Beep. Beep. Beep.

I woke up to the sound of heart monitor's beeping, something I could have done without. I felt a pain at bottom of my back, my tail pinched between the bed and me. I shifted my weight around, trying to get the pressure off, and someone rushed to my bedside.

"You're awake! Ethan, go get a nurse." I heard retreating footsteps, and I opened my eyes to see Magenta and Zach hovering over me. I tried to wave a hand in front of me, only to find both my arms were restrained.

"Don't move," Magenta said. "You're strapped down, so you'll just hurt yourself if you try."

"Why Magenta, I didn't know you were into that," I said hoarsely. I was disgusted with how weak my voice sounded.

Magenta's eyes narrowed at me, and she smacked the side of my head. "Bite me."

Zack was chuckling softly, but was silenced with a look from Maj. "It was funny," he defended himself. He turned his eyes to me. "Normally, even though it was a good shot, I'd have to hit you for that. You're not supposed to say things like that to girls."

"Would you rather I say it to you? Cause that's something I don't want to think about. Don't really want to think about that with Maj, but it's better than you." I stopped for a moment. "What kind of meds do they have me on? They're good stuff."

Zach laughed louder this time, but I was trying to be serious. I remembered breaking a few bones, but I didn't feel any pain. My head was really fuzzy though, and my words were slurring slightly.

I tried to rub my hand over my face to wake me up more, but I just rattled the restraints and moved against the casts my arms were in. Groaning and trying to get the weight off my tail again, I focused back on Magenta. "How long was I out?"

She looked concerned, but it was probably for good reason. I knew I wasn't in good shape. "A day and a half. You're at the ISA hospital."

I groaned again. The ISA stood for the International Superhero Association. All superheroes worked for them in some manner, some heroes more than others. People like the Commander and Jetstream got calls from the mayors from their hometown, but they also got international calls from the ISA when something big came up that needed their attention. Closer heroes were used first, but if the situation was too big, the big names were called in. Heroes were also paid by the ISA for any jobs they did for them, but also got a yearly salary based on their position.

People like Warren's mom were a bit different. As her powers didn't lend themselves to fighting as much as other pursuits, she dealt with them more often. She received work from them, be it healing people injured in natural disasters, or calming warring nations. Other heroes worked for the ISA even more closely, doing research or working in the facilities they had across the globe.

"Can't I get something done about my tail? Cut a hole in the bed or something. It's past uncomfortable at this point." I knew other conversations were going on, but they didn't seem to be directed at me, so I wasn't concerned, or rather, the meds were making me not concerned with it.

"I'll ask someone about it, but don't get your hopes up." I looked up and saw the Dove standing above me.

"Mrs. Warren's mom, how are you doing? And why are you here? Can you do something to get me out of here? I don't really like hospitals you see. Too many questions about my tail."

She shook her head slightly and muttered under her breath, "The painkillers must be hitting you harder than most."

"They most certainly are!" I said proudly. "Medicine usually hits me hard, but I like this stuff. Feels really good. Wish they could do something about my tail though. It still hurts."

"I'll see that someone knows about it," Mrs. Peace said. "But in the meantime, how about something to eat? I'm surprised that wasn't the first thing you asked about when you woke up."

"It's the meds." I slid out of focus for a moment before coming back. "Can I get a sandwich? Wait. Can I get several?"

A few minutes later a tray appeared in front of me and I rattled the restrains again, and I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that even if they weren't there, the casts would prevent me from moving much anyway. The nurse at my side laughed softly and held up a sandwich, intent on feeding me.

"Nope, uh uh, you don't get to feed me. I get to feed me." I ignored the look on the nurse's face and shifted my weight, moving my tail out and grabbing the food from her. "And I'm going to need more food than this. A lot more. And ice cream. And something to drink."

The nurse looked slightly offended, but Zach was laughing. "Dude, Keith on meds is so much funnier than a sober Keith."

As I truly started getting in my eating stride, my dad came in the room, and wisely didn't interrupt me. Instead, he went over to stand with Warren's mom.

"So what's the diagnosis now that he's awake?" Dad asked.

"Well, I'm not his doctor, just his healer. But it really hasn't changed. Broken leg, two broken arms, broken nose, and numerous cracked and bruised ribs. I've begun healing the breaks, but with how serious they were, I'm going to have to do it slow."

"You'll do it fine," Dad said. "You fixed him up just grand when he got himself cut."

Mrs. Peace blushed slightly. "Well thank you, but I was just doing my job. I can't stand by when I see someone else hurt."

"That's a good thing, and too rare nowadays," Dad said solemnly. He seemingly perked back up a second later. "So where are the others? I thought there were more people Keith was friends with."

"Will's feeling guilty," Warren said from his seat. "He doesn't want to be in the same room as Keith. He's a little depressed. Layla's off trying to cheer him up."

"Why's he guilty?" I asked, pausing in my eating to down my apple juice. "Not his fault he tried to kill me. And I blew him up a bunch of times too." My eyes went out of focus again. "Explosions are fun."

"Speaking of which, you almost blew up the school," Magenta said.

"Not my fault. I was running for my life," I stated proudly.

"I'm going to talk to the doctor about lowering your dosage," Mrs. Peace said. "You don't need to be in this kind of drugged state."

The nurse backed away from me, where I had started eating again. "Don't do that. One of the side effects of the medications he's on is that it kills his appetite. If this is his appetite killed, I don't think we have enough food here to feed him."

--

The next day, after the doctors had changed my dosage and I had come down from my painkiller high, though it left me with a fairly nice constant buzz, I sat everyone down to get some information.

"Wait a second," I said, looking around. "Where's Will? He needs to be here."

Everyone looked down and Layla was the first one to say anything. "He doesn't want to be in here with you. He's blaming himself for not stopping it and letting you get hurt."

I looked Layla square in the eye. "That is absolutely idiotic. Get him in here."

Layla looked at me for what seemed like a full minute, and I guess I finally stared her down. "Okay, I'll go get him."

Nobody said anything; I just sucked down some water. Layla reappeared with Will a moment later, practically dragging him in, forcing him to sit down.

"Thank you Layla." I turned my attention to Will. He was bordering on being broken, I knew just from looking at him. Maybe not just from looking at him. If someone else were to look at him, an average everyday person, they may just think he was mourning someone's death, and would be fine, but to those who knew him, Will was looking bad.

It made sense. Will was raised by two of the greatest heroes of the time; he had an overdeveloped sense of justice. He needed to make things right, and when things went wrong beyond his control, he still blamed himself. And to be manipulated and controlled, to be forced to break his morals, it was horrifying to him. To hurt someone was worse. To hurt one of his friends, even unwillingly, was truly a nightmare to him, and he couldn't see past that.

"You are an idiot, you know that," I said to him, not bothering to mince words. There are times for tact, times for gentle words, but right now, Will needed some hard facts to beat some sense into him.

"Now don't interrupt me," I continued, seeing Will's mouth open. "You are an absolute moron for thinking the way you are right now, but I understand it, so I can't blame you too much. You want to protect your friends, and you feel guilty if anything happens to them, whether or not you had any control over it or not."

"You want to protect us, grand. It's wonderful, and everyone would be lucky to have a friend like you. But you're missing a major point about what happened. You weren't in control of what happened. I'm actually convinced that it wasn't even you who did this too me. It was completely the work of Wright, the crazy bastard that he is."

"Anyone here can attest to the fact that you have some of the most expressive eyes in the world. You're a horrible liar because of it. Warren, don't Will's eyes give him away?"

Warren rolled his eyes. "He's never been able to lie to me. Not that he tries too often. And all of his emotions are there."

"Layla?" I offered.

"I'm nowhere near as good as reading people as Warren or Keith, but you're an open book to me. And whenever you look at me, there's always so much…" Layla blushed and looked away, something everyone else was doing as well, so as not to intrude on anything.

"What she's saying is that you always look at her with love in your eyes. Everyone can see it," I said, much softer than I had been, but hardening again quickly. "It's one thing that makes you who you are. But the other night, there wasn't anything there. It was scary, and it wasn't you. You aren't the one who attacked me. I'm convinced of that."

"But I remember all of it!" Will protested, speaking for the first time since entering the room. "I could see it all, but I couldn't stop it, and I kept hurting you…especially at the end."

I fixed a Will with a glare, and he stopped himself, starting again a moment later. "I mean, I couldn't stop anything. I could see everything, and sometimes it was like I was kind of in control, but not really. And then it was homecoming, and I lost all control, and I hurt you."

My voice was serious when I interrupted Will. "How long?"

"Since the middle of the first week back."

"He was planning this for a long time. That's pretty obvious right now. He had everyone at the dance, other than me and Maj, under his control. Including the teachers."

"Not the Mental Abilities teachers," Ethan interjected. "But they never chaperone the dances anyway."

"Really, if he got everyone in the school, expect for the teachers with the best shields, then you didn't have much chance on breaking out of his control. Face it Will, I don't blame you for what happened, and if you keep blaming yourself, I'll kick your ass again."

I knew that that statement was the one that would do it. Will would take a lot of teasing and abuse, but after a summer of superheroing with his parents, he took it personal when someone insulted his ability to fight. Of course, being someone who could hold his own against the Commander and Jetstream, not many did.

"Hey! How are you going to beat me? You're the one in the hospital bed, not me. I came out of the fight with barely a scratch on me."

I couldn't suppress my grin. "The fact that I did scratch you says a lot. And really, you were about to give up when I ended up giving out. You were slowed to a crawl, there's no way you could beat me if I was at full strength again. And besides, you had an evil nut job controlling you. Who's to say that you wouldn't have given up if you had been on your own?"

"Oh come on, I could so beat you, any day of the week."

"I doubt that. Good to see you out of your depression though. Only took me telling you the truth that I can beat you for you to do it. We need to work on that. Of course next time, I'll just call one of my favors in to Layla."

Will put on his classic crinkled brow look. He really does do it better than anyone else I know. "What are you talking about?"

"I'll get her to cut you off."

Will turned beet red. "But we-we haven't…that is to say…I mean…"

I chuckled as he kept stuttering, noticing the red expression on Layla's face as well. "Well as good to know that you guys aren't there yet, I'm meant everything. No kisses, nothing."

Layla was the one to protest this time. "Hey, that wouldn't just punish him!"

Everyone chuckled at that, and I laughed full out. "Well unless you want me to tell everyone about the time you—"

"Fine!" Layla interrupted. "But if you tell anyone, you'll wake up with poison ivy were the sun don't shine."

Every guy in the room winced.

"Well back to the topic at hand. What ever did happen to Wright? I still haven't gotten a straight answer on that."

"That was all Magenta. She's the one who took him down," Zack said proudly.

"He was an idiot," Maj said, sounding slightly bitter. "He had a whole gym full of people he could use to attack me, and he didn't."

"He didn't?" I repeated incredulously.

"He didn't. He pulled the stupid cocky villain thing, and tried to take me out himself. But not before I got him to keep talking for a few minutes. Drew him out and got him to drop his guard."

"So how'd you finally beat him?"

Magenta sent me a sly smile. "You don't think you're the only one it the world who's had karate lessons." She shrugged. "Doesn't hurt that he missed a charge and sent himself into all the power cables for the sound system. A bunch of wires got pulled and he ended up frying himself. The shock backlashed all his power, set everyone free, and messed him up. He doesn't even remember who he is anymore."

"So that's what happened when Will collapsed. I assumed he passed out when the control on him was broken, but I didn't know how. Or if I really had beat him and it took a minute to take effect," I added with a grin.

"As I recall, you were passed out when the recovery team found you," Layla said, defending her boyfriend.

"I fail to see how that's my fault. I was the last one awake. And that's after I was thrown across the room. Twice." Taken out of context, my words may have sounded mean, but my tone was teasing and they all knew it.

"I'm not the one in the hospital," Will said, teasing as well.

"Yes you are," I countered. "Look around. This looks like a hospital to me. I may be the only one in a bed, but all of you are in the hospital right now."

Will opened his mouth, but closed it again when he realized he couldn't say anything. Sometimes, there was just no arguing with slightly drug-skewed logic.

"Okay, we've established that Jack is beaten, can't remember who he is, Will's an idiot who won't accept the fact that we don't blame him, and even though I'm in the hospital, I'll probably be hit by all of you at least twice by the time I get out. What's next on the agenda?"

"Sky High is closed for at least a week. Maybe more depending on how long it takes to fix the damage you caused," Ethan added.

"Ethan and Alisha have come out as a couple to the rest of the school," Zach said, proud that his friend finally broke down and told everyone.

"Good for you man," I complimented. "I don't know her real well, but I think she'll be good for you. If not, I'll help with the revenge."

That earned me a smack on the arm from Layla.

"So anything else?"

"Remember what we said about last year, and how they started the dance up again after everyone was the right age again?" Warren prompted.

I nodded. "Yeah, and I said it was one of the dumbest ideas ever. I mean, major event, big touch of evil in the school, and they just start the dance again? That's stupid."

"They didn't do that this time. Might have had something to do with the fact that the school was slowly descending, though. One of your explosions damaged one of the grav-boosters."

"That's nice."

"Principal Powers wants to have a talk with you," Ethan said. "At least that's what I overheard."

"My man Ethan was being a ninja getting that information," Zach crowed. "Think about it. The Melting Ninja!"