Kind of an odd chapter to release on Valentine's Day... or maybe not.
If everything Fiona was telling his was true, plenty of people had a lot of explaining to do, not the least of which was Dr. Ivo Robotnik. The man had already been brought up on countless ethics charges, always narrowly escaping the grasp of the law on some bullshit technicality. Now it sounded as if he was intentionally bringing harm to people to further his experiments at unification.
If Tails had to guess, Robotnik believed that turning everyone into these creatures somehow brought him a step closer to unifying the universe into one collective consciousness. Unfortunately all it really seemed to do was turn the infected into mindless killing machines. Death that bread more death, a plague that Tails would do his best not let leave the ship.
"Do you know how they work?" the kit asked when she was finished with her story.
"Me?" she snorted, "you're the nerd, you tell me. I just shoot stuff. It's all I've ever really been good at."
That certainly explains a few things.
"You were trapped on a research station with Doctor Robotnik," he pleaded, "you didn't over hear anything?"
Fiona shook her head, "The only thing he wanted to do was build his own. His team poured thousands of hours of research into trying build a working Marker. Robotnik was sure that if he could unlock the secrets, he would be able to tweak it to fulfill all the desires of the Church of Unitology."
"That does sound like him," the kit agreed.
Returning to her feet, the vixen was the first one to suggest that they move, "Come on, it's not good to sit around like this. Besides, I thought you need to go find some jammer."
With a deep exhale, Tails pulled himself upright, "I did, and I think Captain Hammond sent a message to the USG. It could still be another day or two before they arrive."
"And didn't you say we only have a couple of hours before we crash into the planet?"
With a smile, the two-tailed fox responded, "Never a dull moment around here is there?"
"You should have asked me that a month ago," the vixen lamented. "The only thing a girl like me could do for fun was tease all the boys."
Somehow he doubted she had much trouble doing that. Although he couldn't tell for sure while she was wearing so much armor, part of him was certain her looks were as deadly as she was.
"Isaac is going to fix the gravity centrifuge, but that won't run until we get the engines back online."
The frown that appeared on her face wasn't all that appealing.
"I am not sure we want to go down there."
He didn't want to ask why, but he was going to.
"Any particular reason?"
"Right before everything really hit the fan, the most unsettling reports were coming out of engineering. Real grizzly stuff."
"You scared," the kit asked, turning the tables on her.
Fiona's growing grin let him know that she had accepted his challenge, "Alright then, tough guy, let's move out."
Tails followed her out of the back of the kitchen, revealing an abundance of small bullet sized burn marks that had scorched the walls of the corridor. Now doubt she had been doing battle with the monster that had plagued him earlier.
"I hadn't see one of those before," the red-furred foxed commented, following his gaze. "They're quite a bit stronger than the others."
"Yeah," he agreed, "it had a go at me earlier, but decided to run."
"So did I… unfortunately Scourge showed up," the vixen muttered, cursing the Mobian's name silently.
The neon glow of a bioluminescent sign shone in the distance, marking one of the ship's many lifts.
"There's a reason I was working my way to the top of the ship when I found you, ya know," Fiona added casually.
"Trust me, it's not where I want to go either."
"Hydroponics, right?"
"What?" he asked, confused that she would bring that location up.
"That's where you want to go, isn't it?"
He nodded his head slowly.
If nothing else, she was a good at reading people. Tails had never said that he wanted to go there explicitly, rather the red-furred fox put it together on her own after he had mentioned Cosmo.
"Well seeing as we have at least another day onboard this hell hole, why don't we drop by after we're done getting ourselves killed running your little errand."
"Yeah," was all he could reply in an almost speechless state. Most of him was afraid of what he might find, while the other part couldn't live without knowing.
"Just promise me you won't lose it," the vixen began before pausing. "I've been on this ship a long time, and I don't think there are all that many people left."
The kit could respect her candor and honesty. Perhaps he needed it at this point. Corridor after corridor was empty, teaming with silence that should have been anything but. Planet crackers of this class and size were comparable to small cities, but yet outside of Fiona and Isaac, he hadn't seen anyone else that still bared a mark of sanity.
"I stopped holding my breath a while ago," he admitted reluctantly, "but I am not sure how to feel about it."
The vixen turned to him with a warm felt smile, "It only take a little while of feeling sorry for yourself to fill that hole with bad decisions and self pity, trust me I know."
It was hard to dignify that with a response, mostly because he knew she was right. He wouldn't blame anyone but himself for Cosmo's death. All Tails could do now was hope that he wouldn't have to find out what types of bad decisions he would be making.
"But it's an easy trade to make," Fiona assured him.
"Why is that?" he asked just to keep their conversation going.
"The other option is feeling so helpless you suffocate. That much sorrow can leave you breathless."
Is she trying to make me feel better?
"I'll keep that in mind," he replied, not caring much for her input anymore.
Pressing his palm against the reader, the elevator let out a familiar gong, announcing its arrival.
"After you," she motioned him in.
"So what's got you all worked up about engineering?" the kit asked as the doors closed.
"The radio, when it worked, was filled with all kinds of weird stuff coming from that part of the ship. People weren't just going missing, they were disappearing from thin air. There one moment, gone the next never to be seen again."
"That could mean anything."
"After seeing that thing grab you… it lives somewhere."
"There's no way it can be that big, were nearly on the top deck."
"Don't tell me about what's possible, not anymore."
"It goes against science," Tails insisted, "Organisms just don't get that big."
"Everything here goes against science!" she shouted back at him.
She has a point.
When the lift finally grinded to a halt on the bottom floor, the two foxes stepped into the service hallway. Nothing was as nicely dressed up in this part of the ship. The plumbing was all exposed for easy access and repair, while the grates on the floor where a honey combed mesh so not even the peskiest of release valves could hide from engineers.
It was a small rumble at first, the kit could feel it traveling up his suit, but before he could say anything a burst of air exploded down the corridor. The sound it carried was a vicious deep throated growl that had enough force to bend pipes and nearly make him incontinent.
Tails didn't even want to look at the fox standing next to him. Fiona's eyes burned with an 'I told you so' hundreds of times harsher than any supervisor he had ever had.
Just keep cool, it was nothing.
"Come on," the kit said beckoning her to follow as if this awesome display of power hadn't fazed him at all.
"Really?" she asked, "We're just going to ignore that?"
"We don't have a choice," he sighed.
"You want to know how I survived for this long?"
"Probably by not doing stupid shit like this," he agreed. "The reactor is right up here. Just cover me while I fix it and we can get the hell out of here."
Motivated by whatever giant creature lurked in the depths of the Ishimura, Tails moved faster now, nearly running down the corridor waiting patiently for the radiation signs to alert them of their arrival.
"Here," he stopped when an overhead light illuminated a Decontamination Room sign.
This chamber preceded the primary reactor, separating potentially irradiated engineers from the rest of the workers. It had all types of equipment designed especially for working on the core. In addition it also provided the most direct route to service reactor.
Stepping inside, Tails did his best to help Fiona sweep the helplessly dark room. Not a single light flickered into existence, which didn't bode well for the condition of the engines.
Together, they approached the massive hatch on the far side of the room. It dwarfed most other doors so that large equipment could be moved in an out. If there were going to be grotesquely gargantuan creature, there was a good chance it was waiting for them on the other side.
The door hissed slightly as it opened up to more darkness. An orange haze hung in the air, making it nearly impossible to see from one side to the other. Their tactical lights pierced the veil of black like lasers, searching for what they both feared was watching them.
Fiona whistled, impressed by its vast size, "I've never bothered to come down here before, this place is huge."
"All the power in the ship is generated in that reactor," Tails said, pointing towards a large metal structure suspended in the middle of the chamber.
Stepping out onto the catwalk he froze when he saw a large amount of long cylindrical tubes scattered across the deck. They had spilled out of a crate, which had fallen off a fork lift. Given that the driver seat was covered in blood, Tails assumed it was safe to say this wasn't an ordinary accident.
"We need to be really careful," he stated in just a whisper, afraid he would upset the inanimate objects.
"No shit Sherlock," she spat back, taking a step forward swing her plasma rifle from corner to corner to check for enemies.
"Not of the necromorphs," he replied, ignoring her ignorance. "Those canisters are filled with raw uranium."
"So, are they going to explode?"
Fighting off the urge to bury his face in his paw he responded, "No, they're not going to explode… just be careful around them."
"Leave the tech stuff to the nerd, got it."
Tiptoeing between the nearly exposed fuel rods, Tails approached the reactor's maintenance terminal. It only took him a moment to bring up its status, which was thankfully much better than he was anticipating.
The sound of one of the tubes rolling across the deck shattered his concentration. Turning around he found the vixen carelessly pushing it aside.
"Stop!" he nearly screamed, but changed to an enraged whisper at the last moment.
"Oh relax, will you?"
There was no point in arguing, she was doing her best to be stubborn and he didn't have time for it. Resuming his work, Tails clicked through the most recent set of diagnostics, looking for any critical errors that would prevent the reactor from firing.
"So can you fix it or not?" Fiona asked, tapping her boot subtly to indicate her increasing displeasure in the passage of time.
She didn't want to be down here. The kit suspected she was scared, but who wouldn't be. After hearing that noise and see just what the blast of air did to the plumbing, he was not exactly excited to be down here either.
"Yes," he replied walking over to a valve, "it should be pretty easy."
With an exasperated sigh, the vixen shook her head, "Why did you have to go and say that?"
Even he was disappointed in himself for potentially jinxing them, "Sorry."
Reaching for a wrench on a nearby workbench he was able to pry open the fuel line' valve. The hiss of liquid tritium began to flow into the reactor chamber. Now that the reactor had fuel, all he had to do was start a fusion reaction.
"You're going to have to help me with one of those," Tails said as he pointed towards one of the fuel rods, "we're going to have to spark this thing to get it going."
Opening a chamber on the side of the reactor, the kit stepped backwards only to find the vixen already hoisting the tube into position.
"It goes in here, right?" she asked lining it up with the compartment Tails had just opened.
He nodded in amazement. Even an average size human would have had trouble moving a hundred pounds of enriched uranium. Together, they pushed it into place and shut the door behind it.
Returning to the terminal he initiated the loading sequence, which would unpack the uranium and would separate and detonate a small piece of it in a high-pressure environment to begin the fusion reaction. The kit proceeded to bang on the side of his helmet with three fingers in the shape of an M. The gesture to mute armor was universal between military and engineer personal alike. Each profession seemed to work with its own set of loud tools that could easily cause permanent hearing loss.
When Fiona nodded in acknowledgement, he hit the ignition button. Even with all the technology that had been poured into dampening sound in his RIG, the reverberation of a small nuclear bomb going off in a nearby confined space put a ring in his ears.
"That should do it," Tails said as he stepped back from the control panel. "There's enough fuel in there to keep it running for another month."
"So we're not gonna die anymore?" the vixen asked as if she didn't care.
"Well not because we get roasted in a fiery crash anyway."
"I guess that's a relief," Fiona joked. "Barbecues were never my thing and I was kind of looking forward to running around and terrorizing people as one of these things anyway."
As the red furred fox heaved an exasperated sigh, she turned to leave, knocking the kits wrench off the workbench. Ordinarily something so trivial wouldn't have been a big deal, but it landed on the valve to a highly pressurized tank of air.
Almost immediately the tube took off like a small torpedo, speeding across the deck towards the pile of unsecured fuel rods.
"Crap," Tails lamented as he watched canister shatter what little protective casing remained around the fissile material.
Fiona's suit was meant for war, his was meant for working in hazardous environments. While they shared many features, he suspected a Geiger counter was not included in hers. Immediately his suit warned him of he had been dosed with a near lethal amount of radiation.
"What?" the vixen asked in a now worried tone, doing a double take back to the canister that was still spinning in circles on the floor, clanking against several other fuel rods.
Fiona must have been able to see the despair through his mask or hear it his voice, because she still didn't seem understand where the danger was.
"Come on!" the kit shouted at her as he grabbed her paw and dragged her back to the door.
The first thing they needed to do was get away from the radiation, and quickly. The six inches of steel that separated the reactor from the rest of the ship was more than enough to stem the flow of radiation. However, it didn't do much to help them with the amount they had already received.
He knew there would be a decontamination station in the next room, but whether he could get it operational in time was another story all together. Putting his palm on the panel he wanted to scream at the lock to cycle faster. Every moment they were trapped out here with exposed uranium was another year shaved off their lives.
As soon as the door opened he was moving, ignoring his duties to check the room for enemies. At this point he would take getting dismembered or stabbed to death over dying of severe acute radiation poisoning.
"Tails?" Fiona asked as she searched the room with her tactical light, "what's wrong?"
"No time to explain," he answered flipping every switch on the circuit breaker, hoping that resetting them would bring the electronics back to life.
Thankfully every light and computer in the room awoke from their darkened sleep. Running over to the nearest terminal he mashed buttons as fast as his fingers would allow, only stopping once the decontamination sequence had been started.
"We need to put our suits in there," Tails explained more calmly now, pointing to a large container that was beginning to fill with a violet liquid.
"Without this armor," she began only to have the kit cut her off.
"Your armor is killing you right now, very quickly in fact," he retorted as he began the removal process.
Clicking through the OS's screen he overrode every protocol in the system's proper exiting procedures. It could take upwards of an hour to remove a RIG correctly. Each seal was airtight at most of the major joints, which meant that they needed to be separated carefully. At the moment, however, he wasn't as concerned with his suit's wellbeing as much as his own.
Unsure of what to do, the vixen relented. Tails could hear the hiss of her armor depressurizing as the each section released its seal.
"Any chance of an update here, captain?" she muttered in a condescending tone.
"By now each of us has received an extremely lethal dose of radiation, and we have less than five minutes to fix that. That is, if we want to stay healthy for the rest of our hopefully long and prosperous lives."
Tails continued to remove sections of his RIG, tossing each piece into the purple neutralizing fluid. When he was finally down to his fatigues and blue USG jump suit he turned around to find a confused fox, staring at him starry eyed.
"You have two tails," she stated in such a way that he wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement. "Now it makes sense."
It had never occurred to him that he had failed to explain his name. Sure the name tag around his neck read Miles "Tails" Prower, but plenty of people who worked for the USG had call signs that were nothing more than glorified nicknames. Armored suits were not designed with Mobians in mind. More often than not the armor forced him to tuck his tails down a pant leg or let them reach up his back. She no doubt expected to find an ordinary fox underneath all the steel.
He smiled back at the vixen, for the first time taking note of all the features her heavy military armor hid. The curves at her hips were mesmerizing, and the shapes only got better as he moved his gaze upwards. The splashes of tan on her chest and the tip of her tail were her fur's only betrayal of the deep crimson hue that covered the rest of her body. Unlike him, however, she was wearing nothing more than the most basic undergarments, leaving so very little to his imagination.
Rather than ogle Fiona any longer, he reached for as many pieces of her armor as he could handle and began to walk them over to the tub. She wasn't far behind him carrying the remainder.
"How does this help us?" Fiona asked as she dumped the last of her suit into the liquid.
"I don't want to walk around the ship naked, do you?" he grinned at her. "Steel like this will trap radiation for years, so it needs to be cleaned. As for us, we're going over there. Removing radiation from organics is a little different than inorganics."
The vixen followed his finger to the opposite corner where a series of four Plexiglas tubes were lined up adjacent to one another.
"I do need a bath," she smiled, running a paw through her knotted red hair, stopping when she reached the tattered yellow ribbon holding the strands in some semblance of a pony tail.
When she turned back, it was to find the kit bashfully removing the last of his clothes, tactfully keeping his back towards her.
"I uhh," Tails hesitated in embarrassment, "would recommend you put everything in…"
"I bet you would," the vixen muttered as she fumbled for the release on her bra.
Averting his gaze, he let Fiona finish removing the rest of her garments in private. Stumbling over to the controls for the decontamination tubes, he was doing his best to fight the urge to peek over his shoulder. The kit would have been lying to himself if he said wasn't attracted to her, despite her odd and occasionally prickly personality.
Setting to work at the computer terminals next to the decontamination chambers, he set about prepping them as quickly as he could.
"Damn it," he mumbled softly.
Only one of the stations was operational, the rest had shorted out or been damaged in the fighting. Fiona was smart enough to put it all together when only one-glass tube opened up. The look the fox shot him was filled with so much disdain he wasn't sure what she was about to do. He didn't need to look over his shoulders to know she was glaring at him with her arms were crossed strategically over her chest.
"You can go first," he replied softly as he turned to face the wall, "I'll look away."
"How long does it take?"
"An hour, maybe more, depending on the amount of radiation you absorbed."
He felt a paw on his pack, turning him around slowly. Perhaps a life in the military had stripped her of modesty. Fiona didn't seem to mind his wondering eyes as much as she initially led on.
"Come on silly, don't be baby," she said with a grin, "I don't bite… much."
Pulling him towards the tube, she was quick to push him inside. Before Tails could turn around and object, he could feel her body pressed up against his back. The sound of the tube being pulled shut and sealing was as unmistakable as the shallow breaths in his ear.
In such a small space it took effort for him to squeeze in his elbows and turn around, "You didn't have to…"
She was the one to cut him off this time, "let you kill yourself? How many times have you saved my life? I mean how long would you have lasted out there?"
He didn't respond, because they both knew the answer. By the time the procedure would have finished cleaning her he would have been on the floor howling in pain, pass the point of saving. Tails chose instead to stare back into the depths of her eyes. It was hard to do anything but remember Cosmo at a time like this, but every instinct he had was clawing to get loose.
"How full does this thing get," Fiona asked looking down at the rising liquid. Instinctively the kit attempted to cover himself only causing the vixen to chuckle, "there's no need to hide that, honey. No reason to be shy anymore."
The kit was inclined to agree. He was trapped in an incredibly confined space with a pleasantly attractive and very naked fox. Looking up to the top of the chamber Tails hesitated to break the bad news, "you can breathe it," he assured the vixen, "but it can be a little uncomfortable at first."
"Breathe it?" she asked now more concerned about what she had walked into.
"As infants we breathed the oxygenated liquid inside our mother's womb. Our bodies know how to do it but remembering can feel like drowning."
"You don't say," she said with an abundance of displeasure.
When Tails' gaze returned to hers, Fiona advanced her lips towards his. Fighting in such close quarters was useless, not that he wanted to or stood any chance of winning. The warmth of her kiss sent shivers through his body. It was wrong to be here with Fiona like this, but somehow that made it even more exciting. With death in every dark crevasse of the Ishimura, his guilt was likely to be short lived anyway. He didn't want to give up on Cosmo, but his chances to live were numbered, and his instincts seemed content with making sure that he did.
When Fiona who looked down again, it wasn't because the liquid had made it past their knees.
"I… the kiss… I can't control…" Tails began to explain, but the vixen silenced him with another kiss that was somehow deeper than the first. It was no wonder his body was reacting the way it was.
"You're not going to make a girl beg, are you?" the vixen whispered seductively in his ear.
He still wasn't sure what he was going to do. It was easy to see she wanted this as much, if not more than he did. Although, it wasn't hard to blame her. Trapped on a ship and forced to watch anyone you might call a friend die could probably put a person in the mode for any type of distraction.
"You don't strike me as the begging type," the kit replied before returning her affection.
That was all it took for him to get lost in a toxic mixture of passion and guilt. Burying his paws in her fur, he longed to feel her shape. She moved underneath his touch to the beat of her imagination. In no time at all he found himself swallowed by the vixen's warmth, relinquishing control of his senses to her inner desires. Fiona's soft whimpers only served to encourage him to push her harder against the glass walls of their enclosure.
As the liquid continued to rise, so too did the frequency of their breaths. It was only a matter of time before the vixen let out a high-pitched howl of satisfaction. Gripping her tight he unsuccessfully fought the urge to do the same.
Despite her insistence to the contrary, Tails paused as the decontamination fluid flowed past their shoulders.
"Don't try to hold your breath," he said between exhales, "it will only make it worse."
There were tears in her eyes that told him she wasn't ready for this. Most weren't, but inhaling the liquid was the only way to truly guarantee that radiation was removed from every part of their bodies, most importantly the particles in their lungs.
The pain was maddening, while the challenge of convincing you brain to inhale something other than air was near impossible. At first he swallowed it, gulping it down like a drink until the kit's body could no longer hold back the reflex to inhale. The liquid flowed down his esophagus causing him to gag and sputter, only speeding up the inevitable. Icy tendrils wrapped themselves around his innards, forcing his body to squirm in revolt. Every part of him reviled the foreign feeling. With his craving for oxygen satiated he found himself truly breathless.
Fiona, however, was not doing nearly as well. The vixen was still clinging to her last gulp of air and the notion that it was her savior. Unable to relinquish control, pain covered her face as she fought off the urge to inhale in what she perceived to be her death.
Placing a paw against her muzzle, Tails caressed the side of her face before pressing his lips against her. In a moment of weakness and ecstasy she relaxed. Immediately a torrent of bubbles erupted from her mouth as she hacked up her spent oxygen. After only a moment of coughing the vixen stabilized with a look of confusion.
It was odd not to have to breath, to simply be able to exist as your lungs pulled all the oxygen they desired from the fluid that flowed freely in and out. Grinning, the vixen attempted to giggle only to find her laughter was muffled, but it didn't stop the two-tailed fox from returning the smile.
Together they listened to iridescent sounds of a derelict Ishimura, amplified by the translucent fluid they were suspended in. An eerie silence put their minds at ease as they concentrated on other things. The feeling of her lips underwater took on an entirely new sensation. Their fur flowed together effortlessly making the space between them seem nonexistent. The kit had never been this close to anyone before. He only wished he could tell if it was the looming death or a connection that went deeper that drove his desires.
Tails hoped that the decontamination sequence would never finish, knowing that what they had in this moment would likely follow the fluid down the drain when it was done. To compare lovers, was in his mind, to commit a crime, but there was no denying his guilt. Fiona was everything he desired while Cosmo was what he needed. The heart and mind were two of time's oldest enemies, destined to leave him breathless.
Thoughts? Wasn't sure about adding a more 'adult' theme to this story, but I thought this was a fun way to do it. If I did it right, you shouldn't have seen that coming until it happened. I'll take any and all opinions.
Going to switch some focus back to Resistance: Aftermath for a little bit now. But I will be continuing this.
Cheers,
M.D