199X:

It was midnight by the time that Ness knocked on the door to his house. No response.

"Guess in the worst case scenario, we could camp out here," Lucas said, looking up at the sky. "Doesn't look like it will rain."

"One of the best parts about doing most of my travelling in cities is always having access to hotels," Ness said. "I don't know how you and Kumatora did it."

"Yeah, me neither. But here I am." Lucas put his hands on his hips and beamed.

Ness knocked again, and hear King barking from inside.

"Oh my gosh you have a dog?" Lucas walked up to the door. "I only had time to see Boney for a few minutes before heading off while I was dumping Kuma in my reality. I'm just glad that he understood why I needed to go."

"You can talk to animals as well?" Ness said.

"Yeah. Remind me some time to tell you about all the sparrows I talked to along my journey."

Ness thought back to Porky letting out a sparrow's song to make Claus recall painful brainwashings. Hopefully he could learn to leave that part of him behind and appreciate their music again.

The door swung open in front of Ness to reveal his mother in a nightgown. She gasped upon seeing Ness, walking out onto the porch in her slippers and hugging him.

"You're okay," she said. "My baby is all right."

"Uh, maybe not in front of my friend," Ness said.

"Oh, I don't mind this." Lucas smirked.

Ness glared at Lucas before turning to hug his mother back.

"Where have you been all this time?" she said. "If you're going on another adventure, at least let me know, all right? If you had the decency to do that when you were twelve, you have the decency now. And what happened to your eyes? If you charged colored contacts to the credit card, your father is going to be angry with you."

"Really, Ness?" Lucas said. "You didn't even tell your mom what you were going to do?"

"Yeah, like you told anyone you were going to get sucked off into an alternate dimension." To his mother, "I can talk about the eyes later. We're tired for now."

"Now you're just being insensitive." Lucas' grin widened. "My mom's dead, so I couldn't tell her anything."

Lucas looked all too pleased with himself. But if Ness called Lucas out, he would look like an asshole who was picking on the kid with a dead mom. If he did that, his own mom would never let him hear the end of it. So he rolled his eyes at Lucas before turning back and waiting for his mother to release him. When she finally did, she walked over and examined Lucas.

"You must be cold in those clothes," she said. "Why don't you come inside?"

"Thank you," Lucas said. "Don't worry too much about me, though. I hiked up a snowy mountain in these shorts."

Ness narrowed his eyes. "You didn't."

"Guess you two have something in common, then," Ness' mom said. "This boy here calls me from Winters of all places and my first question is whether or not he packed a warmer set of clothes. I was ready to march over there myself when he said that he was just dealing with the cold in his usual t-shirt and shorts."

Lucas laughed. "Great minds think alike."

Ness' mom turned back towards him. "Where are your manners, Ness? Why don't you introduce me to your friend here?"

"I would have done that if you didn't rush out and bear hug me," Ness said. "Lucas, I'm sorry for making you watch me hug random people for several minutes on multiple occasions today."

"I wouldn't have needed to if you didn't go missing for a week," his mom said. "And I'm still waiting for an introduction."

Ness sighed. "This is Lucas. He's from…" Ness glanced at Lucas. "Somewhere far away. He wants to stay with us for an indiscriminate amount of time."

"Well, I'm always glad to see that you're making new friends," she said. "Feel free to stay here as long as you like, sweetie. I can already tell that you're going to make less of a mess than my son. But you should really get out of the cold."

Ness' mother shuffled back in the house. Lucas glanced at Ness, shrugged, and followed her in. Ness shook his head before walking into his house and locking the door behind him. King ran up to Lucas and tried to stand on his hind legs to greet him. Lucas held King's paws in his hands while King licked his face.

"King," Ness said. "Get down. No bugging the guests."

"It's fine, Ness," Lucas said. "Look how excited he is."

Well since his mom didn't seem to be here to police Ness' hospitality, he wasn't going to fight Lucas on that point.

Ness glanced out into the living room to see Tracy playing on her Super Nintendo. She pulled up a pause screen and glanced back over at Ness. She glanced over at the empty kitchen and staircase, wearing a mischievous grin as she looked back at Ness. The one time Ness needed his mom to keep Tracy civil, she was upstairs doing something or other.

"Hey, dipshit," Tracy said. "Who goes missing for a week without telling anyone? And your new eyes make you look edgier than me during my middle school phase."

"Who taught you that language?" Ness said.

Tracy snorted, crossing her arms. "Hey, is that your boyfriend?"

At this point, King was done slobbering on Lucas and ran back over into the kitchen area, raising his tail expectantly. Lucas waved hi to Tracy.

"You didn't tell me you had a sister, Ness." To Tracy, "I'm Lucas, and I'm unfortunately not Ness' boyfriend. I'm open to dating him, but I don't see the reverse happening anytime soon."

"Damn, my brother actually has no taste," Tracy said. "Better watch your back, Ness. There are worse boys someone could make off with."

Lucas laughed, wiping dog slobber off his face.

"Tracy, stop hitting on my friend. He's like three years older than you anyway. Lucas, stop encouraging her."

"All right, Mr. Hero man," Tracy said, turning back to her video game.

"You little-" Ness took a deep breath. "Love you too, Tracy. Goodnight."

Ness led Lucas over to the stairwell. At the last moment, he turned back Tracy.

"Why did you think Lucas was my boyfriend, again?"

Tracy sighed, pausing again. "I don't know. You go missing for a week and show up with someone I've never seen before. And you're obviously not straight."

Lucas whistled. "Someone's perceptive."

"More like someone's painfully obvious." Tracy turned back to her game. "I hope you find the boy of your dreams eventually, Ness."

"I'm not…" Ness grunted. "You know what? We can have this discussion later. And no telling mom that I'm not-"

"No telling me what?"

Ness whirled around to see his mom at the top of the stairwell. He rubbed his temples. The truth wouldn't bother her, probably, and Ness had basically told her about his sexuality a year ago while being a bit vaguer about it. But if she thought he were gay, it might raise questions about him and Lucas.

Well, Tracy was a little snake of a high-schooler, but she probably wouldn't "out" him. Probably. Siblings really were the worst.

"I set up a sleeping bag in your room for you, Ness," his mother said. "You're going to be a good guest and let Lucas have your bed, right?"

"Yeah, yeah." Ness shot a glance at Lucas that hopefully conveyed we can talk about it later.

"All right, scoot of to bed," she said. "I can see that you're tired. Mothers know these things."

Ness let out a sigh. For once, he was more than happy to follow her request. He and Lucas went to Ness' room. Lucas studied the baseball trophies for a moment, but a convenient yawn came out of Ness' mouth to signal that the explanation would need to wait until the morning. Even though it would only be noon by the time zone in the future dimension, Ness was ready to pass out.

Lucas insisted on taking the sleeping bag so that Ness could be more comfortable, and Ness was too tired to argue. He drifted off to sleep, ready to restart tomorrow.

#

That night, someone spoke to Ness as he was drifting through dreams.

"Come say hi to your friends, sleepyhead."

What an annoying voice. Ness blinked awake under a golden sky and a green aurora. The Sea of Eden again. He rotated his body until he was standing up to see Sen grinning at him a few paces away in the pond, still taking the form of his doppelganger.

"Man, you really do have permanent bedhead."

Ness looked out into the distance to see Paula further out. She waved to him and waded closer. Lucas' sleeping body appeared floating on the Sea of Eden in front of him moments later.

"I'm so glad this worked," Paula said. "Thanks for your cooperation, Giygas."

"You can call this part of me Sen." He glanced around at the glowing water. "Paula's pretty smart, Ness. She figured out that because your Magicant was between dimensions, we could all meet here."

"Probably shouldn't do this every night, since it will interfere with regular sleep," Paula said. "But it's to have the option whenever we want to catch up with each other. And this time, there's something I needed to show you."

"Will I still forget everything?" Ness said.

"Not that you have Giygas' power now," Sen said. "Oh, and I'm not the person you fear the most anymore. I'm just appearing this way to be familiar."

Ness glanced at Lucas body floating on the water, eyes shut.

"Don't worry, that's normal," Paula said. "You were floating there for a while as well. Now, bear with me for a sec…"

Paula pressed her hands together. Wisps of darkness flowed off her body, the shadow energy somehow bright enough that Ness was forced to cover his eyes. When the darkness faded, Ness looked up to see two people standing where one had been before. The first person was Paula.

The other was Jeff.

Ness froze. Jeff chuckled and adjusted his glasses.

"Shouldn't have doubted you, Paula," Jeff said. "In another life, you would make a great inventor."

"Is that…" Ness reached out towards Jeff. "Are you real?"

"Not alive, but definitely real." Jeff waded closer to Ness. "It's so good to see your eyes with my own again."

"Lost spirits sometimes wander the PSI world," Sen said. "Paula was able to bring him over from his robot form to this sanctuary inside your mind. If you want to let him rest here, he'll stay for as long as he likes."

Jeff nodded. "I'll want to move on eventually, of course. But this place seems nice enough that I might as well stick around for at least a couple more years. If you let me, that is."

"Of course you can stay here," Ness said. "We're going to catch up even if it takes years to go through all the details."

Ness ran towards Jeff, splashing through the shallow water. He nearly tripped as he made his final steps, and Jeff had to catch him. Ness looked at Jeff and beamed. The grip of Jeff's hands on his shoulders felt so real.

"Did you figure out what your strongest weapon was, Ness?" Jeff said.

"I did, and you were wrong. My heart on its own is weak. It took multiple hearts connected together to accomplish what I needed to."

Jeff threw out a wide shrug in mock surrender. "Objection noted."

"So I guess," Ness said, "That it's good how we're all in this together."

Ness looked from Jeff to Paula, Paula to Sen, Sen to Lucas, and then from Lucas up to the sky that was looking down upon all of them. Perhaps Ness' first adventure taught him the wrong lesson. Perhaps it didn't take the will of everyone praying to vanquish evil.

Because right now, being here with friends was enough.

All right! That's all I've got. Thank you so much for reading all the way through and have a wonderful day. :D