Gun Princess Royale - Book One - Awakening the Princess

Chapter 1

- I -

(School Week One. Friday)

From my window seat in the classroom, I watched the gulls ride the thermal currents flowing over the ocean waves. Looking small in the distance, they resembled tiny pieces of paper littering the air, rising and falling, sometimes lazily circling about. Nonetheless, I knew they were gulls and not paper, and for much of the afternoon homeroom period they had persistently nagged at my attention.

The small flock of gulls dove out of sight. I imagined them diving beyond the rocky shoreline of Telos Island that was shored up by a seawall completely encircling the island. For extra measure, countless permacrete tetrapods banked up against the seawall, protecting it from the heavy waves roused up by the ocean storms that frequented the coastline during the summers experienced in the northern hemisphere.

I say that I imagined the gulls diving beyond the seawall because despite having a window seat on the second level – or first floor if you counted the ground floor – my view of the ocean was obscured by the giant monstrosity of permaglass and titansteel that was the high school clubroom building – a hundred meters long and four stories tall with a transparent façade facing the school.

What is the point of a window seat if all I can see is that vulgar architectural disaster?

I really hated that building and wished the school had built it somewhere else. To me it was a testament to the ego of some half-baked architect with too little talent and too little imagination. I found nothing appealing in its design, though I'm sure someone will criticize me for my lack of taste.

I watched and waited for the gulls to reappear above its rooftop. When they didn't, my attention drifted upwards to the long, thin contrail cutting across the patchy late afternoon sky, generated by a trans-orbit shuttle making its way down planetside from the orbital city. Then again, it could be a commercial skyliner making the low orbit jump from west coast to east coast of the northern continent. With a faint shrug to myself, I watched the contrail slowly dissipate back into the surrounding atmosphere.

The sound of a bell ringing dragged my attention back to the front of the classroom, where our teacher, Miss Serene Marisol, quickly wrapped up proceedings for afternoon homeroom.

For the six thousand students attending Telos Academy, that bell signaled the end of classes for the day, and the end of the five-day school week that paralleled the business week. In other words, it was Friday afternoon, and time to pack up and head for home or other intervening destinations.

I looked at the tall annoyingly good looking blonde boy seated ahead of me, and watched him with a sinking feeling in my gut as he pack his belongings quickly into his school issued carry-bag. It was obvious he had plans, and those plans didn't include me. This was something that had become abundantly clear during the week – more specifically ever since we graduated into high school – as more often than not I found myself heading home on my own, and today was apparently no exception.

Nonetheless, I made a valiant effort to alter that outcome.

I cleared my throat and leaned forward over my intelli-desk. "Hey, Tobias, how about that crêpe place over in Ring One? It's close by the arcade. I was thinking we could pass by on our way—"

"Sorry, Ronin. Gotta run." He hastily stood up and pushed his chair in under his intelli-desk.

I stared at him and blinked quickly. "Wh—what do you mean you have to run?" I sat back. "What—again? You're ditching me again?"