by Simon Archer
“You bioengineered a cat?” Matt asked from the floor, less than impressed by the talking feline.
“Technically speaking, yes,” the cat answered, “though more appropriately, Inferno here saved my life. I would have died on the streets if not for his streak of kindness. And don’t think I haven’t heard his name whispered in allies and corners before! I know full well who the great Lord Inferno is.”
We collectively stared at the cat as it leapt from my dad’s arms and slinked over to Kara and Kristen, who had sat up on her haunches to get a better look at the talking marvel. The cat himself was plump, though I imagined that was because my dad had cared for him for however long he’d had him. His face, tail, and legs were a deep brown, while the rest of him was sandy in color, and he had bright blue eyes that pierced my soul when our gazes met.
“I have heard of you as well, Nick Gateon,” the cat spoke, “and I know that you are a good fit to be my servant.”
I reeled back. “I’m sorry, your servant?”
“Please don’t make me repeat myself.” The cat sighed. “Now, if we are going to have a working relationship, you shall call me by my name.”
“What is your name?” Kara asked sweetly, clearly unphased that a talking cat had just claimed ownership of me.
“Sweet miss, you may call me King,” the cat bowed his head.
“Nah,” I said with a yawn. I didn’t take orders from a cat.
“Pardon?” King whipped his head back to me.
“I like Buttons,” I replied swiftly.
“Ah, a fine name indeed,” my father agreed, and I found humor in how of all of the things, we finally agreed upon the name of a talking cat that he had bioengineered to save its life and gift to me as a companion.
“I will not be called by such a crude name,” King argued, but I wasn’t going to budge, and I had back-up on this point.
“Buttons is cute though,” Kara reasoned as she picked him up and placed him in her lap. Within seconds of her stroking his spine, the cat purred, and he settled against her torso while glaring at me.
“Fine, if ‘King’ is too much for you, I shall allow you to call me by what you wish.” The cat sighed and closed his eyes, content with the soft ministrations that Kara was giving him.
“It doesn’t bother you that he talks?” Kristen asked her with mild curiosity in her eyes as she watched the two of them.
“Not at all.” Kara shook her head. “I don’t have to guess what he wants, and he’s a pretty good cuddler.”
Matt scoffed, but I thought it was endearing that Kara had warmed up to Buttons already. She had always been good with animals. None of us would deny that.
“So why the present, Dad?” I questioned and leaned against the wall. “I haven’t seen you since you’ve arrived in Valcav, and one day, weeks later, you show up here with a supersmart cat?”
Lord Inferno faltered, then hummed dryly. “I wanted to stay out of your way, Nick. This is your home, your turf. I’m just doing what you asked and trying to keep my head down. I just saw the cat and thought it would be a kind gesture since I know some of your friends went to the Brand to study for the semester.”
That took me aback, and a heavy silence fell over the room. Even Matt, who was usually quick to dismiss whatever my father had to say, seemed perplexed by the sudden confession. I stood upright and cleared my throat. It was suddenly hard to breathe without getting choked up.
“Dad, I appreciate that,” I assured him, “but you don’t have to go out of your way to stay out of mine.” I left it at that. This was getting too personal very quickly. I didn’t really want an audience for my family affairs.
“Right.” Lord Inferno smiled a bit, and it was one of those rare genuine smiles that I remembered from childhood. “Well, I won’t keep you. Enjoy Buttons.”
“Ah, yeah. Thanks, Dad.” I opened the door for him, and he briskly swept down the hall, all but running to get out of there. Maybe he didn’t want people to think we were conspiring, or that he was giving me some kind of special treatment because I was his kid. There were already enough rumors flying around, all ranging from petty to absolutely absurd.
I closed the door and turned back to my friends, who all eyed me with bated breath. I knew they were expecting me to open up and express whatever it was that was welling up in the pit of my stomach, but to be honest, I didn’t know what it was myself. I stood there a moment before I grabbed my coat.
“I need some fresh air,” I mumbled. Thankfully, no one argued or asked to come with me.
“Nick?” Kara’s voice caught me, and I paused with my hand on the door. “Just keep in touch, okay?”
I turned back around and smiled, though it was a bit heavy. “Yeah, I will.”
I’d completely forgone the hover-bus outside the school and opted to walk despite the miserable conditions. I didn’t know where I was going. I let my feet take me where they thought I needed to go. Snow crunched beneath the boots I’d hastily thrown on in my desperation to clear my head.
To say I was upset was a lie. I wasn’t, not really. I was surprised, mostly, maybe even a little flattered that my dad had gone to such great lengths to prove that he was trying to be better for me. Things between us hadn’t been the same since I was rescued from the island by Triton and Amazoness years ago, and it meant the world to me that he was making an honest attempt to atone for that. Or, at the very least, he was doing an okay job trying to win me back over.
Truth be told, it was working. All I could do was hope beyond hope that his intentions were true, and that he wasn’t trying to pull the wool over my eyes with some huge scheme.
No, it was something that Diamond had said that irked me. No one would believe me when I told the truth now that my dad was in Alexandria. Did he think that we would team up and be some wild force to reckon with in the realm of villainy? More importantly, is that what the world thought of this?
I’d only made it a couple of blocks from the Academy when I halted at the sight of Akemi standing at the corner of the intersection in front of me. Her eyes were vastly different than normal. The competitive, aiming-to-please hardness had vanished and was instead replaced with wide-eyed wonder as she stared up at the sky. Snow fell on her cheeks and lashes, and she giggled with a bright grin as a flake landed on her nose.
When she wasn’t sucking up to my dad or me, she was actually really pretty. I don’t think I’d given her a proper once over, even during the World’s Finest. My mind had been elsewhere then. Now that she was on my turf and I knew that I could overpower her if I needed to, it was different.
She turned her head when I approached her, doe-eyed and smitten, then suddenly straightened upright. A look of shame crossed her features, and my heart sank. Did my father reprimand people for enjoying the simplicities of mother nature and life?
“Young Lord,” Akemi greeted quietly and started to bow.
I reached my hand out and caught her shoulder before she could. “I thought I told you to call me Nick?”
“Yes, sorry, Nick.” She straightened herself upright once again and smiled softly, though she looked unsure of herself.
“You don’t see the snow much, do you?” I asked, but I knew the answer. My father’s nation had one season, and that was summer. Oh, it wasn’t that it didn’t snow or rain, rather than the hard fact that his island was built at the base of a volcano and it was unbearably hot there all the time. If it rained, it grew muggy and humid. If it snowed, which wasn’t likely even though it was possible, there was no way it would stick to the ground there like it did in Alexandria.
Akemi shook her head. “No, but I’m sure you know that.”
“So what’s your take on it?” I chuckled. “I personally think it’s a bit of a nuisance, but it’s pretty to look at.”
“I remember seeing it once when Niji and I were little. Our parents had a cottage in Juliten,” she explained.
“Juliten?” I repeated. “That’s quite a ways north of here.”
/> “Lord Inferno, blessed be his name, has a reach that extends long and wide,” Akemi continued, “but I’m sure you know that as well.”
I did, but it still caught me off guard when others really laid it out for me. I always had a hard time believing that he had that kind of power, even when I knew it to be true. I changed the subject as I didn’t want to talk about my father right now.
“Are you finding your way around Alexandria all right?”
At that, Akemi scoffed, and the wonder in her eyes shifted to a playful annoyance. “It’s such a large city! How do you not get lost?”
“Oh, I’ve gotten plenty lost,” I laughed outright at her indignant tone, “but it’s easy to navigate once you get the lay of the land.”
“Why don’t you show me around?” she countered with some unspoken dare in her eyes. I inwardly joked that she was trying to get me alone, and I briefly let my mind linger on that before I pushed it away.
“Sure, if you think that will help,” I replied with a shrug.
Akemi’s lashes fluttered, and a blush coated her pale cheeks. Whether or not it was from shyness or the cold remained to be determined, but it was definitely a sweet look on her. She reminded me of a china doll, porcelain skin and dark hair with rosy cheeks and painted lips, something that should have been on display because of how beautiful she was.
I held my arm out for her, and she looped her around it. I had wanted the space to clear my mind, but maybe this wasn’t a bad idea either. Alexandria was a large city. Showing a pretty acquaintance around, someone outside of my immediate circle of friends, might be a nice change of pace.
Our journey began at the coffee shop across the street from where we met up. I took Akemi by the library, and she divulged to me that she preferred smaller book stores because they smelled better. We passed the movie theater, where Akemi told me that the last time she went to the movies was on a particularly bad date to see some romantic comedy I’d only heard of in passing. The museum caught her eye, but that was because there was a statue of a globe that rotated outside of it. Apparently, she liked spinning things. Noted.
We were a long way away from the Academy before I knew it. To my surprise, when Akemi wasn’t trying to impress anyone or under the scrutiny of her peers, she seemed to be a completely different person. This person, I thought, was nice, friendly, and had way more to her than the fiery ambition my father saw.
As we were getting ready to cross the street, I was halted by a figure standing on the other side, eyeing me hard and tapping her fingers against her arm as she crossed them. Violet eyes and cerulean hair that were all too familiar waited for me on the other side as Akemi and I waited for the signal to tell us when we could safely get to the other side.
The staring, however, didn’t go unnoticed, and Akemi looked between us, puzzled.
“Do you know her or something?” Akemi scrunched her nose and leaned closer to me, hugging my arm protectively.
“Something like that,” I answered hesitantly. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to talk to Margo. After all, she had information about what went down at the bank robbery, and she promised to give it over in exchange for a date.
And therein lied the problem. I was already occupied with someone else. This was going to go over swimmingly, I thought sarcastically.
“You know you have a lot of nerve ditching a girl like that, Nick Gateon,” she called from across the street through the traffic. I winced as people turned their heads towards the accusatory yelling.
“Ooh, you stood her up?” Akemi chuckled and didn’t even so much as try to hide her amusement. “I don’t know why. She’s kinda cute.”
“Akemi, not now,” I groaned, but that only made her laugh harder.
“Nick, don’t you ignore me!” Margo yelled again just as the traffic light changed and she began her march across the street to where Akemi and I were standing. I had the thought to make a break for it and avoid the fallout of something that could be misconstrued by onlookers, but I had a hunch that running would have made matters all the worse.
“Hey, Margo!” I greeted her with the best smile I could muster. “I would have called to reschedule, but you didn’t leave me a number like I asked.”
Margo tsked and booped my nose. “I told you I would come and find you. I did, but you went out of your way to make sure I couldn’t get to you privately, so I sucked it up and told myself ‘Margo Wicker, you’re a fantastic reporter and journalist. You have the power to go get the story and make it a masterpiece.’ Lo and behold, I leave my apartment, and here you are! Of course, you’re with someone, a girlfriend from the Brand, perhaps?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You want info, and I want an exclusive, so let’s get down to business.”
I stared blankly at her for a long moment before I heard Akemi sniggering even harder, so much so that I was certain that I heard her snort quietly into the palm of her hand.
“I’m supposed to meet up with Niji anyway,” she lied. “I’ll, um, leave you to this.” She backed away from my arm, still filled with amusement in her eyes.
“You won’t get lost, will you?” I asked, genuinely concerned.
“If I do, I’ll say my tour guide was kidnapped,” she teased, and I didn’t miss the smug look she leveled on Margo before she jogged across the street, leaving me all to Margo.
“All right.” I sighed, not mentally prepared for whatever verbal torture I was about to endure. “There’s a coffee shop up the street from here that’s small and private. We can talk there.”
“An excellent choice, Nick,” Margo commented.
We fell into step beside one another, and I was thankful for the easy silence that followed. I would relish it before I had to spend the next however long talking about myself. I didn’t mind, except I didn’t want to talk about my dad, which is what I knew Margo wanted from me.
The coffee shop, Java Junction, was a hot spot for the local nerd community, mostly older in age. It was themed after a sci-fi movie, one that was apparently revered as a classic back in the day, but the story was told in fifteen parts, and I did not have the time to dedicate to that. Still, the coffee shop itself was pretty neat, and no one really ever wanted to talk to anyone else, which was good for Margo and me since we had a lot to talk about amongst ourselves. The coffee was on point, too. It was a shame the shop was so far from the Academy. Otherwise, I’d be here all the time.
Maybe it was a good thing that it was so far away.
Margo found us a spot in the back corner, away from most everything save for the counter where one of the baristas looked like he was testing new drink concoctions. I opted to sit with my back to him, just in case he recognized my face, and Margo took the seat next to me. I had expected her to sit across from me, as most interviewers did when questioning another, but I had to say that I didn’t mind the closeness. Her nails were manicured and painted ruby red, something I hadn’t noticed before, and her wavy hair smelled like sweet like berries.
“Before we begin, I want you to know that if you’re uncomfortable at any point, we can stop and take a break,” Margo told me quietly.
“Isn’t that part of your job, though? To make people squirm so they give you the information that you want?” I asked half-jokingly.
Margo smiled and shook her head. “I find that pressuring answers from people doesn’t get you the story you want, just a quick fix until the next one rolls around. I’m not out for a quick hit. I want to tell a real story, with depth and emotion.”
I blinked, surprised at her honesty. “That’s ambitious.”
“I know what I want.” Margo shrugged. “Now, are you ready?”
She took out a recorder and set it between us, then laid a notepad in front of her. Her black pen twirled between her fingers when she looked up at me, and she clicked the end of it before putting it to the paper.
With a deep breath, I nodded. “I’m ready.”
Margo clicked the record button on the tape and
looked me in the eyes.
“Let’s start from the beginning. Tell me your name and something about you,” she said simply.
I hesitated. Something about me? Like what? That I’m a super? That I have three amazing women in my life? That I just acquired a talking cat from my father?
My mind kept going back to him. He was so proud to have me as a son, and I knew that despite his errors, he was still my dad. Yeah, he wasn’t going to be winning father of the year or anything, but he tried, and he was still trying. I owed him at least the same courtesy.
“My name is Nick Gateon, and I am the son of Lord Inferno.”
12
I had been interviewed before by pushier and more invasive journalists than Margo Wicker. And yet, by the time we were four cups of coffee and half a dozen custard-filled scones in, I realized I had never felt more exposed and vulnerable.
Everything Margo had asked, from the intricacies of the relationship I had with my father, the mighty and feared Lord Inferno, to the basics like what was my ideal meal at any given time had been discussed in great detail. I didn’t mind, at least, I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I trusted that whatever Margo was going to do with the information she wanted would be tasteful. I’d worked with and met reporters that would twist my words and use it to tell their audiences what they wanted to hear. I didn’t get that vibe from Margo. I believed her when she told me that she was only interested in creating a true narrative. For once, I was looking forward to seeing what I had to say on paper.
Margo was surprisingly easy to talk to and hold a conversation with. It was a remarkable trait for a journalist, but I didn’t view it quite like that. On the contrary, I simply enjoyed listening to her share her own personal experiences with me. For example, she divulged that she was the youngest of five siblings, with three older brothers and a sister, and that her favorite color was a specific shade of purple she called wisteria and insisted that there was a crayon that used to be in circulation by that name.
The more time I spent with Margo, the more I wanted to know her better. She was a fountain of information and odd quirks, and she was insanely adorable, despite her sometimes bossy demeanor. I would have to think more about it when I wasn’t sitting next to her, but I thought maybe I’d like to see her again outside of interviews and information grabbing. Maybe I’d bring the girls with me so they could feel her out, too.