The last caused Speedster to shudder. Luna could appreciate why. She had been claustrophobic before her Fusion and while having a second personality’s strength to draw on had helped, she still struggled with small, enclosed spaces. Speedster’s claustrophobia had kicked in post Fusion and while it wasn’t serious enough to have her avoiding small rooms and locked doors, it was bad enough that she spent the greater majority of her time outdoors if she could help it. The idea of being locked in a small, padded room for months at a time was terrifying to the super fast, super stubborn young woman.
“Exactly.” Luna nodded her agreement, “So you’ll wait?”
“I’ll wait, for now.” Juliet agreed, “But I’m reserving ‘I told you so’ rights if I don’t get to talk to him before he starts trying to take over the world.”
“Deal.” Luna agreed as they turned the corner, “Now how are you going to apologise to Snap?”
“I dunno.” Speedster admitted. “I didn’t think it would matter when I dropped off the map. She did say she had so much footage to edit that she would still be doing it in January.”
“She missed a scene.” Luna explained, “And we tried it with just me and Chi but she said something was missing and it didn’t play out right. Didn’t help the script was written with you in it too and we had to improvise.”
“Well we’ll get this sorted, then I’ll speak to Mako and Bookworm and I’ll get the robot issue sorted too.” Juliet still sounded a little irritated but Luna was just pleased that she seemed to have calmed down. Speedster was normally quite a level headed person, she had a few ego issues, normally controlled by a quick ‘ego check,’ but none of them had seen her as mad as she had been when she had seen the news.
That hadn’t just been Speedster talking then, though. Luna was fully aware of that fact. She just wondered what her friend would be like if she ever let go of her temper properly and flew into a real rage.
They were the first to arrive besides Snap. The film student and director jumped on them the moment they arrived, launching a scathing tirade at Speedster for just disappearing on them. Juliet took it in her stride. Considering how mad the Club had been at her, she had not expected it to matter if she vanished for a few days. Though admittedly she hadn’t originally planned on heading off for a couple of weeks.
She appeased Snap, and the others of the Club who were mad at her for vanishing, a little by providing the gifts she had bought out of the paypacket that had come in just the day before. They weren’t as fancy as the ones she had originally planned to get, but Luna’s suggestion about shooting down to Bath had been fruitful and she had managed to pick up thirty or so pretty Christmas baubles for less than a hundred pounds.
“Bribery?” Michael asked, having been one of the last to arrive for the recording session, though there were plenty of others yet to get their gifts from Juliet. The rest would be given out at the last club meeting of the year.
“No, Christmas presents.” Juliet scolded him. “Just like every year.” She sighed, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you guys, but these aren’t ‘please forgive me’ gifts. I didn’t think you’d be too worried.”
“You’re an idiot.” Spike commented as he helped set up the last camera, his present, a golden star which she had drawn a smiley face on, reminiscent of the Power Stars in Mario. “Just because we’re cross at you, doesn’t mean we aren’t going to worry when you drop off of the face of the planet. What if it had been something serious?”
“Yeah,” Chi, the young man who was the last member of the ‘hero’ party in the film and who had pulled Brawl away from her at the Club meeting, chimed in, “I mean you can’t hog all the good fights.”
“Awww, was someone jealous?” Speedster teased, quite willing and happy to change the tone of the meeting to something a little lighter hearted and playful. “Tell you what, the next time I shoot off to save the world, I’ll invite you along. If you can keep up that...”
“Ego check.” Three voices chorused, causing Juliet to start laughing as Luna, Snap and Spike all blinked at each other in bemusement before they started chuckling too.
“I’m never going to get to boast again, am I?” Juliet jokingly complained to Chi when she calmed down.
“Not as long as we’re here.” Chi shook his head, smiling as he did so.
“Damn.” Juliet pretended to sulk as she snatched up a copy of the script, “Am I changing for this scene or not?”
“Not,” Snap shook her head as Juliet swiftly read through the lines, committing them to memory as she read them through a fourth and fifth time, “This is a meeting of the heroes during their day to day lives. What you’re... okay, why are you covered in paint?”
“Because I’ve been doing D.I.Y. and didn’t have time to change out of these clothes before Luna dragged me out of my front door.” Speedster responded, “Do you need me to change?”
Snap considered her for a moment, before shaking her head, “You know what? No, no, I can use this. D.I.Y. got it.” She made a note on the pad of paper she had taken to carrying with her everywhere. She paused, “What have you been building? Because you haven’t been at home. We checked. Lots.”
“Personal project.” Speedster shrugged, not really wanting to talk about it. “Back home.”
Luna watched her for a moment, a questioning look crossing her features as she caught Juliet’s eyes. When the speed freak shook her head slightly, Luna decided that if the others asked her, which they tended to do if Speedster was keeping to herself, she wouldn’t say a word about the treehouse. If Speedster wanted it kept a secret, she wouldn’t say a word.
“Fine, fine, don’t share.” Snap grouched, “But at least put photos up. Otherwise none of us will believe you can build anything. After all, we remember what happened to that shed you tried to help put up.” When Speedster went bright red in embarrassment, Snap considered herself victorious and chuckled as she went to double check the cameras. Not that she didn’t trust Spike to know what he was doing but it was her project and she was going to keep on top of everything.
Speedster glanced down at her clothes, brushing off the worst of the dirt as she noticed just how grubby her clothes were. Embarrassment settled in a little as she did so. She didn’t tend to think about what she was wearing very often, there wasn’t much point when it ended up windswept and rumpled after not too long. Snap’s tone had been one of ‘you’re wearing that?’ though and it had made her a little self conscious.
“Note to self,” Juliet murmured as they took their places and she read through the script one last time before they started, “Either start living in running clothes or get changed before I go anywhere Snap from now on.”
Luna, who had already memorised her script while she waited for Speedster to actually return home from her travels, chuckled quietly at that. “I’m not sure it would help.” She pointed out, “She would still comment on it if it looked like that.”
“True...oh, here we go.” The conversation stopped as Snap counted down from ten, counting them into the recording.
Speedster’s unfamiliarity with her lines caused a little bit of difficulty, but after only a little addlibbing they got the scene recorded and it was a much happier Snap that shot off with the data disks from the cameras, leaving Luna, Speedster, Spike, Mako and Michael to talk about what had been in the news.
“So, robosuits,” Mako commented as they settled on the railings outside the building, watching the snow falling on the campus, “What do we think?”
“I’m not happy about it.” Speedster admitted, “But Luna says I need to stop and step back and actually think before I go and rush to see the Doc in charge of the project.”
“Might be a plan.” Mako nodded, “Though when you do go, if you want backup...”
“Thanks.” Juliet grinned at her, relieved to have a little bit of backup even if she didn’t think she would need to call anyone in to help her.
“Well you can leave me out.” Spike snorted, “You caused the mess and I’ll step in if something happens here but this is my turf, I ain’t going looking for trouble outside of it unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Is that a ‘I’ll help if trouble comes here’?” Mako asked, amused at the stubborn and lazy shell skinned young man.
“Yeah, yeah.” He waved it off, not particularly happy about the whole situation but refusing to let his territory get invaded by some idiot looking for trouble. There were enough of those as there was, without another joining the club.
“What about you?” Luna looked at her brother.
“I’m staying well out of it.” Michael snorted at her, “Knowing Shade he would take the opportunity presented by a distraction to cause the biggest possible mess imaginable.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him.” Luna sighed, just glad that she had managed to work out a way to work with the Other Self that the Fusion had given her. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have another personality in her head that she couldn’t work with and had to watch out for at every opportunity.
It was why she gave her brother so much leeway when his Other Self was on a rampage and why she insisted that her Other Self tried to help Shade change, rather than remove that part of her brother entirely.
No comments:
Post a Comment