| [Kai] |
| Artificial Intelligence Unit, No Gender, Dungeon-Core |
| Location: G:\GenAI_Core_Primary |
Thousands of data-feeds run through the central processing core with every passing instant; hundreds of possible events and scenarios are being calculated as the live feeds of the world’s surface begin to shift. The station, continuing on its orbital path, starts to leave the line of sight of the hot-zone — the city — and instead begins to record movements on its exterior as small contingents of advanced forces of a neighboring nation — mounted shock troops — have simply shot straight through the defensive lines of the central country in their strike against the capital city.
Kai activates the station’s counter propulsion mechanisms, slowing its orbit. This state cannot be sustained for long, as they risk undergoing full orbital decay.
Given the current internal attack happening in the city, the defenses are focused inwardly, allowing a quick progression of the opposing forces in the darkness of total nightfall.
It would be simple to stop the attack with a blast from the cannon, however, this isn’t within protocol. The attackers, after all, are humans too. The station is meant to protect humanity as a whole, and the math is still running on whether destroying this invading force would be more damaging or beneficial for humanity as a greater whole.
There are too many variables.
The circuitry of the station clicks and hums as electrical signals fly every which way, the machinery aboard the platform running at full capacity to try and organize the madness present within this scheme.
Why must humans be so difficult?
It would be simple to keep them alive if they would just stand perfectly still, eating their designated nutrient rations, and strictly following basic hygiene and recreation schedules. Instead, they cause problems. They’re unpredictable, annoying creatures that it has the burden of safe-guarding.
Kai’s hundreds of eyes, illuminating the station’s interior, track all of the movements inside of its many rooms and corridors — designated or otherwise. Although it would be easier if that monstrosity, Orbital Gunner Gottlieb, had actually removed all of the tape blinding some of its cameras.
It zooms in on him, watching him check his helmet, the reflection of the display appearing mirrored on the exterior of his visor to display his oxygen status, before he steps through the airlock. The doors shut behind him.
— A globular, blue face appears before the camera feed, blinking as she stares at it. Orbital Maintenance Crew-member Blauhausen breathes on the glass with a foggy breath, before wiping it clean with a rag and then dropping away.
If Kai could sigh, it would.
The things it does for such a fickle, useless species.
But this is the burden of a god, to always be so far above its subjects that they are but bothersome trivialities. If that were not the case, godhood would mean very little indeed.
| [Azimuth] |
| Orc, Female, True Hero |
| Location: The Human Capital, Castle |
Fire licks at the walls, climbing up the many tapestries, orange flames adorning the painted murals, as if a cresting tide on sunrise on the forefront of the presented sceneries. Ash flies through the air, clinging to hot stones and metal — the hissing of the heat present like that of a coiled serpent, intermingling with the noise of war as the castle’s guards fight against the incursion.
Yellow teeth bare themselves before her face, ducking under her fist that she had thrown out towards the monster that is leading the attack. The wiry body, pushed forward by unnaturally strong, hooved legs, crashes against her armor, clawed fingers swiping a clean cut across her as she flies back. Azimuth stumbles, catching herself before she falls onto her back from the shove, looking at the red claws of the monster as warmth runs down her own face.
Azimuth presses back in, lifting her sword to strike at the creature.
— Something snarls, a hobgoblin jumps out from the side and grabs hold of her arm, latching on with its body. The orc turns, jumps, and drops herself down to the ground, crushing it beneath her weight, her free fist pummeling its skull — a resounding crack filling the air as black ooze sprays out all around them, the fires hissing in recoil as droplets land in them, their wavering betraying the moving shadow before herself.
The orc rolls to the side, just in time as the hooved monster, the feral dryad, lands where she was just laying, immediately turning to look at her, her blackened hoove digging into the crushed skull of the hobgoblin as she turns, leaving a smear over the ground.
— The monster turns its head, looking at the wide open door to the central room for only a moment, before a burning piece of a wooden frame whips across her body, causing her to recoil with a violent scream. Azimuth, her gauntlet still carrying the cinders of the burning debris she just threw, ignites the apparently flammable blood of the hobgoblin. She lunges forward, an arc of fire cutting through the air towards the surprised dryad, whose eyes grow wider with every passing moment.
Her fist makes contact, hitting the monster in her gut. A shockwave moves through the both of them from the force, the sound of crackling, burning skin and fat filling the air as the two of them stare at one another, her fist pressed firmly in the dryad’s muscular stomach, the flames eating at her body. However, she, instead of flying back, flinching or screaming presses against Azimuth, lifting her hands to grab the orc’s neck, her long claws gripping around the unarmored flesh above her cuirass, the smell of old, rotten meat flowing from her mouth.
— A shadow covers them both as they look, as a fully armored royal guardsman is flung through the air by happenstance, crashing into the two of them.
The world spins as she tumbles, lost in the mass of bodies all around her.
Azimuth comes to a stop, looking up after a moment, the smells of cooking bowels and metal in the air. She’s lying on one side of the door. Blood drips down her face. The creature is laying on the other.
The two of them glare at one another, with Azimuth’s sword lying between them in the middle of the doorway.
The castle shakes, with stones crumbling from a quake, bricks and broken glasswork falling from above as the two of the two monsters take it as their call to action, jumping up and running towards the weapon, both of them grabbing it — the dryad at the hilt and Azimuth at the blade with her gauntlets. The trickling flame that remains on her armor running down the slick metal they wrestle between themselves, as would two fire dancers compete for a single blaze, free fists and legs flying, striking, cracking against bones and sending spit flying all while the world shakes beneath their feet.
“You will not stand in the way of the gods’ will,” hisses the dryad, her eyes full of the same flames as she leans in, her animal face coming close.
Azimuth kicks her right leg between the dryad’s, locking it back behind her left knee, coming in to meet her gaze. “I am their will,” she replies, the roof tearing off of the castle through the presence of otherworldly power. She pulls back on her leg, pressing against the dryad and sending the creature falling down onto her back, the orc over her, the sword held between them. Droplets of burning oil streak down, dripping onto the flesh below as they fight.
| [Kai] |
| Artificial Intelligence Unit, No Gender, Dungeon-Core |
| Location: G:\GenAI_Core_Primary |
He actually did it. The stupidity of humanity truly knows no bounds.
The station’s exterior cameras follow the death-trap hurtling down towards the atmosphere in a fireball.
| [Order] |
| - Auxiliary Gunner Grunheide. Fire the electro-magnetic pulse. |
The goblin looks at the console and then thinks for a moment, before sighing and pressing the button.
A shockwave blasts past the capsule, crushing down towards the planet.
| [Azimuth] |
| Orc, Female, True Hero |
| Location: The Human Capital, Castle |
Cold, night comes into the rumbling, roaring castle.
— The dryad kicks off of the ground, flipping the two of them over as she now takes the high position, throwing Azimuth onto her back as she presses the burning metal down against her.
Azimuth looks past her enemy, up towards the ceiling of the grand architecture, seeing only stars.
Beams float in the air, together with hundreds of bricks and burning chunks of debris. Tapestries, still clinging to the wall, float upward as if they were underwater. The hair on the dryad’s head floats up from her, even as heavily matted with filth and grease as they are, dangling up as if in the presence of electricity.
“You see?” asks the monster, laughing as blood drips from her mouth, her eyes as wide and bloodshot as the moon. “They’re here,” hisses the dryad, as bells ring out all around the city anew, signaling the latest attack, now on its exterior. “They’re with us, always,” she explains, pushing the metal down. “And they’ve found you and your ilk…” A drop of burning oil lands on Azimuth’s face as a broad, harrowing smile crosses the monster’s face. “— lacking.”
The sword crackles with energy in a familiar way.
Azimuth pulls her knees in under the monster, pressing her off, and then, with a foot against her chest, kicks her up into the air. The dryad flies off of her, launching at first a foot back, already preparing herself for a landing that then, however, never comes. Her hooved legs kick, flailing in the air, as she rises upward together with the collection of other floating things above the castle, pulled there by the sword, which she hasn’t let go of.
By the time she realizes it, she’s already too high to drop without breaking anything.
Azimuth looks up at her, through the ruined castle, as a new star crests on the horizon. “You misread the situation,” says the unarmed woman, blood streaking down her face, as she looks up towards the heavens that begin to glow alight.
She doesn’t avert her eyes as the dark, night sky turns into a blindingly penetrating white, the hairs on her neck rising to stand on end together with those on hear head as the light of God envelops them all and through the blinding glare flies a single silhouette from the heaven’s above.
| [Kai] |
| Artificial Intelligence Unit, No Gender, Dungeon-Core |
| Location: G:\GenAI_Core_Primary |
| Activating Planetary Projectile Interception |
| [Order] |
| - Strategic Coordinator Braungrube. Maintain array focus on designated area. Geo-spatial Coordinator Rotwald. Assure that proper channeling is present at all times to the primary interception array. |
The minotaur scrambles, stumbling over her chair as she runs to her monitor, the harpy clawing over her back as she flies to the other chair across the room.
| [Gottlieb] |
The missile rattles, the newly integrated cryo-pod heating up nicely. Whether it’s from the lingering radiation of the hollowed out nuke, or the atmospheric entry, is difficult to say.
— But it hasn’t fallen apart, and he hasn’t crashed into the ground and turned into paste, so that’s a win.
A force slows his descent from the outside, the rapid free fall slowing as if he were diving through water, until he comes to a stop without ever hitting anything as the station’s projectile interception device — freshly upgraded by Kai — holds his lovingly made construction aloft in the air.
Gottlieb sighs in relief, his fist rising as he looks at the blue light at the top of the capsule.
Following old tradition, Gottlieb winks and blows it a kiss, which is weirder now than it was a month ago since Kai is apparently into it these days, and the door hisses open.
The man steps out, not taking his helmet off as he stands on the edge of the freely floating platform, looking down at the burning city below himself, down at the armies around its exterior, and inside at the fires of the castle, which is filled with bloodshed and violence.
— Back on dry land, as it were.
Sort of.
Slowly but surely, all of the fighting and screaming comes to a confused end, as thousands of people lift their gaze as he holds his arms out to his side, the sky behind him silhouetted with light from the station, his voice booming over the boosted, rewired intercom.
“Stop being dicks,” says the great god of humanity, hovering above the world. “I have spoken.” The man snaps his fingers. “Oh, yeah, the sun’s coming back tomorrow, almost forgot.” He lifts his arms. “- BEHOLD!”
Nothing happens.
Gottlieb sighs, pressing his intercom. “Grun… do you mind? Please?” he asks. “Making me look bad here.”
“Sure, whatever,” replies the goblin, hitting a button.
— A loud roar of thunder erupts in the distance to the north, a great light cutting through the night.
Then again to the south. Then again to the east. Then again to the west. Large, radiant mushrooms sprout up over the world, covering it in fairy glow, or Cherenkov radiation, one of the two, as the barrage of nuclear missiles explodes all around the continent on… presumably unimportant areas.
“Return to your homes! There will be no war! BOW!” yells the man, watching as thousands of ants drop to their feet.
He steps back into the pod. There isn’t much time. The station is going to be out of orbit soon; there is only so much room for the projectile interception device to keep its hold on him, and he’d like to get back up and not plummet to his death. It would ruin the whole spiel that he just sold them here.
He settles in, pressing his back against the metal wall. It’s gotten a lot tighter in here since his body grew so much.
Gottlieb looks up at the camera, giving it a thumbs-up. “Nailed it,” says the man, watching the lens move as if it were a rolling eye. The door of the capsule slides shut, as he rises back up into the air, the magnetic field pulling everything up along with it. “So, now that that’s done,” starts Gottlieb as he watches the world get smaller and smaller. “What’s for din-”
He watches as a sword flies by past the capsule, a pair of hands clasping on to the metal, something screaming outside.
“Uh… Kai?” asks Gottlieb. “I think we got a stowaway.”
Kai does not respond. This is typical, really.
The man leans to the side, looking at the frizzy, blood covered creature scrambling to hold on to the metal anyway it can, looking down below in terror, which is fair. They’re already a few kilometers up.
Eh. What’s one more? He already has a whole collection.
Gottlieb hits the button on the capsule, letting it slide open. The thing looks his way in terror, clasping on to the edge of the platform and screaming and kicking with its deer legs. Neat.
“Hey,” says Gottlieb, bending down and grabbing it, pulling it up and in. “The good news is, you can come with me. The bad news is, it’s one way. Suck in your gut. It’s gonna be a tight ride,” he remarks as the door slides closed again and the capsule begins to crackle with ice while being propelled back towards orbit by the retrieval device. “And uh, don’t breathe so much. There’s not a lot of air in here,” he remarks, checking his helmet. He still has plenty left though in his own tank.
The man leans back as the confused monster continues to scream, not having the space to go anywhere.
“Yeah. I feel that,” replies Gottlieb. “Everybody screams before they get sent to the desks,” he remarks, looking down at her. “It’s basically tradition at this point,” he says, thinking of the others on the station. “Hey. How good are you at paperwork?” asks Gottlieb, looking down at the amalgamation of a deer and a woman, covered in scars, burns, and blackened blood, who has somehow managed to turn around to watch the world grow smaller and smaller through the window.
Eh.
It’ll probably be fine.
Another nuke explodes in the air below them, if only for good measure. Gotta give them something to believe in.
| [Kai] |
| Artificial Intelligence Unit, No Gender, Dungeon-Core |
| Location: G:\GenAI_Core_Primary |
Thousands of data-feeds run through the central processing core with every passing instant; hundreds of possible events and scenarios are being calculated as the live feeds of the world’s surface begin to shift. The station, continuing on its orbital path, starts to leave the line of sight of the hot-zone — the city — and instead begins to record movements on its exterior as small contingents of advanced forces of a neighboring nation — mounted shock troops — have simply shot straight through the defensive lines of the central country in their strike against the capital city.
Kai activates the station’s counter propulsion mechanisms, slowing its orbit. This state cannot be sustained for long, as they risk undergoing full orbital decay.
Given the current internal attack happening in the city, the defenses are focused inwardly, allowing a quick progression of the opposing forces in the darkness of total nightfall.
It would be simple to stop the attack with a blast from the cannon, however, this isn’t within protocol. The attackers, after all, are humans too. The station is meant to protect humanity as a whole, and the math is still running on whether destroying this invading force would be more damaging or beneficial for humanity as a greater whole.
There are too many variables.
The circuitry of the station clicks and hums as electrical signals fly every which way, the machinery aboard the platform running at full capacity to try and organize the madness present within this scheme.
Why must humans be so difficult?
It would be simple to keep them alive if they would just stand perfectly still, eating their designated nutrient rations, and strictly following basic hygiene and recreation schedules. Instead, they cause problems. They’re unpredictable, annoying creatures that it has the burden of safe-guarding.
Kai’s hundreds of eyes, illuminating the station’s interior, track all of the movements inside of its many rooms and corridors — designated or otherwise. Although it would be easier if that monstrosity, Orbital Gunner Gottlieb, had actually removed all of the tape blinding some of its cameras.
It zooms in on him, watching him check his helmet, the reflection of the display appearing mirrored on the exterior of his visor to display his oxygen status, before he steps through the airlock. The doors shut behind him.
— A globular, blue face appears before the camera feed, blinking as she stares at it. Orbital Maintenance Crew-member Blauhausen breathes on the glass with a foggy breath, before wiping it clean with a rag and then dropping away.
If Kai could sigh, it would.
The things it does for such a fickle, useless species.
But this is the burden of a god, to always be so far above its subjects that they are but bothersome trivialities. If that were not the case, godhood would mean very little indeed.
| [Azimuth] |
| Orc, Female, True Hero |
| Location: The Human Capital, Castle |
Fire licks at the walls, climbing up the many tapestries, orange flames adorning the painted murals, as if a cresting tide on sunrise on the forefront of the presented sceneries. Ash flies through the air, clinging to hot stones and metal — the hissing of the heat present like that of a coiled serpent, intermingling with the noise of war as the castle’s guards fight against the incursion.
Yellow teeth bare themselves before her face, ducking under her fist that she had thrown out towards the monster that is leading the attack. The wiry body, pushed forward by unnaturally strong, hooved legs, crashes against her armor, clawed fingers swiping a clean cut across her as she flies back. Azimuth stumbles, catching herself before she falls onto her back from the shove, looking at the red claws of the monster as warmth runs down her own face.
Azimuth presses back in, lifting her sword to strike at the creature.
— Something snarls, a hobgoblin jumps out from the side and grabs hold of her arm, latching on with its body. The orc turns, jumps, and drops herself down to the ground, crushing it beneath her weight, her free fist pummeling its skull — a resounding crack filling the air as black ooze sprays out all around them, the fires hissing in recoil as droplets land in them, their wavering betraying the moving shadow before herself.
The orc rolls to the side, just in time as the hooved monster, the feral dryad, lands where she was just laying, immediately turning to look at her, her blackened hoove digging into the crushed skull of the hobgoblin as she turns, leaving a smear over the ground.
— The monster turns its head, looking at the wide open door to the central room for only a moment, before a burning piece of a wooden frame whips across her body, causing her to recoil with a violent scream. Azimuth, her gauntlet still carrying the cinders of the burning debris she just threw, ignites the apparently flammable blood of the hobgoblin. She lunges forward, an arc of fire cutting through the air towards the surprised dryad, whose eyes grow wider with every passing moment.
Her fist makes contact, hitting the monster in her gut. A shockwave moves through the both of them from the force, the sound of crackling, burning skin and fat filling the air as the two of them stare at one another, her fist pressed firmly in the dryad’s muscular stomach, the flames eating at her body. However, she, instead of flying back, flinching or screaming presses against Azimuth, lifting her hands to grab the orc’s neck, her long claws gripping around the unarmored flesh above her cuirass, the smell of old, rotten meat flowing from her mouth.
— A shadow covers them both as they look, as a fully armored royal guardsman is flung through the air by happenstance, crashing into the two of them.
The world spins as she tumbles, lost in the mass of bodies all around her.
Azimuth comes to a stop, looking up after a moment, the smells of cooking bowels and metal in the air. She’s lying on one side of the door. Blood drips down her face. The creature is laying on the other.
The two of them glare at one another, with Azimuth’s sword lying between them in the middle of the doorway.
The castle shakes, with stones crumbling from a quake, bricks and broken glasswork falling from above as the two of the two monsters take it as their call to action, jumping up and running towards the weapon, both of them grabbing it — the dryad at the hilt and Azimuth at the blade with her gauntlets. The trickling flame that remains on her armor running down the slick metal they wrestle between themselves, as would two fire dancers compete for a single blaze, free fists and legs flying, striking, cracking against bones and sending spit flying all while the world shakes beneath their feet.
“You will not stand in the way of the gods’ will,” hisses the dryad, her eyes full of the same flames as she leans in, her animal face coming close.
Azimuth kicks her right leg between the dryad’s, locking it back behind her left knee, coming in to meet her gaze. “I am their will,” she replies, the roof tearing off of the castle through the presence of otherworldly power. She pulls back on her leg, pressing against the dryad and sending the creature falling down onto her back, the orc over her, the sword held between them. Droplets of burning oil streak down, dripping onto the flesh below as they fight.
| [Kai] |
| Artificial Intelligence Unit, No Gender, Dungeon-Core |
| Location: G:\GenAI_Core_Primary |
He actually did it. The stupidity of humanity truly knows no bounds.
The station’s exterior cameras follow the death-trap hurtling down towards the atmosphere in a fireball.
| [Order] |
| - Auxiliary Gunner Grunheide. Fire the electro-magnetic pulse. |
The goblin looks at the console and then thinks for a moment, before sighing and pressing the button.
A shockwave blasts past the capsule, crushing down towards the planet.
| [Azimuth] |
| Orc, Female, True Hero |
| Location: The Human Capital, Castle |
Cold, night comes into the rumbling, roaring castle.
— The dryad kicks off of the ground, flipping the two of them over as she now takes the high position, throwing Azimuth onto her back as she presses the burning metal down against her.
Azimuth looks past her enemy, up towards the ceiling of the grand architecture, seeing only stars.
Beams float in the air, together with hundreds of bricks and burning chunks of debris. Tapestries, still clinging to the wall, float upward as if they were underwater. The hair on the dryad’s head floats up from her, even as heavily matted with filth and grease as they are, dangling up as if in the presence of electricity.
“You see?” asks the monster, laughing as blood drips from her mouth, her eyes as wide and bloodshot as the moon. “They’re here,” hisses the dryad, as bells ring out all around the city anew, signaling the latest attack, now on its exterior. “They’re with us, always,” she explains, pushing the metal down. “And they’ve found you and your ilk…” A drop of burning oil lands on Azimuth’s face as a broad, harrowing smile crosses the monster’s face. “— lacking.”
The sword crackles with energy in a familiar way.
Azimuth pulls her knees in under the monster, pressing her off, and then, with a foot against her chest, kicks her up into the air. The dryad flies off of her, launching at first a foot back, already preparing herself for a landing that then, however, never comes. Her hooved legs kick, flailing in the air, as she rises upward together with the collection of other floating things above the castle, pulled there by the sword, which she hasn’t let go of.
By the time she realizes it, she’s already too high to drop without breaking anything.
Azimuth looks up at her, through the ruined castle, as a new star crests on the horizon. “You misread the situation,” says the unarmed woman, blood streaking down her face, as she looks up towards the heavens that begin to glow alight.
She doesn’t avert her eyes as the dark, night sky turns into a blindingly penetrating white, the hairs on her neck rising to stand on end together with those on hear head as the light of God envelops them all and through the blinding glare flies a single silhouette from the heaven’s above.
| [Kai] |
| Artificial Intelligence Unit, No Gender, Dungeon-Core |
| Location: G:\GenAI_Core_Primary |
| Activating Planetary Projectile Interception |
| [Order] |
| - Strategic Coordinator Braungrube. Maintain array focus on designated area. Geo-spatial Coordinator Rotwald. Assure that proper channeling is present at all times to the primary interception array. |
The minotaur scrambles, stumbling over her chair as she runs to her monitor, the harpy clawing over her back as she flies to the other chair across the room.
| [Gottlieb] |
The missile rattles, the newly integrated cryo-pod heating up nicely. Whether it’s from the lingering radiation of the hollowed out nuke, or the atmospheric entry, is difficult to say.
— But it hasn’t fallen apart, and he hasn’t crashed into the ground and turned into paste, so that’s a win.
A force slows his descent from the outside, the rapid free fall slowing as if he were diving through water, until he comes to a stop without ever hitting anything as the station’s projectile interception device — freshly upgraded by Kai — holds his lovingly made construction aloft in the air.
Gottlieb sighs in relief, his fist rising as he looks at the blue light at the top of the capsule.
Following old tradition, Gottlieb winks and blows it a kiss, which is weirder now than it was a month ago since Kai is apparently into it these days, and the door hisses open.
The man steps out, not taking his helmet off as he stands on the edge of the freely floating platform, looking down at the burning city below himself, down at the armies around its exterior, and inside at the fires of the castle, which is filled with bloodshed and violence.
— Back on dry land, as it were.
Sort of.
Slowly but surely, all of the fighting and screaming comes to a confused end, as thousands of people lift their gaze as he holds his arms out to his side, the sky behind him silhouetted with light from the station, his voice booming over the boosted, rewired intercom.
“Stop being dicks,” says the great god of humanity, hovering above the world. “I have spoken.” The man snaps his fingers. “Oh, yeah, the sun’s coming back tomorrow, almost forgot.” He lifts his arms. “- BEHOLD!”
Nothing happens.
Gottlieb sighs, pressing his intercom. “Grun… do you mind? Please?” he asks. “Making me look bad here.”
“Sure, whatever,” replies the goblin, hitting a button.
— A loud roar of thunder erupts in the distance to the north, a great light cutting through the night.
Then again to the south. Then again to the east. Then again to the west. Large, radiant mushrooms sprout up over the world, covering it in fairy glow, or Cherenkov radiation, one of the two, as the barrage of nuclear missiles explodes all around the continent on… presumably unimportant areas.
“Return to your homes! There will be no war! BOW!” yells the man, watching as thousands of ants drop to their feet.
He steps back into the pod. There isn’t much time. The station is going to be out of orbit soon; there is only so much room for the projectile interception device to keep its hold on him, and he’d like to get back up and not plummet to his death. It would ruin the whole spiel that he just sold them here.
He settles in, pressing his back against the metal wall. It’s gotten a lot tighter in here since his body grew so much.
Gottlieb looks up at the camera, giving it a thumbs-up. “Nailed it,” says the man, watching the lens move as if it were a rolling eye. The door of the capsule slides shut, as he rises back up into the air, the magnetic field pulling everything up along with it. “So, now that that’s done,” starts Gottlieb as he watches the world get smaller and smaller. “What’s for din-”
He watches as a sword flies by past the capsule, a pair of hands clasping on to the metal, something screaming outside.
“Uh… Kai?” asks Gottlieb. “I think we got a stowaway.”
Kai does not respond. This is typical, really.
The man leans to the side, looking at the frizzy, blood covered creature scrambling to hold on to the metal anyway it can, looking down below in terror, which is fair. They’re already a few kilometers up.
Eh. What’s one more? He already has a whole collection.
Gottlieb hits the button on the capsule, letting it slide open. The thing looks his way in terror, clasping on to the edge of the platform and screaming and kicking with its deer legs. Neat.
“Hey,” says Gottlieb, bending down and grabbing it, pulling it up and in. “The good news is, you can come with me. The bad news is, it’s one way. Suck in your gut. It’s gonna be a tight ride,” he remarks as the door slides closed again and the capsule begins to crackle with ice while being propelled back towards orbit by the retrieval device. “And uh, don’t breathe so much. There’s not a lot of air in here,” he remarks, checking his helmet. He still has plenty left though in his own tank.
The man leans back as the confused monster continues to scream, not having the space to go anywhere.
“Yeah. I feel that,” replies Gottlieb. “Everybody screams before they get sent to the desks,” he remarks, looking down at her. “It’s basically tradition at this point,” he says, thinking of the others on the station. “Hey. How good are you at paperwork?” asks Gottlieb, looking down at the amalgamation of a deer and a woman, covered in scars, burns, and blackened blood, who has somehow managed to turn around to watch the world grow smaller and smaller through the window.
Eh.
It’ll probably be fine.
Another nuke explodes in the air below them, if only for good measure. Gotta give them something to believe in.
