"Come on, hurry up!"
"Hold on!"
"We should have been out the door five minutes ago!"
"I know that, and I said I'm coming." Adam hopped around the corner still desperately attempting to pull on one of his boots .
Sunny waited at the door tapping her foot, "You take forever to get ready, you know that."
Adam snorted, "Well unlike you, I don't have the luxury of walking out the door naked."
"You could have the luxury if you weren't such a coward.:" She teased, steading him with one hand so he could finish tying his shoe.
Adam just rolled his eyes at her, standing to dust himself off, "Alright. Hijan, we're leaving ok."
The old Drev poked her head round the corner holding Kay in her arms, "We'll be right here." Adam still found it a little strange to hear a human voice coming from her, curtesy of her translator, rather than her rather rough Drev voice , but since coming to Arcadia, she had taken rather well to a life with technology.
Sitting at their feet Waffles and pancake sat their tails wagging slowly back and forth. Sunny leaned down to pat at their velvety ears, "You two girls behave yourselves ok."
Waffles hopped forward, still on her bandaged paw, and licked Sunny's hand once. Pancake barked happily as she pranced back and forth.
Sunny straightened back up and looked down the hall at Kay, "That goes for you too young man."
Kay Grinned turning to hide his face in Hijan's shoulder.
Kay liked himan, though he generally tended to like everyone, He like hijan especially now that she acted as his surrogate grandmother. Hijan had a habit of adopting people into her family, and had readily taken Sunny in as her own when she learned who Sunny's actual mother was. Following that it was only logical that she would take kay in as her very own grandson.
Sunny placed her hand on Adam's arm as they stepped outside, and he turned to look back at the door with an expression of concern on his face.
"Worried about Kazna coming back."
"Aren't you?"
Sunny adjusted the open front of her trailing, white, silk robe, "I mean of course, but I trust Hijan, and now that Conn has moved his satellite office to the tower, its not like we can be taken off guard."
Adam grunted, that was true enough. His mother had already shown plenty of initiative in protecting Kay. They were still digging bits of shrapnel out of the wall from the shotgun blasts. Waffles was on her way to heeling and Dzara was still in the hospital recovering from her own injuries. Krill said she was going to make a full recover.
Adam didn't know if he would. Hearing those gunshots, and running through that door to see Kazna had probably been one of the scariest moments in his life. Kay being in danger had left him shaky and weak in the knees for almost an entire day. Neither he nor Sunny had been able to let their son go while Kay had recovered in a matter of minutes.
It had been a nightmare
And now he was having trouble leaving him alone.
It was partially for this reason he knew Maverick and Ramirez had invited them out. It was sort of a double date, though Maberick hadn't called it that. That's exactly what it was, but Adam was coming to find that Maberick was rather awkward when it came to the subject of relationships. His personal theory was that she had just lived on her own for so long that the idea of relationships weirded her out. It would take some time for her to see them the same way everyone else did.
If she did, in fact, have some sort of relationship with Ramirez, it was a slow moving one.
They reached the restaurant after maverick and Ramirez who had gone ahead to sit at their reserved table . It wasn't he fanciest restaurant on Arcadia, but none of them were very fancy people. It was, in Adam's opinion, one o the best spots to eat out. It had plenty of strange and exotic alien food, and the chefs were always trying out soemthing new. The last time he came here, he had eaten a regular old steak with an orb fruit glaze and Tesraki roasted tubers with a side of Irus fried desert root.
It had probably been one of the best meals he had ever had.
But perhaps that was his stomach talking.
They took a seat across from Maberick and ramirez, who waved them over from their booth.
The little restaurant had a sort of Southern ranch style theme to it, very steak and potatoes as one might say.
It was more a comfort food place with a side of alien exoticness.
Looking at Maverick and Ramirez it was hard to decide weather they were a couple or not. They didn't sit very close together and they weren't touching like you might expect, but he knew from experience, being on her team for so long, that Maberick wasn't a fan of physical contact.
The poles were still out on weather what they had would actually last.
Ramirez grinned at them, "Surprised you two were able to leave the house without Kay."
Adam gave a grim smile, "Almost had to take a few chill pills to do it."
They laughed. Kay getting kidnapped wasn't all that funny but Adam was either going to laugh or freak out, so his options were pretty limited.
Maverick folded up her menu and rested it on the table. She already knew hat she wanted, she tended to get the same thing every time she came. "So, where are we going after this, you said you had an idea."
Adam grinned, "I do at that. Do you guys know what time of year it is?"
They shook their heads.
Ramirez stroked his chin, "That time of year where I try growing out my beard."
Maberick made a face, "Can it please never be that time of year. It looks just fine where it is, and every time you try to grow it out it struggles."
Ramirez frowned, "You're so Rude."
"I'm so right."
Adam shook his head at them, "She's right Ramirez, the last time you tried to grow it out any longer, it just started to look like wispy pubes."
Maberick snorted, and unfortunately for Adam that was about the time their waiter arrived to introduce herself. Judging by the look on her face she had just heard the president of Arcadia say "Wispy pubes" without context.
Adam went beat red and the rest of the table laughed at him.
"I promise there was context." Adam said, floundering, "We were, I was.... Well it's a –" The waitress giggled , and Adam sighed, giving up on trying to explain himself. She took their drink orders and stepped away still smiling.
Adam frowned at the others who were grinning at him, "Why is it that I am the only one who ever gets caught saying dumb stuff."
Sunny patted his back gently, "Hard not to catch you saying dumb stuff when ninety percent of the stuff that comes out of your mouth is dumb."
Ramirez and maverick laughed at him and he frowned at Sunny again, "Whose side are you on."
"Since I'm with you..... the losing side."
Adam jabbed her in the ribs and tried to go back to the earlier conversation while the others were still snickering at him, "I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, that this is the time of the year that the Jellies have their babies."
Mabeerick perked up, "Oh really? I haven't seen any mini jellies."
"You wouldn't, they like to have their babies out in the dark, we don't really know why." There were a lot of things they didn't know about the jellies. Originally they thought they would need a jelly predator to control the population, but as it turned out, once they were implanted with gravity tags, the Jellies had started migrating off Arcaida.
They could be seen everywhere I the system now congregating on other asteroids and moons, though the scientists had found that plenty of them migrated back to arcadia during their lifecycle to breed and then to have their babies. It was hard to predict who was going to leave arcadia and who was going to stay.
Some researchers had done studies that suggested that Jellies were less likely to leave arcadia if they had a specific attachment to a human. Adam for instance, had a close attachment with the first jelly that had followed him around on the omen, and so based on its tracking beacon, that one had never left the planet.
"Anyway, we don't know what it is, but there is something about their interaction with the atmosphere that has caused some strange mutations. I am told that it's nothing harmful for them, but you get some really cool combinations. Scientists have been encouraging everyone to go out for capture and release and catalogue the new ones that they find."
"You want us to go jellyfish hunting?"
"Like lepidoptery?" Ramirez asked
Maverick turned to stare at him, "how do you specifically know the scientific name for the study of butterflies."
Ramirez jutted out his lip, "Doesn't everyone."
Maverick sighed and turned to Adam, "So basically you want us to go butterfly catching with you?"
"Uh.... Yes?"
"Cool I'm in."
The waitress headed back towards their table, and Ramirez piped up quickly with a, "Flaming buns of pure steel." When she tried not to smile he grinned at her, "Just have to keep the tradition alive."
They ordered their food and it came to them quickly. Sunny got the flower assortment salad. Maberick went for a Tesraki rice bowl, while Adam and Ramirez had both ordered a burger and a coiltree berry shake.
When the food was done, the three of them walked through the city each holding a net Adam had provided.
Overhead the sky was full of stars growing brighter as they exited the city and walked out onto the mossy planes of Arcadia
The wildlife had had a lot of time to propagate in the two years Adam was absent. Coil trees now grew along side earth willows all intermingled with large blue bioluminescent ferns. Slithering through the brush they could hear the sounds of Jeffery snakes foraging for berries.
They even saw the ghost Stag of Arcadia standing atop a ridgeline before disappearing back into the infant forest.
Arcadia, once thought to be an inert exoplanet actually turned out to be a discarded planet flung out of its orbit by some sort of unknown force. I the past few years scientists had discovered that arcadia had a molten iron nickel core and a surprisingly strong magnetic field . They had even discovered massive underground wells of water heated by the thermal vents in the molten core. All they had to do was bring that water up, and then they had rivers lakes, and the weather.
There was even a small inland sea growing on the far side of arcadia, that was slowly being populated with new types of fish, and underwater plant life. There were a lot of species of fish that were considered invasive species, so his scientists were being forced to develop the fish themselves.
Arcadia waterweed was already growing in abundance I the lake.
"Ok, so rule is, whoever catches the coolest Jelly wins a cash prize."
Maverick raised a hand, "Is this a team effort, or every man for himself."
"Every man for himself"
That decision might have been a mistake considering he had just issued a challenge to four highly competitive people. At first it was rather tame. Occasionally they would spot the same little jelly in a new shade of green and fight over it. Ramirez would push maverick out of the way, maverick would grab his leg, Sunny and Adam would take the distraction to run forward, but then Sunny would trip him last second.
Adam had gotten a mouth full of moss and Ramirez had tripped over a rock.
But that was when they saw it
A beautiful creature.
The little jelly was about the size of a fist, and pure iridescent white. It glowed with an unusual power and trailed two long filaments with a series of glowing white beads. At the end of the filaments there was a glowing feather. It had a bunch of smaller tentacles, some with similar filaments, but those two were the longest and the brightest. The group of them stared at it for a long moment, slowly turning to look at each other.
Maverick made the first move shoving Ramirez sideways into Adam to send the two of them tumbling to the ground.
Sunny had seen that coming and tripped her, but maverick threw her net between sunny's ankles as she ran causing her to trip.
By then the three of the had staggered to their feet.
Ramirez tackled Maberick into the dirt again, and Adam vaulted over Sunny. Unfortunately for him, it was dark out and his foot caught on an uneven patch as he came down causing his mechanical foot to twist and sending him plowing into the dirt. Sunny had no qualms with stepping on him as she ran past closely followed by Ramirez AND maverick, who tackled her legs
Adam was up and running again and shoved Ramirez back down as he tried to stand up. Maverick jumped at him from nowhere brandishing her net like a weapon which led to a short bout of combat. He sort of cheated by kicking her in the chest causing her to fall backwards into Sunny. He tried to turn and found that Ramirez had snuck around behind them and went running after the Jelly when none of them were looking .
Adam Had o race after him and knock his feet out from undre him.
His net missed by mere inches and the jelly quickly floated off in the other direction.
Adam went to run after it but ramirez grabbed him and threw him to the ground. They rolled once and then tipped end over end down a nearby hill.
Sunny and Maverick leaped over them heading after the jelly and deeper into a large thicket Adam raced after listening to the sound of a creak growing louder and louder in the distance. Water rushed over stone as the group chased the Jelly into the dark.
Sunny and Adam had fallen back as they were to busy trying to sabotage each other.
It was between Ramirez and Maverick now. They staggered up the trail pushing each other and staggering this way and that. They were coming up to the edge of the bank of the river. The jelly was just out of reach.
Maverick extended her net, and Ramirez plowed into her sending them both toppling with a splash into the creek.
Sunny and Adam ran over to find Mavverick in the creek on her lap. Ramirez lying on top of her, and sticking up above both of their heads was Maverick's net with a rather miffed looking jelly floating inside.
Ramirez looked up, "Dammit."
Maverick smirked, "Ha, sucker." She looked happily up at her prize, "You are going to be my new friend, and I am going to call you..... Cupcake."
Ramirez frowned at her, "Cupcake what kind of name is that?"
"The kind of name you can shove up your ass ."
"Why would I want a cupcake up my ass/"
Sunny shook her head, "We don't need to get into all he weird kinky things you guys are into."
As expected Adam blushed and Sunny laughed.
Maverick walked out of the forest wet, bruised, and triumphant.