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Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Ch 4: S [Day 1 | 1810 hrs] A Friend Indeed...
Last post by TWilkins -About ten seconds later, very much alive and well, Sylvain tentatively opened his eyes, sheepishly moving his arms away from where they shielded his face, a waterlogged hazel glance flickering down towards where the creature was clamped above his knee, undulating as if trying to swallow, but evidently not achieving its result. It puzzled him. The creature’s fangs had been several inches long, more than enough that they should have pierced through his thigh muscle and possibly hit his bone, yet he scarcely felt any pain at all… He considered that the creature might have had some sort of analgesic venom, though the theory was swiftly disproven when the creature seemed to slide backwards off of him, flopping onto its back with a rather satisfying ‘plap’ sound, no puncture wounds to be seen.
The Ensign straightened himself further, watching as the creature rolled itself back onto its front, trotting its tiny little feet to face his limb once more, its jaw completely distending as it locked eyes on Sylvain's leg, but now void of fangs of any kind… Brows descending further over his confused expression, his gaze moved past the creature that threw itself at his leg once again, and instead drifted further into the junction, looking for any evidence as to what had happened to the rows of fangs that he’d seen not a moment prior… And he didn’t have to work in intelligence to find them, scattered on the floor not far from where the creature had originally bared them at him, nowhere near where he’d flung his phaser…
“Huh?” He vocalised, propping himself up further as he reached forwards, gently putting his hands around the creature’s plump belly and lifting it off of his thigh with ease, trying desperately hard to ignore how ludicrously squishy it was, and failing monumentally in the task. Even for someone as opposed to touch as Sylvain was, the sensation of pressing his fingers against the soft, plush flesh of the creature, was nothing short of euphoric; it was even better than stroking a cat… Though, it became a little easier to move past his overwhelming yearning for squishing, when the creature’s entire face split apart once more, revealing a yawning wide mouth, unusually yellow tongue, and disturbingly bloody gum line…
“Hey Cora, come and look at this?” He called backwards, completely failing to acknowledge how readily the woman had abandoned him, and instead gripped by a robust sense of scientific curiosity that was usually reserved for stellar phenomena; he was hardly a xenobiologist after all… Though, no matter where his curiosity had emerged from, it departed him as swiftly as it had arrived, his entire face swelling up with the unreasonable desire to burst into tears, as the little creature in his hands closed its mouth once again, its own eyes welling up with a heartbreaking deluge of its own tears…
“Moopsy…”
Sylvain didn’t think he had ever heard a noise so sorrowful in his entire life…
“Oh gosh, it’s okay little guy, it’s okay…” Sylvain immediately cooed, hugging the creature softly against him as his own heart seemed to shatter within his chest, any care that this creature had been trying to kill him not a minute prior, forgotten. “I’ll look after you, you don’t need to be afraid right now, it’s okay, you're safe, don’t worry, it’s okay…” He continued to barrage the creature with words of reassurance, conscious that he ought to get some sort of scan of its anatomy, in order to try and establish how he could actually look after it.
The creature wriggled placidly in his grip, not making any particular effort to escape his hands, whilst Sylvain carefully drew his thumb and forefinger away from holding it, in order to get a grip on the zip that hung softly against the top of his uniform jacket. Slowly, as to not startle the creature he unzipped his jacket a little way, before making a thoroughly ridiculous attempt at manoeuvring the creature so that its chunky body would wedged inside his jacket, whilst trying hard to keep its head away from the material. It took a moment, and it was perhaps the most absurdly stupid thing he had done in his entire life, but he succeeded, consequences be damned…
“There you go, nice and safe…” Sylvain’s cooing words continued, looking down at the creature's little head as it nestled in the V shape of his uniform jacket, its body prevented from slipping lower by the combat harness that rested under his chest. Confident that the creature was relatively secure, the Ensign's now free hands reached for his tricorder, pale fingers spidering across its cold surface so that he could make an effort to scan the creature, mentally trying to reassure himself that he’d probably have had a premonition if the thing was going to kill him; that was usually what happened, at least...
Frankly, he knew it was absurd. He just didn't seem to care...
It might have been the fact that he was still light-headed from the smell that he’d been subject to in the corridor, or perhaps it was the lingering remnants of the fact that he’d crashed his head into a solid metal bulkhead… It could have been the lubricant that the Savi had used to wedge the tube down his throat, perhaps he was allergic to it in some way? Or maybe inhaling the Savi’s atmosphere in such a confined space had addled him. Or perhaps it was just the knowledge that he was assigned to a ship that was on an apparent suicide mission, having had to abandon his entire life at the drop of a hat and travel across half of the quadrant, with no idea what their plan actually was, and was now spending his possible last-day-alive, crawling through tunnels in a restricted area of a ship belonging to an advanced and somewhat hostile alien species, all because the only friend he'd tried to make had immediately lied to him...
Hell, it was probably a combination of all of those things, blended with the unfathomable cuteness of the little creature that was now squashed flush against his chest…
Either way, the Starfleet way was to try and help other beings in distress, and he wasn’t going to let his first ‘mission’ as a member of the Theurgy crew, disregard that ideal… Plus, he was fairly sure that the Prime Directive didn’t apply in circumstances where the being in question was already being held hostage by an alien species with technology far more advanced than the Federation’s, so he was all in the clear in that capacity too…
At least, that was what he told himself as he lifted the tricorder up, and started scanning the mournful little creature that was wobbling against his chest.
“Mooooooopsy… Moooopsyyyyyyyyy….”
If Cora gave him any grief about his desire to help such a poor innocent little creature, she had to be one of the infested... Kidnapping the Chief CONN Officer and taking him into a hostile area was one thing, but not wanting to help the squishy little bundle of heart-melting cuteness pressed against his chest, was nothing short of unforgivable...