Beacons of Love

Lighting the Beacon

"Is it ready yet?" Honey anxiously asked, practically bouncing as she peeked over her teammate's shoulder.

"It's done," Randi patiently answered, shaking her head with a soft smile as she indulged her friend's excitement. "I finished the edits this morning, but it's taking a while to upload. You know how slow the system gets in the evening."

Randi returned to watching the slowly expanding progress bar on the screen in front of her. Despite her calm demeanor, Randi couldn't deny the thrill that wormed its way into her. What had started out as a random joke from a friend had taken off without much warning. Honey had been a little hesitant at first, but once they got started, she seemed determined to see it through.

"How about now?"

"Still not done," Randi sighed. "I should've done this earlier, but it took a little longer to finish than I'd expected." Randi had zero experience editing videos or designing an app, but with a little persistence – and a lot of online how-to videos – she'd managed to get it done. "Still a few minutes left."

"That's what you said last time!" Honey complained, stamping her foot in an adorable pout. "What's taking so long?"

"Too many people online, I'd guess," Smit offered from across the room, not even bothering to look away from the game he was playing. "Ha! Noob! That's what you get for camping."

"Speaking of..."

"Smit!" Honey roared...or, well, as close to a roar as she could manage. "Stop hogging all the bandwidth. This is important!" She tried to snatch the controller from his hands, but Smit agilely twisted away from each attempt, eyes still glued on the screen in front of him as he continued to wreak havoc on the other players.

"In a minute, Mom!" Smit shot back, even as his player died in a horrific explosion. "Aw, c'mon Winchester. You really gonna start noob tubin' in here?" Honey abandoned her attempts to stop the online slaughter as Smit berated their classmate for his apparent lack of skill. Instead, she stomped back over to Randi, resigning herself to the never-ending loading cycle.

"You two really going through with that stupidity?" Lilly groaned from her bed, staring daggers at Randi over her textbook. Lilly had made her hatred of their new pet project evident every step of the way, even going so far as to look for ways to stop them. Of course, Randi expected as much and had taken the precaution of backing up all of her files in multiple locations. When their video footage mysteriously vanished one afternoon, she simply pressed on with one of several copies without saying a word.

The look on Lilly's face that evening had been priceless.

"Absolutely," Randi grinned, glancing over her shoulder to her team leader. Lilly continued trying to summon death with her eyes, but eventually gave in and returned to her studies with an exasperated huff. Evidently, she'd given up hope of stopping them, though she'd proven quite the sore loser.

After realizing that Lilly was bent on sabotaging their efforts, Randi installed a lengthy password to protect the file from further attacks. Lilly probably thought she was so smart with that Semblance of hers, connecting with Randi to watch her type. The indignant squawk when Randi typed in Lillyisabutt the next day proved her suspicions. Since then, Randi had been careful to avoid looking at the keyboard as she typed, just to be safe.

"Oh, c'mon. It's not that bad."

"Easy for you to say," Lilly grumbled back, sinking further into her mattress.

"But you two look so cute together!" Honey's rationale did little to appease their leader, who audibly ground her teeth together in annoyance. As always, Honey began to waver against Lilly's irritation. "Does it really bother you that much?"