Mako's Message: This was supposed to be up Friday. FRIDAY. But I dunno... I'm suffering from creative constipation or something. The ideas are there, but they aren't coming out.

Which reminds me, be sure to like my page, Makokam Productions, on Facebook.

Anyway, this chapter is dedicated to TorontoBatFan because it contains something he's been asking for for AGES.

It also contains the scene that made me decide I HAD to do a "Mindy Trains Katie" arc.

Enjoy!


It's finished. It's finally FINISHED.

Everything is remodeled exactly how I wanted it. The showers, the loft, the windows, the kitchen and workshop, I even have my secret escape hatches! Man that was a bitch to arrange. Making sure the guys working on the outside didn't know about what was going on on the inside was harder than I thought.

Still, everything works in the training center, the rooms on the fourth floor have been cleaned up and the first floor is ready for renting. Even have the adds placed.

Of course, just because everything was installed and functional doesn't mean it was ready. We still had to move all our stuff in. And man, was that a lot of fun.

Sarcasm doesn't really come across in text, does it?

Actually, it wasn't that bad. Aside from the fact that I've been up since before dawn.

I had Dave come by before anything else with one of his energy drinks, and I used it to make a banana-berry smoothie(Not my favorite thing in the world, but not bad either.), which got me through the morning pretty easily. I can almost understand why he drinks the things so much.

Anyway, as much as I was enjoying watching Angela and Katie learning to fight each other, I'd decided it was time for something a little different.

So, Dave and I took them to nearby basketball court to work on agility and evasion techniques. By playing dodgeball.

It was a free for all game, where we tallied up points instead knocking each other out because with only four of us there wasn't much point to that. Besides, I'd have won every time.

I still won, if were were really trying to win. I just wanted them to start getting a feel for what it meant to be fast on their feet and how to get the hell out of the way of somebody trying to hit them with something.

Cause seriously, people will just pick up anything and throw it at you. Forget bottles and bricks, I've had people throw entire trash cans at me, handfuls of coins, one guy even threw a sandwich at me.

No pies though. Nobody's thrown a pie at me. Not yet at least. I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

Anyway, it was everybody against everybody and it was going pretty well until about halfway through, when Katie looked at me and said, "I think you're enjoying this way too much."

And I said to her, "You think I'm doing this for fun? I can think of dozens of things I'd rather be doing than this. You should be grateful that I'm taking time away from my own life and training to try and make you not pathetic." And then I hit her in the face with the ball.

I was having a little fun.

It really was almost boring though. Angela and Katie were no challenge at all to hit, and it was way to easy to dodge their throws.

Even Dave was only able to hit me once, and that was because I was too busy laughing my ass off after Katie got knocked on her face after the ball bounced off of Angela to notice the ball coming at me next. Captain America would have been proud of that throw.

Eventually we worked Angela and Katie into the ground, even managed to get Dave a little tired. I don't know what I was cause I was still kinda loopy from being up all night and still kinda buzzing from my energy drink smoothie.

We went to the sandwich place near our building, Patti's Picnic, which is a really weird sort of place. It tries really hard to be a hippy health-food place with all sorts of grass juices and smoothies and stuff, but the best stuff they have is cupcakes and chocolates. I swear they must have a professional baker back there or something.

Anyway, we actually ate with Katie, and it was amusing to see her sitting off to the side all awkward and shit. Probably the first time she hasn't had friends since ever.

I actually liked it a lot.

She heard me talking to Dave and Angela about "decorating" our new place though, and asked if she could help. My first thought was "No fucking way", because there is no way in hell I want her touching my equipment. But then my second thought was, "Slave labor."

So I looked at her and smiled and said, "Sure."

Everything I'd ordered for our new training center was waiting for us on the first floor. Most of it was covered in plastic since the contractors had to work around it, which got some bitching out of them, but it was better than having to wait for the work to be done and THEN having it delivered.

And I gotta say, seeing all the weapon crates made me as giddy as a schoolgirl.

Yeah, I kinda went a little nuts when it came to buying equipment.

Anyway, I had Angela go up and start putting the peg hooks in the peg board while, Dave, Katie and I started carrying stuff up.

I carried almost all the weapons up myself, since most of the furniture was too bulky for me to get a good grip on. I actually had to let Katie help Dave with a couple of them because she has a longer reach than me and is actually stronger than Angela.

I was really surprised by that to be honest. Katie might be taking this more seriously than I thought.

So, we started assembling the equipment and I took the opportunity to give them a crash course on weapons maintenance. Katie didn't seem too comfortable working with the guns, so she spent more time hanging the melee weapons up and then putting the kitchen appliances in.

After about an hour, Dave looked over everything and said, "Ya know, this is going to take us all night by ourselves. Why don't we see if any of Justice Forever is free to help out?"

And I said, "No! I want this place to be a surprise. They can't see it until it's one hundred percent."

So then Dave said, "Well, what about just John then? He saw this place when it was a complete shit hole. And my Dad? He has today off and I he'd love to help."

And then Katie went, "Wait! Your DAD knows?! Since when?!"

And Dave and I looked at each other said, "Like, two...three days now?"

She asked how he found out and Dave and I looked at each other again and just said, "It's a long story."

Then I said, "We might as well ask Marty over too."

And Katie asked, "What about Todd?"

I said, "Todd doesn't know and that's the way I want to keep it."

Angela sat up and "Wait, why not?"

"Because he doesn't think before he speaks."

She looked over at Dave and he shrugged and said, "I love the guy, but it's true."

So, we called Mr. L and asked him over and he was almost too happy to come over. He wanted to know if there was anything we needed him to bring and I was about to say we had everything we needed, but then Dave said, "Actually, we're gonna need a ladder," and I looked up at our fucking twenty foot ceiling and realized we had stuff to hang up there and I'd completely neglected to get anything that would let us do that and I felt like a goddamn idiot. So I politely asked if he could get us a ladder before he came over and promised to pay him back.

Marty wasn't so sure about it, but we assured him that coming over to help in no way required him to get involved in any heroics, costumed or otherwise.

Mr. L got there about an hour later with the ladder, right about the same time Marcus decided to drop by and see the place for the first time ever. With no warning. In uniform.

It might have been funny if it didn't look like Dave's Dad was going to have a heart attack.

We'd buzzed him up and he was just starting to open the door, when Marcus came up behind him like, "Caz?"

And Mr. L dropped the ladder and slammed the door shut and turned around like, "Oh! Marcus! Hey. So, uh, how're you doing?"

Obviously Dave got his acting skills from his Mom.

And Marcus said, "I'm...good. What're you doing here?"

And Mr. L said, "Oh, I'm just here doing some, uh, volunteer work. What're you doing here?"

So Marcus was like, "Uh-huh... Well, I came by to see Mindy's new club house. She hasn't been able to shut up about it all week."

Then Mr. L was like, "Wait, what?"

And Marcus said, "Her training safehouse headquarters thing."

And Mr. L was like, "You know?"

And Marcus laughed and said, "I live with the girl man. I took her in after her Father died. Of course I know. I'm surprised it took you this long to figure it out."

It took a minute but then Dave's Dad said, "Dave and I don't see much of each other."

Then it was Marcus's turn to change the subject, "So, uh, what's the ladder for?"

And then Mr. L said, "Oh, they have stuff they need to hang from the ceiling, but Mindy forgot to get a ladder."

Then Marcus chuckled and said, "Yeah, that sounds like Mindy."

Bastard.

Anyway, so we stopped listening at the door and opened it up and I said, "Well, if you want to stand out in the hall all day that's fine, but we need that ladder."

So they were like, "Oh hey!" and "Alright, let's see this place," then they came in and Mr. L was like, "Oh wow..." and Marcus was like, "I shouldn't have come here," and covered his eyes with his hands and looked like he was trying to pull his face off.

Marcus did hang around for a little bit though, and before he left he said, "This really is nice set up you have here Mindy, keep it a secret." and he gave me a quick little hug.

It's weird. I don't know when it happened, but Marcus and I feel like we've gotten a LOT closer lately.

Anyway, we spent the rest of afternoon putting the furniture together for the living/sleeping area, and bolting stuff to the ceiling and walls, like the salmon ladder and the hanging rings.

We ended up ordering a pizza, and we made Katie go wait outside for it. She came back with flowers.

All she'd say was that someone gave them to her.

We finally finished up after dark. We took Angela home, then they his Dad dropped us off at my house. Dave walked me in, and we talked with Marcus a bit about the cult killers before he went to bed, then Dave left.

So today was very long, but productive, and I need to go to sleep because I'm getting really fucking loopy.