In fact, just the other day, he and Gabrielle had been getting reprimanded because their latest invention had run amok in one of the shopping centers. To be fair, their invention had dissolved everyone’s clothing. That was pretty troublesome. Still, Alex though they were lucky. At least it didn’t destroy several million credits worth of property damage.
For some reason, Kazekiri looked really flustered. “Oh… yes, u-um, right, so I have…”
Alex gave Kazekiri a strange look. Ever since he saw her in front of that pet store and went in with her so she could play with the animals, she’d been acting strange. She had more or less stopped scolding him. What’s more, her face was almost always red, and she swayed as though drunk quite often. It reminded him of the times he pulled an all-nighter while working on his inventions... except his face never got red like that. Was all the blood rushing to her head because she exerted herself so much?
“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked.
“W-w-w-what are you doing?!” Kazekiri squeaked when Alex put a hand on her forehead, then put his other hand on his own forehead.
“Huh, you don’t seem to have a temperature, though you do feel a tad warm. Have you been getting enough sleep? Maybe you should think about taking some time off and resting a bit. I know you’re a really hard worker, and I respect that, but you need to take better care of yourself.”
Alex had a sister, so he was always concerned about matters like this, even though his sister was the laziest individual that he knew. He wondered if maybe he was just a worrywart.
“W-why… s-stop acting like you’re worried about me! Y-you’re just an idiot! D-don’t you have a girlfriend who you should be more concerned about?”
Kazekiri knew about Gabrielle. She had met Gabrielle after one of Karen’s harsh scoldings. He and his roommate/fake-fiancé had accidentally destroyed a plaza with one of their inventions. As they were leaving, Kazekiri ran into them, and he introduced her to Gabrielle. That had been one of the more interesting first meetings.
“Gabrielle can take care of herself,” Alex determined. “Besides, she’s with a doctor.” A doctor who would die if he touched Gabrielle inappropriately. “You’re the one I’m worried about right now.”
Alex watched, worried as Kazekiri swayed even more. Her face, already quite red, reached a level of redness that could outshine a red star. Something was definitely wrong. Oh, no. Could it be that she had issues with blood sugar? Maybe some kind of iron deficiency caused blood to rush to her face!
“Worried?! W-w-why would you be worried about… about… uuh… uh…”
Kazekiri was unable to finish her sentence. With her eyes rolling up into the back of her head, she pitched face forward into his chest, her body going limp.
“Oh, crap! Kiri-Kiri?! Are you feeling okay?! Hey! Answer me!”
Alex felt panic race through him as he grabbed Kazekiri by the shoulders and began shaking her. The girl didn’t wake up. Her head shook back and forth, swinging like an inverted pendulum. Her body was also falling, which meant he had to stop shaking her in order to catch her before she could hit the ground.
Darrick clasped his hands together, tears running unabashedly down his face. “To think you could make a woman like Kazekiri faint with just a few kind words. Your manliness knows no bounds. Truly, you are the manliest man among the many men in this galaxy!”
“That has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! Now stop talking and help me! Kiri-Kiri! Kiri-Kiri!”
1
Gabrielle sat on the examination table, her feet, clad in thigh-high socks, kicking back and forth like an impatient child. The hem of her pink dress swished back and forth from the motion. It was a sleeveless dress, so while it wasn’t as comfortable as her crisis suit, she still liked it. She also thought it looked cuter than her crisis suit. That was a definite plus.
Standing before her was the doctor who was supposed to examine her. His stringy gray hair reminded her of squiggly wires, and his pallid skin made her wonder about his health. Despite his hair and skin color, he appeared quite young. He wore wrinkled black slacks, a black shirt, and a white lab coat. He was typing notes into a tablet.
“All right then, Princess Gabrielle, it looks like you’re in perfectly good health,” he said at last. “You don’t appear to have caught any human illnesses, nor does it look like you have any bacteria that are contagious to humans.”
One full month had passed since Alex became her husband-to-be. It was now May ninth. Alex’s former boss and commander, Karen Kanzaki, had determined that Gabrielle needed to undergo a thorough physical examination, something she claimed they should have done earlier.
This had caused a few complications—namely, finding someone who could examine her. As an angelisian, Gabrielle’s physiology was different from a humans, even if they possessed a 73% genetic compatibility rating. Karen also said something about keeping her identity a secret. No one was supposed to know that she was the daughter of King Lucifer.
I feel bad keeping this a secret from Selene, Ryoko, and Sarah... but I do understand where Karen is coming from. It might cause them problems if they knew about my identity.
That was why Karen had this man, Dr. Gideon Fletcher, examining her. He wasn’t human, but an arachnian from the planet Arachnia. Gabrielle didn’t know much about arachnians, only the basics, but she was surprised to see one in this quadrant. They’re home planet was on the opposite side of the galaxy.
“Now that we’ve managed to ascertain that you’re not carrying anything contagious, we can begin with the physical portion of this exam.” He chuckled. “You don’t have to worry about me doing any untoward. I’m simply going to be testing things like your height, weight, standard perceptions, and reflexes. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
“Kay!”
Gabrielle had no clue what he meant by “untoward,” but she didn’t bother trying to figure it out.
The man took out a tubular scanner and ran it over her body. A red beam of light shot out, traveling over her and taking a thorough scan of her overall body composition. It was another primitive device. From what she could see, it scanned people based on laser readings, but it seemed to work as well as any other scanner.
“Hmm…”
The doctor checked over the information that appeared on his screen, nodding and mumbling to himself.
Growing bored, Gabrielle surveyed the basic white room, trying to find something to occupy her attention. Posted along the walls were several posters of the human body. She didn’t know much about physiology, anatomy, or biological sciences other than what was necessary for her inventions, so most of these posters were beyond her understanding. Gabrielle may have been considered a genius scientist, but her genius ran toward inventing stuff, not biology.
“You have an excellent body composition, as expected of an angelisian,” Dr. Gideon said at last. “And you’ve got some rather impressive body proportions. He-he-he…”
Gabrielle tilted her head as Dr. Gideon chuckled. “Do you think so?”
“Definitely. I’ve been working as a doctor for nearly a decade now, and I’ve scanned hundreds of human girls before. Many can’t compare to you. Now to catalog it for future reference… age: sixteen. Height: one hundred and sixty-five centimeters. Weight: fifty-point-five kilograms. Eye color: green. Hair color: silver. Measurements: eighty-nine centimeter bust, fifty-seven-centimeter waist, and eighty-seven-centimeter hips.”
Gabrielle wondered if cataloging information on an individual’s physical traits was a human thing. She didn’t think so, but it could be. Angelisians didn’t do that.
Or did they? Neither she nor her sisters had ever undergone an examination like this, but they were royalty. Maybe royalty was different than non-royalty. She wouldn’t know.
“Okay. The only thing left to do is test your reflexes.” Dr. Gideon set the tablet on a counter near the examination table and pulled out a really tiny… hammer? It looked sort of like a prim
itive hammer, but the head was shaped somewhat differently from what she thought a hammer should look like.
“This is called a Taylor.” The doctor noticed her inquisitiveness and explained the primitive contraption to her. “While the medical scan took a guesstimation of your reflexes based on the speed of the signals that travel to and from your brain, there’s always room for error. This small device is designed to test basic reflexes.”
“Oh… I see…”
Gabrielle’s eyes sparkled at the newly explained piece of primitive technology. What an interesting device. She didn’t know there were still species out there who used such old-school equipment for things like this.
“Now then, all I’m going to do is lightly tap your knee to see how strongly your body reacts, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Right. This shouldn’t hurt a bit…”
2
Alex walked down the hall, carrying an unconscious Kazekiri in his arms. The young woman still possessed a face that was redder than Alex was comfortable with seeing. She must have had a serious fever. She was even mumbling incomprehensibly!
“N-no… not there… don’t… don’t stick it in there… that’s the wrong hole…”
She was obviously sick.
“Honestly, this girl… I keep telling her not to work so hard and what does she do? She overdoes it. It’s like she only has one mode, work mode, and it never turns off. Now she’s gone and passed out from working too hard, and I have to carry her all way to the medical wing.”
Matters weren’t helped by Darrick, who was walking behind Alex, still heaping praises on him.
“Alex, I never knew you had such a manly way with women. You must teach me this manliest of manly techniques.”
“That’s enough out of you!”
They eventually reached the elevator, which already had two people in it. Alex thought about waiting for the next one, but he knew that the chances of having an elevator to himself was slim, so he just sucked it up and entered. Darrick followed behind him.
Alex thought he knew what discomfort was, but as the two women dressed in standard police uniforms stared at him and Kazekiri in his arms, the desire to hide in his shirt became nearly overwhelming.
Their not-so-hushed conversation didn’t help any.
“Isn’t that Alexander Ryker?”
“Yeah, it is, and that girl… if I’m not mistaken, that’s Kazekiri. You know, the part-timer who’s always obsessed with rules and regulations?”
“What do you think happened to her? Gasp! You don’t think he did something… naughty to her, do you?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. There have always been rumors about that boy being a sexual deviant. He’s always destroying public property, too. He sounds like a lecherous delinquent. I bet you my entire salary he did something perverted to her and the poor girl fainted from shock! You know how straight-laced she is.”
Is that really how people see me?
Alex had always known that most females didn’t hold him in the highest regard. Kazekiri was a case in point. She always berated him on how much trouble he caused others, how he was a walking disaster, and how he couldn’t follow the rules to save his life. That said, he’d at least assumed that they didn’t think he was some kind of sexual deviant. Were his destructive tendencies really something that made people think this way about him?
“How repulsive!”
“You know what’s even worse? Alexander is apparently already engaged with another woman!”
“No way!”
“Way!”
“I can hear everything you two are saying! Stop talking about me like I’m not even here!”
Alex narrowed eyes and glared at the two, who suddenly seemed to realize that they weren’t being very quiet. With a mouse-like “eep!”, the two turned away from him to look out of the plasteel tube, which gave them a view of Mars City.
“I can’t believe those girls,” Alex muttered to himself. Did they really think so little of him? Well, they were talking smack about him, so of course they did.
“Neither can I,” Darrick agreed, nodding his head. “I don’t know why they would consider someone so manly to be a sexual deviant.”
“Please stop adding ‘manly’ to all of your sentences. It’s annoying.” Alex’s shoulders slumped as he sighed. “But at least that’s something we can both agree on.” He paused. “The lack of understanding part, not the manly part. I don’t even know when you started praising me for my perceived manliness.”
The two girls ran out once the elevator reached the second floor. Alex twitched as the door closed. He could hear them renew their conversation as their footsteps receded. They were still talking smack about him again.
The Mars Police Department consisted of ten floors. The first floor was the entrance and registry, where all complaints and reports are filed. It didn’t have much else. It was just a waiting room and the file maintenance office. The second, third, and fourth floors were all classrooms. That was where the academy was located. The fifth and sixth was a multi-level training room. The seventh and eighth floors were offices and rooms for officers and active squadrons, and it was also where the locker rooms for fully-trained police officers were located. The tenth floor was the command branch. Commander Karen Kanzaki and Second-in-Command Yuumi had offices on that floor. Alex and Darrick were traveling to floor nine, which consisted of the medical wing. All medical staff and forensics teams were on this floor.
Ping! The elevator door opened, and Alex stepped out with Darrick behind him. A long hallway stretched out before them. Several rectangular plasteel windows meandered across the hall on their left, evenly spaced, with a door in between each one. As they walked past, Alex looked inside. The forensics teams appeared to be hard at work.
Eventually reaching a T-junction, they turned right and entered the medical wing, which consisted of windowless medical offices.
“Isn’t your girlfriend getting a check-up somewhere around here?”
Alex blushed at hearing someone calling Gabrielle his girlfriend, but he didn’t deny it. They were supposed to be pretending they were engaged, after all.
“Yeah, she is.”
“I wonder how it went. Do you think she came up clean?”
“I don’t see why she wouldn’t. Gabrielle’s already been living here for over a month and nothing has happened. She hasn’t gotten sick and neither myself nor my sister have caught something from her. I doubt there will be any problems.”
Darrick placed his hands behind his head as they walked, gaze turning upwards toward the ceiling. His thoughtful look made Alex frown.
“Yeah, I guess. Speaking of Gabrielle, where is she from anyway? I tried to ask Karen about her, but that woman is more tight-lipped than the Mars Penitentiary.”
While Darrick knew about Gabrielle because of how many times she and Alex had been to the police station, he didn’t know who Gabrielle was. As far as he was concerned, she and Alex were simply a couple who’d started dating after she arrived in Mars City.
Commander Karen wanted everyone who wasn’t already involved in the dark about Gabrielle’s origins. He didn’t blame her. Alex could only imagine what kind of chaos would be unleashed if people discovered that Gabrielle was the princess to a galaxy spanning empire.
“Oh, um, Gabrielle isn’t from Mars.”
“Yeah, I got that much. I’m asking what planet she’s from,” Darrick said. “I figured it was Pluto or something since they’re bothering to do a checkup like this.”
“I’m not sure.”
Darrick raised an eyebrow. “You mean you don’t know?”
“I never actually asked where she was from,” Alex lied. “All I know is that she was in trouble when we first met and needed my help. Well, technically, she’d just run away from home, but I didn’t learn that until Azazel and her other bodyguards confronted me.”
Azazel was already a well-known person at the police headquarters. He’d been there even m
ore times than Alex and Gabrielle combined. The reason for this was because he often got lost in Mars City, which led to him getting arrested by the police for carrying his sword.... which he refused to relinquish despite numerous requests for him to do so.
Commander Karen scolded Azazel even more than she did him and Gabrielle.
“Speaking of… just where is that Azazel guy?”
“Who knows? I doubt Azazel even knows his own whereabouts.”
Two weeks ago, Alex had tasked Azazel with getting some milk from the convenience store. He hadn’t seen the man since. This led him to believe that Azazel had gotten lost somehow, which didn’t surprise Alex at all.
Boom!
As they were turning another corner, a loud explosion rocked the hall, and a large dust cloud engulfed them. Alex coughed as he inhaled some dust. He did his best to shield Kazekiri from the worst of it. Beside him, Darrick covered his mouth with a hand, his eyes squinting into the ever-expanding cloud.
“What the heck was that?!” he shouted.
“How should I know?” Alex asked rhetorically.
The dust cleared away to reveal something that shocked them. Pieces of debris lay scattered about, broken fragments of durasteel that were twisted and warped. Alex’s eyes widened. There was a gaping hole in the wall. His eyes widened further when he noticed a man wearing a lab coat lying against the opposite wall, completely unconscious.
The wall had a huge crack in it, presumably from where the man had crashed into it before falling to the floor.
“What. The. Hell?”
“Doctor!”
A barefoot Gabrielle ran out through the hole in the wall and knelt next to the insensate doctor, who Alex belatedly realized was Gideon Fletcher.
And just like that, it clicked.
The reason for the hole and the unconscious doctor.
“Gabrielle.” Feeling a sense of resignation, Alex walked up to his beautiful roommate as she tried to revive Dr. Gideon by viciously shaking him back and forth, which only caused his head and arms to flop around like soggy noodles. “I don’t think that’s going to help him.”
A Most Unlikely Hero, Vol 4 Page 2