Truth

As the three of them approached the apartment Annabelle glanced at her older brother. He had aged over the years. He no longer looked like a teenage boy, but rather a young man. His black hair cut short, and he had a slight mustache.

He had also grown taller, a full two heads higher than her now, his eyes no longer held the mischievous spark they used to, instead seeming to be tired, though that made sense since he had apparently been helping their mom, and Jesse create a new society.

"Come on in." Jazz held the door open and motioned them both inside. "Alright, anyone want anything hot to drink before we start talking? This time you won't escape from explaining everything about your time on Earth Annabelle."

"I'm fine, but she should probably have something hot so that she doesn't get sick." Lewis dropped his coat near the door, completely ignoring the hanger. Kicking his shoes off to the side he headed into the living room plopping down on the couch.

"I'm fine, can we just get this over with?" She had already lost the coat and shoes and entered the room as she spoke.

"Cass. Can you make Annabelle some hot chocolate? And then you and Marc need to come to the living room." Jazz poked his head into the kitchen and spoke to Cass and Marc.

"What's up?" Marc asked.

"Annabelle will fill in the dots when you guys get to the living room."

They both just nodded and hurried to make the hot chocolate and finish the dishes.

Not even five minutes later Cass came in, sat next to Annabelle on the couch, and handed her the cup. Marc sat across on the floor, and Jazz was already sitting to the side in an armchair.

"Alright, time to tell us everything Annabelle. I don't think it's fair that you've been keeping things from us, even though we've been your guardians slash friends for four years."

"She's been hiding things?" Cass and Marc spoke up in surprise, Marc straightening and Cass leaning back to get a better look at Annabelle.

"Is it about that picture you've kept with you?" Marc had tilted his head to the side when he asked the question.

"Yeah, the people in that picture were Lewis." She pointed at him when she said this. "His father John, and his mother Shelly. John and Shelly adopted me when I first got to Earth. They realized I was from a different planet pretty quickly…"

As she took a break to gather her thoughts Lewis piped in. "It wasn't hard to tell you weren't from Earth, you had no clue as to societal norms, at first dad thought you may be from another country, but after a day he realized there was no way you were from our planet. I think that was when he decided to take you in, you hadn't really opened up to us, so he wasn't sure, but mom pestered him until he agreed to take you in instead of bringing you to the nearest police station."

"I think her exact words were, 'What will you do if she ends up in a research facility because you gave her to the cops? Won't that make you feel horrible?' Or something along those lines. Which is hilarious looking back, because he definitely became attached. You never took advantage, but you really had the old man wrapped around your pinky."

"Says the momma's boy." She poked him in the stomach. "I think he felt bad for me, the test probably showed him more than I know. I don't know if they ever told you the whole story…"

"What test?"

"The one to show which clan I was from."

"Oh. Yeah it probably did. After testing you he always told me to never use that if I could help it."

"Did they tell you?"

"Mom told me after we abandoned the planet. Leaving you and losing dad at the same time nearly killed her."

"I was supposed to go back and get you as soon as I could, but I've been in charge of defending Oce from attacks. It wasn't until recently that some of the younger generation have shown promise. I left Jesse in charge, but he can't take care of the whole planet for very long."

"Why are you being attacked?" She would have jumped off the couch if he hadn't pressed her shoulder down.

"We're not even sure why they've been coming after us, hell, we aren't even sure what they are. Don't worry, part of why it's taking so long to fight them is that as long as we don't use lethal force, they don't use lethal force… Unfortunately, we can't communicate with them, but we've only met a few. Most choose to leave the battlefield before we can break apart their ships to see what's inside."

"Jazz, have you ever heard of anything like this?" Annabelle turned to him and asked.

"No, but that's enough about Oce, what happened to you on Earth, why did they leave you, and why didn't you tell us?"

"Well, they left me because by the time they got back to our apartment I was already cocooned in energy and they couldn't get to me. I didn't tell you because I didn't think it was relevant. It's been four years since I goaded Rou into looking for information and he only just found what he THINKS might be a lead."

"As to what actually happened on Earth… Well it's a long story."

[Flashback]

She woke up dazed, the events on Pasef surfacing at the last second. Lunging forward she puked onto the grass, emptying her stomach. The reality of what had happened slapping her in the face.

'Where am I? Why the hell did they send us to randomized places?' She thought as she stood up and looked around.

The meadow was beautiful, pink, red and white flowers were blooming all around her and the grass was tall enough to conceal her vomit. There was only one sun and it was a bright yellow. A sharp contrast to her planet's darker reddish sun.

'I wonder which planet I ended up on… I hope it's one that we have in the database. Otherwise this is going to be terrifying.'

'Let's see, if I walk in a straight line in one direction I should eventually come to a place with sentience, if this planet has sentient beings….' She decided not to follow that train of thought since at that exact moment negativity would just kill her.

Taking a few seconds to choose a direction she started walking in the opposite direction of the sun.