Right. So… yes, I got captured.

You’re wondering how I got out of it. Well… Um… About that…

Clayton was in trouble. Again. As usual.

He was always in trouble. He wasn’t a superhero. He wasn’t a hero. He was a spectacular failure, as usual. He hadn’t even lasted ten minutes before he got captured. Granted, it wasn’t from where they’d thought it would be—the suit hadn’t done this, had even maybe tried to save Clay a little—but it hadn’t worked. He’d been taken. He was pathetic.

He looked down at his suit. Was the tracking device not working? It felt like it had been a long time since the van thing, though he knew from all those times when he had to wait twenty minutes to shift back that time could seem a lot faster than it really was. Still, he would have hoped that he’d be rescued by now. He thought with the tracking device and everything, no big deal.

Only… the former security guard now head sadist of the conspiracy was a big deal.

A big, ugly mean deal.

Clayton hadn’t found a way out, had not found anything that could help him. He was stuck. Trapped. Locked in a room. A dark room. It would be nicer if he was alone, but he wasn’t. He tried being quiet. He tried making noise. It didn’t matter.

The problem wasn’t really being trapped. It was the man who had trapped him. The guard. No, the sadist. Clayton had quickly decided that fit him a lot better. That was what the man really was. He was a guard probably because he was some kind of failed cop or other type of person, someone who’d gone into it looking for power—a glorified bully, and Clay had known plenty of them in school. He knew that he couldn’t really compete with them. He was a wimp.

A wimp in a lot of pain.

“What are you going to do? Turn me over to that guy for his experiments?”

The sadist laughed. “You really aren’t that smart, are you?”

“I figure I’m still smarter than you. Most bullies aren’t smart. It’s just a power trip to you. And it doesn’t make you any better. It’s just a—Ow! Damn it, let go of me! Let—ow,” Clay moaned, trying to get his arm free from the man’s hold. That hurt, and he was pretty sure that some more of his bones were broken. All those little bones in his hand, in his fingers, he was sure they were all broken. Some in his arm. Some in his foot.

Yes, the sadist was quick, but something had to have gone wrong with the tracking device because Clay should not be here. Not anymore. Rescue should have come by now. It should have. It didn’t make any sense that it hadn’t. He should have been free and not in pain and not hurting and why hadn’t he waited until Larabee actually managed to make some kind of device that worked before he did this?

Oh, yeah. He’d somehow thought that he’d be okay talking to his boss. And he had been. The suit wasn’t the problem. He’d been fine. He’d been nice. Might even have gotten to the point of being helpful.

“This is the experiment, Freak.”

Clayton lowered his head. Why couldn’t he have gotten a useful power? What good was switching ages right now?

“Why don’t you turn yourself into a kid, huh?”

Clay glared at him. “What, you can’t stand taking on someone who’s almost your size? You are such a cliché, you know.”

The man grabbed Clay by the collar, cutting off his air. “Switch. Now.”

“No,” Clay managed to say, thinking this was a bad time for a speech, but he was going to make it anyway. “Maybe you’ll get lucky, and I’ll have a random one, but I sure as hell won’t do it for you. Or for anyone who might be watching. I already hurt, and you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve thought that dying would be a blessing. Just about curled up and did it several times since I figured out what I could do, so that… it doesn’t scare me.”

“You’ve got a lot of brave words, but that’s all they are, you know.”

“Maybe,” Clayton agreed, because he was a coward, and he knew it. He’d give anything to get back to April right now. He would love to be a normal person and not a genetic freak. This was, however, what he was and who he was and this was his life. If the only thing he managed to do here was stand up for himself, just this once, that was something, wasn’t it? It was more than he usually did. “You won’t get me to change. I don’t think you really care about that, but if that’s what you’re supposed to be doing, you may as well stop now.”

“Oh, we’re not done. You know that you have a lot more bones that I can break, and I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

“You should have worn spandex. Then this really would have been a nightmare.”

Except, of course, that it was me, and fine isn’t a word that usually applies to me.

April adjusted his tie again. It was the fifth time that she had done it since they’d gotten there. Clayton reached up and took her hands. “It’s going to be okay. Really. It’s just a bit of a talk, and I can handle talking. I talk too much, right?”

She looked at him doubtfully. “I don’t know about that. I do know that I don’t like this.”

He gave her a kiss. “I’ll be fine. Larabee’s recording and monitoring, and there’s a tracking device, and I’m going to talk to my boss at his coffee shop. Not a big deal. This should be fine. Really. I’m good. I’ll probably trip over my own feet and turn into a kid again, but I’ll survive that and make it through this conversation. I can do this. I know I can.”

“Just one thing you want me to do now, right?”

He nodded.

She kissed him. “Not going to talk you out of it. Go. We’ll be waiting right here for you when you get back.”

He smiled at her, taking a deep breath before he crossed the street and went into the coffee shop. The suit was in line, about to order his coffee, and Clay figured he’d wait until the man was about to leave before he made contact. They’d just be two colleagues chatting over coffee if anyone noticed them, and that would be good. No signs of a conspiracy here.

He ordered a regular cup for himself, paid for it, and joined his boss at the stand with the cream and napkins. The suit looked at him. “Something I can do for you, Moore?”

“Well, maybe you could tell me why my life is a giant conspiracy and where you fit in all of it. That would be a start,” Clayton began, and the other man just looked at him. “You know what I can do, don’t you? That’s why I got the internship and you kept me working in records and why you moved me to analyze that stuff. What is Fountain? What did Kilbourne do to me?”

“I am not certain what you mean, Moore. You’ve performed adequately since we took you on, and your attempts at keeping the archives organized were quite impressive, but I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. People see conspiracies everywhere in our line of work, but—”

“But they’re not genetic freaks who can turn themselves into any age, now are they?” Clay demanded. He saw the look on the other man’s face. “You did know. You do know. How long have you known? What is going on here? Are you with them? Who are they? Why did they do this to me?”

“I don’t have answers to all of your questions.”

“Well, the answers to a few of them would still be nice,” Clay insisted. “Come on, you don’t know what this is like and what it has cost me and the hell I have been through trying to keep it a secret and keep some semblance of a normal life. And now I find out that there’s a possibility that I was engineered to do this? Are you kidding me?”

“Keep your voice down, Mr. Moore,” the suit warned, grabbing his arm and squeezing it pointedly. “You do not know what you are dealing with here, and your tendency to overreact like this will only create problems for yourself.”

“I don’t—”

“This is not the time or place for this discussion.”

“That is what everyone always says, and I get that—Oh, crap,” Clay whispered, finally catching sight of a man who had no business being in any coffee bar. His boss looked behind him, taking in the lunatic that masqueraded as a security guard sometimes before turning back to Clayton. “You’re right. We’ll discuss this later because that man—”

“Now works for them, yes,” the suit said, using his hold on Clay’s arm to usher him toward the front of the coffee shop. “Try and stay calm now, Moore. You will walk out that door and go through your day as if none of this has happened, understood?”

Clayton shook his head as they stepped outside. “Yeah, sure, but you know he’ll follow me. He’s got it out for me, has since I—”

A van screeched to a halt in the middle of the road, blocking the path back to April and Larabee, and the back door opened. Four men jumped out of the van, moving toward his boss. Clayton yanked his arm free of his boss’ hold, but then he was hit in the back by the coffee shop’s door, knocking him into one of the men. He tried to right himself, pushing away from that man. He saw his boss fighting off most of the men, and while Clay figured the heroic thing to do was stay and help him, he knew he had to run.

He didn’t make it very far. The security guard smiled grimly as he grabbed hold of Clay and threw him into the back of the van.

The former guard climbed in behind him. Clay sat up, rubbing his arm as he saw that the door release had been removed from the back door and the front was blocked off. His captor reached over and shut the sliding door. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they won’t break the old man—too much. You, on the other hand, that’s a different story, Freak.”

Brady got what was coming to him. He deserved all that he got—the costumes, the kick in the balls, the smack to the face, and more—and we made sure he got it before letting him go. He was fine, and I doubt that any of it really got through to him. Larabee put a tracking device on Brady in case the people using him contracted him again or he contacted them.

It was what came after that, though, that was harder to deal with…

“Do you feel like you were… coerced?”

April looked up from the sink, reaching for a towel from the rack next to it. She wiped off her hands, watching him in the mirror. “What are you talking about, Clayton? And what’s with the hovering in the doorway thing? You know I hate when you do that.”

“I just… Do you feel like you didn’t have a choice? Like you… had to be with me? Like it was… arranged? Orchestrated? You were going to meet me and date me and even marry me, and you never really had a choice in the matter. Do you think that it was all fixed? Everything? I mean, if that guy did create me to use me in his experiments—maybe this is still an experiment. They’ve arranged and manipulated my childhood in foster care, in college, in the job, and now you—”

“Don’t,” April said, moving to his side, touching his face. “Even if they pushed us towards each other, even if they did orchestrate so many other things in your life, one thing they cannot do is say how we feel. Even shoving Brady at me over and over again didn’t make me love him—don’t say it’s just because he’s scum that no one could love—it’s not like seeing a person a lot automatically makes them the love of your life or anything even close to that. I love you, and that is not something they could fix or arrange. They could try, and I bet they did, but they didn’t make it happen. Only you could do that, by being the man you are—the whiny loser and the hapless superhero but really the man that’s so much more than what you’ve thought you were all this time, that one. That’s who you are and who I love and that is all that matters, do you understand?”

“After what Brady did to you,” Clay began, shaking his head. “I don’t—I hate that they’ve done this. I hate that you’ve been hurt because of me. If they really killed your parents because they wanted to bring you close to me or to Brady or—”

“Then we will make them pay for that, but we are not letting that guilt destroy you. You didn’t do anything wrong, and you know that. Even if they manipulated you, if you were created in some experiment, that wasn’t you. That’s not something you have to feel guilty about.”

He leaned his head against hers. “What now, then? We dealt with Brady, but I don’t know what we’ll do now. I should, right?”

“I don’t know. You’re very close to all of it. Maybe you need a bit of distance to plan.”

“Or I’m making someone else do all the work again.”

She wrapped her arms around him. “You’re stressed. Try and calm down a bit, and then maybe you’ll have a plan then.”

Clay took a deep breath. “I thought… Well, I couldn’t help thinking about what my boss has said to me a few times—that I have potential. That I could be an asset. He has to know what I can do, right? He wants to use it, one way or another. I think it’s time we know which way that is.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“April?”

“The anger has worn off, and the fear’s back, trying to take over,” she said quietly, tightening her hold. “You’re… all I have. I don’t want them to take you from me.”

“You’d find me, kick the crap out of them, and look beautiful doing it—all without one of Larabee’s costumes,” Clay told her, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll be okay. I know I have you to come for me if anything goes wrong.”

“What are you doing?”

“I think it’s past time that we confront him about what he really knows, and I’m thinking that I have waited far too long to kick his ass,” April answered with a bright smile that kind of scared Clayton. She was very nearly unhinged at the moment, and while he had been looking forward to seeing her deal with Brady, now he was worried. She had been—well, off was the only real word for it—ever since she read the memo.

“Okay, April, just—give me a moment over here first, please,” he said, pulling her to the side. He touched her shoulders gently, glancing at the man tied up in the chair and then at his wife. “I am all for giving this guy what’s coming to him, but I am a bit worried about what is happening with you. You might be taking this a little too far.”

She gave Clay a look, shaking her head. “He tried to kiss me.”

“What? Like… on the cheek, right?”

She shook her head. Clayton turned back to Brady. Well, there went any sympathy for him. “Okay, fine. Just… don’t kill him.”

April kissed Clayton’s cheek, and he rolled his eyes as she walked back to Brady. “So, now that we know you’re a complete scumbag, you’re going to tell us all about what you’ve been doing. Why are you watching us? Who are you working for?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” she insisted. “And believe me, we can make you talk.”

“We can?”

She looked over at Clay. “Larabee’s costumes? Like that wouldn’t make anyone talk.”

He laughed, shaking his head at Brady. “Oh, I almost feel sorry for you. Almost.”

“Right. I’ll tell you anything. Everything. I swear, I will. Just don’t make me look at another one of those things. Please, I’m begging you.”

“It could be worse,” April said, shrugging. “You could have nightmares about zombie gummy bears.”

“Uh…”

“Never mind that, Brady. Just tell us what we want to know.”

“I have at least fifteen more costumes,” Larabee added helpfully, flexing his muscles in one of his cab driver inspired designs. Each of them was painful to the eyes, and Clay had been trying not to look at him the entire time. They weren’t drunk this time, and it was hard to take when they were drunk. He didn’t blame Brady for caving so quickly. “I like showing them off, and people don’t give me a chance to very often. So, I could just go change—”

“No!” Brady protested immediately. “What do I have to do? Please, just let me talk to you. Ask your questions. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Anyone think this is working a bit too easily?”

“Only you, Larabee, and only because you’re the only one that’s not disturbed by the sight of you in spandex,” Clayton explained, still trying not to look at the scientist. “If you change, put regular clothes on—and make sure they have pants this time.”

Brady grimaced.

“Okay, Brady. Who are you working for? Why have you been watching us?”

“I don’t know who—I got contacted by a guy. He said… Said that April had a connection to someone they were watching. That it was important to know what he—what you were up to. They never said why, but I figured it out soon enough when she told me about your ‘lies,’ about this ability you had to switch ages.”

“Someone walks up to you on the street and says watch this guy this girl knows and you just agree to that?” Clay demanded. “What is wrong with you?”

Brady shrugged. “She was pretty enough, and I already knew her, so no big deal, right?”

“April,” Clay began, not liking his latest thought. “How soon after you knew Brady did your parents have their accident?”

“No. Tell me they did not do that to me. I knew you… incidentally. Why kill my parents to get someone close to me? It’s not right. It’s—” April couldn’t even finish that thought. She lowered her head, and Clayton moved over to her, wrapping his arms around her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to turn it—twist it like this—I didn’t want to hurt you again.”

“Look, they wanted her to be the one to do the watching, but she didn’t ever take them up on it. If they did do anything to her parents—and I don’t know anything about that, I swear—it might have been that they were trying to force her to connect to you, to reach out for anything she could have at the time. I don’t know. I’m just… I am a low-level messenger, that’s it. I was only supposed to find out what you could do, if it was possible, and pass on anything April might tell me about you. And she did actually talk about you a lot. It wasn’t like the writing wasn’t on the wall long before we split, okay? She was—”

“Shut up, Brady. I just want to know who you reported to and why,” April snapped. She turned to Larabee. “Go change. Now. Give him all of the cab outfits just because.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome!” Larabee cried, rushing off to change. Brady looked at her in horror.

“That’s cruel. I told you what you asked. Come on.”

“It takes someone extremely low to do what you did to me, Brady. You used me. In almost every sense of the word, and you let other people do it, too. You knew exactly what you were doing—you never cared about me at all. You… bastard. I can’t believe I ever thought you were a decent human being let alone dated you. You didn’t ever once think that maybe they’d had something to do with my parents’ death? That never made you think you should stop? Or have the decency to tell me what people were doing? Why they were interested in me or Clayton? Letting you see more of Larabee’s costumes is the least of what I should do to you.”

“April—”

“Clayton, untie him for a moment. I have to slap him, and I have to kick him, and then while he’s hurting, he can see Larabee’s fashion show. And then I’m going to find whoever is behind this damn conspiracy, and I’m going to make him pay. For you. For my family. And for me.”

Clay stared at her. “You are so beautiful right now. You’re just… incredible.”

“No, I’m pissed off. Maybe later I’ll be incredible, but now I’m just angry.”

With the exception of April’s gummy bear nightmares, which actually persisted for a while and forced me to give them up temporarily—the idea of having them in the house inevitably led to her sleeping badly and dreaming of headless zombie bears coming after her—we settled quickly and quietly into a married existence. It was nice.

And it all kind of started—well, after the memo—with me getting in a fight with April.

“You snuck into my class today, didn’t you?”

Clayton put his jacket down on the back of the couch and forced a smile. “Now why would you say that? I was working today. Cubicle. Office. Hidden away, sorting papers, looking for spies in boring people eating dinner, that sort of thing—”

“You know, no matter what age you might happen to be at the time, you still look in some way like yourself, and I’ve seen all of them by now, having known you and loved you and dealt with plenty of random shifts,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “Don’t even try to lie to me.”

“I wasn’t lying. I just asked—”

“Trying to avoid answering is like lying. It’s called a lie of omission, Clay, and I don’t like lying. You didn’t think it would be my class or you never would have done it, but yes, I knew it was you, and I knew that you didn’t belong there, and I said nothing—making me the liar by omission. And I don’t like that, either.”

Clay sighed, moving closer to her. “I’m sorry. It’s been—all this time, they haven’t done anything. We haven’t found anything. It makes me… nervous. I keep wondering what they’re up to, wondering what they might be planning, and things have been going rather well… I don’t know. I’m worried. Whenever things are good, I keep thinking that something has to go horribly, horribly wrong.”

She sighed. “You and your worst case scenario thinking. Enjoy the good times. Sometimes… Well, we all know that they don’t last, and you know that any minute now, Larabee will be knocking on the door, telling us he’s got to go over the house again.”

“And he’s really just doing it that because he’s lonely and misses us.”

“Yes. Even though he sees us every day, he thinks we spend all our time here alone because we’re married,” she said, shaking her head. “We don’t get a lot of time to talk with your schedule and mine—being a substitute teacher isn’t easy, going in there with all those kids used to someone else and expecting them and sometimes I don’t even know if I’m working until that morning. It’s been tough on both of us and—”

“Oh, you thought I snuck out to join your class because I missed you? Should I just have said that? It’s kind of romantic when I do that, right?”

She gave him a look and walked away into the kitchen. He almost wanted Larabee to interrupt them. This wasn’t looking good. “April, there is something else.”

“Oh?”

He winced, not liking the way she said that. He took out the copy of the memo he’d made and passed it to her. She looked over the top with its eyes only and classified stamps, and then at him. “How much trouble are we both in right now?”

“I have no idea, but—just read it. Something… It doesn’t have a lot of details, but it still worries me. A lot. I’m… I don’t know. Am I overreacting again? Like usual?”

She took a deep breath before reading over it, shaking her head. “Exactly what do you think this is? That you’re the fountain of youth?”

“Or that I’m a part of their experiment to find it, yes. Doesn’t it sound a bit too close to my ability to be a coincidence?”

“Someone could have shoved this in your files for you to find and lead you down all kinds of wrong paths and get you in so much trouble that—”

“I’m home!”

They both jumped a little, turning to face the doorway Larabee had just entered. April looked at Clayton, and he shook his head. He hadn’t given Larabee a key. He would never give Larabee a key. That was a bad idea on so many levels. Clay shuddered. If Larabee had a key…

“Uh, Larabee, this isn’t your home. Your home has a lab in it, remember? And… well, at least you’re wearing pants, but what are you doing here?” Clayton demanded. April reached over and put a hand on his shoulder.

He looked back at her, and she held up the paper. “Maybe Larabee should find out more about this for you—though I don’t know. I really don’t like this, Clay. I don’t know what to think, and I have a bad feeling about all of it.”

He wrapped his arms around her, and she sighed as Larabee came over to take the paper from them. He read it over with a frown. “Uh… Oh. Ouch. This is not good.”

“Is it one of your projects? Because if it is, then we can just not worry about it and—”

“No, this is bad, bad news,” Larabee said, putting the paper down on the counter. “See this mostly blacked out name there? He’s like… the would-be Dr. Moreau or Mengele or perhaps Rascher is a better example, though Mengele is more famous. It doesn’t matter. The guy is the kind of creep that doesn’t care about informed consent or medical morality.”

“Is this the person that they’ve talked about before, the one that went… rogue?” April asked, biting her lip. “What did he do? And could Clayton really have been a part of that? I mean, that says something about the fountain of youth, right? So this is… anti-aging research, isn’t it? It can’t be that bad, can it?”

“Well… If you were going to look at someone and study the effects of things at any given age, then you would have—”

“No,” April shook her head. “Don’t say it. Do not say that Clayton is the perfect thing for a twisted experiment like that.”

“Explains why I have a lousy superpower,” Clay muttered, shaking his head. He felt a bit sick. “So, wait, if that’s what the guy was trying to do, why… Why foster care? Why a normal life? Why any of it?”

“We may have been wrong about the conspiracy—or there could be two of them,” April began, and he frowned as he looked at her. “Maybe—maybe as creepy as it was that your boss just showed up like he did in those weird coincidences—maybe he was looking out for you. Maybe that’s why you got the internship and why there’s been people watching you. They know that this rogue scientist wants you for an experiment that they shut down.”

He took her hand. “You know, I’d like to believe that, but I don’t know. It’s… Isn’t it a bit much to think that they’d do all that instead of just… I don’t know—arresting the guy? Or making sure that I never lived to fall into the guy’s hands?”

“I like to believe we’re on the side of the good guys here,” Larabee began, shaking his head. “Not perfect—I’m not saying I trust everything they do—but despite the greed and the secrecy, I think there’s good work being done, too. Maybe it’s past time to ask the suit what he knows.”

“We don’t even know that the memo has anything to do with Clayton. There’s no way to know, is there?” April asked. She picked up the memo again. “I want to know more about this man. I want to know if he could have had anything to do with… Clayton’s past. I also want to know exactly what this experiment was and if Clay was any part of it.”

“That’s a lot of classified information,” Larabee began hesitantly. “I don’t know—”

“This is Clay’s life we’re talking about, isn’t it? Even if someone deliberately left that note in Clay’s papers for him to find, we need to know about it, don’t we? Maybe we’ll all end up arrested, but I think we have no choice. We have to know.”

“I think you missed your calling. I’m not so sure you were ever meant to be a teacher.”

You can all breathe a sigh of relief. The sentimental and mushy stuff is over. Yeah. We got married, we became miserable, you know, that’s how it always works, right? No such thing as a happy ever after ending.

And, okay, sure—I wasn’t really kidding about the everything perfect happily ever after bit. It didn’t happen. Though I blame the first part on Larabee, to be honest…

April woke up screaming. Clayton had no choice but to wake up, too, what with her scream right in his ear. He winced and rubbed the side of his head as she rolled to the side and moaned. He’d figured that sleeping together would be an adjustment, but he hadn’t expected this. He let go of his still aching ear and turned to her, touching her shoulder gently. “What is it? The accident with your parents or… I don’t know, the conspiracy? What happened?”

“It was the gummy bears.”

“What?”

“I’m going to kill Larabee for having those things at our reception, okay? That’s what I’ll have to do. Normally, I like the guy, but I can’t take this, Clayton. I close my eyes, and I see them…”

She shuddered, and he wrapped his arms around her, frowning. He had thought that the gummy bear couple on top of the cake had been a bit excessive, but he wasn’t sure why this was bothering April so much. Well, then again, the reception had gone about as well as anything in their lives did, so that wasn’t entirely surprising, either.

“You know, I like gummy bears a lot, but like that… I’m just… I don’t have words. Actually, I’m a bit… frightened by that,” Clay mused as he studied the giant gummy bear at the top of the cake. “I think I’m supposed to be the red one. You’re the white one, right?”

“This is our party, remember?”

“Clayton. Those gummy bears… There’s no way to bite their heads off first.”

He combed through April’s hair with a frown. “Is this about biting the heads of the big gummy bears that were supposed to be us?”

She groaned, burying her face in his chest. “Worse. There were gummy bears everywhere, bigger than those ones. Without heads. Hordes and hordes of zombie gummy bears. And when I say it like that, it sounds stupid.”

Clayton shook his head as he tightened his hold, trying to comfort her. He would never have expected her to have a dream like that, but he didn’t blame her, not after their reception. He just hoped he didn’t end up having any himself. “After Larabee’s gummy bear costume? I don’t think so.”

“Oh, why did you have to go and mention that?”

“Sorry.”

“You owe me a distraction.”

“Hmm… I could shift into another form and creep you out that way instead—”

“Wedding night. You know the kind of distraction I meant.”

“Oh, well, I think we can arrange that,” Clay agreed, giving her a kiss.

So I think you can probably guess what happened right about then. Yeah, it was only the biggest day of her life—it had been a big enough day already with the graduation, but then she’d added something else onto it, and boom, of course I go and screw it up.

And then my lack of coordination kicked in and well…

Larabee pushed him forward, and Clayton tripped over his own feet. He hit the floor with a wince. He hadn’t meant to do this to her—though a bit of warning would have been nice because he wouldn’t have been staring so dumbly if he’d known that this was coming. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to marry April. He did. He had just thought that when she insisted on waiting until after her graduation she meant at least a month after it or something. He hadn’t thought she’d want to do this right away. He hadn’t even thought anything of her telling him to dress nicely for the ceremony. He’d put on his best suit because she’d asked, and it didn’t—he didn’t understand why he’d missed it. Or why she’d kept it from him.

And not from Larabee.

How had Larabee talked her into that dress, anyway?

Not that the flames didn’t look nice. April looked good with those warm colors, and he would have thought she looked beautiful no matter what she wore, but she’d definitely surprised him by agreeing to wear that one. He did have a hard time believing that she had that on under her graduation robe, though.

“Clayton?”

“Sorry. Injured my pride a little. You know me and my lack of coordination.”

April shook her head. “That wasn’t what I was asking about.”

He frowned, and then he cursed loudly when he saw his hands. He’d thought that was just a part of the fall. “No! Why now? This is one of the worst possible times for this.”

“And here I thought it would be less stressful for you this way,” she muttered, moving over to his side. He took her hand and climbed back to his feet.

He shook his head as he looked around. “You deserve so much better than this.”

“It’s part of who you are, Clayton.”

“Yeah, but what bride has to deal with her future husband turning into a little kid? I mean, look at that guy up there. The judge is about two seconds away from a heart attack. How are we supposed to get married like this? We can’t. It’s—I guess there might actually be something to that whole bad luck to see the bride on the wedding day thing.”

“That’s crap, and you know it,” April insisted. She took a deep breath and looked at the judge. “Remember when we talked and I said something weird might happen during the wedding? Well, this is it. Clayton sometimes shifts ages randomly. He really is old enough to get married, though.”

“I am,” Clay agreed, wincing when he heard his voice. “And in twenty minutes, I’ll look like it again, too. And sound like it.”

The judge stared at him. And kept staring. It was one of those moments where Clayton wished the floor would open up and swallow him already. Just get it over with.

“We’ll pay you extra. Don’t go. Not yet.”

“Are you crazy? You are. Look at him.”

Clayton had to admit—his current position wrapped around the woman’s leg was kind of embarrassing—but he’d done the first thing he could think of when April’s friend said she was leaving and thrown himself at her feet, trying to keep her from going. “I’m not always five—though I seem to go back to this age a lot in random shifts; it’s a favorite in that sense—but I am actually in my mid-twenties. I went to college, and I have a degree, and I have a job. I just happen to be a genetic freak, and this happens sometimes. Remember, I showed off for your class?”

“That was a trick.”

“No, it’s actually something I can do, and if you stay twenty—well, more like seventeen more minutes, I can prove it to you. I’ll change back into my normal self. I’d change again afterward, but I need another twenty minutes for that. I know it’s weird, but it… Well, okay, it’s just weird. It’s the lamest superhero ability known to man, and it’s embarrassing as hell most of the time. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Well, you could add in the fact that we think you might be a part of some rogue project in genetic manipulation or something that has a whole conspiracy to go with it,” Larabee suggested, getting a glare from April and Clayton. He held up his hands. “Fine, be that way. I just thought maybe that might help her understand a bit more than you trying to bribe her or anything.”

“Oh, the world is ending. Larabee’s the voice of reason,” Clay muttered, letting go of the woman’s legs and standing up. “I’m sorry. It’s not—I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to do this. I just wanted the wedding to go smoothly, no random shifts, just a good day for both of us for a change.”

April looked at him. “If it went smoothly, it wouldn’t be us. I thought this might help stop the random shift, but it clearly didn’t, so we’ll just have to deal with it. The judge is going to stay—I think—so if she wants to go, we’ll grab someone walking by after you’re back to yourself.”

Clay nodded. “Sounds good.”

“I could call a guy from the guild if you need me to,” Larabee offered. “They know Clayton. It should be fine.”

The teacher took a deep breath. “You’re sure this isn’t… I don’t even know what it could be other than this. I don’t want to know.”

“Look, it would be nice if I could just switch from one age to another to another to another to prove easily what I can do, but there’s a limit. I’ll knock myself out cold if I do it sooner than twenty minutes, and so I don’t. I really don’t want to go unconscious when we’ve got a wedding to finish. See? We should have eloped.”

“Ha. This is pretty close to it already. And it’s still a bit of a disaster.”

“Just a bit?”

April sighed. “I knew something was going to happen, but I’m trying to focus on the positive here. I love you, and you love me. I got my degree today. We’re going to get through this ceremony and have a good day—”

“Party at my house,” Larabee added. They gave him a look. “You have to at least come for the cake. I put gummy bears on it just like Clayton likes it.”

“For the cake, then,” Clay agreed, not really feeling like partying today. He’d ruined the wedding, and by ruining the wedding, he was kind of ruining the graduation, and so he didn’t feel like celebrating. “Has it been twenty minutes yet?”

“Almost.”

“As simple as possible?”

“Yes, Judge. Just in case something else happens.”

“Very well. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“And do you?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations. You’re married.”

As much as the kids loved the costumes and had a blast at the party, as much as they loved Larabee and April—and I suppose, me—they and their parents weren’t the ones that made the decisions about hiring new teachers.

Speaking of being followed, I’m not really sure what the suit was up to…

“It’s a good day for this. Really fine. The wind is calm, the sun is shining, and all the decorations are arranged perfectly, don’t you think?”

“I… uh… sure. Yeah. Nice weather for it,” Clayton agreed, shaking his head a little. He didn’t understand, and he really didn’t like this. Why was his boss here, of all places? Of all times? It couldn’t be a coincidence, but then why be so overt about everything? Even when Clay had been entertaining April’s class, the people involved in the conspiracy had kept their distance and covered their tracks. The only lead that Clay had was Brady, and he was not giving April anything. “I know why I’m here, and why Larabee’s here, and I even know why Brady is here, but you?”

The suit laughed. “You are rather paranoid, aren’t you, Moore? You don’t think I could be here for a good reason, do you?”

“No. I mean, think about where we work,” Clay started to explain. “Is anything that happens there good? Anything in life, even? After what we’ve seen and read about and have to look for in stupid chatter?”

The suit gave him a look. Clay tried not to wince. He didn’t mean to start complaining about his job, not right now. “You have a beautiful young woman who is not only successful, as today proves, but she loves you. Is that not good, perhaps even wonderful?”

“April is… amazing. She’s… everything,” Clayton whispered, looking down and trying to spot her in the crowd. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

The suit clapped Clay on the back, laughing. He pointed at the crowd. “See there? Right next to your fiancee. That’s my girl. I’m here for her.”

Clayton looked at the woman next to April. It wasn’t exactly easy to tell from this distance, but yeah, sure, she did seem to have a resemblance to the suit, poor girl. Still, it seemed a little weird that she just happened to be standing next to April and that his boss had found him in the bleachers. This was not a coincidence. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t believe they wouldn’t try to use any situation they could. They’d used April’s boyfriend for a while, they’d tried to use Larabee, and they were still trying to hide new cameras in their homes.

Clay didn’t like this. He wanted to enjoy April’s graduation, but how was he supposed to do that right now? The suit was here. Clay didn’t know what to do. He needed a different seat, at least. Larabee touched his arm. “Calm down. Don’t let him ruin today. This is for her. It’s okay.”

“You can say that. He’s not your boss.”

Larabee smiled. “That’s true, but that’s not all. Just stop worrying and be happy for April. She’s worked very hard to get here. Remember that. This about her, not the suit.”

“I know. I’m trying. I’m just…”

“Stop. Think about April. Only about April. That’s not too hard, is it?”

Clay looked down at the crowd again. “Is it wrong to think she looks hot in that graduation gown?”

Larabee laughed.

Clayton pushed his way through the crowds in the stand and then the crowd of graduates, trying to get to April. It was like the whole sea of people had turned against him, trying to keep him from reaching her. She saw him and smiled, and when he finally got close to her, he picked her up and spun her around, making her giggle a little before he let her back down.

“I am so proud of you,” he told her, giving her a kiss.

She laughed a little. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Neither did I,” he agreed, lifting her up again. “Hey, maybe I’m stronger than I thought I was. I kind of like this. What do you think? I wouldn’t have thought I could do it twice, but I did, so maybe I’ll do it again. Later, of course.”

“I suppose I should start worrying about how long it will take before you drop me,” she teased, wrapping her arms around his neck. “It’s nice for now, though. Wait a minute—is that your boss?”

“Apparently, that’s his daughter,” Clay explained, shaking his head. “Hard to accept that as a coincidence, but you know… I think we should just focus on enjoying the day and being proud of what you’ve done. And can I say that you look very beautiful in that robe?”

“It’s a tent. You’re insane.”

“Maybe.”

“I think you’ll like what I have on under it better,” she said, and he frowned. She kissed him and pushed his hand away from the robe. “No peeking.”

“What? Are you naked under there?”

She smacked his chest. “No.”

Someone called her name, and she turned toward them, waving. He set her back down. He probably should have done that sooner, but at least he hadn’t dropped her. “I need to finish up a few things here. I’ll see you very soon, right?”

“Of course. I want to see what you have on under there.”

She laughed and hurried off to join her friends.

“Come on, come on, we’re going to be late.”

“Late? It’s a graduation party. It goes for hours, and we’re not late. It’s not like it’ll end before we get there, and I don’t see why you’re so worked up about this,” Clayton muttered, shaking his head. He didn’t even think that April would be here yet. She had things to do between the ceremony and the party, so… They didn’t have to rush. It wasn’t necessary. “It’s not a big deal.”

“No, it’s very important. Hurry up. Now. Faster.”

Clay sighed. “Stop it. What is going on? This isn’t about the graduation party, is it? What did you do? If you are dragging me into one of your ‘experiments,’ today is so not the time for this.”

Larabee groaned. “It’s not an experiment. I can’t tell you, but you’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

Clay blinked as Larabee ran off—Larabee running was a sight that was disconcerting in of itself, but this was just weird. After running into his boss this morning, Clay really didn’t like the way this was going. He took a deep breath and followed Larabee’s path into the room.

He stopped. Wait a minute. This wasn’t right. He had to be in the wrong place. This wasn’t really where April was throwing her party. Okay, so Larabee was here, and she was here—and she was not wearing her graduation robe anymore. She wasn’t naked like he’d kind of maybe hoped she might be. He had to be dreaming. That dress was familiar. It was white. White with flames, and the flowers in her hands were the same colors as the flames.

“Go get her, tiger,” Larabee said, pushing Clayton forward.

Kids love Larabee. Probably because Larabee himself is a big kid at heart. He’s the mad scientist who would be a superhero’s sidekick after all. Still, watching him as he entertained April’s classroom, it made me a bit sad to think that Larabee didn’t have any kids of his own.

No, they were teachers. They were smarter than that, right?

“There. Now everyone has their costume, right?” Larabee asked, looking around the room. He looked to April, and she nodded. There were still a couple of the kids behind the curtain changing into their costumes, but he’d gotten one to each of the kids who had come to class today.

And, of course, he was wearing one of his own costumes. He’d come as Magenta Man, and he’d tried to talk Clayton and April into costumes, but they’d refused. April had claimed that she needed to be appropriate for the students and any other teachers that might come by—having a superhero party was kind of rare and special and the others were curious—so she was not dressing in anything. Clayton had simply reminded Larabee that if he ever wore spandex, he would kill himself.

So the kids got their spandex, running around madly and calling each other by superhero names.

“This is… the best idea ever,” Clayton had to admit, wrapping his arms around April and watching her class play. “You know, this is what we should do. Go around and organize cool parties like this where all the kids can be superheroes for a day. I can do a little ‘trick’ and you can put some kind of life lesson into it, and Larabee can make the costumes.”

“It would make him very happy,” April agreed, bumping back into Clay as one of the kids ran by chasing the other—who was apparently a super villain instead. “Is that what you’re going to do with yourself after you quit the CIA? Go into the little kid superhero party business?”

“It sounds so absurd when you put it like that.”

She laughed, stepping up to give him a brief kiss on the cheek. “You are absurd, but I like that about you anyway.”

“And now,” Larabee announced, leaping onto the chair and wobbling, looking like he might topple over any second, “the very best of my collection!”

“Larabee, I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to model any of the costumes,” Clayton began, and April elbowed him. He shrugged. He couldn’t believe she was willing to watch that again or let the kids in her class see it. Those poor children, scarred for life.

“Clayton, sometimes I wonder if you’re really a friend.”

“And most of the time you know I’m not.”

Larabee gave him another look, and April elbowed him again. He winced, and the kids giggled. They really did like Larabee, more so than their so-called hero that April insisted that he was. He had to wonder if she’d put them up to the drawings.

“Ahem, as I was saying, the best of my collection! The highlight of our exhibition today,” Larabee said, smiling as he jumped down again, hopping over to the side. Clayton winced. April shook her head, but then her mouth dropped open as Larabee unveiled the best of his collection: a rather bright white and rather… unique wedding dress. “See the best part? It has flames* on it.”

“Oh, no…”

“Put it on, Miss April! We can see you marry Super Clayton! Please!”

“No, honey, that’s not how it works,” April began, trying to explain even as the crowd of little kids pulled her away from Clayton and toward the white dress of doom. “I know that you all want to see me dress up nice, but—”

“Hey, anyone want to see me turn into a really old man?” Clayton called, and the crowd around April stopped for a moment. “I can turn into an old man, too. If you want to see that, though, you’ll have to let Miss April go and sit down at your desks.”

“But we want to see Miss April in the wedding dress, too!”

“Well, first we can see my little trick. It’s not like you wouldn’t have to wait for her to put it on anyway, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

April shook her head. He walked over to her as they sat down. He put his hands on her arms and lowered his lips to her ear. “Run while you still can.”

“Clayton…”

“Hey, I’m taking one for the team here. Go. Run. Now.”

*To see the flame dress, go here.

It occurs to me now that I should have asked those kids in April’s class for better superhero names. They had far better imaginations than I ever did. They could have come up with something great for me and my pathetic power.

They did draw some very amusing pictures, after all. Talented little pipsqueaks.

“It really is a shame that you can’t fly,” April observed, looking at the drawing with a smile. She set it down on the table, passing it over to Clayton. He shook his head as he looked at it. He had a cape and could fly, and he was carrying her with him. At least, that was what he thought the drawing was. It was kind of hard to tell with the crayons and shaky lines and all.

“These are cute, but they’re all wrong,” Clayton said, picking up a fry and chewing on it for a moment before he gave in to April’s dark look and explained. “It’s not that I’m judging their artistry. I just can’t do any of that stuff, and you’re the real hero, so…”

“You always say that, but I don’t think that’s true.”

“It’s inconceivable?”

“Maybe.”

“I love this one,” Larabee interrupted, lifting up the paper so that they could all see it. “This is the best picture ever. I could make you a costume just like that.”

“No thank you. I don’t need a costume. It’s not necessary. I am not going to be a hero, and I’m only going to entertain kids with my abilities every now and again. I just spy on people, remember? Costumes are not going to work for that. I can’t find a conspiracy dressed like a pinata.”

“That’s true, but you know that you are more than just a spy, and the kids didn’t just see you as entertainment. They like you better than they do me,” April told him. “And they really want to believe that you can do any of these wonderful things.”

He sighed. “They’re kids. They don’t know any better. They can believe in heroes—in superheroes—but I know that’s not what I am. I’ve tried to work with what I am, and I wanted to be a hero. I’m just… not. Very not. I’m more of a coward at heart, someone who complains rather than steps up, and you stop me from that and make me think, but without that, I’d still be at home moping. And as far as my power goes… I’d rather not have it. I would be happy with a simple life—as long as it was with you, April.”

She smiled, but then she shook her head. “I think you’d be happier if you were a hero.”

“Maybe,” he agreed slowly, thinking of all those old childhood dreams of his. He’d wanted so desperately to be a hero, wanted powers and was going to save the world. Now, though, all he had was a conspiracy he couldn’t sort out and a crazy friend who kept wanting him to wear spandex and a woman he loved but was way too dependent on. “I don’t care about that. As long as I’ve got you, I’ll be okay.”

She started to say something else, but he cut her off with a kiss.

Larabee looked at them. “When are you two getting married? What date was that again?”

April sighed. “I’ve finished up all the exams and certifications, and I’m just about done with my student teaching, so I’ve almost got my degree and license—I will need to go back to school to finish up my master’s, but I’ll work a few years first. Unless it’s impossible to get a job without one, which in this market is entirely possible. Still… After I graduate, I think I’ll finally be able to think about the wedding for a change.”

“I’m telling you—eloping is easy. I don’t need a big ceremony. I have no friends, remember? But I guess I’m just too distracting for you to teach and have me around, but—”

“That is not what I said or what I meant,” she said, covering his mouth with her fingers. “Don’t think I don’t want you around. I just don’t know how to adjust to the idea of marriage, living together, and handle what I’m already doing. It’s going to be hard enough for both of us and handle that first year without me being a nutcase over classwork and lessons and tests and certifications. That was the only reason I wanted to wait. Not because I don’t love you or because I don’t want to be with you. I just want it to work, and we have enough problems to deal without me being so stressed.”

“You mean you can’t be stressed because I bring so much stress to the relationship in the first place.”

“Clayton, don’t. Are you trying to pick a fight with me now?”

“No, I’m just saying that it’s uneven between us. You have to be the responsible grown up one, and you’re always supporting me, and where is that from me? I think I’ve done it once and that’s because I forced you to talk about your parents.”

She lifted up the drawings. “What do you think this is, Clayton? You may have been told to stay away, but you didn’t. You came, and you helped me when I didn’t even know how much I needed it. And you made the kids so happy. They can’t stop talking about you—even if you couldn’t even do what you can, you’d be a hero to them. You’re a hero to me. Accept that.”

“And you could be that to everyone if you’d only let me make you a costume.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“I tell you what, Larabee, make the kids each a costume. They’d love that.”

“Yeah? Cool. I’m so going to do that. It’s going to be amazing,” Larabee said, reaching for the drawings as he got up, almost running out of the diner in his hurry to get back to his lab.

Clayton shook his head. “I do not understand him and the spandex. It’s really unnatural.”

“Forget about Larabee and the spandex.”

“Right. Like that’s easy to do.”

“Oh, I can make it easy,” April told Clay, pulling him in for a kiss.