Chapter Text
Day 35 of the 7-day trip to…somewhere, he never bothered to ask.
32 days since they picked up a new alien.
The 205 person crew of the ship has been dead for 15 days.
The power has been out for 21 days and the backup generators went out after 6 days.
The door to the bridge is jammed and unable to open.
They have been out of fuel for 27 days, and floating aimlessly since the large anthropomorphic boar-like alien blew a hole in the fuel tank that, by some miracle, hasn’t caught fire, yet. Luckily the fuel leak is contained to the lower floor, leaving it flooded. The Boar seems to avoid that floor, most likely due to the awful smell, as it probably has a sensitive nose. Ranboo avoids it as to not start a fire.
Meanwhile, he’s been trying to find a way off this ship or at least fix his arm, but there’s not much he can do there. As it was crushed in one of the big sliding doors. Took him hours to get out, and now his left arm just hangs limply at his side, the metal casing and bone fractured at the forearm, just hanging on by the wires. It is very unhelpful when looking for something to repair themself with, as they can’t move stuff very well and the sparking exposed wires add to the fire hazard that is this entire shipwreck,
And for some reason, Ranboo is the only one The Boar has left alone. It killed all the humans. It killed the two security guard robots, and yet Ranboo is untouched. He doesn’t know if The Boar decided he’s not worth it or what, but after the first few times seeing each other, it mostly just ignores them now. Not completely, it will still stare at them sometimes, but must think they aren’t interesting enough to stick around.
Unfortunately, they are in the middle of one of their ‘staring contests’ right now, looking at each other from across the cafeteria. Ranboo has the height advantage, and the lack of eyelids and well…eyes, unfortunately that’s where the advantages end, as The Boar has the strength advantage and is very intimidating. It isn’t quite as tall but is still very tall, and muscular, a pig like-face, with two large tusks, thick pink fur, that’s in a long braid on its head, and blood red eyes, and despite having eyelids and needing to blink, has yet to lose a staring contest.
Mostly because Ranboo is exceptionally bad at pretty much everything. He’s never lasted more than thirty seconds. You’d think having a screen for a face would make it impossible to lose, but his cracked and glitchy face tends to flicker, which is basically blinking. Or they lose balance and fall over. Which is unfortunately common, as he has some defects that lead to him falling over and not seeing walls coming before it’s too late, and just being very clumsy overall.
But luckily this time he’s got his working hand on the back of a chair in the middle of the cafeteria, so no falling over, but they still can’t avoid the flickering. Unfortunately there’s no way to know when it’s going to happen, so all he can do is stare at The Boar across the room. Its pale, once white, shirt now has dark reddish stains all over it from the crew that once lived here, the rope belt on its black pants is adorned with bones, some from the humans, and others being from some things back where this alien is from. Its got a floor length cape made from the hide of some red animal with white fluff on the inside and edges.
Unfortunately the staring is cut short as the ship lurches and groans like it hit something. Most likely an asteroid or some other debris, but whatever it was, it causes Ranboo, The Boar, and the only chairs still standing, to fall over. It’s not the first time they’ve hit something, with the ship drifting through space and all, but it is rather inconvenient.
The Boar grumbles some annoyed sounding noises, as it gets up. Ranboo decides not to bother and just stays face-planted on the floor. Unfortunately The Boar has other plans, it slowly makes its way over to Ranboo’s lifeless body, nudges him with its foot and lets out a huff.
“I’m n-not de-dead if that’s what you’re ask-asking,” His voice glitches and stutters, he was never really ‘alive’ to begin with.
The Boar snorts and grabs Ranboo by the shoulder, pulling them to their feet. There’s not really much he can say when he knows the other can’t understand.
The Boar’s face is completely unreadable to Ranboo. The best he can do is compare it to similar looking species, and he knows a lot of species, but even with that in mind there’s multiple different options. The relaxed eyes could be bored, the flick of the ear could be annoyed, the slow swaying of the tail could be angry, and the rigid posture could be nervousness. Ranboo’s never had such a hard time reading people and animals emotions, because well…that’s literally his job.
The Boar emits a low hum and prods Ranboo’s broken arm that’s just hanging there uselessly. The Boar stares blankly at Ranboo before turning and walking out the cafeteria, leaving him only a little confused, as The Boar doesn’t seem to like people that much. (considering all the people they killed) Even though Ranboo isn’t really a person, he gets the feeling The Boar doesn’t know what a robot is. He decides to just go back to looking for something to fix his arm with.
Just two hours and twenty seven minutes later, Ranboo’s rummaging is interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of a ship landing in the hangar, which is either really good or really, really bad. Ranboo drops what he’s doing, and stumbles his way through the steel gray halls into the hangar. Like most of the doors, the door has been smashed through by the boar. In the middle of the hangar, surrounded by rubble is a ship, with three new living people exiting, they are all wearing dark jackets with some logo on them and shoulder mounted flashlights, they all look less than friendly. Probably here to scavenge and sell stuff, Ranboo isn’t looking to be sold for parts, but that ship is the only way out of this wreck.
“He-Hello!” He shouts loudly, voice glitching.
The three aliens snap their heads to Ranboo’s direction. The tallest of them, with grayish armor-plated skin, six big black eyes, large sharp teeth, and void black hair, is the first to talk.
“They got one of those freaky robots.” They whisper to the little spiky, reptile-like alien, probably not realizing that Ranboo can hear them across the room.
“It looks, and sounds, busted up, but its gotta have somethin’ worthwhile in it.” The third alien rasps through their full face gas mask, one of their four hands resting on their weapon. So Ranboo pretends to not have heard any of that.
“Do any of you have elec-electrical tape? Our ship needs some re-repairs.” Ranboo asks, the pirates look taken aback by the absurd question, it’s obvious that this ship will need more than some electrical tape.
“‘Our ship’? I think everyone else is dead, buddy.” Spiky quips glancing around at the blood stain on the floor, then the walls, then, with a more nervous look, the ones on the ceiling, their red eyes widen.
“O-oh, well I’m not the only one he-here.” The others pause and share a glance. Masky flips the safety on their weapon off.
“So where’s your friend, are they another…uh…robot?” They say, looking around.
“I wouldn’t sa-say we are ‘fr-friends’, and they do their-r own thing, so I don’t see them m-much.” Ranboo says, as he picks up a metal pipe looking thing off the floor, spinning it in his hand.
“How about you go find your ‘friend’, and we’ll get you that tape or something.” Ranboo wobbles, and leans against the wall considering the options here. He then decides the best option is to throw the pipe at the wall making a very loud noise. That makes Six-eyes cover their ears.
“The fuck was that for!?” They shout, rather angrily.
“You know what, that’s it!” Masky shouts, then pulls out their baton-looking weapon that sparks like a taser, or cattle prod at the end. But before they can step forward, the loud booming footsteps of a very aggressive boar-like creature make themselves known, causing the other two to grab their weapons. Ranboo moves out of the way of the doorway, and The Boar comes barreling in the room, stopping to look at the new intruders.
The Boar towers over all of them. Spiky starts shaking, and after a few seconds of silence, Masky lunges forward, baton at the ready, unfortunately, bravery isn’t too helpful here. The large boar catches Masky’s wrist in a crushing grip and casually tosses Masky over their shoulder, where they collide with the top of doorway in a sickening crunch, they fall lifeless to the floor in a puddle of their own silver blood.
Six-eyes runs at The Boar and skillfully manages to dodge the punches, and get a few hits with the taser, but it has little to no effect. Six-eyes is fast, but not fast enough, as The Boar grabs them by the neck and begins strangling them while slowly crushing their head with their other hand.
There’s a loud crunch, as black blood slowly oozes out, Spiky snaps out of it and shouts at Ranboo “You stupid robot, you knew this would happen!”
They squeak as the crushed head of Six-eyes is thrown at them. Ranboo slowly stumbles over to the pirates ship, and responds “I-I guess I did.”
He disappears into the ship as the screams of Spiky fill the air. Ranboo looks around the small ship. It’s at most six rooms, the cargo bay with the entrance, the bridge, a bedroom or two, maybe some kind of common room, and a bathroom. The cargo bay is dark, but much lighter than the pitch blackness of the old ship. The lights are a low orange color, and the room is full of boxes, probably stolen goods. Across the room there’s a door and a button panel right next to the hallway leading to the rest of the ship.
Ranboo walks to the door in a few steps, and opens it to see a small closet with cleaning supplies and a toolbox. Ranboo slides it off the top shelf, it’s rather heavy, but they manage not to lose their grip. They set it on the floor and open it, beginning to rummage around for something useful, not that he knows what half this stuff is, but eventually he finds electrical tape, or possibly duct tape, or some other kind, he can’t tell.
But it’s tape either way. He holds it in his working hand and tries to come up with a way to get the tape off the roll. They try to grab it with their other hand but they can barely move their fingers, so that’s not gonna work. He sits on the floor and uses his foot to hold the tape roll still as he pulls a long strip. He sticks it to his arm and uses the roll to wrap around the broken part to hold it together. They still can’t move it too well, but at least it won’t fall off now. He manages to tear a bit more tape off and patch some smaller holes and gashes. He slips the roll onto his wrist and grabs the closet doorway to pull himself up.
They turn back to the ship's entrance and see The Boar standing there, hands still covered in blue and black blood with a few new bones on their belt, looking hesitant to fully enter the new ship. Ranboo doesn’t know if he should actually let them in, because they don’t have the best track record of not wrecking ships, but they could be protection, and it would be cruel to leave them here (that and Ranboo probably couldn’t stop them if he wanted to).
They decide to risk it, if The Boar doesn’t feel threatened, hopefully they won’t break stuff. Ranboo gestures for them to come in all the way. They seem to weigh the options before taking a step in and looking around, as if expecting more pirates to jump out. Which, now that he thinks about it, is very possible, but Ranboo’s been quite loud, so if there are any they already know they’re here. Ranboo decides to ignore this.
They hit one of the buttons on the panel and the cargo-bay door slams behind The Boar, who makes an alarmed squeal at the sound. Ranboo turns and walks past three doors, to the end of the hallway, where there is one of those retractable staircases that most likely leads to the bridge, he hits the controls and the staircase clunks and slowly comes down. They clumsily climb up the stairs, clinging to the railing for their non-existent life, because there is no way they can walk up stairs and not fall. The bridge is completely deserted, there’s obviously nobody else here.
There are two worn seats in front of a very complex-looking console. He stumbles over and sits in the pilot’s chair, and spins to look at all the buttons, and levers, and switches, and a few screens, and a control wheel, and so many little blinky lights. It’s honestly very confusing and Ranboo almost gives up right there…but decides to look for a manual of some kind, which they find in a compartment under the control panel.
It’s a very large book, meaning this ship is most likely an older model, as paper manuals are becoming less, and less common. As Ranboo flips through the pages barely reading any of it, he hears the stairs creak under the weight of The Boar. They slowly creep across the room and sit in the chair next to them and begin to examine the control panel, Ranboo spares a glance at them.
Ranboo eventually finds the autopilot section of the manual. After a few failed attempts, he manages to activate it and a screen lights up with a prompt to enter a destination. Now to find somewhere to go. He’d take The Boar back to their homeworld, but the crew picked them up on an uncharted planet, it had no official name, Ranboo never even saw what it looked like.
They can’t go to a space station or a heavily populated planet, because new aggressive alien species and governments don’t really mix too well. They need a world with a smaller population so that they can stay away from as many people as possible, and preferably one with illegal activity already happening so they can blend in, that does narrow down the options. The Boar seems to have a thicker coat, and has multiple layers of clothes, so could they probably handle a colder planet, which is good because Ranboo needs to avoid overheating, and the cold would give them an excuse to cover up any defining features, thankfully, because it’s not like pirates, smugglers, and other criminals wouldn’t jump at the chance to sell a new species to some scientists or scrap a robot for some extra cash.
So Ranboo swipes over to the search tab but there’s a network error, he stares blankly and swipes to the next tab, by some miracle, it’s a list of previously visited worlds. At the top of the list, is a small moon named Snowchester, recommended as a frequently visited place with a five day distance at this ship's travel speed. He selects the moon and the ship begins to take off. It rumbles as it slowly exits the hangar. The screen reads ‘127 hours 56 minutes 15 seconds till arrival’.
As the number slowly ticks down, he looks over at The Boar, who seems mesmerized by the stars.
“Seems like we are going to be st-stuck together a while” Ranboo says, as they look out at the bright stars, the stardust, and solar flare shining, The Boar mutters something back in their own language,
This is going to be a long five days.