Third Person’s POV
It’s been a couple of years since Riza disappeared, fifteen to be exact. After the hospital incident, her parents whisked her away and denied her any contact with the STF.
After the appearance of that mysterious being, Nature and Time disappeared while the other guardians had been defeated. The STF accepted responsibility and took over, leaving the earth for good.
Dimitri became Father Time as Aly became the temporary Mother Nature. Nada and Alicia went back to Hell whilst Damien and Cleo went the opposite direction to Heaven. Since they had to stay there and perform their roles in order to keep the world in balance, Sam, Titan, Sparta, and the triplets went out to find where Riza’s location was. After coming back empty-handed many times, the group proceeded to hunt down A.O.U. bases and destroy them.
During that period of time, Alagretto disappeared and became MIA. He had blocked himself off from the rest of the STF.
In a small town, in an ice cream parlor not too far from the airport, sat a male and a female. They were in their early thirties, no older than thirty-one. Beside them were two boys, each happily eating ice cream sundaes.
“Hurry up boys. We have to go soon,” spoke the woman. The boys nodded, but keep giggling and playing around while trying to finish their sundaes. When they were done, the older man paid and walked them out.
“Where are we going? The car is that way, Daddy…” One of the boys tilted his head as they passed a silver towncar. The male and female kept walking with the boys in tow.
“Just hush for now, Hunter.”
Hunter frowned as the other boy snickered. He wrinkled his nose and shoved him to the side. The boy growled and kicked him, dirtying his new clean clothes.
“Mommy! Leo kicked me!” Hunter whined.
“Leon Everley. Stop it now.”
Leo rolled his eyes and stuffed his hands in his pockets, giving his brother a dirty look before walking ahead. The group finally reached their destination - a small house that hadn’t been touched in a long time. Over its sixteen years of no use, the forest had taken over and wrapped most of it in a crowd of moss and ivy. There were children running around with a ball, having a great time. One by one, they paused and looked at the newcomers, puzzled.
“Mom!” One of the children called. It was a girl, obviously of Spanish descent. After a few moments, a body emerged from the house. Dress in a short, flowy floral dress was a beautiful woman with sun-kissed skin and dark brown hair that flowed in waves to her mid-back. She clutched the necklace around her neck as she looked at her daughter. Her eyes slowly traveled towards the newcomers and her jaw nearly dropped to the ground.
The woman by Hunter and Leo slowly smiled. “It’s certainly been a while Alicia.”
Another body came out of the house, brushing passed Alicia’s shocked state. It was another woman, with dirty blond hair that barely went past her shoulders. She tried to catch her breath as she stared down the group of people in her path.
“R-Riza…”
The woman’s smile faltered as she tried to hold back the tears brimming in her eyes. She nodded slowly and barely had time to react as she was nearly tackled down.
“Aly.”
“Where have you been? What have you been doing? Fifteen years was too long! Riza, I… I…” Riza hugged her best friend tightly as they both tried to comfort each other and cry at the same time. Everyone stood by at their emotional reunion, the children shocked to see their mothers behave like that.
After they were done, Aly ushered Riza and her family inside the home, where the rest of the group was. Nada, Dimitri, Cleo, Damien, and March. The silence in the room couldn’t have been quicker as the group jumped up and attacked Riza and Alagretto, knocking them to the ground. They basically asked the same questions as Aly as they tried to calm themselves down. It had been a while before they all finally sat down in the dining room, having finished their lovefest.
“Riza… where have you been?” Aly came quick to start her interrogation.
Riza snorted. “I come here to see how much you’ve all grown and I’m already in the hot seat… My parents moved me around a lot.”
The others nodded, but March focused her glare on Alagretto. After all, it had been around ten years since she’d seen him. He disappeared on them and had gone somewhere without their consent or knowing.
March was quick to stand up from her seat, walk around calmly to where Alagretto was, and smacked his cheek. Hard. He looked at her like she had grown too heads for a moment, but she was too furious to care.
“Where did you go?!”
Alagretto looked up at her and told her simply, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. “To find Riza.”
She continued to hit him, crying and sobbing and no one tried to stop her. “You left me all alone. I’m your little sister, for God’s sake! I’m the one who worries about you the most so you don’t become a burnt potato chip!”
Alagretto sighed and looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry.”
Once another emotional reunion was done, the room became silent again. Not with bad silence, but a nice, good vibe to the room.
“What has everyone been up to? I seemed to have missed a lot.”
Aly giggled, looking out the window to see what the children were doing before turning back to Riza. “We were about to have our monthly meetings as always. Um… where to start?”
“Moron and Cleo have a big shwiney home in Heaven that the shwiney lady left us!” Cleo beamed.
“We also had a kid, Ariel.” Damien smiled. “But Cleo keeps disappearing and leaves me with her all the time for some odd reason.” Riza looked out the window to see if she could tell which was theirs. It was pretty obvious, a short little girl with long red hair flying around her as she chased after her friends.
Still, only Cleo and Damien knew Cleo’s past and the real reason Cleo kept disappearing all the time. It was because she wanted to see how her sister was doing and make up for lost time over her years of staying away.
“Ah, we had two… Karin and Russell...” Alicia blushed.
Riza blinked, tilting her head. “I thought you two said you hated children.”
“Yet they were the first to have kids.” Dimitri smirked, causing Nada to glare at him and scoff.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You and Alison are horndogs.” He rolled his eyes. Aly stared at him, her mouth wide open as Dimitri raised an eyebrow.
“We’re what?”
Nada sent him a smug smile. “Horndogs. You know what I mean. Hazel. Brook. Ashton. Three kids and you’re only engaged.”
“I wanted Riza in my wedding so I told Dimitri to wait! We could basically be considered married anyway!”
“You’re going against morals.”
“We’re not even of the world anymore! We’re the reason everyone’s still alive! I can do whatever I want because it’s acceptable in our family, got it?!”
Riza cleared her throat, causing Aly to compose herself and sit down as Nada crossed his arms. “People, we aren’t teenagers anymore. We have our own kids and we’re supposed to be models. You’re all just past thirty. Grow up.”
Aly looked at her for a moment before smiling. “There’s the leader I know and love.”
“March?” Riza smiled, glad everyone was okay and being themselves like she thought they’d be. “What have you been up to?”
“Ah… guns and tinkering, stuff like that…” March fiddled with her fingers. “Being with Nathaniel every now and then.”
“Elizabeth’s brother, Nathaniel?”
March nodded. “He’s a really good guy and quite the gentlemen. I believe he could give all you guys a run for your money.”
“Don’t get cocky, March. I can be quite classy.” Dimitri wrinkled his nose.
“Sure…” March laughed.
Riza laughed with her. “Seems like you all have been having a lot of fun.”
“You haven’t seen fun until you’ve watched Nadie and Zion.” Alicia chuckled.
Cleo jumped up, grinning. “Cleo’s seen! They can’t stand being around each other, but at the same time, they like each other. They sound like one of those old couples where the wife is always beating the husband with a cane.”
“Hey, Riza..” Damien tilted his head.
“Yeah?”
“Besides moving around, what did you do for those fifteen years? And how did ‘Gretto find you?”