fandomhigh | BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday Morning

Well. As it turned out, traveling across the country with a seven-foot dinosaur in tow was an experience very similar to hell on earth. Not only had Gert been checked by TSA agents roughly forty times throughout the journey, not to mention flight attendants on the plane itself, and not only had she incurred all kinds of additional pet fees (paid for by Captain America and whoever was paying him, but still), but she also had a seriously antsy ~~velociraptor~~ deionychus to deal with. Between that and the expected grouchiness from having been traveling all day, by the time Gert reached the Portalocity lounge in the airport where she was supposed to wait for the Fandom High shuttle, she was not in the best of moods.

The one good thing was that she at least didn't have very much luggage. She stuffed her single backpack under a chair and then flopped down in it, patting the seat beside her for Old Lace to follow suit. Now she just had to hope that whoever was driving this bus showed up punctually, because she was rapidly getting tired of this airport and was about ready to take a nap.

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Maddie still wasn't sure she was doing the right thing, but she'd made it this far, right? Might as well see what happened next. She found a seat a little away from people, wishing she'd brought something to kill the time, and watching the dinosaur.

Here was the problem with having a friend whose power was turning into a dinosaur: it took you a second to do a double take when you saw one in an airport. Oh-kay...

Hopefully Maddie wasn't used to seeing her dinosaur friend get petted by a random purple-haired girl she'd never met, or things would get really weird.

Bored and disgruntled as she was, Gert nodded at the new girl. "Fandom High?"

Edited 2013-01-04 21:30 (UTC)

"Yeah. You, too?" she asked. "I mean... both of you?"

And then she hoped that this wasn't like an Humberto situation and that she wasn't being rude by not talking directly to the dinosaur.

You try to work out social etiquette on this.

"Me and Old Lace," Gert agreed, scratching behind the dinosaur's ear. "Me for the classes and her for the company." That probably wasn't entirely right, but close enough. She leaned toward Maddie's seat, extending a hand. "I'm Gert."

"Maddie," she said, reaching over to shake her hand. "So... how'd you end up with a dinosaur?"

Smooth, Maddie.

After weeks of living with the very people who'd been there when Gert had first gotten Old Lace, it was weird to suddenly be asked about her origins. It probably said a lot about her life that she'd reached a point where she expected people to just breeze past her dinosaur without batting an eye.

"You ever open a birthday present early?" she asked. "The one time I did, I found an eighty-seventh century velociraptor and a holographic video greeting card. I guess my parents were really pleased with me this year."

You know. Before they died.

"That's never happened to me," Maddie said slowly. Both never opening a present early and never getting a dinosaur. "Wait, did you say eighty-seventh century?"

"Yep." Gert gave a knowing shrug at that, so at least there was some reassurance that no, Maddie, it wasn't just you who found that weird. "My parents were time-travelers. I guess they figured I'd be more likely to appreciate her than a stupid iPod."

The game plan for now was to just go all-out with the weirdness-explaining and hope that Maddie didn't think it was bullshit.

Time travelers. Maddie's mom was a pill popper and her dad was a deadbeat.

"That is so cool."

Well. Gert's had also been evil. Rich and good at gift-giving, but evil.

"Thanks," she said slowly, mostly focusing on the whole 'but they were evil' part. "So... what are you doing at boarding school?" Everyone in Marvel world had a ~~cool~~ ~~traumatic~~ cool reason for coming here, right?

Edited 2013-01-05 03:01 (UTC)

"My last school wasn't really the right fit for me," Maddie said, which was really the only way to explain what happened. "I thought this might be a better option. What about you?"

"I'm 'in need of stricter guardianship,'" Gert recited. "Apparently a school full of teenager counts as that nowadays."

"I'm sure they've got people watching us," Maddie said.

Because that had worked like at all ever at her old school.

"Yeah, we'll see how well that works." See Gert. See Gert be suspicious.

That was Gert pretty much all the time, to be honest.

BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday Morning

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