Makin' New Friends

A Chapter by Lemunculus2

Longest chapter yet, but please bear with me!

Makin' New Friends

Chris rubbed his eyes, trying to get them to open enough so he could see what was going on. It was like when someone turned the light on in your room while you were sleeping--you kind of just want to turn away and hiss. But it was well worth it to open them.

There was a vaguely person-shaped hole in the side of the corridor from which light was continuously streaming. But that wasn't the important part. Whoever came out of there was now fighting his captor, and doing a really good job of it. There's not really anything like watching two beings that are very accustomed to battle square off against each other.

As his sight adjusted, the first thing he saw was Pim on the ground, her adversary on top of her, his hands around her neck. Chris couldn't tell much about him except he might be wearing something like Pim's cassis. It was the best look of him he got before the fighting started.

Pim overpowered him, flipping him over her head. She brought herself with him, landing in a position where she should have been on top of him, but he was already gone--she jumped up, ducking just as a leg came out of nowhere and swept over head. And then he was in front of her. The attack was quick, furious, and centered. She blocked three punches with her arms and grabbed his wrist on the fourth. Before he reacted, she took hold with the other hand and swung him around, creating another opening in the wall with his body when she released.

He reappeared behind her, slapped the side of her head, and was gone again. She growled in irritation and grabbed a locker from the untouched wall against her back, lifting it as if it were just an oversized candybar, her fingers creating creases in the metal with the force of her grip. Chris didn't see anything giving away the position of her enemy when she pivoted, her makeshift weapon colliding with thin air, becoming concave around some invisible object. There was a groan, and a body appeared at her feet.

Pim raised her right hand, watching, it seemed, in admiration of her own power as those deadly ivory claws grew out of her fingertips. She turned her attention back to the fight to notice that her adversary was watching, too, and both Pim and Chris heard the resounding "Yikes." The tone of his voice was filled only with the need to escape her range as she came at him, a harbinger on the wings of death and a feral need to kill. Violently. And bathe in the blood of her victims. Chris wasn't sure where he got the impressions, or the images, but they flooded his mind--bodies on the ground, the screams of others who had gotten on the bad side of her disposition and stayed there as she escorted them into the afterlife. Devoid of mercy.

He wasn't sure he wanted to know what she really looked like, if this was her mask.

The focus of her attention swiveled on his belly, using his arms to propel himself back into the shadows. She followed him in, only to reappear seconds later, sliding across the floor on her knees with both hands of claws out and crossed against her chest.

His head rolled into the light. Pim stood up, walked over, and picked it up, claws retracting in order to hold it. To Chris's surprise, she lifted it to her face and acted as if she were looking inside through the bottom. She dropped it suddenly and turned around as an armored foot--No talons, Chris noted--came out of the darkness and struck her in the chest, throwing her back several feet.

He wondered why she hesitated to attack when she got back up. And then he saw.

There were two of them. Their bodies looked alien except for their heads, which were very human, with messy sorrel hair and eyes of the same color, only a lighter shade. Twins.

Pim cracked her knuckles and gestured them forward. "Come at me."

Her invitation was passionately accepted. Chris was having trouble identifying their individual movements at this point--all three of them moved around with a supernatural agility that was hard on his eyes to follow. The light from the wall behind highlighted them and cast their shadows on the ground in front of him. They flurried around like dancers on fast-forward.

There was a break in the fight. Pim held one of them by the neck. The other hovered behind her, frozen. She turned to look. He faded away, shimmering like a mirage. She cocked her head at the one in her clutches. "Ah. Clever."

"I try." The words were said in a very distinguishable British accent, and they didn't echo through his mind like Pim's did. It actually sounded like he was several feet away from him, which was what it was supposed to sound like. He gave a crooked, rogueish smile before she slammed him up against the lockers along the other wall. He grunted in pain when his head hit the metal.

"Hey, Hammie, you can come out now."

"Are you sure? Cause that--"

"I'm sure."

Chris came into the light, eyes on Pim's catch. "Hammie?"

She shrugged, one hand around the throat of her prize. "I don't like syllables."

"Yo," said the guy on the lockers. He looked at Chris. "I'm Toby."

Pim turned back towards him. Her grip on his neck visibly tightened, and he struggled with the pain of it. "I reeeally don't like it when people talk while I'm talking."

Chris's chest tightened with worry. For all he knew, Pim was human too, but he wasn't going to let her kill anyone right now. Not while he had a say. Although after watching the battle, he was pretty damn sure that if she didn't want him to have one, he didn't. Oh well, it was worth a try.

"Pim. Stop." He laid a hand on her elbow, about five inches above his head. "You can't just kill people."

"Why not? It's fun."

"Well, so is replacing oreo filling with toothpaste. But you don't see me offering you cookies."

"He attacked me."

"You won. So be the better...cassis-user, I don't know." His voice took on a serious tone. "He could help us."

She sighed. "We couldn't trust him. He's slippery."

Toby piped up. "He's also right here, and his legs are falling asleep."

Chris and Pim exchanged a look--or rather, Chris exchanged a look with her blank face--before her head came around to focus on their captive. "So. Give me a reason to keep you alive."

The slippery one in question glared at her. "I'm not talking to the dog. I'm talking to the master."

He probably regretted his words as she used both hands to take him by the neck and scrape him along the line of lockers like clothing on a washboard. She slammed him up against the opposite wall as a guttural growl crawled up out of her throat. "Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Chris facepalmed, overcome with exasperation. "God, Pim, you're going to kill him by accident!"

"No, I'm not," she said patiently, and using the exact same tone on Toby, she tightened her fingers with each word of her question, "What, does, that, mean?"

He grimaced, but the fire hadn't left his eyes. Getting the words out was an obvious difficulty. "It means I wanna talk to the man in charge. Thats him." He couldn't nod, Pim was holding him too tightly, but his eyes went to Chris.

"Me? Why me?"

"Well, lets see." He held up his hands in front of his face and began to count on his fingers. "You're not wearing a cassis, you have her at your beck and call--" Pim clutched his neck in deadly warning. His hands went to hers in a useless attempt to pry them off. "--And you refer to her by title. As for your clothes, you're not wearing a bodysuit, which is quite the style around here. It only stands to reason that you're who I need to be conversing with. I knew this one would only get in my way, so...surprise attack. You know the dealio."

Chris ran his fingers back through dark brown hair and rested them there. "Okay, wait, wait, wait. You--" he looked at his captor, "--your name's not Pim?"

She snorted. The sound echoed in his ears like her words always did. "No. What kind of name is Pim?"

"But I thought--"

"I can kind of see how he would be confused," Toby said. "I mean, titles are names, sort of. Every title was someone's name once. Pim, Pyrthor, they were both people who did extraordinary things."

"Horrible things." Pim's--or, what the hell was he supposed to call her now?--voice took on a somber, but quietly angry tone.

"Yes, horrible things, but things that earned them obvious reknown with these people. Of course, I'm only repeating what Siri tells me. And she doesn't tell me much. But I assume you both know about Leetu? I've never met the man myself. Thought you might be him. I thought I'd made the wrong choice giving this one back her cassis when I saw her with you."

"WHAT?!"

"Okay, okay shut up everyone," Chris half-yelled. "Too much information at one time. Pim, I have no idea what to call you, so I'm just gonna keep calling you Pim until we sort that out. Toby, after I woke up...Siri said something like Pyrthor Leetu took over the ship. Or made himself a captain. I don't know. Is that correct?"

"Yeah, he's the captain. Woke up from what now?"

"YOU'RE the one who brought me my cassis?!" Pim screamed indignantly.

"Hey, I thought you'd be pleased," Toby protested.

"I was in the SHOWER!"

Chris perked up. "They have showers in this place?"

"YOU hid my towel!"

"Yeah, I did, but hey, I replaced it with your helmet! You got control of your operating systems again. And plus I had a great view, so not totally a loss--"

His words were cut off as Pim squeezed his neck hard enough to make her fingers meet around it. "I changed my mind, Hammie.

"I think I'll kill him."

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