Perfect Storm

Chapter 9

I ran to Reed’s room, knocking on his door, mood back in place. He had decided to take a nap, to allow his mind to rest so he could think better. I was about to interrupt that. I wanted to celebrate, and not in the way I had originally.

            He opened the door, and rubbed his eyes.

            “Mags, I told you I was going to take an hour,” he groaned.

            “Reed, I just diffused Jenny,” I said, practically jumping in front of him.

            “What?” he said, awake and excited. “You what!”

            “I diffused the bomb I made!” I said, and he picked my up and spun me around in a hug.

            “That’s amazing,” he said, kissing my head.

            “I know. I was looking over the schematics, and realized where I went wrong. Now, hopefully I can correct it, and the serum I made to diffuse radioactive ions won’t explode and will have a vessel to carry it in!”

            “Congrats. We’ll celebrate tonight, once we’re done with the schematics for-”

            “Right, I’ll go look at those now,” I said. “Go back to bed, I just wanted to let you know.”          

            “Congrats, Mags, I’m proud of you. Dad would be too.”

            I nodded, smiling.

            I skipped back to the lab, and saw Ben.

            “What are you so happy about?” he asked.

            “I diffused my bomb,” I said, grinning.

            He laughed. “Only you would be happy about that.”

            “I’ll have you know, Reed was very excited and proud of me,” I said.

            “Okay, correction, only a Richards would be happy,” he said, and grinned, giving me a careful hug, but still squeezed the daylights out of me. “Good job, kiddo.”

            “Thanks Ben,” I said, choking a bit, but I tried to hide it. I didn’t want Ben to constantly feel like crap because of what happened. He didn’t deserve it.

            He put me down, and I smiled, kissing his cheek.

            “I have to go and look at the schematics for the machine that will fix us, so I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I asked.

            “Go, work,” he said, shooing me.

            “See you later,” I said, and went back into the lab, to Reed’s desk, and started looking over what he had.

            “Hey, I heard you diffused the bomb,’” Sue said, walking in. “It apparently is quite an event, from what Reed said.”

            “10 months in the making,” I told her, nodding. “Hey, I wanted to apologize for this morning, I was running on an hour of sleep, and no coffee. I still shouldn’t have acted the way I did.”

            She shook her head, waving it off. “No problem. Reed had the same problem.”      

            I grinned. “Richards family trait. My dad used to be the same. But he always had my mom to yell at him, and tell him to go back to bed.”