A/N: Ok wow I just went back through some of the older chapters and there's some hilarious inconsistencies and I am quite sorry. To be clear, it is still summer here, and the year is 4080. The planet is Gaia, the country is Sunbruht, the town is Screechbeastville, which is near Cantown City.
I do wanna say, a lot of Bug's current mindset is not good for him, and if you feel like you have a similar mindset, talk to someone you trust about it. It's ok to accept help, especially from people who are happy and eager to help you. And it's not good to repress trauma, cuz it will come back and bite you. I'm just not quite good enough at writing to weave this together eloquently, so I wanted to make this part plain and simple. Bug is hurt, and doesn't wanna say so, don't be like Bug. (Mental health isn't a huge focus in this chapter but it is mentioned. So. )
A month and a half passed, and Bug was beginning to feel normal in this world. He could almost forget the box if he tried, and he never had nightmares. Mkenzi had taken him shopping after a few days of wearing spare clothes, which Bug both felt very grateful for and a little guilty about. He told himself he could work hard and pay the Auferas back for all they'd done for him, and that was what he planned to do.
His physical therapy was going quite well, he could now move and function mostly as average for his hemotype. He found he worked best in the house or in the shop ajoining the lunch room, where the more mechanical aspect of the farm was. He wasn't great at fixing stuff, but it was fun.
Also animals. He loves caring for and hanging out with the animals. Cows were his favorite.
One of his favorite interactions with cows happened when he, Nairuu and Mkenzi had been milking the dairy animals out in the furthest barn, when Bug met a calf for the first time.
She wasn't really a baby, almost six months old, but his eyes still lit up when he saw her coming in from the pasture. She was cinnamon colored, with some black and white brindled onto her face, legs and ears.
He had been leaning back on his stool to look at her, and now he fell over, making the calf take notice of him.
The other two watched, amused, as she snuffled his alarmed face.
"Having a jolly holiday, eh, Bug?" Nai joked, laughing.
"What sort of a- hey!" Bug said, trying to push the little cow out of his face, but not before getting licked.
Mkenzi tried to hide his laughs, but Nairuu's loud, clear laughter rang out. She stood, pushing the cow away from her friend.
Bug sat up, wiping his face on his shirt, before cracking up as well.
All in all, things were going swimmingly. Until one day, when Medusa sat him down at the kitchen table.
He gulped as she smiled smugly, setting a large stack of papers in front of him.
"In a couple days time, I am going to be bringing you to one of the four leaders of our people, so you can become an official Gaian citizen."
"A-alright..."
"But first, I'd like you to be familiar with what that will mean for you. So today, we have a politics lesson!"
She kept a straight voice, but her eyebrows pointed upwards in a way anyone could recognize as playing. Medusa had a very distinct face. Wide and short, with heavy lidded eyes and thin eyebrows that naturally rested in a sarcastic position. Bug thought it would be rather scary to see what she looked like serious.
"The four leaders," she continued, "are Radhia, Faygoe, Tekii, and Lanshe. Sometimes jokingly called Life, Earth, Day and Night. Radhia governs the lowest frequency castes, from burgundy to gold. Lanshe, the next, from lime to teal, Tekii, blue and indigo, Faygoe, Purple and fuschia. Maybe not evenly spread out, but it works lol. Anyway, every troll is registered by their leader. The same is for humans and Carapacians, and I dunno about consorts. So you'll be registered with Faygoe. The man himself. The boi. You and a group of other #FF250256+ will receive a 5th grade level test, and if you pass, you're a citizen of Sunbruht, Gaia. And there's also this 'traditional' test that some parents make their kids take that emphasizes the skills that are associated with their species or subspecies, but you don't have to take it and probably wouldn't want to. For purples, it's an obstacle course. So."
Bug chuckled.
"No, I s'pose not. Heh. Sunbruht is the country we's living in?"
"Yep. Also the planet's called Gaia but. You know. That's common knowledge."
"Aww sweet. This all sounds pretty good. As long as you're ok with takin' me.'
"Pfft duh. Wouldn't want you walking around unregistered in the bigger world, would we?"
"Heh heh, no I s'pose not. Since we're on the topic, I've been wonderin', how does raising kids around here work?"
"Oh, well that's simple enough. If it's two parents of the same species that are able to reproduce, they just do it and raise the kid. That'd be humans and Carapacians. If they can't reproduce, they can adopt. If it's trolls, they go to the brooding caverns, turn genetic material in to the mother grub, then retrieve their egg whenever it's been layed. The mother grub also has her own children with her chosen mate drone, and they are raised by lusii. The only ones out of all of us that produce live young are humans, everybody else lays eggs. Now if two parents of different species who want a biological child want to, they can have a hybrid child ectobiologized for them, but most don't like doing that. The term mother, father, and lusus are thrown around pretty loosely lol. Sometimes you get a case like us, where one Lusus raised the first of us and then kept adopting grubs. Other than Meioxi. He's not an Aufera by birth, he took my last name when we mated. Does that make sense?"
"Hmm. Yeah, indeed. Thanks."
Not long after that, Bug found himself sitting in his best clothes (which was a blue t shirt, black dress pants, and a jean jacket) with a room full of fifth grade kids. He went over the stuff he'd been studying in his mind. Excited. He was excited to be taking this test, getting to be a citizen. He didn't entirely know what to do with citizenship, but he could do something.
He was called fourth, being registered under Aufera. In the other room, the first three students were already at the partitioned desks, looking rather nervous.
"You sit at the table over there, " the adult carapacian administering the test said, gesturing to the larger table in the corner. He sat down. He was still too tall for the chair, but this was better than a tiny desk for sure.
After everyone was filed in, the carapacian stood up, addressing the class;
"Welcome, to your initiation test. Passing this test makes you a legal citizen of Sunbruht, Gaia. You can get up to 3 questions wrong in each section and still pass. Failing results in a 7 day waiting period and then testing again. Any questions?" She sounded tired, like she did legitimately enjoy this job but had seen a dozen groups already and was ready for a coffee break.
No questions. She walked around, passing out paper tests.
They proved to be very straightforward. Paragraph analytics, enterprating the results of an experiment, applying the basic arithmetic functions to real world scenarios, and some local history. The last subject was the most difficult, he had been avoiding a lot of history.
In the end everyone passed. Bug got passing grades in everything, and flying colors in math, which was meaningless but cool to have.
Thet filed put of the room, children bouncing with elation. Bug was quite excited himself, even if he didn't know what to be excited about. Into the other room, where many parents were already waiting for their children.
Before he left the test room though, the carapacian stopped him.
"Sir, would you come here for a minute?"
"Uh, certainly."
She brought him down the hall across the room, to a smaller room. Inside were two couches opposite each other. The blinds were drawn, letting in a small amount of soft golden light from a streetlight outside.
On one of the couches sat a gangly troll man, with his legs crossed, looking at a phone. His long hair was braided the same way Medusa's was. He wore a nice gray suit and a set of gold spectacles.
He got up when he noticed Bug had entered.
"Mr. Lightning Bug! It's nice to meet you," he said, reaching across the coffee table to shake his hand. He had a firm handshake and a broad smile.
"Uhhhhhhh hello, I'm... Wait, you know my name..."
"Oh, sorry, I guess I should have called you first or something lol," He pinched the bridge of his nose, chuckling, "So how are you? A citizen now, huh? That's great."
"Uhh, I don't have a phone... But yeah, it's good to be... Here."
"A phone?"
"That you could have called me on."
"OH! oh I get it. Hah! I guess you're right. Maybe we can fix that up some time lol. Anyway, I'm Mr. Makara, you probably know that though. I just wanted to stop by and say hi. You've done an amazing thing here in the past little bit."
"What'd I do?"
The man smiled, a little confused,
"You're alive. You're doing great. That's awesome."
Bug smiled.
"Thank you."
They talked for a couple minutes, before Mr. Makara said he had to leave.
"Hate to cut this short, but I've got some business that needs attending to. Let's talk again some time, eh?"
"Uh, sure!"
They parted ways in the lobby the test takers had inhabited a few minutes prior. Nairuu had already showed up, and looked rather dumbstruck at the presence of Mr. Makara, who smiled broadly again, sent finger guns, and left.
"You were talking to him?!" She said, shoving am incredulous finger in the direction of the door.
"Uhh, uh huh."
"Yo, Bug, that's cooooool. Anyway, we gotta run, Medusa's got a surprise."
"Huh. Sweet."
Out in the summer night air, Bug took off his jacket. Nairuu stuffed a baseball cap on his head, before they reached the skuttlebuggy.
Inside, as the legs extended and they rose off the ground, Bug took off the hat and examined it. It read "Screechbeastville Bears 4067" with a picture of a screechbeast embroidered on.
"This some sort of sport?"
"Yeah, baseball. Tonight's game will be for the ages. The Cantown City Lapis are facing off against the Gaiansburg Sticksmackers."
"Ooh," Bug said. He had no idea who these people were and didn't know what baseball was but this sounded cool.
The scuttlebuggy headed out of the sleepy town on the highway. After traveling through the woods for about 30 minutes, the city of Cantown came into view. It didn't really look like cans so much as a hundred pillars of glass, metal, and stone rising into the air. It lit up the world as if it were daytime, each building emitting a different pearlecent color. A hundred other scuttlebuggies moved through the streets, crossing over and under each other. The sidewalks below swarmed with hundreds of people. Humans, trolls, and carapacians. Mostly carapacians, though.
He glued his face to the window, taking in everything. They traveled through to the heart of the city, where a sprawling college campus surrounded them with old red brick and half cylinder metal buildings. In the center of a lake, in the center of campus, stood a huge stadium.
Into a packed parking lot, where Nairuu parked the buggy, getting a tote bag out of the back. Today, she had traded her fuschia tank top and black knit shorts for denim shorts and a black t shirt with a fuschia cow skull on it. Bug had never thought to ask her why she always wore that color. Maybe he would some time, but not right now.
She lead him across a sleek, modern bridge out into the lake, where a couple hundred people were filing into the great stadium. Several hundred feet across and filled with all sorts of terrain.
"So what's the point of baseball?"
"What's the point of baseball? Huh, ok, so there are two teams, one ball, four krakens and a bunch of foam dueling weapons. Each team is trying to get the ball to the opponent's base. The base is located directly between two krakens, and slightly out of their reach. Touching the other team's base gets you four points. Whoever has more points at the end of an hour wins. There's a lot more nuance to it but to enjoy the sport that's about all you'll need to know."
"Alriiight sounds great." He said, grinning broadly.
They wove through the excited sportsgoers until the other Auferas came into view.
Bug sat next to Nairuu, who was a little too big for the seat. She held Mkenzi's hand and they chatted amiably. The crowd was loud and excited, he could barely hear over the din. Stadium lights shot brilliant light in every direction, and loud, team spirit™ music blasted from a bandstand. Almost carnivalesque food smells drifted around, giving Bug a sense of nostalgia. He loved the croud, the noise, the light, the chaos of this place. It felt like home.
The game played fast and hard, it seemed like just about all tackling, wrestling, and supplexing were allowed. They ran and dodged and jumped, sending up showers of mud from the loose turf. The terrain was huge enough to accommodate the adult troll players and detailed enough for the tiny adult humans. At one point, in the fourth quarter, a huge oliveblood seized the ball, only to be scaled by a human wearing the Lapis jersey, who grabbed it away, kicked off the troll's arm, flipping over and immediately running. The olive fell hard but was on his feet again in an instant; it was like he ran on all fours after the human. They chased across the course, dodging the other players, till a purple stepped directly into the human's path. The human slid beneath him, tossing the ball into his arms. The purple vaulted up onto the boulders above, missing the leap of another human by a hair length. The purple made a dash straight for the base, throwing the ball, only to have it batted away by a fuschia with a foam claymore. It went into the arms of the olive from before, who skidded to a halt and dashed the other way. Another human, hiding in a tree, hung upside down, snagging the ball and throwing it towards the base. The fuschia made another grab but was tackled by the purple, allowing the ball to land in the large base basket. It almost flew out the other side.
The crowd went wild. With only a few minutes left on the time, the Lapis had victory secured.
After the game, the players came back out onto the field to talk, high five, and congratulate each other. The olive and the human who scored the last base chatted, smiling. The purple talked to the announcer, borrowing his mic. The crowd went silent as he spoke,
"Shout out to Lightning Bug Aufera for coming out here this morning!"
Bug shrank back into his seat, embarrassed as the crowd cheered again.
"Eyo, sweet, man!" Nairuu said, punching his shoulder.
"Why'd he do that?"
"He shouts somebody out at the end of every game."
"Who is that?"
"I mean, ain't it obvious? That's Faygoe Makara, King of the Night and pro baseball player."