Animalis

Disclaimer: See Chapter One
Rating: PG-13 for language and small scene dealing with death.
Word Count: 1881
Author' s Note: Okay, so here is the next chapter which practically wrote itself. This story is came so easily to me, i am so surprised. I am almost finished with the final chapter, so you lovely readers won't have to wait very long to read the last few chapters. Chapter three has already gone through edits, so i should be posting that one later on tonight or tomorrow, just depends on how quickly i finish going through it a final time. I want to thank damnednforsaken, for the wonderful beta work, she has had to put up with my bad grammar, punctuation, etc., so every one give a round of applause for her herculean task! So any errors you see… yeah those are mine, i changed a few lines here or there after she sent it back to me. Okay, on with the show!

"Blah" - Talking
'Blah' - Thoughts

RHRHRHRHRH

"Ahhhh!" yelled Harry as he fell to the desert below him, Remus and Sirius grunting on either side of him as they too hit the sand on the desert world.

With a quick jump up, Harry had his wand out and stood in a battle crouch ready to defend his family and himself from any threat around. He scanned the endless sand dunes as far as the eye could see, frowning as he tried to work out what just happened.

"Remus, Sirius? You alright?" Harry asked after he made sure there were no threats around.

"Yeah, just had the wind knocked out of me," Remus answered as he stood to his feet offering a hand up to his mate and then checking Sirius over just to make sure he was fine.

"Moony, I'm fine." Sirius laughed as the concerned werewolf gave his full attention to checking his mate for any injuries.

Once Remus was done, he nuzzled Sirius' neck and took a quick lick of his pulse point, reassured at his mate's scent and taste again. Then he quickly checked Harry over ignoring the rolled eyes from the amused teenager. "Cub, are you hurt?"

"No, Remus. I'm fine… though I would like to know what just happened." Harry looked around the dry, hot desert around them, frowning as he saw three suns in the distant sky. "Where are we?"

"I've never seen that silver spell before… Obviously, it was some sort of transportation spell," Remus mused as he shielded his eyes looking up towards the three suns. "Wherever we are I don't think its anywhere near Earth, or at least the Earth we know."

"So how do we get home and find the fucker who did this to us?" Sirius groused as he looked at his mate and pup. "I'm not a fan of endless sandy beaches without the benefit of an ocean and a bottomless Mai Tai."

"Can we even get home? It's not like we have access to any potions or tomes with transportation spells in them to search through," Harry said quietly as he again searched the surrounding desert. "There isn't even any sign of people her-"

Just as he spoke, a loud boom echoed around them and all three men looked up to see a long hulking black ship enter the atmosphere, the nose high up in the air. Watching in horror, Harry couldn't turn away even knowing it was going to crash. The ship got its nose down a bit more before it hit the ground below skidding across the desert plains, breaking up and leaving a trail of debris behind.

"Holy shit!" Sirius exclaimed.

"I think we should probably head that way see if we can help the survivors. Besides, they appear to be the only people on this planet so far." Remus stated as Harry and Sirius nodded.

As they began making their way towards the crash, Harry wondered who or what exactly they would find when they got there.

RHRHRHRHRH

'They say most of your brain shuts down in cryosleep. All but the primitive side... the animal side. No wonder I'm still awake. Transporting me with civilians… sounded like 40 plus. Heard an Arab voice, some hoodoo holy man. Probably on his way to New Mecca. Smelled a woman. Sweat, boots, tool belt, leather. Prospector type. Free settlers. And they only take the back roads. And here's my real problem: Mr. Johns, blue-eyed devil. Planning on taking me back to the slam... only this time he picked a ghost lane. A long time between stops. A long time for something to go wrong…'

Riddick's eyes snapped open as a jolt slammed him against the door of the cryo chamber. Yelling and screaming echoed through the ship as people are thrown around, and he could hear pieces of the crew's words as they tried to save the bucket of bolts without any hope. This ship was going down; they just hadn't figured it out yet.

Through a blindfold on his face he could see Johns fall out of his cryo chamber, looking around confused. 'Stupid merc, don't you know a crashing ship when you see one…' Johns stumbled around until the ship began to break apart, part of the hull ripping off the rest of the ship like fly paper. Cryo chambers began sliding out of the ship into the bright desert sun, the poor bastards probably most likely still oblivious to the death that's comin' quick.

Johns grabbed onto a steady support beam as the ship bounced off the ground below it. Then, with a sudden stop, everything flew forward as the ship came to a stop. Riddick found himself launched out of the cryo chamber as it was thrown around. He caught himself in a low crouch, feet planted firmly on the deck, the cat-like reflexes of a Furyan keeping him from being impaled by the loose rebars inches in front of him. Cocking his head to the left he smelled Johns nearby, his scent covered by the debris he's buried in; perfect time to cut and run.

Slipping through the ship, Riddick searched for a way out, anything to get as much space between him and the merc as possible. He heard Johns give a groan as he started to wake… not enough time to get away. Coming to a stop, Riddick sniffed around and then grinned as he found a few thick pipes up high to use as cover. Crouching down low for a moment, his strong leg muscles pulling tight, he sprang up and wrapped his arms around a pipe, pulling himself up into the shadows.

Johns jumped down into the small compacted room, cautiously creeping into the room as he checks every hiding spot for Riddick. Waiting for the perfect moment, Riddick let Johns get directly under him before he quickly slipped the chain linking his feet around Johns' throat to choke him. Johns choked out a surprised cry and flailed about for a second or two before he pulled a collapsible baton from his pants, the click of the baton being release filtering through the room as Johns started hitting every part of Riddick he could. The pipe holding Riddick broke then, sending him falling to the floor below with a silent groan.

"Somebody's gonna get hurt one of these days, Riddick… and it ain't gonna be me." Johns said, his breath coming out in shallow pants. A smug grin was on his face as he pulled Riddick up and he lead Riddick until he found a spot to chain him.

RHRHRHRHRH

"How are we gonna explain who we are and how we got here?" Harry asked as they walked closer to the crashed ship.

They'd been walking along the path the ship carved into the sand for a few hours, debris scattered all around. They'd found a number of people in large metal coffin-like things that Harry thinks might be like those sleeper chambers he saw on a sci-fi movie a few years ago. Everyone they had found so far had been dead. The hardest part had been when they had come across the chamber of a little girl no more than five or six, her pail blonde hair blowing in the slight breeze. She had reminded him so much of Luna when he had found her after the end of the final battle. The thought of her death and the little girl's had Harry turning away and falling to his knees, his breakfast flowing up through his throat and splattering against the hot sand in front of him.

Harry had seen a fair bit of death in the last few years, and he had even gotten to the point were he could shove the horror away for the moment and deal with the current issues. Seeing children dead, though, was something he had never gotten used to and hoped he never did. The final battle had had quite a few casualties; thankfully, only a few of them had been students. However, those who did die were etched into Harry's memory as more people he had failed to save.

"Lets play it by ear," Sirius answered Harry, pulling him out of dark memories. "There have been at least twenty or thirty of those pod thingies with people who didn't survive. They may not know who was all on the ship."

Nodding, Harry pulled his wand out of his pocket and renewed the fading cooling charm on himself. There wasn't a lot to be cheerful about right now, but one of the few things was that they all had their wands with them. They didn't have much else besides those and the clothes on their backs, but at least there was a little glimmer of hope. Harry wondered what exactly they were going to find when they got to the ship; there had been so many deaths from the crash already… Would there be any survivors at all?

RHRHRHRHRH

The air in the broken ship was hot without a hint of a breeze. Riddick could smell the sweat and dirt and blood… death on everything, everyone. The few who lived were outside, their voices filtering through the cracks in the hull as they talked about the male prospector going out and burying the dead. Fear and worry clung to them, even a bit of guilt…?

Turning his head upward, Riddick could spot through the blindfold a break up high in the metal beam he's chained to. Stupid move on Johns' part, slipping up like that. Riddick would take it though; it would get him free and it'd make his day to stick it to Johns.

Standing up, Riddick lifted himself onto the balls of his feet and then twisted his arms up high from their resting spot behind him, grunting as each of his shoulders popped out of their joints and then back in as they went over his head. Slipping the chain through the break in the beam, Riddick fell to the ground before grabbing a sharp metal pike to break the handcuffs around his hands and feet. Once that was done, he quickly searched through the junk around him, smirking when he found a pair of old darkened goggles to shield his eyes.

Quietly moving through the ship he slipped out of the hull and took off running for hills in the distance. A half a mile or so out, he came to a halt as a scent hit him. It was sweet and spicy, crisp and clear; the scent was enthralling and completely took him over. Riddick felt the beast inside, the one that drove his survival, his senses, rise up and give a feral growl. Its screamed MINE! inside his mind.

"Interesting…" Riddick growled with a cock of his eyebrow as he sniffed the air, rooting out where the heavenly scent was coming from. Back towards the crash. He knew he should be heading farther away, Johns is probably already on his tail, but the scent was too irresistible to ignore.