Amanda stared across the table at him and he tried not to look away.

They weren't kids anymore, and he was one of the most influential people in the galaxy. He would not be bullied into submission by a nearing-middle-age soccer mom, or at least he assumed that she was. She had the right haircut for it, though it seemed she had recovered from her accident.

He had been told shortly after graduation she had been hit by a car.

He would have to say that that revelation gave him no measure of delight, though he tried to swallow it down.

Amanda had been actively involved in the group of people who had tormented him during school, and though she had never done the dirty work herself, he knew enough now to know that she orchestrated the whole thing.

Must have been fun tormenting the UFO kid.

He went to slowly stand again. He could walk out of here if he wanted, no one was going to stop hi.

"Are you sure, you're the same guy." This was a girl he recognized as Samantha. It seemed that the intervening years had not been kind to her.. "I would swear he's taller."

He bristled but couldn't exactly tell why. He should have just walked away, "Ah yes my evil twin brother the other Adam Vir, you know since it is such a common name and all."

She frowned, "You still seem a little short."

"I'm six two." He shut his mouth and gritted his teeth. There was something about these people that made him want to revert back into a child.

"You could have just dressed up like that. I mean how hard is it to find an eye patch." This was Amanda again. He wanted to jump across the table and knock her teeth out. They were all looking at him with the same wan smiles they always had, like they thought his obsessions with aliens was cute. He was just the dumb space kid who had trouble keeping his mouth shut.

Come on, he said to himself, let it go, you know they're wrong, and that's all that matters.

He could almost picture the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other.

One of them telling him to turn the other cheek and walk away and the little devil demanding a beat down.

"The eyepatch was a gift from a couple marines. They thought it was funny. It kind of just stuck." His voice was hard and cold .

One of the women laughed, "You're not a space pirate Adam."

More tittering around the table.

"I mean its sort of just juvenile isn't it."

Why was he still here?

"I've met space pirates," he said softly, "They don't wear eye patches."

They laughed again. He didn't see anything funny in what he had said, but they seemed to think something was hilarious looking between each other with knowing looks at his expense, and suddenly he was overcome with a sense of helplessness. It was such a jarring sensation that he was left speechless and unsure what to do . He tried to fight the red flush he could feel creeping into his cheeks.

How was it after almost ten years these people could still do this to him?

Could reduce him to this so fast.

He could see it happening like he hadn't been able to as a child but he was still unable to stop it.

And then he heard a voice. "Tsa Yahan?" You good?

He turned to look over to where he heard the voice and saw Sunny's shadow against the wall.

"Zha Jeeani, Lanish." I'm dying, Help

More giggling, "Is that Klingon or soemthing ?

More laughter, "how old are you again? Aren't you a bit past using made up languages?"

The shadow passed over their backs, and a slow hand came down to rest on one of the chair backs.

"It is not a made up language. It is the language of my forefathers, the language of Anin."

Her voice seemed clear and human through the translation equipment, but even so the shadow she cast was not particularly human.

Adam smirked as two entire tables of eyes turned and fell on Sunny towering over them, with her massive pearl war spear resting in her off hand. The two tables became so silent you could have heard a butterfly flapping it's wings. Mouths dropped open and one or two of them nearly fell out of their chairs inching backwards as sunny lifted her spear the haft resting in both hands.

She looked at them curiously.

She prodded one of them with the butt and looked up at Adam, "So this is what passes for a functioning member of society on your planet?"

He raised an eyebrow at her and smiled. She was playing up the alien thing , but he couldn't thank her enough. He would have hugged her accept that might have ruined the moment, but she was definitely getting one later, "Yes Sunny, it is."

She prodded another one of them bending over to examine with her sharp golden eyes as they shrank back.

She turned her head to Amanda pointing at her with the head of her spear, "You, the one with the annoyingly high voice. What do you do for a living."

She stammered hard and Adam sat back down in his seat. He was feeling a lot better ow, more I control, but then again his battle partner was here and she didn't take bullshit.

"I, I'm A s stay at h home mom."

Sunny tilted her head to the side, "Mmmm." She hummed deep in her throat. She stood and looked at Adam.

So they let just anyone be in charge of children.

He tried to banish the smile from his face as she walked over to stand behind him, resting her spear against the floor like she was his bodyguard. He crossed his arms over his chest feeling a lazy smile fall onto his face. How hard this would have seemed just a minute ago.

"Oh everyone, this is my chief weapons specialist, Sunny, we met during the Drev war

There was no laughing this time.

"I became sentinel of her clan shortly after we worked together to overthrow a tyrannical warlord bent on enslaving the galaxy and turning humans into a mindless drone army."

Mouths dropped open. Again he smiled rather nonchalantly , "Oh and about your earlier question. I did switch schools, but that was because I was accepted in the Transpace aerial combative academy. It would have been hard to continue at the high school when I needed the flight hours."

Josh, still seeming oblivious to the situation had gone wide eyed smiling, "You fly jets."

Adam shrugged, "I used to."

"Now he flies spaceships." Sunny interjected. She paused, "Though you are the best pilot this side of Andromeda." She looked up, "That is not a question, that is a fact."

Adam smiled a little and shook his head. Man he loved Sunny.

"I'm alright, but yes I was shipped down to Texas to participate in the program. They wanted to teach us how to fly jets before the Enterprise was launched. I was lucky enough to wrangle myself an invitation onto the crew of that ship, and was there when we did the first interstellar warp." He winced, "can't say it did good things for my internal organs, but it was an experience I wouldn't trade."

"Wow." Josh commented.

"Of course Proxima B is the reason we discovered aliens."

"You mean you?" Sunny was just hitting all the right marks.

He looked up at her, "What was that?"

"I thought you were the one to discover aliens." She made quotations with her fingers, "You saw them first, therefore you discovered them."

"That's a bit of a technicality, but I suppose it's accurate enough."

He glanced over at the crowd of people staring at him.

Yeah that's right bitches, I discovered aliens, all of the things you laughed at me for, and its just an average Tuesday for me now.

He tried very hard to keep the smug off his face.

"In fact, I was just visiting for my father's birthday, and then we are off again"

Sunny hummed deep in her throat, "To visit Lord Celex."

There was a pause, "Who is lord Celex." Someone ventured."

Adam laughed, "Really? You don't know? I'd definitely assume this was something you might need to hear. Lord Celex is ruler of the Celzex, which is an alien species of cute fluffy creatures with big eyes, sort of makes you want to hug them when you see one, the only problem is they have a serious attitude issue and a whole thing about honor, and they are likely the most powerful species in the known universe. It's estimated that they have technology that can level entire solar systems if operated at full capacity." He shrugged.

More open mouths.

"It's a difficult problem to solve, but we have friendly relations with them thus far. We just need to make sure to keep it that way."

He turned to look at Amanda, "Oh, and I do think the eye patch looks cool, but it does have utility." He reached up and flicked back the patch to reveal his mechanical eye which contracted aggressively and buzzed around to take in all of the faces before matching their faces to their identities using almost....illegal programming that Narobi had scrounged together. Their names popped up next to their heads, and he was surprised at some of the people that he saw having not recognized them before.

He blinked, "The eye has a lot of interfaces, thermal, UV, targeting, facial recognition. the only issue is that it tends towards being a little overactive and all that information at once is difficult to process on the best of days.

He dropped the eyepatch back down, "Its easier for me if I just use the one eye until I need to do something else with the other. Its Tesraki technology so it's good, but it is rather difficult to maintain on occasion."

He had the entire two tables and a few of the adjoining parties attention now, listening as he talked." He tried not to go too overboard. He didn't want to brag and didn't want to make it look like he felt the need to brag. These people weren't important enough for that, and he wasn't going to pretend that they were.

Also bragging was unbecoming.

His mother had insisted on that being a fact.

But that didn't mean he was going to pass up the opportunity for stories. He loved telling stories, and answered all of Josh's enthusiastic questions with answers of his own.

"There is life within our observable universe, or at least we share some of our stars. He motioned to sunny in fact our northern star is Anin's southern star."

Sunny hummed slightly "Eedacheel."

"It was nice, Ive lived on Anin twice, once during the war and once when visiting a Drev clan a year or two ago. I have always thought aliens were real." He added, "But I can't say I ever expected to live on an alien planet."

Maybe that was a bit too on the nose, but he could hardly help it, it made him feel vindicated.

Across the table he could see Amanda with her arms crossed glowering around at the others as the attention was pulled away from her, all of the eyes locked on Adam as he answered questions and described strange alien worlds he had visited.

"Bet it must be difficult." She finally said,

He frowned eyes narrowed, "Difficult?"

"Dating."

She smiled wolfishly and his chest constricted again.

The others turned to look at him,

"You must be too busy."

Again his face tried to flush as memories of her and her friends tormenting him rushed back into his head. The incident with Avery and the others filling him with a sense of shame and disgust which he tried desperately to choke down.

Really, out of all his accomplishments and she was going to bring it back to dating?

"I'm.... seeing someone."

"Oh, what's their name."

He knew that he had caught himself in a hole as soon as he said that. His eyes darted towards Sunny who didn't make a move as Amanda waited smugly her arms crossed over her chest. He couldn't tell them that he was dating Sunny. He knew what a world of trouble that would cause but if he denied it than she would think that he had been lying to make himself seem more cool, and that would have ruined his credibility all together. All of the things he said earlier would be called into question.

Shit.

Shit

She was smiling at him still, like she knew what she had done, and he had to grudgingly commend her for catching him like this. It was a well placed trap and not one that he was going to be able to get out of easily.

He straightened up ready to open his mouth when the entire bar went silent.

It was such a jarring thing that it took everyone's attention away from him and they all turned towards the door.

Where a billowing silhouette hung, ethereal upon the air.

"Conn you dick." Krill said.

The two aliens floated into the room Conn's ribbons billowing around him as the made their way inside. Conn turned his head towards the people watching and opened his mouth to expose rows and rows of circular grinding teeth.

They drew back.

Conn pointed at someone, "No those pants do make you look fat."

He turned to look at someone else, "I know I can read minds, but her facial expression says it all. She thinks your creepy. Get the hint.'

Adam sighed.

Well this was a horrible idea.

Conn floated over grinning and looked over the group at the table, "Well well well, what do we have here?

Krill floated up next to them and sighed looking around the table

"A disaster just waiting to happen it seems."