Selenia smiled with all the stern resoluteness and equanimity that a princess such as herself learned growing up in the Selenar Union with the finest teachers and tutors available. It was just barely enough to hold herself firm against the verbal barrage that the gaggle of childish fairies was throwing her way as they danced around her in the air with their glossmar wings. There were 5 of them, and each of them had a mocking grin with laughter on their lips. They were all the size of children, with hair and eye colors that spanned the entire rainbow. She just needed to endure a little more, and she would finally be rid of them, once they got bored with her, as they always did.

  “Princess of the Melon kingdom!” One said.

  “Princess Selenia Melon!” Another said.

  “Princess Melon Fairy of the Farm Kingdom!” Another giggled.

  “Princess Melonbutt Selenar!” Another chuckled.

  “Princess Moonbutt Melonbutt!” Another snickered.

  Selenia’s eye twitched. She couldn’t take it anymore. The laughing. The childish insults. The gaggle of fairies was hovering around her, buzzing around her like flies. Her eyes zone out. She felt a scream work its way up her throat, but she held it down, puffing her cheeks out.

  These childish fairies! She swore she was going to get an aneurysm!

  “Selenia is the mooniest moonbutt to have ever mooned anything!” Another laughed.

  Selenia couldn’t take it anymore. It had gone on for too long. Over and over again, the same scene played out every time they visited the town of Tigata, the largest population center in Alsium Two. For some reason, the child fairies loved picking on her.

  Her eyes widened as she exploded with fury, her teeth clenched in an angry rage. She turned to all of the fairies around her in turn.

  “What kind of wings are those! Can you even fly with those!?” She said to one.

  “And are those wings!? They look so ugly!” She said to another.

  “And yours are like wings of a fly rather than a butterfly!” She turned to the next.

  “And what about you? You fly so terribly!” She turned to another.

  “And you! I bet a chicken can fly better than you can!” She said to the last.

  Selenia stuck out her tongue at all of them.

  “And you’re all some childish and dumb! And—”

  Selenia stopped with her mouth open mid-sentence as she became aware of the gaggle of fairies staring at her, tears at the edges of their eyes filled with moisture, lips tucked in and trembling.

  Aw shit…

  The gaggle of fairies started crying.

  “Wait. I didn’t mean it!” Selenia stammered out quickly as she waved her hands frantically across all of them.

  “Big sis is so mean!” They all said together.

  The fairies ran off, tears streaming down their faces.

  “No! I’m sorry. Wait! Selenia cried out after them, reaching out a hand after them.

  They started wailing even harder as they ran even faster away. “Liar!” They said back at her.

  “Wait! Come back! Nooooo!” Selenia called after them. She deflated. Whatever momentarily glee she had in dropping to the level of the childish fairies went away in an instant.

  Aster put a hand on her shoulder. “Well. I’m not going to say it wasn’t deserved.”

  Arnis laughed. “It was. Wasn’t it?”

  Selenia raised a silent brow at them as she shook Aster’s hand off. She looked at Aster with a questioning gaze.

  Aster coughed. “For those fairies, I mean. Not you. I mean, they’ve been picking on you for the longest time.”

  Arnis wrapped an arm around Aster. “We’re not above making some children cry if it's deserved.”

  Aster rolled his eyes. “What Arnis means is that those kids kind of had it coming anyway.”

  “I thought you’d both be disappointed that I dropped down to the level of childish name-calling,” Selenia sighed.

  “Well, they were picking on you for the longest time. They go around doing that to a lot of people, so it was bound to happen sooner or later.” Aster shrugged.

  Arnis chuckled, then added, “And it’s alright. They’re children. They’ll get over it.”

  Selenia slumped in defeat. “They’re what? 11? 12?”

  “They’re 10,” Aster chuckled weakly.

  “Oh,” Selenia muttered. “That was very princess-like of me, I guess.” Guilt welled up inside of her.

  The people around them looked on in curiosity, the eyes and ears of making from different species, human and otherwise, stared at them. At her. It was like they were judging her. It was as if they were admonishing her with their stares.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “I-I’m going to go after them,” Selenia said, running off after them.

  “Sure, we’ll be right behind you,” Aster called after her.

  “Go gett’em,” Arnis encouraged from behind.

  Tigata, the town they were in, was full of SETI soldiers that had all been redeployed to Alsium Two from the Rakaila. Even now, the warship Rakaila itself hung in the bright artificial sky. The quaint little town, a mixture of brick and stone, in a nice flat plain with the hills of farm fields in the distance, was alive with activity from people out and about. The soldiers kept a watchful eye on things as soldiers stood at guard, patrolled, and availed themselves of what the town’s amenities had to offer when off duty.

  The town itself, though its architecture was that of an older era of Gaia, with its stone and brickwork resembling that of more ancient times, there were signs of higher technological sophistication within it. The streets and roads were all excellently built and maintained with purposeful patterns and coloration in the stones that made them up. The buildings themselves, though of an older style, were built of the highest quality materials available, neat and clean in their makeup, with little sign of wear and tear. The buildings, aside from those purpose-built for the main throughfares, had unique flair and personality in their coloration and design. The entire town itself looked awash in the colors of a rainbow, with curves and angles that were pleasant to the eye.

  It was midday, and there was no shortage of delicious-smelling food. The fairies had gone down the main path, through the bustling shops and stalls that lined the wide main streets through Tigata.

  If she knew them, they were going to go to that meadow they always played at, just outside the town. She’d cut through an alleyway and use all of her knowledge and skills as a princess to say sorry in the most apologetic manner possible.

  Selenia turned through a nearby alleyway, moving at high speed, bumping into someone in the dark shadows of the alleyway, causing her to recoil and fall backwards onto her behind.

  “Ah! Sorry!” A young man said.

  “It’s alright. It was my fault,” Selenia muttered under her breath as she rubbed her head and blinked.

  Another person bent down, staring at her closely in the face.

  Selenia recoiled from the sight of a young girl with silver hair and pink eyes, staring at her intensely with a dead expression. She was so pale that she thought the blood had drained from her. It reminded her a bit too much of Saphie, that flesh mimic in a thin veneer of human skin.

  “Trois,” A young man said, “How many times do I have to say that staring is rude?”

  Trois tilted her head at her, took a bit out of a meat stick right in front of her, chewing silently, then rose as the man approached her.

  The young man held out a helping hand to her. “I’m Bridges Napa.”

  Selenia took it, and Bridges helped her up. “I’m Selenia.”

  He guestered to Trois. “And this is Trois.”

  The silver-haired albino albino-looking girl nodded at her with a wordless expression as she took large bites out of her meat sticks in her hands and chewed on them. Bridges stood by her side,

  “She doesn’t talk much,” Bridges added.

  They both looked human enough. It was hard to tell sometimes. Given that some people looked human but weren’t. Bridges seemed like a human for sure. Trois, on the other hand, had beautiful silver wings jutting from her lower back, long and elegantly wrapped around her waist.

  They both wore the dark red and black uniforms of the Gaia Sphere Federation with the emblems of SETI on their shoulders.

  “Selenar,” Trois suddenly said with dead eyes, directly boring into her, before resuming the devouring of her lunch.

  Selenia perked up. The way Trois had said that seemed weird, for some reason that she couldn’t explain.

  Bridges chuckled. “That's how Trois expresses her interest in people.”

  “A-Ah,” Selenia said. She turned to Bridges. “Did you happen to see a small group of crying fairies running past her?”

  “Yes,” Bridges said. “They passed by and went off that way.” He pointed to the side in the direction of the nearby Meadow they liked to play at. She knew it!

  Oncoming footsteps made her turn. Aster and Arnis had caught up. She waved at them as they approached.

  “Selenia,” Aster said, catching up. “We brought food!” he had bags in his hands. “What’s a better way to apologize to those kids than to bring them delicious food!”

  “Delicious, delicious food!” Arnis added. He had bags in each of his hands as well.

  Bridgers perked up as he turned his gaze to Aster. “Are you Aster?”

  “Ah, yes,” Aster replied.

  “You did well during mobile frame training,” Bridges said. “Well enough against Captain August at least.”

  Aster looked at Bridges, then blinked. “Ah! You’re the two who fought against Arnis and me. And you’re the one who kicked me in the combat simulation.”

  “Ah! You two were pretty good,” Arnis said. “You’re the few who we weren’t able to knock out.”

  Bridges smiled. “Trois and I are experienced mobile frame pilots with the Rakaila.”

  Trois nodded. “Better than you both,” she muttered as she mindlessly continued eating her meat skewers.

  “What was that runt?” Arnis said, bending downward to look at the small, young girl. “You were the one I was fighting, wasn’t I?

  Trois nodded again. Her dead eyes returned Arnis’s look.

  Arnis elbowed Arnis in the side, which made him recoil backward in pain as he held a hand to his gut. Arnis winced as he coughed. Aster held up a hand in apology to him, to which Arnis waved him off.

  “I’ll have you know that if I weren’t wounded and hadn’t had my gut punctured in multiple places, I would have won!” Arnis said, then muttered to himself. “Captain Titanetta is going to kill me if my gut starts leaking again.”

  “Doubt that,” Trois muttered between chewing as she continued eating without pause.

  “What was that!?” Arnis retorted.

  “Hey, Arnis,” Selenia began. “Maybe you shouldn’t do what I did and get into arguments with someone who looks young enough that they could be your younger sister.”

  “Even so!” Arnis gritted his teeth as he pointed a thumb at himself. “Just you wait. The next time we fight again, I’ll be the one winning!”

  “Doubt that,” Trois muttered again, bored and no longer looking at him but at the food she was eating.

  “You little—”

  “I apologize for my companion Trois. She can be a little impolite in her shortness of words.” Bridges said, holding out a hand to Arnis and Aster. Arnis grudgingly shook it while Aster shook it happily.

  “I’m Bridges Napa,” Bridges began. “You both were pretty good! He turned his gaze to Aster. “But next time, I’ll be the one winning.”

  “Doubt that,” Aster mimicked Trois with a chuckle.

  Selenia took a breath as she readjusted her clothing and knocked away the dirt and dust that had gotten on her. She slightly bowed to them. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both. But we really must be going now.”

  Bridges and Trois glanced at each other, then nodded slightly at each other. “Mind if we tag along?” Bridges said on their behalf.

  Selenia looked at Arnis and Aster, who both shrugged, laden with the bags of food in their hands, though Arnis was still giving Trois the occasional annoyed glance.

  “Sure,” Selenia said with a faint smile. “The more the merrier!”