Antony

I woke up to a call from my agent. A quick glance at my clock revealed it was 5 AM, 2 hours before I usually get up for school.

“Antony, I submitted your drawing. It looked good.”

I stretch my body out, for now ignoring the ignorant man on the other end of the phone. The aching from yesterday’s fight was certainly more prominent than I was expecting. I must have been so fuelled with adrenaline yesterday that it lasted all the way till I fell asleep.

“Right, thank you.”

“Yeah. Also, I have another job for you if you want it. A writer is looking for a disciplined artist to draw a comic book based on his writing, you interested?”

“Send me his writing, I’ll let you know after I finish reading it.”

“As usual. I already read some of it and it seems like it's similar to the last one you did. You enjoyed that didn’t you?”

“To a certain extent.”

“Did you just wake up or something? You sound half asleep.”

“It’s 5 AM here Jack, I wish you’d check the time difference before you called,”

“Oh man, I’m sorry. I’m so used to doing business on Galactic Standard Time, I’ll keep it in mind.”

“You say that every time…”

I pressed the end call button before he could say anything else, I rolled over in my bed in a desperate attempt to get back to sleep. I soon found it to be an impossible task thanks to my aching body and numerous hyper-sensitive bruises.

I decided instead to have a bath, my body should completely recover in a couple of days, just one if I use the correct medicine. It stings like crazy on open wounds but it should be fine with internal bleeding.

I spent the time in the bath reading the story my agent had sent me. He was right, it was similar to the comic I had drawn previously, except, it was quite a lot worse. The original premise was shaky at best and the grammar was atrocious, I would be lowering myself quite a few levels accepting a job like this. In this case, there were only 2 reasons Jack would have even sent this to me. The first being that he lied and had not actually read it at all. The second was that he had been offered a larger than the average sum of money. Either way, I cared not for badly written stories.

With my bath over and my body significantly less tender, I dressed in my school’s uniform and left the giant house behind. The path was perfectly cut and clean, the school itself was the size of an entire business district. If not for the fast moving platforms it would take hours to cross the grounds. My classroom was in the North East Wing, the furthest point away from my house. It took me many attempts to figure out the quickest way of getting there.

The door scanned me briefly and allowed me access, sliding across and revealing the sleek classroom inside. I walked straight over to my chair and slumped across it. My classmates greeted me and I offered a nod, too tired for conversation and in too much pain for any sort of physicality. I sought to actively avoid any social interaction today.

As mentioned before, my status as the class clown was recognised by my entire year, so my behavior did not go unnoticed.

“Antony, are you alright?” After talking with Uvo all weekend it was odd to hear someone speak so properly.

“I’m fine, just tired.”

“Well alright then. How was your weekend?” I kicked my brain enough to at least gauge who I was talking to. I looked up to see Torlan, a member of an odd bipedal race with four jellies like arms, I believe a more accurate term would be tentacles, but, he doesn’t like that. On top of that, they have a sleek, streamlined head. He told me they came from a planet where the atmosphere was as dense as water.

“Riveting.” I answered his question with a roll of my eyes. “What about yours?”

“Same as always, Dad thinks it’s too stuffy out in the open so I was forced to the pool again. Really, I love it there, it feels like it's meant for us. But, it gets boring after you’ve been every day for 2 weeks.”

“You were still singing its praises last week?”

I countered.

“I’ve matured since then.”

“In a week? I think you’re overestimating yourself.”

As I said this the teacher walks in. Somehow with the same impeccable timing as always, when I am mid conversation. I have no doubt she waits to make sure I am midway through my sentence before entering the room. Usually, I stop as soon as she walks in but today, my reactions were noticeably more sluggish and I accidentally finished the sentence.

“Having a good conversation Mr. Vulta? Care to share it with the class?”

From past experience, I should back down here, I fear I would not have thanks to my tired mind had Torlan not been able to tap me on the shoulder in time to bring me back to reality.

“Good, right. Let’s get started shall we?”

The day wore on as I wore out. My break consisted of sleep which was also my plan for lunch but some unwanted attention found itself pointing in my direction. Camile Hurlet, a new student and the son of an intergalactic ambassador, may we be struck by Earth’s Storms lest we forget. Quite the stuck-up pretentious tool and, unlike me, definitely a major case of the only-child syndrome.

The victim today? A middle-class boy, not sure of his name nor his parent's occupation, what I do know is that his hand was a losing hand. The form of bullying here was physical, thanks for the most part to the Interplanetary Combat Tournament (ICT). Most kids grew up watching their planets representative, and, like any kid, wanted to grow up to be just like them.

This Camile guy had no doubt been watching Thar Klin as a child. Earth’s previous representative in the solo category. Specialist in traps and close combat.

The poor kid was getting held down by some goonies and thumped by Camile. The onlookers were watching helplessly, I had no doubt that they wanted to intervene but Camile was not the sort of person to take responsibility for his problems and would no doubt unhesitantly use his father’s position to threaten any peace seeking student with diplomatic intentions.

I walked over to the students as casually as possible, coming to a stop in front of Camile and facing the beaten boy.

“I need your help for a minute kid, mind coming with me?”

I smiled at the kid but he just looked at me like I was crazy, the rest of the onlookers were rolling their eyes. They had seen this before, I was quite famously known as suicidal for stepping out and stopping this sort of thing, then getting my arse handed to me. I didn’t care, it wasn’t as bad for someone who was used to the pain, this poor kid on the other hand, was going to be scarred for life if they carried on.

“You got some nerve. Wyad.”

Wyad is a degenerative disease of the brain, untreatable without getting your consciousness downloaded into a cyborg body. No one but the lowest of the low used it as an insult.

“Right Camile, what say you we come to an agreement, you let this guy go, and I’ll consider leaving you alive.” Straight out of left field, as Camile was new he likely had no idea who I was. This allowed for me to bluff, I looked him straight in the eye with so much faux confidence I was beginning to believe myself.

“Lads, this kid challenged us. What say you we switch targets for a bit?”

The goonies nodded. I noticed hesitance so I’d wager they didn’t actually like doing this, they had to because their parents probably worked for Camile’s father. I shook my head sullenly, after so much physical enhancement over the past thousands of years, the brain still hasn’t caught up.

“It’s your funeral…” I started way too confidently, mostly for the benefit of the expectant onlookers. It roused some giggles which are all I ask.

The guys grabbed my shoulders and arms, aggravating all the bruises I had spent 2 hours this morning trying to get rid of.

I watched as the boy ran away, fast as his little legs could carry him. The first punch came, this is when it usually fell into a certain rhythm. From here on out, I was powerless. But, this time, it was off-beat. The punch was slow, only by a fraction but if I moved quickly…

I felt my body duck without even thinking.

The punch flew over me and clattered one of the goons in the face, rendering him unconscious. Camile smiled a little and unleashed another full blown punch.

Before my mind could even process the situation I smack his arm away with my forearm and tore myself free of the 2 remaining people holding me down. After the brief moment of freedom the primitive, but effective fight or flight response kicked in and I took off running, never looking back until I was back in my classroom looking at my teacher who was questioning why I had returned to class so early.

I made up some excuse and sat down at my desk with my head in my arms and fell asleep, I had managed to find all the things that I had originally set out to avoid, typical.