Oasis

“It’s been an hour, Amon.” Akira’s foot taps against the sand restlessly.

“I can’t lie,” Amon takes a sip from the water canister that Akira had miraculously managed to fill up, having found a pit of rocks with trickles of green water flowing in between them. Luckily it had been safe enough to drink, despite it smelling like mouldy pineapples, and she had run back immediately, however the other member of the team had not responded to any of their attempts of contacting him. “I am slightly worried.”

“That’s a bit of an understatement.” Akira somehow manages to keep her calm, even though he nervous habits are starting to show. “We should search for him.”

“I’m not really in the best condition.” The bandaged wound on Amon’s leg made sure that any movement resulted in pain. He really had tried to stand, but it was all in vain.

Akira sucked in a breath, suddenly collapsing next to Amon on the ground that burns her suit.

“I – We have to go together.” Her face crumples up and she lowers her head. “I can’t afford to lose a member.” Amon notices how she tries to keep a brave front, but he knows how much Hide matters to her - both of them.

Maybe Hide was just trying to play a prank, a really convincing prank. Or maybe…

 He reaches a hand onto her shoulder and keeps it there securely. He can’t afford to think negatively, for his own sake and Akira’s.

“I promise, once I can feel my leg we’ll go.” He says reassuringly, but it doesn’t look like she heard him. There is a tense moment of silence, the hand and Akira’s shoulder becoming awkward and her breaths shortening. Suddenly, she pops off her helmet, the click and whoosh interrupting the silence, and she exhales slowly.

“That leg better get good enough to walk, and soon.” She orders, digging her helmet into the sand. “Else I’ll carry you. I meant it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Akira treads lightly as she walks away from Amon’s sleeping form under the broken wing of the ship. Watching him rest only made her more restless, and she isn’t one too sit around and wait.

But she’s not cruel enough to wake up him, he deserves a break. Even though she said they should go together, the seconds, minutes, hours that tick by while they aren’t doing anything makes her nervous.

She lifts her helmet back onto her head, with determination.

Hide still hasn’t come back and there’s a lingering fear that he will never come back, which is enough to will her into going forth by herself.

Akira knows Hide travelled east, and even in the weak light of the two moons she can spot a boot track a few metres in front of her.

1.. 2.. 3.. 4..

She follows the faint tracks, her own boots crunching on the ghost of Hide’s. Sometimes the tracks seem irregular, like Hide was hopping or jumping, and she lets out an amused huff. He must have been extremely bored, there is absolutely nothing interesting to look at out there, only gravely sand and Akira remembers that red was Hide’s least favourite colour.

623.. 624.. 625..

Other times the tracks would circle in a loop, making her really laugh as she follows them around because – wow –  even in the land of nothingness, Hide finds a way to entertain himself.

Then her heart squeezes. she clenches her fists, and then unclenches them.

They will find him, Akira repeats it like a chant, but she scraps it immediately when it begins to sound unconvincing.

She doesn’t know how long she’s walked for, she lost count after fifteen minutes. She’s still able to follow the tracks, however she can barely spot the indents in the ground anymore because of the terrain becoming sandier.

In the distance, Akira sees that the sand is starting to curve downwards and her eyebrow twitches.

She speeds up, only half focusing on the tracks beneath her.

“I fell down a hill---”

Her heart thuds in her ears.

She’s in the right place.

However, something glints in the corner of her eye and she skids to a halt.

Akira turns and the glints gone, but she decides to investigate it anyway. She definitely wasn’t seeing things, and for her own security she grabs her gun from her belt and holds it with both hands, she herself was starting to think this planet isn’t what it originally seems like.

She catches the glint again not far to her right, it looks like it’s coming out of the top of the hill.

“Akira!?”

She almost drops her gun in surprise, but steadies herself and puts her hand to her helmet.

“Amon?” Akira bends down to inspect the glint up close, she tilts her head and the glint fades. She prods the piece of silver metal, around the size of her hand, that caused the gleam.

“A-Akira! Where are you?” Amon sounds anxious, and she almost feels bad for leaving without telling him.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine.” Akira puts down her gun and tries to pick up the pointy metal fragment, it’s smooth surface somewhat familiar to her. “I’m just-”

She can’t move it, it’s stuck.

“What?”                                                                                                       

She tries again, to no avail. Huh.

Akira dusts away the sand, revealing the piece to be larger than she thought, yet she still can’t move it. It glints tauntingly at her and she brushes away more of the sand, and the metal becomes even larger, then she scrambles to kick away the sand in bigger portions, the metal expanding out more and more and-

That’s when she knows what it is.

“Amon.”

“What are you doing? Where are you? You know it’s a bad idea to separate after what happened-”

“Amon.” She steps away from what she uncovered, and if she’s right, there’s more buried underneath the sand. “Akira?” If she’s right, she really wishes she isn’t.

“I found something… and I - I don’t know, but I think we’ve been lied to.”

Hide rouses to the feeling of someone dragging him by the collar and there’s a second where, in his drowsiness, he thinks he’s fallen asleep at the office and Akira’s caught him in the act again, but then he considers that it can’t be true because he was flying with them on a space ship and what he’s looking at does not look like the white tiled ceiling of the-

He barely manages to contain his shout.

He’s in a cave, a dim-lit and damp smelling cave, with someone dragging him.

Hide can’t turn around to look at who it is, not wanting to alert them of his awakening, yet the feeling of being tied up with rope and potentially being lead to his death isn’t helping his nervousness. What’s worse is that he can’t think properly, the pang of pain every time his body is moved slightly makes it almost impossible to think of a plan.

I fell… how am I still alive?

Who’s behind me? There are beings on this supposedly 'uninhabited' planet?

Where am I?

“Dumb… shit-” Hide freezes at the grumbling coming from above him, and closes his eyes to feign unconsciousness. The voice was too muffled to determine the gender of the person… thing, but whatever was pulling him was sentient, and he doesn’t know whether to be comforted by that or not (especially since they didn’t sound too happy).

The mumbling continues, too quiet for him to decipher, and he continues to pretend he’s a corpse – which is really boring by the way – eyes squeezed shut, taking tiny breathes every ten seconds, until the movement stops and the weight on the back of his suit disappears. His head hits the jagged ground with a ‘thunk’ and he wheezes with the agony the racks his body.

Hide almost chokes when he hears a step coming towards him and the cold feeling of a shadow crawling over his form. He panics and holds his breath, he can feel his knife still tucked into his boots and even if there’s no possible way for him to grab it while he’s tied up like this, it’s presence enables him to feel less vulnerable.

The footsteps pause right next to his face.

There’s a rustling sound, similar to clothes being taken off, and then silence.

All of a sudden, he can feel the presence leaning closer and closer, so close that he can hear their exhales and he’s really trying to keep his face passive.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit ohshitohshitohshit

It’s in this moment that he wishes he really was dead, because, hell, this was creepier than any horror movie, or 90s chick flick he’s watched. Ever.

He’s been holding his breath for a minute, ready to just scream out any second now when he hears a sniff.

It’s a big, long, loud sniff, right in his face which is followed by a drawn out moan and a series of wet sickening popping sounds, and there’s only two ways Hide thinks this can go.

1. He’s about to be ravished
2. He’s about to be ravished – (Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.)

Either way, he’s fucked, pun really not intended.

The crackling ended with a sound akin to water spraying, then the rope wrapped around his middle begins to feel loser and is pulled off him, turning him onto his side in the process. Hide’s brow twitches involuntarily, he has a perfect opportunity to escape and he can’t help but wonder what the hell’s going on behind his closed eyelids.

An animalistic snarl echoes around the hollow cave.

Hide has two seconds to decide that laying down isn’t going to help him in any way, before he’s opening his eyes---

To a pair of red ones---

 and a mouth full of fangs, about to take a chuck out of his arm.

There’s a moment, where all they do is stare at each other with wide eyes, both caught in surprise. All Hide can do is stare at this… girl? Her hair, blue- or maybe purple- he can’t tell in the dark, hangs over one side of her face, and large pointy ears that curl at the end stick out from underneath and- Holy Shit! Are those gills? His eyes trail down her neck, covered in light coloured scales that shimmer ethereally which endure down her body under her clothes, to her webbed hands, where short black claws dig into his arms.

And that’s when he remembers that she’s was going to eat him, and his arm twitches in her grasp.

At the slight movement, she screeches and jumps away from him.

What. The. Fuck.

She moves far away enough for Hide to inspect her entire body, there are two large wings behind her, one smaller than the other, that seem to be fizzling in a way that makes them look like an illusion and he feels like he could put his hand through them (not like he’s going to!) They’re so menacing, that he looks at her terrified expression and then back at those wings, and tries to put the two together.

When it looks like she’s not going to move, Hide stands up prudently from where he was sprawled on the ground while she watches on warily.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

Hide almost keels over, not knowing if it was from the surprise of the creature talking to him or because his legs feel like they’ve been run over by a truck several times. He quickly corrects himself and straightens out to his full height, which is taller than the thing in front of him, he realises proudly.

“Why?” He says, glad his voice isn’t betraying how uneasy he is. “So you could eat me?” He sounds childish and it’s probably an inappropriate response considering the situation, but he had weird coping mechanisms okay.

“Yes.” She deadpans, mouth curling downwards, and Hide sees a slim tail swish out behind her in an annoyed manner. He’s almost offended, but shakes his head, raising an eyebrow when she looks startled by the gesture.

“Look,” Hide begins, moving forward, but falters when his foot crunches on the ground. He looks down to see piles upon piles of bones beneath his feet, so much that he couldn’t see the actual ground. He swallows thickly, and chooses to ignore it for a second (for the benefit of his own sanity).

“I should be dead, but I’m not, so- uh- you should ask the voice that was in my head why that is- and while you’re at it, also thank your planet for literally letting me down-”

“OhOdin, you’re annoying.” She interrupts him, blowing her hair out of her eyes. It took a minute for Hide to realise that her eyes had turned blue. “If most humans are like this, it’s better that they’re dead when I see ‘em.” She glances at him up and down mockingly, the frightened look removed from her face completely.

Hide opens his mouth to respond, but the fact that she knows what a human is shuts him up.

“We’re gonna be the first there!?”

If what she says is true, then that’s a damn lie.

“Well, this was interesting.” She drawls after more silence, her foot tapping impatiently on ground- bones. “But, I haven’t had a proper meal in a while and I found you first, so~”

Hide’s times up. She’s no longer afraid, and the five-minute conversation wasn’t enough to decide to let him go – even though he’s not sure how he can get out of here, wherever ‘here’ is. The wings behind her start firing up again, surrounding themselves in orange fire and her eyes flicker between blue and red, pupils becoming slits.

The knife hidden in his boot might as well be a banana. It’s going to do nothing for him.

“W-what exactly are you?” Hide attempts another distraction as he backs away from her, there are several tunnels leading out of the cave and they’re his only escape routes. There’s one directly behind him, and he’s careful to step over the bones, most not human-looking, so he doesn’t trip.

Hide’s not even going to think about how, in the conditions he’s in right now, he’s definitely not going to last long.

She smirks, jagged teeth making a startling appearance.

“I’m your worst nightmare.”