“Okay,” said Pru warily, one eye still fixed through the dragon’s eyes at this innocuously red-and-blue-limbed robot. “But what does that have to do with your pet Man of La Mancha robot?”
“Don Quixote the knight errant was created by Miguel de Cervantes a solid three centuries before Dale Wasserman penned the musical, thank you very much,” said Alex, “and his namesake is here to put some pressure on you. Don’t worry, I’m piloting him in sparring mode, not real time combat strike mode, so we won’t go too hard on you. For now.”
“What do you mean, sparring mode?” Pru’s belly went cold. “I still have five weeks.”
“Closer to four,” corrected Alex in innocuous tones. “And as my mother used to say, practice makes perfect.”
“That is such bullsh—”
Quixote jumped.
Jumped was a terrible word for it, actually. One second, Pru was side-eyeing those improbably gangly robot limbs, and the next, the robot had launched itself skyward, disappearing into the blue.
Flew, more than jumped, thought Pru. Or better yet, ninja’d. That was a verb, right?
She squinted through the dragon’s eye lenses, looking for some sign of Quixote, when something torpedoed into the back of the dragon. “Holy shit!” The piece of Pru’s brain that buzzed with the dragon’s consciousness flared with surprise, then rage. The machine that encased her woke up all at once, wings flaring outward, as the dragon gave a great mechanical bellow, trying to fling the other mech off its back.
“So, what was your hot take on those videos?” Alex asked conversationally. His mech wrapped spindly arms around the dragon’s throat.
“Screw you!” yelled Pru through rattling jaws as she fought her own panicking mech from its cockpit. Calm down, calm down, calm down, she thought furiously at the imprint, probably not very calmly at all.
“Interesting takeaway!” If Pru didn’t know any better, she could swear Alex thought he was being funny. It figured that a guy as humorlessly no-chill as Alex would think trapping Pru in an impromptu robot brawl was funny.
“Well, now I know why Cat is so in love with you!” Pru shot back, which was probably a low blow, but she figured it was allowed when she could literally hear the cables inside the dragon’s neck straining beneath Quixote’s grip. If this was sparring mode, she really hoped she never saw real combat any time soon.
A derisive snort. “She’s not!”
“Oh, really?” Pru didn’t know who Alex thought he was kidding. Mi gato, he’d called her, my Cat, like anyone could help falling in love with him, hearing a boy like Alex beg you with outstretched hands to run away and build a better world. Pru slammed her own palms against the cockpit walls. Fly, she demanded.
Rebelwing kept thrashing, but to the dragon’s credit, Pru did feel her take that infuriating squirming to the air. Huh, thought Pru. Progress. “The video footage in Robo Reptile’s memory banks says otherwise!”
“That’s hardly a romance. We were literal children!”
“Yeah?” Pru tried to concentrate on directing the dragon through the air, great chrome wings flapping, Quixote still clinging to its back like a deranged mech-riding hitchhiker. “Is that you talking, or Cat?”
“Cat, for sure,” said Alex altogether too cheerfully. “The summer I turned sixteen, she declared that it would be . . . what was it she said again? Right.” He adopted Cat’s crisp and slightly clinical cadence: “‘educational for a boy my age to know some girls preferred kissing other girls over kissing boys, thank you all the same.’”
The dragon flipped upside down midair. Pru gave a thoroughly undignified shriek.
“What? It’s a perfectly reasonable preference, Pru.” The earpiece crackled a few times, but Alex still sounded remarkably poised for someone hurtling skyward on the back of a pissed-off mechanical lizard. “Cat, as you’d imagine, was pretty matter-of-fact in the explanation.”
“I wasn’t screaming about that,” howled Pru, hanging upside down in the cockpit, as the dragon spun through the sky. “I was screaming because we’re going to die!”
“Well, aren’t you going to do something about that?”
“You could quit strangling my mech!”
“Make me.”
Pru emitted a despairing, furious snarl that probably made her sound more like a dragon herself than its terrified pilot. “Who taught you this adrenaline junkie bullshit, anyway? Your uncle?”
“My dad,” corrected Alex, amusement hinting around the edges of his voice. “And it’s called defensive mech piloting.”
“Defensive!”
“Well,” Alex allowed, thoughtful. “Defensive mech piloting with combat forms.” He and his mech were still clinging to hers like some freaky-limbed howler monkey.
Pru ground her teeth together. She needed him off. The dragon’s consciousness hummed agreement in the back of her head. “Yeah, well, guess it paid off when you . . . you know.”
Shall we raise him for art or war? Julia had asked, a million years ago.
Pru closed her eyes. In the end, Julia’s son had made his own choice. Which meant Pru could too.
“It’s about wanting it enough,” she reminded herself, repeating Alex’s words. It was about wanting something for herself. No one’s choice but her own.
Her eyes popped open.
Feint, Pru thought at the dragon, clenching a fist inside the expanse of its left wing. Miraculously, the mech actually responded to her wishes this time, jerking sideways. Over her earpiece, she heard Alex grunt, startled. Quixote’s grip loosened slightly.
“You have questions,” he observed, scrambling for purchase.
Pru wasn’t having it. Again, she asked the dragon, which complied with a tiny swoop that left Quixote dangling off the dragon’s tail. “Questions? I have fifth-period bio lab, which I’m going to be late for if I don’t buck you off!”
“Interesting source of motivation,” gasped Alex over the earpiece, clearly trying to climb over the dragon’s spine. Outside, metal limbs screeched over the dragon’s chrome-plated hull. Alex and Quixote were actually managing an impressive job of defying gravity, all things considered.
“I told you already, unlike you, I don’t have a guaranteed slot at my top choice university,” snapped Pru. She flexed her fingers, try ing to get the dragon to flick its now Quixote-weighted tail. “I can’t fail that class.”
Quixote’s long-taloned, red-and-blue fingers scrabbled along the ridges of the tail, which had begun to swoosh wildly back and forth. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about your bio grades right now,” called Alex, shouting to be heard over the crash of gears inside his cockpit.