A Most Unlikely Hero, Vol 3, page 9
“A blue aura…” Al-lāt paused. “Not a red one?”
Manāf shook his head. “I didn’t see one.”
“Hmm…”
Manāf didn’t say anything while his sister contemplated the information that he had given her. Because their planet was so far removed from most of the galaxy, news reached them more slowly. They did not know much about other species beyond those few who they’d observed. Of the many races that they knew, only one could produce an aura and use it as a weapon.
Angelisians.
Angelisians had many powers at their disposal. Their aura could do a lot. From the studying he had done, Manāf knew their powers could produce weapons, be blasted from their hands as energy cannons, and even destroy entire planets. King Lucifer, the reigning monarch and Emperor of the Galaxy, was said to be so powerful that he could destroy a planet with nothing but his aura.
There was even evidence to back all of this up. Ten years ago, when a young noble from another planet had insulted King Lucifer, that person had been forced to watch as his entire planet was obliterated by King Lucifer’s incredibly destructive power. The entire event had been broadcast to almost every planet in the galaxy. It was a warning of what would happen should someone decide to go against his regime.
“I will go and face this Alexander myself,” Al-lāt decided.
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
Manāf didn’t want to question his sister’s choice, but she wasn’t a puppeteer. She had no talent for it. While she did have abilities that no Jāhilīyahn had ever possessed, that didn’t mean she could effectively use them in a fight.
“You need not worry, Brother,” Al-lāt said, standing up and turning to face him. “I do not plan on fighting him head on, nor do I plan on fighting him while he’s near the princess. I will force him to take me on alone, and I will make sure that I hold all of the advantages.”
Manāf stared at his sister’s back in awe. Her resolve shone through more brilliantly than it ever had before. Slowly, unable to mask the reverence he felt, he nodded.
If anyone could defeat that strange man, it would be his sister.
Alexander S. Ryker wouldn’t know what hit him.
CHAPTER 3
AN UNANNOUNCED VISITOR
It was Monday morning, and Jasmine was waiting in her usual spot for Alexander to arrive. Standing in front of the gates to Atreyu Academy, she held her book bag in her hands, fidgeting while she waited.
Students passed her by. They looked at her as they walked into the school campus, but none of them said anything. This was a daily occurrence, so they were probably used to it by now, she reasoned. Of course, even if they were used to it, Jasmine was sure that all of the boys were taken by her inhuman beauty. What other reason could they have to stare?
The Queen of Beauty attracts boys like moths to a flame.
She raised her IDband. A holographic image of a clock appeared over it. Alex was late.
Had it been anyone else, she would have been upset at being forced to wait for so long, but this wasn’t just anyone. The person that she was waiting for was Alexander. Yes, it was the boy who had stolen her heart.
Jameson, her older brother, couldn’t understand why she loved Alexander so much. That was fine. No one needed to know the truth aside from those who were involved. Not even Alice knew the truth, though that was more because her friend had simply never asked. Really, it was like the girl didn’t even care!
Not fifteen minutes after Jasmine had arrived did Alice stroll down the street toward her, looking for all the world like her perpetually bored self. Her long brown hair framed her face in slightly messy strands, partially hiding half-lidded brown eyes that took in the world with astounding laziness.
Jasmine smiled and was about to greet her friend—when she noticed that something was missing. Rather, someone was missing. Two someones, in fact.
“Alice,” Jasmine started, still looking around. “Where is Alexander? I do not see him.”
“Your best friend shows up, and the first thing you do is ask about her older brother?” Alice raised an eyebrow. “Do you know how troublesome you’re being right now?”
Jasmine composed herself as she realized that, indeed, she was being very rude. “M-my apologies, Alice. I was just so surprised. Alexander has been walking you to school every day for the past two weeks. I thought he would have been doing so again this week.”
Two weeks ago, Alexander had been expelled from the Mars Police Academy. Such an incident was nothing short of tragic, and Jasmine truly felt bad for Alexander. To have worked so hard, only for his goals to be ripped from his grasp, must have been incredibly frustrating.
It almost made her feel guilty for enjoying how she got to see him every day thanks to that.
“You always did care more about Bro than me.”
“O-oh ho ho ho ho!” Jasmine tried to regain her composure. She placed one hand on her hip and the other she positioned near her mouth. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You are and always will be my best friend. Alexander is…”
“Your knight in shining armor. Yes, yes. You’ve told me that only ten thousand times already. Anyway, Alex isn’t here today. It’s just me.”
Jasmine was disappointed to hear that, but she couldn’t afford to sulk. If she was caught doing something unsightly, then it would spread to the school, and then everyone would find out about her crush on Alexander. While that didn’t bother her, the idea of her parents learning about Alexander did. A number of classmates were nobles as well, and if they told their parents, and their parents told her parents… well, she didn’t want to think about that.
Her parents weren’t the kind of people that she would call caring. When she was younger, she had nannies watch over her while her parents went to functions and spent the rest of their time working. As she got older, the nannies disappeared, and she lived alone with her brother—who was also almost never home himself. Despite how they didn’t care about her, Jasmine knew that her parents wouldn’t approve of her feelings for Alexander.
Nobles were supposed to marry other nobles. While the nobility didn’t hold much power over the solar system’s laws—in theory, at least—it was they who owned most of the money, and therefore, they who determined the fate of several billion individuals’ livelihoods. It was expected for a person of her stature to marry someone of similar status.
Even if she technically didn’t have one hundred percent noble blood.
“Come on, Jasmine,” Alice said. “Class is starting soon.”
Jasmine recovered from her own thoughts. “Oh ho ho ho ho! You are right, Alice. Let us depart for class!”
“I just said that,” Alice sighed.
Classes at Atreyu Academy were divided into six segments. Each segment focused on a different curriculum: History, math, language, science, sociology, and biology. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were dedicated to these classes, while Tuesdays and Thursdays were for elective classes.
Students could choose a total of four electives, and they ranged music to visual arts to sports to specialized classes for developing a career-oriented talent. Jasmine had selected Homemaking and Maid Etiquette as her electives. She didn’t know what Alice’s electives were, but she imagined they were whatever gave her friend the least amount of work.
The first two classes that she and Alice had were math and language. Because they were in the advanced classes meant for people with higher intelligence, their math focused on quantum algebra, while language simply meant reading ancient texts from the early 2000s, in the various languages that preceded what had become commonly known as Basic. Neither of them were difficult classes by any means, but listening to the teachers as they lectured students was boring.
After their first two classes, which each lasted for an hour and a half each, Alice and Jasmine ate lunch in the classroom with their friends.
“Neela, do you still like what’s his face?” Reenie, a vivacious girl with red hair and pink eyes asked.
“You mean Kevin? No, I don’t.”
“That’s good. I found out that he was cheating on you the other day.”
“I know.” Neela, a dark-skinned beauty with smoldering eyes and a viper’s smile, said. “That’s why I dumped him.”
“Oh ho ho ho! I think it’s a good thing that you dumped him,” Jasmine said. “He wasn’t worthy of being with someone as amazing as you. Oh ho ho ho!”
“I agree,” Reenie said.
Jasmine wasn’t as close to Reenie and Neela as she was Alice. Unlike Alice, who’d befriended her days after her crush on Alexander began and treated her as an equal, the other two girls had started off as her groupies. They’d been her “yes girls.” If she wanted something done, all she needed to do was ask them and they’d have done it. After Jasmine had stopped bullying others, they had stopped being her groupies. Now they were just friends.
“Speaking of boys…” Reenie began, grinning at Jasmine. “… how is your quest to claim Alex’s heart?”
Jasmine, who’d been sipping some oolong tea from her thermos cup, suddenly spat out her tea, drenching Alice, who she was sitting across from.
“Did you really have to say that just as she was taking a sip of her drink?” Alice grumbled as she snatched up her napkin and wiped her face. “Now I’ve got her hot and sticky drink all over my face and clothes.”
“Whoops.” Reenie bopped herself on the head. “Sorry about that.”
“Oh ho, oh ho ho!” Jasmine’s laugh was slightly off kilter, and her cheeks felt like they had been lit on fire with a blowtorch. “M-my quest for Alexander’s heart is going, um, well!”
“No, it’s not,” Alice muttered. “My bro still doesn’t even know you like him.”
“T-that’s not important!” a mortified Jasmine shouted. “B-besides, Alexander has acknowledged me as a woman.”
“Saying that you look pretty isn’t the same as acknowledging you as a woman.”
“Why must you always try to put a rain on my parade?!”
“I’m just keeping you grounded in reality.”
“Grr!!”
Jasmine never understood why Alice teased her so much, though she guessed it was because they were friends. She had read that friends teased each other on the holonet once. Truth be told, Jasmine liked it when Alice teased her; it made them feel close. Of course, had she been anyone else, Jasmine would not have been so forgiving.
“So, I found the cutest dress at a small boutique shop the other day,” Reenie was saying as their topic switched gears. “I wanted to try it on, but it was way too expensive for me.”
“How much did it cost?” asked Jasmine curiously.
Boutique clothing stores were quite popular because they sold handmade clothing instead of manufactured clothes. Of course, because they were handmade, they were a lot more expensive. Manufactured goods were cheap since they were easy to produce—clothing especially.
In this day and age, manufactured clothing had become an art form. The process was so streamlined and easy that outfits cost less than a single sheet of paper, which was quite pricey due to the lack of natural resources on Mars. However, because manufactured clothing was, well, manufactured, it also meant that every outfit made lacked originality. Everything down to the number of stitches was the same on every outfit.
That was why handmade clothing was so popular. People wanted individuality over convenience these days, and they were willing to spend thousands of credits to get it.
“It was around ten thousand credits,” Reenie mumbled, looking at the ceiling with a despondent expression like she’d just admitted that the world was ending.
10,000 credits wasn’t a lot of money for someone like Jasmine, but for Reenie, whose parents worked standard seven to five office jobs, it was a hefty sum. Most office workers only made around 70,000 credits a year.
Jasmine thought about lending her friend some money, but she stopped before she could make the offer. If there was one thing that she had learned from spending time with these girls, it was that giving them money was an insult. If they wanted money, they would have asked for it because they knew she was willing to lend them some. What’s more, she would appear condescending if she just handed off money like it was candy.
“Do you really want that dress?” she asked instead.
Reenie frowned and crossed her arms. “Hmm… it’s a nice dress, and I would like it, but I don’t think I’d buy it. There aren’t many occasions for me to wear something like that anyway. It would just end up gathering dust in my closet.”
“Sounds to me like you’d be better of shopping for something more functional,” Neela said. Reenie shrugged as if to say, “you have a point,” and kept eating her lunch.
As lunch wound to a close, Jasmine turned to Alice and asked the question that had been burning within her since that morning. “Alice, where is Alexander, exactly?”
Alice cleaned off her convenience store bought bento and said, “Bro and Gabrielle are spending time at Mars Homespring Resort with our grandfather.”
The world around Jasmine ground to a halt as the words echoed inside of her mind over and over again.
“Bro and Gabrielle are spending time at Mars Homespring Resort with our grandfather.”
“Bro and Gabrielle are spending time at Mars Homespring Resort…”
“Bro and Gabrielle…”
“W-what?!” Jasmine squawked. “You mean to tell me that Alexander not only went off somewhere with that trollop, but that they’re at a resort dome together?!”
“Who is Gabrielle?” asked Neela.
Jasmine wasn’t listening. “That does it! Alice! We’re leaving!”
“Huh?”
Alice wasn’t given another chance to speak as Jasmine grabbed her hand, pulled her out of her seat, and dragged her out of the room. As Jasmine marched them down the hall, Alice finally regained her wits.
“H-hey! Just where do you think you’re taking me?!”
“We’re going to visit your brother. There is no way I, the Queen of Rivalry, can let that trollop be alone with Alexander at a resort dome! Oh ho ho ho!”
“You can’t just decide to visit someone when we’re in the middle of school! And don’t laugh like that when you’re choosing to ditch class!” Alice’s ineffectual screams did nothing to deter the determined Jasmine.
Without giving her friend a backward glance, Jasmine activated a comm unit. “Madison, this is a code red. Have my shuttle prepped for immediate departure.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Madison’s voice came over her comm unit.
Try to steal my man, will you? Jasmine thought darkly. We’ll see about that.
“Oh ho ho ho ho!” Jasmine laughed as, within minutes, she and Alice reached the front gate, where Madison was waiting for them with a limousine. She pushed a reluctant Alice inside, and then entered herself. “Take us to Mars Homespring Resort, Madison, and step on it.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Madison slammed on the gas and accelerated at a pace so quick, Alice was crushed into her seat. Jasmine had no such issues. Perhaps it was anger giving her strength, but she remained where she was, back straight and posture proper as she gave Madison commands like “go faster!” and “floor it!”
“WWHHHYYY MEEEEE?!” Alice’s despairing cry could be heard across the entire outer district.
1
The morning after his battle with the Jāhilīyahn prince’s puppets found Alex bathing in the hot spring at Nicolas’ mansion. His aching body, which was the result of yesterday’s battle, was soothed by the steaming waters. Closing his eyes, Alex sighed contentedly as he sank deeper beneath the surface.
I might not like that blasted old coot, but I have to admit that his hot spring is top notch.
“Alex!”
Before he could get too comfortable, the doors slammed open, and Gabrielle rushed into the hot spring. Alex jerked up, coughing and sputtering from all the water that he’d accidentally inhaled.
“G-Gabrielle?! What are you doing in here?!”
Laughing as she jumped into the hot spring with a big splash, Gabrielle said, “I’m taking a bath with you, of course! What else would I be doing?”
“Don’t say that like that should be obvious!” Alex snapped, his face reddening.
Gabrielle stood up and waded over to him. Her towel wrapped around her torso, but perhaps because it was so small, her breasts were still practically spilling out. The towel also didn’t cover any of her legs. Alex looked down and felt his face spontaneously combust when he realized that he could see almost everything.
G-gotta calm down!
“C-could you please go to the women’s side of the hot spring?” Alex asked, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Women’s side? What are you talking about? There is no women’s side. Nicolas told me that mixed bathing was allowed here since he owns this hot spring.”
Damn that old man! Alex growled.
He wanted to tell her that she needed to be more modest, but considering how many times he’d already told her that, he didn’t think saying it again would make a difference. Gabrielle didn’t understand the concept of modesty. Nudity was not something that bothered her. He blamed her lack of understanding on poor parenting.
“Ah!” Gabrielle sighed in content as she sat down next to him, leaning against the same boulder that he was, their shoulders touching. “Isn’t this nice? It’s so relaxing.”
Maybe it is for you…
“Uh… y-yeah… I guess…” Alex lied. He was anything but relaxed. He felt like a string being pulled taught. Every fiber in his body was screaming at him that this situation was dangerous.
W-what should I do? Should I get out?
Why did Gabrielle insist on doing this? He wished she would listen to him when he talked about modesty and how she shouldn’t just show herself off to him like this. He wished she understood that seeing her like this pushed him to the breaking point. While he loved her innocence, sometimes he felt like she was a little too innocent.
