I must offer my utmost apologizes. I should not have called this a "dying" fandom. Because it is not. Thank you for all who's reviewed, now let's get this story on the road!

It takes them fifteen minutes to walk to the school. It's surprisingly close and there looks to be a small strip mall nearby, making it easy for kids to skip school. Rex takes everything in with relish and excitement but take extra care not to seem too obvious. He doesn't know what kind of person he used to be or how to act around everyone, but he doesn't want to completely alarm the people who care about him. So slowly, he decides. He's going to slowly fit into this world.

They walk in through the front door and Rex doesn't miss the way people quickly scamper out of their way. Can it be that they're popular or something? It makes him kind of giddy because doesn't this mean that even without EVO powers, he's a really cool guy?

As they walk through the halls under the gawking and awed gazes of the other students, Rex notices a janitor. Normally, he wouldn't have looked twice. But there's something about this janitor that catches his eye. Maybe it's the tasseled red hat on his head or the eye patch over his eye. Or the casual way he listened to his headphones instead of paying attention to his surroundings. But whatever it is, he takes a small detour to go talk to him.

"… Bobo?"

"That's Mr. Bobo to you, pipsqueak," the janitor growls in a familiar way.

"You're not a monkey!"

"Hah?!" The janitor exclaims in confusion. He snarls and pushes Rex away. "Hilarious, Salazar!" With that, he returns to sweeping and ignores Rex by cranking up the volume on his mp3.

"Nice!" Tuck cheers, holding up his hand for a high-five.

But Rex doesn't get it. What just happened? Why did Bobo push him aside like that? Worst still, why "Salazar" instead of "Rex"?

"Rex? Don't leave me hanging, bro."

"Ri-right." Rex high-fives Tuck, but he can't get rid of the strange questions.

"Do you remember your way to your locker or do you need help?" Circe asks in a bored kind of way. Almost like she could care less.

"Help, please."

She shoots him another uncertain look, but they comply. Almost like they're scared not to.

Rex makes sure to memorize his locker number and the combination. Cricket has to show him how to open it, but after the first few seconds, Rex is pretty sure he's gotten the hang of it. Apparently, he attends a school that doesn't allow kids to carry their backpacks around, so he has to dump his bag in there. Instead, he takes out one of the two binders and receive puzzled looks.

"What?" he asks, realizing he must've made a blunder somewhere.

"I don't think I've ever seen you serious about school before," Walter admits, looking a little like he's been punched. Like he can't quite believe that the world can change so drastically.

But if they don't come to school for studying, what did they come to school for? Rex doesn't voice it out loud. He's not a complete idiot. He knows that there are certain things in his life that doesn't translate well to normal people. So instead he just shrugs.

"I don't see why not."

"Did Doc give you something weird?" Tuck asks. Even he looks freaked out by this.

"What? No. It's…" Rex never finishes his thought because that's when he spots his best friend.

Noah walks in with a group of people. They're all wearing the red basketball jerseys, so Rex knows that Noah's part of the basketball team. They're all chatting excitedly as they pat each others' backs. Heh, how fitting. There must be some kind of a game tonight for them to all be hyped up like this. Rex doesn't hesitate. He trots over to say hello.

"Yo Noah!"

And all hell breaks lose.

There's fear in their eyes. Of course Rex recognizes it. He's spent all his life fighting EVOs, after all. Everyone backs away quickly, looking away and isolating Noah within seconds. For a brief moment, it looks like Noah's going to bolt. Like he's honestly terrified of facing Rex. Then the moment passes, Noah buffs out his chest and stands firm.

"Salazar," he hisses in a voice that he used to reserve for Van Kleiss or other enemies. "I don't know what kind of crap you're going to pull, but I'm not going to sit still. You want a fight? I'll give you a fight!"

"Oh really?" Walter drawls as he comes to stand next to Rex. "Going to fight all of us, Nixon?"

"I will cut you," Cricket promises as she and the others stand by Rex's side. "In places you never want to experience pain."

"So why don't you just crawl back into your little shell and go back to being the spineless victim you are?" Tuck adds. He takes a few extra steps, shoving Noah back with nothing but his words and his presence.

"Scram," Circe orders.

And Noah is gone, tripping on his own feet as he tries to get away from them as fast as he can. It's a side of Noah that Rex has never seen before and he just doesn't get it. Why aren't they friends? Can it be that if White Knight had never forced Noah to be Rex's friend, the two would never have any reason to talk to each other? But the level of fear and distrust in Noah's reaction is different than just someone you vaguely knew. Noah hates him. And that's not something you can get by waving hello to someone in the halls.

"Dude," Tuck says, smacking Rex lightly on the chest. "What's wrong with you? Usually, you can't stand the sight of that guy."

"Isn't he… my friend?"

"How much have you really forgotten?" Walter demands, his voice sharp. "Be honest, Rex."

"I…" Rex looks down at the ground.

"You haven't been friends with Nixon since middle school," Cricket says finally. "Do you remember that?"

"I remember being friends," Rex says, his voice soft, almost breaking. There. That much is honest. The last thing he remembers is still being friends with Noah and now he's in a world where Noah hates him and Bobo is a human and-

"So you don't remember anything else?" Tuck asks, looking more confused than worried.

Rex just shrugs off the looks and walks back to his locker. "I'm fine," he insists. "I'm fine."

The others don't look very convinced, but Circe motions at them to stop. Instead, she just pats him on the shoulder and says, "Then good luck getting to class," and is gone.

Within seconds, the rest are gone, leaving him all alone to figure out the complex school system by himself.

He doesn't have a map. He doesn't even have a schedule for his class. If he at least knew the way to the office, he might be able to get both a schedule and a map, but he doesn't even know that. So he's stuck walking through the halls until someone takes pity on him.

And the person who does so is the hall monitor. And it's not pity that this guy displays.

"Salazar! If you're skipping class, kindly do so in a manner that won't bother me," the hall monitor snaps. Then he drags Rex to a random classroom and shoves him in. "I caught a rat," he informs the teacher.

The teacher's a sharp-looking woman with a look of disdain permanently on her face. She looks at Rex and tutts. Then she motions for him to sit somewhere, anywhere, just let her go back to teaching this class.

Cricket is in this class. Unfortunately, there isn't an empty seat for Rex to sit at by her. In fact, the only sit open is… Oh hell no. Is that… Breach?

He gulps lightly before marching down to sit next to her. He doesn't miss the way she quickly maneuvers herself to the edge of the seat to be as far away from him as physically possible without moving seats. Oh whew. At least in this world, she's not the crazy Breach who collects people as her "favorites."

The teacher returns to lecturing and Rex figures that he might as well as take notes. He opens the binder (he groans a little when he realizes that he's grabbed the 'Math' binder) and flips to a blank page. He then searches himself for a pencil and then remembers that he never grabbed the pencil pouch. Feeling a little embarrassed, he taps Breach's shoulder and has to duck as she spasms.

She gives him the most terrified look from behind her hair-veiled face. "What?" she whispers, her voice so low that Rex has to strain to hear it.

"I… uh… Pencil. Can I borrow one?"

Breach's lips thin, but she doesn't refute. Instead, she opens a pencil pouch with a cat on it and hands Rex a cutsey pen.

"Thanks," Rex tells her with a grin.

She quickly turns her head and returns to her work. But Rex doesn't miss that she's relaxed a little and that she's not as far as she used to be.

"Salazar," the teacher calls suddenly, disdain still clear in her voice, "what are your thoughts on the letter A on Hester's chest?"

Rex blinks and it takes him a second for his brain to connect him to what she's talking about. English class, he thinks. They must've just read The Scarlet Letter. He still remembers the time when Dr. Holiday had shoved the book in his hands and had demanded him write a twenty-page essay on it. Like hell he's going to disappoint his favorite doctor by not knowing the answer to that.

"Adultery... I think what started out as the sin displayed proudly on her chest became her saving grace. Without it, Hester probably wouldn't have been able to gain the status that she did with the town's people."

The rest of the class is staring at him in disbelief. And it's Cricket's voice that rings loudly through the shocked silence.

"You did the reading?"

"It's an easy book," Rex says, suddenly feeling self-conscious. Oh crap, he did it again, didn't he? Just what kind of a person did he used to be to usher this kind of shock that he's done something as simple as reading a book?

The teacher stutters a little but then quickly reclaims the class's attention. Then they move on, ignoring that Rex ever participated in the class. It's kind of lonely, but he figures he would rather that they ignore him than give him that weirded out look again.

"Hey Breach, thanks." Rex passes the pen back to the girl who flinches at the sound of her name. Actually, now that he stops to think about it, there's no way that that's her name.

But she just nods and quickly leaves, meeting up with two other guys as she does so. Could they be Biowulf and Skalamander?

"What the hell, Rex?" Cricket exclaims, coming over to his desk. "If you did the reading, then you could've at least told me what it was about!"

But he can tell that that's not what she wants to say. "I read it a while back," he mumbles. It's the truth. A while back in a world that's very different from this one… "Besides, you sort of abandoned me in the halls. How was I supposed to tell you anything?"

She blushes and looks down at her feet. But he notes that for the rest of the day, she and the rest of the group do their best to help him get to class.

Lunch time is, as always, the best part of the day.

He grabs the mandatory cafeteria gloop on tray and walks out with his group of friends. He glances around, looking for an empty seat, but the rest don't bother with that. They just walk over to a table.

"Hey," Tuck says, putting his foot on the table, "Scram."

The kids on the table don't complain. They quickly disperse, letting Rex and his friends have the now empty table.

"Whua…? Guys, isn't that bullying?" Rex can't help but to ask.

"What are you talking about, Rex?" Cricket asks as she sits down. "This is how we always do things."

It feels wrong but he's not about to argue with them. They're the only ones who can help him out in this situation, after all. He just sits down and pokes at the so-called food on his tray.

"So you really don't remember, do you?" Walter asks, looking at Rex like he's a puzzle.

"Just in case, let me point a few things out," Tuck volunteers. He then points to various people, telling Rex arbitrary titles and few tidbits of information such as "They're losers," and "They fight back." Then he points to Breach and the two guys from before, and declares, "They're Van Kleiss's kids."

"Van Kleiss? He's here?"

"He's the biology teacher," Circe says. "You said once that he used to work with your parents. But that he did something stupid and now has to work here." She looks at him expectedly, as if she wants him to continue adding to that information.

"So that's… Breach and Biowulf and Skalamander, right?"

"You remember their nicks?" Cricket asks, looking a little frazzled. "But you don't remember other things?"

Rex shrugs. "They're interesting names."

They look uncertain but they don't push for more information.

"Finally, the end of the day! Let's hit the arcade!"

"Actually, I'm grounded."

Everyone turns to give Rex a scandalized look.

"So I'll be heading home. See you guys later!"

Thank goodness the house is so close to the school. He makes it back no problem. Taking a deep breath, he stands in front of the front door again. His hand touches the doorknob and he slowly turns it.

Open.

Should it be open?

His training kicks in before he even mentally recognize what's going on. He opens the door a crack, watching carefully what's going on. There's sound of someone's voice, potentially arguing with someone. Female. It doesn't sound like there's anything bad going on. Relaxing at the thought, he walks in.

"-never home anyways!" Then there's the sound of something slamming and a loud cursing.

"… Mom?" Rex calls.

A beautiful woman walks out of the kitchen, looking more drained than Holiday after a visit to the zoo back in the day. And instead of a kind smile and a hug that Holiday would've offered (even if she felt tired because she always put Rex's mental stability over her own), the woman just shakes her head no.

"Not now, Rex."

Then she's gone, walking away and leaving him alone in the hall.

And he realizes with a start that maybe, just maybe, having a physical, blood-related family is much different from having a family of his own choosing.