Chapter Text
The rectangular ship landed on the woodland outskirts of Vow, towing the comparatively massive Tulpar behind it. Blind dogs scattered into the dense fog, scared away by the roar of the ship’s jets and the heavy this as it finally landed. The fog dispersed around the ship, creating a temporary radius of visibility before being quickly cloaked in mist once again. An antenna rose from the roof of the ship, establishing a connection with the crew’s destination, and activating a teleporter inside.
Within the cramped ship, nine humans in orange jumpsuits and gas masks stood around, waiting until the teleporter finally activated. One of them swiveled around in his chair and pointed to the teleporter before addressing the rest of the group.
“Teleporter on. Get going.”
The three most experienced ran in first, followed by one of the newest members, a rotund man ready to get right to work, no questions asked. He was about to be followed by an average built man, but turned around when he saw a woman, young man, and another man of similar build to him.
“Anya, Daisuke, c’mon. We're here to help these guys, remember?”
“R-right… on my way, Curly,” the woman said.
Anya stepped onto the teleporter. Daisuke was up next, and was shaking with anticipation.
“Heh, don't tell me this is your first time using a teleporter,” Curly said.
“Wha? You're telling me these things are normal in this job? Dude, that is so cool! I wish I started working here sooner!”
“I'm just kidding, you know-”
But Daisuke had already jumped onto the teleporter panel and blipped off into the building. That just left Curly with Jimmy.
“Jimmy, you too. Don't waste our time more than you already have.”
Jimmy tutted and reluctantly stepped up to the teleporter. Though he made it a point to shove Curly into it first before being teleported in with him. And with that, the employee in the chair was left alone to advise them all over the radio.
0 days before the CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
“Jim. I can fix this.”
“What do you think will happen when we get back? Hm?”
“We can figure all of this out. You and me.”
KILLS NINETY NINE PERCENT
“All I ever hear is how great of a leader you are. God, it’s so annoying. But, now… What do you think will happen now when we get back?”
“We’ll fix this together.”
“Everything you and I worked for in our lives. Accomplishments, changes. None of it will matter.”
“We’ve gone through difficult situations before. This time won’t be any different. Work through it, one day at a time.”
“It’s not just me, is it? You were supposed to be the one who had everything under control. You said so yourself. The ship, the crew, everything that happened here. This was your responsibility, captain. That is what you’ll be hearing the rest of your life.”
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
“Or this can all be remembered as a tragedy. Despite what must have been the best efforts of its acclaimed captain. The Tulpar crew was never found. No one survived to tell the tale.”
TAKE CARE OF IT
“You’re standing at the top. Feet in cement. I get it now.”
“...”
“Right?”
“...Right.”
TAKE CARE OF IT
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
KILLS NINETY NINE PERCENT
“I’ll take care of it.”
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Curly barreled towards the cockpit as alarms screeched and crimson emergency lights flooded the industrial metal hallway. Right in front of the pneumatic cockpit doors, Curly found his co-pilot, Jimmy, curled up in the fetal position. He was shivering, and his hair was a mess, yet he still bore a distant, uncaring expression despite his panic.
“JIM! WHAT DID YOU DO!?!” Curly’s voice cracked as he needlessly interrogated his co-pilot. It was a waste of time. He knew what Jim did. He just didn’t want to believe it, yet. “T-tell me you didn’t…”
Jimmy looked up at curly, and his expression actually faltered. The look in his eyes was that of a guilty child pleading to not be punished for breaking an irreplaceable family heirloom. A far cry from the severity of what he’d actually done, but it was more guilty than Curly had ever seen on his friend’s face in his life.
“I-I should have… I didn’t-”
“WHAT DID YOU DO!?!”
Jimmy didn’t answer. There was no more time to waste, so Curly rushed into the cockpit of the ship in a desperate bid to divert the falling cargo ship away from a collision course with a deserted planet. The bright red light of the many monitors in the room spiked Curly’s nerves even further, and in his delirium, he ended up hallucinating some sort of red fog or dust cloud overtaking the room.
Curly charged through the crimson sandstorm as he scurried towards the pilot seat, which seemed to evade his attempts to reach it. As he bolted through the endless red fog, the sirens of the ship felt more like a distant echo than the blaring screech they once were. Despite that, he was determined to power through whatever tricks his mind would play and save his crew. After all his failures as a captain these past few days, he needed to at least make sure they could see tomorrow. And no hallucinations were going to stop him.
But then he tripped- or rather, the ground itself suddenly disappeared from beneath his feet, and suddenly Curly was falling. He fell and fell through an endless swirling tornado of red dust leading into a deep dark void. From within this tornado, Curly was baffled to see scenes pass by his very eyes like videos on a screen. Playbacks of the past seven days leading up to this crash zoomed by him. But strangely, they each had something off about them.
In one screen, he saw himself giving Jimmy a similar speech to the one that Jimmy gave him on his birthday. In another, Paulie the Pony, the mascot of the company he worked for, was a real anthropomorphic horse who joined his crew on their expedition. There was one scene where, while he and the ship’s nurse, Anya, were talking two nights ago, she told him that she was pregnant with his child, with a look of genuine excitement on her face. There was a world where Jimmy was never the co-pilot, a world where Curly was never the captain, a world where none of them joined Pony Express and went on to live separate lives entirely, and on and on.
And then Curly began to witness events that hadn’t happened yet, but he had some haunting intuition that they would happen someday. He saw himself covered in bandages, his arms and legs amputated with only his one eye and his mangled maw exposed. He saw Jimmy lording his emergency power over the other crewmates as they were left stranded on an alien world without a breathable atmosphere. He saw his crew, people he would go so far as to call his friends, succumb to madness or depression as their situation grew more and more dire. He saw Jimmy coax their young intern, Daisuke, into a suicide mission which left him mortally wounded, forcing their onboard engineer, Swansea, to put him out of his misery with an axe. He saw Anya lose all hope in the face of her intense fear of Jimmy, and left with no other options, she took her own life. He saw Swansea lay bare all his regrets before Jimmy shot him dead. He saw Jimmy torture and mutilate him while he was already barely clinging to life, force feeding him his own flesh just to keep him alive.
This future- this horrifying nightmare of a tomorrow made Curly weep. If these were the lives they’d be living when he saved them, what was even the point of saving them at all? Should he just turn around and let everyone die? At least then their deaths would be quick. It might just be the only good thing he can do as their captain now. The only way he could atone for all the mistakes he made that lead to this point of no return. With a heavy heart and teary eyes, Curly turned around and opened the door, ready for the flames of mercy to take them all…
At least, that’s what Curly thought would happen. When he opened his eyes, he found himself still in the hallucination. Still falling endlessly in a whirlwind of red. He reached out to try and dispel the illusion… and then he felt it. He felt a handful of red dust in his hand. He heard the howling wind from an unknown source. He smelled the charcoal-like scent of the dust storm surrounding him.
IT’S ALL REAL
Curly screamed and thrashed about, desperately trying to claw his way out of wherever he ended up. The swirls of red dust were so thick that Curly could sink his hands in it, but the air around him was forcing him downward. It was at this point that Curly realized that this was less like a tornado and more like a pool going down a drain. He had no idea where this drain led, but he wasn't keen to find out.
Desperate for a way to climb back up, Curly reached towards the screens, thinking he could climb them. Instead, however, his hand dipped into one of the “screens,” and grasped something inside of it. The thing he grabbed squelched and oozed a warm fluid into his hand which made his skin crawl. Whatever Curly was holding onto wasn’t nailed down either, and it ended up being dragged out of the window and into the drain with him. And then, as he fell down, he realized what it was he was holding onto. Or rather, who it was.
Gazing right back at Curly was his near-lifeless, mummified face from the dreadful future he was on the cusp of fulfilling. The grizzly shell of a man was even more disgusting in person than from afar. He reeked of bile and burned flesh, and his exposed tissue left him wet and sticky. Blood and puss dripped from his open wounds, and festering ulcers on the stump where his left knee was severed squirted fluid all over Curly. The future Curly gagged and groaned, his rancid breath making Curly’s eyes water. He wanted to look away from this thing he was seemingly doomed to become, but everywhere he looked, all he could see were more windows into his future. His horrible, agonizing, rancid, ugly future. And he wept.
As the two men of the same name fell and fell, spinning in each other's grip as they both grappled with the daunting sight of such a drastically different version of themselves, they finally reached the bottom. And at the bottom, they saw the most radiant golden glow they had ever seen. The sublime glory of what they were seeing was incomprehensible to the mortal eye. But there was no joy to be found. No hope. No salvation. There was only fear. Because at the end of this drain was a void of pure gold. And within this golden void was a golden maw. And within this golden maw was absolute oblivion.
!*&)#RJ()$$_*)$&$)&$TYFT)$&@) after the Catastrophe…
Darkness. Darkness surrounded Curly in every direction his eyes shifted. He had finally stopped falling, but he couldn’t tell where he was anymore. His eyes still burned from the sight of the golden god that swallowed him whole, so perhaps its golden radiance blinded him? He felt around, and found he was sitting on something soft, with a smooth, plastic exterior. Then, his eyes suddenly shot open as he heard a familiar voice, and his unadjusted eyes were instantly assaulted by the artificial glow of a fake moon on a blurry digital screen.
“...If you look really, really close, you can see there’s a dead pixel in the upper right corner.”
He silently jerked his head towards the woman sitting next to him. His voice trembled when he saw Anya sitting on the other side of the couch, gazing at the dead pixel on the window screen. His vision became blurry as his mind raced with incoherent questions, which soon devolved into a melting pot of utter nonsense.
“In the back of my mind, it’s always…”
Anya trailed off as she heard her captain heaving and sniffing. She slowly looked towards him and saw his face buried in his dripping wet hands. His body quaked with an overwhelming mix of emotions, all of which came rushing out like a tidal wave.
“Curly? What happened? Can you- ah!”
Anya was suddenly cut off by her captain leaping in and wrapping his arms around her, his sobs becoming a borderline scream. Realizing at this point that something was very wrong, Anya attempted to help Curly onto his feet and escort him to the medical room. If she could get him there, she’d be able to give him the care he needs in an environment where she’d be more comfortable doing so. But all of a sudden, as they finally stood up, Curtly let go of her and began stumbling through the room. He seemed exhausted- moreso than she’d ever seen anyone in her life. It was like his body was on the verge of giving out on him at any moment, yet he kept forcing it to move regardless.
“Curly, wait!” Anya grabbed him by the arm and tugged him closer to her, with little resistance on his part. “We have to get you to medical! Something’s clearly wrong with you, and besides, if you keep walking around like that you’ll get yourself hurt!”
“Where is Jimmy?”
DEAD PIXEL
Anya tensed up. Her face went pale at the mere mention of his name, especially in this context. On top of that, the tone of his voice set off so many red flags. His voice was so uncharacteristically cold, with a clearly malicious undertone.
“Curly, please, come with me.”
“Where is he?” Curly repeated, sounding angrier than before.
“I’ll tell you after you calm down! I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I need you to work with me! Please, Curly, just try to stay calm so I can-”
“I know what he did.”
Anya’s eyes went wide and she released Curly’s arm. Curly suddenly stood up straight, more assured than ever in what he was about to do.
“When the crew wake up in the morning, tell them that Jimmy had a heart attack in his sleep.”
Curly climbed the small set of stairs up from the lounge, before passing through the dining room. His fists tightened, his fingernails digging into his palms as the phantom taste of blood and raw meat filled his mouth. Bile crept up his throat, but he shook it off and proceeded towards the door. He could prevent all of that from happening. The Tulpar could make its final shipment safely, and everyone would get to live their lives in peace. All he had to do was clean up the dead pixel.
KILLS NINETY NINE PERCENT
But suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and he fell to the ground. The last thing he saw as he began to black out was Anya’s boots. A mop fell to the ground next to her, clattering loudly against the metal floor. He started blacking out the moment Anya began to lift his body into her arms.
7 Days before the meeting…
The back of Curly’s head still ached after the hit, but it was mitigated by the ice pack Anya provided him. Once again, he found himself bedridden and cared for by Anya. Due to his actions last night, Anya restrained him in his sleep, securing him to a medical cot and making sure to keep a close eye on him over night. In hindsight, he didn't blame her. He probably seemed pretty irrational last night with the way she was acting. She didn't see the things he saw. The infinite spiral of crimson. The chaotic barrage of scattered presents doomed futures. The torturous existence the crew was forced to bare thanks to Jim… no. Thanks to him.
RESPONSIBILITY.
It was his fault all that happened. Jimmy was a disease, but one he neglected to treat. Until it was too late…
“Curly? Are you still with me?” Anya asked, sitting next to the cot.
Curly nodded.
Silence.
“What happened to you last night?”
Curly shuffled about, then shrugged.
Silence.
“Curly, last night… you said you ‘knew what Jimmy did.’ Did you… I-I guess what I’m asking is-”
“No.” Curly’s voice was dry from keeping his mouth closed for so long. “I didn't know when it happened. If I knew what he was doing to you that night, I would have stopped him.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“I truly wish I had known about it before it happened…”
KILLS NINETY NINE PERCENT
“Maybe I could have killed him when I had the chance…”
“Stop it, Curly!”
Curly's tired eyes widened and glanced towards Anya. Her fingers curled over her knees and squeezed her pants. She seemed desperate, but also scared. Seeing her in such distress surprised Curly.
“Please, you can't just say things like that. You have to think of the others. Think of Daisuke, or Swansea. Imagine what they would do if they found out you killed Jimmy. Do you really think they’d ever trust you again?”
Anya reached out and grabbed Curly's hand. It felt… nice. Not just feeling her hand on his, but being able to hold hers in return. It reminded him that though things might be similar to how they were, he wasn't there anymore. Never again. He’d make sure of that.
“And besides, our worst moments don't make us monsters. What Jimmy… what he did to me… it was the worst thing I've ever experienced. I don't think I can ever forgive him for it.”
‘Nor should you,’ Curly thought.
“But despite that, I don't want to see him get murdered. Especially not by you. I need you, Curly. We all need you. And, whether we like it or not, we need Jimmy too.”
The expression Curly made when Anya simply mentioned that they needed Jimmy gave her pause. It was like nothing she’d ever seen from him before. Back when she first tried to tell Curly about what happened, she hoped he’d take her side, and technically she was getting what she wanted. But the way he looked whenever Jimmy was even mentioned was so visceral and contorted, it deeply frightened her. We're he calmer, she would have told him about their situation with him in the hospital currently, but she felt that now wasn't the time.
“Let me get you something to eat. If you ever need me, you can use this,” Anya placed a small, black box with a single button in his hand. “If you press the button, it’ll let me know you need me.”
“Thank you, Anya. And I’m really sorry about all of this.”
“Well, you seem to be growing more lucid already. As long as you can avoid any outbursts for a while, I can send you back to your duties in about a week.”
“I understand.”
And so Anya left the medical room to grab breakfast for Curly. Despite having to restrain him for the time being so he wouldn't cause anyone harm, she had to admit that it was nice to at least know that Curly cared about her that much. Albeit, a little concerning. Though more concerning was that he told her that he didn't know about what Jimmy did when it happened. During the time between them and now, Anya hadn't even hinted at what had been done to her towards anyone until last night. She had to find out how he knew as soon as she got back.
But as she reached the kitchen, who should she happen to run into at the table, but the acting captain of the ship?
1 hour before the meeting…
W E T R U S T Y O U W I L L B E A G R E A T A S S E T
The rectangular ship puttered through space after a close encounter with a dangerous entity on a far away moon. After surveying damages, the Captain of the ship determined that while the ship could maybe make a couple more trips, in its current condition, they'd need to get repairs done some time in the near future. This was a problem because quota was due soon, and if they didn't meet the company's demands, it wasn't going to end well for them.
“So gang, got any ideas?” The captain asked as he turned back to his crewmates.
Unfortunately, the crewmates were completely uninterested in discussing ways to keep their jobs and appease their boss. They were more concerned with dancing to the ice cream truck jingle playing over the radio (which they bought without his permission a few weeks ago.) He put a hand against his gas mask and let out a long, drawn out sigh. After disregarding his bumbling crewmates, he went to find his hardest working, most professional co-worker, Harvey… only to hear him cry out in pain on the other end of the ship as a plume of smoke blasted out of the spot he was working on. The captain ran over to check on him, and found him dusting soot off of him while grumbling angrily about the broken parts.
“Harvey, you idiot! I told you we can’t fix this shit ourselves! Wait until we’re back at the company building to do it!”
“Oh, pipe down, Walt! I know what I’m doin’. I’ve been workin’ this job back when you were still drinking from a bottle.”
“You know the more you break it, the more it’ll cost us to get it fixed, right? Just leave it alone!”
Harvey crossed his arms and grumbled.
“Look, I’m setting a course for Vow. We can get some extra scrap there, sell it off, and meet quota with enough left over to repair the ship.”
“Can we stop by McPretzels on the way there?” A woman asked while still doing her dance with the other crewmate who remained silent so far.
“No, Helen, we are not stopping by McPretzels, stop asking.”
“Awww.”
Captain Walter sat down and pulled himself closer to the ship’s terminal. However, while setting a course for Vow, the terminal emitted a low, repetitive beeping sound and the ship’s light started flashing red.
“HARVEY!”
“WADDA YOU YELLIN’ AT ME FOR!?! I AIN'T DONE NOTHIN’!”
“WARNING: Unidentified spacecraft inbound! Caution is advised!”
The ship’s automated alert system repeated this alert as the approaching object appeared on their radar, several times larger than their own ship. Walter quickly clicked the ship’s headlights on to get a look at it. The first thing that greeted him was a brand logo emblazoned on the hud of the ship.
Pony Express.
3 days after the meeting…
The hegemonized crew appeared at the front door of the target facility in a flash of light. The company crew were unphased, however the inexperienced tulpar crew needed a moment to readjust after being launched through a wormhole. Daisuke leaned against the nearest wall while clutching his knotted stomach and groaned.
“Does anyone know how to take this suit off? I think I’m gonna hurl.”
“I wouldn't recommend taking that suit off while we're on a moon,” one of the company crew members, Gavin, noted. “There's no telling what the air here will turn you into.”
While Anya nervously questioned what Gavin meant by that, Helen chimed in with her own input.
“You’ll be fine, newbie! The suit will eject whatever fluids you expel.”
“Huh, what do you know? Your company actually has more consideration for the needs of its employees than Pony,” Swansea remarked.
“You fellers gonna keep yapping on, or are we gonna get to work?!” Harvey shouted.
“Hold your horses, we’re coming!”
As Swansea stomped over to Harvey’s side, Curly was relieved to see that his crew was getting along well with this other crew. Given what he discussed with Walter, cooperation would be necessary for this mission to run smoothly. As long as everyone could get along, though, things should go smoothly.
DEAD PIXEL
Except, Curly knew that not everyone could be trusted to cooperate. He watched as one person joined Harvey and Swansea in the lead, inserting himself into their conversation. Even with the full body suit on, Curly could tell who it was just by the voice and mannerisms. His fists tightened and his mind began to wander. Just looking at him made his skin feel like it was on fire. His stare burned holes in the back of his head so intense that he actually spared a glance back at him.
TAKE CARE OF IT
“Curly?”
He snapped out of it when he heard Anya’s voice. She was right there beside him, her soft yet firm grip on his shoulder holding him back from acting on the thoughts racing through his mind.
They're here now. She's alive. They're alive. It didn't happen yet, and it's not going to happen again.
Curly turned towards Anya and patted her on the shoulders. “I'm fine, Anya. You don't need to worry about me-”
“You and I both know that I do.” Anya said with a deadpan tone that almost made Curly chuckle out loud.
He missed this Anya…
“You clearly haven't fully recovered from whatever happened to you last week, so until I'm confident that you're in a sound state of mind, I’m keeping an eye on you whether you like it or not.”
“But I- you…” Curly knew Anya was right. Even if he knew Jimmy deserved it, nobody else did. And it's not like he could explain what he knew to them. But even still… “You shouldn't be pushing yourself just to keep an eye on me. Not in the condition you're in…”
Anya glanced down at her abdomen, but quickly returned her gaze to Curly’s face. “I have bigger things on my mind right now. It's not that big of a concern right now, so just… don't worry about that. Okay?”
“Only if you promise not to worry about me.”
"I'm afraid I can't do that, captain.”
“Then I guess we're at an impasse.”
Their conversation was interrupted by Jimmy calling everyone over.
“WE'RE ABOUT TO HEAD IN! EVERYONE, TIME FOR A SUPPLY CHECK!”
Anya and Curly released eachother and the two nodded in unison, before joining the rest of the crew. Meanwhile, Daisuke ended up needing to be carried on Helen’s back.