Seventeen-and-a-Half Years Ago…

  Early June, 2003

  “And who are you supposed to be?”

  “My apologies for the delay, sir and madam. I am Sir Ambrose Camden, diplomat and mediator. I volunteered my assistance on your child’s behalf, as the situation at hand is rather complicated, to put it mildly.”

  The fox and I could hear them talking through a heavy wooden door. Ambrose, who’d been doing everything he could for me and more, and… I gulped.

  And my parents.

  I’d been sending emails, faxing letters, and anything else that would let me talk to my family without showing them this new me. But apparently, two-and-a-half months of written communication just wasn’t enough anymore. Two-and-a-half months of dodging phone calls, giving excuses, hiding behind any reason Ambrose could provide… that was the only grace period I’d gotten. Because now they were here. Now my parents were in Japan, looking for me.

  I clung even more tightly to the fox in my arms. Gorou, I knew now. His name was Gorou. He was the one who’d put me into this situation, whose actions had left me trapped here, but I couldn’t bring myself to blame him. Not after what he’d sacrificed for my sake, even as a total stranger. Not after he’d given me the one thing I’d wanted more than words could describe, but was always so permanently out of reach.

  “Oh, so you’re here to give us the runaround, too?” My mother’s voice was soft, but cold. The same way it had been towards me in recent years, when I didn’t somehow match or surpass my older brother the valedictorian.

  “Of course not,” Ambrose said. I heard the sound of a chair moving, and a cushion compressing slightly. “I am here only to facilitate, and provide some necessary explanation first.”

  “What is there to explain?”

  My dad’s voice was angry, but it would be hard to tell for somebody who didn’t live with him. It was a tight anger, the kind of thing that didn’t announce itself until he was already about to throw something at the wall. But there was a sound to it. And I’d gotten used to catching it and just… adjusting around that. I shouldn’t have had to, but I did.

  “More than you’ll like, less than I’d prefer.” Ambrose sighed, sliding something onto the table I knew they were all sitting at. I positioned myself to try and look through the crack in the door, from this conference room into the adjoining one.

  “No!” My mom slammed her palm against the table, rattling something atop it. I still couldn’t get a good angle through the crack in the door, I couldn’t see if it was just them. “It’s been months! Where is Joshua!?”

  That name was like a punch to the gut, now. I hissed, pulling away from the door and holding the fox tightly. His tails wrapped around me, and I had to remember to breathe. That wasn’t… I wasn’t…!

  I knew this was going to happen the moment they showed up. I knew they’d keep trying, keep pushing, keep asking about their son. But I wasn’t that anymore. I wasn’t their Joshua, anymore. I was me, now. I was… I…

  A wet nose against my chin pulled me from my spiraling thoughts.

  “Breathe, child,” Gorou instructed. I did, the simple act helping calm me, but I couldn’t ignore what was happening in the next room. I had to know.

  Even if it hurt, even if it felt like a dagger to the soul every time they said that name, or those words, I needed to hear it.

  “—ut before any of that, the explanation must come first,” I heard Ambrose saying once I focused back on the sounds coming from the other room. “The situation is not so simple as you might believe.”

  “What’s to know?” My dad said. “My boy has these… these superpowers, now. If that’s an issue, just fly him home with an escort.”

  “Would that it were so easy.” Ambrose gave a rueful chuckle. “Unfortunately, young master Ziegler did not become Moonshot in one of those common enough random occurrences, and the process of acquiring these abilities did not come without… side effects, I should say.”

  “… I’m sorry, you’ve lost us,” my mom said. It wasn’t an apology, though. More a request.

  “Your child’s case belongs to a subset of a subset, the likes of which I have seen so few times that I may count them on one hand. So unfortunately, Mr. Ziegler, there is something to know.”

  “Can’t fucking believe—“ My dad cut himself off, and I heard the humorless chuckle that meant he was about to throw something. “We have been patient. We have been understanding. But you will bring me my son, now, or—.”

  “Do not presume, Mr. Ziegler, that you hold any sway here.” There was something in Ambrose’s voice that I hadn’t ever heard before. It sent a shiver down my spine and all the way up my tail. “That you were even allowed to board your plane was only by my sufferance, and I can have you deported with but a word. This unannounced visit of yours is a privilege, sir and madam, and I shan’t hesitate to revoke it if you refuse to cooperate.”

  There was the sound of a chair rubbing against the carpet, heavy feet pounding it flat, but nothing else came. Not the shatter of glass I expected. I risked a glance through a crack in the door, and finally found an angle.

  There my father was, all heaving breaths and rapidly reddening face, hands clenching and unclenching into fists. A slim hand rested on his forearm, and I followed it back to the generically Asian woman sitting beside him — my mom.

  It was just the two of them. No Eli. No Mira.

  I took a shaky breath, and Gorou pressed his snout against the underside of my chin, reassuring me that he was still here for me.

  “Sit down if you are ready to close your mouth and open your ears,” Ambrose continued, voice still heavy with that callousness that I’d not heard until now. “If not, you may see yourselves out.”

  Through the crack in the door, I saw my father sit. He balled one hand into a fist and clasped the other over it, but that was as close as he got to letting the anger fade.

  “I’m sorry, I’m confused,” my mother said, once a few seconds had gone by. “So my son just became one of these… ‘Moonshot’. But that doesn’t explain why he’s any different than most.”

  “The difference, madam, is that most Moonshot come by their abilities quite randomly,” Ambrose explained. His voice was less cold now, but he still sounded flat to my ears. “In this case, another entity quite deliberately conferred power unto your child, whose very body changed to accommodate it.”

  “… that’s why you made us get a hair sample, isn’t it?” Mom asked. I saw her eyes go a bit wide, but a glance at my dad showed that he was just confused. “His fingerprints?”

  “Precisely.”

  “What aren’t you saying?” My father asked. “That some freak mutated my son?”

  “Far from it. I am saying that despite all appearances, despite the changes, despite everything, your child is still the same person,” Ambrose said. “The outside may be different, but the soul is untouched.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “What the hell are you even saying?” My dad unclasped his hands, and balled both of them up on the table. “What, are you going to — to trot out some hideous thing and then expect me to believe that it is Joshua? What kind of scam are you running here, huh?”

  “Sir—”

  “Do you want something from us? Is that it? Because if you expect me to look some mangled, wretched thing in the eyes and—”

  I’d heard enough. I couldn’t just keep listening to this anymore. I couldn’t let him keep saying those things, calling me a freak or a monster or a mutated abomination or any number of other labels he wanted to slap onto me.

  I stood up straight, fox held tight in my arms, and reached for that burning kernel of foxfire that now existed inside of me, but was turned somehow sideways from normal. With a bit of focus, I turned the rest of myself that same sort of sideways, and felt the odd sensation of dissolving into something that wasn’t physical. It was… odd. I was still me, even like this. And it was uncomfortable not having a body.

  But for the brief periods I’d been able to stand being like this, I didn’t have to care about silly things like walls or gravity or needing to move normally. I just pictured myself existing elsewhere, and shifted.

  One moment, I was behind the door. The next, I appeared next to Ambrose in a flash of purple flame.

  The expressions on my parents’ faces went from slowly mounting anger to shock when I appeared, flinching back from the table with strangled gasps. It wasn’t like I could blame them, really. I’d never seen actual superpowers up close until I had my own, either.

  Gorou hopped out of my arms and onto the table in front of us, and I…

  I…

  I opened my mouth to speak, but just — couldn’t. I’d just… I was so mad, having to sit there and hear what my father was saying about me, all these horrid what-if’s and maybe’s he kept concocting that spun me out to be some foul, disgusting creature, now.

  “As I said before.” Ambrose, though? Ambrose just seemed to know what to do. He didn’t react at all when I appeared by his side, and even laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “The outside is different. But this fine young adult is still the same person as before, just with a new coat of paint, as it were.”

  I felt my shoulders relaxing as Ambrose spoke, and tried to offer my parents the same lopsided half-smile I always used for family photos, the one that never reached my eyes. Just a small reassurance that I was still me, that even though I looked like this now, I was still—

  “Is this a joke?”

  I couldn’t help the strangled gasp when my dad said that, nor how my new ears went flat atop my head.

  “Mr. Ziegler—”

  “We didn’t fly all the goddamn way out here,” he continued, “just for you to show us some cheap fucking special effects on a random bitch, and call it our son!”

  “Abraham…” My mom reached a hand over to him, but he slapped it away.

  “No!” he yelled. “Joshua is a man! No son of mine would ever be standing there in some frilly pink shit like that! He likes baseball, and hard rock, and—”

  “No I don’t!” I yelled with a snarl as I slammed my hands on the table. “I never did! You were the one who liked those things! You and my perfect big brother, and because that was what you both liked, that’s all I was ever allowed to like! I didn’t get to like my own things!”

  “What is it trying to—”

  “NO!” I slammed the table again, purple flames bursting out where my hands fell. “I’m not done!”

  Gorou stood beside where I leaned over the table, his tails wrapping around my arm to calm me down, like he’d done too many times in the past few months. But this time, I was just… no. No, I couldn’t calm down. Too many years of being the shitty sequel, of having to play a part I’d never wanted in a play written for somebody else.

  “All I wanted to do was be me, but that was never an option for you!” I growled out. “I wanted to try an art class, or gymnastics, or just go to a goddamn museum, but no! It was always sports, or fishing, or a fucking gun show! I wanted to grow my hair out, and you cut it while I slept! I try to wear one color that’s not ‘manly’, and you swap my closet for a uniform! You controlled the books I read, the classes I took, the friends I made! I was never anything more than just Eli’s counterfeit copy to you!

  “I may be stuck here, but I am still happier than I can ever remember being at home, because I get to actually be me! I don’t have to live up to my shining, perfect older brother, try to be another him for you to brag about at shareholder meetings! I don’t have to try so, fucking hard to be something that I’m not, that I never was! I don’t feel disgusted when I look in a mirror anymore! I don’t hate the sound of my own voice!”

  “No,” my mother said. “No, no, Joshua would never—”

  “That’s not my name!” I slammed one fist on the table. “My name is Naomi! I am not your younger son; I am your older daughter! Like I always should have been, like I always wanted to be!”

  Only silence met my pronouncement. My throat hurt from the yelling, from the harshness of it all.

  “I… I’m happy, like this,” I choked out as my eyes burned with tears that I didn’t want to shed, and my arms shook from all the anger, and rage, and everything that I still hadn’t been able to say. “I like this me more. Isn’t that enough?”

  I looked up at my parents’ faces, hoping for some sign that they understood what I’d said, that I was still me, but that they hadn’t ever actually known who I was, as opposed to who they’d wanted me to be.

  But when I looked up, my heart dropped. Because their faces were just… not quite blank. Blank would’ve been fine.

  The way they were looking at me was enough to send me recoiling from the table. I brought my arms up in front of me, lilac flame dancing across my fingers as I felt the need to defend myself.

  Those looks were… they were…

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Camden, but there’s nothing for us here,” my mother said, resting a hand on my father’s elbow. “We’ll be seeing ourselves out now.”

  “... what?” I gasped. All the air felt like it had gone out of the room at her words. She… was just going to leave? “But… I — you…”

  They turned around and walked towards the door at the back of the conference room. I wanted to stop them, to call out, to stand in their way, to make them stay and listen and see me for the first time in their lives, but, I… I couldn’t. I felt like my feet were planted to the floor, like I was choking on any words I tried to say.

  My father opened the door to the conference room for my mother, but when he paused at the door and turned back, my heart leapt in my throat.

  “I only have one daughter,” he said, an ugly sneer on his face. “And she’s not here.”

  The sound of the door clicking shut behind him was so impossibly loud.

  “T-the… but, they… that…”

  They… they left. They left.

  My eyes burned again, and this time I didn’t have the energy to hold it back. I could barely breathe, heaving quiet cries because my voice didn’t want to work, what little air I could get into my lungs hot and fast and they had actually just LEFT ME—

  A light touch rested on my shoulder. I spun and threw myself into Ambrose’s open embrace. My legs gave out as great, keening sobs tore themselves from my throat, and Ambrose lowered us to the ground as I lost the battle against my own emotions.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered into my ear as I shuddered and shook and cried like I never had before. “I am so, so sorry, my dear.”

  Warm fur twined around my tail and torso, a light squeeze reminding me that I wasn’t alone. I did still have somebody, my conscious mind would remind me later, and be glad for it, for somebody who truly understood me, accepted me, wanted nothing more than for me to be happy.

  But at that moment, all I could do was cry. Cry for the people I’d wanted so badly to love me, but had shown that they would never truly care.

  And mourn the loss of the only life I’d ever known.

  This chapter has Naomi turning to the camera and saying that she's transgender, by the way, if it wasn't obvious enough by now.

  whaaaat? the asexual trans woman is writing an asexual trans woman as her main character? say it ain't so!)

  can state that you'll all get 3 of them in Book 2.