03: Thanatii
"Are you lost?"
Rosetta's heart skipped several beats: she was not alone. Standing in front of her was a sim.
"Are you?"
A sim.
What?
His mere presence defied her entire mission: she and her crew were the only sims - the only 'Thanatii' - authorised to be on the planet. Unless... no. She'd never seen him before; he wasn't military... he wasn't Rescue. Rosetta's heart sunk in the wake of such hope.
Who was he, then? She knew that it could be a trap, holograms were not hard to fabricate and he made no sound that she could hear. The acoustics of this underground maze should have rendered a silent advance impossible... but there he was. Was it a hallucination?
She had forgotten that he'd spoken and when he moved closer, Rosetta couldn't muster the strength to retreat. Instead she repressed a shudder from the overwhelming urge to collapse into whatever support he could provide, risks be damned. She was so tired, even a little sick -
Oh, God.
As though heeding a call to arms, nausea crashed down on her. Head pounding, Rosetta dropped to her knees and then to all-fours, breathing ragged. It wasn't long before her stomach was hurling with all it had, but with an empty stomach in moments she was dry-heaving.
Finally, it petered out.
Rosetta tried to catch her breath. She was shaking, ribs aching fiercely from the strain. She didn't dare touch them, very aware of the bruises and injuries she'd already sustained.
"You look like hell - you need help."
He was in front of her now, offering his hand. "C'mon - I won't hurt you."
Rosetta didn't take it, trying to decipher what he'd said. His accent was like nothing she'd ever heard. Mustering the strength to speak, she managed to croak out a question. "Who are you?"
He smirked at her question. "Depends who you ask. Look - let me help you. Won't cost much."
Cost... there was always a catch, she should have expected it. But, Rosetta had neither the strength nor will to refuse his assistance as he helped her to stand. She knew Elijah would say this was not the time to be strong-willed and independent. This, of all times, was when she had to trust in the skills of someone else.
God, Elijah.
She blinked back the sting in her eyes, nodded tiredly and surrendered. "Alright."
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Kip leant against the wall, watching the rusty van. He had an ear on Liam and Aidan as he waited for his allies to retrieve their cargo... the Thanatii they claimed to have. He was yet to be convinced that Tik and Tok were being truthful, though he kept this thought to himself.
No-one had said that they were missing someone. There weren't many of them in this underground world of theirs; an absent sim couldn't have gone unnoticed. Maybe it was one of the Ghosts? He wrinkled his nose in distaste - the Ghosts were an aggressive crew who enjoyed making trouble on the surface, raiding supply chains, upsetting the Terrestarian government, and so on. Their activities made it hard for those like Tik and Tok to conduct a successful illicit trade, and even harder for those who just wanted to survive down here.
Kip didn't want to have to deal with the Ghosts if he could help it. If this Thanatii was one of them, it would be a good idea to split ways as fast as possible.
Absorbed in his thoughts, he lost track of the Tarians as they fussed at the back of the van. Tik's voice jarred Kip from his thoughts.
"It's gone!" he said conspiratorially.
Kip straightened, alert, and moved towards the van. "You should have tied it up," he heard Tok say, obviously annoyed.
"It was unconscious," Tik whined.
Tok clearly didn't accept this excuse. "That does not matter," he said with a scowl, "It is gone and now we have no cargo!"
Listening to the pair, Kip made an effort to keep his face neutral. If either Tarian thought he was taking sides, things would turn nasty. Aware that Liam and Aidan had drawn closer, intrigued by the discussion, Kip signalled to them that it was time to round up. There was no reason to stay any longer. It was time to rendezvous with Zac.
Tik must have seen the motion; he was pouting. "You're going?"
"We're done," Kip told him, "Unless you have anything else for us." He kept his tone as even as his expression - he could not afford either Tarian thinking he was patronising them or didn't believe there'd been a Thanatii.
"No," Tok said, glaring at Tik.
"Then we're done," Kip repeated, "You know that it's not good to hang around too long, and if the Thanatii's gone, it's gone. We'll complete our transactions next time we meet."
With no cargo to transport back to their HQ, the goodbye was brief. Liam was impatient to leave, though Aidan offered the dealers a friendly wave before following his crew.
Tok muttered something to himself and turned towards the cargo strewn about their meeting space. “No more government buildings,” he warned Tik.
Still in earshot, Kip heard the words easily. He almost stopped, almost turned back to demand clarification. No more government buildings. Was that where the Thanatii had come from? Holy shit.
Kip walked on autopilot, one foot after the other in time with Liam and Aidan. No more government buildings. No-one was missing anyone down here - was someone missing from up there?
“We need to find that Thanatii,” he murmured to his crew, and pressed on a little quicker than before.
Continue to 04 >
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes
Writing a story comes to me naturally.
Taking photos, on the other hand, does not. x_x I've had the contents of this chapter written up for months. Probably since before I posted DS-02, actually. It's definitely going through and getting the slides that has bogged me down: for no good reason, of course, it's all about discipline.
Then, a few weeks ago, I accepted a challenge to write a 50,000 word story in 7 days. I managed it (barely), and craved playing TS2 the entire time. After finishing I jumped into the game and made a shitty little basement, for no reason other than I had the scene in my head and I wanted to build it. I think doing that really helped get me back into the swing of completing DS-03.
Anyway, this chapter has actually turned out quite different from how I originally planned it, so it's probably about twice as long as it was going to be. The overall premise is the same (wherein Rosetta meets some of the important people), but the way events have occured... it's definitely evolved. I am very excited to move on in the story. :D
I hope to get at least a chapter up a month, from here on in. Wish me luck. :c
-- So, I started writing this post on friday, with ~15 pictures left to take. En route to returning to it today (sunday), I stopped by simsecret. I'm not a member of the community, though I read it.
Thankyou. :) I never expected anything like that. I have no idea who you are (my telepathy license was revoked last month), but I hope you're a happy panda now.
Oh, and one last thing: Tik and Tok have no relation to a song of the same name. I've never even heard it. You see, all Tarians are simbiotes (and are always of the same sex), and all Tarians have similar sounding names to their simbiote. For example, Ren and Rin, or Kyte and Kote. So 'Tik' and 'Tok' is just coincidence. You know, the exact same kind of thing happened when I named my cat Bella.
'Til next time~