An adventure destined to spawn way more problems than it was planned to fix.
Maple Tremblay and Enoki Ramirez have had just about enough of magic school and hit the road. They're not sure where they're going, but with Maple's fire magic and Enoki's...
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Maple scratched the bridge of her nose. "If you could appraise my life my life so far, how much do you think I'm worth as a person?"
"That's..." she looked confused, "You don't do that with people, silly."
"No, seriously – if I wanted to value myself with a dollar value, what do you think it'd be? I'm trying to add up my raw value per year, but I suck at math."
"And you trust me with math?"
She laughed. "No."
Enoki thought for a moment. "Five dollars a meal twice a day, 'cos you don't eat breakfast, times three-hundred and sixty five is... one-thousand eight hundred and twenty-five, and you've been around for eighteen years and eleven months, 'cos your birthday's in a month... that's... hmm... that by itself is thirty-four thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven dollars..."
"Stop making up numbers."
"I can do it on paper if you don't believe me..."
"If that number's accurate, I'd be seriously impressed."
"Why did you ask me?"
She thought for a moment. "I want to send someone a check."
Enoki frowned. "That's what we need to talk about. We're on the back of a truck, and we're gonna be for a bit, so I can listen."
"Heck it, you're right." She slouched down a little more, letting out a sigh. "So, Aaron, oui? I keep talking about him, you know him, oui?"
"Uh huh?"
"He's not perfect. He's not. But I... I don't know. I feel bad about how I treat him. Looking back on my circles in high school, they weren't great, and I hated him for a long time, and... yeah, I really got mad at him when he pushed me to go to that stupid school. He knew I didn't want to go."
Enoki was quiet for a bit. "So why did you go?"
"I don't know." She laughed a little. "I guess I felt guilty about how I treated him and decided to treat him a little. But I didn't care."
"Yeah..." replied Enoki, nodding.
"I mean, you know, clearly I didn't want to be there, we share a room, but..."
"You did start caring a few months ago," she commented. "I saw you change a bit."
"I watched some tapes," she explained. "I realized that... well... I... loved him too. I was really lonely. And he still cared when nobody else did. So, I thought, maybe just this once, I'll work really hard, and I mean really hard, and then I'll get my grades up and make him proud."
Enoki stared at her, face quiet, eagerly awaiting what she was going to do next.
"And so," she said with a tinge of anger in her voice, "I figured that, if I left, he wouldn't have to worry about me anymore. I won't take anything from him if I'm not there."
Enoki nodded. "I'm sorry for thinking this trip would be a good idea," she whispered.
"No, you're fine."
"I'm not."
Maple groaned. "Would you stop it? There's no point now. We're criminals. We can't go back, now. We're gonna keep swapping license plates until someone recognizes you and they send you back to college and put me in jail."
"I'll bail you out."
"Don't." She rubbed the corner of her right eye. "Prison meals free meals. Aaron won't have to worry about me. I don't have to get a degree or anything. I can just keep committing crimes and rot there for the rest of my life." She hit the door with her palm and the whole car shook. "When's this truck gonna stop at a gas station so we can drive off?"
"Maple..."
"What?"
Enoki wasn't sure what to say.
"Quit looking at me like that. You're a princess, you get whatever you want and everything goes right for you and everybody likes you. You know, I kind of hate you, you know that, oui? So stop looking at me like that."
"Bon," she whispered, looking down at her hands and trying to think of what to say. "What if... Aaron won't be upset at you?"
"No, he won't be, and that's the problem."
She nodded.
The truck pulled up into a gas station. The driver got out, walking inside as if nothing was off.
Enoki cranked down her window and yelled, "UH, EXCUSE ME?"
The driver turned around, staring at the two. He just stood there, thoroughly confused as to what was going on, unblinking.
"WE FELL OFF AN OVERPASS AND ONTO YOUR TRUCK," explained Enoki, "MAY YOU PLEASE LET US DOWN?"
Confused, he started work on the lift, and the hydraulics keeping the second shelf on top slowly lowered the car down to the parking lot. It took some rocking, but the car eventually found traction and rolled off the top of the new, brand new car it had landed atop of.
The guy stared at the damage, unsure what to do about it. "I... er... my car..."
"Yeah..." commented Enoki, who had gotten out of the car and pretended to survey the damage. "We're very sorry sir, that looks like it cost a lot of money... We were being chased by blind elves though, and we didn't have a choice."
"Let me see your insurance card. I've got some phone calls to make."
Enoki ran back to the car. "Maple!" she hissed.
"What?"
"Where's the insurance card?"
Maple popped open the glove box. "It's right there, but-"
"Thank you!"
She handed it off to the man. "Here ya' go!"
He looked it over. "So, you're Daquarius Park?"
"Yessir!"
The man squinted his eyes. "It says here that you're a Homme, but you... look a little more like a Femme to me."
She sighed. "You know how they tell you to throw away expired allergy medicine? Well, the side effects are both scary and irreversible, I'm afraid."
His face went pale. "I took expired allergy medicine this morning."
"Are you married?"
"I've been married for twenty years."
She patted him on the shoulder. "Better let your wife know before things get too awkward."
"Right..." he handed the card back. "I-I'll be right back."
Maple parked the car over at one of the pumps. It had looked better – the back was severely beat up, but the tires were fine.
Enoki gave the card back to Maple. "I'm going to go buy some gas," she said.
