#Danny named a fire extinguisher Wilson in chapter two lol

[starwrighter]

I am not a Baby!! (yes you are)

(Previous) (Next) (Masterpost) (Ao3)

(Chapter five lol)

A jarring noise jolted him awake way too soon for his liking. His eyelids still felt like anchors and vague images of a good dream lingered in his mind. If he went back to sleep now the chances of him continuing his dream where it left off were next to zero. As the noise continued Danny found himself pouting, his eyes watering despite not being sad. Frustration bubbled like a hot spring as he whipped his head around to the source. The radio!

All his anger shifted to giddy hope, exhaustion melting away as he rushed to the blinking red light and pressed play. The machine whirred and clicked a robotic voice different from his PDA chiming in

"Playing pre-recorded distress call..."

"This is lifepod 3, uploading our coordinates. We're plugging some holes in our emergency Seaglide, so if we're late for the rendezvous don't panic. Also, don't go home without us. Seriously. 3 out."

A young lady's voice played from the machine, coordinates downloading to his PDA along with the message itself. It felt like a decade had passed since he'd heard a human voice despite only being on this planet for a day at max. Looking at the coordinates, their life pod should be floating around in one of the kelp forests. Danny still looked human, so meeting up with the other survivors probably wouldn't be too scary for them, alarming yes, but not scary.

In all likelihood, the crew of life pod 3 wouldn't still be there when Danny reached the signal. The message had been sent around ten minutes after the crash and Danny was just now receiving it a day later. A rendezvous was mentioned in the distress call, maybe he could get the coordinates from the other pod's radio? The call he received was obviously responding to a distress call other than his. Why he wasn't receiving messages in chronological order was probably the same reason his PDA's blueprints were corrupted and his lifepod's interior was on fire when he woke up.

All he knew was following that signal was the first thing he was going to do when he set out again. Inside the life pod, however, he was going to have breakfast. Toddling over to the storage unit Danny picked out what was supposed to be a block of food. Scrunching up his nose Danny took a bite, it was dense and crumbled when he bit into it yet, was somehow chewy like a fruit gummy. The taste was nothing like fruit in fact it tasted more like meat. Not good meat either, like someone had taken raw steak rolled it around in their yard fresh after mowing, and then sprayed disinfectant on it. It took an entire water bottle to wash away the artificial taste on his tongue! Honestly, he wouldn't be surprised if you told him this was expired. It wasn't packaged, it just sat at the bottom of a warm storage unit next to his remaining water bottle and flares.

...

Was this some kind of space rat poison? Did he seriously just eat rat poison, his PDA didn't warn him it was rat poison. It should have warned him if it was rat poison there was no reason the PDA would have to poison him... Unless it wanted to? Did his PDA become sentient because it was sick of his crap? He hadn't even gotten close to the level of annoying his friends and enemies dealt with on a daily basis. If his PDA became sentient it was either a coward or trying to save itself the trouble.

"Hi?" Danny questioned, staring intently at his PDA waiting for a response... Nothing happened, after minutes of waiting silently so as to not interrupt the PDA if it decided to speak nothing happened no pop-up, notification, or comment. It wasn't at all disappointing and if it was that was only because the thought of a sentient AI to talk to sounded super cool.

Ancients, how was he this desperate for interaction already? Where was his fire extinguisher? Shuffling around the lifepod Danny looked under the seats, snatching up the bright red fire extinguisher and clutching it to his chest. Resting his chin on the handle Danny sighed, chubby fingers slipping against the smooth metal. The fire extinguisher wasn't as heavy as it'd been when he first sprayed it pretty soon, Wilson would be as useless for putting out fires as it was for blunt force damage. A knife in his backpack could be justified but a fire extinguisher while swimming in the ocean? A waste of space. Leaving his inanimate friend behind was the practical option but Danny didn't care.

The knife he'd acquired last night might be his main friend from now on but Wilson was the Og. They're going on adventures together and Danny would keep it in his room as a souvenir. A knife would eventually be taken from him but fire extinguishers were for forever! Stuffing Wilson into his bag Danny prepared to leave his lifepod again.

Squeezing the knife in his right hand Danny gave a few test swings. Physically, he's weak but the knife was sharp and it'd do some serious damage if he was careful what he swung at. As much as his food tasted like something you were served in prison this was not prison and throwing hands with the biggest creature on the planet would do him no good. With that said he was going to pick a fight with whoever invented those nutrient blocks, or maybe he'd sick the lunch lady on them? Whoever made these rations deserved to live off of only them for at least a week.

Opening the hatch was easier than it was yesterday, the orange handle turning smoothly with one yank instead of many. Water less foreign against his skin, the wetsuit feeling more natural than it had before. A dive that wasn't skin-tight would still be preferred but at least it was breathable and protected him decently. Swimming had gotten a bit easier, the flippers didn't make a huge difference when you accounted for the heavy oxygen tank strapped to his back. Surprisingly the weight of the new tools in his backpack and the oxygen tank strapped to him didn't drag him down to the seafloor.

Catching a few fish with his teeth to distract the metal muncher. Danny wandered towards the signal. Sticking low to the seabed, he ducked between creeping hiding amongst the vines and using supply crates as cover. Tossing a fish at metal munchers that lurked a bit too close to his hiding place distracted them long enough to get to the next one before they swam to inspect where their snack had come from. His PDA informed him it gave the metal muncher a name when he distracted it long enough to scan it. A "Stalker" is what the AI deemed a suitable name. Danny thought that name was boring, a dramatic name for a creature that Danny found to be scatterbrained and lacked the dedication to hunting the name implied. Its pattern of movement was closer to sneaking than it was to stalking. It was an annoying name choice but it made sense. You couldn't give a living creature the genius name he came up with.

Coral was wrinkled like a brain but colored a bright purple and spat out air bubbles that filled his air tank. Giving him more time to explore before the natural need for air spoiled his fun. Sandstone outcrops popped up more often in the kelp forests, useful silver and gold dropped into his open palms before quickly being stuffed into his backpack.

As he closed in on the signal, body pressed to a grassy seabed a sinking feeling started to fester in his stomach. A feeling that soon shifted to overwhelming grief that hit him like a crowbar to the cranium. Chest tightening as a sunken lifepod clear in his view. If it'd had just been sunken there was hope that it'd happened after the crew moved on, perhaps a Stalker taking a little nibble? No, this lifepod had been exposed to some sort of explosion, metal blackened and jutted outward. The bottom hatch looked to be ripped from the floor, now leaning against the gaping hole just below the bright red 3 labeling the lifepod. While there were bite marks on the pod, parts of the yellow latter were likely torn off by a passing stalker that likely occurred after the initial explosion.

Considering his lifepod was on fire when he woke up, this one exploding for no visible reason was too much of a stretch. Swimming into the sunken pod, prepared for the worst. Mentally preparing himself to see a mangled body or the horrific scene of a lethal incident. The lack of gore upon his entry was both relieving and unnerving. A lack of bodies didn't bring him hope, the hairs standing on the back of his neck and a cold breath stuck in his chest told him with certainty that the crew of this lifepod was dead.

The crew's last voice log confirmed this. A modified power cell, one to supercharge a sea glide to be capable of carrying two people at a higher speed. The math was perfect in theory but the seglide itself wasn't built for the power cell. It was too powerful, the kind you used to power bigger things like prawn suits or seamoths. Like rigging a car battery to power a lightbulb it was doomed from the start Chances were, it started to overheat the moment they turned it on and overloaded a few feet from the pod just like the crew thought it would.

Awful, There were no names on the PDA. No bodies to be buried or cremated and no names to be remembered for grieving. Deaths that he could only mourn in the confines of his mind. Jane and John doe's that died doing their best to ensure survival in a shitty situation. It took everything he had not to cry, though maybe he was already crying but the ocean was washing his tears away without a trace just like it had with these people.

A large displacement of water followed by a not quite shriek of something much bigger than a metal muncher snapped him back. That did not sound friendly! Danny hugged the wall of the lifepod peeking out through one of the many holes made by the stalkers.

That didn't look friendly either.

A gigantic snake-like fish with pelvic fins like silk sleeves. Gills glowed a toxic white, its yellow body shimmering in the daylight. Similar to a hoverfish there were spots lining the fish's back, a large white blob in the shape of a bat on its chest. It glided through the water slowly circling the lifepod, eyes glowing yellow.

"Thirty seconds," Danny could have screamed, the robotic alert like a firecracker going off during silent reading. The giant fish whipped its head around creeping towards the lifepod at an agonizingly slow pace. Heart racing, Danny clung to the side of the lifepod pressing himself as flatly against the pod as he could. Desperate to avoid being spotted he shoved himself underneath a metal panel.

A stalker's roar broke through the water followed by a pained shriek and a body slamming against the sand. Danny took this opportunity to make his escape, vision blurring as he swam to the surface. A gasp of air could never taste any sweeter as he watched a pack of stalkers attempt to eat the giant. The giant just seemed annoyed, their face pinched in what he could only assume was the fish equivalent of exasperation. Batting away the hungry gators with their blanket-like tale, Stalkers attempted to thrash around a creature that was several times bigger than them, thinking they could take him as a group.

This distraction lasted long enough for Danny to flee back to the shallows. Back to the bladderfish and Peepers who didn't look like they could swallow him whole without noticing it. Now Danny didn't mean to judge a book by its cover but he also wasn't willing to swim up to a fish that big, not when he wasn't sure if that was the one who'd had a taste of human flesh.

"Detecting increased local radiation levels. Trend is consistent with damage to the Aurora's drive core, sustained during planetfall"

Well shit, sometimes Danny hated being right.

@pupstim @ashoutinthedarkness @avelnfear @thought-u-said-dragon-queen @meira-3919 @blep-23 @hugsandchaos @stargazing-bookwyrm @starlightcat04 @bytheoldwillowtree @zeldomnyo @justwannabecat @shepherdsheart

#Danny named a fire extinguisher Wilson in chapter two lol #Danny wandering towards the signal while unintentionally wandering toward Signal #Danny deserves to cry let the boy cry #dpxdc #dcxdp #dc x dp #dp x dc #subnautica au #I feel like danny isn't feral enough #I need to fix that in future chapters smh