Later that night, there is a dinner being held at Antti’s house in San Jose. All of the GHP members, Sidney, Jonathan, Nathan, Antti, Patrick, Toews, John, Pekka, and Jonas are gathered around the large dining table, eating a Finnish dinner Antti’s wife, Jonna, cooked up; Autumn, John’s girlfriend, is also there.

"Mmmm…! Raspberry jam and mashed potatoes taste so good!" Sidney exclaims, scooping up a mixed mountain of mashed potatoes and raspberry jam onto his spoon. He shoves the spoon into his mouth with a huge smile.

"It’s why us Finns eat it all the time!" Jonna tells him excitedly, serving jam onto her plate.
"This tastes like my mother’s cooking…" Pekka says with wide eyes, filled with nostalgia. "Oh, those good ol’ days."

"This reminds me nothing of my mother’s cooking!" Jonathan points out, scrutinizing a meatball while cutting it.

Antti eyes Jonas, who is munching on chips warily.

"Jonas—!"

Jonas halts in his chewing and stares at Antti.

Antti has a flat look. "Why are you eating chips? I thought you were on the Flames and the Ducks powers left—including the chip eating!"

Jonas shrugs. "I don’t know what went wrong, but I still feel like a Duck, even though I like Canada better!" He continues eating his chips.

"You don’t even want the mashed potatoes?" Nathan pushes the bowl of mashed potatoes over to Jonas’s empty plate. "They’re like what Sid’s friend, Geno says: 'Yum, yum'!"

Jonas dips a chip into the mashed potatoes; he eats it. "Mmm!" He begins dipping the rest of his chips into the mashed potatoes and eating them like that.

"Dude, Tevo man’s been hiding this gnarly food from us if he’s eats it!" Patrick stuffs meatballs in his mouth. "Finf fez Finnf fan fall," he continues saying with his mouth full.

"I see him eat this stuff all the time." Toews raising up some mashed potatoes with his spoon. "I thought it was the nastiest combination of food, which is why I didn’t ask him for any. But now I know—it’s amazing!" He eats the mashed potatoes.

Autumn eats a decent spoonful of mashed potatoes and jam. "Hmmm…" She chews while looking up in deep thought. "Saccharine…yet briny… Remarkably pappy consistency." Her eyes light up. "A delight! Right, John?" She turns to her boyfriend with a smile.

John is mindlessly chewing while staring blankly at the clock that is on the wall across from him.

Autumn makes a concerned look, keeping her eyes on him. "Um, John? John, dear?" She waves her hand in front of him.

John immediately lurches upward, blinking his eyes back into reality. He quickly turns to her. "Yes?"

"Um…" Autumn slowly lifts up a new spoonful of mashed potatoes and raspberry jam. "What do you surmise of this enthralling, yet palatable amalgamation of nutriment?"

"Oh! It’s superb." John shrugs and turns back to his plate.

Autumn shoots him a suspicious look. "Superb? Just superb?"

John blocks Autumn’s talking as he lifts his eyes back to the clock he was staring at. The hour hand is nearing the seven; the minute hand is nearing the twelve. After doing quick time zone converting, John abruptly straightens up.

"Oh, look at the hour!" he blurts out; everyone halts in their eating and stares at him. "I must be on my way!"

"But we hadn’t even had dessert yet!" Sidney exclaims. He then turns to Jonna and whispers: "There is dessert, right?"

Jonna gives him a nod of reassurance.

"But John," Autumn follows her boyfriend with her eyes, while he is standing up, "what’s the haste? Why must we retire from this supper?"

John goes pale for a moment. "Oh, um— Experiment! Seven-thirty: ideal time to conduct my experience on account of the moon’s locality!"

"Since when were you—?"

"Not until now!" John pulls Autumn up to her feet by her arm. He has a nervous look on his face. "I am rueful for the precipitous egress, but we really must get underway! Farewell!"

John then leads Autumn out of the dining room.

The dinner table is filled with awkward silence for a moment.

Toews is staring at his plate with a solemn facial expression.

Patrick eyes him with concern. "Dude, what’s wrong?"

"Something’s not right…" Toews mutters under his breath. He slowly straightens up. "I feel it; my powers are making me feel it. But the thing is…I don’t know what’s not right."

Patrick’s eyes dart from those who are eating, then back at his friend. He leans closer to him and says lowly: "Should you tell 'em before some not radical happens?"

Toews stares at him with a face filled with growing hysteria. "I don’t know, Kaner, I don’t want this to be like a false alarm thing…. I’ll tell 'em when I know for sure what’s not right."

Patrick nods his head and relaxes. "Seems gnarly enough."

---

John and Autumn are now back at John’s house, thanks to John’s aerokinetic flight ability.

John leads her through his porch, opens his front door, and gently pushes her inside the house.

Autumn sharply turns around to face him with an angering look. "John, what in Pete’s sake is going on?" she inquires quite harshly.

"No fretfulness, Autumn, I must to go garner components—"

"Since when were you conducting tests pertaining to the moon?!" she screeches, throwing her hands in the air.

"Don’t fret, I’ll return," is all John says before he closes in front of her.

Autumn gapes at the red door that is in front of her. "Ugh, the audacity of him!" She shakes her head with crossed arms. She then turns around and storms off into the living room.

John rounds his house to the right, over to the side yard. There is a trap door to the left of the pathway, right next to the house.

He rushes toward it, crouches down, and pulls it open, revealing his lit-up lab from the ceiling. With grunts, he slips down, landing on top of his desk, of course stepping on papers.

He jumps down and dashes over to a metal shelf holding all different sorts of vials filled with different coloured-liquid. He swipes a small vial with purple liquid from the shelf. "Perfect."

He then turns around and flies out of the lab through the trapdoor.

---

"Welcome, Mr. Tavares… Glad you can join us," Harry greets him with a deep, yet insidious voice.

John steps up to the dining table that is set up in the middle of the large office of the League Leaders. Harry is sitting at the end of the table; on one side of the table both Larry and Gary are sitting (well, in Gary’s case, sleeping) there.

"Please, take a seat." Harry extends his hand toward an empty seat that is to his left, across from sleeping Gary.

John takes the seat sophisticatedly. "It is a pleasure. Thank you for having me here."

Harry then claps his hands three, hardy times. Immediately, two butlers march into the room: one holding a tray of tea cakes and another holding a tray of four cups of tea. They place the trays in the middle of the table, then leave the room in the same manner.

Immediately, Gary pops up from the legs of the table’s level. He has a rare, feverish expression on his face; his eyes are on the tea cakes. He then gazes at the others with the same expression. “What are you waiting for? Dig in!” He grabs a handful of cakes and dips down below the table surface.

John, who is kind of creeped out by Gary’s burst of excitement, takes a cake and a cup of tea.
“I hope you like Earl Grey tea,” Harry says as he takes a sip of his tea.

“I do, in truth.” John drinks some of his tea.

Harry places his cup down. “Good.” He turns to John. “So, what do you have so far on the erasure project?”

“I recreated the solution.” He pulls out the vial from his pocket and plunks it on the table in between him and Harry.

“That looks like that sweet, grape Gatorade juice!” Larry points out, staring hard at the vial.

“But don’t mistaken it as Gatorade!” John tells him. “Or else the ramification will be noxious!”

Harry picks up the vial and scrutinizes it. “Tell me, how do you give this out to the power players?” He shakes it a bit in the air.

“Oh! Many moons ago, I utilized gloves to convey it to the power players, and before, one would have to take it with a syringe, but with this recently developed substance, one is able to consume it likewise— With something to homogenize, needless to say. It is ideal to slip into...their nourishment.” He eyes him with a wicked smirk. “But I am envisaging on conveying it to them by means of combat, so utilizing it in a firing arm would be ideal.”

“Does it work?”

“I am 91.303135 percent sure that it would function.” John takes in the rest of the tea.

“Hm.” Harry frowns at the substance, not looking quite convinced. He then flicks his eyes at John. “Would you like more tea?”

John gazes down at his empty cup; he then looks back at him. “Oh, yes, please!”

Harry claps his hands two times.

One butler with an empty tray marches up to Harry and halts next.

“We would like to have more tea, please.” Harry swipes John’s and his cups from the table and onto the tray.

The butler turns around, but while doing so, Harry elbows him, making him fumble with the tray and drop it onto the ground. The cups clatter against the sleek, tile flooring, fortunately not breaking.

“Oh dear!” Harry slams his hand against the surface between him and John, flies up to his feet, and rushes over to the butler.

He gathers the cups from the ground. “I’ll be back, I must help the butler!” He then hobbles away with the butler, who has the tray, and exits the room with him.

Now it is just John, Larry, and Gary in the room.

John takes a tea cake and bites into it to revert his attention from the silence.

Luckily, Harry comes back with two steaming cups of tea.

“Ah, here you are, Mr. Tavares!” He places a cup in front of him and sits back down. “Sorry about the mess, I got clumsy there.” He takes a sip of his tea.

John places his cake on a napkin. “No fretfulness.” He sips on his tea; he then makes an odd look while discreetly smacking his lips. “Hm, divergent tea flavour?”

“Yes!” Harry nods his head. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, no, I don’t.” John shakes his head and drinks more of the tea. He puts it down with an odd look. “Blinkin’ knickers, this is some peculiar tea.”

“Tea of the League Leaders.” Harry leans back, extending his arms outward. “It’s a secret recipe.” He places his hand back on the table, then slips it onto his lap.

“Hm…” John takes in more of the tea, hoping that this time, he would be used to it; it still tastes strange to him. “Well, I better get underway…” He stands up. “I’ll start assembling a firing arm for the erasure substance.” He takes the vial without looking at it and he tucks it into his pocket.
“And I’ll assess it out and apprise you when it is in readiness.”

“Sounds wonderful.” Harry stands up as well and shakes his hand. “We’ll see each other soon. Have a good night.”

“Thank you; you, too.” John then ambles out of the room.

He goes through the hallways and down flights of stairs, before exiting the building through the lobby.

The night is cool and the streets are empty: the perfect time for him to fly back home in.

John closes his eyes to mentally grab hold of the wind to help him fly. But he does not feel the flow of energy he usually feels whenever he uses his powers.

John scrunches his face with a frown. “Hm.” He opens up his eyes and looks down at himself. “What is amiss with me? It is like as if I possess no supernatural powers. Like as if…” He fishes out the vial and takes a good look at it.

His eyes fly wide open as he sees that it is completely empty.

“The substance...it’s depleted… The tea...” His eyes slowly gaze up, away from the vial. “I consumed the substance." He drops his arm and stares up into the inky sky. He concludes dejectedly: "I possess no more supernatural powers… I am no longer the power player of the Islanders.”

Notes