Room 315, Wednesday Early Evening

[peace_n_war]

"Hey, dad. It's Warren again. I'm starting to wonder if you even have room on your answering machine anymore, but hey, at least if you've run out by now you won't have to listen through three or four lifetimes of me phoning you like this someday, huh? I'm sixteen still, but not for long. Seventeen tomorrow, dad! I've still got that job at the cafe, and I'm still hanging out with that girl I mentioned last time. She's been trying to get me to go swimming with her. Weird, huh? Me. Swimming. I don't even like the beach, except that I can throw fire around. Other than that, seventeen doesn't seem like it's going to be much different than sixteen was. I'm, uh, still not a villain. Not really a hero either, don't worry. I think I want to call Mom sometime, too, but I can actually talk to her. She'll want to know all that stuff I've been telling you, dad. Asking about girls and school and if I've followed in your footsteps and become a criminal mastermind, and if I have then I'm grounded for life. Thanks loads, Mom, right? ... Seventeen tomorrow."

...

"I miss you dad."

Warren hung up his phone, sighed, and reached for a book. Seventeen, sixteen, whatever. Wasn't like any of it made any difference either way.

[Open post is open! I probably won't be about tomorrow for a job interview, so Warren gets to birthday whine today.]

Comments

[peace_n_war]

"I'll burn out the toes or something. I'll make it work somehow."

He would. He was resourceful that way.

"Either that, or I'll shake you down for your lunch money every day until I can buy new shoes. It'll be pretty violent shaking, though. If I have to run around barefoot for long, I won't be happy."

[Sleep sounds reeeeally good right now. SP it is!]

[heromaniac]

Momoko rapped somewhat cheerfully on the door to 315. She'd just read the paper and Warren's article about communication was a bit weird for him (not the 'I hate people' part, that was normal) and she was wondering if everything was okay.

[peace_n_war]

"It's not locked," Warren reported, glancing up from his book momentarily. "In or out."

If he was aware that it was Momoko on the other side of the door, he'd probably have just told her she could come in.

[Is suuuuper SP okay? I'm just skipping off to bed right now and I'll be out for large chunks of tomorrow.]

[heromaniac]

He was there! Yay!

"In! I choose 'in'! Do I win a prize?" Momoko opened the door and poked her head around with a grin. "I can go away if I'm interrupting something, but I probably won't, so hi!"


[Suuuuper SP is wonderful, and I'll be cheering for you all day tomorrow. Which will get awkward in meetings, but oh well!]

[peace_n_war]

"I can't think of a single thing you could possibly be interrupting," Warren replied, smiling a little when he saw who the visitor was. "I'm just reading. That's what bookmarks are for."

Well. Usually. If a book was particularly gripping, sometimes his bookmarks were known to vanish in a puff of smoke and ash.

"How have you been, Momoko?"

[Those might possibly be the best meetings ever! Okay, good night, and thank you!]

[heromaniac]

"You reading for fun or for class? One other than Heroing, I mean, since I don't think Captain Hammer would ever assign us reading and I wasn't actually asleep in today's class." Momoko stepped fully into the room with a happy bounce and leaned a bit to see if she could read the cover of his book. "Hmm. Well, my laptop crashed Sunday whichwastotallynotmyfault and I may end up having to ship it home for repair. Which will mean I'll probably go through withdrawal until I can get it back, but otherwise I'm good! What about you?"

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

"You'd be shaking me down for awhile because I don't tend to carry lunch money around," he said and snickered. "You might get a pack of gum and some lint. Dunno if the shoe store will take that as payment for your giant shoes."

[peace_n_war]

Warren stuck the bookmark into his book and set it aside. It was a book of Chinese mythology he'd been given by the staff of The Paper Lantern back home, so, naturally, it was written in Chinese.

"Just reading because there are words," Warren replied with a shrug. "Sorry to hear about your computer. If you need to check your e-mails or whatever, you can borrow mine until you get yours back." Because that would totally end well, yes. "I haven't been bad, I guess. Thoughtful, maybe."

[peace_n_war]

"Well, then I guess force-feeding you worms is right out," Warren decided, chuckling a little. "How do beetles sound instead? I hear they have a neat crunch. Barring that, we'll just have to go the preschooler route and make you eat paste."

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

"Warren, you hurt my heart," he teased, wincing and flopping down on his bed dramatically. "You should know better, paste will just go right to my hips and give me love handles. Not needed!"

[peace_n_war]

"Crayons, then." Warren smirked and flopped backward on his own bed, looking up at the ceiling. It was a good conversation for flopping. "Wax is fat-free, isn't it? And it has the added bonus of giving you pretty teeth."

In fun colors like burnt sienna and salmon!

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

"It's kind of frightening that you know all this so easily," Lee laughed. "And I think crayons would be hard to chew. They'd break up into tiny bits and ew."

[peace_n_war]

"They kind of stick to your teeth. I was a kid once, you know," Warren pointed out. "But crayons are more fun to melt than they are to eat. Leave them sitting in the back seat of a car? They'll never, ever come out of the upholstery."

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

"That's...something I never thought of," he admitted. "Do they stay the original color when they melt into the upholstery?"

[peace_n_war]

"They do!" Warren was kind of a professional when it came to destroying things. "The back seat of my mom's car will forever have a purple blotch on it. And an orange one running into that... Which makes the most hideous brown right where they connected in the middle."

When he was little, he really, really liked melting things just because he could.

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

"Man. How did I not do this?" Lee wondered how much his father would glare if he did it at his current age. He decided he didn't care. "I can't think of anything better than melting a yellow crayon in the backseat of my dad's car. He'd hate it. I'd call it decoration."

[peace_n_war]

"Right. Happy, sunshiny, obnoxious yellow. And you don't have to do much to melt them, either. Just, oops, middle of summer, forgot your crayons in the back seat. Technically you didn't do it. The sun did."

Warren grinned a little. "You get to be kind of a professional at random destruction of other people's property after you've done it for a while."

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

"See, I was just a door slammer," Lee said, seeing the error of his ways. "And a yeller. I never actually thought to accidentally wreck things to get my laughs. I had such a boring childhood."

[heromaniac]

"That book doesn't look like it's in English, which means you were reading for fun, admit it! And thank you for the offer!" She grinned and held up crossed fingers on both hands for a moment. "I'm hoping my computer will be fixed before I start twitching."

"So what are you being thoughtful about? If there's a problem, I can help!"

[peace_n_war]

Warren looked at her for a moment, and then shifted his weight uncomfortably on his bed and gave his head a shake.

"No, you can't."

It wasn't anything personal, really. It was just that busting his dad out of prison so that Warren could get a hug or something was probably a very bad idea.

[peace_n_war]

"Well, you're just going to have to make up for lost time, then," Warren decided. "Which would you rather start with? Eating worms, or destroying upholstery?"

[heromaniac]

"Can I at least try to help? Unless it involves technology, because I think we've already established that would be a problem! Unless unless the technology is piloting, because I am totally able to do that!" She linked her arms behind her back and smiled. "Or maybe I could help with just the thoughts part? Contrary to popular belief, I really can do that!"

[peace_n_war]

...

"What are your thoughts on supervillains, Momoko?"

[heromaniac]

Well, that question was out of left field. She stared at him for a minute.

"Which ones? Or do you mean in general? Because while supervillians are each as different as superheroes, they're still villains. In general. Just with super powers. Actually, though, each one is different and you have to know that to be a good hero."

She had examples, if she needed them. She'd been fighting hers for three years.

[peace_n_war]

"Okay." That made sense to Warren. Maybe he'd press on, then. "And what do you think about people who seriously consider breaking certain ones out of prison? I mean, not just your run of the mill radioactive-waste-man who started robbing banks or whatever. I'm talking about the kind of supervillain who used the word 'Battle' in his name proudly, because he could live up to it."