Time & Space

A Wetless Ocean

The golden man and the woman in purple, fallen through time and space, laid on a sandy floor from the sudden drop. Ash gets herself up with her arms and pressed her aching head with one of her hands. Her eyes pressed against each other in pain as she moaned grumpily to the aches. 

"Fuck... What just..." She slowly opened her eyes to see a completely new environment. Around her was a sandy desert. However, she felt something was off, but she just couldn't recognise it for the moment. "... happened?"

The purple faded black-haired push herself up onto her legs, looking around her surroundings, trying to comprehend that she was somehow no longer in her room. However, as soon as she got up her lungs emptied themselves of air and filled themselves with something heavier instead. She randomly started coughing violently and choked, suffocating on the nothingness. Her vision started to blur and fade, her desperation showed as she helplessly gasp for air that won't enter her guts.

Suddenly, something yanked her wrist forcefully which made her land on it. Her lungs finally expanded with air, her eyes were closed from all the panic. Her eyes slowly opened to see the thing she was leaning against, just to be face to face with Zach's. With her leaning against his chest, his arm around her hips, he had pulled her back to him, allowing her to breathe again with the time stone temporarily maintaining the atmosphere around him. 

They both stared at each other for a moment, her heart was racing from almost suffocating, and his heart was racing to see his loved one going through that right in front of him. His head then shot up, scanning at the environment they're in, holding her close to make sure she's safe.

"Where the hell are we!?" Ash yelled in complete shock at their situation after stabilising her breath slightly. Her head turned and turned, trying to figure out where they had ended up. She looked up at Zach's face as he stay silent while inspecting their surroundings. 

Zach stretched out his arm and slowly waved it around, testing the air resistance around them. He plucked one of his hair out and waved it around as he did with his arm just now as Ash just watched curiously. He pulls the hair closer to him and stared at it for a moment before putting the tip of the hair in his mouth, tasting it.

"Hey! What did I tell you about putting random shit in your mouth?" Ash scolded Zach for his weird habit. She had always been upset by this behaviour as it really endangers Zach's wellness.

"Hold on..." he said while pulling the hair out of his mouth, dropping it in front of him as the strand of hair fall gently onto the floor. "As I was suspected..."

"What?" Ash sounds out her completely cluelessness to this absolute bizarre of an experience she's having.

"It appears to be we're somewhere with an atmosphere much denser than what our human body is capable of handling. The air around here could consist of pure Ozone as far as we know, although the gravity pull seems to be nearly the same as Earth's considering there's no noticeable difference, for now at least." Zach rambled out a random explanation while still keeping tight with Ash. Whether it was an explanation for Ash or was it just for himself is unclear. 

"That is why the air is not only unbreathable, but its also lethal. Which reminds me." Zach finally looks at Ash with a super worried and protective glare. "Do not, and I say this in the most serious form of warning, ever, ever, ever leave my vicinity."

"Alright, I won't," Ash said while actually scooting even closer to him. "Are you actually going to explain how we're still alive and breathing right now?"

"Well there is an air bubble, about the size of me but slightly bigger. When we traveled through time and space earlier it brought the air around us along the way. The time stone in my pocket is keeping that air stuck in time around us, but only temporarily." Zach answered.

"A time whuh huh wha?" Ash lets out her confusion to Zach's explanation, which was complete nonsense to her. "Wait, did you say traveled through time and space!?"

Zach looked at her with a widened and slightly shocked expression, he was reminded that Ash was not supposed to know about this life of his. "Well... time? We're not certain of that yet... Space? Certainly."

"How is that-" Ash stops herself as they both catch some sort of movement in the corner of their eyes. Their eyes and face shot towards the direction of the motion, but they were only able to catch a blurry glimpse before it disappeared somewhere.

It was when they were distracted when something bumped onto their sides. They both turned around to catch a creature they both had never seen before. It was an aquatic-looking creature, fins and all, body flexing left and right like a swimming fish. The most noticeable and prominent abnormal feature amongst others is that it was bloated, extremely bloated to the point of looking like a beach ball of the sort. 

"Wow... Ahah, ahah, AHAHAHAH" Zach started laughing out of nowhere. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pack of biscuits. He turned one of the biscuits into crumbs and put his hands out. The bloated creature "swam" towards his hand and started pecking the crumbs off his hand. Out of nowhere, more of them appeared and approached Zach's hand for the crumbs. "Wow! Right, so, because of the denser atmosphere here it made an evolution like this for the locals here possible. Freakin' floating fishes, that's so cool innit?"

Just as Ash was about to say something back, the floor below her vanished right under her which made her fall into the ground. She screamed as she dropped which pulled away Zach's attention immediately. Zach dropped to his knees and tried to reach his hand for her. "Ash!"

Before he could do anything else, there was a screeching gargling noise behind him. His head turned to his back, anticipating for what that sound came from. His expectation was not disappointed, as behind him was a 20-foot, nasty, vile aquatic-like predator.