She guided her reluctant parents into a music store and began her usual petulant demands for various CDs. From across the bank of CDs, Jake watched his sister rifle through the new releases, and he grinned despite himself. Ordinarily he would have had to endure her sulking and tantrums, but right now he missed them. His mom and dad followed, trying to limit her choice of albums to two, but failing. Jake felt sick when he saw them, all three smiling contentedly—and completely oblivious to their son, who was just a few feet away. Basilisk had explained to him that their minds had been wiped by a powerful technique, capable of blocking even the sight of Jake. Chameleon had often taunted him by stating that the process was irreversible—all the more reason for Jake to want to make the scaly superhero suffer. His mother looked straight at him, but her brain refused to see him, so instead she just smiled in an unfocused manner, and then picked up the CD that happened to be in her line of sight.
