For a second, everything at the front of the room stopped. The music continued to play, but no one was dancing, and the lack of sound and movement quickly spread to the furthest regions of the courtyard, until everyone was staring at Mace, Minion, Roxanne, and Gilda. Roxanne's entire body shook. Her heart leaped in her chest, beating so fiercely that if it hadn't been for the music, she was certain everyone would be able to hear it.

But Mace gave her arm a squeeze and smiled at everyone with complete confidence. He waved, but no one moved.

So he started moving instead, leading Roxanne and their minions towards the other side of the courtyard as whispers broke out on all sides.

Roxanne ducked her head to avoid flying objects, scathing words, threats, fists. Picked her feet up higher with every step to avoid any kicks or attempts to trip her. But they didn't come. To her surprise, nothing did, and before she knew it, the quartet were meeting up with a group of Mace's friends, who stared at them slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

"Neren, Nistrom, Gladivore, Chirinesket, Lurey, Sincha, Chisna, Lyrkrat, Riven, Tralitarr, this is Roxanne, and this is Gilda," Mace introduced proudly. "Roxanne, Gilda, this is Neren, his twin sister Nistrom and girlfriend Gladivore, and Chirinesket and Lurey Medulla." Roxanne smiled shyly at them all, and waved in the same manner.

"Hi, Roxanne," Neren said slowly, squinting at her. "I thought your name was Aida?"

"It's my…Cerulean name," Roxanne said, swallowing hard. "Roxanne is the name my…my Earth mother gave me."

"Earth?" Nistrom questioned. "That's you're home planet, right? Or is it a nationality?"

"It's the planet," Roxanne replied, glancing at her feet. Gilda moved toward Roxanne on instinct, setting a hand on her shoulder for comfort. Roxanne moved her shoulder in a subtle manner to indicate her thanks without using speech or lifting her head.

"It's nice to meet you," Neren said almost dismissively, looking to Mace. "I thought you were bringing a date?" Roxanne suddenly wanted to disappear.

"I did."

"Where is she."

"Right here," Mace replied, pulling Roxanne a little closer to himself. His friends and their respective minions all just stared.

For a really.

Long.

Time.

"Does your hair have…nerve endings?" Nistrom asked at length, squinting at the human in question. Roxanne looked up in surprise.

"What?"

"Well…you've got…" Nistrom gestured to her own bald head with grandiose movements of her hands and arms. "All this…all this hair on your head, and I'm pretty sure you had more of it before Mace started hanging out with you…like, a lot more…and I know I don't have nerve endings in my eyebrows or eyelashes, but you are an alien, so…"

"No," Roxanne replied, looking back at the floor and shaking her head. "I don't have—I don't have nerve endings in my hair." She tugged at it as if to demonstrate. "Only at the roots. Like—like everyone else."

"Well, what are you…made of?" Nistrom asked.

"Carbon." The quick quip caused most of them to laugh, despite the collective unease at work.

"No, I mean—our coloring is caused by melanin. Is yours caused by a different color of melanin? And is your body structure different than ours? Do you share any common link with Cryptonians? You look like them, only…smaller."

"Well, yes, I believe my skin's coloration is caused by melanin, and there are some slight variations with bone density and…"

While Roxanne answered Nistrom's questions one by one, Neren grabbed Mace and hauled the taller boy off to the side.

"Lash!" Neren hissed.

"What?" Mace asked, rubbing at the spot on his arm Neren had so forcefully grabbed.

"You took the alien to the dance?"

"Yes. She's my date. It would be kind of rude to take someone else, wouldn't it?"

"Lash!"

"What?"

"Is there something wrong with your head?" Neren demanded, giving Mace a look infused with a mix of incredulity and confusion. "She's not Cerulean! She's—she's—she's human."

"Well, yes," Mace replied, nodding his head in agreement. "She is not and she is, respectively. I think that's a pretty easy thing to tell just to look at her. So?"

"So?" Neren asked. "So you've just crossed a species boundary, that's what! She isn't even from the same planet!"

"It makes no difference," Mace retorted, looking past his friend and smiling in Roxanne's direction. "She's amazing."

"Mace, have you lost your mind?" Neren demanded. "Or is Deldja right, and she really has brainwashed you?"

"Neren, that's ridiculous," Mace said very flatly, looking his friend in the eye with zero amusement therein. "I haven't lost my mind, and it hasn't been washed. You should be a little less closed-minded and a little more open."

"Well that's exactly what everyone else is probably asking right here, right now, at this very moment."

"Well here's something to think about: I don't care."

"How can you just not care?" Neren asked. "Your reputation—"

"You know, I'm getting pretty tired of everyone worrying about my rep-u-ta-tion," Mace informed the shorter boy. "A rep-u-ta-tion is pretty worthless when it comes to the long and the short of it. I don't care about my rep-u-ta-tion, Neren. Sure, it's nice to be well-liked, it's great! But I'd rather be happy than pop-u-lar."

"So you actually like her?" Neren asked. "This isn't just some charity case?"

"No! Charrity belongs to organ-i-zations. It would be—it would be—there isn't even a ward for how terry-ble a person has to be to pretend to dat someone as an act of charrity!"

"Why," Neren asked, "in the name of the collective information outlets at the edges of our universe, would you like her? Look at her! She's pink, and hairy, and stupid!"

"Roxanne is not stupid!" Mace snapped, his temper growing thin. "Granted, she may not be on par with my level of intelligence, or even yours, but she has above average grades, much better than Deldja's, or even Gladivore's, and her culture, her people, were so much farther behind us in age, in development, in technology, in intelligence—to keep up with the steep learning curve put up by our society, especially in our school, she must have had to adapt and learn at a rate more than six times as quickly as she would have on her home planet! They began school, and by school, I mean the very basics of reading and writing, at the age of five, not three as we do here, and she landed on Cerul at a year and a half, meaning she had a year and a half to reach a point acceptable for entry into our society. With the size of her head, which, I might add, I find to be an attractive quality, it is nothing short of a miracle that she is able to keep up with what goes on in the classroom at all, and unlike a lot of students I know, she's intelligent enough to ask for help when she needs it!

"And intelligence isn't even just a matter of how smart she is on paper," Mace went, throwing his hands up and shaking his head. "She writes amazing reports, she does spotless research on things most people wouldn't even think to question. She uses what some people see as a disadvantage to get information no one else can get. She sees potential for things I wouldn't even imagine, she can spot mistakes and flaws and errors in my technology that not even my parents would think about! And despite her 'stupidity,' Nistrom seems to be having a fine old time having a conversation with her, the first conversation any female outside her family has been willing to give her, simply because she's different!

"You can call a lot of people a lot of things, and I won't fight you on it. But if you ever call Roxanne stupid ever again, I will resort to physical violence." Neren shrank beneath the force of Mace's verbal onslaught, and winced.

"Lash, settle down," Neren bade, making a motion as if to smooth out a sheet of paper. "You obviously like her, but seriously. How can you stand to look at her?"

"Very. Easily," Mace returned with an unnatural calm about him. "I think she's beautiful. Even if you disagree, it would be kind if you would keep comments like that to yourself. I would think, as my closest friend, you would tend to support my decisions rather than try to talk me out of them, especially considering the fact that you were among the most adamant to insist that I begin dating. I will now take my leave," Mace announced with a slight nod, slipping past Neren without any other form of goodbye.

Neren cursed under his breath and rubbed at his forehead. It always bothered him when people refused the traditional goodbye, even if things weren't all right between them. It left his forehead feeling somehow numb...

***Break***

"Your brother's such an idiot," Nistrom laughed, rolling her eyes. "He'd be so much better off if he stopped tailing Deldja every which way. What is it about the men in our Year wanting girls in other Years? Not that I'm complaining in your case of course, Roxanne," Nistrom added quickly, not wishing to offend. "I'm pretty sure no one in our Year could meet Mace's standard, and we're all probably so deep in the Friend Zone it's not even funny, but my point is—oh, hey Mace," Nistrom greeted as she caught sight of the boy from the corner of her eye. "Neren sounds ticked. Anyway," she went on, returning her attention to Roxanne, "Neren's dating Gladivore, who is in the Year two below ours, Reptung is always after Deldja, who is, of course, in your Year, then the Medulla brothers here are in complicated relationships with the Oblongata sisters, who are taking their first Year of medical school—and no, as far as I'm aware, their last names are completely coincidental, unless, of course, they went looking for the only twins in the area whose last names coincided so perfectly with their own, and the other boys all follow a very similar trend, leaving the girls in our Year to fend for ourselves."

"What's going on?" Mace asked, wrapping an arm around Roxanne's shoulders. "Are we talking about my refusing to date any of my friends, or are we talking about Lurey and Chirinesket not being able to tell their girlfriends apart?"

"No," Gladivore returned, arms crossed over her chest. "We're talking about Nistrom's massive crush on Roxanne's brother."

"I will slug you, Krint," Nistrom warned in a friendly manner.

"Whatever," Gladivore returned with a smirk. Mace laughed and looked down at Roxanne.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"I now know much more about what's going on in your Year than I know about mine," Roxanne admitted, smiling gaily.

"Where did Minion and Gilda go?" Mace questioned, looking around.

"The minions, as a collective mass, heard a song they liked and moooved out!" Lurey replied, making a throwing motion with his right arm. "Zip, bammo, so long!"

"So they went dancing?"

"Yeah, that's the sum of it," Chirinesket agreed, and Mace grinned.

"I think that sounds like a great idea. May I have this dance?" he asked of Roxanne, and she blushed and nodded, slipping her hand into his and waving goodbye as they marched off to find their own section of floor. "How are you getting along with them?" Mace asked when they were alone. "They didn't say anything dimin-u-tive, did they?"

"No. They're—they're very nice," Roxanne informed him. "At least, Nistrom is. The others didn't really say much of anything."

"Nistrom can be a bit of a flibbertigibbet," Mace agreed. "But she's completely harmless."

"Does she really have a crush on Reptung?" Roxanne asked, making a face.

"A lot more than you'd think," Mace replied, the two of them swaying in time to the music. "Oh," he said suddenly, looking past Roxanne. "Here comes trouble."

"I knew it!" Deldja's shrill voice sounded, causing Roxanne to spin quickly around and grab hold of Mace as the girl and her cronies came barreling towards them.

"And there goes the evening," Mace finished, pulling Roxanne close in a protective manner. Why did it always have to be Deldja? Why couldn't it be monsters? Monsters would be much better!

Authors Notes:

Lash: Dude.

The first time Mace gets angry, he gets flustered and stops being able to talk right. The second time he delivers every word with such force that it knocks the impediment right out of it. BECAUSE HE'S AWESOME LIKE THAT.

NEREN, YOU LITTLE—IMMA CUT YOU! XDXD, JK. But seriously. Neren's bein' a jerk. DX

But Nistrom's being cool about the whole thing. XDXD

YOU DO NOT INSULT MACE'S WOMAN, BECAUSE HE WILL HURT YOU! XDXD

To anyone who wants to know, this is the formula:

Reputation + Mace = No f*cks given. XDXD

Many italicized words. You know, therefore, that those words are IMPORTANT. XDXD

As I said in the last chapter; I've lost my mind. The Tourettey's want you to know that THEY ARE BATMAN. Also, it's 2:47 AM, so I'm probably more tired than I think. (As evidenced by the fact that I tried to end that sentence with the word "have.") So. Goodnight!