Yuma turned and they looked at each other for a long moment. She sent a zapp into him and Jack took a moment before softly shaking his head and then settling on a half-shrug. She nodded, then said, “I got you a gift.”
He wasn’t sure how to take that, he had never gotten a gift before. She handed him two boxes, both slightly larger than his palm and rectangular.
“I love it.” He really did. He peeled through the wrapper on one and then, shortcutting the earlier struggle he had with the container back in his original room, carefully held his blade to carve a slot for his finger through the top. He looked it over as he held it appreciately. A Zapp Killa’s Kill Zappa. He plunged the prongs into his side and noticed how weak the charge was compared to when he had first used it. Still, it brought a smile to his face. The other one was still in its box and went in his pocket.
“Thanks, wh-”
He was stopped by a hug from Yuma. He felt the current spark off her skin into his, she wasn’t trying to zapp him, she just constantly had a large current running through her. He started to hug her back but she had already pulled away.
“You’re welcome, we found them in the Cargo-Bay.”
Before he could ask, “Hey!” That sounded less friendly. He turned, it was…
They looked familiar, but it was hard to place them, “Who’re you?”
“Seriously?! Korl! It’s Korl. Where’s Tule?”
Yuma was paying attention now and, even if she hadn’t, she could feel the temperature rise. The Clan Head had approached as well.
“Tule? Fuck him.”
“Crab-filth!” Jack patted the top of the SI’s head after his outburst. Even for Jack, the disembodied head of the SI was a bit much.
Cura defensively placed a hand on top of Korl’s, likely stopping him from doing something stupid.
She barely looked like she was holding herself together much better than the young boy, “Why do you say that about Tule?”
“I don’t- we don’t have time for this. Jenn! Come here.”
Despite her combat gear and smooth movement, a clearly uncomfortable-looking woman walked forward.
Jack took the body out of her arms and cradled it gently while looking at her for a long moment. Then he turned, “Clan Head, I’m sorry.”
He wanted to say more, but what more was there to say? It wasn’t what he wanted but… he messed up.
He handed the body to the Clan Head who nodded as he took her body in his arms; Jack couldn’t figure out the look in Mr. Lee’s eyes. He started to apply his IQ to disentangle the facial expressions and general ‘look’ of the Clan Head, then cross-reference it with similar expressions others had made and what their expressed emotional state had been… and then he remembered that Yuma was standing right next to him. He looked toward her, with the amount of electricity working through her she was the only person he could read fairly easily since her internal current shifted with her mood. It seemed like she already knew. Thank God he didn’t have to do anymore adhoc IQ/EQ thinking. She’d tell him if he needed to know and if he was really curious, he could always just ask her.
“Jack. Thank you for bringing her body back to the Clan,” his brow furrowed, “Why is she missing so much Nano?” A few Monitors had opened Magno-Tubes to the side of the body.
He remembered the Tube that Leanne had left but before he started looking for it, or even began to mention it, Jonah was speaking, “...we suspect that the hybrids harvested most of her Nano, beyond what she had already burned in her… last stand.”
Jack gave Jonah a look for a fraction of a second that no one caught, except Yuma.
The Clan Head cleared his throat, it was a little raspy, “Can you recount what you know?”
“I can’t,” he looked around, waiting for some sort of new nightmare’s boot to drop right on top of them, “we need to go.”
Yuma zapped him gently, “Can you tell us on the way?”
Jack looked around at the Clan, to the inscrutable Clan Head, then to Yuma, “Yeah, uh, I can do that.”
----------------------------------------
They ran and Jack, with some commentary from Jonah riding on his back, started the story of floating on the back of a giant crab for long cycles while they repaired their wounds. At that point Jonah told of Tule using unaspected crab-Nano to replace his own burnt-Nano.
Cura and Telane’s faces grew pale and slack. Korl’s face tightened. Jack didn’t catch it, he didn’t want to talk about Tule, even if he hadn’t been a crab-traitor at this point.
The ‘Lady’, the half-mad Water Reclamation SI. The mushroom dungeon of the BioPrison. Jack told of how he was poisoned. Yuma thought how coldly he was recounting the story and then realized that he was inadvertently distancing himself. She wondered how close they had grown and frowned. Still, a low-grade zapp from her gave him a hint and he shifted to emphasize how Leanne had been wounded and risked herself to get him to a Security Terminal and purify the infectious spores. He told them of the ‘Brothers’ and spoke of the battle, how Leanne had killed the psychic.
Since it seemed like a logical possibility that he might need to viral-spit-melt Korl, Telane, or Cura by the end of the story, he neglected to mention the Primordial Virus. Thankfully Jonah seemed to have some sense. Yuma gave him a look that was much more pronounced in her electrical profile. He’d had to explain that more later on.
He cut Jonah off from recounting the entire history of the carved murals by skipping to the part where they ran into the first ManRat/crab battle they stumbled across and his battle with the unique hybrid, more like a man than any they had encountered before.
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“He looked like Jack.”
He nearly brained Jonah against a bulkhead for that one. Everyone, of course, showed interest in that part. For ship’s sake Jonah.
“A passing resemblance.”
He bucked Jonah on his back to continue since he had been knocked unconscious about how Tule left with the crabs.
“Perhaps he went with them to secure your life.”
Stupid… Cure? What was her name again? “So what?! He fucking murdered Leanne after she left to bring him back!”
Even Jack noticed that the Clan’s positioning shifted at that, the entire group was ready to cut down the trio of Tule’s companions. They wouldn’t, probably, but they were ready. Cura wasn’t ready to let the point lie.
“How do you know?”
Jack pointed to the wounds on his body, even though they had stopped bleeding and were under a thin coat of Medjel, they looked raw and unclosed. His electricity wouldn’t automatically heal them and if he wanted them to close he would have to manually control the replication and propagation of his cells.
Cura still didn’t believe him.
Jonah begrudgingly brought out Leanne’s water pistol, divided on a molecular edge, and returned back to the Clan.
Cura shook her head, “I will see Tule with my own eyes.”
She made to move, but Trash stopped her and blurted out a string of directions ending with ‘crab-lover.’
She listened intently and then sprinted off. Jack didn’t say anything as she left. If anything, his potential-viral-melt list had just reduced itself.
He swept through the whole Rat messiah thing, or at least he tried to.
“The RatMen-”
“ManRats.” Jack felt Jonah glare at him from his back.
“The ManRats just… followed you?”
Jack palmed his face and threw a thumb at his shoulder, “This is Trash,” the somewhat deep groove into the side of his cranium bone created a bit of an alarm. Yuma zapped Jack and he took a moment to appreciate the electricity she was capable of putting out. He had plenty of electricity left over after he repaired the lasered wound. He gave her a smile, man did he miss her.
“Anyways, this is the Waste Disposal SI,” he added, a minor afterthought, “don’t call him Trash.” Another laser, “unless you want to get lasered.” He bopped the SI hard on the head.
“I was telling them not to, stupid robot.”
The slapstick nature of it diffused some, but not all, of the innate tension at hearing ‘SI’ and seeing its laser eyes.
“You may call me the ‘Skull Seer’.”
“Just call him Waste.”
“Acceptable, electro-meat.”
“Waste-Disposal. Waste-D. Wasty? Is that alright?”
Jack thought he’d have to block a shot at Yuma for that but-
“Acceptable, female electro-meat.” The SI studied her for a long and uncomfortable second, “You should have had the primary electro-meat turn right instead of left back then. Would have been much easier.”
While Yuma deciphered that last part, Jack continued the story. Sweeping through the crab positions down there, searching for Leanne. Finding her.
The fight with the crabs, his fight with Tule. Tule admitting to murdering Leanne, his loyalty to the crabs. Their fight.
“There’s no way you defeated Tule.”
Jack looked at the older teen, “Doesn’t matter what you think. It’s what happened.”
Telane, the male companion of Tule and Cura’s counterpart, finally spoke.
“You said he escaped with the other crab, the first one you fought down there?”
Jack eyed him and looked to Yuma, she sent another zapp in him. He got the hint that Telane was filled more with concern than anger toward Jack. Thank God she was back.
“Yeah, that one. It was helping… him escape after the fight.”
“SI- Uh, Wasty, do you know which way Cura went?”
The SI looked smug, if that was possible on its slightly inhuman face, “Reveal your forearm, crab-lover number two.”
Telane paused then did so and Trash immediately lasered directions into his skin. He flinched at the abruptness of it. He studied it then turned to his younger companion.
“Korl, be smart and be careful. I need to get Cura back-”
“Telane! You’re going to get Tule? I’m going with you.”
“No, young master. You are not.”
“You can’t stop me-”
Even Jack was a bit surprised by the slap that Telane brought across Korl’s face.
“You will stay.”
He looked around and saw very few friendly faces, “Yuma, will you please take care of Korl until I am back?”
She didn’t want to say yes. Maybe Tule had actually been her brother, it was even more likely than not. Beyond that though… her family was murdered by crabs, she had been chased by crabs her entire life, and now Tule was working with the crabs? It was unforgivable to work with them. Why would Jack and Jonah lie? They wouldn’t and she could tell that they were both telling the truth. Her EQ could tell that easily enough.
There were still two things that kept her from saying no; the desperation that dripped off of Telane’s entire being and the fact that whatever Tule had done wasn’t Korl’s fault.
“Sure. I will.”
He nodded.
Both of Korl’s cheeks burned with embarrassment, he spoke through gritted teeth, “Bring Tule back too.”
“...If I can, I will, young master.” He was gone.
They ran in silence, maneuvering according to the SI’s directions. Jack could tell there was an awkward silence but it didn’t particularly bother him. Apparently Yuma didn’t feel the same.
“So what happened after that?”
A pile of Them pulled around a corner ahead, but the Clan cut them down before Jack could hurry to engage and simultaneously disengage himself from the conversation. Apparently his run of good luck was over. He warily looked around as they continued down the metal hallways, at least he had a warning it was running out now.
Yuma zapped him when he didn’t respond.
“Uh, then we watched the giant crab ‘Master’ get ripped in half by Rattigan-”
“Who’s Rattigan?”
Jack gave her a look, it really wasn’t the time to be telling this story but he did have some residual guilt from almost tearing out her own Magnetic Affinity, thankfully it seemed like he had been successfully skipping that part. She gave him a look. Shit, her EQ was a double-edged sword.
“A giant ManRat,” he ignored Jonah’s Ratman correction, “he was the, uh…”
He really didn’t want to mention Death Champion, that would lead to more questions.
“He was the Champion of the Rats.” Jack blurred through the rest, leaving out the whatever-void they had encountered. He didn’t forget to include a warning about Arkology. He raised his voice, “It might be a bit late but don’t drink any water that cycles through the ship.”
“Why?” This came from one of the Clan, Jack didn’t recognize them.
“Mushroom hive mind.”
Jonah bopped him on the head, “Not a hive-mind.”
“You called it a hive-mind!”
“What else was I supposed to tell the defrosties?”