🌀?
Send “🌀” for my muse to spin the Destiny Swap Wheel and see what they get! || Accepting!
Echo burst from the pool, coughing as water poured down her face. Her mouth felt wet and her chest clenched painfully as continued coughing. She tried to blink away the water running down her face until she finally swiped at it with her hand. Her forehead stung from where she'd bumped it against the rocky bottom she'd hit when she'd fallen into the pool, but it wasn't the pain that made her stop.
On the fingertips of her gloves were light spots of thinning red mixing with the water on her gloves. She coughed again, but this time it felt automatic as felt her face again. Soft, squishy, not the hard plating of an exo. Once again she drew her hand away, once again finding small streaks of blood on her fingertips.
"Whisper?" Echo called, clambering farther out of the pool as she turned around to look into it as the water settled. Gradually, the ripples in the water settled and the reflection of a stranger stared back at her from the pool. Short, white hair stuck to pale, teal-blue skin, while threads of light rippled gently across her face as if refracted from the pool beneath her. Shock and barely suppressed terror filled the pale face of the woman before her, while her eyes shone with a brilliant blue that matched the color of her optics.
She jumped and looked up as Whisper materialized next to her and jittered her shell in shock. "What the--Who the hell are you!?"
Echo stared at her in disbelief. "I'm your guardian!" she said, noticing the distinct lack of digital buzz in her voice.
"No, you're not! You're..." The ghost clicked her shell as she gave Echo a quick scan and stared at her. "You're..." She scanned her again and looked at the wide-eyed hunter. "Echo???"
"Yeah!" Echo said, throwing her hands out incredulously.
Whisper looked up and down and then back at her. "How???"
Echo shook her head. "I don't know but I'm really ready to be away from this pool."
Whisper looked at Echo and then at the pool, its waters rippling innocuously from a breeze. "Yeah... Yeah, let's get to the jumpship. Maybe someone at the tower knows something about this."
Echo scrunched up her face, something she forgot was much easier now she was squishy. "Let's... not. I really don't want to be in one of Rahool's petri dishes."
Whisper rolled her optic. "Echo, Rahool doesn't give a flip about anything not engram-related, so if you were going to be in anyone's petri dish, it'd be Ana's."
Echo frowned and rubbed her chin, jerking her hand back at the vivid sensation. "Fair..." she said and would have said more had a branch not snapped behind her. In a snap, Whisper vanished and the hunter pulled Trust from its holster and leveled it at the bush behind her.
"Hope you're a friendly," she said to the bush, "'cause if you're not, you're about to have a really bad day."









