Our Home and Native Land

Talia stared at the pile of blankets. She felt like digging out Cassie just so she could see her face. And hug her again. Those always felt nice. It was an odd sensation. It wasn't like her life was any better off now than it was when she arrived in Canada. And yet...she felt a certain measure of happiness. Like a great burden had been lifted off her mind. She had a purpose, a goal. And for the first time in a long while, she was excited. Hope was a powerful thing.

She couldn't wait to get back to San Diego and wherever life would take her afterward. Maybe she'd end up back in Japan, who knew. At the time, though, she didn't really want to think that far ahead. She couldn't tell how Cassie was feeling. And regardless wanted to cheer her up. The redhead climbed to her feet atop her bed. She crouched down...and then leaped towards the pile of sheets in a splash.

The blanket-pile remained conspicuously silent. Only when Talia climbed up onto the bed did Cassie pull back the blankets just enough to reveal her messy orange hair and her big green eyes.

"Eep!" She squeaked, and curled into a ball when Talia flopped on top of her. An arm emerged from the pile and opened the drawer on her nightstand. She removed her brown crocheted hat with the round bear ears on top, and pulled it under the blankets. Then she attacked.

She tackled Talia off the bed, and the two went tumbling to the floor in a more complicated mass of blankets. Cassie, with her bear hat on, rolled to get on top and grab Talia's wrists. She shook the other redhead's arms crazily back and forth.

"YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE NOW!" She wailed. She closed her eyes and flung Talia's arms around even harder. "You'll miss my birthday!" She flopped on top of Talia and laid flat, like she was suddenly no longer a bear, but a wet noodle instead.

"If you leave, we might never see each other again."

"Eek!" Talia screeched when Cassie leaped into her and brought the two tumbling to the ground. She loosely tried to resist with a great big smile on her face. It was strangely nostalgic. This was how Cassie and her first met way back when at the gym. There was a load on Talia's mind back then. But there wasn't this time. She planted her foot and pushed off of it to roll the two over so she was on top. But it was about then that Cassie managed to make her feel sad again.

"Cassie..." She whispered. Once again she was in that all too familiar position. Inconsiderate of the feelings of others. "I...I didn't want to be a burden on you guys..." She now knew she actually was to at least one individual. But maybe that didn't matter. Cassie had been so nice to her that she should have realized that she may have thought of them as friends. She wanted to see her parents and figure out what to do. She wanted to feel at home and have the loving comfort of support around her.

But she had the rest of her life to get it in order. And Cassie only had one 21st birthday.

"Fiiiiine..." Talia resigned and slumped down. "I'll stay...but only because you're asking me..." That much wasn't true but she assumed Cassie would know that.

Cassie picked her head up and wiped under her eye with her finger, and looked down at her new-old friend. If Talia left now, maybe she'd forget all about what happened, and by the time they made it back to Japan, maybe things would be back to the way they were. Cassie needed time to make it all stick.

She sat up and blankly stared down at Talia for a moment. "Okay," she said. And now that that was out of the way, she found an opening in the blankets and beset Talia with a merciless onslaught of tickling.

'I think as long as-" she began to say your family is okay with it. But Cassie suddenly broke through the sheets and ambushed her with a flurry of tickling. "Hey-heyyyy!" she screeched and pulled her arms tightly against her sides to try and close the openings which Cassie could target. "Stop it! Stop it!" she tried to say inbetween forced laughter. She felt like a kid again.

Cassie's eyes narrowed in gleeful tickle-sadism. Talia may have been more ruthless in the ring, but with Cassie's grappling pedigree, and her resilience to her victims' cries for mercy, Cassie's tickling was sheer brutality.

She straddled Talia, pinned one of her arms under a knee and controlled the other arm at the wrist while her free hand tickled away at Talia's side. She took a moment to straighten her bear hat, moved some hair out of her face, and went back to tickling.

"Payback is a bitch!" She shouted, and giggled.

Talia kept laughing uncontrollably. Part of it was forced but a lot of it wasn't anymore. "S-Stop it...ohmygod Cassie quit it!" she screamed as she rolled around to try and break free from Cassie's lock on her. "O-Okay I give up-I give!" she shouted and tapped the ground in mock submission. "I'll-I'll give you something if you stop! I'll give you a present!"

"A present?" Cassie sat upright, a momentary ceasefire on the tickle offensive. "Ooh, gimme!"

She hopped up and somersaulted onto her bed and got up to her knees. "What is it? Where is it? Is it a birthday present, or a don't-tickle-me present? Because I'd tickle you all the time if that's what happened." She grabbed her pillow and hurled it at Talia. "Now cough up the loot!"

Jacob walked by the open door as the pillow bounced off Talia's face, and backed up a step to lean against the door frame. "Ya know," he said, and folded his arms across his chest. "I could cut together a promo for you guys. Cassie Elliot versus Dark Angel four! A pillow brawl to settle it all!" He grinned.

Talia kept laughing for a few seconds after Cassie finally relented. She sighed in relief just as the pillow hit her in the face. She picked it up to throw back at Cassie when Jacob appeared in the doorway. She managed to force a courtesy smile but that talk earlier still hung heavily in her head. "Trilogies are better than...qualogies or whatever..." She stuttered in response as she just put the pillow down onto the bed and rolled backwards to her bag.

She pulled out the plainly wrapped ribboned present from behind the bag. She subconsciously gave a nervous look in Jacob's direction and placed the box on the floor in front of Cassie's bed while on her knees. "It's just a little something for your birthday...it's early but I wasn't sure when I was leaving so I wanted to make sure you got it..." She looked down at the ground and bit her lip. Then she pushed the box closer to Cassie like a peace offering.

"Quadrillogies?"

"Tetragies?"

"Fourgies?"

Jacob shrugged, and Cassie flopped onto her stomach to reach down for the box. She untied the ribbon and carefully un-taped the wrapping paper while Jacob looked on from the doorway. She slid out the shoebox and looked up at Talia. "Boots?" She grinned.

She pulled off the lid and gasped. She pulled her hands back as if it might bite her. The color quickly drained from her face, and she stared down in shock at her birthday present. She looked up again at Talia, and then back at the box. Jacob leaned over to see what it was, and Cassie carefully lifted the white mask out of the box.

It felt so... normal. It was just a hunk of plastic. It was dead. When Talia took it off for the last time, she cut it's strings, and now it was no more threatening than the book on her nightstand.

But it was threatening. The memory of Dark Angel's eyes staring through the now empty holes at her, seeing her choke Mamouru and beat him unconscious, doing the same to Cassie. Appearing at the top of the ramp just to make sure Cassie could never get her out of her mind. Her hand began to shake, and she quickly put it back in the box and covered it with the lid. Jacob took the opportunity to quietly see himself out.

"Talia..." Her voice was unsteady. She pushed herself up toward her headboard and hugged her knees to her chest. She couldn't think of anything to say, and just peered over at the other redhead, as if for help.