Hey guys! Yeah, it’s been forever (June, haha!) since I posted a part to this. If I’m being honest, it’s because I forgot. But I wanted to finish this before the New Year, so here we are, with the final part (two parts really) of this story. I started this story a LONG time ago, so I can totally understand people forgetting everything which happened.
I will admit, this story has been unusually hard for me to write and is not my best work, as much of this I wrote when I was in high school and haven’t really edited it. I do have a concept in mind for a newer, better serial story, though, so let me know in the comments if you’d like to hear more about it!
Sooo, a little recap of this story before we get to the end here.
The Brief Synopsis
Inventing is illegal on the planet of Kachino. After Ainslyn Paine, the son of inventors, is kidnapped with his sister by the military, he has one goal: to free his sister from their tyrannical grasp. But her freedom comes with a price — the life of an enemy princess.
What Has Happened So Far:
Ainslyn was tasked with finding the location of Kachino’s rival planet, Shiarizi’s princess in order to win his sister Mai’s freedom and went through five years of training with his sidekick Raidon to do so. Eventually, he is sent by the head of the military, Remington, on his mission, accompanied by Raidon and a military girl named Natalia for protection.
While on his mission, he suspects Raidon and Natalia both of hiding things, and soon discovers Natalia is a Shiarizian, but because she is ignorant as to the details of their mission, so he threatens her not to cause trouble, which she agrees. Raidon, meanwhile, finds them a tour guide to further help their cover story as tourists.
Raidon’s tour guide, however, turns out to be a spy as well, and Ainslyn uses a couple of his on-the-fly inventions to help them all escape from them. However, in the chaos, he becomes separated from Raidon and Natalia, and ends up in the top secret base of the Shiarizians.
Sneaking around, he finally finds the information his mission requires–where the Shiarizian princess is. Much to his surprise, the princess is none other than Natalia, who has been hiding right under all their noses the entire time. Natalia and Raidon find him then, but he keeps silent about knowing Natalia’s true identity as they escape from the base.
Raidon takes them to a landfill to hide out at, revealing that he, too, is a Shiarizian, and grew up on the streets there. He also leads them to a ship in the junk pile, and Ainslyn, using his inventor’s skills, crafts a makeshift generator necessary to fly the ship.
Upon arriving back at the Kachino military base, Ainslyn heads to tell Remington of Natalia’s identity and see his sister freed. However, he discovers Remington plans to free them both by killing them once he gets the information he desires. Ainslyn attempts to escape, but Remington captures him and locks him up with his brainwashed sister to await their execution date.
However, Raidon, with the help of Ainslyn’s door unlocker invention, frees them from their cell, and tells them Natalia has a ship awaiting them in the hanger. They are captured again, however, but this time, as they are marched to Remington’s office, they don’t bind them. In the office, he notices Remington has some chloroform, and he and Raidon work together to get Remington to send the soldiers out of the room. As Raidon distracts Remington, Ainslyn tells Mai to lock the door when he goes for the chloroform.
Here is the link to the first part of the story, and if you’re interested in reading back on other parts, just look under Writing Tips – Short Stories.
And now for the final part!
Part 31
I flung myself towards the bottle of chloroform on the desk, grabbing it just as I heard Remington give a muffled shout. Raidon had thrown himself at him as the man reached for his pistol, struggling to keep him from reaching it. Remington shouted for help, and I glanced toward where Mai stood by the door, the knob in locked position.
Alarms blared as I ripped off the bottom of my shirt, my hands shaking as I drenched the cloth in chloroform. Remington must’ve had an alarm button on his desk! He and Raidon toppled to the ground then, the pistol skidding to the corner of the room. Raidon’s strength seemed to fail him as Remington slowly started to pin him to the ground, and he cried, “Hurry!”
I jumped over to him, grabbing Remington around the head and pressing the cloth to his face. Time to give him a piece of his own medicine! He struggled momentarily, still shouting, but soon slumped over. Raidon stood, his breathing heavy, and he adjusted his collared shirt as I retrieved the pistol.
“Mai, face the wall.” I pointed the pistol at Remington’s head, noticing Raidon faced the wall as well, before squeezing the trigger.
I turned away from the mess, attempting to hold what little contents my stomach had in, as I turned to the door. “Don’t look back, either of you. Now, I’m going out first. I’ll cut down the guards, then you follow me–and try not to look.” I doubted Mai ever saw a dead man in her life, and Raidon clearly had no desire to see such things. Well, I didn’t either, but someone had to do it.
I flung open the door, firing the pistol at the guards outside the door before they could even register my presence. They fell, the blaring alarms keeping me from checking if they were actually dead or not as I shoved both Mai and Raidon forward, the two gaping at the bodies. Didn’t I tell them to try not to look?! “Come on!”
Raidon shook out of his momentary stupor, crying, “We did it!” as we both grabbed Mai’s hands and drug her along the narrow hallways. The first doorway we came across, I slammed through, revealing Remington’s empty meeting room. Perfect. “You said Natalia has a ship waiting for us at the hangar?” I said to Raidon, who nodded. Good, I knew how to get to it from here.
The alarms still blared as we hurried through the familiar rooms and hallways, Mai finally snapping out of her daze at least enough to keep pace on her own. Several students and teachers we passed wore confused looks on their faces and stared at us, but made no move to stop us until we reached the hangar.
“That’s them! Halt!” A group of about ten guards headed towards us from the opposite door leading into the hangar, and, ducking behind a row of metal barrels, I glanced at the running ship thirty or forty yards away. I noticed Natalia’s shock of white hair vaguely through the cockpit window, and motioned towards the guns on the ship. If she could help provide us cover—!
“Raidon, I’m going to cover you. Get Mai to the ship and prepare to takeoff. And have Nat give me cover.” Sensing he was about to argue, and watching the soldiers come closer, I snapped, “Go now!”
Peeking from above the barrels, I fired my pistol, trying to find the perfect balance between conserving bullets and giving Raidon and Mai enough cover to escape to the ship. One man fell, clutching his arm, while another lay motionless, and just as I hit a third, Raidon and Mai dove from behind the barrels, beelining towards the ship. I unloaded almost the entire pistol, attempting to keep the enemy’s fire on myself. After all, if I died, at least I fulfilled my life mission. I freed Mai–and Raidon and Natalia wouldn’t be able to come back here, so maybe Natalia would use her princess status to get Raidon and Mai established somewhere in Shiarizi. That was my only hope.
The moment they disappeared inside the ship, I pulled the trigger again, but it only clicked, and my heart dropped. Out of bullets.
I glanced toward the ship as the soldiers charged me. I didn’t have much of a choice–and I’d rather die trying to escape than by just sitting there helplessly. Just as I rushed toward the ship, the unmistakable machine-gun fire came over my head. I ducked, crossing the rest of the distance under the protection of the ship’s guns. Leaping through the ship’s door, I slammed it shut behind me, shouting, “Go, go, go!”
The gunfire stopped, the ship lifting from the ground, and I peered through the small, circular window toward the hangar, where the remaining guards lay, some squirming, others motionless. The hangar gradually melted into the rest of the military base, which, in turn, melted into the surrounding city the further we went into the sky.
I slid to the floor as the door opened from the living quarters of the ship, and Natalia entered. “Well, Hot Shot. We did it.”
I gave Natalia a wry grin. “Thanks… Princess.”
#
It’s been two months since then, and much has happened. The first thing I had to do was explain to both Raidon and Natalia how I knew her identity–and then I had to explain it to the Shiarizian king. Upon further explaining my story, the reason I became a spy for Kachino, as well as Natalia’s vouch for my character and my agreeing to tell the Shiarizian military everything I knew about Kachino’s military, the base, and Remington, I was given a pass from prison or death.
They gave me, Raidon, and Mai a small house near the castle to stay in, and though I swear it’s to keep an eye on me, Raidon and Mai thoroughly enjoy it. I use a little shack in the backyard as my inventor’s lab, and Raidon uses a small lean to next to the house for a carpentry shop, where he makes hundreds of those wooden figures to replace the ones he left (or in his words, abandoned) at Kachino.
As for Mai, Natalia has brought her to a doctor who specializing in reverting brainwashing, and she has been improving, bits of her memory returning every week. Natalia also has employed her in the castle, where she’s befriended many of the maids and cooks.
But one thing that has us all mystified is my door unlocker invention. Raidon used it to free us from our prison cell, but–it doesn’t work. We’ve tried it on several locks to no avail. Mai says it was the Creator our mother always spoke about who made it work–and with the evidence before me, I’m bound to agree.
Some days I miss my past life on Kachino, those happy childhood days with my parents. Other times, I wish I could do something about changing the law restricting inventors and inventions. But most of the time, I stay thankful for the peace and monotony my new life has brought, along with the ability to actually live in the moment, enjoy life, and invest in the lives of my sister and friends. I’ve even discovered Natalia isn’t that bad. That being the key word there.
I also love the several opportunities to use my gifting as an inventor to improve the lives of others. It’s what my father loved to do, and what I love to do. And it’s what I’ll continue to do, as long as I am able. Now, to get that dumb door unlocker to work…!
And thank you all for reading Because We Were Different. I promise that if I put another serial story on here to be more structured with it, and for it to be much better quality than this high-school era story. Despite all its faults, I hope you all enjoyed it, and thank you for reading! God bless! ~ Kay Adelin
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Kay Adelin 