Tucker unlocked the scaled down door made for him, it was the only way he could ever get inside if Jessica and Dawn were both out of the house. He had taken a short trip to the supermarket to stock up on some necessities for the house, which he carried in a large brown bag made of a paper like material.

  He began to notice something was off when his nose was assaulted by a stink that had managed to diffuse itself through the entire house. His nose hairs burned and his stomach gave its own opinion on the matter by threatening to send Tucker’s lunch back up. Tucker barely managed to keep it down. His only solution to this for now was to cover his nose with handkerchief he had in his pocket, forcing him to press the bag against his chest.

 Closing the door, he ran over to the large table and climbed the steps made just for him, placing the large brown bag down and climbing back down.

 Tucker made his way to Dawn’s room and as he got closer, he could hear the sound of a girl crying, spirits crushed and all hopes extinguished. Tucker’s heart sank, Dawn was being bullied again and whatever it was, it was enough to send her running home. He had never seen her leave school early for any reason, not even for being sick. Dawn had never been sick before and her tormentors at school never got to her to the extent that she’d just up and go.

“ Dawn?” Tucker inquired, her room door ajar.

 He had barely stepped inside when Lucky ran out, clicking and chirping, looking very flustered and….gagging? Tucker was astounded by it, he didn’t know that Lucky even had a gag reflex. Lucky didn’t stop, his tail moving from side to side as he took cover under an enormous couch.

“ Go away Dad! Go before I make you faint from my farts!” Dawn warned Tucker, her cries intensifying.  Tucker would not do that, he couldn’t let his baby girl just stew in her own sorrow. He would be a terrible father to let that happen.

 “ I’ve smelt more pungent odours dear. No wait, I’ve made worse, ask your mother.” He assured Dawn and it was no lie although Dawn had exceeded him when it came to quantity. Tucker slowly walked up to her but he made sure to stay away from her bum, he didn’t want to risk it.

 He wanted to have her open a window but he spotted the sole window in her room open, dismayed at how much of the flatulence remained.

 Dawn looked up, her eyes coloured red from all the tears she had shed on to her pillow, a large dark stain from where she had laid her head. The pain was only exacerbated by the sight of her own father using a handkerchief as a gas mask. Tucker picked up on it and in chose to forgo it and simply endure the stench, it would at least assure Dawn.

 “ Dad, have you ever made one so bad that an entire class almost died from it?” Dawn asked him, just thinking about what she had done put her on the brink of tears again. She wiped her face, why did all this have to happen to her? She was already a joke at school but this would be the one that broke her.

 Tucker was taken aback by this, he had heard nothing from her school about this. Surely she had to exaggerating? His daughter could not have done something so terrible.

“ Why don’t you start from the beginning? Tell me what happened,” he said to Dawn, hoping she was merely blowing things out of proportion. He didn’t know what to do if her flatulence had actually killed someone; probably something like going into hiding from the rest of the world.

 Dawn recounted her story, not leaving out any detail. Each moment she recalled cut into her like a knife and this led to the flowing of tears. Dawn had to stop and wipe her eyes before she could resume. Tucker assured her that he was not angry at what she did and told her to continue. Dawn continued and by the end, she had just one thing to say to Tucker, nothing else came to mind.

 “ I need to transfer to another school. As soon as possible,” Dawn declared, in her mind she knew she was done for. She looked at Tucker with hope, hope that she could get a fresh start somewhere else. In another city, province or even continent, anything but staying.

“ No,” Tucker shook his head, disappointed at Dawn. “ I can’t do that. I’ve never blamed you for getting removed from your previous schools, those incidents were handled poorly by the administration and even though your mother went down to fight your case, we couldn’t force them to keep you. Not legally anyway so we left.”

 “ I remember the last one,” Dawn recalled with a tear in her eye, it seemed that she would spend the rest of the day having her eyes act as waterfalls.

 “ I fought back against the bully, picked her up and yelled at her for calling me names behind my back and made her explain everything. By the end of it she needed therapy, or so I was told. Mary was never the same again,” Dawn felt a lump in her throat, regret for her actions even though her folks never attached any blame to her.

 “ Yes and it was an outrage that they never punished Mary at all,” Tucker noted bitterly, that was a dark chapter in Dawn’s life and he still recalled how she cried for hours after finding out what she had done to Mary. He had Dawn inform the school board of this but they had ignored all of this, simply barring her from being a student at the school. Would Dawn be a monster if she showed remorse? To Tucker, the answer was clear: No.

 “ Even so, I bring misery to every school. I have to go somewhere else, some place where this will never happen again,” Dawn replied, feeling morose after thinking about all the other screw ups she had done in her short life.

 “ No you don’t. Dawn, you have Graham. You gave him a reason to come to school, I’ve seen him when he visits, he loves being your friend. Did you make his life worse?” Tucker asked Dawn, he would never let his baby girl see herself as a jinx, she never was.

 “I-I-knocked him out with my gas!” Dawn cried out, though she never saw it, the sight of his body crumpled to the floor lying motionless on the floor. She didn’t need to see it, she had put two and two together and worked out what happened.

 “ Yes but didn’t you save him from George and Edmund, those nasty boys who made his life hell? You’re like a guardian angel to him, keeping his demons at bay.”

Dawn’s heart rose, Tucker’s sentiments were echoed by her. There were moments where she did believe she was Graham’s protector,watching over him while he went about his life. She remembered him thanking her so much on her first day at school that she thought he was having a nervous breakdown, it had made her feel good about herself. To Dawn it was proof she could be more than a burden to society.

 “ I-I did keep him safe….” she answered, “ but how will I ever face him now? I won’t have friends, no one will want me and I’ll die alone. If I live as long as Mom then it’ll be thousands of years isolated from everyone else.” She could picture it in her head so well, her older and withered self on her deathbed with no one to comfort her, her parents long since dead and no one to say their goodbyes to her. It was a future she imagined whenever she felt low and it filled her heart with dread whenever she did so.

 “ It’s an extreme scenario but your mother did worse things and people still love her. She is loved by her colleagues, her friends and her husband, no matter what she did.”

“ What did she do?” Dawn questioned Tucker, surely it couldn’t have been worse than what she did? Dawn saw her mother as the perfect woman, both physically and in personality. She often wished for her mother’s body, a body to drive boys wild and have them chase her but her genes had saw fit to give her small breasts and a slim frame instead of the curvy body of her mother.

 “ Before you were born, she was possessed by this malevolent being called Rammun who wanted to use her to take over the galaxy. Your mother nearly crushed her co-workers and her friends and although you could argue she didn’t actually do it, she still told me of the horror of watching your own body commit such atrocities and being unable to even fight back.”

 Dawn was stupefied by this bombshell, she had been taught in class about how this was just a gas leak that led to those affected having vivid hallucinations; it was even an actual case study on industrial safety standards.

 “ Wasn’t it some gas leak and everyone just saw things?”

Tucker chuckled, “ Oh it was real but we couldn’t afford to let the public know what really happened. Don’t tell anyone by the way but your mother was affected by it and although no one blamed her, she could have just hid herself from the world because of Rammun but she didn’t. She held her head high and lived the life she intended to live.” He paused and was heartened to see Dawn taking all of this in, he loved Dawn and he wanted to see her have some backbone, she often caved in too easily when she hit an obstacle.

 “ If Graham is a true friend, he’ll forgive you for it because that is what friends do, they kiss and make up when they screw up.Dawn, they move from it and Graham will remain chums with you if he is as good a friend as I believe he is. If not, you’ve lost nothing.”

Dawn came closer to Tucker, leaning her head in, “ I-I’ll see him tomorrow and I’ll apologise and after that...if he still wants to be a friend, we’ll carry on from where we left off.”

 “ Great. Thats what I want to hear from you, you’ll go back and deal with whatever awaits you and when it's over, you’ll resume the school life you had.”

 Dawn slapped her hand against the floor, gaining confidence with each second, “ Yes I will Dad! I will face my problems and after that...I’ll cross that bridge when I get it.”

 “ I want you to remember this saying from House Martell, from a Song of Fire and Ice. They have a motto, ‘ Unbowed, Unbent,Unbroken.’ Remember that last one, no matter what happens to you. It’s okay to fall but it isn’t alright to let it break you. When you fall off the horse, you get back up on it and persevere.” Tucker lowered his voice, speaking ominously to Dawn, hoping the message would get through.

 Dawn got it, she’d have to be strong. “ Dad, I know its just a show but that’s really deep. I’ll be strong, never bent or broken in any form. I am  one hundred and ninety eight feet tall, I shouldn’t let a guy the size of my thumb get to me that easily. I am literally above all of that,” she replied, finally finding a reason to smile, a tear broke from her eye and fell to the floor but it wasn’t made from dejection but from the optimism that coursed through her.

 “ I’ll go back tomorrow, no matter what Graham thinks of me. I’ll get through the names, the solitary live I’ll have and-” Dawn stopped as she heard the doorbell ringing.

 “ Guess it’s the police, here to arrest me for well…you know,” She tensed up as she anticipated a fight, Tucker was not too keen on having his daughter battle local law enforcement personnel.

“ Don’t fight them,” He advised her, it wouldn’t be worth it. He’d have to explain it, running out of the room, his giantess of a daughter having long since exited thanks to her longer legs.

 Dawn turned the big door and opened it and screamed in surprise, “ Graham!” She called down to him, thrilled to see her best friend back. His hair was a mess, wet after running from the bus stop to Dawn’s house and the back of his shirt soaked.

 “ Dawn! Don’t give up, you have to-” Graham pleaded, falling to his knees and begging Dawn. He was hoping a dramatic scene might sway her.

“ You can stop, I’m going back,” Dawn chuckled but she was touched he had come all this way, Tucker was right about him.

 “ Thank you for coming, I wasn’t sure if you’d still want to be friends with me after….what I did,” She added sheepishly.

 “ Of course I would! You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Dawn, I never thought about ending this friendship, you mean a lot to me and it will take more than  a bad case of wind to ruin it,” Graham replied with a vibrancy she only saw when he was explaining his latest experiment or more recently, their debate over Wolverine and Sabertooth.

“ You’re right, it was silly of me to even think about it but thank you Graham, you’ve been a good friend to me. No, you’re my best friend too, there isn’t any other way to describe it.” Dawn was waxing lyrical about their relationship and why wouldn’t she? They enjoyed each other’s company in the two years since they met on that memorable first day at school, two social pariahs in school but they were far from miserable when together.

 “ You see Dawn, told you Graham would never abandon you,” Tucker ran up to them, slowing to a jog, panting from the effort. He wasn’t as fit as before but he certainly made the time to stay in shape, a result of needing to keep up with Jessica whenever they had a moment to themselves.

 “ Thanks Mr. Martel,” Graham replied. He wasn’t just here to comfort Dawn, he needed to tell her about George and Edmund, about what he had learned from them in a moment of hubris from the two.

 “ Dawn, I think I know why you got all that gas. Our two favourite bullies told me just before I left.”

 Dawn rolled her eyes hard, she knew where this was going, “ I am going to guess they did it and that they thought I would never come back so they even told you how they did it. Am I right?” She hated those two, too often she thought about just stepping on them and ending it but her judgement told her it wouldn’t end well for her.

 Graham gave a solitary nod in response, “ They knew about your allergy to peanuts and they added it into your lunch. I’m guessing George was a distraction while Edmund did the rest,” he theorized.

 Dawn balled her hand up into a fist, this was one of those moments where she wished she could do it but sadly, the consequences of squishing them were not worth the effort of ending their pathetic lives.

 “ One more reason to go back then...teach those worms a lesson in messing with me,” she said through gritted teeth.

 “ Now Dawn, don’t do anything to get you expelled,” Tucker wanted to dissuade her from dishing out revenge, not because the two boys didn’t deserve it but because she might go too far.  

Dawn turned to her father, she wouldn’t risk that, she had already been kicked out of her previous two schools, there was no need to complete the hat-trick. She relaxed her hand, calming herself down.

“ I won’t Dad, I promise you and Graham that whatever happens to them, I won’t be expelled. No broken bones, no deaths,” Dawn assured them although she had never done any of that and there would be no reason to ever start.

“ Good, you’re better than that,” Tucker said to her and he knew it, she’d never hit anyone out of anger.

 Dawn reached down and picked up both men, holding them in one hand, “ I know, thats why I would never do anything like that, picking on someone smaller and weaker than me. Graham, you look tired, would you like to rest for a bit? Maybe even have dinner with us?”

 “ I think I should head home, change out of these. Maybe another time or you could even have dinner with my family. My parents are really fond of you, always asking me questions about the two of us” Graham answered, choosing not to divulge the exact details of the questions, they made him feel awkward.

 “ Alright, I might take you up on the dinner thing. I’d walk you back but I’m afraid of letting one off on the way there,” Dawn chuckled as she set Graham down. He waved goodbye to her and Tucker before heading back, exalted at the outcome of his visit.

Dawn went back into the house, “ Dad, thanks for that talk. It really made me feel better, a lot better.”

 Tucker gave a simple bow, “ Glad I could help. Now lets open up more windows, the smells need to go and fast,” he replied, his nose tingling and in need of fresher air.