Chapter 1 - "Yeah, I guess the end is here"
Rae rubs their temples, and it's not helping. Valka's LED is flashing every color on her spectrum like she's at a rave. The engineer is having a conversation with herself at two hundred words per minute, there's a jackass pilot in the driver's seat pressing every button he can reach, and a fucking kid on the bridge whining about his dad.
Why the hell is he traveling alone, anyway? What kind of idiot parents let a kid this young fly without a guardian?
Between all the noise, Rae is genuinely starting to miss Valka's show tunes routine. They're one annoying sound from snapping when--
"Hey, you got a radio in here?" The pilot flips a switch, and garbled, staticky music comes on. "Ooh, score! Any requests?"
"I have one, actually," Rae says. "Everybody shut the fuck up."
The engineer's mouth snaps shut. The kid cowers at the threshold of the cockpit. The pilot turns towards Rae, morbidly slowly, and flicks the radio off.
"Rae, that wasn't very nice," Valka says. She's giggling hysterically, but Rae knows she's mad even if she can't keep a straight face about it.
Too bad - they've got bigger things to worry about right now than her mood, like the space station that just fucking exploded.
"Okay," Rae says. They didn't actually expect everyone to listen. "We're all stuck here until Star Sailor McHotshot here can land us in a port. In one piece, preferably."
"Do my best!" the pilot says to himself a little too jovially.
"So we need some ground rules. First rule, no singing." Rae glares at Valka. She turns away and pretends she doesn't see them. "Second, anybody who's not an engineer, a pilot, or me stays out of the cockpit."
"What?" the kid squeaks. "But I know about this stuff from school! I can help."
"You can help by staying out of everyone's way."
The kid's face falls.
He slinks out of the room and back towards the cargo bay.
Ah, shit.
"Okay, let's see if this gets us anywhere," the engineer says to herself. "I think I had to reset the personality matrix before it would let me access any primary systems. Weird."
Valka's light blinks out.
"What did you do?" Rae demands.
"Hang on."
Valka's light comes back on - a healthy green. "Thank you," she says to the engineer. Her voice is finally mellowed out, no more static cackling. "You've quite brought me back to myself."
The engineer lets out an awkward, nervous laugh. "No problem."
Valka inclines her eye towards the engineer in a bow, then fixes it squarely on Rae. The eye flashes red. "Rae," she says sternly. "You need to go fix that." She gestures after the kid.
"Yeah, yeah." Rae starts for the door, then pauses. "No singing," they reiterate.
"I can't heeeeeeear youuuuuu," Valka sings operatically.
Rae huffs and leaves.
They catch up to the kid - he's poking at a panel on the wall, trying to pry it open.
"Hey! The hell do you think you're doing?" Rae rushes up and pulls him away and picks him up, clamping his arms against his sides.
The kid struggles against Rae's bear hold. "I was trying to help your AI!"
"We've got an engineer for that. If I put you down, will you stop touching stuff?"
"...Yes."
Rae puts the kid down. He looks over her shoulder wistfully at the panel, but he doesn't move.
"Good. Alright." Shit, Rae really doesn't know how to do this. It shouldn't be this hard, right? "What's your name?"
"Aevyn." The kid pauses. "Roo."
"Which one? Both?"
The kid picks at his thumb, then looks up with a surprising confidence behind his eyes. "Roo."
"Okay. Roo. You... like ice cream?"
His eyes light up.
Rae can work with that.
The icebox is down in the cargo hold. That creepy cyborg guy watches them come in, barely moving. It's a little uncanny the way he can sit so still.
"Okay, we only have one flavor, and it's shit," Rae explains, opening the icebox.
"Why'd you only buy a shit flavor?"
"Don't say that word. It's my sister's favorite, and I keep it on board in case she ever comes around. She has real bad taste. Ugh, nobody likes pistachios." They take a glass pint out and hand it to the kid - his eyes widen to the size of dinner plates.
"I can have the whole thing?"
"Yeah, freeze your whole brain solid. I don't care."
Rae doesn't exactly love the idea of giving a child a multi-tool, but it's the only spoon they have on board, so it'll have to suffice. They pull out the spoon, lock the safety so the kid can't accidentally pop the knife out, and hand it to him.
"Enjoy, I guess."
"Thank you," the kid says. It sounds conditioned, but he just might be that freakishly polite.
Rae wants to sprint back to the cockpit, but something feels weird about leaving the kid - Roo - down here alone eating ice cream in the near-dark with just a cyborg for company.
Rae pulls up a crate and sits down next to Roo. "Gotta make sure you don't stab yourself with that tool."
The kid offers a half-smile and keeps eating.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:25, Fri 27 Aug 2021.