“So, should we teleport her over here, Cat?” Jo asks, making that annoying sound straws make when reaching the end of a beverage.
“Hey, I’m busy dealing with the Grille freak right now. Faye can handle herself. We have a stamina gauge, so it won’t kill her if we wait a little longer.”
“Ha ha!” cackles Jo. “It won’t kill her. I love the pun.”
As the kids fear what will happen next, the machine’s remaining eye begins to flicker and the arms shake. Without warning, its left arm launches at Kammy Crystal with a speed this machine has not shown up until now. It lifts her up so that she is basically eye-to-eye with it and begins to squeeze her. The grip is only tight enough to scare her, not hurt her…yet. With its first victim encased within its chest, the Powered displays another new ability, speech.
“Now, I will make you suffer, you little moth,” says the machine.
“I’m not a moth. I’m a butterfly,” insists Kammy, “and your data’s insufficient if you think I’m even half done.”
The machine voices its great displeasure at her persistence. “You’re so annoying, Kammy! Why do you always have to be such a snooty jerk?!”
“Faye?!” Despite the machine’s giant-like voice, Kammy realizes the tone of the last whine, as does everyone else.
“Oh, so smart as usual. Yeah, I let myself get captured so I could kick your can. I’m tired of you being so mean to me all. the. time.” The grip tightens with the greatest of care not to hurt her. “Now that I’m bigger and stronger than all of you put together, you know what I’m going to do, smarty skirt? Of course, you do, because you know everything, don’t you?”
“No,” says an angry and scared Kammy, “I don’t know what you’re going to do next.”
Bringing her closer to where the mouth would be if this Powered had one, it says, “I’m going to kiss you, silly. He he!” Kammy is confused and annoyed as her face is carefully placed against the head for a second. “There, and next I’m going to admit I’m not that mad at you. You can be mean sometimes, and it really hurts my feelings. I wish you wouldn’t be so mean. But you know I could never hurt you. Now, as to why this killer car is my baby now, I just started blasting away in here until I could move the arms by myself! Now, I have my own robot!”
Everyone stops.
“Excuse me?” Kammy roars. “You mean you risked blowing yourself up, getting fried alive, just so you could take that machine over? Faye, you could have been killed! And to think you did it because I jumped on you!” Startled by the swift rush of all the events, K.C. begins to cry. “I couldn’t live with myself if you lost your life due to me losing my temper. It was cruel of you to trick me like that.”
Gigi speaks up so Faye can hear her. “It was kind of harsh to do that in front of everyone, sis.”
“Was it?!” The massive fist quickly lets go, dropping poor Kammy like a rock until she realizes she’s been released. “Kammy,” says Faye in the monstrously deep voice, “I am so, so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to humiliate you, Kam. I was just kidding around. I guess I was mad at how you’ve been barking at me all day when all I wanted to do was help. When you’ve cooled down, I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Looking over at Gigi’s approving gesture, Kammy puts her hands on her hips. “I have something to tell you, too, Faye. I’m sorry for being irritable. If you really had been taken over and had attacked me, I would be getting what I deserve for my undue anger. It was cool how you took that thing over though!” And just like that, Kammy’s geeky fascination makes her forget all her previous rage.
Moments later, the door on the Powered’s chest pops off in a fire blast and little Faye comes flying out, screaming, “Get away, as far as you can! It’s gonna’ blow up!!” Four people died in this explosion. AB, Cat, Jo and Leila all died that day, not from the fight, but from laughter. Keb and Cici were too busy with complaining about the snacks running out to catch the full impact of Faye’s comedic exit.
Inner Man Theatre 