Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

    Eclipse, 24, had worked at Laminax for 6 years. She was hired as a teen to earn money for college savings, and worked there as a pup carer. The pups loved her very much, seeing as she’d provide generous amounts of food during mealtimes or whenever they were hungry, always play with them and let them take naps all the time. One day, a small, red, pup with spikes on its back hid in her backpack. Eclipse had been taking care of that pup since it was born, and therefore knew its name to be Kessho, Japanese for “crystal”. It always hid there as it was constantly bullied by the others for "looking weird". It was the only pup she brought to the island with her, as all the others had been adopted already. 

    Eclipse would always attempt to climb the lab-grown tree that miraculously managed to survive and end up on the island, and noticed that the blue fruits were edible, unlike the pink ones. Occasionally crates would float by and wash up on the island's shore, containing supplies such as Bloxy Colas and stashes of credits and tokens belonging to other people. Not that she needed the money. Working at Laminax provided a high pay. So high that due to the sheer amount of employees it went bankrupt. Abble had also been missing since the facility started flooding, fleeing when she saw the water rise just a little. Eclipse sat under the big tree, reminiscing these past memories. Kessho came to Eclipse’s side and laid its head on her lap. The spikes on its back glowed dimly. Kessho was happy being on this island, it was fine as long as it was with Eclipse. On the other hand, Eclipse didn’t really like living here alone. She didn’t have anyone to talk to other than Kessho, and even so, talking to Kessho would make her seem weird. Nobody would see though, since she hadn’t seen anyone or any trace of any living human in the time she’d been stranded on the island. She could swim, but was afraid of anything in the water. She might’ve been dragged down and turned into a Shork if she did… that didn’t seem so bad. At least she would finally have someone to talk to. But becoming a Goo would erase all her memories… maybe it wouldn’t? Agh, she’s overthinking again.. When she did absentmindedly wander too close to the water, or what was now an ocean, Kessho would pull her back. It wasn’t the slight tugging at her shirt that alerted her, it was the strong strawberry scent that Kessho released when it was afraid. That scent was what awoke Eclipse from her daydream.  

  She got up from under the tree, noticing that her pup was missing, and walked in the direction the scent was coming from. She tracked the scent all the way to the sea. Kessho was there, making what was the equivalent of barking for pups. 

    “Huh? Kessho, why are you-” She was about to ask why Kessho was making such a fuss when she noticed something in the distance. It was slightly glowing yellow. She noticed that the lights had switched off. The lights had adopted a day-night cycle, so she knew it was probably evening. The water was dark, rendering her unable to see anything below the water’s surface. She sat on the wet sand. Where the sand came from she didn’t really know. Maybe the sand used to be buried under the dirt? There was a lot of dirt in the Laminax gardens, which all accumulated into the huge island. She waited for the object floating in the water to be within grabbing distance before she stretched her arm out and pulled on it. Its texture was kind of soft and fluffy, though it was heavy. After a while she managed to pull it ashore. Eclipse studied the thing she’d just retrieved, and did a double take after realising what it was. A Gootraxian?! She was quite amazed. The gootraxian had orange fur, red markings covering its feet and paws and yellow chest fluff, horns and tail tip. Eclipse really was too tired to deal with anything, so she left the body there and went to sleep in a tent made of fabric she found in a crate. It was probably already dead anyways. She awoke later to see Kessho gone again. Normally Kessho would sleep until noon and Eclipse woke up as early as seven. She exited the tent to go find Kessho. She once again found it at the island's beach. Wait. The gootraxian was missing! A feeling of fear and deja vu struck her. This felt familiar... No time to stand there and think! She ran to her tent with Kessho on her back and grabbed a bat she'd been keeping in her stash. She slowly went back to the beach, and smelt something. It smelled like oranges! Weird smell, considering how oranges weren't present on the island. She saw light, nearly unnoticeable footprints going towards the tree. She felt unsafe again. Her tent was quite near it, she could've been attacked!

   A shiver passed down her spine as she felt something tapping against her shoulder. Couldn't be her pet, Kessho had jumped off and went back to the tent minutes ago. She quickly spun around and hit the thing in the face. It stumbled backwards before falling down clumsily. Eclipse held her bat in front of herself. 

    "D-don"t hurt me!" Eclipse said, clearly afraid of the orange, squirrel-like latex beast.

"What was that for?! I just wanted to know if I could stay here!" The beast was confused by Eclipse's act of violence. 

    "Uh-uh, NO WAY! You're gonna infect me and turn me into whatever you are any chance you get!" Eclipse yelled.

"Wh-what? Let me explain-"

   They sat in Eclipse's tent, sharing a conversation.

Eclipse : ...so what's your name? Assuming Gootraxians have names...

furry : ...Ethan

Eclipse : Ah... so... you're not gonna infect me?

Ethan : um... no? Unless you're so suicidal that you want to basically die?

Eclipse : ... 

Ethan : ...

Ethan : I can't infect you anyways. I'm not even gooey so I can't transfur you.

Eclipse : yay im safe :D

Ethan : When I was walking around your island I noticed you didn't really have much food.

Eclipse : Yeah?

Ethan : Do you.. want me to help you get more?

    Eclipse was a little stunned by Ethan's generous offer, and the fact he would do this even after she had hit him.

    "You would do that for me?" Eclipse asked. "Of course! It's what friends do after all!"

A... friend! It felt weird to say. She never really had one, other than Kessho. Maybe life wasn't so bad after all.

Chapter Text

“Ugh… I’m hungry… I’m just gonna go and get some food from the storage area on the island.” Eclipse muttered. The food storage area was tons of crates stacked with food inside, near the island’s beach. Eclipse decided to visit it today; she was so hungry she could die.

    “WHA-?!” Eclipse yelled in shock. Most of the crates were empty, except the lemon crate, which was still filled to the brim with the sour fruit. She rushed over to the tent she’d set up for Ethan. 

    “Did you eat everything?!” Eclipse asked 

    ”Mmmm… depends on your definition of everything…?” he replied sheepishly, looking up from a book he was reading. 

    “Anyways, didn't you say you were going out to get food?” Ethan had that face when you just remembered something. 

    “Ah… right…” he remembered. He put the book aside, not realising he’d been reading it backwards and upside-down. 

    “What even is that book anyway?” Eclipse thought, curious as to why he’d been seated in the tent for hours reading the book wrongly, and barely getting past the first few pages. ‘Mindful Eating; how to consume foods until your mind is full.’ What??? Eclipse was probably gonna ask him why he was even reading it anyway. She went back to her little cosy area, and fell fast asleep.

    “HELP-” rang the words of a girl. What was this place? Wasn’t she on the island? No- she must be confused. She was at the receptionist’s office, in front of the broken elevators, trying to escape a Kaiju that was pursuing her. Soon the Kaiju lost her, and retreated back to the cave. Eclipse sat on one of the plush red sofas decorating the office. Wouldn’t be too soon before she got the energy to drag herself back to the cafeteria, where the Slime Pups she was taking care of were waiting.

A scratching noise coming from one of the elevators quickly alerted her. She got up and slowly stepped away from the elevator shaft. A louder, more aggressive clawing noise came from it again, and Eclipse took a protective stance, picking up a glass bottle from nearby and holding it in front of herself. Suddenly the doors burst open, a white Gootraxian lunged out at her. It grabbed her, holding her towards its chest while it restrained her with its paws. She felt afraid, writhing in resistance as some goo transferred from the fur of her assailant to the skin on her left arm.

It completely covered it, making her arm white and fluffy, her hand transformed into a paw. She would have been fully assimilated if not for her final burst of energy, breaking free and bashing the creature on its head. The glass bottle broke, though it left a shard of glass embedded into the fur on the goo’s head. It let out a robotic screech of pain before retreating the way she came, running into the Crystal Cave. Eclipse ran away in fear of another encounter, quickly reaching the spawn hub. She found she was unable to get through, and all the other survivors looked upon her in fear, seeing her transfurred arm yet perfectly human body. Soon she gave up, and went away.

    She rolled down the sleeve on her left arm, the oversized sleeves on her sweater actually helped for once. Eclipse went to the cafeteria. Maybe there was a medkit there… She arrived and was ambushed by a bunch of multicoloured pups. She fell over, taken by surprise. Her pups crowded around her. She regained her balance and looked around. No medkit… She still had to feed her pups anyway. Eclipse opened the fridge door and tossed a few cones of ice cream out the door. A few of her pups caught them, no food wasted. She hurriedly took food, tossing them for her pups to catch. She suddenly felt something slightly heavy pounce onto her. 

    “Kessho?-”

    She was jolted awake by Kessho jumping onto her mattress. She yawned, and exited the small tent. 

    “Huh…? Sunset already? I slept that long?”  She saw something orange and yellow approaching the shore. Ethan! Eclipse ran to the sand, and greeted Ethan.

    “You’re back!” Ethan had a huge net tied to the base of his tail, full of food and other supplies. He dragged it to the storage and untied it. Eclipse quickly sorted out the items. 

    “Watermelon slices… lemon slices (why do these exist other than flavouring food anyway?)… noodle cups…” Eclipse took note of the items on a sticky note pad, and pasted the notes onto the respective crates. She also put away a few items such as weapons, broken tasers and medkits. Soon they were down to the last few crates, when they saw something moving in the net. It seemed to be struggling, though they couldn’t quite tell. They removed the net, and it dashed straight to the water with a loud “splash”. Eclipse and Ethan watched curiously. It stayed under for a few minutes before it came out again. They got a glimpse of the mysterious thing, it was dark blue. Eclipse was intrigued, while Ethan looked at it confusedly. What was it? Some of its scales were light blue, subtly glowing in the dim light provided by the facility. It slightly resembled a Shork… wait- Eclipse realised what it was. A Lantern Shork?! 

    “What are you looking at?!” its voice echoed. It was clearly annoyed by the fact that it could have been so easily caught. 

    “Uh- uhm… I’m sorry that I caught you in the net?” Ethan stammered out an apology. The Lantern Shork glared at them and dove back into the water. 

    “...what just happened?” Eclipse looked to Ethan, but Ethan couldn’t help but stare back in confusion. Eclipse and Ethan resumed their work and retired to their tents after.

    In her tent, Eclipse started digging around, looking for something. After maybe ten minutes of searching, she pulled out a journal. It was red, and had bite marks on it, from when her pups used to steal it and hold it in their mouths. Eclipse sighed at the nostalgic sight, and took a pen out of her pencil case. She hadn’t filled in this hardcopy of a bestiary in a long time. She opened it and looked at the first page. Kaiju. There were a few outdated lines of information and she updated it. She flipped through the journal and updated the entries where they needed it. 

    “Hm… Fashui… so that’s what Ethan is…” she noted. Kessho bounded into the tent with a lemon slice in its mouth. It dropped the lemon slice on the ground and proceeded to eat it. Eclipse didn’t really understand why Kessho liked them. Didn’t they deal damage to pups? She watched Kessho nibble on the lemon slice and soon fell asleep.