Alternate Speed
By: Aviantei
[Twelve Shots of Summer: Go/五 5/12]
An IGPX One Shot
My foot slips on a rock, setting a slick scraping sound through the air, and I stumble, even with the fresh traction on my boots. My headlamp casts erratic patterns against the cave walls as I catch my balance. Ahead, Kirsten pauses and turns around, surprisingly taking enough care to not shine her lamp right in my eyes. The halo of light doesn't fit her at all, standing there with her long sleeves and pants, both bearing splatters from the mud. Her gloved hands prop on her hips as she raises an eyebrow. "You okay back there?"
"I'm fine," I say, standing upright again, feeling the weight of my backpack pressing between my shoulders. "Just stepped on a rock I wasn't expecting. Carry on." I wave Kirsten further into the cave since she's the one who knows the path we're taking.
But instead of turning back around and getting on with that, she snickers. "You can operate a giant mech at over two-hundred miles an hour, but you can't keep your balance in a cave." Kirsten waves a finger through the air, the dark color of her glove almost blending into the gloom around us. "If I were you, I'd be concerned about my safety, Alexander."
There she goes again, tossing my name around—not Cunningham, not even just Alex, but all four damn syllables. Her usual argument that people recognize me too easily by name doesn't exactly hold water when we're in a cave half a state away from home with no one else around. Because I know she mostly does it to get a rise out of me, I hold back my grimace. "So, you're gonna tell me the first time you ever set foot in a cave you didn't slip at all?"
"Oh no, I fell all over the place." She admits with a grin. "Then again, I was also, like, thirteen? Not quite as coordinated as you could be." It's the first time I've ever heard her mention anything about her childhood. Before I can pursue the topic, Kirsten spins around without so much as a stumble, facing down the cave. "Still, this is a pretty easy cave. We're almost to the back. Just a little bit longer now."
Without even checking that I'm ready to keep going, Kirsten forges the way forward, her lithe form not so much as hindered by her gear as she crawls over rocks and navigates dips and rises in the cave floor. All my IG training and fencing have left me in pretty good shape, so I can keep up without losing my breath. Even with the headlamps, darkness reigns in my peripheral vision. Cold, damp air presses against my face, and I'm glad for the extra layers of clothes, even though the weather outside is nothing but dry heat.
The inside of a cave almost feels like a different world. Not just the temperature and the darkness, but with the atmosphere. There's a natural ambiance right next to silence without being utterly quiet, only broken up by our tapping footsteps and the occasional dripping of water in the distance. Unlike what I expected, the air is crisp and clean, with only the faintest fragments of stone and dirt. It's a wholly different environment when we went scuba diving, with water and sound pressing in from around all sides.
The narrow pathway makes way for a wider room that our headlamps can't even illuminate to the other side. "Ah, this is it," Kirsten says and takes off without any abandon. The ground in this room looks to be flat, but I still take the occasional glance down as I follow Kirsten's bobbing form through the dark. It's only the unfamiliar territory that stops me from trying to outpace her, though my stride catches up with hers by the time she comes to a halt. Without any other instruction, she spreads her arms out wide, gesturing to the wall before us.
Following the signal, I point my head and lamp forward. Instead of the spread of rock I expected, there are flecks of color on the wall. I step closer, taking care not to touch the surface, squinting to make out the faded traces of paint. I can just see the shapes of people, though the art style is blocky.
"A real cave painting, huh…?" I say to myself without meaning to.
"Yup!" Kirsten takes a few paces back, her headlamp spreading its light further. Colored patterns spread out the entire wall. The images are in much better condition than you'd expect, all of them depicting stories that meant enough to the painters to record them for the future. "They first discovered stuff here back in the beginning of the nineteen-hundreds, if you can believe it. Of course, back then there were all sorts of busted artifacts and preserved burials, but that sort of stuff doesn't exactly make for a good tourist attraction." She rounds on me, finger poised in the air. "I went through all the trouble of making sure we got the place to ourselves, just so you didn't have to deal with the whole celeb shindig. You should be grateful."
I don't even bother to look Kirsten's way. Instead, I take a few paces back, making up for the sudden loss of light. "I'd be more grateful if I didn't know you were gonna stick me with half of the bill for that stunt." Even so, I can't get that upset, since it's par for the course by now. It's not like I don't have the money for it, anyways. I turn my head so that my lamp makes a wide arc around the room, but the lines of paintings just continue. "How much of this stuff is there?"
Kirsten laughs to herself. "Shoulda figured you were a nerd," she says, though I have no idea what she's basing it on. Our knowledge of each other only extends to our daredevil antics and the first time I caught her breaking into my hanger. Not exactly places to have heartfelt conversations about our pasts. "Well, so long as you're interested, it works for me. I can't lose that way."
Because that's what this trip—and every other trip that's come before it—is about. Our bet, the wager. The one where she tries to make sure I'm not bored in exchange for me not turning her into the cops. And while we both made the agreement together, I can't help but thinking it was stupid.
Even though this is fun. It's not like racing fun, but it's something. Much better than my life of boredom and complacency beforehand. Kirsten goes out of her way every time to find something new to do every day. She's dragged more enthusiasm for life out of me in a few weeks than I can remember feeling in the past five years.
I'm not going to turn her in.
There's no more need for this bet.
If I told her that, would she even believe me?
Probably not.
So, I just say, "Is that so?" My voice is low enough that it doesn't echo off the wall, but Kirsten's ears pick it up anyway. And she flashes me that determined look I don't even think she notices she has, and starts marching along the cave wall, pointing to different images and spouting off historical facts. It's not racing—but it's still fun when she gets all competitive.
I follow Kirsten with a smile ghosting across my lips, and I wonder if she can even notice it in the dark.
By the time we work our way out of our cave adventures, it's already nearing sunset, and the heatwave of the open air rolls over us. We waste no time loosening up our muddy cave layers, though longer pants and sleeves are still necessary for the hike back to our rental car. Kirsten has a pleased expression on her face, and I toss a smirk at her.
"You seem chipper today," I say, breaking Kirsten out of her internal reverie. Her smile almost melts away the second her eyes flicker back to me. By now, trying to out snark each other is almost a habit. "Easy there, I'm just making an observation." Kirsten lets out a half-huff. Still, she doesn't deny what I've said. "Something good waiting for you back home?"
"Hm? No, nothing like that." She pauses on the trail, looking up through the gap in the trees, and I follow her lead. "I was just thinking…sunsets can be really vibrant and beautiful, can't they?"
When I look up to the sky, where a fierce trail of indigo clouds streaks through the flaming red and orange gradients, I suppose that she's right.
[Author's Notes]
I always enjoyed the idea of writing little bonus one shots to expand the scope of my multi-chapter fics (like a quite talented Chronic Guardian does), but most of what I think of tends to be more suitable to touch on in canon. However, since I spend the entirety of Alive in Kirsten's first-person POV, that gave me plenty of room to play around with other perspectives...namely Cunningham's. For the sake of canon awareness, this one shot happens during that little summary of action that takes place in chapter nine of the main fic.
Anyway, this was written for [Twelve Shots of Summer: Go/五] as my Week Five entry, fulfilling the prompts "Spelunking" and "Restoration." "Spelunking" was just begging for me to write Kirsten, and the "Restoration" works both in Cunningham's developing lack of boredom and some growth on Kirsten's part, too. More on that last one in the main story.
Hm, I'm wondering if I managed Cunningham's POV okay. My first-person skills haven't been getting too much use lately since I've been working in third-limited...
If you liked this, you should check out Alive for more on Kirsten and Cunningham! You should also check out the [Twelve Shots of Summer] community, because everyone there is incredibly talented and writes works that deserve your time! Heck, you should check it out and contribute some one shots yourself! (Obligatory moderator plug, out.)
Thanks for reading!
-Aviantei
[06.25.2018]