nextgenerationmarvel | Advice seeking

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Advice seeking

Erin has been having trouble for the past few days at school. It all has to do with that article from Loose Lips. If she could sue them for outing her as a mutant she would. There is a group of girls she has never exactly gotten along with who are taking advantage of the situation.

They are trying to throw her off her game. So far it's just little snide comments she can brush off but she can see the signs. This is turning into a war between rich bitches. Too bad she isn't much of a bitch.

She needs advice on how to deal with this. She wonders if Roxie has any words of wisdom. She doesn't come off as THAT kind of rich girl but she must know a thing or two.

With that she sends off a text.

Hi Roxie. It's Erin. I need some advice on something I think you'd understand more than Bruce. Can I buy you coffee or early dinner?

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Hey! You don't need to buy me anything, but we can meet for frozen hot chocolates? Serendipity 3? Half hour?

Awesome. Thank you and that works.

Erin is five minutes early. She hasn't gone over the top with dressing up but it's obvious that she is the kind of person that doesn't own things that aren't pretty up there. It is just what she is used to.

"Hi Roxie!" Erin tries to look cheerful she looks stressed under it all.

Oh, but the stress is evident. Roxie smiles warmly at Erin, realizing that she hasn't had much alone time at all with her fellow Avenger, and nods her head at one of the guys working behind the counter. As with everywhere else Roxie goes, this guy seems to know her.

In a few moments, two frozen hot chocolates will be on Roxie and Erin's table.

But until then...

She swoops in and gives Erin a hug before taking a seat herself.

"Whatever's going on, I'll do my best to help, okay?" she smiled at Erin, cutting quick to the chase. When someone's stressing out and reaching out for help, it's never nice to make them wait too long. "Breathe. Is this in regards to the Loose Lips column?" She paused and thought back to the text that Erin had sent her. "...or are you carrying a torch for Bruce?"

Erin stiffens like someone who just isn't used to hugging. Her family isn't big on physical affection.

"God no," she laughs softly. "Bruce... is kind of like the older brother I desperately wish I had."

She pauses before continuing. "Yes it's about Loose Lips. I've been outed as a mutant so... There are some people trying to take advantage now. You see right now in my class I'm getting the top grades. I might get valedictorian. And there are other people who want that. They've been starting the classic Rich Bitch war... I don't know how to respond, exactly."

"When we were younger, I sort of had a crush on him," Roxie admitted. Granted Roxie, who tended to wear her heart in her sleeve, tended to have a lot of crushes, though Joe and Bruce and probably been her biggest ones.

"Where I come from, my friends would get their minions to get dirt on the competition, and then use money and various other resources to bury them under all of that dirt," Roxie said. "Well. I wouldn't say friends, in retrospect, but yes. Although, I suspect you're a little bit nobler than that."

"I can see it. He really is a sweet heart," Erin agrees. She is a bit the same with the first real crush she has.

"Well I'm not from the richest of families. ... Dad didn't focus on grandfather's businesses," Erin said with slight eye roll. "They have enough dirt. They're using that against me as best she can. Teachers can't be bribed but they can throw me off.... what would you call it, A game?"

"Your A-game, yes," Roxie nodded. "They do realize that they're messing with an Avenger, right? They might need you to save their lives one day?" It was a pertinent question, and a card that Roxie herself had played once in high school, after her falling out with Brooke.

Edited 2013-01-10 05:41 (UTC)

"I think they've been drinking too much of the Kool-Aide," Erin says trying to not sound mean.

"No seriously. It's a group of girls. I'd never say that to them of course. It's just sometimes they act like very angry Pod People." Very angry Pod People is a good way to describe some Rich Bitches.

"What happens if they ignore that?"

"You'll find, once you graduate and look back on the experience, that nearly everyone there was a crazy Pod Person." Granted, at least her class had a reason, what with Brooke and her empathic manipulations. "I'm not going to suggest that you ignore it, because that will be impossible. I also don't want to suggest that you try to do independent study for the rest of the semester, because I think you're stronger than that. "You can be mature about it, hold your head high, and maybe try to befriend them, though that usually ends in some plot about them still trying to throw you off your A-game," she added. "Let me ask you this, Erin. What do you want?"

"Well we all do have an independent study we're supposed to do for our senior project but that's mostly a half semester replacement for English. They want us to show all we've learned at school. Rushmore is... pretty much a school made to push you towards being rich and reasonably intelligent," she explains.

"Honestly? I just want to finish school. All I need to do is keep my grades up and move onto College so I can..." She wonders how she can put this.

"There's a clause attached to my family's fortune that my grandfather put in place. He wanted to keep the future Sterling heirs from being lazy. He approved of my father being a hard worker. I pretty much have to go to school and find a profession I want. I like numbers so I was thinking of becoming an accountant or banker in between being an Avenger. I like being an Avenger... As hard as that stuff with the Frost Giants was... I think helping save people is the best thing I've ever done. I want to keep doing that without people trying to stop me because I'm a mutant."

"Honestly, I think the girls are just trying to find a reason to pick on you, and the fact that you just got outed as a mutant just ended up being ridiculously perfect timing," Roxie said. "At the same time, I doubt that these girls are smart enough to realize that one of the most famous Avengers of all time is Beast, and that he was a mutant himself."

She paused. "So you do have money. You just can't - and probably ever won't - abuse the money the way your classmates do." The way that Roxie generally tended to as well. "I know Rushmore," she added. "It was one of Woodbridge's frenemy schools." Back in high school, Hollis Hanover had been Queen Bee at Rushmore. She'd been one of the nicer rich girls back in the day, but things sounded as though they'd changed since then.

Roxie paused. "Want me to come and put the fear of Olympus into those girls?"

"It's likely for a power play within their group. I don't belong to any clique because I have no interest in them. There's some really nice students I'm on friendly terms with... There's this one student I really like because he's not a brown-nosing type of person or a jerk. He's going to end up being someone. You can tell. But it will be on his terms, which I admire."

Erin nodded simply. "I try not to lord it over people. Sometimes I think money is trouble... I mean I'd have no idea how to live as a middle classed person. I don't know how to do the kind of stuff that would be expected of you.... It makes me feel pretty helpless."

At least she is self-aware enough to know that she'd be pretty lost in a normal setting. "Just a bit. Dad says Ms Hanover is the kind of society girl he expects me to be like. He prefers it when I'm acting like a proper young lady... Maybe we can wait and see what happens. Next week I have a pretty major Calculus exam. If they try something the day of the test that's when we'll know they're not being very bright."

"I'd almost suggest gathering the ones you're friendly with and starting a clique of your own, but take it from someone who's all too aware? Clique wars aren't fun." She paused. "Hollis is marrying a Whitney, so she's certainly done well with herself. That law degree she's getting from Yale will just prettily sit in a frame on a wall in her husband's library, I'm sure." The Whitneys were one of the city's more prolific, philanthropic families. "Mean girls are never the brightest ones. Most of them tend to...bribe their way into their good grades." Roxie herself had never really excelled at school, and her grades and pretty well reflected that. Granted, neither she nor her parents had tried to bribe the teachers into giving her better grades.

"I'm guessing these girls' families also have a habit of making very nice donations to Rushmore?"

Edited 2013-01-12 00:53 (UTC)

"I'm not interested in a war either. I just want to get to the end of the school year without wanting to tear my hair out." She quirks a faint smile. "I happen to like my hair."

Erin can't help the impressed look. "It makes sense she'd land a Whitney. She was always someone who aimed pretty high.... Shame she won't use that same drive in the court room. But if I know her it could be a political move. Rumor has it there are a few charities she wants nothing more than to see succeed. I'm pretty sure if that's true she'd use that social grace my Dad thought was so admirable to get just what she wants. Not a bad thing for someone who isn't even twenty-four yet. The average person in our.... potential income bracket only gets that kind of goal by the time their thirty usually."

Erin looks very frosty about that for just a moment. "Last year things changed. The board of directors let it be known that anyone suspected of doing that to boost grades would be dismissed. I hated hearing people complain.... Then we got our new Headmistress. Doctor Phillipa Pierce. I swear she is the scariest person I have ever seen running a school... I'm almost convinced she's telepathic."

"You do have great hair," Roxie agreed, reaching up to twirl a lock of her own. Her hair was a little different today. Though the roots and three-quarters of her length were still the same rich, dark chestnut that she'd changed the colour to, the last quarter of her length had an ombre effect going on with it, her natural honey blonde playing against the dark brown.

"Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this Dr. Pierce was a telepath. Not all mutants have joined with the Xavier Institute, and a lot still have never even come forward as mutants," Roxie said. Granted, "Then again, most Headmasters and Headmistresses seem to be telepathic, so..." Roxie shrugged. "That still won't help your problem with these girls, though. You can only ignore it for so long before it starts to build up."

She didn't comment on Roxie's hair. She knew that the older Avenger had gone through some life changes shortly before she had joined the team. She could see that Roxie might need to do a little touching up though if she was the overly obsessive type.

"It's something I like to spoil myself with. That and horses. I love going out for a ride. It's very... peaceful," she admits. "That and my Mom was pretty horse crazy too. It's the one thing we have in common."

Erin can't help the way she smiles in amusement. "I think every good Headmaster or Headmistress probably has their students convinced that they can read minds."

Roxie is right though. "I can't just declare war on them until they do something stupid to try and throw me off my game. That makes me as bad as them in a way."

"I never had the taste for horseback riding," Roxie admitted. "I was always more of a motorcycle girl." Which had led to many, many one-night stands a long time ago. "No, you shouldn't outright declare war. They half want that. I think...you need to regard these girls the same way you would Loki or Kang or Doom. Keep an eye on them, keep the peace, but be on your guard. Fight back only when it's justifiable as self-defense. And if you need back-up, well, I know we haven't spent much time together (and I promise, I'm going to work on changing that because we're teammates, and so we should be friends) but I'm your girl."

"I think my parents would ground me for life. My Dad despises motorcycles. His older brother died in a bad accident when he was a kid." That would pretty much seal the deal for anyone.

"Mom, of course, is of the opinion that they are only good for collecting as works of art."

She won't say that her Mom also thinks that young girls shouldn't ride them. Normally it would be a reason to rebel but she is a bit of a Daddy's Girl.

"Well we should do things besides beating up Frost Giants....I'm not sure what though."

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