***ALEX***

Josh climbs onto my back again for the short flight up to the helicopter. For the benefit of the rescue pilot who wonders why an able-bodied guy can't fly himself, he covers up by explaining that he's a demon. Thankfully, the pilot and copilot both just leave it at that, no other questions asked. And me, I just have to hunker down, hood up, and - in spite of what Bennet said about me having autistic psychic blocks or whatever, though I'm pretty sure that only applies to projection and not garden-variety thought-speech - hope I don't accidentally broadcast the truth telepathically.

It's easier when they're helping me keep warm. Josh too, he's got a blanket on, but he doesn't really need it like I do. He didn't get nearly as wet as I did, and he shook off a good chunk of the frost that attached itself to him when I accidentally teleported us. Me, though, it wouldn't go away, probably because it's my power and all. It's far from the first time ice has tried to get too familiar with me. I haven't forgotten the times - plural now since you may have last heard of such an unwanted incident - I've almost frozen my balls off in the shower.

Good thing I've never dated any girls with the same power as me, because if any such girl were into ice play, I'd have to turn her down until I was a little more confident in my own powers. Fire play, though, I've dreamed of that with Fionna - not in our shared dreams, sadly - and I've been considering asking Kelly about plant play for a while. Maybe our first time going all the way, she can tie my wrists down with vines, help me overcome that particular fear of mine-

"You're turning the air bluer than it already is with those brainwaves, bro."

I turn my head so I can sort of see Josh, even though, with my hood up, I can only do so out of one eye. "Your telepathy keeps changing strength."

"It actually doesn't, but that's just the nature of sex thoughts."

I shrink further into my blanket. "Sorry."

"Don't be. If it eases your stress, it eases your stress. Just don't jerk off in front of me. Or these fine gentlemen. They can go online to witness that sort of shit." He laughs good-naturedly along with the more awkward titters from up front, then changes the subject. "Dude, has anyone ever told you you look kinda like the guy from Mr. Robot? But younger."

I pull my hood off so I can give him a brief glare. Not that I'm actually mad at him, but I need to nip this particular pop-cultural nicknameage in the bud. "They called me that when I was a kid."

"Hmm?"

"Bullies. They'd call me 'Mr. Robot' back in elementary school sometimes."

"Oh..." His face falls as he connects the dots. "Oh, it's 'cause you're...yeah, I'm sorry too. I didn't know." Then he does a double take. "Elementary school? Kids at that age knew what-"

"Gabe and I were the only ones in our graduating sixth-grade class who, at that time, hadn't even seen a minute of Game of Thrones."

He snickers, then winks. "Point." Once both his eyes are open, he rolls them sympathetically. "Kids, right?"

"They're not that bad," I say, thinking of the likes of Luca's or Paul's little brothers. "Kids," though? Gio and Aron are teenagers. Early to mid-teens, yeah, but in my head they're not really kids any more than I felt I was by the time I was fifteen or so. Funny, now I'm seventeen and feel I got seriously lost somewhere on the way to manhood.

I put my hood up and lean against the wall, feeling the charging cables in my pocket. Two of them - no, three, I think. Either way, the infamous Pocket Elves are already at work, tangling them up in hopes of rendering them useless. I extract the knot of cables and work to unravel them. Josh's eyes follow my fingers for a while as I work. Or stim. Whatever I want to call it. Maybe if I were capable of producing anything good from it, I'd take up knitting or something. It'd be pretty hipster of me, but then again I've been known to get mistaken for one already, so why not build that image a little more, am I right? And as long as my writing life's been on hold, I've got to find some other outlet of creative therapy.

"You two brothers?" asks the chopper pilot.

"Yeah," Josh lies. "What was your first clue?"

"Family resemblance." I look up as I hear this, feeling, against my better judgment, a twinge of pride at being told I look like the Son of God. I mean, I've thought for years that we mere mortals were supposed to be on God's level eventually, made in His own image and all that shit. What better proof, huh?

"You must be pretty close, huh?" the pilot continues.

"Not as much as I'd like." I sense Josh thinking it, even in his usual muted way, but the words fall from my mouth. Hardly inaccurate, either. Something born of my years avoiding church like the plague. Which was itself born out of a combo of me naturally shying away from the rules I was told to follow to be in God's good graces, and solidarity with Gabe because his very existence defied the rules on so many levels, according to any number of priests and deacons back home.

Josh tilts his head and thinks, I might've said this already, but don't believe what they tell you. They take a lot of interpretations so strict, they turn loose as hell.

Noted.

"You don't live here, though, do you?" asks the pilot. "I could've sworn we picked up all the residents from this tract already."

I put down the cable I've got in my hand for a second so I could look into the pilot's eyes. But I can't, because he's not looking at us. Still, though, I'm unable to shake a consistently increasing paranoia because of this guy's endless string of questions.

Nothing wrong with having an inquisitive nature, Josh thinks cheerfully. Out loud, he says, "We were just here for a friend. He, uh, forgot something in the rush."

"Pretty dedicated friends, you are."

I chuckle under my breath. "Thanks, Yoda."

The pilot runs with it. "Welcome, you are."

"All right, that's enough," says the copilot. "Don't make me hold you at gunpoint the rest of the way there."

"You wouldn't," I say. With my brain in my current state, I really can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not, and frankly I'd be very surprised if he were.

"Where's 'there?'" Josh asks.

"San Jose City Hall," says the copilot. "You might've seen it on TV once or twice. Place looks less like a city hall and more like an observatory."

"What do you expect, though?" the pilot asks with a sharp laugh. "We live in the heart of Silicoin Valley. Of course we're gonna have a techie-"

"'Silicoin?'" I repeat, unsure I heard the pilot correctly.

"That's just what I call it," the pilot says with a shrug as he brings us down towards a helipad on top of the observatory-looking City Hall. "Tons of money comes into this place, and it's the one percent that hoard it all, those Scroogey assholes." He lets go of the controls for a moment - I'm not sure he's supposed to do that - but that's only so he can scratch what looks like a pretty persistent itch on the back of his neck. "Perfect timing to call them 'Scroogey' too, this close to Christmas. How long is it till the big day again?"

"A full week," Josh says. I nod, and in my head, thank him for the reminder. I'd forgotten too in all the excitement.

Above our heads, the helicopter blades stop turning, and the pilots scramble outside to help us down. "I don't need a hand, thanks," I say as I bypass the copilot. Josh does the same for the pilot, but silently.

"Hey, I just realized something," Josh says as the pilots escort us to the stairway down into the building. "We didn't need to wear headsets. Where'd you get a helicopter that wasn't so noisy?"

The pilot winks. "Benefits of working in Silicoin Valley. We get fancy-ass tech. This one's got noise-reduction courtesy of Scoville Industries." As Josh and I exchange worried glances, the pilot, blushing at how blatant his product placement was, adds, "Not really a local company - I think they're from New Zealand, aren't they?"

"Australia," I correct him, remembering Scoville's interview with Anderson Cooper last night. As if the guy didn't resemble Hugh Jackman enough already.

On the first floor down from the helipad, we finally get into an elevator which takes us down to the ground floor. There, the lobby's covered in a different kind of flood - of people. Evacuees. And somewhere among them might be the Scags.

That's what you call them? Josh raises his eyebrow at me.

Short for "Scagliotti," I say.

Mmm. Cute.

We both look around. The people on the lobby floor look like a pretty good cross section of San Jose residents. All sizes and colors and genders of angel, and some demons as well, I'm thinking. Not that it's as apparent at a distance which wing variety any one of these people has. But nowhere in the immediate vicinity do I see any of Luca's family. I think I'm starting off by looking for Luca himself - he's got the curliest hair by far, even more so than his dad from whom he inherited it, and that's an easy feature to locate, I think. But then, right in front of me are no less than half a dozen people with curly hair as well.

It's a dominant trait, isn't it? Josh asks. Curly hair? He reaches up to his temple and grabs a bit of his own hair, twisting it around his finger. The way he emphasizes the curl of his own hair, it starts to resemble a ringlet.

Don't make this any harder for me than it is, please. I walk past this group of curly-haired people, craning my neck as I keep on searching for Luca. Finally, I spot him when he does the same, making the most of his five-nine height. He runs my way and, to my surprise as much as his, I think, he grabs me in a hug powerful enough to lift me off the floor.

"God..." I shake my head when my feet finally touch terra firma again. "Let me breathe. Look, look, I got your stuff..." I pull the cables out of my pocket. "So did he," I say, pointing to Josh as he steps back to my side and copies me.

"Who are you?" Luca asks Josh as he takes the cables. "Time-traveled Alex from college?"

Josh belly-laughs. When he's able to breathe again, he says, "No, but your boy here can jump through the space part of the continuum like you wouldn't believe."

Luca raises his eyebrows. "Is that how you got here so fast?" He turns around and sees his family coming this way, led by his parents, of course. "Maybe you could, uh, teleport back and grab my teddy bear while you're at it? So I can sleep at night?"

I try not to laugh at his joke, not like he does. "What's gonna...what's gonna happen to you guys?" I ask.

"Trust me, we got this." Luca turns around, expecting to distribute the cables to his family, when he sees someone else coming this way at a fast clip. As surprised as I am, he drops the cables and rockets up into the air, his wings flapping madly as he starts raining fire on this person, who's dangerously close to his parents as it is.

Everyone else starts screaming in horror, while I fly up to Luca and grab his arm. "Hey! What are you doing? Stop-AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

I shouldn't have tried to grab him. When you play with fire, you get bloody burned.

"He had a gun!" Luca points down to the ground, where everyone else is scattered and/or has hit the deck, except for one guy in what looks like a nuclear bunny suit.

A guy carrying a gun, which he fires in our direction.

I pull harder on Luca, earning myself more pain in the hand I got burned, and then snow flies thickly around us. Next thing I know, we're back at my house, sprawled out on the kitchen floor. Michael walks in and looks down on us with a critical eye.

"I'd have brought the fire extinguisher," he says sardonically, "but you look like you've been hit hard by one already." He casts his eye towards the living room. "Flocked like that Christmas tree ought to be." As Mom yells some choice swear words at him, he looks back at us, and his expression shifts from snark to worry. "Where's my brother? Did you...goddammit, did you leave him behind?"

"No!" I jump away from Luca and pace the floor in circles, trying to imagine myself teleporting back to City Hall. How hard can it be? I know where to go, I know who to take back with me-

"ALEX!"

The sound of Michael's voice is so uncomfortably close, somehow, that I reflexively scream, and the snow takes me away once again. It leaves me right in the middle of the lobby floor at City Hall, where Josh is busy trying to talk down the shooter.

I run to Josh and grab his hand, then teleport us out of the lobby. But I don't take us to my house, not the first time, anyway. The first jump takes us to Joey's Pizza. Then to Mr. G's hotel room in the city. Then, finally, back to my house again.

"Someone needs to get rid of all this snow," Michael says.

"Yeah, man." Josh actually flips his brother off. "But you're not about to volunteer for the job, are you?"

"Alex, what the hell did you just...?" Luca brushes snow off his shoulder.

I hold up my hand, and it's very difficult to resist the urge to copy Josh for him. "I could ask you the same thing."

"That was...that was an accident!"

"So was this!" I spread my arms around the kitchen, and especially at the snow still pooled around our feet.

"Well, you can clean that up! I can't be here! i need to get to my family!"

"You want me to take you back?"

"Yes!"

"Then get the fuck out of my face!"

He shoves me hard, and to be honest, I don't blame him. In all the time we've known each other, maybe we've had an argument or two - what friends haven't? But this is the first time either of us have cussed the other out this maliciously.

"There," he says, his voice deeper than I've ever heard before as he looks down at me. "You're out of my fucking face."

"Alex, just do what he wants!" Mom cries as she reaches down to help me up.

I take her hand and get back to my feet, then reach out to Luca. He glares at me for an eternity, then takes my hand long enough for me to take us both back to San Jose. By the time we finally get there after another three or four jumps to completely the wrong place, the police are moving the gunman out of the area, to the applause of the crowd.

Luca checks his pocket and finds his charging cable still safely inside it. "Thanks," he says tersely.

I reach out again. "Look, I'm sorry-"

"I'm sure you are." He doesn't mean anything untoward by it, I don't think, but it still sounds to me like he wants to kick my ass. "But I need to cool down a bit. Call me later, huh?" Averting his eyes, he disappears into the crowd to find his family again.

"But I don't..." I don't have the heart to tell him, though, that my phone's broken. Sighing to myself - and seeing that there are security guards trying to make their way to me - I turn around and vanish from view. This time, thankfully, it only takes me one shot to return home.

"Alex, what the hell?" Mom rounds on me the second I reappear in the kitchen in another flurry. "You can't just help your friend without..." She then sees the ugly dark pink skin on my hand, which I've got tucked firmly in my pocket, but not enough to hide the whole thing. Before I can stop her, she seizes my wrist and takes a closer look. "Oh shit," she whispers. "Did Luca do this?"

"By accident," I whisper back. "I swear. He was just...someone was coming after us, and he was trying to save us." I look up at the lights overhead. "Him, me, his family-"

"And me?" Josh, who's over in the living room, sitting on the sofa next to Firdaus and Ahmad, raises his hand.

"And you," I add.

"So you thought you'd stop him from saving his family?" Mom asks.

"No, I was...I wanted to get him to safety too."

Mom has me sit on the nearest chair and runs upstairs to grab the first aid kit. While I wait, I coat my hand in ice, but I can only do so for about twenty seconds before my fingertips grow too numb to continue. AK steps in and tries to do the same, but then Mom comes back and starts spraying my hand with Bactine.

"At least it's your left," AK comments. "You can still write, and eat, and jerk off..." Mom fixes him with a look that stings harder than the disinfectant she's giving me until he shuts up.

"I know this is a stupid question," Mom says, "but why do you have to take these kinds of risks?" She reaches for an industrial-looking bandage. I haven't seen one of those since the time I managed to greenstick-fracture two of my fingers playing baseball, and they used one to wrap this sort of half-cast around my arm to stabilize it all.

"Because he's a teenage boy?" Firdaus suggests.

"Because the world's against him?" Ahmad asks.

"Because I don't want anyone to walk away knowing I won't do what's right," I say, even though I'm not even sure that's the answer. I think Firdaus and Ahmad are more on the money, though. And I hate to admit it, but the former might be more so.

Maybe my increased impulsiveness is a sign that I'm a little more lost on the road to manhood than I thought.

"If you're really lost," Josh tells me, "don't despair. You won't be that way forever." He takes my hand for a second, the hand Mom just bandaged, then beckons to his friends. "Guys, we gotta get to San Jose. If that was a Peppermint plant, we gotta make sure there won't be another one coming-"

"Then I'm coming with?" I ask.

"No, not right now." Josh holds up his hands as he stands in the doorway, his back to the front door that's kitty-corner behind him. "You gotta rest a bit. You too, AK. Go home."

"Before the storm comes again?" AK asks. "Tell your dad to hold off on the rain until I get back to San Cas, then."

"I don't think it's up to him," Josh says, "but I'll try."

I tuck my bandaged hand under my arm. "So, like you said, you want me to sleep it off or some shit?"

"Take whatever rest you can," Firdaus says.

"We'll be back," Ahmad says, though his Ahnold impression needs work. A ton of it.

They leave with Josh and Michael, and AK leaves on his own, taking wing from the backyard and flying off to the northwest, the same way I went this morning to meet him. As for me, I go up to my room and crash on my bed. Mom tells me, before leaving me to myself, she'll make dinner later if I'm up to it.

"Make it for yourself, at least," I say. "If I'm hungry, I'll fend for myself."

She turns on her heel and leaves, but before closing the door, she adds, "Listen, if they want to bring you out for more...whatever the hell it is you're doing now, I'm not gonna be able to stop you, am I?"

"It's not me you'll have to stop," I say. "I'm fighting to save my own life as much as anyone else's. I know it doesn't look it, but..."

She comes back in long enough to kiss the side of my head. "Be good to yourself, Alex. And be careful. Losing one of my boys was bad enough, but if I had to lose you too..."

As she leaves me, for good this time, I get up just so I can close the door and leave myself in the dark. On the shelf near the ceiling, Kylo Ren gazes down on me, criticizing the amateurish artificial night I've made myself here - a night I break by turning on my desk light. Rey, meanwhile, looks at him critically herself, as if daring him to step out of the Dark Side and be Ben Solo again.

Oh, just go on a good date, you two. Dinner on New Alderaan. A poetry slam at Maz Kanata's place. Something. Anything.

But let me stay in my shell a little longer. I need to rest before the next fight.

If I weren't so dazed and confused and lost in my head, I'd have picked up a phone from downstairs and used it to call one of my other friends. Gideon, maybe. Or Kelly. God, I need to talk to Kelly soon. At least I won't be Snapchat-sexing with her for a while, as long as I don't have a working phone.

If only it was possible to make Skype calls through the Force like Rey and Ben can. Wait, don't I already do that with Gabe and Fionna? To be fair, though, they're both dead, and Kelly, thank God, isn't.

My stomach twinges with hunger, and I want to get up, but I can't. Not when my darkness is spooning me. In a metaphorical sense, I mean, but I extremely feel a weight like that of a person wrapping their arms around me from behind and partly covering my body.

No, darkness, I'm not in the mood to fuck. Wait until I'm sharing a dream with the girl I love, then maybe we'll invite you in for a devil's threesome.

Yes, my darkness is a dude. So is my light side, though he's not sleeping with me tonight in any sense, I'm sorry to say.

The shit I'm putting in my writing journal right now, after so many months of non-use, you wouldn't believe.

Somewhere down the line, this therapy finally makes me fall asleep.