This will give you a small insight to my mind. When for my other CP story, Honeybee4Eva asks Jetpack why he changed his name. From Justin, his brith name, to Jetpakc Guy. And while I was thinking on the subject of names, I wondered why he picked Jetpack in the first place. And this lovely little ficlet was born...
Disclaimer: I do not own CP
A child's first day at the PSA Academy is usually a very… strange one. From the first step you take inside, you are shuffled around in an attempt to confuse (the real purpose to test their sense of direction). There were no schedules, only unmarked classrooms. It was left up to the kids to take the correct classes with the correct teachers. Speaking of the teachers, they were not permitted to give their names or subjects- one just had to deduce what they were teaching after the first day.
And believe it or not, most first days were at a young age.
A pale boy holding his mother's hand is among the new "Academy Brats" to be introduced to the system at age six. He is proudly wearing a bright red shirt with an autograph from Captain Rockhopper himself written in smudged ink on the front. On his straight nose is a pair of mandatory sunglasses, almost as black as his hair.
"Mom." He sighs when she bends down to kiss his cheek. She smiles apologetically and ruffles his hair instead. "Remember," she whispers in her English accent, "Until you pick out your agent alias, you will be called Recruit 209."
"I know, Mom." He says, but looks pale and shaky all the same. Everyone is, including the blonde child listening to a small MP3 player. He runs into 209 and takes off without a sorry, so he makes to run after him and shake it out of him.
"Son," his father catches his collar. "Don't do anything foolish. Stay alert, stay aloof. What is that, again?"
"The family motto." 209 says dutifully. His father smiles and waves him on. He breaks after his target.
The blonde boy is nowhere to be seen, although the campus is quickly losing its occupants as everyone checks watches and heads off to class. Another oddity of the academy- there are no bells.
209 is breathless when he gets to the first class he can find, all filled up with girls knitting. He peeks in and peeks back out. The next class is similar, all of the seats taken by young men typing into small keyboards without screens. Shaking his head, 209 backs out.
The next room is heaven.
Stacks of metal shards and bolts lay haphazardly on high shelves, almost tall enough to block out the sunlight. He creeps forward on silent feet, intent on finding something fun to do in here.
Soon, he can hear voices. A man's voice, whispering. "No, now's not the time. Later, when all of the newbies are in briefing."
209 peeks around a corner to see a bald man in a lab coat talking into a blue cell phone. The next sentence makes him back away in fear. "The bomb will go off. No survivors. And unless someone heads through the vents, no one's gonna know." He said a swift goodbye and clicked off. He stomped inches away from the floor shelf that 209 was hiding under. The kid held his breath for what seemed like forever until the man is gone. Then he acts without thinking.
A briefing conference. Full of young new recruits like him. He has to do something. The vents. The man said that he would have to use the vents to stop it. He cranes his head up and gulps when he finds that the only vent more than large enough to hold three of him is at the top of the ceiling, what seems like miles away.
How to get up there was his next problem. There are no ladders, no footholds… even the shelves refused to reach that high. 209 walks around, looking into dark corners of shelves to find his route... and finds a beautiful piece of machinery, a yellow and black backpack with two metal cylinders and two short wings.
But something is wrong. The jetpack is old, dirty. The guts of it are spilling out like the innards of a slaughtered animal. Now completely frantic on the inside, but still "aloof and alert" on the outside, he takes is down and begins poking gears and springs back into place. When everything seems to be back in a place (not necessarily the right one) he pulls it on. It's heavy on his small shoulders, and the smell of the smoke when he turns in on has him hacking as his feet rise off of the ground.
He opens his eyes and for the first time feels the world.
It wasn't that he was seeing it; he was feeling it, through his hair and against his bare arms. The ground waves goodbye as he shoots up, up, laughing and thinking My Mod, this is life. This is perfection. I want to live like this, up in the sky where nothing worries me —
He hit his head painfully on the ceiling.
Coming back into reality, he rubbed the lump forming and pried the rusty old vent covering from the wall. He tilted his body forward and glided easily into the vent. Even with the jetpack on, he could still fit. It was a straight shot into a room with lots of murmuring, which he assumed was some sort of conference room. He heard the laugh—the laugh of the kid that had run into him, and he knew that it was the briefing that the lab coat man had talked about. He put his fists out like Shadowman and roars as he opens it, yelling "BOMB!" at the top of his voice.
The jetpack chose then to stop working.
He dropped like a stone, hitting a long wooden table with kids his age all around. He groans and tries to shield his eyes from the glare of light that was no longer shielded by his sunglasses. He saw a part of them on the floor a few feet away.
His vision is blocked by the kid with spiky blonde hair. "That was… awesome!" he cawed with a distinct French accent, and all of the kids cheered. The bald man from the other room took his hand and explained that the phone call was a ploy to see how he would react to a threat. He then called himself G, the brains behind the jetpack that 209 was currently standing on.
A taller man, with graying black hair covered by a fedora steps up, and hands him a new set of glasses, which he takes gratefully. Alert and aloof was hard to do with your eyes uncovered.
"How did you do that?" the French kid asked. "Come on, jetpack guy, tell us!"
"Yeah, jetpack guy." The fedora agent repeated, an amused smile on his face. "How did you do it? I thought that that jetpack was out for good."
Everyone echoes in their opinions, asking the jetpack guy to tell, to be the center of attention. He hears this all, barely, because in the front of his mind he sees his father, telling him that in order to be alert and aloof, you gave people what they wanted, in the vaguest way possible.
So 209 slides his glasses up his nose with one finger and shrugs. "It's no big deal." He said clearly, and the blonde kid snorted.
"Whatever, jetpack guy." He waves him off and goes back to his music. The others are herded out, bored again now that their small entertainment had gone. Just as he's leaving the room, a hand clamps down on 209's shoulder. He follows it up to an arm, and finally to the fedora man's face.
"Glad to have you on the PSA," his lips smile. "Jetpack Guy."
209 smiles. Jetpack Guy. He could get used to that.
Yup, that's all I got. Except for a sad little reminder: Jetpack's parents will go missing when he turns seven :( Until next time, Illyria Lives.