A few weeks pass as the group continues to survive and for the most part, thrive on the alien world. Today marks the one month mark of them being stranded here. Hibiki wakes up and heads over to the kitchen, he makes himself a cup of "coffee" or "purple berry brew" as Miku had named it. Hibiki walked over to the balcony and sat down with his drink, taking a sip as the sun began to peak over the horizon. The early morning was almost completely silent with the exception of the occasional sounds of aliens.
"Somebody's up early for once" a cheery voice says from behind him, jolting him upright.
"Oh uh ya, good morning Luh" he says as Luh sits next to him, drink in hand.
"Seems you finally took my advice, you didn't pull an all nighter for once" she says, taking a sip of her purple berry brew.
"Ya I wasn't feeling so great so I slept early today" He responds
"Well I told you but I'm happy you decided to listen" she says, a small smile on her face.
"Ya plus I'll have plenty of time to work . . . I mean we aren't getting off this space rock anytime soon" He says with a sigh.
"Ya thats true. . . what do you think is happening back on earth right now?" Luh asks, glancing at the sunrise.
"Well I don't know but maybe they are working on making a proper crew and ship? I mean they probably think that we're all dead" Hibiki says with a sigh.
"Well that's not a very fun thought," Luh says, leaning back in her seat.
Silence falls over the two of them as they sip their drinks and watch the sun peak over the mountains on the horizon. The fauna of C-100 began to wake with everything from the smallest creatures in the undergrowth to the giants roaming in grasslands. This silence was eventually broken as the rest of the group poured into the kitchen. Mohan and Abel joked around while Miku and Elena made themselves breakfast. Hibiki and Luh join them. Hibiki walks over to Abel and Mohan, who both glance at each other and raise an eyebrow.
"So done hanging out with your girl Hibiki?" Abel says, a teasing grin on his face.
"Cmon at least say good morning first," Hibiki says with a soft chuckle.
"I'm just making an observation," Abel says as the three of them sit down.
"So what's the plan today even?" Mohan asks
"I'm probably just gonna relax and stay in the cabin today" Hibiki responds.
"Finally you're taking a break from documenting, you were treating it like a 9 to 5" Mohan says with a chuckle. "I'm thinking of just relaxing and maybe working on improving our weapons, machetes aren't the best to fight off aliens with"
"Can I help out? I got nothing better to do" Abel says
"Sure, what about you all?" Mohan asks, turning to the girls.
"We're gonna go on a walk after we finish eating" Luh responds as she finishes eating.
"Ok see y'all later" Mohan says, giving them a wave before Luh practically dragged the two other girls away.
"Huh that was weird" Hibiki mumbles with a shrug before going back to his breakfast.
Meanwhile Luh and the rest of the girls were now out of the cabin and out of earshot of the rest of the crew. "Luh calm down!" Elena says before digging her feet into the ground and stopping Luh.
"Ya what the hell are doin??" Miku asks.
"Well I wanted to explain once we got out here so y'all can't say no" Luh says with a small grin.
Elena sighs before speaking. "So what do you even want to do then??"
"Bassically, I found something weird and I need help investigating," Luh explains.
"Well why didn't you just tell us that beforehand?!" Miku grumbles.
"Cause I didn't want the boys to overhear and join us. It'll be just like an episode of Mystery Maven!" Luh says with an excited grin.
"Wait, you also watched Mystery Maven?!" Miku says with a grin.
"Ya! Even though it finished airing by the time I got into highschool, I binged it like 5 times over" Luh says with a chuckle.
"Same here pretty much, they lied so hard about what high school would be like," Miku says, smiling widely.
"Wait, you went to a public highschool?" Luh asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Ya, they probably didn't want me to just go insane or something" Miku says with an awkward chuckle before glancing away.
Before Luh could continue her inquiry, Elena speaks up. "So what are your favorite characters from Mystery Maven? Mines Finn"
Both Miku and Luh look at her in shock. "Wait, you watched Mystery Maven?!" they both say in shock.
"Uh well ya, I watched it with my friends and stuff. Why are you guys so surprised-" Elena says in confusion.
"Uh no reason" Luh says before adding on. "So you like Finn? That's fair, she was legit so hot"
"Nah for real though, I ain't lesbian but I would 100%-" Miku starts before being cut off by a slightly flustered Elena.
"So uh, what are your favorite characters?" She asks them.
"Hmm definitely Nina, love seeing a fellow mango picker" Luh says with a nod.
"Probably Lila," Miku says.
"Ya she's a good leader" Elena says with a nod.
"Definitely but she's kinda generic" Luh adds on.
"Ya ya but she's still a great character" Miku grumbles, rolling her eyes.
"True, at least she's somewhat realistic. I wish that highschool was like how they showed it tho, I hated highschool so much" Luh says with a chuckle.
"Same here but it was still pretty nice," Miku says.
"True true, I wonder what my girls back home are doing" Luh says with a sigh. "I met them back in highschool and we've been besties since" Luh adds on before glancing at a silent Elena. "So what about you Elena? How were your highschool days?" She asks her.
"Oh uh I went to a private school but it was fine, just a lot of work" Elena says with a shrug.
"Oh ok" Luh says nodding.
The group continues to walk along in silence for a minute until Luh, who was leading the group, stops.
"Hm? Are we here?!" Miku says, trying to peer over Luh's shoulder.
"Yup! Take a look" Luh says as she steps aside, revealing a frozen patch of flowers.
"What the hell?" Elena mutters, looking at the patch of frozen flowers. "Do you have any theories on what it could be, Luh?" Elena asks, turning to look at her.
"Well I have no clue but maybe it has to do with the rescue ship that crashed? Like don't they have a really strong coolant for the engine or something?" Luh responds, her eyebrows furrowing as she thinks.
"Hm ya, I remember Mohan mentioning that on the way" Elena confirms with a nod.
Meanwhile, Miku had climbed up a large tree-like organism. "HEY, I SEE SOMETHING!" She yells from atop the organism.
"What do you see?!" Luh yells back at her.
"I'M NOT SURE, IT'S A SINKHOLE BUT I SEE SOMETHING BIG AND SHINY DOWN THERE" Miku calls back before jumping down, landing next to Elena and Luh.
"Let's go then!" Luh says as the girls begin to follow Miku's lead.
Back in the cottage, the boys had begun using a rudimentary blacksmithery right outside of the cottage to recycle the machetes into proper weapons.
"Yo Mohan! I'm thinking of making my sword out of the bones of that thing we fought and killed, the bones were tough as hell" Abel says before Hibiki adds on to his point.
"It makes sense, the bones have a surprisingly high iron content so it's almost as if its bones are made of iron," Hibiki explains.
"So it's kinda like wolverine? Like you know how he has an Adamantium skeleton" Mohan asks, raising an eyebrow before him and Abel exchange a glance and smile.
"Wolverine claws would go so hard" Abel says while Mohan and Hibiki nod in agreement.
The boys immediately get started, Mohan melts down the bone while Hibiki uses a pocket knife to carve a hold for the claws and Abel works on creating a mold for the liquid metal in the ground. Mohan begins to pour the metal into the mold, letting it cool before taking it out and beginning to sharpen it using a grindstone, which is a circular stone which is spun using a pedal. After meticulously sharpening each claw, Mohan then gives it to Hibiki who finishes it up by attaching the wooden hold.
"Huh that doesn't really look like Wolverine's claws" Abel mutters, as he equips the weapon. The weapon had a gauntlet-like part around the top with two parallel bars which would go under his forearm. Then where his hand was there were two crosspieces that could be used as a grip.
"Well Wolverine's claws aren't that practical so I went with an Indian Katar, so if you grip and push down the crosspiece-" before Mohan could finish his explanation, Abel instantly pulls down the crosspiece and two smaller blades swing out from under the large triangular blade.
"HOLY SHIT! THATS FUCKING AWESOME" Abel yells with excitement, as he resets the blades just to do it again while swinging his bladed arm around with excitement. "HAHAHA I BET COULD KILL ANYTHING WITH THIS THING, THOSE FUCKING ALIENS WON'T HAVE A CHANCE! THE STARS ARE OUR BIRTH RIGHT" Abel continues to yell and laugh like a child with a new toy, Mohan socks the back of his head.
"I'm glad you like it but calm down bro, we gotta make you a sword too" Mohan says with a wide smile on his face.
"OH HELL YA!" Abel says with a grin on his face.
This time Mohan uses his sword plus his stone hammer and wooden pegs(It is technically not wood but a similar substance) to first get a rough and rudimentary blade shape from a femur bone of the creature before using the grindstone to sharpen and smooth it out. Hibiki then added the guard and handle to it. The sword was about 2 ft long and resembled a cutlas but with some personal touches that Abel had requested.
"This is perfect," He says with a small smile.
"Glad you like it bro, now we just gotta make my shield and Hibiki's katana-" Mohan says as he goes to the pile to grab some wood, only to see it's nearly empty. "Huh well we need to go get more wood but the problem is that we don't have anything to chop with" Mohan says.
"We should have enough wood for an ax, we can make it double as a pickaxe so that way we can collect some raw ores to use for weapons" Hibiki says.
"Ya let's do that" Mohan says with a nod in agreement.
The group once more quickly gets to work and after a few minutes they are able to create an ax that has both a cutting edge and a sharp point.
"Alright" Mohan says, slugging it over his shoulder. "Y'all down for a mining trip?" He says with a grin as they leave the smithery and head down to the forest.
Meanwhile the girls had arrived at what Miku had seen, it was a giant sinkhole that created an opening down to a cave.
"Wait, what the hell is that?" Luh mutters looking down into the sinkhole.
"It doesn't look even remotely human," Elena says.
"Well I think I see part of the rescue ship y'all were talking about but that isn't human tech in the slightest" Miku says.
"Well uh do we head down?" Luh asks in an unsure tone.
"Well we gotta check it out obviously but it smells . . .rotten down there" Elena says, gagging slightly.
"Agreed but we need to find out what that fleshy stuff is-" Luh says before being cut off by Miku.
"That's not a good idea, it's dangerous," Miku says.
"Well how do you know? Plus if it is a threat, you can help us eliminate it" Luh argues back.
"Well what if I can't kill that thing!" Miku yells at her.
"Ain't you supposed to be a fucking super soldier?! Why wouldn't you be able to kill it?!" She yells back at Miku.
"I'm just not sure! We shouldn't take a stupid risk like this just because you wanna play detective!" Miku yells, her eyebrows furrowing.
"It's not about playing detective! This thing clearly has part of the rescue ship in there so we need to go down there if we want to repair our coms so we can get off this accursed planet!" She yells at Miku, clenching her fists.
A flash of hurt crosses Miku's face before quickly being replaced with anger but before she could retaliate, Elena who was silent this whole time speaks up.
"Yelling and screeching at each other won't get us anywhere. What we should do is head back and get our weapons and the others so we'll have strength in numbers." Elena says, taking a shaky breath before continuing. "I have an idea of what it could be because I saw something similar in Hibiki's field guide. He called it Odienten Carnem, it looks like the same thing but way larger. We should get him over here so he can explain-" Elena says before being cut off by Miku.
"Uh no no no, no need to do that. I'm sure we can manage this on our own. All we have to do is kill it and salvage what's left of the rescue ship right? So we can just do it on our own" MIku stutters out, her hands fidgeting slightly as she explains.
"I mean i guess but shouldn't we get the guys?-" Elena says before Luh cuts her off.
Stolen novel; please report.
"Nah we can do it on our own! Plus the guys are probably busy with their own crap" Luh says while Miku nods in agreement.
"Well alright, let's at least find another way down other than this sinkhole. I don't want to descend straight into the flesh." She says.
"Ya let's do that" Luh says with a nod as they begin searching for another entrance into the cavern.
Meanwhile the boys were out in the middle of the woods, gathering wood. Mohan and Hibiki sat there, relaxing as Abel swung at a tree(Not an actual tree but an organism that resembles a tree) with the ax. As the minutes drag on, Hibiki begins to beatbox. Mohan quickly joins in, adding lyrics.
Mohan: "Day and night"
Abel quickly catches on and joins Mohan and Hibiki as he continues to chop wood.
Abel: "What what"
Mohan: "I toss and turn, I keep stressing my mind, mind"
Abel: "What what"
Mohan: "I look for peace, but I see, I don't attain"
Abel: "What what"
Mohan: "What I need for keeps, this silly game we play, play"
Abel: "What what"
Mohan: "Now look at this"
Abel: "What what"
Mohan: "madness the magnet keeps attracting me, me"
Abel: "What what"
Mohan: "I try to run, but see, that i'm not that fast"
Abel: "What what"
Mohan: "I think i'm first but i'll surely finish last, last"
Mohan and Abel: "'cause day and night"
Mohan and Abel: "The lonely stoner seems to free his mind at night"
Mohan and Abel: "He's all alone through the day and night"
Mohan and Abel: "The lonely stoner seems to free his mind at night, at, at, at night "
They stop singing and Hibiki stops beatboxing(they don't know the rest of the lyrics) and stay silent for a minute before laughing and beginning to sing a new song. Abel and Hibiki begin beatboxing while Mohan starts singing the lyrics.
Mohan: "It doesn't matter to you if you get heads or tails
You just don't like to flip all the time
But if you spin it then you get to see both sides
Oh, the thrill of the double life
Who will you be tonight?"
Mohan: "Who will Gru be tonight?
That's the question
I know you heard the rumors
You must get over to it right away
If anyone can do it, you gotta get there soon, it's not okay
You got cars to drive, plenty jets to fly
When will you arrive? You're running out of time
Don't you see that everything is on the line?
So I'm sorry but you have to choose a side"
They then continue this pattern of singing song after song for the next hour or so as they take turns chopping to collect wood. After they had finally chopped enough, they all sat down together, laughing and chuckling.
"Man, that was too fun," Hibiki says, chuckling.
"Ya, I'm surprised that you can beatbox" Abel says, chuckling as he leans back on a log.
"We should open a band once we get back home at this rate" Mohan says, jokingly.
"Ya we'll call ourselves Abel and friends-" Abel says with a cocky grin before being smacked by Hibiki and Mohan at the same time. "Hey ow!-" he protests as Mohan and Hibiki chuckle.
"We barely touched you bro" Hibiki says with a small grin.
"Ya right" Abel grumbles, rubbing his shoulder.
"Well we should probably head now since we got all the wood we need" Mohan says.
"Man, lets just relax out here a bit" Abel says, throwing a small stone at a boulder, which then squeals loudly and jumps up. "What the fuck-" He says before the rock, which was actually a 4 legged alien that looked nearly identical to a rock began to charge at Abel.
"RUN!" Mohan says as they jump up and begin running away. The beast continues to chase them, squealing obnoxiously the whole entire. "HOW SHOULD WE LOSE THIS STUPID THING" Mohan yells.
"MAYBE TRY ZIG ZAGGING, IT'LL CONFUSE IT" Hibiki says, Mohan and Abel nod as they begin to zig zag and run in different directions. The alien gets confused and stands still, Abel sees a decaying tree to the right of the creature and throws the ax at it. It spins through the air horizontally before striking the decaying tree causing it to fall on the alien's neck, killing it.
"WHOO I DID IT!" Abel yells triumphantly but his celebration is cut short by the sudden smell of rot and death.
"What the hell is that smell?" Mohan says, scrunching his nose.
"I have no clue" Hibiki mutters absentmindedly before Abel calls out.
"Guys look at the tree!" Abel yells, pointing at where the decaying tree was, in its place was a large fleshy organism with parts from all sorts of creatures.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Mohan yells as Hibiki's eyes widen in surprise.
"How is it so big, it's at least 5 meters tall?" Hibiki mutters under his breath.
Before they could make sense of what they were seeing, they heard the squealing as the alien slipped out from under the tree, its neck at an impossible angle.
"WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD?!" Abel yells, as the boys begin running from the creature once more. "THAT THING SHOULD BE DEAD WHAT THE HELL?!" He yells as they begin zig zagging again. The creature continues to run after them, undeterred by the zig-zagging. Abel then makes a hard right, getting the creature's attention as it begins to chase him. Hibiki quickly runs ahead, climbing up a tree.
"Mohan! Your sword!" Hibiki yells.
"I gotchu bro!" Mohan yells, taking off his sword hand and throwing it to Hibiki who grabs it and then drops down and stabs the creature in the head, killing it a second time.
"Whew, thank god" Abel mutters, wide-eyed as he puts his hand on his chest.
"How the hell did it even do that" Mohan says as he takes his sword hand out of the creature but before he can re-equip it, Hibiki stops him.
"Wait, maybe that's not a good idea, what if it's infected with something? We have to take it back and do an autopsy on it, without touching it" Hibiki says.
"Fair point" Mohan says, taking a step away from the carcass. "So how do you suggest we bring it back?" he asks.
"We can make a lasso and pull it onto a raft made up of logs, like a sleigh" Abel says as he stands back up shakily.
"Sounds good" Hibiki says with a nod as they go back and use the material they had chopped earlier to create a sleigh and intertwined vine-like organisms together to create a rope which Abel turns into a lasso and throws onto the neck of the carcass pulling it onto the sleigh which also had the rest of the material they had collected on it.
"Damn where'd you learn to throw a lasso like that bro? Wasn't your dad a millionaire?" Mohan asks as they all pull the sleigh.
"Well I spent a lot of time on my grandpa's farm" Abel says.
"So you're a country and city boy at the same time, talk about double life" Mohan says with a soft chuckle.
"Ya I guess" Abel says, staring straight ahead as they drag the creature.
After that the boys travel in complete silence as they drag the sleigh back up to the cottage. After about half an hour of dragging the carcass, they finally reach back to the cottage. They all head inside after dropping it off outside. Abel plops down on the couch, Mohan heads straight to the kitchen to make some food, while Hibiki heads upstairs and puts on some extra layers of clothes made of the same material Miku had made her clothing out of. Hibiki wraps some layers of this cloth around his face, using it as a face mask. He then heads back outside with a pocket knife to begin the dicessection.
Meanwhile the girls had found an entrance to the cavern the sinkhole had opened. They first made torches before heading into the cold and dark cavern entrance. The warm light of the torch illuminated the walls of the cavern which were made up of a dark black stone with patches of green flora. The group forges onward and soon get out of the narrow area suddenly breaking out into a large and surprisingly open area.
"Whoa" Luh mummers, looking around.
"Smells like death" Miku grumbles as she stomps into the area behind Luh.
Elena doesn't say anything, instead opting to just look around in silent awe of the unique environment.
Large stalagmites jutting from the ground and stalactites hang from the ceiling, over these rock formations were covered in all sorts of plant like creatures that glowed a dim light. Other than the rock formations, large cones produce plumes of smoke, causing small critters to circle around these cones. Other than these giant cones, towering bioluminescent organisms that resemble trees provide shelter to the odd entities of this hidden world. The air was filled with species such as Fulgur Vespertiliones and some new species such tiny two winged creatures that flew around, eating the creeping flora of this strange biome.
"Well as cool as this cave is, we should get a move on" Miku says as she begins walking, the others follow.
As they walk, the smell of rot and death gets stronger. Suddenly, a swarm of milky eyed Fulgur Vespertiliones fly straight at them, screeching and squeaking. Miku quickly kills them without a second thought, cutting many of them in half and others into many little pieces.
"Huh?! What the hell Miku?!" Elena yells at her.
"What, they were gonna attack us!" Miku says in defense.
"How do you know that! They probably were just gonna fly past us!" Elena yells.
"Jeez, why are you getting so pissed off?! All I did was kill some dumb bats!" Miku yells back, her right eye twitching.
"Both of you calm down!" Luh says, stepping in-between the two. "What's wrong Elena? Are you ok?" Luh asks her in a soft tone, putting her hand on her shoulder.
"I well . . ." Elena says before taking a deep breath. "I don't know its just wrong to kill a bunch of bats for no reason." Elena says.
"Well they were gonna attack us! Plus why is it so bad even, just a bunch of aliens" Miku argues.
Elena glances at Luh who gives her a reassuring smile before taking a deep breath. "Well as a kid I saw bats a lot in the forest by my house, I even took some in to nurse them back to health. . . so ya, why do you even think they were gonna attack us though?" Elena asks Miku.
"Ya! You've been hiding something this entire time! Just tell us already, don't you trust us?" Luh adds on.
"Just tell us what you've been hiding already." Elena says, crossing her arms.
Miku sighs. "Fine, I'll tell you all while I walk. C'mon" Miku says as she begins to walk again, Elena and Luh in tow.
Back at the cottage, Mohan and Abel were eating while Hibiki worked diligently on dissecting the creature. Before starting the dissection, Hibiki looks over the surface of the body.
"What the hell is that?" Hibiki mutters before carefully plucking out a purplish stinger from the body. Hibiki quickly puts it in a separate container before starting the dissection. Hibiki begins by making a vertical cut from the base of the neck and down to its lower legs. Next he makes some horizontal cuts along this line then uses pins to keep the skin from covering the cuts. He then begins to look for any abnormalities within the organs. The creature's lung and heart had been punctured, Hibiki believes this was due to a sharp branch of the tree that fell on it. He continued his investigation of the organs, no abnormalities were found. He moved up to the neck and head, the neck had clearly been broken and there were several punctures in the neck. Next he goes to the head, there was a hole in the skull from where he had stabbed and killed it. He then began using the knife to descalp the creature so he could see the condition of its brain. The condition of its brain was shocking, part of the brain was rotted while the rest were covered in prominent purple nerves and veins. The front of the brain, which Hibiki assumed was the frontal lobe, was covered in a fleshy membrane.
"Such prominent changes even though it was only infected for a few minutes . . ." Hibiki mutters. Hibiki heads inside, after taking off all his extra layers, he finds Abel and Mohan sitting lazily on the couch. "Hey guys, can I talk to you all?" Hibiki says.
"Sure wassup?" Mohan says, sitting up straight.
"Did you find anything by cutting it open?" Abel asks as he sits up straight.
"Ya, lemme tell you about it" Hibiki says as he sits down too.
Back in the cavern, Miku had begun to explain everything.
"So uh I guess I'll start with why I killed the bats and work backwards from there. So the reason I did it was because they were gonna attack us, I knew this because they were infected-" Miku explains before Elena cuts in.
"Infected with what? They looked completely fine to me" Elena interrupts.
"Well remember that thing you told us about in Hibiki's journal?" Miku asks her.
"Are you talking about the flesh spire thing? . . ." Elena replies, raising her eyebrow.
"Precisely, basically whatever it is that thing isn't natural and it has this ability to infect other things. Like it'll shoot these little dart things and take the animals over, this just makes them super aggressive and their eyes are all milky white" Miku says.
"So like rabies?" Luh asks.
"Ya" Miku says, with a nod.
"Oh so can they pass on this infection?" Luh asks.
"Ya I think so" Miku says with a nod.
"Oh well good thing you killed those things then" Luh says with a slight shudder.
"Ya the worst part is that these flesh things spread almost like a planet wide cancer" Miku adds on.
"Why didn't you tell us this sooner?" Elena asks her.
"I uhm well I didn't really think it would be that big of a deal?" Miku says.
"Just give us the real reason, Miku," Luh says in a deadpan tone.
"Fine fine, jeez." Miku mutters, taking a deep breath before talking. "I didn't want y'all to get freaked out and stuff so ya" she says.
"Oh that was it?" Luh says, raising an eyebrow. "I thought you were gonna say something crazy like that you want us to stay on the planet or something" Luh says with a chuckle.
"I'm not that insane! I wanna get off this god forsaken rock too!" Miku says.
"I know, I know," Luh responds.
After the girls walk in silence, the smell of rot and decay grows stronger as they get closer to its source. They occasionally see conglomerates of flesh which they sneak past. Miku suddenly stops.
"Hey what-" Luh tries to ask before being shushed by Elena who points upwards.
"Stay quiet or it'll hear you," Miku whispers.
Meanwhile back at the cottage, Hibiki had finished his explanation.
"Alright so lemme get this straight" Mohan says. "So that flesh thing we saw is one of many and it's some type of strange species that uses darts of venom to control the bodies of things it hits and you theorize it uses these controlled creatures to bring it food and parts for it's body based on seeing that large snake herbivore with another animal in its mouth" Mohan says, getting the basics of Hibiki's explanation.
"Yup" Hibiki confirms with a nod.
"Ok, I mean it makes sense considering that thing came back to fucking life. Its basically a fucking zombie venom from the sounds of it" Abel adds on.
"Ya and Miku said she knew some things about this thing but I never got around to asking her," Hibiki says.
"Well we should ask her, we can show her the field guide page too" Mohan replies.
"Ya, that's a good idea, lemme see-" Hibiki says as he begins to flip through his field guide before quickly cutting himself off. "WAIT WHERE IS THE PAGE?!" Hibiki exclaims, noticing the page had been ripped out.
"Wait what? The page is missing?" Mohan questions.
"I have no clue, the only person who knew about it was Miku-" Hibiki says before Abel cuts him off.
"So that bitch must've ripped it out! I knew we couldn't trust that stupid bitch!" Abel exclaims, standing up.
"Well I don't know who else could have but it couldn't have been out of malice" Hibiki says.
Before Abel could yell more, Mohan interrupts. "Wait, the girls haven't returned and it's been about 5 hours at this point." Mohan says, his eyebrows furrowing.
"Holy shit you're right, we gotta go find them!" Abel says
"Well how are we going to do that? We don't even know where they are" Hibiki questions before Mohan's face lights up with an idea.
"Wait, remember when we heard Miku yell from about over there?" Mohan says pointing about the North East.
"Oh ya!" Abel exclaims.
"Well it's not much but that's our best lead" Hibiki nods in agreement before realizing something. "How about you two go that way, I'll catch up to you all soon" Hibiki says.
"Are you sure bro? We should all go together-" Abel starts before Hibiki cuts him off.
"Trust me, I just got something to do beforehand" Hibiki says affirmingly.
Mohan nods. "C'mon Abel lets go, grab your weapons" Mohan says as the two dash off in the direction where they had Miku yell hours ago. Meanwhile Hibiki goes to the smithery.
"I'll need a weapon too" Hibiki mutters as he begins his crafting process.
Back in the cavern, the girls stood in complete silence and stillness but it was already too late. It heard them. Suddenly a giant two limbed alien with a long tail and crushing jaws descends down from the ceiling, lunging at them. Miku grabs Luh and Elena by their waists and moves everyone out of the way.
"What the fuck is that!" Miku yells, taking another more clear glance at the creature. It had no eyes and was covered in dull black armor plates that seemingly began to rot and decay. Its body was sickly and malnourished, allowing you see it's ribs. Its body was as if it was too small to fit in its own skin, causing its skin to be stretched out,causing some of its bones to tear through the skin and become completely visible. Its lower jaw hung loosely from the top of its skull, as if it were about to fall off but most disturbingly was a massive crater in its head, allowing you to see part of its skull and rotted brain. From this crater, a fleshy substance oozed from it and took hold on the rest of its face and parts of its body. "Don't let it touch you and dont touch it! It might be able to pass on the infection!" Miku yells, dodging as the creature charges in.
Elena and Luh stay back and hide. While Miku dodges and figures out how to fight it without touching it once, Elena hears a strange snarling further away from the rock they were hiding in. A group of what look like smaller versions of the large one prowl around, their bodies inhibiting much of the same symptoms as some climb on the cave ceiling and others jump from surface to surface on the cave floor.
"Aren't those the tree crawler things we saw in the jungle" Luh whispers to Elena.
Elena simply nods as the two hide in silence. The creatures screech and begin rapidly heading to help the large one fight against Miku. Miku jumps from surface to surface, cutting the smaller ones down with ease while trying to figure out how to get the big one. As this goes on, more of the cave creatures begin to fill into the area, charging in to fight Miku. Mainly composed of Fulgur Vespertiliones swarms, most with milky white eyes but some exhibiting more extreme symptoms. Miku cut down these swarms before they could touch her and finally got a clear opening to hit the giant crawler, she is forced to jump out of the way as a six legged herbivore with hundreds of beady and milky white eyes stampedes into the fray.
"We gotta help her, she's gonna be overwhelmed by all these creatures at this rate" Luh whispears to Elena who nods and begins to scan the environment before spotting a boulder on a ledge above where the brawl was going on.
The girls begin climbing up to the top of the ledge, as they climb up, some pebbles and debris fall down causing Luh to slip slightly. This causes the smaller crawlers to screech and begin to climb up after them. The two of them quickly reached the top of the ledge as the crawlers do as well. The creatures screech and one lunges at them but Elena quickly throws a rock into its maw causing it to gag and be knocked backwards. Before the creatures could lunge again, they are interrupted by Mohan and Abel bursting from the cave ceiling, killing the last two crawlers.
"How the hell did you find us?!-" Luh says, a huge smile crossing her face.
"We heard a buncha roaring and stuff from coming down here" Abel quickly explains before glancing down at Miku who was taking on the two infected aliens.
"We got a plan to crush them with the boulder" Elena explains urgently, motioning to the boulder. Mohan and Abel nod and run to the boulder, Elena and Luh right behind them. Abel uses his pickaxe to chip away at it while everyone else pushes against the boulder. Miku hears the noise of the pickaxe and immediately lures the infected aliens there right as the boulder falls, crushing the 6-limbed herbivore but only getting the tail of the giant crawler. Miku dashes in, laughing madly as she goes in to deliver the killing blow but with a distorted gargle of a roar, it breaks free, rippings tail off in the process. Miku's eyes widen as she stops and quickly jumps back as the crawler brings its claw down, barely missing. Miku feels the adrenaline that was pumping her veins fade as the crawler charges at her, its movements clumsy as it's missing its tail. Miku dodges out of the way but she catches something, or someone from the corner of her eye and she quickly springs into action, grinning and laughing once more. The creature's foot suddenly gets cut clean off as Hibiki sheathes his katana. The crawler suddenly falls and before it could do anything else, Miku puts it down, cutting its head clean off.
"Holy shit!" Miku yells before tackling Hibiki into a hug. "Oh my god thank you!" She says, gripping him close.
Hibiki pats her back. "Its ok"
Meanwhile Luh and Elena had slid down, Luh quickly joins the hug while Elena breathes a sigh of relief. Mohan and Abel glance at each other flabbergasted before joining the hug, Abel dragging in Elena who grumpily joins the group hug. This heartfelt moment is quickly interrupted as more distorted groans and screeches from further away in the cavernous expanse, the group immediately breaks up the hug and begins running as they glance back and see a hoard of these infected creatures. Luckily they escape through the hole Mohan and Abel had created and then run back to the cabin before night falls. Once they arrive back, they all collapse glancing at each other before Hibiki, Mohan and Abel turn to Miku and speak up.
"We need to talk" they all say in near unison.