Rae grumpily swung the door of the shed open. He was greeted by the strange sight of Dasnir's crotch bobbing up and down right in front of his face. Rae turned flush with embarrassment and looked up in confusion. The Prince was, rather impressively, performing repetitions of one-armed pull-ups from the support beam that ran along the roof of the ceiling.
Rae poked Dasnir's leg to grab his attention. "C-Can you be a bit more discreet? Someone could see you through the windows. At least cover them..." Rae stopped himself before cursing at Dasnir. The pledge he had made to Fulbrik, the day before, came back to his mind.
Dasnir stopped his repetitions and dropped down with a loud thud, as if he were a pallet of bricks landing right in front of Rae. "Fulbrik find something to block the windows," the Prince said, in what was for him, a mild tone of voice. He moved to the side and grabbed a cylindrical metallic canister which he began to drink from.
Fulbrik had a rather uncharacteristic and sluggish response. He looked up at his Master as if he had been knocked back to reality from a far away world. He had one of Jamie's comics in his hand and looked to be in the direct center of book.
Rae lifted his eyebrow in a surprised sense of amusement, as he saw the Alien pouring over one of his 12-year-old, kid-brother's favorite reading materials. "Heh— that's kind of adorable," he laughed internally to himself.
"I apologize, Your Highness," Fulbrik said, "I had not even considered the possibility... how careless of me." He seemed ever so slightly flustered as he leapt up, and instinctively ripped the bed sheet off the foldout; he tore it in two like it was paper. He nearly tripped over Rae in his hurry to fulfill his Master's order and cover the windows.
"What the he—?" Rae blurted out, but stopped himself from swearing at Fulbrik. "Ehem— can you please ask before taring shit up?" Rae said, in a softer tone than what he had originally formulated. "I could have gotten you something to cover those."
"Oh," Fulbrik looked down, and bowed to Rae in apology. "I'm terribly sorry, Sir Rae."
"Stop that, what did I tell you about bowing?" Rae chided. "Listen, we need to come up with something. I really don't have the slightest clue as to how to hide you guys indefinitely. Obviously you can't stay in this shed forever. I go back to school tomorrow and..."
"Ah yes, about that. Sir—" Fulbrik said stopping abruptly. He readjusted his thoughts after seeing Rae flash him a look that just screamed: "Don't you dare". Fulbrik continued and corrected himself. "Rae, I was divulging the detail you imparted upon me, about this place of training you frequent. Perhaps, we might accompany you there in order to disguise ourselves? After all, Asgeeri Warriors are in a constant state of training! It is the perfect place to hide in plane sight." Fulbrik smiled and held up his finger. He clearly thought that this was a very clever idea.
"You want..." Rae said, as he parsed the absurdity of the idea just put before him. "You want to go to school with me?! Oh no, I think you misunderstood. It's not training like... preparing for battle, or blowing up planets, or whatever scary alien shit you guys get up to."
"Then what other kind of training could it be?" Fulbrik responded. "Is it training to acquire secret knowledge?!" He gave a nearly whimsical child like expression of joy at the thought of this idea.
"He's a nerd, although you wouldn't be able to tell from his giant Viking body and statue expressions." Rae thought, squinting his eyes in disbelief at Fulbrik's reaction. He shook his hand dismissively at Fulbrik, and palmed his face in exasperation. "No it's not like that... It's like learning Math, and reading books, and other boring shit that you Aliens would probably already know about."
"What is a 'Math'? Some kind of philosophy?" Dasnir asked, sneering at the idea of reading mundane things from human books.
"Really?" Rae asked rhetorically. He was shocked that advanced Alien beings didn't know what Math was. "It's like numbers, and formulas, and shapes, and stuff..."
"Oh!" Fulbrik said. Now he understood what Rae was talking about. "Yes that. It is part of our scholar curriculum, though neither of us are well versed in those subjects. We are combat Warriors!" He stood up completely straight holding his fist in the air in a strange confident gesture. "So, we only have rudimentary learning in these subjects. The role of understanding these things in detail is normally filled by a Scholar Officer. But, ours unfortunately died in the explosion of our ship." He frowned in remembrance.
"You navigate between Galaxies but you can only do basic Math?" Rae said. He scratched his head at the ridiculousness of this notion.
"Of course, you do not need to understand the mechanics of a Starship in order to pilot it. Besides, all of our devices run inherently on our own Eniris. All of the Great Races can control various types of Eniris. Though, our Eniris is particularly suited for combat." Fulbrik rambled this off like it should be common knowledge to Rae.
"I have so many questions," Rae said, "but this is besides the point of you coming to school with me. That is, frankly, a terrible idea that could very easily lead to you getting caught." He stopped for a moment and sat down. He looked back and forth at his Alien friends who were dressed in the hoodies he had bought for them yesterday.
"Would they even pass for students?" Rae debated with himself. "Dasnir could pass pretty easily as a senior, he is my age. Fulbrik is practically a giant Viking, but his face is youthful enough. I mean that big ugly bastard Roland is 19, he's been held back twice now, and he's still there. So maybe?"
Rae stared for a long time at them in contemplation. He slowly weighed the risks and benefits of trying to pass them off as transfer students.
"If I do this it will let me keep an eye on them all the time," he thought of the primary benefit. "But I would only have today to teach them basic human mannerisms. They'll be exposed to a shit-ton of people like this. Our Senior class has two thousand students. And, I'd also have the issue of getting them into the same classes as me."
Rae's head spun like an analyst pouring over data. He dropped back onto the concrete floor to recline, and let out a small wince of pain as he landed his head a bit too hard. Rae always thought best when he was laying down; he often did his homework lying in bed. But after a few minutes of mulling it over he sat back up.
"Fuck It," Rae thought, as he arrived at a decision.
"I don't have any better ideas," Rae said, informing his friends of the struggle to come. "This is the best we got. But, I'm a bit worried... this won't be easy."
He gave his needy companions a long look, and then his ears perked up in determination. "You can do this Rae, you need to do this, they won't make it without you." Rae thought, as he looked up at his oblivious Alien buddies.
"Good," Dasnir said smugly, "Asgeeri Warriors thrive with challenge."
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