Chapter 7. Empyrean

Catherine sat in their frozen prison, attempting to think of a way out of this ‘S rank? That doesn’t add up’ she thought. Out of all the people’s memories she had stolen, the highest ranked person here was supposed to be Catherine, even then she was only Rank C and according to the memories she had stolen from Catherine herself before taking up her identity the information matched up.

Rose, although the leader of that little group, was only rank D due to not being out in front for achievements most of the time. As much as Catherine wanted to ask she was currently unable to and could only sit.

Thankfully it seemed that due to someone’s orders her life was not currently in further danger, but how they even contacted them with their communication systems down was a bit questionable.

But with nothing to do but wait alone with Rose, they did just that and waited. An hour passed before the entire ship rumbled. “Finally…” Rose sighed, standing from her previous sitting position “Better prepare yourself, no tricks.” Another thirty seconds passed before the door to the room started to turn red, being super heated from the outside and then suddenly chilled.

The door opened, multiple people in white hazmat suits entered. One wearing a golden emblem on their head resembled a halo. They entered the room, taking quick stock of the situation and noting the frozen blob. “That it Rose?” A masculine voice said from within the suit.

Rose nodded, before gesturing around the room “Along with every frozen liquid in this room, already have someone a team cleaning the bodies?”

The man turned back and brought his arm up to his waist, a holographic screen appearing as he quickly fiddled with some controls. Shortly after a person sized floating orb with a test tube like appendage came drifting into the room. Several tubes extended from the machine that the white suit wearing workers grabbed and started sucking up all the ice in the room which got deposited in the test tube, melted.

The man nodded at the workers then turned back to rose “Yes, got a team going around with an incinerator. All of the bodies we scanned were entirely dried out, missing some organs oddly enough not all of them had their brains removed… “

Rose looked over to the frozen blob “Wonder what its criteria is for brains it leaves alone versus the ones it eats.”

“we are keeping a record of them. There seems to be a few instances where it went out of its way to eat a brain after the person had died, and some patterns we can already tell. “The man said “Not my job to look too into it, but one thing I am sure of is that 100% of the females it could get to had their brains eaten.”

One of the workers came over to the frozen blob, sticking the tube to the frozen surface which unfroze and quickly sucked the surface clean. Catherine was vaulted around in the machine for a bit before getting spat out into the tube, quickly reclaiming her body the liquid in the tube visibly shrank to a heads worth before violently lashing out at the tube and the machine above keeping it sealed.

The attempts were futile however, the material being much stronger then anything Catherine could pierce naturally.

“Violent bugger isn’t it?” The man asked, then turned to the frozen bodies in the room, and the dead captain on the floor. “Incinerator for these as well?”

Rose nodded “Should have a few pieces of it in them, as for the captain… into the incinerator as well.”

The main chuckled “Roger, we are cleaned up here. Go ahead and deliver the goods.”

“Thank you.” Rose said, watching the workers finish up, and the tubes retracting into the machine.

“Ah right sorry” The man tapped on his controls, causing the machine to beep then start following Rose. “Forgot you have been on this ship. Should follow you, Section leader is waiting on the deck.”

Rose nodded, briefly glancing at the slime inside the tube still moving violently about before moving out of the room and heading out.

Inside the tube Catherine was screaming obscenities, finding out real quick she did not enjoy the sensation of being trapped. While being frozen was bad, this was one hundred times worse. ‘I am fucking screwed!’ she thought as they moved down the hall, passing by a few people lifting up bodies and chucking them into a donut shaped machine, anything tossed into the center did not come out the other side as it was incinerated immediately.

‘The fuck is up with this tech?!’ She thought, calming down in the tube and collecting at the bottom. She observed everyone and noted that the crew now on the ship had more advanced tech then the previous crew, to an extreme degree. The best example being the floating machines that did not exist on the ship at all till this point.

“Impressed?” Rose chuckled, noticing the slime had calmed down. “Feel stupid for saying you could take us yet?” Rose watched a mouth form on the slimes surface, mouthing something but Rose simply chuckled again “The inside of that space is muted, Can’t hear you. But if you still think you could take us just wait a moment, we are almost out.”

True to their word, they exited the ship “…holy hell…” Catherine looked up, the space above completely covered by a large city sized ship, if it was even appropriate to call it that. That ship made the one they have been on look like a toy car, it was like a large city just appeared over their heads.

She then noticed chains being lowered towards the dungeon, being attached by workers to the asteroid. Rose approached a beautifully decorated man in a white suit with golden linings. The man turned around and smiled, taking off his hat as he gave her a quick bow “Rose! Been too long, sorry to hear about your partners. “He said.

Rose saluted the man “It is unfortunate but that’s what happens when they get used to an easy job.” She said “Thank you for accepting the sos, leader Roswell.”

Roswell smiled, plopping his hat back on his head and approached the tube “So this is the thing that took out so many people…?” He glanced towards Rose.

She nodded “As said in the report, Ambush and set up traps beforehand. Including Catherine I suspect this is how it won most of its fights, given how it fought me… It has lesser fighting ability when not at the advantage by a whole rank.”

Roswell looked towards the slime, nodding he stood up “We will leave final rankings to the scientists, and to see if it will be useful. “He then moved a hand to his arm, pushing a button and the machine beeped. “Now then slime, what say you eh? You made a mess of this ship, impressive even if it was filled with low ranks, even a few higher ranks.”

The tube remained silent for a bit, but then they spoke “Bite my ass.”

Roswell burst out in laughter “Oh they will love you in the labs!” he cheered “Been awhile since they had a variant to this degree.”

“Fu-“The machine beeped again, muting the tube. Guessing what happened the slime once again started to expand rapidly and attack its prison.

Roswell smirked, turning to Rose “Better get anything you want out of this ship. Just to be safe we are scrapping it.” He the turned around “oh, and take a crew with you then report in my sector for debrief, they should be done with initial testing by then.”

Rose saluted “Will do, leader.” Watching the man wave her off, then hit a button on his arm. A beam extended from the ship, quickly turning both him and the machine into light particles and sucking them up into the massive ship.

The world was dark, Catherine could tell some time had passed since they got beamed up into the ship, but since then she could not see. As panic started to approach her the lights flickered on to reveal she was sitting in the center of a white room, though still inside of a glass cylinder, Taking a look around the room she only made note of a chair and desk, and a single metal door on one of the rooms sides.

The door beeped, then opened as a very short and hairy creature walked in, followed by a fairy. The short creature looked like a beast, covered in hair and had 2 sets of arms ending in 3 digit fingers. It had a wide mouth and huge, red eyes.

The fairy on the other hand, just looked like a small human the size of a palm, she had glowing yellow hair and translucent yellow wings. The approached the cylinder the slime was held in, the beast climbing up onto of the chair while the fairy choose to remain flying. The short beast looked towards the slime, opening its mouth in a pointy teethed grin.

“Remarkable, a slime without a core? Sure they didn’t capture a water spirit?” it cackled.

The fairy spun around the cylinder once before crossing her arms. “Not likely. Its lacks that spiritual ‘ooomph’ to be a spirit or elemental” She giggled.

“ooh, correct!” The creature tapped his arm, a holographic screen appearing in front of it. “Anyways, let us begin. My name is Dr.Frig, and this is my assistant Dea. And you identify as…” It gestured towards the slime with one of its arms, clicking the screen with another that unmuted the chamber.

The slime remained motionless. “Oh please, we can do this an easy way, or a hard way.” Frig said.

“Give them a taste of the hard way.” The fairy said “Oh wait, let me do it!” the fairy quickly flew over to Frig, looking at the screen for a second before pushing one of the buttons “hrm, this one!”

immediately, the floor beneath the slime started to heat up, drastically so, causing the slime to scale the cylinder. The fairy giggled “Oh, that won’t help~” she taunted, sliding a bar up on the panel and causing the glass to start to heat up as well. When the slime scaled all the way to the top of the cylinder the roof started to heat up, forcing the slime to drop down and hop around as its body sizzled and evaporated.

“Fine fine! God you fucking assholes cut it out!” The slime screamed. Frig gave a toothy smile, turning off the heat.

“Good good! Now as said before, I am Frig, and this is Dea.” It motioned to itself and the fairy before pointing a third arm at the slime “And you are?”

“…Catherine…” the slime said. Causing the fairy to clap.

“Good! Now, why do you choose to go with that name? Records show that was the first person you killed, an S rank even! Was the first kill special? You also take the memories of people you kill to an extent, did her personality get mixed with yours? Or a-“ Frig stopped as the fairy landed on his flat head, stomping her foot down “Dr you are getting ahead of yourself.” She said.

“Catherine…was an S rank?” Catherine asked, confused.

Frig perked up “Ah! So it is limited memory theft!” He clapped. “Yes yes, you see that ship you were on was a bit special, but we will talk about that later.”

“On question at a time.” Dea reminded him.

“Yes, just right.” Frig coughed “So, why the attachment to the name?”

Catherine was silent for a moment, as if in deep thought. The slime jiggled expanding and morphing into the shape of a tall women with short white hair, blue eyes, and pointed elf ears. The women crossed her arms, looking down on the creature sitting in the chair. “Just felt right” She said.

Frig looked up at the women, momentarily eyeing her naked form only to get poked in the eye by Dea. “Free form morphing abilities. Certainly that isn’t what the original Catherine looks like. So it isn’t limited to who you kill? Your value just went up ten fold.”

Catherine scowled at the creature “My value?” She said, taking note of his staring a light layer of clothes formed around her body “What do you mean, ‘My value’?” She asked angerly.

Dea giggled, flying up to meet the women face to face. “See you silly thing, you are in a bit of a bind.” She said, then put her arms behind her back and started pacing around the cylinder, Catherine’s eyes followed her as she continued “You, a variant species is very valuable to a lot of people, particularly your ability to disarm a ship by yourself makes the military very interested in you.”

Frig perked up. “Our job is to document all your abilities, and more importantly figure out if its even possible to get you to work with us. If not well…”

Dea lit up, flying over to the panel and hitting a button “There!” She yelled. The floor beneath Catherine opened up, she quickly attached herself to the floor and looked down into an empty, black hole. Every cell in her body screamed not to enter that hole. To make matters worse, the ceiling started to move downwards, threatening to push her into it. “Things that have no use is as good as trash.” Dea said as Frig pushed another button, deactivating the ceiling and closing the floor.

“So, for the duration of your stay and with hope that you will be working with us in the future.”

“”Welcome to the Empyrean!””