“See you at school tomorrow!” Jeanette calls out, waving at me while she and Asha walk away. They live in the same general neighborhood, while I have to take a bus home in the opposite direction. Always a bit of a sour note to end our weekly Sunday dinners at The Hangout on, but as always it's been a great night with my two besties.
"Take care!" I yell back with a not-entirely-real smile and pull my coat up around my shoulders to more properly shield myself from the chilling late autumn wind. Maybe a longer skirt would've been better for tonight, but at least the leggings are helping and it won't be long before I'm on the bus. The stop is right around the corner and I've walked it enough to know by instinct when to turn, so I pull out my phone to check various messages and social media while I make my way there, looking up occasionally just to make sure I'm not about to bump into anyone on the busy downtown street. I wince a little at the disapproving glance I get from an older man passing me. And again at the more lurid one I get from someone who looks to be in his twenties, though I mind that one a little less. Just got to get to the bus so I can slump into my usual seat, put in my earbuds and ignore the world for twenty minutes.
Something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye, enough to make me stop dead in my tracks. It's bright and blue, in the trashcan on the corner of the street. As I approach to inspect the curiosity, it reveals itself to be a little knitted and stuffed doll with bright blue hair put up in a loose, curly ponytail wearing what is probably supposed to be a fashionable white and dark blue uniform, not too dissimilar to those worn by the second generation of Celestial Knights. I think the name of their leader was Serenity? She has several cuts where the stuffing inside is already starting to spill out, and is missing one eye. All good reasons for tossing her in the trash, I suppose, but a deep, undeniable urge makes me reach out and pick her up anyway. "Who would throw out something as cute as you? Should be easy to fix," I mutter both to myself and the doll before I put her in my purse and hurry to the stop where my bus is already waiting.
"Destiny? Is that you darling?" That's my dad, Stuart Drake. He's an accountant for a law firm in the city, which is probably the dullest job I could ever imagine, but he seems happy and has made a few new friends there last couple of years. In his late forties, he's gone bald by choice now, but stays in shape by biking to work and running on the weekends. His eyes are blue like mine and especially when he smiles, the lines and creases around them makes his face look extra kind. His and mom's accents still haven't changed much despite moving here from Britain before my older brother was even born. Us children speak a funky mix of the local dialect and theirs.
"Yeah! I was just out with the girls again," I call back and drop my keys in the bowl on the counter before I kick off my shoes and hang my jacket on the rack. "Don't worry, we ate together, I'm not just skipping dinner." For once, I don't leave my purse in our small house's foyer, but instead bring it with me to the living room where I find both him and mom on the couch, watching the news. "How was your evening?" I ask as I plop down on the couch next to dad, on the opposite side of mom, and cuddle up with them, pulling my legs up under me.
"Nice and slow." A non-committal answer, but honestly he probably just spent the night relaxing and unwinding before going back to work tomorrow.
"There's leftovers in the fridge if you want to use them for your lunch tomorrow," my mom, Abigail, notes with a smile while she keeps knitting. She's probably working on another pillow even though the house is absolutely littered with the things. I can't blame her too much, though, my own handiwork is also starting to take up too much space in my room. Plus, she sells a few of them online once in a while. It's not much, but she enjoys it and it gives her a little extra pocket money on top of her nursing job that she spends to go have fun with her own group of girls sometimes. She's a few years older than my dad, the shortest in our family by a good margin, and has put on a couple of pounds in the last couple of years since her menopause started, which honestly look pretty good on her. She still takes good care of her skin and hair, too, so it's no surprise she still gets asked out by men considerably younger than her when dad isn't with us.
On the news, the fairly common sight of our city's protectors, the twelfth generation of Celestial Knights, are battling a giant, blob-like monster that seems to be able to stretch and contort in ways that defy physics, while also defending the sky rail train it had tried to eat, and the civilians inside. All five Knights this time are girls around my age. The black, purple-haired beauty who'd identified herself as Incarna back when this generation first emerged has positioned herself on the rails and summoned some kind of big, magical cannon that fires large slugs of magical matter trailing lightning behind them at the monster, acting as both a last line of defense as well as heavy artillery. If my older brother, Shawn, weren't off at college he'd probably have identified the weapon's exact make and model in a heartbeat. He's into that sort of stuff.
Meanwhile, Kaida and Aria are taking front. Ever-stylish, the crimson-haired Kaida with her flaming sword cuts down the monster's tendrils, dashing back and forth to keep the creature penned in and away from any civilians that get too nosy. Her temper being like the flame her magic manifests as, the young Asian snaps at one man who comes a little too close before protecting him from a sprouted limb shaped like a flail. The youngest of this generation's Knights, Aria with her much calmer demeanor and psychic powers is like watching a master conductor at work with the way she mostly holds still close to the monster, constructing a psychic barrier around it even while she, without so much as looking at them, captures stray civilians in bubbles and floats them away to safety, forming psychic spears and arrows to hurl at the monster's central form. On the roof of a nearby building, the squad's healer, Vida, is concentrating. Her green hair waves in the wind as she mutters various incantations and gestures towards her teammates, particularly Kaida, and sends little bubbles of her magical energy to sustain the other Knights and keep them in good shape for the continued battle.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Finally, zipping around on the edge of the battle and harrying the monster with her strange, hovering shoulder cannons is the most famous member of the squad, their leader and the one who takes the spotlight most often: Onyxia. With her striking pink hair and eyes and the figure of a model, she is on every teenager's mind in one way or another. With incredible speed, she is always the hardest for camera crews to pin down during battle, but she's just as quick to give a brief interview after the action before she and her Knights fly off. She's who the burden of command falls to, the plight of laying the battle strategy. And I have a huuuuge crush on her, the same way millions of teenagers across the globe probably do too.
All five Knights of this generation wear uniforms vaguely reminiscent of school uniforms with knee-length skirts and blazers, though each is styled in colors to suit that of their hair in their transformed states, and with a few accessories that presumably match their personalities.
Exciting as the battle is to watch, it's not far off from standard fare for the Celestial Knights. The live reporting from the scene ends after a handful of minutes when Aria manages to contain the green blob-monster in a bubble shape and hover it off the ground long enough for Incarna to charge an attack with so much force the windows of the train car behind her shatter. Her magical bullet slams through the enemy and leaves behind a trail of purple lightning before the monster immediately starts dissipating in those classic, tell-tale motes of purple light and darkness that signify victory. No casualties are reported, even if a dozen or so civilians are in intensive care, but all expected to recover. Onyxia gives a brief interview and soon enough, it's back to the regularly scheduled programming of nationally-televised gaming shows and heteronormative dating reality shows.
Like most girls, I grew up dreaming of becoming one of the Celestial Knights. With my friends, we play-acted battles during recess and talked about which of the roles each of us would want the most, especially Asha and I. The boys were often happy to play the monsters while us girls made magic weapon sounds with our mouths or fought them with sticks and made declarations about defeating them in the name of love, peace and friendship. Occasionally one of the boys wanted to be a Knight, too, and we never made that a problem since there'd been a good handful of boy Knights by that time. My parents even have pictures of me dressing up as one of the Celestial Knights for Halloween. That's probably one of the reasons not a lot of people were surprised when I started asking people to call me Destiny last year. Of course, reality eventually comes for us all and when the current squad of Knights revealed themselves in the fight with a large, crocodilian monster later dubbed Makara, we all had to realize we wouldn't be chosen this time and moved on to other games and hobbies. I already had my sewing and design, which I just threw myself into even harder.
"I'm going to my room for a bit. Hey mom, can I have some of your stuffing and borrow some tools?" I have plenty of my own sewing tools and thread and most of the things I'll need to restore the doll, but since she's made of yarn and I want to do a proper job, I might even need some of mom's help.
"Sure, honey. You know where everything is?" She seems a bit confused by the request, probably since most of my work is usually with fabrics and cloth. She's already putting her own work aside to come help me. "Actually, the good stuffing is way in the back, let me show you."
Ten minutes later, I'm in my room upstairs with everything I need - and a small piece of cake to boot. Both mom and dad are a little worried about my eating habits these days and I can't exactly say I blame them even though I do my best. I turn on the light and sit down at my work desk, pushing my latest attempt at designing a dress to the side. I briefly consider just tossing it in the bin, but maybe it's still salvageable and I just need a side project for a bit. Maybe that's why I was so drawn in by this doll. It is going to be at least a three-day process after all.
"Alright, let's get you sorted," I say with a smile and start looking for the stitches on her back. Oddly, I don't find any, not even on her bottom. I do find that her clothes are removable, however, so maybe she was part of a toy line with different outfits you could purchase on the side? I don't have any of those, of course, but I could maybe make some, and for now this simply means that her dress is separately washable, which makes my job easier. After searching for a while, I decide to simply cut a small hole in the small of the doll's back through which I can pull out her old stuffing, for which I use a little hooked tool my mom loaned me. I measure up about the same amount of new stuffing from the supply I borrowed and toss the old stuff, then go to the utility room and take off her dress and hair ties, washing those individually by hand, and then the doll herself.
Hanging all her bits to dry on the rack, I figure that's probably all I can do for tonight and congratulate myself on a job well done. I gotta admit, she looks a little funny hanging on the rack, all deflated like that, though. Once I'm back in my room, I pull out one of the fashion magazines I've bought over the last few weeks and leaf through it until I find the section I'm looking for. This one features a spotlight on a rising star in the modeling side of the industry, Eden Sinclaire. She's practically all legs, a flat stomach and curves in all the right places, but even on glossy paper like this I can practically feel her magnetic aura. Yes, I have a small crush on her, but stars, would I love to design something for her to wear and be photographed in. She's probably not much older than me either.
