Chapter Text
Prologue
Giegue stands, unfazed by the attacks of the children before him but not so by his memories. The song—the song of his mother, the anguish of his forced separation and of his forced battle with who is practically his relative, is unbearable. For all these years the alien had to keep his emotions hung up inside, as he was conscripted to the war against Earth, the war to end the people he loved. He tried so hard to keep it bottled up, yet these feelings were spilling out before him, before the enemies he sworn to kill. His body shakes, stricken with the sorrow of his lullaby.
“Stop! Stop singing!” he cries out to his adversaries, “No more!” Ninten stops, he and his three friends standing in silence, their minds and bodies exhausted. Fear coated the human’s faces except him, the meaning of that boy’s expression was inexplicable to Giegue. They both stared at each other in a deafening quiet.
“H-how… how could I be defeated by a song like that?” he asks aloud shakily, the question meant for himself. The invader’s thought process was scattered as every choice that he ever made, fueled his people’s disdain for humans, all called into question by that song. A reminder of his love for a human—for all humans. He stammers, “I will… sometime…” His words, embodiments of a hollowed rage. Giegue cannot kill these people, especially not Ninten, a descendant of who he loved so dearly. In doing so he has failed his people, failed his mission. The invader knew full well what such failure meant if he returned back to his planet—and yet, he had no choice; for there was nowhere else he could go.
A newfound energy filled his voice as Giegue called out, “Ninten! We SHALL meet again!” The boy said nothing, but his eyes shone with understanding. That was enough for him, and more than what he deserved. With a rumble, the ship’s engine started, and just as quickly began its ascent. As the ship flew upwards into the sky, he whispered to himself, “Mother… I’m coming home.”
“Ness! Big Bro! It’s time for school!”
A groan sounds typically in response to such a start to a school day, an already tiresome ordeal. Half-awake, the boy stumbles out of bed, quite literally, in an haphazard attempt to get himself up. This comes to no surprise to his sister, who doesn’t have to even be in the room to foresee this.
She violently knocks on the door again, “Ness, did you fall out of bed again? You’re impossible. Mom says to get changed and head down for breakfast. Try not to fall down the stairs if you can.” The last part, while delivered in a humourous tone, was something that actually happened one morning and it was followed with a scared-half-to-death mother and a sister who was laughing to stitches. She never let this go since.
The brother, now thoroughly awake and partly embarrassed, stands in his bedroom. The grogginess had not fully passed his system though, as he was woken up from a deep slumber, having a vivid dream. Despite this, Ness (as he was called) could not recall the contents of said dream, though this did not surprise him. This always happens to him. Opting to take heed to his sister’s, Tracy’s, advice he slowly made his way to his clothes drawer and picked out his usual clothes: striped shirt, cargo pants, and to top it all off, his baseball cap. There was no mirror to look in to see how dashing he was, though he did not mind that—he didn’t like mirrors.
Retrieving his backpack, Ness opens the door and heads down the stairs, where he is greeted by his mom, with her usual smile. “Good morning sweetie,” she says for the millionth time, “I hope had a good rest. I heard midterm exams is coming up, it’s nearing winter after all.” Her son smiles back, not at the prospect of taking tests, but purely out of the love for his mother. Tracy remains seated, devouring a bowl of Corn Pops, “Ness, eat. You’re gonna be late,” she manages to say with food with her mouth. She points to a bowl of milk-less cereal already prepared to him, completed with a glass of orange juice. He eagerly takes up on his sister’s offer, with King plopping himself down between the two siblings, waiting for strays from their meals to fall helplessly to the floor for immediate consumption. After a short meal, the two children head out to begin their school day after putting on their coats, with a small hug from their mother to the both of them.
Opening the door began a chilly November morning and as the sun rose barely over the horizon, they began their usual walking commute. Just as usually, their next-door neighbours follow rushedly after them, calling out, “Hey! Wait up!” Ness thought about quickening the pace, but he decided it was best to just get this encounter over with. Two kids, Pokey and Picky Minch, approached from behind, the older brother dashing towards with the younger slowly ambling in the same direction, not much in a hurry. The former catches up to the siblings quickly, skidding his boots on the dirt path to an abrupt stop.
“Hello, Ness. Tracy,” Pokey starts with a two-faced smile, the usual look plastered onto his face. “Also near late, I see.” He chuckles at this, but there was no humour in his delivery.
“Pokey, I dunno why you’re running so fast only to stop-,’ the other walks in, just now noticing the other two siblings. He looked unbelievably sleepy, though this did not come to a surprise to anyone—Picky was less of a morning person than Ness was.”Oh," he corrects himself, with a distant gaze to the both of them, “Good morning, guys.” His tone was as unenthusiastic as he looked.
Tracy thought this whole exchange (which happened nearly every day) with a small chuckle as the group began to walk together, “Morning. Don’t think you should be so eager to go to school though Pokey, what with the tests and all.”
Picky hummed, “Yea, but you know my brother, always crazy about Ness. You could say he’s madly in love with him,” His teasing prompted a death stare from his older brother, his smile still unchanging.
“Am not!” Pokey retorts, adopting a snooty tone, “I am just concerned for my fellow neighbours’ educational pursuits. I’m simply being a good Samaritan.”
“Riiiiiiiight.”
Ness and Tracy walked in silence as the minutes were filled with menial arguments between the two brothers, desperately trying to one-up each other til their journey to school was completed—a long fifteen minutes of what was going to already be a long day. The air was a damp cold, not nearly below freezing, thankfully, but cold enough to be uncomfortable. When they reached the steps of the building, their arguments stopped as soon as they began, seemingly already exhausted from the discord they’d wrought. The little sister left with a “see ya, bro!”, Picky following her without a farewell to his brother, leaving the eighth-graders resigned to their own dreaded fate of Eaglelandish Literature. Ness did not hate reading, in fact he quite enjoyed it when it was aligned with his interests, but most of the texts that were assigned to him were dreadfully, brain-numbingly boring: filled with archaic prose and dull themes. “‘Ohhhhh yes,’” he mocked the teacher in his head, “‘Let’s all read a book about the Industrial Revolution and its effects on modern day economics. Surely that won’t be boring for middle schoolers.’” If that was not evil, he figured, nothing was.
The late bell rang nearly before the two entered the room and sat down at his desk in the back, almost prey to his teacher’s yellings about absolute punctuality. It was not enough save them from a leer that almost led to a whole passive-aggressive rant from her—but subsided, giving only Ness a face that read “take off your cap while you’re in school”, in which the boy promptly obeyed. The teacher stood from her desk, mustering to speak in a softer voice than usual, “Now class, you may already know (as this is a small town) that we have some new people that moved here recently, one of which is a new student,” The last clause is said with a meager amount of enthusiasm, but students look curious enough to care about the mystery of this new kid. She continues, “This boy has come all the way from the Nowhere Islands, so I would like you to be welcoming and kind to your classmate.”
As if on cue, footsteps can be heard from outside the classroom, walking hesitantly towards the door before stopping—a short pause before it opened. In entered a blond, skinny boy, slightly short in stature and fairly ordinary for a foreigner. He walked in sheepishly towards the front of the classroom, not at all comfortable from being stared at by everyone. The teacher cleared her throat, “Would you mind introducing yourself, Lucas?” The blond was a tad startled at this, not noticing he was standing quietly for too long.
"Um, okay," he scratches his head, not out of embarrassment, but out of anxiety. "My name is Lucas, uh, I come from the Nowhere Islands, off the coast of Foggyland. I lived in a small town, Tazmilly, smaller than here, though there were no cars or any of that." He stresses the word "were" lightly, implying something no one had the context to. "You could say it was, uh, very rural." He pauses, unsure what else to say but a murmur which barely passes his lips, unable to be heard. The class' initial curiousity had now faded, the shy boy failing to reach their high expectations for interest.
“Well then!” the teacher resumes, with a sharp clap of her hands, “Thank you, Lucas. Since you have come near the end of the term, I will have to give you a test to see where you are academically. Ungraded, but it’ll be good for you,” He nods, looking unsure of himself, “You may sit in the empty seat besides Ness, in the corner. Ness, please raise your hand?” Ness lazily does so, seemingly not catching the attention of Lucas due to him zoning out. Nevertheless, the blond makes his way down the classroom, promptly sitting down without a word.
“Now!” she smiles, finally able to begin her torture, “Today you will continue reading through your workbook, answering the questions that follow. Remember that your essay on H. G. Wells ‘War of the Worlds’ is due this Friday, no exceptions. I have given you plenty of time to read it at home and just as much to write an essay on its socio-political messagry—,” The remainder of her “teachings” are tuned out as Ness looks over to his new next-desk neighbour. The back row had only two people in it: Pokey, who menacingly stares at the boy throughout all the classes they share (which is all of them) and Ness himself, with an empty desk between the two. He was quite excited to meet a new person, and from a far land no less. Taking out his usual spiral notebook, he begins writing, holding it up for Lucas to see a single word: “Hi!” followed by an extraneous amount of exclamation points.
The blond, once in the realm of his own mind, is brought back to reality, glazing over the written greeting. Softly, he replies, “Hi?” Pokey snickers quietly, seeing the “conversation” from the other side.
Ness continues writing, almost frantically, “I’m Ness! Though you knew that already. You came from the Nowhere Islands? Never heard of a place. Is it nice there? Do you play baseball?”
Lucas answers the barrage of questions in order, “Y-yea I’m from there, um, it’s nice I guess. There’s these animals called Dragos, they’re nice. Wouldn’t hurt anyone.” His speech drifts off, thinking about something before continuing, “Sorry, yeah, I think its nice. As for ‘baseball’, I don’t know what that is, sorry.” The blond sinks into himself a bit after whispering an apology, especially as Ness looks shocked at his answer.
“What do you mean you—,” he blurts out, a little too loudly before being silenced by the teacher with an icy glare, an apology muttered before she continues. Pokey at this point is near hysterics, though that reaction is also quelled with another glare. A silence filled with the turning of pages returned to the classroom, as Ness opens his workbook and turns to the short story he’s supposed to be analysing. But this is not without one last message being scrawled to the bottom of the page, in big hastily drawn letters: “Sorry about that. Wanna be friends?” Lucas looks with a quiet surprise, a small smile emerging from his usual somber expression. With the same silence, accompanied by a happy, albeit shy tone, he whispers a reply,
“Sure, let’s be friends.”