so, like i said last chapter, i've just been getting these random flashes... i acctually spent my entire day off sleeping, and once i woke up i typed out this. by the way, sleeping until 9pm can really throw you off, i don't recommend it. i know that this chapter would be close to the start, which is why i went back and added general descriptions, but i would like to point out, that no matter how charlie can make those connections harry is NOT a relative of theirs... he's just got that same look. minus harry's green eyes and charlie's impressive schnoz... which i think is ridiculously cute... anyway, enjoy. 06/26/08 2:30am

Charles Eppes, or Charlie as most folks called him, could hardly keep a smile to himself as he swung into Larry's office

Dr. Charles Eppes, or Charlie as most folks called him, could hardly keep a smile to himself as he swung into Larry's office. Larry was sitting in a plush recliner by the tall windows that opened out into the Quad. The recliner had been broken for almost four years, ever since they used it to "demonstrate" angles and springs to Larry's freshman Intro to Physics course. The administration had asked them never to use that particular demonstration again, and it seemed they were still picking carbon fragments and tufts of hair from the buildings air ducts. So considering the dilapidated angle the chair was now permanently locked in, perhaps sitting wasn't an accurate description. He was more… sprawled. His light orange hair was in its habitually messy state of short curls and random spikes, his large Hawaiian shirt hung on his frame and the stains on his well worn jeans looked like he'd spilled the secrets of the universe on the knees and they'd just stuck around cause they thought he was neat. He had a sandwich resting, half eaten, on his stomach while his hands did some maneuver to exclaim a point that made him look like he had no wrist bones at all.

"Why," he asked in his searching tone, "Why would you automatically assume that magic cannot be quantifiable?"

Charlie held on to his tongue. Normally in any discussion that applied the words "magic", "psychic", or "paranormal", he would be the first to protest and steer the conversation onto things that actually exist. But now, after listening to the debates for a few weeks, he found himself interested despite the subject matter.

Eddie sat, leaning against the window ledge, fiddling with some little nick-knack that Larry had picked up somewhere. If Charlie didn't know any better he would wonder if his parents had had another child after his emergence into the world. The kids hair was like a messy cross between his own long curly mane and his older brothers straight business cut. His face was tanned, as he'd taken advantage of the Californian sun in the past few weeks to get rid of a pasty British pallor so that, again, his complexion was between Don's "office" tan and Charlie's "walking" tan. He was right in the middle of their heights, shorter than Don, taller than Charlie, and his way of thinking was frighteningly similar to Don's, in Charlie's experience.

He'd watched the kid figure out a complex problem he'd had in his equation by finding out that Charlie had forgotten to carry a 2 to the right place. When asked he'd just shrugged and said it "felt like something was missing". And that followed to the smirk that crossed his lips, which at times reminded him of when Don had just gotten away with something, and no one could cross him. In fact, it reminded Charlie of the last time he'd slapped his FBI issue handcuffs on the last serial killer/pedophile/arsonist he'd arrested. The smile said he was completely confident in what he was doing, saying, or even just thinking. It was slightly alarming to note it on the nineteen year olds face at the moment.

"Think of it like this Professor," the kid got up from the window sill and brushed his thick bangs from his eyes; the deep emerald color of his irises caught the light from the window and flashed briefly. "In all your reading and measuring, you know what happens to runners right, when they get tired, but suddenly have the energy and the ability to keep running hard?"

"Second wind," Charlie entered the room and sat down on the edge of Larry's cluttered desk.

"Right!" He was excited now, his hands waving around like he was trying to pluck the right words and analogies from thin air. "Well, if you count magic as a physical talent, like running, once the body is conditioned to a certain extent than you probably could measure the ability of ones performance, how fast they were going, what strengths they could match. Then you throw in second wind, and all those measurements are useless! How do you measure that? The heart rate, the adrenaline, the ability of the mind to make minute connections to keep you on your feet, you can't really measure that!"

"I feel that I must protest, but I'm not sure what I'm protesting about…" Larry looked over at Charlie, as if searching for an answer.

Charlie just shrugged, "You know my view on the subject, I'm really not the best judge for you."

"Well, what about when mothers lift a car off their babies? That's been documented. How do you know that's just a surge of adrenaline that's helping her? The panic, emotions involved triggered something in her brain that got the adrenaline and "energy" for lack of a better word, flowing into her body, allowing her to do something inhuman! How do you explain that? My conclusion still supports that a small amount of the population can, and will, have times in their life that will allow them to do things completely out of the "norm" that can't be measured. Why can't we call this magic?"

"Because we don't even have a single living "proof" to support it!" Charlie put in randomly, just to watch them squirm.

Larry struggled a bit to get out of the dilapidated seat cushion and forgot the sandwich that had been resting on his stomach as it fell to the floor. "No, no, there have been documented claims and studies done in academia…"

"Which can be attributed to hoaxes and rules of averages…"

"That psychic that helped Don with a case that one time…"

"I'm still not convinced," Charlie smirked and brought up the one thing about that case Larry had to concede. "He used his glasses lenses to read every cards color. That was trickery pure and simple."

"You guys are hilarious."

"Yes, yes Eddie, I suppose we are…" Larry waved his next objections out of the way as Eddie smirked at them both. He loved it when Charlie wound Larry up like that. Larry was always interesting in a rant.

"But I've got a class to get to," he plucked his backpack from behind Larry's desk and waved on his way out the door. "I'll see you around."

"Next Thursday we'll be doing a demonstration on fluid dynamics for an elementary crowd. Interested?" Larry asked, then smirked at the pause of the young mans stride. They had him. Eddie nodded and waved his hand without turning around.

"Later!"

That was another thing Charlie had noticed about the young Computer Sciences student. He never missed a demonstration of what the world was like. He attended, ghosted around every lower level exhibition like he'd never seen them before. Like he knew the principals, which was obvious or he'd never have graduated high school, but he'd never seen them practically used… or in some cases, especially when it involved Larry and Charlie together, impractically.

He threw himself into learning, picking things up so rapidly that if Charlie wasn't a steadfast objector to magic in general, he'd have thought the boy had some sort of extra ability to learn. It wasn't a prodigy's talent, like Charlie had been, you tended to notice that type when you were one, but it was like he'd never had the opportunity to really experience random things. And they were random things that Charlie realized he'd taken for granted. Now some things could come from the fact that he was from the UK, but others…

"Did you see how excited he was the other day about the fountain drinks?" Charlie wondered. Eddie had been taken to the cafeteria for the first time, and he'd marveled over the soda fountain machine. He'd asked how it was made, how the liquids mixed, how the tubes followed precise schematics… then he learned about surface tension and insisted that Charlie show him the Mentos and Diet Coke trick.

"It was rather refreshing to advance such an eager mind," Larry reminisced. That Mentos trick was one of his favorites.

"Sometimes I wonder… has he ever told you anything about his home life? I mean, I must have started to ask him about his family a dozen times, but he keeps on redirecting the conversation and I end up raving about Don for thirty minutes."

"I told him about my Aunt Agatha…" both men paused, pictured, shuddered.

"He did mention last week that he wouldn't be around to help with the computer game I'm messing around with next Sunday," Charlie mused.

"Yes, he told me he's meeting with an old friend for lunch. She's rather elusive, apparently." Larry wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. Charlie knew he was referring to his own "elusive" relationship, but he felt it time to sever the older mans thought process. And if he did it right, he'd get a flustered and blushing Fleinhardt in no time flat.

"So, how's Megan?"

Larry shut his mouth with a snap, his cheeks blushing all the way up his face.

How's that for scientific theory?

and also, like i've pointed out before, if i were to make this an official story, i'd need help with theorys and stuff like that. just so i'd get realistic character studies. i think i did rather well this time, but i know it could be alot better.