Malcolm had to push his way through the glut of other students, ears ringing with a hallway full of indecipherable hollering and melding conversation, not to mention the buzzing bell that coated it all. Smiles, laughs, and victorious yells all surrounded him in a hum of positivity so infectious that even he had a hard time sticking to his usual dour annoyance. Winter break certainly had been something to look forward to, and here it now was. No more homework, no more 6 AM bus rides, no more sitting bored in some classroom for eight hours a day—at least for the foreseeable future. It was hard to find something to complain about there.

At least that's what Malcolm thought right up until he reached his locker and found two people waiting there for him. The first wasn't anything special: Luke, his big, dark, smug oaf of a friend, a title that Malcolm himself had only recently begun to grudgingly accept. Already the guy looked back at him with that irritatingly knowing expression, a sly amusement that seemed to revel in Malcolm's awkwardness as much as it sought to alleviate it.

But it was the second person that Malcolm still couldn't quite wrap his head around: Rebecca Walton, the same redheaded girl who'd once barely known his name even after all the time he'd spent pining after her. She seemed to stand apart from it all, the flowing crowd of uniformed students parting around her like a river breaking and twining again, leaving a dry patch of land in between. Everyone glanced at her as they neared, their eyes subconsciously pulled in as much as their bodies were pushed out, but in return she hardly seemed to notice even those that came closest to brushing past. Even flies would have elicited more of a reaction.

And yet, somehow, when Rebecca looked at Malcolm her eyes actually lit up. She smiled at him, waved. Malcolm found himself waving back, found his own lips curving up, found himself growing excited and bundled with nerves as he always did with her.

Then she actually spoke. "There you are! Hurry, Red says he's at his place. We can pick him up."

Right. Malcolm's brow came back down, eyes settling into the deadpan stare forward he'd perfected after a whole lifetime of dashed hopes. "Hold on," he sighed. "Let me put my stuff away."

Luke and Rebecca slid over to let him open his locker, the latter on her phone while she leaned against the wall and the former smirking down at him with arms crossed. Malcolm could hear Luke through that look, the other boy's words ringing mercilessly in his head.

Missed your chance there, boyo.

Rebecca had first sought him out two months before, and only the whole World Tree fiasco could compare to that moment in terms of pure surreality. His accident at her party had still been fresh on his mind, so when she'd actually gone out of her way to talk to him Malcolm had figured it would have something to do with that. He'd even anticipated it in his nightmares, had pictured her gracing him with her awareness only to hear a public recrimination for his social crimes and possibly a demand that he buy her a new couch to replace the one he'd covered in vomit. So when she'd confronted him that morning before even the first bell rang, Malcolm had tensed up just as much as he would against any Mystic Beast.

Instead, Rebecca had simply said she knew about his magic, had met his Ranger friends, and was actively learning to use Spirit herself. She'd asked him for tips. She'd asked him to share his adventures. Most of all, she'd asked him about Red of all people.

Apparently, his secret had been found out. Malcolm was a Ranger, a superpowered defender of mankind charged with fighting against magical dangers most people couldn't notice, much less confront. In other words, he was now interesting and worth talking to.

The sheer kaleidoscopic depth of emotions that he'd experienced was too much to ever quantify. Shock, bewilderment, panic, dread, elation, jealousy, all in that order but also somehow all at once. Ultimately Malcolm had simply stood there before her, blubbering nonsense like a fool for five straight minutes before classes eventually started and Rebecca had stressed they would have to continue the conversation later. Even now, after they had continued that conversation and then proceeded to have many others, he still wasn't quite over it.

Told you she'd dig it, Luke had said. But of course, what Rebecca dug was the Mystic World, not Malcolm, and all because he hadn't been the one to tell her about it. Too late to impress her with talk of Spirit and Magicians and Rangers, too late to show off his Tricks and have that be novel.

No, by what had to be the most insanely unfortunate series of coincidences someone had already made that first impression. Worse, it had been the absolute last person Malcolm would've wanted it to be.

"Seriously, talking to him is like talking to a caveman," she now said, showing them her phone. On it, Malcolm and Luke saw a string of short messages.

Red ❤️

Will wait

Door is open

Bring snacks

MnMs

Wait

No

Reese's

Yes

Malcolm held back a groan, but Luke laughed. "Are you actually getting him that?"

Rebecca shrugged. "Why not? There's a CVS on the walk over."

"He didn't even say please."

"It's implied."

"You are so transparent, Walton." Luke shook his head. "Thinking that feeding a guy is the quickest way to his heart?"

"You figured it out," Rebecca drawled. "My secret wooing technique, convenience store chocolate."

Malcolm closed his locker, at the last second managing not to slam it. "Let's get going."

They started walking out with the rest of their classmates, the hallway thankfully a bit less crowded now that the glut of exiting students had already made their way home. Malcolm tried to ignore how Rebecca kept texting throughout, and when he couldn't ignore it he tried pretending like she was talking to someone else, some other friend of hers he didn't know.

Luke, as was his habit, would not let Malcolm escape into mental comfort. "I don't get it. If you like him so much, why not just ask him out and get it over with?"

"Great advice. I'm sure it would work on a normal person." Sighing, Rebecca finally slipped her phone into her bag. "Red happens to not be a normal person, though. In fact, he may well be the least normal person of all time. I'm half convinced he doesn't even know romance is a thing, much less something he can feel."

"Maybe ask him to dive off a cliff," Malcolm put in sourly. "That's the kind of date I'm sure he'd be super into."

Rebecca, to both his pleasure and horror, actually chuckled at that. "You're probably right. Guess he wouldn't be interested unless there's some risk of death."

She looked away, still tickled by the joke, and as Malcolm watched her he couldn't help feeling a bit happy despite it all. It wasn't exactly how he'd wanted it, but there was still a beauty to walking beside her like this, making her laugh, having her care.

A big hand settled on his shoulder, almost pushing him. Malcolm glanced over at Luke, who now smirked with something like sympathy. Again he could hear the other boy's words without them needing to be said: Something's better than nothing. Or, as some dusty old writer had once said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For once, Malcolm felt he could understand some of what the books they had to read for class always talked about. Love, even unrequited, was only as bitter as it was sweet.

- - - — MKII — - - -

When Malcolm opened Red's door, he was greeted with an instant explosion of the senses. Loud spiraling notes shredded through the air, filling it with what should've been music but mostly came across as the sound of dying eels. The smell of new cushion furnishing attached itself like a gnat to the much more intensive smell of burned butter. The walls were covered top to bottom with posters—Metallica, Independence Day, Paramore, Iron Man, Disturbed, Titanic, all plastering every inch of the small studio apartment in a senseless rainbow collage of paper and tape.

In the middle of it all, Red himself balanced atop a skateboard, pulling a motionless manual while simultaneously demolishing the strings of a Gibson Firebird guitar the same crimson color as the tattooed stripes that spanned his cheek. Whatever he was trying to play was made incomprehensible by the unpracticed enthusiasm of the fretting hand he slid along the neck, and the already broken rhythm of his strumming got continuously interrupted each time he lost his balance and let the nose of his skateboard drop back down with a heavy clap of wheels on wood.

As one, Malcolm, Luke, and Rebecca clamped their hands over their ears, staggering forward and kicking the door closed behind them. "Dude, stop!" Malcolm shouted. "You want someone to call the cops?!"

Red did not hear, but he did twist around and see them by coincidence. The grin he already had in place only widened, and thankfully their appearance got him to stomp on the amp resting beside him, turning it off with his heel.

"Yo, Four-Eyes!"

"Too loud," Malcolm grumbled, walking closer. "Don't you have neighbors?"

"Duh. That's why she's here." Red pointed a thumb over at the corner, and the visitors all collectively realized Kitty had been sitting there on the couch the whole time.

The girl raised her eyes, fixed them with a chilly and dark look, said a blunt "Hi," then turned her attention back to the big bowl of charred popcorn on her lap and the copy of National Geographic in her hands. Clover had gotten her into the magazine some weeks before and she'd been plowing through the older Ranger's old stack of copies ever since.

"Obviously she's real pumped to see you guys," Red said, fixing his guitar to its stand on the wall. "So, do you have—" Something square and white beamed him on the head before clattering to the floor. Scowling, Red glanced down at it, glanced at a suspiciously innocent Kitty, then sighed and picked it up. A small dry-erase board with a black marker attached.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"You're still doing that?" Malcolm said, and Red could only nod as he wrote.

"Practice makes perfect," Kitty said, flipping a page.

"Oh, I get it," Luke said, strolling over and falling onto the couch beside her. "Smart. I didn't take you for a tutor."

"It's nothing special. Even a monkey could teach him some things."

Red scribbled a bit more before turning the board over for them all to see his scratchy handwriting. Reese's? Also fuck you.

"Can't say it's not effective," Rebecca said. She reached into her bag, found the candy, tossed it over, and received a hasty Thanks in return. "Still, didn't expect to see you here, Kitty."

Said girl shrugged, still reading. "It's practice for me too. Muffling the room and my ears without muting the noise completely."

"Uh-huh..."

Rebecca's bemusement was tempered when Red split his chocolate in half and offered her one of the pieces, but Malcolm saw where she was coming from. Red and Kitty's strange friendship had surprised him as much as anyone else, though the longer it went the more sense he supposed it made. Those two were among the weirdest pair of people he'd ever met, so if anything he probably should've expected that they'd wind up getting along in their own abnormal way.

"The others'll be waiting for us," Malcolm said, looking around. "Tell me you're all packed up."

"My bag's back home," Kitty said.

"So's ours," Luke said, leaning an arm back in her direction. "Thanks for letting us drop 'em off, by the way. Would've been a killer thing to carry around all day at school."

"Wasn't my idea. Thank Jay."

Malcolm should've taken some time to enjoy the rare look of cracked confidence that crossed Luke's face then, but he kept his eyes on Red, who chewed on half a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup as he wrote. The answer Malcolm got from the other boy was characteristic, but it still made him groan.

Sorry I forgot. Help?

"You're a child," Malcolm said, and this time Rebecca chuckled at the both of them. "Alright, let's do it fast. But don't blame me if you end up forgetting something."

- - - — MKII — - - -

Jason saw Zelda check time on her phone again from the corner of his eye. The two sat on the Outpost's porch steps, coated against the cool winter breeze, watching the lazy traffic on the road. No snow yet, so the air was as dry as it was crisp. A car passed by every five minutes, the only break from the otherwise quiet afternoon buzz. They'd be in one of those few cars soon enough, or one of those few vans in their case. The gray machine sat parked along the curb in front of them, Baba and Stretch and Clover already inside.

"The hell is taking them so long?" Zelda muttered, cheek cupped in her hand. No cap covered her blonde hair, leaving it to bounce mildly over her shoulders. The cold never bothered her, something everyone else figured had to do with her Trick.

Jason knew differently. She had always just been one of those people that stood strong against the elements. As irritated as she could get by the smallest things, nothing could ever quite breach her core. She was, in the face of everything, always insistent on charging on as herself, so that it was the world that had to swerve away or lie broken in her wake. Out of all the reasons he had to love her, this was to him the most apparent.

Zelda glanced at him, sensing his stare, and rather than meet it with equal affection she frowned. Beautiful. "You're too relaxed about this kind of thing. We have a lot of ground to cover today."

"It'll be fine."

"You always say that."

"And it's always fine." Jason smiled at the shove she gave him. "They probably just lost track of time a little. It happens. Let kids be kids, Zel."

"You know being an older brother doesn't make you a parent, right?"

"Just practicing for when we get to the real thing."

Now Zelda pushed him fully onto his side, and Jason laughed at the furious blush on her face. She smacked him again and again on the arm, probably hard enough to actually hurt a normal person, though with his Spirit he barely felt it.

"Don't! Even! Joke! About! That!" she said, each word followed by a thump. "I'm serious! Not funny!"

When the next thump came, Jason caught her wrists and pulled her in. "You know, one of these days that reaction actually will hurt my feelings."

"Good!"

A honk blared out from the van. Jason and Zelda both snapped up to see Stretch behind the wheel, hands intertwined by his cheek as he batted his eyes at them. Riding shotgun, Clover smirked and drew on the window, leaving a heart marked out on its light fog.

Zelda responded with a frigid glare and a firm middle finger, but when Jason wrapped an arm around her shoulder she didn't pull away. They sat in each other's silent warmth, watching Stretch and Clover laugh together in the van, Baba sitting in one of the back rows and shaking her head at what to her must've been a whole gaggle of young morons.

Eventually Zelda's voice came again, still hard but low against the flutter of fallen leaves. "Stretch, that idiot. You sure we shouldn't just invite his parents in secret? It's not too late for them to meet us there"

Jason hummed, chin resting on her hair, giving it serious thought. "Don't think so."

"We have enough extra tickets even with Mal's dumb friends."

"That's not the kind of thing we can decide for him. He'll reach out when he's ready. If he's ever ready..."

"Hey! Cap!"

Both turned to see Red waving with long, arching swings of his arm, the other holding a duffel bag against his shoulder. Behind him walked the others, Malcolm and Kitty along with the two kids Jason was still thrilled to see his brother hanging out with so often, all covered with heavy coats for the weather.

Jason waved back, meeting Red's grin. When he stood to greet them, Zelda did the same, though not without a scoff. "I still don't know how we picked up these tag-alongs," she muttered.

"Be nice," he muttered back, nudging her. The last thing he wanted was Malcolm's friends feeling out of place just because they were normal, or half-normal in Rebecca's case. Louder, Jason addressed the coming group. "You guys ready? We already put your stuff in the van along with ours."

"Then it's time to go, baby!" Red said. He gave Jason a high five, exchanged scowls with Zelda, then opened the van's door and stormed right in. Stretch's shouts joined his as soon as the two saw each other, a manic combination the rest of the Outpost had by now gotten used to.

"I haven't been on a road trip in a long time," Luke said, walking up to Jason and holding out a hand. "Thanks again. This whole thing makes me feel like I'm in a comic book or something."

Jason nodded and took the offered handshake, how polite, but before he could say anything Kitty paused halfway into the van and turned. "Every Ranger got an audience ticket," she said. "Since we're competing that means we won't use ours. So don't thank us, we literally lose nothing by giving them to you."

Her piece said, the girl went in, leaving behind a high-schooler with head hung low. "I'm getting the feeling she doesn't like me much."

Smile crooked, Jason patted Luke's shoulder. "Don't take it too personally. Kit's not mean, just... er, straightforward."

Luke rubbed his chin, nodding to himself and stepping into the van. "So you're saying there's a chance..."

Jason thought about maybe doing something to save the poor guy from trouble, but decided Luke would find out in due time. Nearby he saw Rebecca looking up at Zelda with a dazzling smile, Malcolm standing with sullen awkwardness beside her wiping at foggy glasses.

"I can't believe we haven't met yet!" Rebecca said, grabbing Zelda's hand and pressing it between both of hers. "Malcolm says you have an ice Trick, right? That is so cool." A pause in which no one laughed. "Ice Trick. Cool."

Zelda slowly pulled her hand back. "Yes. Cute."

Undeterred, Rebecca twirled around and put a foot in the van, turning to give them one last smile. "I do try!"

Jason had to cover his mouth when Zelda turned a blank face to him. He could tell even she wasn't sure whether or not she liked that, a rare feat to achieve in someone so candid.

Malcolm put his glasses back on, and they sat there for a full two seconds before sliding down and getting fogged up again. Frowning, the boy readjusted them and sent Zelda a pleading look. "She'll probably ask you for advice. Her Spirit Boost and Sense are fine, but her Flow's still weak."

Zelda crossed her arms. "Isn't that something you or Red could already help her with?"

"It's not really my specialty, and Red's a freak of nature so whatever he says about Spirit is pretty much useless to like 99% of people. Plus, I already told her your flow was perfect, and she wants to learn about your kind of Trick." Malcolm hesitated, tongue sticking, but to Jason's surprise he forced the words through. "I'd appreciate it if you weren't a jerk about it."

The two stared at each other, neither buckling. After a long moment, Zelda's index finger started tapping on her bicep, a small sign of impatience. Jason cleared his throat to get her attention, raised a brow at her, and after another long moment she rolled her eyes.

"Fine. I'll.. try." When Malcolm actually smiled at that, Zelda kicked him lightly in the shin. "Get in the van, loser. We're burning daylight."

Shoulders hunched, Malcolm did just that. Jason made to follow, but before he could Zelda held him back by the arm. She came in close, and for a second Jason thought she might be trying to kiss him, but instead she whispered tersely in his ear.

"Eventually he'll find out Stretch isn't the only one with parent problems on this trip, Jay."

Jason sighed. He'd been hoping she wouldn't notice him avoiding that conversation, but of course she had. "I know—"

"It's better if that comes from you," Zelda hissed. "If he sees your piece of shit dad without being ready for it, who knows what he'll do?" Pulling back, she gave him her trademarked glare. "We have two days, Captain, so you grow some balls and tell him or I will. Got that?"

"... Roger."

Stretch's voice came from inside the van. "You guys are adorable, but the door's wide open and we're all freezing so either come cuddle in here or we'll leave without you!"

Zelda turned her glare at the goateed man, and Jason took that chance to peck her in the cheek. When her glare returned to him, he was already crouching through the van door.

"Alright, everybody!" Jason said, getting everyone's attention. "We're on our way, but let's make sure we're all on the same page!"

He stood with his back to the windshield, watching as Zelda ruefully followed him in and closed the door behind her. Red sat at the very back with Kitty and Luke while Malcolm and Rebecca sat on the row ahead of them. Baba, sleep mask already snug under her ear muffs, would likely be napping the whole way until there beside him and Zelda at the front row, but she'd been the one to rent the van so she deserved what rest she managed to get with all the noise that was sure to surround her during the trip.

"Our destination," Luke continued, "is a little place called Labyrinth Peak. We have to be there before the competition starts in two days, so we're only stopping to eat and sleep! That means the only sightseeing we get is out the window, but if everyone behaves we can take it easy and act like real tourists on the way back. Think of it as a victory lap for when we win this thing. Sound good?"

Red cupped his mouth and let out a hoot. Stretch did the same even as he started the engine, followed by Clover, followed by Luke and Rebecca. Zelda let out a catastrophically unenthused "yay" when Jason glanced at her, while Kitty and Malcolm remained determinedly silent. Baba, for her part, had already leaned against the van wall and slipped her sleep mask over her eyes.

Well, Jason couldn't say their group lacked variety. "I'm not sure how the RC set things up yet, but we'll find out when we get there. Until then, let's sleep well, eat well, and get ready to kick everyone's butt! If we work together, I know we'll blow right through this thing no problem!"

Now Red howled like a wolf. Stretch followed shortly after, the van already rumbling as it rolled down the street, and Jason laughed before craning his head up to do the same. He felt Zelda staring up at him from her seat, equal parts exasperated and amused, but when he joined her and they sat together he remembered what she'd said before. He remembered it throughout all those hours of chatting with the others and listening to the radio, remembered it whenever they stopped at a drive-thru or gas station, remembered it during his turn behind the wheel each time he happened to catch Malcolm's eye through the rearview mirror.

Douglas Armstrong would be there at the competition. His and Malcolm's piece of shit dad. Again and again, Jason had the same thought. Damn it, En, why didn't you tell me that before I promised we'd go to this stupid competition?