A lot of swearing and oozing filled the time it took Mark to finally sew up and wrap his arm. He muttered a gratitude toward his survival classes he had been forced to undergo as he disposed the extra gauze back into its container. His adrenaline had faded, leaving his busted leg immobile on the floor and protruding uselessly. Mark checked his lifebit and noted a low level of calories, so he helped himself to a sandwich with the last of the fabricator's resources.
While he was tearing hungrily into the sandwich with famished bites, he thought he felt something and paused mid-chew. Was it his imagination, or-? No, there it was again. What is that? An earthquake? There were vibrations in the ground, but rhythmically amplifying. Within a few seconds they were sending shudders through Mark, oscillating with an increasing level of power. Earthquake, Mark decided quickly. He dropped the sandwich on the most sanitary surface he could and crawled under the dashboard, dragging his broken ass into the shadows and away from the cracked glass. The vibrations seemed faster, deafening now as everything in the ship rattled with each boom. Mark almost slid out from under as he firmly fixed himself in the dark corner, closing his eyes and praying that the natural disaster would swiftly take its course. But then the rhythms stopped. Mark was confused, but then he heard someone speak loudly.
"Oh, shit. How did you see this all the way from the cabin?"
"I dunno, guess there was a lot of smoke." Another tremor, and then a rumbling noise.
"Ugh, smells awful. Wait, Jack, look! It's one of the ships from the tv!"
"Whoa! It looks a lot smaller though. Are ye sure it's not a toy?" The whole ship suddenly creaked and groaned as it pitched to the side. Mark strained against gravity and held on with all his might, breaking out into yet another sweat as he wondered what the hell was going on.
"The window's broken. Damn, that's a lot of damage. Look at the size of the crater that thing made! How reckless can those creatures possibly be!" The tone was deafening with the level of anger intertwined in the stranger's voice. But the other one, "Jack", made a whining noise.
"But lookee there, see? There's blood in the grass just there." Gravity's grip suddenly slacked, and everything seemed suspended for a sliver of a second before its velocity changed. Mark jolted, his head whipping forward to almost hit the desk.
"Some stray feathers too," the other voice remarked. Mark waited until another wave of tremors passed, and then he crawled out of his hidey hole to try and sneak a peak at what was going on. But everything was so dark. He was puzzled by this fact, wondering if there was an eclipse happening when the shadow suddenly moved. Mark peeked out through the shattered windshield, and his eyes flew wide open.
In front of the ship, all he could see was a giant pair of red zebra-striped converse looming before the hull.
Mark covered his mouth and fell over on his back. He couldn't pry his eyes away, but he managed to when a second pair of gigantic shoes took up his field of view through the open doorway.
"Fookin' hell, Felix, look at all this!" The other sounded distraught. "What happened here!?"
"Looks like a baguæra happened," Felix answered. "Those cats are vicious, it's no wonder they're used in crowl fights." Mark could only stare. His jaw was hanging, and his eyes were wider than they'd ever been as the gears in his brain finally clicked into place. Holy shit. Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. ARE THESE FUCKING GIANTS??? The ship suddenly tilted again, and before Mark could stop himself he was sliding toward the door, and toward the huge shoe just outside. Panic made him dumbly cling to the edge of the entryway, but the ground never met him. He dangled, and the astronaut looked down and saw the shoes dwarfed by two gigantic streams of black denim. Intentional rips in the fabric revealed ghostly pale skin, and then a sea of pastel red was paralleled with more loose black.
Mark slowly looked up. His heart only beat faster when he saw the rest of the giant. Brown hair with a head of green fluff crowned the gargantuan male, contrasting pasty white skin and a dark brown goatee. Equally noticeable eyebrows were bunched together in a concerned frown, narrowing a pair of breathtaking crystal-blue eyes that reminded Mark of the color of what the sky was suppose to be. But this giant, thankfully, had not noticed Mark: he was instead surveying the ground below, where the ship's impact and its pilot's scuffle was noticeable.
"How could such a small thing do so much damage?" The green-haired giant, Jack, wondered this aloud. Mark grunted as the ship moved again, swinging from the inertia.
"I don't know, but it doesn't look any better inside this piece of garbage," Felix remarked. Mark craned his neck and spotted a glimpse of the other giant: pale skin as well as blonde hair and a brown beard; also sky-blue eyes, but narrowed with a glimmer of annoyance. But that was all he could make out before his bad arm threatened to give out, and Mark switched his focus to trying to haul himself back into the safety of the ship. But despite his excellent upper body, he couldn't summon just enough energy to pull in: his arm really hurt, and so did his leg.
"What if it's still around?" Jack asked nervously, studying the ground at his feet. "What if it's just waiting nearby, ready to pounce out at one of us and-and kill us!?"
"I doubt that's possible. Take a look at the little doorways and this tiny chair. It doesn't look any bigger than a middle finger."
"Yeah, I guess-" A warm breeze suddenly washed over Mark. He froze, leaving only his arms shaking with effort. He slowly tilted his head back, and when he did he met the upside down face of the green-haired giant. Both stared at each other, and then both of their eyes widened. Mark let out a small scream, and Jack jumped back with an exclamation.
"F-Felix! It's right there!" Gravity let go again, and Mark found himself tumbling back inside, being catapulted across the ship. He sprawled against the opposite side of the pod as Felix turned it sharply to take a look.
"Wait what? Where?" With a haunted look, Jack pointed. "Really? It's still alive?" As Mark struggled onto his hands and knees, the doorway was overtaken by a massive blue eyeball. Mark yelped and flopped over on his butt, pressing against the cold wall as his heels dug firmly into the floor. His chest heaved as he watched the pupil constrict with surprise.
"Well what do you know!" Mark didn't stay any longer to see how Felix would react. He threw himself forward and darted to the back of the pod, which was a natural indent that left him just out of sight. "Fuck, where did it go!?" The whole ship started shaking. Mark grunted and tried to keep his weight off of his fractured leg, but he had little to grip.
"Felix! You'll hurt it!"
"Well it disappeared somewhere, I can't see it!"
"Here, lemme try then." Inertia swayed Mark with a jolt, and then it was quiet. Mark stared at the wall he was holding on to, hardly daring to breathe. Are they... gone? No, they couldn't be, they were HOLDING the ship. No, it must be a trap, or maybe they're trying to figure out how to- Glass scuffling against metal made Mark turn around.
To his horror, the natural light of the world was now being blocked by massive fingers as big as— if not bigger!?— than himself. The hand was carefully wrestling past the shards of glass that had once covered the windshield, making its way deeper into the ship to feel around inside.
Mark felt his chest squeezing, like his heart was about to implode. He couldn't even feel the individual beats, only the sheer panic flooding through his whole body. He was frozen, and he kept glued to the wall as what remained of the pod's pilot seat snapped under the weight of that hand.
"Oop— I think I just broke something."
"In your hand, or...?" The hand suddenly retracted, blinding Mark with sunlight once more. Vertigo made the engineer's stomach flip— but then he found himself staring straight into two bright blue eyes as they peered through the window.
Mark forgot how to breathe. His lips were stuck parted, mouth partially open as he felt all the blood drain from his face. He watched in transfixed horror as he saw the pupils dilate, staring straight back at him. There was just enough space within the broken frame for Mark to see the giant's thick brow raise in awe, and he knew he had been spotted. He was dead. He was so so very dead...
"Whoa..." The giant holding the ship adjusted his grip, and the movement made Mark slide. It snapped him out of his stupor enough to dig his heels into the floor; the pain that followed made him wince, a sharp breath escaping his lips as his teeth clenched, and his eyes squeezed shut. He missed the giant's brow furrowing as he adjusted his own upper body strength, still bracing himself against the corner he was cowering into like it would save his battered life.
"Well?" At the other giant's prompting, Jack blinked and finally looked over. "What is it?"
"I... I-it's..." Jack swallowed to wet his dry throat. "It's a-a person...?" He breathed.
"What? What do you mean?"
"I..." Jack shook his head and turned his attention back to the little ship, holding it more level as he peeked at the tiny lifeform inside. Poor Mark was still fully braced against the far back wall, head ducked and eyes tightly closed as he trembled, bracing for what he thought would be his inevitable demise.
"Hey," The giant murmured, his voice hushed to almost a whisper. "It's okay. We're not gonna hurtcha."
"Speak for yourself." Jack glanced away only long enough to give Felix a deadpan glower. "What?" Felix shrugged. "Just telling the truth. We don't know shit about this thing or how harmful it could be." Jack sighed.
"Ignore Felix," the giant continued, carefully peering back into the ship. "Can you... talk, or understand us?" Mark slowly opened his eyes, and with great trepidation he found himself meeting those large blue eyes once more. He stared into them, still too frightened to even think, let alone use his voice to form words; hell if he knew whether eye contact was offensive or not to these giants, but honestly he was beyond the point of caring. If he was gonna die, then he'd rather it quick than slow and toyed with.
Jack was gazing back with equal awe, but far less fear. He felt a jolt of concern, however, when he noticed how dull those wide brown eyes looked, which were starting to gloss over.
"Hey, Felix? I don't think the little duder is feeling so well—" Mark's grip on the wall suddenly gave out, and he collapsed in the cold metal floor of the wrecked pod with a thud. "Felix!" Panicked, Jack turned the ship around and tilted it, sliding Mark's body back over to the little doorway. His breath hitched when he almost let the unconscious body drop, but he managed to stop the momentum in time by leveling the ship back out, and then carefully depositing the small organism into his waiting hand.
"What happened?" Felix pressed, hands moving closer to roll Mark over.
"I-I don't know! He was starin' at me, but then he looked like he was losin' focus and then he just fell over!" The blonde giant put his ear to the human's chest, then after a pause sighed and went back upright.
"Probably scared himself into passing out..." Then he frowned and pinched one wrist between thumb and index, lifting up the proportionally tiny arm to squint at the bandage wrappings. "Yep, had a tussel with the wildlife alright," he remarked. "Surprised he's not even more fucked up actually, given how small he is." Upon looking up and noticing Jack's morbidly concerned expression, however, Felix sighed once more and added, "He'll wake up in no time."
The green-haired giant let out a relieved exhale, bringing his hands together to gently cup the small body. "He looks so tired..."
"Yeah, crashlanding and destroying the environment does that to you." Felix rolled his eyes and picked back up the momentarily discarded escape pod. "Come on, let's get back into the cabin. We should quarantine this stuff— and wash your hands when we get back."
With Felix in the lead, Jack plodded his way through the woods and back towards the cabin, his eyes glued on Mark. The engineer's limp form fit perfectly within his supporting hands, head propped against pale fingers as the tiny chest and stomach rose and fell with slower breaths than before.
Jack chewed on the inside of his bottom lip, then let his thumb lightly run through those small raven locks, keeping his movements slow and delicate as his footsteps mirrored his disquiet care.
"Don't worry, little buddy. Jackaboy's gotcha."