EPILOGUE
<<<Later that morning>>>
Rain was falling outside, and the various members of the MBL had either returned to their rooms or left the building, still too shaken to stay where they had been when everything had transpired.
Phil sat in a chair in the middle of the kitchen, which looked like a trailer park after a tornado. Phil pushed broken glass around with one foot absently while staring at nothing in particular. He had never felt this lost or this - disconnected - before, although there of course wasn't much of a past in his memory to compare it to.
Danny walked in. "A bit early in the morning to be soul-searching, isn't it?"
Phil shrugged. "I... I don't know, Danny. I can do all this weird stuff without even thinking about it. The sandwich, the window, the cereal, you know. And then something like"- he gestured around him - "Something like this happens and I have no idea what to do. I hid under a table, Danny. The guy wasn't even interested in me and I hid under a table. But you... he was trying to kill you - or at least that's what it looked like - and you were totally ready to throw down to save your friends. I'll never be anything if this is how I handle things. I... I don't know what to do."
Danny pulled up a chair. "You don't know what to do because you don't know who you are."
Phil thought a moment. "Sounds about right."
"We can fix that."
Phil looked at him. "Do you know something I don't?"
Danny chuckled. "Nothin' that can't be chalked up to experience, mate." He looked at Phil. "But even if you can't remember where you're from or what your real name is, you can know who your friends are, and you can make it your purpose to look out for them, and look out for everyone else that matters to you. I don't expect you to come out guns blazing whenever anything bad happens around here. Not yet. Because I don't know you. But any living human being can know for themselves just what they're made of at any given time. You can't just be a hero outright. You can't just instantly have the right plan, move, or catch phrase for every single moment. That sort of thing only happens in the comics. All you can do in that moment when it's all up to you is decide what you're made of and what you have to do in that moment. Everything else? Well, there's not much you can do about everything else anyway."
Phil smiled. "Thanks, Danny." His smile faded. "I dunno. I just feel like-" Phil looked out an imaginary window - "I just feel like something is coming. Something big."
"You may be right. I feel it too. Then again, the both of us just might be wrong. Either way, it isn't here yet, so no worries. And, if it does get here, I'm very confident you'll know what to do."
Danny looked around the wrecked kitchen. "What a mess," he said, letting out a low whistle. "It'll take all day to fix."
"Maybe."
Danny watched curiously as Phil closed his eyes. Nothing happened for a long moment. Suddenly, some of the shards of broken glass and splintered wood began stirring. Without warning, broken bits and pieces of everything imaginable began flying around the room in a maelstrom of debris. Danny ducked for fear of being hit with something that might hurt. Yet, glass, wood, ceramic and Formica still whirled above his head in a perfectly organized flurry of activity. Bits and pieces flew off and stuck to walls and furniture. The whirlwind shrank in size and finally dissipated entirely.
Danny looked around him in amazement. From broken chairs to shattered dishes to gouged walls, absolutely everything looked like new. Danny's jaw dropped. Phil opened his eyes and smiled. He hadn't even broken a sweat. "It worked."
Danny simply gaped in silence for a long moment before whistling again, a bit more fervently. He turned to Phil to find that he was already walking off down the hall. Danny just shook his head slowly before turning to leave, shutting the door on his way out.
[ 10-03-2002, 12:56 AM: Message edited by: Captain Sammitch ]
