I'd been sat in the Paper Lantern, waiting for Will to show up while Gwen Grayson was seducing him so that Speed could steal the Pacifier.
I'd watched the time tick by slowly on my wrist. I'd sat there until 10 o'clock and then Warren had appeared. Strangely I wasn't scared of this guy even though I'd seen what he could do when he put his mind to it. Around me he was a completely different person or maybe this was how he was normally and Will just brought out the worst in him. Anyway. He was so matter of fact, didn't believe in unnecessary small talk or beating around the bush. He'd helped me to realise my true feelings for Will and for that I was ever grateful.
Will and I had stayed together since the Homecoming Dance. We were the perfect couple. We fought, like all couples do but always made up and were voted in our yearbook as the couple most likely to get married straight after graduation. Although it wasn't straight after, we married pretty soon after. Why put off something that would happen anyway? Warren taught me not to hide my feelings, so I didn't. People thought it strange that we never dated anyone else but we didn't need to. All we needed was each other and we'd found that because of Warren.
It makes it even stranger then that he never found love for himself, despite creating so much love between Will and I. I guess he never found the right girl.
After saving the school from Royal Pain at Homecoming we hadn't really had too much to do with Warren. Sometimes we ate lunch with him and he and Will remained undefeated champions of Save the Citizen until Warren graduated. We didn't have any classes together because he was a junior when we were just freshmen but there was always an easy camaraderie between the six of us when we did see each other.
We'd go and eat at the Paper Lantern sometimes to say hi and get great Chinese food. Every so often we saw his mom there and we got to know her pretty well. She'd gone inactive after defeating her husband but we never asked her about that. Some said she didn't think she could fight any more but I think she could have done it if the motivation was right. She still kept an important administrative position at Hero Command Central.
However, the happy times only lasted for two years. We were sad to see him go but he graduated with honours and made an amazing display before he went. Warren had evolved in his power and could now create creatures out of the flames – elementals I think he called them. So on his graduation ceremony he sent up phoenixes, butterflies, dragons and birds to circle the sky above Sky High as they received their diplomas in a beautiful night time ceremony.
He stayed on the radar for a while with his sidekick – fighting crime and the like and we stayed in touch a bit but nothing much. Then as we became more involved in school work and graduating ourselves, the communication between us gradually broke down and the only time we heard of him was if he did something spectacular but that was seldom – not his style.
But I still had a soft spot in my heart for Warren Peace and thought about him often – even though I was with Will. Don't get me wrong, I love Will in a way I would never love Warren but, and this sounds silly, I always felt protective over him, even though he was so much bigger and stronger than I was.
Out of our group I felt like I was the closest to him. He always made me feel special and paid attention to my ramblings when Will had tuned out long ago and for that I loved him. Before he took off from Sky High for the last time he'd hugged me hard.
'Bye hippie,' he'd whispered, 'I'll never go far.'
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A/N: I borrowed the idea of elementals from Espantalho - at least I think that's who created them.