A DewPrism/Threads of Fate Fanfiction
Standard Disclaimer Applies
by Adelaine Vanguard
Part 1 of 3
June 2021.
Claire was in the kitchen of their small, three-room apartment, cutting up the vegetables for the beef stew she was going to make that night. It had been raining almost non-stop for the past three days, which was rather unusual for that time of the year. She hummed softly as she worked, the kettle whistling pleasantly at the stove beside her.
Rue was in their living room that doubled as a workshop for his freelance mechatronic repair work. That time, he was working on an old-fashioned oven toaster that had blown up in his face twice the past week, after his having replaced its spark circuits eleven times already.
He could smell the beef stew that Claire was cooking, and he couldn’t help but smile. Claire knew well that her beef stew was his favorite.
“Rue,” she called softly from the kitchen.
“Yes, Claire?” He carefully laid down his multi-tool and walked to the kitchen door.
“Rue, could you go over to the grocery store for me? We just ran out of pepper.” She went to get some change from the tin can on top of the refrigerator. “Besides, you could use the exercise. You’ve been working on that thing forever,” she said, meaning the toaster.
“Well,” Rue scratched his head absently. “The man did say that if I could repair it, I could keep it.” And he wanted to keep it. He knew Claire would love having a working oven toaster around the house. Luxuries like those were rarities to them, as there were times that they could barely manage to put food on the table.
“Working is fine, but I keep telling you that you should get out of the house more.” She handed him a couple of bronze coins. “Now, I need you to get the finely ground, black pepper, okay?”
“Got it.” He smiled reassuringly at her before turning to leave. He hadn’t gone too far when he heard her call to him again.
“Don’t forget to take your umbrella!” Claire said as she walked over to hand his umbrella to him. She kissed him lightly on the cheek before he went out.
It was only a fifteen minute walk to the grocery store. Two minutes more to find the aisle for the condiments, and three minutes to find the particular brand of finely-ground pepper that Claire always used. Twenty minutes in all.
“That’ll be one gil,” said the blonde-and-blue-eyed check-out counter girl.
Rue promptly paid her. “Thank you.”
She smiled sweetly up at him and winked. “Come again, cutie.”
Twenty minutes. He had time yet to browse a while-there was a mechavehicle equipment shop nearby-but he was already anxious to get home. He could overhear a couple of men talking as he exited the grocery store inside the mall.
“…did he come here too? Asking about the Clarence girl?” Clarence? That’s Claire’s last name… he strained his ears to hear more.
“Yeah, he told me that he’s a family friend of hers. Funny, if I remember right, she never had any known relatives…”
“I don’t know. He seemed like a strange guy, stranger even than the freak that the girl lives with… maybe he’s the freak’s relative, hah!”
“By the way, you heard the commotion outside? That was an hour ago, now. Seems that Mr. Mystery Man can’t be that bad… They say he saved the brunette check-out girl from being run over by a truck. Speak of the devil…”
“Excuse me, sir! Sir!!” Rue turned to see a raven-haired woman run up to him, pausing but once to catch her breath. Her face fell when she realized who he was. “Oh, you’re not him…”
“Not who?” he asked quizzically.
The woman arranged her skirts self-consciously before answering. “There was a man who was just here, with hair just like yours… Is he your brother?” But Rue shook his head. The woman continued, “He saved my life earlier. I was too stunned to thank him at once, and when I realized it…” she blushed deeply. “They said he might have gone into this building.”
“If I see him, I’ll tell him you were looking for him.”
“T-thank you.” She smiled nervously before turning to leave.
They said he was looking for Claire… Rue wanted to know more about it, but when he turned to ask the men, they had already gone.
Forty minutes. He had only been gone for forty minutes. Claire would be wanting for the pepper soon. The rain was still pouring in torrents, and it didn’t look like it would be alleviating anytime yet. He was glad that Claire had reminded him of his umbrella.
He walked up the one-lane street that led to their apartment. Most of the houses on their street were old, practically ancient, made of roughly-hewn stone and wood. The windows of the houses were closed, although most were already lighted from the inside. It was almost seven o’clock in the evening.
Maybe the white-haired man hasn’t been here yet, he thought nonchalantly. Already he could see their apartment from where he was. Strange, the lights in the kitchen were off…
Sudden, irrational fear gripped his insides. He broke into a run, the umbrella dropping forgotten onto the street. Damn it, no—!!
“Claire!”
The house was dark and quiet. The beef stew in the kitchen had boiled over, and Claire was nowhere to be found.
“Claire!” He ran out into the street. “CLAIRE!!”
The only answer he got was the endless pitter-patter of rain on the cobblestones.
July 2022.
“No, Mint. It’s not yet time for dinner.” Grandpa East Heaven sternly told the red-headed princess who had her hair done up in twin ponytails.
“Aw, gramps!” she pouted at him with her infamous puppy-dog expression. “It’s almost dinnertime, and in five minutes I’m going to be eating anyway! What’s the big deal?”
“Five minutes is five minutes,” he told her firmly, but his words fell on deaf ears.
Who cares? When I’m queen, I can do whatever I want! And I’m gonna be queen, no doubt about it… She was happily stuffing pieces of food into her mouth. Pork chops, cheese omelet…ewww, yuck! Pumpkins! Choosing the most comfortable chair, she sat down at the head of the table.
“That’s your father’s seat!” Gramps was practically shouting.
“Seat, shmeat—it’s gonna be mine soon, anyway.”
“That’s exactly the sort of attitude that will get this kingdom in trouble.” A new voice called from the doorway of the dining room. With purposeful steps did Princess Maya and a masked, white-haired man approach the table.
Mint stood up abruptly. “M-Maya?! The heck are you to talk to East Heaven’s crown princess like that!”
“Princess Maya has been voted unanimously by the council to replace you as crown princess.”
“And who gave you the right to talk?” she turned to the man known as Doll Master. The man never took off his mask and public. Mint had never seen his face, but she wasn’t intimidated. “You’re just assistant to the head honcho of some two-bit corporation. How you managed to wiggle your way into the council, I’ll never know…”
Maya shook her head in annoyance. “It doesn’t matter. The council’s vote is final. You are hereby stripped of your title.” She took a step towards her older sister and sneered. “I can’t say I blame them.”
“That’s it! You are sooo dead, Maya!!”
In answer, Maya pulled out a really nice, really big, and really intimidating handgun. Blue-black steel with silver and gilt filigree.
“T-the heck?! That’s the Cosmo-Penalty—!!”
“Yes, dear sister. (The council anticipated that you wouldn’t cooperate.)” Maya smirked. “The Cosmo-Penalty, or the Weapon of Cosmos if you prefer the more formal name.” They both knew, there was a reason that their family heirloom was called such-only someone gifted with enough power of the inborn magick could wield the bullet-less gun that could wound yet did not kill. “You realize of course that, as I too am a scion of East Heaven, I can use this gun just as well as you can. Give it up, sis! Your self-taught magic is no match against the power of the Weapon!”
“We’ll see about that…!”
But she didn’t get to do anything. Maya pulled the trigger, and the next thing she knew was that she was being chased out of the dining hall by illusory killer jack-o-lanterns three months before Halloween.
Mint ran into her room and locked the door. If they think they’ve got me cornered—they’re dead wrong!
She had made up her mind. Tonight, it had to be tonight. She was running away from home.
She ransacked her room, looking for the things that she will take along. Always travel light, was what she had been taught, and there were only two items that she needed. She pulled up her bed covers, then the mattress underneath to find-
There. Her stash of gold coins. She tied the small bag to her belt, along with the metal rings that hung behind her door, which were her favorite weapons.
She blinked her tears back angrily. She had promised, when her mother had died, that she would never cry again. She looked out the window and cursed under her breath.
Just my luck. The clear skies they had that morning had turned cloudy in the afternoon, and it was raining now. As if the skies themselves, knowing of her deluded vow, wept for her instead.
But she never believed in those fairy tales. Gritting her teeth, she climbed down the trellis outside her window, being careful not to slip on the wet vines. It only took her a couple of minutes before she was already making her way through a secret gate past the castle walls.
Not a single soul from the ancient kingdom of East Heaven saw their fiery princess with her red hair tied up in twin ponytails disappear into the night.
August 2023.
He had been on the road for over two years, with nothing but a small canvas bag that contained his things, and a black violin case that he carried everywhere. Two long years, in his search for a friend who had disappeared. He had lost his umbrella in those two years, and he had already lost count how many towns and cities he had gone to.
Rue continued to walk, feeling the slight pangs of hunger. He stepped into a small restaurant that was located between a small mechavehicle repair shop and a grocery store. Tonight’s menu featured chicken a la king and pumpkin soup. There was a ‘help wanted’ sign below the menu, but he wasn’t interested.
“Excuse me, sir?” He took out a photo that had already faded somewhat from weathering, and showed it to the waiter behind the counter. “I was just wondering if you had seen this girl.”
After carefully looking at the photo, the man shook his head. “Nope, sorry.”
Rue’s face fell. This was his third day in town, and still he had no leads. But he wasn’t ready to give up yet. He ordered the pumpkin soup for dinner—it was the cheapest item on the menu—and went over to one of the side tables so he could eat his meal in peace. He heard a man approach the waiter and they started talking, but Rue couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Every now and then, the man would glance at his direction, but he pretended that he didn’t notice it.
He felt someone tap him on the shoulder. It was the same man who had been talking to the waiter before. “Say, mister, could I see that picture? I may be able to help you.”
Rue frowned thoughtfully at him, and then proceeded to show him Claire’s photo.
The man said, “You know, I think I saw a girl who looked like that in the big city. I remember, because she was with a guy who had really unusual hair. Same color as yours, actually,” he indicated Rue’s silver locks. “But that was… what, two or three months ago.”
Rue took a deep breath. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”
Finally, it was the break he was looking for. Grabbing his things-and promptly forgetting to finish his soup-he quickly made his way to the MetroTram station and checked the train schedules. The next train wouldn’t leave until tomorrow, so he would have to find an inn where he could spend the night. If he estimated correctly, he should get to the next town in two days.
And maybe in the next town he’d find her then.
August 2024.
Another day, another dollar. It was just a quote, since the currency in that area was in zenny, not dollars. But whether zenny, gil, gold coins or dollars, so long as she had enough to pay for tomorrow’s food and lodging she was content.
No, not really. She smirked. She would never be content with anything less than the world. Her part-time job at this restaurant would be just one step towards a future of world domination.
“Oy, Vanguard! You missed a spot!” the cook called loudly from the kitchen.
“Hold your horses (you [expletive])! I’m coming!”
Mint Vanguard dragged her mop and stomped off to the back area of the room. On her way, she passed by tonight’s menu. She stuck her tongue out. Pumpkin soup? Yuuuck!!! They’ve been serving this dish since forever. When I finally rule the world, I’m gonna issue a world-wide ban on pumpkins!
As she started mopping, she could overhear some adults talking about the latest news from the next town.
“…and they say that they’ve found a way to increase the LLCUs limitation of two meters! You know, the Liquid Light Crystal™ units that they use to make the hoverboards levitate… I think they’ve managed to increase the charge capacity of the power drives…”
“Yeah, but they say the inventor’s a rather high-minded fellow and won’t open his work to the public. Kinda stupid, if you ask me…”
“Huh! When the competition gets fierce, what with Aeon Industries trying to monopolize everything, trust me—he’s gonna give. I’ve half a mind of going there myself to talk to sense into him… maybe even convince him to take me on as partner… just think of the money we can make with that kind of innovation!”
New tech in the next town, huh? She muttered under her breath. “Hah, as if he could… that guy looks like he couldn’t convince a starving elephant to drink water.”
“Tsk, tsk, eavesdropping. And you’d better watch your tongue, young lady. It will get you in big trouble someday.” The white-blonde woman at the counter reprimanded her. She hadn’t spoken a word before then.
Mint narrowed her eyes at her. “Look who’s talking. And who the heck are you, anyway?”
“Belle Brie, and don’t you forget it,” Belle smiled sarcastically at her. “I’m a regular, paying customer here, so be polite. Or I just might complain to management about you.”
“Oh, you’re the old maid who owns the repair shop next door. Belle Brie, huh? What kind of a name is that?” Mint looked the older woman up and down. “On second thought, I think it actually goes well with that tasteless outfit you’re wearing.”
Belle’s face flushed. “T-the hell are you to talk to me like that?! Are you looking for a fight?”
“I’ll say what I think, and I think you’re just an old bag full of hot air.”
Belle stood up then, shaking her knuckled gloves at the girl furiously. “You want a fight, you’ve got it! You can’t do anything against me!”
“Says you! What are you gonna do… terrify me with your wrinkles that no amount of make-up can ever disguise?”
“EAT PUMPKIN!!” Without another word, Belle grabbed the nearest object—which happened to be sample of tonight’s dinner—and threw it unceremoniously at the red-haired girl.
Ker-splawt! It hit Mint smack-dab in the face. She raised her mop angrily in challenge as the green-and-orange mulsh dripped down her cheeks. “That’s it! You are SOOO DEAD!!”
Suffice to say, that by the end of that day she was fired.
“It’s their loss,” she whispered as she stepped out of the half-charred, half-gooey remains of the restaurant. She smiled mysteriously, narrowing her eyes. “Hah! I’m going to find the next town and that tech-whatsis-whatever, and I’m gonna make a name for myself someday. When I do, they’re going to be sooo sorry they were mean to me!”
She slung her duffel over one shoulder, and then started walking towards the end of the street to where the sun sets.
September 2025. The town of Carona.
His hair was platinum white under his orange-and-olive-green cap, the shoulder-length locks tied back in a simple ponytail. His eyes, thick-lashed and coal-black, were bigger than was normal and set wide across his face, making him look somewhat like an oversized doll. He had a small nose, a thin mouth and a rather weak chin, but in spite of this he looked boyish and not at all frail. He looked no older than fourteen. He wore a white polo shirt and black pants—a typical high school uniform in that area—he had on a knapsack for his school things and carried a heavy violin case with his left hand. He was also running as fast as his rubber shoe-clad feet could carry him.
“No no no no no, I’m late!! It’s the first day of classes too—what’ll my professors think!”
Across the street he practically flew-running a stop light, knocking over a (thankfully empty) garbage bin, and almost tripping over a poor innocent little kitty, until he finally made it past the school gates two and a half minutes after the warning bell. Sliding to a halt, he breathed a sigh of relief before taking off at a run to his class on the third floor. In his haste, he bumped into a pink-haired girl on the second floor landing. He muttered an apology without stopping.
“Nice to see you too, Polly!” the girl shouted at the capped boy’s retreating back as he continued to rush up the stairs.
“Oh, it’s you, Elena! Can’t talk now—” he shouted over his shoulder before ducking into the hallway.
He’s late today, Elena thought to herself. That’s unlike him. She was headed to the school’s front gate. The second bell rang just as she reached it. Mint seems to be running late too.
As if on cue, a red-haired girl turned the corner. She had waist-length hair tied up in twin pony-tails. She wore a light blue dress (definitely not a school uniform), and carried nothing but a plastic envelope for documents. Her eyes were almond-shaped and the color of rare wine, giving her an exotic look. She had a face that somehow didn’t seem capable of hiding emotion, and her thin eyebrows didn’t look as if they ever did anything but smile and frown. She acknowledged Elena when she approached.
“So, this is Carona High…” she murmured, looking over the school grounds. She smiled mysteriously, narrowing her eyes. “My first step towards world domination.”
Carona High seemed like a small school, with a population of only six hundred (she remembered from the brochure), but definitely had large grounds. There was a forest at the back of the campus. Most of the buildings were old but well-kept. The first floor of the main building housed all the offices and the library, which was rumored to be the biggest and oldest that side of the prefecture, while the second to fourth floors were classrooms. A small river ran near the clock tower, where all the laboratories were located.
The school crest, which was sculpted at the top of the main building, particularly caught her attention. It was a symbol of four intertwined rings, intricate in design, that seemed to revolve around an apparently hollow center. It was strangely hypnotic, reminding her of a mobius strip… but it wasn’t really.
“Hello. You must be Mint Vanguard.” Elena greeted, bringing Mint’s attention back to the present. “I’m Elena Klaus, and I’ll be your tour guide today.”
“Yeeees, the welcoming committee.” The taller girl raised an eyebrow. “You seem young for a high school freshman.”
“I’m not, I’m in my second year of junior high. My dad’s principal of this school. You won’t be going to classes today—first we’ll have to fix your papers, legal stuff (that will take up most of the morning), and then this afternoon I’ll be showing you around school and around town. You’re moving into the girl’s dorm down at Spencer, aren’t you? You’ll need help with your stuff, I’ll bet… Maybe I could get Polly to help with that-he doesn’t talk much though, but I sure hope he’d agree…”
“Err, right.” Mint tried to interrupt, but Elena kept on babbling. She slouched in exasperation at the younger girl. Why’d I ever choose to come here… Although she knew very well why. She had no other place to go. Still, such setbacks had never stopped her before.
Mint was a girl used to having her way, eldest daughter of an ancient house, ex-crown princess of a small, isolated kingdom in the mountains, and the primary heiress to all the fatal secrets that came with her birthright. She had been trained in dancing, gymnastics and the martial arts since she was three years old, studied at home with nobody but the best tutors, and grew up selfish and extremely head-strong. She had everything going for her. That was, until her little sister got fed up with her supposed irresponsibility and convinced their father that Mint wasn’t the best candidate to inherit the Kingdom of East Heaven…
And so Mint ran away from home. She ran away, right after blurting out hot words that she’d later regret, saying that her puny sister could have East Heaven, that someday Maya’d be sorry she ever took what rightfully belonged to her older sister, that Mint didn’t need anyone of them and that they could all go to heck for all she cares. She ran away, on a cold rainy night with nothing but the clothes on her back and a small bag of gold coins, half of which she spent to get a boat ride to another country. The last of the coins and her sweetest smile were used to bribe port officials into giving her a passport.
That had been three years ago. She had been traveling aimlessly ever since, not having found any place to stay and refusing on pain of death to stay in any orphanage. She felt homesick sometimes, and although she knew they’d welcome her back if only she’d apologize, she figured she could never show her face there until she had somehow proven herself.
Even if walking to the arctic was her only option, she’d still find a way to get what she wanted. And she’d never settle for anything less than the world.
First things first, though. She figured the only way she could get the world to bow to her was either to become a mad scientist, an evil megalomaniac, president and CEO of a really really big biotechnical company, or head honcho of the world’s greatest army. And for that she’d need a college degree and a secondary school education. Being feared and well-known helped a lot too.
“…the club sign-ups are this afternoon. Since that’s held only on the first day of school, and most everyone belongs to at least one club, better make sure you sign-up! The soccer team looks really good this year, what with the new coach and all… And then there’s the ice cream parlor over the next block…”
Clearing her throat, she pointed towards the school building. “Can’t we just get on with it?”
“Oh, right.” Elena continued without skipping a beat. “My dad’s office is this way. By the way, did you know that there’s a really creepy ghost story about our school’s clock tower, you know, the building right beside the gymnasium…”
A vein was close to popping in Mint’s forehead. Either way, she suffered herself to be led to the principal’s office. If this girl’s family was anything like her, Mint was definitely glad she was staying at the dormitory rather than with the Klauses.
Thankfully, Principal Klaus wasn’t anything like his daughter. Mint found that out in the three hours they spent in his office fixing all of Mint’s legal documents. She never realized until now how much red tape foreign transferees had to go through. When everything was sorted out, Klaus offered his hand to Mint.
“Thank you again for choosing to come here. I hope you’ll like your stay.”
It’s not like I have much of a choice. She shook his hand and smiled back at him just to be polite. “I think I will. Thank you for helping me with my papers.”
“No trouble at all. If you’ll excuse me, I still have a report to the school board to finish. Now, if only I can remember where I left it…” he started leafing through the messy papers stacked on his desk.
He seems like an okay guy, she thought to herself as she exited the room with the principal’s daughter in tow. If a bit absent-minded. He walked with a limp, she noticed.
She turned to Elena. Might as well get it over with. “So, Ms. Tour Guide, where are we going?”
Elena clapped her hands in excitement. “Ice cream parlor! Mel’s the greatest soda jerk this side of the galaxy…”
“Waitasec, I thought you said club sign-ups were today only?” If she’s going to make a name for herself in this school, she had to be prominent.
“Oh, that’s right.” Elena frowned thoughtfully. “So we go to try-outs then. Which one did you have in mind?”
“I was thinking of gymnastics.” Gymnastics were her best sport.
“That’s cool! Did I tell you that my mom’s the gymnastics coach? Let’s go!” Grabbing the taller girl by the arm, Elena practically half-dragged her as they walked.
Before they got far, though, something in the school’s trophy case caught her attention, and Mint pulled to a stop at the school’s main lobby. “Hey, Elena, what’s that?” It was the school crest again, embossed on a silver and gold medal.
“That? Oh, that’s the Dewprism medal (don’t ask me why it’s called that), this school’s highest honor. It’s rarely awarded—only people who’ve done ‘exceptional deeds’ are given it. I don’t know what the criteria are. But there is a legend, though…”
Mint raised an eyebrow. “Hmm?”
“Well, it could be just a rumor, I guess… but there seems to be some truth in it. They say that in the rare case that a boy and girl get awarded the Dewprism medal on the same year, they’re supposed to, umm, wind up together, if you know what I mean.”
Mint choked down a laugh. “That’s sissy stuff.” She waved a hand, dismissing the thought.
“Maybe. Mom and dad both won the medal in the same year, and they got married.”
“I don’t care. I want that medal.” She smiled to herself. One step at a time. First she’d take over Carona High. “Then it’s WORLD DOMINATION TIME!!”
The gym was a small building, old and white washed, and had only two floors plus basement. The first floor was for the team sports—there was only one basketball court, which doubled for volleyball, and the basement was for the pool. The tennis and badminton courts were located outside, not that anybody used them, and also the soccer field. The upper floor was for individual sports, which included martial arts and gymnastics.
“Oh, Polly’s here too.” Elena noticed as they passed by the kendo dojo.
“Polly?”
Elena pointed. “The one wearing the cap.”
Mint stopped to look at him. “Weird-looking guy.”
“He’s from the same junior high as me, and he won the district finals in kendo last year. He gets real good grades too. His real name is Rue Kincaid.” Elena blushed slightly, but Mint pretended not to notice. “Anyway, come on… gymnastics try-outs are this way.”
“Well, hurry up then!”
Gymnastics try-outs turned out to be headed by a tall upper-classman, who greeted them as they entered. “Hello. Here for the try-outs?”
“Yup, but just her,” Elena answered. “Where’s mom?”
“Coach Mira’s in a meeting. I’ll be the one evaluating the candidates today. I’m Tonia Nikolai, assistant manager of this team, by the way. I’m in second year.” Tonia had close-cropped brown hair and plain brown eyes. Everything about her said the word reliable.
“Mint Vanguard. Nice to meet you.” Mint shook Tonia’s extended hand, even as she looked over the girls trying out for the team. Mint kept her face impassive, but inwardly thought that most of the girls were rather pathetic. Hmph. I’ve got a thing or two to show them. “What’s this team’s ranking in the prefecture?”
Tonia scratched her head absently. “Actually, we finished dead last last year. Not to worry though, we’ve got really promising freshmen this time. And Kirielle’s back from abroad, so I think we have a good chance.”
“Yeah, and now you’ve got me. I’m taking this team to the top, Tonia.”
Tonia smiled. “That’s the spirit. But first we’ll have to see if you get past the tryouts.” She gestured towards an unmarked door. “You’d better change first. Extra uniforms are in the green cabinet. Hurry though, we’re almost done with the warm-ups.”
The girls smiled at Mint as she passed them. Well, at least they’re polite, she thought as she closed the locker room door. Changing quickly, she joined the rest of the team as they were finishing the warm-ups. She took a spot close to the front, and picked up their rhythm almost immediately.
Suddenly a girl with strawberry blonde hair bumped into her, almost knocking her over. “Watch it!” she shouted, trying to keep her balance.
The blonde-haired girl was smirking at her. “I don’t like your attitude, newcomer. Learn your place, before I have to make you.” She edged closer, forcing Mint towards the back of the formation.
“Nice to meet you too, you [expletive].” Mint murmured through clenched teeth.
The other turned towards her with narrowed eyes. “What did you say?! You have such a big mouth that doesn’t match your tiny wit (that is, if you have any at all)…”
“That’s it! You are sooo dead!!” Mint would’ve rushed at the girl, forgetting the school rules, if Tonia and two others hadn’t held her back. They dragged her towards the side stands, and it took them a while to calm her down.
“Don’t get on her bad side,” another girl advised. “That’s Kirielle Lockheed, second year, and she’s the best gymnast our team has had so far. She’s a shoo-in for captaincy next year.”
I take it back, at least some of them are polite. Mint frowned to herself, thinking that Ms. Kirielle was going to be trouble. But no matter. I swear, next year I’ll be captain of this team.
And that’s exactly what she did.
September 2026.
It was an early summer morning in Carona High. School would start that day, but for the gymnastics team, it was just another morning of practice before class.
“That’s it for today. Good work, people!” Mint Vanguard shouted to her teammates as they started wrapping up. “Keep it up, and we’re a cinch to make it national this year! Don’t forget our season starts today, so make sure you practice well even outside this gymnasium. Try-outs this afternoon, if you guys want a look at our new members. And hurry up, classes start in an hour. I want you outta here in two shakes of a cat’s tail!”
“Pah, who uses that expression nowadays?” Kirielle muttered as she walked past Mint on her way to the locker rooms.
“I heard that, Lockheed. Brush your teeth when you take a shower—or better yet, file them. Your fangs are starting to show.”
“Why you—” the blonde clenched her fists into the smaller girl’s face. “You may be captain, but I’m still your upper classman…”
“Alright, that’s enough you two.” Coach Mira stepped between the two girls. “I’m not letting anyone start a fight right under my nose. Especially not on the first day of classes.”
She put a hand protectively around Mint’s shoulders. Kirielle glowered at Mint, before reluctantly retreating. “Teacher’s pet.”
“You [exple—!” But Mira’s grip stopped the redhead before she could say anything more.
One more slip, and that girl is going to be sooo dead. Mint glared at the other girl’s back a few moments more before excusing herself from the gymnastics coach. “I’d better get going myself.”
“What section are you in, Mint?”
“2-A. What did you expect? I’m a genius!”
“Last I checked your grades weren’t that good.” Mira raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you made it past the first year.”
“He-ey! I passed all my subjects! (albeit barely…)”
“Must’ve been your extra-curriculars that made them put you in the A section. Are you sure you can handle it?”
“Didn’t I just tell you I’m a genius?” Mint grinned at her coach as she picked up her duffel bag. “I’ll see you later.” And with a wave of her hand she was gone.
After a quick shower and changing into her uniform, she made it to class with two minutes to spare. And then she spent the next several hours staring out the window.
Boooring.
She always took a window seat (whenever class rules allowed her to choose her own), and the teacher droning about the fundamentals of thermodynamics was the perfect example of why. At least she could look at the cloud formations while pretending to listen.
Homeroom was their next class. It’s only advantage from her other periods was that there were no teachers. Today they had class elections.
“We have to select a representative for the student council.” A girl named Annette was presiding.
Mint stood up immediately. “Of course, that’s gonna be me!” There was no question about it. She walked towards the front, preparing to take over the discussion from Annette.
But another girl raised her hand. “I think Rue should be the representative.”
The redhead stopped dead in her tracks. Rue? A rival?! Someone actually dares to challenge me? Her eyes narrowed involuntarily.
Rue was seated near the back of the class. Mint vaguely remembered him as Elena’s friend, since they weren’t classmates last year and she had never bothered to pay attention to him before. He wasn’t wearing his cap, but strangely enough he wore a white bandanna across his forehead. It seemed to her that he slouched in his seat. “If Mint wants to be the representative, then that’s fine with me.”
That comment sent the whole class murmuring. “Let’s put it to a vote, shall we? Who wants Rue to be our representative?”
Almost everyone raised their hands.
Whaat?!
“So it’s settled. Rue is 2-A’s representative,” Annette announced. In a tactful display of diplomacy, she added, “And Mint will be his assistant.”
The class started clapping, and Mint’s face reddened in embarrassment. It reddened more when she realized she was still standing awkwardly, halfway between her seat and the blackboard.
Rue Kincaid put on his cap, grabbed his violin case, decided not to stay after the kendo try-outs, and went to meet Elena outside the school lobby.
“Hello, Polly!” The junior high girl greeted, smiling sweetly up at him. “I heard you got elected class representative.”
“Yeah, well…” He shrugged it off nonchalantly. “You said you wanted to see me?”
“It’s a surprise.” She grinned. “Mel’s having a back-to-school promo at the Atelier Soda Shop. You promised you’d take me last year, but you didn’t.”
“Sorry about that,” Rue apologized. He and Elena started walking. “I was busy with the try-outs last year.”
“That’s alright. How were the try-outs this year?”
“They’re okay. We got a couple of new members.”
“That’s cool. Say, you remember this place, Polly?” Elena asked as they passed by a small street kiosk that sold stuffed toy animals. “Remember two years ago, when you saved me from Blood and Smokey? Those bullies, trying to steal my ice cream money! It was really cute, the way you beat ’em up and they ran away screaming like little girls…”
How could I forget? That stuffed parrot was how I got my nickname…
It all began with Claire five years ago. Claire was Rue’s dearest and oldest friend. She was an orphan girl, his keeper, his mother, his sister, his everything since she found and nursed him from an accident that had taken his childhood memories away. They had lived together since then, taking care of each other as they both had no one else in the world. One evening she simply disappeared.
The police had all but given up her case after the first six months, telling Rue that there simply wasn’t enough evidence. She could have just run away from home, and maybe she herself didn’t want to be found.
But Rue knew that Claire would never leave without telling him. That she had been kidnapped he was sure, and he followed every lead, until after three years his search led him to the town of Carona. It turned out to be another dead end, and he had all but given up hope.
That was the night he met Elena.
She was flanked on both sides by two hoodlums, one of whom was threatening her with a knife. He had grabbed the nearest object from the street kiosk and threw it to distract the hoodlums, before bashing them both on the heads with his violin case that he carried everywhere. The stuffed parrot that he threw had forever in Elena’s eyes earned him the nickname ‘Polly’.
And then Elena introduced him to her father, Professor Klaus, who persuaded Rue not to give up on Claire. He helped Rue find a place to stay, and enrolled him in the same junior high as Elena. Although Rue didn’t live at their house, the Klauses became practically family to him.
Another year later, he found that the Klaus family seemed to have an affinity for vagabonds. He learned from Elena that Klaus had helped a girl—a runaway—find a place to settle in town, and had even accepted her into the school in which he was the principal.
But Rue had never met this girl, had never actually talked to her (well, sort of) until today.
“…I can’t wait until I graduate from junior high. I’m going to enter Carona High, of course, and then we’d be in the same school! Wouldn’t that be great, Polly? I don’t really know that many people from Carona High, except for my parents, of course, and you…” she was babbling again, and Rue had learned that sometimes it was best to just ignore her while pretending to listen. “…oh, and have you met Mint yet? I haven’t seen her in months, she hardly ever calls home anymore…”
Did Elena just say 'Mint’? Rue blinked. The red hair and twin ponytails were unmistakable, even from behind the non-glare-resistant glass of the BladeStar Arcade. She was bashing away at the Bonk-a-Bloop™ machine like there was no tomorrow.
“Take that (Whack!), you little [expletive], and that (Whap!), and THAT (Kthwok!)!!” She was almost shouting, and a small crowd had gathered to watch her. “Hey, you almost broke the high score!” someone whispered, but she didn’t care. “THAT (Tchok!), ought to teach you (Klonk!) to embarrass… in front of (Thwack!)… (Ptui!) !!!”
The timer stopped, and suddenly the machine started blaring out piped music. “She did it! She broke the high score! Way to go, Mint!” Elena shouted over the cheers and catcalls of the crowd. Dragging Rue by the hand, she snaked through the crowd to Mint’s side. “That was really great!”
“YOU!” Mint’s exotic eyes flashed dangerously at the white-haired boy. “I was going to be class representative, you [expletive]—”
“You’re classmates?! That is so cool!” Elena interrupted, purposely ignoring Mint’s anger. “So you finally meet each other! Papa will be so happy!”
Mint glared, whilst she took out two batons from her duffel bag. They weren’t her favorite weapons, but she couldn’t afford to be picky right now. She readied the batons in a battle stance. “You are gonna be sooo dead. I know you do kendo—come on and fight me like a man!”
Rue unconsciously gripped the handle of his violin case a bit more tightly. In a soft voice, he answered. “I don’t want to fight you, Mint.”
“[Expletive]!” she shouted, stomping her feet. “You embarrassed me in class! You have to fight me!”
“Err, Papa will not be happy about that,” noticed Elena.
“Fine, if you want to fight…” Rue sighed. “Look, you’re good with games. Why don’t we just play it out on Nightmare Altar, best three out of five.”
Mint reluctantly lowered her batons. “Alright, I’ll call.”
Suffice to say it was a tie.
“Wha-a—? A Double K.O.?!!” Mint stared at the video screen, refusing to believe it. “Noo!!! I want a rematch!”
“That was our fifth game, Mint.” Rue turned his amiable face towards her. “You won the first and fourth, and I won the other two.”
Mint scowled. To her, a tie was as good as a loss. “This really isn’t my day… They were serving pumpkins in the cafeteria for lunch too. [Expletive]! I HATE PUMPKINS!!” she stomped her foot twice in annoyance. “Come on, Rue! You have to fight me again!”
Rue couldn’t help but stare. This girl is supposedly captain of the gymnastics team?
Mint felt an arm go about her shoulders, and she turned to see a tall redhead wearing a black cowboy hat looking down at the two of them.
“Say, you two are pretty good. You guys have heart. Heart, I say, the heart that makes a man!” He smiled at them. “My name’s Rod—Rod Blade Star. I own this joint.” Rod was rather young, no older than 22, and definitely not the businessman type. He had shoulder-length red hair several shades darker than Mint’s, and his irises were a deep green surrounded by a darker corona. He had a strong jaw, and his smile was warm, reaching all the way to his eyes.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bladestar,” Rue greeted. “Meet Mint Vanguard,” he indicated, “Elena Klaus, and I’m Rue Kincaid.”
“Yeah, any chance of getting free credit?” Mint said as she brushed his arm off. “I mean, I do hold quite a number of high scores here.”
“Tell ya what, I judge that you are people to be reckoned with, and since you’re such regular customers (well, Mint is, anyway)… If you pay for the game I’ll fight you. If you win, you get ten times that amount of credit, agreed?”
“Make it twenty and you’re on.”
“Nope.”
“Plus three ice cream sodas?”
“Nuh-uh. Sorry, missy, but I am running a business here.”
“Fine. When do we play?”
Rod grinned. “Right now.”
“Okay, but I choose the game.” Mint slid her game card across the Nightmare Altar machine’s slot. “I choose this.”
“Trying to save face?”
“What do you think?! Shut up and play.”
“Oh, excuse me.” Elena’s cellular phone was ringing. The caller turned out to be her father. “U-huh. Hmmm. Okay. Rue,” she turned towards him when her father hung up. “Papa wants us back home immediately. He said something about a clue.”
Rue’s face brightened. “Maybe it has something to do with Claire!” He would’ve called Mint’s attention, but noticed that she was too concentrated on fighting Rod. Already they were halfway through the first level. Picking up his violin case, he turned to leave. “Come on, Elena. Looks like they won’t be finished here anytime soon.”
Professor Klaus was in the basement when Rue and Elena got to their home. The room was piled up with boxes gathering dust, stuff that Rue had collected in the many clue-hunting missions he undertook under Klaus’s tutelage.
Klaus had promised his help in the search for Claire, and the first thing he did back then was to pore over Claire’s diaries that Rue had taken with him from her hometown. One thing he found extremely peculiar was her detailed descriptions of several, seemingly unconnected mechanical and electronic devices-parts that (he discovered after extensive research) were rare in the region of her hometown, and that Claire, being poor, could not have had access to. For the past two years, every now and then he’d send Rue on scouting missions to gather evidence—relics, as he called them—in the hope that piecing them together and getting at least some of them to work would turn up clues as to who made them—the people that Klaus believed to be behind Claire’s disappearance.
Rue had been a very good helper. He always found what Klaus asked him to and sometimes more, always exceeding the professor’s expectations. Klaus discovered that the boy had a keen eye and natural affinity for technology, qualities that could be greatly improved with the proper training that Klaus could not provide.
Rue had gathered so much junk over the years they had accumulated, filling the room all the way up to the ceiling. After much squeezing through tight corners and shouting at each other, he found the professor on his desk in the least dusty area of the room. “You wanted to see me, professor?”
“Ah, yes, Rue.” Klaus looked up from the thick tome he was reading. “There’s something I want to show you.” He stood up, taking off his reading glasses and walking towards several stacks of boxes. He pulled out a wooden one about a meter across in size, perfectly cubic with black metal edging. “Do you remember this?”
“Only vaguely,” Rue admitted. He found nothing particularly interesting about it, except for the fact that it was made from an uncommon type of wood.
“You got this from Elroy’s library, along with a broken tiara, a couple of years ago. Remember when we thought that Elroy could have been working on illegal technology before his death, and that he got a lot of his stuff from a company based somewhere in the next district?”
Rue nodded. He was starting to remember more clearly now. “You dismissed the idea when the items I got turned out to be bogus.”
“Turns out they weren’t.” Klaus opened the box, and motioned for Rue to look. It was empty. “I just discovered this yesterday. Look closer.”
He pushed a hidden lever at its side, revealing a false bottom. Inside were several hollow indentations. “I think this box hides something under the indentations. I’ve tried putting stuff in but found only one that could fit. It doesn’t open yet, of course. But I’m afraid to use force as that might ruin the box’s workings.” He took a broken item off the shelf behind him. “It’s this tiara that you found, also in Elroy’s library.” Klaus proceeded demonstrate it to Rue. “Now, the workings inside the false bottom are done in metallic blue.” He turned the broken tiara over. “This tiara has workings in orange. Remember that we found this inside one of two identical containers?”
Rue nodded. The cylindrical containers were kept on one of the higher shelves, and Klaus took them both.
“We got the tiara from inside this one.” He opened one and showed it to Rue. The inside was orange. “The other one was empty.” Again, he opened it. This time, the inside was painted blue.
The boy could see where Klaus was going with this. “I remember there were several more containers like that in the main hall. That means that the keys to this box could still be there! I’m going back—right now.”
“Wait, Rue!” Klaus called, but the boy didn’t hear him.
Rue was already out of the room, running up the basement stairs and out into the hall. He reached for his violin case where he had left it by the front door.
Suddenly a hand was top of his before he could unlock it. He looked up towards the gymnastics coach’s blue-gray eyes. “I forbid you to go to Elroy’s library tonight.” Her tone was stern and left no room for argument.
“But, Mira…” Rue tried to reason with her, but she interrupted him.
“We’re not even sure if this, this investigation will lead us to Claire. (Personally, I’ve never been fond of some of my husband’s methods…)” she admitted, shaking her head. “But, either way, tomorrow is a school day, and I don’t like the idea of you going back there alone. I’ll find someone to accompany you.”
Mira’s expression softened. “I know you’re doing this for your friend, and I want her found too, but… She’s been missing over five years, Rue. A few more days won’t matter.”
The week couldn’t pass by quickly enough for him. Mira absolutely refused to let him go back to the old library on a school day and without a companion, so Rue had no choice but to go to class as usual and wait for the weekend. Classes were boring enough, with nothing interesting happening except for Neil falling asleep in history class on Tuesday and being made to mop the entire third floor corridor.
Kendo club practices were during Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Rue never missed a practice, being one of the more talented members and knowing that their coach would kill him if he missed even one. Neil Cougar happened to be a member of the kendo club as well, being Rue’s biggest rival and best friend. They finished drills early that day, but Rue always did extra and was still practicing on their training dummy.
“Well, what do you think of the new members?” Neil asked Rue as he put away his boken.
Rue hit the training dummy a few more times before answering. “They’re okay. Not as good as I’d hoped, though.”
“One of them hasn’t been attending practice. But I think the other one’s ready.” Neil stood up, walking away from the weapon rack. “Come on, remember kendo club tradition. It’s our turn to be ‘big brothers’ to the freshmen.”
“All right,” Rue agreed. Every new member of their club was assigned a ‘big brother’. A big brother was a tutor of sorts, guiding the newbies through the first several months of training, teaching them the rules and traditions of the school’s particular style of kendo as well as the ins and outs of Carona High in general. Having a big brother ensured that the new members wouldn’t feel left out, and as being a big brother wasn’t limited to the training hall, the tradition also helped the freshmen adapt to high school life.
Rue placed his boken on the rack after wiping it clean. After changing quickly out of his training garb and back to his school uniform, he went to meet Neil by the dojo entrance where they kept their schoolbags. The new kid was eyeing his violin case. Curiosity had got the better of him and he started to reach for it.
“H-Hey, don’t touch that!”
Rue reached out to stop him, but Neil was faster. He grabbed the smaller boy by the wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. “You’re the new member, right? The name’s Marco, isn’t it?”
Marco nodded, and Neil let him go. “One thing you learn in the kendo club, is that you never, ever, touch the violin. Ever,” the upperclassman was smirking. “I’m Neil, and I’ll be taking you under my wing for the first few months of training,” he explained. “Where’s the other freshman?”
The other sniffed. “He decided to go out for the track team instead.”
Rue scratched his head absently. “I guess that means I don’t have a charge.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Neil muttered half-under his breath as he saw Mint exit from the gymnastics training room. “I think your assistant class representative is already more than you could handle.”
“You said something, Neil?” Rue turned to him innocently.
Marco piped up. “He said that your assis—mmph!” Neil suddenly clamped one hand over the younger boy’s big mouth.
“I said, I’m going to put Marco here through his initiation rights now. Say goodbye to Rue, Marco,” and then he half-pulled, half-dragged Marco back into the dojo.
“That’s good… hey!” Rue raised his hand to stop them, but they were already out of earshot. “We don’t have initiations in the kendo club!”
“Hey,” Mint was standing beside him. “Say Rue, I’ve a question…?”
“Rue, RUE!” Annette was calling him from the other end of the hallway. She walked towards them quickly, pausing once to catch her breath. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Mint’s question was forgotten at the moment. Rue turned towards the other girl. “What can I do for you?”
“Umm, I need help,” she answered, somewhat hesitantly. “The new sociology books were delivered late, and I’m looking for people to stack them up at the storeroom on the second floor. I can’t go myself, and the class reps from the other sections are kinda missing…”
“Say no more,” he replied quickly. “When do you need it done?”
Annette grinned sheepishly. “Right now?”
“Sure, I can help.” He waved at the girls as he headed out of the hall. “I’ll see you guys later!” He disappeared when he turned the end of the corridor.
“He’s so cute, don’t you think so?” Annette gushed when Rue was out of earshot, her hands clasped over her chest. “He looks just like a doll.”
“Yeah, a voodoo doll.”
Annette looked sharply at the red-haired girl. “How can you say that?! Rue’s a nice guy…”
Mint shook her head in annoyance. “He’s too quiet. Too nice, and he never seems to get annoyed. He wears a bandanna under his cap that he never takes off except in class, and there’s that violin that he carries practically everywhere! Talk about freaky… personally, I can’t stand it.” From the expression on her face, Annette knew that she meant it.
It was now her turn to get annoyed. “You’re his assistant, right? Aren’t you supposed to be helping him with the book stacking? (I was going to help, but I’ve got a school fair committee meeting to attend in five minutes…)”
The other laughed nonchalantly. “He can handle book stacking by himself.”
“Well, isn’t that too bad for you. I happen to know you let Tonia do the gym equipment cleaning last week, even though you were supposed to do it. It’s not against any rules, but if word got out, not everyone would be happy about it.”
Mint clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides. “What’s your point?”
“Don’t you think Kirielle would just looove that little piece of info?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I would.”
Mint’s eyes narrowed. But after a while, her expression softened. “Touché, Annette.” Mint sighed, abruptly doing a double take. “Maybe I’ve misjudged you. But I’ll get you back for this, I swear.” She stomped off, leaving Annette to wonder why the red-haired girl (uncharacteristically) gave in so easily.
Rue and his stupid gallantry… I could be at the arcade beating up Rod by now. It had to happen on a Friday, too… Mint sighed as she walked towards the second floor storeroom.
Rue was just starting on the boxes when she entered the door. After briefing her on the job, they agreed to each take opposite ends of the room. They worked in silence. It felt somewhat awkward to Rue, but he was unable to think of anything he’d like to say to her.
Off hand, he wondered if Mira had found anyone to accompany him yet. Neil would be the logical choice, being second in the martial arts only to himself, but he forgot to ask Neil if he had been talking with the gymnastics coach. Then again, if Mira had asked him, he would’ve mentioned something to Rue already.
He hoped fervently that she had found someone. Tomorrow would be the perfect time to check out Elroy’s place again. He was anxious to go back to the old library—the more clues he found for Klaus, the better their chances of finding Claire.
Claire… he missed her so badly.
When they got about four-fifths through the boxes, Mint finally broke the silence. “Say, doll-boy, what’s this Elroy place we have to go to?”
Rue almost dropped the books in surprise. Doll-boy?! And she knows about Elroy… she’s going with me to that?! “Y-you’re the one going with me to Elroy’s library?”
She nodded. “Mira told me this morning. Heey, don’t get me wrong…” she lowered her voice suddenly. “I ain’t doing it for free, you know. Coach is paying me with time off from practice. Plus a batch of homemade cookies,” she added as an afterthought.
“Y, yeah. Mira’s cookies are great, aren’t they?” He trailed off. Mira actually asked Mint of all people? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it I suppose, but it’s gonna be dangerous there… Distracted, he continued stacking the books up almost mechanically.
“Well, I’m done here.” Mint’s voice called from across the room. “Hurry up, I’ve still got other things to do. I’ll get our stuff already, okay?”
She didn’t even wait for him to say anything. He finished his job quickly enough, and was wiping his hands clean on a rag when he heard her come in from the door.
“Rue, this thing weighs a ton. I’ve heard of heavy metal music, but this is ridiculous…” He turned towards her, only to stop dead.
She carried his violin case with one hand.
Mint stomped her foot in annoyance at his expression. “What?!”
He was staring blankly at her. “Not even Klaus or Elena could lift that thing.”
She sniffed. “So what—you think you’re the only one who could lift heavy stuff? You know, I don’t think this is a violin,” she said as she handed it to him. “What’s in it?”
Rue took the case, slinging the strap over his shoulder before turning to leave. On second thought, maybe Mira knew what she was doing when she asked Mint to come with me. “You’ll find out when we go to Elroy’s this weekend.”
“Mint is late.” Rue could hear Elena muttering from the kitchen. She took out two more platters of pancakes daubed with cream and strawberry syrup. “If she doesn’t come soon, there’ll be no breakfast for her.”
He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll think I’ll wait before I start on those pancakes.”
“Alright.” Elena placed the plates onto the table before sitting down beside the white-haired boy. “Aren’t you excited, Rue? I mean, you’re going back to that really really really creepy place again… I’ve heard that that place is gangster county, too… Ooh, be extra extra careful! Maybe you’ll meet Blood and Smokey again!”
“Blood and Smokey are two-bit thieves who definitely won’t stand a chance against Rue.” Klaus said as he entered the dining hall, Mira following close behind. “Still, that doesn’t mean you won’t meet with monsters or anything.”
Elena laughed. “Oh, Papa, don’t tell me you still believe those rumors! A man of science like you…”
Mira had to laugh along with her daughter. “Mint’s not here yet?” she asked.
“Mira, are you sure it’ll be okay to send Mint with Rue? I mean, that place is dangerous…”
The gymnastics coach dismissed her husband with a wave of her hand. “Mint can handle it.” From outside they heard the sound of scuffling feet that quickly ground to a halt, followed by a knock. “That must be her now.”
Elena walked to the hall and opened the door. “Hello, Mint!”
“Hey.” Mint was brushing the dust off her khakis. “So, is your pet Polly ready to go yet?”
“Err, please don’t…”
“Mint! Come in and have breakfast first!” Mira called from the other room.
“Cool!” She stepped past a furiously blushing Elena and into the dining hall, taking a seat across from Rue. “What’re we having?”
“Pancakes with strawberry and cream. Elena made them,” Rue told her.
“These are good!” Mint complimented the younger girl when they were halfway through breakfast.
Rue agreed. “Elena’s a good cook, isn’t she? She takes after her mom.”
“Yeah,” Mint turned towards her coach. “Don’t forget the cookies you promised me.”
“First you come back from that old library alive,” Mira answered jokingly. She looked over the table and noticed that everybody was done. “Well, you two best be off at an early start.”
They all stood, and Elena started to clear the table. The older Klauses walked with the younger kids to the front of the house. “Be careful of monsters,” Klaus warned them. Mira elbowed him in the ribs.
Mint wasn’t carrying her duffel, but instead had with her two metal rings that she hung on each side of her belt. Rue picked up his violin case by the door. “You’re taking that thing again?” She eyed his violin case suspiciously.
“Yup,” he agreed. “It’ll attract too much attention if I don’t keep it in here. I’ll take it out when we get to Elroy’s.”
“Later, then!” Mint turned and waved at the Klauses. The two high school kids then walked out of the Klauses’ driveway and out into the street, Rue closing the gate behind them as they left.
Elroy’s Library turned out to be a warehouse in one of the seedier parts of town. It was the middle building on a one-lane street where all the structures were in a deep state of disrepair.
Rue explained to Mint that several years ago, before they both came to Carona, the place they were headed to used to be the industrial area of town, until the local government passed a law declaring that all factories had to be moved away from the residential neighborhoods. The buildings were abandoned, and the area eventually became a favorite hideout of the town’s few petty criminals. Elroy was some sort of magician/hermit who had connections with some out-of-district company that Klaus never found out what, but his name had turned up when Klaus was investigating the relics.
“The last time I went here, I encountered several thugs that just got back from a bank robbery. I managed to defeat them and alert the police, but,” he wrinkled his nose. “Mira wasn’t happy about it.” Remembering the two-hour long lecture he got from the gymnastics coach that had almost made his ears fall off still made him wince. “We’re here. Weapons ready, Mint.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” she replied haughtily. She already had her rings in hand.
He knelt and put down his violin case, his hands moving carefully over the black container’s locks. “I’ve had this thing for as long as I can remember.”
She ooh-ed sarcastically. “Finally, I get to see what’s in the oh-so-sacred violin case…” she stopped short when she saw what was inside.
It was a sword. It didn’t look like one, but she knew it was a sword.
He held it so Mint could see it better. “It’s called the Arc Edge.”
“That. Is. The. Weirdest. Sword. I’ve. Ever. Seen.” She was gaping openly. Suddenly she grinned. “But I like it!!”
“Thanks, I think.” With his other hand he slung the strap of his now-empty violin case over one shoulder. “Well, shall we?” Using the Arc Edge, he bashed at the warehouse door lock, opening it neatly. He knew exactly where to hit it without ruining either the lock or the door, as he was the one who sealed it shut from the last time he was there.
The inside was just as dark and dusty as he had found it two years ago. Crates of boxes were stacked on one side, and beside that were huge cabinets filled with broken mechanical devices that Mint couldn’t even begin to recognize. A broken ladder hung by the ceiling on an empty wall. The only illumination came from a hole in the roof, right above Elroy’s old desk.
“I can hardly see a thing.” Mint squinted in an attempt to better make out her surroundings. She turned towards him suddenly. “By the way, don’t try anything funny or I’m gonna jump-kick you in the face.”
As if I’d want to… Rue sighed inwardly, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. He moved towards a cabinet after leaving his violin case by the door.
“I hope you remembered to bring flashlights.”
“We can use this.” He picked up a couple of old rusted lamps off a dusty shelf.
Mint eyed them suspiciously. “Are you sure that’ll work?”
“I can fix it.” After handing one to Mint, he opened the other and started tinkering with its innards. “These lamps are a pretty reliable model, and they run on perpetual power supplies. They’re not working now, but…” they both heard something click. The lamp turned on, diffusing the room with a faint white glow.
How does he do that?! Mint wondered as she handed him the other lamp. A couple of seconds and another click later, that one was working too.
Rue walked over to the old desk where the cylindrical containers were located. He braced his Arc Edge against the table and started opening them one by one. Mint followed, looking over his shoulder at what he was doing. “I just need to find three items for Klaus,” he explained.
“Everything else we find is mine, isn’t it?” Mint grinned mischievously. “What’s up there?” she asked, indicating the hole in the roof. She could see a ledge and railing. “It looks like there’s another room.”
“The ladder’s broken, so I’ve never been upstairs yet. I suppose it’s mostly empty, though.”
“Hmm.” Mint walked off to explore as Rue continued opening containers.
He heard a clang! followed by a loud crash. He turned to see that Mint had thrown one of her metal rings, breaking the wooden ladder in two. The lower half had fallen against the wall, and she was bracing it against the cabinet so as to climb onto the higher shelves.
“What are you…?”
“I’m just going up to take a look! (Besides, I might find treasure… and rules do say finders keepers…)” she had already climbed to the top of the cabinet.
Rue could do nothing but watch. She jumped and caught the end of the broken ladder. “Mint! Be careful!” But either she didn’t hear him or pretended not to notice.
It took her a couple of tries before she finally managed to haul herself up to the top floor. Only to find out that Rue was right—the place was mostly empty except for a couple of boxes and some unremarkable debris. She wrinkled her nose. No treasure.
But that was okay. She didn’t come up there to investigate anyway.
She walked over to the railing to look over the town. The soft breeze picked up right then, as if it knew she was there and that it welcomed her.
But it wasn’t anything like home. Back home it was forest and mountains as far as the eye could see. Here all they had were the houses and buildings of a small town and the ocean beyond that.
She raised her rings above her head, reveling in the feel of the wind blowing through her hair.
After some time she lowered her arms, feeling tears of homesickness sting her eyes. I’m not going to cry over this, she thought, gritting her teeth. She wiped at her eyes. Something glinted on the floor, and she bent over to pick it up.
It was a jeweled tiara. Now that definitely didn’t classify under unremarkable debris. I’d better show this to Rue. She took one last glance at the horizon before reluctantly going back down the ladder.
He was almost done with the containers when he heard her jump down on the other side of the room. “So, found all the relics yet?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’m still missing a large, flat key and the tiara.”
“What about this? I found it on the floor upstairs.” She handed the jeweled trinket to him.
“That’s it! That leaves just one more, then.” He turned, looking around the room for the nth time for any containers he might have missed. He went back to the shelf where he originally found the containers, but he had already checked them all. Maybe in the boxes? He started opening them one after the other.
Mint was browsing through the shelves while Rue searched. She didn’t find them particularly interesting, but it kept her busy while she waited for her companion. It took a moment before she realized he was speaking to her.
“…Claire was always afraid of heights. But you like heights, don’t you?”
Mint nodded. “Back home, I used to climb up the castle turrets every afternoon.” Her eyes took a faraway look as she remembered. “I like having the wind on my face, and looking across the mountains into the sunset…” She turned to look sharply at him. “How did you know that?!”
“I saw you while you were up there. You know, for a moment, I thought…” he trailed off. “Nah, it’s nothing, forget it.”
“What’s nothing?” She stomped her foot in annoyance. “Now you have to tell me, or I’m gonna get really angry!”
“Well, it’s just that when you held your dual haloes over your head, it reminded me of something I once knew, that’s all,” he lied. He didn’t think Mint would take it well if he told her that for a moment, when he looked up through the hole in the roof, he had thought she was an angel.
“What did you say?”
“I said that your dual haloes reminded me of…” But Mint cut him off.
“Dual Haloes, eh? I like that…” she said, twirling her rings.
Suddenly a thought came into Rue’s mind. Weapon in hand, he walked over to where Mint’s ring had broken the ladder earlier and carefully rummaged through the broken wood. “I can’t believe I missed this last time! Mint, look at this.” He pulled the wreckage aside.
It was a trap door. “What are the chances the missing relic is in there?” he asked.
“Very high,” they answered simultaneously.
“I’m going in first.” Mint opened the trap door and jumped in before he could object. “Oww (stupid rock),” her voice called from down below. “Well, Rue? What the heck is taking you so long?!!”
Rue frowned at the empty air, surprised at himself for getting irritated. She is such a pain! I’ve never had to put up with anything like this when I was with Claire… Come to think of it, he didn’t remember ever having to put up with anything like that even when he wasn’t with Claire. Neither did he remember ever getting annoyed at practically anyone else before. Sighing heavily, he gripped the Arc Edge tightly, and jumped down the opening after her.
Mint led their way through the tunnels. At least, she did for the first half hour. And then, extremely annoyed, she let Rue take the lead. After walloping what must’ve been the 50th rodent-thing, she was sick as hell of it. “Gyah, where do these blasted things come from? And what the [expletive] are they anyway?” She practically shouted in anger as she thwacked another one that threatened them from behind.
The critters were unlike anything she’d ever seen before. They were like a cross between a crab, a lobster, a rat and a kangaroo, with really strong copper-colored exoskeletons. The pair of them encountered the first creature several meters down, and they discovered that the rest of the tunnels were full of them.
For some strange reason, she observed that the creatures were approximately a certain distance apart, and they never moved past a certain radius. She also learned that hitting them at the exact center of their …foreheads?… caused them to abruptly stand still, as if dead. Problem was, after five minutes they’d wake up and come to attack again if the kids were still within range.
“Territorial beings… the ‘stasis sleep’ must be some sort of adaptive/protective mechanism. Worms and caterpillars do the same thing,” Rue had commented earlier.
“You think these are the monsters Klaus was talking about?”
Rue whacked another one with his Arc Edge. “Probably,” he said offhand.
They had been traveling about a couple of hours and several kilometers already. If Mint’s estimations were correct, they were probably to the south-western edge of town by now. They saw no sign of the missing relic, and she was starting to doubt (actually, she had been doubting it for the past hour already) that they were going to find it there. Just when she was about to suggest turning back, they reached the end of the tunnel.
Only to find more tunnel. But this time, the rock had a bluish-green tint, where before they were a plain, dark sandstone-brown. Rather than seeming parallel to the ground, this tunnel led down. Also, critters in that part were fewer and farther in between.
Rue walked over to the wall, feeling it with his hands. “It’s damp.”
“I can hear water. There must be an underground river somewhere on the other side.”
He turned towards her with a determined expression. “I think I know where we are. A year ago, Klaus couldn’t stop talking about a relic he called the ‘legendary sword,’ for lack of a better name. He couldn’t figure out where its location was, but he mentioned about an underground lake and these tunnels. It never occurred to me it could be here! Elroy must’ve purposely located his library in that warehouse because of these tunnels. That sword must be the third relic that opens Elroy’s box!”
“A large, flat key, huh? Kinda makes sense.” Mint twirled her rings, and then sent one of them flying towards another critter. It hit the creature smack-dab on the forehead, bounced off the tunnel wall and returned neatly to her hand.
Suddenly they heard an ominous rumbling. The creatures were all scuttling back into their holes. “Huh? Why are all the critters leaving…?”
“RUN!” Rue was already sprinting.
A huge boulder that filled practically the entire tunnel was bearing down on them, and there didn’t seem to be any way of escaping it. Mint turned abruptly, not caring about anything except going as fast as her legs could carry her.
The boy saw her stumble out of the corner of his eye. “Mint!!”
He didn’t stop to think. He jumped towards her, instinctively enclosing his arms about the girl’s body in protection and they dropped to the ground, rolling towards the tunnel’s side. Rue pushed her hard against the wall as the huge boulder rolled over them both, missing them by millimeters. He didn’t know how long they stayed that way. He was reluctant to move until he was sure it was safe to stand.
“Rue…” she called his name softly. “What the HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!!”
KAPOW! He slammed bodily against the opposite wall. The next thing he knew, when the buzzing in his ears and the pain in his abdomen had subsided a little, was that Mint was brushing dust off her shirt sleeves. It took him three tries before he was finally able to stand. “What did you that for?!”
“Hmph. Didn’t I say, any funny stuff and I’ll jump-kick you in the face?” She crossed her arms angrily. “You’re lucky I’m feeling generous. Anyway,” she pointed to where the huge boulder had crashed. “Looks like there’s another tunnel. We’d better split up. I’m taking the right one.”
“Ow, Mint, wait!” He raised his hand to stop her, but she had already gone. Aagh, doesn’t she ever stop to listen! The way he saw it, he had two choices—he could follow her to make sure nothing happened to her, or he could do as she said and explore the left tunnel. He winced as he remembered the kick, and suddenly the thought of exploring the deep, dank tunnels alone seemed very appealing. Besides, it was painfully obvious that Mint could take care of herself.
She didn’t know how long she traveled the right tunnel before she came to another change of scenery. It had gotten colder and more humid the lower she went, until finally she came to the underground lake. The water was clearer than crystal, and the walls and ledges of the cavern glittered with dew.
It’s beautiful… But it doesn’t look like I’m gonna find any treasure here.
That, aside from the cookies, was the only reason she consented to accompany Rue to what was probably nothing more than a wild goose chase. Since Rue didn’t seem interested in treasure, whatever they’d find would therefore… she shrugged. Whatever treasure they’d find would automatically be hers.
Treasure, as everyone knows, was one of Mint’s driving forces. She smiled inwardly. Treasure and World Domination.
There were pillars of fallen stalactites that formed a treacherous path across the icy waters. Somehow, she felt that the way she sought was through there.
Mint had learned through the years to trust her instincts. Her sister Maya had the same gift, even if not as strong as hers—it was something that ran in the family. She sniffed. Spirit guidance and all that crap was what her grandfather had taught her, but personally she never believed a word of it.
She jumped across the natural stepping stones, going deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.
The staircase wound down, down deep into the tunnels. But he eventually came to its end, to see the strangest room he had ever beheld to date.
There were five platforms that were supported by stone pillars. Four of the platforms were designed like chessboards and arranged in a square. He peered across the gaps between them, and wasn’t surprised to discover that he couldn’t see where the chasm ended.
On the fifth platform was a wooden box. It had the same markings and was just a little bigger than the box of Elroy.
He jumped over the other platforms, and knelt down as he prepared to examine the crate. He brushed his hand tentatively against the lock, only to quickly draw it back in alarm. A booby trap! A small knife had suddenly cut through the box’s lid, and his hand was already bleeding.
The ominous rumbling was heard again. He turned, and what he saw almost made the bottom fall out of his stomach.
“-!!!”
It was big, it was huge, it was scary—and although it didn’t have a tangible mouth it looked just about ready to eat him. It was just like the critters they had met across the tunnels, except this one sported a tougher constitution and a couple of extra pairs of pincers. In the dim light, its head looked like a monstrous skull.
It attacked, its pincers bearing down on him. He dodged and jumped to one of the other platforms.
Fire-breathing?! This is getting frustrating… He jumped again, avoiding the stream of red flames that issued from the skull beast’s mouth. His hand wound ached, but he couldn’t afford to think about it now.
Suffice to say it took him a lot of jumping and a lot of maneuvering before he was finally able to subdue the beast. He had bashed it with the Arc Edge so many times on the forehead that the skull was dented.
He took off his bandana to bind his bleeding hand, being careful to keep his cap in place. He had difficulty bandaging his wound with just the left hand to work with—he was right-handed—but eventually he managed it.
The wooden box was now guardianless, and he opened it only to find that it was empty.
I hope Mint has better luck, he sighed in frustration. He kicked the beast’s inanimate corpse one more time, just to make sure it was dead, before heading back up the winding staircase.
Her path was blocked by a huge wall of ice. Any number of whacks with the metal rings wouldn’t make it give way, so she didn’t even bother.
I know I promised mother, but… She brushed the thought away. Keeping promises had never been her forte. Actually, that was one of the reasons Maya had placed to the council on why Mint shouldn’t be queen… she brushed that thought away too.
She held her rings upright in front of her, concentrating. Suddenly the ice started to melt. It started melting at the point closest to the center of the girl’s rings.
After a few moments more all the ice was gone. She whooped. “YESS!!” Finally, the years of training were paying off. She hadn’t used her magick in quite a while, but before, the effort of lighting a mere candle had been enough to make her faint.
Suddenly she fell on one knee, and she had to grasp the wall for support. Ooops, so I guess I’m still not that strong… But she was improving. Considering that it was an entire wall that she had melted, the slight dizziness wasn’t such a big deal.
Inside the chamber she found what they were looking for—the large, flat key Rue was talking about. She almost laughed as she pulled it out of its plastic anvil. The hilt was plastic, the blade was aluminum, and words ‘legendary sword’ were spray-painted on its length in bright crimson. This is it?! It looks like some sort of stage prop. Whoever made these …relics… sure had some really strange eccentricities. Upon closer inspection though, she could see bright blue mechanical workings through a small gap between blade and hilt.
Shrugging, she tied the sword to her belt, deciding to find Rue quickly so they can go home.
Rue was halfway up the winding staircase when he first thought that someone was following him. But whenever he turned, there was always no one there.
He dismissed the thought, alluding it to the wind and his imagination. He knew Mint had taken the westward tunnel, and from what he saw there was no way that tunnel could somehow interconnect with the eastern one. If it did, then unless Mint was running really fast she couldn’t possibly have caught up with him already.
Nothing had happened yet, he hadn’t found anything significant, and he was already back at the blue-green tunnels. He could see the fork where he and Mint had split up.
He heard something move behind him. He did an abrupt double-take, brandishing his Arc Edge.
Nothing. Still, he couldn’t shake his uneasy feeling…
He turned sharply to see a shadow quickening towards him. Without thinking he raised the Arc Edge in front of himself, blocking automatically. Something gold glinted in the dim light as it whooshed past his ear. Within the next split-second another one like it flew to knock his sword off to the side, and then a body slammed into him to fell him onto the ground. He heard a loud crash.
The next thing he knew, Mint was on top of him, and the skull-beast was buried underneath a huge mound of debris where part of the tunnel had collapsed. Gingerly, they both stood. Rue was shaking inwardly, but he managed to conceal it well. He walked towards the monster to examine it. This time the monster was dead, alright.
“We’re even,” Mint said haughtily, although there was an odd tone to her voice. “That was thanks for saving my life earlier.”
He didn’t bother to reply. He was already busy looking over the monster’s corpse, if it could be called that now. Mint’s ring had hit the skull at the same spot where he had dented it earlier, finally breaking through the armor. It was embedded half-way into the head, and he could see wires fizzing with static where her weapon had broken through the exoskeleton—the life-like metal exoskeleton. Oil and kerosene eerily poured through the monster’s hull like blood. It no longer moved—the girl’s ring must’ve broken through the main control circuitry. This is a machine…and it followed me up without my noticing! The critters must be mechanical too—that accounted for their extremely unnatural behavior. The fire-breathing alone should have made him realize it already. And skulls crack—they don’t dent. How could I have missed it?!! Rue clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides, a little shocked and a lot angry at himself for putting them both in unnecessary danger with his ignorance.
He walked up to the skull beast’s dead front and forcibly pulled out the golden ring, noticing it was almost half as heavy as his own weapon. No wonder she could lift the Arc Edge so easily. “That was close. Thank the heavens you were able to stop this thing.” He turned towards her, impressed in spite of himself at the girl’s spunk.
She was sitting down, leaning heavily against the wall and gripping her shoulder in pain. Her left sleeve was torn, and Rue’s eyes followed a stream of blood as it trickled down her arm…
“Mint! You’re hurt!”
She shrugged him off. “I must’ve cut myself on the Arc Edge when I bumped into you. Don’t worry, it’s just a flesh wound.”
“Here, let me look at it.” She winced slightly as Rue folded up the bloody sleeve. “It’s deep, but doesn’t seem too serious. Nothing that a good medkit won’t fix—it’s just too bad we don’t have one right now,” he sighed. “Let me see what I can do.”
She tried to protest. “It’s not so bad. Look, you’re hurt too. Your hand wound has already bled through the bandage.”
“Don’t mind it,” he said. He lifted her arm gently, being careful not to touch her chest, and braced it up by placing her hand on his shoulder. He tore a long strip from his shirt and used it to bind her wound.
Mint watched him as he did so. Ignoring his own injury, Rue was doing his best to be gentle, but the wound hurt nevertheless. But of course, no matter how painful the hurt she’d never, ever admit to feeling it. Instead, she looked up at Rue’s face. She inclined her head and frowned thoughtfully, which Rue didn’t see. “I’d have to admit,” she whispered after a while, “that Annette was right…” She laughed softly.
Rue turned to look at her face in concern when he finished. “You said something?” He saw that her face and neck were flushed, but that could have been due to the pain.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Let’s just get out of here. I have the sword,” she added. Rue had already seen it strapped to her belt.
“Can you walk?” She nodded (“I hurt my shoulder, idiot!”), and he pulled her up by the good arm. “I doubt any critters are going to bother us now.” He had a strong suspicion that their programmed hostility were instructions relayed from the skull beast’s control circuits. With the central monster dead, or inactive rather, the critters should now be as harmful as a bunch of matchbox toys.
They traveled slowly, the boy favoring Mint’s injury. He could tell that she was already tiring. After some time she spoke. “Rue, why do I get the feeling that…” she paused, as if searching for the right words. “…that this adventure isn’t over yet?”
He smiled reassuringly at her. “Everything will be okay. We got all the relics, didn’t we? I’m more worried about what Mira will say when we get back. There’s no hiding these from her,” he indicated their slap-shod bindings.
“I’m blaming it all on you.” For the first time since he had known her, she smiled back at him.
Mint was shaking her head in annoyance as she walked up to her companion. “No, Rue. It’s too weird. The whole thing is just too weird.” She stomped her foot and refused to go back up the trap door without his answer. “Haven’t you noticed it yet?!”
It was Rue’s turn to get annoyed. “All I know is, we got what we came for, and it’s now time to go back and take these relics to Klaus.”
She heard the hint of anger in his tone—no, it wasn’t anger—and for once decided not to push it. Judging from his reaction to her question earlier, there was no way she could breach the subject to him, at least not yet. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them again. Rue had already climbed up the passage back to the warehouse.
Oh, you and your single-minded determination. For someone supposed to be so smart, you’re being utterly foolish for letting it blind you this way, Rue. You’ve been to too many of these ‘missions’ to notice it. And to think you’re doing this for a girl who might have been dead five years gone.
She had approached him as nonchalantly about it as she could. “Say, Rue… Didn’t this adventure strike you as… different? I think that there’s something Klaus isn’t telling us—”
“How can you say that!” he suddenly snapped at her, and it had taken all her audacity not to cringe in shock at the emotion she heard in his voice. “He took you in when you had nowhere to go, didn’t he?!” Apparently, trust was a very sensitive topic with the white-haired boy.
It’s not that she didn’t trust the professor. It’s just that there was something about the whole setup that simply didn’t feel right…
“Mint?” Rue was peering down the trap door. “Come on, I’ll help you up,” he reached his good hand towards her.
She had half a mind to slap his hand away. But, as she was already starting to get dizzy from fatigue, she was actually grateful as she reached for it (though she’d walk barefoot to hell and back three times over before ever admitting that aloud). You know, it’d be a lot easier to stay upset at you if you’d forget to be oh-so-[expletive] polite once in a while. In another half-second she was up the trap door, and Rue sealed it shut behind her.
Except for the legendary sword which the girl carried, the relics they found were in a small canvas bag Rue had tied to his belt. He headed to the door where he had left his violin case, Mint following close behind.
He stopped short when he saw the wooden crate, and Mint almost bumped into him. Rue was positively, absolutely, a hundred percent sure it wasn’t there before they went down the underground tunnels. “Umm, remember the gut feeling you had earlier, when you said that this adventure isn’t over yet?”
“What about it?”
“Remind me next time to believe you.” Without further warning, he turned and tackled the red-haired girl to the floor as the crate blew up in front of them.
“KYAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”
When the dust had settled from the explosion, they could see a big hole where the floor of Elroy’s Library used to be. Rising from that hole was something that Mint could only describe as a huge, ugly, metallic-green painted mechanical toad. And on top of the said toad was a woman laughing her head off.
She was a woman in her late twenties, with straight, shoulder-length white-blonde hair and emerald-green eyes. She had on thick make-up that in the dim light made her look more menacing than she probably really was. Coupled with her outfit of a black leather-jacket, white tank-top, miniskirt, knee-high boots and fishnet stockings, she looked like an overage street punk from the late 1980s era.
Not that her companion minded. Duke Radii couldn’t care less if she wore a chicken suit with purple-and-orange stripes—he’d still find her beautiful. He was standing behind her with his quarterstaff at the ready, just in case the two kids brought unexpected trouble. Then again, he had full confidence that his lady would be able to handle them.
“You!” Mint shouted, her fists clenched. “You old bag!”
The woman turned towards her with amused surprise. “Oh, it’s the little prat! Didn’t think I’d meet you again. I see you finally got out of that dirty kitchen only to become assistant to an errand boy. Poor wittle you,” she pursed her lips, taunting the red-haired girl.
“I see you finally got out of that garbage dump only to become an even bigger balloon,” Mint spat back. “The [expletive] you want with us, Belle?!”
Belle’s face was flushed at being called a balloon by the two-bit high school kid she was looking down upon. Even in the past, Mint always had a way of provoking her. Don’t mind it, rubber and glue, they’re just words… “We want the tiara! If you know what’s good for you, you’d better hand it over quick!”
“You want it, you’ll have to take it!” She spoke sideways to Rue, “This old witch is mine.”
He put a hand on her arm to stop her. “You can’t fight,” he whispered urgently. “You’re hurt.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered back, shrugging him off. Wielding her rings, she ran towards the mechavehicle, Belle jumping down to meet her.
Rue readied the Arc Edge, preparing to run after the girl. Before he could get far, he was stopped by the head thief’s self-proclaimed bodyguard. “Sorry, I can’t let you interrupt them.” Duke readied his own weapon to fight. “Mint and Milady share a long history, and it wouldn’t be wise for us to spoil their reunion.”
Mint cursed mentally. She was already too fatigued to attack in earnest. Belle was fast—and after a few moments the younger girl found she could do no more than block and dodge.
Belle didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong with her adversary. One thing about her was that she liked to talk during a fight. “Aww, how sweet, the little servant girl thinks to protect the errand boy.”
“Hmph. At least I treat him better than you do your boyfriend.”
The blonde seemed taken aback by that comment. “Wh-wha-what?! Are you implying… me and D-Duke?!” Her face flushed even more. “Why, you!” She jump-twirled, punching into the air where Mint was a split-second ago. But missing didn’t faze her—she kicked twice, which Mint easily sidestepped, and punched again, this time hitting the redhead squarely on the shoulder.
Mint screamed. She fell on her knees, gasping for breath. The metal rings dropped to the floor with one clang after the other, and she clutched at her shoulder in pain.
“The hell?!” Belle hadn’t hit her that hard. She leaned over Mint and tore off the girl’s left sleeve. The binding had come undone and the cut was bleeding profusely. “You were fighting me Mint could only narrow her eyes at the older woman. Try as she might, she couldn’t find the strength to reply anymore. Belle stood, looming over her fallen enemy.
“I’ll only say this once, but you’ve got spunk, brat. It’s time to finish this.”
Rue had heard the scream. “Mint!!”
“Stop right there, kid,” Duke said as he blocked Rue’s way. “Remember, I am your opponent. You can’t help your friend if you get hurt as well.” The two of them had been fighting seriously for the past few minutes. Duke was enjoying it, glad to finally have found someone who could match him in skill with two-handed weapons. Still, he knew that he should finish this battle quickly, or Milady would be angry at him again.
Rue blocked another blow from the dark-haired fighter before slashing once more with his Arc Edge. He gritted his teeth in exasperation. Mint was hurt, and he couldn’t get to her because was stuck battling some petty thief’s side-kick.
Suddenly he felt a strong pressure slide behind his back. He dared not turn or Duke might see an opening, and instead jumped sideways away from his opponent. He clasped his canvas bag to find that its flap was open.
“Come on, Duke.” Belle was brandishing the tiara. “Let’s leave the children to clean up, eh?”
“Coming, Milady.” Duke tipped his weapon at Rue before leaping inside the mechavehicle after Belle. And with the squeal of fusion-propulsion drive engines, they were gone.
“Mint!”
Rue ran towards the red-haired girl. He found her curled up in a fetal position, still clutching her shoulder. There were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop them.”
“It’s alright,” he whispered soothingly as he helped her straighten. He rebound her shoulder carefully and Mint had to bite her lip hard to keep from crying out. They had lost the tiara, they were both wounded, and the girl had lost too much blood. Mira was certainly going to have a field day when they get back.
As expected, Rue bore the brunt of Mira’s anger. This time around the lecture lasted no less than four hours and eighteen minutes. Mint was as good as her word. She blamed everything on Rue.
Mira had sent the girl off to the hospital, accompanied by Elena in a cab, the moment the two high school kids got back, and Mint was therefore spared the agony of being scolded. But she didn’t escape the gymnastics coach’s wrath unscathed-she was forbidden to attend gym class and to go out (especially to Rod’s arcade) for the next two weeks or until her shoulder healed, whichever came later. Rue’s cut wasn’t as bad as hers, so his gym class suspension would only be for a couple of days.
Oh, won’t Kirielle be pleased to know that. She frowned at having been made to wear a sling. Not only that, but she had to stay with the Klauses (in Elena’s room, no less) for the time being. The doctor insisted, knowing that as high-minded and hyperactive as Mint was, she was bound to reopen her wound due to carelessness unless she had constant supervision.
Elena was glad at having to share her room with her ‘older sister’. The adopted older sister smiled, but inwardly was infuriated. The thought alone of spending two weeks with Elena the Blabbermouth was torture enough. Maybe she could haggle it down with Mira to a week, or maybe even three days.
She was met with absolute refusal. And Mint knew, whenever Coach Mira got in one of those moods, the best thing to do would be to shut up.
The pink-haired girl clapped her hands at the news. “Oh, it’s going to be so, so cool, Mint! I can show you all my pictures… I still have my pictures from the grade school fair, and every year in summer we’d have field demonstrations with costumes and everything…” Mint sighed. The next two weeks were looking out to be the longest in her life.
But at least Mira agreed to let her spend Saturday night in her dorm room, provided she’d allow Mrs. Cartha to keep an extra vigilant eye on her. It was agreed upon that Klaus would pick her up tomorrow afternoon with her things.
She locked the door, opened her cabinet, and took out a clean change of clothes. After a warm shower, being careful not to wet her bandages, she felt much better. She had left Rue to explain all about the stolen tiara to Mira and Klaus. Personally, she wasn’t sorry at all to have missed it.
Suddenly her vision turned double, and the red-haired girl was forced to sit down.
Apparently she was still tired from her ordeal. She cursed, thinking that she could have won against that, that banshee if she hadn’t injured herself on the Arc Edge, and if she hadn’t sapped her stamina in melting the ice wall…
Belle… what is she doing here?
Mint had met Belle a couple of towns before she met Klaus and came to Carona. Belle was the owner of a small-time electronics repair shop near the restaurant where Mint had worked part time. It was actually Belle who got her fired from her dishwashing job and forced her to skip that town.
Still, she couldn’t see Belle working as a petty thief. The woman had too much dignity (not referring to her dress sense, of course) to simply turn on the wrong side of the law without adequate cause. Treasure-hunters? That sounded more like the Belle she knew, but what treasure could possibly be down in the old library? And why would she steal that tiara which, Mint thought, looked more like a kindergarten stage prop than a relic in particular? Belle wasn’t the type to work for anyone, no questions asked.
Aagh, I hope I never see that annoying woman again. Fat chance of that, though. Belle had humiliated her, and she knew that she herself would never let it go at that. Come to think of it, she had lost to Belle the last time, too.
Besides, Belle had the tiara. Chances were, sometime in the near future either she or Rue would be tasked with retrieving it from the pair of thieves. If the story she had heard from him was accurate, there was no way they could open the [expletive] Elroy’s box without all three relics, and even then they weren’t sure if the relics they found would be enough.
She frowned. There was still the question of the skull beast and the mechanical critters, and Rue’s strange reaction to them. No, it wasn’t his reaction, but rather his non-reaction that puzzled her…
Suddenly she didn’t want to think anymore. She plopped down on the bed, grateful that tomorrow was a Sunday and there was no school.
It was an hour’s drive to the ruins by the lake. Rue sat on the passenger’s seat of the Klauses’ station wagon. Professor Klaus whistled while driving, and the two of them were headed to another of the many famous ruins that were scattered across Carona town and the surrounding area. It was still rather early on a Sunday morning—the city clock tower read seven a.m. when they passed it, and that must’ve been only twenty minutes ago.
Rue gazed out the window with his chin cupped in his palm, contemplating once more on the events of yesterday. He had been replaying their adventure over and over in his mind since he got back and reported to Klaus, and still he couldn’t understand how things had gotten so out of hand. No, he couldn’t understand how he could’ve let things get out of his hands—he had almost gotten them both lost, he hadn’t been able to make out something so blatantly obvious as the true nature of their mechanical enemies, he had let the relic get stolen from right underneath his nose, and he had gotten his companion hurt in the process. Losing the relic wasn’t so bad—Klaus would’ve understood, and Mira would’ve been totally alright with it so long as he got back home in one piece—but the fact that he had to practically carry Mint wounded and bleeding out of the deserted warehouse was, to him, tantamount to an unforgivable crime. He was there, and he remembered it all—he had watched over Duke’s shoulder how Belle virtually overpowered Mint without the younger girl putting up much of a resistance, because she had gotten hurt on Rue’s weapon when she saved him from the skull beast. He was there—only five meters away, and yet he was unable to do anything. He had failed to protect her, just as he had failed to protect Claire when she disappeared five years ago. If only he had done this, if only he hadn’t done that… so many if’s and still nothing would change.
Klaus casually looked sideways at the young boy, his mouth involuntarily curving in a half-smile. Rue’s thoughts were so plain on his face—a face so deceivingly open that it didn’t seem possible for it to hide anything—that Klaus knew almost exactly what was transpiring on the boy’s mind right then. Besides, from the glum set of his jaw, the slight frown and faraway look in his eyes, and the way he had been acting more austere than was usual (even for him) for the past day, it wasn’t that hard to second-guess his thoughts. But Klaus dared not say anything to him in consolation, at least not yet. It wasn’t the proper time.
There were few vehicles on the road, and the trip passed in silence. It was often that way between the professor and his student—such was the boy’s implicit trust in him that Rue almost never questioned Klaus. And Klaus trusted the boy enough that no matter what Rue did, whether he succeeded or failed, Klaus would always take the boy’s side. And often no words need to be exchanged for them to understand each other.
Klaus had known Rue for over two years now, after that first time the boy had saved Elena from the thieves. Rue had never been his student in class—such a thing might have raised objections seeing as Rue had practically been adopted by the Klaus family. But of all the professors, and probably of all the people acquainted with Rue, Klaus was the one who knew the boy best. And this was in more ways than the boy himself probably realized.
It was more or less an open secret that Rue was an amnesiac. Even in school, his professors and classmates (those that bothered to ask, at least) knew that the white-haired boy came from an unknown and very questionable past. And yet the times were such that those things mattered little. Rue managed to somehow find a place of belonging in Carona High and in Elena’s junior high before that, and was even able to land the top spot academics-wise. He had quickly become very popular with the girls, primarily due to his unusual physical characteristics (meaning the silver-white hair and huge orbed eyes) that the opposite gender somehow found strangely attractive. Even Klaus’s own daughter. Klaus smiled inwardly, and he couldn’t help turning slightly jealous himself, although strictly he was of an age already way beyond such superficial matters. He remembered his own high school days when he had been degraded as the class geek, and almost always wound up as the hapless victim of the brash Mira’s multitude of practical jokes.
They pulled over by the lakeside a couple of meters away from some toppled stone pillars. Carona was littered with many such ruins, and they in fact formed the brunt of what attracted Carona’s tourist industry. Several years ago, archeological digs had become all the rage, and it became almost impossible to get reservations at any inns in the entire peninsula for months on end. But, as with all fads, that one died in less than a year. Carona returned to the peaceful town that she was, although there remained the odd archeologist who came to visit every now and then. Klaus himself was an archeologist at heart, but he had taken an education degree in college, as tribute to his parents who were both teachers.
He had always been fascinated by the ruins. One of the more popular tourist attractions then was a ruin known as the ‘Tower of Eternal Sun’ (nicknamed the Winding Tower, because of the winding staircase that runs from its lowest point to the pinnacle) that rose from a small sandstone bluff within the lake. It was supposedly the mate of another ruin—the ‘Tower of Never Moon’—but the latter had been completely destroyed by an earthquake several hundred years ago and was now submerged under the lake waters. The Winding Tower was one of the more beautiful ruins in Carona, but in the past century the staircase had collapsed in the middle, and although the tower stood as tall as ever it was nigh impossible to climb to the top.
Klaus had explained to Rue before that underneath Carona were mazes of underground tunnels. There existed maps of the labyrinths, most of them fake, but no one had been able to document all the tunnels completely. No one knew what they were for, although several theories had been juggled around by so-called experts for years. Most of the ruins were found to exist by themselves, but some actually opened underground. The lakeside ruins were one of the latter.
Not that it really mattered now. The lake ruins were locked, and Klaus believed that the key to unlock these particular ruins lay in the secrets of Elroy’s box. The markings were too similar to be coincidental.
In spite of his permanent limp, Klaus was fine with visiting the ruins by himself, but Rue insisted on coming. Seeing as how distraught the boy had been over yesterday’s misadventure and that the trip might distract him from his misplaced feelings of guilt, Klaus agreed, provided that Rue take a back stand this time and let him do all the dirty work. This meant that the beloved violin case was reluctantly left behind in Rue’s dormitory.
Klaus led them inside a small room three meters wide by three meters high that actually looked like the beginning of a tunnel. “There’s a stone slab here that contains some text that might help us. I already have copies of the markings on paper, but there’s nothing like checking it out against the real thing. Besides, I think I might’ve missed something.” He looked around, searching. “Ah, there it is.”
The first stone slab lay inclined against the wall, and further down the tunnel Rue could see two more of them. Klaus laid down his laptop beside the slab that was nearest the door. He compared the markings to the scanned copies on his laptop, and then nodded. He said to Rue, “Good, good. Can you transcribe that for me? No, wait, I haven’t taught you how to do that yet… Why don’t you just—”
Rue interrupted him. “It’s okay. I can check out the other slabs.”
“Done that,” Klaus said, shaking his head. “This is the only one that hasn’t completely eroded yet.”
“I’ll go check anyway.” Rue went further down the semi-dark opening, only to discover that his professor was right. There were a couple of other slabs, yet they were so smoothed by time that no markings were visible. A pity, since Rue did know how to transcribe them. He never mentioned it to Klaus for reasons he himself didn’t know, but it had been fairly easy for him to learn the writings of whoever made these ruins. They were called the Aeons, if he remembered his research correctly.
He knelt down beside one of the slabs, and the smooth rock felt cool to his skin. He ran his fingers across its edge, and discovered to his surprise that it was smooth all around, except for a slight dent as big as two of his fingers. When he slid his index finger into the indentation, he heard something click. The side of the slab opened to reveal a thin, ancient tome. Rue pulled it out, amazed at the state of its preservation.
But why would the slab open to him, when so many tourists and archeologists, Klaus included, had probably done in the past the same thing that he did just now. That… that couldn’t be just a coincidence. Could it?
Keenly, he checked the other slabs, even the one that Klaus was currently working on. The professor looked up, waiting expectantly for an explanation from Rue.
“I found this inside one of the slabs further down,” Rue indicated with a wave as he showed Klaus the book. “It just opened when I touched a small dent at its side. I doubt these other slabs hide anything, though.” He had checked that the other slabs weren’t as smooth as the one that contained the book.
Klaus walked over to the slab Rue mentioned, but discovered nothing new. “I’ll peruse that book later at home, so I can cross-reference it. Keep it in the meantime,” he said as he went back to transcribing the markings.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to look over it.” But Klaus was already too engrossed in his own work that he paid no attention to Rue. Shrugging, the boy sat down cross-legged beside his professor and started reading.
Eight-thirty displayed the blue-and-gold-painted alarm clock. Mint sleepily opened one eye, and briefly wished that the [expletive] robins outside her dorm room window would shut up and let her sleep in some more. Then again, it was already eight-thirty, already late by her standards, and Mint had always been a morning person—such was dictated by training and her own self-discipline. Extreme fatigue and non-minor injuries were the only exceptions.
Groggily she got out of bed, rubbing her eyes with the side of one palm. She splashed tap water on her face to fully waken, and fixed herself a cup of …powdered milk with no sugar dissolved in warm water… since she frowned on drinking artificial stimulants such as strongly-caffeinated cola and coffee. Which she didn’t have in her frugally-furnished dorm room anyway. Yuck.
Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. But Mint wasn’t a beggar—she was a crown princess, for cryin’ out loud!—She simply chose to live frugally in faithfulness to the gymnastics and martial arts training regime that she would need to follow faithfully in her plans for world domination. History had proven that a strict and harsh routine works. Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great enforced it in their respective armies. The Spartans practiced such tactics, and thus were able to conquer Athens which was then the greatest of the Hellenistic city states of that era blah blah blah. It was discipline, discipline, discipline.
She stuck her tongue out at the empty air. Gawd, who am I kidding? It was almost enough to make her homesick. Almost.
Look on the bright side. At least it’s not pumpkins…
She downed the milk in one gulp, and then quickly took a shower. She had to hurry as she had yet to fix her stuff. The Klauses would be picking her up that afternoon. Mira had already talked to Mrs. Cartha on the phone yesterday evening, and they’d further discuss their plans for Mint later when the Klauses come. Three bags—two canvas ones and a duffel—would suffice to carry all of Mint’s clothes and belongings. It was quite something for a girl who four years ago had no less than four giant room-sized wardrobes for her private use alone.
She was dripping when she got out of the shower, turning the tiled bathroom floor rather slippery. She dried her hair as best as she could with only a towel, since it had been years since she had had the luxury of a blow dryer and maids to comb her hair and do her nails for her. She had to be extra careful now, having the use of only one arm, and she bit her lip in reflex as she suddenly remembered how the first year away from the lavishness of home had been sheer torture.
But she had emerged all the stronger for it. She was able to do such odd jobs that never in her wildest dreams she would have thought she could perform after a lifetime of pampered bliss. Among her many employment ventures, she had worked as an assistant gas station attendant, a back-up singer in a nameless rock band, a janitor that doubled as a dishwasher, and even as a club bouncer (although that one lasted only a couple of days before she took off for the road again). She had lived in a run-down apartment, a one-room shanty, and once camped out by a wooded riverside before she was chased off by the area game warden. For the first time in her life she had experienced ridicule face-front, and had gotten into heated disagreements that thankfully seldom turned to violence, although there were instances that someone ended up with a broken lip or a bloody nose after being on the receiving end of Mint’s notorious killer jump-kick. And all throughout that, not once did she neglect nor forget her family’s traditional martial arts forms that she had done and was still doing every morning since she was three years old. She may have lost her pride as a crown princess, but she had never lost her pride as a capable East Heaven scion.
That being established, living with the Klauses and sleeping in Elena’s room should be a piece of cake.
It took her about half an hour to get all her things ready and tidy up the room a bit. Just in time, too. Three knocks were heard from the main doorway.
“Hello, Mint!” Rod greeted when she opened the door for him. He had a bouquet of fresh chrysanthemums in one hand, his cowboy hat on top of a pizza box in the other, and a wide grin on his deeply tanned face. “I heard you were sick, so I thought I’d drop by to cheer you up.”
“Not sick, just cut and bleeding.” Mint winked at him. She gestured for him to come inside. Looking pointedly at the flowers, she remarked teasingly, “How sweet, are these for me?”
“Nope, they’re for your pet llama to eat. Of course they’re for you,” Rod replied as he stepped past her into the room. “I’ll go put them in a vase or something.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll be living with the Klauses starting this afternoon, and I’d like to take them with me. Doctor’s orders.” She rolled her eyes. Suddenly she turned to look outside to the corridor. “Hey, where’s Johnny Wolf? I kinda miss the guy…”
“You miss him, after he head-butted you… what, ten times already? You have a thing for furry four-legged animals, don’t you?”
“Fourteen times. Yup, and they have a thing for me too… I don’t imagine Johnny Wolf would’ve stayed home if he knew you were coming to visit me.” She smirked at Rod. The first time Rod had introduced his pet dog to Mint, Johnny Wolf and Mint had hit it off in the worst sense of the word. But right after Mint had beaten the dog silly, and Johnny Wolf head-butted her (reeeaaally hard) once from behind and twice in the stomach, and Mint twirled him overhead by the tail until Johnny Wolf could hardly stand from dizziness anymore, the two seemed to have made peace. In fact, whenever Mint came to visit the Arcade, Rod had to wonder who it was Johnny Wolf still considered his master.
Rod shook his head, amused. “He had to hotfoot back home. Mrs. Cartha wouldn’t let anything that walked on four legs to go up here.” He laid the bouquet and pizza box on the table. “It’s bacon and cheese. I figured you would have a hard time getting food this morning.”
Mint sat down on the table across from him, smiling pleasantly. “Thank you so much, Rod. I mean it—it’s really sweet of you to do this for me.”
“Well, it’s the least I can do for my best customer,” Rod scratched his head absently in embarrassment. “So, why don’t you start on that pizza while I clean up a bit?” He turned his gaze around the room. “On second thought, it doesn’t look like you need my help after all.” So instead he sat down to join her for the pizza.
She was already nibbling on a slice. “So, how’d you know I was incapacitated?”
“Elena. You know how she likes to talk. She passed by the arcade early yesternight and thought that I ought to know.”
“Elena talks too much,” she sniffed.
Rod raised one eyebrow. “Don’t be so hard on her,” he said. “She may be like that, but her heart is in the right place. You may not have noticed it yet, but I think she really cares about you, and thinks of you as a good friend. You should give her a chance.”
“Since when have you taken to lecturing about people skills?” Mint sighed heavily, slumping down in her seat. “It’s not like I hate the girl. I just can’t stand her incessant babbling, that’s all. Plus, the way she bats her eyes and practically clings to ‘Polly’ every time she gets into the same room as him. That last I don’t mind so much (it’s so funny the way he squirms), but still… have a little dignity, girl!”
Rod almost choked, laughing, on his pizza. “I didn’t know you had a mean streak like that, Mint. Poor Rue… Is she that obvious? Well, considering that she has it bad for the guy, I guess you can’t really blame her. Anyway,” he swallowed the last of his slice before standing up. “Is there anything else I can do for you? I’ve still got some time before I have to open the arcade.”
“Just because I’m temporarily one-armed doesn’t mean you have to treat me like an invalid. I’m fine,” Mint stood up as well. Suddenly she brightened, as if suddenly coming up with an idea. She grinned mysteriously, her eyes narrowing. “On second thought, come with me.”
Pulling Rod by the hand, she led him two flights downstairs into the dormitory lobby, heading straight into the corridor where Mrs. Cartha’s room was. She stopped, and abruptly turned to face him. “You have to close your eyes now.”
“Is this some sort of forced-labor situation?”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I’m not telling. Now git, and close your eyes!”
Rod obliged, deciding to humor her. (“No peeking!”) Mint knocked on Mrs. Cartha’s door and went inside the landlady’s room. He could only hear snippets of their conversation: “…that really isn’t necessary…” “I’m sure he won’t mind it, and besides you know how I don’t like to…” “…Oh, alright. I’ll leave you two alone.” And then the door opened, Mint stepped out, took Rod by the hand and was leading him once more.
His eyes still closed, he asked, “So, are you going to tell me now?”
“Not yet.” He felt her lead him further down the hallway, and wondered offhand where she could be taking him. Knowing the girl’s tendencies, he wasn’t sure if he should be excited or if he should be shaking in terror for his life. Then again, he was with Mint, and whatever it was it couldn’t be that bad. Or, at least, he could be certain it would be a unique experience.
When Mint finally allowed him to open his eyes, he was in front of a sink in the dormitory’s small kitchen. The sink was filled to the brim with dirty plates, pots and pans, and then some.
She handed him an apron before explaining, “Sunday morning is my turn to do the dishes. Seeing as I can’t do it now,” she shrugged. “Anyway, Mrs. Cartha has been very kind to me, and I don’t like leaving a job unfinished. Not meaning I have to be the one to do it, of course.” She was grinning wickedly.
“Well, you didn’t have to drag me blindly, making it all seem so mysterious and everything,” he scolded as he reluctantly put the apron on.
Mint hung her head. “I wasn’t sure you’d agree.”
He tweaked her nose and ruffled her hair affectionately. With a shout Mint made as if to punch him, but he caught her fist when she did so. It was now his turn to grin. “Payment for making me do this. Now go away and leave me alone.”
She inclined her head quizically. She nodded, and without another word left the room.
Rod laughed silently to himself as he started on the dishes, thinking how easily the girl had (mis)led him. He was glad that Mint had gone, for he wasn’t sure how red his face had suddenly become. What was he thinking? The last time a woman had told him to close his eyes and took him by the hand, he had gotten a working vehicle and his first kiss out of it.
Like and yet unlike. I could just as easily fall for a girl like that. He absently combed his fingers through his hair, and then cursed loudly when he remembered his hands were caked with soapsuds.
It took Klaus the better part of the day to finish transcribing. They took a break and picnicked on the lakeside for lunch, and then Klaus immediately went back to his work. Rue had finished reading the book long before then, but discovered that he couldn’t stomach too much forgotten lore, which was all that the book contained. Most of what he read were simply older versions of the legends and folk tales that he could easily find in the town library. Maybe Klaus could find something, he didn’t know—but honestly, he’d rather let the professor do it. Besides, he could never be sure what scheme Klaus would manage to piece together from the tidbits either of them found.
Rue sat beside the stone archway, eyes downcast, brooding.
“Why so quiet, Rue?” Klaus remarked suddenly.
Rue was sure that Klaus already knew the answer to that, thinking that once again someone managed to read his mind. “It was my fault she got hurt.”
Klaus glanced sideways at his companion. Apparently, Rue was still taking yesterday’s events seriously. A bit too seriously, which was typical of him, now that Klaus thought about it. By way of consolation he told the boy, “I think Mint has too much of a …warrior’s pride… to ever blame that on you (everything else, yes, but not that, heheh). She’d be insulted if she heard you say that.”
The other looked at him expectantly. “You think so?”
He nodded solemnly. “I’m sure of it.”
“Professor, can I ask you something else? Mint mentioned it when we were at the library… She said that, well, she didn’t think you were completely honest with us.”
“She’s right,” he admitted after a moment, surprising Rue. “Of course I’ve got things to hide. Then again,” he paused significantly, “so do you.”
Rue reflexively clasped at his forehead, feeling under the ever-present cap and bandanna for his painfully unwanted birthmark. His eyes suddenly glazed over in some strong emotion he didn’t know as he was reminded of it. The next thing he realized, Klaus was speaking to him.
“Tell me, Rue, what do you remember before you met Claire?”
He shook his head somberly. “You already know the answer to that. Nothing. I remember nothing.”
“And don’t you want to find out?”
Rue turned his gaze towards the far end of the lake. He could see the Winding Tower in the distance, the white stone reflecting the sunlight, standing as a testimony to the undying ages. The sun was still high above them, and in a couple of hours more they would see it go down upon the horizon to turn the azure waters of the lake into a sea of red as it reflects the deep oranges and crimsons of a sunset sky.
Finally, he answered, “I don’t know. When I was with Claire, before, it just didn’t seem important. And now all I want is to find her again.”
Silence fell between them once more. After several moments, Klaus shut his laptop closed and remarked, “Well, I’ve got all the data I need for now. A good thing too—it’s almost time for me to pick up Mint.” He kept away his portable PC into its case, tucked his pencil into his shirt pocket, and headed for the car.
Rue stood up as well. “I’m coming with you.”
Klaus raised one eyebrow questioningly. “I thought you have another one of Professor Cadmon’s dreaded forty-page technical reports due tomorrow? Shouldn’t you be doing that?”
“I’ve almost finished it,” Rue dismissed it with a wave. “Besides, I want to see how Mint is doing.”
He followed the professor into the car, carrying the ancient tome in one hand. In another couple of minutes, the lakeside was again bereft of people, and the Klaus station wagon was heading back towards Carona.
She wasn’t the first girl that stopped him along the school corridor that morning to ask about his (slightly) injured hand. “Oh my gosh, Rue, are you all right?! What happened to your hand?”
Rue merely shrugged and smiled politely in reply, not even pausing as he walked towards class. “It’s nothing. Just a kendo accident. It’s really nothing,” he waved his hands in front of himself in what (he hoped) was a non-offensive gesture of dismissal. “Please, don’t mind it.”
“Well, take better care of yourself, okay?” she waved back at him before entering her own classroom.
Rue sighed, wishing he could run into his classroom and hide in the broom closet until class time, but doing that would attract even more attention. He hurried on, crossing his fingers mentally in the hope that no one else would stop him. When he got to his seat in class, he quickly slumped down and immersed himself in a thick volume of discrete mathematics. But that didn’t keep two more of his female classmates from coming over to his desk.
Mint and Annette were by the window, the former sitting down on the window sill while Annette stood looking at the cloud-heavy sky. They could overhear Rue as he tried to shrug off his injury while the girls fretted over his hand, the boy insisting that he was fine and that nobody need worry about him.
Mint shook her head at the scene. Her mouth curved up in a crooked smile, but there was no trace of humor on her face. “Ever-popular Rue. Thrice as many girls have made a fuss about his hand than people who’ve asked me why my arm’s in a sling.”
Annette couldn’t help but remark, “Admit it, you’re just jealous!”
“Jealous?! Why would I be jealous?” In fact she found the whole thing kinda funny. One of the girls somehow got the idea that she should disinfect the area around Rue’s desk, and started spraying some sort of alcohol/perfume. Its scent hit Rue smack-dab in the face, causing him to cough violently, and he would’ve fallen from his seat if Neil hadn’t gotten to him in time.
“—of the attention he’s getting! I’ve always told you, you shouldn’t be so tomboyish that you scare most of the guys away,” Annette scolded.
“Hmph, I don’t care about that. But at least the girls could act with more dignity around him. I already have to put up with this with Elena…”
“Well, what did you expect? Half the girls in our year alone are in love with him, and that’s not even counting the rest of the school and his junior high. I mean, even I had a crush on him once…” Annette paused, blushing deeply before going on, “He’s nice, polite, intelligent and hard working, not to mention ‘ultra-cute’. He’s top of the class and the best fighter in the kendo team. Plus the fact that no woman could conceivably resist the alluring aura of mystery that is brought about by having a beautiful and possibly deceased girlfriend named Claire that he just can’t seem to forget. Oh, and I wish I was being sarcastic with that last remark.”
Mint rolled her eyes. “Spare me, Annette. You didn’t have to be so long-winded about it.”
“Aww, come on! You can be as high-minded and as stubborn about it as you like, but even you’d have to admit he’s got his merits! Don’t tell me your escapade last Saturday didn’t tell you anything about the guy?”
“Hey, let’s make this clear. There are only two reasons I accompanied him to the abandoned warehouse—one, because Mira promised me cookies, and two, because abandoned warehouses usually have treasure that are anyone’s for the taking. Not that I found any…” she sighed.
Annette raised her eyebrows skeptically. “Really, now?”
Mint bit her lip, thinking. Annette had a point-Rue was the most polite person she knew, and he was practically the closest she knew to being an epitome of courteousness and chivalry. When he had oh-so-carefully bandaged her shoulder that time in the tunnels, it was the first time she had ever gotten a close look at his face. And, reluctantly, she had to confess that he really was… kind of… sort of… somewhat… just a little… …cute… “This calls for a change of topic, don’t you think?”
But a change of topic was not in order, for the bell rang just then. Annette couldn’t help laughing silently to herself as she went to her seat. She doubted if anyone else could’ve noticed it, but it was the first time she had actually seen Mint blush ever so slightly.
“We’re getting a new chemistry teacher, huh?” Neil commented off-hand as he and Rue exited their classroom. “I wonder when. And I hope we get a nice one…”
“You mean someone who won’t mind if you fell asleep in class every now and then?” Rue raised one eyebrow.
Neil grinned. “You could say that.”
They headed out of the building and towards the gym for kendo practice. They were already half-way across the school grounds when Rue suddenly slapped his forehead. “I forgot, I have to take Mint home today! Could you talk to coach for me?”
“Sure,” Neil nodded before looking up at the sky. “Well, I hope you remembered to bring an umbrella, ’coz it looks like it’s gonna rain.” And then they parted.
Rue half-walked, half-ran back towards Carona High’s main building. Just in time—it started raining as soon as he entered the side doorway. No one stopped him this time, although there were one or two girls who waved to him as he walked.
“Aagh, I forgot to bring an umbrella!”
“Rue!” One of the first-year girls who had asked him about his hand that morning (he didn’t even know her name) was running towards him. “Rue! Want to walk home together? We can share my umbrella…”
“Err, no thanks!” he smiled awkwardly, waving his hands in front of himself. “I have to take Mint home today.”
“Oh,” she said, her face falling in obvious disappointment. Suddenly her eyes narrowed. “Mint, huh?”
“He-ey, don’t get me wrong,” Rue replied quickly. Gawd, I hope I don’t hurt her feelings… “Coach Mira asked me to. You know, because Mint got injured.”
“Oh, okay then,” she perked up immediately. “I’ll see you tomorrow!” The girl waved cheerily before going on her way. Rue could only sigh in relief when she was gone.
Mint was waiting by the main entrance, stomping her foot impatiently. “If you had gotten here twenty seconds later, I would’ve left without you.” she didn’t forget to bring an umbrella, so she clicked it open before stepping out into the rain. “Well, what are you waiting for?!”
“Umm, right.” Rue blinked. He was actually waiting for her offer to share the umbrella with him (like the other girl did), but she made no inclination of doing so. The rain was falling in torrents now, and it looked like he was going to get very, very wet before long. Mint had already started to walk home without him. Gritting his teeth, he raised his (waterproof) violin case over his head to use as a shield from the rain.
She wasn’t very talkative on the way home. He had noticed that she was like that especially around him. After several minutes in the heavy downpour, Rue was already soaked badly. The violin case wasn’t helping at all.
Mint turned a corner without waiting for Rue. “Hey, where are you going? The Klauses’ home is the other way…” But she ignored him (again) and walked on.
Rue frowned, finally starting to get upset. He let his violin case down, walked briskly towards the red-haired girl’s side and grabbed her by the good arm. “Hey, watch it!” she told him, but Rue ignored her protests. He dragged her forcibly towards the nearest shelter, which happened to be a newly-opened and not yet fully-occupied mall not too far from the area, before finally letting go of her elbow.
“What is going on with you?! I’m supposed to take you home today, and you’re not making it any easier for me! It’s not like I’m doing it because I want to!”
“Why do you have to be so bossy?!” Mint spat back.
Bossy? Me?! “Look who’s talking!!”
“Well, you don’t have to get angry about it!”
Her tone caused Rue to step back involuntarily. He realized suddenly that it wasn’t like him to get angry. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever getting angry like that before. In a calmer voice, he told her, “Umm, I’m sorry I raised my voice, Mint.”
She sniffed. “Fine, we’ll wait here until the rain stops.” She folded away her umbrella—quite a feat doing it one handed, even with a dual spring-loaded one, Rue thought—and shook the folds free of excess moisture. With a huff, she sat down on the nearest bench and took to looking intently at the rain.
Rue took the opportunity to go inside the mall. He excused himself, claiming he was going to check out the latest hoverboards from the city (although actually he just wanted to get away from Mint for a little while). She didn’t even so much as acknowledge him. But Rue, although it irritated him no end, was already used to being ignored by her.
Why does she keep doing that, anyway?! He knew from his classmates and schoolmates that Mint, normally, was easy to get along with, so long as no one tried to humiliate her outright (like Kirielle did too often). Rue, on the other hand, had been on her bad side from day one, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why. She still couldn’t be mad at him for the class representative thing, or the arcade game tie, or what happened in the tunnels, or the skull beast and Belle-and-Duke incidents, could she? Okay, so she did have a right to get angry at him, case in point. But, he remembered that she had been acting that way around him even before then… He shook his head, not liking where this particular train of thought was taking him. Didn’t he just get away from her so he could stop thinking about her?
He decided to enjoy his solitude while it lasted. He didn’t have to go too far inside the mall to the mechavehicle equipment shop, where he browsed particularly at the motorcycles and the latest hoverboards. He noticed that most of the machines and gadgets were from Aeon Industries, a company based in a nearby district and named after the supposed makers of the Carona ruins. Being the only multi-national corporation based in the area, it was no surprise that they had somewhat of a monopoly of the electronic devices available in town.
One could only browse so much before finding it boring. When Rue stepped out of the store, he was stopped by two former classmates from his junior high. “Long time no see, Rue!”
“Hey,” he greeted back. He didn’t know what he could say to them, but they were so eager to update him on their news that he didn’t need to.
“Where have you been? Class Alpha 2025 had a reunion last month and you didn’t attend!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” the other girl agreed. “You were the only one who was missing.”
“You’re dripping wet, Rue! Here, you can borrow my jacket…” she started to take it off, but Rue stopped her.
“No! No, thank you (it’s neon pink)…” He couldn’t help but sigh inwardly. But he kept his face impassive, not wishing to hurt the girls’ feelings. What did I do to deserve this? He looked around, making it seem casual while searching for any excuse to leave.
A huge, plastic-and-yellow-spandex star mascot was by the entrance of an electronics shop, the only other shop yet established on the ground floor. Another gimmick to attract customers, this one seemed more desperate than usual. The mascot had a hard time moving around, but eventually he made his way towards Rue’s group. He addressed the girls.
“Say, ladies, how would you like to come to our grand opening? Free tickets for the first ten couples who come to go shopping,” he said in a singsong voice. Rue sensed that he was distracting the girls on purpose, and he was grateful for it. The mascot was facing away from him, and Rue could barely see his face. A face that seemed somehow familiar…
“DUKE?!!”
But Duke merely winked at him. “I’m a star, only a star that you can gaze at from afar. (Speaking of far, your lady has already left without you.)”
Rue turned quickly to see that Mint was gone.
The rain had alleviated somewhat, although it was still drizzling. Mint was already halfway to the end of the street, and Rue ran after her, catching up to her in several strides. He reproached her, saying, “Mint! Couldn’t you at least have waited for me?”
“Why didn’t you accept the jacket?” He could see her mouth twitching as she tried to keep from bursting into laughter. “Pink looks sooo good on you.”
But before he could protest, they heard a squeal from the next alley.
Mint was faster. She was already running towards the sound. Rue grasped his violin case in both hands as he ran after her, readying himself for trouble, just in case.
The first thing he saw when they got to the alley was Blood and Smokey. They had cornered some creature that seemed to him rather familiar, and he recognized it as one of Fancy Mel’s famous helpers/waiters at the Atelier Soda Shop. The thieves were trying to put the huge animal into a sack, but kept failing at it.
Rue brandished his weapon over his head. Blood and Smokey saw them coming from several meters away. Recognizing Rue and the killer violin case, they made a desperate getaway, almost bawling over the fence in their haste and leaving the Poppul Purrel behind.
The reason that the creature couldn’t run from the thieves became obvious when they got to it. One of its feet had gotten stuck in a small drainage grating on the sidewalk. Mint folded away her umbrella, and then shoved it into the small gap between the grate and gutter before clicking it on. The metal grate dislodged, setting the Poppul Purrel free, but the umbrella was now broken beyond repair.
Rue picked up the grating and placed it back over the drainage hole. The Poppul Purrel was purring (sort of) contentedly at them, swaying side-to-side in apparent gratitude. Oddly enough, it wasn’t talking. Must be too shy away from home, Rue thought. He turned to the girl. “Why did you do that? Now we both don’t have an umbrella.”
“Oh, well. Seeing as you’re already drenched I might as well get wet too.” She threw the ruined umbrella sideways into a nearby trashcan.
Did she really just say that? Mint’s words, said so indifferently, seemed to him to imply something. Gallantly, he chose to ignore it. He walked towards the Poppul Purrel, kneeling so that his face was level with the creature’s. “You alright? Don’t worry, we’ll take you back to Mel’s soon enough. Isn’t that right, Mint?” He turned towards her.
She was looking strangely at him. No, staring was more like it. There was something about her expression that made him feel uneasy. After some time, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he averted his eyes downwards back to Mel’s pet. He scratched its head, every now and then whispering “Who’s a good boy? There’s a good boy,” and fidgeting at times, painfully aware of Mint’s gaze. He kept glancing up at her, and every time he did so it seemed as if she still couldn’t take her eyes off of him. He felt his face start to flush in self-consciousness.
“Rue, you’re talking to a mechanical toy.”
His face turned as pale as it was red only a split-second ago. He immediately looked down at the Poppul Purrel, its purring now barely audible. “It—it is?”
She stepped forward, taking his hand off the Poppul Purrel’s head so that she could feel under its (very realistic) fur. “You really didn’t know?!” Rue shook his head somberly and Mint frowned at him, thinking. “I’ll admit this type has a very good AI program. In one part-time job, I got tasked with dusting a whole crateload of these a couple of years back—a different model, though.” she twisted her hand, and the Poppul Purrel immediately shut down.
Rue averted his face so that Mint couldn’t see him. She was still leaning over the Poppul Purrel, and they were so close he could feel the warmth of her body through her damp school uniform. It made him feel queasy, too queasy. He had misunderstood her too many times already that day.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, it started raining again.
Rue slung his violin case over one shoulder and bodily picked up the toy. “Anyway, we should take this guy home. We can keep it at the Klauses until…” But when he turned, Mint had already walked quite a distance in the wrong direction from home. “Hey, Mint! Where are you going?”
“Why don’t we return it now?” she asked when Rue caught up to her.
“But the Soda Shoppe is closed this week. Fancy Mel’s out of town until Thursday.”
“Hmmm. I’ve a feeling she’ll open to us today.”
After several blocks of brisk walking, they found themselves in front of the Shoppe. It wasn’t a very big place, but even with the lights off it looked inviting. There were several tables outside, in the style of the open-air cafés of France, but the restaurant’s ambience had a rather cozy feel to it. Inside looked even cozier, with the several tables and wooden counter, and the homey kitchen past that that they could see through a glass window. But the Shoppe was definitely closed that day.
As if on cue, the Atelier Soda Shoppe porch light turned on, and a blonde woman peeked out the window. “My Poppul Purrel!” Mel shouted, running quickly to open the door to let them in. “Oh, you poor dears, you’re soaked to the bone! Come in, come in,” she gestured.
Rue whispered sideways to Mint, “How did you know?” But the girl just shrugged mysteriously.
“GYAAH!” Mint exclaimed the moment she saw Mel in better lighting. She stepped back involuntarily, her hands clutching in fearful surprise at the doorjamb. Even with her erratic psychic premonitions and everything else (former experiences with Belle notwithstanding), she was totally unprepared for this.
Fancy Mel couldn’t help laughing at the redhead’s expression. “You know, I get that reaction a lot.” Rue was a semi-regular customer, and was already used to seeing Mel in uniform.
Mel was a woman in her early forties, and the most politically-correct word Mint could find to describe her was ‘eccentric’. She had sandy blond hair with pink highlights, and the balloon-sleeved dress she wore was liberally decorated with huge pink and lavender ribbons and looked like it popped out of some children’s fairy tale book. She wore a cotton hat that too had pink ribbons. Costume for the kids, she had told them by way of explanation. But there were no kids in the shop right then, and Mint suspected that the woman wore the dress just for the heck of it. Some people just do that. No wonder she’s called ‘Fancy’ Mel.
Rue and Mint took seats on a table across each other by the front windows of the Soda Shop while the rain poured in buckets outside. They wrapped themselves in thick towels that Mel had kindly lent them while she prepared some hot chocolate.
They learned that Mel really was out of town, but a letter from one of her creditors had forced her to cut her vacation short. She in fact got back to Carona early that morning and found one of her Poppul Purrels missing. She was so grateful to them for finding her robotic helper that the hot chocolate and their next ice cream sodas on a warmer day would be on the house.
“Why don’t you wait here until the rain stops? I’ll call Klaus and tell him you’re here,” she told them before disappearing inside.
“See? Free hot chocolate.” Mint smiled smugly at Rue as she sipped her warm drink. “You should learn to trust your partner more.”
“Partner?”
Mint leaned forward, her shoulders set in challenge. “The Search for Claire. I did find two of the three relics at Elroy’s library last week and it’s not my fault you lost one to my friend the old maid. We’re bound to meet them again, and I owe Belle twice now. Besides, after what you did to me,” she indicated the sling, “I figured we ought to make our partnership official. Partner-in-crime,” she winked and leaned back. “You owe me. Mira banned me from the gym for two weeks for this, you know. And she never gave me the cookies.”
Rue cringed, slumping down slightly into his seat. “I know. I’m really sorry about it. It’s all my fault, and I’ll find a way to make it up somehow.”
She turned her gaze pointedly at him. “Rue, I was kidding. Don’t tell me you took that seriously?” He nodded. Mint sighed, murmuring under her breath a word that sounded suspiciously like ‘idiot’. What a start to their beautiful partnership.
Rue excused himself to go to the bathroom.
He gazed at himself in the mirror, white hair and the ever-present cap. Klaus was right again. Mint didn’t really blame him for neither her injury nor the Belle-and-Duke incident.
It had been a very weird day—very weird, very strange, and very, very awkward. Why did he keep getting the wrong impression about things whenever it concerned Mint Vanguard?
Mint. He could never second-guess her, although he had already tried a few times the past week and misunderstood her several times that day alone. She was unlike the other girls who were so easily infatuated with him—so why did he keep thinking that she wasn’t? She had a tendency of simply doing things in some haphazard, indiscriminate way, but in the end he’d always find out that she was right in doing so. There were times it was as if she was two different persons. Impulsive, headstrong and carefree on one side, and then suddenly she’d turn serious and menacing in the twinkling of an eyelash. She had been a vagabond, like him, before she came to Carona-that much he knew. That much was all he knew.
Mint. She was the single most intriguing, most infuriating girl he had ever met, and one so unlike the others that he couldn’t even begin to fathom how. Now she was his so-called ‘partner-in-crime’. But he didn’t mind, and in fact part of him was somewhat looking forward to it. Somehow he felt as if she had planned it all along.
He splashed cold water on his face, feeling the need to think more clearly.
Mint. He couldn’t get it out of his head. Earlier, he was more than half-expecting her to admit to a confession of love or some such thing. He had been sure that was what it meant—after all, he had seen that look several times before from other, bolder, girls. The way Mint had stared down at him when he talked to the Poppul Purrel—any sane guy would have thought the same. Stop it, Rue! Just because every other girl professes to like you doesn’t mean they all do! Why am I even thinking this?! All I should care about is finding Claire.
Claire. Claire, with her long brown hair that fell like waves about her shoulders when she didn’t tie it in a bun. Claire with her oval face, small nose and pale cheeks that blushed so prettily whenever she was embarrassed. Her soft hands with their long fingers, smooth to the touch and gentle in their caresses. Her mouth that often curved in a pleasant smile that always comforted him and made him feel as if everything was alright with the world. Her eyes… what color were her eyes-?! Suddenly he was confused. He face-palmed and shook his head, trying to clear it.
Brown. Claire’s eyes are brown.
But, for some reason, no matter how hard he tried to imagine he couldn’t see them in his mind’s eye anymore.
Blackness. Inescapable blackness. No light, no sound, neither smell nor taste, nothing to the touch. The senses were numb, and time itself seemed to be at a standstill. The nothingness overwhelmed… its seeming emptiness was filled with fleeting emotions… pain… sorrow, solitude… pain… fear, guilt, despair… pain… The darkness was everything…
Mint opened her eyes.
Rue suddenly awoke, sitting up in reflex. He was breathing heavily, and his nightshirt was damp with cold sweat even though it was a cool midmorning. He hugged himself involuntarily, his head drooping heavily onto his chest, and he forced himself to stay calm.
Claire. Where are you, Claire? The dreams were back. They were back—after two years of freedom, they had found him again.
He called them dreams, but they weren’t really. Dreams were supposed to be pleasant reveries, images of nighttime wishes that may or may never come true. Dreams were an escape to the realm of fantasy, to the world that existed only in one’s imagination. They were the visual and fanciful manifestations of the unconscious mind.
But his ‘dreams’ were always the same—the same impenetrable, suffocating darkness, and the intense, voiceless screaming of a thousand agonizing emotions… so intense that, if it hadn’t been for Claire, they would have long ago driven him insane.
Claire had always been there for him, to hold and reassure him whenever the dreams would come. Her face had been his first memory upon waking up momentarily on a cold night almost eight years ago—he was seven years old—when she had found him critically injured and bleeding severely from a head wound he got in an ‘accident’ that had left him without any memory at all of who he was and where he came from. He later learned from her that she had found him unconscious in the middle of a two-lane street, and with the help of some kindly passers-by they had rushed him to the hospital, Claire binding some of his wounds herself, and it had taken all of her meager savings to pay what she could of his hospital bills.
He had lived with her ever since, in a small apartment in one of the poorer areas of town. Ever since the accident, the dreams never stopped, and it was always Claire and only Claire who managed to calm him down. The dreams had gotten so bad at one point that she was forced to move her bed to Rue’s room so she could watch over him at night. But they subsided, eventually, and Rue was finally able to have some semblance of a normal life, at least for a little while.
Claire was a scholar in the local public school, and she would teach Rue in her spare time as Rue insisted he wouldn’t go to classes—he would instead find work so he wouldn’t be a burden to her. He had taken to doing odd jobs, partly because it was needed, but mostly in gratitude for her. She was the only one he had then, the only one who had the patience to take care of him. Those quiet three years he spent with Claire had been the happiest of his life.
Her sudden disappearance had almost broken him. He had heaped the blame onto himself, falling into a wretched pit of depression and self-loathing. And the dreams—the dreams returned in full force—they haunted him almost every night as he traveled from town to town, searching, always searching for the one person who had been there for him when he had needed someone. He held on and was able to push the dreams back, all the while clinging desperately to Claire’s memory and the off-chance that, if he held fast to his sanity for a while longer, he could perhaps find her again.
That mere thought was the one thing that saved him then. Even when she wasn’t there, somehow she was still able to keep him safe. Over time he had learned to suppress his nonexistent memories and keep the nightmares at bay, sometimes managing to shut them completely from his mind.
But the night made it harder to push the dreams away. His first instinct when he’d suddenly wake up from them was to turn to Claire, and now without her to hold him… No! He gritted his teeth determinedly. For her sake, he wasn’t going to fall again…
He stood up, firmly shutting his mind from such thoughts. It was only three in the morning, but he dared not go back to sleep. Instead, he took a warm shower to wake himself up. After dressing into his uniform, he spent the rest of the morning reading up on his homework. At past seven o’clock, he decided to leave for school.
The sun was still low on the horizon, but the sky was already blue. That was the difference between the sunrise and the sunset, he mused. The sunrise was always clear and pristine, while the sunset was red, the sunset was more pervasive, and the sunset always had more color. He preferred sunsets, but for some reason, it was the sunrise that reminded him of Claire.
Claire. No, this time he won’t fail. He would find Claire for sure, and he won’t falter—he won’t let down anyone the way he had let Claire down that night, ever, ever again.
Especially not her. The girl with the burgundy eyes. Burgundy eyes that had somehow replaced Claire’s brown ones… Burgundy eyes that he knew had seen the world like Claire never did… Burgundy eyes that belonged to the sunset… He blinked. Why would he suddenly think that now?
He slung the strap of his violin case over one shoulder before he opened the gate and stepped out onto the empty street. But no, the street wasn’t quite empty at all.
The red hair tied up in twin ponytails (and left arm in a sling) was unmistakable. And unexpectedly he found himself staring into the same wine-red eyes that had briefly and nonchalantly popped into his mind a couple of seconds ago.
“Mint? What are you doing here?”
She started, obviously just as surprised to see him. Her cheeks reddened slightly in embarrassment. “Umm, I don’t really know… there was this calico cat that I followed, and it led me straight here. And when I got here, I realized that I didn’t know where here was…” Suddenly, she pointed. “There it is!”
The cat was standing on the wall behind Rue, and Mint reached for it. Deciding that it wanted to play cat-and-mouse, with it being the mouse, it jumped down the wall and Mint started chasing it. They circled Rue twice before the girl finally caught it, the cat purring and meowing playfully all the while.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he watched the girl’s antics. But, there was a time and place for everything, and today they had class. “Come on, we don’t want to be late for school.”
“Oh, lighten up. We’ve got over half an hour ’til class time.” She was scratching the cat on the head. She must’ve scratched it the wrong way somehow, because it suddenly scratched back her arm before jumping onto her head with the sole intention of irritating the girl. With a hiss, it jumped down, clawing its way down Mint’s good arm.
Both girl and cat seemed determined, though, and Mint started chasing it again. But the cat circled around the girl before making its way between her legs. It nipped her ankle as it passed, causing Mint to stumble onto her knees. (Mint: “Ow ow ow… hurt… stupid tabby!”) When next she looked, it had disappeared into a nearby thicket.
Rue, who had been trying to keep a straight face for the past few minutes, finally broke into laughter. The girl’s eyes narrowed at him, and in a scathing voice she said, “Rue, are you mocking me?!”
It took him a while before he could stop laughing long enough to reply. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Now, can we go?” Mint stood up with a huff, and then stomped off towards the end of the street without bothering to wait for him. Rue smiled faintly at her back as he tried to keep up. Thank you.
Mint sat on one of the back rows in their chemistry lab, doodling absently on some pad paper. It had been six minutes since the second bell rang, and their teacher still hadn’t arrived.
Rue was by the door, chatting with Neil and a couple of their classmates while they waited for their professor—or rather, they chatted while he listened. He was smiling at some joke Neil just cracked, as was his wont, and Mint alone seemed to notice that he was slightly paler than usual.
Could it have been him?
It had been years—ten to be exact—since she had first picked up on another person’s dream. It had been her mother’s, she was five, and she had seen images from her parents’ childhood. It happened several times more over the years, with other people’s, but very rarely such that she never noticed a pattern. The dreams she picked up on were never complete when she saw them, and except for her mother’s, she could see only still fragments, indiscriminate images in black and white. However, the dream she had sensed last night was totally different—she couldn’t explain it.
And then the first thing that greeted her when she got out of the Klauses’ home that morning was that accursed cat, and the familiar buzzing at the back of her mind insisted that she follow it… and it had led her straight to Rue’s dormitory. She didn’t even know he stayed in a dormitory.
“The teacher’s coming! We have a new teacher!” Someone whispered urgently from the doorway. The murmurs spread around the class like wildfire.
Like she cared. She’d rather brood on the dream, and maybe if she thought about it enough, she could figure out a clue as to who owned it. She wouldn’t be surprised at all if it really was Rue’s, although that seemed unlikely given his track record and the way he acted around people, and why she’d pick up on his dream in particular was beyond her… She continued doodling absently, not even noticing when the teacher entered the room.
“Good morning, class!” the new professor greeted cheerily. “I’ll be your chemistry teacher from now on. First, let me introduce myself…” She began writing her name on the blackboard.
Mint looked up as she recognized the voice. She stood up suddenly, her fist banging on the desk. “The heck… BEMmph-!!” Rue was suddenly behind her and firmly clamped one hand over her mouth.
With the other arm around her waist, he bodily dragged her outside the classroom. He had seen Belle coming and had had time to prepare for the red-haired girl’s certain outburst. He didn’t stop until they were far away from the chemistry lab. The moment he let her go, she lifted her hand to slap him, but he caught her wrist when she did so. Her eyes narrowed, and her entire body was shaking in vexation. She was too angry to say anything. Rue let go of her arm.
With a determinedly livid face, Mint stomped off, Rue following. The corridors were mercifully empty. She walked straight up to the principal’s office and turned the doorknob.
SLAM! “Professor Klaus! How could you allow Belle to be our new chem teacher?! Didn’t Rue tell you? She’s the one who stole the tiara from us!!”
Klaus raised his eyes up innocently from his paperwork. “Is that so? Then maybe we should politely ask her to return it.”
“PROFESSOR!!”
“Look, Mint, I don’t see any problems with Ms. Brie teaching chemistry. Now, if you’ll kindly go back to class, I believe you still have forty minutes until the period ends. I have some important documents to finish.” It was clearly a dismissal.
“Mint, come on,” Rue was pulling insistently at her arm. He locked their principal’s door before closing it as soon as they stepped out.
She brushed him away angrily. “You trust him too much, Rue!”
“And you don’t trust him at all, or anyone else for that matter! Who was it that told me that one should learn to trust his partner more?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking of me,” she whispered through clenched teeth. Several expressions seemed to pass over her face at once, the last being some form of resignation. But stubbornness prevailed, and she shook her head. “I’m not going back to that chemistry lab today.”
“Fine. But we’re staying in the library until the next period.”
Mint glared daggers at him, but the threat was empty and they both knew it. Reluctantly, she agreed. She allowed Rue to lead her away, knowing that at this point it was the best deal she was going to get from him.
It was Monday afternoon again. Mint had been absent in gymnastics practice for two weeks already, and it looked like she was going to be absent for two weeks more. The redhead’s shoulder wound was definitely taking its sweet time in healing. The sling had been scheduled to be removed three days ago, but the doctor judged the wound to still be too serious to warrant the sling’s removal.
Kirielle couldn’t help grinning that afternoon when she found out the news from Tonia. It was no secret that she and Mint hated each other anyway, and everyone knew that Kirielle had been gunning for captaincy of the gymnastics club since her first year in Carona High. But Mint had beaten her in the votes last year. Kirielle had insisted (loudly) on a recount, but she had lost fair and square and everyone knew it.
As consolation of sorts, she became deputy captain, and that in itself had its own perks. For one, she’d take over the captain’s job when the captain became incapacitated or unavailable for any reason. She had been very happy during the past two weeks of gym class, and if she could only find a way to get Mint booted out of the captaincy permanently so she could take her place, she’d be happier still. The problem was, the redhead was undoubtedly the best gymnast Carona High had seen in all its days, and even Kirielle had to grudgingly admit that their skills were already on different levels. What annoyed and frustrated her even more was that, at this point, Mint still hadn’t fully tapped her athletic potential, and she knew that once the redhead realized that, she would never have a chance against her anymore.
So she had taken to another approach. Skill alone wasn’t the sole basis for captaincy, but unfortunately for her, Mint also happened to have a certain charisma that she couldn’t quite put her finger on—the girl had this certain quality in dealing with people that she could make almost anyone do whatever she wanted them to, and she could get away with practically anything. The one chance Kirielle could think of that she could use to her advantage was that sometimes Mint had no qualms about bending rules in her favor… when she knew it was alright to so.
But no, Mint may be smart—smarter than even she herself realized—but she wasn’t perfect. And perhaps today she had finally made the blunder Kirielle had been waiting for.
She had first heard the rumor during lunch break. Mint had caused somewhat of a scene in chemistry period that morning, and common knowledge said that the white-haired class representative of 2-A had to drag her kicking and screaming to the principal’s office in an attempt to calm her down.
Of course, Kirielle knew that the grapevine had ways of exaggerating things, so she had to make sure. But she couldn’t ask Tonia about it without coming off either like an opportunist or a gold-digger. So she decided to trust to the grapevine and to dumb luck. And, fortunately for her, dumb luck worked sometimes.
It was two hours past dismissal time, at the front gates of the school. Three students, two boys and a girl, were chatting by the entrance. She knew them to be in the second year. By some chance, they were talking about a certain red-haired girl and a certain incident that happened that morning.
“So, what’s this I hear about Mint going ballistic in chemistry?”
“Nah, that’s unfounded. Annette told me that Principal Klaus had requested the 2-A class reps to do some filing.”
“That’s right,” the boy’s companion backed him up. “I saw them come out of the library for the second period, and Mint certainly didn’t look like she had been in a fight or anything like that.”
Kirielle sighed inwardly. She should have expected it. Annette would certainly have found a way of calming things down and covering them up at the same time. She was sure that something had gone on in that atypical chemistry class—she just had no way of proving it.
Maybe she had better leave that problem for another day. She combed her fingers through her hair absently as she exited the school grounds.
She was greeted by a really nice surprise. The man waved his hand in front of her face, saying, “Hey, why the glum face, little girl?”
“Karwyn!” She beamed upon seeing her brother, and she threw her arms about his neck in a very tight hug. “I’m so glad to see you again! I missed you!”
“I missed you too, sis,” he replied, patting her affectionately on the head.
Karwyn Lockheed was in his early twenties, eight years older than Kirielle, and he had her same strawberry blonde hair and deep brown eyes. But it was seldom that his eyes could be seen—he was born extremely myopic, he often squinted, and he wore thick glasses just to be able to see anything as more than blurred shapes. He kept his hair long, shoulder-length and tied back in a bushy ponytail. He had been abroad for the past several years and graduated from college just recently with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from a prestigious university. His sister, to his eternal dismay, was more inclined towards the humanities and was contemplating going into either law or politics after high school.
She had by accident hit his glasses when she hugged him, so he took them off and wiped them clean on his shirt before putting them back on. “Where’s Narcius?”
The girl shrugged. Narcius had enrolled in another high school, although he and Kirielle were in the same year. “Dunno. He hardly ever picks me up anymore. I suppose he’s either at the BladeStar arcade or sleeping in his apartment. I have his phone number, though.”
“Well, we can worry about contacting him later. Right now I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing.” They started walking away from the school. Unspoken tradition between the siblings when they’d get together was that he would take her out to dinner.
Kirielle smiled inwardly. She knew she had to tread carefully on what she’s going to say now. Typical Karwyn. Astute and overprotective, as usual. “I’m still getting good grades, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’ve been hearing not so good things about your standing in the gymnastics club, and that you seem to spend a lot of time trying to discredit this ‘Mint’,” he reprimanded her.
She wrinkled her nose at him. Being her older brother, it was his prerogative if he wanted to lecture her on wayward behavior, of course, but she still didn’t like it when he poked his nose into her business like that. Still, deep down she knew he was right. But, being his younger sibling, it was her prerogative on whether she’d ever admit to it. “You wouldn’t say that if you only knew how annoying that girl is. She beat me to the captaincy, brother dearest, and she’s only in her second year! Hey, and who are you to reprimand me like that when even Ruecian had acted worse, the one time got hung up on… you know, that girl he liked so much!”
“Which girl? The brown-haired orphan?”
“No, silly! (Ruecian never liked her…) The other one, the brunette! The one whose photo he keeps in his wallet! What’s her name? Li… Lu… Lulu-Cecille? Come to think of it, she looks a lot like Mint, just a tad lot older. And speaking of Ruecian… how is George?”
“He’s fine, still as grumpy as always. He’s coming back to Carona sometime within the month.” Karwyn lowered his voice then. Casually, he placed an arm about his sister’s shoulders and pulled her closer so he could whisper unobtrusively in her ear. “He’s not pleased at all with the way things are going now. I think he’s going to mobilize us again when the time comes, and soon. We’ve been far too idle for far too long already.”
Tonia’s year-old Aero-Scooter of foreign make broke down on her way to school that morning. Annette found out about it, so Annette told Mint. Mint, thinking quickly, snapped her fingers and went over to Rue. And so the two of them were stuck until late in the school parking lot after their respective club meetings, Rue doing his best to fix the busted motorbike while Mint handed him the tools (Tonia and Annette had a fair committee meeting to attend to, and the school fair is only a couple of months away).
“How much did you say you were gonna charge Tonia for this?” Rue asked her sideways, not even looking up from his tinkering of the motorbike’s innards.
“What makes you think I’d charge Tonia anything for this?” she asked innocently.
“I’ve never known you to hand out freebies. Even if the freebies didn’t come from you the first place.”
Mint pouted (rather ungracefully) at him, but he wouldn’t have seen it anyway. “Two weeks use of her brand-new Mpeg7 mini-player.”
Knew it, Rue smirked. Mint was the only girl who could ever get away with it, too. After some final tuning of the motor, he stood up. “I think I’m done. Let’s try it out.” He powered it on.
Aero-Scooters were motorbikes that don’t have wheels—they floated using the same principle as the hoverboards that were invented in the early 2010s. They were slightly faster and more powerful due to the miniature fusion-propulsion engines of the same type they used in the larger mechavehicles that provide power to the scooters’ anti-gravity LLCUs (Liquid Light Crystal™ units). Aero-Scooters were a fairly new innovation, as the technology to infuse high power to the antigrav crystals had been discovered only a couple of years ago. But it’s expected that sooner or later they’re going to replace the wheeled motorcycles entirely in popularity.
Tonia’s motorbike floated properly now. “Well, that’s that-” he wiped his hands on a rag.
Just in time too. From the corner of his eye he saw Tonia and Annette emerge from the main school building.
“Rue! You fixed it!” Tonia beamed. “Thank you so much!”
“Hey, I helped,” Mint interjected.
“Right. Here,” Tonia handed her the mini-player. “Make sure you take care of it, alright? Annette and I will be going now.” Annette was hitching with Tonia on the way home. The two girls climbed onto the motorbike, and with goodbye waves they rode off.
“Don’t worry about your player!” Mint called to Tonia before the two girls disappeared past the school gates. “I just want to use it to keep me distracted in chemistry class.”
Rue turned towards her sternly. “Mint, I thought we had a deal.”
“Oh, lighten up,” she wrinkled her nose at him. “Belle won’t ever notice it. Besides, I can’t learn anything the way she teaches it anyway.”
Which wasn’t exactly true. Rue had found out, surprisingly, that Belle was a good teacher. She clearly knew the subject like the proverbial back of her hand, and had insights into the subject matter that she could only have acquired after a significant amount of experience in the field. On the other hand, she did have a rather unconventional style in getting the class’s attention—she’d break out into her trademark “kyahaha”’s every so often, usually after telling a really old and clichéd joke that would get the entire class groaning—but hey, if it worked don’t knock it. And in spite of the bad humor, Belle had a way of explaining things that made the class seem fun and easy, sort of. Plus, her exams were really simple, she didn’t give out pop quizzes, and she didn’t mind if Neil fell asleep in class every now and then.
Belle and Mint hadn’t broken into any catfights yet, thankfully. Mint had moved to the row farthest from the blackboard, and Rue moved to seat beside her as well, just to make sure that nothing untoward happened. He had persuaded Mint to behave properly in that particular class—no sarcastic remarks, no raising her voice or taunting the teacher—although bribe might have been the better term. The deal was an ice cream soda at the Atelier every Friday (Mint had wanted it every Monday, Friday and Saturday, but Rue put his foot down).
This week would be their third since Belle had become their professor. “…and speaking of our agreement, can we skip this week? I want to make up for time lost in gymnastics training,” Mint told him. She had gotten the sling off only the previous weekend, fifteen days later than it was supposed to have healed. Today was Wednesday.
“No problem,” Rue consented. It would save him the trouble, although he had to admit that he actually didn’t mind taking her out for ice cream at all. “Heading home yet?”
“Yup. It’s getting late. Oh, I’m so glad I’m staying in my own dorm room again…” she sighed in relief. Grabbing her duffel, she turned to leave.
Rue picked up his bag and violin case as well. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” “Later!” and with a wave from Mint, they went their separate ways.
Belle Brie watched from the window of the faculty room on the second floor as her two students exited the school grounds. The girl waved goodbye before they parted, and the boy waited for her to walk some distance from him first before he too turned his own way. She smiled inwardly. In a way, the kids reminded her of herself and Duke when they were much younger.
Mint and Belle had been on bad terms with each other from day one. Oftentimes the redhead just couldn’t keep her mouth shut, and most of the taunts Mint threw at her were about clothing. Belle knew that she had very little dress sense, and the fact that Mint kept rubbing it into her face made her all the more sensitive to the redhead’s (sometimes provoked) taunts and (sometimes unprovoked) insults.
Thankfully, Mint hadn’t heckled her even once during class—yet. She was sure that the boy had had something to do with it. Just like Duke, he tried his best to keep his ‘lady’ out of trouble. Of course, she didn’t know how things stood between her two students, for most times it appeared that Rue treated Mint just like he would a sister.
As for her own situation, Duke was openly and obviously in love with Belle. Several years ago, he had already confessed to her, but for reasons that she could not ignore, she had to refuse him. That didn’t stop Duke from staying with her anyway. He had gone with her, never asking questions, even into her self-imposed exile and what was probably a pointless personal vendetta.
She shook her head. Someday, when everything was over, maybe she could finally settle down, maybe with Duke. But right now she was on a quest—not for personal treasure as Mint had supposed at one time—but to find a long-lost sister.
Her cellphone rang. “Hello?” It was Duke. “Hmm… Uh-huh. Okay. Did you get the parts like we wanted?”
“Yes, Milady. We still don’t have the dipolar antigrav thrusts-they had to be pre-ordered and won’t get delivered until give or take a couple of weeks. At least they don’t make me wear the star costume anymore (but I have to wear it again come opening day next week, sigh)…” Belle could almost see Duke’s familiar grin. There was a slight pause on the other end, as if the other was thinking. “I have a question about these new schematics you made. Are you sure it’s safe to couple the regulator-suppressors to the fusion engine that way? I admit it will give a considerable surge of power, but that in itself could fry the system…”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure. Just follow the plans, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
“If you say so, Milady. Oh, and on your way, could you pick up some green paint? We’re all out.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later, Duke.” And with the telltale disconnecting beep on the other end, he hung up.
Belle pocketed her phone. It seemed like the upgrade of their mechavehicle would take some time longer than expected. But no worries. They were still ahead of schedule, for now.
Friday afternoon found a small crowd gathered about an announcement in Carona High’s main lobby.
“Ooh, the soccer and volleyball teams are going, huh? Too bad about the basketball club, and they had such promising new members…”
“What about individual sports? Did they say anything about individual sports?”
“…no, not yet. I think they’re still deciding on it.”
Mint and Annette pushed their way through the students that had gathered about the poster. Mint snapped her fingers in disappointment. “Aww, it doesn’t say if we got accepted.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll send the gymnastics club to the games in Gamul this year,” Annette reassured her. They had just come from the gym, and even Coach Mira was impressed with the team’s performance that day. Mint had stayed a couple of hours longer than usual in training, and Annette had decided to wait for her before they came to check on the announcement. “I’ve watched your practices, remember, and I promise you—the way you and Kirielle perform are nothing to be sneezed at.”
“Yes, but they’re only sending two clubs for the individual sports this time around. Badminton will definitely go—they were runner-up in the national games last year. Tennis and swimming, I guess we can count out. But there’s Rue in the kendo club…” she frowned, irritated. Just another reminder that, partner or not, Rue was still her biggest rival.
Speaking of Rue, he just emerged from a nearby classroom. “Rue!” Annette called, and she and Mint walked towards him.
“Rue! If you think the kendo club is going to take the spot for gymnastics in the Gamul games, you’re dead wrong!” Mint shouted to him in challenge.
“By the way, class reps have a meeting this afternoon,” Annette reminded him. “It’s about the school fair this Christmas, and attendance is mandatory.” Mint didn’t count, since she was only the assistant class rep. And knowing Mint, she wasn’t about to attend any committee meetings she could wiggle her way out of.
“Yes, yes, I know… I’m on my way now,” Rue dismissed her with a wave. He turned urgently to the other girl and handed her a package wrapped in brown paper. “Mint! I’ve been looking for you-I need a really big favor. I need you to take these to Mel’s before the evening. It’s a package from Principal Klaus, and he says it’s really important. I’m sorry I can’t go myself… umm… two chocolate sundaes next Saturday?”
Mint grinned suddenly. “If you say so. But I was gonna do it for free, anyway.”
>Wha-at?! Rue’s expression said it all.
“Want to come, Annette?” the red-haired girl asked. Then, in a singsong voice she added, “It’s a Friday afternoon…”
“Sure!” Annette nodded, and both girls left Rue standing, confused, in the hallway.
“So, what are you thinking?” Annette broke the silence once they were out of earshot. Mint was frowning thoughtfully. “You’re not usually this quiet.”
“It has to be this year,” Mint said, shaking her head. “We’ve got to be at the Gamul games this year. Kirielle is graduating—and as much as she and I dislike each other (the [expletive]), and as much as I hate to admit it, she’s the only one from Carona High who could (almost) match my skills in gymnastics. Even if by some freak coincidence an athletic prodigy joins the gymnastics club next year, she’d still be too green…” Mint sighed. As impulsive as she was, she knew her duties as captain. “[Expletive], we need Kirielle. This year would be our last chance to go national.”
“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” Annette asked. Mint nodded.
They were outside the school grounds now, and were walking up the street to where the new mall was being constructed. The mall’s grand opening day was fast approaching—next Wednesday announced the posters—and a considerable number of the stalls were already occupied. In fact, Annette had been frequenting the music store since it first opened two weeks ago. She asked Mint if they could stop to browse for a while.
“Let’s stop for a bite,” said Mint. “I’m sooo hungry… haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“You didn’t eat lunch?” Annette reproached her. “You were tumbling about, somersaulting like crazy in gym training ’til late this afternoon, when you didn’t eat lunch?!”
“They were serving pumpkins in the cafeteria!” she groaned. “Pumpkins! I hate pumpkins! Absolutely, completely, entirely, totally, utterly, extremely loathe pumpkins!! A world-wide ban on pumpkins once I declare myself Supreme Dictator of the Known Universe!!” The manic laughter that followed added just the right touch to make her sound completely insane, but luckily no one else had heard her. Her eyes suddenly narrowed at Annette. “And who gave you the right to start acting like Mrs. Cartha?”
Annette didn’t get to answer, for right then, a swift moving (yet mere two-foot high) figure was very quickly making its way towards them.
“J-Johnny Wolf! Nooo!!”
Too late. Johnny Wolf head-butted the girl and bawled her down onto the street—quite a feat for a dog his size—and then growled ferociously at her face. After some time, he started licking her face, and made as if he wanted to lick her ears off. “Owww, okay, Johnny! You got me…!” Thankfully, Annette managed to grab the brown-paper package when she fell, since neither of them knew if its contents were breakable or not.
Mint stood up, forcibly pushing the yapping doggie down and away from herself. She knelt so that her face was squarely looking over the dog’s, and she scratched it behind the ears. “What brings you here so suddenly? Missed me already?” Johnny Wolf barked in answer.
Annette seemed to be deep in thought. “Mint, if you’re serious about the Gamul games and going national, then it’s best that you start preparing for it, even if the teams haven’t been chosen yet.”
Mint sighed. “Tell me about it. I have tried, but I just can’t seem to find the right sequence or music. If you have any ideas at all, I’d be very grateful.”
But Annette shook her head. “No. Weren’t you the one who told me that everything we do should come from the heart?”
“No, that was Rod, and he says that ‘everything should be done with heart’, not from it.”
“I can’t tell you what to dance for your gymnastics sequence, especially not for something as important as the Gamul games,” Annette continued. “It should be something that… I don’t know… something you feel strongly about. Or at least can relate closely to.”
The red-haired girl’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Like… a mother’s lullaby…?”
“Depends on the lullaby…”
Mint brightened, as if suddenly coming up with an idea. “I know this might seem unusual, but… Annette, do you know this song? Mother used to sing it to me all the time while she was still alive, but it’s in a foreign language and had never been translated…” She closed her eyes, and started humming.
Annette frowned thoughtfully. “It seems familiar… Oriental music?” Mint nodded. “I’ll find it. But what about the dance sequence?”
Mint broke into a grin. “For that I would need Neil’s help.”
Annette paused in thought, and then grinned back at her. “Something tells me this is going to be interesting.”
“Come on, we’d better hurry.” Mint motioned for Annette as they hastened past the not-quite-fully-occupied mall (and forgetting about stopping for a bite to eat). She indicated Johnny Wolf, “After Mel’s I still have to take this guy back to the BladeStar Arcade.”
Annette nodded. “I’ll split at Mel’s then. It’s getting late already.” The sun had set about an hour ago, and the sky was already dark.
“Wait, wait…” Mint stopped abruptly, turning to gaze through the display window of a nearby mechavehicle equipment shop. She pressed one hand against the glass as she leaned forward for a better look. “They’ve got the multi-tools on discount! Including the latest one with the auto-lock mechanism and built-in antigrav meter…!”
“I didn’t know you were into those things,” Annette commented offhand.
Mint shook her head. “Not me—Rue would love this. I saw him gaping at it a couple of weeks back. Oh, shoot—” she cursed, stomping her foot. “Even at fifty percent off it’s still bloody expensive… Oh, be quiet, Johnny Wolf!” she turned to the dog, who was again barking incessantly. She bodily picked him up, the better to scratch behind the doggie’s cute, furry ears.
“Mint, can I ask you something?” Annette interrupted her thoughts. “Why are you so determined to go to the Gamul games?”
“I’m still gunning for the Dewprism medal,” the other answered, a bit too quickly. “I know my grades aren’t that good, and gymnastics is my only chance for it. If we don’t get at least second place in the national level, then I’m out of the running. And there’s always the off-chance that Rue—” she abruptly bit her lip on purpose, “that someone else might beat me to the medal.”
“That’s it? But why the Dewprism medal?”
“The medal would by my trophy. Carona High is just a stint in my world domination plans.” Mint’s tone was light but dead serious. “But don’t worry. When I become rich and famous, of course I’ll still remember you. Isn’t that right, Johnny Wolf?”
She ruffled the dog’s head playfully, intentionally ignoring the look of amused disbelief that Annette was giving her.
“Hey there, space cowboy.” The redhead greeted as she entered through the doorway of the sparsely populated BladeStar Arcade (it was almost closing time). “Long time no see. Oh, and you lost something.”
Johnny Wolf came running past her to bawl into Rod, who was mopping. Mop, man and dog were soon splattered all over the floor, the latter growling at Rod’s face in the traditional greeting before proceeding to try to lick his ears off.
“Hiya, Mint! Seems that my friend here has missed you a lot—he just ran off earlier without warning,” Rod replied, looking up at the girl. He pushed Johnny Wolf away and stood up. “You finally got the sling off! It’s been almost a month. Mira has allowed you to come visit me again?”
She rolled her eyes, but there was a slight edge of humor in her voice. “It’s your place and all its attractive video games that she forbade me from visiting. I can annoy you anytime.” She laid her duffel on the floor to take out something. “By the way, you left your hat in my dorm room.” She threw it frisbee-style at him.
In one move, Rod caught the black fedora in midair and placed it on his head. “Thanks! I was wondering what happened to it… So,” he winked at her. “Have you come here to challenge me?”
“Prepare yourself for some major face-flopping.” She grinned back. “Let’s get it on.”
It was only eight in the evening when he checked the clock that hung on his dorm room wall, but Rue was already tired. He ingloriously plopped down onto the bed, burying his face into his pillow. Class rep meetings, somehow, someway, always ended up with exertions of physical effort (for the boys, at least). The meeting that afternoon had ended with more laborious book stackings. Haven’t they heard of online reading material?
The meeting had started out innocently enough. Plans for the Christmas fair and all that, plus the surprising news (for him) that the class representatives of 2-A and 3-A (and their dates) traditionally open the school fair. There was no use pretending—he knew his reputation, and he knew that a sizeable number of girls would surely come after him to ask him to take them as his school fair date. He closed his eyes tiredly. As if he didn’t have enough problems…
The next thing he knew, the phone was ringing, and it was already seventeen minutes past ten o’clock.
He had passed out. Why had he passed out?!
The phone was still ringing, and he quickly grabbed it. “Hello?” After some time, his eyes widened in shock. “C-Claire?!!”
“…please, Rue… It’s been so hard… to find you……please, help me…”
“Where are you, Claire?!” His knuckles had turned white as he gripped the telephone.
“…the phone booth near the town fountain… but they’re after me, Rue! Please hurry…” And then a disconnecting beep, as if the line was suddenly cut off.
He ran towards the door, doing an abrupt double-take as he remembered his violin case. He paused as his hands hovered over the black case’s locks, having second thoughts about bringing his Arc Edge and knowing that Claire had never been fond of it—a constant reminder of their violent first meeting—but the need for surety won. If someone was after her, he had to be certain that, this time, he could take care of everything. I’m not going to fail her again!
The town square and the telephone booth were empty when he got there. There were no signs of a struggle, and everything was eerily silent. He shook his head. No, there had to be something… He heard movement, and immediately turned towards it.
He saw her in the distance. In the dim light, she looked like nothing more than a specter… but there was the familiar rustling of the navy blue skirts, the wavy brown hair tied in a ponytail… and she was swiftly moving away from him…
“Claire? Claire, is that you? Wait, Claire!” Please, please wait for me. He ran into the darkness after her.
“You seem distracted, Mint.”
“Huh?” Suddenly the machine in front of her was blaring. She blinked. “Oh, I lost.”
Huh?! It was Rod’s turn to get surprised. Mint isn’t angry that she lost?! Whatever it is, she really, really must be distracted… “Wanna go again?”
“Nah. I’m not in the mood to play anymore.” She turned to look pointedly at him. “Aren’t you sick and tired of getting beaten, yet?” Mint had gone on a rampage and won eight of the eleven games they played (half of them at Rod’s expense, Mint chuckled to herself).
“Exactly! I need to beat you more to get my pride back.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Hah! As if you could ever stand a chance against the next person who will RULE THE WORLD! Hee hee hee!” A brief glance at the wall clock told her it was getting late. “Besides, I think it’s already way past your closing time.”
“That’s okay. Today’s a Friday and I don’t mind keeping the store open.”
She sniffed. “I think I’ll just browse, then.” She spent the next few minutes walking around the shop and looking at the arcade machines-those that were still powered on, at least. Rod went back to mopping by himself (there was no way the 8-time winner of their most recent matches was going to offer to help him mop, hah!). After some time, she realized that Rod was speaking to her.
“…turning off the machines, okay? This row is the last one.” He wiped at his forehead tiredly. “Whew, I’m beat. I still have to wash my car after this…” he sighed.
“I didn’t know you have a car, Rod.”
He grinned. “Not many people do. Want to see it?”
“Sure.” She allowed Rod to lead her to a small garage at the back of his place. He pushed a bright red button at the side of the garage door to open it, and he and Mint stepped inside the dimly-lit room.
What she saw then, she could only describe as very, very unique in the best sense of the word. Rod had called it his ‘car’, but it wasn’t like any car that Mint had seen anywhere in the many places her travels had taken her. It was a two-seater—one seat in front and one at the back—sleek, aero-dynamic and done up in a shiny red metal exterior. It looked more like a sci-fi spaceship than a car. She suspected that it could actually fly, since she couldn’t see any wheels, but it wasn’t quite a mechavehicle either in the strict sense of the word.
In any other lighting, she would have thought it looked positively bizarre, for lack of a better term, but there was a certain dignity about the vehicle that, for some reason, she felt deserved her respect. Still, she couldn’t help teasing Rod.
“Hmmm. It kinda reminds me of…” she pursed her lips. “A flying shoe. You know, like the kind they have in the archaic TV reruns of some misbegotten animé.”
“Hey, be nice, okay?” Rod frowned at her. “She’s my baby.”
“Okay, okay.” She smiled, raising her hands. “I actually think ‘she’’s cool.”
“She’s a beauty, ain’t she? Just like the one who gave her to me.” He ran his fingers tenderly over the metal exterior. “Lucine made everything in this vehicle, from the hull down to the smallest circuitry. Lucine,” he paused, remembering. “Lucine is the best mechatronics wizard that had ever graced my hometown.”
Mint inclined her head quizzically at him, waiting for him to continue. There was something in his tone… When next he spoke, his voice was different somehow, lower and almost husky.
“Lucine is the most beautiful woman I have ever met. Long raven-black hair, and eyes the color of red wine that I’ve never seen in any human. Except…” Rod turned to look squarely at her. He raised his hand gingerly, as if he wanted to touch her face. “You have the same eyes. In fact, Lucine looks so much like you…”
“Err, right.” Suddenly the mood inside the room had changed, and Rod was creeping her out now. “It’s really late. Gotta go, bye!” Grabbing her duffel, Mint half-walked, half-ran outside to the street.
It was late—past ten or eleven in the evening, she estimated-and she walked briskly in the direction of her dormitory. She was already way past curfew and Mrs. Cartha was certainly going to have fits when Mint got back.
Why does my life have to be so complicated?
She bit her lip, thinking. She had phased out again, earlier, costing her the last match with Rod. She found it extremely strange. It was the same dream, the same deceptively empty blackness that she had sensed… But she had never picked up on a dream while awake before.
All of a sudden, as if her life wasn’t complicated enough, there was again the insistent buzzing at the back of her mind. She frowned at the empty air.
Her sense didn’t say it was him—all she felt was that something was about to happen, somewhere close by or she wouldn’t have picked up on it—but her logic told her. He was the only one who could ever have such rotten timing.
“Rue, you [EXPLETIVE]!!”
Quickly she dropped her duffel, kicked it unceremoniously beside a nearby telephone booth so she could come back for it later, and untied the twin metal rings from her belt. Wielding her Dual Haloes, she broke into a run.
“Claire! Claire, wait!” Finally he caught up to her.
She wasn’t a ghost. She was very real, and he could hardly believe it. It was too good to be true.
She turned towards him, smiling sweetly yet sadly when she saw Rue. “I missed you so much, Rue. Come with me?” She reached out her hands to him.
“Claire…” At that moment, Rue wished nothing more than to be able to hold her in his arms again. He lowered his Arc Edge as he hastened towards her.
It was pure instinct that made him step away from her suddenly.
A kodachi was in her hand, missing his arm by mere centimeters. She cursed softly when she realized that she missed, and then poised to strike again. “C-Claire?”
He heard a familiar whoosh fly past him to knock the steel dagger off to the side. Rue and Claire’s ghost jumped several steps away from each other in surprise, and a shadow swiftly moved between them to push Rue back several steps more. All of a sudden he found himself looking at sunset red hair tied up in twin ponytails. “The [expletive] do you think you’re doing!!”
“Mint?! Whaa…?”
“That’s NOT Claire! Since when did your pacifist girlfriend ever learn to handle a kodachi?!” She rushed towards the ‘ghost’, her one ring held with both hands in front of her, aiming for Claire’s abdomen. Claire jumped back and was barely able to block with her kodachi in time.
Pseudo-Claire cursed under her breath as she beat a hasty retreat. Mint came after her in hot pursuit, right after running slightly askew to pick up the other Halo. The ghost shouted to the seemingly empty air, “A little help, please?!” She abruptly turned a corner, and both girls disappeared into the night.
Rue was just about to chase after them, only to find his way blocked by a man whose strawberry blonde hair was done up in three bushy ponytails.
“Greetings,” the man said as he bowed to Rue in the fashion of gentlemen from the Old European courts. “I am known as Psycho Master, and I must respectfully ask you to refrain from moving forward.” He twisted the metal armbands on his wrist.
Rue held his Arc Edge in a battle stance. If he had to fight his way through, so be it. “Let me through,” he whispered menacingly.
Psycho Master shook his head. “I must insist.” Without warning, he raised his arms towards Rue, as if to push him away.
White hot pain flared in Rue’s chest, the lightning bolt that issued from Psycho Master’s manacles hitting him dead on. Rue barely managed to catch the next bolt on his Arc Edge, where it dissipated once it touched the metal.
For the next few moments, it was like that—Psycho Master would send a charged bolt in Rue’s direction, and Rue would either block or jump away. He couldn’t find an opening as Psycho Master attacked relentlessly, the ferocity of the bolts increasing each time. At last he found himself backed up against a wall. Psycho Master took another step towards him.
Quickly, with his weapon held protectively in front of his body, he rushed towards Psycho Master. But Psycho Master had anticipated the move, sidestepping Rue and blocking the blow with his arms crossed in front of himself. The Arc Edge squarely hit the crossed manacles and Psycho Master immediately cast another lightning bolt. Rue found himself blinded with the force of a small electrical explosion.
The force of the impact knocked him down and backwards onto the floor, his cap flying from its place on his head. Psycho Master wasn’t about to give him time to recover. He sent another of the charged bolts in Rue’s direction, and this time the boy was unable to block it. The bolt hit him straight on his chest, but strangely, this time he didn’t feel anything.
Psycho Master jumped backwards, clutching at his wrist momentarily, as if he was the one who had been hit.
“Ah, yes,” he remarked as he sorely rubbed his manacles. “I had forgotten that you and the Doll Master had been birthed from the same pod.” Without turning away from the fallen boy, he retreated, disappearing into a nearby building.
Rue stood up gingerly, picking up both cap and weapon. After making sure that his cap was firmly in place, he set his sights about finding Claire’s ghost and the redheaded girl.
Although Psycho Master had already gone, the last words he spoke remained for a long while in Rue’s mind.
He found one girl when he turned the next street. “Mint!”
She was sitting down upon the sidewalk, breathing raggedly after her ordeal. Although she seemed exhausted, he saw that she didn’t have any noticeable injuries, thank the heavens. “Rue,” she greeted as he quickly walked up to her. She pointed one ring in the direction of the street. “Claire went that way. Just give me a couple of minutes rest, okay? [Expletive], I don’t normally tire this easily…” that last was a whisper to herself.
He assessed their surroundings, before turning his gaze towards the direction that the girl pointed to. “This place looks very familiar. I think we passed here on the way to…” he paused, thinking.
“Elroy’s Library,” they said simultaneously.
She stood up. “Let’s go.”
He nodded. Mint twirled one of her Haloes in anticipation of battle before going off towards the end of the street, while Rue, his Arc Edge held at the ready, followed close behind.
“Drat!!” Claire cursed loudly as she suddenly ran up from the end of the street where Blood and Smokey were loading crates into an old truck in front of Elroy’s Library. She addressed the spikey red-headed boy who was standing on top of the truck, “Drat it, Trap Master, we’ve got company!!”
“The hell—” Trap Master exclaimed. “I thought he was supposed to come peacefully—!!”
“I didn’t get a chance to drug him!” Pseudo-Claire shouted as she angrily pulled off her plas-skin mask and roughly threw it on the floor. “Time for Plan C!”
“Plan C?!! You mean Psycho Master-”
The girl known as Mode Master spat in disdain. “Brother Dearest couldn’t handle the guy. Drat! Did I mention that she’s here too?!” She cursed again. “That girl has gotten in my way too many times already! I’m splitting—I can’t let them find me here or my cover’s blown. Don’t fail us this time, Narcius!” And then she was gone.
Dangit, Lockheed, you’re always giving me the dirty work… Trap Master jumped down from the roof of the truck. He checked his several belts, making sure his weapons were on hand and easily gotten. He turned to Blood and Smokey, “Prepare yourselves, guys.”
“Holy—!!” Blood shouted when the two high school kids suddenly appeared from the end of the street where Mode Master had come from. The two thieves both recognized Rue and the killer violin case… except that this time it wasn’t a violin case… “No way Smokey and I are fighting him!”
And just like that, Trap Master found himself alone to face the wrath of two of Carona High’s premier students.
They heard the spikey-haired boy shout loudly as they approached him. “You want me, you’ll have to come after me!” Without further ado, he ran into the warehouse.
“How many whackos like this guy do we have to fight in a single day?!” Mint muttered under her breath as she stomped her foot in annoyance. “Well, are we going or not?”
Rue made no inclination to move as he surveyed the area with narrowed eyes. There was an old-fashioned, white-washed truck left with its back compartment doors swiveling open directly in front of Elroy’s library. Inside the truck he could barely make out several boxes similar to the one he found before. They must’ve been loading the crates from the warehouse before he and the girl made their untimely appearance.
But he didn’t understand—the Claire look-a-like obviously lured them there for some purpose. Or rather, the Claire look-a-like had tried to lure him. Mint’s presence was probably an unexpected development, which did not entirely entail it was a good thing as the word trap suddenly sprang into mind. He was loath to involve anyone else in what obviously concerned him alone, but knowing his companion’s tendencies, the mere mention of turning back now would probably just make her more determined (and angry).
“I don’t like this at all, Mint,” he admitted after some time.
“Who does? But simply standing here isn’t gonna get us anywhere.” That being said, she followed Trap Master into the warehouse.
Rue reluctantly followed her inside. They hadn’t gone too far in when the girl stopped abruptly in front of him for no apparent reason. In one swift move she turned and shoved Rue backwards, immediately before a huge iron cage dropped down right on top of her.
It was a trap! But the trap had never been meant for the girl… Quickly, Rue grabbed one of the bars with his free hand, shaking it roughly and realizing that it was made of cheap metal. He readied his weapon. “Step back, Mint-that thing won’t stand a chance against the weight of the Arc Edge.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A voice called from the opposite end of the room. “That cage is rigged with 4 kilos of good, old-fashioned dynamite inside those metal bars. Any sudden pressure on the bars will blow that thing sky high.”
“Of all the low-down…” Mint muttered angrily. She pointed one ring in contempt at the spikey red-headed boy. “Come out and fight like a man!!”
Trap Master ignored her taunts, chuckling. “Well, I guess this evens the odds—I’m not known as Trap Master for nothing. Shucks, maybe it was too much to hope that the cage ’d get both of you…” He held up his hand to show Rue some sort of remote control. “The only way to open that cage without it blowing up in your face is the green button,” he indicated the remote, “while the red button will instantly detonate it.” He winked insinuatingly at Mint and leered. “Thanks for being such a cute, hapless hostage.
“So, Kincaid, are you gonna come peaceably?” He placed the remote face-up in a pouch that hung on the center of his chest—any attempt Rue made to attack him in that area will endanger the girl—and with his other hand he held out a pair of handcuffs. ”I don’t need to tell you what will happen to her if you refuse.“
Rue frowned, clenching and unclenching his fists. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he should have seen it coming. But he knew he had no choice. “You’ll release her afterwards?”
“Of course,” Trap Master replied. “It’s the usual drill.”
“What the [expletive] do you think you’re doing!” Mint shouted from behind the metal bars. “You idiot! Is this how you repay me for saving you from that fake Claire?!”
So, she knew it was him they wanted. All the more reason he shouldn’t involve her, then. He purposely ignored the girl’s shouts as he dropped the Arc Edge and slowly headed towards Trap Master, his arms held up in surrender.
Mint stomped her foot twice in annoyance. “Rue, you are such an [expletive]!!”
He turned to look towards her then, unable to ignore the emotion he heard in her voice. He watched quizzically as she wielded one ring and circled it slowly about her head. “Mint, what’re you…?” And then realization came.
“Mint— NO!!”
Too late. She threw the ring—he heard its familiar whoosh as it flew past him to hit Trap Master at the center of his chest.
The last thing he saw was the cage blowing up before his eyes. And then everything went black.
When the dust from the explosion had cleared, the scene that unfolded before her literally took her breath away.
Rue was fighting Trap Master. The latter kept throwing small bombs at him, but Rue would sidestep them each time, the bombs sometimes exploding so close to him that his clothing had frayed in places and there were raw burns on his arms. Trap Master was retreating as he threw the bombs, but doggedly Rue kept attacking. His Arc Edge was still lying on the floor unnoticed.
Trap Master suddenly faltered as he ran out of explosives, and at last Rue caught up to his target. A single blow was enough to send Trap Master down and keep him there.
But Rue didn’t stop. He knelt over Trap Master and started to strangle him.
Rue, what are you doing…?! “Rue! Rue, stop it!” The cage was gone—blown up into rubble—and Mint ran up to the white-haired boy, grabbing one of his arms from behind.
What he did next happened so fast that if it hadn’t happened to her, she never would have known it. Rue’s body twisted sharply, both his fists aiming for her neck and chest, his eyes glazed over and his face contorted in fury. She evaded but not swiftly enough, one of his blows hitting air while the other hit her old wound. She screamed as white pain momentarily blinded her, and Rue, still not realizing what he had done, attacked her again. Mint’s instincts took over, and she kicked him dead in the stomach.
The force of the kick threw him several meters backwards and down onto the floor. Clutching his abdomen, he propped himself up on one elbow and shook his head in an attempt to clear it. When he finally looked up, the first thing he saw were a pair of bright, bright burgundy eyes that gazed back at him from a distance.
No way. There was no way she could’ve survived that explosion. But she was there, she was very real, and she was very much alive. “Mint!”
He quickly stood up, and with brisk steps he practically ran towards her. He didn’t stop to think and he gathered her into his arms, so relieved was he that she was alive. But she abruptly pulled away, as if his mere touch had suddenly brought her pain—he had embraced her so fervently that he had too hard squeezed the sore shoulder.
“Mint, I…” he was gaping as he took a half-step backwards. “I hurt you again…!”
“Drop it, Rue,” she whispered through gritted teeth. Mint knew well that he didn’t mean to, and she was getting tired of him always apologizing for things that weren’t always his fault. But she was relieved that he was his normal self now.
“No, Mint, that’s the second time I—”
KAPOW! Rue slammed against the wall, right after the girl’s boot connected with his abdomen for the second time in the past two minutes. He had quite forgotten how powerful her jump-kick really was.
“There, we’re even. Now, will you shut up?!” Mint’s face was flushed. “Let’s get out of here.”
She walked over and offered her hand to him, and helped him to stand. His ears didn’t stop buzzing until they had found their way outside again.
Trap Master had escaped, during the time that Rue unconsciously turned against his friend when she had tried to stop him. They discovered him gone when they had paused to pick up their weapons.
Mint kept her face impassive, but inwardly she was scared. No, scared wasn’t the word, (an East Heaven scion is never scared, hah!) …apprehensive, uneasy? Just like that time in the underground tunnels, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong.
It was the first time she had seen him that way, and although she remembered everything clearly, still she couldn’t believe it. The gentle, quiet Rue, the somewhat reserved class representative of 2-A… He had gone ballistic when he thought she had died—and she would’ve died if she hadn’t been able to protect herself with her magic—and for a single instant afterwards there was that look on his face of pure gladness when he realized that she was still there. She felt herself start to blush unbidden (again), and she forcibly pushed the thought away.
But it was the way he had gone ballistic that made her anxious. He had almost killed Trap Master in anger, and when he had suddenly turned against her in frenzy, there was the fierce look that he had on his face… A fierce look that was almost, but not quite, bordering on insanity…
For a brief moment, it was as if he wasn’t Rue at all.
They finally found their way outside to be greeted by the half-loaded truck, exactly as Blood and Smokey had left it less than a couple of hours ago.
“Shouldn’t we call the police, and ask them to check this out?” Rue had asked her.
To which Mint replied, “…and tell them what? That a couple of underage kids had stopped some militant terrorist gang who were loading contraband… err… what were they loading into this truck?!” And so they both agreed that they should investigate.
They stepped inside the truck’s compartment, and found it half filled with square boxes a meter long to each side. The boxes were metal, unmarked and painted a reddish brown with black linings. They were very similar to the box that Rue had found a year ago in Elroy’s library, but there was something different that Mint could sense about these boxes. And frankly, she didn’t like it at all.
The boxes weren’t quite unmarked, she noticed upon closer inspection. Each box had a small control pad, just a little bit bigger than her palm, and a display unit of the same size. At the corner of each box was a small LED marked occupied, but this box’s LED was turned off. She clicked a few buttons to open the display unit, and it promptly bleeped with the words ‘occupant: (empty)’ and ‘life support status: active’. She stopped short.
She knew what they were. She knew the theory behind them—similar to the principle of cryogenics, except that this one didn’t involve freezing temperatures. These ‘boxes’ were containers designed to hold human life forms in total stasis for indefinite periods of time.
“…a life capsule…” Mint shuddered, cursing under her breath. “I didn’t think they actually existed.”
She cursed again, louder this time, when she noticed that one of them was occupied. Rue was already fiddling with the controls. “Gotcha!”
They heard an eerie fizz, and cold steam escaped from the capsule’s linings. When the mist cleared and the box had opened completely, they found him inside.
He couldn’t have been more than six years of age. He had platinum-white hair, very similar to Rue’s, and he was sleeping peacefully. Suddenly his eyes opened, and Mint noticed that his irises were a deep, coal-black as well.
“Umm, hello.” Rue greeted. “Can you talk?”
The boy nodded. “Did you come to free me?”
“Yup.” Rue smiled reassuringly at him. “What’s your name?”
“They call me ‘Prima’.” He reached out his hands, and Rue bodily picked him up to carry him outside.
“So, Prima,” Mint said as she too stepped out of the truck compartment, “My name is Mint, and that guy holding you is Rue. Any ideas why you were in that box?”
Little Prima shook his head. “They said they were taking me to someplace new. But they didn’t say where. They were bad men,” he pouted. “Mean, bad men. They killed my mama and papa.”
Rue started, almost dropping the boy in his astonishment. But he wasn’t startled because the bad men had killed Prima’s parents. He was startled because the bad men had killed Prima’s parents… and yet Prima had said it so indifferently.
“Anyway,” Mint spoke again, “let’s get out of here, alright? I’m sooo hungry… Are you hungry, Prima?” Prima nodded.
Rue put the boy down. “But we can’t just leave these,” he indicated the empty capsules. “We’d better call Klaus and tell him to pick us up.”
Mint wrinkled her nose at him. “I’ve a better idea. Why don’t we just take the truck there? Don’t tell me you don’t know how to drive?” Rue shook his head no. Mint grinned. “Then I will.”
What?! Mint wasn’t old enough to get a driver’s license yet. But she had already walked up to the driver’s side of the truck and promptly stepped in.
He closed the back door of the truck, making certain it was locked securely before running over to the girl. “Are you sure you know how to drive?!”
“I can handle it!” He noted that she didn’t really answer his question. She continued, “Wheel controls the direction, knobbly stick sets the driving mode, right pedal for the brake and left to accelerate.”
“That stick is called the gear shift, and the left pedal is the brake…!”
“…whatever. The point is, how hard can it be?” She adjusted herself on the driver’s seat, trying to get the feel of the vehicle, and Prima eagerly jumped into the passenger side. “Well, Rue? You’re welcome to walk all the way back if you want to.”
Sighing resignedly, Rue rounded the truck and reluctantly hopped into the front seat of the vehicle, squeezing beside Prima. He made sure that all three of them were wearing their seatbelts before Mint started the engine.
Mint whooped. “Here we go!”
The things I get into… All of a sudden the vehicle jarred, and Rue almost bumped his head onto the windshield. “—Mint!!”
“Oooh, you’re right, the left pedal is the brake…” she broke into a wicked grin.
The truck lurched forward bumpily, and Rue thought he was going to be sick. But Prima was ecstatic, and Mint was keen on indulging him.
“Yay, Mint! Can you go faster?” “…want us to take the long way around, Prima?” “Yayy!! Faster! Go faster!” “You said it!!”
Rue’s knuckles had turned white as he gripped his seat. The vehicle swerved, and he shut his eyes tight as the truck barely missed hitting a telephone pole. He didn’t open them again until they had stopped completely in front of the Klauses’ driveway.
After getting themselves patched up by the joint efforts of Mira and Elena, and after a very, very late dinner that did not in any way consist of pumpkins, Rue and Klaus went about examining the empty life capsules while Mint, Elena and Prima had taken to getting to know each other better. That latter event did not turn out to be a pretty picture.
Somewhere in Prima’s little body existed a boundless, seemingly inexhaustible well of energy. After he had worn out Elena from chasing after him all over the house, he and Mint proceeded to slug it all out on the Klauses’ antiquated Play Station 4, and that was what finally tired him out. Elena carried him up to her room (which they would share until Mira fixes up his own) while Mint continued playing one of the older video games that she hadn’t seen, much less played, since she was about three years old (and had sorely missed playing).
After some time, when Rue stepped into the house again, he noticed that Mint had fallen asleep on the sofa while still holding the PS4 controller pad. He went over to her, carrying the blanket that Mira had handed him, and wrapped it snug about the redhead’s shoulders. A stray lock of hair had fallen across her cheek, and gently he tucked it behind her ear. He frowned thoughtfully.
“Rue,” Professor Klaus called to him from outside, “you might want to take a look at this.”
He had decrypted it so fast?! Rue quickly went over to the truck. Klaus had rigged his laptop into one of the capsules, and was typing away when Rue found him. Rue peered over the professor’s shoulder at the screen, and his eyes narrowed involuntarily at what he saw.
Name: Rue Kincaid
“They must’ve lured you on purpose. This cell is primed and ready to be occupied,” Klaus said, indicating the box. He clicked a couple more keystrokes on his laptop to replace the screen’s contents. “Prima’s data is identical, except that his doesn’t have the last two fields.”
“What’s an A.S. System?” Rue asked, his tone quiet. But Klaus shook his head.
“I don’t know either.” He then turned to look at the boy. “However, you realize that Prima doesn’t have your… umm,” he glanced pointedly up at the ever-present cap.
“Professor…?”
“But I wouldn’t worry about it now,” Klaus said, a bit too quickly. He turned back to his typing. “I’m turning these capsules over to the police later, so that they can dispose of them properly. With any luck, they may be able to trace their origins as well…”
Mira’s voice called from inside the house. “Oh, boys…” Her tone was reproachful. “It’s already two in the morning. Shouldn’t you guys be sleeping yet?”
“By the way,” Klaus said to Rue, “Mel is asking if you could go to her place tomorrow—I mean, later today. I think she needs help with installing the new memory circuits on her Poppul Purrels.”
“Was that the package you asked me to deliver?” Rue asked. Klaus nodded an affirmative.
Mira had suddenly appeared at the doorway. “Rue!! BEDTIME!”
“You’d better go,” Klaus smiled sympathetically at the younger boy. Without another word, Rue went off to bed.
He had a fitful sleep, but thankfully dreamless. When he emerged from the Klauses’ guestroom at about half past ten, Mint was still sleeping on the sofa and Mira had already prepared breakfast for them in the kitchen. Elena and Prima had taken to romping about Carona’s famous ruins and had been gone for over an hour already. The white-washed truck and its contents were still in the driveway outside, and Klaus was talking to the chief of police on the telephone.
There was a note on the refrigerator door from Fancy Mel, asking Rue to come to the Soda Shoppe at around eight or nine o’clock in the morning so that they could fix the Poppul Purrels before the Shoppe opened at ten. Mira had already called Mel and made the appropriate excuses for him, so all he had to worry about now was finishing his breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup.
Klaus came into the kitchen and sat down beside Rue just as the latter finished breakfast, and asked him to again narrate exactly what had happened last night.
The tale took him about ten minutes to tell in its entirety. When Rue had finished, as if on cue Mint came into the kitchen, still rubbing her eyes tiredly as she sat at the table. With a small nod of thanks to Mira as the older woman placed a breakfast platter in front of her, she proceeded to eat her pancakes without even bothering to acknowledge Rue’s presence. When her plate was empty, she stood.
“Right,” she said. “Later, guys. I still have to pick up my duffel before the trash collector man hauls it off as garbage.”
“Hey, don’t forget,” Mira told her. “Elena is taking Prima out for ice cream later. Maybe you want to join them?”
“I’ll think about it.” And then she was gone.
“Speaking of ice cream,” Mira turned to the boy, “if you’re done with breakfast you’d better get over to Mel’s place quick. She was already close to panicking when I called her up earlier.”
“It’s that bad?” Klaus commented.
Mira nodded in answer. “All her Poppul Purrels are down for the moment, so she’s doing everything in the Shoppe by herself. I should’ve asked Elena to help out, but she and Prima…” she shrugged. “Anyway, Mel mentioned that the chips manufactured by Cosmos Corp. didn’t turn out to be compatible with those from Aeon Industries, so the circuits need to be manually rewired or something.”
Rue stood up. “I’m on it. I’ll see you later.” With a goodbye nod from Klaus and a smile and a wave from Mira, he made his way out of the kitchen and out of the Klauses’ home.
The late afternoon found him still rewiring the Poppul Purrels. He never bothered to count before exactly how many robots Fancy Mel had running in the Soda Shoppe, and suffice to say that the number was certainly a lot more than he expected. He was sitting on a small stool in the Shoppe’s kitchen, with Mel’s tools lying beside him on the floor. His ever-present cap for once he took off and laid on a nearby table, since repairing/upgrading not-quite-humanoid robots was tiring work and it had been a very hot day. But he still wore the white bandanna.
Rue was working on the last Poppul Purrel—Mel had already sent the others back to work in the restaurant area—and he recognized this one by the rust stains on its foot as the same robot he and Mint had once rescued from Blood and Smokey. Putting his multi-tool down, he carefully closed the doors that covered its electronic innards.
“Well, big guy, let’s see if you’re okay now,” he muttered under his breath. He switched it on.
It started purring. Thank the heavens, he thought, and started to pack up the tools.
“DO YOU WANT TO PLAY?!!”
He jumped backwards involuntarily as the loud screech suddenly blared out of the Poppul Purrel’s synthetic speakers.
“Do you want to play?! Do you want to play?! Do you-” like a broken CD player it kept repeating the recorded words over and over. All of a sudden, it started running about the room. The first thing to go was Rue’s multi-tool as the Poppul Purrel accidentally stomped on it in its wild jaunt.
“Hey, stop!” Rue proceeded to give chase, and he almost caught it when it bumped against the oven. Before he could do anything, it immediately powered on the oven’s switch and cranked it to the highest setting.
BOOM! The oven started to emit lots of black smoke, straight into Rue’s face and setting off the smoke detector but not the sprinkler system. Coughing like mad, Rue had to quickly turn the oven off before he returned to chasing the broken Poppul Purrel.
When he turned, he saw that the errant robot was now making its way toward the Shoppe’s main circuit breakers. In a few moments it was going to wreak dire havoc with the building’s electrical system… No, he had to stop it somehow, right now, before anyone got hurt… “STOP!!” he shouted without thinking.
The Poppul Purrel stopped dead in its tracks.
He quickly ran over to it, and found that it had shut down completely. He groped about its fake fur for the robot’s main switch, and when he felt it, he realized that it was still powered on.
“Rue, what did you do?!” Mel asked irritably as she momentarily peered into the kitchen. He walked over to the kitchen door and saw that all of the Poppul Purrels in the Shoppe had shut down, and Fancy Mel had already started to check them out one by one.
What did I do? Rue found himself asking the same question.
“What the HECK was that?!” Mint exclaimed as she, Elena and Prima stopped short in front of the Atelier Soda Shoppe. They all heard the loud boom, and Mint could see wisps of black smoke emerging from the kitchen windows, a few moments before Rue stepped out of the Shoppe’s side door while wiping his face clean of soot.
“What happened, Polly?” Elena wanted to know.
Rue scratched his head. “I think I did something wrong with the repairs. Anyway, I’m off to get some new parts over at the nearby mall. Be back in a jiffy,” he said, stepping past the trio and onto the street. Shrugging, Elena and Prima made their way inside the Shoppe.
“Wait, Rue!” Mint called suddenly, and Rue turned towards her. She narrowed her eyes at him. “There’s something else you’re not telling, is there? What really happened?” The boy just shrugged, keeping his face impassive. He didn’t know what to say. “Hmph, anyway,” she sniffed, getting annoyed at his silence. “I think I’m just gonna ask Mel about it.” She turned and disappeared inside.
Rue practically ran all the way towards the new mall, knowing that Mel needed to get her robotic helpers up and running as soon as possible. Posters along the street said that the mall’s Grand Opening was Wednesday next, but luckily for him some shops (including one that sells electronic circuits) were already open.
He made his way into the mall, only pausing briefly to again admire the multi-tools on display at the mechavehicle equipment store and briefly realizing that his own multi-tool had been broken. And then, remembering Mel’s circuits, he turned to continue on to the electronic shop that was located further inside.
That was right before a huge, inane yellow-plastic-and-spandex Star-Costumed Duke came hopping stupidly towards him.
“WELCOME TO THE STARLIGHT MALL!!”
“AAAHH!!!” For the second time that day, Rue found himself reflexively jumping backwards in surprise bordering on shock from another very noisy idiotic embodiment of strangeness. For the rest of his entire past life, he could never remember any day that was weirder than this.
“GUARANTEED CHEAPEST BUYS!!”
Starlight Duke barely missed him. Turning swiftly—quite a remarkable feat, considering how ungainly the Star Costume was—he started hopping towards Rue again.
“ONLY FOR TODAY! GET TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!!”
For a fleeting instant Rue wished he had his Arc Edge with him—he had conveniently forgotten it at the Klauses’ when he realized that its violin case was still in his dorm room—but as he had no weapon in hand, he had to make do. From the corner of his eye he saw a stall that sold umbrellas, and swiftly grabbing a big blue one he wielded it in a battle stance.
And then Duke with his Star Costume ungallantly flopped face down on the floor.
After some time and a whole lot of failed attempts to move, a voice called weakly from underneath the yellow mound. “Ummm… hello…? … someone… please help me …(urk) … please…?”
“What are you doing?!” the owner of the electronics shop came out and reprimanded his wayward employee. “I told you you’re only going to scare customers away!”
“I was just… (gak) … practicing my lines for… our grand opening…!”
The man was shaking his head exasperatedly. “You’re hopeless, did you know that?” He palmed his face in frustration and turned to go back towards his store, not even bothering to help Duke.
Rue returned the umbrella, hastily thanking the stall’s saleslady, before running after the electronic shop owner. “Umm, excuse me, sir? I’m here to pick up Fancy Mel’s package…?”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Kincaid?” the other turned towards him. “We just ran out of those particular circuits, but I’ve already sent someone to the warehouse to get the appropriate stock. It should arrive in a couple of hours. In the meantime,” he lowered his voice, “could you kindly help Mr. Radii out of that costume before he embarrasses us further? I would be very grateful.”
Seeing no better alternative, Rue consented. Duke was still flopping about the floor, hopelessly buried underneath the yellow spandex.
It took him no less than a full quarter of an hour to help Duke out of the Star Costume. When Duke was finally able to stand again, he absently scratched his chin, “I’m in the mood for a drink. There’s a small bar at the back of this mall—come on, it’s my treat.”
He was apparently a regular at the tavern owned by one known simply as Jargen. Jargen was a soft-spoken man, Annette’s uncle or cousin thrice removed, Rue didn’t remember. But Duke seemed to know the bartender well. “A malted for the boy and my usual,” he told the man as he and Rue sat down on high chairs by the counter of the mostly empty bar.
Jargen promptly served them their drinks—strawberry sherry for Duke and a plain, un-spiked malted for Rue—before going off to the other end of the counter to wipe some glasses clean, and leaving the two undisturbed. Duke took a small sip from his glass, and Rue couldn’t help but stare thoughtfully at the other’s drink. In the dim lighting, the color of the wine for some reason reminded him of burgundy eyes.
“Duke?” he called the older man’s attention, somewhat hesitantly.
Duke raised an eyebrow at him. “Hmm?”
“I know this is none of my business,” Rue continued, “but… whatever happened between Mint and Belle?”
Duke laughed softly, shaking his head. “Milady Belle. She’s really just like that. People like her have serious trouble saying how they truly feel about anyone. Not unlike Mint in that respect,” he smirked. “What happened between them isn’t any of my business either, and it’s up to either of them to tell you if and when the time comes. But whatever it was, it doesn’t really matter in the present.”
He took another sip, and then downed his sherry before loudly putting down his empty glass on the bar. “Just a warning, I would be very, very careful if I were you. I’ve seen it happen before,” he said as he glanced briefly at the white hair partially hidden by the ever-present cap. “Make sure you take extra care not to turn against the people you care about. Belle would be the first to come gunning after your neck if the lady Mint ever gets hurt because of you.”
Rue frowned thoughtfully, turning to stare into the foamy brown liquid that remained in his own glass and shook it tentatively. He remembered his own experiences, but there was no way Duke could have known about it.
He remembered clearly what happened last night—or rather, he remembered what happened after what he didn’t remember. When he saw the cage explode with her trapped inside, when he thought he had lost her like he had lost Claire, when he had thought that the matchless wine-red of her eyes were gone from this world forever… he had simply lost control.
And in his madness that followed he had hurt her. What could’ve happened if he had been holding his Arc Edge then, he didn’t even want to think. What he had done was bad enough—he had seen the huge, ugly bruise on her shoulder, right beside the partially-healed scar that was caused by his own weapon, and he knew he was the cause of both injuries. Last night was the second time it happened. I had unknowingly hurt her.
Silently, he vowed that it would never happen again. He won’t let it. Not this time.
Mint always started her mornings early. Ever since the fluke accident in the underground tunnels that had incapacitated her for almost an entire month, and especially with the Gamul games coming up in a few weeks, she had been more anxious than usual to make up for the lost time in training. She was in the garden of the dormitory where Mrs. Cartha was landlady, doing the martial arts forms that had been handed down from generation to generation of the East Heaven bloodline.
Tired already? She mentally scolded herself as she stopped, breathing heavily. Usually it would take her three or four hours of the intensive exercises before she’d begin to even feel fatigue. But she had been doing only the basic forms for the past hour and a half—maybe she wasn’t as fully healed as she thought she was. Which was very strange, as she usually healed wounds faster than most people do, and she found it really perplexing—her magic had definitely gotten stronger over the years but recently she felt even her psychic abilities degrading somewhat, and physical injuries technically had nothing to do with magickal prowess…
Deciding to try her magic out again, she chose a small bush beside the dormitory walls, and focused on the air right above it. After several seconds of intense concentration, a gray mist started to collect above the bush. After several seconds more, the mist had turned into a rain cloud, copiously watering the plant before dissipating completely.
Mint smiled. So, she could still do it, and better this time too. She was able to cast the spell stronger and faster, and without exhausting herself in the process.
Self-taught magic—what’s wrong with self-taught magic? The power was her destiny. It was what made her who she was.
She sniffed irritably, remembering the long lectures that Grandpa East Heaven would give her every time he would catch her doing something as insignificant as lighting a candle or casting a small rain shower to annoy his pet hamster. Even her own mother before she died had forbidden her from using the magick, and Maya too—which was one of several reasons why she never got along keenly with her sister, the jealous brat!—but of course she never listened to any of them. The magick was a gift, and she knew she was one of the more gifted scions of the East Heaven bloodline (she had overheard her teachers talking about her once), and quite possibly the strongest born with the gift in the past twenty generations. It was the gift that gave her the ability to cast simple spells—fire, water, wind and lighting-based, plus psychic shields were among those she had discovered so far, whenever she’d test her powers unbeknownst to her elders, but she can only cast the small spells as her magick still wasn’t that strong—as well as some sort of limited danger sense. And there was her favorite: levitation.
But such strong inborn magick was a like double-edged sword, both a great blessing and a terrible curse. If there was one thing she remembered from her history lessons, it was that (especially in times of war) it wasn’t uncommon for an East Heaven mage to sometimes use too much of the power, literally draining herself of the Life Force to cast one final spell, and winding up irrevocably dead afterwards. Almost all of the stronger East Heaven scions in the past three millennia—those born with uncanny strength of magick that they can cast spells without the use of psyche-enhancing items such as the Cosmo-Penalty—had died that way.
The training was supposed to be a form of safeguard against this—to instill in the child a sense of discipline in casting spells, as well as increasing stamina. Maya never had to undergo the training that Mint did as the former wasn’t deemed as gifted in the magickal arts, which meant that she had a lot of free time to romp around the kingdom while her older sister was stuck in rigid lessons with her tutors. But instead of having fun as was Mint’s wont, Maya was always in the castle library with her nose in fairy tale books and other nerdy stuff—and medicine and herbology when she grew a little bit older—which was rather weird on hindsight, Mint always thought. Another reason why she never really liked her sister much.
It had been four years since Mint had a tutor to tell her off for not doing her morning exercises. But in those same four years, she discovered that the training did help increase her abilities, not to mention increasing the power of her notorious killer jump-kick among others, and so she continued doing them in spite of it being against her nature to follow rules. The benefits far outweighed the (slight) stain in her reputation, not that anybody would dare mention it of course.
One other thing that she must always remember, what with the world-wide fiasco of the three telekinetics (one of them happenstance being also pyrokinetic) running amok in the United Nations congress in 2015, and the generation-tried-and-tested adverse reaction of the ‘normal’ people to those born with ‘supernatural’ powers, she had to keep her abilities exceedingly secret outside the confining boundaries of the isolated kingdom of East Heaven.
Admittedly, the world continued to change, and people were more open-minded nowadays. More of those born with the magick (and not just the descendants of East Heaven) have emerged in recent times, and they were starting to become accepted in the circles of normal society, rather than being branded as freaks and mutants as they had been during the Dark Ages of Europe and even up ’til the recent 1900s. The Orient had always been more lenient to those with the power, especially in the areas of Mongolia and Tibet—the Chinese call it chi, the Japanese ki, and the Hindu call it prana—and in fact the monks of Shaolin had mastered several disciplines involving its use.
Still, for Mint Vanguard, it was better safe than sorry. But she was alone in the garden now, it was only a quarter past six in the morning and the sun was only then beginning to rise (the Christmas holidays and winter solstice were fast approaching). She had opportunity yet for another spell.
Let’s try fire this time. A dry leaf would suffice—she didn’t want to test herself too much. She picked up one and concentrated on setting it aflame. It lit up quickly enough. Two seconds, good.
Deciding she had enough of a workout today, she went back into the dorm to get ready for school.
Monday, first period, chemistry class, and for once she was early. But, no surprise, Mr. Punctual Doll-Boy Class Rep was still earlier. She rolled her eyes. Like I care.
Suddenly, she scowled as she looked at him. Rue was usually quiet, but not usually this quiet. [Expletive], he’s thinking about that fake Claire again. She had tolerated it (barely) for the entirety of the past week, and frankly, she was starting to get really annoyed at his misguided self-imposed guilt. She stomped over to where he sat and loudly dropped her duffel onto her seat beside his.
She forcibly pulled his cap down over his face.
“Ow ow, Mint, wha—?!” She raised one hand irritably to stop his protests.
“No, no, no, don’t tell me, let me guess—you still can’t stop thinking about her. Claire, your beautiful kind and caring girlfriend, and how she had oh-so-mysteriously disappeared one night so long ago. And now she had suddenly appeared as a ghost, had tried to lure you into some sort of trap, and when you found out she was fake thanks to my help, you went berserk and got me hurt in the process. You’re worried that they have the real Claire in custody, that they might be doing strange experiments on her like the genetic-testing/engineering-whatsis that you read about in the sci-fi thriller novels, or maybe they had gone and inserted her into one of those creepy life capsules, and that there’s nothing you could do about it because you’re stuck here, in class, with no clues and no leads on what to do or where to go next.”
She had said all that animatedly and in a single breath. Rue looked up quizzically, his dark eyes gazing silently back at her. That only got her even more annoyed. “Get over it. Brooding about it isn’t going to help anyone, least of all her.”
“Mint, I can’t just…” But the red-haired girl stomped her foot.
“Oh, if you’re going to be so dead-set about it, why don’t you march over again to Principal Klaus and have him try to knock some sense into you?” She glanced briefly at her wristwatch. “You have fifteen minutes. Twenty, if Belle is gonna be late again today.”
Sighing, Rue stood up. “You’re right. I’ll see you later then.” Without another word, he walked out of the classroom.
Mint just stared at his back as he disappeared into the corridor. “I was kidding. World-class idiot.”
Rue had always known that he had trouble hiding his thoughts, especially whenever he started brooding about something, but was he really that obvious? Mint’s long monologue had hit a nerve—had hit a nerve real sore—and he couldn’t help but wonder. It was as if she had literally read his mind.
He knocked twice on the door to the principal’s office before letting himself in.
“Ah, Rue.” Klaus looked up from his morning newspaper. “Good news—they’ve decided that the teams going to Gamul this year are badminton and kendo. But I suppose that’s not the reason you came to see me so suddenly?”
“I’m sorry for intruding on you, professor,” Rue walked a few steps closer to Klaus’s desk. “I was just wondering if you’ve found anything more about the fake Claire incident last week.”
“Still worried about it, eh?” Klaus raised one eyebrow at him. “No, neither I nor the police have found anything new on the life capsules. However, I managed to get new data on the original box we procured from Elroy’s library—the one you found over a year ago—and it seems that there’s a link between our favorite late magician and the abandoned amusement park several towns away. Have you ever heard about the Ghost Temple?”
“But that place shut down years ago.”
“Right, it was exactly the same year that Elroy died. Coincidence?” Klaus smiled knowingly. “Feel like going there sometime? It’s not too far from Gamul.”
“Sure. But to tell you the truth, I was actually hoping that our team was not going to get chosen for Gamul this year. They moved the Junon national tournament a few months early.”
“And I suppose Mint isn’t going to like it that her team wasn’t chosen. It was very close, though.” Klaus’s eyes were twinkling as he looked at the boy over his glasses. “By the way, Mint’s angry at you again, isn’t she?”
The other nodded. “I still couldn’t figure out how she knew that night that I was with a fake Claire…”
Klaus merely shrugged. “I don’t know either.” He went back to reading his newspaper. Rue turned to leave, but before he got far Klaus said, “Oh, and Rue, did you tell Mint about the data we found in the life capsules?”
Rue hand stopped on its way to the doorknob. “No, I didn’t think it was—”
“Good. Don’t mention it to her as you’ll only worry her needlessly. Also, I wouldn’t brood too much about that Pseudo-Claire incident either. We’re doing our best to find the real Claire, and I’m certain something will turn up soon.”
Rue frowned thoughtfully. After some time he nodded in understanding, and then promptly went back to his class.
The announcement of the individual teams going to the Gamul games was posted Tuesday morning. Of course, people in the gymnastics club weren’t happy about this development. And it turned out that the people in the kendo club shared Rue’s opinion and weren’t happy about it either.
But Rue didn’t know about the latter until Neil approached him about it two days later. It was Thursday afternoon after shop class, the teacher had already left and only a few others who had not yet finished their seatwork for the day remained in the workshop. Mint and Annette were gone as well, the former having gym practice while Annette had a school fair committee meeting to attend to.
Neil began, “You know, we don’t really need to go the Gamul games. Our team is prestigious enough without having to go there every year. Besides, the time would be better spent in training for the national tournament in Junon City.”
“Tell me about it,” Rue replied, not looking up from his work.
“Captain Davis was the one who brought it up. He said he’s leaving the decision to you, being our ‘most capable fighter’ (for the moment—but I’m going to beat you one day, hah!), and everyone else agrees. It’s alright if you want to give our spot in the Gamul games to, say… the gymnastics club. They were next in line to be chosen anyway, and the entire team knows about your sentiments.”
Rue suddenly turned to stare blankly at him.
“Don’t give me that look,” Neil grabbed a piece of paper lying partially hidden underneath Rue’s thick volume of discrete mathematics. “Don’t tell me this doesn’t mean anything?”
It was a design of an extra project Rue was making for shop class. “Umm… Claire never had any sort of jewelry, and I know she’d be happy to receive even just a pair…”
“Claire is also into video games?” The earrings were in the shape of the Nightmare Altar logo.
Rue colored, ever so slightly. “Okay, you got me,” he admitted. “I noticed she has pierced ears, but she doesn’t have any earrings. I’m hoping to finish it by Christmas so I can give it to her at the school fair.” He grabbed the paper from Neil’s hands and looked over it again. “The design seems a bit too fancy for her, though…”
Neil laughed softly. “Knew it. Annette was right, and it was a good thing she warned me not to go with you guys to Elroy’s library that time…”
Rue frowned at Neil’s words, and realization was slow in coming. “You mean, Coach Mira did ask you…? And you and Annette set us up?!” The other nodded, breaking into a grin.
“It was bound to happen,” Neil commented off-hand. “I mean, a tough chick like her and a playboy like you-”
“I AM NOT A PLAYBOY!!” Rue, his face very flushed now, abruptly stood and banged his fists loudly against the table. Quickly grabbing his violin case, he brandished it and chased after a madly laughing Neil out into the corridor.
Neither of them noticed the shocked stares of the petrified people that remained in the classroom.
“Wait, wait, stop Rue!” Neil stopped short in the middle of the corridor, and turned abruptly to his no-longer blushing yet still livid classmate. “Principal’s office,” he pointed at the nearest door. “Why don’t we tell him about it now?”
Rue reluctantly lowered the black violin case, and then nodded. He and Neil proceeded to talk to Professor Klaus about the kendo team giving up their spot in the Gamul games. Professor Klaus agreed, as Rue and Neil managed to be pretty convincing.
By the next morning, the word was out—Gymnastics was going instead of Kendo. And it turned out that people in the gymnastics club were not exactly happy about this development either.
Friday afternoon after club practices. Mint and Tonia, the former carrying her twin metal rings, paid an unexpected visit to the kendo team. Tonia talked to Captain Davis first. After a short conversation, turning to Mint she inclined her head towards Neil and his best friend. The two girls then approached the other two who were still doing extra drills after the usual kendo practice.
“Rue, you [exple—!”
“I’ll handle this,” Tonia interrupted the redhead. Rue and Neil immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to the girls. “Rue, it’s about the placement of teams for the Gamul games. We’ve heard that it was you who requested Principal Klaus to give your team’s spot to the gymnastics club instead.”
Rue nodded. “That’s right. It’s better for both teams—we could take more time to train for the Junon tournament which is more important to us than the Gamul competition, and I know you guys had been trying for that spot since the school year started. And your team is right next in line for it anyway. Kendo beat you guys by only half a point, I think.”
“Uh, well, that’s not exactly what we’ve been hearing from the grapevine. You’ve had your experiences with raging teenage hormones I’m sure, and you know how quickly rumors in Carona tend to spread, especially if they’re about you…”
Mint coughed sideways, muttering under her breath, “I-am-not-a-playboy-yeah-right.”
Tonia continued, “Mint got hit twice this lunchtime alone by (somewhat) cruel practical jokes, and even Annette and I have gotten our share of flame email,” she shrugged. “To put it bluntly, practically everyone is saying that the only reason Gymnastics is going instead of Kendo is because you, Rue Kincaid, has a certain interest in the gymnastics team captain.”
Rue started at this. “T-that’s not true!”
“We know,” Tonia affirmed. “But they don’t.”
“And besides,” Mint added, her voice oddly quiet. “I don’t take charity. Freebies yes, but not charity. Especially not like this.” She was absently twirling one ring. And then, turning her gaze straight into the dark wide-set eyes, she slowly, deliberately raised both Dual Haloes up in a battle stance.
“I challenge you, Rue. I’ll fight you for the spot in the Gamul games.”
Rue stepped backwards involuntarily. “Wha-at?! B-but gymnastics is a performance sport…”
“Not the way Mint ‘performs’ it,” Tonia was actually smiling. It seemed like the gymnastics team manager (and probably the gymnastics coach as well) was all for the idea of having the team representatives fight it out for the slot in the Gamul games. “Captain Davis agrees. Point system, and you’ll be the scorekeeper, Neil?”
Neil nodded. “One point for each time your weapon touches any part of the chest, back, head, thigh and upper arm regions of your opponent. Six points for disarmament. Fifteen minutes for the entire match. Since our combatants use two different fighting styles, anything else goes.”
“Let’s get it on, then.” Mint was all set with her Dual Haloes. Everyone else in the room had moved to the sides, clearing a place for the combatants and eager to watch what promised to be a very unusual battle. Reluctantly, Rue took his position near the center of the training hall mats.
Mint noticed something, “Wait.” She was eyeing his weapon, only once glancing pointedly at the black violin case that leaned against the far wall. But Rue shook his head.
“Not in school.” And never against you.
“Fine, then.” Mint lowered her Haloes. She promptly stomped over to her duffel, carefully laid her rings on the floor, and took out a pair of batons.
Rue watched her as she did so. “Mint, what…?”
“If you’re not using your best weapon then neither am I.” She stepped back to her place on the mats opposite him. Her next words were spoken with an air of command. “Ready!”
With a cue nod from Captain Davis, Neil raised one hand. Everyone turned silent. “Time starts, now.”
Their weapons were up, and Rue was expecting her to make the first attack. But no, Mint chose to wait. She would let him lead the pace.
Rue realized this quickly enough, and the clock was ticking. With his boken held directly in front of himself, he rushed towards her. She jumped to the side, ducked his second swing, struck and hit his right thigh. First point to the gymnastics team.
She couldn’t help but smirk at her opponent as it dawned on him that she could anticipate his movements. It promised to be an interesting match.
Very few people were at the arcade late that sunny afternoon, and Rod Bladestar was one of them. Not much of a surprise, considering that he owned the place. He was sitting at one of the side coffee tables, looking over the rows of machines that he called his living. But the video games weren’t his true passion. At heart he was a still a blacksmith, a weapon maker and guild master. In fact, at the back of his place he had a small workshop where he still made short swords and hunting knives, and every so often he would sell the odd piece at the bladed weapons store downtown.
Rod Blade Star was a man of heart. He had been in Carona for six years now, and he had seen many faces come and gone. And although he remembered only a few people, they were those who had truly touched him in such a way that they deserved his remembrance.
Lucine was a woman who had heart. Raven-haired, beautiful and serene, she was the best mechatronics wizard in their hometown, always jealously guarded by her younger sibling who tried to emulate everything that the older sister did. He had been searching for her ever since she completely and mysteriously disappeared these eight years past.
Come to think of it, Lucine’s younger sibling had heart too, and along with a companion was the first to come gunning after the white-haired man who took Lucine away. Offhand, he wondered if they ever had better luck than he did. His search for Lucine had led him to a dead end in Carona. He found no other choice but to settle down in the meantime, and to call a temporary halt to his quest to find his beloved. He didn’t have anything then, so he made weapons from metal ores he scavenged himself, worked odd jobs and stayed in a meager one-room apartment in the seedier area of town. He only managed to set up his arcade after meticulously saving for two years.
In Carona was where he met Mint for the first time, when she first entered his arcade sixteen months ago. Mint was a girl who definitely had heart, and she looked so much like Lucine to boot. He wondered sometimes if they were actually related by blood, for the wine-red colored eyes of both women seemed to be too much of a coincidence.
He had often seen Mint playing the video games, but it took an entire year before he finally got the inkling to actually walk over and talk to her. That afternoon when he did turned out to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Never had he met a girl with such a passion for life as Mint has. Everything the redhead did she did wholeheartedly, she was determined to always be the best, no excuses, and when she fought she fought with every single fiber of her being. If that wasn’t heart, then he didn’t know what heart was.
They had taken quickly to each other—at first it was just the video games, but later on Rod started to play a more important part in the younger girl’s life. She looked up to him as a close friend and an older brother, had called him on the phone every so often, and sometimes they’d even go out to lunch or dinner together (his treat, of course).
He had long known that she loved gallivanting in the Carona ruins, often alone, and once he had invited her to traverse some of the underground ruins with him—to go ‘treasure hunting’ like he used to do frequently when he had first come to the town. Mint accepted readily, and during the trip he had taught her to identify certain minerals and metal ores as Lucine had once taught him. Carona was rich in a certain type of rare earth metal that can be melted for forging or sold at an assessor at a negotiable price, and of course Mint was always eager at the mention of treasure. That trip was only the first time, and they were to go treasure hunting twice more in the past few months alone.
During the latest treasure hunt, Mint mentioned that she had seen a richer type of ore somewhere else before.
“What makes you think I’d tell you?!” she had joked when he asked her about it, but in the end she told him anyway. She had seen the purer ores during the time she went with Rue to the Underground Tunnels.
Rue. The white-haired boy had heart too, and he couldn’t help but be slightly jealous whenever Mint mentioned their adventures together. But he knew that such feelings were pointless and unfounded.
He turned his thoughts back to the present. Mint was probably still mad at him for acting weirdly towards her last week in an uncalled-for fit of nostalgia about Lucine.
There was only one customer to be seen in the shop that day. No one else seemed to be in the arcade, so he walked over to the young boy. “Mind if I play against you?”
The boy turned towards him, surprised. “Wow, the Blade Star is challenging me!” He was gaping at the older man.
Rod wasn’t used to such unashamed regard, and he found himself thinking that Mint would have said something along the lines of ‘Prepare yourself for a major face-flop, you [expletive]!’ But it was the boy who stood before him now. “So, shall we?”
The boy shook his head. “No, I don’t think I’ll stand a chance against your greatness. Where’s the redhead you usually play against? She was here yesterday, and I don’t think I’m even at her level… oh, she’s better than you in some games, isn’t she?”
He had seen her yesterday, too, but he didn’t quite have the courage to talk to just her yet. Maybe today he could, to apologize at least. That is, if she passes by his place later, for somehow he didn’t think he could call her over the phone about it.
“You’ll never know if you can beat me if you don’t try,” Rod tried to persuade him, but the boy was adamant about it. Rod shrugged. He looked around the arcade and noticed that it was unusually empty. “Say, where is everybody?”
“At a live concert—Replica is performing at the Starlight Mall tonight. It was their grand opening this Wednesday.” He glanced briefly at his watch. “I’m going there. I don’t think anyone else is coming to the arcade today, so you can close shop early. Want to watch too? The concert’s free.”
“Nah. I don’t go much for concerts.” Besides, she might decide to pass by today. There was a certain ponytailed redhead who had ways of turning up when she was least expected.
“I guess I’m going now. Bye!” With a slight wave, the boy exited the shop.
In the meantime, I think I’ll go wash my car. He’d be leaving the shop temporarily unattended, but Johnny Wolf would surely come barking if Mint ever entered the arcade anyway.
Rue didn’t like to talk during a fight, preferring to concentrate on moving and watching his opponent. And although she could be more vocal depending on who the enemy was, Mint actually shared Rue’s sentiments. It was pretty obvious that Mint was the faster of the two, sleek and quick in her attacks. But Rue made up for it in strength and grace, and he held his ground solidly.
Mint knew the kendo forms. She had learned much with Neil’s help. She could predict Rue’s movements. And she could use this knowledge to her advantage.
White, Green. There were six colors in the Carona High kendo tradition, each of them with their corresponding forms. Rue attacked, and she dodged every blow, now and then managing to strike through the gaps in his defense.
Yellow Lightning.
They were evenly matched. He couldn’t make any headway with her, and the only reason she had hit him several times already was because she had prior knowledge of his movements. Their moved as if synchronized, as if they were dancing to silent music.
Black, Gravitation.
At this point, it was practically second nature to both of them. He would attack, she would block and take her turn. She knew his every move. Although she only needed to learn one color, Mint had learned all the kendo forms from Neil.
Phoenix Tail.
The Red and the Blue were supposedly the most powerful. Rue used the blue forms more often than he did the others, usually as his finishing strikes. It was the blue forms that Mint had chosen to use as well.
He was using Red now. She blocked, sidestepped and hit him again. She knew he will switch to Blue next.
The Scales.
She was ready. He stepped forward once, swinging his sword in a downward arc before bringing it up sideways. She dodged and struck, her eyes keen on the wooden blade and counting silently all the while. There. She saw the telltale sign that he was starting on the seventh form.
For a split-second she froze—the music stops with the seventh form!
And in her single moment of hesitation, Rue attacked. He hit her left arm, she moved—too late!—to block with her right, and he twisted his sword as their weapons connected. No! The baton flew out of her hands to land several meters behind Rue. He gave no pause and quickly struck again.
Mint’s instincts took over. She dodged by somersaulting over his head, landing neatly with her back towards him. Both hands firmly on her remaining baton, she twirled, aiming sideways at his chest for one final blow.
“Time,” Neil’s voice called from the stands.
Mint’s weapon halted in mid-swipe. But it wasn’t the time over that made her stop so suddenly.
The edge of Rue’s sword was pressed lightly against the top of her forehead.
Rue immediately lowered his weapon. He turned towards the side stands and asked, “Score?” Neil handed the score sheet to Captain Davis for verification. After looking it over twice, the upperclassman nodded and handed the paper back to Neil.
“Sorry, Rue. Even with the points added to your score for disarmament… Mint wins by four points. Congratulations.” He grinned at the red-haired girl, and the entire room broke into applause. “The gymnastics club goes to Gamul!”
Mint sniffed, flipping her hair haughtily. “Of course. Dare you expect anything else?!”
The words were proud, but inwardly she was shaking. Could it be that… no, she pushed the thought away, being careful to keep her face impassive. She picked up her other baton before walking over to the side stands where her duffel lay. And for the first time that year, she found herself mobbed with enthusiastic people bent on congratulating her and patting her on the back.
“That was so great!” “Awesome fight, Vanguard!” “That has got to be the most spectacular match in the history of the kendo club!”
“Wow, Mint, that was so so so cool!! If only you had seen yourselves… It was as if you could read each other’s minds! I’ve never seen anything like it before!”
“Thanks, Marco,” she smiled at the younger boy’s compliment. She grabbed her rings and her duffel and turned to leave, ignoring the rest of the crowd. Tonia frowned.
“Is something wrong, Mint?” Tonia grabbed her by the wrist, but Mint instantly pulled away.
“What makes you say that? Oh, and tell Annette that I’ll just call her about our plans.” She smiled again. “We’re going shopping for a costume on Sunday. Well, see you!” and with brisk steps she started to walk away.
“Wait, Mint!” Rue called suddenly from the other end of the room, but Mint no longer heard him. She made her way outside the gym, keeping her eyes downcast. She could barely see where she was going, but she didn’t care. I won, didn’t I? I won, I won, I won.
So, why the hell am I blinking back tears?!
She was already halfway across the schoolyards when he caught up to her. “Mint, wait up!”
She purposely ignored him. Leave me alone, you [expletive]! I don’t want to be with you today!
“Hey, today’s Friday, and I thought I owed you an ice cream soda…?”
Suddenly she couldn’t take it anymore. She broke into a run, leaving an astonished Rue behind. He watched confused as the girl with the sunset red hair disappeared from sight when she turned the street corner, but he made no further attempt to follow.
Mint did pass by the BladeStar arcade that afternoon. When Rod came back inside, she was at the Nightmare Altar machine, playing the game as if her life depended on it. He watched her from a distance, at the haphazard, careless and almost frustrated way she kept mashing the machine’s buttons, and noticed that she was already at her fifth game. Strange, he didn’t remember hearing Johnny Wolf barking at the girl’s arrival. His pet doggie must’ve romped off outside again…
He almost started when he realized that Johnny Wolf was standing right there beside Mint, and that the dog was oddly keeping silent.
What do I tell her? She seemed very distracted, and he knew it was the wrong time to apologize about last week’s incident. Gritting his teeth, he walked over beside the girl. “Mind if I challenge you?”
She sniffed. “Huh. Prepare yourself for major face-flopping, [expletive]. What took you so long, anyway?!”
Rod quietly sighed in relief. He took it as a sign that she had somehow forgiven him already. “Let’s get it on, then.”
Suffice to say that she beat him again. Twice at Nightmare Altar (but losing once). And then five times at Bonk-a-Bloop™ (but not losing at all).
“Hah! Of course I’d win. I’ve never lost to you yet (without saving face on the next match)!” She smiled cockily.
Rod kept his expression impassive, but he was frowning inwardly. The thought kept nagging at him-there was something different with Mint today. He saw it in her poise, the way she moved, the tone of her voice, her words. But for the life of him he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Mint grabbed her duffel. “Well, I’ll be seeing you, Rod.”
It was unlike her to be leaving this early, especially on a Friday. “Going home yet?” he asked, but somehow he already knew she wasn’t.
She shook her head. “I think I want to visit some ruins today. You know, watch the sunset.”
“Treasure hunting?” Rod always went with her on treasure hunts. In fact, he was the one who usually invited her before.
She was already halfway outside. “Nope.”
“I’m coming anyway.” He practically ran after the girl, locking the doors to the now empty BladeStar Arcade on his way out. Johnny Wolf could take care of the place while they were gone.
Mint pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I guess I won’t mind it too much if you’ll drive me.”
“Sorry, but my car’s currently down for maintenance. We can take a cab, though.”
“Only if you’re paying.” She clasped her hands behind her back, looking both ways before she crossed the street and walked towards a small waiting shed. She grinned wickedly. “I want to ride a Fancy Taxi.”
“What?! Mint, you’re going to bankrupt me one of these days…!”
Hands on hips, she pouted angrily at him. “Hey, you’re the one who said you wanted to go with me! And I haven’t quite forgiven you for going mushy on me last Friday. It’s the least you can do, you [expletive].”
He winced. So, she did remember the incident last week. Rod saw no other choice but to consent. “Fine. But just this once!”
The Tower of Eternal Sun was but one of the many famous ruins that were scattered across Carona. The white stone glittered orange in the dusk.
They climbed down the taxi after Rod paid the fare (and almost went completely broke). “Why here?” he asked. Mint just shrugged.
“This Winding Tower has many legends. My favorite is about the owl and the fish…” she laughed casually. “But the legend that made this tower so popular to the tourists was that if two people climb it and make a wish together, their wish would surely come true.”
Rod raised an eyebrow quizzically. Are you asking me to climb it with you?
His expression didn’t pass the girl by, and she rolled her eyes irritably at him. “I don’t care about the legends! But I’ve always wanted to climb this ruin, ever since I came to Carona, and now seemed like as good a time as any. Are you coming with me or not?!”
They went inside, Mint boldly leading the way. Faint light filtered through the many windows to dimly illuminate their path, and they were halfway up the spiraling stairs when they came to the broken part of the tower.
The missing steps had left a really big gap. They had no rope, and even if they did, Rod could see no place to tie it. “I guess this is as far as we go.”
“I can make it.”
“What?!” Before he could move to stop her, she jumped.
Amazingly, she made it. Rod watched her openmouthed, and he could have sworn that she flew at least partway over the chasm. She landed neatly on the other side, and then turned and reached out one hand towards him. “Your turn.”
“No way!!” The chasm was a full ten meters wide.
“Come on, O Rod the Blade Star. I promise you’ll make it.” If you can’t, I can catch you with my magic. You’ve got to trust me. Show me the heart you’re always talking about.
But Rod merely stood, sighed, and didn’t even try. It was just too wide, and he knew that he simply couldn’t do it. “I’ll never make it across.”
Mint bit her lip. Why, Rod? Why won’t you trust me? But she couldn’t blame him. No normal human being could conceivably cross the chasm unaided. Although they were close as friends, Rod remained unaware of her heritage. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t trust her in this.
She didn’t feel like going up alone and leaving him right then, so instead she jumped over the chasm and back onto the lower stairs. “I guess I’m fine watching the sunset from here.” She walked to the nearest window, smiling once at her companion.
It was only then that he finally noticed what seemed out of place. There was something very wrong with the way she smiled.
“Mint… what happened?”
The smile disappeared, and the calm expression faded like a fake mask that was abruptly taken away. It was replaced by a frown, and her look was suddenly full of doubt and uncertainty. “Am I that obvious?”
“Not at all,” he assured her. Rod knew Mint better than anyone else did-at least, he liked to think so. He stepped closer towards her, and she leaned against him, turning slightly so she could hug him about the waist.
Her whisper was barely audible. “The points were only a technicality. I lost to him today.” Her voice was breaking, and she buried her face onto his clothing. Hesitantly, Rod placed an arm comfortingly about her shoulders.
“Hey, it’s okay, princess. Whatever it is, you’ve never failed yet, haven’t you?” She didn’t answer him. He patted her head affectionately. It was some time before Rod spoke again. “Mint, I know that this may not be the right time, but… I don’t think I’ll ever have another chance like this. Mint, I… I think I like you.”
Still she said nothing. After a lengthy silence, she straightened. Brushing his arm off her shoulders, she turned to smile sweetly at him. “Of course you do, Rod. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
She stepped away from him then. Once more, she took a running jump and deftly leapt over the chasm. Without looking back, she told him, “I’m going up. Don’t wait for me.” She started to climb, disappearing from view as the staircase wound up and up.
But Rod had every intention of waiting. He turned his gaze out the window towards the sunset. The crimsons and oranges of the sky at dusk were exceptionally beautiful when seen from the Tower of Eternal Sun.
The sky turned dark as the evening shadows lengthened, but Mint didn’t come. Rod sat down on the stone steps, preparing to wait all night if need be.
She still didn’t come.
The sun was beginning to rise the next day when he realized that she truly wasn’t coming down while he waited there for her. Slowly, reluctantly, and only once glancing up at the broken stairs of the Winding Tower, he made his way back to Carona alone.
Quick Links:
Prev |
Next |
Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Glossary |
Bloopers |
Chapter 06: Klaus at the Lake Ruins
Chapter 07: Chocolate at Fancy Mel’s
Chapter 08: The New Chemistry Teacher
Chapter 09: Just a Stint in Her World Domination Plans
Chapter 10: To Follow the Phantasm
Chapter 11: Prima
Chapter 12: Chasing the Rainbow
Date of Birth: 14 01 2011
Blood Type: B-
Chroma Check: normal
Strain: original, active
System Status: ok
A.S. System: disabled
Chapter 13: One Move Forward, the Other Step Back
Chapter 14: Sunset Red