#''healthy'' aka the fastest way of telling me there's no story involved

[whentheynameyoujoy]

FYI, when it comes to fictional ships, “healthy” is just a pretentious way of saying “boring”.

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

The Misadventures of Prince Kim - chapter 3

(aka the royalty AU story)

[1, 2] [AO3]

Along the way to Chloé’s dorm room, Kim and Max ran into Pharaoh Alix and her snake again. This time she was on rollerskates and was going through the corridors much quicker than she was probably allowed to. She stopped when she saw them.

“Oh hey Max, what’s up?”

“Not much, what’s up with you?” Max replied.

“Are you kidding me?” Kim said in disbelief. “Look, I knew you two knew each other already, neighbouring kingdoms and all that, but are you telling me you’re friends? Max, you traitor! This girl tried to murder me!”

“I did not try to murder you, my snake is too well-behaved for that,” Alix said, laughing. “And of course Max is my friend. His kingdom’s the only sensible one that’s actually interested in trade. The rest of you are all missing out because the Kubdel Kingdom is very, very tech advanced, you know, you could be buying the latest tech off us but you don’t…”

“Your kingdom is the best,” Max admitted. “I wish mine was like yours, but with trade opening up more it’s getting there. That reminds me, have you got any cool new tech gadgets this time? Please say you do!”

“Yep.” Alix pressed a button on her sceptre, and the top of it opened up to reveal a flat screen on the inside. Pressing some more buttons, a blue hologram suddenly popped up, depicting an elegantly dressed young lady holding up a giant watch that showed the time. “My sceptre doubles as a phone now too.”

Max’s mouth had fallen open. “Your sceptre has advanced hologram technology now? And you combined it with a portable phone! And it has a touchscreen? No way!”

“Will you two nerds speak French?!” Kim snapped, putting his hands on his hips.

“Oh, sorry, I’ll explain,” Max said. “A telephone is a device that transforms soundwaves into electromagnetic signals to instantaneously communicate across vast distances, and a hologram projects an image made of light into a 3D space…”

“Max, I have no idea what you’re saying. What the heck is a hologram. In French, please, not sciencey mumbo jumbo. And how is that sceptre a phone, I thought there were only like three phones in the world or something, and–”

“Please tell me he’s kidding, Max,” Alix said. “I know I didn’t believe you when you said people from other kingdoms don’t have stuff like this, but… seriously, how can you not have telephones? How do you even live? What about, I don’t know, aeroplanes?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kim said. “They haven’t invented planes yet. It’s impossible because of like… gravity and stuff! See, I can speak sciencey too!”

“You don’t even have planes? Please tell me you at least have diesel engines…”

“Uh, we have steam engines I think, if that counts.”

Alix turned to Max, unable to believe her ears. “Max, you didn’t tell me they were all basically cavepeople!”

“Excuse me?” Kim said, walking right up to her and leaning down to her level, forgetting about the snake she was holding for a second. “You’re clearly making all this stuff up! Planes, seriously, there’s no way I’m falling for that. Next you’ll be saying you’ve got hovercrafts and jetpacks and teleporters…”

“What? That’s stupid!”

“Well your lame tech gadgets are stupid!”

Max, rolling his eyes, put his arms between them and shoved them apart. “Listen you two, will you be quiet? Your kingdoms have a large disparity in tech levels, fine. Kim, your kingdom is nothing to be ashamed of, most of the world is at an industrial level and you’re doing fine, mine and Alix’s kingdoms are exceptions and you’ll all get there soon. But Alix isn’t lying about the planes and phones and diesel engines. And Alix, you should be wanting to help spread education to other kingdoms rather than belittling them for things they can’t help.”

“Yeah, exactly!” Kim huffed. “At least I don’t carry around a live poisonous snake with me all the time, which is probably really unhygienic anyway!”

“This is a venomous snake, get it right,” Alix said, giving her cobra an affectionate stroke. “He isn’t unhygienic, he’s perfectly clean and healthy. And by the way I updated his name. He is now called Kim the First, since I knew him first, and you can be Kim the Second.”

“That’s stupid, I should be Kim the First. I’m the first at everything. Like did you know I’m the fastest runner in my age group in my whole kingdom? Which is a very athletically inclined kingdom, may I remind you? I bet I could easily outrun your puny little snake. Take that, Kim the First! If you try and poison me then I’ll just outrun you! You wanna go, huh? I’ll prove it!”

“Did you… just challenge my snake to a race…”

“Yeah!” Kim said, cracking his knuckles and ignoring Max facepalming. “Don’t tell me Kim the First is too scared to take me on!”

“Dude, he’s a fricking snake, he doesn’t even go that fast. Me when I’m rollerskating on the other hand…”

“Well I bet I can run faster than you can skate anyway!”

Alix grinned. “Bring it on! When are we having the race?”

“On the weekend, so we can invite everyone to watch you lose!”

“You’ll be the one who loses, but oh yeah, it’s on! I’ll see you in the courtyard on Saturday afternoon, how does that sound?”

“I can’t wait!”

“Good!” Without saying anything else, she snapped shut the hologram on her sceptre and then skated away. Max immediately wheeled round to face Kim, rubbing his forehead.

“Kim, I told you to chill out around the pharaoh of the most developed country in the world… and you challenged her to a race. Why are you like this?”

“I couldn’t help it!” Kim said, suddenly being hit with the impact of what he was doing now that the adrenaline of arguing was flooding out of him. “She’s so annoying, flaunting that snake everywhere and showing off about how her kingdom is the best and everything! I had to do something! Anyway, what’s she gonna do when she loses, execute me? No, she can’t do that outside her own kingdom, so whatever. It’s no big deal. I’ve got to go see Chloé now anyway, so who cares about some skater and her dumb snake? Not me. Come on Max, let’s go.”

 Chloé was just leaving her room when Kim and Max arrived. She had to duck so that her tall wig wouldn’t hit the top of the doorway, and even had to turn sideways to be able to fit through considering how wide her skirt was. While she was busy struggling with that simple task, Kim quickly told Max to go and hide behind the nearest wall and not interfere no matter what. Once Chloé had finally made it through the door, Kim went and stood in front of her, hiding the brooch behind his back.

“Oh, it’s you,” Chloé said, raising an eyebrow – not that it made much difference when her needle thin eyebrows were already plucked into elegant arches. “You’re one of my classmates this year, aren’t you? Have we met?”

Kim gulped – he didn’t realize she wouldn’t remember him at all. That did not bode well. Clearing his throat, he said, “I’m Prince Kim of Lê Chiến, and we met a few years ago at that big banquet you had when…”

“Yes well what do you want? Get it over with, I have a hair appointment to attend, you know.” She reached up and patted the side of her wig, knocking a cloud of powder out of it. “It takes effort to look this regal all the time.”

“Um… well…” Kim opened the box and held it out in front of him, the jewelled brooch inside reflecting pale blue light onto Chloé’s face. “I know you like brooches and jewellery, and so I thought… I would get this for you… and maybe we could…”

Chloé held her fan up in front of her face and let out a high-pitched laugh. “Is that supposed to be a courting gift? Did you think I don’t already receive hundreds each day from other hopeless suitors? I will say, that’s a very nice brooch, but it’s rather pathetic of you to think I would ever be involved with someone of a lower rank than me. If you’re not an imperial prince then I’m not interested at all, you might as well just be a peasant for all I care! In any case I don’t remember you, so the least you could have done is got to know me a bit first before asking me out – not that it would have made any difference! Now get out of my way. I have places to be and much more worthwhile people to be spending my time with than some lowly prince of a backwater kingdom.” Chuckling to herself, she walked down the corridor and didn’t even glance back once.

Max immediately ran over to Kim, who stood staring at the brooch in his hand. “Kim, are you okay?”

“Dang, she’s right, isn’t she? What was I thinking… she’s an imperial princess, way out of my league…”

“What? No, who cares if she’s an imperial princess or not? It was so rude of her to call you a peasant!” Max was tempted to begin explaining that the more correct and less offensive term was “commoner”, but he reminded himself that a linguistics lesson wasn��t what Kim needed right now. “And I thought that even if she did reject you, she wouldn’t do it like that, saying you’re pathetic or just rejecting you outright based on rank. I thought she would have the decency to be polite about it.”

“It’s my fault,” Kim muttered. “I should have talked to her first or something, I thought she still remembered me but apparently she didn’t. Why do I never think properly before doing stuff?”

“Kim, you deserve better than her.”

“You can’t say stuff like that!” Kim gasped. “We’re in her empire right now, isn’t that like… treason or something?”

“I don’t care, it’s the truth. She would have been a good political match despite what she said about rank, but you deserve someone who actually respects you.”

“Thanks Max, that’s nice. I guess I knew Chloé wasn’t always that great a person, but I wasn’t really thinking about that, I just… ugh, I didn’t think about it properly. Next time there’s no way I’m asking someone out on a whim.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“I don’t know what to do with this brooch now though…”

“Keep it for now,” Max said. “Give it to someone more worthy when the time comes.”

Kim grinned and suddenly hugged him. “You’re right, thanks Max! I’ll find someone way cooler to give this thing to! Though I guess this means I can’t really tease Ivan about Mylène anymore, can I? Or maybe I still can, since I’ve met Mylène and she’s really nice, there’s no way she would be mean to Ivan, so I could still…”

“Please don’t,” Max mumbled, his pulse suddenly going alarmingly fast for some reason. Probably because he wasn’t used to sudden hugs, that was it. In any case Kim let go of him and closed the brooch box.

“Fine, I won’t talk to Ivan,” he said. “So anyway, are you up for some more exploring? This school is pretty huge and we’ve barely seen any of it so far!”

“Good idea,” Max said, and followed Kim down the corridor. The good thing about Kim was that no matter what happened to him, he always bounced back quickly. He seemed to be in a better mood now. Hopefully Chloé’s rejection wouldn’t keep him down for too long.