Cassie
"Look Cassie, we both agreed we'd let Cam fight in the war when he turned 14. We even needed him to come on a couple missions. He's had the morphing ability for half of his life, don't you think we ought to let him use it?"
"I guess, Jake. I guess."
Cam walked into the room. I stared, realizing how much he'd changed since he was 7. He'd learned that his best friend Tim was a Controller. He'd grown a few inches taller than me. He'd… he'd matured. A lot. I missed the days when I had to force feed him applesauce.
"My battle morph? Wow."
I stared hard into his eyes. They still had a youthful joy to them. He was so unlike his father, who seemed like an old man before he could even legally drink.
"I think I want a big cat, like dad… but not a Siberian tiger. That would be cliché."
I looked at Jake, thinking exactly what he was. Not a lion, please not a lion! David still showed up in all of our nightmares, and we didn't need that kind of psychological stress like we had with James.
"I want a cheetah. Are there cheetah's at the Gardens, mom?"
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Yeah. Flash and Zoom."
He laughed. "Another Nike deal?"
I laughed with him. "You still remember Swoosh, don't you?"
"Who could forget Swoosh?" Jake piped in.
That's when it hit me. We were laughing with each other, Cam, Jake, and I, just like any normal family. We weren't all horrendously changed by the war, like… like I felt like we should have, for some reason. Why would I think that? Why would… I tried to forget about it.
Ashley, Rachel, and Tobias walked in. Tobias was in his human morph.
((Hi everybody,)) he said.
"Tobias, why are you using thought-speak?"
"Just used to it, I guess. There, better?"
"Very, bird boy." Marco came running in from the back door, followed by Ax in his human morph.
Ashley's eyes lit up. She and Ax have some kind of special bond. Runs in the family, I guess.