My birthday was spent with Mike, Ty, Ben, and April all picking on me, all in good fun of course, because I was the last one of us to turn eighteen. It was a whole lot of fun though. I received a significant amount of random hugs, and gentle kissed on my head, forehead, and cheeks, and it was the best thing ever. Even Ian kept giving me hugs, and kissed me on the head once. 

To absolutely no one's surprise, Steven spent the whole day spoiling and pampering me, never leaving me alone if he didn't have to. I didn't mind this of course, because I loved Steven a whole lot, and also didn't want to be very far away from him for very long. 

Steven and I hung out all over the house, because we were watching a bunch of movies, but Steven was also helping Warren and Jess bake various baked goods, because they thought that everyone could use some sugar to help lift their spirits. All of us were having a pretty hard time after everything that happened with Aristatch, and we were all trying our best to be ok. 

Watching Aristatch die was a bit traumatising for me, and I'm sure for the rest of Light Force too. I had tried to help her, because she was hurting, and grieving, and I wanted her to be ok, but eventually there was nothing any of us could do to help her. Not only that, but I was still trying to figure what Aristatch was talking about when she told me that the sun was my mother. 

I couldn't figure out how that would work. The sun was a giant ball of gas that would kill anyone who got too close to it in a heartbeat. Based on all of the scientific data that had been gathered since the dawn of time, there was absolutely no way that either one of my parents could be anything other than a human, or a mutant. It bothered me to think that Aristatch believed that I was the son of a star for some reason, and it really got me thinking about my genetics. 

So, the day after my birthday, I managed to sneak away, and shimmy up the drain pipe of the house, and stand up on the roof. I made sure to do it at noon, so that the sun was at its highest, and I looked up at the sun, not feeling burned or blinded at all. I knew it was probably crazy, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I began speaking to the sun. 

"An alien was here a while ago, and she told me that you were my mother, and that you destroyed her planted. She was trying to kill me to get revenge on you. I don't know how any of that makes sense. How could you be my mother? You're a ball of gas." I said, feeling kind of weird about talking to the sun. 

"I would know if the sun was my mother, wouldn't I?" I sighed, feeling even more ridiculous about what I was about to say, but continued talking nonetheless. "If you are my mother, can I meet you? Can you show me that Aristatch was telling the truth?" 

I closed my eyes, not entirely expecting anything to happen, but also trying to keep my mind open to the possibility that Aristatch was telling the truth. I didn't feel anything change, but when I opened my eyes, I was flying quickly into the air, and the ground was no longer below me. I was kind of freaking out, looking around frantically, but finding no way to stop myself from rocketing farther and farther away from the world below me. 

I looked up, finding that the sky was quickly getting darker, and stars were getting more and more visible. I started to panic more, knowing that it was going to get harder and harder for me to breathe, and I was going to get colder and colder, until eventually I would be well past dead, and drifting through the vacuum of space forever. 

But I didn't get cold, and I didn't freeze, or die. I just kept going up until the entire earth was far below me, and I was able to see the entire solar system clearly. It was not at all what I was expecting. 

I stared in front of me, my eyes wide, at the sun, which took the form of a giant, thick woman who was looked just like me, and was curled up in a ball. The woman seemed to know that I was there, because I stopped moving up while she uncurled from her ball, and looked closely at me. The woman was closing bright yellow, she was wearing what looked like Ben's superhero suit, but white and with a cape, and had bright yellow eyes just like mine, only hers had a few dark spots on them. 

"Hello Gill." The woman spoke to me, her voice large and echoing. 

"Are....are you the sun?" I asked dumbly, even though the answer was pretty clear. 

"Yes I am." The sun chuckled with an amused smile.

"And I'm your son?"

"Yes you are."

"How?"

"Your father and I made you with our own two hands. We sculpted you out of clay, and added parts of everything we wanted to see in you. Like some of the stars, and clouds from Jupiter. Really you were almost a collective effort to create."

"I don't understand. What about my parents from Earth?" I looked down at the Earth as if to emphasise my point, when I found myself staring in disbelief. 

Much like the sun, the Earth appeared to be a person curled up into a ball. Well, not really a person as much as some sort of troll. He had shoulder length hair that looked like the pictures of Earth I had seen in my science class, complete with clouds floating around his head, and another small woman curled into a ball, which must have been the moon. 

Looking around, I found that all of the planets were just humanoid figures curled into balls, though it appeared as though the Earth was the only one who had a moon orbiting around them, which seemed strange to me. Then again, all of that situation seemed strange to me. 

"Those weren't your real parents." The sun told me, getting my attention again. "I simply placed you on Earth so that you could grow up with the life of a human until you were ready to have your powers, and live up here with me."

"Live up here? I can't do that. I'm human, granted I am mutated, but I'm human nonetheless. I can't live in space." 

"Sure you can. This is where you belong. This is what you were made for."

"Then why have I been on Earth this whole time? I have a life there. I have friends, and family, and people who I love, and who need me. I can't leave them to live in space where they will never see me again."

"We love you here though." 

"But I want to be on Earth. Can you put me back now? I want to see my family."

"We're your family."

"No you're not. You just made me, then dumped me to be raised by horrible people who I'm glad I never have to see again. I want to go home, and see my real family."

"Fine." The sun flicked one of her hands at me, and the next thing I knew, I was falling. 

I was barreling towards the Earth, getting faster and faster, until I eventually caught fire. The fire was only burning me in a few places, but it hurt super bad where it did. My clothes quickly burned off of me, turning to ash and flying away, and I was losing a bunch of skin, blood, and muscle too. 

I watched in fear as the ground, along with Steven's house, came increasingly closer. Before I had much time to think about at least trying to make myself land somewhere else, I was crashing through the ceiling, and landing in the living room, blacking out the second I hit the ground. 

***

When I woke up, I was in my bed, wearing my pajamas, and wrapped in bandages. Naturally, Steven was sleeping in a chair beside the bed, probably refusing to leave my side again. I smiled softly before reaching over to gently shake Steven awake. 

"Dad?" I called out softly, giving Steven my best smile when he sat up and looked at me sleepily. 

"How are you feeling?" Steven asked me, watching me closely. 

"Ok I guess. I really need to stop falling unconscious so much though." I chuckled, and Steven chuckled warmly too. 

"You really do. What happened?" Steven gave me all of his attention when I told him everything that had happened, and he seemed angry when I finished talking, though I knew he wasn't angry at me. 

Steven was angry that the sun had tried to force me to stay with her when I didn't want to, and he was angry that when I told her I wanted to go home, she responded by throwing me down to the Earth and causing me a lot of pain. Though he was glad that I wanted to come home right away, so that was cool. 

Steven wanted to try and figure out whatever he could about my species, and find out if the sun was actually telling the truth. This meant that Steven very excitedly took me down to his lab so that he could run some tests on me. I told him everything the sun had told me about how I was made, so Steven was taking samples of any form of DNA he could get from me, like my blood, hair, fingernails, saliva, and even some fluid from my eyes. 

It kind of hurt, but Steven seemed to excited to run some tests, and I knew he wouldn't intentionally injure me, so I didn't really mind. Steven left for a moment to go get Jess, knowing that she would like to look at my DNA too, then came back to happily look at my blood under a microscope and record his findings. 

It wasn't until many days later that Steven came to me with an excited, and interested look on his face. I knew right then that he had found something out about me that he thought was really cool, and puzzling. 

"So, Jess and I broke the samples we took from you down until we could look at the basic structure of them. We found that your blood has the exact same molecular structure as clay from the ground, and your eyes are made of some sort of plasma, and your hair is composed of some liquid that is completely unknown to man! You're made of an all new element!" Steven told me, practically glowing with excitement. 

"So...I'm not human." I responded, having trouble wrapping my head around the thought. Steven's excitement seemed to deflate a little, and he looked at me in concern. 

"Not really." 

"Then what am I?" 

"Something new. You're something that no one has ever seen before, and we don't exactly know anything about whatever species you are."

"This means that.....Peter was right. I am an animal." I felt my eyes start to get misty at the thought that after everything Peter did to me, and after all the time we all spent trying to convince me that what he did was wrong, and that I wasn't animal, Peter was actually right the whole time. 

"No!" Steven snapped, startling me and making me jump. Steven seemed to realise that he had scared me, because he stepped forward and pulled me into a gentle hug. "You may not be human, but Peter was wrong. You deserves to be treated exactly how we've been treating you, and how we're gonna keep treating you, and there is nothing anyone can do about that." 

Steven made sure that I believed him before letting me out of the hug, and even then he stayed close to me for the rest of the day. He did whatever he could to make sure that I knew that I was loved, and that I would be taken care of, and the result was me happily falling asleep smushed against him while we were watching a movie, no longer feeling incredibly upset.