The Expatriate-the story of a Prodigy

32. 'The Allied Statocracy of America'

It was the rarest and peculiar sight that Thomas with an h had ever seen when he walked into the top floor-the gym-and found the others galloping around, each hands gripping strange, black metal stuff and two giant white boxes aligned on the floor along the walls. He knew that it would be useless to swear, and out of curiosity himself, walked over to one of the boxes and pulled out one of those metal stuff, and by pushing a button on the side with it pointing toward his face, nearly cut off his own nose with a straight beam of white laser light, if he hadn't had Prod-speed.
"Fuck. Is this Martian gizmo?" He finally asked Miles, who was trying to wrestle Melanie down to the floor, one hand holding the same laser gun.
"Hell, yeah. Aren't the Martians geniuses to develop these? Tom, come on, join us," he then used the momentum to hit Melanie down to the floor, making a horrible slapping sound on the floor with her back that would have killed or injured normal people. "Like hell he would," She groaned from below him.
Yeah, what had we expected? Thinking the Martians were total crazy lads, Thomas left, wiping his hands on his pants like crazy as if the gun was contagious.
Meanwhile, Alex Mars was also practicing, but he had heard it all.
"Shit, what's wrong with Thomas?" He asked Lyra Cannes, who was on the bench, still glaring at the laser of the gun as if it was a newly found 100 billion-old animal species. "I don't know. He never told us about his past life before getting here. Maybe it was such a nightmare that made him despise anything new," "But when i had just gotten here, he had treated me quite well, as if I was some old lad of his," he said, slicing the air-alright, that's literally impossible, so let's rephrase it to 'trying to slice the air'-, thus creating a white flash of light float in the air for half a second before vanishing after the laser gun in his eyes-even for Prodigies, optical illusions were unavoidable. Though for a second, he felt a bit dizzy and clumsy after the quick movement, the feeling of the wind felt so cool and awesome to him that for another moment, he decided to discard Thomas inside his brain for now. "Come on-try to get me, slice me...um, kill me," Lyra frowned straight at him. "That wasn't a beautiful set of vocabulary, Al," She said, gripping the gun in her hands.
-But whatever she felt at his words, it didn't matter-for, a single second later, she was lightly charging at him and, yes and literally trying to kill him.
At first, as if she was playing some game with him deliberately, the attacks were just random and hilarious to spend time with-it came to his head, neck, to his ankle, waist, then, somehow, his butt, and he just wriggled out of range at the last second-anyway, Michael the local Martyr had taught how to do just such a thing.
But then, as if she had waited, she started to take things seriously.
She poked around, the started clicking on and off her gun as if using the time to get used to the weapon, making both of their eyes flash spots in their vision-but she managed to stay on her feet and kept poking steadily-to be exact, steadily faster, while Alex Mars' eyes were barely staying on track and he just dodged at everything that came to him. Sometimes, she would brush right next to him and they shared two breathes together-and other times, the majority, she was far away, usually to quickly calculate how to win, how to 'kill' him.
Then, along with his eyes, his legs started to feel number and number with each movement from all the extreme pressure applied to them after the toiling in the desert.
Soon, after a few minutes, spots swam in his vision in a slow undulating motion, and then, the floor also started to sway steadily. We have had enough, his eyes and sore muscles from all the lifting at the desert and exercise right then, muttered before closing their eyes to doze off.
This all happened in a single second.
His legs buckled right after that single second and he could only feel himself falling straight to the ground(since vision wasn't an option for him anymore). But, he was human enough and had 'instinct'-his eyes flew open soon and he watched in horror as, just as Thomas had nearly done to himself a few moments ago, the tip of the gun plunged after him through the air.
And the funny thing with instinct is that, though it is meant to protect your life, it also makes you stupid.
And it was so damned stupid for instinct to make his hands get in front of his face and push away the tip-yes, the tiny metal point that was surrounded by the 8 strings of laser-of the laser gun away from his eyes.
During the last zero-point seconds of the fall, his hands realized the true stupidity of instinct.
Then quite a lot of things happened at once.
First, his head hit the floor of the gym like a small apple that had just been detached somehow from a tree miles away from the ground. Second, his hands felt warm, then numb, then boiling, then stinging all around as if they were going to detach themselves from his hand as if they were the apples of the tree. Thrid, Lyra had dropped her gun and had run to him. And lastly, two words escaped his mouth- and it was "Goddam, shit." And these four stuff all went in slow-motion.
And after that, everything was happening so fast, at a normal pace.
"Hell-Alex, you fine? Shit shit shit, I was a complete, motherfucking fool. Al, can you hear me?" Lyra was -wow, she is shrieking-and for the first time in front of my eyes! (Alright, it was impossible for her to be shrieking in front of his eyes, for they were closed, though). He marveled inside his blinding pain, which had placed itself right at his hands and was slicing through all his nerves like lightning-yes, shrieking-, and unfortunately, for he had turned on his Muter after his task at the desert, every one of the sounds at the gym flowed into his ears, which only helped in adding to his pain, now at his worn-out muscles, eyes, hands, and ears.
-He heard a heavy guy(Miles) racing towards him and Lyra, Lyra kneeling beside him and still asking if he was fine(of course he wasn't, didn't she know that?) and holding his hand as if he was on his death bed(gee, her hands were warm, he realized)and Melanie hovering over all of them, pacing(she seemed to be frustrated). Then, Alex heard Miles also kneel down, then, unexpectedly, grab his wrists quickly and sling his slack body onto his back.
It all felt weird and giddy during the crazy pig-back ride on Miles, who ran down the stairs to Alex Mars' bedroom, so he decided to bonk out for a while, for bonking out seemed like a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious thing to do by then.