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Rated: E · Short Story · Steampunk · #2187019
A short thing I wrote to help with writer's block. It probably won't go anywhere.

Tandem Vale, Similarly known to its occupants as Trusty Veil, who all lived mostly underground, was essentially a large highway. Underneath, it was a meticulously organized little community that still found a way to look unique and cluttered. Housing and recreational structures hung from every surface. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling, everything. You had to be a special kind of resident to live on the floor, however, a judge, a leader, a peace-holder, or even a special ambassador. Everyone had their own job to do, their very meaning, for some.

On the surface, it was one large trampled path split into two surrounded by lush forest and the odd launch bay or cottage. A river ran between the two paths, naturally, and it was all but a normal one. Sometimes it would run when there was water to run down it, formed by the many factories off to the south that had an output of gallons of water each day. For now, this would run down all the way down west until it met up with the ocean, what with it being the height of the year when steam travel was in high demand. When it came to winter, the factories farther north would provide sources of heat instead, and so the bed would either be dry or any water left would freeze up. This was fortunate for the residents of Tandem vale, who every year would send their most skilled above ground to see if the river could be used for the prestigious Waterskid championships, involving breakneck speeds and usually a high danger of injury.

On either side of this road was a small cobbled wall, pushed together that hadn’t held very well. They were both just piles of bricks running the length, now. These were covered with moss and other growths, popping out like clusters of wild ferns. They were long past the look of being walls and looked more like pushed up or elevated pieces of earth. It was more of a guideline, or a warning, depending on how you looked at it, but never to keep people away. Nobody would be stupid enough to go within half a mile as soon as they heard the rumble.

This was the ‘Moving Monstrosity’, Scrappington, a shanty city on large metallic inhabited by the most notorious piratical figure of history, Reinsense. Him, and his crew. Gears clunked and groaned to keep the whole thing upright and going on it's’ big pillars that would move in a set pattern depending on whether it wanted to go straight, turn, or reverse. Some would see the mechanics behind it to be simple and not very well put together but to have this system on such a scale was just ludicrous, especially since it had been built to look just like an old-era explorers ship made out of metal instead. On the front of this, hanging off of the Maidenhead, was Reinsense himself, and he was out for vengeance.

He was a man of a rugged countenance, scraggly beard surrounding a toothy grin. The clothes he wore, needless to say, did not single him out as a captain. He wore a dirty dark beige shirt underneath a small sleeveless tweed jacket and baggy pants that still seemed to fit rather well on him. To cover his eyes, he wore a pair of gem-speckled goggles with small lenses in the center, seeming more to protect and to show off than to help. On his head, a simple Pirate hat that had somehow coincided with a top hat and had come out in an odd combination of the two.

“Ay, we’ll be all caught up before she even gets a feelin’ for what’s got’ ta hit her.” He yelled, ending with a savage and raspy laugh. “Tha’ family will think thrice, twice, Before stealing one of me esteemed and be-love-ed crew…”
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