Chapter Text
Sir Pentious prided himself on understanding systems.
Machines followed rules. Armies followed hierarchies. Plans, when properly constructed, produced predictable outcomes. Variables could be accounted for, controlled, minimized. Failure was not a moral flaw; it was simply a miscalculation to be corrected next time.
This philosophy had served him well in nearly every aspect of his unlife.
It did not, he was discovering, apply to Cherri Bomb.
She burst into the hotel lobby in a cloud of smoke, laughter, and someone else’s debris, and Sir Pentious immediately dropped the blueprint he had been holding.
It fluttered to the floor between them, landing in a crooked heap of paper and pride.
“-WHOOPS,” Cherri said, peering down at it with open curiosity. “That look important?”
Sir Pentious straightened instinctively, smoothing the front of his coat with two of his arms while the others gathered the scattered pages. “YES. Extremely. That was a prototype schematic and, and you just, you tracked ash all over it!”
She glanced down at her boots. One was still faintly smoking. “Yeah, that tracks.”
There was a pause. Cherri tilted her head, eyes flicking over him, sharp and unreadable in that way that always made him feel like he was standing under a spotlight he hadn’t agreed to.
Then she grinned. “Relax, Snake Boy. If it explodes, I’ll help you rebuild it.”
“That is NOT reassuring!”
She laughed, loud and bright, already moving past him toward the bar. The sound echoed through the lobby, bouncing off the walls, impossible to ignore. Sir Pentious watched her go, his tail giving an irritated flick behind him.
Unbelievable.
He gathered his papers with unnecessary precision and told himself, firmly, that this irritation had nothing to do with the way his chest felt oddly tight whenever she was near.
Nothing at all.
Later, when the explosion happened, Sir Pentious was vindicated.
It was not his fault. He had triple-checked the pressure valves, recalibrated the timing mechanism, and even accounted for environmental instability within a five-meter radius. The device had been meant to demonstrate controlled detonation, a proof of concept, elegant and contained.
Cherri Bomb had leaned in at the last second and said, “What if you turned this dial all the way up?”
He had said no.
She had turned it anyway.
The resulting blast took out half the training room wall and sent both of them sprawling across the floor in a mess of dust, ringing ears, and startled swearing.
Sir Pentious lay there for a moment, staring up at the cracked ceiling, his heart pounding. He took a breath. Then another.
Alive. Intact. Dignity questionable.
“WOO!” Cherri whooped beside him. “Okay, yeah, that one’s on me.”
“That one was ENTIRELY on you!” he snapped, pushing himself upright. “Do you have ANY regard for safety protocols?!”
She rolled onto her side, propped her head up with one arm, and looked at him like this was the most entertaining thing she’d seen all day.
“…You’re mad,” she observed.
“Yes!”
She smiled wider. “Cute.”
His brain stalled.
Cute.
That word echoed uselessly around his skull, bumping into thoughts that were already struggling to remain coherent. He opened his mouth, shut it again, and then stood abruptly, dusting himself off with far more aggression than necessary.
“This partnership,” he said stiffly, “is clearly untenable.”
“Mm,” Cherri hummed. “You say that every time.”
“And yet you continue to- to sabotage my work!”
“I don’t sabotage,” she said, sitting up. “I enhance.”
“That is NOT-”
She reached out suddenly, brushing ash off his shoulder with a quick, surprisingly gentle motion. Sir Pentious froze, all four arms locking in place as if someone had hit a switch.
“There,” she said. “Can’t have you lookin’ all scuffed up.”
The touch lingered for half a second too long.
Then she was on her feet again, already walking away, humming to herself as if she hadn’t just short-circuited his entire nervous system.
Sir Pentious remained rooted to the spot, staring after her.
So confusing.
He tried, later, to write about it.
This was another thing he prided himself on: reflection. Introspection. Carefully articulated thoughts, laid out in ink where they could be examined and understood.
He sat at his desk that night, pen poised over paper, lamplight casting soft shadows across the room.
Observations, he wrote.
He paused.
Then crossed it out.
Problematic Variables, he tried instead.
That felt closer.
He tapped the pen against the page, tail coiling and uncoiling behind him as he replayed the day’s events with ruthless analytical focus.
Cherri Bomb disrupted his routines. She ignored his warnings. She treated danger like a suggestion. She laughed at things that should have been alarming and dismissed things that should have been important.
And yet.
She had shown up to help him test the prototype without being asked.
She had taken the blame for the explosion without hesitation.
She had brushed the ash from his coat like it mattered.
He stared at the page until the words blurred.
This did not fit into any known framework.
Sir Pentious was familiar with infatuation. He understood obsession. He had experienced admiration, rivalry, resentment, even longing.
This felt… sideways.
Like wanting someone to stay even when they made everything louder and messier than it had ever been before.
He set the pen down.
Unacceptable.
The next morning, Cherri Bomb knocked on his door.
Actually, “knock” was a generous interpretation. Something slammed into the metal with enough force to rattle the hinges, followed by her voice shouting, “YO, YOU ALIVE IN THERE?”
Sir Pentious opened the door, already mid-rebuke. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT TIME IT-”
She was holding two coffees.
One of them was somehow on fire.
“Peace offering,” she said, holding them up. “Also, we blew up the training room, so I figured we should probably fix that before Charlie notices.”
He stared at the cups. Then at her. Then back at the cups.
“…Why is it burning.”
“Extra kick.”
“That is NOT- you know what,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine. Come in.”
Her grin was immediate and victorious.
As she stepped inside, looking around his room with open curiosity, Sir Pentious felt that strange tightness in his chest again, anxiety, anticipation, something dangerously close to excitement.
This was not part of the plan.
But then again, neither was she.
And that, he was beginning to realize, might be the problem.
-or the point.
End of Chapter 1