Jump One

A city! Knife had found a city! That alone was fairly thrilling. Really, she was flying blind with every jump, and a quick glance at the power indicator she’d rigged up to try and figure out how many jumps she could make before the supercharge sputtered out indicated she could make--at most--four more jumps.

Realistically speaking, Knife could have ended up anywhere. It was perfectly plausible that her jumps might have popped her out in the utter depths of space, so landing on a planet--let alone in civilization--was a pretty big plus.

The problem was that parts of the city were on fire.

Knife’s instincts had pressed her into a dark corner, watching as people ran past. They looked human. Or mostly human. Some... well, some didn’t look human. Some were so noticeably non-human that Knife was pretty sure they wouldn’t have looked out of place on the streets of Manta Carlos.

Or what Knife thought Manta Carlos would be like, considering she’d never actually seen it as anything other than an empty ruin.

Knife spared a quick glance down at the indicator--a small flashing metal box no bigger than the size of her fist--and decided it would be too risky to jump as it was. It needed to cool, the box hot to the touch, and she couldn’t risk it breaking on the next jump.

Maybe thirty minutes, tops. She just had to not die in that thirty minutes.

Knife’s small size was an advantage, and for a few minutes, she was capable of staying right where she was, her fingers wrapped around the handle of her knife. Really, she was perfectly fine with staying that way if not for the sudden sound of an explosion not a hundred meters to her right.

People were coming, and it was Knife’s turn to vanish. She darted out of her corner, heading down an alley with her head down, eyes darting to and fro.

It was time to get out of dodge.

A whirlwind descended not far away, and Knife spun in one quick motion, drawing her own knife. Unlike Ayrskra's own, Knife's weapon was downright bland, the only thing of note being that the metal of the blade was tinted a light yellow. When the whirlwind became a person (if one could call it that), Knife abruptly found herself in over her head.

The person in front of her was clearly not human. Red skin, three eyes (at a glance), pointed ears... everything about them screamed inhuman, and that wasn't even starting on the odd feet.

At the very least they spoke English, even if the intonation was all wonky. It sounded like English anyway, but it was hard... very hard to tell.

"Uhm," Knife said, speaking to someone for the first time in years. "Not really sure, actually."

Maybe she shouldn't have admitted any sort of weakness. That would probably have been smarter.

"Either way," she quickly added. "I won't be here long so just don't mind me."

Why did the man-woman-person-monster in front of her have a bigger knife? It was practically a sword!

The demon-whirlwind-monster-thing was not speaking in clear English, to say the least. It was garbled, sentences that were so clipped that knife couldn't quite follow along. They didn't even get the connotations of the wis. Wise? Something like that.

It didn't matter anyway.

"Uhm," Knife said. "I'm not really sure what you're asking, lady," Knife said, abruptly second guessing herself. Was it even a lady? Did it even have a gender? Non-humans were weird.

"I mean like, I'm leaving. And... you... have a way out? Or you want me to have a way out?" Something was definitely being offered, but Knife couldn't decide if she was being offered a way out, or asked if she had one herself.

The gestures helped a lot. Really, Knife just wasn't quite used to dealing with people. The thing in front of her--person or not--was the first humanoid she'd spoken to in years.A The only voices she heard were the rare snatches of voices in music, heard through stolen earphones before hte batteries went die.

"Uhm," Knife said. "Yeah, I guess. I have a way out. But not for... I don't know, thirty minutes?" She wanted to check, wanted to sneak a peak and estimate how long before the charge was done, but she also didn't want to give too much away.

Well, it was flashing, which made it kind of obvious, but she'd mostly managed to hide the worst of it, the indicator flashing against her hip rather than into the air.

"Alliance," Knife confirmed, deciding against offering a handshake to the creature. "You get me out of the city, I get you, uh, away. Only 'away' is going to be... far? Far away."

Knife got the idea at least, making a vague wave of her hands as she did. "Far," she said, gesturing, "far," another gesture, "away. And no coming back, either."

Knife stuck close to the woman (it had to be a woman, right?) as she was guided through the city. It was alien to her, the layout entirely unfamiliar, but her guide seemed to know exactly where to go and what to do.

"Definitely never coming back here," Knife muttered, wondering how much she should be saying. Her instincts were tearing her in two. She hadn't talked to anyone in years, and now she was just talking and there was a stupid gut instinct in her to simply vomit up every single piece of information possible.

Well, everything she cared about. The future. The present.

Nothing about the past, and certainly not about the last five years of hell.

"So, uhm, I'm actually a traveler?" Knife volunteered. "My names Knife, by the way." She'd been knife for a while, but she'd never introduced herself to anyone like that. It felt strangely freeing.

She was just Knife now.

"And I can get us away from here, it's just going to be one way and I'm not entirely sure where we'll end up." Maybe somewhere better. Maybe somewhere worse. She didn't care, really. Even if shed died in the void of space, it would be better than staying where she'd been.