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"I'm grounded," Tallulah said breathlessly, without any sort of preamble whatsoever, "And my parents want to meet you."

That was Thursday, and now it was Saturday, the fateful day when Jaimie would be subjected to the various interrogations of Nellie and Angus Cowden. Tallulah was a bit over a week into her grounding, which meant she had four to go. In that time she had gotten nicely reacquainted with chores she had not been required to do in several years. Like helping to cook dinner.

Tonight this meant helping to cook chicken. Tallulah didn't even eat chicken (she had tempeh in the oven for herself), but Nellie had heard Jaimie went to Hillworth and decided she needed to mother him a little bit. Angus was less enthusiastic, and had spent the last hour making a big deal of reading the newspaper and harumphing loudly every so often.

Nellie glanced at the clock. "He should be here soon," she said melodically. "What time did you say he was coming, hon?"

"Six thirty," said Tallulah as she stood over the sink, scrubbing her hands with a plastic sponge and lemon extra-strength dish soap. She could still smell the chicken on her fingers.

Rung doorbell or not, the front door opened. Angus Cowden was not an imposing man by any measure of stature - he stood about 5'11", and although he looked like he might have once had the physique of an athlete, but by now that had faded to the wiry shape of an aging regional manager. "Are you going to come in, or were you planning to stand on our front step all night?"

The only clear similarity between Angus and his daughter was their eyes, the same shade of dark brown. Beyond that, the similarities were more subtle. He didn't smile at Jaimie, but he did give him a short nod of approval before waving him through the door.

Tallulah came running out of the kitchen, her hands still dripping, to throw her arms around Jaimie's neck and kiss him.

Angus coughed conspicuously. Tallulah blushed and let Jaimie go.

"Sorry," she smiled. "Hi."

She looked far better than she had a week previously, better rested and less bruised since she hadn't been out on patrol. "This is my dad," she said. "Dad, this is Jaimie."

There was an awkward pause. "My mom's getting dinner ready," she added. There was a brief moment where Angus seemed to nonverbally tell his daughter to go help. At any rate, Tallulah vanished back into the kitchen and left Jaimie alone with her father.

Angus motioned to the window seat. "So, Jaimie," he said. "Tell me a little about yourself."

Angus nodded and seemed to study Jaimie intently for a moment, though he could have just been sizing the young man up in case it came to a brawl for his daughter's honor. "What are your plans for after Hillworth?" he asked.

Before Jaimie could form a coherent answer, though, Tallulah swept in from the kitchen to rescue him, setting a bowl of salad on the table. "Dinner?" she suggested meekly, smiling sympathetically at Jaimie. She brushed past him as she headed back towards the kitchen, whispering, "His bark is worse than his bite."

At least, she hoped so. She'd never tested it before.

Tallulah left again. Angus motioned for Jaimie to move to the table as he moved to take a seat at what was presumably the head. (This was difficult to discern when the table was a square, but it seemed to have something to do with having your back to the window.)

Tallulah came back, this time carrying a bowl of chicken (the look on her face suggested this had not been her idea), and followed by a woman who she bore a strong resemblance to, albeit much younger and without the short, wild haircut.

Tallulah set down the bowl of chicken like it was toxic waste she could not wait to get away from, and took a seat next to Jaimie. "This is my mom," she said, motioning to the woman. "Mom, this is Jaimie."

"Hi," said Nellie, and reached across the table to shake hands. She was far more enthusiastic than Angus, to say the least. "It's so nice to meet you. Tallulah's told us so much about you."

"Mom teaches second grade," said Tallulah, her tone of voice seeming to indicate she thought this explained everything ranging from her mother's taste in earrings (beaded dreamcatchers tonight) to the alignment of the planets.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so," laughed Nellie. "You just have to be gentle but firm with them, let them think they're getting away with everything when really they aren't getting away with anything..." She smiled at Jaimie like this was a great secret of making it in the world, and held out a serving platter to him. "Chicken?"

While her mother asked Jaimie whether he preferred breasts or thighs, Tallulah busied herself chasing a rogue cherry tomato around her salad plate. Her mother seemed to be getting along with Jaimie just fine, even maybe approving of him, although Angus had not done much but glower like a silverback gorilla trying to stake its claim to a piece of turf.

Tallulah managed to spear the tomato and pop it into her mouth just as her mother asked Jaimie, "Has my daughter ever told you about where her name is from?"

Tallulah amost choked, and felt slightly sick as the entire tomato slid down her throat unchewed. "Mom, do we have to talk about this now?" she asked.

Nellie laughed. "Of course!" she said happily as she spooned mashed potatoes onto Jaimie's plate. "Tallulah gorge is a gorgeous state park in Georgia," she said. "Angus and I honeymooned there."

Tallulah, who knew where this story went and did not want it to get there, said, "Mom, this isn't dinner table conversation."

"Tallulah was conceived there-"

"MOM!"

Nellie's only response was to smile and hold the bowl of potatoes out to her daughter. "Potatoes, hon?"

Tallulah gave Jaimie a very long-suffering look as she took the bowl. It was like they were trying to scare him away forever.

Nellie was, in fact, a good cook and seemed thrilled to have someone who didn't ascribe to Tallulah's doctrine of vegetarianism. "Edible" was the least you could say for it, and it certainly deserved better adjectives than that. "What do they feed you boys at Hillworth?"

"Gruel and hard tack, I'll bet," said Angus.

"You make it sound like some Dickensonian prison," sighed Nellie, and heaped a serving of green beans onto Jaimie's plate. Tallulah smiled meekly at him from across the table as she sliced her tempeh. She was not sure that Dickensonian was even a real word, although it did sound very literary.

"Haven't they got some real hardened criminals there?" asked Angus.

"It's a reform school, Dad," sighed Tallulah, "Not Juvenile detention." She smiled sheepishly at Jaimie, hoping he wouldn't take offense.

Nellie had noticed all of her daughter's furtive, withering glances. "What do you think, Jaimie?" she asked conspiratorially. "Do you think we've embarrassed her enough for one dinner? How do you like the food?"

"So they still play dodgeball?" asked Angus, seemingly enthralled by this information. "The public system's banned it. I say not playing dodgeball makes kids soft. All the boys at Meadowview, they're soft - who's that friend of yours, Tallulah? Pavlov?"

"Pasha," she corrected, pushing her potatoes around on her plate.

"Soft," said Angus, popping a bite of chicken into his mouth.

Tallulah would have liked to counter that Pasha was, in fact, a superhero (as were, coincidentally, Jaimie and herself), but now was neither the time nor place. She put down her fork amidst a plate of mostly-eaten food that she'd been picking at for the last three minutes. "I'm going to go show Jaimie the back yard," she announced.

After quickly dropping their dishes in the sink, she motioned for him to follow her down the hall to the back door, past a meticulously neat bedroom. ("Mine," she admitted.)

She pulled him out onto the porch. "I'm sorry, I didn't know they were going to do that," she sighed, shaking her head. "I hope they haven't scared you."

The back yard wasn't much - it was more of a patch of grass that seemed to extend around one side of the house and partly obscured by a wooden deck that was barely large enough for the barbecue grill and patio furniture that balanced on it.

There was a wooden bench swing on the other side of the yard, hanging off an oak tree by the back fence. Tallulah motioned to it.

"Let's sit," she suggested.

"A month's good behavior," sighed Tallulah. "Get out of jail free if I come clean and tell them I'm a vigilante superhero." She flopped down onto the bench swing, then scooted over to one side to make room for him. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

"I think you're doing okay," she added reassuringly. "I mean, I don't think they think you're the one who's been beating on me. You have good table manners."

Somehow, good table manners and teen dating violence could not go together in one single package. She didn't mention the fact that the school nurse had been very thorough in her poking and prodding to decide, once and for all, that Tallulah had not been the victim of repeated sexual assault. Already this had made her parents more willing to trust him.

"It's lonely, though," she shrugged, kicking her feet out, setting the swing into a low, short arc. "Getting cooped up in here all night long, I don't get to go on any adventures! I never thought I'd miss fighting youma until someone said I couldn't."

She looked up, studying the back side of the house for a moment. "I don't think they're watching us through the back windows," she said quietly, grinning conspiratorially. "I've been totally out of the loop all week, you and Pyxis are the only senshi I know out of costume - what have I missed?"

Her head was back on his shoulder and she was looking up. It was getting darker, and around the dim outline of the tree branches, the first stars were appearing.

"Really? Pretty quiet?" she asked, looking at him. She seemed surprised to hear this. "A few nights before I got grounded, Polaris and - oh, it's kind of silly, we ran into Wolframite, the silly little lieutenant with the frilly bows and the jumprope? Have you seen him?"

Perhaps it was a bit of an underestimation to describe any negaverser as being "silly," but this was a private conversation. "Anyway," she said, "We were about to fight him when these aliens showed up - at least, they claimed they were aliens. I think I'd be willing to believe it, too."

(When you were a magically costumed superhero who owed allegiance to the queen of the moon, you tended to suspend disbelief for a pretty long time.)

She pursed her lips. "They fought with a monster that came out of a card," she said. "You haven't seen them, have you? I wonder if they're still around..."