The peace conference, or at least what was MEANT to be a peace conference, was well underway, but was not going at all well! The delegate that had the floor was speaking, but with the number of people cat-calling and shouting down, it devolved into a contest of who could speak loudest...and since he was the only one whose microphone was turned on as the designated speaker, so far he was 'winning' though only marginally.
"Time and time again we have had to endure the barbs, insults and disrespect of your nation!" The speaker called out. "You call us the aggressor, yet you are the one who has sent war ships and planes to OUR border! We don't have any ships approaching you!"
"Quiet in the house please!" The House Speaker, the man who was more or less trying, and currently failing, to referee this verbal brawl called out, banging a gavel on the desk.
"Insults, YOU are the nation that has said again and again that you want to build weapons capable of reaching us and causing untold devastation!" The representative of the other nation stated. "As for insults, I'm amazed you have the nerve to talk about insults. I'm not the one that called you..."
"Gentlemen, can we PLEASE stop this!" Hayley called out as she stood up from her seat. She looked between the two men in disbelief. "What I'm seeing and hearing here today is the kind of thing I'd expect from a kindergarten! Are we really listening to two men who have access to nuclear arms whining about each other calling each other nasty names?"
"Did you see what this man...?"
"Yes, I did see what he said, and unfortunately I saw what you did too! I do have a twitter account!" Hayley interrupted one of the speakers. "To be frank I'd be laughing at BOTH of you for behaving like a couple of five-year-olds if it wasn't for the fact you're both in command of extensive armed forces that you seem intent on playing chicken with and frankly it's THOSE lives I want to see saved today!"
There was a massive cheer and the assembly, except for the two representatives having the spat for obvious reasons, erupted into a standing ovation. Hayley smiled as she saw this, and knew, just knew, that perhaps now that they could see how quickly they were isolating the rest of the international community that perhaps these two men could see how reckless they were being with the fate of the world.
She started to stir as she felt her fingers getting damp, and before long, she was pulled from her dream.
"Hayley, Hayley, your alarm didn't go off again!" She heard the voice again. That damned voice; she'd been hearing it ever since her tenure as a Ranger had begun. She was still too worried about what the others would think to bring it up with them, but it worried her deeply that she could still hear it. She sat up on the bed, at which Kody leapt up onto the bed. She smiled and started scratching him behind the ears.
"It looks like the leaders of the world will have to wait." She remarked. "Right now I know a certain someone who's hungry."
It didn't take long for her to get cleaned up and get dressed, before heading down to the kitchen. Both her parents were already out, her mom worked nightshifts at the hospital, and wouldn't get home until after Hayley was at school, while her dad ran his own shop, and was usually out of the house before she woke up. Hayley had been used to getting herself out to school for the last couple of years. In the fridge, she found a bowl full of meat and jelly. Pulling it out, she sniffed it and smiled.
"Someone's in luck." She told Kody, laying down the bowl. "It's your favourite, rabbit!"
The bowl hadn't even hit the floor before Kody was greedily wolfing his way through it, while Hayley made her own breakfast. She was a little disappointed that she hadn't managed to finish her dream, but at least she wasn't running late, even with her alarm clock being on the blink again.
Hayley had long had ambitions of getting into politics, in particular of becoming an ambassador and dealing with other nations. Since she had been a kid, she had seen enough to know that the world was a small place, and becoming smaller every day. Hell, in the last five years alone there had been no less than four different alien forces came to the Earth, and so it probably wasn't going to be long before the Earth wasn't just going to be shared among humans any longer!
Hayley was a peace-keeper by nature. She was always the kid that tried to stop the other kids fighting whenever she saw two kids beating lumps out of each other. She wasn't afraid to fight herself, something she had demonstrated more than once; she just didn't see much of a point in it. Most of the times she had seen others fight, she had found that the cause was usually something stupid that both parties would find equally ridiculous once they actually talked about it and thought about it for a few minutes. Of course that was when people were just throwing fists. Between countries, that quickly escalated into weapons and lives being lost.
She had wondered how to do it, how to make people think about their actions, especially when people would regularly dismiss her as 'just a kid' and someone who was 'too young to know any better', but that was when she had seen an article that had changed her life. It was about a young man from a place she had never even heard of before then that had become an ambassador. She had read how the then 25-year-old Prince Phillipe III of Zandar had left his homeland to become an ambassador to the US.
The article itself was...to be frank...not at all flattering. They said the same things about him that people often said about Hayley, that he was a young man with no real experience of the world, and who was aiming to come from his tiny nation that about 99 percent of the world had never heard of and couldn't point out on a map to tell people how to live their lives. However, over her reading of the article, she saw a young man that like her just realised that the world was a small place and becoming smaller all the time. He realised that simply pretending the rest of the world didn't exist was no longer a viable option and sought to make his people an active and celebrated neighbour in the world. The fact that he was also kind of a good looking guy and Hayley was 16 when she read the article was just a bonus!
She had tailored her education towards that end since then. She was currently studying two languages, German and Spanish, since communication was important to her and her ambition to get the world into a meaningful dialogue, and she was hoping to get into college and majoring in diplomacy and international politics. She had even run for junior president, though largely due to his "popularity", namely everyone treating the vote as a joke, she had ended up losing in a rather embarrassing landslide to Victor, garnering only about half a dozen total votes, including hers and Calvin's! She shrugged off the defeat and congratulated Victor at the time, but seeing that nothing in the school had changed for the better during his tenure frustrated her greatly, and she was hoping that come this election cycle, history wouldn't repeat itself. It was a long way off negotiating peace treaties, but it would certainly look good on her college applications.
She heard a horn blaring outside and smiled as she saw Calvin standing by Nitro with the car keys. He still preferred to let her drive despite now having his licence, but she did manage to get him to agree to at least drive twice a week to keep in practice. She finished her cereal quickly, before gathering up her belongings.
"Come on Kody." She told him, tapping her leg. "Our ride is here."
"Please tell me you're driving, please tell me you're driving, please tell me you're driving..." She heard the strange voice begin again. As she got outside, Calvin threw her the keys. "YES!"
"I have the decorations I promised for the school dance already loaded up." Calvin told her, gesturing to the back of the truck. Hayley had agreed to help set up for the school dance, not because she didn't like the idea of seeing Victor fail to pull off the most basic function of Student Body Council, but because she figured if she did do a good job, it might be remembered by kids who remembered Victor's disastrous first attempt and keep that in mind they were voting next time around. "Sorry Kody, it's the back seat today."
"Thank you!" Hayley said to her boyfriend, kissing him softly. "If you unload at the other end, I'll drive."
"You have a deal!" He said hurriedly, running to the passenger side quickly. Hayley just chuckled a little as she got into the truck, starting up the engine.
Over at the school, the students were already beginning to set up for the school dance. It was a big event for the school, one that normally came around the middle of the school year to break things up a little for the kids and give them something to look forward to rather than force them to wait until the end of term.
Sarah was over at the sound system, tweaking it and checking everything was set up for the best possible sound. While music wasn't really her biggest passion, she was easily one of the most technically gifted, and was more than capable of handling the rather dated school sound system.
Monty was at the refreshments table, setting out place markers for the food and making sure there was enough room for everything to be set out, when another kid came by with a couple of friends and a girl. All of them were wearing studded leather jackets and denims. The lead one had his arm around the girl, and as he approached the table he shoved Monty aside.
"Hey dweeb, where's the food?" He asked.
"Well...uh...um...it's...not out yet." Monty stammered. "The dance isn't until tonight; if we put the food out too early it'll spoil."
"That doesn't help me with the fact I'm hungry now does it?" The big kid asked. Sarah took off her headphones seeing him start to advance on Monty. She could see that Monty was scared of him. The big kid raised his hand quickly, as though to strike him, but then slowly ran it through his hair as Monty flinched. His friends just laughed, seeing the smaller kid reacting in fear to him. "So, what am I meant to eat now?"
"The um...vending machine is right over there, Ace." Monty stammered. Ace just sighed and glared at him.
"So?" He asked. "Go get me something!"
Sarah was just about to get to him when Victor arrived. He put a hand on Monty's shoulder to let the smaller kid know he was there.
"Is there a problem here?" He asked, looking to Ace. "What's going on?"
"Monty here was just about to get me a snack, weren't you Monty?" Ace asked him. Monty was shaking his head. Victor could see exactly what this was.
"Why, can't afford your own candy bar?" Victor asked him. "Uncle James' shop was doing quite well last time I passed."
"Whatever." He muttered, shaking his head in disgust. "See you around dweeb."
He walked past, along with his cronies, narrowly missing Sarah. She just looked to the two of them as Victor patted Monty on the shoulder.
"Come on." He replied. "I'll help you make the punch."
Sarah just scratched her head, completely confused by what she had seen. She knew that Victor and Monty were "friends", but for the most part Victor kind of dominated Monty, almost seemed to push him around. However, from what she had seen, here he was actually defending Monty. He had got there before she stepped in to break up the obvious shake-down. Shaking her head, she just went back to the decks to continue her sound checks. The sound system was older than her dad, and it was going to take her a little while to figure out the finer points of how to make it work.
Over in the Ranger Base, Redbot was sitting reading a book. He had a couple of stacks sitting next to him, one significantly smaller than the other. It was a selection he had borrowed from the library to read. Being limited in how much he could explore since people weren't really used to seeing robots walking around on Earth just yet, and as he had learned from a couple of books, particularly one mentioning something called the Machine Empire, humans' experience with robots hadn't been particularly smooth sailing so far. Mick had given him a book to read to pass the time, but he had finished it and was keen to find more to fill his data banks on how things worked on Earth. When the school was closed, he had been going to the library to read, but he had taken some books back to the base with him to tide him over between library visits. Fortunately the kids at the school were into more modern pursuits and so the library generally didn't notice a book or fifty going missing so long as they were returned quite quickly.
He always returned them quickly too. Thanks to his processors being more efficient than a human's sensory system, he only needed to read something once to remember it, and he could read whole pages in seconds. He had burned through the entire Harry Potter series in about two hours. He had seen a broad range of stories, from Westerns to Adventure to Science Fiction...which he found to be somewhat farcical since he essentially was Science Fiction, but the ones he enjoyed the most were fairy tales.
Humans, he found, tended to learn best by context rather than explanation and would often use stories to give people the context by which to teach people lessons. Fairy tales, for all their naiveté and idealistic presentation covered a wide range of emotions and actions. Compassion, cruelty, intrigue, betrayal, heroism, love...the last one in particular was something that stirred something within him. That there was a force that would drive someone to act in the interests of another beyond themselves, even in ways that were self-destructive or put them in very real danger, sometimes even caused them to sacrifice themselves was one of the most powerful and amazing forces he could imagine.
"And so the Prince got down on one knee before the fair maiden and said, 'Won't you accompany me to the Grand Ball?'" He read aloud. "Oh, what a story!"
He was starting to form up images in his processors, creating the scene before him in a kind of digital play for himself. He was only distracted from this as he felt the book being pulled from him. He looked down, seeing Kody resting his paws on his book.
"Hey, what are you doing Kody? I'm trying to read!" Redbot stated. Hayley looked up from what she was doing, and smiled, patting her leg.
"Come on Kody!" She called to her dog, whistling to bring him over. Kody came over to her, allowing Hayley to scratch him behind the ears. "It's alright Redbot, Kody just wants to play!"
"Well I just want to read." Redbot said in a tone that sounded a little strange to Hayley. She just laughed.
"So I see!" She said, gesturing to the books. "So which one is the pile you've read?"
"This one." Redbot said, reaching up to put the book on a pile that by now was higher than her head. The other pile only seemed to have about three or four books in it.
"So...how many days' reading is this?" She asked.
"Days?" Redbot asked. "This is what I've read this morning."
"O...kay then!" Hayley said, figuring that it wasn't exactly a surprise that Redbot processed information quickly. His brain was essentially a computer after all, when she was only about ten, she had seen her dad upload the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica onto his PC in about an hour, and she knew that Earth computers were a significant way behind what Redbot was used to. "I guess you were never programmed to play."
"No I wasn't." Redbot admitted.
"Yeah, I suppose fun wasn't something programmed into your databanks." She surmised, shrugging and turning away, picking up some paperwork from the printer. She had been working on tickets for the dance, and just needed to go to the craft room to use the guillotine to cut them up. "Anyway, I just need to get ready for the school dance tonight."
"School dance, that's just like in my book!" Redbot said to himself. He saw the White Ranger about to leave. "Hayley, can I have a word with you for a moment?"
"Well...it'll have to be a quick moment." Hayley told him, checking her watch. "Victor's MEANT to be organising this so that means that if I don't do everything it's going to be a disaster."
"Hayley...won't you accompany me to the Grand Ball?" Redbot asked, sinking down to one knee, and offering her a hand, just like he had seen the Prince do in his book. Hayley stared at him for a long moment, before bursting out laughing straight into his face.
"You're joking, right?" She asked him, picking up her paperwork and gathering her schoolbag. "You're so funny Redbot! I'll see you around!"
As she left, Redbot just got slowly up and hung his head as he looked to his books.
"I wasn't joking at all." He muttered. "I really did want to go to the dance."
With that, he just wandered out of the Ranger base, heading for the woods to be by himself. Suddenly, he didn't really want to read anymore.