Gunpowder
Chapter Sixteen

RING

The doorbell sung. Axis jumped; The sound was so unfamiliar to her. In the barracks she was used to loud noises, orders ringing out over the loudspeakers, officers and soldiers in adjacent rooms making a racket. But the pleasant ring of the doorbell startled her. It would have been funny, had the situation not been so serious.

The woman smoothed out her hair, making sure her signature bun was tidy, and raced to the door. She took in every detail of the wooden object in her hesitation. She noted how it was the same mahogany of her desk, with two windows surrounded by fake-gold frames that were curved into beautiful shapes.

“Stop being so scared,” she muttered to herself, placing one slightly-clammy hand on the door’s lock. Taking a deep breath, she twisted it, opened the door, let the cool air wash over her.

There stood a quite nervous-looking Poppy, her hair vastly more presentable than it had been just a week before. It was now shimmering, its light color highlighted by the shining noon sun, tied into a flowing ponytail that reached down to her neck. Axis could tell that she was nervous as well, with a bit of sweat dripping off her forehead, but, despite that, she looked far better than she had before. The bandage on her neck was gone, her legs no longer bore casts, instead being covered in black walking boots. She knew that her rib was still broken, but almost all evidence of this fact had disappeared. She was breathing normally, and she hardly looked to be in pain. In fact, this was the first time Axis had seen her standing seemingly effortlessly.

“Hey,” Poppy greeted, her voice small, like that of a nervous child. She was obviously trying to break the silence.

“Of course, hello,” Axis replied, gesturing for the slightly younger woman to enter the doorway, “Come on in. It’s cold out,”

Poppy, more than aware of the temperature outside, gladly did so, jumping up into the doorway. She moved quite gracefully, considering that both her legs were still at least marginally injured. Axis closed the door behind her new guest, subconsciously locking it.

“Woah,” That was the first word that exited Poppy’s mouth upon entering.

“I guess it is,” Axis responded, a bit self-conscious. She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by the simple word of reaction.

“This is awesome!” Axis was taken by surprise at the shorter woman’s loud tone, “I-I mean. You have a really nice home,”

“We have a really nice home. It’s both of ours,”

Poppy blushed, “I guess it is,”

Axis had very little experience with actually interacting with others like this. She shook her head, trying to stop the conversation from hitting a dead end.

“I’ll show you around. You can use stairs, correct?”

“Yeah. I can pretty much do everything except run apparently. They said I’m in the latter stages of the healing process,”

“Good. I’ll show you around the first floor to begin with. Come on!” Axis waved for the woman to follow her as she led her through the entrance hallway. The hallway entered into the dining room, which was the largest room on the first floor.

“Dining room,” Axis announced, not truly caring about her improper English, “And over there is the kitchen. I went to the store yesterday, so as you can see there’s plenty of food.”

Connected to the dining room through a large arch was the living room, which boasted a delightful baby-blue color scheme.

“And that’s the living room. It has a door to the outs-”

“What’s a living room?” Poppy asked. Axis thought at first that it seemed to be a redundant question, but after mulling over it a bit she realized that Poppy had probably never come in contact with such a room before.

“It’s a place to relax, I guess that’s how I would explain it,” Axis said, not exactly sure how to describe the room. It had always just been a thing she assumed everyone knew about, “There’s couches and sofas, and a television. You can just.. hang out.”

“That’s... Interesting. Never heard of such a thing.”

“I guess it must not make sense to someone who hasn’t seen such a thing before,” she decided to continue the tour of the house. She cleared her throat and cut to another topic, “That’s all there is of the ground floor. Let’s go upstairs. That’s where most of everything is.”

Axis walked over to where the stairs were, not having to look back to tell that Poppy was following her. She could tell by the loud noise of her walking boots thumping on the carpet below.

“These are the stairs, obviously. There’s a railing if you need it,” she announced, starting to walk up the stairs quite quickly. Poppy was a bit slower, but eventually caught up, looking a bit out of breath.

“This floor is made up of a hallway with rooms branching off of it. This one here is your room,” she explained, gesturing to the room at the top of the stairs, “The one right next to it, to the right, is my room. To the left is the bathroom. There’s a bathroom next to my room as well,”

“Can I see my room?” Poppy requested. Axis nodded, swinging open the door and leading the way inside.

Poppy’s room was the exact same size as Axis’s, but it looked entirely different. The walls were a very pale yellow, completely contrasting the rest of the house. In the corner was the bed, which had a short step-stool leading up to it. The bed itself was quite tall, with no posts and an oak frame surrounding it. Draped over it was a green comforter, patterned with thin yellow lines that ran across it. The blanket’s pattern reminded her of a motherboard, which was something she assumed was related to tech. She had seen the object in a sci-fi movie once.

Against one wall was the desk. It was a darker spruce color, with a chair pushed up to it. On it sat the same model of sleek, black laptop as the one Axis had gotten for herself. She had assumed that it would be what Poppy would like the most, and she was right. The woman’s eyes were locked onto the device.

“This is your room. I set it up how I thought you would like it, but you can change stuff around if you wish,”

Poppy’s eyes were glimmering like a child’s eyes on Christmas morning.

“And, of the course, the laptop is for you. I had absolutely no idea how to set it up, so I’m assuming you’ll be able to do that,”

“Of course. I’m not a techie for nothing, Axis,”

“I guessed as such. I’m never able to understand how you people do it,”

“Do what?”

“Technology and all. It’s like you’ve got a computer in your brain or something,”

“I guess that’s one way to describe it. Sometimes it feels that way.”

“Well, if an electrical fire breaks out, it’s probably the fault of me and my inability to work anything remotely electrical properly,”

“I’ll have to make a fire-extinguisher robot then, huh?”

“Guess so. Well, I’m going to be off now. I don’t have work today, so I’ll be in the house. If you need help with anything, just holler!”

“I will!”

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