It was dark
[---]
In the darkness, orange eyes opened.
[---- up]
The space was torn apart as a hand moved
[-ake up]
A metal tusk gleamed as teeth bit down.
[Wake up]
---
Snapping his eyes open, Ester woke up with a jolt as Eva hurriedly moved her head back so as to not get by his awakening flails.
[Woah, what the hell dude? You scared me.]
Clutching her chest as if to emphasize her rapidly beating heart, Ester shook the remaining grogginess from his eyes as he looked around confusedly.
'What the hell was that?' Trying to desperately recall his dream, despite how hard he tried to remember, it was like trying to hold sand in a hand shot straight through.
The last thing he recalled was a mechanical voice trying to wake him up.
And even that memory was quickly fading.
Shaking his head, Eva interjected once it looked like Ester had collected himself.
[You sounded like you were having one of those nightmares again] Eva wiggled her fingers. [Is it a new nightmare where I kick your ass? Or is it an old one where I still kick your ass?]
Ester used his shirt to wipe his forehead laden with beads of sweat and told Eva the truth. "It's a weird one where some guy bites into me."
[Kinky.]
Ester stared dead into Eva's eyes which glimmered with mischief "Is it that kinky if the guy rips your throat out?"
Eva tilted her head playfully [The universe is a big place, I'm sure we can find someone who's kink is getting cannibalized if we look hard enough.]
"Pretty sure that sort of kink would make them hard to find in one piece." Ester pointed out.
[Fair.]
"So Eva." Ester clapped his hands and stared at the woman bouncing her head up and down. "What's the verdict about your nightmare consultation business?"
Eva tilted her head before fixing her curved posture [I will beat your ass until you fear me.]
Hearing the blatant desire to beat him up, Ester raised an eyebrow.
"...And why pray tell are you trying to beat me up?"
[Because I want to beat you up. Oops.] Eva covered her mouth cheekily. [I meant to say it's so that all your nightmares are only about me.]
Ester had the not so small feeling that it wasn't a slip of the tongue that expressed her desire.
Especially since she had to consciously express her thoughts through the speaker.
"How about we just get you back onto the Gravitator missus voice box?" Ester replied, dripping oil down his right arm and testing how well it swiveled and swerved. "Pretty sure that not so pretty little head of yours should've cooled down now."
Eva snatched the oil from his hands and began to do the same thing for her legs, the black liquid lightly dripping into the joints. [Unless you want to have me choke you in your sleep, be my guest.]
"The first step in getting me to start having nightmares about you. Joy." Ester sarcastically replied, his lifted leg shifting her hand holding the oil away from the core components that didn't take particularly well to oil.
"Also, are you trying to destroy the legs I spent a year on making on purpose?"
Eva stared up at him with a dead stare, and he couldn't shake off the feeling that if Eva found a way to shove sarcasm into that voice box of hers, she would've done it.
[Great Idea Ester, destroy the only things that give me the ability to walk, I truly wish to have that type of genius far away from me.]
It seems she already found the sarcasm button.
Ester moved to get up from the front seat, Eva shuffling away so that he could properly stretch his limbs.
Feeling the rest of his sleepiness fly away as he stretched his legs, Ester felt his back pop several times as it finally protested at its master for sleeping while sitting.
'Oh shush my spine, your suffering is my suffering.'
Feeling the protest of pain disappear as quickly as it appeared, Ester nodded his head in confused satisfaction.
Usually, he would have to tough out the pain done to his spine, but it seemed that it decided today wasn't going to be a day of pain.
And now that he was paying attention to his body, it was as if he wasn't trying to recover from the near fatal levels of blood loss that had occurred when they picked a fight with the bunch of Tork Family gangsters sent to Ash town.
Ester had an inkling of an idea as to why it was as he lifted his shirt and peeled off the day old bandages.
'Just what the void is that grey thing that the old fool gave to us?'
Eva, thinking the same thing, couldn't help the envious look on her face as she stared at his body, the rough bandages formed from ripped cloth being peeled off to reveal to pristine white skin.
[I shouldn't have injected you with that serum.]
"Talking about my death aside, how about you get in the car and channel the gravitator you glorified Radar?"
[Imma stab you in your sleep.]
"I'll bite you. I really will."
[I'm hungry.]
"Me to, so let's get going yeah?"
Ending the brief but enjoyable banter there, Ester grabbed the stick shift and shifted into first gear and enjoyed the sound of the engine blowing up on them.
"..."
[...]
They exchanged meaningful gazes as Eva slowly put the Interfacing helmet onto her head.
Ester grabbed her hand before she could plug the wires into the Gravitator port.
"Eva."
[Beep Boop, Radar's don't know how to replace engines. Beep Boop.]
"Using my words against me? I'll bite you. I really will."
[Beep boop beep BooOPPPP!!!!]
At the end of the increasingly heated argument, it ended up with Eva helping after Ester bit her.
---
Ester shifted the gears from the first to the second as they neared the mountains edge, the plastic coated path dipping down just before them as he kept an eye on his surroundings.
It was still as dark and dreary as before due to the heavy clouds in the sky but seeing as they were just the normal smoke clouds without any heavy discoloration this time, this could be considered good weather.
It made sense though, since the rust rain had just passed by, unless they were extraordinarily unlucky, the skies would remain clear of unnatural phenomena for quite some time.
'It's weird how clean this road is though.'
"Any luck on finding any rifts?"
[What does it look like?!]
Eva snapped and glared angrily at Ester before hurriedly closing her eyes as the Gravitator sent another pulse of information towards her head, forcing her to parse through the information before it quickly became useless.
Ester awkwardly coughed as he returned his gaze back to the front. Realizing once again how cranky Eva got when dealing with Runes.
But it was only a few moments later after he had asked his question did Eva speak again as he drove over the rust free road.
[I found a rift nearby.]
Ester blinked, his eyes darting backwards in surprise. "...Already?"
Eva took off the Interfacing helmet and wiped her sweat soaked forehead, fingers tapping onto the Runeboard connected to the Gravitator's complimentary port, shifting the directive to search only in the direction that she set it in.
[Yes, already.] Eva let out a long hiss through her throat. [You crazy biting bastard]
She rubbed the inside of her arm, emphasizing the area where he had bitten her impulsively earlier, an Ester sized bite tearing slightly at the raggedy cloth.
"I try to be a crazy biting bastard and not a cannibalistic bastard." Ester quipped, his eyes roaming the plastic rust red, grey mold and white plastic road.
"So where is it?"
[Just a moment.] Donning the helmet again and concentrating as the Gravitator sent another pulse of energy.
[It would be...] Eva scrunched up her brows. [The right from here.]
"Past this mountain or behind it?" Shifting the car into first gear as it neared a more level surface, Eva nodded her head.
[Yes]
"How far is it? Roughly speaking?"
Eva concentrated for a few moments as she searched for the relevant data hiding in her head, her eyebrows cutely scrunched up together.
[Uh... It would be... half a kilometer? Just a bit above that.]
"So not that far then."
Ester nodded his head as he looked at the rust-colored mountain, Ester paused for a moment when he saw greyish iron movement near the mountainside.
Feeling an uneasy feeling about this, he began to slowly ease up on the gas, causing Eva to open up her eyes in confusion. [What's happening? Why are we stopping? We're still super far from the rift.]
"I've realized it just now but..." Ester narrowed his eyes at the surroundings. "Don't you think it's weird that there's so little rust in our surroundings?"
Eva tilted her head, ready to retort before realizing the same thing as she looked around.
Common sense dictated that rust followed after rust rain, but now that she was looking at it properly, everything was picked clean of rust.
Instead of the rusty red color that would dominate the landscape for the coming days while the metal eaters slowly picked away at the oxidized metals, their surroundings were suspiciously devoid of rust.
Or metal that would bear this rust for that matter.
Ester felt a spark of realization flow through his head, a bulb seemingly manifesting over his head as he locked eyes with Eva.
["It's a"] [Grunger!] "Scrapling swarm!"
Eva raised an eyebrow as Ester realized how stupid he sounded, blushing slightly.
[Scrapling swarm? Really?]
Ester flushed just a bit more as Eva tilted her head in amusement, leaving little doubt to the mind that she would be smirking if she had a mouth to do it with,
[Tell me what made you think it was a scrapling swarm? No really. Tell me.] Eva made a show of looking around slowly. [Where is the swarm?]
Ester pursed his lips as he stared forwards. "Welllll... in front of us?"
Eva tilted her head in confusion as she looked for the distinctive round balls of sharp teeth and iron-grey shells.
She indeed found something with sharp teeth and iron-grey shells.
The problem was that the something was a whole lot bigger than the fist sized scraplets.
And there were a whole lot of them alighting from the mountain side that slowly got farther and farther away, the mountain appearing more and more like a giant snail shell.
Looking each other deep into the eyes, Ester started the car once more as Eva pulled out the sling hidden away in the backseat, loading it up with several nuts and bolts
Staring at the numerous Klatuls taking awkward flight to the sky, Ester quietly let the engine idle.
"Do you think those birds saw something else that wasn't us?"
[Do you want to test that hypothesis when they're flying straight towards us?]
Ester pushed on the gas in response.
---
5 DAYS SINCE THE RECKONING
+++
Fix your posture NOW
Tree with bad posture.