Her eyes were fixed resolutely on the video playing on her black metal pad and Lexie didn’t mind because it gave her time to survey the environment freely without being worried she looked like a complete idiot. The train was very similar to the New York subway, except for the incorporation of glass panels intersecting the metal body of their currently empty carriage. The outside of the train seemed wrapped with some shimmering material, similar to the make-up of the podium Xena had bought a ticket from. Speaking of the podiums, there were a few on the train too. By Lexie's calculation, there was one between every six seats on each side. She didn't know what they were for, but she'd promised Xena she wouldn't ask so she tabled the question for Aiden later.
The trains also had clean and comfortable seats, made of a semi-flexible material that Lexie had never experienced before. Somewhere between plastic and rubber, but with the smoothness of glass and the comfort of a cushion.
Nevertheless, the underside of the train was actually what she found most interesting. Turned out that the trains didn’t have wheels, and instead were held onto the tracks by that same glistening, almost-liquid substance that covered the tracks. Lexie didn’t know what it was nor did she know its utility, but she thought maybe it helped the train move smoother and faster.
She decided to look that up later too. There was so much to look up, a seemingly endless stream of questions flooding her mind. Honestly, now that her anxiety was receding a little bit, she was actually getting increasingly interested in finding out more about this new world and how it worked. The technology and mystery was captivating. Maybe even exciting.
No, that was too far.
There was nothing exciting about getting separated from her family and thrust into an unfamiliar world.
But, it was a curious new world, and Lexie was a curious girl. And until she could figure out a way out of here, she might as well indulge her curiosity.
The train moved for about five minutes and many miles of nothing but grass, proving just how remote Hovelton was. Lexie could see bright lights in the distance on a hill and a disembodied voice had announced when they left that they would be arriving in Arcadia in about thirty minutes.
Which meant she only had thirty minutes to get ready for what was to come.
She’d already spent most of the first five minutes watching the Hero Party online. It was being live streamed on Video Alley, and it showed various people walking around a decorated garden in the most elaborate and outrageously feathery outfits she’d ever seen. Seriously. Some of them looked like actual creatures of flight.
To be fair, about half the people were dressed more normally than the rest, and the ones in the gaudy outfits looked fairly uncomfortable with what they were wearing. But still. These were supposed to be [Heroes]?
Lexie wasn't sure what she expected but it wasn't this.
They looked more like celebrities attending a met-gala or something.
I guess they can’t be in costume all the time. Sometimes they liked to trade in their spandex for white, monstrously large, feathers.
Since Lexie didn’t have a video pad, she had to watch the live stream on her blue screen, which didn’t give her quite the video quality that Xena’s pad had, but it wasn’t exactly a staticy VHS tape either. Especially since whoever was taking the video apparently went to great lengths to make sure the images looked crisp and well-graded. The shots showed different perpectives of the garden and switched seamlessly from wide-angle to close-ups, to profile to a shoulder-level shot and even a few Dutch angles were thrown in. The footage looked less like a live stream and more like a cinematic masterpiece, with clear 4k quality images. And the camera guy, whoever it was, seemed to have a real knack for getting people’s best sides.
Or maybe heroes were just more photogenic than the rest of the populace. Was that natural? Or was it something you had to work at when you were a hero?
Yet another question she couldn't ask yet.
After watching a few seconds of the feed, she waved it away and opened her inventory. Aiden hadn’t quite finished telling her how to activate the cards but she thought she could probably figure it out on her own. After all, he claimed she had a knack for it, and though that last step had sounded confusing, maybe it was just the phrasing that was the problem. If young mages could activate cards, then Lexie, mentally almost an adult, could do it too.
Except that young mages probably had the advantage of knowing how magic worked here.
Regardless, she would try. And yes, she knew she was probably in over her head, and this may not work, but at least she was fairly certain the cards wouldn't harm her. And if there was ever a time to get daring and adventurous, it was now.
Ha. Look at you. Acting completely out of character.
The thought was followed by another:
It’s a video game. I can be a different character here.
The thought comforted her as she visually scanned through the cards in her deck. The deck itself was conveniently named the Party Planner’s Deck with the tagline, "SHUFFLE TO ENSURE A GOOD TIME ALWAYS."
Lexie chuckled. They may have been going to a party but they certainly weren't going there for a good time.
More importantly though, she needed to know what the cards did and how to activate them.
Luckily, the instructions were fairly laid out on each card.
The terms of use was a thirty page document which Lexie didn’t have time for so she simply moved on.
And then of course, there was her
Lexie read the cards again, frowning as she considered what she learned.
Now she understood what Aiden meant when she said that cards sacrificed flexibity for complexity. They seemed to be only good for doing very specific things, for a pretty short time period. And those things didn't feel particularly impactful in the grand scheme of things. Sure all those skills generated by the cards made party planning easier, but you could still plan a kick-ass party without that. Heck, jocks with single-digit IQs and zero magic could plan great parties.
So it wasn't something that Lexie necessarily thought needed magic.
Plus with every card, you would need to wait for it to recharge before you could use it again? Yeah, that was kinda lame. Lexie could understand why the card user population was declining.
On a more personal level though, Lexie was fascinated. Maybe because she’d never actually had magic before and she just generally loved to learn about new things. But to people who’d had magic their whole lives, this was probably underwhelming.
After all, how many magic users wanted to be able to be party planners, when you could probably do that too just as well without magic? And in times of crisis, you would much rather have a gun than a back-flipping frog.
Thankfully, they weren’t going to the party to shoot anyone. But had she been, she would have been shit out of luck.
Yeah, there’s no way I’m supposed to be a [Hero] with cards like these. How? Am I supposed to entertain people into submission?
Of course this was only one deck to consider. Maybe there were more decks that had more of a combat lean. She'd check later, but for now, her problem was starting to get clearer.
Right now though, she decided to start again with the card that Aiden made her activate, the
First, what was Power? Did that correlate to how much force the card emitted or simply how difficult it was to activate?
“What’s Power in this scenario?” she muttered to herself and her System AI was happy to answer.
Ah. So it was the latter then.
So it was good she was starting with one of the easier cards to activate.
Next was the part that required a mana output of 40. How was she supposed to know her mana capacity?
She repeated the question to the system and it said,
Upon accepting, it brought her the screen she’d seen before:
Okay. That was very doable. She had more than enough to work with.
Now, time to activate the card.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and followed the steps. The hum in the atmosphere was constant but she separated it from the noise inside. It was even easier to do now that she’d done it before, easier to even sense where the energy was strongest in her body, at her core. She pushed that buzzing sensation down to her hand, where she held the card, and suddenly the pathway opened. She saw the ladder.
Excitement fluttered in her heart.
She filled it up slowly with her mana tracing until the end. Then as the stairway glowed brightly, she tried to remember Aiden’s next words. Something about directing the outside mana inside? Using the card?
How?
She took a second to think about it, then Lexie decided to try something.
First, still keeping her focus on the glowing ladder, she tried to get a feel for the external mana again. She found she could still feel it, and it now felt thicker somehow, almost like mana particles had shifted closer to her, crowding her. The vibration in the air had gotten more intense. Maybe that was what Aiden was talking about? Activating the card might have caused the mana to shift closer to her and now she was supposed to lead it inside her.
But how?
He said using the cards to stabilize.
Could she push the mana to her hands? It was worth a shot.
She felt the mana around her hands and then tried to somehow push it closer. But it was too foreign an act. She didn't even have the knowledge of how to do that and didn't know what internal muscles to activate.
But suddenly, she saw the pathway changing.
Huh?
Her heart skipped a beat because she didn’t quite know what she’d done to trigger it. Maybe because she’d focused on her hand? Or maybe it was going to be triggered anyway because it didn’t feel like it was done through much effort on her own part. As the shape morphed into more of a staircase than a ladder, it began getting filled up again, this time a purple color that felt more like the external mana than the internal one.
The fizzing inside her grew. She felt it prickling in her chest, and in her core, and maybe also in her brain. It felt like she was being filled with life and it was an amazingly intoxicating feeling.
This is what I’ve always imagined being drunk to feel like.
Not like the one time Mickie had convinced her to try her father’s scotch. Lexie had only had two glasses before she blacked out, puked most of it out, and then fell into a dreamless sleep. That was totally not fun.
This was more than fun.
“Do you know how to use that thing?”
The voice cracked her focus and Lexie’s eyes flew open. She was a little startled to find Xena staring at her and also jarred when all that mana that had been growing inside her dissipated rudely into the air.
She felt bereft and cold.
“What did you say?” Lexie asked, trying to fight her annoyance at being interrupted.
Xena was staring at her doubtfully. “I asked if you knew how to use it. Because you kept muttering to yourself and it was taking forever.”
Oh. I was muttering?
“I kinda know how to use it,” she said. “And according to Aiden, I may be good at it too. In theory.”
Xena gave her a funny look. “You really have pre-awakened?”
“I mean I wouldn’t lie about that,” Lexie quipped.
Xena watched her carefully. “I’m guessing you’re going to be a [Hero] like your dad?”
“No,” she said. “I’m trying to be a [Researcher].”
Xena scoffed like she didn’t believe her. Lexie supposed the little girl found researchers to be lame also.
“What would you want to be if you had mana?” Lexie asked her.
“A Healer," Xena said without hesitation.
Lexie wasn’t surprised, but she gave her a wry smile. “I thought you hated [Heroes]. Aren’t healers part of the Hero Association too?”
“Not all of them,” Xena said. “Some work solo, some register only under the healer’s guild, or some work for mercenary groups. The Hero Association just pays more, but I don’t care about credits. I want to help people.”
“You mean like a Hero would?” Lexie joked but Xena didn’t find it funny.
“Heroes only pretend they want to help people. Most of them just do it so they can be famous and have money and go wherever they want and be recognized.”
Lexie thought that might be a bit harsh. “Yeah I mean I’m sure some of them suck, but are all of them that bad?”
Xena upper lip curled. “Of course, you wouldn't get it. Your father was a hero. He probably told you a bunch of stories of him saving people and doing amazing things. He never told you the bad parts.”
“Meaning?”
Xena pinned her with a look. “Do you know that a hero can get away with a crime that a regular person can’t? And even if they get punished, it’s like a slap on the wrist kinda deal. Emma says there’s even a law called the ‘Caring Cape Clause’, which basically means that if they do something wrong to someone else in the middle of a mission, it gets brushed under the rug. Like if they try to help you and end up killing you instead, they won’t get charged because their ‘intentions were good.’ Can you believe that? It basically giving them the right to murder people.”
"Well that's not exactly what it is," Lexie said, much to Xena's ire. But she had to be honest. They had Good Samaritan Law on Earth 2 as well, and, though she understood it could be exploited, ultimately the law was meant to protect people from legal consequences in case they tried to rescue someone and it went awry. "I mean, I know it's not great to hear, but without a law like that they might hesitate to act in an emergency because they don't want to get sued or something."
Xena's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, except they don't only use it during emergencies. I saw a Cape once steal a man's sandwich right out of his hand because he said he really needed it before he jetted off. And sometimes, if they're chasing a bad guy and you're in their way, they could end up killing you in the process and they would get away with it."
Lexie’s eyebrow shot up. “Really?” Okay the Good Samaritan Laws back in Earth 2 didn’t extend that far. Or at least Lexie didn't think so.
“Yeah. I know for a fact. The orphanage told me that my parents, the real ones, were killed by heroes. It was supposedly a mistake. They were chasing a bad guy down in a supposedly evacuated area, tried to shoot at him, and then zapped my parents. Lasered right through their skulls.”
Lexie winced. That sounded brutal.
And Xena wasn't done. “It was marked as an unforeseen casualty and the [Hero] who did it just got put on mental leave. He never even got a trial.” She tried to sound casual as she spoke, but I could sense the anger bristling, and the bitterness in her tone. “I’m pretty sure he’s still serving as a [Hero] too. They probably gave him a cushy job on another planet.”
“That’s horrible,” Lexie said quietly. The girl had really been through a lot. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s whatever. I don’t even remember them much anyway.” She took a deep breath and seemed to deflate, her expression looking lost. “Just goes to show you that [Heroes] can get away with a lot of stuff that no one else can. They would have to do something pretty bad to get punished like your dad was.” Her eyes met Lexie’s suddenly. “Kinda makes you wonder what he did, doesn’t it?”
Xena's gaze seemed to bore right through Lexie but she held it. The words were like loud bells in Lexie’s mind, gnawing at her. It made her uncomfortable. More than uncomfortable in fact.
And Lexie felt an inexplicable urge to say something in defense of herself, of Aiden, but she couldn’t.
Instead, she looked away, turning to stare out at the grass until Xena went back to her video pad.
Then, with her heart racing, Lexie promptly went back on the NET and tried to look up Aiden’s crime. She probably should have done that earlier but to be fair, so much had happened and she didn't have any reason previously to think he’d done something egregious.
Now she did.
Unfortunately, she didn’t find much on the NET. She didn’t find much information about Aiden in general, which was strange given that he had supposedly been a powerful, and presumably popular, [Hero]. It was like someone had gone out of their way to wipe out much of his presence from the NET. Like they wanted him erased, forgotten.
Maybe that was what happened when a [Hero] became a [Villain]. All evidence of their heroic deeds were wiped away so that history wouldn’t remember them as who they had been but who they currently were. A nobody. A [Villain].
It was the sort of thing she expected from the System.
But unexpectedly, she didn’t really find out much about his crime either.
All she got was one article that announced he was going on trial, and it showed him with large handcuffs being walked to a courthouse, surrounded by about a hundred armed guards.
Aiden looked rough in the picture, overgrown beard, bloodshot eyes, his hair long and ratty. She almost didn’t recognize him. But the most unfamiliar thing was that hard defiant look in his eyes, the same ones that often shone with affection and kindness when he looked at her.
Suddenly, the train came to a smooth halt.
“You have arrived at the City of Arcadia.”
“We’re here,” Xena said.
and it certainly doesn't have to be raving or anything. Just a quick, honest review to help the algorithm pick up the story and recommend it to more people. I really want this story to succeed so I can write it full time, and if you could take a few seconds to help me out, you'll earn my undying appreciation.
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