A Couple of Teenagers

The morning after she'd tried, with Lightning, Liberty Bill, Reese Riley, and Keen Edge, to save the Woodsman and his teammates from the Devouring Earth in Eden, Noelle took another shower to scrub off the last vestiges of the muck and her failure, threw on her new shorts and a t-shirt, and plopped down in front of her tv with a bowl of cereal.

It didn't seem fair. To have gotten so far, and then, with the finish line in sight, as it were, to have to fall back. She spooned another helping of Alpha-bits into her mouth, and crunched thoughtfully. Lightning had said they needed a blaster, someone who could get in there and blow stuff up, and of course the first person Noelle thought of was Streak.

She sighed, and ate another heaping spoonful of cereal. Streak. It had been – what? A few days? A week? Too long – since she'd seen him. She glanced over at her comm on the kitchen table, and debated calling him again. She didn't want to bother him – she knew he'd been so busy lately, not only with Storm Caller stuff, but school stuff as well.

But she missed him. Missed the nights he'd stop by her balcony after patrol and they'd catch up after a long day, or work off some leftover energy from a frantic battle. Missed just seeing him, spending time with him, talking to him. She wanted... Noelle didn't know what she wanted, but she thought it was him. Even just to see him.

Making a rash decision – and hell, she'd made a couple of those lately – she left her empty breakfast bowl in her sink, braided her still-wet hair in two long pigtails, fastened her comm around her wrist, and grabbed a pair of flip flops, stepping out onto her balcony in the cool spring air. She couldn't hear the waves crashing on the shore far below, but the salty scent of ocean filled her nose, and she took a deep breath and pulled herself away...

...only to return a moment later, run inside, and grab the untouched, refrigerated tray of lasagna from her party last weekend. In another moment, she was on her way to the Baron’s Castle.

She *binked*, as Dottie would say, a few feet away from the Baron’s front entrance, and dropped her flip-flops onto the ground, sliding her feet into them and balancing the tray of pasta in one hand as she knocked at the massive wood door, and let herself in. Waving at Verdigris, who poked her head out from the den, Noelle called out a general "Hiya!" and headed upstairs.

In front of Streak's room, tattered notes hanging off the door, Noelle took a deep breath, yanked on her braids, and knocked gently. After a moment, hearing nothing except the music inside, she knocked a little louder.

Silver-Streak's stereo system was often the cause of much uproar in the Castle. The teen loved his music, and Mal enjoyed creating. When Streak had first appeared in Paragon City, he literally only had the costume on his back. The Baron had given him a room in the castle, and helped him get settled into this new world. While Malcalypse did his best to help the dimensional refugee feel at home.

Mal's first gift to Silver-Streak was a stereo system that only Spinal Tap could have built. It was best described as a piece of furniture. Three feet long, two feet high, and two feet deep, and those dimensions did not include the speaker system. Those were larger then the chest of drawers that the Baron had supplied the room with. And quite possibly made with more wood. A polished oaken faceplate gave the stereo an 'old time radio' feel to it. The ozone smell of its vacuum tubes was omnipresent.

When the power switch was flipped on, the hairs on the back of your neck would stand on end. The static electric charge that would build up in you could arc nearly 2inches from your fingertip to anything conductive. After repeated shocks, Silver-Streak had simply stopped switching the unit off. Which wouldn't be much of a problem, except that this stereo had been keyed to Streak's subconscious mind.

Mal had told him that he had been working on some improvements to Paragon City's "Hospital Recall System," with a degree of success that took his experimentation in a completely different direction. His initial plan had been to create a device that would monitor your brain waves, and trigger the teleport when 'dire emotions' passed through your certain parts of your brain. He'd abandoned the project after the circuitry had gone into overload when he had Muratan field test it.

After a degree of 'fine tuning' the circuitry worked much better as a mood sensor for music selection. Mal had explained that a person's musical taste would vary from moment to moment, as it was tied to the adrenal glands. Silver-Streak really didn't understand Mal's discussions on science, but he nodded and smiled anyways. All he knew was that this monster stereo system always played the best song at the best time. Mal had mentioned once, that he would want the stereo back so that he could figure out how he had built it, so that he could mass produce it and fund the Knights' activities. But like all things, Mal most likely got distracted and started work on a new project.

With his nose buried in a calculus textbook, and The Clash pouring out of The Stereo, Silver-Streak couldn't hear Noelle knocking on his door. Just as he was about to finally grasp the math equation in front of his face, he felt Noelle's energy signature on the other side of the door. He glanced at his wrist comm and it dawned on him that he had been awake and studying all night.

"Good thing I don't sleep much anymore..." He hovered across the room, combing his fingers through his scruffy long hair and hoping that he didn't look too unpresentable in a Star Wars "Revenge of the Sith" T-shirt and a pair of jeans, as he touched down in front of the door. He swung the door into his room open as The Stereo automatically adjusted the volume to a level that Streak thought would be better. He didn't even notice the volume change, as he was accustomed to the machine by now.

"Hiya Frosty!"

Noelle grinned as the door swung open and she saw Streak standing there, scruffy and disheveled, his greeting in her ears before he even saw her.

"Heya, Glow Boy. Hope I'm not interrupting anything..." she began, as she glanced into the disordered room, and presented the tray of food. "But I hadn't seen you in a bit, and I thought... well, I had all this leftover lasagna."

There it was again. Every time she saw him, every time she felt his eyes on her, there was that little shiver, that energy charge that tickled across her skin. She wanted to tuck the hair that fell in his face behind his ears, wanted the static charge that she felt when he was glowing, wanted to... ahem. She hailed the runaway train that was her thoughts and bit her lip, then smiled. "You hungry?"

"Ooo lasagna." Everyone on the team knew that the best way to distract Silver-Streak, was with food. His appetite was beyond the norm, even for a teenager.

Silver-Streak glanced over his shoulder into his messy room. Remembering that he hadn't actually cleaned it in over a week. He blushed slightly and nervously rubbed at the back of his neck.

"I'd invite you in, but the tower of Pizza boxes might attack you. It tried to kill me the other day... I had to blast it against the wall. I think that it may be developing logic skills now. Sammy hasn't filled the pool with Fish yet today, want to go out there and enjoy the day?"

Noelle laughed, "I don't know, I'm getting pretty good at fending off cardboard. But yeah," she nodded and stuck her hands in the pockets of her short shorts as Streak took the tray from her, "Let's head down to the pool."

Streak pulled the door to his room shut behind them as The Stereo went into stealth mode, and they walked downstairs together, hitting the kitchen first to heat up the pasta and grab some forks and plates, and then heading to the pool.

The Baron's castle had some truly amazing training facilities, an outstanding library chock full of the best fiction and non as well as a Giles-worthy collection of arcane books, a couple of labs for Mal and Dark-Neutron, more bedrooms than Noelle had even bothered to count, and any number of other rooms, any of which was liable to feature a Storm Knight enjoying the facilities. The poolroom (not to be confused with the billiards room, of course!) was Silent Sammy's usual playground, though the otter was no where to be seen when Noelle and Streak opened the glass doors that kept the room at a balmy temperature, and made for a couple of lounge chairs on the adjacent deck outside.

Streak dug in to the food as Noelle slipped off her flip flops and bent her legs in her favorite yoga position, watching as the party tray of lasagna not-so-slowly disappeared. She giggled, "Streak, that's disgusting! Didn't you ever hear of sitting and enjoying a meal?"

The teen paused for a second, mumbled something incomprensible around a mouthful of food, and continued eating.

"Oh, yeah, real classy, Glow Boy. Wanna try that again with actual words?"

Streak paused in mind chew, his fork still in his mouth. With some effort he swallowed down the mouthfull of pasta and sauce.
"Sorry honey, I've been eating along in my room while studying lately. I've gotten sloppy about a lot of things lately."

"I saw in the news that you guys took down some nasty Bug Eyed Monster thing. You've been keeping the world safe while I've been busy trying to graduate high school. I kinda feel like I've been slacking off lately... but everyone tells me that I'm doing the right thing."

"Course you're doing the right thing. Anyway, there were tentacles. I know how you feel about tentacles."

Streak shuddered, and went back to eating, as Noelle stretched in the Spring sunshine, worrying over something in her mind. Trying to put it aside, she just sat and enjoyed the weather, deciding that yeah, sometimes, there was something to be said about this whole warmth thing.

With the lasagna finally gone, Noelle figured Streak might be able to concentrate on an actual conversation, and piped up again. "So, how's all the school stuff going? I mean, do you have to go to actual classes and stuff? Take tests? Do homework? Change in the locker room for gym?"

She wrinkled her nose. "All I know 'bout high school I learned from watching tv, so you're gonna have to humor me."

"School has been odd for me. Like everything else in my life, it's hard to explain how it's worked out. Before I had powers, I was a typical nerdy kid in school. Once I got my powers I was pulled out of school, and had some classes here and there as my 'handlers' wanted me to look the part of a student. Then I went and fell into a dimensional hole." He laughed, as he obviously glossed over a lot of details.

"After I'd been here at the castle for a week straight, the Baron set me up with some tutors so that I could get a GED. He's still trying to get me a social security number here, so that I can have a bank account and maybe even get a driver license someday. You know, all the stuff that you've already got because you belong in this world. Personally I think that he's just tired of me being around the castle, eating everything in sight. He's trying to get me started out, so I can get a life started. A life beyond the costume and the powers at least."

Noelle looked thoughtful. "Huh. I guess I never thought... Sorry, Streak. I just... never put it together. All that stuff you don't have."

She had a thought for her parents -- yes, they were way up on the Arctic Circle, but they were still here, in this dimension. She could pick up a phone and call them, hear their voices, or send them an email whenever she wanted, and they'd be able to respond. Streak had... no one.

No, that wasn't true. He had the Knights. And they were a kind of family, after all. One of the best kinds -- people that chose to be together, and worked together out of love and mutual respect, and weren't tossed in a genetic mix haphazardly.

"Well, I think..." she began, getting up from her chaise lounge and moving over to Streak's, pushing his feet to the side to share the chair with him, "...you don't need a driver's license. I mean... Hello? You can fly. And slide. So... what's the biggie? Lots of people in big cities don't drive."

There was something more serious in what he was saying about getting a life outside of the costume, and Noelle didn't know how to respond. Didn't know what to say to that, how to reply, except to joke and tease and hope to cheer him back into a better mood.

She grinned. "So what say you put that super-fast metabolism of yours to work digesting that giant lasagna you just ate, and we'll scoff that 30-minute rule and go for a swim? After all, there's this whole trout-free pool just sitting there, empty, calling to us..."