Dresden Academy

Who: All the cheerleaders except Carly
What: A decision is made about the leadership struggle
Where: Cinna's dorm
When: Evening of March 23rd, when the Spring Fling Dance should have been happening
Rating: Language and adult themes

What should have been the Spring Fling instead became a quiet night in for most of Dresden Academy. With the revocation of freedoms and the imposition of forced curfews the campus had become depressing and quiet of late.

None were quite so affected as poor Cinnamynn Thompson. Her Spring Fling dance had been ripped out from underneath her despite months of careful planning and altogether impeccable behavior during the school year, thankyouverymuch. She felt it entirely unfair that they were being punished for things that had happened outside of school grounds on break.

Even the few activities they were still allowed to participate in had become strained and unenjoyable. Particularly cheerleading, thanks to that awful harpy Carly. Something had to be done about her-- part of the reason they were being punished at all was because of how unendingly awful she was! She was a menace, and had to be stopped.

She sent owls and texts out to all the cheerleaders except that hateful cow asking them to cram into her dorm once they found the coast clear so they could come to a decision. Perhaps Professor Olivier was hoping they'd give up on ousting Carly from the captaincy, but really she'd just given them a reason to unite-- if they could come to her with someone else they wanted to be captain, she would listen. So, their course of action was clear: they had to choose someone to be their leader.

Marina snuck out as soon as Rosenthal was distracted by something shiny and artsy. It wasn't hard living in a house full of artsy types who seemed united in the effort to hornswaggle their beloved houseparent. If anyone had the run of campus during this dreadful lockdown it was clearly the creative types. She plopped onto Cinna's bed woefully and sighed so dramatically it almost made her giggle. "So what are we going to do about this bitch?"

Cinna produced a notebook from underneath her bed. "Here's a list I prepared earlier!" She said, flourishing the pad around with a grin. She brought it up to her face and started reading, ticking off the ones she said aloud with a dramatic flick of her pen. "Replace her shampoo with gravy. Release wild dogs." She looked up expectantly. "No? Okay. How about." She flicked a few pages forward. "Steal all her skanky dresses and take them to a discreet tailor, who will re-seam everything an inch smaller so she thinks she's getting fat. In the meantime, we re-line her shoes with fabric comprised of microscopic razors. Then, we replace her shampoo with gravy..."

Marina liked where this was going. "Brutal, grotesque, I like it. Now see," She leaned forward on the bed, closer to Cinna's masterful plans, "here I thought you were being the mature one. And you've been plotting her demise from the start. She'll never see it coming."

She laughed uproariously. "Me, the mature one?! Oh my god, what have you been doing?"

"You should see her computer," Tina said impishly, having just made a daring escape from Hudson House whilst a teacher's back was turned. "There are three folders of links to webpages labeled 'how to kill someone and not get caught' misleadingly titled 'hot lesbian porn'."

She shrugged sheepishly at Marina. "I was looking for your Herbology notes and got distracted!"

"And went straight to my lesbian porn stash," Marina teased back. "Clearly, that was a good place to hide my devious plots." She giggled ridiculously at the idea of Tina hoping to find something good on her computer. "My porn is in the folder labeled homework."

Cinna pointed an accusing finger at Tina and howled with laughter. "Did you find the notes?"

"I couldn't find her homework at all!" Tina blushed and giggled. "It was probably in the 'dicks' folder; I didn't look there."

"My homework is in the 'homework' folder," Cinna revealed matter-of-factly. "My porn is in the 'recipes' subfolder of my 'wedding ideas' folder."

Marina made a fake gagging sound. "The future Mr. Thompson won't even have a say. She's had her wedding outlined since year one." She imagined Cinna spending her every waking moment perusing bridal magazines so that in five or ten years she'd have the perfect wedding.

"Excuse you, it is GENIUS. Who goes looking in the 'wedding ideas' folder of a girl's computer? It's boy poison and other girls just gag. I could hide Megaupload in there and no one could ever get to it."

Tina giggled again. "Maybe they should look there. Sounds like it would be an interesting wedding!"

"Seriously!" Cinna agreed, laughing. "Right now that folder is lingerie and fucking. Oh, and this one picture of an awesome cake I saw on Tumblr. But mostly lingerie and fucking."

Brenda froze at Cinna's door. "Um, I thought this was about Carly?"

Marina groaned, because it was just good fun imagining Cinna trying to look for porn and avoiding finding scantily clad pictures of her mother. It was a minefield. "Can we just never talk about her again? Kill her in her sleep, maybe."

Lyanna walked in behind Brenda at the most opportune moment of the conversation. "I'm not up to a murder" she said quietly, though the look in her eyes said she'd like nothing better than to have Carly's throat wrapped up in her hands.

"Well, we can keep it in mind for if nothing else works," Cinna said dismissively. Carly was getting obnoxious to the point that Cinna wasn't entirely sure that she was still opposed to a murder. "Come on in, guys!"

The rest of the cheer team soon joined them, and they all crammed up on Cinna's bed and around the floor to make heads or tails of this problem they'd been having.

"I think it's pretty clear that Olivier and Morgendorfer by extension aren't going to kick the bitch out," Cinna started, taking charge as always. "We're going to have to give them a better option. An only other option, basically. We need to vote on who our real captain is going to be. They can say it's Carly all they like, but we're not following her."

The other girls nodded, most of them agreeing, but then some of them wanted the honor of being captain and how could they decide fairly between them? "I nominate you," Marina said cheerfully. She'd gone to all the trouble of organizing them to oust Carly, after all.

"Ohmygod! I was going to nominate you!" Cinna reached over and punched Marina playfully. "You put your ass on the line at training that day and got us all to follow, so you'd be like an awesome captain, amiright guys?"

Marina grinned: "no fucking way." Then she laughed, because she could almost see it now. Maybe she'd have enough pull to get their coaches into some more artistic cheers, adding new dance moves to their repertoire. "What if we put our names in a hat? No voting bs. Just good old fashioned chance."

Cinna nodded agreeably. "Seriously though, even the worst any one of us could be is better than the best we already got."

"Well, I don't think I'd make a very good captain," Tina said timidly. "So maybe I'll just write my choice down instead of me." She wanted Marina to be their leader.

"Me either," said Lyanna. "I mean. I don't think me, not you," she explained to Tina quickly.

Cinna started ripping up pages of her notebook. "Okay then," she said, passing out slips of paper. "Write down who you want to be the new queen bitch. If it's you, that's cool, if it's not, that's cool too. As long as we have someone we can all agree to stand behind."

Marina nodded, writing her own name on the slip of paper. Lyanna jotted down Cinna's name, some of the others followed suit, while others wrote their own names on the tiny slips. "Do you have a hat, Cin?"

"I do!" Cinna rushed at her closet and pulled out a glitter-covered hatbox. Given that there wasn't much in the way of closet space at school, it had been charmed to be bottomless, and hold every hat (or shoe, or bag, or wayward packet of candy) she happened to store in it. She dug around for a bit until she found a hat that would do the job nicely.

"Names in! Last call for new captain!" She waved it around under everyone's noses until every last one of them had dropped in a piece of paper with a name on it. "If any of you wrote Carly down just to fuck with us, I swear I'll rip out your hair," she warned them all, before shaking the hat around to try and mix up the slips a little. "Who wants to draw?"

Brenda volunteered gamely, and jumped up to pull a slip from the hat. She smiled as she read it, and turned it around to show the others the loopy red handwriting with the heart-dotted 'i'.

"Congratulations, Marina!"

Marina giggled before any other reaction could take place. "Well now you bitches are stuck with me," she teased. "When are we telling the coaches?"

"ASAfuckingP," Cinna said firmly. The sooner Carly was off their backs the better. "They'll probably want us to be all 'united' and shit for the game tomorrow, but that's the last time she's stomping all over us."

"After the game," Tina agreed. "And then next practice, we answer to Captain Marina!"

Marina saluted them all in army style. "We'll be the roughest, toughest, baddest ass squad this side of the Mason Dixon." Which set her to laughing again, because she'd never drive them as hard and terribly as Carly liked to. She only hoped they'd still like her as a captain and maybe embrace some of her crazy ideas. "Just, you know, instead of assassination attempts tell me when I'm being a bitch and I'll back off."

"Oh, you better," Cinna threatened. "Or we'll replace your shampoo with gravy..."