Baccano! does not belong to me.

The treatment's not working. Ennis didn't expect that it would.

In this age of photo ids and social networking and well-kept digital records, it's gotten harder and harder to hide the fact that they never age. But while it's difficult for all of them, it's hardest to hide it with Czes. The rest of them can get by for ten to twenty years before mortals start getting too suspicious, but with Czes…kids his age grow fast. Or at least they should. Schools and other parents and everyone they run into notice it quickly. And knowing what Ennis does about his past, she's determined that he's the last one of them that should be taken in and picked over and prodded by researchers who only mean well.

They couldn't not try, having thought of it. But Ennis only really hoped.

Some of them have tried plastic surgery to alter their identities, and it never takes. As Ennis saw it, this would be no different. Firo convinced himself otherwise.

"It's just hormones, right? We're not cutting him up or anything. There's nothing to heal from. It's just a little nudge in the natural direction, that's all."

But it's not, and the growth hormones aren't taking, and on his 314th birthday Czeslaw Meyer is still stubbornly ten years old and just shy of four feet tall.

Firo is terribly disappointed and tries to comfort the boy, much to the boy's obvious discomfort. Since learning that Firo had grown up with Claire, it's taken him decades to really trust him at all.

"It's ok, Firo. Look, I've still got the Internet. They haven't figured out a way to tell my age there yet," Czes says, hiding his own disappointment in a pile of well-practiced nonchalance, and Ennis rescues him by shouting out of the kitchen for him to come dry dishes for her.

Later she catches him in the bathroom staring at his reflection so hard it hurts, and she hugs him and lets him cry into her shoulder because there's really nothing else they can do except move again.