Hench/Story Jenny Needs Braces
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
This piece was written in 2010 by @Ascendant for his character, Hench. I thought the City of Heroes community would like to see yet another one of his awesome and incredibly well-written stories for a character that was a genuine delight.
Rest well, Big A. We miss you, buddy. <3 @Andy
Jack Talisker stumbled into the kitchen, eyes half closed, navigating by memory towards the olfactory beacon of coffee.
Gail, his wife of 16 years, gave him a quick assessment before pushing a steaming mug into his hands. "You came in late last night," she observed.
"Correction," Jack said after a mouthful of caffeine began to seep into his brain, "I came in early this morning." He kissed her on the cheek, "Sorry. I tried not to wake you up."
She gave her trademarked half-smile, an expression she had perfected over the years that said, "I'm more amused than I am angry, but don't push your luck." Jack knew, from experience gained over an equal amount of years, not to try.
He sat at the kitchen table while Gail maneuvered some eggs around an old frying pan with her spatula. He opened the Paragon Times, which greeted him with the headline "Daring Crime Fighter Stops Bank Heist". Jack snorted and started reading.
"Was that you?" Gail asked, nodding towards the article as she loaded a spatula full of scrambled eggs onto his plate.
"Honey, the paper makes it seem like a lot more than it actually was."
"The paper says they were armed."
"The paper says a lot of things, Gail," he grumbled, "If half of them were true, maybe it'd be worth the thirty bucks a month we pay to have it thrown at our house every morning."
"You're going to get hurt one of these days if you keep it up, Jack," she said. It was an old argument, older than their marriage, but she had known the man she was marrying long before she took her vows, "You're not as young as you used to be."
Jack nodded in concession, "Neither are you, but somehow, you get more beautiful every day."
Her half-smile came back. Jack's hamfisted attempts at charm wouldn't be nearly so endearing if he didn't back it up with that roguish grin of his. For just a heartbeat, Gail felt was 16 again, and he was shyly smiling at her from his locker across the hall.
And, just like those moments nearly two decades ago, this moment was also ruined by teenagers.
"Moooooom! Stu won't give me back my science project!"
Gail sighed and stood up, steeling herself to fight the oncoming chaos.
"It's not your science project, dummy. It's my GameStation controller," Stuart said angrily as he came into the kitchen. Jenny, his younger sister by four years, followed in his wake, easily matching his outrage.
"Hey," Gail said in a practiced Mom Voice that stopped them both in their tracks, "First off, you don't call your sister a dummy, Stuart Talisker."
"But--"
"But nothing. She is your sister and you'll treat her with respect."
Stuart bowed his head, still glowering, "Sorry," he mumbled.
"Now, Jenny, did you ask Stuart if you could use his GameStation controller?"
Now it was the 11 year old's turn to bow her head, "No."
"Why did you even take it in the first place?"
"I needed something that used bluetooth. I'm showing off a wireless signal detector that--"
Gail waved her hand to silence the girl, already lost at the mention of 'bluetooth', whatever that was. "Ok, so you needed it for school. You'll give it back to Stuart when you get home from school?"
"Yes," Jenny agreed.
"But Mom--" Stuart began to protest.
"You can't play on your GameStation while you're at school anyway, Stuart," Gail said, "Jenny will give it back to you, safe and sound. Or she'll buy you a new one with her allowance."
"Mom!" Jenny interjected.
"Compromise means that both sides walk away equally disappointed," Gail said, "Next time, you'll ask before you take your brother's things."
The kids stared daggers at one another, then sat sullenly at the table. Gail poured cereal for them out of a box with a cartoon superhero on the side. She caught Jack staring at her with frank admiration, and began to blush.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" She asked.
He gave his Who, me? shrug and replied, "I was just thinking that I could have used you last night."
Breakfast came and went without further catastrophe, and within fifteen minutes, the kids were trundling out the door towards their respective bus stops.
Once the door slammed shut, Gail sank into her chair at the kitchen table with an exasperated sigh. Jack took the signal and immediately began making her breakfast, as was their tradition. He grabbed one of the larger kitchen knives, spun it around his fingers a few times, then began cutting onions, mushrooms and green peppers.
"Stuart's been looking at Paragon, you know," She said.
"Paragon University?" Jack carefully pushed the chopped vegetables off the cutting board and into the hot frying pan, "Do you think he can get in?"
She nodded, "His grades are good enough."
"I thought we were going with the scholarship from State." Jack said, cracking three eggs into a small bowl and mixing them with a fork.
"Paragon would be better for him, Jack, you know that."
He also knew that Paragon University would cost tens of thousands of dollars a year, compared to the full ride that had been offered from State.
"True," he nodded as the eggs pooled into the frying pan, "but State would be better for us."
"There's no 'us' when it comes to what's best for the kids, Jack. They come first. They always come first."
"Right, right, I know." he held up his hands defensively, "It's just that money is already tight, and I don't see how we can--"
"We'll make it work, Jack," Gail said firmly, "We always do."
He nodded as he sprinkled cheese on top of the omelette, deftly folded it, and slid it onto her plate.
"We always do," he agreed, kissing her on the cheek.
"Oh, that reminds me," Gail said, "Dr. Talbot says that Jenny's going to need braces."
Thirty men stood at attention in a forgotten room deep beneath the city streets. They each wore identical armored uniforms, and were rendered anonymous by virtue the mirrored faceplates of their helmets. A hulking man in black polished armor looked at them with a mixture of disgust and anger.
"Alright," the man said, "I don't need to remind anyone what happened last night, but we aren't going to make the same mistakes today."
"We're trying again?" One of the men asked incredulously, "Today?"
The man in the black armor punched the questioner in the stomach hard enough to double him over. Black Scorpion was not the sort of person who appreciated being questioned.
"Yes, we're doing it again," Black Scorpion said, "They won't expect us to try again so soon. I'll be forming a team from people who weren't on last night's raid, so if you were, you can sit this one out. If you want to volunteer, however, you'll get twice your share of the loot."
The six men who were in the previous night's heist looked at one another with concern justified by the fact that there had been an even dozen of them the night before. Now, half of their comrades were in the Zig in Brickstown, awaiting trial.
One of them stepped forward. "I'm in," he said.
"Talisker," one of the other men whispered at him, "Are you nuts? He said you don't have to go!"
"Yeah, I do," Jack Talisker whispered back.
After all, he thought, Jenny needs braces.
