A/N: So I promised myself that I wouldn't do the "Sound of Music", where there was a love story, followed by action, but oh well. I felt I built the action as quickly as I could practically pull it off. The first draft was "Boom - they're together in Chapter 3. Boom - Dark Reunion happens in Chapter 5."

Also: Hey look, a chapter that spans more than one day! Weird.

Thanks for the reviews, everybody. I might have stopped a month ago without them. Any predictions on the rest of the story? Four chapters to go.

Act III - Confrontation
Chapter 14 - The Meteor

Kokomi woke up Sunday morning wondering if last night was a dream. She did it - she had finally gotten together with Kusuo. And that kiss. Wow.

She realized, though, that with their hasty exit from the dance, and sharing their first kiss, she hadn't told him what they discovered about Dark Reunion. She would be sure to do that today.

Kusuo awoke Sunday morning feeling like he'd never felt before. He felt such euphoria he couldn't describe it. But there was something else, too. His body just didn't want to get out of bed. His legs felt a lot heavier than usual. He eventually managed to swing himself over the edge of the bed and stand up, but he quickly had to grab onto his chair, and let the blood reach his head.

Then a few things happened that he had never experienced before - he coughed, then he sneezed, sniffled, blew his nose, and discovered his throat ached when he swallowed. He just didn't have the energy to remain standing.

Group message with the Sci-kicks:
Kusuo: Anybody else feeling sick today?
Kokomi: I have a small runny nose, but it's no big deal.
Nendo: Small cough
Kusuo: I feel like a ton of bricks landed on me
Kuboyasu: Didn't Nendo wipe his nose on you? Angry-face emoji
Kokomi: Sorry. Want us to come over?
Kusuo: Sure.

They must have figured out how to gather without talking about it, since 5 seconds later, everybody was there. Nendo holding on to Kokomi, Kuboyasu, and Yumehara.

"Wow, you look like crap," said Kokomi.

"Don't sugar-coat it, or anything." Kusuo projected, and then gave a weak, quivering smile.

Kusuo was reminded of Kusuke's last warning, that is, the last warning that made sense: "A little thing like a cold could kill you." He tried to not let dread overtake him.

"Does your mom know yet?" Kuboyasu asked. Kusuo shook his head. Kuboyasu went downstairs to fetch his mom. They all heard a glass shatter, and a few seconds later his mom and dad were there.

"You know, you guys are going to have to come up with some way of letting us know you're here," said his dad.

"Sorry, we'll figure it out. Hey, need a lift to work?" He smiled to Nendo.

He ran out the door. "I'm not ready yet!"

Nendo and Kusuo grabbed shoulders and zapped him away. Kusuo smirked nastily. His mom said, "Once is funny. He's going to get fired if you keep doing that."

"Oh, fine." Chiyo helped them zapped him back.

"Oh, you can do that without touching me now? That's great." He walked away.

Now he won't ask me to do it anymore. The corner of his mouth lifted as much as he could.

His mom started to look him over. "Sweating bullets, runny nose, mid-grade fever. Sounds like a cold or maybe the flu. You should rest for a bit, and if it gets a lot worse, we'll go to the doctor this afternoon." She looked at the others. "Can you guys get him a wet towel, some hot soup, and some coffee jelly?"

"What's the coffee jelly for?" Kuboyasu asked.

She explained that she felt that emotional well-being is important to physical healing. They nodded curiously.

They did as she asked. Then they asked him about how he would heal himself before. He explained telepathically that he would just kind of find the infection, kill it, burn out the fever, and then heal his body from the damage. Other than that, he couldn't really explain how he did it.

"Well, can't you try that again?" Yumehara asked.

He explained that his powers weren't really awakened unless Yumehara was filling him with power. "Remember all the accidents? I don't really dare to fix myself. I could just as likely blow myself up if we tried. For some reason, I feel like borrowing Yumehara's power won't work on myself."

"Maybe we could try?" Kuboyasu offered. Kusuo shrugged.

They all grabbed shoulders in a circle, Kokomi holding Kusuo's shoulder and Yumehara grabbing his foot, closing their eyes. Kusuo felt the usual surge of power and temporary feeling of wholeness, and felt being flooded with heat. That must have been Kuboyasu. After a minute they released. Once they let go, he shrugged again, and coughed for a long time.

"Well, we tried," Kokomi said, disheartened.

They all sighed, looked a little more exhausted from before, and sat down. Then they all read manga for a bit together. This was apparently getting to be his weekend routine: get sick (or beaten up), get the party together and read manga. After some time, everybody but Kokomi left, and she stayed to look after him.

"So how did you enjoy dancing with Miko?" she asked.

"It was fine. Her toes will probably heal," he said. "Did you have a good time before we danced?" She filled him in about dancing with Nendo and the others. Are they starting to treat you like a normal person?"

"Sawakita, maybe, and Nendo and Kuboyasu are coming along."

"I was wondering that, if, um, you know, more than just me learns how to do that," he stammered, "that you could … develop feelings for them, too?"

Kokomi looked at him curiously. It had been a long week for them. A long couple of weeks, really. She had started school wishing for a relationship with Kusuo, but not expecting it to happen, being surprised when the door was opened, but realizing that they had to go through the process like everybody else. Then all the surprises came, and the heartbreak with it. Then apologies, forgiveness, healing, and actually becoming a couple.

"Jealous, Kusuo?"

"Psssh, nooooo." He said.

"Mm-hmm."

She paused to wonder, though. Kusuo was the only romantic interest she had had that treated her like a normal person. Is that what caused the interest? If there were others, would she feel the same way about them? "I think most relationships start with an attraction for some reason, but they are built over time. We have had a lot apart from you just treating me like a normal person. But as long as we're together, I'll only focus on you. How's that?"

He nodded. Wow, he looks awful. If he weren't sick, I'd kiss him… she thought, remembering the events of the night before. After a few seconds, she realized she had zoned out and saw him raising his eyebrows at her. Crap, still getting used to that.

"I could do worse…", he thought, teasingly. She smacked him with a pillow.

She decided to let him rest, and bug him about Dark Reunion the next day.

Kusuo had some time where he wasn't feeling terrible, and they controlled the fever, so they didn't go to the doctor on Sunday. However, Kusuo was worse in the morning on Monday. Opening his eyes was heavy labor, his breathing was shallow, and every aspect of his being just felt blurry.

Kusuke barged in, and before seeing his condition, said, "I need you to do me a favor. The government - " then he saw his brother, pale and with a drooping face, and said, " - uhhh never mind. I'll figure it out. Do you need anything?"

Kusuo shook his head. Kusuke patted his foot and left, but came back with his mom, who declared. "We're going to the doctor right now! Big Ku, help me get him to the car." Kusuke complied, and after Kusuo and his mom were in the car, went back to his room.

As the minivan was backing out, they saw that Kokomi had come to ring the bell. She panicked when she saw Kusuo's state, and her eyes started watering. She hopped in the car, and gave Kusuo some homemade coffee jelly. However, both she and his mom knew she needed to be at school, so they dropped her off at the school gates, which conveniently happened to be on the way to the hospital.

Kokomi explained to the others that Kusuo was still sick, and that his mom was taking him to the doctor.

Mr. Iguchi burst into the classroom with a look of terror on his face. Apparently all the crises took place on his watch. He turned on the classroom tv, which announced that a meteor that was supposed to pass innocently by Earth was now on a collision course. The news further reported that the projected impact zone was in the sea just to the east of Japan, and the effects would be immediate for Japan, Korea, and Eastern China, and then tsunamis would impact the coasts of everybody surrounding the Pacific Ocean. Expected impact was three hours.

They all ran to the window, and saw a pin-prick-sized dot appear on the horizon.

Everybody started panicking.

"Why didn't they tell us sooner?"
"Three hours to live!"
"I didn't see this in the crystal ball!"
"Totally gonna pee my pants. Yup, there it is."
"Thank you, God, for us finally getting together. But we need more time! Do something, God!"

The news showed some people speculating that this was the work of Dark Reunion, since it was originally tracked by scientists and expected to pass safely by.

"Kokomi, calm down. Go see … my brother," she heard him weakly in her thoughts. "Deep breaths."

Kokomi took a breath and tried to relax. He was right, they could do something. Over the mayhem, she was able to grab Nendo, Chiyo, and Kuboyasu.

"Why your brother? Why can't you?"

"I'm in no condition for this."

They teleported to Kusuo's house, and found Kusuke in the front, with his dad inside a robot of some kind.

"Oh, look who finally showed up," Kusuke said, irritated. Then he said to his dad, "You know what, I think they got this," and sent him back inside.

"Ok, what do we do? We're not exactly the save-the-world types," Kokomi asked Kusuke.

"Well, you've got several options," he explained. His face was as level and intense as ever, as though they weren't all about to die. He was even a little smug, as if he were the one saving the world. "One. You can send it somewhere else. Two. You can make it change course, so it avoids Earth. Or three. You can break it up into small enough pieces, so they all burn up in the atmosphere. I think Little Ku would have used his super strength to do number two."

Nendo chuckled. Everybody stared at him, but otherwise ignored him.

"Hmm, we don't have strength with us today." They hadn't grabbed Kaido in the panic, and didn't think he was on their side anyway. "Chiyo, see if you can get hold of Kaido." Chiyo sneered. "Would you rather die?! Just try. In the meantime, let's try option one." She waited for Chiyo to send a text. "Ok, Nendo, can you teleport it?"

Nendo could not - he could only teleport things he was touching, unless he was with Kusuo. Kokomi urged him to get them up there. It was too far away, until Chiyo put her hand on his shoulder.

They teleported to the meteor. They realized they couldn't breathe, and started drowning in absence of the air. Nendo looked confused. "Get us back down there, you knucklehead!"

Once they landed back in Kusuo's front room, they all sat and gasped for air for a moment. Chiyo checked her phone for a message from Kaido - no response.

"Ok - you need to teleport some air with us so we can breathe. Can you do that?" He shrugged. "Well, let's try. You'll need to hold it in a bubble or something."

They held shoulders again, and were soon back on the meteor. They could breathe this time. Kuboyasu said, "Look at the Earth. This is awesome! And it's great that the teleportation didn't preserve relative velocities or we would have been -"

"Focus." Kokomi said. "Okay, Nendo, can you teleport it?" He reached down to touch it with his hands. Even with Chiyo, he couldn't do it. It was too big. "Ok, that leaves option three. Kuboyasu, can you use your power to break it up?"

Kuboyasu focused. "I've only managed to shoot fireballs," he said.

Kokomi said, "Try variants of fire - like focusing it into smaller areas, so it will shoot longer and faster. Use Chiyo. Oh, and don't use up all our air."

He tried. He made a pillar of fire shoot down from his hands into the meteor. He imagined it getting smaller in width, but equally powerful, and the fire converged into a point so fine that it seemed like a supercharged laser burst. It made the ground shake, but that was about it.

"It's too bad we can't do an energy blast like the skyscraper did a couple years ago," Nendo said.

"You dummy, Saiki did that on April Fools Day. Weren't you listening?" Kuboyasu said.

Something clicked in Kokomi's mind. "Kuboyasu, didn't you make a lightning strike last week? Can you maybe try to do just raw energy instead of fire?"

"I don't exactly want to be on the end of a lightning blast."

"Then make Nendo teleport it into place, like you did before."

They debated where they would do that for a minute, and settled on a few places. Kuboyasu, Chiyo, and Nendo together made an energy blast about 100 meters under the surface of the meteor about two kilometers away, and they felt a small earthquake and a blast of light. A chunk of meteor broke off and flew away.

The three of them started breathing heavily. They were getting worn out. They had made an impact, but it wasn't enough. And they were running out of air. They didn't have time or energy to keep this going.

They went back to Kusuo's house, and caught their breath. They needed advice, but Kusuo was at the hospital.

Kusuo was lying in a hospital bed. Apparently his oxygen was down, so they had him on oxygen again, with some IVs running into his arm. The doctor had declared it to be a "viral infection" - they had started some flu and strep tests, but nothing positive had come up. She had said that Kusuo was in "really bad shape", and that it was "one of the worst cases she had ever seen."

It had been about an hour they had started battling the meteor. They had just telepathically filled them in on their attempts, and he asked them to come over. So they came.

They looked at him and instantly had a look of pity. "Don't worry about me! Worry about the world!" It hurt too much to talk, so he pushed his thoughts telepathically. With them this close he didn't have to try so hard, or rely on Yumehara-enhanced Kokomi telepathy.

Their work so far had reminded him of how he managed the volcano. He explained how Kusuke had convinced him to divide it into mini-volcanos, and he had his clones each manage a location. He explained how Aiura was able to predict the location they needed to exert their efforts. "You need Aiura now."

Miko was in the classroom. Everybody's eyes were either glued to the TV or a glowing dot out the window, watching with their eyes wide open. Some of the couples that formed at the dance had found each other again, holding on in case these were their final moments on earth. She longed for somebody to comfort her, the same someone she had started to fall for at the dance, but he wasn't there. Even Chiyo had had a few moments with Hairo, even if just to tell him that she still had feelings for Kaido.

They had seen how a small chunk broke off, and rejoiced a little, but their spirits fell again when they saw that most of the meteor was still on its way.

All of a sudden Nendo and Chiyo materialized next to her. She didn't even have time to say "What the -" before she was zapped away.

She was in Saiki's hospital room. Before she could get her bearings a nurse came in and said "What are you all doing in here?! You need to go. Now!" So they all walked away, and as soon as nobody was watching, they were back in Saiki's house.

She found who she was looking for, put on a smile of joy and threw her arms around Aren, and he held her tightly around the waist. Kokomi cleared her throat, and filled her in on the situation. "Ok? Let's go."

"Wait!" Miko tried to object, not quite knowing how all the pieces of this plan fit together, but then they were standing on the meteor. It was way bigger than it looked on tv.

They were all huddled together. Everybody was waiting for her to tell them what to do. However, with Chiyopipi's power boost, her eyes were rolling into the back of her head, and she started trembling. "There's … too … much. Can't … find … it."

"Chiyo, try to tone it down," Kokomi said.

"I can't - it's all or nothing." Everybody was communicating telepathically to save energy, and Kokomi was automatically sending it out since they were all holding on to each other.

Kokomi was panicking now. Their only shot to save the world couldn't do it because there was either not enough power to see everything, or too much power causing her to see so much she couldn't find what she needed.

When had she become the group leader? Didn't anybody else have any ideas? She grunted in frustration. Why couldn't she filter out the interesting pieces, like when Chiyo was amplifying her powers?

Wait - she just needs to filter! She slid off the ring and shoved it onto Aiura's finger. Just think about what you want to see, Aiura.

Miko had never seen anything like this. Suddenly she could see anything in the world she wanted to see - in the galaxy even - and on any scale she wanted. She could see planets or she could see molecules, and the futures of all of whatever she wanted. She was so humbled by the power that she fell to her knees.

"Do you see it?" Kokomi called.

"Yes," she answered, taking a few breaths. "We need to do seven blasts, one at the very center, and the rest at certain points surrounding it." She knew they could see what she was seeing, so she didn't bother describing locations in any significant detail. "These two fall along a natural fracture in the meteor and will do most of the work. If we do the center first, followed very quickly by these two, then the remaining four, all about one second apart, we should be able to blow it to smithereens, and even be able to get off safely. The chain reactions should happen on their own after that. The first blast will need to be the same power as the blast you already did, and the others will need to be about half that."

"Can the rest of you do blasts that strong that quickly?" Kokomi asked the others.

Kuboyasu spoke for them. "It seems like doing the same thing again doesn't drain us as much as the first time - so I know we should at least be able to do a few… We'll try..."

"Ok. This is our only shot, or we can't make the chain reaction," Kokomi told them. "Aiura, show us the first spot, and how much power it needs to get. Everybody, focus on that spot, and Kuboyasu, calibrate for that much power. Here's the important part - after you do each blast you have only a little time to set up the next one. Aiura will focus on it and say 'fire'. Then after the last one, we have to get out of here.

"Everybody tell me when you're ready."

"Ready," they all said.

Aiura put the first image in their minds. Nendo, Yumehara, and Kuboyasu focused together. BOOM. Then the two focus points. BOOM. BOOM. They could feel the entire meteor destabilize. The next image came. BOOM. Kuboyuso's grip started quivering. Then the next image. BOOM.

The ground was shaking so hard they could barely stand, and they were losing the ability to hold on. "Take a knee!" Kokomi commanded, and they went down together. "Focus!" The last two images came into focus in succession. BOOM. BOOM. "Get us out of here!"

And then they were on Kusuo's lawn. They turned around to look at the sky, and the meteor (which was slightly larger than a pinhead at this point) exploded into a burst of brilliant white light that filled the sky for a few seconds.

Then they all collapsed to the ground from exhaustion. Kuboyasu had apparently passed out already, and Miko sat by his side and grabbed one of his hands in both of hers.

"There, see? I knew you could do it," Kusuo called to them.

Somewhere, in a dark room, somebody said to somebody else, "They took care of it. It's not Saiki; he's dying in the hospital. There were five under-psychics. SHE leads them."

Kokomi looked at the others. They were panting heavily and sweating hard. So was she. Kuboyasu started waking up. Good work, everybody, you saved the world!

They smiled, pleased with saving the world, but were significantly worn out. Kuboyasu said, "If I never have to do that again, it will be too soon."

Kokomi nodded, but said, "I'll give you five minutes, and then we have to do it one more time. But this time, we need Toritsuka, too."

Nobody knew what she was talking about, but they didn't have any energy left to argue.

Reita was watching in horror on the news in his classroom as the meteor was getting closer. The news people were baffled both by its sudden appearance, and by the lack of knowledge of any plan to deal with it. They were counting down times to impact, and times to the last point at which a detonation could deal with it without harming the Earth, you know, should any power decide to do anything about it.

All of a sudden the thing just exploded. Into a billion little pieces. The news people were baffled again, and they wondered who or what was responsible for making it happen. They continued to track the largest pieces, and wondered what kind of damage they could do.

Then Reita was all of the sudden sitting in a hospital room with Teruhashi, Nendo, Yumehara, and Kuboyasu. Oh, and Saiki was the one on the hospital bed. Since Reita was not teleported with a chair, he fell onto the floor.

"Ew, hospital floors. What the hell, guys? Why am I here?! And why is Saiki in the hospital?" he asked.

"He's dying of a cold," Teruhashi said. "And I mean literally. Unless we fix it."

Kokomi grabbed Kusuo's hand. His mom was fretting over in a corner. Kusuo was barely conscious.

"What are we supposed to do?" Toritsuka asked.

"You channel a molecular biologist spirit. Shouldn't be too hard given where we are."

Toritsuka nodded. He ran out, and was back in a few minutes. "He wants to know what's in it for him. I told him the experience would be worth it. I have a feeling I won't be wrong.

Kokomi told them the plan. Everybody acknowledged, and Kusuo weakly lifted part of a thumb. They would need him, too.

Kusuo activated his x-ray vision, and looked at his body. Amplified by Chiyo's power, he could see beyond muscle tissue; he saw cells, molecules, and viruses. Aiura gave the Toritsuka-scientist the ring, and he was able to focus on and identify the virus. "It's a mutation of a bunch of medical scientific sounding stuff that nobody understands." He gave the ring back to Aiura. Aiura, having seen the image in Toritsuka's mind, located every instance of that virus in Kusuo's body.

Nendo teleported them all into the sun, where they all burned up. He chuckled.

With the virus out of the way, it was time to heal Kusuo's body. Both the virus and his body's attempts at fighting it had done considerable damage. Aiura was able to find all these places, but it might as well have been his entire body.

The last time they tried, Kuboyasu flooded him with heat, and hadn't discovered his ability to do raw energy. This time, Kuboyasu filled him with energy, with infinitely many locations and how much power to use as determined by Aiura.

All of them together shared the experience, connected by Kokomi's telepathy.

They all let go, stepped back, and waited.

Kusuo lifted his head, lifted his arms out to the side, and opened his eyes. Lightning crackled along his arms, and his eyes were glowing white.

Kusuo didn't think it would work. They had tried before. But why not? I probably only have a few hours left if they don't try,

He felt the usual power when Yumehara was connected to the circle. He opened his eyes and stared at himself like they asked. Then he watched in awe as the virus vanished and energy filled his body.

When they let go, he felt fine. Perfectly wonderfully fine. He gawked in amazement. He was close to dying one minute ago, and now he was fine. He noticed something else, too - the power remained. That hadn't happened before. The connections that had been weakened that were temporarily activated when he was with Yumehara were now fully restored.

He was back to full power.

But crap - I don't have my limiters. I'm probably going to kill somebody on accident.

He sat up very slowly, ripped out his breathing tubes, and IVs, and looked around. He decided that even the act of standing would be too dangerous without limiters, and teleported.

"That's nice, not even a thank you," Kuboyasu complained.

"He's behind you," Yumehara said, pointing.

They turned and found Kusuo on the floor on his knees, with his forehead almost touching the floor. He had decided to take a rare moment of acknowledgement. "This couldn't have happened without every single one of you." He said it very slowly, looking at each of them in turn, even Toritsuka and Aiura, saving Kokomi for last.

It was a touching moment. Many tears were shed, especially from his mom; even Kuboyasu brushed a tear out of his eye.