Title:  Love is Blind
Chapter 2
Virginia Rose
snortimer5@hotmail.com

	Well, this part is told from Darien's point of view, because I felt it 
needed to be told this way, even though I'm more talented with Serena's 
point of view.  This chapter is almost a filler chapter, sorry. It's gonna 
get better.  I swear.  Really.  Imax belongs to... Imax, I guess.  Remeber, 
I'm always open to sugestions.  I need Email!  I have a little question at 
the bottom, so be sure to e-mail me with answers! Oh, and I realize that I 
forgot the disclaimer on the last chapter, so:
nolite habere rights ad Nauta Luna.  phooieus.


	~Darien~

	My day started with a phone call.  It's persistent ringing woke me from a 
deep sleep.  I groggily reached for the receiver, and happened to glance at 
the clock.  6:45.  Usually I was up by now, but last night's battle had 
taken it's toll.
	"Hello?"  I answered, sounding rather peeved.  My first class wasn't until 
11:30, and I had been hoping that I could catch up on my sleep.
	"Hey, Darien, its Alden.  Can I ask you a really big favor?"
Alden one was one of my co-workers at the Museum of Natural History.  He was 
the head curator though, while I was a behind the scenes guy.  I handled a 
lot the computer generated displays and maintenance.
	"That depends on what you want me to do."  I answered hesitantly.
	"Um, well, we've got a real shortage of curators today, Sherill called in 
sick, Bill's grandma had a stroke... And, well, I was kinda wondering if you 
would work as a kind of substitute curator today?"
	"No way.  Absolutely not.  I do not want to lead a bunch of screaming 
terrors through a museum full of other screaming terrors, and- Just NO!   No 
way, no how, Nuh-uh."
	Well, thirty minutes later, I found myself showered, dressed, and heading 
down the sidewalk towards certain doom.  Well, as it turns out, Alden has 
superb negotiating skills.  The man should work for the UN.  He got me, 
Darien Chiba, to lead a tour of junior high students through the museum.  I 
was less than thrilled.
	I was contemplating the meaning of life as I walked along.  (No, actually I 
was thinking of 47 different ways to repel teenage girls, who upon arrival 
to the museum would blind me with eyelashes batting at faster than light 
speed.)
	Well, anyway, I was walking along peacefully, not really watching where I 
was going when a blond bullet slammed into me at full speed.
"Oh, Owiee!"  A chiming voice said.  "Lunaaaa!  Why'd you let me run into a 
telephone pole?"  She whined.  It was Serena.  The little blond bombshell 
who had knocked my perfectly organized life askew.  Around her, I always 
seem to loose all sense of rational thought.   She stirs feelings inside of 
me that I never knew I had.  And now she seems to be talking to her cat.
	"Hey Meatball Head!  Maybe if you weren't so busy having a conversation 
with your cat, you'd have watched were you were going!"
	That was me, of course.  The words just popped out of my mouth before I 
even thought about it.  It was almost instinctual, even if it just made her 
dislike me even more.  Sigh.
	I watched her nose squinch up adorably as her ears turned red.  She picked 
herself up, turned to the wall and pointed at it as if she were planning to 
scold it.
"Arghhh!  Darien, why do you have to be so mean?  And how many times is it 
going to take you to learn that my name is SERENA?!"
	Well, Serena was talking to the wall as if it were me.  Maybe she was still 
half-asleep, or maybe she just couldn't stand the sight of me.  I shuddered 
at the thought, and decided to turn her around.
	"Serena, that's the wall.  I'm this way."
I placed a hand on her slim shoulder and gently turned her to face me.  I 
got a look at her for the first time since our run-in.  She looked stunning, 
as usual, but also different, older even.  Then I noticed that her usual 
hairstyle had been replaced with sassy coils piled on top of her head.  And 
yet, even with the new hairstyle I still felt obligated to call her Meatball 
head. For a second she looked confused, but then regained her composure and 
said  "Um, well...It's easy to mistake you for a wall!  Running into you 
felt like getting hit by a Mack truck!  That's gonna leave a bruise, ya 
know!"
She then  (Much to my own amusement) began to turn bright red and stuttered 
"Um, well, I-I I've got to get to school now.  Bye Darien!"
	I caught a fleeting glance of the golden child disappearing down the 
sidewalk.  Then she was gone.  I sighed as I watched her go, but instantly 
steered myself with the thought that I would see again at the arcade after 
school.
	I was running late for my tour, so I picked up the pace a bit and soon 
arrived at the museum, where I was forced to change into the dorky blazer 
emblazoned with the museum emblem.  ( I have been told, however, that it's a 
great change from my green blazer.  I resent that.  I like my blazer.  Heck, 
I LOVE my blazer.  It's so green, and comfy and... I've gotten off subject 
haven't I?  So sorry.)
Well, Alden drilled me in curating 101, and I soon found myself waiting for 
a bunch of hormone-crazed girls and annoying indifferent boys.  Well, my 
little tour-ees were late.  Twenty minutes late.
Finally a line of teens filed into the museum and promptly fell down.  It 
was much like a domino effect, and I discovered myself standing over a pile 
of tangled limbs, pleated skirts, and surprisingly dirty mouths.  (Junior 
High kids can be quite nasty when provoked.)
	And, at the start of the pile up sat Serena, as her friends struggled to 
help her up.  I couldn't help smiling inwardly as I saw her.  Suddenly this 
day was a whole lot brighter, just because she was here.
	The teacher, who was at least five or six years older than I was, kept 
battling her lashes and giggling as she introduced me and instructed her 
class to "be good".
	I nodded cordially to her, and she giggled again.  Jeez, I can't believe 
this woman teaches school.  Then I took over with my little "welcome to the 
museum" spiel.  When I re-introduced myself as Mr. Chiba, I heard Serena 
yelp "Darien?!" while her two friends who held her by her elbows turned 
bright red and tried to pretend that hey hadn't heard her.
	The rest of the class had turned to stare at Serena and I could tell she 
was terribly embarrassed.  (She was turning that adorable shade of crimson 
again.)  So, I took this all in stride and said,  "Well, as Serena here has 
so dually noted, my first name is Darien, and since we are already running 
late, we should get this tour under way.  If you'll follow me we'll proceed 
to the "terrors of the deep" exhibit.
	I led the class to the west wing, which was home to several large stuffed 
sharks; a (dead) giant squid named Melba and the twelve-foot tall jaw of a 
prehistoric megladon.
  I stood in the corner and watched them file around the exhibits, 
occasionally reminding them not stick their heads in the stuffed shark's 
mouth.  I mainly watched Serena, who was being led around the exhibits by 
two of her friends, who gripped her firmly by the elbows.  She seemed 
strangely compliant to their total control over her movements.   The whole 
situation seemed strange to me.
"Hey Serena!  This thing has teeth bigger than butcher knives!  You really 
ought to see this!" Said the tall one, Lita, I think.
Serena looked as if she were about to cry.  Ami elbowed Lita, who seemed to 
realize that that was the wrong thing to say, and quickly apologized to 
Serena, who was quickly gaining her composure.  More strange behavior for me 
to decipher.  Serena's actions today were a puzzle, one I was determined to 
piece together.
I continued to watch Serena closely for any strange behavior.  She wasn't 
her normal cheerful, bubbly self that I loved so much.  Instead, she seemed 
on the brink of tears throughout the rest of the tour.
She didn't part with her friends until the part of the tour where I led them 
into the room full of interactive displays, the centerpiece being a motion 
simulator.  Most of the teens rushed to the simulator.  Serena's friend's 
hesitated, until Serena spoke softly to both of them.  Lita seemed to 
protest, but finally gave in.  They led Serena to a small room that housed 
an infrared camera and a large screen.  Then her friends exited the room and 
went over to the simulator.
The room Serena was in had a big screen that showed people and the places 
that their bodies had been in the terms of the heat they emanated.  It was 
an interesting display, but still, it could only hold your attention for so 
long.  When Serena had been in there for quite a few minutes, I became 
curious.  Quietly, I crept up to the entrance of the room.
I was met with one of the loveliest sights in my life.  She was dancing.  I 
have never thought of Serena as graceful, in fact, she's one of the 
klutziest people I know.  Yet all of her klutziness seemed to have melted 
away to reveal a elegance and poise that I, for all the time I've spent 
admiring her, had never noticed before.
	Her movements were slow as she turned with liquid grace.  The light on the 
screen mimicked her movements.  Needless to say, I was practically choking 
on my own spit at that point.
	She seemed oblivious to my presence util I coughed.  Then she spun around, 
eyes flickering across the room, and asked fearfully, "Who's there?"
	"Relax, Meatball head, it's just me."  As an afterthought I added "Darien" 
in case she didn't recognize the sound of my voice
	She stilll looked confused, so I took hold of her hand and led her slowly 
back out into the interactive display.  She seemed to gather her wits and 
finally asked, "Darien?  What are you doing? Where are you taking me?  I 
told the girls that I'd stay in that room!  They'll worry!"
	"Meatball head, I'm just taking you..."  I trailed off, searching for an 
excuse.  In reality, I was so ecstatic that she was holding my hand, I could 
hardly speak.  Her touch sent jolts of electricity down my spine.
	I saw that most of the kids had congregated near the door.  Perfect excuse.
	".....to the door.  We're going on to the next exhibit, the other kids are 
almost ready to go!"  I quickly supplied.
	Sure enough, the last group of kids who were in the simulator was just 
exiting, and they were getting impatient to continue. Serena's friends 
spotted her and made a beeline straight for us.  Serena extracted her hand 
from mine, and I felt like grasping it again and telling her friends that 
they would have to fight me for her, but, as I usually do, I resisted.  Lita 
and Ami steered Serena away from me and I sighed.  Why did her friends keep 
such a close eye on her?  Strange, very strange.
	I led the group to what was thankfully the last activity of the day, the 
Imax movie.  Imax movies are shown on four story screens, so that you feel 
like your actually moving when the camera does.  Theres also a huge suround 
sound system, so that it sounds like you're really in the movie.
	I walked over to Laurie, the girl who ran the film booth, trusting my tour 
group to their own devices for a few moments.
	"Hey Darien!"  she said,  "You know the drill?"
	"Nope, but I'm pretty good at improv.  I've heard it enough."  I replied.
	"Kay.  You can start to seat them whenever you feel like it.  The theatre's 
all ready."
	I returned to my group, and prepared to make up a speech.  I had heard the 
whole "Imax Experience" speech enough times to make it myself.
	"Welcome to the Arai Planetarium and Imax theatre.  Our movie today is 
titled "Eye of the Storm".
	 I glanced at Serena, who was as pale as a sheet.  She was obviously 
frightened by the prospect of seeing a film about storms.
	"Imax is a revolutionary filming system that allows the viewer to feel as 
if they are actually in the movie.  Movement sensations may result.  If you 
get motion sickness, all you need to do is close your eyes, and the feeling 
will go away."  I continued, and then stole another glance at Serena.  She 
seemed relieved.
                    "If you for any reason need to leave the theatre during 
film, staircases are located on both the right and left sides of the 
theatre.  Our film will also feature digital surround sound, so it will 
sound as if you're in the middle of an actual thunderstorm!"
	KA-THUNK!
That was the sound Serena would have made when she fainted dead away, had I 
not made a diving leap and cought her softly in my arms.


	....



This fic isn't going to be that long, only 4-6 chapters, so I need input on 
what readers would like to see in a story!  I have so many ideas I want to 
write down, and I need to prioritize!  Here are a few Ideas:

	Amazing Grace-  Typhoon Grace parks itself over Tokyo bringing adventure, 
romance, and a 19 foot storm surge...

	Walmart Run- our favorite couple is trapped in walmart. alone. overnight.  
this will be FUN to write.

	KISS101FM-  A local radio station is having a kissing contest, and heck for 
a 4 day caribbean cruise, serena would even kiss Darien!  ( based on a true 
story!)

Well, tell me what you think!

love to all,
ViGi