"What?"
Jack squinted at Agent Theta, "Excuse me? I know a shakedown when I see one. Breaking into my home at five in the morning, threatening to deport people, yet you are doing it alone so there aren't any witnesses, C'mon!" Jack spread his arms wide, "Clearly you are trying to intimidate me so when you ask for cash I'll cough up, thinking that it's a relief that you are merely a corrupt and greedy government official."
Agent Theta shook her head at the whiplash she was experiencing from the way the conversation kept turning around, "Are you trying to bribe me?"
"I'm not an idiot, you know. How could you afford a suit of bling like that on a government salary?" Jack gestured up and down Theta's body armor, "By having a protection racket, of course. I get it. This whole planet is corrupt as fuck. Seriously. Everywhere I turn I see nothing but crooks. You have to be one just to survive." He pointed at himself, "When I deal with criminals, everyone thinks I'm cute because I actually obey the law."
Jack turned and started walking down the hallway to his bedroom, "I'm broke at the moment, so just tell me how much you are trying to fleece me for and I'll call some friends and get you whatever it'll cost for you to fuck off."
He didn't get far before Theta grabbed him from behind, spun him around, and shoved him up against the wall, "Listen up, you piece of shit, trying to make me look like I'm the corrupt one here isn't going to fly!" She tapped her chest, "I'm not the one dealing with organized crime."
Wanderer looked like she wanted to do something, but Jack was quick to give her a glance and short head shake. He returned his attention to Theta with a roll of his eyes, "Ever hear the story of the frog in the boiling water?" He hooked a thumb at himself, "I can see what's going on in this version of America because I know boiling water when I see it. Your country is corrupt, crooked, and a totalitarian hellscape." He leaned his head in slightly closer, "Who ISN'T part of some form of organized crime?"
Theta backed off a half step as it seemed that Jack had struck a chord. Jack didn't let up on his attack, "You gutted the bill of rights, you crush anyone who stands out, Hell, I'm surprised you didn't rewrite the declaration of independence."
Jack held up his hand and slowly panned it along as he spoke, "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, proclaim that we shall punish Treason by thought, treason by word, and treason by deed. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Diversity is our strength." He dropped his hand and glared at Theta, "You know, Nineteen Eighty Four was a warning, not an instruction manual."
Agent Theta looked confused, "What's nineteen eighty four?"
Jack blinked a few times, "That explains a lot." He rubbed his forehead as he sighed, "It's basically a cautionary tale written by a man called George Orwell that showed what would happen if my world..." He gestured around, "Was allowed to turn into your world." He dropped his hand to look at her, "You might think the people I deal with are crooks, but as far as I can say, none of them have broken any laws that I know about or could prove. I believe in innocent until proven guilty. A concept that I'm sure, along with personal liberties and rights, have been tossed out the window."
Theta pulled back her fist and looked like she was going to punch Jack in the face. Jack stood his ground, "Prove me right."
Theta looked quite torn. Her fist trembled as she sneered, "You're lucky I don't hit men." Theta dropped her hand as she turned away, "He isn't kidding." She glared at Wanderer, "He really is a professional asshole." Wanderer was at a loss as to how she should respond.
Jack smiled and held his hands wide, "Best in the business."
Theta snorted, "Is that why you were hanging out with a terrorist?"
Jack blinked, "Excuse me?"
Theta tapped her wrist then held it out. It started projecting an image that she aimed at the wall. It was video taken from a distance of Jack sitting on the subway car talking to Lord Od, "What are your dealings with Mister Od?"
Jack pointed at the projection, "Now this level of state sponsored surveillance is terrifying." He looked back at Theta who just glared at him. Jack rolled his eyes, "Not a god damn thing. He sat down across from me. We talked about hats. I thought he was cool. He thought I was gay. He bolted."
Theta snorted, "Really." She spoke in a way that indicated that she didn't believe him, "And how did you find out about the Decepticons?"
Jack let out a burst of laughter, "Saturday morning cartoons! Transformers came on right before G.I. Joe. Wait. Are you bugging me?"
Theta leveled a glare at Jack, "If you have a phone, we've bugged you." She stepped up and stabbed a finger in Jack's face, "Time and time again, you keep getting flagged, but someone in the system keeps wiping the flags out. I look into you and get told I don't have high enough clearance." She hooked a thumb at herself, "I don't have enough clearance? ME???" She tilted her head to the side, "Someone is watching your back and letting you get away with shit that would have gotten your ass hauled in weeks ago and I'm supposed to believe something isn't up?"
Jack blinked, "Wait. Are you telling me that Earth actually got invaded by robots in disguise?" He slumped back against the wall and put a hand on his forehead, "I... This place just keeps getting worse and worse."
Theta looked from Wanderer to Jack and back again a few times, "Hold on. Are you actually claiming that in your world, a major alien invasion was a children's cartoon?"
Jack looked at Wanderer, "Is she for real? Tell me this is a joke. That Megatron and Starscream are not a thing."
Wanderer frowned a bit, then looked at Theta, "Am I allowed to explain things?"
Theta had an odd look on her face, like nothing was going as she expected it to go. She nodded once and stepped back.
Wanderer spoke without looking directly at Jack. Apparently she was finding his near nudity a little distracting, "Earth... humanity in general... is a very dangerous species as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned."
Jack blinked HARD, "Excuse me?"
She gestured to the bedroom, "Sorry. Can you please put some clothes on? I know you are comfortable like that, but I'm not."
Jack glanced at himself, closed his eyes and nodded, "Sorry. Didn't mean for you to get caught up in this." He turned and walked to his bedroom, "Keep talking. I can hear you."
Wanderer looked relieved as he went to get dressed, "My race took close to thirty thousand years to get to where it is now. We are one of the older races in this neck of the galactic spiral. We've become quite adept in many psionic art forms." She let out a long breath, "And humans have in less than a hundred years developed far more potent powers than we ever could have dreamed of."
Jack stepped out from his bedroom wearing a bathrobe, "Come again?"
Wanderer looked at Jack, "It's not just psionics. You come from a higher gravity world than most. You are stronger and tougher than most. You can lose half the blood in your body and still survive. You survive wounds that would take down most other species." She gestured to the window, "And that's just the average human. Your metas are... the best in the galaxy. Not everyone has psionics, but you have people with the strongest psionics. Full Stop. Not all humans are strong, but the strongest human is the strongest in the galaxy. The rate at which you are developing new technologies is absolutely terrifying. We've never seen a species combine memetic manipulation with physical objects on your level. Your so-called 'magic items' break the laws of physics as we know it."
She glanced at Theta, then back to Jack, "Most species develop a mutation and it spreads throughout the entire population. One. Mutation. You meet one Brock, you met them all. Not humans. It's because humans have cancer. Nobody else in the galaxy has that particular disease. It has horrible effects, this is true, but it exists because of your body's ability to... effectively reprogram itself. Rebuild itself from the ground up. No other species mutates as much. No other planet contains so much potential. A few leaders of various species have come to the conclusion you need to be stopped before you really get going. Fortunately, the others believe it's too late and we should try to make the best of it. Better to be your friend then make you an enemy."
Theta smirked, "We were deemed such a danger, they tried to wipe us out. There was an invasion after a little incident where we captured a crashed alien space craft."
Jack went over to sit on the couch, "Let me guess. Roswell, New Mexico."
Theta's jaw dropped, "How-"
Jack interrupted her with a wave of his hand, "Nineteen forty seven. In my world there was a huge hoax about a crashed flying saucer. Turned out to be a weather balloon. Fairly famous in American mythology. They have a place called 'The Little A-lee-Inn' where you can stay. It's a bed and breakfast." He rolled his hand in the air, "Stayed there on a lark once. You can buy T-shirts, shot glasses, those little things you shake up and it snows inside..." He looked thoughtful for a second, then shook his head to return to the here and now, "I keep noticing parallels between our worlds and that one is just... obvious."
Theta nodded slightly, but looked like she was having a hard time accepting it, "Alright... Well, four years later, they invaded earth because of that incident. We fought them off without anyone noticing."
Jack blinked, "Seriously? How do you cover up an alien invasion?"
Wanderer looked embarrassed, "It's easy if one side hasn't invaded another world in living memory. The galaxy as a whole is very peaceful. We're no where near as used to war as Humanity is."
Theta nodded, "There were two more invasions after that, but each one only made us stronger, so they tried a proxy war. Redirected problems our way. The whole transforming robots thing was some sort of war between AIs that had been going on for millions of years. Some xenos hid something important to those AIs on Earth and told both factions that the item was here. They showed up to fight over it and everyone hoped Humanity would get killed in the process."
Wanderer snorted, "Nobody expected humanity to actually figure out a way to kill the robots and put an end to their little war."
Theta shook her head slowly with grim resolve, "If the anti-christ won, Humanity would have taken to the stars and wiped out or enslaved everyone else. If that was the devil's goal, then that alone is reason enough for us to try and work out peaceful integration with the galactic community." She jogged her head towards Wanderer, "We try to keep all this nonsense quiet because the truth is, the aliens are right. If humanity only knew how many times it almost got wiped out, we might decide to go to war against the galaxy and... we might win."
Jack blinked, "You're kidding."
Theta shook her head, "Not at all. We're not trying to protect the American people from the galaxy. We're trying to protect the rest of the galaxy from us. It is hoped that if we just keep a lid on everything long enough, we can just learn to get along. After all..." She jutted her chin at Wanderer, "Not every alien is evil. Most of the problems Earth has had came from alien governments, not alien people."
"Kind of like here, huh?" Jack sat there and looked at his hands, then up at Wanderer. She looked back like a deer caught in headlights, but as the moment stretched on, her expression softened and a smile played across her lips.
Jack looked back at Theta and much of his confrontational attitude was gone, "Seems like a worthy cause. I had no idea. I'll stop discussing things from my world with random strangers. I had no idea it could cause trouble."
Theta looked from one to the other, then folded her arms as she focused on Jack, "So I'm supposed to believe your meeting with Mister Od was just random happenstance?"
Jack shook his head, "Oh. I know it wasn't. The way my life is, not a chance. But I'll be damned if I know what he's up to." Jack scratched the side of his head, "We talked about hats... that we both felt like a man out of time..." Jack snapped his fingers, "We talked about the nature of evil and the anti-christ. Apparently Lord Od met him once."
Agent Theta's arms dropped to her side as she abruptly took a step closer to Jack, "What did you say???"
Jack quirked an eyebrow, "He said he once met the Anti-Christ. Looked him in the eye and tried to find some shred of humanity he could appeal to." Jack shrugged, "Apparently, he found none."
Theta squinted and then pressed a knuckle up under her nose as she thought. Jack looked at Wanderer who just shrugged in return. Theta looked up at Jack, "Did... he say when this happened?"
Jack squinted as he shook his head, "Noooo... Say... what is the man wanted for, anyways?"
Theta was crisp in her reply, "Classified. Just know his passport has been seized and he is no longer welcome in any of the fifty four states of America or any of its territories." She thought for a moment then added, "If he approaches you again, I highly recommend you break all contact and call nine nine one immediately."
Jack looked at Theta out of the corner of his eye, "You aren't here in any official capacity, are you?"
Theta narrowed her eyes in return, then, without a word, turned to leave.
Jack abruptly stood up and called after her, "Hey... I meant it. This world is on fire and everyone sits around saying, 'This is fine'. If you are actually trying to put out the blaze and save it..." He let his voice trail off. Theta paused at the door, glanced back at Jack, then left.
Wanderer stepped closer to Jack, "What was that all about?"
Jack shoved his hands deep into his robe's pockets and took in a sharp breath through his teeth, "My Guess? I poked a hole in someone's story."
Wanderer looked at the back of Jack's head, "Thank you."
Jack didn't turn around, "Don't like people fucking with my friends."
She shook her head, "Not that. Every alien that comes here and seeks residency had to take a course about Earth. They explain why we need to keep quiet about the multiple attempts to wipe humanity out. My species is more guilty than most." She reached out for his back, but stopped short, letting her fingers hover without quite touching, "You based your choice on if you should respect the policy of silence entirely upon what you think of me."
Wanderer pulled her hand away, "You didn't like-"
Jack spun around and interrupted her, "I told you to stop telling me how I feel." She was taken off guard and lowered her head, only to be surprised when she felt him ruffling the hair between her antenna. Jack leaned in to speak softly into her ear, "You should get back to your own bed, in case your team needs you." He pulled his hand away and walked past her, clearly intending on returning to his bedroom, "Oh, one more thing."
Wanderer looked up at Jack's retreating form, "Yes, Master?"
Jack paused at his bedroom door, "If you teleport into my apartment to listen to me sleep, don't get in bed with me."
Wanderer smiled broadly and bowed her head towards him, right before she vanished. All that remained was a warping of the air, like heat coming off a road on a bright sunny day.
Even that vanished in time.
"What?"
Jack squinted at Agent Theta, "Excuse me? I know a shakedown when I see one. Breaking into my home at five in the morning, threatening to deport people, yet you are doing it alone so there aren't any witnesses, C'mon!" Jack spread his arms wide, "Clearly you are trying to intimidate me so when you ask for cash I'll cough up, thinking that it's a relief that you are merely a corrupt and greedy government official."
Agent Theta shook her head at the whiplash she was experiencing from the way the conversation kept turning around, "Are you trying to bribe me?"
"I'm not an idiot, you know. How could you afford a suit of bling like that on a government salary?" Jack gestured up and down Theta's body armor, "By having a protection racket, of course. I get it. This whole planet is corrupt as fuck. Seriously. Everywhere I turn I see nothing but crooks. You have to be one just to survive." He pointed at himself, "When I deal with criminals, everyone thinks I'm cute because I actually obey the law."
Jack turned and started walking down the hallway to his bedroom, "I'm broke at the moment, so just tell me how much you are trying to fleece me for and I'll call some friends and get you whatever it'll cost for you to fuck off."
He didn't get far before Theta grabbed him from behind, spun him around, and shoved him up against the wall, "Listen up, you piece of shit, trying to make me look like I'm the corrupt one here isn't going to fly!" She tapped her chest, "I'm not the one dealing with organized crime."
Wanderer looked like she wanted to do something, but Jack was quick to give her a glance and short head shake. He returned his attention to Theta with a roll of his eyes, "Ever hear the story of the frog in the boiling water?" He hooked a thumb at himself, "I can see what's going on in this version of America because I know boiling water when I see it. Your country is corrupt, crooked, and a totalitarian hellscape." He leaned his head in slightly closer, "Who ISN'T part of some form of organized crime?"
Theta backed off a half step as it seemed that Jack had struck a chord. Jack didn't let up on his attack, "You gutted the bill of rights, you crush anyone who stands out, Hell, I'm surprised you didn't rewrite the declaration of independence."
Jack held up his hand and slowly panned it along as he spoke, "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, proclaim that we shall punish Treason by thought, treason by word, and treason by deed. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Diversity is our strength." He dropped his hand and glared at Theta, "You know, Nineteen Eighty Four was a warning, not an instruction manual."
Agent Theta looked confused, "What's nineteen eighty four?"
Jack blinked a few times, "That explains a lot." He rubbed his forehead as he sighed, "It's basically a cautionary tale written by a man called George Orwell that showed what would happen if my world..." He gestured around, "Was allowed to turn into your world." He dropped his hand to look at her, "You might think the people I deal with are crooks, but as far as I can say, none of them have broken any laws that I know about or could prove. I believe in innocent until proven guilty. A concept that I'm sure, along with personal liberties and rights, have been tossed out the window."
Theta pulled back her fist and looked like she was going to punch Jack in the face. Jack stood his ground, "Prove me right."
Theta looked quite torn. Her fist trembled as she sneered, "You're lucky I don't hit men." Theta dropped her hand as she turned away, "He isn't kidding." She glared at Wanderer, "He really is a professional asshole." Wanderer was at a loss as to how she should respond.
Jack smiled and held his hands wide, "Best in the business."
Theta snorted, "Is that why you were hanging out with a terrorist?"
Jack blinked, "Excuse me?"
Theta tapped her wrist then held it out. It started projecting an image that she aimed at the wall. It was video taken from a distance of Jack sitting on the subway car talking to Lord Od, "What are your dealings with Mister Od?"
Jack pointed at the projection, "Now this level of state sponsored surveillance is terrifying." He looked back at Theta who just glared at him. Jack rolled his eyes, "Not a god damn thing. He sat down across from me. We talked about hats. I thought he was cool. He thought I was gay. He bolted."
Theta snorted, "Really." She spoke in a way that indicated that she didn't believe him, "And how did you find out about the Decepticons?"
Jack let out a burst of laughter, "Saturday morning cartoons! Transformers came on right before G.I. Joe. Wait. Are you bugging me?"
Theta leveled a glare at Jack, "If you have a phone, we've bugged you." She stepped up and stabbed a finger in Jack's face, "Time and time again, you keep getting flagged, but someone in the system keeps wiping the flags out. I look into you and get told I don't have high enough clearance." She hooked a thumb at herself, "I don't have enough clearance? ME???" She tilted her head to the side, "Someone is watching your back and letting you get away with shit that would have gotten your ass hauled in weeks ago and I'm supposed to believe something isn't up?"
Jack blinked, "Wait. Are you telling me that Earth actually got invaded by robots in disguise?" He slumped back against the wall and put a hand on his forehead, "I... This place just keeps getting worse and worse."
Theta looked from Wanderer to Jack and back again a few times, "Hold on. Are you actually claiming that in your world, a major alien invasion was a children's cartoon?"
Jack looked at Wanderer, "Is she for real? Tell me this is a joke. That Megatron and Starscream are not a thing."
Wanderer frowned a bit, then looked at Theta, "Am I allowed to explain things?"
Theta had an odd look on her face, like nothing was going as she expected it to go. She nodded once and stepped back.
Wanderer spoke without looking directly at Jack. Apparently she was finding his near nudity a little distracting, "Earth... humanity in general... is a very dangerous species as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned."
Jack blinked HARD, "Excuse me?"
She gestured to the bedroom, "Sorry. Can you please put some clothes on? I know you are comfortable like that, but I'm not."
Jack glanced at himself, closed his eyes and nodded, "Sorry. Didn't mean for you to get caught up in this." He turned and walked to his bedroom, "Keep talking. I can hear you."
Wanderer looked relieved as he went to get dressed, "My race took close to thirty thousand years to get to where it is now. We are one of the older races in this neck of the galactic spiral. We've become quite adept in many psionic art forms." She let out a long breath, "And humans have in less than a hundred years developed far more potent powers than we ever could have dreamed of."
Jack stepped out from his bedroom wearing a bathrobe, "Come again?"
Wanderer looked at Jack, "It's not just psionics. You come from a higher gravity world than most. You are stronger and tougher than most. You can lose half the blood in your body and still survive. You survive wounds that would take down most other species." She gestured to the window, "And that's just the average human. Your metas are... the best in the galaxy. Not everyone has psionics, but you have people with the strongest psionics. Full Stop. Not all humans are strong, but the strongest human is the strongest in the galaxy. The rate at which you are developing new technologies is absolutely terrifying. We've never seen a species combine memetic manipulation with physical objects on your level. Your so-called 'magic items' break the laws of physics as we know it."
She glanced at Theta, then back to Jack, "Most species develop a mutation and it spreads throughout the entire population. One. Mutation. You meet one Brock, you met them all. Not humans. It's because humans have cancer. Nobody else in the galaxy has that particular disease. It has horrible effects, this is true, but it exists because of your body's ability to... effectively reprogram itself. Rebuild itself from the ground up. No other species mutates as much. No other planet contains so much potential. A few leaders of various species have come to the conclusion you need to be stopped before you really get going. Fortunately, the others believe it's too late and we should try to make the best of it. Better to be your friend then make you an enemy."
Theta smirked, "We were deemed such a danger, they tried to wipe us out. There was an invasion after a little incident where we captured a crashed alien space craft."
Jack went over to sit on the couch, "Let me guess. Roswell, New Mexico."
Theta's jaw dropped, "How-"
Jack interrupted her with a wave of his hand, "Nineteen forty seven. In my world there was a huge hoax about a crashed flying saucer. Turned out to be a weather balloon. Fairly famous in American mythology. They have a place called 'The Little A-lee-Inn' where you can stay. It's a bed and breakfast." He rolled his hand in the air, "Stayed there on a lark once. You can buy T-shirts, shot glasses, those little things you shake up and it snows inside..." He looked thoughtful for a second, then shook his head to return to the here and now, "I keep noticing parallels between our worlds and that one is just... obvious."
Theta nodded slightly, but looked like she was having a hard time accepting it, "Alright... Well, four years later, they invaded earth because of that incident. We fought them off without anyone noticing."
Jack blinked, "Seriously? How do you cover up an alien invasion?"
Wanderer looked embarrassed, "It's easy if one side hasn't invaded another world in living memory. The galaxy as a whole is very peaceful. We're no where near as used to war as Humanity is."
Theta nodded, "There were two more invasions after that, but each one only made us stronger, so they tried a proxy war. Redirected problems our way. The whole transforming robots thing was some sort of war between AIs that had been going on for millions of years. Some xenos hid something important to those AIs on Earth and told both factions that the item was here. They showed up to fight over it and everyone hoped Humanity would get killed in the process."
Wanderer snorted, "Nobody expected humanity to actually figure out a way to kill the robots and put an end to their little war."
Theta shook her head slowly with grim resolve, "If the anti-christ won, Humanity would have taken to the stars and wiped out or enslaved everyone else. If that was the devil's goal, then that alone is reason enough for us to try and work out peaceful integration with the galactic community." She jogged her head towards Wanderer, "We try to keep all this nonsense quiet because the truth is, the aliens are right. If humanity only knew how many times it almost got wiped out, we might decide to go to war against the galaxy and... we might win."
Jack blinked, "You're kidding."
Theta shook her head, "Not at all. We're not trying to protect the American people from the galaxy. We're trying to protect the rest of the galaxy from us. It is hoped that if we just keep a lid on everything long enough, we can just learn to get along. After all..." She jutted her chin at Wanderer, "Not every alien is evil. Most of the problems Earth has had came from alien governments, not alien people."
"Kind of like here, huh?" Jack sat there and looked at his hands, then up at Wanderer. She looked back like a deer caught in headlights, but as the moment stretched on, her expression softened and a smile played across her lips.
Jack looked back at Theta and much of his confrontational attitude was gone, "Seems like a worthy cause. I had no idea. I'll stop discussing things from my world with random strangers. I had no idea it could cause trouble."
Theta looked from one to the other, then folded her arms as she focused on Jack, "So I'm supposed to believe your meeting with Mister Od was just random happenstance?"
Jack shook his head, "Oh. I know it wasn't. The way my life is, not a chance. But I'll be damned if I know what he's up to." Jack scratched the side of his head, "We talked about hats... that we both felt like a man out of time..." Jack snapped his fingers, "We talked about the nature of evil and the anti-christ. Apparently Lord Od met him once."
Agent Theta's arms dropped to her side as she abruptly took a step closer to Jack, "What did you say???"
Jack quirked an eyebrow, "He said he once met the Anti-Christ. Looked him in the eye and tried to find some shred of humanity he could appeal to." Jack shrugged, "Apparently, he found none."
Theta squinted and then pressed a knuckle up under her nose as she thought. Jack looked at Wanderer who just shrugged in return. Theta looked up at Jack, "Did... he say when this happened?"
Jack squinted as he shook his head, "Noooo... Say... what is the man wanted for, anyways?"
Theta was crisp in her reply, "Classified. Just know his passport has been seized and he is no longer welcome in any of the fifty four states of America or any of its territories." She thought for a moment then added, "If he approaches you again, I highly recommend you break all contact and call nine nine one immediately."
Jack looked at Theta out of the corner of his eye, "You aren't here in any official capacity, are you?"
Theta narrowed her eyes in return, then, without a word, turned to leave.
Jack abruptly stood up and called after her, "Hey... I meant it. This world is on fire and everyone sits around saying, 'This is fine'. If you are actually trying to put out the blaze and save it..." He let his voice trail off. Theta paused at the door, glanced back at Jack, then left.
Wanderer stepped closer to Jack, "What was that all about?"
Jack shoved his hands deep into his robe's pockets and took in a sharp breath through his teeth, "My Guess? I poked a hole in someone's story."
Wanderer looked at the back of Jack's head, "Thank you."
Jack didn't turn around, "Don't like people fucking with my friends."
She shook her head, "Not that. Every alien that comes here and seeks residency had to take a course about Earth. They explain why we need to keep quiet about the multiple attempts to wipe humanity out. My species is more guilty than most." She reached out for his back, but stopped short, letting her fingers hover without quite touching, "You based your choice on if you should respect the policy of silence entirely upon what you think of me."
Wanderer pulled her hand away, "You didn't like-"
Jack spun around and interrupted her, "I told you to stop telling me how I feel." She was taken off guard and lowered her head, only to be surprised when she felt him ruffling the hair between her antenna. Jack leaned in to speak softly into her ear, "You should get back to your own bed, in case your team needs you." He pulled his hand away and walked past her, clearly intending on returning to his bedroom, "Oh, one more thing."
Wanderer looked up at Jack's retreating form, "Yes, Master?"
Jack paused at his bedroom door, "If you teleport into my apartment to listen to me sleep, don't get in bed with me."
Wanderer smiled broadly and bowed her head towards him, right before she vanished. All that remained was a warping of the air, like heat coming off a road on a bright sunny day.
Even that vanished in time.
