Keeper of the Lost Cities: The Second Moonlark (a KOTLC/MLB crossover)

Chapter Five: Keefe

Keefe started picking at his Black Swan pendant, biting his lip as he tried to forget Sophie.

Hopefully she was moving on from him. It would only make the war in the Lost Cities work better in Sophie's favor. It's not like he was exactly the person who was needed all that much. All he really did was name Silveny Glitter Butt and give Foster mental breezes that really only worked for a few seconds, and that was when she was enhancing him.

She was always so annoyed with him and his antics.

That's when he felt a vibration, and fished out his Imparter.

Grady was trying to hail him.

Keefe quickly hit accept.

"Keefe, where are you?" Grady asked. "We've been trying to figure that out since Sophie found that letter. By the way, I'm not happy that she's currently crying her eyes out in her room."

Keefe cringed a little.

So Sophie wasn't exactly moving on as quickly as he hoped.

"Why... are you... looking for me?" he quietly asked, hoping no one was accidentally commanded.

"Because you just put yourself in a dangerous situation," Grady told him. "You do realize you could leak out the existence of the Lost Cities in one mistake?"

Keefe thought about it for a second.

Nope, he really wasn't fully thinking straight when he wrote the letter, did he?

But it was either hide or accidentally hurt Sophie... or worse...

That's when Grady peered behind Keefe.

"Okay, you have to hide me," he said. "Humans your way."

Keefe nodded and quickly stuffed the Imparter into his pocket and began to walk away when he crashed with a human, both of them falling to the ground.

"Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry," the human said. "I'm usually not this clumsy and..."

Keefe and the boy stared in each other in shock.

It was like Keefe was staring into a mirror. Only the reflection had light green eyes, between emerald and peridot, but had blond hair styled almost like his own, and he wore a black shirt with green, yellow, and purple stripes, a white button-up (only it was unbuttoned) over it, with teal pants (only a little darker than Fitz and Biana's eyes), and orange sneakers.

The boy quickly helped Keefe up.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "I'm so sorry."

Keefe still didn't respond as he tried to dust himself off a little.

"I'm Adrien," the boy said. "Adrien Agreste. And you?"

Keefe took a step back.

"Uh... Keefe Sencen," he mumbled, going extra quiet on "Sencen."

"Nice to meet you," Adrien said. "You know, it's like I'm looking into a mirror. Only I've got blue eyes instead of green."

Keefe bit his lip, noticing the small dark circles under Adrien's eyes, like he hadn't been sleeping lately.

"What's wrong?" Adrien asked. "Cat got your tongue?"

Keefe wrinkled his nose in confusion. What exactly did that mean?

"Do you not talk much?" Adrien asked, a little more concerned. Keefe nodded. "Oh, that's fine."

Keefe stared in shock. This kid, who had only known Keefe for a minute, was fine with him silent?

"So where do you come from?" Adrien asked. "I'm not really sure that you're from here. I haven't seen you around."

Keefe began to panic. He'd never gotten this far in his plan.

"San Diego," he whispered.

"You're a transfer from San Diego?"

Keefe didn't know what that meant, but he nodded.

"Sounds cool," Adrien said.

Keefe nervously smiled.

"Hey, you wanna meet my friends?" Adrien suggested. "I was actually on the way to meet up with them. You can come with me!"

Keefe wanted to shake his head, but...

If he was gonna make the world think he was a human, he shouldn't keep the world out.

So he nodded.

"Great!" Adrien said, his face lighting up. "You're gonna love them. Especially Marinette. She's a really good friend."

Keefe could still notice, though, that Adrien was already beginning to fawn over this "Marinette."

Was she really "a really good friend?"

Keefe hid snickers as the two of them started walking down the street.

Adrien was clearly oblivious.

And tired, considering he was yawning every once in a while.

"Adrien! Over here!"

Keefe looked in the distance to see three people standing outside a building. One of them had dark blue hair pulled up in pigtails, with large bluebell eyes, wearing clothes that looked like color inverses of Adrien. The other girl had brown hair, melting to red at the ends, and wore a button up and had glasses. The only guy in the group wore a cap and also had glasses.

"Yo, Adrien, who's this dude?" the boy asked.

"Guys, this is Keefe," Adrien said. "We just met a few minutes ago. Keefe, this is Alya, Nino, and Marinette."

"Hey," Alya waved. Keefe silently waved back.

"He doesn't talk too much," Adrien said. "Not sure why, but I'm fine with it."

"So what are some things you like to do?" Nino asked.

Keefe didn't know how to reply to that, either. Would it make sense if he said his favorite sport was tackle bramble?

"Okay, so I haven't gotten the tickets yet, since we still haven't decided on a movie," Alya said, holding some rectangle shaped device that had a glowing screen. It looked like Sophie's iPod, only thinner, and with a larger screen.

And what was a movie?

He remembered Dex explaining them, but that had been several years ago, and for some reason, his photographic memory didn't work too well on that. Maybe because he wasn't completely paying attention.

"Hey, you okay?" Marinette asked, and it took Keefe a second to realize she was talking to him.

He shrugged, as if anything dealing with him didn't matter too much.

"Uh, you guys go on ahead," Marinette said, grabbing Keefe's wrist and dragging him to a bench.

"There goes Marinette, being a great friend as usual," Adrien said, but Keefe could see that the look he was giving Marinette was not a "platonic" look.

He prayed that he wasn't the only one who knew that Adrien was this oblivious.

Did he spend all his life locked up in the house or something?

"You're sure everything's fine?" Marinette asked once they sat down, and Keefe nodded.

It wasn't like he was gonna pull her into his problems. And like Grady said, Keefe could accidentally reveal the Lost Cities, which could not happen. As far as he knew, all the humans around the world who knew about the elves were long gone.

"You know, I have a friend who seems to be dealing with something but won't tell me either," Marinette sighed, pushing her bangs out of her eyes. Keefe looked in the other direction. "But I mean, I just wanna help him, ya know?"

Keefe didn't even nod or head shake or anything.

"But, I mean, if you do wanna talk, I'll be here for you," Marinette said.

And without warning, she wrapped her arms around Keefe and squished him into a hug.