ic Family Food

[R. Bluefish]

"Right. Of course. Didn't mean anything by it." Immensely relieved, Starlight's picked her drink back up and drained half the glass in one gulp. It didn't affect her as strongly as before, but the intensity of the flavor still made her eyes water. She stifled another cough and said, "Sounds like it must be rough sometimes. Knowing what's going on in other people's heads. Especially for a kid. She's lucky to have you two."

Abruptly, she remembered what she'd wanted to ask, and fought to keep her voice casual. "So, she got her abilities from you. Does it always work that way? Are powers hereditary?" She winced at how transparent the question was. "Just curious. I was wondering if I got my powers from one of my parents or something," she lied hastily.

[Electra]

Paige opened another bottle of ginger ale and passed it to Starlight, then took another sip of her own drink. "It very much depends on how you got your powers in the first place, and whether they've bonded genetically to you. Richard and I had the advantage of knowing ahead of time that our powers could be passed on genetically. He may have already mentioned to you that we both come from metahuman families. Villainous families, but still superpowered. He got his powers from his mother, I got mine from my father. We weren't at all surprised when Will started developing his powers at puberty. Holly was more of a surprise, but only because of how early she began manifesting, and how strongly. I could wish she'd waited longer, but at least we have a good school to send her to for training." 

She picked up a handful of Chex mix, began sorting out the rye crackers for special attention. "If you're concerned about having children one day, you could always ask one of the super-scientists to do a genetic scan on you. It would probably be able to tell whether your powers can be passed along, and if you have any dangerous mutations or recessives at the same time." 

[R. Bluefish]

Dangerous mutations? Starlight felt sick. That had never even occurred to her. Wish I'd paid more attention in biology class. She accepted the bottle and took a sip, but didn't seem to taste it. Where the hell did you even go to get a genetics scan? She glanced down at her hand, which, almost of its own accord, started to glow softly. How did she know there wasn't anything harmful about that? It certainly wasn't normal, that was for sure. An overdose couldn't be the healthiest way to unlock your powers. Unless they had actually come from the drugs themselves? Which was probably worse, but might mean they weren't genetic, so...

She found herself badly wanting to change to subject. "Didn't know your parents were villains," she said, studying the Chex mix intently. "Does that mean that the two of your used to be...on the other side?"

 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ma made sure I got superpowers," said Richard from the window as he zipped back in just long enough to open the refrigerator, unwrap several slices of American cheese, grab the chili and hot sauce, and carry them outside for the cheeseburgers and the Cline Family Special. "She didn't know much about science, but she ran around with me when she was pregnant and once I was born, super-speed and back and forth in time. It worked, too! I was breaking the sound barrier before I kissed a girl." That particular subject had been something of a sore spot between himself and Paige in the past - had in fact been the subject of one of their most serious fights early in their marriage when he'd suggested taking her around to make sure Junior got the powers. But seventeen years had a way of healing all wounds, even if those wounds had involved the couch. 

"You were probably just a kid back in the day, but Fast-Forward and Hologram were pretty busy in Freedom back in the day. Ten minutes, honey!" he called as he zipped outside again, gathering Holly's skewered vegetables and adding them to the grill. 

[Electra]

"You go light on that hot sauce, old man, we have a guest!" Paige called after him, faint laughter in her voice. Settling back comfortably against the counter, she nodded at Starlight's question. "I went on my first villainous adventure when I was around twelve, with my older siblings. I was much weaker than them back then, so I was just backing them up while we tried to steal some, god, I don't even remember. Some magical thingummy that the Atoms were protecting. Maybe there was a reason, maybe it was just for the hell of it, but it didn't matter to me, I did as I was told. Later on, I did it because I liked it. Richard was his mom's sidekick until he went to juvie, and then when he got out, he struck out on his own. I ran away from my family eventually, but it wasn't because I wanted to be good." 

She studied her drink a moment, fiddled with the lime twist. "I was eighteen when I ran away, but I'd lived in seclusion my entire life, never been to school or ridden a bus or cooked a meal or handled money. I was homeless for a little while, scared out of my mind. Richard and I had known each other as kids, and when we crossed paths again, I was happy to go with him. We fell in love, had some fun, did a lot of stupid things. It took us a long time to grow up." 

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight was silent for a long moment. Their life of suburban bliss seemed so perfect, the idea that they, like her, could have come from "less-than-ideal" circumstances seemed fantastic, almost laughable. And yet, there was a look in Paige's eye that instantly dispelled any doubt that she might have had. That was a look you couldn't fake. "That..." she rubbed the back of her neck, "uh, that must have been pretty rough. No way for a kid to grow up." Christ, who the hell raises their own kid to be a villain? And I thought I was a bad mom.

"So, you used to be a bad guy, and your family were scumbags. What made you switch sides? I mean," she gestured to the house, "looks like you really turned your life around something fierce. Nice house, nice family, good reputation. Your own TV show. How the hell do you go from there to here? Both of you?"

[Electra]

"It wasn't any one big thing," Paige told her, then reconsidered. "Well, it was and it wasn't. It was a lot of small steps that ended in one big leap, I guess. The eighties were a weird time to be a villain in Freedom City." She smiled a little, reminiscing. "The costumes were tremendously weird. But the attitudes, the way heroes and villains acted, it was very different from anything before or after. A lot of the old villains were retiring, and the new ones were thugs. No style, no strategy, just smash and bash. We thought we were way above that, doing our villainy old school, stealing from the rich and giving to ourselves. We didn't like to hurt people, not civilians anyway. Throwing down with the heroes was different, we'd been raised to that, it was almost the fun part. But the heroes were different too. It was the Moore years, so they were breaking the law by upholding the law, so things were a lot less black-and-white. Sometimes the heroes did bad things. Sometimes, very occasionally, Richard and I would step in and save somebody who needed saving, tell ourselves we were still proper bad guys because what we'd done was illegal." 

Paige walked over to the big side-by-side refrigerator and opened the freezer, pulling out a pie from its depths. "It was fun for awhile, especially for someone like me who'd never gotten to cut loose and have any fun. But I realized I wanted more than fun, I wanted some kind of real life, the kind I'd imagined when I was a kid. We'd been doing drugs, mostly cocaine, and it started to scare me, losing time, going through crashes and withdrawal, having trouble controlling my powers when I was flying. I managed to get clean, but it took a long time. Richard was using more heavily and he didn't want to quit, and that was hard. Sometimes it felt like we were barely hanging on. Then my father killed all of my siblings and their spouses, came this close to killing Richard and I as well. We had to leave Freedom City and go on the run. I just about lost my grip entirely, and Richard started getting clean for me, so he could be there for me. It took him years to get all the way there. I was twenty-seven the first year we both made it for six entire months. We moved back to Freedom City, decided we'd figure out what to do next when we got there. We were just getting back into the whole merry-life-of-crime bit when the Terminus Invasion happened."

She looked at Starlight with eyes that for a moment were bleak and haunted. "It was... you can't imagine it if you weren't there. Hell rained down, and it didn't matter if you were a good guy or a bad guy. Freedom City was our home, and we were still human beings. We'd been in a skirmish with 1-800-JUSTICE, and suddenly we were back to back with them, trying to keep Omegadrones from murdering everyone in Lincoln. Lot of people died during those three days. Heroes, villains, civilians. At some point we realized that we could've run, but at the same time we couldn't have. And that helping people, saving people, it was a lot more fulfilling than having fun and getting money. In the wake of the Invasion, the new Freedom League offered us amnesty if we'd retire from villainy, and we took it." She smiled, leaned back against the counter once more. "It wasn't quite as simple as all that, but it was the start. We had Will, moved out to California to escape my psycho family, started building a real life. I busked on the streets for awhile, sleight of hand and illusion magic for the tourists, and eventually that became a TV special, then the show. Nothing was fast or easy, but it happened eventually." 

Edited April 23, 2015 by Electra

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight said nothing, trying to digest what she had heard. Something odd stood out. The eighties? The Moore Act? T-Day? She looked up at Paige, trying to guess how old she was. She didn't look more than thirtysomething. Then again, when you have powers...she changed mental gears. She's probably old enough to be my mother, she realized.

"I remember T-Day," she said. "A little. I was pretty young. Me and my family just hunched together, watching the TV, seeing everything that was happening." She stared out the window, random long-forgotten details popping into her head all at once. "My father piled all the furniture up against the door. Covered the windows. It wouldn't help and we knew it. But, hell, had to do something. He got his gun and got us all around him, and we just hid in there and prayed to God they wouldn't notice us." She laughed under her breath, though it wasn't funny. "I think they were too busy killing people out there to bother coming in here.

"Then we heard that the Centurion was dead. And not just him, so many other heroes, and that they had all died to save us. And I remember, even then, all I could do was wonder why. Why the hell would you sacrifice yourself for people you didn't even know? People who had turned on you, made it a crime for you to help them? For a long time, I just couldn't figure it out. Still have trouble with it some days."

She took a handful of Chex mix and crunched it slowly. So that's what food tastes like. "Didn't take long for us to forget about it, of course," she said with her mouth full. "Once the battle was over, and the reconstruction began, and the graves were dug, we all just started going back to our own bulls--t problems like nothing had happened. Dad left. Mom started drinking. I grew up, started doing drugs. Had a-"

Ow. A sharp cracker poked the inside of her mouth, jolting her from her reverie. She broke off abruptly, feeling all of a sudden absurdly guilty. "Anyway. Doesn't matter now," she said, swallowing hard. "Sounds like you straightened yourself out. I respect that." Just wish I could say the same.

[Electra]

"He did it because it was the kind of man he was. I don't think he would've ever considered doing anything different," Paige told Starlight, that faraway look back in her face for a minute. "He was the best of the best, even the villains had to respect him at least a little bit, because no matter what, human life came first. I saw him, actually, on the second day of the attack. We were between waves, us and the guys from 1-800-JUSTICE, still together in Lincoln, before Jump died. Just absolutely wrecked, exhausted, and then he came down to talk to us for a minute, ask if we could keep holding the line. He was all torn up too,  dirty and uniform wrecked and burnt along one arm, but just seeing him, realizing that the heroes had come back, we finally had some hope. The politics didn't matter, the line of BS from the mayor's office certainly didn't matter when people were dying. Freedom City and its heroes belong to each other, and nobody was a better example of that than the Centurion." 

She smiled then, ran a quick self-conscious hand over her short bob of hair. "Ancient history now, I know. Life goes on, and it's been more than twenty years. Stopping Omega didn't stop all the bad things happening in the city, it just got the heroes back in." She regarded Starlight from calm brown eyes. "Richard didn't tell me much of your story, but he says you've been trying to start a new life for yourself. I respect that. I know how hard it is, and it's even worse when you're doing it on your own." 

[R. Bluefish]

Start a new life? Is that what I'm doing? She smothered a bitter chuckle. Should probably straighten things out with the parole board then. Been a little while since I checked in. She doubted that would go over well if she said it aloud, though. "Doing fine. Doing great. You'd be surprised how many problems can be solved with lasers."

She scraped the floor with the heel of her boot. "You probably heard I'm staying with Miras right now. Got off the streets. Nice to have a place to put up my feet." Especially now that I know I can eat. Her fridge isn't going to know what hit it. "Might even get all fancy and get a real costume at some point. Gloves and a mask and a big f---ing cape."

The kitchen felt small and suffocating. She needed air. She seized her drink and pushed away from the counter. "Think I'll go see if Richard needs any help with the grill," she said, the excuse sounding false even to her own ears. "Good...uh, good talk, Paige."

[Electra]

Paige nodded, looking as though she might want to say something more, then apparently deciding she'd said more than enough already. Walking over to the sink, she handed Starlight a long wooden-handled spatula and an equally-long two-tined fork, along with a bottle of barbecue sauce. "He'll be yelling for all this stuff in a minute anyway, may as well get it out there for him now. And remind him about the hot sauce, unless you really like a burger that could set your mouth on fire. And could you send Holly in to help me make the salad? She's just trying to avoid kitchen work right now." 

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight felt oddly lightheaded as she made her way through the house to the yard where Richard and Holly were working the grill. As she drew nearer, the smell of the burgers wafted towards her, and her mouth began to water despite herself. She held out the utensils and sauce. "Brought you these. And Paige told me to remind you to go easy on the hot sauce." I just got my taste buds back, I should probably avoid scorching them off. She looked at Holly, managing to avoid having a mental breakdown this time. Hey, progress. "And kid, your mom needs you in the kitchen."

[KnightDisciple]

There was a rush of wind and a blur of green-speckled motion, and suddenly Paige wasn't alone in the kitchen. More Chex Mix was gone, and her teenaged son was standing by the sink, drinking deeply from a tall glass of ice water. He finished, and immediately did something else teenaged boys are good at: running his mouth off. 

"You would not believe how terrible the food at school is today mom. I think the normal cooks are all down with a bug. It's probably a villain's plot! Disable all the kid heroes with terrible food they can barely digest! Ugh. So yeah I'm home for lunch today that is okay right? Awesome! Oh! Burgers! You told dad not to soak them in the hot stuff right? I don't want to, like, burn out a girl's lips if I kiss her."

Which was unlikely to happen any time soon. But don't tell that to William Cline. 

[Electra]

"Ah-ah," Paige scolded, giving her son an arch look. "You know the rules, first you must pay the terrible price!" Wrapping her arms around him, she gave him a fierce hug, then kissed his forehead despite the fact she had to stand on tiptoe to do it. "I'm glad you found time in your busy schedule to come visit poor old mom," she teased, turning him loose. "Your father has been warned about the hot sauce, whether he takes it to heart is anybody's guess. I've got bleu cheese dressing to cool them down if it comes to that. If you go out and kibitz with him over the grill, you might be able to spot him before he pours it on; I can never catch him at it."

She reached into a drawer and pulled out another barbecue apron, this one proudly reading "It's not combustible unless you set it on fire!" a classic SuperCrime! catchphrase. She handed it over to Will and watched to make sure he put it on properly. "Our guest tonight is Starlight, a hero your father met who could use some more friends in the city. Be nice and no flirting, she's too old for you," she admonished with a grin. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Holly smiled nervously at Starlight before heading back inside, sticking her tongue out at her brother automatically on the way in. When Will was outside and she was inside, Holly joined her mother at the kitchen counter and thought worriedly "<Mom, why is that woman scared of me? Dad didn't tell her about me, did she?>"

Outside, Fast-Forward was in fine form behind the grill, reluctantly going easy on the hot sauce he was adding to about a third of the grilling burgers. "Yeah, yeah," he said with a wave of his hand. "A couple days on antacid and she never lets me forget it. Turns out stomach linings are one thing time travel don't grow back," he admitted. "But you'll like this stuff. I do know what I'm doing - I've been grilling burgers, jeez, must be thirty-odd years now. I used to make them in RVs when we were...hey, boy!" he waved affectionately as his son zipped outside. "This is my son Will! Will, this is our friend Starlight, she's visiting us for dinner tonight." 

[R. Bluefish]

Thirty-odd years? That at least seemed to confirm that both of them were a lot older than they looked. Did they age at all, or were they...basically immortal? Come to think of it, did she still age? Not enough time had passed to tell...She looked up at the approaching teenager, and wondered half-seriously how old he actually was. Sixty-five, probably. When superpower s--t gets involved, it's anyone's guess.

She took a step forward and held out her hand to him. "Will. Hi. Your parents invited over me for dinner," she said unnecessarily. And thankfully not "for dinner" in an ironically literal, cannibalistic kind of way.

[KnightDisciple]

Will dramatically rolled his eyes at the affection from his mother, but the subtle psychic bond the family shared meant that she knew it was an act. He was at that image-conscious stage of life, but he still loved his parents and sister deeply. 

Just ask the mercenaries he fought a few months ago how protective he was with Holly. The ones whose jaws were healed, anyways. 

 

"Ugh fine yes any price is worth homemade burgers oh my gosh yes you know I love this apron thanks I'll go check now back in soon!"

Skipping school lunches certainly gave him energy! He was outside in a flash and a blur. 

"Hey dad! School lunch today is a disaster so I'm home for grub oh good you aren't going too heavy on the sauce and guest hello!"

Will must have had too much sugar. Or maybe he had stealthily nabbed sips of coffee? Either way he gave Starlight a winning smile and a firm-but-rapid handshake. 

"Nice to meet you, Miss Starlight! Good choice coming on a burger day! My dad might be stuck in the 80s but he flips the meanest burger this side of the Mississippi!"

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight nodded and smiled agreeably along with his words, while her brain scuttled along behind trying to make sense of his rapid speech. Did this kid forget his Ritalin, or just inject caffeinated sugar into his own veins? “Yeah, they smell great,” she said, trying to surreptitiously massage some feeling back into her shoulder after his vigorous handshake. She glanced at Richard’s dispensation of the hot sauce with a critical eye. “So long as he doesn’t burn all of our taste buds off, this should be pretty good.”

She looked back at Will. “I see you’ve got some of your dad’s powers there. You go to Claremont?”

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hm. I guess somebody's been telling tales out of school." Fast-Forward frowned, wondering if it had been Miras. Starlight didn't seem like somebody who'd made a lot of contacts in the hero community. "Claremont's not supposed to be common knowledge," he told the younger hero as he flipped the burgers one more time. "We're in the circle of trust, but most people outside the hero community aren't. Not everybody grew up in the limelight like my boy here," he said, patting his son on the arm. "There are kids there who need safety and don't need cameras in their face 24-7. They need a place to run to." 

He shrugged. "A lot better than when I was the boy's age! Back then there weren't any super-academies, so I spent all my time with Nana Cline, learning the ropes. Kids these days don't know how good they've got it. Even if they do grow up with sass mouths!"  

[R. Bluefish]

Starlight blinked. "Super-academy? I though it was just a school. I just assumed that because you have money and live in..." she trailed off and looked around at their faces. "Uh...I won't tell anybody." She started to wonder what else she didn't know about the real workings of the city, and decided she was probably getting in over her head. "So..." she said, changing the subject clumsily, "...are you, uh...faster than your dad? Did you get any of your mom's powers?"

[Electra]

~She's not afraid of you, pumpkin,~ Paige soothed her daughter mentally as she laid out the salad spinner and a head of arugula for Holly to work on over the sink. ~She doesn't understand much about psychic powers, or about what we can do or how we act. But I don't think that's what's bothering her. I think she has some issues of her own that don't have anything to do with any of us, but that she thinks about when she sees you. It's not your fault, or hers. It just is.~

Holly sighed and picked up the lettuce, pulling off leaves and tossing them in the spinner. ~So it's one of those things like when somebody projects a thought by accident and it's something you didn't want to know, but you just try and ignore it?~

~Just like that,~ Paige confirmed, approval in her mental voice. She set out a cutting board and began chopping carrots into rather uneven discs. She should've put Will on salad duty as well. ~I'm sure when she gets to know you, she's going to like you just fine.~ 

[Avenger Assembled]

"He is not faster than me," said Richard with a chuckle, patting his son on the arm, and choosing to run right past his little conversational slip. "But he is damn fast, especially for a kid his age." He let Will explain his psionic powers, then changed the subject again. "So," he went on conversationally, "you said you were living with Miras these days." He'd talked about the other heroine with Will, so he knew the boy wouldn't be left in the dark. "What's she doing these days?" he asked the question carefully, remembering the painful pride that could come with poverty, especially when drugs went into the mix. He didn't want to just offer money, suspecting the woman would just turn him down, but he was also pretty sure he couldn't just send her out of here with nothing more than burgers - even if they were, he told himself, damn fine burgers. 

"Will, take this batch inside," he told his son, "tell your mother two minutes," he added as the boy cleaned the top rack of burgers and vegetables almost faster than Starlight could see. 

[R. Bluefish]

"She's doing her music stuff. Deejaying, that kind of thing. She's actually pretty damn good, you know. She could probably hit it big someday. But hell, right now, it pays the rent and keeps food in the fridge." Although unless I can restrain myself, the poor fridge might be feeding two heroes now. "I'm...not exactly doing a lot to help out, though. Just taking up space." Starlight's lips quirked in a smile. "Suppose I could take the pocket money off the muggers and dealers I thrash and put it towards the rent, but that just doesn't seem right somehow."

She shrugged. "I do like to think the neighborhood is safer for us being there, though. Dealers and muggers don't know what the hell hit them. Gives us something to do at night, right?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Fast-Forward shrugged. "Paid the bills that way for a long time, even after we switched sides. Of course, that was back when Freedom cops were mostly on the take. No point in handing smack over to them if they're just gonna throw a party in the station house, or put it back on the street a week later." He smiled thinly, then quickly made himself brighten. "All right, it's burger time! Come on boy, get the plates!" What followed was something of a ballet - something that Richard and Will obviously had a great deal of practice with. At super-speed, Fast-Foward cleared away the meat and veggies, putting them on the plates grabbed by Will and a second later, he fast-forwarded the coals through a sudden, memorable flame-out that sent a woosh of heat into the air. "Good stuff!" 

- 

~Thanks, Mom,~ thought Holly with a little more open affection than she might actually say out loud. ~She'd better like me, I'm adorable!~

[Electra]

"That's the spirit," Paige told Holly with a laugh, dropping the cut vegetables into a large wooden bowl and tossing them with a pair of wooden hand-claws. "I'm sure she'll like you when she gets to know you. Just be yourself and don't be shy if she takes a few minutes to warm up to you. Now put the condiments and the salad dressings in the basket and bring them outside while I finish the salad." Despite a marked lack of super-speed, within just a few minutes the Cline ladies were exiting the house into the backyard, laden with more goodies for the picnic table already set with a weather-resistant cloth and the unbreakable outdoor-use dishes. "We'll be ready in just  another few minutes," she reported, "and looks like you're almost done too. Starlight, another ginger ale for you? Richard, another horrifying concoction you like to call soda?" 

Holly, obviously taking her mom's advice to heart, gave Starlight an extra-big smile as she plopped down her load of condiments on the table. "You should try Dad's horrifying concoction," she told the guest, "it's sooooooo sweet."