Also, real-life training montages were actually kind of terrible to live through, even within the confines of a dragon-shaped mobile suit.
“Repeat the exercise, please,” drawled Jay Park over Pru’s earpiece. He sounded like one of those hot but secretly sadistic wicked monarchs in fantasy video games. Infinitely unimpressed, but just amused enough by his jester’s antics to keep her jumping through hoops.
Literal hoops. Pru ground her teeth, as she cast a mistrustful eye toward the crackling blue loops of force field energy that Jay had arranged for their training session. Pru’s dragon-piloting skills had seen a noticeable uptick since her square-off against Quixote. By breaking into the training facilities to bond with Rebelwing and fight with Alex, she seemed to have passed some arbitrary test of worthiness.
Still, obstacle courses—giant, scary-ass force fields shaped like actual, flaming circus hoops—went way beyond the work-study call of duty, in Pru’s opinion. She’d clipped a wing on one of them last week, and the crackling electrical backfire had sent Rebelwing into a tailspin she’d barely recovered from. There was agility under pressure, and then there was agility under the yoke of utter terror.
“Up,” she muttered at the dragon, which pulled up just a hair too fast, and nearly slammed them into one of the force fields again. They got through the rest of the course fine, but Jay made Pru fly it a couple more times, “just to really get the agility maneuvers down.” Likelier that he was just trolling her. At the very least, the whole ridiculous exercise ate up the rest of the work-study period, saving her from anything even more troublesome. “Nice work this afternoon!” Jay called cheerily over the earpiece. “Next week, if we talk the Head Representative around, maybe we can start on the plasma fire targeting!”
“Plasma fire?” squawked Pru.
“It’ll be fun.” Innocuously, he added, “If he’s in a daring mood, we might even convince Alex to pilot Quixote and chase you around the training yard again—”
“Okay, thanks, got it!” Pru interrupted loudly, and tossed her earpiece aside. She wasted no time beating a hasty retreat back to the metro.
She found Anabel waiting on the platform when the train rolled back into the New Columbia Prep station. Just in time to deposit Pru—sweaty, grouchy, and probably nursing another round of whiplash—back at school for bio lab. Great.
“Don’t look so cheerful,” said Anabel, no doubt taking in Pru’s stormy expression. She looked Pru up and down and tutted with a mixture of sympathy and judgment. “Let me guess. My cousin’s putting you through your paces?”
“What tipped you off?”
“Oh, I one-upped him at a family dinner last weekend, or some such thing. Gotta keep ahead of the competition, you know?”
Pru groaned as she dragged herself onto the escalator. “I see. So I’m left in the crossfire.”
Anabel popped up beside her with a casual shrug. “Pretty much.”
“Wow, are all Parks this petty?”
“Sure, but I’m the pettiest of them all,” said Anabel, lofty and unconcerned. “About that, I was going to ask a favor.”
“You mean besides playing whipping boy to your vengeful cousin.”
“Ew, mental image!”
Pru sighed. “What do you need?”
“For starters? To do something about your obvious crush on Alex.”
Pru’s heart clenched. Well, she’d seen that one coming, at least. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Not that there was anything going on to begin with, but I’ll step off your boyfriend—”
“My what?”
“Alex,” Pru clarified, irritated. “You said you liked him. I’m not that big of an asshole.”
“Oh my god,” said Anabel, looking ready to burst. Her cheeks were very red. “Not like that! The boy is pretty, and I can appreciate a nice piece of art as much as anyone, but he’s not my type.”
“Then why are we standing in front of the metro escalator, becoming steadily later for bio lab?”
“Because,” said Anabel, practically preening, “you, on the other hand, are very much Alex’s type.”
“Why, just because his pet dragon imprinted on me?” Pru demanded, strangely offended by these implications. “Rebelwing’s specs are impressive, but last I checked, she didn’t come with a built-in matchmaking app.”
Anabel clicked her tongue. “The dragon’s not the one who won’t shut up about you. I told you, Alex has been insufferable since the moment he pulled that plasma gun on your pork bun.”
“That . . . sounds like a truly terrible euphemism,” said Pru. “Anyway, if this isn’t a ‘keep your hands off my man’ favor, what kind of favor is it?”
“An ‘I need backup on an unauthorized intelligence-gathering adventure in Incorporated territory’ kind of favor.” Carefully, Anabel lowered her voice. “I got a tip. It’s about the wyverns, Pru.”
That, Pru had to admit with a lurch in her gut, made way more sense than fighting over a boy. “So you’re asking the biggest delinquent you know.”
“You say ‘delinquent’; I say ‘seasoned risk-taker,’” said Anabel with a blithe wave of her hand. “My tip is about a retreat in No Man’s Land this weekend—one of those socially stilted yet luxurious mixers for the rich and indulgent from both sides of the Barricades. Highly exclusive invites, limited to so-called ‘influencers,’ and always hyped up like hell, given the whole forbidden fruit nature of mixing company twenty years after a civil war. Supposedly meant to promote compromise and peaceful exchange across Barricader and Incorporated lines, actually just meant to scope out the enemy over cocktails on the beach. Maybe throw in some hate sex here and there.”
“I know what No Man’s Land is, thanks,” said Pru, recalling footage of socialites in skimpy bathing suits lounging among sandy dunes with kegs of beer. “And I refuse to have hate sex on behalf of your weird spy mission, I don’t care how unpatriotic that makes me.”
“Relax, Pru-Wu, no one’s asking you to have sex, hateful or otherwise, with anybody. Just to go on a date.”
“A what?” squawked Pru.
“Keep your voice down! For Christ’s sake, it’s a beachside social, not a torture chamber. Alex and I both have invitations through family networks, but we need plus-ones. You can be his.”
“Why?” Pru tried not to wail. Judging from Anabel’s expression, she failed.
“Because,” said Anabel patiently, “as part of my research duties for my Modern Politics II internship, I’ve been looking into Harold Jellicoe’s much-discussed little product demo, and it’s not taking place three weeks from now. It’s taking place this weekend, at No Man’s Land—or at least, a fun little preview is.”