Alright, so more of this. I rather like this fic. It's just really really fun for me to write. It's so neatly planned and it's still got that lovely new fic smell. It's truly a wonderful smell. Almost a bit like fabreeze. Or bananas. Sorry, I'm wicked excited because I saw the Avengers earlier and it was legen...dary. You have no idea how much I'm holding back from totally fangirling right now, but I have to be the sane one out of my friends so I've conditioned myself so that I can't just start gushing about how cool Robert Downey Jr is, how Tom Hiddleston has insanely pretty eyes, or how Chris Evans has a really nice bum. Let's just leave it at, I'm really happy right now.
787bluegreen: Thanks for the review! Glad to know you like it.
Spadefire: IKR? Snazzy is a fracking cool word. It has a nice shape to it, like exactly proper parts sharp angles and curves. My explanation for the Wu is pretty much this: I needed a pointless Wu and Geometric proofs are pretty much the definition of pointless. Anyway, thanks for liking this fic and my OCs!
Tornadowierdo: Yep. Rai's the one being stabbed. It is him. You're right. He is really fun to stab. Sorry about the whole pronouns business. Yes, refusing the showdown...You will all see the dire consequences of that eventually.
Disclaimer: So...House series finale...there was no puppy. You all know what that means right? If you've been reading my stuff for this long and don't then I judge you. I judge you harshly.
Chapter One: Raimundo Learns of His Obligations
He fell. It could have been for moments, it could have been for hours, but he fell. His eyes shut to the endless expanse of snowy white, he fell. Burning with pain and exhaustion, he fell. He felt currents rushing around him, both like air and water, but at the same time as different from them as could be. And then all of a sudden, it stopped, as caught by some sort of sheet.
He tentatively opened his eyes and saw the white striped fabric of an awning holding him up.
"The hell?" he muttered, taking inventory of both his surroundings and himself. Raimundo drew his hand away from his shoulder and it came away clean. He looked at his body in shock, but there was no wound. However, his clothes, while simple, were completely foreign to him. He wore a sweat stained, but otherwise ordinary white tee-shirt, dark cotton pants, and dark sneakers, and he was carrying a small canvas bag.
The street around him was mostly dark, with a few flickering lamps and neon signs proudly proclaiming, "Best Chinese Take Away." The little he could see were the darkened shop fronts and a guy walking at the end of a crosswalk. It was mostly quiet, save for some yelling in the distance. It really could have been any street in any city on earth, but at the same time, it was foreign and unnerving.
One moment, he was bleeding out in the middle of nowhere and the next he was whole and sitting on a shop awning in strange clothes with no idea how he got there. He was confused as fuck and more than a bit bothered by it.
The yelling became louder and he could make out words now. He wasn't at all concerned with that though. They could catch whatever had gotten away from them on their own. His priorities were first, find out where the hell he was, second, get back to the temple, and third, figure how the hell he got where the hell he was.
He swung his feet over the edge of the awning and gauged the jump. It was only ten feet or so to the ground, it should be an easy landing. He'd dealt with worse in training accidents and he always landed on his feet. He was just about to jump, when a cry of, "There!" startled him, causing him to lose his balance and fall.
"Wind," he yelled, thrusting his hand out in front of him as he fell. However, nothing happened and he felt something in his shoulder slip out of place as he hit the ground.
"Now we've got you," a deep, smooth baritone said as five people gracefully landed around him.
"Dirty thief," an accented tenor commented as he was jerked to his feet. Stabbing pain cut deep into his shoulder has his hands were cuffed behind his back. So much for being pain free.
"Dude, so not me," he said, struggling against their iron grip, despite the pain of a dislocated shoulder. He'd had way worse than this in training.
"Raimundo Pedrosa, you have the obligation to remain silent. If you fail to fulfill this obligation, you will be made to do so. Due to your extensive record and quote unquote smartass attitude, your incarceration period will be no less than three years. Also due to your attitude, you will not be permitted to appeal this decision," a blonde woman said as they marched him down the street.
"I don't know who you're looking for, but it's not me," he said, making a failed attempt to sweep kick the man holding him. He would give them this much, they knew how to restrain a prisoner.
"Let the record show that the prisoner was informed of both his obligations and the consequences of leaving them unfulfilled," the deep voice said. Then there was a faint pricking sensation in his arm and everything went black.
X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X
"And this is the bridge," the dark skinned man said.
If he weren't so excited to be on an actual airship, he would have rolled his eyes. Everybody knew what the bridge of an airship looked like. Or at least everybody who actually paid attention in class.
While the captain gave an, in his opinion, extremely redundant tour, he let his eyes drink in every beautiful millimeter of the command center. The flashing lights and ticking meters played a symphony of light and sound in his mind, a symphony he would one day conduct. Sun shone through the clouds and the glass quarto-sphere around them to dance on the gleaming bronze dials the crewmembers were constantly turning and adjusting. In their gold and brass uniforms, they seemed almost a part of the machine, and for as well as they understood it, they may have been. The groan of the massive gears operating the wings and the hum of the electrical current from the ARC Generator gave almost a heartbeat to the ship. And the captain's chair, most beautiful of all, sat above everything.
Its deep emerald green stood out against the golden tones of the bridge. Set high enough so that one could see all they commanded, it was a beacon of the future. His future. Three years and he would be given his own command.
The airships were still relatively new, the Emperor's Mechanist had only started producing them a year ago, so everybody in his officer's training program wanted one. They didn't have what he did though. They didn't have his brains, his drive, his ability, they were nothing like him. He was the top of his class, he could do anything set before him, and that which was set behind and next to him as well.
The new line in production, the Avalon series, were more sleek and modern than the Victoria line, the bronze and gears replaced with sleek black and white circuitry, but he hoped he could get one of these models. If he could swing it, he wanted the Stark or the Enterprise.
As soon as he returned to the Academy tonight, he would write home and tell his mother and father about this. They'd worried about him at first, he'd been drafted as an officer almost immediately after the Emperor took over, but over the last three years they'd come to see that officer training was the best course for him. He was a natural at it and one day, he'd be the best officer the Empire had ever seen. One day, he would even be the Fleet Admiral.
He could see himself now, in the vivid green uniform befitting an Admiral, standing on the top deck of the flagship, the IAS Dragonheart, his thick, luxurious hair blowing in the breeze, an endless expanse of cloud before him…
"Come along Omi," Lady Ragnelle said, her normally soft voice sharp with the edge of one unused to issuing orders twice, breaking him from his daydream.
He sighed and darted after his class as they left for the engine rooms. One day…
X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X
"Shit," she muttered as she knocked the bucket over and dirty soapy watter covered the floor. She sighed and clenched her fists before picking up her paper towels to sop up the mess.
If there was one thing she'd learned in the last three years, it was that she wasn't cut out for menial labor, at least not mentally. Physically, she had no problems with the scrubbing and bucket hauling and other various cleaning duties, but the sheer mindless repetitively of them was slowly driving her crazy. If you added to this the fact that three years ago she'd been on top of the world and since then it'd been just one humiliation after another, not the least of which being rejection at every other job she'd applied for, the only logical conclusion was that the mental state of Ms. Kimiko Tohomiko was reaching a critical point.
She would kill for another job, any job, anything to relieve her boredom. Before her dad's company went under, she'd had a world-class education. She'd been top of her class at an elite private school. Now, she was scrubbing bathrooms at the Imperial equivalent of the DMV. As she refilled the bucket, she couldn't picture a more perfect fall from grace.
Still, she wouldn't dwell on it too much. Just because it was going to drive her bats didn't mean that she wouldn't do what it took to help pay the rent on the apartment. If that meant subjecting herself to buckets and scrub brushes, then so be it. Of course, that didn't mean she would stop applying for other positions.
One of the smaller airships, the IAS Hamish, was currently docked in Tokyo for maintenance and was taking on new crewmembers. If they accepted her application, she'd more than double her current salary. With the extra money, her dad could work fewer shifts at the factory, they would have some money to set aside for starting a new business, and she would actually be able to use her skills in electronics and engineering. Plus, she might be able to do something about her wardrobe. The current dingy gray-green jumpsuit wasn't working for her. Not in any sense of the word.
She wouldn't find out about that for a few days, she'd only put in her application this morning and Mechanist positions were both competitive and highly selective. Still, as she started to scrub again, the harsh lemon scent of the soap hitting her nose, she couldn't help but hope.
X~X~X~X~X~X~X
Sparks flew at his face, safely deflected by the visor as the machine fused another set of hull plates. As he reset the controls, he couldn't help but miss the Victoria line. Their hulls were held together with rivets. They didn't give off sparks every time they had to make a plate set.
Even after the last two and a half years, Clay still hadn't gotten used to the factory. Two and half years of heat and machines and that damnable feeling of confinement.
Normally, tight spaces didn't bother him. Growing up riding through narrow canyons and family reunions that crammed over thirty people under one roof made them feel completely normal to him. This was different though. He felt like he was a fish caught in a hot metal net, struggling against both it and the throng of other trapped fish, knowing that no matter how hard he fought he would never be free.
He would never again ride across the open plains, smell the fresh clean air, untainted by the metallic, unnatural scent of the factories, gaze upon the clear blue sky, or feel the earth beneath his feet. He was alright with that though. It was keeping his family safe.
After the Emperor took over, the ranch started going under. Taxes went sky high on their property and they just didn't have the money to pay. They were running out of acreage to sell off when they got the add. The factories were looking for workers and the salary they offered would be enough to keep the remains of the ranch intact. Of course, his Pa had thrown it out without a second thought, citing the fact that it was more important that they stick together as a family than to keep the ranch.
He didn't agree though. He saw how it was destroying his Ma and Pa and Jessie to lose everything. He'd dug the flair out of the recycling and hopped a train heading northwest that night and had been sending money back ever since. They hadn't questioned him when he lied about his age, he was a terrible liar, but he was big and strong for his age and he got the feeling that they wouldn't have cared anyway.
He flinched again as sparks flew from another set of plates. He could at least take some comfort in the fact that this was the easy part. Tomorrow, they'd start assembly. That was where the real work began. This was just a bit unsettling, actually building the ship was dangerous. It meant strapping into a welding harness and trusting his life to a thin cable. Still, if it meant he would earn time and a half pay for it, he was willing to make the Excalibur the pride of the fleet if he had to.
Alright, contrary to my slightly hyper active behavior at the top of the page, I'm actually really tired. I'm just going to be quick about this and say, the more reviews this gets, the faster I update.