Remnants of the Earth

Dead. Centuries and millennia but it was just sleeping.

Well, that sounded familiar.

But that thing was nothing like her--or at least she certainly hoped it wasn't. Getting locked out of time for a few thousand years was the only thing they had in common.

We may not be kin, but we are of a kind, she had told it.

She really, really hoped she'd been bluffing.

"Come here," she sighed, getting to her feet and clapping one hand gently on Dawaski's shoulder. "The three of you are in shock. You need fluids and rest. We're on a course for Edanith, and the Rose is a scrapper. We'll be fine, but I need to get all of you into the galley."

She could at least try to get them some water, hopefully something to actually eat, something hot. The Wild Rose may not have been the largest ship, but due to Lynn's own...dietary requirements, as it were, she had a fairly impressive kitchen setup.

In almost any other circumstance, she would have been more than thrilled to parse through all the cultural and biological information that had just transferred to her from a relatively brief point of contact. It was why she was out here, after all, to meet new people and learn about them.

That would probably have to wait.

Maya reached up to lay her fingertips against Ferdix's hand on her shoulder for the few moments it was there, giving him a smile and another pulse of assurance just before he pulled away. I will.

She hesitated a moment, between him and Elaros, then quickly reached back to brush her fingers over his wrist just long enough to project, Stay safe.

Then she was at Elaros's side, taking his hand in hers and looking up into his face with concern. The captain wants you back in your quarters. I'm coming with you, alright?

She made sure not to relay the rest of the plan just yet. She had a feeling the jeweler would be less than thrilled with the idea, and they didn't have time to argue.

Lynn winced as she heard the screams, but she didn't stop. She didn't have time, couldn't hesitate.

Once she was through the hatch and on the Rose, she practically vaulted over her stunned guests to swing into the pilot's chair and punch in a hasty set of random coordinates. She didn't breathe again until her ship had peeled away from the station ands accelerated into the void.

She took a moment--one second, one breath to try to collect herself--then turned to her three passengers.

She moved toward Dav and Serina first, stopping to snatch up an emergency kit from under the console as she did. "Here." She pressed an oxygen mask into Serina's hands. "He's having a panic attack. First thing is to get him breathing normally, and we can go from there."

With a low, groaning sigh--her head hurt, damnit--she turned to look at Dawaski. This one might be trickier.

"Hey." She moved to crouch beside him, trying to examine his eyes. Pupils dilated, maybe? Gods, what was she even looking for? "You're alright, okay? You're safe now."

It took a moment for his voice to register. She felt dazed--she looked it too, when she finally managed to raise her head  and look up into his eyes, her own glazed and distant. "I..."

She shifted, some vague corner of her mind realizing that she was being held in his lap and not wanting to make a nuisance of herself, but the moment she did a new pang of pain jolted through her lower body and she went still, whimpering. It wasn't as strong as before, more an ache than that sharp tearing sensation, but it certainly wasn't comfortable.

And there was something else. Something felt...different. Wrong.

"What...?" Her voice croaked in the back of her throat, nearly as rough as it had been when they first met, and she tried to turn her head to look down at herself, find the source of whatever that had been. Surely she must have cut herself. Badly. Maybe on the broken glass of the tank when she'd fallen...

There were several long moments where she just couldn't process what she was seeing as she stared down at her legs. There was blood--too dark and thick to be human--but not nearly as much as she would have thought from the amount of pain that had accompanied it. She frowned, instinctively trying to flick her tail to slough some of it off. The flipper-like feet twitched, and her eyes widened.

"What--?!" Her voice rose into a screech that made her wince. She squirmed in Torien's hold for a moment, panicky, before the lingering ache and the awkward scrambling of legs she didn't know how to control made her go still again.

She looked up at him, trying to focus on the feeling of his arm around her and his hand against her back as her breathing tiptoed toward terrified pants. "I don't--I didn't..."

She had no idea what to do. Trailing off with another quiet whimper, Seexa turned her face into his chest and clung to him, shaking violently.

What's happening to me?

It hurt.

That was the first thing she registered. The only thing, for the first few seconds. She'd never exposed her whole body to the air like this before, and everything from her gills down ached with a sharp pins-and-needles sensation. Oversensitive, her bioluminescence flickering rapidly, she tried to draw in a breath and choked as her lungs and gills competed, her body panicking as much as she was.

The floor felt so cold it burned, and when Torien half lifted her into his lap she gave a tiny whimper that was half relief and half pain. The water that splashed over her torso helped--at least a little, she thought--and her gills rippled in panicky little breaths as her chest started to rise and fall quickly.

Too quickly. She was hyperventilating. 

The burning, prickling feeling through her lower body wouldn't fade. She was no stranger to pain, she was used to waiting it out, but this...she'd never felt anything like this. She might have been going into shock, or entering some sort of emergency survival mode. She didn't know, and she couldn't seem to force her voice from her throat, only adding to the panic.

Instinctively, she reached out, and her hand caught on Torien's wrist as she tried to force her lips to move, her lungs to work. She needed to say something, ask something, but she couldn't--

Her mouth opened, but all that came out was a high, sharp keening as she convulsed, her tail writhing back and forth through the shallow puddle that had formed around her. She jerked against him again, her grip on his wrist tightening automatically, and the burning sensation seemed to center in her tail and intensify, until it felt like she was being ripped apart and she screamed.

Her tail stopped twitching as it split in two--slowly, too slowly, peeling a bandage inch by inch rather than ripping it off in one go. Her tailfin twitched and contracted, slowly forming into two webbed, slightly misshapen feet at the end of a pair of long, almost frog-like legs. Her gills rippled once more, then sealed themselves along her ribs, looking more like lines of scar tissue once they were closed.

Her markings were lit up a bright, pulsing blue as she collapsed into Torien's hold entirely, whimpering softly. She didn't even seem to fully realize what was happening, eyes squeezed shut as the pain finally, blessedly, began to fade.

While ala'ora were not an aggressive or confrontational species by nature, Maya had enough practice reading body language to get some sense of what was going on even before she'd forged the connection between the two Drakkonans. She kept up the contact as long as she could, using herself more as a circuit than a true part of the connection, simply soothing the edges of fear and tension with a projected calm.

When Elaros pulled away to collect himself at the rail, she let him--but the tiniest pulse of worry trickled from her mind to Ferdix's from where her hand still touched his shoulder. Now that Elaros had walked away, it was becoming clearer that she was not nearly so calm as she was trying to be, her heartbeat just a hair too fast and her core temperature rising as her bio-electricity reacted to her fight-or-flight response.

She listened to Ferdix as he spoke, nodding and sending quick affirmations through their contact so he knew she understood what he was telling her. Along with a brief pulse of vaguely surprised compassion as she sensed the care he held for his employer.

I understand, but there's--

Before she could fully communicate her concern--and an idea--the ship lit up as it was hit and she nearly jerked away from Ferdix in her surprise, whirling to face the bay windows. Her eyes widened. A surge of panic threatened to swamp her, and she didn't have the time to pull her hand away from Ferdix and hide it from him.

The Anastasia had found her adrift in space, ship clearly spent from a series of desperate jumps. It was not an unreasonable conclusion to reach that this would not exactly be her first run-in with pirates.

She took a breath, forced herself to at least fashion a veneer of calm, and quickly grabbed Ferdix's wrist again when he ordered her to take Elaros to his quarters.

I will, she responded rapidly, communicating as much--or more--in flashes of emotion and sensation as words. He'll be safe. I promise. Captain--

She didn't have time to explain this in a non-ala'oran way. Hoping that his easy acceptance of her method of communication meant he'd be receptive to what she was about to do, Maya essentially projected an idea, a plan, into the Drakkonan's head. What might have taken her several minutes to explain was conveyed in a breath.

Something had changed in her since she'd been traveling the stars. She wasn't quite sure when, or how, but she seemed to have somehow developed something of a last resort survival reflex. Where most ala'ora could only link telepathically with their own technology, which was semi-conscious itself and specifically designed to do so, very few of them were able to manipulate their bio-electricity and natural empathic abilities to connect to foreign tech. It was more art than science, never a guaranteed success, and typically was only able to be done in short bursts, their will enacted on one machine or system at a time.

Maya could do more.

If the pirates were after Elaros, she could give them exactly that. With enough desperation and a bit of luck, she thought she could trick their sensors into reading that The Mirage carried both herself and the jeweler, even if Elaros himself was left safely in his quarters.

But she'd need to make direct contact with one of their ships first.

I can buy you time, she told Ferdix just as she projected the idea to him, alongside a sense of determination and reassurance that she would do her utmost to keep Elaros safe. Her lips quirked up a bit on one side, though her eyes were afraid. I chose the name Maya for a reason.

As she pulled away from him, turning back to Elaros and offering her hand, she left him with the knowledge that "Maya" meant "illusion".

Seexa smiled as Torien inspected the new limb with something approaching wonder. She giggled quietly when the doctor rested his reflexes and seemed to surprise him doing it, but she tried to smother the sound quickly.

Pleased that her new friend seemed so much happier with the new arm, she chirped and leaned a little further over the edge of the tank--and the whole thing rocked dangerously in its makeshift standing bay. Her eyes widened and she squeaked, quickly throwing herself back the other way in an effort to balance it out.

Too far. In the brief moment of panic, she over-corrected, and the tank lurched back to land with an awkward clang so that it rested at a much sharper angle, sending an impressive amount of water surging over the edge and onto the floor.

An impressive amount of water and one startled, artificial mermaid. Seexa hit the ground with a wet slap and went very, very still as the shock hit her system and left her all but paralyzed for several long moments. 

Pink hissed in a sharp breath as his touch skimmed over her, cool fingers against flushed skin. It shouldn't have been as appealing as it was, and she wondered briefly if that had something to do with the simulation.

Then her bra was off, and Kayse was smiling--smirking, really-- as his hands trailed down and started working on her pants. She shifted to accommodate him, stilling the movement of her own hand for a moment and swallowing back a faint, needy sound that rose up in her throat when he pulled her back down against him.

"I--" She swallowed thickly, eyes clenched shut. "I never do this," she whispered, not entirely sure why she was telling him that but for some reason feeling like she had to. "I mean, I never do this."

One-night stands, sure. But the spontaneity of this? The sheer novelty? That was so far outside her usual realm of behavior. They were still mostly dressed for gods' sakes, and it didn't much seem to matter!

That didn't stop her from rocking her hips cautiously against his, once, and then reaching up to tangle her fingers through his hair as the movement sent a pang of icy heat through her and she pulled him into a quick kiss, gasping against his mouth. "Oh, fuck..."

The hand she still wrapped around him curved under his, then pulled away, just far enough to reach for her own underthings and almost frantically push the fabric aside before she rocked forward once more, apparently not much interested in wasting time.

She gasped again, spine arching to press herself further against him as she sank down until their hips met and she shivered from some combination of the coolness of his skin and the contrast of his touch against her own overheated body. Her head dropped into the crook of his shoulder, nails catching at the nape of his neck as her hand clenched instinctively in his hair with a low groan. "Oh, fuck," she repeated, breathless and giddy.

With a desperate, wordless cry, Annabelle flung the mercenary forward into the stretch of space between their shelter and their attackers as she felt her control over the armor flicker and fade. She collapsed to her knees, panting, and just barely had the presence of mind to register that man had tumbled and skidded a good few yards before coming to a stop in an ungainly heap.

No time to hold still.

Panting, she managed to scramble awkwardly to her feet and stagger the few steps needed to close the distance between her and Saendyr before her knees buckled again and she wound up practically collapsing into him before she frantically righted herself and thrust her bound wrists up into his face. Her expression was a mix of panic and anger, eyes a bright, burning blue that seemed at odds with the red dust swirling around them.

"Off. Now."

She held his eyes for a moment, head tipped forward slightly toward him and a soft shiver trickling down her spine at the way he bit his lip before he leaned in to murmur in her ear.

“Ohh, fuck,” she groaned quietly, and then twisted to catch his mouth again in a near bruising kiss as her hand slipped under the hem of his shirt. She let her fingertips trail lightly over the planes of his stomach for a moment before her thumb caught at his waistband, then she was pressing herself closer and slipping her hand down between them with a small sound of want panted against his lips.

“That’s…a two-way street y’know,” she murmured into his mouth as she started to stroke gently, almost cautiously. “Open invitation, Kayse…”