The no good, very bad day...part 2.

[basic_powers]

[OOM: Dear Journal,

I didn't get any doors to Milliways today, or for the past week, and man I really wish I could have gotten Usagi or Ray's help with what happened today.

I'm too tired to write more about it...I just wanna take a bath and go to bed...]


'Beauford Tannen' left the grounds this morning after a quick calender check and won't be back for a while.

This evening, a very tired looking young boy walks into the bar rubbing one arm tiredly before he looks up and realizes where he is.

One second after that he's looking for any familiar faces to talk to.

It's been a long two days.

Comments

[hecu_marine]

"Gotcha," says Shephard. "okay, so what'd you do then?"

[basic_powers]

"Charles was going to be at this old locked up repair shop. Once we got there I asked Flea to use his bug powers to ask the termites inside the building what Charles was saying. Except Kevin, Emerald Gauntlet, jumped the gun and punched a hole through the wall barging in before we heard anymore, and then the fighting started. And Charles was good enough at his teleporting that he could dodge the attacks that Eagle and Gauntlet threw before they ever hit. I only got lucky hitting him cause of how I fell off the side of the building above Charles. Flea got this idea to have all the fireants and bees in the area swarm on Charles, which worked for a while until he dunked himself into the lake... But I got an idea from all his teleporting. When he teleported somewhere he couldn't get rid of his momentum from being thrown or whatever...so I told Julie to fly away for a bit and when Charles appeared again she grabbed him up like I told her to, and started spinning him about in midair."

[hecu_marine]

Adrian considers this. He's seen momentum conservation do some amazing things for Chell...

"Wound up smacking into a wall like a bug on a windshield, didn't he."

[basic_powers]

"No...he dunked himself into the lake again and Julie lost her grip." There's a face made at that. "He was still dizzy as heck, but then he got smart, picking people off one by one from the group and teleporting far away with them."

"Right before that I asked Ron to fly far away and wait for my signal...after that Charles came back and began teleporting around me to get me confused...before coming up behind and twisting my arm around to my back." There's a little rubbing of the sore arm with a wince. "Then Ron flew up and punched him out...and got really upset about that before flying off. And right after that...the guys in the gold flying power armor showed up. I couldn't fight em! And they took Charles away before I could get back into contact with the Revenant about it."

"After that, Revenant sent one of his Jet-helicopters around to pick me up...and he figured out that Charles had teleported everyone to a different location where his family had gone on summer vacation."

"I owe Revenant a shin-kicking for not telling me I was flying that thing by myself the whole time I was tracking each of them down."

[hecu_marine]

Shephard makes a disgusted, gagging noise. There is absolutely no love whatsoever lost between him and any kind of helicopter, anywhere, ever.

"Man's got a fuckin' sick sense of humor."

[basic_powers]

"It took me all night to get that done...and by the time I made it back to school in my regular clothes it was already..." Yawn. "After midnight..."

"And then the door opened up in the bathroom to here..." Glance at the wall. Good. The door is still there. "...an you know th'rest."

[hecu_marine]

Shephard nods. "Got it," he says. "You need a hand gittin' up to your room? Looks like you could use it."

[basic_powers]

"Uh-huh." There's a nod as well. "It's room 238."

[hecu_marine]

"A'righty. Come on then." Shephard gets up to get an arm around the kid's shoulders. "Bar'll be here in the morning, reckon I probably will too."

Even in this place, 238 can't be that far.

[basic_powers]

It isn't, though by the time they make it up that second flight to the room fifth-down the hallway...Tyler's just about fallen asleep standing upright with the key to his room in one hand.

And scratching and grunts on the other side of that metal door.

Shephard has three guesses what that might be.

[hecu_marine]

Aw, hell. "Tyler?" Shephard says, shaking the boy by the shoulder lightly. "Tyler, c'mon, wake up. I don't got jerky'n your death lizard wants to say hi."

[basic_powers]

"snrkz...mmrmmble...Winston, sit."

Amazingly the scratching at the door ceases followed by a inquery call.

[hecu_marine]

"Don't git excited, Winston," Shephard says as he fumbles with Tyler's key hand. "We're a-comin' in."

[basic_powers]

"Hrrraaarrrr..."

It's not giving Shephard the evil-eye...just nosing at Tyler's free hand a moment before getting a drowsy head scratching. The 'death lizard' will get to Adrian after it gets it's head scratches done. And the wagging.

"Fhrrfhrrffrrfffrrhhhhhh."

He's probably seen dogs like that anyways.

The room's pretty clean for a kid Tyler's age, bed's made with two stuffed toys on it. Shelf above the bed with books, comics and every kids collection of little treasures.

[hecu_marine]

Nothing wrong with pet death lizards. Shephard himself used to catch all kinds of wild things with scales to try and make pets of them when he was a kid. Ask him about the time he thought one of the poisonous ones was a harmless little water snake sometime.

"Don't mind him, lizard, he's just tuckered out," he says. "Let's just git you into your bunk there'n call it a day, huh?"

Well, and get the blanket over him and maybe hand him one of the stuffed toys, that usually worked pretty well with his sisters' kids.

[basic_powers]

That it does...once the plush Optimus Prime is under one arm, Tyler's sleeping quiet as a lamb...and Winston's climbed up onto the bed to lay his black scaly head on the boy's side.

And for once...no nightmares.