Chapter Thirty-Three

Nobody ever tells you how subjective ‘cute’ is. Like, there are generalities, broad strokes of things that are generally recognized as being under the ‘cute’ umbrella. Wide eyes, button nose, little mouth, humans more or less evolved to find certain features adorable because they’re linked to ‘babies’ and that gets humans to look after and care for them so they survive.

But there’s other things too. Some people find it adorable when a kid is bold and loud and adventurous, cute is ‘attitude’ and ‘presentation’. How they dress and what they do.

Celia was cute because of her shyness. She was already standoffish even by swapper standards, and that was the thing about her that maybe made me want to make friends with her in the first place. I could clearly see the way she looked at other people around HQ, like she wanted to talk to them, but just didn’t know how to.

Maybe I’d spent a lot of time as a human, and that’s why I felt like I did, but I thought it was adorable, watching her try so damn hard to just say a few words while she struggled to show she was an asset and took on jobs that, while they were easy for me, were still hard for her.

Now here she was in a small human body and her insecurity, her shyness, was magnified ten times over, and it was positively precious. I felt weirdly protective of her, and looked over my shoulder to make sure she was still following behind me.

The kids on the field saw us coming and stopped chatting among themselves. I could hear that they were talking about the player shortage, and conveniently enough, we fit the bill.

At least by the numbers. “Hey, can we play?” I asked the largest boy.

He got a cocky look on his face, he didn’t look mean, but I more or less guessed what his answer would be.

“I don’t know. Can you?” He asked. I responded by dropping to an instant crouch, charging, and tackling him right at the sternum, taking us both down to the ground, he gasped as the wind was knocked out of him, I rolled forward and popped up to my feet with a grin on my face, then held my hand down toward him to help him up. “I don’t know. Can I?” I asked.

“Yes.” He wheezed with a grin on his face, accepting my hand, I pulled him up. Celia looked briefly stunned, even taking a step back at my sudden action.

“I’m Akira, this is Celia. My cousin.” I said as he got back up and began dusting himself off.

“Tenchi.” He answered with his own name and we went through the brief round robin of introductions with names I wouldn’t bother to remember.

“Celia’s never played before, neither have I, but we know the rules. So… scrum?” I asked.

“Scrum.” He answered and pointed to a tattered brown box, “Get the colored belts out and put them over your shoulders, we can’t afford uniforms or anything so, this’ll have to do. Our old players left their safety gear behind, so put that on too.”

Celia and I nodded and went to the box, while we were bending over and rooting around for the yellow belts she asked, “What’s up with that… why’d you tackle him?”

“Rugby. It’s an aggressive sport.” I whispered, “Relax, just think of this like when you went through combat training, only you have to stick in one form. Don’t try to kill anyone, but you can get a little rough. You can do this. And if you feel your body start to swap, just say you feel sick and head back to the apartment, I’ll keep them busy.”

Her face brightened a little bit.

We got in the scrum, the little huddle of teams where we started to push, and you know something?

I do find shyness adorable, but the thing about shy people is, it’s not necessarily a permanent, all day, every day, every way, every where kind of thing. In certain situations, shy people come to life and shine.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Maybe it’s because she felt she had ‘permission’ to cut loose, but she smiled a little, it probably helped that she had a point of reference on what to do.

We got into the scrum, and we began to push and shove and shout, my feet dug into the ground, and Celia let loose like I said to. She might not have been the top painter at the Agency, but she still had a lot going for her, she used her body to its limits, and her little voice roared as she kicked the ball forward a little bit at a time. With two swappers experienced in every form of leverage strength use, the other side didn’t stand a chance, feet kicked and limbs pumped, I bent myself to my task, my hand grabbed a shoulder and I drove forward as he tumbled down, smearing his face into the grass, no one willing to bend, no one willing to break…

It wasn’t lethal, but it was fun anyway. We must have been there for only a minute or three, but it felt like longer before we tumbled down all together in a tangle of limbs and Celia grabbed the ball, broke into a dead run. I fell under three boys, tripping up one of them before he could get her, and watched her tear up the field as she sprinted toward the goal.

I don’t know if it was because she saw it on video or if it was just impulse, but she dove over the goal line and landed shoulder first on the grass when she scored, making a nice flashy end to it.

Celia’s smile when she got to her face, was really a beautiful thing to see. She looked at me as I managed to get to my feet, like she was looking for my approval. I gave her a little nod, and she picked up the ball to bring it back over.

“Again, right?” She asked as she huffed and puffed a little.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, and we got ready to go one more time.

To say Celia knew how to move, well to be fair we were up against actual children, whereas she had the body of a child while having the experience of a veteran painter. She knew just how to push people the right way, and took advantage of that knowledge. Weight of numbers brought her down again and again, but now that she had it compared in her mind to just the old training we all went through? She was in her element. The only look of horror on her face was when she realized she’d stepped on mine by accident as she pushed away from the pack.

I wish I could say it worked. That she had to excuse herself right then or at the end of the game. But huffing and puffing, sweaty, grassy, dirty and filthy as we were by the end…

When I looked at her as the team broke up… she shook her head. I put her arm over my shoulder, the last play had hit her pretty hard, she wasn’t going to move right for a while. And I asked as we limped away, “How do you feel?”

She was huffing, puffing, smelly and exhausted, “Please don’t be mad at me for stepping on you. It was an accident.” She insisted, “I just got really into the game, I had the ball, I wanted to score, and it’s rugby, like you said, a rough sport, I wouldn’t do that to you on purpose!”

I rubbed the side of my cheek that had her shoe print on it.

“It’s how the game is played. And what’s a little foot to the face between friends?” I gave her a goofy grin and laughed, “You did great out there, did you have fun?”

She looked back over her shoulder, the sun was starting to descend and the team was disbanding back to their little homes, mostly apartments, like mine. Tenchi had an equally big smile on his face as he waved goodbye, holding up our colored belts and equipment and shouting, “Come play with us any time!”

Celia waved back at him, though she didn’t say anything, not at first, not to him. “Yes. I did. It really was like training, well, kind of. The bruises at least.” She said with a little wince.

“But how do you feel?” I asked as I helped her limp back toward the door of my place.

She waited until the door of my apartment closed behind us and then she tried her damnedest to shift.

Celia looked at me like she was afraid I was going to be disappointed in her, exhaustion hadn’t done it. I flopped down on the couch and flipped to a show about a guy who died and woke up to a life inside a dating game he played. He was likable scum, kinda.

I patted the couch.

“I really did have fun out there but… sorry to disappoint you. I know this isn’t what you had in mind when I showed up… I didn’t mean to ruin everything…” Celia mumbled. I held out my hand and teleported a bag of chips into my hand, yanked it open, and set it on the couch between us.

“It’s fine. It’s not exactly the nothing I expected, but when you have friends over,” I placed special emphasis on that word, “shenanigans sometimes happen. Maybe I should nickname you ‘shenanigans’?” I smiled when I said that, but I could see she was still a little frustrated, her sour frown and her darting eyes spoke more than mere words could.

“Everything will be fine.” I promised her, and I don’t know if she believed me, but when I said, “You can have the shower first.” She at least didn’t argue or apologize again before she got up to go and take it.