Haida's Travels, an Arpeggio Blue Steel fanfic
By: Set3

Part 3

She watched in horror as the ships she destroyed sank below the waves. Thoughts of "Why did I do this?" and, "What will I do now?" ran around in her mind again and again as the paralysis continued to hold her actions until she finally registered shouting and crying amid frantic splashing ahead of her bow. She blinked, back in control of her actions and looked on at three humans trying to keep afloat in the water. Haida hesitated at what to do. She briefly considered getting rid of the humans to save face but the damage to that had been done and there would be no forgiveness for such an act.

She was again gripped by the paralysis of indecision until she heard the child screaming out for help from her mother. Haida slowly moved her shipself forward, turning to port a little to come alongside the trio who were still desperately holding onto a piece of floating debris. She grabbed a net ladder as she jumped down to the starboard-side closes to the water and draped it over the side.

"Climb up!" she told them, but only got looks of fear from the trio. "I want to help you," Haida pleaded.

It was the apparent father of the trio that made a grab for the net ladder pulling the other two to over and having them climb the ladder onto the deck. The smallest child did as she was told quite possibly just to get out of the water. The teenage girl was more reluctant arguing with the man.

"You can't be serious! These things were trying to kill us a second ago and now you want us to climb onto one just because it says it wants to help us?!"

"Do you want to swim to shore then?" the man fired back, not waiting for an answer as he shoved her up the ladder. the teen only put up a token resistance before climbing up on her own. Haida looked at the floating debris for anything useful that the humans would need and spied a floating cooler that had remained intact. Haida jumped over the side and landed on energy barriers that she created so she could walk over to the cooler and picked it up before carrying it back to her shipself. A quick jump and she was back onboard herself. She gently set the cooler down and turned to the trio who were now shivering from the wind.

"You can go below deck to warm up if you want to. You're safe now, no one will hurt you," Haida told them.

The teen got up, stomping over to Haida's mental model, and before she realized the teen slapped her across the face with enough force to have her take a step back.

"What kind of sick bitch would try to kill us one second and "save" us the next?" she a demanded, her lip quivering and an angry accusation in her eyes.

"Grace!" the man called out pleading her to hold back.

"Shove off, dad! These things killed mom and I'll never forgive them for that!"

End part 3