Eldritch Space Hunter Five: III - Shortcut to the Danger Zone

His dream instantly shattered when he was forcefully yanked from his bed. Whatever subconscious meanderings his brain was trying to parse evaporated as he fell to the floor in the small room. He was wide awake in an instant. A shadowy figure stood over him.

“Didn't you set an alarm?” said an angry voice.

“What?” he said.

“I don't like it when people waste my time,” said the figure. It leaned closer, a face emerging from the shadows. It was a woman. Her honey-colored hair was cut at a severe angle, one of her golden eyes was covered by an eyepatch and a scar that ran down the entire right side of her face, all the way down to her bubblegum lips, which the scar helped to rest in a perpetual sneer.

The look on her face could not have been less terrifying if she had tried.

“B-bunny Chiff-ff-ffon?” Kenichi asked. “You look different from your picture.”

Bunny Chiffon grabbed Kenichi by the collar. He noticed that her entire right arm was metal. The metal fingers dug into his jumpsuit and pulled him up off the ground.

“I haven't had the chance to update my headshot since I lost my arm and half my face in battle. You'll have to excuse me, but posing for a photograph isn't hight on my priority list right now.” She said, “Door Open” to the door, and it opened for her without hesitation. Then she dragged Kenichi into the hallway.

“If you don't want to end up like a smattering of my former parts, you had better pay attention, because,” she stared down at him while she dragged him across the retrofuturistic carpeting of the space station, “you're going through the ringer.”

She kicked a door in, and Kenichi wondered if that part of her was metal as well.

“Also,” she said. “It's Captain Chiffon.” She tossed him into the dark room.

He landed on a chair. Bunny turned on the lights, and as the recessed bulbs came to life, he saw that they were in a room filled with chairs with large video screens surrounding them. “Are these simulators?” he said.

“Yes. It's easier this way, as you tend to die the first hundred or so times.”

Kenichi gulped.

“Buckle up, buttercup,” she said. “Because we're going on a joyride through Hell.”

With shaking hands, Kenichi found the straps and fumbled to close them. Bunny lowered the array of video screens down over him. Then he heard her getting into a simulator of her own. The screen before him erupted into a realistic starfield, and a mech hovered in the simulated vacuum of space beside him.

“Okay, Seltzer,” she said. “When we're in our mechs, the first rule: callsigns only.”

“Roger. What is your callsign?”

“Candy,” she said. She said it in a way that challenged him to even think about laughing.

“Copy that, Candy. Let's go!”

Just then, the starfield was filled with what looked like nightmarish starfish with human faces. Then everything went red.

“You just died, Seltzer,” Bunny said.

“Well, I'm not going to get used to it,” Kenichi said. The starfield returned and he grabbed his controls. He tried pushing some buttons and moving the joysticks, but soon, his field of vision turned red again.

“Dead again,” Bunny said.

“I wouldn't have to die so much if somebody would tell me what all these buttons do. A little bit of instructions wouldn't hurt, you know?”

“Life doesn't come with an instruction manual,” Bunny said. The star children attacked and Kenichi died again. “And neither does death,” she whispered.

“How am I supposed to learn this thing if nobody tells me what all these buttons do?” Starfield again.

Bunny's ship bumped his from above. “The only person who can teach you is you,” she said.

Kenichi gritted his teeth. He died a few more times. “Can we save the Alan Watts lecture and just get to the piloting and fighting?”

“Defeat some star children, and I'll tell you what the buttons do. One button per star child. Deal?”

“Deal,” said Kenichi. He died a few more times.

With each death, he learned a little more about how to maneuver the ship. He'd manage to outflank a star child, then hit it with a laser beam, then die. Soon, though, he started to notice patterns in the behavior of the star children's flight.

“How realistic is this simulation?” he asked. He died again.

“Very realistic,” Bunny said. “You're not piloting an actual ship into the fray and some poor human is biting it because you're incompetent. It's just a simulation. But it's modeled after real star child behavior, thanks in part to your future left-leg, Achlys, and her embedding in the star children culture for better or for worse.”

The world spawned again. “So, the way they move is not just because the person programming the simulator was lazy. They actually form those patterns?”

Bunny didn't say anything at first. “What patterns?” she said after a while.

“You don't see them?” Kenichi said.

“Well, I've been seeing a lot less these days since an exploding chunk of space debris took out one of my eyes…” she said. “But no, I don't see any patterns.”

Kenichi laughed. “It looks almost like a Phrygian mode, if instead of being played on a guitar, it was made up of terrifying space-starfish.” Kenichi gunned the engines toward a cluster of star children. “I think I see what to do.”

“Don't get cocky, Seltzer,” she said.

“Stay sweet, Candy,” he shot back.

A pair of lasers grazed his ship from behind.

Kenichi ignored them, plowing on ahead. He followed the pattern of the star children with his eyes until he saw his opening. He fired, taking out a whole cluster of them. Then he spun around and found some more. He was able to maneuver his mech into the pattern, joining it at times and disrupting it at others. Soon, the entire field was free of star children.

“I'd say that you owe it to me to tell me what every single one of these buttons does,” he said, “but I think by now I already know.”

“Seltzer,” said Bunny's voice over the comms. “I think you're ready for the final lesson.”

“What's that, Candy?” he said.

“Fight me,” she said. “If you can win, then you pass.”

Still riding the high from defeating all the star children, he gunned his engines toward Bunny. “Ready or not!” he said.

At the last moment, she spun her mech away, leaving a field of mines in her wake. It was all Kenichi could do to avoid them. One of them exploded, damaging one of his mech's engines. He had to compensate for the skew, pushing the steering stick further to the right than he wanted to.

He drifted, rotating, trying to find Bunny's mech.

Then the head of the mech appeared in his field of vision, from above. Bunny was upside-down, both her cannon arms pointing right at him.

“You're dead,” she said.

Kenichi gunned his reverse thrusters, but forgot to compensate for the bad engine. He spun around wildly, the feet of his mech knocking Bunny's mech in its head. He heard her curse.

As luck would have it, he was now facing directly at Bunny, albeit with her mech's back to him. Without a second thought, he fired the cannons, sending her ship into a fiery explosion.

A moment later, Bunny ripped open the simulator. She pulled Kenichi out by his collar. The restraints snapped with the force of her pull. She slammed Kenichi against the wall, and it felt like the entire station shook with the effort.

“You shot me in the back,” she said.

“You never said that wasn't allowed. Remember, I did ask for some instructions.”

She lifted him a meter off the floor, his back still pressed to the wall. Her eye was a ball of fury, then, he saw her smile. It was the sort of smile the Bunny Chiffon headshot would have made if half her body had been mutilated in a horrible space war. “Congratlations, Seltzer,” she said. “You made it home alive. And while some people might give you lengthy lectures about honor and valor and all that stuff that people only care about when they don't have to be the ones fighting, you did what it took to stay alive, even if it was a deplorable, backhanded tactic.” She lowered him a little, then leaned in close, her face inches from Kenichi's “You pass,” she whispered. Then she dropped him.

After a moment of stunned confusion, Kenichi pushed himself up. “Is that all it'll take to teach me to fly my mech?” he asked.

She had her back to his. She was holding something in her hands.

He stepped up behind her. In her hands was a broken mechmote, the sigil on it was the shape of a wrapped piece of candy with bunny ears.

“I probably shouldn't have started the simulation for you on the highest difficulty,” she said. “I think I was envious. I wanted you to suffer. But you impressed me.” She set the mechmote down. “And it takes a lot to impress me.”

She stood there silently for a while longer. Kenichi felt awkward, so he let himself out. Weary and tired, every muscle in his body ached, even muscles he didn't realize he had. He was so exhausted that he didn't even acknowledge Elana lying on the floor outside his room. Smoke poured from her ears and a discarded box of puppets lay beside her. “Door open,” he said, stepping into his room. He collapsed on the bed and fell asleep instantly.