The Carnival

[Kaden]

Words, any and all of them, escaped Kaden. He stood, watching, as events unfolded before him. His mind was racing to process everything Sophia had just told him. The actual words were plain enough, but to interpret them through a lens of her recent experiences would take some doing. What minimal mental energy remained was quickly dominated by a girl crashing at his feet.

As though waiting for the opportunity, Sophia made good her escape the second Kaden’s eyes left her figure. When the courier looked up from the new girl, Sophia was gone. His eyes frantically darted about the water park, looking for some sign of her: a lock of blonde hair, a flutter or blue or white fabric, even the sound of her new shoes on the cobble-stone floor of their surroundings. Unfortunately, his search was cut short as the new red-haired girl physically shook him back to reality.

“S-stop shaking m-me!” Kaden finally managed.

When Kaden pushed the girl away, she sank away from him, wearing an expression that bordered on confusion and frustration. In front of him stood a girl, whom he supposedly knew, in need of help, while Sophia continued, presumably, to make her way further and further from him. Kaden tried to think, but very little came. Shaking his head, he began walking past the girl before motioning that she should follow.

“Where are you going?! I need help!” she cried as she caught up to the courier.

“I know, I know. I heard you the first time.” Kaden’s gait slowed as he cast another glance around, again looking for traces of Sophia. “You said you’re Belle, right?”

“I didn’t say I’m Belle, I am Belle.”

“Ok then. Who did I help you take two Dragonballs from?” Kaden heard himself ask the question before he realized he was actually asking it.

“What? You don’t believe me?!”

The courier had to admit, even in their current situation, it seemed like a stretch for him to just go with the flow on that one. Maybe if he had the presence of mind to give the girl his full attention he would have been able to come to his own conclusions, but that was not the case. He continued towards the exit to the water park as the girl answer, annoyed that he had told Sophia where it was. It would have been way easier if he could just stand there and wait for her to wander by.

“It was… uh… Rock and that woman. Wave, right?”

“Right,” Kaden sighed. It would have been so much easier if the girl had just been some figment of Gamer’s creation. “So I guess that makes you, what, Bella?”

“My name’s Belle! I’m not a girl!”

“That very poor-fitting tank-top would beg to differ, Bella,” Kaden replied off-handedly. Before the girl could protest the name, he let his stream-of-consciousness continued. “Look, I could call you Belle, but then everyone would find out you’re a girl now, right? Is that really something you want?”

It was a simple argument that kept Bella occupied for a few seconds. Belle certainly wasn’t stupid, but he seemed conflicted between acknowledging – in any way, whatsoever – the transformation and letting just anyone in on what had happened. Or maybe he was just hungry and had drifted off. While the courier felt for the adventurer, he turned to his own thoughts in the moment of silence.

If nothing else, Sophia had been entirely right about his irresponsible way of trying to lead people. He could call it a suggestion, or say that other had been free to do whatever they wanted, but the fact was that he had stepped into a position, and he had done a very poor job of it. While being able to save the people on the Sinking Ship had been a priority for the courier, he hadn’t considered keeping the players of the game safe, or even if trying to mount a rescue attempt was the best course of action when viewed from that light. If he wanted to play leader again, he had a lot to learn. The last thing he wanted was for his actions to put someone he cared about in danger.

“I risked her life…” the courier suddenly found himself saying.

“What?” Bella replied, shaken from her contemplation.

“Nothing,” Kaden lied. “But I was thinking, you should probably look for some clothes that, y’know, fit. If you’re stuck like this in an event or something, you’ll need to be able to move around freely, right?”

“I guess so, yeah. But… where am I going to find clothes here?!”

Considering the question for a moment, Kaden reached into his jacket and retrieved the pamphlet he had received from Mixie after his first event. Flipping it over, he let his eyes scan across it. Though only partially engaged in what he was doing, he nodded when his eyes fell upon a section of the carnival marked “Shops.” Telling Bella to follow, the courier set off.

“How can you be so calm about this?!” the gender-swapped semi-saiyan remarked. “Don’t you realize what’s happened?! “

“No, I understand. It’s just… I’m kind of distracted.” Kaden looked at Bella and tried to flash as reassuring a smile as he could muster. “You’re timing was pretty… intense.”

In the past, Kaden had always considered his meetings with Sophia fortunate. While the savior within him enjoyed having been able to help her out on occasion, he had never stopped to consider such meetings from her point of view. It made sense, now that she had laid it out for him. Maybe he should have realized the impact he could have on someone’s life without realizing it. Maybe that was a responsibility he should have been taking seriously.

Of course, it was easy to sit back find things he could have, or should have, done better, but he knew that wouldn’t help things. Kaden’s appearance in her life had been far from the most dramatic thing to happen to Sophia. On the day he met her, he knew that her father had been murdered and that her home had been torn apart. What had he been worried about? Working on his day off? It sounded even more pathetic than it actually was.

Amidst the things Sophia had said, there had been something that had really hit Kaden close to home. She had been a priestess, raised in a temple, and lived her whole life surrounded by her religion. Then one day, she found out it was all meaningless. Everything she knew, everything she thought she was, it had all been wiped away in the blink of an eye. Kaden understood that far better than he had ever admitted to anyone. To simply have one’s entire life stripped away was something he had experienced and it pained that he hadn’t realized she could be going through it herself.

“… thinking I was dressed like a dog,” Bella’s voice interrupted Kaden’s train of thought.

“Oh yeah?” he replied as generically as possible, realizing she had been talking the whole time he had been thinking. “Oh hey! This is it.”

Pointing directly in front of him, Kaden was shocked that he had actually managed to navigate them to the Shops. He had definitely not been paying attention to what he was doing. Shaking his head, he tried to focus as he motioned for Bella to proceed first. Hitching up her pants, the girl hurried past him and began looking frantically around for something more appropriate to wear.

“I’ll check over here,” Kaden said, pointing in the opposite direction that Bella had headed. The girl nodded an acknowledgement.

What was really amazing, to Kaden, was the range of emotion Sophia had covered. He felt numb just trying to sympathize with it, let alone feel it himself. In spite of the faults she had so easily pointed out, and the one’s Kaden had come to realize from her other comments, she left saying that she…

“Kaden!” Bella’s voice cut off his thoughts once again. “What am I even looking for?! What should I wear?”

“Well…” Kaden looked around, realizing he had managed to stop in front of rack of women’s clothing. Reaching out, he grabbed at a hanger and held it up. It was a yellow sundress with large pink flowers printed on it. “What about this? It’s kind of cute, actually.”

“I am not wearing a dress!”