#sims3challenge #sims3legacy #sims3story #thesims3

[Author’s note: this is a novel. Sorry. It really should be two posts, but I just can’t wait any longer!]

“Hey, Dad, did you know it’s my birthday today?” Gamora said when she returned home from school.

Sawyer looked at her like a deer in the headlights. “I did not track that,” he admitted. “Is it now expected that I throw you a birthday party?”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Gamora said. “I have everything handled. You just come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Someone who lives here?” Sawyer asked. “This doesn’t seem like the kind of home that welcomes visitors.”

“Don’t worry,” Gamora said. “He’s expecting us.” She walked up confidently and rang the doorbell. Sawyer lingered back at the gate.

The door opened with a melodramatic creak.

“Ah!” Forest said. “I was wondering if you were going to come after all.”

Gamora shrugged. “Dad was slow.”

“Have you met my, ah, Flynn?” Forest asked with a unsettling smile. “He was just leaving.”

The deathly pale figure of Sean Flynn followed Forest out the door. He spared a single, uninterested glance for Gamora, then walked past them to the exotic sports car parked beside the house.

Forest Sample in the hall and beckoned Gamora and Sawyer inside. Sawyer tried not to look closely at the pile of dirty laundry Forest was standing in. Some things he just didn’t want to know.

“Happy birthday, Gamora!” Forest said.

That was really all the encouragement Gamora needed.

“Tea for everyone!” Gamora said. “I brought some of Aunt Andria’s interesting herbs to give it kick.”

Gamora made her way to the beverage machine like someone who knew her way around the house.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll serve myself something a bit more sustaining,” Forest said.

“Dad, this is Forest Sample,” Gamora told Sawyer eagerly. “He’s an ancestor of ours. He says he is the family’s personal undead guardian.”

“I actually know who he is,” Sawyer said. “He’s my uncle.”

“Forest’s definition of ‘guardian’ might be a little different from yours or mine,” Sawyer said. He sat down with his tea and looked around the room. “This is quite a lair you have for yourself,” he told Forest.

Forest chuckled. “Thank you.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you,” Sawyer said.

“But not a long time since I saw you,” Forest said.

“I am not reassured,” Sawyer said.

“Really,” Forest said, “there’s no reason to be like that. I mean our family no harm. Quite the contrary.”

Lionel Flynn, ostensibly Sean Flynn’s husband, just sat back with his tea and silently watched everyone else. Everyone in this house was some kind of creepy.

“Well, this went a bit differently than I imagined,” Gamora said. “Let’s move on to the next part of the festivities.”

“You have more in mind?” Sawyer asked.

“Of course!” Gamora said. “Come on!” She hurried to the elevator in the front room.

The elevator took them to a dark humid subbasement.

Where a lovely hottub waited for them. At least the reason for the humidity was innocuous.

“Come on, Dad, Uncle Forest,” Gamora said. “The water’s fine.” There was nothing she liked better than a good, relaxing drink through her vegetable skin.

Sawyer struggled with the elevator door. “You make… this look… so easy.”

“Ooof.”

“Well, this is very nice,” Sawyer admitted when he finally sat down in the hot tub.

“Told you,” Gamora said. “You don’t relax nearly enough, Dad. Try it.”

Sawyer tried. He really did. But when Forest came down to join them, he jumped back out of the water.

“I think it’s time for me to go,” he said. “I have to be up early in the morning for surgery.”

“Certainly,” Forest said. “Let me escort you to the surface.”

“I can find my way up,” Sawyer said. “You can stay down here with Gamora.”

“I insist,” Forest said.

“All right, then.”

When Gamora came home after midnight, Sawyer was up waiting for her.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

“Thanks, Dad.” She took a breath. “Could you help me with an equation in quantum physics?”

Sawyer immediately relaxed. He didn’t know what he’d expected to see from his new teenage girl, but Gamora was still the daughter he knew. “I’d be delighted,” he said and sat down beside her.

They said no more about the birthday party, and that was best for everyone.

And they said no more about it.

Gamora went to bed and wondered what high school would bring.

Edmund completed a new sculpture. He called it, “The Empty Dinner Table of the Soul.”

It suited him better than his most recent painting. The pictures never seemed to make it to canvass the way they were in his head.

Victoria finally learned enough in shop class to attempt to fix the stereo.

She felt like she had an audience for the whole thing.

She was so successful with the stereo that she moved on to the dreaded dishwasher. Family legend was that it was a dangerous device that had already killed someone.

Winston found a new use for the family’s magic.

“Enchanted apples!” he announced. “Let’s find out what kind of cobbler I can make with these!”

“Are you sure you’re all right down there?” Andria asked anxiously. “That thing is dangerous! You know what it did to your grandmother’s girlfriend.”

“I know, Mom,” Victoria said. “I’m fine. This is fun!”

“Please let me call a repairman.”

“No. It’s finished anyway. See?”

“I swear, the parents can be so overprotective!” Victoria complained as she sat down to dinner.

“They might relax if you were a little more true to yourself,” Winston said.

Victoria coughed. “What?”

“Since you got grounded, you’re still kind of pretending to be something you aren’t,” Winston said. “You’re not really someone who looks tough and talks tough. You’re a nice girl who loves the ocean.”

As she got ready for bed that night, Victoria peered at herself in the mirror through her shaggy, ragged locks of hair. Winston was right. She did look like she was pretending to be someone else.

She brushed her hair back away from her face. There.

Much better.

Winston congratulated himself for his advanced application of brotherly love.

Winter pressed on. The snow fell around Avalon and grew into drifts.

Most of Gamora’s mail these days was scientific in nature.

She and Sawyer were hitting the science and medical journals in their spare time.They were crafting their very first experiment together.

Sawyer booked some time on the RGB machine owned by the Sufficiently Advanced Technology Center.

He needed to cross the red pad thai and the blue magnetometer streams to test their hypothesis.

Winston nervously dialed the phone for the third time.

“Cortney? Hi! It’s Winston! Yeah, from gym class. I was wondering if you didn’t have anyone to go to prom with, and I don’t have anyone to go to prom with, maybe — oh, you already have a date. Sorry to bother you.”

Winston hid in his room for the rest of the evening.

Edmund, on the other hand, dithered about whether to ask Joy or Judith until it was too late to ask anyone.

Victoria upgraded the sink to be unbreakable. Then she remembered that she ought to buy a dress or something.

Gamora had no interest in slow dancing with some sappy kid in the gym, but she did have big plans for prom. She’d been assembling ideas from her Advanced Mayhem correspondence course for weeks.

Late the night before prom, she picked the lock to the school and slipped into the gym to rearrange the decorations. The new version was a bit more obscene than the original.

She also got into the ballot box and altered the votes for prom queen.

This was going to be fun.

The night arrived, and the limo pulled up in front of the Sample Estate.

“Victoria,” he said, “you’re my only daughter. I don’t ever want to see you hurt. Boys can be, well they can be deceitful and cruel to someone as beautiful as you are because they want, well, they want–“

“It’s all right, Dad,” Victoria said. “I think I’ll be all right. Do you really think I’m beautiful, or is that just Dad talk?”

“You are radiant,” Dylan said sincerely. “You even outshine your mother, but don’t tell her I said that.”

“Thank you, Daddy. I love you.”

Gamora didn’t wait for the limo. She was one of the first to arrive. She couldn’t wait to see this.

It went down in history as the most disastrous prom Chivalrous Preparatory had ever known.

The only one who was pleased about this was Gamora.

Winston spent the entire evening trying to attract Cortney Pierce-Hodgins’s attention and being snubbed. What went wrong?

He finally asked Paulette Mai to dance, and apparently he was too good at it. She followed him around for the rest of the night.

Victoria also picked up an admirer.

Gamora danced through the evening, sewing dissent and starting fights… usually in a way that couldn’t be traced to her.

Edmund was still the target of some nasty school bullies.

As far as Gamora was concerned, it was a perfect evening. She left

Andria was waiting for Edmund when he got home.

“The principal called. Were you in a fight?” she demanded.

“No!” Edmund said. “Well, yes, but it wasn’t my fault!”

Gamora grinned to herself. This could go on all night.

While Andria and Edmund were sorting through exactly what happened at prom, Gamora changed clothes and called Sawyer.

“Why are we doing this now?” Sawyer demanded. “It’s after midnight. I’m exhausted.”

“You don’t have to work tomorrow,” Gamora said. “I can’t wait.”

The two of them descended to Sawyer’s old lab underneath the barn.

Where they had been building their experimental device.

“Here it is,” Gamora purred. “This beauty is ready to run, come what may!”

“Shall we give it a whirr?” Gamora said.

“I am not nearly ready to do this,” Sawyer said, “but I don’t think you can be dissuaded.”

“Then it’s agreed. Here we go!”

———-

Wow, that was long! I just couldn’t bear to wait another post before moving to the heir poll. I figure this post makes up for the fact that Gamora aged to a teen in this post — she got plenty of spotlight for you to get to know her.

I felt like I had to give you the Into the Future teaser to make it clear that Gamora would be doing something other than making mischief. Though I do like the cliffhanger :).

And here we are! Gamora’s fourth trait is Night Owl. It’s not as descriptive as some she might have gotten, but I’m sure I can do something with it. Her personality seems pretty well-formed at this point anyway.

I am beyond thrilled by her appearance. She’s just captivating.

OTOH, I hate the plantsim hair and clothes with a burning passion. I imagine her hair as leaves and vines, and I’m trying to find hairstyles that suit that look.

I wasn’t quite sure how to present the story context for the rather catastrophic prom. Gamora DID have a mood swing that day with all kinds of wicked wishes, only half of which I was able to grant between the time school let out and prom started. Really, for an Evil sim, a mood swing should include wishes to be nice to people….

WE’RE READY FOR THE HEIR POLL.

Now I just have to put it together, which I don’t think I can manage tonight. Tomorrow, then!