Gunpowder

Poppy was exhausted.

After her and Axis’s conversation she had spent the night on her computer. She had looked up some of these “pet cats” and had fallen in love with videos of them. They were adorable and majestic at the same time, gracefully padding around one second, and falling out of a tree the next. She could hardly believe they had ever been used as lab experiments. She had watched the videos long into the night and through the morning. After her brief nightmare, she hadn’t went back to sleep, instead simply attempting to understand the piece of technology she had been given. It seemed to be a portal to some kind of main database of information, a lot of which was simply pictures of cats and dogs doing cute things. Such pieces of data seemed quite redundant to her, but they sure were cute.

Though there was no mirror in the woman’s room, she was sure her eyes were blood red from exhaustion. It was hard to keep them open, but somehow she managed. The mainframe she had found was so wonderful, she couldn’t waste a second of exploration time with sleep.

She had been delighted when she found what seemed to be a video data storage website of some kind. It boasted millions of videos, most of which were simply people talking to the camera and doing things no normal human would ever do or any purpose ever. Though incredibly stupid, they did interest her. Why would the rebels need such useless information? And so much of it?

As well as all this useless information, there were a lot of publicly available things that looked like they should have been kept private. Some of these things included the names of leaders, maps of whole cities that could generate a route between any two given points, diagrams of some weaponry and robotics, and even some video lessons on self defense. It all seemed like things that should have been kept tightly under lock and key, but it wasn’t. Instead, she could access all of it with a simple search.

The search function was strange to her as well. It didn’t require the search to be of one specific article or image, like the ones she was used to. Instead, a general topic could be given, and the machine would spit up everything it knew about said topic. It proved to be quite useful in her exploration of the database.

Late in the night, or early in the morning, she wasn’t quite sure, she had began looking around at the maps. The city she was in, which she learned was called Kawden, seemed to be built with multiple circles that all stuck to one large circle in the center. It told her that she was in one of the outer circles, which was dubbed “Nagari.” The neighborhood she was in seemed to be quite secure, and to be the home of several medics and retired people. It was protected with a large iron fence. The only way out was a gate that could only be opened or closed by a robotic sentry. It seemed secure, but also safe.

The rest of Nagari was made up of similar neighborhoods, occasionally dotted by a commercial district. She had scoured the paths and roads for hours, and hoped that one day she would be allowed out of the house and to scour them with her own eyes, instead of through the eyes of the computer. Maybe she could even see one of those “pet cats” while she was on her tour. The simple thought made her quite excited, and tired at the same time. With her current state of exhaustion she knew for a fact that she would collapse if she even attempted to stand up. The thought of sleep crossed her mind many times, but the interesting device ahead of her always pulled her back in to its fluorescent grasp.

Poppy had hardly noticed when dawn arrived, and then when the sun was fully in the sky. She was simply too captivated by the machine in front of her.

And then she heard the smoke alarm.

It sounded like a million, if not more, screaming birds, all in some sort of disaster of a chorus. She had never dealt with a fire before, and she didn’t know how to stop it. She had a bit of experience with smoke alarms, however. Maybe it was all a malfunction, and she could just go down the stairs and turn off the alarm and everything would be fine. That’s what she told herself, at least. She had never really experienced a fire, except in the heat of battle, in which flaming explosions leaped into the air constantly. What was worse, the house seemed to be quite flammable.

The technician racked her brain for the proper way to disable to a smoke detector. Such things were quite calming to her; Technology and circuits were so simple and predictable, it wasn’t as scary as trying to work with something completely unpredictable. She yanked open her desk drawer, where she had put the stray screwdriver she had found, presumably left over from the house’s construction. She gripped its bright red handle, gritted her teeth in determination, and swung open the door to her room. A blast of warm air immediately hit her, and then the smell of smoke assaulted her nose. Her throat stung as she raced down the stairs, the pain in her legs gone from the adrenaline coursing through her.

The noise only got loudly as she ran into the kitchen, brandishing the screwdriver like some sort of dagger. Axis was in the kitchen as well, throwing some sort of pan in the sink and spraying it with water. Three soggy pancakes lay on the floor, and batter was sprayed everywhere. There was definitely smoke, but with no definitive source.

Poppy located the first smoke detector- which was right above her. She was much too short to reach it, however. But, as many short people were, she was ready to stack as many pieces of furniture as needed to get to her destination.

She started with a stool, which was pulled up to an island that sat in the middle of the kitchen. Next, she threw a dining table chair on top of the already placed object. The pile seemed to be high enough to reach the ceiling, and thus began the woman’s ascent.

She scrambled onto the rungs lining the stool, and looked as if she might fall when she lunged onto the chair. Though the object rocked back and forth under her weight, she didn’t stop. With a final lunge, the twenty one year old landed on the seat of the chair, balancing on her hands and knees. She slowly and carefully rose to her feet, raising her screwdriver to the sky as she straightened her spine.

The chair was rocking beneath her weight, worse than it had before. The stool served as quite a poor support structure for it. But Poppy wasn’t about to give up. She knew she had little time left before she, along with the chair should stood on, would become broken messes on the floor. Resorting to the last thing she could think of, Zakner aimed the point of the screwdriver at the place where the smoke detector connected with the ceiling, and hit it with all the force she could. The thing went flying, as did she. The force of her action sent the chair toppling over. First, the stool landed, unharmed, then the chair. Its fate wasn’t as lucky as its predecessor, however. Its legs snapped off cleanly, leaving it looking like some sort of short toboggan. Finally, the technician toppled to the ground, landing on her back with her arms and legs held in the air like a flipped over turtle.

Though the whole thing seemed to be a bit of an overreaction, at least the fire alarm had ceased. The two woman sure had left a hell of a mess.

Besides the obvious broken chair and dented stool, sticky brown batter had landed on every surface, even somehow managing to get on the ceiling. Axis seemed to have left the sink on, letting water start to pool on the floor. It was a huge mess.

And then they burst out laughing.

“H-How did you get batter on the c-ceiling?” Poppy howled, hardly able to speak through her obnoxious chuckling.

“How did you manage to destroy a chair?”Axis laughed in response, stopping from where she had been mopping up water from the floor.

“Heh. We’re totally adults, huh?”

“Age-wise, yes. Maturity wise, not exactly,”