Chapter Text
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The core was blaring.
The lights changed from pale white to bright blue as red screens came down to alert them of a system failure. Certain doors were bugging out, repeatedly shutting and opening by themselves.
There was nothing he could do to prevent this; he had to get to the front—
“SYSTEM FAILING. LA-LANDING IS ADVISED.”
“HURRY, STABILIZE A COURSE!”
The captain yelled at him, passing the controls off to someone else, and he nodded and took over the GPS. He needed to find—
There was screaming when something exploded, which only drove him forward.
He had to hurry, but the screen was bugging out, and there was nothing he could see in the database that was close enough to—
He hit the button when he noticed a suitable place to land only a few astros away from them.
It was unmarked, the meter read it as breathable, but the atmosphere was—
“ATMOSPHERE AP-AP-PEARS UNSTABLE. DO YOU W-WI-WISH TO PROCEED?”
He slammed his fist down on the button again, knowing this was dangerous, but there was no other choice. They had to do this.
“Locking in!” He felt sick as he said it.
“PREPARE TO EN-EN-EN-T-TER UNMARKED T-TERRITORY.”
“EVERYONE HOLD ON!” The co-captain pushed the lever into high gear, this being the only way they survive. “DON’T LET GO!”
He followed the order, holding tight to the GPS system in front of him as the craft dived down. Everyone else held tight too, all of them screaming when fire started consuming the window, and the craft as a whole.
“W-W-WELCOME TO UNMARKED TERRITOOooorryy.”
The computer voice deepened as the systems went offline.
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He opened his eyes, everything hurt.
It was blurry, there was ringing.
There was rubble all around him. Metal, rock, sparking electricity from broken wires and consoles, machine juice, and redstone. In the midst of it all was him, and he couldn’t see anyone else from his spot on the ground, flat on his stomach.
Was he the only one…?
Wait, there was a shadowed outline of someone walking, getting closer to him.
Someone else made it! That’s great. He couldn’t do this one alone, especially when he was starting to crash again, and he couldn’t keep himself awake.
As his eyes closed, he realized he didn’t recognize this person.
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He felt… cold.
Something touched his face, stroking his cheek lightly.
“C’mon, wake up.”
Oh, he recognized that voice.
“I need you to wake up.”
She sounded desperate.
“There, there you go. Open those eyes of yours.”
He could hardly see when he managed to open his eyes, but he recognized her blurry face.
“Okay, hi, are you feeling okay?”
He nodded as well as he could.
“You’re grey.”
“I-It’s cold…”
“Oh, right! Hold on, I think I have some left over.” She rummaged around her clothes before pulling out a small bag of crystal-like things that were wrapped in paper. “Here, it’s all I have.”
He took it from her and carefully unwrapped one, before biting into it. Half of it shattered off and into his mouth, quickly spreading heat through his body. He couldn’t help but let out a breath in relief as the cold washed away.
“Th-Thank you, Pearl.”
“Of course, now, do you remember where we are?”
“Huh?”
“The GPS. Where did it say we were? I wasn’t paying attention, and Joel was too busy steering to clock it. Bdubs was too busy trying to time our landing, so you’re the only one who can tell us where we are, but some creatures came up to the crash site before any of us talked this through, and we saw those things trying to get to you.”
“Creatures?”
“I figure they’re the dominant species of this planet, because they’re literally everywhere.”
“Ah…” He rubbed his eyes, pushing himself to where he was properly sitting, instead of half-laying on this wall made of some kind of red-colored brick. “The inhabitants then.”
“Mm-hm.” Pearl nodded. “B-But, uh, you do remember what the GPS said, right?”
Does he…?
“Mumbo.”
“Yeah, I… I, uh, think M.U. should’ve… u-uploaded it to my comm before it lost connection?”
“That’s great!”
“Mm.”
At this point, he’d taken log of their surroundings. He’d say they were in this planet’s version of an ‘alleyway’. A rundown one if the overgrown green plants, cracked walls and ground, and long forgotten containment bins were anything to go by.
He was met with an unfortunate oversight when he checked his communicator, however.
“Oh, dear.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Due to disruption in the main server, the data hasn’t transferred over completely.” He reported, slightly guiltily as he built the system. “There’s going to be a standard week delay, unless I can get the main server back up.”
“We can’t do anything without that information.” Pearl didn’t seem happy, which made sense.
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. The systems were already failing, so it’s no surprise M.U. couldn’t transfer everything at once. It’s just kind of disappointing.”
“Yeah, sorry. I should’ve planned an extra server to backlog information in cases like this.”
“Didn’t you already have five of those?”
“I mean, yes, but I didn’t really plan for the last to fail, especially not so soon after the four servers I had in place before it.” He realized he was rambling negatively, which he promised to work on.
She sighed. “Come on, we should start heading to the others.”
“How are we supposed to get around all the inhabitants?”
“This place has kubs, so we can go around in that form without suspicion.”
“They have kubs?”
“Yes, I don’t think they’ll notice the difference between theirs and ours.”
“Okay.”
“Follow me.”
“Mm.” He gave a single nod.
She shrunk down first, morphing into her kub form, and he followed her lead, mostly because he had no clue where the other two were. Or exactly where the crash site was, now that he was thinking about it, but Pearl seemed confident, and he trusted her judgement.
It'd be fine.