No real rhyme or reason to this – it just struck me as something that could exist. In my head-canon, this takes place after the events of "Chosen Obligations" and before "Anathema" of my other stories in the Fate Is A Gift series.
Enjoy!
"Felix! Hey, Felix! Wait up!"
Felix turned, surprised not only that someone was shouting for him from the crowd of kids streaming from school on a Friday afternoon, but that it wasn't Max doing the shouting for once.
Bea dashed through a couple of upperclassmen and came to a breathless halt. "You should join the track team. How'd you move so fast?" she asked with a scowl.
Felix shrugged. "It's Friday. It's my only superpower."
"Yeah, except for your other superpower for slacking," Bea shot back good-naturedly. Then she grew serious. "Speaking of superpowers, aren't you hanging out with Max today?"
"Nah, he said he was busy."
"That's what he told me, too." Bea crossed her arms and tipped her head. "So what's he been up to lately?"
"Whaddaya mean?" Felix asked.
"A month ago, Max would have been right with you to go dirt bike racing or to hit the arcade or whatever else you guys do on weekends. And every other day of the week he'd have another story for us about why he missed school or something to go off with Norman and Virgil."
"Yeah, so?"
Bea blew out an aggravated breath. "So…why isn't he like that anymore?" At Felix's confusion, Bea said, "When was the last time you and he got together to hang out? Or the last time he got into any trouble at school? Or the last time he bragged to us about how he saved the world from certain doom?"
"I dunno," Felix shook his head. "I guess it's been a while."
"Exactly! And he keeps disappearing after school, too. Today he wasn't even in last period study hall." Bea frowned. "I hoped he'd told you what he was up to."
Felix shrugged again. "He hasn't said anything to me except that he had stuff to do down at the municipal gym. I figured he was just, you know. Being Max. Jumping into something for a while like he does."
"The municipal gym?" Bea frowned. "What's he doing there?"
"Let's go find out," Felix suggested.
A short walk later, the pair drew up near the big, outwardly blank building that marked where their neighborhood ended and the city started becoming more urban. There were gyms all throughout the area, spread a little more widely than the schools to serve the community. This one didn't have a pool since they were pretty close to the beach, but it had workout rooms and weight-lifting facilities and lots of community classes for everything from basketball to cooking to martial arts.
Bea hesitated, but Felix forged ahead – he'd played soccer and softball with the gym's teams in summers past and knew the place inside and out. He led Bea through the lobby to the big schedule board that carefully listed all the events going on at every time and day of the week.
He pointed. "Well, unless Max decided to try to take up Aerobics for the Golden Oldies, he's probably in that one."
Bea blinked. "What is Max doing in a gymnastics course?"
"Only one way to know for sure."
Felix led Bea up the metal stairs to the second floor, passing racquetball courts and the glass-paned room where men and women over the age of sixty were spritely moving to the low beat of the music that pulsed from within. Felix pushed one door with his shoulder, motioning for Bea to be quiet.
"They set up bleachers for parents to watch," he explained. "Nobody'll notice us."
And they slipped into the side of a big open room that could have housed four simultaneous basketball games. Along one wall, wooden bleachers were pulled out, dotted with parents and a few bored siblings. Most of the room was covered with a thick mat upon which at least three dozen children were grouped and practicing things like handstands, cartwheels, and walkovers. Bea blinked in surprise – the children were all at least four or five years younger than Max. Where could he be?
Felix clambered up the bleachers and picked a spot at the top along the wall. After a moment, he pointed across the room. "There he is."
The other end of the cavernous room had been set up with a variety of gymnastics equipment: a balance beam, parallel bars, uneven bars, even the vault horse and the springboard that lay before it. A handful of older kids were here, each working with an adult on a specific technique. And way, way in the back, almost hidden by the balance beam stood Max, stretching. Beside him was a woman who barely came up to Max's shoulders, her grey hair short and curly. Bea and Felix were too far away to hear anything, but from her motions and Max's response, she seemed to be taking him through some basic warm-ups.
A shrill whistle sounded.
"All right! Everybody off!" called a man from the edge of the floor mat. As Felix and Bea watched, all the older kids cleared off the gymnastics equipment and lined up along one edge. The whole room fell silent.
Max loped to the far end of the balance beam, shaking out his arms once more.
"Keep your mind on your form! I'm not going to go so easy on you this time!" shouted the woman in a firm tone. Max nodded once.
The whistle shrieked again and Max was off. To his friends' astonishment, Max started to race through the gymnastics equipment as if it were an obstacle course. He jumped nimbly up onto the balance beam and started to sprint across it.
After only a few steps, however, the woman bellowed "Strike!"
Max reacted mid-stride, ducking low into a somersault along the beam before rolling to his feet and continuing.
"Strike!"
Max was at the end of the beam and threw himself sideways, catching the beam with his hands and swinging his body beneath it to one side. When he released his hands, he slid along the floor for a yard before rolling back to his feet and rushing for the uneven bars. There was a springboard already set up, and he bounced from it to the lower of the bars.
"Strike!"
Max swung himself on the bar, kicking one leg up to catch the higher bar and pulling himself up awkwardly. Then he kicked off the higher bar with both feet, which set him to swinging around the lower bar fully extended.
"Strike!"
Max released the lower bar, flying through the air and catching the higher bar with both hands where he reversed the grip and turned back.
"Strike!"
He swung back to the lower bar, curling his body around it in a tiny ball as he slowed his momentum. When he had done a flip over it, he dropped his body down and landed cleanly on both feet.
"Strike!"
Max took off for the parallel bars, getting himself propped up between them and walking his hands along them as his feet hung suspended.
"Strike!"
With a visible wrench of his shoulders, Max dropped so he hung down from his hands, tucking his feet and knees up. Now, his hands above his head and his arms fully extended, he continued to try to make his way forward.
"Strike!"
Max surged upwards, actually bracing a knee on one of the bars until he could get up on one. In spite of the fact that the bar was narrower than his foot and curved besides, Max got up so he could stand on it and started to run along it.
"Strike!"
He jumped to the other parallel bar, landing with the precision of a tightrope-walker and continuing to run. At the end of the bar, he hopped down.
"Final strike!"
Max started to sprint all out, running once back around the parallel bars before charging down the strip that marked the approach to the vault horse. Just before he reached the end of the run, he dropped into a handspring followed by a cartwheel. He had only a few steps to get both feet under him before he hit the springboard and launched himself off the vault.
Max's body went completely streamlined and tight, his arms pressed to his sides as he arced through the air like a bird. He flew well over the landing area set up for the other gymnasts, careening towards a giant pile of huge foamy blocks, in the center of which was a small hole, not more than a yard in diameter.
Max hit the hole dead on and vanished into the pile.
"Time!" bellowed the woman, just before cheers shook the room from all the spectators. Bea surprised herself by realizing she was cheering, too.
"Two minutes, fifty-four seconds!" called the man with the whistle.
Max popped up from within the pile of cushions, his face red with exertion and bright with a grin. "I made it!"
"We need to work on your acrobatics," the woman was saying, having to shout to be heard over the din. "You need a few more options to get yourself out of trouble. But overall that was excellent work."
"Wow!" Felix turned to Bea. "With that stuff, he could go to the Olympics!"
But Bea shook her head, frowning. "No, not really. Weren't you watching? He didn't do any of the things they get points for in competition. No flips, none of the maneuvers that are a part of a real routine." She got to her feet, determined. "I want to know what this is all about."
Felix followed in her wake as Bea strode down the bleachers. She had to weave around a crowd of little ones now clamoring to go play on the course. By the time she reached where Max was speaking to the older woman, he had a towel around his neck and his breathing wasn't so hurried. To Bea's surprise, the woman was quizzing him.
"How many strikes did you evade on the beam?"
"Two."
"How many of Susan's group were clustered at the north end of the gym when you started?"
"Seven."
"Where was Robert standing?"
"Near the uneven bars."
"Which strike did you handle wrong?"
He grimaced. "The one on the parallel bars." He rolled his shoulders with a wince.
"How many more people are in the room now than were when you started?"
"Sixteen." Max looked up with a sheepish expression. "Not counting those two since they came in before the whistle. Uh, hi guys." He coughed. "This is Magdalena. She's my coach."
"I'll let you talk. Be ready to start a new set next week," Magdalena said with a shrewd glance. As she walked past, she actually patted Max on the shoulder. "Good work today, Mighty One."
"Okay, that's it. Max, what is going on here?!" Bea almost exploded.
Max wiped a wrist against his forehead, then swiped off the Cosmic Cap he was wearing still in spite of the efforts on the course and rubbed at the sweat on his brow with the towel, never letting go of the Cap.
"I just wanna know how you keep that thing on when you're upside down," Felix put in.
"Start talking," Bea planted her feet and waited.
Max looked at his two friends and sighed. "It's really not a big deal." At Bea's ire, he backtracked. "Okay! Fine. Just let me go change, will ya?"
"We'll be waiting," Bea told him.
Fifteen minutes later, Max emerged from the locker room to his two friends leaning on the wall across from the door. Aside from the slight dampness of his hair from the quick shower and the bag over his arm, he looked the same as always. Max gestured with his head and his friends fell into step with him as they started down the hall towards the exit.
"See you tomorrow?" called one of the volunteers at the front desk as they passed.
"No, I'm over at the other one tomorrow," Max answered. "I'll be back on Monday, though!"
"See you then!"
Out in the sunlight, Max stretched. "Anybody want some ice cream?"
"As long as it comes with some answers," Bea told him.
Max rolled his eyes. "Yes, Your Highness."
But he did successfully deflect Bea's dogged interest until after he'd installed the trio in a booth at their favorite ice cream parlor, a banana split before him with his favorite combination of sprinkles and peanut butter chips. Felix was mollified by the strawberry ice cream sundae, but Bea never even glanced at her root beer float as she glared at Max.
"Now spill. What's going on with you?"
"Okay, look," he said, slurping some ice cream between words. "You know that I told you all about the time travel thing, right?"
"Yeah!" Felix grinned. "You knew when all the pop quizzes were going to be. That was, like, so helpful!"
Bea rolled her eyes but waited for Max to continue.
"Well, it wasn't just, you know, school that repeated itself. All the bad guys and monsters and aliens and everything happened all over again, too. But this time I knew what was coming so it was a lot easier to handle. A couple of them we just dealt with before they even got going and the world wasn't in that dire peril like usual."
"Okay…" Bea said, trying to encourage him.
"But it's all new now. And it seems like the bad stuff is worse now than it used to be." Max's voice went softer. "It's not just those lame snake people or that nutso Zygote. A couple of them have been…really tough."
Bea could only nod.
"And I just…you know. I needed to be better in order to deal with it. It isn't going to get easier, and it isn't going to end any time soon. And I can't make Norman and Virgil do all the work anymore, either. More and more of it depends on me to pull my weight."
"Max," Felix said with sudden gentleness, "you always pull your weight. They know that."
"Yeah," Max nodded, "but it's different. After months of knowing everything that would happen and remembering how it went down once before, I could really see where I wasn't up to snuff on the first round. And since I don't think I'm going to get another chance to rewind time, I really can't be less than perfect."
"So you…started taking gymnastics?" Bea asked.
Max shrugged. "Not just that, but yeah. I was always fast and good at climbing around and stuff, but I wanted to get better at it. Not doing random flips or something just to look cool, but being able to dodge a bad guy while balancing on one foot or swinging through the air? Or being able to land on my feet no matter where a portal drops me off? Yeah, that helps. I also started taking a diving course at the pool across town so I can get better at jumping into portals in the first place."
"And that's where you've been every day this month?" Felix wanted to know.
Max nodded. "Yeah. Well, except for Sundays and Thursdays. That's when I portal out to wherever Norman and Virgil are and Norman puts me through his own boot camp." He grinned tiredly. "And let me tell you – the Marines have nothing on Norman's version."
"I believe it," Bea said with a grimace. "But…when do you have fun? For that matter, when do you do homework?"
"Whenever I can," Max shrugged. "Sometimes in the morning before school. Friday and Saturday nights, too. Plus, Norman and Virgil have been staying over a lot more often when they can so Virgil tutors me whenever Normie gives me a break."
Felix reached over and put a hand on Max's forehead. "You don't feel sick to me. But homework? On a Friday night? Are you serious?"
"I guess I am," Max stared at his melting ice cream.
"That's why you didn't tell us," Bea realized. "You didn't want us to know…"
"How completely screwed up my life is?" Max smiled wanly. "I guess so. It's just so lame. But," his eyes took on a faraway look, "…but it's what I need to do."
"I think I understand," Bea nodded. "And, if it helps, I'm proud of you, Max. For taking this seriously. I didn't know you had that kind of sacrifice in you."
Felix was nodding, but Max shook his head.
"Sacrifice?" His face twisted into an ugly attempt at a grin. "Trust me. If you'd been at Stonehenge, if you'd been anywhere I've been in the last few months, you'd know I know all about sacrifice."
He blew out a breath and shoved his spoon into a mushy banana. "Look. It's just…I've got a job to do, you know? And I can't…I can't ever not be good enough to do it right again. Never again. And if that means I gotta turn my life inside out, well…" He looked up with an infinitely sad expression, "…I know now what happens when I'm not good enough. And I'm never going to let that happen again."
Bea swallowed a thick lump in her throat. Her heart was full of things and she wasn't sure which, if any of them, she should say.
Felix had no such hesitation. "So, what time do we hit the pool tomorrow?"
Max actually blinked in surprise. "What?"
Felix smiled lazily. "I'm not saying I'll do all this stuff with you all the time, 'cause that's just crazy. But, you know, if you want a buddy for some of the classes or something, I'm there. It's not that different from dirt biking, I guess. It could be fun."
Bea felt herself smiling too. "Yeah. I could probably use some more exercise myself. And I'd be glad to help you speed up your homework on a Friday night if you needed the help."
Max's eyes lit up like twin suns and his face split in a huge grin. "You guys are the best!" he cheered, dropping his spoon and flinging an arm around each of them.
"But there's a catch," Felix warned, humor dancing in his face.
"Name it, buddy," Max said.
"How exactly do you keep that Cap on when you're upside-down? You gotta tell me!"
Bea laughed and Max laughed too, but his eyes lost a bit of their bright joy and warmed to something much more sincere.
"It's a part of me," he said with a touch of reverence. "It's mine and I belong to it. And it turns out that I can only really lose it if I want to lose it. But now that I want to keep it, for real, for the right reasons, it seems to stick with me a lot more."
"And so will we," Bea promised quietly.
Max nodded and squeezed her shoulder. Then he threw himself back into his seat and dug into his ice cream with a more familiar grin, immediately cracking a joke and pretending as if everything were as it had always been.
But Bea and Felix exchanged a glance.
It wasn't what it had been. It couldn't be. And it seemed Max had decided to embrace that change wholeheartedly, striving ever more forwards on the path he had been chosen to walk.
And if Max was going to walk that path and give everything to it – his time, his fun, his energy, his determination, his whole self – then the least Bea and Felix could do would be to stand with him. They hadn't really gone in for the whole Mighty One thing before, but they, too, had a new chance to get it right this time. They couldn't be Norman and Virgil. They couldn't be Max's protectors or guides or his companions in battle. But he didn't need them to be that. He needed them to be his friends. And if Max could work himself to the bone in order to be in top shape to save the world, then Bea and Felix could be there for him in return.
Bea suddenly remembered something she'd read by George Eliot: It's never too late to be who you might have been.
Max had always been the Mighty One. And finally Bea could really and truly understand why he deserved to be the Cap-Bearer. Because only the true Mighty One would be willing to give up their life not once, but every single day for the rest of his life for it. As Max was doing now.
"And if he can do that, the least I can do is be there for him," she vowed silently.
Felix and Bea walked Max home and decided they all could use a homework party together that night.