From Me to You - The BL Relay Fic

[Rafflesiac]

This fic is special, and only partly because I'm one of the writers. This is a fic that can be written by all BL posters, and I take no responsibility for anything that goes badly (but full responsibility for everything that goes well). There are two rules:

1) No doubleposting.
2) Each post can be up to 500 words.

And with that, we begin!

---

It was one of those moments, those rare times where all of the distractions and noise of the world fade out of existence, where without even trying, without even noticing, you focus entirely on one singular thing that defines your existence. The myths are a lie; there's no convenient scroll of Best Ofs, of highlights, of failings, of mundane thoughts and random worries. As I hid behind the crate, splinters digging into my shoulders, legs burning from crouching far too long, and lungs desperately trying not to rasp, realization greeted me like an old friend.

I was going to die.

[Frostyvale]

I look to the left, look to the right.

Two snapshots of the warehouse appear in my mind. Between them there's the impression of form, but that's all. The eye can't register anything worth shit in the middle of a saccade. It just sends back a mess for the occipital lobe to sort out and blur into something approximating the scenery. Give it a few tenths of a second to stop and refocus, there's the good stuff straight from the fovea. I take a look at the corridor of dusty crates. Can't see a damn thing, and that's what's so fucking awful.

But I'm going to die all the same, so what does it matter? Maybe this is the brain's way of patting me on the back. I don't feel a damn thing. Not an ounce of fear. But my pulse is somewhere up in the sky, and my thinking's never been more clear.

I don't know why, but right now, when I should be in despair, I just feel so perfectly alive.

Alright, made it this far. Let's go a little longer. Maybe it won't amount to anything, but I'm not going to roll over and become dinner just yet.

I'm pretty darn good, after all.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

The heart wants to forget that thing's fearsome visage, but my mind won't allow it. I won't allow it. I stow away the fear, toss the key, and hope the fear doesn't slither back up and break down the doors of my determination. With some difficulty I compartmentalize what I know of the predator and recall its form, brainstorming away to find any sort of weak points.

A central node twice the a man and a half, coiled like a tightly wound knot or a ball of spaghetti to serve as the main body, constantly in motion, and stilted atop a dozen hippopotamus feet. Another dozen limbs, tipped with biting mouths and disgustingly prehensile, moved seemingly of their own volition. It had a face like it was made of clay, likewise full of oversize teeth like its wearing toy dentures.

--a hybrid. And if those alien-runed manacles are anything to go by, it's somebody's attack dog, and one sent after that tasty truffle that is me, myself, and I.

[Leftovers]

I chance a peek around the corner, and barely get enough time to visually confirm my analysis before a limb which was just a moment ago almost lazily swinging to and fro lances through the air, the space that my head had previously occupied, and the wall behind it, burying itself a foot deep into reinforced steel. In my hyper-aware state, I can clearly see a tuft of hair that bravely took a hit meant for the entire right side of my cranium scatter and fall. I, the personified idiom, quietly thank it. The fleshy spear, buried into the wall, growls what is probably a curse.

Growls.

Seeing it up close and relatively immobile - that is, with a bit less fear of imminent death - what's really bizarre about this mess of an organism is how seamless its features are. You'd think that a jumble of animal parts would make the whole thing look like a mad scientist's patchwork, but this is more like a six-year old's doodle of a fantastic beast, to be presented to proud, if disturbed parents, and pinned on the fridge. Though, wait. Given the circumstances, doesn't it make more sense that... and there was that one pers- thing down in Ward D...

I scrutinise the limb for a bit more, and perhaps due to self-consciousness, the crocodile scales that cover it slide up like eyelids to reveal a bright orange, serpentine eye under each and every one. Eep.

It seems to be stuck, though. Perhaps it hit some wires, a steel frame inside, or whatever it is that one makes the walls of a prison for monsters out of. I can see it struggling, but it cannot budge just yet. This might be my chance to... uh...

F-fight?

At my slightest twitch, a hundred pupils constrict.

R U N

The eyes all blink in unison.


...do something?

[Draconic]

Now would be a really good time for my partners to show up. He's durable and she swings a very big sword around like it was a twig, but considering that they're on the opposite side of the complex, I can't reasonably expect their help—

The eye-covered tentacle splits in half, revealing a mouth as long as a python as black ichor sprays everywhere.

"Oh thank god," I breathe. "Still, you cut it kinda close Elena."

"Well then, I have good news," said a familiar voice that didn't belong to either of my companions, "That bitch is bleeding out in Ward F, and well, you know what we keep there."

His sword reaches my throat as I start backing away. He's actually giggling. Piece of shit.

Meet Theodore Gaugh, so-called nemesis from my school days. I should have figured he was planning to cause some sort of disaster the minute I saw he'd started working here.

He's smart, talented, and handsome, where I'm not good at anything outside my respective field, struggled just to meet expectations, have nothing to make me stand out. Unfortunately, I also got an award for innovation that he hadn't been gunning for but decided he deserved. So naturally, he decided that despite all of his great opportunities, he would devote his entire life to finding creative ways to ruin mine. And the nightmare he just put the chop to is looking to him as though awaiting instructions.

I don't know what it did wrong but he he glared at the creature. It shrank back.

"You know, I'm shocked," he snickered, "Absolutely shocked that you of all people would set a creature like this loose. It's already killed upwards of thirty staff members. Was your revenge against me that important?"

What the— I didn't—
Wait…
Oh, that miserable little fuck!

"Yes, truly your actions are appalling. I doubt you'll work in this field ever again. Security has orders to shoot to kill if they see you. Or your conspirators. Such irony that your job was to prevent these things from happening wasn't it?"

New strategy: Find Elena and Warren and get out now.

"Well," I snarl, shoving my way past him while the nightmarish creature is still immobile, "obviously I wasn't counting on you murdering a slew of people and sacrificing years of your own research just to get me fired you sick little—"

Suddenly my side feels like it's on fire. I don't need to look down to know that he's stabbed me, or see his face to know his grin is growing too wide for his face. I ignore it. Have to get to Ward F. Let's hope Gaugh's wrong about Elena bleeding out. It wouldn't be the first time she's been severely wounded. She'll pull through, and was only supposed to guard the entrance, but Warren was supposed to go all the way to the back. And if the thing we're keeping there gets out, even he won't be able to stop it.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

"Let's rock his world, my little billy goat gruff!" He raises his reinforced scimitar, eldritch tuning fetishs danging from its handle like foul tassels. The glow of the tesseractical crest on his biceps lights the room with putrid azure radiance as Gaugh lays down his order.

His word is law. The beast obeys. "SssSSTEein--rrrr!" the

disciplined

semi-mutilated

hybrid forces a single slimy sound out through its undeveloped voice box--A name I haven't heard in four long years.

There's no time to reminisce. As it makes that war cry the creature charges the crate I had hidden behind. Its multitude of arms trail it like streamers in the wind. It aims to crush me, the wood, and the box's contents into an amalgamated pulp of death and trash.

Can't go directly over the crate, into the monster's path. Can't go off to one side, blocked off by Gaugh like it is. But, if I dash through the one path they're herding me down I'll be out in the open, leaving me vulnerable to a multitude of other variables.

I hate being puppeted around. Still, there's no other choice. I play into their hands and dash to the open--!

[Draconic]

I break into a sprint that lasts all of two seconds before falling through the doorway clutching my side.

Goddamn swords. Why does everyone carry swords these days. What ever happened to just using good old fashioned magecraft?

Three of the mouth-eye-tentacles shoot towards me and forcing myself to ignore the pain in my side, I scramble to my feet and slam the heavy steel door on it, one head makes it through and gets cut off by the weight and momentum of the door and I edge away. So, now, if I can't find Elena or Warren, I'm trapped in here forever. If I do get out with them, thanks to whatever forged evidence he made against me, Gaugh is probably going to take over the company and use it as his latest masturbatory-revenge-aid against me, my friends, basic common decency… all those sorts of things.

I can hear banging and roaring from the other side of the door and decide that I should get moving.

* * * * *

I'm not surprised by the state Elena's in when I get to Ward F, She looks like she was hit by three trains, a commercial airliner, and a disgruntled bear, yet she's still somehow on her feet. There is a length of pipe sticking out of her side, which is probably why Theodore assumed she was bleeding out. Her claymore is already strapped to her back.

Then I notice the a shallow bloody indentation in the wall. Her knuckles are bleeding too.

"Warren's gone," she muttered.

"Bastard—" I snarl.

We're both going to be extremely torn up over this in a few hours when the implications finally hit us. One of our best friends is dead.

"I feel totally useless. I'm supposed to be the heavy hitter and instead I get blindsided and let my partner die."

I grab her by the wrist.

"I swear if the first time I ever see you cry is down here before we're even safe, I'm going to hit you," I say. "Besides, what was he supposed to do against the D-Prototype."

Just a note here, when your magus associate gets the bright idea to try and build his own dragon using alchemy, just don't. The results were not only slimy and disgusting, but almost unstoppable. D-Prototype has two mouths, and no sense of sight, hearing, or smell. It just eats whatever's in front of it.

"Did Warren…"

"He got it back into containment. But Ward F isn't salvageable after that."

I shake my head, reminding myself that this isn't the time to talk about our former jobs.

"Look we need to get out of here, we've been framed as the culprits behind this incident. Also, Gaugh and his fake shoggoth are blocking the exit, so you're pretty much my only out too."

She looks at me like I'm the least interesting thing she's seen in a year.

"Fine. If you stumble, I'm not picking you up though.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

/Alt side (A) -- Family Matters



-----"Ssssteinerrrrr......"

Its face soft, its many, many eyes watery, the human/Aforgomon crossbreed grumbles. Its attention divides between nursing its wounds and trying at the door the prey escaped through. It attempts to force its thick, scaly limbs through the hairline crack keeping the door in place. With an anxious energy the being continues at this.

Anxious to pursue.

Anxious for reunion.

Anxiety...

It's a recognizable island of emotion in a dark and stormy sea of inconceivability. That's how Gaugh sees it. Of course, to presume to know of what goes on in the mind of a demon like this is a complete folly. Arrogance and ignorance mingled into one. Such creatures cannot have human concepts be applied to them.

Yet Gaugh is no fool, in this regard. Because beings of this nature, this level are so beyond mortal ken that he can psychoanalyze this one. Take perfect incomprehensibility. Make it imperfect with the addition of the human element. With that, behold the abomination -- see how it is tormented by its duality, tug in all manner of direction by its human and alien halves. Man can never understand everything, least of all what the unknowable of the abyss beyond the stars and space-time holds. Man can understand enough to assume and make decisions based on what they know until opposing evidence suggests otherwise. And man has studied man for thousands of years.

Thus, Gaugh knows that the creature is anxious. Wounds caused by pangs of loss are being torn open again. Of its twenty-seven hearts, the one that controls the human emotions is in pain.

The child is crying. Afraid that it will be made to be alone. Permanently this time. It cries out against separation. Tantrums ensue, the human side raging as the inhuman side inflicts ungodly violence. From this side the door caves and creaks, yet remains steadfast in its lock.

Futility. Despair. Loneliness. Things that an unknowable thing shouldn't know. Not in any capacity humans can comprehend. Still, it wails. Because it's so much more. Can be more than even that.

Gaugh can worry about that later. For now, he lifts his sword. The rod that spoils the child, souped up and specialized to deal with entities of this nature. He brings it down---
---and holds it horizontal, below his lips.

Gaugh blows. A melody quietly, resolutely resounds through the warehouse, the only gateway to and fro this facility. He plays one note, then three, then five, seven, twelve.

Gaugh plays the beast's song. The song that can calm its fractured human mind. The last resort when the enslaving manacles are not enough to sway it. The lullaby works tandem with the infernal devices, exerting a soft and soothing will over the monstrosity.

"Calm yourself, child," the foster-father says. "There there, child. You must be strong, for now. Soon enough you shall reunite with your twin. Mommy's about to deliver the baby soon enough.

"...Deliver it right to our very doorstep."

It coos. A thousand eyes shed one more tear.

The tantrum is over, and the night has just begun.



--Alt side (A) over--

[Leftovers]

We shall remain here to the end.

This lunatic cage embraces corruption. Sorrow. Hatred. Delight. All that makes us human, and less than human. With them we are beasts, without them we are empty shrines. They are anchors for our transience, tailwinds in a floating world, the passion in our throbbing arms, the lifeblood in our veins. They drive us, ever drive us, to glory and ruin, heaven and hell. It's our conviction, and conviction is the source of humanity.

Every moment is like the first, hatchlings born deep under the earth and only now seeing the sun. The clarity, the radiance! The more we bask in it, the more we crave. It fills our greedy vessels to the brim, yet at that moment it cannot even sate half of us. More, more! The feeling of fullness lasts only a moment, for us to taste it, but gone before it settles. The sudden emptiness only drives us into greater frenzy.

Redder than red, yet transient. More and more spills into us, but not enough— never enough.

More. What are you waiting for? This is a battlefield that knows no mercy, a purgatory akin to a furnace. We will burn and burn until nothing remains, so why hold back? Take up your arms. What do you have left to regret? Here, you are nothing. Nothing, but the strength of your arms and the incandescence of your funeral pyre. The instant you burn away to nothing, you will have won your eternity.

Ahhh, my brain trembles! It shudders at each flicker of that burning tongue, as it weaves an inhuman lullaby for our dance of death! That melody that follows us in a thousand scarlet dreams, that loudly singing polyP-P-P-P-P-P-P̧̤̽̆ͨ̕P̢̝̳̭̯̬̫͇̬̙ͦͭ́̑̒ͣͦ́́P̭͔̣͇̱͎̳̔ͣ̏́͆ͅP̨̛̑́̉̎̚͢ ̪̝̭̲̺͙ͅP̭̮̞̩̰̗̫̀̒̏͗ͭ̂͘P̞̾͒ͧͣͯ̎͘P̸̊͏̞̥̺̱--




--track/3 shift [SKIP]--



"--p?"

"Aww, you stopped. I wanted to take a video."

The girl sighed as if she had just missed the opportunity of a lifetime, and tucked the bright orange flip phone back in the inner confines of her straightjacket. It's hard to say whether in a pocket. Actually, it's hard to say anything at the moment.

"Bwah?"

Still, you try.

She takes that as affirmation of her disappointment, and throws her arms up in disgust. Her sleeves, which exceed the length of her arms by a good half-metre, almost slap you in the face.

"It's not every day you see a person do a perfect impression of a skipping CD. That video would've gotten me 10k views easy." She seems to believe her words should inspire some manner of regret in you for dashing her chance for fame, but your regrouping consciousness is occupied by marginally more important things.

Like the still-twitching core of the chimeric spaghetti monster just behind her. Or the japanese sword that is impaling it to the floor, so huge that its handle almost scrapes the ceiling, inviting the question of how such a weapon could be used in these corridors.

Or the sticky semi-liquid that is currently covering you from head to toe.

[Rafflesiac]

Coughing is the first order of business. Lots and lots of coughing. I eventually stop spitting long enough to wipe giant gobs of goop off my face, which cling to my arms like a needy toddler made of taffy. A few moments of wild flailing, and the goop flies off my arms to smack into the wall with a splat.

The hallucinations were one incredibly mortifying thing, but being bukkaked by life is the maraschino cherry on the What Did I Do To Deserve This Sundae.

"Ah." A long sleeve flies up to strike the girl's forehead. "Why did I stop filming!? Humor was no good as a category, but sci-fi horror would've been perfect! Um, whatever your name is, can you re-goo yourself and climb inside Jorge over there for me? And make it quick, I'm running low on battery."

"I most certainly will not! At any rate, who are yo- wait, did you just call that thing Jorge?"

She looked at me. It was not a good look.

"Of course I called him Jorge; that's his name, you jerk! Say hello to the mean ooze man, Jorge!"

The tentacle monster wiggled weakly and keened.

"Uh, hi Jorge. Nasty case of, um, impalement you've got there." With that introduction in order, it was time for the other one. "So who are you anyways, Sephiroth von Shyamalan?"

[Leftovers]

I don't like the mad gleam in her eye one bit. By the time a manic half-grin - which she probably thinks looks cool but actually resembles a muscle contraction after a stroke - is added to the mix, I already have my guard up, ready to make a run for the next delusional madhouse or wherever have you.

And with good reason, as I come a twitch reaction away from the prospect of an afterlife full of terrible head-or-lack-thereof-related puns, without even a motorcycle, red mantle, or indeed gender to make something good out of it. Timely buckling my knees, I avoid an extra-deep shave by the manic urban fantasy reject's washing pole, which she had withdrawn from... Jorge's twitching mass - and how had she even reached the handle? - and had taken to swinging around with a flourish and generous flicks of her wrist, scoring deep gouges into the steel walls, blissfully unmindful of the narrowness of the corridor - and me in it.

Well, that's hardly an appropriate response. I only asked for her name, not for a demonstration of the Octaslash. Though hey, it could be that she's one of those highly passionate VI fans...

Being rather literally transfixed by the dervish's performance, I can only throw a questioning glance to the fellow first-row occupant and floor dweller, but Jorge doesn't meet my two eyes with any of his hundreds, being rather focused on his attempts to flop away from his erstwhile captor, to freedom and a future where it won't end up as shish kebab. Which is a smart move, all things considered.

I turn to inform the madwoman that her prey is crawling away from her, to find that she is done inflicting property damage to the fine establishment that until now housed us both. And what do I know, her vandalism wasn't just a fit or a test of the building's structural integrity; she was actually answering my question. With her sword.

...oh god. That is so precious I could laugh. Or maybe cry. I'm so torn between the two that my brain almost skips a number of important realisations to which it has just arrived.

Immediately obvious is that the steel walls had offered so little resistance to her sword - the immense sword she swung effortlessly - that they might as well have been made out of wet sand and prayers. Carved in it were characters that couldn't have been drawn better with a calligraphy set.

A棟患者・日守桜夏

Okay. Right, nice to meet you. I think I'm starting to get what's going on here.

Although I have to wonder what kind of song she's hearing. Mine could only dredge up and reproduce bits and pieces of the very latest imprints on my mind, which would be the 2 hours I spent last night watching trashy teen TV series. But for her to be like that, and I mean like that...

When it comes to self-delusion, she's probably the strongest.

[Draconic]

Nice.

Suddenly something terrible occurs to me. Gaugh isn't in the room anymore. A quick glance at Elena tells me she's just noticed as well.

"We should probably…" she hefty her sword onto her back and starts sallieing toward the exit. I follow.

Unfortunately, when we escape without further incident, I know that Gaugh let us get away.
Meaning he's cooking up something particularly horrible for mixtape time. Maybe emailing a curse that'll kill children every time someone cuts him. Anything's possible.

It feels safer once we get outside, but I know it's temporary.

"I'll admit it was terrifying for a moment," I say, "but that MIB routine you did with the…thing in there was actually pretty entertaining."

"Oh, good, you've seen it. Would've been awkward if you hadn't known what I was doing."

"How did you know it's name though?" I ask.

She looks at me uncomfortably.

"I took the case for its capture. You didn't know?"

"No."

"Well then, the long and short of it is that yet another pair of mage's decided to experiment on their kid. Jorge is his name, and he's probably less than ten-years-old. I don't know what they did to him, but what you saw is one of his recurring nightmares. He projects his subconscious mind into reality when he's asleep. The reason he doesn't attack me is because he recognizes my voice, but he mostly just lashes out. Who wouldn't in his position? He's been a magic lab rat all his life. He's probably always terrified."

I groan. That thing was a kid's bad dreams incarnate? Sonofa— Oh forget it. This is just what it means to live in mage society. It's par for the course. That said, it doesn't mean we have to like it.

Onto more serious matters, we can't actually go back to either of our apartments because we'll have enforcers throwing black keys into our faces the moment we try to leave, if not in our sleep.

"Got anywhere in mind for where we can hide out until we can figure out a plan?"

She grins.

"Actually yeah."

"Please tell me it's not that thing you found in Whitechapel."

"It's the catacomb in Whitechapel."

Crap.

I mean, it's a good place to hide, and aside from the aggressive rats, it's safe. But despite how many decades it's been since it was used, it still smells like blood.

[Frostyvale]

"Hinomori... Ouka, is it?"

She totes what should rightly be called a bar of steel. There's no practical application for a blade that long, unless you find yourself beyond considerations of torque and yield elasticity. This girl clearly does.

I can't recall the fugue of nonsense that consumed me just moments before. The considerations of real life have seeped back in. I only have to get up and continue on.

And scene.

A persistent silence is broken by the sound of shoes tapping against the ground. The sound is impossible. A phantom of sensation sneaking its way between unmoving molecules of air. Still air, still bodies. This is a world where only one person can live.

There was a theory, a long time ago, conceived by some madman, or perhaps you'd have to call him a genius. If reality is a function of time, then every individual frame of reality is a slice of time with an infinitely tiny thickness. But why should it flow at the same rate for all things? With some tampering, couldn't one change the coefficient of a tiny segment, so small that the world would hardly notice?

So he conceived of a grand scheme. Isolating a part of the world, and slowing its relative time to the point that it would remain intact at the end of the world, or rather the end of existence. There, he might catch a glimpse of primordial Truth.

If that man had seen this, he might have sliced his throat open at once.

Tick, tock.

The hands circle around a small golden pocketwatch.

"Ah, I've found you."

[ItsaRandomUsername]

----then, I awaken on an airplane made of flesh and full of spiderwebs. We're flying too high, too close to the sun. I fear for Icarus.

I squish out of my seat and surge towards the cockpit. I bang on the door, trying to open it. Hinomori-san's the pilot. She dons a pilot hat. It looks stupid and adorable on her. I bet she doesn't even have a license, and that makes me sick.

"She doesn't have a license! Does she?! Do you wanna get pulled over by the sky police?! Do you wanna melt our wings and drown!? Hey! Hinomori-san!! Hinomori-san, open up!!"

Jorge's the wingman. He also has a pilot hat. It makes him look stupid and surreal. He looks at me, blinks once, and pulls the Venetian blinds down.

The phantom pains of the Disorder flares up. The memory of the demon that used to reside within feels nauseous and agitated. No, I can't have that. I can't relapse. It shouldn't be possible, so I won't let it happen.

"Return to your seat. Now." I see someone named Mato Touma cosplaying as a flight attendant, standing amidst the Geigerian design. Her polite speech contrasts harshly with how she looks like she's about to deck me in the gob. Her dominant fist throbs with veins that pulsate in synch with her rapid heart rate.

"If you get me some complementary nuts then we can get down to business, Mato-san." I say, humoring the obvious delusion.

She thrashes me.

As I'm seeing stars she drags me to the restroom. She throws me onto the meat-toilet. It's seat is like a newfangled memory foam mattress. A blood-squirting memory foam mattress. She grinds a plastic bag of peanuts on my crown for good measure. "You have no idea how much trouble you're in, SIR."

[Draconic]

You know, it was bad enough that I didn't remember how the hell I ended up inside some sort of meat-horror flying thing, but hallucinations aside, I'm beginning to wish I was still in it. The woman forcing my head into the pool of blood sounds furious, and possibly crazy, I can't tell. I'm probably not the best person to judge.

Oh, wonderful, the seat has teeth. So now I do know how much trouble I'm in. It seems that when someone asked me to choose between decapitation by meat, and decapitation by toilet, I chose both instead of running away.

"Any chance of you not trying to, you know, kill me in the most hideous way possible?"

"Fool. You know what you've done," she says, "why you're here."

Except I don't know either of those things!

"I'm going to enjoy watching you get eaten. It chews slowly by the way, it doesn't bite so much as it slowly saws off your head."

"And you're enjoying this way too much, lady!"

I realize she's holding me with that hideously engorged, veiny hand as I feel a gross pulsing behind my head. I rack my brain, desperately trying to remember what I did that landed me here.

[Frostyvale]

It's night again. I'm on a plane, and nothing comes to mind to explain why.

Tomato was never good on flights. I can't tell if it's the cramped environment, or the fact that we're out here with nothing but a thin sheet of aluminum between us and open sky.

Sky, void. The empty expanse that covers the earth. The little porthole window is just wide enough for me to see the moonlight glinting off the plane's wing, and all around it, the darkness that extends all the way to water and dirt, two thousand five hundred meters below. I seem to remember something, a crow landing on the wing, one leg extended above the other, wings rotating back in their sockets, beating, beating upward even as the plane surged forward on its twin jets. A little blue crow with brilliant red eyes. Must have been a dream.

Funny thing was, before it flew off, I could have sworn it stared back at me.

Tomato's snoozing now. The darkened cabin and the muffled rumbling of the engines lulled that monster right to sleep, like Orpheus's lyre. It's fitting, I suppose. But honestly, this person could sleep in a moving tank. When she's like this, I'm almost inspired to call her beautiful, in a sharp, office-worker sort of way, but I don't feel like it, so I won't.

Now then, what should I do?

That's when I heard the howling of a dog.

[MauiLand]

I turn, but there’s nothing. Only rows of empty seats, dimly lit by night-time lighting. Tomato is the only one on the plane with me, and she sleeps the sleep of the dead.

The howl comes again. Nearer, if such a thing is even possible. In the cramped confines of the plane, I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Is it in the Pilot’s cabin? The aft toilets? Hiding amidst the aisles?

I suddenly realize how dangerous this situation is. There is no escape from this confrontation. No way of running. All that can be done is to stand and fight.

The plane ploughs through the night like a meteor, unstoppable. There is no escape from a steel coffin rocketing through the sky with no way of stopping it.

How did I get up here? Is something or someone playing with me? Am I a puppet on another’s strings?

Questions I cannot answer. But I can find the dog. I have one enemy in front of me. I can at least fight this.

Slowly, cautiously, I move down the plane. Every sound of boot on floor is somehow elevated even above the omnipresent roar of engines. Every second I expect the beast to burst out of hiding, but there is nothing.

I have no weapon but my fists. I can only hope they are enough.

Finally I reach the back of the plane. There is only one place to look, the toilets.

In one sudden move I reach over and force the door open, and recoil as my eyes take in the mystery creature.

That is no mere dog.

[Draconic]

I really wish that it just had too many teeth. I would go for a wolf over this. I would happily face down a pack of wolves over this thing.

Staring back at me, almost curiously, is a scaly creature. It looks a lot like a dog, but the overall shape is where the resemblance ends. Sharp spines cover its back and limbs. Its claws aren't very long, but they look sharp enough to hurt a lot. Amd it's eyes… its eyes have slit pupils like those of a snake. I immediately slam the door shut, barely in time to keep the monster from leaping out at me. The flimsy door shakes as the creature collides with it. I breathe a sigh of relief. Safe for another minute. Insomuch that one can be safe on an eerily empty plane, I suppose.

That relief was soon to be replaced by confusion. And for good reason.

"Well, that was incredibly rude of you…" said a gruff voice. "I've been trapped in here since before takeoff."

It spoke. I can easily say I would have been less surprised if a bear had walked out of the cockpit and started playing a goddamn saxophone.

I open the door just a crack. The creature doesn't budge.

i shouldn't open the door.

I really shouldn't open the door.

"So, if I let you out, you aren't going to kill me?" I ask skeptically.

"I have more important things to do than gnaw on humans. And I understand that you probably don't know what humans taste like, but it isn't good enough to make 'monsters' desperate to eat them."

Maybe it was foolish of me, but I open the door. It trods out into the isles quietly. Sitting down on its haunches, it squints at Tomato before turning back to look at me with its snakelike eyes.

"Thank you," it says. "You can stop flinching."

I hadn't realized I was… I unclench my muscles.

"Good. I can stop worrying that you'll kill me because I look different."

Right, because it's one to talk about being worried by me. It's like a walking wall of spikes!

"What are you exactly?" I ask, "Actually, before that, do you have a name?"