Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’m home!”

No response. The lights are on, and there’s music playing quietly – some bad OST for a soap opera. She takes off her shoes and slowly proceeds to the light, already prepared for what she might see. Her brain checks the probabilities, and today she got lucky. Both “lights” and “music playing” are checked, about a five percent chance of occurring. The other ninety-five percent is neither of those two instances happening.

The light reflects off of her big round glasses, sitting neatly on the base of her snout. A pair of steel gray eyes wanders around. First, she checks out the kitchen, separated from the living room by a bar counter. In the stillness, as the music softly shakes the air, she suddenly hears a loud sniff. She shifts her gaze to the audio source, and that’s when she finds what she is looking for.

Her mother sleeps peacefully on the big sofa chair. Her large chest slowly rises and falls, as if synchronized with the music. The baryonyx then shifts her gaze to the large screen sitting neatly at the corner of the room, only to see credits rolling down, down, down, accompanied with a sweet lullaby. The baryonyx grabs the TV remote from the glass coffee table in front of the sofa chair and turns the screen off.

She hears her mother shift in her seat, disturbed by the sudden silence. The baryonyx looks at her, patiently waiting for her to wake up, but she does not. The baryonyx puts down the remote and leaves the living room. She makes her way through a small hallway and upstairs, then enters her room and closes the door behind herself.

It’s relatively small and unwelcoming, barely meeting the requirements to be called a “room”, and not a “mental facility ward”. An integrated wardrobe to the left, a tidy bed to the right, with a few shelves full of books on the wall above it. The window opposes the entrance, opening a view into the peaceful suburbia, basking in the evening sunlight. Below it, placed at the corner, is a desk, with a chair slid into it and nothing but some writing utensils and a lamp on top of it.

The baryonyx steps to the desk, pulls the chair and places her school bag. She takes a quick glance at the street outside. Nothing going on there. Just bliss and stillness, as if life had stopped, frozen. Satisfied with the simple landscape, she starts taking off her clothes. First her buttoned shirt, then her skirt and knee-high socks. Her school attire now resting on the back of the chair, she shifts to the closet, opens it and finds her casual outfit. She puts it on in a quick manner, and then closes the wardrobe.

Her hand on the wardrobe door, she stands still, pondering about something important. Today was the last day of the first semester of the last year of high school. Tomorrow will be the start of a small break before the last semester begins. The last dash towards adulthood. The last standoff against endless, relentless immaturity.

She already knows what she will do next. First, she’ll apply to Volcano University, something that works with her hobbies. After, she’ll find a well-paying job. In the meantime, she’ll find someone to love. Together, they’ll buy a house, create a family, raise their children, watch as their children raise their children, and enjoy every second they are given until time finally takes them. No one is immortal, and there is no time to waste, especially for someone like her.

She takes her hand off from the wardrobe door, checks her bag for her phone and, sliding it into her pocket, leaves her room. Back downstairs, she glances at her mother for just a second, only to notice that she’s still asleep, then makes her way to the kitchen. She opens the fridge, its doors adorned in different ways to remind them of their past, then brings out her dinner – a pot of cheesy beef pasta.

She closes the fridge door with her tail, puts the pot onto the counter, and finds herself a bowl with some utensils. She scoops up a good portion, then takes the bowl to the microwave. The hum and buzz of it slightly worries the baryonyx, as she places the pot of pasta back into the fridge, looking at her mother once again, thinking whether that would wake her up. But it didn’t. Whatever dream she’s having, it’s far better than this ugly reality. Quite rightly so.

The baryonyx opens the microwave door just a second before the alarm goes off. With a slight difficulty of burning the scales on her palms, she quickly walks to the dining table and places the bowl of steaming pasta down. She feels hungry just by looking at it. Without wasting any time, the baryonyx sits down and begins to eat. And while she satisfies her primordial needs, she satisfies her attention needs. One hand holding the fork, she reaches into her pockets with her free hand, fishes out the phone and turns the screen on, immediately selecting social media.

As she doomscrolls through the apps, enjoying the dinner, she understands that this little device in her hand is hardly a substitute for what normally happens at the dinner table. And what happens is that she and her mother sit down to have a chat over a meal, enjoying each other’s company. She could wake her up, but she respects her mother’s sleep. So she has to endure the weight of flashy, vibrant posts, all perfectly crafted to push the required buttons and grab her attention.

The last bite swallowed, she taps the power button, turning off the screen. The black screen bleakly reflects her calm and tired expression. Baby blue scales hold any vibrance in the dull reflection. A pair of disinterested, colorless eyes behind large glasses look back, like a person in the midst of conversation waiting for her reply, but knowing deep inside that the theme had already dried out, and they need to change it, yet neither have the guts to do so. And so they sit still, looking at each other expectingly.

Looking at the dull reflection, she reminds herself of who she is. Her name is Nick. She’s a baryonyx. She’s eighteen years old. She’s at the top of her senior class and is one of the most respected people in Volcano High. She’s interested in books and dedicated much of her life to reading. She’s a person of preparation, creating plans is synonymous to her name. And currently, she sits still at the dining table in her home, looking at a bleak reflection of herself, remembering all those details.

Entertaining the dull thoughts, the baryonyx puts her hand over her chest, right where the heart is. It’s beating, she’s living. The blood pump does its job, taking in deoxidized blood and oxidizing it to send it through the arteries. Just one more biological process out of a good dozen, the total sum of which keeps her living, breathing, digesting, and so on. One can’t help but wonder, is this the only way of understanding what is living and what is not?

Nick draws a sigh. Her mother is still sleeping. Today was definitely a hard day for her, Nick can’t blame her for trying her hardest to provide. The baryonyx stands up from the table, grabs the now empty bowl and cleans it in the sink before setting it on the rack. Giving her mother one last look, she returns into her room and falls down onto the bed.

Her eyes look up at the ceiling, constantly losing the endless staring contest. The clock continues ticking, the world continues spinning, and the days change inevitably. The break will pass, and she won’t even notice how she’s back in school again, for the very last time. 

She already knows what will be there for her: what adversity to withstand, what achievements to behold, what paths to take… To some, the future is a never-ending loop of corridors, looming through them without guidance. But to her, there’s just one straight line. And she will try her best to keep to it.

She closes her eyes and sinks into sleep.

January 6th.

Silence-soaked suburbia slowly wakes up as the lukewarm winter sun rises higher and higher in the clear blue sky. The light enters the room of the sleeping baryonyx, leaving a couple of rectangles on the carpet floor. The blaring of the alarm clock wakes her up. Grumbling, she pushes herself to sit up on the bed, then reaches for her phone and turns the alarm off. She stretches a bit, puts the glasses on, stands up and leaves the room.

She passes through the empty living room and into the bathroom. She removes her glasses, turns on the water in the sink and rinses her face, rubbing the last bits of sleep out. After wiping her face and hands dry, she takes a brush and combs her long baby-blue hair. She finds it funny that her eyes are the only thing in her body that isn’t baby blue. Putting the glasses back on, she lazily makes her way out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, to make breakfast for herself.

The stillness and silence of the living room are nothing new to her. Only a handful of days does she get to wake up to a certain ruckus downstairs. But at the same time, those days don’t bring anything new. The desolation she experiences every morning seems to numb her excitement receptors. So every morning, no matter what happens, is practically the same.

This loop isn’t harmful in any way, but it’s depressing to say the least. A part of her likes the simplicity, but the other part of her wants something to change. The problem lies in locating what exactly is the cause for this. Is it how she perceives every morning? Or is it that most of the time she has to wake up to an empty house, left to herself and her own thoughts?

The breakfast is quickly dealt with, and a few dishes are rinsed and placed onto the rack. She’s ready. And so, she returns to her room and quickly changes into her school attire. The bag already holds everything she needs for the day, so she doesn’t bother checking it. She takes it and leaves the room, passes through the empty living room once more, and turns to the front door. She puts on her shoes and steps outside.

A clear blue sky overhead, and a dot of piercing light blinds the baryonyx. There’s no wind passing through the street. The houses around her feel empty. Not a single person or a car around. Layers and layers of silence and feeling of abandonment stack on one another, creating a dense pancake of nihil. This morning feels like a fever dream in a dreamless night. She checks the time – about 45 minutes before the first class. It takes half an hour to get to the school on foot. Without wasting any more time, she starts her little journey.

The suburbia cuts into the concrete, metal, and glass of the city. Skyscrapers stand far away, monoliths to the progress of mankind. Life pours into the streets like wine into a glass, bringing tired faces and humming cars. In the midst of all the hustle and bustle of the casual day-to-day lives, she finds herself tied to her home in suburbia, and there will be no deal that would make her give it up for this endless ruckus.

Light reflects off the countless number of windows, and she suddenly remembers the sunny periods of her childhood. The moments of her life in the summer when she had forgotten about everything, there was no need to understand or ask what she was and what she wanted to be in life. Because there was no “life,” nothing was waiting for her up ahead – there was only now.

What killed off that part of herself? What made her replace the child within for an algorithm? When did she make that decision, and why did she believe it was necessary? So many questions were looming around her head, but she had found an answer for all of them, leaving herself without a single ounce of doubt, the one thing she hated the most.

And so, doubtless, with the clarity of spring water, she carries on through the streets, making her way to school. It’s already there, on the hill, patiently waiting. She speeds up a bit, feeling like she’s running out of time, despite knowing there’ll be about ten minutes before the first class starts. As she approaches, she hears the classic clatter on the giant concrete staircase.

People split away from one another in pairs or groups, talking about how much they missed one another. Those conversations feel like the world had started spinning rapidly, counting years down, the moment they left the school, even though it’s just been two weeks. This only proves a certain point – those people are friends with one another as long as they are tied to school. No need to wonder what would happen, should school come to an end.

Nick doesn’t have that many friends. Being an attractive top of her class, she had seen many people try to chat her up. Only about one-fifth of them successfully get a reply, kick starting the conversation. And only a third of that one-fifth manages to keep it going. And even then, they are nothing more than acquaintances she knows, acquaintances she could chat with if she feels extremely bored. Only a few people in the entire school managed to earn the “Nick’s friend” title.

She makes her way up the stairs, catching the usual glances from everyone around her. Her eyes look up at the grandiose high school building, “VOLCANO HIGH” splayed atop the entrance arch, high above the students’ heads. Some people greet her, and she greets them back. She takes the last step and enters the building.

The baying student throng sticks to the walls, and the never-ending chatter here is amplified in the air of the extensive hallways. She checks what her first class will be. English, second floor. Without further ado, she proceeds to the stairs, ascends them, and then walks to the class. With ten minutes left before the bell would ring, she entered the classroom.

It’s relatively empty, but it’s only for the time being. Should the bell ring, this place would be full of careless, nonchalant student bodies. But as of now, there are only a few people, all greeting the member of the higher class. She walks around the classroom and sits down at her usual spot near the window.

With robotic movement, she puts down everything needed for the upcoming class. Everything finds its accurately picked, systematically correct spot on her desk. With that done, she looks outward into the window, to satisfy her need to look at the blue sky, feeling a certain connection with it due to its vibrant color.

But that lasts only for a few seconds. Then, she takes out her phone and scrolls down through the social media posts, skipping the time remaining before the class would begin. The bell rings out way sooner than she thought. She hides her phone and waits for the teacher to arrive, entertaining herself by listening to the chatter in the classroom.

The teacher, an old stegosaur, finally enters the class. Wearing glasses, a kimono, and what appears to be a katana sheath without a katana, and thus looking exactly not what any reasonable English teacher looked like. And just when she thought the weirdness would cease here, he started speaking.

“Ohayo gozaimasu curassu. Tudei yu habu e niu curassu-meito tsu Borukeino Hai.”

Did they run out of picks for English teachers or something? – Nick thinks.

The teacher’s eyes move around, stopping at someone sitting upfront.

“Anon-kun, puriizu camu appu zen intorudiusu yooru serfu,” he says. 

After a few seconds of silence, someone coughs, and the named person finally stands up, facing the class.

She freezes. Her eyes lock on the person. It’s a human. Green jacket with a t-shirt underneath and worn jeans. A bald dome that could shine in the sunlight like a beacon for the ships far away. His expression is nervous. He stands still, his mind unable to withstand the pressure of all the looking gazes. 

She imagines what he feels right now: anxiety, fear, terror. His legs feel weak, his arms fill with lead, the lightness in his head fogs his mind and the heaviness of his heartbeat deafen every sound around him. All the things almost every person felt when introducing themselves to a new group of people, regardless of nature.

“Hey…” the human says. “My name is Anon, I uh… I don’t really have any hobbies.”

“What was your old school like?” someone asks.

“Uh… I…” the human stutters.

Whispers take over the silence, and the hushed tones and silenced snickers blend with the stares, despite there not being any. Everyone else, except Nick and someone else in this class, is preoccupied. But it didn’t matter. The fact of these whispers, tones, and snickers, already frighten the poor human boy.

“Anon-kun, yuu du natto habu tsu ansaa zattu,” the teacher says. “Puriizu retaano tsu yo shiito, Anon-kun.” The human sits down in relief. The teacher turns his face back to the class. “Hai, nao curassu…”

The old stegosaur continues on, drawing what little attention is paid to himself, as the rest either falls asleep or looks at their phones. Even Nick, someone who never had any issues with learning, finds herself troubled while trying to keep track of the teacher’s ramblings. One reason is the Japanese accent. The other is that human kid she had seen.

Eventually, she completely loses track of what is happening and puts her pen down with a quiet internal sigh. Her eyes wander around the classroom, then stick to the outside view for a bit, and then end up on the human kid. He sits there, doing whatever to at least appear like he’s working hard, and she understands he’s not feeling great. There’ll be more awkward introductions like these, and he’s far from being prepared to withstand one blow of awkward nervousness after another.

As much as she feels pity for the poor kid, she cannot help herself but ask: what brought him, an alien to a world of multicolor, a smoothskin to the house of scales and feathers, here? What happened to him in the past? Where is he from? And, most importantly, who is he ?

She turns her eyes back to the teacher, only to see him filling the blackboard with chalk writings and dampening the air with his monotonous “Engrish” monologues. No one cares about what he says at this point, and neither does Nick. Instead, she’s focused on another thing her mind has right now.

In the eighteen years of her life, this is the very first time she has seen a human person. Not just that: they share this school and this class (maybe more). It’s like hitting a jackpot. But at the same time, she feels slightly embarrassed, because she had never seen a human before. They are so different, calling them “aliens” is quite fitting.

The embarrassment, the excitement, the interest in answering the questions about him – all of this makes her understand just how interested she had became in him. Of course, she denies any romantic involvement, she does not believe in love from the first sight, but she cannot find herself sleeping without satisfying her curiosity, just a little bit.

She takes the pen back into her hand and continues writing from where she had left off.

The next few classes are nothing in particular. Just teachers blabbing to a class that could care less. So far, homeroom was the only time Nick had seen Anon, and that made her think that the human suddenly appearing in her school was just a mere hallucination. It couldn’t be, all of it felt real enough, but she kept the thought in mind just in case she never sees him again.

She makes her way down into the cafeteria. It’s packed beyond belief: all the tables are taken, the noise is unbearable, and a huge line moves at a snail’s pace. The cafeteria itself isn’t anything spectacular. Large windows open a view onto the school’s yards, and a balcony on the second floor overlooks the main eating area, fake leafage hanging from its edge.

Inevitably, Nick joins the giant line, and strangely enough, it moves on much faster. Whether or not it was because of her, she doesn’t know. Maybe it was just some problematic kid taking too much time picking from a not-so-wide selection of foods. But she likes to think she has the power to speed up something like a waiting line.

Eventually, after dealing with that, comes another issue: where to sit? Of course, being an attractive lady who makes the boys froth at their mouth just by sheer existence wouldn’t be such a problem, except it is, simply because she’s attractive and makes a good majority of boys like her. Almost every table would be freed just for her, and that brings nothing but nausea. And besides, she just doesn’t want to disturb them.

And so she starts to walk between the taken tables, seeking one with a free seat. That herculean task is completed in less than a minute, as a group of gals from her class sit her down at their table. There’s no particular reason why they had sat her down, because immediately after they had plunged into talking right after as if she was not even there. A mannequin could do the job, if all they want is an additional spectator.

Their talks aren’t really anything spectacular, just common interests, like fashion and who got how far with their boyfriends, what new shows they had watched, what troubles they had experienced during the winter break, and so on. Basically, the themes of their one big convo was something that Nick was far from being really invested in. Of course, she’s interested in some of those things, but not as much as those gals were.

And if she has to guess, that’s the problem. There’s a sheer gap of difference between Nick and everyone else in this school that makes it really hard to make actual friends and not another set of acquaintances. This could be resolved by one of the sides accepting the other side’s interests, but this rarely happens, especially nowadays, in a world where thinking about oneself isn’t a sin, but a commodity.

Halfway through the meal, the talks finally got to her, and she lost all the interest in the slop the cafeteria serves. Funny that the quality of the foods barely changes even when buying the most expensive things they offer. And so, her eyes begin to scout the surroundings once more.

Dinos, dinos, dinos… A fever dream of color spread far and wide in this gigantic cafeteria. Some of the heads are more recognizable than the others. There’s the dark-orange liliensternus. There’s a silver pterosaur. There’s sand-yellow raptor with a white ptero with markings on their face to appear more like a swan.

And then, she notices the human again. He sits a few tables away, busy talking to the StuCo president and her boyfriend, the athletic champion of the school. From where she sits, their conversation appears to be quite lovely, and unlike during homeroom, the human doesn’t appear even half as nervous as he was. Nick’s only guess is that he had conversed with them before.

It would be the perfect moment to join in. The StuCo prez and Nick are quite a pair of friends, being the unrivaled top in the academics, so introducing a new person into the colorful bag of the human’s new acquaintances wouldn’t be an issue. That would be the perfect moment to leave this bubble of chats on common interests and sit down over there, to ask the questions that bother her the most at the moment.

But she does not. Despite having the opportunity, she decides not to take it. Instead, her eyes return to the empty plates, as her thoughts die one by one, as if called into the murder chamber by a lengthy list.

“What’s up, Nick?” one of the gals asks.

“Ah, it’s nothing,” Nick replies, looking at the person. “Just thought for a second.”

“Hey, have you heard that we have a human in the school now?” someone else speaks up.

“Yeah! I saw him! Jeez, I didn’t know humans were so cute!”

“I thought they wear animal fur for clothing and had a stockpile of spears on them at all times.”

The convos are kickstarted again. It’s hard to keep track, as everyone seems to speak at once, so Nick just doesn’t bother to say a word. Instead, she picks up her bag, takes her tray and quietly leaves the table. There’s about a few minutes before the next class begins.

As she made her way to the class, she suddenly receives a message on her phone. It’s from Naser, that athletic champion.

Hey.

There will be a concert in the auditorium after school.

Just a heads up.

A concert? – Nick thinks. – On school grounds? She remembers the last time she visited something like that. Last year of middle school. A trio took the scene and played something they described as “true punk rock,” but what was simply a shoddy reimagination of Nirvana. They were booed off the stage, and she remembers, in the midst of all laughter, the exact moment the band left the stage.

Come to think of it, it was the last time she had seen someone play live, which makes the invite from Naser that much more tempting. To see how a group of kids, feeling superior, take the scene and plummet down their music on everyone else with undisputable, furious determination… 

But at the same time, she still remembers how the last school concert she attended went. There’s only about a ten percent chance the band succeeds, and aside from turning them into a laughing stock for failing, what other reason does she have to go to the concert?

She leaves the question to dangle in the air, as she finally steps inside her classroom, a minute before the bell rings.

A few more classes pass uneventfully, and soon comes the break before the last class for the day. Nick feels as good as ever, especially in the midst of the student body that feels like decaying vegetables. And as if to indicate that, she goes to one place she mostly visits for a breather – the school’s library.

She knows it from day one. It didn’t change even once after three and a half years. Sure, they have some new books in storage, maybe they have changed the furniture a bit, perhaps there are new faces she hadn’t seen before – but, in the grand scheme of things, these changes are so minuscule, it’d require a certain dedication to find them.

Maybe it isn’t the high costs for a simple change that keeps the school from renewing the library, but… the library itself? Libraries don’t need change. They only need a few frequenters, one person at the reception, and catalog updates at least every half a year. The library is a self-sustaining organism. The knowledge here isn’t bound to people, it’ll remain here for generations to come, whether in physical or in virtual form.

Nick pushes the double doors and enters the library. All the noise and ruckus of the hallways were left behind. This place is Harpocrates’ kingdom. People here respect the silence, and the only “noises” she hears are the shuffling of pages and maybe a whisper or two.

She passes the gloomy receptionist, busy checking something on the computer, and proceeds further inside. Her eyes wander around, looking at the shelves, the tables, the beanbag chairs, spotting people reading or taking a breather. There are not many people here: a few at the table reading, one sleeping in the beanbag chair.

She’d actually enjoy a bit of sleep right now. Even someone like her knows that a long day in school will get tiring. Looking at the sleeping person, she feels some strange weariness reach into her head, but a simple shaking of the head dissipates the feeling.

Walking around the library a bit more, she looks around as if searching for something, but in reality, she just renews the picture of the library again. Her eyes pass through rows and columns of books, lit in various colors and names, when suddenly she hears strange clacking, resembling a keyboard. Following the noise, she starts to hear someone mumbling.

“Either she gets pregnant or does not… Of course she gets pregnant, what’s the big deal?!” followed by even angrier clacking of the keys.

Eventually, she locates the source of the sound. A row of three PCs sits on tables at the far back wall of the library. Only one of them is occupied by a student. Nick looks at them, and quickly realizes it’s that swan-looking ptero she spotted in the cafeteria. They also wear a tuxedo t-shirt for some reason.

Feeling someone behind themselves, the ptero quickly closes the text editor and snaps their head to the baryonyx in an alarming fashion.

“Can I fuckin’ help you?” he asks.

Caught by surprise, it takes a few seconds for Nick’s brain to register the question. “N-No…” she replies.

“Alright then,” the swanlike ptero replies, turning his face back to the screen and reopens the editor, continuing to type. For a moment, Nick thinks about checking out what exactly he is typing right now, but, remembering the mumbling, she decides it’d be better for her to not know what that would be.

She leaves him alone, returning back to the shelves. Her eyes cross different book spines, one flashier than another, but none are that interesting. She soon notices a small ladder: just a few wooden steps to use to reach the highest shelves. She moves it to herself and steps up.

The creak and slight rattling of the wooden structure give a hint that it was built in a shed with not the best materials out there, and for a second, as she places her foot on the last step, she finds herself a bit afraid. But she endures the fake fear, putting her other foot on the last step.

Looking through the top shelves, she eventually finds one book she wanted to read. It’s a bit too far away for her. The best course of action would be to step down, move the ladder a bit and step back up to grab that book, especially when the ladder is so rattly. But against that, and against any other better judgment she may find, she believes that she could reach that book from over here.

And so she began. Just her arm's reach wasn’t enough, so she must move to the ladder's edge. It shakes like crazy under her futile attempts to grab the book. She grunts, unable to reach just one more inch to take it.

But a moment later, she finally grabs it. Only to fall right onto the ground with a muffled thump. It hurt in all the places her body connected to the floor, despite her fall not being that long or that big. She mumbles a bit to herself, picking herself up from the ground.

And that’s when she froze. Her eyes don’t meet the floor, no. They meet another pair of eyes looking back, bewildered, just like her. Her mouth opens slightly, but no sound emits from it. Right here, and right now, the world had stopped spinning.

It’s the human student. She fell right onto him and now lies on top in a rather suggestive position. She feels cold rushing down her spine. She hears a distant laughter – that’s fate laughing at her.

It takes about three seconds for her to snap back into reality. She blinks and quickly gets up, collecting her glasses in the meantime. As she checks them for any injury, the human student picks himself up too.

“You alright?” the human asks, dusting himself off.

“Ah- Y-Yeah…” the baryonyx replies, stuttering in embarrassment. “You?”

He shrugs. “Could be worse.”

Nick dusts off her dress and looks back at the ladder. It finally snapped, now lying in pieces. Maybe now they’ll replace it, – she thinks. Nearby, she notices her bag, and picks it up, but suddenly she hears steps quickly receding away from her. She turns around, only to see nothing. The human had run off.

The baryonyx sighs. I was about to say sorry… – she thinks, then picks up her bag. She looks at the book she managed to grab, and examines it with no interest whatsoever. It wasn’t worth it. Either way, she cannot place it back now, so she tosses the folio into her bag and walks away from the shelves.

As she makes her way to the exit, she stops at the reception. The person behind it is just a fellow student who got the herculean task of taking care of the archive. And judging by their gloomy face, they have been working on it for quite a while.

“I heard that,” the gloomy receptionist says, then looks up from the monitor. “What was that noise?”

“The ladder finally giving up,” Nick reports.

“Oh. It’s been like this for a year, so what’s new under the sun.”

“Yeah…” Nick sighs.

“You hurt?”

“A bit, but it’s nothing. Also, did you see someone rushing out of here right after the ladder broke?”

“I think I saw something but thought it was just some random person.”

“Alright…”

“I tried to fix that thing myself and wrote numerous reports for it to be repaired, trust me.”

“I do.”

“Now they have no choice but to fix it.”

“You think they’d care?”

“I sure hope so.”

With that, Nick leaves the library.

She didn’t go to the concert. She sat through the last class, disinterested in the lecture at hand (which is quite a rare feeling), and then headed back home. She was invited to it by some of her acquaintances, but she simply replied she was too busy to care. Which, partially, is true.

Back home, she quickly enters the bathroom, warming her hands up with water, then out of the bathroom, through the living room, upstairs and into her room to drop off her bag and change her attire. Then, she styles her hair into a bun, making her way back downstairs, into the living room, and getting to work.

Her mother being a busy bee means that all the tasks around the house are on Nick. To some, this immense amount of responsibility is a curse, an unliftable burden, but the baryonyx finds certain comfort in cleaning, washing, cooking, shopping, taking out the trash and so on. It can get boring, sure, but nothing a break with a good book won’t solve.

But now, she doesn’t do this out of will, but out of a certain necessity. As she made her way home, her mind got stuck on that moment when she looked straight into that poor human boy’s eyes, like a broken record. And the more it spun, repeating those three seconds of purest embarrassment, the more she sank into it.

She hoped that the vacuum cleaner's noise would help her dissipate that moment and push it to the back of her skull, but midway through cleaning the house, she stopped, feeling her heartbeat gaining weight. She cannot stop thinking about it, no matter what.

Even with that persevering thought drilling through her, she at least manages to clean the floor in the living room before sitting down. She tries to calculate the odds of that happening – nearly null, millions of zeros before a single digit. But it did happen, and it strangely feels like hitting a jackpot.

If her mother would have found out about what happened, there would be no end to joking about them being together from here on out. That makes her sink into embarrassment even more. She shakes her head to get all of that nonsense out.

About a few minutes later, with the help of some water and breathing exercises, she finally calms down. Well, congratulations, Nick, – she thinks. – What a way to introduce yourself. How humiliating… On the other hand, I was interested in him… for the purpose of research. So maybe that was fate’s twisted way of introducing us to each other. Stella would’ve said something about that. Nothing could be done about this, so all I can do is wait till tomorrow.

With that, she stands up and returns to her routine.

January 7th.

The next day passes uneventfully. The morning came and went, the lunch was distilled by never ending chats, and the lessons were as boring as they could get, but soon came the break before the last class, which meant that Nick had already made her way into the library.

First things first, she comes up to the gloomy receptionist and returns the book she had picked up yesterday. It only took her a singular evening to read through it all. She was so invested in the story that time for her had become a nuisance.

The receptionist checks the book and then enters a sequence into his PC. Perhaps he’s editing Nick’s extensive “reader’s passport.”

“They fixed the ladder, by the way,” he says.

“Really?” Nick replies with a bit of excitement in her voice.

“Yeah, see for yourself.”

The baryonyx nods, leaves the book at the reception, and walks deeper into the library. Not much had changed: the same faces take the same spots at the table or rest in the beanbag chairs, plus Nick hears the intense clacking of the keyboard – no need to wonder who’s at that PC, typing his fiction with vigor and determination.

As she passes the table by, she suddenly remembers the literature club. Calling it a club is an overestimation – it’s just ten bookworms occupying the table, chatting over what they have read and what they want to read in the future. It didn’t meet the bare minimum to function as a high school club. But Nick liked it anyway. I wonder if Theresa still keeps it around… – Nick thinks.

She makes her way back to the fateful bookshelves from yesterday and immediately spots the human student. He stands still, looking at the selection and pondering what to read. The vision of yesterday hits like a hammer. The baryonyx feels her heart beating heavier and her cheeks warm up, but she quickly shakes her head, cooling herself down to reasonable levels.

Without a word, she passes the human and looks at the ladder. Slick metal instead of shoddy wood – now that is a proper ladder. She steps up on it to reach the highest shelf. Every step feels solid. She’s proud that her actions manifested in some sort of change, even if those actions were embarrassing as hell, even if that change is in something as simple as a library ladder.

She reaches the shelf and picks yet another piece of literature to fulfill an empty evening with.

“It doesn’t rattle anymore,” she suddenly hears.

Her hand freezes. She turns her head to the voice, only to see a pair of human eyes looking at her. They look at each other like that for about a few seconds before Nick finally turns her face back to the shelves.

“Yeah,” she says. She looks down at the book in her hands. “Guess all it took is someone finally falling off it for them to fix it.”

“At least they did,” the human replies.

“That’s true.”

She steps down the ladder, then sets it aside, puts the book into the bag – but doesn’t leave. She looks at the human again, who had already found something to read as well. For the first time ever, she doesn’t know what to do. She – a person who is synonymous to the word “plan” – doesn’t have a plan. Again, until recently, she had never interacted with humans, which frightened her. But at the same time, she cannot deny the interest.

Taking a breath, she turns off the algorithmic part of herself and just goes with it.

“You… You’re Anon, right?” she asks, a bit hesitant.

The human turns his head. “Yeah, that’s… me,” he replies. “And you are…?”

“Nicole,” the baryonyx smiles. “Call me Nick.”

Chapter Text

Anon and Nick sit down at the table. The entire library has gone quiet, as if to give them enough space to talk with each other.

“So… Tell me a bit about yourself,” Nick says. “Where are you from, why did you go to here, all that jazz.” Upon seeing Anon’s nervousness rise, though, she quickly retorts: “If you want to, that is.”

“Yeah, I… I don’t think I want to tell.”

“I guess it’s something personal.”

Anon just nods to that. Why, of course he wouldn’t open up so easily, – Nick thinks. – I just got to properly know him, and I’m already throwing so much questions at him. Better talk about myself for a moment.

“You may not remember, but… I’m that girl that… fell on you from the ladder yesterday.”

The human looks at her, and despite his best efforts, does not remember Nick as a person who fell on him from the ladder yesterday. All he remembers was that someone fell on him, and he was so embarrassed he skipped not just the concert and a good greasy dinner after it, but also the very last period. But the way Nick looks at him with slight embarrassment, Anon reckons it’s better to just take her word for it. Against all of his alarms going off.

“You are new to the city though, right?” Nick asks.

“Yeah. I don’t know places aside from my home and this school.”

“Maybe I could give you a small tour around? What do you think?”

“Well… If you want to, then sure. I won’t say no to increasing my odds of survival.”

Nick chuckles a bit.

“How do you like the school so far?”

“I… dunno. I mean it’s nice, if we’re talking about the aesthetics.”

“What about the classes themselves?”

“Uh…” Anon just notices how alike she and Naomi sound with those questions, but unlike Naomi and her plasticity, Nick sounds genuine and… alive. He’d like to answer her questions unlike Naomi’s. “English is a shitshow and a half, Math isn’t math’ing, Science would’ve been better if not for that fossil of a teacher… The rest I don’t care about.”

“I see.”

Nick checks the time.

“We better hurry,” she says, standing up. “The class starts soon.”

“Right,” he replies, standing up as well.

They take their bags and make their leave. When they split (Anon needed to go a floor higher), Anon stops in the hallway and mulls over their convo. It isn’t much to go by, but if there’s anything that he noticed… is that his spaghetti alarms calmed down slightly by the time the talk was wrapped up, and he didn’t feel so jittery when talking to her at all. It’s like he forgot he’s talking to a woman. Whatever that was, and whatever caused it, he wants to repeat it, just to confirm his theories.

The bell makes him snap out and speed up to the class. Luckily enough, it wasn’t far away.

“I’m home!” Nick says with a sigh, taking off her shoes.

“Welcome back,” her mother says with a smile, popping from a corner.

“You’re early.”

“Yeah, our shift was cut short due to some equipment malfunction. At least that’s what I was told. Eh, doesn’t really matter, what matters is that I’m home early!”

“Yeah, that’s all that matters.”

“And that I need your help for a bit.”

“With what? Groceries, taking out the trash, washing dishes?”

“No, nothing like that.”

Nick makes her way inside the living room. The air smells like a good dinner. Her mother sits down on the chair and sighs in relief.

“My shoulders hurt from yesterday… Can you massage them for me, sweetie?”

“Oh- Uhm, sure, why not.” Nick settles her bag down, puts her hands onto her mom’s shoulders and starts massaging them softly.

“How was school today? Anything interesting?”

“Nope. Same old.”

“What about that human boy? Did you get to know him now?”

“…Yes. We talked in the library.”

“And?”

“He didn’t say much.”

“Is that so?”

“Yup. He didn’t tell me where he’s from or why did he move here. I reckon it’s something personal, so I didn’t ask him any further.”

“But he doesn’t know the city, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You should take him around, show him places!”

“I know, he agreed to a tour around the city.”

“And who knows in what that may evolve!”

“…I don’t like what you are implying.”

“Anyways, how’s the boy himself? Is he cute?”

“He’s… odd. First off, he’s a human. He’s bald, and his head shines a lot.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He wears a green jacket, some old jeans and shoes. And, from the looks of it, he wants to keep to himself.”

“Is that so? Makes me wonder what happened to him.”

“Same…”

“Also,” Nick’s mom turns her head to her daughter. “Maybe we should invite him here?”

“You think?”

“Absolutely! I want to see how he’s like, want to talk to him, maybe even in private.” Nick’s mom’s face takes a blissful expression.

“What in the bloody world do you want to discuss with him in private?!” Nick asks. “Okay, I’m done with your shoulders.”

Her mother stretches out her hands, moaning ever so slightly out of relief. “Ah, so good… Thank you, sweetie.” Then, she turns to her daughter. “And what’s his name?”

“…Anon.” Nick reluctantly answers.

“Anon? That is a weird name for sure. But I like it.”

Nick lowers her face. “I like it too,” she murmurs to herself.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. I’ll go to my room now.”

“At least take some dinner with yourself.”

“Alright.”

The baryonyx walks onto the kitchen and notices the closed pot. She lifts the lid to a veil of steam and something that smells really good. As if its reminded, her stomach growls a little. She quickly puts some of the cooking onto a plate, and then, with a bag on her shoulders and a plate full of food in hands, makes her way up the stairs and into her room. She was waiting for this moment for the entire day. She sits down at the empty table, sets the food aside, opens her bag and gets to work.

One subject at a time, she cracks the given homework like some walnuts against a wall. All the math equations and English questions are answered in rapid succession. At some point she considers something silly: to learn how to write with her right hand so that she could finish two different homeworks simultaneously. The plate didn’t even have a slim chance to go cold or at least lukewarm – and she was already done with everything for the evening. With that, feeling victorious, she starts eating the dinner.

The tastebuds melt under the sheer pressure of flavors, mixed together in a holy concoction. Whatever recipe she had found this time, she did her work stunningly, – Nick thinks, taking another bite, – either that or… the recipe was actually decently written this time around. How many times we’d screwed up while making something simple because the recipe was overly complicated? I lost count of those, to be honest… Ah, whatever. What matters is, that curse is finally broken. Thanks, mom.

The plate is finished and laid to rest on the bottom of the kitchen sink, as the baryonyx makes her way to the bed and lies down, finally feeling the weight of the day sinking her deeper into the sheets. She looks at the ceiling for some time, then closes her eyes, and nearly instantly falls asleep. Her dream is a hectic reminder of the past years, back when she had one thing she was proud of, one thing she had to give up while she was choosing between it and the current self. Music.

Since she was a kid she was into music. And not just listening to it, that is lame – she was into the process of its creation. She liked seeing those documentary videos of bands explaining how their records come to life – she was captivated by it. Layer by layer, an instrument after an instrument, music turns from a cacophony of unmixable sounds into something that breaks records, pushes boundaries and brings its creators infinite glory.

On her eleventh birthday, she had finally made her step into that direction, as her mother had bought her an electric guitar. She still remembers that day to the very minute detail. She remembers how she was unwrapping the present, to find it’s a guitar case, with that seven-string slick baby-blue beauty lying in it. She didn’t know how much her mother had to pay, but she was eternally grateful for it, and throughout the years, she had proved that every single penny her mother had spent to get it to her was worth it.

There was a small problem with it, though. It was a right-handed guitar, and Nick is a lefty. When her mother had found out, she panicked a bit, told Nick that she’d get her a new guitar, but she kept it. She loved it, and the difference didn’t really stop her. All that she had to do was to just turn the guitar upside-down and play it like this, with the lowest strings being positioned low. And thus, she became a guitarist.

First were the covers. She didn’t go gently and easy, she dove into the hardest things imaginable – prog metal and mathcore. Those insanely hard compositions with unbelievable musical landscapes kept her with a guitar for hours and hours on end almost every single day. But slowly and surely, she cracked those tracks, one piece at a time, shaping the way she played on her guitar.

Then, she started making her own compositions. Only a few managed to live to the present day, most of them were lost to time, but it doesn’t necessarily mean she was embarrassed of it. If one would play her earliest song to her, she’d only sit with a smile on her face, because she doesn’t really care about how unskillful she was back then – she cared more about the process, how she was figuring it out, making it work together. And that is what most people should remember and pay attention to – the process of creating.

After, came a band. At first, when she was sure that she wanted to do this, she wanted to go solo. Drums and bass are both programmable things, and learning how to make music wasn’t that big of an issue. Problem was – she didn’t have a PC or a laptop of her own, much to the surprise of her peers, any self-respecting developer wouldn’t chop their music editors in half just to make a somewhat usable phone port, and all the apps that claimed to be the “best” music editors on the phone were nothing more but a fluke. So, in secrecy, she started watching tutorials and composing pieces on the library computer.

That’s how she met with Trent. A purple triceratops, a chubby geek, a high-school dropout, he was something of a musician too, being a guitarist himself. After a few playing sessions at his den (that’s how she was calling his apartment, because it really was a den of a technology hobbyist), he soon offered her to play together. At first, she didn’t want to do it, her idea of going solo was too good to give up on just yet, but she did say she’d consider it. She folded her “solo” plan in a matter of thirty minutes after returning home that day, reporting to him over text messages that she’s ready to do something together.

And so, “Swamp Babies” was born. No drums, no bass, no electronics, – no vocals too, they were too lazy to learn and too shy to ask someone. The genre was settled on quickly – prog metal, something that’d be a collective work of all those bands she had listened to throughout her life. In a month worth of weekends, they had wrote their first, self-titular album, and released it on Bandpark, for people to see. As expected, there wasn’t much of an audience, but the listeners were quite positive about their first attempt. She was celebrating all day, and her mother was happy.

Soon, they met Curtis. Tall, muscular, constantly joyful, he already had experience not just with making music, but playing in bands too. He’s a drummer, and by the time he had found “Swamp Babies” he had already left his third band. The reasons for him to leave were always the same – he didn’t feel joy. The musicians in his past bands were really busy trying to leave a legacy, and someone like him is the exact opposite – he could care less about what would happen tomorrow or overmorrow, what he cares about is what happens today, right now. And to him, “Swamp Babies” looked just like what he was searching for, so it was no surprise that he agreed to be their drummer relatively quickly.

Together, they played for about four months, and even managed to release a short EP with live drums, which was a nice surprise that brought more attention to the band. Sometimes, when the time was better than ever, they got outside and played a few shows, bringing even more popularity to themselves. All in all, everything was going fine, they’d keep on going and nothing would stop them…

…until the last year of high-school rolled around. This year, Nick had to make an ultimate choice. Either drop making music and get herself to work, or focus entirely on music and consider school all but a hefty burden. And everyone knows what kind of choice she made.

Trent understood her. He told her that he never really laid much hope for the band in the first place, but he also said that the growing popularity was slowly proving him wrong, and if not for Nick suddenly dropping out of the band, he could’ve actually change his mind. Curtis threw a small temper tantrum, said that “Swamp Babies” ended up being the same like the previous bands, but eventually calmed down and wished her good luck with school.

And so, the promising VB instrumental prog metal band “Swamp Babies” was shelved, to collect dust as yet another chapter in Nick’s life. Did she like it? Yes. She had managed to show her different side and make something of her own, something that she could put on par with the bands that shaped her into what she is today. Did she regret leaving? No. She understands that this was a choice that had to happen. Does she regret it now? She does. And she does a lot.

Where has her passion gone? Who or what took it, carried it away, making her lose something that was one of the most important things to her, making her close the chapter and go back to her normal life? She wants to bring it back, but she doesn’t know how Trent and Curtis would react, and that frightens her. They could understand her, they could unite. Or they could send her to kingdom fuck – and they’d be in the right. So, all she can do now is to just look at the guitar in her closet with longing.

January 9^th.

The alarm clock wakes the baryonyx up. She swiftly gets out of bed and puts her clothes and glasses on. The morning outside is slightly bleak, with the overcast sky stating that not every morning gets to be bright and beautiful, with a clear sky and a shining circle of the Sun. But that didn't really matter to her. Today'll be just like any other day: breakfast, school, some housekeeping work before mom would arrive, then dinner, some reading, and, finally, sleep. She checks and takes her bag and leaves her room, descending the stairs. Her mom is already sitting at the table, drinking her coffee out of a big mug with the words "№1 Best Mom!" on it, which, to Nick, sounds a bit ironic.

They greet each other. The baryonyx makes her way to the bathroom first, to wash the remaining sleep away, then gets to the kitchen. Ten minutes later, she sits down with a plate of omelette, and deals with it in about two minutes. They settle their dishes in the empty shining sink and leave the house. It's warmer outside today, which is quite a nice bonus. Nick takes the front passenger seat, and her mom takes the wheel. A twist of keys brings the car into life, pressing the gas pedal gets it going - and soon enough, they leave their suburbia. All going as per usual, according to the plan.

The ride to school is uneventful. The usual urban landscape grows stale and boring after some time watching it, and Nick lowers her eyes to her laps. To distill the wait at least somehow, she brings out her phone and starts browsing the internet. No new funny memes, no new interesting videos to watch, no new posts to respond to, no new texts. Nothing. As if the powers that be decided to make this exact morning the most boring one the baryonyx had ever lived through.

Her mother stops on the school's parking lot, and the baryonyx makes her leave. And suddenly, much to her surprise, her eyes immediately spot the human standing nearby, as if he was waiting for her. Her mother spots him too, spots her daughter approaching and talking with him, but doesn't pay much attention, as her shift is going to start soon. She drives off, leaving the baryonyx and the human to each other's company.

“How did you know I'd be here?" Nick asks, pleasantly surprised.

“Just saw you leaving that sedan yesterday,” Anon replies, “so I figured that's how you get to school, you know?”

“I see. Well, you caught me a bit off guard, you know?”

“Sorry.”

“It's nothing, trust me. Let's go inside before it gets too late.”

With that, the baryonyx and the human make their way to the school and inside.

The day passes uneventfully until fourth period, Science. Anon makes his way into the classroom, only to notice Nick’s hand waving him over, and, instead of heading to the back of the room, he walks up to her desk and sits down. Right before the tone, one last student rushes in, out of breath – some unfamiliar girl that he doesn’t know, nor care about enough to remember, she strides across the room, taking her seat without a word. The lingering chatter in the room dies out as the teacher stands from his desk, moving to the front of the room.

“Good news everyone!” he says. “Today we’ll be having a lab on magnetic fields. Find a partner and get prepared.”

Anon looks over at Nick, who just smiles at him a bit. Knowing who is his partner, he already feels victorious. He isn’t a dummy, no, but her knowledge is way vaster than he could ever imagine. And she wouldn’t say “no” to some teamwork.

Together, they begin working. The baryonyx pulls most of the weight on herself, while the human cracks the easier ones, just to feel that he had accomplished at least something in this unfair battle of wits. Wait ‘till she’s gonna find out that I can make a railgun, – he thinks, – that oughta get her attention good.

“Hm?” Nick hums.

“Nothing,” Anon replies, then murmurs to himself: “Damn murmuring…”

The fossil of a teacher is making his rounds across the room, eventually stopping at their desk.

“How are you two doing so far?” he asks.

“Good,” Nick replies.

“I see… And you, Anon?”

“What she said,” Anon replies.

The teacher nods with a smile, moving on. Everything goes fine, the bary-human pair cracks the assignment like no biggie… up until something starts a ruckus.

The teacher stops at a certain, desk, asking a pterosaur and a sand-yellow raptor on their progress. A response from the raptor triggers a certain face of regret on the teacher, but it is nothing compared to the process that the pterosaur was going through.

“…She?” the ptero asks.

“Yeah?” the raptor asks back.

“Can you not see?!”

“I can’t.”

The infuriated pterodactyl’s wings spread wide, and their taloned finger jab at the raptor’s chest.

“I. Am. Non. Binary.” they say slowly.

“Oh. Alright. How the fuck should I have figured that out?” the raptor replies. “You wear the most feminine clothes out there.” Then, the raptor stands up, turning out to be a head higher than the pterosaur. “You’ve already made yourself into a laughing stock with that concert of yours, so now try just a lil’ bit harder to impress us, girl.”

That was the last straw. The pterodactyl tries to attack the raptor; the raptor disarms the pterodactyl and twists their hands behind their back. The teacher, trying to regain some control, orders them both to leave, and the raptor, acting like a cop, gets the pterodactyl out of the classroom.

Without the teacher, the snickering begins. People discuss what just happened. Anon and Nick look at one another, as if to make sure they’re there.

“Who was that ptero?” he asks.

“Fang,” Nick replies. “She’s our local musician, with her band VVURM DRAMA. Guess the concert that happened recently didn’t go that well.”

“Huh… I wanted to go there. Just for the pizzas, to be clear. They were too good to pass on.”

“What stopped you?”

“Remember you fell on me in the library?”

Nick slowly turns her face away. Embarrassment hits her like a mallet.

“…Sorry.”

“Ah, it’s nothing. I mean, it’s far better to be here instead of… there. You know?”

“Right. Let’s just round up this assignment and get moving.”

“Sure.”

They were the first to complete the lab.

“ANON!” the math teacher yells. The human sits ramrod after what felt like fifteen minutes of hanging between sleep and vigor. “Are you frickin’ listening? Come finish this frickin’ problem on the frickin’ board.”

“Just one social disaster after another today…” the human murmurs to himself, as he hesitantly slides out of his chair and trundles his way to the whiteboard, trying to decipher the runes he’s expected to understand… Except he doesn’t make it to the whiteboard, at least in the current minute – three rows down, and his foot catches on a loose backpack strap in the isle. Luckily he falls sideways and there’s a cold hard desk in the way to catch his fall. Nick watches it from afar, smiling from his clumsiness, while the rest of the class chuckles a bit.

The human looks up from his resting place to see a massive pink and white muzzle.

“Dude…” the dino says, slowly and relaxed. Anon just waits for him to continue. “You’re on my desk, man…”

The senses kick back in, and he quickly gets up, picking up and returning the pencil that flew to the floor in a flurry of apologies, as he continues his path down to the whiteboard. Picking up the marker and thinking he got this, Anon begins solving the problem, with no one but Nick watching him solve it. There’s a certain charm contained within his clumsy actions that the baryonyx cannot pinpoint to, as if it’s something like a horizon line – one can see it, one can describe it, but can never truly reach it. It takes a solid two minutes for Anon to solve the problem on the board, mostly because of him circling his answer. He looks expectantly at the math teacher, who only gives him a nod.

Anon returns to his desk, with a few pair of eyes following him that he doesn’t recognize. In the meantime, the teacher gives each row a stack of papers to pass back.

“Alright, here’s the frickin’ homework covering today’s lesson. Use page two-seventy-nine. I’ll give you the last… fifteen frickin’ minutes of class to work with your frickin’ peers.” With that, he sits down at his desk and pulls out a math book with a monthly romance novel crudely stuffed inside it, turned sideways and with a very detailed centerfold. Back at his desk, Anon glances over his math sheet. Page two-seventy-nine, right? – he thinks, looking into his bag. – Looks like I finally get to use that phonebook of a math textbook.

That’s where the biggest disaster of today struck. Instead of his math textbook, resting inside his backpack, is the Saturnia Collectors Edition Artbook, the best wanking material that he knows of. He’s frozen, distraught, his mind is on fire as it tries to come up with what he should do in the current situation. Why had this happened? Is someone playing a sick joke on him? How could he bring this to school?! So many damn questions, and none of them can be answered! All that there is – is him, looking down into his bag with the artbook with a face of complete dread.

What snaps him back into his senses is something bouncing off of his head and landing nearby on the floor. He closes the backpack and shoves it under the desk. The object is a balled-up wad of paper. Hesitantly, he picks it up and unfurls it to read the note. “To your left,” it says. The human looks up and around his left side, only to see a familiar baryonyx face waving him over. He looks away, thinking what to do, but eventually caves in, grabs his stuff and shuffles over to her.

“You move as slow as molasses, Jesus,” Nick says, as he lands himself next to her.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“How did you manage to fall while walking in a straight line?”

“Ever heard of loose bag stripes?”

“You could’ve avoided it if you weren’t so clumsy.”

“Whatever, let’s just get this over with.”

They start doing the assignment. Blazing through the questions on the sheet of paper, tossing the answers to one another. Yet one more proof that Anon is someone that if not on her level, then definitely coming second or, what’s more likely, third place. Is no genius, but can definitely get something difficult done, given time. In the midst of action, she looks at him, while he’s reading yet another question. His lips move, but barely anything comes out. Mumbling, clumsy, nervous, keeping to himself… – she thinks, examining him. – Just what’s going on in your head?..

“What?” Unbeknownst to her, Anon has already read the question and is now looking back at her. Caught like a deer in the headlights, Nick stutters, coughs a bit, trying to hide her embarrassment.

“Nothing! Nothing.”

“Right.” He didn’t seem to believe. But at least he got his face back down at the sheet of paper. Nick returns to her paper too, but she’s already distracted.

The given fifteen minutes pass slowly, and they manage to get the assignment done. The bell rings, announcing lunchtime, and the rest of the students collectively rise and start shuffling out the door. Anon and Nick join the parade, leaving the completed assignments on the teacher’s desk on the way.

The cafeteria welcomes them with loud talks, huge lines and taken tables, but they manage to find a place where they could sit and chat in relative solitude. It’s surprising that some of the tables, considering the current ruckus, are untaken, as if they’re damned. Anon and Nick leave their bags at the table and make their way through the line. Nick notices Anon picking out the free options, and a few seconds later spots the comically huge laminated lunch card that is given only to the poorest of the students, which brings another couple of questions to ask him: what was his family’s financial position and where does he live.

They return to their table, sit down and start eating. The cafeteria food still leaves a lot of room for improvement, but it’s not like the cooks work here out of passion for cooking for students who could care less – as long as they don’t get to spend a whole class in the toilet, and as long as it gets them through the day without wishing for someone’s death, that’s good enough. No, those cooks work for money, and it shows at least in the pseudopizza Anon had picked.

Nick slowly goes from actively eating to simply poking the food in disinterest, as her mind is rolling combinations and calculates the various outcomes for what she’s about to ask him. But before she ever could open her mouth, Anon notices her gloomy face, swallows the “pizza” and puts his phone down.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Oh- Yeah, I am,” Nick replies, slightly caught off guard. “I was just thinking.”

“Oh, okay,” the human nods, returning to his pizza.

“You… don’t know much about this town, right?” the baryonyx asks him, making him freeze with an open mouth and a pizza in hand. He closes his mouth, puts the pizza down and just nods.

“Maybe I could… you know, give a tour to you? Show you some neat places here and there?” Nick says. “That is if you want it, of course,” she quickly retorts.

Anon ponders the offer. On one hand, he could spend his time with someone he trusts, so that he’d know a bit more about this town, and even if that knowledge would be useless, the process would matter – just thinking about going places together… It brings some certain notions. But on the other hand, it’s not like Anon would go outside even on a sunny day. No, what matters to him the most is the responses he gets from all the ragebait and shitposting.

And in the midst of all that, something pushes onto the weights, and Anon makes his decision. “Sure,” he says, “when?”

Nick is caught off guard. She thought he would turn it down, so that she didn’t have to do anything (it’s not like he cared about something like that in the first place, or looked like he cared). But she heard him agree. And that means only one thing.

“I-I honestly don’t know,” Nick replies, fixing her glasses. “But I’ll text you when I’ll figure that out, okay?”

“Sure,” Anon nods, and returns to his food.

The baryonyx feels something deep inside. Something burning. Is it excitement?

The rest of the school went uneventful, with nothing to note other than Nick saying bye to Anon. The evening slowly takes over the city, painting orange across the January sky, and it’s getting progressively colder. Fixing her glasses and tucking herself in, Nick makes a quick leap to her house, powered by her desire to not turn into a popsicle. She makes quick work of the way and ends up inside her home before she even realizes it.

With a sigh, she takes off her shoes and proceeds into the living room. First things first, she leaves her bag in her room. Before leaving, she looks at the guitar, noticeable in the gap of the barely opened closet. Then she changes her clothes and makes her way back downstairs. After warming her hands with some water in the bathroom, she finally gets to do the housekeeping work. From the flame, – Nick thinks, starting the vacuum cleaner, – and into the fire…

All of the work is done in a matter of an hour. If there is one thing that housekeeping work consumes – it’s time. Finally free for the rest of the day, she heats up some dinner for herself and eats it in the loneliness, before striding back inside her room and falling onto the bed. The weight of the day sinks her into the comfy cushions and pushes onto her eyelids, making her fight in an unfair battle against sleep. Slowly and surely, she drifts away into the dreamy nothingness, and while she’s doing so, she imagines how she would walk with Anon across the city.

Chapter Text

January 18^th. Over a week ago, Anon agreed to a tour with Nick around the city. The day had finally arrived.

Dressed in her usual blazer, skirt, knee-high socks and shoes, Nick waits for the human outside the school’s premises, with the clock telling midday, just as they agreed on yesterday. It’s sunny, and every new day makes the sunlight slightly warmer. Sometimes, the wind comes by, caressing her cheeks and blowing through the hair inside out. A bit shivering, but a nice sensation nonetheless. She hears distant talks behind her – campus beautification is in effect. It always makes her wonder why do people enjoy school on weekends. She enjoys school herself, but there’s always a limit to everything…

All in all, today calls for a nice walk around the city with a good friend. With a responsibility of a professional guide, Nick had spent the entire yesterday preparing for the event. She has a lot of things to show him, both things that everyone getting into town should see, and things that she wants to show him on her own. And who knows what shenanigans can occur in the meantime. As she thinks about it, she remembers her mother’s words, and quickly shakes her head right after, to get the thoughts out of her head. She still finds them ridiculous.

But… she’s right. She’s right, and Nick hates it, because she cannot deny it. She can order to her mind, but not to her heart, it’s a thing of its own, doing what it desires without any input from the logical part of herself. It burns with excitement, beats heavily as she imagines walking around together. She knows that this would happen, the books taught her, but one thing is knowing about it, and the other is actually experiencing it. And so, while a part of herself strictly follows the plan inside her head, an other part of herself wants to make detours, wants for shenanigans to happen.

She looks up. People and cars move from one side of her vision to another. She notices her glasses are dirty, takes them off, cleans them with a cloth, checks and then puts them back on. The wind comes around yet again, blowing powerfully through her hair, she puts a hand in front of her face. Then, after it died down, she fixes her hair back, looks around again – and finally spots him walking to her. Green jacket and worn jeans, a bald dome and a face in his phone. Still looks like a novelty around these parts, after so much time had passed.

Nick’s mouth stretches into a smile on her own.

“Hey, Anon!” she says, approaching him herself.

“Ah-“ Anon looks up from his phone. “Oh, hi.” He puts the device into his pocket. “I kept you waiting?”

“No, I got here just a few minutes ago. You’re ready?”

“I guess?”

“That’s good enough. Come on! We have a lot of places to visit!”

And so, it begins.

First thing they hit – the aquarium. A large marble building on a marina. They get inside after paying admission. Various exhibits sprawl out to make the place turtle-shaped from a birds-eye view. A nice place, but it needs to be entertaining. And if it doesn’t, then Nick has to make it entertaining. If there’s one thing she cannot afford, it’s failure. While the human stands still at a wall, Nick comes up to one of the map kiosks, quickly building a mental plan for the trip.

“Okay…” she sighs, coming up to the human. “Let’s go to the sea turtles first.”

“Alright. Lead the way,” Anon replies, hiding his phone.

Together, they make it into the chamber labeled “Sea Turtle Conservatory”. Right as they step in, a little sea turtle swims out of hiding in the tank right in front of them. Both of them are captivated by the sheer cuteness of the little thing suddenly appearing for them to see. They peer into the tank, and see a few more hatchlings bob out of the decorative grass. The cuteness slowly becomes overbearing, and Nick finds herself nearly pressing against the glass.

“How do these little things live?” Anon asks out of awe.

“If only I knew…” Nick replies.

After checking out a few more tanks, they make it to the next room. A huge stingray touch tank opens in front of them.

“Oh, cool, a stingray pool,” Anon says.

“Yeah! You plan on touching one?” Nick asks.

“Touch?”

“You can put your hand in and they’ll slide against it,” The baryonyx pushes her hand into the water, splaying it out. “Watch.” The water is cold, but sure enough, a few of the playful things make their round and slide up against it like a cat begging for scratches. Feeling courageous, Anon comes up to the tank, rolls up his sleeve and pushes the hand in as well.

“You sure they’re not dangerous?” Anon asks.

“Well, I’m still alive, as you can see,” Nick replies. “They are slimy, though. There’s a hand sanitizer over there.”

“Right…”

After playing with the stingrays a bit more, they eventually make their way to the dolphin pools. Upon exiting the building, their noses are assaulted by a mix of salty air and the smell of raw fish. Somehow, it’s even fishier here than inside the aquarium.

“Smells like lunch,” Nick comments, then turns to Anon. “It says they should be feeding the dolphins pretty soon.”

The walkway circles around a large pool with several dolphins swimming around. In the distance is a trainer holding a hoop with a bucket of fish by their feet. One of the dolphins jumps straight through the hoop and is rewarded with a fish caught out of the air. Anon smugly smiles. Would she jump through a hoola loop if there were treats? – he thinks, looking at Nick. His smile disappears soon after. – Actually, what is her favorite treat?

The trainer soon trades the hoop for a large brush and gets one of the dolphins to open its mouth. They start brushing the dolphin’s teeth, showing off the rows of neatly spaced cones. Anon cranes his neck down, to get a view on Nick’s teeth from below.

“What?” she asks. Then the realization hits her.

“So that’s how you brush your teeth,” Anon says.

“…Dork,” Nick simply replies. “Come on, one more place to visit.”

And with that, they leave the dolphin pen, following the signs back towards the building. The floor slopes until they reach a door labeled as the sub-level to their destination. Pushing through, they find themselves in an oversized hamster tube beneath the water. From within the glass walkway, they are surrounded by a myriad of colorful marine life swimming around us. And while Nick’s eyes follow the fish darting to and fro, Anon’s gaze is captured by the water-filtered light, cascading off the baryonyx and casting her in a gentle glow illuminating her baby-blue beautifulness even more.

Soon, they arrive at the last exhibit. They open a set of door and step into a near pitch black room.

“Is it… closed?” Anon asks.

“It’s a Deep Sea exhibit,” Nick explains. “Things here aren’t used to light.”

“Alright.”

“Scared?”

“Not much. You?”

“Me neither.”

They walk into the darkened room, what little light there is comes from the various animals within. The aquariums are packed with bioluminescent jellyfish, draping the room with an ethereal glow.

“Whoa…” Nick says. “This is… This is beautiful…”

“Yeah, it is.”

Anon steps aside, pulling out his phone, and while the baryonyx was captivated, he snaps himself a photo. It was too good to not be made. I might get killed if she finds out that I did it, – he thinks, – and if you ask me? That’d be a beautiful death.

Soon enough, they make their leave. Nick checks the time. About an hour spent. Good pace. While Anon checks the phone for something, she thinks about where to go next. And in the meantime, she looks at the human, with an embarrassed look on her face. She doesn’t know whether she did it right. It’s her first time acting as a guide to anyone. Well, he sounded excited, and looked excited, but maybe it’s just the surface level? Maybe down below he wanted to go back home? Better to ask him up front and not worry about it.

“Did I… do it right?” Nick asks.

“What do you mean?” Anon asks back, looking at the baryonyx. “And what’s with that look on your face?”

“I-I just… I don’t know whether I’m doing this properly or not… I mean, was it… entertaining?”

Oh, that’s what this is about, – the human thinks. “It’s not just about the entertainment, you know?” he says “It’s also about spending some time with a friend.” Nick sighs in relief. “Like,” Anon continues, “I doubt I’d be here if not for you.”

“Alright… Thanks. I just needed to know that.”

Anon looks out into the sky. It’s crystal clear, and the color is just like the baryonyx’s scales.

“So uh… Where to now?” he asks.

“To somewhere… more entertaining,” Nick replies, and starts venturing off. Anon follows her suit.

“You know… when I said it wasn’t about the entertainment, I really meant it.”

Nick just exhales, nervously, as Anon looks at what’s supposed to be an arcade. The building looks a couple decades old. Large glass windows covered in sunbleached promotional leaflets adorn its front. All of it reeks of being successful in the long past. Inside is just what they both expected: abuzz with activity, flashing machines all compete for attention, games excitedly conversing. And the smell…

“Ugh, it reeks of old,” Anon says.

“It does…” Nick agrees.

They flow deep into the arcade. Their eyes flow between the various game cabinets in the room, trying to follow each other. As they carry on slowly, Anon feels something weird in his stomach.

“Never been to an arcade in my life…” Nick says.

“Neither have I…” Anon replies. “Let’s see what they have to offer…”

Eventually, scrolling past the screens, they stop at a particularly large one. The title above says “Ruin Robbers”. Dull multi-colored sticks hang off the sides with wires attached, connecting them with the machine.

“Let’s try this one,” Anon says.

“You sure?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Alright…”

They take the lightguns in their hands, Nick blasts the start button into pieces. The action begins right away, without any unnecessary introductions. They push onto the squeaky triggers, pointing the plastic guns at the on-screen pixels of the enemy, destroying them in a million pieces. For something as simple as an endless run-n-gun, this is actually really fun. And, aside all that, they don’t play alone, or over a distance – they are here, playing together, gunning their enemies down and running to the horizon.

They make a few tries, before finally putting the guns back to their holders. The top five scores are all hold the same name and the same numbers, which is possibly the maximum one can achieve in this game.

“This was fun,” Anon says first.

“It was,” Nick replies, looking at the human. “Let’s see what else do they offer.”

“Sure thing.”

They venture off, leaving the machine behind in search for something else. Elements of interior clash together, either making all the sense, or none of it. The deeper they go, the more the air reeks of nostalgia. Nick’s eyes gleam in the lights of the joyous machinery. Eventually, they make it to a crowd, surrounding just one machine in particular, worn and torn by the teens more than everything else this arcade could offer to them. To Anon, it looks quite familiar – it’s a dedicated arcade version of a fighting game he played a long time ago. They push through the crowd and join the spectacle.

To the left of the booth is a usual teen, grunting over controls and trying to regain some sort of advantage in desperation over their character being beaten into shambles. The other character beating their opponent into shambles is controlled by a green baryonyx girl… in a wheelchair. That’s a sight one may not see every day. And, to add to the unique sight, they play in full-force.

“I am not going near that thing,” Nick says.

“Neither am I,” Anon replies.

“Means we’re done here… Let’s go outside.”

“Sure.”

They push their way out of the crowd and make it back outside. Anon coughs a bit, feeling oxygen replacing the gasses of nostalgia from the arcades, while Nick fixes her glasses yet again.

“Do you feel hungry by any chance?” Nick asks.

“Not really… But I won’t say no to a bite.”

“Let’s make a small stop then. Follow me.”

Their destination turned out to be a small building quite close to the coastline. “Lava Java”. A community hangout famous for its Battle of the Bands, providing an equal opportunity for everyone participating to get into the big leagues. A den for local bands and extreme nerds alike. But despite that, Nick hadn’t been in here in years, practically ever since her childhood. Even when she was in a band she didn’t play here. So this technically could be her first time, since she doesn’t remember anything about it. And as far as she is concerned, it could change in a ton of different ways.

They enter the hangout, and are immediately hit with a soft smell of coffee dangling in the air. Lights here are dim, mostly work for the atmosphere, accompanied by leafage and various posters on the walls. Many round tables are taken, and people either chat, eat or play some tabletop games. Far away from them, still standing at the entrance, is an empty scene. And right beside them is a small counter, with a familiar face right behind it.

“Hola, Nick!” the aquilops says.

“Hey, Rosa,” Nick says. “This is Anon, you may have seen him in our school.”

“Yes, I did see him once in the cafeteria. With you, as well! Is he a good friend?”

“He is. But if you’ll excuse us, we need something to munch on.”

“Oh, sure! What do you like? The menus are over my head.”

Anon looks up to see the menus – just lined up blackboards with names and prices written with chalk. They make their selection, Rosa reports to the small kitchen via a window right behind her, and they start waiting. In the meantime, Anon looks around the hall. There are some faces he had seen before in school, like the blue liopleurodon sitting right next to a violently pink microraptor, and the swan-looking pterosaur right next to a sand-yellow raptor. But there are some new faces he hadn’t seen before, like the orange liliensternus.

In the midst of his observation, he spots a staircase leading to the second floor.

“Doubt we’ll find any places here, so maybe we should check out the second floor,” Anon says.

“Sure thing,” Nick nods.

Anon returns to his observations, while Rosa comes to Nick for some gossip.

“It seems like you’re enjoying his company,” the aquilops says.

“Yes, he’s quite a nice chap,” the baryonyx says.

“Are you two… on a date?”

“Wha-“ Nick feels her whole face burning. “No! That’s impossible!”

“Why? You two seem so good together-“

“Enough. Please.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”

Nick exhales, cooling off, then looks at Anon, oblivious of what she just had to go through. Maybe there is some truth to that… – she retorts.

“Okay, here’s your order,” Rosa says with a smile.

“I’ll take it,” Anon says, taking the small tray with two coffee cups and some fresh bakery to munch on. Isn’t that good of a lunch, but it’ll do.

They make their way up to the second floor. A few tables here and there, the same design choices – but, a lot of windows, opening two different views: into the city and onto the coast. They take the seats that open a view on the ocean. Anon settles the tray between them. They take their coffee and buns and get to eat. From time to time, they look out at the coast. Waves come forth to the land, never able to take it whole. The small silhouettes of people enjoy their time. And the sky – the beautiful clear blue sky…

“You’re having fun so far?” Nick asks after their mealtime.

“I am.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Let’s… rest for a bit.”

“Sure.”

Anon whips out his phone to pass the time. Nothing new going on in the boards, and he doesn’t feel like wreaking havoc in there. Maybe it’s out of respect to Nick, to what she’s doing, to the time they spend together. Actually, on topic, – he doesn’t feel any alarms blaring anymore. Is it because he got used to her now, to her company? Maybe that’s why he doesn’t feel so jittery at the sheer thought of possible romance? Who knows. He doesn’t know for sure.

About ten minutes pass. The clocks say 4 PM. He has been out of his home for four hours now, which is quite a record.

“Alright… Where to now?” Anon asks. No response. “Nick?” he calls, turning his face.

And he freezes, staggered by surprise. She’s asleep. Her mouth is open ever so slightly, and her eyelids are closed. Leaning against a wall. He didn’t even notice how tired she was, he didn’t even notice the bags beneath her eyes. But even like this, she looks… beautiful. Her hair, her figure, her face, the way she sleeps, the way she breathes… Anon takes his phone back in hand and captures the second image for today. If the first one won’t kill me, – he thinks, hiding his phone, – this will. He then reaches to her and gently shakes her on the shoulder, waking her up.

She jolts a bit, looks around, then stops on his face. The look of shock is replaced with embarrassment.

“Did I… fall asleep?” she asks.

“You did. And I also noticed the bags beneath your eyes. Look, if it is so tiring, let’s just call it quits here and-”

“It isn’t about this… tour.” She says it like it isn’t what she was doing for the past four hours now. “It’s just that… I was working quite hard on this, planning this out to be absolutely perfect. I went to sleep quite late.”

“How late?” Anon asks.

“…At about three in the morning,” Nick replies, reluctant.

“Nick…” Anon sighs.

“I’m sorry, Anon,” quickly escapes her mouth. “It’s just that… I couldn’t afford myself to fail.”

The human looks at the wan baryonyx, with eyes full of surprise. What she said does not sound like anything else she had said before. It’s like she didn’t speak – or, at least, the part that he sees, that he interacts with, didn’t speak this time. It came from somewhere way beneath the skin. And he doesn’t know what to say, and whether something should be said here.

“Nevermind,” Nick says, putting her hands on the table to get out. “Let’s just keep going. We have a few more places to visit.”

“Wait,” Anon replies, stopping her in-motion and making her turn her face.

“What?”

“Even if this is not going the way you wanted… I doubt it’d be just straight up failure. Like, you got me out of my apartment on a weekend, and if you ask me, that’s already an achievement. So… don’t strain yourself so much. You already exceeded all of my expectations, to be honest.”

Nick looks at him for a few seconds, before turning her face away, trying to secretly smile.

“Dork,” she mumbles to herself.

Anon gets out of the table.

Soaking in the burning light, they arrive at their next point.

“To be quite honest with you,” Nick says, “I hadn’t been here as well, so it’s the first time for me.”

“Right,” Anon simply replies.

They enter the park’s main parking lot. From the looks of it, there’s a decent amount of people here this evening, which is surprising given that it’s still relatively chilly. But it was expected – such a prominent landmark in the city would still draw in a crowd, even with certain weather conditions. Anon finds himself looking at the food truck, despite not feeling hungry, meanwhile Nick glances around – to notice a few gaps in the treeline with trails heading into them. Natural trails, maybe, – she thinks, – maybe birdwatching ones.

“Let’s take one of those trails,” she says.

“Sure thing,” Anon replies.

Together, they head toward the sign indicating where the trail begins, leisurely walking across the dirt path. What starts off as something potentially romantic, which brings them two to think certain things, the mood is quickly somewhat dampened by the hikers disrupting their solitude. Still, their presence doesn’t make the natural landscape any less calming.

“Yup,” Anon nods to himself.

“What?”

“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have known such a place. It’s so… calm.”

“Well, that’s what nature is about. A nice break from the city.”

“I agree.”

Admiring the passing scenery, they continue for another few minutes. There’s less hikers than before… No, not that – there’s none of them at all here. Nick had spotted some hanging back for the pictures, or moving faster ahead, but that was a whole minute ago by now. And so, in this moment, it’s just her, him and the trees as their witnesses. The more she thinks about it, the truer it sounds, but because of the sheer embarrassment she keeps the thought locked away for now.

“Rosa would enjoy these walks as well…” Nick says.

“Who?”

“The orange aquilops we met at “Lava Java”. A friend to Stella, leading the Campus Beautification club.”

“What’s that about?”

“Wasting time under the guise of trying to make the school look beautiful…”

“That isn’t that bad.”

“…on weekends.”

“I take my words back.”

Soon enough, she stops, and Anon stops too. This feels wrong, all of it. Did they take a wrong turn? Why did it become so goddamn quiet?

“You alright?” Anon asks.

“I… I don’t know where we are…”

Covered in calmness, it takes him a second to understand what she’s saying. And all he could do is look around in absolute panic. One last thing that he wants to happen for today (or in general) is him dying in the woods with a girl.

“W-Well… Let’s just go onward,” Nick says.

“Onward? Why not turn back?” Anon asks.

“There’s a much higher risk of getting lost even more if we do so. We can’t be too far from something, or someone. Let’s follow the tracks.”

“Okay…” Anon sighs. Deep inside, he trusts her judgement.

With a heavy sigh, Nick leads Anon along the trail they’re on. From the looks of it, it very well may be some kind of a service road for park rangers or maintenance workers who keep the trail safe. And if that is the case, then they are bound to run into something or somebody that can guide them in the right direction.

For every minute they keep walking in search of a salvation sign, the darker it gets. Using a phone to find the right directions is out of question, the lack of bars throws away any means of traversal guidance. And despite reassuring both herself and Anon that they’ll get out eventually, there’s a tinge of worry that’s beginning to grow in the pit of her stomach. The last thing she wants to do is spend a night in the woods, even if it is with someone she knows.

Anon uses his phone’s compass to ensure they are not going in circles, and so westward they are bound, following the trail at a more cautious pace. It’s as they crest a blind turn north that they finally hear salvation.

“Why hey there,” says a scruffy-looking gentleman – supposedly, a park ranger. “You two lost?”

Anon exhales in relief, while Nick comes up, feeling nervous, but understanding the importance of taking initiative. “We… got mixed up on the trails, and couldn’t find any maps,” she says.

“Uh-huh,” the park ranger nods, “sounds about right. Happens all too often ‘round here. Anywho, I’m assuming you two are looking for a particular sight to see?”

“That’d be great.”

The ranger hums in thought for a moment, his head sweeping left and right, then he smiles, points out a particular path.

“That one there will lead you to the best view here. Then all you need to get back is take any trail eastbound. They all branch off near the park.”

“Thank you so much, sir!” Nick says, with a smile of relief on her face.

“Don’t mention it.” The ranger smiles. “Have a nice one.”

Nick comes back to Anon, patiently standing still.

“New directions. Follow me.”

Anon simply nods and begins to follow her like some annoying companion in a video game. Taking the ranger’s directions, they go down a narrow pathway. It continues on for about another thirty minutes, and ultimately leads to a railing with a secluded table… and, definitely, the most breathtaking view of them all.

Nick’s gray eyes peer over the protective rail, taking the vista that is the Bluffs. Over the edge, Anon spots a number of branches jutting from the cliff’s face, and past that the ocean laps at the base of the bluff. Soon enough, they both lock onto something further away. What they see is one in a million shot.

Tired, they sit down on the rickety wooden table, feeling it groan beneath them. If the stuff here is in such disrepair, then this spot must be the one of the less trekked-to. Knowing that, it makes this place more… private. Like their own private vision of the world that is Volcaldera Bluffs.

Last for today is something much more grounded for both of them – a shopping mall, nested in-between the skyscrapers of the city. Gigantic hallways with people, overwhelming noises and cool air. Bright colors scraping into the skull. Above the first three floors of department stores and restaurants, one can see another dozen for office space, all looking down on the traffic below. Working here must be quite convenient. One would never have to leave if this place had an apartment complex built in. Part of that sentence has certain allure, but thinking it sends a strange feeling of justified dread.

They walk together through the extensive halls, looking back and forth between different shops, cafes and restaurants. All of them look inviting, but neither of them feel like spending some time in there. In fact, they skip almost the entire mall. They’re too busy thinking about today, this tour, and that soon it’d end. Strangely enough, both of them want for it to go on and on. But eventually they come to a silent acknowledging – everything has its limits. Well, it isn’t like it’s the last time they do this. They can do this at any point in their lives, and it’d feel exactly the same as it does right now.

Suddenly, Nick stops. Anon halts next to her, first looking at her in question, then at what she’s looking – an anime apparel shop.

“I didn’t know you were into anime,” Anon says. That makes the baryonyx twitch and look at him with shock and embarrassment in her eyes.

“Y- Yeah… Do you wanna…?” She points at the shop.

“Sure, why not.”

They enter the shop. Just as expected, it’s ablaze with all sorts of vivid cartoony characters with those big googly eyes and beautiful bre- Uh, visual designs. Yeah. They pass between the rack lines, all packed with everything their weeb hearts could ever ask for. Collector editions of their favorite titles, exclusive apparel, and even some… exquisite figurines. But all of them are way out of their price range. There’s a cost for everything, it seems, and importing this directly out of Japan is a really costly thing.

“So… What’s your favorite title?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I didn’t watch much either. I don’t even remember what was the last thing I saw.” Do not tell her about Saturnia, do not tell her about Saturnia, do not tell her about Saturnia… – he thinks hectically.

“I’m… not much into anime either. Watched a few titles with Stella.”

“Who’s that?”

“A green stegosaur, into esoteric stuff.”

“Ah, that weird one?”

“…Yeah. That weird one. She’s into it a lot. Head over heels for it. So maybe I can find something for her.”

“Sure.”

A few minutes into the search, though, Nick stops. She looks at the human standing nearby, and her mind is flooded with worry.

“Why are you always saying ‘sure’ and ‘why not’?”

“Because it was your idea, no? You lead, I follow.”

“Well, we could always go to a different place if you don’t like it. Like right now.”

“Did you forget what I was saying at ‘Lava Java’ or something?”

“…No.”

“It’s not about what we do. It’s about with who we are doing it. I could be anywhere, and I’d still enjoy it, because you can make it more entertaining than it was.”

A weird feeling captures her whole. She looks away, her cheeks burning and her heart beating heavily.

Eventually, Nick and Anon both find something for themselves and leave the store.

“So what did you get?” he asks.

“Nothing too special,” she answers, showing a collector’s edition box of an anime Anon had heard about, but never watched. “She wanted this for a long time already,” she says. “And what did you get?”

“A keychain.” He shows off his small purchase. “It was the cheapest thing in the store.”

“You could always ask me if you have troubles with money.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

Nick just scoffs. “Alright, let’s go onwards. Do you want something to eat?”

“Sure.”

And with that, they make it back to the first floors in search for a place to eat. The variety is huge, but none of them look exactly appealing. They could get some takeout, but it feels like cheating. The cold air makes them stick a bit closer together.

Soon enough, they find a good looking joint… and someone Nick did not expect to see.

“…Nick?” the person asks.

The baryonyx nearly drops the present for Stella. Anon picks it out of her hands, as she stands there, dumbfounded, playing gazing games with a person not so far away from them – a triceratops in a dark-green flannel jacket, a black t-shirt with a vivid orange-red game or band logo, dark jeans and high boots. If not for the overall chubby build and… a virgin moustache…  Anon would consider him a girl because of the long, shoulder-reaching dark-purple hair.

“Trent?..” Nick finally says.

The person smiles.

“It’s been a long time, man,” he says. “You two here to eat?”

“Uh… Yeah, we are,” Anon says.

“Me too. Grab yourselves something and join me.”

Nick is first to get herself something and sit down with the triceratops. Her insides still feel weird at his presence.

“Guess you’re finally growing up on me,” Trent says.

“What do you mean?” Nick asks.

“Don’t play coy with me, you know what I mean.”

“You mean me being a senior? I heard you were held back.”

Trent twitches at the words. Painful truth that doesn’t really add up to his geek aesthetic.

“That ain’t the point!” Trent says, then comes closer. “You seem to be havin’ a good time. Maybe ‘cause of him?”

Gasping in shock, feeling her face burn, Nick quickly replies by hitting him on the head with an edge of her open palm. Trent hisses in pain. One thing that she got from her mother is a heavy hand.

“Owh…”

“You say anything like that, I’ll strangle you. No, I’ll strangle anyone who says something like that!”

“Jesus…”

Anon sits down, settling his tray of food. The table is cramped.

“At least introduce me to the guy before killing me…” Trent says.

“Trent, 18, a good friend of mine,” Nick lists off in a nearly robotic voice. “There.”

“Sounds like a bunch of tags.” Anon says.

“Right…” Trent exhales, turns his face to the human. “And you are?”

“Anon.”

“Anon? That’s, like, your actual name? Not a nickname or somethin’ like that?”

“Nope.”

“You humans are weird…”

“I didn’t have a say in what my name should be.”

“I like it. It’s unique.”

And so, they get to eat. Sometimes, they throw in different words to try and spice up the mealtime, but the conversation just couldn’t be made. All of them were busy on the inside. All of them were thinking about something. Eventually, after the mealtime was over, Anon excuses himself, leaving Nick and Trent to themselves. He had an actual reason, but he also felt like he’s stopping them from something he isn’t a part of (at least by looking at their faces he thought so).

A few seconds later, Trent finally speaks up.

“So how you’ve been?”

“Good.”

“School’s nearly over, yeah? Whatchu gonna do then?”

“I’ll get a degree. I’ll get a good job. Make a good family.”

“I guess you already have a good candidate for that.”

“Did I joke when I said that I’ll strangle you?”

“Should’ve done it two seconds ago.”

Nick exhales, a bit pissed off by her friend’s joking arrogance, while Trent chuckles after yet another jab.

“You know what I remembered when I saw you?” he asks.

“What?”

“The band. The good old day when we played together, on scene or in a rehearsal room, recording stuff together… All that jazz.” He sighs. “Sometimes, I wanna go back.”

He notices her lying on the table, her eyes looking somewhere with a sad expression.

“What’s with the gloomy look?”

“You remember why we fell apart, don’t you?”

Remembering that really hurt somewhere where the heart is, but Trent swallows the stab down.

“I do,” he simply nods.

“It’s my fault. All of it.”

“It isn’t. You did what you needed to do, there’s no blame in that.”

“I affected both of you.”

“Me and Curtis are mature people. Although Curtis did overreact, sure.”

“Still…” She sits up straight. “It’s my fault.”

“Saying that it is won’t change anything. What past is prologue. Move on.”

“…Or start anew.”

Trent blinks, taken aback.

“What?”

“We’re putting the band back together.”

“…You’re joking, right?” he says, in spite of her determined gaze, piercing him whole. “Are you… sure you wanna do this? No second thoughts, no doubts in your mind?”

She doesn’t respond. Her eyes, her gray clear eyes behind a pair of glasses, say everything for her. Trent sighs.

“I’ll contract Curtis. See what he’s up to. Wonder if he’s still pissed about what you did or not, but, knowing him, maybe he already forgave you.” He chuckles a bit. “Anyways, I’ll report to you when I’ll get something.

“Okay,” Nick nods. “Thank you, Trent.”

“It’s nothing.”

With that, the baryonyx leaves the table.

Chapter Text

“I’m home!” Nick yells, taking off her shoes.

“Welcome back,” Nick’s mom replies, peeking from behind a corner. She’s wearing an apron – something that is definitely a rare and a perplexing sight in this house.

“What are you doing that needs wearing an apron?”

“Cooking, of course! Now, where is he?”

“…Who?”

“Weren’t you supposed to be with that human boy?”

“Well, yeah, I was… Wait a minute. You didn’t think that I’d bring him here, did you?”

“I thought we would have a nice dinner together, and I’d get to know him!”

“Stop daydreaming for once.”

With a melancholic sigh, Nick’s mother retreats behind the corner. The smell coming from the living room is immense and alluring, like a parade of different smells she knows and likes, but her mind puts the dinner way below in the list, on the top of which is taking a shower. She’s been outside for a whole day, visiting many places, with someone she enjoyed spending that day with. She deserves a long and warm shower, and so she proceeds into the bathroom.

White walls form a decently sized cube. A sink, a toilet, a shower cubicle, some hangers and a shelf full of everything, from some perfume placed below to detergents high above. Exhaling in relief, she begins to undress. First the glasses and the blazer, then the skirt, followed by her socks and finished by her underwear – all is neatly folded on a small table, with a fresh set of undies lying right next to her clothing. Maybe her mom had left it there, as if knowing she’d go and take a shower after arriving home.

Before stepping into the cubicle and accepting her reward of indescribable bliss, she takes a look at herself in the mirror above the sink. Bright light is evenly distributed across her body, enveloping it in an intimate contour and highlighting the parts that make her a lady. Long hair reaching her shoulder blades, a pair of gray eyes, and a beautiful slim body with a decent sized chest and a long tail. Everything that some wish for and some spend money to achieve, all given to her by nature.

It remembers the years of growth and change, twists of metabolism and slow development of the organism. It remembers the touch of her mother’s hands, caressing her slowly as she eased into sleep. It remembers the touch of air, escaping from the mouths of coveting guys. The hardest part for them was trying to stroke her fingers that know how to punch back for depravity-led boldness. All of these men are still around the school, walking and looking at her with heartbroken glass eyes, but she could care less. They failed.

And amidst all these silhouettes, there is one, alluringly shining in green. It’s different, and the most important difference is that it doesn’t come to her – instead, she comes to it. That human kid got closer to her than anybody else ever will. How does that happen, and who, or what, is the reason for this? Miss Fortuna? The Moirai weaving an endless palette of life? Algorithms of the universe lining up as destiny? She doesn’t know the answer to that.

Leaving the thoughts to be, she steps into the cubicle, turns the valve on and lets the warm water drape her. Slowly and surely, covering every inch of her body, she admits it to the proper care it deserves. After the body, comes the hair, with just a slight difference in the process. It’s almost therapeutic: listening to the foam shaping underneath her fingers, hearing and feeling the water flowing down… She drifts away for a second, noting down everything that happened today.

Well, this went better than I thought… – she thinks. – Nearly the entire day spent outside, wandering around the city with a company. I am still surprised that he held up to his agreement and showed up, I thought he would ditch it, perhaps out of fear or something like that. But, luckily enough, he didn’t. All of my effort didn’t go to waste. And walking with him around – it was a blast to say the least.

She remembers what he said about her preparations. I… – she starts to think, tries to reason it or at least make a good sequence out of it, but fails. One thing that caught her off-guard, something as simple as that little statement. Was he just trying to cheer me up with that? Or did he… mean something else with it? – she thinks. – All of my friends I met over this tour always said the same thing, and I still find it ridiculous. But…

The thought ends with the waterflow. She takes her hand off the valve and looks at it, at how it shines in the bright light. The temporary bliss slowly leaves her body, giving way to a certain concussed confusion. The one that makes one question who they really are. She stands up and steps out of the cubicle onto a small rug, takes her tone-matching towel and begins wiping herself dry. Her hair ends up in a disheveled flurry. She finds the fan and dries it proper, before combing it, not without slight pain. With hair smoothly shining like silk again, she smiles at her reflection in the mirror, before turning to her clothes and dressing up. The new set of underwear matched her scale tone, – neat, but it makes her wonder whether that was an intentional move.

Outside the bathroom in her home clothing, she finally steps into the living room. A wall of different smells hit her like a freight train, almost stunning her – and in all these various smells she finds her mother, standing at the stove and preparing something delicious. She still finds it funny that she expected for the baryonyx to finally get the human here. In a different timeline.

”What’s on the menu?” she asks.

“A lot of different things,” her mother responds. “I just searched for some good recipes. Sit down, I’m almost done”

This sounds promising, – the baryonyx thinks, sitting down at the table. – Promising and alarming at the same time. The cooking process, as told, is soon wrapped up, and the dinner is served onto the table. Her mother sits down at the opposite side of the table, and they begin to eat. The smell is succeeded by an impeccable taste.

“How did your ‘tour’ go?” her mother asks.

“Good,” she simply replies.

“How good?”

“Do you really want me to explain that?”

“I promise I won’t sleep this time.”

“Fine…” she sighs, then takes a big inhale. “For starters, we met at the school, as we agreed on a few days prior. First places we went to were different museums, galleries, libraries and alike. We visited some parks too. And also some other points of interest, like the arcade, which is quite away from here.”

She looks at her mother. She is on the verge of sleeping. With a frown, she flicks at her mother’s face, making her spring up.

“I was listening!”

“Uh-huh,” she says, not believing her. “And also, I… met someone.”

“Who?”

“Trent. You know him.”

“Oh, that triceratops that was in your band? Where did you meet him?”

“In a mall. We were just window shopping with Anon until I saw him in a small diner. We chatted a bit.”

“About what?”

“About the past. And about the band.”

“Oh, that’s nice. It’s great to have someone to reminisce with.”

“Yeah…”

Her mother’s face changes a slight bit.

“Are you okay?”

“I…” Nick looks directly at her mother. “I’m bringing the band back.”

That statement lingers in the air for what feels like ten minutes at least. So sudden and said with such determination.

“Well…” her mother says. “That’s your decision. I just hope you understand what you’re doing.”

“I do. I’m taking full responsibility for my actions.”

“I guess you are ready for the adulthood,” her mom smiles.

The dinner is soon finished, the plates are placed into the sink. While her mother sits down on her most favorite spot in the entire house (the sofa, to watch the TV), Nick spends a bit of time washing the dishes. After that, she makes her way upstairs and into the room, only to immediately fall right onto the bed. She missed it so much, and she doesn’t want to leave now. The whole world may die tonight, but she won’t leave it until tomorrow morning.

She curls up, slightly opening her eyes. Thoughts seize her airways. I don’t know what I’m doing, – she thinks. – I never thought I’d be here in the first place. Seeing Trent today was a nice thing, and reuniting the band is nothing but hopeful, but is she ready to do it? Is she ready to start this whole thing anew, now knowing whether she would be able to? Is she ready to meet Curtis, not knowing how he would react? Is she ready to turn off that logical, rational part of her mind, let herself flow, not knowing if the current would accept her now?

Tears begin to form. I don’t know what I’m doing, – she thinks, closing her eyes.

January 19^th. Another sunny Sunday that makes one think it’s already spring instead of middle of the winter.

Nick spends her time tending the house while her mother works tirelessly, even during weekends – all for their sake. And following her footsteps, the baryonyx too works tirelessly around their home, doing routine actions without a single thought in her head. Eventually, came the time that most of her tasks were done, and one of the few remaining ones will take her outside. She changes her clothes, puts on her shoes, checks the pockets, takes the trash and makes her leave. Heading to the closest convenience store, she throws out the huge bag into their bin on her way.

The sky is clear, and her scales blend in with the hue, mimicking each other. A small, shining circle in the distance warms her neck and arms, as her silhouette gets lost in the urban landscape. Senseless fodder of busy streets enters her mind, marching down the marrow like on a parade. Yet another beautiful day, one of many for which people should live.

The automatic doors open, and she enters the store. Slight chill caresses her face as she progresses through the labyrinth of commerce with a small plastic basket in one her hand and a list in the other, checking it from time to time and marking off everything she found. Not many people are around here, but she can hear the beeping in the distance, the sound of barcodes being scanned. Eventually, she finds everything from the list, folds that paper in two and hides it in her pocket, begins walking towards the check-out, but stops between isles, as her eyes spot someone she definitely did not expect.

“Trent?” she asks.

The triceratops, hearing his name, turns around, with a look of surprise similar to the one that is on the baryonyx’s face. Wearing his typical sneakers, distressed jeans and a nice-looking black t-shirt and with a flannel shirt tied around his waist, he almost looks like from a different timeline, when everything got stuck around the year 2000 – the year of uncertainty, as mankind faces a new millennium.

Only a single second passes between them, before Trent’s lips curl into a smile.

“Nick. As if my day couldn’t get any better.”

“Shopping?” Nick comes up to him.

“Thinking what I can steal and get away with.” He chuckles like a father. “I’m just playin’. Yeah, I’m getting myself some snacks and shit. And you?”

“Groceries.”

“I see…” He reaches in to grab a few cans of some energy drink. “Say, you’re free right now?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Nothin’, just wanted to… talk, you know? You didn’t give me a chance that day.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It ain’t a biggie, don’t worry about it.”

Together, they make it to the check-out, with Trent opting to do things himself while Nick lays things out on a lane, and after a bit of time, they make it outside.

“There’s a park somewhere nearby. Let’s go to there.”

“Sure thing.”

The aforementioned park is only called like that out of pity, because a small fountain, a few benches and some trees sprinkled around, with the overall territory being smaller than a penny on the map (depending on the scale) can’t be called a park. Either way, that’s where they stay for a moment, sitting down at the bench. Nick places her groceries nearby on the bench, while Trent cracks one can open and sips on the sweet poison of the energy drink.

“Those are bad for you,” Nick remarks.

“They should’ve killed me years ago, but they didn’t,” Trent replies, looking at the can. “I think my body got used to all of this abuse.”

“Maybe,” the baryonyx slightly laughs.

“So how you’ve been, nerd?”

“Doing nerd things. School stuff, reading, so on.”

“I reckon you’re in Senior now, right? Last half a year of school?”

“Yup.”

“How you feel about that? About school ending so soon.”

“Not much. It’ll end, but I’ll just keep on learning.”

“University?”

“Yup.”

“That’s all you.”

“And you? What you’ve been up to?”

“Dropped out of Volcano University, opened my mixing studio. Gets me some cash. I’m doing only local shit, only everything that spawns in VB.”

“Even rap?”

“Do I look like I hate myself?”

Nick just laughs a bit.

“Well, you always were good with mixing and stuff, so… that’s a reasonable evolution.”

“Yeah, think so too.”

They go silent. Trent finishes his can and throws it into the nearby bin. Their faces indicate nothing but extreme contemplation. The theme calls for a certain talk, but neither of them can bring themselves up to actually do it. Eventually, though, after about a whole minute, Trent draws some air into his lungs.

“The more I think about it, the more I like it,” he says.

“What’s that?” Nick asks.

“The band. Putting it back together. Showing how much did we learn and shit, compared to who we were. So I’m definitely with you on this one.”

“Thanks. But… what about Curtis? Did you reach him?”

“I did. That cunt deleted everything off the internet.”

“Everything?”

“Every single thing. Any means of contacts. I mean, we both know he isn’t that fond with technology, but I ain’t using pigeons to ask him where he was.”

“And how did you manage to contact him then?”

“Found his number in my old phone.”

“Lucky.”

“We talked for… I don’t know, ten minutes? Fifteen? It was a long talk about everything, trying to catch up after half a year of silence. Then I asked him about whether he’d be up to restore the band.”

“And?”

“He says he’ll consider it.”

Nick frowns a bit, melancholy makes its ugly appearance. She remembers that day. And she remembers his reaction. It still jabs at her soul.

“Nick?” Trent asks.

“You think he still hates me?”

“You talking about that day? I doubt it. Curtis isn’t a hateful person, we both know that. He does like winding himself up a lot, but that’s not just his issue. You too suffer from it.”

“Come off it.”

“Can’t come off the truth.”

That earns him a playful shoulder fist bump.

“Anyway, I doubt he’d outright hate you. But you should say sorry. That’s for sure.”

“Definitely.”

Trent stands up.

“Gotta bounce, job calls… Oh, almost forgot. Can you give me your number? I deleted it… accidentally.”

“You are such a bellend, Trent,” Nick says, smiling and pulling out her phone. She quickly tells him her phone number, and the triceratops’s nimble fingers quickly type it down and save it in the phonebook.

“That’s done. I’ll phone you when I get something. And don’t forget to bring your boyfriend.”

“…Who?”

“Don’t act silly. You know who I’m talkin’ about!”

The realization hits her like a freight train a second later. Her face begins to burn in a fashion of a volcano.

“I'll strangle you someday, you bastard!” Nick yells.

“Should’ve already done that!” Trent playfully replies, flipping her off without turning.

Nick quickly gets up and, taking her groceries, leaves the park, before any more embarrassment would reach her head.

January 21^st.

School is, once again, uneventful today. The hallways are crowded, the lessons are boring, the library is a temporary respite before the last class and heading home after it. Just another set of hours to pass through, another rise of the number on the calendar, bringing the seniors closer and closer to graduation. The only good thing about today was lunch, and only because of the company.

The cafeteria is abuzz with activity: clanging, chewing, talking and so on, to the point it becomes tiring. Secure in their own little bubble, Anon and Nick spend their lunch together, both of them eating items from a “wide” selection the cafeteria cooks offer. It isn’t tasty, not by any reasonable metrics, but at least it’d get them through today.

At this exact moment, when both of them are about to finish their meal and head off before the bell rings, Nick finally brings herself to speak.

“I played in a band once.” Anon looks up at her. “It was quite some time ago,” she says, “we fell apart when the senior year arrived. But, recently, me and my ex-bandmates decided to… reunite.”

“That’s… great. Actually great,” the human replies.

“You remember Trent?”

“That triceratops we met at the mall? What about him?”

“He was our band’s second guitarist.”

“…Second?” His eyes slightly squint.

“Yeah. I played on a guitar. I still have it in my room, somewhere. Anyways, we’ll hold our first repetition today, after school. Do you… wanna come and see it?”

Anon goes quiet, his eyes look away as he mulls over the offer.

“You don’t have to if you’re busy,” she quickly retorts, her eyes slightly move in saccadic fashion.

“Nah, I’m…” He frowns for a second, then looks back at her. “Why didn’t you tell me about that sooner?”

“I just…” She sighs, rubs her arm a bit, “didn’t have a good reason to, you know? I’m sorry if that hurts you in any way.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. It’s just surprising, that’s all.”

A certain pause rises between them. The cafeteria’s noise replaces their voices for a short period of time, as they both think about what to say next.

“So… Do you wanna see it?” Nick finally asks, the uncertainty splayed across her face.

“Sure,” Anon nods. “Just tell me where it is.”

“Okay, I will.”

Anon finishes his meal and ventures off. All alone, Nick’s lips curl into a small smile.

“I’m home!” Nick yells, taking off her shoes. No response emitted, means her mother is still at work. She’ll explain everything to her later, but as of now, she needs to be quick. In rapid succession, she enters and passes through the silent living room, makes her way up the stairs and inside her bedroom. She drops her bag off on the chair and swiftly changes her clothes from school attire to something she didn’t wear in quite a long time.

A white longsleeve with red and blue stripes still remembers the endless practice sessions. It’s so baggy, revealing so much of her clavicles, that she almost feels naked. She doesn’t even remember when she got it – was it a gift from someone, or did she buy it herself? It doesn’t really matter either way. After checking herself out on the front camera of her phone, she gets the rest of the clothes on: some jeans, socks and a hair band.

Ant then, comes the spotlight of this entire parade of fashion – her guitar. She reaches into her closet and, nervously, grabs it by its neck, bringing it out into the light of her room. Glinting baby blue, its shine reminds her of everything they went through, side by side, from the moment she received it as a gift from her friends, to the day it found its shelter in the shadow of her closet. She cleans it with a wipe, making it shine even more and gives it a strum. The sound invokes a special feeling.

Time to bring you back into the battlefield, – she thinks, attaching an old guitar strap and hanging the instrument behind her back.

“I guess this is here…” Anon says to himself, as he looks between the street view on his map and the house he stands in front of, looking exactly like all the houses surrounding it in this suburbia while having a meaning vastly different from them – this is the supposed place where Nick’s band will hold their first rehearsal. He received the address about an hour ago from the baryonyx herself, and now he finally made it here. Better not keep them waiting any longer, – he thinks, pocketing his phone and proceeding inside.

Just like the house’s exterior looked identical to a typical suburban home, the interior looked exactly like where a family of four would live. But unlike in a house with family of four, the living room and the kitchen, available to his eyes from the front door, are both empty, with speech coming from… below. I thought Dinofornia hated basements, – he thinks, as he carefully, feeling like a trespasser, takes off his shoes. He steps onto the laminate flooring, looks around for a basement entrance, and, after finding it, makes his way downstairs, with each and every step making the noise more and more audible.

It’s actually a coherent conversation. Or, rather, a heated argument between… Nick and someone whose voice Anon does not recognize. And from the sound of it, the argument was going on for quite a while at this point.

“Even if you were immortal, you would find something to complain about!” Nick yells.

“Because you hurt me!” someone yells back. “You really fucking did! I laid so much hope in your band, I had so much fun with it, and you just had to ruin it all!”

“And I really am sorry for that, okay?! I really am! But no, you just had to make this even worse for me!”

“Oh, there’s a surprise! I knew it would become about you! It always was! That’s why you didn’t feel a thing when you decided to break up!”

Anon finally takes the last step down. The basement is actually quite lit with bright light, and is fit for a small studio, with a drumset in one corner, a rack full of guitars with some amplifiers standing beside it, and a turned-on PC in the other corner. In the middle of it all, stands three: Trent, with hands crossed on his chest, Nick, standing in a rather offensive stance with gray eyes piercing her opponent, a pink, tall, tanky atrociraptor. Their tails are up, and hands clench and open suddenly, as the confrontation continues.

“I’ll tell you what it is about,“ Nick points at the pink dino, “you snowflaky son of a-“

“ENOUGH!” Trent suddenly yells, throwing his hands, bringing the attention of everyone in the room. “You got me out here, you roped me back into this crazy world of bullshit! If it was lies, new age shit, and arguments about how good life used to be, I could’ve stayed my ass in Saurcramento!”

His roar does not echo, instead bringing in the deafening silence. It lasts for just a few seconds.

“Uh… Hi, guys,” Anon shyly says. Now everybody is looking at him, and seeing three pissed-off faces made his heart skip a beat. Trent’s face quickly eases.

“Oh, hey, what’s up, man?” he says, approaching the human to give him a handshake. “You took a bit of time.”

“Yeah, I was just… afraid of getting lost, you know?” Anon replies.

“Didn’t Nick take you on a ‘tour’?”

“She did, not around these parts, though. Couldn’t keep my map down.”

“Right.” The triceratops smiles. “Well, now you know how to get around here.” He passes the human, starts going up the stairs. “Hold on just a sec, I’ll get us something to drink!”

With Trent now gone for the time being, Anon is left at mercy of Nick, who he knows, and that atrociraptor, who he does not know. He stands still, hoping for the worst, just looking at them, until the atrociraptor moves first.

“A human?” he says, walking up to Anon. He’s a whole head taller than the human, menacingly towering over him… with a keen smile on his face.

“You’ll scare him away, Curtis,” Nick says.

“Oh- Sorry.” Curtis takes a few steps back, then turns to Nick. “So, who’s that?”

“That’s Anon. A good friend of mine, who recently got into Volcano High.”

“Is that so?” Curtis turns back to the human, with a look of extraordinary interest. Then, he gives his hand to him. “I’m Curtis.”

“Anon,” Anon says, shaking his hand… and subsequently regretting doing so, because the atrociraptor’s looks really represent how strong he is.

“My pleasure!” the dino says, as the human checks on his hand for any broken bones.

Soon enough, the triceratops makes his return with a six-pack of soda. He settles it on the floor right next to a sofa that Anon didn’t notice until now.

“I’ll get some more if we run out of it,” Trent says.

“Also can get some takeout while we’re at it,” Curtis adds.

“Get us a pizza. And Curtis will pay for it.”

“What?!” Curtis snaps his head to the baryonyx, smiling wickedly.

“What, it’s your idea to grab some takeout, no?” Nick remarks.

Curtis purses his lips, thinking for a second, before smacking them with an inhale.

“I hate that you have a point. Alright, pizza it is.” He brings out his phone. “What do you guys want?”

“Something with good amount of meat on it,” Nick says.

“Hawaiian,” Trent says.

“Okay, alright…” Curtis types it down, then looks at Anon. “What do you want, Anon?”

“Uh… Something… normal?” Anon says, still in slight confusion.

“Right…” Curtis says, before heading upstairs. With him gone, it’s much quieter in here.

“Come sit down, man, don’t just stand there like a statue,” Trent says.

Anon snaps out of his stupor and takes a seat near the triceratops. Nick moves herself to sit down on the big armrest next to Anon.

“I’m sorry those two dumbasses didn’t make a good impression,” he says, chugging on a soda.

“It’s… nothing, I guess,” Anon replies.

“I just didn’t expect him to get so iffy about it,” Nick says. “Like, I said I’m sorry!”

“He’s just like that, don’t forget,” Trent says. “He won’t remember all of that in ten minutes. tops.”

Nick sighs. Only now Anon notices the sweatshirt. Seeing her looking like an actual rocker instead of a nerd or a housewife is quite surprising. Aside from the clothes, he also notices her hair is now in a huge tail.

“You look like a musician,” Anon says.

“Thanks,” Nick simply replies, smiling a bit.

Trent looks at them both, thinking something of his own, as he opens another can of soda. Curtis soon returns into the basement with three boxes of pizza stacked on one another. He places them down on the only free spot on the couch, then takes his seat on the other armrest. The pizza is passed around and everyone begins to munch on the greasy delight. And Anon notices: something that tastes good on its own, is made significantly tastier around people he knows and even somewhat trusts.

In between the slices of his pepperoni pizza, Anon looks at Nick, munching on her slice full of meat. He looks at her for quite some time before she looks back. Her jaws freeze, and they just look at each other for a second.

“What?” Nick finally asks, continuing munching on her slice.

“I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Why… did you even start making music? Like, what was your reason?”

Nick looks at him for a few more seconds before turning away and finishing her slice, giving herself a bit more room to think. That question he asked is one really good question, the one that she didn’t know the answer to. She wasn’t chasing money or clout… She didn’t want to leave a legacy… She didn’t want to prove a point in a certain argument she might find herself in… Then why did she start making music?

“I guess,” Nick begins, “I wanted to step outside my comfort zone. To plunge into this world of bitter happiness and sweet anger, to see how it was like, see whether I could actually live in it, knowing that at any point in my life I can just… turn around and walk away.”

The silence that rises in the room covers them whole. Even Trent and Curtis stopped munching, looking at the melancholic, yet smiling face of the baryonyx.

“Figured you’d say some shit like that,” Curtis says, returning to munch on his slice.

“Curtis!!” Nick yells, frowning and gnawing her teeth, while Trent just laughs his ass off.

The pizza, unfinished, is soon settled aside, as the band, after washing their hands, gets to the instruments. Nick sits down on the sofa with her baby-blue guitar, Trent sits down near the PC with his slick black guitar, while Curtis sits down behind the drumset, taking the drumsticks in his hands.

“Okay…” Nick sighs.

“What song are we playing first?” Trent asks.

“Let’s not do some crazy shit,” Curtis pleads, “I swear to god.”

“I think we have at least one groovy song…” Nick says.

“How about ‘Physical Education’?” Trent offers.

“Yeah, I’m fine with that.” Curtis nods.

After nodding to each other, Curtis counts down three beats before the song starts.

There’s a certain charm in seeing something played live, more so – if the song is played by friends. Seeing people he got to know properly sit together and do music is mesmerizing, from the skill they all have, to the coordination between one another. And their expressions say it all: Trent’s concentrated face, Curtis’s blissful smile and closed eyes, and Nick… Nick is just smiling. After so much time, she returned back to something that she loved the most.

The longer he sits still, the more he feels like he’s on a private show, but after the song ends, that feeling if vaporized into oblivion. Everyone turns their faces to him, their only audience.

“So…?” Nick asks, nervous.

“Amazing,” Anon simply replies.

“Yuuurr!!” Curtis grunts in excitement.

“Guess ‘Swamp Babies’ are back online,” Trent says, smiling.

“They are,” Nick says, giving the guitar another strum.

And so, in such a passion, the squad spends a few hours. Nick, Curtis and Trent play all the songs of their past discography, in a way that makes Anon feel like they never disbanded. The songs themselves were difficult to headbang to, but also catchy and groovy, making Anon’s head nod on its own, as he sinks deeper into the waves of music.

And while the human was getting lost in the soundscape, Nick felt like she is in a mocking fever dream, like she’s still asleep, believing that she’d done a monumental step in her life, only to wake up in the morning and realize all of it was just a fantasy. She cannot believe this is happening, yet it does happen, this is real, all of it, and she cannot help herself but smile because it is real. She doesn’t know what or who to thank, but if there is something or someone she can thank, it’s Anon. If not for that tour, she wouldn’t meet Trent, she wouldn’t even think about meeting him again, giving this dream of becoming a musician another go.

Eventually, though, as the clocks strike 8 PM, the first rehearsal comes to a halt. Everyone sits down at the couch, eating on reheated pizza and drinking some refreshing soda, continuously talking about anything – just for the silence to never come. About a few minutes later, however, Curtis gets off the armrest and, with a strangely calm expression, leaves the basement. Nick notices him leave, then suddenly feels her phone buzz against her thigh. She looks at the new message – it’s from the atrociraptor. “We need to talk.” – that’s what it said.

Giving a look at her friends, she settles the unfinished bite down and leaves the basement too. She spots Curtis right away, standing in the kitchen, hands and face down on the counter, mulling over something.

“You wanted to talk?” Nick cautiously asks.

“Yeah,” Curtis replies, then turns to her. “Just wanted to say that… I’m sorry. For lashing out on you.”

“Oh. It’s fine, trust me. I… understand your reaction.”

“I just… laid too much hope into our band back then.” Curtis rubs the back of his neck. “I was hoping that it’d be different than the rest. Because those guys, they always took the fun out of music, something I can’t tolerate.”

“I know,” Nick nods. “And I did the exact same thing as the rest.”

“But unlike them, you had a valid reason. School is important too. It’s just me who thought you’re doing the same thing as everyone else before you. But you didn’t do the same. You had to set your priorities.”

“Guess both of us are at fault,” Nick smiles.

“True…” Curtis sighs, smiling too.

Unbeknownst to the baryonyx, the pink atrociraptor feels strange lightness in his chest, as if his soul began to levitate. The weight that held him down is finally gone. My past self should’ve done that months ago… – he thinks.

The silence between them is broken up by a ringtone. Nick gets her phone out, quickly accepts the call.

“Yes?.. Okay, alright. Sure. I’ll be home soon. Don’t worry. Bye.”

“Your mom?” Curtis guesses, as Nick puts the phone back into the pocket.

“Yeah. She needs me back home ASAP, so I’ll get a move on.”

“Alright.” Curtis follows her to the front door, standing near while she gets her shoes on. “I hope this is not a one-time thing for the sake of feeling nostalgic.”

“Don’t worry, it isn’t,” Nick says, looking at him. “You heard Trent, ‘Swamp Babies’ are online.”

“Right. Text me when you’ll feel like jamming again then.”

“Sure thing.”

In the meantime, though, Trent and Anon were still sitting in the basement. Trent was browsing something on his PC, while Anon tried to come up with a brilliant ragebait, something that the four-leaf website didn’t see before (which is an impossible task). The silence between them had something behind itself, but neither of them paid attention to it.

At one point, however, the triceratops turns to the human, typing something down with a smug grin, and decides to just say what is on his mind. With a sigh and a plain expression, he says:

“Nick likes you, homie.”

Anon’s finger stops before hitting “post”. The smug grin instantly removes itself from his face. He looks up at the pain-faced triceratops, looking at him with eyes like daggers. He is taken off-guard by a metric ton, to the point that his mind doesn’t even bother turning on the alarms. He then looks back at the phone, then puts the phone down and shifts a bit in the seat.

“What?” Anon asks, strangely calm.

“It’s clear as day,” Trent adds. “Don’t think I’m saying this out of pocket or somethin’. You two have been an item for as long as I knew you.”

“Where did you get that idea from, exactly?” Anon looks at the triceratops.

“I’ve never seen her so happy in my life. Not even back in the day, when we were making some good shit, she was this happy as she is today. It gotta be you who makes her this happy.”

“Nick is just a happy person overall,” Anon says, looking down. “Me being around doesn’t change anything.”

“You sure about that?”

Anon looks at Trent again. Just what he’s trying to get at? – the human thinks. – Why is he asking me all this all of a sudden? And why does he believe that Nick… likes me? Where does that come from?

“What you gonna do if Nick finally comes up and says that she likes you?” Trent asks after this certain pause.

“W-What?” Anon asks back, frowning in confusion.

“Answer me. What you gonna do if that happens? You gonna change themes? Brush it off as a joke? Run away?”

“Nick and I are good friends, and nothing beyond that…” Anon says, standing up from his seat.

“Why are you so fuckin’ stubborn about it?!” Trent springs up from his plastic chair.

“Because I don’t like these weird ass questions! Why you ask me all of this in the first place? Do you… like her or something?”

Trent blinks, caught off-guard. A flash of memory makes his hand quench into a fist.

“Did,” he says. “Back in time, when we were at our peak, I had something for her. But it’s over. And now it doesn’t change anything.”

“It does. It does change something, like it or not.”

Trent’s eyes look away, brows furrow. While he’s trying to come up with something reasonable for a response, Anon seizes the opportunity.

“You have your own opinions on things, sure, but it doesn’t mean you know how she feels about me. And, well, neither do I. So let’s keep it at that.”

While the triceratops stands still, unsure of how to respond, Anon makes his leave. He takes his phone and goes upstairs. The atrociraptor is already sitting on the sofa.

“Nick just left,” he says.

“I’ll go too.”

“Alright. So long.”

“Have a nice one.”

With that, the human puts on his shoes and leaves, only to spot the aforementioned baryonyx standing just a few feet away from the front door, looking down at her phone.

“What are you doing?” Anon asks.

“Just setting a route in my map, that’s all,” Nick replies, looking for a second at him. That reminds Anon to set a route in his map as well, so that he won’t get lost. He quickly sets one up, then peeks over Nick’s phone to see that, for the most part, their routes are aligned.

And so, they get going. Their pace isn’t quick, they much rather let the upcoming night sink into their bones for a moment, as they pass through the quiet suburbia, where only the lights coming from the streetlamps and, occasionally, from windows of random houses on the other side of the street are their sole witnesses. The wind reminds them that it’s still winter, despite the day being quite warm.

“Your bandmates are great,” Anon says.

“You sure?” Nick asks. “Curtis is a brakeless egoist sometimes, and Trent would dump some geek stuff onto you without knowing or asking for it.”

“Compared to what friends I had, they’re far better,” he says, then thinks: – Considering they’re around her, their behavior makes some sort of sense…

“Alright…”

The silence rapidly takes over, bringing a certain concussed bliss to their walk. The world continues turning, day inalienably turns into night, but they remain at their slow pace, impassive to the constant relentless march of time. One step at a time, they slowly leave suburbia and enter the streets – they are still lively, but it’s clear that the busy hours are far behind it. Skyscrapers beautifully glint in the dying light.

“Anon,” Nick says, suddenly.

Anon turns her face to her and then suddenly feels something grab his hand. He looks down. The baryonyx holds onto it, scales touch against skin. Feeling heat rising to his face, he looks at her again – and sure as shit, she’s blushing too. Whispering ‘be still’ to his rapidly beating heart, he looks away. Their hands move on their own, fingers interlock.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Anon says, “I still don’t know anything about this city, or about our friends, or… you. But I hope that as the days pass, little by little, I’ll get to know everything. This city. This school. These people. And, especially, you.”

Nick looks at him, who stares out into the sky with eyes of a kid that would never tired of spectating the distant collection of stars, mesmerized. It’s… mutual, – Nick thinks to herself.

Soon, they spot the school, and stop at the concrete stairs.

“My house is in a different direction,” Anon says.

“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Nick asks.

“Absolutely. And also,” he says, just when she was about to let go. “Thanks.”

“S-Sure…” she replies, with a vivid blush across her features.

Their hands separate, they look at each other in the eyes for a few seconds, before Nick jogs away. Anon looks down onto his hand, the feeling of scales on skin lingering still. Did she want to let go? – he thinks. – I don’t think so. And I’d never know why, but… But if it's because of what I think it is… then Trent is right, and not just about her… but about me as well.

Then, he looks out into the sky, remembering how the day went overall. This is possibly the best day of his life. The cold starts to push him home.

Chapter Text

February 1^st.  It’s been nearly a month since Anon got into Volcano High. And so far it had been a five star experience, thanks to people like Nick and her band.

Almost every single day brings something new in something that now becomes a commodity, like watching “Swamp Babies” slowly stitching what would be their first album since the breakup. Anon cannot escape the feeling of history being made before his very own eyes. Sometimes, he feels a pang of guilt – in the entire room, he’s the only person who doesn’t do a thing, and he wants to help, but the best he can do is be there for him, be a second opinion they need while making something new.

Today passes uneventfully. Anon and Nick make their way outside the school grounds and walk down the concrete stairs. The noises before and after them mix together in a soft cacophony. The sun is still in the sky, hidden behind buildings as it makes its descent beneath the razor of a horizon line.

“The days will only get longer,” Nick remarks.

“Yup…” Anon nods.

The human checks the hour. About time he bids farewell and makes his way home.

“Okay… I’ll see you tomorrow then?” he says.

“Actually…” Nick starts.

Anon feels like something sinks inside his chest. Did I fuck up? I better not, – he thinks. In the meantime, Nick battles herself: – Do I ask him this? Do I not? God…

She draws air into her lungs, looks at his face.

“Do you wanna hang out at my place?” she finally asks.

A few seconds pass between them quietly and slowly, feeling like a year had made its way around them. They just stand there, both concussed by confusion, as they rapidly try to muster up a response. Anon tries to understand what did she just say, while Nick tries to make a follow up, to say that she didn’t mean that, that that escaped her mouth on its own. But before she does so, the human’s brain finally registers the question.

And the moment it does so, it begins to throwing imaginary scenes at them. All scaling in depravity. Bill Withers joins the party by singing his famous song in the poor human’s brain. Soon enough, though, he finally turns off the “creative” part of his brain and the radio playing a marathon of Bill Withers inside his cranium.

With a clear mind now, looking at a confused baryonyx, Anon weighs the options. He can turn down her offer – she wouldn’t get angry at him for doing so, right? In the meantime, though, the interest tightens its grip on him. She literally offers him a chance at seeing how she lives, who are her parents and so on, so what’s the point in turning it down? It can go bad, sure, but it doesn’t mean it should. It’s up to Anon if he lets that happen, in the end.

Finally, the last second of confusion passes. The world resumes its natural motion, and so does everything else: the noises, the cars and the people, the light passing through the streets and reflecting off the windows and the airplanes flying through the sky to their destinations.

“Sure,” Anon says.

That brings Nick out of her stupor. Too taken aback by her own words and battling her embarrassed self, her brain takes a moment to register the human’s words. And even then, it fails.

“Wh… What?” she asks.

“I said ‘sure’,” the human repeats.

“Oh! Dammit, sorry. I just… zoned out a bit.” A nervous chuckle escapes her mouth. ‘Zoned out a bit’ is a severe understatement, and you know that! – she thinks to herself.

She takes a breath.

“I don’t live close to school, so we better take the bus,” Nick says.

“Sure thing, lead the way,” Anon replies.

Nick smiles, feeling a tide of confidence wash her over. Together, they make their way to the bus station.

“I’m home!” Nick yells, as she steps inside.

Anon comes behind her, closes the door. As he takes off his shoes, the baryonyx looks around, cautiously, sniffing the air and listening to any possible noise. She then quietly proceeds to the doorway into the living room and peeks beyond the corner. Her mother is not here. Good. Nothing would disrupt them now.

“What are you doing?” Anon asks.

“Just… checking something,” Nick replies, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights.

“For what?”

“For my mother.”

“What, she doesn’t like humans or something?”

“No… She’s just a big bother.”

“A mother, a bother… Ha.”

“Exactly.”

Anon proceeds into the living room, following Nick. Whatever he expected, be it rich or poor, what he saw was far from that. In reality, though, it was nothing more and nothing less than a decent living room in a decent house for a decent family, located in a decent suburbia. Aside from that, though, he feels like a gap had opened between him and Nick in terms of material prosperity. Anon’s Skin Row “at least I have it” apartment doesn’t come close to this place. Better keep where I live behind a closed mouth, – he thinks.

“Anon? You saw a ghost or something?” Nick asks. She already left her bag and changed her clothing to something more domestic. The change is really drastic, and Anon feels like Nick at school and Nick at home are two different Nicks.

“Ah- No,” Anon quickly shakes his head a bit.

“Why are you standing like a statue in the doorway then?”

“I’m… taking in the view, I suppose.”

“A view of what? My living room?”

“Yeah. I got to know where you live.”

“Sure…” Nick didn’t look like she bought that lie.

The baryonyx proceeds to the fridge and opens it.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asks.

“Yeah. What are my options?”

“There’s some soda, some yogurt, some water…”

“Give me some water.”

“Sure.”

She picks a bottle of mineral water and a can of soda for herself, then closes the fridge door with her tail as she makes her way to Anon, passing him his desired bottle of water.

“Okay… Now what?” Nick asks. “Any ideas?”

“None. I thought it was your idea to go to your place.”

“It was. But it was just that. How about… I dunno… A movie?”

“Sure.”

They take a seat onto the sofa chair, big enough to fit them both. Nick picks up the remote and turns on the TV, immediately heading into the streaming app. Only now Anon realizes just how close she is to him. A part of the human wants for every single alarm to go off… but they don’t. In fact, he didn’t hear them in over a week, with numerous occasions where it would’ve been reasonable for them to blare. Did it happen? Did the last part of his fearful self finally die? Or did she just become a part of his little comfortable world?

Whatever it really is, Anon is happy that it happened. It would’ve been bad if he would be shaking like crazy just because she’s around.

Eventually Nick finds a movie that somewhat fits the theme. Something sentimental, something that she would watch with someone like Anon. She turns it on and rests the remote on her laps.

Minutes slowly pass. The on-screen action unfolds in slow movements, bits of storyline make their way, putting light on the reasons and the relationships. Only now Nick realizes what kind of a situation she had found herself in. It’s just him and her, all alone in an empty house, watching a movie and sharing a seat that’s too tight to give them at least an inch of space between themselves.

Straying away from the movie, Anon takes a look at the baryonyx. She’s too invested into the film, giving him just enough time to examine her up close. Her hair shines like silk in the light. Her pair of gray eyes contrasts with the baby-blue scales. Her mouth is just a straight line. Anon’s eyes go further, look down: at her slim neck, at her defined chest, at her skinny arms, eventually ending on her hands. Looking at them, he notices that the index finger on her left hand is slightly bent.

“Nick?” he asks.

“Yeah?” she looks at him.

“Your finger. It’s bent.”

“Oh…” She looks at it up close. “It was like that since birth.”

“I thought it was because you write too much.”

“That too can be a reason,” she smiles.

He looks at his own hand.

“Your skin is soft,” she remarks.

“So are your scales.”

“You think?” she smiles a bit more.

“I’m sure of it.”

Soon enough, they press their hands against one another, comparing their size.

“Mine’s a bit bigger,” he says.

“It is,” she agrees. “Do you think dinosaur bones are different from human bones?”

“I don’t know. Only one way to find that out – with an Xray.”

“Yeah…”

And then it happens. Her fingers move aside and lock between his, taking hold of his hand. Slightly taken aback, he looks at her, already looking back at the movie, only the red cheeks betrayingly shining. Without a response, he looks back at the movie, locking his fingers in too and moving their hands down to rest.

“Trent said something a few days ago,” he says.

“What?”

“A ton of things. I know you said that he can dump a bunch of shit on a person without a warning, but… I didn’t expect that.”

“What did he say?” She her face slightly to him.

“He said that you like me,” he replies.

A second passes, taken by the movie’s talking sequence.

“Oh…” She looks aside.

“Yeah. He backed it up by saying that… he had never seen you so happy, but I just don’t think that’s true. I mean, I’m not saying that you aren’t happy. I’m saying that I’m not the reason for it. You should talk to him. Say that what he said is bullshit.”

She looks up at him, then moves her eyes back aside, feeling like her cheeks burn slightly.

“No need to deny that…” she murmurs to herself.

Suddenly, they both hear an exhale. It didn’t come from the TV screen, since it’s in their front, but rather… behind them. More so, they both feel like there’s someone else in the room.

Nick and Anon turn their faces to see a middle-aged baryonyx woman, standing in the doorway, smoking.

“Nick,” she says, “who’s that?”

“Mom!” Nick jumps out of her seat, her hand quickly letting go of the human’s hand. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

So… that’s Nick’s mom, – Anon thinks. –

“I got off early,” she says. “Forgot to type you.” Then, she point at the human. “That’s the guy you told me about? The new guy in your school?”

“Yeah,” Nick replies, “that’s…”

“Wow, you have one shiny dome on your neck!” Nick’s mom says with a smile of a drunkard, taking her daughter into a one-hand hug.

“Put off your cig, ma…” Nick says.

Nick’s mom lets go of her daughter and comes up to the human. Really closely. Two baby-blue eyes stare intently inside Anon’s soul.

“You smoke? Or drink?” she asks.

“Neither…” Anon feels like she’s about to rip his soul out.

“I see… You humans look weird, to say the least…”

A leg rises behind Nick’s mother, too carried away by examining the human, and then quickly drops onto her head like a heavy weight. Nick’s mother drops down, putting her hands onto the point of impact, while Nick puts her leg back.

“I said, put off your cigarette,” Nick says in a harsh voice.

“Nicole, dear,” Nick’s mom replies, “good girls don’t hit their mothers like that…”

“They do hit them like that! You didn’t know?” Nick replies.

Nick’s mom picks herself up and settles right beside Anon.

“Finally got back home… Immediately got hit by my own daughter… And there’s an unknown guy in the room…” She sighs.

“I told you why – you should’ve called me.”

“So that you’d get him out before I’d arrive?”

“Wait… So you knew?!”

“About what and how? Anyways, can you go and cook us something? I’m starving.”

“What?! Raptor Jesus…”

Nick saunters off to the kitchen. In the meantime, Nick’s mother turns to Anon, smiling.

“Got grumpy, but started cooking anyways!” she says. “What a nice girl she is, isn’t she?”

“Yeah…” Anon says, unsure of what exactly he should say in such a situation. Then, he quickly stands up. “Oh, I forgot to introduce-!”

“Sit still, don’t worry,” Nick’s mom brings him back down onto the chair and puts her hand around his shoulders.

NOW WOULD’VE BEEN A GREAT TIME FOR MY ALARMS TO GO OFF, TO BE HONEST!!! – Anon thinks.

“So, what’s your name?” she finally asks.

“Anon,” Anon replies.

“Anon, huh? That’s one weird name.”

“I didn’t get to vote on what would be my name.”

“Well, that is to say, I like it. I’m Nova. Nicole’s mother, as you can see.”

“Yeah… I got that already.”

“A quick learner, huh…?” She leans out in thought, only to come back even closer, looking intently at the human. “Wait, did I disrupt you or something?”

“No, you didn’t!” Anon quickly says.

“I see…” Nova sighs. “That’s sad… I hoped I’d walk onto a scene…”

Another hit onto poor Nick’s mother head, this time with a bowl.

“Make way for the dozer!” Nick says in a robotic voice.

Holding onto her own head once again, Nova takes the bowl full of freshly made food.

“Nicole, dear…” she says. “I wanted to eat at the table…”

“Noted,” Nick simply replies. Before sauntering off again.

“I’m sorry, Anon,” Nova says to the human. “I don’t know how did she get so tough at times. I sure didn’t raise her like this.”

“She’s kind with me,” Anon says, then remembers the argument he overheard while descending the stairs, making his way to the first “Swamp Babies” rehearsal. But not kind to her own friends or family… – he thinks.

“Are you the only child of your family?” Nova asks.

“Yup…” That came out quick. At this point, it’s better to just answer every question they ask me, – he thinks.

“Is that so…?”

Nova then crosses her hands and looks down at the human with a frown.

“You will not receive my daughter.”

“…What?” the human says in confusion.

“I’m just kidding!” Nova says lightly, chuckling a bit. “I just wanted to say that!”

Damn she’s reckless! – the human thinks.

“Nicole! Nicole, my dear!” Nova calls.

“What now? Give me a second, Jesus…” Nick says.

She takes another bowl into her hands and starts making way to her mother.

“Say,” Nova says, “you and Anon are… you know… dating?”

Nick stops. She stutters, as her face goes ablaze. Same happens to Anon, he feels like his cheeks approach meltdown. The tension on the strings of atmosphere is as high as it can get. Seconds pass, before Nick manages to pull herself back together.

“Yes, we do! What’s it to you?!” Nick says, then hits her mother onto the head for the third time already.

One of the strings finally snaps. Anon wants to believe that whatever is happening now is just a fever dream. He wants to believe that he’s in a coma, and whatever he sees right now is just yet another futile attempt for the doctors to pull him out of the endless sleep. His airways seize, as he sits still, blessed by the concussed confusion. His heart beats heavily, as the realization sinks in. The world gives leeway for his descent into bewilderment.

“Anon! Anon, you there?” he hears, far away from himself. It pulls him out of his stupor, and he looks around. Nick and her mother are already at the table, eating.

The human gets up and makes his way to the table, sitting down between them.

“You just arrived and already got him zoned out like that,” Nick says.

“I’m sorry! I just couldn’t hold my excitement off.”

“You should learn how to do so.” Nick turns her face to Anon. “Earth to Anon, you’re hungry?”

“A bit,” Anon replies after a certain pause.

“Better get to eating then, before it gets cold,” the baryonyx replies.

Anon looks down. A bowl of steaming food is already placed in front of him, including the utensils on the side. He takes the fork and joins the dinner. This is… good. Really good, – Anon thinks, – And eating at a dining table with a family makes it better… I know they aren’t real family to me, but… Honestly, a part of me already feels like I became a part of their baryonyx family. Actually… What was the last time I ate at a dining table with my parents? Maybe back when I was kid? No, did that ever happen…?

Sooner than he notices, the dinner comes to an end. Nick excuses herself, leaving Anon and Nova to themselves.

“So,” Nick’s mother begins, “I assume you’re the flame of the week for the school?”

“Absolutely not,” Anon shakes his head. “I got noticed, sure, but a day or two passed, and no one even remembers me. Exactly what I wanted.”

“To not be noticed.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I assume your past school experience wasn’t great.”

Looking aside, Anon just nods. Nova takes hold of his hand.

“Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” she says, squishing it reassuringly.

Anon reaches in and finishes his glass of water.

“Where’s… Nick’s father? He’s working a lot or something?” he asks, trying to switch up the theme.

Nova looks at him for a second, then aside in contemplation.

“He… He is just not here,” she says.

“He died?” Anon asks, while Nova reaches for the glass of wine.

“No.” The baryonyx finishes her maroon poison. “He’s just not here. That fuck got me pregnant and bailed.”

“Oh… I think that’s worse.”

“It is. Because you never know if assholes like him are alive or not. At least if he would’ve died, I would’ve been certain. Either way, what happened had happened. I had to take on two roles at once.”

“Two roles?” Anon looks at her.

“Being a mother and a father for her. I know, sounds silly, but that’s just what it is. And it was hard. Our position was hard in the first place, so I wanted to find someone who could… take a bit of that burden from my shoulders. Little Nick didn’t like that one bit. Once upon a time, she snapped at me. I stopped searching for anyone else right after.”

Nova sighs. Hearing all this makes Anon realize just how lucky and, subsequently, unlucky he was. He is lucky because he had both parents. He is unlucky because they weren’t that much for him.

“My parents…” Anon starts, bringing back the baryonyx’s attention. “I wouldn’t call them bad, but… calling them good is a stretch. My dad, he was like a pointer, always pointing in the direction for me to go, never telling me what was on his mind. My mom was a polar opposite – constantly stuck in a little bubble of pure happiness.”

“That sucks,” Nova says. “Having both parents failing to do one thing because of which they are called parents.”

“No, what actually sucks is having one person do everything.”

“I see what you’re getting at,” Nova smiles. She pours some more wine into her glass, drinks a bit, feeling the burgundy death spreading in warmth across her body.

“When I was doing that “mom and dad in one face” thing, I couldn’t stop myself from asking different questions. Like, do I provide enough for her? Am I there for her enough? Am I a good mom? Am I doing this right?” Nova sighs. “I felt like I was failing at everything. I’m trying my best, but I can’t ever know if I’m really making Nick happy.”

Anon looks down at his empty bowl, remembering all the times he had interacted with his parents. All unique interactions can be counted on one hand. There’s not enough of them, but… they are there. Those interactions shaped him into what he is today. And he’s happy the way he is today. The effort is there, and it didn’t go to waste.

“I may not understand everything,” he says, “but as far as I know her, she’s happy the way she is. And the reason she’s like that is because you never stopped trying your best. You made mistakes, but you never stopped. So yeah, you made her happy.”

Nova looks at him, her eyes open in awe. Who knew that today she’d found that someone willing to listen to her whining and reply to it?

“I… see…” she simply replies, stuttering, before getting up and leaving. Before entering a corridor with the stairs onto the second floor, she turns to Anon. “If she asks where I am, tell her that I’m in my bedroom.”

“Sure thing,” Anon nods.

With that, the middle-aged baryonyx leaves, and a younger baryonyx takes her place a moment later.

“Where’s she?” Nick asks, picking up the plates.

“In her bedroom,” Anon replies. “We had a chat.”

“Is that so?” Wonder what kind of stuff did she drop on him… – she thinks.

A minute later, they settle at the clean dining table, books, notebooks and pencil cases spread around to make a fine homework station. Doing this together is much better, since they can aid one another, which surprised Nick. As much of a smartie she really is, there are some things that this middle-grade human knows more than her. But, most of the time, it was her who helped him. And boy did he need some help.

“It’s this, Anon! That’s literally in the task itself!” Nick points into his textbook.

“Ah, fuck! Right…” Anon crosses out his previous answer.

“Raptor Jesus, how did you even manage to get so far like this?”

“Luck of the devil, I guess.”

“Right…”

A few seconds pass. As Anon continues to write something down, Nick brings some fresh ice tea to the table. A bonus that aids the human’s “autistic” brain.

“Say,” Anon says, after putting a dot. “Where do you wanna go when-”

“Volcano University,” Nick says. “Anything related to music.”

Fastest answer in the West, – Anon thinks.

“What about you?” she asks.

“Uh… I have two options. Army or college.”

“Not much.”

“Yeah. Still thinking where I should be heading. I still have a ton of time.”

“Everyone says that. Then graduation arrives and – whoops – ‘oh snap, where should I go?!’. Better to figure that out now.”

“Right…”

A pause arises. The silence in the room amplifies the scribbling noises, as they write down their answers into the textbooks. As the seconds pass by, Anon cannot stop himself from thinking just how quickly that answer of hers came out of her mouth. Almost seems… automatic. As if she had figured that part out and stuck with it for a long time. But… at the same time, because it’s automatic, there wasn’t that cognizant bit in her tone, that could’ve said to him that it truly what she wants.

“What?” Nick asks.

Anon realizes he was staring at her for quite some time at this point.

“Oh, fuck, sorry. I just thought about something,” Anon says. “That answer you gave me, it came out pretty quick.”

“Yeah. I just figured that a long time ago.”

“And you didn’t pick anything else? Like, why Volcano Uni exactly?”

Nick stops writing mid-sentence. She puts her pen down.

“I just want to make my mom happy. I just want for her to see my Volcano University graduate picture and go ‘Oh wow, my efforts didn’t go to waste!’”

Different flags, same dilemma, – Anon thinks. – Both of them think that they are not doing enough for each other. Jeez.

“They didn’t,” Anon says.

“What?” Nick looks at him.

“Your mom’s efforts didn’t go to waste, Nick,” Anon looks at her.

“Why do you think so?”

“Because you’re happy right now. You’re doing what you want, whenever, wherever, and with whoever you want. And that decision for you to go into Volcano Uni… I don’t know, feels like a ‘must’. As if you think all that you did for her was nothing more than a farce unless you make it to Volcano Uni. You got your band back, you wanted to, – and both of these things make your mom happy.”

Nick looks at him for a moment, before looking down at her notebook and continuing writing. Her hands move on automatically, as she feels how heavy her heartbeat became.

About an hour later, it was time to bid farewell. Anon gets up from the chair, hiding his phone. He finishes another glass of ice tea, given to him by Nick before she sauntered off. He takes his bag and makes his way to the front door.

“Already leaving?” he hears.

“Yeah,” Anon turns to the voice. It’s Nick. “Don’t wanna impose.”

“Come on now,” she says, with a smile.

He slides his feet into his old sneakers and turns to the door, hand reaching out to the handle.

“Wait,” she says.

He turns back to her and…

One could only imagine how soft and warm can scales really get, nearly matching the properties of human skin. He feels them pressing against his cheek, concussing him yet again even after she pulls away. She’s smiling. That’s her way of thanking him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says.

Anon’s limbs move on their own, taking him outside, into the cold evening streets. It was warm today, but it’s still coastal winter. His legs take him down the suburbia, sinking in the chill. The moment he regains control of himself, he stops just right near a streetlight pole, against which he leans. He looks up. Stars in the dark firmament shine, and he can only think if they are truly shining, or this shine is only an echo of what it once was.

His hand reaches to his cheek. It still remembers the sensation. No, he remembers the sensation. He remembers that she did this to him, that she pressed her lips against his cheek. He doesn’t know what she truly feels after that, but if he had to guess, then the feeling of blessed confusion is mutual. As well as many other feelings.

In the midst of all this beauty, he remembers a familiar chubby triceratops, sitting with him in the basement-turned-studio beneath his house. He still remembers how the dialogue went down. Feeling his cheeks burn and whispering ‘be quiet’ to his anxiously beating heart, he delves into thought: – Fucking Trent… His words are now stuck inside my head like some metal engraving… Mental engraving? Ha. Why did he say all of that in the first place? That Nick… likes me? Was it jealousy? I mean, he did admit he liked her, but… I don’t think it’s that. Or maybe he thought I’d… corrupt or steal her away from them? Damn, that’s dumber than jealousy. But it has its reasons to exist, even though it really is unlikely.

Anon straightens. Maybe he just… shared how he saw things unfold? – he thinks. – I mean, first time meeting in half a year – and he sees her with a human friend. Of course people would assume shit! Either way, he’s too fast with those assumptions… but that doesn’t make them false. More so, with each and every day his words are more and more… right. If that can be ever achieved. And not only that, his statement is also shared onto me.

And if all of that is true… I can’t help myself but wonder – just what exactly Nick could find in a bag of meat and bones like me? She has half of the entire school basically ready to lick her feet just to get an ounce of attention, and amidst all them, she picks a new guy, a fucking nobody. That shit happens only in anime.

Okay, sure, let’s assume she did find something to like about me. Whatever that could be. What is it that I can give to her? I can’t give her anything, while she… she gave me a reason to wish for school year to last a bit longer. She… changed me. I don’t want to be a fucking nobody anymore. I am a cognizant being, just like everyone else.

And there’s also one more thing…

Anon looks out into the sky once again.

Just for how long can we remain friends? – he thinks. – Just for how long can we stretch that part out before we can’t anymore?

Chapter Text

February 6^th. Another day, another rehearsal.

Straying away from their past experiences and choices, “Swamp Babies” search for a new sound, making each and every rehearsal unique. One may sound like post-black metal, one may sound like shoegaze, one may sound like the dirtiest punk rock the West had ever heard. All the genres they’d gone through so far all had their distinct features, but it was hard to find just one who would have enough for them to select it. Sometimes, they think about blending different genres together, so that they would stop wasting their time, but it meant their search wasn’t fun, and to say that is to lie. It is fun. It really is fun.

Today, this cold winter evening, they yet again try to find their new genre. Today’s pick was typical tech death metal, akin to Waters of None. In fact, they use that band as their inspiration. Lyrics, aesthetics, tones, drum and guitar parts – they are doing everything that band did, to the point of straight-up stealing. But hey, it isn’t a crime if there’s no one to report it – no one said they release their attempts at new genres. And even if they will, at the very least they have enough dignity in themselves to call it a cover, to avoid any law problems.

This minute, in fact, they are playing the song they just came up with. All the songs they had made during this endless search for a genre were saved, only to be a filler on the HDD inside Trent’s PC, as some sort of a reminder for the future selves. The song is actually pretty good. It’s a testament to their evolution in skill, even after not playing for quite some time. Sometimes, it’s better to remain still and silent and not do anything, not appease to the crowd with constant content pumping.

The song comes to an end. Curtis chokes the cymbal, the last note from Nick’s and Trent’s guitars lingers in the air before dissipating into feedback. Trent turns the amplifier off, Nick draws a sigh, Curtis leaves his drumset.

“I honestly think this one isn’t us,” the atrociraptor says, taking a seat next to the baryonyx. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s buttloads of fun, but it’s just isn’t what we are.”

“First time I heard you say that,” Nick replies, turning her face to him.

“I was too zoned out playing before. Now I’m really thinking about it.”

“Right…”

The ding of a doorbell disrupts the silence. Curtis picks himself up and makes his way up the stairs.

“Another pizza?” Nick asks, turning her face to Trent.

“Yup,” Trent replies, checking something out in the sound mixing interface. “He can’t get enough. Says being here is a constant celebration.”

“Before he notices is, he loses all of his muscle,” Nick draws a smug smile.

“Nah,” Trent shakes his head. “He’d eat a drumstick before he’d let that happen.”

“Talk about being dedicated…”

Trent closes the program and turns to Nick. Curtis is still upstairs, and what he does is none of their concern. Which means there’s a bit of room for them to have a private talk. That is to say, the theme for it isn’t really intimate, but the triceratops prefers talking face-to-face on some topics.

“Where do you wanna go when school’s over?” Trent asks.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

“Wow,” Trent cannot hide his smile. “First time I heard you say you don’t know what to do about yourself.”

“Hey, I knew where I wanted to go before!” Nick looks at him, slightly frowning.

“What made you think differently now?”

Nick takes a pause, looks aside, letting a second pass.

“Anon.”

“And what did he do?”

“I just told him where I’d go and for what reason. Like, I want to make my mum proud.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

“I thought so too. He said that me deciding to go there just because of that and not because I want it makes it a ‘must’.”

“Damn, the human has some wit.”

“At first I just said something like ‘Huh, okay’, but then I gave his words a thought and… now I just don’t know.”

“Well, you still have some time to ponder things. Maybe you will go to Volcano Uni, maybe you won’t, who knows?”

“Yeah…” Nick sinks into the couch.

“But if you will go to Volcano Uni…” Trent suddenly draws a short wheeze, akin to an old engine starting up. “Please just do yourself a favor and actually do something. Don’t be like me.”

“I sure will,” Nick nods, smiling.

A few seconds pass in silence. Nick looks at the stairs again, listening to any noise. But there’s nothing. It’s like he dropped into the backrooms or something. What takes him so long? – she thinks. – Did he close the door before leaving…?

“And where’s Anon gonna go after school? Did he tell you?” Trent asks.

“He said it’s either college or army,” she leans forward, putting her hands on her laps.

“Not much choices… I just hope it’d be in this city. I don’t wanna lose contact with him. He’s a good guy.”

Trent’s words resonate with the processes inside Nick’s soul. Her hands close tightly, fabric stuck between fingers. She hears her heart beat heavily, imagining the human’s picture inside her head slowly dissipate from the pressure of the future. Nothing would prepare her for that.

“I don’t want that either,” she says, quietly. “I really don’t.”

Trent just watches her. He hears everything she says. And even after she looks at him, embarrassed and frowning, he keeps a straight face.

“Laugh all you want,” Nick says, bitter in her voice.

“I won’t. I understand you,” Trent replies. “I want for a lot of things to stay. It’s… human to ask for that.”

Nick looks back down at her legs. He doesn’t know what I feel, – she thinks. – But Anon did say what Trent thought about me, about my feelings, and… he’s right. How does that happen? And does he know what Anon feels about me? Do I know what he feels about me…?

Suddenly, the slam of a door interrupts all thinking and dissipates the notion. The atrociraptor finally returns, making his way down the stairs and taking a seat near the baryonyx.

“You’re slower than molasses in January, jeez,” Nick says.

“I just had to go to a nearby shop to buy some more,” Curtis replies, tossing a can of soda to Trent.

“Neat…” the triceratops begins to crack the can open.

“Trent, wait!” Curtis suddenly says. “It’s-”

Before he could finish though, Trent cracks the can open to a flurry of sugary foam spilling everywhere onto the floor, his hand and his clothing. Curtis rushes out to get a towel, while Nick just watches, surprised. After it seizes, Trent waits a few more seconds before taking a sip and settling the can on the table, exhaling.

“I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch someday…” he says.

Nick just laughs a bit.

After the mealtime, though, came an end to their rehearsal. There was no more ideas to unleash, no new guitar or drum parts to play. Another failed attempt. But hey, it’s the fun one has while doing it that counts. They are not stopping with experimentation, and who knows – maybe tomorrow will be that day when they’ll get it right.

Curtis offers Nick a ride to her home, to what she agrees. The ride to her home is spent in silence, both of them just looking at their own things. The atrociraptor, one hand on the wheel, one hand resting on the lap, pays close attention to the road, while the baryonyx watches as the evening city passes her by, deep in thought to care for the views sliding like a 35mm film.

She thinks about Anon. It’s been a bit less than a month, and they already got to the point when they understand that they are more than just friends. At least, she understands that. She doesn’t know what Anon feels. And that frightens her. The fact that she doesn’t have all the knowledge in the world frightens her. The fact that she cannot be sure about what is going on inside her head frightens her. All the books in the world failed to teach her this, failed to prepare her for this.

Does he feel the same way? Does he even acknowledge the existence of said feelings, or he decides to just ignore them, thinking it’s not the best? Did he think that this could be a possibility? And if so, did he think that it would be good for either of them? She doesn’t know the answer to these questions. She doesn’t think they can remain friends for any longer. But again, it’s just her thinking all this. She doesn’t know what Anon thinks. And Anon doesn’t know what she thinks.

There’s only hope that they think the same things.

The ride comes to an end. She wishes Curtis good night, as she steps right outside her house. The door closes, and the car drives off. Nick steps to her house, only to feel something itching in her throat, causing her to cough.

“Did I get sick?..” she talks to herself. “No. I couldn’t. Trent’s basement studio isn’t that cold…”

With that, she steps inside her home.

February 7^th. She did get sick.

“103 Fahrenheit…” Nova says, looking down at the digital thermometer in her hand. “Oh, Nicole…”

Nick, in the meantime, closes her closet and picks up her bag. She is dressed in her school uniform, thinking that nothing would stop her. Not even some changes in the temperature of her body, disrupting her thought process.

“Where do you think you’re going?” her mother says, looking as she approaches the door.

“To school… Can’t miss it,” Nick replies with a tired voice.

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to go there with that temperature?”

“I’m not sick, Mom. I’m fine, I swear.”

Her hand reaches for the door knob, only for her mother to put her hand onto Nick’s shoulder.

“You are not going anywhere, Nicole,” she says. “You’re staying home.”

While her daughter stands still, confused, the sickness dropping a gauze of fog over her mind, Nova takes her bag off the shoulder, settling it aside, then pushes Nick to her bed. Still in fog, Nick makes her way under the blanket.

“I wish that I would stay here with you, but…” Nova says.

“It’s okay, mom. I’m not a kid,” Nick replies. “I can take care of myself.”

Her mother just smiles, slowly stroking her hair. She pulls her hand out, looks at the time. Then picks herself up and leaves the room, paying one more look at her ill daughter before closing the door from the other side.

Silence permeates the walls, enters the mind and gets lost in the fog of disease. Nick lies still, looking at the ceiling as if she’s stargazing. What was the last time that happened, actually? Maybe when she was a kid, and her mother took her out somewhere she doesn’t remember, on one of the few days off she gets from her work.

She’s always busy. Always somewhere, always with someone, always away, always leaving Nick like this. She cannot hate her, she tries her best to provide. But in the end, it all can fall flat, it all can be thrown into the darkest pit of hell if it means that she has only a few hours a day of talking to her. They could live in poverty, they could die in cold, they could suffer through everything only if she’s there, she’s with her, and she’s not going anywhere.

Oh, how much would she pay for her to never leave…

Several hours pass like nothing. It’s like she had fallen into the pitch black and came out, only to see the arrows on the clock change their position. The ceiling is the same, and she still doesn’t hear anything.

She feels like she can’t breathe through her nose and gets herself sitting up on the bed.

“Where’s the drops…?” she talks to herself.

“There,” she hears someone. Then notices a hand giving her the desired nasal drops. She uses them, feeling the nostrils clean through the chemical pressure, then settles the nasal drops back onto the table.

Only now she notices that there’s someone else in the room. A green jacket with a bag in their hands.

“Anon…? What are you doing here?” she asks.

“Your mom called me,” he replies. “Said that you’re sick, asked if I could look over you for a moment.”

“Oh…” she just sighs.

“Here.” He passes her a wet towel. “Tell me when it’ll get warm.”

“Okay…” She lies back down, putting the towel onto her forehead.

Anon notices the uniform. And she thought that going to school while sick is a good idea… – he thinks.

“What’s the temperature?” he asks.

“99 Fahrenheit… I think…” she replies.

“Alright. Did you take your medicine?”

“I did. Not so long ago.”

“Okay, good.”

She sees him stand up and turn away. Not him. Not him too.

“You better change your clothing,” Anon says.

Before the human could even put his hand onto the door knob, he hears a loud thump. Like a box falling onto the floor. He turns around, only to see Nick, slumping over the floor. His heart skips a beat, he quickly approaches her.

“You okay?” he asks.

Slowly, she pushes herself up.

“Where… Where are you going…?” she quietly asks.

“I was just going to get some water,” Anon replies

She looks at him, and he sees something odd in her eyes. Something that doesn’t fit her. Ire. Despair. A spark of pale baby blue fire shines within her gray eyes.

“Where are you going?!” she yells, only to look down.

Seconds pass between them, sitting on the carpet flooring in her room. The ticking of the clock feels like mocking them.

“Nick,” Anon says, “it’s better for you to rest.”

He notices the wet towel on the floor and reaches to pick it up. His hand is intercepted by her hand, taking hold of him by the wrist. He twitches a bit, looks up at her again.

“Where… Where are you going…?” she asks.

Anon then remembers the talk he had recently with her mother. How she’s afraid of whether she’s doing a good job at it, at being a good mother for the little baryonyx. This, what Anon sees right now, is what she fears the most.

But unbeknownst to him, Nick’s not here. In her mind, she’s back in her childhood, confined to a bed where the ill never get well, as her mother looks at her with nothing but pity and care. Coughing ceaselessly, she cannot stop looking at her mother, as much as she cannot stop looking at her. The time stops in the current.

“I’m sorry that I do this to you, sweetheart,” she says. “I just got used to you always taking it.”

“It’s okay…” Nick replies. “I know it’s tough for you too. I’m not a child anymore.”

Oh, how much she would pay for her mother to understand what she truly feels…

“Everything will be alright,” Nick in the present repeats after her past self.

Anon just sits still, looking at her. A glint of silver appears on her eyes. Her hand holds the wet towel, making it unreachable for him to grab. And even if it wasn’t, what would he do? He doesn’t know. He never was in such a situation.

“Why… Why do you never stay…” she says. “Never, never, never! You are never there for me! Why do you always leave?!”

Her words linger in the quietness. Anon looks down at the towel and reaches in to her hand, taking it into his. It’s wet and warm.

“Don’t ask me where I’m going or why I’m going, Nicole,” Anon says. “Tell me to stay. Tell me to never leave.”

Nick slowly looks up. Her eyes are full of water, shining in what light is in the room. Her heart beats heavily, as her mind refuses to function in the fog of disease.

“It’s our God given right to ask people to stay with us,” Anon says, looking aside. “Of course, we can’t ask them to stay with us forever. But we can ask them to stay with us as long as they can, and as long as we need it.” He looks up at her. “So unless you tell me to leave, I am not leaving. Do you understand?”

And then it breaks. The last threshold finally collapses, as silver lines begin to fall down her cheeks. It’s the first time he had seen a girl he knows cry like this. He lets go of her hand, and she tries to dry her weeping eyes, and while she isn’t looking at him, he moves the wet towel aside, inches in and takes her body into his arms.

Feeling his embrace, she wraps her arms around him tight, crying into his shoulder. Seconds pass as she weeps. Sitting like this, slowly caressing her back as his fingers sink in the silk of her hair, he feels the remainder of his inhumanity drifting spit through the cold.

Soon enough, her crying comes to a halt. Anon helps her get back into the bed. She turns away to the wall and closes her eyes, falling asleep nearly instantly. Of course she’d fall asleep so quickly, – he thinks, looking at her.

He sits down near her. His hand reaches to caress her hair a bit more. He can’t get enough of the feeling. Talks a lot, eats a lot, sleeps a lot… – he thinks. – A walking, talking mess of emotions underneath a gauze of nerdiness. Poor thing. And I don’t know even a slight bit of what she had to go through in the past. Well, at least she has one more person to look after that mess.

“I’ll go now,” Anon says, then stands up. “Doubt I’ll go to school, but I don’t wanna just sit here watching you sleep.” He picks up his bag. “All the medicine and some water are on your table. There’s food and some more water in the fridge. If anything happens, just call me.”

Taking one more look at Nick, he makes his leave.

Silence in the room permeates the walls. It pushes Nick out of her sleep just a tiny bit. She still feels the lingering feeling of the human’s skin combing and caressing her hair. She puts her hand over her chest, right where the heart is. It's beating. Means she's living. It’s beating heavily. Means she’s alive.

She closes her eyes once more, feeling as she sinking into sleep again.

Chapter Text

For the longest time, Nick herself didn’t really recognize Valentine’s Day. She knew about the celebration, but she didn’t participate in it, she didn’t have a reason to. She could care less about all those heart-shaped cards with kiss marks and sprayed with perfume. She could care less about all those teens standing in pairs at each and every corner of the school’s hallways. And, for the most part she did.

But now, she cannot. There’s one person because of who she remembered about Valentine’s Day in its entirety. And she has to do something about it.

Of course, she does it in secrecy, away from her mother’s curious eyes. All the meticulous planning, to make this day just right, just perfect for both of them.

First is the card. Despite having to do a ton of creative stuff involving manipulations with paper during middle school, she feels weird holding the scissors in her hands again. It’s been years since she did anything like that, let alone making it personalized and addressed to someone else. Even with a set of instructions, she had to redo the card at least once.

And, of course, she couldn’t stop her heart from beating so rapidly and so heavily, like a heavy machinegun. Her cheeks were burning, and her mind was stuttering, as her hands anxiously shaped some bits of paper into a heart. She tries to ease herself, but it does barely anything. She cannot escape the loop of thought: she’s working on a Valentine card.

Eventually, after about thirty minutes of battling with paper and with herself, the card is finished. It’s a bit different from what she had in mind, but for a first try, she had made a good job. Now, all that’s left to do is to fill it… but with what? She doesn’t know what do people write into the cards.

She could’ve just went with a simple kiss and a spray of her favorite perfume, but one: she finds both of these things cringeworthy, and two: she doesn’t have favorite perfume. She doesn’t wear any at all, believing it’s a crutch for the ugly.

About fifteen more minutes later, as she just stared at the backside of the card, mulling over what to write, she eventually comes up with something that is worth putting down. She writes it down and reads it.

Cheesy. But it is what it is. At least it’s something, and she doubts she would’ve made something else.

Doubts. Doubts…

She puts down the card and mulls over just what exactly makes her feel this way. It isn’t how he appears or reacts to things. He isn’t excelling her at anything. He isn’t unique in any way, aside from his species. But he is a second pair of eyes that looked over her and said how he saw things unfold. Like Trent, but unlike that triceratops, he doesn’t know her as long as he remembers himself. They know each other only for a bit over a month.

And that what makes his words even better. He isn’t shackled by knowledge about her, he’s honest, but not in a soft way.

This card, as well as everything she had planned for the Valentine’s Day, is her own way of saying thanks for making her stop the train of perfectionism and look back, for making her think once more about what she wants and what she does not want. And as much as the seed of doubt can be evil, sometimes even the most darn things in life work out for the best of a person.

February 14^th.

Valentine’s Day is in full motion, but despite the celebration, the school did nothing to prepare for it. No decorations, no speeches, no nothing. As if they don’t recognize the day at all, leaving it up to the students to do everything: give each other cards, spend some more time together, finally come out with their feelings and so on.

And in the midst of all that action, Nick finds herself at her greenest. Everything going on around her is quite simple on paper, but she never read that paper, instead immediately diving headfirst into the motion. She stands still for quite some time during the break between her classes, looking around and seeing how people are doing it, feeling as if everything that’s going on is nothing more than hieroglyphics.

She feels embarrassed. She thought it’d be easy. Just give him the card, invite him to something that’s it. But one thing is planning it out, and the other is actually doing it. She cannot hold herself from being embarrassed by many things, from the sheer thought of taking action to everything that could spiral out of it. She cannot even bring herself to ‘man up’ and commit to it.

Suddenly, though, she’s taken out of her stupor. A hand touches her shoulder. She screams a bit, snaps out, turns one-eighty to see the perpetrator, only to see Anon, just standing there, taken aback.

“Why the yelling?” he asks.

“O-Oh… It’s just you… You just surprised the hell out of me!” she replies, holding onto her card.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“I-It’s nothing, don’t worry.”

Looking down at her hands, she remembers what she needs to do. A short tide of confidence washes over her, more than enough for her hands to reach out, offering the card to the human. He takes it.

“Ah, fuck, it’s Valentine’s Day,” he says. “I forgot that it exists.”

“Really?” she replies, finally relieved of duty with the card.

“Yeah. So… I don’t have a card. Or anything like that. Sorry.”

“It’s okay! I honestly forgot about this day myself. I, uh… didn’t have a reason to celebrate it.”

Anon looks up at her. She looks aside, hands behind her back, smiling and shy. She’s beautiful, and he cannot deny it.

“And, honestly…” She looks at him. “I wouldn’t take anything else over your company.”

They look at each other for about a second, before sinking their gazes down. If they were in a cartoon, steam would’ve been rising from their heads, painted red.

The bell rings, making everyone move to their class. They leave each other for the time being, feeling that, even with distance, their hearts still beat in unison.

The school, once again, passes uneventfully. Aside from all the teens that actually cared about celebrating and who are now making their leave from the school in pairs, and aside from Nick giving him that card, Anon didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Which is good. This day was already a bit hectic with the baryonyx and her card.

The sun shines brighter this time around, and Anon, hiding his eyes behind his hand, wonders if this is just a one-time occasion that it’s this bright, or it’ll only get brighter from now on. For a moment, his mind considers the sun a giant overclocked, overtime-working, powered by god knows what lightbulb.

He and Nick make their descent from the school’s gigantic concrete staircase.

“I’ll meet you tomorrow,” Anon says. “Thanks for the card.”

“Y-Yeah…” Nick murmurs in response.

Just was he about to leave though, a myriad of calculations pass through the baryonyx’s mind in spastic manner, fueled by embarrassment and a tinge of desire.

“Listen!..” she yells out.

The human stops and turns back to her.

“What?”

“I-I wanted to go somewhere, a-after school… If you’re busy, it’s fine, no problem! We can go there any other day.”

For a moment of silence, as they stand with few feet of distance between each other, Anon looks aside, facepalming himself in his mind. I was about to walk out on something! Something by Nick! What am I, a fucking idiot?! – he thinks, then audibly sighs. In the meantime, Nick, looking in a different direction, thinks something as to oppose Anon’s train of thought. What am I doing? – she thinks. – We can do this any other day. What if he’s busy? Or has something important to do?

“What’s the place you wanted to visit?” Anon asks.

“Eh?- Ah, just a mall not so far away from here…” Nick replies, still embarrassed. “It’s not much, just… shopping… That’s why I said that… w-we could go there any other day.”

“Well, if you planned it for today, for this celebration, then it’s only reasonable we go there today, don’t you think?”

“Y-Yeah…” Nick nods, as Anon approaches her.

“So let’s go. Lead the way.”

A tide of confidence washes over Nick as she’s looking up at him.

“Yeah! Come on!”

Together, they nearly ran off away from the school and the rest of the student body, headed in their own direction. Almost like a true pair or lovers.

The mall was… exactly the same one they visited during Nick’s tour around the town, but by the time they visited it again, they’d already forgotten about it. Or about the tour. The only things that remained from it are some moments in random place they won’t be able to recall and a collective panneau with no distinct shape or form – only a million of different colors in foggy gradients, transforming into one another – an image of their feelings and their slow evolvement.

The first stop was a small restaurant, oddly familiar to both of them. Anon takes a second, as they stand in the line, to find out why is it so familiar to him. And he does find the reason why.

“What are the odds we’ll meet Trent again here?” he asks Nick.

“Here? What do you mean?” Nick looks at him.

“Look around.”

Nick examines the place. Dark tones of the walls contrast with the eerie vibrance of the mall. Small tables sprawl around, most of them untaken, for today is still a busy day. The line is just two people in front of them and that’s it. And in the end, it’d be just the two of them. Just like Nick wanted.

“Oh…” the baryonyx says, recalling her memories. Now she remembers that this mall isn’t something new. And she feels a pang of guilt stab her in the back because of it.

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll meet him here.” Nick looks back at him. “Maybe not.”

“Let’s hope he won’t be around. Just us.”

“Yeah. Just us…”

Her heart gives a heavy beat in a feeling escapade.

They get their food and sit down. Soft forgettable melodies blare in the mall, forever destined to be an echo. The food is tasty, but is quite passable compared to what the baryonyx could cook. Either way, it didn’t matter for either of them. They just enjoy their time together.

After the mealtime, they walk out the restaurant.

“So… Where to now?” Anon asks.

“Let’s go to the clothes shop, I guess…” Nick says, thoughtfully.

“Uh-huh. Just lead the way.”

Nick smiles, looking at him for a second.

The mall isn’t any warmer than the streets. In fact, it could be colder, because in the streets Anon and Nick could stand under sunlight, and it would warm them up. Isn’t the best way to warm up, but it still is a way. Meanwhile here, they have to rely on one another. And, for both of them, this makes the moment better. It brings them together, even if the reasoning for it is artificial.

The clothing shop was located on the second floor of the mall, and, from the outside, didn’t look any spectacular. The logo, the interior, the design choices, even the layout – all of it was made to maximize profit. Makes Anon think how it is handled in a communist world. Or, maybe, it wasn’t handled at all, and people just received clothing from the government. Who knows?

They step inside. It’s a bit warmer here than in the mall hallways, but the difference is so miniscule that neither of them noticed it. Followed by the omnipresent gazes of staff, Anon and Nick make their way around the shop.

“You always seem to wear the same things, Anon,” Nick says, taking a dress that caught her attention, then turns her eyes to him. “What’s up with that?”

“Well, first off,” Anon says, “I’m not a woman, so I don’t need two hundred different dresses. And second… I’m poor.”

“How poor?” Nick asks.

Shit, – Anon thinks. – I walked right into that one.

“Uh… Really poor.”

Nick didn’t look like she bought that.

“Well, at least you didn’t say you live in Skin Row or any place like it.”

“…What would you do if I said yes to that?”

Nick stops. She turns her eyes to him.

“You… You live in Skin Row?” Nick asks, taken aback.

“…Yes,” Anon replies, reluctantly.

“Oh God… And how is it over there?”

“Not as bad as you guys think. I mean, sure, it’s a criminal galore, but the place where I am is relatively safe. That doesn’t mean that it’s any better than the rest.”

“And why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I just didn’t want you to worry about me.”

“Raptor Jesus, Anon…” She sighs, then turns away to murmur: “How can I not worry about you…”

“What was that?” Anon inches his head closer.

“Nothing!” Nick says, with closed eyes and furrowed brows.

Her attention is back on the dress. It looks great. Fantastic even. Without a doubt, it’d fit her. But she still looks at it with question in her eyes. Would it fit her in Anon’s eyes? How he would react it? No, would he react?

She looks at the human, who looks over a selection of t-shirts, with eyes of a window shopper. Jeez, – she thinks. – We got this close, and I know jack shit about the guy. Embarrassing.

About a few minutes later, Nick grabs her selection of different dresses and outfit combinations. They walk up to the fitting room. The baryonyx steps inside, closes the curtain, only to peek from behind it back at Anon, who’s already eyes down into the phone, waiting. A few seconds later, he feels a pair of eyes staring at him, and looks up to meet Nick’s gray gaze.

“What?” Anon asks.

“No peeking,” she warns him.

“Like I wanted to,” Anon replies, feeling a bit offended.

She looks at him for a few more seconds, before disappearing behind the curtain. Anon returns his eyes back to the phone.

In the meantime, Nick begins to take off her clothing. Each and every step to nudity gives out an amplified room-filling sound. As if it’s a feature of every single fitting room, to make the person inside even more embarrassed by the sheer thought.

And in such embarrassment, Nick, who’s only managed to take off her blazer and buttoned shirt, looks back at Anon from the shield of the curtain.

“M-Move a bit back!” she says.

“Got it,” Anon replies, still looking at his phone, and takes a few steps back.

Satisfied, Nick returns to herself. In about a minute, she changes from her normal school clothing into a light-blue dress she’d found. From the looks of it, it’s more suited for summer. Looks fine to me… – Nick says. She draws a long sigh to soothe her mind. – You got this…

She reaches to move the curtain, only for her hand to stop midway. And… And what if he won’t react at all? – she thinks. – No. He will react, if he wants to remain alive!

And so, she moves the curtain aside, revealing herself to the human. Taking a simple pose, she looks at him with a furrowed gaze.

“What do you think?” she asks.

Anon looks up from the phone.

For a second, he freezes. What he sees in front of him is a God’s gift for all the suffering he had to venture through all these years. What he bears witness of is an epitome of beauty and style, an epiphany of the new level of elegance. Light bounces off the silky texture of the dress, praising the worth of the porcelain skin hidden beneath. And the pose she took shows off the sublime features, making her ever more desirable for all the other potential men. Gorgeous, amazing, stunning, charming…

Simply put, she’s beautiful.

“You look great,” Anon says.

Nick blinks. All of her stored anger is released in a second, as she looks at him, slightly stunned.

“If you ask me,” the human continues with a note of a connoisseur in his voice, “you’re a… a tomboy. But this dress, it amplifies your femininity, shows off the colors you hide oftentimes. And it does a good job at doing so, making you more pretty than usual.”

“R… Really…?” she replies, still stunned.

“Yup,” Anon nods.

“Okay… Next one…”

Nick slowly draws the curtain back. The moment she’s left to herself, she squats down, feeling her face burning like lava. W-What?! – Nick thinks spastically. – He just started praising me, no holds barred!

In the meantime, Anon falls to his knees, feeling like a defeated warrior. I can’t… – he thinks. – This embarrassment… – He looks down at his hands. – It melts me from my core… It was so fucking simple in VNs, why do I feel so fucked right now?!

He said I looked pretty… He said I looked pretty… He said I looked pretty!.. – It was hard for her to stop the onslaught of notion and feeling to come out in small punches against the floor. About a few seconds later, though, she manages to catch herself and stop. Sitting on her knees, she pushes herself up, looks at herself in the mirror. Well, that’s something, – she thinks. – I didn’t know he had it in him to… compliment a girl so much… But, this is just the confirmation I needed. I can go all in.

He said that I possess certain tomboy features… – she thinks, taking off the dress. After setting it down, she looks through her clothing to find some jeans and a colorful t-shirt. She puts them on and looks at herself in the mirror. If it wasn’t for her chest, she definitely could’ve looked like a boy. A very feminine boy, that is.

She opens the curtains once again.

“How is this looking on me?” she says.

Anon looks at her for a second.

“Now you’re looking like a tomboy. With your jaw-dropping beauty, of course it fits you.”

“S-So…? Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind. Okay, next!”

And so it began. Every single dress she wore, Anon had something to say. And every time Anon had to see her, he came up with one hell of a compliment. Of course, by the time they went through quite a handful of dresses, it all could devolve in just yet another excuse for the human to say that she’s pretty, but it all didn’t matter for the baryonyx. This very moment hits better than speedball.

With a surge of excitement and confidence, Nick goes through her picks to see what else she could show off for him, just to hear him say it, just for her to feel the hit once more. Her tail is swinging to and fro in joy, as she tries to find what else she could show to him. It doesn’t come up to her mind that she could get addicted to praise, nor does she care.

Eventually, her eyes and hands stop at one particular dress. She puts it on and checks herself out in the mirror. Now she looks like an adult movie model. The dress does it job at highlighting and amplifying every single feminine feature of Nick’s body. A bit too revealing… I think… – she thinks. – Let’s see what he has to say about it.

She turns around and opens the curtain, taking an intriguing pose.

“What about this one?” the baryonyx asks.

Forgive me Jesus, – Anon thinks, – I think I got a boner. And he’s right. Alas, that singular thought wasn’t enough to hold him back.

“Now that is some good porn material, right there,” he says.

All the jazzy tunes going on in their little atmosphere cuts out. The musicians are killed on stage. The bar is emptied and abandoned for years on end. The fashion show has got its funding cut, half of the models were fired to find other jobs to sustain themselves, some indulging in much more profane activity.

They look at each other for about few seconds with inexplainable expressions on their faces. Then, Nick closes the curtain. Welp, – Anon thinks, – now she’ll think I’m a nutjob. Congrats Anon, you blew it, you fucking pervert.

With nothing better to do, and with nothing to say to the hurt baryonyx, sitting behind the curtain of the fitting room, Anon looks at the time and departs from the store. Outside, he takes just a few steps, before burying his face in his palms. There’s no distinct thought of shame going on through his mind, just a terminal lull of disappointment. Even his parents weren’t disappointed in him as he is disappointed in himself here and now.

All of a sudden, he feels something touching his shoulder. He doesn’t jolt from the touch, he just puts his hands down and turns around him, to see the baryonyx.

“I’m sorry,” Anon says.

“Wh- What for?” Nick replies.

“‘What for’?” Anon throws his hands aside. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

“Oh, come on, Anon, it’s just a couple of words.”

“I didn’t think twice before saying them!”

“And that makes it even better.”

“How?”

“Extreme honesty. Of course, you… did surprise me, but no offense taken. So don’t worry.”

Crisis averted, – Anon thinks, sighing. – All the luck I could ever get in my life is spent on this very moment.

He looks at her hands. They’re holding the bag from the clothing store.

“So you got something?” he asks.

“Yeah. A few dresses out of, what, ten? I lost count.”

“Yeah, it was about ten dresses. So,” Anon looks around, pocketing his hands, “shall we go elsewhere?”

“Absolutely,” Nick smiles.

 And so, they leave the clothing store behind, in search for another place to spend their money.

“Say,” Anon says, “how often do you do this kind of shopping?”

“Not as often as you might think,” Nick replies.

“Which is…?”

“Never.”

“I see.”

They pause for a second, reach an escalator and ascend to the third floor.

“And where exactly you got the cash for this?” Anon asks.

“Secret,” Nick replies, smiling proudly.

“Let me guess, you rip people off for answers on different tests? Do homework for them for cash?”

“Well, that’s a portion of my… income.”

“You guys recorded something before disbanding?”

“Yeah. Just one album. It found its listeners, although it was on ‘name your price’ type of deal, so not that many people bought it.”

“I see. And what else?”

“Competitions. Got into a few with decent sized prize pools, but I don’t like the pressure on them.”

“And there goes your secret,” Anon says with a smug grin.

“Well, you deduced it, so…” Nick looks at him with a smile.

As they look at each other, smiling, realizing just how much do they enjoy each other’s company, the human’s eyes catch attention of a slick music store. Its wooden decorations go against the tile, glass and plastic of the rest of the mall. He stops, and she stops too, turning to see what he’s looking at.

“Wanna check it out?” Nick asks.

“Sure,” Anon nods.

They enter the store. Racks upon racks of guitars, all in different sizes, shapes and colors, six-string, seven-string or even eight-string, drenched in luster or in matte… It’s a heaven for a guitarist like Nick. Aside from guitars, it also has a lot of different paraphernalia for drummers, a decent variety of amps and pedals, and, of course, a small section of vinyl records, cassettes and DVDs with music by different bands that Anon had never heard of.

Looking at those guitars, Nick remembers how she had gotten her first one. It was a gift from her mother back in the day when something like a guitar was nothing more than a silly dream of a six-year-old. When she received it, she felt like the luckiest person in the world. It wasn’t great, and now it’s history, but it’s that thing that one remembers no matter what, because it shaped them into what they are today.

She also remembers how she had gotten her second guitar, a gift from Trent and Curtis, a nearly one-in-a-kind type of guitar. Of course it felt great to receive it, of course she’s happy to have it, of course she’s thankful, but is it a substitute for that first one? No. Not in the slightest. The guitar she uses today is an upgrade, and her first guitar is a path she took, that led her to today.

In her thought, she finds Anon looking at different guitars. He thinks about all the times he saw her and Trent play the guitar, he recalls the avid smiles on their faces as they play parts they are proud of, and wonders if he would be the same. He knows it’s nothing more than just a silly dream, but…

“Found something you like?” Nick asks.

“No,” Anon looks at her for a second. “Just window shopping.”

The baryonyx looks at him for a second, then looks back at the guitar, analyzing each and every piece. Eventually, her eyes stop on a particular one, and, without a second thought, she picks it up and heads towards the counter.

“Nick?” Anon looks, as she makes her way to the register with the guitar in hand. “Nick!” Left with no choice, he follows her.

The staff member quickly scans the guitar and tells Nick the price. The baryonyx pays it and receives a soft guitar case as a gift. Without looking back, she leaves the store, making the human follow her. The staff member, with a genuine smile, looks as the pair leaves.

“Nick, Raptor Jesus on his cross of rock…” Anon murmurs to himself.

The baryonyx finally stops. She turns around to the human and, with violent affirmation, gives him the guitar. Anon is torn between the guitar and Nick.

“Look, I didn’t ask you for it, okay? You shouldn’t spend your money like that! I don’t want to impose on you with my Skin Row levels of poverty so you have to spend cash on me!-”

She jabs her sharp finger at the human’s chest, and he stops. A second of silence passes them by.

“Nonsense,” she says. “What you’re saying is absolute nonsense. It’s a gift. A gift, Anon! I don’t expect anything back from you.” Anon sighs. Nick retracts her finger from his chest. “And I order you to enjoy it.”

“Order?” Anon asks. “You’re not gonna, like, ask me for a promise? You’ll just give me an order?”

“That’s more effective,” Nick smiles. “Let’s go!”

Anon has no choice but to follow her, feeling as his lips curl into a smile.

They spent another thirty minutes or so moving back and forth between different shops, not necessarily buying something, but at least window shopping. After that, they get tired of it, and decide to make a stop at yet another restaurant on the top floor of the mall. It didn’t matter which one they’d picked, because, in the end, they all serve nearly identical food, just with different names and prices on it.

And as if the powers that be wanted it to happen, they meet a familiar violently pink atrociraptor, sitting and munching on his meal. They sneakily make their way to him.

“Hi Curtis!” Nick says first.

“Oh- Hi,” Curtis replies, smiling, then notices the human. “Hey, Anon.”

“Hey,” Anon replies, nodding.

The waiter materializes out of thin air right in front of them to ask for their order. Anon and Nick make their selection, just to get the waiter away from them.

“So how are you two doing?” Curtis asks.

“Fantastic,” Nick replies. “You?”

“I’m fine. Sitting, eating, enjoying myself.”

“We see that,” Anon replies.

“And what are you two up to?” Curtis asks. “You two are, like, on a date? Since it’s Valentine’s day and all that?”

“You could say that,” Anon says. “Or you could say she took me to have a little buddy to carry all the stuff.”

That earned him a playful jab from Nick and a chuckle from Curtis. As the waiter settles the food for the human and the baryonyx, the atrociraptor finally notices an inconspicuous guitar case sitting next to the human.

“What’s inside that case?” he asks.

Anon turns his eyes to the case, brings it up, opens it.

“A kitted-out AR-15,” he replies, pulling out a guitar.

Curtis draws a small whistle.

“That’s yours?” he asks Nick.

“Nope. Anon’s,” Nick says.

“I didn’t know you had the money to get that beauty,” Curtis replies.

“That’s the thing,” Anon replies, putting the guitar back. “I don’t. Nick bought it for me.”

“I thought it was supposed to go the other way around?” Curtis asks.

“Do I look like I care about that nonsense?” Nick asks. “Besides, it’s Valentine’s Day. Everyone treats everyone.”

“Alright, alright,” Curtis says.

The rest of the date was spent with Curtis beside them. And it was no doubt that the constantly joyful and joking atrociraptor made it ten times better.

By the time they left the mall, they all were exhausted, but in a good way, since they had so much fun together. Curtis bids farewell to the pair, as he has his own means of transportation, meanwhile Anon and Nick make their way around town, passing by various places they’d visited in January, and stopping near the school.

The baryonyx takes the bag with her new clothing and, before leaving, hugs the human. And the human hugs her back. While the dino enjoys the current moment of blissful warmth and tired joy, he looks up into the sky. Stars in the firmament shine brighter than ever. Doubt we can make this bullshit to go on for any longer, – he thinks. – I don’t want it ending in lying to each other and to ourselves. So I consider it the last day we’re friends. And the first day we’re something more than that.

She lets go of him, wishes him good night and leaves. He stands still, watching as her figure slowly disappears in the distance, before turning around and descending into the streets of Skin Row.

His apartment welcomes him with silence. The hardwood (or vinyl, Anon still doesn’t know) is colder than a grave. This tiny, one-room apartment, with just the necessities to sustain his existence, could be just that – a damn grave. A whole year will be spent here. Anon sighs. One month is already behind.

He takes his shoes off, puts the guitar case near the table and falls into the bed. He could fall asleep right about now, and nothing would change. He would just load into another day, already in clothing, which takes off one step in his morning routine. Ain’t that nice.

But no. He doesn’t fall asleep. Instead, he sits up on the bed, takes the guitar case and settles it on his laps. Slowly and carefully, he unzips it and reveals his instrument.

He wasn’t and isn’t really into making music, but just from looking at it, he recalls every time he had seen Nick with a guitar, every time he had seen her smile. And in the midst, he imagines himself on a scene with her and her band, playing the newly acquired tunes.

He takes it out, tosses the case aside, and starts strumming into the night – softly, one little note at a time.

Chapter Text

February 21^st.

Sunlight passes through the poorly drawn curtains. Skin Row is already awake, already passing through, already begging on the streets, already murdering some poor chap in the alleyway where nobody could see, nobody could hear, nobody could smell, nobody could fear. All but just yet another morning, tipping the scales with its existence. One less to come, one more to already pass.

Anon’s hand blindly searches for his phone near the table’s edge, like a police dog sniffing for drugs. He finds it and turns the alarm off, looking at the screen with sleepy eyes. He wants some more, but he knows he can’t get more, otherwise he’d be late for school. And he doesn’t want to cause more trouble than necessary. The only way he could’ve gotten more sleep from the past night is if he wouldn’t spend a good portion of it annoying his neighbors with the guitar.

His newly acquired instrument welcomes him with resonating echoes inside his head while sitting in a lonely corner of the room, as he gets up from the bed, rubbing his eyes. It’s been only a week, but through hours and hours of trial and error, stopping and going, theorizing with YouSnoot videos and practicing on his own, he managed to get through the basics and some extras.

He knows that the rest of the knowledge is locked away behind a paywall. In the end, guitar is just yet another pay-to-win game. Although he could “rob the casino” like he does all the time, nothing stops him, but this time he feels like it’s just not worth the hassle. It’s better to just find a person who knows the guitar on an incredible level and get them to help – it doesn’t matter how, either through passing charisma checks or with extensive amounts of begging.

In the current moment, Anon had already went through washing his face and wiping it dry, removing the last portions of the sleep from the exterior of his body, and now he’s sitting at the small dining table, eating an intravenous sugar injection of a cereal. The bits of it remind him of how he looked upon the student body on his first day of arrival – a narcotic trip, with its immense number of colors flowing through one another in insane gradients, shapes and forms.

The first meal of the day was quickly gotten over with, and Anon makes his way to his desk. He puts on his clothes, takes his bag, walks to the front door. Puts on his old shoes, checks his pockets and himself out in the mirror, leaves the apartment. Locks the door, hears some noise on the floor upstairs, fastens his descent. Makes his way to the ground floor, opens the heavy apartment complex door that feels more like a hermetic gate, steps outside.

The sun shines down onto the dirty streets, chilly wind blows through, moving the lightest of junk and making people quicken their pace. With his phone in hand, looking down at his device, he begins his short journey to the school. And as he passes through the streets of Skin Row, leaving the area behind, he remembers a saying that the most dangerous moments in flight is the beginning and the end, the minutes of ascendance and descendance. He smiles a bit as his mind immediately applies that to him. One-to-one, no hiccups.

In the more civilized, cleaner and, overall, richer streets, as the human slowly walks through on the pavement, watching as some anons like him seethe over his ingenious and beautiful ragebait posts on a Russian vodka-tossing forum, the sun shines better and the wind is a bit more forgiving. For a second, he wonders why is there a difference, even if so miniscule, then he puts those ponders aside, knowing that it either coud lead to nowhere, or could end up in a Unabomber type of a manifesto against the rage of this capitalist world.

The closer he is to the school, the more students he sees. Momentarily, he feels like he’s in some cheap romance anime where a very hot girl immediately pairs up with the worst of the worst, the shy of the shy, the weird of the weird. If those animes would’ve been redrawn into hentai, he wouldn’t even bother, but they aren’t, and that’s bothering him a ton, since at least hentai is, well, hentai, there’s some value to get out of it right away, not like with those titles made to satisfy the needs of otakus.

But in the end, if there’s a person who doesn’t get a say in what’s supposed to be what, it’s Anon. A person who managed to royally screw up during his first days of school by bringing literal pornography. That he used for its direct purposes. And left some questionable stains after, without even bothering to at least clean the damn thing. Remembering that, the human feels as if the whole world knows about his fetishes. Which brings nothing but a draping sense of shame.

The feeling slowly dissipates as he approaches the stairs and makes his ascent. He only gets up by a few, before stopping and moving aside. He could get in right away, but he decides to wait for the only person there is in the world. An amazing guitarist and a lovely person. Someone he could dedicate his heart to, and someone who could do the same back.

It doesn’t take them… or, rather, her, to make the appearance, just a few minutes of waiting.

“Hey, Anon,” she says, approaching the human. “Kept you waiting?”

“Nope, just got here,” he replies, then pockets his phone.

Together, they make their way up the stairs and into the school. The halls are packed, the students walk to and fro, talking endlessly, the clocks tick down the last minutes before the homeroom. On the stairs, they split, making sure to meet each other at lunch, if Gods decide to not bring them together at any class. Anon pats her shoulder before leaving, disappearing in the crowd despite being vastly different.

Nick makes her way to her classroom and takes her usual spot, waiting until the class begins. People talk, sit in their phones or sleep on the desk, and the baryonyx does neither of these things. She just sits still, hearing the ambience of the class.

Her eyes spot a classmate sitting down right next to her.

“Hey, Nick,” the guy says.

“Hey what’s up?” Nick replies, slightly annoyed.

“I saw you with that new human kid some time ago. Say, are you two dating?”

“We are. You have a problem with that?”

“Nope, just find it funny.”

“How so?”

“All these guys you rejected, Nick… They must’ve been crying their soul out when they spotted you with him.”

“If they tried a bit harder, it could’ve been different. But it’s not. So here we are.”

“Ice cold queen as always, aren’t we?”

“You know it.”

The bell rings, and the guy makes his leave back to his desk. The teacher arrives shortly, beginning the first class of the day.

Classes slowly pass by, one lecture at a time. By the time the bell rings lunch, stirring the bored student body into movement, everything that the teachers had told Anon and Nick over the hours felt like nothing more but language games.

As everyone leaves the class, and Anon slowly picks himself up, he receives a message from Nick, telling him where was her class. Outside the classroom, the human moves against the colorful crowd. He makes it through the hallways and stops right next to the widely open door, where more and more people surge into the current. Between the imperceivable colorful faces, he spots the familiar baby blue profile, and starts moving with everyone, preemptively lining himself up with the baryonyx.

They start to chat. Their voices are lost in the mass of noises, the sheer amount of which could cause a tectonic shift. Their expressions stay joyful and happy from each other’s company. They feel like some students look at them, but they pay the feeling no mind, letting it linger before eventually disappearing. As they walk, they feel like there’s no one else but them. Just the two of them, the human and the baryonyx, destined to walk these hallways eternally.

Eventually, they make it to the cafeteria, already filled out to the brim. Waiting in the line, choosing their picks, taking their trays and locating a table, – they go through the usual lunch process, never separating. They sit down and, without further ado, begin to eat.

“I think we’re coming closer and closer to what we could call ‘our sound’,” Nick says.

“That’s some good news,” Anon nods. “What would that be?”

“Eh, just a mix of something we listen to. Like, Trent throws in one thing, Curtis – other thing, I toss in the third. It’s like a bonfire where everyone tosses wood and coal to keep it burning.”

“A bonfire of music.”

“Yeah.”

“You think I could toss in some of my wood into it?”

“Maybe?” Nick replies after a small pause. “You mean you wanna…?”

“No. I’m not that good with a guitar to think about that.”

“I mean, we could teach you things. It’s not like we’d be gatekeeping that knowledge.”

“I’ll consider that, okay?”

“Sure. In the meantime, you could send us what you listen to. Maybe there’d be that last element we need to complete the puzzle.”

“I will.”

In the meantime, as they talk, someone approaches them. Someone neither of them wanted to see in their own degree. Someone whose whole existence is to disrupt.

The sugar plum fairy of Volcano High makes her appearance near their table. Her peach scales do not match the soulless expression on her face. Feeling her presence, they stop eating and turn their faces.

“Did I interrupt you?” she asks.

“Uh… No? What’s up?” Anon asks.

Naomi doesn’t pay his words, nor, safe to say, his existence, any mind, instead turning her face to the baryonyx.

“Do you have a moment?” the parasaur asks.

Nick looks back to the human for a moment, before looking up at Naomi. She’s just staring, patiently waiting for the baryonyx to reply.

“Yeah, I do,” Nick says, then gets out of the table.

Naomi looks at the human for a few moments, before leading the baryonyx away. As she follows her, Nick tries to understand why exactly did she looks like that. Naomi looked as if she was a shellshocked soldier, with those cold eyes and a psychotically calm expression. But maybe Nick’s simply overthinking what could have a simple reasoning. And whatever trouble the para has, it’s not any of her business.

They end up in the women’s restroom. The uncanny feeling steadily grows, creeping the baryonyx out.

“Why did you take me here?” she asks, looking around. “I thought we were going to the StuCo room.”

The parasaur takes her time. She doesn’t say anything for at least three seconds, creeping Nick out even more.

“Because,” Naomi says, then turns to her, “it isn’t the StuCo that I’m worried about. It’s you.”

“Me?” Nick asks, surprised. “Did I do something?”

“Yes.”

“And what would that be?”

“You’re disrupting my work.”

The parasaur’s stone cold expression works against Nick. Tension and anxiety chills the damp air between them.

“What do you… mean by that?” Nick asks, reluctantly.

“I want for you to stop interacting with Anon in any way,” Naomi replies with a monotonous voice. “Your mere presence near him makes my goal unachievable.”

“Wait, what? What’s up with me being with Anon?” Nick asks, nervous.

“All of my efforts go down the drain because of you. I tried almost everything, and this is my last chance to deal with this in a civil manner.”

The nervousness in the baryonyx’s brain is quickly conquered by anger. Nick frowns her steel eyes.

“Why don’t you stop being so goddamn elusive for a second and tell me what in the hell do you want?!”

The parasaur pauses for a moment.

“Both me and you know Fang. We know who she was, and who she is today. Everything she does stands between me and Naser.”

“O… kay? What does have to do with me and Anon?”

“I wanted him to fix Fang, so that she’d stop being a problem. Two birds with one stone – Naser frees up to have more attention for me, and that loser gets a girlfriend. It was all perfect… until I noticed you two together.”

This is nonsense. None of this is real. Nick’s dreaming, for sure. This is not happening.

And yet, it is happening. As much as the baryonyx tries her best to distance away from what she sees and what she hears, she understands that she’s awake, that whatever’s going on is real.

Naomi takes a step to her, her eyes frowning.

“Do you know how much time and effort I’d put in to make that plan work in the first place? Do you know how much of a problematic parameter you are?”

A… problematic parameter?.. – Nick thinks.

“I don’t want you to mess with my system,” Naomi says. “So, all I ask from you is cease any interactions you have with Anon.”

The clocks give one last tick before freezing. A rusty shiv cuts through the silk of the soul. Her monotonous voice, her nonchalant words pierce her heart, one wound deeper than the other.

“It would cost you nothing, but you’d do a great favor for me.”

It’s cold here. It’s cold and damp. She wants to leave, but it feels like she’s paralyzed. Not a single limb responds to her mind. Hell, not even her mind responds to itself, stuck in a perpetual bootloop.

“What’s a heartbreak to someone like you? Nothing but a bump on the road. Besides, you can find someone better.”

Tears begin to form in the steel eyes, where the spark had withered away.

“So?” Naomi finally asks.

But her heart is still beating. She’s living. The heartbeat is heavy. She’s alive. More alive than this amalgam of plastic and flesh right in front of her.

“…No,” Nick replies. Her voice is shaking but she stands her ground.

The silence is penetrated with a sigh.

“I thought you’d be smarter than this, Nicole,” Naomi says. “I didn’t want this to go the hard way, but you don’t leave me any choice.”

Naomi steps forward, wanting to leave, but Nick takes a sidestep, blocking her path.

“You won’t take him away,” Nick replies, harder this time.

“Who would stop me? You? Come on now.”

Hands turn into fists. A string deep inside the chest snaps. Whether that was the tolerance meter finally shattering or a chain breaking in half, – it didn’t matter.

“And besides,” Naomi asks, “what you’re going to do?”

It all happens in just a singular snap of fingers. A manifest of feeling and emotion resisting the darkness. A whiteout against the facile bloodsucker in the face of the StuCo president.

Nick grabs Naomi by her buttoned shirt, takes a swing and hits her in the face with a fist. The punch is powerful enough to make the parasaur lose control and fall onto the cold tile. The stunned green eyes look back at the baryonyx, except now they look at her with all the emotions contained within them. Now they’re burning, just like the cheek she’s touching, as her mind refuses to believe what just happened.

The baryonyx looks down at the parasaur. A part of her still barely manages to process everything that happened over a few minutes. But the rest had already done that, and came up with simple conclusions.

Nick sits down on one knee and takes the defenseless StuCo president by her shirt. Tears form in the eyes, but the baryonyx does not care for them. There is no more room left for mercy.

“Never have been punched in the face before, were you?” Nick asks. “Well, now you know how it is. One thing that I’m proud to have is heavy fists.”

Naomi’s mind tries her best to regain control over the body. Defenseless, all she could do is to just stare back, aghast, at a pair of furious gunmetal eyes.

“Anon is mine,” Nick says. “And I will not let anyone take him away. Especially someone like you.”

In the silence falling in, they both hear the bell. It rings for about ten seconds, then stops. The deafening silence returns.

Nick lets go of Naomi’s shirt and stands up. Whatever respect there was for this porcelain doll, now it’s nonexistent.

“You want to fix Fang?” Nick says. “Do it yourself, you… selfless sack of shit.”

With that, she steps away and then quickly leaves the restroom. The life is drained from the hallways, it’s awfully quiet in here. People talk from beyond the walls, either in mass or one at a time, none of the voices are recognizable.

Nick quickly makes her way back into the cafeteria, to find it empty, like a liminal space. Not even a noise from the kitchen. Life ceased its action here, at least for the time being. If her mind weren’t so busy, she would’ve thought about spending time here with him, just the two of them in this open, empty cafeteria.

She makes her way around the tables and grabs her bag. Before leaving, she checks the contents – everything’s here. She thought about someone stealing her stuff a ton of times before, but none of them actually mattered when she simply realized no one cares about her enough to actually steal something from her. The only one who does care about her more than the rest is the human, and he doesn’t look like he’s able to commit a crime. Either way, Nick’s glad that the bag is here, as well as everything inside it.

She hangs the bag on her shoulder and makes her leave from the cafeteria, passing through the hallways once more. The quietness mixed with the bright vibrance of the hallways make them appear as if taken out of a horror game. A flurry of thoughts spawns inside her head, all of them have the same contents: the corridors could be infinite, and maybe they are, and nothing is actually real, everything is happening inside her head, it’s impossible for it to all happen.

But as much as her terrified mind wants to believe otherwise, Nick understands that everything around her is real and finite. She doesn’t have a reason why her mind and herself are so separate, it doesn’t make much sense. But if she had to make up one. then maybe it’s because she understands how dreams work and that everything that happened just doesn’t abide the dream’s logic. All of it is unreal enough to… be real. Whatever amount of sense that makes.

After taking a turn through the hallways, she finally sees the exit. What was supposed to be just a few minutes in the emptiness felt like an hour at least. She takes a few more steps… and then stops. She just stands still, quietly breathing the chill school air. But inside her, it’s a full-blown war. All of her energy is thrown onto the frontlines, trying to regain control of herself, of her mind.

And it happens almost instantly. Strangely enough, for a person who never was in a situation like this, she’s quite skilled in regaining control of herself. But this skill is not a blessing most of the time. Especially right now, when the last thing she would want is being able to think.

She looks down at her right hand. First she looks at the inner side of the palm. It remembers the warm touch of the human skin. It remembers the shape of his slim body. It knows it wants more. She knows she wants more, more of everything. Then, reluctantly, she looks at the outer side of the palm, checks out the knuckles, where the punch still lingers.

Her own words echo inside the empty space. What am I, an idiot? – she thinks. – Treating Anon as if he’s some sort of object… He’s not. He’s a cognizant living being, capable of feeling and having emotions. In this regard, I’m not that different from Naomi…

Her hand slowly curls into a fist. No. I am different from Naomi, and by a metric ton, – she thinks. – Unlike her, I don’t consider him a tool. Unlike her, I…

The thought remains lingering in the air, as her feet take her outside the school’s premises.

The break before the last class. Anon had already been everywhere, asked everyone, even threw a text to her directly, yet all of that for nothing. Nick’s sudden disappearance chills him to the bone, and what’s worse is that he doesn’t know what exactly happened. The last time he saw her is when Naomi took her away for some talking. And the parasaur did look at him weirdly… So maybe it was about him? No, it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

A temporary respite, a nerd’s shelter, and Anon’s last chance to find the baryonyx – the library – welcomes him with lively silence. Books turn pages, whispers sprawl across the air. As his mind quickly adapts to the quietness of this place, he fights the tremoring fear inside him, as he slowly approaches the reception. The dino behind it does not look interested in the human at all, not even a slight bit.

“Hey, uh…” Anon cannot help himself but pause and take a deep breath. “I just wondered if you had seen a girl in here. She’s as tall as I am, baby blue scales, glasses… She’s a baryonyx, name’s Nick.”

“Nick…?” the dino repeats, thinking. “Yeah…” he nods. “Yeah, I know her. She frequents this place. But I hadn’t spotted her today… Could be anything, so…”

“Okay. Thanks for help.”

“No problem.”

Strangely enough, instead of leaving immediately, Anon instead goes deeper into the library. He had already received the answer that convinced him enough to not search for her around here, but it would’ve felt at the very least weird to just ask whether the receptionist had seen a dino (as if he could remember them all going in and out) and then leave. He thinks it’s weird, at least. So, to pay some respect to the gods of this library, he decides to look around. Besides, there’s a slim chance he could find her here.

Of course, that chance never happened, but instead he had found a “substitute” – a book that he had read, but never finished. He read it quite some time ago back in one of many schools he had changed over the years. That was the only thing that could really captivate him… aside from blasting idiots in the threads or on the virtual battlegrounds, and wanking to hot 2D women.

He sits down and begins to read. The story is quite simple, it’s the kind that doesn’t deserve a hard cover, but the way the author wrote about it is quite intriguing, to say the least. But while a decent portion of his mind mulls over the book, the rest of his mind cannot stop thinking about Nick.

What exactly happened between Naomi and Nick that Anon couldn’t spot neither of them during the hours spent around here? It’s like they both had disappeared into damn Narnia. And what could be the possible theme of the conversation? Judging from the look on Naomi’s face, it ought to be something really serious. And whatever it was… it made them both disappear. Either Anon couldn’t spot them in the crowd, or they did leave school.

Maybe… maybe they talked about him? Sounds silly, but Anon cannot stop thinking about the look Naomi gave him before leaving, sauntering off with Nick beside her. It was cold, as if the parasaur knows something about him he himself doesn’t know. Or as if the parasaur had messed up big time, and a stare as freezing as metal in the winter was the only thing he deserved. Whatever meaning that gaze had, it could be a hint towards what was their convo about.

And in that case, what exactly did Anon do for someone like Naomi to take Nick away and talk to her privately? It’s not like Anon had made an oopsie daisy big enough for the StuCo prez to come up. But at the same time, it could not be about what he did… It could be about Anon himself. About who he is. And in that regard…

Anon closes the book. He cannot read. His mind is too busy processing every single possibility. He’s scared. He’s worried. He doesn’t know what happened and that bugs him. He wants to know what took place between them, but at the same time wonders if that would actually help him, wonders if he could take that information in.

A buzzing erupts in the silence, Anon feels something quickly vibrating twice against his leg before stopping. He takes the phone out to check.

It’s a message. From Nova, of all people.

Hey.

Sorry to bother you, but could you come to our house for a moment?

Nick came from school early, got into her room and never left it since.

I tried to get inside, but she just doesn’t respond.

Maybe you could talk to her after school’s over?

Okay… Good news – she’s back home, – Anon thinks. – Bad news – she locked herself inside her own room. Anon pockets his phone, takes the book, checks it out at the reception, then, stuffing it inside his bag, leaves the library.

Without knocking, Anon enters the baryonyx’ household. The walk to it from school was more and more frightening with each and every step taken. He couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t stop worrying for Nick, and quite rightly so. The worry made him walk faster, even to the point of running. It could be nothing serious, but he cannot be sure about that.

He takes off his shoes and proceeds inside the living room. Nova is already there, standing behind the stove, and is quick to spot Anon.

“Oh, hi, Anon,” Nova says. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Couldn’t ignore the message,” Anon says.

“Would you kindly sit down for a moment?”

The human obliges and sits down at the dining table. Nova joins him shortly after.

“I just wanted to ask if you know anything.”

“Well… Last time I saw her was when we were eating at the cafeteria. Our StuCo president, Naomi, appeared all of a sudden, asked if Nick had a minute to talk in private. She also gave me that really scary look… I dunno what for.”

“Is that so… Okay…” Nova draws a sigh of relief. “I thought it was something much more serious. Don’t get me wrong, this is still serious, but…”

“Yeah, I get you.”

Anon looks at the door, leading into a short corridor and a staircase. She’s there, in her room on the second floor. He can feel her heartbeat inside his chest. Whisper quiet and lonely.

“Before you leave, I wanted to ask you something,” Nova says.

“Yeah?” Anon turns back to the baryonyx.

“Do you… really live in Skin Row?”

Nick! Why did you tell her this! – Anon thinks.

“…Yes,” he replies, reluctantly. “It’s not that bad, really.”

“It’s still Skin Row, Anon. It’s not safe out there.”

“I didn’t have any options, nor a say in where I should leave for a year.”

“You’ll be living in that damned place for a full year?!” Nova asks, slightly horrified. Someone like her, who isn’t a stranger to poverty, shouldn’t be shocked at the thought.

“Yeah…” Anon sighs.

A small pause arises. Nova inches in and places her hand on top of Anon’s.

“You can move in here if you want. We have a room to spare… I think. If we don’t, I don’t see a problem in you sharing a room with Nick.”

“Uh…” Anon’s taken aback by this sudden offer. “I… I’m already a frequent guest here. I don’t want to impose more than I already am.”

“But you’re not, Anon!”

“Please believe me, I’m fine. The area where I live is quite safe.”

“Still… At least consider it, okay?”

“I will, but I’m not promising anything.”

Satisfied with that answer, Nova lets go of Anon’s hand. The human leaves the dining table and heads towards the closed door into the corridor. He opens it and enters.

Every step on the carpet flooring of the stairs is as loud as it could possibly get.

Standing in front of the closed room into Nick’s room, the human’s heart beats as heavy as ever. This could be it, – he thinks. – The time I properly prove myself to her. Anon leans against the door, trying to pick up any noise, to no avail.

“Nick?” Anon calls. “You in there?”

No response. Anon takes hold of the doorhandle and pushes down. The door opens.

She’s there. Lying on her bed, face down in the pillow. Lying completely still, like a corpse.

Anon closes the door behind himself and sits down near her. His hand reaches in and touches her shoulder.

“It’s Anon,” he says. “What’s up? Why did you leave school and didn’t tell me?”

First, Nick turns her face and looks at him out of the corner of her eye for a few seconds. Then, she pushes herself up and sits next to him. It’s good in the silence, it could go on like that for hours, but the human asked a question, and it’s only fitting for her to reply, especially after worrying him like this. Slowly and steadily, she brings herself to a proper answer.

“Remember when during lunch, Naomi asked to talk with me in private?” Nick asks.

“Yeah. What’s up with that?” Anon asks back.

“She…” Nick pauses. She can think something else up. She can tell just a slight bit. He doesn’t need to know what she knows. But she’d be just as bad as that damned parasaur.

Nick breathes in.

“She wanted for us to stop.”

“Naomi wanted for us to stop?” Anon asks, slightly surprised. “Stop what, exactly?”

“Everything. She said that I became a problem for her and…” Anon notices her starting to shake. He puts his hand around her back. “She wanted for me to stop talking to you.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because she wanted for you to go with Fang.”

The words ring out, desaturating the image inside his head. What was supposed to be something different now pangs at him with a dagger.

“Wait, wait, wait… What?” Anon asks. “Let me get this straight. Naomi asked you to stop talking because… I was supposed to go out with Fang?”

“Yes. She wanted for you to fix her. And I didn’t let you do that. And when she found out about us, she confronted me, told me to stop. But I said ‘no’.”

“Well, that’s what I would’ve done if I were you. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Yes, nothing wrong, but… After I denied her… request, she said that I leave her no choice and that ‘it has to go the hard way’. So I…” Nick exhales. “I punched her in the face.”

Nick turns to him.

“I’m sorry, Anon.”

“Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything bad. You stood your ground.”

“I know, but… What if I doomed us both? What if she’ll do something about us?”

“I doubt she will. She’s a StuCo president, sure, but she doesn’t have a lot of power. And I don’t think she has the guts to actually do something about us. But… Using me as a tool to fix someone else… Wow. Just wow.”

They sit in silence for a little while, letting the words sink in. Their hands find each other and lock fingers, to be sure that they’re here, together, in this room, all alone. Nick looks at the human, sitting deep in thought, and realizes just how much her heart is beating for him. And through the touch, she feels his heart beating in unison.

Suddenly, Anon lets go of her and stands up, then turns to her.

“You know what?” he says.

“What?” Nick replies.

“Fuck Fang, fuck Naomi, fuck Naser, fuck Trish, fuck Reed, and fuck everyone else surrounding that bag of psychos.”

“That’s bold…” Nick smiles a bit.

“You can’t say I’m wrong though. All of them are nothing more than just a bunch of narcissists, all in their own regard. Naomi, for example is of a controlling kind. And here’s what I’m gonna say about that – no one ever deserves to… to toy with someone’s feelings and emotions.”

“That’s right, but… don’t you think you’re too antagonistic of them? I don’t think Naser and Reed are that bad.”

“I doubt so. One is a spineless bastard and the other is literally a carfehead. Sure, they look civil, but that’s only when comparing them to the rest. They are just as bad as the others.”

Nick stands up.

“So I guess we are their enemies now?”

“Yeah. We are.”

Despite saying that, Anon does not think that this place has any sides to pick. Supporting or antagonizing them will not tip the scales, not one bit. To him, there are only people who help and people who don’t. And as much as she helped him, he tries to help her back.

Nick stretches her arms a bit, looking at the human invitingly. And, of course, Anon does not refuse. The baryonyx’s hands and tail wrap around the human’s body, as she leans into the hug, feeling warmth spread around her whole.

In this very moment, they both feel the hearts beating against one another like meticulous clockwork of feeling.

Chapter Text

February 24^th.

Nick slowly rises from her bed, desiring for more sleep as always. Yawning and stretching, she walks around the room in search for her belongings. First, her glasses, then her clothing, after – her phone, and, lastly, her school bag. Dressed and sleepy, she leaves her room and heads downstairs, meeting her mother at the kitchen.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she says.

“Morning, ma…” Nick replies.

As Nova brews some coffee for herself and her daughter, Nicole drops the bag near the dining table and proceeds into the bathroom. She washes her eyes and brushes her hair, restoring her daily beauty, then returns to the table, where a simple breakfast was already served.

“I ran out of ideas for breakfasts,” Nova says, smiling a bit.

“You ran out of recipes that suits us carnivores,” Nick replies.

Her mother chuckles a bit, as she delves into the plain meal. Despite the simplicity, it’s tasty, and that’s what matters.

As she ate, though, Nick notices her mother having quite a thoughtful look on her face. A rare sight, to be honest.

“Mum?” she says. “Did something happen?”

“No, honey, I was just thinking,” Nova replies with a smile.

“About what?”

“About you and Anon. Ever since I spotted him, I realized just how much of a good matchup he is for you.”

“Really?” Nick looks up at Nova.

“Yeah. Unlike all these kids you told me about. And… that makes me happy. You’ve done something I couldn’t do. I’m proud of you.”

Shocked, Nick simply nods, as she returns to her meal under a loving gaze of her mother.

The breakfast is over quick. In a few minutes, Nova prepares for a long day at her job. Then they get into the car, and her mother drops Nick off at the school. Right near the stairs, Nick finds Anon, and they head up the stairs and into the school.

Another day, another dollar. Only if they could get paid for all the days they’d been here. Alas, that’s just wishful thinking.

Once more, repeating everything and everyone, repeating the past and maybe even the future, Anon and Nick make their way through the rituals of the cafeteria after the long hours of boredom, of carelessness and agonizing wait. Come to think of it, anything after classes that doesn’t involve any more learning is a bliss. Their brains would explode from the pressure of the mostly useless knowledge if the system didn’t have lunch breaks.

They make it through the waiting line, pass the labyrinth of filled tables and find their seats. Every single time Anon spots their table, constantly empty in this mini-world of packed tables, he wonders what exactly keeps everyone away from it. Is it honor? Or is this table actually cursed? If it is, then, to Anon, it’s more a blessing than a curse, since he eats with Nick. Nick, on the other hand, doesn’t really care, she’s glad that there’s always an empty table in this place.

They sit down and, without further ado, begin to eat. Neither of them speak or even think about anything during the mealtime, instead opting to enjoy the “food”. Again, the quality of this “meal” is questionable at best, but it does its job, – giving them just enough energy to make it through the rest of the school, – and it does its job brilliantly. No one can blame the cafeteria cooks for just doing their job.

The meal is done with in about a few minutes or so. Feeling it slowly decomposing in their stomachs, they remain silent, opting to instead waste some time in their phones. The persistent noises of the cafeteria die down, unable to penetrate the small bubble around their table. The whole world is muffled as they sit still inside the small atmosphere they created. It’s like the universe itself recognizes that even the most boring parts of a relationship, the moments where nothing ever happens, shouldn’t be interrupted.

And yet the stillness gets interrupted, but not by the outside influence. Nick, feeling the boredom creeping onto her back, silently makes her way under the table to sit right beside Anon. He didn’t even notice. She could’ve told him to move a bit, but she didn’t feel like interrupting him from whatever he’s having.

A few seconds pass in continuous silence. Eventually, after looking at the careless human for a moment, Nick finally breaks it:

“You’re not the guy who’d make moves, aren’t you?”

Anon’s finger freezes. He turns to Nick, only to find her looking at something in the distance, making him feel like the question isn’t even addressed at him. But there’s no one on the other side of the table. Only her, now sitting right beside him, with a calm expression over her face.

Anon looks away. Pushes the power button with his thumb, and the screen goes black, now acting as a dim mirror.

“Do you want me to?” he asks, uncertain.

He waits a few seconds for a response before turning his eyes to her. Now she’s looking a bit more away from him, a vivid blush splayed across her face. First to ask the question, – he thinks, – first to blush, huh?

He chuckles, bringing the baryonyx’s attention to him.

“What’s so funny?!” she asks, annoyed.

“Nothing,” he replies. “Just thought you were being really cute.”

Nick only makes a sound of offended uncertainty, before looking away from him entirely, eyes closed, the blush still displayed across her baby-blue cheeks.

“What kind of moves to you want me to make, Nick?” he asks.

“W-Well…” she murmurs. “You know which ones…”

Nick turns her gaze back to the human, to notice him cautiously leaning in. His hand reaches forth towards her, cupping her cheek. Her heart beats heavily, as her tail wraps around his body. She cannot even say anything, only breathe heavily, looking at him with all the feeling in the world, as she patiently waits for the moment…

Anon freezes just a few inches away. In the corner of his eyes, he notices a silhouette slowly making its way towards them, and he leans back, sitting up straight. As much as the baryonyx wants to be mad at him, she soon notices the silhouette too.

It’s Naser. The dark-skinned ptero with one bad wing and in a getup that makes him look more like a pimp than a figure with authority. He looks calm, but something tells them that there’s more to it than what meets the eye.

“You two have a moment?” the pterosaur asks.

“Yeah,” Nick replies. “What’s up?”

Naser sits down in front of them.

“Not so long ago, Naomi told me that you, Nicole, punched her in the face,” Naser says. “She never told me the reason why. That’s why I’m here. And so you know, I’m not angry or anything, I just want to know what happened. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“It is serious, Naser. Much more serious than you may think,” Nick replies.

“How so?”

“During lunch that day, Naomi came up to me, asked to talk somewhere private…”

One detail at a time, Nick retells the events of that day, from the moment where that peach queen appeared with a cold expression, to the moment where Nick punched you in the face. Anon took the role of an observant, ping-ponging his gaze between the baryonyx and the pterosaur, and during his observations he didn’t notice Naser changing his face even a slight bit. As if he already knows about everything and wants to make sure.

A few seconds pass after Nick finished her talk. Naser looks down at the table in thinking, and Anon finally spots a change – it’s in his eyes. Something slowly left them.

“If it was someone else telling me all this, I wouldn’t believe them,” Naser says.

“Do you think I have a reason to lie?” Nick asks. “It’s just bad for all three of us here.”

“I know,” Naser nods.

“As much as I know Naomi,” Anon comments, “she always had that… plastic-y feel to her movements. As if she’s a doll. Mainly because she was constantly smiling and being really friendly to me and all that.”

“Yeah…” Naser nods again. “If I recall some things myself, she did sometimes ask me about my sister and such, and these questions were… weird. She always says she’s worried about her, but this…”

“All of us have a different side we want to hide from one another,” Nick says.

“I know,” Naser looks at Nick. “I guess it’d be best to ask her directly about this.” The ptero pushes himself from the table.

“Be persistent, Naser,” Nick says. “This involves not just you and her, but your sister as well.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, before finally departing.

Silence slowly takes over at the table. The clocks count down the last few minutes before the bell rings. People begin to leave the cafeteria, heading towards their classes.

Anon looks at Nick, thinking to have another go, but decides not to. He’ll get her next time. With that, he picks himself up, takes his bag and, bidding farewell for now, leaves Nick, moving to his next class.

The school comes to an end for today. And after it, as per usual, will be the rehearsal.

Anon told Nick to stay near school for a moment as he quickly makes his way back to his home, running through the dangerous streets of Skin Row, scaling the staircase up onto his floor and storming into his own apartment. Spastically looking around and searching with tremoring hands, he quickly finds his guitar, replaces his bag with it and makes his way back to Nick. By the time he returns to her, he’s out of breath and would love to just fall down.

“We aren’t in a hurry, Anon…” she says, a bit worried and smiling.

“I know…” he replies, panting, hands pushing into knees as he tries to catch his breath. “It’s just that… I didn’t want to… to keep you waiting.”

A few seconds later, he straightens. The baryonyx cannot look away from the guitar case hanging on his shoulder.

“What made you decide to take the guitar for this rehearsal?” Nick asks.

“Ah, just… to feel a bit included, you know?” Anon says. “Because I always just sit there like an idiot while you guys are having buttloads of fun.”

“I see… Well, let’s hope you’re qualified to have fun with us.”

“You doubt me?”

“Not at all.” Nick turns away on tiptoes. “Let’s go. Better not keep them waiting.”

The weakness in his legs yells at him to fall, but Anon endures the whining pain as he keeps up with Nick’s pace. The baryonyx, in the meantime, quickly slows down, so that her human wouldn’t have to suffer much.

“February comes to an end soon…” she says.

“Yeah,” he replies. “It’ll be warmer and warmer with every day.”

The sun shines down, warming them up just a bit. The baryonyx turns to the human, her attention is on his head.

“Just how hard is it to live with such a shiny head?” Nick asks.

“It isn’t. If anything, I like it that way.”

“How so?”

“I get to annoy people with it.”

“Because the light reflects off of it.”

“Exactly.”

Their hands brush against one another, and soon enough grab hold. Neither of them blush, they just smile as they continue walking.

In this very moment Nick understands just how much of a havoc did Anon bring into her life. Every plan she had created is now destroyed, thanks to him. But that’s an opportunity to make them anew. And that’s what Nick thanks him for.

Because now, she has one more variable to consider. The one variable she’s glad to acknowledge in her plans.

After school, as per usual, came the time for some rehearsing. This time around, Anon brought the guitar Nick gifted him on Valentine’s Day to feel a bit more included in the process. Of course, his input on everything didn’t change much, but at least he could show what ideas he has in his mind, in hopes that at least one of them would be accepted. That didn’t happen so far, but the human doesn’t stop trying over and over again.

A few songs pass by, shaking the air with their vibrant, melancholic, sunbathing shoegaze sounds. It’s nothing like Anon had heard before, and it definitely isn’t anything “Swamp Babies” had put out in the past. And despite the sludgy, grungy name of the band, they adore this new sound. They adore the echoey guitars, they adore the endless blastbeats, and, most importantly, they adore Nick stepping into the role of a vocalist, screaming into the imaginary microphone, as her mind creates a scene where millions watch them play.

“You know what I’m thinking?” Curtis asks.

“What?” Trent asks back.

“That we are ready to perform.”

“You mean a concert?” Nick asks.

“Yeah! We settled on the sound. We just need to do some things here and there to… optimize the flow, and we’re ready!”

“Well, first off,” Nick says. “I need to learn how to scream without running risks of losing my voice.”

“And second, I’m currently learning bass,” Trent says. “I’m tired of the virtual bass. I want something real.”

“Besides that,” Nick adds, “we don’t have any songs. We’re very far from performing.”

“I never said that we should go out there immediately, did I?” Curtis says, feeling offended. “I said that we’re ready.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Trent says. “We’re just telling you to not be quick with it, you freight train.”

Curtis sighs. He excuses himself and leaves the basement. While sitting in the silence, Trent reaches to his bag under the desk, brings it out and opens it. He then takes out a small colorful bag with Japanese hieroglyphs on it.

“What’s that?” Nick asks.

“Some weird candy Stella had found on the internet,” Trent replies.

“Stella?” Nick asks, surprised.

“Yeah. A green stegosaur. An otaku.” Trent turns to Nick. “You know her?”

“Of course! She’s in our school!” Nick says.

“Is that so?” That fact didn’t make any different for the triceratops.

“And since when you and Stella are a thing?” Anon asks.

“We aren’t. She just gifted me that on Valentine’s, after we hung out for a moment at my place.”

Anon and Nick look at each other, not believing a single word that Trent had uttered out, which pissed off the triceratops.

“You can believe anything you want, but we were just sitting and watching some anime,” he says, bit bitter in his voice.

“We’re not judging you!” Nick says, quickly retorting. “We’re just surprised! Right, Anon?”

“Yeah!” Anon nods in agreement. “Who knew someone like you would find a girlfriend?”

That earned him a jab from the baryonyx. Despite the pain, Anon was proud of himself – the comment was worth the price he paid.

The candy itself, despite what Trent said, turned out just to be a ton of odd flavors. Like cheese.

“You’re still not a fan of cheese, are you, Trent?” Nick asks, opening the cheese candy.

“I’d rather snap the strings and burn my guitar than eat even a slightest bit of cheese,” Trent says.

“I see…”

Nick then stands up and approaches him, the cheese candy in her fingers.

“Open your mouth and say ‘aah’!” she suddenly says, with a playful cheer on her face.

Trent’s heart skips a beat. He sees the horror held in the baryonyx’s fingers slowly approaching his lips. Urges fight within him. Nick wants to feed him this piece of candy, and there won’t be a second chance like this! But it’s cheese! It’s the damned cheese…!

Against his better judgement, he takes the candy from Nick and immediately swallows it, not giving it a chance of murdering his taste buds.

Anon looks at it with an indescribable face. Sometimes, – he thinks, – I can’t help myself but wonder what kind of a relationship those two had in the past.

“So?” Nick asks, keeping that joyous smile on her face.

“I’m gonna kill you someday, Nick…” Trent says, as if on the verge of tears.

Satisfied, she takes a different piece of candy, opens it without checking the flavor and, sitting back down on the sofa, tosses it into her mouth. Her expression slightly changes the moment she catches the flavor of the candy.

“What’s up?” Anon asks, noticing that change.

“The candy,” Nick replies. “It tastes like clay.”

“Clay?” The human repeats, a bit surprised, to what the baryonyx simply nods.

Anon looks around. Curtis is still upstairs, and Trent is busy lamenting the cheese candy that Nick had fed him. Silence permeates the room. Looking at her, he seizes the opportunity.

An ocean of light penetrates the baryonyx’s mind, caught in the second. A barrage of feeling makes its escapade, breaking bones down to yellow and crushing gums into blood. Her heart gives one last heavy beat before freezing into flourish at the microinstance, always and forever. Her eyes remain still, looking at the perpetrator.

It all lasts for just a second, but to them both it felt like hours.

“Hey, Anon,” Trent says, breaking the stillness. “Fetch me some water, please…”

“Do it yourself,” Anon says, standing up from the couch.

“Have some mercy! She fed me cheese!”

“Crybaby…” the human murmurs as he leaves.

Nick is lost. Her mind is turned off, her heart beats in the hollow of her chest, amplifying with each and every breath. The feeling lingers on her lips.

“Nick?” Trent shakes her back into reality.

“Ah- What?” Nick says, turning her face to him.

“What happened?” he asks. “You look lost.”

“It’s nothing…” she replies. “He just… stole my candy.”

“Really? What flavor was it?” Trent, oblivious, turns to the bag of candy, offering some more.

“No, I don’t want any more, thanks,” Nick says.

“Alright. More for me,” Trent places the bag back on the table.

Upstairs, Anon finds both Curtis, standing in the living room, and a bottle of cold mineral water for Trent in the fridge. The atrociraptor makes his approach as the human closes the fridge.

“What happened when I left?” Curtis asks.

“Nick tortured Trent for a moment,” Anon replies.

“Nothing out of ordinary.”

Anon stands still for a second in thought.

“Trent would be cool if I left my guitar at his place, right?” he asks.

“If he let me keep a whole drumkit down there, a guitar would be nothing to him,” Curtis says. “So yeah, he’s fine with that.”

“Alright. I think I’ll head home now.” He gives the water bottle to Curtis. “Pass it to him. He asked.”

“Sure thing. See you later then.”

“Yeah.”

Curtis leaves him be, heading back downstairs. Anon makes his escape, putting on his shoes and quickly leaving Trent’s house.

The apartment welcomes Anon with silence, gloom and emptiness. Anon takes off his shoes and immediately proceeds into the bathroom. Standing at the sink, he turns on the water and washes his face and hands. After, he wipes them dry. It was some sort of an attempt at trying to dissolute the thought inside his head, but it yielded null. He hangs the towel and turns back to the sink, facing the mirror.

It does taste like clay, – he thinks.

Chapter Text

February 29^th.

All of them forgot that 2020 is a leap year, and calendars showing this number threw all of them back. But as they came to understand it, to remember the concept of leap years, they realized something important – that this would be the very last winter day of 2020 before months and months of warmth. So, despite most of them being scalies and despite wishing for warmth to come sooner, they decide to bask in this coldness while they still can, before letting winter go.

A vast variety of different colorful and glossy book sprawls left and right in Anon’s vision, yet none feel appealing enough to even consider buying them. Nicole is standing nearby, and Trent with Stella found themselves in the other section. And he could hear them talking even from over here. It’s mainly the stegosaur’s voice, soaking in excitement and joy. Oh, dear God, this is making me cringe so hard... – Anon thinks. – Please, a bus, or a truck, or a mid-sized sedan, even a fucking vending machine would do...

Something tugs on his sleeve. He turns to see the baryonyx with a strange grin on her face.

“Anon, jeez, you’re mumbling,” Nick says, holding herself from laughing.

“I know, for fuck’s sake, I hope they feel some sort of shame!” Anon repeats, feeling offended.

Nicole just chuckles to that.

“Did you find anything?” Anon asks.

“Not really,” Nick replies, looking down at the few books she picked up. “Not what I really wanted, that is. You?”

“Nada. Nothing looks appealing over here.”

“Join Trent and Stella, they’re in the anime section. There could be something worth checking out.”

“No, thanks. If I see a manga I’d be wanting to read, I’ll first check out if it’s available online for free.”

“Nothing beats the real thing.” Nick turns around and starts going to the checkout.

“And besides,” Anon follows her, “I just can’t stand their constant hollering.”

“Understandable.”

Together, they make it to the reception, leaving the cheerful stegosaur and the triceratops behind.

It’s no secret that, just like her aquilops friend, the green weeb stegosaur is into cooking as well, but, unlike her aquliops friend, whose cooking is as good as a meal in a very expensive restaurant, her cooking is… at the very least passable. (At the very worst, it’s a threat to mankind as we know it.) But even with that in mind, the stegosaur doesn’t put her hands down, doesn’t stop trying over and over and over again, in hopes of succession.

But eventually, she grew tired of constant repeat and failure, and finally opted to ask out a few of her friends, one of which is Nick. Strangely enough, asking the stegosaur herself on why did she decide to ask the baryonyx of all people, if it’s clear that the undisputable queen of cooking is the aquilops, the stegosaur didn’t have a particular reason. So maybe it’s just that she needed different opinions from different people.

“Cupcakes…?” the baryonyx asks.

Stella, smiling, nods.

“Even though I’m not really good at cooking…” she says. “So, maybe, cooking something that would be liked by not just me and my parents… is quite a hard task, isn’t it?”

A bit taken aback by a throw of woes, splayed correctly on the nervous stegosaur’s face, Nicole just smiles.

“Why’s that? You think I was born with all the talents in the world, cooking included?” she asks. “No one gets their first try correctly. No one. And those who try to prove otherwise are nothing but liars.”

Stella’s blue eyes look at the baryonyx.

“Failed? Try again. Over and over again. Practice is king. Much like with songs. You play different tunes over and over again until you find the ones that make something that would be listened by the millions.”

The stegosaur smiles, nodding in agreement.

And try again she did. Over and over again, remembering that practice is king. But unlike songs, cooking is a different beast with different requirements of commitment and even sacrifice. And even after attempting over ten different times, she failed to cook a batch of just two simple cupcakes.

After this tenth try, she finally beat her fear of showing it to her friends, and brought it to Anon and Nick.

Both the human and the baryonyx look at the burned pair of cupcakes, unable to say a word for at least a minute. Stella cannot help herself but feel the immense dread and hollow guilt creeping over her spine. This is nothing like the all the anime titles she had watched.

“…That’s your best attempt?” Nick asks, just to be sure.

“Is this supposed to be cupcakes?” Anon asks.

Stella cannot answer, hoping with a hopeless smile across her face that they’d stop questioning her.

“Besides, why are you trying to hide this from Trent?” Nick asks.

“He’ll laugh, that’s why!” Stella replies, feeling offended.

“The hell he will! It’s not like you’re not trying your best for him.”

Suddenly, they hear the footsteps. Both Anon and Nick spot a familiar triceratops silhouette making its appearance. Stella doesn’t even need to look to know it’s him. Besides, she cannot look, frozen on the spot like a deer in the headlights.

“D-D-Don’t come any closer!!” Stella yells, trying to protect her failed cooking attempt.

Despite the warning, Trent notices the burnt cupcakes, and even takes one to have a closer look. And just like Anon and Nick, he too wonders if it truly is a cupcake or a piece of coal shaped like one.

“Give it back, please!” the stegosaur says, reaching her hand out to grab the cupcake back.

It’s in this moment Trent notices the bandaids around her fingers. And in the very next moment, shocking everyone in the room, he bites the cupcake.

“Fuckin’ hell, that’s bad…” he says, still eating the cupcake.

“Hey!!” Stella replies, standing up.

“Really, really bad.” Trent only adds, looking at the stegosaur and taking another bite.

Defeated, the stegosaur’s eyes look down. Her weeb heart feels the pang she’s a bit too familiar with.

“I know that myself…” she says.

Finished with the burnt cupcake, Trent turns to Stella.

“When you’re gonna cook the next batch?” he asks.

Stella looks up to see him smile.

“You’ll get it next time,” Nick says behind her.

“You’ll definitely cook something good,” Anon adds.

The onset of support surges through her veins, dispersing all the darkness plaguing the worried head and bringing forth nothing but a clear, honest smile across the pointy snoot of the stegosaur.

Eventually, as the evening closed in, and everything laid down to rest, Anon and Nick found themselves in her room, jamming along and trying to make something new. The sky outside is overcast, with a hint towards the rain pouring down onto the quiet and empty suburban streets. A beautiful moment to spend alone with a book in hands, but instead it’s spent together with guitars and tones to shake the air and the walls.

“I’ve been thinking more and more about something,” Anon says.

“About what?” Nick replies.

“About joining your band. Right now, I’m a bit more confident that I can join it, but… of course, I’m not as good as you or Trent are.”

“Well, we don’t have high requirements for joining, and the progress you made over a few weeks is already spectacular, so… why not? It’d also mean we’d have a different lineup.”

“What would that look like?”

“Me on the vocals, Trent on bass and you on guitars.”

“You’ll put your guitar down?”

“Not entirely. I’d still write some parts or play on stage, but… I believe in you and your abilities, Anon.”

“I…”

“Don’t even try to sell yourself short. I’ll murder you if you try.”

“Understood…”

Eventually, they decide to put the guitars away. Anon takes his and Nick’s guitars and puts them into the closet, when he suddenly notices some sort of a book hiding in the shadow. Curiosity takes over, and he brings it out into the light. The book turned out to be Nick’s middle school photo album.

“Oh, that’s my middle school grad album,” the baryonyx says. “Can’t ever find a place for it.”

Anon looks at the slick cover, painted baby-blue. How did she look like when she was in middle school? – he thinks.

“You dare to open it, you better have a grave,” Nick says.

The warning chills his curiosity like hot metal lowered into oil. He turns his face to the baryonyx, patiently looking at him, then back to the album.

“I regret nothing,” Anon says, swinging the album wide open.

Just as Nick warned him, she got down to him and playfully locked his head in, lightly jabbing him in the ribs. Even through discomfort, Anon persisted with examining the photos.

“There’s nothing- ow- wrong with you in them. Ow.” Anon says through the jabs. “You’re just- ow!- You’re just cute!”

That earned him one big jab of embarrassment in between the ribs before Nicole lets him go. Anon puts the album back into its place.

“Sometimes I think about throwing it out,” she says, “but I can’t.”

“I didn’t have problems with that,” Anon says.

Nick turns her eyes to him. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“What I mean is,” Anon turns his eyes to her, “all the grad albums I had, I threw them away. There were a lot of things I just… wanted to get rid of.”

“I see…” Nick thoughtfully says. I would never know how he was in the middle school until he himself tells me about it, – she thinks, – but I feel it with my heart that he always was the one swimming against the tide. But now he has changed, and now he slightly regrets shoving all the memories he had into the trashcan.

Nick and Anon make their way back onto the bed.

“I wonder how our graduation album would look like,” Anon says.

“You’ll find out when you’ll get yours,” Nick replies.

“It’s months before that happens, though…”

“Be patient.”

Anon sighs.

Suddenly, they hear something knock on the window. Once, twice, thrice, – and came the rain. The sound of it hitting the glass is soothing to say the least. They both look out, seeing the image distort under water pouring down.

“Guess I’m staying here for the time being,” Anon says.

“Yeah…” Nick replies, thoughtful.

Her eyes turn to the human, busy watching the rain. We’re quite similar, – she thinks. – I like you the way you are. The way you sometimes get weirded out on certain things. The way you constantly curse. The way you play the guitar. The way your hands wrap around me. The way your slim body presses against me. How soft your skin is. How warm your breath is. How soothing your voice is. And also…

“Anon,” she quietly says.

The human turns his attention to her. A pair of metallic eyes look from behind the big round glasses. They look without saying a word, they look like they have already said everything. A few seconds pass, when suddenly she presses against him. Her ear carefully listens to the slow heartbeat.

“What’s up?” Anon asks, quietly, as to not disturb the silence around them.

“Listening to your heart,” Nick replies.

She leans out so that Anon could lean in and listen to her heart as well.

“And what did it tell you?” Anon asks.

“How lonely it was until now,” smiling, Nick replies.

The hours pass, the winter begins to retreat as spring enters the domain, spreading its sprung dominion on everything and everybody. The world feels the change, but they do not. Amidst seasons askew, shedding old skin, they remain still in the room, feeling the chilly air caress them both, doing their best to warm themselves up.

“Jeez, your ears are freezing cold, Anon.”

“You say that, Miss Icy-Fingertips.”

She just smiles. Submerged into intoxicated bliss, they look at each other for minutes on end. The rain continues pouring down, singing a lullaby dedicated to them and them only. She’s so beautiful. He’s so beautiful.

They are so beautiful.

The moment is taken in slowly, saved into a silvery negative in their minds. They share a tired smile.

“It’s raining hard today.” Her tail wraps around his back. “And you are not going anywhere.”

“Like I ever wanted to leave you.”

There’s this certain warmth within me, – she thinks, as he leans in. – I want him to feel it. All of it.

Chapter Text

March 1^st.

The dawn breaks. Spring has sprung into action, hanging in the post-winter cold and in the mist of preparation. Sun beams on the clear sky, pouring warm light into the rooms as perfectly shaped rectangles, filtered through the clearness of the window.

Anon stirs from the sleep, slowly opening his eyes. He feels something weird on his hands and his back. And the first thing he sees is not the desolation of his Skin Row apartment, not the ever-present cold of loneliness puddled beneath the ceiling like a hanged man. The first thing he sees is Nick. Anon shifts a bit to look at her.

The baby-blue baryonyx sleeps calmly, like a child. The few beams of light reflected off the air make her cold scales shine. Looking at her, Anon proves to himself that life was always nothing less than a field of blooming flowers, and he thanks her, a girl forever reluctant to be and to stay sad, for showing it to him once more. Something that was just dreams always persisted throughout his life, and he simply ignored it because he believed it was nothing but that. But it isn’t. It’s life. One way of looking at it, that is.

At that moment, he also finds out what that weird feeling on his hands and back is. It’s just scales. They hugged into the night, tired of calming the mutual physical desire for one another. Anon looks down her slim body, realizing just how much of a lucky bastard he is. What were the odds for all of this to happen? How likely it was for her to fall off that ladder in the library on the day he arrived? Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of zeroes before the one.

Anon looks around the room, trying to spot his phone. He wants to know what time it is. Maybe it’s about time he stirs her from sleep as well. But just as he spots it, his brain immediately remembers what day it is. Today is Sunday, which means no one has to go nowhere and nowhen. Today is a good day to remain still in bed and sleep. And so Anon rests his head back on the pillow.

The noises, movement, and shifting feeling finally pushed the baryonyx out of sleep. Noticing her coming to wake, Anon feels his heart flourishing. Seeing her wake up, her messed up hair, and her scales shine… It’s something him and only him is destined to see.

Nick takes a second to recognize the man in her bed. For a short moment, she thinks it’s a stranger, but her mind quickly corrects the image. It’s Anon. Even if he’s a slightly blurry mess, he can still recognize the human. Not just by what she sees, but by what she feels too – the warmth of his soft skin does not go unnoticed.

“Morning…” she says quietly.

“Morning,” he replies.

“Were you watching me sleep?”

“A small bit. Couldn’t hold myself from how cute you were.”

She smiles, unable to oppose him.

“What day is it?” she asks, looking outwards, around the room.

“Sunday. March 1 st … I think.”

“Sunday…” She turns back to him – first her eyes, then her whole body. “Let’s stay in the bed for a bit longer.”

“Sure thing.”

Her hands pull him into an embrace, her tail secures him in place by wrapping itself around his leg. His hand hold the fragile figure dearly, praising the worth of her porcelain skin. Their soft breaths caress one another. They stay like this for a few minutes, but it must have felt like hours to both. From the outside perspective, it could be a scene out of an arthouse movie. What missing is a soft soundtrack.

Nicole is the first one to get out of bed, followed by Anon. They find their clothing neatly stacked on the chair, pick out what belongs to who and get dressed. She doesn’t ask him to leave the room so that she’d dress up. There’s nothing shameful in that, and besides – what is it he did not see already? As she puts on her clothes, she looks at him, at how he covers the contours of his skinny body with his usual worn clothing.

“How long have you worn that?” she asks, checking her glasses out in the light for any smudges.

“As long as I can remember myself. I’m in no need of fancy clothing.”

“I see. But maybe you should treat yourself from time to time. Or at least buy something similar to what you wear.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t really care.”

“I wouldn’t find myself wearing the same clothes all the time. Maybe for a few days. But I always change them from time to time.”

“Isn’t that a requirement for women?”

“Who knows?”

“I mean… you? You are a woman?”

“Ah, sorry. Brain isn’t braining.”

“Yeah, right.” Anon chuckles. That nearly earns him a jab.

After checking out their pockets, they leave the room together. They descend the stairs and step into the living room. Nova isn’t present in the kitchen. While Anon goes to the bathroom, Nick walks into the kitchen. She notices a note on the fridge door. It says something along the lines of “They called me in very early due to some serious issue, sorry.” Even today, you’re working like a bee, – she thinks. – When will you give yourself some breathing room?

“Where’s Nova?” Anon asks.

“At work,” Nick replies. “The note here says she got called in.”

“When? At six in the morning?”

“Could be. Sanitation is important, after all.”

“Wait, what? Your mother works in sanitation?”

“Yup.” Nick sighs. “Should’ve told you this sooner.”

“I wouldn’t say she works in sanitation.”

“Believe me, no one would. But she does. Figure that out on your own.”

Anon sits down at the dining table. This place is riddled with mystery, – he thinks. – It’s like a hydra. Solve one mystery, and two more appear.

In a few minutes, Nick makes themselves some breakfast. It was something simple and satiating to start the day on a good note, as if it didn’t start on one already.

“So…” Anon says in the middle of the mealtime. “What’s the plan for today?”

“I don’t have any. You?”

“Same. We could just… do whatever.”

“As in cuddling?”

“Yeah. One of the options on the table.”

She hums in thinking.

“Maybe we could spend this morning here,” she then says. “Then we could spend some time outside after lunch. And, in the evening, visit Trent for another rehearsal.”

“You barely look different from your mother with how much you rehearse.”

“There’s no limit for improvement,” she replies, slightly pouting as if offended.

“I never said it was a bad thing,” he quickly retorts. “It shows how involved you are.”

“Maybe…” she simply sighs.

In another couple of minutes, they get breakfast out of their way and move themselves to the sofa chair. Nick turns the TV on, finds something to watch, something soft and soothing, perfect for this morning. Their hands immediately lock fingers with one another on their own. They focus on the movie, but their minds are far away, in a different place, that feels like an endless field of flowers, shining baby-blue – just like her.

Anon never thought he’d end up here. He only hoped that the universe would finally grow tired of torturing him and would let him pass through the very last semester of high school unnoticed. But that never happened. More so, the very first day kickstarted off something that frightened him by a metric ton. Something that he thought will push him out of his comfort zone. And push him out of his bubble it did.

He’s grateful for it more than anyone, even past himself, would think. He’s grateful that the universe, in its constant mockery and laughter, through that one final joke, opened his eyes to something greater than anything he had seen before. Nick helped him to defeat that isolationist part of himself, made the last months of school finally worth the time spent in school, and, lastly, became a part of his life now. Not just the current moment, but maybe even the nearest, or, perhaps, the farthest future.

The moment is savored and saved like a picture in his brain as he returns back from his thoughts.

Just as Nick said, after lunch they had left the house to wander around the town for a small bit. No goal set in mind, no destination to reach – only walking the streets, enjoying each other’s company as much as it was humanly possible.

The first day of spring had already made clear that it’d only get warmer from now on. The sun shines through, passing near the empty trees. Soon, people would ditch their warm clothes, the streets would flood with emerald leaves, and the days would last longer. Days like these make one finally understand why it is great to be alive.

“Hey, Anon,” Nick says as they pass through the streets.

“What?” Anon looks at her.

“Remember Curtis saying that we’re ready to perform?”

“Yeah, what about that?”

“I think we really are.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. That’s why I thought about giving our first performance this month.”

“Really now?”

“Yup.” Nick’s lips curl into a smile.

“That’s great. Where and when you’ll perform?”

“First, I’ll talk to our bandmates about ‘when,’ but ‘where’… I think I know where.”

She grabs his hand and pushes onward. A sudden change of pace catches Anon off-guard, but he quickly gets up to it, jogging with her. There’s no denial both of them are excited. Nick would finally play her songs after years of absence, and Anon would see how the band performs. And who knows? Maybe he’ll perform right beside them. It’s not like that didn’t become one of his goals the moment he received that guitar.

In about a few minutes, they reach their destination, “Lava Java.” Now basking in very early spring sunlight, it looks strangely better now that it isn’t confined by winter. He remembers how she fell asleep on their tour. He still has that photo, and, since he remembered about it, maybe he should put it as his wallpaper, just to see her reaction to it. Maybe she’ll jab him, or take a pic of him to put onto her wallpaper, as if they’re in some sort of a competition.

Without further ado, they enter the community hangout. First things first, Nick’s eyes shift towards the scene. She quickly examines it, imagining who would stand where on it. Anon, in the meantime, pays attention to the tables. Most, if not all, are taken. Some just discuss certain things, and some are playing tabletop games. It’s called a community hangout for a reason.

“I’ll go chat with the owner,” says Nick, letting go of the human’s hand.

“I’ll wait here then,” Anon replies.

Smiling at him for a second, she leaves him behind, quickly entering the backrooms. In the meantime, Anon sits down at the bar counter – and that’s when he meets the familiar face of a green stegosaur.

“Oh, hey, Anon!” says Stella ever so happily. “Didn’t expect to meet you here!”

“Likewise,” Anon replies.

The stegosaur asks him what he’d like on such a day; the human makes his order. A cup of coffee never hurt no one.

“Say,” Stella says, leaning onto the counter, “you’re alone?”

“Nope, I’m with Nick. She’s just a bit busy at the moment, talking to the owner.”

“Is that so? Could you ask her if I could… you know… be at the rehearsal?”

“Ask her yourself.”

“Please, Anon!” Stella puts her hands together pleadingly while Anon sips some coffee. “I-I’m too scared to ask her directly…”

“And what exactly makes you so scared?”

The stegosaur didn’t have an answer for that, and Anon heard only a sound of uncertainty. He finishes his coffee.

“Riddle me this,” he says, returning Stella’s attention to him. “You and Trent are dating, right?”

Stella blushes a bit at the sheer thought.

“Y-Y-You c-could say t-that…” she replies.

“You were at his house a few times, right?”

“Y-Yeah…” she nods.

“And he’s cool with you being around?”

“Of course!”

“Then why do you think you are not allowed to see the rehearsals? Why do you need to ask for permission like it’s a closed club or something?”

Stella looks at him, slightly dumbfounded due to her own spur of stupidity, and then simply nods.

“But I guess it’s better to be overprepared than underprepared, right?” Anon sighs.

“Guess so…” Stella replies.

Finally, Nick makes her return. Seeing her, the stegosaur picks herself up, smiling vibrantly as usual. The baryonyx greets her, then takes Anon outside.

“So?” he asks.

“Three weeks,” Nick replies.

“Three weeks before the first ever concert?”

“Yup.”

“We better get to it then.”

“I think so too. Let’s go.”

And so, they start walking to Trent’s place.

When they arrived at Trent’s house, the clocks showed around 1 PM. By the time they took their third break, it was already somewhere around 4 PM. They did not take a lot of time on preparations, quite the opposite – the moment they got together, they plugged their instruments in and took off in less than a minute.

The first part of their extensive session was all about trying to make new songs. None of them would say they were really successful, but at least they managed to make at least some ideas work. During the break right after, Stella had shyly made her way downstairs, and despite being reassured by the human, she still couldn’t feel at ease while watching the band play.

The second part was about rehearsing and improving what they had already created. They had enough material for an album, and Trent was ready to actually make it happen, but Nick never really told him to start the process. At that point, Anon was already invested in the process of creating music, actively taking part in playing the songs.

And he enjoyed it with every part of his organism. “Swamp Babies” had freed themselves from the shackles of progressive metal, of odd time signatures and mind-bending rhythms, of difficult tapping sessions and drum parts that makes one’s hands explode. They took the road of simplicity, and that made their songs better.

Instead of cold polyrhythms, algorithmic sweeps, and mathematically correct drums, they chose sweet tones, simple blast beats, and echo effects. They left the programmed pragmatism behind and stepped into the zone of feeling and emotion, creating a new mix of beautifully melancholic tunes. And just from listening to all the skits they had created, Anon felt his heart flourishing in a way he had never felt before.

Then came the second break. Stella had excused herself a few minutes prior, leaving just the band in the basement studio. Resting on the couch, the baryonyx prepares herself to tell them about the upcoming concert. It’s just a few words that somehow carry so much weight behind them that Nick cannot actually push herself up to tell them. Her own strength isn’t enough to make her speak.

She looks at the human, and the human looks back at her in the next moment. She nods towards Trent. Anon looks at the busy triceratops, trying to figure out what she’s trying to tell him. It kicks in rather soon; he turns to the baryonyx and nods. That confirmation was enough of a boost for her to finally break the silence.

“I talked with the owner of Lava Java today,” she says.

Trent and Curtis break away from their devices, shifting their attention to Nick.

“And?” the triceratops asks.

“We have three weeks before our first concert.”

The atmosphere changes sharply, like fingers snapping. Everyone looks at each other, surprised beyond any vocal indication. No one dares to say a word for at least a minute, which feels more like ten minutes. The first to break the quietness is Trent.

“Well, that’s… some good news. Good to know we got a venue without really trying. And we have quite a bit of time to prepare, considering we rehearse daily.”

“Yeah,” Nick simply agrees, then turns to the atrociraptor behind the drums. “Curtis?”

Curtis, in question, opens his mouth with a click, pointing upwards with the drumsticks he holds in his hand.

“I have all but one condition,” he says, playing posh.

“And… what would that be?” Trent asks.

Curtis slowly points at Anon.

“I want him to play with us.”

And now everyone is looking at the human. The sheer pressure of three pairs of eyes looking at him and Curtis’s “condition” ringing in the air makes him sweat like a sinner in a church.

“That’s your condition?” Trent asks, sounding unsurprised. “Really?”

“Hell yeah it is!” Curtis replies excitedly. “The guy’s so good at the guitar; it’d be a waste for him to just stand with the crowd!”

“I think you overestimate my skill…” Anon mumbles, knowing that here and now, he doesn’t have a say in this argument despite it revolving around him.

“I mean…” Trent looks at the human again. “Curtis’s right. You got the guitar just a few weeks ago? And you’re quite decent at it. That’d be a good test of your skills, homie.”

“You don’t need to agree, Anon,” Nick says, comforting him.

“Don’t claim him for yourself, Nick!” Curtis says.

“I do not!” Nick replies, frowning at the atrociraptor. “He’s not good enough to be on a stage yet!”

“Then how about you teach him that?” Trent asks.

Nick turns to the triceratops, both in disbelief that he blindly supports Curtis’s ideas and in surprise due to such a sudden idea.

“He already knows enough,” Nick replies.

“You are just lazy!” Curtis says.

“You say that?!” Nick roars at him.

“I agree with Nick this time,” Trent replies. “She cannot teach him more than he already knows.”

“Stop ping-ponging your damn opinions, Trent!” Nick snaps. “You guys are driving me nuts!”

That only made Curtis and Trent laugh for a bit. Anon, amid this conflict, felt something akin to an existential crisis.

Soon enough, like a saving grace, Stella returns to the studio, and, like soldiers changing shifts, Nick and Anon promptly excuse themselves, much to Curtis’s jabbing remark. The human and the baryonyx make their way back upstairs, onto the ground floor, then make their way to the front door, put their shoes on, and leave the house.

The clocks show only about 5 PM, but it’s still as dark as the middle of the winter. It’d take a while before the sky would burn in red and orange during this hour. Anon and Nick make their way down the stairs onto the street. Before leaving, Anon turns his gaze back to the house, seeing how gigantic it is. He visited this place for about two months at this point, and yet his poverty-driven mind barely comprehends how people live like that.

“Spotted something?” Nick asks.

“Nope,” Anon replies, turning his eyes to her. “Just thought about something.”

“About how filthy rich Trent’s family is?” The baryonyx looks at the house too, then sighs. “He’s richer than me, you, Curtis, and Stella combined.”

“You wouldn’t see me living in a mansion like this. For two reasons. One, I would get lost. And two, I’m poor as shit.”

“But I guess we have a certain advantage over people like him, don’t you think?” Nick smiles at the human.

“What would that be?” Anon looks at her again.

“We don’t wish for things like these. We’re more… grounded.”

“Guess so.”

With that out of the way, they proceed down the street. Their hands brushed against one another, but that seemed enough for them both.

“Just so you know,” Nick says, “I’m a really lousy teacher. That is to say, I’ve never taught anyone.”

“I thought someone like you would be a tutor,” Anon replies.

“Tutoring is one thing! It revolves around Math, English, Science, and other nonsense! Guitars are… just a different world, okay?”

“Okay, okay, I get you. Still, if you ask me, it doesn’t really matter.”

“What doesn’t?”

“I don’t care about how you teach me things. I care if you are my teacher.”

“Oh… The old ‘it’s not about what you do, it’s about with whom you do it,’ right?”

“Yup.”

Nick feels a blush crossing her cheeks right when some light, chilly wind hits her in the face. Frowning in embarrassment, she forcefully grabs Anon’s hand, holding it tight.

“Dork,” she says.

Anon smiles. That’s exactly the kind of reaction he expected.

Chapter Text

It all started with a smack on the head.

Anon and Nick were just hanging around at the baryonyx’s place. Her mother was busy on the job, so they wouldn’t be bothered for quite a while. And the best way of spending that time together was, of course, playing music.

Nick was right when she said that she wouldn’t be able to teach him anything new. That’s because she didn’t know any extraordinary techniques. Even her meticulous tapping, which can be heard on the past Swamp Babies records, is nothing new. It only sounds like that because of the speed, but in reality, it’s pretty tedious. And that’s one of many reasons she and Trent had chosen simplicity.

About an hour had passed since they sat down playing the guitars. The whole house echoes with excited vibrations. The feedback loops inside their ears, united with tinnitus. They didn’t manage to create anything new, but it wasn’t their goal in the first place. They only care about the company they offer to one another, as they drown the air around them with repeating walls of noise.

Eventually, though, Nick had put her guitar away and moved herself to the shelves. Anon notices her fingernails are painted baby blue now.

“I thought you weren’t the one to wear any sort of makeup,” Anon comments.

“What do you mean?” Nick looks at him.

“Your fingernails.”

She looks down at her hand. “I mean,” she says, “they always were baby-blue. I just found some nail polish that matched the tone of my scales. So I have to say,” she smiles at the human, “you’re quite observant.”

“Ever thought about buying those colored eye lenses? Since your eyes are gray, but the rest of you is blue?”

“I thought about it some time ago, but never really bothered. Besides, what’s the point in having them? I’ll get my whole body baby blue, sure, then what?”

“Fair point.”

Anon stands up. Nick’s still busy checking out her shelves, as if trying to find something she hasn’t shown him yet. Her tail is slowly swinging to and fro.

And that’s the moment when he feels that urge. Fuck… – he thinks. – Why did I…? She’ll definitely get mad at me… But I want to do it so badly…!

“Anon, you’re there?” Nick asks.

I regret nothing, – he thinks, and then smacks her on the top of her head with his hand.

The room drowns in silence. Anon looks at the bewildered baryonyx with increasing levels of regret. The concussed standoff lasts for over five seconds.

“Fuckin’… Level up…” Anon says, pushing the words out of his throat.

The baryonyx only emits a strange sound of uncertainty. The human snaps his fingers, bringing her back to her senses.

“You alright? No brain damage?” Anon asks.

“Y-Yeah…” Nick then slightly pouts, frowning at the human. “What was that for?”

“I’m sorry, I just needed a segway for a question.”

“What question?”

“I always see you bickering with your bandmates, your school friends and such, but you’re always sunshine and rainbows with me. So I gotta ask, are you putting a mask up for me or something?”

“No, not in the slightest!” Nick says, hands up and shaking a bit. “This ‘nice me’ is the ‘true me.’ It’s just them being really annoying.”

“I see…”

“And I want to ask you the same thing, Anon. Are you straining yourself to be nice to me?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay.”

“What, you want me to be angry at you or something?”

“No, not at-”

Nick’s expression shifts to the one full of ponder. She imagines the angry Anon, constantly yelling at her, smacking her in the face… For anyone with common sense, all of these pictures are just a leeway for a court case. But for Nick…

“That’s hot…” she says to herself.

“What?!”

Unbeknownst to himself, Anon had unlocked the part of Nick he wishes he would’ve never unlocked.

A part of Anon hoped that this would be just a one-time gimmick that just happened. He wouldn’t believe that Nick considered angry him “hot” – No way in Hell. Safe to say, the next day had even that last portion of hope he didn’t know he had.

The morning routine passes uneventfully, and soon, Anon and Nick make their way outside, walking to the school. Their pace is rather quick compared to usual, and the human had made quite a significant distance from the baryonyx, who keeps pestering him about one thing and one thing only.

“Come on, Anon… With an open hand!”

“Fuck no!”

“Why?! Come on, like the last time!”

“I said ‘fuck no’!”

“Please, Nonny!” She finally catches up with him, smiling vibrantly. “Just this once!”

She asks me to hit her in the face with a smile?! – Anon thinks.

“…She said ‘please,’ Anon…” The human hears behind himself. A wave of chills runs down his spine, as he snaps to the figure behind him.

It’s Trent, of all people…

“Where the fuck you spawned from?!” Anon asks, frightened.

“From… that-a-way,” Trent replies, pointing down the street. “I was watching you from afar, and just couldn’t handle you ignoring Nick like that!”

A geek and a stalker, what else is new… – Anon sighs. “You don’t know what’s going on, so keep your snoot out of it,” he says.

“As if I can’t guess what’s going on,” Trent smiles smugly. “Something… vulgar?”

“You couldn’t be any further from the truth!”

Then, they both hear a sob. They turn their heads only to see the baryonyx with an expression that makes their hearts bleed.

“What’s wrong, Anon…?” she says, as if on the verge of tears. “Already fallen out of love with me…?”

“What makes you think that?!” Anon replies quickly. His brain barely manages to handle the degree of absurdity.

“Oy vey…” Trent sighs. “Poor, poor Nicole…”

“Shut the fuck up, will you?!” the human snaps.

“Just so you know,” Trent says to the baryonyx, “I’m always here to support you. I’ll do anything. Or am I not good enough?”

“Yeah,” Nick suddenly replies with a plain face. “No point in asking you about that.”

“I knew it! Plain as day!” Trent says to the human. “It’s something erotic!”

“Did someone blow your brains out or something?!” Anon responds.

Any more of this bullshit, and my brain will explode… – the human sighs, then turns to the baryonyx.

“Let’s go. School’s waiting for us,” he says.

A full second passes.

“…Louder,” she replies, her head turned aside.

In the name of all that’s good and holy… – Anon thinks, unable to handle anything anymore. He gives up, grabs her by the wrist and yanks her forward with himself.

“Let’s go now!” he says, distancing away from the bewildered triceratrops. “We’ll see you later, Trent! And it’s nothing perverse, you hear?!”

“Ah… Yeah…” Trent replies, uncertain. He can’t move a single inch. What in the goddamn… – he thinks.

“Can we hit the shop on our way, Anon?” Nick asks excitedly.

“To hell with you, fine!” Anon replies in a stern voice.

The nightmare continues as they finally make their way to the school and sit through a few classes. At one point, during the break, Anon and one of his classmates pass through the hallways after the human had finally managed to find his phone in one of the classrooms.

The hallways are lively as usual, and, strangely enough, Anon finds comfort in this ruckus. Maybe it’s because Nick isn’t anywhere around to pester him.

Speaking of Nick.

“Oh, there you are!” the baryonyx says, spotting him approaching.

Anon sighs internally. There is no God, otherwise he’d save the poor human boy from this.

“Did you find your phone?” she asks.

“How do you know about that?” he asks back.

“One of my pals told me. You always leave something somewhere.” She smiles. “Aren’t you clum…”

Anon grabs her by the shoulder, cutting her short. Frowning like a maniac, he looks into her steel eyes.

“You shut the fuck up,” he says, low and slow, “or I’m tearing that long tongue out of your mouth.”

The shock hits the involuntary spectator like a hammer. The last thing he expected to see in his life is Nick getting her bones smashed by Anon. In the meantime, the human just pushes the poor baryonyx aside.

“Dismissed,” he says, before continuing his walk.

The classmate, following Anon, looks at Nick with worry, but then catches up with the human, leaving her alone. What he didn’t see is an expression of utter bliss that crossed the baryonyx’s face, that would rise even more questions than anything he had seen in the past few seconds.

After they make a turn, the classmate stops.

“I gotta ask, man…” he says. Anon turns to him. “You just… tossed aside the top of the school… The one girl who gets everyone frothing at their mouth, and you just pushed her…”

“Let me ask you this,” Anon replies. “Would you be able to… punch her in the face?”

“Punch her?! Like, in a fight or something?”

“You could say that.”

“Uh… No. I wouldn’t dare to hit a girl in the face.”

“How about yelling? Would you be able to yell at her?”

“Still no. That’s just too much…”

“Then you are not a match for her. Same goes to the all of those guys.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. If you ask me, being with someone like her’d take a certain dedication.”

“I see…”

With that, they continue onward to their next class.

After lunch, Nick got tasked by one of the StuCo members to move some documents. A simple task, if not for the sheer amount of them. So, like any good boyfriend would do, Anon volunteered to help.

Safe to say, it wasn’t the smartest of his decisions. Now he has to constantly think about that blooming blissful expression on Nick’s face, understanding what is the exact reason for it to be like that. One thing he didn’t expect from someone like her is to enjoy being tossed around like a bag of potatoes. And he’s too scared to know why.

They make it to the empty science class. Not even the fossil of a teacher is there.

“Guess we have to wait for him now,” Nick says, sighing, as she puts the stack of papers down.

“Yup…” Anon replies, putting his stack of papers down as well.

They sit down onto the edge of the teacher’s desk. All the noise coming in from the hallway is muffled behind a closed door. The only sounds both of them hear is their own soft breathing.

Wait a sec, – Anon thinks. – Isn’t this the perfect moment for me to act? – He looks at the baryonyx. – If only I knew how hard I need to push for her to be happy… No, wait, why the fuck am I thinking about this in the first place? I shouldn’t do this. But that basically means I’m not making her happy… Damn you, Nick… You lovely terrifyer…

“Oh!” Nick says. “I just remembered somethi-”

Of course, she isn’t allowed to finish.

In this very second, a pair of students open the door into the class, only to see what appears to be a couple in conflict. The girl is pushed against the wall, and her boyfriend is yelling at her.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?! Stop acting like we’re all buddy-buddy all of a sudden, because we are fucking not! So keep your damn mouth shut, you fucking blockhead!”

The horror stiffens the muscles in the involuntary visitors. Something that should’ve been just a simple rendezvous with the science teacher had now turned into something that they will not forget. And just when they both thought it wouldn’t get worse, they notice the glance .

He looks at them with all the fury and hatred. The singular eye looking at them is enough to freeze any biological activity within their bodies. It’s scary enough to forget how to breathe.

A singular second passes by before the students run away, screaming for their own lives. Anon turns his face back to the baryonyx.

“I swear to all that’s good and holy, this is the last time I ever do this to you…” he says before looking at her.

She’s smiling. She’s in bliss. She got what she wanted. You know, – Anon thinks, – the more this happens, the more I want to ask about your past. Because I really want to know what happened to you in your childhood. But I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle the answer I shall receive.   

After school, Anon and Nick visit the nearby grocery store. To be more precise, Nick pays a visit while Anon is standing outside waiting for her. While patiently waiting, he notices a few guys standing near the trashcans. A trio of dinos, who look like average wannabe-thugs – all style and no substance, all words and no power. The best they could do is trashtalk.

“Oi, mate… I wanna drink, too!” says one of them, squatting. “Leave some!”

“Go buy your own, you cunt,” the drinker replies.

“What’s the matter with you, mate? Something happened?” the squatter asks.

“Fuck off,” the drinker says.

Finally, Nick makes her appearance. The automatic doors move as if presenting her.

“Stop hanging around the shop for once,” Nick comments.

The trio looks at her. The drinker and the spectator, who was overseeing the convo all the time without saying a word, stutter, seeing her.

“What did you say now?” the squatter stands up. “You think you’re so tough, huh?”

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?!” the drinker and the spectator snap at the squatter.

“What kind of bug had bitten you two, now?!” the squatter replies.

In a matter of a few seconds, the drinker and the spectator set up a scene. The spectator holds a big plastic bag, the drinker holds an empty cigarette pack in metallic tongs.

“We’re not hanging around!” says the drinker, scared for his life. “We’re collecting trash, you see!”

“Yeah, yeah!” the spectator adds, nodding. “Earth’s our home and all!”

“Is that so?” Nick says. “Alright. Good job.”

With that, she moves on, making her way to the human waiting for her. The drinker and the spectator sigh in relief.

“Dodged that one…” the drinker says.

“If we didn’t pass that charisma check,” the spectator adds, “we would’ve been turned into a smoothie.”

“I don’t get it, guys,” the squatter says, turning his face to his pals. “Is she some sort of a monster?”

“Wait… Who’s that guy?” the drinker asks, pointing out the human.

“Gotta be her boyfriend,” the spectator says.

In the meantime, the baryonyx makes her way to the human. “I bought everything!” she says, happily.

“He should put a leash on her or something…” the drinker comments. “Why is she so damn evil?”

And just when he says that, they see the human slapping the baryonyx across her face.

“What the fuck took you so long, you slowpoke?” the human says. He then grabs her by the wrist and starts walking back home. “Move your ass.”

“I’m sorry…” Nick replies.

That sight answers why they barely made it out alive during the most recent standoff with her and her boyfriend.

“Because he’s as evil as her!” the trio announces. “Jesus…”

Chapter Text

March 21^st.

Recently, Anon had caught himself staying at Nick’s more often than at his own home. Nothing really bothered him when he stayed, not even the absence of his computer (and the baryonyx’s laptop is hardly a substitute, but it can do the bare minimum for a shitposter like the human). And for the past week, he was trying to figure out what exactly made him stay.

It definitely isn’t an abuse of Nick’s family hospitality – it could only be true if they still considered him a frequent guest, which, at this point, couldn’t get any further from the truth. He’s not a guest to them anymore. He’s a part of them. And it couldn’t be just because of the company they both provide, from the morning and into the night. That reason sounds too simple to be true.

In the end, as Anon had spent about fifteen minutes mulling over what drove him to ditch his own apartment and sleep at his girlfriend’s place, he eventually came to a certain conclusion that, at least for now, had put a dot into his thinking process – it just happened. Not everything is supposed to have a reason; some things just happen, take it or leave it.

All of this rewinding of memory lane happened in those five minutes when the loneliest men remained in the bed, looking at the ceiling and thinking about why they are like this, the way they are. The ceiling isn’t the one like in Nick’s room, or in Nova’s room (that option was once brought to the table, but never spoken about ever again).

He’s in the living room. The sofa chair is a temporary respite for when he stays up into the night. It would’ve been great if he would stay in Nick’s room all the time, but he doesn’t want to push his luck. Video game logic – the more something doesn’t happen, the bigger the chance it soon will. He wants her to ask him, but considering he didn’t get anything of the sort over a couple of weeks, she must be busy fighting her own pride. And so they stand in a stalemate against each other and themselves.

The sun pours into the windows, warming his feet that sink into the carpet flooring. Pulling himself out, he checks the time. 7:02 AM. A bit early for him, but he doesn’t feel tired, wanting to sleep a bit more. His body creaks like an old door, and he pushes himself up. No one would ever get used to sleeping while sitting.

“Oh, someone’s already awake,” he then hears.

At the doorway into the corridor that leads to Nick’s and Nova’s rooms, stands the younger baryonyx. She rubs her steel-colored eyes a bit before putting her glasses back on.

“Yeah…” Anon says, before stretching out a bit.

One after another, they wash their faces in the bathroom and get to making breakfast in the kitchen. They don’t spend much time working on it, especially when it’s a collective effort, and in about a few minutes they sit down at the dining table.

“So…” Anon starts. “Today’s the concert day, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Nick replies, then bites her sandwich.

“Scared?”

She looks at him for a moment, before reluctantly nodding. Swallowing the bite, she puts her hands down onto the table.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the stage,” she says. “Hell, I don’t remember the last time I was on it. More so, I don’t remember if we have ever been on the stage.”

“You can always check for concert recordings, there ought to be at least one.”

“Maybe… But still. I feel like I… forgot how it is.”

“Well, duh, it’s been half a year; of course you’ll forget it.”

“No!” She looks at him. “It’s like riding a bicycle. The skill writes itself into every nook and cranny of your body, so that even on your deathbed you’d be able to ride a bicycle.”

“Is that so?”

“…At least I think it’s like that. I wouldn’t ever know for real until I got onto the scene.”

“Hey,” Anon reaches in and grabs her hand. “All of us will be there for you. Curtis, Trent, and me.”

“I know.” Her lips curl into a smile.

“So if we are going to fail,” the human smirks, “then we’ll all fail together.”

“Hey now, don’t jinx it.”

Anon lets go of her hand and takes another bite out of his meal. Just like always, it tastes amazing, even when it was made by a dipshit like him. And he knows exactly why – those two loving steel eyes gazing at him from time to time behind glinting glasses are the culprit.

“What about you, Anon?” she asks. “Feeling nervous?”

“A slight bit, yeah.”

“Just a slight bit?”

“I know you’ll be doing most of the job.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make you do a lengthy improv solo.”

Anon chuckles. “But yeah,” he says, “I’m confident it’ll go the way we want.”

“Actually,” Nick fixes her glasses, “consider this your exam, since you were my apprentice for some time.”

“It’ll be your test of skill too. And so for the rest of the guys.”

“Well, now you’ve just ruined it.”

“That’s me.”

They wrap up their breakfast and quickly wash the dishes together.

“So… what now?” Anon asks.

“I was told we should arrive around… 5 PM or so,” Nick says. “For all the sound checks and all that. So we could… walk around the city for a while, visit a few places, then head to Trent’s for a rehearsal.”

Anon looks at her, but doesn’t say anything, letting a couple of seconds pass in silence.

“What?” she asks.

“You had that plan in your head all the time, didn’t you?” Anon smiles smugly.

“No,” Nick pouts a bit. “Just came up with it.”

“I doubt that.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That sometimes I think you’re an algorithm. And you’re cute when you pout.”

Nick gasps a bit, before snapping her face away, pouting even more. Anon lets her be for the moment, as he wanders around the living room collecting his stuff, then drinks some water. When he returns to the baryonyx, she’s still sitting and pouting.

“You’ll not sit here all day like that, will you?” Anon asks.

No response. She didn’t even look at him, not even with her eyes. The human leans to her ear.

“You won’t snap out of it right now, I’ll kiss you,” he whispers, then straightens back up.

She blinks, brought back to reality. Her face was still burning, but she stopped pouting now. She slowly turns her head towards the human.

And in the very next second, she gets smacked on the head with his hand.

“What was that for?!” Nick asks, offended.

“You fell for it,” Anon smirks.

“God…” she sighs.

Eventually, she gets out of her seat and walks back into her room, unable to stop smiling.

Just like Nick planned, they left the house and started to roam the streets of the city. Unknown to them, Nova woke up the moment they had left. Her brain was too sleepy to register the sound, let alone recognize it, and so she was welcomed by nothing but silence and emptiness. To say she was surprised is to say nothing.

In the meantime, Anon and Nick walk through the lengthy labyrinths of Volcaldera Bluffs. The sun pours down from far away, resting on the rigid, clear blue sky, blinding everyone who dares to look up. Neither of them look up even once, they're too busy enjoying each other's company to care about the sun, the sky, the warmth, the wind, – everything around them is nothing compared to the seconds, minutes, and hours they spend with one another.

"It'll be scorching hot soon..." says Nicole, smiling.

"Yeah... I can already feel it," Anon replies.

"You better wear a cap or something. You'll burn your shiny head."

"Nah, it'll deflect."

"If your head can deflect light, then I know how to speak Chinese."

"With you, it's a possibility."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you're a nerd."

"Too bad you fell for me."

"Not really. I can only see the upsides. Like helping me with tests and homework."

"So that's what I am to you? A big encyclopedia?"

"Didn't you say you chose this life? Oughta got used to that."

"Yeah..." Nick sighs.

Anon takes a look at the baryonyx. She's wearing her usual clothes: shoes and knee-high socks, a skirt, a buttoned shirt and a blazer. Her baby-blue hair shines like silk in the light, soft even when simply gazing at it. Her scales look soft, adorned in sunlight. She’s beautiful.

It takes him noticing the pair of steel eyes looking back at him questioningly to snap his gaze away, blushing a bit. She smiles, noticing the faint red on his cheeks.

They stop at the crossroad, and look around. The time on the clock is about 9 AM. Still plenty of time to spend outside. And that’s when she notices a bookshop on the other side of the street. Without saying a word, eyes completely on the store, she takes Anon by the hand and, when the lights turn green for them, cross the road and walk straight inside the bookstore.

“Should’ve seen it coming…” Anon murmurs to himself.

A vivid display of books stretches out, every single one of them calling for the bookworm inside Nick’s head. Warm colors and lighting amplifies the feeling of antiqueness. She lets go of Anon’s hand and walks into the store. The human has no choice but to follow.

“Why are we here?” Anon asks.

“I just want to check if they have some books I wanted…” Nick dreamfully replies.

“Couldn’t you find those in the library?”

“Nope.”

“What about reading them from a phone?”

Nick stops, and then starts to turn to Anon slowly. If they were in some sort of a cartoon, the only sound that would fit her slow turning is stone grinding against stone. After she’s done turning to the human, the baryonyx’s steel eyes look straight into his soul, as if they’re about to drain him of all his life.

“Do not say that to me ever again,” Nick deadpans.

“Okay, okay, jeez,” Anon quickly retorts.

Nick snaps back into normal. She then turns back and continues going onward, with Anon following behind.

“The reason why I often visit the bookstores,” she says, “is because they sometimes have certain editions of books that I would like to grab with myself. If it weren’t for them being fancy,” she turns to Anon, “I wouldn’t have bought them.”

“So you’re building a little collection to embrace your inner showoff?”

“You can say that. But I reread them from time to time. I don’t just buy random fancy-looking books just for their looks. I only buy those I’ve already read and liked.”

“On the topic of liking things, what’s the ratio of your likes and dislikes?”

“The ratio? Hm… Three to one, maybe…”

“Three likes to one dislike?”

“Yeah. It’s hard to find a book that disappoints me. Especially in the genres I’m reading.”

“And what do you not read?”

“Sugary young adult romance. You know the type.”

“No, I don’t.”

Nick sighs. “You know, the ones with flashy, vibrant anime-styled covers?”

“Oh, I got you now.”

Eventually, she stops. She takes a few steps back and looks at one of the shelves. Her hand carefully takes out a book, adorned with burgundy and gold lines. She looks at it from both sides, then checks a few pages, and then continues onward, taking the folio with herself.

They spend a few more minutes checking out the store, before paying for their takings and leaving. Nick took a couple of rather expensive books. Anon had taken none.

“A few more additions to the shelves,” Nick says, proud of herself, as she looks down at the folios.

“I’m happy for you,” Anon comments. “Where to now?”

“I don’t know… Let’s just keep on wandering around town, I guess.”

“You guess? Didn’t you say you had a plan?”

“My plan had a certain extent, and we had reached it.”

“Oh, I see how it is.”

With that, they continue onward.

Finally at Trent’s, they immediately get to rehearsing their new material. There’s no time to waste, not today, with mere hours separating them from the moment that will go down in their biographies.

Truth be told, they aren’t really strangers to gigs. Back in the day, they did air a few concerts here and there, but this upcoming show is far, far away from everything they held in the past, because today is different – their music is different, and they are different. They cannot deny or tune down the change, as they all can feel it in their bone marrow.

Still, there’s a certain trend of holding themselves up to a standard. For some, it’s a burden, as if they try to grab the Moon, but for Swamp Babies – it’s their exam on how good they had became and how much they had learned over time. A minute problem arose in that habit, based on the fact that they always compared themselves with their past records, and now they had created something that is a complete one-eighty to what they once were.

The solution was simple – instead of comparing themselves to what they had created in the past, they compared themselves to what they were as a whole. They compared a unity of elements that created their small “mathcore prodigy” project, and in that they will create a better standard to reach, a new limit to overcome. As they always did in this endless game of soundscapes.

The only person who not only was not ready for what was to come in just a few hours from now, but also didn’t know a lick of its concept, was Anon, but, honestly, it didn’t really matter. Like acquiring immunity to diseases, the human felt like, after all the hours he had spent together with them, he had acquired that sacred knowledge that won’t make him tremor in saccadic fashion on the stage. No doubt, the only person he thanks for this is Nick.

The baryonyx, on the other hand, as she looks around the basement studio, notices the determination in the faces of her bandmates, and can’t help herself but feel a mix of pride and responsibility. She takes pride in the fact that she had unlocked that certain bit of strength, managed to push herself upward and throw another attempt at glorifying her name. And she has someone to thank for it, someone who had helped her with that.

But with the sweetness of pride, like a pair of siblings, is the bitterness of responsibility. She’d be lying to herself if she would say she knew what to do with the band after school. Of course, she knew who to blame – Anon’s lovely presence brought an element of chaos, more than enough to break down all of her stale and bland plans for the future. But she could blame him all she wants, that wouldn’t solve the issue.

Actually, come to think of it, now that her plans had been rebuilt to fit her present self, there are a ton of gaps to fill in between the bullet points, numerous to the point of confusion. She had thought of this before, and a lot, after their feelings for another were finally aired between them in intimacy, but never as much as she thought of it now, hours before the concert.

And in that, she had made a choice only an evil clone of her could do – she laid hope on the concert. She never betted on her future self, she never tried to push responsibility on someone who was more experienced than her, even if it would be her tomorrow self. There was only one Nick – the one in the present day, hour, minute, second, instance; the one who sang songs of melancholic beauty.

Yet there’s a limit to everything, and her capabilities are not an exception. She had finally realized that even a mastermind like herself had reached the point of powerlessness. And with that in mind, her decision was possibly the best course of action she (or anyone else in her shoes) could take. The concert will be that push to decide, just like Anon was in the recent past.

Her thoughts settled aside, she returns to reality, where Curtis counts down to one from his drumsticks to start the next song.

The clocks strike 5:14 PM. “Lava Java” is rather empty at this hour, save the owner, the aquilops, and the stegosaur, working as baristas behind the counter, a few randoms that got here way too soon, and the band on the stage, but that’s for a reason.

“Alright, let’s start with the drums…” says the sound tech guy.

Curtis begins the sound check on his drumkit, starting with something simpler and soon evolving into a tune from one of SB’s past songs. In the meantime, Trent looks through his phone, while Anon and Nick patiently watch the atrociraptor play.

As planned, the band made its way to the joint about ten minutes before the actual sound check. The place had made a small change: all the tables were moved to the walls, opening space for a decently sized audience. After some chats with the owner, the aquilops and the stegosaur, the band got onto the stage and started preparing. The men of the band put the drumkit in place, while Nick had spent some time connecting things to things.

Then came the sound savvy: a raptor in slick jeans and t-shirt, wearing policeman sunglasses indoors. With the degree of disrespect he had in his eyes as he looked at the human, he was definitely the guy who would want, or already has, a human girlfriend. He was quick to get his small setup up and running, and despite its rather compact size, it proved to be more than enough to rummage through all the formalities.

Waiting for her turn, Nick cannot stop peeking at Anon, standing right by her side. She cannot wait to perform, cannot wait to showcase to the world how she and her friends had matured, – but most importantly, she cannot wait for Anon to play, to manifest himself into the band. This excitement basically burns all the fear out of her mind.

“Alright, that’s enough…” the sound tech guy says, then turns his eyes towards Trent. In the meantime, Curtis draws a long sigh of relief and joy. “Bass, please.”

Trent starts to pluck his bass. A simple rhythmic line of sound stretches across the atmosphere, mesmerizing the few visitors. There are more of those now, standing before the scene, slowly pulling each other into a crowd. The fateful hour comes ever so close now. The triceratops spends about fifteen seconds plucking the thick strings, before abruptly coming to a close.

“Good,” the tech savvy comments, then looks at him. “Any pedals you’ll use?”

“Nope,” Trent replies.

Nick turns her eyes away from anyone, from her bandmates and from the audience. She feels something pulling on her arteries, constricting her heartbeat. Guilt – the exact same guilt she felt when she pulled Trent and Curtis with herself. The pragmatic part of herself still tells her she could leave back to what she once was. No reward, no punishment, just yet another decision she could make to force herself into a mold.

And while she’s trying to kill that guilt, Anon has already spotted her looking away. Just from her lowered head he assumes that her mind is busy with something. The human takes a step towards her, then softly pats her shoulder to bring her attention.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Yeah…” Nick replies with uncertainty.

“You sure?”

Noticing his attentive gaze, the baryonyx has no choice but to hide her hands behind her back, sigh and look back, nervously.

“I just… I had a thought. About leaving again.”

A second passes. Anon just keeps on looking silently, basically forcing her to continue, feeling as worry creeps up her spine.

“Sounds silly, I know, but… All of us have parts we hide from each other, right? So… I have my own part. That… pragmatic algorithm that ruled me for quite some time, from the moment I left the band to the day you and I got somewhat close. It didn’t die, no, it was just… silent all this time. And… And I hear it speak up now. It tells me to leave. To go back to what I was. And I-”

Her monologue got interrupted by Anon bonking her with the side of his hand. The thought evaporates instantaneously, and she forgets what she was talking about. Looking up at the human, she notices him smiling.

“You’re silly,” Anon says. “Why do you care about what that side of you says? You’re here now, in a better place, with people you know and trust, and you’re about to do something… simply amazing. So snap out of it and focus on the current moment.”

She just looks at him, stunned by this simple logic. And then she simply smiles. That is the exact reason why she’s in love with him.

“Okay…” says the tech savvy. “Guitar, give me something.”

Anon turns his face to the crowd, noticing even more people peeling in. Slight nervousness flushes through his veins, and, before playing, he looks around. Everyone’s looking at him and him alone, his bandmates included. But unlike the crowd, with that predatory expectation in their eyes, Curtis and Trent, and, most importantly, Nick, look at him with pride, as if inviting him onto the road of silk red carpet. Those hopeful looks give him the courage he needs.

And so he starts playing. Something simple and openminded, something melancholically beautiful, something blissfully confused. Something he created in collective effort, something he takes pride in, something that represents what he feels. It isn’t tied to no one, but to everyone, as every single person in this giant room, no matter the distance from the scene, feels it in their heart, the little blood pump that flourishes with each time the human’s hands move, plucking the strings and shifting the tones.

His little improv solo lasts all but ten seconds, which is more than enough for the crowd to sulk with awe. Smiling, the baryonyx looks attentively at the human’s profile, to see him smiling too. This concert will not be the thing that would help her decide what to do, because she had already decided, and that smile helped her to do it.

“Main mic, please,” the tech savvy says.

Nick comes up and checks the microphone for the sound technician. He does something on his little setup, before throwing a thumbs-up, packing his stuff and promptly leaving, for someone else to take his little spot on the side.

And now that she’s standing in the front, she notices the audience amassing before the stage. To think that all these people had decided to chip an hour of their day just for her and her band… The thrill is inexplainable.

A whole minute passes. The people chat, the bandmates behind and around her wait patiently for her command. She looks at them, one by one, before nodding to them all.

Curtis counts down from four.

The hour simply flies by without notice. The band’s ears are still ringing, even after about twenty minutes of standing outside, with coffees in hand, courtesy of the joint’s staff.

At the very least, the concert went amazing. No hiccups from anyone, tech included. Every song was filled with ferocity, just like they wanted. And, of course, everyone was quite taken aback by surprise, as they heard Nick scream into the mic. Who knew that someone who looked as civil as her would delve into something like the territory of death metal screeching?

“Guess this is it,” Trent says. “It’d only go uphill from here.”

“You wish,” Curtis replies. “Before you know it, Nick calls it quits here and now.”

“Don’t jinx it.”

Nick just smiles, looking at them, as she leans to Anon, her hand and tail wrapping around him.

“Did you like the concert?” the baryonyx asks him.

“Absolutely,” the human replies. “You went all in with your vocals.”

“Truth be told, that decision is… on the pragmatic side of me.”

Anon sighs. “Don’t make me bonk you again,” he replies.

“Let me finish before you do,” Nick smirks. “Anyways, I just… didn’t like the idea of sticking to what we did.”

“That’s reasonable,” Anon comments.

“And so I decided to do something new. Had a plan, too. I slowly pushed everyone to do something else, while taking vocal lessons in the meantime.”

“Gotta say,” Trent says, “it paid off tenfold.”

“No!” Curtis adds. “A hundredfold!”

Nick just laughs a bit.

“Alright…” she sighs. “I guess this is it for today.”

“Yeah,” Curtis replies. “The moment I’m getting home, I’m falling onto my bed.”

“Make sure you don’t sleep through our next rehearsal,” Trent comments, smirking.

“I won’t, don’t worry. I got that under control.”

“Yeah, right…”

Nick just softly smiles at them both. Then, she turns her eyes to Anon.

“Care to stay at my place for today?” she asks. “In celebration of a successful concert and all that?”

“Sure,” Anon replies, smiling back.

With that, hand in hand and fingers interlocked, they bid their farewell to Curtis and Trent and leave, slowly shrinking in the distance before disappearing entirely. 

Chapter Text

Trent isn’t really a stranger to love. It’s that he was never really successful at it, and even his best attempt was like dying in a roguelike game to a pellet right before one could proceed to the final boss, after tossing hundreds, if not thousands, of unsuccessful runs.

It could be one of two things. The first is that he simply wasn’t attractive, which is more inaccurate than true. If that had been the case, he wouldn’t even have attempted to get a girlfriend. His geekiness, something that’s more repelling than alluring, works for him like a charm, and because of it, he could talk for hours on end on any subject the girls from his middle school back in Saurcramento could imagine.

The other thing is that he had lied to himself, thinking he needed a girlfriend, while in reality, he not only did not need one but had issues that were more important than finding a person to spend the grace on. He was in the midst of learning guitar and teaching himself how to work with sound engineering software. Why should he worry about seeking someone to talk to for days on end?

With that said, however, he was rather surprised to see someone from his past roaming the streets of Volcaldera Bluffs.

The day was warm for him to walk around in his typical dark-green flannel jacket with his beloved old t-shirt he had bought years ago during a concert he cannot remember now. The sun pours down the wide street. The wind flows through his long hair, and he breathes in the freshness, thinking about nothing in particular. Simple moments like these make him forget what was the hectic reason for him to move southward.

It’s at this very moment he notices a familiar figure in the distance. Short blonde hair is like a beacon amidst the sea of colors. And in a single instance of him spotting that hair, he remembers exactly to whom it belongs.

“Katie?” he calls out.

The person stops then turns towards the chasmosaurus. A pair of bleached golden avimimus eyes look at him, an expression of surprise is etched on the face.

“Trent?” she asks. “What are you doing here?”

“Want to ask you the same thing.” Trent cannot help himself but smile. “Got tired of Saurcramento?”

“Yeah… You could say that.”

“Same.”

“But honestly, I’m here because of university and… because of my sister.”

“I recall you telling me that your sis lives here, but I’ve never met her in all the years I was in VB.”

“She’s spending her time at home.”

“I see…” Trent notices the bags in her hands. “Buying something for her?”

“Yeah. Books and things for drawing.”

“She still wants to be an animator?”

“Already is. Things go slow and weird for them, you know that.”

“I do.”

Suddenly, he notices a silhouette behind her, with the same golden hair as Katie, except much longer. The avimimus freezes in place, feeling her sister glaring at her. A moment later, Katie’s sister walks up to them, and Katie takes a step aside, pointing at her.

“And that’s the animator in question,” she says with tiredness in her voice.

“Hi, Aubrey,” Trent says to the older avimimus.

“Hello, Trent,” Aubrey replies. “It’s been a while.”

“It was. Still hanging around as per usual?”

“Yup. Got that little goblin out of her room to do some fetching for me.”

“Who’s the goblin out of us two?!” Katie says, offended, while Trent and Aubrey chuckle.

Together, they continue down the street. It wasn’t in his plans to see them here at this time of day, but his once purposeless walk now has a reason. And to think he was this close to just wrapping it up and going home to play on his guitar or play some video games.

“Honestly,” Aubrey says, “I still cannot fathom that she knew someone this handsome back in middle school…”

That causes a worried, nervous expression on her little sister, but she doesn’t pay attention as Aubrey turns her determined smile to Trent, who looks like he didn’t hear anything.

“Please tell me you two were a pair back then!” she says.

“Sis, stop it!” Katie adds.

Trent takes a second to respond, remembering how it all went down. Standing right near the exit on that fateful March day, with all the courage manifested in his fists, he tells Katie exactly what was on his mind…

“Nope, we weren’t,” Trent replies.

“That’s sad, but understandable,” Aubrey says. “You were too good for her…”

“She rejected me,” Trent adds.

That makes the older avimimus stop. Katie and Trent stop a step later, looking back at Aubrey, just standing there in disbelief.

“…Tell me you’re joking,” she says under her breath.

“I wish I could,” Trent replies.

“She?!”  Aubrey points at her sister. “ She rejected you ?!”

“Aubrey, stop yelling!” Katie hisses.

“Yeah… That was a bit of a doozie…” Trent says, sighing and putting his hand behind his head. “Perhaps at that time she had found someone better, or…”

“No, that can’t be right…” Aubrey was still in delirium due to disbelief.

“Or I was not really ‘worthy’ of her,” Trent finishes.

She looks at him with cold nothingness, then at her sister, then back at him.

“‘Worthy’? Of this ?” Aubrey says. “You’re talking about her , right? About my lil’ sister?”

Aubrey’s eyes stop on Katie once more, with an expression of disgust and disappointment behind her eyes.

“I know what you’re trying to tell me, so stop looking at me like that!” Katie responds.

After that conversation, they continue onward like it didn’t happen at all, and eventually they have to separate.

“Sorry about my sister,” Katie sighs.

“It’s fine,” Trent replies.

“I’m actually glad we met like this,” Katie smiles. “You didn’t change at all since middle school.”

“Neither have you,” Trent smiles back.

The avimimus looks away, and a slight blush forms on her cheeks.

“And I honestly regret rejecting you back then,” she says.

The chasmosaurus’s expression changes to one of vivid surprise. A flash of memory hits him again with that scene. School’s entrance, blooming March, the sun pouring down and making her scales glow, and then her honest denial that cuts through all this romance and beauty like a dull knife. Hearing her say it now shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Trent replies.

Katie looks at him, but he had already pulled his phone out, to check the time.

“Alright, I’ll head home now,” he says. “See you around.”

“Oh, right, yeah,” Katie nods. “Until we meet again.”

With that, Trent turns around and leaves, and Katie just stands there, smiling. She knows they won’t meet again. Soon, she’ll find out that she has successfully applied to Volcano University, and she’ll be busy with new things to learn, and new people to know. She’ll find a boyfriend in the midst of all this chaos, and the picture of the chasmosaurus will finally evaporate.

But it’s good that the powers that be had let them meet again like this. She feels like a giant burden dropped from her shoulders.

Despite all the possible odds, Stella was the only person who had managed to lock in a certain wavelength, and open the keyless door into Trent’s geek heart. The world’s full of impossibilities and coincidences that shouldn’t have ever happened under any circumstances, and this is just yet another one of those impossibilities and coincidences. Both of them should’ve seen it coming, but they did not, caught off guard by the time their feelings have properly manifested.

Their first meeting was in “Lava Java” back in February. When Anon and Nick were only trying the waters, taking cautious steps to one another, Trent was stuck in a loop of days: wake up, play guitar (for himself or, rarely, for someone for cash), maybe walk outside, eat, play some games, go to sleep. If his life would’ve been an observed simulation, it would’ve been the most boring one.

If he’s not playing games or strumming his guitar, he could find himself behind the cover of a book. Half the time, it’s manga; the other half – something with a low price, a flashy cover and very distilled watery writing that still captivates someone like him, especially when there’s a need for such captivation. A coin toss helps him decide what to take with him on the walks, and today, it is cheap contemporary literature.

Sitting behind a bar counter, waiting for his coffee, he spends his time reading. For someone who’s more digitalized than his friends, he likes to read physical books over an e-book. Perhaps that, and a million other things, made him a good pal for Nick, and even created a spark inside Trent that never really manifested. Aside from the general physical feeling, hearing those pages, and tasting the odor of the fresh ink. It creates a certain feeling of superiority over those who sit in their phones.

The storyline in this book is rather simple, could be fitted to a small, excessively monetized and oversaturated TV series. Just a man and a woman seeking how to manifest their love. As if everything in this world revolves around love. Trent doesn’t hate such storylines, but after hundreds and hundreds of attempts, authors across the globe could’ve come to a conclusion that the topic had exhausted itself, and could’ve pushed that theme aside in search of something greater.

“Lava Java,” despite its noisy nature due to the people amassing at the tables to play games or just chat, respects the boundaries of avid readers. It deafens itself to Trent’s ears, creating a certain bubble of vacuum, through which no sound passes. It’s either that, or his tinnitus has gotten very powerful lately. Either way, it’s great to sit and read something, completely undisturbed by the world surrounding him.

But something does take him out of the flow, and it’s the sudden smell of coffee right under his nose. He looks up from his book, only to see a stegosaur in an apron, standing on the other side of the bar counter and smiling. A paper coffee cup stands between them on the counter.

“Oh, thanks,” says Trent, putting his book down and taking a sip of his coffee.

The stegosaur takes a look at the book cover. Its colorfulness reminds her of all the anime she had watched.

“Is this some manga?” she asks.

“Nah,” Trent replies, putting down his cup, “just a little something I picked up recently.”

“Oh, I see…”

Trent notices the thoughtful expression on her face and pushes the book to her. She reluctantly picks it up and examines the cover, reading the author’s name and title of the book.

“Never heard of this…” she comments.

“It’s hard to find something of worth in the sea of content we’re currently in,” Trent replies.

“It’s not that,” the stegosaur smiles at the chasmosaurus. “I… I’m not really into reading.”

“That’s why you asked if it was manga?”

“Yeah…” she chuckles a bit. “Sounds weird, doesn’t it?”

“It does not. I myself read manga from time to time.”

“Really?” A spark fires up in the stegosaur’s light-blue eyes.

“Yeah.”

“What’s your favorite manga? Mine’s Oreimo!”

It takes all of Trent’s will not to cringe at what she just said. No one in their sane mind would admit to even reading that.

“I see…” he replies, strained, then sighs. “Mine’s Nichijou.”

“I know that anime! God, it was so funny!”

Even though the stegosaur appears to have weird tastes and no bars to hold her from saying what she thinks, Trent finds himself smiling in her incandescent company.

“Oh, I forgot to introduce myself,” the stegosaur says. “I’m Stella!”

“Trent,” the chasmosaurus nods. “Pleasure to know you.”

And so, their friendship had kicked off, quickly gained pace, and broke through all the thresholds like a freight train in a matter of days. Every day Trent walked the streets of Volcaldera Bluffs, he would visit Stella at her worksite, and seeing those salad green pompons on her head, those blue eyes sparkling of childish joy, that never-ending incandescent smile, makes him smile.

Most of the time he had visited her, they were trading manga to read. Trent would use all of his geekiness to unlock some forbidden tomes only he and the author himself know about, while Stella would bring something more mainstream and popular, something he had rejected due to its quality back in the day.

“Here you go,” Trent says, returning the manga Stella gave him.

“Eh?! You read that in a single day?!” Stella asks, taking the tome, and then returns the manga Trent gave her.

“Yeah. I have a lot of time to spend.”

“Is that so…? And how did you like it? I was afraid to give it to you because some deemed it underwhelming and overhyped.”

“It was okay.”

He’s lying , – Stella thinks, looking at the chasmosaurus’s reddened eyes, as he sips some coffee. – He had definitely shed a tear when reading.

These trades lasted for about two weeks, until one day that didn’t look any different. Trent took a bit of time, and arrived at “Lava Java” minutes before Stella’s shift would come to an end. Just as per usual, they greet each other with smiles and share their little stories, not without a paper cup full of sweet coffee on the house.

“I have to ask,” says the stegosaur, “just how much of that… unknown manga do you have?”

“Quite a lot,” Trent replies. “I’m a sucker for avant-garde shit. Something that doesn’t get into the spotlight because of the story, the characters, or because some gimmick y’all like so much does not exist in that manga.”

“And all of them are physical?”

“Yeah. Got into this back when I was a little kid.”

“Do your parents know?”

“Yeah. They are not into it, but they don’t see me as some perverted weirdo.”

“Must be good to have parents like these…”

“Yours don’t like you watching anime?”

“No, not at all! It’s just that…”

“They’ve distanced themselves away from that, making you feel like you’ve made a mistake.”

“Something like that, yeah…”

Stella tiredly lies down on the bar counter.

“I’d like to see that collection of yours…” she says.

“I mean,” Trent replies, “we can go to my place if you want.”

“Really?!” She quickly picks herself up, startling the chasmosaurus with the surge of excitement burning within her eyes.

“Yeah.”

A tide of joy rushes over the stegosaur. Thinking about seeing Trent’s collection is akin to finding the burnt Library of Alexandria intact – the same kind of eagerness burns with green flames deep within.

“O-Okay!” says Stella. “After my shift! We go to your place! Don’t worry! I won’t do anything weird! I promise!”

“Alright, alright…” Trent chuckles to her childish awe.

After the shift was over, and Stella leaves the premises of “Lava Java” with Trent beside her, they make it to the chasmosaurus’ place. A giant mansion a bit north from Santa Monica, a testament to a quality life. While the chasmosaurus made his way up the stairs, the stegosaur looked at it, feeling so small and insignificant before this mansion, until a tap on her shoulder finally brought her back to her feelings.

Inside the house, they made it upstairs and into one of the rooms. As they walked to there, Stella noticed just how empty this place was, to the point of hearing their own breath between footsteps. Only Trent keeps this whole place up.

“How did you get to own this place? Must be very expensive…” Stella asks.

“My family owned it a year before I was born,” Trent explains, “but they got tired of VB, so they moved to Saurcramento. Can’t blame them, to be honest.”

“And it’s so empty…”

“Yeah… Not a whole lot of my family would like to live here. But I made it work, so I’m here now.”

“And the rent must be killing you…”

“Actually, nah. My parents cover most of it. They still think that I’m a student.”

“Is that so? What happened?”

“I dropped out. I wanted to be a sound engineer, but after a couple of years, I realized they didn’t teach me anything new, so why should I continue? Don’t worry, the place is tuition-free, so… No harm done.”

“I see…”

Stella takes a look at the chasmosaurus, at his long hair, at his flannel jacket, at his rather wide figure. There’s so much to learn about him… – she thinks, as he reaches for the door handle.

Finally, they have made their way into one of many rooms of this household. This one is dedicated for all the manga Trent had collected over the years, plus some books here and there. Hard to spot what’s actually a book and what is manga.

“Woah… There’s so much…” says Stella with awe, looking at the shelves stacked with rows upon rows of books.

She reaches to grab one of them on the highest shelf.

“I didn’t clean here in quite a while, actually,” Trent says, “so be careful…”

Suddenly, several books drop onto Stella, but none of them hit her, as if she’s in a defensive bubble. Trent turns his head to her.

“You alright?” he asks, frantically.

“I’m fine!” the stegosaur replies. “Shouldn’t have taken it without asking.” She looks down at the old, worn folio in her hands. “Just wanted to take a look at this book.”

Trent takes the book from the stegosaur. It’s a manga, a really old one. Its cover had seen better days, so did the pages, yellowed after years and years of rest. It doesn’t look that worn, with no trimmed edges or torn sides, but even holding it makes Trent feel like it would fall apart just from breathing on it.

“This was one of the first ones I’ve ever grabbed, I think,” Trent says, flipping the tome open. “Either that, or I bought it when it was already like this.”

“What is it about?” Stella asks.

“About the world one day from complete annihilation.”

“Oh… The entire world, or just America?”

“The entire world. Everyone’s panicking.” Trent looks up at Stella. “If the world you knew would cease to exist tomorrow, you wouldn’t want to do much, would you?”

“I don’t know…” Stella then suddenly smiles. “I think I would’ve spent all my money on manga and Japanese snacks I wanted all my life.”

“Really now?” Trent smiles back. “It’d take you one day till the end of the Earth for that ?”

“There’s still so much I didn’t try yet!”

“Right…”

From that day onward, Stella visited Trent’s place almost every single day, and the long distance didn’t really stop her from doing it.

Soon, February approaches its end. Just a few days before spring would step into action. And as per usual, they rest at Trent’s, spending time together in the library room, which had gained some upgrades over the days.

While the chasmosaurus looks through the shelves, the stegosaur stands right behind him, mulling over something important. The room drowns in silence, secluding from the outside world.

“This series is rather long,” Trent says, “but it’s worth it. I think you’ll like it.”

“Okay…” Stella replies.

Eventually, she gains some courage to speak up about what’s on her mind.

“Hey, Trent?” As it turned out, that courage wasn’t really enough. “So, I, uh… have something to say…”

Trent eventually turns his head to her, with a book in his hand. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing! Uh… just… w-what if… What if the world would end tomorrow? What would you do?”

“Ah, like in that manga?”

“Kind of, but… sure, yeah. Like in that manga.”

Trent’s eyes look away for just a slight second, before focusing back on the stegosaur.

“I’d confess.” He turns away to the shelves. “And then turn into dust. The end.”

The clocks freeze. The breath is caught inside the lungs, and the heart beats heavily in the hollowness of her chest. A tide of feeling crosses her body, drowning her in its warm embrace. Perhaps this is what she was wishing for this entire time.

“You… You’re joking, right?” she asks.

“No,” Trent calmly replies.

They continue to stand like this for a few more seconds, before Trent turns around to face her. There’s no blush on his face; his eyes don’t move in a saccadic fashion; he isn’t hunched over something, like a bulky burden of apathy. It looks like he had planned this, thought about this for a long time. And now, as he looks at her, he’s waiting for an answer.

“You planned this, didn’t you?” Stella asks.

“No. But I did think about it for long enough. Do what you want with what I just said. But at least I die knowing that at least I was capable of saying something like that.”

She looks him into his bleached yellow eyes, and her lips curl into a smile.

“I like you too, Trent,” she then says.

It’s been over two weeks since that fateful day, and seeing each other makes their heart flourish just like during that moment.

One day, Trent picks up Stella after school. It was a rather cold day for March, with wind blowing to and fro relentlessly, flowing through their hair like patternless flags. Even with the sun warming them up, sunlight alone was not enough to protect them from this relentless frost. This day was even worse for Stella, who felt the cold on her naked legs. She should’ve worn normal jeans today, not jeans shorts.

“Wa-ah… It’s freezing!” Stella says, grasping herself by the shoulders.

“Yeah… Guess winter had finally showed up,” Trent comments. “Looks like it’d be a long mile before spring would spring into action.”

Stella chuckles a bit from Trent’s silly joke.

“And you are in your shorts, you poor being,” Trent says.

“I know…” Stella replies. “I should’ve worn jeans today… I didn’t know it’d get so cold… So cold…”

Suddenly, she turns her face to the chasmosaurus.

“Hand,” she says.

“What?”

“Hand!”

They stop, and Trent gives her his hand. Only for her to reach for his cheeks, cupping them with icy fingertips. The scales are thick, but not thick enough even on Trent’s fat face to protect him from this piercing cold. But he stands still, enduring it.

“It’s cold as shit, Stella…” he says.

“But I’m warm now,” she replies, in a childish manner.

“I’m cold, though!” Trent opposes.

“But I am warm!” Stella smiles before running off. “I’m wa-a-arm!”

She quickly stops, turns around on her heels.

“Hand!” she says.

Trent just stands there. A few seconds pass. Even when she offers her hand and soon starts waving it, looking at him slightly pleadingly, he doesn’t move. His brain just collapsed, unable to process what exactly she’s trying to tell him.

“Take my hand!” she yells, pouting.

Puffed up like a macaroni, – Trent thinks, before taking her cold hand.

They continue walking. The cold continues its rampage. Trent looks at their hands holding, and slightly tightens the grip.

“Are you warm, Trent?” Stella asks.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not. How come your hand is so big but doesn’t warm me up even a little bit?”

“Hell if I knew.”

“You should play your guitar a bit less.”

“You think it’s because of strumming?”

“It could be.”

“Yeah, could be…”

The wind dies down, and they cross another road, entering a rather empty street. Seems like they’ve walked far enough to stray away from the livelier areas of the city. Perhaps it could be because Trent automatically took her onto the road back to his place.

“So…” Trent says. “Any place you wanna visit?”

“Hm…” Stella looks out into the sky. “No-o-ope…”

“Right…”

The clocks forget their pacing. Time almost freezes here, giving them enough space to do whatever they want.

“You’re too fast,” Stella says.

“That’s my casual pace,” Trent replies.

“Slow down a bit…” With every word, the stegosaur sounds more and more hollow.

“Alright, alright.”

Trent slows down his pace, but just a few steps later Stella just stops. The look on her face is inexplainable.

“Why did you stop?” Trent looks at her. “We’re close to your place, no? And you said you were freezing? Come on, just a few more turns.”

She doesn’t respond for quite a moment, worrying the chasmosaurus. Her cold hand clenches into a fist.

“Hu-ug…” she silently says.

Trent blinks, a bit surprised.

“Hug?” he asks.

“No.” She suddenly continues walking. “Forget it.”

What’s up with her today? – the chasmosaurus thinks. – Is it because of the cold?

“Stella?” he asks, still standing.

The stegosaur turns around and suddenly runs straight into the chasmosaurus. Her slim hands wrap around his body, holding onto it as much as she could, feeling warmth in his wide chest.

They stand like this for about a few seconds.

“Can you let go of me for a moment?” Trent asks.

The stegosaur, looking at him, lets go of his body, only to be taken into a bigger embrace. Trent’s hands hold Stella’s body in their closure, like a protective shield.

“Thanks,” he says.

Stella nestles a bit. Her eyes close, and her beak reaches to Trent’s mouth. “Chu…” she silently says.

Trent smiles and leans in, capturing her slightly open lips. Gladly, there’s no one to take a picture of them. Just Trent and Stella, hugging in the relentless cold, feeling warmth cradling them both.

Chapter Text

Out of the entire band, Curtis was a musician the longest. Born years before the new millennium, he had spent over a decade behind a drumkit, disrupting the peace of the universe and receiving noise complaints nearly every other day. And when Trent was practically studying alone, and Nick was about to take a leap forward in her career, he already had a rather long story to share.

He discovered his love for drums accidentally, by finding a drum cover on some drum-n-bass song. The first few seconds captivated his mind. He attentively watched the sticks go up and down, hitting the surface of the drums and the cymbals, he paid attention to the different sounds and tones. His dream of being an astronaut was replaced by a dream of being a drummer.

His parents didn’t believe in him, thought it was just yet another childish dream before reality would snap his pink glasses in half and he’d come up with a “real” dream about a “real” job. At first, he hated that his passion didn’t receive any approval and support, but as the time went by, he had just stopped caring. All he wanted is to become a drummer, and he’d find one way or another to make it happen.

At about nine years of age, Curtis’s uncle had heard about his passion and contacted one of his old friends, who once was a drummer in a high-school boy band himself. This was his Christmas, Happy Birthday, Halloween, and Easter gifts – all in one. Of course, his parents weren’t really happy about it, but eventually came to a sighing understanding that their son wouldn’t change, and all they could do is not disrupt him in his passion, still hoping that he’d get disappointed and “get back in line”.

The kit he had received was relatively simple. One pedal, one snare, two toms, a hi-hat, a crash and a ride cymbal. All the pieces of the kit were old and felt cheap, possibly because they were. But the flaws of the kit didn’t stop Curtis from blasting on it day and night.

He played and played. His parents had lost count of the noise complaints in a month, and so they quickly moved his drumkit back to uncle’s place, but even this distance didn’t stop him from playing for hours on end, every day, week, month and year.

Three years pass since that fateful day. Slowly, he had came to a realization that playing alone is rather dull. Sometimes, his uncle would give him company, but what company can a non-musician give to a musician? No, Curtis needed someone with the same enigmatic wavelength, someone with the same passion for creation. He needed a band.

The universe listened to his prayers, and answered. A few months before his thirteenth birthday, he and a couple of his friends from school created a band. Nothing too spectacular, just yet another rendition of Morbid Deity, as if this planet didn’t have enough of them.

Being a blatant copy and not being that skillful in this art didn’t stop the band, or Curtis in particular, from having something that serves as a primary reason why music bands are created. Fun. This essence of joy, surging through the veins hand in hand with adrenaline, cannot be topped by anything, and there won’t be a feeling like it.

Surprisingly, being a blatant copy of a band ten years older than them, they were rather successful at it. They gained a certain amount of fame in the school’s premises, and even got to play their first show ever in the auditorium.

Curtis still remembers this day. The feeling of anticipation when people were pulling into the auditorium. The nervousness creeping up their spine when they saw the mass of students looking at them from the seats. The rush that crossed them like a tide when they played the show. The absolute relief when they heard the applause. And the joy – the joy that always followed them in each and every step, paired with every feeling.

Of course, not everyone was pleased to see them on the stage, showing off that they’re better than anyone else. And those people had their own ways of preventing that from happening ever again. Two weeks after the show, one of the bandmates were beaten, and Curtis found his drumkit broken and disheveled.

Perhaps, in the eyes of the universe, it was an answer to all the wishes of his parents. They wanted their son to think about a future, and so they did. In return, their atrociraptor sunshine was far from that name; he wasn’t sunny nor shiny. He was miserable, to say the very least.

He walked like that for about a few months before his parents finally caved in and bought him a replacement. It was about the same as the kit given to him by a friend of his uncle, it’s the brand that’s different, but it had one significant advantage: double kick pedal. An additional pedal, connected via a drive shaft, had opened up a much greater world of drumming that Curtis had never thought existed.

Soon, came the high school. Four most ferocious and vibrant years of a teen’s life. With them, the many doors of opportunity opened for the atrociraptor. In the very first month of high school, he created a second band. Something more original, but softer and slower than what he played before. That didn’t stop him, however, and he enjoyed playing in that band just like in his first one.

The band quickly died due to a constant clash of ideas. For most of the band, it was a certain tragedy, but for Curtis, it was just an excuse to get into a new band – and so he did, less than a week after. And when that band died, he got into another one, then another one, then another one…

From the outside perspective, he may look like the most genuine dopamine junkie this world had ever seen. He changed bands like socks, and by the time he arrived into senior year, the list of bands exceeded thirty different names. Some were just playing covers and got stale and boring in a week or two, some were more successful, lasting a good few months. Only one of them got “big”, managing to release an EP on Bandpark.

Truth be told, all of these bands, all of these rehearsal sessions, all of these gigs – is nothing more than just means to an end for Curtis to tell everybody that he truly wants to be a drummer. There was no time for him to lament, he needed to keep reminding himself and his parents of what he truly is, as if that wasn’t evident enough.

Soon came the graduation. As he walked on that sunny summer day, he saw all the people he had played with – and finally paid attention to the sheer gap between him and them. Perhaps it isn’t them who are out of touch, being unrealistic, but him? The only person who would change bands like socks is… a person who doesn’t care.

Curtis left the school grounds, diploma in hand, thinking about himself. Maybe he is just lying to himself. He got attached to drumming in a way that makes Stockholm syndrome blush, but could he really call himself a drummer? There’s a distinct line between being a drummer and just playing drums, and Curtis didn’t know where he was. Actually, Curtis didn’t know about himself… anything.

Every time he sat down behind the drums, he forgot what he was. His hands became the sticks, his ears became the Airpods, or the shitty IEMs on the gigs. He became detached from this reality, like a real smackhead. The school bell rang for the last time for him, and that brought him back. He is split in half; one side of him is confused, while the other whines and rages, wishing to go back to this state of the never ending daydream.

After school, instead of college, he went into the military. Those two years feel like a gap, in many different ways. Curtis doesn’t remember anything that happened back then, and even if he did, he wouldn’t tell anybody. All that mattered was that he wasn’t a drummer then.

Now twenty, the atrociraptor had found himself in a garden of forking paths. Every way, every opportunity, looks good on paper, but if Curtis wants to make the best out of it, he has to stick to it with his entirety, and that brings a ton of risk. No path is safe. And when he was choosing his path, he decided to spite his parents even more, just for the fun of it this time. He chose the way of a tattoo artist.

Much like with drumming, the parents did not believe in him, but this time, they were actually against it. They didn’t raise their son to be painting on people’s scales. But the paychecks, the reception, and their atrociraptor’s happiness, spoke otherwise, and just like with drumming, all they could do is sigh and get out of his hair.

His mentor, an old tattoo artist by the pseudonym of Rangto, was a rather famous figure, known to engrave the bodies of some of the most popular people of Volcaldera Bluffs. At first, Curtis treated the fact that he is Rangto’s apprentice like a privilege, but soon, the lizard’s charm broke that spell, and he just did his job as good as he could.

The art of tattoo made him forget about drums for about half a year. To think that something that grasped him tight in his childhood wouldn’t hold him in his adult years. Eventually, he had found that groove that made him play in the first place, plus the people that share that groove.

The band was an homage to Discordance Axis, and it was a pretty good one. The people understood what made the band tick, and they were doing their best to sound like them. The vocalist did a great job, screaming into the mic at the top of his lungs, the guitarist effortlessly strummed some of the hardest technical riffs anyone had ever heard, and Curtis was just enjoying the time.

They were doing rather well. Curtis had found a stable balance of work, drumming and personal life, and didn’t feel like music was detaching him from reality anymore. Perhaps it was those years of the military that did the detoxication wonders, or perhaps he just grew up and out of it. The bandmates also lived good lives with nothing to really bother them.

A year had passed like this. A ton of splits later, they had finally released their second LP (the first one was written with programmed drums). Reviews, critical acclaim, continuous shows, spotlights, vibrant colors, – the dreamlessness and rage were something beyond Curtis’s comprehension. The rays of light from the stage, the applause and adrenaline, worked together to reunite his farthest memories, back to the day when the feeling of relentless joy was discovered for the first time.

Little did he know that this was just a start for a continuous, slow descent. Their next split came out to be subpar to their past content. The guitarist had found a girlfriend, and that pissed the hell out of the vocalist, who claimed that she was sabotaging their work. Most of the venues either didn’t like them, nor were topped out by other bands. A clash of ideas burnt the last bridges between the guitarist and the drummer, and so they had to split.

And Curtis just sat behind his drumkit, watching it all unfold. He isn’t a person to be vocal about something, he doesn’t like to be vocal, believing that things could be sorted out themselves. But as the time proved, over and over again, this omission is why everything he cared about was either destroyed of left behind.

After this DA homage band, Curtis had found himself back in routine. Twenty-three years old, still lives at home with his parents, works as a tattoo artist and does drumming on the side. For some time, he considered leaving drums entirely, the title of ex-drummer sounded rather appealing and mysterious, and it’s not like he would lose much if he left, but that was only a thought.

Soon, in a lonely bar, he met Trent. Or, rather, Trent met him. The geeky chasmosaurus university dropout recognized the atrociraptor as a drummer in one of the bands he was in. After a bit of time, Trent asked whether he’d like to play some music with him, and, having nothing better to do, Curtis agreed. That day started the small pre-SB arc.

The chasmosaurus played music vastly different from anything the atrociraptor had ever played. Instead of being slow or being fast, it was methodical and accurate, like a mathematical algorithm, tasked with creating a song. Curtis was never good at math, but mathcore was something he thoroughly enjoyed.

The fact that it was just him and Trent had basically forced Curtis to change, to be more vocal about what he wants, because there was literally no one else with a different opinion. This change was welcomed with arms wide open, and for someone like Curtis, it was a chance to grow out of his old scales yet again.

Together, they played for a bit less than half a year. Trent turned twenty, and Curtis had made a second upgrade to his drumkit, renewing the cymbals and the drumheads and adding a china cymbal. The gap between those upgrades made him chuckle when he thought about it.

Some time later after his twentieth birthday, Trent had brought Nick with himself. A nerdy looking fifteen year old, still feeling green in high school, who was a guitarist and was amazed at their work. In a few weeks of rehearsals, that served as test of the waters, the trio had finally formed into what is now called “Swamp Babies”.

For something that has such a grungy, sludgy name, they were playing the most sincere and clearest mathcore and prog metal there is. There are a ton of bands like them, some that take themselves serious, like Dinosaurs as Leaders (Nick’s favorite band), and some that don’t, like The Sawtooth Smile. But all of these bands weren’t like Swamp Babies.

Day after day and night after night, the trio would find themselves together down in Trent’s freshly constructed basement studio at his place, playing complex tunes that tickle the baryonyx’s smart brain just the right way. Sometimes, they took a bit more of a serious face and played something that would end up in a proper record. Rarely, they played shows.

Curtis, once more, had found himself in yet another loop of joy, living through his life and forgetting about everything else: his parents, his job, his city, his universe. All of those pesky things didn’t matter when there’s something that feels much greater than any of this. But unlike every other time, when he felt like a dog on a short chain of dopamine, he was not bound to any chains anymore. More so, he bound this feeling to the leash and made sure to get out of it as much as he could, treating every day like the last one.

And that decision couldn’t be any more right, because after just two years of existing, as Nick had stepped into junior year of high school, she told Trent and Curtis that she wouldn’t play anymore, justifying it with the need to focus on her future, since there isn’t much time left for her to decide what she wants to be. Without any arguments or fistfights, the band had called it an honest attempt and closed the casket lid on themselves. Swamp Babies came and went.

While on the surface, Curtis looked like he understood the need for someone like the baby blue baryonyx to focus on what she wants to be, considering that someone like her has more responsibility than both of them combined, on the inside… he hated her. A lot. There is no word that would describe the hatred he felt towards Nicole. He felt cheated, like all of his work was stripped away from him yet again, and the realization of that hurt more than the feeling itself.

Perhaps the problem lied in Curtis himself, in the fact that took things a bit more seriously than necessary, in the fact that he attached himself to something that always was just an elusive concept. But that attachment, that seriousness, was the reason he played so well, was the reason why got the staggering amounts of attention. And in the end, everyone is entitled to what they feel, not more and not less, so can one really blame him?

After the band fell apart, Curtis didn’t feel like he’d need Trent’s contact info anymore. He fell back into the routine, and even joining yet another band didn’t do much. His passion felt like a habit. He didn’t feel like it was a chore for him to play, but there was no room for pleasure left. And so, he just drummed. He just spent time behind the drumkit, utilizing the skills he acquired and honed over time, for others to enjoy. And the only reason he didn’t quit right away is because he would have to find something that captivated him just like drumming did back when he was a kid.

Near eighteen months pass like this. After playing yet another concert with his band, he suddenly stumbled upon Trent. The chasmosaurus didn’t change a slight bit. Maybe he got a bit chubbier, but that’s hardly a change. After a bit of a chat, remembering the old times and telling how their lives were today, Trent offers Curtis to form Swamp Babies back.

He agreed without hesitation.

The first few weeks of rehearsals were a bit tense. Curtis still felt bitter about Nick’s decision, but the feeling soon faded. He can’t blame her for making that decision, because it was important for her, and especially because for the majority of his life he was someone who didn’t have the courage to make such a life-turning decision like her.

The rest is known history: Nick brought Anon to one of the rehearsals, making him into an important item of their sessions, and soon after Valentine’s Day, on which Anon had received a guitar, the human became a part of the band.

Curtis doesn’t care about the past or the future. All the bitterness and melancholy were forgotten. Any vision of what is to come is tossed aside. There’s only now. And this now, lit in vibrant pink, will withstand the test of time, just like him.

Chapter Text

A scorching day in May. The sky is open, like an endless sea, and the dot of the Sun penetrates every surface with its light. The gym teacher took everyone outside for a refreshing game. Laughter and coordinated chatter sprawl across the court. The volleyball flies from one direction into the other; everyone’s running to catch it. Everyone, but one person.

He’s watching from afar, not caring about being caught. His eyes follow the ball’s flight with disinterest. His mind is turned off and shut away in a cellar. The clock slowly ticks down. Over half an hour is left before the bell. He hates that the time is moving so slow, like a car with a flat tire. Eventually, he sighs, looks away from the game and takes out his phone, immediately opening the browser app.

The classroom is quiet and empty. The blackboard shines cleanly under the light. The desks are spread unevenly, but no one bothers to put them back in order. Because of the open window, the cooling wind sometimes comes by, giving him company, and he could hear the chatter and clatter from the court. But none of these things really matter to him.

His fingers type away, creating the only respite he knows. His eyes hollowly read through the rageful responses, and his lips curl into a slight smile. Mission successful, he moves on from this imageboard to a different one. Another message sent, he refreshes the board and checks the responses. Proud of himself, he opens a new board. Rinse and repeat.

“There you are,” someone says in the silence of the classroom.

He looks up from his phone to see a guest. A really familiar guest. They are rather similar, with their skin tone, bald domes and green jackets. The only difference is that the guest is older.

The guest makes his way through the class and sits down near him. In the meantime, he just looks back into his phone, continuing to type away.

“PE’s in effect,” the guest says. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t wanna go there,” he replies. “And even if I wanted to, someone tossed my uniform into the bin.”

“Right…” The guest sighs, stands up and walks to the window. “Yeah, that definitely happened.”

Taken out of his mind flow, he puts his phone down.

“I hate them,” he says. “All of them. They’re happy, and it pisses me off.”

“That also happened,” the guest replies, then turns to him.

“People in groups piss me off.”

“They made me believe that I was left behind, that there is no person like me.”

“Breaks between classes piss me off.”

“They made me feel like people see me and go ‘look at how lonely he is.’”

“I hate every teacher here.”

“When they told to work in groups, my only group was the teacher and not my classmates.”

“I despise the school’s events and everything around them.”

“They amplified my loneliness.”

The guest sighs, and his lips curl into a smile.

“Come to think of it, there wasn’t a thing that I actually liked, was there? Except for seeing people rage online. That was my only respite.”

He doesn’t respond for a few seconds. Then suddenly, he stands up and turns towards the guest.

“Nobody needs me. Nobody cares about me. No one talks to me. Perhaps, I should just end it?”

The guest looks into his eyes, only seeing a reflection. The clocks tick for the last time before stopping indefinitely. Every action outside freezes, the walls fill with candescence. A calming wave spreads its rot across the soul.

“No. Best to not even think about it,” the guest replies. “Soon enough, you’ll change schools for the very last time. You’d think you could get through it like a ghost, unnoticed and unseen, something you wanted all this time. But that would break on day one. As the day would pass, you’ll find yourself in a company that will be always out there for you, and you’ll unlock something about yourself that before was just wishful thinking. You will start the days would last longer. You’ll even start to like the days of high school, all of them.”

The guest closes his eyes. The vision of baby blue crosses him.

“But most importantly… You will find someone who would smile just because of you. And who will make you smile just because of them.”

The guest opens his eyes and looks at him once more.

“Just wait a little bit more. This suffering will end very soon. It’ll all pay off a million times and more. Just you wait.”

He looks at the guest, but all he could see is himself.

“If what you say is true, then I…”

April 1 st .

Morning comes down and shines straight into the human’s closed eyes. His hand automatically turns off the alarm, but he doesn’t combat roll into his cold floor. He slowly opens his eyes, only to see a blurry mess. He wipes them and notices the droplets on his hands. He sits up in his bed, looking at them shine on his skin. Tears? – he thinks. – The fuck was I dreaming about?

He gets out of the bed, walking to the kitchen. I really want to see Nick, – he thinks.

In school, Anon and Nick are at a prank war. The human had already suffered a loss from the baryonyx, but now he’s about to turn the tables around. She may have gotten him with that kiss prank (how did she even find a mousetrap that small?), but he can finally weaponize his weebiness. A special treat, courtesy of Stella.

“Hey, Brittle Bones,” Anon says.

Nick hates this moniker, but still turns her face to him. “What?” she asks.

“Wanna play the pocky game?”

“The pocky game?”

“Yeah. I hold one of these…” Anon pulls a green sugary sticks from the box and hold the plain end by the teeth. “An’ joo haff too take it wiff yer lips an’ try an’ bite as ‘uch as joo can wiffout touchin’ my fashe.”

Nick narrows her eyes in suspicion, looking at the pocky stick, and then cautiously moves her head towards mine.

“It’sh jush shocola’e!” Anon encourages her.

The baryonyx sighs, moves in and crunches down on the pocky stick less than an inch away from the human’s lips. Her face contorts almost immediately, but she swallows the treat. Anon smugly grins at her. Jackpot, – he thinks.

“The fuck was that?!” Nick yells, whispering. She reaches for her coffee to get the taste out of her mouth.

“Let’s just stay,” Anon says, “Stella gets all sorts of weird snacks for Japan. Like wasabi pocky sticks.”

I’m worried for Trent now… – Nick thinks, then snaps her eyes at the human, ready to strangle him here and now.

“Hey now, I have amnesty for today. April Fools! This was my payback for the mousetrap.”

Nick groans, playfully jabs him and then turns away. Before Anon could make his retort, an announcement comes in over the PA system.

“ALRIGHT EVERYONE LISTEN UP! NEXT MONTH! WILL BE WHAT IS POSSIBLY THE HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR TIME HERE AT VOLCANO HIGH! PROM ! THAT’S RIGHT! I SAID IT! TOMORROW WE WILL BE SELLING FUCKING TICKETS TO PROM! SO GET THOSE FORMAL FUCKING OUTFITS READY!”

The ending chime ushers in a moment of complete silence, and then, all at once, the chatter starts.

“Ohmanohmanohman, I gotta ask him to go with-”

“-I even have a dress good enough for-”

“-tickets are pretty expensive, I’ll pass this-”

Everyone is excited about the sudden news. In the meantime, Anon looks over at Nick. Prom, huh? – he thinks. – I wouldn’t mind to go with her. What would she wear…? No, scratch that, what would I wear? I can’t afford a decent outfit. Maybe I’ll mail home and ask Dad for his old suit. Couples tickets are, like, a hundred bucks too… I’m sure I could make it work if I needed to.

“Nick?-”

“Settle down, students!” the science teacher says. “There’ll be plenty of time to scheme your night of debauchery later! We still have the lesson to go through, finish this and then chatter all you need.”

The class collectively throws their heads back to groan.

“Oh, fiddlesticks. It’s only two pages of particle physics.”

I wonder if I have a spare railgun in my bag… – Anon thinks. The science teacher passes out the assignments and returns to his desk for a quick nap.

“Particle physics…” Nick comments, reading through the paper sheets. “Not hard, just tedious.” She looks at Anon. “Should be a piece of cake.”

“With someone like you?” Anon replies. “Of course it’d be.”

The baryonyx just snorts and turns her eyes away. Together, they begin the assignment. The silence of the room is permeated with scribbling on pages.

Sometimes, Nick looks away from the sheets towards Anon. Prom… – she thinks. – What was I thinking about Prom before? That it was disinteresting and boring, I think. That would be so me. But now? I can go there. If he’ll be there, I’ll be sure I’ll go. Just gotta ask him about it.

Fifteen minutes into the assignment, they are just about done.

“Can’t imagine when I’d be using this bullshit in real life,” Anon says.

“You never know,” Nick smiles. “You might just shrink one day.”

“Yeah, and you might stop pretending like you are not an anime heroine.”

“As far as you know, I could be wrong.”

“I call bullshit. Someone like you could never be wrong.”

“Are you sure?”

“Try me.”

The teacher is making his rounds checking on the students, and soon gets to their desk.

“Hello, Anon. Nick,” he says. “How’s the assignment going?”

“Should be done any minute now,” Nick replies.

“Good, good,” the professor smiles, before leaving them be.

Just like they said, they are done with the assignment the very next minute. Anon looks over at Nick when she’s not looking for a second, and she returns the gesture. Both of them think about the exact same thing.

Why am I getting so worked up again all of a sudden? – Anon thinks.

It’s just a couple of words, shouldn’t be that hard to say, – Nick thinks.

Eventually, they both turn their eyes to one another. Their gazes instantly lock in for a moment, and then they snap back away, blushing a bit.

“Anon…” Nick says, looking from the corner of her eye.

Anon takes a deep breath and looks at her.

“Would you go to prom with me?” he asks.

She turns her eyes proper to him.

“Absolutely!” she says, smiling. Then catches herself. “I-I mean, if you want that.”

“If I didn’t want that, I wouldn’t have asked you, now would I?”

“Well… I thought you were- Ow!” Anon bonks her on the head.

“Stop getting so worked up,” he says.

“Alright…” she replies, smiling.

For a moment, the human thinks about asking her about what she’d wear, but he does not. One reason is that if he asks her about what she’d wear, then she’d definitely ask the same for him, and his reply may make her go onto a shopping spree. If she bought a guitar, then buying something to prom wouldn’t be a problem for her. The other reason is that he may already know the answer.

Anon remembers all the dresses she checked out on Valentine’s day. He remembers the poses she took for him, the texture of the cloth, sitting ever so elegantly on her slim, beautiful body. Even when he knows all of her contours, his mind is drooling over the sight. But on the outside, he simply cups his chin and nods, smirking slightly. Nick looks at him and quickly understands what’s up with the smug look on his face. She blushes and turns away.

Soon, the bell rings, they turn in their assignment and leave the classroom. They walk through the messy, noisy halls together, at least for now, until they’ll have to split to their separate classes. They don’t say anything, just enjoy each other’s company in peace and silence.

Peace and silence that didn’t last long, as they hear someone from behind, approaching:

“Ah, Nicole! There you are, a moment please.”

They turn around to see the principal trailing behind them. A neanderthal built like an IKEA shelf, wearing a slick tuxedo with the principal pin on it shining authority into the eyes of the two students.

“I was planning on asking you during your next class, but since I found you here…” He looks at the baryonyx. “You are still a musician, right?”

“Yeah, I got back into it not that long ago.”

“Good. I’m…” He sighs. “I’m embarrassed to say that we’re missing one event slot during prom. Scheduling error. Mr. Jingo recommended Fang and her band for the job, asked to give them one more chance, but… I don’t think I can trust them. Especially with something like this.”

“Oh…” Her face takes a pondering expression, as her mind immediately begins to process everything.

“I’m not asking you to make your decision right now,” the principal says. “But if you’d consider helping out by performing a musical number or two, that would help monumentally.”

“She’ll play for the school?” Anon asks.

“Only if she agrees to.”

“Well, uh…” She looks at the human, who subtly nods, then turns back to the principal, smiling. “Sure. I’ll play on prom.”

“That’s some fantastic news, Nicole,” the principal says, smiling like a father. “When you can, please swing back by the office.”

“I’ll come after school today, thank you.”

Spears nods and heads off. A few seconds later, Nick gushes and hides her face with her hands.

“What now?” Anon asks.

“Now I really need to get a good dress!” Nick whimpers.

“I thought you already had one?”

“A party dress isn’t a performance dress, Anon! It’s like… you know what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do? You played in your school uniform on that concert just fine.”

“I only wore it because I was too scared to choose something else! And besides, we need to get Trent and Curtis on this, we just can’t play without them, me and you wouldn’t do much on the stage, and-”

Anon just bonks her again.

“Snap out of it,” he says.

“That hurts!” she replies, covering her head.

“Like I said, you’ll be fine. It isn’t the first time you perform. And yeah, we should ask both Trent and Curtis if they’re fine with it and the principal if it’d be okay for them to perform. But I’m sure they’ll all agree.”

“I’d take some of your optimism on a sale.”

“Only if you trade some of your knowledge.”

“I could do that right now, even.”

They both laugh a bit, tossing the worries away, and continue walking.

“I’ll see you at lunch, right?” she asks, eventually.

“Of course,” he replies.

She smooches him on the cheek and runs off down the hall to her next class. Watching her silhouette shrink in the distance, Anon feels his lips spread into a grin. He’s actually excited for prom.

Man, I hope dad’s suit has already been to a cleaner, – Anon thinks, turning around and walking away to his class. – I don’t wanna disappoint.

The sun shines brightly in the after-school hour, spotlighting the students peeling out from the building. Anon and Nick are lost in the crowd, picked out by the sunlight equally. Wind comes blowing from the south, caressing their necks and singing a melody of intimacy, making them walk ever so close to one another, holding hands to make sure they share this cold and warmth together.

“I guess I have no time to waste…” Nick thinks out loud.

“You have some, for sure,” Anon replies.

“It’s Prom we’re speaking about, Anon. A performance of our lives. We should be ready to it like a squad of soldiers.”

“That’s beside the point. I don’t want you to strain yourself. You have over a month before the thing would actually happen, no?”

“Yeah…”

“So spend it. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“I get it. Anyways, let’s go to Trent’s. At least to announce the thing.”

“Did the principal give the greenlight for your idea?”

“Yeah, he saw nothing wrong with it.”

“That’s a relief.”

They descend the last stair and quicken their pace on the sideway, almost in the rush to the chasmosaurus’s house.

The practice was rather tense, and only for one reason: both Anon and Nick were seeking to take initiative, both of them wanted to tell them about this, but neither of them found the needed courage to actually do it. And so, their session went, on the surface, smoothly as per usual. It’s only after the rehearsal, when Anon, Nick and Curtis were putting on their shoes, that the human and the baryonyx had finally found the courage to say what they came here for in the first place.

“We’ll be playing on Prom,” they both say at the same time.

The house ushers in a second of silence, as they look at each other. Their gazes spoke for themselves.

“Really now?” Trent asks.

“Yeah,” Nick responds.

“Are you for real?” Curtis asks.

“Absolutely,” Anon responds.

“Well…” Trent stretches for a bit. “Guess we now have a goal for all of this nonsense, right?”

“Guess so,” Curtis straightens up. “But that also means we have to work twice as hard now. We don’t wanna fuck up something like Prom, now do we?”

“We don’t.”

After that, Trent bids farewell to the rest of the band. The night is coming ever so closer, but it’s still rather warm outside, even with the Sun nearly sunk beneath the horizon line.

“I also wanted to say something,” Curtis says.

“Yeah?” Nick asks.

“How about we perform on a fest?”

“A fest?” Anon asks. “Like…”

“You know, open area, large crowds, big stages…”

“I don’t think there’s a fest that would allow someone like us to play,” Nick says.

“True… Then how about we just visit one? There’s a fest that would happen by the end of this month, outside VB. The bands there are mostly metal, safe for a few names, but I think they’re only there for the sake of diversity.”

“Right…” Anon hums.

“So what do you say, guys?”

“Is Trent with us?” Nick asks.

“Of course! I asked him first. So we’re basically waiting for you two.”

Anon and Nick look at one another. They both subtly nod, then look back at Curtis.

“Yeah, we’re in,” Anon responds.

“Nice!” Curtis responds, excited.

Eventually, as they sink into the city’s streets, Curtis bids farewell to the lovers. Left to themselves and to this never ending hum and buzz, they decide to go to Nick’s place.

Nova welcomed them home with open hands. She already took care of the usual house tasks, and had made food for them minutes before they would arrive. They all sit down at the dinner table and, without further ado, looking at the beautiful meal, they get to eat. After so much time outside, finally sitting down and eating is an unmatchable feeling.

“Hey, ma,” Nick says.

“What, sweetie?” Nova asks, looking at her daughter.

“We’ll play at prom night.”

“What?! Really?!” Nova nearly slams the utensils through the table, her eyes stab at the younger baryonyx with indescribable amounts of excitement.

“Yeah. Principal Spears asked me. And I agreed.”

“Oh, this is fantastic! Would it be just you, or Anon would be there with you?”

“Our whole band will be there.”

“Good to hear. That’s a way to make that night memorable for everyone. But you have to make sure you’re ready for it.”

“She’s already working on it,” Anon says.

After the mealtime, the human and the baryonyx seclude themselves in Nick’s room. They quickly rummaged through the homework, and then wanted to play the guitar a bit more, just them two strumming soft tunes, but their guitars are at Trent’s, and neither of them felt like actually going there. A minute passed in boring, burdensome silence, before Nick had found a substitute.

Smirking at the human, she tackles him straight onto the bed and secures him tight inside her embrace. Caught off guard, it took Anon’s brain a second to process what was happening, until he saw Nick with what’s possibly the cutest smile ever.

“What,” Nick looks at him, “thought I wouldn’t do something like it?”

“That was my second guess, to be honest,” Anon replies.

“Really now? So you did expect it?”

“Nah, I’m just playing with you.”

She loosens her hug, so that he could hug her back. They look at each other in the eyes for minutes on end. As he stares into the endless silver of her gaze, he finds himself back in the hallways of a certain school he feels like remembering, an amalgam of every hallway in every school he had seen in his nomadic, pariah life.

And, on the other side of that hallway, he had noticed a younger self. A gloomier face, and a phone tied to his hand – he knows that version of himself, he was it just a couple of months ago.

“All of this is just stupid,” the younger self says. “Dunno why, but it just is. Whether I was in high school or not, whether I changed those schools or not… It’s like there was no difference at all.”

The younger self sighs. “All the ‘what ifs’… A dumb question, asked by even dumber people. Well, for you,” the younger self looks at Anon, “it’s different, is it not?”

Anon cannot answer. His vocal cords are not paralyzed, but he cannot bring himself up to actually say something. And before he could say one word, he is back in this reality, where he just stares into the silver eyes.

“Anon?” Nick asks.

Anon blinks, bringing himself back to his senses.

“Spaced out a bit,” he says, smiling slightly.

She reaches in and grabs his chin with her fingers, moving his head a bit, as if inspecting him like a doctor. “You alright?” she asks. “What were you thinking about so much that you went deep inside yourself?”

Anon hums for a moment. “Nothing in particular…” he then says. “Our lives are just coincidences, are they not? No matter how much you want to plan things out, no matter how much you’re mathematically correct, there’s this… element of chaos that would always bring things down. Just like I did to your plans.”

“Yeah…” Nicole smiles.

“Perhaps, if we miss at least one of these coincidences, our lives would’ve gone a different route.”

The baryonyx silently shifts herself closer to him.

“If that’s the case,” she says, “then the fact that we’re here together now is the work of fate.”

“Maybe,” he replies.

She sighs and rests her head on his shoulder. The human looks out into the evening light, crossing the room. It was almost completely unfathomable, – he thinks, – but it’s real. You’re here with me. I have friends. And now I live with all of you. Maybe even if your “fate” does not exist at all, I’m strangely certain that the world would slowly but surely move in the direction I want it to.

Anon closes his eyes, falling into sleep.

Chapter Text

April 25^th .

Anon and Nick wake up, looking at one another. The sun shines through the window, leaving a couple of rectangles on the carpet floor. Birds are chirping outside. A car passes through the street once, not even disturbing the silence in the room. It’s hot and cold at the same time. Neither of them wants to leave the bed; neither of them wants to leave this embrace.

But eventually, they push themselves out from beneath the bedsheets, because today is a special type of day. Trent’s birthday.

They put on their clothing. Sometimes, Anon took glances at Nick’s body being covered up in cloth; he feels playfully sad because of it, as if he didn’t explore every inch of the baby-blue baryonyx already. They leave the room, descend the stairs, enter the living room. Nova’s not here, possibly taking care of something important for her, who knows?

“Good,” Nick comments on the silence, then turns towards Anon. “We have the kitchen all by ourselves.”

They quickly get through their breakfasts, and as the human moves all used dishes to the sink, the baryonyx puts on an apron.

“Wouldn’t the whole celebration happen only in the evening?” Anon asks, noticing the new attire.

“Yeah, so what?”

“What’s with the rush, then?”

“We get cooking out of the way now; we wouldn’t have problems later on.”

“Right…” Iron cast logic, – Anon thinks.

With having nothing better to do, he decides to join her and puts on an apron as well. Seeing him tie it behind his back, Nick cannot help herself but smile.

“Maybe we should warm up before cooking… whatever’s on your mind right now?” Anon asks.

“Like what?”

“I mean, what do you want to cook for Trent?”

Nick hums for a second. “A chocolate cake. Simple, works like a charm.”

“Maybe we should start smaller then.”

“As in brownies, chocolate bites, et cetera?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Well, if that floats your boat, then let’s do it.”

They search through the fridge, taking out everything they may need on their cooking journey, and slowly but surely they begin the process.

From time to time, Anon looks over at Nick masterfully preparing something sweet, feeling a mix of two emotions. The first one is excitement. His baryonyx girlfriend is cooking something just for him and him alone. And the second one is fear. He never, ever, cooked something, especially for someone. The best he could do is meals that don’t require that much brain to cook, not something as sophisticated as confections. And besides that, he just doesn’t want to disappoint and wouldn’t take her understanding that he never cooked as a substitute.

In the meantime, Nick looks over at Anon, carefully following the instructions on his phone, and feels nothing but a slight tremor. She feels the exact same thing as him, cooking something for someone so close and dear to her, and she doesn’t want to disappoint either. At the same time, she understands she was behind the stove for much, much longer than him, and so, much like with teaching him the extra techniques on the guitar, the very least she could do was to cheer him up.

One step at a time, with minutes slowly passing by, they make the sweet dishes and sit down at the table.

“Ganache?” Nick asks, looking down at Anon’s plate. “They smell great.”

Anon simply nods. Nick looks at him.

“What’s with the sour look on your face?”

“You already know,” Anon looks at her with worry. “Never cooked for anyone.”

“So what? You didn’t blow the kitchen up, that’s already a good start.”

Good start my ass, – the human thinks, – you’ll just say my shit bites are okay because you love me so fucking much! He looks down at his plate, with a small slice of a chocolate cake. The smell, the texture, the chocolate oozing… It’s divinely perfect.

Anon reluctantly takes the fork and pushes it down on the tip of the cake. It freely cuts through the chocolate goodness. He pokes the bite and sends it into his mouth.

“Is it good?” Nick asks.

“It’s fucking amazing,” Anon replies.

“That’s a relief… I honestly cannot remember the last time I cooked a chocolate cake.”

At least you cooked it once! – Anon thinks.

Nick looks down at her plate. The chocolate ganache bites, sprinkled with more chocolate, are evenly spaced across the plate in sixteen different cubes.

“You know, out of all the chocolate I tried, I liked ganache the most,” Nick says.

“Of course you do…” Anon sighs, mumbling to himself.

She takes the first bite. Then the second, after – the third. Half the plate is done for in a matter of seconds. And she’s smiling.

“Is it… good?” Anon asks.

“Of course! The sweetness is just right, the texture is good… You'd done an amazing job for someone who had never cooked anything.”

“Right…”

Noticing the human’s gloomy face, Nick takes the unfinished plate of ganache, moves herself to him and offers him his own bite on the fork.

“Try it,” she says, smiling.

Anon takes the bite. Nick was right, the sweetness is good, the texture is good. He did a good job.

“You were afraid before seeing my reaction, weren’t you?” Nick asks.

“Of course I was,” Anon replies, swallowing the ganache bite.

“And now?”

“Not that much.”

“See? You did a good job. And I’m proud of you.”

An unknown spark lights up in the human’s eyes, but his face is still calm and peaceful. With a sigh, she lies her head down, looking at him, and her hand takes hold of his.

“You’ll get better and better every day,” she says. “And I’ll be there to see your improvement.”

“Sounds like you liked my bullshit only because I made it.”

“So what? I can’t enjoy things made by my boyfriend anymore?”

“You can, but…”

“Quit it, Anon. Just quit it.”

Anon sighs.

“Alright…” Nick stands up. “Let’s get to cooking the actual thing.”

“Sure thing.”

They make their way back into the kitchen and put on their aprons.

***

“Care for some coffee, Anon?” Nova asks him.

“Sure thing.”

The clock strikes evening. Over the past hours, they did nothing but lazing around. They didn’t leave the house to meet anyone, they didn’t play guitar (since it was at Trent’s place). Hell, they didn’t even cuddle for at least an hour, which to them both felt like a missed opportunity.

As the hours slowly went by, soon returned Nick’s mother from the job. Anon at that time was just sitting in the sofa chair and swiping through media in his phone, with the news on the TV serving as a soothing background.

“Where’s Nick?” Nova asks.

“In her room,” Anon replies.

“Figured you two would be together for some reason.”

“I’m not forcing her to cuddle, under any circumstances.”

Nova just chuckles to that.

The clock’s hands continue to slowly move, pushing the mass of time. First it was about an hour before they should move out to Trent’s place, yet Nick was nowhere to be seen. Then it was thirty minutes. Then it was fifteen. Now it’s ten.

Already prepared and with a chocolate cake waiting to be picked up from the fridge, Anon looks at the time again. We might as well be sent for death, – he thinks, sighing externally. – I should go check up on her. He hides his phone and stands up from the sofa chair, turns off the TV and makes his way upstairs. At her doorstep, he knocks on the door a few times, but there is no response.

He pushes the doorhandle and swings the door open. And there she was. Still in her home clothing, face in the bedside, hair disheveled. She’s definitely asleep.

“Wake up, you cuddlemonster,” Anon says, pushing her by the shoulder. “We’ll get late.”

Nothing but a muffled sleepy moan.

Her hair’s all messed up, – Anon thinks, then finds a brush and sits down behind her. – I’ll brush it down, at least. Save her a minute or two. Or twenty.

He starts to brush her hair. A soft sound permeates the air. Anon’s fingers sink in the baby-blue silk, as the brush pushes through, straightening all the strands, making her hair even more beautiful. Caught in the moment, Anon soon pauses. She might kill me for this, – he thinks, putting the brush aside. – But what if I did this…?

His hands move on their own, styling the tired baryonyx’s hair that feels like flexible ropes in his fingers. Everything happens as if Anon is not here, and his body is controlled by a greater spirit. In a few minutes, the process was complete, and Anon, brought back to this reality, pushes Nicole out of her sleep.

“Go wash your face,” he says. “I’ll wait for you at the front door.”

“Mmm…” is the baryonyx’s reply, as she stands up and slowly leaves the room.

Anon makes his way back downstairs and to the front door, grabbing the chocolate cake from the fridge in the meantime. He puts his shoes and jacket on and, with the cake in his hands, starts to wait. Minutes slowly pass him by, and not even his phone could distill this waiting.

And then, he hears a loud yell. Guess she saw my handiwork, – Anon thinks. He hears something thumping quickly towards him, and then he sees Nick, with a distressed face and a large hair bun on her head.

“ANON!!!” she yells. “What’s this on my head?!”

“Well…” Anon hides his phone. “Your hair was really messed up, so I…”

“We’re going on a birthday, sure, but not on a damn date!” she continues to yell, distressed as ever.

“I honestly was afraid that I’d fuck up a simple ponytail.”

“Oooh, God…!” Seeing the baryonyx being so nervous over her own hair was rather cute. “It doesn’t work with my clothes!”

“You’ll untie it?”

Nick notices the expression on Anon’s face. Quite dull and hopeless. Makes her feel guilty for her lashing out before asking a simple question. Swallowing her nervousness, she turns her face away in embarrassment.

“D… Does it look good?” she asks.

Anon looks at her, thinking. There’s a good explanation as to why he styled her hair like this, and he could spend his time telling her this. But instead, he just nods in confirmation.

“Fine! I’ll go like this!” Nick replies with banter and pride in her voice.

She quickly puts her shoes and jacket on, they bid her mother farewell and step outside into the warm evening.

“So,” Nick asks, “does it fit me?”

“What, your hair?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t I say it does?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Oh, the woe, – Anon sighs internally. “It does,” he replies. “You’re cute.”

“Okay…” Unknown to the human, a soothing spark lights up inside the baryonyx’s chest. I’m cute! – she thinks.

In the meantime, Anon looks at the bun, unable to believe that his hands had made them. Gotta thank the guitar for this, – he thinks. – Made my hands nimble as ever.

And so, they slowly make their way to the birthday boy’s place.

***

The clocks strike 6 PM. Trent’s house is lit with light and cheerful holler. Anon and Nick, Stella and Curtis – all chant a familiar song to the birthday boy who had turned twenty-four today. The dinner table hosts the cake, courtesy of the human and the baryonyx, with candles already blown. Trent didn’t wish for anything when he blew the candles, because anything he could wish for, whether material prosperity, luck, or company, he already has them, in one way or another.

Twenty-four years. Feels like a lot, but most that he could remember is just a blink of an eye. Small instances of his life, as he approached what he is today. The best memories across the lane were the day he got his guitar, the day he released his first record, and the day he and Curtis met… The most recent one was that day when he met Nick after over a year of silence, and the first thing they spoke about was reuniting the band. If he could, he would cry right now, cry sweet tears of absolute joy.

And so, all he can do now is just enjoy the current moment. Enjoy the cake that a couple of his friends had baked for him, enjoy the presents his girlfriend and his long-lasting atrociraptor mate had brought him. Enjoy the company, the time he spends with them, and the shenanigans that took place. Enjoy the past, the present, and the future.

“Everyone’s praising my hair bun!” Nick says to Anon, in between the holler.

“Of course they are,” Anon replies, smiling softly. “You look so cute with it. Second to none, actually.”

A tide of embarrassment washes her over, twisting her burning face. She scoffs, turning away with a frowned look, but she cannot deny her heart beating heavier when she hears his praises.

“What’s wrong?” the human asks.

“Nothing,” she says, pouting.

“I didn’t lie, did I?”

“You didn’t.”

“So snap out of it.”

She sighs, calming herself down, then turns her face back to the human, smiling as him.

“You can style my hair for prom,” she says.

“Really now?” Anon chuckles.

“What’s so funny about that? I’m serious!”

“I know you are serious.”

Clocks slowly tick down, getting ever so close to bedtime. The cake is consumed, the table is cleaned, and all there’s left to do is to play their tunes and share stories. Which is exactly what they did – right after the cake was eaten, the group made their way into the basement studio to play their favorite songs, from the past and from the present.

Soon, however, a majority makes their way back upstairs, as if there’s something happening everyone must see, leaving only Anon and Trent in the studio. The sudden onset of silence is deafening, with only occasional clicks of the computer mouse emitting in the nothingness.

“Trent?” Anon asks.

“Yeah?” Trent replies, not looking.

“I… I want to make a song for Nick.”

The clicks stop, and the chasmosaurus turns to the human.

“Took you long enough,” says Trent.

“I know…” Anon sighs.

“Don’t stress it. Not that many musicians I know about made love songs for the people they care about the most. I think it’s a question of passion.”

“You ever made one?”

“Nope. Not even for Stella. She just appreciates me for what I am, without any other tricks.”

“Well, Nick does the same. So maybe I shouldn’t make one?”

“Look, man, if you wanna make one, make one; if you don’t, then don’t. No need to overthink this shit.”

Easy for you to say, you never thought about that in the first place, – Anon thinks. He’s been mulling this idea for weeks on end, from the day since he got the guitar. He knows that Nick loves him with all her heart without any fancy trinkets or odes to the burning sensation within their synchronized hearts. But at the same time he believes he must show some semblance of gratitude for all the efforts she had made to flesh out his guitar skills.

“So?” Trent asks after a pause.

Anon looks at him again. There’s no time left for him to think this through. It’s now or never.

“I’m making a song for her,” he says.

“Alright,” Trent says, then grabs the guitars for both of them. “And just so you know,” he continues, as he plugs the guitar, “I’m with you on this, in many ways.”

“Thanks, Trent,” the human nods.

“Always welcome, homie,” the chasmosaurus replies, smiling.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Curtis, Nick, and Stella are chatting with an unexpected, but still appreciated guest in this place. Reed. A chill pink raptor with a laid-back attitude, a drummer just like the atrociraptor, a schoolmate to both the baryonyx and the stegosaur, – it was surprising to see someone like him here.

Dressed in his usual torn jeans and flashy shoes, wearing a hoodie, he looked rather strange. His eyes were not obscured by the carfe smoke contained within them, but they weren’t clear either – they were rather bleak and dull, focused on nothing in particular. And seeing how much he clings to himself, one may think he’s shivering all the time, as if he had never entered the warm rooms of Trent’s mansion.

After Stella took Curtis with herself to show him something interesting, it was only Nick and Reed at the dining table. For a few seconds, there was no talks. The steaming cup of coffee the baryonyx had prepared for him the moment he entered remains still on the table, and the raptor looks into the black surface, seeing a murky reflection of himself.

“You look fancy,” he suddenly comments.

“Ah- Thanks, Reed,” Nick says. “You… You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m- I’m fine,” he slurs his speech. “Don’t worry about me. No need. Everything’s calm on the western front.”

“With the way you look, I think the western front is being bombed.” Reed chuckles hollowly at that. “What’s going on?”

Reed looks at her. She won’t get off his back unless she hears a proper answer. He sighs, reaches out to grab the cup and weakly take a sip of the warming beverage.

“‘VVURM DRAMA’ is no more,” he says.

“Really? I thought you guys were thick as thieves,” Nick replies.

“Yeah. Up until we saw your band perform.” Reed goes for another sip of coffee.

“Wait, what? You guys were there? Why did I not notice any of you?”

“Not all of us. Trish did. She decided to go there. Saw you perform. It’s like something broke inside her. She started… lashing out on everyone, us included. Fang had enough and… God…”

“Was there a fight?”

“They were like a pair of cats, man… I tried to push them away, but…” He turns his cheek, and Nick notices a lengthy wound on it.

“Oh God…”

“That’s when I decided I had enough. I packed my shit and left. I could care less if anything happens to them, but I’m not joining them on their crusade on a sinking boat.”

“That’s… fair enough I guess.”

“Maybe if I stayed, I could’ve made it a different outcome, but…” Reed sighs. “I don’t know at this point, man.”

“Hey,” Nick moves herself to him. “You did what you could.”

“I know. But…”

“Maybe it was your only option, no need to blame yourself for taking it.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Nick sighs in slight relief. “But that still doesn’t explain you… looking like this.”

“Oh. I’m just getting off the carfe.”

“I thought it would go easier.”

“I thought so too. But it isn’t. I’m fucking shivering all the time; I have to use sleeping pills to take a normal damn nap, and… a ton of other issues I have to deal with.”

“So why did you come here?”

“Stella asked me to come and celebrate. She didn’t know, I don’t blame her, I didn’t tell anybody about this. About me going through withdrawal, I mean.”

“You could’ve stayed home. Things like these are serious.”

“I know.” Reed looks at Nicole. “I just wanted to see some of you a bit more.”

The baryonyx’s heart grows still as the raptor turns away. She cannot help him, there’s nothing she can do. A soothing voice and words of comfort will only be a short-term damage control. She could only spectate as Reed tries to crawl out of the hole he had dug for himself for the past few years. And seeing him do so is nothing but hurting. Even if they weren’t any sort of friends, it still hurt her to see someone like Reed, an aspiring musician like literally anybody out of her band, in this position. She could only hope everything would work out.

Nick notices Curtis and Stella making their way downstairs, into the basement studio. Then she looks over at Reed. His face is just painful to look at.

“Why don’t you join us at our little rehearsal?” she asks.

Reed looks at her for a second. “Sure, why not,” he then replies. They get out of their seats and get into the basement studio.

“Oh, Reed! About time!” Stella says.

The raptor sits down on the couch, looking around.

“So this is where the legendary ‘Swamp Babies’ makes their things, huh?” he says, smiling. It was strangely relieving to see him smile like that.

“Wouldn’t call us ‘legendary’,” Trent replies. “But yeah, this is where we make our stuff.”

“This is cool… We never had a proper studio. We were recording things on our phones, basically. In an auditorium.”

“Sounds like when Mayhem were recording their first LP.”

The raptor looks over to Curtis, who had already taken his sweet spot at the drumkit. His mouth slightly open, he is stunned by this gigantic beauty. The way the cymbals shine, the way the drumshells glint, the way the sticks flick in the atrociraptor’s hands… He’s captivated.

“I see you drooling over there,” Curtis says, smiling. “You a drummer?”

“Yeah,” Reed replies, almost automatically.

“Wanna play?”

“Yeah… I mean, if I’m allowed to.”

“Of course you are!” Curtis puts the drumsticks down and stands up. “Come on now, don’t be shy and don’t go gentle on them.”

A spark lights up inside the raptor’s tired eyes as he quickly makes his way behind the drumkit, feeling almost like a kid on Christmas morning. Taking the drumsticks into his hands, Reed quickly analyzes the monstrous rig, amazed by just how better it looks and feels in comparison to his one and only drumkit, which was left to collect dust in the auditorium backrooms.

And soon enough, after Reed checks out the sound, and Nick plugs her guitar in, the group starts to play, blasting and strumming into the night.

Chapter Text

May 9 th . Swamp Babies are spending the weekend away from the confinement of their homes.

It all started over a week ago, with Curtis finding out about a small metal festival taking place up north from Volcaldera Bluffs. Excited, he brought the idea to Trent, then Trent told Stella, and then Stella told Anon and Nick. At any point in that chain reaction, it didn’t take much convincing to get them going. And so, tossing guitars aside and forgetting about school, they leave their homes on Saturday morning.

Of course, to have some semblance of organization, they agreed to meet at a certain hour in a certain place. Looking at it on the map, if one draws imaginary lines from the homes of every person, that little joint would look like a center of gravity, pulling the group of friends together.

First to arrive, after taking a twenty-five minute walk, was Anon, and looking at the establishment they had agreed upon he felt rather underwhelmed. He thought they’d pick something more significant than a food chain joint. Hell, even “Lava Java” would do, no matter the corniness. But at the same time, everything great starts with everything simple, and this joint would do just fine for that. And so, Anon makes his entry.

As he makes his order, he remembers the hectic talks in their group chat, spitballing ideas and brainstorming schedules. The moment when they were picking out locations is the most vivid one. He wasn’t really participating, as in tossing his ideas to the bonfire, because even with some knowledge about the city, courtesy of Nick and her tour a few months prior, he felt green. He took the role of an observer, agreeing or disagreeing. Luckily, that binary response was really all that was needed.

He receives his food and sits down. A small value meal is his breakfast of champions. A great way to kickstart this day. As he munches on a burger the size of a small planet (it really was big, compared to the burgers from Rock Bottom, at least), he checks his phone from time to time. Halfway through his breakfast, he opens the group chat and goes through all the messages sent this morning. Seeing how same-minded people woke up and now were making their way to here was rather soothing for some reason.

Second to arrive was Trent. Wearing his usual jeans, t-shirt, and flannel jacket, he looks around, eventually spotting the human at one of the tables. Anon waves him over, and the chasmosaurus makes his way to him.

“You’re early, man,” he says, shaking the human’s hand.

“Yeah.” Anon bites his burger. “Didn’t eat anything at home to get something from here.”

“Right,” Trent smiles.

“I gotta ask, are you not sweating in that flannel jacket?”

“Not really, why?”

“Just curious.”

“I mean, if it would get hot, I would take it down, but you know us dinos, man. We love heat more than you guys. We live and die by the sun.”

“That’s poetic.”

A few minutes pass in silence. Trent, tired of glancing at Anon enjoying his meal, decides to get something himself and soon returns to the table with the largest soda they serve here.

“Wonder what Nick has in plans for today,” Anon says.

“I bet fifty bucks and a bar of Snickers she’d take us on a random tour at some point,” Trent replies, taking a sip from his drink.

“Was she always like that?”

“I wouldn’t say… But I don’t really remember. After SB fell apart once, I got caught up in a wiry mess. Was too busy to remember. But even if she was, I guess that feature of hers wasn’t as present as it is today. So you can say that she’s like this because of you.”

“Please.”

“I’m serious, homie! Don’t sell yourself so short. You wouldn’t fathom how much of an influence you were on our lives.”

“Doubt I did anything influential.”

“You did.”

“And what would that be?”

“You were the right man, arriving at the right time at the right place. May seem like a coincidence, but, you know, coincidences aren’t coincidental. Nothing happens on the whim, everything’s a response.”

“Whatever you say, you Buddhist monk.”

Trent just chuckles at that.

Third to arrive was Curtis, in his usual torn jeans and a shining white t-shirt. Only now, as the atrociraptor took his seat, greeting the few waiting men, Anon noticed the flowery tattoos all over his hands and neck. I know the guy for a few months at this point, – he thinks, – and I notice that only now? Damn.

“Hey Curtis,” Anon says.

“Yeah?” Curtis turns his eyes to him.

“How do tattoos on scales work?”

The atrociraptor’s vivid cinnabar eyes light up.

“Glad you asked!” Curtis replies.

Anon sighs, thinking that he walked into an hour-long lecture, and Curtis chuckles a bit as he sees his non-verbal response.

“Don’t worry, man, I won’t talk your ears off,” he says.

The atrociraptor puts his hands down onto the table in full length, letting both Anon and Trent to look at the colorful flowers spiraling on his arms.

“There are two types of tattoos,” he says. “The first type is when tattoos are drawn on the surface on the scales. They’re temporary, depending on how fast you shed the old scales, and typically you renew them in a year. They’re not that expensive, but it’s like a nicotine addiction – it definitely would take a toll on your income. The second type is beneath the scales’ surface level. This is what I have.”

“How painful is it?”

“Imagine you’re walking barefoot on a road full of thick needles for hours and hours on end.”

Anon’s face contorts as his mind imagines the scene. Sometimes he wishes to be mentally impaired so that this would never happen to him ever again.

“ That’s how painful it is. And it’s permanent. So you have to think twice about what goes under your scales. There are ways to remove it, but, as I heard it, it’s twice as painful. And costs thrice the price of your tattoos.”

“Gotta ask now, are you a tattoo artist by any chance?”

“Yeah! Became one when I was… in-between bands, and still am.”

The more you know , – Anon thinks.

“And how is it?” he asks.

“Not as challenging as you think, especially for what kind of money you get from it. Actually, now that I remember, Nick wanted tattoos as well at some point.”

“Really now?”

“Yeah! Even sent me some designs. Hold on…”

Curtis pulls out his phone and searches for the image. In the meantime, Anon gestures Trent for his drink and takes a long sip.

“Found it,” the atrociraptor smiles, then passes his phone to Anon.

The image is an outline of a template dino body with whirling lines in tribal patterns. To the right is a close-up of a dino’s face with a small star beneath the right eye. The time and effort it’d take to put this down onto a living canvas that is the body of a dinosaur…

“Damn,” escapes Anon’s mouth.

“I know right?” Curtis replies, taking his phone back. “She was… I don’t know, sixteen when she told me about this. I talked her out of it.”

“I cannot imagine her with tattoos all over her. Just doesn’t fit.”

“Felt exactly the same as you, man.”

Fourth to arrive is Stella. About thirty minutes had passed since Anon’s arrival, and seeing the stegosaur instead of the baryonyx was strange.

“I’m sorry I’m late!” the stegosaur hectically responds, sitting down at the table right next to Trent.

“It’s fine,” Trent replies. “We’re still waiting.”

Stella sighs. Anon looks around, in search of the baby-blue baryonyx.

“Where is she?” he asks.

“She’s making her way here,” Trent replies, “don’t worry. She wouldn’t forget. Or allow herself to forget.”

“Right…” The chasmosaurus’s words are of little relief.

The time slowly ticks down. Anon’s surfing the internet, Curtis’s surfing his mind, while Stella plays all sweet and sappy in front of Trent, nestling to him as close as she could, squeezing the chuckles out of the chasmosaurus. Trent, in response, puts his hand around her shoulders, bringing her even closer to himself.

“Get a room you two,” Curtis says to them automatically, to what Trent and Stella do not reply.

Anon could not be bothered by this nonsense. His mind, his heart, his soul – his entirety is thinking about Nick and only Nick. Where is she? If she’s on the move, she should’ve alerted them that something’s stopping her, no? And if she isn’t? Maybe she forgot? Or did something happen to her? Please tell the poor human kid that nothing bad happened to her…

And soon, as the clock strikes 9:30 AM, the baryonyx finally arrives. Wearing a simple dress, with her hair flowing down against her spine like a waterfall and her glasses glinting in the sunlight like beacons in the nightmarish nothingness, she passes through the hall like a shadow dancing on the edge, like a soft cloud passing overhead – effortless and free, swinging through reality like no bother. In this very instance, seeing her angelic presence come closer and closer, Anon understands just how infatuated he is with her.

Curtis leaves his spot, and Nick lands herself right beside the human.

“Sorry I took so long,” she says. “Couldn’t pick a good dress for this.”

“You know this is just a party and not a double date?” Trent asks.

“A double date?” Curtis responds. “And what am I supposed to be in it?”

“A silent observer,” Anon replies, “slowly building up his vitriol towards the lucky few.”

“I know it isn’t a date by any means,” Nick says, “but it doesn’t mean I cannot arrive in something fancy.”

Looking at her silky dress, at how elegantly it sits on her slim physique, he suddenly remembers – she had showed him this dress before, back on Valentine’s day. Understanding that it was his response that made her buy it and a few others makes him feel queasy, in a pleasant way. He cannot help himself but wonder what she’d wear on the prom night.

“Well,” Trent says, “let’s start. Nick, fill our crew in.”

“Right,” Nick replies with rather malicious determination. “Today will be a long day, full of many different things. Me and Trent had spent a decent amount of time figuring out how to make this day before end of school as memorable as it could get. So, for starters…”

The first thing on the list is hitting the beach.

The sun pours its light down onto the sand. People holler all around, laughing and chatting. The water comes and goes, and the salty wind sometimes hits the crew in their faces. It’s only 10 AM, and the place is lively as ever.

After renting the necessary items, the boys begin to assemble their little resting place, while the girls make their way to the changing room and swap their dresses for swimwear.

“You guys are so fucking lucky,” Curtis says. “You get to see your girls in sexy wear!”

“Nobody stops you from finding a girlfriend,” Trent replies.

“Yeah, put those nimble fingers of yours to use, big guy,” Anon says.

“It ain’t as easy as you say!” Curtis responds.

“And here I thought drummers would get all the bitches,” Anon says, making Trent choke on his drink.

In the midst of noise, they cannot hear the soft footsteps on sand. A pair of dinosaurs approaches them.

“Hey, guys,” one of them says.

Anon and Trent look towards the voice, and are immediately stunned by what they see.

The stegosaur, against her own embarrassment, wears some slick light-green swimwear with a neat transparent skirt. She never wore anything like this, so all she could do is look away, as her tail wraps around her own leg.

But as beautiful as she looks, the real star of the show, the ace in the sleeve, the brightest star of the universe is, of course, the baryonyx. Most of her beautiful body is shown to the world, with the deep-blue swimwear elegantly hiding her private parts. And unlike the stegosaur, she stands tall and proud, looking at Anon behind her glasses and waiting for his response. Even when he had the honor to explore her body, the human is concussed as if he had never seen a woman before.

Anon and Trent side glance at one another and bump fists. Curtis just scoffs and looks away. Nick and Stella make their way to their respective lovers.

“How do I look?” Nick asks.

“Beautiful,” Anon replies. “And sexy.”

“I’ve never really worn bikinis before, so I was a bit scared.”

“Really now?”

“Yeah. I’ve never been to beaches either, so why would I wear them?”

“Fair enough. And also same, this is my first time being on a beach.”

‘There’s always a first time for everything. First book, first friend, first class…”

“First handholding, first kiss, first love, first…”

“Let’s not get in there.” A slight blush appears on the baryonyx’s cheeks.

“Why not?”

“Let’s just…” She looks at him. “Not.”

“Okay, okay.”

Soon, Nick and Stella join each other in the ocean, while Trent and Anon, after changing their clothes for swim shorts, take their seats beneath the shade. Curtis is nowhere to be seen, must’ve ran off to gather supplies and quench his jealousy in the meantime.

“Man am I lucky,” Anon says.

“Same,” Trent replies. “I think you’re luckier than me though.”

“Why’s that?”

“You got together with Nick. I only dreamt of that.”

“It sounds like you undervalue Stella.”

“I’m not. She’s all I can ask for and more, but… Looking at Nick, I can’t help myself but remember how I had feelings for her, but never could come up to her and say it into her face.”

“Hey now,” Anon puts his hand onto the chasmosaurus’s shoulder. “You’ve managed to find someone else, gave them those feelings that you held inside yourself. It’s an achievement.”

“Right…” Trent responds, uncertainly.

“C’mon, guys!” Nick yells. “Stop sitting on your asses and get over here!”

Hearing the call, Anon and Trent stand up and walk to the ocean. Their feet sink into the cold water, and soon they are swimming toward their beloved ones.

“Where’s Curtis?” Nick asks.

“Ran off to grab something, I think,” Trent says.

“Maybe he bailed?” Anon asks.

“Curtis? Bailed? Please,” Trent replies. “One thing that Curtis would not do is just leave us hanging.”

“I mean, that’s a possibility that you need to account,” Anon doubles down.

“He’s right,” Nick says. “Either way, let’s hope he didn’t do that.”

Speak of the devil, Curtis arrives unnoticed by anyone, grabbing Trent from the back and tackling him into the ocean. Surprised, the crew finds itself at how a pair of adult dinos fight each other in the water like some kids. As the realization sank in, Anon, Nick and Stella burst into laughter.

With Curtis right beside them, the tone shifted a bit. Now that everyone’s sure he didn’t leave them for whatever reason, they could have all the fun they can possibly grab. Whether that’s fighting in the ocean, joining a group of dinos in a fair game of volleyball, or just spending some time under the sun – every activity felt like a fun goldmine.

Slowly and surely, the clocks continue to tick, eating away at the day. Lying under the shade, Anon checks the time. Already near 10:30 AM. He puts his phone down and looks around. Stella and Trent enjoy each other in the ocean, and Curtis is nowhere to be seen, again.

“Wonder where that damn atrociraptor went off again,” Anon says.

“Possibly tries his luck,” Nick replies.

“I think he’d succeed,” Anon lies down on the blanket, feeling the warmth of the sand spread beneath. “He’s charming.”

“You’d date him if you were a girl, were you?” Nick smirks.

“I would. And you?”

“Honestly, if you didn’t roll around and if the band would’ve stayed… I think I’d choose Curtis over Trent.”

“Poor Trent. And he had feelings for you.”

“Really now?” Nick lies down beside him.

“Yeah. Says so himself.”

“I kind of figured he’d have feelings for someone at that point, but… didn’t think it would’ve been for me.”

“Feeling guilty?”

“Not really. I mean, I didn’t know, and I didn’t hurt him by not knowing, right?”

“I guess? He said that he was scared to come up, so he just bottled them.”

“Good to know that he found a way to open that bottle again.”

“Yeah.”

She nestles up to him. Her snoot rests on his chest, and her tail wraps around his leg.

“But we’re here,” she says, “and not in some alternate dimension.”

“Yeah,” Anon absentmindedly agrees.

“We’re in a place where Trent is with Stella, Curtis is actively searching, and I am with you.”

“Yeah…”

Smiling at him wholeheartedly, she pushes her lips against his cheek.

“This is so much fun,” Nick sighs. “Even if it would’ve been just you and me, it would still be so fun.”

They rest under the shade. The world drowns itself down as they sink in the restless clockwork motion of their mind. Dancing in the endless baby-blue fields together, dancing without the music, dancing until their hearts would cease.

The dream is so inalienable from reality that it takes a few more minutes for Anon to realize that he’s awake. Trent and Stella are not in the ocean anymore, and the human also spots Curtis walking across the beach with some dark-purple dinosaur hand in hand. He checks the time: 11:30 AM.

Nick is already awake, sitting under the shade and sipping on some soda. Anon looks around and spots a cooling container, reaches in and grabs himself a can as well. Cracking it open, he pulls himself upwards and sits beside the baryonyx.

“Thirty minutes before noon,” Anon says.

“Yeah…” Nick replies. “And there’s still the rest of the day.”

“I’m thrilled to hear what else you have in store for us.”

“Oh, it’s a lot. Both inside and outside VB.”

“Outside?”

“Remember when Curtis asked if we’d like to get on a fest someday?”

And so it was. The moment it hit noon, the crew changed their clothes, packed their stuff, and bid farewell to the beach and the ocean. There’s still a ton of time left before they take Curtis’s car and drive off to the fest, so they make sure to spend it all roaming across the city.

In and out of many different places, capturing experiences as they come and go. Bars, arcades, restaurants, shops, and on and on and on… It’s almost like they’re putting together a hefty tome of nothing but memories, imaginary polaroid photos that find their places without any order of chronology or soul on the pages.

For Stella, it was just a neat way to spend time together with the people whose presence she enjoyed wholeheartedly. For Curtis, it was his detox season, as his hand, shivering eagerly to play drums again, was forced to rest by his sides. For Trent, it was his moment to remind himself why he stuck through the end with them in the first place. For Nick, it was yet another weekend of her life.

But for Anon, it was his last chance to actually make his pre-adulthood years memorable. At least these few months. At least this weekend. At least this hour. It doesn’t matter that in the years upon years before the current moment he was entangled in drama he swerved to avoid, changed schools for the sake of keeping to his odd name, for the sake of obeying the ode of anonymity. He can finally forget them now. All the suffering, in the end, paid off a million times fold.

And by the time he has to witness his last sunset, there’ll finally be something to remember.

Eventually, came the evening hour, and the crew made their way to Curtis’s apartment. After gathering everything they need for the next day outside of VB, they leave back into the streets and get inside the atrociraptor’s neat sedan.

“A manual?” Trent asks, sitting in the front.

“I trust myself more than this thing, okay?” Curtis replies, in a tone that clearly meant that he won’t tolerate anything coming from them in regard to his choices.

A minute later, they finally drive off into the streets of Volcaldera Bluffs, and their destination point lies far away, in another city an hour up north away from here. On the maps, the distance is miniscule and its blueness reminds everyone of a vein.

“If you need me to stop, just holler,” Curtis says as he rolls onto the highway.

After a few minutes of the continuous evening road, they find themselves bored out beyond belief.

“How about a small game?” Trent asks. “One of us says something and people must raise a hand in agreement. If the statement gets a unanimous agreement, you get a point. The first to three points wins.”

“This will be endless, though?” Stella asks.

“Not really. Doubt we have something that wouldn’t get everyone to agree on.”

“Right, I start then,” Nick says. “Cats over dogs, who’s with me?”

Curtis, Anon and Nick raise their hands.

“You are into dogs too?!” Stella says with a glimmer of excitement in her eyes.

“People with cat personalities often are into dogs,” Nick explains.

“Right… I’m next,” Anon says. “Who didn’t have any friends until recently?”

Everyone raises their hands.

“One point to me,” Anon says with a smile.

“Make it something not so damn mundane!” Trent says. “Okay, here I go…”

And so, like that, until they arrive at the gas station to resupply on snacks and do their duties in the toilet, they played this silly game. Anon won with two points.

Curtis left to pay for fuel, Nick and Stella join him to grab some snacks. Anon and Trent stayed in the car, and while the human is actively browsing the internet, the chasmosaurus spends his time looking outside. The night comes closer and closer, as the sky continues to burn in various shades of fire.

“How’s that song of yours?” Trent asks, breaking the silence. “Is it coming along well?”

“Yeah,” Anon replies without hesitation. “All I need to do now is to get it down in one solid take.”

“That’s your requirement?”

“Uh-huh,” Anon sighs and puts his phone away. “I want to make this as lively as I can.”

“Alright then. I’ll help if you need it.”

“I know.”

A few seconds pass, sulking with pause. Trent moves away from the window and turns around the back of his seat to look at the human.

“When do you plan to play it?” he asks. “No need to answer. I just wanna quench my curiosity.”

“I don’t know,” Anon replies. “Maybe I will play it for her. Maybe I’ll just send an MP3 file and call it a day.”

“If you ask me, you shouldn’t think about it too hard.”

“Why’s that?” Anon looks at the chasmosaurus.

“Because you made a song for her,” Trent smiles, “and that’s the only thing that matters.”

“Right…”

Suddenly, they both hear someone knock on the window. They look, only to see Nick waving them to come over, with Curtis and Stella standing nearby. Anon and Trent leave the car and make their way to them.

“What’s up?” Trent asks.

“Group photo,” Curtis replies, smiling as ever. “That’s what’s up!”

“Oh.”

They quickly assume the position at the front of the car. Nick in the middle, Anon and Stella next to her on the sides and Curtis with Trent on the far ends. From an outside perspective, they look like a simple unassuming band of teens enjoying their life while they can.

“Wanted to do this for a long time, actually!” Nick announces.

The atrociraptor’s long arm reaches out, holding a phone with a frontal camera on.

“Alright! Everyone smile!” Curtis announces.

Suddenly, Curtis and Trent push the trio between them, picturing the moment of blissful uncertainty together.

Chapter Text

The evening soon came, and so the crew had arrived at the hotel. Three rooms: one for Stella and Nick, one for Trent and Anon, and one for Curtis (there was an option for a three bed room, but Curtis was strictly against that, saying something along the lines of dignity). The band was quick to settle down, and soon a wait for the night to come had begun.

As much as he remembers himself, Anon wasn’t a fan of trips. That is to say, he wasn’t on any trip, really. Those that were back when he was a kid unspoiled by the ragebaits and (you)’s of his favorite website don’t go towards the count. So this little adventure, this full day outside of VB that awaits him the moment he’d close his eyes and sink into sleep, is his first and potentially last trip before adulthood hits. Of course, there was still half a year left before he’d actually turn eighteen, but this opportunity still feels just like that – his first and last trip.

So he’s grateful for it. Grateful for his friends to actually pull him out of the confinement of his room, grateful for this trip to be outside of the city, even if it is an hour away from the streets he knows, and grateful for himself for actually agreeing to go. He doesn’t believe that any of them, Nick included, had influenced him when he made that “heavy” decision. It was all him.

“So when does the fest start?” Anon asks, lying on the bed and staring at the empty ceiling.

“At about nine in the morning,” Trent replies. “And ends at around midnight. We won’t be sticking around for that long, though. At about 8 PM, we’ll be heading back home.”

“Right…”

“What, wanted for it to be longer?”

“A slight bit.”

“I wish the same, man. It’s just that you, Nick and Stella have school to worry about. It’s already a bit tough to pull you guys out of routine. I was scared that this would… I don’t know, affect you in any way.”

Anon pushes himself upwards and sits on the bed. Trent looks outward into the dark streets.

“A’ight,” he says, then starts taking off his flannel jacket. “I’ll hit the shower if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll… walk around the place for a bit,” says the human. “Who decided to ‘girls in one place, boys in other’, actually?”

“Dunno. Maybe it was a collective decision.”

“Collective my ass…”

“Hey, if you don’t like it, ask Stella to swap places with you. She’d like it here, I’m sure of it.”

“Alright.”

The human stands up from the bed and, silently bidding farewell to his chasmosaurus friend, walks out of the room.

The hallways stretch far and wide. They’re rather spacious, with no décor but some plants here and there and some paintings, and looking at it makes Anon feel like they’ve consulted a mathematician to actually place all these things down. The spaces between plants and between paintings are rather consistent. It pleases the eye to look at them.

His legs push him forward, and soon his mind picks up the pace. Hands in pockets, he slowly walks through the halls, his eyes wandering around, focusing on nothing in particular. The rich dark tones of this wealthy place soothe the mind and uplift the ego slightly. And to think the rooms here are rather cheap… Maybe it’s because everything else is expensive as hell. Well, they wouldn’t be falling into that trap any time soon, since they’ll be out in the city for the whole day.

As he walks by, he suddenly notices how one of the paintings is replaced by a vivid image from his past. It’s just his tired mind playing, and he could not pay any attention to it, but he does, and so the image becomes clearer and clearer, until it turns into a holographic projection. The powers of imagination.

He continues to tread slowly through the halls, this time paying much more attention to the paintings, letting his mind contort and shift them, mixing the colors and shapes until the chaos becomes order, and the view of a past becomes a view of his past.

There are not that many paintings for him to do this, and so they all represent only the recent past. But it’s more than enough for him to stop thinking about whatever for a moment and focus on something in particular. On how this school, these friends, this guitar, and, most importantly, this baryonyx, have all taught him a story of quick maturity.

Thinking about how big the gap between him in the present and him from the past makes him believe that all the years before, all the schools he had changed, he was in some sort of stasis, some sort of a perpetual loop that was slowly descending down into the abyssal yawn, like on a spiral staircase. And his descent was a mix of involuntary actions and something of his own volition, whether that’s actually possible or not.

It doesn’t really matter how it happened. The matter is, it did happen. He’s grateful that it stopped happening. He’s grateful for everyone who helped him stop this descent. And, of course, he’s grateful for her, that baby blue figure, feeling like a mirage of water in the distance, smiling at him with her eyes of shining silver, for gracing him with one feeling he considered alien for all these years.

Suddenly, he hears a door open, but doesn’t pay much attention to it. He looks only when he hears a familiar voice.

“Anon?”

It’s Nick. She’s standing near the door to her room.

“Ah. I’m just thinking about stuff. And waiting for Trent to go to sleep.”

“You’re not going to shower?”

“Not after his fat ass, for sure.”

“Aren’t you hostile…” Nick smiles. “You can take a shower in our room if you want.”

“I can?”

“Yeah. Stella’s not here at the moment. Currently wandering around the place just like you did.”

Anon takes the opportunity and walks with Nick into their room. It’s not any different from the room he shares with Trent, the only possible difference is the atmosphere here.

“I’ll ask Stella to move to Trent’s place,” Anon says.

“Alright,” Nick simply replies.

The human makes his way into the bathroom. In the meantime, Nick sits down at her bed and looks out into the street. A clock ticks down closer and closer to midnight. Her heart mimics the clockwork, beating one second at a time. Biologically, she’s at ease, but her mind wanders to a million things – all visions of a future she wants to take. School will be over soon… – she thinks. – Gotta decide on what I want.

A few minutes pass and Anon leaves the bathroom, sighing in relief.

“I’m alive…” he says.

“Geez, Anon,” says Nick. She stands up and walks up to him, a towel in hand. “I know you don’t have hair, but it doesn’t mean you should leave a puddle on your dome.”

“I know,” Anon replies, taking the towel. “I just didn’t want to spend that much time in the shower.”

Stella’s nowhere to be seen, still. Perhaps her thoughts are much heavier than Anon’s. That leaves just him and Nick in the room. No sound but their breaths and the clock ticking.

“Say…” Anon says, as the baryonyx sits down. “You would let any guy inside if he was in my position, would you?”

“Of course not!” Nick opposes. “It’s wrong!”

“Then why did you let me in? Would you do the same for Trent, or Curtis?”

Nick’s breath is caught inside her throat. He asked a damn good question – why did she let him in? It’s not like he’s weirded out by Trent’s presence in the room he shares (or, perhaps, shared) with him. And it’s not like not taking a shower before bed is a sin. So what exactly made her offer Anon to take a shower in her room.

Such a simple dilemma made her blush and look away.

“N-No…” she replies. “You’re not a stranger… a-and you aren’t like Trent and Curtis. You… Y-You’re okay, that’s what I mean!”

“Am I?” Anon asks.

Looking at him, Nick notices a certain smile on the human’s face that she hadn’t seen before. Something mixed with bashfulness. That makes her blush even harder.

“I-I know that y-you wouldn’t… try anything… right?” she nervously says.

A second passes in silence, and then she hears muffled footsteps towards her. Her face turns to the human against her own will, only to see him up close. His eyes stare into her with unforeseen intensity.

“What makes you say that?” he asks.

The question lingers in the air and echoes endlessly inside Nicole’s head. This question, this tension, this damped air, these mere inches away from their lips… This could be a lead up to anything. She isn’t prepared, nothing could prepare her for this. Her only wish is that he’d be gentle. Just like the first time.

But the door into the room opens, and the world resumes its clockwork.

“Oh hey, Anon!” Stella says, vibrant as ever.

“Hi, Stella.” Anon looks away from Nick, now focused only on the stegosaur. “It’s good that you’re here, wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure! What is it?”

“Can we swap places? You go into Trent’s room, and I’ll be here.”

“Okay! Just let me grab my stuff.”

That was quick, – Anon thinks, looking as the stegosaur packs her belongings and leaves just as quickly as she entered.

Throughout the whole silent process, Nick just looked at Anon, her heart pounding against her chest, dumbfound and slightly aroused even. The human’s words continued to endlessly cycle in his mind. What did he mean? – she thinks. – Even if I said he could try something, he wouldn’t, right? And what was that about letting other guys into my room?

The door closes with a click. Anon looks back at Nick, still sitting dumbfound. The moment she notices him gazing, she blinks, snapping back to reality.

“W-What?” she asks.

“Nothing,” he replies.

Now it’s just them alone in the room, again. Anon walks to the switch and turns off the light, then draws the curtains. After that, he takes off his clothes, settles them somewhere neatly, then gets into the bed.

“Goodnight,” he says.

“Wh- Wait…” Nick tries to muster something up, but her speech quickly devolves into a slurry quieting mess.

She looks at him for a moment or two, before taking her own clothing off and getting into her bed. Her cheeks burned throughout the whole night, as her mind vividly imagined obscene scenes for a long while, not letting her sleep properly.

***

May 20 th . Days came and went like crazy.

Anon and Nick do not remember a single thing that happened over the past one and a half weeks after the little trip they had with the band. The only difference between all of those days was how close they were to the prom. And today is the very last day before that fateful night.

Just as usual, they wake up in their homes and get to the routine: rubbing their eyes from the remains of sleep, finding something to eat, then eating, after that – dressing up, collecting their belongings and leaving their homes.

In the streets, they slowly but surely make their way to the school, and soon meet up at a certain point between the roadways. Together, they sink into the holler of the students marching towards the school tiredly. All of them, the lovers included, cannot wait for tomorrow to come.

Nick’s hand clenches Anon’s hand a bit tighter this time, as if she’s afraid to split with him even for a moment. They ascend the stairs and walk inside the grand building, make their way inside the homeroom and sit down at their desk. After a bit of waiting, and a few more students rushing in, the class begins. The teacher in his yukata walks up to the blackboard and continues to explain everything in his broken, barely distinguishable English.

The class passes quickly, in between writing and sending memes to one another. The next classes feel like a skipped cutscene, and soon Anon and Nick find themselves walking through the hallway towards the cafeteria, hand in hand.

The lunch goes by in talks and food, made tastier with the company they enjoy the most. Soon, they leave the cafeteria, and when they separate because of different classes, they silently promise to meet after school. The rest of the day is spent in longing for each class to end, and for meeting each other once more, as if they don’t see each other almost all the time.

Eventually, the bell rings for the last time for today, and they head out of the school. Anon and Nick meet outside, just like they wanted to, and together they descend the long concrete staircase. The evening sun shines down on them both, and the wind caresses their cheeks.

“Tomorrow will be prom,” Nick says. “And soon will be the graduation.”

“There’s a whole ass month before that happens,” Anon replies.

“Yeah…”

Soon, Nick suddenly lets go of Anon’s hand, standing still as her mind is overwhelmed. The human walks a few more steps before noticing the absence of the feeling of scales on skin and turning back to the baryonyx.

“What happened?” Anon asks.

Her glasses glint differently this time.

“You know… I’m not as smart as you think I am,” she says. “I still don’t know anything about this city. Or about my friends. Or about… you.”

He looks at her for a moment, and then it clicks. He remembers the dark cold streets back in January, remembers her walking right beside him, remembers the first time he felt her scales on his skin… He remembers how he said the same thing to her. And it repeats inside his mind with her saying it to him right now.

“But… I hope that, as the days pass, little by little… I’ll get to know everything. This city, this school, these people… And especially you.”

The wind carries her worried words away. A singular car passes them by. Seconds slowly tread.

Nick breathes in and looks up at him, her eyes shining with determination.

“And so! Even after school is over! Even after we will get degrees and find jobs we like the most! I… I want to be with you!”

The empty street echoes her words a million times. The clock continues to tick down. Somewhere on this planet, the same pair as them says the exact same thing. The whole observable world, all these houses and all this asphalt, it’s all frozen in the anxious anticipation, like an audience in a theater.

The baryonyx blinks, returning herself to this reality. Anon is still there, standing still, still hasn’t said one word.

“T-That is… if you want that…” Nick adds.

Still no response. The wait is too tormenting for her. Her heart beats so heavy it might just jump out of her chest.

“Come on…” she quietly says, as if about to cry. “Say something… Anything… Please…”

The final second passes. The limit on waiting is reached. Anon breathes in.

“I do want that.”

Her heart beats one more time before silencing itself, as she looks up from the concrete to the human’s face. He looks at her unmoved. His eyes are frowned, determined. Her mouth slightly opens in anticipation.

“So let’s get married.”

It all happens in the blink of an eye. Hands thrown towards one another, not in a fight, but in an embrace. Tightly clenching each other’s bodies, afraid to lose this elusive feeling of touch. Eyes glimmer with a thin veil of happy tears. And lips – lips press against one another. There’s nothing else in this world that matters more than this. There’s nothing else in this world that would capture this moment. Only them.

A whole minute passes before she pulls herself out. Her hands are still on his figure, and so are his on hers.

“I promise I’ll make you happy,” she says.

“Wait,” he replies, “wasn’t I supposed to say that?”

“You wouldn’t. I’m an egoist beyond belief. Cannot do much outside of reading, playing guitar, cooking and taking care of the household. So I’ll take that duty onto myself, you understand?”

“Sure… In that case, I trust you with this.”

“You won’t regret it.”

Smiling against one another, hands clenched together, they return home from the warm streets. Tomorrow will be great.

Chapter Text

May 21^st. Prom night.

Anon tugs on the sleeves of the old tuxedo he’s wearing. His dad was kind enough to send this piece of memory from his time at high school. A bit of sewing was enough to get it looking pretty good. And judging by the wine stains on the sleeves, his father made a lot of important announcements in this tuxedo. An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; what can be said?

Curtis, Trent, and Stella arrive a few minutes after Anon leaves the apartment block. Standing in this outfit was a bit scary, but seeing a familiar sedan roll around the corner and pulling up to his place brought certain relief. Without further ado, he opens the door and sits down inside.

The atrociraptor, chasmosaurus, and stegosaur are all wearing dapper outfits, and, safe to say, they rock those outfits.

“Hey man!” Curtis says, shaking his hand. “Nice outfit!”

“Thanks,” Anon replies. He gives Trent a handshake too. “You look great as well.”

“You wouldn’t imagine what it took me to find something that fits! I shoulda dropped the weights a week or two before prom.”

“Humans have it easier than us,” the chasmosaurus says. “You guys don’t have to worry about hair. Just put the outfit on and you’re good.”

“Jealous, Trent?” Anon says.

“Evidently,” Curtis replies, which makes the human chuckle.

Trent pushes the pedal and turns the car around, heading towards Nicole’s place.

“You two look great,” Anon says to Trent and Stella.

“Thank you!” Stella replies. “My mom gave me this dress.”

“It fits you well,” Trent says.

Stella giggles like a child.

“Get a room,” Curtis says. “Or some sort of a wall between us and you.”

“Hell nah,” Trent says.

The band is quick to arrive at the baryonyx’s house. Together, tucking themselves in with style, they approach the door. Anon has the honor to knock and enter; everyone else follows suit.

The first person they see is Nova.

“OH!” Nick’s mother mutters, surprised. “You guys are quick! Come on in!”

The crew takes off their shoes and walks into the living room.

“Sit down, sit down!” Nova continues. “I’ll get something for you all to drink!”

“Thanks, Nova,” Anon says, sitting down.

“Calling Nick’s mom by her first name, huh?” Trent asks.

“You say anything about a harem, I’m gonna fucking sock you.”

“Hey, I’m just playin’.”

Nova quickly finds the cups for everyone and pours some coffee into them. She settles the cups down with a plate of some luxurious looking candy. Either that, or Anon feels like Scarface, who’s about to eat a dash of lemon after tea time.

“Aren’t you all so handsome…” Nova sighs. “You especially, Anon.”

Anon chuckles a bit, embarrassed.

“Nick will arrive soon, sweetheart,” she continues. “She’s just getting the last of her makeup on! To think such a handsome young man would take my daughter to prom…!”

“Guess this is Anon’s world,” Curtis comments, “and we just so happen to live in it.”

The crew commences into some quality coffee time. The bitter, invigorating brew and the richness of the candy is a mix that just cannot be messed up, even if wanted to. In the midst of chatting, Nova sneakily takes a photo of the crew on her phone. Everyone’s here, everyone’s happy.

A few minutes pass – no sight of Nick. Worry creeps up Anon’s spine. He drinks the last of his coffee and quietly bids farewell, heading to her room. It will be rude to intrude on her, no doubts in that, but he just wants to make sure everything’s fine with her. And who knows, perhaps Anon’s initiative is what she wants.

He walks up the stairs, feeling weak in his knees. Anticipation fights fear. One more step, and now he’s standing at the doorstep of Nick’s room. He knocks, feeling his hands stiffen, disobeying the orders of his mind.

“Nick?” Anon asks.

“Anon? Is that you?” he hears from behind the door. He sighs internally.

“Yeah. Just wanted to check up on-”

“Come inside.”

“…What?”

“Get over here, I said!”

“You sure about that?”

“Urgh… If I weren’t sure about it, I wouldn’t have asked, would I? Just open the damn door and walk inside already!”

“Alright, alright, calm down…”

Anon’s hand awkwardly grabs the doorhandle and twists it, disengaging the mechanism. Butterflies inside his stomach roar hard, as if there’s a revolution happening inside. Taking a deep breath, he enters the room.

And there she stands. A goddess of beauty. A manifestation of effort paying off. An image of love turned real. Silk blue drapes her slim body, leaving the hungry imagination to desire more. Her hair flows behind her like a waterfall. And a pair of eyes, shining in silver, look at him, bashfully and lovingly.

“How do I look?” she asks.

Anon is afraid to take a single step, afraid to breathe, even. Any wrong movement could dissipate this illusion. Seeing him stand still like that for a short while makes the baryonyx worry, and so she walks up to him and shakes him a bit by the shoulder. That’s more than enough to bring him back into reality.

“Ah-” Anon snaps, still confused, as if he’s a tank crew member hit by a shell way too close for his comfort. “What?”

“You alright?” she asks. “You looked like you saw a ghost.”

“Oh. I’m fine. Just couldn’t comprehend how beautiful you are.”

Nick smiles. Up close, he notices she isn’t wearing glasses.

“Where are your glasses?”

“They don’t fit with the dress. I bought contact lenses, don’t worry. The last thing I’d want is to walk around like an idiot, hitting every wall.”

“Yeah… So why did you ask me to get inside? You’re basically done.”

“Nah. There’s one more thing left to do…” She points at her hair. “Can you style it into a bun? Please?”

“Really? I could’ve caught a heart attack behind the door, and the only reason I’m here is because you want me to style your hair?”

“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

“No I don’t. It means I get to play with your hair for a bit.”

“Don’t worry, Anon.” She leans to him, seductively. “It’ll pay off big time.”

From the flame, into the fire, huh? – Anon thinks. – I can get behind that. And behind her.

They sit down and Anon gets to work on her hair.

“As far as you know, I could’ve just gotten lucky that day,” he says.

“Could be. Either that, or your nimble fingers serve more than just two purposes.”

“Yeah. The lightning doesn’t strike the same spot twice, you know?”

“Anything can happen today. Even that.”

“Stop moving so much.”

After a few minutes of work, Anon gets her hair into a bun. Well, fuck me sideways, – he thinks, looking at Nick touching the bun on her head. – Perhaps I should ditch guitar and become a hairstylist.

“Thanks for saving me a few bucks and a headache,” Nick says.

“Now you’re ready?” Anon asks.

“Yeah,” Nick smiles, then offers her hand. “I am.”

The human gently takes hold of the baryonyx’s hand, and together they leave the room and head downstairs.

The living room welcomes them with awe of the crew and Nick’s mother.

“Now that’s the star of the show tonight!” Trent says.

“This is… beyond beautiful,” Curtis adds.

Nova quickly walks up to the baryonyx, not to check if everything’s okay with her dress, but just to look at how beautiful her daughter is.

“You are so beautiful, my darling…” she says.

“Thanks, mom,” Nick replies.

“Pictures! Oh, I need some pictures with you all!” Nova says.

Following the command, everyone groups up for the photo. Nick’s mother takes a few, but not too many, and, thankfully, without any flashes.

“Okay!” Nova says. “You better all run off, or else I’ll take more pictures of you. Have fun, you all!”

Bidding her mother farewell, the crew puts on their shoes and leaves the household. Everyone gets inside the sedan, Anon opens the door for Nick, like a true gentleman, and closes it behind himself as he sits down right next to her. Trent turns the key and pushes the pedal.

“Okay…” Nick sighs. “Gotta tell you all guys something. They told me we have room for just… one song.”

“What?!” Curtis yells.

“I’m not surprised,” Trent says. “Most of our songs are 8-10 minutes long.”

“Yeah,” Nick replies. “But I need to find the one that would fit this occasion the best.”

“You’ll figure something out,” Anon says.

“Yeah…”

“Our stuff’s already there,” Anon says to the crew. “And the school has a drumset.”

“A school drumset…” Curtis remarks. “Fuck me sideways, I don’t want to imagine what kind of Chinese factory shit they have.”

“It isn’t as shoddy as you think. Looks rather solid.”

“I’ll see for myself. Until then, I’ll assume the worst.”

“Alright.”

As the talks die down, Anon looks out the window. The city is covered in darkness, the streetlamps and occasional lit windows are the only source of light here. He looks at them and reminds himself of the few months he spent here. The first day stands vividly as ever. How he didn’t want to go to school anymore, how he wanted to avoid everyone, how someone fell on him in the library… Then, a slideshow of events: how he got to know Nick and her friends, how Nick gave him a tour around the city, how he reignited the flame of passion inside the baryonyx, making her reunite her band… This could go on for forever.

And that’s the beauty of it. He can remember these few months more than he could remember the rest of his life. To some, that’s sad news, but for someone like Anon, it’s a relief. That means there was something to remember.

Nick, in the meantime, spends her minutes in the phone, gazing over the list of the songs they released, trying to figure out how to place them together neatly. A lot of variations come up, and every one of them looks like exactly what she should do, but she cannot land her eyes on any of them. She’s too afraid to ask, but too courageous to leave it to the fate of a coin.

She looks over at the human, staring out into the wild nothingness. If he was in her shoes, how he would’ve done it? A silly question, but it makes her think. If their roles were swapped, how would everything happen? She thinks about it for a moment, before deciding on a simple answer – it’d be chaos, just like it was all the time. This certain chaos is something she’s grateful for, for eternity. And, remembering his answer, she’s glad to know he thinks the same about it.

The car pulls over to the parking lot. Nick closes her eyes and puts her thumb on one of the checking boxes with the potential setlist. The crew leaves the vehicle.  

The students strung up various strings of lights along the overgrowths of vines around the school. A rather impressive mural of King Rex is spray painted on the wall outside by the ticket booth. One could tell how recent it was by how there was smoke leaking out of the eyes and mouth. Anon thinks about picturing himself with the band by it, but decides not to, lest it’d lead to a serious case of photophobia.

The line to get in isn’t too long, and it only takes a few minutes to get inside. Inside is about as well decorated as outside. More lights hang from the greenery and even the ceiling. Strung about from wall to wall are those nerdy little Chinese lanterns.

“Wonder who picked decorations for this,” Trent says thoughtfully.

“Perks of the job,” Anon replies.

“I’m betting a dollar,” Nick says, “the only reason why they’re here is because they go perfectly with the StuCo prez’s dress.”

Nick leads the band to a temporary stage on the other side of the gymnasium, where a curtain had been set up. They slip behind the curtain, and come face to face with King Rex.

“Sup?” the creature nonchalantly says.

“Reed? You in there?” Stella asks.

“Yeah, that’s me. Who are…” Reed points at Curtis and Trent. “Those two?”

“Curtis and Trent!” Curtis says.

“We met before, didn’t we?” Trent adds.

“Oh! Right, yeah! Fuck, sorry, I forgot,” Reed says.

“Shit’s fine,” Trent says. “But you better explain why you’re cosplaying as a t-rex.”

“I’m a deejay for tonight,” Reed says. “That, and I just sit here doing whatever.”

“Say,” Nick says. “You seen any guitars lying around?”

“Yeah! They’re right there,” Reed points outwards. “Already connected, so if you feel like rehearsing…”

“We do,” Anon says. “Thanks Reed.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, man.”

King Rex disappears as promptly as he was met. The band looks at one another.

“So we’re actually going in rehearsing?” Trent says.

“I think,” Anon says, “we could grab a bite before beginning, couldn’t we?”

“Yeah, good idea,” Nick replies. “We’ll get you guys something to eat as well.”

“Alright. We’ll be here hanging out.”

Anon and Nick bid their short farewell. In the meantime, Stella tugs a bit on Trent’s hand, making him turn his face to the slightly nervous stegosaur.

“I… I wanna go dance,” she says.

“Okay, let’s go there,” Trent says, then takes a first step towards the curtains before being stopped by Stella.

“Wait! I’ll go there alone. You need to rehearse.”

“Come on now, I know my guitar like I know myself.”

“I said, you need to rehearse. Please.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll rehearse. You go have fun.”

Stegosaur smiles and pecks him on the cheek before disappearing. Trent looks towards Curtis.

“I’m not going to say shit,” Curtis says. “Let’s just go do some practice.”

Trent finds his guitars, Curtis pulls out his signature drumsticks out of the inside pocket of his jacket, finds a surface and starts drumming in different patterns and paradiddles, getting his hands warmed up for the show.

In the meantime, the lovers push themselves through the crowd to a huge food table on the way in. They find some plates and begin to top them with everything their heart desires.

“Spears told me Rosa helped cook most of this,” Nick says.

“Wh- How?” Anon replies. “This has got to be… at least a month’s worth of food!”

“I dunno, she just did it.”

“Is she here now?”

“Probably in the kitchen working her tail off making more. Some people just live to do something.”

“Yeah…”

And that’s when they sense great and imminent danger behind themselves. In a tight Chinese dress, the peach parasaur waits for them to turn. Anon notices her first, but she doesn’t say a thing or even turn her eyes to him. Nick notices her soon after. The lovers look at each other, before settling their plates and looking at her.

“What is it?” Nick asks.

“Nothing,” Naomi says. “I just want to see how you two feel after ruining a person’s life.”

“We? Ruined?” Anon says. “Says who? Miss ‘I don’t want to do this shit myself, but I’ll force some rando to do it for me’? You’re not in any position to talk about this!”

“I admit, my methods were far from ideal,” Naomi replies. “But it does not mean they weren’t for a good cause. I wanted to help Fang. I really did. And now she’s bumfuck nowhere doing god knows what. Even Naser forgot about her!”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Nick asks. “Isn’t having Naser all for yourself one of the goals in your masterplan?”

“It was. But not like this!” Naomi says.

“I’ll say this once again,” Nick says. “Your plan was doomed from the moment you believed that Anon would actually help you. And now you’re here trying to guilt-trip us into believing that it was our fault. Which it wasn’t, Naomi. None of your failings are our fault.”

“If you wanted to help her, you would’ve done it yourself,” Anon adds. “But you just wanted her brother not to worry about her. You didn’t want to help her, you just didn’t want her to be a nuisance to you anymore.”

“Exactly. You heard, but didn’t listen , Naomi. You knew, but never understood. And that is your problem. So unless you want me to punch you again, you better scatter like a hoard of flies.”

The peach parasaur, defeated, makes her retreat, disappearing in the crowd rather quickly. Even the flashiest of dresses will be lost in the never-ending glimmer.

“Some people just want to believe that the world is nice,” Nick says, sighing. “When the fuck was it ever…?”

“First time I heard you actually curse,” Anon remarks.

“Consider that a privilege. I rarely curse.”

“Why’s that?”

“I think curses should be used only when you’re out of any other words to say.”

“That’s a good point.”

Returning to their food, the lovers pick the plates up and make their way back to their crew. Carefully treading between a wall of loners and the crowd, they spot Stella in the midst of action, dancing like that cute big chested pink haired character named Chika from one of the titles Anon had watched. As cringe as she looks, it brings certain relief that some of them get to have some fun.

The lovers are welcomed by King Rex sleeping in the corner, Trent strumming on his disconnected guitar while sitting in a lotus pose near a couple of other guitars and Curtis meticulously drumming on the nearby wall. If it wasn’t for the context, it would’ve looked like a picture straight out of an asylum.

“We got you guys something to munch on,” Anon says.

“Sweet,” Curtis says, moving himself from the wall to the dishes settled on the floor.

“I was already getting hungry,” Trent says, closing in on the food.

Together, squatting like a bunch of ruskies, they munch on the rich selection of bites, courtesy of Anon and Nick. They refrain from sitting on the floor, but at the cost of enduring the whining tired pain later on the stage.

Halfway through the lunch break, everyone hears some loud thumping coming to them really quickly. They turn their eyes to the curtains, only to see a familiar figure of a neanderthal in a three-piece suit.

“Hello, everyone,” the principal says. “Getting prepared for the concert?”

“Yeah,” Anon says. “Currently we’re on a break, though.”

“Good. Every action counts towards the goal.”

“Did something happen?” Nick asks.

“Nothing. I just wanted to see you and your band, see what you were up to.”

“Okay.”

“And say how proud I am of you, Anon, and you, Nicole.”

Anon and Nick turn their faces to the principal, only to see him smile fatherly at them.

“As much as I knew about you two, you guys were… rather closed in on yourselves. But as the time went by, I say you’ve became much more different. Much better than what you were. You two are going places.”

“Thank you, Principal Spears,” Nick replies.

The principal nods. “Well, here’s my due to leave,” he says. “I have my own business to attend to in a moment.”

“Like giving Naser and Naomi their crowns?” Anon guesses.

“Heh. It’s a bit obvious, but I won’t ruin their moment. Alright, be seeing you.”

With that, the principal leaves. Nick checks the time.

“Alright, guys, we have about forty minutes before this whole thing will begin. Let’s actually rehearse for a moment.”

“Okay,” Trent says. “What’s our setlist?”

Nick checks her notes, finds the checked box with a few song titles next to it. She copies the text and sends it to her friends. They check their phones, nod to one another. The guitars are soon passed around, and the crew gets to practice.

Even when the guitars are not plugged in, making it sound pathetic, the mind still fills in the gaps in the energy and the atmosphere. One could imagine what kind of show it’d be the moment the curtains are drawn. Everyone must fall in awe from the sheer pressure of this melancholic, loving, dreamful sound.

Anon looks at his surroundings. He stands with the few people he calls friends, playing guitar, rehearsing songs he had created with them, minutes before the show on Prom night. This looks like a fever dream, there’s no way that a loser like him has a privilege to be here, but it is real. It is way too real to be a dream.

He looks at Curtis, a person who can be serious and smile at the same time. He looks at Trent, who through subtle clues taught him to take initiative. He looks at his hands, holding the guitar and playing tunes. And, lastly, he looks at Nicole, standing in the middle between them, a manifest of love.

If it is a dream, then it’s a dream they share, and he wishes to never wake up from it.

By the time it’d be just a few minutes before their small show would start, they hear music fading, until there’s nothing but chatter. Then, they hear the principal.

“Alright, everyone,” he says. “Before we end tonight’s prom, we have a couple of items to take care of.”

Everyone drops their instruments and silently approach the curtains, drawing them ever so slightly to see the stage.

“First thing is…” The principal pulls a tiny gold sheaf envelope from his lapel and holds it up for the audience to gawk at. “…to announce Prom King and Queen.”

A few students are already congratulating Naser as he’s led by the arm by his handler.

“A drum roll, please,” the principal says.

Reed steps onto the stage with a small block in his arms, smiling and nodding as he presses one of the myriad of buttons on the block. A mediocre recording of the drumline plays over the speakers as the principal clears his throat and tears open the envelope.

“And your winners for the One Mil Twenty-twenty class are… Naser and Naomi!”

He tosses the paper over his shoulder and yanks out the crowns from a pocket inside his jacket. He backs out the spotlight, giving a polite applause to the pair as they rush onstage to accept. The rest of the class is in a celebratory uproar.

“Figured some of them would understand this is rigged,” Nick comments.

“All they care about is celebration itself, not who are they celebrating,” Trent replies.

The principal offers the crowns to Naomi, who puts the larger one on Naser’s crest to droop off, and then dons the tiara.

“This shit’s so picturesque. Just like she wanted,” Anon comments.

In the meantime, Naomi approaches the microphone.

“Thank you all so much, Volcano High!” she says in her usual ever so happy voice. “This is such an honor to receive. My, I don’t really have a speech prepared, but… In just one short year, we-”

“Alright, alright, let’s stay on schedule,” the principal interrupts. “I promised your parents we’d be out of here by ten.”

“Thanks, Spears,” Anon comments, grinning.

“To close off this wonderful night, I’ve reached out to a locally known band to play a small show for us. The frontman of this group is a student of this school, and definitely someone you do not expect to have a guitar in their hands. To finish up, please welcome, ‘Swamp Babies’!”

The cheap curtains are drawn open, and the group is caught in the light. The crowd is surprised to see Nicole standing on the stage, guitar hanging from her slim neck. A bit nervous, she approaches the microphone.

“What?!”

“Who could’ve thought?”

“I gotta start recording this…”

Her silver eyes scan the area. Calm on the outside, but worried on the inside, she then turns her face towards Trent, who nods to her, and then to Anon, who nods to her as well. Curtis assumes his position behind the drumkit, taking the sticks into his hands.

Nick starts to strum.

It hits Anon like a sledgehammer. A familiar cascade of chords soaking in melancholy and beauty… This is the song he wrote for her. Something he was too afraid to play for her live, so he just sent her the file promptly titled “Nicole”. Is this her thanks to him?

He pushes the question aside, as he joins her, playing the same chords in a different tone. And then, after Curtis counts down from four, the song properly begins.

The musical landscapes remind Anon one more time about the days he had spent. Curtis’s blastbeats remind him of all the sunsets and sunrises he had seen in this city. Trent’s calm strumming on the bass remind him of all the music they wrote together. His own guitar reminds him of that day he received it. And finally, Nick’s vicious screaming into the mic, something that goes against her beautiful nature, reminds him of the path they walked together.

From the very first day to the current moment, it felt like a slippery slope. It begun with an accident, continued with a realization, and ended with this show. A swan song for their days in this school, and a summation of them all.

The lyrics are a mix of different ideas, and their mix is either soft and soothing, or just edgy. Regardless of what it is, the crowd of students liked it. Rocked by the music, the crowd of students cheer on the beautiful rockstar on the stage, as she yells the last parts of her song.

In the corner of his eye, Anon catches the silver looking at him. A look of unreserved glee on her face. The same one she had during the concert at “Lava Java”, or when she got him the guitar, or when she reunited with her friends, or when they walked the city together… Something that’s so common, yet so rare to see at the same time.

She’s finally in her element, and loving every second of it.

She turns her eyes away back to the crowd, as she screams the very last part of his… her… no, their song.

“I WANT TO DREAAAM! WIIITH! YOOOUUUU!”

The voice disappears behind the echoing singing of her guitar. Curtis plays the very last drum part, hitting the cymbals as farewell, and the air is filled with nothing but a trailing sound of blissful, concussed hope. And then, a moment after the last electric sound fades away into silence, the applause erupts.

"GOODBYE VOLCANO HIIIGH!!!" Nick yells cleanly into the crowd. She's smiling. She's proud to be here. So is Curtis, so is Trent, and so is Anon.

She turns her eyes to him. An irresistible, embarrassed mirth shines within those silver eyes. She takes off her guitar, and he follows suit. They approach each other, take hold of one another’s hand and body and then press their lips against one another.

The audience’s cheers grows louder. Behind them are Curtis and Trent, whistling. Somewhere in the crowd is Naomi and Naser. The parasaur is definitely pissed off that she isn’t the spotlight of today’s prom. Sucks to suck.

The whole world drowns in cheers and applause, and the only thing that remains is just them.

June 11^th.

The graduation ceremony passes through the school calmly. The students peel into the school, slow as molasses in January, then the Student Council president gives her commencement speech to them, then everyone is given their diplomas. Everyone feels like nothing would change, like the adulthood is just a myth. But the changes start here.

Anon walks out of the school, only to see Nicole’s mother standing in the crowd, blasted by the sun. Noticing the human, she waves him over.

“Wait! Is that…”

“That can’t be Anon’s mother.”

“They look familiar, tho…”

In what fucking way are we familiar?! – Anon thinks, nervously.

“I’d like to take a picture with my beautiful son over there!” Nova says, nonchalantly.

“A-Alright…” Anon turns to search for the baryonyx. “Let me just-”

He didn’t have to look around. A yell so close to him that it could damage his hearing is more than enough of a clue that there is no more room for mercy.

“What the hell are you doing here, mom?!” Nick yells, pushing her mother out with punches.

“I just rolled around to have some fun, sweetie!”

“Get out of here before everyone notices you in your stupid getup!”

Eventually, Nick calms down… only to reignite, like ash that found its way to reignite itself, seeing as her mother, shoulder-hugging the poor human kid, is standing amidst a small group to take a photo.

“WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS, ANON?!” Nick yells.

“In a different city!” Anon replies.

“Why so angry, Nick?” Nova says, throwing a peace sign to the photographer.

“I. SAID. GET. OUT!!!” the baryonyx shouts before shoulder-checking her own mother’s back, making her trip and fall over.

The clocks continue to slowly tick down. The crowd dissipates, and Nick’s mother finally bids farewell. Anon and Nick make their way out into the streets, and for a short while, they don’t say anything. Suddenly, Nick dashes forward, promptly stopping Anon, and turns over to him.

“How about we head to Trent’s place instead?” she asks.

“We’re halfway to your place, though…” he sighs.

“Come on, a bit more of legwork won’t hurt you. And besides, I don’t wanna see my mother any more for today.”

“Alright, alright.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll throw a big party there!”

“I’m taking your word for it.”

And so, they turn around and start walking towards Trent’s place. The human looks at the baryonyx, and she smiles at him, her glasses glinting in the sunlight. Her hand takes hold of his hand.

There’s absolutely no distance between us, – Anon thinks. – Nothing separates us. The past me would never think that one day he’d have this privilege. I was afraid of this, actually. Of bonding with people. Believe me when I say this, Nick, but back then, I didn’t believe I could have so much… feeling inside me. And I believe that neither of us knew how scary and unnerving just being with one another could be. But thanks to you, I finally understood this.

Nick slowly speeds up, from walking to jogging, and from jogging into sprinting towards the horizon hidden behind the buildings of this city.

What is it that I can do for you? What do I have to do to keep you smiling? You’re stronger than I thought, but at the same time it’s so easy to hurt you. So that’s why no matter where you’re heading, the clear sky would always follow you.

He watches as her hair glistens in the sunlight, flowing like a flag. A flag to a bright future.

For the longest time, I didn’t know anyone but myself. I didn’t know about this world. So I have to thank you. For showing me that I’m capable of something much greater than what I once fathomed, and for giving me the opportunity to show off my true self. For showing me the landscapes of this city, and for sharing the landscapes of your mind with me. For taking me out of my routine in the past, and for wishing to share the future.

His hand slowly loses grip. The illusive feeling of touch fades.

What could I possibly do for you? Is there a way that I could repay you for everything you’ve done for me?

And then, she turns over to him.

“Come on, Anon! Catch up!”

Her smile is a beacon. Her eyes shine in silver. Her hair is like silk. Her heart beats with his, full of love. Stagnant at first, he finally catches up with her, and they continue walking down the streets of Volcaldera Bluffs.

This sky is so mesmerizing… Baby blue, just like you. I wish I could gift it to you. But I guess you wouldn’t want that.

Instead, you’d want to read a new book with me.