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

[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?"

[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."

[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.

[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."

[heromaniac]

Oookay. That made her frown and she stared at the floor for a few moments, tapping her head as she processed the question.

"Okay. Let's ignore the fact that breaking someone out of prison is wrong... Wait, no. That's not right. It's illegal. Not the same thing, like we talked about in class, although I'm used to thinking that it is." She looked at him. "Are you asking that? If it's wrong for someone to do it?"

[peace_n_war]

Warren gave Momoko a tired sort of smile, and then shook his head.

"I know it's wrong. Illegal. Whichever. That's not quite what I'm asking. But that's alright. I think I have my answer."

His gaze drifted upward to the ceiling.

"This whole boarding school thing kind of sucks sometimes, you know."

[heromaniac]

"Uhm. We have a villain back home who is very violent and possessive," Momoko scratched her cheek. "And once he kidnapped our Mayor's assistant. It turns out he was in love with her but didn't know how to do anything other than what he did, so we helped him try to show Ms Bellum how he felt instead of taking him in to jail for kidnapping."

She frowned, not sure if she made her point. "What I'm trying to say is that even persons who do something that's wrong can have a reason that's not necessarily wrong. At least where I'm from. His action was still wrong, though. There should have been a different action only he didn't know one."

[peace_n_war]

"He did what he did because he wanted to. Every year of his sentence, he deserves. Every second of every lifetime." Warren looked down again, his expression taking on an almost dangerous sort of edge. "People got hurt, Momoko. Because he wanted them to be."

[heromaniac]

She threw up her hands, frustrated. "Then what? I don't get what you're asking! I'm trying to say that if you want to let him go there's possibly a good reason behind it, but then you say, no there's not because he deserves to be in jail and not just because he broke the law but because he's hurt people. If he's hurt people and still wants to hurt people and there's no purpose in setting him free, then yeah, the person who does it is not innocent when the next person is hurt."

[peace_n_war]

"He's my dad, Momoko," Warren snapped, spitting out the words before he could really think on them. "My dad's the supervillain locked away in prison for a quadruple life sentence, okay? And I miss him. Of course I do! He's my dad."

[heromaniac]

So now Momoko understood some of what they'd been talking about.

"And you're totally allowed to miss your dad and to want to see him and hang out and do all the father-son things that you can't, but he made a bad choice and ruined it and you really need to stop and think if you want to make another one and probably ruin your life and anyone else's who cares about you like you care about him. Change your actions not your reasons!"

[peace_n_war]

And now Warren was gritting his teeth, shoving his hands into his coat pockets and taking a few deep breaths before he could say anything else stupid.

"What do you want me to do? Forget about it? Pretend it's okay that I'm never going to see him again? It's not. I don't even have any actions to change. I'm not doing anything."

[heromaniac]

The look on his face took the rest of her lecture and tossed it out the window. Hopefully there was room somewhere for her to sit, because now she needed to.

"I don't see how you could forget or pretend; I mean, he's your dad! The fact that you even thought about doing something like that just means you really do care about him." She sighed. "Maybe the doing nothing part is what you can change? Have you asked anyone if it would be possible to visit him? Is there anyone that's got enough power to let you at least get in to see him?"

[peace_n_war]

Warren shook his head. What else could he do?

"He's in solitary. They don't exactly make exceptions for family with guys like him. He's in, that's that, he might as well be dead."

He hated saying that. But his dad wasn't coming out any time during Warren's lifetime. It was true enough.

[heromaniac]

"Don't say that!" Momoko narrowed her eyes at him. "Not only is it bad luck to say something like that about someone, but if he's dead then it's all over. No chance at all."

She thought for a minute. "Uhm, so, was it a superhero who caught him? If so, couldn't you ask them to vouch for you to whomever?"

[peace_n_war]

"I have my doubts that The Commander would do something like that." Warren's frown deepened some more. "He's too proud of getting him behind bars in the first place. He's the sort of hero that keeps souvenirs. Doing anything to help my dad would be against everything he is."

Even if Warren was kind of friends with his son, or whatever.

[heromaniac]

"He keeps souvenirs?" She blinked, then shook her head. Really now, how could you even do that?

"But it would be worth a try, though, right? Asking? He wouldn't be helping your dad, he'd be helping you! And that's what a hero, super or not, does: they help people!" Yes, she was optimistic, despite her growing horrors about the superheros on other worlds.