#im trying to cherrypick whats useful from game mechanics and just kinda ditch the rest uhhh

[kaaramel]

i conked out at like 2am writing this so weigh that in your mind vis-a-vis expectations of quality

the dialogue is weird and stilted a'purpose, partly as like, 'translation' into english from trashtalk (which i imagine is mostly pretty direct) and partly because fish hasnt held a damn conversation in years

whatever woooo apocalypse time

The day had been scorchingly hot, which was bad, and witheringly dry, which was worse. Time was, he might have preferred a dry heat, but things had changed. Drastically so. Now his water supply was unfathomably precious, and he was wasting half of it by sloshing it over his thin, membranous skin, trying in vain to keep himself moist, to wash off the dust and sand and ash that clung to him.

Once upon a time, the beginning of the end of the world, there had been all sorts of crackpot theories, doomsday cults and conspiracists blooming and thriving on the chaos of the profound, unstoppable destruction. One faction he remembered with particular bitterness had held that the influx of radiation was simply ushering in a new age - the powerful mutagen was gifting stagnant humanity a new method of evolution, allowing them to adapt to their new environments, guiding them to radiate into a thousand brand-new, more powerful, better-suited forms. The cults were long since disbanded or dead or themselves mutated into unrecognizability, but he would have liked to confront them, perhaps. Demand what their oh-so-idealistic philosophy of hyperadaptation could say to explain away being shaped into a fish in the middle of the desert.

He'd kept two legs, two arms, two eyes, one head, and such. That was more than some poor bastards could say. His skin was more like a frog's than a fish's, strictly speaking, scale-free and smooth and a vivid shade of green; it was the fins and the wide, thick-lipped mouth that gave him the impression that he’d go well with tartar sauce. He'd never been near a body of water large enough to test whether he actually had gills, but a certain internal fluttering and other changes in the way he breathed suggested he might. He'd never been much of a looker, even before, but he could run and talk and shoot, all of which were skills that counted, in this new and harsher world.

He was not much more than another desert scavenger, competing with the scorpions and the maggots. The bandage-cloaked bandit gangs were the closest thing to civilization, and they bickered and stole and fought among themselves, endlessly. He survived; that was about all that could be said, and it pained him, when he had the energy to spare for self-reflection.

The bandit gangs had been quiet lately, which really should have been a sign. He hadn't paid enough attention, had just been grateful for the lull in activity. As far as he could gather, several factions had been united under a single strong leader. He had not, unfortunately, deduced this through some sort of brilliantly skilled ex-cop investigative work. It was a guess inspired by his current state of being shot at by a big fuckin' bandit and his swarm of cronies.

Cowering behind cover (the bleached skull of some long-dead fishlike creature, which wasn't particularly encouraging) he worked to reload his trusty, slightly battered revolver. He'd been hit once, but that was fine, he'd always worked better under stress. Think of it as motivation to get this over with quickly. Another flurry of bullets whizzed around him, some of them cracking into his makeshift protection, which wouldn't last forever. He just needed to find the right moment.

The shooting paused. The bandit leader spat some crude and guttural jabbering about cowardice, his voice betraying that he was on the move, angling for a new position. Time to move - he ducked and rolled, came up on his feet, revolver steady -

Something burst out of the rocky wall of the canyon - about baseline human-size and bipedal, purple, faceted surfaces that the sun reflected off. It continued the wild charge, funneled its momentum seamlessly into a furious uppercut that sent one unlucky bandit flying off its feet and crashing headlong into another. Both went down in a tangle of wrappings and rifles. The lead bandit turned, distracted, unloaded a wild barrage of gunfire at the newcomer with a roar of rage. The forgotten loner, not distracted at all, trained his revolver on the towering figure and fired, over and over, until his target crumpled to the desert sand.

The remaining bandits cut their losses and fled, trading frantic accusations and vicious insults (Trashtalk, as its name would suggest, was a language truly rich with insults - even the simplified pidgin the bandits spoke). He approached the big bandit's corpse as the dust cleared, anxious to loot him before any particularly daring bandits chose to regroup. It was a shame about the mutant that had leapt into the fray like that, earning itself nothing but a showy entrance and a point-blank flurry of gunfire, but perhaps it had been carrying valuables as well...

A crystalline formation jutting out of the ground beside the fallen bandit glittered brilliantly in the sunlight, and resolved itself somehow into a humanoid shape, albeit a squat and bulky one, with no obvious neck or any division between head and torso. It was the mutant that had plowed through a solid wall of rock, then taken the brunt of bandit gunfire, and it was clearly untouched. Grinning, it raised a chunky hand in friendly greeting.

"Hello." Its Trashtalk had an odd, eerie echo to it, but was entirely understandable. "Good shooting."

"How you alive?" he demanded, blunter and gruffer than he liked, his voice rough from disuse. He wished he could spare a drink of water.

It grinned, and its teeth were sharp and blindingly shiny. "Oh, that? I'm tough. I can handle a few bullets." The constructions it used when referring to itself were unfamiliar to him for a moment, and then he recognized the form. Feminine. She continued. "Like a rock, see? I reflect -" She flexed an arm, showing an impressive bicep, and it went rigid and sharp, the flat panes of it glossy in the bright desert sun. Pointed with the other, mimed a bullet's path bouncing off of it. "Ka-ping."

"You're very strong." He edged closer to the big bandit's body, wondering bleakly if she would demand the spoils from the kill. His best chance in that case would be to grab what he could and try to outrun her. There was something curious about the dirt near his corpse, a darker shape, a hint of movement.

"You too. Like I said. Good marksman." Her radiant smile hadn't faded. "Call me Crystal. What do I call you?"

Proper names in the wasteland were precious and rare. Too many painful memories were locked up in names from before, and on the flipside there were people now who hadn't been 'people' until the radiation, who hadn't had names at all. Mostly descriptions would do. Something snappy and short enough for your friends to yell, something obvious that didn't give too much away.

He shrugged. "Fish." What else?

"You alone? You want to come with me?"

He lost his train of thought entirely. "I - Alone. Yes. What?"

"Through the portals." He had heard the word, but not what it meant - by way of illustration, she pointed at the yawning purple vortex that had opened beside the bandit's corpse, swallowing a trickle of fine desert sand that swirled and disappeared inside. "I'm looking for something. Special. Important. You should come, Fish-out-of-water. This is no place for you."

What did he have to lose?

"Fläshyn," he grunted. Let's do this.

The bandits had carried nothing much useful besides ammunition and guns. Fish managed to patch himself up, liberated a shotgun and some shells that didn't seem in too dire a state. Crystal slung a machinegun over her craggy shoulder and strode confidently toward the portal.

"We need to stick together," she warned him, bracing her feet against the inexorable suction, and held out a hand for him to take. It was solid but surprisingly warm - not on the surface like a rock that had been in the sun, but truly heated from within. "It'll be rough. Hope you don't get sick easy."

"I'll survive," he said, and the portal drew them in to a dizzying timeless rushing void - nothing solid, nothing still, no way to orient himself or measure how long he'd been inside

- and emerged into clear blue waters.

He gasped reflexively for air and got a rush of warm water that soothed parts of his throat he hadn't known existed. He could breathe! Not labored, painful gasps for hot, dry, sandy air, real breathing!

Crystal's chuckle was distorted even more by the water. "Portals aren't always this nice. Lucky you, Fish."

"I will drink. This entire oasis." It was the only word that came to mind for body-of-water. Fish kicked off from the ground, swimming a few strokes experimentally. His efforts were a little clumsy, but respectable enough. Crystal appeared to be heavy enough to simply walk along the bottom.

"Staying here then? I won't make you go. This might be a good place." It was tempting for perhaps half a second.

Other fish - animal fish, not humanoid mutants - were already gathering. The bony, visible ribcages and sharp teeth weren't especially encouraging. A few tenacious scraps of water plants were clinging to the rocky bottom, achingly brilliant rippling green strands, but even as he watched, a few of the starvation-skinny fish got into a fight over the few stringy mouthfuls, snapping and ramming at each other viciously. If this was the state of the local wildlife, he'd just as soon keep moving.

"Was a nice thought." Guns and water didn't mix; he pulled out the only thing he carried that might be effective: a screwdriver, but one large and hefty enough to do some damage. Crystal flexed her fists and shifted into a fighting stance as the school of hungry fish closed in.