"What do you mean I can't go?" Eva glared at her mother with typical teenage petulance, her green eyes wide in disbelief at being told that Jessica was going on a trading expedition without her.

 

"I've done all of my homework and school doesn't start back for another week! It's not fair! I don't want to go and stay with Aunt Tess. I want to go with you!"

 

"Evangeline...." Jessica said in a tone of patience that only a parent with a teenage daughter could know how to maintain, "This isn't like the normal runs we usually do together. This job will take me outside of full UEE protection. it's too dangerous...."

 

"SO?!?" Eva almost screamed at her mother, "I've shot at pirates before. I can fly your ship as good as anyone!"

 

"Eva.....", Jessica sighed the word out as much as she spoke it, resorting to using her daughter's preferred nickname to try to calm the girl down, "This isn't the same thing. I'll be heading deeper into space than I've ever taken you. Trust me when I say, the class of pirate out there is nothing like you've ever seen before."

 

"Whatever!" Eva snapped, turning on her heel and stormed out of the room, slamming the door to her bedroom so hard that the Aegis Dynamics Avenger poster that's stuck there fell off and crumpled onto the floor. She paced back and forth in her room with fists clenched. She loved nothing more than getting off the planet and getting out into the stars. Out there in all of that emptiness she felt free, like she could go anywhere, be anything. Being planetside almost felt stifling in comparison and being left alone while her mother went up there was a suffocating thought.

 

A faint knock came from the door and her mother's voice came through softly, trying to coax the girl out of her room. "Fuck off!" she yelled and grabbed the nearest solid object to hurl at the door without paying much attention to what it was. Her Glas tablet struck the door with a shattering impact, falling to the floor with its screen shattered in a spiderweb of cracks. She stared at it blankly for a moment, but her lip and sighed.

 

Pulling her backpack out from under her bed and started stuffing clothes into it, making sure to slam shut every drawer and cupboard door as hard as she could in the process.

 

With backpack slung over one shoulder, Eva yanked open her bedroom door to find her mother waiting there. Jessica opened her mouth to say something but Eva just threw her palm in front of the woman's face and stalked down the hall.

 

"Evangeline Hawkins, you get back here!", Jessica called after her daughter.

 

"I'm going to Aunt Tess'. See you in a week", Eva snarled to her mother as she walked out the door, holding her right hand up with an obscene gesture at her mother before the door swung shut behind her.

 

NEXT ENTRY: Valkyrie Reborn