Destination Earth
The resonating sounds soon stopped, and Eris no longer felt the feeling of falling. Assuming the drop ship landed, Eris unbuckled herself from her seat and stood up, wobbling slightly under the pull of the Earth's gravity. It was a foreign feeling than that of the artificial gravity on the Ark, something she was going to have to become familiar with fast. She looked around. Everyone seemed unsure of what to do next. It was the first time they were on their own, not being told what to do or where to go; freedom. It felt good. But while the other prisoners headed towards the door, Eris rummaged around the dropship for anything she could use. Those Earth survival classes weren't taught to them for just any reason and if Eris wanted to survive she needed to be prepared for anything and the first thing on her mind was a weapon to defend herself. No one had set foot on the planet for more than a hundred years, but that didn't mean they would be alone. Only a fool would believe that they were truly alone in unknown territory. On the reentry, things were shaken loose leaving exposed wires and metal beams that could easily be shaped into a weapon with the right tools. Eris found the first aluminum beam exposed from broken panels at began to work at it. This is what she was preparing for all those years in prison on the Ark.
After ten minutes of pushing and pulling, bending the metal until it was thin enough at the end point to snap, Eris pulled a long, thin, blade of aluminum free. She had her weapon! All it needed were some modifications. She turned to find other supplies she could use when a guard came climbing down from the above room; the fourth guard. Eris froze in confusion. She thought that only prisoners had been sent down because they were expendable? Why was this guard here? It didn't make sense, but Eris could feel the metal of the aluminum beam cutting into her hand as she tightened her grip. That moment of questioning passed after it became clear to Eris that maybe this guard wasn't a guard at all as he looked too desperate; he was looking for someone. "Octavia!" Eris looked behind her towards the prisoners that crowded the hatch. An olive-skinned girl with bright blue eyes and long black hair turned her face, first in a dreamlike state, then she smiled.
"Bellamy?" Bellamy…his familiar name brought Eris back to her past. Where had she heard it before? Bellamy…. Bellamy…Blake; Bellamy Blake, son of Aurora Blake, the woman who saved Eris' life. Her curious eyes followed Bellamy has he hugged the girl, obviously happy to have found her. Eris wondered how he had lost her in the first place. Eris shook her head. She didn't have time to dwell on the past. At any moment, the prisoners were going to open the hatch to the dropship and then it was survival of the fittest. Eris needed to gather all the supplies she could because if there was one thing she learned in life, it was that no one could be trusted and that she was on her own.
During the ten or fifteen minutes the others spent debating on whether they should open the hatch, Eris managed to find herself a weapon, grabbed a few cushions from the seats, took one cushion from a headrest and made herself a rain-catcher, and fashioned herself a handmade axe that needed a sharpening. If they did decide to open the hatch, she knew that the first thing she was going to head for were the parachutes. Heat, rain, and damaged resistant material would make for a good covering and the cord for almost anything you could thing. Eris knew she had the upper-hand, many of the prisoners too young to understand exactly the situation they were in. The only sensible one, it seemed, was the blonde who was not amused by the games and jeers of everyone else around her. She was survivor, Eris could tell that much about her.
Eris had not been paying attention to the comments that had been made earlier, so when Bellamy offered the girl Octavia the chance to be the first human on the ground in over a hundred years, Eris became intrigued. Finally, she joined the rest of the crowd, keeping towards the back of the group trying to keep space between her and everyone else. With an encouraging smile and a nod of his head, Bellamy opened the hatch to the dropship, exposing everyone to their first breath of earthly air. It was beyond beautiful. There were no accurate words to describe the sight that now lay before their eyes: a lush green forest covered in debris from the ship and, what Eris could only guess, a morning dew. She felt her heart skip a beat with the thought nagging at the back of her mind that she was still alive: no poisonous air that she knew of had suffocated her and there was nothing but green solidifying the idea in her mind that life was possible. She really was free. Octavia walked slowly down the ramp of the hatch, cautious and still catching her balance under the earth's gravity. One more step forward, and she hopped down onto the soft ground. For a moment, everything and everyone were silent. And then ….
"WE'RE BACK BITCHES!" she screamed as she threw her hands in the air, cheers from the prisoners erupting in chaotic fashion, and for the first time in a long time, Eris could feel a smile creep across her face as she ran out to join the crowd on their new home: Earth.
