There was the sound of pecking in trees, and many chirpers issuing their morning greetings. A shimmer of narrowed light heats up the wooded edges of the window seal where dust particles fly in calm directions. Following the spotlight like a gentle order down to the rodent's corpse. Looking weighty. It lays outright as if showing off it’s decaying open gash in it’s head. It lives now a new as a rich party house for all the microscopic larva and parasites to feast as they celebrate their new day. Everyday of life is worth celebrating. A muse Mia finds comforting. She’s perched high above the wooden platform, maneuvering the red wires of her thrusters, wrapping them streamlined around her legs. She stretches, and kicks, testing their mobility. Though this satisfaction is short lived when her concerns bring her to the half empty fuel tank. The blonde top hangs heavy, sighing with frustration. Tilting her head up, and breathing in deeply. Combing fingers through her hair, ruffling up her bangs. This one turns her head to the left, where she spots in a distance atop another platform, a familiar slim plastic object. Mia remembers this years back when she acquired her jetpack from a man she can’t remember. This situation however leaves her grateful for the distraction away from the stresses her memories bring.
She snaps her helmet in place, happy to take the leap of faith. Sets her thrusters off. There is a strain on one of the wires when she placed it around her thigh. It disconnects from a thruster, impelling her to lose balance. She rolls on the counter crashing into a wall. The impact sends the thruster off her boot, where it taps and bounces off the counter down into a corner. Mia’s heart sinks into her chest. Stretching her head over the edge she pinpoints the thruster, suspended in the air, tangled in a large cluster of webbing. Below the piece, wrapped up from the head down is a dying or dead buzzer. Something about the webbing puts her in a strange funk. For now, letting that sit in the back of her head, she brings her way to the device. It is tall with a green plastic body, and a black base. Atop sits a small gear and red button. A sharp point snaps out from the top of her fuel tank, where she jabs it into the base. It only takes a few seconds for the tank to fill. She removes it, and replaces the small hole with a gummy substance she had for occasions like this. After clicking the tank to her hip, it’s now time for her to get that thruster back. She scans the surroundings and locates a tall glass liquid holder, like the ones she had as a kid, only they were made of clay. Mia pushes her back against the holder and readys herself. Her lone thruster hastley ignites, sending the glass holder to the floor shattering it to pieces.
Things get tricky now as she hovers awkwardly down. Only a few feet in the air, when the fire cuts off, landing on her back. She strains as she sits up, sighing and blowing out of her puffed cheeks. The stubborn girl rummages through the shards, carefully picking the right one. She stands just below the webbing and struggles in the air. Glass shard in hand, she begins waving it around, cutting through only so much. All of her movements result in her caught just below the buzzer. Seems like the more she moves, the more scared she becomes. Thinking fast, she sets her last thruster on and off in second intervals. The flames burn the webbing away from her legs much more successfully. Time to move. Up and up passing the buzzer, singing through each strand, making her way closer. Mia reaches up, touching it with the tip of her fingers, when the buzzer wakes and clamps onto her boot.
“Oh shit!”
She kicks at its face, panic stricken. A few thumps to the head, and it releases her. Still stretching her arm until it hurts, and keeping the thruster on as it burns through the buzzer’s whaling skull. Her rib cage feels like it’s going to burst from the inside. Blood pumping overtime in her veins. She grits her teeth not thinking about her dry mouth. Webbing below her burns away fast. Finally, it's in her grasp. The buzzer combusts, taking her by surprise. The web weakens, releasing its grip on her. Mia turns the thruster on, but loses control quickly, and cracks the helmet hard against the wall where the webbing was held together. She bumps her head hard inside the helmet, and drops like a rock smashing the dome open. Mia clenches her eyes tightly together, and spits out a thick rope of blood from her lips. Mia rolls over slowly to her back, feeling the heat of the fire, burning the buzzer to an unrecognizable husk. The warmth leaves her uncomfortable, with a sickly churn in her stomach, and a gas pressure in her chest. She laid there for the full four minutes it took for the fire to die out. The buzzer’s smoldering shell reeks like mold ripping apart her nostrils. It takes crawling on her side to help sit herself upright, where she attaches the thruster back to her boot, and connects the wire more securely. Her eyebrows narrow in wishing for another distraction from the serrated pain in her head. She can’t help but look up at the corroded pervert and feel this sense of dredd. Something about the webbing she thought while pushing down the stomach acid from her throat.
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