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[color=ec008c][i]Ooooh shit a boat...?[/i][/color]

The haptic feedback on Nicole's touchscreen was giving Nicole's thumbprint the massage of a lifetime right now. The redhead's eyes were half-lidded, one leg languidly slung over the armrest of a common room sofa; two fingers on her left hand were idly playing with the untied shoelaces of a modern-looking pair of white sneakers, zebra-striped with the stark, bold-fonted words [b]BISEXUAL SPACE PROGRAM[/b] horizontally, vertically and diagonally, black scars across the shoes' pale surfaces. Nicole's digits stroked the obsidian laces like locks of hair. Her eyes traced the text chain from Aiya for the twentieth time that morning, and yet the words still felt new to her. Not out of shock that the sensuous Duodecim royalty owned a boat. No.

She was tweakin'. And geekin'. And tweakin'. And geekin'.

She blinked with all the alacrity of a particularly sleepy lizard, and read the texts for the twenty-first time.

...

[color=ec008c][i]Ooooh shit, a boat...[/i][/color]

Let's rewind. Two weeks prior, Nicole Cognoscenti's vibrations has been knocked askew by a grueling, Machiavellian test of her leadership qualities that had toppled a legendary Ars Magi from the heavens of hero worship and had done as much to solidify Nicole's position as the center of their group of friends as it had to make her question her place among them. In the opening days of their two week break, the Hastan girl had been spaced out and distracted, preoccupied with thoughts of her time at Nova Lux so far and the stresses of encroaching leadership to join in on the binges or breathless stories about her exams. Most of what had been whispered about Nicole's exam had come from hearsay; she said little on the subject personally. But she listened to the stories of some of the others, the feats of strength, speed, and ingenuity, and felt a little twinge of envy at how cool they all sounded. How...[i]normal.[/i]

Nicole had always thought of herself as just a normal girl.

Enter the blessed angel Cordelia, butler to the stars, Nicole's current roommate and another potential candidate for the [b]BISEXUAL SPACE PROGRAM[/b]. Cordy had intimate knowledge of the faces and attitudes that girls their age adopted when depressed, and had taken it upon herself to go out into some of Palmyra's more adventurous street food vendors or semi-reputable dive bars and seek out a cure for Nicole's ails. Some of the coffees she brought back were tasty and invigorating. Once she'd brought back a pizza from a small chain called Mirror World, whose claim to fame was that the pizza they served was not pizza at all, but cheese-wrapped breadsticks stuffed with sauce and toppings, which triggered Nicole's fight-or-flight instinct and for a time brought her back to her old self. But nothing quite touched the sketchy edibles that poor, faithful Cordy had brought back the other night from one of the nightclubs she'd seen Nicole return from with pamphlets. No doubt her old, wealthy patrons had partaken frequently, and Nicole wasn't about to act like a total saint herself. But if the victory of life was knowing oneself, Nicole liked to think she had won before she even left her teenage years - and one thing she knew about herself is that she did not play off being high super well. But she didn't want to be rude, and to be honest, they were kind of fun. Even when she had finally cajoled Cordy into taking one herself earlier that morning, and hadn't...seen her...since...

Hmmm. Uh oh! ...Uh oh.

Thankfully, the other girls didn't know her as well as she knew herself. So they probably thought she was still just tired. [color=ec008c][i]Yeaaaaaah.[/i][/color]

[color=ec008c]"Mm? Oh. Yeaaaaaah."[/color] Nicole lifted her chin up and murmured absently at Penny and Dana, though it could have just as easily been a verbal acknowledgement of their stories as it was a response to Penny's questions. [color=ec008c]"Hey, did either of you two actually pack a swimsuit? And I mean like...a [i]swimsuit.[/i] We gotta impress here, girls. I saw you two at the gala, I'm not the only one with something to lose on this love boat. So if you're not sure if what you brought is gonna be cute enough to be hit on, you gotta let me know right now while we have time to fix it."[/color]

...

[color=ec008c]"I'm not gonna look cute enough to be hit on. Oh God. God, I gotta go."[/color] Nicole moved her thumb away from the touchscreen, gasped a little at the sudden halt to the haptic sensation of her phone, and then moved it back. She eased herself to her feet and exhaled deeply, before realization struck her that oh God, she had to be careful doing that, or she may tear the common room apart with a hurricane gale. [color=ec008c]"I gotta go [i]now.[/i]"[/color]