Gunsmith Cats: Sci-Fi Original

[Qwaar]

So yeah, odd idea came up, here it is so far. Essentially I came up with the odd idea of what happens if an alien is introduced into the formula without the inclination to leave or the ability to become Gary Stu language barrier destroyer extraordinaire.

***

Thursday, June 12, low earth orbit region.

The bulbous vessel moved quickly through the vacuum, on the dark side of the planet, its dark- almost black- red hull utterly invisible to the human eye except for the brief points in which it came across the view of the numerous lights down below. Upon closer observation, there were also some small repeating lights glowing out from small view ports, the lights too brief and too dull for illumination however, and more familiar to the human concept of a klaxon. Perhaps by some interstellar creators whims, or merely an unbelievably large coincidence, this detail transcended cultures, as that is precisely what the lights were.

Inside the vessel, numerous creatures looking like the bastard children of dogs and deep sea jellyfish, scurried back and forth, luminescent flags being emitted from projectors on their 'shoulders' depicting their purposes. Technicians frantically feed sensor data too the vessel's bridge and engineering compartment, as they did their part to correct their course. The ship had a meager crew of 50 personnel, and unfortunately, none of them operated well under pressure. The ship was a merchant vessel, here solely for the purpose of following up the prospect of one of its older crew members, who had been to the world that grew closer even as the ship tried its best to halt such progress.

Its name could not be properly expressed using most languages on earth, though the Russian alphabet would have been able to provide a close approximation. It sat calmly in its quarters, staying out of the way of emergency crews, and merely sampling more of the delicacy that he had discovered. The sample in question was a spice, a rather common one on earth, but of course it hadn't developed anywhere else, and unfortunately the aliens hadn't quite caught on to the fact that the delicacy was one easy to reproduce with the resources on hand, leading them to this doomed mission. With the essentially genderless individual, was their faithful companion, a creature the size of a smaller guard dog, and looking like a cross between a centipede and a cockroach, lacking the wings of the latter, but with the heavily segmented flexible carapace of the former. The creature was not really sentient, though its evolutionary cycle couldn't be far do to the understanding it seemed to pull of the situation, not really seeming to believe it would survive the incident. It would have whined if it were a dog, as it was mostly concerned with the fate of its master, it was biologically dedicated to do so, having be bred as a security species, its greatest concerns were the protection of its master.

The ship had been aiming to come out of warp at a Lagrangian point close to the planet below, from where they would proceed stealthily on sub-luminal drives to acquire the priceless product below. The sensor data in question had been unknowingly distorted by the presence of a solar flare 5 years prior to the scan, the ship missed its exit point and the sudden reintegration of its mass to gravitational fields ripped large sections of the ship apart, the of the original 80 personnel, 30 had died in the immediate incident. Physiologically being less vulnerable to vacuum than most organisms, the other personnel exposed to the breaches had reached safety with minor injuries.

Their fate had been sealed however, the vessel's drives were seeming to recover, but too many fissionable materials had been ruined by exposure to conditions that their synthesized elements wouldn't hold under. The ship would soon lose main power, and the evacuation order would go out. The abandon ship order would go out, and the crew would make their way to escape pods. They were made with the arrogance that most worlds where the crew would travel would have the less dense atmosphere of their home-world.

In all likely-hood, the pods would break apart, just as the ship was starting to as it frantically tried to reverse its momentum, as it started to strike atmosphere. They would comply with the evacuation anyway, as there was no sense of safety to the vessel they resided in. The ships systems were failing, the hull was compromised, its life support had been gone for several minutes, though the remaining atmosphere would take some time to be rendered unusable.

Soon enough, a final change in the sound of the klaxon blared out, and the occupant and its companion left through the open door, solemnly walked down the hall, and entered separate single person pods. Normally pets would have been left behind, but with 30 fewer crew members even alive, much less actually able to reach this deck, there was a surplus. The pods automatically sealed themselves, and launched. One immediately crushed like a tin can as the cables meant to provide the power to raise the blast door had been severed in the incident, and the safety mechanisms had been spoofed by malfunctions from the residual solar radiation of the flare that caused this incident.

The other pod carried out, its early deployment giving it some extra time to plot a trajectory, a flawed one, that would coincidentally bring it down safely, due to the thinner air behind the burning remains of a portion of hull, and weather conditions thinning the atmosphere below. As the pod approached a series of lights clustered together 2000 feet below, the pod came apart around the occupant, finally succumbing to the stresses it wasn't designed for. The creature instinctively spread its legs and from its carapace extended a thick sheet like membrane, a vestigial form of gliding implement from the creatures roots as a jungle predator. The still relatively fast moving air mass below it snapped its limbs painfully back, as it warbled in agony, but it still managed to steady itself and bleed off more airspeed as it rapidly slowed down to its new terminal velocity, and began to angle itself towards the lights. When it landed it would seek out a warm dark region, hopefully with weak local organisms that it wouldn't hurt itself trying to feed on as it recovered from the wounds it just sustained from muscle strain and shrapnel. Then it would seek out its master, not accepting the fact that its pod was seemingly the only one to come close to making it.

***

Thursday, June 26, Chicago

Rally Vincent ducked behind a sedan as the bail jumper turned around and laid out a burst of fire from their glock 19 and its extended magazine. The rounds thudded heavily against the car as most didn't even come close to their target, due to a combination of the rounds being fairly weak and most striking the engine compartment. Rally still had to wonder for a moment why so many of her targets lately tended to be armed and so alert, she was starting to miss the stupid ones who thought everything was okay as soon as they got to an apartment outside of their usual district.

The man had a fairly decent bounty on him, and was a fairly scraggly guy, and she had the luck of spotting him on the was back to Gunsmith Cats where she was going to call Becky for info. Not especially eager to blow money when the moron seemed so easy to bag, she had blown her cover after parking and stalking him through an alleyway.

Thus leading us to where we are now, as they man with deficient aiming and ammunition conservation skills managed to carry himself on having carried and likely illegal and especially paranoid amount of ammunition, and also having exceptional ability to rapidly reload his glock. The man was an odd combination of traits in that regard, being skilled, yet not, a moron, yet observant, and a pasty white without a lot of muscle mass, but athletically able to run for some time. The difference from the atypical was starting to piss Rally off as it kept her from being able to reliably exploit expected flaws, due to his frequent unexpected bouts of ingenuity.

The bounty quickly ducked into an Indian ethnic shop intent apparently from escaping another door unseen, the hunter however saw the employee entrance a short distance down the alley, and quickly kicked down the door. As she entered the main room, the bounty was surprised, but once again responded irritatingly quickly by sweeping wildly past her dumping the rounds from his magazine. She ducked down behind the counter as the rounds hit the display shelf behind her and dumped powdered dry coriander all over her scalp and back. The suddenly popped over the counter as she heard the release of the magazine and fired a round from her prized handgun, and managed to destroy the trigger guard and trigger, as well as a significant portion of the mans finger.

At this point, something finally made sense about the man's reaction as he screamed and writhed on the floor, acting like the dork he had appeared to be, ostensibly not used to pain in large quantities. Rally quickly managed to subdue and cuff the man, not bothering to lecture him on the mistakes he had made due to the wave of irritation from the powder dumping into her now loosened collar and being worked into her neck as she shifted her leather coat back and forth.

After dumping him at the station, and quickly getting home to try and get the mess out of her hair before finally showing up at the Cats, so they could properly open and May could get assistance regarding customers. After a quick hot shower to seem visibly clean at least, she opened her window to let out the steam, and hopped back in her Cobra to get to the store.

***

The creature backed up quickly, as more water rushed from a pipe in front of it to splash in the foul waters below, the creatures long roach-like antenna gathering info about its contaminates and trying to determine when it would end. The creature would rather retreat to its nest to eat the bundle of prey it kept clasped to its belly with its centipede like pseudo limbs along its 'belly'. The creature was starting fear that it had been too long for it to find signs of its master, given that it would have had to alter its genetics to resemble the local sentient creatures. The locals were fairly dangerous entities, and the creature had observed some conflicts between them and observed their use of projectile weapons.

The creature was startled suddenly as it dropped one of its prey animals, and the rat's corpse was quickly washed away. The creature warbled in disappointment as he clumsily tried to grab it with a forelimb, but failed to do so. It quickly shifted its attention and primary sensory organs back to the pipe as the flow trickled, and once again it pulled the same scent from the flow. It was that smell the master continually ingested and decorated itself with. It was strong too. The master was at the residence above, the master was alive! The creature chittered with unrestrained delirious joy. It quickly and effortlessly clambered its way up one of the frequent access points and forced aside the metal covering before climbing out and replacing it. It then walked to the nearest hive structure, and grazed the ground with its antenna, before rushing up to the structure, the scent having lead from one of the personal transportation vehicles and terminating at the door.

Running around to the other side, hoping for a more advanced door that would open automatically, as too few seemed too here, and the few that did prompted screaming from the inhabitants before it could figure out what was different about those doors and the security doors with the single circular input device. Sadly, this side was primitive as well, featuring a semi-clear door followed by the apparent security doors. Suddenly, it heard a noise back in front, followed by the sound of the vehicle leaving. The creature ran back around hoping to catch its masters sight before they left again. Sadly, they only saw the departing toxins the mechanisms expelled from their rear. Dropping a half eaten rat on the walkway leading to the front door in despair, the creature wailed at the delay between reuniting with its master before spotting sensing the sound echoing strangely off an upper portion of the home. Raising its antenna to their full length before crying out again, it spotted an opening above, with some steam rising from it.

Resigning itself to waiting for its master's return it quickly scaled the wall and shifted aside the mobile covering over the opening, before entering the humid room and closing its entry point behind it. Moving into the small cabin to side, it ate its meal and set to cleansing itself of the particulates accumulated from its previous habitat. It would have to wait in this apparent cleansing area, as it was once again sealed by a security door, the creature wondered if perhaps the local creatures were paranoid given the frequency of the security type doors.

****

AN: So yeah, my idea here is utterly random but wouldn't leave my head, so I decided, what the hell, why not write it.

The idea is what if the Gunsmith Cats were forced to deal with something that is decidedly foreign to them. The largest portion of scenarios that they deal with are ones they either have plenty of information to deal with, or have friends they can ask for help who have what they need. So what happens if there is something nobody knows about.

The entirety of the ship crew is dead, and the security 'dog' is essentially delirious, and believes the scent of Rally to be the scent of its master. 'security doors' are also just doorknob variety doors.

I'm curious if anyone is interested in this concept, wants me to continue, and has ideas on how to do so. The idea was to insert this relatively early in the time line, for the sake of showing of a plot even or two without having to really deal with Rally's father as a character given I have jack for info on him as a character.

No dialogue so far because I'm also half asleep and don't trust myself not to screw up their speech patterns.

edit: also the intended mood of this is to be creepy prehorror, as opposed to happy go lucky ranma plots.

[bissek]

Even after Rally's reunion with her father, he drops out of the story again pretty quickly. I don't think he appears in the second series at all.