Pixie Hazard by Archibald Bradford (top young adult novels .txt) 📕

Funny how terror was recognizable on the face of even a butt-ugly bird monster like this one.

Donnie advanced and let off three more shots in rapid succession, the plasma discharge pulping huge holes deep into it until it slumped to the muck practically in two pieces, its upper body draped over Bunny’s prone form.

She took a step closer to give it one more blast to its ugly face just to make sure it wasn’t getting up, and then had to use all of the amplifiers in her suit to heft the carcass off of the cat-girl.

She carefully rolled her onto her back and didn’t at all like what she saw, her throat closing in a rare moment of panic.

“M-medic! Eniella! I need Billy here now, Bunny is down! Her helmet is fucked and her suit is compromised-”

“Ouchie.” A tiny voice interrupted her.

“Bunny?! You alive baby girl?”

Dimly she heard Eniella copy her orders, but her focus was locked on the injured cat.

The orange suited girl sat up slowly, though the entire inside of her mask was coated with blood and sludge-like muck from where the faceplate had cracked.

“I’m not baby, I’m Bunny. Urgh, this place really smells. Can we go home now?” She answered blearily.

“Yeah, but quit moving around! You’re all fucked up sweetheart.”

With the crap on the faceplate of her helmet hiding her features from Donnie’s view, Bunny wiggled from side to side in her suit for a bit, then shrugged almost carelessly as if a giant mutant turkey lizard monster trying to tear her apart was all in a day’s work.

“It’s not bad. Hey, are you... are you crying? Cuz, it sounds like you’re crying.”

Donnie scowled down at her, though the girl couldn’t see it.

Sure she was stressed out, and yeah the stress was probably plain in her voice; the sight of the scrap-hawk tearing into the loving girl’s legs hadn’t been pleasant after all, but she was a marine dammit!

“No I’m not crying!”

The arm of the orange suit pointed accusingly just slightly to Donnie’s left.

“You are! You thought I was dead and now you’re crying!”

Billy and Eva were coming in fast at that point, the latter with her repeater in hand and scanning all around for more threats while the former un-shouldered her bag.

“How you doing Bunny?” The experienced medic asked over the coms, her voice level and reassuring.

“I’m okay, I think my legs got cut up a bit, but I can’t really feel it. Helmet is stinky, hit my head. DeeDee is crying.”

“Oh? Not surprising, she is a pussy.” Eva’s tight voice commented while eyeing the number the captain pulled on the scrap-hawk’s sorry carcass.

Billy knelt beside the wounded cat-girl and set to work.

“You sound okay, but let’s check you out honey.”

Even in the armoured gloves of her exo-suit the medic’s deft fingers were able to shift the tears in Bunny’s orange pants aside to see how bad the bleeding was, whatever she saw must not have worried her too much though as she turned back to her bag and started taking out her collapsible stretcher.

“Hey.” Bunny slurred; “Now I’m kind of fuzzy and... and swirly.”

Billy unfolded her stretcher and lay Bunny down on it when she started to slump.

“That would be the nitrogen, her heart’s going too fast and the breather in her suit is toast, we gotta get her back to the ship before she asphyxiates herself. I could take her faceplate off and give her some oxygen now, but this place is so toxic I’d rather not risk it. She’s been exposed enough.”

Donnie nodded, the ship was close: they could see the hulking mass of it just past a pile of deformed neocrete tiles.

“Right, I’ll take the front of the stretcher, you take the back. Reeves! Prep the airlock for decon. Hooker, cover us.”

“Copy Skip, just get moving already.” Eva replied gruffly, scanning their surroundings with the scope of her weapon.

Together they hoisted the stretcher and sprinted back to the ship.

Chapter 4: After Action

Once they were in the airlock Donnie sent Eva back out to link up with Maria and Kyle, while Billy got Bunny’s helmet off and put an oxygen mask over her mouth.

She came to right quick once her brain got what it needed from the hissing rubber mask and she almost immediately struggled to sit up to get back to accusing Donnie of crying.

“I wasn’t crying!”

“Yes you were, and that’s okay! I would cry too if I lost my Bunny!”

Once they got her out of the suit and helped the woozy girl through a decontamination shower, they were both relieved to see that the worst of Bunny’s visible injuries were the cuts on her legs and a nasty gash across her forehead from her broken faceplate. None of them were particularly deep, just messy; the mesh of her suit had done a fairly good job of foiling the scrap-hawk’s dirty talons.

Other than that she just had a bunch of nasty bruises from the brief ordeal and a mild concussion from when the beast caught up to her and she had face-planted beneath it.

The doc cleaned her up and electro sutured her cuts, then strapped an EEG rig onto her head to monitor her concussion. She also gave her a pop for the pain in her legs that made her giggle non-stop.

“You are one lucky Bunny, baby.” Donnie said with a smile as she stroked the girl’s fuzzy ears around the EEG helmet.

“I’m not Bunny baby! I’m baby Bunny!” She slurred out and then laughed her ass off when Billy blew up a rubber glove to give her.

Donnie shot her a frown but the doctor shrugged.

“What? She’s high, it’s hilarious.”

Bunny fumbled her grip on the glove and it made a sputtering noise as it shot