“No, I’m not talking to reporters at this time!” Jeremy yelled from his couch, watching anime with hot, well-made ramen he’d made himself.

He was quite proud of it, but he couldn’t bask in his satisfaction when someone kept knocking on his door over and over, despite his requests for them to leave.

Frustrated at their rudeness, Jeremy set down his ramen and opened the door, quite cross.

Instead of some camera-wielding maniac asking for his time, a white-haired maniac wasted none of hers walking in without comment like she belonged.

“Quaint little home,” Jana said, hands in her pockets as she walked around the room, judging it.

“Wha-who-why...” Jeremy wasn’t really sure what to say, so he only studdered in confusion.

Jana looked back at him, eyebrow raised like he was being foolish. “What? You said I could always talk to you.”

“Yes, but I-I figured you’d give me a heads up first or something?!” he said, throwing the door closed, along with his hands into the air.

“Look, I can’t just magically make your phone number appear on my contacts list. Also, your sister made sure your personal accounts on social media and stuff were relatively secret.”

He crossed his arms. “You wouldn’t have told me even if you had my phone number, I bet.”

“HA! Yeah, I wouldn’tve’. Anyway, I’mma be living here for a bit.”

“Scuse me? This is my house you can’t just-”

She held her hands out defensively. “Hey, hey, don’t celebrate too quick, its only for a couple of days.”

“I’m not celebrating.”

“No need to lie, I can tell you’re lonely~”

“Oh my god...Well, since I can’t exactly stop a living calamity, could I at least know why...”

Jana scowled at him, furious.

“Err, a living nuclear missile.” It didn’t seem to make her much less angry, but it was clear she wanted nothing to do with the accidental name mix-up. It didn’t take a genius to notice she personally despised The Living Catastrophe. For good reason, of course. “Well, I can’t exactly evict you, but could I know why you can’t stay at your house? Hell, could you tell me why you’re at my house?”

“Reporters,” she simply responded.

“Right. Why can’t you move to...literally any other house?”

“No particular reason.”

Jeremy sardonically put a hand on his chest. “Look, I know I’m a wonderful candidate for a harem protagonist, but maybe I should wait about four years before I start my cliche rom-com.”

“The fuck’re you talking about? Do you have stuff I need for peanut butter and jam? I just flew three hours straight and I’m starving.”

“We don’t buy jam...”

Jana looked at him, bewildered like she’d heard the world was upsidedown. “Dude, why?” She moved to the refrigerator and poked her nose inside. “What’ll you tell me next: you don’t buy milk?”

“Psychi hates milk.”

Her face turned to one of betrayal. “That fucking cretin.”

“Just kidding. I buy almond milk, but the brand has got lots of sugar in it for Psychi.”

“Hmm...” Jana pulled a milk bag from the fridge and put it to her face as she appraised it. “I guess this’ll do.”

She threw it to the side, and it floated in the air. She then took out a bottle of juice and telekinetically opened all the cabinets to find a fork. She took a nearby glass, filled it with juice, stabbed a fork into it, and froze the juice around it, quickly pulling out a popsicle. She gnawed on it as she moved the milk bag to the stove and poured the liquid into a saucepan to heat it up.

She lit the stove. “Lucky you. You have a stove that doesn’t break every other second.”

Jeremy looked at her sideways, looking rather humored. “Maybe if you didn’t freeze things on accident, that wouldn’t be a problem.”

She looked back at him skeptically. “On accident? What are you talking about?”

He pointed to the floor. “There’s still frost from when I called you an inappropriate name.”

“Oh, yeah, there is.”

Jeremy stared at the lingering ice crystals with a mixed expression. “Now that Psychi’s gone, I guess the house won’t randomly get blown apart...”

Jana looked at him with a distressing twist of her mouth. “Err, that sort of thing happened?”

“Yeah. Sometimes her power went out of control and broke things.”

“That should not be happening.”

“Well, doesn’t it happen to you, like when you spout all that cold about the place?”

“Kha- No~I do that because translucent air makes me look scary! Think fast!”

Jeremy fumbled as a popsicle was flung towards him on short notice, but barely managed to catch the fork handle before it spattered on the floor. “Rudest girl I’ve met.”

“More like the coolest girl you’ve met.”

Jeremy fell backward over his couch’s armest and into its cushion... “How often do you make cold puns?”

“I limit myself to once a week.”

He put an arm over his eyes. “I hate it.”

“Not my fault when everyone around me makes the puns all the damn time. It rubs off on me.”

Jeremy sat back up, onto the armrest, then began to enjoy his popsicle. “So...” he began, before faltering. Maybe it would be nicer to the girl’s pride if he didn’t ask. “So, did you plan on doing something while you’re in my humble abode?”

“Hmm...I was thinking we could go on a picnic.”

Jeremy shook his head in disbelief. “Are you trying to be romantic somehow?”

“I don’t like your flirty jokes.”

“I’m the fourteen-year-old here. You’re the one that asked me out on a picnic!”

“Is that somehow strange?!”

He rubbed his temple, getting another headache. “I swear to god, your ignorance is astounding. Do you often ask boys on picnics in the middle of winter?!”

“Yes, actually.”

...

Jeremy’s eyes flickered in disbelief. “Scuse’ me?”

“I’ve picnicked with plenty of boys and girls.”

“No need to brag about your love life.”

“Are young boy’s thoughts all about that sort of thing?” A fork threateningly bulleted towards Jeremy's forehead and stopped just before it killed him, clattering on the ground under his Psi-negation field. “Am I talking to an idiot?”

Jeremy ignored the threat on his life, though only because he was used to things flying around him at the speed of sound. “Dude, you don’t invite a boy to that sort of thing! That’s...grooming or something!”

“I am so annoyed at you,...” Jana trailed off like she forgot the next word.

“Don’t tell me...” Jeremy sighed, putting a hand to his forehead in exasperation. “You forgot my name, didn’t you.”

“Yeah, well it was pretty forgettable.”

“Is that an insult or excuse? Either way, you’re just being lazy.”

“I bet you’re comparing me to Parkarka right now. I goddamned swear, if one more person compares me to that maniac girl who remembered the faces and names of an entire fucking country, I’m going to kill someone.”

“You’ve killed enough people already, no need to take another life.”

His insult cut deep, prompting the back of another fork to fly towards his head, knocking him down, back on his couch. “Oh fuck you! Like you know a damned thing about my life! Don’t go insulting others based on your stupid sister’s sheltered view of the world!”

...

“U-uhh...J...Ja...whatever the heck your name was, are you...awake?”

...

“Oh fuck, sorry about that!” she said to a ‘nonexistent’ listener, wasting no time running out of the house, with Jeremy in tow.

Though, something felt strange.

“SoOoooOooo, you’re finally awake?”

Jeremy sat up in his bedroll, confused. He was in a dark purple room, or maybe a tent. Standing on the other side of the room, arms crossed, Jana looked down on him, looking a bit smug.

“Congratulations, you hit a fourteen-year-old with a fork. I’m really impressed by your prowess.”

She sighed. “Oh shut it.”

“Don’t act annoyed, I can tell you thought it was funny.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Ohhhhh is that so? How?”

He pointed to her face. “When my sister accidentally bops me with stuff, she thinks it’s funny too, sometimes...other times she’s way too worried -also, where am I?”

“I quickly took you to a local healer, just in case you got a concussion.”

“How thoughtful to fix a problem you made.”

She spoke through an exhausted sigh. “All in a day’s work.”

A man in a dark, heavy coat walked through the room’s curtains, hands behind his back, looking nonchalant. Without a word, he walked to Jeremy and held a pendant in front of him. “Look at this very closely.”

Jeremy followed the pendant as it swayed side to side.

“Is everything fine with your sight?”

“Yeah.”

He stuffed it back into his pocket. “Then I guess you’re good. I suggest not playing with forks like that again.”

“Not my fault Jana chucked it at me. Who even does that!?”

The healer glared at Jana, clearly angered that she had left out that little detail. She met his gaze, confident. After a good, long staring contest, she weakly scoffed, moving her head to the side in a rare show of slight guilt. The same fork that had hit Jeremy, which was on a nightstand, flung off it and ricocheted off Jana’s face, making her look back at the healer with an incredulous expression as it fell into her hand.

“Well, I trust my fellow psychic won’t do this to you again, but knowing her as much as I do, she’ll probably come back with you to some other healer and make another white lie to lay the blame off herself.”

Jeremy slid off the bed. “Wow, you know her well. How long have you known her?”

“We’ve met twice in the past year.”

“Talk about intimate,” Jeremy sarcastically noted.

“I’m going to kill you,” the tank-top wearing girl growled.

“Angering others is a sin, I guess. Do you wanna take me home now? How long was I asleep, anyway?”

“Literally minutes. Also, I’m not carrying you on my back or anything.”

Jeremy looked at her, surprised. She must have left the house pretty fast if she managed to get to Manars’s healing tent so quickly. It was at the edge of the vast town’s outskirts, about forty miles away. Though, since it was the only healer’s tent in the town, everyone knew about it. “Hmph. Well, let’s go.”

He followed Janna out of the room, and through another room before stepping outside. “You can carry me by telekinesis, by the way,” he noted.

“No, I-”

“Jeremy.”

He turned around to see Manars trotting towards him, hands still in his pockets. “I’m sorry about what happened to Psychi.” He paused for a few seconds, averting his eyes. “If you ever need anything now that you’re...you know, alone...”

“I’m fine. I’ll find my sister...” Jeremy looked down with worry. “...no matter what. But thanks anyway.”

“I...” Jana began, trailing off. “Anyway, do your Psychic-meditation thing.”

“Sure,” Jeremy said, closing his eyes for a few seconds. After he opened them again, he lazily looked back at Jana and spoke in monotone. “Come to think of it, did you ever get your rib healed?”

She glanced at the healer as he walked back into his tent complex. “Yeah. Just before you woke up, I paid Manars to give me a quick fix-up.”

“Surprised you bothered,” Jeremy said.

“I’m not a masochist, you know.”

“That’s news to me.”

Jeremy began to float up. “Oh, shut up. I don’t fight to get injured.”

“So you say.”

They shot away towards the horizon, flying side by side under Jana’s psychic barrier. Jana flew Jeremy across the city, sparse for words, which suited the teens fine since they weren’t excactly the talkative types. Jeremy couldn’t think straight anyway since he was in the middle of meditation, which made talking difficult.

That changed, however, when he saw a blue-robed figure flying alongside them. He sputtered out, “Why?!” before dropping like a rock, down towards the pavement not far below.

“Be careful, you idiot!” Jana yelled, calling a cloud of snowflakes to catch him. It wasn’t necessary, as he quickly fell back into a trance, despite his imminent peril. She raised him back up when she realized it was possible. “The heck you doing? If this wasn’t totally safe, why would you insist I do this!?” she complained.

Jeremy readjusted his clothes. “I just saw something strange. Besides, I knew you could save me.”

Jana shook her head, continuing towards the house. “It’s pretty amazing you could have that level of trust in my abilities. It isn’t easy to make someone hover when you can’t move anything in a three-foot radius of their body.”

“I live with my sister. I know the limits of you all’s abilities.”

“I sure hope you do!” For a moment, they soared across the less and less urban area in silence. “Something’s been bothering me, J...Jeremy.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Is it just me...or does it feel like we’re being followed?”

The silent blue-robed entity’s eyes widened, and it quickly disappeared.

“I’m not sure why a feeling would be worth trusting,” Jeremy lied.

“Well, I keep using my recognition ability, and I keep feeling like someone is nearby. I’m not picking up on them anymore, though.”

“You have recognition?” Jeremy asked, changing the subject. He wasn’t really sure why he was covering up the being’s existence, but he could tell they didn’t want to be found out.

“Among other things. That’s beside the point, however. Do you have any idea why it would seem like that?”

“Nope. Maybe your power is bugging out because of my ability.”

“Maybe,” Jana said, looking down on Jeremy with an unusually subtle frown.

...

“So...anything going on in your life?” Jeremy asked, wanting to avoid a suspicious silence.

...

Jana said nothing for the rest of the flight.