Day Five
"???"

"Um… nice day," she said, glancing around and shuffling her feet.

"The weather is fairly agreeable, yes," Brainy replied shortly, not looking at her.

"The park is pretty," she tried again.

"Yes, it is aesthetically pleasant," Brainy agreed, but said nothing more.

"So… has it been slow these days, as far as hero work goes?" she tried again.

Brainy glanced at her. "There's always something to do, but for the most part, yes, it has been relatively uneventful for the last month or so."

"Has anything interesting happened lately?" she asked.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," the Coluan replied. "Except, perhaps, the fact that Lightning Lad has managed to be even more frustrating to me than usual. Probably because he's going 'stir crazy', as it's often put."

"Oh?" she asked, intrigued. "Lightning Lad frustrates you?"

"Quite a few people do," Brainy replied. "And I've heard that I am difficult to get along with also."

"Doesn't seem like it to me," she said quietly.

"That's because I'm not in one of my…'funks', as my teammates often put it," Brainy replied, staring at a cloud that crawled across the sky above them.

"Funks?" she repeated curiously.

"I've even been called 'obsessive-compulsive' on occasion," Brainy said. "Although personally, I believe the problem is that I think more rapidly than most people."

"Really?"

"I can thoroughly think about something eight times in the period it takes someone else to consider that same thing twice," Brainy said. "My mind moves quickly. Consequently, my mind tends to think about things much more often than other people's minds. Thus, I seem obsessive because I think so much about everything, when the reality is I simply have more time to think about things than other people do."

"And the compulsive part?"

Brainy shrugged. "I'm relatively as compulsive as everyone else around me. But since I think more and faster, my inner compulsions also tend to surface more often than most people's."

She considered this for a moment. "So you're saying everyone's compulsive at one point or another?"

"Case in point," Brainy said, smirking, "You have touched your hair fifteen times in the last five minutes, most likely due to the fact that there is a slight breeze. You are compulsively checking your hair-- you aren't thinking about it consciously, but inwardly there is something that drives you to make sure your hair is not mussed."

"You noticed how many times I touched my hair in five minutes," she said accusingly.

"I have to occupy my thoughts on something," Brainy replied, grinning. "I'm obsessive-compulsive, remember?"

She grinned back. "I thought all the legionnaires were kind of stuffy, uptight people. You seem nice."

Brainy glanced away awkwardly in response to the compliment. "Well," he said, quickly regaining his composure, "Don't tell the Fatal Five. They might think the Legion has gone soft."

She laughed. "Point taken."

After a long moment of silence, Brainy sighed. "Half an hour."

"Eh?" she said.

"I'm meeting someone in half an hour," he explained.

"Really? Who?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said sheepishly.

"You don't know?" she asked incredulously, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be meeting her in half an hour.

"No," he said, "I probably could have traced the messages, but…" he shrugged.

"How do you know it's not a trap?" she asked.

"I don't," Brainy replied. "I've got a backup team waiting, just in case." he glanced at her, suspicion on his face. "And how would you know whether I should worry or not?"

"Because you said you could have traced the messages but didn't. I was wondering why you weren't worried," she replied. Oops, she thought, I forgot, this guy's got a brain that moves at least twice as fast as my own.

"Hmm," Brainy said noncommittally, glancing up at the trees again.

"Is there something interesting up there?" she asked.

"Shrinking Violet," Brainy replied. "She keeps moving to a different position every time I look away."

"And your need to find her when she moves isn't obsessive-compulsive in the slightest," she said, smirking.

"I never said I wasn't," Brainy replied, glancing at her again. "Just that it seems that way to some people for less than logical reasons."

She couldn't help laughing at that.

The Coluan glanced away, and if he hadn't been a cybernetic organism, he might have blushed…

A/N: What? Could it be? The romance in this comedy that was suggested in the very first author note? (Raise your hand if you remembered that, then notice the author's hand is not raised... ^_^)

Anyway, even though I've always said that I like to shy away from romance of any kind, especially OC/Canon character romances (as OC romances tend to involve Mary Sues of the worst sort), I somehow began writing this OC/Brainiac 5 romance.

Another Quick Note:

I got really positive feedback on my lame excuses. Perhaps I should mention bad guy conventions more often...

Third Quick Note:

Please don't misunderstand my above author note. I've read a few (very few) romances where OCs and canon characters actually worked as a couple. It's simply that most OCs romantically involved with canon characters are author-inserts to live out the writer's fantasies with a canon character. (Or characters)

I tend to avoid it. Yet somehow, I myself am creating a strange fic that involves OC romance.

Yet Another Quick Note:

Allaena is by no means a self-insert. I have much more self-esteem (or dare I say it, pride), and I would never have the guts to talk to the guy I like out of the blue in the middle of the park with no one around.

So there you have it: Author notes that are longer than the actual story...

Stay tuned!