The Brave and the Bold 1/2
I don't even KNOW anymore. I have a REALLY LONG train ride every day, okay?
So yeah, the ludicrously long non-porny sequel to World's Finest. Which I doubt will be my ssbb submission anymore, because of this. A slight change to the fetish mash-up; instead of a murder mystery this is a CRAZY SPACE OPERA. Even if that is your kind of thing I really don't expect anyone to read this.
So yeah. I don't know. This isn't even really that polished; I'm just tired of looking at it. Anyway.
Title: The Brave and the Bold
Fandom: Original Fiction
Length: 19023 words
Rating: PG-13
Zacir-Sto Fahn, crown prince of the Outer Lucratiann Empire, met his uncle Pat when he was equivalent to a human twelve years old, and it had ended him.
This wasn't such a bad thing. He still got homesick sure, all the time, but with the crumbling of that identity came literally an entire world of potential, tougher and grittier but vastly more interesting. Beacon was a much more substantial person than Zacir-Sto would have been. Besides Zac generally was a sunny kind of guy, blessed with a forgiving personality that was half short attention span. Still, he knew Pat felt responsible for his banishment and Zac might have been an exemplar of decency as his day job, but he was off the clock now. He was not above using guilt.
"Yeah, sure I'll adjust," he said. "I adjusted to Earth in the first place and then I adjusted when you moved us from Titular City to hicksville and now I guess I'll adjust again."
Uncle Pat flushed, which was some small gratification, but quickly blustered his way over it. "High school isn't like moving again, Zac. It's a sign we're settling in. I was never comfortable with letting your schooling slide the way it had, and even with the tutors your education has really suffered. Besides, you should spend more time with people your own age."
"I do that plenty!" Zac said, clenching the edge of the table. Next to him, Susan gave him a measuring look and he made an effort to lessen his grip before the wood cracked. "I'm at the Commando Tower every weekend! I'm around other kids all the time!"
"You should spend more time with... regular kids," Pat amended. Zac didn't quite have a response to that. Stalker was the only non-powered human in the Commandos and he was still a long flight away from normal.
"I don't see why we had to move in the first place," he settled on complaining. "Titular City was great. Littleton is so boring! I don't care if you grew up here! There's nothing to do. Susan hates it too."
"You won't get any help from dragging me into this fight, squirt," Susan said, neatly dissecting her grapefruit. However that wasn't a disagreement.
"Susan is settling in," Pat said, sliding a covert gaze at her. He must have picked up on that too. "Her campaign for the local legislature is going very well and she's meeting all sorts of people. You feel stifled because you've chosen not to go out and engage with the other kids here. If you went to school, I bet you would be a lot happier."
"I feel stifled because you won't let me do anything fun," Zac said. Pat flinched, so he kept going. "You won't even let me fly around here! It's like... it's like you put me in a cage and now you put a little hamster wheel in the cage, expecting that to entertain me except that hamster wheel is a real grind."
Susan rolled her eyes at her plate and Pat lost some of his hang-dog expression. "A little over dramatic there, Zac," he said gently. "You know why that rule's in place. Flying around Titular City was dangerous but it was manageable. It's big enough and crowded enough there that we could get away with it. Living in Littleton though means we have to be careful. Everyone knows everyone, so blending in becomes a lot more important. It's a safety thing."
"You're Paragon!" Zac objected. "Even if you don't think I can take care of myself, you're the most powerful thing on this stupid rock! I don't see why we have to hide all the time!"
"It's not hiding," Pat said, but he looked tired and a little irritated. "It's about fitting in with the people we protect."
Zac pushed himself away from the table. "Yeah, well, in case you haven't noticed, I don't fit in with these hicks. It's not like anything this school would teach me matters. And making me go will just make me look like a freak."
Uncle Pat sighed and gave a commiserating look to Susan. She didn't return it; that was something, at least. "I'm going to be late for work," Pat said stiffly. "We'll talk about this more later."
"I can still go to the Commando Tower, right?" Zac asked, hating how he sounded little-kid doleful. "It's Friday."
"At five o'clock," Pat said. "Clear the stumps out of the field before you go, if you're determined not to enroll today. Might as well keep yourself useful."
"Yes, Patrick sir," Zac said. Pat looked like he wanted to say something angry, but instead he grit his teeth and strode off towards the hallway, shoulders tight.
Susan was looking at him, cool and speculative. She was dressed in one of her power suits; as a COO her wardrobe had always been echelons above what Pat could afford on a special ed teacher's salary. So far her major campaign strategy seemed to consist of wowing her potential constituency with Prada, and it was working. "What?" he asked her.
She held up her hands placating. "Don't take it out on me. I'm just an innocent bystander in this feud."
"You think I should go to school too though." Zac jammed his hands in his pockets to keep himself from kicking the chair into component parts. "Of course you do."
Susan shrugged. "To be honest, I think Pat places a little bit too much value on being normal. You're not a normal kid and most of those are shits, anyway. I don't know how much good it would do you to hang around them all day."
Zac looked up at her, barely daring to hope.
Susan got up, smoothing the creases out of her pencil skirt. "At the same time," she continued. "Your uncle is having a tough time right now and arguing with you every hour of the day isn't making it easier. You two don't always see eye to eye, but I think you should cut him a break. He loves you, after all."
Zac didn't have anything to say to that. He just clenched his own jaw and stared out the window.
Susan put her plate in the sink with a clatter, not rinsing it off. She ruffled his hair as she passed him on her way down the hall. "Remember to call and let us know when you've gotten to the Tower," she said. "And don't forget the stumps."
***
It was raining in Idaho. A fuzzy, sullen sort of rain that threatened to linger into the evening. It could have had the decency to hail, Zac thought glumly. That would have at least been interesting.
It was three-thirty and Zac had watched an America's Next Top Model marathon instead of doing anything about the stumps. Zac knew it was a mailman type of chore - expected in both rain and shine - but he figured he could maybe get away with faking memory lapse one more time before getting caught. It was totally unfair to begin with. Out of everyone on this planet, Uncle Pat should have been able to understand what a terrible calamity rain was for Lucratianns. Back home moisture was redistributed from the atmosphere artificially and the annual harvest of tiktik flowers was the only thing that fell from the sky. Rain was enervating in how tragic and gray it turned the world. Pat had probably just bucked-up through it as a kid though, the same way he diligently plowed through everything from the back forty to his students' learning disorders to a rogue comet.
The weather report said it wasn't raining in New Corum. Zac wasn't sure if he believed that; even when the sun was out, it was metaphorically raining in New Corum, like a cartoon cloud in those anti-depressant commercials. Still, Zac reasoned, looking around to make sure Susan hadn't come how early from work, New Corum glum was an urban kind of glum. It definitely beat stumps. He opened the window and flew out.
Zac had nearly died of shock when it turned out that the name Stalker gave him had been googleable. But Elias Gossling had won a national essay contest in the fifth grade. It was about the revolutionary war and used words that Zac, who apparently would be enrolled as a junior, didn't know. Even so, Zac was pretty sure ten-year-old Eli had been phoning it in. It was a short trip from there to the phone book. And okay, Zac hit a moral juncture where it stopped being strictly laptop-based snooping, but what was the point of having one of the world's most tricked-out spy computer in the Commando Tower if he didn't use it when it mattered?
Even then, Zac half-assumed the address he found had to be a decoy. The first time he flew over to check it out he expected to find a compost heap or a giant sign that said NICE TRY, BEACON. But it was a real house, in a crowded row of identical houses. It was small and weather-beaten, the clapboard stained, and settled more into its foundations than realtors liked. It was in New Corum's East District, which the internet also told him was historically white and historically lower class, full of dock workers and prostitutes and other things that were unsavory and old-fashioned. Stalker casually used million dollar technology, but it occurred to Zac that maybe Eli didn't have that much money.
The traditional Lucratiann form of romantic poetry was highly stylized. The closest similarity he had found on earth was the sonnet, but Zac didn't have much interest or talent at either. Not that Stalker would have reacted well to receiving poetry, although that could be pretty hilarious on its own. If Zac was ever going to write anything about him it would have been an encyclopedia or a textbook, something where unembellished facts were laid down line after line with clinical precision. Not that Stalker would appreciate that either, but because if Zac was proud of anything it was how well he knew that little freak. He had dedicated hundreds of subconscious man hours to learning about him, hoarding away every new crumb of information Stalker let drop. But it wasn't Stalker Zac saw now, making his heart jump in his throat. It was that Elias kid, walking home, and he was a new book entirely.
Zac landed on the roof and hid behind the crumbling chimney. Eli was ambling really, no great intent in his stride, slouched over as he walked. He had earbuds in and was holding a white plastic bag, the kind they give you at convenience stores. He was a whole mess of cognitive dissonance clattering around down there. Stalker, for instance, was almost never out of uniform. Even during off-time at the tower he would just remove the cape and the bulkier kevlar, leaving him in the bodysuit, which was great if distracting. When he went undercover he wore costumes, not clothes, whatever fit the situation best. Like an octopus, and the same sort of slippery too. Eli was dressed the opposite of streamlined; baggy jeans and a gray hoodie under a denim jacket. Stalker's hair was always dark and perfect with whatever, like, shellac he used on it, but Eli had that sandy nothing-colored hair, cut into kind of a shaggy side bang. Stalker only listened to boring classical stuff or, weirdly, sometimes very intellectual hip-hop. But Eli hinted at being almost emo, which was equal parts disturbing and thrilling.
At least even Stalker wasn't paranoid enough to do anything to change his eye color when on the job. Eli still had those weird eyes, too yellow to be brown, but brown was still the best word for them. The effect was odd and compelling - Zac wasn't the only person on the team who liked it when Stalker took off his mask - but reassuring somehow now.
Eli took the stairs up to the door two at the time, humming as he fished his keys out of his pocket. At first it just sounded like nonsense, singing under his breath, but then Zac heard him say in a undercurrent to the melodious buzz, "Land in the backyard and walk around down the sidewalk if you're coming in."
Zac waited a couple minutes, partly to keep Elias fussing because he deserved to look like he didn't know which one was his house key but partly to let his blush die down, before landing behind the bushes in the backyard. He walked down the street, trying to keep casual, but when he raised a hand and said, "Hey!" it sounded straight out of a sitcom.
Eli looked up, pure surprise. "Hey!" he said, sounding pleased and taking out his earbuds. It wasn't quite Stalker's voice, but he couldn't say how. "How's it going, man? Don't see you much around here."
Zac nodded, feeling kind of like a duck. "Yeah, uh, well... I was in the neighborhood? I thought you..." He fished for a euphemism. "Might need a lift?"
"Cool, in a little while, yeah," Eli said. He opened the door and narrowed his eyes and there was Stalker, looking pretty mad. "I got some chores I need to deal with first. You wanna come in?"
The answer was yes and no, but the no was a little squirming worry compared to the cavalcade of yes. What could an environment that created Stalker possibly look like? Zac skipped up the stairs, remember to make each foot land firmly on the brick, and flashed Eli a smile that made him flicker his gaze away. "Sure, man."
The inside was small too, the cluttered neatly organized the way it was for people who had standards but not a lot of time or a maid. Not anything impressive but definitely, almost achingly normal, from the flowery slipcover on the couch to the beige carpet to the trophies on the shelf. "Ma, I'm home," Eli called out, moving into the little yellow and avocado kitchen and putting his bag on the table. He went right to the fridge and opened it. Zac's view of him was blocked by the door. "You want anything to drink?"
"I'm good," Zac said. There were Christmas cards on the fridge, stuck there with alphabet-shaped magnets.
"We have Sprite," Eli said, and Zac realized he was kind of nervous. "And orange juice and water. And lemonade, but it's just Country Time."
"Really okay, but thanks," Zac said. "So you saw me... around?"
Eli shut the door with a thwak, holding a carton of milk. He was definitely glaring now. "All three times. It's really not that wide of a chimney."
"Oh. Uh..." Zac said. "One percent, huh?"
Eli rolled his eyes, and it occurred to Zac that Stalker maybe did that all the time, just no one could see, but Zac was saved from whatever he was going to say when a woman came down the stairs. She looked like Eli. There was more years lining her face than maybe her age alone was responsible for and she was shorter and heavier, but she had the same sharpness to her chin and nose. Her eyes glossed over Eli and landed on Zac. "Honey. Who's your friend?"
"This is Zach. Zach Stone," Eli said. He looked casual if you didn't notice his white knuckle grip on the carton. "We're in A.P. Physics together."
Zac did his best to look like someone who would take A.P. Physics. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Gossling."
Eli went still the way Stalker did when he was the first to see a threat, but his mother's smile only briefly faltered. She patted her hair. "It's Ms. Jacobs, actually. But just call me Diane."
Zac grinned from under his hair as rakishly as he knew how. "Then it's definitely a pleasure to meet you, Diane."
Diane smiled back. It made her look younger and prettier. "You should bring home your friends more often, Eli," she said. "I worry when you don't. What ever happened to that girl who used to come over, whatshername?"
"Heather," Eli said. He jerked his chin defiantly when Zac gave him a look.
"Heather," Diane repeated, nodding the confirmation. "I liked her. Did you get my smokes when you were out?"
"They're in the bag," Eli said. He busied himself getting out a glass and avoiding Zac's eyes. It wasn't like Zac hadn't known Stalker had dated Null - Zac had gone out with Silver when they were thirteen, although at the time he had thought they were just in the primary stage of the jurksha ritual - but he definitely didn't think Stalker would have ever brought her home.
"Lites," Diane complained, looking at the carton. "You know I don't smoke these."
"Well you should," Eli said. "Because they're better for you. Not as much as quitting, but a little better."
"You and your smart mouth," Diane said, but there was nothing mean in it. Eli ducked his head and grinned a little. She pounded the carton against her hand idly as she turned to Zac. "Are you staying for dinner?"
"Yes!" Zac said immediately.
"Zac just came to drop off some stuff we need for a project," Eli said. "I'm not gonna be here for dinner anyway. I have that seminar. We need to go upstairs now."
"They work you kids too hard," Diane said. She sounded a little disappointed. "Nice to meet you, Zach. Stop by anytime."
"Oh I will," Zac said, but Elias was already moving and he had to jog a little to follow suit. He got a better look at the trophies on his way up. Michael Gossling on all of them, engraved in cheap metal.
Eli's room was up the stairs and must have been wedged under the eaves of the house, the ceiling slanted so abruptly. The bed was unmade and there were posters on the wall of two year old action movies. All in all, it was underwhelming. He hadn't known what to expect, exactly, but this was downright generic. It was like Stalker had decorated his bedroom based on data he collated from Hardy Boys novels, which was sad and probably close to the truth.
"Dude," Elias hissed once the door was closed. At least that sounded natural. "Don't hit on my mom."
"I can't believe that's your mom," Zac said, sitting on the rumpled little bed. Stalker slept here.
Eli crossed his arms and drew himself up to his full height, making Zac really aware for the first time how much he had been slouching. Before he had just looked like a kid, but now he looked more like Stalker around the eyes, all that quick intelligence and weary capability. Zac could almost see the cape. "Why's it hard to believe that's my mom?"
Zac shrugged. "I don't know. She's just so normal."
Eli huffed out a breath. "That's a matter of opinion." He pulled out the desk chair and sat down, something about his muscles a little too tense for it to be a natural sprawl. Pretty much every other time Zac had seen this boy he had been literally armored; even naked he generally had a contingency plan. This was a gift, Zac knew, Stalker willingly, if passively, exposing this part of himself. This was Stalker stripped to the essentials; a pretty, awkward, smart kid who slept in a small bedroom in a big city. Zac grinned.
Eli looked concerned. "What?"
"Nothing," Zac said. Eli didn't seem convinced. Zac grabbed his wrist, pulled him gently onto his lap. Eli made a little disgruntled noise but settled in with his typical fluid grace. Stalker's refined athleticism could still take him by surprise. Zac smiled up at him, feeling the rush in his gut that meant his nimbus was flaring. He cupped a hand around Eli's neck, rubbing. "Man, it's good to see you. You would not believe the day I've been having."
Eli smiled crookedly. "Let me guess. You stubbed your toe? Someone made fun of your hair?"
"Why would anyone make fun of my hair?" Zac wondered and pulled Elias down into a kiss.
The first few times they had done this they had both been angry, or about to die, or frantic with jubilation because of their survival. It had taken a good month before Zac learned Stalker could kiss like it wasn't a fighting technique. That was good sometimes, being kissed like Stalker was barely restraining himself from devouring him. But this was nice too, savoring the warm, wet motion of Elias' mouth, like they had an untold lifetime to get to something more.
They hadn't had sex since getting back together. They hadn't had that much sex before they broke up, because Stalker turned out to be uptight and virginal, and man, that had been like walking through a minefield, navigating Stalker's control issues. And Zac had been too much of a wreck to go out and get laid during their hiatus. Twenty minutes until they were expected at the Tower. This wasn't the sort of situation where Stalker ever appreciated a quickie, so he was sneaking a hand down Elias' waistband and guiltily toying with the idea of convincing him that Lutractianns can physically die of blueballs, when the comm went off for both of them.
Elias leaned back, color high in his cheeks and breathing hard. He looked down regretfully at Zac's mouth and put a hand to his ear. "Falconette? Yeah. Yeah, I'm with Beacon. No, we're still on the ground. No, I haven't - hang on, incoming call. Pythia?"
Zac switched on his own comm, clearing his throat. "Beacon here."
"Dude." It was Sterling and he sounded unhappy. "You need to get over here."
Zac looked down mournfully at his erection. "No worries. It'll take us ten minutes to get to the Tower. What's up?"
"No, not the Tower," Brian said. "The Satellite."
"Code Black," Elias said, getting off Zac's lap, which somehow felt heavier for the absence. "Unfamiliar spacecraft sighted heading for Earth. All available capes are requested at Society of Righteousness headquarters."
Zac flopped back on the bed with a groan, starring at the ceiling beams. "I tell you. The day I am having."
****
It turned out, and he was clearly not happy revealing this information, that Stalker kept a uniform in a mechanized password-coded compartment built into his closet. This raised a colony of questions on its own: Who had built it? How had Elias kept his mom from noticing the construction? What sort of seminar did she think he spent every weekend at anyway? But Stalker was already pretty tense. Zac had never gotten confirmation out of him, but he suspected teleporting to the satellite made him queasy. Besides, this was Stalker's second meeting since rejoining the team and not all the hurt feelings had gotten smoothed over just yet. Any chink in unity would only be wedged open further on the satellite.
The space cases - capes who lived and operated primarily on the satellite - were scurrying around prepping, but most everyone else just stood on the viewing deck, waiting. No one paid any attention when they zapped in.
It was why they had started the Commandos in the first place, Zac thought as he followed Elias to where the rest of the team stood in front of the display monitor in an uneasy clump among all the older capes. The Commandos mostly all had mentors and they were all learning, but without a solid front they were still usually sent to sit at the kids table during a crisis situation. Working together lent them all more weight.
Falconette smiled at them before returning her attention to the screen, her wings fluttering anxiously. "It was spotted forty minutes ago. It's already been leaked to the press."
"Wonderful," said Stalker. The Wielder glared at him, tossing The Blade, which had manifested today as a crooked dagger, hand to hand. Stalker gave him a flat, assessing look and went to stand over by Silver. The two of them began whispering.
"Hey," Zac said, sotto-voiced to the Wielder. "Maybe now's not the time, okay?"
The Wielder shrugged. Besides Stalker, Graham was probably Zac's best friend but the guy could hold a grudge. It was a pretty standard character trait for psychics. "I'm still being professional."
Zac gave up on conflict resolution and searched for Paragon. He found him over by the central control panel, deep in terse conversation with Nightmare and the Amazonian. He glanced over in Zac's direction and gave him a distracted and weak smile. The small laugh lines around his eyes made him look old, sort of sage. Zac never quite saw the moment when the ripple happened and his Uncle Pat turned from well-meaning but ineffectual into the unofficial leader of the world. Zac smiled back, a thumbs-up sort of smile. He caught the eye of the Amazonian and gave her a wink because he was pretty sure he was biologically incapable of not doing that.
"Any visuals yet?" Stalker asked, breaking off his private conference and saying it loud enough for the rest of the Commandos to hear.
"They're coming in range soon," Nightmare said. Stalker's eyes widened a little, but then again he always seemed a little too surprised that Nightmare kept him in his radar. Although Zac himself would do his best to forget about it if he were in Nightmare's constant periphery because the guy was unsettling, Stalker never indicated they had anything but a solid working relationship. "We know it's a fleet though. No less than thirteen cruiser-class ships, we know that much."
"Does the satellite have the weaponry to combat that?" The Amazonian asked.
"Let's hope we don't have to find out," Silver muttered. Stalker nodded. His cape was pulled closed around him. Zac went back to watching the claustrophobic infinity of space through the satellite's viewing panels.
"Visual in five," The Blue Peril said. And then they were on screen with a little blip as the digital reading settled, twelve white scout ships flying in formation around the silver tanker in the middle. They were all more circular than most spacecrafts the Society ran into, certainly more elegant than anything humans had yet produced. Zac never really liked the cylindrical nature of most Earth space shuttles. After all, as his old tutors had taught him, the circle was mathematics perfected and Lucratianns strove for perfection in all things.
"Have they hailed us?" Zac heard Paragon ask.
"Not yet," the Blue Peril said. "All channels are open."
"They won't just yet," Zac heard himself say. He had a deep conviction it was true, the way you feel in dreams. Around him, capes looked at him in surprise but he took a step forward to get a better view. "Zoom in on the southeast section of the hull."
Blue Peril looked at Nightmare. Nightmare turned to his left. "Paragon?"
Paragon frowned briefly at Zac, all genuine curiosity. Zac had a wildly paranoid moment before remembering of course Uncle Pat wouldn't know. He left Lucratia when he was a baby and had only been back twice, during which time no one would have been dumb enough to show him the carrier ships.
"Please," Zac said to Paragon.
Paragon furrowed his brow at Zac for a moment but seemed satisfied by what he saw. "Do it."
The moniter zoomed in, displaying a crest. The crimson of it sparkled in empty space, the stylized twining of a mroner bird around an arrow.
"They're not warships," Zac said. The words were hard to get out; they wanted to stay lodged in his chest. "That's the royal Lucratiann crest. The scouts all have military-grade weaponry but that one, it's not armed."
"Beacon," Paragon said, maybe a little alarmed. Zac saw Stalker draw himself up to his full height like a string pulled tight.
The satellite's transmitter beeped, a chiming little beep. It was sound he had half-forgotten and felt off-center to remember. A tinkling androgynous voice said, "Well me, . This is the Royal Flagship Fahniree of the Lucratiann StarForce. We have come on a mission of non-aggression to contact-"
"I'm here," Paragon said, crossing his arms. "Telar-Ere Fahn, born to the royal house of Fahn. State your purpose."
There was politely annoyed silence on the other end before the voice said, "Well met, former son of Fahn. But we seek another. Your ward, Crown Prince Zacir-Sto Fahn, son of Col-Suran Sto, 128th Emperor of the Greater Lutractiann Empire."
There was a stir around them, a sea of people finally shocked out of silence. Falconette instinctively wrapped one of her wings around Zac. He brushed his way out of it as gently as he could with a shaky arm. He felt like he might throw up. Zac looked at Paragon, but Paragon had nothing for him but startlement. Zac crossed his own arms. "Yeah, I'm here," he said. "But that crown prince stuff, you gotta update your Wikipedia page, dude. I haven't been that for a long time."
Another puase, during which the senior members of the Society looked at each other, uneasy and evaluating. Finally another transmission came through. "This unworthy one most humbly requests that his Excellency board our vessel in order to grant us an audience. His majesty, your most excellent father, is dead. There is much to discuss."
***
Zac had had seventeen attendants back when he was a prince, each of whom had assistants of their own. Over the course of his childhood he had had royally designated nurses, tutors, playmates and Mifann-Wi, although she hadn't been on the payroll. His father was more the holopainting in his playroom, the crest over his bed; an ideal or a symbol, worthy of respect and love in that regard. If you had asked yesterday, Zac would have said his strongest memories of his father were of his own sentencing, which still had all the surreal clarity of a vivid nightmare.
When he was a kid, though, Zac would be dressed up in his best robes and escorted to the assembly room, where his father would take him on his knee. "Here's my little politician," he would say, tweaking Zac's ears. "My little warrior."
"We can't let him go," Paragon was saying now. "It's probably a trap, and even if it isn't, they won't have anything to say we need to hear."
"You're suggesting we ignore them?" The Amazonian said. "They're claiming peace, but when have the Lutracianns not had their hands on a sword when saying that?"
"They came here on a pleasure cruiser!" Paragon said.
"It might not be armed," Nightmare said. "But those scout ships are. Whatever emissary they sent, they're protecting them."
"But still-"
"Paragon," Zac said. He wasn't loud but the observatory went quiet as if to accommodate him. "I'm going."
Paragon looked at him like he had forgotten Zac was there. "Beacon. This is going to be dangerous."
"I don't care," Zac said. "I need to know what happened to my dad."
Paragon's eyes went big and then the expression compressed, his mouth flattening into a thin line. "All right," he said, and Zac could have hit him for how gentle he was trying to be. "But you're not getting on that thing by yourself. I'm coming with you."
"Me too," Stalker said, materializing by Zac's elbow. Zac jumped but Stalker was totally immobile, the perfect little soldier.
Nightmare grunted, doing something most likely very important to the control panel. "Which means I'm coming too." He addressed Paragon as, so far as he was aware, Nightmare had never spoken to Zac directly. "You'll need more back-up. Someone capable of keeping a cool head."
Paragon didn't seem thrilled and even through his daze Zac found it kind of funny that Pat got annoyed when a human accused him needing help, even Nightmare. At first, Zac had serious fantasies of throttling Stalker for his suggestions, especially when they were unilaterally useful. Maybe that was genetic, teeth on edge about a best friend who was always right.
Stalker was still doing his gargoyle imitation as the transport system was being prepared, but Zac caught him eying him, an insecure little twinge to his mouth. He looked away guiltily when he noticed Zac staring. How brilliant and terrifying was that, that they had stumbled themselves into a situation even Stalker hadn't anticipated?
***
It took a moment to adjust after the particle reconfiguration, but Zac didn't need to get his bearings to know they had been sent to the atrium. The air felt like warm breath. They were far enough away from the endless waterfalls of the walls that the green water just created a gentle murmur. The orange canopy of the intertwining branches of the dark Leracar trees swayed in the artificial wind.
Stalker landed on his feet but needed to brace himself against Zac. A blue turl-whirl landed on Stalker's shoulder, head cocked as it investigated all his strange smells. Zac figured why not and snuck in a quick grope as he shooed it off. Stalker gave him an awesomely indignant look.
"Clear," Nightmare said, and Zac jumped away, in case he meant your gay affair is. Deflowering Nightmare's protege probably wasn't the best thing he could do for his health, or Uncle Pat's for that matter. Pat tried to be understanding about certain aspects of native Lucratiann society, but he was profoundly and fundamentally from Idaho. "Scanner's not picking up any weaponry."
From a thicket of trees, a cabal of blue robes glided towards them. Within ten feet, the royal radius, they collapsed to the floor as one, foreheads meeting the ground. "Excellency," the one leading the formation, a voice Zac would have known anywhere. "We are honored to be in your most exalted presence. Forgive this unworthy one, as I have-"
"God, just skip it," Zac said, as Stalker raised his eyebrows incredulously. Zac had had daydreams like this, but none of them involved him feeling this irritated. "Will you get up, Uncle Owei?"
Owei looked up. He had grown a beard, pretty much the same color as his skin, and his hair was longer and top-knotted. He looked like a cross between a samurai and Obi-Wan Kenobi, which, if he were capable of understanding those references, would have been what he had been going for. He looked younger than he had when Zac was twelve, when - as the youngest of his uncles - Owei had still seemed impossibly old.
"As his excellency wished," Owei said, a little belligerently. He stood up, robe pooling around his feet. Owei spared a look at Paragon, twitching up the corner of his lip in a delicate sneer. "Telar."
"Owei-Bal," Paragon said, measured. He was stalwart again, hands clenching and unclenching, gun powder lining the pathway of a zen garden. "What is this about?"
Owei lowered his gaze. "This concerns Zacir alone."
"Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of them." Another bird landed on Zac's shoulder this time and started to preen. Zac did his best to ignore it.
Owei curled his mouth up sourly. "As you desire. Your honored father, the great emperor, is dead."
Again, Zac was oddly indifferent about the information, like it was so big it had pushed out his capacity to feel. "How?" His voice was more upset than he was.
The wording crawled across Owei's face before it making it out into the open. "With dignity," he said. "He was challenged and he faced his opponent with honor as a great man should."
Stalker, who wouldn't know honor if it bit him, who was the master of clawing a dude in the junk and running away, took a step closer to Zac. They weren't quite touching, but it magnetized the air between them in a comforting way.
"He lost a duel?" Zac asked.
"Yes, your Excellency."
"To who?"
"Who do you think it could be, Zacir?" came from behind them. It hit like a jumper cable, like being smothered to death with a nursery blanket. It was voice he still dreamed about, sometimes.
He turned around and there she was, older but the same. "Mom?"
Marialle wasn't in quite her finest gown, the crystal one, but it was beautiful even dyed mourning blue. She would always be beautiful. Her eyes were wet and warm. "Zacir. Oh, my baby. Oh, you've gotten big."
"Mom," Zac choked out, trembling towards her. He reached out and then he was enveloped in her, face buried in her dress like he was five and Mifann-Wi had hurt his feelings. He was taller than her now, though. How could he be taller than her? She was larger than the world. She smelled like always, like lotion and ink. "Mom."
She stroked his hair. "It's so good to see you, my little bird. You don't know how much I've missed you."
"You didn't come," Zac said, muffled and wet. "To the sentencing. You didn't even come."
"I was so weak," she said. "My pride and joy was being cast off with that traitor and I would never see you again. I couldn't watch. I couldn't bear it. You don't know how I've regretted that. Forgive me, my baby."
Zac sniffled. "Uncle Pat's not a-"
"This is touching," Nightmare said dryly, and oh god Nightmare was watching. Zac sprang away. "But we still don't know what's going on here." Nightmare and Stalker were looking at him with nearly identical expressions, like wistfulness was leaving a bad taste in their mouths. Paragon just looked angry.
Marialle glided over, taking his large hand in hers. "Telar. Brother. You and your friends are welcome here too. Bad blood may have been between us before, but in these times the House of Fahn needs all the allies it can have."
"What's going on, Marialle?" Paragon asked, clipped.
Marialle turned back to Zac, smiling soft and serene. Zac felt his insides quake. "It's time for Zacir to come home."
"Really?" Zac said at the same time Paragon said, "I don't know what you're playing at here this time, Marialle, but-" and Stalker said, "He is home." It was only the last she paid attention to.
"Who's this?" she asked, turning to Stalker, sweetly fascinated.
Stalker nodded like John Wayne. She wasn't the first alien queen he had met. "You can call me Stalker, your excellency."
"What a pretty one," she cooed to Zac over Stalker's head. "Is he your jurgash?"
Zac's answer to that depended precisely on how much Lucratiann he was betting Paragon knew. Words like jurgash were uncommon but notable. "Err," he settled on.
His mother seemed to take this answer as it was and tweaked Stalker's ear, which okay, that was pretty great. "Well, Mifann-Wi will have company then. She's here too and so looking forward to seeing you again, Zacir."
"She left Lucratia?" Zac asked, amazed.
Marialle sighed, shaking out her hair. "It wasn't safe for her there unsupervised. We're in desperate times, my morning bird. Come with me. Your entourage as well. We'll need to sit to discuss this."
Owei and his attendants led them out of the atrium, down the circular and warmly-lit corridors. Lucratiann design was structured around refined intuition and even the passages in the shuttle were soothingly intimate in their sense of enclosure. Zac was pretty sure they were going to a conference room. It shocked him that he could remember the layout to the ship so well; it shocked him that he had ever forgotten.
Stalker fell into step beside him and again Zac was very aware of the spaces where they weren't touching. "What's a jurgash?"
"It's cultural?" Zac tried weakly. Hopefully they would be hit by a meteor before they could keep having this conversation.
Stalker raised an eyebrow. And bullshit he didn't have psi powers. Zac had seen him break professional assassins with that move.
"Look, it's just... a thing. And it's really important to stress that it's a thing you're not, even a little bit."
"Beacon," Stalker said, in that voice that half made Zac feel like he was five and half really turned him on.
Zac gave up. "I guess the literal translation is something like... official... royal mistress?"
Stalker, for the briefest moment, faltered in his stride. When he resumed walking it was with the stiff and affronted dignity of a wounded tiger, his cape drawn tight around him. The real irony was that everything in him that would be mad about this would also make him a really exceptional jurgash.
"Look, I said you're not one," Zac said desperately. "And anyway, it's a great honor! People train! For years."
"I'm never talking to you again," Stalker said. But that was just posturing; he added a second later. "Is that what Mifann-Wi is?"
And that was a whole other galaxy of complicated. "Not... exactly."
Marialle had heard this, somehow, like she had always heard everything, before. "Mifann-Wi? Yes, I've rung for her. She'll be meeting us. Don't worry, Zacir, even during your banishment she remained a faithful fiance. She's stood by you in spirit all these years."
Stalker stopped abruptly, like a circuit had shorted in his brain. One of Owei's assistants nearly ran into him. Zac saw his hand twitch towards his belt compartment with the smoke bombs; he was just glad Stalker hadn't yet worked out the covers to the ceiling vents. Zac had a feeling in his stomach like he had just swallowed yeast.
"I can explain," he murmured as they were ushered through a door.
"Don't," Stalker said acidly. "Looks like she's here to do it for you."
And indeed, when Zac hadn't been paying attention the room had filled, all the attendants sitting around the table at the end. And Mifann-Wi, perfectly posed, was standing hands clasped in the middle. It wasn't that Zac couldn't recognize her, that wasn't the jolt of shock. But the wide-set eyes and the straw-straight hair had turned beautiful while he had been away when before they were just the identifying markers of his best friend. Zac stepped out of sync with Stalker and croaked, "Hey."
She let out a little sound, overcome and blissful, and ran towards him, skirts swirling. Zac caught her more than held her, but there was definitely a point where it turned into a hug.
"Zacir," she said. God, she was tiny, bird-boned under her clothes. "Oh Zacir. I missed you so much."
"It's good to see you too," he settled on, trying to stay honest.
She drew back, biting her lip and drinking him in. "I never believed them, Zacir. I knew you couldn't have committed treason. Not my Zacir. I never listened to any of that talk, believe me."
"Uh well," Zac said. "I did technically-"
Marialle sighed, bring a hand to her chest. "It does my heart good, this reunion. Even in my grief I can see hope."
Paragon muttered something darkly to Nightmare, who nodded. Stalker, Zac couldn't immediately see, his dark colors lost in the sea of blues. Dating Stalker was like trying to hand feed a chipmunk, and the past thirty seconds had probably undone eight months of battering away at his trust issues. So that was awesome.
Zac turned back to Mifann-Wi. She'd been as close as his right hand, once, and he had somehow not thought about her in years. He could at least dredge up a smile.
She cupped his face. "Together we'll rebuild Lucratia. I just know it."
Zack frowned, cheek twitching against her hand. "I don't understand. Why do we have to?"
"Sit down," Owei said, gesturing to the table. "All of you. Even you, Telar."
"Thanks," Paragon said dryly, pulling out a chair. Zac smiled awkwardly at Mifann-Wi again and went to sit next to him, trying to catch his eye. Paragon was staring at Marialle like he expected her to attack. He could not be more embarrassing sometimes; Zac was scandalized. He slouched into a sulk in his chair. He had forgotten how much more comfortable they were built at home.
Marialle was all grace, as always, and simply smiled at Paragon like the brother she had missed. Etiquette had always been very important to her; she always lectured his tutors about it when Zac was out of line. "Ever since Col's assassination, the Lucratiann royal house has been crumbling into disrepair."
"I thought you said he had lost a duel," Nightmare said.
"He was challenged by Hren-Gared Sto," Owei said. Zac sat up straighter with a small involuntary gasp. Owei noticed. "Yes, your excellency. He returned."
"Hren could never have won that challenge fairly," Marialle said. "All good citizens of Lucratia know it must have been sabotage. It was as good as an assassination by any measure. And now he's claiming right to the throne."
"I'm sorry, who?" asked Paragon.
"My uncle," Zac explained. He didn't know what to do when Paragon looked obliquely hurt so he kept going. "On my other side. One of my father's... my father's brothers. Younger brother. He's an asshole."
"How many uncles do you have?" Stalker muttered, from where he had been apparently sitting two seats down from him this entire time. He was studying Mifann-Wi like he was planning an autopsy, and she kept smiling at him nervously.
"Fourteen," said Zac.
"Some better than others," Owei said, to Paragon. Paragon narrowed his eyes. "And Hren is the worst of them all. He's been planning for years to place himself on the throne."
"Usurping the throne's apparently the national pastime," Paragon said. Zac could have hit him.
"The House of Fahn is collapsing," Marialle said. She bowed her head, and the words were matter-of-fact and apocalyptic. "And Zacir is the only one who can shore it up again."
"Your Excellency," Owei said. "It's time to come home and assume your place as Emperor. The people have not forgotten you, we all feel your banishment was undeserved. They would rally behind you. Lead Lucratia to greatness once again."
Beside him, Paragon breathed in sharply. Stalker stopped staring at Mifann-Wi.
"It's not my place," Zac said numbly. "Being emperor, it's not my place. I was disinherited."
"You're still Col's son!" Mifann-Wi said leaning forward, with the passion of an acolyte. "He never had another! You have more right to the throne than anyone!"
Marialle reached over, took his hand in hers. "You're forgiven, Zacir," she said gently. "You can come home now."
The brand of their family crest had faded on her palm. It matched the shade of a blush now, when before it had been the color of the ground on Mars or drying blood. Zac was already on Earth on the day he turned fifteen and would have had his own branding ceremony. He had gone out for pizza with the rest of the Commandos and when he came home Pat and Susan had waiting for him a copy of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, although Pat hated the franchise, tickets to a Lakers game and Dave Matthews' autograph. He never thought he would touch his mother again; Zac used to wake up in the middle of the night feeling stabbed by that certainty.
"It's not that easy," he heard himself saying.
Marialle's face went puzzled. "Zacir?"
It had been so long since anyone had even said his name correctly, put that syllibant twist in the middle. "Uncle P - Telar. Paragon adopted me. Legally. It would look bad if I just up and left. And I'm like him - I'm a hero here. I'm on a team. They need me."
"We heard," Owei said sourly. "Paraboy."
"Beacon," Zac said. "Anyway, I've got a life here too. I don't know if I can just give it up."
"What are you talking about? I don't understand. You have a responsibility to your people!" Mifann-Wi said. She was always the more enthusiastic civics student. "You're needed at home."
Zac stared at the grain of the table. He didn't dare look anywhere else. "I have responsibilities here too."
Mifann-Wi bit her lip. "My birthday was last month. When you come back we can get married."
"No," Marialle said, sounding somehow both abrupt and kind. She tilted his chin up to meet her eyes and they were sad but accepting. "I understand. Of course you would feel conflicted, you have such a big heart, little bird. You don't want to abandon your friends here. Take a few days and think it over." She tweaked his ear and gave him a brave smile. "Get some closure. I'm sure you'll make the right decision."
"Thanks," Zac said, his voice cracking.
Paragon stood up, knocking his chair back. He said, overtly loud. "We should go. Come on, Beacon."
Zac watched Nightmare and Stalker get up, feeling abruptly out of step. The impact of all this information was delayed but potent and he was almost a little dizzy. He looked over his shoulder, where the rest of the Lucratianns - and why was he thinking of them as Lucratianns instead of Nightmare and Stalker as humans - were clustering together for little conferences. Mifann-Wi was staring at her lap, blinking hard. "But-"
Paragon glared at him. "Now."
Zac slunk up, scowling. "Fine. Sir."
"Perhaps Zacir should stay for dinner," Marialle suggested diplomatically. "You're all invited, of course."
Paragon crossed his arms. "If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to go the rest of the night without being poisoned."
"Dude!" Zac said, shocked, sneaking a look at Owei, who was doing his best to seem unruffled.
"I'm sorry, your Excellency," Stalker said to Marialle. Zac was sure he would like her if he got to know her, wouldn't be this cool and efficient. "But Beacon has a prior engagement. I'm sure you understand."
"It doesn't matter either way," Paragon said. He jerked his head. "We're going."
Zac didn't look behind him when he filed out behind the others. He remembered that Earth story about the salt.
***
The Commando Tower was shaped liked a Erlenmeyer Flask turned on its head. It was paneled in blue-green glass, giving it something of a glossy, aquatic feel high above the city, extravagently and ruthless urban as it twinkled to itself in the sunlight. Stalker had commissioned an architect whose skyscrapers littered Dubai, making him sign at least seventeen non-disclosure agreements and refusing to let anyone in his firm touch the security measures. The Tower only had one elevator, a huge freight contraption that groaned and creaked its way up one hundred and forty seven flights. None of the Commandos used it themselves; it was for tourists only, the twice a year the Tower was open to the public as a show of good faith and publicity. It was the best solution the Society could manage, since the satellite was too expensive for anyone but the upper echelons of the U.N. to reach on any sort of regular basis. The Commandos themselves hated it, both because they were pawns in a decision made over their heads and it meant they had to massively clean every December and May.
Right now it was March, which meant the Tower was littered with pizza boxes and frosting cans, in the lounge at least. The clutter never quite made its way to the control room. But the lounge was a concession to their inevitable downtime and the most impressive piece of equipment in it was the PS3, which stood menacingly on its side next to the egg crate propping up the TV. Stalker and Falconette had spent a lazy Saturday afternoon modding it once, so now it somehow played Wii games and had a CNN news scroll running constantly on the bottom of the screen.
The headlines today were all about the Lucratiann spaceship hovering in the atmosphere, dour like a manatee. Zac had difficulty concentrating and Graham kept beating him at Mariokart, even when he switched to Bowser out of pity. Graham was wearing a shirt that said SHADY GREENS SUMMER CAMP 2005 and he and Brian were both making faces but not at the TV.
"Okay," Brian said, his accent making the word more musical and less doubtful than he was probably trying to convey. "So they're saying basically 'whups, our bad! Come back and be king'?"
"Emperor," Zac corrected moodily. He lounged back against the cushion. "Lucratia rules one eighth of its home galaxy."
"And you didn't tell them no?" Graham said, knocking Toad out with a blue shell. "Aw yeah! I would have told them no. That's a lot of pressure. Being kind of responsible for a small city in North America is enough for me as is."
Zac was tempted to say a couple things, but all of them were pretty arrogant. Graham's powers were weird and entirely contingent on the mystical sword he was bonded to, but Zac never held Graham being Graham against him. "Well you suck," he decided on, losing again.
"Seriously though," said Graham, eyes on his victory lap. "You're not going to do it, right?"
"I said I didn't know," Zac said. He looked around the room like that would make the rest of his team appear. Stalker and the girls had pretty much vanished once they had come back from the flagship, and Zac had only an uneasy array of guesses as to what they were doing. "It was my home. These people raised me. I'm kind of obligated."
Brian raised his eyebrows so they nearly met his equally white hair and said. "Uh, Zac, not to be rude or anything, but didn't they exile you?"
Zac paused a moment to consider and selected Baby Peach this time. "Yeah."
"Why?" Graham asked. "Didn't you help Paragon or something?"
Telar was supposed to be dead. Owei kept repeating that to Zac's father, when Zac overheard them in the palace library, like the emphasis itself corrected the mistake. Telar was supposed to have died over thirty years ago, jettisoned off into space with the trash as an infant and no threat to the throne. Having him come back, even accidentally on his part, as the sovereign hero of some backwater planet was no good, no good at all. Even having him languishing drugged in the holding pen scheduled for execution the next morning would only go so far to correct the publicity damage.
Even at twelve, Zac had known the access codes to the prison compound. And instinctively, somehow, despite a lifetime of worshiping his family dictum like a sun god, Zac knew that this man who was suddenly his uncle but laughed more than any of his other uncles, who hugged Zac in the gardens and told him he was crying because he was so thankful to finally learn he wasn't alone, would never come to Lucratia with the intent to kill anybody.
"I helped him show my planet that our government was totally corrupt." He threw down the controller. "I don't want to play anymore. Brian, your game."
Stalker wasn't in his room. The bed was made with clinical precision, which wasn't any sort of clue as to whether he had been there recently. Stalker was OCD like it was a competitive sport. He hadn't said a word to Zac since leaving the ship. Zac tried Parvati's room instead, knocking on the door when he heard the rustling of people inside. After a minute, the door opened a thin sliver and Parvati poked just her head out, her own white hair up in a messy bun. "What?"
Zac cleared his throat. "Is Stalker there?"
She checked behind her before answering. She let the door open slightly more, revealing only Teresa, wingless, holding a pint of Ben and Jerry's. "No."
Parvati wasn't much of a liar, and the catch in her voice most likely meant Stalker had been there seconds before Zac knocked, but was now either clinging to the exterior of the building or somewhere in the ventilation system. Zac sighed. "Great. Well if he comes back, let him know I'm looking for him, okay?"
"Like he has any reason to listen to you!" Teresa said. "Like you're going to talk your way out of being already engaged."
"Oh come on!" Zac said. "It wasn't like the engagement was still on. I thought I was never going to see her again!"
"Were you going to make me your official royal mistress?" Parvati demanded, crossing her arms.
Zac sort of had been, but he was six months old to the planet at the time and he didn't think he could be entirely blamed for his difficulties assimilating. Still, he wasn't going to get anywhere with the girls with that reasoning. He lounged against the door frame instead, letting his head fall against his wrist. "Silver, you would have been my queen."
"Well, Stalker's not going to be your queen, jerk," Teresa said, picking up an empty bag of Doritos off the floor and crumpling it into a ball. "And you'd better find some way of making it up to him before he freaks out and quits again."
Zac threw up his hands. "Okay look, that was so not my fault! And I brought him back, didn't I? Why am I always the bad guy? And also, did it ever occur to either of you that maybe I'm going through kind of a thing here, kind of in some conflict, and could maybe use some emotional support?"
Parvati and Teresa turned to each other in wordless, feminine conference. They were so smart, these girls, so fearless with their scars and bra straps showing. What would it be like to stop fighting beside them?
Teresa thrust the half-empty ice cream carton at him. "Here," she said. "Emotional support." Parvati slammed the door.
It was Phish Food, at least. That was something. He ate spoonfuls absently as he wandered his way to put it back in the freezer.
Zac had spent years thinking the Commando Tower was some low-key miracle, in no small part because it was a space uniquely and entirely theirs. But also because in many ways it was the one place in his life that had the freedom to be in shambles. Zac, underneath the aristocratic trappings, had never been a guy obsessed with quality. The Commandos had helped him define himself as guy in the first place, not a prince or a hero, or if so one comfortable in sweatpants. They had taught him there could be variations on majesty and how a laugh could be more contagious than an insult. For years he had been stupidly grateful for that understanding. Now, though, opening the freezer to see bags and bags of mozzarella sticks, Zac felt his stomach roil in something too tired to be disgust. Plebeism felt a lot less comforting after being dunked, however briefly, in Lucratiann culture again. Everything on Lucratia had been exquisitely designed and refined over millenia into effortless, elegant perfection. The Tower now seemed tacky and small, trying too hard in order to make up for how it had no idea how to try in the right direction.
Zac felt restless, itchy in his skin. He closed the refrigerator door and went to the launch bay, leaving a quick note before he took off. As he broke through the cloud barrier the world was, for a moment, blissfully white.
continued
So yeah, the ludicrously long non-porny sequel to World's Finest. Which I doubt will be my ssbb submission anymore, because of this. A slight change to the fetish mash-up; instead of a murder mystery this is a CRAZY SPACE OPERA. Even if that is your kind of thing I really don't expect anyone to read this.
So yeah. I don't know. This isn't even really that polished; I'm just tired of looking at it. Anyway.
Title: The Brave and the Bold
Fandom: Original Fiction
Length: 19023 words
Rating: PG-13
Zacir-Sto Fahn, crown prince of the Outer Lucratiann Empire, met his uncle Pat when he was equivalent to a human twelve years old, and it had ended him.
This wasn't such a bad thing. He still got homesick sure, all the time, but with the crumbling of that identity came literally an entire world of potential, tougher and grittier but vastly more interesting. Beacon was a much more substantial person than Zacir-Sto would have been. Besides Zac generally was a sunny kind of guy, blessed with a forgiving personality that was half short attention span. Still, he knew Pat felt responsible for his banishment and Zac might have been an exemplar of decency as his day job, but he was off the clock now. He was not above using guilt.
"Yeah, sure I'll adjust," he said. "I adjusted to Earth in the first place and then I adjusted when you moved us from Titular City to hicksville and now I guess I'll adjust again."
Uncle Pat flushed, which was some small gratification, but quickly blustered his way over it. "High school isn't like moving again, Zac. It's a sign we're settling in. I was never comfortable with letting your schooling slide the way it had, and even with the tutors your education has really suffered. Besides, you should spend more time with people your own age."
"I do that plenty!" Zac said, clenching the edge of the table. Next to him, Susan gave him a measuring look and he made an effort to lessen his grip before the wood cracked. "I'm at the Commando Tower every weekend! I'm around other kids all the time!"
"You should spend more time with... regular kids," Pat amended. Zac didn't quite have a response to that. Stalker was the only non-powered human in the Commandos and he was still a long flight away from normal.
"I don't see why we had to move in the first place," he settled on complaining. "Titular City was great. Littleton is so boring! I don't care if you grew up here! There's nothing to do. Susan hates it too."
"You won't get any help from dragging me into this fight, squirt," Susan said, neatly dissecting her grapefruit. However that wasn't a disagreement.
"Susan is settling in," Pat said, sliding a covert gaze at her. He must have picked up on that too. "Her campaign for the local legislature is going very well and she's meeting all sorts of people. You feel stifled because you've chosen not to go out and engage with the other kids here. If you went to school, I bet you would be a lot happier."
"I feel stifled because you won't let me do anything fun," Zac said. Pat flinched, so he kept going. "You won't even let me fly around here! It's like... it's like you put me in a cage and now you put a little hamster wheel in the cage, expecting that to entertain me except that hamster wheel is a real grind."
Susan rolled her eyes at her plate and Pat lost some of his hang-dog expression. "A little over dramatic there, Zac," he said gently. "You know why that rule's in place. Flying around Titular City was dangerous but it was manageable. It's big enough and crowded enough there that we could get away with it. Living in Littleton though means we have to be careful. Everyone knows everyone, so blending in becomes a lot more important. It's a safety thing."
"You're Paragon!" Zac objected. "Even if you don't think I can take care of myself, you're the most powerful thing on this stupid rock! I don't see why we have to hide all the time!"
"It's not hiding," Pat said, but he looked tired and a little irritated. "It's about fitting in with the people we protect."
Zac pushed himself away from the table. "Yeah, well, in case you haven't noticed, I don't fit in with these hicks. It's not like anything this school would teach me matters. And making me go will just make me look like a freak."
Uncle Pat sighed and gave a commiserating look to Susan. She didn't return it; that was something, at least. "I'm going to be late for work," Pat said stiffly. "We'll talk about this more later."
"I can still go to the Commando Tower, right?" Zac asked, hating how he sounded little-kid doleful. "It's Friday."
"At five o'clock," Pat said. "Clear the stumps out of the field before you go, if you're determined not to enroll today. Might as well keep yourself useful."
"Yes, Patrick sir," Zac said. Pat looked like he wanted to say something angry, but instead he grit his teeth and strode off towards the hallway, shoulders tight.
Susan was looking at him, cool and speculative. She was dressed in one of her power suits; as a COO her wardrobe had always been echelons above what Pat could afford on a special ed teacher's salary. So far her major campaign strategy seemed to consist of wowing her potential constituency with Prada, and it was working. "What?" he asked her.
She held up her hands placating. "Don't take it out on me. I'm just an innocent bystander in this feud."
"You think I should go to school too though." Zac jammed his hands in his pockets to keep himself from kicking the chair into component parts. "Of course you do."
Susan shrugged. "To be honest, I think Pat places a little bit too much value on being normal. You're not a normal kid and most of those are shits, anyway. I don't know how much good it would do you to hang around them all day."
Zac looked up at her, barely daring to hope.
Susan got up, smoothing the creases out of her pencil skirt. "At the same time," she continued. "Your uncle is having a tough time right now and arguing with you every hour of the day isn't making it easier. You two don't always see eye to eye, but I think you should cut him a break. He loves you, after all."
Zac didn't have anything to say to that. He just clenched his own jaw and stared out the window.
Susan put her plate in the sink with a clatter, not rinsing it off. She ruffled his hair as she passed him on her way down the hall. "Remember to call and let us know when you've gotten to the Tower," she said. "And don't forget the stumps."
***
It was raining in Idaho. A fuzzy, sullen sort of rain that threatened to linger into the evening. It could have had the decency to hail, Zac thought glumly. That would have at least been interesting.
It was three-thirty and Zac had watched an America's Next Top Model marathon instead of doing anything about the stumps. Zac knew it was a mailman type of chore - expected in both rain and shine - but he figured he could maybe get away with faking memory lapse one more time before getting caught. It was totally unfair to begin with. Out of everyone on this planet, Uncle Pat should have been able to understand what a terrible calamity rain was for Lucratianns. Back home moisture was redistributed from the atmosphere artificially and the annual harvest of tiktik flowers was the only thing that fell from the sky. Rain was enervating in how tragic and gray it turned the world. Pat had probably just bucked-up through it as a kid though, the same way he diligently plowed through everything from the back forty to his students' learning disorders to a rogue comet.
The weather report said it wasn't raining in New Corum. Zac wasn't sure if he believed that; even when the sun was out, it was metaphorically raining in New Corum, like a cartoon cloud in those anti-depressant commercials. Still, Zac reasoned, looking around to make sure Susan hadn't come how early from work, New Corum glum was an urban kind of glum. It definitely beat stumps. He opened the window and flew out.
Zac had nearly died of shock when it turned out that the name Stalker gave him had been googleable. But Elias Gossling had won a national essay contest in the fifth grade. It was about the revolutionary war and used words that Zac, who apparently would be enrolled as a junior, didn't know. Even so, Zac was pretty sure ten-year-old Eli had been phoning it in. It was a short trip from there to the phone book. And okay, Zac hit a moral juncture where it stopped being strictly laptop-based snooping, but what was the point of having one of the world's most tricked-out spy computer in the Commando Tower if he didn't use it when it mattered?
Even then, Zac half-assumed the address he found had to be a decoy. The first time he flew over to check it out he expected to find a compost heap or a giant sign that said NICE TRY, BEACON. But it was a real house, in a crowded row of identical houses. It was small and weather-beaten, the clapboard stained, and settled more into its foundations than realtors liked. It was in New Corum's East District, which the internet also told him was historically white and historically lower class, full of dock workers and prostitutes and other things that were unsavory and old-fashioned. Stalker casually used million dollar technology, but it occurred to Zac that maybe Eli didn't have that much money.
The traditional Lucratiann form of romantic poetry was highly stylized. The closest similarity he had found on earth was the sonnet, but Zac didn't have much interest or talent at either. Not that Stalker would have reacted well to receiving poetry, although that could be pretty hilarious on its own. If Zac was ever going to write anything about him it would have been an encyclopedia or a textbook, something where unembellished facts were laid down line after line with clinical precision. Not that Stalker would appreciate that either, but because if Zac was proud of anything it was how well he knew that little freak. He had dedicated hundreds of subconscious man hours to learning about him, hoarding away every new crumb of information Stalker let drop. But it wasn't Stalker Zac saw now, making his heart jump in his throat. It was that Elias kid, walking home, and he was a new book entirely.
Zac landed on the roof and hid behind the crumbling chimney. Eli was ambling really, no great intent in his stride, slouched over as he walked. He had earbuds in and was holding a white plastic bag, the kind they give you at convenience stores. He was a whole mess of cognitive dissonance clattering around down there. Stalker, for instance, was almost never out of uniform. Even during off-time at the tower he would just remove the cape and the bulkier kevlar, leaving him in the bodysuit, which was great if distracting. When he went undercover he wore costumes, not clothes, whatever fit the situation best. Like an octopus, and the same sort of slippery too. Eli was dressed the opposite of streamlined; baggy jeans and a gray hoodie under a denim jacket. Stalker's hair was always dark and perfect with whatever, like, shellac he used on it, but Eli had that sandy nothing-colored hair, cut into kind of a shaggy side bang. Stalker only listened to boring classical stuff or, weirdly, sometimes very intellectual hip-hop. But Eli hinted at being almost emo, which was equal parts disturbing and thrilling.
At least even Stalker wasn't paranoid enough to do anything to change his eye color when on the job. Eli still had those weird eyes, too yellow to be brown, but brown was still the best word for them. The effect was odd and compelling - Zac wasn't the only person on the team who liked it when Stalker took off his mask - but reassuring somehow now.
Eli took the stairs up to the door two at the time, humming as he fished his keys out of his pocket. At first it just sounded like nonsense, singing under his breath, but then Zac heard him say in a undercurrent to the melodious buzz, "Land in the backyard and walk around down the sidewalk if you're coming in."
Zac waited a couple minutes, partly to keep Elias fussing because he deserved to look like he didn't know which one was his house key but partly to let his blush die down, before landing behind the bushes in the backyard. He walked down the street, trying to keep casual, but when he raised a hand and said, "Hey!" it sounded straight out of a sitcom.
Eli looked up, pure surprise. "Hey!" he said, sounding pleased and taking out his earbuds. It wasn't quite Stalker's voice, but he couldn't say how. "How's it going, man? Don't see you much around here."
Zac nodded, feeling kind of like a duck. "Yeah, uh, well... I was in the neighborhood? I thought you..." He fished for a euphemism. "Might need a lift?"
"Cool, in a little while, yeah," Eli said. He opened the door and narrowed his eyes and there was Stalker, looking pretty mad. "I got some chores I need to deal with first. You wanna come in?"
The answer was yes and no, but the no was a little squirming worry compared to the cavalcade of yes. What could an environment that created Stalker possibly look like? Zac skipped up the stairs, remember to make each foot land firmly on the brick, and flashed Eli a smile that made him flicker his gaze away. "Sure, man."
The inside was small too, the cluttered neatly organized the way it was for people who had standards but not a lot of time or a maid. Not anything impressive but definitely, almost achingly normal, from the flowery slipcover on the couch to the beige carpet to the trophies on the shelf. "Ma, I'm home," Eli called out, moving into the little yellow and avocado kitchen and putting his bag on the table. He went right to the fridge and opened it. Zac's view of him was blocked by the door. "You want anything to drink?"
"I'm good," Zac said. There were Christmas cards on the fridge, stuck there with alphabet-shaped magnets.
"We have Sprite," Eli said, and Zac realized he was kind of nervous. "And orange juice and water. And lemonade, but it's just Country Time."
"Really okay, but thanks," Zac said. "So you saw me... around?"
Eli shut the door with a thwak, holding a carton of milk. He was definitely glaring now. "All three times. It's really not that wide of a chimney."
"Oh. Uh..." Zac said. "One percent, huh?"
Eli rolled his eyes, and it occurred to Zac that Stalker maybe did that all the time, just no one could see, but Zac was saved from whatever he was going to say when a woman came down the stairs. She looked like Eli. There was more years lining her face than maybe her age alone was responsible for and she was shorter and heavier, but she had the same sharpness to her chin and nose. Her eyes glossed over Eli and landed on Zac. "Honey. Who's your friend?"
"This is Zach. Zach Stone," Eli said. He looked casual if you didn't notice his white knuckle grip on the carton. "We're in A.P. Physics together."
Zac did his best to look like someone who would take A.P. Physics. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Gossling."
Eli went still the way Stalker did when he was the first to see a threat, but his mother's smile only briefly faltered. She patted her hair. "It's Ms. Jacobs, actually. But just call me Diane."
Zac grinned from under his hair as rakishly as he knew how. "Then it's definitely a pleasure to meet you, Diane."
Diane smiled back. It made her look younger and prettier. "You should bring home your friends more often, Eli," she said. "I worry when you don't. What ever happened to that girl who used to come over, whatshername?"
"Heather," Eli said. He jerked his chin defiantly when Zac gave him a look.
"Heather," Diane repeated, nodding the confirmation. "I liked her. Did you get my smokes when you were out?"
"They're in the bag," Eli said. He busied himself getting out a glass and avoiding Zac's eyes. It wasn't like Zac hadn't known Stalker had dated Null - Zac had gone out with Silver when they were thirteen, although at the time he had thought they were just in the primary stage of the jurksha ritual - but he definitely didn't think Stalker would have ever brought her home.
"Lites," Diane complained, looking at the carton. "You know I don't smoke these."
"Well you should," Eli said. "Because they're better for you. Not as much as quitting, but a little better."
"You and your smart mouth," Diane said, but there was nothing mean in it. Eli ducked his head and grinned a little. She pounded the carton against her hand idly as she turned to Zac. "Are you staying for dinner?"
"Yes!" Zac said immediately.
"Zac just came to drop off some stuff we need for a project," Eli said. "I'm not gonna be here for dinner anyway. I have that seminar. We need to go upstairs now."
"They work you kids too hard," Diane said. She sounded a little disappointed. "Nice to meet you, Zach. Stop by anytime."
"Oh I will," Zac said, but Elias was already moving and he had to jog a little to follow suit. He got a better look at the trophies on his way up. Michael Gossling on all of them, engraved in cheap metal.
Eli's room was up the stairs and must have been wedged under the eaves of the house, the ceiling slanted so abruptly. The bed was unmade and there were posters on the wall of two year old action movies. All in all, it was underwhelming. He hadn't known what to expect, exactly, but this was downright generic. It was like Stalker had decorated his bedroom based on data he collated from Hardy Boys novels, which was sad and probably close to the truth.
"Dude," Elias hissed once the door was closed. At least that sounded natural. "Don't hit on my mom."
"I can't believe that's your mom," Zac said, sitting on the rumpled little bed. Stalker slept here.
Eli crossed his arms and drew himself up to his full height, making Zac really aware for the first time how much he had been slouching. Before he had just looked like a kid, but now he looked more like Stalker around the eyes, all that quick intelligence and weary capability. Zac could almost see the cape. "Why's it hard to believe that's my mom?"
Zac shrugged. "I don't know. She's just so normal."
Eli huffed out a breath. "That's a matter of opinion." He pulled out the desk chair and sat down, something about his muscles a little too tense for it to be a natural sprawl. Pretty much every other time Zac had seen this boy he had been literally armored; even naked he generally had a contingency plan. This was a gift, Zac knew, Stalker willingly, if passively, exposing this part of himself. This was Stalker stripped to the essentials; a pretty, awkward, smart kid who slept in a small bedroom in a big city. Zac grinned.
Eli looked concerned. "What?"
"Nothing," Zac said. Eli didn't seem convinced. Zac grabbed his wrist, pulled him gently onto his lap. Eli made a little disgruntled noise but settled in with his typical fluid grace. Stalker's refined athleticism could still take him by surprise. Zac smiled up at him, feeling the rush in his gut that meant his nimbus was flaring. He cupped a hand around Eli's neck, rubbing. "Man, it's good to see you. You would not believe the day I've been having."
Eli smiled crookedly. "Let me guess. You stubbed your toe? Someone made fun of your hair?"
"Why would anyone make fun of my hair?" Zac wondered and pulled Elias down into a kiss.
The first few times they had done this they had both been angry, or about to die, or frantic with jubilation because of their survival. It had taken a good month before Zac learned Stalker could kiss like it wasn't a fighting technique. That was good sometimes, being kissed like Stalker was barely restraining himself from devouring him. But this was nice too, savoring the warm, wet motion of Elias' mouth, like they had an untold lifetime to get to something more.
They hadn't had sex since getting back together. They hadn't had that much sex before they broke up, because Stalker turned out to be uptight and virginal, and man, that had been like walking through a minefield, navigating Stalker's control issues. And Zac had been too much of a wreck to go out and get laid during their hiatus. Twenty minutes until they were expected at the Tower. This wasn't the sort of situation where Stalker ever appreciated a quickie, so he was sneaking a hand down Elias' waistband and guiltily toying with the idea of convincing him that Lutractianns can physically die of blueballs, when the comm went off for both of them.
Elias leaned back, color high in his cheeks and breathing hard. He looked down regretfully at Zac's mouth and put a hand to his ear. "Falconette? Yeah. Yeah, I'm with Beacon. No, we're still on the ground. No, I haven't - hang on, incoming call. Pythia?"
Zac switched on his own comm, clearing his throat. "Beacon here."
"Dude." It was Sterling and he sounded unhappy. "You need to get over here."
Zac looked down mournfully at his erection. "No worries. It'll take us ten minutes to get to the Tower. What's up?"
"No, not the Tower," Brian said. "The Satellite."
"Code Black," Elias said, getting off Zac's lap, which somehow felt heavier for the absence. "Unfamiliar spacecraft sighted heading for Earth. All available capes are requested at Society of Righteousness headquarters."
Zac flopped back on the bed with a groan, starring at the ceiling beams. "I tell you. The day I am having."
****
It turned out, and he was clearly not happy revealing this information, that Stalker kept a uniform in a mechanized password-coded compartment built into his closet. This raised a colony of questions on its own: Who had built it? How had Elias kept his mom from noticing the construction? What sort of seminar did she think he spent every weekend at anyway? But Stalker was already pretty tense. Zac had never gotten confirmation out of him, but he suspected teleporting to the satellite made him queasy. Besides, this was Stalker's second meeting since rejoining the team and not all the hurt feelings had gotten smoothed over just yet. Any chink in unity would only be wedged open further on the satellite.
The space cases - capes who lived and operated primarily on the satellite - were scurrying around prepping, but most everyone else just stood on the viewing deck, waiting. No one paid any attention when they zapped in.
It was why they had started the Commandos in the first place, Zac thought as he followed Elias to where the rest of the team stood in front of the display monitor in an uneasy clump among all the older capes. The Commandos mostly all had mentors and they were all learning, but without a solid front they were still usually sent to sit at the kids table during a crisis situation. Working together lent them all more weight.
Falconette smiled at them before returning her attention to the screen, her wings fluttering anxiously. "It was spotted forty minutes ago. It's already been leaked to the press."
"Wonderful," said Stalker. The Wielder glared at him, tossing The Blade, which had manifested today as a crooked dagger, hand to hand. Stalker gave him a flat, assessing look and went to stand over by Silver. The two of them began whispering.
"Hey," Zac said, sotto-voiced to the Wielder. "Maybe now's not the time, okay?"
The Wielder shrugged. Besides Stalker, Graham was probably Zac's best friend but the guy could hold a grudge. It was a pretty standard character trait for psychics. "I'm still being professional."
Zac gave up on conflict resolution and searched for Paragon. He found him over by the central control panel, deep in terse conversation with Nightmare and the Amazonian. He glanced over in Zac's direction and gave him a distracted and weak smile. The small laugh lines around his eyes made him look old, sort of sage. Zac never quite saw the moment when the ripple happened and his Uncle Pat turned from well-meaning but ineffectual into the unofficial leader of the world. Zac smiled back, a thumbs-up sort of smile. He caught the eye of the Amazonian and gave her a wink because he was pretty sure he was biologically incapable of not doing that.
"Any visuals yet?" Stalker asked, breaking off his private conference and saying it loud enough for the rest of the Commandos to hear.
"They're coming in range soon," Nightmare said. Stalker's eyes widened a little, but then again he always seemed a little too surprised that Nightmare kept him in his radar. Although Zac himself would do his best to forget about it if he were in Nightmare's constant periphery because the guy was unsettling, Stalker never indicated they had anything but a solid working relationship. "We know it's a fleet though. No less than thirteen cruiser-class ships, we know that much."
"Does the satellite have the weaponry to combat that?" The Amazonian asked.
"Let's hope we don't have to find out," Silver muttered. Stalker nodded. His cape was pulled closed around him. Zac went back to watching the claustrophobic infinity of space through the satellite's viewing panels.
"Visual in five," The Blue Peril said. And then they were on screen with a little blip as the digital reading settled, twelve white scout ships flying in formation around the silver tanker in the middle. They were all more circular than most spacecrafts the Society ran into, certainly more elegant than anything humans had yet produced. Zac never really liked the cylindrical nature of most Earth space shuttles. After all, as his old tutors had taught him, the circle was mathematics perfected and Lucratianns strove for perfection in all things.
"Have they hailed us?" Zac heard Paragon ask.
"Not yet," the Blue Peril said. "All channels are open."
"They won't just yet," Zac heard himself say. He had a deep conviction it was true, the way you feel in dreams. Around him, capes looked at him in surprise but he took a step forward to get a better view. "Zoom in on the southeast section of the hull."
Blue Peril looked at Nightmare. Nightmare turned to his left. "Paragon?"
Paragon frowned briefly at Zac, all genuine curiosity. Zac had a wildly paranoid moment before remembering of course Uncle Pat wouldn't know. He left Lucratia when he was a baby and had only been back twice, during which time no one would have been dumb enough to show him the carrier ships.
"Please," Zac said to Paragon.
Paragon furrowed his brow at Zac for a moment but seemed satisfied by what he saw. "Do it."
The moniter zoomed in, displaying a crest. The crimson of it sparkled in empty space, the stylized twining of a mroner bird around an arrow.
"They're not warships," Zac said. The words were hard to get out; they wanted to stay lodged in his chest. "That's the royal Lucratiann crest. The scouts all have military-grade weaponry but that one, it's not armed."
"Beacon," Paragon said, maybe a little alarmed. Zac saw Stalker draw himself up to his full height like a string pulled tight.
The satellite's transmitter beeped, a chiming little beep. It was sound he had half-forgotten and felt off-center to remember. A tinkling androgynous voice said, "Well me, . This is the Royal Flagship Fahniree of the Lucratiann StarForce. We have come on a mission of non-aggression to contact-"
"I'm here," Paragon said, crossing his arms. "Telar-Ere Fahn, born to the royal house of Fahn. State your purpose."
There was politely annoyed silence on the other end before the voice said, "Well met, former son of Fahn. But we seek another. Your ward, Crown Prince Zacir-Sto Fahn, son of Col-Suran Sto, 128th Emperor of the Greater Lutractiann Empire."
There was a stir around them, a sea of people finally shocked out of silence. Falconette instinctively wrapped one of her wings around Zac. He brushed his way out of it as gently as he could with a shaky arm. He felt like he might throw up. Zac looked at Paragon, but Paragon had nothing for him but startlement. Zac crossed his own arms. "Yeah, I'm here," he said. "But that crown prince stuff, you gotta update your Wikipedia page, dude. I haven't been that for a long time."
Another puase, during which the senior members of the Society looked at each other, uneasy and evaluating. Finally another transmission came through. "This unworthy one most humbly requests that his Excellency board our vessel in order to grant us an audience. His majesty, your most excellent father, is dead. There is much to discuss."
***
Zac had had seventeen attendants back when he was a prince, each of whom had assistants of their own. Over the course of his childhood he had had royally designated nurses, tutors, playmates and Mifann-Wi, although she hadn't been on the payroll. His father was more the holopainting in his playroom, the crest over his bed; an ideal or a symbol, worthy of respect and love in that regard. If you had asked yesterday, Zac would have said his strongest memories of his father were of his own sentencing, which still had all the surreal clarity of a vivid nightmare.
When he was a kid, though, Zac would be dressed up in his best robes and escorted to the assembly room, where his father would take him on his knee. "Here's my little politician," he would say, tweaking Zac's ears. "My little warrior."
"We can't let him go," Paragon was saying now. "It's probably a trap, and even if it isn't, they won't have anything to say we need to hear."
"You're suggesting we ignore them?" The Amazonian said. "They're claiming peace, but when have the Lutracianns not had their hands on a sword when saying that?"
"They came here on a pleasure cruiser!" Paragon said.
"It might not be armed," Nightmare said. "But those scout ships are. Whatever emissary they sent, they're protecting them."
"But still-"
"Paragon," Zac said. He wasn't loud but the observatory went quiet as if to accommodate him. "I'm going."
Paragon looked at him like he had forgotten Zac was there. "Beacon. This is going to be dangerous."
"I don't care," Zac said. "I need to know what happened to my dad."
Paragon's eyes went big and then the expression compressed, his mouth flattening into a thin line. "All right," he said, and Zac could have hit him for how gentle he was trying to be. "But you're not getting on that thing by yourself. I'm coming with you."
"Me too," Stalker said, materializing by Zac's elbow. Zac jumped but Stalker was totally immobile, the perfect little soldier.
Nightmare grunted, doing something most likely very important to the control panel. "Which means I'm coming too." He addressed Paragon as, so far as he was aware, Nightmare had never spoken to Zac directly. "You'll need more back-up. Someone capable of keeping a cool head."
Paragon didn't seem thrilled and even through his daze Zac found it kind of funny that Pat got annoyed when a human accused him needing help, even Nightmare. At first, Zac had serious fantasies of throttling Stalker for his suggestions, especially when they were unilaterally useful. Maybe that was genetic, teeth on edge about a best friend who was always right.
Stalker was still doing his gargoyle imitation as the transport system was being prepared, but Zac caught him eying him, an insecure little twinge to his mouth. He looked away guiltily when he noticed Zac staring. How brilliant and terrifying was that, that they had stumbled themselves into a situation even Stalker hadn't anticipated?
***
It took a moment to adjust after the particle reconfiguration, but Zac didn't need to get his bearings to know they had been sent to the atrium. The air felt like warm breath. They were far enough away from the endless waterfalls of the walls that the green water just created a gentle murmur. The orange canopy of the intertwining branches of the dark Leracar trees swayed in the artificial wind.
Stalker landed on his feet but needed to brace himself against Zac. A blue turl-whirl landed on Stalker's shoulder, head cocked as it investigated all his strange smells. Zac figured why not and snuck in a quick grope as he shooed it off. Stalker gave him an awesomely indignant look.
"Clear," Nightmare said, and Zac jumped away, in case he meant your gay affair is. Deflowering Nightmare's protege probably wasn't the best thing he could do for his health, or Uncle Pat's for that matter. Pat tried to be understanding about certain aspects of native Lucratiann society, but he was profoundly and fundamentally from Idaho. "Scanner's not picking up any weaponry."
From a thicket of trees, a cabal of blue robes glided towards them. Within ten feet, the royal radius, they collapsed to the floor as one, foreheads meeting the ground. "Excellency," the one leading the formation, a voice Zac would have known anywhere. "We are honored to be in your most exalted presence. Forgive this unworthy one, as I have-"
"God, just skip it," Zac said, as Stalker raised his eyebrows incredulously. Zac had had daydreams like this, but none of them involved him feeling this irritated. "Will you get up, Uncle Owei?"
Owei looked up. He had grown a beard, pretty much the same color as his skin, and his hair was longer and top-knotted. He looked like a cross between a samurai and Obi-Wan Kenobi, which, if he were capable of understanding those references, would have been what he had been going for. He looked younger than he had when Zac was twelve, when - as the youngest of his uncles - Owei had still seemed impossibly old.
"As his excellency wished," Owei said, a little belligerently. He stood up, robe pooling around his feet. Owei spared a look at Paragon, twitching up the corner of his lip in a delicate sneer. "Telar."
"Owei-Bal," Paragon said, measured. He was stalwart again, hands clenching and unclenching, gun powder lining the pathway of a zen garden. "What is this about?"
Owei lowered his gaze. "This concerns Zacir alone."
"Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of them." Another bird landed on Zac's shoulder this time and started to preen. Zac did his best to ignore it.
Owei curled his mouth up sourly. "As you desire. Your honored father, the great emperor, is dead."
Again, Zac was oddly indifferent about the information, like it was so big it had pushed out his capacity to feel. "How?" His voice was more upset than he was.
The wording crawled across Owei's face before it making it out into the open. "With dignity," he said. "He was challenged and he faced his opponent with honor as a great man should."
Stalker, who wouldn't know honor if it bit him, who was the master of clawing a dude in the junk and running away, took a step closer to Zac. They weren't quite touching, but it magnetized the air between them in a comforting way.
"He lost a duel?" Zac asked.
"Yes, your Excellency."
"To who?"
"Who do you think it could be, Zacir?" came from behind them. It hit like a jumper cable, like being smothered to death with a nursery blanket. It was voice he still dreamed about, sometimes.
He turned around and there she was, older but the same. "Mom?"
Marialle wasn't in quite her finest gown, the crystal one, but it was beautiful even dyed mourning blue. She would always be beautiful. Her eyes were wet and warm. "Zacir. Oh, my baby. Oh, you've gotten big."
"Mom," Zac choked out, trembling towards her. He reached out and then he was enveloped in her, face buried in her dress like he was five and Mifann-Wi had hurt his feelings. He was taller than her now, though. How could he be taller than her? She was larger than the world. She smelled like always, like lotion and ink. "Mom."
She stroked his hair. "It's so good to see you, my little bird. You don't know how much I've missed you."
"You didn't come," Zac said, muffled and wet. "To the sentencing. You didn't even come."
"I was so weak," she said. "My pride and joy was being cast off with that traitor and I would never see you again. I couldn't watch. I couldn't bear it. You don't know how I've regretted that. Forgive me, my baby."
Zac sniffled. "Uncle Pat's not a-"
"This is touching," Nightmare said dryly, and oh god Nightmare was watching. Zac sprang away. "But we still don't know what's going on here." Nightmare and Stalker were looking at him with nearly identical expressions, like wistfulness was leaving a bad taste in their mouths. Paragon just looked angry.
Marialle glided over, taking his large hand in hers. "Telar. Brother. You and your friends are welcome here too. Bad blood may have been between us before, but in these times the House of Fahn needs all the allies it can have."
"What's going on, Marialle?" Paragon asked, clipped.
Marialle turned back to Zac, smiling soft and serene. Zac felt his insides quake. "It's time for Zacir to come home."
"Really?" Zac said at the same time Paragon said, "I don't know what you're playing at here this time, Marialle, but-" and Stalker said, "He is home." It was only the last she paid attention to.
"Who's this?" she asked, turning to Stalker, sweetly fascinated.
Stalker nodded like John Wayne. She wasn't the first alien queen he had met. "You can call me Stalker, your excellency."
"What a pretty one," she cooed to Zac over Stalker's head. "Is he your jurgash?"
Zac's answer to that depended precisely on how much Lucratiann he was betting Paragon knew. Words like jurgash were uncommon but notable. "Err," he settled on.
His mother seemed to take this answer as it was and tweaked Stalker's ear, which okay, that was pretty great. "Well, Mifann-Wi will have company then. She's here too and so looking forward to seeing you again, Zacir."
"She left Lucratia?" Zac asked, amazed.
Marialle sighed, shaking out her hair. "It wasn't safe for her there unsupervised. We're in desperate times, my morning bird. Come with me. Your entourage as well. We'll need to sit to discuss this."
Owei and his attendants led them out of the atrium, down the circular and warmly-lit corridors. Lucratiann design was structured around refined intuition and even the passages in the shuttle were soothingly intimate in their sense of enclosure. Zac was pretty sure they were going to a conference room. It shocked him that he could remember the layout to the ship so well; it shocked him that he had ever forgotten.
Stalker fell into step beside him and again Zac was very aware of the spaces where they weren't touching. "What's a jurgash?"
"It's cultural?" Zac tried weakly. Hopefully they would be hit by a meteor before they could keep having this conversation.
Stalker raised an eyebrow. And bullshit he didn't have psi powers. Zac had seen him break professional assassins with that move.
"Look, it's just... a thing. And it's really important to stress that it's a thing you're not, even a little bit."
"Beacon," Stalker said, in that voice that half made Zac feel like he was five and half really turned him on.
Zac gave up. "I guess the literal translation is something like... official... royal mistress?"
Stalker, for the briefest moment, faltered in his stride. When he resumed walking it was with the stiff and affronted dignity of a wounded tiger, his cape drawn tight around him. The real irony was that everything in him that would be mad about this would also make him a really exceptional jurgash.
"Look, I said you're not one," Zac said desperately. "And anyway, it's a great honor! People train! For years."
"I'm never talking to you again," Stalker said. But that was just posturing; he added a second later. "Is that what Mifann-Wi is?"
And that was a whole other galaxy of complicated. "Not... exactly."
Marialle had heard this, somehow, like she had always heard everything, before. "Mifann-Wi? Yes, I've rung for her. She'll be meeting us. Don't worry, Zacir, even during your banishment she remained a faithful fiance. She's stood by you in spirit all these years."
Stalker stopped abruptly, like a circuit had shorted in his brain. One of Owei's assistants nearly ran into him. Zac saw his hand twitch towards his belt compartment with the smoke bombs; he was just glad Stalker hadn't yet worked out the covers to the ceiling vents. Zac had a feeling in his stomach like he had just swallowed yeast.
"I can explain," he murmured as they were ushered through a door.
"Don't," Stalker said acidly. "Looks like she's here to do it for you."
And indeed, when Zac hadn't been paying attention the room had filled, all the attendants sitting around the table at the end. And Mifann-Wi, perfectly posed, was standing hands clasped in the middle. It wasn't that Zac couldn't recognize her, that wasn't the jolt of shock. But the wide-set eyes and the straw-straight hair had turned beautiful while he had been away when before they were just the identifying markers of his best friend. Zac stepped out of sync with Stalker and croaked, "Hey."
She let out a little sound, overcome and blissful, and ran towards him, skirts swirling. Zac caught her more than held her, but there was definitely a point where it turned into a hug.
"Zacir," she said. God, she was tiny, bird-boned under her clothes. "Oh Zacir. I missed you so much."
"It's good to see you too," he settled on, trying to stay honest.
She drew back, biting her lip and drinking him in. "I never believed them, Zacir. I knew you couldn't have committed treason. Not my Zacir. I never listened to any of that talk, believe me."
"Uh well," Zac said. "I did technically-"
Marialle sighed, bring a hand to her chest. "It does my heart good, this reunion. Even in my grief I can see hope."
Paragon muttered something darkly to Nightmare, who nodded. Stalker, Zac couldn't immediately see, his dark colors lost in the sea of blues. Dating Stalker was like trying to hand feed a chipmunk, and the past thirty seconds had probably undone eight months of battering away at his trust issues. So that was awesome.
Zac turned back to Mifann-Wi. She'd been as close as his right hand, once, and he had somehow not thought about her in years. He could at least dredge up a smile.
She cupped his face. "Together we'll rebuild Lucratia. I just know it."
Zack frowned, cheek twitching against her hand. "I don't understand. Why do we have to?"
"Sit down," Owei said, gesturing to the table. "All of you. Even you, Telar."
"Thanks," Paragon said dryly, pulling out a chair. Zac smiled awkwardly at Mifann-Wi again and went to sit next to him, trying to catch his eye. Paragon was staring at Marialle like he expected her to attack. He could not be more embarrassing sometimes; Zac was scandalized. He slouched into a sulk in his chair. He had forgotten how much more comfortable they were built at home.
Marialle was all grace, as always, and simply smiled at Paragon like the brother she had missed. Etiquette had always been very important to her; she always lectured his tutors about it when Zac was out of line. "Ever since Col's assassination, the Lucratiann royal house has been crumbling into disrepair."
"I thought you said he had lost a duel," Nightmare said.
"He was challenged by Hren-Gared Sto," Owei said. Zac sat up straighter with a small involuntary gasp. Owei noticed. "Yes, your excellency. He returned."
"Hren could never have won that challenge fairly," Marialle said. "All good citizens of Lucratia know it must have been sabotage. It was as good as an assassination by any measure. And now he's claiming right to the throne."
"I'm sorry, who?" asked Paragon.
"My uncle," Zac explained. He didn't know what to do when Paragon looked obliquely hurt so he kept going. "On my other side. One of my father's... my father's brothers. Younger brother. He's an asshole."
"How many uncles do you have?" Stalker muttered, from where he had been apparently sitting two seats down from him this entire time. He was studying Mifann-Wi like he was planning an autopsy, and she kept smiling at him nervously.
"Fourteen," said Zac.
"Some better than others," Owei said, to Paragon. Paragon narrowed his eyes. "And Hren is the worst of them all. He's been planning for years to place himself on the throne."
"Usurping the throne's apparently the national pastime," Paragon said. Zac could have hit him.
"The House of Fahn is collapsing," Marialle said. She bowed her head, and the words were matter-of-fact and apocalyptic. "And Zacir is the only one who can shore it up again."
"Your Excellency," Owei said. "It's time to come home and assume your place as Emperor. The people have not forgotten you, we all feel your banishment was undeserved. They would rally behind you. Lead Lucratia to greatness once again."
Beside him, Paragon breathed in sharply. Stalker stopped staring at Mifann-Wi.
"It's not my place," Zac said numbly. "Being emperor, it's not my place. I was disinherited."
"You're still Col's son!" Mifann-Wi said leaning forward, with the passion of an acolyte. "He never had another! You have more right to the throne than anyone!"
Marialle reached over, took his hand in hers. "You're forgiven, Zacir," she said gently. "You can come home now."
The brand of their family crest had faded on her palm. It matched the shade of a blush now, when before it had been the color of the ground on Mars or drying blood. Zac was already on Earth on the day he turned fifteen and would have had his own branding ceremony. He had gone out for pizza with the rest of the Commandos and when he came home Pat and Susan had waiting for him a copy of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, although Pat hated the franchise, tickets to a Lakers game and Dave Matthews' autograph. He never thought he would touch his mother again; Zac used to wake up in the middle of the night feeling stabbed by that certainty.
"It's not that easy," he heard himself saying.
Marialle's face went puzzled. "Zacir?"
It had been so long since anyone had even said his name correctly, put that syllibant twist in the middle. "Uncle P - Telar. Paragon adopted me. Legally. It would look bad if I just up and left. And I'm like him - I'm a hero here. I'm on a team. They need me."
"We heard," Owei said sourly. "Paraboy."
"Beacon," Zac said. "Anyway, I've got a life here too. I don't know if I can just give it up."
"What are you talking about? I don't understand. You have a responsibility to your people!" Mifann-Wi said. She was always the more enthusiastic civics student. "You're needed at home."
Zac stared at the grain of the table. He didn't dare look anywhere else. "I have responsibilities here too."
Mifann-Wi bit her lip. "My birthday was last month. When you come back we can get married."
"No," Marialle said, sounding somehow both abrupt and kind. She tilted his chin up to meet her eyes and they were sad but accepting. "I understand. Of course you would feel conflicted, you have such a big heart, little bird. You don't want to abandon your friends here. Take a few days and think it over." She tweaked his ear and gave him a brave smile. "Get some closure. I'm sure you'll make the right decision."
"Thanks," Zac said, his voice cracking.
Paragon stood up, knocking his chair back. He said, overtly loud. "We should go. Come on, Beacon."
Zac watched Nightmare and Stalker get up, feeling abruptly out of step. The impact of all this information was delayed but potent and he was almost a little dizzy. He looked over his shoulder, where the rest of the Lucratianns - and why was he thinking of them as Lucratianns instead of Nightmare and Stalker as humans - were clustering together for little conferences. Mifann-Wi was staring at her lap, blinking hard. "But-"
Paragon glared at him. "Now."
Zac slunk up, scowling. "Fine. Sir."
"Perhaps Zacir should stay for dinner," Marialle suggested diplomatically. "You're all invited, of course."
Paragon crossed his arms. "If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to go the rest of the night without being poisoned."
"Dude!" Zac said, shocked, sneaking a look at Owei, who was doing his best to seem unruffled.
"I'm sorry, your Excellency," Stalker said to Marialle. Zac was sure he would like her if he got to know her, wouldn't be this cool and efficient. "But Beacon has a prior engagement. I'm sure you understand."
"It doesn't matter either way," Paragon said. He jerked his head. "We're going."
Zac didn't look behind him when he filed out behind the others. He remembered that Earth story about the salt.
***
The Commando Tower was shaped liked a Erlenmeyer Flask turned on its head. It was paneled in blue-green glass, giving it something of a glossy, aquatic feel high above the city, extravagently and ruthless urban as it twinkled to itself in the sunlight. Stalker had commissioned an architect whose skyscrapers littered Dubai, making him sign at least seventeen non-disclosure agreements and refusing to let anyone in his firm touch the security measures. The Tower only had one elevator, a huge freight contraption that groaned and creaked its way up one hundred and forty seven flights. None of the Commandos used it themselves; it was for tourists only, the twice a year the Tower was open to the public as a show of good faith and publicity. It was the best solution the Society could manage, since the satellite was too expensive for anyone but the upper echelons of the U.N. to reach on any sort of regular basis. The Commandos themselves hated it, both because they were pawns in a decision made over their heads and it meant they had to massively clean every December and May.
Right now it was March, which meant the Tower was littered with pizza boxes and frosting cans, in the lounge at least. The clutter never quite made its way to the control room. But the lounge was a concession to their inevitable downtime and the most impressive piece of equipment in it was the PS3, which stood menacingly on its side next to the egg crate propping up the TV. Stalker and Falconette had spent a lazy Saturday afternoon modding it once, so now it somehow played Wii games and had a CNN news scroll running constantly on the bottom of the screen.
The headlines today were all about the Lucratiann spaceship hovering in the atmosphere, dour like a manatee. Zac had difficulty concentrating and Graham kept beating him at Mariokart, even when he switched to Bowser out of pity. Graham was wearing a shirt that said SHADY GREENS SUMMER CAMP 2005 and he and Brian were both making faces but not at the TV.
"Okay," Brian said, his accent making the word more musical and less doubtful than he was probably trying to convey. "So they're saying basically 'whups, our bad! Come back and be king'?"
"Emperor," Zac corrected moodily. He lounged back against the cushion. "Lucratia rules one eighth of its home galaxy."
"And you didn't tell them no?" Graham said, knocking Toad out with a blue shell. "Aw yeah! I would have told them no. That's a lot of pressure. Being kind of responsible for a small city in North America is enough for me as is."
Zac was tempted to say a couple things, but all of them were pretty arrogant. Graham's powers were weird and entirely contingent on the mystical sword he was bonded to, but Zac never held Graham being Graham against him. "Well you suck," he decided on, losing again.
"Seriously though," said Graham, eyes on his victory lap. "You're not going to do it, right?"
"I said I didn't know," Zac said. He looked around the room like that would make the rest of his team appear. Stalker and the girls had pretty much vanished once they had come back from the flagship, and Zac had only an uneasy array of guesses as to what they were doing. "It was my home. These people raised me. I'm kind of obligated."
Brian raised his eyebrows so they nearly met his equally white hair and said. "Uh, Zac, not to be rude or anything, but didn't they exile you?"
Zac paused a moment to consider and selected Baby Peach this time. "Yeah."
"Why?" Graham asked. "Didn't you help Paragon or something?"
Telar was supposed to be dead. Owei kept repeating that to Zac's father, when Zac overheard them in the palace library, like the emphasis itself corrected the mistake. Telar was supposed to have died over thirty years ago, jettisoned off into space with the trash as an infant and no threat to the throne. Having him come back, even accidentally on his part, as the sovereign hero of some backwater planet was no good, no good at all. Even having him languishing drugged in the holding pen scheduled for execution the next morning would only go so far to correct the publicity damage.
Even at twelve, Zac had known the access codes to the prison compound. And instinctively, somehow, despite a lifetime of worshiping his family dictum like a sun god, Zac knew that this man who was suddenly his uncle but laughed more than any of his other uncles, who hugged Zac in the gardens and told him he was crying because he was so thankful to finally learn he wasn't alone, would never come to Lucratia with the intent to kill anybody.
"I helped him show my planet that our government was totally corrupt." He threw down the controller. "I don't want to play anymore. Brian, your game."
Stalker wasn't in his room. The bed was made with clinical precision, which wasn't any sort of clue as to whether he had been there recently. Stalker was OCD like it was a competitive sport. He hadn't said a word to Zac since leaving the ship. Zac tried Parvati's room instead, knocking on the door when he heard the rustling of people inside. After a minute, the door opened a thin sliver and Parvati poked just her head out, her own white hair up in a messy bun. "What?"
Zac cleared his throat. "Is Stalker there?"
She checked behind her before answering. She let the door open slightly more, revealing only Teresa, wingless, holding a pint of Ben and Jerry's. "No."
Parvati wasn't much of a liar, and the catch in her voice most likely meant Stalker had been there seconds before Zac knocked, but was now either clinging to the exterior of the building or somewhere in the ventilation system. Zac sighed. "Great. Well if he comes back, let him know I'm looking for him, okay?"
"Like he has any reason to listen to you!" Teresa said. "Like you're going to talk your way out of being already engaged."
"Oh come on!" Zac said. "It wasn't like the engagement was still on. I thought I was never going to see her again!"
"Were you going to make me your official royal mistress?" Parvati demanded, crossing her arms.
Zac sort of had been, but he was six months old to the planet at the time and he didn't think he could be entirely blamed for his difficulties assimilating. Still, he wasn't going to get anywhere with the girls with that reasoning. He lounged against the door frame instead, letting his head fall against his wrist. "Silver, you would have been my queen."
"Well, Stalker's not going to be your queen, jerk," Teresa said, picking up an empty bag of Doritos off the floor and crumpling it into a ball. "And you'd better find some way of making it up to him before he freaks out and quits again."
Zac threw up his hands. "Okay look, that was so not my fault! And I brought him back, didn't I? Why am I always the bad guy? And also, did it ever occur to either of you that maybe I'm going through kind of a thing here, kind of in some conflict, and could maybe use some emotional support?"
Parvati and Teresa turned to each other in wordless, feminine conference. They were so smart, these girls, so fearless with their scars and bra straps showing. What would it be like to stop fighting beside them?
Teresa thrust the half-empty ice cream carton at him. "Here," she said. "Emotional support." Parvati slammed the door.
It was Phish Food, at least. That was something. He ate spoonfuls absently as he wandered his way to put it back in the freezer.
Zac had spent years thinking the Commando Tower was some low-key miracle, in no small part because it was a space uniquely and entirely theirs. But also because in many ways it was the one place in his life that had the freedom to be in shambles. Zac, underneath the aristocratic trappings, had never been a guy obsessed with quality. The Commandos had helped him define himself as guy in the first place, not a prince or a hero, or if so one comfortable in sweatpants. They had taught him there could be variations on majesty and how a laugh could be more contagious than an insult. For years he had been stupidly grateful for that understanding. Now, though, opening the freezer to see bags and bags of mozzarella sticks, Zac felt his stomach roil in something too tired to be disgust. Plebeism felt a lot less comforting after being dunked, however briefly, in Lucratiann culture again. Everything on Lucratia had been exquisitely designed and refined over millenia into effortless, elegant perfection. The Tower now seemed tacky and small, trying too hard in order to make up for how it had no idea how to try in the right direction.
Zac felt restless, itchy in his skin. He closed the refrigerator door and went to the launch bay, leaving a quick note before he took off. As he broke through the cloud barrier the world was, for a moment, blissfully white.
continued