Del:

The human boy was irritating. Del had no idea how People put up with ordinary humans. He knew the tousle-haired idiot was a human before he even went into the pokey little apartment. The stench of his humanness perforated the entire building and the boy practically oozed mundanity from his pores.

Del brushed past him, barely even registering his tedious questions. He caught a waft of tangy sweetness. It was the girl’s scent. She was here, or at least, she had been. He couldn't sense anyone else in the apartment, but she had evaded him before. Easily. It was best that he be thorough and search every room.

He headed towards the kitchen where the berry-sweet smell was strongest. It didn’t take long for him to find the source of the scent. What was left of the goupy purple-red paste was the exact shade as the girl’s hair and had the same pungent tang. Del rubbed it between his fingers and watched as it stained his skin. His mouth watered as that now familiar scent trickled through his nose and coated his tongue with its syrupy tartness.

Fixated as he was on the paste, it took him a few moments to notice the scrubbed bench and counter top. Del silently kicked himself for losing focus. He should have noted that the moment he entered the room. The rest of the kitchen was tolerably clean, but a small section of counter and the cabinets and floor beneath it had recently been scoured with bleach. She must have spilled the berry concoction.

The patch of clean extended across the linoleum floor a little ways, towards a closed door. She’d tracked the mess across the kitchen when she stepped in it. Del made a beeline to the closed door.

“Wait, you can't go in there,” said the human. Del ignored him. The door was locked but with one vicious twist of the handle, Del was in.

The room was not what he expected. Tiny footprints trailed back and forth around the room. The girl had stepped in the berry mixture with her left foot and had stained the carpet with faint purple tracks. There was a small bed tucked in the corner furthest away from the door. The sheet were rumpled at the foot of the bed, the pillows spewed about haphazardly. Del got a brief impression of the girl kicking the blankets off her and stretching luxuriously in the light of morning. He shoved the vision aside and focused on the rest of the room.

One wall was mostly taken up by a large canvas that had been propped against it. The painting looked half finished and the drip mat tucked underneath it was littered with paint pots and unused brushes. He stepped closer, brushing two fingers against the raised streaks of paint. She had stood here mere hours before. Del’s eyes closed as his fingers followed the swirling lines of paint. He could hear the tune she had been breathlessly humming. The smell of wet paint stung his nose and he could feel its liquid texture beneath his fingers.

“Don’t touch that,” said the human boy from the doorway. Del made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat. His concentration was broken. He could no longer hear the sweet humming and the paint was powdery and dry under his hand. He glared at the source of his distraction who was now standing between Del and the bed, looking completely unaffected by his murderous glare.

“I thought you said you didn’t have any girls here,” Del said.

“I have a girlfriend, so what?” The boy flushed a little and crossed his arms. Del raised his eyebrows at him. “I don’t see how this is any of your business, stranger who has broken into my house.” Finn didn’t sound particularly distressed which earned Del’s grudging respect.

Del spied a small scrap of paper on the bedside table. He tried to get to it but Finn gallantly blocked his path. Del rolled his eyes again - his retina were going detach if he spent much more time with this irritating human - and pushed Finn down firmly by his shoulders. Finn hit the bed hard enough to clack his teeth together and paled at the strength Del displayed in that small exertion.

The paper Del snatched up was penned in a flowing script with neat little flourishes at the end of each word. The soft, feminine writing didn’t match its blunt contents nor the snarky woman who wrote them.

To my dearest stalker,

When you get sick of finding only empty rooms, I will accept your surrender with joy. There is beer in the fridge, help yourself.

The letter was signed with a purple fingerprint. The perfect oval stain told him two things; one, she knew how he had tracked her down and two, she had no intention of repeating her mistake. Far from being angered by the girl’s cheek, Del was charmed. She was resourceful and skilled and Del thrived on the challenge of it.

He turned his attention to the boy. He was not going to get any clues of the girl’s whereabouts from the room but maybe the boy would let something slip.

“Where is she?” Del had never been accused of being tactful. Finn ignored the question.

“What do you want with Nyssa?” he demanded instead. So the girl’s name was Nyssa. The boy seemed to realise his mistake and went ashened. He sat on his hands nervously and pressed his lips together, as if that would prevent him from letting any more secrets slip.

“I want to help her.” Del allowed a small amount of his sincerity to leak into his words. The human boy remained unconvinced, re-crossing his arms and pouting. “I’m family,” Del added. He wasn’t technically related to the girl but the oversimplification would help the human understand.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“That’s a lie,” Finn stood. “Nyssa’s kin abandoned her when her mother died.”

Del was surprised at how much the human understood about the People. He was obviously very close to the girl if she had confided such secrets with him. Finn’s lack of surprise or apprehension at Del’s rough entry now made sense.

“I am not of her mother’s kin,” Del explained calmly, “I’m of her father’s. I have come to take her home.” Del’s soothing words did not have the desired effect on Finn who turned a bright, ugly red, his wire glasses sliding down his nose.

“She has a home.’

Del wasn’t going to get anywhere with this line of questioning. He stepped closer to the boy, shoving him easily back down onto the bed.

“What the hell are you doing?” Finn protested, slapping Del’s hands away. Del ignored him and placed two fingers on the human’s forehead. He loosened the tight ball of his consciousness and stretched a thin tendril towards the boy. He braced himself for the onslaught of unfiltered thoughts and feelings that was the norm but was surprised at resistance he encountered. Finn had an unexpected amount of control over his mind, probably honed by sharing sharing a home with a psychic.

However, Finn had not encountered a psychic of Del’s skill. The human’s practice against Nyssa’s raw, untrained power prepared him to resist Del’s targeted mental assault about as much as swimming laps prepares one for a tsunami.

Del tightened his control, feeding more power into the trickle that was now probing Finn’s mental defence. It didn’t take long to find a weakness. Del slipped past feeble defences and allowed his awareness to sink into the soft tissue of Finn’s brain. The static buzz of foreign thoughts filled Del’s skull; like white noise or distant traffic.

“You have a bond,” Del said with some surprise. Del could sense the connection Nyssa and Finn had, anchored unobtrusively to a deep corner of the boy’s mind. Nyssa had connected so often with him, had brushed her awareness through his mind so frequently, that they had forged a permanent connection.

“So?” Finn said as he tried to dislodge Del’s fingers from his forehead. His efforts were in vain, Del was unyielding.

Del’s sharpened his concentration, and restricted his reach. His awareness no longer saturated every brain cell, but pooled around Finn’s memories of the girl, probing experimentally. There was a lot more there then Del expected.

A flash of wide green eyes surrounded by a frizzy halo of dark hair. She was young, no more than fifteen. Brief impressions flittered past; the wild thrill of unrestrained joy, a small hand clenched in his sweaty fist, laughter, hushed whispers and the oppressive stuffiness of huddling beneath blankets. He tasted salty tears and his nose filled with the sharp, tangy-sweet scent that was uniquely Nyssa. Years of memories assaulted him. Almost as soon as one memory flared behind his eyes, it was shove aside by another.

Del gritted his teeth and suppressed the urge to pull away from the onslaught. Instead he eased back and filtered out the old emotions.

Almost immediately it wielded results. He grasped onto a recent memory of the girl, barely a few days old. Music filled his ears. She was singing.

Terribly.

Nyssa stood in front of me, dancing slightly to the fast-paced guitar riff blaring from a radio. Sliding between the sink and stove in her socks, she nudged whatever was cook in a pan with her spatula and the sharp scent of hot cheese washed over me.

“You’re burning it, Nyssa,” I said. No, Finn said.

“Oh shush, it’s not burning, I’m adding flavor!” Nyssa declared, brandishing the spatula like a weapon. Her eyes sparkled with humor but she did take the pan off the heat. I laughed and comfortable amusement crawled down my spine and settled in my stomach.

Del was tempted to stay; to watch as Nyssa sung along to the music, making up her own words and skipping bits she didn't know. He wanted to soak up Finn’s emotions; old and as familiar to the boy as well-worn boots but so foreign to Del.

Del shook his head and pulled away from the memory, slightly ashamed at witnessing the intimate moment.

He flicked through Finn’s thoughts again, discarding those without Nyssa and pausing only long enough over the recent memories of meals being eaten and long nights spent watching TV to determine if they were useful.

Finally he found what he was looking for.

“Where are you going to go?” I asked, adjusting my glasses. Nyssa rushed around her room, shoving things into her backpack.

“I don't know, somewhere fun,” she said. “I hear Australia is really nice this time of year.”

“Are you sure you need to go?” I could hear the whine in my voice but I didn’t care. “You said you had a few days.”

“I know what I said, Finn.” She stopped her packing and stepped close to me. Her arms wrapped around my neck and she sighed, her breath heating the patch of my shirt that her nose was pressed to. “Turns out Mr. Teen Angst is more resourceful than I gave him credit for. He will be here by morning.”

I returned her loose embrace. This news had me worried and Nyssa sensed my distress.

“Don’t worry about him,” she said, grinning up at me. “As far as I can tell, he’s after me for some noble reason. He’s the type that believes that he can save the world single handedly. He will learn soon enough that I can take care of myself.”

“Okay,” I said, unconvinced, “but remember, Mum’s birthday is coming up and you promised you would be there. She will be disappointed if you miss it.”

Nyssa pulled away and gave me a mock offended look.

“I have never missed her birthday and I don't intend to start just because some guy with a superman complex wants to ‘save’ me from a life of independence.”

I laughed. “Okay, well bring me back a boomerang or something, and remember to call!” I planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll see you when I do.”

Del pulled away, slowly untangling his mind from the boy’s. He’d gotten what he needed.

Del turned on his heel and headed for the door.

Girlfriend, my ass, he thought to himself darkly.

“Hey,” yelled Finn who was still sitting on the bed. “Where are you going?”

Del ignored him. He had to get back to the compound, he had a lot of work to do.

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Very long one for you. I hope you enjoyed it.