Slugterra Oneshots

New Hire

Dana scowled and Sarai tensed when she saw the girl's scarlet eyes faintly glow. The veins on her arms became slightly visible as they faintly glowed as well, and she threw Twist off from on top of her, sending him sprawling across the ground with a huff.

"Watch it," he snapped, getting to his feet and rolling his shoulders. "You know Blakk wants you practicing fighting without-"

At that moment, he happened to glance up and spot Sarai lingering in the doorway. He quickly closed his mouth and simply raised an eyebrow. Dana, who was dusting off her hands, followed the blond's gaze and turned to face Sarai as well. She scowled, looking Sarai up and down light she was thinking about what it would take to beat her in a fight.

"Can we help you with something?" she asked coldly.

Sarai snapped out of her hesitation, nodding and quickly walking forward, holding the data tablet out to Dana.

"The internal servers are down," she explained, allowing her voice to shake slightly. It wasn't too hard to act cautious of the girl who looked like she wanted to pick a fight with anyone and everyone. "I was asked to deliver this to you."

Dana snatched the tablet from Sarai's hands and pressed her thumb against the screen. The tablet flickered to life, flashing green when it accepted her thumbprint and displaying a document. Sarai watched awkwardly as Dana read the information. Dana's lips twisted into a smirk, which Sarai assumed was a bad sign.

"I got moved to the team going to Slagrock tonight," Dana happily told Twist. "That'll be amusing, not that we even need to send a crew out to make sure they're meeting our mining quotas. We have the entire cavern under our thumb."

"Well, on the way there, figure out how to win a fight without having to do... whatever you do," Twist noted, walking to the side of the room and grabbing his blaster. "You never know what'll happen if you go up against A-"

"Whatever," Dana snapped, fury temporarily lighting her eyes up bright red.

Wonder what that's about, Sarai thought. She was hoping to figure out some way to neutralize Dana when the need inevitably came, and she was sure it would come soon. Just the sight of her made Sarai feel uneasy.

Then she sighed and the light subsided. "We'll fight again tomorrow. Go work on whatever you do here."

Twist clearly looked like he wanted to argue at that, but he just gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes. Dana smirked, then glanced back up to see Sarai still standing there.

"Can I help you?" she drawled.

Oh, how badly Sarai wished she could snap back, show Dana that she wasn't someone to be looked down at. But that would defeat the purpose of being here, and Sarai wasn't going to lose her cover just because of some rude girl.

"I, um, need the tablet back," Sarai explained, pointing to the tablet that Dana still held in her hands.

Dana rolled her eyes (as if it was Sarai's fault she needed the tablet back?) and held out the tablet.

But when Sarai went to grab it, Dana's fingertips- left uncovered by her fingerless gloves- grazed Sarai's, and Sarai jolted away at the touch. Dana was ice cold, and something about her felt so instinctively wrong that it had made Sarai physically recoil.

"What?" Dana hissed, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

Before Sarai could think of a reply, Twist, of all people, came to her rescue. Sarai hadn't seen him approaching, but in a blink, he was at her side and resting a hand on her shoulder. That left her feeling some sort of way, but she wasn't sure what exactly it was.

"Cut her some slack, Dana, she's new and she's built like a fifth grader," Twist said nonchalantly. "I'm sure you were this short once."

Hey!

Sarai started to tell Twist off, but his hand tightened around her shoulder and her mouth clicked shut.

"Yeah, yeah," Dana muttered, squaring her shoulders and turning away, walking over to retrieve her jacket and blaster from the side of the training room. The instinctive fight-or-flight Sarai had felt subsided, leaving her acutely aware of Twist's close proximity.

Then he leaned down, talking quietly into her ear, so close she could feel him.

"I'd just leave her be. Not someone you wanna mess with."

And then he released her shoulder and was gone, briskly walking back toward Dana and not giving Sarai a second glance. She just watched, and- guardian slugs, were her cheeks getting hot?

She huffed quietly and quickly exited the training room, trying to keep the rest of her face from turning red.

~~~~~~~~

Why did I do that? Twist thought vacantly as he walked back over to Dana.

Sure, it wouldn't have been fun to watch Dana tear up someone small enough to be twenty pounds soaking wet, but he was trying to keep a relatively low profile at Blakk Industries. He was barely allowed to do anything without supervision, or at the very least someone constantly checking in on him. Doctor Blakk didn't want to risk Twist's infiltration of the Shane Gang being over before it even started, especially when they hadn't actually made a solid plan yet.

But he'd acted without needing to think, redirecting Dana's attention (a skill he was quickly learning, for his own sake). He didn't know a thing about that girl. And yet...

"So, do you know her?" he found himself asking before he could stop.

Dana, who was clipping on her bandoleer, stopped and looked at him like he had just asked what she thought about the moon (or whatever the Burning World conspiracy theorists had come up with lately).

"What?" she asked. Twist had never heard her so genuinely confused.

"Um. The girl, she works here. Obviously. So I thought you might've seen her around or something," Twist explained, immediately regretting his decision.

"Okay, so I did hear you right," Dana said, rolling her eyes and sliding her gray jacket on. "What makes you think I give a crap about some grunt worker? If someone's not on one of my field teams, I don't care. I barely care about them as it is."

"Fair enough," Twist muttered, scratching the back of his head. "Just wondering."

"Wonder about something important," Dana drawled. She inspected her blaster before sliding it into its holster, hanging readily by her left hand. She turned away from Twist, making her way to the training room's exit. "Instead of fawning after nobodies."

"I'm not fawning," Twist protested, but Dana didn't acknowledge his comment.

"Whatever. See you tomorrow," she called, slamming the door shut behind her.

The slam echoed around the empty training room. Twist sighed and rubbed his eyes. What was he thinking? Dana was right, there were more important things to worry about. He was working for Doctor Blakk, for guardians' sake.

Loki chirped from his shoulder. Twist hadn't even noticed the ghoul hop out from his bandoleer.

"What, you got something to say?" Twist asked, raising an eyebrow. The ghoul simply shrugged. "Yeah, that's what I thought."