In which Joe looses his temper, Kevin worries and Nick shows a new side.

"Really Stella, he's not that good-looking." He tried again, lazily poking at his left-over tomatoes.

School had never really been one of Joe's most favourite things to do.
He was a fairly normal student, with fairly normal grades and a very healthy level of aversion towards sitting inside a desk all day long, with nothing to do but to listen to a teacher drawling on about some uninteresting subject or another.

The two weeks of vacation Kevin's 'illness' had granted him were over and Joe couldn't quite say he liked it.

Of course it meant that he was now able to see Stella on a more frequent level again, with or without her new 'boyfriend' (and now that Joe had done his investigations, he'd concluded he didn't like the blonde guy) It was great to have his best friend back. She was a wonderful person, beneath the annoying questions on where he went everyday after school, why he was never willing to play mannequin anymore and how his clothes got so dirty.

Her babbling made Joe feel brighter on the inside; happier, if possible. It was something he was so thoroughly used to that it was soothing. Stella's voice was like a medicine.

"Is too!" She countered him, after his criticism on 'Ben', pointing at him with her own fork with a dangerously raised eyebrow. "He's very handsome!"

Joe snickered. "And this has nothing to do with the fact that he's older, with a car, lots of money to buy you clothes… Not to mention that sugar-slimy voice praising your obvious prettiness." He drawled mockingly. "When is he picking you up today?"

Stella went red, but shed a laugh. "His voice is not slimy. He's being sweet. You should try it. And he's going to be here any minute, for your information." She flicked a piece of cheese in his direction.
He dodged easily and retorted; "I just don't like him. I don't know anything about this Ben. Do you know his parents, where he lives or what he does to get that amount of money? Or if he has a dog as awesome as we do? He might be a dealer, a pimp, a maniac axe-murderer! We have no idea what he does."

Stella snorted, flicking her hair out of her face. "Says you."

He glared at her, even though she was right, and took to staring out of the cafeteria-window instead, only vaguely acknowledging Kevin joining them, his brother immediately starting on an all out animated story about his last encounter with the school nurse.
He knew the story and decided to instead stare at Stella for a bit.
Aside from the curiosity, which he forgave her for in a heartbeat, Stella was trying her hardest to get everything back to normal.

Or rather, as normal as things ever were in their lives.

Her make-up skills had done a wonderful job on concealing the mark on Kevin's forearm and the scars on his skin. She'd called up all of their acquaintances for a 'welcome home' party. She'd bought a new, stronger, leash for Elvis and because she hung out at the firehouse practically half her awake time, she was a great help with getting things back on track.

The only things that hadn't made their return were the hour-long phone-calls at night between her and Joe himself, because Joe was too tired to do so.
He suspected she spend them talking to Ben and he severely hated that fact, but it wasn't enough.

"Joe?" said Kevin, effectively turning Joe's attention on him.

Not all things were back to their old ways; Kevin was one of them.
He was… different. Not anything less Kevin, but more, organised?
He still loved ducks and glittery things, he was still fond of animals and his car was still his one and only and probably the one he was going to marry.
But he was less out of it- attentive, even. He wasn't flying anymore; it was like his attack and his stay at the hospital had made him crash and stay grounded.
It was pleasant in a way, but strange, to see Kevin exploring the world with more maturity then before.

Joe still couldn't believe he could say the words 'Kevin' and 'Mature' in the same sentence, without the words 'isn't' in between.
It was nice to see him live, see him become a Kevin that was healthier for everybody, including himself, but it was unnerving.
The way he spoke, without the usual words Joe couldn't and wouldn't understand, reminded him of Nick.
And Nick's English was outstanding.

"Yeah?" He said, turning towards his older brother.
The fond smile quickly disappeared from his face when he saw Kevin's stare.
"Are you going to be off to do whatever it is you keep from us again this afternoon?"

Joe's face fell. He didn't need Kevin's accusing to feel guilty every time he went to Nick. It wasn't like he chose him over his family.
Was it?

"Yes." He answered; his voice deeper and angrier then he'd expected it to be.
Kevin just shot him a stern look and through the surprise of seeing Kevin giving someone a stern look, Joe suspected him to hold back because of Stella.

"Why can't you just tell us already?" Kevin asked, his eyes trying to pierce Joe's.

Joe knew he probably should go easy on Kevin (he was just released form the hospital, for god's sake) and that Kevin was in his full right to want to know where his little brother hung out, but he couldn't help but snap.

"No, like I already said, it's not my secret to tell." He spat through his teeth.
The image of Nick flashed before his eyes.
Barely weeks old Nick who knew nothing of the world but the testing labs. Who knew nothing but the scientists around him. Nick who, really, only had Joe, now that Macy had seemingly retired.

"I just don't get why, Joe!" Kevin said, his eyes sending a shockwave straight to Joe's gut.
It was pure, deserved and undisguised guilt. "Don't you know how much we are worrying about you, how much we…!"

He didn't get to finish his half-shouted sentence and neither did Joe get to snide a remark, as a certain blonde haired boy interrupted them, making Stella blush immediately.

"Am I interrupting something?" Ben asked. His eyes were a piercing blue (something that never ceased to annoy Joe) and he looked slightly nervous.

"Yes," Stella said.
"No." Joe said.

"Joe, you know I love you, you can talk to us about this. We wouldn't do anything to hurt you, or someone you care about or something you don't want…"

"You can go meet Ben, Stella, there's nothing to talk about. I'm okay." He shot her a grin; she'd done nothing wrong, after all.
She returned his gesture with a weak smile and put her hands on the white surface of the cafeteria-table, pushing herself up.

"Okay then, if you're sure..?" She stared at him expectantly.
"I'm sure." Joe promised.

Then she walked away, Ben's arm wrapped around her shoulders and her torso turned awkwardly to send him one last look, before she disappeared behind the atrium.

"You're not okay, Joe." Kevin whispered, his hand reaching for Joe's shoulder, but he shrugged him away.
"How hard is it for you to understand that I am," He whispered back, near desperation in his voice. "I know what I'm doing."

Kevin looked unbelieving. "Do you, Joe? 'Cause last time I checked, you were running away from us, screaming about how things were wrong."

"You know it wasn't like that." Joe hissed, annoyed, but with a heavy feeling in his stomach.

"But you were pretty damn messed up, Joe. You didn't see your eyes when you demanded to see me, you didn't see your face, the way you were trembling. You were scared of something, Joe. Something happened and I want to know what. What is it that lures you away from your family, your friends, your duties?" Kevin tried, inching closer to his little brother, as if approaching a cornered animal.

"My duties? My duties? Last time I checked I was the only one doing those duties. The only one that ever helped mom, the only one that ever did anything for our family. Before all this happened, you were always doing your stupid stuff, Frankie was never to be found and dad works his ass off to support us and all your escapades. Don't you dare accuse me of not doing my duties!" Joe nearly yelled with his teeth clenched together as he was now nose to nose with Kevin.

Then he stood up, the pain of guilty hitting him like an anvil between the eyes.
"I know you care, Kevin. But I've always let you do whatever you wanted. I never questioned you if you were doing something ridiculous. Me and mom always protected you, so you could expand; keep seeing the world in your own unique way. Because we love you. The only thing I am asking is— Protect me, Kev."

They stared at each other like that, for minutes, like they were getting to know each other for the first time again. Examining what it was they were working with, exploring the battlefield.

Finally, Kevin sighed and his expression alone made a burden rise from Joe's shoulders; it was soft, gentle and caring. Like his father's face when he would watch Frankie win a football match, or Kevin showing him his self-made poems. It was familiar, safe.
"I trust you Joe. I trust you to be safe, even if you won't tell me what is going on."

"Thank you."

Then, Joe grabbed his bag, lifting it over his shoulder like it weighted so much more then just those few pounds of books and looked at Kevin with what he hoped was an equally gentle expression.

"I'm sorry."

Then he started to walk towards the atrium, towards the exit, towards where Kevin couldn't follow him, towards Nick.
He didn't once look back.

"Tell us how to reprogram him!" The angry voice yells in her face. His tone as cold as the bars she's clutching.

"Never!" She screams, desperate and broken, as another shockwave tears through her lithe body.

"Tell us how to reprogram him!" The girl yells again. Her voice is harsh, almost livid in her anger towards Macy. She has all the reason, this woman has always been impossible, but her knowledge is of crucial importance.

"I won't let you destroy my hard work, my vision for a better world, all my grandfather's hard work!" She cries, tears leaking out of her light brown eyes. They're like doe eyes, pathetic and weak, she couldn't hate any pair of eyes more then she does these brown ones.
Except for maybe the ones that are stuck in the faces of that boy and the Humanoid.

She almost leaps towards the cell, making her prisoner shrink back into the prison.
Her long, pale fingers wrapped around the bars, clutching them until they were an angry red.
"You know what happens to your grandfather's precious work if you don't talk, don't you?" She hissed, knowing her thread hurt the woman like no other. She adored the demented, old retard.
"The same thing that happened to him, when he wasn't of any use to us anymore."

Her eyes widen and tears start to stream over her face, creating red spots and making her even uglier then she already is.
Her hair tangled, her body filthier then ever.
Penny finds her disgusting.

"You're lucky we need your Humanoid to give the boy responses that make actual sense." She snaps, before she turns around and stalks off like the predator she feels like.

She is unknowing that she has given Macy precious information.
A smile graces her lips.
"Keep him safe, Joe."

"School really isn't all that great." Joe awkwardly told the Humanoid, rubbing the back of his head, feeling embarrassed.

The large brown eyes focussed on his face, one by one, and Joe couldn't help but look away. "Really, it's boring, half- most of the time."

"Such a large gathering of young humans, learning to explore their born abilities is a very unique phenomenon. Hardly something to defy with 'boring'. You might want to reconsider how you judge your educational system." Nick said as a matter of factly.

Joe was once again left gibbering at Nick's advanced usage of the English language.

"Wanna switch, then? You go listen to Mrs. Snark talk about the importance of 'drama' in a biology lesson, it's creepy, I swear!"
They were seated at what Joe referred to as Nick's 'home base'. It was a stationary computer that was attached to Nick almost all the time when the N.I.L.'s scientists weren't testing him. It seriously never stopped; it was ridiculous how many pointless things they made Nick do. Going from solving puzzles, to completing mathematical problems Joe couldn't even phantom understanding, to doing four-hundred push-ups straight.
Joe suspected them to let Nick re-invent the theory of special relativity at some point in the future. It was like they were deliberately stretching out what Macy had previously described as a 'short sequence in the N.I.C.H.O.L.A.S. project'.

"I'm not allowed to leave the New Industrial Laboratories." Nick answered softly and Joe could swear he heard something close to sadness in the boy's voice.
Joe felt bad for him; locked up in the boring, white, sterile environment all the time, prodded and poked by people he didn't know, with only silly, old Joe for company.
Everybody seemed to view him as an object. Joe did too, in the beginning, but there was something so alive within Nick's eyes.

"I know." Joe said, reaching out to touch Nick's shoulder.
The poor boy was hunched in a position that would have been incredibly uncomfortable for any human, crouched and leaning on this calves with one of his hands crossed before his chest and the other behind his back.
But his face was as serene as ever. Calmly observing Joe, who was sitting in an oval white chair that hung from the ceiling in the small, blue-lit room.
"I wish I could take you out to see the real world, I always thought Macy's plan was to set you out and let you help people."

"I'm designed to help and comfort, the main design of my system is to be everything any human would want me to be."
Joe looked at him with a puzzled look. "Be something? Aren't you just- I don't know... you?"

"In theory, yes." Coler's familiar voice interrupted them. "He has a programmed personality, but he is designed to adapt to human wishes."

"Is he doing that right now?" Joe asked immediately, worried. "Is he adapting to me."
Coler laughed without humour. "Well, of course he is, Joe. He's just a machine, he doesn't feel anything."

Nick had gone strangely quiet at Coler's entrance, his head now bowed towards his chest as he seemingly listened to the insulting words that left the CEO's lips like venom as they spread through Joe's veins.
"Nick?" He tried, making Nick look up to him, his eyes focussing again.

"With one push of a button, we could completely erase the personality you have called 'Nick'." Coler said, walking towards Nick with confident strides as he gently slid his fingers behind Nick's ears.

Joe thought he saw the Humanoid stiffen at the contact, but then he was enthralled as the director of the N.I.L. opened a segment at the back of Nick's head, revealing a small dip, surrounded with wires, where soft blue light illuminated the shining silver.
It was a weird sight, though he'd seen Nick's insides before.
Nick didn't have blood or human flesh. Just muscles, skin and an appearance, grown from Kevin's DNA. The rest of him was made of wires, screws and computer-programs.

"You see that, Joe?" Coler pointed. "It's what we like to call the action-switch..."
Joe stared, wide eyed at the small white surface embedded inside Nick's neck.
It was a line, crossed by three smaller ones; the exact shape of the key Joe had once stuck into Nick's neck to activate him.
"I take you are familiar with that?" Corer questioned, without really asking, like he knew what flashed through Joe's mind at that moment.

"Now, behind this," He hooked his long fingers behind the button, pulling slightly. "Is the reset-button."
He revealed a small, black button, barely larger then the tip of Joe's index-finger.
"A reset-button?" Joe questioned weakly, feeling sick in his stomach. "He has a reset button?"

"Of course, if there are any problems, we need to reset him to re-program him." Coler answered, ever as patient with Joe.

"No!" Joe shouted, almost frantic with panic that coursed through his entire body. "No, you can't! You wouldn't, you can't just do that, after everything he's been through, after everything we've been through. You can't just destroy all Macy's hard work." He wheezed. "That's not fair; he's been good, hasn't he?"

Coler's hands landed on his shoulders, his grey-blue eyes staring at Joe through his glasses. "Calm down, Joe! Of course not, we wouldn't do that. He's too important and we've made so much progress. Of course we wouldn't delete him now."

It didn't calm Joe in the slightest.
Just the possibility of Nick just disappearing like that, gone like a piece of garbage for someone to throw into the trashcan was unnerving. He couldn't let that happen, he wouldn't let them!

"I promise you we won't. If not for our investigation, then for you, okay?"
Joe looked at him in a new kind of shock. That one he hadn't been expecting.

"Me?"

"You're important to our investigation too, Joe. The plan always was to let the humanoid interact with humans and your appearance was like god had planned it. We want you to stay, Joe, so we won't delete him. I'd scare you away."

Damn right it would.

"So you won't kill him?" Joe asked again, staring at the boy before them. He could imagine him; limb and with nothing behind the automatically focussing eyes. Nick, gone, dead.
He shuddered all over his body at the mental image.

"We won't kill him." Coler gently confirmed, adjusting the today bright red scarf around his neck. "Now, if you'll excuse me. I trust you'll keep an eye on him?"

Coler turned on his heels, away from Joe, not sparing a second glance to Nick, who was still crouched on the floor.

Joe waited until the door had closed behind the older man and then half-ran towards Nick, kneeling besides him.
He stared at Nick's face and Nick stared back.

In that moment, Joe felt like he and the Humanoid understood each other, no adaption, no machinery, no human deceivement involved.
Slowly, careful not to touch the wires, he wrapped his hands around the boy, resting his head against the shirt that he knew to be exactly 92.3 degrees, colder then a human's, but warm enough for now.

"You know I'd never let them hurt you, right? I'd never let them destroy you…" Joe whispered into Nick's hair, a painful tugging in his heart, like little strings wanted to pull it straight out. "God, I wish Macy were here."

Then, hesitatingly, the boy's arms lifted and folded themselves back around Joe.
It was the first actual sign of affection Nick had ever shown.

"I can't reset the damn thing, because the boy will be on his toes and I need him…"

"I can't reprogram him because Misa's damned granddaughter won't tell me how…"

"I can't do anything but watch them grow and hope they'll be better. Hoping I can use the N.I.C.H.O.L.A.S. project as the main piece of the puzzle, like he is meant to, once I have the boy safely in my clutches."

That's it, babynoids. I wanted it to be perfect and I hope it worked.
I'm happy to tell that I have the rest of the story pretty much planned out, but I'm still struggling with the lengths of the chapters and how to split the plot evenly into understandable bits.

Hope you still remember all the pieces of the puzzle! Every detail is important.
See you next time!