“No, thank you,” he said in his low voice. “I will not be staying long.”
Titan straightened his back and clasped all his hands together. “What is it you wish to discuss?”
In response, Titan’s father approached his desk and set a tablet on the table. He pressed a button and a holographic document popped up and hovered above the screen.“You have a new assignment.”
Frowning, Titan scanned the document. The first thing he noticed was his own name… and the title that accompanied it. “Ambassador?” he asked, his foreheadcreased in confusion. “Ambassador to what?”
“Human-Darvrokian relations are becoming more complicated,” his father explained, “and our people are wary of getting involved with a hostile, underdeveloped species. Surely you recall the incident between Darvrok and the Froothum people?”
“Of course I recall it.” That incident had nearly led to war. “But what do I have to do with this?”
“It has been decided that having a Darvrokian working alongside Ambassador Ezra will aid in expediting positive relations between our species.”
Titan’s heart leapt in the lower quadrant of his abdomen. Was he understanding this correctly? Surely not, because that would simply be too good to be true…
But then his father pointed at the document floating between them, and said the words that Titan had been longing to hear since he had arrived back home. “As such, we are sending you back to Earth.”
8
Ezra
“You discriminate against me,” fumed the woman sitting across from Ezra at the long conference table.
Ezra sighed. “I’m not trying to make you feel discriminated against, but we’ve been over this a thousand times—I can’t grant you access to Earth if you refuse to wear a proper human disguise.”
“My human disguise is very good,” the woman insisted. It was not the first time she’d said as much, but unfortunately, repetition didn’t make the statement any truer. Ezra had been trying to talk her through it for a good forty-five minutes because her paperwork was otherwise solid, and having another respected Darvrokian researcher on Earth would probably benefit Al and the kiddos, but she just couldn’t seem to understand that if she was going to come to Earth, she had to look passably human.
“You can only have two arms, dude,” Ezra reminded her. Again. “I know you think having four is more efficient—and hey, you’re probably right—but humans don’t have four arms. That’s just the way it is.”
The woman, who looked like your typical human save for the additional pair of arms jutting out from her waist, became irate. Her chair screeched across the floor as she pushed herself up and slammed her four hands palm-down onto the table.
“This is big discrimination,” she seethed. “My arms are very important. Humans are stupid for only having two. I am not stupid, so I will have all my arms, and you will let me onto your planet, or I will complain to my government that you are hating me for no reason.”
Ezra sighed. He looked to Kyle, who was looming in the doorway, arms crossed, and nodded at him. Kyle immediately sprang into action and approached the woman, saying something firm and authoritative in his native tongue. The woman stopped raging at Ezra and instead began raging at Kyle, who then puffed up his chest and loomed over her as imposingly as possible.
After a few beats, the woman’s complaints petered off into muttered grumbles as she allowed Kyle to escort her from the room.
Ezra propped his elbows up on the table and buried his face in his hands, blowing out a big breath. He heard the door open and close again to signal Kyle’s return and said, voice muffled against his palms, “I think I might suck at this job, dude.”
“There is no need for formal titles, Human Ezra.” Kyle came to sit beside him, the chair groaning ominously under his weight. He gave Ezra a couple rough pats on the back, and while the gesture was appreciated, he had to choke back a cough from the force of Kyle’s strong hand thumping between his shoulder blades. “You need not despair. I have not seen you suck even once while performing your duty. Your lips have only ever been used for making conversation, which I find quite admirable indeed.”
“No, I—” Ezra sighed. “Thanks, bud, but that’s not really what I meant. What I mean to say is that this is the thirteenth denial I’ve issued this week, and it’s not like I’ve been granting a ton of approvals. Isn’t the whole point of my job that I’m, like, supposed to be proving our races can coexistpeacefully? It’s not going to look good when the government notices I’m turning down so many applications, and it’s going to look extra especially not good when they realize the reason I requested you come to work with me is because I needed a bodyguard.”
Ezra glumly recalled an incident during which a Darvrokian had been denied entry to Earth due to the fact that he refused to hide his scales when in his human disguise. When Ezra had told him this would mean he wouldn’t be granted a visa, the Darvrokian had started cursing him out in his mother tongue and then had proceeded to throw a chair at him. It had taken weeks for the bruise on Ezra’s arm to heal from where he’d been hit, and if he hadn’t been so quick to react, it would have been his face. That was when he’d recruited Kyle to accompany him to his meetings. Jude had been more than okay with letting Ezra borrow his nanny for a couple hours a day, and Ezra felt better having a bit of muscle there to handle things if they went sideways, which lately they seemed to be doing more and more.
Kyle hummed thoughtfully.
“If it makes your feelings better,” he said, “from my observations, humans exhibit much more violence than my people. On Tuesday I entered one of your McDonald’s establishments and witnessed a woman stating to a worker that she would ‘shove a McNugget up his McAss’ if he did not provide her with the proper dipping sauces.”
“Yeah, but customer service is just like that, though.” Ezra huffed yet another sigh and tilted his chair back, leaning against the wall and crossing his legs, ankles resting on the edge of the table. “I thought this job would be different, and it doesn’t help that I don’t feel remotely qualified to work it in the first place. I mean, I got hired onto this weird ambassador gig because mycatvouched for me. This job should require like, a bachelor’s and five years’ experience in a related field minimum.”
“You are an excellent ambassador, Human Ezra,” Kyle said with sincerity. “It is difficult simplybecause you are doing the job on your own. I feel belief that my government underestimated the number of Darvrokians that would be interested in visiting Earth, given that it is an unremarkable place with bad calendars and many bad languages and a tendency toward war as a solution for otherwise solvable problems.”
“Thanks, Kyle,” Ezra said flatly.
“There is news that is good, however.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
