My mom was Mexican...

For getting to the house and meeting everybody!

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"Only mostly," Olive offered, trying not to actively wince. That'd be a great impression, right? Victor's friends were on the other side of that door, and the first time Olive met them was not going to be when she looked like she was in pain, thank you. "I hope they don't ask anything I can't actually answer."

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"Like what?" Victor asked, freezing in place. (From behind the door, she might hear a muffled 'Is that them? Let me - Ow!') "It's not like you're the one who normally has to keep secrets."

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"Oh, like something I don't know the answer to," Olive said, shaking her head. "Mostly a joke. It sounds like they know we're out here, though."

And cue her putting on a smile for her soon-to-be-audience.

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"Sounds like," Victor -- who had totally missed the joke -- agreed, and added a muttered Showtime under his breath just before the door cracked open and a blond guy who looked like a surfer leaned out.

"Olive?" Chase said, glancing her over. "Hey, wow, c'mon in. Blender boy has good taste. Everybody's in the kitchen."

"There are cookies!" a younger, female voice with a light German accent added. "And Nico had us add pieces of Reese."

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"And you must be Chase," Olive said, raising her brows and smiling at the boy. She wasn't resentful of the once-overing and had actually kind of expected that, but don't think she'd missed it, buddy.

"I happen to love pieces of Reese," she added, calling out towards where that little German voice had come from, before leaning a bit towards Victor and murmuring, "Blender boy? I'm remembering that one."

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"Got it in one," Chase said amiably, while Victor rolled his eyes and nudged Olive with an elbow.

"Don't encourage him," he said, as they walked to the kitchen. "He comes up with a new one every five minutes."

Two preteen girls were hovering over a plate of cookies around the kitchen table. The one with lighter brown hair under her bunny hat was eating a cookie and had a second in her other hand; she waved a cookie at Olive and said "Hi, I'm Molly" through a very full mouth. The other, with darker hair and an old-fashioned skirt, halfway curtsied and offered a shy hello in that same German-accented voice.

Karolina and a Japanese girl in a long dark dress emerged from the other room. Karolina looked happy to meet someone new; Nico looked suspicious but willing to be proven wrong.

Victor took over the introductions. "Olive, this is Klara, Molly, Karolina, Nico ... you already figured out which one is Chase."

"The hot one," Chase shot back with a smirk. "Also the only guy since Vic took off for the wrong coast."

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"I see you're also the shy one," Olive added to Chase with a slight smile, before turning to look around at everyone else and waving a little nervously. "Hi. Um. Nice place you guys have here."

It was weird seeing Karolina here, but Olive was already prepared for that and thus just gave her the same standard wave she was offering around to everyone. Also with the weird? Trying not to stare at Nico. Not because of the goth thing so much as the common-taste-in-boys thing and damn it she was actually pretty and Olive had been hoping pettily that she'd be a total troll.

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"It was a big step up from the tar pits," Nico put in, with half a smile. In a petty corner of her heart, she'd kind of hoped Olive would be a troll, too, but she wouldn't admit that even under pain of death and never being allowed into Hot Topic again. "And the neighbors still buy we're some weird big foster family. Mostly they're only here weekends, anyhow."

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"You're lucky they buy it," Olive said with a little smile. "I can't even hide in my room at home without my parents and three faculty members and maybe some random passers-by looking into what I'm doing."

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After the younger girls had gone to bed, Chase, Nico, Karolina, Victor and Olive moved into the living room for some slightly more grown-up fun. Victor had dared Karolina to fly around the beach house and over the ocean, and was passing the time until she got back talking to Chase and Nico about the Sons of the Serpent.

"So wait," Chase asked, "Do these guys have anything to do with Cobra? As in 'commander'?"

"No," Victor explained. Again. With a slight glance and shrug in Olive's direction. "Totally different serpent commandos."

Edited Date: 2013-01-04 03:34 pm (UTC)

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"Oh, sure, everyone knows that serpent commandos are like their own entire sub-genre," Olive said knowledgably, nodding like she had any idea what she was talking about.

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"These guys are real," Nico explained -- mostly to Olive, because she'd decided Chase was being dumb on purpose again, and Olive at least had an excuse for not knowing this stuff. "~~Meta~~ GI Joe is not. The ones we're talking about are white supremacists."

"So they dress up like snakes?" Chase asked, and ... okay, maybe he was being dumb on purpose a little bit. Just because it was fun to exasperate Nico and Victor and their smarter-than-him stuff. "How does that make their point? Are these guys complete morons or something?"

"They're white supremacists, Chase," Nico repeated. "So .... yes."

Before anybody could get any more exasperated, a rainbow-colored Karolina crashed back through the open window, startling the sleeping Old Lace as she passed just over her head. She giggled as she knocked Chase over, too entertained by her own daring to apologize.

Nico's "LOOK OUT!" was more than a little tardy.

Edited Date: 2013-01-07 07:27 pm (UTC)

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Olive also lunged to the side, just...in case. She at least had good reflexes, even if they weren't necessarily applicable in this case. And thankfully, she'd seen Tie-Dye Karolina before, or this would be the part where she had a lot of questions.

"That's one way to make an entrance," she noted dryly, wondering if her own Karolina was going to start doing that. She'd have to be on her guard.

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"I know," Karolina giggled as she caught her breath. Normally she was a little shy about flying in front of a new person, but she'd got caught up in the moment. "That was ... really ... fun."

Victor went to offer Karolina a hand to help her up. "Nice!" he said. "No offense, but I wasn't sure you'd really do it."

"Well, I'm not surprised," Nico put in, and was it Victor's imagination or was his ex flirting with her lesbian teammate? "You pretty much always amaze me."

Chase cleared his throat. "All right, that makes it Karolina's turn," he pointed out.

"Okay, okay," Karolina said, and almost asked Nico something before losing her nerve. "Olive? Truth or dare."

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"Um, truth," Olive said, almost immediately. Not because she thought Karolina -- any incarnation of her -- would come up with anything particularly scary as a dare, but because there was no way she could follow that act. "Give me your worst."

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"If you're sure," Karolina said -- even though she also knew even her worst wouldn't be all that bad. "Um ... what was the last, you know, hot dream you had?"

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For all that Olive didn't embarrass easily, it sure was easy to get her to blush by asking the right questions. She debated making something up, but her stupid conscience and sense of good sportsmanship argued against that. Besides, it wasn't anything too bad, just...potentially embarrassing for more than just her.

"Um," she began eloquently. "Okay, it was a couple of weeks ago, over our Christmas break. And um, in Ojai, there's all these orchards with these secluded little areas in the trees, but there's this one particular orchard where the air's really warm and everything smells like citrus and...it's just really nice. And so anyway I had a dream about, um, hooking up there. I'll spare you the dirty details and blame my own ladylike sensibilities, but um, a member of present company was involved."

Olive was pretty sure it was obvious which member of present company she meant, given how she'd shot a sort of embarrassed smile and shrug over to Victor. The whole thing was made a little easier by how she could see herself telling her Karolina this pretty comfortably, but she was still looking anywhere but at Nico -- she didn't want to make things weird after they'd gotten off to such a good start.

"So hey, my turn to ask now, right?" she added, eager to get the spotlight off herself.

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"Your turn," Victor agreed. He looked both embarrassed and totally proud, and not a little like he was wondering if stopping in Ojai on the way back to Fandom was an option. "Pick your target."

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"Chase," Olive decided, grateful for the opportunity to deflect. "Pick your poison -- truth or dare?"

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Chase grinned lazily at her from his spot on the floor, where he leaned back against Old Lace. "I always have to go for dare," he said. "Just make it something fun."

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