They Feared Death So They Ate The Young

As if claiming the seat meant winning some grand prize, Penny launched herself at the over-ripened banana Rippen called a car.

The sight alone made him stiffen mid-step, inched off the curb. Admittedly, the car wasn’t as valuable as gold, despite it’s color. The appearance alone would tell you that. But the only thing he could focus on was the loose steel hinge trembling like a freezing animal as the youthful redhead rattled the door handle with not a lick of patience in her eyes.

That shitty metal box already had a number of problems, and a missing handle was soon to be another if he didn’t unlock the door faster. 

And the second it was, Penny threw herself onto the passenger seat. The inside was nose-wrinkling, if not ghostly familiar; the air smelled vaguely of old plastic, despair, and whatever air freshener Rippen had bought five years ago and simply never replaced.

“You really do drive this thing everywhere..?” she muttered, her white sole adjusting a crooked vent that snapped back out of place immediately.

“Yes,” Rippen hissed through gritted teeth, sliding in himself. “...Because, unlike some people, I don’t have the luxury of being chauffeured around like a– Hold on a tick! Should I even allow you in the front?” he blurted, concerned less with human legalities, and more reluctant to deal with a teenager having full reins to his dashboard. “You’re like a paper clip. I don’t want you flying out when the window decides to roll down on its own again.”

Penny's eyes slid toward him, her head dropping sharply at tilt;  “Oh, gee. Gee. Ol’ Rip, since when did you become a wet blanket, on top of being a stick shoved somewhere dark and undignified?” She answered, noodle legs folding into awkward angles as she tried and failed to arrange herself comfortably among the questionable springs and the fossilized gum under the glove box; eventually, she resorted to kicking her legs up, only for her heels to be sourly swept off the dashboard posthaste. "It's probably fine!"

 “...You know what?” He jabbed an ombre claw to the car ceiling. “Sit wherever you like! If you shoot out the front, it’s no longer my problem!”

“Sure,” With a breezy dismissal, it was obvious she wasn't going to move either way. Penny made herself as comfy as those lumpy cushions would let her. "...Uncle Chuck’s car isn’t much better, fur in a lot of weird places actually.” she added, picking at a frayed seat thread. “It’s not that bad but they’re just,” Penny paused, fishing for something charitable or witty, but her comment landed flatly as her eyes escaped to the window.

“They’re them.”

Rippen gave a curt, disinterested nod. He didn’t care about her domestic peculiarities, not really. But there was a faint tug somewhere under his ribs. Unwelcome, uninvited, characteristically itchy; A nasty, sickly warm hint of sympathy.

But before the thought could travel somewhere sentimental, he forced the key into the ignition.

The Eridian visitors clearly do not know what to make of that. “We think we misunderstood Savior Grace’s word,” they say, apparently hoping this is a vocabulary mix-up. “Explain (question, polite)?”

“Didn’t misunderstand,” says Rocky, sounding very sheepish. “That is sacrifice wheel.”

“So. While we were on our way to Erid, we might have gotten… anxious about each other’s well-being,” Grace says, which everyone is already very aware is a wild understatement. “And, well, you heard what happened at Tau Ceti, and after. There were a lot of unexpected dangers for the whole trip that required a lot of, at least, attempted self-sacrifice to solve. We ended up almost dying for each other several times. And we had an argument about what we’d do if another crisis like that came up. And we couldn't agree.”

“Grace argued that Grace already was unlikely to survive long-term on Erid, so he should be the one to do any potential deadly but necessary maneuvers to make sure I was able to bring taumoeba back,” Rocky says.

“Which made sense.”

“Did not make sense! Grace already sacrificed so much for me and for Erid, wouldn’t be fair to make you do it again—“ Rocky cuts himself off with a huff. They have obviously had this conversation before. “So sacrifice wheel was compromise.”

“Yeah,” Grace says. He spins it to demonstrate; it whirls around in a blur and a rattle of the flap hitting the pegs, then eventually slows down, and stops—pointing at the segment depicting a very bad but very clear image of an Eridian. “Rocky made the wheel, I spin the wheel, and whoever it lands on, that’s who gets to sacrifice themself to save the other and the other person does not get to argue. This way, we wouldn’t waste time debating who does the self-sacrifice and who survives, it’s just a plain fifty-fifty chance. Or, eighteen-eighteen chance in base six. But the point is it could be either of us and we would have to accept the outcome.”

Rocky started fidgeting while Grace was explaining. When Grace finishes, proud of the equitable solution they came up with to allow them to die for each other fairly, Rocky says, “Now that we are back and we don’t need sacrifice wheel anymore… I have confession to make. About the wheel.”

“What about the wheel?”

Rocky doesn’t answer. Grace frowns, first confused, then suspicious, and spins the wheel again.

It lands on Rocky again.

He spins the wheel again, and again, and again, and it lands on Rocky every single time.

“Rocky!”

“I weighted the wheel,” Rocky admits.

“Rocky the whole point was that it was equal, that was why we even made it—“

“Never was necessary so doesn’t matter anymore!”

“But you WOULD have!”

“And you never noticed because you were hungry and cranky and distracted and so would have done bad job on heroic self-sacrifice anyway!”

“I would not! I would have done fine!”