Plan Knowable was going swimming-lee. We’d worked it out, I’d pilot to Vanquo, and over the day reveal the girl inside the Handmaiden uniform. A joke here, cunning pun maybe a little tussle with the Stab-if-nah girl (after I healed her to much applause), and I, Raya Najwa-Zambrano, would become part of the Troublesomes.
A part of a whole, which didn’t include many of my now deceased siblings, cut down during Uncle Braxus’ last purge. I huddle in my chersilk cloak, glad for its’ ability to hide my Echani body. Sure, none of these Mookalorian tweendults understand the body language of my kinfolk, but motion translates. By the end of today, I will have friends.
Real ones, who know my name and think my ability to walk on my hands is pretty darn nifty.
Then, something gigantic hit the shuttle I ‘borrowed’ (sorry Daddy didn’t mean to crash the shuttle, I promise I just scuffed the outer coating) and I had about two seconds to realize the yoke wasn’t going to respond. In those two seconds, a semi-animal-demon creature tore one of the wings off the freakin’ ship. “Mayday, Mayday...”
A sickened sensation grips my mind as I feel Adara’s hands on the back of my chair. She didn’t have time to sit down. I reach for her, my head swimming from the tailspin, but the cousin... that girl @Shoden bumped my hand away as she too was sucked out.
“Aaawwwwwww sshhhiii-“ Black. I didn’t grab Adara.
Uncle Braxus is going to do worse to me than the crash.
Klaxons ring my ears as I groan and strike out for them, like the alarm clock I had when I was younger. Mr. Gigglesworth. It had this happy unicorn and to hit the snooze you smacked its’ tail...
“Nnggh...” The ruined shuttle creaks around me, and if it weren’t for my hair falling to the side, I’d have no way of guessing which way up was. I hit the release on my seat webbing in time to hear another of the troublesomes,
Amma Dib
, shriek.
“Fred!? FRED!” She scrambles to touch him, hold his head in hands which spark with green fire. “Fred, c’yare, be okay you have to be okay... Fred... Fred!”
“Yeah... the pyromaniac with control issues, a one armed boy and Ms. Limp-ity are the best rescue team...” I groan and clutch my stomach as I fall to the side, my chersilk hood falling from my previously unrevealed face. “Amma! Calm down before you set the ship on fire.”
Not... not how I expected to meet Amma. Kinda planned some sort of shared musical thing, my headphones a little too loud around my ears and a wall to lean against. Maybe head tilt and ‘hey. S’old tunes, but I dig it’.
“Smell the fuel, perchance? Your boyfriend is fin-“ The shuttle wobbles, settles more firmly on its’ side. Water droplets begin to drip from the broken viewport, the heat from the ship melting the snow. “-eeeeeehhh... out. Out!”
I crawl onto my seat and leap for
Tabitha Solus
, whose webbing (thank my immortal father) appears intact. One of my knives release from the belt holster, and that too is a mercy.
“Stababithia, can you cut yourself loose?” Hey, the girl knows knives. Might as well give her one.
“... you can talk?” Amma gritted her teeth, fidgeted with her webbing until she too was released.
“Talk, do the jive, heal people... Which! Might be necessary if we don’t get to Shoden before Adara does. ‘M Raya. Been Adarables’ Handmaiden since I was 11.” The scripted lie, I am an Echani Handmaiden hired to protect the Adarable one. We memorized it until I believe in a small part of my mind it’s true, since, well... I’ve never been capable of lying if my life depended on it. “Yeah, it’s me. The same me that’s been by y’all’s side since you were 13. But! Seeing as how this is the definition of the bad, and the ship is moving, oh gods the ship is moving hurry up, out out out. Out! Stababidia.. Stababuddy? Starabatha? Stabs. Can you hold onto me?”
Amma feels along her forehead, and comes away with hot and sticky blood. It quickly combusts in her hand and that’s my cue.
“If we don’t get Shoden and book it as far away fro-”
A guttural and horrific scream agonizes the air. It hits me inhuman, the sound of a dying godling which dug its’ claws into the Galaxy itself in a stubborn refusal to fade.
My ankle, which I broke steadying myself in my seat, clicks back in place. Pain like that? A broken bone? It’s long finished leaving a mark on my face. Sure, I feel it, and it ruddy hurts, but the real pain is about six Bastion quarsecs from drowning us all in Adara’s pain.
I shoot out of the broken viewport with a force jump onto the snow sixteen metres above, and thank my luck (and Mom’s classes on instinctive astrogation) that both feet hit solid rock.
There... in the snow... oh... oh no.
“SHODEN GET AWAY FROM HER! GET... GET A-“ Behind me the ship moves again, and I see how precarious it is on the snow bank. “AAwwww gooses!”
I drop back into the cockpit, and reach for Stabs. “Hurry, Mandagoobians!”
Fred Gred
Tabitha Solus
Ellie Omera
Shoden Moz
Stardust Solus Skirae