Kyle:

It was inevitable. We had to go back to that clock tower sometime that day.

Allen had invited Jessica and I to church, but I let on that I really wasn't Christian myself. Jessica was, but she would never force me to go. She had always just studied on her own. I actually wanted to tell her to go ahead without me. She could worship and I could use the chance to practice and maybe work on my invention. Unfortunately, she and I being separated for that long wasn't allowed.

Jessica and I had practiced throwing lightning for hours. After about three hours, I convinced her to practice more direct blade attacks with me. Jessica doubted she would ever need such skills, but did not begrudge me the chance to at least practice my own functional attacks. On the way back to the tower, Allen driving us again, we stopped by a restaurant. While there I ate something called a hamburger with cheese. It was good, and I enjoyed the "french fries" that I was given as a side dish too. Jessica didn't take the meal as given however, she often didn't. When she was given her burger, she sighed saying that she had already tried burgers. She then asked for yogurt and dumped that between the meat and the bun when she got it. (Whatever "yogurt" is.) She said it was good... I didn't know what I was looking at, to begin with when it came to burgers, but one with a giant pile of pink dairy product added I REALLY didn't know what to do with.

From there we went to our final destination for the evening, the tower.

Allen had brought a second mattress for Jessica with him and put it down for her when we reached the floor behind the clock. He also had a bundle of blankets that he set down with it. Setting up her bed with two blankets, Jessica said she was turning in. I nodded and said I would do the same.

However, Allen asked me to come away from Jessica for a few moments.

"What's going on?" I asked as we went out on the balcony.

"I skipped out to go to church earlier while you two practiced, but did you practice your own attacks?" he asked when we were out of Jessica's earshot.

I looked up at the stars; part of me wasn't in this conversation. "Yeah, we did. Jess doesn't like direct attacks, says they're too risky, but me, they're really all I can do. The idea of actually shooting someone at a distance... well maybe if they were right in front of me I could do that."

"So, explain something to me."

"Suppose I'm an open book to you, shoot," I said turning around and giving him my attention.

"You have one of the most powerful people in the world looking out for you and you're on a planet where almost everyone is so young you have a hard time taking them seriously, am I right so far?"

"Well, I can take humans seriously..." I tried. But I could tell from the look he gave me, he wasn't buying it. Still, I was liking Allen, so I wanted to soften the blow. "Just not too seriously, so I suppose that's the gist of it."

"So why are you so worried about learning to fight for yourself?"

I had to stop at that question. I looked around, thinking. Self-defense was just a basic thing on my world, but there was more to this than that.

It was chilly out. I looked down into the street, watching the lights of cars as they passed under us. Strange to notice, but the lights of cars and the stars in the sky have a lot in common. White lights with little distinctiveness, you can't tell their shape from a distance, you only see the bright light that reflects off them. I had thought a few times... home was just a light.

"You know how long Pharaoh's live right?" I asked looking up into the sky.

"Long time I hear."

I nodded. "About two thousand years. In the life of a human, there's a pretty good chance you'll never see violence. That's only about a hundred years though. But do you really think there's even a chance that you'll never get in a fight for two full millenniums? Even the idea of not having a weapon is considered the very definition of naivety where I come from."

"Still, Jessica pretty much is your weapon. Aside from that, she's trying to train you. Why were you so worried about it taking ten years to learn a technique?"

I turned my head to him, a small amount of fear in my eyes. "But what if something happens in those ten years?"

"I'm sure Jessica will handle it."

I folded my arms, it was getting colder out there. "You really don't get it, do you? That's what I'm afraid of. You know what her purpose is right? She's a bodyguard. Her entire purpose in being here is to take a bullet for me. In fact, she even says she can see no better way to die." Colder still.

"Sounds like she really cares about you."

"Fights come several times even in a short life... but real friendship- real love, even in a lifetime as long as mine, you might only come across it once." I took out and looked at Rita. "I've lived without Jessica for eighty years. I've lived with her for twenty. I think I forgot how to live without in just that short time." I looked back directly into Allen's eyes, dropping my arms to my side. I didn't feel the cold anymore as I said clearly, "No one will take her from me. It will not happen. She won't die protecting me, she won't have to."

(***)

The next morning came quickly. When he arrived on our floor,  Allen hadn't brought little Jaden this time. School in the area apparently started at 7 am and that was apparently earlier than his mother would have liked him to be about.

I groggily got in the car wishing my mom had forbid me getting up so early. Jessica was bouncing around like a rabbit of course. I was sleepy, still, every so often, it was good to laugh with her.

Thus Jessica and I were in the car by 6 am and I was doing my best not to pass right back out. I was dressed in a red jacket, a green shirt, and black jeans.

Jessica wore a red t-shirt with yellow pants and bright green shoes. Looking at her outfit did help me wake up. Where Jess came up with her outfits, God only knows. I suspected she felt a need for variety, but often she would repeatedly wear the same badly formed get-up several days in a row, having several pairs of red, purple, or yellow jeans. I'm not even sure who sold such clothes, but somehow she found them. At least on earth, that would stop being the case. I hear that here, they're much more uniform in their clothing designs.

We two were dropped off at the bus stop.

The grass around reflected the sun and I had to admit, there was a beauty to it. The trees and grass in a natural condition, even though I knew it had all been planted; it wasn't something you saw on Triad. For what it was worth, Jessica was right.

As we got out of the car, a small group of kids had already gathered. As he dropped us off, Allen ruffled my hair in front of the assembled crowd saying quietly, "You're lucky it's not a uniform school kid... course I think Jessica is gonna stand out anyway."

I shook my head. "On my planet, everyone has a different first name, most everyone makes their own invention by aged 10 and we have several thousand different kinds of buildings, at least two hundred of which are types that float and fifty are types that orbit the planet. On my world, Jessica is still considered unique by our standards. She'd be able to get your attention if you were on fire."

"Hence why you're together."

"I couldn't stand life without her," I said with a big grin.

Allen nodded. "Alright, listen up. You're five, on this world they're generally a little shy at that age. You should probably stick close to Jessica... we are going with her being your sister still right?"

"Why not?" I asked.

"I don't know if you noticed, but you two have almost nothing in common beyond dark hair and light skin color." He shook his head. "Just something to keep in mind... One question, does the same mother who dresses you," Allen pointed at me, but probably more at my clothes, "Dress her?"

I shook my head. "Don't worry. You're liberal parents. She dresses herself because you don't believe in discipline."

"Ah- um- yeah don't use my real name then."

I laughed. I didn't know too much about child-rearing on earth, but some things are easy to translate. "No problem daddy."

Allen drove off, leaving Jessica and me with a group of assembled clueless children. Yeah... I realized what I had just done about three seconds after Allen left. It wasn't long before Jessica had engaged the largest of the group in some kind of fight, teasing and taunting him. He was good-natured and she didn't hurt him, but somehow I got involved and me and three other kids ended up on the grass being tickled and otherwise tormented for the next ten minutes.

(***)

The "bus" arrived. It was a giant yellow vehicle with ten windows on each side. Despite myself, all I could think about was putting giant yellow wings on either side of it. Sure enough, would have looked just like a moth... and so would the other three cars around it... and... I shook my head trying to get out Jessica's logic.

As we sat down together on a small black cushion I confided in Jessica, "sure wish we had our swords."

"They don't let their children carry weapons here Ky," Jessica said back. "Not our age anyway."

"All conditions being as we suppose," I continued, "you know school was only the last place Thomas was actually seen. He's not there anymore and with a whole town looking for him, it's a good chance he's pretty far from there." She nodded to this. The bus started to move forward. "If we think like criminals in this, whoever grabbed Thomas, especially after seeing a huge search for the boy, if he doesn't want to get caught, is going to want to keep Tommy as far from that school as possible."

Jessica pointed back at me, with an 'ah-ha!' kind of expression. "But if he's smart, he's gonna return to the scene of the crime regularly to see what progress folks have made in finding the kid." Jessica pulled out our tracer. "And when he does that, this thing will pick up traces of the kid's DNA all over him."

"You do realize Tommy, from what we've seen, was a pretty well-known kid right? Chances are a number of people have had physical contact with him of some kind in this town. At this stage, we really can't rule anyone out either."

"Ah but there's a catch," Jessica said with a cocky grin while bouncing her head side to side. "There is no approximation of a DNA tracer on this world. Not that normal humans know about anyway. We don't have to look for a person with Tommy's DNA period. We just have to look for the guy who came into contact with him AFTER he went missing and no one knew where he was."