This Coming Storm

A Rue Skyfire x Oscillation story, by Kittyluvver
Rain.
Rain poured down from the twilit heavens, rain thick and gray and heavy as pooled shadow. The sky was split by the flash of stark lightning and the rumble of distant thunder. The heavy clouds above were black as deepest midnight, black as NightWing scales, so dark that they veiled the moon and the stars.
There were some rains that were gentle, some rains that healed and cleansed, some rains that fed the thirst of the earth. But not this rain. It was cold and brought misery in its wake - it was the kind of rain that clung to your skin and soaked you to your bones, the kind of rain that sapped your life, the kind of rain that made you wish that you were far, far away.
Thunder roared over the muddy wastes, echoing out over the distant mountains and the stumpy, twisted, radiation-scarred trees that formed the landscape of the Pyrrhian Wasteland. The thunder roared as if in defiance, in anger, but all its efforts were in vain. Its fading voice would go unheard, as there was no life in these barren wastes. No life - not even so much as a single, solitary, scarred creature, to cock an ear and listen.
Except a single muddy gray RainWing, huddled alone under a scarred tree.
She was alone, cold rivulets of water pouring down her sallow, blanched scales. She shivered violently, shoulders hunched, wings mantled against the pounding rain. The scraggly leaves and pockmarked branches of the tree over her head offered little cover against the merciless assault of the elements. The driving rain blistered against her scales, and the howling wind cut sharp as a knife.
Rue looked up at the storm-torn sky, blinking streaming eyes.
"Cold," she whispered.
Her voice was lost in the roar of the winds.
Morning.
Morning was quiet and bright, here in the vast emptiness of what used to be the SkyWing kingdom. Morning was violet and red and pink, filling the sky with golden streaks, gilding the world in the silent beauty of the dawn. Morning was gentle here.
The little RainWing uncurled herself gingerly from under the tree, her frame wracked by a few soft coughs. Her face and wings were caked in a light film of grit and dust; detritus of the storm, and as she tood she gave herself a weak shake to dislodge the clinging dirt. She sneezed, the harsh sound strange and out of place on these quiet mountain slopes.
Rue sniffed, her nose running freely. Oh three moons, she thought to herself. She was sick.
She groused about it to herself as she gathered her meager belongins. Her worn brown backpack, containing everything that she had and needed to survive. Her dark black sniper rifle, Oblivion, lay to one side, its sleek length propped up against a cluster of fallen rocks. She shouldered her pack and grasped Oblivion fondly, her paws light on its familiar grip. Even on days like these where she was sure that there wasn't another living soul within a radius of miles, she still kept it close. It had become a comfort thing; these days she could hardly rest easy if it wasn't in paw's reach.
And then she sneezed again, violently, and managed to startle a pair of blackbirds out of a nearby tree. Cursing, she groped around for anything she could use to blow her nose.
And then she froze.
She wasn't alone after all. A pair of eyes, stark white as the fallen snow, blinked up at her from a gap between the trunks of two stunted trees.
In a fraction of a second, Rue had Oblivion turned and cocked, aimed directly at the space between those two eerie, pale eyes. 
She should have taken the shot. She would have under any other circumstances. It didn't pay to be merciful in the Pyrrhian Wasteland, no, no indeed. On any other day Rue would have shot first and made apologies later, especially when those eyes so clearly belonged to a mutant of some sort. A single hesitation, a single missed chance could cost her much more her life.
Looking back on the moment, Rue wouldn't be able to say exactly why she didn't make the shot. Just, that something made her hesistate. Something made her claws relax on the trigger, something compelled her to lower the muzzle of the gun ever so slightly. Something stopped her.
"Who's there?" she growled at whatever it was skulking in the darkness. "Show yourself!"
There was a fraught silence. Then it emerged from the shadows.
It looked like a NightWing, but Rue knew instantly that it wasn't. It wasn't so much as any one individual feature that hit her wrong, but more of a gut instinct - the same gut instinct for danger that had saved Rue on several occasions. There was simply a general aura of wrongness around this dragon. Its scales were black as deepest midnight, so dark that they appeared to drain the color from the rocks and branches around it. Enormous white orbs turned to stare at her as the mutant emerged from the shadows. 
It didn't belong here. It didn't even belong in this world. It was unnatural. Mutant. Aberrant.
Rue hesitated, heart beating fast. Her spine prickled, her RainWing scales turned murky grey as she was overcome with horror and revulsion. Every instinct screamed at her to kill it, put a 10 millimeter slug into its brain. She had seen mutants before. They were not uncommon on these blasted, irradiated wastes. The mutants she knew were like slavering, lunging animals. And she knew that sometimes, the most merciful thing to do was just to put them down.
And yet she didn't shoot. Something stopped her.
"What are you?" she breathed.
She had no reason to expect a response - the mutants of the Wasteland were usually so decayed and warped that they had lost all the sentience that they once enjoyed. Rue hadn't met a mutant that was capable of uttering more than a howl or shriek as they lumbered in for the kill.
And yet the NightWing's mouth opened, and it replied conversationally.
"I am Oscillation," it said, enunciating every syllable very clearly and crisply, as if it were unused to the sensation of using its mouth to form words. "And you are Rue Skyfire."
Rue gaped in astonishment, the muzzle of her gun dipping even lower. "How... how do you know my name?"
"I know many things," it replied, moving further out into the clearing. Its wings and tail became visible, slender and black as shadow. There was no part of it where its intense coloration lightened, except its eerily pale eyes. Looking at it was like looking into a dragon-shaped swatch of void, black and empty.
Category:Content (Kittyluvver)
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
Category:Genre (Romance)
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)