Tilly may be average, but her family isn't.
She knows that it's very abnormal to be able to play fetch with her dad. She knows that her cousins are very, very dangerous, even if Kalique does play nice exceptionally well. She knows that her mother was in danger for being a recurrence of Seraphi Abrasax.
What she doesn't know, at first, is that her childhood best friend is the recurrence of Seraphi's oldest child, Balem, the creepazoid (as her mother puts it) who nearly succeeded in murdering her and taking control of the Abrasax Empire.
She doesn't think he even knows, not with the circling uncertainty that Balem is even dead. Sure, it's been almost seventeen years since the interstellar manhunt that heralded the slow fall of the RegeneX industry, but not even Chicanery is totally sure he's gone.
Tilly wishes there could've been some sort of… disturbance in the force, or something like that, to indicate that Balem died. But since there wasn't, it's just conjecture, up until Asher accidentally cuts his finger while at Tilly's house, and Caine just about goes berserk.
Jupiter successfully plays it off as a bad allergic reaction to a bee sting, which Tilly knows is total BS, courtesy of Uncle Stinger. Asher just takes it in stride, already acquainted with Tilly's characteristic strangeness, and after he leaves for the day, she approaches her parents for an explanation.
Being fifteen, her parents deem her old enough to learn of her parents' history – albeit a very PG version – and when they finish explaining, she's dumbfounded.
I can tell from the giggle Mom lets out that I must have an impressive disgusted look on my face.
"Ehh," I sigh, "Mom, it's not funny!"
Hugging me, much to my annoyance, she replies, "Sweetheart, it is very funny. Caine, just look at her face! How precious."
Pouting, crossing my arms as well as my being captured in Mom's hug will allow, my gaze falling on Dad's ears… which appear to be twitching in amusement-!
"Dad!" I exclaim, hoping that he would at least take my side on the seriousness of the situation. "Dad, come on! Work with me, here!"
Mom lets go of me, still giggling faintly, and I turn away from both of them, only for Dad to scoop me up in his wings and coddle me just like when I was a little girl.
"Gahhh, Da-ad, let go!" I fake-whine, wiggling around and tickling myself on his feathers. But he ignores my plea, adding to my embarrassment by carrying me around as he slips into his grav boots and leaps off the balcony of our high-rise apartment.
The ground quickly looms up from below, forcing a small scream out of me just before the grav boots kick in, and we're gliding over the park and circling around the apartment building. My scream turns into strangled laughter as we scale higher and higher, finally coming to rest back on the balcony where Mom stands waiting for us.
Dad puts me down and gives me a noogie before fixing my hair back into place. I nudge him in the side as repayment, and he sits down on one of the balcony chairs as he deactivates the grav boots.
"Ready to talk now?" he asks, ears twitching in tandem with the raising of one eyebrow.
Following Mom's lead and leaning my hip against the railing, I cross my arms once again after pushing my honey-colored hair over one shoulder. "Yeah, I guess," I finally say, giving in to the chronic strangeness of my family.
"Good," Dad says, and Mom extricates herself from the conversation on the grounds that she has to go wake Simeon up from his nap. She reenters the apartment with all the grace due the owner of Earth and recurrence of the virtual queen of the universe.
Scratching behind one ear, he bites his bottom lip, unsure of where to begin. After a few moments, I start the conversation for him.
"Dad," I start, "why did you go nuts when Asher got that paper cut? It was so freaky, like you were under some spell or something."
That's a very delicate way to put it, I think, recalling how he nearly leapt across the apartment to jump a very terrified and confused Asher, thankfully stopped by Mom. The look in his eyes could only have been described as vengeful, maybe borderline homicidal.
Inappropriately, he chuckles faintly, resting one elbow on his knee to cup his forehead in his hand. "There's a reason for that," he admits, "though not necessarily a good one.
"We already told you about the fight between the three Abrasax kids that almost got your mother killed," he reminds me, "and how Balem was lost during the plant explosion. That was as far as we thought we would ever have to get in digging up old ghosts.
"What we didn't want to tell you," he continues, sitting back in his chair and letting his gaze sweep over the city skyline, "was the reason why I was being employed by Titus."
Confused, I ask, "Wasn't it just to find Mom?" That's what they led me to conclude, at least.
When he looks at me, there's a dark look of shame in his eyes. I barely recognize the words when he explains, "No one goes from being skyjacker to kidnapper for a good reason. And mine had to be one of the worst."
I've just taken a step up from confusion to total bewilderment, and nervously ask, "Dad… what happened to you?"
He takes a deep breath and rubs a hand along his jaw line before responding.
"I once attacked an Entitled, long before I met your mother. I never told her, but the Entitled – who I attacked after being genetically tricked into doing so by an enemy – was Balem Abrasax."
I'm horrified for about three seconds before the surge of pride rushes in me for Dad attacking the creepazoid who tried to kill Mom. I know, deep down, that it's not really something I should be proud of, but I'm proud of him anyways.
"So what?" I ask. "You attacked Balem, like, twenty years ago, right? What does that have to do with anything?"
His face darkens again when he reveals, "Asher's blood smelled exactly the same as Balem's did."
My jaw slowly drops before I shakily ask, "Does M-mom know?"
Sighing, he leans forward once more, hands folded between his knees, and tells me, "I think she could sense it, being a recurrence of Seraphi."
I want to ask, Sense what? But then it hits me.
That same disgusted look must have appeared on my face, as Dad's ears twitch in amusement, even as I exclaim, "Asher is Balem's recurrence?!"
Mom cuts in, "It would appear so, darling," bouncing Simeon in her arms.
"But I thought they were super-rare. Recurrences, I mean," I reply, twirling a strand of hair absentmindedly.
"Supposedly, they are," Mom admits, handing Simeon off to Dad. "But with the Abrasax family, you never really know what's true and what's not."
From the way Dad rolls his eyes, I can tell she's referring to the ridiculous bureaucratic practices and deceit. I might be a fifteen year old girl, but I've seen some of it for myself, when Mom's brought me along on her monthly meetings to go over Earth's retained status as a piece of her inheritance from Seraphi. The trips may be fun, with all the cool splices running around doing errands for the other Entitled, but the meetings themselves are so full of interstellar legalese – which is even worse than Earth legalese – that I can barely follow what's going on. It's a wonder that Mom's able to do it, but then again, she's had seventeen years of practice.
"If the Abrasax lied when they said that recurrences are extremely unusual, then it's definitely plausible that Asher really is Balem's recurrence." Dad wipes drool off Simeon's face with his bib, then adds, "It's the only thing that legitimately explains what happened earlier."
"Let's not worry about it too much," Mom says, placing a hand on my shoulder. "Come on, it's time to start dinner. I'll have your father contact someone on the Aegis to get a DNA testing kit. We'll just have to invite Asher over again and swipe a cup he drinks out of to check and see," she says with a twinkle of mischief in her eye.
Best. Mom. Ever, I think, as we all head inside to help with dinner.
"Hiyyyaa," Simeon squeals from his high chair before shoving another piece of peach into his mouth and gumming it happily.
"He's such a happy baby," Mom laughs, wiping peach juice off his face only for him to do it again. "I'm so glad we had a second child, Caine. We need another little bundle of joy in our lives."
"Not that you weren't enough of a bundle of joy," Dad adds, chewing thoughtfully on the baked chicken Mom made.
"That's right," Mom smiles, "it was pretty fantastic to see the look on the doctor's face when you were born."
"Because of these?" I ask, fingering the slightly-pointed tips of my ears.
"That's exactly right," she answers. "It was easy to explain those away as a rare genetic difference, what with your father usually hiding his. I don't know what we would've done if Simeon was born with them, too."
Dad, smirking, comments, "It would've been simple, if you didn't insist on having a human doctor around for the birth."
Huffing, she whacks Dad in the arm with a rolled-up towel, joking, "Your father is such a smart-aleck, Tilly, don't listen to a word he says."
Rolling my eyes good-naturedly, I stand to clear the table just as the phone rings. The tone is shrill and birdlike, so I grab it and hand it straight to Mom.
She answers it, listens for a few moments, and then looks worriedly to Dad. She says nothing to him, but he automatically knows what's going on. He disappears into his and Mom's bedroom while she hangs up the phone and gathers Simeon into her arms.
"Tilly, take care of your mother and little brother," Dad says when he reappears with his skyjacker uniform on. He hasn't worn it since I was much younger, when he still worked with Uncle Stinger before retiring to take care of us.
"Dad, what's going on? Mom?" I demand, wanting to know what's so serious that he has to jump up and leave in the middle of dinner.
He stops, folds me into his arms, flexing his wings before planting a kiss on my forehead. He does the same to little Simeon, then holds Mom for several moments before kissing her as well.
"Dad's gotta go help Uncle Stinger with some interplanetary stuff," he says, putting his hands on my shoulders and looking into my eyes. "I'll be back by tomorrow, Tilly, I promise."
"Caine," Mom says, breathless, drawing Dad's attention.
"Jupiter," he answers, and Mom just gives him this look, and he nods, disappearing out into the night sky, the balcony door still swinging open in the breeze.
Simeon is long past falling asleep, but I've stayed up with Mom, cleaning up around the apartment while she contacts one of her friends on the Aegis to let them know what's going on. Not that they probably don't know already, but she just feels the need to contact them, to be comforted by knowing that they'll keep a watch on anything suspicious that might crop up.
Finally, around eleven, she signs off on the communication with the Aegis and comes into my room, sitting on the edge of my bed as I wrangle my hair into two loose braids.
"Mom," I say, but she just raises a hand, palm out, to quiet me.
"Sweetheart, there's not much I can tell you. There wasn't much they could even tell me." Smoothing her hair down to push behind her shoulders, she explains, "Not because they weren't permitted, but because there wasn't much to tell."
I tie off my second braid, then climb down to the end of the bed to sit next to Mom, who pulls me into a side hug. Resting my cheek on her shoulder, I ask, "What could they tell you?"
She doesn't answer, at first, but after a few minutes of sitting with our arms around each other, she confesses, "Someone who may or may not be related to the Abrasax family has sent a ship here, to Earth. I was notified of the foreign vessel having entered our starspace, but other than that, there wasn't anything else they could tell me. Your dad and Stinger left to take a few of the retired skyjackers stationed here on Earth to investigate."
"And if the ship is Abrasax," I realize, "Dad is going to be gone for more than a night, isn't he?"
Mom frowns, probably more at my quick conclusion than its actual accuracy, and admits, "No, then I might have to take a business trip for a few days."
The mood in the room turns somber, until she says, "How about we go watch one of those cheesy comedies Uncle Stinger recommended?"
Laughing lightly, I shake off the heavy thoughts of Balem and the other Abrasax, easily trading it for some hushed laughter – Mom will definitely kill me if we wake Simeon up this late at night.