Crash Landing

collette

~Mae~

"Be thankful I'm not having you Cast Out. Now, you'll be on probation for the next two weeks and I'll have to revoke your pass for scheduled meal times with your fellow workers."

My jaw clenched so tightly at her words that I could've sworn I rearranged a tooth or two from the force alone, my fingers clenching and unclenching in a similar fashion as I wondered how much it would hurt to be Cast Out for a punishable crime such as physically assaulting the Commander.

Hmm...Maybe it's not as painful as you think?

Who knows, maybe suffocation, organ failure and drowning in your own blood isn't as bad as everybody thinks it is.

I do admit that some of my thoughts may range on the scale from low to high levels of morbidity and insanity but could you really blame me for it?

At least I could make light of a terrible situation and tragedies, these people wouldn't know a joke if it came up behind them and slapped them on the ass.

"You're actually being serious right now? What, you can't just place me in solitary confinement for a day or so? That's what you've done to the other "aggravated assault" cases before."

Commander Ophelia raised her eyebrows, intrigued at the ranting and the spewing of words that were coming out of my mouth faster than I could choke them back.

"Is that what you would prefer? Solitary confinement down in the depths of the cargo bay instead of a supervisor watching your every move while you're on probation?"

I nodded almost eagerly because if I'm being honest, anything sounded better than being placed back on probation.

That was probably the worst thing that could happen to me right now, especially as I was so close to fixing the ruined equipment from the last Explorer's mission and if I presented it in time to Commander Ophelia, maybe I could get her to forget all about the fight I got into with Kyle.

Maybe I could convince her that I was worthy after all of being in her little elite exploration organization.

And it couldn't hurt to give me some more practice on working with older space equipment.

It was a bit of my specialty and most of my fellow co-workers were aware of this. I actually hadn't meant to stumble upon that sort of equipment when I first took the only available position as a low level mechanic of sorts, I was only trained to work with advanced engine thrusters, turbo boosters, cracked holographic control panel screens and whatnot.

But then, this only piece of equipment came in and at first, I thought it was just scrap metal junk, I almost actually threw it out until I realized the engraving alongside the side.

It was a part of one of NASA's old missile rockets before they blew up with the compressed impact from the various war bombings.

And that's when I decided to keep it and tinker with it, just to see if I could get it working once again and with an odd stroke of luck, the piece of equipment that I once saw as junk was helping alongside the engine regulators to keep the Celestial from overheating with the combined energy it produced on a mass quantity.

That's when I realized I had found my outlet, my niche in life.

If only I could get the Commander to see it that way, maybe she'd understand why I wanted the channel of becoming an Explorer.

But as Fate would have it, Commander Ophelia only sighed heavily, as if she was disappointed that I would even suggest solitary confinement over probation.