Mayday
Summary: Kori, Roy, and Jason are stranded in outer space with life support steadily failing. Kori can survive without oxygen, but Roy and Jason cannot. And, Kori would do anything to save them.
Whumptober day elevel fill. Prompt: "all the lights going dark and my hope's destroyed" though I really used the whole song MAYDAY by TheFatRat and Laura Brehm.
The lights on the console flickered intermittently as the power cells in the ship struggled to keep even low levels of energy running through the circuits. The display screens shows the dark red swirling atmosphere of the planet RaeTha, the planet where they were meant to find a desperate resistance looking for their help. Instead, they had been fired on until their ship was as good as junk floating through space.
"Mayday, Mayday, please respond," Kori said into the long range radio. She then repeated that message in every language she knew, which was a painfully long list. It was the third time she had repeated her message, but she had yet to receive any response.
"Why aren't they coming for us," Jason rasped from the hallway behind her.
Kori spun around, panic swelling in her chest. "You shouldn't be up!" she chastised him.
"I have to do something," Jason tried to growl, but ended in a rough cough.
"No, you do not. Moving around and talking is only going to use up more air," Kori reprimanded him as firmly as she could, but she could hear the anxiety in her voice, which meant that Jason certainly heard the same. He could be perceptive about some things.
"Kori," he gasped, his voice suspiciously thin.
"No," she said, succeeding in sounding firm and immovable this time. She stood quickly and scooped Jason up in a bridal carry. He didn't respond with a squawk or a single protest. He just went boneless in her arms. The anxiety spun up tighter in her chest.
Kori strode down the familiar hallways of her ship at a fast clip, carrying Jason back to the big, comfortable bed that belonged to Kori but was of course open to both her companions whenever they wanted it. Roy was already spread across the blankets, looking pale. His chest was rising and falling shallowly. He cracked an eye when she walked in, but otherwise didn't move.
She tucked Jason gently into the blankets beside Roy and smoothed his hair away from his forehead. His brow creased in irritation, and he tried to wave her hand away, but he barely got his hand off the bed. She wondered how he managed to get all the way to the bridge in his condition.
"Oxygen?" Roy asked quietly, his voice a faint rasp.
Kori knew what he was asking, but hated to be the bearer of bad news.
"Ten percent," she answered solemnly.
Roy cussed and rolled toward Jason with a grunt of effort. He settled his calloused hand in Jason's. Kori watched him struggle to keep his breathing shallow and even. Any speeding up of his breath would just deplete the oxygen available to him and Jason all the faster.
They were dying. Kori was watching her boys die. HER BOYS.
"I'm going to fix this," she said, more for herself than for them.
"It's okay, Kori. Not your fault," Roy rasped.
"Love you. Fuck those assholes," Jason agreed blearily.
"Do not fear, my loves. Trust in me and I will protect you both," Kori said, her shoulders thrown back, and her face set in determination. She turned and left before they could say something to break her resolve. What she planned to do was risky, but she felt she had no other choice.
When the atmosphere contained less than 19.5% oxygen, any form of exertion could cause increased breathing rates, accelerated heartbeat and impaired thinking or coordination in humans. 12%-16% oxygen could cause the same symptoms even in people who were resting. At oxygen levels 6%-10% humans experienced nausea, vomiting, lethargy and eventually unconsciousness. Less than 6% caused convulsions, cessation of breathing and finally cardiac standstill.
Kori had been radioing for help for hours, but obviously the rest of the galaxy knew that the area they were in was dangerous and no one was answering. The oxygen in the ship was getting far too low for her to allow continuing with S.O.S. signals. She had one last thing she could try in order to energize the remaining power cells, but after she did it, she would be useless. She had to hope it would work and get the boys back on their feet. Once they were okay, they could surely work together to repair the rest of the ship and get them out of enemy territory.
She had to trust in them and in herself to do this.
Kori walked through the ship, turning down progressively more narrow hallways until she reached a ladder that led down into the bowels of the ship. She shimmied past the huge dark fuel cells to the hulking mass of the engine.
She had tried to fix things down there early in their predicament with Roy's help. But, they were in quite the predicament.
The engine needed energy from the fuel cells to get it started, but once it was started, it used antimatter in the core to keep running. Once the engine was running, it could recharge the fuel cells. When they had been hit by munitions from the planet below, a huge surge had run through the whole ship and fried all the energy cells attached to the engine. They had a few extra ones which they had switched out with the blown cells, but none of them were charged. The only way to charge them was to start the engine
So, the only option left was for Kori to start the engine herself.
Her hands started shaking as she opened one side of the huge cylinder that made up the casing of the engine. Inside the small door was a narrow opening leading to the core containing the antimatter.
Kori looked at all the warning signs printed on the outside of the antimatter for a long pregnant second before taking a deep breath of stagnant air and climbing into the narrow opening. She had to tuck her elbows and knees against her chest tightly and twist her feet in awkwardly to close the shielding door behind her. She hesitated with her hand on the door to the antimatter core. What she was planning to do was going to be extremely painful, and she wasn’t completely sure she would survive it.
She squeezed her eyes shut and pictured Jason and Roy as she had seen them just a few seconds ago. Her boys, her best friends and sometimes lovers, laying in her bed, slowly suffocating. They were running out of air, and it would only get worse the longer she took.
She had to do this. She was a hero. She knew she could do this.
Taking another bracing breath, Kori reached out and flicked open the three locks holding the shielding to the antimatter core shut. Inside was a glass container with a strangely undulating black nothingness inside. Kori couldn't feel anything change, but knew she was being hit by a truly wild amount of radiation. It was then or never.
Kori clenched all her muscles as tight as they would go as she let down all the walls she had built inside herself to hold the solar energy inside. She had to take down the walls and then somehow still hold all that energy inside with sheer force of will. Hold it, she cautioned herself. She had to let it go all at once. It had to be a big enough shock to start the engine, to ignite the core with her still inside it. She was tough, incredibly tough, she would survive somehow. She had to trust it.
She let go.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roy woke up and he could breathe. He took a deep breath, delicious air expanding in his lungs.
He opened his eyes and looked at Jason, his face slack in sleep, his chest rising steadily with big easy breaths.
God, she must have done it. She really fixed it somehow.
The relief was an intense balm over what had previously only been a heart full of defeat and despair. Then, Roy’s brain started to tick over with questions. Once he started to run through ways that Kori possibly could have saved them, he started to panic.
"Jason. Jay!" Roy shouted, shaking Jason hard. He started awake, sitting up quickly and then clutching his head and grimacing.
"Oh god, my head," he groaned.
"Kori, Jay. Where is Kori?" Roy croaked, trying to sit up himself and feeling dizzy from the head rush. He was lucky he didn't have the headache that Jason was dealing with, but then he hadn't tried to walk around the ship with barely any oxygen to breathe.
"What?" Jason said, squinting at Roy. "I don't know. Didn't she? Wasn't she at the bridge?" he asked in confusion.
"She got the engine running somehow, but she's not here," Roy said, climbing to his feet and only swaying slightly. "Something's wrong."
Roy had a suspicion, but he really hoped he was wrong. He hoped that the people who shot at their ship had shown up and hooked them into their own life support systems. He hoped that Kori had gone outside and pushed their ship down onto the hostile planet. Roy hoped that she had done almost anything other than what he suspected, but he couldn't risk waiting another second to find her either way.
He wanted to tear through the ship, run at full tilt, but after the oxygen deprivation he had been subjected to, he had to hold onto the wall and hobble along the hallways at the pace of an octogenarian. Jason followed behind him, peppering him with questions until they got to the emergency launch and Roy took down one of the exosuits.
"You really think she's in there?" Jason rasped, but got to pulling on the suit a lot quicker than he had been moving before.
"There are other possibilities, but this is definitely the worst one. I just want to make sure she's not in there," Roy said, pausing with his hand on the bulkhead to wait out a bit of spinning.
"Shit," Jason bit out. He yanked his suit into place with the kind of speed and violence that Roy hated to admit that he found incredibly attractive. Roy had barely had the thought before Jason was taking off back to the heart of the ship at a much faster speed.
"Jay!" Roy shouted, struggling to follow behind Jason and pull his suit on at the same time as he combatted his own dizziness and slowly mounting nausea.
By the time Roy got down the ladder to the engine room, Jason already had the engine open and was pulling an unconscious Kori out.
Roy's heart dropped through the floor. He had no idea how she had even fit herself inside the engine and closed the housing, since it was such a small space. But, it was obvious she had been inside while the engine was running, unconscious and almost empty of solar energy and slowly being roasted alive by the heat inside the casing. Her soft orange skin was roasted red and black everywhere it had been touching metal, and even the parts that weren't looked red and rippled.
"Get us out of here!" Jason barked, his face twisted in rage and hurt behind the glass of his exosuit.
When Roy hesitated, his eyes stuck on Kori's ravaged skin, Jason shouted again. "ROY!"
Roy felt something creeping up the back of his throat, and turned around with a force of will and threw himself up the ladder before whatever it was could crawl out of his mouth. He got to the bridge somehow, though he couldn't remember the path he had taken to get there, and started to plot a course to the closest friendly system, checking system status and available resources while he went. The ship was just limping along. They wouldn't be able to get there fast. Fifty-two hours was the earliest they could get to neutral occupied space. Kori would have to suffer for at least fifty-two hours with those burns before they would have a chance to get her real medical help. And even once they were there, there was no guarantee there would be a medic there with enough knowledge of Tamaraneans to be able to help.
Once the course was plotted and the ship was on its way, Roy put his head down on his arms.
She could have left. Kori didn't need oxygen to survive unless she was out of solar energy. She could have left them behind, she could have taken them down to the planet, she could have done something else.
Instead, she put herself on the line to save them. Two stupid assholes that most people on Earth wouldn't have pissed on if they were on fire.
"She's too good," he rasped into his arm. "Way too fucking good for us."
15 notes
·
View notes
MK-S: Ah, you gotta love it when your parents get you the gag gifs. You should name your rock. Maybe call it “Irony” or some sort of pun.
Congratulations on the gift! And for apparently beating Margit.
Don’t worry, you’ve got a compass; just follow one of the roads and you’ll be in the “Weeping Peninsula” in no time.
And agreed; those sword eagles are annoying…You can target them while they’re in their perch; have fun with that little vengeance-enabling tidbit. I will admit, the sword they have a small chance to drop does look cool though.
If you’re also still looking for spots to explore, there’s plenty of rivers and whatnot you can access from that dragon lake. And, if you want, I can tell you how to skip stormveil and godrick entirely when I wake tomorrow.
Have a good day!
oh the rock is named, its rocky. and technically hes a brick. but whatever.
but yeah FUCK these birds, the best way i managed to deal with them so far is the parry, but only if its one or else its like a bullying party 😭
as for the castle... i dont wanna skip it, id rather just run around and explore and elevel to deal with this, maybe i'll even find a better armor set who knows! as annoying as it can be lol.
tbh though something id like to figure out first is how to deal with skeletons, or rather, where is the next best weapon to do so since killing them definitely will require holy or divine or whatever the name in english is stuff to do so just as it was in dark souls
1 note
·
View note