“Well, actually, every decision can be framed as right or wrong, including the decision whether to frame the decision as right versus wrong.”

“Please, please stop trying to be just like Rigg,” said Umbo. “We had two of him for a while, and we couldn’t stand it so we kicked one of them off the planet.”

“Not even close to true. Rigg told me what really happened.”

“You can’t take Rigg’s place, Square. He may not like war, but Loaf trained him for it and he’s very good.”

“The facemask makes him good,” said Square. “And I have—”

“No training whatsoever,” said Umbo.

“Loaf has trained me a lot.”

“Loaf has trained you how to fight like a child.”

“I’m older than you are,” said Square.

“You know there’s no way to prove that,” said Umbo.

“Not my fault you skip around in time so much you have no idea how old you are. But I’m taller than you.”

“That’s heredity. I’m not overly tall and I was slow to grow. You must have had tall parents.”

“I think you know who my parents are.”

“I know they must have been annoying and stubborn, which is probably why they got killed.”

“ ‘Stubborn’ just means you don’t want to do something somebody else wants you to do, and ‘annoying’ just means somebody else is frustrated that you won’t obey them.”

“Excellent on vocabulary, failing grade on getting the point,” said Umbo.

“Before you try to change the subject,” said Square.

“Too late.”

“Look at this.”

“At what?”

Square didn’t show him anything. Umbo checked both hands, glanced around the meadow where they were sitting. When he turned back to Square, the young man was pointing at his own face.

Except it wasn’t his own face. It was Rigg’s face. Not Rigg’s real face, not his original face. It looked exactly like Rigg’s face with the mask on. It had grown a lot more normal looking in the past year, but he still deserved the moniker “Captain Toad,” and Square’s facemask was shaped exactly like Rigg’s.

This was especially surprising because Square didn’t have that abnormal facemask look. The facemasks that were applied to babies didn’t look toadlike and deformed. By age three, they looked like perfectly normal children. There was no way to guess whether they looked the way the child would have appeared if no facemask had ever been applied, but they didn’t look strange, and they didn’t all look like each other, either.

“You can change the way it looks?”