"Ow ow ow..." Ester groaned quietly as he slowly woke up from unconsciousness, his eyes slowly cracking open underneath the crackling buzz of semi functioning lights. "Everything hurts..."
Sore in every sense of the word, even just wiggling his fingers caused an anching sensation to feedback into his mind.
'Is this what being thrown from a slingshot is like? No wonder they always bore holes into people.'
Sympathizing with the rocks he usually threw at the foreheads of people until they died, after several moments of wiggling his limbs to confirm that amongg all his sore body parts there wasn't the unfortunately familiar pain of losing a limb, he let out a sigh of relief.
Letting his head fall back onto the furry surface of the bat monster he had just stabbed an unknown range of time ago, he felt the sticky sensation of blood soak into the hair of his head but ignored it...
'No I can't ignore it.'
Realizing that it would cause more trouble than its worth if someone caught sight of his hair color, Ester forced himself to move through the aching sensations plaguing his body and raised both of his arms.
Or at least he tried to.
Feeling something stop his right hand, Ester frowned and opted for using just his left arm.
Adjusting his hood with his free hand, Ester turned to look at what happened to his arm and felt his heart skip a beat when he came face to face with a mouth full of teeth clenched around his arm.
Then he noticed the four dull red eyes placed above the mouth full of jagged teeth.
'...' Staring at the dull eyes reminiscent of the dead, Ester slowly placed a hand over where his heart would be, feeling the dull thud of the Respirator's pneumatics.
'That was... not nice.' Taking in several deep breaths of stale air to calm his heart speeding away on adrenaline, upon collecting himself metaphorically, he turned to collecting himself literally.
Said action involved taking out the arm stuck in the Bat Monster's mouth.
Getting onto his knees to get better leverage on the jaw wrapped around his arm like a constrictor and its prey, Ester grunted and pushed the heavy jaw the same size as his torso upwards, allowing access to the arm trapped inside.
*Schlick...*
Pulling away the blade embedded into its skull and was the primary cause for its death, Ester winced at the sound of twisting metal as he pulled his arm out fully.
*Thud*
Letting the jaw snap closed once he got it free, Ester turned to look at his arm to assess the damages.
'Yeah... I'm not going to be able to use this thing for now.' Ester thought as he grimaced at its appearance.
No matter how optimistic the glasses he put on it was fucked, plain and simple to the point it hurt.
Staring at the large holes bored into his arms to the point that he could see to the other side thanks to those crazy strong teeth he was extremely tempted to take for some arrow heads, Ester tested how extensive the damage was.
*Snap*
Then he had to watch as the pneumatic sections acting as his ligaments split apart, making his arm fall limply in the opposite way arms were meant to go.
Ester felt his eyes twitch at the sight of his arm limply swinging the blade around.
'I literally just tapped you... but I guess that's what I get for thinking that it would be fine when there's holes bored into it.'
Letting out a sigh, Ester forced himself to look at the positives of the situation.
'Since my arm was still moving that means this thing should still be safe...'
Twisting around to reach at his shoulder, with a deft twist of the wrist, he opened the small panel that hid the Aether battery from the world.
Glancing at its glowing innards, Ester let out a sigh of relief when he saw the glowing blue crystal lying peacefully within its case without a single scratch riddling its tempered glass shell.
'It would be horrible if the shell broke after all.'
Aether Sickness was a thing, and it was still horrible.
Recalling the senasations of nausea, dizziness and weakness that he had felt some time ago when he entered the boundary zone separating Realspace and the Weavespace, Ester closed the small panel.
Lightly leaping to his feet with a hup of effort, he turned from staring at the dismal state of his arm to staring at the dismal state of the place he was in.
It wasn't good objectively speaking.
The walls? 2 of 4 were intact thanks to the bat monster crashing straight into Junk Bunk at an angle.
The ceiling? Half of it was was gone thanks to the bat monster again, crashing straight into the building at an angle.
The floor? Mostly crumbling thanks to, again, the bat monster crashing straight into the megastructure at an angle.
'That bat monster was more destructive than I thought.'
Ignoring the fact that this was all started when he had the insane idea of mounting the bat monster to stop it from harassing him unilaterally which then ended up in its death and his own panicked piloting, Ester hopped over the broken wings and chunks of concrete to reach the exterior of Junk Bunk.
Poking his head out of the bat shaped hole in the wall, Ester felt the harsh drops of rain falling down harsher than before, the energy drink green cascading downwards like a broken faucet.
Wiping his goggles so that he could at least sea what was in front of him, Ester looked downwards and estimated the distance
'Roughly speaking I went down... 150 floors?'
From the roughly 200 floors in his memories to only 50 to go thanks to the chaotic crash landing, it was quite the leap in number.
'It's a miracle I only ended up with a broken arm and some muscle pain from all that.'
Usually at such heights, the only outcome was a very violent greeting with the ground and him turning into a particle pressed plate.
'But as they say, if it already missed, don't look a gun down its barrel. '
Listening to the sound of rain fall down on the side of the building like drums, Ester glanced downwards and weighed his options.
Go down on the outside like before? Or go down using the stairs?
Both had their downsides, such as rain for one and people for the other but-
*Grrr*
A growl derailed his train of thought, directing it towards another path as he straightened his spine.
'I forgot since its been such a long time since I've lingered this long on the surface but...' Ester glanced at his blood soaked self. 'Blood attracts attention doesn't it?'
Bad, carnivorous, hungry attention.
Ester turned to the side where the source of the growling was coming, he spotted the cone shaped source of the hungry attention.
'Correction, sources'
Glancing to the side from where more of these cone shaped sources appeared from the shadows growling all of the way, Ester instantly recognized them.
'Rotlings.'
Corpse eaters that not only ate corpses, but also made them.
Honestly speaking, it was harder not to recognize the corpse eaters with their iconic cone shapes.
Some people could mistake them for their grey colored metal eating siblings the Scraplings, but unlike the Scraplings whose mouths were sported on the sharp ends of the cone, the Rotlings had mouths on the flat ends making it relatively easy to identify the two cousin species.
And if they still didn't find the difference, they would find out the hard way when the Rotlings latched their flesh rending teeth into them.
'But random thoughts aside, I guess that answers my question of whether to stay on the outside or the inside of Junk Bunk.'
Since their four sharp feet were more than capable of clinging onto walls, Ester would be willingly signing his death warrant if he still wanted to climb down the outside of Junk Bunk.
'And I really don't want to die on this Architect forsaken planet yet.'
Thinking that, Ester readied his arm blade only to belatedly recognize the fact that his sword arm was currently out of commission.
'...'
Switching to his other arm, Ester thanked the architects as he grabbed the Screwdriver hanging off of his waistband.
'At the least I found out a use for the screwdriver.'
Deftly spinning the makeshift weapon in his hand until its pointed end was now pointing inwards, Ester leapt forwards.
---
"...And that's the gist of how I came here." Ester finished.
[...]
Staring at Ester with eyes filled with a mixture of emotions as she digested what he had just said, Eva let her head hang low as she stared bluntly.
[So-so it's a-a given that t-the psy-psycho g-gang leader knows we-we are a-alive.]
"Sadly yes."
Eva buried her face into her hands. [...I-I spent a-a-a whole w-week wait-aiting for y-you you know?]
"...I really thought there would be other survivors."
[...]
"..."
[...L-lets just l-leave before th-things get w-worse.]
"That's good with me."
---
25 DAYS SINCE PROJECT VOID BUFFER FIRST FIRED ITS FLAMES
13 DAYS SINCE PROJECT VOID BUFFER FIRED ITS FLAMES THE SECOND TIME
13 DAYS SINCE THE CORRUPTED OF C-POINT BEGAN 'HER' HUNT
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