Gun Princess Royale: Awakening the Princess, Book One

by Albert Ruckholdt

  I nodded faintly. “Yes, it was me. The girls of the Cosplay Club made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Was it worth it? In the short term, yes. But in the long term”—I shook my head regretfully—“I can’t say that it was.”

  I told him about living the past year in fear of being discovered, and I told him about my regrets. What I didn’t tell him was that despite the terror of cosplay cross-dressing, some part of me had actually enjoyed not being Ronin Kassius for an hour or so over three days. However, the fear outweighed the positives about the experience so I doubted I would ever cosplay again.

  I realized I was a little saddened at the thought, but when I looked up at Tobias, I saw him searching my face for a long while, before turning away with an uncomfortable light in his eyes.

  I swallowed quietly and then said, “It bothers you, doesn’t it, knowing that I make such a convincing girl.”

  He shook his head subtly. “No, it doesn’t. What bothers me is that you’re so obsessed with Mercy Haddaway that you’d cross-dress for those tickets. It gives me the creeps.” He glanced at me. “I could have gotten you those tickets. My family does have a lot of connections, and my uncle is an executive at her talent agency. All you had to do was ask me.”

  He had a valid point, and I could only respond with a shrug and contrite nod.

  Tobias eyed my sidelong, and hesitated before asking, “Tell me the truth. It wasn’t just about the tickets, was it? You wanted to cross dress.”

  “Not in the least,” I admitted truthfully. “I’m just a slave to my passion, and my passion is Mercy.”

  “And that’s the only reason?”

  “Absolutely,” I declared with a firm nod. “But I think you’re lying. You really are bothered by how good I looked as the Silver Blue Princess. I bet you must have wondered if it was me or not in the outfit.”

  “I told you, I’m not bothered by how you looked”—he glanced away—“or how you look….”

  I smirked but it was humorless. “Then are you afraid I’ll start hitting on you? I can tell you now that’s not happening. I like girls. Pure and simple, though with my dirty secret out of the closet my chances of getting a girlfriend are zero point zero to the tenth decimal place. My chances were slim before, but now they’re kaput.” I started to laugh unstably. “At least Silver Blue had a fan following and was popular for three days.”

  Tobias snapped harshly, “Damn it, will you quit it with Silver Blue!” He was loud enough to attract the attention of the people around us, but whether he was aware of them or not, he nonetheless growled, “I’m sick of hearing about Silver Blue. I’ve been hearing about it from her all weekend.”

  “From your cousin?”

  He nodded without facing me.

  So Valjean’s been turning the screws on him. Was it a test to see how far she could push him? But why?

  Changing tack, I half turned my body toward him and asked, “Mat, when you look in the mirror, what do you see?”

  He was briefly off guard. “Huh? I see me. What do you think I’d see?”

  I shook my head. “No, you see a man, or at the least a boy steadily developing into a man.” I held my hand up as though measuring our respective height. "This time last year we were both just as tall. Now look at you. You're at least seven inches taller than me. And this uniform I’m wearing now is the same size as my middle school one."

  He frowned at me then pressed his lips together as he began to catch onto the thread of my argument. Yet he surprised me by asking, “So what’s your point?”

  I sighed, and pressed on. “My point is that when I look in the mirror, I don’t see what you see.”

  “You’re just a late starter—a late bloomer.”

  I shook my head again. “No, I don’t see a boy, and I don’t see someone androgynous either.”

  “Someone what?” Not understanding me, he frowned and leaned my way.

  I laughed softly and rolled my eyes at him. “Mat, you really need to study more,” I commented drily, noticing the mag-lev was quickly approaching the station. I watched it decelerate smoothly as it pulled up to the platform, coming to a stop on its marks.

  “Just tell me what you see,” Tobias urged me, glancing at the doors opening up before us.

  I tilted my head at him, while feeling people begin to bunch up around us, ready to push forcefully into the mag-lev carriage. “I see the same thing you’re seeing now.”

  The doors opened, and the rush to get aboard began.

  Tobias tried to hold fast but though he was larger than me, he was pushed along by the commuters determined to get aboard within the ninety-second time limit. “Huh? What? What are you—? Hey—wait! Stop pushing me!”

  He was swept into the carriage, but being smaller I was able to slip between the onrushing crowd and retreated away from the doors of the mag-lev.

  “Cass,” he called out, but the river of bodies eager to get aboard gave no quarter, and Tobias was pushed into the carriage. The transparent doors closed, and I saw him squeeze past people, and then press himself against the doors with a frantic look on his face.

  I smiled at him and waved goodbye.

  “I see the same thing you do, Mat.”

  The warning bell sounded and the mag-lev fluidly pulled away from the station, the carriages soon sweeping by at significant speed, whipping up a breeze as the train made a hole in the air, and rustled up turbulence behind it.

  Having decided to walk to school, I made my way through the newly forming crowd toward the platform’s exit.

  I pressed my lips together and clenched my jaw, feeling utterly miserable, and hating myself at the same time. But the truth was, I couldn’t accept what I was, regardless of what feel-good people might say. I wasn’t happy with what I was, and I wasn’t going to learn to love my body simply because there was no alternative.

  “You see a girl instead of a boy. Isn’t that right.”

  I stopped abruptly, almost stumbling forward, and hastily looked about in search of the owner of the man’s voice I’d just heard. However, all I saw were people with morning faces, some trying to stay awake, some looking impatiently up the mag-lev line, and others reading material displayed on phones and slates, and amongst them stood a large number of fellow students of Telos Academy. But though some of the people on the platform glanced at me, I didn’t believe any of them had called out to me.

  Swallowing nervously, a shiver ran through me, and trembling slightly, I walked fast off the platform and down the escalator to the station’s street level.

  I shoved my hands into my dark grey school trousers, and then hurried out of the station and onto the sidewalk bordering the street.

  Chapter 6.

  - I -

  (School Week Two. Monday)

  The question of whether I was transgendered had occurred to me.

  However, when I applied its definition to my situation, I found it a little like forcing a square peg into a round hole. I wasn’t a girl trapped in the body of a boy. Neither was I a boy trapped in the body of a girl. My mind and my physical gender married up. In that respect, I wasn’t transgendered. However, my problem was that I was a boy in the body of a boy that looked like a girl. Truthfully, I should describe myself as having overly effeminate features such that with the right accoutrements I could pass for a genetic girl and not draw a second glance expressing ill will toward me.

  I grew dispirited whenever I thought of my situation in such terms.

  Convinced there was something wrong with my body, a few months after my cross-play nightmare, I sent Erina a message explaining that I was going to see a specialist to determine why I wasn’t developing as well as the other boys in my class. To my astonishment, Erina replied within minutes informing me that she would arrange a medical session with a specialist she knew well, all of it funded by the Telos Corporations. Shortly thereafter, I visited the office of a young woman, a doctor by the name of Umi Pearson, who ran a battery of tests on me, and then presented the results, exp
laining that I had some deficiencies in my endocrine system, in particular my pituitary gland. However, it wasn’t anything that medication couldn’t correct, so I was given a fresh batch of pills to take, with the assurance that in time my body would catch up that of my male classmates.

  That was months ago, and I had yet to develop the slightest hint of a facial hair. My skin was smooth, my body almost hairless, and my voice had yet to break. During school swimming lessons, I compared myself to the girls in our class and was disturbed to see how similar I was to them. Certainly, I didn’t have their body shape such as wide hips, narrow waist, or budding breasts, but if I was convinced that with a little padding and a girl’s swimsuit, I would be able to stand right alongside them.

  When I looked in the mirror, there was the hint, the impression, that one little push from my body’s hormone glands and one day I would find myself developing the secondary characteristics of a girl. Some kids lose sleep thinking of the monster hiding under their beds. For me it was the prospect of waking up to find adolescent breasts on my chest. It was a fear that woke me up during the night, and kept sleep well at bay. I lost count of the number of mornings I arrived at school with dark circles under my eyes.

  I’d given my body until the new year to deliver the changes I fervently hoped for, and having failed to do so, I’d quietly booked myself a session with another specialist and I had my first appointment scheduled with them this week.

  This time I chose to keep it a secret from Erina.

  It hurts to say this, but for the first time in my life, I began to mistrust my sister. There wasn’t a single reason I could put a finger on. It was simply a feeling that began to fester in the dark, doubtful recesses of my mind where my subconscious lurked, viewing the world with cynicism and suspicion. Then again, I was simply following good practice by obtaining a second professional opinion, though at the time I had no inkling of the can of worms I’d just opened by going behind my sister’s back.

  In hindsight, I believe that one decision was what hurried my fate along.

  - II -

  Not wanting to be late for school, and thus earn myself a demerit that would blemish my perfect attendance record, I hurried down the streets of Ar Telica’s Ring One districts that bordered the horseshoe shaped harbor, and headed fast for the kilometer long bridge that connected the city-state to Telos Island.

  However, the prospect of arriving late was not what truly gave wings to my heels.

  The voice I’d heard had rattled me so deeply that I regularly glanced over my shoulders, or used the reflections in the store front windows to see if anyone suspicious was following me – in particular a creepy young man since the voice sounded as though it came from one – but I was handicapped by the volume of the morning’s pedestrian crowd and my lack of stature. That said, the latter helped hide me from pursuit as I was able to use the taller elements of the crowd as ground clutter.

  The voice had disturbed me for a number of reasons, and foremost was the fact that the owner had without my knowing been discreetly eavesdropping on my conversation with Tobias. The second reason was that I’d failed to locate the owner when I swept my gaze over the mag-lev station platform. But there was one more reason that unhinged me, and I was doing my damndest to kick it to the curb and down the drain, because the words had been spoken into my ears, and that shouldn’t have been possible unless the speaker was right beside me and thereby invisible to my senses.

  In other words, I suspected of being stalked by a ghost.

  I shivered as I waited for the lights at the street crossing to change from red to green, then frowned as I remembered that ghostly presences were usually accompanied by a severe drop in surrounding air temperature. I breathed into my hands, but my breath wasn’t frosted. However, I still shivered as my thoughts skipped rampant inside my head with everything I knew about ghosts, poltergeists, astral projections, and other denizens of the macabre.

  The light turned green and I crossed the street, sticking close to the taller crowd, hoping to hide my presence though I suspected it would be futile. As I arrived at the sidewalk across the street, I wondered why a ghost would single me out for torment, and suddenly I was more angry than afraid. Ducking my head and squaring my shoulders as though I was battling a headwind, I whispered harshly to myself, “Why the Hell am I being haunted? It’s not fair—not bloody fair!”

  “Rightly so,” was the unseen reply, and my bravado vanished in a heartbeat.

  Someone or something clamped onto my left shoulder jerking me to a stop.

  I screamed, and then spun around with my fists balled up in a terrified show of force against my ghostly tormentor.

  A tall, harried looking blonde boy stood before me, eyes wide in shock and left hand hovering in the air.

  “God’s damn it, Cass, you don’t just look like a girl—you scream like one too!”

  I openly gaped at him. “Mat—?”

  He lowered his hand, staring at me in disbelief. “Yeah, what?”

  I gulped air like a beached fish, and felt dizzy. Then without warning I did the unthinkable – I rushed up and hugged him tightly. “How—how—how—?”

  He stiffened sharply, then gasped, “Let—let go of me!” He shoved at me but failed to dislodge me. “You’re making a scene, you twerp!”

  I released him and stepped back, my heart thumping in relief at the sight and presence of a familiar face, even if said party was glaring down at me as though I’d violated his chastity.

  A red-faced Tobias held a fist between us. “I swear you do that again and I’ll thump you.”

  I chose to act innocent after my impromptu display of familiarity, then noticed he was somewhat out of breath. “Did you chase after me?”

  “Yeah, I did. You didn’t think you could ditch me, did you?”

  “Actually, I did.”

  Tobias exhaled unhappily, then took a couple of deep breaths before explaining, “I got off at the next station thinking I could cut you off, but I never expected you to move so fast. I thought you were sprinting or something. When did you get so fast?”

  Me? Move fast? With my short legs? He must be delirious.

  I had one more question for him. “How did you find me?”

  After straightening his uniform, and calming down, Tobias held up his phone and I saw a map displayed on it. “Did you forget back in middle school we installed that app on our phones so that we could keep track of each other?”

  My eyes widened a fraction and I mouth a silent, “Oh….”

  Truthfully, we’d never used the app once we’d finished testing it on our phones.

  Grabbing my shoulder, he spun me around, then pushed me along down the sidewalk. “Come on—we’ll be late if we stand here much longer.” Despite looking embarrassed, he muttered a disgruntled, “And you draw a lot of attention.”

  We walked fast, with Tobias occasionally pushing me along but not ungently. I was comforted by his presence, and gradually my fears began to recede. In my chest, my heart had regained its seating though it sat limply, beating at a fast pace progressively slowing down, like a runner unwinding after a marathon.

  After ten odd minutes, we arrived at the wide promenade that overlapped the crescent shaped contour of the harbor shoreline. By then, I was feeling more at ease, though I will admit my ears were on alert for even the slightest whisper from my invisible stalker. Only once, when we arrived at the foot of the broad bridge spanning the distance to Telos Island did I hear something like faint mocking laughter.

  I swallowed hard, and tried convincing myself it was just the strong harbor breeze, while giving my situation some thought. Unfortunately, a great many of them swirled about inside my head like clothes in a tumble dryer, making it difficult to choose one to consider first, but after a minute of walking in silence, I decided to begin with the facts as I understood them.

  My weekend was a blank. I had no recollection of it at all, leading me to assume I’d either slept through it, spent it unconscio
us, or had fallen through a fissure in space-time and emerged in my apartment more than two days later. That last possibility had me recalling my last waking experience and the trail led back to my time at the gaming center…and my participation in The Game.

  I swallowed hard, and fervently prayed that was also part of the horrid dream, and nothing more than that. Yet, part of me believed that I was in denial, and that my attempt to sweep the traumatic experience under the rug of a nightmare would catch me out in the end.

  Walking along the bridge, I looked at the city behind us, the sky overhead, and the permacrete ground underfoot. It all felt and appeared to be quite real, just as I remembered it. The morning sunlight was strong and warm, the color of the sky looked right, and the breeze carried the smell of the ocean with it. Rather than a deserted environment, hundreds of male and female students walked to the Academy that was several hundred meters ahead of us beyond the eastern foot of the bridge.

  I looked at the guys, many of whom were engaged in conversation with their companions, many of whom were casually eyeing up the girls and quietly thanking the Powers-that-be for the strong gusts of summer ocean breeze that blew across the surface of the bridge and flounced the girl’s skirts offering a peek of what lay underneath. The girls walked either individually or in groups, hands sometimes on skirts to keep them down, gossiping in tightly bunched cliques, criticizing their rivals or enemies in the comfort of numbers, or discussing the latest clothing trend, fad, boy group, or actors that were the current flavor of the month. Overhead on the elevated rail, the maglev whooshed by, its carriages loaded with students and perhaps members of the Academy’s faculty and administrative staff.

  In essence, this was reality as I remembered it. However, I was afraid that in the blink of an eye it would become a waking nightmare with hundreds if not thousands of people around me turning into undead zombies. It was a very real fear that sent a shiver running through me, and my hands clenched as they yearned to grip the lightguns and find comfort in their presence.