Chapter 19: Lunch time

“And why can’t I sit here exactly!?” bellowed Helena Beaulac, looking indignantly at Alejandro, who almost recoiled from the sheer volume of the yell. “I thought we were friends!”

“Since when?” couldn’t contain the Minor, looking bewildered at the enormous woman –if a lot smaller than Shannon, of course.

“Since when!?” asked the black MAJOR, looking as if she had difficulties inspiring enough air, her cheeks puffing out and her eyes bulging out slightly. “Since I got rid of that pesky Flannagan who was putting her dirty fingers in your beautiful hair!” she added, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb.

Sandy Flannagan shot dagger at the other MAJOR but the Minor noticed that she said nothing and didn’t try anything either, not even a sneak attack. Then again, she was only glaring with one eye, the other remaining almost closed, her eyelid and the surrounding area of her face a deep purple. Her more impressive rival seemed totally uninjured and Alejandro shivered a little at the idea of angering her, but still. She wasn’t his friend, and he didn’t want her sitting next to him. Sadly, he was kind of alone right now.

Lindsey was still negotiating with the cook, trying to get some supplement of meat for her diet, almost shoving her card as a member of the all-girl MMA team, whom she had apparently joined when he had went to see Shannon, which gave her some privileges, he guessed. As fort Derek and Joshua had moved to another table, with the MAJOR’s team members, and their raucous laughter did nothing to make him feel less exposed.

“I never asked for help…” he dared to said at the enormous woman, who leant toward him, exposing her impressive curves for all to see – but more particularly him, of course.

“You don’t have too, tiny fairy! It’s any respectable MAJOR’s duty to help and defend minors, especially one who has suffered so much already!” she boomed, her face barred by a wide smile that she probably thought was enticing and only looking unnerving for the young Ferrand.

“You re conscious that I said during the Revelation that if you want to be my friend, you’ll have to earn my trust right? Because you’re failing, big time, lady.”

“What? How!?” blurted the muscular black behemoth, her face a picture of absolute confusion. “I… I did everything expected of me, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, well, turns out that one is a Righter, so you’re wasting your time. He’s probably thinking that he’s better than you even” sneered Shawna, coming from behind the impressive pillars of muscles that served as legs for the MAJOR woman pestering Alejandro.

“What!? No way! How could you support the Matthewson’s crazy campaign!? She’s putting you and all your kind in danger!”

“Oh really? Because it was someone who thought that Minors belonged to you MAJORS who crushed my arm into a bloody pulp and tried to violate my mind” growled the young man, glaring balefully at both Shawna and Helena.

“You see cousin? He’s a lost cause” sighed Shawna, in a tone which made the Ferrand’s skin crawl with disgust. “He’s unable to see the good you could do to him.”

“You mean, making you like you? Overweight? A sniveling little useful idiot for the MAJORs to parade and try to stamp out Minors with any sense of self-respect” shot back Alejandro, letting his anger show. “Well then, sorry, but I vastly prefer to be among the Righters. At least, we don’t try to suppress the rights of others!”

“Yeah, you’re just…” begun the other Minor, her shrill voice puncturing the teenager’s ears. Then she stopped abruptly and her face took a look of contentment, seconds before she fell flat on the floor.

Alejandro jumped on his feet, looking from the perch he had found himself sitting on, wondering what to do, when he heard a light snore coming from Shawna. Then, a little sigh coming from Helena, which drew his attention back to her. She wasn’t looking at her cousin, but had in fact turned her back on him to stare down another, massive woman, who still looked small compared to the black titaness. From what he could see, it was Samantha Paolini. It was incredibly frightening to see that this MMA champion he had always found enormous looked so puny compared to the Beaulac girl.

“Really Sam? You’re abusing your powers on my cousin? What did I told you would happen the last time you did that?” growled Helena, taking a step forward toward her potential rival, her muscles budging out menacingly.

“I’m sorry that I’m such a little bitch and that my cousin is an asshole and I’ll nevar bother you again Samantha?” offered the Paolini girl, her voice cold and hard.

“You bitch!” roared Helena.

She rose her fists, clearly ready to strike at Samantha. But the smaller girl was quicker and in a swift movement, she crouched and dealt a powerful blow on the right ankle of her opponent. A powerful crack resounded and the colossal MAJOR let out a scream of pain. She lost her balance and seemed to be falling toward him. Alejandro let out a yelp and try to fall back, but the bench was too narrow and he fell to the floor, on his left side. He hissed in pain when his left side collided with the cold tiles, and that his prosthesis managed to punch him in the gut.

A mighty boom above head forced his eyes upward and he saw the titanic back of Helena forming a kind of ceiling. He couldn’t heard anything because his head was still ringing from the shock of his fall, but he noticed something strange. The mighty body over him was shaking repeatedly and it took him several seconds to understand that she was probably clobbered hard by Samantha. Finally, he managed to hear the voices of the MAJORS again, and the sound of Helena’s pleading voice was both a relief and frightening at how submissive it sounded.

“I yield! I yield! Please, stop it!”

“Fine… but take your cousin and scram!” bellowed Samantha.

“You broke my ankle” whined Helena as she rose to her feet, or foot more accurately.

“Stop acting like a little girl” grumbled the Poalini girl. “We both know that in a waak top you’ll be back to your usual insuffarable self” sighed Sam, her voice somehow sounding amused.

“Bitch” mumbled Helena on the same amused tone. “I should really find a moment to spank you bad, you’re too arrogant for your safety girl.”

“Really, you want to lose your sacond angle in a row?”

“Hell no. Damn it girl, you really need to teach me those moves, it would come in handy during a fight” calmly said Helena as she picked up Shawna’s sleeping form and departed, but not before pecking Sam’s left cheek in a playful manner.

“Dream on!” laughed the mixed MAJOR, waving her blonde hair in a mocking fashion.

Alejandro was totally at a loss. He had absolutely no idea what was happening. He had seen his siblings fighting a lot of time, sometimes hurting each other badly in the process, but making peace almost as soon as the last hit had fallen. But they were members of the same family and he had always found it unnerving. Now, he had just witnessed two woman fighting, one pounding the other into submission and then apparently bantering amiably seconds after the end of their fight. MAJORS are fucking crazy!

“You okay down there?” asked Samantha, her beautiful face coming into view.

“I… I’m fine… but…”

“You need help to gat back on the banch?” completed Jim’s daughter, interrupting him with a little smile.

“No, in fact I wanted to ask you if you could give me your backpack to make a cushion for my head” grumbled Alejandro, which provoked a powerful fit of laughter from the MAJOR woman.

“What is happening here!?” suddenly shrieked Lindsey’s voice, her head peering down and noticing her brother on the floor. “’Rando!”

“I’m fine… mostly” explained the Minor. “But damn it, I didn’t know that coming to school would be so dangerous… I just want to have my lunch calmly…” he added grumbling, as he rose to his feet without difficulty and gestured to Lindsey to pick him up.

“Wall than, I guass I’ll leave you two...” said Samantha, but before she could go away, Alejandro stopped her.

“Wait! I…” he stuttered when she turned toward him, one of her eyebrows arched in a questioning and really beautiful way, making him lose his train of thought during a second or so. “I wanted to thank you. You can eat with us if you want to.”

“Really? Don’t you think that your SO wouldn’t ba too happy with you hanging out with a Tier 3?” asked Samantha, displaying a certain dose of subtlety in avoiding to name Shannon.

“Don’t worry about it… Plus, I’ll have you know that eating with someone doesn’t mean that I’m interested into bonding or even romantic interactions, thank you very much” said the young man matter of factly.

“Wall, aren’t you a chamar, ah?” laughed Sam, sitting next to him, on his right, in a graceful movement, while Lindsey sat to his next, grumbling to herself.

“What’s the problem Little Lind?” asked Alejandro, worried that something was wrong for her and she needed some help.

“I didn’t get to punch that idiot pestering you” finally admitted his little sister after some hesitation.

Alejandro glared at her, taking a deep breath, but before he could berate her, she glared back, surprising him. She had never done so before, and quite frankly, he wasn’t sure that he was liking it very much. She knew how much he hated MAJORS beating each other’s face blue, and her being at that age when they were all itching for a fight didn’t made it better in his book, quite the contrary even. But even as he tried to get the upper ground needed to impart some sorely needed big brother wisdom, he was back footed once more by his little daughter.

“Listen ‘Rando” she started angrily. “You don’t know what school life is. I need to assert dominance just to back your words at the Ceremony. All those idiots out there want to get you now that they know you are unbonded. Do you want me to let them have you?”

“No but…” tried the Minor, but he was cut off once more.

“There is no but big brother” whispered Lindsey urgently. “We don’t have a choice… I don’t have a choice. If I want to let you behave as freely as you want, and trust me there is nothing I want more, then I have to be able to prove to everyone that I’m not a pushover and that they better stay clear of you if I don’t agree with their courtship.”

“But I know that you aren’t a pushover” tried the Minor, horrified by what she was saying.

“Of course you do little guy” interjected Samantha, quite philosophically. “But avaryone alse doesn’t. Wall, I do because I had a scuffle with your little sistar some days ago, and man, she got the fire to ba some sarious fighter! It’s worth making this talent grow.”

“You fought with my sister!” almost yelled Alejandro, quite indignantly.

“I was the one who snapped at her, don’t held it against her please…” pleaded Lindsey, letting her fingers rest on his shoulders.

“But…” begun the Minor, but once more he couldn’t finish his sentence.

“Please, please, please! Would you do it for me!” and the young man knew he had lost this battle, because this massive pre-teen looked so much like the infant he had fawned over when he was a kid, before the Incident, that he simply couldn’t say no to her.

“Fine, fine” he grudgingly admitted. “But I’m the one who decides who can and can’t touch me, not you, even if you’re itching for a fight, got it kiddo?”

“So… you would be okay with me fighting other peoples?” asked him a puzzled Lindsey.

“Not at all. But I guess I have to admit that some things are simply outside the realms of possibilities. If you all can’t learn to not behave like Neanderthals, then I guess it’s better to try and minimize the conflicts, right?”

“Ha got some brain, doesn’t ha?” laughed Sam, showing one of her powerful digit in his back, making the Minor yelp in pain. “Oops, sorry!” she offered, still laughing.

“Watch it!” grumbled the Minor. “And also, while I’m really thankful for your help earlier, I would like to know since when you and Lindsey are friends, or since when do you care about us Minors. Our previous encounter didn’t made you sound as very interested in our plight.”

“Well, quite frankly, you’re right. I can’t care lass about Minors as a whole. Just like I don’t care about MAJORS as a whole. I want to meet challanging paoples, those who don’t shirk from a challange. And you, you added to your difficulties!” roared the Iron Girl with a bright smile. “I like that kind of guts! I can’t help but want to be a friend with you! After all, I told you both that if you wanted to be my friend.”

Alejandro could feel his eyes widening. That girl is crazy! Okay, crazy and somewhat sympathetic, in her own way. But damn it, who would have thought that a Tier 3 would be like that? Hell, a MAJOR even!? It was something else altogether. The young man was beginning to rethink his idea to go to High School. Being surrounded by horny and aggressive teenagers had even a lot less stellar than even he had anticipated. But on the other hand, he hadn’t had any friend since he was eight, since the Incident.

“Since when does a MAJOR and a Minor can be friend?” he asked ironically.

“Since when does a girl and a boy can be friend?” she replied rather seriously, even if she still had a smile on her face – and Lindsey too.

“Touché” admitted Alejandro graciously. “But now, you’ll have to excuse me friend, but I’m famished! I want to eat!”

The last part was directly addressed to his sister, who was still hogging his plate with her. He had asked her to take a portion of French fries, roasted lamb ribs and a Minor-sized bottle of Fanta. It wasn’t his usual diet at all, but with all the emotions of his first day, Alejandro felt that he deserved to be eat whatever he wanted, for once. Plus, everyone, from Izzy to his parents had told him that food in a school where Minors were student was always delicious and he had to try it, to be able to judge it fairly. Plus, good food will make the year more sufferable, he decided.

“Oops, sorry ‘Rando, here’s your food” promptly said his sister, handing him his tray.

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“Thank you!” said her older brother, before immediately starting to eat his fries, as if he hadn’t eaten for days.

“Wall, somabody was hungry uh?” asked Samantha, clearly surprised by Alejandro’s enthusiasm. “But haven’t you been a little… harsh with the size of his portions? They are barely a mouthful and a half.”

“They are more than enough I assure you. Don’t you know that Minors can’t eat as much as us?” asked Lindsey, a little perplexed.

“Wall, yeah, but… so little, really? Suraly he can eat more than that.”

“Not really” intervened her brother. “Plus it would be bad for my diet, I don’t want to get fat.”

“But you’re scrawny and all bony” said Sam, “you need to put some meat on your frame!”

“Meat, not fat” sternly replied the small teenager whom Lindsey wanted so much to protect. “And I’ll have you know that for a crippled Minor, I’m quite good physically, really.”

“You’re not crippled...” growled the pre-teen, gritting her teeth.

‘I’m pretty sure he is…” interjected Samantha, earning a fierce glare for her trouble, but the older MAJOR clearly found it funny. “Anyway, what’s your beef with Shawna? I’ve naver known Halena cousin to be overbearing, aven if she’s kind of everywhere in town now, being from the Mayor’s family and all.”

“She’s an asshole” grumbled Alejandro, not even deigning to look at them for a second, clearly enjoying far too much his ribs.

“’Rando!” indignantly said Lindsey, who really disliked to hear her older brother being vulgar. It didn’t suit him at all, even less than other Minors, in her eyes.

“What!? You didn’t heard her in the Minor’s funny room” he said, clearly still raw and angry at this other specimen of his kind, which was quite disturbing.

“Doesn’t she have the right to have her own ideas?” she asked, fully conscious of Samantha’s eyes judging them and trying to understand what the problem was.

“Of course she does, but she has clearly no respect for my own, and has already decided that I’m some kind of disgusting moron or something like that. I get to judge her as quickly!”

“Okay, okay… no need to yell at me about it…” mumbled Lindsey.

“You guys are really strange, you know that right?” suddenly blurted the Iron Girl.

“How so?” asked the Ferrand girl, who felt that she was quite average for a MAJOR, as of right now.

“Well, I’ve never heard of a MAJOR and a Minor being… well, I don’t, know, being together as you are. It’s almost as if you truly considers him your big brother!” she explained to Lindsey.

“I am her big brother!” yelped Alejandro, but her sister felt as if he was mostly feigning outrage.

‘You know what I mean little buddy. She’s the MAJOR, you’re the Minor. I get that you’re in cahoots with Shannon M., but come on, surely you don’t…”

“Don’t believe that MAJORS and Minors deserve the same rights? Yes, I do” proudly affirmed Lindsey, looking straight into the older MAJOR’s eyes.

Samantha did not reply immediately and Alejandro also remained silent, and suddenly, Lindsey realized that she had unconsciously grabbed her brother to bring her closer to herself. It wasn’t exactly the best way to illustrate her position, but she resisted her sudden impulse to release him, even push him back a little. It’s just me trying to protect him. ‘Rando needs it, whether he would admit it or not. Having the same rights as me doesn’t mean that I can’t be here to support him and make sure that no one try to hurt him as he was…

“That’s like… aran’t you from a backwatar place? I wouldn’t have thought that someone with such a background would have had such a viaw.”

Lindsey had to give it to Samantha. No matter what her defaults may be, she was honest to a fault. She felt really insulted by this question and the idea that just because she came from a very small and isolated town, she was expected to be somewhat… ultra-traditional when it came to MAJOR/minor relations and all. But the pre-teen giantess knew all too well how easily the Tier 3 could handle her ass, so she couldn’t simply punch her in the face, no matter how she felt the urge to do so. Plus, they were perhaps becoming friends, and even her brother was accepted by the other MAJOR and she couldn’t jeopardize it, no matter how much she wanted it.

“Old Creek is really small, yes, to the North of California, but it doesn’t mean that all the peoples here are reactionaries. Our Mom work as a scientist for some firm dabbling in genome shenaningans or whatever, it’s top secret, and our Dad is an astronomer, and Mount Janet is close enough that he can drive to it and back everyday” explained Alejandro.

“Wow, so you’re kind of the two rich kids of your homatown or what?” asked an impressed Sammy.

“Well, there is also my little brother, my twin” replied Lindsey’s brother with a smile.

“Wow, anothar Minor!?”

“You wish” sighed the smaller MAJOR. “He’s a big stupid dummy of a MAJOR and a jumbo sized pain in the ass.”

“Lindsey!” indignantly shouted Alejandro, who was shocked enough to not immediately return to his food. “You can’t talk about Alaric like that, young lady.”

“Bleh!” only replied Lindsey, sticking her tongue out, as if to demonstrate how little she cared about being nice about their absent sibling.

“Just wait until we come back to Old Creek for the holidays… I’ll be in the front row to see him handing you your ass!” threatened her Minor brother, in a way which could have been frightening if he hadn’t looked so damn cute.

“I though you didn’t like when wa guys fought?” inquired Samantha, making Alejandro stutter and then focus entirely on his food as the two MAJORS begun to laugh loudly once more.

“You should eat your food Little Lind” grumbled her ‘Rando. “You need to come back home with me, considering that I can’t open the fucking front door…”

“But I have my first biology class after lunchtime is over!” whined the young girl, returning to her childish nature for a moment.

“All the more reason to eat your fill soon then!” firmly shot back her brother, signaling that no matter how much she could try, he wouldn’t bulge on this point.

He clearly didn’t want to stay in the Minors classroom alone, nor risk a trip to the library to wait the end of her schoolday. Not that she could blame her, since she was now painfully obvious that a lot of other MAJORS wanted to get their hands of her ‘Rando. Leaving him alone was out of the question, even if librarians or teachers would be there at all time to keep him safe, at least in theory. He didn’t know enough about MAJORS socializing, school and generally being out of the house to survive such an environment unprotected.

“Couldn’t your friend Jenny lend us a hand?” suddenly asked Lindsey to Samantha. “Where is she by the way?”

“No can do. She naver comes to the cafataria, sha’s always at the gym to halp the MMA club whan she had a spare momant. And, wall, you’ve met her. Sha is evan less into this Righter’s club than I am. Not that I couldn’t find mysalf supporting it, if the stars alignad” she added for Lindsey’s brother attention, beaming him a wide smile.

“So, what you’re trying to say is that a friend could convince you uh? Well, Sure… if you can prove yourself worthy of my friendship, of course” he replied sarcastically.

“Oh, I am the one who has to prove harsalf? Aren’t you a little too full of yoursalf uh? I mean, I am the powarful and might Tiar 3!” laughed Samantha, who clearly liked where the discussion was going.

“Well, you are the one who said that you liked a challenge right? If I folded and asked you to be my friend right along, you wouldn’t say yes, right?”

“Touché” admitted the Iron Girl with a chuckle. “And I would like to halp you but I can’t, I’ve math in thirty minutes, and it’s the othar side of the campus. I think you’ll ba on your own kiddo” she added for Lindsey, who sighed in despair.

“Well then I’ll guess I’ll just have to run the whole way then” she finally said to her ‘Rando, enjoying his horrified look.