Max's steps felt heavy and reluctant as he got out of the rental car. He looked back at the thing, shaking his head in irritation. Even after the end of the world, rental car companies still functioned, and still worked almost exactly the same way. Now Max was rich, but he was still driving an old, economy car; it’s what he’d been able to get.

  Ironically, the supply and demand stayed the same for rental car companies. Even though millions of people had lost their vehicles, or couldn’t drive them anymore for various reasons–like being crushed by monsters–the concentration of survivors in human-controlled land was enough that fewer people needed cars anymore. Public transit was safe, enforced by low level Challengers helping the police.

  Max still hadn’t been back long enough. To him, it still felt like a strange, strange world. He had to take the changes as they were instead of watching them happen gradually.

  And it sort of made sense that the country, and the world, all functioned like civilization in the midst of a war now, because that’s exactly what was happening.

  With heavy thoughts, he moved up the walkway to a new apartment, a simple set of living quarters made by magic in what used to be a park. Many buildings like this had been constructed all over the human-occupied United States to help those whose apartments or homes were destroyed during monster attacks.

  Luckily, nothing had happened to her, and Max was already aware of this for a long time, but this was the first time he'd be visiting his mother in person. He had to admit privately that he hadn't been emailing her back often enough either.

  Of course, since she'd been doing interviews and such, he was a little irritated with her. Their meeting had the potential to be terse, and he was not looking forward to it. But at the same time, he was also looking forward to the reunion because he hadn't seen his mother in a long time. That thought made him feel somewhat guilty…more guilty. The amount of time his mother had gone without seeing him was far longer, that he hadn’t seen her, and most of the time Max had known both of them was alive.

  Max had seen some of his mother’s interviews. Over the years, there were times that his mother hadn't heard from him in a long time and had dark thoughts, dark thoughts indeed.

  At the moment, he was wearing a disguise of sorts. He had on jeans, a bright, garish, button up Dragon Ball Z shirt and Crocs. He was also wearing a wide straw hat just like Luffy. He looked ridiculous, like a caricature of an otaku, and sure enough, most people either ignored him or looked at him, grinned, and then looked away. Not many people actually paid attention to what his face looked like when his clothing was so showy.

  He followed the directions he’d gotten for his mother’s place, and eventually ended up outside number 613, his mother's door. She should be home—he’d emailed her earlier that day and told her that he was coming over. As he knocked, part of him was excited to see her, but another part was hoping she was out so that he could put off this reunion.

  Max would rather fight a monster than deal with a situation and relationship this complicated.

  The door opened with a creak, and just like that, Max was face to face with his mother again. He'd already seen some of her interviews, so he knew that she looked older now, but seeing the new lines on her face in person made him feel suddenly, uncharacteristically emotional. The marks of her emotional and personal battles of the last few years were plain to see on her face. It was also evidenced by the fact that they both just stood there for a few seconds looking at each other before she waved a hand, sighed, and said, "Well, bucko, come in then, I guess. You're so famous right now, you can't be loitering outside the door of some random old lady."

  Max sighed and moved into his mom's apartment. He closed the door behind him without being asked.

  "It's not much," she said. "I've lost almost everything, but there are a lot of people who are even worse off, so I guess I shouldn't complain." She vaguely waved at the couch and sat in a recliner. Max sat as well, and the moment his butt touched the fabric, his mom was up again, bustling to the kitchen, muttering about getting coffee or a soda or something. Max rolled his eyes and stayed still. She might be older, but his mom was still his mom, and this was something that had driven him crazy about her his entire life. He knew there was nothing he could do other than just wait for her to come back with some sort of drink for him and for her, then hope that she didn't decide that they needed something else after that. Like a storm, his mother's annoying, random, semi-hospitable chaos was something that he had to just endure.

  Luckily, after putting down a coffee and a can of soda for both of them, she settled into her recliner again and looked expectantly at him like she had been waiting for him to speak all along. Max cleared his throat and said, "You look good, Mom."

  "Well, that's a lie, Maxie," she said and laughed. "But thank you for saying it, I guess."

  Max grimaced a bit and nodded. He said, "Well, I suppose I should just talk about the elephant in the room right off the bat. I've already emailed you this, but I'm really sorry that I went so long without talking to you. I did whenever I thought about it. And, to be fair, I have had a lot going on."

  "Yeah, yeah, saving the world and all that." Geraldine Cunningham took a sip of her coffee and made a face. "This is terrible," she said. She made a face at the coffee like it had intentionally tried to disrespect her. The mug read, “Sorry, no Hablo Fucktardo.” It was not his mother’s sense of humor, and he knew she probably hated it. The absurdity almost made Max laugh, but he barely kept his face straight.

  Geraldine said, "You know, after you vanished, I got into cold presses.” She spent a few minutes detailing the exact way that cold press coffee is made. She even talked about the beans. Max was used to these tangents, and he just listened quietly while he drank his soda. Eventually, she paused, then said, “Gosh that was some delicious coffee, but when I lost everything, I lost the press." A brief shadow of grief crossed her face before she took another sip of the coffee, and Max sighed.

  "I'm really sorry, Mom, but like I've told you in emails before, if you want me to buy you a house or…really much of anything else, it's not a problem. You don't need to stay here. You don’t have to drink using mugs you don’t like. I know you probably hate like half the shit in this place."

  “Language, Maxie!” Then Geraldine made a face and shook her head. "No, no, all my friends and most of my family are living just like this. I don't want to impose on my very important son and live large while everyone else is suffering."

  Max's temper flared a bit, and he said, "Well, if you didn't need more money, then why have you been doing interviews showing everybody my baby pictures?"

  The question hit Max's mom like a blow, and she rocked back before looking up at him with a mixture of defiance, guilt, and sadness. "Well, money has been tight," she admitted, "but also, I didn't know if I was ever going to see you again. And after all those videos came out of you fighting that big thing," her voice broke a bit. "After I saw those videos of you, I started wondering if one email every week or two was just all I was going to see of you again.”

  Even as her eyes teared up, her lips firmed in defiance, frustration, and pain. She continued, “And I decided, you know what? I have a very important, very famous son now. Maybe I can tell the world about him the way I would tell my friends if half of them weren't dead now. And so that's what I did. And maybe part of me thought that if I was talking about you, it would mean finally seeing you again. And you know what? If that's the case, well, I guess I gotta give that part of myself a hug because she was right because here you are."

  A flash of intense, almost crushing guilt ran through Max, and he, this time, was the one to sit back like he'd been slapped. Silence reigned for a few moments while Max tried to decide how to respond. All he eventually could do was just apologize and try to explain. "I'm really sorry, Mom. I know I should have told you what was going on when I could. Going to the Quartet, well, I couldn't do anything about it. And everybody else's mom was in the same boat as you. I know you know that. And I know you know that there were limited things I could do when I came back to Earth the first time. That was very strange, and as far as I know, I'm the only person that's ever done that. I had to be careful at the time because I wasn't sure if I could get in trouble for it. And some of the people in the Quartet are very scary people, Mom."

  She nodded numbly. "Yes, but now you've been back for a while."

  Max grimaced and said, "Not for all that long. And it's not like I was playing video games. I was working so that I could, like you said sarcastically before, save the world. But I'm sorry, Mom. I truly am. And if I could go back in time, I would free up time to come see you in person like this. I'm not saying that I'm in the right. But at the same time, it's not like I was going on a dating show or something instead of seeing my mother. I was paying with blood, sweat, and tears so that I can be who I am today and save people…and stay alive myself."

  "That's good that you can save people, Maxie," Geraldine said, "but what about me? What about you? Why can't you let everybody else fight the big fights? Why can't they do it? You're so young. Or at least you were. I don't even know how old you are now! You might have lived years of your life now without me seeing you, just like I have. Maybe longer."

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Max nodded slowly and wasn't sure if the truth was going to make her feel better or not. He told her, "Mom, I actually left the Quartet early. I was there for less than a year."

  "Well, why did you do that!?" Geraldine almost yelled, her eyes wild. "Wouldn't you get stronger if you stayed there longer? Did you get killed in a dungeon or something? Isn't that how it works?"

  Max shook his head. "No, Mom." And once again, he decided to be honest with her. "Some people…conspiracy type people from other worlds tried to kill me, tried to kill me for real. I defended myself and got out. I don't really want to tell you this stuff, Mom. I know you can't really understand. Like, you won't even tell a server if there's a hair in your food. But Mom, my life is different now and…brutal sometimes. And I just don't know how much I can discuss with you that you can handle. Or should handle. I never wanted you to be in this situation. But on top of that, now that you're doing all these talk shows and things like that, I'm not even sure what I should tell you now. Like, are you going to go and tell people everything I've just told you?"

  Geraldine looked down at her hands, visibly hurt. "Is that what you think of me now, Maxie?"

  Max frowned and said, "I don't know, Mom. You are showing naked pictures of me asleep in my oatmeal on morning news shows while ladies with five pounds of makeup on their faces laugh at me. I mean, I don't care too much because, at the end of the day, it's not my image that people value me for, and I'm not an actor. People only care about me because I kill things well. But it's kind of distracting when your friends are telling you that your mom might show your blurred-out penis on television again in childhood photos from when you were six."

  Geraldine nodded slowly. "I guess I maybe deserve that. You know your brother and sister basically said the same thing? That's one of the reasons they wouldn't participate. I actually invited them. They said no."

  Max nodded slowly. "I still need to visit them too."

  "Yes, yes, you do, Maxie," said Geraldine. "But they're your siblings, I get it, it's not the same. In fact, your sister in particular is extremely proud of you. But they're not your mother. They don't lie awake at night wondering if you're fighting some nasty monster that's going to bite the back of your neck. Like I've seen news reports about people suffering and these guild people and the adventurers getting hit through walls and poisoned and..." Her voice trailed off, and she was obviously near tears.

  He ignored the fact that she hadn’t mentioned his dad, but that was a sore spot and a can of worms he was not going to open. It’s why he also hadn’t said he still needed to visit his father, too.

  Max got up, walked over, and gave her a very big hug. "Look, Mom, I can't promise that I'll always be safe because I'm not going to make a promise I can't keep. But I will tell you point-blank, and please don't repeat this, that yes, I am the strongest Challenger in the world right now. The only reason Lance is as strong as he is is because of me. I taught him how to fight in the Quartet. He's my friend. In fact, if you need money or anything, I will get it out of him because Lord knows he has enough of it. He probably wastes more money than most houses cost on one piece of his dumbass clothes. But you know what? He has saved his country multiple times, so if anyone deserves to be rich, it's someone like him. Millions of people owe their lives to him. I’m probably the only person in the world that gets irritated about his diamond studded sunglasses or whatever."

  Geraldine wiped her eyes and gently pushed Max away. "Yes, I know that he’s important. I know that you are, too. And I've had that talk with myself too. A lot of people might get their houses back or even be saved because of the things you've done. I get it, Max, I'm not stupid. I may not be smart, but I'm not stupid. And I know that what you're doing is important. It's just..hard. Especially when I see videos of my son getting the tar beat out of him by some King Kong thing."

  "I know, Mom. I'm sorry." There really wasn't anything else for Max to say. So, he didn't say anything for a while. And the two of them sat in silence while Geraldine got herself back together. Finally, she said, "So what have you been up to?"

  Max opened his mouth to speak, and before he could answer, she added, "And do you have a girlfriend? Are you going to get married? Have you thought about giving me any grandkids?"

  Max groaned and felt his heart drop with old frustrations and irritations, but he also felt somewhat lighter. If his mom was willing to ask about grandbabies, then maybe she was feeling a little bit better now. He said, "I dated a girl in the Quartet, but it didn't work out. There are some other girls out there, but I think the one that I probably should be focused on isn't on our world right now."

  "What!?"

  Max clarified, "She was from the Quartet, from another world."

  Geraldine shook her head. "Well, then you should forget about her then, right? If you know someone in the Quartet and then you go to different worlds, you'll never see each other again, right? Even I know that. Well, I actually know a lot. Do you know that there are specials about the Quartet on TV all the time? There are Youtube channels now that only talk about the Quartets."

  Max hesitated before saying, "So what you said about never being able to see someone from another world again… Um, not necessarily. Theoretically."

  Geraldine looked at Max in surprise and confusion. "You told other people about this, right? Like, please tell me you told other people about this."

  "Well, Lance and a few people in the Patriot Guild know."

  Max's mom shook her head. "Is this my life now? I just need to get used to my son talking about famous, powerful people casually like this?" Then she looked Max in the eye and in a very serious tone of voice asked, "Did you just tell me some sort of national secret?"

  "Sort of," Max admitted. "If you talk about this on talk shows, though, it's not just gonna be me who's angry at you. It'll be Lance, too."

  "Oh, and the bullying begins," Geraldine said dramatically. She took a sip of her coffee and made a face of disgust before spitting it back into the mug. "Not in the mood for that crappy coffee.” She paused and stuck her lower lip out. “It's not enough for my son to ask me to not go on talk shows. Now he's going to blackmail me by getting his rich and powerful and famous friends angry at me, huh?"

  "Basically, yes," said Max, his face blank.

  "Why are you so mean to your mother, Max?" Geraldine sighed. She took another sip of coffee before spitting it out again.

  “I’m not being mean.”

  “You’re not telling me anything.”

  “I told you a national secret.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I want to know!”

  Max sighed and asked, "So you want to know what I've been up to? Are you sure?"

  His mom shrugged and said, "I think so. Don't you basically just play Power Rangers?"

  Max tapped the table, wondering what to say or even how to make his mother understand how dangerous and dark his universe could be. Finally, he said, "Mom, that fight that you saw on TV, the one where I was fighting the Beast King, for me, that wasn't even the worst. I mean, yes, it was a fight to the death, but I had several of those, and I had much closer calls."

  Geraldine shook her head. "I don't believe it. That was terrible. That was the worst thing I've ever seen. I can't even imagine you going through things worse than that all the time."

  In exasperation, Max said, "That's exactly why I don't want to talk to you about it, Mom! I'm worried about you. You're probably already having nightmares about what you saw on TV! If I tell you other things that I've been through, you're going to worry even more, and it's not even going to help me. In fact, knowing that you're stressed out and worried about me and not sleeping well is going to make me feel worse and may distract me so bad I am distracted. Being distracted could be life threatening in my life now."

  Geraldine shook her head and said, "It's hard to accept, Maxie."

  Suddenly, Max heard a small voice in his ear as Lavinia asked, "Max, do I have permission to reveal myself to your mother?"

  Out loud, Max said, "Lavinia, it's not like you need to ask me permission, but I suppose I appreciate the gesture. Sure, go ahead, but give me a second." To his mother, he said, "Mom, one of my spirits, my friend, is going to manifest. I guess she wants to talk to you."

  Geraldine's mouth opened and closed a few times like a fish before suddenly Lavinia was standing in the room with them. She looked the same as she always did, for the most part, except now that she'd been on Earth, her appearance kept morphing into some sort of hybrid of a Quartet student and e-girl. At the moment, she was wearing about ten bracelets on each arm, a t-shirt with Trogdor on it, and thigh-high Invader Zim socks. Max thought she looked utterly ridiculous, but like most of Lavinia's outfits, he'd been holding his tongue if he didn’t like them. He suspected she already knew and thought it was hilarious.

  Lavinia waved at Geraldine and said, "Hello, Max's mom. My name is Lavinia. I was Max's first contracted spirit in the Quartet. And when I was alive, I was a Summoner in the Quartet. I died before I could go back to my family, and my soul stayed locked in the quartet. I would still be there if not for Max. But I can honestly say that I have been with Max for most of his journey now as a Challenger…as a Summoner," she clarified. "And I can tell you with full honesty that Max is telling the truth, and you probably don't want to know everything about what he's been up to or the challenges he's faced. He has spirits right now, inside of him, that if they were to manifest, you would probably never get to sleep again."

  She suddenly glanced to the side and muttered, "Don't even speak, Saliron. I'm serious. You outrank me, but Anansi likes me more." Then she turned back to Geraldine and smiled like her side conversation never happened. "I'm telling the truth. Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself and tell you that Max is working hard."

  Lavinia smiled brightly. Max’s mom slowly said, “You’re a spirit? But you never got to see your mother again before you died?” Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “It’s okay, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and–” Lavinia's voice suddenly broke, and she looked down at the ground. "Mrs. Geraldine, I'm not telling you how to feel, but please cut him, cut Max some slack."

  Max's mom moved her shoulders back and looked at Lavina in the eyes, her stance and expression remarkably calm for speaking to a manifested spirit for the first time. "You're so precious and sad, aren't you?" she said, tears still swimming in her eyes. "How long were you alone for, dear?"

  "Centuries," said Lavinia sadly.

  Slowly, Max's mom nodded and said, "Okay, I'll accept that I am probably best off not knowing everything because just looking at this young lady, who I realize is also way older than me, is making my heart ache in a way that I didn't even know it could."

  Max sofly asked, "Lavinia, can you go back in my soul now?" She nodded and disappeared like she’d never been there, some residual ectoplasmic smoke dissipating, completely gone two seconds later.

  Nobody spoke for a minute or two.

  "Okay then," said Max. "Are we okay now, Mom?"

  Geraldine looked down at her hands for a moment before glancing up. "I don't know, but I think we can be."

  "What do I need to do?"

  "I've lost my car, and delivery sucks now. Can you take me to McDonald's?"

  Max grinned. "I can definitely take you to McDonald's, Mom. Let's go."