Sarah Vale and Megan, Tuesday June 28th (backdated)

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Pixie and Sarah head out for an afternoon adventure, namely Mini Golf and ice cream. They talk about future plans, both for the summer and beyond.


The mall was pleasantly frigid inside, a welcome reprieve from the hot sun and high humidity. Pixie had been determined to enjoy as much of the summer as possible, but right now that meant retreating back inside. She was super excited to be hanging out with Sarah, too. They’d had some classes together but hadn’t really talked much during the school year. So it was with half-flying, half skipping that she made her way to the giant decorative mushrooms at the back of the mall. Neon tape marked the line to the counter where they could rent putters and play rounds of mini-golf in the Alice in Wonderland themed course.

“Hey Sarah, have you ever played mini-golf before? I saw it on Groupon online and it looked cool. I wonder if my hair will glow under the black lights?”

Sarah followed Pixie to the counter and picked out a putter from the many ones they had available. It looked like it was going to be a very fun course, and it was certainly a perfect setting for Pixie.

“I haven’t in a long time, but I played once or twice with my sister before, on vacation when we were younger. It’s pretty fun!” They mainly had a good time with it and didn’t play all that competitively, which was what she hoped it’d be like with Pixie. “Ooh, it might, we’ll find out soon enough!” She looked around for where they’d start at the first hole and headed over in that direction.

Pixie selected a putter wrapped with neon green tape and followed Sarah to the first hole. She couldn’t see her own hair too well, since it barely came to her shoulders, but the white patterns she’d spray-painted onto her black tank top were putting off a nice glow.

“I don’t have too much practice at this either. I always seemed to whack the crap out of the ball when you really just need a gentle...”

She set up her shot to bounce lightly off the right border and avoid the glowing white statue of a rabbit that split the miniature fairway. “...touch.”

However, it ricocheted way too hard, bouncing off the left border and falling down a hole that was marked with a sign reading “Rabbit Hole”.

“Dammit,” she swore, “oh well.” The grinned to show that she wasn’t actually upset. Her ball rolled out of a tube and she grabbed it when it deposited onto the floor.

She over at Pixie’s hair, which was glowing nicely too in the darkness. “Your hair really does look cool in here! Not that it doesn’t outside, I mean, but it’s all glowy now!”

Sarah watched Pixie’s shot, frowning when it missed its mark. “It does require a gentle touch, but I don’t have that really, hehe.” She laid her ball down and took a stroke, which started off looking ok but glanced off of the rabbit and hopped down the hole right after Pixie’s. “See?” She laughed, picking up her ball as well and moving on.

“So, do you have any big plans for the summer, Pixie?” Sarah didn’t, not really, but she was sure glad classes were over.

“I’m glowing! Awesome! Are you going to go to Mr. Worthington’s pool party?” Pixie was glad the relative darkness of the mini golf wonderland hid the blush on her face as she pictured the beautiful winged teacher in bathing gear. “I’ll probably go to that and um... I dunno, try to get into this art show.”

At the next hole, they were presented with a steep ramp that spiraled around. There were cutouts of Victorian-era furniture along the edges and 3-D versions forming obstacles in the middle. They started out upside down and by the end they were right-side up. Pixie’s ball got an extremely lucky break from the Goddess of Physics and happened to sink into the proper hole right by the bottle marked Drink Me.

“Yeah, it’s very cool!” She smiled at the other girl, then shook her head a little. “Nah, I’m just going to stay at home this weekend, I think. Maybe watch some movies, veg out a little, that kind of thing.” Sarah knew she should probably make more of an effort to get involved, to get out and get to know her fellow mutants, but she didn’t feel like it this weekend at least. “I hope you do get into it!”

She lined up her ball, taking a more careful shot this time around. Hers was a better shot but stopped a few feet away from the hole, and she walked up and tapped it in for a two shot hole. “Not bad, I guess!” It was fun at any rate, which was the main thing.

“Oh you should come! But I understand if you don’t feel like it.” Pixie had been trying very hard to stay active and positive since the whole tunnel incident. She butchered her next starting shot, hitting it right into a cookie that read “Eat Me” in giant neon frosting instead of getting it through a succession of smaller and smaller doorways.

“So what kinds of movies do you like?”

It was definitely harder to stay positive since then, definitely, and Sarah had a hard to over instinct to stay at home most times since then, trips to the mall aside. “I probably should, yeah, but I think I’ll take a pass this time. But next time for sure!” She smiled, hoping it didn’t seem like she were blowing Pixie and everyone else off. She lined up her shot, once again getting close to the hole but coming short of the mark for another short tap in.

“I’m a huge fan of steampunk stuff, I guess. Things like Hellboy were pretty cool, with the robotic bad guys. Ooh, and that Sucker Punch movie was neat, some of the scenes anyway.” They mightn’t have been the best movies every but she loved those parts of them anyway. “What about you, what do you like?”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who liked Sucker Punch! That was such an awesome movie,” Pixie gushed. “It’s like... Alice in Wonderland meets The Matrix. I like visually interesting movies even if most people don’t ‘get it’.” She planned her next two shots a bit better and the final shot went perfectly around the last bend to sink into the hole. “Steampunk is cool,” she added. “I like Tank Girl. Does that count as steampunk?”

“Yeah, it had some pretty cool effects in it. It had great visuals, totally.” Sarah would probably never admit it but after watching that she’d tried to reenact some of the neat sword fighting back in her room when she was alone. “Nice shot!” She gave a little golf clap to Pixie for nailing the shot around the bend. “Hmm, I think Tank Girl was more post-apocalyptic than steampunk, really, but it was pretty cool just the same!”

“Oh well, I like post-apo stuff too I guess,” Pixie said cheerfully as the girls picked up their balls and moved to the next hole. Giant plastic flowers with faces on them decorated the layout. It was actually a little creepy. “It’s cool to take stuff from history and make new ideas from it. Or speculate about a strange future. Of course we’ll have the edge in a nuclear/zombie/religious apocalypse because of our mutancies, right? I can fly and dust people to make them confused and/or euphoric. And you can, like, super-hack computers right?”

The flowers were pretty creepy, and Sarah could’ve sworn that the eyes of one of them was following them as they moved. “Me too, if it’s done right it can be pretty cool. And yeah, exactly, speculative fiction is awesome, which is what steampunk is too, only in the past usually.” She grinned and nodded her head. “Yup, kinda. I can sometimes make them do what I want, anyway, not really a hacker I guess but it sometimes comes in handy.” When she was able to make it work properly, at any rate, which was why she’d come back to the school. “It’s awesome that you can fly, such a cool ability.”

In order to get a better line for the next shot, she flew over to it and knocked it in without stepping on the decorative area they weren’t supposed to stand on.

“Thanks! It totally makes up for my dust being pretty much worthless,” she said, smiling. “I’m going to have to work really hard next year as a senior. I mean, to get the kind of control over it that I want. Do you know what you want to do when you graduate?”

Unable to follow Pixie through the air, Sarah went to the designated starting area and lined up her own shot. This hole was trickier for her, and it took three putts before her ball followed Pixie’s down into the hole.

“I’m sure it’s not worthless, and it looks pretty cool.” She added. The flying part was definitely awesome, and she was perhaps a little jealous. “I know, me too, it’s cool that we’ll both be seniors! I’m thinking about maybe doing something with computers, maybe. It’d fit, right?” Her parents had dropped hints about political science but that was their cup of tea, not hers. “How about you, do you know what you want to do?”

“Ooh, like a computer forensics detective? I have no idea what I’ll do. I don’t even know if I want to go to university or not. I’ll probably just hang out for a year after I graduate and then try to decide. Maybe I could help out on missions and stuff.” Was there such thing as being a Professional X-man? she wondered. She was distracted, and took five puts to finish the next hole.

That sounded like an awesome idea, but it wasn’t what she’d been thinking of exactly. It could certainly become a possibility though, now that she mentioned it. “I hadn’t thought of that, hmm. I was thinking more like programming or building machines, I dunno. I guess we’ll see how it goes in the first year and go from there.” That was what most people did after all, wasn’t it? “That’s not a bad idea, I’d like to help out if I could too, but don’t know how useful I’d be.” Sarah wasn’t entirely convinced her powers were of much use to anyone, at least not at the current lack of precision she had in using them. She wasn’t keeping score of their shots so it didn’t really matter how many they took, not to her anyway.

“I guess I watch too many crime shows. That and Top Gear. I want to be race in fast cars! Or catch baddies with science and cunning. Hehe, so that’s why I thought of forensics. I’m not real good at math, but maybe I can get into some kind of science field. Or maybe just race cars.”

Pixie had been neglecting the scorecard too, and ambled on to the next hole which was a simple maze meant to evoke the scene in Alice in Wonderland with the playing cards painting the rose bushes red. She immediately began humming the tune from the Disney movie.

“Hey, do you want to take diver’s training with me later this summer? It would be cool to have someone I know in the class.”

“A science field could be pretty interesting, depending on the field I guess. Anything in particular you want to try out?” Sarah was pretty sure it’d be computer science for her, given what she could do.

She followed Pixie to the maze, lining up her ball and bouncing it off of several walls through the course somewhere. “Oh yes, that’d be awesome, I really want to learn how to drive this summer and it’d be great to have someone else to do it with!”

“Cool! I’ll show you the website where you can sign up later.”
The ball finally made its way into the hole and Pixie skipped over to the next, where they’d have to avoid a moving Jaberwocky head.

“Well, not biology. I didn’t like dissecting things. Except the cockroach was OK,” she mused as she set up her shot. “Actually I do kinda like bugs. Hehe, I have no idea what I’d want to try. I like to study mythology, but it’s not like you can get a job doing that.” The ball just barely glanced off the side of the creature’s face.

“Awesome, thanks, sounds like a great idea!” Driving lessons were the sole exception to the general rule that summer school sucked. It’d be great to have her license, even if she didn’t have a car of her own at the moment, it was still a step in the right direction.

“Ew, yeah, I agree with you there.” Dissecting things didn’t appeal to Sarah either. “Mythology is cool, you could become a teacher or a professor with something like that, I bet.” She made her own attempt, narrowly missing the face but putting too much power behind her shot, resulting in the ball skipping over the hole. “Rats. Definitely am not meant to become a professional golfer, at least I can eliminate that as a possibility, hehe.”

“Hmmm.... I never really thought about becoming a professor,” Pixie mused in her airy sing-song voice. “Hey, do you want to do the back nine or do you just want to skip and get ice cream?”

“That’s an option, yeah. Professor Pixie, I like the sound of that!” She smiled, then thought about that question for a second. “Ice cream sounds awesome, not that there’s anything wrong with golf, but I’m good with just doing the first half.” They did pretty well with it, so they deserved some ice cream!