Deathworlders Should Not Be Allowed To Date! 30 (Patreon)

Luna VI query: Set the source to the leaked files of the first reconnaissance operation of Irisa.

Sure!

Luna VI query: Why did Elysira hurt Yelara?

***

From his not-so-comfortable seat on a rock, Ryo inspected the only gun he found among Zaenvalor's abandoned belongings. His hands had been itching to test the item the whole day, but, given that they had to leave their previous cramping site in such a hurry, he had been forced to store the weird object in his backpack and bring it with him, despite not knowing if it would be of any use to him or not.

The most surprising aspect of the gun was its light weight. Even though it was as long as a short-barreled rifle—small enough to be fully hidden on the back of an Irisian, but too big to fit on a belt holster—Ryo still felt like it was lighter than some of the fully loaded pistols he'd tried before. Of course, it was heavier than the 3D-printed piece he had smuggled with him into this mission, but that was to be expected given that it could barely be classified as a proper gun for his standards.

"Did you like it?" Elysira, who hadn't bothered to take a seat, asked while standing by his side.

"Hard to say without firing it first." Ryo pointed the gun's muzzle towards a faraway tree and went on. "I need your hand."

He had noticed he wouldn't be able to reach the trigger without a claw, which was quite disappointing.

"Like this?" Elysira didn't think twice before leaning against him from behind, her right arm resting on his shoulder while a good chunk of her body pressed against his back as she struggled to reach the trigger.

"There gotta be a better way-" Midway through his complaint, she reached the trigger, and the gun fired.

He struggled to see it well in the dark evening, but with the help of one of the small camping lights he was relying on, he got to see a tiny hole appear on the tree he was aiming at without the gun having made a noise.

Ryo glared at her, full of disbelief.

"What the heck! Are you crazy? Have you ever heard of gun safety or that's not a thing for your species?" If there had been any significant recoil, that might have caused an accident.

"I thought this was what you wanted me to do." Ryo had only been harsh with her a few times, which resulted in some faint purple appearing on her neck as she avoided his gaze. "I've never held a gun before, no one ever let me try."

Ryo stood up and stared at her averted eyes for a while before scratching his head and releasing a fake cough.

When he had her attention, he put the gun in her hands. "Two rules. Never point it at something you don't intend to shoot, and keep your claws away from the trigger until the last moment."

Ryo saw a wave of yellow propagating through her body, but her neutral pattern returned as her gaze transitioned to him. "Don't you want to inspect it more? I know you were eager to try it."

"One shot was enough." Ryo was truthful. "It feels like a toy. The kind of toy that's not meant for me."

Yellow returned.  "This means I-"

"Yes, you can keep it." He knew her well enough to anticipate her reply.

At the sight of yellow taking over her body while she inspected the gun, careful to not break the two rules he just told her. Ryo found himself enjoying her happiness. It was so easy to make her turn yellow that it felt like he was taking advantage of her, giving her worthless things and getting such intense reactions every time.

He could only imagine what she would do when she found out the endless supply of trinkets she could buy with the amount of money she was making working for the Martian Republic.

But her happiness only lasted until he noticed the twitching of her ears, which caused all the yellow to fade and be replaced by some light purple. "Is someone coming here?"

"Yes, there are many."

Before he could ask if she could identify who they were, Yelara, followed by a group of guards, emerged from the rock formation uphill. She surveyed the area around, her gaze alternating between his tent, Elysira, and finally Ryo himself.

"This place is not suited to set camp, please relocate to the spot we found in the rocks above and join us there."

Ryo raised an eyebrow at her suggestion, but Yelara didn't even wait to check his expression. She assumed he would just comply and turned to leave before he could explain his reasoning for choosing this place, which annoyed him more than it should.

"What if I like it in here?" Yelara had stopped her futile attempt to seduce him a while ago, but Ryo still remembered how annoying it was.

Their forced relationship at the beginning of the mission had tuned into a non-existent relationship as the days passed, but now she had given him a reason to think about her again and he didn’t like it.

Yelara stopped and their eyes met again. "You can't stay here; this place is too open and there are few places to hide if you are attacked."

"And who told you I plan to hide?" Ryo talked fast. "If I'm attacked, I'll either confront it head-on or withdraw. There is no reason to stay at a place where I can't do either without wasting time climbing rocks and struggling not to fall."

"You are free to do what you want, but if you stay here, Princess Amara will have to come here in person to talk some sense to you, why waste her precious time instead of just relocating?"

Ryo consciously decided to ignore her and leave her question unanswered so that she would just leave, but, to his utter surprise, Elysira interjected. "Amara has time to abandon all of us behind to go into the woods after Earth's representative, I doubt she is busy."

Elysira was controlling her colors well, there wasn't a hint of her true emotions showing. Did that gun give her the confidence she was lacking?

Ryo didn't have much time to think about it since something else increased his caution—red flowed among Yelara’s black spots at Elysira’s accusation.

"A traitor like you should be executed just for saying her name!" Yelara took a step towards Elysira. "How can you feel anything besides shame after betraying her the way you did? She is risking her life replacing you in this mission and you repaid her with betrayal.

“You-” Yelara cut her off.

“And you know what's even worse? You could only cry when Queen Khaala ordered you to make a sacrifice for the sake of our species, but now that it benefits you alone, you are there, sleeping in the same tent as the human and you seem happy about it!"

Ryo’s expression turned ugly at the accusations. He was only keeping Elysira with him because he feared for her life if she was left alone, and besides, before Amara had attacked her, Elysira had never told him anything that compromised Amara or their species.

"You can't say I'm a traitor, you don't know me... nor do you know much about Amara. I think she sees you as just a replacement for me." Elysira brought the gun closer to her body as she spoke, losing some of her control and letting some purple appear. But Ryo was keeping an eye on her hands to ensure her claws stayed away from the trigger and the muzzle was not pointed at Yelara.

Yelara didn't take Elysira’s words well. "This is not true! And why are you holding this gun? Are you planning to shoot me or Amara? I won't be able to sleep knowing someone like you has a gun. This will be confiscated!"

Yelara advanced towards Elysira as her body merged with the background. Ryo could almost smell an accident happening. But, of course, his confidence in preventing something like that was absolute as long as the guards behind Yelara didn't interfere, which they didn't seem like they intended to do.

Through the infrared view mode, he saw Yelara trying to snatch the gun from Elysira’s hand, but he moved faster and took it from her first.

As he was focusing on taking the gun out of the equation, however, Elysira’s left hand moved in an attempt to stop Yelara, grabbing her wrist firmly—which resulted in Elysira’s claws penetrating deep into Yelara's skin and immobilizing her arm.

"It-it was an accident!" She turned purple.

"You..."

Yelara moved quickly, but now he couldn't focus on her or Elysira since he noticed the guards behind were raising their guns at the sight of Yelara’s blood. They were all gouging his reaction, just like he was doing the same with them, which left them all at a standstill while Elysira and Yelara were let on their own for a brief moment.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ryo saw Yelara’s right hand going for Elysira’s neck, but Elysira intercepted it again, creating a copy of the wound on Yelara's other arm and restraining both her limbs under the pressure of her claws.

Light purple spread among the guards, but not one of them dared to do anything for fear of starting another fight, which caused Ryo to think they were stupid for not splitting their group to end this stupid fight.

"Stop this!" He shouted. Elysira listened to him and released Yelara’s arms, causing a large amount of blood to flow out of her wounds, painting the dead leaves on the ground in red.

"W-what have you done!" Yelara panicked, abandoning her camouflage and turning purple as soon as she saw how much blood was leaving her body.

"What are you all waiting for, take her from here and stop the bleeding!" Ryo noticed that his presence was still intimidating the guards. It was as if they thought he would attack them if they were to spare some attention to help Yelara, which meant he had to make his intention clear again.

His words worked like magic and two of the guards rushed to help Yelara while one still stayed behind, watching Ryo’s every move with his gun ready.

He noticed they were very careful while helping her, using their tails to constrict her arms like a tourniquet, abandoning the need for any external object to contain the beading.

As they were retreating, Ryo was surprised by how well Yelara was taking the pain, she didn't scream or make a fuss about her wound, she only took a glance at Elysira and went away while tones of purple appeared on her skin.

Elysira, however, crumbled in gray as soon as they were alone.  "I... I didn't mean to hurt her, you have to believe me." Countless tiny black spots appeared and disappeared on her skin as she went on, talking unusually fast and in a confusing way. "She attacked me and I did just what we do in training. You are always wearing this jacket and my claws don't hurt you, I always grab your wrist when we fight and-"

"Calm down!" Ryo was not bothered at all by what happened to Yelara. "If there is someone to blame is me who judged it was too soon to teach you restrainment, but this whole blaming game is useless anyway. So accept what you did and do better next time, this will be enough."

His words had not erased the gray from her skin, but they managed to stop the fleeting black spots from showing.

She threw a mysterious gaze at him and stayed silent, but since Ryo didn't mind the silence she ended up talking first anyway. "Uh... what do we do now?"

"Nothing. I'm not relocating anywhere and I doubt you are in the mood for training." Ryo retrieved a bottle of water from his backpack and gave it to her." You can use this to clean the blood off your claws."

Elysira’s eyes widened at the sight of her tainted claws and accepted the water in a rush, not even talking to him as she usually did before she started cleaning.

Ryo watched her for a bit, but, since he'd never been very good with emotional support, he left before she was finished, storing the gun back in his backpack and taking a sit somewhere beside his tent. He noticed that very few light beams were making their way through the thick leaves above and confirmed that night was approaching by checking the time.

Some time passed as he considered his opinions of things to do before going to sleep when Amara and Nathan appeared, coming from the same direction of the rocks where the rest of the group had chosen to stay the night.

"Fuck!" He whispered to himself in anticipation of the talk he was about to have. Thinking Nathan might confront him again after their not-so-pleasant last discussion on Amara's ship, Ryo entertained the possibility of this finally being the chance he'd been waiting for to extract some blood from the botanist.

Yet Nathan stopped somewhere along the way, letting Amara come alone as he kept an eye on her from behind. The botanist stayed behind with a little box in his hands while looking around, likely mapping the surroundings with his drones.

Ryo tried the infrared view mode, but, he only confirmed what his regular eyes sight had already told him—Amara was coming towards him alone.

She walked fast until she was right in front of him. "Where is Elysira?"

"If you can't see her it must be because she doesn't want to talk to you." Ryo didn't need to look back to understand what had happened, Elysira had simply noticed Amara and hid from her.

"She will appear if you call her, will she not?" Amara's tone was calm, and there was no sign of emotion on her skin.

"And why would I do that?" Ryo was not in the mood for Amara's games, so he was direct. "What happened today is more Yelara’s fault than Elysira's. If you can't see this, that's your problem and we have nothing else to talk about."

"I received a full report and reprimanded Yelara for her actions, she will recover and she will stay away from you from now on." Ryo found Amara's intentions very hard to read. "But Elysira will have to hear some words of mine before she can return and tell you any more of my secrets."

"You are free to wait here." Ryo smiled. "But you might have to wait a lot because I won't call her for you."

"I have all night." There was a hint of yellow on her neck. "Me and Nathan will set camp on this spot you found."

Very few times had the Irisians surprised Ryo, but Amara caused him to swallow a lump of saliva for a lot of different reasons.

Firstly, why was she not using her soldiers to get what she wanted like she had done when Zaenvalor was not cooperating with her?

Secondly, did she mean they would share a tent? If so, when had she seduced Nathan?

Most important of all, why would she leave the spot full of her subordinates to stay in a place Ryo chose for himself without following the suggestion of her own people?

He was too prideful to ask any of that in a friendly manner, but before he could decide what to say, he heard Elysira’s voice from behind.

"I'm here, Amara." Turning around, he found that the blood on Elysira’s claws was gone along with all the gray on her skin. And, whether she was faking it or not, he suspected this was an improvement over her previous state. Or, at least, he hoped it was.

"I presume you overheard me and found it preferable to hear my words rather than hiding all night, am I wrong?"

"Yes you are." Elysira advanced until she was right behind him. "I won't hear anything you have to say, just like you refused to hear me when you found I was teaching Ryo about our species."

Ryo looked behind with wide eyes, he could barely believe Elysira was picking another fight after everything that happened.

"And you believe I will simply go away if you refuse to listen?" A hint of red flashed on Amara's face.

"I know you won't." There was no purple on Elysira’s skin. "But I know that if I propose a challenge to you as the condition for me to listen, you will accept it and go away."

"Speak!" Amara replied in less than a second.

"It's simple... we fight and whoever wins will have to listen to everything the other has to say." Elysira went straight to the point.

Amara surveyed Elysira from head to toe. "You are hiding it better than before, but I can see through that. You are still afraid of me. You know you cannot win."

"There's more you are not seeing." Elysira's act crumbled and Ryo watched firsthand as her patterns became complex.

There was purple in many places, but that was far from being all. There was a concentration of black spots full of gray right on her neck, her belly had hints of yellow, and there was a fair amount of white and green taking space on her chest.

"You..." A complex pattern also flashed on Amara's body, but it disappeared faster than Ryo could see it. "You want me to forgive you."

Elysira’s exterior turned into a mess of tiny dots and gray again. It seemed like Ryo had misunderstood her greatly when he assumed she was fine.

"I miss you, Amara." She spoke fast. "The first time I saw how happy you were with Nathan the day you ruined our friendship… it hurt a lot and I couldn’t understand why you would do that. I might understand you better now, but what I can't understand is Yelara! How can you replace me with someone like her?"

Ryo didn't see that one coming. He had never asked how Elysira was feeling about Amara, he just assumed she was fine with the end of their friendship. She had even refused Zara’s offer just to repay some sort of debt to Amara, and she had even expressed her desire to abandon Irisa behind.

How could he have missed something so big as this after so many days together with Elisira full-time?

"I can never forgive you and you know that." Ryo had not digested all this information when Amara replied.

Gray gained much more space on Elysira’s skin and Amara, showing only a hint of gray in her neck, turned her back to them before speaking again. "I accept your challenge, and I also promise I will keep my word and hear you if you defeat me. This is all I can do."

Amara returned to where Nathan was assembling his tent, and Ryo was left alone with Elysira again, not knowing what he was supposed to say in this situation and bothered by the silence for once.

In doubt, he tried the usual method, "Hey, how about we go inside and have dinner instead of worrying about that princess?"

She showed a lot of red. "I challenge Amara for a fight and this all you want to ask me?"

"Yes." Ryo then added. "But there is something I want to give you. It's better than the gun."

None of the gray disappeared from her skin, and some of the red even persisted, but she still replied. "Fine."

***

This was an account based on the reason why Elysira hurt Yelara. The previous narrative is based on the events of the evening of the nineteenth day of the exploratory mission of Irisa. According to your current settings, no queries will be suggested.