vanilla and flavour of the day with caramel
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Crates
Rating: G
Challenge: Vanilla #4: I can’t believe you (don’t) know how to ___, FOTD: nostrum
Toppings/Extras: caramel
Wordcount: 680
Summary: Victor Blackledge meets Cairo Sparks for the first time.
Notes: Another Moonquartz Mystery extract! Nostrum, noun; a usually questionable remedy or scheme; a cure-all.
Robyn was an excellent runner. She had years of military experience behind her. Although her boots were chunky, they made hardly a noise, and each step fell precisely where she wanted it to. She was crouching slightly, keeping out of the lines of the cameras as best as she could, yet she still looked graceful as she went. Sure-footed and springy in her gait, she wove between the various automatons and arrived at one of the cargo bays without issue.
If only Victor was as agile. He’d been created to be a solider too, but he had no military experience aside form the gruelling training drills that he had suffered at the Facility, and he had not kept them up after the project had been disbanded. He knew nothing about graceful movement, and although he tried to copy Robyn as much as possible, he was still nearly squashed by one of the heedless loading machines several times.
Robyn made weaving between them look easy.
Amused, Robyn reached down and caught his forearm, pulling him up onto the platform within the cargo bay of the shuttle as though he were a kitten. Dangling by the arm, Victor felt rather undignified.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she said cheerily. With Victor being such a prodigal wonderboy and all, it was good sometimes to get one over him.
But now wasn’t the time for thinking about that.
One of the loading machines quickly tipped a huge metal box onto the spot they were both crouching. They only just scampered out of the way before the heavy crate slammed into place, vibrating the floor beneath their feet.
Thus began the most dangerous game of Tetris the two of them had ever played.
Clambering over the crates, dodging as more slid into place, creating nothing but solid metal where once had been a gap, Robyn felt on top of the world-it was clear that Victor did not share her sentiments. A crate slammed into place inches from him and he tripped in shock, knees clanging onto the metal crate beneath him and sweat flicking from his head.
“Vic! Careful!”
He looked up at her in time to see a massive shape blotting the air above him.
I don’t want to be a shadow, he thought miserably as the huge metal crate tumbled into the gap he was stood in. What he wasn’t prepared for was a sudden clang as the crate stopped falling inches above his head. It was hovering there, metal surface impassive as ever.
Slowly, Victor turned his head.
Crouched next to him was an odd, scruffy creature with a face buried beneath so much brown hair that he scarcely recognised it as human at first. The young man flicked his head back to get it out of his face and grinned, stubble thick on his jaw and neck. He was holding a thick metal pole, one end jammed against the crate beneath their feet, the other holding the crate above them in place, balancing precariously on the pole and yet another crate in the massive pile they were floundering in.
The bottom of the pole began to scrape along the metal of the crate beneath them, leaving a thick silver welt. Over their heads, the rather more deadly crate loomed closer.
“Jump, then,” the stranger said. He nodded to a small gap behind him. Obligingly, Victor pressed himself into it. After a moment the man joined him, dragging the pole with him. The metal crate smashed into the place they had been stood moments ago with unforgiving force.
“Thanks,” Victor managed to say to the man jammed up against him. He was trying to be polite and not show it, but the stranger smelled rather bad.
“No problem,” he grinned. “Always willing to help out a fellow urchin in trouble.”
“My friend’s still out there,” Victor said, as another resounding boom somewhere above their heads brought him back to reality.
“I’ll be right back,” the man winked, and slithered out of the top of the gap between the piled crates.