Quest for the Omnistone

Chapter 8: Mission Memories

A/N: Hailow speaks alternately in high and low notes. Bold letters are low notes while high notes are italicized.

Max:

"See ya, Herc! Take it easy on the Herculade, Phil!" I shouted before going through the portal.

I came out just outside Steven's Technolab. Upon entering, I realized that I was the last one there. Crystal and the rest of the D.T.C. were already seated around the table... the table that I bumped a few hours ago, no thanks to Crystal.

"Good, we're all here." Steven stated as I sat down.

"Yeah, I thought you'd never make it, Maxie. Were you held up by Phil or Jaz?" Crystal teased, smirking.

"Neither, actually." I replied coolly. "I just had a nice long chat with Julian." I said the last word nice and slow, knowing the immediate effect it would have on her. It was a little useless and quite dangerous to tease back, but Crystal made it so hard to ignore her endless teasing.

As I predicted, she narrowed her eyes at me. Steven, however, looked confused.

"Julian? As in Julian, the initiate from Brooklyn House? What's he got to do with Crystal?" he asked, a little older-brotherly protectiveness evident in his voice.

"Ooh." I said, an evil grin making its way onto my face. "So cousin Crystal never told you about the time he—" I was cut short by masking tape appearing over my mouth. I narrowed my eyes at Crystal, who looked very annoyed. Perfect.

'What is it?' Steven telepathically asked. Being too annoyed, Crystal forgot about our telepathic communication.

'Back in the Serpent's Shadow time, Julian asked Crystal for a dance at BAG Academy. You know, during Anubis's visit.' I replied, trying to act natural since Crystal was still glaring at me.

'Oh, I see.' He replied, an unreadable expression on his face.

During our stay at Brooklyn House, Crystal would tease me about Jaz, who according to her had a slight crush on me. Remember the time in the third book of the Kane Chronicles; Jaz seemed to be 'flirting' with Carter? Yeah, she was actually talking to me.

You can probably imagine my delight when Julian cut my conversation with Crystal short and asked her to dance with him that night at BAG. Being polite and all, she agreed. I've been teasing her about it whenever she brought up Jaz since then. Conveniently, Steven had stayed at Brooklyn House with Walt to ready our weapons. Julian probably took it as an opportunity. I had noticed his 'little crush' a few days after waking Ra. Carter, however, was disappointed that Steven didn't come. He was probably hoping for an excuse to avoid the dances. Carter and Steven got along well when it came to technology and facts and stuff.

"Ahem." Johnny cleared his throat, breaking me out of my reverie, which was surprisingly only a few seconds. "Let's begin the report now, shall we? Crystal, the tape if you please."

Crystal muttered something under her breath and snapped her fingers.

'RIP!'

"Ow! You did that on purpose!" I complained. Instead of making the tape disappear, she made a hand appear and rip the tape off. Rapidly.

"Johnny, how about you start?" Steven suggested before Crystal had the chance to retaliate. "You went to Narnia, The Hunger Games and Pocahontas, right? Crystal, visualization please?"

 "Okay." she replied, hiding a laugh behind a cough at the word 'Pocahontas'.

Johnny gave her a look, obviously noticing the laugh. Crystal merely smirked as she touched his forehead with one hand and pointed at Jarvis's screen with the other. In the blink of an eye, Johnny's mission was shown on the screen as if the events were happening right now. Johnny began talking and the scene showed him in Narnia.