Atlas drew his dagger when he heard a rustle outside. He looked around for his helmet, which he always removed while he worked, but he didn't see it right away. Rule #1 was 'Heads up,' so Atlas gave up finding the helmet and kept his attention on the doorway of The Workshop. In the months he'd been spending more time in The Workshop, Atlas was thrilled to sometimes get visits from PJ, the raptor that saved him from the others. Unfortunately, there had also been visits from other raptors- aggressive ones that would sooner tear Atlas apart than sniff around him and his workshop with innocent curiosity. Atlas never told anyone about PJ's visits because he knew Gressam would get all indignant and obsessed with killing him.
'The Workshop' was what Atlas had named the back half of The Persephone that was stranded in the middle of the valley below where he had climbed to find his mother and the front half of the ship. He'd used scraps from the wreckage along with wood that Gressam had helped him skillfully cut into planks to patch most of the holes in the hull, create shelves and benches to store tools and supplies, and turn the heap into a respectable facility. Atlas, his mother and Gressam had accomplished a lot over the last year, but Atlas was most proud of The Workshop.
Atlas inched closer to the opening. The rustling had evolved into a scratching on the outside of the hull of The Workshop, just around the edge of the opening. Atlas held his breath and jumped out, hoping to scare away whatever creature was overstepping its bounds.
"Yah!" Gressam cleaved downward with his makeshift sword and caught Atlas' raptor-hide gauntlet as he immediately threw it up in defense.
"Ass," panted Atlas.
"Don't be a baby. I'm toughening you up. You need to work on your reaction time," Gressam scoffed. Atlas holstered his dagger and rubbed his forearm underneath his scraped gauntlet. "How's your magical superhero sword comin' in there? Will it be able to fly us back home?" Gressam pretended to crane his neck to peek at Atlas' workbench behind him and laughed.
"It'll cut your sword in half when it's done. What do you want?" Gressam hesitated after Atlas said that. He trusted the boy's words enough knowing he survived alone for 2 years, but never really asked about his sword project. He'd only gotten vague hints from Atlas that the native metal- the metal Gressam's own sword was made out of- was relatively weak.
"Fireworks are coming soon. Your mom wants you to come up and watch," Gressam was already walking away by the time he finished delivering his message. It was true that Atlas had been spending a lot of time down in The Workshop. As grateful as Atlas was to be reunited with his mom and finally make it back to the crash site, Atlas also realized his mind was most at ease when he was working on a project. It distracted him. He came to The Workshop to work on whatever he could think of while his mom usually remained up at the camp. Gressam enjoyed hunting rhinos for probably the same reasons as Atlas liked working on projects, so he was usually out of sight as well. Atlas couldn't complain about that.
Atlas walked back into The Workshop and grabbed his helmet. They had been building barriers along the path between The Workshop and the stairs to camp for months now, but Atlas always wore his raptor armor when he descended into the valley. It was as much for his own protection as it was a sign of respect to any creatures that might be watching. He couldn't be sure, but he felt like if he respected their power they'd respect his. He picked up AGS-9's leg off the workbench he'd been using and put it on a shelf behind him. Atlas was working on a weapon to replace the axe made from AGS-9's arm that he had survived with since the beginning. He wanted it to be perfect though, so Atlas was taking his time in preparing: practicing on logs, sketching plans over and over, and etching the metal leg very slowly. It was going to be perfect.
As Atlas stepped outside he looked up to see a very tiny hole in the sky as the clouds began parting. It was about an hour away. There was a still-functioning clock on The Persephone and Atlas' mom explained how this phenomenon of the clearing of the sky was occurring exactly every three months to the day ever since Atlas' alleged rescue ship crashed down in the far distance. There was plenty of time to get up to camp and grab a good seat with his mom, so Atlas took a pitstop in the shed.
Back when Atlas first found The Persephone he had an encounter with a Risen just before it burst into green energy, but before it did it slammed some sort of metal crystal into the ground. Atlas figured it was just a show of power, but over the months that seed grew into something Atlas had seen many times before- a giant, round, hollow tree stump with a doorway; a stump-house! Seeing as the alien being left, Atlas figured it would be okay to repurpose it into a storage shed. Atlas rolled the improvised door to the side and stepped in. There were crafted casks of collected drinking water, a huge section of the shed dedicated to drying out rhino meat to make jerky that would stay edible for a long time, and the newest additions to everyone's diet: radishes and potatoes.
That was something else the three survivors were proud of- their crops. Closing the shed's door, Atlas left with one radish in his teeth, another in his hand and a potato. He inspected the crops as he walked towards the mountainside to get up to camp. They had cleared many trees to form a wide path between The Workshop and camp. This gave them a lot of space to work with, so Atlas' mother started the farming project by designing the way they'd use wood planks to cover raised platforms with extra sand, allowing for the roots of vegetable plants to grow. So far the only crops that would take were radishes and potatoes, but Atlas' mother felt good about the blueberry bushes and apple trees that would take much longer to grow. She said it was because the 'soil' they were forced to use was so acidic from centuries of rainfall.
None of the alien wildlife seemed interested in their crops, so as Atlas and Gressam worked to build a protective wall along the entire path they didn't feel the pressure of protecting the crops, so there was currently just sections of wall- which were tree trunks roped together- by The Workshop and by the stairs leading up to camp The stairs were pretty cool, too. Gressam fashioned them in what he called an ancient "fire escape" technique.
Atlas made it up to the campsite and found his mom starting up the second fire. They liked having the light of several fires when it got dark out during the event after a relatively harmless rat had snuck up on them during one such night and scared the hell out of everyone. He took over the fire duties for his mom and handed her a radish.
"How's it going down there, sweetheart?" she asked she she relaxed on a wood-crafted chair and took a big bite out of her radish.
"Really good! I think I'm just about ready to start the blade," Atlas smiled and sat down across from her.
"That's great to hear. You've worked really hard to make sure you do this right. I can't wait to see it when it's finished!"
"Gressam's being an ass, as usual," he added as the sunset finally cast its warm, orange glow over everything. His mother rubbed her arm uncomfortably at the mention of Gressam's name.
"You know he's just trying to help," she said softly. Atlas walked up to her and gently pulled her right hand away from her left arm. There was a faint bruise on the skin. He gave his mother a concerned look.
"Did...did you slip again with the equipment in The Lab?" Since it wasn't the first time Atlas had called his mom out on a bruise, he offered her a chance to give the same explanation she had given last time, referring to the makeshift laboratory that was set up inside the front half of The Persephone up at the campsite. His mother looked like she was holding back tears. Atlas knew the question he really should have asked, but he also knew how delicate the balance was for the survivors. Rule #2 was 'Be Patient,' so Atlas pocketed his follow-up question for later. His timing was good.
"Listen, son, the most impor-"
"Looks like this shitshow's about to start!" Gressam finished climbing the stairs and joined them around the fire. He grabbed some rhino jerky and started chewing noisily.
As the sunset predictably faded and the green fireworks of energy predictably started rising towards the warp gate, Gressam and his mother stared up into the sky. Atlas didn't, though. He'd seen it enough times. Atlas stared at Gressam who casually put his hand on his mother's shoulder while commenting generically on the 'beauty of it all,' or some such garbage. She shrugged the hand off of her shoulder and took a subtle step away from Gressam. His lips tightened as he took a deep, frustrated breath, but then he glanced at Atlas who met his eyes with his fierce, unwavering stare. Gressam cleared his throat and looked back up at the stars, making another garbage comment about 'the magic of it all.'
Some weeks passed with heightened tension between everybody after that night.
Atlas was crafting his sword very slowly; each step was taken with the deliberate hesitation of a true artisan. Every small application of heated acid was carefully dripped onto the alloy of AGS-9's leg. This would be no novice axe or crude dagger. This weapon would be perfectly sharp, perfectly balanced, and beautiful- at least in Atlas' eyes. He had a spinning circular stone sharpener ready at his side and ground the blade into the desired shape just a tiny bit at a time, applying cold filtered water when needed. He'd been at this for a week now and finally had a sharp blade on one side, but the other side and the hilt and handle were all still crude remnants of an android's leg
He heard a rustle outside. It was louder; sounded heavier than normal. Atlas knew right where his helmet was this time so he quickly put it on and drew his dagger. As he quietly walked to the opening of The Workshop his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the view of the surrounding clearing between the ship and the stump-house storage shed. He froze.
Out by the storage shed was a Risen with its back facing Atlas. He'd never seen one at the camp- not since the one that planted the seed that became the shed. With one hand this Risen was pulling at the shed's door they'd built, sending small scraps of wood to the ground.
Atlas gripped his dagger tightly. He still wasn't sure how aggressive the Risen could be. He also had no idea if he could, or how to take them down if he needed to. He glanced over his shoulder at the sword-in-progress on his workbench and then at his dagger. Maybe the dagger wouldn't be enough. Atlas grabbed the sword by its crude handle and set it down at the mouth of the cave-like Workshop. It was just a little closer now, in case he needed it.
The next thing Atlas noticed as he cautiously approached the Risen was that it was holding something in its other hand. It was an axe. It was Atlas' old axe!
"...Is that you, PJ?" He was so used to seeing PJ as a raptor now that the notion that his guardian may have evolved again; the notion that the raptors even evolved into the Risen, wasn't an obvious assumption to Atlas. There was also a chance that this wasn't PJ, and had just come across the axe out in the wild. PJ was the only one in the world that Atlas considered friendly. Everything else was a threat.
The Risen slowly turned around. There on his chest, through all of its phases of evolution, were the Earth-esque blue and green markings, complete with a glowing orange addition from Atlas' own blood. It was PJ after all. Atlas didn't even have time to say anything before Gressam came charging out of nowhere in his own raptor-hide armor, ramming into PJ with his shoulder and wrestling the axe out of his hand and onto the ground. Gressam had his sword with him and started swinging wildly at Atlas' ally.
"Gressam, wait!"
"No way! Rule #2, boy! I've been wanting to take one of these suckers down since I first saw 'em!"
"This is PJ! Stop!" Atlas cried out and ran at Gressam to try to stop him.
"Ain't PJ a slasher? This one brought weapons along for a 'friendly' visit- shit-" Gressam realized his sword was no good against the extremely tough metallic skin of the Risen. He looked around and saw Atlas' project sword back by The Workshop. With Atlas' talk of how much sharper it was, Gressam grinned and ran for it, knocking Atlas to the ground as he did. Atlas unintentionally flung his dagger away while breaking his fall. In no time Gressam was back on the assault against PJ, who had just stood there.
"Put it down! The axe was mine!"
There was no use.
Gressam was hacking away at PJ's side like a lumberjack going for a new world record. The Risen wasn't making any noise, but kept moving its arm to block Gressam's strikes and seemed to be looking at Atlas as it fell to one knee. Gressam only started swinging harder when that happened. Atlas got up and ran over to put himself between them. He noticed PJ was collecting a few scratches, but even though he seemed physically okay, Atlas felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and pain when he concentrated on his friend.
"Get dead and stay dead you E.T. bastard!" Gressam yelled.
Atlas' knuckles became bloody from the raptor armor Gressam was wearing, but he didn't care as he punched the man's stomach repeatedly, trying to interrupt his rage. Gressam got fed up with that and planted his foot as hard as he could on Atlas' knee, snapping it in the wrong direction. As Atlas fell backwards in shock, Gressam took the blunt, unrefined handle of the AGS-9 sword and slammed it into Atlas' gut, knocking the wind out of him.
"You and your bitch mother should be kissing my feet every damn day for all the shit I do for you two! All the shit I put up with! But no! You piss me off at every turn and she won't even put out when I'm the last man on the planet!"
Clarity washed over Atlas in the seconds before adrenaline and pain took over. He was ready to kill Gressam. His muscles tightened. Coughing and gasping for air after Gressam's assault, Atlas frantically tried to stand up, but screamed out at the attempt. His leg- the one he had injured and healed through at Camp Wellspring- was broken. He half-crawled, half-pulled himself along the ground away from the fight, towards the axe PJ dropped by the shed. Every grain of sand; every bump on the rocky surface sent waves of pain shooting through Atlas' nerves as he dragged his leg over them. The butane gas he was forced to breathe in down there wasn't helping, either. He was ready to pass out.
It felt like it took forever to reach, but once Atlas finally got his hand on the axe and painfully spun himself around, his vision was starting to blur. The edges of his sight were darkening. He yelled through it as best he could and made his way back towards Gressam.
Gressam had gotten frustrated trying to get at PJ's side so he switched to striking his shoulder. PJ stopped moving his arm. He stopped moving altogether. Gressam stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He stayed alert in case the alien moved, but he remained still. Gressam grunted and changed his grip on the sword, lining it up with PJ's neck. He reeled back to thrust the sword forward with all his might, but then dropped the sword. His eyes widened. He tried to reach behind him, but fell to his knees and then stomach before he could. Standing there with a bloody hand, Atlas' mother let go of Atlas' dagger, lodged deep through the tough raptor-hide armor in Gressam's back, and ran over to her unconscious son.
Rule #3 was 'Survive.'