AN: Well, here's the second chapter and in less than twenty-four hours too. This is where you really get to meet my OFC, I hope you like her! I've really been wanting to toss a character like this into this story for a while and finally I said...WTF? Hopefully it will take a little different twist for all of you than has been done in the past. Enjoy!

Disclosure: Much to my consternation, I do not own any of the rights to Pitch Black or anything in the Riddick universe. Nor do I get to make any profits from this little spinner. The only things I own are the deviations from the plot and my OC. (Though if anyone wanted to fork over Vin to me, I certainly wouldn't protest...just something to bare in mind.) And yes, there are quotes straight from the movie, PB...I figure if I mention that in here I won't have to actually mark them. They're there, you know which ones they are, deal with it.

Full Summery: We all know the story of Pitch Black and we've all wondered at the 'what ifs'. What would happen if a single variable was changed? One character didn't die, another did, things shift slightly one way or another, another person survived the crash...This is the tale of Pitch Black with the latter, an OFC by the name of Lera Chase. She's not your typical survivor. A mystery in and of herself, who is this woman? How does she know the things she does, why isn't she scared of Riddick but instead seems to understand him, and just how is it she can see in the dark without a shine? Look deeper into the story of Pitch Black through the characters' own eyes and see how this new element affects them. Just what will she mean for their survival, their destruction, and the future that awaits them all? (PB and maybe beyond...)

Pitch Black: A New Twist

Crashed

Green eyes snapped open and just as quickly snapped shut against the intruding light, their owner fighting off a groan at the harsh waking. She'd heard the alarms, felt the increasing turbulence, and known what it meant. She'd braced herself as best she could, once again cursing her confinement in this death-tube. Apparently she hadn't been braced well enough as her head had managed to hit something hard enough to knock her out. Perhaps that was a blessing, all things considered.

Her eyes opened again, slower this time, and she found herself staring at the ceiling of the ship through the partially shattered glass of her cryo-tube. She slowly undid her straps and pushed the remains of the door open, climbing out with a care to the sharp shards clinging to the frame. She managed to haul herself upright and half out and look around at the destruction.

It looked like a majority of the ship had been ripped away, everything in the passenger cabin behind her own pod was gone…littered behind the ship. If it had pulled off any more, she would have been with it.

Damn, the thought breathed through her mind. What is this, the third crash you've survived? Someone, somewhere must be looking out for you, Lera girl. Question is, do they reside above or below?

Considering some of the ways her life had gone she never had been able to answer that.

Slowly, Lera took stock of her surroundings. Most of the passengers seemed to have bit the dust, literally. But she could hear voices coming from slightly farther in and turned her head that direction. Well, looked like she wasn't the only one being looked after today. Milling around were some…seven other passengers and they seemed to be working on getting an eighth out. They hadn't seemed to work far enough back to notice her yet. As she watched they used a torch to burn off the hinges of one of the doors and a kid rolled out but she wasn't close enough to hear whatever was exchanged.

She hauled herself over the edge of her overturned tube and landed softly on the floor of the compartment, her eyes straying to the one across from her. Apparently that side had faired a little better than hers. She blinked, seeing the 'locked-out' tube had been busted, the lights flickering on the display, and the occupant gone. She couldn't help the slight smirk that touched her lips at the irony of that.

I wonder just how far he'll get…she thought as she noticed that the one with the merc had survived as well, and was just as empty.

"Hey! You all right over there?" Lera turned at the sound of a woman's voice, heavily accented in what sounded like Earth Australian. Though really, it could have been from a number of the different colonies here towards the outer rim. She was dressed for hard work—heavy boots, leather vest, work pants, tool belt. She had been the one wielding the torch that freed the kid. Free Settler it looked like. And Lera was willing to lay odds that the dark skin man standing behind her and garbed like her was her partner, if not more.

"Pretty sure," Lera replied as she touched the back of her head where it had hit the compartment and winced. "Got a bump, bit banged up."

"Yeah," the woman replied as she approached with partner in tow, "aren't we all. Name's Shazza, this is Zeke. Free Settlers."

Lera nodded at them both and smiled friendly, doing a little mental 'ha' at being right. "Lera. Lera Chase. Unfortunate traveler."

Zeke snorted at that. "No shit."

"I don't know," Shazza said, "I'd say we're pretty fortunate. I mean, it could be a lot worse…" she trailed off with a nod towards the missing two-thirds of the ship. Both Lera and Zeke couldn't help but nod in solemn agreement.

The sudden noise of boots hitting metal coming from below them startled them all out of their revere and all three turned towards the sound. Lera blinked as she saw the blindfolded face of the convict emerging from a hatch. She'd heard of wandering blindly, but this was ridiculous…and he sure as hell could have heard them. As he continued to emerge the blonde, curly head of the merc appeared behind him with a gun at his back.

Guess he didn't stay free for too long, Lera mused to herself as the merc pushed him up the stairs. This time. The fact of the matter was that they were crashed who-knew-where and with who-knew-what. Mostly likely, he'd get another chance.

As they started to pass the little group, though, the convict paused slightly, his shaved head turning towards her. Lera's eyes narrowed minutely as she swore he sniffed the air. Is he scenting me? She watched as he frowned ever so slightly before the merc at his back pushed him on. I knew there was something different about him if he was able to remain conscious during cryo-sleep…but to be able to scent people…that's a whole other level. Something tells me I need to find out who this guy is.

"Well damn, I know it sounds bad, but I'd kind of hoped he wouldn't make it," Shazza said, drawing Lera's attention back to her. She raised a questioning brow at her comment. "What, you haven't heard? That's Riddick. He's an escaped convict. Some kind of super killer or something. The guy who got him is called Johns. I must say, he must be one hell of a cop to have caught a villain like him."

Lera blinked. Cop? She looked back towards the room Johns had gone in as Shazza and Zeke moved off to help the others, only to see him come out a few moments later. She took him in—blue uniform-looking clothes, dressed and pressed appearance, badge. So, he was trying to pass himself off as a cop. Guess the folks here didn't run into too many cops if they didn't notice the faults with the disguise. Like the fact that that was the cheapest fake badge she had ever seen. Cop badges had markers on them, insignia that showed their affiliation to a specific planet or department. They had serial numbers so that the owner could be tracked. They weren't plated with nickel. And no cop, but no cop who would ever do the kind of run that Johns was supposed to be on would wear a uniform like that or his badge out in the open. Cops weren't the most beloved people, no matter what slice of society you came from and one doing a dangerous run like this would never openly display what they were.

Despite a lot of popular opinion, they were actually smarter than that.

As though he felt her eyes on him, Johns turned and looked at her. Lera offered him a slight smile, hiding her disgust, and saw him look her over. Obviously he liked what he saw as he offered her a leer in return.

Great, she grumbled internally, crashed on some planet somewhere, bump on the head giving me a headache, and now I just may loose my lunch. Not so sure someone's looking out for me after all.

Lera was jolted out of her thoughts of disgust as Johns was from his of appreciation by the sounds of frantic rustling up at the front of the cabin. They both turned and headed that way, arriving in time to see the woman Lera recognized as the docking pilot turn over a flight chair and its gruesome occupant. The navigator. She heard the others around her gasp and curse in shock as they all saw the metal rod piercing his chest. Lera's jaw clenched momentarily before she sighed. The others were starting to argue about whether or not they should pull the rod out, but Lera knew it wouldn't make a difference. The man was dead, or he would be soon. His near unintelligible shouts would soon degrade into plain screams of agony before dissolving into weak whimpers of a painful death. She'd seen men die of chest wounds like that before. It wasn't pretty.

"There's some anestaphine in the med-lock in the back of the cabin," the pilot, Carolyn Fry she remembered, cried desperately.

"Not any more, there's not," replied a man with a high-end British accent.

Lera watched the woman's face fall in despair, pain, and…guilt? Words rang through Lera's head from shortly before she was knocked out. They were the same words the navigation officer, Owen, had screamed out the moment he'd unfortunately regained consciousness. 'Don't you touch that handle, Fry!' Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly in thought. She'd heard the sound of an airlock closing at the rear of the cabin just before the sudden jolt that announced a compartment dump. And she'd heard the sound of the airlock at the front of the cabin closing just after, only to be reopened again and wedged that way. The rest was bumpy blackness.

She'd purged the rest of the ship…had she tried to purge the passengers too? Is that what Owen meant by his hysterical cry? Was that why she looked so damn guilty?

"Everybody…get out," she heard the pilot say weakly and watched the rest of the passengers make their way out of the chamber and out of the ship, leaving her to see to her dying friend. Every single one of them left…save for her. There were a lot of questions in her mind that needed a lot of answers…but more than that, there was a man dying a very bad death. Lera never could seem to walk away from that.

ooOoo

Carolyn bit her lip against Owen's pained cries and ragged breathing while the others trooped out of the cabin. He deserved some dignity, at least. She just couldn't bear for the others to just stand around and watch him die.

She'd thought they were all gone, which is why she jumped when one of them suddenly squatted down across Owen's trembling body from her. Carolyn blinked. It was a woman. She had deep red hair, pulled back into a high pony tail, but some of the curls had escaped to frame her face. She was dressed in a tight tank, cargos, a jacket, fingerless gloves, and boots…all black that made her fair skin almost seem to glow in the low light. Carolyn blinked as she looked down at Owen, a sad, sympathetic look on her face as she gently stroked his brow. Carolyn was about to ask her what she thought she was doing when the woman spoke.

"It would be kinder to kill him quickly," she said in a soft tone, her voice smooth and deep, almost smoky.

"He deserves to live," Carolyn bit out.

The woman looked up at her and Carolyn found herself staring into a pair of large, light green eyes. There was a strange calmness to them, like nothing could rile her, not even the hard death in front of them. It was comforting and yet slightly disturbing at the same time.

"Yes," she said in that same, soothing tone, "he does. But he's not going to. We don't have the skills or the supplies needed to save him. He's going to die, Carolyn, and you need to accept that."

Carolyn's jaw clenched, her eyes stinging with the tears she refused to cry. Who the fuck did this woman think she was? Of course he was going to die, she'd known that since she first saw him.

"What the fuck good is that going to do?" she asked the woman harshly, realizing she didn't even know her name. "Who the fuck are you?"

"My name is Lera Chase," she said softly. "And I'm giving you a choice, it's yours to make." She reached into a pocket of her jacket and pulled out what looked like a small aid packet, flipping it open to reveal a small collection of various medical supplies and drugs. Carolyn watched her pick out a small vial with a slightly yellowish liquid.

"This is Cordin," she said. "It's a highly potent narcotic meant to relieve pain and relax muscles. If I give him a standard dose it will take away most of his pain, but he'll still die slow. If I give him a high enough one…it'll numb him completely, and stop his heart in a matter of minutes. It'll be quick and painless and his last few moments he'll only know peace. He's your crewmate, it's your choice."

Carolyn stared at the woman in complete shock, not really knowing what to make of it or what to do. She looked down at Owen's tortured form as he started to loose the fight with the pain. His cries were getting louder and each one seemed to cut at her soul.

"Do it," she bit out. Lera nodded at her once and withdrew a collapsed syringe from the pack, quickly filling it all the way. Carolyn watched her inject it directly into Owen's neck and moments later all signs of pain seemed to be erased from his face, his breathing easier. She bit back a sob as a slight smile touched his lips right before his eyes closed, Lera silent at her side. Finally, Owen released a last, sighing breath as he slipped into a quiet death.

"Thank you," Carolyn rasped out, almost jumping as she felt Lera's hand on her shoulder before barely hearing her light footsteps move out of the cabin, leaving Carolyn alone with her crewmate, her grief, and her guilt.

ooOoo

Lera sat crouched on the top of the ship where the rest of the survivors had gathered, staring off into the desolate world they'd crashed on. And man, what a crash. It stretched for miles behind them, a dismal trench of death and debris. She couldn't help but study the pattern of it, the way the pieces were spread out. Beyond the smaller bits that had obviously ripped off the main passenger cabin when they'd skidded to a halt she could see large sections in the distance. She wondered if anyone else noticed, if anyone else could even see them. And if they did, if they noticed the pattern.

She did. After all, it wasn't the first crash she'd been in and survived. She knew what it looked like when a bird went down, knew the different ways it could happen. She knew that the whole thing didn't go down as one. She was right, the other parts had been purged, jettisoned, detached probably in the hopes of lessening the rear weight to get the nose down. She snorted almost silently to herself, completely unnoticed by the others. Rookie mistake.

Thinking of Carolyn down there in the main cabin, filled with grief and guilt over the death of her crewmate, Lera couldn't help but shake her head in mild disgust. Carolyn had panicked, that much was obvious. And yet…she found she had a hard time truly blaming her. Lera knew they'd been hemorrhaging air, she'd seen the bits of whatever that had shot through the hull like it was paper. She'd heard Carolyn tell the navigation officer that the Captain was dead. It was pretty damn obvious that they'd gotten off course because of it and that a crash was eminent. Each of those things alone was enough to make someone without a lot of experience in emergency procedures panic. Put together and you had…this.

Still, there was that part of her that sneered in professional disdain. Lera had landed more ungainly birds than this, ones with worse damage and in worse conditions and not caused this kind of chaos and destruction. It was a fuckin' embarrassment. What the hell were they teaching pilots these days? Obviously not the joys of keeping your cool under pressure.

Lera sighed and in an almost unconscious movement reached into her pocket and pulled out a vial of eye-drops, tipping her head back and in a practiced movement, quickly putting one drop in each eye before blinking it in. Without thought, even, the cap was back on and the bottle was back in her pocket, a pair of wrap around sunglasses sliding onto her face.

Damn, she thought, realizing what she'd just done, this world is going to be murder on my eyes. If I do that automatically…definitely not a good sign.

Hearing a slight commotion from behind her, Lera stood to see Carolyn come to join the rest of them on the roof. She had to fight off the urge to march over there and give her a good dressing down about her flying skills. Some curses, degradations, maybe a good bitch-slap for some added spice. But she could see already how the others were turning to her for support and leadership. It made sense, she was the only surviving crew member, the only figure of some kind of authority in a frightening and desperate situation. It was natural that people would turn to her now. Who else would they go to? Her? Oh, hell no.

So instead, when the pilot met her shaded gaze briefly and gave her a tremulous smile and a slight nod of thanks, Lera returned it, not failing to notice the regret and misery hidden in the other woman's eyes.

Well, at least it's obvious she at least regrets what she almost did. That's something at least. More than some. Now we'll just have to see what happens now…

ooOoo

Fry made her way slowly up the side of the ship to where the others had gathered, not entirely sure how she was supposed to face them after what she'd done…what she'd almost done. She almost dumped them…if not for Owen, she would have. And yet, she was the one to live while he died. How wrong was that? She heard them talking about the air as she made her way up, about how thin it seemed, like they were one lung short or had just finished running or something.

Funny, she thought dismally, and here I thought that weight on my chest was just my guilt.

It was Shazza's voice, one of the free settlers that had bought passage, that drew her out of her thoughts, the first to meet her.

"There was talk of a scouting party, looking for other people. Then we saw this…"

Fry followed her direction and looked off the back end of the ship. Her jaw dropped. It was...horrifying. She could see the bodies scattered, some in their tubes, some not. The smoke and debris seemed to stretch on for miles. She knew the crash was bad, but she hadn't pictured this…this massacre. Had she really done this?

"What the bloody hell happened?" Zeke asked, sounding close to hysterical himself. He was Shazza's partner, she recalled. And he wasn't the only one looking to her for answers. Most of the others seemed to be as well. Well, the Muslims were down praying, but the rest…the British man, the kid, even the cop Johns had turned from his survey of the land to hear her answer. The only one that didn't turn was Lera. Save for the brief, veiled nod of acknowledgement she'd given Fry upon her entrance, Lera had merely stayed at the edge of the ship, crouched down and still, surveying the damage. It was strange, but the woman's still calmness was almost soothing to the battered pilot and she found herself staring at her back instead of the wreckage. Maybe she just couldn't look at it.

"Could have been a meteor storm," she said, her own voice sounding low and rough to her as she tried to hold back the tears she'd been crying over Owen. "Might have been a rouge comet. I don't know."

"Well," Shazza continued, "I, for one, am thoroughly grateful. The beast wasn't made to land like this…but I think you did well. Actually, the only reason we're alive is because of her."

Fry heard the others agree and couldn't find it in her to respond. She was watching Lera, her eyes seemed trapped, searching for some strange comfort in the stillness of the dark clad woman. That was probably why she saw her stiffen ever so slightly and turn her head…just enough to show she was paying attention. Probably nothing more than a normal reaction, Fry wanted to tell herself, but her conscience was waging war against her with each person that told her how well she'd done in saving their lives.

It's a lie, he mind screamed at her, seemingly echoed now in the stiff back of the woman before her. It's all a lie. A better pilot could have landed this. A better pilot would have been able to get the nose down. They wouldn't have panicked, they wouldn't have freaked. And they sure as hell wouldn't have ever thought of dumping the passengers to save her own ass. A better person would never have even considered it.

"Don't you think so, Lera?" Shazza's voice drew Carolyn out of her self-recriminations. Her eyes snapped back into focus on the black-clad woman as she took a deep breath and stood with more grace than Carolyn could never hope to possess.

"Well," she said slowly, as though choosing her words, her eyes not leaving the wreckage of bodies and metal strew behind them, "it could obviously have been much worse. Ship could have rolled when it hit, or cart-wheeled, would have ripped us all to pieces." Carolyn watched with a feeling of dread as the woman turned to look at her, her eyes hidden by the dark sunglasses she'd donned. But still, it was like she could feel the piercing stare through them, knowing. "Just a damn good thing you managed to get the nose down."

Carolyn felt her eyes widen slightly as the others agreed and commended her on it, but her eyes never left those dark glasses. She knows…No, that was impossible. How could she know? What if she's a pilot? She'd know what a crash looks like, how it gets to look that way…

Suddenly, though, a smile lightened her features and she snorted, making Carolyn blink.

"Frankly," Lera continued, "I've been in a hell of a lot worse. Considering the fact that more than two people walked away and my leg isn't broken…I think I'm gonna call this a win."

There was a moment of silence following her comment before it was broken by the kid, Jack, she thought his name was.

"You've crashed before?" Jack asked in stunned disbelief.

Lera turned an amused grin on him, alleviating the tension that seemed to have built up in the pilot with her light tone. "Well, let's just say that's the last time I ever let my brother pilot anything."

The others chuckled at that and Fry let out a silent exhale. Lera, almost as though she heard it, turned to her and gave her a soft, warm smile. Fry tried to return it, but it came out a little shaky.

"Well," Paris asked in his high accent. "What now?"

Carolyn hesitated a moment, not really sure what to suggest. They were all looking towards her for leadership now and she felt like a hypocrite for it. They shouldn't be looking to her, she was the one that almost killed them all. What was she supposed to say?

"Well, I don't know about the rest of you," Lera said, filling in the silence before the hesitation could really be noticed, "but I'm gonna go look for my stuff. We may just be here a while and we're gonna need all the supplies we can get."

"I think Zeke and I can probably do something about the air problem," Shazza suggested. "A respirator of sorts. We've use something like that in mountain mining before."

"Yeah," Zeke nodded, "we should be able to find the parts to put something like that together."

"Water." They all turned to the until-now-silent Johns. "We're gonna need water, liquid of some sort. Desert like this, we're all gonna get thirsty real quick."

"Well, I've got some liquids in my belongings," Paris supplied, actually looking eager to be able to offer something. "They should be in that cargo compartment over there. Luckily it landed pretty well near us."

Fry nodded as though in agreement and the others seemed to take that as a good sign. "We don't want to get too separated," she suggested. "Get what you might need to get stuff out and we'll head over there in about ten."

The others nodded and started filtering below, but Fry stayed up on top for a moment. Lera stood there, seeming to watch her, the last one to make a move to go below.

"If I can find my bag," she said as she slowly approached, "we may be in a bit better shape. I've got some emergency stores in there; some rations, vitamins, hydro pills. The last will probably be the most important, but they're just emergency stores. With this number of people they won't last but a few days, if that. We're gonna need to find another source."

Fry nodded at the woman who now stood in front of her. Damn she was tall. Probably close to six foot herself. And when she was all serious like this Fry found her rather imposing, dressed all in black, not seeming to even sweat in the heat. Then she took a deep breath and smiled, and everything about her seemed to change. Relaxed, warm, friendly. So much so that Fry didn't even jump when she felt Lera's hand come down on her shoulder and squeeze.

"It's a shake up, I know," she said softly, gently. "But you gotta focus on the now. The past can't be undone, all we can do is live and make life better for it. If you let it eat you alive…you might as well have died."

She gave Fry one last squeeze on the shoulder and the pilot found herself taking a deep breath, her head dropping. Who was this woman that she seemed to know exactly what she needed? First in the flight cabin and now here…

"Come on," Lera said, slinging an arm around the smaller woman's shoulders. "We have a scavenger hunt to get to." She tipped her glasses down and looked Fry in the eye. "Okay?"

Fry nodded, bolstering herself in the sight of this calm, strong presence beside her.

"Okay."

AN: And thus endeth chapter two. Amazing, two whole chapters and not a single cliff hanger. Something new for me. Anyway, now we've got the basics...they're crashed on the planet and taking stock. You know what's coming up in the next part, don't you? That's right...it's time for some Riddick! Gonna be interesting, I can tell you that!

Reviewer Response:

SadisticFireMage: I'm glad you like my revamp so far, hopefully you like this one too! I try...

bre3354: Thanks. I have a really hard time writing from just one perspective, I'm just so omni. I like the OC's too, most of the time. I just hope you like mine.

AN: Well, only two reviews this time, but I guess that's what I get for posting so quickly and on a friday to boot. Well, hopefully I'll get more soon. Please, Read and Review!