Chapter 181: Book 3 Chapter 26.1: Mommy Issues

Hawke walked into the looper lair and immediately regretted it. Harley and Vell were on the left side of the table, and Lee was on the right, being stared down by the other two.

“What’s happening now?”

His whimpering didn’t make Harley or Vell break eye contact with Lee. She was trying to be stoic under their scrutinizing glare, but failing on several levels.

“Oh, nothing important,” Vell said.

“We can tell Lee’s up to something,” Harley said. “We’re trying to see if we can figure it out just by looking at her.”

In spite of the intense stares, Lee didn’t seem all that bothered by the scrutiny.

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I’m actually quite curious to see if they can pull it off,” Lee said. “So far they’ve managed to guess that it concerns Vell, it’s happening in the next few days, and it’s a surprise that involves someone else.”

“Just from looking at you?”

“Lee’s not great at keeping a poker face when she’s happy,” Harley said.

“Most of my experience is in hiding how miserable I am,” Lee said. “It’s a very nice change of pace to be hiding excitement for once.”

Their early successes had inspired Lee to keep a stiff upper lip, even in front of her friends, if only for the sake of some friendly competition. She’d given a lot away in the first few minutes, but they hadn’t made any good guesses recently. Vell looked like he was on the cusp of something, though. He was up to four wrinkles on his forehead, and that always signaled he was close to an epiphany.

“Can I make a guess based on a conversation we had a while ago?”

“I can’t exactly make you forget what we talked about,” Lee said. “The only rule is you can’t ask Quenay for help secretly.”

“Completely unfair, by the way,” Quenay said, as she materialized over Vell’s shoulder. “I want to play too!”

“You’re borderline omniscient, the nature of your existence is cheating,” Vell said. “Anyway, the game’s about to end. I’m cracking this thing wide open.”

Quenay vanished, and Vell placed his palms flat on the table. Lee had been asking a few too many questions about his schedule and free time lately, and he’d seen her asking questions about ferry service a few days after that.

“Lee, you’ve gone behind my back and arranged for one or both of my parents to come visit me here on campus.”

Though her mouth was closed, Vell and Harley could both tell Lee was biting her tongue. Eventually she relented, and let out a deep sigh.

“Alright, yes, you got it.”

“Hah! Nice,” Harley said. She held her hand up for a high five, and Vell gave her one. He’d earned it. “Do you want to rub it in, or should I?”

“You’re better at gloating, go ahead.”

Harley stood up and did exactly forty-five seconds of intense, boisterous gloating, then sat back down and acted like nothing had happened.

“Alright, so, who all is coming? Is it Mommy or Daddy Harlan?”

“Just Vell’s mother, I’m afraid,” Lee said. “She’s off to visit some of your family back in Pakistan, and reached out to ask me about a pitstop here. I helped her make some arrangements.”

“Thanks for that,” Vell said. It’d actually be nice to see his mom, and introduce her to some of his friends. They had interacted electronically on rare occasions, enough that Vell’s mom knew Lee’s phone number, but had never met his best friends face to face.

“So when can we expect visitors?” Harley asked. “Do we have to help Vell clean his dorm?”

“I’ll have plenty of time to do it on my own,” Vell said. “We’ve got like two weeks.”

“Two weeks?”

“Yeah. Two weeks until the end of the month,” Vell said. “That’s when the academic break is. Classes get out for the weekend, she can stop by no problem.”

“Well, no, dear, I fit it into the travel plans she’d already made,” Lee said. “She’ll be here this Wednesday. She wanted it to be a sur-”

“She’s going to be here on Wednesday?”

Vells palms were flat on the table again, this time white-knuckled and tense.

“Well, yes. Did you have plans, or something?”

“Lee, we have classes on Wednesday.”

“Yes, you can always-”

“When there are classes, there is an apocalypse,” Vell snapped. “Lee! You invited my mom to the apocalypse!”

The long-overdue realization hit Lee around the same time Vell stood up and started scrambling out of the lair.

“I’ve got to go carve some runes, and polish my guns, and- and I still have to clean my dorm too, fuck,” Vell said. He slammed the door behind him on his way out, leaving behind a stunned Lee and a very confused Harley.

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“Okay, did anybody find me some more granite?”

“I’m pretty sure you used up every granite slate on campus, dude,” Harley said. In his quest to be as prepared as possible for his mother’s arrival, Vell had carved dozens, possibly hundreds of new runes. “I haven’t seen you this hyped up about apocalypse preparedness since Roxy was here.”

In the span of a single day, Vell had carved dozens of runes, double-checked all their weapon stockpiles, and did a quick survey of every ongoing and planned experiment on campus, then set up alert systems for every suspicious or potentially dangerous one. He’d even gone to Dean Lichman to ask about canceling classes for the day, in an effort to prevent the loop entirely. The request had been denied, of course, but Dean Lichman had at least assured him that there were no challenge day activities planned, and that he would try to have school security be more vigilant today. In spite of those assurances, Vell was still high strung, and only getting worse as the clock ticked down towards his mother’s arrival.

“It’s my mom,” Vell said. “Do I need to explain it?”

“No, not to me,” Harley said. She’d do crazy things to keep her mom safe too. “But can you chill out for five minutes and talk to Lee? She feels like she fucked up real bad.”

“She’s fine, she’s been helping me a lot,” Vell said. Harley immediately smacked him in the shoulder.

“Yeah, to make up for how she feels she fucked up!”

“Ow! Okay, yeah, I get it. Sorry,” Vell said. “I got a little fixated on protecting my mom.”

“I get it,” Harley said. “She’s good at hiding when she feels bad, after all.”

It was a persistent problem with Lee, just like Vell had the persistent problem of getting overly fixated on something. At least all it took was a quick smack to get Vell’s head on straight again. Lee’s emotional maintenance was a bit more involved.

“Just make sure to smooth things over next time you see her,” Harley said. “Unfuck what you have fucked.”

“Yeah. She should be here soon, she’s been helping me out.”

Sure enough, Lee arrived mere moments later, with an armload of silvery charms in tow.

“Alright, I’ve found or made as many defensive charms as I could,” Lee said. “We were a bit short on defenses against grave curses, since, oddly enough, people very rarely die permanently on this island, but I believe I’ve made up the difference as best I can. What’s next?”

“Uh, nothing,” Vell said. “Let’s take a break. I might’ve gone a little overboard in prep work.”

“Are you sure? I have a lot of work left to do on reinforcing the lair’s protection-”

“Lee. It’s okay. I freaked out a little,” Vell said. “And I will, for future reference, freak out again when my mom’s actually here.”

“Understandable.”

“I’m sorry I made you feel like you messed up,” Vell said. “I appreciate you helping my mom come out to visit me.”

“I appreciate the understanding,” Lee said. Some tension visibly left her shoulders. “But I can’t let myself completely off the hook. I should’ve been more thoughtful in my planning. Regardless of how you feel, I am putting your mother in a dangerous situation.”

“You know, big picture, you haven’t actually affected her odds of dying much,” Harley said. “Remember that time a giant piece of paper crushed most of North America? I don’t want to be the one to break this to you, Vell-”

“I know, I know, she’s probably died a lot,” Vell said. The entire planet had been destroyed on more than one occasion, he could hardly delude himself into believing his mother had survived the planet being cracked in half. “It’s just a little easier to abstract when she’s not within line of sight.”

“Maybe we just shove her in the lair the whole first loop and do our thing,” Harley suggested.

“Harley!”

“What? You want to give her the grand tour of all the things that could explode and kill her, or shove in her a basement?” Harley said. “She won’t even remember!”

“Would you shove your mom in a basement?”

“If the alternative was her exploding, probably!”

The duo traded a few argumentative barbs back and forth, while a fascinated Lee watched from the sidelines. She had always been intrigued by the emotions normal people had in regards to their parents. Things got so complicated for people who weren’t raised by sociopaths.

“Lee, you’re relatively neutral on the concept of parents,” Harley said, dragging Lee out of her observation and back into the argument. “Which is worse, shove them in a basement or blow them up?”

“I don’t particularly enjoy either,” Lee said. “It’s not as if there aren’t other options.”

“We aren’t discussing those options right now,” Harley said. “Answer the question, basements or bombs.”

“I choose telling you both to shut up,” Lee said. “We only have about three hours before your mother arrives, Vell, we can—calmly—make a few more preparations before then.”

“Cool. Have we reconsidered the forcefield proposal?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“No, Vell, we are not enclosing the island in a protective bubble,” Lee said. “Honestly, that’s more likely to go wrong than anything else.”

“Okay, okay, cool,” Vell said. “But-”

“No, Vell.”

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Vell looked up at the unshielded sky and nervously imagined all the things that could go wrong. Dragons, UFO’s, and evil balloons were all free to descend from the sky as they pleased. Vell tried his best to scan all the possible angles while still keeping an eye on the teleportation portal.

“You got to relax, Vell,” Harley said. “You’re going to freak out your mom.”

“As long as she’s alive to freak out,” Vell said.

In spite of his nerves, Vell did try to bottle up his emotions and look calm when the teleportation circle flared to life. The portal flared with energy and let out a low, rumbling humming sound, as it usually did, before the first travelers started to step through. A few deliverymen stepped through, quickly shuffling their freight off to its intended destination, followed shortly thereafter by a handful of casual travelers.

Last through the portal, towering above the rest, was Vell’s mother, dragging a small amount of luggage behind her. She scanned the room for a moment before spotting Vell and rushing his direction. He braced himself for the incoming mom hug and was still only barely prepared for it. She held him tight and gave him the requisite embarrassing kiss on the cheek before finally letting go and stepping away.

“Hey mom.”

“Vell. Good to see you aren’t starving here on campus.”

“Mom, you saw me a few weeks ago,” Vell said.

“That’s plenty of time for you to go hungry!”

With the fussing done, Mrs. Harlan looked away from her son and towards the two women accompanying him.

“You two must be Lee and Harley.”

“The very same,” Harley said. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Harlan.”

“The pleasure’s all mine. And Lee, thank you so much for making this all possible,” Mrs. Harlan said. She bowed her head a little as she spoke. Lee had provided some funding for the usually cost-prohibitive teleportation, allowing Vell’s mother to stop by the island. Lee waved off any attempts at gratitude for the expense.

“It’s alright, any excuse to spend my parents money.”

“I still appreciate it, Lee, and I-”

The teleportation device behind them sparked to life, and made a loud noise as it did so. Vell instinctively jumped between his mom and the machine, just in case. The travelers who walked out of the portal gave him an odd look as they strolled by.

“Vell? Is everything alright?”

“Fine, just fine,” Vell said, as he eyed the portal suspiciously. “Come on, we should drop your bags off in my dorm and then I can give you the tour.”

“Alright. Your dorms are just over there, ye-”

Mrs. Harlan took a few steps in the direction of the dorms, and was then immediately pushed in a different direction by Vell.

“Not that way,” Vell snapped. A straight line would take them right past the hazardous materials lab. He didn’t want his mom within five hundred feet of that place. “We’re going to take the, uh, scenic route. By the coast. Follow me.”

“Okay,” Mrs. Harlan said. “What are all those things on your belt, by the way?”

Vell had hooked some of Lee’s protective charms to his belt for easy access, and he was practically jingling with every step.

“Accessories, I’m very fashionable,” Vell said. “Keep moving and don’t make eye contact with anyone I don’t introduce you to.”

“What?”

“I’ll repeat myself later, we need to move,” Vell said. The teleportation circle was constantly bringing in unknown variables, and Vell wanted to be far away from it.

“Oh, alright,” Mrs. Harlan said. She allowed herself to be pushed along, far away from the hazardous materials lab. “Will I get to meet Skye, by the way?”

“Maybe later, she’s busy,” Vell said. Skye had been enlisted to keep an eye on her fellow Marine Biologists, and hopefully keep them from causing havoc. Any introductions would have to wait until the second loop, if they happened at all. All apocalyptic shenanigans aside, it would just be plain old fashioned awkward introducing his girlfriend to his mom. He wanted to avoid that if possible. “Just keep moving, keep moving, stay at least ten feet away from that guy at all times…”

Mrs. Harlan eyed the student Vell was wary of and saw absolutely nothing suspicious about them. Vell knew that the seemingly innocuous student had caused a nuclear meltdown in last year’s loops. They weren’t anywhere near fissile material right now, but Vell kept his distance anyway.

“Okay, take a sharp left, want to stay away from the Rocketry lab,” Vell said. “And please pick up the pace, we don’t want to be too close to the Zoology lab for too long.”

“Are you feeling alright, V?”

“Just fine thanks.”

“V? That’s a heck of a nickname,” Harley said. “Vell’s monosyllabic already.”

“You can thank missing front teeth for that,” Mrs. Harlan said. “Vell used to have some trouble with L sounds. It was less embarrassing to say V than Veww.”

“Hah!”

“Mom,” Vell groaned. The regular parental cringe was not a pleasant addition to the constant apocalyptic anxiety.

“Ooh, I think we should try and bring it back,” Harley said. “It makes us all rhyme! V, Lee, and Harley.”

“I’m going to go ahead and veto that right now,” Vell said.

“I think it’s too late, Vell,” Mrs. Harlan chuckled. “Lee looks very taken with the idea.”

“Hmm? Oh, no, no,” Lee mumbled. She didn’t think it was that obvious. “Though I do like the idea of matching…”

“You should get matching outfits,” Mrs. Harlan suggested.

“That’s what I keep saying!” Harley said. “We’ve got to do it now, guys, even Vell’s mom agrees.”

“We’ll think about it,” Vell said. “Eyes up! Lee, ready on the defensive spells. We’ve got incoming targets.”

The “incoming targets” consisted of Freddy Frizzle and Goldie. They were waving hello, looking excited to see their friends, until Vell threw up a hand and demanded they stop in their tracks.

“Easy now. You two carrying any experimental technology or unknown items on your person?”

“Uh...No?”

“I have a weird pen I borrowed from somebody,” Goldie said. “Does that count?”

“Maybe,” Vell said, as his eyes narrowed. “Toss the pen, just to be safe.”

Goldie got as far as taking the pen out of her purse before she realized what she was doing was completely insane. She put the pen back and said goodbye to everyone. Freddy persevered through Vell’s odd behavior, largely out of concern.

“Everything good, Vell?”

“That depends. You clear your lab?”

“Sort of?” Freddy said. Vell’s weird request for him to try and shut down every ongoing experiment in his lab had been all but impossible to fulfill. He and Goldie had worked together and managed to get most of their associates to take a break for the day, or at least shift focus to something slightly less dangerous, but fully shutting down the lab was impossible.

“Well go run interference, then,” Vell said. “At least warn me if something happens.”

“Seriously, Vell?”

“What?”

“Vell, are you sure everything is alright?” Mrs. Harlan asked. “You seem worried about, well, everything.”

Even the local seagulls were not spared from Vell’s ire. He almost looked like he was calculating the best way to shoot one out of the sky, even as he tried to address his mother’s concerns.

“I’m fine, there’s just a lot of potential problems I need to keep an eye on,” Vell said, through gritted teeth.

“I thought you felt safe at this school, Vell,” his mother said. “I know you were kidnapped once, but...no, actually, there’s no ‘but’, that still concerns me.”

“Oh believe me, mom, right now getting kidnapped is the least of my worries.”

“Then what are you so worried about?”

Far behind them, the school’s teleportation circle made a loud noise. The machine making noise was not too worrying, but the fact that it continued making a progressively louder and louder noise was. Vell let out a low grown to match its ever-increasing rumble.

“I’m worried about that, probably,” Vell grunted. He turned towards the source of the increasingly loud noise. “Hey, whoever’s doing that, cut it the fuck out!”

“Vell, language.”

“Mom, I am a twenty-four year old man and I say ‘fuck’ sometimes,” Vell said. “Especially when I am trying to save you from having your bones dissolved by soundwaves!”

Vell took off in a dead sprint back towards the portal. He made it about halfway there before he got his bones dissolved by soundwaves.

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“I told you we needed to be more careful,” Vell said, as he and his friends stood in front of the portal a second time.

“Yeah, but you wanted us to be careful about weird bugs and random students,” Harley said. “Just chill, Vell.”

“I’ll chill when my mom’s safe,” Vell said. Though they now knew the source of the day’s apocalypse, no one had been able to get close enough to the portal to determine the exact cause. Vell would not be satisfied until said cause had been identified and hopefully terminated with extreme prejudice.

“Just try to be a little less high strung about it,” Lee said. “You were worrying your poor mother to death.”

“No, that was the sonic weaponry,” Vell said. Harley elbowed him in the ribs to shut him up. Both for her own sake and the fact that Vell’s mom was about to show up.

She arrived in a flurry of affection and maternal embarrassment, just as before. Vell, to his credit, was slightly less high strung than before. Now that he had a very specific threat to focus his attention on, he didn’t need to worry so much about literally everything and everyone else. All he had to do was make sure his mom headed to his dorm on time, which she gladly did.

“Harley, are you good to take care of the thing?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Harley said. She had concocted a way to shut down the portal entirely if it came to it, and she knew enough about the portal’s inner workings to prevent a myriad potential catastrophes. With her watching the portal vigilantly, Vell almost felt safe enough to relax. By the time they were back to his dorm, the hairs on the back of his neck had almost stopped standing on end. Almost.

“Hey Vell.”

On literally any other occasion, Skye’s playful smile would have delighted Vell. The fact that his mom was three feet away somewhat lessened his delight.

“And you must be Mrs. Harlan,” Skye said with a smile. Their similar appearances—and heights—made the family resemblance impossible to miss. “I see where he gets his good looks.”

“Oh no, those are all from his father,” Mrs. Harlan chuckled. “You must be Skye.”

“She is,” Vell said. “She is also supposed to be in her lab.”

“You’re the one who wanted soundproofing in your dorm,” Skye said. “Again.”

Vell had just gotten comfortable enough to take the soundproofing down after the cricket incident earlier this year, and now he wanted it all put back up again for some reason. Skye was patient enough to not ask questions about that, but playful enough to lightly roast him about it.

“Okay, fair enough, hope you did a good job of that,” Vell said. “Let’s go inside, behind all that nice thick soundproof paneling.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Skye agreed. “So, Mrs. Harlan, did you bring any baby pictures of Vell?”

“Only the best,” Vell’s mother said, prompting a horrified groan from Vell.

“Mom, I will make you tiramisu if you promise not to show anyone any pictures of me from before I was five,” Vell said.

“Deal. Sorry, Skye, but he makes very good tiramisu.”

“Oh I know,” Skye said. “I want some too.”

“Good to hear, because you’re helping,” Vell said. Specifically, she was being sent out for ingredients. Vell didn’t keep cocoa powder and cognac on hand. Skye headed off to go shopping while Vell started the other prepwork, and Lee settled in with Mrs. Harlan. Lee had almost relaxed when she spotted the penis-shaped cactus she had given Vell earlier in the year, and frantically stood up to hide it.

“Something the matter, Lee?”

“No, no, everything’s just fine, just trying to do some last minute tidying up, for Vell’s sake.”

She cursed Vell’s priorities as he carefully tucked Prickly the Cactus behind a few books. Vell had spent days obsessing over a dozen possible doomsdays and not spared even a second to think of the penis cactus in his dorm.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Mrs. Harlan said. “I survived Vell’s teenage years, I can survive whatever messes he can make now.”

“I heard that.”

“Should have cleaned your room when I told you to, then,” Mrs. Harlan said. “Please, Lee, sit down. Relax.”

Since she was now done hiding Prickly, Lee complied.

“You’ve done quite enough already,” Mrs. Harlan continued. “Thank you for bringing me all the way out here.”

“Oh, again, no problem,” Lee said. Mrs. Harlan looked at her quizzically when she said ‘again’, and Lee suddenly remembered she hadn’t been thanked yet in this iteration of the time loop. “Ah, but, enough about me. How long are you going to be spending with family?”

“Hopefully a few days,” Mrs. Harlan said. “But we’ll see. Discussions with my family don’t always go well.”

“I know the feeling, unfortunately,” Lee said. “My advice is to bite your tongue and try to rank your favorite foods from one to one-hundred.”

Mrs. Harlan gave Lee a very long, concerned look.

“It helps avoid talking to them,” Lee said. “That and pretending to sleep.”

The long, concerned look got longer, and more concerned.

“Lee, I’m not trying to avoid my family,” Mrs. Harlan clarified. “I am trying to get them to stop avoiding me.”

Mrs. Harlan lowered her voice and glanced at Vell, who was still on the far side of the kitchen, mostly heedless to their conversation.

“Us.”

“Oh.”

In retrospect, Lee could vaguely recall Vell having mentioned that his extended family had not spoken to him in a while. She had assumed, up until now, that it had merely been a result of physical distance.

“When he...came back, most of my family assumed it was something unnatural. Even dangerous,” Mrs. Harlan explained. “I’ve been trying to change their minds ever since.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“It’s okay, I understand.”

Lee started to sit up straight again. She naturally started to shrink in on herself when apologizing, but Mrs. Harlan’s reassurance had her upright in a moment.

“And you don’t need to worry about anything,” Mrs. Harlan said. “I’m worrying less and less every day. With me cut off and his father an only child, I used to worry Vell wouldn’t have family. People he could rely on, no matter what.”

Mrs. Harlan looked at Lee with a slight smile she didn’t quite understand.

“But-”

Mrs. Harlan stopped in her tracks and nearly jumped out of her seat as Harley ran into the room and slammed the door shut behind her. Harley pressed her back to the door for a moment, as if to try and barricade it shut, and then ran to Lee instead. Her frantic energy also attracted Vell’s attention, and concern.

“Harley, what’d you do?”

“I resent your tone, sir, I did a very good job,” Harley said. She took a deep breath and folded her hands behind her back. “So, good news, I prevented something disastrous from happening.”

“You’re saying that as if there is bad news,” Mrs. Harlan said.

“You’re very quick on the uptake, Mrs. Vell’s Mom, I see where he gets it from,” Harley said. “Anyway, the bad news is-”

“Baby? Are you there?”

Being quick on the uptake, Mrs. Harlan easily figured out that whatever voice she had just heard was bad news. Every ounce of joy got sucked out of the room in an instant, and she could practically feel Lee’s blood run cold.

Without waiting for an invitation, the source of the nasally voice opened the door and let herself in.

“There you are, Excy baby,” said Granger Burrows. Lee’s posture shifted, and her voice cracked, as she forced herself to smile.

“Hello, mother.”