Serenity, Raz, and Lex had just sat down in the living room when the door from the garage opened and Serenity’s mother walked into the house. Like Serenity's father, Bethany Rothmer was dressed formally in a suit. Unlike Lex, Bethany looked younger than her age.

“You’re already done?” She sounded surprised. She moved over to hug Serenity in welcome before she even put her keys on the table. Like his father, Serenity could smell an underlayer to her scent that seemed odd. He didn’t pay much attention; the important thing was that his parents were safe.

“Yeah. You can watch the recording later, it’ll be going out to a lot of people soon. We’ll cut the end off. Apparently the invaders we’re getting here look a lot like kangaroos.” Lex leaned back in the couch seat. “They seem to be over on the east end of the city.”

Bethany paused for a moment, thinking, then nodded. “Well, that would explain the silly season reports of kangaroos. I think most of them have been in the east.”

Lex froze then turned his head towards his wife. “How do you always know these things?”

Bethany shrugged. “I pay attention. Speaking of which, who are you?” She was looking at Raz.

“That’s Raz,” Serenity explained. “He’s a friend, but he doesn’t speak English. He’s from another planet.”

Bethany set her purse down on the coffee table and started to go through it. Before she found what she was looking for, the doorbell rang. “Oh good, right on time.”

Bethany answered the door and returned with three large pizzas. “Wasn’t expecting it to be just four of us, but that just means there’s plenty of food, right?”

Serenity was glad she’d gotten three. He was pretty sure he was going to eat more than anyone other than Raz expected.

She set the pizzas on the coffee table and went back to digging in her purse. As Serenity opened the boxes to see what was in them, she pulled something out of her purse. It looked like an elastic wristband with a thick disc glued to the inside. “Here we go!”

The pizzas were supreme, cheese, and something that looked like it had “all the meats with extra cheese”. Serenity smiled, knowing his mother still remembered his preferences.

Serenity took a slice of the meat pizza and took a bite before looking back over at his mother.

“Here. Put this on your wrist-” Bethany held the wristband out to Raz, then shook her head, put it on, and tried again. “Put this on your wrist. It’s a translator, that way we can understand you.” She took it off and held it out to Raz.

Raz said something in a language Serenity didn’t know as he took the wristband. Once he put it on, he spoke again. “Can you understand me now? Is there anything else I need to do to activate it?”

Serenity blinked. Raz had just spoken English. Or had he? His mouth didn’t seem to quite sync with what Serenity heard.

“It’s working, good. I hoped it would. It’s the only one we have that doesn’t require the manufacturer to know the languages.” Bethany pulled out a slice of the supreme pizza. “Have some pizza. Or - can you? Do you have any dietary restrictions? What can aliens eat?” She had a stricken look on her face. Serenity remembered that dietary restrictions was always one of the first questions she asked when he had friends over as a child.

“I’d say that if Serenity can eat it, I can, but I’m not sure that’s true,” Raz said with a wink at Serenity.

Serenity groaned and Raz continued. “Generally if it’s food I can eat it. I don’t have a poison-detection skill, but most things that are food on one planet are food on another.” Raz watched Serenity eat, then grabbed a slice of the same pizza.

Lex cleared his throat. “So. Tell me about what’s happened to you. I know you were in several Tutorials but it seems like that’s not all?”

Serenity started the tale with being dropped onto Tzintkra. His father winced and started asking questions when Serenity talked about Garrett. Raz gave a very brief description of his experience with the man. Serenity could tell his father was angry, but he didn’t let it stop him from continuing the story.

Serenity didn’t mention that the Heart of the Deathless survived the encounter, but he did say that he seemed to have ended up with some control over the dungeon, even if he didn’t really understand it. However much he wanted to hide his relationship with dungeons, he wasn’t willing to. The Heart wasn’t important to the war effort, but being able to control or influence dungeons might be.

As the tale went forward, Serenity skimmed past a few of the stranger things he’d done with little explanation. He was describing his interaction with Rakyn and his daughter Desinka (skipping the entire vampire thing and only mentioning that she was cursed and that Stojan Kenna was using the curse as leverage on her father) when his mother started laughing.

“What?” Serenity was annoyed. Laughter didn’t seem like an appropriate response to Desinka’s situation. He knew he hadn’t described it in detail, but surely blackmail wasn’t funny?

Bethany took a moment to catch her breath. “It’s your wings. They’re so expressive - I’d forgotten how much emotion could be expressed with wings. I guess you don’t usually see a bird telling stories.”

Serenity slumped a little. “You’re telling me that I suck at keeping a straight face, aren’t you?” He always had, for all that his mother had tried to teach him.

Bethany shook her head. “That’s not needed for storytelling. I shouldn’t have laughed, it’s just - the wing movements add a lot, and I don’t think you even…”

Serenity tried to recover his poise as he continued, but it was mostly a lost cause. Every time he saw one of his parents start to smile, his mouth tripped on his brain and he stumbled in his explanation.

Now that they were past Desinka, the story was relatively straightforward anyway. He didn’t like admitting that he’d indirectly threatened to kill someone and raise her from the dead to get her to talk, but neither of his parents seemed bothered by it.

If anything, it was more embarrassing that he’d accidentally taken control of part of a planet - mostly because his mother started laughing again.

Serenity went over the time he spent in Tek’s space station in detail - well, everything except the neural interface chip. He didn’t have to mention that to know how his parents would feel about it. It was easy to avoid, because once he started talking about Tranquil Conviction, he had to explain where the name Serenity came from.

That he’d lived or at least remembered a life that extended far past what anyone could expect, where things had gone very wrong for him. A life he was trying to change.

He didn’t go into much detail on what happened. He honestly didn’t remember that much of what had happened immediately after the Tutorial. It’d been too long. Still, he didn’t need to go into much detail to shock everyone into silence.

It was his father that broke the silence. “Well, at least there’s one good thing I can take away from this.”

Serenity looked up at him, puzzled. “What?”

Lex’s mouth quirked and he shook his head. It was a smile Serenity remembered well, one his father used when he saw something deeply ironic but not particularly funny. “At least I don’t have to worry about whether or not you’ll commit suicide from combat stress.”

Bethany punched her husband’s shoulder. “Bad Lex, no cookie.”

Lex laughed at his wife’s antics. He reached up and rubbed his shoulder, clearly pretending it hurt. “Hey, it’s a real concern.” The smile fell off his face. “It’s something I’ve been trying to figure out how to face. If we’re going to be doing a lot more fighting, and on our own soil…” He shook his head, but didn’t finish the thought.

Something niggled at Serenity’s memory, and then he realized it was the word cookie. Serenity reached into his pack and brought out a paper bag. “Did I mention that Rhea brought cookies?”

Serenity didn’t want to talk about how dark his memories of Vengeance and the Final Reaper were. Yes, he’d managed to keep going, but he wasn’t sure that was any sort of a guarantee. It was only another reason to try to make things better.

Serenity froze as he set out the cookies. Was there a reason his parents hadn’t mentioned Rissa yet? He’d assumed they’d say something if there was anything to be worried about, but they hadn’t said anything at all. “So, did you hear from Rissa?”

Bethany hummed an affirmative as she took over arranging the cookies. “She’s doing fine, but I think she hasn’t left the house since she got back. Her parents came to visit her; I think they’re still there. She seems pretty nervous; I think that’s because they still haven’t heard anything from Macho since he escaped the hospital.”

Serenity blinked. “Macho escaped?” The last he remembered, Lancaster had him tied down in the hospital wing after he attacked Serenity and Echo. Hadn’t Lancaster gotten some useful information out of him? He’d been trying to steal a … Serenity wasn’t sure what. Something Rissa had in one of her closets, an artifact of some sort. How could he have escaped?

Oh, of course. Macho must not have been tied down in the hospital on Earth. There wouldn’t have been a reason to tie him down, would there? And even if there were, would it have been enough to hold someone who went through the Tutorial and invested in Might? “I didn’t think about what would happen when he got back to Earth. I don’t remember if we ever found out who he was working for. I don’t think we did?”

His mother shook her head. “I talked to Lancaster about it. He says Macho didn’t tell him, and believes that Macho never knew. There are some ways to do that sort of thing pretty anonymously, especially if both sides are trying to not know who the other is. There’s probably a go-between, but he hasn’t been able to find out who it is. I’m rather expecting to find out that whoever it is isn’t in the business anymore.”

Lex reached past Bethany and took a cookie off the plate right before she moved it into the “correct” position. “So, son. What’s your plan? It sounds like you have some long-term goals and a couple of short-term tasks to go with them.”

“I don’t know. I want to go see Rissa. I want to figure out what’s going on there. I need to deal with the Sterath; if I don’t, Tranquil Conviction will probably come after me, and that won’t be good for anyone. I need to figure out a way to help get everyone ready for not only this round of invasions but the next one. And-” Serenity stopped. “I’m not sure what else I should be doing. It seems like there should be something. Well, I need to do more Tutorials, and find a way to grow stronger. Only I don’t think I can really do that on Earth right now.”

A moment’s thought told him one more thing he needed to do. “I also need to figure out where Katya ended up, why she isn’t with us.”

Raz had been silent enough that Serenity nearly forgot he was there. “She’s probably at the other Serenity. The one to the west.”

“I completely forgot about that. It showed up when you tried to follow me?”

Raz nodded.

Serenity chuckled. “I think that’s the settlement Echo established. At least Katya should be safe there. I still don’t know what’s up with that.”

“Sounds like another thing for the list,” Serenity’s father said. “So where’s the beginning?”

Find a beginning, then start there. It doesn’t have to be the best beginning, it just has to be a place to start. That was how Lex had always told Thomas to approach a problem he didn’t know how to start.

Serenity thought for a moment. “You’re already looking into the Sterath. When you find them, I can come back. Unless it’s tomorrow, at least; then I can stay here. Either way, there’s time before that’s critical, I know it was several months before they attacked in force in my memories.” He could make it faster by doing a divination ritual himself, but it would be better if others could find the portals, not to mention all the people they’d hidden wherever they were gathering. He didn’t really want to murder hundreds of people as Vengeance had, even if they were Sterath. These Sterath hadn’t killed his parents, after all.

Serenity thought over the list, ticking off the other things he needed to deal with. “Katya should be safe for now; I’m sure we’ll hear from Echo. For the other invasions, hm. I should figure out what’s going on before I say anything. Maybe I should do a talk show? That was what Nightwitch suggested.”

Serenity thought he’d covered everything else. “That leaves Rissa’s situation as the one I can and should do something about.”

He also needed to figure out the neural interface chip, read that book on Void magic, and go to Tutorials, but he could do those while working on other things.