[1-3] The Nose

[Kenpachi Zaraki]

Weightlessness.

The burgundy beast felt a wave of dread wash over him as he felt the aircraft begin to tip forward like an overburdened see-saw. Nanaki’s keen ears were deaf to the ensuing din of distress around him as his fellow entrants received their own personal shots of a adrenaline. The feline felt himself sliding forward off of the leather seat as the sturdy body of the aircraft groaned against the stress of the turbulent air. His eyes bulged as he was suddenly sent somersaulting across the cabin, coming to rest abruptly and painfull against the row of jump seats near what he only imagined was the pilot’s area. Thinking quickly, the grabbed hold of the shoulder harnesses, scrambling to click the buckles in place with his less-than-dextrous jaws. It was times like this that he really envied human thumbs.

CREEEEEEEEA-KUH

The fiery feline could wonder only briefly over the safety of the vessel before he was slammed with a sudden decrease in air pressure, turbulent air threatening to rip him from his hastily-fastened harness as the distant seating rows of the aircraft disappeared from view. Terror assailed his mind as he gritted his teeth hard. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was inevitably coming next.

---

“Ugh…”

“What...what happened?”

“Is everyone…”

For the second time in just a handful of hours, Nanaki found himself jarred awake by the loud words of faceless speakers. This time, however, he was not waking from a pleasant rest to the site of quaint townsfolk. It was more akin to falling asleep and entering a nightmare. All around his resting place he caught sight of chunks of smoldering wreckage, gnarled chunks of aluminum having torn through and splintered the trees and bushes of a temperate forest. He didn’t even want to think about the fate of anything or anyone they had landed on.

“Oh no…” Red heard himself mutter, looking out at his surroundings. He could find no other words.

The burgundy beast slowly got to his feet, wincing at the painful reminder that seatbelts were not meant to accommodate animals. He had evidently parted with his makeshift seating, having been presumably thrown from the jump seat upon impact. Further assessment of the area informed him that the majority of the plane’s nose say in its own personal crater some 20 yards in front of him. He thought he could just barely make out signs of movement from the crash site, though he dared not get his hopes up too high. Nanaki may have not appreciated humanity, but he definitely didn’t wish ill on them. 

Having freed himself from the thorny bramble bush that has ‘cushioned’ his fall, Red XIII limped his way toward (he assumed) the rest of the group. He licked a droplet of blood from the corner of his mouth spitting the ichor onto the forest floor. The feline dropped his nose as he got closer, sniffing for signs of leaking fuel or other telltale signs of danger. Thankfully, he could detect only very faint traces of jet fuel, most of it seemingly having been burned off in-flight. Did this mean that they had reached their destination, if not quite in the manner they had intended?

“She’s dead, Jim,” a male voice commented, emanating from behind a large chunk of aluminum debris, just out of Nanaki’s sight. 

The voice was foreign to the beast, seeming strangely calm despite their current situation. As he shuffled around the obstruction, he saw a pair of men with their backs to him, walking away from the crash site. One of the them was quite obviously the cybernetic humanoid he had met after arriving in the Omniverse, but the other he could not place. Red XIII didn’t remember the man’s confident stride nor his meticulously tailored garb from when their group was still airborne, though he hadn’t exactly made an effort to meet the other contestants. Perhaps the man was one of Syntech’s employees? The crimson canid reasoned that if this were the case, he might be able to give Red some insight on what had happened.

“Hey!” the beast barked, hopping nimbly (or as nimbly as one could with a dinged-up leg) over a downed tree. “Are you staff for this event?”

The pair stopped in their tracks and turned to face him, the shorter of the pair pausing to affix a smile on his visage. “Staff? I suppose you could say that,” he replied, presenting a smarmy grin. 

Nanaki trotted up to the man, turning his good eye toward the well-dressed gentleman. “What happened to the flight? Were we attacked?”

“I haven't the faintest idea, I’m afraid,” the man responded, giving the area a quick look around. “My robotic friend and I were just about to attempt a head count. You’re welcome to join us; come along,” he winked, turning away without waiting for a response.