EPISODE 3 - PART 1

- UNDERGROUND -

[BLACK]

Right-flank squad – Hunting team

“Where’s her?” Stella walks on the grass looking around, afraid.

Her steps are cautious, trying to familiarize with the grass. She lost herself in the forest.

The sound of leaves moving makes her lift the sword to the right, where two black animal ears creep on top of the green bushes, they move, and the same noise follows.

Fear dominates Stellar’s body, the cold sweat freezes her spine. She can’t move, she’s going to die now.

After so much time training, even by always being told to give up because of her princess looks and for being on a political family, she kept going. But now, she can only close her eyes. She wanted to be strong, but not this, being in the middle of this hell.

As her hands tremble, and the grip loose, it jumps out of the bushes, making sudden noises of broken twigs in a single swift move.

She wants to open her eyes, but she can’t move them either.

Whatever nothing happens. One second passes, then the other, then the following one. She still feels her breathing, her body trembling, and her sword drawn.

The fourth second passes, the fifth, sixth.

Nothing is happening.

She slowly opens her eyelids. The black ears aren’t there anymore.

Did I imagine that?

Her body refuses, but she forces to go a step forward, going closer and closer to the bush.

The forest is dense, it’s easy to get lost in it, she just didn’t imagine, that…

A loud noise hits the oak, echoing throughout the entire jungle.

…that she would see Kattie hit her head in full speed right on a tree.

“Kat, what are you doing?!” Stella shouts, still shaky from the last scare.

“Owie… my head,” Kat whines as she pats her forehead.

“I said that we shouldn’t get separated, but then you start running like a crazy person!”

“But…” Kat pulls the cat ears that were sunk in her beanie.

“No excuses! We are in danger here; we can’t go catching strange fluffy ball thingies!” Stella scolds her, but by imagining the tiny creatures her head starts to get fuzzy by the cuteness.

Before getting up, Kat starts to crawl on her four limbs into another bush. She disappears for a moment, then her head pops out of it, showing her cat ears just like before.

“Stop doing that!” Stella whispers, upset.

“Look! Look!” Kat silently calls with animation.

Stella moves near the bush, being able to see two tiny light-grey creatures that could fit on two hands, having the majority of its size due to its incredibly long and thin fur.

“Ho!” Kat exclaims surprised, but as quietly as she can. “They are really that evolved, huh? They are even talking with each other.”

The two creatures appear to be eating something on the ground, and from time to time they look around and move their long ears.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Stella says, worried about Kat’s mental state.

“I’m catching them.” Kat affirms with excitement.

“No, don’t-” But before she could finish, Kat runs like an animal to the couple of fluffy balls, they disperse at an incredibly fast speed.

She tries to follow one, but it got in a tiny hole of a tree, making her hit the head again.

“Owie,” Kat whines in the distance fixing her sunk cat ears.

“So here you guys are,” Larry scares Stella, being already on her side, watching Kat from over the bush.

“Dammit, Larry! You guys want to kill me today?” She puts her hand on the chest, trying to calm down.

“I just found you guys because of this loud wood noise,” Larry says with a grin. “Was that Kat hitting her head before as well?”

“Larry!” Kat goes back to the bush in front of them like an animal, then pushes her head out, looking at both of them. “Can you please give me some Vis? I’m sure I can catch them with a little more.”

Her pity eyes make Larry blush.

“All right.” He says bluntly, she smiles and closes her eyes, waiting for Larry to put his hand on top of her head.

He does so in embarrassment, also closing his eyes.

A few thin strings of blue energy start to appear from Larry’s neck, traveling through his arms and entering Kat’s neck. In the beginning, the strings were short and almost transparent, but soon afterward it got longer and more visible until it suddenly stops, and Kat opens her eyes.

“Thanks, Larry!” she grins.

Kat goes back down on the bush, disappearing, and shortly popping her head out again but now turned to where the fluffy balls were.

“Why did you give her even more energy?” Stella scolds disappointed.

Larry can only scratch his neck in shame, then more noises come from the bushes behind.

“Why are you guys running around?” Tamara comes out of it upset, with some leaves on her long dark-brown hair.

“Kat’s going crazy, I don’t know what’s happening…” Stella looks at Kattie running behind those creatures with the blue Vis light illuminating her uniform, making her faster. “She was kind of a nutty before, but now…”

Kat jumps on one, but it enters on a really small hole on a tree that seemed impossible for them to go in so easily. She puts her hand on the oak, propelling to the side, evading to hit her head for the third time, she looks to the tree going behind her.

“They’re too fast!” Kat murmurs surprised.

On the corners of her eyes, she realizes something out of place, so she quickly focuses forward, there’s no normal floor with grass, actually, she’s diving full speed into a big dark pit with a lot of creeping vines covering its walls, she stretches her arms to try holding on them, but they aren’t reachable, she glances back as her body descends on the darkness of the hole.

Main base – Landed aircraft

“NOW!”

A sword cuts the air, hitting full force on the tree’s surface, it craves into the strange rubber-like texture, then they quickly drawback their swords.

Fritz, Zack, Kyle, Oskar and Scott are around the tree’s base.

“It’s not working…” Oskar says incredulously.

“One more time!” Zack yells an order.

“Zack, if we do this our swords are going to be destroyed,” Scott says catching his breath, in a tired tone.

They look at their swords; the fine line of Black Cutter is all wrinkled. The tree, whatever, is cut, but it slowly tries to recover itself like a living goop.

“At that speed,” Fenik starts to think aloud as he watches from outside the group. “The tree’s going to eat the entire ship in less than a day.”

“What the hell…” Kyle trembles. “How are we going to survive five days without the aircraft?”

Another sword swing hits the tree, the sound is muffled by the softness, cutting open more space into it.

“We can’t let that happen!” Zack confidently takes off the sword and rises it again for another hit.

“It’s best to conserve our weapons,” Fenik explains seriously, stopping Zack. “We can make a new base, but the BC on our weapons can’t be recovered.”

The tonality in Fenik’s voice is more of a scolding, like he was reminding something to Zack, which he understood.

“Alright…” Zack recomposed. “Kyle, go check on Nora, we need to know the situation about that radio.”

“Y-yes, sir!” He says surprised, keeping the sword on the sheath and going to the aircraft’s ladder.

Fenik pulls his pocket watch out, the ticks appear to be faster than normal because of the tension.

“Seven hours to sunset.” He puts it back.

“Fenik, if you gave me Vis-” Zack stops himself.

“I doubt it would work,” Fenik replies coldly.

“OK, let’s start making the base here. A lot of the trees broken there,” Zack points to the destruction trail, “we can use them to make barricades. So, all of you go get them, with gloves.”

“Nora!” Kyle gasps.

“AH!” She jumps in a scare, making her drop something. “Don’t enter like that! I was just about to fix the electrical wires.”

“So, … the radio, how’s it?” Kyle asks insecurely.

Nora takes the wires off the ground and rolls their bare tips on a blue screw.

“I don’t know…” She takes another wire to connect on a red screw. “When we fell, the circuits got all destroyed, or maybe it was the thing that attacked us.”

Kyle looks to the three long black bags that are stacked on the corner, where the dead people are in.

“And look,” She takes something metallic off the floor. “I found two of these things inside.”

It’s a flattened solid metal a little bit bigger than a fingertip.

“Is this a fire gun’s projectile?” Kyle’s surprised,

“Is it? I don’t know much about those.”

“No, this is definitely a bullet.”

Nora seems to ignore that information, she’s too concentrated on fixing the radio, but Kyle gets more and more afraid as he stares at it.

What are these doing here?

It was prohibited to carry fire guns on the trip. So, why was it there? Did they got killed by a human weapon?

The three dead bodies appear on his mind, all of them with a hole on their heads. It is possible.

“Nora,” Kyle hesitates. “How much time to fix it?”

She welds something on the circuit board, before answering:

“If it’s possible…” She puts the tool’s back on her lips. “Maybe a couple more hours, maybe more.”

Kyle nods, exiting the cockpit.

“Put them there!” Zack shouts to Scott.

“Sir!” Kyle lands on the grass. “I-”

“Oh, the radio.” Zack interrupts hopefully.

“Ahm… she said it would take a couple of hours, or more, if it’s actually doable.”

“That’s cool, we have the time.”

“And sir-” Kyle froze in a cold sweat.

What was he going to say anyway? That someone might have killed the people in the cockpit? He doesn’t have any proof besides a coin-like figure that could be anything.

“What’s it, Kyle?” Zack asks.

Besides, everyone’s already taking so much, is it really necessary to make everyone worry about one more thing in this situation? Is it really that important?

“I…” Kyle looks to the ground. “I…”

“ZACK!” A girl shouts happily from afar.

Kat waves to him, together with Stella, Larry, Tamara, and Vincent.

“Look who got back.” Vincent smiles confusedly. “They almost stepped on a trap of mine though.”

“Zack!” Kat shouts. “You need to see what we found!”

“What’s that?” He points to something grey on her hands.

“Ah, this is a fluffy ball, but this isn’t it.” She grins.

Why the hell someone would want the ship to fall?

“They were saying something about a bunker or something.” Vincent answers.

“Wow, what a party breaker, I wanted to give the news.” Kat frowns.

“It’s an abandoned bunker lab.” Tamara continues. “It looks really old-”

“Hey! I was the one that found it!” Kat raises her finger trying to get attention.

“The front gate still had energy…” Tamara carries on. “…and in there, it was still untouched by the SAE, well, at least under the first floor.”

“What?” Zack opens a grin. “That’s perfect!”

It doesn’t matter that they were solving the base problem. Kyle knew something worse was hiding in the shadows, between the cheered-up smiles of the platoon, the more he thought about it, the more frightful it got.

Kyle gazes back at the aircraft.

Tyler looks to him from up the ship, he immediately understood what that expression was. Fenik was the second one to see, glancing to the side.

The ship’s slowly being eaten, that’s the only certain situation for now.

The entire platoon’s alive, this should be the most important thing in mind.

Whatever, the thought of being there, because another human threw them to die, is terrifying.