13: Kang Park-Min

NPCS: Shakeel Qadir, Sophie Mantega, Thomas MacNeil-Hudson, Angelica Jones,
Illyana Rasputin, Gaius Gallo

Kang Park-Min had been looking forward to spending Saturday night at the Salem Center Mall at the bowling alley, but now he was here he had got himself in a mood. The four other Xaviers students on the lane seemed to be having far more fun than he was.
Shakeel was in great form, lording it over everyone, buying them hotdogs and Cokes with the small fortune he had made with a shitload of games he had pirated for half the kids on campus. The school had every game you could imagine but they were locked and "age appropriate". Shakeel always had some dodgy money-making scheme going on, but as far as Min could work out this was the first one that had ever earned decent money.
The other two of his fellow red shirts Sophie and Thomas were there along with a trio of oranges, Illyana, Angelica and Gaius. As they wanted to play teams they split into girls versus boys.
"Strike!" Angelica shouted, as ten pins rattled off in different directions. She flailed her arms and jiggled her bum about, doing a kind of freaky war dance.
"You're up, Shak," she whooped.
Angelica turned away from the scene of her triumph to see Gaius Gallo grinning at her from his plastic chair, next to where she had been sitting before she bowled.
"Great shot," Min called out.
"Didn't I say you’d bowl better if you swung your arm back a little less?" Gaius interjected. "Your balance is much better now." When it came to balance and dexterity it made no sense to question Gaius. As stunningly handsome as the guy was, his vanity was annoying.
Angelica remembered the advice, but she hadn't bowled any differently to normal. The strike had been down to luck. She looked at her plastic seat and realised she couldn't handle another second of this guy fawning over her. She reached under her chair and grabbed her bag.
"Where are you going?" Gaius asked apprehensively. "What's the matter?"
"Min looks a bit down in the dumps," Angelica explained. "I'm gonna sit with him for a minute and see if I can cheer him up."
"Good idea," Gaius grinned. I’ll come with you."
"No," Angelica said stiffly. "You are gonna stay right there."
"But..." Gaius said, half standing up before sitting down again.
"Look," Angelica said. "I don't mean to be rude, but you have been acting seriously weird and it's getting on my tits. Can't you let me have five minutes of peace?"
Angelica felt bad as she reached over and pulled her jacket off the back of her chair. Gaius had the expression of a toddler whose mother had punished them by confiscating their favourite toy.
Min was out of sorts, staring down at the floor between his legs.
Angelica tapped him on the knee. "What's up, misery guts?" she asked, as she took the
seat next to him.
Min shrugged his slender shoulders. "I kind of miss Ally, I have not heard from her in over a week."
"Neither have I," Angelica said. "But the last message I got said she'd arrived in Mexico and was going deep undercover, so it's hardly surprising."
Min nodded. “I spoke to her mission controller on the comms and he says everything is fine and hopefully Ally will be home in a month or so."
Something cold touched the back of Min's neck. He looked around and realised he and Angelica had been splashed with someone’s drink and ice by the gang of sixteen and seventeen-year-old boys who were playing the next lane. They were acting rowdy, rucking and throwing stuff around.
"Oi," Angelica stormed, as she scowled over her shoulder at a mass of acne in a Giants shirt. "Do you mind?"
"Sorry," the kid said, grinning mischievously at the ice in the bottom of his cardboard cup.
Min got the impression he wasn't sorry at all.
"Min," Shakeel shouted. "Your frame."
Min got out of his seat and grabbed a bowling ball off the rack. He had picked up a coupon and taken a couple of free bowling lessons, so when Min was on form he looked the business: delivering the ball in a powerful arc and racking up respectable scores.
But not tonight.
In fact, Min’s mood had nothing to do with missing Ally, Min was feeling down because he
couldn't aim a bowling ball to save his life.
He lined up, holding the heavy ball under his chin. He took a good smooth swing. The ball crashed nicely into the front three pins, and for a second Min thought he'd scored his first strike in ages. But pin seven, at the back on the far left, merely wobbled and number ten on the extreme right didn't even have the decency to do that. Min could not believe his rotten luck.
"Seven-ten split," Shakeel shouted, slapping his thighs deliriously. "You're going down again, Kang."
Min glanced up at the scoreboard. When they bowled in a group, Min usually fought Shakeel for first place and won more than he lost. But he had already lost two matches tonight and was thirty points behind Shakeel in this one, with four frames left to play. Min thought Shakeel rubbing in the misery was harsh, conveniently forgetting he would have acted exactly the
same if it had been Shakeel having a bad night.
Min grabbed his ball as soon as it clattered on to the rack and stopped spinning. He lined up to take his second shot, glowering at the two pins standing on opposite sides of the lane. To make a seven-ten split, you need to hit one pin so hard that it bounces against the wall behind, then
spins out and knocks down the pin on the opposite side. The shot requires a hefty chunk of luck and even a world championship standard bowler wouldn't expect to make it often.
"You'll never hit both in a million years," Shakeel goaded. “Even Gaius couldn’t make that shot.”
Min turned back and smirked at Shakeel, struggling to fake an air of confidence. "Sit your
butt down and watch the master at work."
Min swung the ball as hard as he could, but when you bowl fast you lose control. The ball did a little bobble as Min let go. It had plenty of pace, but Min knew straight away that it wasn't right.
"Turn back," Min gasped desperately, as the ball edged closer to the gutter. "Come onnnnnnn baby..."
The ball thunked into the gutter a couple of metres shy of the pin. Min put his hands over his
eyes and cursed under his breath. He almost couldn't bear turning away, knowing he would catch sight of Shakeel's smug face.
"Eight points and a gutter ball," Shakeel said happily. "Maybe you should wander down to the bumper lanes and ask the supervisor if you can play with the little kids."
Min huffed as he slumped back into his seat next to Angelica. "The way I am going tonight, I reckon the little kids would beat me."
"You're doing better than Illyana and Sophie, though," Angelica said sympathetically, pointing up at the TV screen with the scores on it.
"Some consolation that is. Those two are always hopeless."
Angelica smiled and brushed the back of her hand against Min’s leg. Just not your night, guess."
As she said it, both their backs got sprayed with more coke. They turned quickly to see two beefy looking guys in football shirts wrestling in a puddle on the floor. Min waited until they broke apart before having go at them.
“What are you two retards playing at?" Min barked furiously. "I’m soaked."
"My top's all marked," Angelica said, looking anxiously down her back and wondering if the stains would come out.
The two lads were giggling as they got to their feet.
"We're just having a laugh," the one in the Giants shirt said.
The other lad looked less sympathetic. "There's loads of empty seats over there," he grunted. "Why don't you just move?"
"Because this is our lane," Angelica said. "I don't want to walk five miles every time I take my shot."
"Yeah," Min agreed. "Why should we move, just because you want to roll around the floor with your boyfriend?"
The kid jabbed Min in the back. "Are you calling me a queer?"
Min and Angelica stood up and turned around to face the two lads, who towered over them.
"We didn't come here for a row," Angelica said.
"Nor did I," the tough guy said. "But you're going the right way about getting into one; so why don't you just take your little gook boyfriend off and sit somewhere else?"
The tough guy had twenty-five centimetres and fifteen kilos on Angelica, so he never expected what happened next. Angelica, who was a second-dan Karate black belt, launched a high kick over the row of plastic seats. Her bowling shoe slammed into the thug's kidney and by the time he had got his breath back, he was pinned to the ground with a bloody nose and an orange painted thumbnail digging into his cheek.
"Call him that again," Angelica screamed, as she bunched up her fist. "Go on… I fucking dare you."
Her voice echoed across the bowling alley's metal roof as a hundred sets of stunned eyes turned towards her. The whole place went quiet, except for the sound of a couple of squealing toddlers and the blipping of arcade machines.
Min quickly straddled over the rows of seats and rested his palm on Angelica's shoulder. "Come on, Angelica," he said soothingly. "Cool it. It's not worth getting upset over the likes of him."
Angelica released her hand from her victim's face and stood up. Min thought he'd defused the situation, but then he realised four other lads were moving in to surround them. As he stepped forward to walk back to his lane, a clumsy punch glanced across the side of his head.
Min instinctively swung back with his elbow to take out his assailant, catching him full in the face and deftly sweeping away his opponent's legs as he stumbled backwards. The other three lads didn't like this one bit. Two lunged at Min, while the guy in the Giants shirt tried to take down Angelica by jumping on her back.
Xaviers had trained Min to handle himself in a fight, it was how he had become a red shirt, level one in training. Angelica was orange. But however good your training, and contrary to almost every action movie he had seen, there's a limit to what you can do against three significantly larger opponents at close range.
Luckily, the other students were rushing to their defence. Shakeel, Illyana and Sophie all piled over or around the seats and launched themselves at the thugs. Min caught a second punch and his bowling shoe squealed as he lost his balance on the polished wooden floor.
He tried to get back on his feet, but found himself trapped on the ground, while a tangle of limbs waged war overhead. He caught sight of Shakeel's knee hitting someone in the guts and Giants-shirt guy getting pulled into a painful arm-lock by the other two girls.
By the time a group of adults charged in to break up the fight, there was no doubt about the result. The five yobs were crawling around on the floor in varying degrees of pain, with a ring of steely-faced Xaviers students surrounding them, defying them to make another move.
Min rolled on to his back and took a big gasp of air. He got a little rush from being on the winning side, even though his main contribution had been getting thumped in the head and falling over. He reckoned the older kids deserved what they had got; the way they had spoken so casually to Angelica was totally out of order.
But Mins" mood darkened as he levered himself up on to the plastic seats. His head hurt, his clothes were filthy and there were going to be consequences when they got back to campus.