51. A Budding Bond Between a Bigshot and a Trash Ship

“Are there still no one coming, master?” Kuon asked.

“Nope," Abyssal replied.

"I wonder what's taking so long?"

"Beats me," Abyssal responded as she continued to look around herself, in the large hangar bay where thousands of fighters lie still. A small and naughty part of herself was begging her to assimilate one of the fighters to steal the tech, but she controlled herself from doing so. There was no telling what would happen should she attempt to do something stupid.

It has been about half an hour since they were beamed up into the supercarrier but no one has yet to greet them nor has E tried communicating since then. There had been several emergency warps since then and the only thing moving was the hundreds of drones swirling around the Shark class, just observing her. There was something about the drones too, sometimes they were erratic in behaviour, swirling randomly and sometimes they were moving around in an orderly manner. Currently, they were just floating naturally.

Something was up and Abyssal couldn't point out what. Abyssal, however, wasn't exactly sure what to do about it. She could send out a scouting drone or maybe some nanites out of the ship, but there was no telling what the hundred of armed drones swirling around herself would do. So far she has stayed put and did emergency repairs to herself, though she was far from repaired. Her transmitter was still messed up and her entire power network was badly damaged. Whatever Senssenman did to Abyssal, it was not pretty.

'What did hit me anyways? Some sort of EMP?' Abyssal thought to herself. 'It sure as hell did a lot more than fry my systems though…'

"Uuuuu…."  A groan came from the side of the room, disturbing Abyssal's thoughts.

She looked behind her only to see a girl with cat ears and tail lying face flat on the ground. Her ears and tail swooped downwards as if she had no energy, one of her hands was rubbing her stomach while the other one covered her mouth. Several instances of weird warp travelling have taken its toll on the young Nekomi.

"Are you alright there, Meica?" Abyssal asked in worry.

"Uuuu," a question which was responded with another groan.

Kuon looked over to the young Nekomi before looking back at the displays. "She'll be fine. Nekomis are naturally resistant to these kinds of things."

"If you say so…" Abyssal said before going back to looking at her surroundings.

"What kind of warp is that anyways? It's different from the one I usually do, that's for sure."

"It's not a warp, nor is it a hyperlanes. The ship is probably travelling through miniaturise wormholes, through another dimension. A jump drive. It's very rare and hard to create technology given only to certain ships. Doubly rare that a ship of this size would have one. Back when I was still in New England, this tech would only be given to the royal escorts and Her Majesty's ship herself."

Abyssal massaged her imaginary temples as she heard this. "So this E girl… she's a big shot?"

"Yes. Perhaps she may even be one of the biggest shots of Freedom United."

"Great…" Abyssal let out a sigh. "What did I get myself into?"

"What did you get us into, you mean?" Kuon said.

"Ehh….."

"I told you she was bad news. We wouldn't be in this mess if we didn’t harbour her in the first place."

"Urk!"

"I told you that we shouldn't go out before we finish the shark class. This entire mess is because you went out and caused that engagement between Astral and Jinko, which attracted all those ships to us."

"Argh!"

"I even told you we should have stayed within the asteroid until things cooled down. We could have maybe escaped unscathed."

The number of venomous words struck Abyssal, leaving her stunned on the floor, looking at her robotic fingers.

"I mean…. The fight before this aside, how would I have known about Meica?  Yeah, I knew she was a runaway, but nobody told me a giant battlecruiser bounty hunter or whatever was going to be after me! Also, you saw that destroyer, right? That girl was just waiting for me to get out of the Asteroid! I bet she would have been there regardless if we waited or not!" Abyssal yelled out to defend herself and the room went quiet.

Kuon wasn’t amused at all by her whiny response and looked at her with a dead stare. "You chose to warp to this location in the first place too. I know this was the fastest coordinate, but surely there was someplace else, right? Someplace random that could have been calculated just as fast?"

"...."

"..."

Abyssal who couldn't take the laser-sharp stare from Kuon looked away before replying. "In my defence, this was the only place we could warp to during that moment. We would have been caught by Jinko if we didn't warp out."

"Perhaps, it would have been better to be caught by this Jinko person. At the very least we would have a bargaining chip against her. Unlike our current situation that is," Kuon said before looking over to Meica. She was still lying on the floor, clutching her stomach.

"I’d rather not be caught by anyone," Abyssal responded.

"That would be ideal."

The room went silent again for a short while when suddenly,

"Hmm?" Abyssal let out a strange voice.

"What's wrong, Master?"

"The elevator on the far right is moving. Someone is coming!" Said Abyssal as she shifted the display to what she was seeing at that moment.

True to her words, the open elevator seemed to be having some sort of movement. It was a hollow hole in the ship with two large steel wires going up or down the entire ship. It was like an open shaft—  a shaft that was blocked by metal railings to prevent anybody from falling into it. The steel wires that were inside this shaft moved and not before long, a large open metal box started to appear from above.

The box slowly came down to a halt on the floor that Abyssal was at. A loud ding was heard and the two automatic doors opened. What was inside the elevator was a young-looking man, wearing an officer's uniform. The somewhat large sailor hat that he wore covered his face. On his uniform were a few golden badges and the symbol of liberty. He walked out of the elevator slowly before looking upwards into the shaft.

*Thump!

All of a sudden, a young girl came crashing on top of the elevator like some sort of superhero.

'What the… is she okay?' Thought Abyssal as she saw this. It looked like the girl fell from a considerable height, but she looked unscathed from the fall.

She wore a white one-piece dress and if one looked closely enough, one could see a pair of futuristic pistols hidden near her exposed thighs. Her long silver hair fluttered with the wind as she immediately made another jump off the top of the elevator onto a position next to the man. She made a soft landing before showing a peace sign to the man.

'Is that… E? She's much more tomboyish than I thought… Also, who's the man? His clothing is pretty cool...' Abyssal gave her first impressions of 'E' and the man. She had always wanted to wear one of those space academy types of clothing.

The man gave the girl a shrug before saying something, though Abyssal couldn't exactly hear what. The girl too let out a small shrug and said something. A smile was accompanied with whatever she said before she started to point towards Abyssal. Now, the two people started to walk towards her.

"Here they come," Abyssal said.

"They don't seem to be armed from the looks of it," said Kuon.

Abyssal looked all around herself, at the hundreds of swirling armed drones around her before letting out a small laugh. "I don't think they need to be. Go get Meica up, get her ready. "

"Understood," said Kuon before she went over to Meica. Kuon upon arriving, without even asking for permission, then held Meica by her armpits and holstered her upwards.

“Uuuu…” Meica moaned. It was like seeing a sleeping cat being held by its front legs.

Ignoring Kuon and Meica, Abyssal looked back at the two individuals walking towards her. They seemed to be leisurely taking their time and were in no real rush. They talked to each other with smiles on their faces with the occasional jab and a smirk. One look at them and one could tell they are very close to each other.

Within two minutes or so, they finally arrived at the base of Abyssal's ship and were looking upwards towards her. Abyssal took this chance to zoom in on their faces. The last time Abyssal was tractor beamed up to another ship, she couldn’t listen to the outside of her ship. This time was different, she thought another situation where people talking outside of her ship might happen, so she added additional mics just for this occasion.

She nodded to herself over her 'brilliance' as she listened to the two.

"This is the ship?" The young man spoke. It was a voice belonging to a male in his early twenties— those super handsome playboy types.

"Yep," replied the small girl who looked no more than fourteen. Her blue eyes staring into the camera of the Shark Class.

It was like she's staring directly into Abyssal herself. Abyssal felt uneasy upon looking at her, but she also felt weird in another manner. The girl gave out a similar feeling to Kuon all those months ago. It was a special feeling that somehow resonated with her soul— a somewhat spine chilling feeling.

“Hmm...”

The man adjusted his sailor hat before bringing one of his hands to his chin. “It’s a pretty trash ship, not going to lie.”

“Haaah?!” Abyssal roared out. Not like the people outside could hear her though.

“Not everyone can be as great as me, ya know,” E replied, her face still smiling.

The young man looked over to the young girl. “I know. It’s just that when you said you picked up a small treasure, I was expecting… something more.”

“Hey, you know what they say? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,”

“So, your treasure is trash? Man, you have some bad taste. Why do you even want this anyways? Could have just left it at the roadside, ya know,” the man responded before looking at Abyssal. “This trash ain’t even useful to us as scrap.”

“Stop calling me trash!” Abyssal yelled out again. Though it’s not like the people outside could hear her.

“Supercarrier punch!” E shouted as she did a right hook onto the man’s stomach.

“OOF!” the man grunted out in pain before clutching his muscular core. He spoke in broken words after a few moments wincing in pain. “What… the hell…”

“That’s for being a prick, my dear captain. You ought to learn the intricacies of a girl’s feelings. Besides, if the soul of this ship could hear you, she would be very sad, ya know.”

“You aren’t a girl. You’re just a brute in a girl’s skin…”

“Supercarrier kick!” Shouted the girl before landing a roundhouse kick onto the man’s buttocks.

“Oof!”

‘Uwahh… that’s got to hurt. Good job though,’ Abyssal gave the imaginary girl a thumbs up.

The girl, as if knowing Abyssal was looking at her, gave her a thumbs-up, as well. It was done in such a way that the man before her, was not able to see her as he was too busy touching his bum.

‘Does she know…’ A confused yet amused Abyssal thought to herself. Something tells her that she’s going to get along well with the person named Abigail E. Eternity.