He Comes in Peace

"Crap!" Skye broke away from Kartayon, almost feeling a stab of reluctance. "I'm going to be late for school!" she yelped.

Kartayon stood there awkwardly, with his arms still half extended towards Skye. He dropped them hastily, and turned, watching Skye run around gathering her school stuff.

"Crap, crap, crap," she muttered, flying around and throwing things into a random bag.

"Would you like some assistance perhaps, Skye?" Tay asked politely, standing with his arms folded behind his back.

"No, that's all right, thanks. I gotta go! Bye!" She ran towards him, squeezed him in a hug and was off, dashing down the steps.

Kartayon stood stock-still at the sudden contact. Skye really was a very odd girl.

And as Skye sprinted down the steps, laughing nervously when she caught sight of her mother tapping her watch, she couldn't help mentally beating herself up; the look on his face was complete shock.

"But oh well. He won't be here for very long...Probably going back to his mother ship or whatever. Sometime this week, maybe, and it'll be like nothing happened."

-x-

Skye's jaw dropped the minute she walked into the school. Sure, she had been seeing small little flyers taped up on telephone poles, but she guessed they were for dogs that had run away. Besides, she couldn't see a thing; anyway, her mother had been speeding to get her to school on time.

But now that she was on her two feet, she could fully appreciate the disastrous situation she was in.

Twenty or thirty fliers, all of a very bright shade of green, were stapled to the bulletin board by the office. The words printed on them seemed to scorch her. But the most terrifying of all, a cut-out from the Vancouver Sun newspaper...

ALIEN SIGHTINGS IN VANCOUVER

Skye rushed forward, despite the shorter hand pointing to the nine, and the minute hand perched precariously close to the twelve.

She read quickly, her eyes scanning the newspaper article.

All through Vancouver, there have been reported sightings of an alien life-form, wandering the streets of the lower mainland. Whether these tales are fact or fiction, nobody can be sure. But the photo above sure proves that there is, indeed, an alien roaming Vancouver.

There was more, but Skye didn't feel like reading up on the people that claimed to have seen Kartayon.

Her eyes swiveled to the giant picture that took up half of the front page. It was a picture of Kartayon, perched in a tree. A side profile. And he was leaning over someone…Someone like…

Skye choked and spluttered, looking at the unfocused picture of herself. This was taken at the lake house, when Kartayon had first slung her over his shoulder and placed her onto the tree branch. Was this what the rustling in the forest was?

"Look sharp, Skye, you'll be late."

Skye jumped and looked at her counselor, leaning against the door to the office, regarding her with curiosity. He was a balding man, the patch of missing hair the size of a baseball already.

"Oh, hi Mr. Evan. How're you doing?" Skye asked politely, tearing her eyes away from the newspaper article.

"Good, good. Talk about crazy, huh? Look at those spikes on its back. Amazing. Though it could be a lunatic dressed in a costume, for all we know," he said thoughtfully, gesturing at the clipping.

"Yeah, crazy. And look at him, he's leaning over something," she added nervously.

"Him? It has a gender?"

Skye felt a dull flush creep up her neck. "Well, him, it, doesn't really matter, does it? Just that it shouldn't be here."

"True words, Skye. Well, you'd better run off now, eh? Class has already started."

"Oh, yes. Yeah…See you around, Mr. Evan." Skye waved and escaped up the nearest staircase, on her way to Social Studies.

-x-

When it was lunchtime, Skye quickly joined the queue that was starting to form at the cafeteria. Her hands almost shook as she gripped her tray tightly.

Her first and second block teachers had taken it in turns to talk about the newspaper article. It seemed as though it had come out yesterday, though Skye, of course, had no idea.

Her Social Studies teacher, Mrs. Gonzalez, had marveled about the possibility that an alien had descended upon Earth. She was a rather superstitious woman, and wasted half of their class talking about the 'signs' she had seen, that suggested Kartayon was here for a good reason.

Mrs. Edgar, however, thought otherwise. An elderly woman that usually spent the entire class yelling at students outside in the hallway, sat at her desk at the front of the room, lecturing the kids in Skye's class.

Skye saw her best friend, Lynette, dozing off in her seat. She nudged her and she started awake, looking sheepish. It was lucky that their last names were so close together: Skye Cedona and Lynette Caznon.

They both leapt to attention when Mrs. Edgar slapped her hands down on both of their desks, face looming a little too close.

"As I was saying, girls, the possibility of an alien life form invading Earth is ridiculous. You know what I say? I say that you shouldn't believe in any of the rubbish that the Vancouver Sun is feeding you. It's clear that the person in the newspaper was wearing a costume. Alien life form…I ask you!"

Skye considered bringing Kartayon with her to school for just a fraction of a second, just to show Mrs. Edgar that she had been lecturing them falsely.

"Skye? Skye? Earth to Skye, hello?" Lynette tapped her metal fork on Skye's tray, smirking slightly.

"Oh, sorry Lyn. Were you saying something?" Skye asked abruptly, jerking back into reality.

Oh, what a shame. I was just imagining Kartayon electrifying Mrs. Edgar.

"…she's right, Skye."

"Huh?"

Lynette rolled her eyes and nudged Skye forward. "I was just saying that I think Mrs. Edgar's right. It's not possible! It's just not…Practical."

"What! I—think you're absolutely right. I mean, when I saw the Vancouver Sun, I started laughing so hard." Skye silently prayed that Lynette's unnatural lie-detecting ability wouldn't kick in right now.

"I know, right?" Skye relaxed. "It's like…Like Lilo and Stitch all over again. I can't believe people are actually buying it…"

The thought made Skye almost drop her lunch tray. Lilo and Stitch. Maybe Kartayon had done something horrible...Maybe that was why he was on Earth in the first place.

Skye looked around. Indeed, everyone around them was jabbering excitedly about the article. Several people in line were even staring down at their own copies of the newspaper article, looking awed and dumb-struck.

"Skye! Oh, for goodness sake, she'll have a cheeseburger," shouted Lynette, accepting the burger that the lunch lady was holding out and throwing it down on Skye's tray.

Skye blushed and followed Lynette out of the cafeteria and into the courtyard.

"Something's on your mind, Skye. Care to enlighten me?" Lynette asked wryly, spooning a mouthful of clam chowder into her mouth.

"Um, nothing. Just thinking about…About Cosmo." Only when she groped about inside her mind did she remember that her mother had said, before they left for home, that she had left Cosmo with one of their lake house neighbors. Skye had completely forgotten about it in the heat of excitement that Kartayon had brought with him.

"What's wrong with Cosmo?" Lyn asked worriedly.

"Nothing. My mom just left him with the Gardner's."

"Oh. Aw," Lynette said sympathetically. "You must miss him loads."

"Yeah, I do...Kind of lonely around the house now, y'know?"

Lynette nodded and the rest of the lunch hour passed with no more talk about Kartayon or Cosmo.

-x-

The minute Skye got home she bounded upstairs, her backpack bouncing up and down as she leapt from stair to stair. In her urgency to see him, she had ignored her mother, who was speaking with someone on the phone in the kitchen.

"Skye! No, Skye, someone—"

"Kartayon!" she gasped, when she burst into the room. She was shocked to find him with his spikes fully raised, his face looking more animalistic than before, and more like the one she had seen in his memory, though of course, Skye could not remember.

"What's the matter?"

Kartayon growled and backed away from Skye, eyes darting around.

"Wait, what's going on?"

Skye heard her mother call her again. She cast a worried look at Kartayon and dumped her bag on the floor, leaning over the railing.

"Yeah, Mom?"

"Some people are coming by. Called the ECI or something. Stands for Educational Career Institute. They said they wanted to see you." Karen looked extremely happy, and Skye faked a smile.

"Never heard of them...But sure. When are they coming?" she called down.

"In a few minutes. They said they were visiting the students from your school that meet their standards. Are you sure you've never heard of them?"

"Um, yeah, never heard of them."

"Oh, Skye. Your teachers probably talked about them, and you weren't paying attention," her mother said with a laugh. "Be sure to come down here when you hear the doorbell ring!"

Skye nodded and went back inside her room. Kartayon seemed to have calmed down, but his body was still hunched and he looked wary.

"Tay, what's the matter?"

"The so-called ECI. They are not the Educational Career Institute. They are not," he said abruptly.

"Um, what do they have to do with anything? And how do you know that?"

Kartayon gestured at her computer. It was open to a website. Skye walked over uncertainly and looked at it. It was like any other web page…Except with many, many spelling mistakes.

"It says they're the Educational Career Institute. I don't get it, Tay."

He clicked quickly on the mouse, surprisingly fast considering the fact that Skye doubted they had computers on Quetz. "Please look again."

Skye glanced at the computer screen again. She had no idea how Kartayon did it, but the title had changed, the content had too.

She gasped.

Instead of reading the Educational Career Institute, it read the Extraterrestrial Control Incorporation.