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Needless to say, by the end of that first half-hour, Kealey was feeling several different things. First. She was mildly confused, but for some reason she had a feeling that was all part of the grand design. At least as far as the comic was concerned.

Second, she was tickled pink. Some of these jokes were simply so hilarious. A few times she’d startled herself by laughing out loud in an otherwise quiet room. It was a bit shocking.

Third, she had this inexplicable desire…no it was almost a need to continue. She had to find out what was going to happen next. What character would pester John next? What crazy antics would they be up to in their own home? Would they ever actually sit down and play the game they all seemed so interested in?

It boggled the mind. Seriously.

In the world of addiction to Webcomics, a half-hour is merely a drop in the bucket that would no doubt be embarrassing later on. Kealey barely noticed that Shin was gone….which was saying something. Kealey always knew when Shin was gone.

The artwork had grown on the blond, and as she sat, twirling curls around her finger, she realized how complex some of the frames really were. This author was obviously some sort of diabolical genius.

Ah ha! she thought as the loading screen appeared to block the green slime ghost on John’s computer screen.

Then Shin spoke.

Kealey looked up, obviously startled that he’d appeared out of nowhere. She smiled at him, and recognized the new feeling that was at least coming from her.

Camaraderie

”John just installed the beta….and….”

She clicked, she clicked again, one more time and she sat back with a silly grin on her face.

”I….just met Rose.”

He…had something to show her…and it involved his laptop. The laptop he’d been attached to for the past several days. Kealey tilted her head as she looked at her boyfriend and thought. He really was very excited about whatever it was he wanted to show her.

The blond grinned and started moving things around. ”Sure, just gimme a sec.”

The trash bags all got lumped together and shoved into one of their number. That cleared things up considerably. The pattern paper, pencils, and other materials went into various drawers in the wheeley-drawer-cart-thing that Kealey had bought to try and organize things.

Once a space was cleared, she waited, starting to get excited by virtue of Shin’s emotions.

”So, do I get to see what’s kept you all the way over in your room for the past few days?” Nope, she hadn’t bugged him a single time while he’d been a little bit of a hermit…but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been curious.

Kealey shrugged her shoulders and couldn’t help but smile just a little bit. ”I don’t know…but it usually takes a few times before people really figure out that they can’t fool me.” she admitted candidly.

Then he spoke. Explaining what the problem was. Some of Kealey felt sorry for her, she really did. It was a terrible position to be in. Wanting to do more than you thought you could hurt. Kealey also knew that it didn’t do any good to dwell on those feelings.

She took a deep breath, hoping she wasn’t about to overstep.

” Andrew. If you want to do something more. Do something more. I know this is going to sound harsh…and please believe me when I say I’m not a harsh person…but I’ve been where you are.”

She looked at him straight in the eyes, she wasn’t holding back at all.

”If you sit around telling yourself that you’re useless, you’ll be useless. You want to be able to fight? Learn how to fight. Just because you don’t have powers doesn’t mean you can’t do something good. Andrew…I’m weak as a kitten, you just have to find a way.”

Kealey laughed and shook her head, ”Everyone need to meet Aurum at some point, Andrew.” she said. ”We were ridiculously at sixes and sevens when we first met. He’s got this terribly roving eye….”

She let it go, it wasn’t story time. This was still slightly serious business, and the blond was as shocked as Andrew when the next statement came out of his mouth.

Kealey thought for a few moments, a year and a half ago, she’d have spoken about the plans that each person had made for them. How a person had to trust.

Things had changed.

”Andrew…everyone has their part to play. Some peoples’ parts are different than others. I’ll never be like Sam or Shin or Ghost, swooping in to save the day. I play in the background, feeling things out. It‘s the best I can do.”

Another pause, the final bite of brownie, and Kealey mirrored Andrew’s earlier action by grabbing a bottle of water and taking off the lid.

”More and more I believe that we make our own luck. At least some of the time. If you want to find a way to help, ask Sam. Just be content with what he tells you…even if that seems like it would be a difficult thing.”

Teasing was definitely better than the worry that had laced all of Andrew’s thoughts before.

Kealey took another bite of browning and smiled a close-lipped smile. She shrugged her shoulders, ”Costumes are something that people wear on Halloween. I make those too.”

She paused for a moment, working out how to phrase what she was trying to say, “Costumes don’t have pockets for body armor, they’re not made of fireproof material, they aren’t catered exactly to suit a person’s powers.”

Kealey paused.

”I made a suit threaded with gold thread that has real jewels for buttons.”

Playing heroes. Kealey shorted and took another brownie…surely it wouldn’t hurt.

”And who wouldn’t want to be a hero…with all the glory and sparkles.” she said…just a little facetiously.

Kealey could tell that Shin was working through something, and she just let him talk. She didn’t know how to react either. They were stuck in a nearly infinite loop of not knowing how to react to her first foray into what it was really like to be an X-Man.

His pause…wasn’t really a pause. He was logic’ing something out. Strangely…it helped. The logic helped a lot.

Until Shin had done all that talking, Kealey hadn’t been able to figure out what was bothering her so much about the whole situation. It had been her perceived ineptitude.

Shin kept talking, and Kealey started nodding her head. Her eyes widened slightly, and the smallest, faintest hint of a smile started to tug at the corners of her mouth.

He pointed out that Kasumi had always ran into things without a plan. He also pointed out how good it was that she had gone into this situation with a plan.

”No. Nobody got hurt badly enough to even need the hospital…except for Mittens…and he’ll probably be in jail by the end of the day.” she said as the vice started to loosen the hold it’d had in her chest since she’d left the crime scene. She took a deep breath and let it out, then started talking.

”And yeah…I think there are definitely some things we can improve. The idea was really good, we just hadn’t planned for the fact that in situations like that there’s always a certain element of chaos. We weren’t ready for it. Is that something we can work on in the Danger Room?”

Kealey pulled her eyes from the stack of papers and looked Shin in the eyes for the first time.

”You’d have been proud. I had the whole room full of bad guys wandering around like a porygon without a trainer.”

Shin was getting awful worried, and Kealey was too tired to work that hard at making sure she wasn’t worried too. She wrung her hands slightly in her lap and continued to look at the stack of papers she’d selected for her staring needs.

”Or….not.” she said when the silence stretched a little bit too long.

Story time.

”There was a hostage situation. This mutant with these huge hands.” the emphasis she put on ’huge’ made it obvious just how big they were talking.

”He had lackies, they had guns…the whole nine yards. Ghost made us invisible and we got in there with no problem. Blended in with the hostages perfectly.”

She stopped for a few moments to let those details sink in.

”Somehow Andrew had ended up there…Ghosty and I decided on a plan and put it into action. I used confusion on all the lackies and Ghost started taking all the oxygen out of the top half of the room. Except everything didn’t go perfectly.”

Suddenly, Kealey felt a little silly. Had she really expected everything to go perfectly? It didn’t matter, the story had already started.

”The leader, Mittens, did this clapping thing…and the guy he’d sent to put a gun on me fell over, I hit my head on the wall…and I lost my hold on the emotions.”

That was probably the worst part. The whole thing could have gone so much more smoothly, worked out so much better if she’d just done her job.

”I really messed up. Andrew almost got thrown out the window, Ghosty got sucked up, the water cop showed up, then I tackled Mittens and he fell…then I threw up on the ficus.”

Kealey sighed. That was a lot. And the end probably hadn’t made any sense at all.