ALEXiThymiA: Chapter 3 The Aftermath

Chapter 3

The Aftermath

Silence.

The entire ride back to the Thyme residence was done in silence. As usual, Alexa tilted her head to face out the window. This was not done out of interest of seeing anything outside, but something she offered her brother as an out, so he didn’t feel the need to fill the car ride with excuses, or small talk.

“Look I’m sorry.” Luke began.

“It’s no big deal.” Alexa replied. Of the two, Alexa was the one who had showered and changed quickly. Luke on the other hand just decided to use the time after the game to meditate, while continuing to wear his sweaty uniform.

While he did smell, it wasn’t terrible enough to cause Alexa to roll down the window. Though she did think that mom and dad would likely have to roll down the windows. Their tolerance levels for teenage funk were not as high as Alexa’s. Of course, their parents were on a vastly different power level than either of the twins were. Jim and Judy were both fully awakened, which meant they had access to levels and Attribute increases that Alexa could only dream about.

“When you say that, do you mean it?” Luke asked.

At this, Alexa turned to look towards her brother. She found that if she continued speaking towards the window, Luke’s anxiety level would continue to increase, despite what she said. Thus despite the fact that he would need to take his eyes off the road, she turned to make eye contact. This she found was effective in establishing what others referred to as a personal connection. Once their eyes locked, Alexa answered crisply, but firmly “yes.”

Luke let his gaze pass over Alexa, as he desperately thought back to the exact phrasing of his question. He knew his sister would answer him truthfully. Honestly sometimes he feared how truthful his sister was, not just with him, but with everyone.

What he did, what he had done was unforgivable. He knew he would likely get a pass due to Alexa being his twin, but familial bonds only went so far. Sometimes people went too far, and this time Luke knew he had gone too far.

Having finally let out a slight breath of relief, Luke relaxed some of the tension in his shoulders and looked back to the road.

“It’s not that I don’t think you can do it.” Luke began.

“I know.”

“I also don’t want you to think it was because of some chauvinistic ideals.” He continued.

“I know.”

“It is just that…” He trailed off trying to find the right way to frame his thoughts.

“You got greedy, then rather than letting me reap the reward for my hard work. You swooped in and stole it, selling yourself short in the process.” Alexa stated.

At that, Luke let out a slight wince.

“That is one way to put it.” Luke admitted. He knew not to refute this, as it would only cause Alexa to go into herself more. He knew she cared for advancement crystals, though he still didn’t quite understand why. The things were painful but made life so much easier after they were applied. Back when they first began schooling, there was a clear divide. All academic rewards went to Alexa, while all the sports related rewards would go to Luke. With that, Luke had his identity, he felt like he was still part of the family. The only problem, Alexa played sports too. Worse, she got competitive for crystals. At first this was only seen as a passing craze. Most girls didn’t particularly care for advancement crystals, claiming they hurt more than regular mental crystals. This was great for Luke, as it meant Alexa would likely go out, earn a few, then stop. The only thing was, once she won a few, she became unstoppable. She joined every sports league and fighting contest she could, just to earn more. She taught herself Krav Maga just to earn the most crystals she could.

Silence.

They had just come from their introductory basketball game against North.

Judging by the tension in the vehicle, one might assume that the twins had lost. But in fact, the opposite was the case. The team not only won, but they won by a rather large margin. Particularly once Luke was benched for a time, as he was missing every shot whether he was open or contested.

No, the tension in the vehicle came, not from Luke’s poor performance during the game. Instead, Luke was still hung up on what he had done before the game, at the principal’s office.

“I will say.” Alexa began, still speaking towards the window. “That if you play for coach Vickers the way you played for us tonight, you won’t have sold yourself short.”

At that, Luke winced. “Thanks. I deserve that.”

Silence.

Out of her periphery, Alexa could see Luke was doing his minor twitching thing that he always seemed to do when he was nervous. Seeing him squirm, Alexa decided to throw him a line.

“Look, I’m not mad at you. You know I can’t be right?” Alexa asked.

With that Luke, let out a sigh. “Yeah, I know. Which makes your ability to read me even worse. It’s like you know you should be mad, but you can’t find it in yourself to be mad.”

“You really feel bad about it, don’t you?” Alexa asked, once again she turned to face her brother. This time it was to see if she could read more of his feelings from his body language.

“Yes.”

“So why did you do it? Mr. Vickers had asked you numerous times before. Why did you feel the need to steal it from me, once I was in the middle of negotiations?” Alexa asked.

“He offered you five augmentation crystals just for winning over half of your games. I know you were pushing for seven, citing that sales and attendance would be up as we would be supporting one of the few non-awakened female quarterbacks, but I couldn’t sit back and let five crystals go. Especially not if they…” At that Luke trailed off.

“If they what?” Alexa asked, her mind going through a myriad of scenarios.

“Nothing, it’s a whatever. You are just going to go on regardless of this and get better, while I fall to the wayside.” Luke finally managed, after a minute of Alexa staring the confession out of him.

As soon as he was done, he paused to look at Alexa.

“You feel better?” Alexa asked.

With that, Luke let out a long sigh and nodded, not wanting to say any more.

“Well, you should know that it was a crap move. But I get it. You feel that I have eclipsed you in your niche of the family. You also feel that as time goes on, you will be pushed out by me.” Alexa said.

As she spoke, she noticed the way Luke’s muscles twitched and bunched up with most of her phrases. See when your Perception Attribute went above 30, there was a new condition that was unlocked. These were often based on the personal needs or desires of the person with the attribute. For Alexa, the merit she unlocked was Read Emotion. For someone like her, this merit was crucial, and frankly the only way high school was half survivable. Once she unlocked this merit, she felt even more determination to increase her attributes. While Perception was the attribute most people saw as a throw-away mental attribute, Alexa found their benefits to be necessary just for her to survive.

She still had no clue on what emotions were, not truly. But thanks to her ability to read situations, and people she could at least begin to carve out a spot within a social hierarchy of school. Given her grades, and physical prowess she was easily able to rise to the top of the social echelon. The fact that she didn’t judge anyone who was previously mean to her, helped a lot. Still, it had taken her a long time to get here to this point in her life.

When others would ask why she worked so hard to gain social charms. She would often give a banal answer that everyone seemed to accept. The true reason why she wanted, no needed to get better at dealing with people? Well, that was simple, team sports often gave out twice as many rewards, as individual sports did. Thus, just being on a championship winning team was enough to earn an augmentation crystal. Or as Alexa mentally called them, a piece of normalcy. Then being the MVP for a championship team, often earned a second augmentation crystal. That was the real reason she worked so hard at improving herself, day in and day out. In fact, had it not been for the way her brother clearly needed to talk to her, she would have rather run home from North. Despite the fifteen-mile distance from the North High to their house.

There was also a dungeon along the way, that she likely would have gone into as well. Dungeon for unawakened were often very dangerous. The primary reason they were considered dangerous was because only once a class and level were established, basically the two main components of being fully awoken. Only once those two components were met, would dungeons inform you of the relative level of the monsters within.

Of course, a high enough Perception attribute was also beneficial as it could be used to gauge the effective mana range of a dungeon, or a would-be stalker.

Still despite all her words of comfort. It was clear that Luke still felt bad about the situation. So, she decided to throw him a lifeline.

“If you still feel that bad about it, you can just provide me two of the crystals.”

“Just provide you two crystals? When I will be doing all the work on the field?” Luke commented.

“Think about this as a continuation of our dating service. Except in this case, you are the date being offered up.” Alexa began, this was a good start. But it was clear from his expression that he wasn’t going to cave in so easily, so she decided to go in for the kill. “Besides, we both know you would have caved when he got to three guaranteed crystals anyways. The fact that you get five, plus the normal extras from winning a championship or being team MVP are just a bonus.”

At that, Luke let out a defeated sigh. “You’re right. Fine. But only Perception crystals.”

“Deal.”

Honestly Luke didn’t mind offering his Perception crystals to his sister. Especially after seeing how she had been able to interact with people normally, thanks to them. In fact, he had a deal worked out where he would trade two of his Perception crystals for one of her Strength, or Endurance crystals. This of course was an unfair trade, or at least that is what Luke thought. But his sister was more than happy to make such a trade each and every time. While he wasn’t certain what his sister’s Attributes were, he was more than certain she was past the fifteen point threshold in all of them. Of course, he like most people had no clue just how far off he was from what he considered her baseline attributes to be.

There was a slight silence, before Luke asked the question that often terrified him the most. A question that he rarely felt prepared to know the answer to.

“So, what are you thinking about?” Luke asked, trying to make sure she was well and truly over the betrayal. From Alexa’s point of view, it wasn’t even an issue to begin with. The fact that she managed to get two Perception crystals for free out of the deal was only icing on the cake.

No, in the time since they last spoke, she thought back to her run she was currently missing. The run that would have been headed off by entering the natural dungeon.

It was after hours, and highly illegal to enter a dungeon as an unawakened. Especially as entering after hours would mean she would have to have done so without a permit.

“Spelunking.” Alexa answered.

At that, Luke just scoffed to himself, “why am I not surprised. So, you want to go on another dungeon run?”

Alexa nodded. “Can you see if anyone would be willing to take me for a date in a dungeon?”

Hahaha!

“You do realize most people are frightened of dungeons, right? That most high schoolers dread the fact that part of their getting a driver’s license requires them to do at least one low tier dungeon as part of a team?”

“I know. I tried to start the after-school spelunking team.” Alexa admitted. “It’s a shame that it never went anywhere.”

“You were still in middle school at the time and trying to force the state to increase the mandatory number of dungeon dives to ten.”

“We could have funded all sporting events for the year from that rule alone. Not to mention the revenue we would normally gain from the state to help subsidize our teams.” Alexa shot back.

“So, you did it only for the team?”

“Well, the teams that I was going to join, yes.” Alexa answered.

Chuckle.

At that, Luke let out a lot of the nervous tension he had been holding. With that, “tell you what. I will see what I can do about getting some mook to not only pay for your services, but also buy you the dungeon passes. Just know that if I do work this out, you will likely be the one having to carry them through the dungeon.”

Hearing that, Alexa just shrugged.

“In that case, let them know the selfie will be us standing in front of the dungeon boss’s corpse.” Alexa responded.

“You know, that might work. Particularly if you use a different grading scale entirely for dungeon dates.”

“Dungeon dates? That is what this new model will be called?” Alexa asked incredulously.

“What? You don’t like the name?” Luke asked, sounding somewhat embarrassed.

Alexa just shrugged, a gesture that she learned meant she didn’t care, but also, she didn’t have to say why she didn’t care. Seeing the gesture, Luke relaxed, as they finally pulled into the driveway. Once they were in, Luke parked and went up to his room to shower and relax for the evening. As for Alexa, she had a few hours of practice to put in before she could rest comfortably.

Seeing her brother go up to his room, Alexa could only shake her head. Five augmentation crystals for that level of effort. Is all she thought to herself, before she began focusing on ways, she could get her next augmentation crystal fix.