Europan Slice of Life

[zha everything broken]

Proterna Station (pop 8,781), Europa, Sol

2444-03-13-16:02:43

It's a Monday. Subdued electronic tones signaling the shift-change return muffled echos in stale, oil-thick air. Eliza sits atop a quietly churning circulator rig bolted near the ceiling of the vaulted junction, legs kicking lazily over the thirty-foot drop. It's a fun enough kind of vantage. All the little people in their insulating jackets and overcoats bustling around in every different direction, making graceful arcs as they switch tiers. She's not the only one on overwatch; a handful of other children have perched up in the high nooks and maintenance gaps.

Her primary focus though she glowers at: homework splayed across the book in her lap. Eliza is the best at multiplication tables. Beckett is good too, she guesses, but he doesn't count, for ephemeral reasons that don't bear consideration. SolComm has always been stupid though. Her tongue sticks out unconsciously in focus as she tries and fails to remember tonal distinctions for fully two-thirds the vocab section.

Marin's voice interrupts from below, a sharp-edged hush of urgency. There's a fight! It's Suri again, of course. Crazy ratfucker! It can't be missed. Eliza stuffs her schoolwork into tiny child's backpack and pitches herself from the high ledge. The others jump too.

Europan children in their puffy jackets rain silently from the ceiling in exaggerated slow motion.

They grab onto stanchions and support rods, slinging themselves to the front of the dash to the scene. Eliza lags near the back but the rush is very real because if she'd caught that last handrail she totally would have been in the lead.