Among a messy pile of abandoned metal, with several parts rolling down, a figure flipped out of it. He pulled out a dirty piece of fiber cloth and wiped the oddly shaped part in his hands again and again, then lifted it toward the sky, trying to use the light to see it clearly. The dim space offered no sunlight and no moonlight, only a gray ceiling silently answering the only voice in the area.
"Heh heh, the core part of a solar sail. This should finally make you happy, right?" Unable to borrow any light at all, the boy breathed on the part once more, not caring whether moisture would damage it. He tossed it behind him, and the part landed neatly on a strange tool that barely looked like a vehicle. The boy hopped onto the vehicle, tapped the pedal, and after it slowly floated off the ground, he pushed the control lever, sending the odd transport sliding forward with a faint engine sound.
He rested his feet on the dashboard, propped his chin with his left hand, and worked the lever with his right as if on instinct. He muttered, "Left, left, right, left, jump, yeah, that's it," while the hover car slipped past huge shadows with ease. After gliding over a small slope, the car and its scattered cargo of parts shook several times from inertia.
"Left, right, right, straight, ha," he said through a long yawn, digging into his ear with his little finger. Just as he was about to rest his chin again, a massive piece of building wreckage suddenly appeared in front of him.
"What the hell, when did this fall down?" he complained, as if accusing a familiar route of spawning an unwanted boss. Still pushing the lever with one hand, he tapped a button on the dashboard with his foot, lifting one side of the hover car. Before crashing into the debris, it traced an arc, skimmed past sharp metal fragments that could have skewered both rider and vehicle, and returned to the standard route that existed only in his head.
Dust trailed behind the hover as it moved through the wreckage. The vast space had no lights and no second voice, only the boy's bored chanting of "Left, left, right, straight." After an unknown amount of time, he finally reached the only place in the area that showed signs of human life.
It was still made of abandoned buildings, but unlike the dead ruins before, this place held something that marked civilization. It had light.
He whistled, and the hover car slid into the open area with a tail swing. Before the cushion fully settled, the boy braced himself on the console and jumped out at an angle. "Hey, hey, I'm back. I even brought a solar sail core part. Hey, are you home or not?" His voice sounded young, yet it carried no name or identity at all.
"Hey, where are you? I worked my ass off to bring back something this important. I deserve at least a thanks, right?" Inside the building were only basic living items, along with blueprints covered in messy mechanical sketches spread across a table. He stepped over half-eaten compressed food on the floor and dodged a twisted mass of fiber cloth that might have been a blanket, searching the small space quickly but getting no reply.
Muttering words even he did not understand, he hooked a can with his foot and flicked it into his hand. He grabbed a metal shard that had clearly been ground smooth on the upper half, with the lower half wrapped in strange fiber cloth to form a crude knife. He pried open the can with practiced ease, speared a piece of food dripping with juice, and stuffed it into his mouth, blocking off his endless chatter.
While eating the strange, unknown food, he showed no sign of discomfort. He stepped back outside and once again ignored the door, slipping sideways into the hover car that had barely stopped. He started the hover system, put his feet back on the dashboard, and the vehicle slid away with its familiar soft mechanical hum, leaving the lit area behind and entering the endless gray ruins again.
This time he did not recite his memorized route. Maybe chewing affected his speech, or maybe the path was simply more complex than before. In any case, after finishing an entire can, he reached another pile of metal junk that could honestly be called trash.
Before the car touched down, he jumped out with the carried momentum and kicked the empty can into the air. It landed with a clang against the metal pile only after he had already touched the ground. "Hey, hey, are you here? I found the solar sail, uh…" Before he could finish, a slender pale hand rested on his shoulder, stopping his words more effectively than food ever had.
"The solar sail. Where is it," came a clear female voice, light but without any emotion. The boy scratched his head in embarrassment, turned around, and took out the strange part he had found earlier. "Ahem, I wasn't done talking. It's a solar sail part, a part. Not a whole sail. There's no way I could find a complete one in a dump like this."
He finally looked at the girl properly. She had white twin ponytails and stood slightly taller than him, wearing clothing far removed from simple fiber fabric. The black tight suit clung closely to a body that was not especially graceful, covering her arms down to the wrists, as if gloves had been removed on purpose, and it matched her cold expression and emotionless gaze without any sense of mismatch.
"Still, don't be disappointed," the boy said, waving his hands in an exaggerated way. "Our small pod should be able to fit a solar sail this size. If we load enough supplies, we can leave this place. It's the age of space colonization, after all. Someone has to pick up our distress signal." Despite his effort to sound convincing, the girl showed no expression at all. She silently took the part and walked toward the core area surrounded by scrap metal.
"I know it's too small. It's obviously for a single person, maybe two at most," he kept talking as he followed her. "Our big guy definitely can't move, but it's still good if the two of us can leave. Once we find people and learn how the outside world works, we can come back. We can bring back whatever parts the big guy needs. Hey, hey, are you listening? Hey!" He never once called her by name, yet she showed no irritation and never stopped walking as they reached the center of the junkyard.
A fairly open space had been cleared among the piles of metal. A black steel giant lay quietly in the middle. Under the boy's accustomed gaze, the white-haired girl leaped lightly several times to reach the giant's chest, pressed something, and then vanished inside.