6: Reaction
Last time in Quarks of the Heart, Captain Happily Married discovered that his daughter, Meg Atomic, and the Malevolent Med-Student, aka Keith, were on a date, in a reasonably nice restaurant no less! This could be disastrous! Or will it?
“Finally,” Super Soccer Mom said, breathing a sigh of relief. She had at last managed to calm the shrieking cybernetic soccer ball down and run through its diagnostic mode properly, by which time her daughter Sauna had grown bored, cut off her thermal blasts, and wandered back to her room to brood. As a result, Seymour’s diagnostics cycled through and turned up absolutely nothing wrong with its systems at all.
“Hm,” Super Soccer Mom said, her eyes narrowing. “Funny.” This had to be the work of either a supervillain or her kids trying to pull something, she knew. Before she could figure which one, though, she had to check in. “Seymour, get me the Captain and Meg. Meg should be on patrol, and the Cap-”
Seymour blipped excitedly. “What?” Super Soccer Mom said, wondering at first if the soccer ball had gone bonkers again. “They’re together? Oh, well, okay, that’s good, I guess, nothing like a father-daughter crimefighting patrol, I wish someone had told me about it but-”
She was interrupted by a sudden burst of static and then the voice of Captain Happily Married. “Tasha?”
“Oh, Justin,” she said, “Thank heaven. I’ve got Seymour calmed down now, and he tells me you’re with Meg, is everything all right there?”
“No,” the Captain said, in a voice that boded thunder, “Everything is most definitely not all right. Do you know where our daughter was just now, instead of going on patrol?”
Tasha winced. “Okay, no, she shouldn’t have skipped patrol, but it couldn’t have been that bad-”
“She went on a date. With the Malevolent Med-Student.”
In a flash Super Soccer Mom was on her feet, the Miraculous Minivan already spinning up into full power in the driveway outside. “She WHAT?”
There are ways and there are ways in which one might introduce one’s intended romantic partner to one’s parents. One way, for example, might be to invite one’s parents out to a nice Sunday lunch at a restaurant one knows they particularly like, such as a place with unlimited breadsticks and a plentiful salad bowl (read: Olive Garden). Another way, one somewhat more fraught, might be to gather with one’s intended at the home of one’s parents while being stared down by a hyper-vigilant cybernetically enhanced soccer ball.
The Malevolent Med-Student hadn’t quite expected that he’d find himself sitting nervously on the sofa in Captain Happily Married’s living room while Meg Atomic and Super Super Mom argued. He turned awkwardly to the Captain. “So…uh… did you see the game the other night?”
“No, son, I didn’t,” the Captain said. “In fact I understood it was canceled because someone teleported a Volkswagen right through the free throw line. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“No, sir,” the Malevolent Med-Student said quickly. “No, I, uh, don’t usually go in for teleporting.”
“Mmm,” Captain Happily Married said, a sort of very intense syllable meant to convey the old idea of Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting all in one breath. The Malevolent Med-Student shifted uncomfortably. The awkwardness was and continued to remain palpable.
Meanwhile, Super Soccer Mom was making a very good point which Meg Atomic, for understandable reasons, was completely refusing to hear. “He’s a supervillain!” Super Soccer Mom said, raising her voice as if the volume would drive her point home. “He blew up a bridge last month!”
“He tried to, yes,” Meg said, “But he didn’t, did he, and maybe he wasn’t going to anyway, and it doesn’t matter because I am going to change him! People can change, mother, or do I need to remind you of Commander Shadow, not to mention Sunflower? They used to be good guys, remember?”
“People are one thing, my daughter is different!” Super Soccer Mom shot back. “You think you’re the first person that’s ever tried dating someone thinking they can change them? It never works, Margaret! People do not change who they are, not like that!”
“Well, maybe no one’s tried with him, but I’m going to!”
“Not here, you’re not!”
Meg had been leaning forward, hands on the table, but now she stood, her face white. “Then I’ll leave,” she said. Before she had time to work the probabilities, before she had a moment even to think anything through, she turned and went straight for the door. “C’mon, Keith.”
The Malevolent Med-Student didn’t say a word. He stood, pulling on his jacket as he did so, and followed her out. A flick of graviton power from Meg and the door slammed behind them. Only devastated silence remained behind; that, and a querulous little beeoop from Seymour.
I thought this would be coming...