A Most Unlikely Hero, Vol 4

by Brandon Varnell

  “Huh?”

  Kazekiri’s face turned a shade of red that he’d never seen before. “I-I’m not asking you to spend time with me because I want to be with you or anything,” Kazekiri mumbled. “I… just—you look like you could use someone to talk to, so I thought I would help.” She squirmed uncomfortably as he continued to stare at her. “W-what are you looking at me like that for?”

  “Sorry.” Alex shook his head and smiled. “I didn’t mean to stare at you.”

  “O-oh… s-so, do you, uh, you know, wanna go somewhere and talk… or something? I just got off my shift, so I’m free.”

  Alex thought about her proposal. Selene and Gabrielle were spending the day together and Alice was with Jasmine again, so it wasn’t like he had anything to do. Plus, it would be nice to have someone to talk to, someone with an unbiased opinion who might be able to help him with his problem. He would have to be careful, though, as Kazekiri was a stickler when it came to issues of morality.

  “I think I’ll take you up on that,” Alex said at last. “Thank you.”

  “Ah… y-you’re welcome,” Kazekiri murmured. Unable to look into his eyes any longer, she looked down at the ground… and at their conjoined hands.

  With a mouse-like squeak, she let go of his hand and began stammering, which caused him to laugh and her to get angry. Several minutes after that, Alex and Kazekiri were on a shuttle traveling to the entertainment district. Alex had a large lump on his head from where she’d hit him.

  “Did you really have to hit me?” Alex asked, rubbing his abused noggin. “That really hurt.”

  “I-it’s your own fault.” Kazekiri scowled at him. “You shouldn’t have laughed at me.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  For some unfathomable reason, Kazekiri seemed to get embarrassed when he apologized. She slowly sunk into her seat and tried to hide her face in her shirt—at least, that’s what Alex assumed she was doing.

  “I... don’t worry about it,” she mumbled softly.

  The shuttle arrived at the entertainment district. Alex and Kazekiri exited with several other passengers and began walking with the flow of traffic. That day seemed busier than most days. There were so many people that it felt like they were being squished between numerous shipping crates in a large warehouse.

  To keep from getting separated, Alex grabbed Kazekiri’s hand. The morally upright officer squeaked as if she’d been hit with an ion charge.

  “Sorry.” He smiled at her, hoping to ease the girl’s discomfort. “It’s so crowded, I thought this would be a good way to avoid getting separated.”

  “I-I... it’s not like a mind... I mean, holding hands to stay together is a good idea... so... yeah...” Kazekiri murmured just barely loud enough for him to hear.

  The entertainment district, like most districts, was made up of several interconnecting walkways and hubs. Each hub contained a number of shops and restaurants. Tube-like elevators allowed people to ascend or descend to the levels above and below, which led to even more walkways, warp points, and hubs.

  “Where are we going?” Alex asked.

  “There’s a quaint little place that I like to eat at,” Kazekiri informed him. “We’ll go there.”

  The café that Kazekiri spoke of really was a quaint place, especially when compared to the towering buildings it sat between. It was a small, single-story building made of plasteel. Despite its appearance, it looked surprisingly popular, as it already had quite the crowd congregating there by the time they entered.

  “Ah, Ms. Kazekiri. It’s good to see you,” a waiter greeted before noticing Alex and smiling slyly. “And who is this? Your boyfriend?”

  “W-what? Of course not.” Kazekiri tried to scowl, but her cheeks were pink. “He’s just a friend that I’m helping out.”

  “That’s too bad.” The waiter looked honestly disheartened. “You two look like you would make a cute couple. Still, I apologize for any discomfort my words might have caused.”

  “Naw, don’t worry about it,” Alex said, laughing. “There are far worse things to be considered than Kiri-Kiri’s boyfriend.”

  “Don’t address me so familiarly,” Kazekiri mumbled. The waiter raised an eyebrow at the nickname Alex had given her, but he didn’t comment.

  He directed them to a table near a window. As they sat down, he offered them both a menu before pulling out a tablet and stylus.

  “May I start you two off with something to drink?”

  “I’d like some hot chocolate, please,” Kazekiri said.

  “I’ll just take a water,” Alex added.

  “Very well.” The waiter typed away on the touchpad. “I’ll come right back with your orders.”

  As the waiter left, Alex took a good look around. A lot of people were sitting at tables, talking about this or that. He noticed that most of them seemed to be couples.

  No wonder that guy thought we were dating. This place is like couples central.

  “I wonder if there’s a couple’s event going on today,” Alex said, directing Kazekiri to look around and finally notice the number of couples surrounding them. “If so, that’s probably why that waiter thought we were a couple.”

  “Indeed, it is.” The waiter came back with their drinks, hot chocolate for Kazekiri and water for Alex. “Today we have several couples’ items on our menu that are half off, like our love-love desserts.”

  “Love-love desserts?” Alex scrunched up his face at the name. It was a horrendous name.

  “Yes. Basically, if you buy one of our desserts on the couples’ menu, you’ll get it half price.”

  Alex checked the menu over and saw that some of those desserts looked pretty good. He didn’t know what he wanted yet, but everything on the menu made him nearly salivate. That said, calling something Lovey-Dovey Ice Cream made him want to gag.

  “What do you think, Kiri-Kiri?” Alex asked his friend. “Wanna go halves and get something from this couples’ menu?”

  “I-if that is what you want,” Kazekiri stuttered. “N-not that I want people mistaking us for a couple, but consider this my way of thanking you for helping me with those errands the other day.”

  “Okay then!” Alex pointed to one of the items on the menu and looked at the waiter. “In that case, I would like to get this one.”

  The waiter squinted at the item that Alex was pointing at before a smile blossomed on his face.

  “Ah, yes, the Blissful Confession,” he said in a way that Alex couldn’t interpret. “That is one of our more popular desserts. If you two would wait for but a few minutes, I will come back with your desert.”

  As the waiter left, Kazekiri focused her attention on Alex. Her gaze made him feel like one of his and Gabrielle’s inventions. The focus that she was giving him reminded Alex of the look on Gabrielle’s face when they were building something.

  “Did you want to talk about whatever is troubling you?” she asked. “I don’t know how much help I can be, but I can at least listen.”

  “I would like that,” Alex said after a moment’s silence. He bit his lower lip, wondering just how much he should tell her. “I have a… a friend who’s in a bit of trouble. You see, there was this girl that he saved, but in order to save her life he had to… do things to her that he feels really guilty about.”

  Kazekiri raised an eyebrow. “What kind of things did he do to her?”

  “He… the girl he rescued was running a fever, a really intense fever that could have killed her if he didn’t bring it down.”

  “Was it some form of space sickness?” Kazekiri asked.

  While not a relatively new phenomenon, there were many different types of sickness that people could contract, despite the GDF Medical Branch’s best efforts. This was especially true for people who did a lot of space travel; the jumping from one planet to another, regardless of the decontamination process at each spaceport terminal, often caused sickness.

  Most were never serious. However, there were a few space sickness
es that could be fatal.

  “Maybe.” Alex shrugged. “I don’t really know.”

  “Hmm, what did your friend need to do, then?”

  “In order to get her temperature down, he had to cover her body with a cooling agent. Unfortunately, her clothes were in the way, so he had to, well, he had to take them off.”

  The flaring of Kazekiri’s cheeks told Alex all he needed to know. She clearly understood where he was going with this.

  “He feels really awful about it, not only because he had to strip a girl’s clothing off while she was unconscious, but also because he had to wipe the cooling agent off her body afterwards, so it wouldn’t damage her skin.”

  “Oh… w-well, I can understand why this would be a problem.” Kazekiri trembled from her head down to her toes. Alex could almost imagine that she was fighting the impulse to yell at him for talking about something shameless with her. “So, your friend, he stripped this girl and used a cooling agent to lower her body temperature, and then wiped it off?”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “I… He feels like he took advantage of this girl while she was in a weakened and vulnerable state, and it’s been eating him up inside. He doesn’t know what do, and I can’t really help him with this because I don’t know what to do either.”

  Kazekiri remained silent. Alex wondered if maybe he made a mistake in telling her this, but eventually, the morally upright officer started speaking.

  “Normally, if I had learned that someone had done something like that, I would say they’ve committed a grave crime deserving of the most extreme punishments.” Alex flinched. “However, in light of the extenuating circumstances, I do not believe your friend has committed any shameless act. I think he did the right thing.”

  “Even if… even if the act aroused him?”

  Kazekiri’s face turned a deep red. She looked down at the table, bit her lip, and then and nodded.

  “Y-yes… I mean, getting aroused is… it’s natural, right? It’s not really something that can be helped, so I don’t think he did anything wrong, especially if he’s remorseful about it.”

  Alex felt a surge of hope course through him. If someone as morally forthright as Kazekiri did not feel that what he did was a crime, then maybe he really was just feeling guilty over nothing.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” Kazekiri finally mastered her blush and looked back at him. “What your friend did, he did to save that girl’s life. There is no crime in saving the life of another, even if he was forced to take such… extreme measures to do so. That being said, he should still probably apologize to the girl for what he did. While it was done to save her life, it does not change that he saw her at her most vulnerable.”

  “You have a point.” Alex reflected for a moment, then smiled. “Thank you, Kiri-Kiri. Your words have helped me out a lot. I’m sure my friend will appreciate them as well.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t address me so informally.” Kazekiri frowned at him. Alex just laughed, and, despite wanting to maintain her frown, the upstanding, part-time officer began smiling as well.

  Their waiter soon came back and placed their chosen dessert on the table. Alex gawked at the sheer size of the sweet treat. It was gigantic, and it contained a plethora of colors. It looked like the ice cream had absorbed a rainbow. Surrounding the ice cream was a wide variety of fruits, there was whip cream on top, and the entire thing was drizzled in caramel and fudge.

  “Wow,” Alex mumbled. “I didn’t realize it would be this big. Good thing we’re sharing this, right?”

  “Right,” Kazekiri murmured, also looking quite taken back by the desert’s size.

  “So… how are we going to eat all this?”

  “Uh…”

  Neither of them had an answer for that.

  7

  After finishing their drinks, Gabrielle and Selene wandered around the entertainment district. They didn’t have a destination in mind and simply followed the flow of the crowd. While walking past a certain café, Selene looked through the plasteel window and saw something that made her nearly trip over her own two feet.

  “That’s Alex and Kazekiri!” she nearly shouted, which caused several people walking nearby to stare at her. Gabrielle merely looked at her friend, and then at where her friend was looking.

  “Oh, it is Alex and Kiri-Kiri. We should go say hi.”

  “We can’t just go in there,” Selene hissed at her friend.

  Gabrielle appeared confused. “Why not?”

  “Just look at them.” Selene gestured to the duo, who were in the middle of sharing a really large ice cream. “Look at what they’re doing.”

  “Um, eating?”

  Selene rolled her eyes. “Your naiveté amazes me sometimes, Gabrielle.”

  “Tee-hee.”

  “That wasn’t a compliment. Anyway, we can’t interrupt them because those two look like they’re in the middle of a date.”

  “A date?”

  Wasn’t a date that thing that two people who loved each other went on? Gabrielle had seen that word many times on the holonet, and Selene had mentioned it just a few minutes ago. A date was when two people who were in love went out together and had fun.

  Does that mean Kiri-Kiri and Alex are in love?

  Gabrielle’s chest constricted. It felt like something had grabbed her heart.

  “They’re leaving,” Selene muttered as the two stood up after paying for their meal.

  She grabbed Gabrielle’s hand and dragged her over to a tree, which they quickly hid behind. They were just in time, too, as Alex and Kazekiri left the café and began strolling down the walkway.

  “Something odd is going on here,” Selene said to herself. “Kazekiri and Alex have never been very close to the best of my knowledge. Why would they be going out on a date together? And didn’t Kazekiri say that she had a boyfriend?”

  “A date...”

  “Gabrielle? Are you okay? You look pale.” Selene’s words startled Gabrielle out of her thoughts.

  Gabrielle shook herself out of her funk and gave Selene a smile that belied the conflict she felt inside of her mind. “I’m fine. I was just thinking… I haven’t been on a date with Alex yet. That’s not fair. I wanted to be his first.”

  “Shouldn’t you be more worried by the fact that he and Kazekiri are even going on a date?” Selene asked.

  “Should I be?” Gabrielle tilted her head.

  Selene deadpanned. “Yes, you should.” When Gabrielle continued to stare at her, she sighed. “Anyway, what do you think? Do you think Alex and Kazekiri might have been on an actual date? It seems unlikely, but at the same time, they were sharing a dessert in a rather nice café.”

  Gabrielle thought about her friend’s question, but she honestly didn’t have an answer. “Do people who go on dates usually share desserts like that?”

  “Of course they do.” Selene gave her a strange look, as if she’d said something dumb. “Sharing a dessert with your significant other is a huge step for people to take in a relationship. It’s a sign that you and he are intimate. Didn’t you know that?”

  “I… no, I didn’t know that.”

  So sharing a dessert meant you were intimate and close? Did that mean that Kiri-Kiri was closer to Alex than she was? Gabrielle didn’t understand, but the thought that there might be someone closer to Alex than her made her chest feel tight.

  What was this unusual pain?

  8

  After parting ways with a strangely demure Kazekiri, Alex grabbed some groceries for dinner. He had decided to make shrimp pasta with alfredo sauce and a side salad. He knew that Alice would complain, but he wanted Gabrielle to have a variety of different meals. There was still so much he hadn’t cooked for her yet.

  “Thank you and come again,” the bored voice of the store clerk called out as Alex walked out of the doors—only to bump into someone that he thought was currently healing in a tank.

  “N-Nyx?”

  The pretty assassin stared up at hi
m with her bottomless red eyes. As he stared back at her, Alex felt the guilt over what had happened when she was unconscious return, causing him to look away.

  “Follow me,” Nyx told him before turning on her heels and walking away.

  Alex felt a strange sense of déjà vu as he followed Nyx, straying just a few steps behind her. He should have felt nervous, especially when he saw their destination, but all he could feel was an overwhelming sense of shame. It didn’t last long, and he quickly steeled himself for what was to come. He knew what needed to be done.

  They arrived at the very bridge where he and Nyx had their battle. The damage hadn’t been repaired yet. Several large dents marred the durasteel floor, showing where Nyx had bodily slammed him into the bridge, and there were numerous holes where Nyx’s swords and tendrils had pierced the durasteel. A number of cables had also snapped somehow and now dangled uselessly. He wondered how that had happened, but much of his attention during that fight had been on Nyx, who right now sat on the railing that kept idiots from falling off.

  Slowly, Alex lowered himself until he was on his knees, and then lowered himself further until his forehead touched the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Nyx asked, her voice bland, yet Alex thought he detected a hint of curiosity.

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I’m really, really sorry!”

  “For what?”

  While he couldn’t see her, Alex could imagine Nyx tilting her head as she stared him down.

  “You… I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a disgusting freak, but when you were unconscious, I… I had to get you out of your clothes, douse you with cooling agent, and then clean you off. I… because of that, I ended up touching you inappropriately. I’m sorry.”

  A moment of silence.

  “You are apologizing to me, the person who tried to kill you, for touching me inappropriately while saving my life?”

  Alex nodded, even as he kept his head to the ground. When put like that, it sounded kind of dumb, but at the same time, he felt awful. He might have saved her life, but it didn’t change what he’d done.

  “Yes…”

  “So it’s just as Ēostre said.” Another pause. Alex didn’t look up. He remained on the ground, fully prostrated in a sign of humility. “Did you enjoy it? Stripping me, I mean. Did you like it?”