Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Another shitty night. Another shitty gig.

   Fang briefly wonders what day it is, but she puts the question out of her mind as she finishes the last notes of yet another tired old song. She doesn’t even bother looking up anymore. She knows that there are no crowds cheering her on or even giving her the time of day. At most, someone will give her a passing glance before returning to whatever it was they were doing. At worst, they’ll just ignore her like they have for the last three years. The monochromatic ptero briefly wonders what it’s like to have aspirations in life; to have actual hopes or dreams to chase down and achieve…

   Fang shuts her eyes and bitterly chides herself. Dreams are only for those that can afford to chase them, not for someone whose only thing left in life is a job. The ptero can’t help but grip the end of her bass as she thinks about her situation. ‘Play my shitty gig, get my shitty pay, give most of my shitty pay to the collectors, use what remains of that shitty pay on food, rent, and whatever shitty comforts I can get my hands on… and then do it all over again the next day, and the next, and the next until I die. Dreams are only for those that can afford to chase them, not for someone whose only thing left in life is a job...’

   God, she hates her life so much, but it’s not like she has a choice in the matter. Whatever ‘bright’ future she may have once had, she tossed that away the day she stormed out of her friends and family’s lives. She even went out of her way to buy a ‘fresh start,’ something that she now admittedly regrets. The last four years of her life had been nothing short of hell because of that hasty, stupid decision. It was probably the second biggest mistake of her life, the first being…

   ‘No,’ Fang thinks as she represses the memory of a certain bald human back into the recesses of her mind. ‘That bastard’s not worth remembering anymore…’

   “Hey, Gilda! You awake?” a purple-toned triceratops asks as she turns to face her bandmate. “You’ve been spacing out since we finished that last song!”

   Fang snaps out of her rut and turns to look her bandmate in the eye. For just a second, the ptero swears that she’s looking into the face of her old friend, another triceratops named Trish. The sense of familiarity has to do mostly with the almost identical facial structure, short curly tuft of hair, and purple eyes. Of course, that feeling of familiarity soon passes when her bandmate’s other differences become apparent. 

   For one thing, Fang’s bandmate is a lighter shade of purple than Trish was, though it was just barely noticeable. She is also somehow shorter than Trish ever was, standing almost a head and a half shorter than the ptero. Finally, unlike Trish’s trademark yellow hoodie, black jogging pants, and red boxing boots, her bandmate instead sports a fairly typical white tank top, a knee-long black skirt, and a pair of fairly beat-up converse shoes.

   With an exasperated sigh, Fang reaches for an almost empty bottle of water and takes a sip. The moment she’s done, she fixes her bandmate with a glossy, tired glare. “We’ve been playing this shitty gig for almost four hours now, Tana. ‘Course I’m going to space out.”

   The purple triceratops rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “Weren’t you the one who was all excited about playing this gig?”

   Fang fixes her bandmate with another tired glossy glare. Tana only shakes her head and turns to face the third member of the band, a reasonably bulky shark in a blue muscle shirt and white shorts sitting behind a set of drums. “What about you, Chadley? You also feeling spaced out tonight?”

   The shark gives his bandmate a wide toothy grin as he plays a quick beat on his drums. “Getting a bit tired, but my head’s still in the game!”

   Tana nods and turns back to Fang. “Well, there you go, Gilda. Looks like you’re the only one whose head isn’t in the game.”

   Fang rolls her eyes and steps forward. “Let’s just end our set and go home,” she says in a bitter tone.

   “What song you wanna close the night on?” Tana asks as she checks her guitar’s strings for the correct tension.

   Fang ponders on just what song to end the night with. She could pick any one piece that she wanted. Not that it matters much to her in the end. People will ignore it as usual, so it was almost a pointless decision. Still, something in her heart pushes her to play a specific song, one that she had written not that long ago during a particularly harrowing and lonely night. One that she knew her bandmates detested for its downright bleak lyrics…

   “Let’s end it with ‘Not Here,’” Fang says with a weary grin on her lips.

   Tana lets out a groan and shakes her head. “Really?” she asks, her brow furrowed in response. “That song’s SO nihilistic!”

   “Gotta agree with Tana on this one,” Chadley chimes in, all the while running a hand through his short black hair. “Like, I know you wrote it and stuff, but does it have to be so bleak?”

   “Not like anyone’s even listening,” Fang points to the virtually deserted pizzeria. “Besides,” the ptero continues, an uncharacteristic fire burning in her eyes. “I want to feel something other than apathy tonight.”

   Tana shakes her head and readies her guitar. “Okay, fine. But for the next gig, I’m choosing what our last song is. Got it?”

   Fang doesn’t even bother acknowledging her bandmate as she begins strumming her bass. Seconds later, she’s joined by Tana and Chadley, the duo jumping in to fill a melancholic, almost depressing tune whose main instrumental sound comes from Fang’s bass.

   The intro melody lasts about ten seconds before Fang steps forward and takes her place in front of the microphone. With a deep breath, she closes her eyes and recites the song’s lyrics.

   Lyrics that arise from the very depths of her soul:

I am a question to the world,

Not an answer to be heard

Or a moment that's held in your arms.

And what do you think you'd ever say?

I won't listen anyway…

You don't know me,

And I’ll never be what you want me to be.

   The song picks up in tempo, though the melody remains as bleak as ever.

And what do you think you'd understand?

I’m neither boy or a woman

You can take me and toss me away

And how can you learn what's never shown?

Yeah, you stand here on your own.

They don't know me 'cause I'm not here.

   Chadley beats on his drums as Tana begins strumming her guitar energetically. It almost starts to overpower Fang’s bass. Ultimately, though, the depressing nature of the ptero’s bass strumming wins out in the end, resulting in a tone that’s as unmelodious as it is downright depressing.

And I want a moment to be real,

Wanna touch things I don't feel,

Wanna hold on and feel I belong.

And how can the world want me to change?

They’re the ones that stay the same.

They don’t know me,

'Cause I’m not here.

   The song again slows as Fang’s bass takes point once again, much to Tana’s visible chagrin.

And you see the things they never see

All you wanted, I can’t be

Now you know me, are you afraid?

And I wanna tell you who I am

Can you help me be someone?

They have broken me

Because I don’t know who I am

   As the second chorus kicks in, Tana steps forward again, once again trying to take point for herself. However, Fang’s bass remains overpowering, which only adds more to the unmelodious nature of the song.

And I want a moment to be real,

Wanna touch things I don't feel,

Wanna hold on and feel I belong.

And how can the world want me to change?

They’re the ones that stay the same.

They can’t see me,

Because I’m not here

They can tell me who to be

‘Cause I’m exactly what they see

Yeah, the world is still sleepin’,

While I keep on dreamin’

And their words are just whispers

And lies that are all too real!

   The final chorus kicks off. Tana doesn’t even bother overpowering or trying to show off anymore. Much like with Fang, she’s come to accept that the song’s main driving tune is a mournful disharmony that speaks of her bandmate’s broken soul...

And I want a moment to be real,

Wanna touch things I don't feel,

Wanna hold on and feel I belong.

And how can they say I never change?

They’re the ones that stay the same.

I’m still no one,

‘Cause I’m not here.

I’m not the one

I’m not here

I’m not here

I’m not here... 

When the final note plays, the venue somehow feels quieter than before. No one is clapping, and what few eyes and ears are present seem to be full of confusion, even displeasure. At least two of the patrons get up and walk out of the pizzeria in visible disgust, and the last remaining patron, a human wearing a black turtleneck and beanie, looks on with what almost could pass off for pity.

   Tana removes the guitar strap from her neck and turns to look back at Fang. “Gilda…” she starts, her voice full of vitriol and face just barely holding back rage. “We’re NEVER playing that song again!”

   Chadley, despite his usual sunny demeanor, stands up from his drum set and walks up to Fang, putting a hand on her shoulder. He shakes his head, wordless agreeing with Tana before walking off the small stage. The purple triceratops grabs her guitar case and stuffs her instrument in without a word, following after him. Unlike Chadley however, she stops and turns to face her bandmate with a sour expression on her face.

   “Despite that last song being… as soul-crushing as ever… good show... I guess.”

   Fang lets out a snort through her nose. She hates it when Tana gets all patronizing. ‘Not like she cares. She doesn’t even do this for a living…’ she bitterly thinks as she looks at the barely fifteen-year-old high schooler. She joined her band less out of a desire to and more because it was a convenient mutual arrangement for both of them. Still, Tana and Chadley are about the only people Fang interacts with on the regular. They’re the closest things she had to friends nowadays, even though she knows almost nothing about their lives besides that they choose to torture themselves with her presence. ‘Not that I even deserve friends in the first place…’ she somberly tells herself before letting out a sigh.

   “Hey, Gilda. when are you going to play the guitar instead of bass?” Tana suddenly asks Fang, forcing her away from her current train of thoughts.

   Fang thinks back to when she had last picked up a guitar and played it more than decently. Just that had catapulted her playing from ‘dreadful’ to ‘almost decent.’ Yet as the warm memory of playing the instrument and letting herself soar with the music filled her soul, it also brought with it memories of the person who had convinced her to switch over to a guitar…

   Instantly Fang shook her head and shot a glare at her bandmate. “I’ll play whatever the hell I want, got it?”

   Tana sighs and shrugs before turning around, walking away without so much as another word. Fang notices how Tana picks up her pace to meet up with Chadley, who was waiting for her by the pizzeria entrance. Soon as the two lock eyes, they begin to chat among themselves like they were high-school buddies. Given their respective age ranges, fifteen for Tana and seventeen for Chadley, they probably were.

   At first, Fang let out a low hiss, almost like a vampire seeing the crucifix of Raptor Jesus. The hiss then turns into a deep and gloomy sigh. The ptero spares one more look at her bandmates, a pang of regret erupting in the spot where her heart once lay. She should be nicer to the only people on this planet who still put up with her bullshit. Yet, she can’t bring herself to feel anything other than bitterness. That’s how it’s been for four years, and that’s how it feels like it will be for the rest of her life. 

   ‘What a pathetic existence,’ Fang thinks as she greedily gulps down the last of her water, not even caring that the liquid smears her black lipstick. She thinks back to how she had once told someone dear to her that people were like weeds, only existing to get stepped on while she moved ahead. Despite their attempts at being cordial, her bandmates are no different. She only needs to reciprocate their comradeship enough to keep up a working relationship. They are her meal ticket, and the last thing she wants is to alienate yet more people in her life. ‘Even if that's my best fucking quality,’ the ptero somberly thought. 

   With a sneer of disgust, Fang kicks the amp next to her. There’s no point sparing another thought on self-pity. Pity is not going to clear up her debt. Pity is not going to give her enough to live on beyond a shitty one-room apartment that doesn't even have air conditioning. Pity isn’t going to magically undo all of her stupid life’s mistakes, and pity certainly won’t help her find more gigs. Instead of wasting precious energy on idle and worthless thoughts, she packs away the last of her equipment. As she does, she notices someone standing near the stage in the dimly lit pizzeria, staring at her like she is a sight for sore eyes. A human of all things. The same human that had stared intently at her like she was the most beautiful of muses.

   Fang scoffs at the notion of anyone—let alone a human—finding her attractive. Maybe the ape is high or drunk off his ass. Maybe he has a fetish for dinos. Maybe the guy is schizo and off his rocker. Whatever the case, he's just another weirdo out to make her night that extra bit more miserable. As if shit couldn't be more miserable already.

   Fang ignores the human to the best of her abilities while she finishes locking up her bass in its case. Unlike everything else she owns, her bass is the one thing she took care of like an offspring. More than just a keepsake from a better time, it’s her only worldly possession that held real value. Sure, there are also negative memories tied to it, but they serve as reminders of what not to do in the future. A glance at the nicks and scratches on the instrument make the ptero realize the oppressive flow of time. To think that it has been almost four years since she had last spoken to her family. Four years since she had last seen hide or hair of her former friends. Friends she had so callously tossed away in a fit of rage and paranoia, all thanks to a certain person she had once believed loved her for who she was, only to be proven dead wrong when he revealed that it was all the plan of some machiavellian bitch named Naomi. As she thinks of that bitch Naomi, she can’t help but wonder what any of her old friends are doing now. ‘Certainly something a hell of a lot better than what I’m doing,’ Fang thinks with the kind of exhaustion not even a hundred years of sleep could ever hope to fix. Yet as she thinks back on Trish, Reed, Rosa, and Stella, she feels unworthy of holding them in her memory. How could she, when she had so readily cut them off from her life in the first place?

   There it is again, that pang in Fang's chest. That damnable pang that shouldn't exist—couldn't exist—in her hollowed state. Yet there it is, nagging at her very soul. It screams and kicks like a child throwing the world's worst tantrum.

   Gritting her teeth and taking a deep breath, Fang gathers the last of her pitiful belongings. As she does, she forces her body and mind to go numb. What she wouldn't give right now for a smoke of whatever Reed used to fill his lungs with back in High School. She looks in the direction of the pizzeria’s pitifully stocked bar, ‘At least drinks are on the house tonight…’

   Part of Fang’s pay for playing at Pizza Time is access to alcohol, something her younger bandmates couldn’t enjoy yet. Legally anyway. She knew the two drank on the side. She isn't going to stop them, though. It isn’t like she’s their guardian. ‘Whatever the fuck Tana and Chadley do on their time’s their business, not mine,’ Fang thinks as she settles on drinking the stiffest, most arduous liquor she can get her hands on tonight. She deserves a cold one after playing for two hours.

   A small part of Fang, probably all that remains of her former self, reminds her how booze had set her down the path she now walked. The ptero quickly shuts that voice up. It’s too late to be sorry about what she did to wind up in her situation.

   Four years too late to change anything…

   A voice suddenly pulls Fang from her thoughts. The voice belongs to the human who, up to that point, has been ogling her like he’s a ravenous horndog. Fang turns to face him, realizing that he’s the only person left in the entire restaurant. Even the waiters and the bartender appear to have cleared up. Is it really that late at night, or had they fled after that last song?

   Fed up with the usual bullshit she puts up with daily, Fang let out a low, almost feral growl in response to the human’s words. “Fuck off!” she hisses dryly, without so much as sparing a single glance at the human's eyes. She doesn’t even wait for a reply from the evolved ape as she grabs her belongings and makes her way off the stage.

   “L-Lucy…?” the human calls out just loud enough for Fang's ears to catch.

   Hearing that old, almost forgotten name, Fang feels a bright hot rage bubble in her. It threatens to consume her as she whips around with eyes like daggers at the heckling human. ‘How did he know my old name?’ She asks herself as she seizes the human before her with a vicious glare. ‘Who the fuck is he?’

   As if to answer Fang’s silent question, the human steps forward, out of the dim light of the Pizzeria and into the brighter lights of the stage. 

   The human’s plain black turtleneck and navy blue pants almost make him look like a thug, yet at the same time, he doesn’t look like a hobo or junkie. For one thing, she can see some well-defined musculature even with the slightly loose clothing he’s wearing. He also carries himself with a presence that is pretty hard to pin down properly. The only thing the jaded ptero can tell for sure is that he has just about zero fucks left to give.  What was more, unlike other humans, the one now staring her in the eye had little in the way of remarkable facial features. If she were looking at him from a distance, she could even swear he has no discernable face to speak of.

   It hits Fang like a freight train going at a hundred miles an hour. She drops her bass case and grimaces, the rage bubbling through her veins, making her whole body feel at least ten degrees hotter. But just as quickly as the anger rises, it not only cools but practically freezes over. Something about the man before her feels familiar, like some long-forgotten memory calling out to her… one she barely wanted to acknowledge despite it screaming loudly and desperately at her. Whatever it is that wants to claw its way back to the forefront of her mind is having a hard time getting past the usual maelstrom of recollections and regrets. 

   Another glare at the human has something in her brain click, and she suddenly remembers why the face brought out so much anguish and confusion in her. Those barely visible eyes of his, that blank yet unique expression—one she had fought so hard for four years to kill all recollections of to no real avail… 

   The fire inside fang's soul turns to acid.

   ‘You... YOU!’ Fang venomously thinks. As more and more memories she had believed long-buried rise up to the surface, she grits her teeth and clenches her hands into fists. The force on her jaw is so tight that it makes her teeth ache and her gums quake. A torrent of emotions begin raging within the ptero’s soul—none good, and none that she knows how to handle without violence. 

   “What do YOU want!?” the dino asks so chillingly that her words could freeze the very sun.

   The human wordlessly steps closer to Fang. As he does, the ptero notes how he is now very clearly not the human she remembers from four years ago, yet still, the same man that she had once believed had loved her for who she was…

   “Anon,” Fang seethes with every bit of hatred that she can put into her voice.

   Fang’s already clenched hands tighten further. Her claws dig into the flesh of her palms, drawing blood as her knuckles turn white. Whatever pain she might feel is utterly overwritten by the inferno raging uncontrollably in her soul. At that moment, she wants nothing more than to rip Anon's chest open with her bare hands, showing him his still beating black heart as the life slowly leaves his eyes.

   The ptero takes one step towards the human. Without wasting a single second, she raises an arm and snaps her shoulder back. With all the strength she can muster, she throws a punch directed right at Anon’s face. A blow the human does nothing to avoid, parry, or even counter.

   As the sound of a scaled fist meeting soft human flesh echoes through the abandoned restaurant, Fang can’t help but feel some level of catharsis. It’s several years too late and far too little to make any real difference, but as she feels her first bury itself into Anon's cheek, she feels a certain level of rapture. 

   Fang can’t help but smile ever so faintly...

   To Fang's surprise, Anon takes her punch without so much as flinching. At first, the ptero wonders if she’s that weak, but as Anon's cheek turns a dark shade of red and rises a few millimeters in inflammation, her doubts evaporate. If anything, it’s Anon who has gotten physically more robust.

   Anon turns his head to once again gaze right into Fang’s eyes. Fang puts away her surprise at Anon's resistance—or numbness—to once again glare daggers at him. However, as Fang's eyes meet Anon’s, she feels overwhelmed by the deep sorrow she finds in them.

   The ptero’s previous hostility deflates as the sadness in Anon’s eyes overwhelms her. Little by little, the fire and acid in her soul vanishes as a realization hits; that the human now staring deep into her soul is just as damaged—if not more so—than she is. The sorrow she can see in his gaze is but a fraction of the emotion she could feel in his soul. There is so much more just hidden away under the surface... 

   “Lucy…” Anon whispers as he takes another step forward towards the girl he had once loved, yet the one girl he had ruined everything with because of his selfishness and apathy. “What happened to you?”

   Despite wanting nothing more than to kick Anon in the testicles and run away to hide from the feelings in her heart, Fang can only shake her head in denial. Goosebumps course through her body as for just one moment, she lets herself remember what Anon had been to her... and what she had been to him. How they had both ended it so unceremoniously, almost as if all those hours spent together, all those laughs shared, all that happiness that bounced between the two of them had meant nothing.

   Fang steps even closer to Anon without another word and wraps her arms around the human’s chest. Anon returned the embrace, doing his best to cradle the woman he had loved and so carelessly hurt four years ago.

   As the night outside grew colder, Anon and Fang—broken and beaten by a cruel and uncaring world—found a small semblance of comfort in each other's embrace. It wasn't enough to heal the wounds or to undo all the mistakes the two had committed in their lives up to that point, but for just one second, it didn't matter...

   Just for one second, it was a good place for the two of them to start again…

-Two Weeks Earlier-

“People never change...”

   Those are the words Anon repeats to himself as he walks down the streets of Skin Row. The box of pizza in his hand trembles as his mind and his soul duel over what emotion he should be feeling at that moment.

   While brain, heart, and soul duel over what the human should be feeling, another part of Anon’s mind races as a hundred different thoughts acost him, making his journey down to the smoke shop all the more arduous. As he nears the old and worn-down shop, all his thoughts begin merging into a single focus. Instead of easing his mental anguish, the cacophony of emotions and memories only serves to give him a splitting headache. 

   Anon turns away from the shop and finds the nearest bench to sit on. As he lets his body plop down on the hard concrete seat, he focuses his mind on a single stream of consciousness, one that hopefully wouldn’t leave him feeling like a shoe inside a tumbling drying machine. It works for the most part, save for one rogue idea that refuses to go back into the deepest recesses of his mind no matter how hard he tries to push it down.

   Anon puts a hand on his face and lets out a groan of physical and emotional pain. “Why of all people on this fucking planet did I have to run into her again?”

   Anon is dragged back unwillingly to just a few minutes earlier…

***

Anon set eyes on the slightly worn-out sign in the window. “Pizza Time,” the human says out loud, not sure what to make of the name. 

   From the looks of the eatery, it appears to be one of those family entertainment restaurants along the lines of Freedy Fazzbear’s Pizza or Bon’s Burgers he had always wanted to go to when he was younger. He never got the chance, because his parents either didn’t have the time, the money, or both. Just from the worn sun-bleached lettering and the unkempt, barely cleaned glass, it’s clear the restaurant has seen better days. The fact that it’s smack-dab in the middle of Skin Row probably doesn’t help any. The neighborhood had perhaps been a far better place to live decades ago when the restaurant was first built before the streets had been overrun by the gangs and all the impoverished people.

   Anon didn’t think much of the restaurant before his eyes. In truth, he only wants some cigarettes. Preferably the same brand his old high school buddy Reed used to inhale like a chimney all the times they had hung out for guy’s nights. Yet as he takes no more than three steps forward his stomach growls, followed by an unignorable pang of hunger racking at his stomach.

   With a sigh of defeat, Anon retraced his steps and stepped into the eatery, a tiny bell chiming overhead. Pizza isn’t precisely within his budget, but it isn’t like he plans to be spending any more of his pension later this week anyway. He might as well live a little while he has some cash to burn. 

   The human looks around the restaurant’s interior. Sure enough, it’s far more spacious inside than the outside had led him to believe. Aside from at least three dozen old round tables dotted across the main dining area, there are a few booths meant for more private gatherings, and even a pair of large rectangular tables meant for catering events, such as birthday parties. The walls and ceilings are painted a faded blue-ish purple, and the floor is lined with hundreds of black ceramic tiles that look as worn and scratched as it’s expected of such an old restaurant. As far as the restaurant’s lighting went, several hundred round wire lanterns hang overhead, each holding an orange LED bulb that shines just brightly enough to keep the restaurant from becoming a tripping hazard. The overall color scheme gives the pizzeria a dark quality that even the lighting couldn’t counteract. It reminds the young sailor about his time aboard the CVN-295 Judgment, the aircraft carrier he was assigned to not long after joining the navy. The only other thing worth noting is the sound of the pizzeria’s arcade, which as expected, blasts out a loud racket of varying sounds that honestly make Anon wonder how anyone can listen to such a din without going mad within only a few minutes.

   Aside from another human munching on a burger at a table and a couple of teen dinos kissing in one of the booths, the restaurant is pretty devoid of customers. Even the small bar which caters to parents while their children waste hard-earned money on prize tickets and short-lasting merriment lies utterly empty, the bartender sitting down to one side and reading a book while looking bored out of her mind.

   At first, Anon has the urge to ask the dino tending the bar for a drink, but after considering his monetary situation and the early hours, he settles on only getting food. Scanning for a secluded table, Anon makes his way somewhere he concludes is just far enough away from ‘the crowd’ while still being visible to the waiters. The last thing he wants that day is to interact with anyone he doesn’t need to. He finds a table with a broken chair and a lopsided base. 

   Not one minute passes before a waitress comes around to take his order. Flipping through the menu, Anon settles on getting a to-go order of a classic medium pizza with cheese and ham. He considers being bold and adding something extra like pineapples for a second, but he ultimately decided against it. Not that he hates pineapples on pizza—far from it, he loves them unconditionally—it was just two dollars extra for the added topping, which meant two dollars less for his cigarette budget, and that would not fly.  

   As Anon hands the menu back to the waitress and refuses a drink of any kind, something other than the racket of the arcade machines and gotcha contraptions catches his attention. It’s music. And not just any type of music, but live music… live music that sounds so very familiar to him... 

   The human follows the tunes with his ears, the sounds eventually leading his eyes to a tiny stage tucked near the restaurant’s back. It’s just barely in sight of the patrons, almost as if the point is for a few looks to fall on it as possible. There, on top of a platform just large enough for five people, three musicians stand playing in the beam of a single headlight.

   Usually Anon wouldn’t care about some nobody band playing such a tiny gig, but his attention falls on the trio of performers for reasons beyond his current comprehension. In particular their ‘lead,’ a monochromatic ptero who still has her back turned away from the ‘crowd,’ even though said crowd, consists of four people at most, none of which are even paying any attention to the music.

   Glancing behind the monochromatic dino, Anon’s eyes then fall on the band’s drummer, who much to his shock isn’t even a dinosaur, but a land shark instead. A megalodon, if he wanted to be more accurate. He was dressed like a stereotypical surfer, with a blue muscle shirt and a white pair of shorts, some long and slick black hair, and the kind of muscles you only get from daily trips to the public weightlifting areas of the beachside. The ‘dude’ seems to be into playing his drums; his eyes shut as he let the music’s rhythm serve as his guide. In a way, it reminds Anon of his old buddy Reed, who also had the same habit. Whether or not the shark was also a heavy drug user—or a drug user at all—is still up for debate.

      Standing almost directly in front of the land shark is a small light purple-tone triceratops playing a very competent guitar solo. From her strumming speed and penchant for showy movement, she clearly is the band’s lead guitarist. Her outfit is perhaps the most ‘basic’ out of her comrades, as she sported a plain white tank top and a black skirt. In fact, she looked squeaky clean by comparison and is far younger in appearance than either the ptero or land shark, almost like she’s still attending middle school. Her size and general body shape remind Anon of another triceratops he used to know by the name of Trish. Unlike his memories of Reed, which are on the more pleasant side, his recollections of Trish only brought about discomfort. As he studies the triceratops girl more closely, he finds other comparisons to Trish, like short curly hair and an abnormally ample bosom-to-body ratio. If he didn’t know any better, he would think he’s witnessing a younger version of that diminutive terror play before his eyes.

   Anon scoffs at the sour reminder of former friend turned enemy. He still hasn’t forgiven that purple bundle of joy for doxing him, which ensured that his last months of high school were as socially agonizing as possible. He half wonders what the tiny terror is up to these days, but he drops the question just as quickly as it had popped into his head. It doesn’t matter. It’s been about four years, so she has either gone to college or found herself some sucker to settle down with and terrorize.

   Anon’s eyes fall on the last member of the band, the ptero girl with her back turned to the world. Her coloration—or rather, her lack of it—reminds him of someone he used to know, but with her not bothering to face the world, he can’t tell who. Not that he cares anyway. Her bass strumming is pretty harsh and discordant, even if technically melodic and well constructed. Without seeing the dino’s face, he would never know more of the ptero girl apart from her backside. In that regard though, she at least has it going on.

   Anon tears his eyes away from the pitiful band and brings out his phone. He turns on the device and scrolls through a few gun nut forums. For a second he gets the urge to do a bit of shitposting, for old time’s sake. Ultimately he decides against it. Once again, he can’t bring himself to care enough to get mad at some random person over the internet. 

   As Anon considers putting on some earphones he had brought with him from home, the band’s bassist begins to sing. Her voice is dulcet for being in a shitty three-person band. More than the surprise of hearing a decent voice coming from what otherwise looks like a garage band, it’s the voice itself that made the human’s entire world stop at that second.

   No matter how hard the young sailor had tried to suppress it, no matter how many times he had forced his mind to erase the memory of it, he can never forget that voice…

   Anon again gazed up at the band. As he did, the bassist, at last, turns to face what few patrons are in the restaurant. As his eyes focus on the lead singer he sees her, standing there, singing a song he had thought all but repressed in the most bottomless darkest pits of his memory… “...Fang…” he found himself whispering to no one in particular.

   The human barely recognizes his ex. A part of him even tries to deny that the pterosaur on stage is even her. Yet the more he observes, the more his rational mind clarifies it. Yes, the woman standing on that platform singing a song that he knew by heart was in fact, Fang.

   ‘The years haven’t been kind to you,’ is the first thing that crosses Anon’s mind as he studies his ex’s physical appearance. A shaved head, gaudy and painful-looking tattoos down both arms, and thick black eyeliner that makes her once bright and lively citrine eyes look dull and lifeless. Black-painted lips twist into a scowl of desolation—the kind that only having one’s soul crushed beyond any hope of repair can earn—he can hardly believe that the woman before him is the same girl he had dated four years earlier. It would be easier to say that she’s some twisted doppelganger or a parody of the girl he remembers, but the more he looks, the more he realizes that his eyes aren’t playing some kind of trick on him.

   Anon almost doesn’t notice the waitress handing him the order he put minutes ago. After giving the waitress his money for the food, he stands and dares to walk a bit closer to the stage. As he does, a part of him hopes that Fang will look his way, that she would recognize him and realize that he was the only one that cared enough to watch and listen to her and her band playing their music. But as she scans the restaurant robotically, her eyes pass by the human, their dull gaze ignorant to the fact that someone is looking back who had once cared for her.

   Anon turned away from the stage with a sigh. ‘It’s actually sobering,’ he muses as he makes his way out of the restaurant. A part of him had hoped it would not be so, but the more he rationalizes it the more it makes sense to him. It was fun to pretend that it might go somewhere. That Fang would recognize him, drop her instrument, race towards his arms, and put all the pain and anguish from the last four years behind her. That they would forgive each other for all those hurtful shitty things they said to each other that horrible night and start over from square one.

   Anon stops in his tracks and spares one last glance back. ‘She’s right there,’ he conceives with all the bravery his foolish heart can muster. ‘I can take everything back. Everything that went to shit because of that fight. If I try talking to her, she might forgive me. Things could go back to the way they were, back before…’

   Anon’s mind once again goes blank. Another memory supplants his thoughts as the voice of the woman now singing shouts those painful words:

    “Trish was right about you!”

   Anon lets out a long sigh, turns his eyes to the floor, and walks out of the restaurant altogether; his mind now set only on finding cigarettes. With every step away from the eatery, his mind further cements that he is doing the right thing. Though he tries to erase the last few minutes from his mind, he knows the memory will stay with him for the rest of his life…

***

Anon lights his last cigarette, takes a long and deep drag of smoke that would even impress Reed, and stands up from the bench. The sudden intake of nicotine helps dull his headache as he forces some semblance of order on his thoughts. With a still-shaky hand, the human reaches into his pizza box and takes out a slice of the still-warm pie.

   As Anon takes a sizable bite of the cardboard-tasting pizza he had spent about ten dollars on, he tries to force himself to feel some semblance of joy. ‘I have not one fucking care in the world now,’ he muses, albeit half-heartedly. ‘No school to stress about, no navy to return to short of a war, and most importantly, not one person to tell me how to use my shitty pension!’ He takes another drag of his cigarette and forces a smile on his lips, the muscles on his cheek screaming in soreness from years of atrophy. He is right on the money. He has no care left in the world except himself. He’s free from all accountability.

   It’s reassuring, in a twisted, awful sort of way, but that was how Anon likes it. He isn’t sure if it’s because he has grown numb or if he has just given up trying to feel, but the apathetic cynicism is a welcome escape from the hell that has been his life up to this point.

   Or at least that’s what he tells himself…

   As Anon continues his way to the smoke shop, there is something that nags at his soul. A feeling that he can’t get rid of no matter how hard he tries. Before he can reach the store, the feeling evolves into a pain in his heart that makes every step absolute agony. It isn’t quite physical distress, but to him it sure as hell feels like it. The tendrils of despondency spread throughout his being, running deep into his presence, wholly metaphysical and nearly impossible to describe without some kind of degree in psychology.

   The human steps into the shop and focuses on his current goal. As he does, his discomfort continues to evolve. Now, even his eyes feel heavy and laden with moisture seeking an escape. As he picks up some weed-based cigarettes from the shop, his discomfort further evolves, eventually feeling like some kind of thorn got stuck to his being, one he can’t reach and pluck out. Anon storms towards the liquor aisle in a desperate bid and scans for the highest proof alcohol he can find. Only seconds later, he spots a bottle of imported vodka from one of the former Soviet block countries. The label says that it is 96% proof, which means a good night and a wild party to most.

   ‘This ought to get me nice and wasted,’ Anon thinks as he puts his two purchases together. Sure, the drink is far more expensive than anything he would normally get, but if he can’t force the pain in his soul down through willpower, then he’s going to drown it out with booze strong enough to be vehicle fuel.

   Anon pays with his government-issued debit card and leaves the store as fast as his legs can carry him. Without any other delay, he begins his trek back to Skin Row. On the way, he again passes by the same restaurant where he accidentally ran into Fang. Though he tells himself not to, some subconscious instinct forces his head to once more look towards the back of the pizzeria. Though the glass is grimy and covered in scratches and etched graffiti, he can just barely make out the still playing figure of his ex-girlfriend, still strumming away at her base and silently singing despite her eyes looking sullen and dead.

   Anon forces his head to turn away as he sets his pace to a brisk power walk. Though his mind is still abuzz with thoughts and ideas that he can’t—or rather doesn’t—want to act on, the thought of returning to his apartment alone with a pizza, smokes, and booze to watch a movie and enjoy his life undisturbed—with no judgment for his appearance or the place he lived in—fills him with relief… even if that relief feels hollow and artificial.

   ‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted,’ Anon reasons to himself, even though a part of him—he isn’t sure if it’s his mind or his soul—screams in refutation. “It’s all I’ve ever needed…” he adds, this time in a mumble only he can hear.

   As Pizza Time gets farther and farther away from his view, Anon raises his one free hand and half-heartedly waves at it. “Goodbye, Fang. It was nice seeing you again... I suppose… because I haven’t changed,” he says loud and clear, the words in his mouth overpowering the taste of cigarette with what feels like bile.

    “...Because people never change…”

Chapter Text

“Hey... lucy…?” Anon asked, his voice smooth and devoid of any harsh apathy borne of years of hardships and regrets. His eyes are set to the sky first, his sight set on the light of the stars above, their eons-old radiance ever-present and luminous.

   Next to the human stood a pterodactyl of beautiful light cyan skin and plumage and shining silver hair. Her presence, unlike his, was warm and reassuring even in the cold night air. So long as she stood next to him, everything would be right with the world. Lucy's brilliance would dispel any and all fears he may have carried in his heart.

   “I got a contract here with a studio here. I’m thinking…” Anon said, hesitating for a second. In that momentary pause, he took a fast yet deep breath of air to steel himself before continuing his words. “...Since I’ll be here for a good while, how about we get some dinner sometime. Y’know… together.”

   Anon, soon as he finishes speaking his words, turns his gaze towards Lucy. Lucy, for her part, has her eyes set to the night sky as well, but as the seconds pass by, a dusting of pink crosses her cheeks.

   “I would… I totally would, Anon…” Lucy answers as she brings her eyes to meet mine. “But I’ve got work like you wouldn’t believe!” she adds, all the while letting a slight sight escape her lips.

   Anon feels slightly deflated by Lucy’s response. “O-oh. Well, if it’s too much—” 

   “HOWEVER!” Lucy interjects, cutting off whatever words Anon was about to say. She then places her hands over Anon’s, all the while her eyes remain fixed on those of the human. “I’ve got time in the morning. So how about breakfast?”

   Anon’s lips rise. “Is that a date then?” he asks cheekily.

   Lucy gives Anon a mischievous little simper. “Oh, I don’t know. Is it?”

   “It is then,” Anon reaffirms to Lucy.

   Lucy lets out a giggle, her cheeks growing ever pinker in the process. “You’re such a dweeb,” Lucy said as she shuffled closer towards Anon until their legs pressed together.

   “I know,” Anon replied to Lucy as he moved his chest ever closer towards Lucy. Lucy, in turn, leaned her head on Anon’s shoulder, who in turn wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

   ‘Feels like old times,’ Anon thought as he allowed Lucy’s warmth to fill his being. ‘Like no time’s passed since I left Volcadera Bluffs.’ He looked up to the sky, his gaze falling on the bright almost full moon. ‘I guess I never did say goodbye to Volcano High,’ he mused to himself.

   A short snort and a tiny giggle left Lucy’s nose and lips as she turned her eyes back on Anon. “Thanks, now my face is forever stuck in a cringe.”

   Anon rolled his eyes. “ Way to ruin the moment,” he said, the grin on his lips only growing wider by the second.

   “You ruined it first with you mumbling,” Fang retorted with a matter-of-factly look.

   “Fix it then,” Anon riposted.

   “You ruined it. You fix it,” Fang countered.

   Anon shifted Lucy in his arms and brought her up within inches of his face. “Fine. I will,” he said, his hand cupping Lucy’s cheek. Lucy, in turn, softly smiled and leaned in for a well-earned kiss…

***

Anon jolted awake. 

   With a groan of pain and a whimper of sorrow, Anon forced himself upright. His body refused to move for a full ten seconds before he forced himself to sit. As he did, he felt wrapped in something he hadn’t felt in what to him felt like decades: warmth and comfort. 

   Anon breathed through his mouth. His mind struggled both to process what he had seen in his dream all the while fighting to preserve any memory of it before the cold uncaring oblivion of wakefulness claimed them. 

   Anon brought a hand up to his face, wiping away sweat from his face. Except that what he was wiping from his eyes and cheek wasn’t sweat...

   For almost a week now, Anon had been experiencing the dreams. They always started the same, with him relieving the most important days of his high school life. The dreams would then go into wildly different directions than what his life had taken. Regardless of how they played out, all lead him to some happily ever after with Fang and Trish and Naser and Reed and Rosa and Stella. 

   For almost a week, Anon had seen events that were far too good for an apathetic caveman like himself. Each dream resulted in happiness and joy for all his old friends… as well as for himself... 

   ...Even though he knew deep down that he didn’t deserve happiness of any kind...

   Anon picked himself up from bed and raced for his fridge. Tossing out old food containers and empty bottles of juice, he found what he had been searching for. Another bottle of high-proof vodka, this one 120. Without equivocation, he chugged down what might as well have been rubbing alcohol. As the liquid traveled down his esophagus, he let out a hiss as the liquid burned his throat. He then walked to his desk and pulled out a blunt of weed from a homemade cigarette pack. Looking down, Anon realized that it was his last roll. With some hesitation—and a trembling hand—he lit a match and set the cigarette alight. A second later, he almost inhaled the whole blunt of weed, holding the smoke in his lungs for almost half a minute before exhaling. Within ten seconds, his mind became abuzz once again with memories of the various dreams he had experienced so far. Memories in which he saw his friends joyfully living lives they deserved. Memories in which he saw Lu—Fang, working a job she loved, following her dreams without compromise, and loving him as deeply as any woman can love a man…

   Anon once again brought his head to his hands, sweat once more pouring from his face and staining his hands, body, and floor. He tried to wipe the sweat away, but the more he rubbed his face, the harder the sweat flowed. 

   Anon did his best to try and calm down, but as the minutes ticked by, he began to feel a strange sensation on his being. Little by little, his apartment began feeling far too small and far too hot for him to bear. The memories also returned in full force, sending his mind reeling with confusion and chaos. The memories of a happier home he would never have. Clean walls devoid of cracks and blemishes. Portraits of a happy family without a worry in the world...

   Anon stood on his feet and began glancing around his apartment in a panic. The very walls judged him for his failures. They jeered and laughed and reminded him how much of a real fuck-up he was....

   Anon had to get away; find a place that was wide open, one where he could escape. One where the walls couldn't find him in.

   Wasting no time, Anon snuffed his blunt and slipped on his usual drab attire. After sliding on his black turtleneck and putting on the black and worn wool beanie he brought back from his time as a seaman, Anon headed for his apartment's exit. 

   Right before he exited his home, Anon took another look at his bottle of vodka near his fridge. With a grimace, he snatches the bottle. Hesitating for a second, he downed another large swig. After yet another hard grunt, he placed the bottle in one of his pant's pockets and stepped into the hallway.

     Already feeling lightheaded, Anon struggled a bit with locking his door. After some fumbling with his keys, he successfully worked the door’s mechanism. 

   With that small victory under his belt, Anon took off like a man on a mission. His pace was on the normal side for an ex-navy member. It was practically a jog when compared to the average person out on the street though. Within a matter of only ten minutes, he was more than halfway done with walking a mile.

   As Anon aimlessly moved down the streets of Skin Row,  Anon's booze-addled mind couldn't fathom where his body was going. In the few instances where he had some form of lucidity, he course-corrected. By the time he had exited Skin Row, he was well on his way towards the shore. 

   Anon wasn’t sure why his body moved towards the beach. Maybe it was because some part of him actually missed the smell of the ocean. Maybe it was because his body felt hot and he wanted—needed—to cool off. Whatever the case, it seemed like his lizard brain had settled on the course. Gradually, his pace became faster. First a power walk, then a full-on sprint.

  Anon’s legs pushed his body forward at a pace that could have matched Naser during his track and field prime. To any observer, the human looked like some kind of stereotypical robber. With the bottle of vodka in his hand though, he could pass for some kind of Gopnik after hearing the words ‘free vodka’ echoed in the distance. To further add to his Gopnik appearance, he took a swig of his vodka every few minutes. In his drunkenness, he had confused the bottle in his hand for water. While the human thought he was hydrating, he was in reality only getting drunker... on top of already being high.

   When Anon reached Volcadera Bluffs’ shores, he was well beyond drunk. The world was a spinning swirl in his eyes. What little of the beach he could see mixed together with bitter memories. Memories that were his and memories that he was sure couldn’t be his. In those memories, or hallucinations—Anon couldn't tell anymore—everyone he had once known was happy… something he was pretty sure he had destroyed with a nuclear bomb.

   In a brief moment of lucidity, Anon took in his surroundings. As he did, what little hold he still had on his sanity began to slip as he realized where his legs had carried him…

  ...The beach where he had fucked everything up... 

   The exact same spot, even.

     Anon frantically glanced around, his addled and swirling vision doing him no favors. What his eyes couldn’t rationalize as an image, his brain filled in with repressed memories. Little by little, the past and the present mixed together. He could see Fang’s face of rage and sorrow as clear as if it happened yesterday. He could see her body language as he tore down everything the two had built together. He could feel the two teen's booze-addled minds loosening their lips and removing any and all inhibitors. 

   Anon heard himself screaming all the horrible things that night as clear as if they were happening in the present...

   “Probably couldn’t fix you if I tried…”

   Anon felt ill. Like his very innards wanted to become his outwards...

   “You should be glad I’ve put up with your shit as long as I have!”

   ‘Please, no more!’ Anon demanded of his brain.

   “I deserve a fuckin’ prize or something!”

   ‘No. Please. That’s enough!’ Anon pleaded as he fell on his knees, his head feeling like it was getting squeezed by a vice.

   “Not like anyone else would put up with a mentally ill schizo like you!”

   ‘NO! NO! NOO!’ Anon squirmed out, unsure of if it was a mumble or in his head. In response to his confusion and all the self-loathing he felt in that instant, he began to punch himself in the face like some kind of lunatic.

   “YOU DON’T EVEN MAKE A PASSABLE FAGGOT!!”

   “NOOOOOOO!” Anon shouted as hard as his lungs would allow. His shout echoed in the empty streets behind him, but it carried out well out into the empty ocean and the cold uncaring sky. Sweat once again saturated his face and outfit as his body began to shiver.

   No. Not sweat. Tears. Tears long-suppressed flowed unhindered by any of the human’s many self inhibitions. 

   Bitter tears that felt like acid upon his skin.

   Without wasting another second, Anon once more began to beat himself. While doing a poor job of actually doing damage due to the haphazard nature of his blows, they at least served to rattle his mind. Each successful punch brought him closer to the sweet embrace of oblivion. 

   When Anon felt that his self-harm was failing to knock him out, he dragged himself towards the nearest hard surface he could spot. In that case, it was what looked like a cement bench. 

   With no hesitation left in him, Anon began beating his head against the cold hard concrete. With every strike to his head, he cursed himself for his mistakes; the many, MANY mistakes he had made over the years:

   How he had been so cruel toFang when she had been the only person to care for his sorry ass.

   How he had been the catalyst for Fang cutting ties with all her old friends and family.

   How he had never bothered to bury the hatchet with Trish, which resulted in Fang falling out with her.

   How he hadn’t bothered to apologize—or even care—about Fang after their fight.

   How he had cut himself off from the world like some cowards.

   How he had run away from his mistake like a little bitch.

   How he had grown cold and detached from the world at large, to the point that he stopped caring about living.

   How he had again failed to do the right thing and apologized to Fang in that restaurant.

   How he had let his apathy once again ruin his chance at starting the healing process between himself and Fang.

   How he had tried to drink and smoke the dreams away instead of manning up and accepting the message they were trying to tell him...

   By the time Anon hit his head one final time, he could feel his awareness slipping from away. But right before the last of his consciousness left him, he raised a hand up towards the night sky.

   “Fuck… I… I’m not a religious man… b-but Raptor Jesus… if… if you are f-fucking hearing my w-words…” 

   Anon’s eyes once more welled with tears, what little vision he had becoming distorted by the veritable dam. 

   “Please… I’m s-so... so... fucking...sorry… for my f-fuck ups!” 

   Anon took a deep breath and steeled himself for words that he never thought he would say out loud…

   “Please! G-give me... ano-another... chance! L-let me… l-let me set this f-fucking mess right! F-for their sakes a-and… not m-mine…” 

   Anon again breathed soft, his vision becoming consumed by the dawning embrace of unconsciousness. 

   “P-please…” Anon whispered one final time before the last bit of his consciousness left him. 

   "P-plea..."

   "..."

   Anon’s body went as still as a corpse...

***

It was five in the morning. At least, that’s what the clock on the car’s dashboard said. 

   A lime-toned stegosaur rode on the passenger seat of a fairly modern van. She let out a tired yawn as she sunk her body deeper into the car seat. ‘I guess I shouldn’t have stayed up all night rewatching Gurren Lagann,’ she mused with a mixture of self-scolding and pride. ‘Ten hours well spent though.’

   Despite her drowsiness from awakening ten minutes earlier, the steg scanned the city vista with interest. As the building whizzed by, her mind projected a small running dino parkouring in pace with the van’s speed. It made her giggle to herself. 

  Stella knew it was juvenile to rely on a children’s trick to keep her boredom in check. She had never been one to follow 'standard' growing conventions though. In her eyes, it worked both to keep her entertained and awake. If it worked, it worked. Besides, the world already saw her as a cheerful weeb. It was an outlook that had been with her since elementary school. It was also an outlook she had no qualms in keeping. Short of an apocalyptic event taking society back to the Stone Age, she would stay a weeb until her dying days.

   A cheeky smile formed on Stella’s lips as she thought about what kind of funeral a weeb like her should have. There were plenty of themes she could pick. It had to be something she enjoyed, otherwise, what was the point? She first thought about Neon Genesis Evangelion. 'I mean, that can work,' she mused. NGE was the first anime she ever watched. An uncle had introduced her to it, and on seeing the first few episodes, it had been like love at first sight. From there, NGE served as her gateway to the world of mecha anime, which in turn served as her gateway to anime in general. She started with all the classics like the early Gundams, Macross, and Armored Trooper Votoms. From there, she moved to stuff like The Visions of Escaflowne, King of the Braves Gaogaigar, and Gunbuster. She then got into more contemporary stuff like the Big O and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Gurren Lagann and its celebration of mecha through the years—as well as its sheer galactic scope—made it her absolute favorite anime of all time. 

   So with TTGL being Stella's absolute fave, it only made sense that her funeral should be TTGL themed. She pondered for a bit how that would work out though. After about ten seconds of thinking, she decided that it was a topic best saved for somewhere other than a car ride. After all, she had years to plan it out. 'Besides, it's the music that sets the mood,' she told herself with a bit too much excitement. 'When I go, I'm going to have Libera Me from Hell playing on repeat for at least twenty-four hours. If they refuse, then I'm not going to my funeral.' 

   With her happy thoughts all but settled for the time being Stella closed her eyes for a few seconds. She had been using her eyes for hours after all, and it wasn't like she was going to fall asleep that easily.

   A few seconds of silence passed by; time in which Stella felt quite relaxed and quite at peace with the world...

  “Hey! ¡Despiertate!” the voice of the van’s driver, an orange ankylosaur, snapped Stella out from her trance-like state.

   “I-I’m awake!” Stella yelled reflexively. She blinked the haze out of her eyes and looked at her surroundings. Upon ascertaining that she was not in any danger, she snapped her sight towards her combined boss, business partner, and best friend. “Wha—wha’s happenin', Rosa?"

   Rosa let out an amiable chuckle in response to her friend's physical reaction. “Ah, ¡Disculpame! I was only making sure you didn’t fall asleep on me before we got started on our cardio!” she exclaimed. "We're two minutes away, so I don't want you sleeping on me!" the ankylosaur cheered as she turned the steering wheel left before accelerating.

  "But Rosa! I was getting comfy!" 

   Rosa once again laughed. “Maybe you wouldn’t be such a dormilona if you hadn't stayed up so late watching anime."

   Stella crossed her arms and puffed her cheeks. “Oh come on. You know well that when I get into a show, I can’t just stop watching it!”

   Rosa let out a single laugh in response to Stella’s statement. “¡Que bichita todavia eres!” She said in her native Spanish before reaching out and rubbing the stego on the head, being careful not to ruffle her green hair too much. “I don’t have anything against you enjoying your anime. Just the anime getting in the way of your sleeping hours.” The orange dino's face turned stern as soon as she finished her words. "Can't have one of my employees tired at work. Oh, no, no, no, no, no! That’s when I gotta put my foot down!” Almost as if to augment her point, she hit the brakes a little harder than usual. As a result, the van came to a halt with a small jerk, causing Stella to lunge forward in her seat a bit.

   Stella, cheeks still puffed in annoyance, thought of something to say to Rosa. ‘You’re one to talk, what with how you obsess over your telenovelas!’ The sentence constituted in her brain, words taking shape at the tip of her tongue. She wanted to say it to Rosa too… 

   But the more thought Stella gave it, the more she decided against saying anything. In the end, she deflated her cheeks and only nodded in acknowledgment.

   "¡Perfecto!" Rosa cheered as she started to better park her van.

   'Yeah,' Stella thought as she tried to put their interaction in the back of her mind. Deep down, she knew Rosa was only looking out for her wellbeing. It had been that way for the last four years, ever since her own parents more or less washed their hands of her. In their own words, Stella turned out to be an *'anime-obsessed, mystic bull believing, socially stunted excuse for a daughter.'* and pretty much kicked her to the curb. And what had brought about such a hostile exile? Her dream of moving to Japan to become an anime voice actress while also taking up divination and fortune-telling. Sure, accomplishing either goal was a long shot... and she didn’t really have a plan to make any money in the meantime... but she was still determined to see that dream become real! 

   'Then again, I don't exactly have the best type of voice for an acting gig... nor do I really speak Japanese fluently despite watching thousands of hours of anime...'

   So her voice acting dreams needed work. She was still amazing at Tarot readings! From her own admittedly biased record-keeping, she had yet to make a wrong prediction.

   'Then again, I haven't exactly been able to practice my fortunetelling much in the last four years. Most people on the streets aren't exactly open to some stranger telling them about their futures. Not to mention...'

   Stella's stomach suddenly felt like she had swallowed a cup full of ice. Her thoughts rewound to that one awful night. The night she made a huge mistake. The night that, with hindsight in its full and terrible might, she committed the single biggest mistake of her life. The night she gave that fateful fortune reading and failed to prevent a terrible fate from coming into fruition...

    ...All because she failed to explain what one single card meant to the one person who needed it most...

    Stella’s heart sank as she remembered the moment in Pizza Moe’s like it was yesterday...

***

   “I wanted to ask, what did you think of your fortune?”

   “Uh… I kinda forgot”

   “You got the Judgement, right?”

   “Doesn’t Ring a bell.”

   “O-oh. Well… uh… How would you like another?”

   “Eh… I got time to kill. Sure.”

   “Alright. Take one.”

   “Oh my… Inverted Empress. You... need to be wary about future negligence, Anon...”

   “What the fuck does that mean?”

   "Uh… er… Gottago,naturecalls,seeyouattheshow!”

***

As the conversation played out in her memory, Stella had to ask herself why. Why had she rushed out from that situation despite Anon asking for clarification? Had it been her shyness overpowering her desire to help out Anon? Her lack of social skills in the face of such an important development in Anon’s life? Or some misguided belief that Anon had to face his destiny alone despite needing help in walking the right path?

   Stella didn't want to know the answers anymore. The answers wouldn't change the event that transpired that night, nor the aftermath. 

   Friendships died. People’s lives abruptly changed. Joy turned to sorrow, and the world moved on regardless of who cried about it. 

   Stella—for as naive and childish as some may have called her for it—desperately wanted to believe that there was some other timeline in which everything turned out alright. 

   A timeline where she got her stuff together and made something of herself. 

   A timeline where all her friends stuck by with each other and helped each other grow to ever-higher heights. 

   A timeline where Anon and Fang stayed and had a happy life together...

   “Hey. ¡Bicha!” Rosa’s voice snapped Stalla back to reality. “We’re here! And look, we made it before sunrise! That'll give us plenty of time to do our cardio and—” Rosa paused in her tracks, her expression losing some of its cheer. “Are you okay? You look sad. REALLY sad.” the orange dino leaned closer to her friend’s face. “Are you teary-eyed?”

   Stella blinked a few times before running the back of her hand past her eyes. Sure enough, as she withdrew her hand, she noticed a few droplets of water glistening.

   Stella took a deep breath and buried her previous thoughts. “Oh, this! I, uh… I was just remembering this… super ultra-emotional scene in an anime. Yeah!” She once more put on a broad smile and widened her eyes. “It… it was this, uh, v-visual novel adaptation! Yeah. Two former lovers, torn apart by bad decisions and their own inability to let love reach their hearts, finally realize what they mean to each other and race back towards each other’s arms as the music swells and the sakura leaves fall and it’s super, ultra heartwarming and it’s just…” Stella brought the fingertips of her right hand up to her lips and, pinching all her digits together, kissed them, and dramatically tossed the metaphorical kiss away from her face. “So cathartic and perfect that it still brings tears to my eyes!”

   With a deadpan look on her face, Rosa raised an eyebrow. Stella, in turn, only kept a toothy smile on her lips. A few droplets of sweat formed on her brow as she struggled to keep smiling despite her mood being in no such disposition.  

   Two seconds later, Rosa also put on a warm smile on her lips. “¡Hey! Mientras te haga feliz, ¡yo soy feliz!” she cheered, turning away from her friend and undoing her seatbelt. 

   Stella let out a sigh. ‘Sorry for the lie, Rosa, but I don’t think remembering the past would be a good way to start your morning," She thought, all the while doing her best to keep the forced smile on her lips. "You have enough to worry as is with the business and stuff.’ She looked down at the spot on the back of her hand where the now dry tears had been. ‘Besides, I'm being too sentimental about the past. Not like being sentimental's going to change anything about it...’

   A part of Stella wished it could do. 

Rosa shut off her van’s engine and turned to face her friend. “Lista?” she asked in an enthusiastic tone.

     The lime-toned dino hesitated for a second. Her previous thoughts still lingered in the forefront of her mind. It made pumping the brakes on her train of thoughts harder. Rather than risk some mental derailment, she redirected her perception towards thinking of the day yet to come.

   Stella gave her friend a toothy grin. “‘Course!” she answered as she unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out of the van. Rosa followed not long after. The two friends grabbed their water bottles and shut their respective doors. Only when the two were standing out of the van did Rosa press a button on her car’s remote. With a cheerful chirp, the van's doors locked with loud mechanical clicks. 

   Stella went over her workout outfit, hoping she hadn’t overdressed like last time. She had gotten her tracksuit on sale one week earlier, and only because it was the same style and color tracksuit that Subaru Natsuki from Re-Zero wore. Re-Zero was the ONLY Isekai show that she actually liked, the rest being hot garbage. She hadn’t bothered to premiere the outfit outside of checking that it fit her well. She almost would have forgotten about it had it not been for Rosa suggesting they go jogging on the beach at dawn. 

   A part of Stella wondered why Rosa had decided to do a pre-sunrise jog at the beach. Their workouts at the gym already worked pretty well for them. 'Maybe Rosa wants to try something new?" Stella pondered as her eyes scanned the still darkened horizon. 'Like some kind of wish that she hadn’t been able to indulge until today?' 

   Whatever the case was, Stella was happy that she had a sturdy and warm tracksuit with which to jog that morning. Sure, it was a bit warm for summertime, but it would more than suffice once winter rolled around. 

   ‘I wonder…’ Stella thought as she turned to look at her ass. Sure enough, the pants did her no favors in hiding her wide hips. Hips that only seemed to grow wider with the passing years. 

   Stella felt her cheeks warm up a few degrees as she remembered why she hadn’t used the outfit until today. If she wore that outfit in public, she was sure every male eye within a hundred-mile radius would lock on her.

   To try and get her mind off her little dilemma, Stella set her gaze on Rosa’s outfit. 

   In some way, Rosa’s workout gear is the polar opposite of Stella’s. Unlike the thick jacket the stegosaur wore, Rosa sported a very light and very red cotton tank top that didn’t even go all the way down to her waist, leaving at least a hand’s worth of open space in which the ankylosaur’s orange belly was visible. Her light gray pants were also on the thin side, being something of a cross between joggers and yoga pants. Unlike Stella’s pants, Rosa’s pants fit her frame so well they neither increased nor decreased the size of her hips. On top of that, the outfit had an intricate set of floral patterns, gray on the shirt, and red on the pants. Stella couldn’t be sure, but something told her that the two garments were matching pieces, even if they didn’t look at them. It made her a bit jealous. It was a really nice ensemble.

   Rosa took a deep breath of air and let out a chuckle. “¡Ah, que gloriosa es esta amanecer!” She inhaled again, only this time wholly through her nose, the smile on her lips only growing wider by the second. 

   Stella envied Rosa when it came to her olfactory prowess. She had always had the stronger sense of smell of the two on account of all her years tending to flowers. If what she said was true, botany was an old family tradition dating back at least five generations and two continents. She also didn’t suffer from any pollen problems, like allergies. Likely a perk of her family’s long botanical traditions.

   “Bien!” Rosa said as she pulled out her phone and readied her jogging log up. “We have about an hour before full sunrise. Let’s try and do four miles in that time. Sound good?”

   Stella pulled her own jogging app and also set her goal and pace on it. “Oui! C'est parti pour cette course!” she cheered in her native French without hesitation.

   Rosa guffawed at her friend’s use of her family’s native language. Not many knew that Stella's family had come from France. She had been born in Volcadera Bluffs, but she spoke French very well. It reminded the ankylosaur of her own family, and how despite also being born in Volcadera Bluffs, she spoke Spanish almost as well as her native parent.

   Without further words or interruptions from either of them, Rosa and Stella set off jogging. At first, they tried keeping to the paved road snaking along the beach. Soon, they entered the sandy beach itself, their footing becoming uneven in the sand. The extra work needed to maintain balance added to the workout, their combined footfalls muffled by the sand, yet still almost in pace with one another.

   Steadily, the two approached the first big landmark on their journey: a set of concrete benches erected to help beachgoers get some sand-free seating. The benches were plain. Aside from a bit of sun bleaching and some harmless graffiti, they were the definition of mundane.

   That was, except for the black form resting next to the benches. What looked like a body, sprawled out on the sand and almost dead looking...

   Rosa and Stella stopped in their tracks and turned to look at each other. A second of contemplation later, the two anxiously approached the body. Neither of the two girls wanted to say anything, but their growing fear was impossible to deny.

   Rosa is the first to show any emotion other than shock. She lets out a shriek and takes a step away from the body. “S-Stella!” she stammers, her eyes falling on her friend as she points a finger at the body by the benches. “Ese h-humano e-esta… esta…” she takes a deep breath and loses any semblance of composure she had. “¡Esta muerto! ¡Esta muerto!” the orange dino screeched all the while frantically running in place. 

   Stella froze and swallowed hard. Unlike Rosa’s understandable and warranted freakout, she didn’t panic. At least physically. Even as a part of her brain told her to lose stability and give in to terror, she kept a coolheadedness that betrayed her actual emotions. Years of playing the aloof and mysterious fortune teller may not have helped her make many friends... but it had helped her develop control over her immediate reactions.

   Rosa looked to her friend with concern and fear still etched all over her expression. While still keeping a face full of anxiety, she took some cues from Stella’s calmness—feigned as it might have been—and began calming herself. There was still a sickness in her stomach though. It made her want nothing more than to turn right back around and leave.

   Stella, looking between Rosa and herself, inhaled as much as her lungs would hold and stepped forward.

   On seeing her friend move ahead, Rosa reaches out to Stella and grabs her by the right arm. She says not a word, only shaking her head and giving the lime dino a supplicating gaze.

   Despite her trepidation, Stella eased out of her friend’s grip and stepped closer to the body. As she did, she couldn't help but feel unusual by how calm she felt in the face of literal demise. Perhaps years of dabbling in such occult things as Tarot cards and Ouiji boards had made her apathetic to death? Or maybe all the people back in High School had been right and she was just weird.

   Rosa made a sound behind Stella somewhere between an ‘eep’ and a whine. Even though she didn't turn around to look, Stella could tell that Rosa had taken a few more steps back in fear. Fear of what, she wasn’t clear on though. ‘Maybe she thinks this is like the start of a zombie story, like with Highschool of the Dead?’ Stella mused as she continued to approach the body. She of course knew that it was complete nonsense to believe in zombies. Yet, there was always a minuscule chance that she could be wrong. That the instant she got within reach, the body would spring to life and bite her, turning her into a member of the great skeleton army.

   Stella shook her head to get the errant thoughts of zombies out of her head. The only thing that mattered was that there was a body lying on the beach. Neither Rosa nor herself even knew if the human was actually dead. It was hard to tell considering the body was face down.

   The first thing she needed to do was to check.

   The lime stegosaur gingerly closed the remaining distance between herself and the body. Hesitating for only a second, she crouched next to the human and placed her right hand on their back. With one last look back towards Rosa—who still looked like she was ready to take off running at the first sign of danger—she flipped the human face up.

   The first thing Stella's eyes noticed about the human, aside from his gender, were the many bruises and scrapes on his face. As she inspected the human closer, she also spotted a nasty gash on his forehead. The blood was dry, which meant the injury happened hours earlier. Next, she noticed the human's getup. He wore a plain black long sleeve turtleneck and a pair of navy blue jogging pants, as well as a black wool beanie.

   With a bit of doubt given the circumstances, Stella moved her hand towards the human’s chest. At first, she felt neither heartbeat nor lung movement. That changed when a second later, she sensed a very faint heartbeat. She let out a sigh of relief and turned around to face Rosa. “He’s alive!”

   Rosa, on hearing Stella’s words, exhaled the air she hadn’t even noticed she’d been holding in to for the last minute. After once again collecting herself, the orange dino made a flurry of movements with her right hand. First, she made a cross sign with her index and thumb. Next, she brought up the small cross up to her forehead, then moved to her lower stomach next, and finally both shoulders, starting with her left, and then moving to the right. Finally, she finished by kissing the cross sign and looking up to the heavens with a wide rapturous smile. “¡Oh, gracias Raptor Jesús!”

   Stella, also feeling relief, decided to take a closer look at the human’s face. She didn’t know many of them, but something about the injured man before her struck her as... familiar. Something about his lack of features that, ironically, made her think of a human she had known years ago... 

   ‘But that can’t be,’ Stella thought as she continued staring into the human’s battered face. ‘He disappeared almost four years ago…’ 

   The lime dino's eyes fell on the human’s beanie. "There's only one way to find out for sure…" she whispered as she reached for the human’s beanie. With a single pull, she removed the hat, revealing to the world a shiny bald head, nary a single hair.

   Stella almost tripped backward at the sight. Rosa, noticing her friend’s sudden change in disposition, rushed forward to provide support. She was about to ask her companion what had so shocked her when her eyes too fell upon the human’s face. 

   The moment the ankylosaur’s eyes took in the sight of her, she too felt weak on the knees. A strange and powerful mixture of nostalgia and melancholy began coursing through her as the full weight of recognition hit her like a runaway popemobile.

   “¡No lo creo!” Rosa shouted before almost kneeling next to her friend. “S-Stella… is it... really him!?” she stammered her question.

   Stella looked between her friend and the human a couple more times before the full weight of what she was seeing also sunk in. In the end, there was no other human in town—possibly the world—who had such plain, almost nonexistent features yet had still caused such a large impact on their lives…

   “It’s Anon...” Stella whispered

   “It’s An-On!” Rosa shouted.

   Rosa and Stella stayed in shock for a few seconds before Stella broke the silence. “What… what do you think happened to Anon?” she asked, her voice barely holding coherence.

   Rosa looked over the human and grimaced. “Looks like An-On got beat up and got left for muerto.” She lets out a snort, her face twisting into a scowl of rage, her very orange skin turning a deep shade of hot crimson. “¡¡SI ENCUENTRO A LOS PENDEJOS QUE MALMATARON A AN-ON, LO JURO POR RAPTOR JESUS Y DIOS TODO SANTO QUE LES VOY HACER LLOVER FUEGO, FURIA, Y AZUFRE EN SUS CULOS!!”

   Stella swallowed hard again. As a pious follower of the holy cave paintings, Rosa’s whole MO when it came to grievances and affronts to her sensibilities was to turn the other cheek. Her disappointment in you was often more than enough to make even the most hardened offender beg her for forgiveness. To see Rosa be livid enough to threaten fire and brimstone was nothing short of apocalyptic…

   Rosa continued breathing hard for a few more seconds. Each puff of air that left her nostrils was steam. After a minute of barely restrained rage, the dino closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Five seconds of seeming introspective self-calming later, Rosa turned to face Stella. Her expression had shifted from one of rage to one of apprehension. “We gotta wake An-On,” she proposed to Stella. 

   For her part, Stella wholeheartedly agreed with Rosa. The question was, how did they go about rousing a beaten human back into consciousness? What if they did something wrong in the attempt? The idea of causing Anon more harm than he already had suffered wasn’t appealing to either of them. Especially since they hadn’t seen him in nearly four years. Humans could change a lot in that timeframe. Who was to say that Anon had a whole different range of physical functions?

   “Uh, Rosa,” Stella started, her hands already withdrawn from Anon’s vicinity. “I think this is beyond us. Maybe we should… try and get professional help?”

   After a few seconds of contemplation, Rosa let out a sigh and a nod of acceptance. “¡Quedate aqui! I’ll bring the van around and…” she paused, giving Anon another worried glance. “...We’ll drive An-On to the hospital. I’m sure they can help him there...”

   Stella gave Rosa a nod, Rosa taking that as her cue to stand back up and rush back in the direction the two had come in one of her fastest sprints ever. Stella found it a bit surprising to see her friend burn rubber as she was. Then again, the life of an old friend was on the line. If that fact didn’t make someone move faster than they had before, then they weren’t exactly a friend.

   With Rosa gone, Stella looked westward towards the rising sun. She didn’t quite know what to make of the unfolding situation. One thing was certain to her though…

   Anon's entrance into Volcano High and into their lives had once caused everyone’s story to change dramatically. Maybe his return was also a sign that great change was coming? 

   Whether that change was good or bad was still anyone's guess…

The big hand on the clock ticked over to the four. Somewhere in the sterile white hospital room, the sound of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’s main theme, ‘Sorairo Days,’ snapped Stella awake. The lime stegosaur let out a yawn, stretched the soreness on her neck away, wiped her clear, and looked down at the phone’s screen. A picture of Rosa was glowing back at her. Groggily, she pressed the answer button and placed the phone to her ear. “H-hello.”

   “Hey Stella. Como estas?”

   It took Stella a few seconds to translate her friend’s Spanish in her head before answering. “I’m good. Fell asleep though.”

   “I’m guessing An-On’s not woken up yet?”

   Stella turned her eyes towards the bed to her right. Lying there, with an IV bag attached to his arm and wrapped in bandages was Anon wearing a white polka-dotted hospital gown.

   “No. Still out cold.”

   “Did the doctors tell you anything about what happened…?” There was a pause, though Stella could almost hear Rosa’s hands clench into a white-knuckled fist. “...And who beat him up?”

   Stella thought back to what the doctor had told her…

   *“Your friend there suffered a major concussion, I'm afraid. He also suffered minor fractures on his cheekbones and forehead. We also found shockingly high levels of alcohol and cannabis on his system. I’m shocked he didn’t overdose. Unfortunately, it's still too early to know if all that bad stuff in his system will result in permanent damage…”*

   Stella sighed. “Still no word on who beat Anon up. The only thing the doc told me is that he suffered an... what did he say… oh, a ‘major concussion.’ He was also jacked up with so much alcohol and weed that… well… he was REALLY jacked up on the stuff. At the same time, too.”

   Stella could hear a gasp from the other end. Her mind played an image of Rosa doing another sign of the cross before her friend spoke again. “¡Santa Madre del Raptor Jesús! Is he going to die!?”

   Stella sat up straight on hearing her friend’s words. “No!” she almost shouted before clearing her throat. “I-I mean, Anon’s not dying! He’s stable… just... really, REALLY hurt....” She thought about the last few words the doctor had told her about Anon’s possible brain health. She considered telling Rosa that last part, but in the end, decided against it. The last thing she wanted was for Rosa to feint from worry.

   “Did the doctor say when An-On’s going to wake up!?”

   “No. Not really…”

   There was another moment of silence before Rosa once again spoke. “I’m going to close shop early for the day. I’ll be there in three hours.”

   “Are you sure?” Stella asked, the full weight of the events now playing before her sinking in. ‘Rosa’s never once closed early or taken a vacation…’

   “An-On needs help, and I doubt anyone else in this town’s going to help him. Especially considering what happened between him and the others.”

   Stella was about to say something, but she only nodded in agreement despite being on the phone.

   “Hang in there for a few more hours, Stella. I’ll take over when I get there and you can go get some real rest.”

   “Thanks,” Stella said, a warm smile forming on her lips. 

   There was a crashing sound from Rosa’s end. What almost sounded like the shattering of a vase. “Maldita sea. Gotta go! A customer’s kid toppled over some flowers and spilled water everywhere. ¡Te veo al rato!” Rosa said before shouting something she couldn’t quite catch in her native Spanish. Seconds later, the call dropped. Stella was once more left with a still unconscious Anon by her side.

   Stella put away her phone and stood up to stretch. She had been Sitting for almost nine hours now. Though she hated to admit it, doing nothing but waiting for Anon to do anything other than lay on the bed like a vegetable irked her. Compared to her daily work routine, her current situation couldn’t get any more boring. At the same time, the reason she was even in a hospital was because of Anon’s sudden and violent reappearance. 

   As Stella’s eyes fell on Anon’s battered face, the dino couldn’t help but wonder what the human had been up to for the last four years. He, alongside Fang, stopped going to school after prom night. They had ditched prom itself too, which should have been the first red flag for everyone. Talking to Naser had revealed very little aside from the news that Fang had broken up with Anon and had wound up in a bad place. Stella and Rosa believed—or maybe they convinced themselves—that Fang and Anon only needed time to work through the break-up. That they would return to school once they got over the depression. None of them could have known at the time how far-reaching the problem was.

   When a week passed by with Fang still locked in her room, Naser tried taking matters into his own hands. He talked to Trish and Reed. Trish refused to talk about what happened between herself and Fang. Only when she wasn’t around did Reed tell Naser that Fang had broken off her friendship with them. 

   With that venue dead, Naser then searched for any trace of Anon. Despite looking for the human high and low, he found no trace of him anywhere. He almost got his father involved at one point. But he realized that doing that would mean setting his very angry father on the person who had hurt his daughter. That would have not been survivable for Anon. 

   In the end, Naser gave up and tried to get Fang to return to school… only to discover that she had run away the night prior. She left no note and nothing to track her with.

   Stella sighed again and plopped back into the couch next to Anon’s bed. As she did, she eyed Anon up and down, taking in all his visible physical aspects in an attempt to piece together some kind of past that would explain the human’s four year absence.

   Stella stared with Anon’s face first. The bandages made it hard to see much skin, but what was visible looked rough. There was a certain tan coloration to it, almost as if Anon had been getting a huge amount of daily sunlight exposure. Going down his neck, she noted a little bit of dryness to his skin. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the alcohol-induced dehydration, or if it was because of Anon’s last four years somewhere other than Volcaldera Bluffs. Moving to his chest, she noticed that it was far, far bulkier than she recalled in High School. The Anon from High School was scrawny. Not a stick by any means, but certainly lacking in the musculature this Anon had. The arms attached to the chest were also bulked. In some ways, they reminded her of Rosa’s arms, which were naturally heavy thanks to all her garden work.

   Curious and maybe a bit drawn by the muscles on display, Stella inched a finger forward and poked Anon’s right arm. The instant she did, she felt a huge level of resistance, the arms holding almost no flabbiness to them. Stella poked the arm again, this time holding her finger down on the bicep. As she pressed down, she felt the strands of muscle underneath contract, further increasing the arm’s hardness. Having already gone that far, the dino decided to wrap her hand around the human’s bicep. It was then she felt the full level of volume in Anon’s arms. As she withdrew her hand, she couldn’t help but feel slightly warm around the face, her heart racing a bit faster than before. She could hardly believe just how beefed Anon felt. He was almost beefier than the jock she had somehow managed to ask out to prom.

   The discovery of such muscles gave Stella pause. Anon had to have been doing something physically demanding if he had gone from a scrawny guy who could barely pull weeds, to now feeling like he could lift several hundred pounds with one arm. As she inspected Anon’s arm closer, he spotted something that she had somehow missed. She inched closer to get a better look, at which point the shape of an anchor came into her view.

   Stella blinked a few times, unsure of how she had missed such an obvious tattoo. Thinking fast, she reached for her phone and looked online for what an anchor tattoo could mean. Less than two minutes later, she had found a page detailing the exact meanings of sailor tattoos. She only needed to take one look at similar tattoos in the arms of other sailors to put two and two together.

   ‘The dry, tanned skin, the well-toned muscles, and the anchor tattoo...' Stella shut off her phone and once again sat back down on the couch. As she did, the full weight of her discovery hit her like the fist of one of the Getter Emperor. She again looked to Anon, this time with amazement. Of all the people she had ever met in her time at Volcano High, she had never once imagined Anon as someone to join the Navy. ‘Though, now that I think about it, it would explain his sudden disappearance...' Stella thought. If she had to take a guess as to what happened after prom... 

   ‘So Fang and Anon break up. The two fall into a deep depression. Anon stops going to school. Probably drops out. Fang also drops out and runs away from home. Anon then joins the navy because he either didn’t have anywhere else to go or wanted to vanish. Spends the next four years on a boat crossing the pacific, hence his tattoo. Got buff and probably did a lot of cool navy stuff. Gets released after his service and comes back to Volcadera Bluffs four years later and then... gets beat up on the beach...?’

   Stella shook her head and started rubbing her chin. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. None of it does!’ she thought with growing frustration. Anon became a sailor. Sailors were tough. Anon, being a sailor, was tough too. ‘I mean, the muscles on him are pretty hard to deny,’ she mused, again feeling warm around her cheeks. She changed her mental tracks and returned to her previous ponderings. ‘Whoever beat him up had to be tougher than he was. Then again, the doctor also said that he was super drunk and super high at the same time. With his senses impaired, it makes a bit more sense that someone would be able to jump him. What would anyone gain from beating up a sailor though?’ The dino brought her hands up to the temples of her head and looked to Anon with a growing grimace. “Oh Anon, why won’t you wake up and tell me what happened to you!?” the lime dino groaned as she again collapsed on the couch.

   With a sigh of defeat, Stella looked up at the clock on the wall. The minute hand had only moved thirty whole minutes. As she narrowed her eyes, the minute hand moved forward one space. That caused the stegosaur to drop back her head in defeat. She considered for a second putting on an anime on her phone to pass the time, but one side glance towards Anon killed that plan. Not because she didn’t think it was in poor taste to watch something fun and entertaining next to a man who may or may not be braindead, but rather because she would have much preferred to share that show with that man. If Anon was suffering, then she too deserved to suffer. If nothing else because she had helped to lead Anon down the road that led to his current unconsciousness.

   With grim determination in her heart, Stella pulled out her phone and logged into her Rocktube account. With some hesitation, she navigated towards a playlist titled ‘Only play this if you want to feel absolutely, UNEQUIVOCALLY terrible.' She moved to tap on the list, but her finger hung a few centimeters away from the screen. Some subconscious part of her brain was forcing her hand to freeze in place. She glared at her hand before putting the rest of her willpower into moving that finger. At last, though, she got the result she wanted and managed to tap on the playlist. With a click, a sixty-video long list of the most terrible anime openings ever put to both screen and music loaded up.

   The first song on the list, titled ‘Gundoh Mushashi OP’ began playing. Within the first few seconds, Stella felt a jolt run down her spine, down her legs, and right into her tail. She had heard buzzsaws carry a better tune. She could almost feel the blood pouring out from her ears as the song played for an agonizingly long one minute and thirty seconds. When that song at last ended, the next song on the list, ‘Spiral OP’ began playing. The female singer’s high-pitched voice combined with what sounded like an unfiltered drum played through a broken speaker followed. The two sounds combined so horribly that Stella was certain that VVRUM DRAMA back when they were still using two bases could have done a much better job playing the song. When that at last ended, a song titled ‘Kill Me Baby’ played its uneven, chaotic melody. The singers obviously did very little in the way of caring aside from getting a paycheck, something that made Stella grind her teeth in rage.

   Stella was doing her best to hold together and not turn off her phone in disgust. ‘Suffering tempers the soul,' she told herself as another horrible OP, this one titled ‘Hentai!’ of all things, played. As the absurd lyrics talking about all kinds of lewd things and the less than subpar animation performed before her, the lime stego actually began to envy Anon. For in his inability to listen to such horrible music, he was in true bliss...

   ...That was until Anon’s hand very suddenly dropped on top of Stella’s phone, pausing the video and bringing about ecstatic silence once again.

   '...Wait a sec...' Stella thought as her eyes fell on Anon's arm.

   Stella let out a sharp scream as she recoiled from the surprise. Anon, meanwhile, glared daggers at the dino, his eyes sunken yet glowing with absolute fury; like at that very second, he wanted nothing more than to wrap his hands around Stella’s neck and wring the life right out of her for even thinking about playing such foul abominations of the melodic arts.

   “Your… taste… in... OP’s… is absolute… dog shit… St-Stella...” Anon hissed through clenched teeth, his hand shaking as he struggled to keep it placed over the screen.

   Shock soon gave way to surprise, which then gave way to confusion, which then gave way to relief and joy, all within the span of less than a second. “ANON!” Stella shouted as she tossed herself on Anon, wrapping her arms around the still weak human.

   Anon, for his part, was utterly confused about what was going on. One moment, he had been lying in his flat feeling hotter than he’d ever felt and getting drunker and higher than he’d ever been. After that, he saw flashes of things he did. Running down a street, walking on the beach, punching himself in an attempt at self-punishment, smashing his own head against concrete... He couldn’t recall more particular things than that. The only thing he knew was that his face and head both hurt like hell.

   One of the nurses burst through the door a second after Stella had screamed. “What’s goin—” she cut off herself the instant she saw Anon’s eyes fix themselves on her. “Holy mother of—” she began but paused before turning around. “Get the doctor! The patient’s awake!” she shouted as she walked into the room. Without a word, she motioned for Stella to relocate. Reluctantly, the lime stego moved as the nurse rushed next to Anon. Within the second, she checked his IV drip and the rest of his vitals, all the while adjusting the bed so that Anon could better lay on it without having to strain his back. 

   Less than a minute later, the doctor rushed into the room, his eyes falling on Anon with a mixture of surprise and delight. He walked up to Anon’s bed and gave his nurse a nod. “Thank you so very much. I’ll take this here case from here.” 

   With a respectful nod, the nurse left the room, leaving only Anon, the doctor, and Stella.

   “Well, color me surprised, but you had us scared for almost nine hours now. Glad to see you awake, uh… Anon, was it?”

   Anon gave the doctor a nod before bringing a hand to his head. The instant he touched one of the bandages, he retracted his limb with a hiss of pain.

   “Woah. Easy now!” the doctor said, stepping closer to anon and gently patting him on the shoulder. “You’re still very tender. In fact, I’m shocked you’re even awake at all!”

   Anon blinked a few times, his eyes traveling between Stella and the doctor. “Why?” he asked, his voice still raspy and weak.

   “Well, for starters, someone beat the living tar out of you. Secondly, you were so loaded on alcohol and cannabis that I’m shocked you didn’t give up the ghost then and there. Finally, you took such a hard knock on that there nogging of yours that I’m astonished you’re even aware right now!” He grabbed a clipboard from the front of the bed and began writing down on it. “Yes sir. You, my homo-sapien amigo, are very lucky that this here young lady found you when she did. Had you stayed on that beach after sunrise, you would have died not just from all those there injuries, but dehydration too.” The doctor turned to look at Stella. “What was your name again, miss?”

   “S-Stella,” the stegosaur stammered.

   “Well, Miss Stella and Mr. Anon. Vitals are looking good. The only thing left now is observation.” The doctor finished writing on the clipboard and set his eyes on Anon. “We’ll keep you overnight and see if any complications arise. If nothing seems to be going south, then we should be able to let you go tomorrow morning. I suggest you get yourself some grub, catch up with your friend here, and get yourself some rest.” The doctor placed the clipboard back on the bed’s front. “Oh, and don’t worry about any medical expenses. Half of it's covered by your GI benefits. The other by a family member of yours.” The doctor let out a well-meaning chuckle. “I really do love it when family sticks together.”

   As the doctor left the room, Anon couldn’t help but wonder who this ‘family’ the doctor had told him about was. Last he checked, his own parents had written him off for dead. It couldn’t be any of his Navy comrades either. He never got along with any of them beyond the whole team building bull. He had no other people on earth that could claim to care about him either…

   Anon’s head began throbbing, and he took that as a sign that he needed to stop thinking. He lay his head back on the now angled bed and turned to look at Stella, who for some reason was wearing what looked like a very familiar tracksuit. He blinked a few times and let out a dry laugh. “Why… are you… wearing... Subaru… Natsuki’s... tracksuit?”

   Stella’s eyes lit up like they were Christmas decorations. “Y-you can tell!?” she almost shouted, her tail instinctively wrapping around her leg.

   Anon sighed and turned away from the stegosaur. “Four… years. I don’t… fucking see you… for four… years… and you’re still… the same… weeb…” He let out another dry chuckle as he closed his eyes. “People… never… change…” he whispered bitterly.

   Stella tilted her head to the side, not sure what to make of Anon's comment. Not that it mattered anyway, as her previous excitement returned in full force as she rushed back to Anon’s bedside, eyes once more aglow with barely-contained glee. “So, did you watch any good shows while in the navy!?” Stella asked with almost child-like energy.

   Anon turned back to look at Stella’s eyes. At first, he felt tempted to make a snide remark about growing up. That thought fell away as a question formed on his lips instead. “How… did you know… I was in the… navy?”

   “Your anchor tattoo!” Stella answered, pointing at Anon’s right arm. “Also... your new musculature…” she bashfully said as she tapped her fingers together and looked down at her feet.

   Anon let some air out of his nose. “So…” he started, his eyes once again falling on Stella’s light blue eyes. “Why did… you… save me…?”

   Stella again tilted her head in confusion. “Why did I save you?” she repeated the question with some incredulity. “Why WOULDN’T I save an old friend!” she answered with such sickening sweetness that Anon couldn’t help but feel that one in his heart. “I haven’t seen you in four years. NO ONE has. We… we all thought you had died, Anon. DIED!”   

   Anon’s face turned into a grimace at Stella’s words. “I might... as well... have died...” he whispered. 

   Stella gasped, a grimace forming on her face. “Why would you say something as awful as that!” she almost shouted in rage.

   Anon opened his eyes as wide as he could and stared right into Stella’s soul. “I have... nothing... to impart on to you. I straight fucked it… this life…”

   Stella’s tail dropped along with her mood. “I guess you haven’t exactly had the best four years of your life, huh?”

   Anon didn’t even dignify Stella with an answer, only continuing to give the lime dino a soul-piercing glare.

   Stella stood up straight and put on a determined face. “Anon, listen to me and listen well. Just because you feel like you’ve screwed your life beyond repair doesn’t mean you actually have. You’re still here and are still alive, aren’t you?!”

   Anon opened his mouth to speak, but he promptly shut it when Stella once again moved forward, her face only inches away from his.

   “As long as we are alive, we can work towards a better tomorrow. So what if we suffer along the way? So what if we stumble and fall? We have to get back up and keep moving ahead!”

   “I don’t... think I’m capable of that…” Anon whispered, his eyes shifting away from Stella's own soul-piercing stare. “I… I have committed horrible sins… and I hate myself for it…” He bit his own lip and turned to look at Stella, yes shimmering. “I fucked up so, so bad!” the human shouted, his voice still coarse, but his tone uninterrupted and heartfelt. “I ran away when I should’ve faced the consequences of my actions. I tried to numb the pain with booze and weed and apathy. I… I had a chance to start over… and I still chose to be apathetic!” The human took an uneven, wavering breath as he again looked away from Stella. “I… I think I even tried to kill myself last night… which is why I’m this fucked mess of a man…” He closed his eyes, a tear flowing from his right eye. “People don’t change, Stella. I haven’t changed… I don't believe in myself anymore…”

   Anon opened his eyes to both clear the tears and to see Stella’s face of devastation over his words. Instead, he opened his eyes to see a lime-toned stegosaur with the most outraged expression he had ever seen. While her eyes shimmered also, her cheeks had turned a deep crimson, the heat radiating from them almost overwhelming to the human.

   Before Anon had a chance to say or do anything, Stella placed a foot upon his bedside and crossed her arms, holding her head up high, all the while still looking deep into Anon’s eyes. 

   “If you don’t believe in yourself, then that’s fine!” Stella started in a boomy voice that Anon had never heard from her. “Don’t believe in yourself, Anon!” she thundered, all the while pointing her right index finger at Anon. 

   It was now Anon’s turn to tilt his head to the side. “...What...?” he asked, unsure of what to make of Stella’s words.

   “Don't believe in the me that believes in you, and DON’T believe in the you that believes in me. Instead, believe in yourself who believes in you!” Stella again leaned towards Anon, a wide and confident ear to ear smile on her lips. “Don't get distracted by the what-if's, should-have's, and if-only's. The one thing you choose for yourself… that is the truth of your universe!” she ended, once again crossing her arms for emphasis.

   There was silence in the room for almost half a minute. In that time, Stella still pointed her finger at Anon, all the while holding one leg up and striking her crossed arms pose.

   Anon, meanwhile, was trying—and failing—to make sense of Stella’s words. Despite his throbbing headache, he did force himself to try and make some semblance of reason when it came to Stella’s motivational speech. Only when he ran the words over his head for the tenth time did he recognize that the words didn’t belong to Stella at all.

   Anon narrowed his eyes. “You... stole that from Kamina... didn’t you…?”

   Stella’s reaction to Anon’s discovery was twofold. First, Stella lost all composure and nearly fell on her rear. The only thing that kept her upright was her tail. Next was her putting on a goofy little simper. Finally, the stego gave Anon another wide-eyed and glowy stare, as if trying to divert his attention.

   Try as he did, Anon couldn’t help but find Stella's stare adorable...

   Anon sighed and rolled his eyes. “You know that quote only works if the person I’m going to believe in is strong and full of hot-blooded spirit, right?”

   Stella finally let go of her pose and moved next to Anon again, once again taking on a more conservative posture. “Am I not someone you can put your full unquestioning trust in?” Stella asked with a bit of disappointment in her voice.

   Anon shook his head and let out a soft chuckle. “Honestly, no.”

   Stella’s expression soured a bit as she again looked down at the floor.

   “However,” Anon added, his words snapping Stella from her low. “I… think I get what you were trying to tell me…” The human looked at his hand, which he clenched into a fist. “I can’t keep living in the past and beating myself over mistakes that I already made. I have to learn from those mistakes and face the future. Have to man the fuck up and set right what I so stupidly set wrong in the first place.”

   “Not just you...” Stella interrupted meekly. “I’m also responsible.”

   Anon narrowed his eyes. “How the fuck are you responsible? You were at prom enjoying yourself while I went and fucked everything up with Fang.”

   Stella sighed and reached into the purse next to the sofa. She pulled out a deck of tarot cards, one Anon was very familiar with.

   “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking with me!” Anon bemoaned as he raised his hands up in the air. “Tarot cards? That’s your big ‘mistake’!?”

   “You don’t understand. The day Fang and the others played at Dino Moe’s I gave you a reading that… I... that I failed to explain…”

   Anon rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, I remember. ‘Inverted empress,’ followed by some cryptic warning before you… fucked off to the bathroom.”

   Stella nodded, again sitting down on the couch. “I pulled the card, but I neglected to tell you what it REALLY meant for you. Then, despite knowing of your confusion, I said nothing else because…” Stella closed her eyes and sighed. “...Because I was afraid. Afraid that you would make fun of me. Afraid that you would do the opposite to prove me wrong. Afraid to..." the dino's whole body trembled as she pushed past some self-imposed inhibitor. "... Afraid to realize that I WANTED to help you… even though you never liked me as more than a friend. If I was even a friend to you at all…” She slammed the tarot deck on the nearby table and left it there, her face scrunching into a scowl of both pain and anguish. “I so wanted you to like me back then. I… I mean, we were both weebs and outcasts. Why couldn’t we help fill each other’s loneliness too?” She sobbed deeply. “The real reason I ran out on you that night was because a part of me wanted things to fall apart for you. If you… if you messed everything up with Fang... then you would have been all alone again. Then I could have found you, and we would have bonded and become happy together as fellow lovers of anime..." She brought her hands up to her face, the damn finally breaking as the dino began to weep in the most heart-wrenching way imaginable.

   Anon, despite his desire to keep a stoic expression, couldn’t help but feel the same sadness that Stella did. His experience in Dead End had left him wary of ever showing that he loved something. It got to the point that he began vilifying the very idea of showing his passions to anyone, hiding it all away so that no one could ever use his passions to hurt him. When he had first met Stella, he immediately pegged her as someone to avoid and belittle, and all because she was more open about a love he felt he had to hide from the world. Yet when his true power level became known to all, she was, along with Fang and Rosa and Reed, all there to support him through it... 

   With a still shaky arm, Anon put his right hand on Stella’s shoulder. As the lime dino turned to look him in the eye, he tried his best to put on a sympathetic smile for her. He had no words to tell her, but he hoped his expression—as battered as it was—would be enough to convey what he wanted to tell her; that even in his fucked, broken, and apathetic life, he didn’t hate her. Maybe in some alternate universe, they could have been something more than friends. A happy pair of dweebs whose idea of romance was rewatching old mecha shows while planning out their next trip to an anime convention... 

   Stella grabbed Anon’s hand with her own two hands and cuddled it. He felt a goosebump run up his arm and down his spine when he felt Stella's skin. He hadn’t felt anything so soft in nearly four years.

   The two friends stayed silent for another minute before Stella let Anon’s hands go and once again picked up her Tarot deck. “Anon… I know you don’t believe in fortunes and stuff… but do you… do you want me to give you a quick reading? For old time’s sake.”

   Anon hesitated for a second. He really didn't have the best memories when it came to Stella’s fortune-telling. At the same time, he couldn’t deny that she loved it, her flair for the occult being second to none. He also didn’t want to upset her again, especially bearing each other's hearts to one another.

   “Sure. I’d… love to,” Anon said in as neutral a tone as he could muster. His voice felt like it was about ready to give out from the previous strains.

   With Anon’s blessing, Stella shuffled the tarot deck several times over with a showy level of showmanship that he hadn’t quite ever seen from the lime stegosaur. Seeing her twist the cards, shuffle and re-shuffle them, divide the two into piles that she then pulled and brought together was mesmerizing. 

   After about thirty seconds of shuffling, Stella held the deck out to anon. “Take one,” she told Anon. 

   With a still shaky hand and a heart bearing some hesitation, Anon placed a hand on the top card of the deck and drew it. He waited exactly one second before turning the card around. 

   The card's art was that of an angelic being—one that looked like a cross between a human and dino—residing on top of a cloud while blowing a trumpet. Below it, a human male and a ptero female reached out to the angeling being, as if either asking for salvation or begging for forgiveness. 

   Anon looked at the card’s name. Before he could say the name himself, Stella spoke it for him.

   “Upright Judgement,” Stella stated as she leaned her head next to Anon’s. “You are being called to follow a new path or incorporate a new practice in your life. What you have and where you are is not who you're meant to be. It’s time to embrace change. A new era is about to begin...” Stella explained. “Anon… I think… I think this means that…” the dino didn’t finish her words, the weight of the card’s meaning hitting her so hard that it forced her to take a seat.

   Anon and Stella once more grew quiet as they absorbed the meaning of the card. As the two reconnected and reconciled friends looked at each other, they both knew that all the events the led to this point couldn’t all be mere coincidence. The odds were too low and the world too chaotic. Yet what else could it be?

   Anon wasn’t one to believe in such things as hokey religions and fate, but even he was finding it hard to rationalize it…

   Before either Stella or Anon could say another word to each other, the door to their room opened. In walked a pterosaur doctor, his light brown skin accentuating the orange crests on his head and underbeak. Unlike other dinos of his species though, one of his wings looked shriveled. From the scars and missing pieces, it looked like it had gotten crippled many years earlier... 

   Anon’s eyes went wide with shock as memories began flooding back to him. 

   Stella, for her part, stood up, her hands moving up to her mouth as she tried, and failed to suppress a gasp.

   The pterosaur looked at the stegosaur and human before his gaze fell squarely on Anon. As it did, his expression changed to a mixture of nostalgic delight and barely restrained wrath.

   “Hello... ‘brother'...” the dino spat, his every syllable laden to the brim with vitriol, almost as if speaking the words caused the dino’s beak to ache and his very stomach to turn.

   Anon’s eyes, still wide—and mouth just as widely agape—could only form one name on his tongue...

   “N-Naser?”

Chapter Text

“Hello... ‘brother'...” the pterodactyl spat, his every syllable laded to the brim with vitriol, almost as if speaking the words caused the dino’s beak to ache and his very stomach to turn.

   Anon’s eyes, still wide—and mouth just as widely agape—could only form one name on his tongue…

   “N-Naser?”

   There was no answer from Naser. Instead, the dino only continued giving the human a steely, hateful glare.  

   The room went as quiet and as still as a morgue after Anon’s words. As the seconds ticked by, neither human nor pterodactyl spoke another word. The only hint that time had not stopped was the sound of the clock's hands and the faint hum of the fluorescent lights.    

   Stella was the first person in the room to break the silence. “Naser… is that... really you?” she asked, taking a single step forward.  As the stego inspected her former classmate and once-upon-a-time top student, she found herself scarcely able to believe what she was seeing. As she tried looking deep into Naser's eyes, she found herself looking into what almost seemed like a void. It was that more than anything that forced her body to move between Anon and Naser, almost as if her instinct warned her that something terrible was about to happen between them. 

   Much like with Anon, Naser disappeared not long after graduating from Volcano High. Unlike Anon, Naser’s departure had less to do with completely falling off the face of the earth and more with his entry into medical school. Everyone knew where Naser would go. They just never expected him to go so soon and so unceremoniously. After four years of absence, to see him standing before her garbed in a doctor’s coat and with a grim look of ice-cold fury sent chills run down her spine. In her mind, she had wanted their reunion to be perfect, her and the others laughing about their lives up to that point. But, of course, considering everything that had happened up to that point, that dream was just that... a dream.

   Naser redirected his hate-filled stare towards Stella. While downright soft compared to the glower he had on Anon, it nonetheless remained sharp enough to pierce through steel. “Stella,” the ptero acknowledged. “If you don’t mind me asking… what are you doing here with… him...?” he hissed his last words out, almost like it was taking all his willpower to not rush forward and strangle Anon.

   Stella, swallowing hard and giving a side glance towards Anon, put on the best smile that she could muster on her lips. “Oh, you know, the usual that you’d do with someone you haven’t seen in four years! Catch up, reminisce a bit, be glad that they’re alive...” She took another step to the right, this time getting completely between Naser and Anon. “Stuff like that!” she added with a wave of her hand and a giggle.

   Naser sighed and put a hand to the ridge of his nose. “Stella… you… haven’t changed at all.”

   Stella’s brow furrowed a bit. Even so, she still gave her former classmate a broad simper. “Sure haven’t!” she exclaimed, giving Naser a wink while sticking her tongue out.

   Naser took an ominous step forward. “Stella… I’m only going to say this once. Get out of here.” He again set his glare on Anon.

   Stella’s smile completely dissolved as she took a step forward and glared at Naser. “No,” she snapped in reply. “Naser… I know that you’re angry at Anon, b—”

   “ANGRY!?” Naser shouted at the top of his lungs. His raised tone, combined with a contorted grimace of utter wrath, completely interrupted whatever it was that Stella wanted to say, causing her to flinch and recoil backward. “‘Angry’ doesn’t even BEGIN to describe what I’m feeling at this second!” 

   Before Stella could even think of something else to say, Naser took another step forward. As he did, he clenched his fists into white-knuckled fists as he glared fiery daggers at Anon. “Never in my life have I felt the rage I’m feeling at this very instant. Four years; four FUCKING years I’ve carried this!” he pointed an accusatory finger towards the human. “And it’s all because of him! He caused everything to fall apart! Our perfect lives, our perfect futures! If it wasn’t for that... fucker, Fang wouldn’t have run away. If it wasn’t for him, Naomi wouldn’t have dumped me like a piece of trash. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have had to work my ass off so hard to keep my parents from falling further into hopelessness!” He set his gaze back on Stella. “And it’s not only me he fucked over. Trish, Reed, Rosa, even you! EVERYONE would have had a better life if it wasn’t for this self-centered piece of shit!”

   Despite quaking in her shoes in response to Naser’s outburst, Stella took yet another step forward. Her move put her only inches away from her former classmate's face. It was only at that distance that Stella noticed how much taller Naser had gotten in the last four years. Tall enough that he was on par with his father now. “Anon may be responsible for what happened with Fang… but he’s not to blame for everyone else’s misfortune!” Stella snapped back at Naser, this time poking him in the chest for added emphasis.

   Naser scoffed and looked at Stella with disbelief. “Are you that deluded? You can trace everyone’s misfortunes back to Anon!”

   Stella looked like she was ready to start shouting at Naser when Anon suddenly spoke.

   “Stella,” he started, causing the stego to turn back and look at him. “Naser… Naser’s right...”

   Stella shook her head in disbelief. Anon only closed his eyes and let out a sigh. “Naser… I… I know I don’t have any right to say this… but I’m sorry…”

   Naser practically shoved his way past Stella to stand right next to the human’s bed. From up above, the pterodactyl fixed the human with a glower so fervent that his amber eyes felt like they could start a fire at any second. As he did, he grasped his hands into fists, the skin on his knuckles threatening to tear from the force.

   “No. You’re not sorry,” Naser replied before lunging forward and grabbing Anon by the gruff of his hospital gown. With a rage-full lift, he brought the human up so he was at eye level with him. “If you were sorry, you wouldn't have ever shown your face in this town again!”

   “Anon!” Stella shouted as she rushed forward to try and break Naser’s grip on the human. She wrapped her hands around the pterodactyl's arm, but she found she didn’t have enough muscle to make the arm budge even a millimeter. “Put him down!” she shouted, tears pooling in his eyes as she struggled to separate the human and dino. “Please!" she sobbed. "This… this isn't what friends should be doing to each other...”

   Naser scoffed in reply to Stella's words. Despite the fury on his face remaining—if not intensifying—he let go of Anon. The human fell back on the bed, coughing and attempting to scramble away from the sizeable pissed-off pterodactyl still standing over him. 

   “...‘Friend’...” Naser repeated in a sickened tone as he stepped away from Anon's bedside. He did not say another word as he snatched the clipboard at the base of the bed and looked it over. After reading it, he seized the top page, crumpling it in his hand and stuffing it in his coat. Without so much as another word, he turned around and opened the door. But before he left the room, he gave Anon and Stella one final glance before walking out and shutting the door.

   Anon let out a deep breath and let himself collapse. He put a hand on his chest and tried to calm his speeding heart. But, unfortunately, it was easier said than done.

   Stella fell upon Anon and began checking his body for any injury. When she found none, she let out a massive sigh of relief and sat back down on the nearby couch. Seconds later, she began sniffing as she brought a hand up to her face in a desperate attempt to hold back tears.

   Despite feeling like he had no right to, Anon again put a hand on his friend's shoulder. Like she had done earlier, the lime stego grabbed the human's hand and cuddled it up to her face. Anon was again taken back by the softness of Stella’s skin. It made his face feel warm and brought him ease. Or at least, as much ease as he could have considered what had happened. 

   Anon looked in Stella’s direction, expecting to see a semblance of a smile or something to tell him that she was alright. Instead, he was only met with a sunken and defeated expression from the stegosaur.

   “Stella,” Anon started, forcing the stego to look him in the eyes again. “...This… this wasn’t... your fault…” he whispered, all the while gently cradling her cheek.

   Stella slowly began perking in response to the human’s words. She looked at him with her own light blue eyes. The deeper she looked, though, the damper her eyes got. It wasn’t long before her vision became a hazy mess as tears began flowing. Whatever smile she once carried vanished as the total weight of the last few minutes sunk in. She let another soul-crushing sob, and before the human could say or do anything to comfort his friend, she fell upon his chest, grabbing hold of his arms for support all the while wailing in anguish.

   Anon wanted so badly to say something to ease Stella’s sadness, but he couldn’t find any words that he could say that wouldn’t be in agreement with Naser. ‘He has every right to hate me,’ he bitterly yet legitimately thought. He had more than earned his former classmate's ire… and a hell of a lot more than that. With no other thought in his mind, he put a hand on Stella’s head in an attempt to comfort her as she cried her heart out…

***

Naser stood outside of Anon’s room for about a second before scoffing and walking off in disgust. He couldn’t fathom why Stella would stick by Anon considering he had done everything in his power to scorn her once upon a time. ‘Yet there she stood defending the bastard. Then she dares to cry because I have every right at being angry?’

   Naser hissed in annoyance, bringing his fist up in preparation to hit the nearest wall. Instead, he took a deep breath and exhaled. He reached into his coat and pulled out the crumbled-up paper he had taken from Anon’s bed and looked it over again, a grimace forming on his lips. 

   Unlike everyone else, Naser had not once accepted that Anon had gone and died without no one noticing. Deep down in the pterodactyl's heart, he knew the human was too stubborn and spiteful. He had been so confident in that knowledge, he waited, imagining for four years what he would do to the human if he ever saw him again. He again took a deep breath to get his anger under control. He did this now as much as he did when he began medical school right out of high school. But, in a twist of irony that wasn’t entirely lost on him. The same unbridled fury he felt for the human helped him get through his higher education. Begrudgingly, the rage he couldn’t channel towards beating Anon became his fuel. It drove him to work harder than any of his peers, pushing his very natural limits past the point where anyone else would have burnt out. It cost him though, as he eschewed all social connections and any personal growth beyond his medical career. Whereas other peers found friends, even love, with each other, he pushed on with his singular goal. Yet as he got closer to his graduation, a deep fog of uncertainty fell over him. What would he do when he reached his end goal? Where would he go? Graduating not top of the class, but also early earned him calls from hospitals the world over. A ticket to anywhere in the world... yet he chose Volcaldera Bluffs' hospital. The equivalent of working at a convenience store. 

   What had brought Naser back to the very place that he had run away from just a little over two weeks ago? He didn't know. Or least, he hadn't known... until earlier that day, when he had seen Anon’s name and face in the recent admittance records. How he had believed it to be a trick of his imagination. That he would read over the name again only to realize his brain had played a cruel joke on him. That the picture of the bald, almost featureless human he had seen was his wishful thinking and nothing else. But a closer inspection had revealed to him that it was no hoax. Anon was in his hospital, and he was for once in a position of power over the human, his life in his hands. Anon was back into his life... except for the troublesome fact that Anon had returned to his life as a patient…

   For the first time since finishing medical school, Naser felt great regret at taking the Hippocratic oath. As a doctor, he could not harm anyone. Sure, there wasn’t a technical punishment for breaking the oath, but becoming an oathbreaker wasn’t exactly an appealing prospect. There was also the threat of getting slapped with malpractice. If that happened, then all his struggles and sacrifices graduating from medical school would be for naught. 

   In the absence of a more immediate solution to his problem, Naser came up with a plan. A risky strategy, but one that was his only real recourse. 

   First, Naser had claimed Anon as a sibling. The idea made his stomach churn. It not only meant having to pay for the human's hospital stay out of his own pocket, but it also meant faking a blood relation with the human. Even so, having Anon as his brother on paper gave him a bit more leeway for the next part of his plan, which was to become Anon’s physician. Once he had direct and exclusive access to the human's health, he would be in almost complete authority.

   From there, all it would take to take care of Anon would be a convenient ‘accident.' Maybe a bit more air would find its way inside of Anon's IV solution. Maybe Anon would need some kind of surgery, at which point one of his major arteries could be ‘accidentally’ severed. Or perhaps Anon would need to ingest some type of medicine, and he would ‘accidentally’ get drugs that were past their expiration date. Even in the best-operated hospitals, accidents happened and were a lot more common than people wanted to admit... 

   With thoughts that shouldn’t live inside of a doctor’s mind, Naser gave the paper in his hand one final confirmatory read before once again stuffing the sheet in his coat. He took a deep breath and buried whatever leftover anger he still had. Then, with his mind fixed on the next part of his plan, he walked up to the second floor’s receptionist. 

   “Good afternoon,” Naser said in a confident, albeit forced, tone.

   “Afternoon. How can I help you?” the receptionist, an earthen brown gorgosaurus in a blue nurse's outfit, asked without turning away from her computer screen.

   Naser inwardly scoffed at the receptionist’s rudeness but maintained his smile. “I need to speak to Director Joshua if he’s available.”

   The receptionist finally looked away from her computer screen and inspected Naser a bit before putting on a simper. “Oh, you’re the new doctor we hired two weeks ago! Naser Aaran, right?”

   “The one and only,” Naser answered, the smirk on his lips never wavering despite how forced it was.

   The nurse ran a hand through her short curly black hair as she gave her full attention to Naser. “A lot of talk going around about you!” She said, leaning in a bit closer to the pterodactyl. “Is it true that you graduated one year early?”

   Naser felt his brow twitch a bit but maintained a polite smile on his lips. “Yes, I did. Wasn’t easy!” He answered. He wanted so badly to grimace at his own words, but he couldn’t let the receptionist pick up on any sign of weakness.

   The receptionist let out a whistle and went back to typing something on her computer. “Well, congratulations on the D.O. then,” she concluded whatever it was that she was clicking away at and again turned to look at Naser. “So, you want to see if Mr. Joshua is available?”

   “Yes, that would be very considerate.”

   The receptionists again perked an eyebrow. “The director is a very busy man. What’s the occasion?”

   Naser steeled himself for the words that were about to come out of his mouth…

   “Well, you see, my… brother… recently got into an accident, and he wound up admitted into our hospital.” 

   The receptionist’s expression softened. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. If you don’t mind me asking, is he okay?”

   Naser had to fight the urge to frown at the reminder. “He’s doing fine! Was out for a while, but he woke up less than an hour ago…”

   The receptionist perked at hearing the news. “Oh, wonderful!”

   ‘Yeah, absolutely wonderful...’ Naser thought as he continued to force a grin on his lips. “Unfortunately, he suffered some cranial trauma, so he might be here for a while.”

   “Oh, so my guess is that you want to transfer his health care to your account?” The receptionist asked Naser

   “Already did,” Naser answered, the words causing him no short supply of grief. “I feel like I could give him a bit more direct care though, so I wanted to ask the director if I could become his direct physician. At latest until he's ready for his discharge.”

   The receptionist was silent and stoic for a second before giving Naser a warm smile. “Aw, family really does stick together!” she announced in a sickenly cute voice, one that the ptero couldn't help but compare to his ex-girlfriend's mannerisms.

   Naser forced himself to grin even wider despite the vile he was feeling churning in his stomach. As the discomfort in his gut grew, he started to worry that he might develop an ulcer. 

   “I’ll go ahead and page the director. Give me a second.” The receptionist said she reached for the phone next to her computer and dialed a number with practiced speed. A few seconds later, the receptionist spoke to the receiver. “Director Joshua? Yes. I have Doctor Naser here wanting to talk to you. Yeah. Says it’s about his sibling who was recently admitted to our hospital. Hmmm. Okay. I’ll send him to you right away then.”

   The receptionist hung the phone and turned back to Naser. “The director will be waiting for you. His office is on the fifth floor. Take a left after you leave the elevators and head straight. You won’t be able to miss the big double doors to his office.”

   “Thank you so much,” Naser responded, giving the receptionist a smile and a quick wave before taking off towards the elevators in the foyer. After less than a two minute walk, he reached the elevators and pressed the call button. The elevator only took a minute to arrive. To Naser’s relief, it was empty. ‘Will give my cheeks a chance to rest,’ he thought as he stepped into the lift and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator then took off without a fuzz, traveling at a reasonable pace, all the while playing a pleasant little jingle.

   As the elevator crawled its way up to the fifth floor, other errant thoughts entered Naser’s mind. He wondered what his parents were up to. He hadn’t seen or spoken to them in four years. Since his return to Volcadera Bluffs two weeks earlier, he still hadn't worked up the courage to even go near his old neighborhood. A part of him felt that he didn’t deserve to face his parents again. How could he when he had failed both as a brother and a son? If he saw his parents again, would they be proud to hear how he graduated so early at the expense of any social and emotional growth? He knew his mother at least wouldn't want to hear that. And of course, there was the biggest elephant in the room, Fang. A part of him dreamed of returning home to find his sister there, waiting with the news that not long after he left for medical school, she changed her mind and came back home. Of course, he knew that was only a dream. Fang vanished so abruptly from everyone's life it was almost as if she had died. The scariest part was that with how Fang left to trace behind, they could very well be dead and no one would ever know…

   Naser put a hand over his face and fought back some tears threatening to form in his eyes. His lack of knowledge on Fang’s whereabouts tormented him to no end… and he would do anything to just know that she was still alive...

   ...Anything...

   Naser forcefully turned his thoughts away from Fang and onto something else. His mind went back to recalling his conversation with the receptionist. Yet as she thought back to the young and somewhat cute gorgosaur, he recalled someone else who also took a chunk of his soul with her when she left him. His high school ex, Naomi...

     'God-dammit…’ Naser thought as memories of his ex flooded his mind. How he had loved and cared for her… until she had stopped loving him back. He never understood why she turned so hostile near the end of their relationship. A part of him had always had a suspicion that he desperately wished was false; that she never loved him for who he was, but only for the prestige he brought to her. Blind as he might have been in his younger years, age had brought with it brutal and unforgiving hindsight. In retrospect, he should have seen the signs. Naomi, after all, had always striven to be the best at any one time. Perfectionist to a fault, the moment he showed even a single sign of imperfection, she tossed him aside like a moldy apple in a basket of plum and juicy ones. But like the crazy and loving fool that he was, he couldn’t help but wonder if she was doing good with her life. Surely, if anyone had made something of themselves, it was Naomi...

   The elevator’s door slid open, and Naser stepped out. He vanished all other thoughts from his mind with an exhale except for those of this most immediate goal. He turned left as the receptionist had instructed and then walked down the hall. The hall itself sported wooden walls. Potted plants and pictures of people that couldn’t be anyone else but members of the board of doctors from years past finished the decor. The added fact that they all sported smiles that seemed superficial only added to Naser’s feeling of unease. As he reached the door, he paused to fix up his coat and ran over his words again. He had come too far to get his words jumbled up and cause hitches to his plans.

   With a twist of the door handles, Naser stepped into the director’s office. It was a relatively large space on the simple side, the only pieces of furniture being a large old-styled work desk and a pair of desk chairs facing the desk. What parts of the wall weren’t large glass windows made of the same wooding out in the hall leading to the office. Instead, much like the hallway outside, the walls donned paintings of natural vistas and a few medical diagrams on both human and dinosaur anatomy. Sitting on the other side of his work desk was a blue-toned archelon who Naser had to guess had to be somewhere in his early sixties. Yet his estimation could have been wildly off, considering the dino still sported a complete set of black-toned hair and even a small yet well-maintained beard. Mr. Joshua also looked sternly build, his chest broad and shockingly well-toned. Considering that he had to lug around a daily bulky shell, it made sense that the director would be on the burly side. Naser couldn’t help but imagine what his boss would have looked like in his younger years. Maybe something between a linebacker and a marine.

   Before Naser’s thoughts could drift away further from him, he’s snapped back to reality when director Joshua acknowledges his presence. “Ah, Doctor Naser. What can I do for you today?”

   With one final inhale, Naser steps forward to the base of director Joshua’s desk.

   “Good afternoon Doctor Joshua.”

   “Please, call me Joshua,” the director responded with an amiable smile.

   Naser cleared his throat. “Well then, Mr. Joshua, I came today because I need to make a request.”

   The director sighed at Naser's unwillingness to stop being so formal and instead moved on. “Ah yes, the situation with your ‘sibling’...” the elder dino said as he reached into a drawer on his desk and brought out a manilla folder he likely had prepped for when Naser got there.

   Naser’s eyes widened as he felt ice drop into the pit of his stomach.

   “Doctor Naser… I have the understanding that you claimed Mr. Anon Y. Mous as your sibling… even though you and he are, well... quite unrelated,” Director Joshua started as he gave the files a read. “It says here that he attended Volcano High for the last six months of his senior year. The same school and same grade level as you.”

   Naser gave his boss a single nod of acknowledgment. ‘How could I have been so damn stupid?’ he thought to himself as he recalled how every person, no matter how ‘obscure’ they were in the eyes of society, still had a medical record. It wasn’t like they were living in the middle ages anymore, where all it took was moving from one town to another to completely change identities. What was more, Anon had served in the navy before being medically discharged. So he, of all people, would have a medical record on hand.

   Naser wanted to beat himself up so bad for his stupidity...

   “So… my understanding of the situation is that this patient is a… dear friend of yours, is he not?” the director inquired bluntly, snapping Naser out of his thoughts.

   Naser almost recoiled at his boss’ words. Only practiced stoicism kept him from showing anything other than a confirmatory glance towards the director.

   Director Joshua turned his attention back to Anon’s profile. “Says here, Mr. Mous did not finish school and went straight into the navy’s PACT program. There, he served a four-year tour of duty until suffering an injury on a ladder well. He was then medically discharged two and a half weeks ago.” He closed the manilla folder and put it down. “Sounds like he’s had a rough four years."

   "That he has, Mr. Joshua," Naser said in his best monotone in an attempt to salvage the situation for himself. 

   Director Joshua narrowed his eyes for a second before suddenly changing gears and smiling quite widely. "No wonder you want to help him out so badly!” he almost cheered unapologetically.

   Naser couldn’t bring himself to say a word. In his mind, he wanted to snap at his boss and tell him that the last thing he had on his mind was helping the human who turned his whole life upside down. After some more careful consideration though, he gave his boss a nod in reply.

   "The first thing that comes to your mind on seeing an old friend in need is to help him out. That right there is the true spirit of a doctor," the director said with perhaps a bit more cheer than was necessary. "I'm proud of you, my boy!" he ended his words with a thumb's up.

   Naser wasn't quite sure what to make of his boss' words, but something about them struck him in a way that he couldn't quite describe. A part of him felt revulsion at the idea of helping Anon do anything besides pay for his crimes. Yet, another part of him felt an odd sense of satisfaction at being the better man by assisting Anon to mend whatever wounds had caused him to become so hollow and pathetic in the first place. Yes, he wanted to see Anon pay for his sins... but did he want to damage someone who was already broken to begin with?

   For the first time in four years, Naser found himself questioning his own anger...

   "Standard insurance policy would dictate that I remove Mr. Anon from your medical insurance, but seeing as you went to so much trouble to fill out his paperwork, I’ll let it slide.” The director said with a chuckle, snapping Naser back to reality. “I’ve never been a fan of how insurances see people as only money Anyway. Besides, it’s not exactly illegal. Just unusual.” The archelon sat upright and put both of his hands back on the desk. “I get the feeling though that the insurance coverage situation wasn’t why you wanted to talk to me, though,” he added in a moderately ominous tone.

   Naser paused to consider what he should do next. His plan was already on very shaky ground; his luck pushed pretty far as it was. He was fortunate that his boss was such an understanding person, but even he would no doubt raise an eyebrow at his request, especially now that the truth was out…

   Naser gripped his hands tight. ‘No. I’ve come too far now to pussy out,’ he thought resolutely. Maybe it was the rage still burning in him, or perhaps he had really lost his mind from four years of missing out on sleep. Whatever the case, his father hadn’t raised a coward. He was an Aaran, for Raptor Jesus’s sake!

   “Mr. Joshua, I want to request becoming Anon’s physician,” Naser almost blurted out.

   The director raised an eyebrow in response to Naser's request. “That is… highly unusual," he said bluntly. "Why do you want to do that?"

   Naser swallowed a lump in his throat and gave his boss as warm a smile as he could muster. "Anon is... someone dear to me. As his friend, I feel like I'm... uniquely qualified to help him, both physically and emotionally."

   The director once again looked at Naser with a flat, indecipherable look. "Normally, its the patient who makes a physician request, not the other way around,” he announced, bringing a finger to his chin and closing his eyes in contemplation. For five long seconds, the office went quiet as the director submerged himself in thought. Once those five seconds were up, director Joshua opened his eyes again and gave Naser a warm smile. “Well, seeing as you are already claiming Mr. Anon as your sibling and are paying for half of his medical expenses, I don’t see the problem with you also being his physician. Although...” he rapped his fingers over the desk as his expression soured somewhat. "It reminds me of a similar situation that happened many years ago."

   "O-oh?" Naser asked almost instinctually.

   "Yeah," the director continued as he leaned back on his office chair. "Sixty years ago, there was a doctor who also claimed that he had a sibling he wanted to personally oversee. At the time, it was a bit more common, so no one really batted an eye. Then, one week later, the patient died in the middle of an operation. The cause? An accidental rupture of a major artery." The older dino shook his head solemnly as he moved to his computer and typed out something on it. "The doctor in charge of the patient was promptly fired and stripped of all his medical licenses." The director turned to look at Naser again, only this time, much less warmly than before. "Accidents do happen in the medical field, but it is our job as physicians to keep said accidents from becoming more than statistical anomalies. Remember our oath as doctors: share your knowledge, support the unwell and downtrodden, and do no harm." 

   Naser, unable to think or say anything in response to his boss' words, nodded in acknowledgment.

   With a nod of his own, the director turned back to his computer one more time and quickly typed out something on his keyboard. Five seconds later, he hit the device's final button before again turning back to face the pterodactyl. “Doctor Naser, Mr. Anon is now in your care. All that's left now is to fill out some paperwork.”

   Naser let out the air he had been holding in his lungs and tried to smile, only to find a part of himself unable to. Finally, through sheer force of will, he forced the corners of his mouth to rise in the closest facsimile of a smile that he could form given the maelstrom of emotion in his heart. “Thank you so much, Mr. Joshua.”

   “No problem at all, my boy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some more work to get done before the sun sets.”

   Naser gave his boss a nod and walked out of the office, closing the door behind him as gently as he could. Once he heard the mechanism click, he let out a huge sigh and hobbled towards the nearest wall.

   He should have been ecstatic. He should have been celebrating the fact that his plan was finally coming to fruition. Finally, four years of misery were close to ending in a single great moment of cathartic retribution against a person who most certainly deserved it, and then some. Yet despite being so close to the finish line, Naser very suddenly felt utterly ill.

   Without another word or thought from him, Naser moved towards the elevator at a brisk pace, reaching the lift one minute earlier than when he had first sought out the director. Without wasting a second on errant thoughts, he called up the machine. The instant the doors slid open, the dino stepped in, once again finding the compartment empty. As before, the silence gave the ptero mind ample chance to think over what was to happen next. It wasn't long before a voice in the back of his head screamed and begged him to stop and think about what he was planning. 'This isn't who you are,' the voice screamed into his ear. 'What's revenge going to earn you? Will it magically make Fang return home? Will it set right everything that went wrong with your friends and family? Will it really make you happy?'

   Naser looked down at his shoes and brought a hand up to his face. Then, with another sigh, he leaned against the elevator's walls and closed his eyes. For the first time in four years, the rage that had given him so much purpose feel frail and petty…

   Naser sighed again and looked down at his hand. With a grim expression, he clenched his hands shut and grimaced with newfound determination.

   It was time to end it once and for all...   

***

Anon opened his eyes and groggily looked at the room’s clock. It was exactly one hour and one minute since Naser had so shockingly reappeared into his life. 

   Anon hadn’t thought he’d ever see his ex-classmate again, but fate, it seemed, had a funny way of playing things out. He wasn’t sure if it was his well-deserved lousy luck or some curse cast upon him by Neptune. If it was a curse, then it had to be because of that one time he kicked an albatross off the deck of his ship. He’d been told hundreds of times by his more superstitious comrades that killing a seabird was grounds for a nautical curse. Anon being Anon though, he hadn’t cared for some hookey seaman ghost story.

   Now though, as he thought back to all that had happened up to his hospitalization. His accident at sea, the dreams of a better life mocking him, his spiral into substance abuse self-destruction, his seeing of Fang once again, and now Naser of all people in the world working in the same hospital he wound up in. Anon couldn’t help but feel like there was something grander out there making sure he started paying all the dues he owed.

   The human shut his eyes and recalled all of Naser’s words to him. While he would have loved to pretend they meant nothing to him, he knew deep down that they hadn’t been harsh enough. He deserved all the vitriol that Naser could conjure at him and then some more.

   Anon tried to shift his body around, but then he felt something on top of his body. Turning his eyes down, he spotted Stella’s head lying on top of his waist. Confused at first, he carefully slid a hand out of his covers and moved to poke one of his friends’ green hair buns. He paused when he heard a snort escape from the stego's mouth. 

   Blinking a few times to process the scene before him, Anon followed Stella’s body and noticed how she had shifted the sofa next to his bed so that it now faced his bedside rather than the room’s entrance. With the new position, she was able to plop her head and chest over him more comfortably, her face directed at the door, almost as if serving like some kind of watch dog.

   Anon sighed and shook his head. ‘She pours out her heart to me, and next thing I know, she’s doing something like this…’ 

   At that thought, Anon found himself struggling to piece together how Stella could like someone as socially dense as he was. ‘And not like as a friend either,’ he thought in surprise. The absolute last thing he had expected to hear that day was how Stella had liked him as more than a friend back in high school. It was a heck of a lot more than he deserved even back then. His more cynical side wanted to believe that Stella’s revelation was a spur-of-the-moment type of thing. That she got her words confused with some anime quote and only wanted to make him feel good before once again departing from his life. Yet as he stared at the sleeping dino on his lap, that cynical voice was having a harder time convincing him otherwise.

   The human tried to think what was it about him that Stella liked. The obvious answer would have been their shared love of anime, but Anon felt that wasn’t quite the answer. Both Stella and himself hadn’t exactly been the shining beacons of popularity four years ago. Could it have been their shared status as social outcasts? Stella always seemed to have a way of making others avoid her, no doubt thanks to her general awkwardness and obsession with the occult. As for Anon… aside from being the only ‘skinny’ in a school of dinos, there had also been the whole doxing incident. In fact, that damned incident had very nearly cost him his life when he took that tumble down the stairs. ‘If it hadn’t been for Fang that day…’

   Anon paused in his tracks. He'd almost forgotten in the chaos of his last few days that there had been someone else who liked him once upon a time. Someone that, despite all their flaws and shattered outlook on their own existance, had still found it in their hearts to love him all the same... 

   ...At least until he fucked it all up in a drunken stupor...

   Anon took another look at Stella and grimaced. A nasty taste began to fill his mouth as he realized that he didn't deserve Stella's kindness. 'After all, people don't change... so I'm only going to end up fucking things up for her...' he thought as he put a hand on the stego's shoulder. 'I deserve my current misery. No need to drag someone else down with me as well.'

   Before Anon could shake Stella awake, the door to his room swung open. Almost as if startled awake by an electrical prod, Stella jumped awake, turning to face the door and once again placing herself between the human and whoever had just dared intrude into the area. As she did all that, her face twisted into a scowl and her hands curled into fists.

   "Woah!" an orange-toned ankylosaur in a florally adorned black dress yelped, raising her hands up defensively. "¡¿Que hice para enojarte, Stella?!" Rosa shouted as she took a step backward.

   Upon seeing her friend's face, Stella relaxed her pose and expression before letting out a huge sigh of relief. Before Rosa could say another word—or think about anything really—the stegosaur rushed forward to tightly embrace the orange dino, all the while sniffling as whatever anger she once had dissolved as happiness took over.

   Rosa blinked a few times before patting Stella on the back. "There, there, mija. Whatever's wrong, it's okay..."

   Stella nodded and broke the hug before walking back to Anon's bedside, where she again sat down on the couch and leaned back with a groan.

   Rosa let out a slight chuckle as she closed the door behind her and set her eyes on Anon. The moment she did, her expression considerably brightened at seeing her old classmate awake and lucid. 

   "So... An-On... it's uh..." Rosa started, all the while rubbing the back of her head and giving the human a wide simper. "...Ha pasado mucho tiempo... ¿no?"

   It takes a few moments for Anon to translate Rosa's Spanish in his head. When he does, he gives the orange dino a nod of acknowledgment but says not a word. 

   Rosa began fidgeting a bit with her hands, seemingly unsure of what to say or do next. Finally, after a few seconds of awkward silence, she let out a sigh and walked right up to Anon's bedside. "May I?" She asked the human, who considered the dino's word for an attosecond before nodding.

   With Anon's blessing, Rosa sat down on the edge of the bed, careful not to sit on his leg. Only once she found a seat did she let out the breath she had been holding in her lungs and looked Anon in the eyes. "Look, An-On... I'm... I'm having trouble trying to figure out what to say here," she started in an uneven voice, almost as if she was struggling to keep her tone consistent. "I-I mean..." She grimaced as she leaned closer to the human's face. "¡Pense que estabas muerto!" she abruptly shouted, her eyes slightly shimmering in the sterile light of the room and her cheeks reddening from a mixture of emotion. "Stupido! First, y-you stop going to school! Then you disappear completely! Then no one sees or hears anything from you for four years. FOUR YEARS! And then... and then you suddenly show up again... b-but all beat up and... and..." she scowled, all the while more tears welled in her eyes. "¡¿Quiénes fueron los cabrones que te malmataron?!" she asked, her face only growing a darker shade of red. "When I find them, I'm going shove my chancla up their asses so far up they're going to be tasting leather for at least a month!"

   Anon shifted his eyes towards Stella in the vain hope of glimpsing some kind of answer from the lime green stego. She had taken the revelation that his attackers had been none other than himself relatively well, but Stella was Stella, and she really hadn't changed much in the last four years. Rosa, on the other hand, was a completely different story. He had no idea how she would handle the revelation that the one who had beat him up had been himself. If she was still the same fiery latina he remembered, then she would beat him back into another coma, all the while holding a great deal of disappointment in him... which, frankly, he found far worse than any anger she might have towards him.

   When Stella only gave Anon a warm smile and a nod, the human came to the conclusion that he might as well face the music. He just hoped that the orange fury he recalled Rosa being capable of becoming had considerably dulled over the last four years...

   "About that..." Anon started, setting his eyes directly into Rosa's crimson orbs. Then, with a deep breath of air and what little resolution he had wrangled into place, Anon narrated to Rosa just what had happened to him. He left nothing out, from the dreams to his overindulgence in alcohol and weed, and finally to his self-inflicted injuries.

   Anon could practically feel the heat rising within Rosa. With one last exhale, he closed his eyes and prepared himself to receive the beating of his life...

   ...Instead, Rosa let out a sob and grabbed Anon by the shoulders, bringing him in for a tight yet gentle embrace, her head resting on top of his head as her soft brown hair draped over Anon's cranium. "¡St-stupido!" She shouted as she tightened her grip around the human's head. "Y-you stupid, STUPID boy! Hiding away your pain and thinking that you're all alone in the w-world!" she let out another sob, Anon feeling something wet hit the top of his bald head. "It's okay An-On... everything's okay... estoy aqui for you..."

   Anon sat speechlessly. In his mind, he tried to rationalize why Rosa, of all people, would be as lovingly welcoming as she was being. He hadn't precisely been friendly towards the Hispanic dino in the past. If anything, he had been rude and dismissive. Perhaps not to the same level as he had been with Stella, but certainly enough to ensure that the ankylosaur would view him as nothing less than an asshole. Yet, despite having given her every right to shun him, there she was, embracing him like he was the most precious thing in her world at that moment.

   Anon couldn't handle it. He broke away from Rosa's embrace and gently pushed her away from him. "Why?" he asked her, unable to keep his emotion from showing. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

   Rosa's expression soured at Anon's words. "Why am I being so nice?" She asked with a growing scowl on her face. "Why am I being so nice!?" she repeated, this time standing up from the bed and crossing her arms.

   Anon glanced sideways towards Stella, who only gave Anon a cheeky little smile that more or less said, 'you've done it now.' 

   "Tell me An-On, are you really so pessimistic as to think that there wouldn't be anyone happy to see you again!?" Rosa roared at Anon in the same way that one would expect to hear from a mother scolding her child. "I don't know what kind of appalling life you've had since dropping out of school, but I'll have you know that I NEVER once saw you as anything less than an amigo!" She again leaned close to the human and fixed him with a harsh yet somehow caring glower. "Si, you were often rude and distant and definitely in need of some lessons in empathy, but deep down, I knew that wasn't the real you!" the orange dino sighed again, and her expression and tone dropped. "The doxing incident... it was pretty shameful... but it showed to me why you were so cold and distant and unemotional and willing to distance yourself from everyone... and I'm so, SO sorry something like that happened to you..."

   Anon was now the one to grow angry, his brow furrowing as he glared at Rosa. "Why would you be sorry about me? Why did you even give me the time of day when you knew how terrible and pathetic I really am?"

   "BECAUSE—" Rosa shouted back, her cheeks turning a bright shade of red to match her eyes. Before she could say anything else, she shut her mouth and let out a silent yell before closing her eyes. "Porque vi lo bueno dentro de ti..."

   "W-what?" Anon asked, not quite sure if he had heard correctly.

   Rosa breathed and fixed Anon with a stalwart yet gentle gaze. "The first time I met you, you were just some idiota that ruined my flowers and couldn't even plant seedlings right! Que Raptor Jesus me perdone por decir esto, but I honestly expected to hate you! Yet, the more I got to know you in those beautification weekends and beyond, the more I realized that the front of callousness you built for yourself wasn't who you really were, and I..." she turned away from the human, the red on her cheeks growing brighter. "...I started to think to myself... 'este hombre solo necesita una buena chica a su lado para brillar...'" She grit her teeth and turned back to face Anon. "I-I know it sounds stupid. Childish even! But the idea of helping you surpass all your problems and support you as you became el hombre that I knew was buried somewhere inside was..." She again closed her eyes, a warm smile spreading across her lips. "By my lord on his cross of rock, was it a stupid childish idea that only niños could come up with! Como si el amor fuera realmente asi de facil..." 

   Having sat in silence as Rosa poured out her heart out to Anon, Stella now had a look on her face somewhere between extreme astonishment and dainty melancholy. She didn't quite know how to feel about her friend's revelation on her feelings for Anon back in high school. Had the stego been a more jealous woman, she would have felt some anger at the disclosure. Yet, with how heartfelt Rosa had been, the only thing she felt was understanding, as well as a sense of relief. Relief that she wasn't alone in her past feelings towards Anon.

   Anon, meanwhile, could barely wrap his head around what he had just learned from Rosa. The more the human tried to make sense of it, the more it baffled him. 'With Stella, I can understand. We were and still are weebs and still are awkward. We were loners looking for friends and someone to love us. But Rosa? Rosa and I just weren't compatible in high school. She was the polar opposite of everything I strove to be!' Anon thought as he gave the orange ankylosaur a look of disbelief.

   Perhaps realizing the kind of emotional bomb she had dropped on the scene—or maybe thinking that the conversation was best steered elsewhere—Rosa cleared her throat and turned to face Stella. "So, bichita," she started, the redness of her cheeks still visible despite her best attempts to move past the moment. "Now that we know that An-On's okay... wanna go get some food? Maybe change out of that tracksuit you've been wearing all day?"

   Stella's expression expectantly soured. "No," she replied bluntly.

   Rosa raised an eyebrow and shifted her head back a bit. "No? ¿Por que?"

   Stella looked to Anon, her eyes again filling with the anger, sadness, and pain from earlier that day. Her sight hung over the human for about a second, during which time she seemed to debate whether she wanted—or rather needed—to tell her friend of the complicated situation brewing. Meanwhile, while a good part of Anon's brain told him to not do anything to encourage more grief from Stella, the human knew that in this particular case, hiding the truth wasn't in anyone's favor. Gently, he grabbed hold of Stella's hand and gave her a nod of confirmation. Before the stego could open her mouth to speak, Anon turned to face Rosa and spoke for her. "We met Naser earlier. He's a doctor in this hospital."

   Rosa's eyes widened as a smile formed on her lips. "Naser's here!?" she asked with glee. "¡Ay Dios mio! ¡Esto es maravilloso! That means we can all reconnect with him and see how he's doing and what he's bee—"

   "He attacked Anon!" Stella interrupted Rosa before the ankylosaur could go any further with her statement.

   Rosa's expression did a 180 in a matter of nanoseconds. Where before she looked giddy and rapturous, on hearing Stella's words, her face twisted into a scowl of anger, her very eyes suddenly glowing with fury. "¿¡Hizo QUE!?" the now-ranging orange dino shouted so loudly that it was surprising there hadn't been a nurse or some other hospital staff rushing in to see what all the commotion was about.

   Stella stood up and rushed to her friend's side. "Rosa!" Stella started, all the while putting a hand on the ankylosaur's shoulder. "R-remember what we talked a-about!"

   Rosa shot a glare towards Stella, but rather than grow angrier, the dino shut her eyes tight and let out several hard and steamy snorts. When at last she was no longer fuming, the ankylosaur turned her full attention to Stella. "Tell me everything!"

   Over the next half hour, Stella and Anon took turns telling Rosa everything that had happened before her arrival. They started from Anon's miraculous awakening thanks to Stella's terrible anime openings, followed up by stegosaur's heart to heart with the human—complete with a recreation of her less than adequate but still well-meaning speech quoting Kamina from Gurren Laggan—to Naser's arrival and his all-encompassing resentment towards Anon. Rosa's fury reached its peak when Stella repeated all of the terrible things the pterodactyl shouted in his anger. 

   By the time Anon and Stella finished their tale, Rosa looked like she was ready to march out of the room to personally hunt down Naser and bring upon him the wrath of her dreaded chancla. Stella looked just as keen to bring down fire and fury upon Naser, her previous sadness now turning into a fiery sense of righteous wrath that the human couldn't deny made him—for lack of a better term and most certainly taking the word from much smarter and funnier men than he was—scaroused. The absurdity of having two pissed-off girls who had admitted to having once liked him as more than a friend ready and willing to go on a warpath on his behalf wasn't at all lost on him, and it only compounded his confusion and guilt. Regardless of what either Stella or Rosa thought on the matter, Anon felt he deserved every bit of Naser's wrath. Of course, he would have an easier time convincing a brick wall to move aside than convincing either of the former Volcano High garden club leaders that Naser was in the right for being so furious. Anon couldn't help but sigh in frustration. 'So much for keeping my head low and living the rest of my life as the pariah, I really am...'

   Both Rosa and Stella turned to look at Anon, their eyes filled with a mixture of righteous fierceness and deep solicitude. "We're gonna go find Naser and give him ¡La chancletada de su vida!" 

   "Oui!" Stella added in her native French. "He's soon going to learn what it means to mess with team Fleuriste!"

   Rosa turned to look at Stella with a slight frown. "Team Fleuriste? No, no, no! That just won't do!"

   Stella deflated somewhat at hearing her friend's comment, reminding Anon of the times when he had called the lime stego a weirdo. 'Something I never really apologized for and probably should,' Anon embarrassingly thought, making a mental note for later. 

   "What's wrong with Team Fleuriste?" Stella asked meekly. "It's a catchy name, and it fits us to a T since we're florist and whatnot."

   "Yeah, but that's exactly why it doesn't work," Rosa retorted, putting a hand on Stella's shoulder in a show of support. "If we're going to have a team name, it has to be something that tells people '¡Cuidado! ¡No te metas con esas chicas!'"

   Stella put her hands behind her back and under her tail in contemplation. "I guess that is a good point..." She set her light blue eyes on her friend's ruby eyes. "I did think of using the name 'Stardust Crusaders,' but that would be... maybe a bit too flashy?"

   Rosa snorted out a laugh. "That sounds like the name of an awful eighty's hair metal band."

   "Actually, it's from this one show called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure," Stella added excitedly. "It's really cool and I think you would like it!"

   Rosa raised an eyebrow. "JoJo? ¿Que tipo de nombre estupido es ese?"

   "Actually, I'll have you know that it's an epic seven-part story abo—"

   "¡Enfocate!" Rosa shouted, curring Stella off much to Anon's endless gratitude. "We are not using 'Stardust Crusaders' for our team name!"

   Stella puffed her cheeks and crossed her arms. "Fine. What's your suggestion then?" 

   The ankylosaur tapped her chin in contemplation for five seconds before snapping her fingers and smirking. "Team '¡Tres Estrellas!'" Rosa almost yelled out, all the while flexing her arm with a wide grin on her lips.

   Anon, with a raised eyebrow, was the one to speak this time. "Team 'Three Stars'?" he asked in a deadpan tone. "What does that even imply?" 

   Rosa, smiling broadly, turned to face Anon. "Si!" she replied, all the while still fleshing her arm. "There are tres people here: Me, Stella, and you. One star for each of us!

   Anon put a hand on the bridge of his nose. "Please tell me this isn't a reference to—"

   "Dragon Ball Zeta!" Rosa practically roared, interrupting Anon's words. 

   On hearing Rosa's explanation why she wanted to use the name 'three stars' for their hypothetical team, Anon very much wanted to unhook the IV still attached to his arm and use it as a makeshift noose. 'As if one weeb wasn't enough, now I find out that Rosa of all people likes DBZ...' The human then paused for a second as realization hit him and chuckled once he really gave it a good think-over. Of course, Rosa would share at least one interest with Stella, and DBZ was unequivocally popular in Latin countries. Even so, he never pegged the orange florist for being a big enough fan to reveal her power level so casually. 'Learn something new every day, I guess,' Anon thought, wondering just what other revelation he would be witness to that day...

   Just then, and almost as if his thoughts tempted some sort of mischievous trickster god out to make everyone's life all the more confusing, Naser opened the door and stepped into the room. As he did, he again fixed Anon with a glare. Yet, it was nowhere near as nasty as it had been earlier. It felt forced, like something he struggled to maintain despite his mind and spirit being in entirely different places.

   Stella wasted no time in once again stepping in front of Naser's sight, almost as if the presence of her actuality would somehow keep Naser from recognizing Anon was even lying on the bed. Rosa, meanwhile, turned beet red as she marched up to the pterodactyl and looked up into his eyes with a scornful glower that embodied the old saying, 'if looks could kill...'

   Naser let out a scoff as he returned the orange dino's death glare. "Good to see you too, Rosa."

   Rosa responded to Naser's words with a slap across his face, the speed and fierceness of the blow causing the ptero to stagger back as he put a hand on his cheek. "Eso es por lastimar a Anon," Rosa hissed through clenched teeth.

   Naser, after recovering some of his composure, glowered at Rosa before allowing himself an exhale. He then straightened his posture and adjusted his white coat. "Okay. I deserved that," he muttered just loud enough for everyone present in the room to hear. "Glad to know you're still as fit as I remember," the dino addressed Rosa with a mixture of sentimentality and comfort. He turned to face Stella, a tiny grin forming on his lips. "My guess is that you also want to hit me."

   "I'm VERY tempted to!" Stella snapped at Naser, her body refusing to budge from her defensive position over Anon's bed.

   As he turned to look between Stella and Rosa, Naser couldn't help but feel great resentment. He turned his full attention to Rosa, who he viewed as the more physically imposing of the trio in the room. "Why are you taking Anon's side," he asked, his voice astringent yet shockingly lax despite the current situation. "You know very well what he did."

   Rosa rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Si. I know what happened between Anon and Fang. Y si, I know exactly what it led up to."

   Naser's brow furrowed as he took a step closer towards Rosa. "If you know the truth, then why in the name of Raptor Jesus are you protecting him?"

   "Because..." Rosa started, giving Anon a glance before turning her attention back on Naser. "...Because I believe in An-On!" the ankylosaur said as she took a step forward, all the while keeping her glare squarely on her former classmate. "Because he's suffered just as much as you have. Because despite having a ticket to anywhere in the world, he came back to us!"

   "So he returned to the scene of his crime! That doesn't mean he's sorry or that he's changed!"

   "¿Y tu que sabes sobre cambio?" Rosa asked at the top of his lungs.

   Naser paused his thoughts in his tracks as Rosa's question pierced through all his mental defenses. Try as he might, the question rattled in his head as he the pterosaur tried—and failed—to plan some sort of retort. 

   He had changed, yes, but for all the worst reasons... 

   The once bright and all-around honor student of Volcano High had forced himself to become a friendless, spite-fueled doctor who took the first job that he could in Volcadra Bluffs not because it was what he wanted, but because it was what he felt he needed to do. Whereas he would have once gone for a higher sense of purpose with his career, he instead settled for the bare minimum, not caring that refusing to chase the greatness that so many had once seen in him killed his very soul. And what was worse, the anger and hatred of Anon—someone he had once considered a good friend—drove him to consider breaking his oath as a doctor... 

   Was that all that he really was? A bitter man willing to throw anything and everything away in search of revenge that at best would prove hollow and at worst would leave him no better than Anon was?

   "I... I..." Naser mumbled as he attempted to form words in his mouth. With a grunt, he turned away from everyone's eyes and hit the nearest wall with his fist. The ptero then hit the wall again and then a third time. When he moved to hit the wall a fourth time, he abruptly stopped and let his first hover over the wall for a second before opening up his palm and placing his open hand on the wall. Less than a second later, he let his whole body sag.

   Naser suddenly felt a hand rest upon his shoulder. Naser perked his head and glanced at the extremity placed upon his being, expecting it to be orange or lime-green in tone. Instead, it was pink and distinctively scaleless.

   Slowly, the ptero turned to face the owner of the hand, who was none other than Anon. Despite still being weak of body and sporting a battered, bandaged face, the human had risen from his bed, IV stand in hand and a look that held so many emotions contained within—from sorrow, to understanding, to grim determination—and had walked up to the one person in the world that had both the strength and desire to kill him.

   "Naser..." Anon started in as gentle a voice as he could summon. "I... I know I don't deserve to speak to you..." he glanced towards Rosa and Stella, both of whom stood by with stunned looks on their faces. "I don't deserve to direct even a single word at any of you..." he turned back to face Naser, all the while maintaining his hand on his shoulder. "...But I have to say this..."

   Naser said nothing to the human, only fixing him with a tired glare.

   Anon took a deep breath and grimly looked on at his former classmate and friend. "I... I know I fucked up. Fucked up real bad. I know what I did to your sister that night led to so many people losing their way... and not a single day has passed by since then that I don't regret my choice to run away from the world like a bitch..." The human removed his hand from the ptero's shoulder. "I'm... I'm done running. I'm done hiding and letting life pass me by because I'm a little cowardly bitch who can own up to his mistakes as a man would. I know my word probably means little to you... but I can at the very least promise that I'll find a way to set it all right. Even if it means I have to sacrifice everything I have left, I WILL fix my fuck-up..."

   Naser looked deep into Anon's eyes. At first, he was convinced the human was playing some kind of joke on him; that he was lying to find another way to hurt him more. But the deeper the dino gazed into the human's eyes, the more evident it became that Anon wasn't lying...

   The pterosaur let out another bitter chuckle and he stepped back from the human and right into the wall. "Anon... your promise doesn't even matter..." tears shimmered in Naser's eyes as he began taking uneven and raspy breaths. "Fang's... gone. No one's seen them... in four years. I... I don't even know if they are still alive..." 

   At Anon's words, the dam finally broke for Naser. A bitter waterfall began streaming down the ptero's face, one whose flow he couldn't halt no matter how many times he wiped his eyes. As the dino stared into the human's eyes, his expression changed from grief to wrath, to confusion, and finally into a near-incomprehensible rage. Almost instinctually, and without any warning, the ptero reached up for Anon's throat, both hands wrapping themselves around the human's neck and squeezing down with such intensity that the skin slowly began turning purple. 

   Stella and Rosa's very breath left their lungs as they saw Naser's actions. The two began rushing forward, only to stop when they saw Anon gazing on at them shaking his head despite the tears of agony forming in his eyes…

   Naser's lips turned into a grin as he began squeezing tighter and tighter. He had the hated human where he wanted him, his hands slowly and painfully squeezing the life out of his hated enemy. 'Fang, this is for you. Your big brother's going to get payback for you. This is what you'd want...' 

   '...Right...?'

   Naser's mind stopped for a second as his own words rebounded within his skull. Little by little, he realized where his hands were and what he was doing, at which point another voice, one far older and wiser than his, echoed in his mind...

   *'Share your knowledge, support the unwell and downtrodden, and do no harm.'*

   'Do no harm,' Naser thought to himself as he looked down at his hands still gripped around Anon's neck. "Do no harm..." he whispered just barely audibly enough for both his ears and Anon's. The ptero looked up at the human's eyes, only to realize they were slowly rolling upwards into the back of his eye sockets. He was so close. Just another squeeze and Anon's neck would snap...

   Realization hit Naser like a bag of bricks, and his hateful rage turned to shame. 'I'm killing Anon...' he thought as more tears formed in his eyes. 'I'm... I'm killing my old friend...'

   Naser released Anon from his grip and put his hands on the human's shoulders. Anon, meanwhile, breathed a great sigh of relief as he tried his best not to cough away the pain in his neck. The ptero slowly looked up into the human's eyes again, a stinging smile plastered on his lips. It seemed as if he needed to say something... but whatever those words may have been, they were lost when he began sobbing. A full minute passed with the dino neither able to speak or stop crying. Only when the ptero felt he had expunged every last tear in his system, he patted Anon on the shoulder and began walking towards the door. "I'm a failure. As a man, a brother, and a friend," he whispered without so much as meeting anyone's gaze. "I'm... sorry. For... everything..."

   Anon ran a hand over the quickly bruising spot on his neck and put on a determined face. "Naser!" he called out just as the ptero reached for the door. "Fang is alive."

   Naser stopped in his tracks and slowly turned to face Anon with eyes open wide. "W-what d-did you say?" he wearily asked in a coarse voice.

   "Fang is alive," Anon repeated, his own voice turning raspy. "I saw them two weeks ago. They're still in Volcadera Bluffs. Somewhere."

   Naser put a hand over his mouth and staggered backward once again. The moment he hit a solid surface, he began sliding down onto the floor. Thirty seconds went by where the entire room was silent except for the sound of Naser's heart furiously beating. Then, very gently, the pterodactyl began to chuckle. It was quiet and faint at first, but gradually, the laughter turned louder and more ardent. In the expanse of thirty seconds, the dino laugher turned to bewailings. Unlike his last cries, though, there was a hint of joy in these new sounds. Perhaps the first bit of genuine joy he had experienced over the previous four years. Before he could stop himself, Naser broke into full-on wails. 

   Naser’s howls weren't those of sorrow or defeat or incredible loss, however...

Chapter Text

“Lucy’s alive…” Naser told himself for what must have been the hundredth time that morning. “She’s... alive… h-holy shit…” 

   The young doctor barely got any sleep last night. The news of his sister’s continuance made sure of that. At most, he got maybe an hour’s worth of slumber in his office before the restlessness snapped him back into the waking world. Since then, he had wandered the halls of the hospital like a specter, occasionally doing the work expected of him as a physician but mostly hovering somewhere between lucidity and unclarity. As night turned to dawn, he had found his mind wandering too much. Grabbing several cups worth of espresso, he had excused himself to the hospital’s rooftop to get fresh air and hopefully get his thoughts back on track. Unfortunately for him, fresh air brought him neither peace nor clarity of mind. The coffee kept him wide awake, yes, but wakefulness proved to be more a curse than a blessing.

   Naser walks past the small communal area used by patients and staff alike, past the helicopter landing pad used for the offloading of critically injured patients or the occasional CEO visiting them, and towards one of the edges overlooking the city of Volcaldera. Downing the last of his espresso and crushing the paper cup in his hand, and letting it get carried off by the wind, the ptero cast his gaze towards the cityscape. As he did, he feels his brows crease as something in his chest starts to burn. “She’s out there somewhere,” he whispers, grabbing the railing with both hands and grasping the metal with enough force to make his knuckles go white. “She’s out there… and only Anon knows where…” He shuts his eyes, grits his teeth, and hisses furiously as his grip on the rails tightens. “ANON!!” he screams at the top of his lungs.

   Naser breathes raggedly as he allows the anger in him to bubble over. For a moment, he expects to think of terrible things to do to the caveman who had caused him and his family so much vexation for four years. But as he feels the anger boil again, Naser realizes that his rage isn’t aimed at his former friend...

   Naser lets go of the railing and brings his shaky hands up to his eyes. In his palms, he can still feel the memory of Anon’s smooth skin pressed against his scales as his digits wrapped around his once good friend’s neck, squeezing to snuff out his life. The shame grows again in the ptero’s heart as he realizes how close and how willing he had been to kill his old friend. The guilt only grows as he remembers that he is supposed to be the very antithesis of death. His hands were pledged to protect and nurture life, not take it away...

   ‘What kind of doctor am I?’ Naser woefully ponders as he shuffles towards the nearest bench. As he takes a seat, he shifts his thoughts away from his attempted malpractice. Instead, he focuses on the good that had come out of the ordeal and the reason why even if he was still angry at Anon, he couldn’t bring himself to hate him anymore…

   ‘Lucy. He saw her. He confirmed she’s still kicking. After all these years, she's still alive…” He whispers, a smile spreading across his lips as tears once again well in his eyes. Sweet memories of his sister’s antics play in his mind as the young doctor does his best to every good time he shared with Lucy. He stops himself before the bad memories can fully flow. He wants only to feel the joy of that moment, even if a big part of his soul’s telling him that he doesn’t deserve it. 

   Not after…

   “Doctor Naser. There you are.” a voice snaps the young ptero out of his thoughtfulness before the bad memories can take complete control over him. “Been looking all over the hospital for you,” Director Joshua, Volcadera Bluffs General’s head doctor, and Naser’s topmost boss says before walking up to greet his junior. He hasn’t taken more than a dozen steps before he notices Naser’s troubled expression. Soon as he does, he slows his pace and takes a deep breath. 

   Without saying a word, he walks past his junior. He turns his attention to admiring the morning scenery on the horizon instead. “Beautiful morning we’re experiencing today, aren’t we?” He asks in a melodious, sagely tone.

   “Yes, Mr. Joshua,” Naser says before letting out a sniff and wiping his eyes clear. He then takes a deep breath and slaps himself on the cheeks to psyche himself up.

   The elder archelon nods as he turns to face Naser. “You holding up okay?” he asks in as gentle a voice as he can muster.

   Naser nods and smiles at his boss. “I… I just had a rough night.”

   “So I hear,” Doctor Joshua replies as he walks up to stand right beside Naser’s bench. “Do you mind?” he asked, pointing to the spot next to the ptero.

   Naser shakes his head and scoots over, giving his boss more than enough room to take a seat.

   “You didn’t go home last night at all, did you?”

   “N-no,” Naser answers intermittently.

   “Were you that worried about your brother?” The director asks, all the while smiling warmly at Naser. “He should be well and ready to be dismissed later today if I’m not mistaken.”

   Naser nods and tries to give his boss a warm and confident smile. Instead, he finds his lips unable to maintain any sort of smile for more than a few seconds.

   Doctor Joshua sighs and removes his glasses, bringing out a small handkerchief and proceeding to wipe his glasses clean. “Something else’s on your mind, isn’t it?” the elder dino asks as he continues wiping the lenses of any blemishes.

   Naser shuts his eyes and stands up from the bench. The mixture of excitement, regret, joy, and sorrow almost causes his body to go haywire.

   “I-I’m sorry, Mr. Joshua. It’s just that I… I recently found out from none other than my b-brother that my—our—sister… is still alive!”

   Dr. Joshua’s eyes lit up with genuine excitement. “That’s wonderful news!”

   Naser rubs his head and begins pacing back and forth impatiently. “Yes, absolutely wonderful… except that I haven’t seen her in four years, a-and we didn’t leave on the best of terms… and also our parents may or may not hate us for…” Naser stops at that thought and grabs his head with both hands, all the while letting out a groan of pain. “I… I don’t know what to feel right now! I want to be ecstatic that a family member I was convinced was dead for the last four years is alive. At the same time, I don’t know what she’s been up to or if she even remembers me or if she WANTS to remember me. There’s also the problem that only my brother knows where she is, and we have to go and find her, and then our parents will get involved and who knows how they’ll react a—”

   “Doctor Naser,” Director Joshua snaps in a stern yet comforting voice. “You are making a mountain out of a molehill here. You have to relax, take a deep breath, and roll with the punches that life’s dealing you.” He stands and walks up to the young doctor, all the while looking deep into his eyes with a wisdom that only decades of life experience can bring. “Part of living is learning how to adapt to all the surprises life brings us.” he puts a hand on the young ptero’s shoulder and gives him a sage grin. “If you’re willing to work hard, adapt where necessary, and never give up on yourself and those you care about, there’s nothing you can’t achieve.”   

   The elder dino taps Naser on the shoulder a few times before walking past him. Naser follows his boss with his gaze, the archelon's words ringing in his head and helping dispel much of his previous unease.

   “Doctor Naser,” Director Joshua suddenly starts, snapping the young ptero’s attention back to him. “You’ve had a rough time with your brother and now with your sister by the sounds of it. So after you complete this morning’s tasks and discharge your sibling, I’m giving you the rest of the week off, barring an extreme emergency, of course.”

   “W-what?” Naser stutters his question, completely dumbfounded by his boss’ words.

   Director Joshua only guffaws at his junior's reaction. “Go help your brother. Reconcile with your sister. Get some actual sleep and stop drinking so much espresso. That stuff’s not good for you young'uns,” the elder dino commands, all the while adjusting his glasses.

   “Bu-but—”

   Director Joshua raises a hand, stopping Naser’s words before he can fully form them. “Doctor’s orders,” he says before allowing himself another hearty laugh. “Now, if you excuse me, I have a nice hearty breakfast with the missus waiting for me. See you in a week!”

   Naser can only watch in utter dumbfoundment as his boss leaves the roof the same way he had come.

   Perhaps for the first time in the last day and a half, Naser felt what he needed to do next. His emotions weren’t all settled yet, but he at least knew with which foot he needed to start walking.

   That was far more than he’d known in the last four years. 

***

A few hours after his rooftop situation, Naser walks down the hospital hall. As he does, he looks down at the clipboard in his hand. He scans the name printed in the standard type-font Volcaldera General used on all their paperwork: 

   ‘Anon Y. Mous - Discharge approved by Dr. Naser Aaran.’ 

   The pterodactyl can hardly still believe where he was going and for what purpose. He hated Anon’s guts a day prior and wanted nothing more than to strangle him and leave him dead in some ditch somewhere. 

   Of course, it was a morbid form of thinking, one that a doctor shouldn’t even consider in the first place. “So stop thinking like that,” Naser snaps at himself during a rare moment when there aren’t other members of his hospital’s staff within earshot. “Focus on the here and now.”

   The here and now… now that was another can of worms Naser still can’t wrap his head around. Barely one week back in Volcaldera, and he had already found the person that for the last four years had kept the fire of hate burning in his soul. Yet not one day after meeting him, all of that hate had been snuffed out at the revelation that person had brought with them...

   Naser still wanted to hate Anon. A part of him felt like he needed that hate to keep going, much like how a junkie needs their next hit of drugs. Yet, just like an addict, breaking the dependency was the best thing to do. In his case, letting go of the hate had led to him seeing things differently. Now for the first time in what felt like forever, he felt a sense of hope. That absolution could be around the corner. It still didn’t change the fact that he found his situation surreal... like something out of a Twilight Zone episode.

   Naser picks up his pace and reaches Anon’s room. Without so much as a knock, he opens the door and walks in. Thankfully for Naser, Anon’s already dressed in the same attire he was found in, only clean of filth. The only sign left on the human now that showed he had suffered physical harm were the white bandages dotted across his face.  

   On seeing the human wearing his plain black turtleneck, navy blue pants, and black wool beanie, Naser can't help but feel a sense of longing for the old. Somehow, he imagined that Anon would still be wearing the same outfit he had donned in high school, even four years later. Seeing his new wardrobe was a sobering reminder of how long a time four years were. At the same time, he also wondered if Anon’s spartan fashion style resulted from his time in the navy or if it was personal taste.

   Naser walked up to the caveman and fixed him with his most professional gaze. Last he checked, he was still a doctor, even if he had come dangerously close to throwing all that away a day earlier. Whatever other feelings he might have for the human still, he was now his physician first and foremost.

   “Well, Anon, aside from the lacerations to your face, you're fully detoxed and have suffered no permanent brain damage. That means that as your physician, I can officially discharge you… on the condition that you don’t drink or smoke or do anything stupid, harmful, or stupidly harmful to yourself for at least a month.”

   Naser finishes his word in stunned surprise. He had expected his every word to taste like vile, but now that he was more or less on good terms with Anon, it felt like he was trying to care for an old friend. Granted, the human was an old friend. It so happened that he did something that he found unforgivable. But whatever beef he might still have with the petite caveman no longer mattered. Anon had given him hope of seeing his little sister again. Hope he had all but given up on years ago.

   Despite being given the go-ahead to leave, Anon couldn’t find it in himself to move an inch. Something kept his feet rooted to the ground. It was almost as if some invisible weight still lingered over him. He reaches into his pocket to instinctively search for a cigarette, only to realize that he has none on his person. He can’t help but grumble at his little blunder, his shoulders dropping and his brow furrowing in mild agitation.

   Naser takes notice and raises an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”

   Anon sighs. “I’m so used to smoking away what ails me that not being able to… fucking sucks.”

   Naser lets out a single chuckle and puts the clipboard under his arm. “Cry me a river,” Naser replies with a mocking grin. “I’m surprised we didn’t find lung cancer or some other fucked up shit in you after all those years of smoking and drinking.”

   Anon lets out a grumble, his disposition dropping further. “I’ve only been smoking hard for the last few weeks. Fucking navy doesn’t allow smoking on their ships, especially the warships.”

   Naser’s eyes broadened. “So you were stationed on a legit warship? And here I thought you wound up in some dinghy.”

   Anon shakes his head. “I wish. I wound up in an aircraft carrier. I spent most of my days around live munitions and jet fuel.” The human put on an exhausted smile. “You can imagine what would have happened if I smoked around that?”

   Naser has a few flashes to old WW2 movies he saw when he was younger where ships exploded left and right. It makes him cringe a bit, imagining such fireballs caused by a smoking sailor.

   Putting that image out of his mind, Naser instead turns his thoughts to a question that's been burning him since finding out Anon had joined the navy. “What exactly did you do in the navy?”

   Anon fidgets his body around before letting out a sigh. “You’ve probably seen my record by now. Might as well come clean.” He walks up to the sofa chair Stella had been using hours earlier and takes a seat, all the while keeping his eyes square on Naser. “After I dropped out of High School, I had no real prospects in life. My dad only paid for the Skin Row apartment for four months extra after I graduated high school. After that, it was either college or the service. Since I dropped out, I naturally chose the service.”

   “Why the navy, though?” Naser asks.

   “Because the navy was the only armed branch that was willing to give a high school dropout like me a chance. Also, a lot of the ships want small-stature people. Me being a literal runt of a human was perfect for ‘em.” Anon bitterly laughs as he stretches his arms upwards. “Also, the navy got me the fuck out of Volcaldera. I was at boot camp within the week. After surviving that wonderful experience, I was stuffed into a carrier and sent to sail the seas for four years. It would have been five had it not been for my accident on those stairwells.”

   “You still haven’t told me what you did in the navy,” Naser comments impatiently.

   Anon grimaces and shoots a glare towards Naser. “I’m getting there. I’m getting there!” He let out a snort and continued. “Anyway. Once I was a full-fledged seaman—don’t you dare fucking laugh!—” Anon barks and points a finger towards Naser, who only raises a hand in a sign of peace “—I joined the PACT program so I could get myself some engineering know-how. Aside from that, they taught me a bunch of other stuff you’d expect to learn on a warship: munition loading, electrical know-how, survival training, physical conditioning, and over a hundred ways to clean a ship with only a toothbrush and seawater." 

   "That sounds..." Naser started but found he had no accurate quip regarding that last thing Anon mentioned. "...Interesting," he only said before shaking his head. 

   Anon let out another chuckle. "The one thing I didn’t expect to learn was the glorious art of CQC. Guess they wanted us fit and ready to fight off pirates or some bullshit like that.”

   “CQC?” Naser asks.

   “Close Quarter Combat,” Anon replies with yet another tired sigh. “How to fight hand to hand and with certain tools like knives. If you’ve seen MMA, it’s kinda like that, only a hell of a lot less flashy and more deadly.”

   Naser’s eyes swell again. “Wait a second then,” he looks at Anon with a bewildered stare. “Are telling me that back when I was… strangling you, you could’ve—”

   “—Reversed your choke and snapped your neck several dozen ways? Probably,” Anon finishes Naser’s words with a bitter grin on his lips. “I didn’t because… a part of me knew I deserved that strangling. Plus…” Anon looks at Naser with a soft gaze. “I… I guess I trusted you enough not to kill me.”

   Naser blinks a few times, almost as if his brain was having a hard time processing the information it had received.

   “What about you?” Anon suddenly asks, breaking his train of thought. “What has the prodigal son of the Aaran’s been up to these last four years?”

   Naser visibly flinches at Anon’s words, but he does his best to keep a scowl from forming on his face. “I went straight to medical school as soon as I graduated. I didn’t give myself any breaks or anything.”

   Anon raises an eyebrow and lets out a whistle. “Damn, and here I thought you’d propose to Naomi or something. How’s she, by the way?”

   Naser’s expression darkens. His only reply is to look down to the floor.

   Anon catches the mood right away and shakes his head. “Fuck. That bad, huh?”

   “Naomi and I…” Naser starts but stops himself. He takes a deep breath and forces a smirk on his lips. “Naomi and I went our separate ways shortly after graduation.”

   Anon raised an eyebrow in response. “She dumped you, didn’t she?”

   Naser puts a hand on his face and shakes his head. “Damn… Is it that obvious?”

   Anon shrugs and gives his old friend a warm yet sour smile. “A bit. Though I’m mostly going by the fact that Naomi was a bitch.”

   Naser’s surprised to hear the words come out of Anon’s mouth. A part of him wants to punch the human for even daring to say such a thing about his ex, but deep down, he knows his old friend—turned one-sided enemy, and now back to a friend—is correct.

   Anon leans back on his chair and lets out a chuckle. “Did you know that Naomi tried to set Fang and me up back in the day?”

   Naser’s shoulders slump a bit at Anon’s words. Some part of him had always suspected, but he never dared to accept it for fear of what it would mean. But hearing it from Anon all but made it an irrefutable fact, and it stung at his soul.

   “I… I guess I suspected it…” Naser answers meekly.

   “Naomi thought that if Fang and I dated, your sister would magically get ‘fixed’ of all her problems or some idiotic bullcrap that only Naomi could think up. Barring that, that our dating would keep Fang from bothering you so much. That bitch Naomi could then have you all to herself to do as she pleased.” Anon sat back up and looked at Naser with sunken, tired eyes. “Too bad she picked me to date your sister. I was probably the worst person she could have chosen for the job..”

   Naser wanted to say something in rebuttal to Anon’s words, but harsh as they were, his words rang true. Naomi had shown her true colors in the end, and everyone fell into her ploy without any means of seeing the truth until it was far too late. Anon may have been responsible for breaking Fang’s heart, but that only happened because Naomi forced them together in the first place. Still, as bad as things got in the end for them, Naser knew that Anon and Fang had shared a connection. They had enjoyed good times and had made each other happy. At least before their apocalyptic break-up. 

   While Naser didn’t believe in multiple universes, he hoped to god that there was a reality out there where everything turned out alright and that Anon and Lucy had found some semblance of a happily ever after...

   The room goes quiet for about a full minute. After that minute passes, Naser walks up to the now-empty medical bed and sits down, setting the clipboard to the side as he staring deep into Anon’s eyes.

   “Anon, I’ve already told you that I believe you about Lucy, but I need to know the truth. Did you really see her a week ago?”

   “Yes. I really did.”

   “W-where!?” Naser asks in more of a panic.

   “She was playing in some shitty pizzeria called ‘Pizza Time’ back in Skin Row.”

   “W-what did she look like? Was she well-fed? Was she thin? D-did she still have all her extremities attached!?”

   At the question, Anon hesitates. He doesn’t want to break Naser’s spirit any more, but something tells him that lying about Fang’s physical state wouldn’t help anyone. ‘Naser deserves to know the truth too…’ the human reasons as he decides he’s done keeping things from others.

   “Fang, she… she looked thin. Malnourished, even. She had this gaunt look to her like the last four years have worn down her spirit to the point where she’s more of an automaton animated by neurotransmitters than a person...” Anon sighs as the bitter memories of the day he had failed for the second time in his life flood back in. “She… she literally looked right through me, as if I wasn’t even there, and I was sitting so close to that stage…” He gives Naser a look full of regret. “I… know I said she was still alive, but the way she looked… I would say that only applies to her physically…”

   Naser Stands up and glares daggers at Anon. For a few moments, the fires of hatred again ignite within the ptero’s soul. For the faintest of moments, he considers cursing out Anon for what he did, how his actions led to Fang’s current state of living death… but that fire dies as quickly as it ignited as the young doctor remembers Anon’s words the last time they met.

   Instead of punching the human as he originally wanted, Naser winds up grabbing anon by the sides of his shirt and forcing him to stand up, so the two are eye to eye with one another. 

   “You saw Lucy looking like that and just walked away!?” Naser shouts at Anon’s face. “What is wrong with you!?”

   Anon shifts his eyes to the side, his expression dropping as he silently agrees with Naser’s assessment of him.

   “W-well!” Naser shouts, all the while shaking Anon. “Don’t you have anything to say!?” 

   Naser’s brow only furrows when Anon gives him no answer.

   “No,” Anon whispers in reply.

   Naser lets go of the human and takes a step back, his eyes shimmering as tears begin welling in them.

   “I know… that what I did was cowardly," Anon finally says as he sets his eyes on his friend's teary gaze. "I don’t need a reminder of that. I’ve had a whole week to think back on how I once again ran away instead of facing my mistakes like a fucking man. But like I told you, I’m done running, and I’m done being a little bitch about it!” Anon puts a hand on Naser’s shoulder and gives him a dead-serious look. “Soon as I’m out of this hospital, I’m going to go find Fang, and I’m going to do what I should've done a week ago!”

   Naser breathed deep and returned Anon’s intense gaze. “Y-you better,” he says with some resentment, yet also with hope.

   Anon tightens his grip on Naser’s shoulder, prompting the ptero’s eyes to widen a bit. “You should come with me,” the human says, a faint smile forming on his lips. “You’re Fang’s brother too. She—they—deserve to know that you’re still out here caring about their wellbeing, even after being gone for years.”

   “W-what?” Naser asked, stuttering as his brain tried comprehending Anon’s words.

   “Come with me to Pizza Time or wherever else she’s going to be playing next. We’ll meet her together, and together we’ll let her know that there are people who still care!” Anon put his other hand on Naser’s shoulder and brought him close enough that the two were only inches away from bumping noses. “If you’re there, you two can reconnect and be family again. I mean, it’s what you want, right?” 

   Naser takes a step away from Anon and turns away from the human. As he does, his shoulders sag, and his head slumps forward. Not one second later, the young doctor’s body begins to tremble, almost as if someone turned his blood ice-cold.

   “I… I don’t think I can do that, Anon…”

   “What?” Anon asks in shock.

   Naser turns around, his eyes now sporting tears ready to roll down his cheeks. “I don’t think I can do that!” he shouts.

   “What’d you mean that you can’t do it?”

   Naser shut his eyes and grits his teeth. “I can’t do it because… because…” he brings up his sleeve and rubs his eyes before fixing Anon with a glare. “Because I’m also a fucking coward!”

   Anon doesn’t say anything as Naser tries his best to compose himself, all the while the scowl on his face slowly gives way to a frown full of shame. “I also ran away from everything!” he snaps in a rage that isn’t entirely directed at Anon despite his eyes fixing themselves firmly on the human’s eyes. “I chose to separate myself from this place and everyone I grew up with because I couldn’t handle the stress, the pain, the responsibility that I had to—needed to—find Lucy!” He sniffs and again tries to wipe his eyes clear of tears. “I even turned my back on my parents in their time of greatest need…” He clutched his hands tight, all the while scowling more and more furiously. “How can I possibly face Lucy when I haven’t even grown the spine to face my own mother and father!?” He slams his fists on Anon’s chest. “What kind of brother does that? What kind of person deserves to reconcile with a sibling when he can’t even bring himself to reconcile with his parents!?”  

   Anon’s reminded of Fang’s emotional outburst back on the roof of Volcano High all those years ago. Just like he did then, he keeps his mouth shut. Not because he didn’t have anything to say, he had plenty to. Rather, because something told him that Naser, much like Fang had back then, didn’t need anyone patronizing or to have other's ideals forced upon them. 

   Naser needed someone to support him in his greatest time of need.

   ‘He needs someone better than shitty ol’ me, though,’ Anon thinks as he grapples with what to do next. He knows he’s not the ideal person to be giving support to anyone. But given the lack of people qualified for it, he was the nearest person who realistically could. At the same time, he was also dealing with a person who had thrived off hating him for the last four years. Hell, he had tried to kill him. His sudden change of heart notwithstanding, how did one go about supporting such a person?

   ‘I guess the first thing he needs to do is bury the hatchet with his parents,’ Anon reasoned. Of course, that was also true about him. It was clear that Fang’s disappearance had also affected the Aarans in ways that younger Anon could have never have hoped to comprehend. Yet apologizing to Fang’s parents was a terrifying prospect. So much so that he would have much preferred to save that particular apology for last, after he hopefully got Fang to be on friendly terms with him at the very least. Yet, with Naser now in the picture and the weight of his baggage, saving that particular apology for later had gone from something that he could put off for later to needing to be done ASAP.

   ‘Fuck,’ Anon thinks as it slowly dawns on him that there’s no getting around what’s to come. ‘I don’t think I can do this alone, though…’

   At precisely the moment Anon thought that, the door to the room swung wide, almost as if kicked open. Less than a second later, in pops a lime-yellow stegosaur with a big wide grin on her lips and cheerful glow that bordered on the ludicrous. 

   “Hoi, Anon! I’m back!” Stella shouts with all the subtlety of an atom bomb. The stego is no longer sporting her previous Natsuki-inspired tracksuit, but rather is back to wearing an outfit that seems to be a direct callback to her high school outfit: black jean shorts slightly longer than her old pair, a white shirt more on the slim-fitting side—which help accentuate the curves and muscles that she’d put on thanks to her cardio workouts over the last few years—and a pair of black and white retro sneakers that probably belonged more in the late 80s or early 90s than the present day, all wrapped under her now trademark twin-bunned lime green hairstyle.

   Both Anon and Naser turn to look at Stella with varying expressions. Naser, for his part, welcomes the sudden shift in the room’s mood, thankful that Stella’s sudden appearance brought about some form of levity to the serious conversation he’d finished having with Anon. 

   Anon, on the other hand, can only close his eyes and put a hand over the ridge of his nose. ‘Stella doesn’t have an off switch, does she?’ he asks himself.

   “No, I don’t think she does,” Naser answers with a warm smile forming on his lips. 

   Anon turns to Naser and gives him a quizzical expression.

   “You still mumble,” Naser replies matter-of-factly to Anon’s non-verbal question.   

   “Of course I do,” Anon tells himself as he shakes his head in frustration.

   “Of course you what?” Stella asks, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “Did I interrupt a live-changing dialogue between you two or something? I-I can wait outside.”

   “You’re already here,” Naser answers as he takes a step away from Anon, all the while doing his best to bury the previous grief he had brought to bear. “Me and Anon… we were just talking about… stuff...” Naser takes a deep breath to steady himself before stuffing a hand into his pants pocket, all the while smiling in feigned confidence. “You know, catching up and whatnot.”

   Stella’s eyes grow to the size of tea plates. “Oh!” she announces as her expression brightens considerably. “That’s SO good to hear then!”

   “S-Stella,” Anon starts, his full attention finally turning towards the genki dino, “What are you doing here?”

   Stella raises an eyebrow at the question. “What am I doing? I’m here to see you, of course!”

   “I get that much… but WHY?” Anon asks again, taking a step forward to emphasize his words.

   Stella puts her hands behind her back, the posture once more making her look like she couldn’t be more than a year out of high school. “Do I really need an excuse to check up on someone dear to me?” She asks the human.

   Anon’s only answer is to cross his arms and raise an eyebrow.

   Stella rolls her eyes, puffs her lips, and crosses her arms. “Oh fine!” she snaps, turning her gaze towards Naser, her brow furrowing in the process. “I also came here because I heard Naser shouting and was afraid he was trying to strangle you again.”

   Naser rubs the back of his head and gives the anime-loving stego a sheepish grin. “Yeah… that was not my best moment in life…”

   Stella replies to Naser’s words by walking next to Anon and grabbing him by the arm while glaring at the young doctor.

   Naser again sighs and looks away from the two. “I’d really appreciate it if… if you two would keep the whole... strangulation... situation to yourselves…”

   “Only if you promise never to do it again!” Stella snaps, her grip on Anon’s arm growing tighter.

   “I-I swear it!” Naser answers with a mixture of fear and shame.

   Stella turns her eyes upwards as she ponders on what to say or do next. 

   In the meantime, Anon slips his arm out from Stella’s grip and clears his throat. “At any rate,” he starts, once more turning to face the ptero. “I’m sorry you feel that way… about your folks.”

   Naser’s expression again sours as he’s reminded of his problem. He leans against the nearest wall and ponders on what to do next. So long as he still had the regret of his parents, it would prevent him from facing Lucy. Yet meeting his parents wasn’t a pleasant prospect for him at all. ‘Especially after I…’

   Naser winces as the memories lash at his being. ‘No. I can’t face them. Not after I said all those things to them…’

   Stella’s the one to clear her throat this time, causing Anon and Naser to turn their attention to her. As they do, she paces towards the middle of the room to stand facing the two males.

   “The two of you are at a critical crossroads in your lives,” Stella starts in a voice that Anon recognized as her ‘mystic’ mode. “Anon,” she says, turning to face the human. “You know what your destination is, but you don’t know where to begin this journey or if you’ll have the courage to see it through to the end.” The stego turns to face the young doctor. “And Naser, you fear the journey’s start because of something you said or did in the past that’s shackling you with fear.” Stella closes her eyes and brings her hands together in what almost looks like a praying motion. “For the two of you to really heal, you have to take an initial step forward, and that step lies with an apology.”

   Anon and Naser look at each other in confusion. “But we already buried our respective hatchets,” Naser says matter-of-factly.

   Stella snapped open an eye and looked at Anon and Naser with mild annoyance. “Not an apology to each other, dummies. An apology to the Aarans.” She gives a nod and again crosses her arms behind her back as she opened her eyes and alternated her gaze between human and ptero. “It’s been four years since the catastrophe with Fang, and since then, they have no doubt been suffering, not just because of their missing daughter, but also because of their wayward son.” She fixes Naser with a serious gaze. “Just like Anon, you left suddenly and without a word. You knew your destination, but you gave no one a roadmap of what roads you would use to get there. Because of that, you might as well have become a ghost. If what I heard is true, you haven’t even kept in contact with your parents in years..”

   Naser’s head dropped as he looked to the floor.

   “And Anon,” Stella says next, her full attention turning to the human. “While your journey to Fang is more direct, you’re going to have to eventually confront the Aaran’s about your part in their daughter’s disappearance. Thankfully, you have both the conviction and knowledge now to face them with a head held high!”

   Stella gives the pair a warm smile as she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her trusty tarot deck. “Right now, you are a literal hope bringer, Anon. The Aarans think their daughter is dead, but you know the truth, one they deserve to know.” She shuffles her deck expertly, just like she did earlier with Anon, and draws the top card. She holds it facing towards her as her gaze again shifts between Anon and Naser.

   Anon, swallowing a lump that had formed in his throat, looks Stella in the eye. “What card is it?” he asks, baffled that he was going along with something he considered to be trashy superstition days earlier.

   Stella puts on a wide simper as she flips the card around, revealing it to Naser and Anon. “Upright chariot!” she cheers as she walks up to Naser and offers him the card.

   Naser, with a shaky hand, takes the card and inspects the art. It depicts what looks to be a T-rex dino with a crown and regal armor atop an opulently ornate chariot. At the head of the chariot, two regal sphinxes, one white and one black, pull the chariot forward, their faces a mixture of human and dino features.

   “The chariot card signifies that you have some hard work ahead of you,” Stella says, causing Anon and Naser to pay close attention to her. “It may be resolved quickly, but the labor you are undertaking will probably tend towards the long and difficult. You will quite possibly experience rough roads, long uphill slopes, dead ends, and painful setbacks. This hard road will instill in you a strength of purpose, the ability to succeed through organization and endurance, and confidence possessed only by those who have done what they thought they could not. Harnessed correctly, few forces can stand against individuals like that…”

   Naser once more looks down at the card in his hand. Not once has he ever believed in such occult practices as tarot cards or psychic readings. As a doctor, he believes in the rational and the physical. There is no room in medicine for the supernatural. Yet, something about Stella’s reading filled him with intrigue and purpose. Even if Stella’s reading was nothing but a bunch of smoke and mirrors bull, her words about finding absolution with his parents remained true. Facing his own past mistake and correcting it was the first step towards bettering himself. 

   Otherwise, he would wind up living the rest of his life unable to move on... 

   While Naser continued to stare at the chariot card with wide eyes, Stella walked right next to Anon again and gave him a toothy smile. “And you don’t have to worry about anything,” she said, all the while jabbing his arm with her shoulder. “I’m going to be keeping you company throughout this journey.”

   Anon blinked about five times before realizing what Stella meant by her words. A bead of sweat formed at the idea of having someone tag along with him, especially if that someone had admitted to having liked him in high school a day prior.

   “Uh… isn’t Rosa going to be pissed that you’re not showing up to work?” Anon asks earnestly.

   “Of course, she’d be mad! But she’s also the one who gave me the mission to look out after you. Just in case you decided to beat yourself up again!” she flashes the human a peace sign and gives him a wink.

   Anon rolls his eyes at Stella’s words. ‘Course, leave it to Rosa to still care about others, even when they weren’t the best of friends towards her in the first place…’ 

   “Well, it wasn’t all Rosa’s idea, you know,” Stella suddenly replies, her cheeks growing flushed at her words.

   ‘Damn. Mumbling,” Anon thinks to himself before the total weight of Stella’s words hits him. 

   “Wait, wait, wait!” Anon snaps, taking a step away from Stella. “You WILLINGLY offered yourself to be my tail during this whole fiasco?”

   Stella gives Anon a sympathetic ear-to-ear smile. “Course! You really think I’m going to miss out on an IRL redemption story to rival the Zuko arc?”

   Anon put on a smile as he shook his head and shrugged. Not like it changed anything about his goals. Plus, it would be nice to have the company of a person that never actively hated him to begin with. Especially now that he was going to be walking right into the den of a very angry, very violent pterodactyl... 

   Having come to terms with the fact that he had a permanent party member, Anon turned to Naser next. He walked up to the young doctor and put a hand on his shoulder in a show of camaraderie.

   Naser looked up from the card and onto Anon’s eyes with fear at first. Still, slowly, that fear dissolved as newfound determination began to take its place. The young doctor would be lying if he said that his stomach wasn’t filled with ice at the prospect of facing his parents again, but he wouldn’t be doing it alone. Anon was with him, and together the two could face the storm that was approaching.

   Every journey started with a step. This was the first step. The most critical step... 

***

It’s several hours later. The sun had long set, and night had brought with it a frigidity uncharacteristic of that time of year in Volcaldera. Naser, Anon, and Stella stand outside of the Aaron residence, a very different expression on each of their faces: Fear, determination, and enthusiasm, respectively. 

   As the pale moonlight shines upon the household Naser and Fang once called home, and there is a certain level of anxiety within the human and pterodactyl’s hearts. The last time the two were at the Aaran residence, their respective outlooks on life were brighter. Now the surrounding darkness felt like an apt reflection of what had become of their individual lives. Only the moonlight served as a beacon for what they needed to accomplish next.

   Anon breathed heavily, his body quaking with warranted regret as he remembered his last visit to the Aaran residence. He remembers the faces of Fang’s parents. He remembers the hopeful and sunny disposition of Mrs. Samantha, her joy of knowing her daughter was going to prom almost overwhelming. He remembers Mr. Ripley’s scrutiny over Anon, and his parting words of warning before the human excused himself to ‘feed’ Metal Gear RAYmba, a lie that he still couldn’t believe had worked. How right Mr. Ripley had been to distrust Anon with his daughter. Even following the old parental stereotype, Anon had proven the ptero patriarch’s worst fears correct.

   Naser, meanwhile, took just as heavy a breath as Anon as he too began remembering the past. His memories were initially good. He remembered getting along well with his parents. He remembered all the good times he had playing with Lucy when they were young. He remembered those carefree days before the accident. Then, his memories sour as he recalls the accident that left his wing crippled. He recalls the dour mood as he felt Lucy’s anguish over her role in the event. How it started her down a dark path of insecurity and self-loathing. How it shaped her life from that moment on, leading to a spiraling of worsening problems as Lucy became Fang, Fang became non-binary, and Fang stopped thinking for herself, instead clinging on to anything and everything Trish told her to do, shaping his sister into something that by the end he could barely recognize as the once cheerful and energetic pirate princess he had grown up around. From there, the memories became bittersweet. He remembers vowing to make up for his sister's faults, excelling not because he wanted to, but rather because he needed to keep his parent’s wrath away from his sister. He remembers meeting Naomi and thinking that she was the one. He reflects on his high school career, joining the track team and rising to become its captain, and his eventual rise to honor student. And, of course, he remembers prom night. How he had expected to see Anon and Lucy there, only to find out later that they never attended. That they instead had their own private prom, after which everything fell apart…

   Naser glanced sideways towards Anon, his brow furrowing and his hands curling into fists. A part of him rightfully wanted to strangle the human again for it as the fire of righteous indignation ignited in his soul once more. But as the young doctor inspected the eyes of his human companion, he too could see the pain that a past full of torment was assaulting him. He sighed, unfurled his fists, and let go of his anger for what felt like the millionth time that day. Anon may have been the cause of four years of pain for him, but he was also the catalyst for his now experiencing change.

   As the anger faded, another memory came to Naser, one he had tried long and hard to suppress. He had no defenses against its overwhelming assault against his heart. How could he fight against it when every fiber of his being told him he shouldn’t?

   Naser takes a step back from his old home, all the while shaking his head. “No,” he whispers as he completely turns away from the Aaran residence. “I… I can’t do this…”

   Both Anon and Stella turn to look at their ptero companion with concern. Being the only person whose heart wasn’t burdened by painful memories, Stella walks back and grabs Naser by the arm. “What’s wrong?” the stego asks, light-blue eyes scanning the young doctor’s visage for any possible clue. 

   Naser shifts his eyes to meet Stella’s gaze. For one moment, he stares deep into those light-blue pools in the hopes of finding some relief from the thorns gripping his heart. After about five seconds, he shuts his eyes tight and janks his arm away from Stella’s grip before slowly shuffling towards the sidewalk’s nearest curb. At this point, he sits down and buries his head in his hands.

   “N-Naser… you… you okay?” Anon asks, unsure as to whether or not he should approach his troubled companion.

   Naser slams a fist on the hard concrete and lets out a groan of pain. “No,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “I… I thought I could forge through the memories, but I just fucking can’t!”

   “They can’t be that bad,” Stella says in her best attempt at cheering the ptero.

   “You don’t understand,” Naser snaps as he looks up at the moon. “The reason I’m so fucking afraid of going back home…” He inhales unevenly as he shuts his eyes. “...I said some really fucked up things… before I left…”

   Naser allows the memories he had so desperately tried to suppress overcome his being, sending him back to what was perhaps the worst single night of his life…

-Four Years Earlier-

   Almost a month has passed since Lucy ran away from home. Dad turned all of Volcaldera upside down in search of her—them—I honestly don’t even fucking know anymore. All I know is that ever since Lucy up and left, everything's gone to shit. 

   Graduation is only days away, yet I can’t feel any joy about it. How can I when my sister’s fucking gone missing? Even worse, dad won’t shut up about how this is all my fault. Doesn’t he know that I did everything that I could to keep Lucy on the straight and narrow? It’s not my fault that she went and got herself indoctrinated into that enby bullshit by Trish. Not my fault she ended dating some deadbeat asshole that broke her heart... It’s not my…

   Fuck. Fuck you, Anon. Seriously. FUCK. YOU. You were my friend. You were Lucy’s friend. I thought you could be the one to pull her out of her rut finally. To give her the support she deserved and that I obviously couldn’t provide. I fucking TRUSTED you! Instead, you turned out to be another asshole in a very long line of assholes I seem to be surrounded by...  

   Fuck... even Naomi, the girl I thought would stick by me for the rest of my days, dumped my sorry ass. She didn’t even give me a good reason. She only said that I had changed and that our relationship wasn’t going to work out anymore. That I wasn't good enough for her either and that we were better off seeing others more like each other...

   Well, of course I fucking changed! My sister’s fucking gone missing! Did she expect me to laugh it off like it's nothing? Like this is another one of Lucy’s personality reinventions? Fuck, for all I know, Lucy's probably dead by now. I mean, no one vanishes for close to a month without leaving some trace behind. I mean, for fuck’s sake, dad’s the police commissioner! He moved earth and sky and brought in every possible resource to search for Lucy, and even then, he found no trace of her anywhere! And who does he blame? Me, of course. Only Naser, the perfect son of the Aaran family... 

   Well, I’m done getting blamed. I’m done with everyone looking at me like I could have prevented this bullshit. I’m done with Trish yelling at me like I was supposed to know that Anon was bad news. I’m done having to endure Reed’s look of distant disappointment every time our eyes meet. I’m done taking my mother’s silent judgment over my inability to keep my sister from vanishing. I’m done bearing principal spear’s stoic gaze of dissatisfaction.

   I Am. Fucking. Done!

   I slam shut my suitcase with as much force as I can before picking it up. I give my room one last look before turning around and storming out of the door. If I stay there another second, I will wuss out and not go through with it. I honestly can’t think of a more horrible way to torture myself. A part of me wants me to reconsider what I’m doing. I know it’s stupid and reckless and petty, but I’m all out of fucks to give. I head down the stairs as quickly as my legs can carry me. The sooner I get out of this house, the sooner I can move on from all the bullshit.

   “Where are you going, Naser?” my father’s voice stops me in my tracks. I sigh and turn around. My dad is sitting there on the living room couch, a half-empty glass of something that smells like paint thinner in his hands.

   I glare into my father’s eyes but don’t give him an answer. He should already know by the suitcase in my hand what the fuck I’m doing.

   My father downs the last of his drink and stands up from his seat, walking up to me and using his considerable bulk to try and intimidate me. “And just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” He asks me like I’m some kind of child.

   “What does it look like I’m doing?” I answer in the most resentful tone that I can muster.

   Dad looks me up and down, almost like he’s sizing me up like I’m some kind of criminal. Who knows, by how he’s been treating me for the last month, I might as well be a criminal in his eyes.

   At that moment, my mother walks into the living room. She takes one look at the suitcase in my hand, and she rushes towards me, grabbing my arm like that’s somehow going to prevent me from storming out the door.

   “W-why?” She sobs out as tears flow from her seemingly permanently squinting eyes. “Why a-are you leaving us too?” She tugs on my arm as if that’s somehow going to change the mind I made up hours ago.

   I can’t take it anymore. I forcefully snatch my arm away from my mother and fix her with a furious glare. “I’m leaving because I’m tired of being perfect!” I shout, causing my mom to take a step away from me in fear. “I’m tired that no matter how hard I worked or how much I sacrificed, it never once felt like I was doing anything for myself, but instead to please everyone around me!” I snap my eyes towards dad, who I can tell is getting real close to bringing out the golf clubs. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck anymore. “I’m tired of always having to live with the knowledge that I had to excel to keep you from giving Lucy shit over an accident that happened years ago!” I point an accusatory finger at my father, then turn back to look at my mother. “And I’m tired of having to be oh so perfect for a girlfriend who up and left me the instant I stopped being the absolute best!” I balled my hand into a fist and grit my teeth so hard I could almost feel the enamel getting worn off. “I’m tired of being what everyone wants me to be… and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

   Father rushes me with a speed I had never seen before in my life. Before I can fully process his movements, he grabs me by the collar of my shirt and slouches forward so that we’re almost eye to eye.

   “You’re a real selfish brat right now, Naser,” Dad tells me in a tone that’s dripping with venom. “I suggest you stop with the melodrama and get your head out of your ass before you hurt yourself.” 

   I slap my father’s hand away before shoving him away, albeit partially unsuccessfully due to his sheer bulk. Still, he gets the point as he looks at me with a shocked yet absolutely pissed expression.

   “I’m not the one that needs to stop being selfish, dad,” I say with as much vitriol as I can pack into my voice.

   “What’s that supposed to mean,” my father hisses through clenched teeth.

   “Not once did I ever see or hear you support Lucy’s life choices. You only acted like she was some object that needed supervising. You never really understood her plight, the guilt she carried on her conscience. If you just tried to understand her for what she wanted to be and not what YOU wanted her to be, she wouldn’t have felt the need to run away and possibly get killed!”

   “And you think you’re acting any better than your shithead of a sister!” Father roared at me. “You’re making the same fucking mistake!”

   And there it was. The real feelings dad had towards Lucy. Hearing him call her a ‘shithead’ almost felt cathartic. It verified all my emotions leading up to this moment. In a way, I almost wanted to thank him. He’d made my decision all the easier for me to take.

   I let out a bitter chuckle and turned away from my father. “Then maybe Fang had the right idea,” I say without so much as caring about what my words did to my father. Or my mother, for that matter. Though in the case of my mother, I did feel a little bit bad. I know she tried her best with us, but in the end, she didn’t do anything to stop Lucy—or rather, Fang—from going down the path she wound up traveling. She shared as much guilt as my father did...

   With those thoughts in my head, I make my way to the door, head held high and determined not to look back no matter what either my mother or father says to me. 

   As I grip my hand on the door handle, I hear my father roar, which gives me enough pause to hesitate.

   “Naser! If you walk out that door, then you better never come back to this house. You hear me!”

   I don’t say another word as I turn the door handle and swing the door open. I don’t stop as I shut the door behind me, and I walk down the walkway leading to my house. I do pause for a second to look back at the home I’d probably never again return to. As I do, I hear the sound of shattering glass, followed by the wails of my mother as she no doubt falls on her knees weeping at the loss of her son.

   I only turn right back around and finish making my way towards the Nas-Car. I stuff my suitcase in the trunk and make my way to the driver's seat. A slight sense of bliss fills me as I realize that I’m doing something that won’t help me achieve some kind of perfection for the first time in my life. Of course, that bliss is quickly overtaken by fear of the unknown future. Where would I go now? What will I do? 

   Whatever it is, it’s going to be my choice. No one else’s...

-Present Day-

Naser let out a groan as he finished telling Anon and Stella something he had kept secret for close to four years. 

   Soon as his words are done, he again buries his face in his hands and sighs. “I was so determined to escape from all the responsibilities and pressures of my life… except that I wound up doing exactly what I would have done anyway had I not had that outburst.” The pterosaur began to laugh bitterly. “I went to medical school like I was going to anyway and became a doctor as I would have anyway. My whole little rebellion accomplished nothing except getting me disowned and turning my family against me!” He let out a single sniff and brought up his head, looking Anon directly in the eyes. “That’s why I’m so afraid of speaking to my parents again. That’s why I’m so afraid of meeting Lucy again…”

   Anon, who had been quietly listening up to that point, looks to the floor in stunned silence. In his mind, Naser’s hesitation sprung from his own perceived failures, that he was greatly exaggerating his guilt and working himself up over nothing. But after hearing the real reason for his old friend’s hesitation to come home, he could completely understand the trepidation. 

   In some ways, his mistake was almost the same one he made with Fang four years earlier…

   ‘This… complicates things,’ Anon thought as he wondered what to do next.

   “Complicates things? Yes. Stops him from reaching his goal, no!” Stella suddenly snapped as she grabbed Naser by the arm and forced him back to his feet. “You’re already here!” she points to the house behind her, all the while looking deep into Naser’s eyes. “Just… take the plunge and make amends! I’m sure your parents will understand and forgive you!”

   “God damned mumbling,” Anon whispered as he looked at the scene playing before him. While he understands the exact train of thought that Stella had in mind, he still can’t help but feel like it’s not going to be satisfied in any way. Naser’s mistake isn’t something he can sweep under the rug with his parents. He cut ties with them, and they, in turn, probably cut ties with him. His actions and words led to his familial exile, something that is not so easily reversed. Something told him that Mr. Ripley was the kind of person to hold a very long, very spiteful memory of something like that…

   Naser glares at Stella and snatches his arm back. “That’s easy for you to say!” he shouts, his cheeks turning a shade of red from anger, embarrassment, or both. “You weren’t there to see their faces that night! How they looked at me like I was committing high treason!” He shuts his eyes and turns away from the lime-yellow stego. “This… this was a stupid idea,” he mutters, hanging his head in defeat. “I’ll just… wait in the Nas-Car,” he whispers as the ptero staggers back to his car.

   Stella turns back to face Anon, her eyes full of sadness and defeat. She looks to be on the verge of tears.

   Anon feels an Anger bubble in him. In his mind, he wants to march up to Naser, slap some sense into him, and drag him back to his house… but he knows that he’s projecting what he wants now. It wasn’t that long ago that he, too, was precisely where Naser is now, a man afraid of his past, too broken and numb to even consider fixing his situation despite absolution lying literal feet away. A man so shackled by his fears that he was willing to turn away when all he had to do was reach out and grab that which tormented him so…

   ‘No,’ Anon whispered. He exhaled deeply and turned to face the Aaran residence. He still needed to apologize for what he did that night at the beach. Even if nothing got fixed that night, Fang’s parents at least deserved to know that their daughter still lived. He was the reason she left them… making amends was the right thing to do, even if it was painful and potentially even dangerous…

   “A-Anon?” Stella called out the instant she noticed the new fire burning in her friend’s eyes.

   Anon, for his part, gave her a nod and smile before storming up to the Aaran household’s door, at which point he rang the doorbell without a moment’s hesitation.

   Stella’s eyes broadened in awe and horror. ‘Oh my Jebus! That b-baka actually did it!?’ she thinks, her mind reacting far faster than her body can to the audacity and craziness of Anon’s act.

   It takes less than ten seconds for the sound of heavy footsteps to approach the door. Anon wills his body to stand its ground despite every single one of his brain cells telling him to run away. He knows what he’s exposing himself to. He knows what will happen the instant Mr. Ripley lays eyes on him, but he can’t back out now. If his apology is the last thing he does in his life, it will at least be his best way to go out. 

   A just reward for a life full of bad decisions…

   “How many times do we have to tell you, bastards, we’re not interested in anything you’re sell—” Mr. Ripley roars out the moment he opens the door. The instant he locks eyes with Anon, his eyes fill with the kind of hate only a father who’s forced to look upon the face of his child’s killer can have. His whole body trembles as he clutches his hands shut so tightly that they pierce the palm and draw blood.

   “What is it, honey? Mrs. Samantha asks as she finds her way next to her husband, only also to be struck numb by the sight of Anon standing before her. Unlike her husband, though, the petite matriarch's expression is far more challenging to read. There is anger present, yes, but there is also sorrow, almost as if seeing Anon before her was akin to seeing the ghost of a past she had tried so desperately to move away from...

   “A-Anon?” Samantha asks in a quiet, broken voice. Before another word leaves her lips, Anon finds a gigantic bloodstained hand wrapped around his neck, easily lifting him off the ground and holding him at least three feet above the ground. 

   Instinctively, Anon tries to grasp the gigantic dino hand constricting his breathing. As his hands fruitlessly try to lessen the terrible grip slowly squeezing the life out of him, he locks eyes with Mr. Ripley’s amber orbs. They are awful, wrathful burning spheres that hold within them such overwhelming anger that Anon finds it amazing the elder ptero hasn’t snapped his neck like he so very easily could.

   “How fucking dare you show your face in house!” Mr. Ripley roared as he lessened his grip just enough to allow Anon a breath of precious air before again constricting his neck. “HOW DARE YOU COME BACK AFTER YOU TOOK MY DAUGHTER AWAY!”

   Mr. Ripley tightens his grip. Unlike Naser’s chokehold, the human has no hope of reversing the elder ptero’s terrible grip. Anon can only let out a strained gurgle as he feels his hand go numb. It suddenly dawns on him that he's on the verge of dying. That only makes his past regrets seem all the more terrible. With the last of his strength, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. In it, he wrote the exact address of where he had last seen Fang. He had scribbled it down, knowing full well that he might not live to see the following day.

   So long as that information was known, he could at least die with some peace in his mind...

   Samantha rushes forward and grabs her husband’s arm. “STOP!” she shouts as she desperately grips onto the matriarch’s burly arm. “You’re killing him!”

   “That’s the idea,” Ripley answers coldly and distantly. He was done being nice. He was done being idle. For four years, he had let the pain fester in his heart. Now that he had the one responsible in his grasp, he would not waste his opportunity to achieve some form of absolution. Even if it meant damming his soul to hell...

   Stella looks around her in a panic. She knows well she has no chance of stopping someone as big and robust as Mr. Ripley, but she's not going to stand by as she watches the life of someone precious to her get snuffed out. ‘Even if I made no difference. Even if I get hurt in the process, I’m not letting Anon die!’ She thinks as she musters all of her strength and wills her legs to move.

   But before she can spring forth to action, a blur of brown and orange rush past her. Before her mind can finish processing what her eyes had seen, she hears the voice of Naser, letting out a roar of fury. The stego turns her attention to the scene in time to see the young doctor attempt to tackle his father. 

   While Naser’s form isn’t nearly large enough to leave a dent on Ripley, the force of his sprint, combined with the element of surprise with which it occurred, causes the patriarch to lose his wind temporarily. More importantly, the blow is enough to force him to loosen his grip on Anon’s neck, all the while pushing him further into the house's foyer.  

   Anon Falls on the ground choking and gagging in a desperate attempt to bring oxygen back into his lungs. The previous strength Stella had been putting into rushing and tackling the elder ptero she puts towards hurrying to Anon's side. Wasting not a second, she picks up the human and helps him sit against a nearby wall, all the while checking his neck for any wound that would prevent him from adequately absorbing oxygen.

   Meanwhile, Ripley lets out a roar of rage as he readies his fist to smash down on whoever dared interrupt his attempt at obtaining justice. Before he can make contact, the assailant jumps back and fixes him with a glare full of mixed emotions ranging from rage, regret, fear, and finally to… happiness? 

   Ripley manages enough breaths in his lung to cool some of his rage. In that moment of sudden clarity, he recognizes the face of the ptero now glaring back at him and standing guard over the body of the human he’d been so joyously strangling seconds ago.

   Ripley’s expression flashes with mixed emotions at the sight of the son he thought he’d never see again. Anger at his daring to show his face in his house again. Joy at seeing him again despite their previous fallout. Relief at seeing him not only alive but also healthy and strong. Finally, back to anger, not just as the fact that he had come back after what he did four years earlier, but that he was protecting the one who had caused all their pain and misery in the first place. He couldn’t wrap his mind around that last part, and it filled him with such bitterness that it was starting to make him see red.

   Ripley opens his mouth to shout at his son. He’s cut off when Samantha rushes forward and wraps Naser in a tight embrace, her arms and wings forming a protective cocoon over her child as she allows herself to weep. “My son!” she says through the sobs. “M-my N-Naser’s back home!” Her grip over her son grows tighter as her tears begin to stain Naser’s trademark arboreal jacket. “I-is it really y-you!?”

   Naser, for his part, returns his mother’s embrace. “Yes,” he whispers, trying his best not to break into sobs of his own. “It’s really me. I-I’m back…” 

   Naser broke off from his mother’s embrace and turned to meet his father as much as he hated to. He again fixes the elder ptero with a glare as he takes a step forward so that the two are standing within arm’s reach of each other.

   Ripley narrows his eyes and puffs out his chest in a display of intimidation. It doesn’t work quite as he intended, as Naser only intensifies the glare in his eyes. As elder and junior ptero continue their stand-off, the very air grows heavy as the dinos seemingly prepare to enter into a no-holds-barred brawl.

   “STOP IT!” Samantha shouts at the top of her lungs, jumping between her son and husband, all the while putting her hands up and spreading her wings as wide as they can go. “Stop this nonsense, NOW!”

   Samantha, the usually laid back and relaxed housewife of the Aaran household, snaps her regularly closed eyes wide open and sets her visage into a deep and terrible scowl, one she brings down upon both her husband and child. Almost as soon as that terrible gaze falls upon them, the two pteros lose whatever swagger they were building and shrink back in fear.

   “Now, you two listen to me!” Samantha starts, her voice cold and barely holding back the rage bubbling in her chest. “I have been waiting for the day that our family returns to some semblance of togetherness for four years. FOUR YEARS!” she snaps, all the while shifting her gaze back and forth between her warring son and husband. “Now that our boy has returned home, we will try to be a HAPPY family!” The petite ptero matriarch snaps her glare directly at Ripley. She takes a step forward, all the while jabbing a finger into the ptero patriarch’s chest. “And I will NOT have you ruin this with your stupid machismo!” She then snaps her glare back to Naser, who can't help but take a step back out of fear. “Or you with your rebelliousness!” she hisses through clenched teeth. “The two of you are going to make up this instant, or so help me I’m going to smack the two of you around until you do!”

   Ripley’s brow fills with dozens of beads of sweat. He uncomfortably shifts his gaze around the foyer, looking at everything and anything that wasn’t his son or wife. 

   Finally, after the piercing and hot glare of his wife breaks through the last of his rage-created defenses, Ripley clears his throat and takes a step towards Naser. With a heavy sigh, he softens his gaze and raises his hands. “Naser… m-my boy… I… m-missed you,” he says in a voice that almost comes off as bashful.

   Despite his previous rage, Naser is surprised to hear his father sound so vulnerable. Vulnerability was already a concept he was convinced his father had never learned or actively ripped out of his brain, so to see it happen before his eyes left him with a feeling that he can barely describe. Gradually though, the feeling supplants whatever negativity he might have harbored towards his dad, to the point that the reason he had once feuded with him became less and less critical. With a final sigh to dispel any negative emotion from himself, Naser looks at his father’s eyes, the corners of his lips rising ever so slightly in the process. “I… I missed you too, dad…”  

   Samantha claps her hands together and once more shuts her eyes as a smile returns to her lips. “See, was that so hard?” she asks in a sweet yet vaguely threatening voice. She quickly rushes to the front door and shuts it, ensuring that whatever other shouting happened, it would stay inside the Aaran residence.

   Both Naser and Ripley let out a nervous chuckle before sighing in relief.

   Crisis averted for the time being.

   Naser looks back to Anon. Despite the human’s best efforts, he was still struggling to breathe, even with Stella helping him sit upright.

   Wasting not one second, Naser rushes towards his friend and inspects his neck. He lets out a hiss as he realizes that while there was no external damage, the force of his father’s grip very nearly crushed the windpipe. There would be definite bruising and soreness, maybe even another visit to the hospital if it were bad enough...

   Naser looks at Stella. “Help me get him up,” he tells the still shocked stego. She follows the order without question. “Hold him up and steady,” he tells her as he lets go of Anon’s arm and turns back to face his father, all the while his brow furrows and his eyes sharpen. 

   “That was way out of line, dad!”

   Ripley shoots Anon a glare before setting his sight back on Naser. “Why are you defending that piece of scum? You know well what he did to this family.”

   Naser hesitates for a second. The dying amber of his hate threatens to set his soul alight once again, but he snuffs them out by telling himself that he was past that point in his life. ‘Besides…’ he thinks before taking a deep breath of air and steeling himself for his words to come. ‘He’s doing something I was too cowardly to do for so many years…’

   “Dad… I know what Anon did. Believe me; I have lived with that knowledge for the last four years too.”

   Ripley crosses his arms. “If you know, then why ar—”

   “DESPITE that,” Naser snaps, cutting his father’s words off and causing the elder ptero’s eyes to go broad with surprise. “Anon’s the reason I’m here tonight. If it wasn’t for his… lack of self-preservation… I would have kept on living without once thinking about making amends with you and mom...”  

   Naser’s words shake Ripley to his core. He shoots another glare towards Anon, who, for his part in all of this, continues to stand there supported by a woman he was sure he’d never seen before, holding on to his neck and still attempting to breathe. How could that human be both responsible for his daughter’s vanishing and the return of his son?

   “Dad,” Naser says as he takes another step forward. “I’m sorry… that I also ran from this family four years ago. It was the biggest mistake of my life.” He shut his eyes and sighs wearily. “I was so convinced that running from all of this would lead me to a better life... when the reality was that it led me to repeat so many of the same mistakes. Worse yet, it turned me into something I wasn’t!” The young doctor takes another step forward and once again stops only an arm’s length away from his father. “I stopped socializing for fear of losing my friends and loved ones like I did with Lucy and Naomi. I tossed myself into my schoolwork and did nothing else in a desperate attempt to prove that I was still perfect when that perfection was what was killing me. I pushed my body and mind to the brink daily so that I could focus on getting that damn degree when that only caused me physical and emotional anguish... and for what? Only to return home an almost broken man desperate to one day find his sister and make the one responsible for her vanishing pay…” Naser puts his head on his father’s chest and lets out a mournful sob. “C-can you find it in your heart to forgive a stupid, idiot boy for all of his mistakes?!” The ptero cries out, unable to keep his composure any longer. 

   To say that Ripley is stunned by his son’s words is an understatement. Within the ptero patriarch, a fierce battle rages between his mind and his heart. His mind told him that he couldn’t let go, that he couldn’t forgive. One didn’t just forget four years with a finger snap. His son had made a grave mistake, and he deserved to be punished as gravely for it. If he didn’t, could he call himself a lawman at all?

   Ripley’s heart, however, sang a very different tune. It told him that punishment wouldn’t magically turn back the hands of the clock. His child had returned to him and was within arm’s reach, begging for forgiveness for a crime that wasn’t even all his in the first place…

   It was that final recognition that stung the hardest for Ripley. In all his stubbornness, he first gave up on Lucy and put all of the world’s weight on Naser’s shoulders. When Lucy ran away, he blamed Naser for failing to be a good brother, neglecting to realize that it had been Naser and only Naser who had ever truly cared for Lucy. If there was anyone who had failed Lucy in her most significant time of need, it was neither Naser nor Anon as he had believed for so long. 

   The chain of failure had started with him…

   Tears welled in Ripley’s eyes as he embraced his son for the first time in four years. “Son,” he starts, his voice barely holding together as it threatens to burst into sobbing. “I’m… sorry too. I should've never put so much pressure on your shoulders. I Shouldn’t have ever given up on Lucy as I did. I… I…” Ripley increases the tightness of his embrace on his son, who in return also embraces his father all the harder. 

   The hug between father and son lasts almost a full minute. By the time Naser breaks it, his eyes are puffy and red, though the smile on his lips speaks another story, one of joy and peace after so many years of regrets and sorrows. He turns to face his mother, an apology already formed in the tip of his tongue, when she merely rushes forward and hugs him again like there was no tomorrow.

   “It’s okay… my sweet little Naser. I f-forgive you!” Samantha managed to say between sobs of joy. 

   Ripley moves forward and also hugs his son and wife, wrapping the two in a protective cocoon with both his arms and wings.

   While by no means a complete family yet, in that fleeting moment, the Aaran’s felt like in the old days, before the pressures of life and disappointments about the future battered and tore at their dreams.

   For one moment, Naser, Ripley, and Samantha dared to believe they had found a small piece of peace once again… 

   Despite his best efforts to keep his presence as diminished as possible, Anon lets out a string of painful coughs, which nearly causes him to double over as the pain racks at his throat. The only thing that keeps him standing is Stella’s diligent grip. 

   Ripley lets go of his family and walks up to both Anon and Stella. His previous expression of bliss vanishes the instant he locks eyes with the human. “I… I don’t understand you... You’re the reason that Lucy ran away... yet you’re also the reason my son came back…” Ripley grimaces as he again moves to grab the dainty caveman. 

   Before Ripley’s hand can get anywhere near Anon, Stella slaps it away, which causes the ptero to stop in his tracks and flinch in surprise. The stego then begins dragging the human away from Ripley and towards the house’s main entrance.

   Ripley turns to face his wife with a flabbergasted expression on his face. The diminutive ptero shakes her head in reply before pointing to her husband and making a strangling motion with her hands.

   It takes about two seconds before Ripley’s eyes widen as the realization hits him like one of his golf clubs to the head.

   Meanwhile, Stella is making some headway dragging Anon, who for his part is doing his best to struggle against the stego’s grasp. “Let… go… of me,” he hisses at his dino companion.

   “It’s okay Anon, I’ll get you out of here!” Stella boldly declares as she tries her best to lift the human over her shoulder. Of course, the moment she manages to get his feet off the ground, Anon’s weight, combined with her awkward footing, causes the stego to collapse backward. She hits the ground pretty hard, leaving her partially addled. 

   Anon, meanwhile, is flung backward at least five feet. He winds up striking his head against a nearby wall, causing him to see more than a few stars.

   Seconds later, Anon feels a strong hand lift him off the floor and stand him straight. It takes the human a few seconds for his vision to fully return, by which time he realizes far too late that the one who picked him off the floor had been none other than Ripley.

   Swallowing very painfully, Anon looks up to meet Ripley’s eyes. Instantly, he feels the very warmth leave his body. At the same time, he also feels a strange sense of ease. ‘Sooner or later, I was gonna get killed,’ he thinks as he mentally prepares for Naser’s father to grab his neck once again, this time finishing what he had started minutes earlier.

   But before Ripley could have his shot at strangling him, he needed to get the guilt off his chest.

   “I… I understand if you never forgive me…” Anon whispered in a strained, raspy voice. “I know... I have... no right... to apologize for... what I did to your daughter... but…” Wasting not one single second, the young man bows his head before Ripley. “I’m truly…. truly sorry... for my actions... that night...!” 

   Ripley lets out a sneer as he drags Anon forward. He even slouches forward enough so that he’s face to face with the human. 

   “I’ll never forgive you for helping to kill my daughter,” Ripley hisses, his words colder than the coldest glacier on earth. 

   Anon takes the patriarch’s words and shakes his head. “You’re wrong… about... Fa—L-Lucy,” Anon manages to say despite his ravaged voice doing everything it can to fail him.

   Ripley’s eyes snap wide, and he grits his teeth in absolute fury. “What did you say, punk!?” he growls, his face coming dangerously close to Anon’s.

   “Fang’s... alive…!” Anon barely manages to rasp, his voice giving into a cacophony of coughs seconds after he managed to speak those crucial words to Ripley.

   Upon hearing Anon’s words, the ptero patriarch locks eyes with Anon and grabs him by the shoulder, albeit a bit more gently this time. “W-what did you say?” He asks the human in a flabbergasted tone. 

   “Fang’s… alive…” Anon repeats, all the while trying to stop his heart from beating faster than an anime fan who somehow managed to score himself a date for prom night with the head cheerleader. “I don’t… I don’t know... what she’s been doing... for the last four years... but I saw her playing a shitty gig... a little over a week ago at a pizzeria in... Skin Row…”

   “O-one week ago!” Ripley shouts in a mixture of pain and rage.

   Anon flinches at the ptero’s raised voice. He glances to the side and notices how Samantha and Naser are helping Stella back to her feet. She looks a little worse for wear but overall seemed to be unharmed. Anon let out a sigh of relief, though he wasn’t sure why since Stella had caused him to fall earlier with her ‘rescue’ attempt. Still, he couldn’t fault her for trying.

   With that particular burden off his shoulders, and his newfound determination pushing him to say what needed to be said, Anon once more narrated his life up until he met with Naser. He told it all, from his return to Volcadera after four years in the navy, to his running across Fang by complete chance, to his regret for not speaking to her when he had a chance, to the subsequent week and its mocking dreams of a better life, to his drinking and smoking and self-harm and eventual hospitalization. 

   On hearing his friend end his tale, Naser leaves Stella’s side and stands beside the human, also looking his father in the eye. With a deep sigh to steel his nerves, he picks up right where Anon left off. He, too, tells it all and tells it truly, including the moment when he tried to strangle Anon before his realization hit like a train full of bricks. 

   Anon takes a step forward and approaches Ripley with a determined look in his eyes. He’s aware of the danger he’s putting himself in by just being that close to the still furious elder ptero. Still, a part of him isn’t afraid anymore. Much like with Naser before, he couldn't afford to run, not if he could fix all of the mistakes in his life.

   “Mr. Ripley,” Anon starts, his voice still raspy and weak but also filled with newfound courage. “I may… have made many mistakes… in my life… but I’m done… running and hiding… from them...” He fixes the ptero with a grin. Weak at first, but growing with confidence with every passing second. “I will… set things... right with Fang… and I will… bring her back home… even if it’s… the last thing I do… because… this is my second… chance… and I am not… wasting it…!”

   Ripley’s face is a mixture of strong emotions. Anger, confusion, regret, despair, happiness, and perhaps strongest of all, hope. He can only look at the human with confoundment, his previous words about how he couldn’t understand the human buzzing in his mind. A part of him wanted the simplicity that came with hating the human. Yet, from hearing his tale and feeling the regret in his voice and seeing the shame in his eyes, the elder ptero found any reason to despise Anon fading by the second. After all, how could he hate someone who had already suffered so much and had come out stronger for it? How could he hate someone so determined to right all his wrongs?

   Ripley bitterly chuckles to himself. Much as the idea seemed alien to him in this world, perhaps in some other place and time, Anon would have made a good husband to Lucy...

   Samantha walks up to Anon without saying a word. Anon, for his part, is startled by the sudden appearance of the petite ptero, but he tells himself that whatever she had to say to him, he more than deserved. He locks his eyes with the matriarch’s closed eyes. Even so, he can still feel her gaze pierce right through him, exposing his every weakness to her perception as if she had x-ray vision.

   The matriarch of the Aaron household breathes deep, and without a single moment of hesitation, slaps Anon across the face, causing the human to stagger sideways a bit, as the impact of the slap is both so sudden and so powerful. ‘God, it feels like I just got punched by a martial arts champ!’ Anon manages to cobble together in his brain as he instinctively rubs his cheek, which feels like it’s swelling with every passing second.

   “That’s… for breaking the heart of my little pirate princess…” Samantha says coldly. Anon readjusts his posture and nods, accepting the blow as well-earned. He readied himself for another when he sees Samantha’s arms twitch. He closes his eyes and prepares himself for the pain that's to come.

   But what came next wasn’t something the human expected.

   Samantha lets out a sob and lunges forward, wrapping her arms around Anon, locking him in a tight embrace that made his muscles ache from the surprising amount of force the petite housewife could generate.

   Anon does not return the embrace. He does not feel like he deserves to...

   “Thank you for bringing my son back to me,” Samantha sobs into Anon's shoulder, which suddenly becomes sodden with tears as the ptero lets herself weep freely. Less than ten seconds later, Fang’s mother breaks the embrace and makes her way next to her husband, who finally appears to be composed enough to speak again.

   “Anon I…” Ripley begins, his voice coarse and uneven, almost as if he was struggling to maintain his usual gravely demeanor. “I don’t… I can’t…” Ripley shuts his eyes and lets out a loud groan before he again fixes Anon with a glare. Only, this glare isn’t one of hatred or anger or resentment. Instead, it's filled with something Anon never thought he’d see from Fang’s father…

   “Dammit, kid, you’ve given me the one thing I never thought I’d have ever again…” He snarls and points a finger at the human. “I swear in the name of Raptor Jesus, if you are fucking lying to us about our daughter, I’m going to mount your head on my wall, damn be whatever jail time I have to face!”

   Anon again painfully swallows as he nods.

   The elder ptero walks up to the human and grabs him by the shoulders. At first, Anon believes he’s about to get strangled again, but that fear’s put to rest when Ripley, much to the human’s shock, brings him in for a hug of his own. 

   As if the embrace wasn’t already surprising enough, he hears the ptero patriarch break down into silent, dignified sobs, all the while his grip on the human grows tighter and tighter.

   “Thank you for giving this old man hope again,” Ripley whispered through barely contained sobs. “Thank you…”

   Anon brings up an uneasy hand and pats Ripley in the back. As he does, his determination grows ever more potent than before, supplanting whatever doubts he might have had in the past about his next course of action.

   It was time to set things right with Fang...

Chapter Text

“Is this the place?” Naser asks the moment the four friends step out of the Nas-Car and into the uncharacteristically chilly night. “You sure we didn’t take a wrong turn somewhere else?” He points to the seemingly abandoned and decrepit facade of Pizza Time’s storefront.

   “Yeah, the place looks pretty shitty, I know,” Anon answers before glancing around the street. As he does, he can’t help but feel a chill run down his spine. The streets of Skin Row just aren’t the place you want to be so late at night. The sense of impending danger lurking around the next corner does wonders to keep one nice and sharp, however.

   Stella steps forward and approaches the bold, albeit slightly faded lettering by the pizzeria’s window. “I don’t know. It looks rather homey. Reminds me Freedy Fazzbear’s or Bun’s Burgers!”

   Rosa perks an eyebrow in response to her friend’s comment. “¿Estás loca? ¡Parece que podrian robar este lugar en cualquier momento!” she exclaims in unfiltered Spanish. Somehow, everyone seems to understand what the feisty Latina says in her native tongue, as everyone but Anon nods in agreement with her words.

   While Anon was inclined to agree, he had already been inside the restaurant, so he knew the place’s exterior didn’t entirely paint the complete picture of the establishment. “It looks much better on the inside, at least,” the human adds with a shrug.

   “That doesn’t put me any more at ease, Anon,” Naser counters. 

   Anon’s only reply to the ptero’s concerns is to take a step towards the restaurant’s door.

   “Oh, Anon! You’ve been here before. Do they have an arcade in there?” Stella inquires gleefully.

   Anon’s brain brings back the memory of the maddening din of the pizzeria’s arcade the last time he was there. He lets out a grumble and snaps a scowl towards Stella. “Yes, but I don’t recommend getting anywhere near it if you value your sanity.”

   Stella’s eyes go wide on hearing Anon’s words. “Think they have a DDR machine?” she asks in a bubbly tone that makes Anon yearn for the days when he could be more carefree about life. Considering the current situation, none of the group could afford to be carefree. Especially since they were standing in the middle of a Skin Row street late enough at night that not even the vagrants loitered around.

   “Focus, chica!” Rosa shouts at Stella, all the while giving the stego a light slap on the back of her head. “We’re here for Fang’s sake, not to play on maquinitas!”

   Stella rubs the spot where her friend and boss struck her, but rather than looking mad, she nods twice in acknowledgment, all the while letting out a defeated sigh. “Yeah, you’re right. Fang comes first!”

   Naser glances between Stella and Rosa before turning to face Anon with an expectant look in his eyes. “So... what’s the plan?”

   The human stops to ponder just what his plan should be next. He knows what needs to happen. The big question was if it was even possible to carry it out? How will Lucy react to his sudden appearance? Will she be happy to see him again, or will she be furious? Would she even give him the time of day? For all he knows, she could very well not even remember him at all, just like two weeks earlier, treating him with cold indifference. 

   At that thought, an internal debate begins within the former sailor. He tries to think which reaction would be worse to experience. ‘I mean, with rage, it at least implies that she remembers enough for it to elicit an emotional response. Indifference would mean she either forgot or forced herself to forget all about me…’

   Anon rubs his temple before letting out a sigh and settling on an all-or-nothing plan. “I go in, speak to Lucy, get her attention, and let her vent all her rage on me. I’m sure she’s going to have plenty of that in need of venting. Meanwhile, you three wait outside for my signal to come inside. After that…” the human glances between Stella, Naser, and Rosa, not sure about what was to happen next. “I… I don’t know... but this is the best I have right now, as shitty as it sounds...”

   Naser walks up to Anon and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure that going alone is a good idea? Knowing Lucy, she’s probably going to be REALLY pissed off. It won’t surprise me if she punches you in the face.”

   Anon gives his friend a determined grin. “Yeah, I’m well aware she might punch me. I’d deserve it too.”

   “Yeah, you do,” Naser quips as he removes his hand from the human’s shoulder. “Still, as satisfying as it would be to see that, it doesn’t help you reconcile with her.”

   “Actually... it might just work...” Anon says as he rubs his chin.

   Naser raises an eyebrow. “Anon, I don’t think violence is the answer in this situation.”

   “On the contrary, I think violence is EXACTLY the answer!” the human retorts with perhaps a bit more cheer than expected. “You can’t beat the catharsis of a punch. Especially if that punch’s aimed at someone or something you’re angry at.”

   Naser gives his human companion a mate, almost pitiful look. “Maybe I should have had your head checked more thoroughly before I gave you your discharge. Something definitely broke in that brain of yours.”

   It’s now Anon’s turn to give his ptero ally a flat look. “Says the guy who almost strangled me two days ago.”

   Naser swallows hard and points an accusatory finger at Anon. “That was a moment of weakness, and you know it!”

   “Can you deny how cathartic strangling me felt?”

   Naser opens his mouth as if to snap back with a retort. Quickly, though, the young doctor shuts his mouth and slowly lowers his finger before glancing sideways. As he does, his mouth twists into a frown.

   Anon smugly smiled as he nodded his head twice. “My point exactly.”

   Naser closes his eyes and lets out a drawn-out sigh. “Lucy hasn’t seen you in four years. Do you really think she’s just going to let you walk up to her for a chat? If she’s as broken as you’ve described, she’s going to be very unhappy to see you. VIOLENTLY unhappy, if she’s still anywhere near what I remember her being.”

   “I think it’s a great idea!” Stella chimes in, turning around to meet the gazes of Anon and Naser. “What better way to show Fang that Anon’s sorry than by opening himself up to her judgment!”

   “Stella, this isn’t some romance manga where the two leads embrace each other out of the love they once held for each other after years apart!” Rosa interjects, all the while waving her arms around as if trying to draw all attention to herself. “We have to abide by real-life rules!”

   “Such as?” Stella asks, all the while tilting her head and placing her hands behind her back.

   “W-well…” Rosa stutters, clearly flustered by getting called out for her words. “Uh… f-for one thing…” she glances towards Naser and smiles, rushing to stand by his side. “Naser made a good point! Fang va a estar MUY enojada con Anon. If I was in her shoes and I was dealing with a no-good, no caring, apathetic ex-boyfriend that broke my heart and sent me down a path of self-destruction...” She brings her hands up and forms a first. “I would slap him across the room before doing one of the pile drives my Tio Juan showed me the last time he got some time off from his wrestling world tour!” The ankylosaur ends her words by flexing her right arm, which bulges with muscles that couldn’t just result from a career as a florist.

   “When you put it like that, I guess I can understand Fang’s anger,” Stella remarks as she taps a finger on her chin. “Anon insulted her and left her basically in her lowest possible moment before walking out of her life like he’d never loved her in the first place….”

   Anon put a hand over his face. “Rosa… Stella… you’re not HELPING...”

   “No, I think we’re making an excellent point!” Rosa says as she walks up to Anon, putting both her hands on his shoulder. “You have to approach Fang with some tact. The last thing we want is to overwhelm the poor chica, especially if this is the lowest point in her life!”

   Anon grimaces as he shifts his gaze between all three of his friends. “Do any of you have better ideas then?” He asks as he steps out of Rosa’s grasp and back to the center of his friends. 

   Stella again taps her chin before smiling and raising her hand. “Oh! Why don’t you go in there holding a big boombox playing ‘Out of my league?’ That’s sure to get her attention AND cheer her up!”

   Anon facepalms. “No Stella, I will NOT walk in there with a boombox over my head while playing some cheesy love song. Where would I even get a boombox?”

   Stella crosses her arms and puffs her cheek in reply to Anon’s rebuttal of her idea.

   Anon sighs and looks at Rosa and Naser. “What about you guys? Any ideas?”

   Rosa shakes her head in reply, for the first time looking as if she doesn’t know how to handle the situation currently unfolding before her. 

   Naser, meanwhile, opens his eyes wide and grins just as widely. “Take an offering to Lucy, something that will get her on your side no matter what.”

   “An offering?”

   “Yes! And I have just the thing. Give me a sec...” Naser says before he rushes back to the Nas-Car. 

   Anon shoots a look towards Rosa and Stella, both of whom look at each other before shrugging. Anon’s mind wanders a bit. Just what could Naser have in store for him?   

   The human gets his answer not one minute later when the young doctor returns holding two items in his hands: an orange box with an image of cartoon dinosaurs printed in the front and a ziplock bag full of what looks to be…

   “...Are those chicken nuggets?” Anon asks, not quite able to fully process what he sees in Naser’s hand.

   “Dinno nuggies,” Naser corrects his friend, all the while grinning ear to ear.

   Anon blinks again and looks Naser square in the eyes. “...Why do you have a box of dino nuggets in your car?” 

   “I bought it earlier while you were getting some sleep in that… apartment of yours,” Naser answers as he hands Anon the ziplock bag of dino nuggets. 

   Anon narrows his eyes. “Yeah, I know my place sucks as a home, but it’s the best I can afford with my pension right now,” Anon says as he stuffs the bag of nuggets in his pant’s back pocket. “Better a shitty apartment in Skin Row than sleeping in the streets.” 

   “You can sleepover at my place!” Stella exclaims, all the while smiling as cheerfully as a kid in a candy store. “My home’s ALWAYS open to you, Anon!”

   “Stella, the only way I’m sleeping over at your place is if I lose my apartment,” Anon protests, all the while shooting the lime-yellow stego with an annoyed glare. “You’d probably keep me up all night watching Gurren Lagann reruns or, god forbid, all the Naruto filler!” the human visibly shudders at that last thought. “ninety-one episodes of pure non-canonical horror...”

   “If we were to have an anime night, I thought we should watch Space Runaway Ideon!” Stella chirps innocently. 

   The human blinks a few times as he absorbs his anime-loving friend’s words. “I mean… it’s a magnificent series, but damn if it’s not…” He stops himself and quickly realizes that he’s getting off-topic. “That’s beside the point!” he shouts as he points an accusatory finger at Stella. “No anime nights anytime soon!” He then turns back to face Naser. “And I still want to know WHY you’re carrying around a box of dino nuggets in your car!” 

   “I like them,” Naser says matter-of-factly. “They also remind me of Lucy, which is the important part here. If my sister is still in there somewhere, she should still LOVE dino nuggies!”

   “You do know that chicken nuggets aren’t a high-class food—more junk food than anything. You’re a doctor. You should know that.”

   “Don’t overthink it, Anon!” Naser says as he gives the human a pat on the back. “What’s important is if you give the nuggies to Lucy, she should be far more receptive to whatever you tell her.”

   Anon lets out a sigh before shaking his head once. “This has got to be the most insane plan I’ve ever been a part of…” 

   The human takes a step towards the pizzeria, only stopping for a second to glance back at his three friends, all of whom look at him with determined expressions on their faces. Somehow, their expressions of hope do little to instill the young sailor with confidence. At the same time, he feels a burning drive in him, one borne out of all the tribulations endured up to that point. He knows there’s no avoiding what he needs to do next. Too long he’s avoided it when he should have faced it head-on four years earlier.

   Without another word, he pushes on the front door to the pizzeria and steps inside, ready and willing to face whatever destiny has in store for him.

-A Few Minutes Later-

“Anon,” Fang seethes with every bit of hatred that she can put into her voice.

   Fang’s already clenched hands tighten further. Her claws dig into the flesh of her palms, drawing blood as her knuckles turn white. Whatever pain she might feel is utterly overwritten by the inferno raging uncontrollably in her soul. At that moment, she wants nothing more than to rip Anon’s chest open with her bare hands, showing him his still beating black heart as the life slowly leaves his eyes.

   The ptero takes one step towards the human. Without wasting a single second, she raises an arm and snaps her shoulder back. With all the strength she can muster, she throws a punch directed right at Anon’s face. A blow the human does nothing to avoid, parry, or even counter.

   As the sound of a scaled fist meeting soft human flesh echoes through the abandoned restaurant, Fang can’t help but feel some level of catharsis. It’s several years too late and far too little to make any real difference, but as she feels her first bury itself into Anon’s cheek, she feels a certain level of rapture. 

   Fang can’t help but smile ever so faintly...

   To Fang’s surprise, Anon takes her punch without so much as flinching. At first, the ptero wonders if she’s that weak, but as Anon’s cheek turns a dark shade of red and rises a few millimeters in inflammation, her doubts evaporate. If anything, it’s Anon who has gotten physically more robust.

   Anon turns his head to once again gaze right into Fang’s eyes. Fang puts away her surprise at Anon’s resistance—or numbness—to glare daggers at him again. However, as Fang’s eyes meet Anon’s, she feels overwhelmed by the deep sorrow she finds in them.

   The ptero’s previous hostility deflates as the sadness in Anon’s eyes overwhelms her. Little by little, the fire and acid in her soul vanishes as a realization hits; that the human now staring deep into her soul is just as damaged—if not more so—than she is. The sorrow she can see in his gaze is but a fraction of the emotion she could feel in his soul. There is so much more just hidden away under the surface... 

   “Lucy…” Anon whispers as he takes another step towards the girl he once loved, yet the one girl he had ruined everything with because of his selfishness and apathy. “What happened to you?”

   Despite wanting nothing more than to kick Anon in the testicles and run away to hide from the feelings in her heart, Fang can only shake her head in denial. Goosebumps course through her body as for just one moment, she lets herself remember what Anon had been to her... and what she had been to him. How they had both ended it so unceremoniously, almost as if all those hours spent together, all those laughs shared, all that happiness that bounced between the two of them had meant nothing.

   Fang steps even closer to Anon without another word and wraps her arms around the human’s chest. Anon returns the embrace, doing his best to cradle the woman he had loved and so carelessly hurt four years ago.

   As the night outside grew colder, Anon and Fang—broken and beaten by a cruel and uncaring world—found a small semblance of comfort in each other’s embrace. It wasn’t enough to heal the wounds or to undo all the mistakes the two had committed in their lives up to that point, but for just one second, it didn’t matter...

   Just for one second, it was a good place for the two of them to start again…

   …

   Fang is the first of the two of them to break their embrace as she takes a step back and clears her throat. “So…” she starts, all the while wiping the blood from her hands on her pants, adding to the grime accumulated over a day of work. “H-how long were you watching me play?”

   Anon rubs the back of his head and gives Fang his most sincere smile. “Been here since before you sang that last song…” Anon’s smile faltered somewhat as he recalled the bleak lyrics to it. “It was… pretty good...”

   Fang rolls her eyes and scoffs. “You weren’t supposed to like it,” she says as she crosses her arms. “I wrote that almost four years ago, after…” she trails off and shuts her eyes before shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. What I wanna know is—” Fang cut herself off as her nose began twitching. Less than a second later, she actively began sniffing the air around the human, much like how a dog would sniff around when searching for something that had caught their attention.   

   Realizing that his little ‘secret’ was out, Anon reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the zip bag of nuggets Naser had given him earlier. “I know this isn’t exactly an ideal ‘I’m sorry’ present, but—”

   Before Anon can finish his words, Fang snatches the bag from his hands and inspects it closer, her eyes gradually widening as she confirms the contents were processed chickeny goodness.

   “I, uh… heard you liked dino nuggies…” 

   Fang brings the bag of nuggets closer to her chest and shoots anon a glare. “Mine!” she utters in an uncharacteristically childish tone.

   “Yeah, I figured. H-hope you like them!” Anon stammers, all the while rubbing the back of his head for a second time. 

   Fang blins about five times before clearing her throat. “W-wait here for just a sec…” she whispers, all the while backing away from the human without breaking eye contact with him. Only when she reaches the backstage area does she look away, disappearing behind the small stage.

   Anon stands where Fang told him to, fidgeting in discomfort as he hears what sounds like the rummaging of plates and other metallic objects. Then the sound of beeps and the unmistakable hum of a microwave follow. Anon almost asks himself for a second why there would be a microwave behind a music stage until he realizes that bands who have to play for hours on end don’t have the time in between sets to get themselves a full meal. Some might not even be able to eat what’s on offer in the pizzeria’s menu on account of being herbivores.

   The human only snaps from his idle thoughts when the loud alarm of the microwave catches his ears. That’s followed by Fang walking out from behind the backstage area, holding a plate of freshly heated dino nuggets. She walks up to Anon and takes one of the dino-shaped pieces of chicken in her fingers—the T-rex-shaped one—and greedily chomps down on the tiny piece of food, sending it down to meet its nuggety maker.

   Anon can’t help but snicker softly at the sight. When Naser had told him that Lucy loved dino nuggets, he hadn’t expected her love for the pieces of processed chicken to be so… raw. If the young sailor hadn’t known any better, he would have said that the ptero’s love bordered on the obsessive.

   Then again, there could also be a darker implication. Maybe it wasn’t that Lucy loved chicken nuggets so much as she was just that hungry. She looked pretty thin, to where Anon wondered if his ex was getting enough food. A bit of an ironic thought to have, considering she played music for a pizzeria.

   Fang chews her food before swallowing, grabbing another nugget before pointing a finger at Anon. “So, I gotta know. How the fuck did you find me?” she asks, all the while narrowing her eyes and glaring at Anon. “I went pretty far out of my way to make sure I disappeared from everyone’s life.”

   “Why disappear?” Anon asks before he stops his thoughts and sighs. “Actually, I think I may already know why…”

   Fang only nods in reply to Anon’s self-answered question. Neither human nor dino needed to explain further how they had come to their shared conclusion. Their very life choices leading up to their current reunion spoke far louder than any words they could exchange with one another.

   Still, there was one question that buzzed in Anon’s mind. “How did you manage to disappear?”

   This time, it was Fang’s turn to sigh. “That… might take a while to explain. Why don’t we sit down… over there,” she points to one of the nearest open tables. 

   Anon nods in acknowledgment. Fang walks past him and heads towards the table at a steady yet sluggish pace. 

   Before he follows his ex to the table, Anon pulls out his phone and quickly taps a text message to Naser.                        

[Anon]

Convo is going well with Lucy. Come inside but stay out of sight.

[Naser]

 Sounds good. When should we come out?

[Anon]

I’ll find a way to mention you. That’s your cue.

[Naser]

Okay.

Soon after Naser sends out his last reply, the human put his cellphone away and falls right behind Lucy as she leads him to a suitable table, one that doesn’t turn out to be pretty far from the stage.  

   Before she takes her seat, Lucy puts her plate of nuggets gingerly down. As soon as she’s sure her precious food isn’t going anywhere except her stomach, she allows herself to plop down on the chair and let out a sigh of relief. “Oh fuck, feels good to sit after hours of playing!” the ptero exclaims, all the while letting her body go numb, and her wings flare out in relaxation. She then remembers where she is and who she’s talking to before again clearing her throat and adjusting her position so that she’s sitting upright again.

   “Alright, Anon. First things first, you still haven’t answered my original question,” Lucy starts, her eyes once more narrowing as she glares at Anon. Whatever threatening aura she may have wanted to give off dulls, however, when she reaches for another piece of nugget and greedily munches on it. “How the fuck did you find me?” she asks the second she swallows her food.

   “Well… I didn’t find you per se. More like I ran into you two weeks ago…” Anon answers as he shifts his eyes away from Lucy and glances down at the table. “Seeing you again after four years… that wasn’t something I ever considered a possibility…”

   Lucy’s eyes widen as she puts on a bitter smile. “So… what you’re saying is that you accidentally ran into me two weeks ago… recognized me despite my current appearance and didn’t even say anything to me at the time?”

   Anon feels himself shrink at his ex’s question. When she puts it like that, it made him out to be a bigger coward than he already was. Still, she was right about everything. “Yes,” he answers bluntly. Not like he had any other answer to his ex’s question.

   Lucy takes another nugget from her plate and munches on it before crossing her arms. “I’d ask why you hesitated to talk to me for two weeks… but you and I both know just what kind of shit we screamed at each other on that beach four years ago.” She shuts her eyes and lets out a long exhale before slumping back on her chair. “I’m… I’m sorry I ever said that to you…” 

   Anon’s eyes widened at Lucy’s words. “W-what?” he asks in an incredulous tone. ‘Why is she apologizing! I’m the one who’s supposed to be apologizing!’ Anon thinks in a panic.

   Lucy lets out a groan and sits back up again. “What? Surprised to hear that your ex is apologizing for the shit she said to you?” she asks before bitterly laughing. “You’re not the only one who’s had FOUR FUCKING YEARS to think about what they did and regret every wrong decision they’ve made!” The ptero gives Anon a harsh glare as she slams her fist on the table. “I’m old enough to admit that I was a fucked-up schizo just like you said! Old enough to realize that I let myself get strung along by Trish without realizing that she was shaping me into something I didn’t want to be! Old enough to see that my whole ‘enbie’ bullshit was just me screaming for attention when I could have done a hundred more productive things to get it, like being better at my music or even joining the fucking gardening club! I could have put real effort into my schoolwork instead of going around shoving my non-binary bullshit down everyone’s throats!” Lucy reaches a hand to the plate of nuggies and grabs a handful of them, stuffing them all into her mouth before harshly chewing and swallowing. “Yeah, I’m done with the gender politics bullshit that Trish shoved into my head. It never did me or anyone any fucking good. Does it surprise you to hear that?” The ptero lets out another scoff as she again sits back on her chair and looks to the ceiling.

   Anon has no answer. Frankly, the human’s stunned by what he hears out of Lucy’s lips. This apology was so far going in a way that he couldn’t have ever predicted. It wasn’t so much an apology he was making towards Lucy, as it was Lucy venting about the mistakes she’d made in her life.

   “Lucy, I—”

   The ptero once again slams her fist on the table, causing anon to flinch. “Don’t you ‘Lucy’ me!” she snarls, her face twisting into a visage of rage. “I’m not looking for any sympathy! I did what I thought was right at the time… and I’ve lived with the consequences ever since!”

   “And what exactly did you do?” Anon asks with equal parts curiosity and dread.

   Lucy cringes as she wraps her arms around herself, claws digging into her plumage. “I… I...” she stammers as her digits dig deeper and deeper into the skin under her feathers. “When I… I ran away, I wanted to leave everything about the old me behind. I wasn’t Lucy anymore… and I certainly couldn’t be Fang either… so I abandoned it… Abandoned everything...” She shuts her eyes as her claws draw blood from where they had pierced her arms. “To finally answer your question about how I disappeared… I… I got in contact with some people. Bad people. M-mobsters…”

   Anon’s eyes once again widen, this time to the size of tea plates. “Oh no. Lucy, you didn’t actually…” The human couldn’t bring himself to finish his words. 

   Almost as if to answer him, Lucy nodded as her eyes grew dull and tired as if she had run the memory through her head a thousand times, and each time the recollection etched away another piece of her soul. “They gave me the fresh start I wanted. Made me disappear real good. Goodbye Lucy and goodbye Fang. Hello Gilda!” She, at last, released the hold on her arms, the blood on her fingers a deep contrast to her almost white plumage, making the injuries appear even more gruesome. 

   “I got what I wanted, but I lost all I had. Worse, the cost was high. So high that I’m still paying it off to this day…” Lucy grimaces, and for just a second, Anon prepared himself to see Lucy—or Gilda, rather—slam her fist on the table again. Only, that doesn’t happen. Instead, she smiles sourly as she shakes her head in defeat. “That’s the reason why I’m stuck playing shitty gigs like this one and why I live in a single-room apartment barely big enough to move around in.” The ptero subconsciously reaches for the last few dino nuggets on her plate. She grabs the four with a bloody hand, smearing the nuggets with blood and tossing them into her mouth without a care. She then chews and swallows, either unaware or just too numb to catch the taste of her blood.

   “I guess that answers your question about how I disappeared,” Lucy exclaims in a haggard tone as she stands from the table. As she does, the dam finally breaks and tears streak down her face. She does her best to wipe them with the back of her hands, but that only serves to smear what remains of her dull black eyeshadow. She grits her teeth and prepares to use her still blood-stained hands before Anon himself stands and grabs his ex’s palms, uncaring of the blood that will stain his hands.

   Lucy scowls at first, but her expression gradually gives way to one of indifference. As Anon looks down at his now red-stained extremities, he can’t help but feel that there’s a specific symbolism to be taken from the sight: two former lovers, both having made equally terrible mistakes, leading them both to equally awful futures. Both now standing before each other, with blood in their hands—literally and metaphorically—trying to find some comfort with each other despite knowing full well that things can never go back to the way they used to be... 

   “Anon,” Lucy whispers as she slowly removes her hands from Anon’s. “What happens now? Between us?” she asks, her voice weak. “I… I know we can’t go back to what we once had. We both fucked that up real good. But... I don’t want us to go back to being strangers who hate each other…” she sniffs once, a single tear rolling down her eyes. “I… I don’t want to go back to being so very alone…”

   Anon brings Lucy in for another embrace. As he does, his vision swims as he feels tears forming in his eyes. “Yeah,” he whispers into his ex’s ear.

   Slowly, gently, Anon breaks the embrace, and he wipes his own eyes, unaware or uncaring that by doing so, he’s also smearing some of Lucy’s blood on his face. “C-can we… start over?” he asks his ex.

   Lucy wipes away the last of her tears with her shirt before smiling and raising an eyebrow in response. “That’s... sooo cheesy, you god-damned dweeb…” she lets out another sigh and gives the human a tired smile. “But... I think I’m okay with that idea…”

   The ptero takes a step back and stretches out her right hand. “Hi, my name’s Gilda. Formerly Fang, who was also formerly Lucy Aaran. I’m a down-on-her-luck musician, high-school dropout, and… well, that last part doesn’t matter anymore. And you are?”

   Anon chuckles as he takes a step forward, grabs hold of Lucy’s still bloody hand as tightly yet also as gently as he can. “My name’s Anon Y Mous. Also a high-school dropout, former navy seaman, and… a wayward soul. Nice to meet you too.”

   Anon and Lucy look into each other’s eyes for about five seconds before the two shake hands. The shaking itself lasts for a full thirty seconds, almost as if neither human nor ptero wants the physical contact to end.

   Lucy raises an eyebrow at Anon. “You’re supposed to let go now,” she says, the corners of her mouth slowly rising as she speaks her words.

   Anon lets out a single chuckle in reply. “Ladies first,” he says, all the while slowly forming a grin on his lips.

   The two look down at their still grasping hands. Soon as they do, the two burst into hearty laughs over their somewhat childish re-introductions. Still, neither of the two former lovers can deny the level of catharsis that comes with finally reaching some level of reconciliation after so many years apart.

   Still, as happy as Anon feels at that moment, he knows that the work’s far from over. Just like with Naser, reconciling with him is only the first step. Lucy still needs to reconcile with everyone else in her life. Otherwise, Lucy would always be incomplete. Hollow.

   Anon and Lucy at least let go of each other’s hands. Lucy is the first to sit back down on the table and let out a satisfied sigh. 

   “So, navy, huh?” Lucy asks as her eyes scan the human’s body. “I guess that explains the extra bulk on your formerly scrawny ass.”

   Anon smiles and also sits back down on the table. “It was the military or homelessness.”

   “What was it like? Being a sailor boy?”

   “Hell,” Anon flatly answers as he leans back on his chair. “Stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean with nothing but water for thousands of miles around, living on a rigid schedule of drills, menial ship tasks, inspections, crappy food, and even crappier sleeping arrangements…” He shakes his head. “And don’t even get me started on the whole ‘shipful guys who are also super horny’ bull, or the god-damned gay chicken competitions...”

   “Wow… that sounds… fucking terrible,” Lucy says as she also lets her body relax on the chair. “But hey, I’d take that over fuc—” she stops herself and lets out a whimper.

   Anon instinctively perked and looked into his ex’s eyes. “You’d take it over what?”

   Lucy winces and looks to the side. “D-don’t worry about it. It’s… it’s in the past…” she grabs her right arm as her eyes again shimmer.

   Anon leans forward with a grimace on his face. He wants so badly to ask her what’s causing her to act so dourly. ‘It almost feels as if she was trying to hide something about her past from me… something fucking painful…’ he thinks to himself.

   “Yes,” Lucy whispers as she grabs on to Anon’s hand. “I am trying to hide something from you,” she says in a soft, tired, and mournful voice.

   “Fucking mumbling, god-dammit,” Anon berates himself.

   Lucy can’t help but giggle at Anon’s outburst. She holds on to the human’s hand tighter as she slowly ends the giggles, the smile it brings to her lips remaining present even after the sorrow returns to her eyes. “It’s… nice to know that even after four years, you’re still that same dweeb that I…” Lucy hesitates for just a second before she speaks again. “...That I remember...” she finishes her words, finally bringing her eyes back to meet Anon’s. “I… I think you’re the one thing that’s stayed mostly the same…”

   Anon breaks his eyes away from looking at Lucy and gazes to the side. He knows his ex’s words are meant to comfort both herself and him, but she doesn't know just how painful hearing them was. It almost felt like an encapsulation of all his failures in the last four years...

   Lucy reaches into her pocket and pulls out something that Anon can’t initially recognize. It only takes a second and a loud click for him to realize that it’s her phone. The same phone Lucy owned back in high school. Pretty worse for wear, the device’s screen has a few cracks, and its casing’s scratched and faded. It almost looks like a reflection of the girl holding on to it.

   “G-give me your number, dweeb…”

   Anon hesitates for a second, not sure what to make of Lucy’s request.

   As if to answer his mental question, she rolls her eyes and lets out a snort. “I just reconnected with my idiot ex-boyfriend after four years. How the fuck am I going to keep in contact with him after tonight? Are you going to come to see me every night that I do a gig? Pizza Time’s not the only place I play gigs at, you know.”

   Anon ponders his ex’s words for a moment. He hadn’t given the idea of keeping in contact with Lucy that much more thought aside from that night. What did he expect, for the two of them to make up, kiss, and start living together like nothing ever happened between them? Such a thing only happened in fairy tales and lousy romance stories. Of course, life wasn’t that simple, nor should it be.

   Anon quickly gives Lucy his number, which she taps on her phone with shocking speed. A second later, his phone buzzes. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, the bright screen displaying Lucy’s text message:

[Lucy]

God, u can b so dense <:V

   The human swiftly unlocks his phone and saves Lucy’s new information, leaving nothing to chance. He tightens his grip on Lucy’s hand and lets out a sigh. ‘No better time to bring up the Aarans and Naser than now,’ he thinks as she fills his lungs with air.

   “Gilda… Have you… Have you given any thought to reconciling with your family?”

   Lucy’s expression darkens at the mention of the word ‘family.’

   “No,” Lucy says bluntly as she snatches her hand back.

   “B-but… why not?”

   Lucy’s face furrows. “Because they’re the reason I ran away...”

    Anon wishes he could say he was surprised by what he hears Lucy confess. Still, after having listened to what Naser went through with Mr. and Mrs. Aaran and how they themselves admitted they had some share of the blame for Lucy’s flight, that surprise rang pretty hollowly.

   Regardless of that, he had to try to get to her. He’d already come this far...

   “What about your brother?” Anon asks, careful not to say Naser’s name out loud prematurely. “I’m pretty sure he’d love to see you again.”

   Lucy glances down at the table. What anger she had at the mention of her family fades as a deep sorrow supplants it. “Naser… didn’t deserve the shit he went through…” she whispers. “When I was younger, I couldn’t hope even to comprehend all the sacrifices he made for my well-being. When my parents all but gave up on me, he was the only one who stuck by and tried to support me. When I went through my nonbinary bullshit phase, he stuck around and humored my insanity. And how did I thank my little brother? By insulting him, making his life hellish, and doing everything that I could to act out and get myself in trouble!” Lucy grits her teeth and looks Anon in the eye, her eyes once again shimmering with fresh tears. “Like, I know now that he always meant well, always had my wellbeing in his mind first and foremost. Yes, shit blew up in his face a lot, but he always found some way to make it seem like everything would still be alright! And all that despite me causing his accident!” She slams both hands on the table, a few tears shaking loose from her eyes as she looks deep into her ex's eyes. “The reason he became a cripple? Me! The reason he missed an entire school year? Me!” she practically screeched that last part as she put her hands on her face. “Naser would have been better off if I’d never been born...” she softly laments.

   “That’s not true!” A fresh voice suddenly interrupts Lucy’s heart-wrenching reminiscence, causing the already emotionally compromised woman to flinch in surprise. “N-never EVER think that I w-would be better off without you!” he shouts with all his heart, his force of will just enough to keep his stuttering voice from breaking any further.

   Naser, who had up to that point kept himself in the shadows, steps into the light. His eyes shimmered in the faint light of the pizzeria, and his body trembling with emotion.

   “Si!” Another voice—that of Volcano High’s feisty former head of the gardening club—shouts as Rosa also steps from the shadows to stand right beside Naser. “L-Lucy… Gilda… F-Fang… It doesn’t matter who you are. ¡Eres preciosa para nosotros!” The ankylosaur places her hands together as if in prayer and gives a warm, reassuring smile. “Don’t you ever dare think otherwise!”

   “Rosa’s right!” Stella shouts next, also stepping out from the shadows, only instead of standing next to Naser, she somehow materializes right beside Anon, her eyes locking on to Lucy’s. “It doesn’t matter what name you decide to use, you’re still you, and you are precious to us!”

   “N-Naser? Rosa! S-Stella!?” Lucy shouts as she practically jumps up from her chair and takes several steps away from the table, all the while scanning the bodies of her brother and two former classmates before her as if trying to figure out if she saw a very elaborate hallucination. “W-what are you three doing here!?”

   Stella gives Lucy her biggest, happiest smile. “We came here to save you!”

   Rosa clears her throat and reaches out to Stella, grabbing her by the shoulder and pulling her back slightly. “What Stella means to say is, we’re here to support and help you out, Gilda.”

    Lucy’s expression sours at hearing Rosa’s words. Despite the visible anger, she says nothing as she snaps a glare towards her younger brother.

   Naser seems to be paralyzed by his emotions. Fear, confusion, pain, regret, relief; all mixed, forcing the young doctor to remain rooted in place.

   Anon stands from the table and gazes at every person in the room. In his mind, he’s trying to figure out if the situation unfolding before him is beneficial or not. He hadn’t expected Naser to jump in and reveal himself as he had. Then again, he also couldn’t blame him, especially considering the kinds of emotional bombs that his ex had just finished dropping. Even so, this wasn’t at all what they had planned.

   Lucy shifted her glare towards Anon and puffed her cheeks. “Anon… did you… did you set this up!?”

   “I-I mean…” Anon started but found himself almost lost for words.

   Almost as if in reply, Lucy marched up to the human and punched him in the gut. The blow itself was not that painful, but its suddenness still knocked some air out of his lungs. 

   “So this whole thing we just had… our reconnection and… and everything we told each other… it was all some kind of ploy!?” Lucy screams, all the while her face turns a shade of red.

   “N-no!” Anon replies in between gasps for air. “G-Gilda… everything that we’ve said to each other… I’ve meant... every word!”

   “LIAR!” Lucy shouts as she grabs Anon by the neck in an attempt to choke him, albeit fruitlessly considering how tired the ptero already was from a long day of work.

   “F-Fang!” Stella shouts as she moves to stop Lucy from hurting Anon.

   “MY NAME IS GILDA!” Lucy shouts as she pushes Anon right into Stella’s arms.

   The Stego catches the human in a protective embrace, but his added weight, combined with her poor footing, causes the two to tumble right into the floor.

   Stella still hit the ground first, all the while keeping anon from so much as even touching the floor. She even went so far as to use her tail as an impromptu shield in case the angry ptero started stomping on him.

   On seeing Stella’s care towards Anon, Lucy’s scowl deepens as she stands over the two. Before she can say or do anything, she’s interrupted by Rosa, who also steps forward. 

   “G-Gilda!” Rosa shouts, drawing the ptero’s attention to her. “Why are you doing this? Somos tus amigos. ¡Tu familia!”

   “You’re not my family!” Lucy screams as she grabs the empty plate on the table and tosses it at Rosa, who deftly catches it, an act that only causes the already angry ptero to grow angrier. “You’re all just a bunch of painful memories I thought I got rid of!”

   At last, Naser snaps from his stupor and rushes forward, grabbing his older sister by the shoulders. “Lucy!” he shouts, struggling to maintain his grip as the ptero desperately tries to free herself from his grasp. “I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry for everything that happened! I never meant to make you feel you were responsible for my accident! I never meant to make you feel like you were hurting me! I’m… I’m…” he lets out an uneven sob as he looks as profoundly into his sibling’s eyes as he can. “I should’ve been there for you when you gave up everything to be someone else… when you got embroiled in that debt to the mob…”

   “No!” Lucy shouts as she shoves her brother away from her. “That fuck up’s mine and mine alone...”

   “Lucy!” Naser cries out, reaching out for his sister. “You’re not alone anymore. I-I’m here now! Mom and Dad are waiting at home for you to come back! Everyone misses you so much!”

   Lucy’s face blanches. She takes several steps back, all the while shaking her head and fighting back the tears. “You’re wrong, Naser…” the ptero whispers as she grabs her bass case from the floor. “I can never face mom and dad again… not after what I did…”

   “And what have you done!” Naser asks in frustration. “Please, Lucy, t-tell me!”

   Lucy puts a hand on her mouth and chokes back a sob. “I… I…” The ptero shuts her eyes and lets out a sigh to calm herself before giving her younger sibling a bitter, tired smile. “I’m taking that fuck-up to the grave, Naser...” 

   “Wh-what do you mean?” Naser asks, his voice cracking, barely holding together as tears roll down his cheeks. “Please, whatever it is, we forgive you! Mom and dad forgive you! I forgive you!”

   Lucy once more scowls and shakes her head. “No. No, you don’t forgive me. Mom and Dad don’t forgive me. Trish doesn’t forgive me. Reed Doesn’t forgive me. Rosa and Stella and… and…” she looks to Anon, who with Stella’s help is just barely getting back to his feet, and shuts her eyes before gritting her teeth. “You’re all wrong… about me…” she whispers weakly before taking off in a sprint past her friends and family and out of the pizzeria, right into the cold streets of Skid Row…

   Naser stands there silently for what feels like an eternity, staring at the door leading to the outside of the restaurant. At first, he appears to be completely braindead, his eyes quivering as the rest of his body seems to be shut down. That changes over the next ten seconds as his expression rapidly transitions from anger to confusion to frustration, and finally to all-consuming sadness as he falls on his knees. The moment he does, he allows all his pent-up sorrow to burst out his eyes explode with tears. So many tears that they stain his clothes.

   Anon considers walking up to Naser and placing a hand on his shoulder as a sign of support, but he ultimately reconsiders. It wouldn’t do anything to ease his friend’s anguish… nor his own.

   The human reaches for his phone and brings up Lucy’s text message. ‘Not all lost at least,’ he thinks to himself. As long as he still has Lucy’s contact information, there’s a slight hope to reach her still. ‘And a small hope is better than nothing…’

   “That’s right,” Stella chimes in next to Anon, albeit softly.

   Anon only exhales in defeat at his inability to stop mumbling, even in the most inappropriate situations.

   “I know this… didn’t go as planned… but it wasn’t a complete loss,” Stella remarks perhaps in too cheerful a tone.

   “Not a complete loss? Stella, this was a total disaster!” Anon replies, just loud enough for Stella to hear but soft enough to spare Naser something he didn’t need to hear in that second.

   “You got Lucy’s number, didn’t you?” Stella asks, Anon swearing he heard a voice of a forced tone near the end. “We also found out that Fang—er, I mean Gilda—did something she feels is horrible enough to make her think she’s above forgiveness. The question now is… what?”

   Anon rubs his chin in agreement with Stella.

   “She also mentioned Trish and Reed and how they wouldn’t ever forgive her.”

   Anon’s surprised by the level of introspection that Stella was showing. He hadn’t even considered the importance of Lucy mentioning her oldest friends. Had it been a spur-of-the-moment thing to add weight to her words, or was there more to it than that? 

   “I… I think that if we are to get to Lucy—or Gilda, I guess—we’re going to need the help of Trish and Reed.” Stella lets out a sigh and puts on as warm a smile as she can. “They deserve a reconciliation with Gilda as well.”

   Anon thinks about Stella’s words for a second. Despite his best efforts to find fault in them, he can’t help but agree with his friend one-hundred percent. Maybe the tiny purple terror and the stoner-extraordinaire could be just what they’d need to finally break past whatever insecurities still held Lucy back from embracing forgiveness.

   “Uh… Do you know what became of Trish and Reed?” Anon asks Stella, unsure where to even search for those two.

   Stella sighs and gives Anon a sad expression, shaking her head in reply.

   Anon drops his head in defeat. Less than a second later, he grips his hands into fists and grits his teeth. He fights the urge to grab the nearest chair within his reach to toss. “God fucking dammit…” he whispers.

   Stella puts a hand on his shoulder and sighs as well.

   Things had just become so much more complicated...

***

Lucy practically kicks her apartment door open. 

   The ptero doesn’t even care that the door slams against the wall leaving a small dent on the plaster wall. Not that the landlord even cared what went on in her shitty space. Once she was inside, she slammed the door shut and let out a loud primal scream of rage. 

   “That fucking Naser, even after doing everything in my power to disappear, he still somehow found me!” She considers tossing the bass case in her hand against the nearest wall. Still, She ultimately reconsiders, instead placing it gingerly against the nearest wall before opting to kick the nearest wall. 

   With her anger spent on the kick, Lucy sits on her bed and buries her face in her hands. At once, all the pain and anguish from minutes earlier kick her in full force, and she weeps openly. Had it been a mistake to explode on Naser as she had? Did any of his old friends deserve her ire when most of them hadn’t even contributed to it in the first place? What she found most odd of all was that the one person she should’ve been raging at—who unquestionably bore the entire weight of the shittiness of her current existence—was the one person she couldn’t bring herself to be that angry at anymore. On the contrary, she now felt extreme regret over not only exploding on him but even trying to strangle him. “But why though,” fang asks herself as she plops on her bed. “Is it because we technically started over? Is it because he too’s suffered as much crap as I have? Or is it because some part of me still loves that fucking asshole?” She grabs her off-white pillow and lets out a scream into it. She then considers for just a second ripping it apart to cope with the anger. That thought dies pretty fast as she tosses the thing back to the side and instead thinks about what to do next.

   It was apparent that Anon was friends with Naser now. A part of Lucy was interested to know how her ex befriended a brother that she was pretty sure wanted to kill him the instant she told him what he did to her on prom night. He was also friends with Rosa and Stella. Not that big a surprise to her on that one, since those two had always been friendly with Anon. Stella, in particular...

   Lucy thinks back to how Stella had not only tried to save Anon when she’d unsuccessfully tried to strangle her ex, but had even cradled him in her arms and tail as the two tumbled to the ground. In her eyes, it almost appeared as if the stego and human had something going on. A relationship, perhaps? The idea of Anon and Stella having more going on than just a friendship made her angrier than it should have. “But why?” she again asks herself. “Whatever shit Anon and I had going ended four years ago!”

   So then, why did the idea of Anon dating someone else piss her off so much?

   Lucy pulled out her phone and scrolled to Anon’s contact information. She was so very tempted to call him up that instant and scream at him some more. Ultimately, she decided against that as well. “I should delete his number,” she told herself. “Less chance of me deciding to call him up next time I get all drunk and sad…” 

   Just as the ptero navigated towards the option to delete Anon’s number, her phone began ringing. She looked at the caller ID and realized it was none other than Tana, her bandmate.

   With a sigh, she answers the call.

   “What is it?”

   “Pizza Time’s owner just called me. Said you got all crazy again. Did you get fucking drunk again?”

   “No. Not this time, at least. I… I ran into some… old acquaintances of mine. Shouted at them for a bit before bolting.”

   “Did you break anything? You know we’re still paying off that table you snapped in half that one time you decided to get all sad-drunk.”

   “I didn’t break shit this time. I swear to fucking Raptor Jesus!”

   “Okay, okay. Just checking. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

   Lucy considers ending the call but something prompts her to continue the conversation. She doesn’t know if it’s loneliness, or the desire to take her mind off the mess that had been seeing her brother again.

   “Say… did you make it home alright?”

   “...That’s a weird question to ask me suddenly. Why’d you ask?”

   “I don’t know! Maybe It’s some kind of motherly instinct. You’re like eight years younger than I am!”

   “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

   “Okay. Point taken. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night for yet another shitty evening of music.”

   “It’s only shitty because you refuse to play the guitar.”

   “I’ve already told you a hundred times. I’m NEVER playing the guitar again!”

   “Why not? That time you played, it was the best gig we ever had! It’s the reason why we have a permanent spot at Pizza Time and don’t have to stand in some street corner playing for tips!”

   “I… I have my reasons. Just… just respect them, okay?”

   “Fuck. Fine. Just hope you change that fucking mind of yours one day. Because the sooner you do, the sooner we’ll go places other than a Freedy Fazbear knock-off that can’t afford animatronics.”

   “Yeah, yeah. Good night, Tana.”

   “Later, Gilda.”

   The call ends, and it kicks Lucy back to the previous menu. The option to delete Anon’s number is still highlighted and waiting for her confirmation.

   Lucy sighs and exits the menu, shutting off her phone and allowing it to drop on the bed. “Doesn’t matter. He’s got my number, anyway. If he calls me then…” 

   The ptero stops herself and thinks about her words. If Anon called her back after the shit she pulled that night, what would it mean? Would it be a good thing? Would it be a bad thing? Where would that put them now that they had started over?

   Lucy lets out another sigh. “Maybe... a quick apology and...” she whispers as she tosses off her boots and crawls into bed. For a second, she considers brushing her teeth, or at the very least gurgling some mouthwash, but she’s too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to move out of bed anymore. Instead, she brings up her phone and navigates towards Anon's number. Without thinking, she begins typing out a message.

[Lucy]

Sorr bout tonite. Shouldn't hav blown up like I did.

I'll mak it up to you.

Promise <:V

Lucy bit her bottom lip, her fingers still hovering over the phone screen's digital keyboard.

   After a few seconds of pondering, Fang began typing her message. She didn't even bother re-reading it, sending it the moment she finished typing. A small smile subconsciously forms on the ptero's lips as she thinks back to her surprise reunion with Anon. Everything that came after might have been a disaster, but at least with her ex… 

   Well… she felt like she had a second chance. All she had to do now was not fuck it up again as she did four years earlier...

***

“Later, Gilda,” Tana says as she ends the call. As she does, she stands right at the front of her home.

   Well, not her home per se, but her sister’s. It had once belonged to their mother, but after a gang decided to go on a shooting spree three years earlier, it went to her elder sister, who had been only twenty-one. The two siblings had lived alone in the house ever since, making the best of a shitty situation. Of course, the two had found a way to not only cope with the pain of losing their mother but also their other siblings as well. Even Riley, for as big a pain as he could be, was missed a lot...

   Just as she was about to open her front door, Tana’s phone rang. She reached for it and inspected the caller ID.

   With a sigh, the triceratops answers the call.

   “What is it, Chadley?”

   “Yo. Sorry to call you so late, but I just heard from the boss that Gilda tossed another drunken fit! How much money do we have to pay this time?”

   “None. Yes, Gilda tossed a fit, but this one wasn’t because of the booze. Apparently, some old buddies of hers showed up, and she didn’t care much about them, so they got into an argument. Don’t know the deets, but it sounds like aside from the screaming and cursing, Gilda didn’t do shit this time. We’re scot-free as far as paying for shit goes.”

   “Oh. Radical then! Guess we don’t gotta worry about getting money deducted from the checks!”

   “Doesn’t seem to be the case this time. By the by, I hear a lot of shouting and grunting in the background? Are you calling me from the gym again!?”

   “Yeah! I keep telling you, my dudette, you gotta join me one of these days! You won’t believe how cathartic it is to let all your anger loose on a punching bag at the end of the day!”

   “Don’t worry about me and my anger. I have my ways to vent the rage too.”

   “Nice! Gotta show me ‘em one of these days then!”

   “Yeah. Maybe. At any rate, I gotta go. Sister’s waiting for me.”

   “Ah. Okay. See ya later, my dudette!”

   The call ends. Tana puts her phone away and turns her attention back to her house. With a smile creeping on her lips, she walks up the porch steps, unlocks the door, and walks right in.

   “Hey! I’m home!” she shouts as she kicks the door shut.

   “About time you got here!” another voice, that of a harsh-toned female, replies from somewhere deeper in the house. “We’ve got shit brewing again in Little Troodon. Bunch of fuckers associated with the Aurero syndicate have set up another racketeering gig.”

   Tana rolls her eyes and sets her stuff down by the door. “Fucking really? Didn’t we kick the asses of another bunch of assholes like that two weeks ago?”

   “Yeah, but it seems like these fuckers can’t take the hint!”

   “So, want me to call up the girls?” Tana asks as she walks down the hallway and to her room.

   “No need to tonight. I know where the head of that group’s gonna be, and he’s gonna be all alone. We’ll just pay him a little visit and ‘convince’ him to stop his shit. Sound good?”

   Tana cracked a wide grin on her lips. “Fucking nice!” she replies as she walked into her room, removed all of her clothes except for her undergarments, and opened up her closet, pulling a bunch of clothes away, revealing what looks to be some kind of white jumper outfit with the words “VVRUM FURIES’’ written in bold stylized green letters.

   “I’ll be waiting in the garage!” the other voice in the house shouts at Tana.

   Tana pickles up the suit, and in a matter of seconds, she’s slipped on the pants, put on her best black tank top, and slipped the white jacket into her pants, completing the outfit by slipping on a pair of thick black leather boots, its tips hardened by steel and its soles thick enough that even walking on nails wouldn’t come close to piercing them.

   With a nod, Tana grabs a wooden baseball bat leaning next to her door and sprints out of her room and down the hall towards the house’s garage. 

   On entering the sparse garage, Tana’s greeted by another triceratops, one of purple scales just slightly taller than she is. She’s garbed in a similar white jumper suit, albeit with the jacket draped over the shoulders as if it was a cape. A purple closed motorcycle helmet obscures the other dino’s face. The visor is polarized with a gold finish, making it impossible to see the wearer’s eyes.

   “Let’s roll,” the older triceratops says as she walks up to a dark lilac-colored ninja bike. 

   Tana follows her sibling and jumps right behind her as the garage door rises open. Just before the door reaches the end of its rise, the magenta triceratops slip on a black-toned closed helmet of her own and lowers the visor down. 

   The bike’s driver looks back to Tana, who then gives the driver a thumbs up. Soon as the rider sees that, she turns on the ignition, the engine’s roar deafening for a few seconds before she twists on her bike’s throttle, causing the sports bike to shoot out of the garage at near maximum speed. Tana chances a glance back just to make sure the garage is fully closed before turning her attention back to the road ahead.

   A few minutes of riding through Volcaldera’s mostly empty night streets led the two to a shady part of town, one that very much looked like some kind of warehouse district near the port. A few more turns down the alleys between the mazes of warehouses and other storage locations eventually led the two to find their quarry: a single raptor in a fancy standing next to his car, smoking a cigarette with a carefree expression as he stood looking over the ocean. In his hand, he held a gun, and near his feet was a prominent spot where the mobster had shed someone’s blood just minutes earlier.

   The bike comes to a complete stop near the car, and the driver practically jumps off, all the while brandishing an aluminum bat that she always kept strapped near the back for ease of access. The raptor takes notice of the sudden movement, but he has less than two seconds to react as the purple triceratops slams the bat against the dino’s hand, cracking the bones on the wrist and knocking the firearm right into the water. The biker then grabs the dino by the collar of his suit and slams him right into the ground hard enough that it knocks all the air out of his lungs.

   The biker lets out a chuckle as she removes her helmet, tossing it towards her sister as she squats right over the mobster, her bat held over her shoulder as she fixes her purple lavender eyes on the raptor right underneath her, where he belonged.

   “W-who the fuck are you!” the raptor screamed the instant his lungs filled back up with oxygen.

   The triceratops grins, the scar running across her nose and past her broken front horn stretching somewhat. “Name’s Trish Royal, leader of the VVRUM FURIES…” her smile grows wider and crueler as she stands back to her full height. “And the last thing your murderer ass’s ever going to see…” she says ominously as she raises her bat.

   “No, wait NO—” the monster cries out in terror, but the sickening sounds of breaking bones and splattering blood overpower his words…

***

“Ah. Okay. See ya later, my dudette!” Chadley says as he ends the call with his bandmate. 

   The land shark turns his neck side to side, each time with a loud pop of his spine, before pocketing his phone and turning back toward his locker. He removes his casual blue muscle shirt and slips on a white muscle shirt, one that has a few permanent sweat stains and even some splotches of dry blood. Sure, he can wear a fresh shirt, but this one was his favorite for working out and sparring with. ‘And it’s not like any of the bros are going to care, anyway. Well, maybe except for Balboa. He’d tell me to keep it on and to cherish every stain on it.’ He lets out a chuckle at those thoughts. “That pink raptor dude sure is weird. Super chill dude, but also super loopy…’

   Chadley closes his locker and walks out into the gym properly. As he does, he’s greeted by a couple of other gym-goers, most of them friends of his from when he first joined the gym when he was twelve. A few were his older brother’s friends, though, so they greeted him more out of respect for his older brother, one of the current local MMA champs.

   It was actually surreal to think about; that his older brother was up there with the best of the best in the ring. His rising ranks inspired him to step into the octagon. Sure, he was still too young to compete in the same class as his brother was, but with only a single year left of high school, he was getting closer and closer to standing beside his brother. And who knew, maybe one day, he’d ever surpassed his brother, though that would mean facing him in the ring, a prospect he didn’t feel that comfortable with. After all, no sibling in their right mind would want to punch a brother or sister…

   Chadley shakes his head and prepares himself for a night of weightlifting, punching the bag, and maybe a few sparring matches. 

   “Hey Chadley!” a voice suddenly snaps the land shark from his concentration. “Check it out! Balboa is up to ring tonight!”

   Chadley leaves his post and immediately rushes towards all his other gym compatriots as they crowd around the large flat screen that they usually used for music videos and the occasional televised sporting event. Chadley found a spot among some of his larger peers and set his eyes on the screen.

   There, upon the octagon, surrounded by a crowd of cheering—albeit bloodthirsty—fans, was one of their gym’s pride and joy, Reed Balboa. He stood tall, hands raised to prepare for his bout, his stained white shirt tightly wrapped around a muscly frame that was neither too large to be off-putting, nor too low to be fearful of his physical prowess. He had eyes locked upon his opponent—an ankylosaur at least twice his height—all the while sporting a confident smirk that spoke to his belief in victory despite his disadvantage against such a titanic foe.

   The bell rings, and the two opponents dash forward. Reed, being the faster fighter because of his size, closes the distance first. Almost instantaneously, his opponent moves to strike down on him. The pink raptor slips through the attack, closing the gap in a matter of seconds and replying to his opponent’s aggression with a barrage of quick blows to the enormous ankylosaur’s head. The giant dino, of course, counters by trying to grapple Reed, who ducks out of the way and slips right underneath his foe’s legs before sweep-kicking the large dino, forcing him to hit the ground face first. Reed then pounces on top of his opponent and wraps an arm around his neck while holding on to his leg. He then pulled on both, causing the Ankylosaur to let out a scream of suffering loud enough even to cause the TV’s speakers to rumble from the bass. Within a minute, the dino was tapping on the ground, prompting the referee to step in and end the fight.

   Everyone in the gym explodes into cheers as the referee declares Reed the victor by submission. Chadley can only watch with wide-eyed awe as Reed accepts his victory with a broad, albeit tired, smirk.

   Chadley breaks away from the TV and walks back to his punching bag. He wonders for a second who of the two would win: his brother or Reed. As he punches the bag with renewed vigor, he puts those thoughts out of his mind to focus on his own growth. 

   ‘One more year, and I won’t have to ponder such questions,’ Chadley thinks as he increases the speed and power behind his punches. As he punches the bag with renewed vigor.

   ‘One more year, and I’ll be able to put all my years of training to the ultimate test…’

END OF ACT 1