September 23, 1999

"What are they doing up there?" Roxanne muttered, leaning against Kelly's new bike.

"I have no idea," her boyfriend shrugged.

"They're probably talking about their relationship," the girl mused. She chuckled. "Poor Kelly. He doesn't stand a chance."

"He doesn't," Syx agreed, "but it will probably take them awhile. My brother can be awfully stubborn when he wants to be."

Roxanne shook her head. "I just don't get it," she complained. "How can he not see that they're perfect for each other? It's just beyond dumb to push Maria away. Not to mention that it's a waste of time." She frowned. "So why's he doing it again?"

With a chill, Syx realized that now would be the perfect time to tell her. Kelly doesn't want to date her because he's a space-fish-turned-almost-human. What about me, you ask? No, I'm not a space-fish-turned-almost-human. I'm blue, bald, and- don't run screaming, Roxanne! Come back!

He told himself that that wasn't going to happen. Roxanne would accept him, just like Maria had accepted Kelly. She wouldn't flee into Metro Dude's open arms.

"You okay, Syx?" the reporter-in-training fussed.

The boy swallowed. His throat was dry as the Sahara. "I'm fine. I-" Tell her, Messerosyx. The longer you wait, the harder it gets. It's hard enough already; can you imagine what it would be like in a month? "I-I-I-" But he couldn't say it.

Roxanne's eyes softened. She kissed his forehead, very softly. Syx's nerves evaporated, replaced by unadulterated bliss. "You can tell me when you're ready, okay? Don't hurt yourself." Those blue eyes of hers were compassionate, understanding.

Syx's heart swelled with love. How amazing, how wonderful, that such a woman was his! How in the worlds had he gotten so lucky?

And how could he betray her by keeping silent a moment longer?

"Roxanne, I'm an-"

"Ready to go, Syx?" his brother called. The younger boy nearly jumped out of his skin. He whirled around, heart thudding, eyes bulging out of their sockets. Kelly's expression froze. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," the other alien mumbled. He focused on his heart rate, trying to make it return to normal. It didn't work. "You just startled me, that's all."

He could tell her now. Maria already knew what he really looked like, and Kelly had been with him since the day he was born. Or, if he didn't want them there, a few words would send them away, leaving him alone with Roxanne. That's what he should do. He should ask them to come back in a few minutes because he had to tell Roxanne the truth. Yes, that was exactly what he should do.

But his nerve had failed him. He couldn't send Kelly and Maria away. It would have been easier to fly of his own volition or shoot lasers from his eyes or bring back his dead birthplace. The moment had passed.

Roxanne squeezed his hand, fixed him with a sad smile. When you're ready, she mouthed. How much did it cost her, curious as she was, to hold back?

"You don't look so good, Syx," Kelly observed. He pressed a hand against his brother's brow. "Your temperature's higher than normal. Have you been drinking enough fluids lately?"

"I'm fine," he gulped. Kelly shot him a withering glare; he was doubtless probing through their bond, scanning his physical and emotional state with a precision that human therapists could only dream of. "No, really, Mother. I'm fine."

The glare changed to a we-will-discuss-this look. Syx nodded, and his brother turned to Maria. "When will your dad be here to pick you up?"

"Five minutes or so," she answered.

"We're heading home now," Syx announced. "Bye, Roxanne. Bye, Maria." He scurried over to the motorcycle. "You coming, Kelly?"

What happened next was almost enough to shock Syx out of his misery. His prudish, I-refuse-to-get-involved-with-anyone-because-I'm-a-fish brother kissed Maria on the forehead. "See you tomorrow," he said softly. "I've gotta get this one home." To Roxanne, he added, "Thanks for the party. It was really fun."

The future reporter didn't seem to hear him. She was grinning ear to ear at Maria. "You go, girl." The older girl grinned. She seemed almost to be glowing with joy.

"Yeah," Kelly mumbled. He, too, was glowing, and not just from his xiben-hair. "Bye."

"So what happened with you and Maria?" Syx demanded the second they had cleared the garage on Kelly's new motorcycle.

His brother was sitting in front of him, so he couldn't see the older boy's beatific smile. "We read a book."

"What?"

"We read a book. She actually wrote it- I think she spent the entire summer working on it. I'll show you the second we're done in the warden's office."

The color drained from Syx's face. He could think of only one reason for the warden to summon them. Somehow, some way, he must have found out about their deception. "Warden Ridgeway wants to see us?"

"It's nothing like that," Kelly assured him quickly. "He and I have a surprise for you, that's all."

"What kind of surprise?" the younger boy demanded. He hugged his brother tighter. "Is it a puppy? Please tell me it's a puppy."

"Ah, no. No puppies. You know what he says about puppies and prisons. They just don't mix."

Syx mock-scowled. "I want a puppy."

The light ahead of them turned red. Kelly braked. "This is an amazing bike, Syx."

He perked up. "And you haven't even tried out the special features yet. Remember that one movie with the botanist and the children and the line about phoning home?"

"It's called E.T., Syx." Then he realized what his brother was implying and gasped out, "This thing can fly?"

"It can fly," Syx confirmed.

Kelly turned to him with a huge smile. "If we weren't in the middle of traffic, I would kiss you right now."

"Please don't. Oh, the light's turned. You should get going."

The driver returned his attention to the road. "How on or off Earth did you make it fly?"

His brother spent the remainder of the drive explaining exactly what he'd done to make the motorcycle more sky-worthy (among other things). Most people would have been lost after the third word, but though Kelly wasn't as intelligent as his partner, he was still exceptionally bright. He understood everything that Syx was saying.

Syx continued his description of the bike's special features as they entered the schoolhouse, removed their holo-watches, and reverted to their true forms. He fell silent after that, though, knowing that they had to sneak into prison to avoid suspicion. No one there knew about the holo-watches, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Warden Ridgeway and his wife, Judge Lucia, were waiting in the former's office. "Happy birthday, Kelluerai," the judge said, embracing him. She released him, looked Syx up and down. "I think you've gotten taller, Messerosyx." The blue boy beamed.

"Now that we're all here," her husband began, "we can get down to business." He met Syx's eyes. "Kelly applied to become your legal guardian. Now that he's eighteen and a legal adult, all he has to do is sign the paperwork. But he wants your permission before doing anything more."

The younger alien was confused. Ridgeway was his legal guardian, and he had no complaints about the man's suitability for the job. "Why did you do that, Kelly?" he asked.

"Legal precedence," was the piscine's blunt response. "If they granted me, an alien who was born a fish, rights over any minor, then that means they acknowledge my personhood. And if they acknowledge my personhood, they really don't have any excuse for dismissing yours, because you're a lot more human than I am."

Syx's mouth dropped open. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and croaked out, "Human rights?"

"Not exactly," sighed the judge. "But if they ever decide to come after you two, this paperwork will give you legal ammunition. We can raise a huge fuss over it, drag it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to."

A gleeful smile crossed Syx's face. "That's downright devious! Which of you closet villains came up with that?"

Kelly ducked his head and waved. His fins fluttered in embarrassment.

"My brilliant brother," his sibling laughed. "Sign away, my devious fishy friend." He rubbed his hands together with anticipation. "Where's the paperwork?"

"Right here," Lucia replied, passing it across the desk.

Kelly had already read through the forms many times. He knew exactly what they said and where they said it. Smiling almost as widely as his brother, he signed Kelluerai Dazarro (Kelly Auslander).

"Congratulations, boys," Judge Ridgeway said. "I'll get these filed first thing in the morning. Now, I believe we have a birthday to celebrate."

Syx nodded. "We have to tell our uncles everything that happened today," he exclaimed.

"What did happen today?" asked the warden as they walked through the halls.

"What didn't happen?" Kelly joked. "But don't worry, sir. Everything that happened was good."


September 24- September 29, 1999

Syx tried to tell her. He really truly did. But whenever he scrounged up the courage to begin, something would interfere. That something took various forms: a thwarted bully shoving him into his locker, an old friend stopping by for another conversation, the waitress at the café asking for their orders. The distractions didn't take long to deal with, but when they were gone, so was Syx's resolve.

To make things worse, Roxanne knew that he was trying to tell her something important. She didn't push him to just spit it out already, but each time he lost his nerve, her frown grew a little deeper.

Perhaps, if the reporter-in-training hadn't thought she knew what was going on, she would have pressed more. But Roxanne had come up with an explanation that fit everything perfectly: the brothers' fighting ability, their refusal to give their home address, why they had previously been so adamant about not dating.

She had concluded that they were in the Witness Protection Program. It was so blindingly obvious that she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it before. There were still a few holes in her theory- she didn't know what kind of crime they'd witnessed or how much immediate danger they were in- but she had convinced herself that Syx and Kelly Auslander needed government protection.

Roxanne thought she knew when the crime had occurred. Neither boy had attended Metro High until the fall of 1998, when Kelly had been a junior and Syx a sophomore. That seemed to imply that they'd seen the crime sometime during the previous summer. Whatever it was, it must have been awful. Why else would Syx clam up like that whenever he tried to explain?

So she bided her time. Whenever her new boyfriend chickened out, she reminded herself that he had been psychologically traumatized and might even get in trouble with the government if he spilled.

By contrast, Kelly's relationship with Maria was blossoming. The piscine had never been able to confide in anyone besides Syx, and the human was immensely curious about his life as a space-fish-turned-almost-human on Earth (she tried to avoid questions about his dead birthplace, though. She didn't want him to feel like she was dating him only to satisfy her curiosity about a genuine alien civilization). Her boyfriend wasn't accustomed to talking so much- he usually left that job to Syx- but she had a way of extracting details.

Maria almost wished that he had kept silent. Some of his stories were… not pretty. He had grown up in prison, after all, and such a childhood was not conducive to family-friendly tales. Add in the bullying, the kidnapping attempt and subsequent rescue mission, the constant paranoia that the government might really be out to get him, and the fact that he'd seen his entire home planet sucked into a black hole…. In Maria's opinion, it was nothing short of a miracle that he and Syx weren't rabid axe murderers.

When she expressed that sentiment to Kelly, he frowned slightly and nodded. "You're right," he admitted, "but please don't say that in front of Syx."

"Why not?"

The ichthyoid grimaced. "Because when we went to kindergarten together, Scott took one look at him and decided he was a super villain. He even gave Syx some ridiculous villain name and started calling me 'that blue kid's minion.' So he's kind of sensitive about stuff like that."

"Gotcha." She hesitated, chewed her lip. "Speaking of Syx…."

Kelly scowled. "I know it's tough, but he has to tell her. And the more he delays, the worse it's going to get!" He shook his head in exasperation. "I love my brother, I really do, but he can be such a blockhead sometimes."

Maria thought of how afraid Kelly had been the first time he let her see him. "He's just scared. You were too."

Kelly rubbed his forehead. "I know, and he's had it a lot worse than me. In kindergarten, I was just a talking fish in a ball of water: weird, yes, but not a person in the same way Syx was. Yeah, they would do things like play fish ball and 'confiscate' me- remind me to tell you about the Swimming Pool Incident- but it was only a way to torment him. It wasn't personal because they didn't realize I could be psychologically traumatized.

"But Syx looked human enough to be emotionally vulnerable. So everyone went out of their way to hurt him, and they made sure he knew why."

His girlfriend shuddered and squeezed his hand. "He does know Roxanne's not like that, right?"

"Intellectually, yeah. But emotionally? He's too scared to take the plunge."

They sat there for a long time, watching people go by in the park.

Maria knew better than to suggest that Kelly tell Roxanne what Syx couldn't. She knew that this was something the younger boy would have to do himself. But, short of locking them in the janitor's closet until Syx confessed, she didn't know what else to do.

"Think I should give him a deadline?" the ichthyoid finally asked.

Maria started. They had been quiet for so long that she hadn't expected him to speak. "You mean threaten to tell her if he doesn't spill within x number of days?"

"No," he teased, shoving her playfully, "the other kind of deadline."

She chuckled. "Point. I think it's a great idea. Definitely better than waiting until they have kids."

Kelly adopted a high-pitched, feminine voice. "'Honey, why is our baby blue?'"

"How about homecoming?" his girlfriend suggested. "That gives him time to prepare, but it's still coming up pretty soon. He could write a script or something and memorize it. Do you think that would help him?"

"I think it would," Kelly agreed. "But can you be there when I tell him? I'll probably need a bodyguard."


Yeah. Filler chapter is a filler. But this stuff needed to happen. Don't worry, though, for Syx shall finally man up in the next installment. Hopefully that excitement will make up for the lack in this chapter.

This (filler) chapter is dedicated to PuppyBeBad.

-Corona