A Most Unlikely Hero, Vol. 2

by Brandon Varnell

  “Don’t worry.” Ignoring the looks his friend received, Alex grinned, raised his arm, and flexed. “I’m feeling great. Whatever that doctor did to heal me worked. I feel perfect.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Alex lowered his arm. That tone, the sadness seeping into it. That didn’t sound like Gabrielle at all.

  “Hey, now. The Gabrielle I know doesn’t frown like that.” He bumped her shoulder with his own. “What’s eating you?”

  Gabrielle’s sad smile seemed so out of place that Alex felt it like a punch to the gut. “It’s just… I heard about what happened last night, during your talk with Caridna.”

  “Ah.” Alex hid his blush behind his hand and cleared his throat. “So, you were only pretending to be asleep.”

  “I woke up halfway through your story,” Gabrielle admitted. “But I learned enough to know that I caused you a lot of trouble. I’m sorry.”

  Alex didn’t know if he liked this depressed version of Gabrielle. She was always so bright and cheerful, smiling that obliviously innocent smile, speaking in a voice that defined enthusiastic, and creating wonderful inventions with him that sometimes exploded in their faces. Seeing her like this hurt.

  I want to protect that smile.

  “What are you talking about?” Alex’s grin returned. “You could never be a bother.”

  “But I—”

  “You know, if I thought you were bothering me, I would’ve told you. You need to stop worrying. After all, isn’t a knight supposed to protect his princess?”

  Gabrielle looked stunned for a moment, but then, like ion beams ripping through a sand storm, she smiled. Alex found it hard to breathe.

  “Thank you, Alex!”

  “Anytime.”

  “Ugh, someone gag me,” Alice grumbled. “Look, Bro, if you two are going to get all lovey-dovey and troublesome and stuff, could you not do it while walking me to school?”

  Alex blushed. “Oh, right. Sorry, Alice.”

  “Whatever. Troublesome big brother.”

  It was a peaceful day, though since it was usually peaceful, that didn’t mean much to him. Still, considering what happened yesterday, he would take what he could get.

  As they walked along the sidewalk, his hand accidentally bumped the back of Gabrielle’s hand. He jerked it back. His face felt like someone had torched it with a welder.

  “S-sorry!” Alex apologized.

  “Sorry?” Gabrielle tilted her head. “What are you sorry for?”

  “Oh, um, nothing,” he mumbled.

  Gabrielle giggled. “You’re weird, Alex.”

  He scratched the back of his head, feeling a sheepish grin spread across his face. Alice rolled her eyes at them.

  As they continued down the sidewalk, he looked back at Gabrielle’s hand. Should he hold it? Did he even have the right to hold it?

  Gabrielle always crawled into his bed at night and tried to take baths with him, but that was because she was naive. She didn’t understand concepts like modesty and common decency. She didn’t know what it meant to be in a relationship. What’s more, he was just a temporary replacement for whoever she ended up falling in love with.

  But… we are friends, so maybe…

  Reaching out, Alex was about to grab her hand—

  “Alexander!”

  —when someone shouted his name.

  He jerked his hand back as if he’d been scalded. Looking around, he eventually spotted Jasmine running toward them. She wasn’t coming from Atreyu Academy, but from the opposite direction. She must have been running late.

  I thought she warped to school.

  “Morning, Jasmine. How are—”

  “Alexander, are you all right?” Jasmine interrupted him in a frantic voice. “Are you feeling well? How are your injuries?”

  Jasmine didn’t allow him a chance to respond before she began checking him for injuries, studying him with a concerned gaze. She continued to ask questions. Alex tried to answer, but she fired off more questions than he could keep up with.

  She was worried about me…

  As he listened to the girl babble on, Alex thought he might cry. Jasmine had bags under her eyes, showing that she hadn’t slept well last night. She must have spent all night worrying about him. That knowledge made his heart beat faster, but it also made him want to punch himself.

  He placed a hand on her head and gently patted it. Jasmine stopped talking.

  “Thank you for worrying about me, but I’m really all right.”

  Bangs of hair like honey parted to reveal a pair of cobalt eyes. Jasmine stared at him, her expression uncertain, her cheeks red. Alex found it hard to look at her. While he liked the confident Jasmine best, he knew this demure demeanor was going to show up in several of his dreams.

  He really hated going through puberty.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Really.” He nodded.

  “Really, really, really?”

  “Really, really, really for reals.”

  Jasmine continued to stare at him. She sniffled once more. Then the planets seemed to realign themselves, and Jasmine got back in her groove.

  “Oh ho ho ho! Of course you are all right! I expected nothing less from you, Alexander. A man of your caliber would no doubt be fine even after receiving injuries like that. Oh ho ho ho!”

  “That’s right. I can’t be beaten down by some measly burns,” Alex agreed. “Anyway, I’m sorry about yesterday. I was going to make you grilled pizza, but I wasn’t able to because of everything that happened.

  “Worry not, Alexander, for I, the Queen of Compassion, am not upset about what happened.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “Jasmine was really worried about you,” Gabrielle added.

  “W-well of course I was worried!” an embarrassed Jasmine shouted. “And you don’t need to tell him that!”

  Gabrielle just laughed, which caused Jasmine to retort with even more zeal. When he saw them like this, it sort of made him think of how sisters might act with each other. It was nice to see them getting along.

  “Well, now. If it isn’t Gabrielle and Alex,” a voice said seconds before Serah and Ryoko appeared.

  “Oh!” Gabrielle exclaimed in surprise as Ryoko fondled her from behind.

  Alex turned red. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

  “Saying hi,” Ryoko said. “Ah, I’ll never get tired of feeling these. They’re so big.”

  “Is big a good thing?” Gabrielle inquired.

  “Big is a very good thing,” Ryoko said.

  “You!” Jasmine suddenly pointed at Ryoko.

  “Oh, boy,” Alice muttered, as if she knew what was about to happen.

  “You’re the trollop who groped me in the hallway two weeks ago!”

  Ryoko stopped fondling Gabrielle and looked at Jasmine, her expression befuddled, until, like a light turning on, she brightened. “Oh! I remember you. You’re that cutie with the weird laugh. What was your name again?”

  “H-how rude!” Jasmine sputtered before regaining her composure. “Everyone should know who I am. I am Jasmine de Truante, known as the Queen of Atreyu Academy.”

  “Right. I think you said something to that effect the last time I groped you.”

  “Hey, Ryoko,” Alex started, “do you think you could let go of Gabrielle’s chest, please?”

  Ryoko appeared to consider his request. “Well… I suppose I could.” She released Gabrielle’s chest from her grip. “Since she’s your wife and everything.”

  Alex blushed at someone calling Gabrielle his wife. Sure, she had told everyone they were engaged, and yes, he knew they were technically engaged thanks to her father. However, to have someone else acknowledge their “relationship” caused ion particles to well up in his stomach.

  “W-wife?!” Jasmine squawked. “Alexander, what does this woman mean when she says ‘wife?’ Surely she can’t mean that you and Gabrielle are…”

  “You didn’t know?” Serah said, spe
aking for the first time. “Those two are supposedly engaged.”

  Jasmine’s eyes widened. Her body trembled. Her face turned red. Mount Jasmine was about to explode.

  “NNNOOOOO!!!”

  Her scream was heard for kilometers in every direction.

  6

  “Filtration systems look good,” Alex said.

  “I’ve got all the gravity repulsor nodes attached.” Gabrielle gave Alex a thumbs up. “They’re green across the board.”

  Alex nodded. “Control functions appear to be working.”

  “Adjustor fins are working correctly.”

  Alex and Gabrielle were in the east district. There weren’t many people, since it was Monday and everyone who was anyone was either at work or in school. That made it the perfect place for their experiment.

  After dropping his sister off, he and Gabrielle had gone back home and grabbed their current project—anti-gravity repulsor boards.

  Made from standard hoverboards, the anti-gravity repulsor boards combined Angelisian anti-gravity nodes and human repulsor technology. A pair of dorsal fins on the bottom would give the device increased maneuverability, while magnetic locks would keep passengers from falling off. They also had an built-in metric speedometer. It would calculate how fast they were going, energy output, and performance—in theory.

  “Testing anti-gravity in real life simulation,” Alex said.

  “The repulsors seemed to have synced properly to the nodes. Yay!” Gabrielle cheered.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Gabby. We still need to make sure they work in conjunction outside of basic simulated flight.”

  “I know that, but we’re still flying. Check it out, Alex!”

  He and Gabrielle were riding their newly-built boards. They hadn’t gone off the walkway yet, sticking to standard linear movements across the walkway. This meant that they were only hovering one-third of a meter off the ground. Standard hoverboards could do that too, however, so this wasn’t a big deal. The real test would come after their preliminary observations were complete.

  Gabrielle moved back and forth across the walkway, laughing like a naively cheerful maniac. She drew a lot of attention. People walking to work after eating out for lunch stared at her as they passed. She either didn’t see them, or she just didn’t care.

  Alex was betting that she wasn’t even paying attention.

  “Everything looks good. Let’s go higher.”

  “Right!”

  While the magnetic clamps kept their feet locked in place, there were tiny sensors underneath their shoes. Each sensor was pressure sensitive. If they shifted their feet, they could adjust things like altitude, direction, angles, and speed.

  “One meter off the ground. We’re good.”

  “Hey, look! I’ve gotten two meters higher!”

  “Three meters check out.”

  “Four!”

  “Five.”

  They went higher and higher, but the higher they went, the more difficult the boards were to control. Gabrielle didn’t seem to be having any trouble. Alex chalked it up to her Angelisian strength. He needed to put more effort into keeping his board balanced.

  After reaching ten meters, they lowered themselves back onto the walkway.

  “I think everything checks out,” Alex said, looking at Gabrielle.

  “Does that mean we can perform the final test?” Gabrielle asked. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement.

  Alex grinned. “I think it does.”

  “Then let’s go!”

  “Final test: Ready? Set? Here we go!”

  Adjusting the pressure on his front foot, Alex shot forward at the same time as Gabrielle, bursting off the walkway and into the open airspace. The wind rushed around him. His eyes stung with ears. Flip flops. His stomach was flipping around like an out of control shuttle with a drunk driver behind the wheel.

  He felt a moment of panic. Despite the tests having checked out, there was a huge difference between ten meters and twenty kilometers, which was about how far down the bottom of Mars City was. However, neither of them fell. The anti-gravity repulsor boards remained at the same altitude.

  “They worked, Alex! Look at this! Our invention is working!”

  “I can see that!”

  He and Gabrielle high-fived—which actually caused them to lose their equilibrium. Squawking, they windmilled their arms to keep from tilting over. There was no telling what would happen if they ended up flying upside down.

  “Okay,” Alex said, breathing a sigh of relief as they both regained their balance. That had been way too close. “Let’s head back to the walkway and—”

  “Race me, Alex!”

  “Wha—hey! Wait!”

  Gabrielle raced off, and Alex, left with no other recourse, chased after her. He followed her as she zipped through traffic with ease. He didn’t know how she swerved around shuttles so effortlessly. Several times he nearly became a pancake on a shuttle’s windshield. Her pinions, which protruded from her back, seemed to be helping her adjust her trajectory. Alex noticed that she wasn’t using the board’s dorsal fins to control her direction.

  The board became easier to control the longer they flew. Alex eventually caught up with Gabrielle, who gave him the most joyful of smiles.

  “Isn’t this a blast?”

  In spite of himself, Alex felt his lips twitch into a smile. “Yeah, it is.”

  Unfortunately, he and Gabrielle had made a fatal mistake—taking their eyes off of where they were going.

  The loud beeping of a shuttle alerted them to the oncoming danger. The two turned their heads, looking at the source, a massive shuttle that was traveling toward them at breakneck speeds. In desperation, they swerved out of the way. The shuttle that nearly flattened them also swerved—right into another shuttle, which crashed into another shuttle, and then another, and another. A domino effect was created, with more shuttles ramming into each other, until one shuttle was unfortunate enough to slam into a skyscraper.

  Alex and Gabrielle floated in the air, staring wide-eyed at the unfolding chaos. Smoke rose from the building in plumes, fires burst out from the building’s windows, and several shuttles lay on the walkways, wrecked to the point where they were no longer flightworthy. They looked away from the scene to stare at each other.

  “… Why don’t we leave and pretend we were never here?” Gabrielle suggested.

  Before Alex could decide on whether or not that was a good idea, several police shuttles surrounded them.

  “You two are under arrest for air traffic violations! Stay right where you are!”

  … Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to test their invention in a district with such heavy traffic.

  7

  Alex and Gabrielle stood in Karen Kanzaki’s office, doing their best not to look at the woman in front of them, a task that was far harder than it sounded.

  He was surprised that they weren’t in shackles. Given the amount of property they had damaged, he and Gabrielle should have been arrested. Alex guessed that the reason was because Gabrielle was the princess to the galaxy’s current ruler. Despite that, he still didn’t feel comfortable. It probably had something to do with Karen’s glare, which was hot enough to melt the hull of a frigate.

  “Did you two have fun on your little joyride?” she asked.

  “We had a lot of fun!” Gabrielle said.

  “SILENCE!”

  “Eep!”

  Gabrielle hid behind Alex, whose eyebrows twitched. “Don’t use me as a shield!”

  “You be quiet, too!”

  “YES, MA’AM!”

  The silence that ensued somehow seemed louder than when they were shouting. Tension threatened to choke Alex, who looked anywhere but at Karen as she sat behind her desk, glaring at them with more vitriol than he’d ever seen.

  “Do either of you know how much damage the two of you caused?” asked Karen.

  “Uh…”

  “Um, I think it was—”

  “That w
as a rhetorical question!”

  “Eep!” He and Gabrielle squeaked at the same time and held each other for dear life.

  Karen sighed and rubbed her forehead. “You two have caused over two-point-five million credits worth of property damage. This includes the building that your actions destroyed, the fifty-six shuttles that were damaged, and the medical bills for the people who were injured. You’re lucky no one died in this and that the injuries were mild, otherwise both of you would be in a lot more trouble.”

  Alex wanted to say something to defend them, but honestly, he couldn’t think of anything to say. It wasn’t like he could deny that what had happened wasn’t their fault. It was. It totally was.

  “Um…” Gabrielle started to say something.

  “Be quiet!”

  “Eep!”

  She hid behind him again.

  Karen grimaced. “As things stand, there are a lot of people complaining about you two. I’ve received over two-thousand complaints. If you two were anyone else, I would’ve thrown you both in the Mars Planetary Penitentiary.”

  Unspoken was the “because of who Gabrielle is, I can’t do anything.” Alex didn’t need to be a genius to realize why Karen had stayed her hand. As the princess to the galaxy’s ruler, putting Gabrielle in jail would have been like declaring war on the galaxy—not a smart move.

  “Despite not being able to arrest either of you thanks to your unique circumstances, you still need to be suitably punished,” Karen continued with the sort of imperiousness that Alex had come to expect from her.

  “We understand,” he and Gabrielle said morosely.

  Karen twitched. If Alex didn’t know any better, he would’ve said that she was annoyed by something, though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what.

  “The first part of your punishment is going to involve reimbursing the city and people that you injured through community service. I’ll inform you of the details once I’ve figured them out. After that, I’ll come up with the next part of your punishment. Do you two understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said.

  “Good. You’re both dismissed.”

  He and Gabrielle looked at each other, and, seeing the dejection in the other’s expression, they both turned around and headed for the door.