Scavenge for the Future

by Evilhumour

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

“You knew.”

Aerostorm looked nervously up at her girlfriend. “Yes, but I can expl-”

“You knew and you didn’t tell us‽” Scratched’s nostrils were flaring. “How long‽”

“Scratch, honey, please, let me explain,” Aerostorm was trying to get herself out from under the pegasus.

“How. Long.” She spat, jamming a hoof into her chest with Aerostorm wincing and looking away but Scratched brought her head back. “How long!”

“A few months after our first birthday,” Aerostorm confessed.

“You had cancer for almost a year‽” Scratched snapped, staring furiously at the griffon. “When the fuck were you going to tell me you, you damn selfish bitch, when you died‽”

“I had my reasons, godsdamnit!” Aerostorm roared back, thrusting a talon into her face before glaring at Spliced. “How dare you do this!”

“I thought it was known considering how spread out it was,” Spliced snarled out with Scratched staring at her. The mare shook her head. “This was a mistake; I should have stayed away.”

Zaat raised a wing. “Um, I for one am glad you saved her,” he said nervously. “Even if she is getting cranky about it.”

“Shut up Zaat!” Scratched screeched at him before glaring down at Aerostorm. “I can’t even stand to look at you, you selfish piece-”

“Enough!” Aerostorm screamed back. “I had my reasons, but I don’t need to hear this shit from you!”

“Fine!” Scratched hopped off her. “I’ll be in my room!” She stormed out of the room, and had the doors been capable of it, she would have slammed them shut behind her.

Zaat shook his head. “That… did not go well.” Then he looked over at Aerostorm. “Seriously, I’m glad you’re all healed, but-”

“Not now Zaat,” she snarled, storming out of the room and into his room, closing the door.

The parrot sighed. “Aye yi yi…” Then he looked at Spliced. “Care to join me in the cockpit?”

“Why?” Spliced asked with a snort.

“Because I really, really don’t feel like being by myself right now,” he said.

“If it is all the same with you, I’d just like to get to a room and be alone,” she said. “I just lost-” she broke off. “Well. I’d like to be alone.”

“Okay.” Zaat regarded her for a moment before leading her to the spare bedroom. “But if you ever feel like talking to someone, you know where to find me.” With that, he hesitated at the door. “And like I said before, I do appreciate you saving her.” The door closed behind him. Now by himself, Zaat leaned against the door and sighed. “Now to deal with those two.”

---

Scratched sat on her bed, pawing at their duvet angrily as she was still fuming at Aerostorm for lying to her.

All that damn coughing, all of those weeks and months of being worried about her girlfriend’s damn health and the cat-bird couldn’t tell them she was dying‽ Right now Scratched didn’t know if she wanted to undo Spliced’s work and strangle Aerostorm, or… well, she wasn’t sure what the ‘or’ was, but she’d think of something.

Huffing out again, she recalled all the times they’d laid in this damn bed and she had been sick with worry over hearing Aerostorm trying to cough out her damn cancerous lung that had fucking cancer in it that she didn’t bother to tell her about! And considering Zaat’s surprised reaction, she knew he hadn’t known about it either.

Why didn’t she just tell us? she asked herself silently. Why? And why didn’t she try to do something about it? She’d never once seen Aerostorm visiting a doctor beyond routine checkups, or taking any treatment, yet she must have gone at least once if she knew about it.

Did she actually have any treatment done?

The thought that the woman she loved had gone a full Zeehalian year without doing anything about her illness was almost too horrifying for her to contemplate, and the fact she could have died from it without ever telling them was even worse. If it wasn’t for Spliced, she would have died, and then where would Scratched be? Sure, she had Zaat, but as a friend only. Aerostorm was her soulmate.

With a sigh, she flung herself back on the bed. “What am I going to say to her?” she whispered. Fluffing out her wings out, Scratched knew she had to say something, anything, but just what was beyond her.

She was still laying in that position a few minutes later when she suddenly sat up. Grim-faced, she marched towards the door and opened it, right in front of a startled Aerostorm, her talons up to knock.

Both stared at each other awkwardly before Scratched let out a noise. “Um, come in?”

Aerostorm nodded wordlessly, and brushed past her. As she sat down on their bed, both started speaking at the same time.

“Scratched, I-”

“Aerostorm, I-”

Both stopped with a blush on their faces, then promptly started speaking again, then stopped. Finally, Scratched let out a hiccuping giggle. “I… I’m sorry,” she said. “You go first.”

“No, you.”

“No, you!”

“No-” Aerostorm cut herself off. “Scratched, I owe you a big apology.”

“No, I owe you one,” Scratched sighed. “I was way out of line. I mean, you just got your wing back and you got cured from your cancer and I started to yell at you and-”

“Honey, you had every right to yell at me,” Aerostorm said as she placed her talon on her shoulder. “I mean, I only kept the fact that I was dying from everyone I loved, all because I was too selfish.”

“Selfish?” Scratched’s jaw dropped, and for a moment she looked angry again. “Why-” She caught herself. “I was so worried about you all this time, and you were dying and didn’t tell us!”

“And I was being selfish because I kept it to myself all because I didn’t want to worry you guys!” Aerostorm shook her head. “Do you know when I found out about this? It was the same day that you took apart the toaster.”

Scratched gasped, raising her hoof to her mouth. “That’s when I got my cutie mark and when we became a couple; that’s when you found out?”

“Yeah.” Aerostorm nodded her head, leaning into her now and Scratched instinctively lined herself so that the griffon would be supported. “I was going to tell you then but you were so happy I couldn’t take that away from you so I resolved to tell you the next day but… you know what happened then,” Aerostorm said with a blush across her face as Scratched very vividly remembered then[/i], and couldn’t stop herself from giggling before she caught herself. “Things kept pushing it back and back and… well, I just couldn’t tell you after a month had passed, could I?”

“So you just kept it to yourself all this time.” Scratched sighed. “Aerostorm… if I’d known, maybe we could have done something about it sooner.”

“Like what?” Aerostorm said, taking her head in her talons. “We’d have had to sell the Excelsior to get enough money to pay for what I needed, and that wouldn’t leave us with anywhere near enough to live on during the who knows how many months of treatment where I’d be sick from all the chemo. Even then, there’d have only been a slim chance it would have killed all the cancer cells, and missing just one would have meant it would probably come back - I’ve seen it happen. I couldn’t put you through that nightmare, you or Zaat.” Aerostorm giggled as she brushed some of Scratched’s mane off her face. “Besides I would be completely bald and unsexy from it.”

“Oh come off it, you’ll always be sexy to me, even if you were a big pink chicken,” Scratched said with a giggle that earned her a playful wing swat. Then she turned serious. “But I am glad you’re better now.”

“So am I, Scratched. So am I,” Aerostorm said nuzzling her face before kissing her on her the lips. The two of them shared a long kiss before they broke it off, smiling at each other again. “Come, I think we need to tell Zaat he’s got his room back,” she said trailing a bit with Scratched scoffing.

“Of course he has his room back you silly kitty-birb,” Scratched said, reaching up to mess with her hair with Aerostorm squawking in mock protest. “That’s if you want to be here with me, Aerostorm.”

“Of course I do, you silly smol birb,” Aerostorm teased back, pulling Scratched in close, holding her back to her chest as she ran her beak along Scratched’s ears.

“Glad to see you two are getting along again,” Zaat said from the doorway, a grin on his beak. “Guess that means I have my room again.” he chuckled with Scratched and Aerostorm laughing as well.

“Oh come here you dork,” Aerostorm waved him over with the parrot jumping on the bed and the griffon pulled him close. They all laughed like they had back on Zeehale before all of this craziness began. After they got their laughter under control, Aerostorm gave both of them a nuzzle of her head. “I’m so sorry for everything again.”

“Hey, no more of that; we agreed on that. Everything is good again, guys” Scratched said, placing her hoof on Aerostorm’s beak before she frowned. “I need to do something; I will be right back.”

“What do you mean Scratch?” Aero asked Scratched freed herself from the comforting embrace of her wings.

“I need to talk to her,” Scratched said over her shoulder as she left the room and walked to the guest room. She raised her hoof to knock on the door when she heard.

“I thought you sho-”

“Spliced, is everything okay in there?” she asked with a frown on her face “Who are you talking to?”

“Just a moment, Scratched,” Spliced’s voice came back. The door opened up to reveal the stonely gaze of the older mare looking intently at her. “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

“I…” Scratched found herself faltering for a moment before she collected herself. ”I want to say I’m sorry.”

“For what?” the mare seemed genuinely puzzled by this.

“For how I treated you. I mean, you gave my girlfriend her wing back and you saved her life and I just yelled at you.” Scratched felt her heart began to race and tears were starting to flow. “I could have lost her forever without you. And I don’t know what I would have done without her. I mean I never thanked you or anything or...” Before she was aware of what she was doing, Scratched had reached out to pull Spliced into a hug.

The other mare tensed up for a long moment before she seemed to melt and returned the hug, nuzzling the top of her head with her chin and rubbing Scratched’s back with her wing. “You are welcome, child,” she said softly. Scratched looked up to see a sad smile-like visage on her face before it faded away to the normal flat look. “Alright, let us see what you have found.” She moved past Scratched and walked into the next room where the mare used her magic to clear off the table she’d conjured earlier. Behind them, Aerostorm and Zaat walked in with the alicorn flashing a look at him.

“Here,” she said as she floated over a piece of paper. “Go to these coordinates; it will take us to a jump gate that will get us to Hesturland.”

“But,” Zaat frowned. “This is nowhere near the jump gate station.”

“Exactly,” she said, flashing him an annoyed glare. “Whoever is after you will be monitoring those closely. That one is a much older and very unknown jump gate. It was what I used to get here years ago and it should still be functional.”

“I’ll go set us up then and see what’s out there,” Zaat said with narrowed eyes before standing up and leaving the room. Scratched watched him go, then turned back to the others with Spliced staring hard at her with her hoof out. Scratched blinked and then reached into her saddle bag to pull out the data box with the alicorn using her magic to levitate it over and began to prod it with her magic, her eyes narrowing as she reactivated the message.

“It sounds like someone with a Terakian accent,” she said with a frown. “And this is built in their style…”

“But… “ Aerostorm trailed off with Scratched sitting across from the mare.

“But if it was Terakians, then why make it so obvious it was them?” Scratched asked. “Don’t get me wrong, it fits… it was a crashed Terakian ship where we found this thing, after all.”

“Exactly the issue,” Spliced said in what seemed to be approval in her voice. “If they were actually planning an attack on Hesturland, they wouldn't make it this obvious. Which means either they are planning on being too obvious for anyone take them seriously or someone is using them as a scapegoat. Which in itself is troubling as the Terakian Imperium is only spacefaring nation strong enough to actually pose a threat to Hesturland and with those two going at it with all of their allies, then the entire galaxy would be engulfed in war.”

“And with how everything seems to be on its way out…” Aerostorm trailed off in horror as she began to realize the sheer scope of what was before them.

“Getting this information to Hesturland may be the only way to save the entire galaxy,” Scratched said, only for Spliced to shake her head.

“No, it’s not,” Spliced said in a detached tone. “You are unknown to them and can easily be viewed as either stupid kids trying to pull a joke on them or being part of this conspiracy to attack them.” She sighed. “They know me, however. If I go to them, then they’ll know we’re serious…” The mare’s magic flared for a moment before she raised her head. “It’s time for me to go home.”

Comments

[Asolem2]

The other mare tensed up for a long moment before she seemed to melt and returned the hug, nuzzling the top of her head with her chin and rubbing Scratched’s back with her wing. “You are welcome, child,” she said softly. Scratched looked up to see a sad smile-like visage on her face before it faded away to the normal flat look.

Good to see that she is capable of smiling again

“Exactly the issue,” Spliced said in what seemed to be approval in her voice.

Spliced seems to like Scratched for some reason

[ShadowLDrago]

“You had cancer for almost a year‽” Scratched snapped, staring furiously at the griffon. “When the fuck were you going to tell me you, you damn selfish bitch, when you died‽”

She didn't want to hurt you.

“Fine!” Scratched hopped off her. “I’ll be in my room!” She stormed out of the room, and had the doors been capable of it, she would have slammed them shut behind her.

Well. That went poorly.

“Honey, you had every right to yell at me,” Aerostorm said as she placed her talon on her shoulder. “I mean, I only kept the fact that I was dying from everyone I loved, all because I was too selfish.”

I, see.

“Things kept pushing it back and back and… well, I just couldn’t tell you after a month had passed, could I?”

Ah...

“Of course I do, you silly smol birb,” Aerostorm teased back, pulling Scratched in close, holding her back to her chest as she ran her beak along Scratched’s ears.

Daaw.

“Exactly,” she said, flashing him an annoyed glare. “Whoever is after you will be monitoring those closely. That one is a much older and very unknown jump gate. It was what I used to get here years ago and it should still be functional.”

Ooh? Now this is interesting.

with those two going at it with all of their allies, then the entire galaxy would be engulfed in war.”

That's bad.

“It’s time for me to go home.”

Oh. Now that's going to be VERY interesting.