When Roxanne tried to contact Mace on the watch he'd given her the night before, it quickly became apparent that he wasn't supposed to be talking to her. Or anyone, for that matter.
"Mace?" Roxanne had asked. "Are you there?"
"Aida!" Mace had exclaimed. "Listen, I can't talk right now, I'm supposed to be—"
"Mace Mind, you let that girl alone!" a female voice had cut right through his statement.
"But she was the one who contacted me—"
"Give me the watch, Mace," the woman (Roxanne assumed it was Mendje, Mace's mother, for though she honestly couldn't recall ever having met the woman, she'd heard about her, and who else could it have been?) said firmly.
"Mom," Mace had whined, "I'm not doing anything, I'm just—"
"Mace, we've gone over this at least a dozen times—you go bursting in through a girl's window like that an hour and a half past midnight, and there are consequences—you're grounded, and that means no HWP, no lab time, and no contact with anyone until you're back in school. The watch!" Roxanne felt sorry for Mace—she knew he wasn't trying to cause her harm or anything, and she was pretty sure everyone else knew that—but the woman did have a point.
"Bye Mace," she'd said quickly before either of them could deactivate the other watch.
"I'll talk to you at lunch when we return to school," Mace had promised before the line crackled and went dead. Roxanne sighed and flopped back onto her bed.
The rest of the weekend was the longest two days she'd ever lived through.
****Break****
"Holy Shnarblock!" Mace exclaimed as he and Minion sat down at the table, both of them unable to stop themselves from staring at the huge bruise on Roxanne's forehead that was quickly become a gonshedin egg. She tried to pull her hair over the spot, and looked quickly away in embarrassment. "How in the world did you get that?" Mace demanded, looking distraught.
"It's nothing," Roxanne mumbled. "I get them often."
"It doesn't matter how often you get them!" Mace huffed. "I want to know who did that and how so I can go give it to them with twice the vehemence!"
"Deldja threw her book at me during biology," she muttered, hunching down in her seat. "It's nothing."
"Deldja," Mace growled, standing up with his hands balled into fist. "I should have known, that…that…creshnan!" he spat, and turned as if to go and grab her. Minion and Roxanne were quick to grab him and pull him back into his seat, Roxanne practically begging him to let it be.
"It's nothing," she insisted. "It's just a bruise; it'll go away. I've had thousands before, and I'll have a thousand more before the year is through. It's nothing, really."
"The reason I gave you that watch was so that I could assist you whenever you needed help," Mace growled. "You could have contacted me, and I would have taken care of it!"
"You would have just gotten in trouble for ditching class and being violent without provocation!"
"Deldja hitting you in the head with a book is provocation!"
"I don't count! Roxanne hissed. Mace harrumphed, but he said nothing else. "I looked these over," Roxanne added shyly, pulling Mace's plans from one of her folders. "I really like it," she said, making sure not to look him in the eyes as she gave the sketches back. "It looks exactly like her, actually. You're a very good artist." Mace blushed a little and shrugged it off.
"I'm not that good," he mumbled. "I'm fine as long as it's a plan or a schematic or something, but once I try to actually make any sort of art—" He wrinkled his nose. "It doesn't turn out so good. I have troo-trouble with my gross motor skills. But I'm glad you like it!" he added excitedly. "Would you want to go through with it?"
"It wouldn't be painful for Quicksilver, would it?" Roxanne asked tentatively.
"No," Mace assured her, "nothing like that! It wouldn't hurt anymore than it would hurt to get a kidney removed—less, even, since after she went under she'd wake up in an entirely new body and wouldn't feel an ounce of pain!"
"Would she be able to feel at all?" Roxanne asked warily. She didn't know how it would be to go through life unable to feel. Probably horrible. She wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially her only fellow survivor.
"It would be a little difficult to craft artificial nerve endings for her," Mace admitted, then grinned. "But I'm always up for a challenge! And I did a little DNA profee—profiling," he corrected himself, "with a few of her hairs—sorry about that," he added as an afterthought, "—and she should live at least another three years if she doesn't consume any poisons or get herself killed, so we have plenty of time to work on it!" Roxanne smiled at both the thought and his enthusiasm.
"Thank you," she said, expressing her gratitude by squeezing his hand, quickly withdrawing it when he glanced down. "It's a really great idea. And I think…I think you could make a line of toys from it, too." Mace blinked and cocked his head.
"What's that now?"
"Well, if the finished product is how you plan it to be, it would be a robotic kitten—it would walk, jump, play, and sleep just like a normal kitten, but it wouldn't have to eat and children could play with it without fear of hurting it—if you didn't add nerve endings in the toy version, that is—and it would be a guarantee that Quicksilver wouldn't die off! Even if the toys aren't alive, they'd still be kittens, and every child on Cerul would want one, and they'd live forever!" Her eyes shone with raw passion, and she was practically breathless in her excitement. "She wouldn't have to be the last of her kind! And even after I'm long dead and gone, there will still be a part of Earth left alive; my destiny won't have to be their legacy, because Quicksilver will be able to do it instead!"
"I honestly only understood about three quarters of what you just said," Mace admitted, "but I'm excited! Are you really willing to allow me to craft a line of toys?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Roxanne answered. "It would be nothing short of amazing!"
"Huzzah!" Mace cried, leaping onto the table and starting to dance. For his klutzy nature, he was a surprisingly good dancer. But Roxanne still tried to hide her head under the table as people started to stare. Mace wouldn't have that, though, and pulled her up onto the tabletop with him. She could have died from embarrassment, but…It felt really, really good to have Mace's hands on her waist for that split second where he'd picked her up and twirled her around.
****Break****
After one of the lunchroom chaperones had come over to tell them to settle down and get back to eating before they were sent to the Overlord's office, Mace and Roxanne settled back into their seats. Mace's keen eyes picked up on something as Roxanne smoothed out her dress, and he grabbed her wrist before she could pull her sleeve back down. "What is that?" he asked sharply, pointing at a second bruise on her arm. "Did Deldja do that, too? I swear, the next time I see her I will give her such a piece of my mind!"
"It wasn't Deldja," Roxanne admitted as he released her, smoothing out the sleeve and looking down again. "It was a kid in the halls. I didn't see who it was. Probably no one I know, anyway."
"That's it!" Mace said, standing straight up with his palms flat on the table. "Mignon, bring up my schedule."
"Yes, Sir," the fish agreed, pressing a button on his suit. A beam of light shot out of a hole just beneath the button, and projected a screen into the air in front of Mace. Mace looked at it quizzically before glancing back at Aida.
"Can I see a copy of your schedule?" he asked, and Gilda was quick to do the same as Minion had done. Mace sized the two schedules up before using his finger to write in new entries above every class he took. He smiled as he finished. "Save file," he ordered Minion, and in a moment, the screen was gone. "There!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands together in a triumphant and "job-well-done" manner.
"What did you change?" Roxanne asked.
"I now have myself scheduled to walk you to your classes—that way if anyone tries something, I'm there to stop it."
"You don't have to do that," Roxanne said quickly. "You'll only make yourself late to your classes!"
"I won't be late," Mace said, shaking his head. "Minion and I know this school like the back of our hands. Our record is getting from History to Cerulean in 19.22 seconds. Besides," he added with a smile, "I want to make sure you're safe." Roxanne blushed and averted her gaze yet again. The bell rang before she could think up any coherent answer, and when Mace touched her forehead, she found herself irritated with herself for not being able to make that same connection everyone else had. Maybe if she could, she could finally express the sheer magnitude of the gratitude she felt.
But she was only human.
A gonshedin egg is a goose-egg.
Mace is such a sweetheart. ^^ I love that guy.
Dear GOODNESS, this fic is going to be long! O.o XDXD