FicWad

The beeping sound was really annoying as it filtered through Mikey’s haze of sleep. Reaching out in the vague direction from where the sound was emanating, Mikey repeatedly slapped his hand on the bed in the vain hope of reaching his phone - the source of the noise. With no success, Mikey grunted, accepting that he would have to sit up to find it, which would actually wake him - something he had been trying to avoid at all costs. He was warm and comfortable and reluctant to move, but the unending and persistent sound demanded his attention. Pushing himself upright, Mikey found himself staring, his eyes narrowed and his mouth twisting into almost a snarl as Frank, sitting at the desk opposite and with his back to his laptop, grinned at him whilst waving the cellphone in his right hand back and forth.

Reaching behind himself, Mikey grabbed a pillow and hurled it at the shorter boy. Frank ducked with a laugh but stopped abruptly as the pillow seemed to stop suddenly, make a sharp turn and swing with a thump across the side of his head with enough force to knock him from the chair. With the thud of his small frame hitting the carpet with an accompanying cry of pain and annoyance, Frank threw the phone at Mikey, a look of indignation and irritation couched on his face. Mikey smirked as the phone flew towards him, unexpectedly grinding to an abrupt halt, quivering and hanging roughly two inches from his nose. With a quick smug smile in Frank’s direction, he plucked it from the air, deftly switching the alarm off as he did.

“Freak!” Frank complained as he pushed himself to his feet, a grumpy pout on his lips.
“Like you can talk,” Mikey rolled his eyes.
“Whatever,” Frank shrugged. “Anyway, it’s time for your appointment.”
“What appointment?” Mikey frowned as he pushed the phone into his jeans’ pocket, getting to his feet and stretching out his long, boney limbs.
“I made an appointment for you with Principal Scott,” Frank shrugged.
“When?” Mikey narrowed his eyes with suspicion.
“Before,” Frank replied, non-committal.

Mikey tipped his head as he looked at Frank’s feigned innocence.

“Am I going to get there and find out that you’ve manipulated his secretary’s mind, again?”
“Again?” Frank’s eyes widened.
“You don’t do innocence well, Frankie, you might as well stop trying.”
“I could make you believe I’m innocent,” he offered with a cheeky grin.
“And I could hang you upside down from the canteen ceiling,” Mikey perked up, a bright smile on his face. “Again.”

Frank returned with a frustrated pout.

“You’re no fun, Mikeyway.” Frank frowned. “Anyway, I know you weren’t going to, so I made an appointment. It’s in five minutes.”
“Stay out of my head!” Mikey growled, angry at the intrusion.
“I didn’t need to!” Frank threw his arms out to the side in exasperation. “I know you well enough by now!”
“All right, so I wasn’t in a rush to do it, but I would have,” Mikey objected.
“Do it before you have to and before it’s too late,” Frank implored his friend, adding: “For once.”
“This is harder than you realise, you know,” Mikey frowned, looking away.
“No,” Frank spoke with such sincerity that Mikey was forced to face him once more. “Waiting until he ends up here and blaming you. That’s when it’ll be really hard.”
“I know,” Mikey sighed. “And I’m genuinely sorry I offered to be involved. I’m terrified he’ll work it out and disown me or something.”
“Mikey none of us work it out until we get here. How could we? Not one of this makes sense until you’re living it.”
“You said yourself, he’s not stupid,” Mikey returned, growing increasingly concerned.
“No, but he’s not a genius either. Now go before you’re late and he goes red.”
“Okay, okay!” Mikey shook his head, giving in at the prospect of angering their principal. “I’ll see you later.”

Frank bit his tongue as he nodded. He almost opted to wind Mikey up further by suggesting that he might never leave alive or at the very least, intact, but that would be cruel and although Frank could be many annoying things, he wasn’t cruel.

“Good luck,” he said instead as Mikey left Frank’s room.

*

It wasn’t a particularly long walk to the principal’s office, but as Mikey walked the length of the last of the plain and drab corridors, it felt both the shortest and longest walks of his life. Talking to Principal Scott was a terrifying concept at the best of times but to tell him he no longer wanted to be directly involved in Gerard’s introduction to the academy felt like admitting fear, or worse, failure. He had no idea what Scott would say, but already he wanted it over with. Now standing outside the door, Mikey took a deep breath and raised his hand to knock.

“Come in Mikey,” a sympathetic sounding female voice announced.

Pushing the door open, Mikey peered through before stepping inside. The outer office to the principal’s own office was large enough for a desk, his secretary and a small waiting area with three chairs. Shuffling fully inside, Mikey looked at the woman sitting behind the desk. She smiled up with what seemed genuine interest. Everything about her suggested a kind, studious woman, committed to her work but perhaps her serious outer expression concealed a sense of fun? Dressed in a pale lemon skirt suit, she had blonde, wavy, but not unruly, hair, and looked up through a pair of smart gold-framed glasses. Only her eyes, twinkling beneath the glass seemed to suggest that there was more to this outwardly sensible woman than met the eyes.

“Hello, Miss Sherman,” Mikey greeted her, his voice giving away his distraction.
“Don’t look so worried, Mikey,” she smiled warmly. “You’re not in any trouble.”
“Yet,” Mikey mumbled.
“You can go in. Principal Scott is expecting you.”
“Thanks,” Mikey nodded, as he headed towards the door.
“Oh, Mikey?” She called after him.
“Yeah?” He asked turning to look over his shoulder.
“It might be better coming from you, but could you let Frank know that if he wants to make an appointment, he should do it through the usual channels, please? His powers are not quite as accomplished as he seems to believe.”
“Uh… yeah,” Mikey’s eyes brightened with mischief. “Yeah, I’ll tell him.”

Turning to knock on the door, Mikey let himself in to the office; almost without realising it, he held his breath.

*

Inside the office, it looked like any other principal’s office. A large plain and sparse modern teak-effect desk with wheeled pedestal drawers underneath, and a laptop and phone on top. Lockable metal filing cabinets lined one wall, a book case with an assortment of hardback books and files another. The wall behind the desk was bare but for a few scorch marks. The only thing that could even be said to be remotely personal to the principal was a framed motto, suspended underneath the clock above the filing cabinets, that read - Live to Learn, Learn to Live. The principal was nowhere to be seen, but Mikey said nothing; he had long since learned that even if he couldn’t see Principal Scott, it didn’t mean he wasn’t there. The main question was always - what colour was he?

“Mikey,” the deep crackling voice intoned, causing the boy to shiver - good, he was blue.

Standing behind the desk, Principal Scott turned to face the unnerved boy. Scott was a mere outline of a person; Mikey would hesitate to say man, as it wasn’t at all obvious. In truth, he could hardly say person. The shape was right, but that’s all it was - a two dimensional shape that could not be seen if standing perpendicular to anyone looking even directly at it. Now that he had turned, Mikey could clearly see the black outline that enclosed the ice-blue, shimmering and featureless form.

Blue was a good sign. Blue meant calm; ice-blue even more so. As he angered, Scott would cycle through a range on colours that changed with his mood. Mikey had never seen Scott flare into a fiery red, but he had heard many terrifying stories, and from the scorch marks staining the back wall, he could tell all too well that those tales were not exaggerated. One such story had been recounted by Frank, which was why it was a constant mystery to Mikey that Frank continued to flout the rules with breathtaking abandon. He had toyed with the idea of not letting Frank know that his powers were insufficient to fool Miss Sherman, but on seeing the back wall, he decided against it. Mikey wasn’t cruel either.

“What can I do for you?” Scott asked.

With no mouth, lungs or even a body to speak of Mikey was at a loss to understand how Scott could even speak but it was only one of the things that Mikey wondered about which he would likely never receive answers.

“Sir, I…” Mikey paused as he saw the blue shimmer fluctuate for the briefest of moments.
“I beg your pardon, Mikey,” Scott interrupted. “I ate something that I think has disagreed with me. My chroma keeps shifting. Try not to let it worry you.”

Ate something? Mikey thought. How?

Mikey shrugged off his momentary bewildered daze and forced his mind back onto his problem.

“Sir, I don’t feel comfortable any more trying to ease Gerard’s integration before he’s actually here.”
“Oh?” Scott asked, his chroma darkening to violet for less than a second. He could almost hear Mikey’s nervous swallow. “Can you say why?”

If he could have, he would have tried to add empathy to his reply, understanding more than Mikey realised the likely problems that Mikey’s attempts to help might entail. Scott didn’t have the luxury of tone or emphasis, with each word emerging in a deep, gravelly monotone.

“Sir, I don’t want him to think I’ve been plotting against him. He’s my brother and I…”

Mikey paused as Scott raised an arm-shaped appendage.

“Please, Mikey, take a seat,” Scott encouraged much to Mikey’s surprise.

Slipping quietly into the chair opposite Scott’s own, Mikey watched with uncertainty as he too sat down.

“I will be honest with you. I was surprised when you said you wanted to help him transition to the Paladin Academy. I was impressed, but surprised.”

Mikey frowned; did that mean what he thought it meant?

“Does that mean you’re disappointed in me now, sir?” He asked quietly, forcing himself to maintain what passed for eye-contact with a creature without eyes but clearly some visual sense.

A deep low rumble filled the room; a sound that was lost on Mikey, having never heard anything quite like it before. As Scott continued, Mikey realised it to be a laugh of sorts.

“No, not at all,” Scott replied. “You see, Mikey, I know you are very close to your brother. It’s why you’re allowed to return home each night at the moment. Well, one of the reasons. Normally, we would have expected him to have attended the academy before you, but unfortunately, Gerard’s gift has taken longer to emerge than yours did so it was necessary for us to wait. As the elder brother, with no parents he has taken very good care of both of you, but I suspect that this has had a detrimental effect on the timing of his emerging gift.”
“How will that affect him, sir?” Mikey asked with a concerned frown.
“I suspect it will come to him suddenly and he will be ill-prepared for it. I’m aware he has already shown signs of it and I am impressed that you wanted to help him through the initial stages. I would say that that idea was either foolhardy or very brave.”

Mikey lowered his eyes, assuming the worst.

“I know also that from your own experience being so recent that you are well aware of how scary the discovery of a new gift can be, so your offer to help was certainly a brave one.”

Mikey raised his head slightly before another thought came to him.

“But I’m not brave now.”

He almost spoke the words as a question, but he felt sure he knew the answer. Again he would be contradicted.

“Bravery isn’t always about continuing regardless of the danger. It is about knowing your limitations and accepting them, especially when it affects others. You have done more than I thought you either would or could, Mikey and I commend you for it.”

Mikey raised his eyes again, astonished at the praise.

“But tell me,” Scott continued. “What changed? What happened that you want to stop now?”
“He saw me,” Mikey sighed at what he saw as his failure - or as Frank had put it ‘getting sloppy’. “I was in his dream and he saw me. I’m sorry, sir, I was careless.”
“On the contrary,” the voice boomed, crackling just that bit more as the blue paled further. “I think it says more about his awareness than your carefulness. I think it’s time for him to visit the Paladin Academy at last.”
“You want me to…?”
“Leave it with me, Mikey. I will ask you to bring him but I will make all the arrangements and let you know. A few strange things might happen to worry him, but nothing damaging I promise. When he is here, you can help him to integrate. Of course you will have the faculty’s assistance but I know you will want to have a great deal of involvement.”
“Yes, sir, thank you. What do I do in the meantime?”
“Nothing, just be his brother. That’s what he needs from you right now. It’s going to be quite the shock for him when he discovers the truth and he’ll need you more than ever then.”

Mikey nodded gravely. He just hoped Gerard would understand.

“Now, I believe your transport is ready to take you home. But, Mikey, if you could pass by Frank’s dormitory on the way and encourage him not to annoy Miss Sherman again, please? Not unless he wants another scorching.”

Mikey nodded; he would probably even run, just to make sure.