Quick name reference: Zima=Sonya, Istina=Anna, Gummy=Lada, Leto=Rosalind, Rosa=Natalya, Absinthe=Zoya, Carrion=Mikhail (the OC)
Blue light, Red light
Life is not easy for the infected. A rule that isn't exclusive to terrans. When a catastrophe hits the land, humans are not the only creatures affected. Slugs, spiders, dogs… any and all sorts of lifeforms are susceptible to becoming diseased. All it takes is for a small injury to give access to the blood vessels and enough originium particles to invade the system.
When the same members of your species were malformed by mutations and sentenced to a painful death by crystallization, who could ever hope for love? And yet, life is adamant in its command. As such, the lonely deer continued its advance through the forest… looking for that fabled companionship.
The warmth.
A thunderous voice roared above the deer. The animal did not know who was that knight falling over it, but it knew better than to stay put. Kicking its hooves, the deer jumped out of the way to dodge the dropping bulk of armor and banners. It had to continue moving forward, far, far beyond the hunter's grasp.
But the hunter was not alone. A terran with antlers as majestic as its stood its path, an odd tool of sticks and strings making circles over her head. The hunter threw the invention, but the deer jumped high to avoid getting its legs tangled. All it took to meet certain death was falling down once. Fortunate were the few animals who could survive even the simplest of falls.
The deer kicked the ground to the left and sought a different path. It ignored how many hunters there were, but it would not take any risks. The creature was confused. The best it could do was moving erratically, hoping to confuse the pursuers that gave chase.
Out of nowhere, the earth beneath the animal exploded, sending it up into the air. And so, it fell. But it still breathed. Even if doom was nothing but certain, for as long as a creature continued to draw breath, it would struggle on. The two hunters that were meant to land the killing blow started bickering against each other, while the third was too busy reloading her cannon. Hope was the last thing one could lose, unless it was the first thing to be given up. So the deer stood up and dashed forward. To where? Towards that warmth.
A terran sighed and asked something of another. A gun was pointed at the deer and an arts shot was fired. The animal tripped over and fell down once again. Before the fallen could keep struggling, a surprise attack was fired from a flying machine thing. A shapeless bolt took it down, a thin laser kept it down and the slice of a military knife put it down.
There was warmth in death. As confusion preyed on its bestial mind, the deer found comfort in that sensation alone… even if it was the heat of its blood, slowly fading away with its conscience.
"We've committed a grave sin! Oh, Click, what have we done?!" Carrion continued to weep as they edited the documentary on wild life in a laptop. The zalak wiped off a single of her tears and continued speaking into the mic.
But, even if the warmth fades away, it doesn't disappear. It moves somewhere else. From the wound on the deer's neck to the soil. From there, to the growing foliage and the thirsting trees. From its flesh, to the hunters… and so, the cycle continues, undisturbed by oripathy. A simple conclusion to a simple, yet beautiful life. The warmth from its life… to our hearts.
"Guh… ghnn… I was ready for trouble… but not for the feels…"
Click stopped the recording and breathed out the exhaustion. "We took its life to have something to eat. If I didn't make it any justice, I wouldn't feel right about having dinner."
Carrion continued to weep the tears of his soul, renewing his admiration for Click's many talents while highlighting the beautiful aspects of the wilderness and the life therein. As painful as taking the deer's life was now to them, that was one way to keep sane in Terra. Valuing the weight of a life, one won't forget how precious it is. Getting excited about perfecting the deer's legacy and presenting it to the Doctor later, the video editing duo kept working on the laptop next to the tents, some distance away from the campfire.
"The Nightmare Knight! It could be anywhere! In that tree's shadow! Creeping behind your backs! Or even in the darkness of your teetering mouth!"
"I bet that knight or whatever is also inside that hollow skull of yours, haha."
"Isn't it, already? Figuratively."
"Hey! That's rude, you two! I was just trying to tell a spooky story for ambience!"
Absinthe focused in the meat she was grilling over the fire in order not to think… in the shadows. She was meant to be those operators' senior, but she wasn't any good with scary stories. As much as she learnt of the worldly horrors, the ones that terrorized the mind were the ones she felt the weakest to. Listening to Squire's tales about the Nightmare Knight was not going to sit well with her when she went to sleep.
Squire and Salvager kept calling names at each other, but Cannon was neither as young or immature as them. "Miss Absinthe, if I may?"
The whitehaired forte was older than the ursus, but she was respectful of her senior, unlike a certain pair of unruly individuals. Absinthe welcomed the chance to keep the Nightmare Knight outside her thoughts.
"I wanted to apologize for our earlier failure."
"Don't sweat it. Hunting prey is harder than it looks. You almost had it."
"We failed." The forte repeated, repentant.
"Hey, it was this crazy chick's fault for trying to get the upper hand on me!" Squire protested.
"Huuuh?! It's your fault for getting in my way! You haven't even killed a fly in your life! It had to be me who did it!" Salvager retorted in her anger. The kuranta returned his dark eyes towards the fire and glared at it, growing silent. "But you guys took it down no problem after it escaped us! As expected of our seniors!"
Absinthe shrugged. "It was nothing, really. I only did as Carrion told me to and-" The ursus halted her words, glanced at the pair of film makers wailing nearby and shrugged again. "We… make a good team."
"Wow, boss, you're cute." Salvager called out, putting words to her partners' thoughts.
"W-Wha-"
"Can I make you a question? Aside from that one, hehe." The elafia persisted. "Are you and the teacher a thing?"
"A thing?"
Salvager sat on Cannon's lap and tried giving her kisses, only to get blocked by the forte's rejecting hand. "You know, like that!"
Squire stood up, grabbed the deer girl by the antlers and pushed her aside. "Why do you ask for the obvious? It's rude."
"You're rude! How many times have I told you not to grab me by the antlers?! Gnhaaa, release me!"
Unfortunately for her, Squire was just slightly big enough to mess with her from outside her grasp. The kuranta of brown hair would not normally pick on others, but Salvager usually gave him more than enough reasons to be mad at her, so he had been butting heads with her ever since they were assigned to their instructor. Cannon, on the other hand, made a conscious effort not to get dragged into their childish disputes. Two out of ten times, that worked. That time, she gave both of them a bump on their heads to cool them down. Before they could open their mouths to keep fighting, she stuffed them with the cooked dinner.
"I apologize for those two, miss Absinthe. Can I… ask something else?"
"Sure…" The blushing bear nodded.
"Why does instructor Carrion, um…" The forte of thick short horns signaled to her own baggy clothes and hair, hesitant to say something that might be seen as rude.
"Ah, that? Mikhail likes fluttering things."
"Is that all?"
Absinthe glanced over her friends' direction once more. "Well, no… I'm not sure if I'm allowed to tell you about that."
"Is it private?"
"More like personal."
"Does it have something to do with him being a bad person in the past?"
The forte's words caught her teammates attention. Their mouths were full of meat, but their eyes repeated the question to the one who could answer it. Absinthe tensed up a little.
"Mikhail tried doing what he felt was right, even if his approach was less than desirable… Long story short, he bullied a male student who used to like feminine clothes and… that changed Mikhail in some way. I don't know if it was just his own preference being awakened or… the result of his…"
When the hunters ate the deer, did they become the deer, themselves? Or was that an illusion? If they ate its heart, would their own heart beat in honor to the fallen? Absinthe didn't care about those things. Admittedly, she was a bit weirded out by his skirts at first, but she had grown fond of his confident and unique fashion sense… and she had always liked his bright red hair, so having more of it was not in her list of complaints.
The ursus caressed her own gray hair, growing conscious of her changed appearance. She used to have a messy hairstyle as a result of taking care of it herself, but there was an angelic hairstylist aboard Rhodes Island already. When Zoya showed them her new braid, she felt embarrassed. The compliments she received still echoed in her fluffy ears.
"I apologize if I sound rude, but does that mean the instructor swings the other way?" Once Cannon was already invested in a conversation, there was no stopping her anymore.
Absinthe shook a little, but a nostalgic memory revived in her mind. She once used to wonder the same thing, so she understood the novice operator's curiosity. Everyone in Rhodes Island tried being respectful of others and their private matters, but delicate topics such as those were not really brought up by many. There were usually more important things to worry about, but curiosity and personal affairs were basic aspects to daily life, even in such a harsh world as theirs.
"It's like food and colors. You can like chocolate, but that doesn't mean your favorite color is brown, or that you hate blue." Although those weren't her own words, the ursus agreed with them. "If you're that curious about it, you should ask him yourself. Mikhail is not too concerned about the things you're imagining. The only flag he waves is his own. As for me, I don't really care which way he swings or how he chooses to dress. As long as I can stay by his side, that's enough for me… You're lucky that he's your instructor. He's passionate about his job and cares about you more than he will ever admit. You're in good hands."
The trainees regretted not having coffee at their disposal. None of them felt like teasing such a pure girl anymore and they had almost run out of ghost stories to share next to the firelight.
The exaggerated duo of deer appreciators returned from the emotional rollercoaster and sat down with the rest. When they were offered their ration of roasted meat, they ate with funny yet dignified expressions. When the drone flew over them and descended to film their dinner, they saluted to the camera at the same time.
"Aaand, cut! Hehehe, I can't wait to show this to the Doctor!" Click squealed in satisfaction.
"I don't really think we should. It has the potential to punch a hole in anyone with empathy. We could destroy the Doctor's sanity."
"Hahaha, then nothing will really change, huh? That's always at zero!"
Chuckling at their joke, the film enthusiasts told the trainees to stop fighting with the metallic skewers, since it was disrespectful for the departed. Absinthe then asked them to show her their video, though they gave her many warnings for the inevitable emotional damage. The forte operator had no idea what the documentary was about, but it was powerful enough to make even a discreet and quiet girl like Absinthe to become teary-eyed.
Just what in the world did those two do behind their backs? Whatever it was, Cannon felt a little jealous of her instructor's group. There was a lot of warmth between them.
The only warmth that could originate between the idiots of her partners was the friction of their undying rivalry. But then, did it really matter the shape warmth took? As long as it was within your grasp, wasn't that enough?
"Hellooooo, everyoneeee! Your favorite streamer, Click, is back on the move! Today I'm going to show you the beauty of wandering through a tranquil forest! What? I'm disrupting the tranquility of this place? Ahahaah! That was on purpose, my dear friends! I don't want to disturb more of the local fauna, so I'm just giving them a friendly heads-up! Huh? Isn't that going to put me in danger if predators find me? Worry not, my dears! Dangerous monsters are usually nocturnal… so as long as I don't fall into any creepy cave or something like that, it will be fine! Just casually rising some death flags for myself, hahaha!"
Click kept walking over a fallen tree trunk in silence and jumped at the end of it. A voice in the distance told her not to go too far without them, but as much as the streamer appreciated that her friends' presence, she also looked for some alone time in the midst of nature. It was at those times when she forgot that her drone was recording and she just wandered around, going wherever her instincts told her to. As the humidity grew, she noticed the start of swamp. The land beyond was not easy to transit, so the mouse turned back and started talking to the drone and pointing out the many sights that made nature truly beautiful. She danced around the scenery to make sure all viewers who watched her later felt envious of her and grew an interest in visiting the countryside.
"Go touch some grass!" As Click usually put it, though the grass wasn't really all that important. As long as people took a break from their monotonous lives in the landships to appreciate the hidden beauty of their world, that was plenty.
The mouse then stopped to watch her surroundings and appreciate a little detail that escaped her attention. She was lost. Well, she wasn't. It was her team that got lost. Click took some steps back to sit down over a rock. She had to test her radio and attempt to get in contact with the others.
Suddenly, the ground beneath her feet crumbled into a shadowy and dirty rift.
"Oh, no!"
Click hung onto her staff, which she managed to position between the crevice's walls.
"Our lovely adventurer is in a pinch! Will she live to tell the tale? Find out next chapter!"
Once the usual gig for comedy was taken care of, the athletic mouse tried pulling herself up, but the crumbling ground had other plans for her. Click held onto staff and maneuvered her drone to give herself an extra footing. Tragedy struck in the form of a pebble, which fell onto the machine, disrupted its trajectory and crashed against its user.
"Crap!"
Darkness grew hungrier and swallowed the mouse whole.
Would that be the end of Click's wild adventures through the countryside? It better not! Her fans would be heartbroken! Holding fast onto such ideas, the streamer tried calming down before panic took over her senses. She couldn't see anything. It was pitch black in that cavern.
Worst yet, she wasn't alone.
Or was she?
Shadows are a hunters' allies. They hid anything and everything. There could be nothing around her… or everything. From fangs to talons. From claws to spikes. From maws to venom. Could you imagine it? Did you fear it? Close your eyes and open them again. Anything changed? Indeed. Nothing would change for as long as your eyes didn't habituate to the darkness. In the meantime, your greatest enemy wasn't the beasts prowling around, but your own mind carving the silhouettes of your fears.
Click resisted it. She couldn't allow herself to freak out again. Not during her trip. She learnt from Mikhail to take deep breaths in order to fight the building anxiety. But fear gripped her too tightly. Eyes failed to see, but the mouse's ears? Those functioned perfectly well. There was a breathing, but not hers. She had been holding it ever since she fell down to the predators' den.
Next time the little zalak opened her eyes, they weren't blue. But who cared for pigmentation? When darkness reigned, there was no color. Except, perhaps, for one.
The shiny red in the predator's eyes.
There was a valley next to the forest they visited. Carrion had hoped that Click would be waiting for them by the entrance to the open area, but there were no signs of her anywhere. There was a path of torn wooden fences that led to a town in the distance. Knowing there were nearby people they could turn to in case of an emergency was good to know, but the ursus operator was still trying to get into contact with Click via radio.
Absinthe approached him from behind, but her intentions changed as soon as she saw the worried look on his face. "Is there any need to worry so much? Click is a pro at this. If anyone had to get into trouble, I think that would be us."
The redhead rubbed his shoulder and adjusted the cap he wore. "You're right about that. I may be worrying over nothing, but…"
"It's about her complex, no?"
Carrion sighed and tried once more to ask Click for her location through the radio.
The female bear continued. "I was also surprised when I saw how much she changes when she goes through emotional stress. It's like she's entirely a different person… but that person is strong. We both know it."
"I was a bit nervous when she asked me to go to this trip, but she looked so excited about it I couldn't turn her down."
"You are like a doting dad." Absinthe grinned.
"More like a brother who gets pulled into all her schemes."
"Come on. You love it."
"You read me like an open book." The instructor replied with a smile.
"What would I be then? A sister?"
"For Click? A little sister for sure. She once tried scouting you into being her channel's mascot, remember?"
"I'm not so good in front of cameras…" The caster mumbled, reminiscing on the tension that always filled her body whenever lenses were pointed at her. Carrion opened his mouth say something, but he ended up choosing not to be so honest.
A breeze caressed the valley's green blades, making the tree's leaves ruffle and the distant clouds move just a tiny bit faster. The marc of past catastrophes created great bodies of originium minerals, which grew like spires from the earth. That moment was peaceful the ursus duo hoped that it would last forever.
But Absinthe had a goal. It was one of the rare occasions during the trip when the instructor was neither nagging at his students or joking away with the streamer. It was the time where Zoya could be alone with Mikhail. She just claimed last night that she would be content if things remained as they were, but the heart was greedier.
"And for you?"
"Hm? For me what?"
The girl cursed the increasingly wild wind. It was as if nature itself tested her resolve by forcing her to speak louder. Ever since Chernobog, Zoya considered herself an insignificant girl who was incapable of achieving important things… but it had been a full year since then. Besides, it was that boy who helped her regaining the confidence to speak up when it mattered.
"What am I to you?"
Carrion felt a new set of pains eroding from within. The first one was a fluttering sensation in his stomach. It made his mind spiral out of control with all sorts of possibilities. The other pain, however, was one he was quite familiarized with. It told him that there would be no time for those fantasies. As much as he wanted to consent the former, the latter was sharp enough to make him stay put.
The instructor glanced at the distance before returning his blue eyes at her. When he spoke, he did so from the heart. And his heart made him hug Zoya.
"Obviously, you are an irreplaceable part of my life. You're the person I want to keep the closest to me."
There was love in his eyes and Absinthe didn't need anything else. The feelings were already spilling from her mouth when, as if cursed by fate, a lonely damaged drone stumbled its way up to them.
"That's Click's! Oh, no… Something must have happened…" The team leader immediately noticed, reaching out to the drone.
Absinthe was hurt from the ball of feelings stuck in her throat, but Click was also her friend. She swallowed her hopes back in and entered the emergency mindset. "We need to find her quickly. What do we do?"
"The drone has been set to automatic mode, so it sought the closest user to itself."
"That's us. I'll go gather the team. Can you pinpoint her location?"
"I'll review the drone's travel history to trace any suspicious movements."
"We'll find her, Carrion, but we must hurry."
"We do."
As much as the Infected appreciated the timely interruption, Click being in danger was nothing to be happy about. The last time he felt so desperate while in the countryside… he had been recently infected and he was forced to prey on animal corpses. In those two months, he was lucky enough to avoid dangerous situations with the scarier monsters… but Click was a different story.
All Carrion could do was praying that some silly accident was everything that took place, but that was the worst part of radio silence. There was no way to confirm her safety.
Cannon secured the way down the rift by staying outside and guarding over the ropes. Squire wanted to go down as well, but his armor was too heavy and his lack of fighting capabilities would only get in their way. Carrion fixed his ponytail over the gap of his black cap and picked some climbing tools he kept stored in his skirt's many pockets. He, Absinthe and Salvager descended slowly but surely, flashlights strapped onto their vests.
"This is…" The elafia covered her mouth and tried not vomiting.
Gore. When death was sprayed like fertilizer, the end result usually stirred one's insides in a wrong way. Carrion and Absinthe had been through enough operations to keep calm, but the younger operator was still unused to such things, even if they were nothing new to her.
The rescue party scanned through the area filled with wolf corpses and found the only standing predator. Her gray shirt had been bloodied, her jacket was scratched by many claws and her trademark cap was nowhere to be seen. The little mouse had back curved, almost as if her mind was that of an animal's, ready to lunge at her next pray. When the streamer saw her teammates, it was not a smile that surged on her mouth.
"Salvager, stay behind us and do not even think of running away." Carrion warned in a low voice. "Click, you are injured."
The tiny mouse approached the bear, looked up at him and punched his gut. "Oh, really? I didn't notice. Anything else you want to add?"
Absinthe grabbed Click's wrist and glared at her. Her cop instincts told her to twist it and force her down, but she knew better than to mess with the mouse when she was red.
Click pulled to free herself. "Took you long enough to find me. Were you too busy kissing each other's ass to think about me?"
"That-" A bad reply could make the whole situation much worse. There was an emergency protocol when Click turned red for a reason. "We're sorry we took so long, Click. We were really worried when your drone came to us."
The mention of the drone halted the zalak's next attempt at answering like a monster. The red-eyed Click buried her bloodied fist into her friend's belly and noticed the trembling Salvager behind them. An instinct to predate her took over the enraged streamer, but the aching ursus pair straightened their backs to shield the rookie.
Click squeezed her fist in anger and, for a moment, considered the unthinkable… but something inside her wouldn't allow it. Shaken by the urge to kill, the predator turned her back and dived deeper into the cave before the operators could call out to her.
"W-W-W-What was… that?" Salvager muttered, her trembling legs failing her.
Neither bear answered the question. Instead, they told the young guard to go back out with Squire and Cannon. The rescue mission was not over yet.
Usually, when they were in the landship, they would coordinate a team to taunt the mouse to chase the speedier operators, eating away at her stamina until Click was unable to keep acting so violent. Afterwards, she would be exposed to a long session of her most popular videos and regain her old sense of self. Unfortunately, they were in the middle of the countryside and the drone had its holoprojector damaged. It was dangerous enough to approach the reddened Click, but doing so inside an unexplored dark cave filled to the brim with monster corpses? That was beyond what a novice could take, so Absinthe and Carrion pushed on by themselves.
The ground was muddy and slippery due to the nearby swamp. A few sections were practically flooded, but there were paths that the beasts transited to get from one place to another. Absinthe pulled her companion's jacket and pointed at something. It was a metallic conduct that led downwards. A gate with a rudimentary door that had been torn down. Mouse-sized mud footprints revealed the pair where to continue their search.
The instructor readied a hand-camera and begun documenting their findings.
"Is this… some kind of facility?"
There were rooms and hallways that reminded them of Chernobog ruined hospitals, but there was almost no furniture in them. In one room, there was literally nothing but the shapes of dust that revealed what once was stored in there. Another, there were a few metallic pillars that pierced both the floor and the ceiling, but it was not stable enough to be considered a structural piece. Then they found some kind of storage room with shelves and abandoned flasks. Next to it, there was a stone table… with ropes and restraints where a person's limbs would go.
Carrion almost made a comment on their finding, but he noticed the crouching mouse next to the water barrels. Click remained still, unaffected by their presence. All she could do was holding her head in order to retain control.
Not saying a word, the ursus nodded to each other and approached from behind to embrace her. Click shook, but the bears' arms held her in place without squeezing too much. The struggle persisted for a few minutes, until the angry defense mechanism relaxed and the winded streamer realized what she had done to them a few moments ago.
Her friends absolved her of any guilt, understanding of what she had been through. All they cared about was making sure their favorite streamer was safe and alive. Words alone would not really make Click forget how she attacked them or the things she said, but it wasn't the first time she red-eyed mouse did something that the blue-eyed one came to regret later.
"This is a spooky place." Carrion observed.
Absinthe nodded. "…now that you mention it, your students would be terrified if they stepped in here. They told too many scary stories last night."
"What about you? Hanging in there alright?"
"I was so worried about Click that I didn't notice."
Click held onto them tighter. "I'm sorry…" Her frail voice apologized for the tenth time.
Zoya picked her up and begun the journey back to the cave's exit. Carrion fell behind. After the emergency situation had been dealt with, he could not shake away the sights he had seen inside that weird place. It was… disturbing. Their trip had met its greatest obstacle yet, but Mikhail had smelled enough rotten things to know when something reeked of degeneracy. They had to inform Rhodes Island about the underground facility asap.
