Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-21, -18, 410. That’s where life was. That’s where he needed to go.

Thankfully, Shuuichi was no stranger to navigating by coordinates. Everyone in Alterra space used it for navigation, after all. But that also meant blindly jumping into the water and trusting the PDA to give him the right coordinates… Was that a good idea?

“Warning: local radiation readings suggest the Aurora's drive core has reached critical state,” the PDA read, “Quantum detonation will occur within 2 hours."

Shuuichi bit his lip, his eyebrows furrowing at the message. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the Aurora at the time of its explosion, and he prayed that no survivor was inhabiting the area.

(Though there was no point in his prayers. The radiation would have killed them off long ago, and he knew it.)

Food, check. Water, check. Oxygen…

Now, that was an issue.

There was nothing wrong with his current oxygen tank, but the coordinates given indicated that he would need much more oxygen than what he could hold if he wanted to find the lifepod without being too worried about his air supply. There had to be something better.

And indeed there was. Searching the PDA for a better oxygen tank yielded the high capacity oxygen tank, which required a standard oxygen tank, two pieces of glass, four titanium, and one silver ore. Which meant he had to go back into the caves. Which meant he had to deal with those Red Bastards again.

Shuuichi sighed and resigned himself to an afternoon of scavenging and terror.

There was no reason there had to be so many Red Bastards in the area. They had no reason to be clustered up in one spot.

Shuuichi winced as he patched up a wound on his arm from the explosion. In his haste to collect the materials before the Aurora detonated, he had completely looked over the sulfur plants he swam over. The fish exited the flower, then detonated before he even knew what was happening.

But it was worth it. He had managed to hunt down every resource he needed to fabricate his journey materials.

Shuuichi waited after setting his items down on the fabricator, tapping his fingers against his thigh in anticipation. Kirumi’s words repeated in his head.

There was certainly another person with her. She was the type of person who chose her words carefully and someone who never misspoke. But emergency seaglide? Rendezvous?

He knew what a seaglide was; it was only one of the most popular methods of faster transportation in Alterra space and beyond, beaten only by two other vehicles. He just didn’t know lifepods came with an emergency seaglide, or if they were the two who happened to be lucky enough to get one. On the other hand, he hadn’t gotten the memo about the rendezvous that was apparently happening. What if it had already happened?

Fuck. He really needed to find the other survivors.

Shuuichi equipped the high capacity oxygen tank before climbing the ladder to the top of his lifepod.

The sun was still up, and he had plenty of time to swim back and forth. The PDA had clearly marked which direction he was supposed to go, and in case of failure, he knew how to navigate by coordinates. There was plenty of food and water in his inventory.

So why was he hesitating?

Shuuichi took a deep breath before leaping into the water.

Oh, fuck no.

Shuuichi looked down at his PDA, his heart stopping upon reading that, yes, Lifepod 3 was indeed in the Kelp Forest. The biome he knew nothing about. The biome where light struggled to penetrate the top canopy of kelp.

He sat down on a cliff’s edge in the Safe Shallows, wrapping his arms around himself in an effort to contain the anxiety flooding into him and waiting to regain control of his thoughts.

The Kelp Forest possessed a high level of biodiversity, he knew that. But that was about all he knew. Inference told him there had to be some creatures who adapted to the environment through camouflage or some other means of hiding. There had to be at least one prey creature and one predator creature inside the biome, or the biome wouldn’t be as diverse as it was. Judging by the Peepers weaving through the kelp stalks, he had identified at least one of the prey.

The only problem was the predator.

He had to stop thinking. If he wanted to find some other form of human life on this planet, he had to shut his brain off for two seconds and just go.

Shuuichi swallowed, peering down at the depths of the Kelp Forest.

That’s right. He just had to go.

Shuuichi swam back up for another breath of air before swimming into the forest, dodging stalks and fish. Light levels had decreased, and the surroundings took on a green hue. The sound of water rushing past his ears blocked his thoughts out. It felt as if he were a rocket traversing through space, everything else around him nonexistent or so tiny it was no importance. The ocean was his space, and the fish the glowing stars in the distance.

Then the rocket came crashing down and exploded in a blazing glory when Lifepod 3 revealed itself to him with a giant hole torn torn into it.

Shuuichi gasped, holding a hand over his mouth with the rest of his body frozen.

The number printed onto the lifepod had almost been torn off, the top of the three barely surviving whatever had happened. The orange flotation devices around Shuuichi’s lifepod weren’t present. Instead, several burn marks were imprinted around where the metal had been torn off. The devices inside were completely mangled and dysfunctional, despite there being no indication in the radio transmission of that feature. The lifepod was devoid of any human life, and if it were any other situation, Shuuichi would have laughed at the irony.

Shuuichi kicked his way to the surface and pulled his mask up, allowing the tears building up to release. His sobs were drowned out by the sound of waves crashing on top of each other. All his hopes had sunken along with Lifepod 3 and any other lifepod that found its way to this hell planet.

“What happened to you?” he shouted above the waves. “Why did I have to be the one who lived?”

His questions were met with the waves crashing and the creatures above him chirping. The world went on even with his sorrow.

And just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, the PDA said, “Emergency: A quantum detonation has occurred in the Aurora's drive core. The reactor will reach a super critical state in T-10…”

Oh, right. The Aurora was about to explode, unleashing who knows how much radiation into the water.

“9…”

The Aurora was shaking now. Or maybe that was him.

“8…”

And maybe it was his imagination conjuring the scene of fish frantically swimming away from the Aurora.

“7…”

There truly was no hope for him on this planet. He didn’t know why he bothered trying.

“6…”

Was this the end? Was he truly alone all along?”

“5…”

No. No. No.

“4…”

He rejected the thought. He couldn’t have been the only survivor on the Aurora.

“3…”

There had to be something else to this planet than what met the eye.

“2…”

Shuuichi Saihara was officially a survivor, and he’d be damned if he didn’t rise above expectations.

“1…”

He was going to live .

Shuuichi equipped his mask.

Boom!

And just as the Aurora detonated, Shuuichi dove underneath the water and kicked his feet, squinting until he was able to make out the figure of Lifepod 3 underneath him. The PDA chirped something about a radiation suit being added to his blueprints, but he couldn’t care less at the moment.

There had to be someone else. Even if he was the only one alive on this planet, there had been at least one other human on it with him at some point, and he couldn’t let that evidence escape.

He took another look at the remains of Lifepod 3 with the scanner in hand.

A databox had been left on the floor of the lifepod. Upon being opened, it revealed a lone compass inside its confines. Shuuichi equipped the compass onto himself, his hands shaking ever so slightly.

A fragment of… something had been left next to the lifepod. He raised his hand to scan it.

Seaglide fragment. I’m going to need that if I’m going to find whoever else was left. I need another fragment to complete the blueprint.

And finally, a PDA was left in the lifepod, its screen still bright.

Shuuichi hesitated, his adrenaline fading away. It seemed horribly invasive to steal another person’s PDA. It was right there in the name: Personal Digital Assistant. PDAs were personal.

He closed his eyes and whispered an apology to Kirumi before downloading the information onto his own PDA.

Beep! Beep!

“Thirty seconds.”

Well, that killed the moment.

Shuuichi swam back up to the surface to appease his oxygen needs before spotting his lifepod in the distance and swimming towards it. Night was falling, and he didn’t want to be caught in the ocean without so much as a flashlight.

After climbing into his lifepod and locking the bottom hatch, he sat down on the floor and scrolled through the databank, searching for Kirumi’s file.

Oh. The PDA had recorded audio.

“Crew members Kirumi Toujou and Ryouma Hoshi recognized,” the PDA said.

Shuuichi sighed.

While he and Ryouma hadn’t been too close with Ryouma being his superior while working for maintenance, their daily conversations, however short as they may have been, made the job tolerable, even pleasant at times. He didn’t deserve this fate. Still, the PDA played back the audio recording.

“Are you certain this will carry two of us?” Kirumi asked.

Ryouma’s voice came next. “The regular seaglide carries eighty kilograms at over thirty kilometers per hour. The power cell I rigged to it should double that, if my calculations are good.”

“And if they aren’t?”

“Well, I’ve had a good run.”

“You’re awfully calm about this.”

“Heh. As are you.”

The recording stopped there, leaving an implication that didn’t sit too well with Shuuichi.

It was too ambiguous. The two obviously weren’t alive, seeing as how their lifepod sunk, which meant Ryouma’s calculations weren’t correct. It also didn’t explain the giant hole torn into the side of their lifepod. Unless the seaglide exploded somehow? But there wasn’t any recorded case of seaglides detonating, to his knowledge. He supposed the predator living in the Kelp Forest could have been responsible for the sunken lifepod. However, he didn’t know enough about the biome to confirm his suspicions. There were too many contradictions and possibilities.

But this was the evidence he had, and it was all he had to work with.

Shuuichi checked the blueprint he had acquired for the radiation suit and made a mental note of what resources he had to gather tomorrow. He drifted to sleep with memories of Kirumi and Ryouma clutched close to him.