This World

by Lee, TD

  The ground violently shakes as its losing balance and is ready to collapse. A lot of us are frantically running around avoiding the falling debris. Hell, Hiro even has me under his arm as he’s trying to protect me. What’s with this guy? Are his first instincts to always protect other rather than himself? Amongst the chaos, I see Mari moving about trying to avoid the debris, but she ultimately gets forced to move with a crowd that moves towards the elevator. From what I can see when I look up, the ceiling is close to caving in and Hiro has us positioned at the edge of the window. Shit, don’t tell me he’s thinking about jumping off! Even with how loud it is, I can hear Hiro’s deep breaths. Then, without another second to reconsider, he jumps while holding me. This guy is insane!

  As I’m expecting a fall to my death, a cold yet comforting force breaks the fall. Hiro finally releases me and I notice that we’re in the palm of a Mobile Knight. This Mobile Knight has a lot of feminine features and is colored in a gentle yellow glow. The head of the Mobile Knight looks down at us and we hear a girl’s voice loud and clear, “I hope you’re okay. I’ll protect you!” The girl maneuvers the other hand of the Mobile Knight outward and she projects a spherical barrier to protect us all.

  “Whoa,” Hiro gasps happily. He turns to me and violently starts to shake my shoulders, “We were saved by a Mobile Knight!”

  “Yeah, I can tell,” I reply with a slow nod. I look back at the building to find it in the process of collapsing. Luckily for everyone inside, the other Mobile Knights were there to help them.

  “Ridley, look! That Mobile Knight is Arthur!” He shakes my shoulder again and points up at the blue and silver Mobile Knight. Last I saw, its arm was severed, but at a pretty fast pace the arm is regenerating. Branching from where it was severed, glowing green hexagons make the outline of the missing part of the arm. Within seconds the whole missing part of the arm forms from nothingness and looks exactly as it did before. With one final swing of the giant sword, Arthur cleaves straight through the Alpha, killing it. Upon killing the Alpha, the Beta Sefirots all flee back into the sky.

  So that’s the self-healing technology they keep talking about. Pretty cool actually, I wonder if they can use it for other things than super fighting robots. When I look further in the distance, I notice the bottom half of Lancelot’s armor. Oh yeah, the laser sliced through Lancelot. I wonder if the pilot inside is okay. I’m not worried though, if they have technology to repair robots on the battlefield like this then they surely have a way to fully repair a person if they’re injured.

  Looking at the battlefield, all I can see are large burn marks, the rapidly fading dead Sefirots, debris, and the large lower half of Lancelot. The feminine Mobile Knight puts me and Hiro on the ground gently and she quickly jets off. We’re immediately crowded by the other students as they all try to get a better look at the Mobile Knights as they fly off into the distance. Some Mobile Knights gather Lancelot’s lower half while others fly in formation around perimeter of the entire facility possibly to just scout things out.

  Some students start focusing on Hiro and they ask, “Yo Hiro! You were just with Guinevere right?”

  “Yeah, it was awesome!” Hiro exclaims as a reply, “The Mobile Knights are so cool!”

  “Dude what was it like? Guinevere almost never comes out during combat situations, let alone make direct contact with civvies like I us,” another student says, throwing his arms around Hiro’s shoulders.

  “It was awesome!” Hiro repeats himself even louder and more excited, “It’s so different actually being held by a Mobile Knight than just seeing one protect you. It’s so cool!”

  I sigh quietly and murmur, “Maybe to someone like Hiro it was really cool, but really all that happened was we got saved, had a nice flight, and then put on the ground.” He makes it seem like we’ve never been rescued by these mechs before. Hell, it was literally last week that we got saved by a mech – or was it just a superhero? I honestly can’t remember, they all just blur together now.

  One of the student’s turn to me, asking, “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “All students come this way!” Hisako’s voice overpowers the crowd of students as she directs us through an entrance into the facility. There are students trying to sneak out from the crowd to remain behind to get a better look at the Mobile Knights, but there are guard that just force them back in with the crowd.

  As soon as we get back inside the facility, we get directed through several corridors. Loud voices and siren echo down the hallways, “Please move aside, medical emergency!” Passing by all of us is a medical team quickly moving someone on a stretcher. I only got a brief glimpse of the person on the stretcher, but it’s a man with long black hair who needs help breathing with an oxygen mask.

  “Is that Lancelot’s pilot?” a student asks out loud.

  Hisako turns to the crowd of students and answers with a saddened expression, “He is. That’s Kyric, he was severely injured during the fight with the Sefirots. But he is truly a hero as he was able to dispatch the Sefirots. He is well known for being a great pilot and having a high kill count of threats. Let’s all give him all of our hopes and prayers for a safe recovery.”

  “Feel better soon Kyric! Our prayers are with you!” a loud female voice yells which only causes the rest of the students to get amped up and repeat and cheer after her.

  Right, because prayers are going to help this guy. Maybe this place doesn’t have the technology to heal people, but I doubt the guy is going to die. Then again, these heroes are basically celebrities so it’s only natural for people to get attached to them. Or maybe it’s because we saw a fight first hand? I don’t know, people are weird.

  Hisako continues to take us through several hallways until we make it to a large lounge filled with plenty of comfy chairs, long tables with snacks, and plenty of TVs attached to the wall. Currently playing on those TVs are promotional material of the Mobile Knights basically about how great they are. There’s also a bunch of large bags with the Mobile Knight’s logo on it sitting on a table close to the wall. “On behalf of the Mobile Knights, I sincerely apologized that you all had to endure the life-threatening attacking and situation,” Hisako bows to us apologetically, “please do take advantage of the commodities of this room for the rest of your time here.”

  The crowd of students scatter throughout the room, most of them immediately went for the snacks. I have no idea what to do, so I just sit down on a comfy chair and watch the looping footage of the Mobile Knights.

  “That was something wasn’t it?” Mari says, approaching me with a plate filled with food in hand.

  “U-uh yeah, definitely different from last year,” I stammer. What is it about her presence that makes me stutter so much?

  “If it weren’t for the shit ton of people pretty much carrying me away, I would’ve gotten a way better look at those Mobile Knights in action. Definitely not something you see everyday up close,” she says with a disappointed look on her face.

  “It’s not really anything amazing, just a giant robot,” I say, not thinking too much about what I’m saying.

  She shrugs her shoulders, replying, “I guess that’s what it looks like. But being up close to one would’ve been pretty great though.”

  “You haven’t grabbed your swag yet?” Hiro’s voice says. A big, kinda heavy, bag falls onto my lap from over my head. “There’s some awesome stuff in there, I think there’s some exclusives that you can’t find anywhere else.” Hiro sits down next to me with his own bag. He looks through the bag and pulls out a couple of stuff as he exclaims, “Whoa, a figurine of Arthur!? This shirt is different from the ones from last year! They even have a book about each of the Mobile Knights!” He keeps going until he tells me what all of the items inside are. There’s always a sense of wonder this guy has when it comes to super stuff. He’s looking through the book and keeps reading some parts out loud because they’re “interesting.”

  “This guy can go on forever,” I sa
y, turning to Mari only to find that she’s no longer standing where I last saw her. Huh, I wonder where she went. She probably just stepped away when I was preoccupied with Hiro fanboying over the merch he just got. I look around the lounge for her, but don’t see her at all. Weird of her to not say anything if she was going to leave, but maybe she’s talking with her friends. Whatever.

  Turning back to Hiro, the guy is really absorbed into the book. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s definitely been really big into superheroes. Wanting to be one is his goal. Then again, I was like that at one point too. Saving people, stopping evil from accomplishing their goals, it all sounded so great back then. But reality hits. I’m nothing special, he’s nothing special. We’re just people living in this world. Specks of dust floating in endless space. Hell, are the heroes on Earth even that great compared to the heroes that travel across galaxies? Only about one in a ten thousand people become superheroes whether it’s by birth, experimentation, scouting, or accidents. It’s such a small margin of people that trying to aim for it is just a waste of time. Sure it looks like those heroes are having the time of their lives, but it’s not for everyone. People need to learn to give up on the impossible. Like me. Gave up on that superhero dream a long time ago.

  I’m snapped out of my inner monologue when Hiro shakes my arm, “Hey, you’re spacing out. You okay there?” I look at him, nodding. “They just said the busses got here and we gotta go,” he says.

  Taking a quick look at the lounge, it’s pretty empty now and people are leaving. How long did I monologue for? I stand up, grabbing the bag of merch that Hiro threw on me and start heading for the exit. There’s strangely a lot of guards in here now. Or were they always here? Hisako stands near the exit of the door and her eyes keep looking in my direction. She’s not necessarily looking at me, but just in my direction. Instead of the cheery attitude she had for most of the tour, her face is a bit more serious. Did something happen? I pull out my phone to quickly check the time and notice that it’s way too early for this fieldtrip to end. Especially since we only got put into the lounge a few minutes ago. How weird. And no one raising any sort of objection either.

  “Hey, why are we leaving so early?” I ask Hiro. It feels like we’re being rushed out instead of just simply escorted out. There’s some sort of sense of urgency and I really want to know why.

  He looks over at me, answering, “You weren’t listening? Well, Hisako said that the tour was cut short because of the Sefirot attack, but we did get to see Arthur in action so that’s always a plus! Those Avalon fibers looked really cool in action.”

  Leave it to this guy to find something positive out of this whole experience. But seriously, why does it seem like we’re just being forced out fast? To reinforce what I’m thinking, I even see a student that barely moved away from the crowd only to be pushed back in by a guard. This is really weird. You would think someone would object or say something, but no one is. I’m not going to though. Confrontation scares me.

  We’re all escorted outside to be greeted with the same busses that brought us all here. I take a quick look around, some schools have already boarded their respective busses while others are finding theirs. I look up to find a silhouette of someone looking down at the crowd again. I wonder who that is. Hiro and I get on the same cat shaped bus after checking in with the chaperone of my school. We take a seat and Hiro immediately starts talking to some of the other students about the fieldtrip. I, of course, start tuning out.

  What’s weird about today isn’t the fight with the Sefirot, considering Sefirot invasions have been happening a lot lately, but just how quickly they made us leave. This was supposed to be an all day fieldtrip, but by the time we make it back to school only half of the school day would be over. I wonder what they’ll have us do for the rest of the day. Hopefully, they’ll just let us go home.

  The bus comes to a sudden halt on the bridge. Some students start questioning what’s happening. Taking a brief look out the window, I find a very cliché scene of a superhero duking it out with a supervillain. The superhero is a man in a rather tight looking suit that somehow accentuates his muscles. Something strange is a blindfold over his eyes. The villain is a man wearing a cybernetic black suit with wings that branch from his back. He has a chest piece with a red core that looks oddly obvious as a weak point of the suit.

  “Everyone look! Blind Justice is fighting Corvus!” a student exclaims as they glue their face to their window. All of the students look outside, some even run to the front of the bus to try to get out to watch the ensuing fight. Almost all of the students and any innocent bystander takes out their phones and points them at the superhero and villain before us.

  “Stay in your seats!” the chaperone scolds at all of the students. The chaperone does their best to get the students to sit down, but they ultimately fail.

  Blind Justice and Corvus collide in the air at amazing speeds. It doesn’t really look like one has the upper hand over the other. They punch each other over and over again, and with the power of superpowers neither of them have been knocked out or are even bleeding. While Blind Justice probably is the superior fighter, Corvus has an abnormal speed to him that really helps him avoid some of Blind Justice’s attacks. Somehow, Corvus manages to grab a hold of Blind Justice and go into a spinning dive in the air and slams Blind Justice into the concrete of the bridge.

  There’s a loud uproar in the bus as everyone is rooting for Blind Justice, “You can do it Blind Justice, don’t give up!” It’s not just the bus, there are other vehicles on the bridge that have stopped to watch the fight. Some have stepped outside just to cheer on the superhero.

  Corvus flies high into the air and the red core of his chest piece glows brightly. From the red core is a large laser that slices the bridge in half, causing it to start collapsing. Welp, there goes the bridge again. I could’ve sworn that the bridge just got fixed too. The bus tries its best to reverse, but gravity is not on our side and the bridge starts to fall forward with a bunch of surrounding vehicles. A lot of students are freaking out, awaiting death. Not me. I’m just sitting on my suit, holding myself in the seat because I know someone or something is going to save us.

  The bus stops falling and I notice Zola – or should I call her Trembler considering she’s a superhero and stuff – standing in a strange pose. Looking outside, I see that some of the falling concrete is placed under the bus. I’m assuming Zola is using her powers to keep the concrete under the bus. Ever so slowly, the bus starts moving up as students in the bus are cheering Zola on. I look at all of the other vehicles and there several super people rescuing those vehicles in one way or another. There are a couple of heroes in normal clothes using their super strength to lift vehicles up. Some are just simply being held up by seemingly nothing, but I think that’s just telekinesis. One car is being held up by the water down below. The vehicles that continue to fall don’t have to worry as several flying superheroes go to their aid.

  One superhero stops by this bus and announces loudly, “Great job Trembler! We’ll take care of the other ones, you got this one!” And with that, the superhero zooms off to rescue a car from hitting the water down below.

  Trembler – or should I be calling her Zola since that’s her actual name – manages to get the bus back on a stable part of the bridge. She falls to her knees, but the students in here are all cheering for her since she saved our lives. A couple of the other super people in this bus leave the bus to help the surrounding civilians with protection from the fight or debris.

  I look outside to find Blind Justice and Corvus fighting some more, only this time Blind Justice does have the upper hand. Blind Justice uses his laser eyes against Corvus’s chest laser, but Blind Justice proves his strength as his lasers are overpowering Corvus. As soon as Blind Justice’s eye lasers make direct contact with Corvus’ chest piece, the chest piece explodes and Corvus loses his balance in the air. Blind Justice takes advantage of the situation, quickly flying over to Corvus to grab him
by the neck. He dives straight for the bridge to finish Corvus off with a powerful slam that caused everything to shake a little bit. After that last attack, I wouldn’t be surprised if Corvus died. Of course he didn’t though, he’s just unconscious.

  A fanfare of cheering erupts in the bus and on the bridge. A repeated chant of, “Blind Justice! Blind Justice!” fills in the air.

  Blind Justice poses triumphantly in the air with a large grin on his chiseled face. He announces loudly as the other superheroes fly by her after saving their quota of people, “Thank you all for your support! Without it, I may have not defeated Corvus. I’m sorry to endanger you all like this. The Disaster Relief Unit will be here shortly. Please be patient. I love you all, you’re all superheroes in my eyes!” He flies down to grab Corvus’ unconscious body and flies away. It’s totally obvious that speech is copy and pasted. I mean, he just called some supervillains in this bus superheroes. He called me a superhero and I can’t do shit.

  “That was awesome!” Hiro shouts in my ear, “You saw all of that right? How awesome was it!?”

  “It was, meh,” I reply nonchalantly, “wouldn’t put it on a top ten list of superhero fights. Pretty boring.”

  “Oh, c’mon man! A superhero was fighting a supervillain! We almost died, but our classmate who’s a superhero saved us! How can this not be cool to you? Sure they’re not Meteor, but they’re still amazing!” Hiro questions with the same loud volume of a voice.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I reply dismissively. A long sigh escapes my mouth. Seriously, everything is so predictable, it’s boring. How can I be excited about something I can see the outcome of?

  After all of the superheroes leave or return to their respective vehicles, I see the aftermath of the fight. The bridge is destroyed, again, but I’ve seen worse when it comes to this bridge. A large jet soars high above and dropping down are people attached to parachutes. This would be the Disaster Relief Unit, who you could pretty much call the janitors of the superhero fights. They’re the ones that have to clean up the mess left behind which is kinda a shit job. Think about it, the superheroes get the glory, but don’t have to deal with the aftermath. That sucks.