Heirs Unapparant | A Miraculous Origin Story

Chapter 20: Security Breach (خرق أمني)

"Dude!" Milo scolded, his voice exploding from the next room as the shower turned off and the model emerged, messing with the laces of his shoes as he rang out his unruly mop of blond. "Have you gone completely crazy?"

Nicholas winced at the forcefulness of his tone as he peeked up from his schedule in time to receive a towel to the face. Peeling the fabric away, he watched as Milo stormed over to his bunk and began tossing books and papers into his bag. "I guess that depends on your definition of 'crazy'," he replied, doing the same with his things. Lorr jumped at the resounding thwack and blinked up at him with confused oceans of chocolate. "Sorry," he added off-handedly to the kwami.

Milo chucked something hard into the backpack as he whipped back to glare at his roommate angrily. "You don't get it, do you?" he hissed, sounding unusually snake-like. "Nicholas, we are supposed to be here in secret! Why on earth would you go straight out and reveal yourself to a potential bad guy?"

"She's not a thief, Grimm," Nicholas insisted. "When I confronted her, she didn't even know what a miraculous was! How could she steal something she didn't know anything about?"

"She could have been hired, man!" Milo groaned. "Maybe it was a blind deal! People do it all the time! She could have been baiting you and you walked right into it. Idiot," he muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Nicholas to catch it. "You're a lovable idiot, Lahiffe, but an idiot nevertheless. You're just too trusting. Not everyone is going to be as alright with a superhero appearing out of the blue as you tend to do. You need to be more careful who you let get close to you or you're going to get us--and everyone on this campus--killed."

Nicholas squinted at him as the boy gathered the last of his things and slung his bag over his shoulder, already halfway to the door before the Moroccan could blink.

"I'm going to class now," Milo went on without looking back. "You should do the same. And try and keep your head in the game this time, would you? This is serious. Trekk, let's go."

The kwami's head shot up at the use of his name and he snarled irritably, carefully rising from his place next to Lorr and gliding over to drop silently into his holder's bag as Grimm readjusted his fingerless gloves and stepped outside into the hall.

Nicholas gawked, momentarily trapped in place by his mystification. "What was that all about?" he ruminated aloud as soon as the blond was out of earshot.

Lorr chirped something incoherent as he too lifted from the beanbag and darted over to try and assist with his holder's volumes, awkwardly lifting one of the smaller ones into the air, snapping the boy out of his stupor and sending him scrambling for his books as his phone gave its first blaring warning of imminent doomsday-meaning his first anatomy class.

"Well, no time to worry about Milo's spastic tendencies right now," the boy went on, opening up his bag once more to allow Lorr to dive inside. "We've got other pressing matters to attend to. Come on, Lorr. Let's get going."

Ready when you are, Master. Might I suggest you recite what we have been practicing as we go? This will be a good opportunity for you to make new friends, but in either case, your story will have to be believable.

Nah, Lorr, Nicholas shrugged him off as he hitched up his bag and followed in Milo's footsteps. I got this, man. My name's Ryan Morgan. I am twenty-one years old. I am a social outcast and geek extraordinaire. My parents are both dead from a car accident and I was raised by my uncle in a distant third-world country. I was brought to New York when I was five and I learned English as a second language. That's why I don't always understand the jokes and expressions that I often hear and why I often sound different when I speak. Huh, good to know some things about my alter-alterego haven't changed.