Chapter 5. Pointless Negotiation

Rose nearly dropped her gun in shock after hearing the captain even suggest that. “Are you nuts?!” She screamed “This monster wiped out our entire ship and you want to offer it a safe passage!” She gripped her gun harder, gritting her teeth.

“Gotta say captain, that doesn’t sit right with me.” Dolan said, keeping his swords at the ready.

“She can kill all of us, and other members of that alliance have done far worse then take out a single ship. “The captain sighed, looking defeated “If there is a chance I can get out of this alive, I am going to take it.” He closed his eyes and nodded, reaffirming to himself before he faced Catherine “So what say you, monster.”

She raised an eyebrow “I don’t know much of this so-called alliance. A, dungeon alliance?” she said, going through the memories in her head, but the topic was fuzzy. Her ability to steal the memories of people she killed by eating their brain was limited to recent thoughts.

The captain gave a sigh of relieve, thankful she was at least interested in the topic “Space is vast, and our galactic force spread wide. We harvest dungeons for resources and sometimes when finding a particularly, difficult, dungeons our higher ups have come up with other means to get what we want without sacrificing too much.” He said tapping briefly on the broken console before cursing, unable to bring up what he wanted he continued.

“Dungeons, as I am sure you know, consist of the dungeon core that produces monsters, items, and other useful resources. But in order to protect itself it summons a dungeon master that is many times stronger then every other monster, I am guessing that was you for this dungeon?” He gestured to her.

She shrugged “Nope.”

“Wait what?” Rose blinked “What do you mean ‘nope’? are you fucking lying again? There is no way in hell you are not a dungeon master!”

Catherine shrugged yet again. “When you guys invaded, that dungeon core didn’t even have one monster summoned.” She smirked spreading her arms wide “I was one of many summoned in haste, killed my comrades to get stronger, and killed this girl as well” an amused grin spread on her face, that spread wider when Dolan yelled and charged.

“Not so fast big guy.” Catherine pointed at him, then snapped her fingers. Dolan’s body went limp, flying forward with the momentum of his charge. Catherine side stepped, allowing his limp body to fly past and slam into the wall with a groan.

“You monster!” Rose yelled, tossing the rifle towards the captain and extended her open palm. Her hand lit up in sparks “Oh no you don’t.” Catherine chuckled, pointing towards her and snapping her fingers. Rose flinched, but when nothing happened, she glared at Catherine. Flexing her palm, purple lightning flew out towards her.

Catherine’s eyes widened before her body flattened towards the ground to avoid the spell, but still her top half got singed “Shit!” She cursed, slithering over to Dolan and wrapping around him “fucking cool it with the lightning.” Her body reformed, albeit with a lot of randomly placed burn marks, she raised a finger to the groaning Dolan, the finger sharpening to a point.

“Dolan! You bitch, what do you do to him?!” Rose yelled, her palm sparking up again.

“I said chill.” Catherine pressed her finger up against Dolan’s head, breaking the skin.

“What… what did you… do…” Dolan said weakly. Catherine smirked “well~” She glanced over to Rose “You’re smart, guess.” She chuckled “What did this lug do today, that apparently you didn’t.”

Rose glared, her mind racing as she went over the events of today so she could make sense of the situation. First, They sent the original Catherine on a scouting mission. Then rescued the fake after the original was killed. After that, out of ignorance they threw a party. ‘But we confronted her after the party so it has to be befo- no.’ her eyes went wide. Rose looked towards her. “No…no no. no you didn’t. that…” She looked at Catherine, who by now was laughing her ass off.

“Oh yes!” She laughed.

The captain glanced between the two “What? What is it? What did she do?”

The lightning in Rose’s palm slowly flickered out, her hands shaking. “We… we sent them to their graves, without most of them having the slightest chance of winning…”

“Rose! Snap out of it what did she do!” The captain asked, still confused.

Rose gulped “She spiked the drinks…”

“What? When?”

“During the party, she, she didn’t drink…she just handed out drinks… I was suspicious of her so I….oh god…”

“Bingo!” Catherine cheered “Oh and before you ask what I put in there~” She tapped Dolans face, which instantly paled as he started coughing, blood splattering in every direction until finally a white blob flew out of his mouth that flattened onto the ground. “Cute little bugger isn’t it? Just slip a part of me in the drinks, have it navigate to the spine aaaand~” The blob on the ground shook, reforming into a pair of small scissors that did a small *snip-snip* motion “Do that once I give it the command, the snapping is just for show, by the way.” She chuckled. A hole opened in Catherine’s head to allow a rifle shot to fly threw, quickly reforming her head Catherine looked towards the captain, unamused. “Captain, that wasn’t very nice, I thought you wanted to invite me to an alliance or something?”

“Screw that.” The Captain mumbled

Catherine raised an eyebrow “oh? What was that Captain? Didn’t you want to save your own sk-“ She got cut off, stretching her neck to avoid another shot.

“I said screw that!” The captain yelled, firing off more rounds “You came onto my ship, crippled its systems! And worse of all! You murdered my crew in the worst way, as if it was game! Not even giving them a chance to fight back!”

“Oh, did someone grow a pair, Captain?” Catherine said, dodging shots before hiding behind Dolans large body.

The captain gritted his teeth. Before his eyes went wide, then, gave a simple nod before he glared “I am not just the captain of this ship, I am the captain to this brave crew, who you cowardly killed! Disgracing my crew! And that I cannot stand!” He aimed his rifle, turning a nob on the side as the rifle blew out steam. “My name is James R. Donavan! And I will avenge my crew!” He yelled, then pulled the trigger “Get the FUCK off my ship!”

The rifle exploded, a beam spewing out with incredible force that punched clean threw Dolans chest and splitting Catherine clean in half “W-what the fuck?!” Catherine yelled in surprise, her bottom half melting and scattering. She climbed up to Dolans shoulders “Avenge your crew?! You just blew a hole ri-“ She stopped when she heard Dolan laugh. Quickly looking down to see his shit eating grin.

Dolan smirked, then spat out a bloody blob from his mouth that smacked Catherine in the face. Catherine flinched “The fuck did you just…spit..at…oh you crazy asshole…”she picked up the fleshy blob, seeing it was Dolan’s severed tongue. Rage flared up inside Catherine, she snapped towards Dolan and rose her hand that sharpened into a spear. “If you want to die so much then fine!” She yelled, and right when she was about to bring her arm down it was blown clean off by a concentrated bolt of lightning.

Catherine screamed, reverting to a blob and leaping towards the ceiling. Rose smirked, her hand smoking as she glanced over to the captain, who was reduced to a smoking corpse after the rifle exploded point blank to his face. “…Good job captain, was an honor.” She gave a quick nod towards the captain, then faced Catherine, who was just a white blob on the ceiling. “Really is a fucking slime…” She raised her hand towards it, and instead of lightning, the air around her palm chilled creating a visible layer of mist.

“First” Rose said, suddenly pointing her palm downwards and blasting her magic towards the small white blob that came out of Dolan, freezing it solid. “Second” She then looked back towards the group of suspiciously quite noncombatants, and confirming they were limp, likely as the slime said, the snapping was just for show. No telling how long they have been like that. She gave a sad nod, then steeled herself and blasted the group, putting them out of their misery and freezing them solid. “Third…” She then pointed towards Dolan, who, smiled, giving her bloody grin. “…idiot.” She said and blasted him, freezing him solid along with the scattered bottom half of the slime that got blown off.

“Now then.” She then looked up, facing a slowly sleeking away slime “I think that effectively sealed all the options a slime like you had?” She smiled, sending a blast towards the slime that quickly leaped to another wall to avoid it. “Now then, without any more distractions.”

“Let’s see if you really deserve that A-rank classification.”