Thorsday morning (TWO):

​      Shawnacy and Noel sat across from each other in the hot tub. Neither said a word. Shawnacy never spoke, and Noel was blind. Noel still wore his opaque glasses, even though he sat in bubbling hot water that made them steam up. Shawnacy, her naturally blonde hair pinned to her scalp, sat with her head against the stone wall with a dazed, half grin on her face.

     Brock zizzed into the room using his azure force power. He glowed sky blue.

     "Mind if I join the party?" he asked.

​     He didn't wait for a reply. He slowly turned off his azure force until the wheels of his chair hit the floor. He wore only a sky blue terry cloth robe. He hung it and his towel from a hook embedded in the cement wall. He used his azure force to elevate himself out of his wheelchair and into the hot tub's bubbling water. His skin was fish belly pale. Anyone who ever got a look at his legs, which added up to only a very few people, would almost always initially think, okay, there's no way he's ever going to be able to walk on those. They were loose flesh wrapped around bone and not much of anything else. His penis couldn't be seen because his gut was so big. If he pulled his gut away from his lap, what anybody would see was a penis as shriveled and as small as a worm in an apple. Brock smiled at his two friends. "So what are we talking about?" he asked.

     Noel nodded towards Shawnacy. Talk? Her?

     "You know what I mean."

     "We were enjoying the silence."

     "Oh, I see, and now here I come along and..."

     "I'm not saying that."

     Without looking at Brock, Shawnacy climbed out of the tub. She used her hands to keep her private areas covered.

     Brock yelped, "Wait! You don't have to..."

     She grabbed her towel and robe and left to go dry off in the weight room.

     "Okay, that's sad," Brock said. "I am so sorry she feels she has to do that."

     Noel put up his hands as if to say, please, leave me out of this, but then he asked, "Really, do you blame her?"

     "I don't blame anybody for...but, come on, for the last two years the four of us have been cooped up in this house..."

     "We're not prisoners here."

​     "We've trained together, we live in the same house together, and Shawnacy's so...we've talked about this before. Remember that night Shawnacy and Estelle went out, and we got drunk on...on..."

     "Blackberry wine, of all things. Dear God."

​     "And you said it then. You told me how attracted you were to Nacy, and you can't even...even...oh shit. I'm sorry, Noel."​

​     "I can't even see how beautiful Shawnacy is because I am blind. I believe that is how you intended to finish that sentence."​

​     "It's like she's got some sort of aura or something. It's like she glows with beauty, if that's even possible."

     "I've never met a single person, man or woman, sightless or otherwise, who wasn't attracted to..."

​     "Exactly! That's exactly what I'm saying. That's unique, isn't it?"

     "What is?"

​     "Name one other person you can say that about, that anyone who's ever met them has felt attracted to them?"

​     "Like either one of us has a wide circle of friends."

​     "It could be a soul weapon, right?"

​     "We already know Shawnacy's soul weapon. No one gets more than one soul weapon."

     "But maybe, just maybe..."

​     "Maybe she's just a beautiful woman from the inside out. That's a gift, I grant you, but a soul weapon? Listen Brock, I understand why you did what you did..."​

​     "Because you've thought of doing the same damn thing yourself."

     "No. I don't care how drunk I'd ever get, I would never...That is not the direction in which my fantasies go, no."

     "It's not like I groped her. It's not like I forced myself on her in any manner."

     "That's not what I heard."

     "The last couple months or so it's been like I've been living a lie. Just to be in the same room with her anymore makes me crazy I want her so bad."

     "And so you..."

     "And now..."

     "That's kind of the deal now though, isn't it?"

     "Huh?"

​     "I mean, it's not just you and Shawnacy...Lately, there's been a sea change in how we all feel about each other. We've lived in this house together, pretty much just the four of us, for the last two years. None of us, except for Shawnacy, really go out." 

     "You're putting this whole thing on me."

​     "I'm putting it on all of us. Listen, there's no one who loves the three of  you more than me, and I'm certain you all feel the same, but, you know, come on, let's face it. This is all getting a little stale. Of course we're starting to get on each other's nerves. It'd be unnatural if we didn't."

     "I just refuse to be ashamed for..."

     "No one's asking you to..."

     "Everyone's acting like I'm..."

     Estelle bounded into the room. "Hey Noel, I hope you don't mind if I..." Then she saw that Brock was already in the tub. "Oh." She'd been in the process of taking off her robe to hang on a hook. After she saw that Brock was there, she kept her robe on.

​     "Oh, for God's sake." Brock used his azure power to rise back out of the tub and into his wheelchair. The azure energy also dried the excess moisture on his skin. He put his robe over his lap. "This is turning into way too big of a really stupid deal," he said.

     "Don't worry about it." Estelle slipped off her robe to slide into the tub, and, as she did, she, too, covered the private areas of her body with her hands, just like Shawnacy had done. Not that she needed to. Brock didn't take a single look in her direction.

     Instead, he azured away in his wheelchair, leaving Estelle alone with Noel.

​     "Brock gives me the creeps," she said. "If I'd known he was here I never would have come down."

     "I think you're both being a little hard on him."

     "He forced himself on her, Noel."

     "He was drunk. They were both drunk."

     "He used his azure power to hold her down. That's wrong no matter how you slice it."

     "But nothing happened. He saw that he was pissing her off and he stopped."

     "He goes anywhere near her again and I'll..."

​     "Oh please. Stop being so melodramatic. We're talking about Brock here, remember? I love Brock. He's been like a brother to us for the last two years."

     "But that's the problem. He's not acting like a brother anymore."

     "He's just...I can't...Look, I don't want to speak for him."

​     And that was it. They said no more. Estelle looked around for a bar of soap, then remembered there wasn't one. She wasn't in a bath tub. She was in a hot tub. She slapped at the water the way an infant would. She didn't like just sitting there without talking. It wasn't any fun. She finally got bored enough to climb back out of the tub to dry off. The hot tub used to be where everyone could let their hair down and just be themselves, but now...ever since Brock had made that way too aggressive move on Shawnacy...

​     Two minutes after Estelle left, Shawnacy returned.

     She slipped into the hot tub to sit across from Noel once again.

     She leaned her head back until it touched the stone wall.

     A half-smile returned to her face.

​     At which point the ALERT! signal flashed in both their minds...

​     ...as it did in the minds of Estelle and Brock.​

     They were all being contacted, telepathically, by the Azure.

     Whoa.

     At long last...

     ...another mission.

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