>>6110685oooh boi. I have wanted to write this scene since I began the quest.<span class="mu-i">The car feels cramped, like always. She runs a hand through her sweaty brown hair. How long is a stupid stop at the gas station’ store going to take anyway? Maybe she should get out of the car and check on her parents. But no — says a small and angry part of herself — they would probably make more comments about how she cares now, about how she’s finally growing up.</span>
<span class="mu-i">“Fuck that noise,” she mutters, picking up her phone. Here in the middle of nowhere, on a stupid stop of a stupid road trip — it was supposed to bring them all together, but mom and dad switched from terse, glacial silence to bouts of shouting and then to uneasy silence again, so she has spent most of the trip either playing with her phone or attempting to coax the character’s AI into something approaching believability — and now all she can do is kick the seat in frustration.</span>
<span class="mu-i">Whump.</span>
<span class="mu-i">It feels good.</span>
<span class="mu-i">So she gives it another — whump! — and she starts to feel a little better, the anxious knot in her stomach giving way to gleeful adrenaline.</span>
<span class="mu-i">Look! She’s kicking the seat. Just what she’s not supposed to do, what dad complained about over and over. And there’s no one to stop her here. Nobody who can tell her what to do. Or what not to.</span>
<span class="mu-i">One day, every day will be like that. She’ll be the one making the rules.</span>
<span class="mu-i">One day.</span>
[cont.]
