Chapter 7

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***

The thirty-first of August meant that Gerald Grosvenor stayed at home. At the end of breakfast he said, addressing his son:

- 'Richie, we need to talk.

The man's tone did not bode well. Richie braced himself for trouble. All the boy's good mood vanished. Sadly, he put aside his fork and went into the living room, where he traditionally sat in a chair by the fireplace. Gerald was seated opposite his son.

The man did not pull the cat by the tail and said:

- Son, I'm glad for your success in business, but remember what we talked about at the beginning of the summer.

- Dad, I remember everything.

- If you remember, we had an agreement that you would combine work and study. What do I see? Ritchie, you've gone into business, you've never done your schoolwork and you've given up fencing.

- Dad, it's summer! - Ritchie was genuinely puzzled. - All the kids are on holiday at this time.

- Let's say, - Gerald was focused and serious. - You may have been on holiday, but you can't go on like this. You have to start studying from tomorrow. I've already hired tutors. We're moving into the main house today!

- But...

Ritchie would have been happy to ignore his studies, because they had nothing to offer him. And what he was doing was making the boy rich. He could have gone on in business and made huge sums of money without a high school diploma. But Grosvenor Sr. had an opinion about that. Richie realised that there was no way he could change his father's mind.

The boy sighed sadly and said:

- Okay. But I hope, Dad, when I finish school, you will not force me to study?

- No, Richie," Gerald shook his head faintly. - When you finish school, you can do whatever you want. But I do hope that you'll decide to do some higher education, like studying management. It would be extremely useful for your business endeavours.

- Mm-hm... Perhaps, but I can't promise anything. Dad, before we leave for the estate, I need to make some investment arrangements.

- I understand, Ritchie. You have until lunchtime, then we're leaving.

- Lunch? - Richard said thoughtfully. - I should be able to make it.

***

The first of September began for the successful young businessman as it did for other children his age, that is, with studying.

Richie had to get back to the nasty task at hand. And who would want to waste time on useless studies, if at this moment you can make millions of dollars?

He realised that Gerald thought of him as a child, and even though he allowed him some liberties, like any responsible parent, he wanted the best for his child. From his father's point of view, it would be better for Richie if he got an education. But in reality, the trainee, who had already received a higher education in his previous life, needed school as much as a dog needed a fifth leg.

Still, Ritchie knew that until he had a diploma, he would not be able to run his business properly. So he decided to take all the necessary exams as soon as possible.

Richie dug into the granite of science like a beaver into a dead tree. He burrowed into the textbooks for the first year of high school without any prodding.

Day and night, Richie studied literature. Because of his excellent memory, the humanities came easily to him. The main problem was English and history. He noticed some inaccuracies and discrepancies in historical events, which he put down to the fact that in his previous life at school he had not studied hard enough and did not have such a memory.

It took Richard only two months to pass his seventh grade exams.

Apparently, he had taken the pace too high. In addition to studying school subjects, he had to attend the fencing section again. And he also had to devote time to business. Even a little, but he had to get into the details, to study the exchange rates and securities.

All this led to a logical result - stress accumulated day by day more and more, fatigue piled on the shoulders of the child's body.

After passing the last exam for the seventh grade Ritchie came to the fencing practice not in a good mood, as it should have been, but tired, gaunt and irritated.

The boy was like a tank of petrol - any spark was enough to burst into a bright flame.

When there is fuel, there is always a fool to put a match to it. Such a person was the new coach who was replacing the sick and familiar Mr McCornick.

A young guy with blond hair lined up all the kids in a row. He looked like a pompous peacock. Looking at his charges as if they were the results of animal activity, he exclaimed in a loud shrill voice:

- You are a herd of sheep! But I, Stanley Vince, a silver medallist in international fencing competitions, will make champions out of you.

Richard didn't like it when someone dared to address him like that. Accustomed to being danced on tiptoe around him and mostly treated with respect, he could not tolerate the insult.

- Sir, what year's champion are you? - he asked calmly.

Richie, being a fencer, naturally followed the world championships in the sport. With his excellent memory he remembered the names of all the medallists of the last ten years. Since the seventy-ninth year, there hadn't been a single competitor from Britain who had won even a bronze medal. The coach looked at most twenty-seven years old, hence there was no way he could be a medallist.

- In eighty-six! - Mr Vince answered the question pompously.

- Hmmm... - Richard was brimming with irony. He asked sarcastically:- Sir, in the eighty-sixth year at the International Fencing Championships, the Spaniard Miklos Bodocy took silver in the individual event. And the USSR team won the group competition. Sir, are you Russian or did you change your name from Miklos to Stanley, having plastic surgery and dyed your hair at the same time?

- No, I'm British," said Mr Vince, embarrassed. - I was wrong. I was referring to the '85 championship.

Ritchie gave a meaningful chuckle and said sarcastically:

- "Group standings - silver for Italy. Jaroslav Jurka, Czechoslovakia. It seems to me, mister, that you're a notorious liar.

The children, whose faces were hidden by fencing masks, began to laugh. It was obvious to anyone that the coach was lying.

Mr Vince didn't like it. In fact, he got mad.

- Shut up, you little brat! - he shouted at Richard. - You're just making this up to humiliate me. But it won't work, you little brat!

- Sir, do you know who you're talking to? - Richie asked, in a sympathetic and soft tone, like a retard. - I am Richard Grosvenor. You could get in serious trouble for insults like that.

- Are you going to threaten me again?! - Mr Vince's nostrils flared, his eyes bloodshot. - Show me what you've learnt, puppy. I'll teach you a personal lesson!

- Sir, I'm not threatening you, I'm just confronting you.

Richard, tired though he was, was still a nobleman and kept his face. As much as he wanted to swear at the braggart who didn't know how to treat children, the boy remained polite.

The substitute trainer was already swinging his practice rapier. He froze in an attacking stance and pointed the sword at Richard.

- Puppy, are you going to stand there like that? Get out here!

- Eh... - a heavy exhalation escaped from Richard's chest. - Sir, I'll ask my father not to let you teach anywhere else.

- If your father were a prince, his word would mean nothing! - said Mr Vince, in a self-righteous tone.

- Not at all, sir," Ritchie drew his sword and strode into the arena. - My father is not a prince, only a duke, but he has enough influence to keep you away from children on British soil.

- Ha-ha-ha-ha! - Vince laughed unbelievably loudly. - You little liar! You can tell those tales of a rich and powerful father who's also a duke to someone else. I'll make you want to lie to people!

Even though Vince was the liar and Richard was telling the truth, there was nothing to stop the substitute trainer from carrying out his threat. He may not have been a champion, but the man had a lot more fencing experience under his belt. Plus the strength and reaction of an adult... All in all, the weight class wasn't for a nine-year-old boy.

Vince hit hard. After each jab, Richie found himself on the mat. The pain was unbearable, but the trainer shouted threateningly, forcing the boy to get to his feet and continue the fight. After such a beating, and it was impossible to call it otherwise, there would be bruises that would take a long time to go away.

In the end, Richie, tired, angry and driven to the pen, so embittered that after another blow, lying on the mats and not finding the strength to get up, raised his head and exclaimed in heart:

- "I wish you'd been hepped, swatted and twisted!

At the same moment Richie felt that he was losing consciousness.

When Richard opened his eyes, he saw a white ceiling. His nose crinkled with the smell of medicine and the ineffable aroma that comes with exposing a room to an ultraviolet lamp. Looking around, he found that everything was white and concluded that he was in a hospital.

A nurse looked into the room. When she saw that the boy was awake, she closed the door. A loud clatter of heels could be heard from the corridor. Not ten seconds later, a worried father appeared at Richard's bedside.

- Son, you're awake. The doctors said your loss of consciousness was due to exhaustion, but I didn't believe it.

- Dad, I wanted to ask you to make sure that the coach who was teaching fencing class today never comes near the children again.

- Son, I'm afraid he can't do that.

- Thank you, Dad.

- Richie, I had nothing to do with it," Gerald shook his head.

- I know it's not something you talk about out loud.

- No, Richie, I mean it. What's the last thing you remember?

- I was beaten up by Mr Vince, I couldn't get up any more, I shouted something at him, and then it went dark.

- Now, Richie. When you fainted, Mr Vince had an accident. He dropped his sword, slipped on it and fell. In the fall, he knocked over a retaining pillar and the ceiling of the training room collapsed. Fortunately, none of the children were injured, but Mr Vince was crushed by a concrete block. Doctors say he was twisted pretty badly. The bones would not fuse properly and, for some medical reason, there was no way to change that. Mr Vince is disabled and will never be able to hold a sword. The ceiling collapse was investigated by the police. The other children told about the way Mr Vince treated you. So when he's released from the hospital, he'll be facing trial.

- That's a curious coincidence," Richard said.

- What are you talking about, son?

- Oh, just a lot of stuff that's been on my mind. You know, Dad, I won't go to that gym again. Either hire me a proper personal trainer or find another gym where they don't hire psychos as trainers and where the ceilings don't collapse.

- Ritchie, I've thought about it and I wanted to tell you that you're not going back to that gym.

He didn't spend much time in the hospital. Already in the afternoon of the next day he was discharged. The attending doctor marvelled at how quickly the boy's wounds were healing. He said something about amazing heredity and a high level of regeneration.

There's nothing to do in a hospital, even if it is the Royal Children's Hospital. Time flows like treacle. The only thing Richard could do was to reflect on what had happened.

In the end, he came to the conclusion that he was a mutant. Moreover, it was no longer possible to write off the inconsistencies of historical events on a bad memory in the past life. The only reasonable conclusion was to assume that he was not in the past, but in a parallel world, the time in which lags behind the universe of the past life of the guy.

And here was the question: was he alone, a mutant with unusual abilities, or were there many?

Richie had no doubt that the trouble with Coach Vince was his fault. As he had wished, Mr Vince had been hepped, swatted and twisted. But since this was the first time something like this had happened since the hit, Richard surmised that his supernatural abilities only kicked in at an emotional peak. The same abilities could also include improved regeneration and even a good memory.Except the hitman doubted that this was the first use of Richard's supernatural abilities. There were enough facts to draw a conclusion. Firstly, some time ago, the main estate was shaken as if after a strong explosion. Secondly, after that, in Richie's body was the mind of an adult trapped in it. Thirdly, it is known that the boy before that experienced strong negative emotions: unwillingness of peers from school to communicate with him, ignoring them, increased workload for a child, cold relations with his father, his mother ran away, and the boy had a single girlfriend, whom he saw only once a week. All of the above is enough for a child to feel, to put it mildly, uncomfortable and wish to die.

If reincarnated person correctly understood, in addition to strong emotions to activate the mutant skill, you also need to set the message with a clear wish. An example is the incident with the trainer. If so, the original Richie could wish to disappear or switch with someone. But then the version with the science experiment to transfer consciousness to the past can be considered a failure.

'Could I have ended up in a world described by cinema, comics or literature?' - Richard thought. - After all, in many fantasy works with hitmen described how the hero finds himself in a universe known to him fictionalised by someone. There was even a scientific justification for this, as information knows no boundaries, and some people can connect with their consciousness to the infosphere and read data about parallel universes. But if it was so, how to find out in which world I was? And if I do, how do I find out what version of the universe it is?"

Over the past two hundred years, authors and screenwriters have come up with so many offshoots of fictional worlds in the past world of the fallen that it's mind boggling. There are hundreds, even thousands, of variants of the Marvel world alone. But since they do not talk about mutants on TV, this universe can be crossed out. Or not? It's hard to say, because there were released film adaptations of the world "Marvel", in which mutants hid their existence from ordinary people. And there were so many films and holo-movies about wizards, magicians, psionics and other supernatural powers that a human lifetime would not be enough to watch them all.

Richie could immediately recall a holo-film called The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in which the events took place in a similar world of the past.

"Eh! How hard it is with all these reboots, sequels, prequels, and standalone independent stories," he thought sadly. - Why didn't people make one book and one film based on a single universe? Then it would be easier to navigate."

***

For a while after he was discharged from the hospital, Richard did nothing. He rested, recovered and regained his strength.

That's what it looked like to everyone around him. In fact, he was trying to experiment with his mutant abilities. Naturally, he was in every possible way encrypted and did it alone.

To experiment, Richie tried to screw himself up. Artificially induced different emotions. The easiest thing to induce was anger. It was enough to remember all sorts of troubles to begin to sincerely hate everything around him. But since hatred had to be given an outlet, the boy used different objects for this purpose.

It is very difficult to hate, for example, a plush toy. It's hard, but you can.

The toy was chosen for a reason. Richie assumed that with the help of hatred can only cause harm, and what happens to the thing, God only knows. If you took something hard like a chair, there was no telling what would happen if it exploded. Being killed or maimed during the experiments was not in Richard's plans.

On the first day, the experiment proved its worth. Richard hated the toy at first, but that wasn't enough. So he decided, at the height of his emotions, to add a message.

- Blow yourself up! - exclaimed the boy.

POW!

With a deafening pop, the plush hare exploded and showered the entire office with shreds of fabric and stuffing.

Thankfully, the clap was quiet enough not to be heard by the valet and servants.

For the first time in his life, Richard had to personally clean up the mess to hide the evidence of his supernatural powers. Despite the labour, the boy was immensely happy. He had succeeded in using his mutant powers consciously.

In a similar vein, dozens of experiments were conducted over the course of a week. Richie destroyed huge stocks of toys in all sorts of ways: blowing up, cutting, turning into rubble, flattening, tearing, and all with the help of superpowers. Destroying things was the easiest. But after three destroyed plush toys, Richard was tired.

At the end of the experiments, the boy had two large bags of rubbish. Since the house was filled with servants, there was no way to discreetly dispose of the evidence. Richard thought:

"Damn it! If superpowers grant my wishes, why not wish for something more supernatural? Like shrinking an object to discreetly discard evidence."

But he didn't have time to make his wish come true, for the bruises had worn off and Mr Grosvenor decided it was time for his son to start studying again.

Another mad marathon of lessons with tutors, studying the school programme for the second grade of secondary school began. In addition, Rolf Edling, a Swedish fencer, two-time gold medallist of international competitions in the individual classification and Olympic champion of the eightieth year in the team classification, began to come home to Richard. A two-metre blond man with a neat beard. In his forty-six years he looked thirty-five at the most, had a good-natured disposition and was an excellent teacher.

Richard, angry at his impotence against Mr Vince, had decided to take up fencing. As a result, Mr Edling taught the boy six days a week for two or three hours.

It wasn't until Sunday, when Richie had a day off, that he was able to practice his mutant ability. And then there was a problem - negative emotions did not help in the fulfilment of positive desires. With them it was easy to destroy, break and destroy, but to reduce the bags of evidence did not work.

Then Richie decided to try to evoke different emotions. Except that studying and training took up all his free time. By evening, the boy had no energy left for anything but one thing - to crawl to bed, put his head on the pillow and close his eyes.

Because of his busy schedule, Richard began to train in the use of supernatural abilities only on Sundays.

After two months of torment, the boy had some success. Only instead of reducing the bags with the remains of plush toys, Richie, in a fit of anger, wished them to disappear. And miraculously, both bags disappeared. They dissolved, as if erased by a giant eraser from reality.

And as if he should have been happy about this success, Richard was afraid. There could be a living creature, or even himself, in the place of the bags of rubbish.

Richard made a vow to himself that from now on he would never wish himself anything bad even in his thoughts. It happens that a person has some kind of trouble. He starts cursing out loud, calling himself an idiot or wishing himself to go to hell. If for a second to imagine a mutant with superpowers, whose wishes are sometimes fulfilled, it becomes scary.

Still, if a person has an innate ability, it is worth training and developing. That's exactly what Richard thought.

There are several options for training supernatural abilities.

The first is to keep practising in secret. But here lies a fat disadvantage - all the secret sooner or later becomes apparent. And it's good if the secret will reveal his father, and that's not a fact, because it's impossible to predict his reaction. And if one of the servants catches him? There's trouble.

The other option is to tell Father. But again, there's no telling how Gerald will react. What if he's afraid of his own son? He threw his wife out of the house, even if she was not the best person.

Richie was leaning more towards the third option. If you want something well hidden, make it visible. This principle was once seen in an old detective holo-film.

As a result, Richard, after another breakfast in the company of Gerald turned to him:

- Dad, I've realised one thing.

- Yes, Richie?

Gerald remained dry and cold, but did not lower his attentive gaze from his son.

- Dad, I've realised that every man needs rest and a hobby to rest his soul.

- I'm glad, Richie, that you came to that realisation at such an early age. I, for one, have hunting, shooting and fishing as hobbies. I understand that you would like to join my hunting club, too?

- Perhaps later," Richard replied tactfully. - Actually, I'd like to try my hand at being a magician," the boy corrected himself, noticing his father's puzzled look. "Or rather, I just want to learn tricks so that I can amaze people I know.

- Hm..." The corners of Gerald's lips curved slightly, marking a smile. - It's not a bad hobby, worthy of an aristocrat, unless you're going to make a living at it, Richie, by performing for the amusement of the public, like some kind of showman.

- No, no, Papa," Richard shook his head. - Do you approve?

- Of course, Richie," the cold, contrived indifference was gone from the elder Grosvenor's face. He smiled warmly and stroked the boy's head. - You're free to choose your hobbies as you please. Or, Richie, is there anything you'd like to ask for? Hire a magician to teach you tricks?

- Um..." Richie said thoughtfully. - If it's just one lesson. Maybe we could visit the circus, and then I could ask a magician for a masterclass.

- The circus?!

Gerald looked at the child as if he recognised his intentions. He thought of his son's sly desire to go to a circus show in his father's company, but for some reason he decided not to say so directly.- Of course, Richie, we'll go to the circus. And the magician... Mmmm... We'll think of something.

That same day, Mr Grosvenor Senior postponed his trip to the hunting club, cancelled his son's classes, giving him an extra day off, and went to the circus with Richie.

The trip was long, because they had to go to London, but Richard endured the hardships.

The boy remembered this day for a long time. Firstly, he had the opportunity to see a live circus performance for the first time in his life. In his world, human rights activists had long banned the use of animals for entertainment. For example, zoos are only large, free-range zoos, where people, not animals, sit in cages. Circuses as they exist in this world are extinct. No, the name is the same, but the essence is different. You can't see any animals in the arena. Acrobats work with antigravity insurance, because of which it is not so interesting to look at them, because it is 100% known that nothing will happen when falling, so there is no such breathtaking effect. Only clowns and magicians remained the same, but only their jokes are extremely tolerant and clearly calibrated, there is no such space as in the circus of the late eighties. In the former world of the fallen it was impossible to imagine that the clown called a spectator into the arena and began to joke about him, because the spectator may consider himself offended and sue the circus.

Secondly, Richie in the presence of his father managed to communicate with a magician-illusionist and not only promoted him to demonstrate the trick, but also persuaded him to sell the props. Of course, the illusionist charged a decent price. At the same time he slipped the boy a rather shabby set of props for simple tricks. Apparently, the illusionist had changed more than one such set during his work and was glad to get rid of the junk himself. He had supplied Richard with several shabby books with detailed descriptions of various tricks. Naturally, such books could be found on sale, but Richie was happier with such copies. After all, any mutant ability skill could be written off as a secret illusionist's trick, which was suddenly written down on the pages of the book.

From that day on, Richard never parted with the coin and the set of cards. He deliberately demonstrated tricks to his father, John or the servants and openly practised his supernatural abilities. For example, he made a coin disappear and appear, levitated a playing card. Adults with smiles on their lips watched the innocent hobby of young Grosvenor, it did not even occur to them that all the tricks are performed with the help of supernatural abilities.

Richard was happy, because now he could train without hiding and think of new ways to use his newly discovered powers.

The only frustration was the need to study, just like any other schoolboy of his physical age.