[Witches' Horses] Chevalier de Grammont
Title: introduction
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; Grammont, Sinclair, Martin
Prompt: 30C "trust"
Word Count: 534
Notes: after a small display of fireworks.
Yes, she's named after an Age of Sail French pirate. He was based in the Caribbean, and evidently fairly competent.
If anyone spots where Martin sparked from, please do cackle in the comments.
"Oi, Sinclair!" the human yelled across the stable, only just after she'd accurately tagged the dark coat and eyepatch.
Her human wandered over into easy talking range before saying "Yeah?"
The man pointed at her. "Machines like me. Except this one. Which implies there's something weird going on, and that you haven't exactly--"
Her human interrupted with a "No," before she'd even properly started the run up sequence to throw lightning. She pondered finishing the sequence anyway, then let it spiral back down.
The other human blinked at hers, then crossed his arms over his chest, scowled. "Explanation or double the price."
Her human was staring at her through the eye covering, so the other human couldn't see it.
She considered, then flicked on an external pickup. "I told you guns were a bad idea."
Her human rolled both his eyes as the other human jerked, twisted around to look at her straight-on. If she didn't already know they couldn't, she'd have suspected he'd lost control of his internal gravity settings in surprise, he'd moved so much.
Her human stuck his hands in his pockets, while the other one said "While it's possible--marginally--that there's enough horse I haven't had access to that you could be hiding another person in there, I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed. So I'm left with--"
"Good afternoon," she said, amused.
"Good afternoon, yes. Hi. Do you actually not like me or were you just trying to avoid me spotting you?"
"Mostly the latter. You do seem to know your way around, for a human."
"Yes, she's always like that," her human said when the other one glanced back, one eyebrow raised. "Wait 'til she starts accusing you of human stupidity. And really, nag--" he raised his voice, "my logic in why we need guns still stands!"
She staticked him.
He snickered, took his hands out of his pockets, shook his fingers out. The other human, without looking at him, let one of his own hands drift farther away from something with a sturdy power signature hanging from his belt. She'd filed it under non-standard hammer designs, when he first came inside her to look at the spaces they'd set aside for guns, but seeing that made her reassign it to 'unknown'.
"I'm Martin Vedunov," the human said, held out his hands in a 'I mean no harm' gesture. She tentatively assigned the Christian name as truth, the family name as not, though humans might be strange enough to make a surname out of 'the knowing ones'.
"I am registered as Le Chevalier de Grammont," she informed him. "You may call me Grammont."
The human stared for a moment, his expression running an interesting gamut from thinking to realisation to half-horrified amusement. Then he turned around again. "You named her after a pirate? Sinclair, one of these years someone's going to work out that you're way better read than you pretend, and they're going to take a closer look at what you're up to."
"Fortunately I'm not above shooting first," her human replied in a serene tone, "and in the meantime I'm entertained."
Martin covered his eyes with one hand, groaned. "Saint Ilya preserve me from your sense of humour."
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; Grammont, Sinclair, Martin
Prompt: 30C "trust"
Word Count: 534
Notes: after a small display of fireworks.
Yes, she's named after an Age of Sail French pirate. He was based in the Caribbean, and evidently fairly competent.
If anyone spots where Martin sparked from, please do cackle in the comments.
"Oi, Sinclair!" the human yelled across the stable, only just after she'd accurately tagged the dark coat and eyepatch.
Her human wandered over into easy talking range before saying "Yeah?"
The man pointed at her. "Machines like me. Except this one. Which implies there's something weird going on, and that you haven't exactly--"
Her human interrupted with a "No," before she'd even properly started the run up sequence to throw lightning. She pondered finishing the sequence anyway, then let it spiral back down.
The other human blinked at hers, then crossed his arms over his chest, scowled. "Explanation or double the price."
Her human was staring at her through the eye covering, so the other human couldn't see it.
She considered, then flicked on an external pickup. "I told you guns were a bad idea."
Her human rolled both his eyes as the other human jerked, twisted around to look at her straight-on. If she didn't already know they couldn't, she'd have suspected he'd lost control of his internal gravity settings in surprise, he'd moved so much.
Her human stuck his hands in his pockets, while the other one said "While it's possible--marginally--that there's enough horse I haven't had access to that you could be hiding another person in there, I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed. So I'm left with--"
"Good afternoon," she said, amused.
"Good afternoon, yes. Hi. Do you actually not like me or were you just trying to avoid me spotting you?"
"Mostly the latter. You do seem to know your way around, for a human."
"Yes, she's always like that," her human said when the other one glanced back, one eyebrow raised. "Wait 'til she starts accusing you of human stupidity. And really, nag--" he raised his voice, "my logic in why we need guns still stands!"
She staticked him.
He snickered, took his hands out of his pockets, shook his fingers out. The other human, without looking at him, let one of his own hands drift farther away from something with a sturdy power signature hanging from his belt. She'd filed it under non-standard hammer designs, when he first came inside her to look at the spaces they'd set aside for guns, but seeing that made her reassign it to 'unknown'.
"I'm Martin Vedunov," the human said, held out his hands in a 'I mean no harm' gesture. She tentatively assigned the Christian name as truth, the family name as not, though humans might be strange enough to make a surname out of 'the knowing ones'.
"I am registered as Le Chevalier de Grammont," she informed him. "You may call me Grammont."
The human stared for a moment, his expression running an interesting gamut from thinking to realisation to half-horrified amusement. Then he turned around again. "You named her after a pirate? Sinclair, one of these years someone's going to work out that you're way better read than you pretend, and they're going to take a closer look at what you're up to."
"Fortunately I'm not above shooting first," her human replied in a serene tone, "and in the meantime I'm entertained."
Martin covered his eyes with one hand, groaned. "Saint Ilya preserve me from your sense of humour."