Drade fried eight eggs and took some fake bacon from the freezer, which he simply shoved into a toaster oven and cooked over the rack. When he was finished, he placed four plates on different sides of the dining table, where Onei sat.

She looked at the plate, which was just bacon end eggs, then back up to Drade, who scooched out a chair and sat down, making himself comfortable. “So, are you all vegetarian, or what?”

“No, we just don’t eat much meat. My mom tries to be environment-friendly and all, so most of our frozen food is just fake stuff.”

The door to Drade and Uffield’s room opened, and Onei watched in anticipation as a blanket-draped entity squeezed through the entrance, then spread out to its normal square-like shape. Uffield seemingly slid to the table, then plopped her ‘body’ down, as if sitting, “Hi, I’m Uffielddufkyalluphanimwartailophanaltthaz, you can just call me Uffield or some other shortening of my name, though. Nice to meet you.”

Onei didn’t know what she was expecting, but a living blanket wasn’t it. She felt Uffield’s gaze on her, even though she had no eyes...maybe. Onei moved her own from place to place rapidly as if looking for an escape. “Uhh, nice to meet you...” She forced a wry but timid smile onto her face, “Should I call you...Fkyallup?”

Drade put a fork into an egg. “Haha,” he said with the passion of a tree.

Uffield sighed, somehow. “You don’t want to know how many times I heard that joke in my streams. Well, no, it’s more of a running gag at this point.”

Onei noticed something moving in her peripheral vision and averted her eyes to see what it was. A black tentacle had opened a drawer in the kitchen and pulled out two forks. It quickly slid above the table, much to Onei’s dismay, and dropped one fork into her hands.

Onei squeaked out what amounted to a whimper, frozen in the surreality of the event she’d just witnessed.

The tentacle cut Uffiled’s egg and bacon methodically, then retracted itself underneath Uffield’s blanket, presumably to...’ingest’ the food.

“S-so, you’re a V-tuber, huh. What’s...that like?” Onei said, quite unsettled.

“It’s really fun! I wasn’t able to get many viewers on my streams before, but now I’ve been able to do a lot since Drade and the Friends made me the avatar!” A tentacle appeared from beneath the table and placed itself on Drade’s shoulder lovingly. Onei had no idea due to being preoccupied with unsettlement, but Uffield was trying her hardest to appear welcoming.

“O-oh, that’s nice. You mean the...the Friends and Drade made you it?”

Drade nodded, answering for Uffield, “Yep.”

“Cool...” Onei finally decided to take a bite of one of her eggs. It tasted well cooked.

Uffield urgently spoke, “Somebody is heading our way down the hall. I don’t recognize them.”

Drade tilted an eyebrow and looked to the door with suspicion

Onei found the suddenly tense atmosphere a little overkill.

...

A polite knock hit the door.

Drade stood from his seat, tactically leaned on the door, then opened it, only revealing enough of his head to see who had knocked. The door didn’t look like it, but Drade had reinforced it with steel. Seeing nothing dangerous, he opened it all the way.

A girl was kneeling on the ground with a pencil in her hands. She had blonde hair that fell into extreme curls near the bottom of its strands and wore a mix of baggy yellow and white clothes. She held a sack on her back and looked to be the same age as Drade.

She glared at Drade intensely. “Watch closely.”

She placed the pencil upright, with the tip touching the ground. Slowly, she moved all but one of her fingers off of it, with one on the eraser, holding it in place. She let go, and the pencil fell onto the ground, not rolling or bouncing at all. She pulled another pencil out of the pink sack she carried on her back and held it up for Drade to grab it, then ordered him, “Do exactly what I did, with absolutely no differences.”

“Uhh, sure.” Drade rolled with the punches, per usual. He grabbed the pencil and began mimicking the blonde to the best of his ability, resulting in another pencil falling onto the ground gently. It landed in a direction identical to hers. Drade took note of a tiny flicker of magic that seemed to appear from nothing the instant he let go of the pencil.

The girl continued, “Just to confirm with you personally...your date of birth is the eighteenth of September, two-thousand and two, correct?”

“Y-yes?” It had been a few weeks since Drade was truly confounded, but this certainly counted.

The blonde began rapid-firing important information at Drade. “So some basic explanation for you, both of us are among the chosen, we were born on the same day, and we both have incredible luck/fate attunement. I’m a fate conjurer. My name is Hinnqua. What you just did was determine the wind of fate. Since both of us are perfectly attuned with fate, we landed our pencils exactly where the winds of luck are. It’s currently blowing exactly south, which is why we could meet today without instantly ripping the fate-time continuum into shreds like two dogs playing tug-of-war with a small string. The further north the pencil lands when you cast that spell, the more fateful that day will be.” Hinnqua stood up and pulled a piece of computer paper from her pocket, holding it in front of herself. “I liked the idea of handing out personal cards, so I stole the idea and made some of my own. Mind trading yours for mine?”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Uhh, sure.” Drade pulled out his own and traded it with hers.

Hinnqua started talking less formally. “All this ‘fate’ crap was just shoved onto me, so I gotta go clean up that mess. Before I do, though, I’m going to require you to come to the century-annual save the universe from collapse ‘party’. It’s in three months.”

Drade’s deadpan expression melted away in an instant. The emotion, unsurprisingly, was confusion. “C-can you say that again?”

The girl ignored him. “I’m going to have my...’agents’ explain things a little better sometime soon, in like a week or something. Don’t worry too much about the whole saving the world thing I mentioned. All you need to do is be where you need to be on the right day, and reality will survive. For now, I got to go so we don’t make the universe angry. See you.” Hinnqua stashed the two pencils and Drade’s personal card, then powerwalked away, out of Drade’s sight, giving no time to ask questions.

Drade turned around and looked to Uffield and Onei with a baffled expression, his mouth absently hanging open. “What in the name of Chaos was that?!” He threw his arms up in exasperation. Everyone in the room silently agreed they had no idea.

“Oh, I think Hannah is here,” Uffield said.

Drade looked into the hall again to see his mom walking towards the door with two grocery bags, then waved. “Hi mom, we’ve got a guest, and I prepped dinner.”

Two tentacles took her bags and moved them to the kitchen when she walked through the open door. The appendages began pushing the food about, placing the bag’s contents into their respective places quickly.

Unlike drade, his mom was still timid when dealing with Uffield’s appendages and recoiled when they took the bags from her. “Oh, thanks, Uffy.” She glanced towards the guest before taking off her coat and placing it on the last of the dining table chairs, then looked back and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Hannah, Drade’s mom. Nice to meet you.”

Onei took her hand and shook it, smiling at her. “And I’m Onei. I’ll be staying here for the day.”

Drade raised an eyebrow at Onei. “Wait, you sounded like you were going to stay here for a while. Did you change your mind?”

Onei rolled her eyes before facepalming as if Drade had messed something obvious up.

Hannah looked between the two suspiciously, “Hey, Drade, can I talk to you for a sec?” She walked to a corner in the room and beckoned Drade to come. When he did, she whispered, “You didn’t do anything stupid again, like when I asked you to ‘snag me some bagels’, then you literally snagged and stole them, right?”

Drade sighed, exasperated. “Mom, that was eight years ago. Are you going to hold that over my head for a whole decade, or can we put that to rest? Also, I think you’re implying something that passed over my head. Please state that in a more straightforward manner.” Drade whispered back.

His mom looked back to the guest, then back to Drade with a worried expression. “You know how I asked you to try to get a girlfriend yesterday?”

“Yeah...”

“You didn’t like, ask some random girl something ridiculous, right...?”

Oh, this. Drade spread out his arms and tilted his head, meeting her question in good humor. “Mom, I might not be a whizz at interpersonal stuff, but I’m not an idiot. I also entirely disregarded your demand and have no intention to attempt to ‘find a girlfriend’. Seriously, mom, who asks their son to do that?”

She rolled her eyes dismissively. “One who has to watch her son constantly save tons of people from one unspeakable calamity or another, then proceed to show zero real social skills, I guess.” She sat back onto her seat and looked between Onei and Drade. “Well, Under normal circumstances, I would let things pass by my head under the pretense of ‘it’s complicated magic stuff that’s difficult to explain’, but since you’re going to be living in my house for at least a day or something, that is not going to cut it.”

Drade sat and retorted, “We are in an apartment, not a house, mom. Also, I pay for half the bills, so this is technically half-mine.”

“ShutupIdon’tcareI’myourmomevenifyoumakemoremoneythanme. Now, please explain.”

“Well, it’s kind of pointless to tell you...” Onei began.

“It’s never pointless to have information.” Her posture signaled she didn’t care.

“Because every day everybody forgets I exist, and it’s like I never did.”

“Oh, that is pointless. But why do you need to be here?” She asked another question regardless.

“Because Drade and maybe his sister don’t forget me.”

“So you don’t want to be alone.”

“Yeah...?”

Drade’s mom smiled wryly, then clapped her hands together as if praying. “Please be good friends with my son and Uffy. They really need real friends.”

Onei chuckled and rested her head on the dining table, smiling smugly. “I’ll make sure to be the greatest of friends to your children, Mrs...?”

“Jupiter.”

Onei shot back up, “Yall’s last name is Jupiter? That’s sick!”

A tentacle lightly hit the table, accompanying a chuckle from Uffield. “Not that the two of us need a last name in any capacity.”

“I guess you don’t, with that huge name of yours.”

The family ate in silence for a minute before Uffield excused herself and walked back into her room. Afterward, Drade remembered he needed to mention something to his mom. “Right, mom, something else is happening tomorrow.”

Hannah looked up at Drade, swallowed her last bite of food, and then placed her plate in the sink. “Before I forget, Onei’s doing the dishes if she’s staying here. So what’s going on tomorrow?”

Onei looked like she wanted to mention something, but Drade beat her to the chase.

“I’m trying to train Luuko to get better at polysomnomancy, so she’s going to possess me tomorrow.”

His mom looked back at him with a strange expression. “Wh-huh? I mean...uhh...” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Sure, Drade.”

Onei sympathetically chuckled. It must have been difficult raising an alien.