A small, repeating twenty seconds of Stone Canyon and Angel Grove tying at the football championship in Trini's Sophomore year.
One of the very rare times that the two high schools got along, if only because the lead players--Matt Cook for Angel Grove, Rocky DeSantos for Stone Canyon--leaned in at the same time to smile at the camera, having shaken a huge bottle of soda and let it burst over themselves.
There was a kind of endearing bonus to the situation, as the night was also on Halloween and half the stadium had costumes on--she could see Aisha right at the front of the stands, Harlequin colors and costume in place, but with Canary Yellow rather than Heart Red; Adam standing right beside her looking like a main character from the cast of An American Horror Story, so much black and white paint perfectly painted across his face--the football players unable to partake in the bigger costumes making do with painting their faces and taking off their helmets in view of the camera.
There a vampire. There a voodoo practitioner. There a victim of The Shape. There a sallow Victorian.
Trini smiled, almost painful, when the camera settled over Kim's face, and Trini, and the whole group of Rangers before everything went to hell.
Neither she, nor Kim, had dressed up beyond--oh, who was Trini kidding; they'd gone to a vintage flea market and each bought the plainest, frill and lace bedecked dresses that could pass for wedding gowns and doused each other in corn syrup. The boys had followed after them and were posing at the Three Musketeers; Billy especially as close to being historically appropriate as possible--the feather in his hat the fluffiest little thing that Trini could still remember taking every opportunity to stroke it like a cat's tail.
The reel finished, screen going to black and Trini didn't even care that she was crying a little.
It wasn't like Bulk ever judged anyone for anything, anyway.
"Where did you find this, hm?"
Bulk smiled over his shoulder, still working at making the recipe that would basically be a Biscotti by the end of the evening, though with more honey than any Biscotti had ever had before, "It's mine. It's been bouncing around in my carry-on bag since Rita took over."
The nicest way to say, B.D. Before Drakkon (Fucked Them All Over and Took Over the World for the Sake of Trying to Find Something that Could Make Him Happy and Fill Up the Hole Where His Soul was Supposed to Reside, The Motherfucker).
"So, why are you giving it to me?"
"Because," he paused a moment, handing her the mixing spoon to taste, her savoring the chocolate and honey on her tongue before giving him to go-ahead, one hand wave, to put it in the main oven of Drakkon's palace that the servants gave a wide berth since Kim had insisted on giving most of the rooms to the Coinless, generals and foot soldiers, to make the place feel significantly less empty and creepy; the shadows under his eyes had been sliding away the longer he was allowed to do things that didn't have anything to do with life and death, and she knew her own were receding too, "Now I can."
