Summus Proelium

I really wished medicine worked immediately like it did in so many movies. Or at least, that I could skip over all the time where nothing happened with a few commercials and come back at a point just a few seconds before the medicine magically did its job and everyone got to be happy. Then again, being able to skip right over certain parts of my life in general might be pretty beneficial anyway.

Wait, what the hell was I thinking? The only parts that I would be able to skip over in such a scenario were the boring ones. Or at least, the ones that weren't considered dramatic enough. I really needed those moments. If my entire life was nothing but the terror, screaming, and both physical and emotional flailing, I would have completely lost it already. The slow, uneventful parts were the ones that gave me the time to actually process everything else a bit.

Still, I was done processing at the moment, and would have really liked to fast forward to the part where the medicine did its job and my parents were awake. We had all waited more than long enough.

But no, just because the last stage of that cure had been administered didn't mean that my parents were immediately on their feet. Apparently, the doctors had no real idea how long it would take for the last bit to do its business. Sleeptalk itself was so complicated, had been designed to be so difficult to cure, that even once you went through every stage of fixing the damn stuff, it was still very unpredictable. And as complicated as the human body could be, they weren't even positive that it would work properly. They had used it on a couple other people to some success. One of them woke up in fifteen minutes, and the other took almost six hours to snap out of it. I had no idea what the difference was, or how many complications could pop up. All I knew was that we could get the call any minute that they were conscious. Or we could be waiting all night. Maybe one of them would wake up hours before the other. I'd like to think that my parents were so in sync that they would come out of it at the same time, but there was no way to guess.

Honestly, sitting around the little waiting room for hours upon hours, agonizing about every little detail, would have been torture. Fortunately, we didn't have to do that. For administration of the cure, my parents have been moved to a secure lab in the middle of the Seraphim campus. If anyone wanted to interrupt the process, they would have to fight their way through a hell of a lot of defenses.

Which, of course, reminded me that I still had no idea who had attacked that lab where they were creating the cure to begin with. Three brand new Touched I'd never seen before, and a small army of Prev troops, but they weren't part of any established gang? Where the hell had they come from? Why had they attacked that building? There wasn’t the slightest snowflake’s chance in hell that the Ministry would have given them clearance for that, so they were obviously breaking all those rules right in the open. That in and of itself raised so many questions.

In any case, no, we weren't sitting around a waiting room with plastic chairs and old magazines. Instead, Izzy, Simon, and I were in one of the Seraphim game rooms. It was like an arcade in a soundproof room so it wouldn't disturb anyone else, meant to give kids a distraction while they were waiting either for a relative to get out, or for their own treatment. There were several people in here using wheelchairs and heavy crutches to move from machine to machine, each of which had been specially designed to adapt to those needs. The arcade cabinets were set up so that someone in a wheelchair could pull down the controls to their level and see the screen. There were a couple foosball and air hockey tables that had a platform a wheelchair could lock into and raise up a bit so the person could play properly. And other things like that, meant to ensure that it was all accessible.

Obviously, we didn't need any of that. And we were trying to make sure we didn't prevent any of the actual patients from using what they wanted. At the moment, all three of us were over by one of those games where you threw a bunch of basketballs through a hoop at the end of a ramp that was angled so they would roll back down to you.

“Okay, Booster and Bubbles,” Simon was saying while rolling one of the balls between his hands. “Let me show you how this is done. Please, hold all your applause until the end. I wouldn't want you to get a hand cramp by starting the second you're amazed.”

Bubbles. That was what he had started calling Izzy. I hadn't known what that was about, until she admitted that she had been trying to help by cleaning our bathroom and accidentally turned on the shower before knocking about half a dozen bottles of shampoo, body wash, and bubble bath into the tub. Just like that, she had been getting soaked, with bubbles filling up the entire place. Poor Izzy had been taken so much by surprise that she'd completely forgotten, just for a moment, to use her power.

Simon had been drawn by the commotion, and found Izzy, fully-dressed, with various buckets of cleaning fluid sitting by a tub that was full of an assortment of brightly colored and sweet smelling bubbles while she was being thoroughly soaked by the shower.

Yeah, no wonder he had decided to call her Bubbles. As for Izzy, she blushed whenever he said it, but not in a bad way. It didn't offend her. No, quite contrary. She seemed happy. She was happy that he cared enough to give her a nickname. She was happy that he cared enough to tease her.

Yeah, it was all very complicated, that was for sure.

Izzy and I both watched while Simon began sinking basket after basket. If he was worried about showing off too much, he didn't show it at all. Despite taking almost no time to aim, he made every shot except for one. The steady swish of the net being hit by the ball going through it filled the air. In the end, he scored fifty points and gave a slight look toward us while asking, “who wants to try to beat that? I could use a good laugh right now.”

I knew what he was doing, and it wasn't actually just about distracting himself. He wanted to distract both of us too, so we wouldn't sit there and obsess over the whole situation for hours. Well, at least not as much as we would have without the distraction, anyway. He knew for a fact that I couldn't resist that sort of challenge, and that I would keep trying over and over again no matter how many times I failed to make all the shots that he did.

Well the joke was on him, I couldn't let myself be as competitive as I wanted to be, because he might have a few questions if I actually shot the ball as well as I was capable of. If it came down to it, he and I could probably sit here all night trading shots and trying to one-up each other. So no, tempting as it was to show up my brother by making every single shot, including the one he had missed, I had to restrain myself. Without looking like I was restraining myself.

To that end, I made a big show of taking the ball from him and insisting that when I made every shot, he was going to learn to shut up. Then I proceeded to carefully fail at beating him. I missed two shots to his one. Okay, yes, I could have missed more and made it even safer, but I was still pretty competitive. I could only suppress it so much.

While Izzy was practicing her shots, Simon and I stepped away to watch a couple guys who looked like they basically lived here in the hospital full time. They were playing air hockey, and were both really good. They also played up the trash talk against one another when they realized they had an audience. Of course, Simon and I each picked one of them to cheer for, and fell into an easy rhythm of teasing each other about our choices. It was all just fun ribbing, and I almost couldn't believe how casual it felt. It was like old times, before I knew everything about our family. And especially before this whole thing with Sleeptalk had gone down. Were we both just feeling better about the whole situation now that we seemed to be in the homestretch? Was I so relieved about the idea that my parents would be awake soon that I was able to push all my complicated feelings away for the time being?

I wasn't sure, and honestly, right then I didn't think it actually mattered. I could deal with all that later. Right now, I was here with my brother and sister, and we were going to have our parents back soon. Even if I did really wish that we had a better definition of soon.

Eventually, Izzy came to join us, and we continued cheering on the air hockey players until they had to leave. Then the three of us played the Ninja Turtles arcade game together for a while before being joined by this kid in a wheelchair who proceeded to show us a bunch of secrets we never knew about. Which was pretty impressive, considering we had the same game back home. He’d managed to find secrets we never did.

Once the boy, whose name was Luke, headed off to play something else, we were trying to decide if we should eat something or wait longer. While we were in the midst of that discussion, the sound of someone clearing their throat drew my attention over to where a very familiar, very small figure was perched on one of the nearby arcade cabinets. Yup, Lucent was right there, staring at us with his little dark bird eyes. “Well!” he started in a cheerful tone, “what a pleasure it is to see the children of such illustrious members of our community! And on such an auspicious and hopeful occasion as well.”

Oh God, it was so hard not to blurt out ‘Papa’ right then. Probably because I’d only ever interacted with Lucent while I was Paintball, so seeing him as Cassidy was screwing me up a bit. It made me fumble my words, my mouth opening to say something before realizing who I was supposed to be right then just in time to catch myself. Fortunately, Simon just laughed at me and took it as me being tongue tied by meeting Lucent for the first time. He teased me about that, of course, before greeting the bird TONI in a way that made it clear they had spoken before. And yes, that did make my subconscious briefly go into a paranoid spin about whether Lucent knew about the Ministry or not. If he was close enough to Simon to have that sort of relationship, it was possible. But then again, Simon did stuff for our parents outside of the whole criminal organization thing, so maybe he had just visited this place often enough to be recognized.

Pushing all that out of my mind, I extended my hand with a couple fingers out so I could shake Lucent’s talon. As I did that, Simon gestured. “Yeah, so these are my sisters. Izzy and Cassidy. You'll be able to tell them apart because Cassidy is the one who is going to start ending up here because she won't stop skating off the top of buildings.”

A blush touched my face as I instinctively murmured the correction, “They.”

That made both Lucent and Simon look at me, as I realized what I had said. More importantly, I realized I had yet to have that conversation with my brother. My head shook, and I mumbled that it didn't matter. Then I focused on talking to the bird TONI. It really was a very different feeling to be having a whole conversation with him as Cassidy instead of Paintball. And even as that thought occurred to me, I realized something else. In neither of those comparisons, Paintball or Cassidy, did I think of either as purely myself and the other as simply a name. They were both parts of who I was. They were each pieces of the full me. Sometimes it felt as though Paintball was more me than Cassidy, but other times I was definitely more Cassidy than Paintball. Neither was the full person, they were parts that I put forward. I couldn't show everything I knew or could do as Cassidy, so when I was that person, my civilian self, I wasn't showing the entirety of who and what I was. And when I was Paintball, no one could know things about my life as Cassidy.

Yeah, I was definitely overcomplicating it. This was getting stupid. What did any of that matter? Basically every Touched who didn't have a public identity kept parts of themselves in separate categories. That was just how it was.

Lucent was just as charismatic and caring as ever, making a point of talking to me about both school and skating. He made several jokes about how terrible he had been while trying to ride a skateboard the other day, and I told him what he needed was someone who could make rollerblades in his size. It was so easy to fall into casual conversation with him that I saw Lucent give me a couple curious looks up now and then. Which, of course, threatened to make me break out into paranoia-hives. But no, I had to calm down. He wasn't realizing I was Paintball. He was just thinking that it was interesting that someone who had never really interacted with a TONI, as far as he knew, was so casual about it. which made me rethink the entire conversation and wonder if I should have been more awkward. But it was too late now. If I acted differently, it would just come off like I was overcompensating or something.

Eventually, Lucent offered his apologies that he couldn't stay longer, and wished us luck in waiting for our parents to wake up. He assured Izzy and me that they were under the best possible care, and that the medicine they were given had been tested as best as it could be. When he said that, I caught something in his voice. It seemed like he might have disagreed with the cure being given to them already. Did he want more time to be taken to test it? Was that what he objected to? Or did he object that they were being given a couple of the first doses, ahead of almost everyone else?

I wasn't sure, and he didn't exactly linger on that. Even as the thought occurred to me, he was already flying off through the open doorway. Once he was gone, Simon shrugged. “Well, that was cool. Even if being around that guy isn't really a big deal for some of us.”

That time, I caught my own paranoia before it even fully manifested. He wasn't talking about me. He meant Izzy as Raindrop. She blushed and shook her head quickly, mumbling something about how it was always fun to be around Lucent.

We went to the cafeteria then to eat, since there still wasn't any word about our parents one way or the other. I knew they weren't going to contact us the very instant Mom or Dad (or both) seemed somewhat coherent. They would walk them through a series of tests to make sure they knew where they were, who they were, and everything else first. Even after the medicine seemed to work, it would be a little while before they let us know. Still, I couldn't help feeling anxious about the whole thing. It had already been several hours, how much longer was it going to take?

I had no idea. But what I did know was that the hospital here served very good food. I had thought that I wouldn't be able to eat anything, but it turned out I was kind of starving. As soon as the food was in front of me, I scarfed it down like a person who hadn't touched a meal in a week. I had to go back for seconds before I even slowed down somewhat.

Simon was watching me with a raised eyebrow, audibly chuckling. “Don't tell me you started some sort of starvation diet. Wasn't there something about people thinking that being hungry could help you study more? You better not be that stupid.”

My head shook. “No, I am stupid in completely different ways. Right now, I'm just hungry, I guess. Besides, do you really want to get into a competition about who tried the dumbest tricks while studying? I still remember that time one of your idiot friends convinced you that eating peanut brittle was good for the memory, so you ate so much of it you threw up all over your test.”

Izzy snickered at that, and I ducked away from Simon’s lazy swat before sticking my tongue out at him.

Before we could say anything else, all three of us were interrupted by the sound of a tall, blond man in a doctor's coat as he stepped up to the table. “Excuse me, I think you'll want to come with me.

“Your parents are awake, and they'd like to see all of you.”