Thread:FleetCaptainT/@comment-27324808-20170702031601

3025 AF

“Nice hair.”

The boy sitting alone at the circular lunch table ran a hand through his curls self consciously. He kept his head down and faced the paper plate of mashed potatoes below him. His spoon hovered where it had been the last five minutes, next to the untouched serving. He used to love mashed potatoes when he was younger. He could inhale an entire bowl in thirty seconds.

For lunch every day though, for the entire past month, he quickly tired of it.

“Dude, I said nice hair.” the voice next to him repeated.

“Thanks,” the boy mumbled and looked up, ready for a confrontation with another boy from his block. Instead he did a double take. Standing next to him was a girl with the most vibrant orange hair he’d ever seen, orange like her outfit, long and straight and tied to the side of her head.

“So you can dye your hair here?” the girl continued. “Like, I’ve always liked being a blonde girl, I tried red once, turns out it was just as bad as this. My natural.” She tossed her head so her orange ponytail undid itself, and she began retying it. Where she even got a hair-tie, the boy wasn’t sure. He thought they were contraband. “I never considered blue.” she said.

The boy frowned. “Mine’s natural.” he said.

“You’re a natural blue? That’s so cool, dude.”

“What are you even doing in this room?” the boy hissed. “Boys and girls are segregated.”

“I don’t really care.” the girl muttered, still focused on her hair. She finished it in an updo and stuck out a hand to the boy. “What’s yours?”

The boy considered batting it away. “What’s my what?” he asked.

“Your name.” she clarified.

He sighed. “Stunt.”

“Nice to meetcha, Stunt. The name’s Shrill Failed Brick.”

“Isn’t that your given name?” Stunt repeated. “How about your birth?”

“Yours first,” Shrill said, “you know, I’m all for ’Treat others as you want to be treated’.”

Stunt sighed again. “Stunt is my birth name.”

Shrill looked surprised for a second, and Stunt couldn’t help but smile at his accomplishment, dazzling a girl, even if the moment didn’t last long. “If that’s the case,” she continued, “then mine’s Shira. Shira Talmid. A pleasure to meetcha Stunt. Mind if I sit here?”

“Yeah, sure.” Stunt said.

“Even with the whole separation thing?”

He gestured to the chair to his right, and Shira slid it out and plopped into it. She set her own tray of mashed potatoes down in front of her and dug in. “My school lunch was better than this.” she mumbled when her face wasn’t full.

“Mine wasn’t so bad either.” Stunt said with a shrug. “I dunno the thing against school lunches. My place had steak.”

“Yeah, me neither. And that was a joke I did there, buddy boy. I was homeschooled.” Shira rolled her eyes and took another spoonful of taters.

“So what’re you in here for?” Stunt asked since Shira’s talkativeness was curbed.

“Oh, the stupidest of reasons. The breaking and entering never happened. Stealing a rocket is bull. Unauthorized world access, eh, maybe that happened, since I came from Avant Gardens and this is Nimbus Station...” She paused for a moment. “This is not an admission of guilt, for your information.”

“Wait, you’re not Paradox?” Stunt asked. Now he was surprised.

“No, why?”

“Lady, don’t you know there’s a Faction War going on?” Stunt asked incredulously. “Between the Nexus Force and the Paradox Rogues? There’s Paradox getting detained left and right, myself included.”

“Oh yeah, I did hear of the War.” Shira confirmed. “Kind of stinks they’d arrest you for no reason, since you’re not a Rogue, right?”

“No way.” Stunt shook his head vehemently, and he was glad that Shira gave him a pitying pat on the shoulder. “I don’t even know anyone who’s a Rogue.” he added, even though that might not be entirely true. Regardless, he wasn’t going to out anyone he knew, not to the Nexus Force, not when they were detaining random, innocent Paradox who had nothing to do with the Rogues or the War. No one could get hurt because of him.

“Yeah, it does stink.” he agreed.

“Glad we’re on the same page. I’ll see you later then.” Shira said. She stood up suddenly with her finished tray and on the way around him to the recycle bin she whispered, “Your shoelaces are untied.”

Stunt looked down doubtfully. His shoes, gray prison flats, weren’t untied. They didn’t even have laces. But the edge of a paper stuck out from under his right foot and caught his attention. It must have been slipped under while he was tapping. He inconspicuously lifted his shoe to see the letter and numbers “E23” scribbled on it. Of course it was a note. E23 meant cell 23 in the E block and for some reason Shira wanted him to think about it. His cell was the 28th in the same block, so he could walk by 23 on the way there after lunch.

He wasn’t sure what he’d see there...

<ac_metadata title="Prologue to a Story"> </ac_metadata>