xx49.07.26 | 10:22 | Still Saturday

Mum and Dad are leaving again. Still more 'investigating'. Mum's been avoiding me all morning, she's down in the hangar doing checks on her ship, which almost definitely means they're hiding something—if she was around I'd just ask her 'where are you going and what are you doing?' and she'd have to tell me. Although I probably wouldn't do that, actually. I want to know and I think I have a RIGHT to know, but abusing someone's honesty curse like that is kind of Villain. Not very Hero at all. And I know better than anybody how irritating it is to constantly tell the truth. Still, I do want to know, so I asked Dad about it. He wouldn't tell me, though. He said it was 'sensitive'. Uh-huh.

Anyway. Guess where my best friend is this morning? Yep, in Daniel's workshop, helping. Apparently she's a draftsman, whatever that is. Oh THANK YOU, Opal—Opal just popped up a little window, 'draftsman: a skilled worker who draws plans of buildings or machines', apparently the live update thing isn't the only adjustment Daniel made. Now even my Opal is making me feel stupid. Great.

Here's Dad again—I'm in the lounge writing this, he's skulking through very suspiciously. Yes, father, I am watching you. Yes, father, I see that guilty look in your eyes.

He's gone now, through to the kitchen. Probably making a packed lunch for him and Mum. Flying from the moon is easier than flying to the moon (apparently), but it still takes time.

Sigh. I wish I was going with them. No I don't. Yes I do. No, I want to spend time with C2—but she's not even AROUND, she's with stupid Daniel in his stupid workshop. I might as well not be here—whoops, here they are, C2 and Daniel I mean

[Entry Timed Out]

xx49.07.26 | 15:09 | Still Saturday

So Mum and Dad have left already, Dad just did a quick 'all right, we're going now, be good, don't do anything impulsive, we'll be in contact with you very soon, Charlotte PLEASE don't do anything rash' thing and then they were gone. Kind of abrupt but I guess they've got Things To Do.

I am POSSIBLY feeling a little bit better now. Not because they left, but because C2 and I MIGHT be okay and also all right I can't lie I'm really happy and everything is great again. Pretty much. I mean I'm still a bit worked up about how close Daniel and C2 got so quickly, but C2 said some things to me this morning that kind of made things better. I'm just such a dork about this stuff. Fifteen years of fiction did not adequately prepare me for real life relationships. Anyway, after C2 and Daniel came in from his workshop he went off to do monitoring duty (we're back on since Mum and Dad left) and C2 sat on the couch and watched TV with me, it was a documentary about alternate power sources and actually pretty interesting, I don't usually get into those sorts of things but C2 explained some stuff that I didn't quite understand and so pretty soon I was having fun with her, it was kind of funny actually, there'd be something difficult on the screen and I'd look over at her for an explanation, the first few times I had to ask her but after that she realised what was going on and as soon as I looked over she started explaining, then towards the end she was doing the explaining almost before I looked at her.

Anyway, after the thing ended I remembered that I was a little bit annoyed at her, but before I could say anything she beat me to it:

"I'm sorry I spent the morning helping Daniel. I came here to see you and spending time with you should be my highest priority."

I didn't say anything. Maybe I should have, but I was kind of scared of what my honesty curse might make me say if I opened my mouth.

"Daniel explained ... certain things to me," C2 was continuing. "Are you jealous that he and I get along well?"

"No, of course I'm not," I said, then instantly followed that with, "Yes, I am, of course I am, why do you like him better than me?"

Stupid honesty curse. C2 took it well, though. She just nodded thoughtfully, then said:

"Daniel isn't my best friend. You are my best friend. I like your brother. I want him to be my friend. But he can't replace you. Maybe you feel left out because he and I discussed subjects that you have no interest in or knowledge of. I'm sorry about that. But I ... I don't get on well with many people. At Blackbird ... I like it there, I'm learning many useful things, but I haven't made any friends. Even before, in Emerald Hill, I realised that my relationship with others was ... tenuous. When they learnt that I was scientifically promoted, they rejected me. I haven't had any contact with them since then. It's difficult for me to engage with people. When I find any sort of connection, I feel good. I was surprised that talking with your brother was so easy and so comfortable. It's something that I haven't felt since ... since I met you."

At that point I was feeling awful that I'd ever doubted her. She IS my best friend.

"Of course I want you to get on with him," I said. "I think it's ... of course, it's good. I know it's hard for you. It's ... um, it's hard for me, too. I mean ... you're my only friend, you know." I managed to smile. "You're already beating me, you have two."

C2 looked puzzled.

"Me and Daniel," I explained. She made a cute little 'oh!' noise, then she kind of smiled.

"Maybe it's too soon to call him my 'friend'—"

"Are you kidding?" I said. "He doesn't like ANYONE, I mean he goes on his chatrooms and his netgroups but he's always complaining about how stupid and shallow and boring everyone is. If he had his way he'd just spend his entire life up here on the moon fiddling in his workshop—trust me, C2, you are the closest to a friend Daniel is EVER going to get. It's sad, I know, but true."

"Oh." C2 sounded pleased. "As long as you don't mind—"

"Of course I don't mind! I love that you two get on!" And it must have been true, because I didn't feel so much as a twinge from my honesty curse. "But I really want to spend time with you, just the two of us—we're best friends, right? So let's do best friend stuff!"

"Okay." C2 actually smiled then. "What do you want to do?"

"No way, you get to choose. Um, not that there's much to do around here, we've got lots of movies and TV shows and games and that kind of thing, and there's the Training Room if you want to do something there—"

"Do you have anything about scientifically promoted individuals?"

The way C2 said that was really weird, I mean usually she talks in that cute flat voice of hers, but with this she almost blurted.

"Um, of course," I said. "Pretty much everything, actually, probably the biggest collection of super information in the world. Well, not 'in the world', 'off the world', but you get what I mean. Um, why?"

"I want to learn," C2 said, firmly. "I hardly know anything about the community, the history ... even about my own promotion."

"Psychic Shielding? It's not like it's one of the weird complicated ones, like Universal Empathy or Perception Clarity, it just means you're immune to psychic waves, they can't affect you at all. Well, in certain cases they could, I mean like when Dulleye was fighting the original Blue Spark—Dulleye's power wasn't actually a 'power' at all, not technically, his aura was 'anti-psychic' in nature, it's REALLY rare but pretty much meant he was—um, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," said C2. "I was just thinking that everyone has their own area of expertise."

"Huh?" I still don't get what she meant by that.

"Could I please ask, is it all right if we start at the beginning? With the history of the scientifically promoted community? I prefer things to be ... linear."

"Well, fine, I guess—I mean, I never mind watching all the old videos, some of those fights were amazing, it was SO different back then, before The Event of course—"

"The Event," C2 said. "I know little about it, except that it killed so many scientifically promoted individuals."

"Oh. Um. Well, I guess we'll get to that eventually." The Event isn't exactly my favourite subject. Mum and Dad were there, you know. I guess technically so was I, Mum was pregnant with me at the time. It's only because of The Force putting up one of his shields that they survived, and even then they got lucky. "But let's start with the fun stuff, the Golden Age—I mean, a lot of it's pretty basic and if you ask me the Chrome Age is where things really start to get good, but if you're looking for history the Golden Age is the best place to start. Plus you'll get to see Dad with long hair, he looked hilarious."

So then we spent like three hours just watching all the old videos, like of Dad and Mum when they were just starting out, there's a surprising amount of amateur footage of them and even some professional stuff, especially of Mum—she still worked as a stuntwoman and test pilot back then, she was VERY popular. C2 was really interested, like maybe almost as interested as me (except NOBODY is as interested as me in Super History). She said that they never even talked about this stuff at her school, which is so weird—I mean, what's more interesting than supers? Nothing, right? I have to wonder what they taught. If you take supers away from the world, what are you left with? Not a lot! Nothing interesting, anyway. I mean ... I mean, YES, after The Event that's pretty much what happened, a world without supers, or without 'active' supers anyway, and before 1st Gens like Mum and Dad manifested their powers I guess the world didn't have supers at all ... but if you look at the history of the world BEFORE the manifestation singularity basically NOTHING happened. For like HUNDREDS of years. History without supers in it is boring.

Anyway, I'm writing this out in the monitoring room—have I described that yet? It's really nice, actually, it's one of the lowest rooms in the base, just above the tops of the tallest trees in the jungle so the view is really nice, and it's got these really big high windows in a kind of semi-dome, I don't know how to describe it but it gives you a really nice feeling, you've got the green of the jungle ahead and the blue of the fake sky above, even though the rest of the room is filled with computers and big screens and that kind of cold hard electronic stuff it still feels really open and natural.

But enough of that, like I said I'm writing this out because I'm stuck on monitoring duty. C2 said she'd help me, but I generously let her off—I mean, because it's her she'd probably even enjoy this stuff but her education into the history and culture of superheroes (and supervillains too I guess; know your enemy!) is WAY more important.

So anyway, I'd better get back to work. I've been writing this off and on while waiting for this unbelievably slow scanner to sweep through the Sparkling Islands—I know, we're STILL on them, even though OF COURSE there's been nothing since Arrow Island. I kind of lost where I was there—oh right, I should probably stop writing now and concentrate on what I'm doing. I don't really have anything more to write anyway, except that having C2 here is fun again and I'm REALLY looking forward to getting off monitoring duty so I can do more stuff with her.