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Rett is keeping an eye on the ship's levels, sitting firm and buckled down to his captain's chair as he stares out the three gigantic windows curving around the cockpit in a semi-circle. A light starts in the corner of his eye and crackles across the wide panes, jumping from cloud to cloud of the Aether that surrounds them, a bolt that drags rather than sparks. The Rhapsody– his Pride and Joy, the beauty that she is– was easily cutting through the fog; she was made for this, after all. An Aether Harvester in her youth, made to collect Aether from the universe and recycle it into usable energy for other species, planets, entire other sectors to use.
He waits, holding his breath, and the shutter in his right eye closes to a pinpoint in preparation. A bright flash erupts the room in light, only for a moment, and a loud rumbling boom shakes the entire ship soon after. He barely notices as the graphs and numbers, as the hologram itself wavers and warps in front of him; his mechanical eye keeps steady even as his body rocks with the turbulence. The levels spike along with his heart rate, nearing too high– ‘come on, pretty girl, don’t fail me now’– before it slowly evens back down into reasonable frequencies, the Rhapsody correcting herself to stabilize into her usual, quiet hum.
Hank barks from his co-pilot chair– a well-loved, and heavily chewed, heated dog bed propped up in-between Rett and Pyke’s chairs– confirming what Rett already knew; the ship was fine, and would continue to be fine as it flew through the agitated Aether clouds around them. He wasn’t all too worried, truthfully. It’s more instinct, a deep seeded nagging worry, that keeps him up here, that keeps his eyes glued to the screen and his fingertips digging into the leather armrests at his sides. Just in case.
He would’ve sat here for hours– for the rest of the night, if he had to– keeping an eye on everything as he worked through the mountains of paperwork that've piled up over the months of not-so-subtly ignoring it all. Just in case.
But then, he hears a sharp yelp, echoing faintly up from further into the belly of the ship. It was afar, the sound nearly faded by the time it reverberated to this side of the Rhapsody, but Rett’s attention was drawn either way.
He swivels to stare down towards the opened door, the darkened corridors that lead towards the hull. Tilts his head and squints into the dark, closes his left eye to try and see anything through his right; even with the dark vision lens clicking into place and the grey-scaled walls fuzzing into focus, the hallway seems… completely empty. Devoid of life. “...You alright down there?”
His own voice filters out, seeping through the open air. Only silence greets him in return.
He’d warned everyone of the possibility of them flying through the storm before they'd gone to their rooms for the night, and of what that could entail. Now that it was nearing the automated-cycles-equivalent of moon high, Rett had assumed that everyone was going to sleep through it, or the worst of it, at the very least.
He feels a bit silly for that now, as another flash burns bright behind him, and the entire ship judders once more. There’s another sharper squeak that bounces down the hall, some extremely muffled mumbling following suit.
Rett gives a low sigh, and runs his fingers through his beard, squeezes it into a point. Turns back to give Hank a look, and Hank’s lifting up a paw in salute before he even says a word. “You good to keep watch?” Hank yips in an affirmative, and Rett huffs a faint chuckle, leans down to pet his smooth, cooler head. The paint is starting to wear and rub off, the golden undertones of his metal beneath beginning to shine through the whiter coat. “Who am I kiddin’? Of course you are. Couldn’t ask for a better co-pilot than you, Hank.”
The robopug’s tongue lolls out, and his eyes squeeze shut, leaning into Rett’s palm as his tail wags up its own type of storm.
He unclicks the latch of the buckle and slips off his chair, his steps heavy and clanging down the darkened metal walls. The pneumatic door hisses closed behind him with a click. Rett's biological eye adjusts quickly as he scans the still vacant hallway, passes by the closed bedroom doors, and heads into the living quarters. There's a half-played card game thrown haphazardly onto the floor in the middle of their circular couch, a few ash trays with the scattered cigarette bud on the side tables, an empty glass or two in the sink thankfully unbroken. Nothing unusual or out of place– his heart swells with how lived in the Rhapsody is, how alive she feels again. Fuck, he had missed Pyke when he was gone, hasn't realized how much he missed having a crew until they all fell into his lap.
Plastic crinkling breaks the weighted silence, sounding from his right, and Rett shifts on his heel to head towards the kitchen– there's a squeeze, and a pop! and he immediately knows who the perpetrator is, even before he rounds the corner to spot the saurian leaning against the kitchen cabinets.
Ziggy's back is faced towards Rett, his body slumped against the fridge as he stares down into his Gridboy, the neon green glowing and casting heavy shadows over his cheeks; he hadn't even bothered to turn on the overhead lights, choosing to leave the room in near-pitch darkness. He's folded over, face damn near touching the table in his grasp, eyes squinted and shifting rapidly like he's trying to read, and Rett suddenly wonders if his goggles have more use than just his connection to the Hypergrid.
“Zig–” He starts, only to spot the gigantic headphones tucked in front of his frill, big and clunky black boxes fixed atop his ear holes. There's a faint, grating oontz oontz oontz floating above the mechanical hum of the ship, and Rett has to wonder how fuckin’ loud he has to have it for him to be able to hear from the opposite side of the kitchen island. Definitely gonna need to talk to the kid about taking better care of his senses.
Another round of rumbling shakes the Rhapsody, another roaring crash, and Ziggy's shoulders jump to the bottoms of his headphones, eyes clenched tight. Another high-pitched squeak escapes from his beak, and his eyes are flying back open as he uses a single finger to start rapidly scrolling through whatever is on his screen, as his other hand digs into the bag of chips thrown haphazardly into the counter. There's eight of them, eight individual sized packets of chips scattered across the countertop, and Rett isn't sure why this surprises him– why anything does, at this point.
Another step, two forward, and Rett is putting a hand onto Ziggy’s shoulder. “Ziggy–”
“GAH!” Ziggy flinches hard, almost leaping onto the ceramic as he lets go of his Gridboy and it crashes to the ground, the cord connecting his headphones ripping from their socket as they collapse off of his head, clattering onto the tiles just beside the tablet. Loud, electronic music starts to blare from the tablet, and Ziggy quickly stomps on it– gently– once, twice, until the song abruptly cuts off. Tiny, beady eyes are wide and unblinking as they connect to his own, and he can see the whites around the rim of his pupils. “Rett! What the fuck, man!”
“Don't what the fuck me, what the fuck you!” Rett wheezes out, grasping onto his chest as his heart heavily thumps within its cage. He’d expected a little jump, sure, but the saurian had nearly thrown himself into the wall. “Gods, kid! Y’nearly gave me a heart attack!”
“I nearly gave you a heart attack?!”
“You jumped about fifty feet!”
“Because you grabbed onto my arm! Like a maniac!”
“I was just tryin’ to get your attention–”
“How was I supposed to know that?!?”
Rett huffs and waves it away. This is going nowhere, and it isn’t the point. “What’re you doin’ up, Ziggy? It's half-past midnight–” Ziggy just gives him a flat look, and quickly, he rephrases, “–right, yeah, stupid question. What're you doin’ out here so late? Shouldn't you be in your room?”
Ziggy just shrugs, his eyes jumping once, twice to the side. “Just- just getting a snack. I got hungry.”
Rett would believe that, Architect knows how hungry he tended to get as they approached the dawning hours. Thankfully, Ziggy couldn't lie for shit, the sweat dripping down his frill only further proving Rett's point. “Riiiight. Just for a snack.”
“Yup! A midnight snack, haha!”
The kid rubs at his cheek, and smudges some blueish-green dust towards his front-most horn. Rett just raises a brow. “And it’s definitely not because you're afraid of the storm?”
“What? Pssh!” Ziggy waves a hand, laughing awkwardly. “No! Why would I–” Rett raises his eyebrow further, and within another heartbeat, the Saurian deflates. “Yeah, okay, I– but I'm not afraid of it, alright? I'm not!” Rett furrows his eyebrows, and Ziggy continues stumbling, "I just- it's just… it's loud.” His arms are crossed in front of his chest, and his voice has lowered back into that barely audible mumble. “And- and sudden. It catches me off guard.”
Rett takes a moment to think, humming, before he bends down to pick up the scattered electronics. They're oddly greasy, and his Gridboy is sticky– Rett refuses to think about why. “And that's what these are for, the-” He can't help the nose scrunch, but quickly smoothes it out before Ziggy can get offended, of all things. “The music? To try and block it out?”
“Right!” Ziggy nods, and holds out grabby hands, snatching them out of Rett's grasp. “And it was helping! But I can still–” Another hand wave, more circular than before; Ziggy does tend to talk with his hands. “ –I can still feel it, you know? Deep in my bones.”
“In your bones,” Rett agrees– sort of agrees– cocking his side against the counter. Speaking of bones, the handle digs into that spot just above his hip and wedges into his skin, making Rett shift once more. “Have you ever been near a grenade, Ziggy?”
The Saurian wraps the headphones around his neck, looking pensive. “Uhhhm… Maybe? Those fuckin’ guys threw grenades at us down the– the trash shoot that one time, right?”
“Hm, so they did.” Rett scratches the back of his neck with one hand, taps his fingers against the ceramic with the other. “It’s the closest I've ever come to explainin’ the strength of an Aether storm.”
Ziggy seems to perk up at that, intrigued– but there's another flash from a side window, and Rett's leaping to cover Ziggy's ears before the thundering rumble quakes through the ship. The kid still jumps, but it's more at Rett's quick movement than the impact, so he takes it as a win. “It's… primal. Old tech, but it does the job, right?” He pulls his hands away from Ziggy's face, drags them down the front of his bed shirt to rub away the heavy wrinkles. It doesn’t work. “You pull the pin, throw it, and boom, it explodes. Aether is… similar. Docile, until energy is thrown into it– pulling the pin.” Rett motions pulling the pin with his teeth, making a faint click with his tongue. “Then it lashes, turns wild and untamed, and we get storms like these– the explosion.”
Ziggy stares at him. “…are you– are you trying to help? Because, to be honest, this is kinda just making it worse–”
“ –Thankfully,” Rett continues, as if Ziggy hadn't said a word, “This one seems to be more like a… a dud. Or maybe,” He huffs at his own joke before it’s even said, “More like a flash bang. It's loud, abrasive, but it ain't harmful. The worst it'll do is make the power shut off for a couple of seconds.” He tilts his head up to look Ziggy in the eyes, but the black beads are already locked onto his own, focused, searching, pleading. “We're safe, Zigs. I wouldn't have let us go through it if it wasn't.”
“I know,” Ziggy swallows, but his gaze doesn’t waver. “I know.”
“Good,” Rett gives him a firm pat, and goes to pull away–
Ziggy lunges forward, sudden, unexpected, and the aetheron is engulfed in a hug. “But– but can you maybe just stay here? Just for a little bit? …Please?”
Rett inhales, long and slow… pulls him tight to his chest, giving him a tight squeeze. “Of course, Ziggy. As long as you need.”
The Rhapsody, the wonder that she is, does fly through the storm completely unharmed. There’s a few more energy spikes throughout the night, and the lights do flicker just once– but Rett, much like the others, wouldn't know. No, he's much, much too busy snoring away from his spot reclined on the couch with Ziggy curled into his side, a controller hanging limp from his claws as the TV screen in front of them plays the Game Over! screen on repeat.