Midgar High School

It had started out like any ordinary weekend. Shera, still worn out from the events of Homecoming, had slept in later. When she awoke she found her parents were already gone, off to test another ultra lightweight aircraft before she had even hit the snooze button on her permanently-set-to-five alarm clock.

With a sigh she made her way through the house--ate breakfast, reorganized her bedroom, set aside some laundry to be ironed--and waited for their return.

Today was the day.

She pulled out her Dungeon Master's Guide and rid of of its false cover, forcing the wolf to be a sheep no more.

She put the book in her backpack.

She pulled out her character sheets, unfolding them carefully one by one and laying them flat--holding them there by placing one or two dice on each corner.

Why they ceased to curl inward of their own accord, she put the precious papers in her backpack as well.

Minutes turned to hours, still with no sign of her parents.

Once again Shera went through the house--ate lunch, tidied the den, ironed some clothes she had set aside earlier--and waited still for her parents.

She found her neglected Magic decks, kept clean in their blue-backed sleeves, and made sure that they were still properly separated. A Sliver had somehow made its way into her Angel deck, and she relocated it properly before placing all three decks--Sliver, Angel and Island--in a slim box.

She tucked the box into her backpack with the utmost care.

She hunted down her old gameboy and the two games that went with it, hidden under the bed, replaced the machine's batteries and checked to see that her game was still saved after all this time. It was.

She put the gameboy in her backpack as well.

More time passed and soon Shera found herself making and eating dinner alone, taking a shower, and then sitting out in the den while she waited for her parents to get home. She watched the history channel, got bored with finding out about the past and tried in vain to change it to the technical entertainment channel. As she had expected, it was still blocked.

It was one in the morning when the sound of keys jingling and a lock coming undone jarred Shera from her sleep, and she turned to watch her eerily young parents walk in as though everything was all right. Today had actually been a fairly normal day on their part--six complete tests and a dozen incomplete ones, three meals, all of them only to forge good contacts in places that counted, before they had started home.

Shera was used to it. It was a day like any other.

Until now.

"Mom, Dad," she said, rising to her feet, "can I talk to you for a minute?"

With her urging they sat down, a little concerned but still moderately comfortable. Her father asked if she was pregnant, she said no. Her mother asked if she was on drugs, she said that she had eaten a couple cookies but other than that no.

"The thing is," she explained, "I decided something last night." She paused and shook her head slowly; her hair, for once kept down instead of bound in a high tail, waved slightly with the motion. "No, I think I decided it a long time ago, but last night was when I decided to tell you."

"Sweetheart, are you a lesbian?"

She blinked. "No, Mom, I'm not a--"

"Then are you bisexual? Is that what this is about?"

Shera narrowed her pale blue eyes and folded her arms. "Yeah, Dad, probably, but that's not what I want to talk to you about."

The minor confession--which really wasn't very minor at all--apparently did not sink in properly, for her mother sighed and asked, "Then what is it?"

The girl took a deep breath. "I'm going to college."

"We all know that, hon--" He father began, only to be cut off with a sharp gesture from his daughter's hand.

"I'm not done," she said firmly. "I'm going to college..." She swallowed thickly, thought of Elena and Zack, of how strong they were and how they were behind her all the way. "...at the Gongaga College of Technical Arts."

The room went completely silent, utterly still for several seconds.

A minute.

Two minutes.

In the middle of the third her father gave a snort. "Oh, very funny sweetheart. You really had me going for a s--"

"I'm not joking."

Her voice was stern, her tone even and completely serious. Her mother shook her head. "But dear, you don't have what it takes to be an engineer," she asserted. "Your father and I already decided that you weren't cut out for Gongaga."

"I'm not going to be an engineer," she said, doing everything in her power to keep her voice over a whisper. "I'm going to go into electronic entertainment."

"You mean..." Her father flushed. "You mean you want to make games?"

Shera nodded, and her head felt like a lead weight perched precariously on her neck.

What happened next were both the longest ten minutes in Shera's life and likely the shortest argument between a teen and their parents in the entire world. The first two minutes were spent absorbing the information, trying to fit the square peg of Shera's wishes into the triangular hole of her parents'. The two following were disbelief and defense, assertions that escalated to five minutes of stern debate, which ultimately led to a final two minutes of yelling.

"No child of mine is going to is going to make mind-rotting brain gum for the terminally stupid!" her father declared. "Not if you intend to live in this house until graduation!"

"Then I won't live under your roof!" Shera replied, just as firm. She whirled around and strode determinedly to her bedroom, where she located her cel phone and dialed in a number she hadn't had time to program into the phone book. She really wouldn't be gone for long, her mother would see to that, but she couldn't let them think she would break under their wishes any more. She'd had enough of doing everything they wanted--it was time to see what the consequences were for breaking the thousands of unspoken rules in her household.

The phone on the other end rang several times as she tested the weight of her backpack.

Finally a groggy voice spoke. "Uhff...Hello?"

"Hey, El?" Shera glanced over her shoulder to make sure the voices she could hear were just loud, not nearby. The hallway was empty.

"Shera?" Elena spoke in disbelief. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

She sighed. "Yeah--I'm really sorry to bother you so late, but..." The voices in the other room raised to a frantic level, yells from her father and what sounded like sobs from her mother. She thought a quick apology to them both.

"...Shera?"

She returned her attention to the phone. "Can I crash at your place for a couple days?"