Jewel helped her husband with various tests of the ground water, astral alignment, and so on. At one point late into the morning, as they were building a machine to scan the brain waves of everyone in town, she stopped and looked around thoughtfully.

"Carver isn't home yet... I can't recall, did she say she was sleeping over with her friends?"

Finkelstein growled and banged on a rusty bolt with his wrench. "No, she did not. I'll punish her next time I see her. Right now, however..." He tried unscrewing the bolt again with a nasally groan, before snarling and motioning for Igor to give it a go. "Right now, it's better that she's not here getting in the way, interfering with our work."

Jewel nodded. "It's also probably better for her over there, anyway. It's been a very stressful time for everyone, and the four of them can comfort each other better than if she were alone in her bedroom."

"Hrmph. If she had chosen better friends, she wouldn't be grounded all the time and wouldn't have to [i]be[/i] alone in her bedroom."

His wife responded lightly, "If you were more supportive, she might not take so much pleasure in giving you reasons to ground her."

"I'll be supportive when the rebellious, ungrateful pumpkin does something [i]worth[/i] supporting!"