[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/NYrpWli.png[/img]
[@Silvan Haven][@Crimmy][@Write][@Plank Sinatra][/center]

[i]And I think to myself

What a wonderful worl--[b]THUD[/b].[/i]

What did he mean by that?

Warily, I clicked off the music and set down the headphones. Lack of sleep had been shoved off away from the forefront of my mind, unfortunately enough. Normally when I want to sleep, I'm about as responsive as a brick, but as my sisters woefully became aware of around my sophomore year of high school, I'm still very receptive to loud thuds in my vicinity.

Or rather, considering I had the music playing and didn't actually hear—

I was still very receptive to tactile impacts.

I felt whatever had just happened rumble through the deck. That, in my experience, means there was a lot of weight being thrown around.

And a lot of weight being thrown around without any warnings or alerts or any sort of notification from the crew meant we hadn't just run into something, either. Not if I'd felt it up here.

I stood up.

Either a bookshelf had just fallen over for no reason, or something was afoot.

Not that bookshelves fall over for no reason in the first place...

Opening the door back to room 1004, I was pleased to note that no such incident had taken place in my room. Nothing fallen or out of place in any way. So, nothing on my end fallen over. No coincidences in my room. It being all that I could check on my own with the ship's keycard system, I had to compensate for breadth with thoroughness.

If there was nothing out of place, touched, or hidden within in my room, then I had indeed eliminated coincidence.

What about enemy action?

This time I opened my front door, feeling not dissimilar to how I'd always imagined the victims of a ding-dong ditching would. Any rowdy kids on my metaphorical lawn would probably have gotten an earful from a responsible guy like me, but that was better than having someone else come after them.

I was a rowdy child once, too. 

However, nothing of the sort appeared before me.

An empty hall.

No dents or craters against the wall.

No blood or brain fluid or any other liquid spilled against the wall or carpet.

In fact, there wasn't any sign of anyone having passed through in the last half-hour, really. Even my door wasn't damaged in the slightest, as I deduced after a full swing test. The hinges were even freshly oiled, how nice.

Blinking, I checked down the line to see if that held true for everyone else. After all, the thump didn't feel terribly close by...

I blinked again.

No, yeah.

1003's door wasn't bulging out like that yesterday.

The plot thickens.

Leaving my door unlocked so I could get back in later, I walked over for a closer look. The door hadn't actually broken in any one place, but was in a state that I supposed you could call...

"Barely hanging on" was good. There were definite cracks running along the body, and it'd have taken a significant impact to deform the wood itself like this.

Thus explaining the thud I felt.

I rapped my knuckles against the door twice.

...Nothing.

I did so again.

[b]"Beryl?"[/b]

... Still nothing.

So she either wasn't in the room, or whatever had caused this had left her unable to respond.

...Which meant one course of action was left.

I inhaled, and stood sidelong towards the door.

I extended an arm, fingertips just touching the door, and found my range. Even though it was already half-broken and bent out of shape, I was going against the grain...

I would need power, power beyond compare.

Power was speed.

I needed, then, maximum velocity to overcome mechanical disadvantage.

I bounced twice on the balls of my feet.

Front foot twisted in towards me.

My back foot's heel left the ground.

I pumped out every ounce of torque I could muster in one smooth, explosive motion, creating a kinetic chain of raw force that ended in my heel.

[url=http://www.nantanreikan.ca/Glossary/K/kaiten%20yoko%20geri/kaiten%20yoko%20geri%20diagram.jpg]And I forced my way in.[/url]