Parnell's POV

Man, why do I have to do all the work around here? I fly after the monster while I hear Sunny getting up and racing after me. The Goliath jumps in front of the relay and punches it right in its center, then starts to rip off small pieces of it. "Ready to work?" Sunny says from behind me. "You bet," I reply as I charge right at it, shotgun ready.

Woah wait, who cares about those two? It's all about Caira and Abe, right?

Caira's POV

"You scare me you know," I say as we follow Sunny towards Parnell. "Is that a bad thing?" Abe says jokingly behind me. I stifle a laugh and switch my grenade launcher to napalm.

The Goliath is roaring in fury as Parnell shoots out all of his shotgun rounds, Sunny is jetpack boosting him and Abe is moving up behind the Goliath to throw stasis grenades. I launch up with my jetpack and fire the napalm while keeping half an eye on my teammates. The Goliath roars again and breathes fire right at me, but Sunny's shield drone protects me from the damage. The Goliath roars again and smashes to shield drone to pieces, but Sunny works fast and places another one. "Shield drone out and charging!" she yells over the furious Goliath.

I switch to healing as the Goliath charges right into Sunny, knocking her over. I fire the healing grenade and Sunny pops back up and fires her mini nuke grenade launcher, throwing the Goliath off balance. The Goliath shifts targets and picks up a rock, throwing it on the now vulnerable Parnell, hitting him and knocking him down. I fly straight towards him as the Goliath starts fighting Abe and Sunny. "Get back in the fight Parnell," I say while triggering the healing field. Abe gets knocked onto the ground, Sunny gets launched out of the building by another rock, and the relay is half finished. "I'll fight, save them fast Caira," Parnell says to me, launching himself back into the fight.

I zip over to Abe and use the healing grenades, then outside to Sunny, but only to see nothing out there. "Sunny?" I call out, hoping that she's not gone. "I'm alright, it's just a scratch," Sunny calls from the right side of me. She's not wrong though, the rock only destroyed her shield drone, but she is not injured. "Caira!" I hear Abe call. I jump back in the fight to see a half dead Parnell and a dead Goliath. "Parnell!" I yell as I land before him. "You'll be alright, I promise."

Later, back at the main ship

Still Caira lol

The TV is off; my bed's sheets are pulled practically all the way to the carpeted ground. My dresser sits in one corner, while my tiny bookshelf full of field guides and space books sits in another corner. I sigh and get up off of the bed and open my door only to find Abe standing there, about to knock. "Oh, hi Abe, what's wrong?" I ask, now worried as I stare at the sad expression on his face. "Oh nothing, just exhausted and just wanted to see if you want to talk," he replies, nearly yawning. "Oh, sure, come on in then."

We walk over to my bed and sit down on the corner, the TV still off in front of us as we just sit there and stare at each other. "Well, Caira you always are in the lab, did you find out anything new?" "Kala explained that they have fusion cores and they convert it to biochemical mass and that's how they evolve. Without any monster samples, like you know, a dead monster, it's hard to find out these kinds of things. Though I don't like having her around, Kala has more experience with these things and has taught me things about them that are so useful, I feel like every day we're getting closer and closer to finding out how they came here" I explain.

"Wow, but here's the real question; how can we help Kala?" he asks, with pity in his eyes. "You go too harsh on her sometimes Caira, she's willing to sacrifice her own life if it means stopping these things, wouldn't you do the same?" I look down at the crossed feet and silently curse at myself. He's not wrong, I am way too harsh and I would do the same. "I don't know how we can help her, she might tear this ship apart if anything happens to her brain, it's already half monster and I don't know how she controls it."

He puts his index finger on my chin and lifts my head up to prevent me from looking down and he sighs. "It's not your fault you know, any of this. You act like it is. Kala made her own choice, and you try your hardest to stop these things with so little resources and have found out so much. Instead of being down on yourself for not finding out something, you should be proud of what you've achieved so far," he says softly. A single tear falls down my cheek and I wipe it away fast. "You're right." He laughs warmly. "Am I ever wrong?" he asks with a grin. I playfully punch his shoulder, but then he looks back at me with a frown. "You're still crying," he complains.

I wipe the tears away like they mean nothing, which in reality, they don't. I am proud of what I've done, I don't need anyone to tell me anything less. Abe smiles again and wraps his arms around me, then pulls me into him for a tight hug. I lean into it and accept every single comfort that's there for the taking. I let out a sigh and we pull away from each other, I almost miss the heat of him. I almost miss the embrace. He stands up and tips his hat for a farewell. "Four more days of fighting and evacuating, then you can get back to catalog and do what you were born to do," he says with a pained look in his eyes. "No, Abe," I start, but he already closed the door.

I slump onto my back in frustration, all he thinks of me as is some rich scientist, nothing more. He doesn't truly care, he only cares about whether or not these things can be stopped, that's the only reason why he comes to me. I throw my pillow across the room and nearly scream. Why am I this hurt? I can't possibly like him, can I? I push the thought away and stand up. I don't need a guy in my life to keep going, I need to focus on my research.

I run through the seemingly endless hallways and finally reach the lab, where Kala stands with a dead monster in the quarantine. "What's going on here?" I ask, approaching Kala. "I'm sorry Caira, Laz and I had to take matters into our own hands," she replies, not looking up from her tablet. "What do you mean?" She puts her dead hand up to silence me and I peek into the room to see Lazarus about to use his glove. "No! You can't!" I scream, but it's too late. He uses it and the monster springs back to life, roaring and hissing in fury. This is the same Goliath that we just killed.

"What's going on here" he doesn't even finish his sentence as he runs up to Kala and nearly tackles her. "What the hell did you do?" he rips the tablet out of her hands and tosses it to me, and I barely make the catch. I look down at the screen and see one thing, written at the top in huge letter. MONSTER TERMINATER TEST 1.

They aren't bringing it back to life to study it, they're testing ways to destroy it. "Abe, stop!" He looks back and throws Kala to the ground, then takes the tablet out of my hand. He reads it and growls. "Why didn't you tell someone about this?" he says in an angered whisper. "Who was there to tell. No one would agree and everyone would just laugh at our idea," Kala says calmly as she stands up without showing even a flinch of pain. "Abe, it doesn't matter, just let them try it." I look up at him only to see nothing but anger in his eyes. "I don't care," Abe says as he turns to walk out. I sigh and follow him, and once we're outside and the door closes, Abe pins me to the hallway wall.

"Caira, you can't possibly agree with this!" I look away from his animal like stare and sigh, gently pushing him away. "Abe, it won't hurt to try a monster terminator, but please go and eat and cool down, you're starting to scare me," I say, still keeping my eyes on the ground. I feel his burning gaze give away and I look up to see his eyes return to his normal, calm yet caring expression. "Are we friends, Caira?" he asks, looking at me with a blank expression.

I look at him in the eyes, and nearly sigh. "I don't know, are we? After this the only thing you'll be doing is bounty hunting." I push away from him and walk all the way back to my room without looking back. It's his turn to feel bad about what he's done.

Before we arrived at Shear, Abe and I were friends for the long couple of months ride here, but now I'm not even sure if he ever wanted to be friends.

LATER (the next morning)

"Caira, please wake up," I hear a voice call to me. I yawn and reluctantly lean up to see Abe looking at me. "What?" I say as I stretch my arms. "I'm sorry Caira, I was so rude to you and probably made you feel like I didn't care about you." "Jee well I wonder what gave you that idea," I say with a roll of my eyes. "Caira! Please, you're such a kind, caring and smart person," he pauses to shift closer to me, and for once I don't back away. "I don't want to lose that," his voice turns to a whisper and I look into his eyes and sigh. "I'm sorry too, I know with Parnell it was stressful and I shouldn't have made it worse." "Well, at least we're friends again, right?" Abe asks. "We never weren't friends Abe, we just had an argument, happens to the best of us," I say with a grin.

He sits down right in front of me on my bed and runs his hand down my cheek and looks straight into my eyes. "I don't want you to get hurt, and quite honestly I think this is the first time I've seen you sleep in a couple of days," he says. "You don't have to worry about me, I can handle myself." "I know; I just still have that urge to protect you. "I know, it's in your nature. You're a caring person, so you want to protect anyone you can," I say. He leans his head closer to me, and I can feel his warm breath, but then the speaker comes on. "Team 5 please come to the dropship for briefing."

I sigh and look at him. "Well looks like I have to wake up now." We stand up and he leaves and heads straight for briefing while I change into my battle clothes and head down to the dropship.

DROPSHIP

"You ready?" Abe asks me as we stand, our hands on the railings, preparing to drop. "Yeah, let's just locate them and get them back. I have a lot of research that has to be done today."

Thank you all so much for the positive reviews! J

I wanted to write a long chapter for you guys so here it is! Enjoy! I'll get the next chapter in as soon as I can!

Let's just say some more "action" happens the next day ;)