Chapter 2- Team Bonding…..Of Sorts
The stealth jet whizzed across the landscape while inside, Katelyn practiced her powers, shooting blasts of energy at targets, while thinking about her life. Ever since she was little, her life had never been normal. Being raised by an agent and a super-soldier, Katelyn was almost as abnormal as you could get. She didn’t even go to real school. Avengers Academy was the number one school for kids with powers. Katelyn had all her normal classes, Civics, Geometry, Spanish, and English, and then all her training classes, Stealth, Martial Arts, Precision, Stamina, and Team. She had all nine in one day, plus training with dad. That didn’t even include missions that Katelyn completed. Looking back on it all, Kate was surprised she was knocked out cold from exhaustion. And then she remembered; she was a super-soldier. And that didn’t even cover the nightmares she was having now since the torture. Kate was pretty sure she had PTSD but never talked about it. Dad would just tell to walk it off. Mom would…Kate didn’t know what her mom would do because they weren’t really that close. Kate loved her, she really did, and it was just that Katelyn never talked to her about personal stuff.
SMASH. Another target hit.
SMASH. Blasted into pieces
BAM. Katelyn’s blast hit something that wasn’t a target. Steve removed his shield from in front of his face, grinning.
“Oh, sorry. Did I get you?”
“Nope. I got it up just in time. You’re distracted. What’re you thinking?” Steve probed.
“Just about…stuff,” Kate replied evasively. She wiped some sweat from her forehead. Steve walked over and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Katelyn…Don’t lie…” He said, his voice soft.
“I’m not! I don’t-“Suddenly, Katelyn found herself enveloped in his arms. He picked her up like a baby and carried her over to a bench and sat down. His hand ran through her hair.
‘Baby, tell me what’s wrong…” He said, using a name he hadn’t used in a long time. Katelyn looked up at him, her eyes starting to fill up with tears.
”I keep having flashbacks from Tony and Nat and nightmares and I’m always scared of what they’re going to do if they get me again, and I’m always super tired because of all the stuff I do in school, and that’s why my powers have been unstable and I’m sorry that this is happening,” Katelyn said in a rush before burying her face into his chest. Steve seemed at a loss for words for a minute. He recovered quickly.
“Honey, why didn’t you tell me?” Steve said.
“I didn’t know when to tell you, honestly. And I thought that you wouldn’t…” Here, Katelyn paused and looked at her father guiltily.
“What? What did you think?”
“I thought that you wouldn’t…” Katelyn’s voice got smaller, “Care…” For a minute there was absolute silence. Then Steve tilted Katelyn’s head up toward him, gently.
“I will ALWAYS care what happens to you. I’m…” He took a deep breath, “I’m sorry I didn’t…Or you thought I didn’t. I just assumed that you wouldn’t want to talk about it, and for that I’m sorry.” Steve kissed her cheek gently.
“It’s okay. I should have said something.”
“You should have. But never mind that, because now I’m here and I’m holding you and I’ll never let you go.” And they stayed like that, Steve holding her close, for a while, until Bucky came bursting in.
“Hey Cap, just wanted to tell you that we’re landing-oh, sorry, my bad.” He stopped and scratched his neck, as Steve stared pointedly at him; Kate was asleep. The Captain stood up as carefully as he could and walked out after Bucky, leaving the smashed remains of the targets on the floor.
“What happened to her?” Bucky asked, noticing tear tracks on Katie’s face.
“Emotional stress. Educational Stress. Stress in general. PTSD. Stark. Romanoff.” With each step, Steve gave Bucky a new one.
“And she never talked to you about it before now? I mean, I knew about the, what did you call it, Educational stress awhile back but-“
“You knew? And you didn’t tell me...Typical Bucky…” Steve said, half joking, half serious.
“I told her to tell you herself. And I think she’s working way too hard.”
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you do something about it?’ Bucky asked, stopping. Steve stopped too.
“Because…I don’t really know. I was impressed by how much she was getting done, and her grades were good, and she seemed to enjoy missions so I-“
“Decided to work her as much as you could.” Bucky interrupted, and Steve noticed a glint in his eye.
“Uh….No. I honestly didn’t notice she was doing that much. But I’ll fix it.” He added quickly as Bucky opened his mouth indignantly. Bucky closed it but raised an eyebrow.
“Exactly how are you going to do that?”
“Cut her out of the classes she hates, limit her missions, etc.” Steve grinned at Bucky. “I’m not a totally bad parent, you know.” Bucky dropped the eyebrow and grinned too.
“I know. But seeing as I’m her godfather, I should get I say in your decisions for her.”
“That is so untrue, James.”
“I know that too….” Bucky said, pouting, “But I wish it was…She’d have so much more fun with me than with you.”
“Would not…” mumbled Katelyn, unexpectedly, scaring both Steve and James.
“Katelyn! Were you awake this whole conversation?” Bucky asked, curiously.
“Nope, just the last part. Dad is so much more fun than you are, Bucky.”
“Thanks for that,” Bucky said sarcastically. Steve laughed and set Katelyn on the ground where she walked with them to the front of the jet.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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129,936 Literary Works • 671,510 Reviews
This is Kaos here for a review!
This is a long block of text, so I highly suggest chopping it up. This is due to you changing topics somewhat often, and it's doubtful that this is all in the same thought. My main problem with this first paragraph is that you use Katelyn testing out her powers as an excuse to info-dump a lot of her thoughts into one huge blocky paragraph. Nothing is going on in this paragraph other than Katelyn's thoughts, so I didn't really know why it was all bunched up here. It's a weak way to start the rest of the chapter.
Rather than doing this, I suggest you sprinkling this information throughout the rest of the chapter instead of letting it all out here and having what actually goes on in the chapter afterwards. It feels like a general mess with the punctuation and all as well, so I'd give it an aloud read for you to see where it doesn't flow. A small note about PTSD is that, that's not really how it works, as in you can't assume you have it without a medical diagnosis. That part annoyed me a bit how you just throw it around and all, but it was small.
This felt kind of awkward with the "SMASH" in all caps and all the like.
The dialogue is awkward in this chapter, as it feels like the characters are a sort of monotone. I didn't really feel the emotion that you were trying to display in this chapter, which was a sort of stress of being a superhero-in-training, it seems. Instead of this, the reader gets an awkward scene between Steve and Katelyn with Bucky slided in between the two of them.
Katelyn's character as a whole feels just sort of childish, which I hope isn't for the whole novel. There has to be some sort of changing point where Katelyn has to mature. She feels like she hasn't seen the world yet or hasn't seen what's out in the world, and it'd be good if you made a change in her character with some sort of scene that makes her open her eyes and realize more what's out there.
A final note is that the excess of ellipses and exclamation marks in this chapter makes it feel like you're incapable of expressing that your characters are distant or that they're trying to be loud or expressive of their emotions in a different manner. Use body language to do this.
I hope this helped and have a great day!
Hello!
Snazzy here for a review!
The reason this sentence tripped me up was because of the punctuation - instead of a comma after "powers", you should use a semicolon (because you are pausing - and joining - two separate clauses). So, something like this: "The stealth jet whizzed across the landscape, while inside, Katelyn practiced her powers; shooting blasts of energy at targets, while thinking about her life." Easily fixed.
This seems really abrupt. One minute, she's all cool, calm, and collected - showing no emotion, and then she utterly breaks down (without warning). It just doesn't seem real, if you see what I'm trying to get at. As I haven't read any other chapters, I don't know Katelyn's character - so if she's the "crying type", I would maybe somehow hint before the breakdown that all she wanted to do was cry and fall into his arms (so it's not as abrupt). If she's not the crying type, I would make it so that she wants to cry, but holds back tears - or just doesn't at all.
Something that really bothered me, was about in the middle when Katelyn 'fell asleep'. You kind of switched perspectives from then on out (from Katelyn, to her dad's), which confused me for a bit. Just as I've said before, I would only tell you to "keep it consistent". Also, it seems unlikely that she would sleep for that short amount of time, and then be able to wake up from it (or that she'd just fall asleep in the first place, I think).
So really, the 2 things that pretty much sum up this review is this:
1. Keep it believable.
2. Keep it consistent.
Other than that, that's all I could really find (there may have been 1 or 2 other small grammar mistakes, but if you read through it, I'm sure you'll find them - I didn't want to bother you with too many grammar nitpicks.
Anyway, pretty good job! Keep writing!
~Snazzy
Happy RevMo!