Adventures

Fearless

Fearless ..... Xenoclea

As usual, the delicate project blew up in Jameson’s face and, as usual, it was a rather large explosion.  Luckily, his experience in evading exploding inventions gave him enough of an intuitive tingle to leap backwards in time; the fireball stung his skin instead of burning it.

The same could not be said for his clothes.  Groaning, he pulled the shaded goggles he wore up to his forehead to better inspect the damage. His heavy leather apron had taken most of the hit, but his shirt and trousers uncovered by the leather were ripped and charred, some patches still smoking. He tromped over to the cupboard where he kept a change of clothes only to realize that he was wearing them, having put them on after his original outfit had caught fire that morning. With some trepidation, Jameson walked out of the laboratory and toward his last resort: his bedroom.

He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in his quarters, but it looked like he’d just left a moment ago. Hastily drawn sketches and diagrams he’d dreamed up papered the walls and crept onto the ceiling. The failures sat in crumpled balls on the floor amongst the shiny rubbish of useless spare parts. He scooped up a clean-enough pair of trousers from the floor and slipped them on, searching for a shirt, or at least a jacket. How could there be nothing clean? He hopefully grabbed a white club-collared shirt from the back of the chair but dropped it again after realizing there was a hole as large as his head burned through.

“There must be one here,” he muttered, checking under his unmade bed. Nothing but dust and cracked cogwheels.

“Looking for your clothes?” asked a cheerful voice from behind him. “No use. Annie stole them.”

“Hello, Adalè,” he said, now shaking through his blankets. “What do you mean, Captain stole my clothes?”

“She doesn’t have any clean shirts either,” she shrugged, pushing her brown curls over her shoulders. “So she took one of yours. And a vest. And a belt. And maybe a hat.”

“Where is she? I need to find her and make her give my clothes back,” he said, gesturing at his once-white shirt.

“Up on the topside. Want me to climb up with you?” she offered.

Jameson paled. Before he could say anything, Scot stuck his head into the doorway. “Did I hear ya’ say that he was going climbing? That’s something I’d like to see!” Jameson blinked, holding back some clever snappy retort (though all he could come up with at the moment was “go away”), but Adalè beat him to it.

“Go away, Scot. Just because Jameson might be a little scared of heights-“

“There’s no ‘might be’ about it! Lad’s afraid of everything from darkness to drowning. Even if he could pluck up the courage to even look out the window, there’s no way he’d get all the way to the top.  More likely he’d freeze up halfway through and I’d have to go rescue him,” Scot laughed, giving Jameson a light shove on the shoulder. He lost his balance and tumbled backwards, glaring up at a roaring Scot and snickering Adalè. “Sorry, lad. I didn’t mean tah-“

“Don’t call me that. I’m not a lad; I’m all grown up now,” Jameson snapped, blushing as he realized just how juvenile his retort made him sound.

“Ay, aren’t you a big grown up man,” Scot smirked. Not for the first time, Jameson wanted to hit him but refrained, knowing that he would come off worse in a fight.  He clenched his fists instead.  Why wasn’t chess an appropriate way to redeem oneself? MacMillan would be begging for mercy.

“Don’t tease him, Scot,” Adalè whispered.

“No, let him,” Jameson barked. “I know you all think I’m a spineless coward, but would a spineless coward go climbing on the topside?” He pushed past Adalè and Scot, rushing towards the storage room on the other side of the ship.