Survival Of The Fittest

It all happened in the blink of an eye.

One moment, Taylor was mumbling their way through their thanks and goodbyes, and even though she wasn’t giving her full attention to what they were saying, Trinity couldn’t help but feel a little conflicted as to how this whole situation had gone, a small twinge of guilt plucking at her heartstrings for how she had handled everything. Taylor didn’t seem actively malicious, merely loud and completely oblivious, and if Trinity had allotted herself this lunch period as just ‘free time’ to work on whatever she felt like, then maybe she would have been more amenable to helping them with their project. Maybe things would have turned out totally differently.

And then the next moment, there was a blur of black and neon-green, followed by two, distinct clattering sounds. The first had been the light and metallic noise of a, now very empty, energy drink can hitting a table and rolling off the edge. The second had been Taylor, making their escape from the workshop as fast as humanly fucking possible, taking Trinity’s hopes that this wouldn’t totally fucking escalate with them.

She stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at Derek and his now completely sodden t-shirt, bright neon radioactive runoff dripping onto the floor, a pool already forming underneath his chair. She knew that she needed to do something, here, before the poor boy’s shirt was totally ruined. There was a stack of paper towels in the cupboards below the sinks just behind her that she could grab easily enough, but something had seemingly frozen her to her chair. There was a very, very fragile tension in the air, one that felt like it would break as soon as someone moved, daring the two of them to blink first.

And as soon as Derek did, the situation got even worse.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, uhh!”

A third clattering sound echoed around the workshop, as Derek’s chair fell to the floor, a copycat action of the boy who had been sitting on it moments prior. Trinity leapt to her feet, heart pounding, moving closer to Derek’s prone form and hovering around him, trying very very hard to push past the rising sense of dread inside of her and the sweat that was quickly building up on her forehead. Okay. Okay, just think calmly, think rationally about this and… and…

Oh, fuck, she really had absolutely no clue what to do here, not in the goddamn slightest, there was a boy choking in front of her and she was just standing still like a fucking moron, she knew she should have taken those first-aid classes she’d seen advertised last year, what was the fucking point of knowing about the Heimlich manoeuvre if she didn’t actually know how to do it, except, wait, she was pretty sure she’d heard that it could make things even worse to do that to somebody choking, so now she had even less of a clue and she was just wasting time and so she needed to do something, now!

So with a berserker yell that she didn’t even realise she was capable of, Trinity ran forwards, and smacked her hand as hard as she could against Derek’s back.

Falling to the ground had done nothing to ease Derek's pain.

Am I gonna die here? This question plopped into his mind just as fast as it was gone. It was hard to think about anything since he was still grasping for air, his vision now darkening by the moment.

And then something collided with his back.

With a ugly feeling, the piece of sandwich was launched out of his mouth and Derek's lungs were able to do their damn job again. He breathed in greedily.

Then he realized he was still crumbled on the ground. Freeing his eyes from the extra portion of water around them, Derek slowly got back to his feet and turned to his life-saver.

"Uh... Thanks for that."

Oh thank God, that looked to have done something to alleviate the situation a little.

Trinity let out a long, deep sigh, the tension in her shoulders relaxing just a fraction, some of the stress leaving her body as she exhaled. There was a small wad of damp, chewed up bread lying a few feet away, which was honestly incredibly disgusting to even look at. She’d have to remember to tidy that up later, lest someone in a class later today ended up treading on it or something, but for now her priority was on the boy standing in front of her.

“Um, yeah, uh… No, ah, no problem…”

She realised, now that heart had decided to settle down somewhat, that her palm was stinging pretty seriously, the colouration turning a standout pink against the rest of her pale skin. The feeling on her fingertips was deadened, as she wiped a bead of sweat off of her brow. Her throat felt sore as well, her attempt at clearing it doing little to alleviate the sensation. God, had she really been yelling that loudly? She’d really rather this didn’t become more of a scene than it had already become, thank you very much.

“Are you, uh, okay?”

She gave Derek the once-over, eyes scanning him from head to heel. He was out of breath, understandably, and his eyes were red and watery, even more understandably, but he seemed like he was in okay condition otherwise. Honestly, the worst ‘injury’ he had suffered was a totally drenched t-shirt. Not that that wasn’t a huge pain in the ass, of course, far from it. In fact, as Trinity watched a few droplets collect at the hem and splash onto the floor, leaving behind a line she half-suspected would cause acid burns to linger there, she felt the heat rising in her cheeks, blood thundering into her head.

“What the fuck was that moron thinking, anyway? Throwing her drink around like she owns the goddamn place, what a fucking tool. And what if she’d hit someone’s project with that stuff, that could be weeks, months of work ruined, and-ugh!”

Trinity squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose, forcing herself to calm down, and when that proved futile, forcing her anger into energy elsewhere in her body. The heel of her Mary Janes tapped rapidly against the floor, her free hand shook as her arm pressed tightly against her side.

“Well, she better not try coming to me for help again anytime soon, that’s for certain.”

Derek nodded, hoping that this counted as an answer. He hated talking bad about others behind their backs, no matter how justified it was.

His shirt felt wet against his torso, reminding him that he had to change it before the next class unless he wanted this day to get a lot weirder. And the day had been already weird enough. "Whatever, I am glad that you were here and nothing too bad happened." He tried to calm the girl down a bit while starting to pack up his things plus the borrowed wooden figurine that was thankfully unMonsterEngergyfied.

"Now I guess I will grab my spare shirt before the bell rings.

"See you around some other time... uh?" He realized he still hadn't gotten her name just a moment too late.

“Right. Right, yeah, of course.”

She gave Derek a short, curt little nod, not wanting to hold him up in his sodden clothing for any longer than necessary. Nor wanting, for that matter, to be in close proximity to him anymore. It wasn’t his fault, of course, but the pungent stench of splashed and spilled Monster was beginning to make her feel nauseous. Likely it was just her heightened senses that was making it so strong, but whatever the case, the smell was keeping her permanently on edge.

“And, it’s Trinity. Trinity Ashmore.”

She always gave her full name when introducing herself, even though she was quite certain she was the only Trinity at JEM, let alone in their grade. It was instinctual, an action she currently had no explanation for. Maybe the past few years of signing off on film reviews and analysis with her full name had leaked into her verbal lexicon. It was entirely possible, but also something to push to the back of her mind for now while she dealt with this mess.

“You go and get changed,” she said, striding briskly over to the sinks so that she could grab a handful of paper towels. “I’ll sort this all out.”

She was tempted to shove all of Taylor’s belongings onto the floor as she walked back past the table, her hand going so far as to jerk upwards briefly, her petty desire for revenge almost overriding her usual sensibilities. She managed to stop herself and keep walking. Just. If only because it would have been incredibly obvious who had done it, and she had no intention to get embroiled in some childish prank war that would eat up all of her valuable time and energy.

“Hopefully we’ll see each other under less…”

Trinity chewed the inside of her lip and scowled, searching for the right word to slot into her sentence as she crouched down to open the cupboard.

”... difficult circumstances.”

Derek nodded. "I agree."

He found it kinda weird how Trinity introduced herself by saying her given name twice. But maybe that was just a tick of her. Or maybe her name really was Trinity-Trinity Ashmore. Parents could be cruel.

Not cruel was her offer to clean up the mess on the table and ground. This was good since any second Derek spend in his wet clothes, the stench seemed to get worse. And there was no way he could leave the mess alone without ensuring it got dealt with.

"Thanks for the cleaning. I owe you one."

With that, he gave a wave and walked away. Goodbyes had never been his forte, so he was glad to get this one done without issue.

A few steps out of the workshop he realized that it was only about ten minutes until classes started again while his locker was pretty much on the other end of the school, so he started to run.

((Derek Caldwell continued in ))

The rapid-fire pitter-pat of Derek’s footsteps faded away down the corridor, and to Trinity’s great relief and mild surprise, there was no sound of any others coming in the opposite direction, curiosity piqued at what must have sounded like an active fucking warzone raging inside of the workshop. Small wonders and even smaller mercies; maybe this whole inane string of events could remain a dirty little secret between the three of them.

Then again, maybe not; she doubted that Taylor could be trusted with a secret for more than 5 seconds before they blabbed about it to all and sundry.

Trinity ripped off a few paper towels from the roll, then a few more for good measure; if there was one thing that any school budget skimped on, it was sanitary supplies, and she didn’t want to end up with her palm coated in Monster. Floor Monster, just to make things extra repugnant.

She grumbled under her breath, muttering half-formed curses and unintelligible words of disgruntlement as she crouched down, mopping up the spilled liquid and pulling a face as her fingertip brushed the surface of it. It wasn’t lost on her that her biggest problem from before, that her body had been constantly threatening to drag her down into the depths of sleep, was well and truly dealt with now. She felt more awake than she had for a full month, even if that was just due to the residual energy drink fumes.

Shockingly however, as she picked up the sodden chunk of bread between thumb and forefinger and grimaced, she had come to the conclusion that she didn’t want to spend any more of her precious time in this room today.

She strode over to the garbage can, flinging the detritus into its depths, before she scurried over to the sink in order to wash her hands three times over, sighing as the faucet turned on and cool water flowed over her fingers. There was still a little bit of lunch left, enough time for a few pages of work and a spoonful of pasta before her next class if she rushed to the library. She was absolutely no longer in the mood for needlework, but there was almost certainly homework to double-check, or study notes to go over. She could settle down at her bright, clean, Monster-free desk once she was safely at home, and finally finish off Sunflowers. This day didn’t have to be a complete bust.

Still. Best she didn’t bump into Taylor for another week or so. They’d managed to avoid bloodshed on this occasion, after all.

((Trinity Ashmore continued in Humming/Treasures))