something.

The room the blood trail had started in was some kind of observation room, featuring screen and several rows of comfortable seats. It was dark, but with the light from the atrium, anyone looking in could spot the remains of rainbow fabric caught in one of the chair arms, worn through the middle.

( Just another typical day in Ex-LA )

[Much love to my fabulous preplayers, not_every_mage, rebelseekspizza, smilestopscars, and tigerundercover/vdistinctive. Bits and pieces of text taken from Chapter 21 of Ex-Communication by Peter Clines. NFI, NFB, OOC is always loved. Previous Entry Next Entry]

After getting out of work in mid-afternoon, Kathy caught a portal up to Portland for the evening. A random text conversation about her wardrobe had led to Ezra pointing out that he was the best shopping partner ever. Considering his fashion sense--especially compared to the fashion senses of damn near everyone else she was friends with--she couldn't really argue with that, so they'd agreed to meet up in Portland for a bit of an impromptu shopping adventure.

Kathy hadn't expected the address he'd given her to be a small huddle of exclusive boutiques and restaurants in the downtown, but knowing Ez, she really probably should have.

"It's a good thing I pay off my credit card every month," Kathy said, looking at the price tag on an elegant sweater that would look amazing on Dante if she could ever convince him to wear such a thing. "I have a feeling I'm going to need every cent of it to afford a spree in this place."

[NFB and for the guy mentioned!]

So, most people probably did not have a twenty-item, bullet-pointed list for ways to relax and/or enjoy themselves during the last week of break before the beginning of their senior year (definitely and/or; parties were fun but stressful), but relaxing had never been something that Kathy was all that great at anyway. And her normal method of relaxing was typically nerdy and kind of introverted methods anyway: reading comics, playing video games, practicing a routine. Stuff she enjoyed, yeah, but also things that she'd spent her entire life doing. Her current list was all about trying new things, rather than defaulting to the same activities she'd been doing for years.

Which was why she was at a club (number 8 on the list) tonight. Sure, it was a Wednesday, which wasn't exactly peak club hours, but fewer people in the club meant fewer people to get flustered by, especially if she decided to also cross off number 14 on the list, dance to make someone's jaw drop. And if she managed to humiliate herself trying for number 14, fewer people meant fewer people laughing and fewer people in her way as she bolted for the door.

Right, awesome, great pep talk.

Ignoring the small voice that was trying to convince her to trade her dress for her gi, Kathy drew on some of the confidence she had has Banzai and entered the club. It was just people. Just dancing. It wasn't a gymnastics meet with hundreds of spectators or even a nasty fight in a back alley against a guy with a knife. It was supposed to be fun. And, if it wasn't, she could always go home and play video games until dawn.

She could do this.

[For one please]