Summary: The Burger World employee doesn't know what to think when Foop, three hours old, wanders in and demands solid food.

Characters: Kenny, Foop, Gary, Betty

Rating: K+

Prerequisites: None

Posted: August 6, 2016

7. Shouldn't Have Survived ("Anti-Poof")

Friday June 13th, "2008"

Year of Breath; Spring of the Frozen Planet

The only human on the entire tiny rocky planet lived and breathed his work. Really, he didn't have much of a choice. Where else was he to go- outside for a leisurely walk? Um, how 'bout no? Find another suicidal sucker, thanks. It was barely five degrees above freezing beyond the door on the best days, and the slightest tear in the oxygen and gravitational field bubble around the fast-food joint would suck his eyeballs out of their sockets before he could even think of saying, "Can I take your order?"

He lived his work because he couldn't leave it. He breathed it because he'd never had another choice. He didn't necessarily love it because in his younger years he'd once partaken of a life he liked better, but now his work was all he had to cling to. The rules of the game were simple: Do your job, obey orders, keep the Head Pixie happy, and you survive another painful day.

Not that the Head Pixie had ever come to visit him. Not that Mr. Sanderson really ever came to visit him, unless he wanted something.

Everybody wanted something from him. It was the way of things. Occasionally some random customer would make small talk over the counter with him, but only until he finished whipping up their food. Even the various interesting types of currency he earned were all useless in his eyes; once a month, Mr. Sanderson or Mr. Longwood or one of the other pixies would show up and take it all. In return, he'd get free toilet paper, more of the same greasy food he'd eaten every day of his life since he'd turned nine, and maybe a phone call home. Or to that weird daycare center that sort of passed as home to his sister nowadays, anyway.

"Why?" He had once asked Mr. Sanderson on a day he actually had decided to take a walk around his fifteen-by-seventeen-square foot lump of floating rock (excellent view of the Big Dipper, if nothing else). Taking a brown pebble, he'd hurled it into open space as far as his arm could muster. It hit the oxygen bubble with a ripple and passed through without breaking it. Supposedly, it would take some serious power to bust open that thing. "Why do you make me stay here? What's my purpose? When do I get to go, I don't know, home?"

Mr. Sanderson had continued to arrange the Boudacian coins in his palm without looking up. Boudacian knives, more like- honestly, did even their money have to be deadly to handle? Their personalities were irritating enough. "You're an orphan," he'd said. "This is your home. You've been provided with everything you need here."

"But I'm useful here, right? I'm still helping you guys out by doing this?"

"Of course. Now, go take a shower. I'll cover your post for twenty minutes, and then I must be on my way. Was there some sort of birthday present you wanted me to bring your sister?"

That had probably been four years ago. He'd spent over a decade in this place, and half that time running it all on his own. It was elegant but cramped, organized but dirty, popular but infamous, friendly but distant, old-fashioned but up-to-date, and it all belonged to him.

And late one morning, before he'd found the opportunity to scrub the frost off the window panes again, he met a newcomer. An awkward blue baby of a newcomer who had been floating outside the door for five minutes until a seafoam-haired elf girl by the name of Laurie had at last flown over to open it for him. He obviously had no idea who was in charge of the place, or even where he was at all. Though, the human teenager behind the counter half-wished Laurie wouldn't have let him in. Maybe it was mean - almost as mean as sticking a genie's lamp underwater for an hour on end until the insides flooded, or stealing an elf's shoes, or taking just one item from a leprechaun's careful hoard of forty-nine - but Anti-Fairies were always great fun to watch when smooth, flat glass was involved, and he could have used a little entertainment.

The kid looked like he'd never slept in his life. Creases like crows' feet pressed into the corners of his bloodshot eyes. When he flapped his leathery wings, he listed somewhat to his right side. There was someone else who always did that- someone important, but not quite important enough for the fast food joint's single employee - slash - manager - slash - environmental health officer to remember, at least on a cold day like this one. He clutched his baby bottle to his chest with one fist, and the thumb of the other hand appeared to have taken up permanent residence in his mouth. Even if he weren't dressed in the cubed exoskeleton of Anti-Fairy pups, the scrubby, slightly hunchbacked, brace-faced strawberry-blond boy sipping a chesberry milkshake and working out the exchange rate between multiple foreign coins could have guessed this was his first visit; he turned in circles and gawked at everything.

Kenny Lovell arched just one eyebrow. After flipping the straw to the other side of his foam cup, he leaned across the counter with his arms folded. "You're a long way from Hy-Brasil at your age, friend. Welcome to Burger World. What can I get for you?"

Hesitantly, the anti-fairy set his bottle down (though he didn't release it) and braced his palm against the counter. "I need directions down to Earth. And can I get a Number 5 Peppy Meal and a soda?"

Yep. A baby. A legitimate baby, and he talked. Never got less creepy. Kenny had noticed over the years that the Anti-kids tended to talk young (though he'd never met any who ripped out sentences quite so eloquently as that) while their 'primary' counterparts suffered through embarrassing pooferty noises for the first year of life. Apparently that was the trade-off for them having clean 'magic veins' that ran like roots through their bodies and connected them directly to the universal energy field, as opposed to the watered-down version that most of the Antis were left to content themselves with by drawing power from their host's core.

Mostly, anyway. Sometimes there were exceptions, and weak fairies like that shy Binky showed up one day, and the next day one might meet his counterpart and find the latter far stronger. Either way, there always had to be an equal balance of magical prowess between primary and anti-entity, and only when it was approximately even between the two did you wind up with either double talkers or double 'poof poof'-ers.

Thus, seeing as he could speak, the blue child wasn't likely half the threat he was clearly attempting to portray himself as with his square chest puffed and chubby neck arched. Nudging his neat white cap up with his fat forefinger, Kenny said, "Kiddo, there's no way in the name of smoof you're weaned. Solid foods are for big kids."

Wrong thing to say. The anti-fairy's face pinched together. The soft tip of his bottle evidently doubled as his starpiece, because it began to glow blue. Blue was the color that magic automatically turned when the user was frustrated or defending themselves or something, and that was honestly amusing. "I'm three entire hours old. I assure you, acne-cheeks, I can stomach anything. Hand over the box of chicken nuggets and waffle fries at once as I commanded, or you will be forcing my unpleasant hand to bring you another decade closer to your untimely DOOM!"

The fluorescent lights flickered on and off and on overhead. The one above Table 3 had been dead for the last two years. There were eight patrons - all of whom except one Kenny knew by name, thank you - and all of whom twisted their heads around to stare at the raging child. Kenny nodded to the black and yellow wand lying on the lower counter about two inches from the cash register. "You know I was taught how to use this thing like a real magical business manager, right? I'm not some defenseless Earth human like my big sister. I know how to fight back. I'm not just going to let you walk over me like a doormat. You can't beat me there."

If the anti-fairy had been older, perhaps he would have debated the chances of Kenny following through on the threat. As it was, he hesitated, then redirected his bottle towards an imp called Stanley behind him and released a blast of boiling magic. Stanley promptly turned into a hairbrush and clattered to the chair. Kenny caught the eye of one of the fairies and, when the pup's irritation had cooled, she poofed him back into his regular form, his antennae waving on their stalks.

"Can I still get my grape soda?" the anti-fairy wanted to know, leaning to his right again and shaking his hand like the blast had drained him half-dry, and he wasn't about to admit it verbally. He popped his stubby thumb back into his mouth. He didn't even have scales along it yet, nor the soft batty fur around his face. Well. Maybe a little near his nose and chin. A bit blacker than usual, making it look an unnerving amount like he was already sporting both a pencil-thin mustache and a goatee, but… there.

"I can't serve you that. I'm not permitted to distribute concentrated processed sugar to minors unless your parents are around to supervise you. You'll have to have something else. I can offer you milk, fruit juice, and water. That's what you're allowed to get."

"I have parents," he insisted, and as he waved his stubby arm to indicate this, two anti-fairies that Kenny at once recognized as the High Count and Countess appeared behind him with a pop. Ah, so that's whose pup he was, and it definitely explained the 'limping' on his right side as he flapped his wings. Maybe it was genetic. Kenny flipped the wand into his fingers and aimed it first at Anti-Cosmo, then at Anti-Wanda. It beeped both times.

"Nothing there but pure magic, distributed nice and evenly all the way through. Those are two holograms, and really good lookers too since you're so young and everything, and then also you're a boy among your kind. Anything else? Go on. Try again. Third time's the charm. You'll get it. I know you can."

Up went the anti-fairy's thick eyebrows. "When is age of majority, precisely?"

"I've sort of been told it's roughly in the ballpark of something like maybe about two hundred thousand years or so, give or take a bit, I think."

The pup's square face slammed down on the counter. After a few seconds, a noise like a snore escaped his mouth. When it went on, Kenny reached out to tap his shoulder, but before he could, the anti-fairy jerked backwards again and shook out his wings. "About that juice you said you offered? Could I pretty please have apple?"

"Sure deal. And do you still want those nuggets? Okay, your sickbed. When you inevitably need to hurl after digesting something other than milk this soon after birth, please run to the edge of the asteroid and do it over the edge into oblivion. That's what it's there for. Now, I only need to scan your starpiece."

The anti-fairy jerked away in an instant, lifting his arm up to shoot and protesting that he could very easily just steal the juice, or for that matter a soda thick with sugar, but Kenny still managed to focus his wand and make it read the cap of the baby bottle. The receipt began to print from the cash register, instantly catching the attention of both pixies at their far table (Mr. Saddler and Mr. Andrews, if he wasn't mistaken, though pixies didn't come around often and he was admittedly a couple tads rusty).

"That's been sent to your parents' automatic tab," he told the brat, tearing off the receipt. "It's all paid. Credited. You won't have to worry about it. Seeing as that bottle of yours obviously works like a wand, the memory chip's all synced up to it, and I get to keep this fun doohickey in my scrapbook for legal reasons. What's your name, kid? What can I call you? What do you answer to?"

The anti-fairy mumbled something into his shirt, tugging on the collar of his pajamas.

"Come again? Speak up. Little louder. Can't hear ya, bud."

"Unfortunate as it is, my name is Foop."

Kenny took a paper cup from the stack on his left and went off to fill the juice. "Huh. Interesting. That's a new one. Never met anyone by the name of 'Foop'. Is that supposed to be a quick way of tossing out 'Anti-Foop', or…?"

"Well, it's- it's going to be Anti-Poof, really, on my birth certificate and everything, but my father has a famous general by that name - Anti-Poof Anti-Everwish and perhaps you've heard of him? Lovely chap, or so I've been told - and he thought it would serve both he and I and all of us best if we simply set the record straight from the get-go."

The famous Baby Poof's anti-fairy, then. "So Anti-Cosmo named you 'Foop'. He went and gave you a different name. He spelled it backwards."

His comment made Foop flick up his pointed ears. "So you do know us, then!"

"I should," Kenny replied through a snort. He returned with the order of apple juice and nuggets and slid both bag and cup across the counter on a bright red tray that matched his bowtie and pants exactly. "I'd better. I've heard it said. You pick up things. I listen. You stick around this business for as long as I have, kid, and you'd have to be a sock puppet not to."

"I would advise you for your own sake to quit with the calling me by that demeaning term." Foop blinked around at the walls, violet eyes wide and bright. He brought the acid-resistant straw of the apple juice to his lips. "Do you get a wide assortment of my kind passing through here? Anti-Fairies?"

Kenny took up a cloth and made as though he were wiping down the tiled counter, but he didn't remove his hand from the handle of the wand he'd been left with all those years ago. "Some. I've seen fairies, I've seen aliens, and I've even met your parents. Multiple times. Anti-Wanda likes her bread toasted only on the inside so it takes an extra second before you hear the bone-like crunch."

Foop pulled slightly away, clinging to his tray with tiny claws like toothpicks. He'd balanced his bottle beside his other drink, although if he kept making sharp lurching movements like that, it would probably topple over to the ground in a matter of wingbeats. "Who are you?"

Kenny shrugged. "Nobody important. Nobody anyone remembers. I don't think I've even given my name out to anybody for what has to be ten years. And I'm gonna keep it that way for as long as I can. I've gotta have something that's my own. Even something silly."

"Are you who… who… heehoo…" The word was apparently difficult for even his capable tongue to pronounce. Not that that seemed to be uncommon among the magical folk. "Are you human?"

"Mmhm, sure am, or at least I was the last time I checked. I was born one of them, even though I wasn't like raised by them for long or anything. Born in Jetmore, Kansas all the way down there in the good ol' U.S. of A."

Foop grinned. It was a chilling grin, full of pointed teeth that made Kenny flinch inwardly and wrack his brains to remember whether Anti-Wanda, who would have been the one to pass her wings along to her son, was a vampire bat subspecies or something a little more harmless, like a fruit-eater. "In that case, you can surely direct my course in the way of Earth, then?"

"Uh… sure? It's not far. You're just on the wrong side of Fairy World for it, kid. Oh- not kid, not kid! It was an accident. Force of habit. I forgot. I just remembered. I won't do it again. So, just go straight thattaway. It's a bit of a lengthy trip, but if you stay on course, you should run right across Choketroll Pass. Straight shot to where you wanna get." Kenny pointed directly forward to the other side of the building and decided not to warn Foop about the windows, just to see what would happen. Satisfied, Foop spun around, tray in hand (he either didn't know it was supposed to stay here, or didn't care), and flew off in the direction Kenny had indicated.

"Don't, don't!" shouted two or possibly three of the patrons, but Foop didn't register them. At least not until it was too late. Instead, he ran face-first into the glass with a dull yet satisfying thunk. The Peppy Meal bag and drinks waterfalled from his hands, everything rolling across the ground. It was clean ground, at least- Kenny had a lot of spare time to mop.

"What the-?" Foop lay his palms against the solid surface. A note of panic trickled into his voice. Blue fingers crawled left and right. And, like every Anti-Fairy Kenny had ever seen, despite the fact that he had just touched it and proved that there was something in his way, the kid withdrew and rammed into the thing again. Then again. "That's not- that's not any kind of waterfall! What- what is this strange force field?"

Chuckles sprang up from a few of the more sadistic people in the fast-food joint, Kenny included, and Foop snapped around. His left wing clipped the window hard enough to make him cry out. "Stop laughing at me, you utter imbeciles! DEATH! Fiery, painful death will rain as a great cursing upon all of you!"

Kenny rubbed the smirk from his face as best as he could with thumb and forefinger. "It's called glass, pint-size. I'm gonna make the guess that if you're only three hours old, your parents haven't explained to you yet that Anti-Fairies can't see anything that nice and clean and smooth. Not that I'm bragging, but those windows were cleaned by someone who cared. Look, you're bats. It's in your DNA."

The fists rained down against it. Faster and faster, louder and louder. "This is an outrageous and blatant impossibility! The Harbinger of the Doom Time cannot be contained!"

"Little dude, just chillax." Kenny reached for his abandoned chesberry milkshake and took another sip. Even in the eternal chill that clung like moss to Burger World, it had turned more liquidy than he usually liked. "If you need to, you can hit it again with your echolocation. Just remember that it's not water and move away from it. The door's over there about two feet to your right. It's just your kind's little cross to bear in life: you either can't see the stuff with your eyes, or you can't see through it with your echolocation." And if Anti-Fairies weren't annoyed after a meeting with a glass sheet, they were baffled by their inability to pick up a clear read on anything moving on the opposite side, and if they weren't baffled, they turned panicked, every time, either way. Never got old.

"What? Not water? You want me to" - Foop tapped the pane, his brow furrowing - "echolocate? I don't- I can't- How might I manage to- Y-you deliberately guided me into this horrid trap so you might make a mockery of me for your own selfish amusement! … Except for the part that involves me ending up as the butt of the joke, I can't help but find myself somewhat impressed by your surprising cruelty. Credit where credit is due."

Kenny upturned his left palm in a half-shrug.

And then Foop looked down. Even from what may as well have been the opposite end of the whole asteroid, Kenny swore he watched the young anti-fairy's purple eyes narrow until they were little more than dots. He bent down and picked up a small, soft object that had tumbled from the bag with his chicken nuggets and apple chunks. "Is this a Baby Poof toy?"

"They've come in all our Peppy Meals for the last three months." Kenny widened his own eyes as he realized what he'd said. He took his right hand off his face again. "That's your counterpart then, isn't it? Your host is the famous Baby Poof- of course! Duh! Obviously! I even thought it for a second earlier, but I didn't really follow through with the realization. That makes sense. The famous fairy baby! Gah, I'm an idiot for not making the full connection. Although in my defense, I don't get a lot of news up here. Just for being Baby Poof's offshoot, I should've like offered you half-price or something."

Foop gnashed his teeth. His hand squeezed around the purple doll, which was… not the sort of reaction Kenny had ever witnessed any anti-entity perform towards anything resembling their host in his life, and it made him curious. The term 'host' was used for a very accurate reason. No more fairy meant no more anti-fairy. Sure, he was no expert on the subject, but he was immersed enough into the world his customers lived in to know that two counterparts crossing paths at the young age of three hours old was not a common occurrence by any means. And yet, no one snarled and wrung the neck of a plush toy with both hands by accident. How could so much hate be boiling in the blood of one so small?

He stuffed the Poof toy into a crumpled front pocket of his blue pajamas. "Well, this is simply no matter for me, then. As much as I loathe the name, Foop shall scoff upon your jeers and rise from among the ashes of scorn like the mighty born-again phoenix, and let what comes next fall upon your own head! The time of doom is now!" Diving down, Foop shoved several chicken nuggets into his mouth. Then he snatched his bottle and his apple juice up and in the same swift movement blasted a gaping hole in the side of the restaurant. A pair of gnomes in that area shielded their faces, but maybe would have been better off shielding their hamburgers. Kenny pitied them. He wasn't allowed to offer refunds once the food had passed into customer hands.

"Come on," he complained, watching as Foop summoned up some sort of blue-gray rocket-powered cart that really looked as though it belonged on a theme park ride. "That's not cool, kid."

"It's on me today, Lovell." After Foop had puttered away, the fairy who had brought Stanley back from his brief excursion as a hairbrush spun her wand again. Yellow bricks began to fly back into place one at a time. Most of the stray glass shards across the floor and tables shimmered out of existence. New, fresh windowpanes sprang up in the wall, free even of the dusty brown streak marks that had been fixed in the high corners for years.

The word 'Thanks' was only just leaving Kenny's tongue when the entire restaurant erupted like a stabbed balloon.

The electric blue light was searing, and worse yet- it was everywhere. Kenny flew backwards, not to mention upwards, with a huge chunk of white, tiled counter embedded in his gut. In an ironic twist of fate, the heavy first-aid kit banged against the back of his head and turned his vision briefly black. Chairs, cabinets, sugary soft drinks, picture frames, plastic trays, machinery, and currency of various shapes and feels spiraled around him like the rain he hadn't seen in fifteen years.

He squeezed his eyes shut, though the force of the blast ripped at the lids. The air tasted dead and frozen around him. "Lovell!" one of the patrons screamed. Laurie? Maybe it was Laurie. Maybe it was the elf with the seafoam hair. Maybe it was Stanley. Maybe it was the pixies. Maybe it was all of them. He didn't know that. What he did know is that he flew for about twenty-five feet, and then he and the chunk of Burger World that had flown with him smacked into the side of the oxygen bubble barrier. The wall and several of the mismatched appliances passed through with a slurping noise. Stanley grabbed Kenny's wrist and wrenched him away before he could follow it.

"Steady, steady Lovell ol' boy and- Smoof, you're chubby. Agnes, Harriet- Little help here, maybe? Kid took a mighty sharp blow of magic in there, and he's not resistant to it like we are."

Their warm bodies crowded around him one by one over the following couple minutes once they had shaken themselves free from debris, So many, so many. Kenny covered his eyes with his limp, curled hands, but somebody pulled them off. Suddenly hot lips were pressed against his own.

"Wha-?" he choked out.

"Whoa, back off him, Krystal. He doesn't have lines or breathe magic. You're just smothering him."

That was a sobering thought. If he should need CPR one day, most all of the people who ever came up here didn't have lungs with which to give it to him. Kenny found himself trying to sit up among multiple arms that had enveloped him from underneath to form a sort of cot, coughing, hacking- pounding on his chest.

"He sliced the energy field like a crosshatch with that laser show of his," Laurie said, watching him. Kenny focused his bleary eyes upon her. Laurie was an eastern elf- the only one of the three subspecies types with wings, Mr. Sanderson had patiently informed him once when he was thirteen and nosy. But no matter the subspecies, all had honey bee embedded in their genetics. The buzzing she made near his ear as her wings pumped up and down was sort of familiar and comforting, in a weird way. Like an old home. She went on with, "It's going to take at least half an hour before it seals itself together again."

"That's too long," Kenny protested, spitting blood across his wrist. His hand was so cold. Something had embedded itself in his side. A knife from the silverware drawer, probably. He eased it out with an arm that didn't want to function very well. Fork. So close. "There's not… not magic around here, in the air. You'll all run out. You'll asphyxiate. You'll go dusty. You'll die."

"That's right. We're leaving. Now." Laurie turned her expectant gaze around their awkward cluster. "Where are we going to mass poof off to until the situation gets taken care of, hm?"

Silence. A few mutters. An argument. Then, uncertainly, one of the pixies raised his hand. "I might suggest we bring him to Jetmore, Kansas."

"Mr. Sanderson will need to be contacted about this development, of course," said the other.

Stanley looked accusingly at the pair. "And what business is this of Pixies?"

Mr. Saddler motioned to the drifting wreckage around them with a dull wave of his hand. "Pixies Incorporated owns this plot of space, actually. Burger World's a subsidiary."

"I don't want… Jetmore," Kenny wheezed, coughing again. "Do you know… Dimmsdale, California? That's where my sister is. It's where she lives. She's supposed to be there. Her name… her name's Elizabeth Lovell. We call her Betty sometimes, my sister."

"Shh, shh. Hold on there, Lovell. Don't talk or move just yet. We'll want to make sure you're all okay. Teleporting someone anywhere while unaware of their injuries is a serious health risk. Just let us check you over. Shh, shh."

Harriet had found the runaway first-aid kit, although she obviously didn't know what to do with it. After several minutes spent wrapping various portions of his limbs, Kenny finally managed to convince his ex-customers that while he was obviously sore, nothing felt particularly injured. The lot of them who could fly (the two gnomes were still stranded on a nearby bit of table) were all starting to sink lower and lower as the effects of the magic field waned around them. They couldn't stay here much longer. Time to get going.

"I know where we'll find your sister," said Mr. Andrews, taking his gray cell phone from an inner pocket of his coat. "Though I will of course require payment for my services, I can ping all of us-"

"Hold on," Agnes interrupted, grabbing the pixie's wrist (much to his poker-faced alarm, it seemed from the skip in his wings, though he didn't immediately throw his starpiece over his shoulder like Mr. Sanderson always seemed to do when caught off guard). She pulled him an inch nearer through the air without letting go of Kenny's foot. "How do you know Lovell's sister, of all people?"

Mr. Saddler made another of his unenthusiastic arm motions and droned, "How exactly did you think he got up here in the first place?"

"I… didn't ask. I was just grateful."

Krystal leaned forward, bending Kenny's wrist in an awkward direction that he struggled not to whimper at. "You're telling me you brought the kid up there from Earth? Alone?"

"He was an orphan. We simply put him to use. Now, would you like me to ping you all to a location where the energy field is less cluttered, or should you like to continue arguing until the field crumples inward in this part of the universe and we all drop our lines? I'm already down about a third."

So with arms linked - some more than others - they flicked off to Dimmsdale. It had been so long since Kenny teleported, and upon their arrival he fought to sit up just so he could be sick on the floor.

"Is this… the Learn-A-Torium?"

They'd rematerialized in some sort of office, with the door propped open. Flappy Bob's office was his first thought, until blearily he noticed the two desks crammed into the small room so they faced each other, each equipped with a swivel chair and a large bowl of candy. The nearest desk had a framed photo peering down at them. It was Betty and Gary, back when they were younger. He wasn't in it.

"Nice aim, Andrews," Harriet remarked sarcastically from where she'd landed on the top of one of the bookshelves.

"Don't even talk to me," one of the elves snapped back, yanking the spines of a potted cactus from her rear.

"It's been rearranged since last I came here," he protested.

"Oh, don't let those damsels get to you. You did fine."

"Using magic just takes practice," Stanley added.

"Yeah, not too bad for a pixie."

"… Wait. That's not what I meant whatsoever."

"What silly, naughty children have run away back there into our office?" asked a cheerful voice from beyond the door. A voice that Kenny recognized, and it made him melt.

She was looking good. Better than he'd expected- all youthful pink cheeks and the same fluffy pigtails he'd never seen her without. She seemed like she hadn't aged a day since the last time Mr. Sanderson had pinged her and Gary up to see him.

"New fresh meat," she laughed as she walked in. "Now, how did you sneaky-weaky kidlets manage to squeeze in here without going through the front door?"

"Maybe we left a window open," Gary said from the other side of the door. "Good morning, special guests! Welcome to Gary and Betty's Camp-"

Betty finished the phrase "Learn-A-Torium" with a brilliant smile, but Gary choked on the words and gawked at them. Pure panic was uncomfortably evident on his face and in the way his hands drooped at the wrists.

Kenny barely glanced at him. He kept his eyes focused on his sister. In another second she would scream, "No- no- Kenny, you're hurt! You can't be hurt!" the way she used to when they were little and he would scratch himself on this cardboard box or that sharp desk corner, and it would be the first time he'd heard his own name in ten years.

Instead, she set her hands on her hips and cocked her head and, beaming, said, "You don't look like you're here for us to babysit. Are you here to apply for the open position? Rules and Regulations fellows have been knocking-wocking at our door for ages, telling us we need to up our staff! What's your name, new best friend?"

Still crouched on his knees and hoping she wouldn't notice the stinking mess behind him, he smiled up at her. It had been so long, and he'd grown so much, that she didn't recognize him. "Kenny. Betty, it's Kenny."

"That's a nice name," Laurie mumbled behind him.

Betty again- "Kenny!" The hands migrated to her knees as she leaned down towards him. "Nice to meet you, Kenny. You can head right on to the super-safe Fun-Sensing Room! Down the right hand hall, fourth left by the happy front door!"

"Aha… Betty, it's me. Kenny Lovell. Your little brother." He held out his arms.

"Oh, silly-willy basketcase," she said, rapping on his skull with her knuckles. "I don't have a brother. I just have Gary-Wary, but he's a lot like a brother to me."

"Ha ha, so we're having funny jokey-wokey time a bit earlier than usual today," Gary said, clapping his hands and beaming equally. "Betty, why don't you take our little ones to the Day Care room, and I'll get our big friend here all taken care of and on his way!"

"Uh, what?" Stanley said, dropping his hold on Kenny's elbow. Laurie drew her screwdriver and the other fairies went for their wands, but just as they pulled them out, Betty scooped four of them up at once and caused all but one to drop them. Krystal clung to hers dearly with both hands, evidently realizing that she couldn't very well use magic in front of a human like this without getting her license revoked for a few decades or so. One of the gnomes still on the ground attempted to make a dive to freedom, but Betty urged him through the door and along the cheerful hallway with her foot. The pixies and the other gnome, who had all flattened themselves against the wall behind Gary, exchanged glances and pinged away as one. Kenny wondered if they were going to alert Mr. Sanderson about this, or if they'd just wanted to get somewhere, anywhere else, and feign obliviousness to the whole matter.

Gary watched them move off in silence. When they had, Kenny grabbed his arm. That made the older boy flinch very hard. "Gary. What. Happened?"

"Oh, that? With the taking the Fairies to Day Care? It's nothing. There's so much magic dust on everybody's skin that Betty thinks they're just regular, boring ol' human toddlers. It's nothing!"

"I meant with my sister in general. What happened to my sister? She didn't…" What was this hot, wet sensation on his face? Puzzled, Kenny lay his fingertip against a liquid dot that had formed near his eye. "She didn't recognize me. She didn't know who I was. She's forgotten me."

Gary's eyes flicked sideways, then came back. The smile was still on his face, but twitching at the topmost corners. Kenny braced one hand on the floor and held the other up to Gary. After several seconds of hesitation, his old friend pulled him up to his feet.

"Was it the Pixies? Jorgen? I dunno, maybe that Foop kid and some of the other Anti-Fairies? What did they do to my sister?"

Gary wrapped his arms around his head. "I-it's only temporary, I swear! Th-there was Rosebud, and Florida, and these alligators, and Pixie World, and Mr. Sanderson wouldn't help us, and sh-she got, um… There was a fight? It didn't go very well - the Head Pixie was there - and I'm fixing it! I am! We're, um, experiencing technical-wechnical difficulties at the moment. In her brainy-wainy. It'll all be over soon and there's nothing to worry about."

Kenny hmphed. "You don't have to make the 'scary' words child-friendly in front of me. I'm nineteen- I can handle the truth."

That brought Gary pause. "You're fourteen."

"Nineteen."

"How can you be nineteen?" Gary asked, all reasonable-voiced and, vaguely, there was a hint of talking-down in his words. Okay, maybe a few hints. "I'm only eighteen and a half, and I'm supposed to be four years older than you."

Kenny recoiled. "Did your head get screwed up too? I know how math works, Gary. You age a year each time the four seasons pass. Even chilling with my alien peeps, floating up in space without any trees or weather, I still follow a calendar. Am I small? Does this body look like it's fourteen?"

Gary wrinkled his nose like he'd never heard the term "peeps" before. The pair studied one another in silence. Oh my smoof, Kenny found himself thinking, he looks the same. No, he looks exactly the same.

He felt sick. He didn't know exactly why. He just did. Something about the smell of magic permeating the air. Something about Gary's disbelieving stare. Something about… everything.

Kenny's eyes roamed around the office. They settled on a calendar resting on the desk beside the pencil sharpener and a pink laptop - one of those 'tear off one page a day' types of calendars. "Gary… What year is it?"

"2002," Gary answered without hesitation. "Or did you want it in the Fairy calendar? It's the Year of the Last… the Last… Well, I can't be expected to remember what it was exactly-wactly, but you get the idea. Oh, Last Berry- that was it. It's the Spring of the Last Berry. LS, 90, YoLB19. Yes: June 13th, 2002, exactly a week before the Fairy calendar turns to summer on June 20th. What?" When he saw Kenny's expression, he tipped his head, the soft blue tassel on his graduation cap bouncing against his dark cheek. "Am I wrong?"

"I dunno. Where I'm from, it's 2008."

"Well, well! I respect and support you. Haha, I don't even know you anymore, friend, but here on Earth it's 2002. I sing the counting song with the kids. Every day. For the last seven years. I think I know how my numbers go, Kenny. You've been away from humans for so long, you've probably forgotten."

"Excuse you. Do you even know how many ethereal planes of existence there are in our universe alone? Twenty-four. Why do you think we say days are twenty-four hours long when the sun never rises or sets in Fairy World? And I wasn't even counting neighboring dimensions." Kenny slapped his chest with an injured hand. "I'm recognized as the official guardian of the crossroads between Planes 5 and 6. I manage an intergalactic cash register. I've memorized the exchange rates for over fifteen different types of currency, and keep up on the information on a month-by-month basis and adjust for inflation accordingly. If one of us knows how numbers go, I think I have you beat. Now tell me, punk, how long ago did the Pixies throw their plan to use Flappy Bob to take over your world into action?"

"Um… Um, I think maybe three or four years ago. Maybe two. Maybe one. Huh." Gary scrunched up his nose. "It might have been this year, actually."

The fingers on Kenny's left hand tightened into his sore stomach. "Gary, think about that statement. Consider it. Think hard. Use logic. It doesn't make sense. It's June. The thirty-seven-year plan involving Flappy Bob occurred at the beginning of June too. I heard about it for months after the event. The news was everywhere. It was all people talked about. The Pixies taking over Fairy World and biologically rewiring a hundred thousand magical beings to temporarily carry pixie genetics and get them shut out of all the automated systems so they could be individually monitored and have their permanent records, histories, behaviors, frequent location tendencies, past granted wishes, strengths, and weaknesses instantaneously updated in the Pixie World files was kind of a massively big deal."

"Yes! Now I remember. Oh, silly me!" Gary knocked on his own head with a chuckle. "It was six years ago. Almost exactly, too. But I guess it really doesn't matter. What were we talking about again?"

Kenny frowned. Reaching out, he grabbed his old friend's arm and shook it until Gary's wandering eyes snapped back to his. "Don't get distracted. Pay attention. Stay with me. Focus. So then what was your age? What did your official papers and stuff say? How old were you?"

A half sigh. "Well, Kenny-friend, since eighteen minus six is twelve, obviously I was twelve back then."

"But you wouldn't have been authorized to look after kids at a huge place like this at only age twelve. Gary, how long have you been here?"

Now Gary just looked frustrated. He crossed his arms. "Why are you asking me all these tricky-wicky questions? It's 2002, and I'm going to be turning nineteen in early October. Being in Burger World has made you cuckoo up top in the attic-wattic. I think someone needs a nappy-wappy."

"I don't need a nappy-wappy!"

"That's just what a grouchy fourteen-year-old who needs a nappy-wappy would say." Gary opened the door to the office and motioned for the younger… well, the older boy to follow him down the hall. All Kenny could do was put a hand to his temple and scratch the hair above his right ear.

He sighed down at his rumpled red and white clothes. "Just… just point me to your kitchens and I'll shut up. I've gotta make some hamburgers, or I'm gonna lose my mind. I'll flip out. I'll go insane."

"Kenny, I'm pretty-witty sure you already have."