When Hanna returned home she found Kyle rummaging around in the front yard, sticking random grey sticks into the ground. She didn’t inform him of her arrival either and just watched his suspicious behavior.

At first, she’d assumed that he was behaving oddly because of the accident, but he’d come back practically, and suspiciously, unscathed from that. Then she thought he might have been sexually harassed by one of the Big XXX Hospital’s doctors, but he didn’t even understand what she was asking at first so that wasn’t the case. Now, he was supposed to be sick, but here he was, walking around the house, placing weird sticks in inconspicuous areas. Where did he even get these sticks?

Was this Kyle a transmigrator like her? Maybe he had a secret space or something cool that she didn’t have? Wait, no. Wrong genre.

If this was hentai, then could he be a demon or yokai of some kind? But he’d helped her with technology. And this was a contemporary world. Those sticks didn’t look like anything demon or yokai related. She also hadn’t seen any sign of this world turning into some magical thing... yet anyway.

That left the often under-seen Sci-fi hentai. Was he perhaps an alien?

She almost laughed. This was silly. She must be overthinking things.

With a grin, she stepped up to her brother. “Kyle! Whatcha doin’?”

He jumped a good two feet straight into the air and turned to stare wide-eyed at her.

“You’re home early...”

“I had Mr. Cummings for my last class. He came early... and left early.”

“He... does that.”

“But what are those sticks... They look weird.”

He scratched the back of his head awkwardly and looked up and to the side. “I was looking out here during my recovery period and saw that the plants looked a little malnourished so I picked up some specially made nutrients.”

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She wasn’t exactly familiar with plants and gardening, but she had seen the plastic sticks that had nutrients in them before. They didn’t look like those... but this was a different world. So it was possible.

It was a better explanation than, ‘aliens.’ If she kept up this line of thought she’d basically need to poof her hair and go on the XXXHistory Channel.

“So, you going around and putting these down... does that mean you’ve recovered physically?”

He nodded. “But I’m still going to need to take a few more days off of school, so don’t tell mom that I’m better.”

“What? Why?”

“I have some things I need to take care of because of the accident. I lost a lot of my belongings and important documents in the crash.”

“Can’t you take care of it on the weekend or online?”

“Have you seen how well our government works?”

Well, no, but she assumed it was as shitty as the government in her original world. “Well, If you’re better then can you help me study tonight? I have a big test tomorrow and your explanations are always so much easier to understand than the books.”

He swallowed. “Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow, I’ll help you study. I have a lot of things I need to prepare tonight for tomorrow.”

That sounded like an excuse, but whatever. He couldn’t dodge her any more tomorrow.

***

Kyle Did have a lot of paperwork that he’d lost in the accident. But that had been easily replaceable. What he needed the time for was several things. First, He needed to go over the memories Human Kyle had of the way he studied with his sister. Then he’d have to try and replicate that way of speaking.

It gave him a migraine and sweats just thinking about it. Obviously, he was a warrior and not an actor.

Then he would have to do what he came here to do and stop getting distracted by inconsequential things.

As soon as he woke up the next day, he reviewed all the recent lessons in original Kyle’s mind. The human was very methodical and thought about things deeply. He also had a turn of phrase that was hard for Tov Kyle to replicate, one of the reasons he preferred to stay quiet when in the presence of his family. But he did manage to find a way to do so. It required getting very familiar with the copy of Kyle in his mind.

That taken care of, it was time to search for the ship.

He knew that it had landed somewhere in a 500-mile radius of his own ship. It was a lot of ground to cover for one alien, even with advanced federation technology aiding him. Especially since, if there were currently no traces, then he would have no clue where to start.

He looked at the time. Hanna would be home in around 4 hours. That would give him enough time to search through the human web for any strange sightings from a couple of weeks back.

And since he was alone in the house, he sat in his comfortable boxer shorts and stretched his tentacles. Not being able to use them as often as he used to, had felt like breaking a leg.

He grinned as he accessed human Kyle’s computer using a thin tendril.