A Space Oddity

by J. J. Pavlov

  Daica is looking back at the storm in silent awe. When everybody was let back out this time, she didn't have as much trouble getting her bearings and catching her breath again. It seems that she may be getting used to the corruption faster than Hestia is. But her current expression suggests that she's awestruck by the fact that they just went through that force of nature without even feeling anything. The inside of a Crawling Chaos is mysterious as ever.

  "Are you alright, Lenoly?" Hestia rubs the little bakari's back as she's shaking all over with a pale face. On the other end of the spectrum, Lenoly seems to be taking the corruption worse with each exposure. Maybe regular demons aren't as resistant as cursed beings are. However, that doesn't explain why Ninlil seemed to be perfectly fine despite having spent the most time inside Asoko.

  "I-it's just so overwhelming." Lenoly looks up at the angel girl with a weak smile. It's something a Crawling Chaos itself will never truly understand; Asoko doesn't feel like she's exuding anything from her body.

  "So, where are we now?" Since she can't contribute to the matter, she instead asks Senka, who has taken out the map to check their position.

  "We've gone a little off course, but whatever you did has cut down our journey by more than half a day." The doll girl replies after Dregana helped her activate the map magic. It seems that the former is apart from this world's system and can't use any of its magic, but has her own set of abilities that nobody else has.

  "That's good news. Maybe I should do it again and go all the way to the Dominion." Asoko suggests but earns herself a glare from Tamariki. It seems she really dislikes the idea of being enveloped by tentacles again after all. If only she had behaved herself, that wouldn't have needed to happen.

  Once everybody calms down from the experience of corruption, they start making dinner. Luckily, the wind helps in preventing the smell from reaching her nose, or Asoko would begin to feel hungry. She has plenty of mass from their last hunt before they set off from Enorath, but raw food purely for sustenance can't compare to meals cooked over a fire.

  Suppressing the urge to sigh at the thought that this would continue for however many more days, the Crawling Chaos tries to focus on the beauty of the setting sun beyond the watery horizon instead.

  On the morning of the seventh day after they passed the storm, land came into sight. At one point, the constant midday sun with nowhere to hide threatened to cause heatstroke in several of the people riding on Asoko's back. She grew a cover to shade them, but it did slow her down a bit, which resulted in a slightly longer journey.

  Lenoly had told her that traveling from Ceogath to Blereath by ship needed almost half a year. So making this same journey within two weeks must seem like a dream to her.

  Asoko hadn't considered it before, but Ninlil is the only person present who made that trip herself too. She would find an opportunity to ask her when they make landfall. For now, the catgirl appears absentminded despite the sighting of Ceogath. The others are celebrating in one way or another. Most of them are showing relief that they'll finally have solid ground under their feet again.

  "Don't celebrate yet. That's only the Cape of Nervis." Senka rains on their parade - as she does so often.

  "But at least we can spend some time on land before continuing on our journey." Tamariki replies as if that's already been decided upon. So far, nobody has talked about what they should do once they reached the Dominion. Still, since the suggestion touches a nerve in several of them, it seems to have become the only option.

  "Yeah, we should do that. At this rate, I'll forget what I normally look like." Asoko remarks jokingly and agrees with the red-skinned demon.

  Her reasons are different from everybody else's. She has gone through many experiences that tested the limits of her mental and physical strength, so spending ten days in the form of a dragon is nothing for her. After all, she can fly through the sky freely that way, unlike when she was forced to wander the scorching desert while dying from thirst and starvation.

  She wants to test the Dragon Jet Engine to its utmost limits - something she couldn't do when she had to worry about everybody inside her. Maybe she can then find a way to turn herself into a proper plane and safely let others ride on her without having to keep them inside her body. To that end, she will need the cooperation of one particular individual who wouldn't die even if she were killed.

  "What is it?" Tamariki asks when she notices Asoko's gaze on her.

  "Nothing." She turns away and smiles to herself, though the dragon face can't really show any emotions.

  When they reach land about an hour later, Asoko sets down just beyond the rocky beach. Seagull-like birds disperse in her path of approach, but when she lands with an earth-shaking impact, the entire swarm takes flight.

  Only moments later, they come back down, watching the dragon with curiously tilted heads while keeping their distance. Ninlil immediately jumps off Asoko's back once the latter's wings rest and bolts at the birds, which fly away in a panic once more. It seems she can't control her cat instincts, or her urge to run about has become really pent up.

  Tamariki and Dregana each help Daica and Lenoly down, while Hestia flies down with Senka in her arms. Once everybody has debarked, Asoko returns to her human form and stretches her body even though it has been formed from new matter just now. It's more of a psychological thing than a physical one.

  "Hey, Tamariki. Come with me for a bit." She then calls out to the horned demon, who watches Ninlil chase the seagulls with a curious look on her face.

  "What is it?" The towering girl turns her head to regard Asoko suspiciously.

  "You like explosions and high speeds, right?" The latter asks with a grin on her face. She's unable to conceal the delight at revealing this to somebody who most likely shares her enthusiasm.

  "Oh?" By that sound, Tamariki is obviously intrigued.

  "What is this about?" But to Asoko's surprise, Lenoly joins them and inquires with a curious expression. The two girls before her are at practically the exact opposite ends of a slider for physical builds. The horned demon is at the extreme end of sturdiness, while the little bakari appears like fragility incarnate. Or at least her petite body doesn't look fit for what she has planned.

  "Sorry, but for now, I only need Tamariki. When this works, you can try it out." Petting Lenoly's hair, Asoko explains. It elicits a pout from her, but she nods while a blush develops on her cheeks. She isn't drawing away from the caress and seems to be enjoying it. Only when the red-skinned demon watching them clears her throat do they separate from each other.

  Something is definitely budding between the two, and even Tamariki can see it, but she's still selfish at heart and wants to know what Asoko has in mind.

  "So, we first need to get some altitude." With these words, the Crawling Chaos transforms into Kiamedras again. But instead of an indentation, she creates a kind of cockpit for Tamariki to sit inside - complete with a tentacle harness.

  "I don't need those." When the towering demon climbs on, she states with a disapproving frown while pointing at the complex seatbelt.

  "Suit yourself." Pulling the tentacles back inside her body, Asoko presents Tamariki the pilot seat covered in dragon scales. The latter nods in approval and climbs into the cockpit.

  "What is this for?" She asks while knocking on the bony structure around her. There's no glass, so it's nothing more than a frame. For the time being, it doesn't really serve any purpose.

  "Don't worry about it. Ready?"

  "I'm always ready!"

  Rolling her eyes at that reply, Asoko takes off from the ground with mighty beats of her wings. The swarm of seagulls that had begun to settle down again in the vicinity scatters with terrified shrieks.

  "So, what is this all about?" Tamariki asks while putting her hands behind her head in a relaxed gesture.

  "If you don't want me to grab hold of you, you better grab on yourself." But instead of replying to the question, the Crawling Chaos suggests to the demon sitting in t
he cockpit in a nonchalant tone. "We'll be going very fast."

  With these words, she quickly forms the thrusters at her flanks. Then the duet of magic incantations follows, upon which her wings fix into position. Unlike before, these are curved backward slightly like in a fighter jet. The instant the spells are completed, the Dragon Jet Engine is propelled forward at an incredible speed.

  "Woaaah?!" Tamariki screams in surprise as she's pressed into her seat. But her voice is mostly drowned out by the sound of explosions from inside the engines.

  Shooting across the sky, Asoko experiments with her form in midair without worrying about going haywire from her aerodynamics getting out of balance. She first pulls all the features sticking out of her body, including the spiky bone plates running along her spine, inside to reduce air resistance. Then she shortens her neck until the head, of which all features smoothens out, connects directly to the torso to form a triangular shape. She more and more resembles an actual plane rather than a dragon.

  The wingspan is reduced as well, as she can feel incredible forces tugging at them from about halfway down. In the same vein, she turns the leathery membranes of the wings solid before covering them in dragon scales. They smoothen down across her entire body to reduce any and all air resistance.

  Finally, the tail is retracted into the body, as it's mostly useless even for a dragon's regular flight. Since a Crawling Chaos defies the laws of physics, the more matter she pulls into her pocket dimension of a body, the less she weighs on the outside. With the massive bone bludgeon at the end of the tail gone, she grows ever lighter and gains speed.

  "Wooohooo!" Raising her arms out of the cockpit fearlessly, Tamariki cheers like a child on a rollercoaster. If it were anybody else among the party - other than Senka - they would most likely have fainted from the speed.

  Asoko can instinctively feel that she's reaching a velocity more than twice of what she traveled at in the last iteration of the Dragon Jet Engine. At this point, there are no signs of the dragon form left, so rather than an improved version, this is a whole different thing. One that can be called a jet plane already.

  This is the Chaos Jet. While she may be called Asoko by many, she's still a Chaos. She can't wait to show her other half this invention and share with her the technique to replicate it. After all, she's another Kuroe Makoto, so she's going to love this.

  Quickly performing some fast maneuvers, she realizes that without any mechanical moving parts in her body, it doesn't share the limitations of actual fighter planes. Narrow turns that would cause a plane to scatter into its pieces are no problem for her uniform body. She enjoys the feeling of the g-forces on her, as she has neither circulation nor a brain that could be affected by them.

  The feeling of freedom as she can move as she wishes is incredible, and she nearly loses herself in making ever more daring turns and spins.

  That's when Asoko realizes that Tamariki hasn't made a sound in a while. She grows a pair of eyes on the inside of the cockpit to find the demon girl having grown limp. Her face has been drained of all blood, and only the whites of her eyes are showing. She has fainted from the stunt maneuvers.

  Asoko immediately begins to slow down and grow out the dragon features again so that at the end of her deceleration, she can glide back toward where the others are gathered on the shore.

  "Hey, Tamariki!" Extending several tentacles inside the cockpit to shake the horned demon, Asoko tries to wake her up. She doesn't know the procedure for treating somebody who has fainted from g-forces, so all she can do is try to call out to her.

  Suddenly, Tamariki's entire body begins to glow, and moments later, she startles awake. Looking around in confusion, she regains her bearings and blinks a few times. Then she jumps up from her seat, causing Asoko to very nearly flinch in surprise. She must be angry at being tossed around like that or embarrassed about being seen in her weakness.

  "That was incredible!" Instead, she pumps her arms into the air and roars in joy. "Let's do it again!"

  Her ability to come back from anything that doesn't kill her is like a cheat. Maybe Asoko should have taken some of her genetic material while she was unconscious, but if she found out, there would be hell to pay.

  "Some other time." She lands a distance away from the camp, causing the birds who had settled to once again scatter away. But this is the third time, so they come back quickly, looking at the giant dragon with curiosity. It seems they aren't especially concerned by the fact that Ninlil has caught and killed several of their kin.

  Lenoly is frozen in place with the tip of her staff emitting a flame to ignite a pile of dry driftwood, most likely to begin roasting the birds. But then Asoko notices that Daica, Hestia, and Dregana are staring just as wide-eyed as the little bakari.

  "So that's what you did back then, huh?" Senka is the only one who comes up to her and speaks, though she's furrowing her brow. The doll girl isn't easily surprised, and as somebody who seems to know about the world Kuroe Makoto came from, she doesn't consider a jet plane especially curious.

  "Not entirely. Last time was still mostly dragon with two jet engines." Asoko says while turning back into her human form after Tamariki jumped off. The horned demon looks giddy, just like a child who had an exciting ride at the fair.

  "You may not have noticed, but that was very loud." With a tilt of her head, Senka comments not about the incredible feat Asoko just performed, but its drawbacks.

  "Can't do anything about that. That's how jets are." Shrugging, the Crawling Chaos doesn't argue against it. Though she was still somehow able to hear Tamariki's cheery voice when she accelerated. That must mean she hasn't surpassed the speed of sound yet. Next time then. "Let's eat and then get going to Pontis Daemonis."

  Pontis Daemonis is a huge seaside fortress built on a delta, with one bridge over each arm of the river flowing past it on both sides. The fortifications look incredibly sturdy, and the front facing the sea has many towers on which ballistae and catapults can repel an attack from ships.

  So when Asoko approaches them, it causes a huge ruckus. A giant dragon flying toward a populated town is always a reason for worry. But because it looks like it's coming from across the ocean, the demons instantly prepare for a human invasion.

  Before they fly close, the siege engines shoot at them. Even though Asoko is sure that those can't hurt her, she still weaves through them to prevent anybody on her back from getting hit. Soon, she's in the range of the archers standing on the battlements and can see them aiming up at her.

  "Cease!" The Crawling Chaos roars before they can loose their arrows, causing many of them to drop their weapons in terror, and most others to stare in confusion. Using this opening, she flies over the fortress wall and into the courtyard before the main keep.

  Once on the ground, she wastes no time to wait for the others to climb down. Instead, she grabs them all with tentacles while transforming into her human appearance before placing them on their feet. But it still took enough time for the defenders to assemble and surround them from all sides with spears and halberds.

  Asoko always knew the demons were quite varied, but she realizes that once again when she looks across the soldiers around them. They range from goblin-like creatures as short as Senka to towering minotaurs as tall as Tamariki. Most of them look at the group with suspicion, although some are more surprised about where the dragon disappeared to.

  "Who are you?" A mightly roar echoes across the courtyard. It comes from a massive demon easily standing at six meters from head to toe, which approaches them and from the gate. He's like a centaur, but instead of the body of a horse, it resembles a scaly elephant. Four sturdy legs propel him toward them in earth-shaking steps, and a long spiked tail counterbalances his gait. His upper body is ash-gray and incredibly muscular, with the shoulders and forearms covered in crystal-like growths. "What business do you have here?"

  He sports a pair of elephant tusk-like horns growing from the sides of his jaw, which move with every word he speaks. Anothe
r pair of horns extend from his forehead and curve backward like those of a goat. His mouth full of sharp teeth may appear to be opened in a constant shark-like grin, but his tone makes it clear that he's not making that expression out of happiness.

  "Depending on your answer, I will grind you into the dirt or hang you from the city gate!" His mighty fists grip a giant axe, though his bare hands look like they could easily crush armored humans. Judging by his appearance, he's the commander of Pontis Daemonis.

  "I am-" Ninlil begins, but Asoko steps forward and stops her from exposing herself as a deserter. Even if she may be the founder of the Maid Corps and fought alongside Aldeath, she did flee the Dominion.

  "My name is Chaos. I am the daughter of Queen Pelomyx." The Crawling Chaos announces with a regal bearing. She has seen too many similar situations in which a person announced their true heritage with all their gravitas, only for everybody to laugh at them. Thus, she's mentally prepared for that.

  "Can you prove your identity?" But everybody remains silent, except for one voice. A lanky, almost skeletal demon with insect-like limbs steps out from the four-legged one's shadow. He's about a head taller than Tamariki but looks incredibly fragile. His white exoskeleton is only interrupted by his black joints, and he's wearing nothing but a red tabard with the emblem of a black sun just like the gigantic one beside him. That must be the Dominion's flag.

  Once he comes to the forefront, Asoko notices that he's dragging an oversized meat cleaver along the ground with one of his three-fingered hands. It looks like it should weigh more than him, but she knows not to underestimate those with slender builds. His face, which has compound eyes but otherwise human-like features, seems to be in a constant frown.

  "Well, demons should be fine." Muttering to herself, Asoko shrugs.

  Then she transforms into the true appearance that she had before the episode in the desert when she almost died of starvation. A vaguely humanoid shape, black tentacles wrought into muscles like steel wires, a constantly pulsating form despite lack of movement. Where a face should be, there's only unfathomable depth, as if one is staring into a starless section of space - although there's a distinct feeling that something is looking back.