Chapter Text
Another quiet night found Piper Faraday’s crew aboard the Déjà vu, left to their own devices as the spaceship chugged on to its next destination. The band of space-pirates-turned-world-saviors had been summoned to take care of some lingering Scrappers that were bothering the locals, and while they would have done it anyway, the offered cash reward was quite an incentive for them—some of them had dreams that needed funding, and darn it if Piper wasn’t going to help fulfill them.
The captain herself was relishing the rare moment of peace and quiet while she calculated next month’s spoils, pencil flowing across the page like a fish through the sea. Scribbly notes covered the page from head to toe, yet lead found paper time and time again as she filled in every available space that she could find.
Just as she finished up she heard approaching footsteps, and so she placed her pencil on the desk, looking over her shoulder to find the hunched form of Fen, their antennae twitching in curiosity.
“Hey Captain, what are you doing?” they asked, taking a step closer to look over her shoulder at the desk. Piper gathered the papers accumulated on the desk into a stack, bumping the sides on the wooden surface to straighten the pile.
“Just a bit of paperwork,” she said, “Figuring out how we’re going to split this month’s profits.”
The two blue squares that served as Fen’s eyes blinked as they moved to her side. They got really close to the stack of papers, to the point where they were sticking their face in it. “But… what do these squiggly symbols mean?”
Piper raised her brows at that. “You don’t know how to read?”
Fen raised their head from the desk and stared at her, head cocked to the side. “I… don’t think so.”
Piper shook her head in disbelief; poor Fen had been secluded from the world for so long they didn’t even know how to read. “All right, let’s see what we can do to fix that, now shall we?” she said, opening a drawer and pulling a blank sheet of paper out. In quick, practiced movements she jotted down all the letters of the alphabet, nice and big so they would be easy to see. Piper dropped her pencil again and put a hand on Fen’s back, drawing them closer to the paper. With her other hand she pointed to the letter ‘A’ and said, “Now that’s the letter—”
Her teaching was interrupted by a rather loud smash coming from below, gasps of varied tones coming within seconds of each other. Piper sighed, already dreading the oncoming explanation. “What was that?!”
“Our resident scientist spilled a dangerous liquid again!” yelled the piratey voice of Seabrass, a hint of annoyance in his voice.
“It’s not dangerous! It’s the liquidized cerumen of an unidentified species!” came Dora’s protest, sounding just as unhappy as Seabrass.
“I don’t know what that be, but it stinks worse than the carcass of a whale,” Seabrass complained.
Just as he finished saying that, an unpleasant odor wafted up into Piper’s quarters, and she put a hand to her mouth to suppress a gag. She was afraid to find out what it might look like down there, but she didn’t really have a choice. Turning to Fen, she said, “I have to take care of this, but I’ll finish teaching you later, okay?”
Fen lowered their head, chirping a disappointed note, but ultimately didn’t object and nodded in understanding. With that, Piper leaped out of her chair and hopped down the nearest ladder. As she touched the floor she noticed that Dora had already pulled out a roll of paper towels and was vigorously wiping at her mess. Ivanski seemed to be the only one with enough heart to help her—which disappointed Piper, but she wasn’t going to force anyone else to drop what they’re doing to help with chores. Soon enough Piper was on her knees, scrubbing at the orange substance, all while trying to avoid gagging at the smell.
“Why do you even keep this stuff around on the ship?” she asked Dora, ripping another towel from the roll.
Dora seemed more than enthusiastic to answer, “Zoology is my passion, Captain! There’s still so much out there I don’t know about!”
Meanwhile, in another part of the ship, Payroll and Billy were seated at a table, deep in a game of cards. Billy was valiant and clever, but when it came time for show of hands, he was completely crushed. Payroll had a lot of experience up his sleeve and was hard to beat, even in a game played just for fun!
“Ah, left in the lurch!” the former con artist exclaimed. “Better luck next time, pal.”
Billy slouched miserably into his chair, grumbling in his blubs and bloops. Losing was no fun! And he was brutally murdered, so he felt absolutely humiliated…
A smirk slowly made its way across Billy’s face as he got an idea. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad night after all…
While Payroll was reveling in his victory, unaware of his surroundings, Billy lunged forward from his seat onto the table, sending the playing tokens everywhere with the wild movement. He swiped the purple hat from Payroll’s head, and jumped off the table and to the side, twirling the hat playfully with his finger.
Payroll was stunned, patting his hatless head in confusion as he processed what happened, and once he finished that, he turned to Billy with a pleading look on his face. “Hey, give that back! I’ll have you know that hat’s made of a rare, high quality velvet!”
With a blub of glee Billy ran off with the hat, weaving around obstacles and crewmates minding their own business, scaring some of them silly. Payroll, a master of mobility that was quick on his wheel, made chase—however, their game of cat-and-mouse was quite noisy and bothersome, riling up the others into complaining. It wasn’t long before Piper heard the commotion: another problem placed on the tired captain’s shoulders.
“Yeah, can we not?!” she begged, scrubbing the floor with a renewed energy, worried at the prospect that she has another issue to deal with. “I already have a mess to clean up here, I don’t want another one—”
Not looking at where he was going, Billy accidentally tackled Piper to the floor, face-first into the gooey liquid. Payroll followed close behind, and, seeing the mess before him, swerved around the steambots. He lost control and streaked the orangey stuff all over the place before finally crashing into the wall. Poor Valentine, who had dozed off early, was startled out of a blissful sleep and fell out of his bedsheets.
Piper pushed Billy off of herself with a pained grunt, sitting up and rubbing off the yucky goo that had gotten into her optics. With her cleared vision, she could see that most of her crew had gathered around the scene, almost all of them starting at her. Her face started to burn with embarrassment, but she refused to let her feelings show outwardly. “All of you are going to help clean up, now,” she ordered in a strict tone.
Seabrass was the first to whine, as usual. “Gyarrh, but I didn’t do anything!”
Piper held up her index finger, shushing him. “Not another word! All of you are going to help clean up, Captain’s orders.” At that, Seabrass only grumbled under his breath and walked crookedly over to the paper towel roll, pulling a bunch of sheets off in angry, untamed movements. Piper would’ve laughed at the sight if she wasn’t in such a sour mood.
“Blub?” came a worried gurgle from her side, and she turned to see Billy offering her his hand, an apologetic expression covering his face. If only to please him, Piper gripped his hand and allowed him to help her up. She could feel the junk sticking in her joints as she moved, and it absolutely disgusted her.
Piper then noticed both Ivanski and Fen coming up to her, and there was a certain look in their eyes that told Piper they had something to say. “Bogdan? Fen? What’s up?” she asked, trying to dismiss her aggravation.
“Are you okay, Captain?” asked Fen, the blue eyes on their face-screen transfigured to express concern.
“I’m all right, Fen; don’t worry about me. You should help clean up.”
“Captain can go clean herself up; Ivanski and crew will take care of mess,” Ivanski said.
“No, I’m gonna help, I mean—”
“Captain clean yucky goo from joints; crew will clean up ship,” Ivanski insisted, crossing his arms sternly. He could be extremely stubborn when he wanted to, and Piper knew from experience that he was hard to sway when he was like this.
“All right, all right, I’m going!” she said, raising her arms in defeat. Fen giggled as she went past them and up the ladder.
As she grabbed a cleaning solution and started to put it in her joints, she found her mind wandering, thinking about her crew and back on all the trouble they got into. They got into so much trouble at times, Piper swore, they could drive her nuts. She had to dissolve countless arguments and clean up even more messes. Not to mention the times where someone got especially upset at something, leading to an emotional outburst. No one else seemed to be as great as the comfort stuff as she was, so she often found herself at the troubled crewmate’s side, talking it out with them or simply being there for them. It sometimes made her want to scream or cry, but she had to be strong for them; she was their captain, after all. The one who always led them to victory; the one who had everyone’s back.
To be honest, she wouldn’t have it any other way. It was the role fate put her in, and it wasn’t that bad. And if she said she didn’t appreciate having her crew around, she’d be telling a terrible lie.
She loved them to death. To Piper, her crew was family.
Too bad she couldn’t quite build up the courage to tell them that.
“...Aaaand this one?”
Fen scrutinized the letter on the page before blurting out, “EfffffffaaAAA—”
“Okay, okay, don’t hurt yourself. You almost got it.” Piper had been teaching Fen the alphabet over the past hour or so, and while Fen was a fast learner, some letters took more effort to stick than others. Piper could tell that Fen was getting frustrated with themself, so she figured that now was a good time to wrap it up. Besides, it was getting late, and they had a busy day ahead of them.
Stealing a quick glance at Fen as she put the papers away, Piper saw that their antennae had drooped, a tell-tale sign that they were tired. “Hey, Fen. You did good. No one can master anything in a day. Sally’s still learning, too.”
“Ah keep gettin’ my U’s and V’s mixed up!” came the indignant yell.
“Can I try again tomorrow?” Fen asked.
Piper nodded, standing up from her desk. “Of course. Now how about you get some rest? It’s getting late.”
After wishing her goodnight, Fen complied and scuttled down the nearest ladder to sleep in their corner (Let’s see how long they’ll last there this time; Piper thought to herself. Fen didn’t like sleeping in one spot; oftentimes the crew woke up to find them snoozing in the most bizarre locations).
With Fen taken care of, Piper walked to the ship’s controls, which were only a couple long strides from her desk. “How’s it going, Wonky?”
“The solar wind is blowing in our favor today, Ma’am. We might get to our destination a lot sooner than I initially though.” Wonky tapped a few dials on the control board, checking various measurements.
“Sounds great. Want me to take the helm for a while, so you can get some rest?”
“But Ma’am, you’ve been on your feet all day… Are you sure?”
“And you’ve been at the wheel all day. Oh yeah, and I actually fell asleep this afternoon, somehow. The crew let me nap for a few hours before Valentine decided to scare me awake,” Piper said, putting her hands up in a mock scary gesture.
“That doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“It wasn’t.”
“...You sure you can stay awake at the controls this time? And not doze off on them and make the ship veer off course like last time?”
Piper’s face burned at the memory. They were supposed to go to an outpost to grab some water, and Piper insisted to be at the controls that night. The next morning everyone awoke to Piper hanging haphazardly on the steering wheel, the Déjà vu sailing through Deep Space. They would have gotten stranded if it weren’t for a deep diving vessel coming in from a scouting mission noticing them. “Wonky, I’ll be fine, really. Get some rest,” she affirmed, crossing her arms.
“Okay then. Goodnight, Captain.” Wonky let go of the wheel and grabbed his plant, Earnest, from its perch and a watering can from the nearby shelf. Piper watched him perform his nightly routine with the plant – watering it and setting it by the window – and settled into a bed made especially for him: a bed built in a high position, covered in loose blankets for him to easily slip into.
With a satisfied sigh Piper grabbed the wheel, looking out into the deeps vastness of space. The Core shone dimly from the right, bathing the chunks in a mellow orange glow. Never a sight to tire of, stars covered the blanket of darkness, each and every one a spectacle to behold.
...Scrap, I’m not drifting off course, am I?
Piper turned her attention to control board, checking various gauges and tools; and much to her relief, she wasn’t off course. Damn her tendency to space out at the most inconvenient times… She wanted to get to her destination as quickly as she could, to put a prompt stop to the Scrappers’ acts of violence. She didn’t want people to get hurt again – or scrapped – just because she was too slow—
Piper took in a sharp breath and shook her head, as if to cast the negative memories from her thoughts. She didn’t like to think about that time, but it still found its way into her train of thought every now and then… It didn’t matter now. She has her crew – her family – and she won’t let anything happen to them.
Just then, a loud voice coming from downstairs drew Piper out of her thoughts.
“Hey! Captain said lights out, you two!”
Piper easily identified it as Beatrix’s, and she shook her head in amusement. When Piper wasn’t bossing everyone around, Bea was probably doing it instead. Although it was amusing to hear, Piper still took time to make it clear that she was in charge around here. She only let it slide sometimes because she knew Beatrix was only trying to help, and it occasionally led to some hilarious exchanges taking place between crewmates.
“But we’re almost done! Give us a few more minutes!” Payroll protested.
Piper gave a half smile. Wonder who he roped into playing cards with him this time…
“Nope. C’mon, pack it up and go to bed. We’ve got a day full of fighting Scrappers ahead of us.”
The ensuing back and forth banter was short-lived, but it ended with Bea convincing Payroll to put a halt on the game for the night and go to bed like he was supposed to.
The whole time, Piper was resisting the urge to laugh at their antics. Just one of the many reasons she loved her crew so much, they could brighten her day.
She wouldn’t have it any other way.
Funny how things can spiral downhill so quickly.
Piper didn’t expect that spiral to begin with a literal bump in the night: a terribly loud bang that shook her from her sleep, making her nearly fall off of the steering wheel. It was when she caught herself with her hands, sensing the heavy footsteps resonating through the floor, that she came to a terrifying conclusion:
Intruders.
She was already on her feet, dashing through the darkness to grab her weapon. Reaching a ladder, she didn’t bother to use the rungs and lept down, landing with a heavy thud.
“Oh scrap, where’d they come from?”
Piper felt her gears turning ten times faster at the sound of her crew’s voices; they sounded so scared, so afraid—
And then she bumped into someone with a harsh “Oomph”.
“Captain, is that you?” said the worried voice of Valentine.
Piper didn’t hesitate to grab him by the hand and resume sprinting. “Valentine, what’s happening?!” she yelled, barely audible above the clanging metal that had begun to fill the air.
“I don’t know; Scrappers got in somehow!”
“Scrap!”
Then she heard it: a chilling, steam-curdling scream coming from one of her own, and all at once Piper wanted to stop, turn around and run to them, hug them, tell them they’re going to be okay but she couldn’t and she was so scared for them and—
The bullet came out of nowhere, penetrating the back of Piper’s head, a particularly sensitive spot. She yelled in pain, stumbling to the floor, Valentine falling along with her. She heard him yelp in surprise as his hand was torn from hers, and she reached out with a strangled cry of her own. “No, give him back—”
Her pleads were silenced with more bullets: one to her arm, one to her chest, one to her leg, and oh cog it hurt so much.
“We got what we came for; let’s get outta here.”
Steam curling out of her vents like and angry thundercloud, Piper struggled to her feet, staggering in the direction of the voices. “No, no, no, please—”
“Captaaain!”
That call. That terrified, desperate call for her aid wrenched her heart, weakened her legs, made her realize she was already too late as she fell to her knees, body shaking, breathing laced with panic; and then the door closed with a bang.
Silence. Cold. Darkness. Pain.
Ignoring her battered body’s protests Piper fought to her feet again and fumbled for a lantern, silently praying that this was all a bad nightmare and that she would just wake up already. Please don’t be gone, please don’t be gone, she pleaded, over and over and over again, even as she lit the lantern with shaking hands, lifting it up with her good arm, searching through her crews’ quarters.
Empty. Empty. Empty. All the rooms were empty. Wonky’s gone too; he was ripped from the ceiling.
No.
No.
NO.
“Noooo!”