The coffee machine hissed and gurgled as it went about its business, the sound and smell of fresh coffee welcoming the slanting rays of early morning sunlight that slipped through the window over the sink and splashed across the flowery print on Heather Grasso's dress.  The tween girl placed a delicate hand over her mouth as she yawned, pausing in the act of fetching a large navy blue mug from the cupboard.

The mug was blue, but the block letters declaring it to be the property of the "World's Best Dad" were contrasted in white.  Into it she poured a dollop of milk and then emptied a yellow packet of not-sugar.  She swirled the contents around - she figured out a while ago that you really didn't need a spoon if you did it this way - and then filled the cup with a strong, quick pour from the coffee carafe. 

Between the swirling and the pour, everythign was mixed just right.  With a smile of achievement she raised the mug and padded carefully off to her father's bedroom.

She peeked through the doorway to make sure he was decent before entering.  Yes, he was decent, but he was still asleep at 8:07AM and that was completely unacceptable. 

"Dad."  Nothing.

"Dad."  Nothing.

"Dad, wake up,"  A brief grunt rose up from the mass of comforter, pillow, and hair at the head of the queen bed.

Heather sighed and placed the cup of coffee down on the table before she disappeared from the doorway.  She returned after half a minute holding a large sauce pot in one hand and a heavy wooden spoon in the other and then took up a position by the bed.

"Turn on my VCR!"  *BONK*  "Same one I've had for years!" *BONK*  James Brown and the T.A.M.I. show!" *BONK*  Same tape I've had for years!"  *BONK*

A growl came from the bed and Joe Grasso's groggy head popped up like a gopher, his eyes still mostly closed.  "What the-- Knock that off!"

"Are you gonna get up?" Heather politely asked her Dad.  "It's after eight, you know."

"Wake me at nine," Joe grumped groggily to his daughter before his head dropped back down onto the pillow.

"It's a beautiful day," she countered.

"It's always a beautiful day," he retorted before pulling the comforter over his head.

Heather put the pot closer to the covered lump on the pillow.

"I sit in my own car!"  *BONK*  "Same one I've had for years!"  *BONK*  "Old battery's running down!"  *BONK*  "It ran for years and years."  *BONK*

"Allright, allright!" Joe yelled, unhappy with the wake up call.  He sat up onto the edge of the bed and rubbed at his eyes to get the sleep out.  "Jesus... What's wrong with you?"

"Your fault for getting me into the Police," the girl explained with a flip of her hair.  She turned back to the dresser and exchanged the pot and spoon for the coffee, which she brought over to hand to her father.

He accepted the mug warily and replied, "Okay, I guess you're not all bad.  But what's the rush, kiddo?  I'm still out of work, remember?"

"You always told me not to quit, so it's time to get up and look for a new job."  Heather's stance, arms crossed, brooked no disagreement.

"I've been looking, you know that," Joe answered after swallowing the first sip of the day.  It helped.  "There's just nothin' out there for me right now."

"Okay, well... If you're not going to look for a job, then we'll practice today."

"What?"  Joe put his coffee down on the nightstand.  "How about a day off?  I'll take you to Chuck E. Cheese."

"I grew out of Chuck E. Cheese a couple years ago, Dad," Heather answered testily.  "Try to keep up."

"Well, the mall then," Joe flailed.

"Practice first," Heather replied after a moment of thought.  "And then the mall."

"You're a slave driver, you know that?"

"Blah blah blah..." Heather replied as she walked out of the room and made yapping gestures with her hand.

Joe turned to look down at his pillow and then slumped back down onto the mattress.

"And no going back to sleep!" Heather's voice yelled from the hallway.  Joe grabbed a pillow and clasped it over his head.

About half an hour later, Joe stood in the basement drinking his coffee while Heather crawled around inside the crawlspace.  Looking through the low door, he asked, "What the heck are you looking for?  There's nothing in there 'cept some old toys of yours and the holiday stuff."

"Got it!" Heather's voice cried out from inside the storage area.  She backed out through the door on her hands and knees.  in her hands was a red and blue plastic dodecahedron. 

"Let's go," she said as she moved past her Dad and through the door to the backyard. 

Joe shook his head and followed.  Someone had eaten her bossy flakes today, but he'd let it go for now.  Since her Mom died the young girl had taken it upon herself to care for her father and not so much the other way around, and Joe knew that was just her way of coping, so he let her cope.  When she coped at eight in the morning, though...

He walked up the short flight of steps out of the bulkhead and into the sunny backyard.  Heather had taken her spot and was seated on top of the picnic table with her latest find.  The yard wasn't huge but it was surrounded by a tall privacy fence and didn't give any real exposure to his neighbors, so it was ideal for these little sessions his daughter cooked up.

"Start with the fridge," his daughter suggested.

Joe nodded and, stil holding his coffee in his left hand, extended his right out towards the old doorless fridge with the broken freon pump that stood up against the side of the white-stained garage awaiting bulk garbage day.  It came much easier now than at the beginning, responded quicker to his mental command.  His head, and then his shoulders, and then his extended arm started to glow with a faint turquoise aura.  The light intensified quickly until it seemed to flow gracefullly in waves out towards the fridge. 

The large appliance shuddered once and then lifted slowly off the ground until it floated some five feet in the air.  Small bits of dirt fell from the bottom, but the fridge hovered evenly.  Joe concentrated and the fridge responded.  It moved on it's own closer to the middle of the yard and then settled back down onto a patch of ground with an indentation that matched the unit's base.

Joe let it go and the glow faded quickly.  He turned to his daughter with a smirk. 

"Piece of cake."

Heather shook her head in dissapintment as she studied the fridge.  "We need to get some heavier stuff."

"Okay, forget the pick-up-and-move-around stuff," she said  "Let's try the other thing, over by the tree."

Joe nodded and moved over to the large oak tree that dominated the far corner of the yard.  One of the thicker branches extended out towards the house and Joe put himself along side of it.

"You ready?" his daughter asked.  Joe nodded and took a relaxed ready stance facing the tall branch.

Heather picked up a hockey stick and struck at something up in the tree.  A one-gallon milk jug full of water came swinging down on a rope tied to the horizontal branch.  It arced right at Joe, who extended a quick flat hand.  The glow reappeared, as did a plane of illumination that hovered in place before him.  The jug struck the flat surface of light and bounced off.  Joe relaxed and the wall vanished.

"Next!" Heather called, swiping again at the tree.  Another jug swung down, this one filled with concrete.  Joe repeated the block with another conjured wall of light. 

"Next!" Heather swiped and Joe blocked again, this time deflecting a menacing black anvil that swung down with a vengeance.  After that, Joe stepped back.

"Where in tarnation did you get an anvil?" he asked with incredulous concern.

"Uh...don't ask," Heather replied, somewhat sheepishly.  She left the tree to walk over towards the garage.  As she moved, Joe looked to her and then up at the tree and back again twice more.

"How the heck did you even get it up there?"

"Can we move on, please?" Heather replied, doing a little deflection of her own.  "Here, help me get this up on the branch."

There was a stack of old car tires, six in all, all bound together in such a way that they made a tight cylinder.  Through the middle of the makeshift black rubber tube ran a heavy length of rope.  Joe fixed his mind on it and extended a hand.  The turquoise aura formed again, then extended out to encompass the tires which floated easily off the ground and over towards the thick tree branch.  Heather dragged a tall step ladder over and secured the tires to the branch with her best Girl Scout knots.

"Okay," she said after stashing the ladder.  "Punch it."

Joe looked at the tires and he had to admit it did look like a mutant heavy bag.  Sure, why not, he thought as he gatherd the force to him once more.  He tried flinging the force at the tires but it ended up being more of a push that put the stack into a gentle back-and-forth swing.

"That's not gonna cut it," Heather judged.

Joe pursed his mouth up at his daughter and then turned back to the tires.  He tried it again, putting more of what he felt was a mental snap into it.  This time the tires jerked, much more of a punch than a push but still fairly inadequate.  he looked at his daughter, who shrugged.

With his mouth set in determination, Joe concentrated harder on making the force flick outward faster and harder.  He held it in check, really concentrating now, and with a grunt flung out his glowing hand at the stack.  The tires jumped like they'd been kicked by a giant mule.  The stack swung back and up and over the thick oaken limb in a flash - once, twice, until there was no more slack in the rope.

*CRACK*

When the slack was gone there was still so much torque in the heavy mass of rubber that the branch snapped like a pencil.  Tires flew high into the air across the yard and heather let out a scream as the heavy piece of broken wood fell down upon her.

Joe's hand shot out and the branch bounced off a glowing dome that suddenly encompassed his daughter.  He quickly turned his head, the aura now a fiercely bright radiance, and shot out a hand at the tires in the air.  They froze in place across the length of the yard and then slammed together into a single mass at their center.  He looked at his daughter, who was peeking out between the hands covering her head, and then back at the tires before sending them with a thought into a pile by the cinderblock sidewall of the garage.

After he released the force, Heather came running over and nearly tackeld him with a hug.  She buried her face into him like a frightened child, which she was, and her arms clutched at him tightly.

"Alright...It's alright," Joe soothed her as he hugged her back and stroked her long hair.  His eyes wandered to the fallen branch that might have put his little girl in the hospital. 

So much for practice.