The Smeet

The End...?

This was bad.

This was very bad.

Very, very much bad. A catastrophe!

Red sat just outside the closed doors of the infirmary, his face buried in his hands, while Purple was pacing around snacking on whatever he could get his hands on; up to now he had devoured five bags of doughnuts, two of chips and about six servings of trimisu.

There were more injured, but Ilk was given medical priority for obvious reasons. Meanwhile one single doc had to tend to the rest of the Sobr-beast's victims while the rest of the medics did their best to save Ilk and all her remaining body parts.

Why remaining? It's quite... disturbing.

That Sobr-beast turned to be much smarter than they anticipated; it pretended to be dead, somehow even holding its breath for minutes and slowing down its own cardiac rhythm to trick them so they'd lower their guard. And when they did, it dropped the act and made one last move.

Red thought it would go after him. At first glance it seemed like its purpose was to kill him, but though the Sobr-beast did lunge at him, he was not the target, he just happened to be holding the real one. Before he knew it, the monster had snatched Ilk from his arms, and then sprinted out the hangar and towards the escape capsules.

He didn't wait to be checked before going after the Sobr-beast on his PAK-legs. He managed to catch up just when it was somehow activating one of the escape pods; how the hell did it know how to operate one, by the way?! He didn't really care, his priority at that time had been to retrieve his smeet; but the Sobr-beast wouldn't give up its prey without a fight.

If only he had noticed its jaws had been holding her leg... If he had killed it on spot instead of playing tug of war as if Ilk were a mere rope... There were many 'if onlys' he wouldn't even know where to start.

The only thing that brought him out of it was the blood-curling scream that left Ilk's throat.

Everything after that was a blur; he remembered holding her in desperation as she cried her squeedly-spooch out, his hand pressing against the bleeding thump where her right leg had once been. He remembered the Sobr-beast fleeing into the capsule pod and escaping on it just when the rest of the soldiers arrived. He remembered Purple's panic-stricken voice when he saw what had happened and how Ilk was quickly put wound-closing gel and put in a medical capsule to be taken to the infirmary as fast as possible.

It had been two hours ever since. TWO HOURS AND NO ONE HAD TOLD HIM ANYTHING YET! WHAT IF SHE DIED?!

"Oh, Irk. Oh, Irk. Oh, Irk..." Purple was chanting as if it were a sacred mantra.

"Would you shut the hell up?!" Red snarled. "You're driving me nuts!"

"Well, sorry for being worried about my niece!"

"All you have been doing is eat!"

"Hey, don't you dare mistake my appetite with apathy! Besides, you know I eat when I'm stressed!"

"And then you throw up."

"It tore her LEG! Who wouldn't throw up after seeing THAT?!"

"That's the point, Pur! That monster tore a bloody LEG! What will become of her now, she's too young to have a prosthetic, she won't be able to become a soldier in that state! What if the Control Brains want to put her down! We have a situation here, we have a-!"

Before he could process what had happened, his he felt his right cheek hurting after Purple's free hand came into contact with it. After a few seconds, he found himself out of his panicked frenzy.