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Empty Spaces; Not So Instant Transmission Quest
Topic Started: Jul 4 2011, 04:09 AM (77 Views)
Clare
Member Avatar
Love Suicide
The rest of the trip to Yardrat was not only exhausting but it was almost excruciating to sit through. Clare didn’t speak to Griff nor did she try to make any kind of eye contact with him. It was almost as if the two of them were strangers once again with no will to get to know each other or even speak. To pass the time, Clare decided to sharpen her blade with a flat rock that she had been given after learning sword techniques on Konats. Duke, the man who had taken Clare under his wing, was a respectable fighter and Clare learned more than she thought she would in the days she spent with him.

“I need to learn how to take care of you. While you might be just an instrument to destroy you - you’re more than that.” It was awkward, or at least something told Clare that it was supposed to be. The Shotel couldn’t speak nor could it understand the words that were coming out of Clare’s mouth. She wasn’t sure when it happened but the sword had become a part of Clare’s psyche and it meant more to her than any other piece of equipment did.

Sparks flew wildly as Clare slide the sharpened rock against her blade, the quick movement of her hand refining the curved blade to make it sharper. Clare took Duke’s words into consideration, the old man’s words echoing into her mind as she continued her work.

“Ho, ho, ho! Don’t sharpen the blade too much, you hear? You don’t want to thin it out! Your weapon would just end up being useless and you don’t want that!”

It truly was a terrible journey, and he’d been on some pretty awful flights in his life, crammed shoulder to shoulder in a ship that was roughly the size of a bread basket with a bunch of Saiyans that didn’t think bathing was appropriate in war time, or, even better, the ship he’d riden in to Vegeta in the first place. After going stir crazy not even twenty minutes outside of Earth’s atmosphere, Griff had tried to throw someone out of the airlock, having suspected them of being a sleeper agent for the Red Ribbon Army. Guards subdued the Shikirian billionaire in rather prompt fashion -- he had to give them their due on that -- and the higher ups along the chain of command thought it would be in everyone’s best interest for Griffon to spend the rest of the trip in the brig.

With no windows, a toilet that didn’t flush, and a bed that no doubt had scabies, he had curled into the fetal position and rocked back and forth.

Still better than the shuttle to Yardrat. He’d fucked things up with his android companion in a serious way. She had gone from being property of his company and willing to serve him in any capacity to giving him the cold shoulder at a noticeably higher rate -- she was known for being distance, but this was getting downright ridiculous. After he had cooked a meal worthy of a king and set the mess hall with two plates, she hadn’t even come up with a reasonable excuse as to why she wouldn’t be dining. No, “Androids don’t eat,” or, “It smells like poison.” He would have settled for a terse “No time for eating; I have to go and rewire my vagina right now, sorry,” but instead he got nothing.

Whenever he step foot in a room she was already occupying, it took no more than three minutes before she disappeared to some other corner of the ship.

All in all, it was more than a little frustrating. As if he didn’t feel like a big enough asshole already. For someone that was used to embarrassing himself in a plethora of ways, this was a new level of shame.

Turned down by an android that had previously been willing to do anything for him.

With little to do but eat, sleep, and play with himself, Griff spent most of his time slumped in the captain’s chair on the bridge because it was the closet thing to comfortable on the whole ship. And it wasn’t like Clare was going to walk in and tell him to move; that would require actually opening her mouth and speaking to him. With his feet up on the console and his hands tucked behind his head, fingers laced, Griff had started to doze about an hour ago, a few minutes before an alert flashed on the heads-up display signaling the approach of another vessel. By the time a warning klaxon went off in the ship, they were seconds away from being just another smear on the side of a cargo ship.

Griff knew his way around the cockpit, so when he woke up, wiped away the drool, and saw what was happening, he was quick to cut the throttle back enough and adjust their flight path, adjusting the pitch and the yaw, barely escaping under the massive hull of the oncoming bulk freighter.

Which would have been fine had they not been about to enter atmosphere. As soon as they hit the invisible, protective bubble that made Yardrat an inhabitable planet, the ship was sucked in like water down a drain at an odd, sideways angle. Not an ideal point of entry.

“Oh, fuck,” he repeated the mantra over and over as he tried to straighten the ship out and adjust the nose of the ship toward the surface of the planet. It fought even his best efforts. From the top of the ship just aft of the viewport, he heard a carbon composite panel get ripped from the ship and bounce off. “Oh, fuckfuckfuck.”

There was but one option: get the hell out. And he did just that, exiting the bridge and rounding the far corner of the hallway as Clare approached from the opposite end of her ship. As soon as Griff heard her inside and trying to do what he’d just done, he ran back to the bridge, skidding to a halt outside the door.

“What the hell’s happening!? WE’RE CRASHING? What kind of auto-pilot do you have?!”

A few minutes of sharpening and Clare felt satisfied with the edge the blade now had. While she could have spent another few minutes on it she felt the need to quit before she got real into it. A part of her knew that the longer she spent, the more she would forget about the situation at hand. But then she wouldn’t stop. Flipping the blade backwards so that it folded with the rest of the sword she moved to stand, her eyes falling on the status panel of the ship as it suddenly began flashing an ominous red. “What the hell?” Clare asked, her voice shrill as she stepped forward to check on the automated progress reports.

“Near collision - ship unstable. ABORT. ABORT. ABORT. (P.S. Griff sucks. Maybe you should have let him bone you.)”

“So, he wants to destroy my ship now that he has destroyed whatever was left of our relationship?” Clare unfolded her sword with a quick snap of her wrist, exiting her bunk in order to head over to the bridge to see what was happening. When no sight of her purple companion was found Clare almost wanted to scream, her mind at once putting the blame on Griff even though he didn’t seem to be the cause.

“I’m not going to abandon this ship,” Clare stated, speaking to herself once again as she shot forward to grab the nearest set of controls. The ship was turned at an odd angle, the right side of the cockpit facing the planet when it should have been facing forward instead. As Clare struggled to regain control Griff made his appearance, his voice only setting Clare off even more.

“Go to Hell! You did this, didn’t you? I reject you and now you want to kill us both!”

“I didn’t do shit!” He screamed his response, voice higher pitcher than normal, just about the same time she finished her accusation, already knowing full well what she was going to suggest. He may have been as dumb as a sack of hammers, but he he knew she was going to fault him for any little thing that went wrong. This? More than a little thing. He had to hold onto the co-pilot’s station so as not to get planted on his ass; the ship had lurched violently even farther in the wrong direction, twisting at an angle that made their reentry to the planet’s atmosphere even more precarious.

“I was in my bunk, alone, reduced to touching myself because someone else is too good to lay with a BILLIONAIRE!”

Instead of pushing her out of the way and grabbing the flight controls like he had a few moments before her arrival, Griff opted to take over the co-pilot controls in the vain hope that with both of them applying their strength, they might actually be able to swing the nose of the ship around. They weren’t, and it was a moment later that the robotic, monotone voice of the console alerted them to just how honestly screwed they really were.

“Hull integrity - forty percent and diminishing. Inertial compensator shutting down. Life support, rebooting. Full scale power failure, imminent.”

Griff’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “We’re going to die in a second, aren’t we?”

Even if the pair wanted to run, not that they had anywhere to go, the lack of an I.C. made it impossible. Barely a second had passed after Griff questioned their fate before the ship slewed hard to starboard, rolling, tossing both of them together. They didn’t hit the floor, but the side of the bridge’s communications console, then the cockpit’s ceiling as the ship continued to roll, jostling them around like they weighed nothing.

When he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her much smaller body against his own, there was no way she’d be able to accuse him of taking advantage of the situation. Separately, they’d both take the brunt of the ship tossing them around. Pressed against Griff, at least his larger form could shield her from some of the minor damage.

He began by saying, practically pleading with her to understand and accept his apology, “I’m sorry for last night, I just--”

It ended as the ship hit the unforgiving blue sands of the Esahu Desert, where there was no hope of Griff’s body being able to protect her any further.

Everything was spiraling out of control. The ship was about to crash and there wasn’t anything Clare could do that would stop it from happening. How badly would the ship be damaged? How long would it take for it to be repaired? Would she be forced to journey back with Griff if it was in too bad of a shape? Clare gritted her teeth, her mind ejecting her questions as she did her best to keep the controls from violently shaking.

Even as the ship gave those loud warnings the android ignored them, her eyes focused on the front of her ship that now resembled a burning fireball. When the ship breached the atmosphere and spun Clare had absolutely no choice but to fall into Griff’s arms, her tinier ones circling around him automatically.

Death seemed like it would be better than what would happen if they survived. If the ship landed peacefully then the two would have to continue to pretend that the events of the other day didn’t happen. Clare would have to simply ignore the fact that Griffon, the man who technically owned her, had somehow mistaken Clare’s feelings. Somewhere along the way the two had breached the line of companionship and because Clare was an android, because her mind thought like a machine, she accidentally led Griff into a false sense of security.

Now Griff was apologizing, or at least he was starting to. The loud alarms and the deafening sound of the ship racing towards the ground blocked Griff’s words entirely, not allowing Clare to hear them as the ship smacked into a large, sandy hill. The impact practically sent the android out of Griff’s arms, her head smacking against one of the ships panels which knocked her out cold.

When Clare came to, she thought the first thing she would see would be her own charred flesh. Instead, Clare was staring into the eyes of a pink, bald headed alien like creature. While Clare wanted nothing more than to send her fist into the alien’s face she controlled herself, not knowing whether or not the strange alien had saved her from certain death. “Where am I?” Clare asked, ignoring the excruciating pounding in her head.

The Yardratian canted his head to one side, seemingly perplexed that Clare was capable of speech. Apart from that small motion, he sat still as a statue while she looked on, confused and in some serious pain, until she tried to move into a sitting position. Once she did that, he rose from the small wooden chair in the far corner of the room and placed a hand on her shoulder, gently easing her back into the straw mattress.

“What happened? Did you...pull me out?”

The second she tried to fight him, her head began to swim, obviously still reeling from the crash. Without a word, it was like the Yardratian had put a spell on her, urging her back into a painless state of unconsciousness.

She would remain that way for at least another day and a half. The next time she woke up, her software processors, or whatever caused her to feel like she’d been concussed immediately following the wreck, had adjusted themselves and began to compensate for some of the pain. One of her arms, regardless of the fact that she was an android, had been placed in a sling.

The mysterious alien was no longer hovering over here. Instead, she was alone inside a small alcove that served as a bedroom in a hut that was just barely wide enough for three full rooms. In the next room over, larger than the bedroom, the sound of a laugh track could easily be heard over cookware rattling and a table being set. When Clare exited the bedroom, no doubt wary of what was happening, Xerash would be there, trying to urge her back into the other room.

“Sleep now, soulsore from crashcrash. No on the feet. Sleep, sleep.” Clare wasn’t exactly fond of the galaxy’s wide array of species, but even she would realize that the Yardratian meant her no harm. “No on the feet,” he repeated, pointed to her feet like they would fall off if she stood for too long. He had no idea Clare wasn’t what she appeared to be.

Even if it was half a day it felt even longer to the unconscious android. While she rested Clare was met with dreams of past memories she couldn’t understand. The dreams were fragmented, almost as if there were pieces missing to make them whole. The dreams were enough to make her toss and turn, her body plagued with exhaustion despite the fact that it seemed as if she was resting well enough.

“Crash,” Clare repeated, suddenly remembering her broken ship. She didn’t know if it was still in working condition or if it had been tossed to whatever junk yard that existed on Yardrat. “My ship. My shipship. Do you know where it is? Is it...gone?” The last thing Clare remembered was the bridge catching fire. If her ship was meant to be salvaged then someone had to be there to put out the flames before it consumed the ship.

Xerash had obviously misunderstood her question, because with a somber face, he shook his head before he led her to the third and final room of his humble abode. It mirrored the room she had been afforded down to the too-small chair in the far corner. With everything below his waist tucked under a threadbare blanket with bandages littering his torso, arms, neck and head, the pink-skinned alien must have thought Griff was what Clare meant. “Shipship leg no shipshape.”

Stepping gently to the edge of the bed, he lifted the cover and displayed the makeshift cast he had applied to Griff’s broken leg. “Bonesour.” Setting the blanket back in place, Xerash stepped to Clare and placed one hand on either side of her head, his thumbs resting against her temples. She wasn’t tall by any means, but even with his domed head she managed to tower over him.

Images of the crash played themselves out in her mind’s eye, her processors working overtime to display the Yardratian’s live feed of what the accident looked like. From his perspective she saw the ship hit the blue sand and disintegrated into three different pieces. The tail section collided with the ground first, shearing it from the rest of the body, and as the other chunk flipped end-over-end, the cockpit section came down hard, crushed nearly all the way. The wings went next, sticking up out of the sands at odd angles while the rest of the shuttle settled into place.

The picture then jumped to a different perspective, one the little Yardratian should not have had access to. It was from inside the bridge, now crushed like a paper cup, and showed Clare lay dangerously close to one of the burning consoles. Despite the fact that the bone had protruded through his right leg, Griff had dragged her away from the flames and pulled her from the wreck by the time Xerash had teleported close enough. He then beamed all three of them back to his parent’s home, where his mother had applied medical salves and ointments, setting Griff’s leg as best she could.

Stepping away, Xerash gave her a moment to adjust to the images and then smiled. “Dinner ready!” Shuffling by her, he went to the oven, opened the door, and inhaled the smell of fresh cheese melting.

Clare could have done without seeing what happened since all it did was make Clare feel responsible somehow. If she had listened to Griff then perhaps he wouldn’t have been injured the way that he was. As the images left her vision Clare instantly frowned, her eyes gently falling on the sleeping purple giant. Before Clare could ask how long it would take for Griff to recover, the pink Yardratian was already running out of the room to check on his meal, something she guessed was more important than the two strangers being taken care of in his home.

“Are you really passed out or are you just pretending?” Clare asked, her eyes lowered to look at Griff’s face.

“He gave me something for the pain,” Griff whispered, eyes remaining closed. “I feel like I’m a flying strobelight right now.” That caused one corner of his lips to twist upward in a smirk. “I can’t understand half of what he says, he talks like he’s got marbles in his mouth, but I think he might be baking senzu beans into whatever the fuck he’s making.”

His nose twitched a few times, but other than that, he remained still. “Smells like feet.”

“You should rest,” Clare added quickly when Griff finished, her arms having encircled her so that they were crossed over her stomach. “You look badly hurt and I can tell that despite what alien medicine they’ve given you it’s not going to automatically heal you. If they are making those ill-looking beans then you should stay in bed until they are prepared.” Clare nodded, hoping that Griff would listen to her advice instead of circling his way back to what had happened to them on the ship.

“As for what you did, I, um. Thank you. I would have burned inside of the ship if you hadn’t pulled me out. I’m a little less angry at you now because of that.” Clare chewed on the inside of her cheek, her eyes avoiding eye contact all together now. “Well, perhaps I should go and inspect the damage done to my ship. I need to see if it can be repaired or not. I don’t want it to be used for scrap metal by these pink alien things.”

“How could you stay angry at a face like this?” He offered her his biggest, sappiest pout, and even that caused muscles to ache he didn’t realize could have been impacted. “Ow,” he groaned, “I think I deserved that. I promise next time you start acting nice, I won’t try to . . . y’know . . . as long as you promise the next time you want to have drinks, you don’t invite me back to your bunk.

“Deal?”

“Deal,” was Clare’s quick response, her soft lips slowly offering Griff a much deserved smile. In order to avoid the awkward silence Clare cleared her throat, her eyes turning to see that Xerash was reentering the room with the pizza he was talking about. “Good, you’re back. While I don’t want to interrupt your dinner I’m going to have to. I need you and your people to help me repair my ship so that I may have access to it. It’s the only one I have, you see.”

“Ship out of side,” he would have motioned with his head, no doubt, but the simplest act of tipping it too far one way or the other would have made him topple over. “Ship outside in better condition than shipship inside.”

“I’m not a ship, you twit.”

“Ship outside not as angry, neither. Open.”

Griff tried to shift away, but there was only so far he could go before his body revolted and the pain made him settle. “You’re not feeding me like I’m some invalid. Help me sit up, Twit, and get me something to drink. That smells terrible.”

“Smells gooder than you.”

“Clare, don’t leave me with him. Clare, hey! Stop! Get back here! As your boss I order you, do not open that door! Do not walk out of that door!”

“Yumyumyum,” Xerash sang, “vroom, vroom, vroom,” impaling a slice of the pie with a fork, he brought it to Griff’s mouth like it was an airplane and he was feeding a child.

“I was just involved in a horrific spaceship accident, you insensitive prick.” Against his better judgement, he slowly opened his mouth and accepted the first bite.
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Clare
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Love Suicide
[+3 Days/Words: 3,789]
[+2,160 EXP]
[Quest Reward(s): Instant Transmission]
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