The Consequences of Turning Green (CC/Teen) Complete 6-12

[ultimatepickupline]

Sternbetrachter-Well thank you! That was a really hard chapter to write, because the dynamic between them was hard to pin down.
GLCW2-well I gotta say that there was an idea I was playing with at one time to include the dupes, where Khivar was going to round them up to help take down Max, Isabel, Michael, and Tess, but I decided that I wouldn't be able to write the dupes well enough, or devote enough time to them, to actually include them. So no there aren't any dupes in existance in this story, and therefore Khivar will not be going after Ava once he finds out that Tess isn't the one that's pregnant.
katydid-Yes, I think we all hope that Thehlec gets out quickly. The poor boy here, putting his life on the line for people he doesn't even know. But I think we're quite thankful for that aren't we? But wait till you read this chapter. Then you'll really want Thehlec to get out. NOW!
orphyfets-ok so you like to see Liz and Isabel together? Well thanks then! As for how Isabel is about Alex, yes I have to admit I'm quite fond of their relationship as well.
Dream Weaver-ok... so how soon do you want me to come back with the part after this one?
bluebballjumper-hey long time no see huh? (quite literally) You're right by the way, the whole time travel thing is more than a little tricky. If I think about it too much, my head starts to hurt! But there is a plan! *evil laugh*
Flamehair-thanks, I kind of like the Liz/Isabel friendship
Redrumm-Yeah the whole not realizing some of the fics you read have been updated without RF letting you know? That happens to me a lot. Kind of stinks doesn't it? But don't worry about it. I just gladly welcome you back. As for powers, the way I see it, everyone can do the same things, to a certain extent, but some are better than others. It's like any other skill you can think of. You know everyone has the ability to cook, but some can do that better than others. Everyone has the ability to read, but again some can do that better than others, and so on and so forth. If you want to get more of an idea, I did write a paragraph to that effect in Chapter 9, if you want to go look it up again. Oh and btw, I update every Monday with this fic, so if you stop getting the notices again, you know when I update.

So for anyone that's interested, I'm planning on posting a new fic, that's just a one parter on Friday, December 1. Please check it out, it's a Christmas fic.

And now we continue with the show...

Chapter 30

“Do you know what we’re doing here?” Amanda asked her brother as she climbed out of the black sports car.

“Not really. I just know Mom and Dad called me up yesterday and asked me to pick you up and bring you here.” Caleb looked out across the ghost town. At one point in time it had probably been really busy, if the four saloons were any indication. But now it just seemed to be a dusty place that was getting ready to make him sneeze endlessly.

“Yeah, they called me to tell me to be ready to leave with you at 7AM. What were they thinking asking me to get ready before the sun even came up? Don’t they know I don’t even get off work until two?” Amanda happened to be paying her way through college by working as a waitress in a bar, so she had become nocturnal of late. Actually the whole thing wasn’t that bad of an idea since it meant she was out of the sun, which was great for her sensitive skin. But if anything ever came up at a normal time of the day she had a difficult time not sleeping through whatever it was.

Caleb glanced at his sister knowing that she was basically killing herself throwing herself into school and work. He suspected that it was a result of her trying to prove to the world that she was just like everyone else. He used to do the same thing, but then he had found his fiancé. Rose made him feel like he was more valuable than life itself. He couldn’t wait to finally marry her in just two months. Of course he did still need to tell her about his heritage. He refused to marry her without telling her at all, but he was planning on telling her tonight. He was a little worried because he had never told anyone before, but he had a feeling she might already know something. So it might be fine. Hopefully.

Caleb finally spotted his parents over Amanda’s head. They were second generation antarian immigrants. They came from a time when all the skins still lived in communities and prepared for the time when they might be called upon to go back to Antar. But as his parents’ generation grew up, the children started becoming humanly educated and moved away. So while both Joe and Susan Borgen had been expected to marry other skin children and raise their own children in anatarian ways, Caleb and Amanda were no longer expected to keep human contact limited. They were free to marry whomever they wanted as long as they promise to train their children and bring their chosen spouses in to meet the other skins for a bit of evaluation.

“Mom! Dad! Over here!” Caleb waved his hands over his head and saw the second they realized where he was. Amanda turned around and almost lost her sunbonnet when her father immediately embraced her. Caleb hugged their mother first and then they switched and the women hugged while the men gave each other a friendly pat on the back.

“So why are we here? And why so early?” Amanda asked.

Susan and Joe shared a glance that left their children a little anxious. Susan was the one decided to have to break the news. “We’ve been called in today to pay our debt.” She didn’t need to say anything else because they all knew what that meant. It meant that they might have to stop living their normal human lives and start living the life humans always thought aliens were suppose to live. The one where the aliens took over earth. Or something like that. Susan and Joe’s parents had only been allowed to leave Antar by promising that they would pay that debt, and now it was time for their children and grandchildren to pay it.

“What?! Mom no! You said that I should live my life the way I wanted it to be! You said the debt had been forgotten! You said! You said...” Amanda felt her whole world come crumbling down around her. When she was little she had always felt different from other kids, and she was worried that her heritage would set her apart in a way she didn’t want to deal with. Then her mother had reassured her that she could still live her life. She may have still felt like she had something to prove, but she worked hard and she was getting ready to graduate from college next year. She had plans that would now all be completely negated just because of who she was. It wasn’t fair. She had never wanted to be normal any more than she did at this moment. But she didn’t have a choice. Her future had been decided for her. Amanda started to feel tears come to her eyes, and she gave her mother a pleading look. But all she got was a teary-eyed look back.

“I know. I know honey. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Susan didn’t want this for her children at all. She didn’t want it for herself either, but she had grown up in the antarian community. She knew her place, and she had been trained for it. But she had raised her children outside of this world. This wasn’t supposed to be their destiny.

Caleb didn’t want to think about anything. If this turned out to be exactly what his parents said it was, then his dreams of marrying Rose and sharing the rest of his life with her were most likely no longer possible, because while he was pretty sure she would have accepted him being different, how could she accept that her husband’s species were most likely going to try to take over the planet? Yep, it was better just to not think about it.

The small family stood in a circle looking each other in the eyes and silently decided to go to the meeting place now. All deferred to Joe as he turned and headed to the center of the ghost town then turned right and started into the vast desert. It wasn’t long before they saw all the others gathering too. There were probably 150 skins in total, and they were all in one place for the first time ever. Everyone started talking to one another contemplating who exactly who would be coming to meet them and what their tasks would be, but Joe, Susan, Caleb, and Amanda remained silent in the sea of murmurs.

*****

Khivar looked out at the skins and considered the possibilities. With this many people he should have no problem overcoming Zan and his pathetic family. Not that Khivar even needed all this back up, but it would be nice to see the look of fear on Zan’s face. That was one thing he had missed relishing the first time around due to the nature of the “surprise” murder.

After Khivar had spent a few minutes observing, he smiled and dropped the mass mind-warp. When the people in front of him saw his sudden appearance and were startled into silence, Khivar’s smile turned smug. He would never get tired of the fear and devotion he inspired in others. To prove he had even more power Khivar remained both motionless and soundless for a few more minutes before he addressed the crowd. “Thank you all for coming today. I wish we could have met sooner, but it seems that our last couple of efforts at communication have been thwarted by someone on the ship. Rest assured that there is a current ongoing investigation to find the culprit. He will be found and punished accordingly shortly.” Khivar paused to let what he said sink in and to take a long, pointed look at all the workers on the ship.

Thehlec felt his stomach flip-flop. He thought he had been so careful. How could he continue to hide himself now? Surely he would be found soon, there were only two people in charge of the communication devises, and Soirafen must have been the one to report the discrepancy. In fact, Thehlec actually wondered why he wasn’t already being punished. As Khivar was speaking, he had felt all the blood drain out of his body. At least that was what it had seemed like. He wasn’t entirely sure he would be able to move anytime soon. So when Khivar had turned to look at everyone he had no trouble staying still and not fidgeting, but it have taken everything in him to keep a normal expression on his face. If it weren’t for the powers he had been working on, which he used to push power into his face and make it look like a normal skin tone, Thehlec was sure that Khivar would have known immediately who the culprit was.

Khivar didn’t see anyone look immediately guilty, so he turned back to the crowd positive that the guilty party would be found regardless. “Unfortunately that means that you need to work faster and harder. Six months ago we received a transmission indicating that the former Queen had conceived an heir. I’m sure that by now that was been mad exceedingly obvious through your observations. But that is not entirely the point. We believe that the queen is about to give birth, which cannot happen without our presence. You need to take us to Zan, Ava, Vilondra, and Rath immediately so that we can verify that the baby born is indeed the heir to the throne, and we can begin to bring the Royal Four and the heir back to Antar.” Khivar stopped and waited for someone to come forward and tell him the location of the royal four or volunteer to take him there. But after waiting for a few minutes and receiving nothing but whispers in the crowd, Khivar started to feel his anger rise at not being catered to. “Will someone give me the location of the Royal Four?” Khivar’s request was met with nothing but whispers in the crowd. The skins had never been contacted before, so the hadn’t looked for the Royal Four. They didn’t even know the Royal Four was apparently on earth. “Who’s in charge here?” Khivar waited a bit while once again he got no answer, then finally one man in the crowd came forward to talk.

“I’m sorry Lord Khivar, but we don’t really live as a unit anymore, so we don’t have a leader. However, I am the one that carries the communication device. My name is Joe Borgen.” Joe felt a little awkward not knowing what to do. If he were meeting a fellow American he would offer his hand, but this was the ruler of Antar, and he couldn’t remember the proper protocol.

Khivar had never been known for his patience, and he was just about to the end of it. He couldn’t care less about this man’s introduction; he just wanted to get his answers. Now. “Where are the Royal Four?” Khivar barked.

Joe felt the urgent need to gulp, but didn’t want to show any sign of fear, so he held it back. “We don’t know sir. We never received a message about finding them.” Joe’s fear multiplied by tenfold as soon as he saw Khivar’s reaction.

“What?!” Kivar roared. “We’ve been sending messages for months, and getting replies, yet you never looked for the Royal Four?!” Khivar didn’t even wait for a response, before he raised his hand and sent a deadly blast of energy to Joe’s stomach, killing him instantly. The crowd gasped, and the Borgen family immediately went into shock, but all Khivar did was lower his voice to a tone that would paralyze anyone with fear and say “Make no mistake. You have no choice to follow my orders past, present, and future, and for this your entire clan will be punished. Guards, go get ten men and bring them here.”

The soldiers went out into the crowd and randomly chose one skin each. Two of the skins chosen were elderly, first generation skins. Their skin was starting to peel from the desert sun, and they had long ago become feeble. Four of the men chosen were middle-aged with teenagers of their own. Two were in their twenties and just beginning to start their families, and the last two men were really only boys by earth’s standards; they looked like they must have only been fourteen or fifteen. The soldiers brought all ten up to the platform and tied their hands behind their backs.

“Now. The death of these men will be on your heads, for not following orders.” Khivar placed his hand on the first elderly man’s head. “Don’t bother trying to fight back. Any abilities you have left are going to be taken away with a special device we designed on the way here. Soirafen!” Khivar glanced over the skin’s left shoulder, and briefly made eye contact with the antarian behind him.

Soirafen quickly took the cue and disabled everybody’s powers within a 5 mile radius with the exception of Khivar by just twisting the device in his hand. The design of it was brilliant if he did say so himself. It had been designed in such a way to short-circuit the powers of anyone in the area with out a certain power signature. The power signature it was currently set to was Khivar’s.

Khivar started with the first man, pushing power into his brain directly where the brain registered pain. The elderly man’s brain quickly went into overload and with a grimace of pain on his face, the man melted to the ground. Meanwhile his wife, children, grandchildren, son-in-laws, daughter-in-laws, and close friends were screaming that Khivar make it stop. Unfortunately, Khivar had never been one to be deterred from carrying out punishment, so one by one the ten men were slaughtered. The entire crowd started mourning for their husbands, fathers, brothers, grandfathers, boyfriends, sons, and friends. And as the mourning continued, the chaos started. Men left in the crowd tried to rush at Khivar with hopes of somehow taking him down, but Khivar’s soldiers weren’t the best on Antar for nothing. There was no way they would let anyone kill Lord Khivar. So as the men rushed, the soldiers slaughtered even more people. Soon the ten men on the stage along with twenty other men in front of the stage were all dead. Khivar remained standing completely unfazed and just watched.

Thehlec felt like he was going to be sick. He had never seen so much destruction. He had been raised in a poor part of town where people were killed all the time, but never had it been so bad as this. Never had he heard of a mass killing practically ordered by a king. If he didn’t get out of there soon he was going to loose his lunch. Especially if he thought about the fact that, in a way this was all his fault for not really sending the messages he was suppose to send. But Thehlec couldn’t leave for fear that Khivar might realize that he was half the reason for the miscommunication.

So Thehlec stayed and watched as guards started rounding up the people and attacking even the innocent people who were just crying. He watched as Khivar gave the order for the guards to not come back with a single skin left alive. He watched as skins fought harder and managed to kill a few of the soldiers only to be killed themselves. And he watched as the soldiers came back, drenched in blood without a single skin living and their own number decreased by half.

[ultimatepickupline]

Hey guys! I'm back! Thanks for patiently waiting an extra day, and thanks for all the feedback!

Dream Weaver-Yep that Khivar is indeed an evil one. But really in a story like this I think our villians should be huh?
Redrumm-Yeah Thehlec really does need to get away. But it's not going to happen yet. And btw I'm thinking more along the lines of Thehlec needs to tell them what's going on, because they have no clue! Not that I'm saying that's going to happen.
thetvgeneral-thanks for the feedback
GLCW2-well I hate to say this, but I'm glad the part invoked angry thoughts. That's kind of what it was suppose to do. So mission accomplished.
Sunshine6258-You hope Khivar chokes on his own tongue? That one made me chuckle a bit. I'm sure the Royal Four appreciates your support as well.
orphyfets-well personally I'm seeing the end of Khivar as very difficult. But that's all I'm going to say.
bluebballjumper-yeah all the skins are dead now. They're all gone. So at least Khivar is left alone with his five soldiers, Thehlec, Nicolas, and Soirafen.
Flamehair-No worries. Someone will eventually stop him. Just not before a whole buch of crap happens first.
SarahWhitman-Your rambles to at least half make sense. Good job you picked up on my wording with everything here. I believe everything will be cleared up in my story later, about the time when Khivar realizes there are five people with powers not four.
katydid-Good idea! Thehlec could start a rebellion! I actually didn't think about that one, because I kind of see Thehlec as a like a double agent. So he's going to continue to try to be sneaky. Sorry about that. But I promise that everything will work out in the end.

And now stay tuned to find out who our new visitor is!


Chapter 31

The entire group was sitting in the Crashdown trying to be their normal selves by ordering food, talking, and generally acting like nothing was unusual with any of them. Not that there really was anything wrong with them per se. But it was always kind of weird to acknowledge Liz’s pregnancy, so for the most part, they ignored it. The current set up of the group made it that much weirder too. All of the couples were sitting together, which somehow meant that Max and Liz had to sit together too. Supposedly there was no other way for them to all fit the way they wanted otherwise. But Liz had the sneaking suspicion that Isabel and Maria may be conspiring to at least get Max and Liz near one another any way possible. In a way, being by Max was the weirdest, most awkward thing ever. But Liz had to admit that that was mostly her fault. It seemed that Max had no problem whatsoever with Liz being pregnant. And that was what was weird about it.

Suddenly a thought occurred to Liz that she didn’t exactly approve of and she narrowed her eyes at Isabel on the other end on the table. Isabel didn’t have anything to do with Max’s ease around her did she? Well Liz would just have to make sure that Isabel hadn’t said anything. Of course she would have to wait for a more appropriate time to ask later.

Max felt a little awkward. Here he was sitting next to his ex-girlfriend, whom he was still in love with, and she was pregnant with someone else’s baby. He was trying really hard for it not to bother him, because like Michael had said, it wasn’t like he and Liz had been together at the time. But the thing was that this just proved how much he didn’t even know Liz, because his Liz would have never gone and gotten pregnant as a high-schooler. And if it did by some chance happen to his Liz, she would at least know who the father was. But this Liz Parker had indeed become a pregnant teen from an unknown father. Of course the thing that made everything really weird was that Max felt an uncontrollable urge to be around Liz and help take care of her anyway. So he found himself being the one to help her up out of chairs, and getting her water when she needed it, and urging her to rest when she seemed to be pushing herself too hard. Max would have to be completely oblivious not to notice that he was starting to act as if it were his responsibility to take care of Liz. And he was also starting to notice that he was the only one Liz allowed to help her. Whenever Maria or Alex tried to help, she would launch into at least a half-hearted tirade about being able to take care of herself, and when Isabel ever tried to make a small attempt to help, Liz would just give her a brief glance, and Isabel would back off. That whole thing was actually weird too, but it was odd that Isabel would offer her help to someone who had hurt him so badly, and it was even odder that Isabel would actually back off from giving the help after just a look. Needless to say, Max had no idea what was going on there. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that whenever Max tried to help Liz, Liz would just have a bit of a pained look for about half a second before she hid any emotion whatsoever and then relented. Sometimes she would even give Max an almost miniscule scowl followed up with a soft smile. So yes the whole thing was a bit awkward and weird, but Max would continue if only for Liz’s appreciation afterward.

Liz was still contemplating ways to get Isabel ‘s attention when her own attention was distracted to the ringing of the bell above the door of the Crashdown. Liz took a brief look at the door and began to refocus her attention on Isabel, only to quickly bring her gaze back to the door. Liz was so excited to see the girl standing there, that without even thinking about it, she started to try to get out of her chair. This of course was quite difficult to do being so close to her due date, so the entire table’s attention was brought to her, and Max immediately stood up to help Liz. Meanwhile Liz got frustrated enough that she just yelled across the diner to the girl who was looking around. “Serena!”

Serena was taking in the surroundings of what had to be one of the cheesiest diners she had ever seen when she heard her name being called. She quickly focused her head in the direction of the voice and smiled when she saw Liz being helped to her feet by the brunette guy next to her. Serena immediately made her way over to Liz and hugged her as soon as she was able to. “Oh my goodness Liz! Look at you!”

“Serena, what are you doing here?!” Liz and Serena’s exclamations were lapped over top of each other, so that the others at the table could barely even tell what was said, which made Liz let out a small laugh before replying to Serena. “Yeah, I’m getting pretty big here.”

“But she’s the only one who can say that! If we even accidentally let a comment like that out we’re not sure we’ll live to see another day!” Maria called from the other end of the table.

Liz rolled her eyes. “I am so not that bad.”

Serena laughed as she made her way around the table. “Yeah, I’m sure Liz. Hey Maria.” Serena gave Maria a hug then looked to her side at the guy with messy hair next to Maria. “You must be Michael.” Serena said while offering her hand, “I’m Serena.”

Michael just looked at Serena’s hand like he thought Serena might have leprosy or something. He had never been very trusting, and he definitely did not like some stranger just coming into the Crashdown and already knowing him. Sure the stranger knew Liz and Maria, but that didn’t mean it was okay. So it wasn’t until Maria slapped him that Michael even grunted and grudgingly gave up his hand.

Serena just smiled at Michael’s response. Maria had told her about Michael’s trust problems, and considering Serena’s last boyfriend had been pretty similar, she completely understood. Serena then turned her head and nodded at Alex. “Hey,” Alex smiled and nodded back, and Serena moved on to the girl with long blond hair sitting next to him. “And you would be Isabel right?”

Isabel took Serena’s hand without hesitation, but it didn’t mean she didn’t also have her reservations about this Serena-girl with dark red hair. Sure it seemed that Liz, Maria, and Alex all knew her, and Isabel truly did trust Liz and undoubtedly trusted Alex. But that didn’t mean she should be at least a little cautious anyway.

Serena made her way back over to Liz, hugged her one more time, then encouraged her to sit, and turned her attention to the guy next to her. Serena had already identified two of the guys, so this one must be one of Liz’s ex’s. Though why he was the helping Liz in and out of her seat, was a little elusive. Serena held her hand out again. “Kyle I assume?”

Max was getting ready to hold his hand back out to Serena, when she called him by the wrong name and he felt his stomach drop. Liz must have told Serena all about Kyle, but Max was apparently not important enough to mention. Luckily Max wasn’t really required to respond, because the real Kyle interrupted.

“Actually I would be Kyle.” Kyle called from Serena’s side.

“Oh I’m sorry,” Serena smiled and then took Kyle’s hand, while giving Liz a questioning look. Serena didn’t get any answers though because the curly-haired blond sitting next to Kyle interrupted with her own introduction.

“And I’m Tess!” Tess shook Serena’s hand with a big smile. Tess saw the look on Max’s face when Serena called him by the wrong name, and Tess may not have really spent a lot of time with Max, but she still kind of considered herself a friend, so she tried to divert attention from Max while he collected himself. “I’m Kyle’s girlfriend.”

“Oh! Um…nice to meet you.” Serena was a little embarrassed by the mix-up and more than a little confused by this. Hadn’t Liz said that Tess was the ex-girlfriend of Max’s who wanted him back? So what was Tess doing with Kyle now? And who was the guy sitting next to Liz? Well she might as well find out now. So Serena turned her attention back to the guy from before and held her hand out one more time. “So who are you then?”

Max had now had time to deal with this. But that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt a little that Serena didn’t even have a clue as to who he was. “Max.”

“Ok. Hi Max, you’ve probably heard that I’m Serena.”

“Yeah I think I did.” Max released Serena’s hand, and didn’t fail to notice the pointed, questioning look Serena gave Liz, which Liz ignored. He wondered what that meant.

“So Serena why are you here?” Maria had heard Liz ask Serena that earlier, and she figured the answer might provide a decent distraction from the Max thing.

Liz immediately realized what Maria was trying to do and silently thanked her. “Yeah why don’t you pull up a chair and tell us?”

Serena didn’t hesitate to grab a chair from a neighboring table and place it at the end of the table between Liz and Kyle. “Well Mom recently decided that New York was too cold, and she wanted to move someplace sunnier. So she and Dad bought a house in California. They’re moving out there now, and I decided to take a little detour while driving the convertible there and visit my good friend Liz for a bit.”

“So basically you’re trying to take as long as possible and spend as much money as you can while following your parents’ orders?” Liz said as soon as Serena finished.

“Pretty much. Anyone want to go shopping this week?” Serena asked and Liz laughed.

“Hey you want to get me a week’s supply of baby stuff? That might set you back a bit.” Liz joked.

“Yeah sure, just point me to the most expensive store!” Serena was getting ready to ask Liz if she had heard from Eileen when Isabel interrupted.

“So you two know each other from where?”

“Oh sorry,” Liz apologized. “So guys this is Serena, one of my best friends at Winnaman. Maria and Alex already met her when they visited for spring break.”

Serena explained a little further, “Yeah, and I knew all your names from Liz’s stories. Though Liz wasn’t too forthcoming with them.” Serena teased.

“Well you wouldn’t have been either if you were the new girl from small town Roswell, New Mexico, and you were meeting your very first person with dark purple hair!”

“What can I say? I like to make a statement. Did I tell you I was going to get a tattoo?”

“No, did you?”

“Of course. Check this out.” Serena lifted her now dark ruby red hair, and turned around in her seat. Liz shook her head as soon as she saw the bar code tattoo at the base of Serena’s neck.

“Serena what the heck were you thinking getting that?”

“What? You don’t like it?” Serena gave a fake pout to Liz as she turned back in her chair and shrugged. “I thought it was perfect. You know the idea that we’re really just all the same in the grand scheme of things.”

“You know you’re weird right?” Liz seemed to be saying that in relation to Serena just about everyday sometimes.

“I prefer to think of it as one of my better qualities.”

Liz couldn’t help but just shake her head and smile. “So what did your parents think of it?”

“Oh they haven’t noticed yet. You know I’ve only had it three weeks, so I figure they have another month to actually realize it’s there.”

Liz and Serena continued to banter back and forth, and gradually the rest of the table joined in. It was weird but Serena immediately seemed to fit in with everybody, and nearly everyone felt kind of drawn to her. It was something Liz could have almost predicted because it always seemed like everyone liked Serena, but Liz was a little surprised that even this group let her in, what with their high aversion to new members and all. Of course Isabel had resolved to ask Liz about Serena at the next training session, Michael was already plotting ways of going through her stuff, and Tess was thinking of revealing questions to ask her later, but the rest liked Serena and immediately wanted to trust her. Max was almost appalled by how much this proved he still trusted Liz even after she broke his heart then stomped on it, but he did trust Serena, because he trusted Liz. Then Maria, Alex, and Kyle figured that anyone Liz liked was probably okay. Of course there was the fact that Maria and Alex had already met her before. They had already gotten their chance to find out what kind of person she was. Okay so really it was that the humans liked Serena, and the aliens liked her, but had minor reservations. But still, that was a surprising acceptance rate for a complete stranger from such a secretive group.

[ultimatepickupline]

Okay I have a couple questions for everyone so feel free to answer them *hint hint, nudge nudge*.
1) Can everyone read my A/N when it's in orange like this?
2) As it now stands, this fic is due to be updated on Christmas Day. Now that's not the next update, it's just one in the future. If I am not able to update on Christmas, would you as a reader prefer to get the update on Christmas Eve or the day after Christmas? Because I'll take your comments into consideration.

Now moving on to feedback. As always, thanks everybody for giving feedback.

TrudyGill23-It seems a lot of people like that Max feels the need to help Liz. Glad you enjoyed it!
Orphyfets-Yes I'm happy Serena is there too, because I like writing the original characters, but I have to admit, that it does make things a little trickier to keep track of.
Sternbetrachter-Thank you
GLCW2-Yay! You are the first person to quote my story back to me. I've been waiting for that. As for Max knowing the truth by a certain time, I make no promises.
Dream Weaver-Yes Max's isolation is very sad, but he won't keep himself isolated obviously, he still keeps himself involved. And, btw, I did like finding new stories, so it was a pleasure to read your fic.
Emz80m-Yes but the question is, will Max get the answers even if he does keep asking them?
Flamehair- Thanks
katydid-Now that would be interesting to see, but unfortunately I have another scene in my head that I want to write out. I just hope I'm not asking too much of Isabel for her to keep the secret, cause right now I'm having problems writing a scene because of it!
izzyandkyle-yes it was unfortunate that Serena made that mistake. I didn't know that was going to happen. But yes, I'm thinking that Max feels a certain connetion to the baby even though he doesn't know anything. Just wait until Alexa is born and he sees her for the first time!
PML-I do believe that it is interesting that Liz only allows Max to help her. I see it as a side effect of her guilt. Because if he is going to so nice as to offer help when he thinks she slept with multiple partners, than how can she honestly refuse that help?
Roswelllostcause-No prob.

I also wanted to let you all know that I have posted a short Christmas story on the AU w/out aliens board. It's called Glass Snowflakes, and you can access it through my author's page, which you can access through my signature. Thanks in advance to anyone who reads it!

And now back to the show...

Chapter 32

Thehlec stood across the street from a restaurant called the Crashdown. It was a little ridiculous looking with a big round circular structure sticking out from it. Apparently, this is what humans though a spaceship would look like. It would be almost laughable if it weren’t for the fact that it was indeed very similar to what was now considered to be ancient technology. Of course there was something very ironic about the fact that while Lord Khivar had had no knowledge of the fact that there had been a ship sent to earth and it had crashed with the pods of the cloned Royal Four, this supposedly inferior race had at least known alien life had crashed on their planet over fifty years ago. Of course they had no idea what the significance of that crash meant, but it was still somewhat funny to think about, which reminded Thehlec of something. He desperately needed to find the Royal Four now.

Since the ship landed nearly a week ago, Khivar had been completely insane. Suddenly, he had no idea where the Royal Four were, and he had nowhere near the man power he had once had. He had come expecting the skins to already know Zan’s location, and if they didn’t, he planned to make them pay for that, but still leave enough skins to have an abundance of people searching for Zan and his heir. But Khivar wasn’t thinking about that when he sanctioned what Thehlec referred to as the skin massacre. So Khivar had spent the last four days making sure no one slept or ate until there were at least some major leads. Thehlec was now completely starving and exhausted. He had tapped all of his resources in the last few days, and he was somewhat surprised he was even able to keep going, especially considering what had happened three days ago. Thehlec couldn’t even think about it without quivering in his boots.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
“I can’t believe what happened out in the desert. Can you Thehlec?” Soirafen waited for a reply but didn’t get one, so he continued, “I mean I never really thought about whether or not Khivar should be king, and I figured, hey you gotta take what you get. Especially with the disappearance of our powers, you know?”

Thehlec didn’t really understand what was going on, but he knew it was something. This wasn’t the way Soirafen normally talked, and Thehlec was a little worried of what that could mean. For one thing, Soirafen was suddenly kind of bad-mouthing Khivar, something he would never do before. But even his normal speech was off. It was like Soirafen was purposefully tying to use chummy language to become all buddy-buddy with Thehlec, and considering Khivar’s speech on the platform before the massacre, Thehlec was becoming a little suspicious. So Thehlec remained quiet and hoped that Soirafen would just stop.

“I almost wish there were someone to take over for Khivar. Nicolas might be a good choice you know? But then again he has been under Khivar this whole time. He might not able to get out from under Khivar’s influence. What do you think?” Soirafen waited for Thehlec’s response, but he wasn’t getting anything but an occasional blank look. Soirafen felt his anger and nervousness start to simmer. He had to get Thehlec to admit his part in messing with the communication devices. Well he didn’t have to of course, but it would be better to know for sure what happened so that he could tell Khivar. It was kind of a shame really Soirafen had actually liked Thehlec. Thehlec was like a prodigy with his understanding of technology. He could do more with it and understand why things worked better than most of the veterans of Soirafen’s group on Antar. But Soirafen was not about to take the blame for the failure of contacting the skins. That blame would be placed solely on Thehlec one way or another. Unfortunately for Soirafen, Thehlec wasn’t responding to anything, and Soirafen didn’t have the patience to wait. So he decided to just come right out with it. Good thing Soirafen brought something to back himself up just in case. Soirafen got the weapon he had liberated from one of the dead guards and raised it up to aim at the back of Thehlec’s head. He hadn’t used a weapon for several decades now, so he hoped he would still be able to shoot with reasonable accuracy if need be.

Thehlec suddenly felt the odd sensation of his adrenaline kicking in for no reason. The need to flee or fight was almost overpowering. He managed to get a hold of his emotions and sit still with his back toward Soirafen, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t using the skills he had acquired over the last few months to keep him completely aware of what was behind him. He knew there was a danger of some kind there; he just wasn’t sure what it was exactly until Soirafen finally made a move.

Soirafen stepped forward with his arm extended and brought the weapon to the base of Thehlec’s skull. With such close proximity, there would be no chance of missing or of making Thehlec think that he still had an opportunity to escape. As soon as Soirafen saw and felt Thehlec tense he started his explanation, “I know you had something to do with the skins not getting their messages. How did you do it?”

Thehlec had no idea how to get out of this, but he still tried to deny it. “Why do you think I did it? How do I know you’re not the one who did it?”

Soirafen didn’t have the patience for this. He just wanted answers, “Don’t try to get out of this. You and I were the only ones with access to the communication devices, and I know I didn’t do it. What I want to know is how you did.”

“Well you taught me everything I know. So how would I be able to do something you can’t figure out?”

Soirafen’s anger was rising. All he needed was for Thehlec to admit how he manipulated the communication device and he could take him to Khivar. Soirafen was getting so frustrated though that he was starting to shake. “Obviously you figured out something else. SO TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!!”

Thehlec could feel the weapon shaking against the back of his neck, and if he wasn’t feeling fear before, he definitely was now. A weapon was never safe in any hands, but put it in shaking hands and it was a thousand times more dangerous. But the weird thing was that he was also calm at the same time. Somehow he knew that he would make it out of this. Thehlec took a slow deep breath and used the one thing he hoped might put him at an advantage. He had been working on his powers ever since he discovered he might possibly have them six months ago. Thehlec concentrated on imagining the weapon behind him. Then he erased it in his mind’s eye and made it reappear in this hand. It didn’t exactly work correctly but when Thehlec heard the weapon drop to the floor, he realized that at least his objective had been accomplished: Soirafen no longer had the weapon. So he shot up to his feet and pushed Soirafen back.

Soirafen was momentarily shocked when he saw the orange light appear around the weapon he was holding, and he snapped his hands back as if he had touched a hot stove. The weapon hovered in the air for a second and then dropped to the ground. Before Soirafen could even figure out what happened, he felt himself being shoved backwards. Soirafen stumbled and then tripped on a chair behind him.

Thehlec saw Soirafen go down and wondered what he should do now. He could easily take Soirafen out, but Thehlec wasn’t a killer, and he didn’t want to kill a defenseless man. So Thehlec just stood there staring at Soirafen, and Soirafen just stared back. But Soirafen had no such qualms about killing so after about a minute he rushed toward the weapon, and stood with his right arm outstretched, calmly taking aim for Thehlec’s heart.

Thehlec knew the end of this conflict was coming as soon as he saw the end of the weapon pointed toward him once again. Time suddenly seemed to slow down as everything came into hyper-focus, and Thehlec saw the look in Soirafen’s eyes. Thehlec barely had time to think, but luckily he acted without thinking, because it was only a millisecond after Thehlec saw the look in Soirafen’s eyes, that Thehlec saw Soirafen’s finger start to close over the trigger of the gun. Then it was a millisecond after that that Thehlec saw an energy blast start to come toward him. And then all Thehlec saw was black as it was all over.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Thehlec wiped the sweet from his forehead as he remembered the end of the conflict with Soirafen. Apparently, Thehlec had lifted a black metal chair in front of him at the exact second that the bolt from Soirafen’s gun would have hit him, and instead of using the chair as a conductor and forcing the energy in him anyway, the bolt was bounced off back to Soirafen killing him instantly. Thehlec had been shook up, but he immediately went to Khivar and told him what happened. Or rather he told Khivar that he had walked in on Soirafen trying to manipulate the records to prove his innocence and Soirafen had gone crazy, saying that Khivar wasn’t fit to be king and that he was the one that was going to have the power. Then Thehlec said that Soirafen brought out a weapon and threatened Thehlec into following him. When Thehlec had refused, Soirafen had attempted to shoot him. From there on out the story was the truth.

Thehlec had been worried that Khivar wouldn’t believe his story, because really it sounded a little lame even to him. But luckily Khivar was too wrapped up in other things to notice. So instead of getting caught and being killed, Thehlec was kind of promoted to being a spy for Khivar. Khivar had randomly assigned the rest of his soldiers plus Thehlec to areas to scour and Thehlec was just hoping beyond hope that he had randomly been assigned to the correct location.

Thehlec sighed as he trudged across the street and opened the door to the Crashdown. He dragged himself to the nearest available booth that would also allow him to keep an eye on everyone and plopped down into the seat. He could barely keep his eyes open as he waited for a waitress. Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long before he saw a blond girl with two French braids and a teal uniform came over.

“My name is Maria. I’ll be your waitress for today. Can I get you anything to start with?” Maria looked the guy sitting in front of her up and down. For some reason he seemed a little out of place, but Maria couldn’t really put her finger on a specific reason for it. Maria mentally shrugged though, thinking he must just be passing through.

Thehlec didn’t know a whole lot about earth food, but he had discovered that coffee worked wonders for keeping him awake, “Just coffee for now.” He was definitely hungry, but he wasn’t sure what kind of earth food he would like, so he decided to put that decision off for a moment.

Maria nodded and turned to go get the coffee without a word. She should probably be a little more pleasant, but this guy kind of creeped her out. Why, she wasn’t exactly sure, she just knew that he did.

Thehlec barely registered that the blond had turned away from him. He was so tired that he could feel his brain shutting down on him. But a split second later when the swinging doors opened in the back and a brunette pregnant girl and a punk looking girl with burgundy hair came out, Thehlec was immediately brought to attention. First of all, Thehlec would pay more attention to any pregnant woman on the street in case it was the queen with the heir. But this particular girl happened to also project something. Thehlec wasn’t exactly sure what it was; it could be an image, a command, or just plain power, but whatever it was, Thehlec was about ninety percent sure that this was indeed the Queen. Thehlec couldn’t believe his luck and was so excited he could hardly contain it. He really wanted to go directly over to her, but before he could get up, the Maria-girl brought his coffee to him and asked him if he needed anything else. Not wanting to look suspicious and definitely wanting to stay longer, Thehlec ordered the first non-Beverage item on the menu, which happened to be a Galaxy Sub and Space Fries. Maria quickly wrote down his order and then left, letting Thehlec listen in on the conversation the potential Queen was having. Thehlec had never been more thankful for his good hearing.

Thehlec watched as his waitress moved from the pick-up window to the Queen and the punk girl. The three were just starting to talk when their own attention was brought to the swinging doors where a middle-aged couple was coming through with suitcases. “Are you sure this is okay Liz? You don’t want us to stay here?” The woman asked.

“No mom. Go have fun visiting Aunt Becky. I’m sure she’ll enjoy seeing you, and you wouldn’t want me there to slow you down anyway.”

“We don’t really feel right leaving you though Liz. What if something happens?” The man said.

“I’ll be fine Dad. Serena is going to be here for a few more days, and after that I’ll go over to Maria’s.”

“That’s right Mr. Parker. Liz will definitely be taken care of between me and Serena.”

The man gave Maria a skeptical look and the punk girl stifled a laugh. The Queen however just interrupted by turning the couple to the door and giving them a shove. “Don’t worry about me.”

The woman quickly turned around and placed her hands on the Queen’s shoulders. “But you’ll call us if anything does happen right?”

“Yes mom. You’ll be the first one I’ll call.”

“Okay. I guess I can deal with that. Bye honey.” The woman leaned over to hug the Queen above her stomach and moved out of the way to let the man give the Queen a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Thehlec watched the rest of the interaction but didn’t really pay attention. What really struck out to him was the Royal Four were obviously not going by their past name. At least the Queen wasn’t. And now the Queen was apparently going to be missing the protection of the people she called Mom and Dad. Thehlec sincerely hoped that the couple would return soon, before he had to report back to Khivar. Because there was only going to be so much he could do to keep Khivar away. Eventually Khivar would meet the Queen, and Thehlec really hoped the Royal Four had as much back up as possible.

[ultimatepickupline]

TrudyGill23-thanks, I'm glad you like it.
ArianneleighI have it all planned out...I promise
orphyfets-thanks
Emz80m-Danke
Redrumm-It's okay, missing updates happens to the rest of us. As for group interaction there's some more coming up in a couple of weeks that I think people will like, and the climax is group stuff. So you'll see more!
Dream Weaver-Remember that the girls with powers of already been feeling something coming, they just don't know what the heck it could be. How could they?
Flamehair-Grazie
katydid-Thanks for pulling for Thehlec. I really like him.
AnnViolet-I'm honored that this is one of your favorite stories. The showdown is coming, but we need a little more set-up first.
thetvgeneral-Yes I'm the same as you with the fics I read. I'm a complete addict, and it really killed me to not have my computer and the internet at my disposal whenever I wanted when I was studying abroad for the last couple of months.
Timelord31-Thank you very much. I'm glad you like it.
Sarah Whitman-That's an interesting question that I don't think is ever addressed. Unfortunately, I don't think I can share what my answer is at this time. I don't want to ruin anything.

Thanks all, and I think I'll be able to update on christmas next week, but if not, I'm going to make it the day after.

Please turn off all cell phones before the start of this reading session...


Chapter 33

Liz’s eyes snapped open and all she could hear was her own harsh breathing in the dark of the room. She was sweating and feeling somewhat disoriented by the dream that was receding from the forefront of her mind. Even though she didn’t remember what the dream was about, she could still feel the adrenaline running through her body, so it must have been bad. Liz slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position in the bed and tiredly raised her hand to turn on the lamp next to her bead. Liz then brought her feet to the side of the bed and pushed herself off, sticking her stomach out in front of her. Once she was on her feet she placed her hand on her stomach and waddled to the bathroom. “Mommy’s going to get some water okay Alexa? Please don’t make her have to go to the bathroom too soon okay?” Liz whispered. She felt Alexa’s answering kick and really hoped that meant that she might get a break tonight. But somehow Liz didn’t see that happening.

Liz went to the sink, filled up her glass of water, and brought it to her mouth. She was just starting to take a drink when she felt liquid rush down her legs. Liz froze for a second before she slowly brought the glass away from her mouth and looked down. She couldn’t see her feet at all, but there was no mistaking the iridescent clear liquid on the ground that was faintly glowing a light purple color. Liz then looked at herself in the mirror and saw the handprint on her stomach distinctly glowing through her T-shirt, and this time it was pulsing. Looks like it was definitely a good thing to get Maria to learn midwifery because there was no way this would have gone over well in a hospital.

*****

Ring…ring…ring

Maria groggily reached over and hit her alarm clock, but it didn’t turn off. She lifted her head and opened one eye only to realize that the sound wasn’t her alarm clock at all. It was the phone. Who would be calling her at five in the morning? Maria considered just letting it ring, but she didn’t want her mom to wake up, so she reached for the phone and pushed the talk button. “Mmm?”

“Maria? It’s Liz.”

“Liz?”

“I’m in labor.”

“Huh?”

“I’m in labor Maria.”

Silence

“So you need to come over here and deliver my baby.”

“Oh! Are you okay? How...uh-how far apart are your contractions?”

“I’m in pain Maria. And they’re ten minutes apart.”

“Okay stupid question. I’m on my way. I’ll call Alex in the car.”

“Great. Hurry.” Liz had to clench her teeth as the next contraction hit. She had never felt so much pain. And she was sure she never would again. Because there was absolutely no way she would ever go through this again.

Maria hung up the phone and rushed out of her bed to get hap-hazardly dressed and leave her room. She considered telling her mom she was leaving, but at this hour it might just be easier to ask for forgiveness later than to get permission now. So Maria grabbed the keys off the counter and made her way out to the car as quietly as possible. On her way over to Liz’s, Maria called Alex and woke him up. He promised he would be there as soon as possible, and Maria was just hanging up as she pulled into the Crashdown’s parking lot. As she walked around the building to climb up the ladder to Liz’s balcony, Maria felt her stomach jump. She had never been so scared in her life. She may have read as much as she could about the birthing process, and followed a midwife around for five months. But now she was responsible for bringing her best friend’s baby into the world. How was she supposed to do this herself?

*****

Max was startled awake and looked about his room. Everything looked normal. He tried to listen for an unfamiliar sound. He didn’t hear anything. He tried to remember if he had dreamed anything that would have been responsible for waking him up. He didn’t remember anything. He concentrated on feeling something different within himself. He felt nothing. By now he had listed three of his five senses and he doubted that taste or smell would help him figure out what had woken him up. All he could say for sure was that something had indeed woken him up, and when he looked over at the clock it said it was five AM. Well there was no sense in him staying up. He might as well go back to sleep. Max rolled over and was dreaming in almost record time.

*****

“This is all Max’s fault!” Liz exclaimed angrily through gritted teeth.

“I know chica. Boys are stupid,” Maria agreed. If it weren’t for Max, she wouldn’t be here right now.

“Hey! I resent that!” Alex stood up for his sex from his position behind Liz.

Liz’s contraction receded and she slumped against Alex once more. “Alex, I love you. But you’re not the one being split in half right now to give birth without drugs. You don’t get a vote.” Liz patted Alex’s cheek wearily, and laid her sweaty head back on his shoulder. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could take this, and she wasn’t even allowed to push yet!

Alex immediately saw the wisdom in maybe not exactly making any defending statements for the male gender right now. One, there is no way he would win against Liz and Maria ever, and two with the way Liz was apparently making it her personal mission to render his hand useless, he was sure that if he ticked her off too much that she might just decide that maiming him wasn’t enough, and he would kind of like to live to see eighteen.

Maria’s fears were somewhat settled now since she didn’t have time to freak out, and it was all running pretty smoothly now. But she was by no means completely comfortable with this. She was doing her best to hide her nerves, and she figured that with all the pain Liz was in right now, that she wouldn’t exactly be able to tell that her best friend was freaking out. She hoped.

“What time is it?” Liz felt like it had been ten years since she had woken up in the middle of the night and her water broke. But she knew that seeing as she could clearly see the sun out of her window, she knew it was at least still morning, and probably early morning at that.

“Maria looked over at the clock. “It’s seven.”

“Only seven?” Liz whined. Maria nodded and Liz let out a whimper. “I’ve only been in labor for a few hours, and I already can’t take anymore.” Alex and Maria were just silent staring at one another. What were they suppose to say to that? “Can one of you guys call Isabel at nine? She’ll want to be here for this.”

“Yeah sure chica.”

“And can you get rid of Serena then too?”

“You haven’t gotten rid of Serena yet?!” Alex couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How in the world were they getting away with making this much noise without bringing Serena in?

“No. Not really…I kind of knocked her out with my powers earlier, and then I made an attempt of sound proofing her room so she couldn’t hear anything. But she’s still going to get up soon.”

The look on Liz’s face at her confession told Maria that Liz was already worrying about Serena and feeling guilty, and Maria knew there was only one thing Liz was suppose to be concentrating on, and this was not it! So she quickly tried to reassure her friend. “Don’t worry Liz. I’ll take care of it.”

Liz felt relief sweep through at the thought that she wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. Besides if there was anyone who could get someone to do something for no good reason, it was Maria.

*****

“Evans Residence. This is Isabel.”

“Hey Is.”

“Alex?”

“Yeah.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, not really. Liz is in labor and she wants you here.”

Isabel was a little surprised that Liz would want her there. Sure she figured that Liz probably knew that Isabel would want ot be there for the birth of her niece, but Isabel though that Liz would think it was too weird. “Is she at her house?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“’Kay. See you soon.”

“Bye.” Isabel hung up the phone and rushed to get the keys to the jeep. Unfortunately, she quickly realized that instead of being on the counter, they must be in Max’s room. Isabel ran upstairs and knocked on Max’s door on her way to her room to grab her shoes. As soon as she picked them up, she ran straight into Max’s room. “I need the keys.” She said as she moved to sit on Max’s bed and put on her shoes.

Max groggily rolled over, wondering why his sister would be in his room at this time. “What?”

“I need the keys.” Isabel already had one shoe on and she needed Max to get the keys so she could go!

“Why are you in such a hurry? Where are you going?” Max got out of bed to pick his pants off the floor and get the keys out of the pocket.

Isabel momentarily paused while tying her second shoe. She had been in such a hurry that she forgot that this would be difficult. “I just am. I need to go see Alex.” That wasn’t exactly a lie right? Alex would be there.

Max tossed the keys to Isabel as soon as she was done tying her shoe and went back to bed. He doubted he would be able to get back to sleep right now. But he didn’t have anything else to do today. “Well, I don’t know why Alex would want to see you so early, but have fun sis.” Max mumbled on Isabel’s way out the door.

Isabel felt guilt settle in her stomach and then spread through her body. I didn’t matter that she had been keeping Liz’s secret from Max for a few weeks now. It wasn’t getting any easier. It was only getting harder. “I will,” she choked out as she gently shut Max’s door and headed out to the car.

*****

“Rise and Shine!” Maria shouted as she entered the Parkers’ guest room. When she saw the covers stir, Maria walked over and ripped them off. “Come on. Up!” She said forcefully.

Serena moaned. She never wanted to wake up in the morning, and this was no different. “Go away.”

“Oooo. Not a morning person I see. Well, too bad. Get out of bed.”

Serena opened her eyes, and gave the drill sergeant next to her a glare. Then she pushed herself up to a sitting position. “What’s going on Maria? Where’s Liz.”

“Liz is taking care of something right now. And you are going to go shopping with Tess.”

“What?! The girl who took Max away from Liz? I though you were Liz’s best friend. Why would you tell me to go shopping with Tess?”

“Because we’re all friends now, and Tess and Liz actually kind of get along. So you and Tess are going to go shopping, for Liz. I think she needs something to make her feel better.”

“And how is Tess supposed to help find something that will make Liz feel better. Does she really know her that well?”

Maria paused. She hadn’t really thought this thing out; she had just gone into Serena’s room and tried to wing it. Well when in doubt, be vague. “It doesn’t matter how well Tess knows Liz. You know Liz. Now get up and go! I’m going to keep Liz distracted here.”

“Geez, Liz said you were Bossy, but I never knew how much.”

“Yeah, well I have my moments. Now scat.” Maria then turned and left the room, calling out as she walked down the hall "Tess is waiting at the food court in the mall!" Ten minutes later Serena was out the door and gone. Maria just hoped she and Tess would find something to talk about. Tess hadn’t seemed very excited about entertaining Serena by herself when Maria had called her on the phone, so Maria really, really hoped they could keep each other occupied the whole day.

*****

“Okay. That’s it Liz. You’re doing fine.” Maria said to at least distract Liz a little bit.

“How would you know?” Liz asked testily. She loved Maria, but Maria really couldn’t tell her how she was actually doing, and now that Liz was actually in labor, she was rethinking the whole Maria-as-a-midwife thing. Liz was in pain and scared, and all she really wanted right now was her own mommy. She wasn’t ready to be someone else’s mom yet! She was only seventeen! Where did all the time go? She had months to prepare for this, but it didn’t seem like it.

Maria could see the pain Liz was in and she really didn’t know what to do. Isabel had connected to Alexa earlier, and it seemed that everything was going well according to Isabel. But she still wished there was something more she could do.

Alex sat behind Liz and let her squeeze his hand to the point where he couldn’t feel it anymore, and he really wished one of two things. Either he wished that he could do something to make this go faster and smoother for Liz, or he wished Max were here getting the crap squeezed out of his hand instead. Both were pretty appealing options right now. Alex felt Liz’s grip on his hand lessen, and he knew that she would be okay now for a few minutes. “Okay Liz, I’m going to get you more ice. Isabel you want to take my place here?” Alex moved Liz forward a bit and climbed out so Isabel could get in.

Isabel got settled behind Liz and asked to connect to Alexa again. Liz just nodded and Isabel reached forward to place her hand on Liz’s stomach. The connection came quickly, and Isabel suspected it might have something to do with her biological connection to Alex, though she wasn’t sure. Alexa seemed to be fine, and Isabel was just getting ready to close the connection with her when she was forced out of it due to the beginning of a new contraction. Isabel felt Liz grab her hand, and Isabel had to grit her teeth as Liz squeezed. No wonder Alex had wanted to leave! Who would have though that Liz was so strong? And where the heck was her brother? He should be the one losing his hand right now!

Alex returned to the room to see that Liz had started another contraction. He placed the ice on the night stand and started coaching her, “Okay, now breathe. Come on Liz. You have to breathe through the pain.”

Suddenly Liz grabbed the front of Alex’s shirt and pulled his face directly to her own. “If I weren’t breathing. I’d. BE. DEAD!!”

Alex gulped and gently pried Liz’s fingers loose from his shirt, which luckily wasn’t too hard to do because her contraction was receding and she was relaxing. “Okay Liz. My bad.”

Maria tried to muffle her laugh at the brief interaction between Alex and Liz, because she knew that Liz might not think too kindly of it. “Okay Liz, on the next contraction you can push.”

“Thank you.” Liz was more than grateful for the news. Maybe now it would go faster. She hoped.

Luckily for Liz, the rest of Alexa’s birth didn’t last long, or have any complications. Before she knew it, Maria had placed Alexa on her stomach and Isabel was cutting the umbilical cord with her powers. It occurred to Liz that at least if Alexa’s father couldn't be there to cut the umbilical cord, her aunt could. Alexa was so tiny, Liz didn’t even know how much she weighted, but it couldn’t be much. And she had only the littlest, tiny bit of brown hair around her head. Liz had known that she was going to have a baby, especially since she could connect with Alexa, but now that Alexa was actually here, everything was finally real. Alexa was perfect and Liz’s only wish was that she could share the birth of her daughter with her daughter’s father. But that wasn’t possible.

It only took a few minutes to get Alexa cleaned up, dressed, and wrapped in a blanket with the use of Isabel’s powers, and now it was time to call up Liz’s parents. They would never forgive her for not calling them right away as it was, but if she didn’t call them now, they would be beside themselves.

Liz brought Alexa to her breast to let her eat for the first time and asked Maria to call her parents for her. Maria instantly went to the other room to make the call with Alex. This was not exactly a call she was excited about making, and she wanted back up.

Isabel stayed in the room with Liz. “So how did you get your parents to go away?”

Liz looked up from watching Alexa to answer. “Well, they thought Alexa wasn’t due for another month. Plus…” Liz paused and blushed slightly, “I mindwarped them a little to get them to leave. I just couldn’t chance them knowing I was going into labor and trying to take me to the hospital.”

Isabel nodded before answering, “You’ve given up a lot because of all this haven’t you?”

Liz couldn’t help but snort in response, “Yeah, you could say that.”

Isabel didn’t know what to say to that, and neither did Liz, but they didn’t really need to say anything. The comfortable silence just seemed peaceful as Liz nursed Alexa and became completely enraptured with her daughter. After Alexa stopped nursing and fell asleep, Isabel asked to hold her, and Liz couldn’t deny the request, nor did she want to. So Liz handed Alexa to Isabel, and Isabel got to hold her niece for the first time ever. There was nothing either one of these women wouldn’t do for this child.

[ultimatepickupline]

First of all, I just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Now for a few notes on my fic. I'm sorry everybody for this next chapter, because I'm going to admit ahead of time that Max will not realize that Alexa is his. But if you think about it, how would Max know? Max has never even had sex. Does anybody remember that Virgin Father comment Maria made in chapter 27? It was a funny comment (in my own opinion), but that is essentially what Max is right now. So why would he even suspect that Alexa is really his? He wouldn't. He would just think it was kind of funny/weird that he felt a bit of a connection to Alexa, if he felt one at all. So sorry everybody. But I promise that Max will find out eventually. Just please don't hate me.

glennfan33-see above comment, but I hope you still enjoy the next chapter.
Flamehair-Here's my explanation for the labor. No one said that Max would indeed feel Liz's labor. Plus, Max slammed that connection shut a long time ago. Maybe if he hadn't, he would have felt the pain. (Plus if he had felt it, it would have messed up my storyline.)
Emz80m-we'll see, but you might be disappointed.
Timelord31-I know. I feel soooo sorry for Max too.
Sternbetrachter-Danke
Redrumm-yeah, at least if Max couldn't witness his daughter's birth, Isabel could see it. But don't count on a revelation too quick.
Dream Weaver-I think my comment above would be the correct reply to you.
izzyandkyle-I know that the last chapter left you with a lot of questions, and I really hope that this next chapter leaves you with some answers. I'm also sorry that you won't see any of the Tess/Serena shopping trip. I did considering writing a section with that, but right now we're coming up to the climax of my story, as you'll see at the end of this chapter, and it messed with the flow.
GLCW2-I can't wait tell Max finds out either.
Tanya7496-thanks, enjoy this update.

Handy Tip: popcorn butter is not good for keyboards....


Chapter 34

Liz felt exhausted. She had just had Alexa yesterday, and if that didn’t take enough out of her, now she had to take care of Alexa and prepare for her parents’ arrival. All Liz wanted to do was sleep, but she had to figure out how to take care of a newborn and how to balance staying with her daughter and doing other things, like making it look like she hadn’t perhaps given birth at home. One thing was certain though, Liz had never been more thankful for her powers. They didn’t seem as strong as they had been before, which led Liz to wonder if maybe she was drawing off of Alex’s power before, but they were still strong, and really came in handy for cleaning up, and healing herself a bit. Of course, the fact that Maria had stayed the night to help also had something to do with that, but still Liz didn’t know what she would do without her powers.

Liz looked around the room satisfied that everything looked like it was in its place, which was good, because now Liz was going to lay down and not get up for a few days. She was entirely too sore right now, despite her own healing, and Maria or Serena could just bring Alexa to her when Alexa needed to be fed or something. Like now.

Maria was holding Alexa watching her sleep when Alexa started to fuss. “Hey Alexa. Do you want your mommy? Are you hungry? I don’t think I can help you with that, but I know someone who can. Shh…Let’s go see your mommy okay?” Maria gently bounced Alexa and cooed to her as she brought Alexa to Liz’s room. Maria opened Liz’s door and saw that Liz was sitting on her bed.

“I thought she might want something to eat.” Liz said as she opened up her arms to take Alexa. “Hey Alexa. Are you hungry?” Liz started to feed Alexa and Maria went ahead and left the room.

Maria really needed to figure out when she should call her mom. She probably already should have, but she wasn’t sure what her mom’s reaction might be. So Maria was putting that particular phone call off until she absolutely had to. Maybe she would just skip it altogether and just show up at home. That might be interesting.

Maria was startled out of her thoughts by the ringing of her cell phone. She briefly considered not even checking to see who it was since she was pretty sure it was probably her mother’s hundredth call. Why Maria hadn’t just gone ahead and turned off her phone already, she really didn’t know. Maybe she would just turn it off now. Maria picked her phone up and as she did, she noticed that it actually wasn’t her mother. It was Michael. “Hello?”

“Where are you?!” Maria heard Michael bark.

“Well aren't you in a good mood.”

“Maria, where are you?” Maria could clearly hear Michael’s warning tone and decided to go ahead and answer his question.

“I’m at Liz’s.”

“You’re just at Liz’s?”

“Yeah. Where did you think I’d be?”

“I don’t know! I just know I got a call from your mom this morning demanding you come home. When I told her you weren’t here, she started panicking, saying you left in the middle of the night and hadn’t been back all day.”

“Well, I’m just at Liz’s.”

“Fine. My shift starts in two hours. I’ll see you a little before then.”

“’Fine. Bye.”

“Bye.” Michael hung up the phone a little confused. He had been really worried about Maria after hearing that she hadn’t been home in over twenty-four hours. He didn’t think he had any enemies right now. But anything was possible, and capturing the humans from the group would undoubtedly be one of the easiest ways to get the aliens to comply to any demands. Michael really would have to talk to Maria about that.

Maria turned off her phone, headed back into Liz’s room, and saw that Liz was now just holding a sleeping Alexa and looking like she could nod off herself at any second. “Hey Chica.”

Liz looked up from watching Alexa and tiredly smiled at Maria. “Hey.” Liz looked back down at Alexa before she remembered what she had wanted to ask Maria. “Do you know when my parents will be back?”

“They said they were getting the first flight out that they could. So they should be here in a few hours.” Maria watched as Liz nodded and then dropped her head back against her headboard momentarily. “Why don’t I take Alexa and you can take a nap?” Maria suggested.

Liz was more than appreciative of the offer and didn’t hesitate to accept it. “That would be great Maria. Thank you so much for everything.” Liz said while giving Alexa to Maria.

“Don’t mention it chica. You would do the same for me. Though I doubt my and Michael's love would ever cause the end of the world and make Future Spaceboy come back to me.”

Liz laughed a little, too tired to either reassure Maria about Michael or to really think about the fact that she could never be with Max again. Instead Liz just scooted down in her bed and pulled up her covers to go to sleep.

Maria took Alexa out to the family room and took care of her for a while until she heard a knock at the door. Maria carefully got up off the couch so that she wouldn’t wake Alexa and walked to the door to open it.

Michael was shocked when Maria opened the door holding a baby. He had assumed that if Liz had her baby that Maria would tell him when he talked to her. Apparently not. And wait, wasn’t Liz’s baby suppose to be due in another month? What was going on here? Was this really even Liz’s baby? “What’s that?”

Maria rolled her eyes and stepped back from the door to let Michael in. “Hello to you too Spaceboy.” Michael walked into the apartment keeping his eyes on the baby the entire time as if he were afraid that it would attack him. Maria noticed and decided to at least introduce Alexa in hopes that it would put Michael a little more at ease. “Michael, meet Liz’s daughter Alexa Marie.”

Michael looked at Alexa and made up his mind to just not dwell on it. “Do you work today?”

Maria just smiled and went to sit back down on the couch. Leave it to Michael to freak out because of a little baby and then completely ignore it as soon as he got even half of an answer. “Yeah, I have the same shift as you.” Maria hoped Serena would get back soon from getting a few things for Alexa, because Maria really didn’t want to leave Liz alone to fend for herself and Alexa. But right now Maria had to get ready for work, so she was going to have to leave anyway. “Here Michael. I’m going to go get ready for my shift.” Marie passed Alexa off to Michael beside her and stood up from the couch.

Michael held Alexa out from his body with one hand under her neck and one hand under her bottom. “Maria! What are you doing?! You can’t leave me here alone!”

Maria made her way to the door and opened it before she replied, “Don’t worry. I’m only going to be gone a few minutes. All you have to do is hold her for a bit. I think you can handle it.” Maria turned and walked out the door, but she didn’t miss the stricken expression on Michael’s face, and she couldn’t help but laugh as she made her way down to the Crashdown to get her uniform and change.

Michael looked down at the awkward position Alexa was in and quickly realized that she was about to start crying. “No no no. Don’t do that. I don’t do crying chicks.” Obviously this meant nothing to Alexa because that was when she started actually whimpering. “Come on now. You know no one likes a cry baby.” That of course just seemed to make her cry more, and within seconds Alexa was at a full-blown wail, and Michael was completely at a loss as to what to do, which is why he had never been more thankful when he heard someone knock at the door. Michael quickly shifted Alexa to one arm begging her to at least keep quieter until he could pass her off because he knew Maria would have his head if he let Alexa wake Liz up, and when Michael opened the door and saw who it was, he couldn’t help but let out a very relieved sigh.

Max stood at Liz’s door with a bunch of flowers. Isabel had told him that Liz had had her baby yesterday, and while Max thought it seemed a bit early to be sent home from the hospital, especially with Alexa being early, he figured that he probably just didn’t actually know how it worked. But he did know that he should go congratulate the new mother and bring her something, and he figured flowers were as good of a gift as any. So Max stood anxiously at the door waiting for someone to answer. But when the door swung open to reveal a flustered, but relieved Michael and a squalling baby, Max couldn’t deny that he was surprised.

“Maxwell, you’re responsible right? So you must be good with babies. Here.” Michael rushed to hand Alexa over to Max, not noticing that Max already had something in his hands. Max was forced to drop the flowers to the ground in order to take the infant at first, and he didn’t even get to say anything before Michael uttered a “gotta go” and ran down the steps, leaving Max looking at his back. Max then turned his attention back to the baby and noticed that he or she had immediately seemed to be put at ease and started to settle down. Max carefully shifted the infant to one arm so that he could bend down to pick up the flowers he had dropped, and he walked into the apartment. He figured that since Michael was the one who had been holding Liz’s kid, that there was probably no one else there except Liz, and she was probably currently occupied, but Max wanted to make sure so he laid the flowers down on the coffee table and made his way further into the apartment to Liz’s room. When he didn’t hear anything through the door, Max gently knocked and when he didn’t get a response he slowly eased the door open to see inside. He quickly saw that Liz was asleep so he shut her door and made his way back to the living room with the baby, where he sat on the couch and turned the TV on low.

In a way, Max felt a little weird sitting in Liz’s living room, holding her baby, and watching TV. But in a way, it felt right and natural. He could even almost trick himself into thinking that he felt a bit of a connection with Liz's baby. But that was ridiculous, unless maybe Liz had passed down a bit of her connection with Max to her child. Gazing down at the babe and feeling the connection however false it might be, reminded Max of things he would really rather not think about. The thing was he couldn’t forget that there had been a time when he had hoped for this. Well kind of. His dream was that he and Liz would be married and most likely have graduated from college before he was holding a baby. But he had pictured stuff like this. How weird was it to now be living this very screwed up reality?

As Max continued looking down at the sleeping infant in his arms and couldn’t help himself from talking. “Hey Little One. You know I really wish I knew your name, but Is didn’t tell me that…Do you know how special your mommy is? She’s so special that I fell in love with her in third grade without even knowing her, and I still love her…I probably always will…but I don’t think things will quite end up the way I always thought they would. Too much has happened now…Now this is a totally different topic here, but you better not dirty your diaper on me, because I don’t know how to change it, and I don’t think you want me to try.” Max had run out of things to say now, but when he heard the door open, he figured it was probably perfect timing, because he really didn’t think he would relish someone catching him pouring his heart out to Liz’s baby.

Jeff pushed the door open to see Max on the couch with his granddaughter. His first reaction was to be a bit incensed that his daughter’s ex-boyfriend got to meet his granddaughter before he did. But after a few seconds that gave way to something of a feeling of regret. The sight of Max sitting on the couch holding the baby almost seemed right, as wrong as that was. But Jeff had to admit that he would have preferred Max to be the father. At least then Liz would have had some help raising her daughter. Of course that was only if Jeff had decided not to kill Max for getting his daughter pregnant. But at least then Alexa would know for sure who her father was, even if he had been killed by her grandfather.

Max felt a little nervous sitting there holding the baby and seeing Liz’s father stare at him. He knew that he didn’t have any reason to feel guilty, but somehow he did. Max stood up to offer the baby to one of Liz’s parents as well as a somewhat timid explanation. “Um, I just came over to drop off the flowers,” Max nodded his head toward the flowers on the table in front of him, “and, uh, Maria had to work I guess, and Liz is asleep...so I guess I’m watching the baby.” Max raised his arms to indicate the infant.

By this time Nancy had stepped in behind Jeff and she had gone through the same gamut of emotions as Jeff, so she just choked out one word. “Alexa.”

Max was confused. “Excuse me?”

Nancy nodded to her granddaughter, “Alexa. Her name is Alexa Marie.”

“Oh, uh, I didn’t know.” The three stood in silence for a few seconds, and Max felt more than a little awkward just standing there. He was getting ready to hand Alexa over to Nancy and excuse himself when Liz walked in.

Liz’s heart clenched when she saw Max holding Alexa. He looked so at ease with her, and that was how it was suppose to be. Max should be able to hold his daughter, even if he didn’t know it was his daughter. But at the same time, it might seem a little strange to just let him stand there holding Alexa when both her and her parents were there too. So Liz moved to stand in front of Max, held out her arms, and softly said, “I can take her now.”

Max handed Alexa over and Liz took her to the couch and sat down. Max didn’t really feel comfortable just standing there with Liz and her parents, so he quickly pointed out the flowers he had brought, congratulated her, and left. This meant that Liz was left alone to face her parents’ anger. Nancy couldn’t help but make her way over to Liz and sit down. “Can I see my granddaughter?” Liz handed Alexa over without replying, and Nancy’s heart melted at her first good look at Alexa. This was her granddaughter! And she may not have wanted to become a grandmother so early, but Nancy found that she wasn’t sure she could completely regret Liz’s decisions either, because Alexa was perfect. “She’s perfect Liz. Congratulations.”

Liz was a little surprised to be congratulated and not scolded, and she felt herself relax a bit. She hadn’t even really realized that she was tense, but she couldn’t deny how good it felt to be accepted.

Jeff saw Liz’s relief and he didn’t want to take it way from her, but he also couldn’t ignore what was bothering him right now. “Liz, why are you already home? Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

Liz hated the constant lying she had to do, and she really wasn’t too sure that this was going to work, but she really didn’t want tot mindwarp her parents again unless she really had to. So for now she had to at least try to talk her way out of suspicion. “Umm…the hospital just released me this morning.” Liz inwardly cringed at how stupid that sounded.

“They released you this morning, not even 24 hours after you’d given birth?! And to someone other than your parent or legal guardian?!” Jeff’s worried expression was the only thing that kept Liz from panicking. She knew her father was more concerned about her own health than anything, which was proven when he continued a second later. “What if you’re not healed enough? What if there are complications with something? Alexa was a month early! Shouldn't they have kept her longer at least? They kept your mother for three days!”

Crap. Liz had thought about her parents being worried that she wasn't in a hospital when they got back because she was sure that a normal birth would keep her in the hospital. But somehow she had completely forgotten the fact that from what she had told everybody, Alexa was suppose to be a month early. If she had really gone to the hospital, the hospital would have at least wanted to keep Alexa longer for observation. Well she would just have to continue with her planned story for now, and wait for one of her parents to ask about Alexa. “I know Dad, but I really wanted to come home, and when they said that I could go home with my parents’ permission, I couldn’t help but get myself signed out immediately.” Maybe her parents would be side-tracked by her admission of wrongdoing?

“You what?!” Jeff couldn’t get anything more than those two words out.

“Liz why would you do that?” Nancy started to question, “You know your health is the most important thing. We would have wanted you to stay in the hospital just in case. What if something happens to you or Alexa?” Nancy tried to stay somewhat hushed because she could feel Alexa starting to wake up, but she really couldn’t keep herself from getting a little out of control, which Liz noticed.

Liz reached over and took Alexa away from her mother, pretending to be angry. “I know I’m not legally an adult yet, but considering the fact that I now have a daughter of my own, I think I should be allowed to make my own decisions. And I wanted to come home! Alexa is fine, you see that she's fine. I'm fine. You can see that. And I didn't want to stay in the hospital!”

"Liz! Calm down! We're just worried that you shouldn't be home yet." Nancy said trying to soothe Liz and calm her down.

Unfortunately, Jeff wasn't thinking that way. So when Liz said that she could make her own decisions, he lost it a bit. "Just because you have your own daughter now does not mean that you can make all of your own decisions. You already made the bad decision that got you pregnant, and now you aren't making good decions about your own health, let alone that of your daughters! Alexa is a month early! She should be in a hospital!"

"I'm fine! Alexa's fine! Everything's fine!" Liz shouted, waking up Alexa, and causing her to start crying. Liz couldn't be more thankful for the interruption either, because it allowed her to give her father an angry look and then turn to take Alexa back to her room to quiet down. Liz just hoped that that would be the end of the conversation, and if it wasn't, Liz would just have to deal with it then.

*****

Thehlec stood before the door to Khivar’s meeting room dreading the next few minutes. He hadn’t raised his arm yet to knock on the door, but he knew he had to soon or else things might go even worse than they were already bound to go. Thehlec took a deep breath and raised his hand. He waited for a second, then made a fist and knocked. He immediately heard Khivar’s reply to come in, and Thehlec reached for the handle to open the door. Once he got inside the room, he saw Khivar seated at the head of a rather large table, looking through something. Then Khivar pushed his papers away, looked up at Thehlec, and just waited. Thehlec couldn’t help but gulp before he said anything. “I believe I have found the Royal Four sir.”

Khivar smiled; this was the best news he had heard since he had arrived on this planet. “Good. How protected are they?”

“It appears sir, that they have no protection whatsoever. However, I’m afraid our calculations were off, and I believe that the Queen has already given birth.” Thehlec waited for Khivar’s rage to explode, but felt even more fear curl through his veins when Khivar only waited a second and then responded with a deadly calm voice.

“And how could that have happened Thehlec?”

“Umm….I’m not sure sir. Perhaps the Granolith didn’t register the actual conception of the heir. Or perhaps we were miss-informed of the gestation periods. The Royal Four are half human now.”

“Very well Thehlec. We’ll figure something out. For now you are dismissed.”

Thehlec nodded and quickly scrambled to get out of the room. He had hated to tell Khivar anything, but he knew that he had to tell Khivar something, so the best he could do was put off telling him the development. Thehlec had waited three days after the heir’s birth to come back, hoping that that would give the Queen enough time to heal. But he wasn’t sure about how all this would work out. There was a very fine line that had to be tread when being a double-agent of sorts, especially when the agency you happened to actually to be loyal to, didn’t exactly know you even existed. But he was determined to make this work someway, even if it cost him his life.

[ultimatepickupline]

Hey everyone. I wanted to start off by saying thank you so much to everybody who nominated me for awards. I feel very honored, and I know I was nominated for several of them. Now I'm just waiting to see which awards I make it to voting for. So now I get a nominee banner!


For Favorite Newcomer
Favorite Conventional Couple Fic
Favorite Post-Episode Fic

And now on to thanking everybody for your feedback on the last part.

Sternbetrachter-Thanks, I thought Michael with Alexa would be a very funny scene. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
GLCW2-Yes, you're right if the parents investigated even a little, they would find out that Liz was never in the hospital, but unfortunately, as you will see in this next part, they won't have the time to do it.
Redrumm-I'm glad you like the Dad reaction. It took a little bit of work for it to come out right. And I'm glad you liked the Max/Alexa part as well. You should particularly like a little part in this chapter then.
izzyandkyle-thank you. That scene wasn't a planned part in the fic originally, but then I realized that I would totally be jipping you guys if I didn't write it. So it got added in. I'm glad you appreciated it.
orphyfets-thank you
Emz80m-Yeah I think the Max/Alexa part broke everyone's heart, including Liz.
Dream Weaver-Yes, Max finding out that the connection is real should be a good part (let's hope).
sunshine6258-Well I'm going to tell you that Max will not figure anything out on his own. Sorry. But he will find out the truth semi-soon.
Shiesty23-well thanks, I hope that waiting for today wasn't to long? Not that I'd change my update schedule if it were. Sorry.
Flamehair-I love that you could see Michael before your eyes. Sometimes he's hard for me to write. And thank you very much for your comment about my German, it means a lot.
83 AlienAngel-no problem
Timelord31-thanks

Happy New Year everyone...


Chapter 35

The group plus Serena was once again sitting in a closed crashdown. But this time all the girls were sitting at a booth fawning over Alexa in her baby carrier and all the guys were at the table trying to stay away from their baby-loving girlfriends. By now each one of the guys had been roped into holding Alexa one way or another, and while Max secretly enjoyed it, and Alex truly didn't mind it, Kyle and Michael were dead set against ever having to be alone with Alexa again. Babies freaked them out, and the only thing they could think of whenever they were around, was that they really had no clue how to take care of a baby. What if it needed to be fed or changed? In all likelihood, they would just hurt the poor kid. So they stayed away. Max also tended to stay away, but that was because while he knew that holding Alexa somehow just felt right, he knew others wouldn't think it should, and he didn't know how it made Liz feel, so he distanced himself. Then Alex stayed way just because he was a little sick of always having best friends who were girls and he wanted to still be a guy at least some of the time.

"'Kay guys I'm bored." Michael announced. "Anyone want to go to my place and watch some TV or something?"

"Definitely!" Kyle started to stand up and place his chair on the table immediately. The rest of the guys started to do the same, which ended up getting the attention of the girls.

"Hey! Where do you think you guys are going?" Tess asked from her seat at the booth.

"Nothing to do here. We're going to Michael's" Kyle called back.

"Well don't leave us behind!" Maria started to scoot out of the booth.

"I don't know if I really want to take Alexa out. " Liz bit her lip trying to decide if she wanted to go. If she did, this would be the first time she had taken Alexa out anywhere.

"Come on Liz, you haven't been out of your house or the Crashdown in a week. Just go pack the diaper bag and bring Alexa. If you want to, you can leave early." Isabel wanted to spend some more time with her niece, and she wasn't about to let Liz not hang out with them all.

"I don't know."

"Liz you know you don't want to be boring my last night here." Serena didn't think it would hurt to try to goad Liz into anything. Besides, it was true that Serena was planning on leaving the next night, and she really didn't feel like either staying in with Liz or hanging out with Liz's friends without her yet again.

Liz stood for a minute, highly debating with herself as to the wisdom of the plan before she finally gave her answer. "Okay fine. I'll go, but I'm not making any promises about staying."

"Great! Let's go!" Maria grabbed the diaper bag Liz had brought down earlier and the nine teenagers made their way out to their cars.

*****

"Are you sure this is the right place?"

"This is where Khivar directed us to go."

"But I don't see any power reading on this thing."

"Maybe it's broken. I don't know , but we better hurry up. Khivar wants us back as soon as possible."

"Yeah sure."

The two darkly clad men made their way up a ladder to a balcony and through a window into a room. They left the room dark and crept over to the bed, while getting ready to attack, only to discover that the bed was empty.

"Maybe she's in another room?" one man suggested.

The other man shrugged and the two left the room in search for the missing sleeper. They quietly walked down the hall, opening the doors until they finally came to a room with two people in it. They knew that there was only one person they were targeting tonight, but maybe both of these people were targets. They had better bring in both just in case. As the two made their way over to the bed, one of the floorboards squeeked loudly. They both cringed, but quickly jumped into action when the man stated to stir. Not wanting either the man or the woman in bed to wake, the two men in black quickly knocked the sleeping couple over the head, rendering them unconscious. They then picked up the unconscious pair, slung them over their shoulders, and left.

*****

"Oh that was so good! He changed his stars!" Tess said at the end of the movie.

"The only good thing about that movie was the fighting. It was stupid of him to purposefully lose at that one part though." Kyle countered.

"No it wasn't; it was romantic." Maria slapped Kyle's arm.

"Hey! Michael get her off of me!"

Michael just smirked at Kyle. "Hey, better you than me, man." Maria glared at Michael.

Serena couldn't hold back her laugh at the whole interchange. "So what's next?"

"Maybe we should go home now. It's getting kind of late." Alex suggested reasonably, while looking at a sleeping Liz.

"No let's watch another movie. Something sad," Isabel countered. "Besides there's no reason to wake Liz up right now."

Max looked over at liz sleeping peacefully with her hand on Alexa's baby carrier. "Well if we're going to watch another movie, I'm going to take them to the other room so we don't disturb them so much." Max bet down and gathered Liz up in his arms.

"Go ahead. You can even put her on my bed." Michael suggested and Max nodded before he left the room.

Max savored the feeling of Liz in his arms for as long as possible, even if she was asleep. He still loved Liz, and everyday it was becoming harder and harder to just be her friend. He had thought that Alexa would change everything, but truthfully Max loved Alexa too, if for no other reason but that she was Liz's daughter. Max knew that trying to work a relationship out with Liz now would be incredibly hard. But maybe he should try anyway.

Once Max laid Liz on the bed he couldn't help himself from pushing her hair out of her face and kissing her on the forehead before he left the room to get Alexa. While bringing Alexa into the room, Max noticed she was starting to squirm and wake up. Not wanting her to wake up Liz, Max placed the carrier on the bed and then reached in for Alexa. Maybe he could get her to go back to sleep himself. Alexa opened her eyes slowly and then just stared at Max. "Hey Alexa, you want to go back to sleep for me? I don't want to wake your mommy." Max spoke lowly, and it seemed to make Alexa a little drowsy, but she still didn't go to sleep even after a couple minutes of talking, and eventually Alexa started whimpering. Max momentarily panicked and then ran through a list in his head of things it could be. He was very tempted to just connect with Alexa and see what was wrong, but he didn't think Liz would appreciate that. Finally Max decided that maybe he should check Alexa's diaper. He had never actually changed a diaper before, but he had seen Liz and some of the other girs do it several times, and he was somewhat confident that he could do it too. It took quite a bit of trial and error, and in the end Max had to use a bit of alien juice to keep the thing together, but eventually everything was taken care of, Alexa went back to sleep, and Max walked back out to the living room where the group was just deciding what to watch.

"Okay, that's it. We're watching this." Isabel announced while holding up a DVD.

"What?! None of us guys want to watch a chick flick." Kyle argued.

"Well that's too bad because it's five to three." Serena said while smiling.

"How do you get five to three? There are only seven of us in here right now." Alex said puzzled.

"Alex, you should know how this works by now." Maria said in a teasing voice. "Obviously, there are four girls in here; plus if Liz were here, she'd vote with us. That makes five."

"You can't do that!" Michael burst out. "Liz isn't even going to watch the movie because she's going to sleep through it. Besides, Max is here, and he is going to watch it. So that makes four to four."

"But if Alexa were old enough, she'd side with us girls too. That's six to four. We win!" Tess said while grabbing the DVD from Isabel and walking to the DVD player.

"You're going to use a vote from an infant? That's pretty under-handed." Kyle said while wrapping his hands around Tess's waist and pulling her back.

Maria grabbed the DVD from Tess then. "Whatever, you guys know that if you know what's good for you, you'll side with us." Maria took out the DVD and opened the DVD player.

"Fine! Let's just get this over with then." Michael grumbled and fell back into the couch.

Maria smiled and dropped the DVD into the player and then made her way over to Michael's lap. The rest of the group got settled and Max made his way over from the door to claim a seat on the floor. Then they all waited for the movie to start.

*****

"So I'm going to go in this window. You go in that one. And you go in the front door. Orders are to retrieve Zan and Vilandra without a death toll, but injuries are permitted. Got it?"

"Yes sir," two voices answered at the same time.

"Great. Let's go." The three departed for their entrances and were in the house within seconds. The searches went quietly room by room, turning up nothing at first until something was knocked over and a man appeared in the hallway.

Philip heard movement in the house and felt a little relieved. Max and Isabel hadn't come home on time tonight, and while Philip wasn't too worried because he knew they were probably together and that Max would never let anything happen to Isabel, he couldn't help but feel better that they were home. He considered just letting them go to bed, but when he heard something fall over, he decided to go ahead and talk to them a bit.

Philip carefully got out of bed, trying not to disturb Diane, and walked into the hallway. He was just getting ready to softly call out his kids names, when suddenly three men he didn't know appeared from different directions. "Hey! What are you doing?!" Philip didn't even realize that he had actually said anything before the three men attacked. He struggled fiercely, but all it brought was pain as the three other men beat him while trying to subdue him. The struggle didn't last long before Philip was knocked unconscious, his last thought on his wife in bed.

[ultimatepickupline]

Thanks again for all the nominations, because I just found out this round that I've also made it to voting for Favorite Conventional Couple Fic and Favorite Post-Episode Fic. So thanks once again to all of you. I really appreciate it.


Dreamer-laure-thank you, I'm glad that you like the part between Max and Alexa, and thanks for saying it was beautiful, that means a lot.
orphyfets-thanks
Shiesty23-I do believe that Max/Alexa part was popular
PML-welcome back, I haven't seen you in a while
Dream Weaver-well I hope I'm delivering well here
izzyandkyle-I'm so glad that you agree that things going slow is realistic, it's nice to have support, and you're right, the parents won't be clueless for long. Btw, my sister's favorite parts are the group interactions too.
Emz80m-I promise that Philip is okay for now, but I don't make promises for the future.
Redrumm-I thought I had to add in a little comedic relief with that movie watching thing, and I thought the guys fighting the girls and losing would just be too funny, so I'm happy you agreed.
Flamehair-I love making people laugh, so I'm glad I could do it here, and Liz parents will be fine for at least the next chapter.
Timelord31-not all the parents actually, just the Parkers and the Evans.
sunshine6258-thank you, coming right up
NUNARFEATHER00-well I'm glad you got caught up, and I'm glad you think it was a cliffhanger. I plan to be making the rest of the chapters from here on out predominately cliffhangers.

thanks all, the next chapter is coming right up...


Chapter 36

Liz opened her eyes and wondered where she was. She saw Alexa in her baby carrier on the bed, and she realized that someone must have brought her and Alexa into Michael's room. Liz stood up and went into the TV room to see what everyone else was doing. When she opened the door, she saw the TV on a blue screen and the eight teens sprawled all over the room peacefully sleeping. Liz softly laughed to herself that all nine of them could fall asleep during a movie, and she raised her wrist to check what time it was. What she found out had her moving in seconds. "Guys! Hey everybody! Wake up!" Liz moved over to Serena and shook her awake before moving on to the next person.

"Geez Liz. Where's the fire? I was sleeping!" Serena moaned.

"Yeah, but guess what time it is." Liz said while trying to get Kyle to wake up.

"Liz, I don't care what time it is. You're not suppose to wake a guy up when he's having a really good dream," Kyle complained.

"Too bad. We're all going to be in so much trouble." Liz ducked as Michael tried to push her away.

"Chica, I'm sick of you waking me up in the middle of the night." Maria grumbled from her position in Michael's arms.

"Yeah well this time it's three AM and you haven't been home yet. What do you think your mom will think of that?"

"What?!" Maria was wide-awake now and bolted to a sitting position. "My mom is going to kill me! I just barely got away with last week!"

"I know."

By now everyone was awake and Isabel realized what was going on. "Oh no! Max, we gotta go!"

Michael snorted and continued to lay on the couch. He couldn't help himself from saying, "I am so glad I don't have parents." Maria hit him in the stomach for that comment and Michael grunted.

Tess was just getting ready to agree with Michael when Kyle pulled her up and to the door. "Come on Tess. My dad is going to kill both us! Unless...you don't suppose you could mindwarp him to think we were home on time do you?"

Tess slapped Kyle's shoulder as they walked out the door. "I can't do that Kyle! It's cheating."

"Who said cheating wasn't allowed?" That was the last thing the rest heard before the door closed behind Kyle and Tess.

"We better go now too Liz. You're parents were already angry with you, now they're going to go ballistic." Serena said as she grabbed her purse and searched for her keys.

"You're telling me!" Liz muttered under her breath as she walked back into Michael's room to gather her daughter and their things. Why was it that lately Liz constantly felt like she was a bad daughter? Liz and Serena left Michael's apartment quickly and made record timing getting home. When they got there, Liz felt her stomach turn as she thought of her parents' reaction to tonight, but when she saw that they had apparently chosen to go to bed and deal with it in the morning, Liz couldn't help but feel even more nervous anticipating how much worse the blow-up would be the next day. However, Liz really didn't want to wake up her parents, so she motioned for Serena to just sneak into bed as quietly as possible, and they went to their rooms to get a little bit of sleep.

*****

"You idiots! You had one assignment, and you're the best Antar has to offer. So I thought there would be no problem. But you can't do anything right!" Khivar's eyes narrowed in on two of the five people in front of him. "You! Did it not occur to you that since you were suppose to get the Queen, and if the Queen has already given birth to the heir that the heir would be with the Queen? So why would you mistake a random couple for the Queen and King?! And you!" Khivar turned his focus to the remaning three. "Did you not think that if you had really surprised the King that he would have done more than throw a few punches? But no, none of you think at all! And now instead of relishing the soon imminent death of the Royal Four, I'm going to have to order you to kill their helpless human parents. Or do I have to do that too?"

The five soldiers stood in front of Khivar inwardly cowering at Khivar's wrath, but they were too scared to even do that visibly, so they just stood there. Khivar considered killing one of them just to show them a lesson, and to prove that he could, but he grudgingly decided that he should spare their meaningless lives just in case he needed an extra hand later. After all, he still needed to capture the Royal Four. "Get out of my sight and kill the humans. And make sure you do it right!"

Khivar was just getting ready to turn his attention to something else when he heard something from the back of the room. "Wait!" Khivar couldn't believe someone was giving him an order, but he was feeling amused today so he let that go.

"What seems to be the problem?"

Thehlec paused for a second. It wasn't that he really wanted to suggest this to Khivar, but he didn't feel he could just sit back and let the human parents be killed. He had to do something. He just hoped that it was the right thing in the end and that the Royal Four could succeed. "There's no problem sir. I just have a suggestion." Thehlec paused for another second to see if Khivar looked interested, which Khivar didn't really show, but Thehlec continued anyway after a second. "What if you keep the humans and use them to lure the Royal Four directly to you instead of having to go get them?"

Khivar was a little surprised by the suggestion, but the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. "And how do you suppose we do that?"

Thehlec almost started to fidget. He hadn't gotten this for in his thinking. He hoped he could come up with something on the spot. "Well, you could send them a note via one of your soldiers saying that they are to meet with you at a certain time or you'll kill their parents. From my observations, they will undoubtedly show up, and surely with your clear superiority you could then kill them easily." Thehlec almost thought he was going to gag, praising Khivar like that, but he had to do what he had to do.

Khivar took a full sixty seconds to think about it, during which time, Thehlec sweated, but at the end he made his decision. "Fine. I like it. You." Khivar pointed to a random soldier. "Go deliver the messages from me."

*****

Philip woke up slowly and with a pounding headache. His first thought was that he hadn't thought he had woken up feeling so bad since he was in college when he and his frat bothers spent a little too much time partying. But his mind cleared remarkably fast, and then all he could think about was the robbers in his house. He opened his eyes only to see nothing in the darkness. And then he realized, he wasn't home anymore. "Diane? Diane!" Philip called out hoping for no answer. But he realized that his prayers obviously weren't answered when he heard a responding groan. Philip felt his fear go from zero to sixty in half a second, and he started to try to maneuver himself toward the sound. It was hard to move with his hands tied behind his back, but Philip managed to get to a standing position just in time to hear another groan, and this time he realized it was distinctly male. "Hello? Who's there?" Philip started walking, only to go sprawling the next second when he tripped over a leg.

"Ow!" the two men said at the same time.

"I'm sorry," Philip apologized. "I didn't mean to. I just can't see."

"Yeah me neither."

"Do you have your arms tied behind your back too?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know if there's anyone else here? I'm looking for my wife, Diane."

Pause. "Philip Evans?"

"Yes, and who are you?" Philip had been thinking that the voice sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it.

"I thought maybe it was you, but I wasn't sure until you mentioned Diane. This is Jeff Parker."

"Oh. Why do you think we're here?"

"I don't know. The last thing I remember is going to bed a little worried that Liz hadn't come home yet. Now, I'm thankful she hadn't."

"I was just getting ready to go bed when I thought I was finally hearing Max and Isabel come home, but it wasn't them. It was three robbers and I fought them, but they must have knocked me out. Now that I think about it, I'm glad Max and Isabel weren't home yet either."

"Do you think Nancy and Diane are here?"

"I don't know. Why don't we split here and go around the room and meet on the other side. Then we can see if they're here, and we can get more of an idea of where we are."

"Good idea." The two men split up and quickly explored the perimeter of the room. It was small but it was a bit difficult to maneuver because not only did they soon discover that the room did indeed hold their wives, but it also held several miscellaneous and unidentifiable items, causing the men to trip several times. Philip and Jeff then told Diane and Nancy all that they knew and the four spent the next few hours discussing possible reasons for being there, ways to try to break free, and worries they had for their children.

*****

Liz was panicking. She had woken up this morning with the expectation that her parents were going to chew her out, but instead she quickly realized her parents weren't in the apartment at all! Still wanting to get it all over with, Liz went downstairs to find her parents, only to discover that the Crashdown hadn't even been opened. That was completely not like her parents, her dad specifically. They would never just up and disappear on a day when they were suppose to open. So as Liz was opening the Crashdown herself, she was getting more and more freaked out.

Liz had left Alexa with Serena upstairs while she opened the diner, but once she felt she could take a quick break, she went upstairs to check on her. Liz opened the door to the apartment and found Serena standing on the other side with Alexa in one arm, a note in her hand, and a frightened expression on her face. Liz was immediately alarmed, and rushed over to take Alexa. "What's wrong Serena? Did something happen with Alexa?" Liz looked her daughter over, but there didn't seem to be anything wrong with her. Even discretely using her powers, Liz could detect nothing wrong.

Serena stood in shock for a minute before she could get a hold of herself and explain. "Alexa was crying. So I went to your room to get her, and there was this letter laying by her in her cradle. Liz, what are you involved in?"

Liz wasn't sure what Serena was talking about exactly, so she just grabbed the note out of Serena's hand and began reading.

As you may have already noticed, your parents are gone. They have been taken by Khivar, the great leader of Antar. If you want to see them again, come with the others to the old soap factory at three o'clock today to renounce your position.

Liz slowly looked up from the paper to Serena with a shocked expression on her face. She had never guessed that something like this would happen. And Liz could only guess that this Khivar person was the enemy Future Max had mentioned. So apparently instead of saving the world, Liz might have quite possibly made the end come sooner. Well that was just great. Liz looked back down at Alexa in her arms and felt the determination settle in her bones to finish this. She had someone depending on her now. She needed to make this a better world for her daughter, and she would do it no matter what. Besides, as far as she knew, future Liz didn't have powers, and now they had both Tess and Liz to help. Surely there might be some chance of this ending well.

Serena saw the determined expression on Liz's face, but she was surprised when she heard Liz. "I have to go Serena. Will you watch Alexa for me?"

"Where are you going?" Serena really didn't like the way this was playing out.

"To get my parents, but I might not be back for a while."

"Liz, what is this?"

"I'm sorry. I can't say." Liz genuinely felt remorseful about not telling Serena what was going on, but it wasn't really her place to tell. Besides, she really didn't have the time.

"This sounds dangerous Liz. What if something happens to you?"

Liz thought for a moment, and felt the tears come to her eyes. She would have to leave her precious little girl behind if something happened to her, but she couldn't let her parents stay with Khivar. How was she suppose to choose between her parents and her newborn baby? She couldn't believe she had to make this decision and as she felt a tear fall down her cheek, she gave the instructions to Serena. "If something happens to me, give Alexa to Max if possible-"

"What?! Liz, why would you give your daughter to you EX-boyfriend?"

Liz swallowed and continued her instructions, ignoring Serena's question, "if not, give her to anyone in the group, preferably Maria, Isabel, or Alex."

"Seriously Liz? You're talking about your death?! You can't go!"

"I have to. And I have to go now. Hopefully I'll see you later. If I don't, just know you've been a great friend to me." Liz kissed Alexa, whispered that she loved her and handed her to a shocked Serena. Then Liz grabbed the keys to her parents' car and headed out the door to start her mission, choking back the tears as she went.

[ultimatepickupline]

Thanks for all the feedback all. I have to admit that I was actually I little surprised by most of it, because apparently I implied something in my writing that I didn't actually mean. But that's okay, I think it turned out better for it.

Also is there an inverse relationship in the Khivar regime between loyalty and intelligence? I mean his hand picked soldiers seem loyal, but dumb. Thehlec seems bright, but he's definately not loyal. Assuming Khivar lives (not likely I would guess), I predict a lot of casualties in the HR department for this mission.

PML-Yeah, I literally had to laugh out loud at that comment there. But methinks you may be onto something.
Dream Weaver-I think you will be pleased.
orphyfets
NUNARFEATHER00-You're right, Serena is probably pretty confused right now. But just wait till later!
Emz80m-Hmm...good point. Maybe Liz should have left Alexa with someone who could actually protect her.
Redrumm-I can neither confirm nor deny your future projections.
Arianneleigh-Well welcome back. I feel very honored that you think it's good to be reading my story again.
behrluv32-Thanks for coming out of lurkdom. I love when people do that. And you won't have to wait too long for Max to find out the truth.
Timelord31
Flamehair-I promise that the parents will be safe for this part too.
SarahWhitman-um...I want to say something soooo bad, but I don't want to give anything away, so I'm just going to say...enjoy!
Lou-Thank you! I tell other authors that they are keeping me from writing my story because I get too caught up in reading, but I never thought anyone would say that too me. It means a lot.
sunshine6258-Okay, just read on...


Chapter 37

Liz frantically pounded on Max's door just feeling the panic rising up in her. She needed help now. She didn't have time to be doing this. Okay, she did. She wasn't suppose to meet this Khivar person until three o'clock, and it was only ten right now. But that meant she only had five hours to figure out what to do. What was taking so long?

Max and Isabel were standing in the kitchen just staring at the note they had gotten. They couldn't even bring themselves to talk yet. Then they heard the frantic banging. Max silently made his way to the door and opened it. He was startled to see Liz on the other side, but all thoughts flew out of his head a second later as the two just stared into one another's eyes for a few seconds. Unfortunately, the moment passed rather quickly. There were too many things to be doing and figuring out right now to just stand there and look at one another. But at least the couple of seconds that they did spend looking at one another calmed Liz down a bit.

Max eventually opened the door a bit wider and let Liz in. She was just getting ready to say what was going on when Isabel walked into the room to talk to Max and got a bit side-tracked by Liz's presence. "Liz! Why are you here?"

"My parents have been taken! I just got this note," Liz started to get her note out of her pocket, but Isabel interrupted by thrusting another note in Liz's face.

"So were ours! Was your note like this?" Isabel asked.

It didn't take long for Liz, Isabel, and Max to realize that whatever was going on with their parents, it was related. The decided to call the rest of the group dreading to hear that all the parents had been taken. But oddly enough, the Evans and the Parkers were the only parents missing. The whole thing was more than a little puzzling, but they all quickly decided to meet at Max and Isabel's and discuss what to do.

Michael, Maria, Tess, Kyle, and Alex all arrived within fifteen minutes, which had to mean that some of them were not driving very carefully, but no one mentioned that.

"Can I just point out the obvious here and say that we are sooo in over our heads?" Maria asked.

"Oh, definitely," Alex said while nodding.

Half a minute of silence passed by before Kyle posed the all important question. "Well does anyone have a plan?"

Liz had been thinking for awhile, trying to come up with a good plan, and while she didn't feel that anything she could think of was very good, she did kind of have an idea. "Not really...but what about this.."

*****

Thehlec looked around the corner and was pleased to see the corridor empty. He had been trying to get away from the soap factory all morning, but Khivar or Nicolas kept asking him to do things with the granolith reader, the power supressors, and the survelience equipment Khivar had recently installed. On the bright side, Thehlec definitely now knew how to free the parents and help the royals defeat Khivar. The only problem was that he would need the royals actually there, and he would need their help to free the parents. So Thehlec had tried to get away at the first opportunity so that he could catch the group before they did anything drastic. He could only hope as he left the factory that he wasn't too late, and that no one had seen him leave. His plan kind of depended on Khivar still trusting him when he came back.

*****

The group had already split up into couples and were either already in the position they were suppose to be or were heading there. They had decided for each couple to take one side of the old soap factory and watch for any movement there. Then they would meet in an hour to discuss and plan. They were hoping that this was where the parents were since this was the place where they were suppose to meet Khivar. It was a very risky plan, and some of the group felt more anxious about the plan than others, but really all had their qualms about the fact that they were flying blind.

Isabel and Alex were the first in position, and consequently they were the first to find out that despite the tention of the situation, it was difficult to focus on such a boring activity when nothing was happening. So instead of staying silent like they had planned, Isabel let out her frustration. "I can't believe Liz didn't tell Max what she knew! She had better be telling him now."

"Isabel be quieter! The point of this isn't to get caught." Alex paused to see that Isabel was getting better control over herself before he continued. "But I agree. Right now every bit of information counts, and everyone else needed to know too."

Isabel was almost surprised that Alex hadn't defended Liz to her. She had been expecting a reprimand about not trusting his best friend like she should, not about calming down to stop drawing attention. But if Isabel thought about it for a little bit, she should have expected it, because Alex had always been fair, so it made sense that he didn't necessarily suport a dangerous decision or action by Liz or Isabel. "We'll just have to tell everybody once we get together then. If Liz doesn't tell, then we will."

Alex shifted a bit nervously at Isabel's comment. Sure he thought that Liz should tell everybody. Most likely the information Liz had to share with everyone was important to what was going on with Khivar right now. But he didn't feel right plotting with his girlfriend behind his best friend's back. It just didn't seem right. "I don't know. Let's just try to force her to say something first."

Isabel understood exactly where Alex was coming from, because she felt the same way to a degree. Over the past few weeks after finding out the secret, Isabel had become quite close to Liz, and she respected her new friend. Liz was really only the second girl she had ever become close to, and the only other girl Isabel had ever shared a close friendship with was Tess. So that close friendship hadn't lasted all that long yet, which made Liz that much more important to her. Besides, Isabel knew that if Max had all the facts Liz would probably become her sister-in-law anyway. "Okay. We'll try to force Liz's confession first."

Isabel and Alex were then lost in their thoughts for a few minutes as they watched the warehouse for any movement. Unfortunately, by the time it registered that something was indeed a bit amiss it was too late.

*****

Michael and Maria were in position on their side of the building and had been for fifteen minutes. Maria was completely lost in her thoughts about Liz not telling the truth, but unlike Isabel she didn't say anything about it, because she couldn't just burst out and tell Michael about it herself. Luckily, Maria was good at the whole spy/detective thing, so regardless of the fact that she was lost in her thoughts, she was still keeping a watchful eye on the building. However she was soon brought out of her thoughts by Michael's nudge. "Hey, I'm going to go over there. You stay here, I'll be back soon." Michael started to sneak away, but Maria grabbed him by the back of the shirt.

"Oh no you don't," Maria hissed. "That's not a part of the plan. We're suppose to stay together, and we're suppose to stay here."

"Well plans change." Michel attempted to turn around and continue off, but Maria still had a rather strong hold on his shirt, so he didn't get very far.

"These ones don't. If you go now, you could get yourself in trouble, and then we'd have to rescue you as well as Max, Isabel, and Liz's parents, which isn't going to help us."

"We need a better look! So I'm going. Wait here."

"Well if you are going to change the plans, you are not going to leave me out of it! I'm going!"

"No you aren't. It's not safe."

"It's not safe for you either, but at least there would be two sets of eyes then and two people to fight."

"I don't want you near that danger."

"I already am."

"Well then don't make it worse."

"If you're going, I'm going."

"No."

"Yes."

Michael and Maria stared at one another, and they both went nearly a minute without blinking, only to be startled out of their staring contest by some footsteps to their side. They turned to look, but before they could see anything, everything went black.

*****

Tess and Kyle sat with their binoculars in silence. They may joke with one another a lot, but when they had a a job to do, they were focused on it. Well for the most part they were. The problem was that it had already been half an hour without any movement, and since they hadn't been talking, things were getting pretty boring. Tess had been using the binoculars almost the whole time, and Kyle wanted a bit of a change-up. "Okay Tess. My turn to use those."

Tess brought the binoculars down and looked at Kyle. "No it's not. I have better eyesight than you, so I should keep using them so that I can see even more."

"Or you could hand them over to me and then we could both see well."

"Yeah…that's not how it works. I'm keeping them."

"You shouldn't be able to. They're my dad's. Therefore they're more mine than yours."

"Too bad."

Kyle looked longingly at the binoculars until he decided to take matters into his own hands. "Come on Tess. You know you want to give them to me," he said in a sing-song voice as he reached for them. Tess adamantly denied any such thing, and and stretched her arm out as far as she could so that Kyle couldn't reach them. Unfortunately for Tess, Kyle had longer arms, so he pulled Tess over to him with one arm, then leaned over her and reached for the binoculars with the other. Tess tried to hide them behind her back, but her efforts failed when Kyle just combated that with tickling her, making her have to put her hands over her mouth so that she wouldn't make too much noise, and therefore losing her grip on the binoculars. Kyle quickly grabbed them and stuck his tongue out at Tess before bringing them up to his eyes. Tess tried to think of something she could do to get them back, and had just settled on used her powers to pull them back to her when she was distracted by Kyle's foreboding, "Oh no."

*****

The silence between Max and Liz could only be described uncomfortable. Max felt that his and Liz's relationship had been getting better, but for some reason today it seemed very strained. Max hoped it wasn't a result of something he had done, but he really couldn't be sure.

Liz felt awkward, but more because she knew that she really had to tell Max the truth. By now she had been holding this secret in for so long, that it was hard to just blurt it out. But at the same time, maybe she should tell Max now before they got back with the group and she had to tell them all at once. Liz whispered to catch Max's attention "Uh, Max?" Once she got a response, Liz took a deep breath and held it for a second before going on, "I think I have to tell you something." Liz waited for a prompt from Max, but all she got was a prodding look. "Umm…remember that night when you came with the mariachi band?"

Max felt his heart start to beat harder. Of course he remembered the mariachi band, he had spent a week learning the words to the song, and that was the last time he had really felt that there was a hope for him and Liz to get back together. But all Max could do in response to Liz's question was nod. Luckily that's all Liz was looking for.

"Okay…And remember when I came to your room and gave you that whole big speech about Romeo and Juliet?"

Max felt his heart painfully clench at that memory. Of course he remembered that. Up until that point, that was probably the most painful night of his life. Of course, it paled in comparison to another night not too long after that, but Max didn't even want to think about that. So Max just nodded again.

"Yeah, okay…And remember that night-"

"Where are you going with this Liz?" Max didn't want to cut Liz off so abruptly, but he had a bad feeling about where all this questioning was going. And he really didn't want to have to relive his memories of last fall. They were suppose to be gathering important information right now, not rubbing salt in a very old, but still open wound.

Liz flinched back a bit at Max's question. She knew that she wasn't doing the best job of just getting this out, but she really didn't know how to even start with all of this, and while she knew it was incredibly important to share, she just didn't even know if she could. But she had to try. "Well I know that it may not seem like it, but all those events were re-"

"Well, well, well what do we have here? You wouldn't by any chance be with the other three couples that were around this building would you?"

Max and Liz looked toward the sound of the voice with startled expressions. They hadn't been paying the best attention to what was going on around them, too busy being caught up in reliving painful times, and now they were being confronted by someone who was probably not looking out for them to say the least.

"Khivar is really not going to be happy about this. Or maybe he will be. You never can tell."

"Who are you?" Max asked, somewhat more confidently than he felt.

"Tsk tsk tsk, it's a pity you don't already know. I'm Nicolas, Khivar's second in command, and if you're who I think you are, which I think there is a pretty good chance you are, things are looking up." Nicolas didn't wait for Max or Liz to react, he just brought the weapon he had brought out up in front of him, and pulled the trigger as fast as he possibly could, leaving both Max and Liz unconsious.

[ultimatepickupline]

Okay, you guys, this is probably the chapter I've felt the most unsure about before posting ever, which is why I'm posting so late. I hope you like it anyway.

Dream Weaver-um...sure...that was really convincing wasn't it?
Flamehair- I come back on Mondays, no sooner no later. Sorry.
Lou-Actually I do enjoy torturing you guys like this. But just remember, I'm not really that cruel, cause I do promise updates every Monday, so at least you aren't left wondering when the next update will come.
thetvgeneral-It is a shame that they all got caught, was I was happy that I got to write a little more couple action for everyone.
Timelord31-yes I know, and there will continue to be some cuelities such as this.
orphyfets-yes it seems that there's always something that gets in the way isn't there?
PML-Good point. That she is.
Redrumm-I know it's like watching the show all over again isn't it? Having to wait for a week to pass to find out what happened to the characters?
Luna_Seer-I regret to inform you that your questions will not be answered in this chapter. However, they should come up in the next one.
sunshine6258-mwahhhahahahaha, I love making people not being able to sleep! JK.
katydid-thank you, that was the intention. Plus it works for my plot.
ken_r-Your fb meant a lot to me because you actually commented on things specifically from through out the fic. Thank you so much, you have no idea how much you made me smile. I'm glad there are so many things you like about my story.
lab6651-Yes I love imagining that revelation to Khivar. It makes me laugh. As for your questions about Alexa, I'm sorry, but I can neither confirm nor deny anything.
Roswelllostcause-I will tell you that the parents will be let in on the secret (but only because you'll read it in this chapter). As for you hating cliffhangers, sorry about that, cause they'll be a few more coming up here.



Chapter 38

Thehlec once again stood on the outside of the Crashdown looking in. But this time he was specifically looking for any one of the Royal Four or their friends. There was almost always one of them here, what with three people in the group working here, one of which even lived here. But right now there was absolutely none of the group in the diner, and Thehlec was starting to get anxious. He didn't have much time to find the group, relay the information, and get back to the warehouse to help run the rescue, so every second he spent just trying to find the group was a second wasted. Thehlec bounced on the balls of his toes for a second before making the split decision to try to contact the queen by climbing up the balcony into her room. She was almost guaranteed to be there if she wasn't in the diner, especially after she had the heir, so it was the best bet to get ahold of the group.

Thehlec's eyes darted around, as he tried to walk around the Crashdown as quickly as possible without being noticed. As soon as he got to the base of the ladder he started climbing as fast as he could, not bothering to be quiet or stealthy anymore. He didn't have a second to loose.

Serena was worried; Liz had only left two hours ago, but Serena basically had no idea what was going on with Liz, and that's what scared her. What could Liz possibly be involved in that required her to leave her newborn daughter with instructions saying who she was suppose to go to in the event that her mother didn't return? It was crazy! Serena had always seen Liz as a girl who had it all together. Even when she got pregnant, she seemed to be on top of things. But suddenly, it seemed like Liz was in way over her head.

Serena was distracted from her thoughts by the sound of Alexa's gurgle, and she readjusted the baby softly singing to her, as she made her way to Liz's bedroom and sat in the new rocking chair there. Serena hoped that the process of calming Alexa down enough to sleep would also help to calm herself down and get her mind off of things. A few minutes passed, while Serena softly sang anything that came to mind, and finally she was just starting to let her thoughts go when the window behind her opened on its own, and she jumped and screamed, causing Alexa to cry.

Thehlec had barely gotten his foot inside the room before he heard a shrill scream which caused him to yell. The screaming continued for a solid ten seconds with out taking a breath, and it wasn't until Thehlec completely got in the room, and the window slammed behind him that anyone stopped. It was actually more than a little eerie when Serena, Thehlec, and Alexa all stopped screaming at the same time. Thehlec however didn't even wait for the eeriness to pass before he spoke. Luckily, the very fact that he spoke made the odd feeling go away much faster. "Where's Liz?"

"What?" Serena was thrown off a bit by the abrupt question from this complete stranger, but that didn't cause her to offer up information right away. Oh no. She wouldn't do that, especially with that frightening note that showed up earlier this morning. What if this guy was a part of that? In fact shouldn't she be a little more worried right now? Serena tightened her grip on Alexa almost imperceptibly before asking her next question. "Who are you?"

"I don't have time to explain right now. I need to know where Liz is."

Serena could nearly physically feel her fear churning in her stomach, but she held her ground anyway, and forced herself to stay still and stand up to whoever this man was. She didn't have the option of running anyway, she couldn't run with a baby, and she certainly couldn't leave Liz's daughter by herself. "Well I'm not saying anything until you explain who you are," Serena forcefully stated.

Thehlec was impressed with Serena's courage; he knew that she had gumption, but he didn't know that she would stand up to a total stranger, and he had to appreciate that. "I don't really have time to explain, but your friends are in trouble, and I'm here to help."

"What do you mean my friends are in trouble?"

"I don't have time to explain. I just need to get to them to help them. I can explain then."

Serena wasn't sure what was going on, but this guy seemed pretty genuine. She just needed to get a few more questions answered. "How do you know who Liz and her friends are?"

"I've been watching all of you. You're Serena right?"

"Yes. Why have you been watching us?" Serena didn't know why, but for some reason this guy's confession didn't creep her out as much as it probably should have.

"It's a long story that I'll explain to everyone when everybody's together. But for now can you just tell me where Liz is?"

Serena waited a second before answering, but when she did, she surprised herself by how much information she offered up. "No, I don't know where she went.. She got this freaky letter a few hours ago and just left me with Alexa." At this point Serena finally realized that Alexa was starting to whimper, probably from being held too tight, and she loosened her hold on the baby. There didn't seem to be any danger from this man right now.

Thehlec looked at the baby in Serena's arms, and then then looked up to meet Serena's eyes. "Well then we have to find Liz and the others now."

*****

Philip, Diane, Jeff and Nancy were all lightly dozing when there were abruptly woken up by the the squeaky opening of a heavy metal door. They were blinking and trying to make out what was going on when they heard someone laugh and say, "I can't wait until Khivar sees what the former king of Antar is like now." Then several people were literally thrown into the room one by one until there were eight more people in the room and the doors slammed back again, causing the room to become much darker again. It took several seconds for the parents' eyes to adjust to the dim lighting of the room again. Fortunately once their eyes adjusted back to the previous lighting they could see the eight people in front of the door groaning, and they were starting to realize that the new prisoners were only kids. But it wasn't until they heard the actual voices of the kids, until they realized the importance.

"Liz...Liz, are you alright?" Max tried to move his arm to reach out to Liz only to discover that he could only move his elbow a total of about five inches. But that still hit someone else.

"Ouch, keep your elbows to yourself!" Maria winced after she got hit in the head.

"Sorry," Max mumbled while trying to sit up, "are all of us here?"

"If by all you mean your loyal subjects, then yeah, we're all here." Kyle snorted while trying to maneuver himself to a sitting position without kicking anyone.

Alex wanted to hold his head, but with his arms tied behind his back, there was nothing he could do about his headache. "Well this is great. What do we do now?"

"There's gotta be a way out of here." Liz had been trying to use her powers for a while now, but she wasn't getting anywhere, she was vainly hoping that one of the actual aliens could do something. "Do any of your powers work?"

Silence ensued for a bit as all four aliens tried to loose their ropes. "No, I can't do anything. What about you?" Isabel asked Liz, but Max, Michael, and Tess took her question to be aimed at them, and they soon answered negatively.

"Great. So any ideas anybody?" Tess asked as she tried to scoot her way over to a place where she could lean up against something.

"I have one. Why don't you tell your parents what's going on?" Jeff called out from across the room, startling the eight teens.

"Dad?" Liz felt her stomach drop at the sound of her father's voice. This wasn't exactly the way she had imagined telling her parents the truth.

"Liz, Honey, what's going on?" "Max? Isabel? Are you okay?" The two mothers asked at the same time, and then everyone started talking and moving at once. Chaos reigned for a couple of minutes before Max took control.

"HEY! LISTEN UP!" Max shouted across the eleven other people in the room trying to get settled next to the people they were most worried about. "We need to talk in some semblance of order here so that we can actually come up with a plan to get out."

"I don't know if that's going to happen son," Philip reasoned. "But it appears that you kids know more about this situation here than we do, and I think we would appreciate some answers here."

If Max's shout hadn't quieted the room down before, Philip's statement certainly did. Suddenly no one knew what to say. All the teens were anxious about suddenly letting four new members into the "I know an alien" club, and they didn't really even know where to start for sure. Usually when they inducted someone new, the person already had some kind of an idea about what was going on, but the parents were not prepared for this news in any way. The parents were silent for an entirely different reason. They wanted their children to talk, and they were hoping that by keeping silent themselves, that the kids would eventually break and talk. The deafening silence lasted over a minute before anyone finally gave in.

"Look we're all going to be here for a while, and we just want to know what's going on. It seems that you guys have a better grasp on what's happening here. So please just tell us." Diane pleaded with the group for the truth, and Isabel couldn't just ignore her mother's plea.

"It's not that we don't want to tell you Mom-"

"Not that we want to tell either," Michael muttered.

"But there's a lot you don't know, and we don't know where to start."

"Well that's a very reassuring statement there." Jeff derisively said. "Liz, what are you involved in? And where's Alexa?"

Liz had to swallow before she could talk. Right now they were in the worst possible position possible. If something happened and none of them made it out of here, her daughter would be left by herself without the support of someone who knew something about her heritage. "Alexa's with Serena Dad." Liz didn't even want to broach the subject of what was going on, so she just left it there until her father prompted an answer.

"And my other question?"

Liz hesitated before replying. "That's going to take more time to answer."

Tess couldn't take anymore of this tiptoeing around the issue. She had never really been for the whole letting-people-in-on-the-secret thing, but it was obvious that the Parkers and the Evans were going to find out right now anyhow, so she might as well get it out in the open. "We're aliens"

The parents did a double-take before Philip asked what they were all thinking. "Excuse me? Is that suppose to lighten the mood? Because I'm not in the mood for this right now. I just want the truth." Philip couldn't help but let some of his anger out in his voice. It wasn't that he wanted to take anything out on the kids, but the hours of being tied up in an uncomfortable position in a dimly lit room had taken its toll on him.

Isabel felt the tension rising and tried to diffuse the situation. Any hostility at this point would just make this confession all the much the worse, and she had a feeling it was already going to be rough. Before they left, every secret in the room would probably be blown wide open, and that was going to be exhausting enough without excess anger. "Mom? Dad? You know how you always thought there was something different about Max and me? There was kind of a reason for that..."

"You can't actually be saying this, can you?" Jeff felt that he was at the last of his rope. He had be kidnapped, and stuck in a dak warehouse room for who knew how long, and now his daughter and her friends were there making up stories!

"It's true Mr. Parker. Michael, Isabel, Tess, and I aren't exactly of this earth." Max said in a calm even tone.

"You're trying to tell me that my daughter dated an alien?" Nancy scoffed. "We want the truth, not a made-up story."

"Well don't believe us then. We'd prove it, but right now we're a little inhibited, what with the ropes and all." Michael bit out. Go figure, he was always the one probably the most scared about letting people in, and when they do try to let a few new people in, the newbies don't believe it anyway!

"Michael you're not making it any better." Maria chastised just before Liz jumped in on the convincing process.

"Please, Mom and Dad, I think you need to hear our story. And please don't interrupt, it'll be easier to get out that way." Liz waited for someone to protest or say something, but when no one did, she wasn't sure where to start.

"Well where should we start? The beginning of our group? Or your guys' beginning?" Alex asked the pod squad.

"Oooo yay! Story time!" Kyle joked, "I'd clap my hands and jump up and down too, but this space doesn't meet my code for jumping."

Maria rolled her eyes regardless of the fact that no one could see a motion that small, "Shut up Kyle." Kyle immediately shut his mouth and resolved not so say anything again until he could contribute. It wasn't that Kyle wasn't completely aware of how inappropriate of a place this was to be joking around, but this was probably the most tense situation her had ever been in, and humor was the only way he knew how to deal with it.

Max cleared his throat to bring attention back to the matter at hand. "Well I guess I'll start, and we might as well start at the beginning…Actually no scratch that, believe it or not, starting in the middle makes more sense…Do you guys remember that shooting in the crashdown last September?"

The four parents kind of looked at one another wondering what was coming before they all looked back to the teens and nodded.

"Right. Well that day was the beginning of our group." Max paused and Liz immediately picked up.

"Remember how I had ketchup all over my uniform, and I said I fell and broke the ketchup bottle?" Liz briefly paused for her parents' affirmative statements before continuing. "It wasn't just ketchup on that uniform. It was blood. I was standing next to the counter when the gun went off, and I froze. I couldn't force myself to drop to the ground like everyone else, and I got shot."

"What?! Liz, why didn't you tell us? You could have died!" Nancy could feel the fear for her daughter like a sharp pain in her stomach, and she couldn't stop herself from nearly shouting.

"She couldn't Mrs. Parker. I healed her, and she was keeping my secret for me." Max said quietly.

"What? Son what are you talking about?" Philip wasn't a dense person, he knew what the kids were saying, especially since it wasn't all that cryptic, but he needed to hear the explicit detail to even begin to believe it.

"When the gun went off in the Crashdown, Michael and I were there, and I saw Liz get hit. So I went over to her and I helped."

"And how did you help?" Jeff asked with a suspicious tone. He didn't really like the way this was going right now.

Liz was getting a little sick of the way they were talking in circles. It was stressful enough to finally admit what happened, but to take this long just to tell the beginning was a little ridiculous. "He put his hand on the bullet wound, connected to me, and disolved the bullet and knitted my stomach back together. That's why the bullet was never found. It was in me!"

Jeff, Nancy, Philip, and Diane were completely shocked. They couldn't even form the questions in the their heads to be able to find out more. The uncomfortable silence in the room lasted for about a minute before Maria just continued with the story.

"At first, Liz didn't tell me what was going on. She just told me what she told the police and everyone else, that she fell and broke the ketchup bottle. But I knew there was something wrong. There was blood on my ordering pad, and I told Liz that if she didn't tell me everything, I was going to tell Sheriff Valenti everything I knew."

"Which I couldn't let happen," Liz jumped in. "Sheriff was already suspicious about what happened, and he had already called me to his office to try to get me to tell him the truth."

"How did the Sheriff know something was wrong, when I didn't realize that something so major had happened to my own daughter?" Nancy whispered, making it almost impossible for the group to hear it, but with the tight quarters, there really wasn't a way to make something completely inaudible and still say it.

"My dad knew something was up because the bullet was never found, but the really kicker was when I told him about the handprint I saw on Liz's stomach," Kyle paused for a split second before continuing, "Sorry about that by the way you guys."

Max didn't have a chance to reply before Jeff cut him off. "What? There was a handprint on my daughter's stomach?!"

"Um...yeah. I leave a silver handprint when I heal people from something deadly." Max haltingly admitted. "But it's fine. It goes away in a few days."

"Which was a good thing for me, when the Sheriff asked to see my stomach. Luckily it had faded by then," Liz commented.

"Well, did the handprint do anything to you Liz? Are you okay?" Jeff asked, worried that this apparently alien side effect would leave lasting effects.

"Honey, why don't we just let them continue with their story. I'm sure that Liz is fine." Nancy was of course worried about her daughter too, but seeing and hearing how calm her daughter was about the whole thing, Nancy couldn't help but feel that Liz was truly fine, and that the only thing she needed to do was listen to the story.

"Fine," Jeff conceded.

"So anyway, that's when I told Maria the truth," Liz concluded.

Isabel felt the need to tell the story from more of the aliens' point of view and started talking before anyone else could go on. "When Liz had told us that Valenti was suspicious, we wanted to leave. Michael, Max, and I had all gotten in the jeep to leave Roswell when Liz and Maria cornered us and said she had a plan to throw Valenti off. It felt like a long shot, but for a short time it worked."

Diane felt a stab go to her heart when she heard that her son and daughter had thought about just leaving home. What kind of fear had made them considering leaving home like that?

"Unfortunately, that wasn't our only problem. Shortly after that, a new guidance counselor showed up at school, and Liz noticed she was unusually interested in me." Michael said. "After a few a while we proved that she was FBI and she had to leave. But that wasn't the end."

The FBI? Philip could just imagine what the FBI would want to do to kids who were "not of this earth", and he didn't even want to think about it.

"I was the one who helped prove Topolsky was FBI, but Liz didn't let me in on the secret until we were in jail with one another for possession of alcohol." Alex laughed shortly. "That one wasn't alien related though. That was just being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Yeah, and then Valenti kept us longer because he knew that I knew something, and probably suspected that Alex did as well," Liz added. The group was silent for a minute trying to figure out where to go from there. After a while Max moved on.

"When the oil fire happened in our house, and I put it out, you had reason to be suspicious Mom," Max started. "I put that fire out with my powers. And I think that it made Valenti even more suspicious about what was going on with me. A few weeks later there was that alien sighting in the woods, and we went looking for it. We found the symbol and covered it up just in time for Valenti to find us. But I think it raised even more suspicions."

Jeff and Nancy were worried about where all this was going. Their daughter had been going out with this boy, and he was having to hide from the Sheriff! What did that say about how good he was for their daughter? Jeff was starting to think that he was very happy that Liz had gone to Winnaman and gotten away from him, even if she did end up with a child of her own. Surely it was better than this life of running from the law. Of course, if she were truly disconnected, why was she here now? He would have to think about this some more later.

"Later, I figured out one of the messages we found was a map, and I used it to try to communicate with whoever left the symbol we found. Isabel and I burned a symbol in front of the library," Michael was reluctant to give up any information, but since every one else was telling the story, he felt he ought to help out in some way.

"Don't worry, we didn't leave it there. I cleaned it up," Isabel rushed to assure the parents that her and Michael hadn't vandalized public property and left it there. "We didn't think it worked though, because nothing had changed."

"But it did." This was the first time Tess could actually join in on the story, and she wasn't about to leave her self out of that. "Nasedo knew that someone had left a message, and he moved us here."

"I made friends with Tess first, but I didn't know who she was." Isabel remembered the time that Tess had come over and made the four square symbol using the sugar cubes. "That didn't mean that she didn't leave clues though."

"Which really creeped us all out by the way," Maria shuttered as she thought about that time the group had spent discussing Tess and what was going on with her, and Maria remembered how scared she had gotten.

Tess couldn't help but let out a small chuckle before apologizing. "Sorry about that." The others accepted her apology quickly and went on with the story.

"Anyway, so we figured out that Tess was an alien, but we didn't know if she was on our side or not." Liz tried to get back to the story.

"Which I was." Tess confirmed.

"Yeah, but then the really scary thing happened. One day Nasedo shape-shifted to look like Max and he kidnapped Liz from the Crashdown!" Maria couldn't help but raise her voice with this statement. That action was what had started the weekend of terror.

"What?!" Jeff and Nancy could help but shout out together. They had been patiently listening to the story so far, and while they had wanted to ask questions many times, they had refrained because Liz had asked them to just listen. But they weren't prepared to hear that they daughter had been kidnapped at one point. How did they not know this?

"Don't worry Mom and Dad. I was fine; everyone got me back pretty quickly. Max was really the one in trouble." Liz tried to calm down her parents, but unfortunately she worried Max's parents instead. The parents then started firing questions at the group so fast, no one could really tell what was going on, and it took several attempts at order before the group could actually get back to the explanation.

Tess started the explanation because she knew the most about Nasedo. "When our ship crashed her in '47, we four were just in pods, so they had to send someone with us to protect us. That person was Nasedo; he was our protector. He was suppose to come back when we hatched and raise us. But Max, Isabel, and Michael all hatched early, and when he came back, I was the only one left. So he took me and we spent the next ten years searching for the others.

"Nasedo was what we called a shape-shifter, which meant that he could actually manipulate his body to look like anyone he wanted. I didn't know why he did it, except that he decided that the FBI was getting to close, and he wanted to lure them out. So he shape-shifted to look like Max, and he took Liz."

"We figured out that it wasn't really Max that had taken Liz pretty quickly," Maria interrupted. "Then we did everything we could to find her and get her back. And we did."

"Unfortunately, when we got her back, we met up with the FBI, and instead of taking Nasedo, the real killer, they took Max," Isabel growled at the fact that Max had been falsely taken and tortured.

"The FBI took Max?!" Diane started to cry at the thought of what the FBI might do to Max if they had him. How in the world did she not know that her son had been taken by the FBI? "When was that?"

"In May," Max whispered. Talking about all of this stuff, was making him remember what had happened those few days that he had been in FBI custody, and he didn't want to relive that. It was too horrific.

Liz heard the agony in Max's voice and looked over to see him just staring at his hands. She knew that Max wouldn't be able to tell anyone anything, and yet she knew that the parents would need answers, so she resolved to be the one to give them. "Yes, the FBI took Max, and they did tests on him to try to get him to tell them who the other aliens were and how to work the obs. But he didn't give in." Pictures flashed through Liz's mind about what the FBI did to Max while he was in their custody, and her throat started to swell up just thinking about it, but she forced herself to go on. "He did well holding up against them, and luckily Isabel was able to dreamwalk Max to see where he was."

"Wait a minute. Dreamwalk?" Jeff was trying to process all of this, but it was difficult, and he couldn't help but ask for clarification here.

"Yeah, it's one of my powers Mr. Parker. I can go into peoples' dreams while they're asleep and see what the dream is. Sometimes I can communicate with the person like I did with Max that time, but I don't usually try to." Isabel explained.

"Right. So Isabel dreamwalked Max and got his location. Then we all went to Eagle Rock to get him back. Michael was responsible for breeching security and getting Max out, Isabel was supposed to dreamwalk Max to tell him the plan, and Tess mindwarped Pierce so he wouldn't think that Max was really being rescued." Liz said.

Tess anticipated the next question and answered it before it came up. "A mindwarp is when I make somebody see something that isn't really there. In this case I made Pierce see the obs with a kind of green force field around them, with Max just sitting on the table like he was suppose to. When in reality, Michael and Nasedo were blasting through the wall to get to Max and get him out of there."

The parents were all stunned into silence now. Who would have thought that there actually were aliens on earth and that they could have powers such as these? It was all a little mind boggling.

"I just barely got Max out in time, and I helped him to Liz's car, but Nasedo didn't make it," Michael added.

"But the FBI was right after us." Max whispered as if he were lost in the memory. "We were trying to get away, but they cornered us on a bridge, and we had to jump off into the water. It was freezing. My powers didn't work, and I couldn't get warm."

Liz leaned up against Max and rested her head on his should to try to give him any kind of physical comfort she could while she was still tied up. "We found an abandoned truck and we spent the night there, only to be woken up of them chasing us again."

Michael knew that both Max and Liz were having trouble with this part of the story and took over. "The Sheriff knew something was wrong as soon as Max had been taken, and he was on our side. He helped us look for Max and Liz, and we were just in time for me to blind the FBI and rescue Max and Liz again. That's when Valenti found out that it wasn't just Max who was different."

"We met in an abandoned silver mine and came up with a plan to get the FBI off the trail, and it worked for the most part; we ended up getting rid of all of the extra agents, and Pierce was killed, but someone else got hurt too." Maria purposely left out information on how Pierce was killed and who killed him, because she didn't want Michael to think about it again. Then she nudged Kyle to join in on the explanation since this was the part he actually knew.

"I got shot." Kyle was oddly happy to actually be able to tell some of the story now. "I was worried about my dad, so I took one of his guns and went after him, determined that nothing would make me lose him. But go figure, the hair brain plan backfired, and I got shot. I really thought I was going to die, I think I got hit in the heart. And then suddenly, Max was there, and he healed me. Gotta say, I wasn't so fond of that induction."

Nancy, Diane, and Philip were starting to be in awe of these kids. They had obviously been through so much, Max especially, and yet they were still able to function as normal kids. They were specifically in awe of Max. How many people would have been able to go through torture at the hands of someone who should be protecting you, and yet have the strength to help someone else out. To heal someone. Really this group was extraordinary.

Isabel kind of felt that they should leave the story at that. She didn't know if the parents would really be able to accept anything more right now. But she knew that they really had no choice but to tell everything. So she moved on to what had be the most life-changing thing for her at the time. "Before Pierce was killed, I dreamwalked him to find out where Nasedo's body was. So we got it back, and brought it to the pod chamber where we were born," Isabel said. "We used these healing stones, that brought Nasedo back to us, and he told us to try the orbs for real. We did, and we got a message from home."

Max was feeling better now that they weren't talking about what he had been through specifically, and he felt that he needed to be the one to share what was in the message, so he interrupted Isabel. "Apparently, there had been a war and we were killed. I was the King, Isabel was my sister, a princess, Michael was my second-in-command, and Tess was my bride. We were sent here to defeat the enemy here and then go back and defeat the enemy from home." Max said. "That message came in May, but nothing happened again until September."

"Nasedo died. He was killed, but we don't know who he was killed by for sure. All we know is that when he died he told Max that the skins were among us. We tried to think of way we could fight, but nothing came to us until Tess was taken on my birthday." Isabel said.

Diane felt the dread settle in her stomach. This story just got worse and worse. As if it weren't bad enough that it started with someone almost dying, by now, three of these children had been kidnapped on three separate occasions, her own son included, and she wasn't sure she was prepared for what else would come. What else in her children's lives did she not know about?

"I wasn't sure who took me, it happened too fast for me figure it out. But once I was kept in one place for a longer time, I tried to reach Isabel. It was difficult to do because she was so far away, but I apparently I succeeded because she came for me." Tess explained.

"It turned out that Congresswomen Whitaker was a skin. That meant she was one of our enemies, and she had taken Tess trying to get to me, because on Antar, our home planet, I had betrayed everyone, and she wanted me to do that now." Isabel felt her stomach heave and her throat tighten at the thought. She had been battling with that for so long, and she had never told anyone, but now was the time for secrets to come out. "But I couldn't. I could never betray Max or Michael, and when Whitaker tried to force me to help her by threatening Tess, but I ended up somehow being able to revert the energy back to her, and she died." Isabel felt the ever-present remorse at killing a person, but this time it didn't feel so bad. She knew that she had only done what needed to be done. "That was the night I found the Granilith." Isabel stopped talking then, and no one really had anything else to say or add, so it left the parents with a time to actually ask their millions of questions.

"You kids have got to be making this up. There is no way all of this could actually be true!" Jeff tried to deny the feeling he had that this was in fact all true. He wanted them to be making this all up, because if they weren't, then he hadn't known what was going on on Liz's life at all.

"We're not making it up Dad. How could we have told such a cohesive story between eight of us if we made it up?" Liz spoke with a reassuring tone, trying to make them realize that they weren't joking about this.

"I believe you." Diane said somewhat softly, but confidently. She didn't know why she did, and she had no idea how her children could have kept such secrets as these from her. But she did believe it, and she felt terrible. Why did Max and Isabel keep this from her? Was she not a good mother that she didn't think anything so major was different? No wonder they felt that they needed to put Max in therapy that summer. He had been tortured no doubt. He deserved to change, but he couldn't even talk to anyone about it. He couldn't tell his secret, because his secret could cost him his life. All Diane wanted to do right now was go over to her children and hug them and not let them go for awhile.

"I believe you too." Nancy said after a few seconds of silence. She really couldn't believe that she was believing this, but Liz was completely serious here. Even in the dark lighting that allowed her to see none of the facial expressions that might help her confirm their story, Nancy believed what they said. Of course, she was shocked and a bit appalled that all of this could happen without her even knowing, but for some reason she couldn't help but believe.

Philip didn't even know what to think. He felt so overwhelmed that he could barely even think about it. He tried to grasp at anything in his mind that would make this more clear, but everything was running by to quickly. He couldn't comprehend anything. Finally, Isabel's last sentence replayed in his head, and he just blurted out a question. "What's the Granilith?"

Liz felt her stomach drop to her toe felt shivers run down both her arms and legs at the knowledge that this was the time she would have to finally offer up the truth. "Um...actually there's more to the story."

[ultimatepickupline]

Okay, I'm finally here. Thank you everybody for the feedback. I greatly appreciate it, and I want to reply to it as usual but that take about half and hour to forty-five minutes for me to do, and seeing as it's already 3 AM on Tuesday morning for me, because I've been working on my update here since about 6 (although don't get me wrong, I took breaks, and I procrastinated). I'm sick of it all and I don't want to deal with it any more tonight. I just want to get it up as promised. However, I will comment on fb either tomorrow or the next day. Thanks again everyone!


Chapter 39

Serena was in the front seat of her car barely holding on to Alexa and the side of the door at the same time. This Thehlec guy was driving way too recklessly in Serena's opinion, but she didn't really see any other options at this point. At first Thehlec wouldn't say anything but that he needed to explain what was going on once he found everyone. But after looking at Michael's apartment and the Evans' house and not finding anyone, Thehlec started muttering under his breath and rushing out to the car. He wouldn't let Serena buckle Alexa back into the seat, saying that they didn't have time, and they had to go. Seeing the look on Thehlec's face, Serena knew he wasn't kidding and quickly got in the car, holding Alexa in her carrier on her lap, and fervently praying that Thehlec would be careful enough. But when Thehlec took a particularly precarious turn, Serena couldn't hold it back anymore.

"What are you trying to do? Get us killed?"

"No, I'm trying to keep you and your friends alive!"

"Well this kind of driving isn't exactly conducive to driving with a baby in the front seat! You're not suppose to ride with them in the front seat at all."

"Don't worry. Nothing will happen to the heir. I won't let it."

"The what?"

"The heir." Thehlec couldn't help but take his eyes off the road for a second and look at Serena's confused and shocked expression. "You don't know do you?"

"I don't know what? What is Alexa the heir to?"

"The throne of Antar."

"What?"

"Antar. It's a planet in the whirlwind galaxy."

Serena couldn't help but laugh. "You know I should be really scared by all of this, but I'll settle for you just slowing down."

"What's so funny?"

"You're saying Liz is an alien! She's not an alien!"

Thehlec realized now that perhaps the Royal Four had kept their secret quieter than he had thought, and decided to tell Serena the most basic and fastest truth he could. "Yes she is. A long time ago on Antar King Zan ruled. He was a great ruler, but his cousin, Khivar, was jealous, and he killed Zan along with Zan's sister, Vilondra, his second-in-command, Rath, and his future wife, Ava. Of couse Khivar then took over the planet. Everything was fine, no one the wiser about the new King's deception, and then the Granilith reader said that an heir had been conceived. This little one right here."

Thehlec briefly looked down at Alexa and smiled. "Khivar quickly got a team together and came to earth to kill the Royal Four and the heir and be done with it once and for all. I found out early on what actually happened to King Zan, and I've been working behind Khivar's back to give Zan a fair chance. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to warn him. And now the Evans and the Parkers are taken, and I was trying to get Royal Four before the Royal Four did anything drastic. But I'm afraid it's too late."

Serena was silent for a few seconds trying to process what Thehlec had said. He had spoken fast, which made it more difficult, but that wasn't the only problem. The whole thing seemed a little far fetched, even if it did answer a few questions. "Was that what the note was about earlier that Liz got?"

"Yes."

"Where are we going now?"

"To the soap factory, hopefully to stop them, and help them get the parents. I have a way in." Thehlec finished just in time to see the building come into view. "We're here. I need you to come just in case I need help, but I need to you keep Alexa quiet okay?"

Serena was more than a little freaked, but she shakily nodded her head, and they got out of the car as quietly as possible.

*****

"What?!" Several of the occupants of the room explained at once. No one could be sure who was more surprised by Liz's statement. The teens who didn't know what Liz was talking about couldn't imagine what they had left out. They had told everything right? And the parents were surprised that apparently there was something that only Liz knew. What could involve the story of the group, yet only Liz knew what it was? Did that even make sense?

"There's more. Trust me, there's more. Mr. Evans, you asked about the Granilith? Well we don't really know what it is. But I do know it is extremely powerful, because it can be used for time travel." Liz said.

"What do you mean?" Michael asked barely controlling the anger in his voice. He couldn't understand how Liz could know about the Granilith and yet not feel the need to share it with them before. This was unbelievable! He never thought that Liz would keep a secret of this nature from the group. At least she shouldn't keep it from Max, and Max wouldn't keep it from him. So why was he in the dark here?

"I mean that the Granilith can be used for time travel-"

"That's impossible! Time travel is impossible! I was beginning to believe that all of this insane story might be true. But you just pushed it too far. Time travel?!" Jeff scoffed. "I can't believe you of all people would do this, Liz."

"I'm not doing anything but telling the truth! The Granilith can be used for time travel! And I know because Max came back to me from the future!" Liz couldn't help but get louder as she was talking. She had enough anxiety about telling the truth now as it was. She didn't need everyone to be doubting the veracity of that truth.

"What do you mean I came back from the future?" Max as soon as he could form a sentence. How could Liz not tell him something so important as the fact that he supposedly came back from the future?

"You guys don't make this very easy to tell, you know. Maybe if you would stop interrupting, I could get it out," Liz said.

Needless to say, nearly nobody took well to that reproach. Michael, Tess, and Max argued that they shouldn't be finding out this information now when they were with the parents, and captured by an unknown enemy. They should have already known. The parents argued that the story they had been told in the last hour was completely too outlandish to be real, so they would need at least a few minutes to process before they could go on to discussing something even more out there. It took several minutes to settle everybody down, during which time it became obvious that Maria, Alex and Isabel already knew what Liz was getting ready to say, and that just sparked new debate. Max, Tess, and Michael were all angry that Isabel hadn't told them, they thought that as a fellow alien, she should have let them know. Kyle, not wanting to be left out of the argument, complained that he was the only human in the group to not know. Max felt the chasm between him and Liz even more acutely than he had in the past few weeks, and this time it took the parents to help calm everyone down to hear the story.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you guys this before. But I couldn't. I only told Maria and Alex because I needed help, and Isabel just found out by mistake." Liz started.

"Why did you need Maria and Alex's help?" Max couldn't stop himself from asking the question despite his previous promise not to interrupt.

"See all that arguing, and you guys don't even know the story yet." Liz shook her head and looked down at her knees, but luckily no one said anything at the break, and Liz took a deep breath and continued. "It all happened in the beginning of October. Do you remember that night you came to me with the Mariachi band, Max? Yes, of course you do, I already asked you that. Well that's the night it all started. I was in front of my mirror, and suddenly there was this guy on my balcony. He was dressed in all black leather, had long hair, and he looked like Max. He was Max."

"Just because he looked like Max, doesn't mean that he was!" Michael said. "It could have been a shape-shifter or a mindwarp or something!"

"No, it wasn't," Tess said so fast that she surprised everyone into silence. "It couldn't have been a mindwarp or a shape-shifter because Liz would have known it wasn't actually Max. She knew when Nasedo wasn't Max, and he was the best."

Liz couldn't help but stare at Tess. They had been becoming closer, and she would even call Tess a friend now, but she never would have expected Tess to stand up for her so quickly. "Thanks Tess. I did tell him he wasn't Max at first, but he proved that it was. He knew that Max would come with the mariachi band, that he would change the roses from red to white while they were in the air on the way up to me, and that my dad would interrupt it. There was no way it couldn't have been Max.

"Anyway, he came from fourteen years in the future, because the world was ending, and he wanted me to prevent it."

"How could one person prevent the end of the world? That's ridiculous!" Philip couldn't help but interject.

"Well apparently, fourteen years from now, some antarian enemies came to earth, and because in that original timeline, Tess had left Roswell last fall, the four square was incomplete, and without the complete foursquare, we weren't able to win. Hence the end of the world."

"Why would I leave?" Tess asked. She had never been happier here right now, and she couldn't fathom leaving now.

"Well now you're very much a part of this group, but back in the fall, you will still going after Max, and if things had continued the way they were, Max and I would have gotten back together, and you would have had no place with us. You wouldn't have been wanted here, and you would have left," Liz said, then paused. "I'm sorry Tess. I'm sorry that we would have treated you so badly that you would have wanted to leave. You don't deserve that." Liz got quieter during her apology to the point that everybody in the room had to strain to hear her at the end, but that didn't mean that it had any less of an impact

"So this Future Max asked you to make sure that Tess stayed here?" Kyle asked after a second of trying to think through his confused thoughts.

"No, he asked me to help him fall out of love with me."

*****

Thehlec looked at the screens he had set up to surveil the building and made a quick decision. "Okay, I need to distract Khivar, and the guards, and you're going to have to get everyone out of the storage room. Okay?"

"Okay. How do I do that?"

Thehlec paused. He hadn't thought about the possibility that he would be working with someone without powers. What were they going to do now?

*****

Khivar sat in his conference room thinking. He had wanted to throw Zan and his friends into the storage room with the parents for a little bit to prove who was in charge. But it had been a couple of hours by now, and he was getting bored. Maybe it was time that he go check on his cousin.

*****

"What?!" Max almost shouted, but he quickly cut himself off and just indicated that Liz should go on.

"First I tried to get Max and Tess together." Liz felt a little weird tell this part to the whole group at the same time. She didn't know who she should address. "But that didn't work. Max just found out that that's what I was doing, even though he didn't know why. Then I tried to tell Max that I didn't want to participate in our relationship anymore." Liz turned to Max to address him directly. "Max, I didn't mean any of what I said that night. I would gladly die for you, and I only wanted you, but I couldn't say that." Sensing that Liz would need a moment after that confession, everyone was silent, letting her gather herself, and it was a minute before Liz went on. "But neither of those things worked. Future Max said that once we changed the future that he would cease to exist in the version he was then. But he hadn't disappeared, so we knew that we had to do more. That's when I got a new idea.

"Max had invited me to a Gomez concert, and I had declined. Future Max told me that I had in the other timeline too, but that he hadn't taken no for an answer and he had come over that night. That's when we had gotten back together. So I knew that Max was going to come over, and I set him up." Liz took a shaky breath. This was the part that no one really knew. "I made it look like I had slept with Kyle."

At this point the room nearly exploded with questions and accusations. The mere chaos of it didn't even allow anyone to distinguish the actual reactions to the news. Max was the only one who was completely silent, just trying to process the information. Liz was hesitant to even look in Max's direction to see his reaction. But with the darkness of the room, once she did look, all Liz could see was Max staring into his lap.

Several minutes passed before any semblance of order was resumed and Liz could admit that there was more. "You guys there's something else that you need to know. Most of you know my cover story that I don't know who Alexa's father is, because I supposedly slept with a lot of guys when I was at Winnaman. But that's not true. I do know who Alexa's father is. That night that I set Max up, I didn't sleep with Kyle, but I did sleep with Future Max. He's Alexa's father, and I think that's the reason Khivar is here now."

Once again, chaos ensued, and once again, it took a while to get everyone to settle down, but luckily since this had happened a couple of times already, the order was brought quickly enough.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Max asked, the hurt showing in his voice. Hearing that Alexa was really his, when Max had already been feeling such a connection to her, loosened Max up enough to actually have a verbal reaction this time.

"I'm sorry, Max. I'm so sorry," Liz whispered. "It's just that at first I couldn't tell you because it could have ruined everything I had worked to so hard to change. Even when I found out I was pregnant, I couldn't tell you just in case. Besides, my choices ended up giving me Alexa, and that was a huge responsibility that you don't have to be responsible for."

"But Liz! She's essentially my daughter! What happens if she gets powers or something? How are you going to deal with that? Tell me the truth three years down the road? How is that fair?"

"It's not. It's not. I just didn't know what to do!"

"You've had at least nine months."

"Well I couldn't tell you right away! It would have completely negated everything I did! Why do you think I went to Winnaman in the first place? It was so no one would think you were Alexa's father!"

"Hey!" Jeff yelled over Max and Liz. "First of all, I don't think this is exactly the place to argue about whether Liz should have admitted what happened. Second of all, Liz, why did you really go to Winnaman?"

Liz sighed. She was just going from one interrogation to another. "When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I couldn't let anyone know who the father was, so Maria and Alex helped me come up with a plan, and Alex found out about Winnaman for me."

"So you only went to Winnaman to get away from here?" Nancy really didn't need for Liz to answer this question, but she needed a breather for her brain, and at least this would accomplish that.

"Yes."

Diane and Jeff sat with boggled minds, with only one thing sinking in. "If all of this is true, then in a way, Alexa is our grandchild, isn't she?" Diane asked.

"Yeah, I guess so." Liz had never thought about it from that aspect. She had always been too wrapped up in the idea that Max was Alexa's genetic father, even though he didn't know it.

"Wait, wait, wait," Kyle said. "Let me get this straight. Basically this other version of Max took Liz's virginity twice. Is that what I'm hearing? Oww!"

Kyle had barely gotten his question in before Tess kicked him a couple of times, leaving what Kyle was sure was going to be a swollen bruise tomorrow. The rest of the reactions, no one could really see in the dark, but Liz blushed, Max and Jeff glared, and everybody else was torn between rolling their eyes and blushing themselves.

The room probably would have erupted into another bout of chaotic interrogation and conversation if it weren't for what happened next.

The door opened, and what seemed like a blinding light fell on all twelve prisoners.