...okay. One more, one more.

Here's a shout out to the following who gave me the correct answer for last chapter's question! AccessBlade, MexicanSwagg, Lady Cougar-Trombone (you're first answer was right ;) ), BTRlover1122, Rodrigo, AlienGhostWizard14, SapphireBlueSea, AllAmericanSlurp (you made a clean sweep there with all three chapters!), Doomforzombies16, and rosepika13 - you get two thumbs up! Bree would have gone to Australia.

UnknownForNow and Sharon1234, thanks to your reviews, too!

Guys, really, thank you for your kind reviews! I really appreciate the time you guys take just so you can share your thoughts with me. :)

Okay. This time, this is the last update. I'm about to go into hibernation for a few weeks to finish something, and hopefully I'll be back sometime September.

Please enjoy!

Episode Tag to: Which Father Knows Best?

Chronicle #035

"Diastolic"

05/17/14

12:37 AM

Well, things didn't work out as I expected.

There's good news and interesting news. Good news is, Bree finally got her bionics back. She's very happy about that. She's been so peppy all day, especially after they came home from a mission earlier this afternoon. I guess stepping out of the box for a while really helped her to see that she actually loved being in the team.

Interesting news is, Douglas is now living with us—at least for the meantime.

I personally don't think it's bad. I mean, I guess a part of me is still not sure about him, but when he, Big D and I were working together on Bree's chip, I didn't get any bad feeling about him. Not really. And he needs a place to stay, especially as he's on the run from Krane. What better place to be in than a house full of people in your family, right?

Still. It's something that needs a bit of adjusting to, mostly on the parents' side. It almost became catastrophic earlier when Big D and Douglas fought over who gets to tell Adam, Bree and Chase what to do while they were at the mission site. Two grown men, bickering like children. And my poor mission specialist desk almost became a casualty. They were overloading it with too much information that, if you really think about it, is pretty much the same. I had to referee between them again at one point because of a disagreement they had about their hairs.

Their hairs.

Like, seriously?

Though, what happened when Mom got home was, I'll say, much more amusing. Adam and I were in the kitchen, making PB&J sandwiches for us, with Douglas behind us looking through the fridge for something to eat, when we heard the front door open. We saw Mom standing there, unmoving, just looking at me then Adam then Douglas.

"Hi, Mom," I said, oblivious to what she may have been thinking at that time. "How's work? You hungry? Adam and I are making PB&Js."

"Yeah, they're pretty good!" Adam added. "Leo and I just got back from the store, and we got some fresh strawberry jams from this couple at a stand. They said they made it from the strawberries they grew in their farm."

Mom kept staring straight ahead, and it was only then that Adam and I noticed that Douglas was completely frozen behind us, a light frown on his face as he looked back at Mom. He tilted his head a bit, maybe as he wondered why she was staring at him like that.

Mom's face cleared up, but even if her face was blank it was obvious she was becoming hostile.

Douglas, unable to understand it, narrowed his eyes.

Mom seemed to have taken this as a challenge. She shifted her feet and stood up straighter. What are you doing in my house?

Douglas' eyebrows wrinkled in slight alarm. I think he wanted to ask me or Adam what he should do, so he made the mistake of stepping closer to us.

Mom sharply breathed in all the air in the room, not in panic but in anger. She glared at him. A few awkward seconds later, an eyebrow shot up, and her arms twisted dangerously across her. Try it. I dare you. Touch my kids, and see how hard I'll kick your butt.

"Uh, I'm just going to, uh, go back here and find…yeah," Douglas said, pointing at the hall to his left while slowly backing away. They were still locked in a stare-down.

I frowned. "You do know that you're heading for the garage, right?" I asked, but he was gone.

Now that I think about it, that may have been where he wanted to go. For a quick exit.

As it turned out, Big D forgot to tell Mom about our new house guest because of how busy he's been. He got in trouble for that, too, but getting Mom to forgive him was much easier than getting Mom to let Douglas back in the house without being very threatening every time she sees him.

It's kind of funny, actually. My stepdad and step-uncle, both afraid of my mother.

Like I said, interesting.

I felt bad for Douglas after a while, especially during dinner. I think he was still scared of Mom, so instead of joining us at the table, he stayed out in the balcony fixing an unfinished invention that he found at a storage room down at the lab. Big D tried to be the middle man at first, asking Mom to at least let Douglas come inside the house so he could eat then telling his little brother not to fear the wrath of the woman in the pink apron because he already talked to her, but it didn't work out. Mom continued to dart daggers, and Douglas seemed to have just ignored the idea altogether for his own safety.

Bree tried to help, but it was still no bueno.

After we finished dinner, everybody got ready to watch a movie. While Adam was trying to choose between Wreck-It-Ralph and Monsters University, I snuck back into the kitchen to fix a plate. Discreetly, I went around the house so I can exit to the balcony without Mom checking me. Thankfully, I made it out successfully.

I found Douglas concentrating hard on rewiring the switch on the gadget. He looked up briefly when he heard the door, but he went back to work when he saw it was just me. "What. Your mother sent you out here to spy on me?" he asked.

"No," I said, putting the plate at a corner of the table. I shrugged. "I'm just bringing you something to eat."

He stopped working. He looked at the food, and then looked at me. From the looks on his face, he was probably wondering whether what I brought out was safe to eat. "Thanks," he muttered later on before going back to work.

I stood there for a while. "So how long are you planning to camp out here?" I asked.

"Until your parents go to bed," Douglas said.

I nodded. "You know, you can actually come in in about twenty minutes," I said. "Aunt Janice always calls Mom at 9:30 Friday nights before she leaves for work. Mom goes upstairs to take the call. The room would be clear for about ten minutes."

"Thanks for letting me know," he muttered absently.

"Yep." I turned away after that to leave, but I remembered something I thought of earlier during dinner so I stayed. I grinned a little. "By the way, it was probably the best move not to come in earlier," I said. "If I were you, I'd think about buying my own food for the first two weeks of your stay here."

Douglas sat up. "What are you trying to say? I'm being a freeloader?" he asked a bit defensively.

"No," I said. "What I'm saying is, the box of laxatives in the bathroom down the hallway was unopened before you got here. While Mom was preparing everybody's plates earlier, including yours, a packet was missing."

Douglas frowned at me. Then, he shot a look at the plate on the table.

I waved the thought away. "Don't worry. I got that one myself," I said.

"That's not very reassuring," he said.

I chuckled. "You think I'm upset with you about something?" I asked, amused. "And since when did you start caring about what I think?"

"Since you prepared the food on my plate," he said.

I held up my hands. "Look, I'm just being nice here. Eat it, don't eat it—it's up to you," I said.

"Oh, come on, kid. You must have some hidden grudge against me or something," Douglas insisted.

"Like what? You already apologized for it," I said. I thought about it. "You know, on second thought, yeah. I am a bit unhappy about something. My tablet. You hacked into it and deleted everything. I have pictures and signatures in there."

"Oh, I did you a favor," Douglas said factually. "Everything you wrote in there was too…positive. I don't think any of it were true."

I'll admit, I was a little offended. "What do you mean?" I asked.

He shrugged. "All you talked about were your family and your friends and how your life is awesome even if you have to share and don't get the things that you want to have," he said. "I've been the little brother all my life, just like you are now to them, and it wasn't as great as you make it."

That kind of took me aback. I guess I've been hearing and seeing why Big D's upset with Douglas for so long that I didn't really think about hearing and seeing why Douglas was upset with Big D. I didn't really know what to say.

He sighed. "Things are not as dandy, Leo," he told me. "You're just sixteen. You'll learn that as you grow older."

I thought about it for a while. Then, a question came to me. "Will I, or have you?" I asked.

He stared at me, brows lightly wrinkled.

"There is a difference," I added.

He shook his head, but I could see that he understood my point. "I don't know," he said. "Either way, I'm right."

I nodded. "You must think it's nice, then."

"What."

"To be feared rather than to have friends," I said. "I mean, those are the only two reasons why people would be around you, wouldn't it? People who are scared of you are forced to be in your life because they think that if you snap, they'll get the tail end of it. People who are your friends want to be in your life because they know that you'd treat them right and you wouldn't be harsh."

I could see that Douglas was processing what I said, so I didn't say anything else.

When I saw that it was okay to talk again, I nodded towards the inside of the house. "I've got to get back. Mom's going to look for me. If she sees me out here, both of us will get in trouble," I said. Then I started heading back.

I was about to come in the house when Douglas spoke again. "Hey, kid."

I turned around to face him. "Yeah."

"So, did you come out here because you were scared of me?" he asked.

I shook my head. I scoffed, grinning. "No."

He nodded.

I checked my watch. "The coast will be clear in ten minutes," I said.

"Thanks."

I came in, and that finished our conversation for the day.

To be honest, I really didn't think he would be that grumpy before I went out there. His mood was a lot better earlier. Then again, he hadn't eaten for six hours, his last snack being the potato chips Adam shared with everybody after they got back from the mission. Food does make a difference in people's temperament.

As the movie started, Mom received a call from Aunt Janice. She left the room for a while, but she told us to keep watching. I wasn't too sure if Douglas came in then, but I'm positive I heard a click somewhere between Mike and Sulley's induction to Oozma Kappa and the beginning of the Scare Games.

There are so many things that has happened that I can barely go to sleep. Bree getting her bionics back, Douglas moving in with us, Big D and Mom talking about how they could make this work (not that I'm intentionally eavesdropping)—it's all exciting stuff. I'm already looking forward to tomorrow to see what's gonna happen next.

It's interesting how people are. We're all physical but figurative at the same time. The things that we're made of and how they work stands for what we're made of and how we work. Like our hearts, the one sitting between our lungs, right above our diaphragms and under our ribcages. Besides our brains, it's what keeps us going. The heart has a regular cycle, diastole and systole, the filling and the contracting, and what results is the proper (or, in special cases, improper) functioning of the other systems.

We work similarly. Throughout, we go through phases too. We let go of things, but we also take in some things. That's what gets us in trouble at times, the taking in too much and not letting go. I guess that's where Douglas was for a while. Or is, for the meantime. He took in too much of the bad things. Big D did too, though his was a bit justified and didn't last as long. He was angry at his brother because of the bad things he'd done.

While I'm at it, I might as well be honest. Contrary to what Douglas believe, Adam, Bree, Chase and I don't see eye to eye all the time. Hard it is to admit, I've harbored resentments that sounds so silly now if I think about them.

But you can't hold on to things like that. It just makes you…stuck. And boring. Maybe even poisonous, mostly to yourself. While people around you had moved on, you're still sitting there and sulking. What you've been holding onto controls everything else in your life that you don't think straight. You can't make a move without it. So much so that you don't even realize that it's slowly but surely ruining the other things you've got going right for you.

I know this all sounds too deep and a bit cheesy, but hey. I am my father's son.

Since it's getting too late, I'm going to turn in. I want to have at least enough sleep to watch how my parents and my step-uncle will handle a big Sunday breakfast. Adam, Bree and I are already counting on another stare-down. Chase is just counting on Mom's chocolate chip pancakes.

Signed,

Leo Francis Dooley

05/17/14

2:23 AM

The Adam Chronicles

In Which Father Knows Best?, what solution did Leo come up with to stop Bree while her super speed is glitching? Reviews and answers are appreciated, guys!