An explosion rocked the ground sending a bone rattling vibration up through the soil and into his feet. He felt the sudden change of air pressure from the explosion in his chest, a hollow thump that made his insides rattle. Bright blue and red light lit up the sky casting illumination down on kay's pudgy little face. The small boy's eyes were wide with delight, and he pointed up to the colored sparks with a grin of wonderment on his face.

Another explosion went off, and this time emerald sparks cascaded downward followed by a sharp crackling rattle of flashing white light. Over the roaring of the fireworks Adam could hear the cheering of the crowd. In his arm Kay continued to clap and wave his tiny Arcadia flag, at his side, Sunny wrapped her lower arm around his waist, keeping the two of them close. She had her head tilted back towards the fireworks, but in her off hand he knew she held a collapsible spear, ready for anything that was to happen.

Almost everyone in the crowd Adam saw were armed, but Sunny was armed and ready.

He leaned into her with his shoulder as another pink firework went off, and she turned to look at him with a questioning look in her eyes.

He leaned over to he could be heard over the roaring.

"You can relax you know. If Kazna tries anything here she'd be facing more than half of the Arcadian army."

Kay gasped and pointed at another set of fireworks white and green like the Arcadia flag against the black backdrop of the sky.

Sunny seemed hesitant but Adam nudged her again.

With a sigh he watched her collapse the spear and hook it to a slot in her carapace well within reach but sheathed. He leaned up to kiss her cheek forcing himself onto his tip toes to reach. "Now relax" He ordered, and to her credit she did er best.

Off in the darkness Etium must have been having a grand old time setting off fireworks. Ever since someone had given him a personality, there were two things the little furball lived for, and that was armed conflict and explosions. With every passing moment the fireworks grew more elaborate, until there were several going off every second. The crowd gasped in shock and delight until the lights stopped flashing with one last series of explosions.

Adam was left with spots in his eyes as the crowd cheered. He blinked them back.

Kay turned to look at him big green eyes wide with delight, "Did you see!"

"Yeah I saw, wasn't that cool!"

He adjusted Kay so he was sitting higher up in Adam's arms. Martha Jim, and Adam's brothers and sisters got up from where they had been sitting and walked over.

"Nothing to make you feel free like blowing things up. I think it is one of the greatest f human traditions." Jim was saying, "A staple of independence since time immemorial. You can bet if there was an independence day, people were plowing stuff up on it."

Adam smiled, "Technically ours isn't an independence day, it's a foundation day. Arcadia was never technically under the constitution of any other planet."

"Same difference."

"Gam'ma did you see!" Kay said pointing up to the sky where little clouds of smoke billowed in wisps.

"I did!" Martha said taking Kay from Adam's arms when Kay reached out for her resting the boy on her hi, the opposite him from where she was carrying her firearm. Weapons on arcadia were a symbol of status in a way, and even before his parents had come to Arcadia they had always supported the private ownership of firearms. However, he had noticed since the attack by Kazna that they carried more openly than they had before.

He worried that the ordeal had done psychological damage to his mother, but she would have denied it six ways from Sunday if he had asked, so he didn't.

"Mom, Mom! Can I go find my friends!"

Maya looked down to find Kimber tugging at her arm. Adam always forgot how old she was, somewhere between nine and eleven years old, and boy was she growing up fast. She was already taller than most of the kids in her age cohort. She had short pixy style hair and openly used Arcadia's weapons as religion law to wear armor almost everywhere she went. Maya had been a bit concerned when Kimber had insisted on joining Drev battle classes at the public school, but she shouldn't have worried. Kimber had been doing martial arts for several years now, and she was a little monster.

"Fine, but make sure to text me every hour or so, so I know you haven't been kidnapped."

Kimber waved a hand and ran off into the crowd. Adam watched as she vanished int other crowd, coming out on the other side with two little Drev and another little girl. They were taller than her by almost a foot, but it was clear she was in charge as she raced out ahead of them. he recognized the little girl as the Ex assassin's turn police chief's daughter.

Arcadia had once been small enough that the military and intelligence units were the same thing, dealing with both outside and inside threats, but as new refugees from earth started spilling in, they just couldn't keep up with the work and a domestic police force needed to be established. Desmond was more than willing to take on the responsibility of creating and running such an operation.

Desmond's ex wife was skeptical about arcadia to say the least. She wasn't a big fan of their combat is religion policy, but unfortunately for her, inside every little girl is a desire to wear armor and whack things with sticks, and their daughter had integrated too nicely to dare pull her back out. She had apparently forbidden her daughter from taking any martial classes at the public school, but that had gone over like a lead balloon. All her friends were in those classes and she had thrown such a royal fit that her mother had eventually relented just to find some peace.

Now Kimber was heading a squad of children that, if they hadn't been lead by Kimber, would probably have been holy terrors, and they sort of were, but at least they tried to be well meaning about it.

Kay pointed after them.

"Sorry kay, maybe when you're a little older." Martha was saying

Kay pouted.

Off to their other side Jordan and David watched their son vanish off with some of his friends. It was crazy to see how fast they were growing up. Jeremy was now married to that cute redhead he had been dating. They didn't have any kids, but Jeremy and his wife seemed perfectly happy with that outcome.

Thomas hovered happily at the back of the group.

Several years clean now, Adam had rarely seen his brother so content. He was a private and reclusive guy who preferred the company of family and one or two friends. He had no desire for romantic relationships or dating and was perfectly content in that fact. He had his family and his friends and couldn't have wanted anything more. The drugs had really messed him up for a while, made it difficult for him to feel pleasure in the way normal people do, but after several years clean he claimed that things were starting to feel good again.

Adam was relieved.

The crowd was dispersing heading back towards town square where the foundation day celebration was in full swing. Half carnival half county fair, and partly some sort of martial competition, the square was alive with color, life and noise . Jellies were filtering back from the outskirts of the city, driven a ways away by the fireworks. Jeffery snakes hung in large groups in open planters shamelessly begging for pats from anyone who was willing to give them.

Waffles Jeffery and Pancake had been left with the other Vir family pets for the night, and so the three of them were free to wander through the crowd. His family began to break off in chunks as they found things to interest them. Maya dragged hr husband to where they were having competitions at a makeshift climbing wall. David and Jordan went to go play with rocket boots.

Martha and jim vanished to go sit in the grass and pet the Jeffery snakes.

Adam looked up to find a familiar starry silhouette hanging back from the edge of the carnival, sitting on an open park bench. He waved at Kelly and she waved quietly back. He looked around for Hye knowing he would be close by and found the poor man standing by a prize booth desperately trying to throw knives at moving targets.

His prize.

A giant space jelly plush,

Adam nudged sunny in the ribs and motioned over to the poor man.

He was a marine biologist not a fighter, and it showed. Sunny laughed, "that is, both sad and adorable at the same time."

"Please go help the man before he makes me cry."

Sunny sauntered over surreptitiously so she was out of Kelly's line of site. She paused next to him, "Would you like some help."

"I got it!" He said throwing another knife which missed his target by at least two feet and bounced off under the table. He sighed, "I don't got it." He turned his head eyes widening a bit as he saw Sunny. Everyone knew the saint of Anin, by definition she was the best martial expert on arcadia.

She held out a hand, "May I?"

He looked down at them, "But.... It doesn't count if I don't win it."

"I think effort counts, besides which do you want more, your pride or that jellyfish."

Hye looked down, "The jellyfish."

Sunny hummed deep in her chest setting herself up in front of the booth. Unlike actual carnival games, these ones could actually be won if you had enough skill, most of them were martial based. Archery, knife throwing, marksmanship, etc etc.

The man at the booth was already retrieving the jelly before Sunny started. There was only one outcome to the saint of Anin playing the se games.

All five knives left her hand in under a second as she used both her left and right upper arms to throw them, and all five hit their targets within the red bullseye. The man at the booth handed Hye the jellyfish, which was about the size of a small beanbag chair.

Hye thanked Sunny who winked at him and withdrew from the booth out of Kelly's line of site.

He was too honest of a man to claim he won it, but the gesture was still nice, and Adam smiled as he watched Hye run to where Kelly was sitting holding the jellyfish over his head with triumph. It was good to see her out and about. The longer she spent with Hye the more she was slowly starting to seem like herself again. She showed no signs of turning back into herself, but personality wise she seemed to be recovering.

Adam saw a lot of people he knew as they moved through the carnival.

Conn and Eris floated overhead together, King James and his queen Xanthea were sparring to raucous applause. Etium was running some sort of drinking game with a group of marines. Maverick and Ramirez were slowly working their way through trying all the weird alien food

Somewhere the Nox Dance academy was putting on a show to showcase a new form of dance they were Calling Martialmodern or soemthing weird. Basically it was stylized weapon kata for performance sake, and very fun to watch.

Adam spotted his brother Thomas in the crowd with his newest and most surprising friend.

Lord Celex walked with him laughing and gesticulating wildly. Theex emperor was almost impossible to miss with his brightly colored rainbow hair with matching beard and mustache. Every time Adam saw the man he found it hard to reconcile the juxtaposition of his hair, and the severity of his face and personality.

With his high cheekbones and prominent nose, Celex was clearly a man fit to be king, but then the bright rainbow hair changed the effect. Celex wasn't any less intimidating for it somehow but it was still quite strange. It was all made even stranger by the rather dad-like fuzzy sweater he was wearing in the oddest shade of garish pink.

And still.

Adam would not have picked a fight with him.

Any man who was willing to wear a sweater that color in public was someone who could kick your ass six ways to Sunday. He talked and laughed openly with Thomas. The two of them got along well considering they were both ex addicts. The use of adrenaline which had ruined his body was a big contributing factor in why celex had died.

Still Adam had a very hard time reconciling the rainbow pink with the, lets be honest, war criminal that he was.

If celex had been any other species, Adam would have avoided him like the plague knowing that he had blown up a planet and murdered millions of people in the process tended to put a damper on things. However, in Celzex culture the more ruthless you were the better you were. There was a reason Celex's harem had consisted of over two hundred steamy celzex ladies.

The ruthlessness required to blow up a planets was apparently very sexy to celzex women.

Then again their species tended to have a problem with eating their own children, so there was that little fun fact.

Only the females though, as far as Adam knew the males didn't tend to eat their children. He had no idea why but maternal instincts were not something that the Maker gave celzex women.

They made it to the center of the fairgrounds, to a large and rather dumpy looking playground. Riss had done a lot of research on the proper execution of a child's playground, and much to Krill's horror, it turns out that a certain level of danger in a playground is better for children.

Loose objects, strange tools, planks of wood and random scraps with high rickety objects to climb are actually best for a developing child. From what Adam had read of Riss's research paper, middlingly dangerous playgrounds fostered a sense of adventure, free thinking, appropriate caution and self esteem in children. Children learned to take care of themselves, come up with creative ideas, and allowed them to build a proper sense of caution.

That logic was a no brainer to a Drev, but very concerning to parents who were used to letting their kids play on gravity enabled playgrounds.

As it turns out this was a horrible idea because kids got the wrong idea about jumping off of high objects.

Gravity playgrounds quickly went out of style when kids started jumping off of high things at home severely injuring themselves when there was no gravity mats to break their fall.

Adam waved a hand to another set of familiar faces.

Ell'an and Jason, The finnari and human couple who had been the first parents of the first natural born hybrid. They waved back from where they were sitting, and Adam looked down at Kay, "Do you want to go play with the others?"

Kay squirmed trying to wriggle out of Adam's grip.

"Okay okay hold on,"

He set Kay down on the ground and stepped back to let him go running after the other kids. He was friends with the hybrid finnari girl who was a year or so older than he was, but she didn't seem to mind, Adam and Sunny sat with their friends and watched as the kids played.

The finnari girl was strange but surprisingly cute, not unlike Kay himself.

She looked mostly Finnari but had very human eyes and a rather human build. She gave Kay a big hug when she saw him, which was very Finnari of her. Kay hugged her back with all four of his arms in an attempt to crush her, which was particularly human of him.

Adam sat at his table, patting a Jeffery snake as it slithered past.

He closed his eyes and sighed.

It was a good day.

Sunny slid an arm around him and he rested again her, staring up t the inky sky.

It was a good day, but in the back of his head he knew.... It couldn't last forever. With the void as it was, they weren't out of the woods, they were just barely into the woods