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Chapter Twenty

Lash was irate.

Very, very irate.

"This sucks!" Lash mumbled, watching TV with Speed in his basement. Speed was being lazy on another sofa a few feet away in the small lounge area that was Lash's 'man-cave'. A sixteenth birthday present from his parents. Before the Royal Pain fiasco. He had been grounded from it for a month after that. That was probably one of the reasons that he had behaved himself. The other reason he would behave himself was also the reason he was irate.

Two hours earlier was when Mina did her freaky telepathy+empathy thing with Delia. Naturally, Mina believed that Delia couldn't possible walk herself home due to the fact that 'the poor girl' was practically blinded by tears. And Mina, being the good samaritan she is, decided to help her. But instead of taking her home, Mina decided to play 'spiritual healer' and take her someplace where they could help Delia 'feel loved'.

Girls.

Lash was pretty much insanely pissed off at the world at the moment, mostly Delia, because he had genuinely wanted to talk to Mina. He had risked his hard-earned freedom by hacking into the school secretary's computer when she was in the breakroom getting coffee... just to get a girl's phone number. And then on his way to meet up with her, those weird butterflies growing in his stomach the closer it got to six o' clock, Delia stepped in front of him and decided to talk to him. And then she worked her fancy power on him and had him talk to her, tell her where he was going. He was lucky she didn't ask who he was going to meet up with, because then Mina's secret would have been blown.

But he didn't even have the chance to talk to Mina. He wouldn't be able to ask her about that funny feeling in his stomach whenever she was around. He thought that it might have been a side-effect of her 'siphoning', since he had never experienced it before. And then he wanted to ask her what exactly she had done when she left, what she had done to gain mastery of her powers. And he couldn't get rid of the nagging question in the back of his mind: why was she so sympathetic and forgiving towards the people who had tormented her and made her life miserable, like him and Speed, and Delia?

He snapped out of his thoughts when a piece of popcorn hit him in the face.

"Yo, man. You zoned out for a minute there." Speed threw a few pieces of popcorn into his mouth and chewed for a moment, then swallowing and staring at his friend curiously. "What happened with you date with Mina, anyway? I thought you would have called me a lot later, and gush about her or some other pussy thing." Lash sighed and rolled his eyes. Shortly after Mina left the park with Delia, he had gone home early and called Speed, suggesting a guy night or something. Watch Quentin Tarantino movies and movies with hot girls in tight clothing, stuff like that. Speed was there in less than five minutes, despite him living about a twenty minute drive away. Speed had shown up and told Lash that his 'best-friend senses' had been tingling. However, as men, they did not discuss what happened. Instead, they went into the basement, Speed made popcorn, and Lash threw in Resident Evil, because they both thought that Milla Jovovich was hot.

Lash had been hoping that his friend wouldn't bring it up, instead leaving them to watch Milla Jovovich run around killing zombies.

"Delia cut me off." Speed winced and glanced over at his friend.

"Dude... is she still hung up on you?" Lash shook his head.

"Nah. She just has that complex where she likes ruining other people's relationships." Lash thought for a moment back to the exchange he had witnessed between Mina and Delia. "But I don't think she'll have that anymore."

"Why?" Speed asked, his voice muffled due to his mouth being full of popcorn, a few bits of it falling out when he spoke.

"Mina did her weird empathy thing... but she stuck it with her weird telepathy thing." Lash raised an eyebrow and glanced at his friend who snickered. "What?"

"You should call that telempathy or something." Lash also snickered at this random suggestion. "But, what did she do with it? Like, what happened?" Lash thought for a moment.

"Apparently, Delia has shit going on at home. She has some serious emotional crap, and Mina pretty much read her mind and narrated all of it to her. For some reason, hearing someone else say it must have done something because she was in tears after a few things that Mina said. And what really weirds me out..." Lash drifted off for a moment. "Is that Mina was so nice through the whole thing. Like, she was showing genuine sympathy for her. Hell, she started crying, too." Speed looked away from the TV screen where Milla had just woken up in the weird tube thing with her memories, and killed all of the bad dudes.

"Why?" His face contorted into a look of confusion, matching his incredulous tone. Lash shrugged, the two of them silent for the next few minutes until the movie ended.

"Dunno. Might involve the empathy." Speed was silent after that as the closing credits rolled down the screen. "What next?" Lash mumbled stretching his arm towards the remote on the coffee table, since he was too lazy to get up. Speed held up the empty bowl of popcorn, which Lash stretched toward and grabbed with his other arm and placed on the table.

"Dunno." Speed shrugged, stretching his arms out and folding them behind his head. "Pulp Fiction?" Lash nodded as he stretched his arms out and placed the previous DVD back in its case, then putting it on the shelf and scanning through the movies. When he found the suggested movie, he removed it from its case and placed it in the DVD player.

"Man, I am so happy that they took off those power restraints." Speed laughed as the opening credits started on the screen, Lash laughing in agreement.

"I know. Then we would actually have to get up and do it ourselves."

Such lazy, lazy boys... ah, well. What can you do? Anyway, REVIEW! XD