This is my entry for Resbang 2015! I hope you enjoy it. My partner smol-scythe was an absolute delight to work with, and I am so thrilled to finally unveil our work! Please read and review~
"Again?" said Spirit in a defeated, weary tone.
Maka scowled up at him as she stepped over the threshold of their inn. There was a clatter as something was tossed to the floor at her feet, and her scowl deepened.
"Caught again utilizing unlawful technology in a restricted zone," came the metallic voice of the policebot. "Make sure it does not happen again."
"It won't," said Spirit, hand tight on Maka's shoulder. She jerked forward to break his grip and moved deeper into the house.
"It will," called a voice from one of the back tables. A man sitting deep in the shadows leaned forward, fading sunlight glancing off his glasses as he did so and rendering them temporarily opaque. He gave a friendly little wave that managed to be both genial and smarmy. "I am sure Maka will act out again; statistically, it's quite likely."
"Are you the other parent?" asked the second policebot.
Spirit spluttered indignantly while the man chuckled.
"No, just a long time friend of the family. Professor Stein, at your service."
"We do not require servicing," the first informed them, which only increased Stein's laughter and caused Maka's face to grow red. It pointed an accusatory finger made of tempered steel at the contraption on the floor. "We only require that the Rulebreaker no longer engage in illegal activity on any property in any manner. Self-sustained flight propulsion apparatus are not allowed in any capacity on Neh Vah D-A Prime." The two policebots blinked their farewell light patterns at the inn and its patrons and rolled towards the door. The tread of one of their wheels crunched over the delicate, intricately crafted metal wings on the floor.
The roof of Chupacabra's was Maka's favorite hiding spot.
Her father's inn had many rooms, but they all felt as strange to her as the people who often stayed in them. They were impersonal, lifeless; she hated going in there every time she had to scrub slime from the floors or pry spines from the walls (their guests were not always the neatest). Her room was stuffy and small, filled with detritus from another life. She felt like she was suffocating in there.
So the open air on the roof of the inn was her only solace.
Neh Vah D-A Prime was the closest planet to the busy space port of Kaly Fornya. Her father had originally built the inn thinking that many of the weary travelers would want to spend the night away from the hubbub of the port, and when Maka had been small, that had been the case, but the improvements to space travel had made it harder and harder to make ends meet. Ships got larger, with more amenities and rooms, and patrons didn't need to disembark anymore. Her father's cozy inn no longer looked quaint and homey; it looked run down and dark compared to the gleaming cabins of the luxury liners.
Chupacabra's had started attracting the less savory of characters, the dregs of the travelers, and the regulars began to match the clientele. The inn now had a reputation for attracting people in long coats, fingers gently running along their vials of brightly colored liquids, and people in slinky outfits, draping themselves off of the bar patrons and slipping Spirit an extra doubloon for a good room upstairs.
She wondered if that was part of the reason her mother had left.
Maka huffed through her nose and pressed her cheek to her shoulder. The night air made the leather of her jacket cool to the touch; she found it comforting.
She could see the crescent shaped port hanging in the sky above her. From the surface of Neh Vah D-A, Kaly Fornya looked like an actual moon, gleaming and bright in the dark expanse of space, but it was a moon without phases, an unchanging face, divorced from the natural ebb and flow of the universe.
The stars stared down at her from beyond the port. Maka felt a tugging from deep within her chest, like an invisible string connected her heart to the twinkling stars. She had read so many books growing up about the voyages between those gaseous balls of light, the explorers who had been the first to step foot on an alien planet, the cartographers and botanists and miners who left their families behind in search of knowledge. Maka yearned to be one of their number.
She watched the stars for a long time. The night sky changed from deep purple to dark blue to an ebony, shifting slightly before her eyes. The pinpricks of light that made up the various constellations she knew by heart blurred as her eyes filled with tears. But one was particularly fuzzy, and Maka blinked rapidly. It grew brighter and brighter, and with a start, Maka realized it was actually growing closer.
Leaping to her feet, she watched the thing spark and crackle in the air like a firework. As it descended, a form began to take shape. It was a ship, with a thick, hardened body propelled by eight long thrusters falling from the sky, and it was aiming right at the end of Chupacabra's dock.
With a sickening thud, the ship slammed into the wooden dock. A rain of splinters fell from the old structure down into the empty abyss below. For a moment, it hung as if attached to a spider's thread, balanced precariously at the end of the dock, smoldering like a log. But then with another crash, the door opened and something spilled out of the ruined ship just as it began to teeter on the edge of the wood.
Maka sprung into action. She slithered down the drainpipe and cleared the few scraggly bushes at the base of the house. She kept her eyes on the massive black shape that was barely stirring at the foot of the ship. As she approached, it came into focus.
It appeared at first to be the figure of a woman draped in a long, black dress, but upon closer inspection, Maka could see the inhuman characteristics: the elongated teeth, the blood under the pale skin pumping black instead of red, the impossibly long fingers, covered in tiny hairs. The woman seemed to unfold as Maka knelt beside her, long black fingernails digging into the dock. Maka grasped at her shoulders, trying to guide her away from the still swaying ship.
"Bastards," spat the alien, blood dribbling from between plump lips.
"Please, we need to get away from here," Maka said. "The ship could fall-"
"Horrible bastards," the woman repeated. Maka tugged at her, and she hobbled forward, but her eyes were glassy, a faraway look in them.
There was a whirring and wheezing, and from the woman's back sprouted long, thin metal beams. They tried to settle underneath her, but Maka could see even by the weak light of the burning ship that many were damaged. She wobbled for a moment, then collapsed, the metal of her spindly legs wrenching and twisting horrifically.
"We need to move!" Maka insisted. The woman didn't answer, but allowed her arm to be pulled over Maka's shoulders. The eight metal legs tried in vain to keep up with Maka's pace, sparking at their ruined joints, but in the end Maka was huffing at the effort of dragging the alien alongside her.
A high-pitched groan pierced the air. Maka turned. The flames that had engulfed the ship had finally spread to the wooden dock, and the entire mess had cracked through the planks. In a shower of splinters, the ship and the end of the dock collapsed and fell through empty air, down into the gaping chasm below. Maka turned her back on the dock and yanked the spider woman forward.
"I will never let them have it," slurred the alien in Maka's ear. She struggled with the extra weight until finally she reached the back door of the inn. With a grunt, she lifted her booted foot and slammed open the door.
"What the-!"
Her father and Stein were sitting at one of the tables, hands curled around mugs of beer and a plate of Angorian mollusks between them. When the door burst open, Spirit had leapt to his feet, comically grasping at his chest. Stein was adjusting his glasses, eyes sharp on the creature in Maka's arms.
Strength giving way, the alien slid out of Maka's grasp and slumped to the floor. The feet of the metal legs protruding from her back scrabbled weakly against the ground.
"What is going on?" demanded Spirit.
"She's hurt!" Maka said, sinking to her knees. The woman suddenly reached out towards Maka, long, oddly hairy fingers clutching at the air in front of her face.
"You won't let them, will you?" she growled with an unexpected ferocity.
"Uh-"
"What kind of… what is that?" Spirit asked Stein over Maka's head. They saw innumerable species of aliens cycling in and out of Chupacabra's, but she hadn't been able to recognize what the woman was, and apparently her father hadn't either.
"I'm not sure." Stein knelt down, reaching for her slender wrist to feel for a pulse. "Is she lucid?"
"They'll be here shortly," rasped the woman. She tried to get up, but fell again against the floor. Spirit made a small noise in his throat, and Maka knew he was concerned about the slowly spreading brackish stains on the floor. Her long fingers dove beneath her cloak, rummaging around, and finally withdrew a small box. She shoved it into Maka's hands.
"Wh-"
"Don't let them have it." The alien was supporting herself on her arms now, pale face almost level with Maka's and eyes boring into hers. Maka wasn't sure whether it was makeup that made her lips so dark or if it was her blackened blood, but in the next second one of those pale, spidery hands had grasped her collar and dragged her forward. "Promise me!" spat the alien, a thin line of spittle dribbling down her chin.
"What?"
"Promise me!"
Maka's hands closed around the thin wrists in a panic. "I promise!"
"And make sure to kill that bitch of a sister of mine." Her eyes grew glassy again as she slumped forward. Maka scooted backwards out from under the weight of the woman.
"What even-"
"Maka, we need to-"
There was a shout from outside. Leaping to her feet, Maka dashed to the window. She could see dark shapes moving outside through the parted curtains. She squinted. There was a sudden flare that roared to life, and then another and then another, and she recognized flames.
"We need to leave!" she hissed, running back to her father and Stein, who was still examining the twitching woman. Maka grabbed them both at the elbow and tugged them forward. Stein reacted quickly, finding his feet and running, but Spirit stumbled. "C'mon!" screamed Maka. Stein's arm snaked out and dragged Spirit to his feet.
They flew into the front room of the inn. Maka slammed the door behind her at the same time the sound of the back door crashing open echoed through the building. Spirit was fumbling for the small safe they tucked away behind the bar while Stein was looking out the front windows. There was shouting and stomping from the back room.
"Dad, we need to go."
"Spirit, quickly," said Stein, striding towards him.
"I can't find it," Spirit moaned as Stein grabbed his shoulders and dragged him towards the door.
Maka cracked it open. "We're clear!" she said. They threw the door open and ran hunched over towards the stable. It wasn't far from the entrance, but it felt like a million light-years away as they dashed through the dark.
Stein slid open the heavy door and his steed Delilah snorted with delight at the sight of him. "Shh, quiet!" he admonished her. Spirit was watching out the door, eyes trained on Chupacabra's. Maka joined him. She could see an orange glow flickering in the windows.
A shot rang out. Delilah spooked, screaming and rearing up on her hind two legs.
"Stein!" cried Maka.
"Easy girl, easy!" Stein was struggling to grab the reins. Maka leapt aside, trying to avoid Delilah's clawed feet.
"No!" yelled Spirit, still watching the inn.
Stein managed to grab the rope. "Now!" He swung his body up and over Delilah. Reaching down, he met Maka's hand as she clutched at him. Her stomach swooped slightly as she was lifted off her feet and hit Deliliah's scaly back with a thud. "Spirit!" As Delilah began to gallop towards the open door, both Maka and Stein leaned over just as her father turned and leapt towards them. He hit Delilah's back behind Maka, and for a brief terrifying moment, it felt as if he were slipping of her grasp, but he managed to heave himself up and on.
"No, no, no," he groaned as he turned back to look at the inn.
Maka whipped her head around to watch the home she had grown up in grow smaller and smaller. The entire structure was glowing orange, billowing smoke curling into the sky and blotting out the stars. Chupacabra's was burning.
Somehow that night Maka made her way into Stein's small, messy apartment above his lab and collapsed onto the sofa. It smelled musty and a little like iron, but in her exhaustion, none of that mattered, and she fell into a dreamless sleep. She woke in the middle of the night to hear her father's dry sobs fill the room and Stein's answering low murmurs, but before she could do anything, she sunk beneath the darkness again and slept again until morning.
Every part of her body felt leaden. The weak morning sunlight streaming in through the window hurt her eyes, but her arms were too heavy to lift to block it out. She buried her face in the lumpy pillow, but the sun's insistent pull and the droning of voices from downstairs finally roused her. Lifting herself onto her arms, Maka blinked the sleep from her eyes. As she got her bearings, something glinted on the floor in the sunlight and caught her attention.
It was the box the alien woman had given her last night. Somehow she had managed to hold onto it during their entire flight from the ruined Chupacabra's. Upon closer inspection, she could see that it was a smooth metal cube with various small buttons across its surfaces. Blinking back the sand from her eyes, Maka lifted it to her face.
Pressing the buttons in a random order made a red light from within the box glow, then grow dim. She tried a few different patterns, but they all resulted in a quick red flash. She shoved the box under her pillow and lifted herself off the couch.
She descended the steps to find Stein and Spirit sitting in the lab. Maka suspected that once upon a time, the lab and the kitchen were separate entities, but at this point, they were one and the same. Stein was brewing Galatean coffee over a small open flame, drumming his fingers on the counter. Spirit sat in a stool, head buried in his hands.
Stein glanced up as Maka approached. "You can of course stay as long as you need," he said, as much for her benefit as for her father's, "that's no concern at all. I have enough research money left from my previous expedition to the exoplanet Pwort-O Reek-O and I'm happy to feed you for now. I… do not have enough to help finance any sort of rebuilding, however."
"Gone," groaned Spirit. "All gone."
"Yes. I can speak to the local policebots to see if there is any possibility of pursuing the people who burned down your inn, but I strongly suspect there will not be a lot to go on. They seemed to approach from the docks, so it seems likely they arrived via ship. I'm sure they departed as soon as they looted the place."
"Who was that woman?" asked Spirit, lifting his head to look at his daughter. There was a large red mark on his forehead from where his hands had been clutching at it.
"I don't know," Maka said, shifting her weight from foot to foot, struggling to maintain a perfect poker face. "She was in a small ship that landed on the end of the dock in the middle of the night. I didn't get a chance to ask her for her registration, or where she was coming from, or where she meant to go, or anything. She was hurt and I helped her. And her ship… her ship fell."
"So that'll be a dead end," said Stein. "With no way to retrieve it, we have no way of garnering any clues. And you know those policebots-"
"Too well," growled Spirit. Maka looked away.
"-they won't bother investigating without solid evidence in front of them. We may be at a bit of a loss on that front. I'm not really sure what could happen."
"What am I going to do?" asked Spirit in a whisper.
"You're going to eat breakfast," said Stein, setting a plate in front of him. Maka slid onto a stool next to him, careful to not let their knees touch, and Stein handed her one as well. "That's a good start."
Stein poured both Maka and Spirit a cup of coffee from his burner and slid some eggs onto their plates. The yolks were a pale green, which suggested they were the eggs of the Snarlak lizard. They cycled in and out of being legal to purchase, and on another day Maka might have raised an eyebrow and made a comment about that fact, but this morning she was starving, and wolfed down her breakfast.
The next few days bled into one another. Policebots cycled in and out of the front room, their droning robotic voices creating a cacophony of condescension. Maka lurked upstairs whenever they came by, not having any desire to spend any more time in their presence as necessary. Like Stein had predicted, they hadn't had much success in investigating the ruined inn, and Maka didn't want to answer any questions about the dead spider woman. There was something about the look in that pale face as the woman lay dying that haunted her.
Her father insisted that they earn their keep by cleaning Stein's laboratory. The task kept them incredibly busy, because the place was disgusting. Stein clearly did not prioritize cleanliness at any time in any manner. Her days were spent scrubbing blood stains of almost every visible color on the spectrum (and even some off the spectrum) out of the floors and the walls, were spent scraping dried out fluids from beakers and burners, were spent organizing and tidying and dusting and washing and folding and hanging.
The only saving grace of the project was the fact that Stein had collected so many books. Many of them were written in languages she didn't understand, but she still found plenty she could read. Running a hand across the leather bound covers, she traced the gilded letters with her fingertips, reverently memorizing their titles, until she gave in to temptation and flipped open the book and started reading. She whittled away the hours poring over the tomes, their musty pages imparting their knowledge as the sun crept across the carpet below her. If her father caught her, he would chide her for wasting time. If Stein caught her, he'd mention mildly which book she should place it next to when she put it away, which often lead her to the next book.
Her father collapsed onto the bed in Stein's room every night, exhausted and weary, the lines around his eyes growing deeper with every passing day. Stein kept strange hours, and seemed to sleep in the chair attached to his telescope more often than anything else. Maka took the couch that she had the first night they had escaped, gazing up through the skylight into the night sky, and when sleep did not come to her right away, she fiddled with the box.
Some of the small buttons on the cube were a little smoother than the others, ever so slightly more worn, rubbed down from years of oils and scales and skin touching it, so Maka had been able to narrow down the possible choices. Still, there were plenty of possibilities left, and Maka tried over and over and over, the little red light flaring from inside the cube a sign of her repeated failures.
That red light had become so much a part of her nightly ritual, the afterimages burned into her vision as she closed her eyes, that one night when the box glowed a pale green, it took Maka a moment to process what she'd seen. She blinked, but then the cube unfolded in her hands with a whoosh, and she startled so badly that she slipped off the couch onto the floor. From the center of the box erupted a thin stream of lights, curling into the air like Thymonian fire wasps during mating season. They met in the middle of the room, then shattered into a thousand pinpricks of light.
Maka clutched the box to her chest in surprise. It had opened like a flower in bloom, and in the center was a small orb powering the lights. The lights began to swirl together, forming like tiny galaxies - and then Maka realized that they were forming the stars. She stood slowly, watching miniature suns and moons and planets take shape, expanding to fill the room.
"Good lord!" cried a voice. Stein had apparently raced up the stairs. He was wearing only his socks and pajamas, one hand on the railing to steady himself, but his face was filled with wonder, the tiny lights reflected on his glasses.
"What's going on?" Spirit had flown from the bedroom looking harried and half awake, hair askew.
"In all my life," Stein said, approaching Maka and shaking his head, "I have never seen such technology."
"Look," Maka whispered. "It's Neh Vah D-A Prime." She pointed at the small planet, dwarfed by the Kaly Fornya space port next to it. Just as her finger drew close, the planets all burst into movement. "Whoa!"
The lights began to move away from Neh Vah D-A Prime. As the stars hit the edge of the projection, they shattered into tiny pinpricks and scattered, reforming new planets on the other edge of the map.
"There's Y-Ohmin," said Stein, pointing at a planet as it rushed by. "And there's R-Can Saw. Goodness, it even has Burmyudah Omega. I can't believe-"
The planets sped by, birthing and dying in the space of moments across the darkened room. Maka watched, heart in her throat.
Finally they began to slow. The three people in the room turned to face the largest object made of light, hanging in the room like a tiny sun. "It can't be," said Stein, adjusting his glasses.
"Treasure Planet," breathed Maka.
"What?" asked Spirit.
"Papa, don't you remember? We used to read stories about it all the time." Maka reached forward and her fingertips just barely touched the light particles maintaining the image of the planet surrounded by two distinct rings. It glittered like gold in front of her. The cube was warm in her hand.
Stein's eyes found the box at that moment. "Could it be-?"
Spirit still looked nonplussed, so Stein turned to him. "The story goes that the two legendary pirates, Eibon and Asura, traveled the galaxies and looted thousands of ships and ports, collecting treasure beyond imagination, beyond comprehension. They were the most effective and most feared pirates to traverse the universe. Eibon was clever and skilled while Asura was cruel and ruthless; together they made an unstoppable force."
"Oh, maybe this does sound a bit familiar," said Spirit, glancing at Maka. "This was in one of your picture books? From when you were a child?"
"I wouldn't be surprised," said Stein, now approaching the glowing planet as well. "It's a story that has long since been reduced to a fairy tale. But there is good evidence that Eibon and Asura were indeed historical figures. It's estimated that they lived eight hundred years ago."
Maka remembered the story well, but apparently her father didn't.
"So what happened?" asked Spirit. "Where does this planet come in?"
"As it's told, Eibon began to grow worried about Asura's cruelty. There is also some belief that Eibon might have fallen ill. So the legend goes, faced with his own mortality and the realization that Asura would retain everything that they had earned together, Eibon was determined to win against his partner in the last way that he could. He took the entirety of their vast wealth and hid it on a planet far, far into the darkness of space. He created Brew, the map to that treasure, but made it so that only someone as clever as he could crack the code. Asura, discovering his treachery, scoured the galaxies in an attempt to find the planet, but to no avail. He died, penniless and enraged in ignominy, while Eibon died surrounded by his treasure on a planet that has been lost for eight hundred years."
"Until now."
Spirit and Stein both turned to her, but Maka refused to quail under their surprised looks. "This must be Brew, and I know how to open it. We can use this and find the treasure and that will solve all our problems! We could rebuild Chupacabra's a hundred times over, we could actually attract respectable customers-"
"How, Maka?" Spirit asked quietly. "How could we possibly get there?"
"We charter a ship, of course," said Stein. Father and daughter turned to look at him. He looked mild and matter-of-fact. "I have enough money to do that. We hire a crew, we stock up, and we head out into space. Maka will of course hold on to Brew and utilize it whenever we need it. I will accompany her and catalogue any discoveries we make along the way."
"But-"
"You'll have to stay here just in case the policebots discover anything about the break in, and to make sure you continue to pay the lease on my lab here, and we will likely be back before you know it!"
"Likely?" he asked weakly.
"I can do it, Papa," she said.
Their eyes met and even through the gloom, Maka recognized them in their similarity to the eyes she saw every morning in the mirror. There was a plea in them, and something almost like pride.
"Please, Papa." She tried to imbue the word with all the connotations she meant for it: her eagerness, her determination, her guilt, her desire to prove herself. Spirit heaved a sigh and nodded, almost imperceptibly, but a grin cracked across Maka's face.
"Excellent," said Stein brusquely. "We have a lot to prepare in a short amount of time, so we'll need to get started first thing tomorrow morning…" He began to prattle off a variety of things they would need for the expedition, walking in circles and paying no attention to his guests. Spirit's hand twitched as if he wanted to reach out to his daughter, but Maka tensed and stepped a little farther away, and he made no further move.