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“Earth,” Triton started, putting his head in his hands. “I need you to explain that again for me. Slowly .”
He looked up again, giving Earth a blank stare. The much larger planet shrugged, seeming far too nonchalant.
“It’s been ages since this was decided, dude, I don’t know why you don’t remember,” Earth said, gesturing with one hand in the void. “It was a whole vote and everything.”
Some sort of pinwheeling thing, oddly green and far too strange looking to be an asteroid floated past them. Triton momentarily looked away from Earth, giving it an open mouthed stare. Whatever it was, it looked larger than some moons he knew.
“Triton buddy, did you hit your head?” Earth said, looking weirdly concerned for a planet that Triton was mostly sure he had never talked to before today.
Or at least he thought so, but he’d woken up in the Moon Club to find multiple moons telling him that it was almost time for the next stage of Earth’s plan. Which was concerning in of itself, but—
“Why am I being told by every planet I see that it’s almost time for your Earthlings to disassemble me?!”
“Well, they’ve been having these energy issues for a while, Pluto’s worth less than a couple pennies now, and they’re almost through with Saturn,” Earth responded, far too casually for the complete nonsense that came out of his mouth. “So then they’re onto Neptune for energy, then it’s your turn, yada yada yada. Disassembly.”
Triton had no idea what any of that meant. Lucky, he had experience with nonsense. Pinching the bridge of his noise, he closed his eyes, not wanting to look at Earth any longer. “If they’re having energy problems , couldn’t… the Sun help more than me?”
“I mean… maybe?” Earth questioned, not sounding like he was considering it. “It was already decided… so… y’can’t really back out now? You gave your word like a decade ago. It was a blood oath and everything.”
Opening his eyes again, Triton simply stared at Earth, not bothering to hide any part of his expression. “What do I need to do to make you realize how stupid that sounds?”
Once it became obvious that Earth was going to be no help, Triton turned tail and left. It had also steadily been becoming uncomfortably too warm in the planet’s orbit, so he was thankfully able to use it as an excuse to leave as quickly as possible.
With a sign of relief as the distant sounds of a Moon Club session could be heard, Triton sped up, letting himself coast past dozens of asteroids into the centre of the Moon Club’s clearing. He received more than a few stares at that, but none of the moons staring were any of the ones he was trying to find.
“Luna,” He called out, the larger grey moon turning to face him mid-conversation with Titan. “Your planet has gone insane.”
“Uh… not that I’ll disagree, but… what did he do this time?” Luna said hesitantly, looking between Triton and Titan.
Titan took one look at Triton’s unusually less put together state and backed away.
“He kept telling me,” Triton started, seeing Luna preemptively wince. “That his Earthlings were going to kill me in order to fuel… something .”
To his utter horror, both Luna and Titan gave him a strange look that spoke more of questioning his own sanity than Earth’s.
“I… don’t know why that’s news to you?” Luna said slowly, starting to visibly scan his surface for new large cracks, gashes, or craters. “They’ve been having an energy crisis for years now. The first solar system meeting with both moons and planets was about it.”
“Great. Can either of you explain why I am dying for them and not anybody else ?”
“You won the vote?” Titan added in as Triton realized that most of the other conversations around them had stopped. “I thought we were over this by now…? I’ve already done my time as the conduit and everything.”
Triton didn’t know why he expected any of them to be a voice of reason.
It was only by sheer luck that Triton avoided almost every other planet in the system. Jupiter and Saturn were easily spotted in the far distance as he left the asteroid belt and just as easily ignored.
Another one of the strange pinwheel things nearly hit him as he attempted to locate Uranus and Neptune—he didn’t have time to deal with an accidental capture if he was going to make it to Kuiper Belt and into hiding without anyone noticing. It would only be for as long as it took the rest of the solar system to regain some semblance of normalcy. Or at the very least stop telling him that he was going to sacrifice himself for a ton of minuscule creatures on the surface of a planet he had talked to once.
Triton came to an almost complete halt as the pinwheel shaped object moved almost in a right angle—anything that size orbiting the Sun couldn’t be awake, how was it doing that?—starting to move away from him. It was travelling at an angle far too sharp to be anything natural…
He shoved the thought out of his head, continuing forward, towards the Kuiper Belt. It didn’t exactly matter where he entered it—
“Triton! When are you gonna die?”
The named moon jerked up in shock, making an uncomfortably quick turn to face a small crowd of smaller moons. Crap. Where did they come from? He was in open space, there wasn’t anywhere the rest of Neptune’s moons could have hidden. He had tried to avoid any of their usual spots.
“Don’t say that.” Triton said out of reflex. Too late, he realized that he hadn’t stopped any of them from latching onto his gravity. He now had a train of moons following behind him, only barely keeping up with his speed. Triton slowed down slightly as a different voice spoke up.
“The Earthlings said they’d make me into a major moon once you’re gone so that Neptune isn’t lonely!” Proteus chirped. There were too many things wrong with his statement to count.
Most of the time, Triton would have completely ignored it then lectured all dozen moons about asking about when someone would die. This time, he had an uncomfortable feeling that Proteus wasn’t just speaking nonsense.
“What.”
He didn’t turn around to face the smaller moon, he was still trying to get to the Kuiper Belt as quick as possible.
“Remember? It was in that whoooooole weird plan. They won’t be using all of your rocks so Proteus gets the rest!” Naiad’s voice said, a chorus of agreements coming in afterwards.
“Rocks just can’t not be used! That’s sad .” Nereid added in after a moment.
Triton finally stopped, turning to stare at them, open mouthed. What were they talking about?!
“Okay. Kids,” He started, resisting the urge to just throw them all off of him—one of them might get hurt if he did—and leave as fast as possible. “I’m trying to have alone time right now. None of you like it when your alone time is interrupted. I do not like it when my alone time is interrupted.”
“Oh! Sorry Big Brother!” Larissa said—first for a change, he hadn’t seen her take the lead in a conversation since over two of Neptune’s orbits prior—grabbing onto Neso, Psamathe, and Despina, pulling them away from him. “We’ll leave you alone!”
Nereid floated slightly too close to his face for comfort, “Pretty please tell us stories afterwards and before you die?”
“…Sure.” He said, pushing her away. It was a coin flip whether or not she would remember, but it got Nereid to release her grip on his gravity, nodding to herself.
It was only once they finally left him that Triton suddenly realized that nobody was watching the fifteen as they galavanted through space, somewhere between Saturn and Uranus’ orbit.
It was only once he had practically vanished into the Kuiper Belt that the biggest problem Triton had faced to his plan appeared.
“Oh hey Triton, I was looking for you!” Neptune’s voice came from behind him and Triton only barely spun around to face him before he was gravitationally scooped up.
Which was already a bad sign for how the conversation was going to go, if Neptune was either not asking before picking anyone up or being much less careful than usual.
“Neptune. If you are about to say something stupid about Earthlings killing me, I am leaving the solar system, consequences be damned.”
Neptune gave him a blank look, as if the planet was thinking hard about something but didn’t want to show it.
“…Why are they called Earth lings if his name is Terra …?” The ice giant said slowly, turning to look towards the inner solar system, shifting Triton with him.
For a fleeting, brief moment, Triton thought he finally found a planet who didn’t have something wrong with their head. Or at least, nothing different was wrong.
“…I think his name is Earth.” Triton offered up hesitantly, slowly drifting away from Neptune. If he could make it back to his orbit, he could easily shake off the ice giant’s gravitational grasp on him.
“I don’t actually think so? Wasn’t there…?”
If Neptune was having a bad enough recollection day that it was showing, Triton really didn’t want to be a part of it. If Neptune was having an even worse day, then he could probably leave without the ice giant even noticing his conversation partner was gone.
His plan of inching further away until he could click in and out of orbit was instantly foiled as Neptune spun around to face him, clapping his hands together.
“Anyways!” He chirped, forcing Triton to halt his movement—he was barely at Despina’s orbit, much less his own. “I mean I didn’t like the plan either , but you volunteered for it and I wasn’t going to say no if that was what you wanted! If you’re having second guesses we could totally do plan B of handing over a ton of asteroids equal to your weight then vanishing for a million years if anyone questions!”
Triton stared at him, his final misplaced hope for the solar system as a whole crashing and dying. “I never volunteered for… that .”
Neptune stared back at him for slightly too long without blinking. “I… actually remember it quite clearly .”
Neptune put both hands on his cheeks, scrutinizing him as his legs swung in the void behind him. Normally Triton would either shoot him a glare or completely ignore it, but this time, the ice giant was holding him so still that he couldn’t move a kilometre.
“Neptune,” He said calmly . “Let go of me.”
“I don’t think you’re my Triton,” Neptune said conversationally, tilting his head. “I mean… you’re certainly Triton , but that’s not everything .”
He leaned closer, making the impromptu staring contest that Triton found himself in worse, as Neptune was now close enough that he needed to pick which eye to look at.
Triton opened his mouth to say something only—
“Triton, I finally found you, I may have messed up a—Oh wow!”
Both he and Neptune turned to see a somewhat out of breath Makemake, dragging Haumea with him by one hand. Haumea let out a squeak and almost seemed to shrink in on himself.
“Hi Neptune, I don’t think we’ve actually formally met!” Makemake continued, looking away from Triton. “I’m Makemake and this is my friend Haumea, we’re both dwarf planets!
“Oh hello!” Neptune said with a wave, releasing his crushing grip on Triton as he shifted himself back to a somewhat regular position. “I may have seen you before and I’ve definitely seen some asteroids in the same pretty light grey shade as Haumea. I knew there had to be some sort of common origin!”
Haumea somehow managed to look more self conscious than Triton had ever seen him, surreptitiously adjusting his ring.
“I think Haumea was scared of you so we never actually approached,” Makemake said, ignoring how Haumea ducked his head and almost tried to step behind him. “Anyways that’s not what I’m here for! Chatting is for later, now is… Triton I may have messed up, I didn’t actually know what that glowing asteroid was , I only made an educated guess. And I might not have had all of the important information so the guess turned out to be wrong.”
“There’s a glowing asteroid—?”
“What did you do —?”
Neptune and Triton both started at the same time, turning to look at each other before Neptune gestured for him to continue.
“Makemake. What. Did. You. Do.” Triton said, enunciating every word as he crossed his arms, glaring at the offending dwarf planet.
Makemake shrugged before he started to speak, “I’m not completely sure! There was a flash of light and you vanished and now you’re back but not from the same place, so I either teleported you or otherwise changed your position, but that might change depending on what you remember. What do you remember?”
“Ooooooohhhhhh,” Neptune butt in before Triton had the chance to speak. “You swapped two different Tritons! I don’t think he’s from our solar system but he’s still a Triton.”
Makemake gave Neptune a wide eyed stare for a moment, before letting out a gasp. He suddenly appeared in Triton’s personal space, spinning around as he examined him.
“What are you doing ?” Triton asked, shoving Makemake away as he tried to grab onto his jacket.
“Trying to find that patch in your jacket from when that asteroid hit you during D&D!”
“That never—Hey!”
He grabbed onto the hood of Triton’s jacket, yanking it upwards and smoothing it out a little.
“Woah.”
Both Neptune and Makemake said in unison, before Makemake let out a triumphant, “See, it isn’t there! Oh this is just fascinating —!”
“I knew something was missing!” Neptune said, puffing himself up a little. “I saw you—or not you, my you—sew up his jacket after that!”
“Uh, Makemake, shouldn’t we…” Haumea started, still standing a decent distance away from the group around Triton that had formed.
“Tell me everything , what’s it like in your universe!” A gleam appeared in Makemake’s eyes that distinctly reminded Triton of being swarmed by all of Neptune’s other moons. “Are there different planets? Are the laws of physics different? Does anyone act different? Are—”
“The only thing that’s noticeably different is that the Earthlings aren’t planning on killing me.” Triton said bluntly, yanking his hood out of Makemake’s grip.
Makemake winced, his hands hovering in front of him as if he was trying not to touch Triton, “I did have a feeling it was something unique about our universe.”
“If you want to go back,” Haumea started, voice decreasing in volume as the other three all turned to stare at him. “I… brought the glowing asteroid with me.”
He pulled an oddly shaped rock out from behind him, taking care to not touch it with anything other than his gravity. It shone a bright white as he moved it, almost brighter than that of the Sun, decreasing in luminosity as he kept it still.
“Yes, I would.” Triton said after a moment. He would normally humour Makemake for at least a few minutes, but the entire day had been strangely taxing.
Haumea slowly crept forward, ducking his head downwards. Neptune tilted his head letting out a small gasp, then looked away from him, making a point to diminish his passive gravitational influence as much as possible.
Haumea passed the glowing asteroid to him and Triton had to momentarily squint as it blindingly lit up at the movement.
“Oh alright, well it was nice meeting you… Alter Triton.” Makemake said, pausing as if not entirely sure what to call him.
“My name didn’t change and it was nice meeting you too.” He said, giving Haumea and Makemake a nod in thanks. Haumea nodded back awkwardly, looking below him.
“Bye bye different Triton!” Neptune said, waving at him. “Have a good life!”
“Bye Neptune.” Triton said back, before firmly grasping the rock with his hands.
The white light overtook his vision in milliseconds, painting the inside of his eyelids as Triton closed his eyes to try to block it out. He thought he heard Makemake say something, with Neptune responding, but it was quickly gone.
Triton sat up with a groan, nearly running into someone. Luna let out an odd shriek, jumping away from him.
“Where did you come from , you vanished then just appeared—” Luna let out in one breath as Triton felt a couple dozen eyes all land on him.
He took off his sunglasses with his gravity, dragging his hands down his face. “ Please tell me that it wasn’t decided to disassemble me in order to power something for the Earthlings…”
“W-What?!” Luna said after a moment of shocked silence, looking just about as horrified and confused that Triton had hoped.
“Good,” He said, pulling himself back up to his feet and pushing his glasses up on his nose again. “I’m going to the Kuiper Belt. Nobody stop me.”
Thankfully, not a single moon did, staring at him in stunned silence as he left the Moon Club clearing.
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