Hyper! (Vol.1)

Head in the Clouds

Nathaniel wasn't afraid. He knew he should've been.

He'd drawn enough scenes like these to have an idea of what was going on. The turning point, where the stakes were raised and the big bad makes their first appearance. Rising action, as Marc described it to him once, which sounded cool. Using a real-life Akuma attack as an example, this was the delay between the helpless screams of terror and the heroes' eventual arrival, in which the villain had a chance, minutes at most, to flex their newfound powers. The worst few pages for an unsuspecting extra to wander into.

Something about being knocked out for hours must have dulled his senses. He might as well thought he was still asleep. In his mind, a clear line demarcated his desired course of action in the waking world and in the realm of slumber. He tended to be braver in dreams, while in real life, he would be the first to back down. He was a natural at disappearing—fading away into the background, off the radar. He wasn't strong and intimidating like Ivan, loud like Kim, a tech genius like Max, a party animal like Nino, or a hopeless womanizer like Adrien. When an enraged monster burst through the classroom doors, or when Ms. Mendeliev came to grade their presentations (which was essentially the same), nobody noticed where Nathaniel went. They didn't bother to ask, either.

Chances were, if he wasn't a coward, he was dozing off.

But he hadn't felt like himself ever since that afternoon, when he (willingly, mind you!) saved Marc from the Akuma, letting it take him instead. Did it really happen? None of it made sense. How come he wasn't evilized? Where did the butterfly go? Neither Marc nor Mr. Montalan offered him a plausible explanation for the incident. They were just as clueless as he was, and it bothered him.

He would find answers, sooner or later. But now, he had bigger issues he couldn't deal with.

Around him was pure pandemonium. High-pitched shrieks rend the air, and pedestrians scattered in separate directions like terrified mice. Just like that, the quiet evening was transformed into a deadly game show match, where the main objective was to avoid the mechanical steel arms curling and twisting in the air, grabbing the legs of unlucky passers-by and turning them upside down, their pockets emptied, before flinging them across rows of shops. At the center of the chaos was Picksprocket, shiny cogs ticking on her brown Victorian-era dress. Under her leather hood, a pair of bronze-plated goggles reflected the glare of the lit-up shop windows. She slammed them hard, shattering the glass to pieces, and robbed the luxury goods on display. Steam billowed from the box-shaped device attached to her back, where the arms retracted and protruded from.

Shaken laughter escaped her lips. Louder, louder still.

Marc tugged on his sleeve. "We shouldn't be here."

They sought refuge below a roadside café table, peeking from underneath the stained cloth draped over its surface.

"Why are we here, anyway?"

"Wasn't it your idea?" Nathaniel snapped. Then he immediately regretted it.

"No! I... I mean, yes, kind of. I wanted to help. But not like this!" Marc squirmed further away from him, as if he could explode at any second. Which he wouldn't. "Also, what's up with that hero talk from earlier?"

Nathaniel huffed and twisted his pen between his fingers for comfort. He wished his tablet would work, so he could draw something. Calm down a little.

"I'll be honest," he said. "This.. is not what I was in for."

"It absolutely isn't. So what now?"

Marc lifted the cloth slightly. Outside, Viperion fiddled with the bracelet on his wrist, only to hear a loud series of beeps. "Come on, come on..." he muttered. "Hang in there, Sass." He couldn't fathom why Viperion would call on his... sass, of all his qualities, in a moment of turmoil. But he rooted for him nevertheless.