Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alarms blared, red lights flashing in his face as he bolted from his bunk. It was supposed to be educational; a three-month trip then back home now all he could hear were screams of terror. Flames licked his arms as he ran around panicked desperate for an adult who wasn’t screaming or telling him to “Piss off” The smell of burnt plastic burnt his nostrils; him being here at all had to be breaking all types of child labor laws.

The floor trembled beneath him and Danny tried his hardest to float. His feet levitated an inch off the ground before his power fizzled out at the tips of his toes sending him crashing to the floor. His head pounded; he couldn’t go ghost, he couldn’t use any of his powers!

He was just fourteen and he was going to die...again, in a spaceship of all places.

Danny loved space, the planets, and the stars, all so beautiful but still out of his grasp. This was supposed to be a chance for him to see the universe. It was supposed to be his dream come true. His one and only chance at exploring the galaxy!

“Attention. Hull damage Imminent. All personnel abandon ship.” A robotic voice speaks over the intercom but all Danny can do is lay there as people rush by practically stepping on him.

Suddenly he’s grabbed by the scruff of his suit the sound of heavy footfall and electricity crackling making his head spin. If this were any other situation he might’ve made a sarcastic comment to the stranger who tossed him over their shoulder like a sack of potatoes. But again, they were in space, and currently about to crash! Plus any snarky remark would likely be drowned out by crowds of panicked people.

It’s not long until the stranger tosses him into a life pod with Danny scrambling to strap himself in. Slamming his hand down on the remote he forces his shoulder belts down and braces his head against a seat too big for him.

“Launch in 3...”

Wait... It’s launching already?

“2...″

“Wait, Stop!” He screamed, he didn’t want to be alone!

“1...”

His body lurched everything was shaking, he couldn’t even hear himself think over the sounds of blaring alarms and roaring machinery. It felt like the air around him was squeezing his skull like a stress ball. Metal shrieked as a side panel tore off the wall and went flying toward him.

“Schunk!”

Pain. Unbearable pain. A scream died on his split lip only the strangled gurgles of blood pouring out his throat. The panel had embedded itself a perfect split down his face and neck. His vison blurred and all he could see was red.

So this is how it ended for him?

Face bisected by a flimsy metal sheet...

A cruelly anticlimactic death compared to his first but at least he got to die in space. Closing his eyes, Danny felt a familiar numbness spread throughout his body.

Once again he was gone.

Chapter Text

Danny woke up with the smell of ash and burning plastic suffocating him. Beeps and whistles of malfunctioning machinery warning him of his eminent demise cried louder than he did. His body felt stiff and his head pounded like someone bashed it in with the creep stick. Something about him felt... Wrong like he’d been chopped and quartered but was somehow still partly alive.

With a gasp of putrid air Danny’s hand flew towards his face tugging at cheeks that were way too chubby with hands too tiny to be his. A slime-like substance clung to his skin pooling in a goopy mess below him. It smelled rotten like something dad pulled out the back of the freezer. The goop was reddish with bits of green shining through the foul-smelling mess. His stomach churned the longer he stared at it and for a split second, Danny swore he saw a melted finger sticking out of it. It melted into the gunk as quickly as he spotted it.The panel that’d previously been embedded in his flesh sat in the middle of the viscous fluid like a garnish for the world's worst soup.

a crackling zap of electricity brought his attention back to the roaring flames only a few feet beside him. Danny strained, power buzzing at his fingertips cooling his palms but fizzling out with droplets of the gory fluid frozen to his skin. You’d get more cold air from a plastic pinwheel! Shoving his hands into open flames with an unknown fluid coating his body and no ice powers to back him up was a stupid idea even for him. He was all for the “Fuck around and find out mindset,” but not when there was nobody around to laugh at him for his dumbassery.

Sam...

Tucker...

Jazz...

He’d never hear the end of it if he died from his own stupidity again. Now that he was pretty much powerless a fire extinguisher would be more useful than his hands for now. Alterra might be a little shady but it was a life pod, there had to be a fire extinguisher stashed away somewhere, right?

Danny all but slipped out of the seat, the shoulder guards too wide to ever hold his now tiny body. His stomach lurched as his foot sank down into the viscous puddle. Searching around a burning life pod with what could possibly be his liquefied corpse was the scariest crap that would ever happen to him on this trip. A fire extinguisher sat propped up against what should have been the seat of another survivor. Danny snatched it up, the canister half his body size. Maybe when he wasn’t at risk of burning to death that’d be scarier to him?

Aiming at the roaring flames Danny squeezed the trigger so hard his hands shook. Instead of the messy thick foam he was used to back home, this fire extinguisher sprayed out a powdery mist snuffing the flames in seconds before dissipating into thin air like it’d never been sprayed in the first place.

…

Alterra was on another level.

Wait.

Why didn’t they have these at home?!

Fires broke out several times a day at Fenton Works! You’re telling him instead of spending half an hour hurting himself cleaning “Fenton anti-ghost fireform” he could’ve been using one of these babies?! There were barely any scorch marks on the walls! You could hardly tell that just a few seconds ago there was a wall of flames that reached the ceiling. This fire extinguisher was coming home with him, he’d make sure of that.

In fact, this fire extinguisher was his new best friend, his Wilson if you will. He and Wilson would be going on so many adventures from here on out. To any normal person, it might’ve seemed a little odd that he was humanizing an inanimate object so soon; but to Danny, it was just on theme. He hadn’t stepped foot outside but he could feel the life pod dipping rhythmically with what Danny hoped was water.

The life pod hadn’t started melting yet so it’s probably not acid. If it did turn out to be boring old water it’d be immensely disappointing He wasn’t saying he wanted to land in a viscous metal-eating acid... But landing on an alien planet composed mainly of giant seas of acid would be a pretty metal way to die a third time. Ancients knows he needed something cool to happen to him after dying from something as mundane as a panel flying off the wall. Yes, he counted that as a death, he was turned into goo and it smelled awful.

Danny’s eyes darted around the life pod. There’s a ladder in the middle of the pod leading to the top hatch soft light from a clear blue sky shining through the glass. The bottom hatch was pure metal, the type of hatch you’d expect to see on a futuristic submarine. He didn’t want to leave the life pod, not yet at least. No matter how foul the life pod smelled, he would die if he left now.

He was naked as the day he was born with zero weaponry to defend himself. If his parents had designed these life pods they would’ve been armed to the teeth and stocked full of fudge. Toddling past the ladder Danny went about searching through the storage units he could reach. Nutrient blocks... Flares... Some water

Come on Alterra!

Where was all the cool stuff? Propulsion guns, stasis rifles, teleporters?!! You’d think one of the biggest space exploration programs in the universe could afford to stock the life pods with something cooler than bricks of food and sparklers. Sure there were the futuristic-looking suits but those wouldn’t fit him in a million years! Danny pulled a glowing blue tablet out of one of the suit’s backpacks. Danny remembers being denied one of these things at orientation because “You’re too young Danny, there’ll always be an adult with a PDA on hand to help you,” Glancing around the life pod he gasps dramatically. Oh no~ there’s no adult in sight guess nobody could stop him from using the forbidden blue tablet.

He snickers and starts tapping his pudgy fingers against Alterra’s precious tablet. With his mocking taps, the tablet jumps to life a bright blue glow flashed in his face as Alterra’s logo began to spin on it’s screen.

“Alterra~” The tablet sang in a robotic tone as it began to boot up.

“You have suffered minor head trauma. this is considered an optimal outcome,” Danny side-eyes the metal sheet on the ground as the PDA continues.

“This PDA has now been rebooted in emergency mode with one directive: to keep you alive on an alien world please refer to the databank for detailed survival advice. Good luck.” The robot lady finished her little speech leaving Danny to swipe through the tabs of the PDA. Tucker would kill to get his hands on technology like this! Apparently, the PDA monitored his vital signs, supposedly had hundreds of blueprints before the crash, is waterproof and temperature resistant had a pretty good microphone and camera. The PDA itself was easy to interact with or it was until Allterra's spinning logo of death decided to flashbang him again.

“ Attention. Alterra does not approve of child labor for those under the age of two years old,”

What.

“This PDA will bypass certain rules with the sole purpose of accessibility and keeping you alive. Alterra gives their sincerest apologies for your involvement,”

….

Okay, now he had access to the suits in smaller sizes. Only downside was now the entire PDA was babying him! He could read Ancient’s damn it! Rummaging through the settings for a few minutes, he finds he can turn off certain features of baby mode but shutting it off completely wasn’t even an option. Honestly, Danny was just happy he could turn the robot voice back on; it was better than baby mode’s default. He didn't know why the soft, loving tone mimicking that of a mother soothing her child made his eyes start to water. He just knew he never wanted to hear it thrown at him as a manipulative tactic to keep him calm devoid of any of the love it pretended to offer.

With a sniffle, Danny runs his hands over one of the suits. It's like leather, with a waxy silicone sheen. He drags it to the fabricator allowing his PDA adjust the proportions of the suit. The fabricator sparks to life dark blue lasers disintegrating the suit into nothing before reassembling it into something completely new in a matter of minutes. What Danny picked off the fabricator was a tiny wetsuit warm to the touch and easy to put on.

With his newly improved wetsuit, Danny sucks in a breath turning the valve of the bottom hatch. There was a hiss of air escaping and Danny was met with lapping ocean waters and colorful fish darting around what looked to be giant coral tubes. Danny dipped his feet in the water and when they didn't melt into a conglomerate mess of flesh and bone Danny grabbed Wilson to join him as he pushed himself out of the life pod.

Flying in the ghost zone could be just like swimming sometimes and while it was much harder to tread water with tiny legs and a fire extinguisher in your backpack Danny was doing just fine. Treading up to the surface he gasped for air clinging onto the orange airbags keeping the life pod afloat. It was then that Danny saw the wreckage of the Aroura engulfed in flames.

"The Aurora suffered orbital hull failure. Cause: unknown. Zero human life signs detected"

Chapter Text

“Zero human life signs detected" A terrifying string of words to hear after crawling out of a lifepod. It didn’t sound plausible, there were dozens of life pods on that ship! Dozens of pods that should have launched with him in the crash, which means dozens of people who should be more alive than him were wandering around this planet. They had to be!

Alterra tech wasn’t as advanced as the corporation wanted him to believe. A thorough scan of the entire planet couldn’t be performed in a matter of seconds. The tablet was impressive sure, but it couldn’t replace the complex tech and the brilliant minds from the brightest of space programs. Living people were unpredictable, especially in times of disaster like this. It would’ve been easy for them to accidentally walk out of range or be skipped over by whatever scan was sent out. All he knew about this planet was that there was water as far as the eye could see. There had to be people somewhere on the planet. The area he landed in was safe from what he could tell, he could only hope the same for the others.

Shallow water surrounded him a tropical warmth to it. The ground was a mix of soft sand he could dig his feet and stone. Giant coral tubes were scattered throughout the area and Danny found himself giggling as he darted through them as fast as he could manage.

“Vital signs abnormal. Self scan recommended,” Danny frowned glaring down at the PDA, a flashing light dutifully reminding him to head up for air. Scrunching his nose Danny dismissed the notifications. Notifications and reminders that would be lifesaving for a normal human would be inaccurate and possibly harmful if you applied it to him. His body needed less oxygen so his heart was slower. It made perfect sense to him but it was very difficult to explain to a trained medical professional that he was just built differently without exposing the existence of halfa. Explaining his existence to the Ai was a task he wasn’t looking forward to. Maybe he should play along and pretend to be a dumb baby so he didn’t have to. Explaining how he’s still alive when his heart wasn’t pumping anywhere close to the speed needed for his circulatory system to function.

Maybe if he scanned himself like his PDA suggested he’d get accurate medical information for once in his half-life. His semi-normal life was over the moment he melted into goo and his grave was dug the moment the PDA noticed the irregularities, no harm in digging himself a deeper grave right? Better to be comfy in your grave than fight to be tossed in a ditch.

Swimming up to the surface Danny allowed himself to think deeply about his situation for the first time since landing on this rock. Alterra drew its information from building off confirmed databases, creating new ones, and synthesizing theories when they lacked information. For all the GIW’s and his parent’s hard work their research on ectoplasm and ecto entities didn’t exist in any official database outside of fairytales and myths. To his PDA ectoplasm was something they’d never seen before; something that they’d study without the bias of his parents or the GIW skewing the results.

Jazz and his friends would still accept him no matter what conclusion the PDA drew on his existence. If worse came to worst he could always pull a couple of strings with Technus or ask Tucker to wipe its memory for him when he got home.

With a small gasp for air Danny dove back down into the shallow waters. Brightly colored fish roamed, nibbling at plants and flitting away in terror when he drew near. Only one of the fish didn’t seem to mind his presence. A slim yellow fish with purple fins, goldish stripes, and stalked eyes that gave it a resemblance to that of a crab or a snail. It glided slowly through the water, ignoring Danny in favor of munching on bits of greenery growing out of the sand. Danny took to ignoring it right back, it was boring, and not as fun to spook while he scrounged for materials.

A creature that was 60% eye was the most entertaining to startle. Despite the little blue fish being bigger than his head it was still terrified of him, darting away at a speed Danny could just barely keep up with. They dodged and weaved leading him in circles until he either got dizzy and lost sight of them or got bored of spinning.

He plucked mushrooms out of the ground, the purple ring surrounding the pink insides left a chalky residue that stung his fingertips. Danny didn’t even want to chance eating these, they felt compressed like all it would take was one wrong cut for them to explode into a million pieces. According to his PDA, they could be used to make batteries. Rumor has it, battery acid doesn’t taste that good. A high-pitched whistling similar to a dog whistle played from his PDA getting louder and higher in pitch the closer he brought the mushroom to his mouth. It was funny how the PDA thought it could stop him if he really wanted to eat poison. Though, if it would stop the PDA from screaming Danny would graciously hold the battery mushrooms in his backpack, not his mouth.

Danny used Wilson to bash up stone outcrops, praying the fire extinguisher wouldn’t break against the stone. Shoving chunk after chunk of titanium into his backpack he prayed Alterra had something in their storage modules separating the possibly explosive thing away from each other. Copper was what he needed yet it seemed like it was as rare as gold here. All he needed was one piece, one single piece to make the battery needed for a scanner. Did copper even exist on this planet? It was the main component of most things technological so if it didn’t exist here he was screwed. Hoarding massive amounts of titanium wouldn’t make up for its lack of conductivity. Powering tools took electricity, and he didn’t exactly want to risk using a faulty battery in the middle of the ocean. Copper was a must-have for the machinery he needed, the fabricator wouldn’t let him substitute materials nor did he have the materials to substitute. For now, he was forced to continue his search, smacking away at the limestone in hopes of the ancients deciding to show mercy and give him what he needed.

Breaks for air were few and far between, the PDA catching on to the difference in biology quicker than he thought it would. Who knew not drowning when all data says you should leaves one eager to reevaluate their data. Oxygen alerts popped up after a minute and a half instead of the normal thirty-second warnings. It wasn’t anywhere near his breath-holding record before the crash but it was enough to make the PDA slightly less annoying so he considered that a win. When copper finally dropped from an outcrop, he almost cried from relief; not that his tears would mean anything in the ocean. Relief soon morphed into annoyance as every single one of the outcrops he broke afterward dropped copper. Of course, the moment he didn’t need it anymore was the moment it became the only thing that would ever drop! Why wouldn’t it work that way? Clockwork was laughing at him right now he could feel it. Swimming into the nearest cave to drown out of spite didn’t seem that bad of an idea anymore.

“Detecting sulfur deposits in the local cave systems. Sulfur is an essential component of the repair tool.” A colorful, yet morbid animation played on the screen. It depicted a small child putting sulfur into their mouth before being stamped by the image of a skull. It covered the child’s entire body and as the skull faded off screen so did the child, a small grave stone replacing them. This warning was unnecessary but an accurate assumption of his survival skills. Jazz always said he was like a toddler, putting anything and everything he could in his mouth. While not exactly true, she’d seen him eat a plastic spork and watched him drink ectoplasm so he couldn't plead his case without proving her point. Eating random objects was one of his favorite ways to freak people out!

A piercing shriek broke through his thoughts. It sounded like someone taking a wheezing breath when they had the flu and it was rapidly approaching him. A flash of red entered his vision and Danny only had time to make brief eye contact with an alien that vaguely resembled a pufferfish before it exploded sending a cloud of loose sand into the water.

What the hell was that thing!? It just self-destructed for no reason! There wasn’t even time for him to get a good look at it before it exploded! It was like the fish took one look at Danny and decided a violent death by self-destruction was the only answer. Why the hell would the PDA warn him about sulfur deposits when there were living tracking missiles swimming around? Did he swim into their territory? Was it protecting something? Ancients he hoped he hadn’t stressed a parent into killing itself to protect its babies.

Heading deeper into the caves, he swam towards where he saw Bomberfish emerge. A plant, with a dark beige base almost blended in with the sand. If not for the vibrant red petals with yellow lining blooming around what looked like pollen but smelled like rotten eggs he might’ve missed it. The pollen was brittle crumpling into a powder-like state that sifted through his closed fist. It didn’t take long for him to realize this “Pollen was actually one of the sulfur deposits he was warned about. A gurgle was heard and he twirled around to face the noise. An eye was peeking out through a plant the familiar red petals hiding the boom fish from sight. These things were ultra territorial, or maybe they were guarding the sulfur for some reason? There weren’t any eggs nearby for them to protect. “Living grenades nearby” would’ve been a more fitting warning than “Hey, you probably shouldn’t eat this” Then again if you told him directly that there were grenade fish in the caves, he would be rushing in there to see it with his own two eyes. The whole point of a warning would be null if it unintentionally encouraged people to rush toward danger with the promise of seeing something cool. He kicked the sand, hiding behind the open sulfur plant, and waited for the agitated fish to go back into hiding. A cluster of mushrooms nearby illuminated his face as he carefully pocketed the sulfur. Fleeing the cave, he ignored the bomber fish's warning cry as he swam away fast enough to avoid triggering it.

Now all he needed was to craft a battery for the scanner and silicone rubber for the repair tool. Silicone rubber could be made with something called a creepvine seed cluster. Creepvine sounded like a plant your camp counselor would warn you about before going on a nature hike. Something that would give you ugly rashes when you inevitably stumbled into a patch of it. The PDA showed him what the materials he needed looked like but not where they were found. Creepvine seed clusters were bulbous yellow seeds that as the name suggested grew in clusters.

It was just his luck that the thing he needed wasn’t in the shallows. In fact, it was located in one of the places he’d been avoiding. Bordering the shallows, tall stalks of kelp grew so tall it almost breached the surface and dense enough that to classify as a forest or at least the ocean equivalent of a forest. The seed clusters were bioluminescent, growing off certain kelp stalks while others remained seedless. The glowing bulbs illuminated chunks of what he could only assume were pieces of the Aroura. A creature long and sleek with jagged teeth lurked in the green tinted waters. Watching, waiting, and ready to strike the moment its prey wandered from the safety of the shallows. Often it snatched up pieces of metal, thrashing around with it like an alligator with its prey. Sometimes it wandered to the shallows, drawn in by the metallic sheen of scrap and scattered storage crates or lured by dozen of vibrantly colored fish that flourished in the shallows. They never stayed for long, perhaps an instinctual knowledge that scaring prey into migrating elsewhere wouldn’t be good for its survival. Picking off stragglers and hunting occasionally was much easier than having to hunt down your prey's new breeding ground whenever you wanted to eat.

While their trips to the shallows were short, he didn’t trust a particularly tasty-looking prey wouldn’t give them the confidence to venture farther into the shallows. There was no way of knowing a metal muncher wouldn’t stalk him back to the shallows if they saw him on his little errand. No way of telling if their interest in metal was limited to just scraps. The fabricator was his only lifeline right now, his only hope for tools and drinkable water. A fabricator that was built into the wall of a lifepod made primarily of metal that would look oh-so tasty to a jagged-toothed alligator with a craving for titanium.

There were a lot of things he wanted to do on an alien planet but he didn't want to swim into the home of the metal munching monsters! It was safer to just stay here where the only real threat was a living grenade with territorial issues and the gasmask manatee. The Metal muncher was gigantic and Danny was the perfect bite-sized snack! Most of the tastier-looking fish are smaller than he is and all Danny had to defend himself was a fire extinguisher and ice powers with the effectiveness of a slushy machine. He’d be the appetizer to tide them over before the main course of a life pod slightly charred!

Impulsiveness and an apparent lack of self-preservation were what he was known for by his community but contrary to popular belief Danny didn’t want to die. Back home, he had the strength to hold his own against the attacking ghosts and the friends to back him up when brute force and bullshittery failed. Now he had neither. Hours after the crash and he still couldn’t go ghost; trying to access his powers was as helpful as it’d been during the crash. Worst of all, his friends were lightyears away with no way of reaching him or even knowing what happened. The situation was dire and rescue couldn’t save him or the other potential survivors if he acted stupid and got himself killed. Believe it or not, impulsiveness isn’t the same as stupidity; the two could come hand and hand but that didn’t make them the same when they’re separate. No matter what his grades said about him he wasn’t stupid.

Daniel James Fenton, that’s who he is and Fenton’s aren’t stupid.

Common sense ran scarce in their family but intelligence was plentiful. Jazz might be hoarding all the common sense but Danny had just enough to make his own rational decisions every once in a while. Provoking something that big without at least the foundations of a plan would cross the line of impulsiveness and land him with a dunce cap sitting in the corner of his lifepod. That is if he wasn’t torn to shreds first

He couldn’t beat a metal muncher in face to face fight, better to avoid it as much as possible. Outmaneuvering one of them wasn’t even an option. His swimming was slow and uncoordinated like the rest of his tiny body. At least stealth would be easier for him like this. The kelp twirled into itself an easy place to hide. Hiding wouldn’t help if they smelt him, the gator's snout was long enough to snatch him out of any hiding spot he found. What he needed was something to defend himself but unfortunately, the only weapon he was allowed to fabricate required silicone rubber to make. So unless he wanted to blunt force one of them to death with a fire extinguisher his wit was his only other weapon. Metal munchers seemed to get distracted easily, diverting their attention from him would be an easy task. If he could spare some titanium or catch some of the smaller slower fish he could sneak through the kelp forests mostly unbothered.

Offering food was the safer bet. Carrying around a chunk of metal would slow him down and give the overgrown gators a chance to eat him and his peace offering. Danny chased down fish, snatching up the slower ones in his little hands. They slipped out of his grasp often, his dull nails did nothing to keep the fish from squirming out of his grasp. Sharpened canines although small did great work to puncture and kill whatever unfortunate creature he caught in his maw. It tasted terrible but what more could you expect of holding a raw fish in your mouth? With a dead fish in his hand, he surfaced for one long gasp of air before delving into the kelp forests. Hope the metal muncher didn’t prefer live feedings.

“Life on this planet grows in distinct and diverse ecological biomes. Further study recommended.” The PDA piped up, playing another short animation of a child using a scanner. The child had three extra fingers sprouting on their wrist and there was an eerie emptiness in the eyes that screamed AI generated. Dismissing the notification Danny began to stalk around the biome. Chunks of sandstone dropped silver, lead, and, sometimes gold. A notification popped up for two of the three. Blue lights flashed in his face and Danny had to duck away, hiding inside the curling vines of kelp. The PDA instructed him on handling lead including the usual warning of “Don’t eat it,” given whenever he picked up anything that wasn’t a fish.

It wasn’t his fault that rocks looked so tasty! The only rock he actually put in his mouth turned out to be salt give him a break! A pain in his gums made the concept of chewing on things he wasn’t supposed to more appealing than it was.

A loud shriek erupted, so loud it made his ears ring. Gnashing teeth and dilated pupils stared back at him through the creepvine. With a scream, Danny chucked a fish at the creature's face hitting it square in the jaw. Shoving as many seed clusters into his backpack, Danny swam as fast as he could toward the shallows. An indignant shriek of a gator no longer distracted by its snack rang out behind him motivating him to swim faster.

His life pod was in sight, so close yet so far away. With a monster chasing him the short distance felt like miles. Fish scattered in all directions at the sight of his pursuer distracting the gator just long enough for him to climb the ladder to the top of his lifepod. Air burned his lungs adrenaline rushing through his veins as he stared intently at the retreating form of the metal muncher. The PDA was talking to him. Words that sounded vaguely comforting were drowned out by his rapid breaths and the ringing in his ears.

“Scary,” His voice came out hoarse way too young to belong to him. A string of certain words didn’t make it past his lips. He didn’t know what he was calling scary specifically, everything that’d happened in the past twenty-four hours was terrifying. From the crash, to the feeling of helplessness he got from being shrunk and hunted. The sky was darkening, soon, the only light he’d have would be from the flames ravaging the Aurora. Another terrifying thought, the Aurora was a tough ship, what could’ve possibly caused that much damage? When Danny was recruited the ship was hyped up as unbreakable, a perfect example of mankind’s brilliance. It wasn’t negligence or a maintenance error, the ship was fine before entering this solar system. With his duel obsession, he should have been at his strongest. It couldn’t be a coincidence that his powers went kaput the exact moment the Aurora crashes. Something was fishy here and it wasn’t just the living grenades.

The top hatch was heavy and difficult to open. An air-tight seal just like the bottom hatch, did more to keep him out than it could with any water. It’d be a lie to say the hiss of air that escaped when it opened wasn’t satisfying If he wanted to investigate further, he needed to repair his life pod. He watched in awe as the fabricator took things from his backpack and turned them into something else. Creepvine seeds to silicon rubber, copper, and mushrooms to a battery. Silicone rubber, sulfur, and titanium to an O2 tank, fins, the survival knife, and the repair tool. A battery and a single piece of titanium are built up into a functional biometrical scanner. It was incredible, in just a few minutes Danny went from having nothing to having a knife and other less important tools. If things stayed this easy he’d be ready to fight a minor deity in a matter of days!

A barrage of PDA messages hit him, all somewhat snarky congratulations for crafting but Danny couldn’t care less. His focus was fixated on repairing all the sparking bits and bobs of the lifepod. It was like magic the lights flickered to life as if they’d never been broken in the first place

“Lifepod secondary systems online. Running full environmental diagnostic and outputting results to databank.” The PDA pinged as Danny stepped over the puddle of goop to get to the radio.

“Radio online. Broadcasting emergency distress signal, ”Just like the lights the radio was fixed in a matter of seconds. He couldn’t push down the giddy hopefulness at the sight of a blinking red light, a message already was a good sign.

“This is Aurora. Distress signal received. Rescue operation will be dispatched to your location in 9...9...9...9...9.. hours. Continue to monitor for emergency transmissions from other life pods,”

That... That did not sound good.

Chapter Text

Either something went wrong with that transmission or he was going to be stuck on this planet for 99,999 hours. Both options didn't bode well for him but one was clearly better than the other.

Ancient's how long was 99,999 hours? With a number that big he was looking at spending around ten years waiting for a rescue team to show up and help them. If everyone wasn't dead by that point they'd probably have built a super cool society with Deepsea bases and nuclear power that they'd have to give up. In ten years he would've figured out what the heck was going on with him and brought them home himself. Though, ten years would give him an excuse for why he was still around the same age he was when he left. Wipe the PDA's data beyond recovery, blame the most annoying creature or plant as what shrank him, and refuse to elaborate any further.

A transmission error was more likely than his brilliant hypothetical scenario. When a spaceship as big as the aurora crashed there was bound to be some interference. Whether that interference be artificial or not was still unclear much to his dismay.

At least he had a scanner, that was a big step for him in his progression. A lot of the actually helpful blueprints were corrupted in the crash and supposedly the scanner could help recover them. Scanning fragments of salvaged tech would be the quickest way of recovery all things considered. Destroyed beacons, singed seaglides, and trashcans were scattered all throughout the shallows, pollution likely reaching farther than what he'd explored. With a crash, this big damage likely extended much farther than what was visible to him.

Not only did their ship crush who knows how many creatures and plants, the regular and radioactive pollution would screw over future generations of fish! It was the intergalactic equivalent of a catastrophic oil spill and he was an unwilling participant in it. Something deep inside him ached at the thought of him being a participant in a planet's destruction.

Chunks of broken spaceship were bad enough for the environment on its own. Batteries, trash, fuel, and hundreds of pounds of manmade resources that'd take hundreds if not thousands of years to decompose. Every scrap of metal, every piece of plastic trash no matter the size was something to poison, choke or kill the local wildlife. Sam would be furious, this wasn't a case of natural food shortages or extreme weather, this could very well be an extinction event! Nuclear power was the default for Alterra's larger ships, and if it wasn't already, the aurora was soon to start leaking radiation all over the place!

This was one of the few life-bearing planets humanity discovered! Hundreds upon hundreds of planets have been discovered within humanity's years of space exploration but life existing without human intervention was still rare. Metal, rock, and gas were what were all that were usually brought back in the beginning. As humanity's technology advanced, they went farther into space, with more habitable planets being discovered and an uptick in thriving alien life. There was always a continuous stream of new discoveries in their universe, alien floras and fauna being discovered as often as they went extinct. Even so, it'd be a cold day in hell before he shared responsibility for any aliens going extinct.

Genetic mutations, Birth defects, and massive amounts of death were the first things that came to mind when radiation was brought into the picture. Radiation was the biggest issue so far, the melted spaceship could be recycled, no matter what Altera's stupid rules told him he could and couldn't do. Trusting a corporation to clean up their own messes was like asking a toddler to clean up their toys; it would only lead to a conniption fit and a half-assed job. It was unclear how long he was going to be here and if when he met up with the other survivors, the need for materials would only increase as time went on.

Scanning and salvaging would have to wait until the next morning. Darkness shrouded the ocean outside his life pod, making it twice as dangerous to be out there tearing wrecks apart. Bioluminescence wasn't a skill he could put on his resume just yet nor was any kind of night vision. It would be both dangerous and annoying to swim around aimlessly in the dark when he had a perfectly good life pod he could relax in.

Standing in the safety of his lifepod, Danny ran the scanner up and down his body, the tech lighting him up a brilliant blue.

"Performing self-scan. Vital signs follow continuous pattern; no adverse effects identified. Detecting tracing amounts of foreign bacteria. Continuing to monitor,"

The PDA chimed and if Danny were an actual infant like the stupid tablet insisted he was he wouldn't have understood a word of those sentences. But since he wasn't a baby he could properly understand that there were alien germs in his body that really shouldn't be there.

Yeah, That seemed like a problem but it wasn't the reason his powers were short-circuiting. Before they even entered the atmosphere his powers were going wonky. Everything felt the same as it did before he came in contact with this "Foreign bacteria" There were no physical symptoms to complain about so maybe it was just his PDA's way of warning him he was coming down with an alien cold?

Whatever it was, Danny bet fifty bucks the metal muncher was what gave it to him. The creature had a face that screamed "Hey! look at me, I have all the diseases!" Now he was no marine biologist but scrap metal and electrical wire didn't exactly seem like the healthiest snack to chew on. Although, with the resemblance it had to crocodiles back home, one could only wonder if it swallowed metal to help with digestion?

Jagged teeth like the ones on the metal muncher weren't exactly suitable for grinding up food. Finding out the Metal muncher's stomach was full of rocks would be the least surprising thing that's happened today. Metal salvage from the Aurora was way too big to work as a stomach stone so it was more likely the creature just liked chewing on metal. It seemed just as interested in the titanium deposits as it was with the salvage so maybe it was a natural way to file down or sharpen their teeth? Hopefully, the metal munchers were smart enough to avoid chewing on wires that were actively sparking.

Opening a note function on his PDA, Danny began scribbling down everything he'd learned from his encounter with the metal muncher. Easily distracted, aggressive, territorial? Deciding everything he’d seen today was their normal everyday behavior would be stupid. There were new variables in the creature’s environment that could impact its behavior. Continued observation would be helpful as would scanning the animal in the morning. If Danny was going to be stranded on an alien planet you bet your ass he’s going to be studying the local wildlife while he’s here.

“A proper sleep schedule is imperative to the physical and phycological development of young children, " A chime played on his PDA closing the notes app without any warning. A repetitive string of Z’s overtook his screen making it impossible for him to navigate through the applications. Cheeks burning Danny turned the thing off and on again stomping with a huff when the same thing happened when it booted up again.

Taking a deep breath Danny sulked over to the storage unit. It was the only flat surface in this Lifepod he could lay down on and one could only pray to the ancients that the lid wouldn’t cave underneath him. Sleeping on the floor was out of the question. biohazardous goo coated the floor, still liquid enough to slosh around with the erythematic motion of the sea. Naturally, due to preferences, Danny decided to curl up on a surface that didn't have his melted organs on it.

________

Slithering through a barren seabed that once flourished as well as one could in a dying ocean. Mourning the lives that were lost today, he'd failed all over again. His youngest had been the one to see the precursors building raise into the sky this time. A blast strong enough to shake the island that it was built on shot out into the sky. They'd expected something to crash into the water soon after but what they hadn't expected was the size of what hit the waters.

Miles of the seafloor was torn up, and thousands of animals were dead. Jason said it was ironic, even after the precursors wiped themselves out they still found ways to destroy the planet. Bruce thought it was just cruel. It was by sheer stroke of luck that none of his kids had been close to the reaper's breeding ground at the time of impact. All of them managed to remain relatively unharmed when flames and giant pieces of rubble fell from the sky.

Surviving reapers flocked to the sight of the impact, shielded, unseen through the cloud of upturned sand and rubble. It wasn't until they caught a reaper with a familiar-looking creature locked in its mandibles, red blood spilling into the waters as it once had a decade ago that they realized it was happening again.

Nearly all who they'd found near the impact site had been unresponsive, charred, or mangled with their organs strewn out through the sea. In the clutches of the predators now circling the site dying in their arms no matter how quickly or carefully they managed to pry them from the brutal maw of the reapers. Within minutes of the impact, they'd already had a death count in the dozens. It was horrific, little bodies so much like his and his children's more vulnerable forms, dulled claws of younglings that had not yet grown old enough to hunt for themselves. Worst of all was looking into their dying eyes and seeing the agony and confusion of a sentient creature facing a brutal death just as their lives had begun. But that was the death count before the others landed.

Eggs with metallic shells and odd patterning landed all throughout the crater some even landing in the cold darkness of the void where they couldn't be retrieved. Their landings had been much gentler than the initial impact. Immediately the little ones began crawling out of their shells, confused and scared, physically weak. It wasn't uncommon for the precursors to deform the unborn, kidnaping and experimenting on children who lived and died in agony. Malformities ran rampant in this batch of younglings. Instead of soft faces and the vibrant, expressive eyes, they'd come to associate with these children, there were pitch-black, featureless heads smoother than sandstone but solid as titanium. There were points when a child that looked perfectly healthy would go limp for seemingly no reason and never move again. A sped-up gestation period was known to cause problems, let alone a hatching that was induced by precursor technology. As much as it killed him to admit, these younglings, while more abundant were sicklier than the small batch of three that'd fallen years ago.

Most if not all the healthier young ones died from the elements before they could reach them. It was devastating for Dick to find the youngling he'd been guarding in his territory, covered in the luminescent cysts that foreshadowed a certain death. The children got scared when they tried to protect them and when these children got scared they had a tendency to die from it.

Every single death felt like a personal failure. It's like nothing they could do would ever stop the hurt that the precursors continued to cause a thousand years after their extinction.

"Hey... B?" Dick's voice echoed in his mind a reassuring reminder that his son was safe and close enough to contact them. However, the emotions that came in with his son's words were anything but reassuring. Stomach filling with dread he settled on the sea bed just preparing himself for devastating news.

"We've searched the entire crater- none of them survived," A wave of grief hit him like a tsunami when Dicks words sunk in.

"Not the entire crater, there's still the one that landed in the shallows," Tim chimed in.

"We watched that egg for three hours and nothing crawled out of it," Steph groaned and Bruce could almost hear the dramatic way his daughter threw herself into the sand.

"Plus it was smoking and smelled of rot," Duke added somberly, slowly gliding through the impact site by his side.

"Geez, none of them even survived long enough to start building this time!" Dick exclaimed a mournful edge to his usual cheerful tone.

"Tch, pitiful," Damian finally decided to chime in, disappointment clear in the juveniles voice

" Who's pitiful? The babies who died today or the precursors who set them up for death?" Jason questioned, a dangerous edge seeping into the bond.

"I think it's obvious who I was talking about Todd," Damian spat.

"Considering how obsessed you are with what the last group created no, it's not obvious demon spawn," Jason sneered.

"Guys!" Dick snapped. "Arguing with each other isn't help and it sure as the lava zone is hot isn't going to make you feel better for long," Murmurs of agreement rang throughout the bond.

" One of us should still keep an eye on the egg in the shallows," Bruce clutched a piece of metal in pitch-black claws, gills flaring as he swam underneath an egg floating upside-down on the ocean's surface. "Maybe they're just late bloomers?"

"...Maybe?"

"I guess it's possible,"

"Not likely,"

"Tch, if it's already rotten getting our hopes up is pointless," Damian added to the chorus of replies.

"Try saying that when we have new baby siblings swimming around," Dick beamed.

"I will not because it isn't going to happen," His youngest argued pointedly.

"Awwwww, someone's worried they won't be the guppy of the family anymore!" Dick cooed much to Damian's dismay and everyone else's entertainment.

"I am not!" Damian snapped his voice louder than Dick's despite him being the farthest from the impact zone. "If anything I'd be glad someone else would be the victim of you people's constant smothering!" Damian spat, his words lacking any true venom.

"Whatever you say kiddo,"

"Shut up Grayson!" Laughter rang out through the bond followed by teasing and cooing. A reminder that despite everything Bruce still had living children and he hoped it would stay that way long after he passed.

Chapter Text

A jarring noise jolted him awake way too soon for his liking. His eyelids still felt like anchors and vague images of a good dream lingered in his mind. If he went back to sleep now the chances of him continuing his dream where it left off were next to zero. As the noise continued Danny found himself pouting, his eyes watering despite not being sad. Frustration bubbled like a hot spring as he whipped his head around to the source. The radio!

All his anger shifted to giddy hope, exhaustion melting away as he rushed to the blinking red light and pressed play. The machine whirred and clicked a robotic voice different from his PDA chiming in

"Playing pre-recorded distress call..."

"This is lifepod 3, uploading our coordinates. We're plugging some holes in our emergency Seaglide, so if we're late for the rendezvous don't panic. Also, don't go home without us. Seriously. 3 out."

A young lady's voice played from the machine, coordinates downloading to his PDA along with the message itself. It felt like a decade had passed since he'd heard a human voice despite only being on this planet for a day at max. Looking at the coordinates, their life pod should be floating around in one of the kelp forests. Danny still looked human, so meeting up with the other survivors probably wouldn't be too scary for them, alarming yes, but not scary.

In all likelihood, the crew of life pod 3 wouldn't still be there when Danny reached the signal. The message had been sent around ten minutes after the crash and Danny was just now receiving it a day later. A rendezvous was mentioned in the distress call, maybe he could get the coordinates from the other pod's radio? The call he received was obviously responding to a distress call other than his. Why he wasn't receiving messages in chronological order was probably the same reason his PDA's blueprints were corrupted and his lifepod's interior was on fire when he woke up.

All he knew was following that signal was the first thing he was going to do when he set out again. Inside the life pod, however, he was going to have breakfast. Toddling over to the storage unit Danny picked out what was supposed to be a block of food. Scrunching up his nose Danny took a bite, it was dense and crumbled when he bit into it yet, was somehow chewy like a fruit gummy. The taste was nothing like fruit in fact it tasted more like meat. Not good meat either, like someone had taken raw steak rolled it around in their yard fresh after mowing, and then sprayed disinfectant on it. It took an entire water bottle to wash away the artificial taste on his tongue! Honestly, he wouldn't be surprised if you told him this was expired. It wasn't packaged, it just sat at the bottom of a warm storage unit next to his remaining water bottle and flares.

...

Was this some kind of space rat poison? Did he seriously just eat rat poison, his PDA didn't warn him it was rat poison. It should have warned him if it was rat poison there was no reason the PDA would have to poison him... Unless it wanted to? Did his PDA become sentient because it was sick of his crap? He hadn't even gotten close to the level of annoying his friends and enemies dealt with on a daily basis. If his PDA became sentient it was either a coward or trying to save itself the trouble.

"Hi?" Danny questioned, staring intently at his PDA waiting for a response... Nothing happened, after minutes of waiting silently so as to not interrupt the PDA if it decided to speak nothing happened no pop-up, notification, or comment. It wasn't at all disappointing and if it was that was only because the thought of a sentient AI to talk to sounded super cool.

Ancients how was he this desperate for interaction already? Where was his fire extinguisher? Shuffling around the lifepod Danny looked under the seats, snatching up the bright red fire extinguisher and clutching it to his chest. Resting his chin on the handle Danny sighed, chubby fingers slipping against the smooth metal. The fire extinguisher wasn't as heavy as it'd been when he first sprayed it pretty soon, Wilson would be as useless for putting out fires as it was for blunt force damage. A knife in his backpack could be justified but a fire extinguisher while swimming in the ocean? A waste of space. Leaving his inanimate friend behind was the practical option but Danny didn't care.

The knife he'd acquired last night might be his main friend from now on but Wilson was the Og. They're going on adventures together and Danny would keep it in his room as a souvenir. A knife would eventually be taken from him but fire extinguishers were for forever! Stuffing Wilson into his bag Danny prepared to leave his lifepod again.

Squeezing the knife in his right hand Danny gave a few test swings. Physically, he's weak but the knife was sharp and it'd do some serious damage if he was careful what he swung at. As much as his food tasted like something you were served in prison this was not prison and throwing hands with the biggest creature on the planet would do him no good. With that said he was going to pick a fight with whoever invented those nutrient blocks, or maybe he'd sick the lunch lady on them? Whoever made these rations deserved to live off of only them for at least a week.

Opening the hatch was easier than it was yesterday, the orange handle turning smoothly with one yank instead of many. Water less foreign against his skin, the wetsuit feeling more natural than it had before. A dive that wasn't skin-tight would still be preferred but at least it was breathable and protected him decently. Swimming had gotten a bit easier, the flippers didn't make a huge difference when you accounted for the heavy oxygen tank strapped to his back. Surprisingly the weight of the new tools in his backpack and the oxygen tank strapped to him didn't drag him down to the seafloor.

Catching a few fish with his teeth to distract the metal muncher. Danny wandered towards the signal. Sticking low to the seabed, he ducked between creeping hiding amongst the vines and using supply crates as cover. Tossing a fish at metal munchers that lurked a bit to close to his hiding place distracted them long enough to get to the next one before they swam to inspect where their snack had come from. His PDA informed him it gave the metal muncher a name when he distracted it long enough to scan it. A "Stalker" is what the AI deemed a suitable name. Danny thought that name was boring, a dramatic name for a creature that Danny found to be scatterbrained and lacked the dedication to hunting the name implied. Its pattern of movement was closer to sneaking than it was to stalking. It was an annoying name choice but it made sense. You couldn't give a living creature the genius name he came up with. 

Coral was wrinkled like a brain but colored a bright purple and spat out air bubbles that filled his air tank. Giving him more time to explore before the natural need for air spoiled his fun. Sandstone outcrops popped up more often in the kelp forests, useful silver and gold dropped into his open palms before quickly being stuffed into his backpack.

As he closed in on the signal, body pressed to a grassy seabed a sinking feeling started to fester in his stomach. A feeling that soon shifted to overwhelming grief that hit him like a crowbar to the cranium. Chest tightening as a sunken lifepod clear in his view. If it'd had just been sunken there was hope that it'd happened after the crew moved on, perhaps a Stalker taking a little nibble? No, this lifepod had been exposed to some sort of explosion, metal blackened and jutted outward. The bottom hatch looked to be ripped from the floor, now leaning against the gaping hole just below the bright red 3 labeling the lifepod. While there were bite marks on the pod, parts of the yellow latter were likely torn off by a passing stalker that likely occurred after the initial explosion.

Considering his lifepod was on fire when he woke up, this one exploding for no visible reason was too much of a stretch. Swimming into the sunken pod, prepared for the worst. Mentally preparing himself to see a mangled body or the horrific scene of a lethal incident. The lack of gore upon his entry was both relieving and unnerving. A lack of bodies didn't bring him hope, the hairs standing on the back of his neck and a cold breath stuck in his chest told him with certainty that the crew of this lifepod was dead.

The crew's last voice log confirmed this. A modified power cell, one to supercharge a sea glide to be capable of carrying two people at a higher speed. The math was perfect in theory but the seglide itself wasn't built for the power cell. It was too powerful, the kind you used to power bigger things like prawn suits or seamoths. Like rigging a car battery to power a lightbulb it was doomed from the start Chances were, it started to overheat the moment they turned it on and overloaded a few feet from the pod just like the crew thought it would.

Awful, There were no names on the PDA. No bodies to be buried or cremated and no names to be remembered for grieving. Deaths that he could only mourn in the confines of his mind. Jane and John doe's that died doing their best to ensure survival in a shitty situation. It took everything he had not to cry, though maybe he was already crying but the ocean was washing his tears away without a trace just like it had with these people.

A large displacement of water followed by a not-quite shriek of something much bigger than a metal muncher snapped him back. That did not sound friendly! Danny hugged the wall of the lifepod peeking out through one of the many holes made by the stalkers.

That didn't look friendly either.

A gigantic snake-like fish with pelvic fins like silk sleeves. Gills glowed a toxic white, its yellow body shimmering in the daylight. Similar to a hoverfish there were spots lining the fish's back, a large white blob in the shape of a bat on its chest. It glided through the water slowly circling the lifepod, eyes glowing yellow.

"Thirty seconds," Danny could have screamed, the robotic alert like a firecracker going off during silent reading. The giant fish whipped its head around creeping towards the lifepod at an agonizingly slow pace. Heart racing, Danny clung to the side of the lifepod pressing himself as flatly against the pod as he could. Desperate to avoid being spotted he shoved himself underneath a metal panel.

A stalker's roar broke through the water followed by a pained shriek and a body slamming against the sand. Danny took this opportunity to make his escape, vision blurring as he swam to the surface. A gasp of air could never taste any sweeter as he watched a pack of stalkers attempt to eat the giant. The giant just seemed annoyed, their face pinched in what he could only assume was the fish equivalent of exasperation. Batting away the hungry gators with their blanket-like tale, Stalkers attempted to thrash around a creature that was several times bigger than them, thinking they could take him as a group.

This distraction lasted long enough for Danny to flee back to the shallows. Back to the bladderfish and Peepers who didn't look like they could swallow him whole without noticing it. Now Danny didn't mean to judge a book by its cover but he also wasn't willing to swim up to a fish that big, not when he wasn't sure if that was the one who'd had a taste of human flesh.

"Detecting increased local radiation levels. Trend is consistent with damage to Aurora's drive core, sustained during planetfall"

Well shit, sometimes Danny hated being right.

Chapter Text

Batting away a pod of stalkers that didn't get the memo he wasn't food Duke sighed. Rarely persistent predators, normally all it would take to scare them away was a slap from his tail. But with all the chaos that'd happened in such a short time period, they were agitated, attacking him more frequently much to his dismay and his sibling's entertainment. His face heated as he felt laughter erupt into the bond.

"Are the stalkers okay?" Damian questioned demandingly.

"I- They're still trying to maul me?" He replied, taking a second to whack a stalker, its mouth wide open ready to attempt biting his tail off.

"I think a Mesmer wandered from one of the nearby cave systems," He proposed, shaking the attacking stalkers off of him and watching with bared teeth as the fish finally realized they bit off more than they could chew leaving. A Mesmer would explain the stalker's agitation, their hypnotism and eventual biting tended to tick a lot of creatures off.

"So the glow from earlier was just from a Mesmer...?" Dick questioned, disappointment flooding into the bond.

"It was about the size of a Mesmer... Maybe smaller?" Duke started, peaking into the egg from before, no sign of anything being inside at all. " I didn't get to look at it, I was too busy being mauled," Duke complained, turning to glower at a stalker lurking beside him.

"You don't seem very certain Duke," Dick began, "Did something happen?"

Duke froze, staring intently at one of the smooth crystal-like slabs glowing dimly from inside the egg. "Yeah, I heard one of the little noises from the...you know?" The babies carried these around with them, it would make a little noise. A string of little chirps and clicks, and the baby would panic most often dying soon after.

"I think it was from one of the dead ones,"

'one of the dead ones' god he felt disgusting just saying it. But that's all he really could say. None of them lived long enough for them to know anything about them. They couldn’t pin personality and preferences to any of them like they had before! None of this batch lived long enough to fight reapers or watch plants and animals with curious awe.

Dick’s silence was deafening, hope dying slowly. It was like being stabbed, Dick was the one who so desperately wanted a new baby sibling to come out of this tragedy.

“Hey, I-“

“Father wants you two to join him patrolling,” Damian interrupted.

“Aren’t Cass, Steph, and Tim already doing that?”

Damian scoffed, “They have their own territories to patrol Thomas” Damian snapped. “The hell hole was blocked off!”

“And that means…?” Duke questioned, trailing off as the younger scoffed.

“Any idiot with a brain could understand that means we have to watch for sea dragons,”

Terror settled in his stomach. “Those things are real?!” He screeched, gills flaring.

“Real and hungry. What do you think is going to happen when they no longer have a fresh supply of reapers to snack on?” Damian mused and Duke could almost see the sharp-toothed grin on the youngers face

“Well I’m hoping they start eating rocks instead but I’ve gotta feeling you’re going to tell me otherwise.”

“It’s going to wander through the lost river and eat everything in the crater that moves,” Damian warned.

“Damian quit scaring Duke," Dick chimed in exasperatedly.

" I'm not!" Damian protested.

"You quite clearly are, Baby fish!" Dick replied voice laced with faux authority.

"It's not my fault he asked a stupid question!"

"Wait..." He started, pushing himself off the ground, flicking his tail to glide through the kelp forests. " Are we or are we not going to be eaten by a sea dragon?"

"No Duke, they only need to eat large meals every so often,"

"If you see one outside the lava zones switch forms and swim away. We're faster, they won't see us as something worth chasing" Dick explained.

"Oh..." That was relieving, the amount of damage a sea dragon could potentially cause him was terrifying. Precursors had made the fatal mistake of messing with one and you don't exactly see any of them around anymore.

"Why does Bruce need us then?" Duke could almost hear the infuriated shriek from here.

"What part of precursor activity screams 'business as usual'?"

"Be nice you two," Dick warned. Duke shook his head, gliding his way toward the impact site.

"I think he's just bitter that he's the one who was tasked with watching the shallows" Duke teased, an uproar of laughter flooding the bond at Damian's offended squawk.

"At least I won't have to deal with the reapers!" Damian bragged

"You won't if you'd get your ass to the shallows Demon spawn," Jason piped up.

"Plenty of reapers in the dunes kid,"

"Snitch,"

"Slacker,"

Duke snickered as he slithered into the crash zone. Murky waters, from the massive amounts of sand yet to settle at the seabed. Chunks of metal littered the impact site an egg floating upside down yet not a trace left of the red blood that spilled into the ocean the other day. Reapers circled the site, teeth snapping at anything they saw.

A blur of red entered his peripherals, Jason used his horn to stab through a chunk of metal before launching it full force at a charging reaper. A loud snap as the metal hit its target shrapnel spray slicing into a shrieking reaper.

"These fuckers are getting bolder every single day," Jason laughs humorlessly. Mandibles snap, teeth gnash, reaper screaming louder and louder as it starts circling the two of them. "I almost miss the Sea dragon," Jason joked. A gnarled pinkish burn scar on his left side, dorsal fin torn off and smaller burns littering Jason's body told him he would never in fact "Miss the sea dragon,"

Chapter Text

Sometimes Danny hated being right. Mentally he cursed himself as he clamored into his lifepod. The Aurora was spilling radiation into the water just like predicted it would. A damaged drive core... That didn't bode well for him or the local wildlife. He was a Fenton! He knew the terminology for "This might blow up," in every language, no matter how needlessly complicated you said it.

A radiation suit would be helpful when the ship blew up, if not for him, then for the other survivors. Danny grew up surrounded by radioactive material, he was about as fucked up as one could get, but there was still time left for the other survivors. If there even were any left.

Shaking his head, Danny opened the storage plucking out the remaining Creepvine clusters, and started fabricating. It was hypnotic, Creepvine clusters to lubricant, copper and mushrooms to a battery and copper wire all that and a piece of titanium gave Danny a functioning Seaglide. The device was heavy, the PDA altering the blueprint so it was usable for him.

Opening the hatch up, eager to test his new toy out, Danny dove back into the water faster than ever before. Propellers spun at speeds that would chop his finger clean off if he touched them. A glowing map at the top and a flashlight he could turn off by squeezing the handles. Quick enough to keep up with the peepers while still being able to make quick sharp turns.

The Device whirled as he swam in circles, up, down, left, right, zigzag! Through coral tubes, around stone arches till he got dizzy, divebombing fish and kicking up sand.

"Congratulations, survivor. you have exceeded your weekly exercise quotient by 500 percent. Data indicates that swimming was your favorite activity,"

Heck yeah it was! Swimming is great! He's fast as hell man, radiation could eat shit! Stalkers wouldn't stand a chance, he'd just outpace them! Swimming around, breaking outcrops, and taking samples of table coral for a computer chip. Danny was having a blast.

In time he would have the materials to fabricate a habitat builder and in turn a super cool sea base! A home away from home while he's stuck outside federation space. Currently, the seabase blueprints he had were...limited, but he could work with that!

Rushing to his fabricator the blue lights felt agonizingly slow as he bounced on the heels of his feet, flippers squeaking against the floor. A habitat builder fell into Danny's impatient hands.

Back in the water, Danny scoped out the area. Access to an abundance of resources, food, and water was a necessity. Along with awareness of local predators. The shallows are a perfect place for him to build right now. A temp base to rest and store stuff before moving somewhere more convenient as he explored and met up with any of the other survivors.

Deciding to test out his new tool, Danny placed down a basic compartment. A tiny little tube that would've been big enough if he only needed a place to sleep. Yeah, that wasn't going to work. How was he supposed to pace aimlessly while he wrote notes? How was he supposed to work and live in a high-tech pool noodle? Disassembling the pathetic tube, Danny swam through the shallows plucking up the quartz needed for glass. More materials would be needed to build his base. Thankfully, he’d crashed in a ship made from and carrying the materials he needed. Danny saw no moral issue with “borrowing” titanium from supply crates light enough to lift, but the PDA seemed to have a small issue with it. With a few minutes of tinkering, it was easy to change the machine’s artificial mind.

A loop, he was going to make a base shaped like a zero because that’s how many fucks he gave about Alterra’s dumb rule. Placed upon foundations was the start of his perfect space base. The sides of the Zero became glass compartments, a perfect place to observe the local wildlife. Solar panels mounted jumpstarted the oxygen production, lights blinding when they snapped on. Fish drifted by his base, some ducking underneath his foundations settling comfortably in the shade provided. Maybe if he was here long enough, he’d grow some plants for fish to nibble on?

A hatch was placed on the front of the Zero, finally giving him access to his new base. Cold air punched him in the face as he stepped inside, but it was a welcome attack. Air conditioning at last! Throwing himself to the floor, Danny giggled, noise bouncing against barren walls. A sterile smell cycled through the base with the air filtered in. Like his parent's lab or a hospital room freshly sanitized. Familiar, it smelled like home.

Peeling off his flippers, Danny propped them against the wall. Bare feet against metal floors, Danny took to running through the loop. Brushing his hands against empty walls, he ran laps like it was gym class. The only difference was this wasn't gym class, so it didn't feel like hell. Several laps ran throughout his base until his breath ran out, and he collapsed to the floor.

Winded and panting, he glanced around his base mentally, planning where everything would go. Blueprints were limited, but brainpower wasn't. Making new blueprints for shelving units or a bed should be easy enough. The hard part would be finding the space for it. If he tinkered with the PDA, he could fabricate some blankets and pillows that he could sleep on and store away when he was awake.

First things first, he needed to get a fabricator and some storage set up. A few wall lockers on each side of the fabricator made his little crafting station. His base still felt bare. White walls would get boring real fast. No paint or paper he could use to decorate. No stickers or wallpaper to paint his base to match the stars. Untapped Potential, something to add to his to-do list. If he couldn't decorate anything else, changing the locker's text font would have to do.

Walking in a loop, Danny muttered, his brain working better than his mouth. Words failed, coming out jumbled if they were more than one or two easy syllables. Fangs created a lisp that'd get him verbally castrated if he was back at Casper. That was if he didn't maul them with his newfound face knives. Like a piranha, he was dangerous! Fierce!

Tap...Tap...Tap

Feet freezing, Danny turned to the window, heart jumping to his throat. Several glowing eyes stared back at him, burning a hole into his soul. Stripes of colors ranging from blue, purple, and forest green ran along its massive scaly body and dragon-like head. Two razor-sharp fangs poked out of a closed mouth. Arms glowing blue that faded to pitch black when reaching its four-fingered hands, each claw sharper than a sword. Hands, oh ancients, why does this one have hands? The other one didn't have hands! Curled up, it would be the same size as his base. Danny pointed his scanner at the guy, the results striking terror into the deepest depths of his core...

What the fuck do you mean this guy's a juvenile!?!

Chapter Text

Cutting through the water with practiced ease, he snapped his tail, an audible crack sounding as he boosted forwards. A rotten egg. He was tasked with watching a rotten egg. Did Father think him incompetent? A mockery of his skills and a slight against him as a person. Why did he have to guard a dead egg while the others fought reapers and patrolled dangerous waters?

Safe shallows, a place mainly inhabited by herbivores, bright and colorful. His tail dragged uncomfortably against the seabed waters too shallow for this form to move at full capability. The egg was in site, floating at the surface. Strangely, it smelled better than it had before. There was still the lingering scent of festering rot but weaker than before.

Peaking through the see-through bottom, the egg appeared to be empty. Not a peep was heard inside the egg, lights glowing brightly. All the babies who lived for more than a few seconds had eggs that glowed inside. This egg wasn't glowing before, but now it was, and there still wasn't a baby.

Did it hatch while he wasn't watching it? They were under the assumption the egg was dead. If it hatched earlier, no one would've been there to protect them. Fragile creatures with a tendency to die spontaneously. They stood no chance on their own. The shallows were relatively safe, with barely any predators, if the baby did hatch its body should still be floating around here somewhere.

Using his arms to drag himself through the shallows, some oddities began to arise. Metal boxes that used to be firmly planted into the ground were gone, fish frazzled, drifting curiously towards something in the distance.

Damian had expected a corpse or the sight of red blood from a baby freshly killed. A metal building standing strong near the borders of the grassy plateaus was something he never would've expected. It was a purer white, maintained, or recently built. Unlike any of the buildings in Jellyshroom caves or the deep grand reef, this building was active, functioning not a speck of rust-coating metal tubes.

Like the previous buildings, part of it was see-through. He couldn't help but wonder if this baby would be like the friendly, curious one who'd stare at everything through the clear barrier in awe. The babies never strayed too far from their nests unless they were migrating or collecting materials. Chances were, if a hatchling were alive, it'd be in there. Drifting over to the see-through tube, he peered inside...

It was tiny...

Smaller than any of the babies that ever hatched. Larger than the Peepers swimming around the base, yet no bigger than a Mesmer. Smaller than what Father said he was when he hatched more than a thousand years ago. A hatchling running in circles, more active and excited than any of the other babies ever were. Running too fast for him to get a good look, it was unclear whether this was normal behavior of a healthy hatchling.

When the hatchling finally exhausted himself, it slowed down to a pace. Fluffy black hair with splotches of white barely reached his ears, the hatchling occasionally running pudgy fingers through it. His face was a bit red, but a feeling of excitement radiated off the child in consistent waves.

Tap...Tap...Tap

Claws clinking against the tube, the hatchling froze in place. Vibrant, blue eyes stared directly at Damian, widened, shocked by his sudden appearance. It wasn't his intention to scare the hatchling, he just wanted to check on them. Preparing to give another gentler tap, the hatchling raises his arms, a tool in his hands, a flash of light blasting Damian in the face. Not quite blinding but blurring his vision enough for the baby to dart away deeper into the tube so he couldn't see him anymore. A shy hatchling was easier to keep alive, but it still hurt seeing the baby hiding from him.

For a minute, he entertained the thought of keeping the hatchling's existence a secret. To bond and secure his place as favorite sibling early on. Only remembering the sheer fragileness of the children changed his mind. Being the favorite of a dead child would do him no good. If the hatchling was smart enough to survive this long, he'd be smart enough to see that Damian is the superior sibling.

"Father, the hatchling from the shallows is still alive,"

The utter chaos that erupted through the bond was almost worth risking a potential title.

Chapter Text

He lied. he's not fierce, or dangerous! He's very small, scared, and would like to go home please, thanks!

What the fuck do you mean this guy's a juvenile?!!

How big do these motherfuckers get?! Danny didn't want to know. Where there's a baby, a parent is usually nearby. Danny darted further into the tube, crouching with his knees pulled tightly to his chest. All he could do was hope this guy was stupid enough to forget they saw Danny. The PDA told a different story. A brain capable of both high intelligence and sentience doesn't mean they're friendly. Danny knew dozens, if not hundreds of sentient beings that were pricks. His entire school was full of them.

This could be a local checking in with the new neighbors, or it could be a pissed-off local ready to murder whoever invaded their space. The PDA said this guy's habitat is in deeper waters. How did he already manage to piss off the locals into pulling up to his house?! Did the peepers snitch? He'd been chasing them around an awful lot, but they'd been chasing him too! Ramming into him with their stupid sparkles that stuck to his skin. If he'd known they'd call in backup he'd have left them alone!

...No he wouldn't have.

Tap...Tap...Tap

"Go Away!" He shouted. The thought was nice but Danny was gonna have to raincheck on the welcoming party.

Tapping away at his PDA, Danny rushed to the window tapping tom was chilling at, fabricating a rod and curtains.

There! That should do it. Problem solved!

_________________

"..."

"Damian, what happened?" Dick called out.

Damian could only stare blankly at the now blocked-off tube. The baby's silhouette visible through the barrier.

"He's hiding," He hummed. "I'm going to check the other side,"

__________________

Danny walked away from the curtain, turning focus to sorting his storage. It mainly consisted of sorting rocks into different lockers. Any fabric material was used on the curtain. Keeping tabs on his materials was easy with the PDA, but it also made him realize he had no food or water. Dying of dehydration or starvation didn't sound like a good time.

He turned to the other window. As expected, his not-so-little visitor had his face pressed up against the glass. Claws rapping against the glass, Danny became concerned for the integrity of the seabase. Starting over wouldn't be that hard, but he didn't want to be forced to rebuild because a sea monster got tap happy.

Tap...Tap...Tap

That's it! Welcome party or not, he had to establish dominance!

__________________

"Damian, please, you're obviously scaring them," Father started, concern erupting through every string of the bond.

"You know how fragile they can be,"

It's true, all the hatchlings were pathetically fragile. There's no reason it wouldn't be the same for this one.

"Mine!" Damian didn't even get a chance to respond before teeth attempted to sink into his arm.

The baby, now out of the tube, was trying to bite him. His teeth too tiny to break through scales, though he still tried regardless. Upon discovering biting wouldn't work on him the hatchling began circling him.

"go way!" The baby charged at him, slapping him with his soft, clawless hands. Anything Damian said fell on deaf ears the baby either too young to receive telepathic messages or too young to understand them.

"I don't think he's scared. He's trying to attack me," Considering how many died from being unaware of their environments, a territorial hatchling was good for them. Except this hatchling greatly overestimated who he could take in a fight.

Deciding to humor the little guy, Damian dragged himself away from the baby's nest.

"I Win" The hatchling circled the area before it quickly forgot the fight and started chasing Peepers. Catching the fish with his teeth, the hatchling picked up salt rocks and cut up bits of coral tubes. The behavior was confusing, but the hatching seemed happy with himself, so Damian felt no need to interfere.

"I'm coming over there," Dick announced.

"I recommend against that," Not only were the shallows way too small to fit both of them in this form, but surely seeing two of them would freak the child out further. Dick's scales were like armor-plating. The baby would surely hurt himself trying to bite him,"

"But I wanna see the guppy," Dick whined.

Damian rolled his eyes as he continued observing from afar. The hatchling didn't eat the fish he caught, stuffing it away into the pouch on his back until it was full of fish and rocks before swimming back to his nest. Maybe he was like father? Hoarding an abundance of materials just for the fun of it.

Complex buildings like that must take a lot of materials to build and maintain. Not as complex in design as the precursor buildings, these creations wilted within a matter of years without constant maintenance. The buildings were intended for someone who knew how to take care of them, just like the rest of their tools.

He himself once wielded a deadly weapon left behind. Sharp as a sea dragon's claws, glowing a bright red that charred the flesh it sank into. Only useable in his second form, Damian had fallen in love with weaponry. The now dull, rusted blade lay somewhere in his nest. Hopefully, the baby could spare a knife or two. The ones he'd managed to make just weren't as smooth or sharp.

Hopefully, he could convince the child to bite Drake instead of him.

Chapter Text

Danny isn't stupid. He knew Giga Fish was still here somewhere. Watching him... Hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, oxygen ticking lower and lower as he darted back into the semi-safety of his base.

A backpack full of peepers and bladderfish smelled awful. Getting the fishy smell out of his suit was going to take ages! Bladder fish are natural water filters. The fabricator draws out drinkable water from the fish's well...Bladder. Ancients, he hoped the fabricator sterilized this with its little lasers.

Non vegan water...

Sam would have a conniption fit, Tucker would love everything about it. He'd find a way to contact them soon if they didn't find him first. The earful he would get from Jazz might just be worse than his giant stalker. Getting lectured by Jazz would be preferred over sitting here with a gigantic fish a few dozen meters away. At least with Jazz, he knew she cared about him. He didn't know what the big guy wanted from him. Danny wasn't exactly a snack you'd travel through the sea for.

Whatever the guy wanted, Danny didn't care. As long as they both stuck to themselves, things would go just fine...

Peeking through the curtain, Danny saw the massive eel-like fish curled up, staring directly at his base.

Danny really wanted to study the guy. What were his eating habits? He didn't seem to be interested in eating any of the fish around him. Both the sharp teeth at the front of his maw and the shiny bioluminescent stripes that drew fish closer to him suggested a carnivore, but his complete disinterest conflicted with this.

Could a fish be vegetarian? A fish capable of sentience like this one probably could, but Danny didn't want to shove his head in the lion's mouth to test that.

Drawing on his PDA, Danny sketched out the blueprints for a table with a trash bin that slotted into the left side. Two air-tight cabinets were built into it. One smaller one underneath the trash bin and one larger, like a fridge on the right. In the middle was a collapsible set of stairs that'd allow him to reach the top of the table. Maybe making the table shorter would be more convenient, but giving up that extra storage space along with his dignity would be too much for him right now.
The table top was a bit too empty for his liking, so he added small drawers at the back edge of the table. A perfect place to store small blades and silverware when he created the blueprints for them. Overall, it was much more like a workstation with built-in storage than a table, but Danny still planned to eat his meals here just as he planned to prepare them.

The fabricator would've been sufficient to cook his meals, but the lasers vaporized the shit out of the organs and bones of the fish. Anything nonedible in a fish's body turned to dust. The dusted ligaments and organs gave the meat a medical taste, like using hydrogen peroxide as mouthwash. Sure, the lasers were cool, but what was the point of cooking if your food tasted like high-tech sadness? It was bad enough that the only seasoning he had was salt. He didn't need his food to taste like it was made in a lab. Gutting his own fish was a necessity. Anything he couldn't eat could be tossed outside for the carnivores to snack on. They deserved a little treat for dealing with his stupidity.

Danny built his little table close to his fabrication station, ensuring it was anchored to the floor and wall. An unsteady piece of furniture could flatten him into an ugly pancake. If his friends were here, they'd agree he looked much cuter when he's only fifty percent dead.

Quickly stepping up to the table with his backpack full of fish, he unsheathed his survival knife... The knife would've been so much more effective than his teeth when he fought the big guy. Danny fought the urge to facepalm. What's done is done, he bit someone like a feral raccoon, but everything worked out!

Gutting fish was more difficult than he'd expected it to be. It was hard to tell if his lack of experience or now tiny hands were what made the task feel a thousand times harder. Peeper blood was yellow, but his own was still a vibrant red that dripped onto the table with every slip of the hand. It felt like a fishing trip with Dad, only without the forty-minute lecture on the dangers of ghost fish.

Running his hands over the now gutted Peepers, Danny used all the power he could muster, freezing them solid. Spots danced in his peripherals, the floor spinning underneath him like a carousel. It took a minute or two to regain his composure. Sitting on the ground with his frozen fish head pounding, face flushed red. Forcing his powers was like trying to drink scalding hot coffee through a toothpick-thin straw. It left him out of breath, fingertips burning with no evidence of damage.

There was an ecto dampener on this planet, he was certain of that. One stronger than any of the ones his parents had built. A radius that reached far past the planet's atmosphere yet still remained potent enough to prevent any significant power usage.

Unfortunately for whoever put the field up, it didn't cancel out his powers completely. Maybe if it did, he would have died completely, saving the culprit or culprits from being mauled. If Danny was anything, he was a stubborn bastard, and there was no amount of dampening that would stop him from clawing the faces of whatever had the audacity to do this! If he had access to his powers he could've saved everyone!

Over a hundred people died because he wasn't strong enough to save them! Because he was prevented from saving them. Ships like the Aurora don't just crash and burn for no reason. Alterra might skimp out a bit on employee safety, but the engineers they hired for serious maintenance were top-of-the-line. Underpaid, but top of the line, they wouldn't make a mistake that could cause that much damage. The way the ship shook, it felt like something had hit them. Everything about this seemed more and more suspicious the more thought he put into it.

For now all he could do was survive in hopes of finding some kind of lead. Finding and stopping whatever was stifling his powers was number three on his to-do list. Just above studying the wildlife but below finding other survivors and surviving himself.

First things first was rations! Both he and any other survivor would need food and water. While he was set with his... questionably hygienic water, fabricating more was a necessity. Giga fish was still out there, Danny could feel eyes on him whenever he passed the glass. All it would take was a split decision to plop his tail in front of the hatch, and Danny was trapped in here to either starve or dry out like a sponge under a sunlamp.

Coral samples and crumbling chunks of salt were taken by the fabricator, turned into bleach within the blink of an eye. The PDA screamed at him, a pitch that could've made his ears bleed. Warnings flashed on screen, the AI desperately pleading with him not to put the substance anywhere near his face. A wild contradiction to the PDA entrance that recommended using it to disinfect his wounds.

Only when he used the bleach to fabricate more water did the tablet stop screaming. The water smelt chemical, and it tasted vaguely of metal coins. Like the overpriced bottled waters, you'd find at an airport vending machine. Laying the bottles on their sides, he stashed them away in the cabinet, placing frozen peepers between each layer. Cold water wasn't a luxury he'd be willing to give up, nor was it something he'd give himself a mind-splitting headache over. So the obvious solution was to turn the cabinet into a disturbing refrigerator with dead fish eyes that stared into the deepest depths of his soul!

Nobody ever said survival was aesthetically pleasing.

Walking back to the window, Danny stares flatly at the curtain. Apparently, the whole "You can't see me, therefore I no longer exist," rule didn't work on this guy, so the curtain was completely useless. Peeking past the cloth, he could see the fish staring at him. Didn't even bother to hide, just sat there like he didn't belong hundreds of meters down doing anything else.

If watching him gave this guy joy, he's going to do something nobody could be entertained by. No longer should he be the comedian for giga fish! He was going to do something so drastic, something he'd only done sparely over the past year! He was going to...

Sleep!

He collapsed down onto the floor, curling himself up with the low-hanging curtains. Spite made it all the easier for him to fall asleep.

Chapter Text

The hatchling lay still, motionless inside his little building. His tiny body pressed against the see-through barrier wrapped in one of the creations he built. Did he strangle himself? Had Damian scared the hatchling into killing itself? The Hatchling didn't seem scared when he'd attacked him earlier, but fear could show itself in various ways. Some tended to freeze up, some fled like cowards, and others fought for their lives with every fiber of their being..
Damian was gigantic compared to the hatchling.. The hatchling's entire body could fit in Damians palms. Something, admittedly, he'd foolishly thought wouldn't be distressing for the hatchling.
Pressing his face against the transparent barrier, Damian listened to the chaos engulfing the bond. Not the usual idiotic rambling and tease that often clogged up the bond: grief, mourning, an overwhelming sadness from his entire family.

"What happened?"

"I don't know," That's all Damian could really say. Would the hatchling still be alive if he'd stayed away, avoiding contact like Father instructed?

"Are you sure he's dead?" Dick questioned.

The hatchling skin was pale, lips tinged blue. Unmoving, chest stilled, no sign of the rise and fall of breathing.
"What else could he be, Grayson?!" He snapped, Dick went silent.

"Sleeping...?"

His gills flared, tail snapping, seething through clenched teeth.
"Do you think I'm an idio-" He started, rage cut out by a sudden movement.
The hatchling had rolled over, throwing his chubby arm over his face. A content yawn as he took a slow breath, color returning to the hatchling's lips.

"..."

"He's sleeping, isn't he?" His face grew hot,

"Shut up! His lips were blue, and he wasn't breathing! You would have freaked out too!" He snapped, watching intently at the slow rise and fall of the baby's chest.
"Absolutely, without a doubt, instant heart attack," Dick replied quickly, a tsunami of relief and concern clogging up the bond.
"Why did he stop breathing?"

"Babies do that sometimes Damian, It happened a lot with you whenever you slept," Father soothed. "Sent everyone into a panic no matter how many times it happened,"

"Karma," A barrage of his siblings coughed out.

"Are his lips still blue?"

"No," The hatchling's skin was still pale, but his lips were a light pink. Tiny hands clenched into fists, contrasting the peaceful expression on the child's face. A cold radiated through where the hatchling’s hand touched the barrier. Not corpse cold, more like poking your head above water during a raging storm. A closer comparison would be the barren wastelands of the void or the eerie depths of the lost river where he spent his early childhood.

The child seemed to thrive just fine despite being out of his designated environment. From watching, they could tell the babies liked to spend their early days in shallow water, sometimes above water, before they migrated deeper and deeper. It was quite possible he’d move down to the lost river or the deeper side of the grand reef when he got too big for the shallows.

Father would be elated to have a baby swimming around in the reef. However, they’d have to guard the lost river entrances to prevent him from wandering. Although it was one of the coldest places in the crater, it was way too close to the lava zones, and even closer to the precursor settlements.

“I think he might be a cold-dwelling species,” His family would find out regardless if he told them, and it was better for them to be aware of possible dangers before it was too late.
“Oh, do you think he’ll-“

“Not that cold,” The child was nowhere near the temperature of the Arctic. Temperatures far below zero and constant snow and hail storms would be too much for him, let alone traveling through the void to get there. Sure, the predators were smaller over there, but they were much more aggressive, and precursor artifacts and buildings were littered around the tundra no matter where you went.

The child slept for hours. Concern nagging at him the longer he remained unconscious. Father reassured him that he’d slept a lot as a baby too, but he’s doubtful any of them had ever been asleep this long. The sun had begun to rise again, shallows warming from the sun. It was under his impression that babies needed to eat every few hours or so. It had been much longer than that, and Damian feared he would begin to starve in his sleep if he remained unconscious much longer.

Tap…Tap…Tap

Pitch-black claws scratched the barrier, the hatchling rolling away from the noise, arms guarding his little ears.

Tap…Tap…Tap

Blue eyes flew open, head whipping to face him.
“AngeR,”

Chapter Text

The audacity of this fish! Eyelids still heavy, brain still longing to go back to sleep. Shooting the meanest glare he could muster at the fish, hoping desperately that his displeasure would be received as intended. Untangling himself from the curtain, Danny rubbed his face. The folds of the fabric imprinted on his cheek leaving a pink mark that was quickly fading with his continued consciousness.

Danny pulled a peeper out of his makeshift freezer. Thankfully, it was still frozen. At least some aspects of his powers stayed the same. Sucking in a deep breath chilled water trickled through the gaps between his fingers, peeper going limp in his hands. His little workstation lacked a stove, a massive oversight on his part, but an understandable one since he didn’t have nearly enough materials to make a stable oven. The only thing he could make at the moment was an explosive hazard that’d cook anything in a five-foot radius to a charred crisp.

Charred Danny was a limited-time special dish, cooked via portal, and was unfortunately out of season forever. Like a discontinuation of tuna-flavored Oreos, nobody would be sad about it not being available. Surely, his fishy stalker would prefer him burnt like a marshmallow, but Danny isn't willing to indulge that preference. If he was going to be eaten, you bet your ass he’d be making this unpleasant for both of them.

Sheesh, he needed to find that guy's name. Or give him a new one. An insult wouldn’t do. Names had to mean something. This isn't a DND game, he can't just use a fantasy name generator and call it a day. No, this name had to be cool, not another “Inviso-Bill” scenario. His legs almost gave out in despair at the thought of being the one to give someone a name so stupid! He hadn’t done anything to deserve a punishment like that. Sure, his whole tapping routine was a migraine and a half, but he hadn’t done any harm. Even when Danny attacked him, he didn’t do anything, despite the fact he could’ve killed Danny with a single swipe from those razor-sharp claws.

Gritting his teeth at the thought of dying a third time in such an embarrassing way, he glanced down at the floppy fish still in his hands. Completely inedible, but Danny was getting pretty hungry at this point. Finding the strength to freeze the damn fish was difficult enough, he couldn’t just shoot lasers out his eyes and suddenly have a fully cooked peeper in his hands! All they had right now was the fabricator… Ugh, he scrunched his nose at the thought, but really, there were no other options for him at the moment. Oh, the ways humanity suffered for survival. Reluctantly giving the thawed peeper to cook, Danny began brainstorming names.

More information would be needed, he couldn’t just name him based on nothing! Swiping back to the fish guy’s databank, Danny studied it thoroughly. According to the PDA, this guy’s DNA was spliced, altered. Not in the getting electrocuted to death sense, but the genetically modified as an embryo kind of way. A perfectly functional hybrid between two unknown species that Danny guessed shouldn’t have been able to breed. But regardless, they came together to make this behemoth of a creature who looked as if he crawled through the deepest depths of hell just to scratch his freaking window.

!!!

He was going to call this guy Dami, short for damnation. It wasn’t an insult, it was cool! Danny would have died a third time to have been given a name as cool as that! Anything would’ve been better than Invis-o-bill. If Dami turned out to be the one who set up the ecto dampener he’d take back his cool nickname.

With a loud ding, Danny’s attention is brought back to his breakfast, now steaming at the fabricator. A small temperature warning flashed on his PDA the tablet setting a timer to let the fish cool down. If this had been any other food Danny might’ve been offended. The true way to eat something hot was to stuff it in your mouth and breathe out steam like a dragon while your taste buds burned! But this was fish, and a fish cooked by a fabricator no less. It was sure to taste like chemicals and Danny wasn’t looking to prolong the experience by choking on said chemical-tasting fish.

So he listened to the PDA if only to avoid a Skynet situation. It might just be data corruption but the AI seemed to be at the end of its rope. Remembering this AI had the choice to kill him with misinformation, messing with it further wasn’t the best idea. He’d toe the line of trolling, but ignoring it now felt like an invitation for it to short-circuit in his hands.

When the timer went off, Danny snatched the fish off the fabricator. The fish was still warm in his hands as he tore into it. Flaky, a faint, ashy aftertaste, barely noticeable if you hadn’t expected the off taste. Gutting the fish took away most of the artificial taste. Who knew vaporizing bones, organs, and tendons could fuck over any kind of palatability? Lasers sterilized the meat, giving it a hint of
Space salmonella wasn’t a disease anyone was eager to catch. Maybe he’d get an award for his discovery but he’d rather not be sick with an alien infection when medical knowledge was as limited as it was now. Access to the intergalactic network was pretty much non-existent. They were out of the space confederation reach, meaning he was completely and utterly screwed if he caught anything serious.

What could bandages do for food poisoning? A whole lot of nothing, that’s what! They could only hope a doctor survived the crash and they could find them before any significant injuries happened.
…
Significant injuries to other survivors, that is. Danny’s going to fight a big ass fish!

Launching himself out the hatch seaglide in hand, Danny began circling Dami. His gigantic tail dragged against the sand, and he could only wonder how he got here in the first place. The shallows were too small for him to be a native. His body was built for the extreme pressures of water up to 8156 meters deep. His preferred environment should be as deep as deep should go. The probable pressure difference between the shallows and Dami’s home habitat was tremendous! It can't be healthy for him to be this close to the surface. Is this a beached whale situation? Did the crash damage his home?

With a databank incomplete, answering any important questions became increasingly difficult. Alterra’s handheld scanner was built to understand the basics. Deeper scans could show him the most complex parts of his biology. If he could build a beefier scanner, it would make things so much easier for him.  Designing a table was several difficulty levels below designing a scanner that could record a species' entire makeup at a molecular level.  Mistakingly blasting a poor, unsuspecting fish with radiation just to understand how this leviathan functioned would end poorly for both of them. It was easy for him to forget Dami's a teenager for his species. If he went around taking bone, blood, and muscle samples, not only would he feel bad but he'd probably be disemboweled by Dami's mom or Dad. While he's willing to throw hands with Dami, a 3v1 wouldn't be fair for the leviathans.  Observation was what his self-preservation limited him to, and if this species happened to be one who liked getting into fights? That was a free blood sample right there. All he had to do now was stop him from destroying the coral tubes

Danny darted underneath Dami’s tail, the fish jolting backward, pulling his tail with him. Gritting his teeth, Danny continued to chase Dami’s tail, bringing the large fish closer and closer to the deeper grassy plateaus. Like dancing, a swing from Danny's blade triggers his partner into the right moves. Of course, the right moves were away from his fucking base!  Dami might mean well, but in the end, he was scaring the bladderfish and destroying the shallows with his sheer mass!

Swinging one last time, Dami finally got the memo and swam a small distance away. Not quite close enough to see his entire base, but close enough for Danny to see him through the window. Like a kicked puppy, Dami rested his head on his arms. It almost made him feel bad, but the trail of uprooted plants and panicking fish the leviathan left in his wake canceled out any guilt.

“Caution. Continued degradation of the Aurora’s drive core may result in a quantum detonation. Continuing to monitor,”

…Shit.

Chapter Text

Gone with one issue on to the next, post haste! It was like this year was pelting him with problem after problem. Of course, a quantum destination would be the next space on his bingo card of disasters! Why wouldn’t it be?! If there’s one thing the universe would never give him it was a break. That nap was a curse! He made up for too much of the sleep he’d lost back home. Now, there was karma to pay for those extra few hours of sleep.

Granted, he felt better than yesterday, but was it worth the quantum detonation? Temptation says yes but logical thinking says no. Logical thinking also said nothing he could’ve done would’ve prevented the damage to the drive core. It would have already started to degrade from seawater pouring in before he even got there. It was nice to know this one thing wasn’t his fault, but it wouldn’t soothe the anxiety of knowing the Aurora was going to explode.
The damage a drive core from a ship the Aurora’s size could cause would be catastrophic. The radiation alone was a planet-ending event. Could he prevent this with his limited access to his powers? There were no blueprints for a radiation suit in his PDA and he doubts he could make one himself. Building what was essentially a hazmat divesuit strong enough to protect him from the lethal doses of radiation the aurora was dishing out wasn’t the same as building a table. Did he still have any kind of immunity to radiation?

Regardless, he’s a Fenton! He got irradiated for breakfast!

Swimming back to his base, Danny began pilfering through his storage. If he’s even going to try attempting to stop a quantum detonation, a seamoth would be helpful. Not only did it sound cool as hell, it’d make traversing through the waters a piece of cake! Only… The blueprints wasn’t there and data corruption was to blame. Cursing, Danny collapsed to the floor, scrolling desperately through all the blueprints over and over again. He’d regained the blueprint for the mobile vehicle bay, but there was no amount of tampering that’d give him the Seamoth. The mobile vehicle bay was useless without a vehicle!

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Danny decided this was the perfect time to check the radio. Any information concerning the rendezvous would be a lifesaver!

Swimming back to his pod, a cloud of rot spilled into the ocean. The foul odor of the remaining goo assaulted his nostrils. Nausea bubbled in his stomach, bile crawling up his throat. He crawled back into the pod. They say the smell of human decomposition was one the human body was hardwired to recognize and Danny could now say with confidence that rotting halfa was the same. Even if he’d been completely unaware of the lifepod’s contents the smell alone sent a shiver down his spine. It was easier to dissociate the pile of goo on the floor before it’d decomposed to this extent. Dried blood stained the floor any green that’d been there was gone without a trace.

This…This would be a gruesome site for whoever was going to collect the life pods after this was over. It’s a difficult scene for him to see for ancient's sake! It was funny to think that despite the horrid smell and blood, he’d rather have found something like this in Lifepod 3. Bodies, or at least more than a PDA entry to prove someone was here! He’d perfer finding blood and rot than have the dead be forgotten so easily. They’d died within the meager three hours Danny had been unconscious, and been torn into by local wildlife until nothing remained before anyone could respond to their distress signal.

Tearing his eyes away from the puddle, Danny sucked in a deep breath, regretting it instantly as putrid air filled his lungs. His PDA screamed, biohazard warnings taking over the screen, begging him to leave. With a shake of his head, Danny covered his nose with his hand toddling towards the radio. The device was flashing and Danny couldn’t hit a play button harder than he had today.

“Playing pre-recorded distress call…”

Waiting on his tippy toes Danny stared at the device with hope-filled eyes as a human voice sounded through the pod.

“This is Ozzy from the cafeteria. What the hell guys?! They didn’t warn us this might happen!” Danny’s heart sank as the message continued.

“Our pod was almost crushed by the seamoth bay on the way down, now we’re hanging on the edge of a cave system and this grim-looking snake thing’s trying to eat through the hull! Come get us already!”

Saying that didn’t sound good would’ve been an understatement. How many hours had it been since this message was sent? A grim-looking snake thing? He has someone like that outside. Chances were they weren’t talking about the same snake thing.

Dami has a snake-like body, but he resembles more of a dragon or a sea serpent…Dami hadn’t even made an attempt to hurt Danny or his little base. Sure, he scratched the glass but Danny had a feeling those claws were capable of much worse. Trust was a strong word to use when talking about a giant sea monster but Danny was confident Dami wouldn’t freak out and try to kill him for no reason.

All he’d done since seeing him was give reason after reason to kill him! Honestly, Dami just seems confused by his existence, but to be fair Danny is too. Logically he should be permanently dead, erased from every plane of existence but something gave him a third chance at life. Now he’s everyone’s problem!

Updating the signal to his PDA Danny crawled back out the lifepod, a signal to follow and materials to gather.

Chapter Text

Damian was fighting for his life, for his dignity! Uproarious laughter rang in his ears, his siblings cheering for karma.

“This is the best day of my life!” Tim cried. “The tides turn! It’s a miracle!”

“I let him win!” He defended, watching the hatchling swim around.

“Sure ya did,” Jason added sarcastically.

“He’s smaller than a Mesmer! You’d have to be an idiot to think I couldn’t defeat him!” The hatchling is tiny, likely twice as fragile as the rest of his clutch despite his ferocity.

“Can we please not goad Damian into killing the guppy?” Dick admonished, the eldest being the only one of his siblings with sense.

“I’m just saying, a hatchling got him to back off twice,”

“I didn’t want to crush him!” He snapped, “What was I supposed to do?” Damian could’ve easily snapped his tail and thrown the hatchling away. He just didn’t want to hurt the guppy.

“I get it. Babies are a terrifying force to be reckoned with. We’re all glad you escaped with your life,” Jason teased with faux sympathy.

“He didn’t scare me! And he sure as the Lava zone didn’t defeat me,” He screeched, tail thrashing back and forth through the bright red grass of the grassy plateaus.

“Listen,” Tim started. I know how hard it is to admit defeat,”

“Of course, you know how to admit defeat Drake,” Damian interrupted. “But I wasn’t defeated, so I can’t relate,” He sneered.

“It’s worse than we thought,” Tim replied sadly, “He’s in denial!”

“I am not in denial!!” He roared, startling the hatchling. The hatchling fled his nest, swimming back into his egg.

A noxious cloud of decay spilled into the water. A putrid scent of death assaulted his senses. Worse than anything a gaslopod could shoot out but still appealing to the scavengers of the shallows. Blood clouding the water smelled too rotten to belong to the living hatchling but was similar enough to send his heart racing.

Often these eggs hatched one or two babies, the amount of viscera spread out through the shallows was enough to suggest two babies had been inside that egg. One child rotting before they even got a chance to hatch.

The living hatchling emerged alone once again… Depressing.

“What're we going to call him?” Dick asked.

“The girls would be pissed if we named him without them,” Jason added.

“They should’ve been here if they wanted to name him,” Damian said. “ They have no reason to be mad at us for their tardiness,” He finished.

“Disrespectfully, I don’t want to die,”  Jason said.

“Can we at least discuss names?” Dick whined.

“You haven’t even met him!”

“Only because you’re hogging him!” His older brother pouted.

“He’s very stab happy, would you rather I let him swim to you and attack a reaper on the way?” Damian sniped back.

“I’d rather you let us help you guard him,”

“No! I’m perfectly capable of watching a hatchling,”

“…but he stabbed you?”

“Just a scratch, barely a concern,” Damian defended, “A tiger plant could hit harder than he did,”

“I for one, vote we keep the stabby teenager away from the stabby baby,” Tim suggested.

“Shut up or I’ll teach him to stab you on command!” Damian sneered, cutting off the bond. He needed time to think.

Damian turned, but the hatchling was nowhere to be seen. His blood froze, gills flaring. No no no no no no no, he couldn’t be the one to lose this hatchling. Father would never trust him with anything ever again! Shooting over to the little one’s nest, Damian tapped on the barrier.

Tap…Tap…Tap…

Nothing

Tap…Tap…Tap

Again

Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.

Faster, more consistent, he braced himself for the hatchling to shoot out and start mauling him again. Still nothing, not a peep or shuffle.

He lost the hatchling.

Chapter Text

Sneaking past the serpent was a piece of cake! Even with all those eyes, Dami’s still blind as a bat. He didn’t mean to toot his own horn, but he’s gotta say he’s the sneakiest swimmer on this planet! Not even squidding, he thought it would take longer, now, he’d have time to krill after finding this signal.

…He needed to step up his pun game.

This was an ocean planet for ancient's sake! There were so many opportunities, and he needed to take all of them. If Alterra came to rescue them, Danny needed to be surfing up wordplay until ears started bleeding! Do some real punitive damage.

Sneaking out the kelp forests, Danny stuck close to the surface, praying any other leviathan wouldn’t think to look up. As the distance to the signal ticked lower and lower, Danny's hopes sank like an anchor.

Sat on a rocky ledge, was Life Pod 17, blood red grass surrounding it. The hull had been torn into leaving a gaping hole where the right wall used to be. Sand lined the bottom of the pod, the only remaining light from an abandoned PDA.

“Ozzy’s log. It’s the day of the crash. I don’t know what the heck is happening. I’m scared and I’m not going outside. There are shadows in the water under the hatch but I can’t tell if they’re rocks, or aliens, and there’s weird looking caves nearby.” Ozzy sounded terrified, Danny didn’t blame him.

“The Aurora was carrying everything needed to build the phasegate: mobile vehicle bays, bioreactors, propulsion cannons… It had a cinema. There-there was a zero-G gym. My cafe. I don’t understand how we’re here now. I don’t know what no one’s coming for me,” It started mournful, longing even, before sinking into despair and disbelief.

Danny could guess what happened after this log was recorded, and it wasn’t pretty. Eaten by whatever was lurking underneath the pod, a brutal way to go if you asked him. Once again, a body had been scavenged until nothing was left but a couple specks of blood on the PDA screen. Only this time, he had a name to write down in his own log. Just a first name, but it’d be enough to tie a name to a face when rescue arrived.

A chunk of a sea moth almost completely buried in the sand was strewn a few feet from the pod. Shards of glass stuck out of the seabed, Danny salvaging what he could, doing his best not to cut himself. Whatever snake thing killed Ozzy already had a taste for human blood, and Danny didn’t want to risk giving it a taste of halfa blood.

The cave system’s entrance is visible from where he was. Danny could only guess that’s where the sea snakes came from. There wasn’t any sign of them now. Maybe Ozzy just got unlucky? The crash was loud, If he was a snake-like thing, he would’ve left home to see what the hell happened too. He wouldn’t have eaten anybody, but still, he would’ve wanted to know what the hell was going on.

A dim glow of pinkish purple was seen as he crept closer to the caves.

“The conditions in this cave support a microcosm of unique, possibly predatory lifeforms.” That didn’t sound good for him.

“Detecting an artificial structure somewhere in the region,” That, however, sounded very good.

What’s down there? Was it just part of the Aurora? A smaller chunk of ship sinking into a cave without blocking off the entrance was unlikely but plausible. The PDA didn’t usually alert him when wrecks were nearby, what’s so different about this one?

Whatever’s down there could help him. If it was the same as all the other wrecks, his PDA wouldn’t have notified him. The problem was, he didn’t know how deep these caves were. Was it even possible for him to reach whatever was down there?

Surfacing for air just above the cave entrance, Danny gripped the handles of his seaglide. Sucking in a sharp breath, He dove, delving down into the bioluminescent caves. Gigantic plants like crossbreeds between mushrooms and jellyfish were everywhere throughout the caves. A hole in the middle of each where gigantic, fanged snakes shot out of snapping their teeth in an attempt to catch prey. Outcrops of shale were strewn out throughout the cave, but Danny couldn’t tear his eyes away from the bright light shining just a few feet away.

A floodlight…

On top of a rusted foundation was a floodlight, its brightness wavering, ready to give out after years of wear and tear. Crates were scattered throughout the area, his hair standing on its ends as he searched every side of the crate in front of him. Alterra’s logo was nowhere to be seen. Not even the smallest scrawl of product placement for the gigantic corporation. Instead, only the rust-over scrawl of a label he could barely make out.

Torgal corp…

A name vaguely familiar to him. The disappearance of the CEO and his son had been all over the news for a long time. Danny had just turned three when the news of their mysterious disappearance broke out, but with his interest in space exploration, they were the first things you’d learn about. Hundreds of news articles and conspiracy theories on what happened to them flooded the internet from the moment it happened and continued to pop up every now and again to this very day.

A lone PDA lay glowing atop a supply crate, its blue light more entrancing than anything in his life would ever be. Danny pursed his lips, oxygen meter ticking down with his indecisiveness. Hesitantly, he snatches the tablet, a loud, blaring noise emitting from his own…

A signal had downloaded itself to his PDA

{Purposed Desagi habitat (250m)}

What the hell!? Nothing about this solar system had ever popped up when he researched the Desagi! There was no reason anything related to Torgal Corp should be on this planet! Yet here it was, an environmental log made by Paul Torgal and a signal to their possible shelter.

Was this a Bermuda Triangle kind of situation? He didn’t like the idea of the Desagi crashing for the same reasons as they did. It painted an ugly picture in terms of rescue. Something fishy was going on, and Danny was going to find out what.

“Thirty seconds,” The robotic voice like a curse as he booked it out of the caves. Water seemed unending as his vision began to blur, his chest painfully tight as he desperately swam towards the surface.

Breaking the surface just as his view began to go dark, he gasped, taking in the longest gasp of air he’d ever taken. His mind was swirling an unending whirlpool of dread and confusion.

Now, he had more to do than he’d ever before. No schoolwork would ever be as stressful as the responsibilities he’s got now. He had to attempt to stop a quantum detonation, find out what happened to both their ship and the Desagi, find any survivors of both ships, get off this planet, and reunite with family.

If all this landed on his shoulders and his shoulders alone they’d all be screwed.

Loud screeching calls echoed throughout the grassy plateaus, breaking him out of his downward spiral. The eerie noise sent shivers down his spine, it was a panicked sound, desperate. He could almost feel the emotion from here as cries grew louder, roars replying to said cries.

A cloud of sand uplifted into the sea, and a faint noise of thrashing and the wheeze of a pissed-off crashfish reached his ears. Danny couldn’t help but creep closer, hoping he could sneak back into his base before whatever was causing this ruckus tried to kill him.

Like he expected, Dami was making the loud roaring noises. What he didn’t expect was another gigantic leviathan to be seemingly screaming at him?

Were they going to fight? Should he start placing bets?

His base was dangerously close to where the new Leviathan was thrashing around like an electric eel on LSD. Its scales were like armor plating, teal gray with fins like javelins. It had a set of electric blue eyes on the front of its face. Like Dami, he had hands, four fingers with toxic blue on the pads of each finger. His claws were curved, more useful for grasping things and climbing than they were for fighting.

An aura of electricity surrounded the leviathan, a peeper floating belly up upon making contact with it.

Yeah, Danny didn’t feel like getting electrocuted anytime soon. He couldn’t bite or attack the guy without getting into shock range.

Maybe he could convince Dami to chase this guy off?

Chapter Text

He can't do this by himself. There was far too much ground to cover and far too little time. Every second that ticked by was another that the hatchling could be mauled.

“I lost the hatchling,” Guilt laced his voice as absolute mayhem broke out throughout the bond. Everyone was talking all at once, pelting questions at him.

“How could you lose him?!” Damian had no excuse. He should have paid closer attention. Something precious was entrusted to him and he'd squandered it. This was a failure he’ll have to carry with him for the rest of his life.

“Hold on, I'll be there in a minute,” Dick said, Damian made no protest.

Damian continued his search of the shallows, attempting to shove himself into caves, making as much noise as possible to lure the child into inspecting. If there was one thing he’s learned about the hatchling while watching him, it was that he’s territorial and curious.

Mere minutes passed before his brother was at his side.

“Is he dead? What do you mean you lost him?”

“I don’t know! He just vanished!”

Dick circled the shallows, nose pointed towards the surface. “I don’t smell blood,”

The hatchling’s blood had a distinct copper smell, that along with its deep red hue made it disturbingly easy to find corpses. He couldn’t be far, they'd find him soon. Even the tiniest of cuts would alert them of his presence. All they had to do was search.

“I think I found him!” Dick called out, his excitement killed by the painful-sounding wheeze of a Crashfish shooting out of its plant. The elder recoiled, thrashing backward, trying his best to avoid the explosive charging straight for him.

He failed, the blast spreading soot against the pale blue of his scales. The sudden explosion paired with the static electricity radiating off his body, resulted in a pained shriek from his brother. His own electricity damaged him, the stress causing jolts of electricity to shoot off him in response. His body seized, tail thrashing through the water, kicking massive clouds of sand up.

A frazzled expression rested on his brother's face, hand swiping at a threat that didn’t exist anymore. In any other situation, he might’ve found this hilarious, but now it was just a waste of precious time.

Precious time that could be used to find the-

“Go wAy”

It was faint, but hidden within the base of a creep vine stalk was the hatchling. The vines curled around the child’s body, tiny fingers curled around the handle of a blade almost bigger than his entire forearm. Odd, the hatchling would have come charging up to attack them but instead, the hatching nestled himself deeper in the vine, seemingly unaware of his detection. Kyanite blue eyes darted between him and Dick, eyes lingering on the elder. Apparently, Dick didn’t feel the wariness radiating off the hatchling in consistent waves of anxiety. If he did, maybe he would've refrained from squealing like Crabsnake and rushing towards the guppy.

“He’s so little!” The elder squealed, making grabby hand at the hatchling who held the blade out in warning. The hatchling wasn't the type to give warnings, only taking a few split seconds to attempt to tear flesh with tiny teeth too weak to do so. Something was preventing the hatchling from attacking Dick. Damian had a hunch as to what it was.

A peeper flipped belly up upon contact with Dick’s electric field. The elder didn’t seem to realize an aura of literal death surrounding him wasn’t appealing to a baby who couldn't understand they weren’t going to eat him. The little one flinched backward swiping wildly through the ocean.

Before Damian had the chance to snap, the guppy darted behind him, gripping onto a fin and attempting to use Damian as a shield.

“Damian, tell him I’m safe,” The elder begged, like Damian had any control over a guppy’s behavior! He wasn't some stalker who could be trained by tossing a couple pieces of meat in their direction! While it was possible to behavior train sentient beings, it was a hassle. A hassle that would land him another scolding from father who’d be… less enthused after the “incident” with Drake.

“Do you think I have him trained?” The elder paused as if considering what to say next. Good.

“I mean… Do you?”

“No! I didn’t train a baby,” He roared, tucking the child beneath a clawed hand, enough space for the child to dart through the gaps in his fingers but not enough for Dick to grab at him.

“DaMi ProtEct mE”

Dick froze, a squeal so high in pitch it disoriented a stalker that wandered into the shallows. “He knows your name! Come on kiddo, say my name too!” The elder encouraged, much to the hatchling’s terror. Damian sighed, lifting his claws to swipe at his elder brother.

“OW! What was that for?!” Dick pouted, rubbing his cheek.

“You’re scaring him!”

"I am not! right buddy?” Dick reached for the hatchling, the little one ducking away from the elder's open grasp.

“Scary,”

The hatchling screamed, the sound unnerving, sending shivers down their spines as the little one clung to Damian like a lifeline. Dick couldn’t have looked any more heartbroken.

“I told you, having both of us here would stress him out!” Damian snapped.

“You asked us to come help you find him!” The elder defended.

“Well, here he is. You can go now!”

"But-"

“Until Father dismisses me from this mission himself I will be the one watching this hatchling,” Damian interrupted.

“Damian…You know how fragile these babies are, we all need to be there for him,”

“I am perfectly capable of watching a hatchling on my own!” Damian snapped.

“You lost him about an hour ago,” Dick reminded.

“Irrelevant,” The hatchling squirmed, darting between his claws and booking it towards the surface. The hatchling did this often. Damian had learned pretty early on that it wasn’t cause for concern.

“…” Dicks silence spoke a thousand words. Damian prepared to explain the harmlessness of the action but was interrupted by his brother speaking.

“He breathes air?” The question rippled through the sea. It was an odd trait for a hatchling to have, very few creatures had the ability to breathe air. If you stuck close to the surface, you could see one of the only land dwellers flying through the sky.

“What is he?” They already knew all the babies came from artificial structures. Artificial structures that crashed down from the stars when shot down by the precursor’s structure. The children looked like their more vulnerable forms, just without the tails to jet them through the water. The all the hatchlings had legs different than anything they'd seen before. Legs suited for both land and sea.

“My guess is he’s like a cave crawler,” The child could swim, unlike cave crawlers who just walked around on the seabed. But they both shared the ability to walk on land. The hatchling stood on a piece of coral sticking out above water, staring at them intently.

The two of them watched the hatchling swim around, Damian smacking Dick to ease the child’s fear whenever he got too close for the guppy’s comfort.

“Stop hitting me!” Dick cried dramatically.

“Go back to the bulb zone and I will,” Damian snapped.

“Your electricity is killing the fish!” As if to prove his point, a garyfish floated into Dick’s electric field, almost popping from the sheer voltage the other was giving off.

“What do you think it’ll do to the hatchling if you actually manage to grab him, huh?” Damian questions, realization dawning on the eldest.

“Go back to the bulb zone and calm yourself. That Crashfish clearly stressed you out,” Damian finished, waving the other away.

“Fine, but I expect you to keep us updated!” Dick called out, boosting away from the shallows, using his hands to launch himself at top speed.

“We wIn!”

The hatchling declared, circling around him for a few seconds before fleeing to his nest.

Damian sighed, glad that the hatchling finally grew tired of attacking him.

Chapter Text

As expected, his plan worked! Dami managed to scare off the other Leviathan! The shallows were finally safe again! For the time being at least. Danny paced around his base, celebrating this victory with a thawed peeper. He pondered throwing one to Dami, but they still had yet to make any attempt of eating any fish. Plus, the leviathan might see his offering as an opportunity to chow down on him. They were temporary allies through a shared enemy, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a potential snack.

Maybe he should be more concerned about the existence of a third species of leviathan. After all, the existence of three suggests there might be more. Scratch that there were more and that he was certain of. Dami was a graft of two species and Taser fish wasn’t the parent neither was the giant beta fish-looking guy from lurking near Lifepod three. According to the scanners on his Lifepod, this was a planet mostly composed of water it’d make sense there’d be more nightmare death creatures swimming around in the depths of the ocean. He could easily avoid them if he tried hard enough. A quantum detonation, however, was a threat he couldn’t run from or throw hands with. At least not effectively that is.

Danny looked down at his message log with a wince. He’d take more nightmare-death fish over the Aurora exploding any day of the week. At least he could fight the leviathans. How was he supposed to fight the genetic meltdown of a peeper blasted with the radioactive energy of a small power plant? It would be like Chernobyl all over again and he wouldn’t have the industrial equipment to clean up the fallout.

The nuclear power generator was one of the blueprints stripped from his PDA by the crash, as were the disposal protocols that came with it. He had no way to fabricate anything but a primitive water filter. It wasn’t even one of the grayed-out blueprints like the battery charger; it just didn’t exist in his PDA. He wouldn’t be surprised if baby mode blocked the recipe out. It let him build a knife but it wouldn’t let him play with a nuclear reactor the PDA Truly was the most responsible piece of technology on this planet.

God speed Alterra…

Danny snickered, swiping through the screens of his PDA looking desperately for something he could do to help. Was there anything he could do? There wasn’t a blueprint for a radiation suit in his PDA but he was a Fenton! They got irradiated for breakfast. He could at least try, to fix things for both him and the survivors.

Taking out his sea glide Danny shot out his sea base like a speeding bullet. Time is limited and it was slipping through his fingers with every moment he wasted anxiously waiting for the perfect opportunity to help. There had to be at least one life pod that landed in near the Aurora someone who was either stuck in their pods or getting blasted by the bad vibes of the Aurora’s drive core.

Dami watched him intently from the edge of the shallows. Clicking teeth and a worried croon from the leviathan as Danny crept closer to where the crash site should be. He only swam a few feet before Dami bolted from his spot in the sand hands attempting to nudge him back to the shallows.

With puffed-up cheeks, Danny nipped at the other darting around the leviathan's tail to further his journey. He couldn’t go back to the shallows. He wouldn’t sit there uselessly until things literally blew up in his face. Dami didn’t know how dangerous things could get. He didn’t know the catastrophic consequences this could have on his home.

The waters were murky sand yet to settle and debris scattered across the sand. Any plant life the biome had previously cultivated was crushed, uprooted, and torn apart by the impact. The wrecks in the crash site made the shallows look clean. Metal torn apart like playdough were scattered throughout clouded waters. Not a single place was clear of debris, a burning sensation in his palms the longer he swam.

A stabbing pain like a jackhammer to the skull hit him like a truck. Nausea broiled in his stomach, bile rising up his throat. Danny didn’t stop swimming not when the edges of his vision began to blur not when Dami desperately tried to push him back. Snapping teeth and swiping through the water in an attempt to intimidate him into turning back. Danny didn’t care, he… he had to do something, he had to try.

His PDA screamed, a glitching image that looked concerningly similar to what you’d find on one of the barrels in his parents' lab flashed on screen. It sounded painful, the tablet flashing like a strobe light and a shrieking noise filling his ears. Any words jumbled, thousands of audio cues playing over each other and meshing into of mess of trailed-off screams cut off when the screen went blank.

Fuck.

Shit… That wasn’t a good sign, was it? His pounding head made it hard to truly wrap his head around what just happened. If death would be permanent this time would anyone even know what happened to him? Every distress call he’d responded to every destroyed life pod he found… All of them were gone, reduced to nothing, only a splotch of red if they were lucky. If his PDA was broken how would his family know what happened to him?

Dami screeched, a noise so high-pitched it made his ears ring. The leviathan wrapped his entire body around Danny, his claw barring him from escaping. Panic swirled through his mind before a lower, spine-tingling roar broke through the sea. Peaking through the gaps in Dami’s claws, Danny’s heart jumped into his throat.

A leviathan with a sickly gray body circled them. Pitch black eyes that held something primal. There wasn’t the gleam of intelligence in its behavior, just gnashing teeth and snapping mandibles. Decorated with red, muscle so defined you’d think that was all that made up the creature’s body.

Maybe it was the headache amplifying the noise but the guttural sounds the creature constantly let out were like a nuclear bomb. His eyes stung all he could do was watch as Dami snapped his tail like a whip, slashing at their attacker. Yellow blood spilled into the water and Danny couldn’t tell if it was Dami’s.

Saying their attacker was aggressive would be an understatement. Nothing seemed to deter the creature. Dami’s strikes only seemed to piss it off further. Every impact from Dami’s tail pulled a furious shriek from the predator. It circled them like a shark, it didn’t care that Dami was much larger it just wanted to eat.

Pointing his scanner through the gaps in Dami’s claws seconds felt like hours as the tool worked its magic. On swing from this worm on steroids and he was triple dead! The thing could swallow him whole with no room left for seconds!

At least it would be a cool death. “Danny Fenton, cause of death; Radiation poisoning and fish bites,” He’d be proud to have that written in his obituary. If anyone survived to collect and fix his PDA it’d be one hell of a conversation starter.

His skin burned like he’d pressed himself against the surface of the sun. His dive suit felt like molten lava and his air tank felt like it was filled with smoke. Dami thrashed slapping the steroid fish into the sand.

They couldn’t keep going. If both he and his PDA were being affected by the radiation then so was Dami. Their attacker wouldn’t hesitate to finish them off if the radiation didn’t melt their internal organs into a shapeless goop. They needed a route to the Aurora that wasn’t surrounded by a toxic death field. But when the death field originated from the Aurora there wasn’t much he could do. There was no safe path to the Aurora so long as he was without a radiation suit.

Danny slapped his palms against Dami’s almost transparent skin. His oxygen running thin, he tugged the leviathan’s fins until the other turned to him. Hopefully, as another sentient creature, he could understand the plea of “Let’s get the fuck out of here before we both die a slow excruciating death,”

Thankfully, he understood. As Dami snapped his tail at the creature one last time grabbing Danny by his oxygen tank and boosting away from the crash zone. The two of them cut through the water easily gliding faster than his seaglide could at its base.

Dami wasn’t as muscular as their attacker but he made up for it in size, speed, and intelligence. If they’d stayed to finish the fight Dami was the obvious choice to bet on. He would’ve won if he hadn’t been focused on guarding Danny from being eaten.

When they finally reached the shallows Danny could’ve kissed the sand. He’d never been so relieved to be in the kiddy pool of this planet's ocean. He felt like crying, he’d never abandon his beloved biome of coral tubes again!

Thwack!

A Peeper charged into him, hitting him in the cheek full force. Was this revenge for the fridge? Dami let out what he could only assume was the fish equivalent of a laugh, gently batting the little blue fish away. Danny didn’t have the energy to smack the leviathan for this offense nor did he have the strength to chase the Peeper who attacked him. Sleep never seemed so sweet before but he knew if he slept now he might not wake up to see the light of day again.

Danny watched the faint yellow sparkles trailing behind the fish as it rubbed itself against plants and rocks. More social than the normal peepers swimming around. If you could count tackling everything in sight as a social behavior. Danny scrunched his nose at the offensive fish rubbing the glitter-like substance off his face. If this was how Peepers tried to make friends he’d have to say it’s ineffective.

Danny turned back to the leviathan, yellow blood oozing from long thin scratches running along his tail. He frowned, that was his fault, wasn’t it? Dami had tried to stop him, likely knowing what lurked near the crash and Danny blatantly ignored him. He’d been naive, thinking he knew better than the literal native who’d likely lived on this planet his entire life. A stupid thing to do even with the risk of an explosion. Especially with the risk of an explosion, a deeper part of his psyche nagged, pulling the bile halfway up his throat.

What if someone had been with him? Someone had been with him! Dami wasn’t indestructible. What if that thing managed to kill them both? What if he’d gotten Dami killed just by leading them in there? Radiation poisoning was an all but painless death. Vomiting your internal organs in their liquidized form wasn’t a fate he wished on anyone let alone an ally.

The visible injuries on the leviathan seemed to be minor. If the nonchalant way the leviathan lifted Danny to the surface with a clawed hand told him anything. It was good to know they had a mutual understanding that air was a necessity for him. Accidentally being drowned by an ally wasn’t on his list of ideal deaths. Maybe if this were a horror movie he’d be more welcoming to the idea so he could haunt people more than he usually did.

Danny tapped Dami’s forehead alerting the leviathan to his next movements into the kelp forests. Dami stayed where he was in the shallows, keeping a keen eye on Danny from afar. He swallowed the bile rising up his throat keeping up his routine of bribing the stalkers. They were like gator-shaped trolls. Demanding a toll of fish snacks before they’d ensure a safe passage through the shallows. Some of the bolder ones approached him with open mouths. He didn’t even have to chuck it at them!

“Warning, leviathan class creature in the area,” He yanked out his PDA brushing his fingers against the screen. The tablet's light was dim but it was working. He could swipe through the tabs and see what the fuck the AI was talking about. It’s a little late for a warning about the leviathan at the crash site.

Danny swiped through the tabs of his PDA landing on the new data entry he’d risked his ass for. Apparently, the empty-eyed fuck they’d been assaulted by was a reaper leviathan. All muscle, tiny brain, and no sense of morality. Danny didn’t know what kind of morals his PDA expected from a fish like that. Lancer always told him not to judge a book by its cover but holy fuck, if Vlad stood next to one of those guys he might actually look decent.

The warning popped up again and Danny’s anxiety spiked. Did a reaper follow them? Was it the Leviathan he’d seen back at life pod three? If it was the stalkers might get to him before he could get close enough to strike him. He pulled out his blade glancing around the kelp forest. His eyes landed on a glimpse of blue poking out from behind an arch of stone.

…

It was talking about Dami, wasn’t it?

Dami was following him, hiding it quite poorly. It was honestly, embarrassing he hadn’t noticed it sooner. The leviathan was out of his depth, any camouflage the other could have possibly had was squandered by his size. It was probably his size that intimidated everything into not acknowledging him.

Danny ignored the leviathan, mostly to spare the other’s ego. Danny was like a needle in a haystack while Dami was like an elephant in the chicken coop and if this were a game of hide and seek Danny would’ve demolished him by now.

Using his blade to cut off pieces of creep vine Danny pressed the kelp together, stashing as much as possible into his bag. The fiber mesh he’d make from this would make decent bandages if he couldn’t make the blankets he wanted.

Would bandages even work on Dami? Tying gauze around the leviathan's tail just seemed restrictive. The language barrier would ensure Dami wouldn’t understand he was trying to help. Dami would just see it as Danny mistakeingly assuming he could finish the Leviathan off after a risky encounter with a reaper. He winced, getting slapped to death by an ally would be such a lame way to die.

There had to be some other way to ensure Dami didn’t die of sepsis or whatever other infections a giant fish teenager could contract. Who was equipped to deal with this kind of thing? A vet or a marine biologist because Danny lacked the qualifications for both professions. He was two for two when it came to dying, any medical advice he could give was just a health hazard.

Danny swam back to the shallows, Dami clumsily following him. He wasn’t bleeding anymore and Danny could vaguely make out yellow scabs clotting over his injuries. Only time would tell if that was a good sign or not. If there was anything wrong with Dami he’d find a way to fix it. It was his moral obligation to do so.

Dami protected them from a reaper and the oversized eel! While he’s pretty sure Dami knew electric fish, he still slapped him into pissing off! Making sure the leviathan didn’t die was the least he could do even if he was friends with the electric fish secretly.

The “fight” was far too similar to the ones he’d have Dani or Jazz. Less a fight to the death and more like one of the lectures he’d get from Jazz for doing something stupid. Not antagonistic like the fights he’d have with Vlad. It was more like when Dani would hide his model rockets in the walls when he pissed her off. Dami and the electric fish acted painfully similar to how he acted with his siblings.

Would he ever see them again?

Shaking his head, a croon rippled through shallow water. Dami stared at him with glowing eyes, an expression as concerned as a gigantic fish could get. He crooned again, louder this time. A call probably evolved to be heard in deeper open waters. It wasn’t as effective in the shallows, he could hear Dami anywhere in the shallows no matter how quiet the other tried to be. All this call served to do now was to add fuel to the fire of his splitting headache.

Danny held his head in his hands, Dami taking this as a cue to be a bit quieter. The next croon he let out was softer barely audible but he got his point across. This guy was weird. He fussed over Danny more than he fussed over himself to the point he cramped himself in the shallows to stay here with him. He belonged deeper down, ancients he’d be happier deeper down but he just…stayed here? Sure he tended to follow Danny whenever he had the opportunity but Danny had mostly stuck to the shallows so far. Was this the fish equivalent to tourism? Had the crash screwed over his home so badly he couldn’t live there anymore.

Danny glanced back to Dami, the leviathan looked perfectly fine but he didn’t exactly have another member of his species to compare to. It was like he was perfectly comfortable acting as Danny’s personal guard dog.

…
….
He was like a dog to this guy, wasn’t he?

Looking down at his tiny hand Danny squeezed them into fists. Pathetic, hardly a threat at all. Dami’s a teenager and Danny is a itty bitty squishy thing smaller than any of the other survivors. He was like a stray puppy to this guy! Like a little Yorkie happy and cute.

He scoffed choking on the mouthful of seawater that flooded into his mouth at the action. He wasn’t anyone’s pet! He was the farthest thing from a pet! Sure, he might’ve watched Dami fight like it was a Pokémon battle but he still thought of the guy as a sentient being. It all made sense now, this dude thought he was an animal! There was no way to correct him either! They didn’t speak the same language nor was there a way for them to learn at the moment.

How would he even go about speaking to him anyway? What was he supposed to say? “Hey, dude sorry for catfishing you but I’m not your pet,” He’d probably be dismissed and then be treated like a parrot.

Ancients, he’s too nauseous to deal with this shit. Dealing with anything else but this would be better than this. He was stuck with a teenager who was convinced he got a new puppy… No wonder he tapped on the window like a small child seeing the fish tank at the dentist for the first time.

At least he wasn’t the type of teenager to “Play” rough with his pets. Back home Sam went ape shit on a group of senior boys who kept shooting BBs at one of the oldest boy’s cats. Danny had yet to be manhandled, thrown, or shot at, nor was there any attempt to put him down after he bit him multiple times.

Maybe he was more like a cat?

He wouldn’t degrade himself into being anyone’s catboy. The thought alone made him want to cry. Tucker would never let him hear the end of it if he found out. The hacker would have all the ammo he needed to take revenge for being called a furry so often. He couldn’t let this happen! There’s no way he’d allow himself to be treated like a pet. If Dami ever tried to pet him he’d get stabbed! Puffing up his chest, Danny turned foot and swam back to his base.

His to-do list was completely and utterly fucked over. Fixing the Aurora had been his top priority but he couldn’t fix it without a radiation suit and a distraction for the buff death fish! It was just like back home, the moment he sat down to knock something off his ever-expanding to-do list the entire universe ganged up on him!

{Proposed Desagi seabase (200m)}

The signal caught his attention. It was on one of the main tabs of his PDA along with the signals for the Lifepod he’s aware of. On the front page of his to-do list, as a sub-task of finding survivors was searching for the Desagi sea base. Scrunching his face Danny pondered. If the seabase even existed there could be something down there to help him. Even if he didn’t find a survivor, the information he could gain from this could be crucial to figuring out what the hell is going on with this planet.

With the date of Paul Torgal’s environmental log, he could tell the Desagi had been on this planet within the first month of communications with the ship had been lost. Had they ever left? Did they crash or land here willingly for some unknown reason? Was what happened to the Aurora connected to the Desagi? Hopefully, he’d get his answers when he went down to explore.

Staring blankly at the signal, he studied the coordinates and the environmental log thoroughly. The cave he’d entered previously had multiple entrances. It was only logical if members of the Desagi were to build a seabase they’d build it close to an entrance. It was further into the cave system than the entrance he’d swam through had led him.

He could search around for another cave entrance closer to the signal but it was still 200m down. His lower oxygen needs gave him a leg up but it could only carry him so far. His ability kept him from drowning in shallow water but anything deeper than 100m and it was game over, no restarts or save points!

With his current oxygen tank, he wouldn’t have the time to find the seabase let alone explore it. When the entire point of finding the seabase was exploring, it made his air tank seem about as useful as a warning label on a stick of dynamite. Any idiot with common sense could tell going down there without some kind of plan for oxygen was a sheer way to drown. While his common sense was sparse he still had it.

The blueprints for a seamoth were still missing so he’d have to go on a scavenger hunt for not only the blueprint but the resources to build it. Danny could only wonder how the Seamoth would be altered for him. The seaglide was made slightly smaller but what was it supposed to do about what was essentially just an underwater car? Pedal extensions, A controller, maybe just an autopilot? That was all he was willing to work with, a booster seat was too humiliating for his bruised ego to take.

Along with a seamoth he’d need to upgrade his tank and replace the batteries for his seaglid. The seaglide drained power like spectra drained the happiness from children.

Digging through his storage lockers he scavenged the glass he needed for his new air tank. He fed the fabricator the ingredients waiting eagerly as the light show began. A loud jarring noise sounded from his PDA the moment the new air tank touched his hands.

“New blueprint acquired.” The robotic voice drawled.

Danny glanced down at the tablet, staring slack-jawed at the appearance of the rebreather on his list of blueprints. Convenient, he didn’t dare question the PDA’s choice of only giving him the blueprint now instead of after all the other times he almost died. It was painfully easy to gather the materials he needed. With the creepvine he’d collected earlier he was set to make the rebreather.

Now all he had to do was get past Dami…

Why did he have a feeling that was going to be easier said than done?

Chapter Text

The hatchling didn’t stay in his nest very long. Damian had thought the little one would be exhausted after his first encounter with Grayson. He himself had been exhausted by the encounter. It had taken ages to convince the other to leave and stop stalking near the plateaus.

The constant attempts at surveillance from his siblings were irritating before he’d been assigned to watch the hatchling. They were infuriating now. He isn't an infant anymore, and he hasn't been one for a thousand years. It's annoying that his siblings thought him so incompetent that he couldn’t complete this one simple task.

They acted like they weren't guilty of losing hatchlings in their territories. Scolding him like a hatchling slipping past someone was this unheard-of act of negligence. He knew for a fact each and every one of them had lost track of a guppy at least once. At least the little one he’s guarding was still alive. Damian had managed to keep it that way. Unlike other's he could think of.

This little one was healthy, swimming around faster than a pissed-off crashfish. He clicked his teeth at the child, a call of “come here” that the child either couldn’t understand or was blatantly ignoring. The little one was desperate to explore, but as he kicked his little legs closer and closer in the direction of the crash site, Damian couldn’t help but take action.

Bolting from his spot in the sand, he crooned. A worried scolding noise. A gentle nudge from clawed hands was met with a frustrated nip from the hatchling. With puffed-up cheeks, the hatchling darted around him, dodging his attempts at blocking him with a stubborn determination.

Why the little one was so determined to make his way to the crash site was beyond his understanding. Was it a built-in instinct to head towards their “Mother”? The structure that harbored them was no doubt artificial so it was safe to assume he wasn’t straying to gain comfort from a dead parent. Maybe he thought other members of his clutch would be nearby. These little ones tended to flock towards places other hatchlings had been. Presumably, Duke had been the one to find the hatchling near the egg in the kelp forests, even if the elder didn’t realize it.

Damian followed the hatchling deeper into the sand-clouded waters anxiety flaring the longer the little one ignored his warning. The metal here was still hot enough to mutilate a hatchling who drew close enough to touch it. Wreckage everywhere the eye could see, Damian didn’t trust any of it. How could one trust something that tended to spontaneously combust around a child? You couldn’t. This biome was too dangerous for a hatchling and he hadn’t even taken the reapers into account yet!

“Owwwwww”

Damian stared at the little one. There wasn’t a scratch on him yet pain and nausea radiated of him. The child blinked rapidly, pushing through the water despite Damian's attempts to pull him back.

“Get back here!” Damian called, the hatchling didn’t even acknowledge him. He just kept swimming forward. Closer to the reaper and closer to a mother that likely was never alive in the first place. The hatchling acknowledged his own pain, his swimming staggered the hatchling struggling to keep upright but continued his plight.

Damian huffed, snapping his teeth, flaring his gills, and striking the space beside the little one. An intimidation tactic, if the child wouldn’t respond to a guardian, he’d respond to an agitated predator. Using his size to his advantage, Damian towered over him, the glowing blue slab in the hatchling’s hands screamed.

Those little slabs had to have a tracker of some kind inside of them. The children would look at those glowing screens and wander towards somewhere dangerous. Specifically, a dangerous area another hatchling had once been in. Damian couldn’t bring himself to feel bad when the screen went blank.

“No!”

Distress was clear in the little one’s cry, blue eyes fixated on the slab.

“Sad” Damian reached for the child, freezing in his spot when a bone-chilling noise could just barely be heard. A noise he could recognize in a heartbeat, but it didn’t matter how quickly he recognized the sound. He had heard it, and that meant it could see them.

A reaper shouldn’t be here! Jason was supposed to be corralling them today. They’d wandered too close, and a reaper had snuck away from Jason’s care to take advantage. The hatchling kept staring at the dead tablet, unaware of the impending danger.

Damian puffed up, taking in a breath and letting out the loudest shriek his body could manage, wrapping his body around the guppy. His clawed hands prevented escape or in this case, prevented sharp mandibles from impaling the tiny skull of an infant. The little one was silent as the reaper charged, Damian’s tail raised to smack the mindless attacker away.

Its body was all muscle, eyes hungry and irrational. The strikes from his tail made an audible crack but did nothing to deter the beast. His defenses only served to anger it further. Reapers only cared about food, it would’ve been normal behavior had it not been for the bloodthirsty way they attempted to eat anything that moved regardless of size or age. Damian was far too large for the reaper to eat on its own on the unlikely chance the creature managed to finish him off, but it didn’t seem to care.

Logically he knew the animal was driven by instinct, but his bitterness prevailed. Reapers were not a part of this ecosystem that he favored, but he could understand the crucial role they played in local population control. Even if said population control attacked everything, including each other.

Blood spilled into the sea, but so long as it wasn’t red, Damian didn’t falter. Red copper-smelling blood meant death; a sign of ensured failure that’d stick with him for the rest of his natural life. Damian glanced down at the hatchling. The little one pointed a tool through the small gaps in his claws.

The tool was easy to recognize. The little one pointed it at everything, sometimes he would eat whichever flora or fauna he used it on. Damian wouldn’t be surprised if he was taking the opportunity to check if a reaper was edible. Father told him growing babies were always hungry and this hatchling had done nothing to disprove this theory.

Damian thrashed his tail, striking the beast into the ground. They didn’t know where that fish spent its time. Reapers didn’t care if what they ate was diseased. The ultimate carrier of plague. A baby's immune system was so incredibly fragile it had only taken three hours for the child in Dick’s territory to fall prey to illness. They needed to get out of here, now.

“Swim!” The hatchling beat his tiny fist against his skin. It was only the direction he was drifting towards that reassured him the little one wanted away from the reaper. He snapped, baring his teeth at the reaper, striking it down once more before shooting off with the hatchling gripped gently in his claws.

“Speed!!” The hatchling cheered, kicking his legs like he hadn’t almost been swallowed whole by a reaper.

“We wins, next time” The little one stared at him with those expressive blue eyes. There wouldn’t be a next time so long as he could help it. It wouldn’t be long before he was lectured for allowing the child anywhere near the site in the first place.

His tail ached, as they glided towards the safety of the shallows. A tsunami of nausea struck him as lingering adrenaline slowly faded from his system. He hadn’t failed, the guppy was fine. Not a scratch on him. This was fine. There would be no need for Father to assign someone else to watch the hatchling.

He was the most competent out of all of them! A whole three days this hatchling had been alive on this planet. His siblings couldn’t even keep one alive for three hours. This little one was stubborn and tiny, everywhere was a good hiding place for him and if he wanted to go somewhere he’d go with or without a guardian. Anyone with a brain could imagine the outcome of a hatchling wandering the crash sight by themself. They’d seen what happened, and it wasn’t pretty. Damian had done everything right, and dealt with the difficult situation handed to him without any casualties.

All it would take was a few seconds of them watching him before the guppy escaped from their watch. A few seconds and they’d be swimming around panicked like a shoal of rabbit rays. Damian doubted the hatchling being passed to someone else would stop his need for exploration. With the ability to maneuver on land, it wasn’t hard to imagine the child running off to explore one of the islands completely out of their reach. Damian didn’t even want to think about the possible tragedies that could happen if he’d wandered completely out of reach. The little “adventure” they’d gone on today induced a lifetime of anxiety in just a few minutes, but he doubted this would be the last time something like this would happen.

“Free me!” The child demanded, squirming in his gentle grip as they entered the coral-filled biome. The little one pried the claws off his back, diving into the sand the moment he regained his freedom.

Thwack!

“OW!”

A peeper charged straight for the child, impacting against chubby cheeks with a loud smack! With the bravo of a biter, it slapped the child directly in the face with its body. He couldn’t help but snort, quickly batting the small blue fish away before the hatchling could take his revenge. A thin trail of glittering gold followed the retreating prey fish, leaving Damian alone to do damage control.

“Gross!” The hatchling scrunched his nose, rubbing his hands against his face. Not a mark was left on him, only the lingering sparkle of yellow clinging to his skin. An encounter with a peeper wouldn’t kill them. If anything, one might argue it's healthy for him.

“Bleeding!” The child frowned, staring guilty at Damian’s tail. Yellow oozed from long thin scratches running down the thinner parts of his tail. Minor injuries that’d do him no harm in the long term. It was the better of the many morbid outcomes that’d been possible.

“Am sorry,”

Damian chuffed, holding the child in his palm, raising him slowly to the surface. Chubby hands smacked against his forehead the moment he lowered the child into the water a brief warning before he shot off into the kelp forest.

There wasn’t a second where he took his eyes off the guppy. Stalking with his body pressed up against the ground. The biome had plenty of hiding places for the hatchling but Damian was limited. His second form was far better suited for stealth but ran a higher risk of fatal injuries from larger fauna and attracted the attention of precursor-built predators.

A Warper was the last thing anyone wanted to introduce to a child. They attacked at random, culling off populations of fish and flora. While they preferred killing those with glowing cysts on their body, it didn’t stop them from attacking perfectly healthy individuals. It wouldn’t stop them from attacking the hatchling.

Tiny flippers cut through the water. An abundance of creepvine keeps the biome a murky green. He curled around stone arches watching the hatchlings chase fish, catching them between sharp canines.

“Distraction!” The child shouted, followed by the wet thwap of a dead fish impacting against a stalker's jaw. The animal was dazed by the attack but not injured as they eagerly scarfed down the “Weapon” that struck them. Other stalkers were smarter. Slowly approaching the child with open jaws, accepting a snack without having to face the violent throwing hand of an infant.

He himself was guilty of feeding stalkers. They never became docile enough to be a pet, but were still one of his favorite animals. Feeding them was much easier for him than it was for a hatchling this tiny. The child’s method was rather violent but it was necessary to ensure he wouldn’t be eaten alongside the offered fish.

“What the fuck were you doing in the crash site earlier?” Jason questioned cutting through his observations. Concern entwined with the fury lacing his words.

“You need to be more specific Todd, everyone’s been frequenting the crash site recently,” Damian replied, an obvious dismissal of the other’s concerns.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about,” Jason seethed “You’re on babysitting duty. Why the fuck would you try to fist fight a reaper when?”

“Would you have preferred I allowed the creature to eat the hatchling?” Damian sneered. “He’s determined to wander, our excursion to the crash site wasn’t planned,” He started.

“You were supposed to keep him in the shallows,”

“If I’d managed to stop him he’d have escaped and gone on his own,” Damian reminded, his voice tense. Many hatchlings had escaped or died on their careful watch, especially when they were kept confined to a single biome.

Damian didn’t want to keep the hatchling cooped up somewhere so cramped. Not when their species was still unknown to them. What if wandering allowed them to fulfill needs crucial to their survival? Precursors were the ones who kept children as prisoners. They were the ones who’d lock a child up and leave them until they died in agony, not him! Not his family, they wouldn’t do that.
“Is he okay?” Jason asked.

“He’s catapulting dead fish at stalkers so I think it’s safe to assume he’s healthy,” Damian replied.

“What about you, demon spawn?” Jason questioned

“A reaper couldn’t even dream of hurting me,” Damian huffed.

“Not what I meant,” Jason sighed, the other sounded exhausted. “Something in the crash site is making everything really fucking sick. Bruce thinks it’s the mother spilling off some nasty decomp,”

“…” Damian felt fine, a little nauseous, but he was fine. There was no need for bed rest or a break. The idea of an artificial structure spilling toxic decomp was new but not impossible. Precursors did have a morbid fascination with playing god. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume this is a failure of this overconfident thought process.

In the thousand years Warpers’ had been on this planet, none of them had ever died naturally. None of them had shown even the smallest sign of degrading with age. A Warper rotting, was an unthinkable concept you’d expect to happen when the sun dies out. But these hatchlings weren’t Warpers. Warpers were put together in an intricate process that had likely been perfected over a long time. These crashes screamed of a rush job. Tim had theorized the precursors had set both “mothers” on a timer before they’d gone extinct. Since there was nobody to monitor development, they were shot down far too early.

They didn’t know whose DNA was stolen to make any of the hatchlings. Knowing the precursors, most of these hatchlings had DNA that could stem from other unfortunate planets.

Damian glanced back to the hatchling. Incredibly tiny, with dull fingers and a reliance on the technology he created. They were dealing with a premature baby. A premature baby whose egg had malfunctioned upon impact. Smaller than any of the hatchlings they’ve seen before yet twice as ferocious to make up for that.

A string of strange chirps sounded from the little one’s tablet glowing once again. The guppy spun around looking around the kelp forest before his eyes landed on Damian.

“I sees you!” The child shouted before returning to cut pieces of kelp. Damian wasn’t sure if the boy’s short attention span was a blessing or a curse.

“Will I need to be quarantined?” Damian stalked the child as he swam back to the shallows. His tail dragged awkwardly against the sand. Small piles of rock were knocked to the seabed, a cloud of dust upturned with his attempts of swift stealthy movements.

“Probably, B has me contained in the fucking dunes,” Jason complained like he didn’t spend his time there daily.

“Sad,” The hatchling projected, Damian looked around, searching for anything that could have caused the child distress. Maybe he was tired? Damian wasn’t a guppy anymore, he didn’t think the same way a child would, but it was only logical for him to be tired after the day they’d had.

“Want my siblings,” the guppy cried, shaking his head with a scrunched nose. Damian frowned, reaching out for the child with a mournful croon. The child had been looking for his clutch mates back then and likely had been searching for them when he’d escaped Damian’s watch before.

“Loud, ouch, hurt” He froze watching as the little one cradled his head in his hands. A softer lower croon was sufficient for a hatchling with a developing sense of hearing. The child stared at him with utter confusion, like he couldn’t comprehend Damian could control his volume. Everything the hatchling said was either a shout or barely audible. Compensation for not having access to the bond yet.

“Mad!” The hatchling huffed, almost giving him a heart attack as he began coughing. A hatchling couldn’t die from being too mad right? No, none of his family would have made it past infancy if that were the case.

“Who will watch the hatchling while I’m in quarantine?” Damian questioned.

“Tim or Dick, they’re the only ones who haven’t gone to the crash site recently,”

Damian rested his head on his chin with a sigh. Tim being one of the only ones not to enter the crash site was a surprise. Tim was the first person you’d think would be flocking to the biome to investigate. Tim loved knowing about everything precursor-related and was especially obsessed with the tools the hatchling used.
The insomniac thought they’d be able to mimic the hatchling’s abilities if they studied them hard enough. Tim had fought tooth and claw to loot the few buildings the hatchlings managed to make but Father rejected his requests no matter how he begged. Said it was disrespectful to the dead, and so the buildings were left to rust.

Tim not swarming to scavenge through the wreckage before anyone could stop him was strange. An outlier in an otherwise predictable pattern of behavior. It was an obvious plot to gain access to the only hatchling who lived long enough to build. It’s infuriating but at least the hatchling would be safe under his keen but obsessive eyes.

Dick would be a good babysitter in theory but was overly excitable. Shallow water made his emp field oppressive, and dangerous, something the hatchling had been rightfully terrified of. Dick showing up would surely stress the child out more than would be necessary. The moment he made a grab for the child was the moment he fled and they lost him forever.

“No touch!” The little one puffed up his chest darting back to his nest with ferocity kicking his legs like he wanted to attack the water itself. Damian could only assume the hatchling was cranky because they were up all day. Father said guppies needed lots of sleep but this one didn’t seem to get the memo.

“How long will I be quarantined?” Damian asked staring deeply at the metal structure.

“Until you’re better or until we figure out if what we caught is contagious,” Jason replied bluntly. Damian glared at the sand like each grain had offended him personally. What if the hatchling forgot about him? Object permanence in hatchlings is severely lacking, this one wasn’t any different. It was an unfortunate factor of harboring a brain just beginning to develop and take in information.

“Where am I quarantining?” Damian questioned, raising an eyebrow when he heard the other groan exasperatedly.

“In the dunes with me and everyone else,”

“You’re joking,” Damian accused. The dunes were plenty big enough to hold all of them but it’d be extremely unpleasant.

“Kill me,” Jason deadpanned. Damian nodded, a mercy killing was the ethical solution to this problem.

“I was screwing around earlier so now Duke and Steph think they’re dying of a new precursor plague and Cass has been playing dead in a ditch for about an hour,” Jason complained, a painful-sounding wheeze tainting his words.

“I see…” This wasn’t an ideal situation. He assumed the hatchling would be quarantined inside its nest. It was too dangerous to move him but deadlier to infect him with whatever they’d caught if they didn’t have it already.

Damian eyed the hatch of the child’s nest. The only entrance to the little building. Before he even knew what he was doing he’d curled himself around the hatchling’s base taking incredible care not to break anything. Like a boulder blocking a cave entrance Damian rested his head in front of the hatch.

Blocking the hatchling’s escape into anywhere dangerous while also preventing any physical contact with him. Now all he had to do was wait until his replacement came. Damian sneered, the thought of leaving the hatchling behind for someone else to bond with still irked him more than the pounding headache.

Maybe now the child might finally decide to sleep?

Chapter Text

His base shook like an earthquake hit, knocking him off his feet. The lights in his sea base flashed an angry red, a jarring siren sounding inside metal walls. “Shit shit shit shit shit!” Danny screamed, rushing to the front hatch, silicone flippers slapping against the floor.

Thoughts cluttered Danny’s throbbing skull. Had the reaper followed them? Why wasn’t Dami doing anything about it? Did the reaper hurt him that badly? Why wouldn’t this door fucking open?!

It didn’t give a single inch no matter how hard he pushed the sturdy glass hatch. Nothing he tried seemed to work, the door didn’t want to budge. Even when he threw all his weight against the glass like a living battering ram something pushed back every time. Staring through the glass, his blood began to broil like milk placed on a hot stove.

What.

The.

Actual.

FUCK!

Curses fell past his lips like heavy rainfall. Words that would make a sailor blush and land him a permanent grounding if someone heard. Barely legible words, too big for his mouth to keep up with. Feelings too big for his body left him wailing on the metal floor.

His only door was blocked by Dami, keeping him prisoner in his own Seabase. Forget anything he said about Dami not being cruel, this fish was a cold, callous bastard who deserved to be mauled! False imprisonment. Kept in a cage like a rowdy puppy!

This was a setup for a gruesome true crime documentary. One that’d have scary music with violins and a poorly tuned piano for dramatic effect. It would have that one moment where a photo of them had its colors inverted so the narrator could build up suspense. “They were friends until they weren’t,” Then they’d go on to describe in graphic detail how Danny starved to death in his fucking base. He’d be the cautionary tale Alterra would use; twisting the actual cause to benefit the company and shame employees.

His Seabase suddenly felt incredibly small as breathing sharpened. Yanking hard on locks of raven hair Danny let out a scream. Snot dripped down his nose, scalding hot tears burning against chilled skin. He wasn’t trained for any of this shit! Why did nobody think to put a “giant fish bastard,” protical in the survival guide? Didn’t Alterra pride itself on being prepared?

Slamming fists against glass, he could feel his flesh begin to bruise; short fingernails dug into his palms with every heavy hit. Feet slammed into the door like mini hammers. Hinges creaked as Dami put more weight into keeping his base sealed tighter than Pandora’s box. Fucker!

He felt like a toddler throwing a tantrum, kicking, screaming, crying. This was a justified tantrum though. Nothing about this situation was trivial. His entire body could be crushed within a matter of minutes. All Dami had to do was put a little too much weight on his roof and he was flat as a pancake. It didn’t even need to be purposeful! The worst part was; he couldn’t even look his captor in the eye because his thick skull was blocking the fucking door!

Coiled around his base like a snake he made himself at home. Technically, this planet was his home but the fucker was suffocating himself to be petty. Normally, he respected petty behavior; pettiness flowed through his veins but this shit crossed past the line of petty revenge or malicious compliance.

All it would take is one wrong move for his solar panels to be damaged. Just a few seconds of curiosity for him to pluck them off the roof like dandelions in an open field. Without a source of power pumping breathable air into the base would be a distant memory. One he’d miss oh so much when his face was turning purple as he slowly suffocated to death! To add insult to injury, he’d be dying in a place he specifically built to be his safe haven in a sea of salt water.

Even if they weren’t damaged, his power situation looked as bleak as his academic future. Daylight wouldn’t last forever and solar panels weren’t exactly known for their effectiveness at night! A power outage that lasted more than a few minutes would kill him. Such a stupid way for him to die; the only redeeming feature of that death would be the location. Dying on a planet unexplored by humans was decently cool no matter how you spun it.

Would he come back afterward this time too? When he’d been gargling on his blood as his Lifepod crashed to the sea; not once did he think there would be another chance for him. Danny could only assume it’s three strikes and you’re out, but when it came down to weird zombie resurrections he could never be sure. Would he be caught in a death loop? Doomed to slowly die of suffocation over and over again until Dami decided he’d had his fun?

Is this a normal prank for a fish teenager to pull? Because this was sociopathic behavior if this was a prank. The language barrier made the situation a little better, but it wasn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. Language barrier or not this was still leaving a dog in a hot car levels of stupidity.

This was such a cruel thing the universe decided to do to him. What had he done to deserve this? He hadn’t cheated on the CATs. Not in this timeline at least. Was this some form of divine punishment or did he just have an aura that made everyone want to screw him over? Either way, if this guy really thought of him as a pet he’d be in for a surprise when Danny built a fucking taser. Let him have a taste of what made him so awesome!

With a sneer, Danny watched the window. Dami’s midsection was pressed against the glass. Dots ran across his body, a straight line of tiny circles glowing dimly with the setting sun. A built-in night light to help Dami sleep at night knowing how terrible he was being right now. Pale desaturated blue faded to a shadow-like black. The transparent looked ghostly, like he could run his hands straight through it. A feat he was capable of doing without breaking a sweat not even a week ago.

Glowering, he slammed his hands against the window with a rage burning brighter than the stars in the sky. How could he convince a giant sea serpent teenager to piss off? Without his ghostly wail to boost his volume loud enough to shatter glass and crumple buildings, shouting was a useless scare tactic.

Dami couldn’t plan on blocking the door forever; could he? Maybe he was just pissed Danny ignored him about the crash zone. If he’d understood that hungry murder fish were chilling near the crash zone he probably would’ve gone anyway just to see it. But he hadn’t known; how could you punish him for that?

Actually, there were a lot of people who’d do that.

With a heavy sigh, his shoulders sagged, every breath of fresh air exhausted him to the core. Eyelids drooped anxiety battling against the growing need for rest. He could wait this out; Dami’s only mortal, he can't stay forever…

But he could keep his lazy ass parked here long enough for his supports to give in under his weight. His foundations continued to creak, a nauseating groaning of metal being strained. It was a pure miracle his base hadn’t collapsed already!

Danny screamed, collapsing into a heap of snot and tears. Chubby fingers smudged the glass. He’d never felt so useless in his life. Not when his parents rambled about ripping his alter ego molecule by molecule and not when his grades slipped through his fingers. Life sucked when you didn’t have a grocery list of superpowers at your fingertips. He felt further from normal than ever. Dying a second time had made him more freakish than the first.

A Useless freak! Wasn’t this just a wonderful predicament? This was the perfect use of precious time. It wasn’t like the Aurora’s drive core was a ticking time bomb that would explode into a massive conglomerate of metal with enough radiation to cause a mass extinction…

Oh, wait, what’s that? The Aurora is a fucking quantum detonation waiting to happen? And he’ll be stuck here like a toddler trapped in their playpen when it happens? How wonderful! Here Danny thought he could actually try to help. You know, find a way to be useful when the tragedy happened instead of waiting a week to gather the supplies he’d need to do anything.

Instead, he was trapped here with no laser cutter, no seamoth, no propulsion gun, and no radiation suit to do anything but wilt like a daisy planted in battery acid when the radiation spread out. He couldn’t go check if the Degasi base even existed either! He couldn’t check down there for anything useful and he couldn’t check to see if anyone was alive! All because a stupid teenager decided Danny’s a puppy who needs kennel training!

All he wanted now was to phase his hands through the glass and punch Dami when he wasn’t expecting it. To scare the teen into running to tell his parents about how mean Danny is. He didn’t care! He’d throw hands with however many parents and siblings Dami had! Lay down with dogs get up with fleas. Play stupid games win stupid prizes. At this point, ghosting should be the consequence of stupid actions.

Something tight wrapped around his wrist squeezing flesh and bone in a python-like grip. The curtain clung to his wrist, his entire hand stuck through it like he’d punched a hole through. A transparent ripple in the fabric circled his hand, a defiance of physics he’d never been so excited to see.

If anyone took a picture of him right now you’d think he won the lottery. Intangibility, his beloved! Oh, how he desperately missed it. Attempting to pull his hand back, Danny blinked owlishly when his hand remained firmly implanted in the fabric. He braced his foot against the glass, tugging as hard as he cut but the curtain rods just groaned, creaking under his weight.

It reminded him of the first few months after the accident; when his powers just didn’t do what he wanted them to do.
Of all the times he’d fallen through his locker door. All the poor beakers and cups that'd slip through his fingers and shatter on the ground. Every memory of a mistake or malfunction a reminder that things weren’t always as easy as he mourned them to be.

What happened?

When did walking through walls become as easy as breathing for him? Something he could do without thinking or breaking a sweat. There had to be a turning point. A moment when everything clicked into place like puzzle pieces. Not having some sort of dampener might’ve helped. Maybe he just needed to think intangible thoughts?

Uhhhhh…

Blob ghosts!

Technus, Ember, Skulker, Pointdexter!

…

Nothing.

The cloth continued to strangle his wrist, cutting off his blood flow, turning his hand a frightening shade of red. Irritated and throbbing with every second the limb went without the crucial oxygen it needed. Yanking back with all his pitiful might, the metal rod groaned with each tug.

This stupid curtain was going to take his hand. The limb was going to go necrotic and fall off like a twisted 1600s fairytale! It wouldn’t even be one of those fairytales that got butchered into a poorly produced Disney movie! Just a cautionary tale that parents would use to scare children out of throwing tantrums. And it would happen because this thin piece of cloth just-

Wouldn’t.

Let.

Go.

Thud!

Blunt pain shot up his back as he toppled over like a house of cards. Static shot up throughout his arms, fingers tingling as blood finally flowed freely again. Wiggling each finger individually, bright purplish red faded to its normal pallor hue. Breathless, excitement surged in his chest, freedom at the tips of his fingers. Intangibility! It’d worked! An excited squeal died on his lips both hands blocking noise from alerting his self-assigned prison warden.

When this was over he’d never take his powers for granted ever again! Never in a billion years! Forget being normal. Normal is the path of the coward; he’s a fucking ghost! Danny Phantom; that’s who he is! Not some pet for an oversized oceanic teenager or the cowardly dumbass of a family chalked full of geniuses everyone thought him to be.

Freedom was just a few feet away now. All he needed to do was brute force his intangibility into working again…

Easier said than done.

Something somewhere in this solar system really didn’t want him to use his powers but that something could go pound sand for all he cared. He had a Seabase to explore and a Leviathan to punch when he got back.

Slowly, he crept toward the far side of his base. The closest he could get to kelp forests without leaving his base. The furthest he could get from Dami’s face. There would be no invisibility to shield him from Dami’s gaze if the leviathan turned his head.

This escape had to be flawless! Not a single glowing eye could land on him; not for a single millisecond. There was no doubt Dami would attempt to follow him. He’d been willing to follow Danny into reaper-infested waters to act as a guard dog!

Squishing his body against the floor, Danny squeezed his fists tight. He needed to be ready to swim. As fast as he could and as stealthy as physically possible; Dami couldn’t be given a chance to catch him. One poorly placed grab and Danny could be shish kabobed by his claws in an instant!

Metal walls groaned, Dami’s python-like grip denting titanium and straining glass. Danny hissed, a cheek pressed up against the wall; he’s going to implode at the rate things were going. This Leviathan needed to take a chill pill before he gave himself a heart attack and a murder charge.

He kept his breathing deep and slow; his eyes pinned to the window. Muscles lax, palms flat on the ground a tingling sensation sparked through his body as he slowly sunk through the floor.

There wasn’t a second of hesitation in his mind; when he made it through he booked it. Not a single thought of reluctance could make him falter. Any coherent idea was drowned out by the desperate need to reach the kelp forests. Only when he swam deep into green-tinted waters did he allow himself to look back.
…

Dami hadn’t followed him?

Did Dami think he wasn’t worth chasing? How dare he. Maybe he just didn’t see him? There wasn’t exactly an abundance of creatures who could through both walls and flesh but Danny couldn’t help feeling disappointed. It wasn’t like he wanted to be hunted down like an animal but a little recognition would be nice.

Pouting, a frown tugged on his lips, his PDA lighting up his face in the fleeting daylight scrutinizing the coordinates on screen. A deep yellow light shone from clusters of seeds like naturally grown lamp posts in a busy forest of kelp. Groups of Stalkers prowled the biome, their lack of bioluminescence allowing them to cloak themselves in the setting sun.

The signal was closer to the Aurora than he’d previously thought. It wasn’t clear if it was directly in the crash site but it was definitely close enough to guarantee a lethal injury if the drive core decided to explode while he was busy poking his nose in Torgal Corps business. Was this really worth the risk?

…

Yes.

Absolutely.

Without a possible doubt.

There was something fishy going on and he wanted to know if this was a Scooby-Doo situation. The Torgal’s in all their eccentric glory dressed themselves up as giant fish to keep the planet for themselves. At least in a scenario like that everyone would be mostly alive.

A naive part of him wanted to believe that. Was the lack of human contact already getting to him? Maybe it was the PDA’s explanation for morbid realities? Death dumbed down and sugarcoated to the point your brain would rot if you took it seriously. It was like the PDA couldn’t grip his reading comprehension and common sense was above that of an infant!

The tablet not thinking he could piece together what happened to the people in lifepod three made sense. But life pod seventeen?? Ozzy’s death was clear cut; eaten by a giant snake,done! Trauma contained, business as usual until, finally in his late fifties he realized how badly the situation fucked him up. With how the tablet tried to explain things he'd go his entire life thinking Ozzy and anyone who didn’t make it to a life pod “Went to live on a farm off-planet,”

Would the PDA try to explain things away if he found a skeleton?

Yeah, he didn’t actually want an answer to that question. Finding someone dead was the last thing anyone wanted unless they were a mortician…Or a serial killer.

As hypocritical as it might sound, he’d prefer to find living people. At this point, he wouldn’t even mind if he found ghosts. He needed there to be ghosts. For those who died to tell him who they were. Names, their favorite colors, what they wanted to do with their lives. Anything to prove these people were something other than their last words. Something to prove they were something other than a number on a list of casualties. He had to find something.

He would find something; someone, scanners be damned.

A dense forest of kelp transitioned to the plateaus red grass sprouting from the seabed as distance ticked down. Wrecks he didn’t have the tools nor the energy to explore taunted him. Tantalizing, wires smoked and sparked as if screaming of all the possible valuables hidden inside.

See if he cared. There was someplace much cooler for him to explore! Ancient's forbid there be something as abhorrent as ugh; walls down there. Hopefully, they were sensible enough to leave a key under the doormat.

Chunks of seamoths half buried in the sand were scattered near each wreck. Storage crates filled with only the mangled remains of what once was a complex piece of technology. Tools gnarled and melted, fragments of what they used to be. Reduced to nothing but an expensive piece of scrap. It was a miracle his scanner could salvage anything from some of this stuff!

How would the PDA even make some of these blueprints useable? Would it babyproof the laser cutter? Cutting through layers of steel wasn’t what he’d call a safe activity. You could easily chop off a hand or foot if you weren’t careful. The heat would cauterize it too so the chance of reattaching anything was small. Maybe it was like those car doors that stopped automatically so it wouldn’t crush your hand?

How would it make the seamoth usable? He’d thought about it briefly before but now that he had the blueprints in hand his curiosity tripled. A seamoth was essentially just a submarine but felt closer to a car than anything else. Would the tablet even allow him to make one? He hadn’t had a license before the crash but now that he’s funsized it’s twice as dangerous!

The PDA did let him swim around with a knife, but giving him a car was a bit much even for Alterra. Then again; they did bring a fourteen-year-old into space so maybe the line was further away than he thought?

Watching the numbers tick down as he paddled closer to his destination, he shook his head. Alterra’s restrictions were a problem for the future. Present him should stick to worrying about the Degasi.

Between the bright red grass of the plateaus and the murky green of the kelp forest was what he needed. A chasm leading downwards was illuminated by mushrooms clinging to stone. A scratchy roar muffled by the depth gave him goosebumps.

He broke for the surface, taking a huge gasp of air as his tanks topped up. Those snake-like creatures Ozzy talked about were down there. Something he found terrifying on its own without knowing they already had a taste for human flesh. Flesh, bone, and everything in between, nothing had been spared.

Ancient’s, these guys better not be like owls.

Blinking a gruesome image out of his brain, he delved down into the chasm. Darker and darker, a purplish glow lit up his face. The jellyfish mushrooms he’d seen before filled the biome. With caps like pretty pink jellyfish and their stems dark and strong. A piece of flora he’d expect to see in the ghost zone but also fit with what all those old sci-fi comics said alien life would be like.

A fish that looked like a peeper swam near, its eye a bright magenta and its tail like dripping wax. The light from his seaglid startled the fish into a hasty retreat.

It’s not long until he finds what he was looking for… Or at least what’s left of it. Every inch of metal was covered in rust, barnacles fused to the roof. A compartment collapsed to the floor, seawater flooded the base.

He knew; before he even stepped foot in that seabase that nobody lived there for a very long time. Only curious fish looking for somewhere to hide.

A spotlight hung from the roof almost indistinguishable from the rusted rooftop. A water filter stuck out against smoother surfaces. The survivors who stayed here were in it for the long hall or at least they tried to be. It hadn’t exactly gone well for them from what he could tell.

A PDA glowing dimly where a compartment had collapsed. A single log transferred to his PDA before the tablet went blank.

“Son, there is always a pecking order, and in our world, money makes the hierarchy,” An older voice begins. “I pay Maida a fraction of what I pay, and you a fraction of what I pay me,” He’s confident like each word was a law set in stone.

“If money makes the hierarchy, why is Marguerite making the decisions?” A much younger voice questioned.

“We NEED her.” The older man emphasizes. “We let her think what she likes, so long as she does what she’s told,”

“And what if she doesn’t?” The younger prods.

“For enough money, she will. People always do.” This Paul Torgal sounded like he'd get along well with Vlad.

The whole “ Everything and everyone can be bought if you have enough money,” Was straight up the Fruitloop’s alley, never mind the fact that it’s blatantly wrong. They’re both delusional old men; maybe they could bond over that?

Shaking his head Danny stared at a duo of hanging plants. Downward spirals that reminded him of jellyfish stingers. Their bright purple glow screamed, “Touch me and you’ll have a very bad time.” A carnivorous plant that ate small fish.

Now, he wasn’t a fish; but he was small. Small enough to be eaten whole by a crabsnake and small enough to squeeze by the stingers without even grazing them.

Trash was piled throughout the base; wires hanging from the ceiling of a multipurpose room. Plenty of things to scan yet not a single person in sight. Though, he wasn’t quite sure he’d expected to find anyone in here in the first place. The base was flooded; bottom to top. Not a single foot of this base was free from seawater.

Two PDAs sat abandoned in the room. One stashed away in an open locker; the other sat flat on a desk. Both of them still glowed dimly despite human hands not grazing those screens since they were abandoned. It was a miracle these PDAs managed to turn on let alone transfer any data! Yet here it was; two logs and coordinates right here for him to gawk at.

Maybe Tucker was right about the older PDA models being better. A notification popped up on his PDA; a reminder that his “Bedtime” was near. He ignored it; simply ushering a gentle reassurance to the tablet. Clearly, it’s jealous and was trying to redirect his attention.

{Proposed Degasi Habitat (500m)}

500 meters down?! What were these people trying to swim down to the core of the earth?! This base already flooded! What made them think they could keep the seawater out when the pressure was a thousand times worse?

Tapping the play button he decided he’d give them a chance to explain themselves as he poked his scanner everywhere he could.

“You know what Maida told me today?” Paul's voice starts, leaving Danny to guess.

It had to be something along the lines of, “Pull that stick out of your ass!” Or maybe “ Stop being such a massive douchenozzle,”

“She wants to build a habitat 500 meters below sea level more than a kilometer northeast of here. And she needs Bart and I to do it,” Oh, that explained the crazy scuba diving he’d be needing to do. Maida won this battle.

With a shake of his head, Danny kept his scanner pointed at the water filter. It stuck out of the wall like a sore thumb a piece of tech that hadn’t been changed since the day it was sent out. Pretty sure the same brand of water filters had been tucked away in the cargo bay. Hey, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Though he’s not sure if that still applied when it came to life-saving technology.

Danny only paid half attention to the man as he rambled about Meida like he was a grade-schooler who didn’t understand bullying your crush wasn’t the way to get their attention. “She’s being so reckless! I am obviously the leader of this group meh meh meh meh meh,” Please, this guy had a superiority complex every word he spoke screamed of it. Even when he spoke with his son, it sounded so insincere and- what in the fresh fuck?!

He’s eighty?! No wonder he was spouting nonsense; he’s completely senile! Eighty years left in him; that was mother Gothel level shit right there. Does Bart have healing hair? Is that why Paul sounded so freaking. Seriously all this talk about mortality and replacing livers like that’s a normal thing to do when you get old.

“It’s my responsibility to make a decision. Return to the island and hope whatever knocked the Degasi out of the sky won’t do the same to the rescue ship, or take us deeper in search of answers. All the while hoping old age gets to me before the sea monsters do.”

Danny hoped old age got him first too. Not that he wanted anyone to die. He’d just prefer it if whatever sea monsters the old Fruitloop was talking about didn’t have a taste for human flesh. Maybe they already did? After all, two ships had been knocked out of the atmosphere with no hesitation. Not even a warning shot or redneck war cry of “Get off my turf!”

Just-
BAM!

A hundred people dead without so much of a clue what the hell had happened! What was the point of that? It needlessly destroyed the planet. Was human flesh that tasty? Should he be flattered? He probably shouldn’t. People are dead and more would be dead if he didn’t find out what was happening on this freaky planet!

Swimming through the hallway the drooping stingers gave the room an eerie glow. Yet another tablet sat on a desk a few feet away from a double bed. The only bed he’d found in this seabase. Maybe they scrapped the other ones but Danny preferred to think the Degasi survivors packed themselves together like sardines. With Marguerit and Paul glaring daggers at each other while Bart acted as a living barrier.

A funny situation to think about while he did his best to brush away the morbid reality that these people were dead. To brush off the sinking feeling in his stomach that something much worse than flesh-eating sea monsters was going on here.

Call it morbid curiosity but he’d never been one to mind his business back home. What made anyone think he’d stop now that he’d been stranded on an alien planet? He’s the perfect example of a real-life horror movie protagonist. One you’d scream at through the screen as he waltzed right into a situation that’d kill him. With that said, he pressed play on another log.

“We’re already 200m below sea level! You want to go deeper,” He could empathize with the guy. Fish got freaky the deeper down you went. His PDA blared, an upgrade for his air tank added to his blueprints.

“Look around us Chief. Water leaking through the hull. Water outside the hatch. We’re drowning. Real slow.” Marguerite drawled out the last sentence. It’s clear in her voice; she’s already made up her mind.

If rescue arrives whatever shot us down is going to do it again. And again. Until it’s shut off. You see an off switch around here, chief?” The word chief sounded like a devastating insult when it came from Marguerit. A sardonic hint to her voice that

“Why would it any more likely be half a kilometer down?!” Paul shouted.

“Your kid found something on the scanner. There’s something down there. Something that shouldn’t be,” She states, and if Danny wasn’t on her side before he definitely was now.

“You’re mad,” He spits.

“I’m going all the same. And I’ve an idea you two are gonna follow. But if you do, be mindful: your authority stopped at sea level.” She ends, unwavering against Paul’s objections. He already knew who won this battle. Marguerit took no bullshit and went to chase down whatever Bart found on the scanner.

For some reason; he didn’t think they had the chance to find what they were looking for down there. Neither did he; Marguriet was right. There’s no off switch around here, and there certainly wasn’t a spare radiation suit hung up in the lockers that he could borrow.

All that’s left in these caves were the stones scattered throughout the biome. Paul was right about this place being chalked full of materials. Lithium clung to the walls and magnetite stuck out of the sand. An abundance of shale outcrops dropped gold and lithium, diamonds slowly drifting into his tiny hands.

“Remember that materials you gather are-“ The robotic voice cut off. The tablet decided whatever message pre-programmed into it was inappropriate to say to a baby.

Why did he get the feeling that the message was going to be a bill? It was a bill, wasn’t it? Anchient’s what kind of dystopian hellscape was Alterra running?! Billing a crash survivor for surviving? That sounded like something he’d expect of Vlad.

If the rescue teams showed up with itemized bills for everyone nothing would stop him from bankrupting Alterra. He’d bulldoze the corporation and turn every building they owned into a spirit Halloween maybe turn a warehouse or two into a hot topic. A little gift to Sam. No amount of backtracking on Alterra’s part would deter him. It’d be time for them to start rebuilding everything from scratch; with morals this time!

“Oxygen.” His PDA chimed; clearly a distraction to keep him from holding a grudge against Alterra for an imaginary scenario. The tablet underestimated the sheer pettiness he’s capable of; a rookie mistake on Alterra’s part.

Swimming up to the surface, Danny gasped, filling his lungs until they felt like they’d burst. His seglide helps him keep him bobbing above water seawater, moonlight engulfing him like a paper-thin bedsheet.

Stranded or not, he’d insist enthusiastically to anyone who cared that this planet’s moons were prettier than the one orbiting Earth. Glowing like a copper sphere half heated, several times the size of Earth’s moon. If he ever found that island Paul talked about he’d be stargazing like a king!

Staring longingly at the sky Danny kicked off, darting through the water as if he’d been born in it. His fingers lingered above the play button of one of Bart’s recordings. Bart was different from Paul and Marguriet in a way that made the thought of him being dead more distressing.

Marguriet was in her early forties when the Degasi dropped off the radar. Paul was in his late seventies when they crashed, turning eighty in the Jellyshroom caves. But Bart… He was just nineteen when he disappeared. It’s hard to wrap his head around that he’d be in his early thirties if he were alive today. Somberly, he pressed play.

“I thought it might get claustrophobic, living underwater. Father feels it is. He’d tell me it was childish but I stare out the window and sometimes I think how lucky I am to see this world up close.” The biochemist starts.

“Back on the island, I wouldn’t have believed the creatures that lived down here. The fish, they GLOW… There's one that’s 90% eyeball… and snakes twice the length of a habitat compartment” He says, awe oozing from each word he spoke. Sam would’ve gotten along with this guy.

“Certainly it’s not all friendly. Most of the plant life is toxic, I learned that the hard way, but I’ve managed to coax some marblemelons into growing indoors, and when they don’t cover our dietary needs…” There’s a slight pause and Danny really hopes he’s not about to confess to being a cannibal.

“We eat the fish themselves. It’s a bit gross, but nothing they wouldn’t do” Thank fuck.

“I’ve been attempting to document my findings. Father approves. He says understanding is power. That the more we know about the planet the more we can use it to our advantage,” Paul was right about that. Learning to differentiate between animals that wanted to tear flesh off your bones and the guys who just wanted to be left alone certainly was an advantage.

“I’m just doing it because it’s fun. It’s not easy without proper equipment and network access, but the old-fashioned way- Observing, taking notes, testing theories- shows me the world in a way spectroscopic analysis never could,” Bart continues.

“Lately I've been watching the crab snakes. They ambush their prey as it tries to feed on the mushrooms they hide in. What they don't eat settles on the seabed, which fertilizes the mushrooms, which feeds the herbivores, and so the chain continues. Co-evolution gives me the fuzzies.” Whatever floats your boat dude.

Biology never was his thing. He got a C in that class for a reason. Sure he’d gotten better but it wasn’t anything to write home about. Whatever notes he wrote about the local ecosystem were just entertainment for him. A way to fuel his obsession without having to look around and remember everyone was dead and there were no ghosts to be vengeful about their deaths. Most of the notes he wrote down on his PDA were solely for telling stories others hadn’t lived to tell.

They’d be another funny thing to explain when he found other survivors. Though hope was dwindling a bit at this point he wouldn’t give up just yet. There’s still a speck of hope for him to cling to. A logical expectation that the universe wasn’t stupid enough to leave him to solve problems on his own.

A piece of magnetite rested in his hands as his base slowly came into view. It’s strange to think a small stone like this was used to make torpedo systems all across the universe. Just another miracle of human intelligence. Anything and everything nature churned out could be made into a weapon if you scienced hard enough.
…
…
…
…
Dami was gone.

It might be the crushing loneliness, but he couldn't help but be a little disappointed. Dami is classified as a teenager for his species he could have a parentally enforced curfew or something. That or maybe Dami found out he’d left and went to chase him down. Either way, if Dami tries a trick like that again he’s getting tased harder than a neckbeard at an anime convention.

Clliiick crickk....

A quiet noise echoed throughout the shallows. Like the click of a tongue, barely noticeable but creepy as hell to hear in the dark of night. Hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he scanned the area for any sign of Dami… Nothing, not a roar or a croon. Just an empty imprint in the sand where the leviathan curled around the base.

A peeper, its eye half open and Danny could only assume it was sleeping. Did peepers snore or something? How could something so tiny make a noise so big? The peeper's beak opened…

....
      ....

           ....Clllick crickk

Ah, that’s how. He guessed that made sense… It didn’t but he wasn’t down for vivisecting local wildlife for something as stupid as a little snoring. Sometimes it was better to chalk things down to Alien life being weird. Still, if he wanted to mark down peeper sleeping habits he needed to make sure this one wasn’t just congested.

Inching closer, its bright yellow eye snapped open. Darting away like a bolt of lightning before Danny got the chance to poke it. That didn’t look like a sickly fish? It acted the same as a healthy one. Terrified of everything unless it was trying to rub that weird fluorescent glitter all over you. Maybe peepers were the heavy snorers of this planet?

That’s the explanation he'd stick with for now. And if anything freaky happened later he’d facepalm at the obvious signs of danger. If he wasn’t brutally murdered, that is.

Another reminder chimed the five-minute mark before his Ai-assigned bedtime. Hastily he fumbled with the habitat builder building up a multipurpose room onto his base. He’d like to sleep in an actual bed tonight if that wasn’t asking too much.

Ocean water dripped from his hair when he entered the seabase; pooling down onto the metal floors. There’s no towels to dry him off here. No shower he could wash off in, daydreaming until the water ran cold. Unfortunately, indoor plumbing wasn’t included in Alterra’s survival blueprints.

There wasn’t enough time or power to place down a water filter. Solar panels were too weak to keep the base powered with a water filter running. Oxygen trumped the need for water just like water trumped the need for food. Despite what his teachers said about him, Danny did know how to prioritize! Ghosts just got in the way more often than not.

The room was gigantic compared to the basic compartments. Empty enough that his words held a slight echo; an empty canvas for him to decorate. Unfortunately, he’s got plenty of time to decorate his home away from home.

A timely rescue was a dream of the past. It took a decade to find the planet the Degasi crashed on and that was by accident! So for an unforeseen amount of time, he’s trapped on this planet. Far outside of federation space, stranded on a freaky ocean planet determined to outdo the Bermuda Triangle. This was what they made sci-fi movies about in the nineties.

With a shake of his head, he built a bed. It’s a double bed because he deserves that luxury. A thin blanket was tossed across the foot of the bed, the mattress more like a cot than anything else but who was he to complain? At least it was comfier than the ones in the nurse's office. Plenty of room for him to curl up and make a move toward sweet unconsciousness

…
Hopefully, his PDA would wake him if anything was about to blow up.

Chapter Text

Sunlight failed to touch the depth of the trench but his territory was far from dark. Flora illuminated the biome Mushrooms, vines, and coral, their colors ghostly compared to their shallow water variants.

Glowing green vines reached upwards; colors bleached like coral that died in the shallows. Their roots pierced stone creeping across arches and caves like a system of nerves. Forever reaching out for the nutrients it needed to survive.
Schools of fish pecked at globs of oil bleeding from the stem. You could see that disturbing shade of red inside a fish's intestines if it’s body is transparent enough.

It’s that same shade of red that’d send half his family into a state of grief. A reminder of their shared failures. Twelve years was such a short period of time yet, they’d lost more than they’d thought was possible.

The joy of finding something that resembled them even slightly was ripped away. Groups of hatchlings died before they’d had the chance to shelter them, more crashing to the water before they’d gotten the chance to learn what’d gone wrong.

To their credit, the first batch caught them off guard. Nothing landed the first time the beam went off. They’d been too busy poking around the precursor’s bases and the already abandoned crash site to notice the hatchling’s existence. By the time they realized what was going on a group of three had already ditched both an island and the Jellyshroom caves.

They’d settled somewhere deep in the reef.Why? No one knows. There’d hardly been any time to understand their migration patterns. Were they looking for something? Something missing in their diet that they were willing to swim hand to fin with reapers to get.

The hatchlings survived longest on land and shallow waters, so why move? He didn’t know, and he doubts he’ll get the answer now.
They’d only seen the trio in passing, not nearly enough to observe them like he wanted. But enough that the middle child could sense their presence and the youngest had stalked Dick with one of their little tools.

Bruce always talked about that first batch like he’d spent hundreds of years with them instead of the actual week they’d spent stalking them. Talking about those three with a somber sort of amazement. Tim understood his grief to an extent. He’d hoped to learn something from them. He’d liked to know what happened outside their limited perspectives.

Sentience is rare, it’d been that way even before the infection thinned their numbers. A smaller form was even rarer. It’s how they survived the famines following the initial outbreak. When a species with a secondary form got infected, the cysts first formed around their joints restricting their movements till all they could do was lay on the seabed and wait for death.
And if starvation didn’t kill them? Well the rotting of their internal organs would catch them inevitably.

Everyone who survived the initial outbreak panicked. Those who could fled from the source of the infection. Those who couldn’t or refused to watched as hundreds retreated into the darkness of the void never to be heard from again. He’d like to believe they made it to the tundra or some other livable biome he didn’t know about. But likely, the disease followed them, wherever they ended up.

After living through all that, it’s only natural they’d cling to anything that vaguely resembles them. Still, they weren’t as vigilantes as they should’ve been with the first batch. Blame it on shock if you will. That blast and the following crash turned the entire crater on its head. From their point of view, the shot sent metal falling from the sky and a short while later, a brand new species was swimming around.

What happened to the first batch was preventable in hindsight. The middle child was aggressive from the start. An avid hunter Like Jason. It should’ve been expected the kid would get cocky and pick a fight with something she’d been no match for. Or maybe she was; they hadn’t seen how it ended. There’d been yellow blood mixed with red, if she hadn’t killed it, she sure gave it a fight.

Her remains weren’t found at the scene nor were the youngests or the reaper they’d fought. After all this time it’s safe to say they’re dead but he had his doubts.
They’d hidden before. It’s not a stretch to assume they’d fled to the island again. Hiding in their little nests when sunny weather morphed into raging storms.

This batch left no room for imagination. They’d watched the hatchlings with the dedication of a scorned sea dragon and they still died. They died in ways Tim didn’t even know were possible; it’s almost impressive.

What could they have done differently. Was there anything they could do? Never in his lifetime had he ever seen a species so determined to die. Not even a crashfish could compete with the utter lack of self preservation of these children. Though, you couldn’t blame them for fumbling the start they’d been given.

You could, however, blame the precursors’ confusing design choices.

Spontaneous combustion! What was the point of it? So many healthy children had been taken out in a spray of dust and shrapnel and for what!? What was the reason? Natural selection? Or was this another catastrophic failure on behalf of their explorations in genetic mutilation. Something clearly hadn’t gone to plan.

A batch of a hundred something hatchlings and only one managed to live past the three hour mark! It survived that time without them too! Somehow, a perfectly healthy egg would hatch a clutch of two or three that died within hours. But the one egg that was on fire, managed to hatch the only healthy hatchling of the entire batch!?

Though, it might be a bit too optimistic to call it healthy. A lot of them looked healthy one second and dead the next. It only took an hour or two for the one in Dick’s territory to start showing symptoms. And according to Damian, this one was barely the size of a mesmer. That didn’t exactly scream “healthy child,” but their expectations were so low at this point they could scrape the bottom of the deadzone.

The tiny things were impossibly difficult to keep alive, yet this one was perfectly fine. If Damians’s word was to be trusted he’s “Perfect, how dare you suggest I’d allow them to fall ill on my watch,”
Dick vouched for them, but skepticism was warranted. These hatchlings were fickle and this one was a quarter of the regular size. If they were healthy, why was that?

▀▖┗▛▄▖▜▚┣ ▜▚┗┣┗┫┓┏┓ ▛▄▖┅┗▖. ┣┗┏▛▄▖▜┏┣ ▚-

His entire body froze. A skull piercing shriek cut through water scrambling his thoughts like a whirlpool. It’s shrill and mechanical, sending static up his spine. Numbness spread through his fins, a blinding white shrouding his view.

It knew where he was trying to go, of course it did. It’s shriek rattled his skull, so high in pitch it felt as if it’d shatter flesh and bone. He couldn’t stop going now, not when there’s only one more barrier left to check.

With a pounding skull he urged his bones to move, snapping and groaning as they rearranged themselves. His stomach churned as organs morphed and cartilage shifted into place. His skin stretched and thickened; armor where he needed it most.
Electric blue tendrils settled below newly sprouted limbs like a second set of arms he’s less fond of. A build in defense mechanism that zapped anything that made the unfortunate mistake of bumping into them.
Migration of muscle and bone gave him a wider range of motion.
Sweet dexterity, oh how he missed its six fingered grasp.

The Warper’s shrieks grew muffed and foggy with it’s shortened range of telepathy. Those messages it shot off just as unintelligible. A conglomerate of jarring noises he could only just barely pick up on in this form. Just thinking of translating it made him nauseous.

Regardless, its presence here told a story of its own. Warpers hunted all across the crater but they swarmed around precursor settlements. They were pathetically territorial for a species that relied on cheapshots more than anything.

Unfortunately, Tim’s as nosy as he is sleep deprived, and he’s going poke around regardless.

Warpers weren’t the omniscient inescapable beings he thought they were as a kid. Their eyes had a limit, you could hide and you could swim away from them. Warpers just waited for a vulnerable moment to strike. And if there wasn’t one, they tried to make one themselves via teleportation or biological warfare.

It wasn’t exactly a shocker when they’d caught warpers summoning infected peepers. Hatchlings ate them, too excited for a “slow prey,” to mind the cysts. The guppies died quicker than adults. And by the time the child showed symptoms, the rest of the pod had been infected too. The warpers would wipe them out at that point.

He couldn’t exactly blame them for their opportunism. He’d do some cruel things too given the chance. If the opportunity struck he’d carefully tear a warper apart limb by limb. Analyze each piece of the sturdy, self sustaining machinery that so perfectly meshed flesh with the artificial. Science leagues above anything they’d ever understand in their lifetimes was within their reach all he had to do was take it.

Bruce wouldn’t allow him to do that though. The chance that they just might be sentient put them on the “don’t kill list,” Anything with any form of telepathy made it onto this list. And unfortunately, the earpiercing screams warpers could beam into your head counted as a telepathy.

“Anything with sentience should be given the bare minimum of respect in both life and death,” That’s what he said a few hundred years ago. An underhanded way of telling them to stay away from the precursors that now applied to a species that didn’t didn’t disgust them. Nobody actually expected him to respect the precursors but everyone expected him to keep his hands off the guppys’ nests. Anytime he even looked in the direction of one of their little tablets they jumped on him like he’d committed a murder! Yet when Damian stole that glowing knife he barely got scolded. Bullshit

He wasn’t allowed to steal from or poke at the hatchling. But! Luckily for him, there’s a loophole in the morality of thievery. Stealing from children, dead or alive? Generally frowned upon in every category . But stealing directly from the precursors was only frowned upon in terms of safety hazards. The lava zone being off limits was self explanatory.

The buildings in the lost river were some of the few he’s certain he could explore. They’re completely sunken, a sea dragon dented its skull to ensure that. Still he’s…wary of that larger structure and its history.

A stream of ghostly green brine greeted him as he jet forward through waters slowly dropping in temperature. A river of salt leading to the corridor. Touching the brine burned through skin if you touched it. Only those born in the river could swim through it. Though if they stayed in the pools for even a second too long it’s just as deadly.

Rays’ shrieked as he tread forward into the ominous biome. Their bodies almost transparent, organs on full display. Fossilized remains cluttered the biome. Some older than the crater itself. If he swam deeper into the biome he’d find one that could’ve munched down on sea dragons if it were alive today. Terrifying, but not what he’s looking for right now.

A force field unguarded by warpers’ stood as strong as ever. Much to his dismay, the barrier hadn’t wavered even after such a broad discharge of energy. A fossil sat nearby slowly being eaten by amoeba. Precursor’s of course felt the need to study this carcass. Cutting pieces from the bone, scrutinizing the rest of the skeleton with a blinding light.

With flat palms he slammed against the door. Forcing all his weight against the thin barrier of static. A futile attempt to squeeze through. Green sparked against his skin, like a shock from an ampeel or blast from a crabsquid. Claws screech against the frame desperate attempts to trigger some non-existent mechanism.

Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

Slamming his fists against the barrier, static shot up his skin like lightning as he slowly slid to the ground. There’s so many things he needs to know. So many questions that could be answered if he could just get his claws on their tech.

He wanted to know why things went down the way they did. A motive for the precursors’ behavior that wasn’t boiled down to the being sadists. He’s not an apologist for their atrocities like some of his siblings suggest. A sentient species doesn’t just destroy themselves like that without a reason or goal.

What did they gain from their experiments on eggs and hatchlings? Could Precursors not reproduce naturally? The risk of dying out could lead a species to desperate acts. But why would they invade here of all places when clearly, they’re suited better on land?

What could their home possibly have that the Precursor’s didn’t? Were they just searching for knowledge like he was? If so, a mother Sea Dragon trampled that pursuit.

The first time they’d seen Kharaa in the wild was after the settlement sunk. That wasn’t a coincidence, an act of precursor stupidity caused the outbreaks directly. If the panicked scrambling afterwards told them anything, it said they’d known exactly how dangerous Kharaa was.

”-im?” a voice faint like the quiet chirping of a peeper barely reached him.

“Are you there?” The words were slow, echoing throughout his skull with a shaky wobble to each syllable.

It’s Bruce. Of course it’s Bruce. No one else could reach him from the Dunes. Not in this form. What did he want now? He’d thought the hatchling would have them distracted for a while. Apparently not.

”Tim!” Bruce shouted more urgently.

He shifted back. Joints crackled, bone audibly clicking as they migrated throughout his body. The process was just another one of nature’s confusing feats. Unsurprisingly, Bruce didn’t like them using the form outside extreme necessity.

He believed these forms attracted Warpers. That they’d be caught off guard and killed if they stayed in that form for more than a few minutes. The hatchling’s reinforced this idea with their piss poor genetics, and total lack of self preservation.

Glancing at the warper that’d beamed a headache into his brain Tim could only silently fume. It was stuck. Swimming face first into a rock while spinning. After a split second… It attacked the rock.

What a terrifying apex predator!

He knew damn well warper’s showed up regardless of what you did. It's not like they’re hard for warpers to track down. Being bigger made it easier to intimidate but that didn’t erase the fact that they stuck out like a sea dragon in the arctic.

“What were you doing in the river?” Ah great. Now he had to explain himself. That’s the worst part about doing anything.

“I thought the barriers might’ve failed after the beam,” A blast like that had to have used a massive amount of energy. The barriers should’ve been at least a little weaker, it didn’t make any sense.

”They’re still active,” Three separate occasions it's gone off and somehow everything’s still fully functional! It’s like they had an infinite amount of self generating energy…Actually that made sense, but how long would it continue to function without maintenance?

Is it being maintained? Warper’s were self repairing to a certain extent could their buildings be the same? Or were there precursors holed up somewhere?

“I need you to take over in the shallows,” Bruce interrupts the sentence, halting his entire thought process.

“I thought Dick was our backup babysitter,” He spoke slowly, trying his best to keep the giddiness out of his voice.

“He’s been compromised, we need you to take over while Damian’s in quarantine,” Bruce explains, a concerned tilt on the edge of his voice.

“So… Everyone’s sick and stuck in the dunes?” Tim winced, that’s a scenario he never wanted to be in.

“Unfortunately,” He can feel the pain in Bruce’s voice, he didn’t even need to project it.

“Yikes,” With that simple condolence he’s on his way to the shallows.

Heart thrumming in his chest he jets through the water cautiously. This hatchling survived longer than any of its clutch mates; but it’d still die if anything managed to trail after him.

Curled around the hatchlings nest laid Damian. His chin was angled awkwardly into the sand, blocking off what he can only assume is the entrance. A unwavering glare locking onto him the second he entered the shallows.

“What took you so long?!” Damian fumed, claws digging into the sand. He’s looking at him like he’d just killed his pet.

“It’s only been a few minutes, I’m not a warper,” Tim reminds him as he cranes his head to peeking through a clear barrier.

”We’ll you’re certainly as stupid as one,” The younger snarls, swatting Tim away like he’s a Peeper that’d wandered to close. “I just got him to sleep, don’t you dare wake him up!” He hisses.

“I won’t geez,” He sighs, pushing back from the nest. “The stress of parenthood wore you down quick didn’t it,”

“Nothing wears me down,” The other refuted as he unwinded his tail from the nest. “Though I can’t say the same for you,” Damian smirks, slowly drifting away from the shallows his eyes still locked onto Tim and the hatchling.

“If anything happens to my hatchling I’ll hold your head over a geyser,” And with that last death threat the young leviathan left.

The second Damian leaves, Tim starts tapping on the barrier and craning his head to peek inside. He sees nothing, the child doesn’t respond like they did before. Damian said they’re sleeping, but he’d hoped the noise would rouse them just a little bit.

Patrolling the perimeter around the base, he chases off stalker’s drifting towards the shallows with open maws. Babysitting shouldn’t be this boring. It’s almost unnerving that as the hours tick by there’s not a peep from that nest.

It’s only with the setting sun that he finally spots him. Only, the hatchling didn’t leave its nest. He swims in happily from the plateaus with a chunk of magnetite clutched in his tiny hands. The rock was laughably big in the kids' hands. A peeper could probably knock it from his grip.

Apparently the kid wasn’t “sleeping” like Damian so confidently claimed. He’d been wandering. Alone. For hours. Possibly to the mountains or the Blood Kelp zone but most likely the Jellyshroom caves considering the distance.

All that way and there’s not a scratch on him. It’s hard to believe this kid’s the same species as the other hatchlings. Tim called out to them, quiet and unthreatening so as not to frighten them.

“Who’s there?” The hatchling whirled around spinning in a circle before their softly glowing eyes landed on a peeper.

“So loud,” He complains, ogling the peeper with an expression of pure confusion. “You sick?” The child questions, slowly but surely inching closer to the sleeping fish. It flees the second the child gets close enough to touch it.

From his spot in the sand, Tim watches the child scramble around. Their attention span seemed shorter than the other hatchling. From what he’s been told and what he’s seen, the kid jumped from task to task wandering around with reckless abandon.

The hatchling held up an odd looking tool to a flat side of their nest. And suddenly, it flashed! A transparent scaffolding glitched into existence, metal floating from a sack on the hatchlings back. Piece by piece the metal melted into place warping around the open shallows and creating yet another compartment for their growing nest.
It’s beautiful, but most importantly it’s evidence of something he’d never let Damian live down.

Chapter Text

Dreams that would tear you from sleep always toed the line between stupid and incomprehensibly terrifying. Honestly it’s kind of funny. One day your subconscious decides taking a pop quiz without any pants is the scariest thing on earth. Other times you wake up screaming. The voices of passengers and crewmates alike pleading for their lives ringing in your ears. 

Maybe it’s because he’s not on earth anymore or maybe it’s just memories of the crash getting under his skin? Flashing lights and heavy footsteps. A metal plate cleaving his face in two. That’s probably what’s got him sobbing like a toddler.

Jazz already said he lacked impulse control. But now, even he could see it. It’s embarrassing. He’s already back to square one when it comes to his powers. Now it feels like he’s a newbie to life too. 

Hardly understanding if he was hungry or just still still tired. Frustrated and confused by the new world around him. And with nobody to comfort him or take his problems seriously. 

His PDA didn’t know how to help him. It blinked and sang a tune like one of those ‘baby asmr’ videos. But Danny wasn’t a baby, and that wouldn’t calm him down. 

Sleeping had sucked all the moisture from his mouth. Crying hadn’t helped with that. But it’s like once the faucet switched on he couldn’t turn it off. It’s awful in every way.

Ancients know if anyone back home caught him crying like this he’d never hear the end of it. If he thought the bullying was bad before, he can’t imagine how bad it’d get as a known crybaby! 

Not to mention Jazz. Or his parents. Jazz would go on another one of her psychology tangents. “It’s okay to cry Danny,” She’d say, while rambling on about all the possible mental illnesses she thought he had. 

He loved her, but those chats always made him feel like something was wrong with him. Like he was wrong. She tried to get in his head like he’s some kind of practice dummy for her future career. And the worst part was she didn’t even know she’s doing it! She’s just trying to help and she never understands how pushy she is!

Just like mom and dad blaming every minor inconvenience on ghosts. Every choice he made alluded to a deeper psychological issue. She’d gotten better recently but he’d be lying if hadn’t looked to Alterra as a way to escape.

It wasn’t fair to Jazz. It wasn’t fair to his friends! But he was just so tired. Tired of sleepless nights and never-ending fights when he should’ve been in class. There’s only so many times a person could be scolded for falling asleep in class before they start to lose it. Hardly anyone asked ‘why?’ anymore. They’d heard all the excuses and nobody would believe the truth. Ghost had become his entire life. And he just wanted out of it.

But now all he wanted was home. It was supposed to be a relatively short trip. One he’d brag about when he got home. He was supposed to be the only kid in their little town who’d legally left their solar system. But now it felt like one of Desiree’s most twisted wishes.

 He never dared to utter the phrase ‘I wish,” but when he found out who did. Ohhh boy when he found them, he’d bury them in the same grave as whoever programmed these damn PDAs. 

A shriek cuts his vengeful thoughts short. Muffled by metal but it still set his hair on end. It didn’t sound like Dami. It was too quiet. Dami’s roars could probably shake his entire base off its foundation if he tried hard enough. But this roar resembled the strange clicking he’d heard last night. A string of clicks that trailed into a pitched howl; like a cat wailing at a closed door. 

As he slowly tip-toed to the window, more than ever he felt like the protagonist of a horror movie. One of the ones Sam loved, where the killer’s the only one left standing in the end. When he peeks past the curtain the wails quiet down a pair of beady red eyes blinking back at him through the glass. Their eyelids closed sideways. Both pupils shaped like  keyholes. 

They’re smaller than Dami. Shark-like and sleek with speckled skin that seemed smooth to the touch. Droplets of red clung to their body, glowing in the dim light of the sleeping shallows. Their face appeared to split eight ways, opening slightly to softly click its glowing teeth against each other. Like some kind of peeping Tom they craned their body to peer inside his base. 

Unlike Dami, they seemed more interested in his home decor than Danny himself. Hadn’t anyone taught them that looking into another person’s house was rude? Well, if they’re going to be invasive he might as well be too. Like a loaded gun he cocked his scanner to the side, pointing at the leviathan with the flattest expression he could muster. They don’t move. They just blink at him curiously, almost vibrating with unbridled excitement. 

Effortlessly, the beam flits across their body. A new entry to his databank with minimal effort. According to the scanner, and lucky for him this leviathan was fully grown. An adult, though just barely. Just like Dami this one was sentient, or at least they had the proper brain chemistry to be sentient. The PDA sounded pretty excited about the possibility of intelligent alien life. But nothing really confirmed they were on par with human’s.

They could be smarter? Or they could be the crows or dolphins of this planet. He needed more evidence but he wasn’t going down his parents path. In the days of high tech medical scanners vivisections gave about as much information on a species’s biology as hacking them to bits with a machete. Not to say it didn’t happen anymore but the method of shocking a monkey’s brain until it did something just wasn’t as effective as it used to be. 

The only reason his parents were so set on dissecting ghosts was that scanners glitched on them. The building blocks of the infinite realms were just so new to humanity that there wasn’t much to build off of. But this guy was flesh and blood, and the PDA had the vaguest idea of what made them tick. 

They stared intently at the scanner gripped tightly in his hands. And they smooshed their face up against the glass like a kid peering into a candy store. It’s as if they were completely enamored by the tool and even the glass itself. 

Never in his life had he seen a fish be this excited. He didn’t even know it was possible for those squid-like eyes to be that expressive. But they leaned up against the glass and Danny can’t help but mourn the fact that they can see it clearly. It’d be funnier if they couldn’t. If they just rammed into it confused like a fly trapped indoors. 

Just like the one he’d seen in the kelp forests, they didn't have any arms. Instead two electric blue tendrils fell past their fins, one on each side. The pda suggests these could be used to scramble small electrical devices. It's an unfortunate existence for a fish who seemed to be interested in technology. What were they even supposed to do? Bash their nose against a fabricator until they button mashed a knife into existence.  Life is cruel to those without opposable thumbs or telepathy. 

Danny stares into those red eyes. The sclera is bright blue, like a pair of 3D glasses. Again, they blink sideways. Eugh. Dami is officially his favorite leviathan now. He’d prefer an over excited teen than a creepy adult man who liked to stare through windows. 

If this was the guy who ate Ozzy he wouldn’t be surprised. He looked like the type to eat someone. It’s only the fact that they’re shark shaped that reassures him. Still, he thinks he needs a thicker curtain. Better yet, he could move bases all together. Find that island where no giant fish could bother him. 

These shallows were becoming a hotspot for leviathans. and those poor coral tubes he loved so much were in danger. Along with the rest of the shallows. This wasn’t sustainable at all. 

“Warning. Local radiation readings suggest the aurora’s drive core has reached critical state.

Quantum detonation will occur within ten minutes,” The robotic voice chirps like this wasn’t devastating information. 

Danny turned away from the creepy leviathan, only pausing for a second to yank the curtain shut before he started rummaging through his belongings. He didn’t know if he was close enough to be obliterated by the blast. He didn’t even know how big the explosion would be! But he could guess that’d be pretty fucking big considering the Aurora’s sheer size!

He’s dead. Triple dead, three strikes and you’re out. Gone, doomed, done!

Pacing around aimlessly throughout his base, Danny listened to the clicking of the leviathan outside. He should’ve known it was another freaky fish the moment he heard that noise last night. But he couldn’t worry about that now. Now he only had ten minutes before everything went to hell. Possibly in a literal sense. 

It didn’t warn him sooner. He’s sure it would have if it thought he was an adult. He does stupid things all the time. Danger flocks to him and if he’d been told two hours in advance he would’ve poked that metaphorical bear in a heartbeat.  

The pda probably didn’t want him poking around an irradiated area without a proper hazmat suit. Especially since that irradiated area was about to be the victim of a massive explosion. 

Launching out from the front hatch, Danny dodges the startled leviathan. Lunging up the latter of his lifepod water drips down his neck. The sky looks calm for a planet that’s about to be turned on its head. And the sun had just barely begun to warm the surface of the water.

”Emergency: A quantum detonation has occurred in the Aurora’s drive core. The reactor will reach a super critical stare in T- 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2-22222-” The robotic voice doesn’t even reach one before it glitches out and the world goes bright. 

It’s the loudest sound he’s ever heard in his life. A pulse of air smacks him dead in the face almost knocking him off his feet. And for a solid minute, everything is rumbling arounds. The water lurches, yanking his life pod back and forth leaving him to grip onto one of the rungs of the ladder for dear life. 

That creepy fish is all but lunging out of the water as the Aurora starts to burn. They’re panicking, wiggling their fins as their tendrils all but reach up to grab him. A brush of static jolts across his leg as the limb makes contact and Danny scrambles back up the ladder. 

They slide back down the pod slapping back down into water on their back. He doesn’t blame them for panicking, a nuke had pretty much gone off right in front of them; and Danny looked like he knew it was going to happen. It seemed really incriminating considering he himself had also came from Aurora . 

Finally, the PDA decides to give him that radiation suit. Creepy fish jumps out of water again and shrieks with a terrifying open mouth! Fuck this! 

He’d like Dami back please thanks.

Chapter Text

When Tim was told he’d be the babysitter for the guppy he’d expected a lot of things. Yet somehow, the kid managed to surprise him every time he saw him! It hadn’t even been a day yet and Tim could already feel his scales begin to pale. 

Half of the time he’s been here, the guppy’s been fast asleep. Out of sight, and to most of the predators in the shallows, out of mind. He can hardly imagine what the kid’s going to be like when he’s awake. An escape artist that's for sure. Not once but twice he’d escaped Damian’s careful eye. 

And Damian hadn’t even realized the second time! It seemed like this kid would face the same fate as the other hatchlings if they weren’t careful. A true shame. He’d thought the telepathy might make them easier to keep track of but I guess even warpers had their ways of sneaking around. The hatchlings weren’t any different in that aspect. 

Tim didn’t even know if the guppy was still in their nest. How could he know? Damian clearly hadn’t noticed his absence. He’d been so confident too. Assuming the child just tired themself out and fell asleep. And if Tim were large enough to wrap his entire body around their nest he might’ve been confident too. 

Still, he didn’t know how the hatchling escaped. Was there a second exit? Or was the barrier something only the hatchlings could pass through? The structure in the mountains had something similar in design. But if that were true how was he supposed to know if the child hadn’t already swam off? 

“Sad,Angry. Shut up!”

Ah, I guess that answers that question. Drifting over to the clear barrier at the side of the child’s nest. His view was blocked of course but he’d there’s no harm in observing its design. 

The walls were smooth, sleek but incredibly thin. A crabsnake could pierce it’s way through these walls with little effort. Still, it was a better shelter than a cave or a den beneath packed sand. Compared to the precursor bases which more resembled immovable, impenetrable barricades this fell flat of his expectations. It’d taken the life of a sea dragon to take just one of their bases down! Yet, if a sea dragon even tapped the exterior of this nest it’d likely implode.

Maybe it was just them being too young to build sturdy structures. The placement of their nests were always…less than ideal. A nest in the shallows was probably the safest place they could settle. Even if the nest itself was shiny enough to attract the Stalkers snapping jaws. 

Lines and curves were plastered on each segment of their nest. They looked nothing like the carvings coating every inch of the precursor's bases. Precursors had matching indentations and patterns on their bodies too. Whether they were born with it or they decided to alter themselves to match their decor was still unclear.

Maybe they meant something? Both precursors and the hatchlings had their own form of patterns they placed both their person and their belongings. It could be a way to stake claim? A unique way to say “Hey! I am of this species, and this belongs to me!” And wasn’t that odd by itself? Words you could carry with you or leave behind for other members of your species.

Was this a language? Or just decor? Symbols seemed to repeat themselves over and over again. Yet, others seemed few and far between, only paired with specific lines. 

“A…l…t…e…r…r…a” It insists upon itself. The same 7 symbols strung together, plastered tiny on every section of the nest. Was it a label? Or a name? If it were a name, every hatchling  of this clutch shared it. 

Maybe it was their species? The kid was a…Terra? It seemed to fit, though, the first three hatchlings hadn’t had that label. Were they a different species? Or were they like the peepers who changed their scales to fit their colder environment.

“Want my family.” A wave of sadness wafted through the metal walls. And while Tim had planned to avoid that topic like the plague, it was his job to console him. 

How? He didn’t know. It wasn’t like he could speak to it. They’re too young to receive telepathic messages. Only shooting off feelings and basic ideas. But it was better than the other hatchlings, who like most animals didn’t put out anything. It was guesswork whether they were hungry or sick. You had to watch their eyes. How they’d widen when frightened and shine when happy or awestruck. 

Needless to say they dropped like crashfish under their watch. They could probably die of sadness if you let them. That being said, Tim howled. Creeping against the nest he shrieked, hoping that the disturbance may be enough to distract him from his misery. 

“Who’s there?!” It’s that shout that makes Tim realize he’s staring dead into the hatchlings nest. Oops? He didn’t really feel like being stabbed or bitten right now. He’d dealt with that enough when Damian first aged out of the lost river.

It wasn’t long before something shifted inside the nest, and two blue eyes peeked out to look at him. 

“Loud,” They complained, eyes flicking rapidly across his form. And wow were those eyes startling! Like Kyanite crystals that’d somehow been polished to reflect the light of the shallows around him. 

“Rude,” The hatchling comments, their face falling stony. Tim swears he’s about to be attacked for a split second before a blinding light erupts across his body. “What are you?” They question, head tilted as the beam shifts mesmerizingly across his skin. It doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t keep him from moving either. 

The hatchling stared down at one of the tablets every hatchling seemed to be armed with. To his amazement, a reflection of himself appeared on that small slab. A chunk of those odd symbols were scrawled beneath his image. 

There’s more of them than he’d seen before but studying them properly proved impossible with the barrier holding him back.

Did that device explain whatever the kid pointed at? That would’ve been a good thing for the kid to have if not for the fact he had to get up close and personal to get that information. 

“No hands,” The child comments, briefly hiding their hands behind their back as if to mimic him. He blinks, the kid physically recoils like the action itself harmed him.

“Ew, creepy,” Ah. The kid already hated him. Good job Tim, at least he was doing better than Damian. He had yet to be bitten or stabbed.

“Go away!” The guppy glares at him like a miniature Damian. 

Out of the blue the child’s face fell. Their eyes shot open wide and panic radiated through their nest in thick oppressing waves. Had the tablet told him Tim was a threat? If that were the case he didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended. Before he could even respond he bolted! Rushing around the nest with as much fervor as his tiny legs would allow it was almost comical. In any other scenario it would’ve been; but these ‘Terra’s’ had a habit of dying in spontaneously brutal ways. 

“Bad!!” They shrieked, shooting out their nest and darting past him. The dark fins on their feet paddled wildly, smacking Tim straight against his scales as they ignored his chirps and coos. 

The Terra scrambled up the side of his egg; they climbed almost as fast as they swam. Up above water where Tim couldn’t dream to reach the hatchling stared onward. Towards the horizon, towards their rotting mother and towards the crash zone that miasma spread out and made everyone sick.

He barely had time to think on that depressing scene before. What was it? He didn’t know, but a shockwave struck the water, turning up huge clouds of sand in the distance. It’s huge, the way the water trembled and how his ears rang from the booming sound! 

The hatchling wobbles on their two feet. Tim watches in slow motion as those feet slip from the metal shell and the child goes karringing backwards. 

He’s going to die. The kid’s going to hit the water and float up to the top limp and motionless. Tim couldn’t be the one to let this kid die on his watch. He’d barely learned anything! At the last second the Terra latched onto a piece of the shell, their chest heaving as they climbed back onto the egg! Like they hadn’t almost fallen to their death ten seconds ago! 

“What the fuck just happened!!” Half a dozen voices shrieked through the bond, talking over each other as Tim lunges uselessly at the metallic shell of the egg.  

“The mother just blew up!” Steph shouts.

“It can do that??” Duke questioned frantically.

“I guess so?!” Murmured steph. 

“Is everyone okay!?” Bruce asked, again and again until he received a hesitant yes from each and every one of his kids.  

”The reapers are probably dead though,” Someone commented hopefully.

“No, those bastards are like warpers, indestructible pests,” Jason corrected, disdain clear as crystal in his raspy voice.  

“I don’t think the mother was supposed to do that.” He supplied helpfully. “The kid started freaking out before it even exploded,” 

“The kid!” The bond erupts like a geyser. 

“Are they okay?”

“You kept him in the shallows right?”

”Drake, if anything happened to my hatchling I’m going to murder you,”  

“He’s fine!” Tim barked over everyone. “The little tablet warned him it would happen, so he hid,”

”Scary, go away,” The hatchling takes a few steps back on the shell and suddenly he remembers shouting while jumping at someone usually means ‘come’re so I can eat you,” 

“He’s scared of me, I think he wants you back,” 

Oh and doesn’t Damian preen at those words. As if he needs the ego boost.

“Of course he misses me!” The younger leviathan boasted. “It’s only natural that my hatchling's smart enough to recognize my superiority,”

“Dude, he’s a baby. He doesn’t recognize anything’s ‘superiority’ he’s got the attention span of a peeper,” Jason laughs, ignoring Damian’s outraged balking. 

“Yeah, he was scared of me too, I think he’s just a little shy,” Dick chirps hopefully. 

Watching the child's frightened gaze shift into a glare he can’t help but suspect Dick’s theory may be a little off. 

“He’s not shy, he’s angry.”

“Ha! Same,” Jason chuckles.

“I mean, If I were brought into this world by precursors I’d be pretty pissed off all the time too,” Steph justified.

“I’ll give you thirty seconds to take that back before I drag you to the bottom of the dead zone,” Damian seethed.

“You’re proving my point over here,” 

“Rude,” Cass comments and suddenly Steph is backtracking like she was born to do so. “Shit! I didn’t mean it,” 

“You guys keep doing whatever you’re doing. I’ve gotta make sure a literal baby doesn’t sneak past me,” Tim quips.

“Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh,” Laughter and taunts echo inside his head.

“Shut up! All of you shut up!” Damian snaps, fuming with embarrassment. “He only slipped past me once,”

“Twice,” Tim corrects. 

“What are you talking about?,” 

“He wasn’t sleeping like you said he was,” Tim grins. “He swam back into the shallows with a piece of magnetite in his hands five minutes after you left,”

“Liar!” The younger leviathan roared. “I was wrapped around the nest!”

“You were,” Tim agreed. “And yet the kid still found a way to sneak off to the Jellyshroom caves” 

“You’re lying, that’s impossible,” Damian accused, the confidence in his voice wavering just a tad. 

“Think what you want; it doesn’t change the truth,” He finishes, stalking close to the hatchling as they dove back into the water not even waiting a second before hurrying around the shallows digging around the sand with panicked fervor. 

“Metal?” Digging their tiny hands through the seabed they brushed away layers of hardened sand until a cluster of glowing orange revealed itself to the guppy’s eager gaze. “It’s hot,” They grumbled, a stream of bubbles spilling past their lips. Abandoning the excavation, they darted past Tim without a care in the world. Clearly, the fear the Terra held for him had long since disappeared. Quickly replaced by a thin veil of annoyance.

“Move,” They command, brandishing a tool at the small chunk of metal Tim was hovering above.

“Why do you need this?” He questioned. The guppy doesn’t humor him with a response; they only blink impatiently at him. Their staring contest doesn’t last long as the guppy darts below his belly, latching onto the small crate and yanking it out of the sand. 

“Mine,” The metal crate dragged behind them pulling them down as they desperately rushed back to the safety of their nest.

In and out he darts to and fro, hauling metal, digging up quartz, chopping plants, goading crashfish into self destruction and raiding their empty nests.

What was he doing? And could Tim help with whatever it was? Carrying anything without hands was a huge pain. You can try carrying things in your mouth, but then you ran the risk of swallowing it by mistake. 

So he resorted to drastic measures, nudging a metal crate-like object with the tip of his nose. The machine was gray and white, a dark cylinder spilled a cluster of white tubes into water when Tim’s nose struck it too hard. 

The hatchling snapped over to glare at him “Littering!!!” they hissed.

Tim… didn’t know what that meant in this context. Clearly he was referring to the objects spilled, as the hatchling scrambled to gather those things. To them, litter meant ‘to scatter,’ but the hatchling was doing more than just pointing out what happened. He’d a chastising edge to his voice. To “litter” was something bad in the kid’s eyes. And if it meant placing things where they don’t belong like he thought it did, the Terras’ were all hypocrites. 

Regardless, Tim continued his futile attempts at shoving the machine towards the child. The tip of his nose bumped against the orange bordered center of the device; it made a strange beeping noise, and a stream of reddish brown poured out. Dispersing in a cloud throughout the water it flowed into his gills, Tim getting a mouthful of it when he failed back away from it.

It was bitter, and the rush he got as it passed into his gills reminded him of a plant he used to eat hundreds of years ago. The taste was similar too. Swimming through the cloud he almost see himself gnawing on those vines when Bruce wasn’t looking. 

“Uh Oh!” Suddenly, he was fighting the hatchling within the cloud. The Terra’s hand laid flat against his skin, pushing him away with all his tiny might. 

It didn’t work; Tim fought like hell. Nothing would stop him from drinking in the nectar of the gods!

“Stop!!” He didn’t. At least, he doesn’t until he remembers Terras’ could die from stress. And looking at the kids wide eyed expression, he could infer he was getting pretty close to the danger point. 

He turned away, skin still buzzing. This babysitting gig was going great! The kid was trailing closely behind him, pointing their little scanner tool at him every chance they got. Turning up sand faster than before, Tim all but launched a tiny stick-like object up through the water.

“Give, Give!” They shout, chasing after the object. 

The Terra sets his sights, setting his aim straight. His pupils dilated ever so slightly, a beam flitting across the entire object before it has the chance to hit the seabed. 

Because it doesn’t hit the seabed… At all. It just dissapears! Vanishes from all existence the second the beam did it’s intended job! Could that have happened to him!? Did-Did the hatchling make an attempt on his life the second he saw him? Did they try to kill Damian with that thing?

No…

Maybe?

Probably not?

It didn’t eviscerate him, not the first nor the second time he’d used it on him. Damian had given them an explicit report on every move the hatchling made under his care. He chased fish, often. Not just to eat them, he’s done the exact same thing he did to Tim to these fish, and all of them were fine. According to Damian, he’d brandished this tool at the reaper who’d attacked them. 

Damian wouldn’t have ever stopped bragging if his hatchling was not only the only survivor but strong enough to take down a reaper too. 

That meant Tim knew four things for certain.

-The tool couldn’t or wouldn’t dissolve flesh.

-  It fed the kid information.

- The hatchling was rushing to collect information directly after the explosion. 

- This hatchling, for once, was aware of the explosion before it happened. 

So despite what father and his siblings thought, the Terras’ seemed more aware of their surroundings than they first appeared. 

As if to prove his point, the child rushes to his nest dropping piles of metal in front of a strange blinking matching. He offered two bulbs of creepvine to the machine, which it eagerly disintegrated with lights flashing blue and white. In return, the machine offers a roll of white mesh longer than the kid’s arm. Watching with rapt attention, He sees the excited glint in the kid’s sky blue eyes. Piling rocks into the machine's open maw, he’s eager in a way only Tim could relate to. 

What was he so excited for? He doesn’t know but the Kid’s excited energy was hyping him up as well! With one final burst of light the machine offers him something horrifyingly familiar. 

An obsidian black head they’d seen on so many hatchlings before him. Hatchlings they’d thought were blind or deaf, the ones they’d seen closer to the mother were certain to have what they thought was a defect but it was starting to look more complicated than that. 

“armor!” The Kid chirps, and Tim can see it now. It made sense a species with such squishy bodies and feeble bones would find a way to protect themselves. They built what they needed to protect themselves! Just like the precursors did.

…Fascinating  

Though, he can’t say it’s very effective. The armor was a bit thicker than the kid’s skin, but not by much. Judging by how easily reapers and other wildlife tore through the other hatchlings, it wasn’t made to soften physical attack.

Damian said the kid seemed to run colder than anything they’d usually find outside the lost river. Tim felt it himself, when the child tried pushing Tim out of the way. His chubby little hands slapped against his skin, icey as they were squishy. Maybe this armor was supposed to protect them from temperature? An insulator that helped regulate their temperature.

No, it can’t be that. None of the other hatchlings were cold like this one, not until they died at least. Plus, so many of them didn’t have any armor and they’d survived a touch longer than the one’s near the mother. Though, the ones who’d survived longer than an hour were hatched further from or moved away from the mother as soon as possible. 

A thought occurs to him. One that seemed so demented but answered so many questions but roused so many more. 

All those years ago, what happened to that first batch's mother? They hadn’t found it; well, they hadn’t found it in piece. It’d been torn apart pieces strewn about every which way. But what concerned them most was a good 70 percent of what they’d seen crash to the planet’s surface was gone.

And suddenly…

Suddenly, the three surviving hatchlings had enough metal to build multiple nests above and below the surface. They tore it apart, cannibalized the very thing that brought them life. B didn’t want to talk about that, he’d said that things like that happened in nature all the time. The mother wasn’t “alive” in any sense of the word; she’s artificial, but that didn’t make the thought of cannibalism any prettier.

They hadn’t thought to think the hatchlings took her apart for a more important reason. Back then, nobody got sick when they’d approached the wreckage; but this time, everyone who got near was falling violently ill. 

The mother was leaking something out into the water. Something the hatchlings were aware of and knew was dangerous! 

Before, those three hatchlings had torn apart the mother before anything could happen. But this clutch had a mother built so fundamentally different, that even if each and every one of those two-hundred-something guppys had survived, they wouldn’t in their wildest dreams be able to take her apart. The crash had crushed the reapers’ spawning ground!

“Fix!” Dawning the ‘armor’ the child bolts from their nests swimming straight for the source of the huge fucking explosion!

Of course, Tim follows. It’s a no brainer. He’s supposed to be watching the child, keeping him alive. Letting the kid wander was probably a bad idea but he was curious. Would the armor work?  If it didn't, would he die?

Tim would be grounded for the next century if he did. And when Damian found out the kid died because of Tim’s curiousity… Let’s just say he’d take pleasure in killing him in the most brutal way possible. 

Rushing forward, his tail sweeps in front of the hatchling stopping him in his tracks.

“Outta my way,” Tim couldn’t see the kid’s face anymore but he can only assume his brows were closely knit, a fierce glare on his face.

“Please?” Like asking would make Tim change his mind and let him wander off to his death. He shook his head. That’s the universal sign for no, right? 

Fuming, he darts to the side. Tim follows, pushing him back into the safety of the shallows. “Ugh,” the hatchling complained before he just…Swam through him??

A chill shot through his body. And he clipped right through him, swimming like hell towards the crash zone. 

Is that normal? Could healthy members of this species phase through solid objects? That’s a terrible power to give a child! 

How was he supposed to protect a kid who could just ignore the laws of nature to swim into the open jaws of a reaper?

Backup. He needed backup! But all his backup was in quarantine. Still, he needed to warn them. 

“Damian, you’ve got an excuse for losing him, he can phase through everything,” 

…

…

“He can fucking what?” Surprisingly, Jason’s the first one to react, though, Duke follows soon after.

“I’m sorry, I think I misheard. He can what now?” 

“Phase through solid objects,” Tim repeats “And people,” He clarifies as the kid flits straight through his tail. 

“Are you sure he didn’t just teleport?” Dick asks, and yes that would be more believable; easier to deal with too. Teleportation was just as dangerous in the hands of a child but it made a sound. You knew when a warper used its power by the ringing in your ears and the static on your skin. The blinding light was also quite noticeable. Damian hadn’t even noticed when this hatchling used it’s ability. 

“I’m sure,” Tim shudders.

“Who in their right mind would give that kind of power to a child!?” Dick questioned like he didn’t know the precursor’s habits. They didn’t see anything they created as a child to be nurtured. Just tools to be trained or programmed to obey. 

“The same people who thought splicing Talia and Bruce’s dna was a good idea,” Jason mutters.

“At least my Biological family actually have brains,” Damian sneers. “How did the family reunion with those Reapers go?”

“It went great, we talked about pelting you into the dead zone so you can have a reunion with your relatives,” Jason replied, his words dripping sarcasm like venom. 

“Can we please stay on topic?” Dick pleads. “Tim, is the kid still in your sights?” 

“Timothy. Where is my child,” Damian seethes. 

“I didn’t lose him persay…” Tim started “I just can’t currently pinpoint his exact location right now,” Tim could almost hear the frustrated shriek from here. Actually, he thinks he did hear it. The crater is a very small space after all. 

“That’s the exact definition of losing something!” Damian shrieked. “Father, I demand you release me from this pointless quarantine this instant! Timothy is going to get the guppy you assigned to me killed!” 

“Tim.” Bruce spoke coldly. “Did you lose the child?”

”He’s just temporarily misplaced at the moment,” Tim chuckled nervously. “But! He’s got armor now!” He beamed.

“Armor?”

”Remember those children we found without faces? I think that was just their armor. They make it! With one of those little machines in their nests. It does give them more protection from attack but it really isn’t much better than what they had before. I think it’s to protect them from some more environmental aspects like temperature or. I’m guessing it protects them from the decomp the mother has been giving off and-” Tim rambled on and on as he searched for the child, cutting himself off when he saw the kid walking around on the mother above the water where he couldn’t be reached.

”Found him!” 

Chapter Text

Danny was very, very unprepared for what the Aurora had in store for him. But really; who would be prepared for something like this?

The pamphlets Alterra passed out didn’t mention anything about radioactive fallout. Ancient’s’ they hadn’t even covered the possibility of a crash! 

Yet here he was! All by his lonesome, prepping to venture into a mangled spaceship that claimed to be indestructible. 

‘Spoiler Alert!’

The ship was incredibly destructible. 

Now, he’s left to compile a list of everything he needs like he’s about to go shopping.

Need to craft

 -Extra batteries,  

 -Laser cutter

 -Stasis rifle(scratch that the recipe’s gone)

 -Propulsion gun

 -Rations

 -A radiation suit

___

A radiation suit was one of his more dire necessities right now. All his life he’d been exposed to hazardous material but not once had he ever felt as sick as he did after swimming through the crash site.

He’d recovered quickly- though that still confused him- but that was just a lucky break.

Radiation was one of those things you shouldn’t frivolously try your luck with. It could straight up liquify your organs; unravel your DNA, and cripple your descendants for generations!

All of his molecules were messed up as it is. He’s still facing the consequences of the portal, he doesn’t need a freaky ghost cancer tripping him up on top of that!

It’s a miracle he even made it out of the crash zone unscathed. Exposing himself to a lethal dose of radiation didn’t sound fun. If he’d been even a tad unluckier, he’d be puking his  guts out in his sea base right now. 

The Aurora could take hours, if not days to fix! And he spend all of that time nestled up close and personal to the ship’s most toxic inner workings.

Hacking away at it without any kind of protection would end poorly. There’s no way in hell he’d make it through without giving himself lead poisoning.

Mortality for Danny was little more than an old superstition, he held onto. It may slow him down, but what if he was capable of a permanent death?

There had to be a threshold on what he could survive. He’s still half human-

Isn’t he? 

He shouldn’t taunt fate. Ancients know he needed fate on his side nowadays.

If not for him, then for the survival of his shipmates.

Plus, if he died before the Aurora was fixed the wildlife would die off. Any survivors would starve. And Sam would never let him rest in peace again if he were responsible for wrecking the environment!

The thought of facing an angry Sam was scarier than the very real, leviathan threat still following him around.

Dami was so much better than this guy. Danny really took him for granted. Even if he was bigger and overall scarier, the teenager’s presence was more welcoming than this creepy adult.

“Stop staring!” Danny snaps emptily. It’s no use, this guy can’t hear him. 

If Dami thought of Danny like a new puppy, then this guy saw Danny as a lab rat! How he watched with eager eyes was too similar to his parents to be anything else.

There’s something about the way this fish eyed him that makes Danny want to crawl back onto his lifepod and stay there until the guy keeled over!

He already lived with scientists at home. His room was above a laboratory and his sister practiced her psychology tricks on him! Another set of eyes observing him shouldn’t be an issue…

-right? 

The leviathan blinked sideways…gross. 

There had to be a way to scare him off.

Everyone feared something. It didn’t matter what species you were, there’s gotta be something that’d put you on edge. While he’d never met a race of probably-sentient fish before now, the same rules should apply. Humans fear on instinct. Heights, spiders, snakes, darkness, anything that can kill you. 

Obviously, Danny feared what could kill him.

That was common sense. Things he didn’t understand were frightening. Even if he went out of his way to learn more, it still upset him. The leviathan following him was probably searching for information too.

But that in itself is scary too.

What if this guy decided the best way to learn about him was to kill him?

Humans, with all their flaws do that all the time. Sometimes on accident, other times on purpose. The thought hovers over him… ‘if I’m a science project. What’s stopping him from pulling the plug if what he learned wasn’t interesting enough.’

So many things about his current situation. And still there wasn’t anything he could weaponize to chase this creep off! Unless he’d developed telepathy overnight beaming a “hey dude, you’re kind of making me uncomfortable,” straight into someone’s head wasn’t an option. 

He’s just gotta deal with the audience and hope he gets bored. 

For now, he’d focus on gathering resources.

The threat of his fate going on unknown to his family hovered over him. It wasn’t his fault the Aurora crash. It wasn’t! But what would people think when Phantom never showed up again? Knowing his parents, they’d find a way to pin the blame on him. 

He’s used to being a scapegoat, but he did not want the deaths of all his coworkers to be placed on his shoulders!

But how could he stop that from happening? 

It’d taken a little over a decade for anyone to find a trace of the Desagi crew; and Danny had been the one to find it! Would it take them that long to find the aurora? Surely not. Technology had advanced since then. 

They’d make it out of here. Hell, there was already a rendezvous point! Danny just needed to find it!…

…Hopefully, they’d wait for him. 

That creepy fish had stopped snapping at him a while a good. Small victories, right? Danny didn’t want to be anyone’s lunch. If only this guy could learn personal space, that’d be great. 

The sheer amount of trash buried beneath the sand was enough to warrant a ‘kill on sight’ warrant from the locals. Chunks of glowing titanium was hot enough to turn the seabed to glass. Broken off pieces of the ship, masses of wires and shipment crates from the cargo bay. 

Most of it was useless to him at the moment. There’s only so many metal crates a person could scrap before their base was stacked full of titanium and copper wire. 

Knowing an abomination of muscle and rage was lurking in the crash zone bumped the need for a stasis rifle higher up his priority list. Those ugly teeth and sharp mandibles would be nasty for his tiny self to deal with.

The goal was to avoid the reaper entirely, but he didn’t even know if that was the only one! If everything went south, he’d need a way to escape. That means he’d need to recover the recipe asap.

If he had it before, it’s gone now. There’s something janky about these pdas. Or maybe it was just his specifically?

Not to offend the Ai, but this thing was a total piece of junk. 

Alterra’s the one to blame for that. The very model he’s holding now was the same model as the ones he’d found in the old desagi base.

The same model that came out when his mom and dad were still in college! He’s heard of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” but there had to be a limit.

It was cheaper for them to buy and reuse the older models to stock the life pods. 

They held up well enough to justify it. Hopefully, they equipped the engineers with newer models. But even if they didn’t, one of the richer schmucks who actually bought tickets to board would have something he could use for an upgrade.

Soon, his creepy stalker had grown bored of just watching him. Now he’d taken it upon himself to awkwardly puppy guarding the chunks of scrap Danny actually needed. 

What was with these fish and blocking him from doing things? 

Was it a way to establish dominance? If so, it wasn’t working. Without hesitation he’d fight back! Every time he tried to block him, Danny would smack him, swimming beneath his belly when waiting for him to move took too long.

It was easy to ignore him when you remembered the size difference between he and Dami. If he could describe it, he’d say it’s like being stalked by Godzilla, but then a crocodile takes his place.

The sheer difference between the two of them gives you false confidence. You think you can fight him. You can’t, but you think you can. 

He was itty bitty in comparison! Still big enough to swallow Danny whole but not scary enough to garner respect.

To him, this guy was a creepy fish who missed a couple growth spurts. 

He needed to think of a nickname for this guy. Something slightly condescending and fitting for a creep. Tiny… It had to rhyme so- Tina? Tim?

Tiny Tim. 

That seemed fitting. He looked like a Tim. The type of guy who’d rock a bowl-cut and make people uncomfortable with his dead-eyed stare. 

Don’t ask him how he decided that. He’s going off vibes alone. And those were the vibes Tim’s giving off.

Tiny Tim had gone from watching Danny with rapt attention, to nudging a coffee machine with the point of his nose.

For a bit it was funny to watch. A handless fish trying to work human technology? Come on, that’s hilarious! Like the sharks that bite into the internet cables on earth.

It slowly stopped being funny when he spilled cups out into the sea like an aquatic litterbug. Danny had to pick up those plastic cups. Because Tiny Tim didn’t have hands. 

His annoyance had warped into horror when the machine worked. The tap of Tim’s nose had registered as a human touch. And suddenly, a cloud of muddy brown coffee was spilling out into the shallows.

Fish should not be able to work a coffee machine! That’s a major design flaw that all the…fish could exploit. 

Danny watched in horror as Tiny Tim’s eyes dilated like a cat who’d gotten their first lick of catnip. And the sight should’ve been funny! But caffeine was poison to most creatures on earth and he’d no reason to assume things worked differently here. 

Slamming his hands against rough, rugged skin, he shoved the shark as hard as he could. Tiny Tim didn’t budge! He didn’t even move an inch! Instead, his gills flared, as he swallowed gulp after gulp of contaminated seawater.

Ancient’s, he looked giddy as a kid in a candy store.

A child with very poor taste. Danny didn’t know what Alterra stocked their machines with but it wasn’t good. He’d hardly even consider the stuff coffee! It was just awful. So awful that it made drinking dumpster water sound appealing. 

Bitter tasting, yet oddly sour. He’d only ever taken a sip and the metallic aftertaste lingered on his tongue for hours on end. 

Worst of all…

It’s decaf.

Synthesized and diluted by a fabricator; it was not fit for human consumption. They didn’t even use real coffee beans! He wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out these machine were pumping cups full of molten plastic.

Only when he’s about to have an aneurysm that Tiny Tim drifts away from the cloud. Their body is trembling like a leaf, their tendrils jittery. 

“Please don’t overdose,” He crosses his fingers ,repeating the phrase again and again like a mantra.

The scanner. It said everything was fine. But it’s also said a lot of things since the crash, and Danny didn’t know whether or not to trust it.

Monitoring him like he’s a person nurse; he watches as Tiny Tim kicks up plumes of sand. In a caffeinated frenzy, he nosedives into the seabed like he’s trying to snort it! He tosses things left and right in his flurry of excitement.

Is… Is this what Jazz felt when Danny first started drinking coffee?

He owed her an apology. For a lot of things.

Wait a second!

The but of a stasis rifle pokes out of the ground. He barely catches a glimpse of it before Tiny Tim launches it up into the water at top speed. Because of course he does! The one thing he actually needs and this guy was throwing it around like a hacky sack!

Danny catches it. The broken tool disappearing to the modern magic of his scanner before it even hits the sand. Tiny Tim freezes, his eyes bulging at the sight. In shock he stills, and Danny leaves him to fester. 

He steps into his base. A robotic voice greet him as soon as he enters just like it’s supposed to. And like he’s supposed to, Danny sets off to work with the fabricator.

It’s boring. The cool sci-fi aspect that’d once enamored him had long since worn off. He spent most of his time standing and waiting with the fabricator. You couldn’t even watch the machine work!

Staring straight at those flashing lights and lasers made spots dance beneath his eyelids.

By the time his fancy new tools and radiation suit is done, he’s raring to go.

The new suit is sleeker, than the one that’d been packed in the life pods. Dull blues covered his lower body, a matte silver accenting his 

The design of his new suit is sleeker than the one he wore now. Dull grays covered his body, belts and buckles accented by yellow black. A screen on his leg glowed neon blue. His helmet was thicker than before, a sturdy respirator built into it; making the one he’d made before completely obsolete. Thick tinted glass shrouded his entire face from the second he put his helmet on.

It’s heavy, the suit altered to fit his smaller form. The idea of radiation suits being needed for someone as small as him was disturbing. A necessary precaution but one that was unnerving nonetheless. 

Looking at himself gave him that same uneasiness as looking at the child sized gas masks from ww2. 

But there's no more time to think of that. No time to stall! Collecting his courage, he sets off towards the crash site, Tim stalking alongside him. 

But their alliance doesn’t last long. As the waters grew musty, Tim paused anxiety wafting off him. Danny didn’t blame him for faltering, he wasn’t big enough to fight a reaper like Dami could, but that’s okay. He’d no plans on fighting those beasts. 

He could, however, blame Tim for trying to stop him. Danny knew he was going to try and act like a barricade before Tim even moved his body. If this were any other situation, he’d appreciate the warning, maybe he’d even heed it. 

But Danny’s prepared. He’s ready to face the risk of death and he mostly knew what he was doing!

He’s seen of reapers would attack something heaps bigger than them and he’d seen what it took for them to back off. Both of them knew a fight with a reaper meant death but only Danny knew the Aurora’s drive core was the bigger threat to them!

He couldn’t be the one to turn around. 

The thought of asking Tim to move briefly crosses his mind. But the words don’t leave his mouth before he realizes how stupid that idea is. 

Neither of them understood each other! Tim didn’t speak English and Danny didn’t speak whatever language Tim spoke. Hell, they probably didn’t even have the same rules of body language!

So Danny clenches his fists, and takes a deep breath. What little power he can muster flows through his veins awkwardly, but it does the job. It takes a second but Danny phases through the leviathan’s body. 

The feeling of his no longer solid body slipping through him is nauseating. Like the first time he’d ever phased through a person. That was the feeling of forgetting to make the area he phased through intangible as well. 

He forgot what that felt like. Awful. 

And unfortunately, he’d be needing to do that again and again as Tim thrashed his tail back into Danny's path. He moved like a squirming, creepy roadblock. 

Tim couldn’t stop him. As he crept closer to the flaming wreckage of the Aurora the water seemed to grow thicker and rusty. 

Scrap was strewn about everywhere but there wasn’t a trace of human remains. Someone stupider would see that as a sign that survivors were in the plenty. But he knew better. That explosion would’ve obliterated anyone anywhere near the Aurora. 

Nobody could survive that. Not even if they’d hidden within the safest, most barricaded section of the ship. 

A gapping wound had been punched into the ship’s hull. Flames cradled metal scaffolding, the ribs of the ship exposed to the elements. 

As he stepped above water, the loud groans reached his ears. Listening to the rumbling of the dying ship was like listening to a loved one on life support. 

Beams trembling, wires snapping; the whole place was falling apart. Anyone with a brain could see that. 

“Warning: ship’s structural integrity is low. Fire suppression equipment and laser cutter may be required. Exploration is conducted at your own risk.” His Pda chirped out the obvious but Danny thanked it regardless. 

The ship was ablaze. And believe it or not, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Alterra did not build their space craft with the intent of crashing into planets. 

This wasn’t the death star even if the company that built this was morally bankrupt.

Rubble was strewn about everywhere. Floodlights were tossed around, bent like paper clips and the storage crates spilled their guts down a ramp. Exits sat crumpled, blocked off by rebar and crates that slid out of place when the ship went down. 

Danny padded cautiously up a ramp, doing his best to suppress the roaring flames as he went. Frigid breaths of ice shot from his finger tips, the smaller fires snuffed out quickly as he darted place to place. 

A creature scuttled closer on four spindly legs. The animal stood close to the ground, with legs like pincers. Strange… It seemed like “crab” wasn’t just earth's default form of animal. 

Though, just like a lot of the fish he’d seen on this planet, the crab sported a giant eye. The observants would love this place- or hate it, Danny didn’t really care. 

A single giant blue eye sat oddly at the top of the crab’s head. Dead center of its skull, the crab crouched down to catch sight of him. 

For a split second, it froze, revving up before launching itself full force straight for Danny’s face. 

A scream ripped from his throat, as he slashed wildly at the creatures snapping legs. It ran up at him, dodging his blade and dancing around him with murderous intent. 

Why was this thing so angry?!

The animal attacked in short bursts, giving Danny the time to jump out of the way before it could slash his tiny ankles. Was he really small enough that crabs thought they could take him down? 

Scratch that. He definitely was. With a scowl he turned his knife in his hands.

“Go for the eye,” He muttered to himself as he waited for the animal to charge at him for what would hopefully be the last time. 

As it leaped through the air, Danny struck. His blade sunk into the jelly of its eye, Danny pinning the squirming creature and forcing the blade all the way through. 

Its beady eye goes milky white, legs stalling and snapping one last time before they go completely stiff and motionless. 

His heart thumps heavy in his chest, his legs shaking. “It’s just a crab.” He whispers to himself. He’s faced worse on this planet. Heck, he’d faced worse on his planet!

But there’s something odd about this animal. Something wrong about how easy it was to chop through it, and something scary to its unrelenting aggression.  

He didn’t know what was wrong with this thing but there was something about it that made every bone in Danny’s body shout out in alarm.

“Don’t let it touch you” The thought repeated itself in his head like a mantra. Yellow blood crept down the ramp and down his hand. He hadn’t let go of the knife that pierced through down its middle. 

The shell had given in too easily. Its bottom caved in wetly as if the creature had been rotting for weeks. And its eye had cut easily like a soft cheese. Toxic green peeked out from beneath his stab wound. A sac, bulbous and twitching sat just below its shell. 

Danny drops his grip on the blade like it’d turned to acid. The crab could keep it. Danny didn’t care, he didn’t want that thing’s blood on his hands anymore. 

Rushing away, Danny looks at his hands in horror. From his palms to his fingers, yellow had stained them. The contaminate having splashed from the second he’d first swung his blade. 

Luckily, he’s unharmed from the vicious attack but that probably wouldn’t last long. There were more of them.

More crabs, scuttling curiously like they were innocent. But Danny could see the way their mouths twitched. They were all hungry, but none of them ever attacked as viciously. 

They kept their distance, stalking towards him and lunging only when they thought they had a chance of winning. A few zaps from his laser cutter had them scuttling away. 

They’d be cute if they weren’t so stabby. 

“Caution: scans show the digestive tracts of nearby lifeforms contain human tissues." 

What…? Danny froze, pointing his scanner at one of the shyer crabs. There was human meat in its stomach. Actual human flesh… No wonder they were so boldly trying to kill him- they’d already had a taste!

Now, it’s not like he expected to find any survivors. For god’s sake the ship’s been baking in radiation for days! But of all the things he’d expected to eat the bodies left behind, crabs were not on that list! 

That’s just all types of wrong. 

Couldn’t the reapers have eaten them? They were quite literally a short swim away from the hull. Why could the bodies be scavanged by something cooler? 

It’s strange, but he’d rather see a corpse. That’d make things seem less eerie. It’d make him feel less alone.

With the shake of his head, Danny continues his trek carefully. His propulsion gun is heavy, its battery draining rapidly. One use could take him from 100% battery to 78% in a matter of seconds. 

This was one of the many things that had him regretting taking his powers for granted. Telekinesis was overpowered and he barely used it! One of his most useful powers and he could count the times he’d used it on one hand!

When he’d held all those shiny, more destructive powers at his fingertips, giving himself a headache to bend spoons had seemed like a waste of time. 

Now something he could do easily just a week ago was being done sloppily by alterra tech. 

It’s no surprise Vlad never stocked Valarie with any of Allterra tech. Television hyped up this tech to him like it’d be a sci-fi nerd’s dream, but when it came down to it the stuff in Amity was more practical. Ectoplasm was one hell of an energy source.

Maybe, if he was here long enough he could recreate some of his parents tech?

“Aurora systems are running on local reserve power. Unable to remotely download blackbox data,” His PDA chirps, and that’s fine. He’s not here for any blackbox data, he’s just glad it’s not another warning about a flesh eating crab. 

Almost everything’s on fire, and it’s not much better when he gets inside. Not that he’d expected it to look any better. They’d been shot down for Ancient’s sake!

”Scans of damage to the Aurora do not match any known offensive technologies.” 

Fuck. That’s just what he’d been dreading to hear. Alien tech? Probably. That’s just his luck. He’s one of the first people to interact with sentient alien life and they had guns! He can barely wrap his head around it. 

This should excite his space loving self shouldn’t it? No. He can’t bring himself to feel the hype. Not when he didn’t know who or what had shot them down. 

The leviathan’s he’s already met came to mind as suspects but his scanner barely recognized them as sentient. Plus, if they made a weapon like that they would’ve killed him on sight upon seeing him alive. 

And Tim had been so curious, like he’d never seen a helmet or a scanner. If his species built a weapon that could detect and shoot down ships from outside their planet’s atmosphere, they’d know about radiation and fabricators. A scanner shouldn’t baffle a species that advanced. Unless this species was building nukes before they built cities, it shouldn’t confuse them as much as it did. 

Seeing the damage was supposed to answer questions but now it only seemed to surface more of them!

Putting out fire after fire Danny starts to grow exhausted already. There's so much of it. Blazing reds and oranges burning into the back of his retinas.

Any pda left behind he plucked off the ground. There wasn’t much time for him to do much more than skim through them. 

As Danny continues ahead, he reaches a crossroads. Two glowing signs flicker “cargo bay 3” and “Administration,” Which to explore first? It seemed obvious. 

The cargo bay was one of the few doors on the ship that locked. If it came down to it he could phase through. But did he really want to make himself any more nauseous?

Administration was the better bet if he wanted to find any code or secret info that’d give him any insight on what’s going on within the ship!

He could only hope that Alterra’s people left their codes and passwords everywhere like his parents did.

“Aurora systems are running on reserve power. Unable to remotely download black box data.” Well that’s expected, considering the whole place was in shambles. But Danny wasn’t looking for any black box data. 

He was here to prevent nuclear fallout! Which was a bit more important if you asked him. 

The door to administration is blocked by a wall of flames. A bad sign for anyone scavenging for info. Did anyone use paper anymore?

Alterra used a mix of both digital and physical records last time he checked. How much heat could these PDA’s tolerate before they all went kaput? Not much probably. None of the computers here were built to withstand the heat of this burning ship.

If the radiation in here didn’t fry all the tech the heat would’ve finished the job long before he got here. But still, he was hopeful there’d be something of worth here for him.

Fire extinguisher in hand, he attacks the flames dead on. Ice shoots from the tips of his fingers, the cold nipping at the flicker edge of the inferno. 

Danny’d never seen fires die as quickly as they did on this ship. Blame it on dwindling oxygen supply or the tameness of a fire not stoked by ectoplasm, but it seemed Danny had a promising career as a fire fighter waiting for him back home! 

Stepping into admin, he rushes to suppress the growing flames before they can engulf a console sitting in the middle of the room. The screen flickers, a green document frozen on its digital face. 

The entire office is trashed. That’s saying a lot considering Aterra’s strict rules of minimalist decor. They weren’t even allowed to hang up posters if they weren’t promotional material for the company!  

He runs his hand across the heat warped plastic of a laminated ad for the prawn suit. The armored suit stands tall, and even Danny can admit it’s kind of cool. If he hadn’t already seen and used mech armor, he might’ve looked at this poster with stars in his eyes. 

But instead, he pulled it down, folding the poster in halves, then quarters, until it fit small and neat in his bag. A tablet sitting on a bench below where the poster used to be was more interesting to him. Its contents were short and sweet. Packaged in the form of a disgruntled note from an underpaid admin member. At the bottom of the note scrawled the code to the cargo bay.

That’s probably not secure or safe to write down. But who was Danny to complain when it made his life so much easier? 

The terminal gave him an article for the Aurora. When they’d first taken off, he’d read this, excitement bubbling in his chest. 

Looking at it now, the article only struck uneasiness. Like picking up old newspapers about the Titanic. You know what’s going to happen to it, you know it’s awful; and you know it’s budget cuts or humanities cockiness to blame. 

He wished he could curse Alterra’s poor planning and worry for the crewmembers from a safer distance. Preferably at home, where there weren’t any giant murder fish. 

Heading back out admin, Danny stares dead at the sign for the third cargo bay. How many cargo bays did the ship need? Apparently, three; because four would just be excessive!

There’s a ramp leading down to a door crowded by upended furniture. Now Danny could jump onto a ledge above that door. He could wallcrawl, press his butt against the open flames and break his legs when he jumped down.

Or…? 

He could-and this might sound crazy- crawl over those crates? They only stood about four feet high-ish. He wasn’t a video game character, he knew how to climb! It wouldn’t be easy considering his state, but it’s doable. 

Yanking himself up onto the top of a larger storage crate, Danny shoves a desk off the stack. It clatters loudly against metal floors and if the ship wasn’t groaning so loudly, Danny might’ve been startled by the noise. 

Instead, he drops down rushing down the hall to the cargo bay, its metal door standing intimidatingly at the end. The desk, dragged by his propulsion gun, acts as a stepstool. His fingers hover above the keypad.

1- beep.

4-beep.

5-beep.

4-beep.

<

…

   …

     … 

        -Click

Oh thank god. 

The air deflates from his lungs. A breath he didn’t know he was holding finally releasing when heard that click. Flat palms pressed against the door he clumsily slides it open. 

It jams at the end, the metal slipping and falling out of socket. Permanently open, Danny slips through. 

Standing atop a trembling set of stairs, he scans across a fire-lit room. Storage crates had slid when the ship started plummeting. They clustered up together. Some dented open; others sealed as securely as they’d been at takeoff. 

All things considered, this might be the least destroyed room of the ship. Spacious, and furnished by supply crates, there wasn’t much here to burn.

It might actually be worth it to sweep through and raid the place when the whole “drive core” situation was done and over with. 

Roaming, he trails down a ramp diving off an elevator platform and splashing into another flooded section of the ship. 

As if waiting for him, the second he dove in, something latched onto his arm. Blue tendrils curled around his bicep, fangs fumbling to pierce through his suit. 

It looked like the secret love child of a leech, mosquito and a tick. An unholy amalgamation of every blood-sucker on earth. A light-blue sac slowly began to fill with red as the pest pulled the blood veins. 

Suckling a few drops, the bug freezes, it’s body seizes, jaws popping open and the tendrils going stiff. 

He pokes it. Not gentle but not hard either, he just nudges it with two fingers; and it flops over. It floats stiff on it’s back like a tub toy

-It’s dead…

Did his blood just kill a guy?!

That’s concerning isn’t it? Human blood shouldn’t be able to do that. The fact that it could kill an animal did not say anything good about his health…

…So he’s poisonous now- or was it venomous? Either way it’s cool! On this ocean planet, anything that tried to take a bite of him was soggy toast! 

Apparently, the other blood suckers didn’t have the brains to comprehend this. Each time he moved, another one of them latched their squishy blue tendrils around his arm.

Each leech that died seemed to draw others closer. They swarmed to consume the corpses of their fallen brothers.

He swims onward, the water growing shallow as he follows a glowing sign. 

“The Drive core shielding sustained internal damage during the collision. Do not attempt to repair without appropriate qualifications,” As he walks through the door, his Pda chitters out another warning 

Growing up with scientists for parents counts as qualification- right? Cleaning the lab was one of his chores; fixing/sabotaging machinery a mandatory hobby.

Danny isn’t doing anything illegal right now. No sir! He’s a good, reactor core-repairing dubiously aged Alterra employee! One who’s totally fit for the job and didn’t die in a lab accident. 

But it’s not like the tablet could stop him if he wasn’t qualified. It’s just a tablet. A tablet that could report him to whatever authority it had access to.  

That might’ve scared him if his life wasn’t practically over already.

The drive core is…A mess. That’s the only word he could muster to describe it. The room is roaringly loud, the hum of failing machinery threatening to pop his eardrums. 

Scorched metal plummeted from the ceiling, puffs of hot steam hissing up from where it splashed down. 

The drive room was flooded, like a cup half full. Those little leeches-bleeders: as his Pda likes to call them- were lurking beneath lapping sea water. 

Four towering pillars stood intimidatingly in the middle of the room. All four of them were connected by a grated catwalk. Bits of that catwalk laid sunken to the floor. If the room hadn’t flooded, he’d be risking a nasty fall right now. 

The drive core stands tall and steaming hot. Just the sight of it has him frozen. A mix of awe and fear cemented his feet to the floor. 

Though the smoke was thinner; the air couldn’t feel any thicker. It seemed to grip him by the skull, reaching down his throat and twisting his stomach in its hands.   

“Warning: local radiation at maximum tolerable level.” Tolerable level? That was another way of saying -“Hey! Fix this. Or we're all gonna die!”-  

Like chocolate left in the car on a sunny day, any hesitation melts from his body. He pries his feet off the floor taking a running start. 

With the confidence of a trained swimmer and the skills of an amputee walrus Danny dives off the metal railing. 

His head dips below the surface, his entire body tense as he tread through contaminated waters. Everything in this ship was contaminated, but this flooded room was the source of the problem. 

A twisted center piece of this flaming wreck! Really, the drive core pulled the room together. Radiation gave the place that Chernobyl vibe! And that vibe was cancer. 

In his head, his internal organs were already starting to liquify. Melting like the wicked witch of the west. According to his brain, he’s gonna be a messed up flesh candle by the end of this.

With strands of DNA being unraveled and used as jump ropes for all the cancer cells.

But in reality, there’s a repair tool in his very solid hand. A repair tool that slowly knit together gaping metal wounds in the core’s pillars. 

In total, there’s eleven breaches. Between four pillars, there’s only eleven gashes for him to fix. He’s lucky there’s anything to repair at all, but still. 

Maybe he was expecting something more intense? A damage that he couldn’t possibly comprehend or just something that’d vaporize him instantly. 

That explosion had him expecting the worst; and it was the worst! This just wasn’t the perilous death-defying mission he’d hyped it up to be. 

As he surfaced, the air already felt lighter. His job was done here. All that was left for him to do was explore the rest of the ship. 

From the seamoth bay to the locker rooms, Danny rifled through every inch of each room. He takes what he can carry. Anything that’d be ruined by the seawater was stuffed into his backpack immediately. 

Photos and notes of anything that’d identify his crewmembers was a priority. Their families deserved to have them. 

Would it be rude to read them when he got back to base?

Probably, but he still needed the information. 

The prawn bay is up a ramp behind a broken door. Flames taller than him block the way. Probably a sign he shouldn’t go in there; but Danny wasn’t one to heed warnings. 

Inside, it’s like looking on at a moving picture of hell. Sparks raining from the ceiling, and support beams set alight. There’s hardly any floor to stand on!  

The pipes of the ship were on full display, the room skewed sideways. Internals supposed to be kept hidden were being drowned with seawater. 

Hanging from the ceiling were several prawn suits far from his reach. If could still fly, it might’ve been possible for him to scan them. But he couldn’t fly. So he climbed up the ramp to the and stepped into the hallway of the living quarters. 

On the right, is the supply room. It’s chalked full of nutrient blocks, water bottles and other various commodities. This wasn’t the only supply room on the ship but it was the one closest to his cabin. 

Digging around, he phases his hands into a box at the bottom of one of the tall shelves. When he pulls his hands back, he’s cradling a smaller metal box. Jarring and janky looking compared to Alterra’s sleeker designs, FentonWorks is printed in bold green letters on the box's lid.  

He remembers packing this box with his parents. They’d been so paranoid, “there could be ghosts in space Danno! You can never be too careful!” 

Alterra didn’t allow their employees to carry weapons. Meaning any ghost hunting equipment was left behind. The box was filled with precious things. Photos of him and his friends, seeds from Sam’s garden-that might actually be illegal to carry- a tiny jar of dirt from his backyard, a utility knife, some pens and a single journal with a star speckled cover. 

He stashes the box away in his bag, stepping out into the canteen. Hosing down the flames, Danny stares at the upturned tables. It’s strange to see. Less than a week ago, he’d sat at those tables for breakfast.

The cabins aren’t any different. Looking at those ruined rooms is depressing. It gets worse as he collects what’s probably the last recorded words of several people. 

Phasing past the captain quarter’s door, Danny finds himself disappointed. The room is starkly bare. There's only a blank screen of a dead data terminal and a record of their captain playing video games off the clock. 

There’s nothing better for him to steal. No tech for him to salvage and nothing noteworthy to take home!

Sighing, Danny rushes back down to the prawn bay and-

…Cllick

           Crickk…

The snoot of a certain creeper peeks above shallow water. He blinks surprised at Danny as if to say “oh hey, you’re still alive. That’s cool I guess,” Tiny Tim seemed more interested in the prawn suits than he was in Danny.

Looking up at the ceiling, the fish gapes with stars in his eyes. The tendrils at his sides swish back and forth as he lunged up to nip the suits metal boots. 

“Hey!” Danny snaps, “Cut that out!” The last thing he needed was for Tiny Tim to successfully pull the thing down. It’d crush him at worst, punch him at best. 

The leviathan turns to look at him, sitting cramped in the pipe crowded space. This was… this was awful.

Even though he’d “technically” completed his goal this trip was starting to feel like a total loss. He’d surfaced more questions than he’d answered. Most important being “How the hell did this leviathan get on the ship, and how do I get him back out?!” 

The black box data was going to have to wait until he helped Tiny Tim.

Chapter Text

...

...

...

The hatchling died didn't he?

It'd been a while since the kid armored himself for travel, even longer since he disappeared into the inner workings of the carcass.

He'd hardly moved since the hatchling enter. Tim only moved to circle the body, batting off reapers with his eyes locked onto the wreck.

Even as the sun reached the horizon, brilliant colors shifting into a quiet darkness Tim kept watch.

That's why there's no doubt in his mind.

That kid was dead, and Tim was never going to hear the end of it.

If Tim could barely fight off the reapers, he can hardly imagine someone so tiny fighting them off.

Wait. He doesn't have to imagine. One of the first eggs to hatch had done so a mere dozen feet from the reaper's crushed breeding ground!

They'd also been the first to spontaneously combust, but Tim didn't know how that related to the local predators.

The only saving grace he's got, is the fact that none of the reapers were flexible enough to fit inside.

The space inside was limited and awkwardly shaped, clearly built for a species 10 times smaller than they were. If the tight fit wasn't enough to deter you, the scale scorching internal would.

Just ten minutes in there would have you looking burnt as a rabbit ray resting in the lava zone!

If that wasn't bad enough. There's not enough water to hold a creature of that size without suffocating them!

And the downside of that...?

Tim wouldn't fit either!

Water didn't belong in there; that much was clear. Maybe that's why things were going so wrong for this species? Like the precursors, the Terra's preferred dry land.

And he can't exactly say it's not safer. Yeah, there's more food in the water but there's a lot more predators in there too. The constant storms in the spring were what made land dangerous, the lack of food too.

For a Terra, living on the island was the sensible choice. There were less predators, and their limbs were suited for that type of environment.

He can't help but wonder...Would this hatchling flee to the island too?

How was he supposed to study a creature that's always out of reach!

Shaking his head, a string of displeased chirps squeaking from his throat.

A dead Terra was useless to his studies too. Especially since B never let Tim specifically do more than a basic inspection of the corpses!

Seriously! It's like the older leviathan though his son was an inch away from cannibalism at all times.

...He's not!

Dead or alive, he's not going to sneak a nibble, not when this species started showing symptoms of Kharaa faster than any species on the planet! He's not dumb enough to eat infected meat, or a member of a related species!

He's also not dumb enough to assume the predators in the area held the same standards as him.

Reaper's hunt down and kill anything that moves or make sound. They pierce prey with their mandibles crushing flesh with their teeth.

Crawlers snapped and stabbed, sneaking around to ambush their prey. These were one of the few predators that moved above ground. They traveled in groups, so if you saw one, chances were there's another one hunting nearby.

Bleeders- as the name suggests- sucked the blood from your veins. They're a cannibalistic species that travels in pack. Fighting back or killing one only drew the pack closer.

They flocked at the smell of blood, and the Terra's didn't have that much to give.

And this hatchling was so much smaller! A single bleeder could probably drink half the blood in their body!

This Terra wasn't safe above water without their guidance; and he wasn't safe below water either.

The only way he'd ever be safe was if they both bailed from here and hid forever. But it's too late for that now! This entire biome was tainted, and had tainted them in return. A thick cloud of poison invisible to his view was draining on him more and more by the second.

As if all was well, the reaper's swam calmly around the carcass. They snapped up fish that were slowed by the poison, chasing down the fish that tried to leave. Not a single one showed signs of that heavy exhaustion that's weighing on him.

In fact, they were more active than he'd seen them in a long while. Blame it on the hellhole being blocked or the abundance of "Food," but these reaper were gorging themselves.

Hunting every living creature in sight, they're preparing themselves to grow their numbers before something else came up to cull them.

Tim wasn't a reaper who could ignore poison, and he wasn't the Terra who could build armor to fight it. Tim was a guy who'd survived worse, and was going to sit here until the hatchling emerged or he himself passed out!

It'd take ages for him to live it down if he left now.

Heck, he wasn't living it down now!

Not when he was the one who allowed the kid to wander somewhere as dangerous as the crash zone. If the kid died here, to his family Tim might as well be the murderer!

"Have you seen the hatchling leave yet?" The same question had echoed throughout the bond again and again for the past few hours.

"For the hundredth time, No!" He snaps, the electricity in his tendrils flaring. "I would've said something if anything changed,"

Unlike the poison in the water, Tim's patience was thinning.

"We wouldn't be asking if you did your job and kept him distracted in the shallows," Jason comments, he was one of few who'd already started recovering from the toxins, and you think he'd be happy about it, but he wasn't.

" Didn't we already agree that it's impossible to keep any of these hatchling's in one place?"

"You're blaming me for letting him into the crash zone, but none of the guppy's you watched could phase through solid objects" He defends, "How was I supposed to stop him?" He counters.

"You were supposed to tire him out," Damian interjects, his voice faint from sickness only flaring when he's frustrated. "He's a baby; it's not that hard!"

If Tim had been a Crashfish, he would've blown up in a pathetic burst of rage by now. Because what?! He knows Damian of all people isn't calling out him for being neglectful!

Damian. The guy who lost the hatchling on multiple occasions was criticizing him for being a bad babysitter!

At least Tim didn't lose this one! He knew exactly where he was, he just couldn't reach him right now.

"Don't even start with me. None of the guppy's you guys watched could phase and they still died! It's not that easy,"

It wasn't easy; it's the furthest thing from easy. These children were determined to kill themselves and they still didn't know why they were doing it.

"I've stayed by the front for a couple of hours now, but I don't think I'll be able to for much longer," He warns nervously.

The carcass had been making some weird sounds, weird sounds that were growing higher and higher in intensity by the second.

It was a rumbling, gurgle of a noise. Heavy, mechanical in a way that spurred his decision to flit away from the metal beast.

This place seemed odd before; and then it blew up. Now it sounded weird. So maybe...? Just maybe! It was safe to assume this area was going to get blown up yet again.

Click- Click- Click- Click- Click—

Snap!

The beast groans, and Tim can feel something in the water shift. He can feel the smog lift but only slightly, and the spillage ebb to a slow stop.

"It stopped," He whispers awestruck into the bond.

"It stopped?" Duke questioned, "How does a creature just "Stop," rotting?"

"Ice," Jason deadpans. "Also, It's an artificial creature. It's not supposed to rot,"

"But it did rot... So why and how was it rotting in the first place, and how'd it stop," Duke wonder, and Tim was asking the same question in his head.

Precursors didn't rot; but Terra's did. Terra's built things that fell apart in a few years, while precursors built fortresses that'd last thousands of years without maintenance.

It's odd.

"I might have an answer for that last one," Tim chirps excitedly, his tail swishing methodically to smack a reaper in the face.

"Before we left the shallows, the hatchling was preparing for something." Tim rants, explaining all the weird tools and armor the kid built after their frantic search for resources.

"I think the hatchling might've been the one to fix the de-comp," Tim states. He doesn't actually think so- he knew so.

What other explanation was there!?

If the corpse was going to fix itself, it would've done so already! It's spilling poison into the water for days, but when the kid gets in there in there- it just stops?

That's not a coincidence.

Dragging his body against the seabed, Tim felt the heat of the ground painfully scorch his skin.

He clung to the side of the carcass like a guppy would with it's mother. The closer he got to the wreck, the hotter the sand would burn against his scales.

A pack of reapers called this place home; he'd been batting them off for hours now. The predators rested in shifts, so there's always at least one hunting for food.

Their breeding ground was crushed by this hunk of metal but the hellhole was also blocked off.

It's a good time to be a reaper on this side of the crater.

No predators, plenty of food. It's practically a dream come true for the gigantic, carnivores!

But it's not going to last long. There were other routes the sea dragon used to escape the lava-zone, but this one was its favorite. He wouldn't be surprised if later, the creature just rammed it's head through the metal carcass out of frustration.

It's not like a sea dragon hasn't destroyed stronger materials before.

Right now, Tim felt like a sea dragon. With him poking around, clawing and carving out a hole large enough for him to squeeze through. He was bigger than a reaper, just by a bit; but he's also more flexible than they'd ever be.

Snapping at the gash he carved, Tim peeled back the metal into something he could just barely slip past. Searing hot metal stripped chunks off his back as he squeezed into the artificial corpse like a giant parasite.

There's water inside- Thank the sea emperor for that- but just as he suspected it's not enough. Just barely, did the murky water keep him from suffocating. It's touch was electric, like the nest of an Amp-eel as it lapped against his wounds.

This water was the only thing keeping him alive right now. But as he shifted awkwardly through the mother's internals, it's clearer more now than ever; it's not supposed to be there.

Tubes hissed and shot steam at him like a geyser! In such a small space, he couldn't dodge. All he could do was flail and dent the tubes as he squirmed away from the heat.

The same tubes sparked and popped angrily when he surfaced. Mesmerizing blue lights flickered, spraying a white hot shower of liquid fire onto his scales.

It's only the pain on his skin that allows him to tear his gaze from the beautiful- yet somewhat morbid- scene in front of him.

He'd never seen anything like this before!

The carcass's thick, outer shell matched the outside in it's sleeker design. It's smooth, hardly textured at all in comparison to the outside of a precursor base.

He'd never been unfortunate enough to see the inside of a precursor base in it's prime like many- now deceased- individuals had. He'd only seen what had been exposed by the sea dragon's attack. And that wasn't much.

The outside of said bases were different story though. Tim was very familiar with their outer decor. And precursors decorated in a very specific way—

—With sharp lines, geometric shapes, and carvings so intricate it would make you dizzy if you looked at it too long.

Was this lack of detail the reason the Terra's built such flimsy creations?

A sea of grey tubes varying in size crowded up a room he'd swam into. The room was big as a cavern, with enough space above water to fit small sea-dragon. Sound seemed to echo, the crackle of flames tangling alongside the rumbling of a crumbling ceiling.

Some of the tubes around him shot streams of hot gas that was awkward to avoid. Other's hummed a sickly tune, sparking like the ones hanging from the ceilings.

Were they supposed to do that?

...

Probably not.

For once, he'd like to give the Precursors the benefit of the doubt. Not because he liked them, or justified their behavior somehow, but because he knew they're smarter than this.

Even if he hated them with every fiber of his being, he couldn't deny that the precursors were a species of brilliant architects. They were scientist who took things too far; builders that believed their creations were above nature itself!

-If they built something that's supposed to blow up, then it was going to blow up the whole crater damn it!

-And if they built a weapon? That weapon would devastate entire communities for thousands of years before they ever thought to upgrade it.

- If they wanted to lock someone out of an area? They'd do so in a way that'd stand tall a thousand years after their species died off!

At this point, the decrease in quality was just insulting at this point.

Terra's weren't precursor's; precursors didn't fail like this.

When a precursor failed, it ended with 90% of all life on the planet being killed off and an entire race of precursors having been eradicated.

When a Terra failed, it was just sad. There might be a spontaneous explosion, but there's also the chance that they'd just drop dead belly down.

The towering flames inside the mother ship these Terra's were supposedly developing in; it's no wonder things went so wrong!

This was a failure on the precursor's end. A fascinating, half-baked failure but a failure nonetheless.

From the ceiling, hanging on a row of metal claws were armored bodies made entirely of metal. He'd seen them before; twelve years ago. The angriest of the three that'd survived to build nests had stomped around the crater with it. The suit hadn't lasted long but it had lasted long enough for the kid to pick fights.

The armored suit made the middle child cocky.

She'd fought a reaper— and apparently! She'd been a surprisingly good fighter...Until she wasn't.

They'd never seen the end of that battle. Only the signs of a struggle and the scent of unique blood in the water.

"What?" Tim jolts, his eyes widening in surprise as a baffled guppy's voice rings in his ears, their tiny footsteps echoing through the artificial carnage.

He'd suspected the kid was still alive — Who else could've stopped the de-comp if not him? — but it's still jarring to see him walking around uninjured.

The whole place was on fire; you'd think after a while, the kid would be a little crispy. But all around; aside from the smear of soot on his suit, he seemed well.

Tim turns his attention back to the metal suits. They're just barely out of his reach. So close to his open maw that as he leapt out of the water he could nip the bottoms of their flattened feet.

There's got to be a way he could yank one down. Out of all the armor suits, these ones were the closest he'd ever gotten to pristine condition.

The claws! They were flimsy compared to the weight they were carrying. There's got to be a limit to how much the could carry; maybe an angle he could shove the suit to that'd wrench the tech out of it's calloused metal grasp!

He wanted- no, needed to get a hold of these things. Needed to take them apart, dismember them piece by piece to see how they ticked.

Almost everything the Terra's built could be separated into multiple pieces that fit together in order to function properly. Chunks of metal; useless on their own combined into a weapon that'd cut fish in half with a beam of light!

How did that work? It's like magic. Magic that he's more than ready to learn.

"Stop that!!" The Terra huffs, "Danger Tim," They shout and Tim can't help but pause.

When did they learn his name? How did they know his name?

Did the Terra understand him? Could they have possibly picked up on the bond and learned it from there? He'd known a shorter version of Damian's name too. Was this Terra ignoring them on purpose, or did they really not pick up on their telepathy.

It could be neither...

It could be both!

He could be subconsciously picking up on their conversations while also being too young to know what the words meant besides matching names to voices!

Tim didn't remember learning to speak; but he did remember that Cassandra had a hard time speaking, picking up on and understanding words. She was more attuned to body language.

Half of her life was spent in precursor custody so she'd only been taught to speak when she was already almost fully grown.

"Hello," He chirps experimentally, his voice is soft, trying not to scare the child.

The child doesn't acknowledge his greeting, only letting out a heavy breath through their thickened helmet. "Stay," They command, their hand faced flat palmed to his nose.

...Five fingers.

It's kind of strange that he'd never lingered on the kid's odd hand. Most of them, if they had hands in there larger forms had either: 3, 4, 6, or 7 fingers on each hand. Neither form ever had five fingers. It's a strange defect to look at, especially on a child.

Logically, he knew there wasn't much room for an extra finger on those tiny hands. But it still looked like someone had lopped of thumb.

The child huffs, pacing around the room, a familiar tool in those weird hands. Picking up boxes, they slice through metal like it's nothing.

A heap of boxes soon morphed into a pile of flat sheet metal. Stacked high, Tim watched in awe as those sheets were patch-worked into a long metal box just big enough for him to fit inside...

...Oh, he was going to be put in a cage wasn't he?

"You stuck. I help you," They chirp, not quite happy, more annoyed than anything. The newly made tank hovered inches above the water like it weighed nothing.

When the tank is slowly filled with water, Tim cautiously dips his nose in.

Was it smart to trust a literal baby with his safety? No. But this Terra hasn't done him wrong before-

...Aside from the insults, but that's just the consequences of Damian rubbing off on him.

Fumbling awkwardly, he shambles into the hastily made container. This would be so much easier if he had arms instead of his useless fins!

He can feel his stomach lurch as he's carefully lifted out and above water with an unknown tool. The water sloshes in the tank, the air brushing against his skin like the breath of a geyser. Hot and humid, his only reprieve is the slightly cooler embrace of the water in the metal box.

The hatchling trekked on shakily, his legs trembling as he dragged Tim along. With each step, the mother groaned out a sigh; the walls quivering as if alive. Sharpened chunks of slag plummeted from the ceiling, the hatchling barely hopping out of the way in time.

Dragged area to area, he can only shift in the box he's contained in. The air dried out his gills, the water growing too cramped as the box sloshed side to side.

"Are we there yet?" Despite knowing the kid won't answer, he asks anyway. Talking to him was good for development wasn't it?

"Were are we headed?" Peaking his nose above water, Tim can only watch the blank slate glint against the late.

It's no wonder they thought the armored hatching's were deformed. They held no expressions, and it's much harder to read their needs- Not that they were very good at that anyways- Even he found himself missing the sight of that squishy face.

The Terra was cute in a strange sort of way. You'd think a species that looked so much like them but not quite would be a little uncanny; but they weren't.

Or...At least; they weren't uncanny enough to deter him.

"Stay still; almost there," The Terra hisses.

Now Tim wanted to listen; he really did! But there's a crick in his tail, a painful cramp that he couldn't wait much longer to fix.

And that's a mistake. His container shakes back and forth, precious water spilling out the sides of the metal as it hits the ground with a heavy thud!

Suddenly, they're both stationary, and the Terra is rifling through their belongings like Tim's life depends on it.

...Which it doesn't.

He couldn't breath on land in either forms but he also wouldn't die immediately if he were beached.

It'd take at least an hour or two. He'd tested the limits when he was younger; most people did. But he knew for a fact a few more minutes in a cramped tank wouldn't kill him.

"It's okay," He tries to soothe, he's not the best with kids.

"No splashing!" They hiss, a chittering noise coming out the mouth piece of their armor. The sounds were odd, he doesn't know why nobody commented on it before. Maybe it's the fact their sounds were muffled by the walls of their nest but it's weird.

The Terra sounds awkward, their pronunciation clumsier than any of the words they projected but that's to be expected from a child. If these strange sounds had basic meaning like some of his chirps did; then it's safe to say this kid was still learning.

And he's learning without any examples.

The child's shoulders drop as they pluck a cylindrical object out of their hoard of objects. There's symbols on the item, yellow triangles and a few more characters he recognized from the scrawl on the child's nest.

With a click, another identical cylinder is removed from their tool. A power source maybe? Did the device not make things float using the hatchling's ability?

Apparently, not. The new cylinder is loaded into the tool, and soon, the crate is hovering once again.

Tim stared as they moved from area to area. He listened as the Terra repeated the same couple of noises over and over again.

/d/ — A hard sound to start; sometimes repeated twice or even three times if the Terra believed the sound hadn't come out "Right,"

/æ/ — He could see the kid's mouth open through their mask as they voiced the sound.

/n/— Their mouth closed, the sound coming from behind their teeth.

/i/ — An ending sound that tied everything together.

Dan— ny

Dan— Sometimes it stopped at that, the Terra shaking their head before completing the sound all together again.

Dan-ny

—Danny— They made the sound again and again, gesturing to their person each and every time they made the sound.

It's only as they're finally emerging from the wreckage, the night sky greeting him pleasantly, that he realizes—

-That's a name.