she dreams of stars || Stupid

Stupid

"Hey, where were you last night? I called like, three times but you never picked up."

"Well, yeah." Ken turned backwards, responding to his friend, "I told you, I went to the library after 5."

"Oh." Steve stuffed his books into his locker, "So what happened this morning? You were like, half an hour late."

"I was only like ten minutes late, not thirty. Went to hit the snooze button and the alarm fell right off the desk."

"That's like, the third alarm you've broken this month. You considered moving the alarm out of reach?" Steve didn't really have much right to critisize though, considering nothing would stay on his bedside desk, either. He closed the locker door, and threw his backpack on.

"Yeah, I've considered that. I doubt I'm gonna replace it at all thou-- dude, what the hell did you just do? How'd you close the door like that?"

"What?" Steve nearly panicked. Really bad habit to get into doing. Fortunately, as much as he could habitually do stupid things out of habit, he was rather quick.

Hah, what, me close the door magnetically? Brilliant, man, great habit to get into... Steve thought to himself.

"Dude, I just kicked it, you idiot." Rather quick.

"Right." Ken felt almost as stupid as Steve did.

Steve slung his backpack over his shoulder.

"So, you wanna go play Small World at the arcade?"

"Yeah, sure. I was gonna go meet Alex there anyway."

"Alex?"

"Oh, you know, Alex Starne..."

"Aw man, you suck..." Ken yelled out at Steve.

"Oh, c'mon, it ain't my fault..." Steve popped in another quarter, and hit the start button. "Besides, it's because thise side's messed up."

"Yeah, sure. You're full of crap, you know that?" Ken didn't buy it.

In fact, yesterday someone had spilled a can of coke while playing that game, and had gotten the buttons stickey and rather inresponsive.

Which wasn't uncommon for that arcade. People would try to rest their pop cans on them, start playing, and it'd fall. But that's irrelevant.

The yelling wasn't uncommon, the arcade was half full, and the owner of the arcade was watching a TV with the volume turned up.

The 24 hour news channel was on, and was repeating one of last night's stories. At the time of recording, Jenna Rook had another headache. Probably because the writing on her script was way too small. But again, her headache had no relevance to this story.

"Police are still looking for the suspect in the attack against the wearer of the stolen AVN6, dubbed as 'Avenger'. The attacker was..." Like I said, the volume was up very loud.

"Hey man, can you turn that stupid TV down?" Ken yelled at the owner of the arcade, still playing the game.

"Oh c'mon, don't you care about the news?" Alex looked at Ken.

"No, it's this damn story. You know, the sorta 'bad things happen to good people'? I've heard enough about this guy getting his ass kicked." Ken felt a bit strange talking about himself in the third person.

"What? Good people?" Steve popped another quarter into the machine, "Man, do you really pay attention to the news, or just read the headlines?"

"Oh c'mon, if you really do pay attention, then you'd see that--" Ken was starting to get angry now, but got cut off by Alex.

"Man, calm down, both of you. Look, neither of you were there, so you should both stop acting like you know everything about this."

This was actually inaccurate, but Ken obviously wasn't going to blurt out "Well, actually, I was the one who stole the armour because it's actually easier than to steal an experimental police armour than it is to get enough money to buy leg braces and besides I'm sick of these damned gangs controlling everything going on in my neighborhood and really if you look at it I didn't do anything wrong" because Ken wasn't that long-winded, and that'd just be stupid, anyway.

So instead, he shut up.

"Hey, what time is it, anyway?" Steve finally said, after about a few more minutes.

"Uh, four fifteen." Alex said, after looking down at her watch.

"Aw crap, I gotta get home now. See you guys tommorow." Steve didn't realize that he had been there that long. He waved, and walked out the door.

"You know, I don't think he gets it." Ken said, after Steve had left. "I mean, and he just gets offended at everything so quickly."

"Yeah, well, you're not exactly perfect, either. Besides, he's probably got his own problems, and he's just not telling us."

Later, Ken'd realize that she was probably right.

"Hm." He was about to say something, but was distracted by a police car with the sirens on driving by. Well actually, it was the girl wearing the large metal boots and gloves seemingly flying after it that distracted him, the sirens just got him looking in that direction.

"Did you just see that?" Ken looked at Alex, a very surprised look on his face.

"Whoa... I think so..." She was just as surprised. "Wait, isn't she..." Alex looked over at the TV, which was still replaying the clip of the armoured Ken (who they had now nicknamed 'Avenger' because of letters and numbers in the armour's model number, AVN-6) being attacked by the same person they just saw fly by.

"Yeah. Except she just flew."

Most of people had also made this connection. And were equally surprised.

"Whoo!" was all that the girl had to say. Later, "the girl" would be called Magnet, because she seemed to be a lot like the soldiers of the same name, and nobody working for the media was feeling particularly original that day.

Anyone who assumed that she was like the soldiers she was named after would be correct, though. Anyone who wasn't blind and payed any attention at all in history class would notice that she was wearing the same boots and gauntlets that I constantly mention as the magnet soldiers. Anyone who wasn't deaf and payed a fair bit of attention in history class would know that they amplified the magnetic pushes and pulls that those soldiers could create.

Furthermore, anyone who fell under all the categories above, and actually had the desire to think about it, would have come to the conclusion that she was the daughter of one of the soldiers and was using the amplifiers of her parent.

All the news networks figured this out pretty quickly, and started calling around, trying to figure who she was before any other network did. Unfortunately for them, the records of the genetically altered soldiers would never be declassified, because the reords were destroyed, and everybody who knew was either died from terrorist strikes, cancer, or terrorist strikes with chemicals that cause cancer. So in short, nobody was every going to find out who her father was.

About twenty minutes later, Ken would arrive, furious at her, and attack her because of her assault on him last night. He didn't like to take crap from people who attacked without any provacation.

But that would happen in twenty minutes. But right now, Steve was having the time of her (using a female pronoun to describe a male name sounds ackward, but it is correct) life. Later, she would downsize the excitement when talking to Alty, saying that she "had a bit of fun".

She wasn't flying, by the way. The street lamp posts had been shot out by bored kids years ago, but they were still firmly rooted, and still made of metal, so the person soon to be named Magnet was able to swing off them, by magnetially pulling herself to them, swinging, then grabbing the next one. Much easier said than done; she had practiced for several days until she stopped falling off every time.

She wasn't putting on armour and flying around the city for a cause nearly as noble as Ken's, though. Really, it was just for attention. Or as she'd later phrase it, "I think this is the best way of screaming 'I'm a girl, stupids' while remotely retaining my social status".

It might be important to note that her attire was a bit different from the soldiers' was in the war. While she still had the boots, gauntlets, and the little visor that functioned as a targeting computer that was controled by precise maagnet pushes from her forehead (which so far, she was having much difficulty reproducing), she had a mask covering the lower half of her face.

Actually, the next twenty minutes may have been incredibly exciting to her, but not particularly interesting. So let's go about twenty minutes forward, shall me?

Ken, armoured by now, flew down the street. He was looking for the girl, and had appearently, found her, swinging from lamp posts.

"Computer, compare target to 'Magnet', filed last night." Ken said, to the armour.

"Positive match." was the computer's response. Because it was, actually her.

"Distance?"

"Aproximately 1.3 km. Estimated time of arrival at current speed: 40 seconds."

She didn't see him, however, because she was 'flying' in the direction away from him.

"Computer, load right arm. Rubber bullets." Ken instruted the computer and aimed his arm at the person soon to be called Magnet. "Fire."

I don't think I need to say that it hurt. A lot.

Of course, the bullets he was using were rubber because normal ones would be useless, and besides, he does have a conscience, even towards someone who hurt him and his ego.

Unfortunately, she didn't appreciate this huge act of kindness, and repayed him by telling him something rather nasty.

And after she was done cursing, she spun around and landed a kick on him. Well, it wasn't really much of a kick, considering it was the magnetic pressure exerted on the armour that hurt, not the actual connection of the kick. But let's look at it from Ken's perspective to see what really happened.

He had expcted the cursing, and had also expected the kick. He didn't expect it to be that powerful, though, because clearly, Ken wasn't thinking properly.

Oh my god. He thought. Oh my god, what the hell just happened? He was getting up, and was just about to swing a punch at her. Instead, he only succeeded in spraining his arm more. Ow, what the hell did she just do?

Ken may have been angry, but not stupid or incredibly stubborn. He knew when to back off. Well, sorta.

"Don't do that." Her back still hurt like hell, but Ken could've sworn that it looked like she was smiling under the mask.

He said nothing to her. "Computer, flight activate. Take my home before I do something even more stupid."

Ken went in through the back door. Well, it was really more like "crashed in", but the point is, he went throught the back door. He struggled for a few minutes taking the bent chestplating off, then sat down in his wheelchair, and popped off the boots.

It was then he noticed the several large wounds in his arm. He was starting to feel a bit lightheaded.

Quickly he grabbed a shirt from the hamper and put pressure on the cuts.

"Oh, bloody hell." Ken cursed. He tied it to his arm, keeping it tight over the wound.

"Man... that was incredibly stupid." He thought out loud. "Should get some rest before I pass out..."

He stopped talking to himself, and collapsed onto his bed. When his mother got home from one of the rare times she actually went to work, she didn't wake him up.