When the object had finally hit the ground, Lancer didn't know how far off he was from decent enough hearing until people's mouths started moving without him hearing them.

He staved off the urge to go charging towards the meteor, to go off running. That was the Security Department's job. Unlike what he read in history books, being a prince didn't give him nearly the darn power he'd dreamed of when he was three. The meteor had also fallen outside of the castle walls, giving him every right to stay inside the castle walls like he'd been since he was just a zygote in his mother's womb. His mother that, after he was born, had taken off. She'd known how little power she'd have. But would it kill her to take the thing that'd slithered out of her womb with her?

And what if it even was a meteor? That was what Lancer expected it to be. Rouxls had sat him down one day, having carried out all of his duties for his duchy, read him out of an astronomical textbook, fascinated him with talk of stars and meteors and asteroids and any paraphernalia that wasn't stuck to the ground. They'd stayed there, locked the door, shouted out to anyone who knocked that they were tending to the library's maintenance. But what were meteors when the sky wasn't-

"There you are, you little-"

The words were mixed with ringing. But that didn't impede any of its impact. Everything in Lancer stopped. His heart turned to stone, his breathing clogged, still alive, still as a statue. All of the hormones stopped flooding through his veins, replaced by cortisol, cortisol, cortisol. Every night, every bad night that he could remember, every night that left him unable to sleep on a side or two, was preceded by that phrase. Five words. Five words that were chilling ice. A tangle of thorns.

So he did what he usually did… hang his head low, not speak a word. Doing that would only make everything hurt more. There was love in this, he was certain. If there wasn't any love, he wouldn't be alive, no breath to stop. If he started it, maybe it would reciprocate. And what if it already did? If he'd just take one look around him, he'd see his bike, his status, his intact feet on the finest soil in all of gosh darn Dark World. He'd see love. That was love.

He whipped around toward Lancer's face.

"Rouxls," he half- whispered, the "xls" a dying- off, a puff of air, a sputter in his voice, as his body forced itself to work again. "Thank goodness…"

There was a midget- ghost of a smile on Rouxls face. "Don't worry I'm having quite a stressful day myself I don't know what we'll do but I have to do something it hit my duchy I know how small it is but I don't know how many people there are in it…"

"Hey." He put a gloved hand on Rouxls cheek. The public wouldn't have it any other way. He'd seen this in the movies to calm people down, and as much as he hated to admit it (or maybe on the borders of "loved to"), it worked.

All of Rouxls' speech stopped, the air leaving him in a sigh. Deflating. Back to what the gentry called normal.

Lancer didn't need to say another word.

"Alright… well… let us both betake ourselves to the duchyeth… I sincerelyest wager that there will be…" Another breath. "...manifold complications."

Lancer's face lit up, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling the starting hook to its bike. It started on the fifteenth or twentyfifth time, he wasn't sure, but soon, it hummed to life, not quite making itself known over the ringing or the other people rushing to the duchy.

This was the only time when he felt… normal. Each day, he'd always felt like he'd stuck out, was the ace of spades in a card deck, big and dark and uniform, the one everyone debated over. But when his hands were put on the bike, the shuddering bike, he felt lower-classed, yes, but normal. Normal. He had a way to get out, to spread his wings to airless flight.

As the dirt bike went forward, kicking up some of the faultless grass and dirt, he leaned in closer towards the bike. Him and his bike were sometimes one and the same, both monsters with no direction until he leaned this way or that, turned a handlebar. He could feel its breath, its motorized heartbeat. He'd named it "steed"... short for "fiery- footed steed", but a steed nonetheless.

Steed banked around the corner, nearly cutting off the leaves of one of the pine trees. Its engine doubled, tripled, each vrooming adding another heartbeat to Lancer. It was a chaotic kaleidoscope, a kaleidoscope he could control.

The wall was edging up towards Lancer's vision. The gates were opened, but Lancer didn't have the gumption to barrel through an entire crowd of nobles just yet. They hated him enough because of his position, and he was sure that a tire tread to the back wouldn't help matters at all.

So he slowed down Steed's eager warrior-heart for a little while, eased off of the gas bar, his frustration set on low in its boiling- pot. He made his way to the path. Some of the nobles made accented yelps, mostly British accents (as if they weren't "noble" enough), whenever he drove by, but that didn't matter. He was Steed, and Steed had control. Steed knew what it… no, he was doing. Lancer calculated each lean, each dip. Once, though, he ended up almost scraping his elbow on the ground. That would have been inconvenient, especially since it was next to a handful of cuts trying, trying their hardest, to form scabs.

The engine puttered in an impatient drumbeat, and Lancer found himself muttering, "I know, I know." But he couldn't pay attention now… the duchy lay just to his left, and the first noble who had walked out was at least a few hundred foot behind him, as far as he could tell.

The duchy was… untouched. Out of everything, out of all the catastrophes he'd imagined with a meteor, it was untouched. There were no people scattered everywhere, nobody running away from the explosion site. In fact, there was no explosion site.

Then what could be the matter?

The only way Lancer could tell where to go next was a wisp of smoke, a hair trapped in the sky. He veered off the path, hearing an "Oh, thank the Lord" or two behind him. Having no time to grit his teeth, he sped off towards where the wisp was coming from. The wind tasted sour now, the distinct taste of smoke. A convolution of both hearty gatherings by the castle fireplace and a fistful of war, of innocent people and buildings burning, crumpling to the ground.

There was nobody here, nobody left, nobody to the right. He would look behind him, but then he'd hit a tree, or worse. Gosh, he needed to get some rearview mirrors on there soon.

Inching forward, the engine puttering, everything looking clear… wait. Wait.

He tried turning on his headlights, it flashing in an almost epileptic manner the way a phone does when taking a picture. But a glass shatter almost coaxed a "darn it" out of him, and his eyes adjusted to the blackness.

Wait. There was something.

A lump, but not an ordinary lump. He knew what it was in the way it shifted up and down ever so slightly, moved back and forth, even tried to drag itself. Steed skittered to a stop, Lancer's legs almost touching the engine in the middle and burning themselves more than they were before.

A body.

He'd had these first- aid classes before, but he'd taught them to himself; the castle had its entire department to help with that. "You okay?" Lancer half- shouted, the dimming almost gone from his ears. Not quite. If the person ended up being alright, and didn't allow Lancer to help him, he couldn't. Lancer didn't preferr being bashed by every direction because of "royal blood assisting a peasant." They were both people. Just people.

Or… was he a person?

He shook, put his hands on his legs, stood up. There was a slight rattling as he shook himself free, and Lancer stepped back for a moment so the man could get his bearings. As soon as Lancer looked at the man even more, he realized he was Lancer's height. A child.

"Erm… hey there, buddy." It felt stupid spitting that out.

No response from the child, and after hearing a whisper from him of, "Jesus, I fall into a whole duchy, and no streetlights?"

The nobles had finally caught up to him, had finally started their accented yelling at them. Lancer thought of shushing them, but he stopped. He didn't want to be the royal- pain- in- the- gavortnick everyone already thought he was.

The kid's eye flashed a color of blue, the color of his hoodie an eerily perfect match with Lancer's. A voice, deeper than even his father's, came out, and Lancer tiptoed backwards, back towards Steed.

"Heya. I know, not one of my best landings. Show's over. Nothing left to see."