Her friends pause and think about this as they start to understand her dilemma.  Faye strokes her chin in deep thought and says, “When you explain it that way, I totally see your frustration.  I’m just saying that, from the outside, you look rude when dealing with Paul.  You know I don’t care if you like Paul or not.  I just get annoyed seeing everyone try to cheer him up because his friend is always, noticeably, ignoring him, and I believe that’s more of the thing everyone else sees.  It’s like Elf and me, everyone wanted me to calm down, but I took that as they didn’t want him having anything to do with me at all.  Now that we’re normal, people still tease us about dating someday, and we might joke about it between ourselves, but as a whole I’ve come to terms with being just friends.  There are going to be people who tease you about dating Paul, but most of your complaints and critiques will go away if you stop taking it out on him.  You’re a Christian.  Bear one another’s burden.  Don’t play drama games.  If you have issues, be open with him rather than leave him alone in the dark.”

    “I hope I didn’t make it worse with the chancing game,” says Kammy.

    Thinking about what Faye said, Gigi tells Kamron her game with Paul was fine.  “Besides, I was having a good time talking to Christy and Vahnna, so I was too distracted to focus on the game, which is what I’m talking about.  If I can get too distracted to constantly watch Faye and Elfie, whom everyone knows I love, then why am I a jerk if I don’t make it my life’s mission to watch Paul every. single. second. of the day?”

    Kammy was going to say something.  In fact, there was something she was going to say that she felt was really helpful for Gracie’s comment about everyone expecting her to date Paul, but Faye’s monologue has caused her to forget, so she simply asks if the girls can pray together about it.  The group is still distracted, so the three best friends are able to catch a quick moment.  This moment isn’t quick the entire time, though, with each girl pausing to apologize to the others for saying this and doing that, but overall, the mini-prayer meeting goes smoothly and transitions back to normal conversation without causing a distraction.  Paul, thanks to his insecurity senses, noticed, and Ent also noticed, but neither one of these had any reason to complain about such a precious site, so both boys just continued to focus on the other conversations around them.

    “I hope next time, we can get Dilemma in on one of the lessons,” says Sakura.  “We talked to her about it and thought about it, but we weren’t sure if the schedules would work out.  Hopefully, we can squeeze her in next time, or maybe we can visit you guys instead of making you do all the work.”

    “Who is Dilemma?” asks Owan.

    Perking up, Sakura is delighted to talk of her best friend.  “Dilemma is our techbot friend.  She’s the sweetest person you will ever meet!”

    “Is Dilemma from XI or from Storyboard VII?” Paul inquires.

    “Oh, she’s from XI alright.  I guess I should call her a Powered more than a techbot, since that’s what she is.  Since the two are basically the same these days, it really doesn’t matter which you call her.”

    “What?!” the kids all cry out.

    Duplica quickly reminds them of last year’s lesson about Alios Crucian.  “Before you jump to the conclusion that Dilemma is a giant female robot that’s going to eat us all, remember that Victor Grille had developed a way to make humans into Powered, able to grow and shrink as needed.  Well, he had worked on this in addition to making his perfect woman of destruction, Jeko, and this resulted in a wave of female Powered that were more or less an advanced version of techbot.  Even though his intentions were evil, and his wicked works were all destroyed, the benefits of his research have been used for quite a while, and in fact, they had been used long before we even knew Grille was the one to be thanked for such an ironic contribution to the System.  Mind you, we’ve checked since discovering his tie to it all, and I can assure you this new kind of techbot is free of the influence of Grille.  These are safe robots, okay?”

    The kids all give a cautious, “Okay.”

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