Survival [IV]

"Oof!"

The breath exploded from Leo's lungs as the impact knocked him flat onto his back against the freezing diamond-plate floor.

The back of his skull hit the steel with a dull ringing thud, and stars burst across his vision.

Before he could even raise his hands to push her away, Chloe straddled his hips with ruthless precision.

Her fever-hot thighs clamped around his waist like vices and pinned his pelvis flush to the cold deck. 

Her small trembling hands drove down into his shoulders with her long hair spilling over his face in a wild dark veil.

…She was burning.

Her skin felt like an overheated radiator, scorching against his bare torso then, without a second of hesitation, her mouth dropped down.

CRUNCH!

A blinding flare of white-hot agony tore through the side of Leo's neck as her fangs sank deep into the junction between his shoulder and his jugular.

Leo's back arched off the metal floor.

His hands instinctively gripped her slender bare waist with his fingers digging into the soft curve of her hips, ready to heave her aside with pure adrenaline…

And then the pain stopped.

It didn't just fade... It dissolved into something terrifyingly different.

A strange numbing warmth flooded the puncture wounds, spreading through his carotid artery like molten honey.

It felt like a potent euphoric narcotic was being pumped straight into his bloodstream with every pull of her throat. 

She drank with ravenous desperate greed with her throat contracting rhythmically against his skin as she drained him, making small choked whimpering sounds into the crook of his collarbone.

'Holy... shit...'

Leo's breath hitched into a ragged helpless gasp.

The sensation wasn't just bearable… it was mind-numbingly pleasurable.

A heavy electrifying heat surged straight down from his chest into his groin. 

His vision blurred at the edges and his muscles melted into the deck, even as his lower body betrayed him completely.

Underneath her soft bare backside, the heavy six inches that had hung flustered and soft surged with sudden violent blood flow, hardening into a solid unyielding rod that pressed firmly up against her.

'No, no, no, not now, you traitor!'

Down on the lower platform, the reactions were instant.

"Oh, god..." Camila gasped, clapping both hands over her face and turning her back so fast she nearly tripped over the pipe she'd stripped.

Jin-Ah's jaw dropped.

Her cheeks flared with a fiery blush as she jerked her head awkwardly toward the ceiling monitors with her throat clicking as she swallowed.

Harper's eyes went as wide as dinner plates. 

"Whoa... bro..." She looked away with a mortified nervous laugh, staring hard at the floor plates. "I mean... physiological response, sure, but... damn..."

Ms. Tachibana covered her mouth with trembling fingers.

Her neck and chest flushed a brilliant rose-red as she stared fixedly at the bulkhead warning lights, unable to look away and terrified to keep watching.

Only Elena stared with pure hatred.

"Disgusting!" she spat, gagging like she'd swallowed ash as she shielded her eyes. "Filthy depraved animal! Getting off on a monster attacking him! You make me sick! You pervert!"

Leo couldn't even hear her.

His ears were ringing with his own thudding pulse and the wet desperate sounds of Chloe drinking.

Gradually, the fever radiating from her body began to cool.

The violent trembling in her limbs softened into a slow rhythmic tremor. 

The chalky translucence in her cheeks retreated, replaced by a soft healthy peach flush, and her ragged breathing evened out into steady shallow sighs.

'What... what am I doing...?'

The tiny disjointed thought flickered through Chloe's clearing mind as the haze of all-consuming thirst was lifting like morning fog.

Just moments ago, she'd been sitting in the corner, clutching her knees and weeping over the terrifying notification that had turned her into some blood-drinking abomination. 

Her skin had felt like it was on fire and her mind had been tearing at the seams, an instinct older than the stars demanding she feed or die.

And now...

Her mouth was full of the rich metallic sweetness of life as her teeth were buried in warm flesh. 

Her hands were clutching broad muscular shoulders, and her bare skin was pressed completely against—

"Chloe...?"

A low strained male voice rumbled directly beneath her chest and Chloe's eyes snapped open.

The crimson veil was gone, and her pupils were once again a wide terrified emerald green.

Her fangs tore free from his neck with a wet sickening pop, leaving two clean weeping puncture marks just above his collarbone.

She blinked and looked down as her mouth fell open in paralyzed horror.

She was completely naked and straddling Leo Kaine, the quiet competent boy from her class, pinning him to the floor of a spaceship bridge.

Her bare thighs were gripping his hips as her chest was smudged with his blood.

And pressed hard and hot directly against her backside was an undeniable rock-solid erection that felt large enough to split wood.

She felt every single pulsing millimeter of it.

"Ah... ah..."

Chloe's breath locked in her throat.

Her gaze darted from his flushed sweating face down to where their bodies met, and then out across the bridge… the averted faces of her classmates, Elena's horrified sneer, and Ms. Tachibana's wide-eyed shock.

"I... I..." Her voice broke into a high pitiful squeak.

Tears burst from her eyes and splashed down onto Leo's bare chest.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to… I'm a monster, I'm so sorry—!"

Before she could finish, the emotional overload combined with the shock of the transformation proved too much for her nervous system.

Her eyes rolled back, her jaw went slack, and her whole body pitched forward like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Whoa… hey!"

Leo caught her on instinct with his forearms wrapping around her slender unconscious frame before her forehead could hit the iron floor.

He rolled her gently onto her side, cradling her head against his bicep.

…The two puncture marks on his neck stung.

But when he reached up to touch them, he felt a strange tingling itch.

The bleeding had already stopped as the edges of the tiny wounds sealed up behind a thin layer of rapidly drying plasma.

He let out a slow shuddering breath as a deep hollow exhaustion settled into his bones.

'Lost a pint or two,' he thought, shaking his head to clear the dizziness. 'Feels like I gave blood at a mobile clinic and didn't even get the free juice box… But she's breathing and she's stable.'

"Is she... is she alive?" Ms. Tachibana asked softly, taking two cautious steps up the dais stairs.

Her face was still deeply flushed as she looked down at the unconscious girl in his arms with her eyes very deliberately avoiding his lap.

"Yeah," Leo muttered, his voice raspy. "Her pulse is steady… She just passed out from the shock… As long as I can find some actual food to replace what she drank, I'll be fine." 

He frowned, glancing at the dark galley bulkhead. "Assuming this rustbucket even has emergency rations stored anywhere."

From the crew platform below, Jin-Ah cleared her throat loudly.

She was still keeping her face pointed at a forty-five-degree angle toward the ceiling conduits, but her eyes flicked down toward Leo for a fraction of a second before darting away again.

"Leo," Jin-Ah said, her tone tightly controlled despite the crimson dusting her ears. "You're the Master Captain. The AI core obeys your verbal commands… Instead of worrying about rations while you're... unequipped, perhaps you should ask the vessel if it has standard-issue crew uniforms?"

Leo blinked.

"...Right. Good point."

He cleared his throat and leaned back on his knees, keeping Chloe supported with one arm. 

"AI. Does this ship have basic crew clothes in storage? Or are we expected to fly this thing in our birthday suits?"

[Query acknowledged.]

[Emergency Remnant Survival Protocols detected...]

[Tier-0 Auxiliary Stores: Unlocked!]

[Fabricating standard-issue Void-Weave Field Uniforms for all registered crew members...]

[Note: This unit was beginning to wonder when someone would ask.]

Before anyone could ask how, the vents above each station hissed with a blast of warm dry air.

FWOOSH!

A shower of fine glowing blue particles drifted down from the ceiling emitters and swirled around Leo, the unconscious Chloe, and the five women on the mezzanine like living static.

The particles didn't just fall.

They clung to their skin and knitted together with eerie synthetic speed.

Within three seconds, the cold drafts were gone.

Leo looked down at himself.

The nakedness was gone, replaced by a form-fitting matte-charcoal flight suit made of dense textured ballistic weave. 

Reinforced slate-grey plating covered the shoulders, chest, and knees, finished off with flexible combat boots that gripped the deck plating.

It felt as light as silk, yet it had the unmistakable rugged density of military-grade gear.

[Item: Void-Weave Standard Uniform]

[Tier: 0 (Standard Issue)]

[Properties:]

[• Minor kinetic dampening]

[• Self-cleaning nanofiber matrix]

[• Thermal insulation (-40°C to +80°C)]

[• Basic micro-debris puncture resistance]

[Fit: Automatically tailored to the wearer.]

Down below, the relief was immediate.

Harper let out an enormous sigh and dropped the plastic crate she'd been hiding behind.

THUNK!

She stretched her arms over her head and rolled her shoulders in the snug charcoal uniform with an appreciative whistle.

"Oh, thank god... If I had to feel that cold metal against my bare ass for another five minutes, I was going to throw myself out the airlock."

Camila tossed the yellow foam aside and smoothed down the front of her uniform with a bright relieved smile. 

"It actually fits perfectly… It's warm."

Ms. Tachibana let the torn flag drop to the deck, and her posture straightened back into that of an educator.

She smoothed the dark fabric over her hips and adjusted her collar with an instinctive professional motion.

"A significant improvement," she murmured, though her dark eyes still lingered on Leo with a mix of gratitude and lingering embarrassment.

Even Elena quickly smoothed the fabric over her waist, clearly thrilled to be rid of the fiberglass seat cover. 

She refused to acknowledge Leo with anything other than a cold sniff.

Her hand drifted up toward her chest… then stopped.

Under the new uniform, her skin was still prickling with an itch from all that fiberglass.

She clenched her fist, lowered it to her side, and kept her chin high.

"Thanks, AI," Leo grunted, feeling a hundred times better now that he was covered and warm.

He hooked his arms beneath Chloe's knees and shoulders and lifted her off the deck.

Her new uniform fit her small frame snugly, and her dark hair spilled across his chest as he carried her down the dais steps.

"Harper, take her," Leo said, gently passing Chloe into his childhood friend's arms. "Lay her down near the environmental vent where it's warm… Keep an eye on her until she wakes up."

"Got her, Cap," Harper nodded, taking the girl with practiced athletic ease and carrying her toward the crew benches.

Ms. Tachibana stepped up beside them and checked Chloe's pulse at the hollow of her throat with two slender fingers.

"Her heartbeat has normalized. Her temperature is stabilizing… You made the right call, Leo. Even if it was unorthodox."

"Didn't have many options, Sensei," Leo sighed, rubbing the back of his neck where the skin was still tender.

He turned, walked back up the three steel steps to the dais, and lowered himself into the command throne.

This time he didn't lean back to engage the neural sync… He just sat upright with his forearms resting on the carbon armrests, looking down at his crew.

Ms. Tachibana finished tucking a spare seat liner under Chloe's head, then turned back toward the dais with a serious expression.

"Now that the immediate crisis has passed, Leo," she said, her voice carrying clearly over the deck, "we need full transparency. We've all shared our roles and talents with you… But as the Master Captain, what's your talent? What did the extraction give you?"

Leo hesitated and the bridge went quiet again.

Harper looked over from the bench. Camila and Jin-Ah leaned forward. 

Even Elena crossed her arms and watched him with narrowed skeptical eyes.

'Should I tell them?' Leo thought, his mind racing.

Keeping an SSS-Rank ability hidden was impossible in the long run.

The moment he started pulling upgrades, blueprints, and weapons out of thin air, they'd know something about his interface was fundamentally broken.

Besides, morale was hanging by a thread. 

They were five terrified girls and their instructor stranded in a rotting hauler with fourteen hours of oxygen. 

If they thought their captain was just some ordinary guy with the master keys, panic would fester.

'They need to know we've got a winning card.'

"It's called the Cosmic Gacha Wheel," Leo said, his voice level and steady. "SSS-Rank."

Silence.

"Excuse me?" Jin-Ah blurted out, her usually stoic face cracking into pure disbelief. "SSS-Rank? The statistical probability of an anomaly exceeding triple-A parameters is less than—"

"Gacha?" Harper cut in, blinking. "Like... a lottery wheel? You got a gambling talent in space?!"

"Not just a lottery," Leo explained, leaning forward. "The system tracks everything we do. Scavenging resources, surviving crises, killing Void Beasts… It all converts into Survival Points. Once I have a thousand points, I can summon the Wheel of Fate. It drops high-tier tech, permanent physical enhancements, and ship blueprints that skip the normal research trees."

"Are you serious...?" Camila whispered as her hazel eyes lit up with sudden hope. "We don't have to spend months figuring out how to build parts? We can just win them?"

"If I grind the points," Leo confirmed. "It's all merit-based… We hunt, we scrap, we survive then we spin."

"Ridiculous."

Elena's voice dripped with sour venom.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder, her arms still crossed tight over her chest.

"A gacha mechanic? How utterly juvenile. While the rest of us received legitimate scientific specializations… engineering, logistics, navigation… the so-called captain gets an arcade game. Typical. Leave it to a low-class degenerate to rely on blind luck instead of calculated intellect."

Leo didn't even blink.

He gave her a lazy pitying smile. 

"Keep crying, Elena. When that wheel drops our first plasma cannon and saves your neck from getting chewed up by an oversized centipede, make sure you keep that same energy."

"Why you arrogant little—"

[Ding!]

A crystalline chime cut Elena off mid-snarl.

It rang out with a tone so deep it seemed to shake the deck plates beneath their boots.

A massive golden notification box flared to life right in front of Leo's face, glowing so brightly that the light spilled off the screen and washed the entire bridge in brilliant amber.

[Notice: Initial Survival Synchronization Complete!]

[The Master Captain has resolved the first Internal Crew Crisis and established full vessel authority.]

[Remnant System reward distribution initiated...]

[Congratulations!]

[You have received a Newbie Gift: 1 Free Invocation of the Wheel of Fate!]