Drops of Jupiter

Some people spared a glance at a boy no older than thirteen running for his life down the countryside. He was wearing a strange getup of straps and cardboard and, believing it to be some kind of game in session or a cosplay, they ignored him and continued on their day-to-day activities.

But it wasn't a game. Not for him. Slipping into a muddy foxhole, he pressed his back against the wet dirt and tried to regain his breath as planes soared over his head and disappeared into the woods further down. With a soft cry of relief, he sank down and shuddered underneath the rain. What should he do now? Everyone he knew and cared about were KND agents.

They probably hated him now.

Once the coast was clear, he crawled pathetically out of the hole and sighed. He was a traitor, a no good evil teenager. But he didn't want to be evil.

He just wanted to keep his memories.

But no matter how much he begged that he wouldn't tell a soul or betray the KND, protocol had to be followed. In his fear, he had run before they could apprehend and decommission him.

A large shadow suddenly obstructed the rain hitting him and he looked up, finding a young woman holding up a red umbrella over both of them.

Her gentle smile instantly hooked him. She was blond and very pretty, but what was more appealing were her warm brown eyes that slowed his rapidly beating heart. They spoke of compassion. Safety.

His heart plummeted when she spoke. "Numbuh 88?" That voice. He remembered that voice, who belonged to that voice.

She had been the best KND spy. Like he was.

Instinctively he pulled out his weapon and pointed it at her, but he should have known better. A flash of red danced across his vision and before he could pull the trigger, the gun smacked out of his hands and bounced harmlessly onto the grass. Cradling his hand, he watched the young woman popped the umbrella back up and covered herself from the rain again.

"Well that wasn't very nice," she said dryly. "Is that how you greet your former instructor?"

He didn't know what to say to that. "I..."

"Would you like to stay here and wait for the decommissioning squad or do want to align yourself with the Teen Ninjas?" she nodded her head to the side. "There's a gas station over there if you're interested."

In defeat, he dropped his head back down again. "I just want my identity. Nothing else."

"Then come with me." She turned back around and continued down the path. Whether or not he was going to take the offer was not her problem. Everyone had a choice.

With one last look at the sky where the planes disappeared to, Numbuh 88 abandoned his weapon and practically stumbled after his former mentor. The young woman minutely smiled under the umbrella when she heard squishing sounds trailing behind her.

One more operative to the cause.


Chad's first night back on Earth was almost like a dream. Nostalgia crept along the familiar roads and buildings both old and new. There was a detached sense of belonging exploring the city on his own. It helped him think, plan grand things that no one that passed by him would ever comprehend. And that was where that detachment came from.

This was his home and yet it was not.

It was hard adjusting to the constant spin of the Earth. The day and night cycles back on base were artificial and even then time didn't have much meaning when you traveled through many star systems. One could travel forward in time in one system or backwards in another. Time practically stopped for travelers like him. Like Uno and Infinity and all the others who walked the very stars people down here gazed up at.

This insomnia continued on past the third or fourth night. Sometimes he stayed in motels or temporary residence with a fellow teen operative under the guise that he emerged from some deep undercover mission in China or Australia or whichever country came to mind. It didn't matter his story because he didn't stay long for anyone to suspect anything.

Where he rested was inconsequential and convenient so he simply ended up sleeping in his car while he continued the search for his target. It was the only physical possession he had left that remained when he returned.

The platform collapsed right under them and, one by one, they rolled and tumbled off it and into the abyss below.

Breathing heavily through his helmet, he shoved a broken beam off the top of his exoarmor and surveyed the damage. There was debris all over the place and the other two were nowhere to be found.

That was when he saw an armored hand sticking out of a pile of rubble. Immediately he scrambled over and started pushing the metal plating off his comrade until he found Uno's body underneath, unresponsive. He ran a holographic signal for life signs and, finding none, dropped his head down in defeat. Not Uno... he was supposed to be the stronger one. He let this happen.

Through his cracked interface, he noticed a fading signal not too far away and, realizing that it could be Rachel, he swallowed the heaviness in his throat and hoped she wasn't lost as well.

He found her under a few broken support beams and it was an effort to pull and push aside so he can reach her. There was no sound, not when his interface was glitchy enough as it was, but she twitched upon further examination and, his heart pounding in relief, he helped her sit up and said something to her.

What words they were he didn't know, but she stirred and stiffened and he had to physically tilt the side of her helmet away from the lifeless body of Numbuh 1 not too far off. They had to mourn later.

It was wrong to leave Uno's body behind. He was his best operative and a sense of guilt and regret hit him hard even long after he propped 362 up against him and helped her limp their way into the next corridor.

That was when the shots came. He could hear her heavy breathing through his helmet, which was logically impossible, but not of importance to him at the moment. White hot plasma shots hit the area around them and by some stretch of a miracle that they managed to survive this long without getting hit.

Until Rachel suddenly shifted under his grip and twisted in pain when she took the plasma burst meant for him. With a howl of alarm, Chad wasted no time in closing the hatch to the second corridor when she slumped back into his arms.

No, no, no... she was going to be alright. He wasn't going to lose her like he lost Uno. His glove brushed against the exoamp on her back which was smoldering and burning into her armor. It's fine. It was just the amp. He turned her back over to get her to stir. It's just the...

Cold, unseeing brown eyes stared up at him through the cracked helmet and the wild beeping in his helmet signaled that her life frequency had ceased.

That was when he started to hyperventilate through his suit, unable to process that he's lost everyone. He was alone on this station, in this incomparable storm waging outside.

His knees collapsed when he tried to carry her lifeless body with him. He couldn't leave another operative behind. Not like this. Please...

A hand grasped his shoulder. Cold. Alien. Fear and panic hit him and he started to shout in terror.

Chad nearly fell off his seat when the waitress tentatively touched his shoulder to wake him for his meal. She set his plate down and worriedly bit her lip when the customer started panting and breaking out into a sweat. "Are you okay? Do you need me to call a bus?"

He immediately shook his head, but it was not enough to appease her when he was still panting and shaking like a leaf. "Sure? It's no trouble at all."

"I'm fine," he snapped, though his tone softened once the cafe's gentle easy listening music wafted in and centered himself. "Just a nightmare." A reoccurring one probably brought on by insomnia.

She accepted this explanation, probably a typical occurrence during graveyard shift, and left him his burger before leaving to refill his drink and allow him to compose himself. He was grateful for the silence and turned to the dark window to watch what little cars drove by. Sometime during his dozing it started to rain.

The insomnia had its perks keeping him up past midnight. His mark walked by this cafe every weeknight due to her graveyard shift.

Infiltrate, acquire, destroy. That was the bread and butter of his life in the GKND. But messing with Cree and the older teens was easy, impersonal. They had been untouchable god-like beings looking up to them back in the day. There was a kind of twisted pleasure in taking down a 'god' and bringing them back to their level.

But Rachel hadn't been an untouchable god. She once served three of the five years of his time leading the Kids Next Door as his most loyal officer. And then, like that very loyal officer she was, she cleaned up the mess of his desertion and took the mantle of Supreme Leader during the chaos and made it better; brighter.

Chad idly spun his disguised communicator around and somewhat admired technology still evolving on Earth. It was called an ePhone or something. The screen lit up when he slid a finger across the screen to unlock it. A frown on a very pretty face greeted him, a face much too angular and mature for his memories of her.

Age seventeen. It was lifted from a social media site where their techies managed to hack into her private page and upload pictures and posts from her. It wasn't very useful for intel, but Chad expected that. Rachel used to be in espionage. She wasn't stupid enough to talk about Purnima or whatever faction she got herself into on a social network site where everyone and their grandmother could read.

But it was a glimpse into a normal life, or lack thereof. He found he spent most of his nights rereading posts she made or looking at the pictures attached. She talked about school, how hard a part-time job was, or the long string of hearts she left behind because they couldn't measure up to her impossible standards. Those were blatant excuses, of course. If he knew her as well as he did, she simply wasn't a very romantic person. Her shortcomings in that department would have caused most of those relationships to end.

You don't get things like a possible meaningful relationship on base. It was just the next mission, dossier, or file handling. Personal lives were fleeting and few because of the war. No one had time to breathe and take a second glance at the pretty alien sitting at the bar going through her paperwork.

So her social life written out for the rest of the internet to see was something he greedily took in as he imagined how his former operatives were doing outside of KND work. From her, there were others. Some turned out exactly how he imagined it and others got him to drop his jaw in shock a few times.

Time really did a number to people.

And her pictures. There were very few, that he could believe. She was always a very private person both on and off duty. Most of the pictures she was in were simply tagged in from other profiles, group photos, family photos, or a surprise shot in the background.

His favorite photo was his current wallpaper. Dressed in a very appealing business casual and high ponytail, she awkwardly raised the peace sign for the camera. The comment for the photo had made him laugh.

'Gone job hunting to prove my parents the economy sucks. Actually got a job in the first place I applied. Fail.' That not-so-amused pout really set it to instant fave. It was so like Numbuh 362.

"Oh, she's cute." The waitress had returned and grinned at his phone. "Is that why you're all alone at two in the morning? Had a fight?"

Chad turned the phone over. "I'm looking for her, actually."

"Ahhhh…" her grin grew. "The one that got away, huh?"

"You can say that," he replied and lit up an I-sig. "You don't mind if I light up in here, do you?"

The waitress wasn't curious about it, which was fine enough for him when she gave him the go ahead and walked back into the kitchen. Earth's technology had changed so much in over half a decade he wasn't surprised if they really did have 'healthy' cigarettes.

His meal turned cold, but he dissuaded her from taking it back to the chef. There wasn't a problem with it but that dream had really cost him his appetite. He regretted it dearly.

What was considered food in space, (Vesta called it a Kazkyark delicacy, he called it What Lurked Under Area 51), none of that would fly in a real American restaurant. Burgers, fries, and a soda was something he was going to splurge on as much as he could before he was forced to transport back to base again.

And he learned a new trend the first day back: hipsters. Apparently the nerds must have had some kind of uprising while he was gone and became the new overlords of teen chic because now everyone was wearing thick rimmed glasses and boasting about how watching cartoons was the in thing.

Lame-o's.

Not everything changed, however. The music seemed to have the same beat, just different lyrics, and fashion came and went as they pleased, though he was pleased that sagging went until karma bit him in the butt and introduced skinny jeans.

He had to admit though, skinny jeans and plaid shirts were probably much more comfortable than spandex and exoarmor.

Just when he was going to give up his surveillance for the night, long blond hair streaked across his window so fast, he thought he had imagined it. Chad scrambled out of his seat and leaned against the window to see a young woman trying to beat the gentle rain for the bus stop further down.

He cursed, tossed a twenty on the table and bolted out of the cafe.

The waitress looked up while pouring coffee and snorted at the empty booth. "Rude," she slurred out to her regular. "He didn' even say goodbye."

Patton lowered his newspaper and frowned as the coffee cup was being overfilled. "Fulbright, you're drowning the porcelain."

"Shut up. Ye like it like that," she purred and even topped it off. It spilled all over his monte cristo. "Too bad he didn't eat. I had a real nice ingredient for that triple agent."

He sighed and set his coffee aside before it drowned anymore of his meal. "How many times do we have to tell you? Spiking food gets us nowhere if they're dead."

Fanny wrinkled her nose and snorted. "I wasn' gonna kill him. Just… knock him out. Maybe do a little ol' fashioned interrogating."

"Just stick to the plan." Patton's eyes noticeably darkened when they watched Chad pass by the window after his mark. Fanny giggled lowly in her throat like some kind of Bond villain.

Patton shot a look at her. "Okay, that's creepy. Stop it." Now he'll have to check his own food from now on.


She was crossing the street when he caught up to her and ignored the digital red hand encouraging people to wait while the streetlights changed colors.

Chad colorfully swore when he found himself trapped in the crosswalk as cars moved in and out to honk at him and, when he hopped onto the hood on one car that blindsided him to prevent becoming roadkill, someone helpfully pulled him back onto the other side of the sidewalk.

"I see your reflexes are still there," his 'savior' noted in a dry tone. He looked up and was caught in those nostalgic brown eyes. "but your execution was always bullheaded. I've warned you this years ago, sir."

Rachel hovered over him in her bright red umbrella that brought color to this drab wet night. It fleetingly reminded him of Uno and the red stripes of his exoarmor.

Sir. He had to suppress a shiver running up his spine at the word. This wasn't exactly the ideal meeting he had in mind. Approaching coolly in the rain all mysterious and charming so she would easily swoon under his power easily was a better way to manipulate her early.

Oh well. He's worked with worse luck. She blinked when he raised a hand to her. "Help your former commander up?" he smiled up at her which earned him a suspicious eyebrow before she grabbed his hand and let him under her umbrella. He couldn't help but ask. "Miss me?"

There was an awkward silence.

"I guess not," Chad snorted.

She looked him up and down as if trying to comprehend that he was here instead of some kind of figment of her imagination. From the darkened roots of his hair brought on by age and down his strong body all the way to his sneakers, he felt like she was sizing him up before she nearly knocked him back down when she grabbed his middle and squeezed.

He took advantage of the embrace to pat down her sides for a weapon, disguising the action as an earnest hug. And when he felt her fingers brush just against his lower back, a sense of pride hit him. She was doing the same thing.

It was good to know that her common sense didn't fly away somewhere and replaced with hormones like many girls her age ended up doing. Walking around the city at 2 AM for her was starting to sound less worrying with this bit of information.

"You're wet," he heard her mumble into his soaked jacket. When they pulled away, some of her hair stuck to her cheek.

He brushed it away and that made those brown eyes soften. "Look how pretty you got," he laid down the charm. "I've missed you, McKenzie."

Perhaps it wasn't entirely a lie. Duty tore him apart from those he considered allies... maybe even friends. While they may have forgotten or hated him mattered little. Seeing her there in her red umbrella and looking at him like he was a forgotten figment in her past negated the reality that she was a young woman now and no longer Numbuh 362.

Those eyes told a different story. And that familiar snort. "I see you haven't changed a bit." She suddenly looked concerned. "You've been gone for over five years. Did you come back to see your mother?"

He frowned. "What's wrong with my mother?" Contacting his parents had been far from his mind. The day he left for the GKND was the day he escaped their coddling and their overzealous desire for him to be at the top of everything. Going back would probably be a death sentence... or a permanent grounding. Though the extent of their power was questionable. He'd like to see them enforce their rules on a nineteen year old kid.

She looked away and seemed to examine something two streets down before responding. Spotters maybe? He wouldn't put it past her. "Are you staying somewhere tonight? We can talk there."

"Eager, are we?" He couldn't help it. It was his natural counterintelligence charm. She didn't seem amused by his joke so he shrugged it off. "I'm in and out of places since I got back. Unless you want to talk in my car..."

She was really good at expressing emotion through her eyes alone because the flash of irritation was obvious. "My place then. You don't mind taking me home?"


Seven Years Ago

With a growl, Chad slammed the hood of his ship down so hard it echoed loudly in the launch bay. Just what he needed. It was like the universe was trying to stop him from meeting Infinity.

This would be the last time he would leave Moonbase on his own. Sliding down the side of his ship, Numbuh 274 tossed the oiled rag away and tried to count to ten. At this very moment the plan was coming to fruition. The Decommissioning Squad was going to receive the false information to detain Sector V and attempt to decommission them while he made it look like he was covering his tracks. Adding T and Q wasn't in the plan, but his parents already sent out invitations to them and really, it just made the conspiracy believable.

It really dawned on him that he was turning thirteen. And he was going to gamble the Moonbase to prove to the big guys upstairs that he was capable of doing anything for the KND. Anything. The idea still made his skin crawl, but that was about it. If he could go back in time he'd just do it all over again.

No, he didn't regret risking his reputation. What he did regret was the chaos that would follow after his desertion.

Sacrifice was just collateral to the grander scheme of things. But while Infinity danced around the issue praying that the dominoes would fall into place, Numbuh 274 believed in his kids. Uno was a clever kid. He'll see things through. He was special.

"Sir?"

He found Numbuh 362 curiously watching him. There was a clipboard under her arm and really, he shook his head at that. Was she really going to spend another full night on base doing paperwork?

Of course she was. That was why she was going to make a fine Supreme Leader when he was gone. "You staying another night?" he wondered aloud. "Or are you just stranded here like I am?"

Rachel frowned at the bit of oil still on his hands and the state of his ship. "Is something wrong with your ship?" Before he could dissuade her she was already popping up the hood and sticking her hands into the machinery before her brow pulled down in defeat and closed the hood.

He tried not to grin. "You don't know a thing about mechanics."

"Not a clue," she admitted before she sat down next to him and looked up at the skyline above. Just like that, they just sat there and gazed at the stars. It was this moment where it hit him hard. This would be the last time they would just hang around each other in comfortable silence. The next time they meet, they'll have weapons drawn at each other.

Maybe that was one more regret to add. "I'm gonna miss you."

Rachel blinked. "I'm not going anywhere."

Those words bothered him more that she would ever know. "I know. That's why I believe in you."

"Are you alright?" she asked sharply. "You're not dying are you?" And she really did look like she was going to physically drag him to the medical deck. Her eyes softened when he sighed and looked at nothing in particular. "Listen, if you can wait an hour, I'll just fly you home in my own ship. Would that be alright?"

Chad shrugged. "You don't mind taking me home?"

"Not at all. Can't leave the Supreme Leader stranded on base."


"Not at all." When he led her on the pathway to his car, he added reproachfully, "Can't leave a KND traitor stranded at a bus stop."

She visibly flinched and shot a glare at him. "You'd be the poster kid on that wouldn't you?" she said coldly. "I had to learn it from somewhere."

Needless to say, she didn't offer the umbrella again.