Amanda and I sit outside after Naval Brigade meetings, and this one is at her house, so we can hang around forever if we want to--well, at least until curfew, which I never figured I'd need, but then again, I've never had friends to violate it with. I'm also certain my mom thinks Amanda and I are a couple, which provides an endless source of bad jokes for the Naval Brigade and probably singlehandedly eased my newly-founded curfew thirty minutes earlier.

On the other hand, my mom has failed to notice, possibly for the best, that my brother spends most of his time hanging out with a singular boy, about half his height and twice his angry, which makes him four times as anger-dense as Adam is, per cubic inch. Adam has his fake broadsword in one hand, Evan in his other, and they sit further down Amanda's lawn, pointing at stars and trying to make constellations using the eight (nine?) available pinpricks of light. This is interspersed with other, more raunchy teenage-guy humor, but I'm happy to have Adam at a meeting, and even happier that he only attempted to run down two people with a cardboard claymore this time around. Last week, when he first got it, there were almost casualties.

"Beautiful night," I say.

"We're in suburbia. There are only eight stars and it's partly cloudy out." Amanda responds.

"And the moon," I flick both my pointer fingers towards yours truly.

"Son of a bitch," Amanda hits me on the shoulder.

"I think you mean sun of a bitch." I wink.

Amanda's gaze follows mine out to the squatters on the lawn, and she tenses up. "Right."

I lean out over the steps so that I cross her new field of vision. "What's up?"

"I don't want to forgive him," Amanda admits with a deliberate flick of her hands.

"Which one?" I ask, under my breath.

"Both of them. I saw the three of them together a lot. I used to be jealous- I mean, how could she be so happy without me? Was there something I did wrong? Something I couldn't be? Now, I know that was the Diosite... but I still think they would've been good for each other. Were. Like something out of some niche webcomic. You know, you meet someone and suddenly they're your whole world! Everything is some off the rails adventure! That was... that was how it was for me. With her."

"The Diosite kind of ruins it for you. All this hero shit, I mean." I shrug. "All those stories."

"No," Amanda shakes her head, resolutely. "No, actually, I don't think so. I think that this is why we need stories. Because it's good to know that someone got their happy ending. Because they're good reasons to keep fighting. Because the action of creation is cathartic, Will. Denying ourselves that because 'that's not how it really goes down' is the last thing we want to do. It's giving up the battle before we even begun." She adds, "I'm going to need a colorist on that webcomic, you know."

"I'll tell you if I talk to any good, avaliable ones." I shrug.

She elbows me so hard I almost fall off the stairs.

"I have been coloring a lot of pieces in lately," I say. Trying out a new style. There was this tutorial on Ignatius's blog- super helpful-" I stop myself.

Amanda's looking off to the side, tapping her foot. We're both thinking of the night, the action we didn't stop, the blank face of our almost comical villain, smeared with blood. Beneath her breath, she whispers, "Your brother scares me."

"He scares himself," I say. "But hey, now that the teams are merged, we're all one family... I think things could work out. Correction. I have a vested interest in things working out, us possibly sticking together for the rest of our lives, and a special interest in my brother being okay, because that's what siblings are supposed to do. Take care of each other."

"I wouldn't know," Amanda says. "but you're kind of like the brother I never had, if not one of the best friends to boot, and I'm always going to have your back.. That counts for something, right?"

"Hell yeah it does." I hug her, and she squeezes me until my ribcage feels like it's going to crack open. When I pull back, I fall into the fence for real, my head slamming against the metal and causing both to resonate at a low hum. I shake the pain off, getting to my feet, and hoist her up as well.

She grabs the ice cream tins. "While you're at it, get Evan off my lawn."

"Think he's getting off your lawn for you," I say. Evan is indeed leaving the lawn, trekking on foot to the nearest bus stop. He flashes a finger gun at Adam before putting back in his earphones.

My brother puts a hand on my shoulder. "Our birthdays are coming up. I know you have something in mind, but forget that. I want a real sword. I don't care what loops you have to go through. I would die for one. I'm dying without one."

"Same for the shield. Our parents are going to be so confused." I smile.

Adam doesn't respond. I raise a hand to his face, and his unblinking stare casts in Evan's direction, far out into the distance of suburbia. "Adam?"

"Yeah. I'm here." Adam says, like he's only just worked out that it's his name. He speaks like he's choking the words down. "We're going to have to get better, for them."

"We're getting there," I say. I tug the old bond, knowing not to expect a reaction, and he blinks back double vision.

"Where to then, Luna?" he asks.

"For now?" I extend a hand. "Let's go home."