Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was such an ordinary day. It was in fact an INSULTINGLY ordinary day. Blake got out of bed, or more accurately rolled out of bed and fell to the floor still covered in blankets. She
could barely be bothered to move from this position but unfortunately her quite annoying alarm clock decided to beep loud enough that she wouldn’t be surprised if Adam heard it from the next quadrant over. Speaking of Adam, she probably needed to scurry off this ship sooner rather than later. He was still on her tail as far as she knew and their was no time to be-

“Engineering crew, report to the nearest conference hall for immediate check up!!!”

The intercom barked out.

“Huh… I guess the captain is having a bad day.”

Which was amusing to her because the day just started. She groaned as her aching bones stretched themselves out and popped themselves back where they belonged and popped up to her full height. Quickly getting herself fully dressed and rolling her neck a bit, she went off into the brightly lit and bronze colored corridors, her still sleeping eyes hissing in protest as the light stung them like an angry bee. She shrugged off the pain and trudged on, her face drawn into a calm facade, every bit fake and brittle, just like the mask she wore when she was at that monster’s side. Anger at her past and herself caused her to get distracted and stumble on some uneven bit of floor. She tripped down and caught herself, before looking up and seeing that she hadn’t in fact slipped up on an uneven bit of floor. Her ears twitched and she felt the vibrations deep in her bones, teeth rattling and eyes shaking as the entire ship gave a truly strange groan.

“WARNING. MASSIVE DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO HULL. PREPPING FOR PLANET FALL.”

The intercom gave its sullen roar as the lights flashed red and Blake’s mind turned to a single immediate thought.

“The escape pods. THE ESCAPE PODS!!!!”

She picked herself up and ran, so many other panicked voices in her ears, but panic makes us deaf to it all. She slammed her fist into the eject button and heard something as she did. A familiar voice. She turned up to see a familiar face.

“BLAKE!!!! BLAKE OPEN THE DOOR!!!!”

Came the thunderous call of Sun Wukong, his voice outdoing the alarms in causing Blake’s panic to rise.

“I-I CAN’T!!!! IT’S ALREADY-“

*BOOM*

Metal gave its painful and dying shrieks as Blake desperately gestured for Sun to get into another pod. Beset by horror himself, the monkey darted in and Blake saw no more of him… And then she felt weightless. Looking around to see that the escape pod had launched, her eyes darted over to the seat. her only saving grace when this thing started to slow down. Desperately, she clawed for it, mouth agape in a morbid attempt to scream as the seconds ticked by, each one furthering the reaper’s skeletal grasp. She saw everything. Every mistake,every person she failed and tears burned her eyes like drops of acid as death came mere moments away…. Then her hand found steel. With strength only known to the dying, she forced herself into the seat and slammed the bars over herself, locking in and preparing for impact… When a peculiar sound hit the air. Clanging steel, smashing against each other with a wild thrill, as if life were some wild party she was unaware of.

“Wait… WAIT-“

The Panel launched itself around the place, each dent in the life pod adding to Blake’s anxiety and said anxiety was spiked through the roof when it flew at her like Superman winding up a punch. She threw her arms up to deflect the mighty blow, and failing to realize that her arms were locked in place by the life saving seat, she just ended up looking like a fool when the panel slammed into her head and knocked her out cold. She awoke in blissful ignorance for a moment, the world dark and painfully ordinary. Slowly, her body remembered how to move and she awoke, pushing the bar away from her and immediately collapsing to the ground. Her head pounded like the drums of war, and slowly bobbed along to an invisible rhythm. Vaguely, she remembered her home planet, with its Sandy beaches and delicious fish. The beat and bob of the deep blue sea that became a part of her very soul and it was this, not anything else that told her she was on the ocean. Feeling the cold metal bars of the ladder, she ascended it and looked out to the pristine blue sky and endless blue ocean. Her eyes filled with tears at the sheer endless majesty of it all, its might and power making her feel so small. An insignificant flea on the hair of a roaring beast. Her legs felt like jello and her knees buckled like metal incapable of keeping itself afloat. But then something else hit her… It smelled of burning metal and rubber, sharp and noticeable even against the backdrop of salty water. She turned and saw the most demoralizing sight that any one person could. The Aurora. Or rather, the broken and washed up corpse of the Aurora. Its side was gaping and wounded, one of its engines had been shorn off in the crash and its side had been scrapped red and steaming, pained by the fall.

“N-No…”

Despite already being on her knees, she felt like falling further, sinking deeper into the despair that had opened beneath her feet like a gaping abyss. Even from here, she could hear the metal groaning and crying, trying to keep its dignity as the waves battered it gently. Against the blue beauty of the ocean, it seemed like an insult, an oversized beached whale ruining the sanctity of the ground it died on. She had started to seize up, her breath rapidly becoming erratic and shock turned numb terror into gibbering horror. A wave hit the life pod a little too hard and sent her overboard and she let out a terrible scream. But no one heard her. It simply echoed out as she fell into the water… and opened her eyes to see a whole new world before her.

Chapter Text

It was often understated how different the surface of the ocean was to its bottom, yet in many ways, they were much alike. Both were filled with constant movement and beauty, the frothing twinges of the sea mirrored by the mighty thrashes of the fish. Their multi-colored brilliance was a sight to behold, causing even her hightended eyes to be overwhelmed with its splendor. She stood stock still for an impossible moment as the wonder of this alien world temporarily overtook her. But then she noticed something rather important. She needed to breathe. With a desperate burst of fear, she tore her way to the surface and once again…. Was amazed. The beat and Bob of the sea moved her around regardless of what she wanted and even now, the water seemed for lack of a better word…. Alive. It breathed, heaved and hoed, all independent to any patterns she could figure out. All of it was too much and she began to swim back over to the safety of her pod, coming in through the lower hatch and finding the pod still… Dark. This was confusing for a lot of reasons, as she was pretty sure the thing was supposed to reboot by now, but such was her lot. Calmly, she started to investigate the paneling and of course, that’s when an overly loud voice decided to make its presence known.
“SALUTATIONS SURVIVOR!!!!”
Came the overly enthusiastic cry of the PDA lady, which scared her to the point of nearly leaping out of her skin.
“I am AI model number 2432, and I will be happy to run today’s experimental test flight! Running diagnostic!!!”
A strange series of Boops and beeps were heard before she spoke again.
“….. We seem to not be running a test.”
Blake scoffed and went back to rummaging through the place for tools.
“No shit Sherlock. Now give me the rundown of everything wrong with this hunk of junk.”
Model 2432 paused and compiled the information together in a small digestible package.
“Most of everything madam, but no need to lose hope! With a repair tool, you can fix most, if not all of the things onboard!”
Blake sighed and looked at the speaker, which didn’t actually contain the AI’s face or anything even approaching it, but it made sense to her.
“Do we have one here?”
There was a pause and then an answer.
“No.”
Blake’s sense of exhausted fear was mixed with something far more familiar. Complete and utter bafflement.
“WHY? Who decided that was a good idea?!?!”
The answer was rather obvious, that answer being of course a dumbass, but Blake didn’t need to know that.
“It was one of the top businessmen, Jacques Schnee! He stated, and I quote-“
Her voice changed in a rush of static.
“Who’s going to attack us? Those White Fang fools don’t possess the means and it’s not like the ship would crash. Why waste the money?”
Another rush of static and Blake was left alone with a burgeoning feeling of utter fury.
“… If I get out of this, I’m going to kill that man.”
There was a weak alarm and the AI’s voice was now filled with something that she seemed to think was threatening.
“Do not say such things, violence against SDC employees will NOT be tolerated by-“
Blake waved her off and went back to what she was doing.
“I looked over your code, you can’t do anything to endanger me. Now can I MAKE a repair tool?”
The AI said nothing for a moment.
“…… There are sulfur and titanium deposits in the caves below. Bring them to the fabricator and all should be well.”
Blake nodded and sighed before looking at the hatch at her feet.
“Thanks…. Do you have a name?”
The machine within the walls took another moment to respond.
“No. I do not need one.”
Blake shrugged and opened the hatch… But then caught an odd metal smell. It was… Familiar. Suddenly she was a kitten at a museum, touching something she wasn’t supposed to and smelling it. It was orange and shiny but she forgot the name… Nickel? Dime?
“Penny. Ah that’s what it was… Hey, how about I call you Penny?”
The old phrase, of hearing cogs turn in someone’s head was an odd one, but most appropriate in this case.
“…. That seems… suitable.”
The cat gave a small little smile and felt her loneliness degrade just the smallest bit. Maybe…. Maybe she wouldn’t die on this planet after all.
“Now, remember, cave diving on alien planets with very little equipment,training or any idea of the local fauna is extremely dangerous. Keep a calm mind and remember, just because the odds are very low, doesn’t mean that you’ll die a hideously painful death.”
Blake had nothing to say to that. It was so lacking in common sense that she failed to see how the person designing this program could be anything BUT a incompetent boob, however more likely they were a corner cutting employee with a bastard of a boss breathing down their neck.
“… I shall be departing now.”
Penny used her advanced record keeping system to calculate the best thing to say in this situation.
“Best of luck survivor.”
Penny was entirely convinced that “luck” was a complete fabrication but Blake didn’t need to know that. And with that…. She took the dive into the unknown.
*Blub.*
Her old days of diving for fish on her homeworld came back into mind and all but forced her to smile at the thought of that lovely little planet. It wasn’t really lovely, but they made do and happily she hunted for anything that looked like sulfur, keeping a mental clock on when she needed to resurface, which would be in a minute or so…. That’s what she thought at least. In reality it would be far sooner as a high pitched scream, guttural and gripping her with fear. Her head turned on a dime to see a cyclopian bomb charging at her with 0 regard for its life or the fact that she barely glanced over at the thing it was trying to protect. She swam with a desperate fury as the Crashfish raced towards its own death.
“DON’T EAT ME!!!!!!!”
Came Blake’s desperate cry, which sounded like utter gibberish under water. With strength known only to the terrified she ripped a limestone chunk out of the wall and put it between her and certain death. The proceeding explosion knocked her into a wall and her vision went dark… but then she heard something.
“OXYGEN.”
Something that she desperately needed and as the robotic voice started to scream at her, she kicked off the bottom and broke the surface just before life evacuated her lungs. Gasping and barely clinging onto life she grabbed onto her life pod like a terrified child would its mother and forced herself on board before promptly collapsing into unconsciousness. Penny started to make an alarm sound to wake her up and this… partially succeeded. Blake was pawing at something and slowly dragging herself to standing.
“…. I exploded.”
There was an affirmative chirp and Blake took that to mean “good job.” She didn’t know why. It was probably the concussion she suffered.
“Indeed you did! But that is the mark of effort! Also you still need the sulfur or this lifepod will sink within… 10 minutes!”
Blake wasn’t even surprised at this point. Why wouldn’t this rust bucket sink?
“…. I’ll get the sulfur…”
“Great idea!!! I’ll make sure this pod doesn’t sink?”
“……… May I ask how?”
There was a solid minute of silence.
“… Positive thinking.”
……
*Sploosh.*
There was a part of her brain that was seriously concerned with the fact that her ship’s AI appeared to be an idiot, but more of her was concerned with the prospect of pissing off more of those 1 eyed devils. That was until her eyes spotted something yellow in a red plant. It looked… Odd. She swam down toward it and found some truly strange looking material. Shrugging, she grabbed as much as she could, along with a scrap of her former ship and went back to the lifepod, all but assured that the ship would sink to the bottom of these safe shallows and leave her corpse for the water grubs.
“YOU DID IT!!!! Quick, put it in the fabricator!!!“
But it appears that the gods had more in store for her than a relatively peaceful death. The blue lasers of the fabricator lit up the dark room and she smiled a bit, weighing the repair tool in her hands before getting to work fixing the ship up. Within no time, the lights were back on and things felt… Manageable. Not good. The farthest fucking thing from good. But… Manageable.

Chapter Text

The high pitched sound of whirring machinery was an oddly pleasant one, but maybe that’s because her brain was simply associating it with food. In any case, she looked over her prize and smiled, her innate love of fish turning what would be a simple joy to most people, into a near religious experience each bite. Soon there was very little left of the Peeper and she was purring like a happy, content kitten.
“Salutations again survivor. My scanning of the water is now complete! The good news is that it is effectively just normal H2O. The bad news is that my scanners picked up Levithan Class life forms not too far away.”
Which was disconcerting but to call that downright bad is-
“In addition, there seems to be some undiscovered species of micro bacteria in this water. Currently it is dormant in your system but it may cause a bad reaction. And possible death.”
Blake blinked rather owlishly for a cat and wondered about her chances of curing an alien disease with her 0 years of professional training or interest in the medical field. They were probably somewhere in an underwater trench near the planet’s core without someone else’s help, in other words, she NEEDED to find a medical professional NOW. Her head snapped over to the radio and she started to tune in to find a channel. Quickly she did, the garbled distress signal reading out as follows,
“Hey so, I think the floatation device just exploded, but we’ll try to unexplode it. Please send supplies and help.”
Well…. This sounded like a job for our friendly neighborhood feline. She rooted through the glove box and found a scanner before attaching it to her belt.
“I’m going to be off now Penny, don’t do anything dangerous while I’m gone!”
“Survivor Blake, how is it possible for me to do anything dangerous here?”
This was a good question and one Blake wouldn’t answer as she opened the hatch and dove into the unknown.
*SKOOSH.*
The radar on her mask allowed her to see where the signal was sent from and she started to swim over, taking a pause to breathe here and there. Soon enough, she was in a kelp forest and to call it Awe inspiring would be an insult to Mother Nature’s excellent craftsmanship. It was awash with an emerald light, the water reflecting the deep green of the towering spires of plants. The stalks of the greenery were thin, but the leaves were as long as she was tall and they held strange sacks that she presumed were seeds contrasted with their own golden glow. Small fish danced and dove through the jungle, little birds flying through a nest the size of a small city. But her sharp eyes caught something peculiar in the dark hues of green and gold. It was an aqua flick in the corner of her eyes. Sensing danger, she quickly moved on, the lurking movements of the kelp turning from a hypnotic dance to grasping fingers, each one hiding threats that stalked her from below. Her eyes then locked onto the signal, mere meters away and she dove, finding…. A wreck. An exploded and torn apart wrecked life pod. It looked like something tore its way in, large slash marks appearing to decorate the entire thing. Stunned but still of sound mind, she slunk down deeper and rooted around for anything that could indicate location or survival, which was a rather fruitless endeavor. She did find an advanced PDA, and through no action of her own, the tablet downloaded all of its information onto her own PDA. Numbly, she moved to leave and felt…. Odd. Like she just swam into the casket of someone else and looted the remains. A terrible thrum of fear stabbed into her chest and she swam for the surface, her entire body prickling and she nearly screamed every time the kelp brushed against her arm. She broke the thin membrane that separated sky and sea, gasping for air as terror chewed at insides, as if she swallowed a whole school of piranhas and she desperately tried to look for the lifepod that acted as her only chance for continued existence on this planet. Blake clawed at the water and she began swimming towards the lifepod, her mind besieged by horrors of the deep, completely oblivious to the fact that every last one of them was a mere figment of an overactive imagination. All except for one.
*SNAP*
A small explosion of water was the only indication Blake had the jaws of a beast wrapped around her arm. Aside from the stabbing agony of course.
“AHHHHHHH!!!!!”
She screamed as the Stalker sunk its crocodile-like teeth into her flesh, its thrashing indicating a clear Desire to tear the arm out of the socket.
“Get OFFF!!!!”
There was no real reason to scream, it just made the blood more enticing as the Stalker pushed her deeper into the water. She looked at the beast, and attempted to pry open its jaws like a fool and found them as unyielding as titanium… But then she noticed something. A shining beautiful something that jutted out of the beast’s mouth as it attempted to toss her around like a kite in a hurricane. A long, thin tooth that was in grasping distance. Struck by an incredibly poorly thought out idea, she grabbed it and pulled harder then she thought possible, muscle resisted her but ultimately failed and there was a strange *POP* as the razor sharp shearer of flesh was broken free of the monster’s gums. Said monster clearly noticed this, as the pressure on her arm went from squeeze to crush, her bones splintering the slightest bit as it chomped down ever harder. But now Blake had something she didn’t before. Something to bite back with.
“RRRRRAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!”
She gave a burbling war cry as the tooth was grasped with a desperation plated grip and slammed into the sea beast’s face. It responded by shuddering and was about to redouble its efforts in biting, but then the razor sharp and pale white fang seemingly appeared before its eye. Though its mind was too primitive to fully comprehend many things, it did understand one thing. It needed its eyes. Immediately it let go of its one time prey and tried to flee but in a moment of uncontrollable rage Blake used her teeth to grab on before RAMMING the fang into its eye, raking it along the creature’s side and just making sure that it would leave with a permanent reminder of why taking a bite out of her was a bad idea. The poor monster whipped her off with its tail and fled its own home as quickly as possible. Leaving Blake with a bleeding arm and a still gore covered trophy of survival. Weakly, she swam back to her pod, progress slow and vision blurry, a snail’s trail of blood flowing out of her as freely as the air did. Painfully, the cat clawed her way into said pod and looked up at where Penny’s voice usually came out of.
“… Do we have any med kits?”
Not for the first or last time, Blake found it odd that an AI could sound so human.
“OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?!”
Penny screamed, despite being a robot and thus about as religious as a rock.

Chapter Text

The process of hauling herself inside the lifepod was akin to a crab hauling itself out of a near death experience with a pot. Miraculous and utterly pointless without some help as the chances of said crab escaping the kitchen on their own was… Small.
“Penny, focus! I need a medkit!”
Penny’s lifesaver protocols kicked into high gear and a medkit fell on Blake’s head with a minor thunk.
“Use it quickly!!!”
It occurred to Blake that she had no idea what to do with the damned thing but opened it and found some soft cloth.
“How does it work?”
There was a moment of silence as Penny consulted the Manual for a second.
“Slap it on your arm and the synthetic fibers should stop the bleeding and replace organic tissue.”
These directions sounded like horse shit but Blake didn’t exactly have an abundance of options, so she smacked her own arm with the strange material and then there was pain. She felt each fresh bit of meat regrow and scream for a second before suddenly… All was still. Her arm was fine, save for the scars.
“Are you okay now?”
Blake clenched and unclenched her arm, feeling the muscles within reacquaint themselves.
“So…. Are these synthetic fibers permanent?”
She asked, not really worried but somewhat curious.
“No. They’ll be replaced by your original body tissue in time, just like any other body part really.”
Blake had a brief existential crisis as she thought about the fact that technically speaking, most of her body had been replaced by a new body years ago and she was slowly being replaced all the time, but the ramifications of this would have to wait for when she had time to think about it. Which, by the rate things were going, would be when she saw the pearly gates.
“You’re sure that there’s no negative side effects for this?”
“Well, technically speaking, the SDC now owns 5.8675% of your arm.”
Ah every cloud and its silver lining. Or in this case, every silver lining and its severe case of heavy metal poisoning.
“… That is indeed, unfortunate. Can I sue?”
The awkward silence told her no and she chuckled a bit. That chuckling turned into a laugh as the sunken grave of a lifepod appeared in her mind’s eye to mock her. The laugh went from jovial to jagged within mere breaths, each heaving gasp only gave way to more poorly disguised sobs as the exhausted cat fell to the floor in the fetal position, crying as though she were a newborn kitten. She whined and wailed, shaking like a leaf in the wind, curling up on herself in self pitying agony. Penny didn’t know what to do or say as Blake’s body finally gave out, mentally and physically spent. Her rather high pitched keening had been heard from far out and in turn…. Woke something up. The sound pierced the rumbling of her volcanic vent, not because it was particularly loud, but instead because it was painfully familiar. Immediately, the animal bursted out into the clear blue water, gnashing teeth and claws, magma leaking from its gums like venom from the fangs of a snake…. And then it noticed the smell of blood. A low rumble rattled in their stomach and hunger began to gnaw on its ribs. Deciding to forgo the hunt for memories, it instead began to hunt for something far more satisfying. Meat.
“Grrr…”
The stalker snarled lowly, its wounds ranging from stinging to a white hot burn, mainly from its eye, or rather the lack thereof. It could hardly swim, for the tail that once propelled it so quickly, had been weakened. Sickly yellow blood hanging over it like a halo of death. And in a breath, predator turned to prey as the smaller but far stronger teeth of an underwater dragon wrapped around its once oh so fearsome jaws, biting in such a way that it couldn’t open its mouth to bite back. It thrashed in a futile attempt to escape its fate before claws like hooks sunk deep through scales and it gave one last baleful twitch before… It just stopped. There’s only so far one can swim when the hands of fate reach for a neck to break. There was a deep powerful crack and all the fish nearby swam away, the vibration of bone breaking was strong enough to be felt, Nevermind how chillingly soft yet heart stoppingly loud the impact was. The beast let the quarry bob in the water for a moment, inspecting the body for anything that caught its eye. Perhaps this creature had a shiny rock? Or maybe. No. Nothing of note. Disappointed, but nonetheless happy with the food, the 7 foot long stalker’s body was grabbed by the tail and taken near the dragon’s den. Just close enough so that it’s meat sizzled and became crunchy. Just like how the sea dragon enjoyed its food. The lush tropic of golden hair on its head floated upwards like a crown, which was fitting seeing as it was the apex predator in this part of the sea. Looking around for a moment, surveying its domain, those glowing violet jewels locked onto something truly bizarre. A floating and glowing rock. Floating rocks were not strange to the dragon, but a floating rock that glowed was somewhat to be investigated. The strange rock was a distance away, but to a creature who deemed themselves sovereign over these shallow waters, such distance was easily traversed. In moments, they were upon the strange shiny looking thing and were enraptured by it, an age old adoration of all things that glimmered and shined causing the tunnel visioned creature to ignore many things. Like the strange hum the ship made. Or the fact that something seemed to…. Wriggle inside of it. The dragon paused, and looked it over, her hair and tail drifting in the tide for a second as rather haphazardly, it bumped the strange construct. In return for such an effort, it was rewarded with a sound. The most painful sound that the poor beast had ever heard.
“Penny, WHAT?!?!?”
The human voice was such a strange thing. Such a specific pitch and so unique. Everyone seemed to have their own unique flavor diction and their own way of speaking. Some people used their entire body, some remained stiffer than a board.
“There is a MASSIVE thermal reading near the lifepod! It’s at 100 degrees Celsius and climbing!!!”
Blake pretended she knew what Celsius was and sighed, being an example of the former as she used every single ounce of her being to express exasperation.
“What do you want me to do about it?”
Penny calculated the best response to that and came up with this.
“Go to the top of the lifepod and see if you can find anything!”
The cat didn’t have much to say to that and she was a few steps past caring. She hauled herself onto the ladder and looked around for a moment.
“I’m not seeing anything Penny. Just water.”
Well…. That would be a lie. Something strange caught her eye as she was about to duck back into her pod. It glowed brightly in the inky seas, the water around it frothed, as though hitting an invisible mountain and she could have SWORN she heard bubbling. Her eyes locked onto that single point of gold in the black, a stray sun lost in the night sky.
“… Penny. What am I looking at?”
Something hot apparently. The water turned from a slight bubble to a full on broil as the dragon clutched its skull in absolute agony, that strange sound that this rotund creature made turning her mind to mush as other sounds kept appearing, as if trying to drive the sea monster into the furthest reaches of madness. Something a human might call pride but a beast only knew as life boiled in its throat and in a flash it ROARED. And as with every other time she roared, a stream of molten metal and rock was launched from her mouth and scolded the side of the ship. The paint bubbled, the metal rang out with an evil hiss as the cat on top screeched and dove back into the safety of her lifepod. The dragon, proud that its dominance was established, rushed back to its lair. The beast buried itself in magma vent and gave a low whine, trying to pretend that it still wasn’t scared by those…. Sounds.

Chapter Text

Blake was having a panic attack. Penny knew she was having a panic attack because of her erratic heart beat,the general scrambling of limbs and her overly heavy breathing. But she didn’t know how to stop this as all of her data reports that the best way to calm a panic attack involves speaking in a calm and controlled manner. She did not feel calm nor in control of much besides her own voice. And her voice didn’t seem like enough to stop Blake from giving herself a heart attack. Which was not ideal according to her scanners. What should she do?!?! The only relaxing thing that came to mind was… A song. “
“Yes, that's perfect!!!”
*A strange song started to play through the speakers. It was… Soft. Alleviating. The smallest touches to the piano and the lowest ambiance all added together into something that made her feel… Safe. Even as she ventured further into the unknown.*
“… Are you okay now?”
Blake was very much not okay but in spite of this, she still managed to reply to her robotic companion. Her breathing was still heavy and her heart rate was a little high considering she wasn’t moving but regardless she was no longer in the danger zone.
“… Penny. What. Was. THAT?!?!?”
“I have no idea. The creature matches no scans of any species throughout the known galaxies. Though this was only a surface level scan I can conclude some things about it-“
Blake snarled and went right up to the speaker.
“YOU NEARLY GOT ME KILLED!!!! WHAT IF THAT LAVA SPRAY WAS CLOSER?!?! WHAT IF THAT THING DECIDED THAT IT WANTED CAT SOUP?!?!? WHAT IF… Oh… Oh gods…”
Her legs turned to jelly as she fell back.
“I’m going to die here.”
It was a strange thing to realize how out of your depth you were. Like jumping into a pool only to realize that it isn’t as shallow as you thought. That terrible moment where you keep expecting to hit the ground only for no ground to appear. And you just sink. Deeper and deeper. The darkness that you thought was a floor turning out to be a yawning abyss that was about to swallow you whole. Breath was getting hard to obtain, her lungs were squeezed into singularities as the jaws of despair began to snap around her neck. It got tighter and tighter, she couldn’t breathe and in her state of crushing defeat… a poke. A small stab that drew an even smaller amount of blood. The pain shook her out of the vacuum sealed coffin that slowly drained her of soul. Her foot had been cut on a tooth. A large, cone shaped tooth that she tore out of a monster’s mouth. The marks of the other teeth pulsed on her arm and she felt different now. Looking at the tooth seemed to remind her of something but she couldn’t remember what. Then… it clicked. An old tale that was passed from port to port, a news story that was blazened on every cereal box for a good long while. The tale of an invincible girl who fell from her ship onto an alien world. She fought a great beast armed with nothing but a sharpened metal pipe and an escape hatch. The story diverges a few places here, some said she slayed the beast in one attack, some say she battled the beast for an entire day until it ended in a draw and still others… They say she stabbed her pipe into its eye but that didn’t kill the monster. So she grabbed one of its teeth and used THAT as her spear. In a fit of brutality she tore the terror’s skull open with its own tool of butchery and howled towards the sky screaming, as if declaring her victory to the gods themselves. And as she looked at her own blood staining the Stalker’s tooth… Blake couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she and that legend had something in common now.
“How could you? You’re nothing.”
Came a voice in the back of her head, whispered in a low huff and spoken in the skin of a lover.
“You barely got this far without me. Just wait here… And let me save you.”
A lie. The same lie a salesman might pitch to get you to buy poison.
“… if I stay stagnant… I die. And I will not die here.”
Something stirred in her chest, like an animal waking from a fitful rest into a new day.
“You won’t save me Adam. You never have.”
With that solemn truth realized she looked down at her blood stained weapon and grabbed it, examining it raptly as Penny hesitantly asked her a question.
“…. w-were you talking to me?”
Blake shook her head and went over to the fabricator.
“No. Now how do I make a knife with this thing?”
This was a question that Penny felt prepared to answer.
“The largest blade allowed by the SDC is 200 millimeters long. Is this acceptable?”
The tooth itself was longer than that, so…
“Yes.”
Metal,bone and rubber were placed into the fabricator and what came out was… Deadly. The hardened calcium mixed with the titanium into a curved dagger. Blake took it in her hand and stared at the reflection it held within. She didn’t see a survivor. It was just her. Plain ol Blake.
“…. Can I make a base of any kind down here?”
Penny quickly looked over the blueprints.
“Yes. You need a terraformer-… wait no that was removed. Hmm… where is it? I think it started with a b… WAIT! It’s a habitat builder! Not a base builder!”
Blake per usual had no idea what Penny was talking about but did once again consider the fact that most AI’s she’s spoken to were a bit less dorky.
“Okay so you need a computer chip,wiring kit and a battery.”
The cat was about to dive into the sea once again before she stopped.
“…. How do I get those first 2?”
Penny paused for a second.
“The material is in the caves.”
“The caves with the exploding death fish?”
“Yes.”
Blake wanted to be disappointed but frankly she would be more surprised if the stuff was in a convenient location.
“… I’m sorry for yelling at you earlier.”
Penny was going to say something but… Nothing came to mind

Chapter Text

Finding the material for a habitat builder was in reality rather simple. Finding all the material to build a base on the other paw…
“HOW MUCH TITANIUM CAN THIS THING POSSIBLY NEED?!?!?!”
“2 more chunks of scrap metal should be enough.”
Penny’s rather chipper tone contrasted heavily with Blake’s frustrated hiss as she angrily dove back into the sea.
“This is stupid, how could anything need this much metal?!?!”
Her anger only grew as the metal scrap she required was quite heavy and she didn’t know how to carry more than one without dropping the other piece. Deciding that she has enough injuries for one day, the cat carried the scrap one piece at a time. It was as annoying as you’d expect. Especially when you were getting pestered by a 7 foot long vice grip with teeth.
*SHINK*
The bone blade was already out and had sunk hilt deep into its jaw. The beast glared at her but knew better than to test her again and quickly swam off. Yellow blood floated in the water for a moment but Blake kept it moving, sheathing the overly long dagger back in its case. She arrived back at the pod and popped back in.
“Have you got it?”
Penny asked as Blake just shoved the scrap in the fabricator and watched as the glowing blue lasers carved up the heated metal into something that the habitat builder could actually use.
“…. You’re being a bit rough with that Blake.”
The AI didn’t know if the fabricators broke but she didn’t want to risk it.
“Won’t matter, we finally have enough to build a proper base!!!”
The now amphibious cat held the habitat builder up like it were the sword of light that would strike down a demon king.
“…. You’ll still need the fabricator.”
Said Penny, the Debbie Downer.
“I know Penny but you know what I won’t need?”
Penny processed for a second and came to a conclusion.
“I do not know what you won’t need.”
The aquafeline kicked her shitty sleeping bag across the pod and accidentally hit her shin on the solid metal ladder.
“I WON’T NEED TO SLEEP IN HERE!!!!”
She hopped up and down, either from the joy coursing through her or maybe from the pain of banging her shin on the damned ladder. In any case, she was clearly energetic and ready to build the habitat.
“Alright, one last thing, how do I talk to you more consistently? Because I… I kinda need your advice more than occasionally.”
The AI chirped and the fabricator started to move on its own accord. A strange new oxygen mask was suddenly in front of Blake and it had a hint of a radio line on its side.
“This should allow me to speak to you even when you’re out of the lifepod! Now go out and build!”
Penny’s enthusiasm for once meshed well with Blake’s and the cat dove into the sea, with the resources to turn something hostile into a home.
“Okay so I just… hold it out?”
Doing that cussed a few things. For one, Blake moved slightly in the current. And her arm drifted with her. Most importantly, she looked like a complete dolt.
“…. I really hope this is a slow roll kind of thing,”
Penny tuned in and spoke for the first time with the new radio set up.
“SALUTATIONS!!!!!!”
And promptly scared Blake so effectively that the cat sprung out of the water like she was fired from a slingshot with questionable aim.
“…. The volume was too high wasn’t it?”
The sea faring fuzzball didn’t really respond but Penny assumed the answer was yes.
“Oh, you forgot to turn it on.”
Despite the possible tinnitus she was suffering from, Blake heard her loud and clear. Possibly indicating that the volume was still too loud, but that was the problem of someone without hearing problems.
“L-Let’s try this again….”
She hit the trigger on the device and multiple lasers sprouted from it, like a flower opening its petals. Within seconds, and by a design that would seem magical to most, a glistening construct of metal appeared in the ocean. The sun reflected off its pure white surface and its rather wide shape underlied a clear roominess. This… This could very well be home-
“Wait, where's the entrance?”
The SDC logo was then spotted by Blake and the reason there wasn’t a door on the habitat clicked in her mind like a rock falling on her head.
“… T-That… THAT CHEAP PRICK!!!!!”
It was lucky that she was so close to the surface, otherwise the cavalcade of swearing would have spelled her doom, for all of the oxygen in her lungs would have been used up swearing. That being said, due to the hyper potent cocktail of rage in her body, she may have just evolved gills and used those to swear until all the water in the ocean turned foul from her language.
“Oh all you need for that is quartz and titanium which you have plenty of!”
Blake huffed and talked into the radio wire thing.
“But those are for emergencies!!!!”
“And what is this?”
Penny’s unassailable logic was hard to argue against so Blake grumbled but ultimately installed the hatch, wasting quartz on what should have been a preinstalled fixture. But that was that, no more of these shenanigans. Now all she had to do was-
“Penny, where's the oxygen?”
Blake said, wasting more of what was APPARENTLY a precious resource.
“The oxygen only works when it has a sufficient fuel source. I could tell all of you this sooner if you just slowed down a bit.”
Penny sounded slightly frustrated. Possibly because speaking while also trying to download “how to make humans not die in a metal box under the sea” 101 with no Wi-Fi and crappy reception was… difficult.
“O-Okay. S-So what do I use to power this thing?”
The schematics were helpfully brought up on her scroll and she had a few bad options. The bioreactor which needed fish to fuel it. Fish that she needed to fuel herself and she couldn’t catch them consistently enough for that to make any sense. Then there was the thermal reactor which she… did not have the right metal for. Thus her only option was solar panels. Solar panels that would only work for part of the day and not even provide that much power for the effort.
“… Alright. Let’s get this place booted up.”
She went out into the sea once more, its cold but soothing embrace like the chilly arms of a lover, trying to steal the blanket from you. Briefly the cat thought of her past experiences with love… And she shook her head with a snarl, getting back to work after going to the surface for a quick breath before getting back to work. All the while, from places unseen both above and below, a pair of eyes set their gaze upon her. From below was the beast. A monster. By all stretch of the word, an abomination. Scales covered its body like armor, especially where her powerful tail writhed back and forth, the tri-pointed fluke connected by a fleshy webbing and had patches of rock on it, still glowing from the lava vent she lived in. Its hair was as gold as the precious metal it collected, its hands ended in often used, yet still clean claws, and then the eyes… curious bright purple eyes locked onto… Something she had never seen before. But, like everything in this part of the ocean, the dragon assumed that this creature was prey. Something to be hunted down… but for now… her curiosity outweighed her hunger. And in the cold gloom of space, there he was. In the captain’s seat he sat, his eyes locked on his computer, like it had just stolen something from him. His horns curled behind his head and camouflaged into his bright shock of crimson hair, the 2 ebony spikes hidden like snakes in the garden and the blue light bounced off his bright white mask, making it look like he wore a small chunk of a stolen moon on his face, possibly to make sure he never truly saw the sun. The hunter had his gaze upon a photo of Blake, one taken right before she boarded a cruise ship, in a futile bid to get away from him. It didn’t work. And he would make sure she knew it would NEVER work.
“Hmm…”
But as different as the pair of eyes that locked on Blake were, as different as they looked,sounded and even breathed they had one thing in common. Their hungry little eyes locked onto Blake and wondered…
“How do I catch you?”

Chapter Text

It would be wrong to say that the base was complete. Mainly because it lacked so many very vital things. But she did have her own quarters and an actual bed to sleep in, along with a good view of the sea.
“You know Penny… This isn’t so bad.”
She said aloud to her friend in the walls.
“I must warn you, that if night falls when you are in here and power goes out, you may very well suffocate.”
Blake just stared at the ceiling for a second before popping out of bed and storming towards the hatch.
“How do I make a thermal reactor? Where are the materials?!?!”
Her anger at the stupidity of Schnee industries was growing every second she was on this planet and rather forcefully she yanked her newest tool out of the locker. It was 2 feet long and glowed a brilliant blue in the dark.
“Scans of the planet show that Magnite is on it, but it is difficult to pin down a specific location. Might I recommend something?”
Blake didn’t respond as she made sure that her only actual method of travel was in tip top shape.
“You could perhaps check out the new distress signal. It is at a depth of 200 meters so remember to bring your rebreather.”
Blake paused at that.
“…. What did the distress signal say?”
Static played over the comms for a second before Penny’s voice cut it off.
“Their own radio was compromised. No audible message available at the time.”
Blake sighed, but got ready for another long dive regardless.
“Any idea about the environment over there?”
“Yes. Signs of echolocation and water displacement suggest whale-like life forms feed over there.”
That sounded potentially dangerous, but also rather intriguing. Whales were among the first large species to die out on earth, but thanks to cloning technology had been brought back. Though, they’re under close supervision so the amount of the public that had seen them and lived to tell about it could have been counted on Captain Hook’s bad hand. And being that she had grown up on a beachside planet, she had always wanted to see one…
“I’ll be in and out. Be back soon!”
She opened the hatch and looked at her heads-up display and saw the general area where the distress signal came from.
“Why did you say bye?”
Penny's STILL overly loud voice spoke in her ear.
“…. Old habits.”
The seaglide gave a powerful snarl as it then blasted Blake off into the further reaches of the sea, cutting through the kelp forest, the rather imposing sound of its engine making any Stalker think twice before tangling with her. Its turbine propeller cut through the sea with the efficiency of a lawnmower and gave the sea drenched survivor a break from swimming everywhere.
“Approaching a flatter expanse of ocean.”
Blake wondered why Penny bothered to say that, but her incredulous response died in her throat as the gorgeous expanse of ocean was revealed to her. Its vastness was only matched by its beauty and the true sight to behold was the fields of crimson grass. Like an underwater savanna, it stretched for as far as the eye could see, patches of sand making the ocean floor appear spotted, like the coat of a crimson leopard and tall spires of stone stretched upwards, the probing fingers of a rocky giant. Tears stung her eyes as the floor raced to meet the endless blue sea, a horizon that was beneath a horizon, an expanse of beauty that bloomed beneath the waves. But as beautiful as this particular stretch of sea may have been, even with the tears stinging her eyes… it couldn’t hide the inherent savagery that marked it as a part of nature. The thick red grass swayed against the current when something thought she couldn’t see it, the herbivorous fish seemed to keep a very close eye on what was beneath them and even the few predatory creatures she could see seemed wary of the blood grass. But of all that was a natural sort of disturbing. It didn’t stem from anything more than nature taking its course… It was not a tragedy. Simply, it was the way things were. But something that rested in these waters, was in fact a tragedy. A building-sized tragedy that had been stabbed into the ground, like the desperate claws of a falling cat, its rotted white exterior an outright insult to both the chaotic beauty that surrounded it and the sterile serenity that it once flew with. A large chunk of the Aurora was stuck in the ocean, never to see the stars up close again. Trapped and lost forevermore, in the crystal clear waters of a planet millions of miles from home. The sight of a chunk of the spaceship she once called home in such a sorry state stirred something in her chest and quickly she shot up to the surface, catching a breath to more properly mourn her planetfall with. But such sobbing sorta stopped before it could begin because just as she was about to let loose the first heave… a truly monstrous bellow rang out from beneath her feet.
“… Please be nice,please be nice,please be nice,please be nice-“
*GROOOOOAAAANNNNNN*
“I think you found one of the whale-like life forms! Quick, scan it, it could have invaluable secrets!”
Blake wanted to ask if this creature was perhaps aggressive, but the fact that it passed by her, seemingly unaware that she existed, sort of answered that question for her… but she didn’t dare move regardless. Her mind and body have been shocked into stillness by the sheer scale of the sea beast. Its back carried the entire weight of a reef, plants of all kinds blooming on its hardened carapace, life had grown on life and despite the fact that the plants offered no immediate benefits to the Levithan, it didn’t seem to mind. But then… It gave off another throaty bellow, with all the guttural zeal as a madman at an opera, the base of its song making even the hardest beat drops seem soft. And despite how loud it was… it was still rather kind to listen to. The pitch vibrated her very bones but that is what soothed her aching muscles. Slowly the great stone skinned creatures swam away and left Blake drifting in its wake, honored to have been in the presence of such a magnificent creature… but then another bellow. A response and a cry. A roar and a growl. Slowly, like islands coming into view, more of the creatures swam over, the strange propulsion systems that sat beneath their rocky backs guiding them ever onward as they talked and sang about distant places. Some were small and stuck close to their parents, the plant matter on the babies shells seeming as young as the rest of them. But then… there were the older specimens. These creatures were what foothills wanted to be when they grew up, giant in every sense of the word, their hardened bodies seeming more impervious than the face of a steel plated mountain… but evidence on the contrary was written across the skin or exoskeleton in this case. Because across that exoskeleton, on the largest of the Reefbacks was something rather simple. A tooth. A single tooth that had been lodged into its body with what one could only call a biblical amount of force. Along with… burn marks. Perhaps not unusual in of themselves, putting aside the fact that they were under the sea thus the only way this giant could have been burned was volcanic activity, the tooth itself was surrounded by blackened shell. As if it had been burned… whilst being bitten by something. The horror at this rather concerning revelation snapped the cat out of her near divine worship of the leviathans and immediately she went over to scan the both tooth and Reefback. The scan of the peaceful beast showed her a great degree of things. It’s lifecycle,feeding habits and age. Turns out this particular specimen was in his early 500s. She chuckled a bit at that, but that chuckle died an early death when the data regarding the giant tooth came in. According to the scanner, this was a month old injury and that it was made by predatory Levithan. Not surprising, but certainly unnerving. But the scale and strength of this particular Levithan was rather concerning. For, in order to crack the shell of a reefback, one would need to exert around 100 tons of force. Judging by the angle of the tooth, and how deep it was buried into the shell the scanner concluded that the creature who bit into this shell would be capable of chewing through the hulls of spaceships. As for its size… apparently it being around 80 meters or in space American terms 262 feet long would be a conservative estimate for it. Trying to ignore the tremors in her hands, Blake went off to take another VERY deep breath, before diving back down, hyper aware of every twitch in the water, her breath becoming so heavy that a very noticeable stream of bubbles appeared every time she exhaled. Every part of her behavior made it seem like she was some species of aquatic and terrified gopher as she quickly found the destroyed lifepod. The fact that said lifepod looked like something chewed it up and spat it out did not help her mood. She quickly went about scanning it for anything useful before turning to leave.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. THINGS ARE FINE.”
The horror she felt was not at the mere thought of there being some kind of building sized monster roaming the waters. The horror that she felt was more at the sheer fact THAT SHE HAD NO IDEA WHERE IT COULD BE. It was possible that it simply could appear out of the water or maybe tear it’s way through the sand-
*GRRRRAAAAHHHHH*
“OH GODS OH SWEET MOTHER OF ALL THINGS HOLY!!!”
Blake prepared for some kind of giant, a beast who’s every breath caused a hurricane… Instead it looked to be some kind of spasming shark. That wasn’t even trying to eat her, it was chasing some fish.
“…. Okay. That’s… That’s normal.”
What wasn’t was the little piranha that had bitten into her arm. She stabbed it with her knife before seeing that it had 15 other friends. Quickly deciding that leaving would be prudent, she sped away on her sea glide, the thought of a man sized tooth still embedded in her mind.

Chapter Text

Penny was observant. Annoyingly so, she would argue because there was a difference between being observant and being forced to be observant. One can be turned on and off the other was constant, which was not really helpful. She kept getting intakes of junk data that didn’t help anyone, like the size of the waves gently slapping the hull, the angle of this star’s rays and occasionally the fact that a fish was near them. True, it gave her a basic timeline of things that happen in one day, but besides that it basically just clogged up space and she constantly had to delete it. So imagine her surprise when this constant awareness of everything around her started to yield good results.
“Heightened heat readings? From what?”
The AI combed the area with the lifepod and habitat’s fairly rudimentary scanners, finding another slew of junk data but more importantly, the temperature reading was always within a margin of error, 1 or 2 degrees off here and there but not enough for anything to be considered strange… yet here came in these hot spots. They were never particularly large but they went from the surrounding water temperature of a mere 26 degrees Celsius to a scalding 95. Just a few degrees below what would be required for water to boil and this just… comes and goes as it pleases. It wasn’t natural and the calculations for it being a lava vent were so one sided that the possibility was worth disregarding entirely. She kept it in the back of her metaphorical head while also pondering how she, a machine, understood what a metaphor was.
“Penny? I got the schematics for the Seamoth but… Still no survivors.”
Briefly the copper themed robot wondered if it was perhaps the time to tell Blake that the chances of there being survivors were low, as based off her own performance and calculating the likelihood of hostile life forms,hunger,water or simple accidents against them, the survivors of the Aurora crash faced an immense challenge that they simply were not prepared for. Yet everything she knew about humans told her this was a terrible idea.
“That’s to be expected. The area that all the pods would land on are separated by a few miles of sea and we can’t expect that all of them would be lucky enough to land in areas like this.”
This was true but as the data about this heat anomaly kept raising questions and answering precisely none she wondered if “lucky” was the best way to describe the location they ended up.
“I-I guess. I mean… I can’t be the ONLY survivor right?”
Her only companion said nothing in response to that.
“…. Right?”
The thought of the creature that could bite hard enough to crack the shell of a reefback made keeping calm a futile endeavor. Her mind was besieged by it, the sheer scale of it. To think something that large EXISTED was enough to make her entire body shake, like she was a newborn kitten.
“Blake, focus on the Seamoth. Once you obtain that, we’ll actually be able to use the geographic scans I’ve done.”
Forcing down the fear, the fear of the unknown and known, the knowledge of a shark being in the water and the lack of knowledge when it comes to its actual location. She gave a brief look outside, to the window she built, noticing something she didn’t want to. A Levithan class lifeform could be within a mere 500 feet from her and be perfectly hidden in the deep blue hues of the sea.
“P-Penny…. What else did you get out of the tooth I scanned? Anything about range or habitat? Places to watch out for?”
Silence. The machine was either thinking of a lie or trying in vain to find an answer.
“Penny… I need an answer.”
The AI sighed in a rather human manner and spoke gently.
“There are high traces of residue that would line up with volcanic and organic activity. It seems life on this planet has evolved to begin consuming magma and other lifeforms. That is all this tooth has revealed to me.”
Blake nodded and got her breathing under control.
“Okay, okay… so stay away from volcanoes?”
“That would seem to be the best recommendation for a long and happy life. All the reviews on volcanoes come back distinctly negative.”
Blake didn’t know if she was joking or not but Penny’s deadpan response made her feel a bit better.
“Now, back on task Blake. SeaMoth. Quickly.”
The scuba cat nodded and looked over the recipe for a fresh baked Seamoth.
“Oh… This is actually a bit more convenient than I thought it would be.”
It was just lubricant, titanum, a power cell and some glass. Easy as pie. Assuredly nothing would go wrong with her scraping this together.
“By the way, did you notice any thermal vents on your swim? I wasn’t scanning for them at the time, sorry.”
Blake looked up at the speaker in the habitat, despite the fact that her companion was still in her scuba mask.
“No… Why do you ask? Is it because of that one time lava came out of nowhere on the lifepod?”
Which was concerning but she didn’t think it was the biggest deal. These were the lies Blake told herself to get through the day and were she in any other situation, therapy would probably be a much better choice. However she wasn’t in another situation, she was in the watery circle of hell so lies would have to do.
“Let’s go grab the stuff. And some fish for dinner.”
Dinner for one, but dinner nonetheless. She swam out, grabbing first the scrap but then she noticed some sandstone outcrops and decided to smash them.
“Ooo, gold!”
She needed that for… something. Quickly putting it in her underwater backpack she moved on and happily enough found the rest of the materials easy enough. Hell, she didn’t even see any signs of stalkers anywhere, so that was nice.
*….beep*
The heat scanner went off. Which was strange because the water still felt fine. Blake looked at her thermometer confused while Penny scanned the area for any irregularities. And found one. A very large one.
“Blake get down into cover!!! Use those coral tubes!!!”
Seeing no reason to disagree with the machine that could feel fear, the cat dove into the small space, squeezing in while also making sure she could wriggle out later. Her ears twitched and the faint sound of bubbles not her own became to resonate into the water. Something floated above her, but it didn’t have a shadow.
“Grrr…”

It was here. She KNEW that her prey was here but she could never find it! The prey was so slippery and elusive. Smart. She liked smart prey, they usually made hunting the most fun, but this was just IRRITATING. In a fit of rage, the dragon let out a terrifying roar, her hair lighting up like a second sun, lava dripping to the Sandy floor making glass in seconds as each individual muscle rippled, from the tips of the golden mane to the end of her golden tail. Teeth gnashed, claws grasped, frustrated with the fact that there was nothing to slash.

“…….”
Blake didn’t know what the hell she was looking at. Her eyes told her things that were inherently impossible. Her mind screamed at her that the thing she saw was an aberration of all thought and this conflict made her body go numb. So many things were captured in a second and even as the creature whirled around, apparently looking for something the shock faded. The light hit the mermaid’s face and something in Blake’s chest started to pulse strangely. She was… beautiful. That was the only way to describe her. Even with her face locked in a permanent scowl of rage, even with the tail that seemed to be barbed at the end, even with the fact that she seemed to be wearing the skin of another monster as a tank top and that her claws seemed to be primed to kill, the grace she showed in the water, the shine of each scale and glow of hair. But then… Then there was the roar. It was as if a Bull, Tiger and Elephant bellowed in rage all at once, causing the cat’s very soul to shrink back.
“… Blake. That appears to be the cause of the heat fluctuations in the area, and is likely the top predator in this part of the ocean. All you can do right now is hide and pray it doesn’t find you.”
Penny was programmed to be positive and cheerful. And it was this fact that made Blake 1,000% sure she was dead. Because if THAT was the most positive course of action she had… She was dead.

Chapter Text

Jaguars. That’s what Blake was thinking about at the moment. See, jaguars were actually more aquatic then one might think, at least according to her books. The old joke about cats and water didn’t apply to them and much like a jaguar it didn’t apply to her. She felt at home in the water and she always did.

“Grrr…”

But as she watched that golden monster swim around, its body rippling with steel corded muscle she realized something. Even now, even after all that’s happened, with the scars that stalker gave her, the tooth of that overgrown deep sea abomination and now this… she still felt at home here. And she wasn’t going to let anyone kick her out of her own home.

“Okay Blake, the creature seems to be going somewhere else.”

A sigh. A deep breath.
“For now, yes Penny. But she’ll be back eventually and I can’t always find a place to hide.”

It was just like with the bullies on her homeworld. They bit and shoved, picked and prodded at her…until she showed them what a true hunter’s fangs looked like. Or in the more poetic way Sun would put it-

“Give the bastards a bloody nose and they’ll find someone else to pick on.”

And this yellow devil seemed like quite the bastard.

Her prey was hiding. That was the only conclusion she could come to as she slunk around, sniffing for any foreign scent. But it never really occurred to her that she was also being stalked. Not even once did she check her six or consider the fact that she may have been getting hunted. Would you? Really, would you? Imagine yourself in the dragon’s position, she knows she’s not the baddest thing in the entire ocean but that being said, the last time something looked like dinner it ended up on her plate. So that is to say, what exactly would you have to be concerned with if you’re in an ocean shallow enough to see the bottom? Blake apparently.

*SHINK*

The seaglide may have been faster but it would have been too noisy for her purposes. As of such, Blake breaststroked her way over to the monster and when said monster wasn’t looking rammed her knife into where she thought the neck was.

“GROOOOAAAAARRR!!!!!!”

She did guess correctly but the issue was that she guessed correctly. Instantly boiling blood rushed out the wound and all over her hand, the resulting wound being a combination of a stinging burn and salt flowing all over it. The bone blade stuck in and she let it go because of the burn. She looked up to see the beast she just stabbed looking more enraged than she thought possible, hell even Adam looked more calm and collected at the worst of times.

“Ssssssss, BOOM*

With a sound like a cannon shot, a ball of molten magma got ejected from her fanged maw and the intention was rather obviously to make Blake’s burn more of a whole body experience.

“BLAKE DODGE!!!!”

Taking Penny’s good advice, she tried her best to squirm her way out of a direct hit but just being that close to the lava gave her a whole body singe. And made her unaware about the 7 feet of pissed off coming towards her like a freight train. Desperately she brought out the sea glide and swam away as quickly as possible, kicking her legs as the propeller let her move faster than any human could possibly hope to. Even then, with her Phelps-like spee, the dragon was still on her tail, its face a perfect masque that a red death would love to wear. Speaking of red death, that’s what was burning in her eyes, as the blood leaking from her wound left a trail of crimson behind her, bubbling up to the surface like the resentment for the wound was harming the water.

“Okay she’s fast but is she agile?”

She’d have to figure that out sooner rather than later as teeth came close to shredding her hide and she quickly dove down towards the caves.

“ROOOOAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”

The dragon roared, a rageful song that shattered the sea, but even then her prey slipped away again and the thought of food was forsaken. This scurrying runt had attacked her.. Like she, the sovereign of this shallow sea was something to be eaten. This grave insult damned the cat to feeling a fury only known to natural disasters. She followed mindlessly, her rugged body tearing through stone as easily as she wished to crush bone and soon she was within spitting distance from the elusive creature. The molten rock and metal in her stomach churned, boiling to the surface into another ball of magma and as just as she was about to turn the diver into ash and bone, there was a blood curdling scream and the cyclopean gaze of a crashfish came into view. It was trying to protect its nest, apparently having failed to learn a very simple lesson when it comes to certain predators.

*KA THOOM*

The easiest way to avoid them was to stay still as you were beneath their notice. This particular crashfish would never learn that lesson, as magma turned both it and its nest into a blackened smear on the cave wall. With a heavy growl she turned her attention back to the disrespectful prey and as her eyes locked onto the space she thought it was… She just saw a rock wall.

“Okay so she CAN swim pretty agilely.”

Blake thought as the mermaid gnashed her carnivorous teeth above the panther’s hiding place. The knife was still stuck in her throat but the chances of her getting close enough to grab it were painfully low. As was her oxygen supply.

“Okay, okay… plan c is a go.”

Gently she tied a flare to her seaglide before giving it a gentle pat.

“Thank you.”

She lit the flare and turned the sea glide onto its max setting. The bright red glare got the attention of the hellish jewels in the sea monster’s eyes and she took off like a shot after it.

“Good.”

She swam through the cave and to the surface and breathed in the deepest breath possible before swimming in a mad dash for her base like a woman possessed. It was a shame that she wasn’t possessed by a faster swimmer though as she heard a terrifying crunch, the very distinct sound of metal being chewed into scrap, teeth cutting grooves into titanium like it was made of plastic.

She never got a good look at this disrespectful prey before. It was a truly strange sight. A sleek black beast swam in the water before her, its hide darker around the body then the head for some reason. The muscles were thin but visible and her eyes were… gold. But regardless, something was very clear. It wouldn’t get away.

“GO!!!! You’re close, you just need to swim a little faster!!!”

A little faster was kind of the issue because she was already giving it every last scrap of power she had in her body, her ears closed to her scalp to help with hydrodynamics. This, in fact, did not help her enough for her to get away but she was tantalizingly close. The glass hatch was within grasping distance and just as she reached out for it… She felt claws on legs and everything went into a bubbling blur. With one great swing, her wild haired antagonist tossed her dozens of meters away, crashing into soft sand. She was dazed and the beast knew, as it was adept at sensing weakness. Blake looked up at her and still had to call it a HER because it wasn’t looking down at her like meat. More like an annoying rat that had finally been pinned in and trapped. Though even then, the rage in her snarl and eyes was far more animalistic than any person she had seen… no. No, she was lying to herself. Her silly little brain was repressing details and doing a poor job of it. Because she had seen that look, though it was with different eyes and duller teeth. The rage though… THAT was consistent.

“Adam… You followed me… All the way here.”

She tasted blood in her mouth and hoped it was from a bitten tongue or loose tooth. Internal bleeding would be a fairly lethal issue in these foreign lands as was the concussion. Though it was hard to tell if she was suffering that or perhaps her mind was short circuiting due to the proximity of certain death.

“W-Well… Put up a good fight right?”

She chuckled bitterly as those crooked claws grabbed her by the neck and held her still. The inside of the monster’s mouth glowed a sinister red for a second before it heated up to a dark orange and finally a bright golden hue.

“Gold?”

Didn’t she… have gold on her? Well if there was ever a time to check! Quickly her hand lunged out and grabbed the knife still embedded in her enemy’s neck, the mere presence of the beast making the water feel like a hot tub but she pressed on and jammed it in further, trying to yank away the jaws of death from her neck.

*PHOOM*

She successfully avoided her skull being melted but now had to contend with the lava being only a few inches away from her arm and face. Desperately she reached for her backpack in search of something ANYTHING to keep her heart beating but the pressure on her throat was rising and she started to think that maybe she hallucated there being good in her backpack… Till her hands grabbed something heavy. And solid.

“Please work.”

She was tired of this hunt, she was tired of this prey and she was TIRED of this damned tooth in her neck!!! Blindly she grabbed it and tossed it aside with such force it embedded itself in a rock before glaring down at the captured cat. There was no good reason she had to melt her… But the dragon REALLY hated her. Her maw opened wide for one last time, the heat bubbling in the water and her gut… before something was shoved in her mouth. The heat kept rising but whatever was in her mouth wouldn’t melt and she stood still for a moment, before her claws shot up to tear the metal out of her mouth. But it wouldn’t work, the heat kept rising and rising, she felt the stinging sensation of vomit in her own mouth and her jaws were too filled with molten rock to chew properly. Bits of magma leaked past her lips and she choked as her gills were filled with fire instead of water, which normally would be fine, but it wasn’t flowing. It just clogged up everything and her vision glowed with the ominous tinge that one could only see when choking to death under the sea. She spasmed and thrashed, each terrible whip of her tail causing great waves of water to batter the stoney walls. Even underwater, the gagging sounds were painful, like someone filled her throat with half digested bones and as she clutched maddly at her throat, the lava she weaponized cut off her air supply as she couldn’t quite manage to eject it in time.

“… Penny. Don’t yell at me later.”

She swam over and made sure her gloves were tight on skin before grabbed the now irritatingly hot metal and put her feet on the monster’s boulders for shoulders, before pulling with all her might. This did alleviate some pressure and quickly the beast shoved the metal out of her throat before a torrent of hell was blasted out of her neck. It wasn’t a fireball, it was a stream of it and she saw vague shapes in it as if it was her former meals lodged in the lava. It’s stomach was splayed all across the sandy floor and the reptilian mermaid said nothing for a moment. Nothing but pain filled her and she looked up at the thing she had been trying to eat for the longest time, whose hands had been burned saving her. And as her gold eyes meet her still crimson one’s something… twitched in her soul. Angrily she pinned the cat down again for the third time and just… roared. She roared in confusion, she roared in frustration and she roared in gratitude. The entire sea heard her song, proclaiming her own life and in a flash of golden scales she swam away clumsily, crashing into every piece of coral in her way on the path home.

“… Blake. WHY?”

It was rather selfish of Blake to be this way. Penny dutifully answered any question of her’s but when Penny tried the same, all she got was static.

Chapter Text

Blake laid on her bed, feeling her entire body filing their quitting notices at the same time as she just stared at the ceiling.

“Why did you do that?”

Well not just stare at the ceiling, she was also being berated by a nanny bot.

“It just felt right.”

Though Penny had no face, her deadpan transcended such concepts.

“…. You saved a murder lizard… because it FELT RIGHT!?!?!”

Blake snapped up at that.

“Yes!!! Now leave me alone so my internal bleeding can finish her job!!!”

Despite the fact that Penny had neither lungs nor need to breathe, she still took a deep intake of air to calm down.

“For one… you don’t have internal bleeding. For two, you have things to do today. And for three… I’m sorry I yelled.”

She really shouldn’t have been, but she was.

“…. so am I. But can I have another hour to just… think things over a bit?”

Penny sighed and nodded.

“Sure Blake… that seems fine.”

She cut off her audio and did another scan of the area, searching for temperature irregularities, not exactly looking forward to another encounter with the draconian mermaid. She found none and went back to looking for bits of things that could help Blake… and then there was a bright red tick from the radio. Its crimson hue was enough to catch the attention of both “inhabitants” of the sea base. Blake got up and stretched for a moment, before hitting it, expecting another doomed message from one of her fellow cabin mates… instead there was a strong and confident voice.

“This is the captain of the Sunbeam, seeking to help the injured people planetside on Planet 4546B. Any survivors?”

The captain waited for quite a few moments as Blake frantically searched for any button that would indicate a way for her to communicate. She hammered her paws against the metal machine for a minute, scratching and grasping for any ticket out of this hell.

“Hmm… I’ll open a radio chat again in 24 hours, see if we find anything then.”

The audio cut off and Blake was left alone, the red glow of her radio dying off into nothing. The silence that filled the room was so empty that even the cold abyss of space would seem comforting as the cat watched her only hope crash into sand. Despair opened its jaws wide to devour her… but she snapped those jaws in 2. A growl creased her lips and she looked towards her robotic companion.

“How can I communicate with them?”

A new blueprint got added to her base builder in a second and she didn’t even react to that. Just went off to go gather the resources as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile both above and below her, 2 very different monster’s thoughts were consumed by her. Beneath the depths that Blake dared to dive, in a cave carved out for eons by magma flow and water, rested the beast. Her golden scales were scattered across the place shed as she grew older, along with bones from her hunts and shiny bits of metal that she just liked looking at while trying to make things out of. Briefly, she scanned over her collection, the thermal vent near them casting a lovely orange hue over the shiny metal and graying bone. The apex predator of shallow waters growled and tried to keep her teeth from grinding together too hard as the rage at her newfound scars started to burn. Though she never really felt the pain of a burn before for rather obvious reasons she did feel the stinging flame of fury and in an act of petty retribution slammed her hand into the side of her stone castle. The wall cracked and buckled under her might, as all things should, but she paused and looked around at her home for a moment. She couldn’t hear the tell tale signs of stone about to cave in on itself but it wouldn’t hurt to be careful. Looking around for any material suitable for the task, she quickly found it and shoved it in her mouth. Gently chewing solid rock, she spat it at the shattered wall and using a bit of her lava, managed to make the cave more stable. Satisfied with her underwater repairs, she turned to the exit point of her cave and thought for the 5th time of swimming out to attempt another hunt… only for the image of that strange creature's soft hands on her body. Wrenching that wretched piece of metal out of their teeth. She tried to remember the last time something touched her without the intent of killing or wounding her. And all she got was painful flashes of smiling faces, things that looked like this strange new devil that tormented her so. She hated every last one of them, because she could feel the love even through the haze of amnesia… but if they loved her… then why was she so alone? She thought of this as far above both the beast and the beauty was a hunter.

“Ilia, where is my status report of the planet?”

Adam said, his sneer making it very clear what he thought of the girl before him. Ilia for her part just turned a bit red before going back to her neutral skin tone and expression.

“As I’ve said before captain, what little information there is on this planet is more or less a repeat warning call of why going planetside is a really stupid idea. It’s a string of missing ships and dead signals.”

Adam looked at her flatly, his mask hiding the annoyance in his eyes.

“…. Are you sure you looked hard enough?”

Ilia took a deep breath and had to choke down a far less diplomatic response.

“Permission to speak freely Captain?”

Adam’s sneer deepened.

“Granted.”

“With all due respect, that waterball is a death trap. We’d have better luck convincing Schnee Industries to make a ship that could actually fucking work, before we’d be able to touch ground. I don’t know what’s going on, but our planetary scans tell us that place is a damned graveyard of ships. Not just small ships, CAPITAL ships. The cities we put into orbit, the ones with shielding so advanced, one of our operatives took one for a joyride and leveled a good chunk of Atlas. Those behemoths couldn’t handle whatever the hell is going on down there, what makes you think this ship can?!?!”

Adam looked at her blandly for a moment.

“…. Tell me, are the scattered chunks of metal in orbit getting turned into paste by whatever’s down there?”

Ilia looked at him confused.

“… No? But why would that matter?”

The captain shrugged his shoulders and stood up.

“It matters because whatever the hell is down there clearly makes a distinction between space scrap and ships. Therefore, we can probably make a quick visit down there if we go down in a small enough pod. Though… we probably shouldn’t bet too many people on that gamble. I think we’ll fire off some stuff down there, see if anything intriguing happens.

Ilia paused and looked at her captain confused.

“… Why are you doing this? What’s on that planet that’s so important?”

Adam didn’t say anything for a moment, before just bringing up his computer and flicking its screen to a picture of an old “friend” of Ilia’s.

“……… B-But you said she was-“

“Because I believed her to be. However as you can clearly see, Blake Belladonna isn’t dead… and she may yet live. But for how long on that watery rock?”

Ilia said nothing for a moment. There was of course, nothing to say, as Adam’s countenance stayed firm and resolute.

“I’ll…. I’ll get a search team prepared at once, captain.”

The lizard slinked off and made herself scarce while the bull looked at the picture for a moment. If you knew Adam, you’d call his face mournful, perhaps a bit longing. If you knew Adam better than that, you’d know that his face was 2 seconds away from a blood curdling scream as the mockery that Blake caused him played over and over again in his head, driving him further and further into a rage. He shut down his computer and looked down on the tiny little planet with a near blind fury mounting on his face.

“I’ll find you Blake. No matter where you run and hide.”

It is now that both monsters looked down at their scars, finding each one an unacceptable slight to their pride. The dragon rose from her grotto and charged where she thought her prey was, the bull snorted and threw himself into planning the perfect trap for the ever elusive cat. But the cat in question was hardly trying to be sneaky, as she crafted her newest tool.

“The Seamoth will help you Blake, but what are you doing with the radio?”

Blake said nothing to Penny as she jury rigged a new part of the submersible.

“The seamoth has an onboard speaker and I can use it to communicate with you. However, if my guess is right….”

There was a high pitched whine as the feline more or less Frankensteined 2 radio systems together to make something she could talk to, rather than just listen out of.

“…. That was rather clever.”

Blake showed her Cheshire grin as the silky smooth vehicle was slowly powering itself on.

“Thank you Penny. Now…”

She hopped in the driver seat and felt the entire thing thrum with a power that made her inner panther purr like a kitten.

“Let’s see what she can do.”

Chapter Text

Blake felt a bit more familiar with her roaring engine and machine, the bright blue glow of her lights turning a dour collecteting of resources into a rather trivial matter. In a matter of a single hour, her radio was upgraded and ready to go. A small smile graced her lips as she just waited for the radio to go off… when rather irritatingly an alarm did instead.

“OH WHAT IS IT NOW?!?!?”

“It’s the dragon. You know. The one you saved the life of.”

Despite having no corporal form Penny managed to look at Blake very judgingly as she just…. kept laying down.

“…. Blake. They’ll be here in seconds.”

The cat still refused to move.

“BLAKE.”

Blake lazily looked up towards the speaker.

“She can wait a second. Besides, going outside to fight her is a terrible idea…. instead, I’ll set a trap for her…”

She got up and went up to her window, trying to spot a flash of golden scales… only for the dragon to suddenly pop up in front of her and cause her to yelp in surprise.

“Grrrmm…”

Her prey was behind some kind of… hard water? The sea beast poked the strange construction and then got a massive headache, as… as she remembered something that looked like this. That made the same clicky noise when she poked it and for some reason it made her mad. In a flash of reckless rage she swung out and clubbed the glass, the reverberating shock causing it to crack before suddenly there was no glass.

“…. Hrrm?”

She never saw that happen before. Perhaps she punched it so hard it turned into something else? That did happen when she squeezed things sometimes…. she shook her head and went to find another way in. She didn’t like the clicky stuff and more to the point, her prey was probably up to tricks. She just didn’t know what kinds of tricks,..

“She’s searching for weak points! Quickly, build more reinforcements!!!”

Blake looked up annoyed.

“With WHAT exactly?

“There should be a blueprint for it! You just need lithium and titanium-…. Wait, why would you need lithium to build basic reinforcement?!?!? WHO DESIGNED THIS?!?!?”

Penny’s shouts of futile panic didn’t exactly soothe Blake’s nerves, as the sound of her foe banging against the walls, crawling around to find a weak point to peel open…

“Grrrraahhh….”

Now the dragon was annoyed. She had been scratching around for a decent amount of time now, but nothing lended itself to be peeled off. So she came to the logical conclusion that she needed to crack it open!

“Blake, she’s leaving.”

“Oh thank the gods, I thought she was going to-“

*KLLLLLAAAANNG*

And thus the loudest sound Blake ever heard reverberated through her base and temporality deafened her. Her hands were on the floor and blood leaked down as she grasped at her ears and felt something…. wet covering the floor. Cold and wet, tasting rather salty… oh it was water! In a waterproof base.

“…. What?”

Slowly she looked around and saw the source of her leak. It was blonde and currently stuck in a wall.

“…. WHAT?”

The sensation Blake was feeling is something called “this can’t be happening.” It’s when you see something so preposterous that your mind refuses to believe what it was looking at for a long moment.

“GRAAHHHH!!!!”

She had managed to tear open the shiny cave her prey hid in, and now she was a mere claw’s reach away!!!… but she couldn’t move.

“…. Grrrm?”

Her arms were trapped by the titanum and though she could easily tear through it, the position she got herself in made getting any leverage impossible. A dribble of magma leaked past her lips like drool as she gave the cat a hare filled glare. She expected her prey to use that shiny claw to kill her, and was determined to not die… but then the prey picked up a red tube.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!”

Was Blake’s battle cry as she slammed the fire extinguisher into her underwater foe’s face multiple times, each one slowly sliding the pinned dragon out of her metal bonds. But it also hurt quite a bit so the sea dragon prepared to fire off magma, only for Blake to ram the hose of her extinguisher down her throat.

“BURN THIS!!!!”

She then pulled the trigger and caused the CO2 to blast straight down the monster’s throat, extinguishing any fires that could be in it. However, it also caused said monster to panic and tear out the titanum jail, shards of metal and wires coming with her as she accidentally swam headfirst into a coral reef and shattered it to nothing. Normally she would flee after such a disastrous hunt but then again, normally she didn’t get her rather large ego involved in such a matter.

“SHIT-“

Blake got blasted back by the incoming wave of water and slammed into a wall, spinning around as the hole in her base was currently filling things up at a rather uncomfortably fast rate and as she stumbled over, slipping and slamming into the floor before BARELY managing to patch the hole. However while she was head butting the floor, she didn’t notice the rather sizable creature that had slammed into her wall.

“…. Okay… okay we’re good.”

“BLAKE IT GOT IN!!!!!”

Blake’s brain did a quick survey of what Penny could mean and came to the conclusion, about the same time as the conclusion came to her.

“EEP!”

She barely dodged the way out of razor sharp teeth as they chomped down on the metal where she used to me.

“Oh C'mon!!! I SAVE you and this is how you repay me?!?!?“

Another angry roar was the brine borne devil’s only response.

“SHUT UP!!! I did a scan on your thick skull and you have enough brain power to recognize a non-threat!!! Guess what I am, you overgrown gecko, A NON-THREAT!!!!!”

The roar that came again got cut off by Blake slamming a chair over her head.

“SHUT UP!!! YOU ARE SO LOUD!!!!”

She bashed her enemy across the teeth again and sent her back slightly before her chair got grabbed and crumbled into a ugly ball of metal and rubber. But this did not deter Blake from attacking, like every good cornered cat would. Scratching and hissing, trying her best to draw blood from a scaly hide. A futile effort and only served to further enrage the beast as she got slammed into the floor, claws digging into her shoulders. Nothing happened for a second as Blake struggled to get out of the dragon’s claws.

“Heh heh heh…”

She had won. The prey had been beaten. Rather confidently, she puffed out her chest and let smoke rise from her nostrils, arrogance radiating off of every gorgeous bit of gold.

“Get-… off…”

It occurred to Blake that the position she was in wasn’t exactly unpleasant, and if she didn’t know for a fact that this mermaid was one of the eat you alive varieties, she would be rather pleased with the circumstances. However, she did know and thus refused to go down quietly. Though it was rather hard to scream when a 300 pound beast was currently…. strutting in place? Whatever the dragon was doing, it was smug and Blake didn’t appreciate it.

*Beep. Beep. Beep.*

“Of course… the radio starts working when I’m about to be eaten by an ungrateful animal….”

The beeping caught her attention, mainly because it sounded familiar and… and made her home sick. She looked down again, her prey still trying to escape and slowly saw her prey change slightly. The same shade of hair but with red tips and their golden eyes were silver now. Those eyes were filled with annoyance and she could hear something coming out of their mouth. They blinked and the little girl was gone. It was just the cat. Now trying to bite her arm.

“…. Hmm?”

They leaned down and that made the cat’s movement more frantic. She paused now. And slowly… very slowly they began to stroke the top of the cat’s head. Painfully, they tried to remember where this instinct came from but it wouldn’t appear for her. It just… she just kept going.

“… Ruby.”

A name. Not her name. But a name…. What was a name?

Chapter Text

Blake was confused. This thing just spoke and was now petting her. It was an odd combo as the monster stroked the top of her head like she was a small kitten. She didn’t really appreciate that but the fact that the brute wasn’t tearing her head off was quite appreciated. Of course she kinda had somewhere to be so began to slowly squirm her way out of the beast’s grasp.

“Ruby…”

That word again… but it was spoken like a name?

“C-Could you get off of me?”

The words caused the gilded dragon to pause once more, looking even closer, tooth and claw mere breaths away.

“…. P-Please?”

Nothing at that word. Blake couldn’t help but breathe in the scent coming from those interlocking scales. It was… not particularly unpleasant actually. She smelt of smoke and sea salt, along with a touch of cooked fish. It was also just now Blake noticed how… well groomed the creature was. Its hair fell in a soft flow, what appeared to be some kind of tanned leather tunic was still in good condition and kept her… decent. It then occurred to Blake how unproblematic this situation would be if the person pinning her down wasn’t half lizard monster on the bottom half. Though speaking on that bottom half, it was a glimmering coat of gold that was seemingly polished on a regular basis. With what, that’s a question left for the gods, or perhaps Blake at the moment.

“….”

Once again Blake moved slightly further away and once again, the dragon followed her. Like a dog insistent on obtaining head scritches.

“….”

Another slight movement and Blake was now next to the radio. In addition, the beast now had her against a wall.

“…”

A hand was raised and she pressed the button on the radio.

“-this is a waste of time you-“

There was a sound of a thud on the other end as someone picked up the radio.

“Hello? Is this a survivor?”

Blake gulped deeply and looked over at the radio.

“Y-Yes? I’m planetside and I don’t have any way off. The Aurora’s crash site isn’t too far from my location.”

There was a note of triumph in the person’s voice as they responded back.

“Well, it’s good we came along. Don’t worry, we’ll have you off that hunk of rock in no time at all.”

Blake let out a weary sigh as the teeth of the creature were still mere inches from her throat. But she made no moves to bite. She just looked at the dark haired creature at her mercy, like in staring at the cat, they could find every answer to every question. A slight glow was still coming off them, like a star trying to warm up.

“G-Good! Do you have any landing locations in mind?!?!”

She tried to sound calm but with searing death looking at her like she was some irritatingly stubborn puzzle piece that refused to conform to any shape pinned down for it.

“Well, yes actually. I think we can send the location to you, it’s only a few miles away luckily. Sorry we can’t land any closer but that’s the only real patch of land there.”

Blake made some strange affirmation noise as hot breath tickled her neck.

“Kkknnn…”

Nothing. No matter how hard she grasped on these memories, nothing came of it. She just got the vague sensation of needing to protect something… and since she couldn’t decide what exactly that was, satisfying that strange urge by making sure the smooth skinned creature didn’t die seemed like a good enough substitute.

“Hrrmph.”

She turned away from her self appointed charge and decided to look around a bit while once again Blake let out another massive sigh of relief.

“Thank the gods…”

Penny meanwhile had been running increasingly frantic calculations and somehow, none of them ended with this.

“I… Blake, what did you do? How did you…”

The aquanaut stood up, watching as the monster slowly slithered off.

“… I have no idea. And uh, may I get a name for my rescuer?”

The person on the other end laughed good naturedly and lied through his teeth. Though, Blake was not to know that yet.

“My name is Gavin. Gavin Jäger.”

Blake nodded and managed a nervous smile.

“W-Well I hope to meet you soon Gavin.”

Another laugh.

“As do I B-… I never got your name. May I?”

A nervous giggle came to Blake’s lips, but she did notice the slip of tongue Gavin had… but it’s not like she had many other options at the moment.

“My name is Nyx Nightshade. A pleasure to meet you Gavin.”

Another chuckle sounded off before Gavin spoke once more.

“The same to you. Be seeing you, soon.”

The radio cut off and Blake was left alone with a monster and a robot.

“…. Penny what do I do with the-“

*GRRROOOANNN*

“…. It appears the dragon has breached the bedroom!”

“I can HEAR that Penny, now what do I DO with her?!?!”

There was a near audible shrug as Penny went back to trying to figure out that conundrum. Blake sighed before going in to assess the damage and being both surprised at the lack of UTTER destruction. Don’t get her wrong, this thing somehow had managed to rip a solid titanium table apart but she didn’t really care about the table.

“…. Could you stop?”

There wasn’t a response as the new housemate continued to consume the table.

“Why? Just…. Is there some vital nutrition in there I don’t know about?!?!”

There was a beep over the intercom.

“Yes actually. From what my study on her biology shows, she’s actually ⅓ inorganic materials. Specifically in her stomach, scales, forelimbs and the end of her tail. So… she likely needs metal to replace it.”

Not for the last time the monster looked up at the speaker and wondered why something speaking from it made sense. Shrugging, she went back to her meal.

*CRUNCH*

“…. So what do I do with her? I can’t exactly move houses quick and trying to evict her would end…”

She looked at the scraps of the now destroyed table.

“… Poorly.”

The machine beeped once more.

“You could try befriending her! A study on dogs found that giving treats could help.”

Blake stopped cold at that.

“…. Were the dogs capable of EATING the person giving them treats?”

Another beep.

“In all fairness, it’s also worked on alligators.”

Blake stopped and considered her options, coming to the rather depressing conclusion that this was the best one she had.

“…. Penny, explain to me the process of this.”

“Gladly! So first you start with some meat.”

*CRUNCH*

This shiny rock was quite good. Nice and hard so her teeth could be even stronger! Making a pleased bellowing noise she licked the remains of her meal off of her face before looking around a bit more. She turned over to see… something. It looked kind of familiar but she had no idea what it was.

“No, NO!!!”

The creature she was protecting was angry that she approached the soft looking things and the beast took time to smell it. Deducing that this was her charge’s scent, things now made sense. This is where she rested for the night. It was her den! She made a proud little rumble, happy with her deductions before she saw the fact that her charge was dangling food in front of her. She instantly began salivating.

“Huh… I thought she would drool lava or something.”

She did not. She also proceeded to leap on top of her, while eating the fish.

*SLIP*

And now the giant scaly monster that had attempted to eat her alive 2 separate times was snuggling her like an overgrown golden retriever… what was her life?

Chapter Text

It was a pitifully normal day. Sun rolled out of his bed and hit the deck with all the grace of a rock rolling out of a tree.

“…. Welp, time to get to work!”

The monkey said to no one in particular, his tail whipping around in a happy little circle.

“Hopefully nothing TOO eventful happens… besides me texting Neptune.”

He chuckled to himself and moved across the ship with a upbeat sorta vibes when-

“Engineering crew, report to the nearest conference hall for immediate check up!!!”

Sun looked up annoyed and then sighed.

“Guess the captain’s having a bad day…”

Which was funny to him because the day just started. Shrugging, he went down to a conference hall, when his vision started to shake. No… No, that was wrong. The ship had started to shake!!! A vibration hit him down to his very bones and all his teeth rattled like a xylophone.

“WARNING. MASSIVE DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO HULL. PREPPING FOR PLANET FALL.”

He stumbled over the shivering wreck he was in and tried to get to a pod, tripping and slamming into it… only to see his friend frantically setting things up for her escape.

“BLAKE!!!! BLAKE OPEN THE DOOR!!!!”

His cry of terror was met with Blake’s frantic yelp, her panic matching Sun’s.

I-I CAN’T!!!! IT’S ALREADY-“

There was a sound that may as well have been the mourning bells for both as the ship felt itself warp and contort, a painful boom signaling that Sun Wukong needed to get into a new pod ASAP. Blake gestured to another pod with terrified and frantic gestures, Sun quickly abiding by these vague orders and diving into the neighboring pod… where there was a rather shrill response.

“BUCKLE IN DAMNIT!!!!!”

This shriek was not directed at him, but it was good advice nonetheless. Sun just about heard the click of his seatbelt before his world went into a cacophony of sounds and sights, the bright orange of the exploding ship making it clear that the universe just lost a couple hundred souls. Then there were the rather amusing screams of disgruntled rage. Like somehow, this entire situation was an inconvenience and she was the victim of said inconvenience. Which wasn’t technically wrong but the lack of fear was… strange. And in a moment of terror and confusion, hilarious. Sun started to laugh chimpishly as the pod glowed with the fury of reentry.

“WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?!?!?”

Those words only made him laugh harder as the pod shook with the unsteadinesses that only cheap metal could provide.

“I have NO IDEA!!!! AHAHAHAHHA!!!!!”

His laugh was cut off when they hit the surface of the ocean with a rather loud THOOM!!!!…. And something broke.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!!!”

Came the shrill cry of an heiress as she grappled with her seatbelt… only for nothing to happen.

“… I’m going to kill my father if I get out of this.”

The lifepod slowly began to sink, the weak hull of the vessel caving in rather easily to the forces that, were it designed with any sense, it’d easily be able to withstand.

“Provided I don’t die first.”

Her hands became invigorated with strength only known to the terminally terrified as she grappled with the thing that once secured her life and now tied it to a quite literal sinking ship. Though to call the currently sinking aluminum can a “ship” would perhaps be a far too kind term for it.

“Damned budget cuts!!!!”

She clicked and clicked on the supposed release mechanism only for 2 things to happen. A harsh little sound that signaled her death and her heart rate increasing well beyond a healthy degree. With her tunnel vision and signal minded panic, it was hard to notice little things. Like the towering shadow looming over her, it’s hand reaching forth and grabbing onto her seatbelt before roughly bringing down its head., and biting the restraining device in 2.

“UP WE GO!!!”

Rough calloused hands that smelled faintly of motor oil and sweat grabbed onto her before yanking her out of the seat and kicking the sealed vent of the lifepod out. Believing death was close, both scrambled out quickly and rushed for the surface as the lifepod slowly sank into the depths beneath them. Bursting to the surface in a frenzy of movement, both looked around frantically for land or just something to swim towards.

“OH THANK THE GODS WE LANDED NEAR AN ISLAND!!!!”

Sun happily sang out his glee as both he and his still nameless friend swam to the sandy banks of the towering refuge. Gasping with the exhaustion of coming down from a truly harrowing experience, both slowly dragged themselves further onto sure before finally falling face first in the sand.

“…. Talk about a way to start your morning.”

Came Sun’s glib statement as he turned around and looked at the endless sea.

“Or afternoon… hard to tell in space.”

He flopped onto his back and took in the sky. The endless sunlit sky.

“One star… that’s nice.”

He heard the random person he saved scramble to their feet suddenly and look around… before screaming in abject despair.

“Damnit, damnit, damnit DAMNIT!!!!”

Wrath coursed in her entire body as she swore vengeance against her father and his penny pinching idiocy.

“I WILL END IT!!! YOUR ENTIRE EMPIRE WILL BURN TO NOTHING AT MY HANDS!!!! I’LL RUIN YOU SO HELP ME!!!!”

Some people might take these threats against the sky as a sign to be quiet and let her finish. Sun would let her finish but he was laughing too loud to be quiet. Which quickly earned the snow haired stranger’s ire.

“Is something AMUSING?!?!? If so, PLEASE DO ENLIGHTEN ME. Because between the awful escape pod and this desolate wasteland of a rock masquerading as a planet, I don’t see much to laugh at!!!”

Sun hopped to his feet with an easy going smile, showing off his fangs and tail with the pride of a king showing off his crown.

“Well, that’s the difference between me and you stranger. You see the cloud and I see the silver lining. For example, look around you! Not a speck of dry ground in miles but what do we happen upon?”

He pounded his feet against the ground to emphasize his point before proudly gesturing to something behind his newfound friend.

“Land and shelter!”

The sour princess looked behind her to… a towering and very much alien structure.

“… I… what in the good name of my grandfather is that?”

Sun shrugged and started to stroll over to it.

“No idea. Wanna check it out?”

His tail curled up in a question mark as she stopped and her stance went defensive.

“Okay, who are you? Are you… are you part of the White Fang? Sent here to kidnap me? Or are you just another ruffian?”

Sun didn’t know how to answer that. But he figured a question of his own would be more prudent.

“Uhh… what’s a White Fang?”

His confusion made Weiss’s suspicions nearly fade away and die… but she shook her head at that notion. He was clearly playing, dumb, how could anyone, let alone a FAUNUS not know about those terrorists! They were galactically renowned for being menaces to good society and more importantly, murdering barbarians.

“Oh you think I'm a fool?!?! I will have none of this!!!”

She gazed at her opponent critically and determined how to defeat him while he just kept looking at her, trying to keep up this “doey eyed git” persona.

“You may be taller and stronger than me beast, but I assure you, Weiss Schnee shall not fall into enemy hands quietly!!!”

Her screeching caused the poor mechanic to cover up his ears and back away.

“Yeah, I figured. Pretty sure you CAN’T do anything quietly!!! Goddamned that voice! I think you might split the mountain in two if you don’t-“

“HEEEEE YAHHHHH!!!!”

Came Weiss’s ferocious battle cry as she drove her foot into Sun’s unprepared gut and made him stumble. Not relenting, she followed up with yet more attacks, her punches moving with practiced grace, her balance picture perfect and timing on point. Her jabs thrusted out and met his jaw once, twice and she prepared for thrice… when her world spun beneath her and the face she was hitting vanished. Apparently, this particular assassin was quite good at sweeping the legs.

“Okay lady, THAT’S IT!!!!”

Her back hit the sand before strong and capable hands picked her up like she weighed nothing before tossing her away, her body hitting the shifting ground in a heap.

“You wanna be a bitch?!?!? Fine, then be one over there!!!”

Weiss slowly stood up and shook the sand off her form as she readied herself for another engagement with her enemy… then stopped.

*Krr…*

A low and strangle growl emitted from behind the now rambling Sun Wukong. Who’s rage prevented him from checking his six and the alien thing lunged with a desperate hunger, its fangs ready to sink into his toned muscles… when Weiss slammed into his chest head first, her instincts preventing the Cave Crawler from enjoying an easy meal.

“What the hell is WRONG WITH-… oh.”

The shrieking little demon was prepping another lunge when Sun fell upon it like a hammer. His feet met his carapace with a sickening crunch and after that, he made sure to stomp this thing into a paste.

“… today is just determined to be hell!!!”

He scoffed and spitefully wiped his would-be killer's remains off his mechanic boots.

“Disgusting little thing. Probably not good for eating… not that me crushing it helped matters, but still.”

Weiss was still clutching her head, her attempted football impression possibly costing her a concussion or two.

“Hey, you alright over there? Thanks for the save, but say something before you run into me next time, kay?”

And now the faunus was smiling at her like she was his friend. Like she didn’t just try to kick him in the gut without provocation… something about that bothered her.

Chapter Text

It has been a day or two since the unthinkable happened. When a monster broke through her defenses, clawing down the door and baring fangs… only to snuggle up to them. But that wasn’t the weird part.

*CRACK*

It was how easily they got along.

“Thanks.”

The dragon had made searching for resources a breeze. She smashed through most obstacles with ease and seemed to know all the best places to gather shiny materials. Blake theorized that this was something of a hobby of her’s, but didn’t know much more than that. Most of all, what Blake appreciated was… having someone else with her. Because it was with company that free form diver truly saw how… beautiful this place could be. Someone to laugh with, when something a little silly happened. Like now for instance.

“Hrrm?”

The fish confused her. Because it kept swimming into a rock, getting partially concussed and then swimming back into the rock. She decided to end both the fish and rock’s suffering… while also getting a little snack.

*SNAP*

Her jaws made quick work of the peeper and reminded her companion that those teeth could turn on her at any moment. She was a wild animal after all… or so went the lie Blake told herself.

In truth, her new found friend would sooner chew off her own arm than harm Blake. Because this was a relationship that went both ways. They both got companionship out of it, but the dragon was in far more desperate need of it. Though she may not have readily understood the concept, all humans rather instinctively sought it out. The feeling of being with another human is a craving just as strong as the craving for food or water. It causes a pain in the chest, not dissimilar to your tongue’s dry suffering when without fluid or the stomach’s painful ache when it desires food. The heart has its own flavor of pain however, it varies and wanes, before spiking into a spear that makes even breathing difficult. As there was nothing that makes hunger quite as acute as the tantalizing lure of food, nothing awakes the heart like the presence of a friend in a dry desert of isolation.

“Uhh… You!!! We should head back home!!!”

Blake barked out the order through her mask and her scaly friend understood them quite easily. Though sound was muffled and distorted under the sea, the violet eyed creature never found them hard to hear. Though, the hesitation in the cat’s voice did give her pause. It wasn’t a particularly long pause, the equivalent of a slightly slower then average blink, but she did pause long enough to ponder. Ponder over the fact that she didn’t have anything to call herself. Then she continued that ponderance, and briefly wondered what she would call herself. Shaking her head of such dalliances, she flicked her powerful tail and was at Blake’s side in a moment. Too fast for Blake to take notice of her scrunched up and confused face.

“So uh…. did you enjoy the fish?”

The sea monster knew the words fish and you. “You” in the monster’s mind referred to themselves and “fish” referred to her prey. “Prey” being defined as things weaker and edible to her… which was basically everything in the nearby area that was alive. Except of course, Blake. She liked thinking about this word. “Blake.” It made her think of other things, but they were fuzzy… not unpleasant mind you, just fuzzy. Her shining purple eyes looked at her amusingly named friend and smiled a small bit. It was a razor toothed grin, each fang sharp enough to cut straight to the bone, but… Blake found it charming in a strange way.

“She looks scary but… when she’s smiling like that and the sun’s caught in that beautiful mane of hair she looks more… more beautiful than dangerous.”

Such thoughts were foolish. The self taught sea explorer knew this. And yet she found herself thinking foolish thoughts. An odd conundrum for one so normally composed and controlled.

“Welcome aboard captain!… and guest.”

Penny wasn’t quite used to the arrangements yet. If only because her scans of the scaly roommate had made her increasingly annoyed and perplexed. Her genetic sequence was a giant question mark mixed with what her data saw as intentional muddying. Which didn’t make sense. Because a genetic sequence isn’t something one could code to the extent that they COULD intentionally make it confusing.

“Annoying darn meat hackers…”

The voice in the walls still gave her a headache but not because it was strange… but because it was familiar. Vague memories of black walls and green lights floated in her mind like wood chips from an undersea wreck. Forcing these thoughts aside, she began to perform a very old habit.

*Brush. Brush.*

Using her own claws as a comb, she groomed herself. She could use the magma vents to rid herself of any parasites but irregardless of that fact, she still wanted to keep clean of all the sand,soot and occasionally scrap of a leftover meal, which she quickly scarfed down to keep her surroundings tidy. All in all, for what amounted to an underwater cavewoman, she was a fairly good person to share space with. Save for one issue.

*Thump. nuzzle.*

She kept using Blake’s bed as a nest. In spite of the fact Blake had constructed a room for her, she insisted on sleeping in the cat’s bed and surrounding it with metal. Though she had eased up on the latter habit, making it so that the bed, while still surrounded, had a very easy path to get in and out of. In another time, the cat would be vehemently against such things but was now amenable to them… mainly because with the constant supply of metal, it made things a lot easier. But for all the gifts the dragon casually lended, their horde open for plundering, the cat couldn’t feel comfortable with any of it. At first she chalked this up to the fact that the person giving these gifts wasn’t quite a person… but that felt incredibly offensive to say. Her roommate was scary and scaly but they way they moved through the water and the intelligence in those eyes… whatever they were, it wasn’t an animal.

“I… Hey.”

Blake sat down on the bed, with a bit of distance between her and the creature from a lava lagoon.

“... I don’t know how much you understand me. But… but I think you understand me pretty well. And… and if you do… I have to ask. What is your name?”

That stopped the hot blooded beast dead. Every part of her felt numb for the briefest of seconds. The fuzziness was gone, a sudden thundering roar of realization scattering it like a shoal of fish and left her stunned. Completely unable to comprehend her own body. It was as if she switched places with someone else, with different teeth, hands, legs, eyes, and everything else. She didn’t recognize her own skin. The only thing that felt familiar, the only thing she could grasp onto was the thick mane of hair she always prided. And so she grabbed it. Grabbed so hard that her nails, or to be more accurate, talons, sheared it away. Perhaps it took some effort. Perhaps none at all. Regardless, she stared with shaking hands and breath at the clump of gold in her hands. It looked the same as she remembered it. And that was the problem. Memory. So many things hit her on the skull like waves mindlessly pounding a cliffside made of brittle obsidian glass. Something in her clawed at her chest and she could only curl up in a ball, just wishing that the ache in her head and the screaming in her ears would stop. She didn’t want to remember now. She didn’t want to know what her name was.

“Blake. Step away.”

Penny’s warning was the correct one. Blake would be better served stepping back and away from the apparently suffering monster. The cat cringed then snarled at the use of the word.

“Monster?”

She thought scornfully, looking down pitfully at the wailing, crying creature. One she haphazardly tossed into the deep end and was sinking so far into it that if the pressure didn’t crush her, the cold and the dark would make her wish it did. No. Whatever this thing-... whatever she was. It wasn’t a monster. Just a very very badly damaged person.

“Hey.”

Her voice. A much needed rumble in the sea that the dragon was being smothered in. In pain that came from neither tooth or claw, it was the closest thing to a soothing balm that she could hope for.

“I… I’m sorry I pushed you like that. It’s fine, you don’t need to tell me-”

“Sunny… dragon.”

It was the most painful sounding croak Blake ever heard. The result of spending time in so many underwater volcanoes she assumed. but still, it made her wince to listen to.

“Name… no that not name…”

The pain had stopped and she had driven most of the fuzziness back to where it originally was. Protecting her from the memories which seeked to maul her.

“My… name is… Yang. Xiao… Long.”

She looked up at Blake even as the tears fell free from her face.

“Please call me that… please…”

Blake blinked, utterly bewildered but saw how important this was to… Yang.

“Uh… Hi Yang Xiao Long? How are you doing today?”

Yang didn’t have a response to that for a long second. Before something resembling joy melted into those eyes.

“... Good. Yang is doing… good.”

Chapter Text

Yang. Such a simple name. She knew the meaning behind it, the opposite to a Yin, representing many different things in cultures from a very long time ago, eastern asian if she recalled correctly. Yang, the word, as far as she understood it was strength. Hard and unyielding, like a hammer, and just as powerful. Fiery passion and boiling rage all mixed up in that one little expression. In that one little symbol. But what was Yin? Blake’s memory failed her for a moment, before her mind decided on a definition, one that bled back into her skull like ink. Yin, was flexibility. The willingness and ability to bend, to move around and flow through adversity. This was of course, the barest of understandings of the words, she obviously wasn’t as well read on it as she’d like to be… but… something about that name and those words resonated with her.

*GRRNNN*

Not unlike the sound of metal being turned into scrap resonated through the halls of her base, as Yang’s hunger for more things to melt into magma in the furnace she called a stomach once again reared up. Her titanium sharpened teeth were rather excellent at the task set before them. That task was to chew another chair into fuel and rather easily did she manage that. Blake, was rather violently jolted out of her pondering by the sound of metal being grinded into a fine pulp then rather loudly swallowed, was confused… but not angry. Normally, she’d be upset at yet another of her chairs being turned into chow, however it’s not like she sat on them very often. Most of the time she just sat on the captain's chair and stared out into the ocean when she needed a good think, and Yang wasn’t exactly interested in this one. Perhaps because it was made out of softer materials? She was similarly disinterested in tearing apart her bed so, it was a worthwhile theory… she could ask her now. Which was a strange thing to consider, but as she found out yesterday, the dragon apparently could use her maw for something other than chewing or burning a hole in things. It was this that made her get up, plan out how exactly she would phrase this question and strode on over to the strange creature that was something resembling a roommate.

“…. Hi there Yang. Enjoying the chair?”

Yang snorted as she finished off the last of her snack.

“…. Yesss….”

She coughed a bit and growled, an irritation playing in her chest.

“I… I enjoyed eatring… eating that...”

Her eyes now seemed more keen, like she was considering her words before she spoke again. Not because she had anything particularly complicated to say, she simply wanted to speak correctly… or, at least she assumed the way she was trying to speak was correct. She didn’t remember.

“Well… may I know why?”

Blake was unintentionally mimicking the way her mother spoke to her when she was scared, but Yang didn’t seem to mind. Or if she did, she was too preoccupied with forcing her words into a human shape to notice.

“I… not hungry. I was not hungry. Needed… needed metal for…”

A growl rattled the floor as her eyes started to glow red with irritation… though Blake was more than observant enough to notice the tears pricking the edges of those same vibrant eyes.

“… I needed the metal for lava. Lava… lava helps with food.”

She clutched the side of her skull, trying to steady her thoughts and focus on speaking. To tell Blake what she was thinking, to convey that she was trying and that she didn’t want to grumble out responses like a savage… not for the first time, Yang got the uncanny feeling of being… inside of her body. Like the thing her mind inhabited wasn’t her’s and it moved on its own whims. Her vision went a bit fuzzy as she looked down at her… at where hands should be. All she saw was inhuman, scaly and terrifying claws. Claws that belonged on something that hid under beds to lure children into a false sense of security, before tearing them in 2 not… not her. Yang Xiao Long didn’t have claws. She had hands. She could form a proper sentence. But as her eyes so painfully told her, she did not have hands. As her ears so wretchedly told her, she could not form a proper sentence. So, it was then that the dragon had to ask… was she really Yang Xiao Long?

“Uhh… Yang?”

Yang started to shuffle away from her, and curl up in a corner, before the feeling of her own scales caused her to thrash around in fear.

“No… not Yang…”

She groaned and whined pitifully like an injured animal, scratching at the floor and seemingly trying to… stand. But she didn’t have legs so she just ended up falling back down like a dog balancing on its hind legs.

“Blake, don't get closer.”

Penny’s voice rang out through the halls, and for some reason this caused Yang to still for a second. Not a long second, she went right back to trying to squirm out of her own scaly hide, but it was noticeable.

“But she needs help, and-“

Penny cut her off, Blake’s ear twitching a bit as she fully understood her tone.

“Yes, but she’s not ready for physical comfort yet. I analyzed her behavior and it is consistent with the behaviors displayed by both humans and animals after… experimentation. Extreme experimentation.”

There was a weight to the AI’s voice that put a pause on any ideas Blake had to move forward.

“… She may have triggers when it comes to physical contact I… I am sorry.”

That apology very well could have been for Blake, an apology for her absent mindedness over not informing her of rather pertinent information earlier… but she had a sneaking suspicion that the voice in the walls was talking directly to Yang.

“I should have… it should have been obvious. Whatever this is, isn’t natural and anything that caused it would be…. distressing to say the least. Perhaps physical comfort can help, but for now I…. I implore you to approach her gently and perhaps focus on making her feel more…”

A dozen words were scanned as Penny looked for the right one. Then a small little ping as she found it.

“Make her feel manageable. Like her condition is something she can deal with and live with.”

Blake nodded at that, before swallowing her apprehension and speaking.

“Hey Yang. I uh… I just wanted to thank you for something.”

Blake sat down on the floor, criss cross applesauce, and brought out a rather hefty chunk of copper.

“You brought this to me. I needed it for my uh… electrical equipment and you brought it to me. Haven’t used it yet but I will. And I just wanted to thank you for that.”

Yang’s face twitched, as she looked at the copper and then Blake.

“…. Look. I haven’t known you for long. Barely a few days and if I’m honest our first meeting was…”

The phantom pain of tooth and claw crawled across her skin.

“… fairly impolite as first meetings go, even by my standards…. I don’t know what happened to you, and I don’t know who did it but for what it’s worth… I am glad to have met you. You’re helpful and um… yeah.”

She finished that last part lamely, more than a little uncomfortable with the way Yang just stared at her. And then, slowly, another word. Or, 2 rather.

“You’re… Welcome.”

Blake smiled a bit awkwardly at that, and Yang seemed to calm down even more. Drawing herself in from her formerly scrambled state.

“… I think your scales are pretty.”

Blake kind of just blurted that out, as Yang seemed somewhat uncomfortable with her own skin. In hindsight maybe not the best thing to jump into, and as Yang’s face scrunched up in confusion Blake was ready to apologize, but Yang cut her off. She pointed a finger at her own face and tilted her head.

“…. Pretty?”

Blake stared into her eyes, at her long mane of golden hair, her pearly white teeth and somewhat adorable nose… then started to blush a bit.

“… Yes.”

Yang nodded at that and considered her scales, claws and fins.

“…. Pretty?”

Though her tone was somewhat primitive and hindered by years of disuse… she still managed to sneak an incredulous tone in there.

Blake nodded, a bit more confidently this time.

“Yes.”

Yang’s eyes trailed over her whole body…. then wandered up to Blake.

“…..”

She pulled herself over, just a small bit closer as her violet eyes danced against Blake’s golden ones.

“…. Pretty.”

Not a question, a statement this time. And seeing as it was referring to Blake… she didn’t have much to say.

Chapter Text

She had crash landed with an idiot. Was that rude to think? Yes objectively so, but in all fairness, Weiss was rude.

“What makes you think that energy gate with budge after the last 15 attempts?”

Sun shrugged as he wound up another swing with a stick he found.

“Optimism! Sides, not like anyone else has come up with a bright idea!”

This was true, but the fact that he was correct irritated her on a near spiritual level. So she hmphed and instead looked around… a strange little metal… table? Podium? She wasn’t really sure what it was, but it did look promising. Casually walking over, she examined it a moment… then hopped back in surprise when it opened up like a door and presented a glowing purple… thing.

“…. by the twin gods, what even IS today?”

She walked closer, her eyes finding nothing resembling a button or keypad and put a hand to her chin.

“What to do here…. maybe…”

She tried to press down on the purple sigil itself. No such luck, the energy barrier refused to open still.

“Accursed door… but you have not yet bested me.”

Her eyes trailed down and around, poking and prodding for a weakpoint, only to find none. Sighing, she took a step back and-…

“A ha!!!”

She strode over confidently and picked up a rather thick metal tablet.

“Your days of thwarting my curiosity are over door.”

Smugly she walked up to the panel and was about to pop it in, when it was magnetically yanked out of her hands. She eeped a bit in surprise as Sun finally shattered his stick against the door… right after which it started to phase out of existence. The monkey laughed uproariously, and held half of his broken weapon in the air.

“Victory for the great Sun Wukong!”

He was about to bust out his victory dance, when Weiss walked right past him.

“Uhh, hello? A thank you for opening the door would be appreciated!”

Weiss’s eyes nearly rolled out of her head as this blonde buffoon apparently thought he did something worthwhile.

“You’re welcome. I accept my thank you’s as expensive presents and groveling.”

Sun blinked confused and tossed his stick away.

“Thank you for what? I opened the door.”

Weiss huffed and gestured to the console.

“No. I used inductive reasoning and opened the door that way.”

Sun looked over at the console, then walked up to it.

“….. how?”

Weiss walked up beside him and gestured before it…. It did nothing.

“…………”

She gestured more aggressively. Still nothing.

“…. YOU DARE MOCK ME?!?!?!”

She punched it and it finally opened to reveal a weird check mark. Weiss stared at it for a moment before clearing her throat.

“As you can see, I have navigated this strange technology and-… what are you doing?”

Sun had begun to inspect the thing, with a rather curious expression on his face.

“Looking for something to take it apart with. This is someone’s tech and someone’s probably got a way to talk to it… but… no, no dice.”

He dug his hands into the sand, and found the same thing. Smooth, no screws to loosen or bolts to break… not even welds to possibly weaken. He stood up and looked at the structure.

“…. Let’s be careful going in there okay? I’ve been an engineer for a very long time and… well ....”

He looked down at the panel, which seemed to have been formed into the shape by the hands of an unseen god.

“This isn’t new. It’s unnatural.”

He found another stick, and led the way in. Weiss let him, if only for her suspicions of traps… also his legs were longer than hers so speed walking in front would be a little awkward.

*Grrrrnnnnn….*

It was amazing how pristine a place managed to be, in spite of how much it groaned at the weight of itself. Not a speck of dust, not a wrinkle in the metal, a perfect canvas of whatever it used to be… though whatever it was and the thing it currently is have a very simple thing in common. Be ye a simple engineer, a quite literal grease monkey or the heiress to a company spanning galaxies…. the space they now walked was alien.

“What in the hell?”

Sun whispered, awe tainting his words as he stumbled through hallways meant for beings far more numerous or simply larger then the 2 who found themselves inside their walls. Unknowingly both protected and imprisoned by them as they stretched and twisted and spun, a maze, if only for its unfamiliarity. Green lit the hallways, shining like a neon garden, beautiful and strange…. though the strangest part of the base, as they tread through it, was the thing that twitched with mechanical life in their presence. Raising itself up and presenting them with a… cube. Which seemed not dissimilar to the walls around it, only brighter… and the occasional spark of electricity did not lend any credence to stability.

“…. Weiss. You got a scanner on you?”

The girl shook her head as she stared at the shimmering, crackling thing, slightly mesmerized, as each flick of energy seemed to beckon… a challenge or an invitation.

“It’s like the power core of ships but… smaller. So much smaller….”

Her blue eyes reflected the green and glowed like an ethereal sea because of it.

“I… it was theorized that mintiruzing cores could make them more powerful, but… those were massive. The one inside the Aurora was the size of a bus, and it was theorized shrinking that down even by 5 percent…”

She then stopped. Mental math clicked to a dead stop as it reached a devastating number, and her legs shook like brittle twigs.

“It… oh… what the hell IS this place? Nothing makes sense-“

Why couldn’t she feel the floor on her heel? No… no there wasn’t a floor there was a wall… but her heel wasn’t hitting a wall. It was in the open air. Open air that her entire body was pressed down on, making any kind of balance hopeless as she slowly but surely tipped backwards….

“Gotcha!!!”

A strong, steady and stone-like hand managed to grab her before she fell. A smug, overly confident grin hid the monkey’s own fear at losing his only companion at the moment.

“Geez, talk about the walls coming down ey? We’re already-… floating. Why are we floating-“

A girlish scream trailed off as the 2 plummeted to ground floor in a perfectly straight line, as if gravity was ignoring half of physics as it just set the 2 down on cold steel.

“…. O-Okay… that was a… a…”

Sun’s tail was thrashing and he stumbled, immediately latching onto a wall, just for something solid to hold onto, hoping to fend off the vertigo slightly quicker… while Weiss just sat on the floor, looking up to the “elevator” they just took the same way a child looks up at a roaring, vast spacecraft. Terrifying in its complexity and unknowable functions… but what scared Weiss was the fact that something THOUGHT of such a strange… alien device. And those cubes, which each probably contained enough power to level a small continent were just left lying around… like how one might leave batteries out. That the creatures who once roamed these now empty halls were so unimaginably advanced that such things could be left out like children's playthings but this entire facility laid empty… lifeless. An unnatural and thick air slowly slipped into her lungs as she breathed in pure terror and tears slowly slipped from her eyes.

“I…I want to go home….”

Perhaps it was something Sun had thought. Perhaps it was something Weiss had spoken. Regardless… the sentiment between the 2 was mutual.

Chapter Text

It was hard to say when exactly they mustered up the courage to move. Or was it courage at all? A strange paranoia had taken Weiss, and it was this paranoia that caused them to suspect something lurking where they just were, a ghost formed of flesh and steel, angered by their trespassing and eager to reap vengeance upon them for such foolishness. Such ghosts were entirely figments of her imagination, but that did not make her any more eager to turn back…

“I… I don’t think we should… go back to wherever that was…”

Sun’s voice was filled with fear, wrapped in a paper thin mask of bravery… did Weiss call him out on this? Of course not. If anything, she admired him more than she could ever stomach to admit. Because he was at least present enough of mind to hide his mounting horror. All she could do… was blindly stumble forward.

“L-Let’s keep going.”

Said the terrified thing that hid in Weiss’s skin as she looked over at the base beneath the base. The bones of it perhaps? Or maybe it’s bowels. She did not know, but as the steps she took kept guiding her deeper, it seemed inevitable that she would find out.

“Yeah… l-let’s.”

The quite literal grease monkey trailed after her, his tail tight with anxiety and slashing through the air like a living whip.

“…. let’s also hope nothing down here has a problem with that….”

He spoke that last part as a whisper… but to Weiss it sounded like a mountain being slammed down on glass. A shattering echo that this alien expanse devoured greedily in its vastness.

“… Good call….”

Her own voice didn’t reach anyone ears but her own, as they crawled ever deeper, the comparison’s to a decent into hell not going unnoticed by either party… but Weiss corrected herself sharply the moment they hit what passed for a bottom in this place. Because in hell, you find sinners. But the thing framed on the wall, while admittedly displaying a ghost, did not contain a sinner. Trapped behind a layer of transparent green glass, the painting was suspended by nothing at all, a void supporting the weight of… him.

“Grandfather?”

Weiss’s voice had no weight. Surprise had shattered its knees and sent the bulk of its mass scattering across the floor, leaving only a wispy little gasp in its place. The voice that could have filled a room on its own, ethereal in its beauty, deserving of every ounce of respect it commanded… found itself robbed of any gravitas or strength at the sight of Nicholas Schnee’s gentle smile,kind blue eyes and magnificent white beard. The broadness of his chest, the wrinkles in his face, the slight twitch of his lips as he attempted and failed to hide a smile. An exact and perfect copy of the painting that had hung so proudly in the halls of Schnee Manor for so many years…

“…. Why… is… that here?”

The shudder in her voice had such a painful tremor that it could have cracked the crust of the planet in half as her eyes were swaddled in a lie, made true only by the fact that no matter how many times she blinked or breathed, the image refused to warp or reveal to its true shape. This strange changeling stayed consistent and impossible, not moving in the slightest bit.

“….. HOW is that here?”

What was once confusion turned into offense, as her beloved grandfather’s face stood stock still, unaware of the situation it found itself in as Weiss strode up to it, her bright blue eyes focusing themselves on finding a control panel to release the painting, a frantic splay of hands and darting eyes as she sought to correct this clear and obvious mistake.

“Hey Weiss, what are ya doing?”

Sun gently walked forward as the young lady’s hands darted around for any possible way to free her grandfather from his unearthly shackles, a near mania slowly crawling across her face as the task began to seem more and more impossible.

“Wrong… all wrong…. None of this makes sense…”

Sun nodded as he used his tail to grab her hand and used his hand to tilt her shoulder towards him.

“…. Yeah. But you’re not really making much sense right now and we probably should be looking around for a way out instead of… this.”

Weiss was still hyperventilating. She probably seemed a mess to the man, but he didn’t judge her for that. He did snort a bit at the sight.

“What is it with rich kids and not knowing how to calm the hell down? I swear Neptune’s just the same… well, no, he usually hyperventilates more….”

His lighthearted jab did shake Weiss out of frazzled state, if only because it called upon her near boundless amount of pride.

“What’s THAT supposed to mean?”

Sun desperately tried not to laugh at her huffy face. It was a act of utter futility.

“And now you’re laughing at me?!?! For what? For being disturbed at this… disgusting display of MY Grandfather?!?!?”

Her once shock transformed into a brimming hatred in the blink of an eye as Sun continued to chuckle.

“Nothing, you just sorta reminded me of my boyfriend for a sec. He uh… he gets a bit frazzled sometimes.”

This odd bit of trivia once again knocked the Schnee off the warpath and she just stared up at the man as he held his head aloft in some more pleasent memories for a second.

“Boy…. Friend?”

She sounded so confused that Sun got nervous for a second. Would be just his luck to crash land with someone who didn’t like Faunus or people with less… straight laced sexualities.

“Uh…. Yeah?”

She stayed silent for another second then blinked while turning her head away.

“… good for you?”

She didn’t know what else to say. Sun had shown himself to be somewhat immature, but fairly sound of mind. She looked him over in a more… objective light and found that she could see how one would date him.

“…. Thanks?”

Sun pondered on this response. It wasn’t the worst response he’s gotten, and she didn’t seem disgusted so that was a relief. Be a bit awkward if Neptune comes down to save him, and he rushes into those strong arms of his during a sunset, only for her to be like “EW.” It would completely ruin the magic!

“… you’re welcome?”

It took quite the effort for Weiss to not shrug awkwardly as she said that the panic that had overtook her now turned into that strange politeness she often defaulted to when talking to people. It wasn’t really “her” but she didn’t know how else to communicate.

“Let’s uh… move on now okay?”

Sun helped Weiss off her knees and the girl looked down with dismay at her hands. Covered in dust and grime from trying to free her grandfather’s portrait with nothing to show for it.

“…what even is this place?”

She looked around some more until one unsealed shelf caught her eye. A dozen or so weapons were just… out in the open. The distance between them and the sealed painting wasn’t vast, the steel gleaming in the green light, as if casted in emerald. More relics, trapped in the gullet of a bigger relic.

“Oh sweet, weapons!!! The fancy kind too. Don’t suppose you got any sword skills or-… Weiss?”

He looked around confused and saw the girl already holding one of the weapons. A delicate but deadly looking blade, that ended in a razor sharp point, the edges glinting dangerously in the dim light. Familiarity was painted on the girl’s face as she looked the magnificent sword over, the Rapier reflecting her perfectly unblemished face like a mirror.

“… Nice pick? You uh… familiar with that kind of sword?”

Sun’s innocent question brought Weiss flashing back to the dozens of training sessions she had with her beloved elder sister. In a single motion, she grabbed the sheath for the sword and strapped it to her side, before sheltering the sword within it.

“…. As familiar as I am with my own 2 hands.”

Her hand now rested on the hilt and she felt… stronger. A lot stronger now.

“Well… as you said. We need to get a move on.”

The sword filled Weiss with pride and more courage then it would probably provide protection… but in these alien depths, courage is a blade more potent then any other.

“… Heh. Not bad there Schnee.”

He looked over the weapons and picked out a very basic looking black bo staff. It may have been a walking stick, or maybe a support hanger seeing as it was entirely made of steel, but it was now his staff. He spun it around checking the balance, which he found to be workable and grinned even wider.

“… that’s a… interesting choice?”

Weiss thought it was slightly impractical, but he seemed fairly adept with it. Better a weapon you know then one you don’t, her sister used to say…

“I’ve always been partial to bo staffs. They’re neat.”

He spun it around again before planting it firmly on the ground and using it to walk forward, clearly also regaining a fair bit of confidence himself.

“So… there’s like a LOT of stuff down here.”

The mechanic made quite the apt observation, as there was a seemingly random assortment of art,weapons, some human and some… distinctly alien. Like a twitching box they had no intent of going near or a bizarre orb made of moving metal. The alien artifacts were interesting, but they were… expected. After all, when you step into a dragon’s den, to see a large scaly beast there is in the norm. A Starbucks located directly in the dragon’s horde? Less so. Yet here were the metaphorical Starbucks, sitting in glass tubes just opposite of the other artifacts.

“… So was someone collecting all of this stuff or…”

Weiss hid a shudder at the sight of it all and shook her head.

“No. That one painting of my grandfather is one of a kind. Even if you got the artist who painted it, and had him make every last stroke the same way, it wouldn’t be the same. The one in the manor has been subjected to years upon years of exposure to open air, the paint wouldn’t age the exact same way every time… but that one is… is… identical. Down to the smallest imperfections.”

Sun nodded and scratched his head.

“Then what the hell is going on here?”

Weiss shook her head and a determination burned the edges of her icy heart.

“I don’t know. But I WILL find out.”

Sun nodded, approving of this new dedication as it seemed much more stable than before. He looked ahead at a larger, more imposing energy gate and sighed.

“Welp, gotta whack this a few times.”

Weiss shook her head and pointed at a panel close by… it wasn't next to it, but neither was the panel before so she had no reason to think it connected to something else.

“No, we just need to find the key. I did it before, they’re pretty easy to spot.”

She tried to channel an air of smugness but was a bit too on guard and ready to draw her sword for that to be an option.

“By key do you mean like… key or weird purple tablet?”

Weiss looked over at her fellow survivor, holding a weird purple tablet.

“That shall suffice. Now give it here.”

Sun shrugged and relinquished control of it, his tail twitching a bit as he took another glance at his surroundings. On his left were a bunch of strange alien artifacts and on his right were… human artifacts. Specifically ones relating to music, a violin, microphone and a piano or 2… but beyond those instruments weren’t CDs or any other sort of thing that could be used to capture sound in a physical form… once again, there were strange paintings. One of which being Weiss's Grandfather again… but there was something different about it. Instead of a simple black pillar supporting the green tube it was a black pillar with weird holes in it… and a large green line connecting it to the panel Weiss was approaching with her key.

“Uhh… Weiss?”

He had no idea what the hell this meant but he had a sinking, no pun intended suspicion.

“Yes, Sun?”

She still carried on with her task and was about to place the tablet in when he spoke and stopped just short.

“Your uh grandpa’s here again, and he has a weird line next to him now.”

Weiss took a glance at this line and the panel… before nodding affirmatively.

“Then this should get him out of the clutches of whoever placed him here!!!”

Chipperly she placed the tablet in and waited for results… nothing happened.

“…. blast, this must be something-“

“Mirror…. Tell me something….”

Weiss froze up at the sound of her own voice coming from somewhere that wasn’t her mouth.

“W-What?”

“Tell me who’s the loneliest of all….”

It seems as if this little panel had nothing to do with the door and instead was a jukebox of a kind… playing Schnee music. Weiss’s near angelic voice echoed out from the speakers and eventually began to be spoken from other places. As if she had gotten hooked up to some strange alien PA system and was serenading the place with her music. The ghost of her voice cried out through the machine, speaking of an aching and painful loneliness… one that gnaws on Weiss’s heart like a cancer. But as it continued to ring out and echo, it found its way into the water. A reflective tune dancing through a reflective substance, the music wrapping and warping around in the depths of the cold sea. Even with weak human senses, it would be relatively simple to pick up on such vibrations, a fair distance away. They weren’t particularly loud, but their pitch and consistency was what made the difference… to a beast more accustomed to such noises… even a few miles away, it would be child’s play to pick up on such noises. And something more attuned to strange sounds then perhaps any other creature in the vast deep most certainly heard it. A song… a siren’s song.

“Gruuaahhh….”

Came her groan, as the music infested her ears, sensitive to vibration already. Her entire body went on edge as the sound spread and throughout the deep cold depths… the words shattered against her skull like glass cracking against flesh, each lyric embedding and festering. It was making her think. This particular monster hated thinking. It grabbed the edges of its own leathery cloak and pulled in on itself, the crimson folds covering their face in a vain attempt to protect what was left of its psyche… but the sound pierced that cloak. Pierced its peace of mind. And left the wild animal frothing with rage. The most irrational, beastial rage that could only stem from a lifetime of fear. And to drown out the sound of… of something. It was a thing. The voice sounded like one of the things that had hurt it and… and someone else. Who else did the voices hurt?… it couldn’t remember…. But… but the voice… the voice… why wouldn’t it just be quiet already?!?!?

“Grrrrr…”

It’s frustration kept growing, the sound never ceasing in intensity or volume, just staying at the same exact tempo with no respite or hope for an escape… and then something broke. She hated the voice. It was so LOUD….. so it would be louder. And all things in the deep dark cold depths felt a shudder, as the cold white vines of kelp, with clumps of blood pooling here and there visibly bent, as the long lost little red reaper… roared. It roared so loud that the sand around it scattered, the volume and breadth of her voice enough that anything around it couldn’t help but fear and dread what sort of demon could make such an hellish noise. It kept screaming, letting its own ungodly howl batter the voice away from her ears… that didn’t didn’t work. The moment it stopped to rest her throat… it was there again….. it… the voices would never leave her alone would they?

“Orrrgg…”

It gurgled on water and slowly drifted to the sea bed that she so rudely disturbed… and violently dug its claws into the muck and grime. In a proxy of a sprinter’s pose, it coiled up on the floor and leveled it’s silver eyes like arrows on where the voice was coming from.

“…. Kill….”

What did the word mean? The monster didn’t know. All she knew, as she exploded towards where this accursed noise came from, is that she wanted to do that to the voice.

Chapter Text

Yang was sleeping at the moment. Blake knew this, because the rumble that the beast made every time she exhaled vibrated the entire bed and more or less gave her a free back massage. The cat stared for a very very long time at her new roommate as her breath went in and out, in and out. The calm and peace on her face was just… lovely to see. Blake was happy that Yang was at peace. That the scars and pains of her past were abated and quiet in the sanctuary of this home, hidden beneath the waves.

“Hmm… now if only I could get her off of me.”

Which led her to an issue. Yang had sorta… fallen asleep on her lap. Which wasn’t really what it sounded like, it was less a loving, cuddling snuggle and more a big dog with no concept of personal space had decided to lay claim on this particular part of the bed with no concerns for what was under it.

“I have a suggestion!”

Penny helpfully chirped, her mild amusement at the situation carefully hidden in her already cheerful tone.

“What would that be?”

Blake asked nonchalantly, her lack of real… effort in the question making it clear that she didn’t quite mind her predicament… in fact between the rumbling and the warmth she was getting a little sleepy.

“You could try waking her up?”

Blake blinked very slowly. And just… took a very deep breath.

“…. You seem exasperated.”

The aquanaut wondered what the chances of her getting away with lying were. She decided to take them.

“I am not.”

Her chances of getting away with it were 0.

“Why have you lied, Captain? You can always be honest with me!”

She didn’t want to hurt Penny’s feelings… however, there wasn’t much of a way “gee why didn’t I think of that” without being rude.

“Penny, your suggestion was…. certainly an option. But she’s very heavy and I… I think she deserves her rest.”

Penny beeped as she considered this response and came up with an idea.

“Then I suggest you snuggle her back and fall asleep with her! That way, it’s less like you spend all that time crushed under her and more like you just…. Well… fell asleep!”

Once again, Blake had to balance her immense desire to be sarcastic with her equally strong desire to be nice to the perpetually positive robot.

“…… That sounds like a good idea.”

Penny hmmed happily and scanned a little bit more.

“It shall soon be your only option so you better decide quickly.”

Blake was somewhat alarmed by this answer from Penny, as it sounded a bit like a threat.

“Uhhh…. Why-“

Yang then nuzzled up further on her, completely ensnaring Blake in her grasp.

“That would be why Captain! Don’t worry, you’re in no danger of anything, reading her mental scans, she subconsciously views you as a member of her pack or family unit and thus is shielding you from harm! It's quite intriguing really, if you want to know more.”

Blake wondered what bet the gods had going on to make her life as bizarre as possible, and why exactly they took such pleasure in it.

“…… Well, it’s not like I’m going on a run anytime soon…”

Penny beeped happily and continued.

“Well, comparing her inactive mind state to that of a normal human’s, it’d be wrong to say she’s completely unconscious right now. It’s more accurate to say that she has entered a state in which her more intensive senses like sight and smell are simply dulled, but all her other ones remain active and on high alert, likely as a defensive mechanism or some remnant of her human biology keeping a part of itself aware that it needs to breathe. She’s also “aware” enough to acknowledge things around her as friend or foe, which is likely why she seeks your comfort so much, as an extra way to ensure her safety. And seeing as she likely views your body temperature as quite low, she could also be trying to warm you up.”

Blake was wondering how the hell someone managed to program in something that advanced but couldn’t make a radio worth shit… though upon reflection, with the massive debris field around the planet, she supposed even a good radio would be… shoddy.

“Warm….”

It was warm… it would be so easy to fall asleep right now…

“Mmm….”

Yang put the side of head right over Blake’s neck, which was… strange. It was almost like she wanted to make sure Blake was still breathing and her pulse was still strong… like she was that scared of losing someone again…

“Heh… I’m… I’m not going anywhere… promise…”

A promise made between her and a slumbering monster… one she meant with all of her soul, as her last moments of consciousness came… and she placed a gentle hand atop the dragon’s head… then began to dream. It started off simply enough at first, she was just walking upon a beach somewhere when she heard a playful bellow… It was Yang. Calling her to the waterside. Grinning, and diving on in, they began to reenact their first meeting, but far less violently, no desperate blasts of lava or clever swipes of the knife, just simply bumping and bunting, the playfulness of this little game reminded Blake of when she was just a little kitten, “challenging” her far larger father to fights, a thought she had not had in years… Dream Yang then grabbed her close, wrapping her tail around her as they both floated back to the shoreline…

“…. Pretty…”

The great golden beast rumbled the word in her chest before she spoke it, as slowly, she began to descend upon Blake. Her back on the sand, and face to the sky, the sun dipping just at the horizon line, a great gold,purple and red symphony blanketing them in beautiful shades of flame, as Yang’s lips came but inches from her own… she could smell hot breath, salt,charred metal and something else mixing in her nose as Yang’s eyes bored into hers. That bright red was like cherries in summer, welcoming and warm, not a hint of judgment in them… they coaxed out words Blake never thought she would say again, even in a dream… but just as she spoke… she looked behind Yang. To a great big something pushing the puffy white clouds of her perfect sky away, to an object, red and bright from reentry falling upon her small stretch of dreamlike paradise to wreak upon her a hell she had been running from for years.

“N-No!!! How did he find me?!?!”

He would always find her, a voice said in her head… not her voice though…

“Hello, my darling.”

…. She has run so far. So well. She had put so much distance between them… yet he still chased her. She had been planning to stow away off the ship, she was so confident that this time, this time she would be truly impossible to locate… but then the ship came tumbling down in a ball of fire… leaving her at her Hunter’s mercy.

“It really has been quite a long time since we’ve talked…”

She got up, and spun around, trying to hide Yang from his gaze. A stupid thing to do, since she was on top of her, and was likely the first thing Adam saw.

“Look at what’s become of you… out of my sight and already finding another to warm your bed…”

He chuckled in his cruel way, the same way he always did. How did she not see, why did she not listen, WHY COULDN’T SHE MOVE-

“Though, I must question your taste darling, this… THING seems like more of a wild animal than a person.”

There was an indignant growl in the dragon’s voice as she crawled away from Blake’s legs, much to the dreamer’s chagrin.

“S-Stop Yang. Run away. Just… just run away… please…”

She begged. It was pathetic the way she begged. But she still begged.

“Go… you can leave me, I’ll be fine I swear just go…”

Adam never looked over at his opponent, hand on his sword as she let drops of magma leak from her jaw.

“…. I’ll take everything from you Blake… and I’m going to start with her.”

His voice was so commanding, even in a dream it made her snap to attention, her back arching in horror as some unseen force held her tight… and she was forced to watch.

“RAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!”

That same bellowing battle cry that at first struck such horror into Blake’s heart did so again, but not because it meant the threat of danger for herself… rather it was the sound of the guillotine dropping on Yang’s head…. It… it came off so easy it just… there was red everywhere. It pooled at the site of death and her head rolled for a little while until it stopped and… and it looked up at her… it didn’t say anything but it was still looking at her-

“Now my darling…. You’re going to come with me.”

No.

“Cmon… it’s time to end this little tantrum and-“

No.

“-get back to more important work wouldn’t you say?”

Blake’s entire body was filled with stomach churning fear. She would have puked if she could have moved, so instead bile and vomit merely pooled in her mouth so she could not scream, but she still managed a choked, disgusting gurgle of petrified madness, her terror so great at the thought of being ALONE with HIM, it made the deep endless waters of this abyssal hell seem like a welcoming escape from this demon that she thought was her love… meanwhile her… her friend was… dead because of her?… how many were dead because of her?

“Shhh… it’s okay… it’s okay.”

His words of poisoned honey slicked across her face as he went to caress her cheek and she cried… she couldn’t stop crying…

“No one is coming to take you away Blake… not this time…”

She believed him. She knew that this… this was it. That all her struggling would come to an end.

“… How… strange.”

She would be his. And nothing more. Just something he could fill the empty spot in his heart with and call it a soothing balm for his pain.

“…. That’s not really like you.”

She… she… SHE…. She heard a voice.

“Well… no. I guess it’s hard to say that isn’t like you…”

Something was behind Adam. Something big. It’s voice echoed in her ears but her mind felt so empty and the voice just sounded so… big… and curious. In a moment it was as tall as a mountain. At the same moment, she could see its face right against her’s, its bemused expression the only thing in her world that felt real at the moment… It was not a comforting feeling. Like cold steel on her neck, or hot breath tickling the back of her ears… something was IN her head… and she… she…

“?Ŵħǎț æřę ÿœů¿„

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!”

A deep throaty roar jolted that sounded as if it came from the night itself drove the beast from her slumber, fear gripping her heart as it thudded like a war drum. Immediately, her claws were out, her teeth were gnashing and a fire was borne from her wild yet defensive rage… only to realize that nothing was there. Nothing to fight,kill or chase away, just the same sterile white steel that had become her new nest. She felt the vibrations of Blake hitting the floor in front of her as she scrambled away, reminding her of a fish she tore the fin off of, doomed to bleed out anyway, but still fleeing like they would find some place to mend their wounds… they never did.

“Blakeee?”

Her wording was still thick with accent and misuse, her strange mewling cry like that of a child… which annoyed her. She was not a child… though… on the subject of that…

“GET AWAY!!!! GET AWAY FROM ME!!!!”

Blake was acting like one.

“Blakeeeeyyy… stop iiit.”

She did not mean to add a y to Blake’s name, but she did kind of like how it sounded… such thoughts were for later however. Blake was in trouble.

“Calllm downnnn….”

Her call to Blake was droning and confused, as she crawled forward, her serpentine body slinking behind her.

“Grrrmmm… Blake!!!”

The cat was hiding now… she was good at hiding. Most of the time. Right now… not so much. She was sobbing and her scent was thick with fear. Easy to track that way.

“Stop iiit… not gonna hurt youuuu…”

Still no response, but the sobbing stopped.

“…. Blakey? You okay nowww?”

The cat looked over at her, wet tears dropping to the ground in rivets as she sniffed. She was curled up in on herself, and quickly turned her gaze away, trying to continue her charade of hiding. Which Yang found to be strange, because Blake was right in front of her.

“… Go away….”

Her words came out harsh, and maybe they would have been hurtful… were it not for her shaking chest and throat. As it stood, Yang felt more concerned then hurt.

“…… No.”

The dragon didn’t advance any closer. She just… refused to leave Blake alone. She rested her weight against a wall and just… laid there with the stranded mechanic. Blake shot a nasty glare at her, which Yang met with naked concern… and utterly declawed any threat in that glare.

“You… You should go away… Go away Yang.”

Her voice was trembling even more now filled with a terror as deep as the sea she was imprisoned in…. And like any predator smelling fear, that drew Yang in.

“You hurt. Need help.”

Her words, even strange and accented as they were, rang true… Blake was hurt. Deeply. The kind of wound that didn’t heal… it just slowed… and killed.

“I-I’m not hurt in a way you can help Yang, now please go away!!! I’m fine!!!!”

Her voice loud and angry, just came across as the last death keels of her prey to Yang. Blake balled up and closed her eyes, huddling against herself trying to find some kind of way to escape or be stronger somehow…. When the dragon made her move.

“Blakey needs help… like I needed help.”

Making sure to stay away, she sprawled out on the floor in front of Blake, her back facing from the cat, and her eyes on the entrance. Loyally, she laid there like a guard dog, her purpose in this poise as clear as the tears that dripped from Blake’s chin.

“I… I don’t need your help Yang. I need you to go away.”

Yang didn’t look at her after she said that.

“Liar.”

It was such a short and curt response, the intelligence and clearness of those words cutting through Blake’s stilted pose like a well timed slash from her claws.

“I… I mean it!!!”

Even to her ears, that sounded quite weak and infantile, but she still stuck to her guns.

“You being close to me… it’ll hurt you.”

Yang still did not move from her point of protection, eyes still locked on the door as her muscular back’s only sign of motion the little exhales of breath she took… causing the many, many scars on them to ripple, like streaks of oil on water.

“Been hurt before. Will be again. It’s better than being alone… that… that is…”

Her voice trailed off. Her back tightened like it was straining under immense weight.

“… I lose eyes. I lose teeth. I lose arms, and I lose hair before I EVER lose you Blake.”

Her speech was still broken… but that broken speech had a jagged edge. It split Blake’s chest open down the middle and left her heart out in the open, as the tears flowed down her face in big fat rivets, the whites of her eyes a puffy pink, as the sorrow of her soul rattled around in her throat, constrained by a prideful desire to not let it show outwardly.

“N-No…. No please don’t…”

Yang looked back now, her eyes filled with a fire once more… but it was the flame of the hearth. The heat that drives the cold away, the light that turns the sharp and twisting confines of a house layered with darkness, into a comfortable, gentle place….

“…. You don’t scare me Blake. I don’t scare you….”

She locked her scaly hand round Blake’s and slowly drifted closer. The simple ease of movement like the current mercifully floating a raft in a stormy sea.

“…. We can be safe together. We can be alone together…. “

She wrapped around Blake now, her tail a comforting blanket, her hair a most luxurious pillow and her arms the gentlest nudge to sleep she needed.

“I-I…. I would hurt you…. Burn you even! It would… it would sting like hell, it would be the worst thing someone could ever do to you!!!”

Blake screamed an exaggeration, a lie that she was told to believe and believed with all her heart… but even if it were true…. Yang had a response to it, as she gently pushed the hair out of her eyes.

“…. Then I Burn.”

And with that… the arguments fell flat. The confidense Blake had in her own self hatred and doubt was burnt to ash by a few well placed words… as she without hesitation, without thought, saw her fire, the fire that could finally burn away her shackles… and leapt into it. Enjoying the sting and hiss of every little crackle, as that fire leapt into the shadows just as eagerly… refuge and company were all it asked… and by the gods above and below…. Blake was more then ready to give it.

Chapter Text

Island. The song was coming from an island. That is what the monster discovered as she approached it from the northwest side, keeping low and blanketed in darkness… song… that word. She hated it…. It contained memories and those memories made her THINK… she hated thinking. She hated the song. She would kill the song. Kill the thinking…. But not now… the light… the light was right above her. Had to stay in the dark. Or the light would see her. She would stay in the dark… stay in the shallow part… away from the heat. Away from the deep… so the dragons and the ghost could not find her… so they would not eat her… everything wanted to eat her.

“Gods fucking DAMNIT!!!!!”

Weiss’s howl of pure rage echoed across the vast rolling sea, the bleeding hole in her arm a half forgotten memory as the rage just kept building.

“I’ll tear this all down!!! Every last bit of it!!! BOLT BY BOLT IF I HAVE TO!!!! DO YOU HEAR ME!?!?! HIDE FOR NOW ALIEN SCUM, BUT I WILL FIND YOU!!!!!”

Sun watched this temper tantrum with mild amusement.

“Ya alright there Weiss Queen-“

Weiss snapped back to him, a foul insult on her lips before… it was hushed off.

“…. I’m…. Fine. Dandy even.”

Sun snorted at Weiss’s words, much to the heiress’s chagrin.

“Dandy? Dandy people curse at the sky and swear vengeance upon the cloud aliens?”

Weiss scoffed and turned her face to the sea.

“What would you know about that? For all you know, this could be the dandiest I’ve been in years!!!”

Sun, who had found a decent spot to sit on the beach, had to roll his eyes at that one.

“If it is, I’m very scared for your future.”

Weiss huffed again and kicked at the water, the loud splash echoing against the waves with a sloshing fury, as her arm still hummed slightly with pain.

“It’s…. Well that’s certainly valid. Given the rather grim circumstances we find ourselves in.”

Sun pondered on 2 things, one that the word Grim felt too… short when Weiss said it, and the second, the alien… temple they had found themselves in. They had easily escaped it, just retracting their steps, but… still. The thing they found in the bottom of it… a coiled metal serpent. It lunged out and drank Weiss’s blood before retreating back into its hole. She had punched the place it came from, and he suspected she’d still be nursing that bruise on her dainty little knuckles, but that was the least of their concerns… what did concern him was that booming metal voice that shook everything in his skull.

“…. We need to salvage our pod.”

Weiss stopped her rant against her semi imaginary foes and clicked her teeth shut.

“…. You’re right. In a rare turn of events we got lucky. It didn’t sink that deep… but I don’t know if there’s anything in it to salvage. That piece of shit didn’t even float, I doubt it’s been stocked well.”

Sun nodded and hopped to his feet with no hands, using just his abs to toss himself up.

“….”

Weiss was impressed by this, as she’s only seen that trick a few times before. Her elder sister did it, with much more effort then Sun just did and she also saw it in the middle of a Pyrrha Nykos sparring session… she rewatched that moment quite a lot, watching as each individual muscle ripple, as the fighter sprang up, looking like a perfect statue of marble had come to life…

“Now, I’m gonna take a dive, and you’re gonna watch me. If I start drowning, help. And if something tries to snap me up…. Watch me closer, as I kick its ass.”

Weiss blinked at his bravado before he dove into the sea. She then sighed and stuck her own head in the water, looking at the monkey gliding through the sea and into the sunken lifepod. It was a… fairly simple process. Simple enough that as Weiss caught a breath and looked back down again, she wasn’t surprised that Sun was already swimming back up… though… as her critical eyes adjusted to the water… she did find it strange that he was ascending so violently. Bits and pieces of gear he salvaged floated to the bottom as he bursted to the shore, gasping and gapping like he had run a mile. She rushed over to him and checked him over, seeing no wounds or signs of injuries, but his chest still rose and fell like a seizing mountain, concern dancing across her face like scattered light and she grabbed him by the back of his head and pulled him up, so she could look him in the eye.

“Sun, calm down, what happened?!?”

Sun grabbed her by the shoulder and with great effort that was entirely unnecessary for her rather lithe frame, shoved her away from the shore before running up onto land himself.

“…. So. There’s a… thing down there. It was… purple and weird. It had these weird little arms and… teleported. It uh… it teleported.”

He held himself a little closer.

“… We shouldn’t go back in that water.”

Weiss didn’t believe him. Teleportation had been attempted and all agreed it was a stupid idea. The energy needed for it would drain a Dyson Sphere and that was to get you from 5 feet to another 5 feet instantly. Not exactly a great trade for wasting all that energy…. So it was either a creature that could camouflage exceedingly well or move exceedingly fast… both of which did very little to comfort her.

“I…. I would agree. But unless you wish to build a fabricator out of sand and driftwood, we don’t have much of a choice.”

Sun growled and glared at her.

“I’m sorry, what part of TELEPORTING didn’t you understand-“

Weiss cut him off with a swipe of her hand.

“I understood it FINE, what I don’t understand is how YOU think there’s a match’s chance in tundra that we’ll survive without whatever’s in that pod!!!!”

Sun’s teeth clinked together rather loudly, like 2 stones dropping on top of each other.

“…. I…. There’s plenty we can do.”

Weiss looked at him, and raised a very sharp eyebrow.

“Really? Well ENLIGHTEN me Sun, what can we do?”

Sun paused and looked around.

“We… We can eat the fruit of those trees!”

Weiss looked over at the trees with the bright blue leaves and sighed

“And then?”

Sun’s face froze in an expression of false excitement as ideas came and went.

“We… can build a smoke signal?”

Weiss, trying to be civil and only partially failing, responded.

“Why, how brilliant! So that way the tired,desperate and hungry survivors can swim over here and get killed by the sea monster instead! Why didn’t I think of such a wonderful idea!?!?!”

A perhaps deserved amount of sarcasm for what was a terrible idea, but execution is everything with words, and this was a rubber guillotine falling on a stone neck.

“Because your counter proposal of SWIMMING with the damned monster is such a better idea!!!!”

Weiss paused and her lips thinned into a line… before she looked out on the still burning ship, its corpse bloated by flame and wind.

“It is. Because then… we have a chance at survival…. However I acknowledge your point. To swim with something we don’t know anything about is a bad idea… luckily, I have a good one.”

Sun snorted and looked at her, her utter lack of supplies or anyway to build something that would help them.

“And that brilliant idea would be?”

Weiss looks at him, her gaze firm.

“We make it feel like it’s swimming with us.”

The quite literal grease monkey just stared at her unblinking for a second, so still was his body that Weiss could’ve sworn he turned into a statue… and then…

“Oh, you want to scare it?”

….. well… he was right. But her way of saying it was much more elegant.

“Hmm…. Now, there’s the beginning of an idea. But what to scare it with?”

Weiss put a hand to her chin and snapped her fingers.

“Something unknown to it. That would make us appear threatening and strange, a new species that it wouldn’t immediately know how to engage with!”

Sun shook his head at the idea, before looking over at the now baking corpse of the alien he killed… and got an idea.

“Well… that’s one thing to do. But we already are aliens to them, we can’t look much stranger as is. But what we can do…is lure it away.”

Weiss stopped her own schemes and looked at him.

“Explain.”

Sun stood up and walked towards his fallen foe.

“Sea animals have a nose for carrion, easy to eat something that’s dead after all, right? So, I’m thinking, one of us chum the waters away from our pod a bit, and keep it distracted with some goodies while another one of us gets our pod good and ready for use. What do ya say?”

This… this idea had some merit, but it also risked some other things.

“What if we attract something worse than what we already have to deal with?”

Sun scoffed and nudged the corpse.

“Yeah, worse than the teleporting invisible space ghost. Sure, I guess, theoretically, it could get worse. But I’ve got another idea anyway.”

He looked over at the strange, spore-like purple growths, and smirked.

“One that spices things up a bit.”

Weiss followed his gaze to the weird mushroom looking things and wondered what he was doing. She then watched him crunch them under his feet and REALLY wondered what the fuck he was doing.

“Kay, now I need some rocks!!! We’re making a fire today!”

Weiss saw the arrival value of fire, but how did it help them get supplies out of their ship?

“Now, I know what you’re thinking, this is a stupid idea… and it is! But it just might work. Ya see, fire is… weird.”

Weiss gestured for him to go on, with a rather exaggerated hand movement… or maybe she tried to smack him but remembered halfway through the attempt he was too far away to attempt it.

“So weird that basically every living creature around has a pretty instinctive fear of it. One little touchy of the hand and POW, you rip your hand away!!! So if we could bring a little fire to the ocean ....”

The foundation of this plan, scaring away whatever was there with a little lightshow wasn’t necessarily all too bad… there was just one, smaller issue with it.

“How?”

Sun whirled over, a bundle of crunchy dried what she presumed to be plant matter in her arms and grinned.

“I’m so glad you asked!!!”

Chapter Text

”This plan is gambling with chance, and exhibit A of this is you not wearing anything to protect against burns!!!”

Sun heard Weiss’s valid complaints and didn’t really respond to them as he finished gathering up his pile of floatation and kindle.

“I’ll be in water for most of it and you’ll be up here, ready to dive in with that sword of yours to stab anything that bothers me in the neck! Or… whatever equivalent they have for a neck..”

Weiss was not as confident as he was, because this plan had a lot of failure points in it… least of which was the still unknown location of the thing in the water.

“Sun, please.”

Her voice was soft… and something in his stomach told Sun that she hadn’t used that tone in quite awhile. It was raw. Chipped. Sincere only for how much it weeped.

“… You mentioned a boyfriend right? You have something to go back to, people to go back to. Don’t be reckless.”

Her tone was firm but the thought of losing this man, the only other connection she had on this planet…. True she had known him for a scant few hours but still, without him, the… isolation of the situation may start to set in. Which she supposed wouldn’t be new to her exactly. In her manor at times she went days without seeing another person. Sometimes… sometimes she wondered if she was the only one there. Other times she wondered if she would ever be found if… if something happened-

“Weiss.”

The golden tailed monkey gave her his most comforting grin, just barely showing his more pointed teeth… though the edge in those fangs reassured Weiss in a way. The reassurance of strength, that the person she was speaking to was a survivor first and foremost, was what put her at ease.

“I’m not abandoning you, and I’m not dying on you. I’ll be fine. You will be fine. You are not alone here.”

She opened her mouth… and closed it firmly. Nodding, before giving Sun her blade. With steel and stone, came sparks, with sparks, came fire… and gently, he pushed the life raft of flame out into the ocean. It sparked, sputtered, but still crackled with life, the fire fleeing from the rocking water, as if trembling with fear. It grumbled, hissing all the more and Sun took his chance, taking the plunge, his weight making him sound like a stone as he slammed through the surface of the water, hands cutting bluntly, before being swallowed into the blue… With him out the way, she actually had a decent view of the Aurora. She did not like looking at it. In fact, short of a beach full of corpses, it was perhaps the most disturbing sight she could see, for all she could think about was the death that came to every crew member who burned alive, who drowned and the lucky ones who were smashed into paste immediately. They had families. Friends, or maybe just one bartender who knew their order on instinct. And in that bloated, bleeding and groaning corpse, they met their end. All because someone had to save a few quick bucks here and there.

“No… stop it.”

She placed a hand to her hand, before deciding that the temporary annoyance of holding her breath was worth the distraction from the rotting hulk on shore. Dunking her head into the water, drowning out the snowstorm of guilt in noise and foam, she watched as the glowing orange of the flames drifted out further on the water… and Sun stayed safe in the shadows it cast. He picked through the things quickly and effectively, in moments, he had grabbed a satchel from the pod, and stuffed it with all the supplies and tools he could.,. It would make him slow, but it wasn’t a particularly large distance he had to cross. And with the fire, anything curious enough to bother him would have something else to be worried about, or investigate. It was clever… and it was working.

**Whormp**

…. It was working, right up until the point where the mechanic was in open water. No cover. No place to hide. No clever little backup, no tricks or diversions. The only thing between him and the THING that just showed up, was empty water. He was a scant few feet away from shore, from safety… and in moments that wouldn’t matter.

“ŞķŘÆŮǍÃĀĶẞ”

Its voice was an explosion of static, its scream shaking the water and filling it with a swarm of glass, scratching every bit of them. It floated over, gracefully, its hideous talons close to its body… and Weiss did something incredibly stupid.

“Hmmm… HM!!!!”

She tore her head from the sea, took in a deep breath, and dove in, as smoothly as a jagged spike of ice would slide into snow. She was mere feet from the creature when the sunlight caught on her sword, and wisely, it moved away.

**Whormp.**

The beast warped away once again, as Weiss brandished her blade, hoping to seem scarier then she was… and scarier then her opponent. As it warped back into place, this presented itself to be an impossibility.

**Whormp.**

The heiress was perhaps the wrong person to ask about the look of such a creature, her “ick” response was stronger than most… but “ick” was a very generous description of the beast. Disgusting was the wrong word, it was intelligently hideous. She could see its… stomach? Heart? Some other unknown organ? Whatever it was, it pumped and pulsed, twitching at random intervals like another monster was ready to burst out of its chest. It was long, 9 feet or so, from the purple crown on its head, marking it as the king of horrors, to the ends of its strange and tentacled tail. The midsection was covered with a leathery cloak, the smoothness of the skin like a sheen of film over rotten meat, as talons longer than her arm outstretched in front of it, ready to shear the flesh from her bones…. And its face… it garbled and gurgled, its little mouth pieces twitching and fidgeting like pincers of a spider, as 4 eyes studied her like a fresh fly stuck in its web. In brief, it was a corpse in an ill fitting jacket, made of rotten leather and heartless functions.

“GreeěěëǎĦĦĦĦĦ!!!!!!!”

Even muffled by water and distance, the sounds it made were an amateurish lobotomy on Weiss’s senses, its form turned to static and five were in front of her. She blinked, trying to right the wrong of her vision, trying to shake the pain away… and of course, things got worse from there. An orb made of light was sent hurtling towards her, and with more instinct than thought, she jammed her blade into it.

***POP***

The bubble of energy did what bubbles do when confronted by a sharp object, and suddenly Weiss’s vertigo from the beast screams went from “painful” to “agonizing.” All but the vague throbs of blood in her skull were blurred and bloated globs of light,sound and static.

“MMMM!!!!”

Was that her voice making the sound? Was that her blood filling the sea?

“ĦĦĦŘØŐMMMM!!!!”

Were it her hands that thrashed in front of her with a blade, all but the basest of instincts guiding their actions, or was it that of the beast's blades, poking and prodding her like she were a strange piece of meat and it were a child tasked to eat it?

“GRRRRMMMM!!!”

And now for something that came outside of her whirlpool of confusion, something that was neither her, nor was it the beast. Red filled her entire world, like the sun had fallen into the sea as a hand grabbed her by the neck and pulled her away, to the surface, to air.

“WEISS, SWIM!!!! SWIM!!!!!!!”

Winter’s voice had gotten… stranger over the years, but it was still authoritative and, being a good student, Weiss followed the command. She swam. She swam and swam, swimming right into the shore in what could’ve been seconds, or hours, it was hard to tell with the sound of water,wind and vague screaming. She paddled until her fingers felt sand, then she kept going, clawing into the shore, as the starving monster below might claw into a meal.

“Gugh… I… Oh gods…”

Sun puked as he wrestled onto the beach himself, the events of the day being far, far too much for him… he wondered what the hell he even puked up, he hadn't eaten in a day.

“…. Oh… okay. Alright…”

He rolled onto his back and faced the sky, still gasping for air.

“… That sucked.”

Weiss didn’t agree or disagree. She simply breathed… and marveled at her ability to still do so.

“My… my sword…”

Sun turned his head over, lines of drool being wiped off his face, funnily enough, like he had just eaten a meal.

“Where… I dropped my sword…”

Weiss stumbled up, reaching for a thing that was not there, and stopped.

“…. I need it back.”

Possessed by some fear induced madness, she began to wade back into the sea, into the demon’s domain, but Sun stopped her.

“…. No. You don’t need it… you need to breathe. In… and out.”

Trying to calm someone while he himself was still riding a adrenaline high was not something the monkey believed he could do… as it turns out… he was wrong.

“I-In… and out…”

Weiss sputtered as she fell down to her knees, Sun falling with her…

“In… and out.”

In… in the sea, the monster prodded at something. Scanning it from the outside, before moving closer. The sword had sunk far below the surface, burying itself like Excalibur in the sand.

“ĶĶĶĠĞĠÄăãá….”

It considered many things, things that a mind made of flesh would falter in, but this beast was only partly made of such weak materials… and its mind had long since forgone flesh.

“…….”

Though, as it clicked and prodded, examined and studied… a weakness was soon exploited by a beast made of flesh….

“RRRRRRUUUUUUUAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”

Weakness one: it failed to consider variables in the manner a paranoid creature might. True, nothing dangerous was around it, the lesser predators of the area had long since learned that it was not a thing to eat, but this particular creature let its guard down to the extreme. Something a more wise predator would never do.

“¡¡¡!¡!¡ŘRŘRR%{+~’drřRŘ€£€!!!!!”

Weakness two: once injured, it had little means of egress other than to teleport away. The issue with this, is that a fast and determined predator will not give up the chase with one quick get away.

***CRUNCH***

“RUUUUUUUUAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

Weakness three: Its whole method of escape was in its chest. This method of escape was… Glowing, a beacon to come closer… and if something came close enough to rip into its chest, and then pull out whatever it was that made it more than colorful meat… it could, from there, only observe its own death. Though, in all fairness….

“ĞĞĠSĶŞŽŽZzzZZZZZzzzzzz….ZZZ….. zzz….”

That is the weakness of all things is it not? A heart… a truly pitiful thing in the world of fangs and claws.

Chapter Text

Sun and Weiss had held each other, felt the warmth of the other and the blood that pulsed through each other. The reassurance that both of them survived did wonders to harden resolve and willingness to survive… but after a certain point, both of them were just tired and didn’t really want to move.

“…. We need to build a shelter.”

The light haired fanus rumbled as the sun dipped into the sea.

“…. That we do.”

The even lighter haired human responded as slowly she stood up, her knees visibly wobbling as a question passed through both of their minds….

“When did we last eat?”

Weiss fell down on a knee, and looked back at Sun, hope firmly buried under a thick layer of cynicism.

“…. Please tell me you found nutrient blocks.”

The former engineer cracked his neck and checked out his bag.

“Just the one.”

Without a second thought he handed it to her.

“We should split it. You need food just as much as I do, and chivalry is quite dead in a survival situation.”

With a snort and a look, Sun responded.

“Damn good thing I wasn’t being chivalrous. I’ve got enough meat on these bones to last a bit without solid food. You on the other claw, do not. And I need an alert pair of hands, with good ideas. Not a starving set of eyes that grumble hungrily all the damn time.”

The Schnee gave him a glare which he matched with a stone cold smirk…. And a grumbling stomach.

“… Well, guess I’m hungrier than I thought.”

Weiss split the block in a quarter, leaving the larger piece for herself.

“As much as it irks me… you are correct. But you still need something in your stomach. Otherwise, you’ll be that starving set of eyes, correct?”

His tail flicked up and down, before he grasped his piece and snapped it down in one bite.

“… Point taken.”

He pulled out a few more things from the bag. Listing them all would be a brief activity. It would also be a pointless activity, as the only one which mattered was-

“A HABITAT BUILDER!?!?!?”

Weiss’s voice sang through the air, a cry of jubilation that whisked through the night on a still breeze. Sun would say something about the spike in volume but in their current situation, short of a ship coming to save them or one of the Brothers floating down to bless them with infinite power, this was the damn holy grail. Being excited was a normal reaction.

“Hell to the fuck yeah it’s a habitat builder! Even better, it came with a full battery!… and like… 2 spares.”

He pursed his lips.

“Only managed to snag one PDA though.”

Weiss gestured for it and Sun raised an eyebrow.

“You’s some kind of hacking wiz?”

Weiss shook her head no, and continued to gesture for it.

“I simply know a few useful passcodes for the system. I’m far from a software engineer, but I can reason out some layers of code. Maybe beat a guide out of it.”

Sun paused… and then handed it over. From there Weiss crossed her legs.. and just… tapped away on it. Sun sorta expected more but she seemed determined… then angry. Then calmed… before shooting back up to angry again. It was an amusing display, but he had things to do…. Like figure out how a Habitat Builder worked.

“Gods forsaken junk…”

The tablet kept trying to reset into “survival mode” which was a bit of a misnomer. All it really did was focus fire the PDA on survival, it didn’t really add any information and this survival mode was only helpful in the occurrence there was a functioning lifepod nearby, where it’s A.I could properly scan the area. She had none of that, and the fact that this damned thing kept trying to force itself into uselessness was… frustrating. But, she did know a trick… one that she and her brother found out when they were young. SDC tech had a few “quirks” that some may call “potentially life threatening and most definitely lawsuit worthy bugs” but one of them would be quite useful. That being, the entire thing reset if you shook it the right way, bleaching itself clean of all directives beforehand. The exact reasoning behind it was beyond her, but after a few very jittery attempts… She managed it.

“Yes!!! Victory is mine!!!”

She gloated over the lifeless machine as it turned back into its “standard” setting, which had a few features that the “survival” mode did not. A larger selection of reading, an option for music and most pressingly, a camera with a zoom feature. The “survival” mode did have a camera but… well, for some reason it couldn’t zoom in on anything.

“Now I can see the other lifepods!!! A few have to be in the general vicinity.”

The thought of them not being there made her stomach churn, but she forced down her illness and got out her camera. Scanning the area around her, on a flat sea with nothing obscuring her view……

“……. No.”

….. The human eye can perceive things on a clear day, around 3 miles away. A lifepod would poke out from the flat,empty and endless ocean from at least a mile or 2, especially with how… empty this place was.

“… we… we can’t be all that made it… right?”

She set the camera down and fully took in the magnitude of the planet they were on. The scale, the breadth and vastness of such a large object, dwarfing her and all her concerns with its sheer indifference. She didn’t matter here. No one did. She would die here… and no one would notice. Least of all, this careless and endless sea.

“…. Heh…”

The weight of it all was pressing down on her, even at the surface she couldn’t help but feel her lungs compress under a thousand atmospheres of pressure… and then her eyes saw something. Two things. One, an errant cloud, a clumsy messenger from the sky gently caressed the ocean’s face… revealing that the “distant clouds” may have been closer than she thought and hold more secrets than first imagined… it was entirely possible that other life pods were simply held captive by these formless masses of vapor and fog. As for the second…. It was a mass. A black strange something right on the surface, moving through the tides.

“Maybe it’s… no. No, it's worthless to even speculate…”

She zoomed in with her camera again… and it almost slipped through her fingers.

“….. SUN!!!!”

Her voice rang out on the desolate island like a gunshot in a library, causing the person she was calling for to jump out of his skin with shock.

“What the hell Weiss, I’m RIGHT here-“

She grabbed him by the back of his head and forced him to look through the camera. Many questions were raised in his throat, a snarl rattled in his chest… and left his mouth as a whimper.

“… T-The habitat needs more titanum. There’s some in the cave, I’ll grab m-more and… and we do NOT get in the water.”

He didn’t notice how hard Weiss was gripping his hair, or the tremble in her hands. His own heart was racing far too fast to even focus on such menial details. Because what that oh so useful camera had shown him… was what was left of the sea monster that attacked them. It was face down in the water, a gaping hole in what it had for a chest, any strange and deadly powers it may have once possessed clearly proving insufficient to save its life.

“Agreed. We… we shall build a warning sign too. Something… something to tell people to go around this island.”

Sun raised his voice to complain… and then stared back out at the corpse in the water.

“………. Yeah… that’s… that’s not a bad idea. Unless this is one of the nicer spots….”

Weiss pulled the offending image away and turned her heel to the cave.

“That problem solves itself… they’d never make it this far if that was the case.”

She was right in a sense. Of all the spots to land on the planet, the island was quite a lucky one. Food was abundant, resources equally so and on the whole of it, one could hardly complain…. Especially if you stood on dry land. In the water however, many predators lurked, and the abundance of small fish made it a hunting ground for many terrible creatures. Bone Sharks stalked the deeper depths and on the surface, an encounter with a Warper was quite likely. The visage of the former being more than enough reason to avoid the area like the plague. But these creatures were subservient to the true threat…. A threat that made itself known in unearthly howls, its Grimm way of hunting and letting others know that they were the hunted… but once again. That’s an issue that the 2 on land had nothing to fear.

“Is it done?”

Weiss asked as she carried another bundle of metal and supplies in her arms. Sun spit on the hull of the base and shined it out, much to the heiress’s silent chagrin.

“Just about. We’ve only got solar power to rely on so don’t do anything too stressful.”

Weiss turned up an eyebrow at that.

“Define stressful?”

Sun thinks on it for a second.

“Breathing too hard.”

Weiss didn’t have an answer for that. She just stared,.. and sighed… as the sun dipped low in the sky… and the thing that those on land had to fear made its way to the surface.

Chapter Text

It was dark. It would remain that way for an undetermined amount of time, the day-night cycle on this planet was unknown but she doubted it could be all too long. They would wait, and they would rise early the next morning to begin construction on the next part of the base… it was a good plan. She was sure it was a good plan…. There was just one issue with it.

“Weiss, go to sleep.”

Came the grumble of the shipwrecked trickster, his voice causing Weiss to visibly jump.

“…. I am keeping watch.”

Sun blinked a few times.

“…. Isn’t there supposed to be shifts for that?”

Sun was correct, sleeping in shifts is indeed what happens when one person keeps watch. A discussion is also supposed to be had between the parties keeping watch, an agreed schedule and logical execution of the process which allows both parties to get a maximum amount of sleep, while ensuring safety, All things Weiss knew and yet, she did not do them.

“I can handle it. Just… rest. I… I need to do this okay?”

Sun stared at the back of Weiss’s head, and thought on her words… if she felt like she needed to do this well… what was there to do besides snuggling back on the nice comfy and utterly barren floor? It was warming up thanks to his body heat and the engineering ape was more than used to sleeping in uncomfortable positions.

“…. Rest.”

Weiss looked out the porthole again, the strange multitude of moons dancing with the stars in a glorious panoramic view. Were it not for the stinking hull of the Aurora, she could truly appreciate the planet’s beauty…. But that hull was there. Squat and fat on the beach, it was there.

“…. Damn you father.”

It was HIS budget cuts that caused this. When her grandfather was in charge, the SDC didn’t have a single major accident, but now that he has his disgusting paws all over it, apparently it was cheaper to undercut the victims of his callousness than to ensure safety regulations!!!

“… damn you.”

She was going to survive this. She would have him brought to justice if it was the last thing she ever did.

“I’ll live and you will live to regret it. That, I promise you.”

Her declaration was quiet, softer even than the foam of the sea washing on shore… but someone heard it.

“ghhhhrrrmmmmmmm……”

The voice. She could hear it clearer now… but it was still hiding. Behind distance and noise, the voice hid… but it would not escape her. Nothing escaped her…

“Ghhhaaarrr… ARR…rrrrr…”

She growled and groaned, her deep set vocalizations had attracted many enemies… things that wanted to bite. She bit first. Faster. Fangs stronger than any armor crushed the biting things and now… she hovered in empty water. Her hunting post was surrounded by the floating corpses of the things that tried to bite.

“K….Kkkkkkk….”

Her teeth rattled… and she waited. Carefully, she waited.

“What… what is that?”

It was hard to pick out shapes in the inky water. Like trying to find shape in shapeless shadow, it very well could’ve been her mind playing tricks, the stress of the day fracturing her vision… and yet… Weiss couldn’t shake the feeling that something was… bobbing in the water. There was a particular patch of sea that when the stars danced over it, no light reflected back. It could be a trick of her mind but… she wasn’t sure.

“Maybe it's driftwood from another island?”

Now that would be good news. True it probably wouldn’t be “wood” but if they could burn or deconstruct it, Weiss didn’t care much for the distinction. She considered going outside to grab it when one of those… crab things scuttled over to it. The heiress’s eyebrow raised, she could understand the creature’s curiosity but it seemed… eager? It was impossible to tell the motives of a beast with no face but… eager was how she would describe it.

*Eee… Eee*

The crab-like scavenger squeaked as it fed upon the… driftwood. Weiss’s suspicions of the debris only grew as more of the disgusting little beast gathered round and nibbled away at what was most definitely not driftwood… especially with the sounds it made.

**CRUNCH.**

Came the mushy crack of… bone? She didn’t think bone sounded like that…

***SQUELCH.***

Came the pulling of a particularly stubborn bit of… meat.

“…. Carrion.”

They were eating carrion. The rotting, bloated corpse of something that washed upon the shore… it… it was so easy to imagine it as a human. That these disgusting vermin were feeding upon a person, a former person, a thing now stripped of dignity and soon to be stripped of flesh… until… another bit of carrion washed up on shore.

“Oh brothers above…”

The beast was terrifying. It was big, the half of it that was on shore swept a large degree of sand aside with its bulk, its carapace or armor scratching into the beach and hooking it in, as its maw splayed open, jaws lined with razor sharp teeth sliced through the air and its blue, predatory eyes gleamed under the moons brilliant light. It was horrid to say the least…. Made all the more so, by the open wound in its belly and the entrails that spilled out, like it were some depraved piñata. In life, it was likely a fearsome predator. But now, in death, all it served as was a reminder that something worse skulked beneath the waves. The corpse eaters gathered around in greater numbers, eager to clean the water’s edge of all available nutrients.

“Aaahhh… ahhh….”

More kept washing up. By the time Weiss’s mind had fully recovered from the initial shock, the island’s small little coast was piled with a line of bodies. She counted 15 at the least, though she could not be sure that more lifeless creatures did not bob and rot just out of sight, just under the water’s surface… and finally… something else. She first noticed a silvery sheen, like a spike made of frost had lost itself in the sea… and she saw her blade. Her rapier, proud and glinting in the starlight. Well, she saw a part of it. Towards the handle, the round guard of the weapon was smothered and covered by the head of one of these large horrific beasts, though from the way the neck of the animal seemed so… jaggedly torn, Weiss assumed that the blade did not decapitate this enemy. Rather, it seems that someone tore the head off of this alien shark and impaled it upon the weapon…. Weiss could not fathom a reason why a… creature might do it. And then, a single thought shattered her psyche. That it was not in the claws or teeth of another horrific, alien monster her sword was held in… it was the soft, supple hands of a human. Pale skin reflected the moon, ending in black nails that… went on too long. Another hand, burst from the water, dragging itself on shore, a low deep hum shaking everything around them. Her ears, her bones and blood all vibrated with a tense taut fear… or… no. No this hum, this bizarre alien sound that shook the air, it didn’t come from her mind, it wasn’t an illusion it was coming from… from….

“Grrrnnnn…. Hmmmmmmmmm…..”

The voice. It was here. She knew it was here.

“Rrrrnnnnn…. Raahhh…. Haaahhh….”

Air. She hadn’t tasted the sweet tang of surface air in… years. She smelled things, heard things and felt things a dozen different… almost new ways. It softened her rage for a moment, and she looked at the… weapon. Weapon. Yes… that is what was in her hand. A weapon. A sword to be specific. The head of the biting thing was staring back at her, its eyes frozen in a permanent state of fear. She grabbed this thing by its head, pried it off her sword and stared at it.

“…. Kill….”

That’s what she had done to the lesser predator. It’s what she was here to do to the voice…. The… the voice. It was just like the other voices…

“Sun.”

Weiss grabbed her fellow survivor and shook him. Violently. He was awake within seconds, but he did not speak, for Weiss had slammed a hand over his mouth.

“It’s out there.”

Sun’s first conclusion when he woke up, was that Weiss had gone insane. That was the only way to explain the shaking in her eyes, the whimpers in her throat and the fact that her gaze was fixed on one single point.

“It’s hunting for us.”

Sun slowly raised up, so slowly as to not make a sound… and looked through the porthole window.

“….”

Something else was looking back.

Chapter Text

Its eyes were human. There wasn’t some animal disconnect in them, not some distance between the emotions of a beast and a person. Being prey, being the potential meal of something else is horrible and stomach churning… but there is a benefit to it. When you look into the hungry eyes of a monster, that’s… all it is. Hungry. There’s no real greater scheme in those eyes, you can offer yourself a brief comfort before teeth tear into your neck that the beast won’t hunt down your family just to settle a score. It’s hunger ends at you.

“Hhhhhhhh…”

The Reaper’s hunger would not end at him. Because she wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t territorial. No beastial motivation is what drew her here…. She was looking into Sun’s eyes and all he could see was a bottomless pit so black and dark he couldn’t even call it hatred. It was mania. Humanity’s irrationality and barbarism boiled down into condensed pools of black barely contained by the purest of silver.

“…..”

He couldn’t think. His brain had shut off, like the aura of this demon was so wicked it swallowed him whole and did not allow him to move. He thought of begging for mercy. Begging that the creature may spare him and Weiss its wrath…but there was the mistake. It wasn’t a creature. And its wrath was already upon them.

“Skree!”

One of the scavenging parasites leapt at the demon from the deep. Its body was stopped midair as a blade ran it through, and held it aloft, the speed and precision of the strike indicating… thought. Planning. Cold and calculating, not an instinctual flash of rage. With an errant gesture of her hand, the alien’s body was flung off the sword… and the beast began to crawl closer. Its breath made visible puffs in the night air, the bright red moon that revealed only parts of its horrible frame made what he could see sharp and what he couldn’t see long.

“V…. Voice”

Its eyes. Those were the only things that were clear. It was speaking. It was a monster, that could communicate… that could in theory, be reasoned with… but that theory was as translucent as the sea and weaker then a rope made of sand.

“…. Singing….”

It didn’t blink. Then its mouth twisted. Kept twisting. And twisting. Her teeth were wide and flat, human and inhuman, a whirl of white keratin over bone fangs and molars, fright and might mixed together in a slurry of death. And it kept moving forward.

“………. LOUD…..”

She was now speaking in a manner directed at them. The shiftless shape of her words a forgotten memory, as the focus in her eyes became a focus in her words.

“…. Always loud…”

She was right up against the porthole window now and slammed her hand against the glass. It held steady… a development that Weiss had little hope would remain the norm as she PRESSED on it.

“……….. kill the voice.”

There was a sing song way she said that.

“Kill you.”

…… That as well.

“N-No. no. No.”

Sun’s voice sounded less solid then a shattered statue as he grabbed his weapon. He held it out like it was a suggestion and judging from the reaction on the sea monster’s face, it may have been less then that… more like an… invitation. Like the thrashing of wounded prey, it only enticed the predator even more… as she pressed harder on the glass. Under the weight of one of her palms, with the bulk of her strength hidden in a thin layer of calm… it cracked. First a few… then it spread. A spider’s web bloomed across the one portal separating them and the ravenous desire in the creature’s eyes.

“Get… away.”

Sun’s voice shook with terror as he stared down death, his pose becoming more threatening, and yet the pressure on the glass didn’t yield in the slightest. Finally, when the glass was more cracks than it was solid… it shattered. Her hands grabbed the edge of the hatch, claws digging into solid metal as she lurched into the habitat, sliding it over the broken glass without any snort or indication of pain… her form came to a cold stop as the light of the habitat finally revealed how many fathoms the monkey was in over his head.

“………. Hhh….gaaahhhh….”

Her breath still made visible puffs in the air, but she didn’t move beyond that, her gait strange and inhuman, slithering along the ground while keeping her body upright, like that of a cobra, as its face stayed in that same semi-fixed smile, though Sun knew that sort of smile better then most. The strange beast wasn’t happy. She was simply showing how big her teeth were.

“Ghhmmm… hmm…”

A low rumble filled his ears, the frequency causing everything, his veins, his eyes and bones to tense as taught as a bow string, but he still made no move to attack… it’s… it was hard to describe the creature, his eyes kept darting around it, but…

“Rrruuahhh….. RRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”

It was the reaper. Sent here to harvest. On its arms were 2 wicked and sickle like blades, extending roughly 2 feet out from its hands as other massive blades twitched on its back, razor sharp gifts from whatever hell it crawled from. Its lower half was red, with a faint trim of blue on the sides, the fluke of its tail slammed into the floor denting it visibly, the crescent moon shape of it looking like a flesh rending weapon all on its own, the same blood red pattern flaked with blue on the end. His eyes trailed up, its body cloaked in another, weaker monster’s skin, as a matter of fact it looked… purple. Aged by saltwater and time, it’s color had faded but it was clearly once a rich royal purple…. Just like the creature that nearly killed them.

“… Ah… I see.”

As did it. Its face was human, or would’ve been had its face not had its skin stretched by that uncanny grin, but the rest of it… soft silver eyes stared at him without the slightest drop of concern. It roared and bellowed, rumbling the ground beneath it for reasons Sun didn’t understand, but it wasn’t to scare him. Such a task was beneath her… it’s eyes though…. All… silver. Silver surrounded by an ocean of black. Little things beneath those eyes blinked at him, just as dark as the uncharted abyss above them… extra eyes. He saw his reflection in those eyes… and he paused for a moment. Bracing himself. After all, it’s not every day after all, that a man is asked to watch his own death from 4 different angles.

“HEY!!!!”

Red filled the room, and to both the
Reaper and the Mechanic’s great surprise, it wasn't liquid… It was light. A blindingly bright light in the small confined space of the empty habitat.

“You have something that’s MINE.”

Her voice was brave. Her actions were brave, clad in red light and white smoke… if you didn’t have the monster’s hearing, you wouldn’t have even heard her teeth chattering.

“………. Voice.”

She said, naming Weiss without permission.

“… you the voice.”

Weiss’s grip on the flare tightened as the creature lazily traced the tip of the Schnee’s sword across the ground, scaring it and damaging what was not her’s.

“……….. die.”

Her command was soft, but slithered in her ears and she shuddered slightly, placing a foot back for a better position to retreat, to potentially evade a lethal slash or thrust, but her heel hit the wall. Life flashed before her eyes, training with her sister as she drilled the proper forms into her head, singing alongside her brother as he played the ivory keys of the piano, the last time the 2 siblings would be friendly with each other, crying with her mother as she helped her gather the necessary items to more properly flee her prison of a home and finally… the last light in her eyes, before she expected it all to go black was the day and half with Sun… it was that of all things that caused her to jerk out of the way, the slash for her neck slicing open the skin on her shoulder. A crippling strike with any other blade, but the rapier Weiss favored didn’t exactly cut all too effectively, further dulling the lethality of the strike. She stumbled on the floor, just as another strike came, this one thrown off by a firm strike to the hands by Sun’s trusty staff.

“RAHHHH!!!!”

She smacked him against a wall, her tail proving an effective weapon as it cracked ribs and sent the mechanic to a deep slumber… that same crescent club slammed into the floor, denting it as she looked back to find her original prey.

“…. Always… the voice.”

She said as she approached, Weiss’s frenzied attempt to grab the flickering flare on the floor barely noticed as a single, powerful, hand wrapped around her skull and lifted Weiss in the air…

“Taking something from me…”

Weiss felt her world go sideways as her head was rammed into the bulkhead of the habitat, stunning her, making the lights around her brighter… and the shadows cut even deeper.

“Then… voice adds something. Makes me… LESS of me…”

Her hand went from the back of her head to her throat… as those massive hooks on her shoulders and arms drew in all around Weiss.

“……. Do you remember voice? How it started every, SINGLE, TIME?”

The hook blades drew closer to her neck.

“The lights.”

One of the blades retracted as it brought the sword to her neck once more.

“The knife…”

Weiss grabbed her executioner’s hands, the most base desire to live causing her to flounder precious time… time better spent praying for a quick end.

“And finally… the screams. Are they mine now voice?…. Or… will they be yours?”

The sword slowly traced across Weiss’s face, a thin red line following it, like hungry jackals trailing a dying beast.

“…… We will see… and we. Will. SCREAM.”

***BANG.***

Sun struck her in the back of the head, the impact denting his homestyle bo staff, as he spun back and struck her again, a clean one to her back.

“GRAARRRH!!!!”

Came the monster’s roar, swinging blindly at the staff, not Sun, dropping the sword as she did so, which gave him a clear opportunity for a firm strike to the side of her head again, using the momentum of her own attack to spin the staff into her face.

“What’s wrong little red, can’t keep up?!?!”

She could speak, which meant a lot of very confusing things, but chiefly at the moment, it meant that she could understand him and thus get annoyed by him! Which would make her sloppy and confused-

***KLANG.***

He was flung back again, but recovered easily this time, rolling across the ground and springing back up at her, determined to WIN.

***CRASH***

She met his charge, the full 7 feet he had to sprint at her, with a simple brace, the mere flexing of her guard more than enough to match his attack for every inch, her one forearm taking his blow and shaking it off like it was a bug bite.

“DAMNIT!!!”

She swung again, he ducked low and spun on the floor, dancing around her downward strikes, each one putting a hole in solid titanium, as he sprung up and once again, bashed her across the teeth with his staff. She stumbled for a moment… and in another moment, ended the brief bout.

****CRUNCH****

His weapon was now in 2, half of it rolling across the floor, and the other half held in Sun’s shaking hands.

“Q-Quite a bite.”

He said, as she stepped back, his one advantage, that being range now rolling across the floor not exactly filling him with great confidence. She looked him over, her nostrils twitching as fear filled them… and went back to ignoring Sun. He wasn’t a threat.

“NO!!!”

Not that Weiss knew that as she picked up her blade once more, swiping the flare from off the ground for an offhand weapon and perhaps some meager distraction. She felt her body lurch as the red skinned reaper grabbed the hand she was attacking with, and held it… gently. Like it was a child’s hand.

“GET OFF OF ME!!!”

She swung with the flare, her acoster’s eyes narrowing to pinpricks as she jabbed at those bright silver eyes, before the creature’s head reared back and slammed into the heiress’s. Weiss saw nothing but stars, and then she saw black. The creature’s frame swallowed the light around them.

“…….. No.”

Her voice was soft. As was her grip on the sword she stole and she put the tip right above Weiss’s eye. Before… oh so softly,.. pulling it down. And that… was the last thing that eye ever saw.

Chapter Text

The volume of Weiss’s voice did not surprise Sun, the amount of blood did not surprise Sun and the stomach churning horror did not surprise Sun… what surprised Sun was the strange expression on their accoster's face, he expected sadism and was met with blank, dispassionate loathing.

“… not… Loud enough.”

Disappointment may have been a better turn of phrase, she looked annoyed by the pain sprayed across her face.

“…. LOUDER!!!!”

She raised the sword again, and Weiss’s terror rose with it, she spasmed as if she were in her death throes and quickly grabbed the handle of the sword. To the reaper it was as if a twig snagged on her arm as she was chopping down a tree or a blade of grass grazing her wrist as she was mowing through a field of wheat.

“NO!!!!”

Weiss’s hands still scratched at the gnarled arms of her executioner, her nails chipping like she was grinding them against stone.

“GET OFF OF ME!!!”

She swung, her knuckles bruising and doing nothing to the solid body of the monster ready to… not kills… torture. It grabbed her arm,.. and slammed it to the floor before slowly…. Twisting.

“Ah… ahh….. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Was it the fear of the bone breaking,the slow ripping of tendons or the insidious glint in the breathing guillotine’s eyes that caused Weiss such distress? At the moment, it was impossible to say, but if you asked her later… it may have been the sudden shadow over them. Like Death itself had decided to intervene and cut things off early… but it was not death that jumped on the crimson skinned creature’s back.

“I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU YET!!!!!!!”

Came a mighty battlecry, making balance slightly more difficult… a thing that became impossible within seconds after that. You see, Sun had spent the last few moments contemplating in record time, taking in every scattered bit of information that came from this most terrible enemy that shattered the chamber door. Her strange groans, the way it kept complaining and roaring at Weiss’s “voice” like it was a intolerable sound… which to Sun’s much less sensitive ears… sounded like this THING had an issue with loud noises. Which meant if one were to do a few things, it would likely cause it a great deal of distress… one of those things was-

***BANG. BANG. BANG BANG BANG!!!!!***

Slamming 2 ends of a broken pipe right into its ears over and over and OVER again!!!

“GRAAAHHHHH!!!!”

It bucked and tossed off him off, but he was expecting that, he leapt with the throw and sped right back in, leaning in close enough that the demon could FEEL his breath in its ears and SCREAMED!!!! He screamed and screamed and SCREAMED!!!!!! Her already rattled ears interpreted this as a red hot poker being jammed into her skull a dozen times a second, she swung blindly and hit nothing but metal, tearing a gash in it and adding to the cacophony of ear trauma she was experiencing.

“AHAHAHAHA!!!! Got ya that time-“

Her tail swung and cut him across the chest like a whip, the pain causing his taunt to turn into a wheeze, but still he laughed through the pain as he crashed into a wall for the third time.

“D-Don’t like a taste of ya own medicine do ya?”

He coughed on blood, noting in his head that it probably wasn’t a good sign he was doing that, but that sorta seemed like a later problem.

“Fuck ya hit hard-“

”ĞĠGĞĞĠŘRŘRŘROÖOOǑÒØŌŐÀǍÁÂǍÆĄÃRRRRR?¿!!¡¡¡!!!!!!!!!“

She returned the favor for deafening him as she charged at him, grabbing him and slamming into a wall again and again and AGAIN!!!! Blood leaked from the back of his head as she tossed him around some more.

“Pay for that…. PAY FOR THAT!!!!!!”

Sun snorted, as his vision made it look like 4 separate monsters went to end his miserable life.

“Sorry bout that… little short on change at the moment.”

Red filled his vision again… and once again, it was light. Another flare, which by itself was useless… when it was jammed into someone’s ear on the other hand…

“AHHHHHHHH!!!! STOP!!!! STOP IT!!!! STOOOOOOPPPPPP!!!!!”

Her agony made the very sky itself howl, Weiss did not relent however, as she bit into the ear not accosted by a flare, trying her best to rip it out before being tossed off. She expected an immediate counter attack… but was met with a blast of metal scraps, as the beast dug through their base like a trapped animal and tore itself free and into open air, plowing through the field of corpses she made and back into the water.

“……. Is… is it coming back?”

Sun asked himself out loud, as Weiss clutched her bleeding eye… and slowly fell to the ground, using the wall behind her as lumbar support.

“… Eventually, I imagine she will return.”

To slaughter them both. That part went unstated, but not unheard.

“…. We uh… should probably grab the 2 medkits I found.”

Weiss hummed and stared at the hole in their base, blood still pouring from her eye.

“… Weiss?”

Fear, icy cold fear grabbed his heart at the strange angle Weiss was laying at… he… he thought he didn’t see any breathing for a second and leapt up, injuries be damned.

“Weiss!!! Cmon, say something!!!”

Maybe not the most soothing voice he could use but… it was something?

“…….. I think I’m going to die here.”

She said it so calmly. Like she had just found the perfect spot to build a house. Sun looked like she had just tossed a snowball right into his face.

“W-What? No. No I won’t let you blabber on like that! We’re not dying here!!!”

Weiss didn’t so much as twitch at his bold declarations… and for a moment, Sun swore it was Blake laying down in front of him, barely moving.

“…… what do I have to go back to? My sad pathetic little family, they probably barely noticed when I left…”

Sun didn’t have much to say about Weiss’s family issues. But still, he grabbed her shoulder, gently, as gentle as he could manage… and spoke.

“… That’s their loss. Not yours.”

Weiss turned to him, red covering half of her vision and grimaced.

“… Is it? I don’t think it is. I think that my older sister was probably better off without-“

Sun glared at her, his 2 blue eyes piercing through the layers and layers of frosty armor Weiss had built up just to survive her household.

“No. If she’s anything like you, she’s heartbroken and would move the stars themselves to see you brought home. If she’s nothing like you, she’s already forgotten about you and isn’t worth the effort to spit on.”

Weiss scoffed, or maybe she tried her best to? In the state she was in, it sounded more like a choked gasp.

“… what would YOU know? I’ve barely known you longer than a few days!!!”

Her self rationalized hatred for the woman she saw in the mirror came boiling up, but Weiss was never one for boiling. She became brittle and started to sob even more.

“I know you saved my life just now. And I know I need you to see my boyfriend again. Beyond that?…. Well… you do come across as strangely crass for someone raised in a castle.”

Weiss started to pout, but quickly stopped herself.

“I was raised in a MANOR, and I will tolerate no disrespect from you!”

Sun’s eyebrow raised.

“…. Okay but like, what’s the difference?”

Weiss sputtered indignantly, not quite sure WHY she was so angry at him.

“FIRST of all, Manors aren’t fortified against attacks like castles are-“

Sun cut her off dismissively.

“Oh so you’re saying it’s actually LESS cool then a castle?”

Weiss sputtered more, now standing or… well it looked like she stumbled to her feet, but that was besides the point.

“It’s WAY cooler and a more impressive show of power! My grandfather built his manor next to the common people and invited them in at every opportunity!!! It shows trust in the community, not guarding yourself away like a miserable scum sucking parasite!!!!!”

Sun blinked at her as she began to ramble.

“Strength does not need to flex and strut up and down the street!!! It is confident but quiet, towering but easy to miss!!!! Not some pompous and poorly decorated circus for the rich clowns to waltz into and pretend they’re anything more than spoiled lambs, unaware of the wolves at the door!!!! In my company’s prime, people were LISTENED to, we built towering monuments of civilization that’ll last FAR beyond any of those piggish morons, because all they see is money!!! They don’t know anything about POWER AND HOW YOU USE IT!!!!!!”

The mechanic stared at her as she took a deep breath and glared at herself.

“…. You’re right. We are NOT dying here. I have an entire company to beat back into shape.”

She stumbled strongly towards where she believed the medkits were.

“Uhh Weiss-“

She raised a hand, and continued her warpath forward

“Hush Sun! I have to prepare myself for yet more stressful work!”

“Weiss-“

She growled and glared back at him.

“This must be done quickly and-…… I… I don’t believe I know where the medkits are,..”

Sun nodded.

“…. You were trying to tell me that, weren't you?”

Sun nodded yet again.

“…. Sorry…”

Chapter Text

Weiss truly had to marvel at the duality of this situation, in regards to the technology they had on hand. It was remarkable, as she felt her tissues being repaired in a near instant… it was unremarkable because for some reason, fixing eyes was considered a “deluxe package” rather than standard operating procedure.

“It’s just more tissue, why would it be any harder to fix it?”

Sun shrugged as he applied another medkit to himself, the synthetic fibers pinching a bit as they replaced flesh and mended bone.

“It isn’t, people just think it is, so they charge more for it.”

Weiss sputtered indignantly before sighing again.

“I feel the urge to apologize to you, and yet, I had nothing to do with this…”

Sun snorted before wincing as his rib cracked back into place.

“Nah, I should be apologizing. Just had to use the only 2 medkits we’ve got and it’s barely been a day… sucks doesn’t it?”

Weiss nodded as she tried to readjust to her newfound lack of depth perception.

“That’s a word for it… but, regardless, we must pull through.”

At that she looked over the sky and the sea again, seeing the broken hulk of the Aurora and sighed.

“…. She’s going to come back.”

The heiress said softly, her words as certain as the ebbing and waning tides. She stared at the pale white sand, tinted gold by the sun and just… kept seeing it. A person squeezed into the shape of a beast, a horrid and cruel denizen of the depths, that’s what she saw in every shadow, in every dark shape in the water she saw it… and she wondered when it would rise up again, to claim her other eye.

“….. Probably.”

Sun had his eyes on the water too. He got off easy compared to Weiss, but the images he had burned into his head… not necessarily of what happened, though that was certainly terrifying, more so… the ocean. He watched an endless expanse of water, and in it, his enemy was not only lightning fast, but effectively invisible. She was clearly intelligent and likely quite patient. Perhaps it would only attack in the dark, but that was a cold comfort when it could see so much better and was IMPOSSIBLY stronger then either of them.

“…. We need to fortify the shelter and make a REALLY big warning sign. If someone swims over here…”

He didn’t need to finish that sentence.

“… Or maybe we can deal with her ourselves.”

Weiss said as she stood up and used her sword to draw a diagram in the sand.

“So, during our construction of the base we discovered a few things didn’t we?”

Sun nodded as he cracked his neck and glared at one of the little parasites still swarming the beach, dutifully taking care of the whole “corpse” issue.

“Yeah, like those things can crawl on walls?”

Weiss nodded and drew a bit more in the sand, ignoring the sound of the Cave Crawlers munching on carrion.

“That, and the cave we’ve stumbled upon is filled with natural resources! Like, for example, copper.”

Sun nodded and stood up to stretch a bit more.

“I’m following, but I’m not sure where ya going with this?”

Weiss kept drawing, before looking back up at him.

“So, I have a plan. What if we used the copper in there to make some batteries, and use those to electrocute that abomination against nature?”

Sun nodded a bit, considering the plan… and he saw one minor issue with it.

“Where are we getting the acid from though?”

The 2 stared at each other and just as Weiss was about to give up on the plan… one of the little scavengers ran off with a piece of carrion again.

“…. I’ve got something for that too. But I am going to need your help… and possibly a fresher source of it…”

Sun looked to where she was looking… to the pile of somewhat fresh, but also decaying corpses… and took a deep… DEEP breath.

“…. Alright… alright.”

He stood up and cracked his neck.

“So, first, we need a way to refine the acids in their stomachs, assuming they have acid in their stomachs, and then we need a way to have that conduct electricity.”

Weiss finished her diagram and started adding new segments to it.

“True… and that’s assuming our fabricators work with the damn thing.”

Sun saw the big question mark she drew over it, as both of them contemplated their next moves.

“Yet another issue in all of this… but I’m sure we can uh, “coax” them into seeing things our way.”

He said the word coax rather conspicuously, which caused Weiss to raise an eyebrow.

“…. I forgot to ask but uh… what was your job on the ship?”

Sun shrugged as he grabbed what remained of his staff and spun it over, appraising it for a future project.

“I was one of the mechanics for the place. All the little stuff, and some of the big stuff went my way. And unlike some of my contemporaries, I’m still doing hands-on work, instead of relying on gizmos to fix gizmos… though to be fair, that was only an issue on THIS trip. Most of my coworkers were…”

He stopped to think about it for a second. How green all his fellow engineers were. They had formal training, and knew WHAT to do, but when he talked to them, they revealed this was their first actual job. Not suspicious at the moment, the ship they were on wasn’t exactly liable to fall apart, but now that he was on waterworld, with nothing but a few scraps to his name…

“… most of them were still getting the hang of things. That boat was a good place to start, good credentials and heck, most of them had pretty long contracts with the thing. The weird thing NOW is… there wasn’t an issue last time I checked?”

And he had ALWAYS checked. He wasn’t the official manager, but he still ran things in the engineering department. Most of the juniors looked up to him and now they were….

“… Hey Weiss… you uh… you’re the daughter of some bigwig right? Most of the bigwigs nowadays have government contracts and the like right?”

Weiss nodded as she continued to look over her impromptu road map.

“You would be correct on that.”

Sun pointed what was left of his staff at the ship.

“So, I don’t know of any toys packing enough boom to send that hulk down, but… look at HOW it’s damaged.”

Weiss had been trying not to. Something about seeing the rotting bulk of what she was living in didn’t do wonders for her mental health, but… she looked. And much like Sun, she found something strange.

“Well, yes, it seems like something took a chunk out of the front of it, but that’s not really indicative of a weapon. It could have been a-…”

The sentence caught in her throat as she considered the possibilities and likelihoods. None of which made sense, because an asteroid strike would have either

A. Done nothing or

B. Flattened the entire ship like a soda can.

Anything big enough to damage the ship would have to have its own gravitational pull and in addition, seeing as the captain had the good sense to land it on an island, it stands to reason he had the good sense to NOT ram straight into a mile wide object.

“Perhaps someone had placed bombs within the ship?”

Sun tilted his head and nodded, but then stared at the wreck even more.

“Well, yeah that’s an option, but why attack the Aurora then? It’s a classy ship, but it’s a worker’s ship. Not many rich folk on board, and it’s not prolific enough to warrant brownie points for whatever wingnut decided to blow it up.”

Weiss’s frosty hair splayed gently in the wind, as the possibilities ticked by, like grains of sand amassing and dissipating on the beach front

“There was a celebrity onboard, and extremists aren’t exactly known for thinking things through but that just raises the question… Why wait until HERE to detonate the explosive? If they just held off until we were close to a star or in deep space, we would’ve been dead. As it stands, this plan leaves a lot of holes open for survival. Not MANY admittedly, but enough to be concerning.”

Sun was about to say something when a shadow brushed against his face… and he looked up to the glowing green tower they had crash landed by.

“… you know… I’m betting it takes a lot of energy to keep that place running without any direct supervision.”

The heiress looked behind her, and paused to consider that statement.

“… it would.”

Sun felt a strange lump in his throat, as a rather chilling possibility wandered down his spine.

“…. Isn’t it kinda weird that it’s so close to the ship?”

The chill rather quickly spread to his audience of one.

“….. yes. It is.”

Chapter Text

The interior of the base wasn’t exactly large and it wasn’t exactly cozy. It was mostly blank steel, fitted with the occasional piece of furniture. The bed was also a travesty, mainly because only one person seemed to be interested in making it, along with it not being particularly soft. There were many reasons Blake Belladonna should hate her current living situation. All of which were turned to ashes in the face of one simple thing.

“Yang, we have enough gold, you can stop bringing more.”

Penny’s voice drolled the statement out as if she repeated it a dozen times before.

“I knowww we have enough! I want more! It looks pretty and it makes Blakey happy!!!”

The dragon glared at the voice in the wall.

“And you DO want Blakey to be happy, don’t you?”

Radio static grumbled on the line, but no response was given. Yang accepted this as a victory and stuffed more gold into the “trove locker” as she named it. Penny found this name ridiculous, but kept that comment to herself.

“Yang, the locker can’t fit anymore.”

Yang grumbled as she gently melted some of the gold together, making them a bit easier to fit into the trove.

“That trick will only work for so long.”

Penny said, the admittedly clever solution to the storage issue not dulling her general annoyance with the blonde’s antics.

“Work for long enough.”

The beast closed the door and dragged herself over to the Fabricator, leaning against a wall as Blake finished making the cooked peepers.

“Alright, eat up because we’ve got a long dive ahead of us.”

Yang snapped up her meal in 2 bites, slightly confused why Blake was talking to her like she was the one likely to get tired on this mission.

“Where we going?”

Yang caught her own mistake and had the all consuming urge to bite her own tongue off.

“HSSSS!!!!”

She growled and slammed her hand into metal, but quickly huffed out with even more intensity, another hiss rattling through the place.

“Yang!”

Blake’s ears flattened at the deep hiss which followed the dragon’s question, the cat’s distress caused by the pitch of the hiss and more pressingly, the seething self hate on her companion’s face. It was the expression of a woman who just burned her hand, irritated and hateful all at once.

“Yang, please be patient with yourself. You can’t get angry over every slip up in language.”

There was another grumble as the beast turned her head away, but Blake caught her by the chin and gently, but firmly, held her gaze.

“Yang. Would you get mad at me for slipping up like that?”

With a huff of smoke, Yang met Blake’s gaze, and relented… before stopping to smirk at how the cat’s entire face cringed up at the sudden off of smoke.

“…. I would not.”

Came the deep rumble, undercut with mirth.

“…. You do the smoke thing on purpose don’t you?”

Suddenly, Yang was very interested in the exit.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

There was a beep, and a response from the walls.

“Voice analysis records with a margin of error approximately reaching 0.000000000000000001% indicate she does know what you’re talking about.”

Yang then slapped the wall with her tail and glared in the general direction of the voice.

“You make numbers up.”

Penny sneezed.

“I did no such thing.”

There came another, rather suspicious sneeze, causing both Blake and Yang to ask the same question.

“……….. why are you doing that?”

The polite and helpful companion A.I had no inkling of an idea why she sneezed when she lied. Her working theory was that her creator thought it would be funny. She disagreed with her creator, but thanks to this ignorance of the exact reason, her reply was completely sincere.

“I do not know.”

Her words echoed through the space, their volume increasing by magnitudes the longer both the beautiful survivor and savage sea-beast stared up at her, confused at her wording. She did not want to elaborate on said wording, but a follow up question did seem likely to her… so Penny came up with a rather clever ruse.

“The coordinates to your target’s location are 11″21′ North latitude and 142″ 12′ East longitude-…. Apologies I believe there was a temporary error, your actual coordinates are closer to-“

Blake waved her hand to cut her off.

“Penny, just mark it on my visor, the exact details don’t matter that much.”

There was a bloop and then the mark appeared.

“For the record, I disagree with your assertion of details mattering, but that is not currently of import.”

Blake nodded and cracked her shoulder a bit as Yang sharpened her fangs.

“Do you have everything you need? Extra medkits, your knife, rations, flares,-“

Blake continued on, doing some basic stretches before finishing her mental list.

“Air bladder,Seaglide and one scaly roommate? Yeah, I think I’ve got everything.”

Her humor was met with a mild chortle as the intercom beeped once more.

“That would be all. I suppose we are salvage ready!!! To the wreck we go!!!”

The trio left the base out of the porthole, though a rather philosophical question had to be asked in regards to Penny, for could you truly say she ever left the base? She was still attached to Blake’s equipment but also, she was attached to the base? What defined her body? Who was she truly? All of these questions would have to be asked by someone else, as Blake continued on her journey back towards the blood grass field.

“I wonder if Yang’s ever been there?”

The thought wisped through her head as she pondered on the communication issues the dragon had at times. Mainly with explaining what she had seen or encountered. The aquanaut often got the general gist of things, but another issue was brought up rather swiftly, and that was Yang’s sense of time, or rather the lack thereof.

“Grrrrmmmm…”

She looked over at her closest physical confidant as she snarled at a Stalker that was perhaps getting a bit too curious for its own safety.

“Heh, thanks.”

The violet eyed brute turned over and gave her a toothy smile before playfully bumping her, a warning to be more careful. Blake gave her own smile back as her thoughts came back to the forefront again. From what she could piece together, Yang had spent quite a lot of time in the deeper areas of this region and in addition, she made no effort to keep track of the days. Her hunting schedule and sleeping schedule wasn’t limited by the sun or stars, and thus she simply lived from one moment to another. Thus, she couldn’t really say how long she’s been here or even how long it FELT like she’s been here.

“Forever.”

She had spoken it softly once. It had made Blake stop asking anymore questions, the feline’s heart could not handle seeing the sea dragon weep another time. The kelp forest started to fade… and once again, the red grass fields opened up. Blake was still impressed by them, the sheer scale of them in her mind being enough to take her breath away, luckily not literally, but Yang hardly blinked at the sight.

“Hhhhmmmmmm…..”

She didn’t like open areas. Too many surprises and too few heat vents. But, Blakey needed something from here so here she was. Waiting for the sand biters to-

***GRRRROOOOOOAAAR!!!!!****

Do that. Quickly she grabbed the Sandshark by its jaws and shoved it back into the muck it crawled from. She heard Blake’s little squeak of surprise and hid a rumble at it. It was just so cute, but she refused to say anything else about it. Blakey would get upset.

“Gods… above.”

Okay, so those things were still a problem, but luckily, unlike last time, she had a big scary wall of teeth between her and the other scary things with teeth.

“Oxygen.”

Yang couldn’t quite help with that though. Quickly hitting her air bladder and rocketing up to the surface, with maybe… too much force.

“You know, I didn’t think I’d go this high-“

She had a more coherent thought after that, but the saltwater slamming into her cut it off. Raising her arm above the surface to refill the floatation device before diving back down, she took a moment to try and see the wreck from a bird’s eye view… which was a bit strange to say in the water, but Blake had long since learned to roll with these things.

“Where are you…”

Her voice lowed through the sea, looking down at the plains of red grass. She tried to focus her eyes on the murky edge of her vision… only for her to turn slightly and see what she saw last time. The massive, upturned and distended white bone of the Aurora lodged into the sand, the bent and broken hull groaning under its weight as shoals of fish danced in its massive shadow.

“Okay… well… time for the… rough part of the job.”

There wasn’t exactly a “soft” part to a wreck dive but that was largely irrelevant. She kicked off again, the seaglide gently pulling her along and towards her target in moments. There was a low grumble behind her, as Yang sniffed at the wreckage. By now, Blake had sort of figured out what Yang’s different snarls and snorts meant, which ones were the angry sort or the hungry sort, or the…. Content sort. She made a lot of those content grumbles while they… lay in bed together. Blake blushed as she kicked away a bit from the beast, lest her thoughts wander again… though how would they wander even farther now-

“Stop.”

Blake was about to tell herself that, but Penny apparently had something to tell her… Then her train of thought hit a massive wall. A wall 3 miles thick and 3 miles wide, because Penny did not speak in her ears. Penny. Spoke. INSIDE OF HER HEAD. Which was strange. She should be panicking but she just…. Wasn’t. Everything was… calm at the moment.

“W-what? Penny what’s going on?”

She was drifting in the tide now, towards… towards….

“Just… Stop. And relax Blake. Your new primary objective is to swim towards that beautiful creature…. şŴĪm çŁÖŞēřrřrřrř….”

Her voice broke up into static as the swirling mass of light came closer to her… or maybe she got closer to it? Perhaps the ocean itself pulled her toward this very beacon of magnificence… and why wouldn’t it? It would be wrong to deny the creature its beauty…

“No. No. NO.”

She jerked against what was meant to be, her arms flailing uselessly in the water, kicking against the sea like it would help her. But the creature was trying to help her… and it would show her… paradise-

***KRK.***

“…. Don’t… touch… BLAKE.”

The words were muffled by the water, but nothing short of the vacuum of space could blunt the meaning behind Yang’s words. This brightly colored vermin knew the meaning all too well, the law of claw and fang being edged into every fiber of its being. Its body was grabbed in the paw of the far larger monster but it still could attack, it still tried to defend itself, as all living things attempt to do. But Yang was faster than it was desperate, she grabbed its disgusting little tentacles, as they shot out of its beak and with effort so slow you could almost call it sweet…. Pulled it apart. She made sure that the creature was ALIVE through this process that its last dying view would be those slimy little wings of it being cast off like trash to the corpse eaters.

“Grrrhhmmm…”

Yang spat magma on what was left of the foolish Mesmer, before wrapping her muscular tail around Blake and dragging her around.

“H-Hey, what are you-“

A scanner was snatched from her hands as Yang took the liberty of using the device to complete the mission before loosening her grip on Blake for a moment, wrapping an arm around her instead as Yang placed the scanner back on Blake’s belt.

“Y-Yang-“

She still didn’t even get a look from the dragon as they both darted off from the Blood Grass Fields.