vindizzLe

I can't do this. I absolutely know that I cannot do this.

It's three days ago, and my Mother is creasing my tie, checking my collar, taking in my features. It's like she's inspecting me, trying to find a crack on the surface. That's how she is. Every time I come home to visit, she looks me over, tries to find a break somewhere in order to ask me to stop what I'm doing. My Mom believes in my being a hero because she believes that I'm the strongest person that she has ever known.

How wrong she is.

I can't let her see though. I can't let her see that I'm about to fall apart, that my entire life feels like it's breaking down into nothing. My parents are trying to be strong for me, and I'm trying to be strong for my parents. All we have is each other.

We're at his funeral today. I'm by no means someone that you would consider a religious person, but I do believe in the power of spirit. I felt my spirit first hand in Thailand, and I knew what Adrian's spirit felt like too. He had so much of it, and it was so strong, so apparent. He was quiet voice of reason, the constant in an ocean of change. But that constant is gone now. Nothing feels solid, the whole world is becoming transparent to me.

We're holding the ceremony outdoors; we're giving him a proper burial. I look out from the car and see my friends, family and peers gathering to pay their respects. My father offered to speak, but I told him that I wanted to, that I needed to. I owed him that. I owe my brother so much, but I don't have the opportunity to repay him anymore. It hurts so bad that sitting upright grinds down into my spine; the pain is acute, sharp and endless. Red-Havok buried his claws deep enough to kill me, and that hurt nowhere near as resoundingly as this does.

They're here: The Challengers. Xanatos, Havok, Foxy, Johnny, Renegade, Terra, everyone. For the first time in my life, I see Gidge dressed formally, even forgoing her usual metal plated boots. Even as small as her frame is when standing next to our team, she stands out the most. Her eyes find the car that I'm in; she's trying to see through the tinted window. She knows I'm there. She waits.

"Are you sure you can do this?"

I nod once. I feel a hand touch my back as I move out of the car, it lingers until I'm standing. My Mom and Dad follow soon after.

We join the crowd of people that have gathered. My parents exchange pleasantries. I can hear condolences given, words of comfort and thanks in return from my folks, but everything is dull, as if I'm hearing these things from the opposite side of a very long tunnel. I'm tuning everything out. The world moves in frames that my eyes capture piece after piece. My friends and colleagues greet me one-by-one. They ask me if I'm okay, and I nod yes. Some of them know better. Their gazes follow me as I move throughout the crowd, they gauge me, inspecting me just as my Mother did. They all want to see where it is precisely that I am breaking at. How can they not see? It feels like a wound exposed to the wind, everything that I do causes it to ache, and that ache effects everything that I do. How can they not see?

I'm twenty minutes into the future, standing at a podium. I'm staring out at a large group of people that are gathered to honor someone that they barely knew, someone that they did not care about, someone that some of these people did not even like. Many are here because of me, or my parents. They do not understand the bond that my family shares. I wish it were just me and my parents, but we have to go above and beyond that. Plus, I need these people to know the hero that my brother was. Thus, I bring myself as close to the microphone as I can, and I speak.

"I'm not going to talk to these people today, Adrian. I promised myself that I was just going to have a conversation with you."

I can see Gidge standing near the team, trying to appear inconspicuous. She's worrying her bottom lip so bad she might make it bleed if she keeps it up. And there's Xanatos, strong, stoic, trying to be a rock, someone that I can grab on to no matter how hard it gets. He's like a second father to me, and he doesn't even know it. But not even Xanatos can keep me strong this time.

"You remember when we sat on the roof back during my Senior year? We stayed up all night and just talked about what we wanted to do. I looked over at you and I told you that I wanted us to be Superheroes. I wanted us to be just like the Havok Brothers. You laughed, looked away, put your hand on my shoulder, looked back and said... 'Someday we will, Grant.'"

I look to at my brother's casket. I see the picture of us. Not just my brother, my parents chose a picture of both he and I. It's our families favorite picture. We took it after I had won a baseball game back in High-School. See me: Arms entangled around my younger brother, who attempts to look disinterested, defiant. He could never do that around me, in that picture his pride is bursting from his facial expression as he smiles by my side.

My brother was my best friend, my only believer, and now he's gone.

"Hckh... I..."

I steel myself, look away from the picture. Tell myself not to look at it again. I hear the whispers, the quiet sobs as my pain reaches out. I am making this very real now. They can see it now, even Johnny can see it. He looks forward and just nods. The face displays so many different emotions and thoughts that we never even know about. I read all of them in an instant.

They're all telling me the very same thing. I hear Xanatos grip Red-Havok's shoulder, Red refuses to take his eyes off of me. Foxy tilts her head to the side, regarding me carefully. Xanatos whispers.

"Come on, son. Be strong. Be strong."

I can't. They can all see it. I'm breaking apart at the seams.

"Hckh... I... I can't. I'm sorry. Gehch... I love you Adrian!"

I see Xanatos and Red move for an instant, but pause as my parents jump forward, rushing to the podium to put their arms around me as I nearly fall to the floor. I don't want this world anymore. I want it all back the way that it was.

-

The funeral is over, I'm sitting in a pile in my brother's room. I've stayed here every night since his death, going through his things, pouring over memories. My parents didn't want to me, but I wouldn't take no for an answer. They agreed with me when I said that we should leave his room the way that it was. My younger brother saved the world, his memory should be preserved in every way possible.

When we were younger, Adrian and I were obsessed with taking pictures of everything, documenting our lives to the best of our ability. The record of our time together is here at my feet, day after day, year after year. I laugh, I cry, and I pour over my self-loathing over and over again, playing back every instant of the last few days, reliving every moment. I have learned my lesson, Adrian. I will never run from my grief or my fear ever again. This time, I will confront it head on. This was the lesson that Tyler tried to teach me two years ago, you have finally shown me how to deal. You have finally shown me how to confront my fears and my destiny and say yes or no to my potential futures. The irony is not lost on me that in order to save the world as we know it, I had to give up my world as a sacrifice.

My world, my best friend; you believed when no one else would. When I ran from home and traveled the world, you understood. "Give him time." You told my parents.

You may have been younger, but mind body and soul, you were always my senior, Adrian.

When I told you about the visions, you didn't doubt me or fear for one instant. You are the only person that didn't think that I was some sort of monster.

"You're better than that, Grant. You always have been."

You truly believed that I was the best. But you were wrong. It was you, always you. Always stronger, wiser, more capable.

You kept your Hyperempathy from me. Didn't want me to know that all of these years that I had been fighting crime, you had been sharing in that pain with me. You protected me, at the last moment of your life, you protected all of us. You weren't some punk kid, you accomplished in one day what many heroes couldn't hope to accomplish in a lifetime.

Amidst all of his things, I find a crumpled piece of paper. A sketch. As I unfold it, I relive the moments where he and I designed my first costume, the Rave Spider costume. He and I, hunched over a paper with one bulb giving us just enough light to draw in the late of the night. The both of us fighting back and forth, erasing each others designs in an attempt to make something truly heroic.

This sketch is another costume, a different one.

This isn't for me, is it? This was for you. You tried to hide it, crumple it up and discard it as trash. But this was for you. You were planning on joining me.

My eyes fill with tears as I run my fingers over the creases in the sketch. How long ago did you draw this? How long had you known? I wish you would have told me, maybe things would have been different. Maybe we could have been like the Havoks.

I cry and I cry and I cry, holding the sketch. This is the last, most important thing that I want from him now. I will leave the rest of these things here, but I will take this. I will take this because this is his last message to me, though he doesn't even know it. Through the haze of pain things become apparent.

The name.

I am not Rave Spider any longer. Rave Spider was not one man, but two. Brothers. I never dreamt of this concept alone, this dream was ours. Remember, Adrian? We sat on that rooftop and we made a promise to each other. Well guess what? We did it. We were heroes. But the Rave Spider was something that I took on as my own, you believed in me, and through that belief I did remarkable things.

But this... Replacer? This is your dream, isn't it? This is your dream and you wanted to share that with me also. I want you to fulfill that dream. Even though you're gone, I know how much it must have meant to you. I want you to fulfill it and I want you to know that even though you are gone, I believe in you. I believe in the great things that you can accomplish.

As corny as you might have thought that it would have sounded, you can live on through me. I will make sure of that. This is my last promise to you, little brother. Rave Spider died saving the world with you. You are the greatest hero that I have ever known.

That name, Replacer, it would have never fit for you. You are no one's replacement, Adrian. You are your own man, your own hero in every respect and incarnation of the word.

But me? I am a replacement, a stand-in. I was the Renegade's replacement, I am a copycat, a mimic. I become what people need in order to help them. I am the Replacer, Adrian.

Now and for as long as I live, until we walk side by side and laugh together again.


I am your Replacer.

He does; he was getting nasty in practices tonight.

Sounds good man, no worries.

Where's MJ at? I want to see you two go at it again.

Clearly this isn't a passive aggressive attack on any member of our team. "Weight" must be a reference to skill level.

Burns dies less than barrier does.

The boy had been perfect, in every single way.

The insignificant Malta agents had played their role as well; immaculately even. Echo-Seven had secured the young man as he had promised. His team boasted of their commander's performance, but he remained quiet, stoic before the Doctor as he took the younger Miller brother into his custody. Try as he might, the Doctor could no longer keep up the charade of humanity. An insatiable hunger had begun to grow within Corradine as his experiments continued on. He had locked himself in the upper level of the laboratory that he had been re-assigned to in order to have the tools needed to be successful with the operation. Little did the Countess or the Malta know that Corradine's ambitions lie far beyond the constraints of human sciences. He had conquered that aspect of his life. He had come to understand the genius of his predecessor in ways that no other individual could.

Many in the scientific community considered Ginger Yates to be the foremost expert on Pasalima's research. Having come to Paragon in order to conduct close study on the "Devouring Earth", as they had been so inappropriately named, Yates had lost her family due to the mistakes of an overzealous hero named "Torque". The tragedy had caused her to devote her life to combating the Devouring Earth, and Pasalima in any and all of his incarnations. How could she truly understand him, or understand his work with such hatred in her heart? She would never be able to embrace the world that Hamidon had sought to create; she was inferior for this reason alone. Her emotions clouded her intellect; she was a disgrace to scientists across the world.

And what of Xanatos? Perfect Xanatos; the ultimate hero. The Paragon of virtue; justice incarnate. Xanatos had been the first hero to successfully study the Hamidon's physiology. He had pooled together the resources of Paragon's best and brightest scientists alongside it's heroing community to combat Pasalima when the city was at its weakest. He was the first to "defeat" the Hamidon, breaking down its cellular structure, effectively halting the inevitable devouring process that was slowly consuming the world. Did he not know Hamidon better than anyone else? It was said that prior to his becoming a monster, Xanatos had known Pasalima personally. Corradine envied him. To be so close to such a brilliant mind; to be able to learn from it. What a fool, squandering his opportunity on foolish acts of heroism. He had turned his back on the world's most brilliant scientist, refusing to see the multifaceted genius that lay within his innermost designs and experiments.

No one understood as well as he. He had bridged the gaps, made the necessary connections with total impartiality. How could he fault a man who had committed so many atrocities in the name of evolution? Here was the pinnacle of his field, a man who sought knowledge for power above anything and everything else. Raymond Corradine found solace in this, that he could connect with an individual who cared not for accolades. No longer did it matter that his brilliance be recognized by his fellow peers. His brilliance and dedication would no longer be a matter of opinion, lorded over and discussed by foolish committees filled with aging, ignorant dolts who grew more and more bitter with each passing year at their own self-stagnation. No, his greatness would be fact; undeniable, just as his predecessor's was.

The boy had been prepped with relative ease; he did not put up much of a struggle. Despite the excessive strength that they had recorded, Adrian had not attempted to break the Impervium bands that locked him into place. He did not flail about or scream as the Impervium needles entered the various points of contact, injecting him with the most raw form of the Hamidon's DNA. Millions of dollars had gone into this one project alone to retrieve the necessary DNA to conduct the experiment, but Corradine cared not. Monetary figures were no longer of any concern to him.

This was what mattered. The boy. The brothers.

As hypothesized, the boy had responded well to the injections. The Devouring process had begun, and his body fought it with all of its adaptive might. The external damage had been extreme, but his accelerated healing factor had mended even the most grievous of wounds. A dark thought stirred within Corradine; he delighted in the question of how his older brother would feel if he were the one watching Adrian suffer this way.

The suffering was a necessary darkness; a necessary evil, even. In the name of evolution, adaptions were to be made; sacrifices.

He had emerged with no cosmetic changes whatsoever. Appearance wise, he still possessed the same genetic good looks that had no doubt seen him through a life full of favor and acceptance. Perhaps a part of his contempt for the Miller brothers stemmed from that as well. Their perfect life, how easy everything had come to them. Both Adrian and Grant had the choice to go to any school that they wanted anywhere in the world, they could live wherever, safe in the knowledge that their parents would support them and see through them any bump in the road that came their way. Their apparent "genius" intellect had not been worked for, it had been given to them due in part to their favorable mutation. A mutation, in fact, that Corradine considered to be the greatest that he had ever come across. The percentage rate for an ability like the one that the Miller brothers possessed was at the top percentile; the Doctor theorized that such an occurrence would not happen in the gene for hundreds of years to come. It disgusted him, but above all else, he practiced impartiality. He could not allow his feelings to taint the experiment. These boys were necessary; a key.

Using their bodies, he would build a bridge.

He would build a bridge with their bones if need be.

With the first portion of the Devouring complete, Doctor Corradine eyed his patient carefully. Now surrounded by not only himself, but his dedicated staff, Corradine finally spoke to Adrian.



"You are very nearly there, child. You should be quite proud of yourself."

Not a word of defiance from the boy as he was placed onto a raised platform. Corradine's staff worked the controls; the platform lowering Adrian into the center of what appeared to be a miniature reactor that was channeling raw energy. This was no ordinary reactor, or an ordinary energy, even. This was raw power fueled by the greatness of the Hamidon, a reactor of energy powered by The Will of the Earth!

He danced about, lazily waltzing throughout the facility, eyeing his reflection against the surface of the floor that had been newly waxed and installed prior to his arrival. Inside his head, a cacophony of magnificent sounds that seemed to elevate him outside of the laboratory itself. He was aroused; intoxicated by his own genius and accomplishment. Success was within his reach! Adrian had been placed in the center most reactor; the surrounding reactors were able to feed their power to one another. Corradine had ordered that his assistants do so. The loud hum of each machine notified him that they were nearly ready.

"Doctor Corradine, systems are online. We are ready to begin."

He stopped in the midst of his dance, whirling wildly, a devious grin about his face.

"Let us not wait any further, gentlemen! Evolution awaits! Hahahahahahaha!"

Unsettled by Corradine's apparent derangement, the scientist hesitated, but finally brought all of the energy surging into the one reactor that Adrian now lay directly under. As he activated the center reactor, Adrian's harsh cries of pain could no longer be ignored. They pierced the ears of every scientist, lab hand and Malta Operative on the upper level that stood guard. The only one that did not appear to be affected by the boy's torment... was Doctor Corradine.

He danced on, moving himself towards a wall panel with a security console on it. The panel had a viewing glass that showed the contents of what was inside: syringes. The final step.

"NOW! ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!"

He moved his arms as if he was conducting an orchestra; he was bringing about the crescendo. There would be no stopping him now. No no, the foolish brother, Grant... He would come. He would come and he would learn of what had been done to his brother, of where he had been taken. Even now, the Countess was prepping a facility; a joint venture between both Crey Biotech & Portal Corporation that the Countess used for her own machinations. These days, anyone could be bought for the right price.

But not Corradine.

She could have the boy. He would survive this. How could he not? This was what he was built to do. He was the Hamidon's child after all, a worthy successor to his evolutionary achievement. Corradine would give the Countess the boy, and she would give the boy right to the Hamidon. She desperately hoped that Corradine had indeed found a way to reverse the evolutionary effect, that the boys would somehow be able to "undo" the multi-dimensional deity that was Hamidon Pasalima. He had told her that they would.

He had lied.

Instead, the Hamidon would receive Adrian, and through him he would receive Grant. With both brothers, he would find all the power that he needed to sustain himself. He would continue to devour, and they with him. They would inherit the Earth, and all Earths like it.

He had neglected to reveal one pertinent piece of information about the reactors. Operating them at one hundred percent produced a secondary effect. And as his staff and the Malta Operatives that had been sent to protect him fell to the floor in agony, their bodies twisting and contorting as they themselves were Devoured, Corradine punched a code into the console on the wall, opening it and retrieving one of the many vials. Their agony, Adrian's agony, was like music to his ears. This was science, this was process.

He turned and spoke to his predecessor, as Adrian's cries and the cries of all of those around him that were shifting and morphing were drowned out by the sound of the reactor as it poured raw energy straight into the young boy, conditioning him.

"Look at what I will give to you. Look at how hard that I have worked. Ahahahahahaha! Look at how far we have come! I will give you... EVERYTHING!"

rofl. This is why I love you.

I can speak personally for myself and say that I would never not consider playing someone that I picked up that showed the willingness to improve competitively.

Case in point is Seethe, a draftee this season who played for our team last year.

Seethe was drafted as a D6 blaster who had no relative experience in a PvP setting whatsoever. He took to the pressure of dealing with me as his target caller and rolled with every punch thrown at him. It made him an exceptional player in a small window of time, so much that he stepped in to fill March's (an excellent player in his own right) shoes during the finals of last year's FPvPL.

If that isn't an indication of a team's (or captain's) willingness to play a draftee that shows aptitude and dedication, I don't know what is. By the way, we won that league last year and wouldn't have done so without the assistance of several players who stepped up to fill roles that they had almost no experience in.

"Aegis-Four, are the dampeners in place?"

"10-4, Dust; the dampeners are in place. Teams have taken up position and await further instruction."

"Copy that, proceed to the vantage point, I need snipers covering every entrance and exit in order for this plan to go over smoothly. We're not looking for a bloodbath here, gentlemen. Target is extremely hostile."

"Copy."

Rhode Island is a rare gem in the United States. A relic of beauty in a nation tarnished by crime, pollution, disease and depression. Michael Miller chose Rhode Island for a reason when he decided to relocate his wife after he found out that she was pregnant. It was the perfect place to raise their children and enrich their family while building Michael's strong career. The assumption that they had made had been correct; they had grown up in relative comfort and safety.

But that safety came at a price. When Clarissa Van Dorn came knocking, Michael had no choice but to accept her offer to help him "boost" his burgeoning career. He went from successful lawyer, to having a seat in the Senate in a blindly fast amount of time. The stipulation was simple: if a policy came his way that could favor the Biotech firm, he would simply fight for that policy. But the real cost went further than that.

Michael always suspected. Deep down, his trust for Van Dorn or her company was non-existent. His own personal investigations gave him all of the information he needed on how she "acquired" her late husband's multi-billion dollar corporation. From that moment on, he feared. And try as he might to shield his wife Amanda from the truth, he finally caved in, confiding in her the depth of the mistake that he made. His fear wasn't for himself, but for his wife, his son.

Grant Miller.

That beautiful baby boy, with eyes that changed colors with the seasons. That beautiful baby boy that brought out so much love in the both of them, that they decided to raise a second: Adrian. Michael wanted them safe, and when he begged for his wife's forgiveness, she gave it to him. The love that the Miller family shared was tremendous. Michael loved his wife so much, that he told her the real reason why he suspected that the Countess had approached him in the first place. Not, in fact, for his brilliant analytical mind that had skyrocketed him to the top of his class at NYU.

He was a mutant.

A psychic, albeit untrained and relatively harmless. Michael could detect normal surface thoughts. The ability, hidden, had given him an edge in the courtroom. He suspected that Van Dorn wanted him for that, or perhaps even worse: that she wanted his firstborn. The biotech firm was rumored to have delved into the darker corners of genetics, the idea that his son could be the perfect guinea pig was not lost on Michael. Thus, he feared. Together, they feared. But their children never knew; they were raised in the best environment that their parents could give them. They were loved, they were respected, they were protected.

But that thin veil of protection had long since faded, and now the Countess was ready to collect on the debt owed to her. Michael Miller had had a good life, it was time to reap the rewards of what she had sowed so many years ago.

"Echo-Seven, we've got a subject out on the front doorstep. Looks like a kid."

"Copy that, Aegis-Four. That's our target."

"All this for a kid? I-"

Silence over the codec.

"Aegis-Four, repeat. I lost you."

"Echo-Seven, he's spotted us."

"What?"

The breeze caught Adrian Miller's hair, shifting his locks into a dance across his features. Sometimes, you didn't need to hear, smell, or see something to know that there was an anomaly; a problem. The absence alerted him immediately. He always knew that there would come a day where someone would come knocking at his front door. He always knew that they'd try to come for his parents again. It had happened once before; Grant had been the one to save them. This time, Adrian would protect them. Thankfully, his father was out of town on business. But his mother was seated in the living room, watching television without a care in the world. She had no idea.

It was better that way.

"What do you want?" Adrian called out, his arms hanging lazily at his side. He looked straight ahead, off his porch and across the street in front of his house. He didn't need to raise his voice; something told him that whoever was there could hear him just fine.

"I know-"

"Aegis-Four, does your team have a clear shot?"

"-that you're-"

"10-4, Dust. We're in place."

"-out there."

"Take the shot."

His mother would have never heard it. At 5 in the afternoon, her primary concern was the Special Victims Unit marathon on USA. The bullet left the chamber of a modified G22 German Arctic Warfare, silenced by a suppressor and traveled straight for Adrian's knee. At 18 years of age, Adrian Miller hit the ground, the entire portion of his lower leg beneath the kneecap obliterated on impact. He fell forward, catching himself with his palms and rolling silently against the wooden porch. Echo-Seven was impressed, the kid didn't want to alert anyone inside as to what was going on.

"I'll handle this. Keep your eyes on the exits, and I need four eyes on the kid's vitals just in case he makes a struggle. Remember, we can't kill him, but we can severely incapacitate him."

"Copy that, Echo-Seven."

Dust disabled his cloaking device, stepping out of the underbrush. A few steps forward and he emerged from behind a large evergreen. He moved with indolence, crossing the street without a care in the world. Taking the first step up the porch, Adrian raised his gaze, saliva pooling from his bottom lip on the wooden deck. Dust unholstered his gun, placing the .45 caliber to the young man's temple.

"You know why I'm here. You know that I've already won; don't make this any more difficult on yourself. You come with us and we leave this place intact. Is that understood?"

Adrian was healing, fast. Echo-Seven could hear the bone and muscle sewing itself back together at a remarkable pace. He spit.

"You know what we call people like you, kid?"

Adrian coughed into his forearm, his gaze cutting right through Seven's intimidating stare. He had balls, that much could be said.

"Regens. We call you hard-to-kill types 'Regens'. ******* tenacious, you are. But you're a dime-a-dozen, and there's a science behind not dying. Did you know that?"

He pressed the .45 into Adrian's skull, and the kid pushed back.

"Did you know that we have you figured out?"

"...guhfkyrsff" Adrian mumbled. Dust smiled, leaning forward.

"Sorry, repeat that? I couldn't hear you."

"I said go **** yourself."

The hand shot forward, clasping for Echo-Seven's throat, but the Malta operative batted it aside.

"Nu-uh-uh! None of that. We didn't come here to fight you, kid. And I didn't come here to give you a speech on how I was going to walk out of here with you as my captive, only to give you a chance to fight back. Nope. You're gonna listen, and you're gonna obey."

Pulling the crimson sash that he had tied over the bottom portion of his face down, Echo-Seven leaned as close as he could get. From the bottom corner of his chin, across his lips and running all the way up to his eye there was a deep scar that had ruined what may have at one time been a very handsome face.

"I didn't get this from talking, kid. I got this from fighting and surviving **** that you couldn't even imagine. And I don't have the luxury of being a genetically mutated **** like you are. But there's not going to be any fighting today. If you want your mother to live, you're going to do exactly as I say, because I have four snipers on her right now that will cut her to so many pieces that you could use her for New Years confetti. Am I making myself clear?"

He pulled away, observing Adrian. For a moment, their eyes were deadlocked, each trying to overpower one another with sheer will alone. But finally, Adrian looked back at his front door. He buried his head into his forearm, heaving in a deep breath. He had given up.

"What do you want me to do?" Adrian asked, quietly.

"You're going to heal up. Go inside; don't make a fuss. Pack a few things and tell your mother that you're going to go stay the night with your brother. We know that you visit him in the city from time to time. Give her a kiss, tell her you love her, and follow us out without telling her anything else. Otherwise, she's dead. Got it?"

Silence as he processed the instructions. He looked back at the door one last time. There was no other way. Finally, he nodded in affirmation.

"I got it."

Dust moved quickly and quietly off of the porch as Adrian drew himself up. His knee having fully healed itself, he checked himself before opening the front door to walk back inside. The staircase was right by the front door, his mother wouldn't even have a chance to see the knee of his pant legs to make the determination that anything had happened to begin with. If the kid was smart, he would change his clothes before leaving so as not to raise suspicion. The Malta operative had read the files on both Miller brothers; they were fiercely protective of their parents. The kid would do the right thing.

Adrian changed and packed his bags quickly, stuffing enough clothes into the pack to make it seem as if he was going to stay with his brother. There was no time to write a note. Grant was smart, he would know soon enough that something was wrong. He flew down the staircase, trying to put on an exasperated expression; excitement that he'd be going into the city to see his older brother. When he arrived in the living room, his mother read the expression and bought it right away.

"Going to Grant's for the weekend, honey?"

"Yeah, he's gonna take me to look at some apartments in the city, see if he can convince me to move closer to campus, you know."

His mother's eyes twinkled with pride. Both her boys had grown so fast, and they had both come so far, stepping into their respective responsibilities without missing a beat.

"Give me a call and let me know how it goes, I'm sure your father will be excited to know if you found anything too."

"Sure thing, Ma. Love you."

Adrian Miller kissed his mother on her forehead with all of his heart, blinking back tears. He smelled her hair, gazed upon the perfect complexion of her skin and touched her hand; that same hand that had comforted him for years. That same hand that had tucked him in at night and turned his light off as he fell asleep. He felt all of that appreciation swell up inside of him, pushed to the surface by a deep fear and anxiety. It was his turn to be strong now, for his brother, for his family. Here was where the well of his strength had originally come from.

"Love you too, honey."

Adrian Miller looked at his mother, and turned to walk out of the living room, and out his front door.

It was the last time that he would ever see her again.

You're not better than me at tf2. Stop it.

Cowboy Jon?

WARE is also interested in setting up practices as well.

Approved.