Thion 3XQ: Journey [ON HOLD]

“W-What? What do you mean were on Thion 3XQ? H-How? What happened?” Sana said, her voice was barely above a whisper.

“Don’t you remember?” Momo was staring at her.

“Of course I do. I just- I remember the engines failing and the ship falling but I-I didn’t know we’d end up here” Sana replied.

Momo sighed and threw her head back to stare at the ceiling “According to Taeil, we’ve been here about a day and a half already”.

Sana eyed around the room, counting the number of heads.

7, 8, 9..10..

“What wrong with Professor Sunmi? Is she okay?” Sana said worriedly as she approached Somi.

Somi tensed as she looked up at Sana. “I-I don’t know. She won’t wake up. I don’t know what to do. She also has a broken foot”

Sana could see the tears forming in Somi’s eyes. Her eyes scanned Sunmi’s body as she saw her foot wrapped in what looked like the hoodie Renjun was wearing.

Sana cupped Somi’s cheeks trying to calm her down a bit. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay. Professor Sunmi will wake up in no time. I’m sure of it. Okay?”

Somi nodded wiping her tears away as Sana gave her a soft smile.

She looked around the room again and saw Nayeon and Jeongyeon closely sitting together on one of the corners of the room. Dowoon was laying down in a fetal position next to the wall. While Taeil, Dejun and Renjun were sitting together in another corner of the room. The room was honestly so tiny, Sana’s dorm room was bigger than this. The walls were dirty with stains that Sana only hoped weren’t blood. The ground was muddy and the room reeked of urine and feces. There wasn’t even a door or a window. She wondered how they managed to even get in there. Everyone looked so tired but at least they weren’t hurt.

“Wait..” Sana noticed that someone was missing. “Where’s Mr. Bae?”

“He’s dead” Jeongyeon said with her eyes glued to the floor.

“W-what?” Sana turned to Jeongyeon.

“He just..” Nayeon spoke. “I had regained consciousness when a group of Thions came and captured us from the place we crashed. Taeil, Jeongyeon and I were the only ones who were conscious of what was going on”

“What do you mean?”

“It means we were awake when the group of Thions loaded us on their vehicle and brought us here” Taeil chimed in.

“We were awake during it all. Mr. Bae wasn’t with us when they loaded us in. They left his body at the site because one of them said he was dead already” Jeongyeon’s eyes became a bit watery while her gaze never left the floor. Nayeon gently rubbed her arm.

Sana was silent, she didn’t know what to say. This was bad. They were locked in this tiny room with no hopes of getting out.

“What if.. what if someone’s coming to rescue us? You know? M-maybe the president notified Captain Park from the Vesta Base a-and she’s coming to save us?” Dejun spoke up, breaking the silence as all eyes were now looking at him.

“Maybe… or maybe no one knows we’re here” Dowoon muttered. He then sat up and turned to face Dejun “It’s been a day and half and we’re still here. Maybe no one’s coming and if they already have then maybe their dead already like Mr. Bae”

“That’s enough Dowoon.” Taeil said sternly.

Sana wanted to think that Dejun was right. That there was help coming for them but she didn’t want to wait around for that to happen. Dowoon could’ve been right as well.. maybe something had happened to rescue team or maybe.. no one was coming at all. Sana wasn’t really a pessimist but she had to consider all the factors here. They were trapped in a little room with no way of coming out and to make matters worse, it was on a dangerous planet. She didn’t even know exactly where they were.

Suddenly a door appeared on the side of the wall and a man walked in along with four other men. But they weren’t just men, they were Thions. Though they resembled humans, they were indeed Thions. There aren’t any clear distinction between Thions and humans because many of them would use human suits, which Sana thought was ironic since Thions were known to hate humans, yet a majority of them chose to look like humans.  Of course there were other Thions that resembled reptiles or different species. They were shape shifters so they could look like whatever they wanted. The only way to clearly differentiate a Thion from a human was by looking at their abdomens, a Thions had a marked symbol that looked like a 3XQ on their abdomen and a human did not.

“Get up, we’re leaving” Gork said to Momo who was closest to the door. The rest of them that were sitting quickly stood up. They were all shocked that he spoke Villari so clearly, despite having a slight accent.

“W-Who are you?” Jeongyeon managed to let out but Gork ignored her while he aggressively grabbed Momo’s wrists.

Momo winced slightly at the contact. Witnessing that, Sana took a step closer towards them but one of the Thion guard stood in front of her. He then grabbed her wrists and attached a metal band around them. All the rest hand these metal bands around their wrists even Professor Sunmi who was lying on the floor. This was to prevent them from escape. But Sana thought it was stupid to put one on the professor who was unconscious.

Gork eyed the professor curiously and asked “What’s wrong with that one?”

Sana’s Ogsic was a little rusty but she could make out what he was trying to ask. Being archeology students meant that they also had to study different histories of different planets, they were also encouraged to try and learn a little bit of the different languages. Sana thinks she shouldn’t be so shocked that this Thion can speak Villari so well since they were neighboring planets. Nevertheless, it caught her by surprise.

“She’s unconscious, but she’ll wake up soon” Somi answered quickly, not wanting Gork to do anything to her.

Gork eyed her suspiciously. “Carry her on your shoulder, we’ll be moving out now” he told the guard closest to Sunmi.

The guard nodded and lifted Sunmi and threw her over his shoulder. Somi stiffened. As the guard began walking out the door. The other guards began pushing the other to walk through the door.

“Where are you taking us?” Gork just looked at her and pushed her to keep moving.

They were all walking in a straight line towards a black van. When they all got in Sana swears she heard Gork tell the driver to take them to Factor 6. There were three guards in the van with them.

As they all got into the van with their wrist still cuffed by the band, Sana noticed that the van was no regular van. She noticed it was similar to the vehicles they had on Zanerth. The only difference was this had a lot more buttons and commands, it looked more complicated.

As she looked out of her seat she took note of her surroundings. The place was dusty and there were a lot of abandoned buildings nearby, or buildings made to look like they were abandoned. She had no idea where they were going or where Factor 6 was.

Suddenly the van stopped in front of another building that looked abandoned. Two of the guards got out and one of them opened the door for the group to get out. The other one threw Sunmi on his shoulder again.

“Out” one of them said. Nayeon didn’t understand but she thought he was telling them to get out of the van. One by one they got out. Sana was the last one left but she knew she had to do something or else they’d be stuck in one of those little room again, with no way out.

She looked between the guard on the outside who was looking at Dowoon as he was getting out, and the driver who was tapping his fingers on the wheel while looking outside the window, his door was slightly open, one foot was in and the next was dangling on the outside.

In a matter of seconds, Sana managed to kick the sliding door close and lock it with the little bit of fingers she had free. The driver turned to see what she was doing when he was met with Sana’s shoe in his face. With her two feet she kicked him straight in the face. He fell out the door and Sana quickly jumped in the driver seat and pressed the button she saw him press before unlocking the doors. She quickly locked all the windows and doors. The other guards were unable to get in as they kept banging on the door and windows.

Sana turned and looked at Momo through the glass mouthed the words “Sorry, I’ll be back with help”. Momo seemed confused at first but nodded. Momo gave her a small smile and she ran to kick one of the guards on the back of the knee. He fell to his knees while Sana was continuously pressing random buttons to get the van to work. She pressed some blue button and the van retracted its wheels and started to hover.

The guard that Momo hurt stood up and slapped her. Sana kicked the lever with her foot and the van started taking off into the air higher.

How the fuck do I get this to go?

She pressed a green button which made the van start moving. She looked back at Momo and the group and saw them entering the building.

Wait for me guys, I’ll be back with some help.

 She managed to get a few feet into the air when she heard someone tapping on the window. She turned to her left and saw one of the guards holding on to the roof trying to break in. Sana tried using her wrists and forearm on the steering wheel to steer the van left and then to the right to try and shake him off which worked until he then shaped shifted into a half human half bird looking animal. He had the body of a human with the head of a bird and flew with his wings.

Sana began frantically pushing buttons with her wrist trying to do something to get him to stop attacking her. She couldn’t focus trying to steer the van and having to get rid of him all with her wrists still in the band. She pressed a random purple button and a zap went off. She accidentally hit him with the zap and he fell from the sky.

“Huh I guess that worked”

Sana felt a little relived now that she got him off her back but she knew that reinforcements would be coming for her so she had to come up with something really quick. She managed to find the autopilot button so she no longer had to steer the wheel.

She had been driving for a while and she was thankful that no one had followed her yet. The sky was getting darker and she knew she’d have to park the van somewhere because she couldn’t risk any Thions seeing a van flying throughout the night.

Suddenly Sana saw smoke in the distance, it wasn’t too far away from where she was. Sana doesn’t know why but she felt like she should go in that direction to see what was there.

Who knows, maybe someone needs help

-

“Chou! Did you find anything over there?” Yiren asked Tzuyu through her ear piece.

“No. Empty” Tzuyu replied.

They had been searching around the crash site for a few minutes already. So far no one had found a body or anything. Just the remains of the fallen ship and a few suitcases of now burned clothes. While heading back to where the rest of the team was something caught Tzuyu’s eyes. She saw something shiny on the ground. She went towards it and picked it up. It was a necklace.

This looks so familiar.. But where do I remember it from?

“Tzu!” Yukhei snapped her out of her thoughts. She quickly put the necklace in her pocket as if she’d been trying to hide what she found from him but he didn’t seem to notice.

“This place is a mess huh? What do you think exactly happened? Not one body is around here. That she be good news right?” he asked.

Tzuyu looked around and shrugged. “I mean, I guess so. But that must mean they’ve been captured and we need to go and rescue them. Right?”

“Right, we gotta be the heroes” Yukhei said with a smile.

Tzuyu chuckled. “That’s right bud, we’re the heroes”

“Chou, Wong, get back to base. Kim found something” They both hear their Commander’s voice through their ear piece.

“Roger” They both replied in unison as they both began walking back to where the Commander was.

As the got back Wonpil told them to follow him. He led them to a little pathway where there was some tire marks on the ground.

“This could mean that they took’em that way” Wonpil said.

“How could you be so sure?” Tzuyu asked. She knew he was probably right but she also felt that it was too obvious and easy.

“Well we could follow the trail and see where it leads. What’s the harm in that? Right Commander?” Wonpil turned to face Saerom.

She looked at him and then back and the group. She sighed and said “Well, it’s the only lead we have right now, so let’s go”

They all nodded and began following Wonpil who was following the tire trail. They all had their ray guns in their hands, in case of a surprise attack or something. Tzuyu stopped in her tracks and looked back at the crash site once more before she continued following the team.

They were walking for a little while when Wonpil noticed a few buildings in the distance. They all began picking up their pace. As the got closer they noticed the buildings looked abandoned. They tried to remain as low as possible in case there was an ambush or something.

“Look” Wonpil said while pointing at one of the buildings. “There, the tracks stop there”

“Then they must be in that building” Yukhei said.

“We don’t know for sure, kid” Taeyong told him. “But let’s go, we shouldn’t waste any more time”

“Right, let’s go and get ready for anything” Saerom warned them.

Tzuyu felt a bit uneasy but nevertheless she still followed them. With their guns in their hands they steadily entered into the building. Wonpil entered first then Taeyong, then Yiren, then Yukhei, then Saerom and Tzuyu stood by the door in case there was any one following them. Since Tzuyu and Yukhei were both on the defenses they had to watch their team member’s backs.

“Well, it empty” Taeyong said.

“Yeah, I guess it’s just another abandoned building” Yiren said as she lowered her gun.

“Guess so” Wonpil said as he sighed.

“Wait, something’s not right” Saerom said.

-

While they were inside, Tzuyu was looking outside she saw a shadow move between two of the buildings. She lifted her gun up slowly. The next time she saw the shadow move she shot at it and she saw a body drop. That’s one of the things she excelled at, she had a good aim.

“Guys, we need to leave” Tzuyu quickly said.

They all turned to look at her. Saerom was closest to the door as she was ready to leave.

“Hey what’s that” Yukhei saw a square box on the floor and went to touch it.

“Wait don’t touch tha-“ Taeyong ran to stop him but it was too late.

It all happened in slow motion. Tzuyu saw when Yukhei bent down and lightly touched the box before it set off a bomb. She was the closest to the door and she saw Saerom turn to push her harshly out the door before the bomb went off. The impact of the bomb sent her flying towards the wall of another building, she then fell to the ground. Tzuyu weakly looked up as she the building her teammates were in, engulfed in flames. She could feel herself losing consciousness but she tried to fight it as best as she could.

With all the strength she had left she slowly stood up with one arm on the building to help support her up. She groaned and took a deep breath and she limply walked to the burning building. She checked her watch for any sign of life from her team mates, and there was no heart signature in sight indicating that she was the only one alive.

Tzuyu fell to her knees as tears fell down her cheek.

She knew she couldn’t stay there out in the open for too long. She limply walked the building she had collided with at first. She leaned on the wall as she sat down. She let her eyes close for a second before she lost consciousness.

-

When she woke up, she was still in the same spot she was before. The fire had now stopped, only the smoke filled the air. Tzuyu made a weak cough before she looked at her watch again.

Still no sign of life.

Tzuyu didn’t know what hurt worse, her body or her heart.

It was a bit dark now and truthfully Tzuyu wanted to die a bit, right there. She heard a vehicle a coming closer to where she was, then it stopped. Tzuyu managed to take out one of her guns from one of the pockets of her jacket. She was still sitting but her hands were raised ready to shoot.

She heard footsteps approaching closer until she heard a voice say “Tzuyu?”

That voice. It can’t be..

Sana walked closer to Tzuyu with her hands raised as if telling her not to shoot.

“Tzuyu?” She said again.

Tzuyu turned to look at Sana.

“Fuck” Tzuyu said.