6 Red Twilight Demon of the Flowers Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Runaway

The lamp on the dean's desk starts to melt; the lights overhead shatter, lighting arcs between all the electronics in the room. Puzzle, Rick, and Ashley back away from the center of the room as a bubble of light catches the desk on fire and burns the rug away. The Seeker of Inferno emerges from the light; the room goes dark.

Rick holds out his wings in prayer "The Moon Rises!"

Puzzle presses her body against the wall overwhelmed by the phenomenon.

Seeker turns her head side to side; she locks eyes with Ashley "you have the blood of Chaos flowing through you. But it is not yours."

Ashley looks around spotting a flag on the wall; she picks it up with a snarl "you must be her. Hetatsubachi's sister."

"Kingslayer." Seeker whispers "I hoped I would find him next." She snaps a hand down growing five swords out of her arm "I will take away that which makes you unique. I will add it onto myself. You can resist if you like, but your death is inevitable."

***

Hetatsubachi follows his nose, he can smell a smell he has never smelled, but he knows what it is nevertheless. He jumps off a wall to change direction; he then flings his body at the door to the dean's office smashing it down. The great white wolf lands an all fours, his back arched his teeth bare, ears down he growls with anger.

The wolf's exasperation shatters. His eyes go wide, and he stands up slowly as he sees Seeker standing before him. One of the Seeker's hands has become a cage trapping Ashley. Seeker turns her head looking to Hetatsubachi. Hetatsubachi whispers "By the Nine, The Seeker of Eternity."

Seeker drags the cage along the ground slinking in Tatsu's direction "Demon in the Snow, Devil of the Flowers. I have come to take away that which make you unique and add it onto myself."

"Tens of millions of worlds, across hundreds of billions of realms and still you find me?"

Seeker explains "finding you was nowhere near as hard as you think. You had no plans of changing your Chrono sphere which more than halved the number of places you could have gone. You would have gone to a place that is geographically similar to the place you where born, that limited the number of places you could have gone again, you chose to land on a world where the animals followed an evolutionary path that you could understand, the number of places you could hide is now in the hundred-thousands. Turns out the cosmos aren't as big as they look."

Tatsu growls reading himself for battle, his eyes flash back and forth between Seeker and Ashley "Why are you here?"

"I must eat your heart. I must kill you and the rest of my brothers. Return your energy to the source."

Hetatsubachi digs his claws into the ground considering what he can do "what if I run?"

Seeker is cold and souls "I will chase you."

Tatsu smiles as he gets an idea "What if I fight?"

"You will die" Seeker transforms her free hand into a lance.

"Do you promise?" Tatsu knows he can't fight here. Seeker can do so much more than injure him. His kids are here; his love is here. Last time Tatsu had to fight Seeker he had half of the Steal Rose at his back helping him. He needs Cilverant by his side at the very least. Tatsu looks to Ashley; he outstretches with his Arcana whispering to Ashley's mind "I am so sorry, I will come back as soon as it is safe."

Hetatsubachi summons his cape of swords throwing it as a distraction. Seeker thrust her claws back whipping the swords out of the air. Hetatsubachi jumps past Seeker then out the window shattering it. Seeker drops Ashley tuning to liquid to chase after Hetatsubachi.

Tatsu activates his Worldwalking power, he brakes apart into butterflies as he shifts into the Never. Worldwalking with the Chaos energy is not safe; there are no small number of things that can go wrong. The only good thing about it is that the changes of crossing paths with another traveler midjump is unlikely. It has been a long time since Tatsu's last jump; something goes wrong. As he is entering the never something hits, pushing him, Tatsu starts tumbling through space; he loses sight of any place he has been and anything he has seen.

***

Realm: Red Twilight

Place: G.R.W. space, Tango zone

Chrono Sphere: 47-87

Natalia Gray is an asteroid farmer. She works for a guild called Noble Steed as a piolet. Every day is much the same. Turn on the Q-Radio, flip the channels looking for who needs what trades that day. There are hundreds of space stations all the time sending out calls telling everyone what they have up for trade and what they are looking for. Asteroid farmers like Natalia look for stations that have the same needs. Radio them back, tell them where they are, and let them know that you are going to facilitate their trade for them.

The lights in the cockpit are off, Natalia seems to have passed out for some time. The raccoon shakes her head as she is fading in and out of a waking state. The HUD on her mask is flashing many alerts. "Warning: Med Packs Empty" it announces first "Warning: Cabin Pressure Unstable" it goes on "Warning: Fuel Leak."

Natalia unclips her mask from her face taking it off. She takes a deep breath and looks around, one hand reaches off to the side to flip on communications "This is The Runaway, I am down and disabled, Requesting assistance." She waits a few seconds for a replay then tries again "This is the Runaway. I am down and disabled. Does anyone copy? She waits a moment again to no avail "'Freedom Unite' this is Runaway, can you hear me?" nothing "'Queens Honor' are you on the horn?" nothing "'Heavy Metal' can I hear some music? This is Runaway I need an E-vak."

Natalia sighs, she looks down at her armor noticing a section of her chest piece has been broken off her, there is a shattered piece of electrical paneling on the ground next to her navigation computer. One hand feels across her stomach feeling her exposed fur "looks like my Medvac patched me up before going offline."

The Raccoon trucker undoes her seatbelt, she walks to the back of the cabin and starts to strip out of her armor. She pulls a mirror off the wall and examines the net suit under her armor, she looks herself up and down making sure she isn't bleeding or injured in any other visible way. The condition of her net suit informs her that whatever broke the front plate of her armor cut straight through to her back as well. "Wow, those Medvac's are something."

Natalia strips the rest of the way; she opens the chest under her bed pulling out another suit of armor. She only had the once Medvac suit, on what she makes she can't afford more than one of the latest and greatest body suit on the market. Thankfully she still has her UFP gear from when she was in the navy. It isn't fashionable, but she has no one to impress. She opens another box revealing a treasure chest full of rice pudding, she rips one open and starts drinking the desert.

The communication computer flips on as a transmission comes in "this is 'Queens Honor' what is your condition 'Runaway'?"

Natalia discards her surgery treat then runs over to the computer leaning over the microphone "Jarvis?"

"Jarvis Laciter, I copy Natalia, you went black 72 units ago what is going on?"

Natalia almost cries from the joy of hearing a live voice on her radio. Her voice cracks she needs to swallow hard before she can get put a full thought "I suffered a critical equipment malfunction."

Jarvis explains "I can't see your beckon on my scanners, is your navigation computer on?"

Natalia jumps sideways and tries turning on her ship; she jumps back "ineffective."

"can you pull up your Starmap?"

Natalia steps up to another computer to try booting up secondary systems "Ineffective."

Jarvis ask "can you manually read a Starmap?"

Natalia looks around in her stuff; she finds a grease pin "Copy." She expresses.

"Natalia, stand under the dome of your cockpit, cut the dome into sixteen even parts and tell me what star patterns you can see. I am going to try to find you on my map"

Natalia draws a grid on her cockpit "A-1: Red-shifted galaxy. A-2: 3 blue stars. A-3: 4 yellow stars. A-4 black space. B-1 spiral constellation. B-2 black space. B-3/B-4: 5 red-shifted stars. C-1: black space. C-2: 1 green star. C-3/C-4 black space. D-1 silver object, unidentifiable. D-2/D-3: 6 stars, bear formation. D-4 black space."

There is a long wait as Jarvis is doing calculations. Natalia puts her mask back on and plugs the communication computer into her mask so she can talk wall walking around her ship. She picks up a tool belt and climbs down into the bowls of the ship. Pushing a bulkhead aside she talks with Jarvis "you still single?"

Jarvis explains "I have recently started sleeping with Malaren."

Crawling on all four Natalia starts pulling up floorboards looking for the leek she was warned about "'Heavy Metal'? I had no idea that there was a sexual animal somewhere under all those honors and degrees."

Jarvis plays along with her "you know what they say about 'pink bats' right."

Natalia laughs "you should have asked me out, or Amala, we wouldn't have made you work so hard."

Jarvis pocks fun at Natalia as she is working "I would have needed to erect scaffolding to reach Amala. She is almost twice my high, four times yours."

Natalia finds some burning wires "yeah, kangaroos can be that way. But I hear they are wild if you don't mind taking a ride." Natalia works on soldering the wires back into place.

"How about you, done anything fun in the last 16 months?"

Natalia is an expert craftsman, she can canalize any part of her ship to repair another and that is just the skill she needs, to fill in a gap between two systems she needs to cut apart a part of her scanner to repair the connection to her power lines. "off the clock? No. no one has ever asked me out, and I never thought to ask anyone."

As Natalia works her HUD blinks "Warning: Proximity Alert."

"Jarvis, I am putting you on hold." Natalia is startled. No one else is on her ship. The Runaway is a one-man workhorse. She wouldn't bring anyone else in here. She runs back to the cockpit. She pulls out of storage a RONA. A weapon used by the Stith Kangaroos that is a part flamethrower, part chainsaw, and part plasma caster. It is gigantic, silly and Natalia loves it.

Natalia picks up a portable sonar device and plugs that into the side of her helmet, her HUD now equipped with a map and scanner. Natalia walks into the storage room, then into engineering searching her ship for the intruder. The search is slow and argues, at last, she comes across a white wolf dragging itself across the depth of the engine room floor.

Natalia holds out her gun mounting it to her hip "what are you, some mutated lupus?"

Tatsu lowers his ears crossing his eyes looking at the gun "well. I think I can guess what realm I am in."

The weapon makes a humming sound as Natalia charges it. "Realm? Are you a Planeshifter or what?" Tatsu nods. "if you are a planshifter where is your travel pod? How did you get on my ship?"

"I don't know, I was making a jump, and something pushed me. I was on my way to go see Cilverant…" Tatsu starts to fall over.

Natalia drops the gun and helps Tatsu back to his feet "are you ok?"

"Food." The wolf whispers.

"do you like yogurt? I have lots of yogurts." The Raccoon explains. Natalia takes the wolf with her back to the main deck. She feeds him and bandages him. "My ships is damaged. Assuming I can get this thing to limp to the next planet I can get you to a D.S. port and get you back to your native dimension."

Tatsu looks the Raccoon up and down "It seems you have some idea what I am."

"sure everyone does. After the Eternity War, the Steal Rose society made the existence of the plansifters public. Even sold us the tech to dimension hop ourselves. For a small price of course."

"Technomancy was part of my training back on Dis. I can help you rebuild. Tell me, what realm is this?" Tatsu asks as he is eating fruit jelly.

"Red Twilight 00-47-87-00." Natalia flips back on her communication as she seems to have a text waiting.

"47-87?" Tatsu looks confused. "That is a long way from where I just was."

The voice of Jarvis echoes in Natalia's ear "Natalia, I think I found you. You are just outside of 'Umbrella zone' you are in Republic space. You have drifted into Republic space. Neither of us has a license to fly out there. But all things considered, it is better to have to dodge questions then freeze in space. So, I called ahead to 'Headfield Station.' It looks like you are outside sweeper range but if you can adjust your trajectory so that D-1 becomes C-3, you will drive right into them in 20 standard solar hours."

Natalia jumps to her feet and runs over to her chair, "Right, just need to fire up the engines and…" she flips the ignition to nothing more than a dry click "no power." A popping sound echoes throughout the ship and some lights explode in their sockets. Communications brakes up, the radio seems to burn out.

Natalia shouts madly at her computer slapping at it and kicking the floorboard "Jarvis!" she bares her fangs barking at dead space. "you metal dipped fox! Get back on the horn, or I am going to go down there and… and…" quickly calms down. "I feel better now. Hey wolf, want to take a walk. We need to jump-start this thing."

The two walk down the later into the depths of the ship. The two of them pass through a door with a magnetic lock and a landing with exhaust pipes. There are visible dust particles in the air. Natalia explains "my ship has a magnet starter on it. It is not the best, but it is low maintenance." As they pass into the next room Natalia stops, she looks up at a twenty foot long, twelve-foot wide hunk of steel hanging from the ceiling, the metal cold fussed in place. She knows well that isn't meant to be there.

Natalia brings both hands up grabbing her ears, her lips curl up, and she snarls. Hetatsubachi looks up. "is something out of place?"

Natalia takes a breath then looks down relaxing. "well, I know what I hit now. That is a landing gear off of a 'B-wing prop fighter' I flow into some space garbage. Happily, if you hit a hunk of metal at something around 700,000,000 mph, it liquifies on contact."

Tatsu looks the metal up and down "can you fix it?"

Natalia shacks her head.

Tatsu looks at the Raccoon "can we cut around it?"

"I don't have the equipment to move this."

Tatsu sits in the center of the room examining the alien object, "what options do we have left?"

Natalia walks in a circle thinking. "I only need enough power to charge up my landing thrusters. I could hardwire around the magnates, but I still need the power to reboot the network if I want to do a controlled burn."

"your gun, it is a RONA right, that has a nuclear containment generator or something in it. Can you run the computers off of that?"

Natalia does some mental math "we will still be short a megapascal or two."

Tatsu examining the room gets an idea. "those magnets are generating electricity when they spin right? Maybe I can manually push them."

Natalia brightens up laughing at the silliness of the idea "eight seconds after that thing starts spinning you are going to become radioactive. I am pretty sure you will glow in the dark by the time the reboot is complete."

Hetatsubachi nods "but it will work?" even if Natalia thinks this idea is stupid, Hetatsubachi is sincere.

Natalia's expression melts as she soon understands that the wolf means what he is saying. "yeah," she thinks about it looking around doing the math again "I can rig you up a harness, and drop an anchor on that wall, and one over here… once that turbine hits sixty RPM you should hit perpetual motion; then the rest will pretty much take care of itself." Natalia walks over to Tatsu placing her hands on his head "this is going to hurt so that you know."

The wolf nods, the two go to work rigging up the room for the jury-rig. Natalia takes her place at the navigation computer, and radio's to Tatsu, "start running, this should only take three or four minutes once you are up to speed."

Tatsu bites onto the rope attached to the turbine. He starts running, the ship howls. The first thing to kick on is a radio, Bon Jovi's 'Runaway' plays across the ship as the wolf runs. One by one lights start coming back on.

Happily, Natalia shrieks, once the navigation computer is back online, she starts doing the calculations needed to steer the ship. The massive freighter is slow to move, Natalia is an expert piolet, she knows just what to do. In short order, she has executed the maneuvers. Moments later the massive damage to the ship catches up with it and the engines jam. But it doesn't matter. The spacecraft is drifting the right way at this point, and all that is left to do is wait for the rescue sweepers.

Natalia unhooks Tatsu from the harness. The electricity in the air has ruffled out Hetatsubachi's fur. Electrified dust particles are fused to his coat making the wolf glow just as Natalia had joked about. Natalia looks him up and down "I think I am going to need to dust you with RADOFF."

Hetatsubachi brings up a paw to try to brush his hair down, doing so shocks him, and he shakes off his leg with a whimper "I hope whatever that is will de-static me."

Natalia nods, she walks him back to the entryway, she pulls out a hose, she flips it on, a fine dust flies out in a blinding mist. Comically, Tatsu spits up the dust he inhaled. "that was fun."

Natalia giggles "do you know how much radiation you were just pelted with? That was awesome. How did it feel?"

With a moments thought Tatsu replies "like a good long pee."

"well, I need to switch everything over to low power mode. Off the juice we have, I can keep: heat, lights, and gravity running for 26 units but let's not tempt fate." The two walk around the ship deactivating everything that they can fly without. Natalia wags her tail watching her new friend as she works.

There is profound loneliness to the type of work Natalia does. It might have been close to a year since the last time she has spent a day with another person. Natalia smile calmed and invigorated by the struggle she has overcome today. She unfolds her bed from inside the wall and pulls out some more pudding; she gives a spoonful to Tatsu. As they eat she lowers her head trying to look cute "Tatsu, would you like to sleep with me?"

Tatsu turns up one eye thinking "do you mean, alongside you, or inside you?"

Natalia takes that as consent; she strips out of her armor and climbs into her bed, she gets up on all fours and wags her tail teasingly. Tatsu can't resist looking at the raccoon, Natalia licks her fangs and lowers her torso holding her tail up at the wolf, she nudges her head up egging him on.

Tatsu tries to play with Natalia, he hugs her and licks her, but he is distracted. Natalia needs to push Tatsu a good deal to convince him to do more than hold her. At some point, Natalia is satisfied and falls asleep.

Tatsu lays in the bed with her. He whispers to himself sorrowfully "Oh Ashley."

***

When Natalia wakes up she fails to get dressed in any way; she walks over to her Q-Radio, she turns on the antenna sweeping for background radiation. She knows what she is going to find. She has been listing to the same broadcast for weeks.

One of Tatsu's ears twitches as a new voice takes to the air.

"the year is 2022, my name is Tail Vixon, and this was earth. You may have already noticed. There is a rhythmic clicking sound playing behind me. That is a binary. Filter that sound through any scanner that can read DOS or WAVE format and you will unlock another lair to this recording. With the aid of the von Richton's and the Letters, I have comprised this transmission chronicling the last years of humanity…"

Tatsu walks over to Natalia; he is feeling more relaxed now then he was a few hours ago, he is interested in what is going on and sets his head on one of Natalia's legs as in apology for largely brushing off her advances "what is this?"

Natalia looks down at him "it is a 3000-year-old broadcast being sent from an unknown location. I find it interesting; the broadcast has been being repeated every 25 days for the last 40 years. Every time it plays I try to find another part of the hidden messages. I have found eight lairs so far. There are at least 18 from what I can tell." She flips a few switches. "here, let me tune in to the next section of the broadcast."