When I walk into the psychology classroom on the first day of school, I catch the teacher chatting with some other students about how some of our classmates will be from Onett High. He explains that with more and more people interested in PSI after the war on Gigyas, the people at Onett High wanted their students to have an opportunity to take an advanced psychology class. And given that their school is small enough not to have one, they decided to bus the kids over to Twoson High so they can participate in our program.
I barely hear the words. Classmates from Onett means that after five years of near radio silence between us, there's a good chance I'll see…
Before I can even finish the thought, Ness strides in through the open door. His striped t-shirt, blue shorts, and red baseball cap are near identical to what he wore on our adventure. But his body, now over six feet tall with his baby fat having solidified into muscle, reminds me how much the passage of time has widened the chasm between us. How we can never go back to our whimsical little adventure fighting UFOs and dinosaurs alike with common household objects. That was a child's world that we can never return to.
Ness's gaze falls on me first, and he offers a little wave accompanied by a warm smile. Like he doesn't even see the ripped jeans, skull earrings, and blue streaks in my hair that mark me as someone for reputable boys to avoid. Like he doesn't remember how I stopped replying to his calls, letters, and emails.
Like he really hasn't changed at all.
"Hey," Ness says to the teacher. "You must be Mr. Kelly. I know we're supposed to wait until class starts to chat about this, but thanks for letting me and the others from Onett join your little party here. I'm ready to learn about how this slab of meat between my ears actually works."
"Nice to meet you, Ness," Mr. Kelly says. "Your bus made good time. The driver didn't speed, did they?"
Ness scratches the back of his head, grin turning sheepish. "Ah, I was lazy and decided to teleport over. The others should be arriving-"
A phone call in the back of class cuts Ness off. Mr. Kelly heads over to answer it, his body stiffening after a few seconds with the phone to his ear.
"Repeat that," he says. "The bus is being blocked by a Starman?"
All the chatter in the room dies in an instant. Most of the students here know at least one person who was in Onett when Giygas took control of the area near the end of our journey. I remember blinds closed, doors barred shut, and hearing stories later about frightened children and pets on edge. If this is a prank call, it's in such poor taste that not even the edgiest troublemaker students will back them up on it.
"Where is this?" Ness says.
Mr. Kelly looks up at Ness and blinks. "What?"
"You heard me. Where's the Starman?"
"Near the entrance to Twoson. But-"
"Thanks." Ness turns my way. "Let's go, Paula."
I freeze. This isn't supposed to be how it goes. I avoided Ness for nearly five years and never even gave him a reason. Why is he acting like I didn't burn every last bridge between us?
Deep breaths, Paula. Your silly drama can wait until after these people are safe.
"Right."
Even getting out that single word feels like trying to move a boulder with my breath. Ness offers a quick nod and darts out of the classroom. I run after to see him sprinting down the hall towards the front entrance. One of the teachers offers a halfhearted "hey!" which does nothing to slow him down. I remind myself that this is a crisis and shove down my anxiety at breaking the rules.
Looks like I still need Ness to hold my hand at everything, even getting into trouble.
I nearly slip as I try to match his pace, and by the time we're out in the front courtyard I'm already gasping for air.
"Like running to first base," Ness says. Turning to me, "I almost dropped and slid once I was close to the door. In case you weren't already convinced that baseball is ruining my brain."
Being winded is all that stops me from snapping at him to get a move on, and when I open my mouth he begins manifesting teleportation PSI. Wait, did he make that little comment so I could catch my breath?
"Teleport β."
The world starts to spin as my legs move on their own, running in circles behind Ness. As the scenery blurs, I recall our adventure and remember Ness's little remarks to lighten the mood whenever Poo was hard on himself for not keeping up with us or one of Jeff's inventions fell apart. The compassion his jokes and shoulder pats provided were what kept us going during our hardest moments.
It was why, even as a kid who didn't know what romance was supposed to feel like, I knew I loved him.
And that leadership is in him still.
#
When the world rematerializes around us, Ness is off before I can even get my bearings. I glance his way and see a bus turned on its side on the Twoson side of the road connecting it to Onett, and standing in front of it is a Starman.
A real, honest to god Starman. The last drop of security I didn't even know I was holding onto evaporates in an instant. For the last five years, I was convinced that at least there was no more threat to Eagleland with Giygas gone. That no matter how uncomfortable it was to feel the eyes of the public judging me, at least it was a pain that couldn't hurt anyone else.
And with my safety goes with hesitation. If the people in the bus are in danger, nothing else matters.
I dash after Ness as he hurls himself at the Starman. Ness tackles the alien to the ground, the creature's body fluid yet arthritic as its tentacle-like arms tangle with him. The Starman fires off a beam that looked like it was aimed at the bus, but with Ness knocking it to the ground the laser fires off into the sky. A blast of psychic energy sends Ness flying off the Starman's body, landing on the road several feet away.
"You."
My hands go to my temples, and a full second passes before I register the pain. Like a headache, but like my brain is chafing against the skull keeping it in. The psychic energy of the telepathic thought is so fierce that I wonder if my mind is about to explode.
"You and he are children of the stars as well. Free yourself."
A series of unhelpful questions fly through my mind. Is this how Starmen communicate? Why did the ones during our adventure never use this telepathy? What is it asking me to free myself from? I shake the questions out of my head and enter a meditative focus state that lets me use PSI. Starmen are enemies to be defeated rather than creatures to parley with, especially ones set on attacking civilians.
"Starstorm Ω."
Sure enough, I see meteors of raw psychic energy falling from the sky. Not only directed at Ness, but at the bus as well. Typically I don't have the time to react to an enemy's PSI once they start manifesting it, but with the telepathic heads up my mind and lips are already in motion to respond.
"PSI Shield Ω."
A glassy rainbow sheen covers Ness and the bus, and I can see it coating my outstretched hand as well. As the energy meteors approach, solid enough to send vibrations down my spine through the air but lighter than a feather, they steer away from us.
Right towards the Starman.
Several explosions go off, and when the dust clears nothing remains. I look around to make sure it hasn't teleported to a new attack location, and then run over to the spot where it was standing. No remains left behind. Does that mean it managed to escape? Starmen aren't supposed to use their teleportation to flee, but then again I've also never had one use telepathy to communicate. With Giygas gone, is it possible that the scattered remains of the Starman army are acting of their own accord?
And now that I think back on it, the Starstorm it used wasn't aimed at me. Like it actually viewed me as something to converse with rather than attack.
Chatter from the direction of the bus interrupts my thoughts, and I glance over to see Ness helping people out of the emergency ceiling door. A few bumps and bruises, but it doesn't look like anyone's seriously injured.
But it isn't the way he offers a hand to whoever's exiting that keeps my gaze on him. He jokes with each one of them about making sure they have all their organs in the right place or how they can convince their parents that a near death experience should allow them more TV time and fewer chores to recover. And what starts out as a tense line of people walking out of a near tragedy ends with a group of classmates laughing together about their shared experience.
Along with the bus driver, the last one out is a kid I recognize as Picky Minch, Pokey's younger brother. I… don't want to think much about Pokey after his role in kidnapping me and how he fought alongside Gigyas in the Cave of the Past, but I do remember Ness saying that Picky is the nicer of the two.
"I can't believe I got to see you beat that Starman in action," Picky says, looking up at Ness in awe. "Is this what it was like on your adventures?"
"More or less." Ness uses Lifeup PSI to heal a bruise on Picky's arm. "But if you want to be impressed by one of us, it should be Paula. She reflected that Starstorm all on her own."
That's when their gazes all go over to me, and their excited chatter is replaced by awkward silence. It has to be a weird experience for them to be saved by someone who's essentially a celebrity that ruined her image with the public. It doesn't surprise me that Ness lives under a rock, but he can't possibly have missed that development.
The silence is broken when some authorities arrive at the situation to take stock, and while the other kids chat with them Ness takes the opportunity to slink back over to me.
"Looks like we're still a good team," he says. "I distract them by charging in like a bull, and you do the actual work. Still golden after all these years."
How do I respond to that? It was almost comforting to tell myself that by cutting Ness out of my life, I was leaving this behind. If I had known he wasn't mad at me for ignoring him…
"And in a way," he says, "This is lucky for me."
"Lucky? When all of these people nearly got hurt?"
Ness wags a finger, his grin dispelling any illusion of real disapproval. "But they didn't. And now I know that you still kick ass."
The fact that I ever kicked ass in the first place is news to me. I remember being a fragile little flower he had to protect and resuscitate whenever I got knocked out. It's not a great sign that even by the end of our adventure, I went down about as quickly as a literal teddy bear. An oversized teddy bear that was larger than me, but still.
"Jeff called me last night," Ness says. "He didn't want to bother you, but I thought we should pass it along. Tony went missing a few days ago, and apparently nobody has heard from Dr. Andonuts either. I don't think the Starman showing up today was a coincidence."
"That… makes sense."
Ness nods, pushing past the hesitation in my voice. "Do you want to head up to Winters with me and investigate? If there are more Starmen running around, we could really use the firepower."
Another adventure. It's a possibility I yearned for on lonely nights, and one I never let myself linger on. Time and time again, I told myself that I can't go back to being one of the chosen four, and that I don't want to even if I could.
But now it's real. And…
"Paula?" Ness frowns. "Are you all right?"
I force myself to take a deep breath.
"I'm sorry," I say, "But I don't think I can join you."
Then for the first time since he walked into the doors of the psychology classroom, he does what I expect and frowns at me. Whatever illusion there was of us returning to what we had five years ago has vanished at last.
#
Author's Note: A week from tomorrow apparently is my 9th year anniversary for publishing fanfic. Crazy how time flies. I mostly work on my own (amateur/unpublished) original writing now but I decided to take a break and head back to the more casual fanfic environment. It's good to be back to writing EB fics given that my last fic was in… 2019. Wow.
Thanks for reading! :)