Thug and Idol: 10X Rewards Second Identity System

"Am I?" Tristan parried question with a question. "Maybe I should wonder if my next dream will be prophetic as well."

Derek pressed his lips together and shook his head, at a loss for words. Instead of talking, he busied himself with checking his seatbelts and putting his tablet into its protective travel case.

Soon the steward returned with a microphone, which he gave to Tristan. He thanked her.

"Passengers," he said as a test.

Tristan's voice, somewhat tinny from the poor microphone quality, came from the dynamics placed over the short length of the plane. The two dozen people who were discussing the alarming events in place between each other, paused.

"This is Tristan Gemello speaking. Yeah, I should've said, 'my crew', instead. You've all heard what our steward said. Things aren't good. But they aren't too bad, either. We won't be crashing, we will glide nicely to some empty corn field, leaving alien-worthy trails over it… The equipment in the baggage will be a toast, sure, but it's insured. And all of us will be fine."

Tristan's calm voice was like a balm on his team's anxieties. All those people—simple dancers, musicians, music technicians and other helpers—could now believe in Tristan's authority. Like they always did in the past.

"All you need to do is to sit tight, wait, and do everything the plane personnel says. After all the work you've done for me, sitting in place for ten minutes should be the easiest thing in your lives. Now, I'm turning this thing off."

Tristan found the switch on the side of the microphone and flicked it, then passed the mic back to the steward. Although the man wasn't the one Tristan targeted with his speech, the aura of calm he was projecting reached the steward as well.

He looked much less nervous than before and smiled at Tristan with genuine gratitude.

"This will be so helpful, Mr. Gemello. Panic is extremely unhelpful in those situations. Anyway, if you need something else, this is probably your last opportunity to ask."

Tristan shook his head.

"No, thanks. This is the last thing."

The steward nodded and went down to the airplane cabin, checking that everybody got their seatbelts on and their seats straightened, and showing safety measures to people who didn't figure them out.

Tristan's own seatbelt was on already. He sat straighter in it and closed his eyes.

'Was there anything else I could do? No, I don't think so.'

Just answering this question to himself took Tristan a minute. At this minute, the turbulence around the plane became more pronounced. He felt a slight tilt of it to the sight, but wasn't sure if it was intentional or not.

Tristan opened his eyes and looked out of the window. Distracting himself wasn't a realistic option—Tristan knew he'd think about the plane in the background of his mind no matter what he'd do.

He chose to meet the danger (the ground) with eyes open wide instead.

Soon, the drop of altitude became felt in Tristan's ears. There was more shaking. It was similar to a normal landing, but more rapid and more sharp.

Around five minutes passed, when Tristan could see where they were going to land.

It was a wide open field with some agriculture going on. It spanned wide enough for the plane to not have any obstacles, but was definitely not solid enough for the chassis to do its job.

But that was why this was an "emergency" landing.

Tristan already mentally calculated the plane's position related to the nearest airports. He wasn't a specialist on planes, but it would've taken at least half an hour to the nearest one. It also meant that the nearest major city was quite a distance away from where they would land.

Then the shaking of the plane became even more pronounced. From the dynamics on the plane, the pilot's voice told everybody to brace for the landing.

It happened with a loud crash and a screech of bending metal. Something cracked, and a rush of noises from the outside, together with a swish of the wind, burst through the cabin.

The oxygen masks dropped from the compartments above the seats, following some built-in safety measures.

The entire plane shook hard enough to throw people out of their seats if not for their safety belts. Tristan grabbed the armrests of his seat for dear life and saw Derek do the same opposite of him.

The man was white-pale with panic, and muttering something much like a prayer under his breath.

There were scared shouts from Tristan's crew, ones that became even more pronounced every time the plane hit another bump in its rough way.

It continued like this for some long, long, long seconds. Tristan counted each of them until there were forty-three.

The more seconds there were, the quieter became the sounds and the weaker the shaking. Eventually, everything became slow enough for Tristan to let out a breath. Then, the plane came to a full stop.

Derek sat tensely for a moment, before sliding down his seat like jello.

"Oh my god. We are still alive. Oh my god."

Tristan took another breath in.

"Yes. I think that really was a pretty soft landing, all things considered."

The steward walked out of the pilot cabin in the next moment, wild-eyed and jubilant.

"All passengers, congratulations with this successful landing! Please, call out if any of you needs medical assistance. Everybody else, remove your safety belts, take your bags from their compartments, and proceed to the front exit from the cabin in an orderly manner."

"What? Leaving already?" Derek asked in a daze.

The steward approached him and leaned closer.

"There might be a fire in the lower parts of the plane after this. None of us wants to risk the safety of the passengers even more."

Derek nodded.

"Obviously. Of course. Ugh… I feel like my bones have liquefied."

Tristan was already standing on his feet, with his cabin bag hanging from his shoulder. Now he reached out to offer Derek a helping hand.

"C'mon, you aren't so old and weak that you can't even walk off a plane crash," Tristan joked.

"I'm old enough to be your father, young man…" Derek grumbled. Since Derek was 40 years old, he was not even lying. Nevertheless, he took Tristan's hand and, with his help, pulled himself to his feet. "Thank you, Tristan."

Tristan just nodded.

Near them, the steward had opened the front exit and lowered an extending ladder outside. It was barely reaching the ground and very steep, but it was enough to descend.

One by one, people trickled to the front exit and got outside, where Derek (who pulled himself together) and Tristan checked on them and offered some words of encouragement.

The place where the plane landed was an open potato field, as far as Tristan could judge. He *thought* the plants looked like potatoes. They definitely weren't any illegal plants used for making drugs.

The last ones to leave the plane were the two pilots, the steward, and the engineer. The pilots immediately were surrounded by the gratitude from all not crashed people.

People got scratches, bruises and seatbelt burns in various extents, but those were all of their injuries.

"Thank you for this relatively soft landing as well," Tristan said genuinely. "When we get back to civilization, I should send you some expensive signed merchandise for your trouble."n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"We should thank YOU, Mr. Gemello," the first pilot said, shaking his head. "Seriously. I will admit, all our crew got pretty irked when you insisted we double-checked everything, and in the end, the turbine still broke—but it really helped. You've been so sure about this entire thing back when we started flying that I got thinking about 'what ifs' too… And, well, I was ready to land this broken bird when we needed it."

He gestured at the plane behind the pilot.

Despite the steward's fears, the plane wasn't burning as far as Tristan could see, but it looked like some potatoes did. It didn't seem like the fire was spreading, though—the soil and the plants were too wet for this. Well-watered.

Tristan smiled at the first pilot, wondering if his actions really made as much difference.

"I will still send that gift," Tristan promised. He looked at Derek and his crew, then around himself. On the horizon, he could see the faintest hints of a town. "But first, I think someone needs to call emergency services of the nearest city to get us out of here. Perhaps we can even salvage something from our equipment."

At least for now, he was ahead of the assassin after his head. Whoever he was, he would need some time to locate Tristan and get there.

Unless he went straight to Los Angeles and waited. Because that's where Tristan was going, and there was no way around it.

"I wonder if I can still get to my next concert on schedule," Tristan added quietly.