Look at me, popping these babies out.

Okay, so I have a question. Do you guys picture anyone when you think of Emm, Dan, Maggie, or Elijah? 'Cause, outside of Emm, I only have a vague image of them and I've realized I haven't written much in the way of a description for them. Except, I think, Maggie's hair color, and that Emm has dark hair. So, what do you guys picture them as?

Chapter 6-

She thought it was a little funny that the Detention room didn't really deprive her of anything she didn't usually go without anyways. She did not find it funny that the glaringly white walls of the room were her only companions for an hour and a half after school had finished. The first day Maggie had insisted that they wait for her but she'd shooed them off home and refused to bring them down with her boredom.

On the third day she got smart and threw a few pieces of her project for Mad Science in her bag to work on. As it turned out, the floor of the Detention room was actually an excellent work space and in no time she'd forgotten that she was supposed to leave until Principal Powers walked in. That did not, by any rights, mean that she was glad to be there and she still huffed and puffed every day when the final bell rang.

Maggie not having to work anywhere near Thompson was always worth it, though. The bruises all over Thompson's face when he returned to school a day later were very much worth it too. On the whole she thought a week's worth of detentions in which she worked uninterrupted on all her little projects for Thompson's utter humiliation and agony had been a great deal for her.

Despite her detentions Emm had been almost chipper in the past few days. She'd brushed off all the inquiries into her sudden super strength with a crooked grin in her hero support classes and a little sort of smile to almost anyone else. Her lengthy argument with Peace the day before on which of them was the bigger ass and or bitch hadn't even dented her good mood. Well, not for long anyway.

It was enough to make her less reluctant about having to have dinner at his house later.

She'd been on her way to meet Maggie for Hero Support History when she heard Thompson's familiar and grating voice around the corner. Without really knowing why she leaned against the wall, just out of sight, and listened.

"Well, Peace," She looked around and realized his locker was, in fact, just around the corner. "I think you need to learn to control that rabid sidekick of yours." Immediately her blood pressure shot up and she moved to confront the bastard.

The distinct sound of someone being slammed against the lockers stopped her.

"Listen here, Thompson," She pressed herself against the wall and ignored the odd looks she was getting and the interested looks from everyone who'd stopped in the hall to watch Peace and Thompson. She had to really strain her spectacular hearing to catch everything.

"You so much as look at Maggie Rollings, or Garwin for that matter, again and I'll melt that armor right off of you and feed you to her." Somewhere in her head she was insulted that he thought she needed protection, but it was sufficiently drowned out by his active protection of Maggie. And the knowledge that he meant her as his ultimate threat.

She couldn't help but grin widely as Thompson stumbled off, looking satisfyingly disheveled, past her and the crowd began to disperse. Grin still in place she swung around the corner and looked at Peace.

He clearly hadn't been expecting her if his wearied sigh and eye roll were any indication.

"How do you always get your lunch so quickly?"

She looked up from the loose string on her skirt and blinked at Zach, whose yellow shirt almost matched her's in intensity. "I get in line early." She motioned to Maggie, Dan, and Elijah who were all still in line. "I have Mad Science before lunch and they don't."

She wasn't sure when she'd started sitting with Peace and his friends while she waited for her own group, but the annoyed look on Peace's face was always worth it.

Emm liked his friends, that she had to admit. Zach's bright colors, mostly the yellows, were endearing to her (not that he'd ever know) and his constantly fumbling around Magenta amused her. She didn't understand it since they'd been dating for a year by now, but it amused her. Ethan made the best faces when it seemed Peace and her were going to fight again and turned out to be rather useful when it came to random bits of history she'd forgotten for class, even if he was a year behind her.

She liked seeing Magenta as a pair with Zach and had been patiently (for once in her life) waiting for the chance to play with Guinea Magenta. Will Stronghold had been alright in her books since that first fight with Peace and for a week after it she'd proclaimed him her hero. Now he was just a nice guy who didn't seem to mind when she teased him. And, Layla. While Layla's ever-cheerful demeanor might have been off-putting for some, she had been friends with Maggie for too many years to be bothered. To her it seemed a perfectly normal way of being, even if Layla lacked the frequent nervousness that Maggie suffered from.

"So, why don't you have Mad Science with Maggie?" It was generally true that all the sidekicks and all the heroes had their own Mad Science period.

"Oh, I'm kind of in an advanced class." And by advanced she meant a very exclusive class of only four students during Mr. Medulla's planning period. Emm strived to be a good student in all classes, but she excelled in Mad Science. Across from her Peace nodded in a way that suggested he was hardly surprised.

Will's eyes lit up and he began scrounging around in his backpack. "In that case," he lugged what she immediately recognized as a badly constructed shrink ray from the bottom of the bag, "can you please tell me why I can't get this to work?"

Her eyes lit up now and she practically lunged for the ray gun. She heard Peace scoff across the table as she turned it delicately in her hands and studied it. Setting it down she forgot all about lunch as she reached into her own bag and began extracting everything she thought she might need.

Zach sputtered in his seat. "Why do you have all of that with you?"

She barely spared him a glance before she began dismantling the gun. "I have nothing else to do during my detentions."

"Oh boy, we've lost her."

She did look up, screwdriver in her mouth, when she heard Dan. "It will just take a second, I swear." She assumed they understood her around the screwdriver and returned to her work. Until, she noticed Peace's friends making room for her group.

"No! Don't sit." They all froze. "You guys sitting down here could cause a catastrophic chain of events that will end in my untimely death." She thought there was an added effect in not looking up from her work as she spoke.

"I have carefully measured my time spent at Peace's table to ensure that this wouldn't happen." It took her no time at all to take the gun apart. "We can't have integration."

"What?"

"If you guys sit down now there's a very real likelihood that you'll all get along. And, I think you already do from when we fight." She motioned between herself and Peace with the screwdriver, never looking up. "And then, next thing I know out groups have integrated for lunch." With the same alarming speed with which she'd dismantled the gun she began to rebuild it, stopping only when she had to search through her parts for a proper connector.

"I like you guys alright," she mumbled around the screwdriver that was once more in her mouth before she put it to use again, "but there's only so much of Peace I can take and he cannot become a regular lunch fixture who steals my fries." She ignored that he already had.

Dan, Maggie, and Elijah looked between themselves before simultaneously moving to sit down anyways. Emm was too preoccupied with the gun to notice.

"Did I say 80? I meant to say you make no sense 90% of the time. My mistake." Warren dodged the distracted attempt to hit him with the screwdriver and continued to eat her fries.

Finally Emm looked up and was clearly upset to see they'd completely ignored her. "You sat down! I'm doomed!" Maggie patted her head as though she were a puppy. "In other news," her grin was back, "you now have the best shrink ray in the school."

However humorous she'd found Peace's discomfort when he'd stood on her front porch she didn't find it funny when it was her standing at his door. Peace lived further into the city in a townhouse style row of apartments and she was glad the bus dropped her off on his block else she might have had trouble finding it. Her sense of time was impeccable, her sense of direction not so much.

Normally she would have just had her dad drive her up, but the Garwin home would be missing its elder members for the next few days thanks to the double whammy of a Mad Science convention and an art gallery in the same week. Sometimes, if the events were big enough, their parents would decide they were good enough students to miss a day or two and bring them along for the ride. Emm would never be as interested as Elijah and her mother in the art galleries, but she and her father always found themselves entertained. It worked the other way for their science conventions.

When she left the house Elijah had just been about to order himself a pizza and she knew he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself and the house for however long he needed to, but she still called when the bus got to Peace's street. He'd laughed at her and just pointed out that she was nervous about being on Peace's home turf. She hung up.

While she waited for someone to answer the door she tugged anxiously at her skirt. She had meant to change when she'd gotten home but then the DVD player had started acting up and she was too occupied with fixing it to remember. Her miniskirt wasn't really mini and was perfectly acceptable by all rights but she still felt a little awkward meeting Mrs. Peace in it. She'd had the sense to grab a jacket to drape over her bright yellow tank top at least.

She heard the locks turn on the other side of the door and took a deep breath. There was no way she'd give Peace the satisfaction of seeing her nervous- she'd enjoyed being on the other side too much.

It wasn't Peace who opened the door. Well, technically it was a Peace, but not her Peace. Not that he was her Peace in any way, shape, or form, nor did she want him to be.

Mae Peace was a pretty looking woman somewhere around Maggie's height with soft Asiatic eyes and a pleasant smile. Emm imagined Peace completely dwarfed her. "Oh, you must be Emmeline, please come in."

There was something about her that immediately put Emm at ease and she smiled easily as she stepped into the Peace home. Unlike her own house, which was decorated in crisp, cool colors, everything in the Peace household seemed to scream warmth. She couldn't bring herself to be surprised. The living room was warm and cozy and neater than her own. It was modestly decorated but everything seemed inviting and she almost scowled because she really didn't want anything related to Peace to be inviting.

"I'm Mae, dear, please don't bother with calling me Mrs. Peace or anything."

Emm noted that she still considered herself a Mrs. and not a Ms. but made no comment on it. Instead she smiled and nodded. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Come, dear, Warren's this way." She was led through a short hallway into the kitchen and attached dining room. "Warren, you forgot to tell me how pretty she is." If Emm had been Maggie her face would have matched the red of Warren's shirt, instead she just muttered a thanks and took in the kitchen.

"Sorry, mom." He didn't sound sorry, but she didn't really care.

"This looks great." She'd wanted to mock Peace somehow about not talking up her beauty but found herself unable to in the presence of Mrs.- Mae. And the food did look great. Even with Peace involved she would still be getting a better dinner than Elijah.

Mae gave her a little smile and led her to the table. "Don't look at me, Warren's the cook here." She leaned in conspiratorially, ignoring the look Emm was giving her son, and mock whispered. "I'm a little rubbish in the kitchen, if he hadn't learned how to cook he'd have to live off of TV dinners and cereal."

A little smirk formed on Emm's face as Warren set the last of the dishes down and rolled his eyes at her. "Cooking, huh?"

"I can't have a hobby, Garwin?" He echoed her own words back to her and sat down.

Again, she found herself unwilling to argue and wondered why.

He sighed across the little round table and began to serve himself. "Mom, ease up a little." He ignored the different confused looks he got from both of them. "You're doing it without realizing and Garwin without the necessity to argue on everything I say is a little unsettling."

"I do not argue with everything you say." She looked surprised. "Oh! Oh, I'm back to normal." She smiled, satisfied. "What was that?"

Mae tutted at herself and took the bowl of rice pilaf that Warren handed her. "That was me, sorry. I control emotions." She gave her an apologetic look. "I wanted you to feel at ease but I guess I went overboard and stopped you from arguing with Warren, which is apparently a bad thing." She passed the bowl over to Emm.

"It is a bad thing. It's the foundation of our entire relationship." Whatever crazy antagonistic partnership it was. "We're known throughout the school for it."

Peace nodded across from her.

"If we stopped arguing one day they'd take us to see Nurse Spex." She set the rice bowl back down in the center of the table. "But, thank you, for trying to make me feel at ease." She thought perhaps there were still residual effects that continued to relax her. Maybe it was just Mae's presence.

It irked him a little that she got on so readily with his mother, but he had to admit she would always be the friendlier one out of the two of them. Her family had been very welcoming, and it had surprised him, but his own disposition prevented him from laughing as easily as she now was. In any case, he'd known there was no way she wouldn't get along with his mother. He disliked her, of course, due to some never-ending antagonistic chain the beginnings of which he couldn't remember, but he'd known his mother would like her.

"I mean, can you imagine all the 'you wouldn't like me when I'm angry' jokes? I'll stick with being a powerless sidekick, thank you very much." She'd also been much more forthcoming when asked about her powers than she had been with him. He blamed his mother for that and the fact that she was probably still making Garwin too relaxed.

"Warren, I'll take care of the dishes, show Emm around a bit." Emm chuckled to herself, realizing all parents were the same.

"Thank you again, for having me. Even if you didn't have much choice in the matter." They exchanged smiles before Mae shooed them out of the kitchen and into the hallway. "Lead on, Peace."

Peace was not quite so enthusiastic in his tour guide duties as she had been but she figured a "that's mom's room, bathroom, my room," would have to do. His room, she noted, was more spacious than hers and impeccably tidy. She'd always seen Peace as a typical boy with a messy room and clothes thrown all about (despite the fact that neither Dan nor 'Lijah were like that) and was surprised when she realized that absolutely everything was in its place.

From the papers on his desk to his CDs (alphabetized by artist and album title) everything was neat and organized. Even without the comforting clutter she was accustomed to his room was nice. The walls were a deep enough red that they didn't hurt your eyes, but not so deep that she felt the need to call him a sissy emo child or vampire or anything of the sort. Like the rest of the house it was inviting and damn if his bed didn't look comfortable. She considered looking into a new mattress.

"Well, well, well. You cook and you're absurdly neat." She looked over to his spot on the bed where he'd been trying to ignore her. "Peace, you have layers."

He gave her a long sideways glance. "Compare me to an onion and I'll throw you right out the window."

She waved her finger mockingly and moved to sit on the bed (he'd made himself at home on her's) and leaned forward to study his CD collection. "Nuh-uh. Your mom likes me, she wouldn't be too happy if you did that." She frowned at his CDs.

"You give me crap about my musical choices but half of these aren't from this decade either!" Though some CDs were of more recent bands quite a few of them were from the 80's. One particular CD caught her eye and she let herself slide off the bed to reach it. She heard him groan behind her. "Ha! I knew you'd like him! Everyone loves David Bowie."

Ignoring her declaration of victory he snatched the case from her hands. "Not everyone loves him, Garwin, and certainly not like you do. He's good, that's all."

She paid him no mind and just snatched the case back. "He's a god, Peace. Get it right." Turning back to his stereo system she removed the previous disk- which she was surprised to learn was her mix- and replaced it with the one in her hands. "You should just learn to not disagree with me anymore. I'm always right."

The pillow that smacked her in the back of the head set off another fight that somehow ended in a temporary truce based on Westerns and Steve McQueen.