Yay, an update! School's out, so I actually have 4 months to write before college starts. WOOOOHOOOO!

Chapter 7: Impersonating Space Police.

Though Casey expected less-than-optimal treatment, he still hoped that waking up in a cell was out of the cards. He was right, more or less. The thing he was in wasn't a cell. It was an observation chamber. And apparently, he had a shiny new name: Subject 2. How did he know this? For the past ten minutes, a very annoying message had played on repeat.

"Subject 2, please move to the center of your chamber." Same monotone voice, repeated at the same interval. It was getting annoying.

"Subject 2, please move to the center of your chamber." It was their fault they put the bed along the edge of the clear walls. Having no privacy sucked.

"Subject 2-"

"SHUT UP!" Casey yelled. There was a beat of silence.

"Subj-"

"ARGH!" Casey tried kicking the bad away from the wall, but all he got from that was a throbbing foot. Apparently, it was welded to the metal, featureless floor. Therefore, with the slowest movements possible, he wrapped himself in blankets, dropped to the floor, and rolled into the center of the room.

"Happy now?" the annoyed teen spat at empty air.

"Thank you for your cooperation. Remain still as the examiner enters the chamber." 'If this is cooperation, I hate to see what disobedience is', Casey thought to himself. What was essentially an airlock irised open, and a familiar man in a suit entered the room.

"Agent Ren. What happened to 'open and civilized'?" Casey snarked from his spot on the floor. Below the blankets, he was picking at the forcefield around the fragments on his wrist, trying to move the generator into position to be broken down by the nanites.

The Plumber Agent's face twitched. "That went out the window when you assaulted my men, and revealed you are in possession of a counterfeit plumber's badge." He pulled a thin device from his pocket, and it unfolded itself into a tablet screen. "That, and you are on Earth without an interplanetary travel permit."

"...pardon?" Casey asked. He sat up and adjusted the black jumpsuit he'd been given in place of his normal clothes. "I've lived on Earth all my life, you can check my records. Besides the little bit that, you know, I'm human." The generator started to slip towards one of his fragments.

This actually got Ren to chuckle. "Your DNA says otherwise, though I'll admit I've never heard of a half tetramand and galvan cross who looks like a human." He tossed the datapad over to Casey, who managed to unfold an arm from the blanket to catch it. Upon viewing the contents, the teenager's eyes went wide.

"This is ridiculous! I'm human! I… how…" He slumped back to the floor, covering his face with one hand. "You have to be lying."

Unexpectedly, a familiar, if tinny sounding voice came from a speaker. "Actually Casey, he's not, and we're in a lot more trouble than we thought. I've looked up the pertinent laws, and as partial aliens our citizenship on Earth, as a tech level 3 planet, is overridden. That, and apparently we're impersonating members of an intergalactic police force." He broke off with a sigh. "Also, we're being accused of murder of the grandson of one of their officers, one Max Tennyson. In short, without evidence disproving this we're absolutely screwed."

Agent Ren nodded. "That's about the long and short of it. Your friend, the petrosapien, was surprisingly cooperative. Most members of his species are… hardheaded, shall we say?" His grin was cut off by Jack slowly clapping reverberating through the speakers.

"That pun wasn't funny the first three times you used it. Anyway, since I've been mostly cooperative, they've lent me a tablet to try to prepare a defense for us. Casey, there's a whole galactic community out there!" Jack said excitedly. "Also their lawyers suck, so-"

Jack was cut off by the agent clearing his throat. "As convincing as your act is, until you are proven to be human, and the other violations have been addressed, you will be confined here."

Throughout this exchange, Casey just sat there, flipping through tabs on the datapad with lighting speed, until now. "We're human." His eyes flashed dangerously at Agent Ren, who tensed, reaching for his taser. "We'll prove you wrong here. That is a promise." Casey said in a cold tone.

Ren turned and left the chamber with calm measured steps. Once the door hissed closed behind him, he reached for the communicator in his ear. "Did you get that Velocity?" He casually asked as he headed to his office.

The kineceleran disguised as a human responded quickly. "Yep. Ren, I think they're telling the truth. I've checked the records. Those two have rock-solid alibis for literally their entire lives. Jack especially, considering some of what I found on him. But that's not important. You realize that Max is on his way here right?"

Ren sighed as he opened his door and saw stacks of paperwork. "I know. I'm hoping he can clear this up. The second I mentioned aliens who transformed into kids, he dropped everything to come over."

"I don't think it's healthy for him. He just lost his grandson, he doesn't need more stress."

The director of the Plumbers in North America ran his hand over his face tiredly. "He's coming as a civilian. We can't order him to stay away."

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "This is not going to go well. Agent Wheels out."

The line cut off.

Ren sighed. "I sincerely hope you're wrong."

Author's note: Velocity is Agent Wheels's code name (which she hates, and rarely ever uses), and she's on loan from the European branch of the Plumbers to help with the meteor case. Only a few people know about her being a kineceleran, and Ren (for now) is not one of them. Also, I know that technically Earth is stated as being a tech level 2 planet, but I call bullshit on that because we most certainly have nuclear fission. Kudos to Rocker On for guessing who Velocity was.

-sonyaxe