#go nuts!

Richmond International Airport, USO Lounge, 2002

Her feet can’t touch the ground and the leather of the waiting room chairs is too squeaky for her liking, but there are fewer people in the secluded room than out in the concourse and Mel quite likes not having to press her palms against her ears to quiet the noise.

The Kings don’t travel very often. It’s her first time in an airport, and in an hour, her first time on an airplane, and there’s a strange twist of nerves and excitement in her stomach.

“I like your hat,” a voice sounds behind her. She turns to see a boy around her age peeking over the seats, two blue eyes trained on the logo of her too-big baseball hat. When she doesn’t say anything in response, he asks, “Why’s it say Richmond over the Braves logo? They play in Atlanta.” His nose wrinkles as he says it.

“No,” she frowns. “They play here. At The Diamond. It’d be silly if the Richmond Braves played in Atlanta.”

“Huh. Cool! Well, I really like baseball. North Carolina doesn’t have a major league team, so we mostly just watch the college teams.”

She nods as he rambles on, and it’s very nice, even if she doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. 

“Sorry,” he says suddenly, climbing over the seats to plop down next to her. “I’m Frank. My mom says I can come on strong.”

His hand hovers between them and she lets him shake her arm up and down until they dissolve into a fit of giggles.

“I’m Melissa,” she replies.

“Melissa,” he tries, but his front tooth is knocked out so it comes out more like Melitha. She laughs. “Can I call you Mel?”

Mel. That’s nice. “Yeah,” she smiles. “I think I like that.”

Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, 2025

Mel does not like waiting rooms. They’re so loud, but they’re a necessary evil of emergency medicine, and she needs to acclimate better.

She’s on a preliminary tour with an administrator, on her way to finalize some paperwork before her first official shift at PTMC, so she’s understandably distracted.

So distracted that she didn’t notice someone walking in front of her until she runs bodily into them. The world tilts and she grabs onto whatever she can, which turns out to be a very handsome man’s steady arm and his own scrub top.

“I like your hat,” he smiles when he pulls her upright, pointing up to the worn cap that’s now been knocked askew by their collision. “Virginia, right? Flying Squirrels.”

A strange sense of deja vu washes over her, and it only takes a second of staring into his familiar blue eyes for her to figure it out. 

“Oh,” she breathes. “Hi again.”

Specifically, I'd like to propose that it radiates a special type of energy that happens to give people powers, given a long enough exposure time.

(I mean, why not, right? This is a universe with aliens, magic, and naturally occurring superpowers. Why wouldn't the Astral Pulse also be a source of them?)

Of course, the only two people who have ever had it long enough to have gained enough exposure would be Robbie and Robert. Robbie might have been starting to develop powers, but he died before he could really show them. But Robert? After what happened with Shroud and Invisigal and losing the Astral Pulse after the explosion and then nearly again when Shroud attacked? He sleeps with the damn thing tucked under his pillow. He's not letting it out of his sight again.

Go Nuts!