"W--- -- ----"
"Wa-- U- ----"
"God damn it wake up!" A woman cried as she looked down, her mouth twisted into a trembling cry as she screamed "Wake up E---!"
---
"!"
Hurriedly jolting up as the faintest remnants of those words cried into his mind, Ester was vaguely aware that a weight had just been lifted up and off of his chest as he looked around in abject confusion due to how unfamiliar his surroundings were.
Then the memories came rolling back like the big backed Ergul's who had nothing better to do than ruin someone's day in a rolling fashion.
'We were just flying...'
Recalling the sensation of briefly floating up into the air as the Driller flipped over a large crack on the ground, the floating sensation was rudely interrupted by a wall in the path of the flipping Driller.
And swiftly following up on the crash which left him slamming into the wall of the Driller, the gate which had enough of how many years of neglect since the people manning the array had left swiftly broke apart from the abuse of a flying Driller, collapsing onto the Driller and burying them deep underneath the ground.
Of course there was some bias linked to whatever visions he just had, but it stood to reason that a gate as big as that wouldn't leave things half buried.
For some reason though, Ester had a small feeling that he was forgetting something.
'But if I forgot it, it probably wasn't important enough to remember anyways' Rubbing the side of his aching head as he shoved the weird feeling to the back of his mind, he moved.
Trying to push himself up and off of the ground and wondering if it was in fact the ceiling if they were flipped around, Ester grimaced and looked down to see absolutely nothing.
Which sucked since he really did like to see.
But with the lights completely destroyed and rendered into the glass and plastic mix of shards that he felt on the palms of his hand it was safe to say the lights had been broken.
Either that or his eyes had popped, and seeing 'Heh' as he didn't feel any pain in his eyes as of of yet, it stood to reason that the lights had been broken and his eyes hadn't been popped.
But to make sure that his eyes hadn't popped and he wasn't suffering from cut nerves 'Which is doubtful because of my fecking waist.' Ester opted to turn on the lights using his arm.
'It's complicated and hard work trying to mod on some Lights onto my already heavily modded right arm without making it clunkier and slower than need be.'
'So I didn't' Groping around in the darkness, Ester felt the small indentations on his right arm, allowing him to peel back the metal plating, exposing a crystal Aether battery which let out a soft light.
Voila, a flashlight.
'That confirms it, my eyes haven't popped.' Squinting as his eyes got used to the soft blue light, after a few breaths of time when his eyes got used to the low light levels, Ester finally was able to assess what had happened to his waist.
And it didn't look good in the slightest.
Shirt blotched in a dark reddish hue as dark as his surroundings, a constant throbbing pain brought his attention to the large gash on the side of his waist, a sizeable metal desk sized hole formed in his flesh.
Ester didn't doubt that if he were to look at the place where he had flown into earlier due to Eva's reckless driving that he would find his own blood congealed around the edges.
Letting out a soft hiss as he pushed himself up, Ester looked around, using the dim light to confirm whether he was on the ceiling or on the floor.
Glass shards intermingled with plastic fragments on the ground, reflecting the light from his Aether battery.
It reminded Ester of the stars that he rarely saw when the Dumpers penetrated the thick cloudy atmosphere.
Looking around in the near absolute darkness interrupted only by his arm's battery, the darkness's favored cousin, silence lay heavy in his surroundings, interrupted only by his own labored breaths and softly beating heart.
Grunting with pain as he shifted his arm to shine on different parts of the driller, the soft blue light eventually settled on an unmoving lump next to him.
'Why is there a lump here?'
Feeling the niggling feeling he shoved to the back of his mind rear its eager head, the feeling prompted the rest of his memories stalled by blood loss and confusion to return.
Chemical signals fired in his brain neurons as Ester's eyes widened, finally recalling the Woman who took up the vast majority of his life.
"Eva?"
Ignoring the pain in his open waist as he half forcefully twisted his body round to the left, he grabbed the lump as his cognition dulled by the dark finally recognized the unique and easily memorable head of black hair.
Angling his arm in such a way that the Aether battery shined its soft blue light onto her unmoving visage, it exposed the pale as medical gauze skin merged with the dark as ebony stool metal.
"H-hey, Eva. Are you good?" Trying and failing to keep the tremor from his voice, Ester grabbed her face and forced it to look at him, her grey eyes closed, hopefully not for forever.
Releasing her face and slipping a hand underneath her shirt, he felt for her heartbeat on her chest and let out a sigh of relief when he confirmed that her heartbeat still functioned albeit a bit weak.
But that was just a matter of course on the trash planet filled to the brim with harmful gases, some of which that would induce heart attacks if breathed in wrong.
"I would be mad at you if you got hurt after you used me as a shield."
Lightly cursing at Eva while ignoring the fact that he himself had voluntarily covered her body with his own, Ester grimaced while feeling once again the pain in his side.
But this time, the pain wasn't something he could just ignore.
'What the Void?'
Trying and failing to angle the arm battery in such a way that it could illuminate his side, he instead used his hands to grope around at the wound, trying to find out what was the cause of his pain.
A wriggling thing was the answer.
'Fecking curses.' Cursing however ironically at the curse, Ester tightened his grip around the curse as it started to squirm around in his wound violently, the pain nearly making him black out a second time.
But if he blacked out now, he would be either forced to use a high amount of Aether crystals to flush the curse out of his system or endure long enough for his immune system to deal with the Aether powered disease.
And if this type of curse was one of the incredibly rare ones that were able to attack his brain or heart, he might as well roll over and die.
Rare as they were, the odds of them being the one in his hand still existed and Ester wasn't feeling like gambling with his life as of yet.
Letting out a pain filled groan as the Curse violently resisted his attempts at removing it from the blood soaked home that it was trying to move itself into, after a few pain filled seconds that felt like minutes, Ester finally removed the Curse trying to stuff itself into his side, bringing it over to his Aether battery and observing its small form.
Resembling a little furry blob of slime, the thin hairs on its surface shifted angrily as it roared at the indignation of being forcefully removed from the new blood soaked home it had just found.
That roar of indignation didn't last long however as the Aether powered Bacteria forgot the indignation quickly, instead shifting its anger to the hand currently holding it aloft.
Shifting into several different hues of colors, some of which Ester didn't even know existed like that color that seemed to be a mix of blue and red, Ester watched its hairs shift like living waves as he moved his metallic hand over it.
Squirming violently as it sensed its impending doom, Ester clenched his mechanical fist, briefly feeling a resistance that swiftly gave way with a crack, the bundle of hairy slime falling apart at the seams as the core holding it all together broke apart.
He could've chosen to keep it in a glass jar where it would then be sold to a Body Splicer for whatever they had on hand, but it was doubtful that whether there would even be an intact jar in the Driller.
'And now that I think about it, I wonder if the Judgement Bellflower is still alive.'
It seemed weirdly intelligent for a plant so Ester wouldn't put it past the plant to hold down its protective coverings by itself.
'Woah I'm feeling woozy.'
Feeling the aftereffects of blood loss strike his head with a light feeling, he shook his head and grabbed Eva by the shoulders again, dragging her closer to him in the case that another one of those curses thought to appear and attack the vulnerable Eva.
The odds of there being more than one curse was low, but again, Ester wasn't the type of person to bet on the low odds.
Easily ignoring the fact that just a few days where he had bet on the incredibly low odds of surviving the destruction of C-Point to destroy that corrupted, he laid her head onto his lap, her soft hair splayed against his thighs.
Running his fingers against that grey hair of hers, Ester felt his head dip slightly as the aftereffects of blood loss hit him again.
'Ugh, please for the Love of the Architects Eva, wake up and help your only friend will you?'
Pain of the curse already forgotten as his head dipped lower and lower as it had been transformed into a weighted core, Ester struggled to keep his head aloft and awake as his eyes focused and unfocused.
Forcefully keeping awake by digging his fingers into his side where the Curse had dug a small hole in an attempt to move into the house known as his body, the blood loss only got worse that way as his head dipped lower and lower, his eyes slowly but surely falling closed.
He faintly registered the head on his thighs flinching as his head slumped over hers,
'Ah so the sleeping beauty is awake now eh?'
Feeling the last strands of his consciousness fade away with that realization, everything went black.
---
'She' woke up as everything shook around 'her'.
'She' looked around with curious confusion as everything shook around 'her'
This was the second time 'She' woke up, but this was the first time 'She' wasn't hungry.
'She' remembered something.
No this wasn't the first time 'She' wasn't hungry was it?
There was a time before where 'She' wasn't hungry.
When 'He' appeared.
Trying to remember what 'He' looked like, the world around 'Her' continued to shake.
Then light began to pour down from above.
Thoughts freezing in place as 'She' stared at the bright blue pillar of light in the sky, waves originating from the blue pillar pushed at the surrounding clouds, exposing the stars in the sky.
'She' stared blankly at the blue pillar that soon disappeared.
Feeling the shaking around 'Her' disappear soon after the blue pillar disappeared 'She' slowly crawled out of the ground.
'Her' twisted limbs broken by the plastic and steel rocks twitched as 'She' instinctively corrected her body.
Feeling more at home in 'Her' body, 'She' looked around and became more hungry.
Would 'He' fill that hunger permanently for 'Her'?
Finishing her corrections 'She' took in a deep breath and sucked in her surroundings, briefly sating the hunger in 'Her' as she began to walk.
The Corrupted of C-Point still lives.
+++
I swear. I get into a flow state near the end of the deadline and when I lose it it's already pass the Deadline and I have to schedule it for tomorrow
Tree
[Rewrite]