Nick sat with his long legs crossed on the barren office floor, cobalt-grey captain's jacket splayed out behind him amidst shreds of carpet and gutted chair cushions. His nose curled upwards as his gaze drifted idly. Moments ago this had been a quaint, yet state of the art little office. He liked it better this way.
He lifted the dark purple cube he'd found to his eye, briefly admiring the translucent material before standing and dropping it down his jacket's cavernous pocket. He left his little ceramic knife beside its shattered blade, and readied himself for the short trip out of Estermere Orphanage and Boarding School, giddy enough to jump off the station's edge and orbit the planet below. Crime didn't pay as well as tending bar did, but it sure was a lot more fun.
As he reached for the angled handle on the synthwood door, it turned, and the 3d printed contraption began to swing towards him. Vester, a round-faced, male-identifying ohma and headmaster of Estermere, stepped one foot into his office. "I apologize, Mr. Harte, but there's been a… security..." His voice grew higher in pitch, faltering before finally trailing off and leaving him agape in the doorway.
Nick yanked the door inward. He kept his grip on the handle so it didn't bang against the office's inner wall, but his sudden motion had achieved the desired effect:
Vester stumbled into the room as the door was torn from his grasp, and Nick caught him with a knuckle to the solar-plexus. He squeaked as his diaphragm collapsed, eyes wild and hands clutching as the wind was knocked out of him.
Nick laid him down on the girded floor amidst the detritus. "Sorry about…" He waved around the room before closing the door behind him and jogging back towards the foyer. He floated over the thick, green carpet, one hand on the dark purple datachit in his pocket. He remembered passing two intersections and taking a sharp left when he'd followed Vester to his office.
A thickly-muscled arm flew at him as he approached the first of the intersections, barely skimming his forehead as he ducked under the attempted clothesline. He sped up to a run without missing a step as a second ohma positioned themselves at the next intersection, their broad shoulders walling off the way forward atop two solid columns of leg muscles. Their entire shape was made of hard, obtuse angles, including a square jaw, rigid brow, and limbs thicker than some of his own ship's support beams attached to an upside-down mountain of pectorals and abs.
Nick squared his own shoulders, locking eyes with the ohma and leaning into his run: he quietly thanked Leru for pushing him to join her on her workouts, but the ohma ahead looked like they could break him in half with one hand regardless. The ohma smirked cockily as they flexed in the tight hall.
Nick met their smirk with his own determined grimace as they settled into their stance, placing one foot half a step behind their bulk. Nick pushed himself into a full-force sprint as the distance between them closed, a low growl beginning in his chest and rising to his throat in a defiant shout as he bounded across the final couple of meters in a mid-air kick.
The guard's smirk showed teeth, falling into a grimacing frown as Nick fell to the carpet centimeters before making contact with them.
Nick's forward momentum pulled him between the guard's wide, braced stance with enough inertia to bring him back up to his feet on the other side with a grin wide enough to feel the breeze in his teeth.
He burst into the foyer/common room, eliciting gasps from the staff who dotted the maze of coffee tables and lounges -- he'd timed his visit to take place while the estate's charges were in class, leaving the space mostly empty.
More thickly muscled guards made their way towards him: two around the edges of the room and three more weaving around the furniture through the room proper. The latter were closer and moving directly towards him, though the large, circular, pamphlet-laden table near the entrance where they'd started meant they had to do so at an angle.
Nick could feel the massive guard he'd slipped under closing the distance behind him as well, the floor beneath his feet trembling harder with each step -- they'd be on him in a matter of seconds. He took one final breath, a bracing step backward, and leapt:
His right foot landed near the edge of one of the low, synthwood coffee tables. The centerpiece rattled, but the furniture maintained its position thanks to being part of the entire 3d printed structure as Nick continued onto the back of an empty chair. He made a rude gesture at a nearby guard as he leapt over them from table, to chair, to table out of reach, soaring over the final few meters between himself and the larger, darker table near the entrance.
His foot landed just shy of the table's center as he realized too late that this was a genuine piece of carved wood. He slid across the surface on a stack of pamphlets titled Proper Self-Punishment as it tilted, threatening to dump him right into the arms of the approaching guards behind him.
He heard a scream of wordless rage, and managed a quick glance back as he slid past the center of the table -- Vester had entered the room just in time for the table to begin tilting in the opposite direction, slamming back down to the floor with a crack as it continued his slide towards the exit, pamphlets toppling and spinning through the air around him. The table deposited him neatly on his feet a couple meters from the door, then went thudding back the opposite way as he stepped off. Motors in the walls whined as he crashed through the large front doors, briefly overshadowing an out of sync, yet tastefully quaint creaking sound from some unseen speaker as he stepped onto the tarmac beyond.