Scorpio

NINE - Escape

A/N
Thank you so much for reading :)

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"Hey, Alycs?"

Estella watched the granola bar in her palm warily, as if worried it might explode on her at any second. When the small green light in the corner blinked with an incoming reply, she fumbled with the disguised device before pressing it to her ear.

"We're undercover right now, Stel, you can't call me Alycs."

"Right, er..." Estella thought for a moment. "Catboy?"

The granola bar crackled to life a little while later, an odd little laugh vibrating through. "Catboy. I like the sound of that."

Estella decided not to call him Catboy. "Did you locate your ship yet?"

Alycs hummed in response, the sound easily lost in the vast storage room. "You're looking for code 712." He answered, to which Estella relayed the information at a small touchpad installed in the wall. In simultaneous fashion, robots dropped down from the ceiling, picking out an assortment of items from numerous shelves lining the area and dropping them onto a conveyor belt.

Estella beamed proudly at the accomplishment of the simple task, tip-toeing closer to a robot and craning her head up at the underbelly of one. Between rippling joints and sliding tubes, the robot was a work of art - the way the claws were plated to move like fingers, and the incredible amount of power the machine seemed to have as it effortlessly lifted a tank of fuel reminded Estella of something...someone, to be exact.

Thinking for a moment, the girl felt an odd sense of sadness when her mind couldn't place just when she had had the same feeling of awe, wonder, and curiosity for such an object. Perhaps it's one of those...'I've seen that before' moments, she decided to herself, staring at the ground as if she could raise the answers from the concrete floor with her mind.

A pinch caused her to squeak, and Estella instantly clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle to the noise. Looking around, she saw that the robot had mistaken her for a bulletproof vest and was now lifting her high in the air, twisting her around almost curiously as its laser scanned her face. Concluding that it had grasped the wrong object, the robot wound back and sent Estella flying across the storage room, well out of its work area.

Slow down, slow down, slow down! Estella flailed her arms around uselessly, trying to summon some of that aura power she had when she first met Tony Stark in his suit. But if anything, the aura only made her speed up, leaving the flying girl in a state of panic. As a last resort, Estella curled up in a ball, hoping that somehow through all of the tests the agents had put her through she could control her density on command and meet the ground unharmed.

A strange, squishy sound echoed through the area, and for a moment Estella worried she had become one with the floor. Peeling herself off the glossy surface proved to be an easier task once she fixed her hands into a less nauseous appearance, but trying to remove the debris that had blended into her clothing through her less-than-graceful swan dive was nearly impossible.

Besides, she was wasting time.

Grabbing a random jacket from a crate, she covered up her altered hoodie and ran from the room.

Alycs was already waiting for her by the time she reached the hangar, gated by a single, heavy-duty metal door. Taking her hand, Alycs teleported them both onto the other side, and Estella instantly went over to the energy supply box to fry the backup generators. After a nod of approval from the older boy, the pair snuck through the dim lighting between masses of glinting, looming figures, weaving among cargo ships and messenger jets towards a quiet, buzzing noise.

A smaller version of the robots Estella had seen in the storage room was tinkering at the side of a shadowy structure, obscuring the form as it loaded the last of Estella's ordered supplies into the trunk of the aircraft.

"Is this it?" Estella whispered as Alycs halted, trying to stare through the shadows at Alycs' proclaimed 'most prized possession.'

"Yeah." The boy nodded back, although he continued to face the robot working on his ship. "She's a black beauty equipped with retro-reflecting panels and top-of-the-line defense systems, nicknamed the Speedster of the Sky, and so fuel efficient that one full tank could take her around the world."

The robot retracted into itself as it moved away, revealing the indeed incredible, sleek jet of diminutive size as compared to all the other aircrafts they had encountered upon first entering the hangar. Without another second of hesitation, Alycs bounded up to the craft and pressed his palm against its pod-like surface.

With a purr, the engine awoke, illuminating the pod with intelligent blue lines. Trusting Alycs' beckoning hand, Estella followed after the boy into the small aircraft.