2022-07-18 16:25:46Devon stormed down the street, fuming, his thoughts in a chaotic blur of rage. Summer heat roasted his skin, worsening his already boiling temper. His precious hat, the hat that he had given up his family for, smelled like the seat of an old school bus parked in a scorching sun.
He kept the hat on out of sheer spite, despite the sweat pouring down his nose.
Truly, Devons costume was not made for city heat—it was a hunter’s costume, meant for cool forests and the shade of trees with easy access to babbling brooks and the like. Had he given himself more time, he would have changed into something more appropriate—gym shorts and a basketball shirt, maybe—so he wouldn’t have to talk to the convention sweating himself dry.
Already, Devon was beginning to regret his choices.
Down the street from his house was the 712 bus line that would bring him out to the New Hudson Convention Center. He pulled out his phone and opened up HighStreet Maps. NHCC was on the other side of the city from him. The 712 would put him close to the convention center, but it would be a 2/12 hour ride there. At least the busses were air-conditioned. He find a corner seat on the bus and take a nap. Hopefully, nobody would bother him.
It was another ten-minute walk before he got to the correct stop—West 480 and Harvey St. There weren’t any seats available so he leaned against a pole, mopping up sweat that had pooled under his hat. Devon kept his head shaved in the summer, so the sweat that would have otherwise gotten trapped in his hair slid down the back of his neck.
He wrung out the sweat from his hat when he saw out of the corner of his eye a small group of high schoolers snickering at his hat.
“Yo, check it out, it’s the Pied Piper of West 480!”
The high school students snickered behind their hands.
“Hey, I’ll give you ten bucks if you can grab that feather.”
A burst of suppressed snickering answered that this was a good idea. “Get it on camera! Get it on camera!” one of them said.
“Shut up! I got it!”
Devon grit his teeth. If he wasn’t in costume, these instagoons wouldn’t have dared. But there was nothing an instagoon wouldn’t do for a few more clicks—no matter what stupid app they used.
The crescendo of snickering increased. They were actually going to try it.
Did they not realize Devon could hear them?
If they did, they didn’t care. Maybe it was all the social media they were exposed to as children. Maybe all the pandemic lockdowns had stunted their emotional growth. Or maybe it was just because they were high schoolers with still-developing brains. Devon was too hot and sweaty to care. All he knew was that these kids were rock-licking stupid, and worse, they were about to be his problem.
Since he was a foot taller than these kids, Devon predicted that jumping for the feather would likely be part of the challenge. He stretched and turned so the goons were just within his peripheral vision.
One of the goons slunk towards him, with a hand outstretched, snickering softly, ready to grab the feather.
He leapt forward.
FWOOSH
With basketball reflexes, Devon spun around and locked eyes with the goon.
The goon tried to jump back, while momentum carried him forwards. The result was a terribly awkward twisting motion, and the goon collapsed to the ground, flailing. His comrade-goons thought this was hilarious and broke out into gasps of choking laughter.
“Oh noooooo! Hahahaha—whaaaat?! Noooooooo!” laughed the goons.
His would be assailant—a young lad with his hair fashionably poofed in modern style, got up from the concrete. His eyes flamed with rage as he stormed over to Devon.
“Yo, what’s your problem?” snarled the young man as he gave Devon a shove on the word ‘problem.”
“Oh shit! Oh shit! Dude, Jaxton’s tilted!”
“Jaxton, calm down, it’s not a big deal.”
But Jaxton was inconsolable. His face twisted in a swirl of furious hurt. He was so close to having a sweet video to post, but this be-hatted idiot had made him look a fool. Now his awkward fall was on camera to spread around the world.
“Don’t touch me.” Devon put out his hands.
“You assaulted me!” Jaxton snarled. “That was assault! You can’t do that!”
Devon blinked. “What are you—first of all, I didn’t touch you. Secondly, I heard y’all saying that you’re going for my hat!”
“You assaulted me! You assaulted me!”
Jaxton swaggered and postured, showing off what he thought was well-defined muscle, storming towards Devon. Devon backed away with his hands up as Jaxon shouted and grunted, daring Devon, “Try it again, bro! Hit me again, bro!”
“I didn’t hit you at all!”
As Devon backed away, he saw in the corner of his eye one of the goons snatch his undefended bag, his eyes flashing with mischievous glee and barely restrained laughter.
“Yo, put my bag down!”
As though Devon had given a signal, the goon snatched the bag and started to run, his breath barely able to keep up with his cackling, braying laughter. With the bag gripped tight in both hands, he ran south as fast as he could, doubling over in hysterics.
“Look! I got his bag! I got his—“
But his words cut short when he turned to see the infuriated Devon much closer than he thought. Malignant mirth drained from the goon’s face as he realized there was now a six foot tall basketball player pounding the pavement towards him, feather flapping in the wind, his eyes flashing with rage.
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Chapter 52
His room had been cancelled. Just like that. No warning, no notice. At the snap of Marc’s fingers, Devon had been unceremoniously tossed out of a Convention that he literally gave up his family to attend. Devon stared at Marc for a while. Then, he laughed. He laughed quietly, then he laughed loudly, cackling, until he had no more breath in him. And still he laughed. This had been, by far, the most ridiculous weekend in Devon’s entire life. He had given up his family in a moment of anger, suffered assault and insult nearly daily, only to befriend some kind of foreign royalty who, while defending his newfound friend, had sacrificed the only housing he would have for the foreseeable future. Ridiculous! His life had become a joke, some absurd and wild story written by a mad idiot. This was a weekend that would define the rest of his life, and it all had just been so unbelievably stupid. Meanwhile, Marc looked as though he were about to leap out of the Executive Lounge window from shee
Chapter 51
Things were getting out of hand. Zayin needed to think quickly; his Prince was going to start digging himself into a deep and terribly expensive hole. Yes, Ali had certain entitlements to his family’s wealth…in theory. But Ali had never tapped into his family’s wealth before—Zayin wasn’t even sure that he could. It was a poorly kept secret that more than one relative had access to Ali’s accounts…including Cousin Sayid. To his shame, Zayin was quietly praying that there was not enough left to embarrass the Prince. He never thought that he would ever wish for relatives to embezzle the Prince’s funds. Even with his Aunts and Cousin Sayid dipping into his funds, Ali’s personal wealth was enough that he could make serious trouble for himself, as well as the Kingdom. And with the stone-set fury on Ali’s face, trouble would come. Perhaps the key to solving the trouble lay in Ali’s ‘brother’. “You.” He pointed at Devon and spoke in English. “Come with me, please.”Quietly, Devon complied.
Chapter 50
It was not the strangest occurrence to ever happen, but it was one of the strangest that had ever happen to Zayin.He stood nearly speechless as Marc, a hotel functionary, sputtered and nearly fell down on his knees trying to explain to Ali how all of this had been an enormous mistake. There had been in Marc’s words, ‘a deep and serious cultural miscommunication that New Hudson Convention Center will work tirelessly to reconcile’. It was ten minutes of this kind of diplomatic nonsense, and Zayin had to admit that he was doing quite well with it. In another life, and with another passport, Marc would have made a great presenter for one of the old State Television channels. More amusing still was, for the first time since knowing him, Ali acted like a prince. This was the greatest shock. Zayin was confident in this assessment—that Ali would be easily brushed aside by his more competent cousins and tossed out of Zhabaiye public life. Cousin Sayid would place him on a farm in the middle
Chapter 49
Since the construction of the New Hudson Convention Center, there had never been a moment quite what Marc Abramov experienced in that Executive Lounge. Since its actual opening some twenty years prior, there had never been so many people silenced all at once with just a few short words. Time seemed to freeze and Marc’s armhairs stood straight on their ends. The VIP…more like the VVIP in fact…was expecting an answer. Why did Marc make the VIP’s brother cry?He clasped his hands and began, “Well—“ Well what? Nothing. The words caught in his throat. Something about the young man’s look—and he barely registered as a man at all—struck him with a sense of absolute terror. The VIP’s gaze encompassed his entire being, utterly and completely, as though he were no more than a fixture of the room. Marc had a sudden, curious idea that there was a sword hanging over his neck. And if he did not speak very, very carefully, that sword would drop and lop his head clean off from his body. There
Chapter 48
Devon sat crosslegged on the floor, squishing his hunter’s hat for comfort. He stared at a spot of carpet, trying to drown out the sounds of the frightening-looking man screaming at Ali. Devon could piece together that the goons all worked for him—some of them were half in costume, others dressed like regular folk. A few wore golden watches. Were they thugs? If so, they weren’t like any gang members that Devon had ever seen, and New Hudson was unfortunately filled with those. These men looked too clean-cut. They didn’t have the casual swagger of the gangs he knew, and other than a little bit of rough-handling on the way to the top-floor lounge, they hadn’t been beaten. Furthermore, gang attacks usually don’t take this long, and by this point they had been sitting in the lounge for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Ali had begun to shout at the man who kidnapped him. That was the strangest part of all of this--when Ali shouted, the man who kidnapped them listened. And so did his goons. At
Chapter 47
Zayin’s head throbbed. He wished, more than he’d ever wished for anything in his life, that he could wake up back home, in Al-Zhabaiye. He missed his coffee, he missed his 17th story view of the desert, he missed the smell of the cedar paneling of his building’s elevator. All these little things he missed, many of which he had not appreciated before. His head ached until the pain seeped down into his shoulders. So tense were all his muscles that even the slightest movement ached. And it was well to be tense, because his ward, the PRINCE OF AL-ZHABAIYE HIMSELF, chose to behave like a childish idiot. Now Zayin and his security team occupied the hotel’s Executive Lounge, where they had extradited the Prince from a possible attempt on his life. The Prince sat on the couch with his head in his hands, refusing to look at or speak to anyone. One of his security team had thoughtfully prepared a plate of dried fruit and cheese. The plate sat in front of the Prince, untouched. Good. Maybe the
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