8: A Certain Perspective
Last time in Quarks of the Heart, Meg Atomic and the Malevolent Med-Student were on the way to crash overnight with Meg’s friend Liz Flask, and the Malevolent Med-Student had just disintegrated his supervillain phone after relieving his henchwoman Candystriper of her employment! What happens next? Read on to find out!
“Hey, Meg! I-oh, wow, oh wow are you okay?”
“Could be better,” Meg said, standing on her best friend’s doorstep with Keith awkwardly waiting behind her. “So I left home and I don’t have my stuff, and also this is Keith and is it all right if we crash here tonight?”
She hadn’t meant to unload everything like that. Fortunately, Liz understood. They’d been friends that long, after all. “Oh, sure thing, I’ve got a spare bedroom you can have, and oh, here, this folds out for you, unless…” she hesitated, her eyes going back and forth between Keith and Meg.
Keith was just about to say that he’d be fine to take the foldout couch when suddenly Liz’s eyes locked on him. “Wait a sec,” she said. “Wait wait wait. I know you.”
“Yes, I imagine you do,” Keith said tiredly. “Here we go.”
“You’re the Malevolent Med-Student!” As she said the words a stream of water whip-coiled out of a nearby vase and suddenly froze in midair into a razor-sharp knife aimed right at the Malevolent Med-Student’s head.
He blinked, stared at the ice knife floating in the air, and then shot a look around the room. He counted two more vases whose water remained undisturbed; not to mention, he could see the kitchen just beyond the living room and a glass of water on the table. That too remained calm. “Interesting,” he said, his voice cooler than one would usually expect when one has a cuttingly-sharp ice blade suspended in air next to one’s head. “Microhydrokinesis. I haven’t seen that yet. I wonder if your limiting factor is range or capacity? I’d guess it’s capacity, but I’d require further data for a proper hypothesis. Is it just water or can you control any liquid?”
“What?” Liz asked.
“Hold that thought,” Meg said, nudging the Malevolent Med-Student with her elbow. “Liz, I’m sorry, I should’ve told you beforehand, but... it’s complicated, okay?”
“Wait,” Liz said as the full reality of the situation broke upon her. “You… you’re dating the Malevolent Med-Student? Meg! He’s a supervillain!”
“I know,” Meg said, trying to keep her voice level, “My parents made that very clear.”
“Yeah, yeah, but, he’s not just your average bad guy, okay?” Liz retorted. “The dude tried to bomb the Flower Festival!1 He tied a woman to a train track!2”
“She was rescued,” the Malevolent Med-Student interjected.
“Like that makes it better?” Liz snapped. “One of your Pharma-Destructo Rays or whatever they’re called destroyed my car last month! Now I have to make payments on a new one plus pay off the old one while I wait for insurance to finally get the forms through and figure out that you blew it up in the first place! And you’re dating him?” she said, rounding on Meg.
“I know, I know he did all that and I’m sorry about your car and everything but he’s changed-” Meg began.
“Technically they’re Pharma-Death Beams, not rays-” the Malevolent Med-Student was saying.
“Shut up!” Liz exploded, her fury, hurt, frustration, and betrayal bursting out all at once. In that instant she lost control of the suspended ice-knife and it slashed forward. Meg reacted on years of practice-honed instinct. One burst of atomic power shattered the knife to atoms. It also sent Liz flying backwards into her kitchen. She missed the table, just; she didn’t miss the refrigerator. She hit with a loud thud, followed by a tremendous clattering as everything in the refrigerator exploded or smashed to pieces. Liz fell to the floor.
Meg started forward, desperate to help, praying she could somehow salvage things. It was too late. She realized this the instant an ice cube cracked bullet-like past her head. Liz didn’t even need to yell at her to get out of her house; Meg grabbed hold of Keith’s arm and practically dragged him along as she ran back to the car. They drove away, Meg trying to think of options, trying to sort how things had gone so wrong.
“It’s beams,” Keith mumbled beside her as the car raced along. “I thought everyone understood that. Beams aren’t rays. Clear difference.”
He should’ve kept quiet. Meg hit the brakes and wrested her car to the side of the road. “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the deal, Keith. I just blasted my best friend into a refrigerator for you. I left my family for you because I told them you’d change. Because I said I could change you.”
“Ah,” Keith said.
“It’s not like that,” she said. “The thing is, we’ve had two dates, which I’m told is promising for a relationship. But this is the part where we need to define what exactly we have. And to do that, at the very least, I need to know which side you’re on. Or, I suppose, which side you’re not on.”
“What?” Keith said.
“Let me clarify,” Meg said. “Are you going to continue as the Malevolent Med-Student, or not?”
The variables spun in her head as she waited for him to respond.
As seen in Train Rescue
The difference is that you can't see a ray easily, whereas you can clearly see a beam.