"Adam!"

"ADAM!"

"Coming."

Krill peered from his spot on the couch as Captain Vir made his way down the stairs quickly at the call of the Alpha female.

"I just got a call from your old High School."

Krill watched in fascination as the man's eyes widened his knees locked up and he skidded right into a doorframe.

He rubbed his head as the alpha female peered around the doorframe.

"Well what do THEY want....." He frowned

"Oh, Adam, don't sound so annoyed, you're a bit of a celebrity, and they just want you to come and give a talk at the school about your work, no big deal."

"I most definitely will not! I'm not going back to that place."

***

They stood outside the massive concrete and brick building as snow billowed around them. High chain link fences rose towards the cloudy sky.

"It looks like a prison."

"It IS a prison." The man muttered trudging through the snow and up to the doors carrying Krill over one shoulder contained within his specialized containment unit. He shouldered open the doors into the warm entryway bombarded suddenly by an array of pulses. The doors ahead of them buzzed once and then blinked green letting them inside.

"That's new." The man muttered stepping into the long hallway to stomp snow from his boots on the inner carpet. Setting down the containment tube, he opened the door and allowed Krill to scuttle outwards onto the floor. He looked around in curiosity, eyes wide and wondering at the long hallway lined in doors and strange containment lockers blinking lights red for locked.

"What is this place?" He wondered following the Captain towards the first set of doors.

"Hell Krill, This is hell." Krill kind of doubted that. Very much as they passed through the doors into a small office space with a long desk manned by two plum middle-aged human females. They looked up as he entered looking confused for a minute before.

"Adam, is that you, I barely recognized you under that." She waved a hand up and down, "and the gaudy eyepatch doesn't help."

He frowned, opening his mouth to respond.

The woman nudged her companion, "Look Susan its little Adam Vir, can hardly believe it." It was just then, she noticed Krill, and the scream she let off could have ruptured glass if there was any glass in the room to be found. "What is that?!" She demanded leaping backwards nearly out of her chair. Krill found himself oddly satisfied. A lot of Earth humans weren't nearly as brave as their space human counterparts. He had never made a human scream before.

"That." Vir said smugly, "Is Krill, my crew's acting medic and, oh yeah very much an alien."

The woman stammered for a moment before grabbing a couple of badges and tossing them over the desk towards Vir who caught them and gave a grin.

"The auditorium." The woman said curtly before retreating further behind her desk, as Captain Vir led Krill back out into the hallway and down. Krill watched the doors pass by peering in through cracked doors at lines of desks and young humans staring glassy eyed towards the front of the room listening to a single voice droning on and on.

"Really captain, what is this?"

Captain Vir sighed, "In this country and on Earth I general, it is mandatory for everyone to receive public education up until about the age of eighteen. One this continent we have elementary middle and high school education. Subjects include science, mathematics, English, communications, linguistics, geography, health and physical education. Then we have sports teams tagged onto that for after school activities."

"That's.... actually quite amazing Captain, I never knew that about humans."

"Don't worry, it's generally completely useless and everything about it is designed to torture your soul into apathy."

Krill followed confused but said nothing as they were met by a man who, claimed to be the "Principal"/ He was thrown off momentarily upon meeting Krill, but eventually let them backstage giving them a place to sit and rest while he called the students from class. He warned that there would be a few more curious people in attendance. Vir was beginning to look a little green.

They waited back stage for over an hour before the principle came back patting Vir on the shoulder. In that time Vir had changed into his uniform.

Krill could hear the sounds of many voices echoing up from the chamber beyond as the principle walked out onto stage. Distantly Krill could hear the speakers booming overhead, "Five years ago, Earth began peace talks with the Galactic assembly, and it took almost two years for earth to finally accept the terms of the peace talks. The six month war with the Drev took place two months after we joined, and a thousand of our soldiers were sent in aid of our galactic allies. Much of this had been made possible by a man who graduated from this very school not so many years ago. At only age 20 Then Lieutenant Adam Vir was the first human to encounter sentient life. Two years later he fought alongside our galactic allies in the war against the Drev. He received a purple heart for injuries received and a silver star for valor in action. Two years later he was promoted to the Rank of captain, and now currently pilots our furthest reaching human space vessel. He has worked, in part, for the Galactic Assembly, and has helped with the construction of many human-related laws, now Please give a warm welcome to Captain Adam Vir."

The man took a deep breath as the polite clapping began motioning Vir out behind him as he walked onto stage. Upon seeing Krill, the room erupted in a measure of gasping, shrieking and awes of wonder.

Captain Vir leaned against the podium and waited for the crowd to die down. Krill hid behind him.

When they finally did, he responded, "Look I don't have a speech prepared or anything so if you want me to talk you better ask. Otherwise I can stand here for an hour staring at you and just make it weird and awkward for everyone. Don't bother raising your hands, I'm not about that."

Pause, "What the hell is that!"
He frowned, "That is actually very rude, so don't be a Jerk." He stepped aside allowing the students to see Krill, "This is my crew's acting medic Krill. If you have one of those universal translator apps on your phone, you should probably use it unless you have the implants and then, more power to you."

The phones were already out pointed directly at Krill. Questions were shouted out at random and at great vigor.

Krill stumbled to answer most of them unsure how to answer the question. Despite his poor stage presence, the students seemed thrilled that he could even talk. There was never a moment of silence, and why would there be, this was probably the most interesting thing that happened to them all year.

"Do you wear the eyepatch because you think it makes you look cool?"

There was a pause, "I have two answers for that one. One I don't have an eye, and number two.... Yes.... Absolutely why wouldn't I wear an eyepatch. My question is, why wouldn't anyone else?"

"What did you get your purple heart for?"

"Well, I got my leg ripped off by a big ass alien.... Uh sorry I mean a nine foot tall alien."

A collective, "Woa, can we see it."

Krill was stunned, little savage.

"Yeah, sure." He reached down and pulled up the leg on his pants to reveal the robotic leg underneath. "It goes up to about mid-thigh, good model though."

"Tell us your most interesting story."

"Oh.... Well sh- I mean uh..... I have a lot, like there was the time I lost my eye, saved an alien race from bubblegum pink overlords, ran a marathon on a class A-1 Death planet to avoid dying, accidentally killed an alien pirate by spitting on him, got locked inside a Rundi prison, navigated an asteroid field manually, killed a serial killer who tried to kill me, saved an alien child from drowning, won a battle by throwing rocks, battled an underwater leviathan, survived an attack by pirates, and uh of course made contact with the first E.T. life."

The crowd was silent before demanding that he tell them as many of his stories as he could before their time was up.

Krill was encouraged to jump in on the stories, and by the time they were done Captain Vir was significantly more relaxed than before. Krill hid behind the podium most of the time.

Eventually the Principal had to dismiss the students to a chorus of booing, "Alright, Alright, enough of that, and les thank Captain Vir, for coming to speak with us today, no, no I have already gone over all the time I am willing."

Vir stepped down from the stage greeting and speaking with some of the students as they left. Krill stood beside him as, suddenly the man grew stiff.

"Hey look Alien Adam, Can't believe it's really you." A rather large.... Mildly flabby human walked up to the two of them. He looked Captain Vir up and down, "and you finally got some muscle on you."

"And you finally got fat." Captain Vir responded immediately. The other human seemed surprised before his eyes narrowed in anger.

"You-"

"The captain held up a hand, "Ah ah, hold on distinguished veteran with frontal lobe damage, I can't control my impulses."

Krill looked between the two men, "You know each other?"

Before the other man could speak, captain Vir held up a hand, "Yes, we do, he made my life a living hell for four years all because he peaked in high school, and I didn't. Now I'm winningly successful, and he's been in the same dead-end job for the past seven years."

"Brain damage?"

"No, that was all me. And one more thing. I was right."

The man huffed, "Come on Adam, you can hardly blame me. You were a weird kid like I mean what kind of person ACTUALLY believe in UFO's and Aliens. It wasn't normal."

"Oh yeah, and it was only about me being a geek, nothing about how skinny I was, or the graphic T-shirts, or how short I was, or my braces, or how bad I was at sports. And I'm going to go right ahead and point out that a lot of people believed that the sun revolved around the earth for a long time, that didn't make them right, but you couldn't leave it alone, and now that it turns out I wasn't crazy you seem to think it's just ok to come up and insult me again."

The man worked his jaw somewhere between anger and surprise.

"What, have nothing to say now, that I won't just lay down and take it....." He took a slow deep breath calming himself, "I found what I was looking for, and I don't need you explaining yourself to me. You were a jerk, and here was no reason to be. You messed me up for a long time, but I am over what you did to me, and I am done with this conversation."

He stepped past the man with Krill at his heels Krill following after, "What was that about?"

He sighed long and deep, "I wasn't always as fantastically awesome as I am now." He chuckled to himself, "When I was younger, a lot of people didn't believe in Extra-terrestrials, interstellar technology was still in in its infant stages..... And, I well, I believed that everyone was wrong. I was sure aliens were real, so I looked for UFOs, I spent all my allowance on a telescope. I was so obsessed, it came at the exclusion of everything else, health, sports, eating, I was probably really weird, and some people used that as an excuse to be real assholes to me."

"Is that common in human schools?"

Captain Vir sighed, "All too common I'm afraid, thousands of years and we still can't shake it.... But I was right."

"We were never alone."