Freak the Freak Out (Any of Gaston's friends)

[Gwyn Locksley]

If Gwyn were to be completely honest, she thought the whole thing was entirely stupid. Why wouldn’t someone want others to know their name? She wanted everyone to know her name and to speak of her for years, no... for centuries to come. She wanted to be a legend, just like her father, but for her own accomplishments, not simply because she was the daughter of Robin Hood. She wanted to make history, to have sonnets composed about her and statues erected in her likeness. For someone to hide their name sounded silly unless they were ashamed of their true self, but if this was some great character of a story, the hero, then what shame could he have?

Still, while she was completely honest with herself Gwyn was wise enough not to be completely honest with her friends. As terrible as that sounded, and while she was usually the first to speak her mind with most people, she knew telling the other three that the whole premise sounded stupid wasn’t a good idea, especially since she was here with them, in their element. She hadn’t had to come, but she had decided to anyway, and now she had to play nice like her mother told her to do at all the boring parties back home.

Sure, she could probably just ask them to explain it all, everything from the names to the costumes, but she really wasn’t that interested. “Well, doctors are always handy to have around in any case,” she said instead, figuring that was a safe enough reply.

[Gaston Jr]

Gaston listened to his friends replies intently, nodding at Eddie as he suggested what Moffat was up too and smiling when Meredith brought up the past history of the Doctor. He was about to exclaim that he was one such person who was happy not knowing what the Doctor’s real name was when Gwyn also added to the conversation. It wasn’t very often that she would join in their nerdy conversations, and even if she did it would just be to tell them they were being ridiculous and could we go do some sort of physical activity instead. So when she actually contributed something that was along the similar line as to what they were talking about, all he could do was smile and say, “So true. What’s in a name after all and-ooh look we’re nearly there!”

Almost jumping with joy he handed over his ticket to the stern looking ticket collector and still arm in arm with Gwyn walked in to the larger hall. It was a lot bigger this year, with more stalls and more people and more…cosplays. Excellent.

“Look! Stormtroopers, they’re hear every year, they’re going to be so confused, normally they like to chase me around as Han Solo for a while,” he said pointing the white helmeted guards to Gwyn, “And there! Imperial guards! They are really freaky, I used to have nightmares about them! And-”

“GASTON!” shrieked a group of girls that had previously been standing in front of a stall that had a lot of strange weapons around it.

The girls appeared to all be dressed as different types of Princess Leia’s, the white dress Leia, the empire strikes back Leia and of course, Slave Leia. They all rushed towards him, grinning and swarming around him as fast as they could, one of them attempting to knock Gwyn out the way.

“O.M.G Gaston! It’s so good to see you again,” said the White dress Leia

“Why aren’t you Han Solo, you’re always Han Solo,” said empire strikes back Leia.

“We dressed to match!” said Slave Leia.

Gaston laughed and said, “Well I can’t be Han Solo all the time, I mean I can, but I would get sick of it eventually,” the girls looked shocked and he laughed, “nah I wouldn’t, I just fancied a bit of a change so I came as the Doctor.”

“So we see,” said Slave giggling a little before adding, “OH! Maybe next time I’ll come as Rose!”

“Or Donna!” said Empire strikes back Leia.

“Or Martha!” said white dress Leia.

“Well next time I’ll be doing Mal, since Gwyn here pulls off an excellent River,” said Gaston motioning to Gwyn and giving her an approving smile.

The girls gave Gwyn a dirty look before one of them then turned to Meredith and said, “And I see that you‘ve already taken River Song, this time around.”

All at once the girls turned to face each other and shouted, “DIBS ON INARA!!”

[eddie]

Eddie was always completely blown away by the con every time they arrived, it was like he forgot how big it was and was surprised all over again, mind you it did seem to be bigger than ever this year. He stopped to stare for a moment, taking it all in, until he realised Gaston's voice was getting quieter and quieter, meaning he was walking away, and now Eddie had to run to keep up. Honestly it was a wonder he didn't trip over anything or bump into anyone, but he managed to catch up with the other three just in time for the girls to appear.

"Hi girls," he waved with a dorky grin on his face, trying hard not to stare at the slave Leia. They ignored him, of course, they always did. They never really looked at Eddie, content to have only eyes for Gaston (or dirty looks for Meredith), but he didn't really mind because, well, girls never had eyes for him, there was no reason it would be any different just because they were nerdy girls.

[meredith]

Meredith smiled at Gaston's enthusiasm as he started pointing everything out to Gwyn, he was always like this when they first got into the con - actually it was quite good that Gwyn was there with them, it meant Gaston got to explain things to someone who didn't already know, rather than saying the same things every year to her and Eddie. Not that they minded, Meredith was always too cheerful to be bothered by it, and Eddie always hung upon Gaston's every word, whether he'd heard it before or not.

Then they struck. The girls.
Meredith's mood immediately dropped, and that annoyed her further. She didn't want to dislike the girls, after all, there were only so many girls around in this sort of environment and that was no reason for them to get bitchy and competitive, except that they bloody well started it - they'd hated Meredith since the first time they'd clapped eyes on her and she took offense to that. In more recent years she'd figured out why, of course, and she considered the whole thing to be pathetic.

Privately, she wanted to smirk at their ideas, she knew exactly why they wanted to pick those costumes and actually, they were sort of fitting - people who were in love with the Doctor (well except maybe Donna), but who the Doctor did not love in return (even Rose, in Meredith's opinion). It only furthered her disdain when they immediately started fighting over Inara, there were much better characters to choose from.

Despite all of her irritation, derision and exasperation, on the surface she smiled sweetly at them.
"Well of course, she's an awesome character don't you think?" she asked "I love all your costumes, Leia's my favourite - as you know - and you pull her off... quite well."
She was very much her father's daughter, it was well known, but she had also spent a lot of time around Gwen, and Tristian, and though she didn't do it often, she knew how to do the sugary sweet bitch. They were probably trying to get a rise out of her, but they weren't going to get one.
"Oh, Inara is free if you wanted to join our group, since I'll probably do Zoe. You'd make a good Inara."
She deliberately did not specify which one, there was nothing like a bit of dissent in the ranks of your enemies.

[Gwyn Locksley]

Following Gaston’s lead, as she had the feeling she was going to be doing most of the day, Gwyn handed over her own ticket and stepped into the chaos. It was worse than she could have ever imagined. Everyone was there in some sort of costume or another, very few of which she actually recognised and even then she couldn’t really name them. Some were imposing and a bit scary, others as revealing as possible without being arrest worthy, and all completely nerdy. She tried to listen to Gaston as he pointed to people and identified the characters, nodding along and trying not to be completely overwhelmed by all of it.

That was when the trio of tramps hit. So taken aback by the high pitched squealing and the pushiness, Gwyn actually released her friend’s arm and let herself be pushed aside. It was a rare occurrence, but she was completely out of her element after all.

Looking over at her brother, who was just grinning at the girls, it was obvious that he would be of no help, and Meredith was of course being her diplomatic self, so Gwyn turned her glare back to the girls, particularly the one in the tiny bikini thing, and crossed her arms over her chest. Somehow Gaston managed to turn their attention on here for a moment, and her glare turned into a smug grin at the compliment and smile, and the dirty looks the girls were giving her.

See this? This here was one of the main reasons she had so few female friends. Most girls she met since coming here acted like these brainless bimbos, girls with no self respect or goals whose only cares in the world were boys and love. It was pathetic. Of course it was a bit unusual to see those types of interaction directed at Gaston, though he had been getting a bit more attention since he’d returned to Tintagel looking all different, as he and her brother more often got overlooked. Gwyn didn’t like it one bit, it threw all the dynamics off.

Wincing when all the girls suddenly shouted in unison, she rolled her eyes and turned an exasperated look to Meredith. How that girl could always remain so nice and pleasant, even when faced with such annoying trolls, Gwyn would never know. Unfortunately the youngest girl was not so polished.

“Or maybe you could all just dress up as parts of the ship and offer him a ride,” she said as innocently as she could. She wasn’t so good at comebacks either, and not even completely sure she had this one right (or what it really meant), but she’d heard something like it before and it seemed like it could be both innocent and insulting.

[Gaston Jr]

Gaston being as oblivious as he was didn’t see the true intentions of the girls, always dressing to match, always wanting to be the love interest to whatever he was…he just thought it was an amazing coincidence and weren’t those girls just so friendly and nice. He never quite understood why Meredith didn’t much care for them, and as he looked over at Gwyn he realised that she was looking at them the same way Meredith did. It must be a girl thing. He regarded them as a completely different race some of the time, with their own kind of culture and secret language they didn’t have a hope of understanding. So he did what any man in that situation would do, he chose to ignore it.

That was until Gwyn made it impossible not too. Meredith’s comments had gone right over his head despite watching his mother and Tristian do the same, but he couldn’t mistake the meaning of Gwyn’s statement.

The girls looked shocked, they had been about to argue amongst themselves about who Meredith was referring too, but instead turned their full laser beam glares on Gwyn instead. Gaston turned round to look at Eddie and came to the same conclusion that his sister had come too, that he would be useless. At this point in time he was probably already drifting off in to Planet Eddie, a strange world which he also didn’t try to understand… Either that are he was completely captivated by slave leia’s bikini to really notice what anyone was saying.

Thinking quickly he burst out laughing putting an arm around Gwyn and saying, “What this lot? Serenity? I don’t think so. They’re much too hyper and loud to be called Serenity. Besides I wouldn’t trust them to be my ship, they distracted by the next space pirate that came along and then my ship would be going off in different directions.”

The girls seemed to back down a little at that, and even smiled and laughed as Gaston gave them his full attention. “Anyways,” said Gaston staring at something over their shoulders, “I can see the light sabre stand from here and I was going to see if River here would allow me to buy her, her first one.”

He turned to look at Gwyn and grinned, motioning with his other hand towards the stall. Gaston knew she wouldn’t get the significance of buying her the light sabre, not being a huge star wars fan…well…not really knowing much about it at all, but he intended to let her know just how important that was.

The girls jaws dropped and one of them looked like they were about to burst into tears.

[eddie]

Eddie was completely oblivious to all of the bitchy conversation going on, perhaps it was because he had acquired a special ability to zone out negativity when he was in a good place and enjoying himself, perhaps it was because he just didn't want to listen to that negativity... or maybe it was just because a group of girls had walked past dressed as X-men characters in skin-tight lycra, and once his gaze had followed them as far as it could, it had landed on a table filled with limited edition figurines. Finally he was snapped out of his fanboy daze by the word 'lightsabre' - ok, so maybe that's not so much 'out', but it at least brought him into the here and now.

"Lightsabre? What lightsabre? Wait, for Gwyn, has Gwyn even seen Star Wars? Did you see Star Wars and not tell me," he turned accusing eyes on his sister

[meredith]

Meredith wasn't a competitive sort of girl, particularly with those people she viewed to be on her side, and she definitely knew who her side was in this little battle, so instead of any jealousy over Gwyn's biting comment, instead she thought it was brilliant and had to hide her snort of laughter in a pretend cough. She could tell the three of them weren't fooled.

Of course then Gaston had to go and be, well, himself, and smooth it all over and get them simpering all over him once again - one day he would realise how sweet and charming he actually was to girls, and on that day he would become devastating.

...or maybe not, because in his classic way Gaston he immediately ruined all of his good work, not that Meredith minded him disappointing those three... tarts.

"Don't go buying the poor girl merchandise just yet, not when she doesn't even know the significance of it," she shook her head slightly at Gaston's enthusiasm, adding insult to injury by immediately ignoring the other three girls "why don't we start with some merchandise of something Gwyn's actually seen."

[Gwyn Locksley]

Glancing over at Gaston when he put his arm around her, Gwyn gave him an odd look. He had actually taken her completely literally and was laughing about these three girls dressing together as a ship? Now even the girls were laughing too, which was not the effect that she had been going for. They were like leaches, little annoying, high pitched, shrieking leaches and Gwyn just wanted to get them away from her. Did this happen every year?

It would sort of explain why Eddie loved coming here so much. Beautiful and brainless seemed exactly his type, though he was never their type. Her brother was far too nice, and Gwyn had come to realise that most girls like these, girls like her roommate, preferred boys that didn’t seem to care about them at all. The less interested the boys were, the more the girls wanted them. It was stupid.

Gaston didn’t seem all that interested in them right at this moment, so that would further explain their fascination, and he was even trying to get away from them by... offering to buy her a light sabre? Well it would certainly be easier to wield than a heavy sabre, but it would have to be of strong steal and very sharp. Her interest finally peaked at the prospect of a new weapon, Gwyn positively beamed back at him.

“That sounds...” she started to say before Eddie burst in about Star Wars, leading her right back into confusion. “Why would I ever do that?” she asked. He hadn’t yet been able to convince her to give up six hours or more of her time to watch these movies with him (she did know enough to know there were three of them, which made them even less appealing and her protests even greater against them), so why would he even think she would watch them on her own?

The other girls completely forgotten, Gwyn looked to Meredith for guidance, but she didn’t seem to be too keen on the sabre idea. Apparently it was very important and had some special significance. Despite herself, Gwyn was intrigued. “I’d like a sabre,” she ventured. “I have mastered my broadsword and can impale a knot in a tree with a dagger. A new weapon could make training more interesting.”

[Gaston Jr]

It was clear that Gwyn, due to her lack of Star Wars watching, wasn’t quite clued up about the kind of Lightsabres a person could buy at a convention. Gaston smiled cheerily, it was always good introducing a newbie to it all, that was if Gwyn would allow herself to being introduced to it all. He knew she hadn’t watched them and was hoping that by buying her the weapons she would be much more interested in watching it. He knew how to get into Gwyn’s mind, it needed to be something deadly and shiny.
 
Before he could say anything however, either in reply to Eddie, Meredith or Gwyn, the girls burst out laughing.
 
“She doesn’t even know what it is,” said white dress Leia.
 
“She’s never even seen it,” said Empire Leia.
 
“She doesn’t even deserve such a beautiful weapon from a more civilized time,” said Slave Leia, sweeping her pony tail over her shoulder, smirking at Gwyn.
 
Gaston, angry at this clear prejudice against newbies actually managed to scowl a little and keeping his arm around Gwyn said, “Gwyn might not know what it is, she may even have not seen Star Wars, but she definitely deserves one. Now if you don’t mind…”
 
Turning Gwyn around and heading towards the stand he motioned with his other hand for Eddie and Meredith to follow, take the time t whisper to Gwyn, “Lightsabres aren’t actually a real weapon, although it would be awesome if it was. It’s a weapon the Jedi’s and Sith’s use, they’re deadly, like swords, but made of lasers.”

[eddie]

Eddie, bless his heart, was not going to let some girls, however pretty they were, saying anything bad about his sister. Now that his attention had actually been drawn back into the conversation, he was ready to defend Gwyn from their comments. He stepped forward gallantly, doing his best to look as cool as his father (and he sort of managed it, looking it, anyway)

"Just because she hasn't seen it, it's not any of your business if she gets a lightsabre, and Gwyn deserves any weapon she wants because she's actually very good at fighting, she's almost as good as our dad, and our dad is Robin Hood, so there! Just because you are all ..very pretty... doesn't mean you can say that about my sister! She could see Star Wars if she wanted to, but she doesn't, only she will, because we'll show it to her and she'll realise it's awesome and then she'll come back here with a lightsabre and... beat you!"

It wasn't the most eloquent or well-made speech ever, and he completely spoiled it when he went to push Gwyn towards the lightsabre stand only to find that Gaston had already made a much better speech and was already steering his sister, and instead just managed to trip over his own feet, but he had made it and he was proud of himself, so he recovered from his stumble with his head held high and marched after Gaston and Gwyn.

[meredith]

Meredith winced slightly when Gwyn seemed to think it was a real weapon (oh how she wished it was, how they all did), just knowing that the girls would pick up on that and immediately start on the attack - which, predictably, they did.

Luckily the boys seemed to have it well in hand, and Meredith smiled proudly as they both leapt to Gwyn's defense and steered her away from the bitchiness. She even noticed Gaston leaning over to whisper something to her - probably an explanation of what a lightsabre actually was, Gaston was very helpful like that, if a trifle enthusiastic, when introducing people to new things.

For a moment, she didn't follow, just stood with her hands on her hips and watched the three Leias, wondering if there was anything that needed to be said - Gaston, after all, had provided the ultimate burn to that lot when he sided with Gwyn.

"Such nice boys, aren't they?" she said fondly, knowing she had to say something to them, even if it was unnecessary "A little tip girls, you will never get into Gaston's good books by putting down one of his friends, so if you find it physically possible to not be bitches for, oh, thirty seconds while you're around him, I'd advise it."

[Gwyn Locksley]

When the three ditzy girls in their stupid costumes started laughing at her - laughing at her - Gwyn’s eyes narrowed and her hands clenched into fists. They were lucky that Gaston currently had his arm around her because the urge to grab the ponytail of the one that was wearing practically nothing and use it to throw the girl to the floor was almost overwhelming. Gwyn had more weapons than these girls had probably ever seen in their lives combined, real weapons, and she could use them all expertly. She was going to point this out but both Gaston and Eddie were already jumping right in there to defend her.

Now Gwyn was no damsel in distress and she rarely, if ever, needed defending, but that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate it. She had always been better with fists, feet and swords than words anyway. As for the speeches, Gaston’s was very short and too the point, while Eddie’s... was not. He still gained major points for complimenting her fighting and bringing up their father, even to the point of saying she was almost as good as him. As different as the siblings were they always had each other’s backs, and it was moments like these that Gwyn remembered just how much she loved her big brother.

So while she was still angry and still wanting to beat down the whole lot of them (and she had no doubts she could beat all three of them), she was also smug and, to be honest, a little touched. Sliding her arm around Gaston’s back, she did the same to Eddie when he reached them on her other side and gave them both a light squeeze. Well, light by Gwyn’s standards.

“I still don’t see the point of a fake weapon, but... thanks,” she said, grinning at each of them in turn. “But if this was all just some big ploy to get me to watch your stupid movies then you know I’ll kick both your asses, right?”

Because after that, the next time they asked her to watch it, how could she really say no?

[Gaston Jr]

The girls all glared at Meredith but kept their mouths firmly shut. On this occasion they had been bested and they departed, noses in the air, until the next time where they would be better prepared. Armed with the new knowledge that Meredith had provided them with.
 
Gaston Jr laughed at Gwyn’s comment and said, “Yes, we are all very well aware that you could kick our rear ends no problem. And us? Try to trick you with some ploy? Why of course not, what kind of scoundrels do you take us for?”
 
He smiled at her with the best ‘scoundrel’ smile he could muster. He was quite good at the ‘cheeky’ smile, being funny and fast rather than having much physical strength, but scoundrel was something he didn’t think he had quite mastered yet, at least in his opinion. Others may have a different one, but to Gaston Jr, despite his recent make over, he was still the geeky black sheep of the family who wasn’t nearly as charming and handsome as his older brother and Mordred.
 
Approaching the stall he motioned to the ones displayed and said, “Pick any one you want. Just think about it, this way, if you fought us with one of these, not only would you still be kicking our rear ends, but you would be beating us at our own game.”

[eddie]

Eddie was actually glad that Gwyn accepted their defense of her, because he knew how badly things could turn if she lost her temper, and he didn't want them kicked out of the place for fighting (even though those girls totally deserved it and the whole thing would probably be over in thirty seconds anyway).

"Yea it isn't any trick, we just think lightsabres are cool!" Eddie added "though it would be good if you did watch the movies because you need to know just how cool they are and the proper noise that they make, unless you get one that makes the noise anyway, but you should watch so you know what a jedi or a sith is and you can choose which one you'd be even though you'd totally be a jedi but a really cool one."

He was nothing if not unhelpful.