The shot skimmed his head as the gun was wrenched away from him. Ira clicked his tongue and looked over at the navigational officer who stood above him on the crate and used Ira's gun to fire at a monster. "What the hell is wrong with you?!" the navigation officer exploded. 

Once more came a shot. And again, the monster exploded in a shower of blood, drenching everything around it (including Ira) in blood and guts. Ira sighed. Blood was fine and all but it was a pain to get out of clothes.

Then again, walking around in clothes covered in blood was kind of fun.

"Well?" Fumiko asked and glared at Ira. Xe, too, was covered in blood and gore. Looking like that and sneering at him, xe made a terrifying picture.

Ira shrugged. He answered, "I didn't want to get eaten."

Fumiko's incarnation looked at him and sighed. Xe shook xyr head and handed the gun back to Ira. "If you try to do that again," the navigational officer's voice lowered and a vicious green split xyr face in two, "You won't like what I do to you."

Ira believed them. He nodded and tried to show a remorseful face. Fumiko's eyes lit up in laughter so he guessed that he didn't succeed.

They emerged from the crates that he had hidden behind to find that the rest of the cargo hold was now covered in the blood and gore of a dead human body that had been ripped in two by a monster, and whose blood and intestines littered the whole area. In the corner, a lower officer was in the process of throwing up. That was not a scent that he wanted to smell and so with a thought, Ira's sense of smell was turned off. Somehow in the middle of this, he had turned on his hearing again and he could clearly hear the cries and screams of the people around him who were panicking and freaking out. This was not sound that he had anything against; rather it was amusing. They screamed and cried and begged for salvation and yet, they still edged away from Ira and the navigational officer who was covered in the blood of the dead monster.

Ira didn't mind if they stayed away from him; that meant that he didn't have to interact with them. He wouldn't have to go through the effort of staying away from them. It was always nice when he didn't have to do anything and things still went his way. He faced the navigational officer and asked a belayed question, "What's your name?"

"Nylo," the navigational officer answered. Ira nodded and laid the name to memory.

He said, "My name is Ira."

Nylo's forehead furrowed and xe looked like xe were going to ask something. It wasn't hard to guess what, so Ira answered before xe could ask, "A nickname."

Xe nodded in understanding. Smiling at him, xe walked over to comfort the person who had thrown up. Ira watched for a second how xe patted the poor officer on the back and said calming things to them before he pulled his attention away to other things. He walked over to the dead body — more precisely, the upper half of the dead body — and nudged it with his foot. He was just making sure that there was no alien in there that was about to erupt from the chest and kill people again. Those monsters were cool, but they were a pain to kill.

Of course, they were also very fun to kill. But Ira wasn't heartless; occasionally he would do good things for the benefit of others. Mostly because Fumiko was not far away and it would kind of bum him out if xe died.

There was nothing in the chest. Even his ultra-secret X-Ray ability didn't detect anything unusual in the chest cavity or anywhere else in the body. Satisfied with his examination, Ira stepped back from the corpse and decided that he needed to go take a shower before the blood dried and got stuck in his hair. When it did that his hair, which was now long because apparently, that was the fashion again, clumped together and it became painful to comb. Troublesome, he thought. Ira would take a shower before it became a problem, but there was no saving that costume.

The door to the cargo hold opened and the Captain entered through it. "What the hell happened here?" the Captain asked loudly. The elderly man ran into the room and paled visibly at the sight of the torn-apart corpse and all the blood that filled the space. The medical officer was right behind the Captain and immediately set out to examine the dead body.

"It's Micheals," the medical officer said. Her hands trembled as she brushed some of the blood off the man's face and closed his eyes. She stood up and stared straight at the Captain. She frowned and said "If there are more of these things on the ship..." she shook her head and sighed deeply.

The Captain looked angry. He had a snarl on his face and his eyebrows were furrowed; his hands clenched at his side. He slammed a fist against a nearby crate, the sound loud in the silence. The people around them were no longer screaming, instead, they were quietly crying or going into shock. The navigation officer glared at the Captain and continued xyr efforts to calm down the panicking people. Meanwhile, the Captain glared at the monster that was dead and asked "Who killed it?"

Ira immediately pointed at a navigational officer. The Captain's eyes swept right past Ira and stopped on the navigational officer. He stepped closer to xem and said, "Good work."

"Thanks," Nylo said. Xe glared at the Captain and said, "We need to do a sweep of the ship."

The Captain nodded. He turned away from the navigational officer and walked to the clean part of the cargo hold. He dragged a hand through his short, stubby gray hair. "Damn it!" He kicked the floor and growled something that Ira couldn't make out. Then the man took a deep breath and forcefully regained his calm.

Sensing that he was no longer needed, Ira left the cargo hold and walked the familiar route back to his room. Once there, he entered the bathroom that was so tiny that he could barely move and squeezed his way into the shower. Turning the shower-head on, he was immediately drenched by cold water. Still wearing his clothes, blood ran down the drain. He got undressed and stowed the clothes in a corner of the shower floor while he got the shampoo from a small shelf that he had to contort himself around, so as to not accidentally hit it with his body. Cleaning his hair furiously, he frowned at the lumps in his hair.

He spent over an hour in the shower. By the time that he left it, his skin was wrinkled and he inexplicably wanted to drink water. He toweled himself off in his room — there was no space for it in the bathroom, it was way too tiny. It was reminiscent of a twenty-first-century airplane bathroom. Ira surrounded himself with the fluffy towel and sat down on the bed with his hair still dripping water. He pushed it out of his face and ignored the water soaking into the sheets.

His gaze traveled over the room to the door that was still non-functioning and was stuck at the halfway point between open and shut. At least, it wasn't wide enough for one of those monsters to get in. Ira used a smaller towel than the one that he was wearing around his body like a dress to dry his hair, the towel immediately getting stained red. Despite his best efforts, he hadn't been able to get all of the blood out. And eventually, he just gave up.

Finally dry, he stood up and swept himself into the bathrobe hung on the back of the bathroom door. It barely reached his knees, but he didn't think he was meant to wear it outside of his room. Humans were strange like that.

He could go back to sleep. He had done his job and everybody was distracted by the dead body and the dead monsters. So he could go back to sleep and nobody would probably even notice. But he wanted to do some exploring. Now that he was here in his own body and had a front-row seat to the fun that was about to transpire, he wanted to see it for himself.

He didn't have a spare uniform for some reason, or maybe he just hadn't bothered to look hard enough, so he exited the room in only his bathrobe. Because the long strands of his hair were annoying, he tied it back with a hair tie at the back of his neck. It would do.

Ira made his way to a much more damaged part of the ship. His arms swung by his sides as he cheerfully walked through the ship. Most of the lights were still out so it was dark in the long hallways. Ira had no issues since his eyes were superior to humans, and he could easily get past the doors that were stuck with his strength. He shoved his way through anything that tried to hinder him.

Eventually, he got to a much more well-lit hallway. Looking around, he couldn't see anyone close by so he entered the hallway and followed it, wherever it may lead. He got further and further away from the dot that represented his Host on the map.

His footsteps echoed in the silence. He could clearly hear the sound of himself walking. A hint of smoke was in the air, something was probably on fire nearby. It gave the air a hazy quality. Some of the hull-plating on the walls had been dislodged in the crash and he could see some exposed wires sparking. Touching those would be the height of stupidity.

There was nobody around. His map clearly indicated that he was alone in this part of the ship. It was the work of a second to switch his map to also show non-sentient beings who were close. Immediately, dozens of yellow-colored dots appeared on the map. So many dots that he could barely make out the dots that represented humans and other sentient beings. Ira frowned and narrowed his eyes at it. There weren't a lot of things alive on this planet. So, odds were good that some of those dots were more of those monsters. And from the look of it, they surrounded the whole ship.

At the end of the hallway was a door that opened automatically when he approached. Pleased that it was not yet another damaged door that he would have to force open, Ira walked through it confidently. Then he pulled to an abrupt stop.

Glancing at his map again, Ira confirmed what he saw with his own physical eyes. The monsters weren't surrounding the ship, they were in the ship. And there were two of them right in front of him.

And Ira didn't have his gun with him.

Keeping his eyes on the monsters, Ira looked around the small space for something to use as a weapon. His eyes lit up when they landed on a crowbar conveniently stored in it.

Well, he was alone. There were monsters in front of him that would eat him if given the chance. Nobody could see him. He had a free pass to act however he wanted. Ira's lips slowly stretched into a bloodthirsty grin. In a burst of speed, he walked over the closest metal box and pulled out a crowbar. Holding it up in front of him as he stared with sparkling eyes at the monsters, he felt excitement rising within him. Ira licked his lips and pushed off from the ground. The monsters rose to meet him.