”He’s been wrong before…” Tarin said with a shrug, ”Like when he said you can’t bake.” Man, that pie had been good.

Lee did point out that there were far too many baseball games and Tarin had to agree, ”It would be a full time job to watch them all…” he said, then thought for a moment, ”I’d love that job.”

When Lee leaned a bit closer, Tarin draped his arm over the back of the couch as she found the correct channel for the pre-game.

Lee and Robert were chatting about her giving guitar lessons and Tarin wondered if that was something Lee would like to do on a larger scale, she was doing really well teaching him after all.

Then Kevin came up, ”He mentioned what happened at school and his new school.” Robert said, ”And he showed me his shield…about twelve times.” Robert said, shaking his head, ”He’s grown up all of a sudden.”

Lee shook her head and rolled her eyes slightly at Tarin. ”I’m sure you would love that job,” she replied.

She was just leaning forward to set the remote back on the table when Robert mentioned that Kevin had told him about school. Well, schools.

”Even I don’t know how or when that happened,” Lee said as she looked over at Robert, a small smile on her face. ”Only twelve times? His excitement must be dying down a bit. Did he try and get you to throw something at him?”

The smile disappeared as her thoughts went back to his previous school. ”How much about the incident at school did he tell you?” she asked. Though she was actually more interested in how Robert had reacted to what he was told.

”I may have lost some cool points for refusing to throw things at him. Robert said, ”He’s pretty good at making it appear and disappear.”

When Lee asked Robert how much Kevin had told him about what had happened at school Robert scowled, ”Enough. He also told me he ended the fight in one punch.”

”Right?” Tarin chimed in as the game got ready to start. “Then walked away.”

Robert looked at Tarin for a moment then tersely nodded and looked back to Lee.

”I wouldn’t have grounded him either. He said the new school is real nice…”

The other team was up to bat and already had two runners on base. Tarin didn’t say a word.

Lee nodded in agreement. Kevin had gotten quite good at bringing his shield up and down before heading to Texas. ”The first time it appeared, we were all excited and quite surprised. Well, Kevin was happy until he discovered his phone wasn’t working; apparently it had drained the battery. But when Kevin couldn’t figure out how to get it to go away, Tarin helped. Much better than I would have been able to.”

Why was it that the guys were so…proud? Impressed? That Kevin had ended the fight with the one punch? There had been a reason she had made zero tolerance for fighting a condition of him getting to go to the gym. Still, the fact that her son had been able to walk away rather than continue hitting after what the other kid had said…

”Why do you think I made sure to tell Kevin in front of the principal that I was proud he’d walked away after that one punch?

“There’s no possible way I could justify grounding Kevin after what was said to him. No. We went out for a nice breakfast and then to the gym that afternoon.” There was no way Lee would have grounded Kevin. She was proud of him for standing up like he had, and disgusted at the school for letting it happen.

”It is nice there,” Lee agreed. ”And I know they’ll take care of him there, even if Kevin still finds it hard to believe I’ve spent time there or that I know some of the X-Men.”

Robert looked over at Tarin when Lee mentioned that Tarin had helped Kevin with his power the day it had manifested.

Tarin just shrugged, ”I’m good at mental control. I just gave him some ideas to help him calm down. Didn’t help his phone much though. He could barely get through his sandwich.”

Again, Robert looked over at Tarin but didn’t say anything.

Lee went on to talk about Kevin and what she had done as far as discipline was concerned for the altercation he’d had at school and Robert nodded, ”I thought about sending a strongly worded email to the school board…but it’s not like I’m a stakeholder.”

When Lee mentioned that she knew the X-Men Robert had a similar reaction to the one Tarin had had at the restaurant on his first date with Lee…only instead of laughter he exclaimed, ”Now you’re telling me you’re mixed up with those crazy vigilantes?”

Tarin just let that sit. Lee had been a bit chagrined when he had reacted strongly to the news. Besides, the Mets had just gone three up and three down and were down by two at the top of the second.

”It didn’t help that you wondered if Kevin’s shield had fried the phone to start with,” Lee pointed out in a teasing tone as she glanced over at Tarin. ”I was already dreading how quickly that was going to get expensive. But thankfully it was just an energy drain.”

Why was it so surprising to people that she knew some of the X-Men? Tarin, Kevin, now Robert, they all seemed completely shocked to find out she knew them. And for Robert, this was after what she thought had been much more shocking revelations about her life.

”I’m not ‘mixed up’ with them,” Lee said with a sigh. ”I’m friends with a few of them. And I met them before I did any of the actual ‘crazy stuff’. And Sam’s already promised me that he won’t encourage Kevin to join, either.”

”I didn’t stop to think that potentially frying his phone would be more interesting than the emergence of his new and unique special powers…”

Tarin wondered if Kevin could pull energy from the things around him and hold it instead of immediately funneling it into a shield. If he could project the shield away from himself? Tarin didn’t mention his thoughts though, it was probably too early. Too soon. He should let the experts at the Mansion help Kevin figure those things out.

And yep. Lee just couldn't understand why it was a little wild that she knew the X-Men personally.

”Well, thank goodness for that.” Robert said with an exasperated gesture of his hands, ”He won’t be encouraged to join the militant vigilante group.”

”He’s a teen, Tarin,” Lee said, a bit of laughter in her voice. ”The phone is at least as important as having special new powers. Even when he’s been impatiently waiting for them for ten years.”

But when Robert spoke again, Lee just stared at him for a few moments. ”Do you even know your nephew?” she asked. ”He’s not going to need any encouragement to want to join them, he'll want to the moment he thinks it's a possibility. I'm just hoping to put it off for a couple extra years so he's able to think more rationally and had more common sense first.”

Lee spoke about Kevin and how excited the boy had been to get his powers, how long he had wanted powers. It still made Tarin smile, ”I’m still so glad it was good for him.” [/i] Tarin said, wondering what that would have been like.

Now Robert was freaking out about Kevin being in proximity of the X-Men and Lee was explaining that proximity didn’t matter because Kevin was going to want to be involved no matter what.

”Fine. At least if you know them you can tell them to keep their distance.” Robert said, ”Kevin definitely doesn’t need that kind of violence glorified”

Now the score was 3-0 and the Mets had two outs in the bottom of the second.

Robert thought that she could get Sam, Shin, and the other X-Men away from Kevin. Just wait until he found out that some of them were teachers.

But Robert just…didn’t get it, did he? Not that she wanted actual violence glorified, but things just seemed to happen to mutants. And as much as she hated it, no matter what she did, Kevin was unfortunately going to have to deal with things in his life.

”No,” Lee did finally agree. ”But there is a lot that he could learn from them.”

Tarin was of a mixed mind on the current conversation, but he sat quietly and listened to Lee and Robert as the spoke.

On one hand, he and Lee constantly spoke about how amazing it was that Kevin didn’t have to grow up like they had. Kevin was getting to grow up like a kid should grow up…more concerned about his phone and hanging out with his friends than the kind of danger that simply having powers would put
him in.

On the other hand, danger seemed to find mutants, and when you could do something to help…

”He can learn a lot from them. Tarin said, looking away from the game for a minute, ”Having a safe place to learn about your powers…to be safe and supported if you make mistakes.” Tarin shrugged, ”A lot of us didn’t have that.”

He paused for a moment, suddenly sheepish about having involved himself in this particular conversation, ”Not that it’s really any of my business.”

Tarin spoke, and while he was still saying that it was none of his business after Lee had previously told him that she wanted to hear his opinions, she knew that this was not the time to remind him of that. Instead, she simply reached over and gave his knee a slight squeeze.

Robert looked at Tarin briefly as he spoke before turning to look back at Lee. ”But he already has that with you, Lee,” he said, and Lee thought that he actually sounded a little confused.

”He does, yes,” Lee agreed. ”But I only know how I figured mine out, and that took a decade longer than it would have if I’d had a place like that. They’ve got dozens, if not hundreds, of years of experience helping young mutants figure out their powers, plus facilities much better suited to that than my apartment here.”

Lee was explaining things to Robert well and Tarin nodded, “Obviously you know every power is different, but the way you control them and use them is different too. Kevin can turn his shield on and off at will. Even this soon, his power isn’t running 24/7. Mine doesn’t work that way, neither does Lee’s. Even then it's different for the two of us, as far as I know I can't completely turn mine off.” he added.

“Someone who can do things at will is going to be better equipped to help Kevin figure things out. I helped him calm down when he couldn’t figure out how to turn his shield off, but beyond that it’s like a bird teaching a bat to fly…they both have to accomplish it, but they do it in totally different ways.”

Tarin paused for a moment and thought. ”And it hasn’t happened yet, but Kevin is going to get upset or angry, or he’s going to be practicing to figure out what he can do and he’s going to lose control and damage something or hurt someone or himself.” It was one of the darker realities that most mutants had to live with, ”Like Lee said, it’s better that he have those moments around people and in places where he can learn from it instead of getting punished or unjustly blamed for something that’s not his fault.”

Tarin paused again, ”Plus he’s close enough that he can come home whenever he wants.”

To start with as Tarin started to explain about how Kevin’s powers were different than either of theirs, Lee just listened. But then Tarin continued. And continued to talk and explain, Lee turned to look at Tarin. She was a little surprised by just how much he was saying; Lee didn’t think that she’d ever heard Tarin say this much to the other man before, and even with other people he wasn’t this talkative most of the time.

But Lee thought that Tarin was doing a rather good job of explaining it all to Robert. And Robert seemed to be understanding it all. Until Tarin mentioned Kevin’s powers being potentially dangerous or harmful.

At least Robert waited for Tarin to finish speaking. ”But Kevin just has a shield, how could that cause damage or hurt someone?” Robert asked. ”Like you, Lee. Nothing like that happened when you were younger.”

Lee shook her head slightly. Robert really was willfully ignorant about her mutation and mutants in general, wasn’t he? ”But I did,” Lee told him. ”I was upset most of the time after we figured out that all those problems were me being a mutant. I didn’t know at the time, but I would have been siphoning more than what would have been my baseline. Meaning I was constantly taking more energy. To this day, Robert, I siphon more and more difficulty controlling how fast I move when I’m angry.

“And yes, at the moment Kevin’s powers are just that he creates a shield, which he seems to draw electricity in to create,” Lee continued without pausing. As though she had already thought through all of these situations. ”What happens if he draws in a lot more and actually hurts someone who touches the shield? Or he’s hurt and his shield is up? No one would be able to touch him, even the Doc at the mansion to heal him. Or his powers grow, which will happen, and he ends up suddenly shooting that energy away from him?”

Yeah, there was a lot that could happen with Kevin’s powers in the coming months and years. And the worst part for Lee was she had no idea what would happen, so she couldn’t plan for it. At least at the mansion, they were used to the unexpected in terms of powers, and took it all in stride.

Tarin nodded as Lee continued to explain how and why Kevin’s powers could be an issue, ”The problem is that we don’t know until we try, and the trying can be tricky for all the reasons we just explained. A controlled or prepared environment is better than a locker room or classroom in a school full of people who won’t understand.” he pointed out.

Lee had obviously thought about all of these different scenarios and Tarin supposed that made sense, both because she was Kevin’s Mother and because Lee liked to try and plan for every eventuality under normal circumstances.

Tarin turned back to the TV now and frowned. Things really weren’t getting better. Tarin glanced over and down at Lee and back at the TV right as one of the Mets hit a long fly ball to center. For a moment it looked like it might get over the wall, but it fell short and the center fielder managed to pretty easily catch it. Third out.

Tarin sighed. Such was the pain of being a Mets fan and Tarin wondered if there was a universe out there someplace where they were actually consistently good.