Viral stirred from his sleep, snuggling closer to the mysterious woman pulled from the ground. What did she say her name was?

Minka…

Yawning, he stretched out an arm and opened his eyes… Nobody was there. He found himself holding onto a pillow, but there was nobody else in the room. He was back in his bedroom, curled into his bed. Viral bolted upright, searching the room, sniffing the air and his paws and smelling only himself, nothing foreign. Getting out of bed, he quickly pulled on a pair of pants and a thin shirt before running downstairs to check.

He nearly tripped over her as he ran down the stairs. She was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, on the third step with a pencil in hand, scribbling something onto a piece of paper pinned to a clip-board. Viral acted without another thought. He grabbed her by the shoulders and stood her up, but realized she was a little heavier then he thought her slender form would be. "Jeez, I should start working out again…" He thought in the back of his mind, he hadn't really gotten a lot of food since he was out here in the desert, and he hadn't had a good fight in a long while. He had lost a significant amount of muscle weight because if his new lifestyle, though he was far, far from being bony or skinny.

"M-Minka? Is that you're name? Minka?" Viral stammered, unable to sort out his thoughts, he still held onto the upper portions of her arms, though not squeezing them tight, more like a butterfly resting on your arm in weight, which was a but unexpected from oversized paws like his.

"Yeah, it's Minka," She smiled at him; her white cheeks seem to colour the tiniest bit. Staring at him, Viral noticed she was quite a bit odd looking, but pretty in her own unique way. He barely had time to think about it all, it was so confusing how she even got here, let alone where she came from or what she actually was. Her name wasn't anything he had ever heard before, it wasn't based off DNA like beastmen names were, and it sounded a bit too odd to be a human name.

"Minka…" He rolled the name over in his mouth, unsure of how to really say it. He had thought it was Minka, and that was that, but she seemed to say it more like Mihng-Kah. "Where… How did you get here?" Viral tried to make his thoughts rational, but years upon years without socialization with others had made it a bit difficult. He also realized how he felt had changed… With Lord Genome's armies and with the Gurren Brigade, he had been proud and confident, head held high, when faced with dangerous and strange scenarios. But now, standing in front of this strange pale woman, he felt an inch tall and horribly nervous.

"Well…" She thought for a moment. "I had a mom and a dad; it's a standard I guess. I don't really want to explain how that works, if you know what I mean. I dunno if—"

"Wait, what!? That means you're a human?" Her skin was too pale, literally white as fresh snow, and her teeth… She had three sets of razor sharp teeth, her mouth didn't seem to close properly and always show a bit of her teeth, and her hair was so black it looked as if you could sink into it just by staring for too long. But beastmen had a major flaw, at least in Virals' opinion; they could not reproduce biologically or otherwise.

"No… What makes you think that?" Minka frowned at him, clearly confused as to why he would think of her as a human. Her eyes had become sharper, more vibrant gold, probably because she wasn't tired anymore. She probably slept on the couch during the night or something. Can't exactly say it was comfortable, but he guessed they shared the mutual feeling of awkwardness when you slept in the same bed as a stranger.

"Because beastmen can't reproduce, that's why!" Viral bit his lip, unsure about speaking this way about that subject.

"Yes they can… Or at least the newer models can," She brushed some hair out of her eyes, looking him up and down. "You're an older model, are you? By Lord Genome, right?"

"What do you mean by… Newer or Older model?" Virals' mind was racing, what was she talking about? She was odd, came here in an odd way and her speech was odd.

"I see…" Thinking again. "Never mind then, never mind. You don't really need to know, anyways. It's probably better like that…" Minka paused to think, she seemed like a thinker, not one of those dumb, hollow-headed girls. "I'm not the only one, you know… I can hope that one day you'll join us… But till then, there's not much I can do." She sat down on the white-tan couch, under stuffed and stiff with age.

"Who is 'us'?" He sat down slowly beside her, keeping his eyes locked at hers'. She was quiet, and it seemed that nothing he could say would make her speak again. He bit his lip, mindful of his teeth. "Are you okay?" He asked, suddenly remembering how she was being sucked under by something last night.

"About what happened last night? Yeah, I'm fine; you saved my sorry ass in the nick of time, eh?" She smiled a little, a friendly tug on the corners of her lips. She almost sounded as if she was joking around.

"What was it, that thing that was in the ground?" He remembered it vividly, the ground and sand parting to drag Minka under, like some sort of morbid mouth. That odd slurping noise; and the gurgling noise it made when he had pulled her out… It was sickening, even for Viral himself.

"…It's called the Abyss Grip, or at least by us it is." She paused once again to think. "It was designed by humans to search out and destroy us new model beastmen."

Virals eyes widened a little with surprise. The humans wanted to exterminate them? Why? There were allies, living in peace after the fall of Teppelin City, Lord Genome and the Four Holy Generals. "Why did they want to get rid of the… Uh, newer models?"

"Because… We actually had the power to do things, we would last, you know what I mean?" She looked at him expectantly, and he felt embarrassed that he had no clue what she was speaking about. How long had this 'Abyss Grip' been going on behind their backs? How come he didn't know about the newer models?

"I really don't know… Can you kindly explain?" Viral instantly felt humiliated. He was the Captain of Earth's largest space-voyaging ship and lead earth into that peace conference, yet he didn't know anything about this. How long had Simon and Roissu and the rest been keeping this a secret? So many questions to ask, and it was all so confusing.

"Well, I have to explain a lot to you… It's like you've been living under a rock or something." She frowned. "The older models like you were made by Lord Genome, but you were imbalanced in certain aspects and were lacking certain traits. You cannot reproduce since your animal and human DNA and genetics were imperfect and unbalanced, which is the easiest way I can explain."

Viral gave a slow nod, understanding most of what Minka was saying. He wished she would explain farther, but he kept quiet for now.

"And you older models had a… 'Expiration date', you know what I'm talking about? You burn out after a certain amount of time, you're cells can't multiply so you die off. Since you cannot reproduce and you'll burn out without Lord Genome's method to get your cells to divide again, the older models will all burn out and die sooner or later, which leaves only the humans. Either way, they will be dominant eventually." She paused to think again.

"The newer models like me… We do not have that burn out, and we can also reproduce. We were developed by a beastman scientist who knew what the humans were up to, I guess, so he perfected us newer beastmen from Lord Genome's old methods. The human higher-ups found out before the general beastmen population did, so they developed their own weapon against us. That's the Abyss Grip."

"And… What exactly is the Abyss Grip?" Viral listened attentively, interested and alert.

"The Abyss Grip is… Hm…" She stared up at the ceiling, tracing the cracks and patterns with her yellow eyes. "I don't really know myself… All I know is that its job is to catch us and bury us few and far between, to get rid of us."

"So, what about these newer and older models? There are some key differences, but who was this scientist what developed you? And what about—" Viral felt filled with questions and he hoped he didn't sound impatient or rude.

Minka quickly interrupted him, "I… I think I told you too much already," She looked towards the kitchen area. "You want something to eat? I couldn't really find anything in your cupboards, so I went out early this morning to hunt."

"Uh… But—" The sudden change of subject threw him off, but what made his cheeks flush pink was how she placed a finger on his lips and said,

"Shush. I told you I said too much already," She stood up straight and cleared her throat before wandering off.

When Minka was out of sight, upstairs in an empty, spare room, she heaved a large sigh. Clouds of dust billowed up wherever she stepped, leaving footprints like marks in fresh snow. The dust was thick and whirled in clouds, dancing around in the beams of sun that shone through the tattered, wispy curtains. The room was almost empty, save for a chair cast in the corner, a round-topped table the size of a tire, and a few stacked cardboard boxes. Everything was covered in a thick coat of dust, turning everything fluffy and grey.

She plopped herself onto the floor, sending a cloud of swirling, ancient grey dust into the air and whirling around her before it settled again.

Minka surveyed her surroundings with slit yellow eyes, sharp teeth protruding out of lips that never closed properly. There was something wrong with the house… Or the occupant of the house; Viral. This whole place had an odd feel to it, as if something died and was forgotten. Normally she would've avoided a place with this kind of feel entirely, but being chased by the Abyss Grip, her only option was to take refuge here.

She briefly wondered about her parents then. How many years ago had they been split up by the Abyss Grip? Five? Eight? Probably so. Were they even still alive? Maybe… Just maybe.

Deciding to forget about it, she swirled her finger in the thick dust in front of her. The dust was actually soft, like fur almost, or some good cotton. She began to draw out what she could remember, abstract swirls and large points from her dreams, she would've added colours if she could. Jabbing and swishing here and there, she got up and began to draw beyond the reach of her arms, letting her mind flow; the ideas coming readily like paint to a brush.

"This is gonna take a while…" She thought, a small smile gracing her pale face. A thought suddenly crossed her mind, and the smile grew a tiny bit wider, "That blue haired devil…"