Chapter Text
He can feel the harsh unforgiving winds blow past him as he feels the drop of temperature that gets him to feel excessively cold. He crosses his arms for a desperate attempt for warmth as he paces through the blizzard, hoping he'd stumble into anything that could help his current situation. But as try as he might, locating a notable landmark is basically impossible for it was the white fog that was obscuring his vision.
The only things he can do, was just walk and hope that either the blizzard will end or that he locates shelter. With how long he's been walking, that hope is slowly dwindling down. He can feel his own body start to slowly give up on him with his exhaustion starting to arise. Pushing the need to take a rest aside, he continues on swiftly walking. He is prioritizing surviving at least, and trying to rest for a bit in the harsh environment definitely meant death for him.
Forte isn't really a lucky guy. He found himself awake in a barren purple land, and the next thing he knows he's in a blizzard. His streak of unluckiness would soon keep going as the next second..
The next step that he took.
He notices that his foot didn't meet the land.
Right before he could process what would happen next, his body falls forward and starts to stumble down a slanted slope littered with rocks that scraped his body upon contact. A scream left his mouth as he just kept rolling, and rolling with the adrenaline cancelling out any pain he was experiencing at the moment.
Then finally, he lands on the flat ground with an impact. His thoughts are hazy and his vision twists from the nausea. The injuries he got were starting to hurt and being conscious is just too unbearable for him right now. He could feel his vision slowly coming to a halt, and as much as he wanted to stand up and keep going, the absence of his own energy is stopping him from doing that. Everything starts to become a blur and he slowly closes his visor.
Maybe one rest wouldn't hurt.
Forte's visor flutters awake as his consciousness starts to slowly return. He can feel that he's considerably warmer than before, but yet he could see.. nothing but black?
He could feel something around his entire body which felt like he was encased by something, and he couldn't pinpoint at what it felt like. Something of an odd mixture of warmth, gooey and.. slightly wet? Moving just a slight motion from his body seems to fix it as he felt that something slither away from him.
His visor finally meets the familiar surroundings of the purple land. He's partly bummed he's still stranded. He stands up to look around but then immediately collapses due to the sharp, throbbing pain that suddenly ached across his entire body.
Having to let out an uncontrollable groan of pain, he uncomfortably lays down in the cold ground. With no choice, the only thing he could do was look up at the stars from above which were shining brightly, giving its mesmerizing appearance.
Out of all the things he should be doing right now, stargazing probably isn't an appropriate thing to do. Though idly watching the stars was oddly calming him down despite the current situation.
It was then he felt something touch his right leg, suddenly interrupting his train of thought. He moves and tilts his head towards the odd sensation, and what meets his eyes were a small creature poking its head onto his leg. Its color was black with red eyes and it resembled a snake of sorts.
It's a parasite.
Forte's gears twist and turn to give him the thought that the parasites were the 'something' that wrapped around his entire body earlier. He can't help but give a look of thanks towards it, as it essentially saved him from freezing in the middle of nowhere. The parasite does nothing but blankly stares back, and it quickly slithers off and appears out of sight.
Now that he's alone, he tries to get a move on. He slowly stands up, hand on chest and manages to get up without feeling any major pains. Grunting at the process of standing, he starts walking forwards in a random direction again, hoping that soon he'll find at least somewhere to stay.
Keeling down and dying of exhaustion would seem like a good fate for Fortegreen right now. The energy to even stay conscious has been almost depleted because of how far he's walked. Pair that with the frigid temperatures keeping him colder and it creates a result of your body screaming for rest. And he knows he can't.
But the need to is increasing.
A step forward, and he's out of breath. Stopping for a second to gasp for air, the moment of relief he received doesn't last long.
A step forward, and he notices a cliff edge come into sight. He's unsure if that was even there before, and that he'd had not noticed it earlier.
A step forward, and he slowly approaches the cliff edge, hoping that beyond the view there'd be something.
A step forward, and he can feel his visor droop. His own exhaustion was slowly catching up to him and he'd soon collapse if left ignored.
A step forward, and the cold was starting to feel like it wasn't there anymore. His senses start to feel muffled in a way.
A step forward, and he's nearing the cliff edge. He was starting to hear a deep ringing in his hearing and it was uncomfortably irritating.
A step forward, and every part of his body was screaming he needed to stop and lay down for a while. And Forte is really close to just doing so. His legs were tired, his body was tired, he was tired and if he survived one rest in the cold weather, surely he could survive another... right?
A step forward and he completely stops.
Something has caught his eyes.
Walking a few steps more towards the very edge of the cliff confirms what he thought he was currently looking at. His visor meets an outpost that has multiple gray buildings scattered around.
Suddenly filled with a surge of energy, dying doesn't seem to be a favorable decision anymore.
Forte paces around the cliff in circles, being deep in thought. He has finally found something, yet he couldn't exactly reach it just yet.
The outpost was located at the bottom of the cliff, and from what he could see there were no ways to drop down to the ground without getting injured.
Looking towards the outpost again, he scans on where he would drop if he jumped. He notices two snowmates right nearby which got him to think.
Snow would be a safe material to cushion a fall right?
He doesn't really have a choice either way, since it was either the hard, cold ground or the soft, cold snow. The latter just seemed to be the more obvious choice.
Snapping out of his thoughts, he looks down towards the ground with his visor focusing on the snowmates. He's fairly certain that he could reach one of them if he fell from where he was standing. Taking a moment to brace himself, he breathes in a deep inhale and shuts off his visor.
He's rolled off a hill before, this should be no biggie.
Relaxing the best he could, he lets go control of his own body and gravity does its thing. He falls forwards, and then his foot goes off the land. Without feeling the comfort of being grounded, he immediately gets a spike of adrenaline and a small dose of regret, but he was already committed to it.
He'd let future Forte deal with the consequences, he supposes.. and he'd be future Forte in approximately 1 second.
The wind harshly blows past his head and then a second later, his torso hits the top of the snowman and then another second later, his torso hits the ground.
A pang of pain immediately courses through his body, and he lets out a pained heave. The snow didn't do much to cushion the fall seeing as it was immediately crushed the moment Forte landed on it. He releases a groan of pain as he struggles to stand up, having to use his hand to force himself up using the ground. He hisses a bit in the process before using the nearby building wall to rest his back on so he could have a breather.
Calming himself down for a moment and trying his absolute best to not faint on the spot right now, he puts a hand to his chest to feel around if he's broken something. He wasn't exactly a professional but he concludes that nothing is broken after a few light pats to his chest. He regulates his breathing and tells himself that he's (mostly) fine.
Now to find out where he exactly was.
He was leaning against the wall of the building so the next step was to find the entrance. He looks around from his surroundings and the only remarkable things in sight were a wheel attached to a wall and a huge crater in the ground, big enough for someone to fit in.
He walks away from his spot, leaving the wall he used for support. He is quick to regret it when he feels a spike of nausea overcome his systems but alas, he had to keep going forwards like what he’d been doing for the past few hours. He had to go use the wall beside him for support again, following along it while his hand was resting on the wall. He’s about to turn a corner when he hears a noise that wasn’t made by him.
Footsteps.
His body immediately freezes like he had to process what he's hearing. It takes him a second to realize it could be another person. Shoving away the violent thoughts, his recovery is all he was prioritizing at the moment so he quickens up his pace and turns around the corner with his hopes up that it wasn’t just an auditory hallucination.
His streak of unluckiness finally ends as he sees a crewmate come out of an open door right nearby.
His new regained luck quickly shatters as he finds out that crewmate was the same color as him.
In a quick motion, he hides behind the corner again and was absolutely WISHING that the other crewmate didn’t hear any noise nearby. He now had a lot of questions in mind from the short sighting. So they’re the same color as him, would that pose a problem? It would if more crewmates lived here.. if he introduced himself as he is then it’d feel like he was pretending to be the other fellow crewmate in Fortegreen.. that’d look suspicious.
Fortunately for him, long before the blizzard incident and shortly after he realized he.. existed (he can’t remember far back for some odd reason), he had found out something about himself. He looks toward his own body before focusing, and as if it was magic the color of his suit transforms into a deeper shade of green.
He’s essentially a whole new person. With the problem sorted, he peeks out of the corner to see if the crewmate was anywhere. Locating them appeared to be fruitless as they had already slipped away to somewhere else. The coast was clear, at least.
He swiftly slips into the same entrance the crewmate had gone off while trying to ignore a nauseating feeling that he could feel brew up soon. A waft of warm air had overran his body and he subconsciously lets out a short sigh of contentment from the warm comfort after being stuck in the cold for longer than necessary.
He makes haste to explore the place and he soon finds himself in a purple carpeted room with books seemingly left neglected on the floor as no one had returned them to their righteous place in the shelves. Walking around in the quiet room, he turns to the left and spots a futuristic looking table. Naturally curious, he goes over to the table to inspect it and what he finds is a panel on either side of the table. The panels had a keyboard built into it and the moment he pressed the enter key, the middle of the table suddenly flashes to life and a hologram of a map forms into place.
Scrutinizing the map, his interest piques with the crewmate icons that appeared in some rooms. One in Communications, one in O2, two in Storage and oh– one in Admin. He makes a mental note that this table can track your location in the rooms. He was about to look even more when a splitting headache suddenly spikes in his head causing him to use his hands to grip the table and head respectively while letting out a groan of pain. Was a headache really what he wanted right now? He looks down at the map again now dealing with the sharp pain. His gaze flickers back and forth between the rooms and he soon focuses into one room that could help him.
Medbay.
Visually tracing on how to access Medbay from Admin, he sees that he could get to it by passing through Specimen Room with the door to that right behind him. Pressing a finger to the enter key again, the holographic map shuts off and he groggily walks toward the closed off door. He gets a short moment of confusion from the fact that he didn’t know how to open the door, but he notices a panel at the side and bringing his hand up to press against it makes the door slide open with a hiss.
Shortly after he enters the room, the doors behind him close afterwards but the other door hasn’t opened. In the midst of wondering why, fumes spew out everywhere out of the walls which takes him by surprise. Using the wall as support for the THIRD time now, he painfully waits for the gases to stop releasing in the room. The doors finally open after the fumes come to a halt which felt like torturous minutes to him and he starts speed walking out of the room and into the hallway which felt too inconveniently long for someone who’s trying to haste into Medbay.
Entering the actual Specimen Room, he ignores everything in sight and is already at the other hallway. Walking was starting to take a lot of effort, and he hasn’t been appreciating the feeling of nausea and exhaustion he is suddenly getting alongside with dark spots in his vision which were starting to form. Essentially throwing himself towards the door at the end of the hallway, he slams his hand to the panel (missing twice in the process) and internally groans the moment he realizes it was another Decontamination room.
Making himself as comfortable as he can in the corner of the room, he leans against the wall with his hand on his head while trying to take breathers to lessen the dizzying feeling. It's agonizing and it was looking like everything was in slow-motion because he swears that the sounds of the fumes hissing are way slower now. Eventually the sound of the doors opening alerts him and he dashes out, knowing that Medbay is right around the corner. He was so close to his destination, he couldn't just faint right before it.
Immediately turning to the right, he steps foot into a place that resembles a laboratory. Recalling the map, he locates the part of the room which serves as Medbay and he wastes no time getting in there. He looks around the room, trying to find something that would help aid him. His visor settles on a tray cart filled with different kinds of pill bottles and medicine, and he quickly approaches to inspect the contents of the tray cart.
He scrambles through the different medicines, picking them up one by one and reading the unfamiliar labels. He isn't exactly an expert on what he should take for headache relief, but he has to use something at least. Just anything to use.
"Hello..?"
That voice isn't his.
His mind just blanks, and his exhaustion finally catches up to him. All he heard next was a concerned muffled voice right as he hit the ground, his body finally giving in to unconsciousness.